Land Academy Show

Land Academy Show

By Steven Butala Jill DeWitBusinessTechnologyEducationInvesting
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Land Academy Show episodes

  • How To Get Your First Land Flipping Deal in 30 Days (LA 2016)

    In this insightful episode, “How to Get Your First Land Flipping Deal in 30 Days,” they offer a deep dive into the competitive landscape of the land industry with an in-depth analysis of the numbers and break down a realistic timeline for closing your first deal flipping land. Don’t miss these actionable tips and essential information to jumpstart your land investing journey.

    Steven Jack Butala and Jill DeWit have been teaching their land flipping methodologies since 2015 when they founded Land Academy. Having completed over 16,000 transactions (and counting!) since the 90s, they bring a wealth of experience to their educational land investing platform and share that knowledge each week on “The Land Academy Show” podcast.

    Transcript: N/A

    https://youtu.be/U4R7-a2ZvXQ

    Thanks for listening, and finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts.

    56 min
  • Market Changes Demand We Expand Our Land Business To Flipping Houses (LA 2015)

    In today’s episode, Market Changes Demand We Expand Our Land Business To Flipping Houses, Jack and Jill discuss why the current housing market trends make it the perfect time to expand their land business into buying and reselling houses. They emphasize the importance of using data to identify areas with excess demand for houses and a supply that has caught up with it. They also address questions from their Land Academy community, including whether to do a self-close or a title escrow close for a land purchase, and the importance of using a separate mailing address and phone line for business purposes. Tune in to get valuable insights and tips on ensuring your land investments are successful.

    Transcript:

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Steven Jack Butala here.

    Jill Dewitt:

    And I’m Jill Dewitt, and this is the Land Academy show.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    It’s sort of the House Academy show today.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Oh really, why?

    Steven Jack Butala:

    If you don’t know this, we have a website just like Land Academy, a company just like Land Academy, called House Academy.

    Jill Dewitt:

    I knew that.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    For years it has not been feasible to buy and sell houses. Well, that’s what it’s all about today.

    Jill Dewitt:

    It has been feasible, but now, because there’s people that have been successfully doing it in our groups, so I don’t want to pooh-pooh anybody that’s doing it. They’re like, what are you talking about? What they’re probably saying is, “Stop sharing this.”

    Steven Jack Butala:

    It hasn’t been feasible enough.

    Jill Dewitt:

    There we go.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    To meet Jill and I’s standards where you can get rich off of it.

    Jill Dewitt:

    That’s it.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    We probably could do a deal here and there.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Right, exactly.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    That’s not how we roll. This is episode number 2015, and today we are talking about why the housing market demands that we expand our land businesses into buying and reselling houses. I didn’t just wake up today and think, we should start buying and selling houses.

    Jill Dewitt:

    I’m bored.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    I don’t have thoughts like that.

    Jill Dewitt:

    This just seems like a good idea.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    I’m looking at the data, as I do every single week, and share it with the Land Academy community, and the data is now for sure telling us that there’s excess, there’s an incredible demand for houses still, and there’s now a supply that has caught up with it and it’s time to start buying houses again for us.

    Jill Dewitt:

    What’s interesting is, well, I’ll save my questions for the show because I actually have some questions on this topic for you. Go ahead.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Each week on the show we answer a question from our Land Academy member Discord forum, and we take a deep dive into land related topics by popular request from our Land Academy community. Let’s take a couple of questions today.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Cool. Jenny … Oh, by the way, in case you couldn’t notice, we are still coming to you from the RV, so on the road for quite a few months actually this summer. So the background may change. Right there over my shoulder, that little window, that view’s going to change, but this shouldn’t change.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    And our attitude will change for sure.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Oh, definitely.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Jill’s will.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Yeah, exactly. I’ll get angrier.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    That’s usually my job.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Oh, that’s true. Your job is angrier. I just get loopy, like what, I’m supposed to do what? Okay, so back to the questions. Jenny in our group wrote, “I have a newbie question for everyone. I have a purchase agreement in place to buy my first parcel of land this weekend. Yay. My sellers are in a situation where they need the cash as quickly as I can make it happen. It’s a vacant land parcel that an end user will most likely put a mobile home on. Power’s at the street. Well, septic of course will need to get done. All normal stuff. Given all these details, and if there’s anything else I need to consider, will it be okay for me to do a self close following the steps from Jill, or would there be a reason to make this a title escrow close instead? Buying for 18K.”

    Jill Dewitt:

    Do you want to go first or-

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Yes. A lot of people had comments, and I believe in the general consensus of those comments and they are as follows. Having a baby’s not really a cash crunch situation. This is not my words. These are the words of other Land Academy members.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Did they say that?

    Steven Jack Butala:

    In Discord. Oh, yeah.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Where’s there a baby involved?

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Oh, somebody’s having a baby.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Oh, is that why it’s in there?

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Yeah. Oh, this is why they need the money.

    Jill Dewitt:

    That got cut out of the question.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    It’s not them. They’re having their first grandchild, so they’re probably freaking out. Yeah, it did get cut off.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Oh, okay.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    And number two, you know somebody’s going to put a mobile home on this. They’re going to need title insurance. So I would close with title insurance, like we do with most transactions, a vast, vast, vast majority of transactions, and I would try to find a residential or an escrow agent that can do it quickly and effectively.

    Jill Dewitt:

    My turn now. I’m with Jenny, you do have options. You could buy it really fast and get title insurance on the sell side. There’s nothing wrong with that. Make sure you have those people in the loop because they may be needing to sign some documents, blah, blah, blah, when you do the title insurance on the sell side. Have we done this? Heck yeah.

    Jill Dewitt:

    And then on the flip side is, too, the big picture is it shouldn’t take that long anyway because we’re not in COVID. There’s actually an abundance of agents. There’s so much of abundance and time right now with title agents, speaking from experience, that they have all the time in the world to analyze your deal and even try to save you from some things. So I’m kind of like just close it like we talked about kind of thing. So that’s another show. But you should be very capable and able to make five phone calls and find a good agent in your area that can do this inside of two weeks-

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Oh, geez.

    Jill Dewitt:

    … period-

    Steven Jack Butala:

    A week.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Because you’re all cash with title insurance.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    And there’s probably not a loan. There’s no loan on the property, so that takes out a lot of time and energy.

    Jill Dewitt:

    They’re probably worried because they’re thinking, you know what, they’re thinking of their house experience where, gosh, it was 30 and 45 days to close because I had to provide all these documents. I had to provide letters that I paid off that credit card. I had to provide this. That’s kind of a normal situation for people. So to them, when you say, “I can get it done a week from Friday,” they’re going to be like, “Oh, okay, that’s perfect.”

    Steven Jack Butala:

    So for the rest of you, if you’re brand new, or for any of you who are saying what the heck are these two talking about now, there’s two ways to close a real estate deal. The one that everybody knows about, Sally Smith, the residential real estate agent, gets a listing. You sell the property, you sign your name 3000 times. Sally Smith, who does not actually know how to close a real estate deal, sends it to escrow agent John Smith, and John Smith does all the work.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    And from there, again, a bunch of stuff to sign, disclosures, all kinds of things, and they manage the money for you. So if you were to buy this for cash, you would be buying it for $18,000. You would put it in escrow. The escrow agent would set up a closing statement where the money goes and the whole thing, and that’s how Jill and I sell property and that’s how we buy it 99% of the time.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    If you go way back into our podcast, that’s not how we did it in the beginning. A lot of years ago, 10, 15 years ago, that was exactly not what we did. So that’s way number one, the way that everybody knows.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Number two is just like selling a car without a dealer. You have a title in your hand and the buyer of your car has a fistful of money. He gives you the money, you sign over the title to the car. Some states you need a notary, some you don’t. I take the money, I give you the title, and the title gets recorded and it’s done. Same thing with real estate, and that’s what a self close is. I’m oversimplifying, but it’s really important to know. Everybody needs to know you don’t need a real estate agent to close a real estate deal.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Thank you. All right, next question. Steven wrote, “Any issues with using my home address for mail? Should I pick up a post box office instead? I do not plan on moving in the foreseeable future. Also, is it recommended to get a second phone line? Any option on using a virtual phone line like RingCentral versus a second dedicated phone line?”

    Jill Dewitt:

    I have a lot to say about this and I’m sure you do, too.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    I do. You go first. You’ll probably cover all of it actually.

    Jill Dewitt:

    That would be nice. Thank you.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    I think you and I are-

    Jill Dewitt:

    You don’t need mom and dad weighing in on this, so that’s why I held back on the last one. I let dad take that one. We’re going to let mom take this one. So you know what, Steven? What if you hit it big, or just who knows? Life happens. You might move. You never know.

    Jill Dewitt:

    So one reason is I want you to get a post office box or some kind of a virtual mailbox, something like that, that will never change, because 10 years from now, 15 years from now, hey, this one, I’ve been doing this for 15 years, he’s been doing it for 30. Thank goodness we still have the same mailbox address because people do write letters and still reach out to us from now I can say decades ago. It’s crazy, but it’s true, and I want to get those letters because I might want that property now, whatever it is. So I do want you to do that. The flip side of that, too, is like I don’t really want anybody showing up on your door. Not that they would.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Sure they will. Eventually they will.

    Jill Dewitt:

    But what if somebody’s not happy about something? I don’t know. They have something to say about it. You definitely don’t want your own personal stuff. You don’t want a package on fire on your doorstep.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Mom’s softening this topic. Do not use your home address.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Well, that’s what I’m saying.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Okay, then number two on the phone number, same thing. I can’t be sure I’m going to have my same phone number forever, but I can keep my phone and I want to keep it separate too. There’s a couple different reasons. A, I don’t want people to have my own cell number. I need to be able to differentiate if it’s a work call or it’s my friends calling me. B, I need to flip this number around sometimes. I need a phone number that I purchase and I own. I might buy it from [inaudible 00:09:43] or something like that and then port the number into my phone system, and that’s the best way because what if I’m not taking the calls this week? I’m doing so great, I’m so busy. I have Pat Live take the phone calls and I can just route the phone number to Pat Live. I can route the phone number to my new assistant five years from now.

    Jill Dewitt:

    And again, the main point is they might reach out to you six months or six years after that mailer goes out and there’s a good chance you’re going to want that property. At least you want the option to look at it and go, “You know what? I did so well in that area and boy, I wouldn’t mind doing a couple more. I’ve got the whole team in place.” You need to get those calls. So that’s why you want to do that.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    The relative cost for all this stuff is so small.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Cheap.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    And geez, maybe 30 minutes.

    Jill Dewitt:

    A hundred bucks a month, if that.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Both of these things set up. In 1995, I got a mailbox in midtown Scottsdale and we still to this day have that same mailbox. We have moved, we’ve lived in three different states. We’ve probably moved 12 to 15 times, and that mailbox is the same.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    I had a home phone number and a fax number. That’s how long ago this was. That is still in use within our companies today, that we still use it for certain stuff because I was fortunate enough because we owned it and then we forward it and the whole thing. So you want to leave open a lot of options. Millions and millions of letters, hopefully if your career goes well, you’re going to send out millions of letters like Jill and I do, and you’re going to get calls 10 years later.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Here’s your nomad tip of the day. If you want to have a lifestyle like us, doing deals from wherever you choose to be, whether it’s in this country, in an RV, whether it’s on the back of a boat, whether you’re in the Caribbean, wherever you are dreaming up, spending a month in Paris, I don’t care, you could even do mailbox place to mailbox place.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    That’s what we do.

    Jill Dewitt:

    That’s an interesting thought. Exactly. So we have, like Jack just said, from 1995, our same whatever address, guess what they do? Bundle it up, send it to us wherever we are. It’s the greatest thing.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    We have our home mailbox and our professional company’s mailbox in the same place and we don’t get mail anywhere else.

    Jill Dewitt:

    We don’t get mail at home. Everything at the mail at home is all the junk mail that I feel bad that people are wasting money on because it gets stacked up and then I recycle it all.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    And the people that run the mailbox place, I think we’ve been through three owners there, pack up our stuff and send it to us probably once a month, whatever’s in there.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Yep. Okay. Today-

    Steven Jack Butala:

    The bigger, deeper question is, Steven, we address all this stuff in the program, and I have to ask myself, I guess I have to ask it out loud myself, why would you veer from what we teach?

    Jill Dewitt:

    Well, maybe he hasn’t got to that part of the program yet. That happens a lot. I’ve noticed that. I had some dear sweet woman recently and I went back and I looked and I’m like, tell me how much, she’s like, and she stopped watching at that crucial point. I’m like, “You turned off the thing.”

    Steven Jack Butala:

    What happened? What’s the story there? Tell us the story. I want to hear this story.

    Jill Dewitt:

    It’s all right. She turned it off at that crucial moment where you go on to talk about, “And here’s what could happen and here’s why you test this and here’s how you do this,” and stuff. It was data related, and I’m like, “You’ve got to watch this stuff.” Not only do you have to watch it, watch it a couple times because every time you’re going to pick up on something different.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    When are you guys going to get to the topic?

    Jill Dewitt:

    I know. Can we talk about it?

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Today’s topic, why the housing market demands that we expand our land business into buying and reselling houses. Jill and I have a lot of experience buying and selling houses. We’ve done many deals. That saved us around 2009, 2010, long before we had Land Academy, where we just, if you’re old enough to remember, we had the largest real estate recession in the history of our country, with the exception of 1929. So it was a tough time. We had a ton of real estate. Jill and I owned a bunch of land free and clear, as we always do, and we couldn’t sell it. Nobody was buying land.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    And certainly nothing like that’s going to happen this time, but it is showing the sign. And back then we saved ourselves by buying houses and selling them. We were buying houses from banks for 40 to $60,000 that are now three and $400,000. And we were reselling them back then for 80 to 120 really successfully. And that was only because the market was conducive to that situation. That’s it.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    And so yeah, we bought and sold houses after that, and all throughout my career, I’ve always been buying and selling houses and so was Jill. She cut her teeth on that actually. I cut my teeth on land and we got together and did a bunch of house deals, and at that time it wasn’t our favorite thing because we were cleaning them up too much, but they were always profitable.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    So there’s some circumstances that are lending themselves in the market that are starting down that path of repeating what happened in 2009, only a lot less acute. And so I’ll go through what those circumstances are and why we’re going to start and already have started out. We’ve got a house [inaudible 00:15:06] hitting here in about less than a week. All right, here’s number one.

    Jill Dewitt:

    To my phone.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    If you remember-

    Jill Dewitt:

    I’m taking those calls right myself, at least the first wave.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    If you remember back then, what caused that financial breakdown that trickled up and down into the housing and real estate community was credit. It was lack of credit, which was really catalyzed in my opinion by predatory lending. We have weird, weird crazy lending practices with reverse mortgages and all kinds of stuff.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    And fortunately, and I don’t say this too often, but fortunately, and I think it was required back then, the federal government stepped in and made some changes for the better I think. Now what we’re experiencing is COVID. So COVID happened and we all thought that it was going to destroy the economy and it didn’t. It had the opposite, direct opposite effect to real estate. So if you look at any graph, you can see COVID happened, the world shut down, and nobody was buying or selling property at all.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    And the next January came, I guess it was around 2021, everybody started buying property. It was time to buy mountain houses and second homes and all of that, and it was mixed up with the three percent. We were having two and three percent mortgage rates. There was a massive house buying binge that was happening. Well, little did I even know back then most of the deals that were happening for residential properties were adjustable rate mortgages. So you were locked in for a certain amount of time and then after time passes, it adjusts to actual interest rates.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    So from a lender’s perspective, you have to say or think, well, how can you lose actually? They’re kind of betting on the fact that they’ll go up, and they are. Interest rates have gone up. They were two to three percent back then. They’re around seven percent now. Six to seven, maybe seven plus. So all those interest rate mortgages that were locked in at three percent, two and three percent, are going to go up two or three percent. They’re literally going to double. That was 2021. This is 2024. Three years later.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    If you had a 3/1 adjustable rate mortgage, an ARM, it’s adjusting right now. And the direct result of that is a lot more houses are going on the market. And here’s why. If your mortgage is 12 to $1,500, which is the national average a month, and it goes from three to six percent or seven percent, that $1,200 mortgage is now $2,500. A very substantial number of people can’t handle that financially, and understandably so. Your mortgage is doubling and your salary and the revenue that you have in your household is the same. So significant. Way more than half of the people that are experiencing this can’t handle it.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    What’s the first thing they do? They call their sister-in-law real estate agent and put the house on the market. And that is why we’re seeing tons of inventory on the market. And people are celebrating. I read an article today that was published by the National Association of Realtors. Jill and I are going to talk about it on the call, on our Thursday webinar, a closed call for Land Academy members and House Academy members, and they said there’s reason for celebration. And I stopped before I even, I stopped right after I’d read the title. I didn’t even get into the article. Why are we celebrating? There’s more inventory on the market.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Well, that industry sees that, number one, real estate agents, now they have more stuff to sell. That’s really what they mean. And I’m not even going to tell you what I really think about that. The real positive in it is that people who could not get into the housing market as an owner are now having a better shot at that. There’s more inventory. It’s driving the prices down, very slightly and slowly, but it is driving the prices down because it’s bringing supply and demand in sync again, instead of just having all this crazy demand and not enough supply. So that’s what’s happening and it will continue. And then 5/1 mortgages are going to kick in, too, between now and two years from now. So that rate from 50 to 60% who can’t handle it, it’s going to go even higher.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Demand in the real world, in a regular situation, it would be great because that regular amount of demand would kind of equal out, like I said. But geez, this generation is the largest generation in the world. There are two generations at work here, the Generation X, and I’m sorry, the millennials and then the next one after that, I think it’s called Generation A or something like that. I don’t know. I don’t remember. Together they are 140 million people. The baby boomers are only 70 million. It’s twice as large as the baby boomer generation, which is our parents, Jill and I’s parents. If you’re about our age, that’s the case also.

    Jill Dewitt:

    What is our age?

    Steven Jack Butala:

    I’m not going to say that.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Thank you.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    That was a trick.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Yeah, thank you. Good one.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    If there’s a woman in your life, don’t answer stuff like that.

    Jill Dewitt:

    You’re on your toes.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Please know not to answer anything like that.

    Jill Dewitt:

    There you go. How much do I weigh? Good one.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    That’s how interested Jill is in this topic.

    Jill Dewitt:

    You got this.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    So now you’ve got this massive demand. You’ve got real high interest rates because the feds are trying to keep us in check from an inflation standpoint. And you’ve got all these mortgages coming due. So you’ve got tons of property on the market and tons of demand. All right, so how do we make money on this? What you have is a heck of a lot of activity, tons of activity happening.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    What you need to do is start trolling around on realtor.com or Redfin or Zillow, like we teach in Land Academy and House Academy, and find the markets where properties, lots and lots and lots of properties are being listed and lots of properties are being purchased. And then within that market you are going to find the break point. I talk about all this stuff in House Academy in great detail.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    And you’ll find that at about the top of the bell curve-ish, let’s just say there’s tons and tons of properties listed for between 325,000 and 375,000. There’s very few properties between 100 and 200, 250, and very few properties in the five to $600,000 range. The break point is somewhere at the top of the bell curve, and it smacks you in the face because when you click on pending properties, properties that are under contract, and you click on sold properties, the values will smack you in the face. They will be somewhere around that 350 mark.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    So you send out a mailer, you figure out how to buy property below that break point. When you have all this activity and tons of properties are hitting the market, some people get your offer, they get your letter, they get your offer in the mail, and they say to themselves, “There’s 14 houses for sale on my block right now. Every time I drive to work, I see the signs. I’m going to call this guy back. He wants to buy for 250. I think I’m going to sell it to him if he wants it that bad.”

    Steven Jack Butala:

    If this works, Jill and I have done it in two market downturns. So I would urge you, if you’re listening to this because you’re buying and selling land, or you want to, I would urge you to expand into this space or at least explore it.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Do you want to share anything at all about, and you can say no.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Oh, good. No.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Okay. No, I was just going to say we all understand and agree and appreciate your insight and your research. That was wonderful. Beautiful presentation about why it all makes sense and what numbers and where you should be looking at and trolling and that kind of thing. There’s a couple questions that I’d just like to throw in there and see if you want to talk about, am I cash or am I financing these?

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Oh, geez. So that’s a great question. Boy, nothing will make you run out of money faster than buying a house and reselling it. If you’re buying for 300 and selling for 400, two or three deals and you’re a million bucks extended. For most of us, that’s a lot of money.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    It’s the same situation. The people in our group, the people in the Land Academy group, are dying to apply money to what you’re about to do. Your job is to find properties that are below that break point in that market. That’s the money. And one message on Discord as a Land Academy or House Academy member, you will find the money you need. Jill and I will give you the money.

    Jill Dewitt:

    What about it needs a carpet, and the roof kind of stinks, and boy, that carport should be a garage. What do I do about that stuff?

    Steven Jack Butala:

    So it’s obviously that I left out all the HGTV topics that apply to buying and reselling a house. And the fact is, I could care less about that stuff. I only care about it if it will dramatically stop you from reselling the house. And so nobody wants to buy a super huge piece of garbage. Nobody. And it doesn’t show well and it stinks and it doesn’t pass code and the whole thing.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Except for a flipper.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Yes.

    Jill Dewitt:

    They do want that. If you do too much to it, you’re going to scare all the flippers.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    It’s got to make financial sense. You need to walk in, you need to be the kind of person that can apply common sense and say, “I know I can easily sell a property like this for $350,000. The guy accepted my offer at 250. There’s a lot of stuff wrong with it. I think I’m going to go back and probably re-offer 210 just because I think there’s a lot of [inaudible 00:25:24].” You’re going to get an inspection anyway. The inspection’s going to tell you what’s wrong.

    Jill Dewitt:

    The point I’m trying to make here is in its current condition, the whole goal is you’re trying to find an asset where, what were your numbers? Anywhere from 20 to a hundred. There we go. You’re trying to find a sweet spot, I’m going to argue even more than $20,000. I’m going to say 50 to a hundred thousand. You’re trying to find an asset that’s marked, that’s priced 50 to a hundred thousand dollars below what it’s worth in its current position. And because it’s convenience, you’re finding it before there’s an agent involved, there’s no commissions, all that good stuff. It’s convenience between you and the seller. They can walk away and have a check, and it’s going to be cash and no one’s going to make them redo the roof or clean out the garage. Those kind of things.

    Jill Dewitt:

    And then the point of it is, too, you’re selling it in its current condition. And well, I know we’ll talk more about that because that’s the whole Land Academy, House Academy model. I’m not going in there and making it beautiful. Again, buying it for 250, let’s just say buying it for 250. In its current condition, it’s worth 310, 320. But some flipper can come along and make it beautiful and now it’s worth 400. That’s the goal.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Or 450. That’s what those outliers are.

    Jill Dewitt:

    That’s what you’re doing. You’re selling to them and let them do that work. You don’t have a construction company.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Listen, you do not want to become a contractor here.

    Jill Dewitt:

    True.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    You do not. This is not, it’s called House Academy. It’s not called House Renovations.

    Jill Dewitt:

    True. Or HGTV.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    We do not renovate houses. The most we’ve ever done with any level of success is paint and carpet, and maybe light fixtures in certain cases, if they really need to be replaced.

    Jill Dewitt:

    That was only because I was doing the end user. You know what it was? We bought one that was a little too nice and that’s all it needed. And none of the investors wanted to touch it. I’m like, well, I guess we’re going to sell it then, we’re going to sell it to the end user. Guess what happened? Then we made even more money. So that’s the worst thing that can happen if it’s in that good of shape. So good stuff.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    This is all math.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Thank you.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    It’s all buying properties that are like kind, analyzing sold values, active values, reducing it down to a price per square foot, and doing the math. It’s not about window treatments. If you are really interested in buying and selling houses so that you can express yourself artistically, this is absolutely the wrong show for you and the wrong program.

    Jill Dewitt:

    We’re here to make money.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Through data, through the use of data.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Exactly.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    That’s it.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Thank you.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    So yeah, something to share today.

    Jill Dewitt:

    I was thinking about, in light of this environment, I’m talking to my team and talking about people coming into Land Academy, and it’s so interesting the shift that we’re seeing of the very accomplished corporate people coming to us right now due to little, I don’t know if little or big, I don’t know what the right word is, but shifts in the job market. And I just want to talk about it for a minute and make everybody feel really good about this.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Again, our group is small, and when you really think about the number of people out there doing what we do, it may sound like a lot of noise, but the number of people really actually doing it and doing it well and actually getting mail in out there to people, it’s not that big. So I want you to feel good.

    Jill Dewitt:

    And then to make you feel even better, what I wanted you to know is you could have some very conservative goals in Land Academy, screw it all up, and still have no trouble putting food on the table. So let me just, that’s my whole thing.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Good point.

    Jill Dewitt:

    We talk big numbers all the time. That’s just who we are. We’re wired to do that, and it’s fun. But realistically, if you can’t live on $10,000 a month, we could, then we’ve got some problems. Think about it. If the world all goes sideways and you had $10,000 a month, could you live on that? Yeah, you could.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Oh, geez.

    Jill Dewitt:

    And you know what? If you can’t, we need to talk because then you’re paying too much. You bought your house for too much, you need to reel it back in. You shouldn’t be driving that car and you shouldn’t be going to Hawaii right now.

    Jill Dewitt:

    So you can do it. Those are not crazy numbers. And then within Land Academy, boy, if you just did a couple deals a month, like I said, your goal is to do three, four deals a month and you want to make 10 grand a deal, super small, conservative numbers, you screw them all up. Guess what? Now you make 10 to $20,000 a month and you’re going to be just fine. That’s my point today.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Use this how you’d like to use it. That’s the whole point here. You can scale it.

    Jill Dewitt:

    That’s true.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Scale it how you want.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Well, because I talked to people recently, just in this last, you know, a couple of weeks ago we did this big workshop. It was five days, ended up being six. We went over the next week because we did a whole big Q&A day, workshop, really helping people understand what we are, what we do. And I broke it out into five days. Jack joined me. It was a whole lot of fun.

    Jill Dewitt:

    And I talked to people, and there was an interesting gentleman who was very successful. He said, “You guys scared me with sending out this much mail.” I said, “Well, hold on a moment.” Because you know what’s funny? He’s like, “I don’t want to do that much. I don’t need that much money. I don’t want to do that much.”

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Really?

    Jill Dewitt:

    Yeah, it was really kind of funny. And I’m like, “I can’t remember hearing that before, but okay.” It was really interesting and it made me take a step back and just realize, we’re not going to push you to send out a hundred thousand units of mail a month, uh-uh, but I am going to push you or at least help you and show you.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Guide you.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Guide you with how much mail you need to send to hit whatever your personal goals are. That’s it.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    I don’t want that much money, Jill. I’m good.

    Jill Dewitt:

    It was so funny. He’s like, “Yeah, you guys turned me off on sending that much mail.” I’m like, “I don’t think anyone’s ever said that to me.” I’m like, “This is the funniest thing, but I get it. Okay.”

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Somebody else said that to me. One other person in my entire career said that, “That’s too much. I don’t want to do that.”

    Jill Dewitt:

    I’m like, “Well, you don’t want to make that much money.” “I don’t want to do that.” I’m like-

    Steven Jack Butala:

    By the way, we don’t physically stuff envelopes here.

    Jill Dewitt:

    No, that’s true too. So I guess that’s all I wanted to make sure you know. Whatever your goals are, well, we just introduced personal coaching, by the way. It’s starting this summer. I’m so excited. And that’s one of the main things that I’m really going to get with all the coaches, and we’re going to really sit with you to help you. You may not even know what your goals are. We’ll help you set your goals if you don’t know.

    Jill Dewitt:

    We’ll go through the equity planner with you step by step by step until you feel so good about like, yeah, I can do that. All right, 20 hours a week and that much mail a month. Okay, yeah. To hit those numbers so you feel good about whatever it is for you, and whatever number is magic to you, we’re going to help you hit it. So that’s my point today. Thank you. What do you have to share?

    Steven Jack Butala:

    If this stuff’s intriguing, by the way, I failed to mention, go to either landacademy.com or houseacademy.com. I think if you want to become a guest on our Thursday call-

    Jill Dewitt:

    You could do that.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    I think you go to service at Land Academy.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Support.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Or support.

    Jill Dewitt:

    [email protected]. Send them an email if you want to be a guest on our Thursday member call and see and hear more about some of the deals that we’re all doing.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    That’s your opportunity as a member or not to ask any questions you want.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Totally. All right. What do you have to share with us today, Jack?

    Steven Jack Butala:

    My inspiration slash information segment is a direct segue from the actual topic. You have to adjust to the market. It’s imperative. We have had people in the past who’ve now since, I’m happy to report, gotten over this, but they are one track minded people in the distant past that say, “I’ve been mailing urban Dallas and I’ve been buying infill lots for two years straight. And this most recent time, it doesn’t seem to be working as well. And I guess it’s over.” It’s never over, never, ever over in real estate. You just have to adjust to it.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Could you imagine? Well, Texas is done. Mark that off the list. Everything’s bought and nobody’s moving. No, everybody’s settled. Yeah, that’s it. Texas is over. That would be really funny.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    If our government one day wakes up and says, “Yeah, it turns out we own everything. We’re the government and we own it all, and you’re just our guests here,” which could happen, that would probably end it. But short of that, I think-

    Jill Dewitt:

    Hello.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Join us next Wednesday for another interesting episode. You are not alone in your real estate ambition.

    Jill Dewitt:

    We are Jack and Jill.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Information.

    Jill Dewitt:

    And inspiration.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    To buy undervalued property.

    https://youtu.be/4c_npqEgTJs

    Thanks for listening, and finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts.

    35 min
  • 3 Reasons Why Lack of Access Kills Land Deals (LA 2014)

    In this episode, 3 Reasons Why Lack of Access Kills Land Deals, Jack Butala and Jill DeWit from Land Academy dive into the critical issue of property access and its impact on land deals. Discover the top 3 reasons why lack of access can make or break a deal, and learn from their decades of experience in the land business. Tune in to get valuable insights and tips on ensuring your land investments are successful.

    Transcript:

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Steven Jack Butala here.

    Jill Dewitt:

    And I’m Jill Dewitt, and this is the Land Academy show.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    It’s sort of the House Academy show today.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Oh really, why?

    Steven Jack Butala:

    If you don’t know this, we have a website just like Land Academy, a company just like Land Academy, called House Academy.

    Jill Dewitt:

    I knew that.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    For years it has not been feasible to buy and sell houses. Well, that’s what it’s all about today.

    Jill Dewitt:

    It has been feasible, but now, because there’s people that have been successfully doing it in our groups, so I don’t want to pooh-pooh anybody that’s doing it. They’re like, what are you talking about? What they’re probably saying is, “Stop sharing this.”

    Steven Jack Butala:

    It hasn’t been feasible enough.

    Jill Dewitt:

    There we go.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    To meet Jill and I’s standards where you can get rich off of it.

    Jill Dewitt:

    That’s it.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    We probably could do a deal here and there.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Right, exactly.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    That’s not how we roll. This is episode number 2015, and today we are talking about why the housing market demands that we expand our land businesses into buying and reselling houses. I didn’t just wake up today and think, we should start buying and selling houses.

    Jill Dewitt:

    I’m bored.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    I don’t have thoughts like that.

    Jill Dewitt:

    This just seems like a good idea.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    I’m looking at the data, as I do every single week, and share it with the Land Academy community, and the data is now for sure telling us that there’s excess, there’s an incredible demand for houses still, and there’s now a supply that has caught up with it and it’s time to start buying houses again for us.

    Jill Dewitt:

    What’s interesting is, well, I’ll save my questions for the show because I actually have some questions on this topic for you. Go ahead.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Each week on the show we answer a question from our Land Academy member Discord forum, and we take a deep dive into land related topics by popular request from our Land Academy community. Let’s take a couple of questions today.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Cool. Jenny … Oh, by the way, in case you couldn’t notice, we are still coming to you from the RV, so on the road for quite a few months actually this summer. So the background may change. Right there over my shoulder, that little window, that view’s going to change, but this shouldn’t change.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    And our attitude will change for sure.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Oh, definitely.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Jill’s will.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Yeah, exactly. I’ll get angrier.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    That’s usually my job.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Oh, that’s true. Your job is angrier. I just get loopy, like what, I’m supposed to do what? Okay, so back to the questions. Jenny in our group wrote, “I have a newbie question for everyone. I have a purchase agreement in place to buy my first parcel of land this weekend. Yay. My sellers are in a situation where they need the cash as quickly as I can make it happen. It’s a vacant land parcel that an end user will most likely put a mobile home on. Power’s at the street. Well, septic of course will need to get done. All normal stuff. Given all these details, and if there’s anything else I need to consider, will it be okay for me to do a self close following the steps from Jill, or would there be a reason to make this a title escrow close instead? Buying for 18K.”
    Do you want to go first or-

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Yes. A lot of people had comments, and I believe in the general consensus of those comments and they are as follows. Having a baby’s not really a cash crunch situation. This is not my words. These are the words of other Land Academy members.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Did they say that?

    Steven Jack Butala:

    In Discord. Oh, yeah.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Where’s there a baby involved?

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Oh, somebody’s having a baby.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Oh, is that why it’s in there?

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Yeah. Oh, this is why they need the money.

    Jill Dewitt:

    That got cut out of the question.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    It’s not them. They’re having their first grandchild, so they’re probably freaking out. Yeah, it did get cut off.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Oh, okay.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    And number two, you know somebody’s going to put a mobile home on this. They’re going to need title insurance. So I would close with title insurance, like we do with most transactions, a vast, vast, vast majority of transactions, and I would try to find a residential or an escrow agent that can do it quickly and effectively.

    Jill Dewitt:

    My turn now. I’m with Jenny, you do have options. You could buy it really fast and get title insurance on the sell side. There’s nothing wrong with that. Make sure you have those people in the loop because they may be needing to sign some documents, blah, blah, blah, when you do the title insurance on the sell side. Have we done this? Heck yeah.
    And then on the flip side is, too, the big picture is it shouldn’t take that long anyway because we’re not in COVID. There’s actually an abundance of agents. There’s so much of abundance and time right now with title agents, speaking from experience, that they have all the time in the world to analyze your deal and even try to save you from some things. So I’m kind of like just close it like we talked about kind of thing. So that’s another show. But you should be very capable and able to make five phone calls and find a good agent in your area that can do this inside of two weeks-

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Oh, geez.

    Jill Dewitt:

    … period-

    Steven Jack Butala:

    A week.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Because you’re all cash with title insurance.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    And there’s probably not a loan. There’s no loan on the property, so that takes out a lot of time and energy.

    Jill Dewitt:

    They’re probably worried because they’re thinking, you know what, they’re thinking of their house experience where, gosh, it was 30 and 45 days to close because I had to provide all these documents. I had to provide letters that I paid off that credit card. I had to provide this. That’s kind of a normal situation for people. So to them, when you say, “I can get it done a week from Friday,” they’re going to be like, “Oh, okay, that’s perfect.”

    Steven Jack Butala:

    So for the rest of you, if you’re brand new, or for any of you who are saying what the heck are these two talking about now, there’s two ways to close a real estate deal. The one that everybody knows about, Sally Smith, the residential real estate agent, gets a listing. You sell the property, you sign your name 3000 times. Sally Smith, who does not actually know how to close a real estate deal, sends it to escrow agent John Smith, and John Smith does all the work.
    And from there, again, a bunch of stuff to sign, disclosures, all kinds of things, and they manage the money for you. So if you were to buy this for cash, you would be buying it for $18,000. You would put it in escrow. The escrow agent would set up a closing statement where the money goes and the whole thing, and that’s how Jill and I sell property and that’s how we buy it 99% of the time.
    If you go way back into our podcast, that’s not how we did it in the beginning. A lot of years ago, 10, 15 years ago, that was exactly not what we did. So that’s way number one, the way that everybody knows.
    Number two is just like selling a car without a dealer. You have a title in your hand and the buyer of your car has a fistful of money. He gives you the money, you sign over the title to the car. Some states you need a notary, some you don’t. I take the money, I give you the title, and the title gets recorded and it’s done. Same thing with real estate, and that’s what a self close is. I’m oversimplifying, but it’s really important to know. Everybody needs to know you don’t need a real estate agent to close a real estate deal.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Thank you. All right, next question. Steven wrote, “Any issues with using my home address for mail? Should I pick up a post box office instead? I do not plan on moving in the foreseeable future. Also, is it recommended to get a second phone line? Any option on using a virtual phone line like RingCentral versus a second dedicated phone line?”
    I have a lot to say about this and I’m sure you do, too.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    I do. You go first. You’ll probably cover all of it actually.

    Jill Dewitt:

    That would be nice. Thank you.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    I think you and I are-

    Jill Dewitt:

    You don’t need mom and dad weighing in on this, so that’s why I held back on the last one. I let dad take that one. We’re going to let mom take this one. So you know what, Steven? What if you hit it big, or just who knows? Life happens. You might move. You never know.
    So one reason is I want you to get a post office box or some kind of a virtual mailbox, something like that, that will never change, because 10 years from now, 15 years from now, hey, this one, I’ve been doing this for 15 years, he’s been doing it for 30. Thank goodness we still have the same mailbox address because people do write letters and still reach out to us from now I can say decades ago. It’s crazy, but it’s true, and I want to get those letters because I might want that property now, whatever it is. So I do want you to do that. The flip side of that, too, is like I don’t really want anybody showing up on your door. Not that they would.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Sure they will. Eventually they will.

    Jill Dewitt:

    But what if somebody’s not happy about something? I don’t know. They have something to say about it. You definitely don’t want your own personal stuff. You don’t want a package on fire on your doorstep.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Mom’s softening this topic. Do not use your home address.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Well, that’s what I’m saying.
    Okay, then number two on the phone number, same thing. I can’t be sure I’m going to have my same phone number forever, but I can keep my phone and I want to keep it separate too. There’s a couple different reasons. A, I don’t want people to have my own cell number. I need to be able to differentiate if it’s a work call or it’s my friends calling me. B, I need to flip this number around sometimes. I need a phone number that I purchase and I own. I might buy it from [inaudible 00:09:43] or something like that and then port the number into my phone system, and that’s the best way because what if I’m not taking the calls this week? I’m doing so great, I’m so busy. I have Pat Live take the phone calls and I can just route the phone number to Pat Live. I can route the phone number to my new assistant five years from now.
    And again, the main point is they might reach out to you six months or six years after that mailer goes out and there’s a good chance you’re going to want that property. At least you want the option to look at it and go, “You know what? I did so well in that area and boy, I wouldn’t mind doing a couple more. I’ve got the whole team in place.” You need to get those calls. So that’s why you want to do that.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    The relative cost for all this stuff is so small.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Cheap.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    And geez, maybe 30 minutes.

    Jill Dewitt:

    A hundred bucks a month, if that.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Both of these things set up. In 1995, I got a mailbox in midtown Scottsdale and we still to this day have that same mailbox. We have moved, we’ve lived in three different states. We’ve probably moved 12 to 15 times, and that mailbox is the same.
    I had a home phone number and a fax number. That’s how long ago this was. That is still in use within our companies today, that we still use it for certain stuff because I was fortunate enough because we owned it and then we forward it and the whole thing. So you want to leave open a lot of options. Millions and millions of letters, hopefully if your career goes well, you’re going to send out millions of letters like Jill and I do, and you’re going to get calls 10 years later.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Here’s your nomad tip of the day. If you want to have a lifestyle like us, doing deals from wherever you choose to be, whether it’s in this country, in an RV, whether it’s on the back of a boat, whether you’re in the Caribbean, wherever you are dreaming up, spending a month in Paris, I don’t care, you could even do mailbox place to mailbox place.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    That’s what we do.

    Jill Dewitt:

    That’s an interesting thought. Exactly. So we have, like Jack just said, from 1995, our same whatever address, guess what they do? Bundle it up, send it to us wherever we are. It’s the greatest thing.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    We have our home mailbox and our professional company’s mailbox in the same place and we don’t get mail anywhere else.

    Jill Dewitt:

    We don’t get mail at home. Everything at the mail at home is all the junk mail that I feel bad that people are wasting money on because it gets stacked up and then I recycle it all.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    And the people that run the mailbox place, I think we’ve been through three owners there, pack up our stuff and send it to us probably once a month, whatever’s in there.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Yep. Okay. Today-

    Steven Jack Butala:

    The bigger, deeper question is, Steven, we address all this stuff in the program, and I have to ask myself, I guess I have to ask it out loud myself, why would you veer from what we teach?

    Jill Dewitt:

    Well, maybe he hasn’t got to that part of the program yet. That happens a lot. I’ve noticed that. I had some dear sweet woman recently and I went back and I looked and I’m like, tell me how much, she’s like, and she stopped watching at that crucial point. I’m like, “You turned off the thing.”

    Steven Jack Butala:

    What happened? What’s the story there? Tell us the story. I want to hear this story.

    Jill Dewitt:

    It’s all right. She turned it off at that crucial moment where you go on to talk about, “And here’s what could happen and here’s why you test this and here’s how you do this,” and stuff. It was data related, and I’m like, “You’ve got to watch this stuff.” Not only do you have to watch it, watch it a couple times because every time you’re going to pick up on something different.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    When are you guys going to get to the topic?

    Jill Dewitt:

    I know. Can we talk about it?

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Today’s topic, why the housing market demands that we expand our land business into buying and reselling houses. Jill and I have a lot of experience buying and selling houses. We’ve done many deals. That saved us around 2009, 2010, long before we had Land Academy, where we just, if you’re old enough to remember, we had the largest real estate recession in the history of our country, with the exception of 1929. So it was a tough time. We had a ton of real estate. Jill and I owned a bunch of land free and clear, as we always do, and we couldn’t sell it. Nobody was buying land.
    And certainly nothing like that’s going to happen this time, but it is showing the sign. And back then we saved ourselves by buying houses and selling them. We were buying houses from banks for 40 to $60,000 that are now three and $400,000. And we were reselling them back then for 80 to 120 really successfully. And that was only because the market was conducive to that situation. That’s it.
    And so yeah, we bought and sold houses after that, and all throughout my career, I’ve always been buying and selling houses and so was Jill. She cut her teeth on that actually. I cut my teeth on land and we got together and did a bunch of house deals, and at that time it wasn’t our favorite thing because we were cleaning them up too much, but they were always profitable.
    So there’s some circumstances that are lending themselves in the market that are starting down that path of repeating what happened in 2009, only a lot less acute. And so I’ll go through what those circumstances are and why we’re going to start and already have started out. We’ve got a house [inaudible 00:15:06] hitting here in about less than a week. All right, here’s number one.

    Jill Dewitt:

    To my phone.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    If you remember-

    Jill Dewitt:

    I’m taking those calls right myself, at least the first wave.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    If you remember back then, what caused that financial breakdown that trickled up and down into the housing and real estate community was credit. It was lack of credit, which was really catalyzed in my opinion by predatory lending. We have weird, weird crazy lending practices with reverse mortgages and all kinds of stuff.
    And fortunately, and I don’t say this too often, but fortunately, and I think it was required back then, the federal government stepped in and made some changes for the better I think. Now what we’re experiencing is COVID. So COVID happened and we all thought that it was going to destroy the economy and it didn’t. It had the opposite, direct opposite effect to real estate. So if you look at any graph, you can see COVID happened, the world shut down, and nobody was buying or selling property at all.
    And the next January came, I guess it was around 2021, everybody started buying property. It was time to buy mountain houses and second homes and all of that, and it was mixed up with the three percent. We were having two and three percent mortgage rates. There was a massive house buying binge that was happening. Well, little did I even know back then most of the deals that were happening for residential properties were adjustable rate mortgages. So you were locked in for a certain amount of time and then after time passes, it adjusts to actual interest rates.
    So from a lender’s perspective, you have to say or think, well, how can you lose actually? They’re kind of betting on the fact that they’ll go up, and they are. Interest rates have gone up. They were two to three percent back then. They’re around seven percent now. Six to seven, maybe seven plus. So all those interest rate mortgages that were locked in at three percent, two and three percent, are going to go up two or three percent. They’re literally going to double. That was 2021. This is 2024. Three years later.
    If you had a 3/1 adjustable rate mortgage, an ARM, it’s adjusting right now. And the direct result of that is a lot more houses are going on the market. And here’s why. If your mortgage is 12 to $1,500, which is the national average a month, and it goes from three to six percent or seven percent, that $1,200 mortgage is now $2,500. A very substantial number of people can’t handle that financially, and understandably so. Your mortgage is doubling and your salary and the revenue that you have in your household is the same. So significant. Way more than half of the people that are experiencing this can’t handle it.
    What’s the first thing they do? They call their sister-in-law real estate agent and put the house on the market. And that is why we’re seeing tons of inventory on the market. And people are celebrating. I read an article today that was published by the National Association of Realtors. Jill and I are going to talk about it on the call, on our Thursday webinar, a closed call for Land Academy members and House Academy members, and they said there’s reason for celebration. And I stopped before I even, I stopped right after I’d read the title. I didn’t even get into the article. Why are we celebrating? There’s more inventory on the market.
    Well, that industry sees that, number one, real estate agents, now they have more stuff to sell. That’s really what they mean. And I’m not even going to tell you what I really think about that. The real positive in it is that people who could not get into the housing market as an owner are now having a better shot at that. There’s more inventory. It’s driving the prices down, very slightly and slowly, but it is driving the prices down because it’s bringing supply and demand in sync again, instead of just having all this crazy demand and not enough supply. So that’s what’s happening and it will continue. And then 5/1 mortgages are going to kick in, too, between now and two years from now. So that rate from 50 to 60% who can’t handle it, it’s going to go even higher.
    Demand in the real world, in a regular situation, it would be great because that regular amount of demand would kind of equal out, like I said. But geez, this generation is the largest generation in the world. There are two generations at work here, the Generation X, and I’m sorry, the millennials and then the next one after that, I think it’s called Generation A or something like that. I don’t know. I don’t remember. Together they are 140 million people. The baby boomers are only 70 million. It’s twice as large as the baby boomer generation, which is our parents, Jill and I’s parents. If you’re about our age, that’s the case also.

    Jill Dewitt:

    What is our age?

    Steven Jack Butala:

    I’m not going to say that.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Thank you.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    That was a trick.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Yeah, thank you. Good one.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    If there’s a woman in your life, don’t answer stuff like that.

    Jill Dewitt:

    You’re on your toes.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Please know not to answer anything like that.

    Jill Dewitt:

    There you go. How much do I weigh? Good one.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    That’s how interested Jill is in this topic.

    Jill Dewitt:

    You got this.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    So now you’ve got this massive demand. You’ve got real high interest rates because the feds are trying to keep us in check from an inflation standpoint. And you’ve got all these mortgages coming due. So you’ve got tons of property on the market and tons of demand. All right, so how do we make money on this? What you have is a heck of a lot of activity, tons of activity happening.
    What you need to do is start trolling around on realtor.com or Redfin or Zillow, like we teach in Land Academy and House Academy, and find the markets where properties, lots and lots and lots of properties are being listed and lots of properties are being purchased. And then within that market you are going to find the break point. I talk about all this stuff in House Academy in great detail.
    And you’ll find that at about the top of the bell curve-ish, let’s just say there’s tons and tons of properties listed for between 325,000 and 375,000. There’s very few properties between 100 and 200, 250, and very few properties in the five to $600,000 range. The break point is somewhere at the top of the bell curve, and it smacks you in the face because when you click on pending properties, properties that are under contract, and you click on sold properties, the values will smack you in the face. They will be somewhere around that 350 mark.
    So you send out a mailer, you figure out how to buy property below that break point. When you have all this activity and tons of properties are hitting the market, some people get your offer, they get your letter, they get your offer in the mail, and they say to themselves, “There’s 14 houses for sale on my block right now. Every time I drive to work, I see the signs. I’m going to call this guy back. He wants to buy for 250. I think I’m going to sell it to him if he wants it that bad.”
    If this works, Jill and I have done it in two market downturns. So I would urge you, if you’re listening to this because you’re buying and selling land, or you want to, I would urge you to expand into this space or at least explore it.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Do you want to share anything at all about, and you can say no.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Oh, good. No.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Okay. No, I was just going to say we all understand and agree and appreciate your insight and your research. That was wonderful. Beautiful presentation about why it all makes sense and what numbers and where you should be looking at and trolling and that kind of thing. There’s a couple questions that I’d just like to throw in there and see if you want to talk about, am I cash or am I financing these?

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Oh, geez. So that’s a great question. Boy, nothing will make you run out of money faster than buying a house and reselling it. If you’re buying for 300 and selling for 400, two or three deals and you’re a million bucks extended. For most of us, that’s a lot of money.
    It’s the same situation. The people in our group, the people in the Land Academy group, are dying to apply money to what you’re about to do. Your job is to find properties that are below that break point in that market. That’s the money. And one message on Discord as a Land Academy or House Academy member, you will find the money you need. Jill and I will give you the money.

    Jill Dewitt:

    What about it needs a carpet, and the roof kind of stinks, and boy, that carport should be a garage. What do I do about that stuff?

    Steven Jack Butala:

    So it’s obviously that I left out all the HGTV topics that apply to buying and reselling a house. And the fact is, I could care less about that stuff. I only care about it if it will dramatically stop you from reselling the house. And so nobody wants to buy a super huge piece of garbage. Nobody. And it doesn’t show well and it stinks and it doesn’t pass code and the whole thing.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Except for a flipper.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Yes.

    Jill Dewitt:

    They do want that. If you do too much to it, you’re going to scare all the flippers.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    It’s got to make financial sense. You need to walk in, you need to be the kind of person that can apply common sense and say, “I know I can easily sell a property like this for $350,000. The guy accepted my offer at 250. There’s a lot of stuff wrong with it. I think I’m going to go back and probably re-offer 210 just because I think there’s a lot of [inaudible 00:25:24].” You’re going to get an inspection anyway. The inspection’s going to tell you what’s wrong.

    Jill Dewitt:

    The point I’m trying to make here is in its current condition, the whole goal is you’re trying to find an asset where, what were your numbers? Anywhere from 20 to a hundred. There we go. You’re trying to find a sweet spot, I’m going to argue even more than $20,000. I’m going to say 50 to a hundred thousand. You’re trying to find an asset that’s marked, that’s priced 50 to a hundred thousand dollars below what it’s worth in its current position. And because it’s convenience, you’re finding it before there’s an agent involved, there’s no commissions, all that good stuff. It’s convenience between you and the seller. They can walk away and have a check, and it’s going to be cash and no one’s going to make them redo the roof or clean out the garage. Those kind of things.
    And then the point of it is, too, you’re selling it in its current condition. And well, I know we’ll talk more about that because that’s the whole Land Academy, House Academy model. I’m not going in there and making it beautiful. Again, buying it for 250, let’s just say buying it for 250. In its current condition, it’s worth 310, 320. But some flipper can come along and make it beautiful and now it’s worth 400. That’s the goal.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Or 450. That’s what those outliers are.

    Jill Dewitt:

    That’s what you’re doing. You’re selling to them and let them do that work. You don’t have a construction company.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Listen, you do not want to become a contractor here.

    Jill Dewitt:

    True.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    You do not. This is not, it’s called House Academy. It’s not called House Renovations.

    Jill Dewitt:

    True. Or HGTV.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    We do not renovate houses. The most we’ve ever done with any level of success is paint and carpet, and maybe light fixtures in certain cases, if they really need to be replaced.

    Jill Dewitt:

    That was only because I was doing the end user. You know what it was? We bought one that was a little too nice and that’s all it needed. And none of the investors wanted to touch it. I’m like, well, I guess we’re going to sell it then, we’re going to sell it to the end user. Guess what happened? Then we made even more money. So that’s the worst thing that can happen if it’s in that good of shape. So good stuff.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    This is all math.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Thank you.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    It’s all buying properties that are like kind, analyzing sold values, active values, reducing it down to a price per square foot, and doing the math. It’s not about window treatments. If you are really interested in buying and selling houses so that you can express yourself artistically, this is absolutely the wrong show for you and the wrong program.

    Jill Dewitt:

    We’re here to make money.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Through data, through the use of data.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Exactly.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    That’s it.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Thank you.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    So yeah, something to share today.

    Jill Dewitt:

    I was thinking about, in light of this environment, I’m talking to my team and talking about people coming into Land Academy, and it’s so interesting the shift that we’re seeing of the very accomplished corporate people coming to us right now due to little, I don’t know if little or big, I don’t know what the right word is, but shifts in the job market. And I just want to talk about it for a minute and make everybody feel really good about this.
    Again, our group is small, and when you really think about the number of people out there doing what we do, it may sound like a lot of noise, but the number of people really actually doing it and doing it well and actually getting mail in out there to people, it’s not that big. So I want you to feel good.
    And then to make you feel even better, what I wanted you to know is you could have some very conservative goals in Land Academy, screw it all up, and still have no trouble putting food on the table. So let me just, that’s my whole thing.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Good point.

    Jill Dewitt:

    We talk big numbers all the time. That’s just who we are. We’re wired to do that, and it’s fun. But realistically, if you can’t live on $10,000 a month, we could, then we’ve got some problems. Think about it. If the world all goes sideways and you had $10,000 a month, could you live on that? Yeah, you could.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Oh, geez.

    Jill Dewitt:

    And you know what? If you can’t, we need to talk because then you’re paying too much. You bought your house for too much, you need to reel it back in. You shouldn’t be driving that car and you shouldn’t be going to Hawaii right now.
    So you can do it. Those are not crazy numbers. And then within Land Academy, boy, if you just did a couple deals a month, like I said, your goal is to do three, four deals a month and you want to make 10 grand a deal, super small, conservative numbers, you screw them all up. Guess what? Now you make 10 to $20,000 a month and you’re going to be just fine. That’s my point today.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Use this how you’d like to use it. That’s the whole point here. You can scale it.

    Jill Dewitt:

    That’s true.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Scale it how you want.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Well, because I talked to people recently, just in this last, you know, a couple of weeks ago we did this big workshop. It was five days, ended up being six. We went over the next week because we did a whole big Q&A day, workshop, really helping people understand what we are, what we do. And I broke it out into five days. Jack joined me. It was a whole lot of fun.
    And I talked to people, and there was an interesting gentleman who was very successful. He said, “You guys scared me with sending out this much mail.” I said, “Well, hold on a moment.” Because you know what’s funny? He’s like, “I don’t want to do that much. I don’t need that much money. I don’t want to do that much.”

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Really?

    Jill Dewitt:

    Yeah, it was really kind of funny. And I’m like, “I can’t remember hearing that before, but okay.” It was really interesting and it made me take a step back and just realize, we’re not going to push you to send out a hundred thousand units of mail a month, uh-uh, but I am going to push you or at least help you and show you.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Guide you.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Guide you with how much mail you need to send to hit whatever your personal goals are. That’s it.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    I don’t want that much money, Jill. I’m good.

    Jill Dewitt:

    It was so funny. He’s like, “Yeah, you guys turned me off on sending that much mail.” I’m like, “I don’t think anyone’s ever said that to me.” I’m like, “This is the funniest thing, but I get it. Okay.”

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Somebody else said that to me. One other person in my entire career said that, “That’s too much. I don’t want to do that.”

    Jill Dewitt:

    I’m like, “Well, you don’t want to make that much money.” “I don’t want to do that.” I’m like-

    Steven Jack Butala:

    By the way, we don’t physically stuff envelopes here.

    Jill Dewitt:

    No, that’s true too. So I guess that’s all I wanted to make sure you know. Whatever your goals are, well, we just introduced personal coaching, by the way. It’s starting this summer. I’m so excited. And that’s one of the main things that I’m really going to get with all the coaches, and we’re going to really sit with you to help you. You may not even know what your goals are. We’ll help you set your goals if you don’t know.
    We’ll go through the equity planner with you step by step by step until you feel so good about like, yeah, I can do that. All right, 20 hours a week and that much mail a month. Okay, yeah. To hit those numbers so you feel good about whatever it is for you, and whatever number is magic to you, we’re going to help you hit it. So that’s my point today. Thank you. What do you have to share?

    Steven Jack Butala:

    If this stuff’s intriguing, by the way, I failed to mention, go to either landacademy.com or houseacademy.com. I think if you want to become a guest on our Thursday call-

    Jill Dewitt:

    You could do that.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    I think you go to service at Land Academy.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Support.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Or support.

    Jill Dewitt:

    [email protected]. Send them an email if you want to be a guest on our Thursday member call and see and hear more about some of the deals that we’re all doing.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    That’s your opportunity as a member or not to ask any questions you want.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Totally. All right. What do you have to share with us today, Jack?

    Steven Jack Butala:

    My inspiration slash information segment is a direct segue from the actual topic. You have to adjust to the market. It’s imperative. We have had people in the past who’ve now since, I’m happy to report, gotten over this, but they are one track minded people in the distant past that say, “I’ve been mailing urban Dallas and I’ve been buying infill lots for two years straight. And this most recent time, it doesn’t seem to be working as well. And I guess it’s over.” It’s never over, never, ever over in real estate. You just have to adjust to it.

    Jill Dewitt:

    Could you imagine? Well, Texas is done. Mark that off the list. Everything’s bought and nobody’s moving. No, everybody’s settled. Yeah, that’s it. Texas is over. That would be really funny.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    If our government one day wakes up and says, “Yeah, it turns out we own everything. We’re the government and we own it all, and you’re just our guests here,” which could happen, that would probably end it. But short of that, I think-

    Jill Dewitt:

    Hello.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Join us next Wednesday for another interesting episode. You are not alone in your real estate ambition.

    Jill Dewitt:

    We are Jack and Jill.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Information.

    Jill Dewitt:

    And inspiration.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    To buy undervalued property.

    Jill Dewitt:

    That was crazy.

    https://youtu.be/5HCIsakDn-Y

    Thanks for listening, and finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts.

    40 min
  • Land Academy Success Story: $3 Million Dollars In 1 Year (LA 2013)

    Join us for an insightful interview with Josiah Ronco, $3 Million Dollars In 1 Year – Land Academy Success Story, an accomplished entrepreneur who achieved an impressive milestone last year. In this episode, Josiah shares his journey from overcoming early challenges to implementing effective strategies that drove his business to success.

    Transcript: N/A

    https://youtu.be/SIudCmnay3A

    Thanks for listening, and finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts.

    39 min
  • 3 Ways to Deal with Competition in Your Land Business (LA 2012)

    Welcome to the Land Academy Show with Jack Butala and Jill DeWit! In this episode, we dive into a hot topic that’s on everyone’s mind: 3 Ways to Deal with Competition in Your Land Business. Whether you’re new to the field or an experienced land investor, competition is a reality we all face. Today, we discuss three key strategies to help you stay ahead and thrive in a competitive market.

    Transcript:

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Steven Jack Butala here.

    Jill K DeWit:

    And I’m Jill DeWit and this is the Land Academy Show.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    This is episode number 2,012, and today we’re talking about three ways to deal with competition in your land business. Oh my gosh, is this a hot topic, Jack? I-

    Jill K DeWit:

    What? Wait, wait, there’s competition?

    Steven Jack Butala:

    For three years straight-

    Jill K DeWit:

    What?

    Steven Jack Butala:

    All I did was mailed Metro Dallas for infill lots. I did 20 deals a month. I just did it again last month and it … I only got 10 deals. I only got two deals. It didn’t work at all. Why? I want it to go back the way that it was.

    Jill K DeWit:

    What do I do?

    Steven Jack Butala:

    You know what Land Academy member, so do I. I want to go back to 1994.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Oh my goodness. Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Total timeout. Hold on a moment, let’s think about this for a second, we’re getting a little sidebar here. If you could go back to any year in your life what year would it be and why?

    Steven Jack Butala:

    You know what? From my soul.

    Jill K DeWit:

    I’m writing mine down.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    I would not go back.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Oh, that’s too bad. Hold on a minute.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    What’s your year? She’s going to say 1985.

    Jill K DeWit:

    No, 1990.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Really? 1990? What would you do different?

    Jill K DeWit:

    I didn’t have a care in the world.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    You know what? Neither did I. 1990-

    Jill K DeWit:

    1990.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    I was absolutely freaked out about … This is what ManPlan’s about. If you don’t know about ManPlan please go to manplan.com. I’m filming it and writing it right now. You’re a man you need a plan. Men make plans. I think women want to have not a care in the world.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Let me tell you where I was in 1990. Let me paint this picture. I moved in to a three-bedroom apartment on the beach with four flight attendants. We had the best parties. People would fly in to come to our parties. It was awesome. I loved it. I miss those days.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    And there’s no period in my life starting from when I was about 14 years old that I’ve suffered from a lack of a good time. I’m not talking about that.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Well true.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Including yesterday.

    Jill K DeWit:

    But I didn’t have care in the world. I made great money, I had no problem paying my bills, everything, and I could go to any concert I wanted-

    Steven Jack Butala:

    So what happened?

    Jill K DeWit:

    And that was it.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    What happened? What changed?

    Jill K DeWit:

    I got transferred.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    This is way more fun than talking about land.

    Jill K DeWit:

    This is very good actually. Well, it was American Airlines and they closed the LA office and they moved me to Arizona. And so I-

    Steven Jack Butala:

    And that triggered-

    Jill K DeWit:

    And then I thought, well, why not do something different? Why not leave California? This could be a good thing. Changes is good, right? Go where the job is. And they’re like “Okay, let’s go to a new state.” And Arizona was always and still is very, very good to us. Now fast-forward. Then what happened? Then I got to Arizona and I got bored and that’s a whole nother story.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Keep going.

    Jill K DeWit:

    And then I made some bad decisions.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Okay. Now we get to the bottom of it. The stage was set for bad, boring, boring …

    Jill K DeWit:

    Bored.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Boredom driven bad decisions.

    Jill K DeWit:

    That’s it.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    That’s a show.

    Jill K DeWit:

    That’s it. So anyway.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Kind of bored maybe I should get married. I’m bored maybe I should have a baby.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Maybe we should buy a house.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Nope, nope, nope. Let’s get some debt.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Yeah, that’s a great idea.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Sprinkle some debt.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Yeah, let’s get-

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Sprinkle some debt on a bad relationship-

    Jill K DeWit:

    Let’s get a great car-

    Steven Jack Butala:

    And a couple-

    Jill K DeWit:

    That holds a couple car seats.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    A couple of babies.

    Jill K DeWit:

    That’s a good idea.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    A minivan. Get a white minivan.

    Jill K DeWit:

    It was not white. I’ve never had a white-

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Sprinkle some debt on a bad marriage and a couple of babies in a white minivan and she said … She picks out, well, it wasn’t white.

    Jill K DeWit:

    There you go. Now you know. I have not nor will I ever have a white car. Go ahead.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Two periods like that in my life and I got out of them really fast.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Got it.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    I’m glad I did.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Yeah, all right.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    And you did too.

    Jill K DeWit:

    I got out of it.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    You got out of that.

    Jill K DeWit:

    I wouldn’t say fast.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Your fate.

    Jill K DeWit:

    You know what’s funny? There’s times in my life like right now where I’m like “Oh.” Our staff is like “What happened?” Let’s rip the band-aid off we’re running around crazy people getting stuff done. It’s because I get to the end. I’m like okay, we’re trying to be calm and trying to do this right. And then I’m like nope, over. All right, back to the show. Sorry.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Each week on the show we answer a question, in this case, two questions, from our Land Academy member Discord forum. And we take a deep dive into land-related topics by popular request from our Land Academy community. And today’s topic is three ways to deal with competition because it is the topic, not only within our group but all over the internet. What are we going to do?

    Jill K DeWit:

    Right.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    I’m not the only one sending a mailer to Dallas right now, there’s two other people doing it. What do I do?

    Jill K DeWit:

    I’m just looking ahead. Are they two separate questions?

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Yeah.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Do you want me to pause in between?

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Very separate, yeah.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Okay. So Jen wrote, “When evaluating a property that has come back from a mailer as a possible acquisition, do you send a realtor out to look at the property to give a listing price opinion while still negotiation with the seller or wait until it’s under contract? I have a property that’s anomaly in its area and hard to comp. The seller counted my offer so I was hoping to get an opinion from a local realtor. I thought about contacting Whitetail because I found a Whitetail guy with other similar properties” … This is great.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Good. This is great.

    Jill K DeWit:

    “In the area.”

    Steven Jack Butala:

    You’re on point. Good job, Jen.

    Jill K DeWit:

    “But I don’t know if I should contact him before I’ve assigned PA with the seller. Please advise, thank you.” Can I go first?

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Oh, yeah. First and final on this.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Oh, okay. I would not have any trouble with this. It’s when you send out an offer and the person says, “No, I’m not good enough,” and now you just have no number. You’re just nebulous trying to go well, I don’t even know what to come back with, I need to bring in-

    Steven Jack Butala:

    It’s not a deal yet.

    Jill K DeWit:

    I need to bring in some help. That I wouldn’t do yet. You need to get a number. But this said you have the seller that countered a number so now you have a number. So let’s just pretend, Jen, you sent it out for $15,000, right, and you were feeling good about that. You’re like anything can go anyway. I know at 15,000 this is just going to be great, and they counted at 25. And now you’re going okay, now I really got to think about it. I’m having trouble. I knew at 15 I could make it work no matter what, but at 25 now I’m not so sure my number’s going to work, maybe I need to bring in somebody else. I would have no trouble doing all of this. This kind of a verbal thing with a seller I personally feel … I feel good with.
    I’m not going to say, “Will you sign it, send it to me, and then I’ll really get serious about it.” No, they gave you a serious number back and I would be fine. It sounds like you found somebody good, you found a … I’ve worked with several agents from Whitetail Properties and I think they’re great. I would have no trouble calling them. Don’t give him all those details. Don’t say, “I just got a verbal” or anything like that. But calling him and letting him go look at it and giving you an opinion, I would be totally fine with that at this point

    Steven Jack Butala:

    I would say, “I’ve got a property under contract,” don’t say for how much. “This is it, what do you think you can sell it for?”

    Jill K DeWit:

    I don’t even say that. I don’t even say under contract. I’m just like “Hey, I just got this in and I’m trying to figure out what to do with it, what would you sell it for?” Be real vague. Hello Blake. Okay. Then Blake wrote, “Has anyone who is on a consistent mail schedule noticed a dip in calls the past few weeks? I’m wondering if I messed up by mailer or if it’s a seasonal lull with people traveling for the summer.”

    Steven Jack Butala:

    This is my friend is why we wrote this topic. Not your question specifically, but many, many, many others with the same sentiment. What’s going on? I sent a mailer out and it doesn’t … It’s not performing the way that I want to. To which I answer, and my short answer is … And Jill and I are going to get into the topic here in one second. Welcome to the business. Welcome to any business. There’s ups, there’s downs, there’s great months, there’s bad months, there’s mediocre months, and when you average it all out, hopefully, there’s a little bit of money left over.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Right.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    That’s what this is.

    Jill K DeWit:

    I have to say, sometimes though I do have to agree, there are weird things … Think about you, Blake. I mean, just to be honest, Blake, you’re a Land Academy member because I know you got … This came out of Discord so I know that you’re in there. Just to back up a minute. Let me think for a second. There’s weeks that you are busy. I watch it with our … With Land Academy members. The week the kids are out of school or a holiday, sometimes there’s a lull on people that show up for the activities, and the group calls, and things like that. Sometimes there is a little bit of a dip like that. If it lasts for six weeks then we got to look at it. But if it’s a week here and there and you can go yeah, kids just got out of school, I … They’re going to call me. There’s an expiration date on it. But there are other things going on that you’re going to talk about today too I know.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Let’s do this real quick.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Okay.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Today’s topic, three ways to deal with competition in your land business. When I was a kid and a young professional … I grew up in an industrial environment. My friend’s parents were somehow … Well, it was in Detroit so it was almost always tied to, in some way, the automotive industry including my own parents. My dad had a small accounting practice and my mom had her own psychology clinic-type business. And then my friend’s parents had metal stamping plants and all … But anyway. Everybody was tied to the automotive industry. And I remember hanging out with these older people, at the time, and some of them would pour themselves a Scotch on the weekend and kick their feet up on the desk or wherever we were and they would just have a big smile on their face. Kind of had this aura of it’s just over, I make a bunch of money now. I’ve got this house and my family and I’m happy and I’ve got a big smile on my face and a Scotch in my hand.
    And I took that very incorrectly to mean yeah, this guy’s arrived. He’s done it, it’s all good, nothing to worry about. That doesn’t exist. Your business is a messy but somewhat controllable disaster just like my business is and it will always be that way. That guy was kicking up his feet, I realize now, because he’s trying to get drunk to forget about what happened that week in his own business, and putting a smile on his face. There is no arrival. There’s no point where you say, “Nan, I’ve arrived.”

    Jill K DeWit:

    I don’t have to do anything now.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    I’ve got the right vice president, the right CEO, I don’t have to do anything now. I don’t know I just-

    Jill K DeWit:

    I’m just going to go off and watch the bank balance, watch the money roll in.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Here’s a new address, this is where you send all their money.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Yeah, exactly. Oh, and by the way, I expect that same year-over-year 5% growth. Thanks-

    Steven Jack Butala:

    No, a month over month-

    Jill K DeWit:

    See you later.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    5% growth.

    Jill K DeWit:

    There you go.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    That’s 50 or 60% a year.

    Jill K DeWit:

    There we go. I expect that to continue without me.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    That’s just not how this works.

    Jill K DeWit:

    You guys got this, right?

    Steven Jack Butala:

    It doesn’t work like that, not because of you and something wrong that you’re doing. What ends up happening is, invariably somebody younger, and faster, and smarter is going to come up behind you, take a look at what you’re doing, and figure out a better way to do it. That is a given, number one.

    Jill K DeWit:

    True.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Number one and the three deals away with … Three ways to deal with competition is this. Except that everything is constantly changing. Change is constant. Your supplier is going to cut you off, there’s … Orders are going to go down for some specific part because it’s cheaper to get in China. In our case-

    Jill K DeWit:

    Good point.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    You passed the red-green-yellow test, you’ve been smashing urban Dallas for infill lots for two years straight. Somebody figured it out, not maybe because they were following you around like they follow us around, but just because there’s just … People found out. The red-green-yellow test got out there. Or there’s other people in this environment, which is really serious actually … Other people in this environment that are way less qualified than Jill that are instructing people to send mail like that overpriced. Without getting into-

    Jill K DeWit:

    Noise.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    A lot of the details, you have to accept and embrace that everything’s constantly going to change.

    Jill K DeWit:

    True.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    That’s it. Or you will not survive. You got to get new customers sell side, you have to find new sellers in a different way, you have to reach them in a more creative way.

    Jill K DeWit:

    [inaudible 00:13:16].

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Jill and I just recorded, I don’t know when it’ll air, an interview with a four-year long member, his name’s Josiah Rocco, and he has … He doesn’t know this but he has completely and totally accepted change. He has chosen to deal with that change by ruling his market which is one of the number threes here. And so he’s just the best person in the market to sell your land to for a bunch of reasons and it … Not just price.

    Jill K DeWit:

    This is good stuff.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Number two is what I just said, get to know between one and four areas like the back of your hand so you can start to brand yourself there. Jill has done that in the markets that we’re in. We’re in about four consistent markets. We’re always trying to get new markets, but we always go back to those original four. Jill’s starting to brand herself as a person that buys land in the area and is great to deal with and work with with real estate agents, and escrow agents, and everything.

    Jill K DeWit:

    They’ll give you properties-

    Steven Jack Butala:

    It might be in-

    Jill K DeWit:

    They’ll send me properties. I’m like “Why don’t you do this?” So they’re like, “Nah, it’s not my thing.” I’m like “Okay.”

    Steven Jack Butala:

    What ends up happening there too is it makes your … It builds your confidence. At some point, and it’ll probably take at least two years of consistently mailing maybe 10,000 units a month, what’ll end up happening is you’ll get some property back, you’ll review it, and you will within seconds say, “I would love to buy this property but not at this price. I love this block but not this block.” It goes down to the block sometimes.

    Jill K DeWit:

    You’ll know it that well. And not only that you have your team, it just makes it so easy. Susie at ABC title is on speed dial with you and you just … Now maybe you just text her and say, “Here it comes, here’s the information. Open escrow let’s” … It’s just so fast she doesn’t need to ask you everything over again. It goes faster, and it might even be cheaper by the way.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Build this critical mass too because you’re … Now you’ve got all tens and tens of thousands of mailers out in circulation all over the place. Let’s call it a state, one state. You could do it state-wise, you could do it county, or zip code. There’s one guy we had in our group for a long time and he was just in one subdivision in Texas and that’s it. And he was buying and selling properties, that was his whole career.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Isn’t that funny? Well, think about that. Let’s just back up. Everybody goes like “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.” Well, what if you do one deal a month, and you make sure that one deal a month nets you 25 grand? I’m good with that. So you’re doing 12 a year. Now you can see like oh, okay, I can see, especially in some metro big city, how you could do one deal a month in a pretty consolidated area and do just great.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    It’s $300,000 of net. It doesn’t take a calculator. You just have to consistently send out mail and deal with it.

    Jill K DeWit:

    No, I have you, I don’t need a calculator.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    When you say that-

    Jill K DeWit:

    Thanks to doing the math.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    I think that’s a compliment but it’s okay.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Some days it is some days it isn’t, you decide.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Number three.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Just kidding, haha.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Number three, and this is imperative this is ManPlan stuff. Number three is imperative. You need to remove your emotion based on your bank balance or whether or not you had a good month or a bad month. You need to buy into this business and enjoy it. You need to enjoy land, and looking at land, and analyzing it. If you are joining Land Academy, or any group for that matter, or going into anything and you’re testing the concept … I hate this business of testing. I’m going to send out a test mailer of 200 and see what happens.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Wait, wait, are we on number three? I’m still trying to slow down. I’m trying to slow this down. Can we circle back around or should I slow it down?

    Steven Jack Butala:

    There’s not only three, that’s the kicker. There’s going to be a few more.

    Jill K DeWit:

    All right. I want to just make sure that we’re really talking about these so I’m going to ask you to come back around in a minute. So sorry to interrupt you, please continue on your number three.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    You need to remove your emotion. If you’ve got some type of figurative gun to your head about getting a deal done this month because you need to make payroll. In the long run, that type of stressed environment’s not going to work. That’s not what this is for. You need to make sure that you have no bills or that your bills are so … You have a W-2 job that … Where you can find time in your life to start a company which is what this is. This is not what everybody else on the internet calls it, geez, passive income, and a side gig, and there’s all these cute little names for it. The fact is you are starting an empire and it needs capital, it needs your attention and time, and it needs you to be … Believe in it. You are the leader, you’re the CEO of it. You need to really grab the thing by the horns and give it what it deserves. Feed it so that it becomes something that you can … That you want and you’re hitting your goals.
    Being emotional about having a bad month, you got to barrel through that because you believe in the product, you believe in the concept and the business, and you believe in the group that you’re in, hopefully it’s Land Academy because other people are doing it, they’ve already proven it for you. And you believe in yourself. I think this is the biggest one. The biggest issue with competition is not the competition itself it’s your ability to roll with the changes and your belief in yourself that you can do that and come out of it okay. God, how many times have you and I said, “Wow, the market changed. Geez, what are we going to do?”

    Jill K DeWit:

    We don’t, isn’t that funny?

    Steven Jack Butala:

    How are we going to do that? I can’t count the number of times.

    Jill K DeWit:

    This is perfect because I want to circle back through since we have lots of time. I want to circle back through. I love your list of three here, and I want to talk about them a little bit more with my thoughts on it. So your first one is … Okay, again, we’re dealing with competition, three ways to deal with it. One is you just have to accept it. Totally get it. Like you said, “How many times did we go well, it’s changed, it’s over, it’s done.” We don’t give up, we don’t we just find a new place kind of thing. And that’s part of it for me. You have to stay on track, and stay committed, and pivot.
    You brought up some really, really good points in the beginning here about, no matter what business you have someone’s going to get it cheaper. You could have been the widget king of fill-in-the-blank for two decades and now all of a sudden here comes the new guy. It’s going to happen. Think about Coca‑Cola, Pepsi, think about all the energy drinks, think about everything, there’s always a first guy and then there’s 10 after him, always. And then the question is who stays the course? Who lasts? Who rolls with the punches?
    That’s the thing too about change, you have to change and adapt. If you say, “Well, it’s always worked this way why would I change it? If it ain’t broke don’t fix it” whatever your mindset is. If you don’t change and listen to your customers and what they want you’re going to … They’re going to move on without you. I really like that. Change and accepting that is huge. I was thinking too, how many times we’ve pivoted and changed? How many credit card companies that we’ve gone through back in the day? They didn’t understand our business and they would shut us down. I’m like “I got to be able to accept money.” That was one of the hardest things. People are trying give me money and I can’t take their money, I got to figure something out here. And we got creative.
    There were many times that we just did weird stuff too. It hasn’t happened in probably a decade now, but people would send me checks. I’d have money orders and things like that we had to do just to … Because people really wanted the property and we got creative with them. Then I love your, gosh, dig into an area that you know that … Better than anybody else. And building your team. That’s so huge. Like you mentioned, a lot of it is how fast you can make decisions now because how well you know the area and what’s coming. You know where the Walmart’s going in and you know where this is … And you know the good side of the tracks and the not good side of the tracks. That’s still a thing.
    And it does build confidence because you really know what you’re doing. And also for me it’s ease, it’s money. My life is easier. I’m getting cheaper things done with my same escrow agent. They cut me all these deals because I have three I’m throwing in escrow a month. And we don’t have to talk that much. I know how she rolls she knows how I roll. We get these things done kind of thing. And then your third one, this is good, just taking yourself I guess out of this. You call it remove your emotion or your bank balance.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    That’s great, take yourself out of it.

    Jill K DeWit:

    This is bigger than you.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Well said.

    Jill K DeWit:

    This is bigger than you and it is not personal.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    That’s right.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Being co-founder of a sweet little land company for going on … We’re nine years now and we’re going to be 10 next summer. Boy, if I thought everybody was out to get me I wouldn’t be here right now. I know that we’ve helped a lot of careers in a lot of different ways get off the ground. And I can’t take it personal, and I have to just trust that we’re doing the right thing. And I know we are, I know we are because we’re all doing great. I have one last little thing I’d like to add to this is … We talked about it a little bit on the career path alumni call with the noise out there. And you know what we all agreed on? No one’s listening to the noise, we’re ignoring it. Well, especially Jack has weathered three real estate storms-

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Three.

    Jill K DeWit:

    We’ll just say-

    Steven Jack Butala:

    One was a depression, yeah.

    Jill K DeWit:

    In his career.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    But a lot of little ones that I somewhat caused.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Guess what? It works out. If you can stick with it like we’re talking about, don’t take it personal, find your niche, accept the change, and roll with it … Don’t have a big ego and expect to do the same numbers you did last month, so what? Add up the year, divide it by 12 you know you did fine. And you stay the course, it’s going to work itself out. I hate seeing people not make it-

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Me too.

    Jill K DeWit:

    But there’s a lot of people that won’t make it. There’s a lot of people right now that are … That’s part of what’s going on I think too, there’s a lot of noise out there. People are like “Oh, this is a” … “This land thing.” We’ve talked about this too. I can’t remember the last time I had to explain that you could make money selling land. But when we started Land Academy I was constantly … No one believed me. Not one person would believe that you could make money on land.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    That’s right.

    Jill K DeWit:

    They’re like “You’re stupid.”

    Steven Jack Butala:

    For five years.

    Jill K DeWit:

    “Jill, you’re wrong.”

    Steven Jack Butala:

    For the five years it was like that.

    Jill K DeWit:

    “Oh, you must do something to it, you’re not telling me the truth.” I’m like “No, really, I’m not doing anything to it.” They didn’t believe me. Now that’s over, everybody understands that. But there’s people that are still … What’s the word I’m looking for?

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Let me paraphrase.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Education, and knowledge, and experience or tenacity to hang with it.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Jill and I have never said this is easy. If you go out on the internet and look at-

    Jill K DeWit:

    Oh, that’s great.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Anybody who thinks they can teach this are … And is teaching it and offering some type of product, the underlying message that they’re sending is that this is an easy, fast way to make money.

    Jill K DeWit:

    There’s a lot of moving parts.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    This is a business and you can build an empire. We just talked to Josiah, again, I don’t know when that’s going to air. This is his fourth year in the business. Last year top lined three million and this year expects to do seven or eight million, and he’s very humble about it. And he said, “Yep, we did everything wrong. I made a mistake over here, this happened over here.” And then he revealed really what motivates him and why he’s got to that level. So it’s really worth listening to. He’s in this. He’s in it full-time, he’s got full-time people, and he’s managing cash flow and has the same concerns that all of us do and he addresses them one by one and overcomes them. And how he overcomes them and addresses them this month will be different next month.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Oh, there’s going to be a whole new set of issues.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    And it’ll be different the month after that.

    Jill K DeWit:

    What we’re dealing with this year in 2024 is going to be so different in 2025.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Yeah, for sure.

    Jill K DeWit:

    And think about what we got through since 2020. There’s many of you in Land Academy, you’ve been with us way before COVID, we all got through it. If anything, it was a woo. We all thought it was going to sink the ship and then it turned out the opposite effect. That’s a thing too, you don’t know what you think is going to happen the outcome might be the opposite. So stay the course and learn to roll with it.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Here’s what you have that we never had, and most people don’t have, camaraderie.

    Jill K DeWit:

    I was going to say us.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    You have a group. You have a group of people. When you have one of those days or one of those months, you can reach out on Discord or reach out to the people that maybe you went through Career Path with and say, “Are you having this situation?”

    Jill K DeWit:

    That’s good.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    And there’s a very good chance that they’re going to say, “Oh, yeah, I had that last year. Last year in July the same thing happened to me, this is what I did.”

    Jill K DeWit:

    Or how about last week?

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Oh, no. I’ll give you a great example. Early on in this business around two … Around January 15th … I mean, December 15th, everything just stopped. Every single time for years I said, “Well, I guess my career’s over. My career in buying and selling land’s over, I wonder what I’m going to do next year over because it’s over. The phone’s not ringing, I can’t send any mail out.” Until I met Jill and she said, “What the hell is wrong with you? It’s Christmas, the kids are out of school.” I didn’t ever think to think in terms of school and children going to school. Kids are out of school, everybody’s off the internet, nobody cares about their land. And January-

    Jill K DeWit:

    Give it a minute.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    January 15th all this pent-up oh my God stuff’s going to happen-

    Jill K DeWit:

    And the bills come in.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Where everybody’s life returns. And that’s exactly what happened. When I look back on it that’s what happened every single year. That’s my camaraderie. My first person to really vent and throw … Bounce stuff off of was Jill. Now we have Land Academy. Jill and I are doing a product right now, personally, where we’re sending out a bunch of mail and we are seeking funding. We’re not the funders, we’re usually the funders. Seeking funding so we can do more deals and have what I call … I call it the Limitless capital plan where we could do 50 deals instead of 10 because we’re using some other … A partner.

    Jill K DeWit:

    It sounds like a commercial. It feels like Capital One, limitless capital. We could have a Land Academy credit card. Oh.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    I thought about that. Stuff’s going to happen. I thought about that a while ago.

    Jill K DeWit:

    That would be really cool. I love that. Good stuff, thank you.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Jill, you have something to share.

    Jill K DeWit:

    I do. Jack’s toggling for me. Here’s what’s really cool within our group, we’re just talking about the community. This is a perfect little segue to what goes on in Land Academy. Talk about a niche within a niche within a niche. We have a Land Academy Ladies group. And then to take it even smaller of a niche. Some of the sweet gals in the Land Academy Ladies group decided to start their own book club. They held their first book club in June. I, unfortunately, was tied up with you trying to take down a real estate deal on a Sunday, of course, Sunday afternoon. This is all true, I wasn’t playing hooky. And I wasn’t there at the book club meeting. They held it.
    And I went back later and looked at their notes from the presentation and I … It was all about a book that I grew up with. Well, I don’t know if I should say a book. It was all around my life growing up. If you’ve been listening to us for a while you know that my dad was a coach at Dale Carnegie. Boy Jack just has … When he met me he just embraced that with open arms, not. And he gets a little tired of it but that’s just how I roll around. But you know what? I actually have veered away, right? I have veered away a little bit from some of the original Dale Carnegie things.
    My point in bringing all this up is, this not about the group, and the ladies, and how awesome they are and that they did this, but it was just thinking about … I went back and looked at the notes from the call and it made me go back and reintroduce myself to some of the thinkings there. And gosh, it’s so powerful. And at the end of the day, this is really a lot of the way I get deals done. The way that you talk to people, the way you approach things, the way you don’t complain about things. The way you try to give honest and sincere appreciation. And the way you try to inspire people by being genuinely interested in what they have to say. I do this all the time with sellers, that’s how I get them, smiling.
    I haven’t talked about this in a while, but a couple years ago we did these intensive workshops. It was right after COVID and I did a whole thing about winning over these sellers. That was one of my thing. Gosh, before you pick up that phone you better have a smile on your face. If you don’t think that matters I’m telling you it does. They know if you’re smiling or not on the other end of the phone. Gosh. Using their name. Really listening and taking in what they have to say, making them feel important. Does all this make sense? Well, yeah duh. Boy, if I was talking to a seller and I had this attitude, yeah, Jill, it probably would work. That’s why I’m bringing it up. This is a lot of where it comes from. Be friendly. Try to get them saying yes. Those are little things that I’m trying to pick out. Be sympathetic. Whatever’s going on in their life … I’ll end it on that. These sellers are calling you because of a situation.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    This is my takeaway is-

    Jill K DeWit:

    And you need to be sympathetic about whatever it is they’re dealing with. Whoever passed on, who … Whatever financial situation’s going on, being sympathetic is great.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    What Jill’s saying is, get yourself prepped and in the mood quickly when the phone rings to provide the best type of meet them from where they’re coming as a seller so you can do a deal.

    Jill K DeWit:

    That works. What do you have to share with us today? I know you have something good that you wanted to talk about.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Like most of the topics here, I’ve made this mistake in the past and really learned from it, learned that I was wrong. You can’t cynical your way into wealth. You can’t sit around … And especially this day and age where there’s just so many … So much negative stuff out there, politics and bifurcation. I don’t know if it’s me or … But I’ve met more people recently in the last couple of years that … Especially young people that just say, “My way’s better and I’m not going to learn anything. I don’t have any questions for you, I don’t know.” And these are people that truly have done nothing with their lives. That’s not coming from, look at this over here what I created. You should be asking me questions. It’s not that. So you can’t cynical your way into wealth. You’re alienating people, you’re making yourself angry. It’s the exact opposite of what Jill was saying. Get yourself in a happy place before you talk to a seller and they’re going … It’ll come off that way.
    What you can do is you can camaraderie your way into wealth. That’s what Land Academy is, that’s why we created it. To create an environment for people that … Where we can do partnership deals with, whether it’s fund them money or have other people fund us money. If we had a couple of deals come in Northern New York, let’s say, there’s several people in our group that I would call and … I’m not a specialist, specialist in Northern New York at all. And if they came back, “The deals look pretty good, what did I miss?” I would utilize the people in our group. I would camaraderie my way into doing a deal and not sitting there saying-

    Jill K DeWit:

    Helping each other.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    “Oh, New York, who wants to live in New York?” Remember that? People used to say that all the time. Who wants to live way out there? Why would you ever buy land out there? Cynicism is just not appropriate in this environment-

    Jill K DeWit:

    No, it’s funny.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    It’s not going to get you wealthy.

    Jill K DeWit:

    That’s a good one. You know what’s another phrase … Saying that I haven’t heard in a long time? What was it? A junk lot.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Junk land.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Junk land. Oh, junk land way out there. I haven’t heard that in a long time. That’s kind of funny. That used to be a thing, yeah.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Join us next Wednesday for another interesting episode, you are not alone in your real estate ambition. We are Jack and Jill, information-

    Jill K DeWit:

    And inspiration-

    Steven Jack Butala:

    To buy undervalued property. See you next week.

    https://youtu.be/es3vowwSDs0

    Thanks for listening, and finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts.

    36 min
  • The Truth about Working with Your Spouse in the Land Business (LA 2011)

    Join Steven Jack Butala and Jill K DeWit on this week’s episode of “The Land Academy Show” as they dive into the realities of working with your spouse in the land business. They share personal anecdotes, practical tips, and the highs and lows of their journey together. From managing multi-property deals to balancing strengths and weaknesses, Jack and Jill offer valuable insights for any couple considering a business partnership. They highlight the importance of clear communication, mutual support, and the ability to navigate challenges together. Whether you’re already in business with your partner or just thinking about it, this episode provides a candid look at what it takes to succeed as a team in the land business.

    Transcript:

    Steven Jack Butala:

    I’m Steven Jack Butala.

    Jill K DeWit:

    And I’m Jill DeWit, and this is the Land Academy Show.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    This is episode number 2,011, and today Jill and I are talking about the truth about working with your spouse in the land business. In case you don’t know, it’s not all peaches and cream.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Oh, there may be something-

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Just like this show.

    Jill K DeWit:

    I got to write one more thing down. Excuse me, I have another note now, just kidding.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    On a personal note, I love this topic. I think it’s going to be a blast. I think there’s probably a lot of stuff that Jill’s got to say. There’s a few things I need to say.

    Jill K DeWit:

    And in the safety of this environment with you on the other end, we can’t get in trouble.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    That’s exactly right. Well, we can only get in a certain amount of trouble.

    Jill K DeWit:

    True.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    We can’t get in any nasty [inaudible 00:00:56]-

    Jill K DeWit:

    Major trouble, because when the camera’s off, so are the gloves.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Hey, it’s hockey season by the way, I’m taking those gloves off.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Yes, all right. Hey, before we get started, I have a big announcement. For the first time ever, we’ve never done anything like this. We are going to do a live, open to the public workshop the week of June 17th. I’m looking for the exact dates here. So, June 17th through the 21st, and it’s not like the same thing is going to be repeated. It’s going to be building on each other every day. So, we’re going to start with equity planner and goal setting and all that stuff.
    It’s kind of everything we do in Land Academy, but I wanted to really take a step back and have an open workshop for anyone. So, if you’re really thinking about doing this, you do not want to miss it. So watch your email, if you’re not in my email loop, you should be. Download our free eBook, that’ll get you in there. Or just send a note to my team like, “Hey, what’s going on June 17th? I need to be involved,” to [email protected]. So, what’s going to happen is it’s going to be one hour a day, Monday through Friday that week, sometimes with Jack, and sometimes just me, and it’s going to be 9:00 AM Pacific time to 12:00 PM Eastern Time, and again, just for an hour each day and it’s really going to give you-

    Steven Jack Butala:

    You will learn tons.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Oh my gosh, a really good insight to what’s going on more than just reading the eBook and getting on the Thursday call.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    How to buy and sell land.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Totally. We’re going to really do as much as a deep dive as we can in an hour, but you’re going to walk away knowing whether this is a good fit for you or not. I guarantee it.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    I’ve been doing this for 30 years. We’ve done more than 16,000 deals, Jill’s been doing it for more than 15 years, so we know what we’re talking about, and we’re not at this age afraid to share the actual real story.

    Jill K DeWit:

    True.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Not the fluff, not just what’s possible, but here’s how to do it.

    Jill K DeWit:

    We have nine years of Land Academy. We got people that have been with us nine years, so we have a lot to share.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Each week on the show, we answer a question from our Land Academy member Discord forum, and we take a deep dive into land related topics by popular request from our Land Academy community. I read a couple of reviews of our show recently and one reviewer said, it just made me out loud crack up, “Yeah, this show is fine. The highlights are actually just the questions. So, if you can just listen to the question and not really listen to the other stuff that they said…”

    Jill K DeWit:

    Oh, that’s hilarious. Just tune in for the first five, 10 minutes, and then you’re done?

    Steven Jack Butala:

    By the way, it was the most meaningful comment. There’s all kinds of comments about everything on the internet, but that was like… I just want to hear the questions. We’re going to do two questions today.

    Jill K DeWit:

    All right, so I’m going to read one, and you’re going to answer, and then there’s a second one. We’re going to flip-flop. So all right, here’s our first question. Greg wrote, “Good morning. For infill lots, when we’re doing the red, yellow, green test for houses, are we only looking at new construction or all houses? Also, should we use the red, yellow, green test for lots once we determine our favorable zip codes from houses? How much do both lots and houses are they test for a reason or is it doing too much work?” I’m sorry, “Would doing both lots and houses be a test for a reason or is that just too much work?”

    Steven Jack Butala:

    So, I’m going to simplify Greg’s question, because I’m pretty sure I know what he’s asking.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Cool.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Do you test lots or do you test houses or do you test both? This is what you do. You test for everything that is reported and make sure it’s apples to apples. So, you have a zip code, you test, just like we teach in the program, there’s three or four or it could be as many as eight statistics that you judge a zip code on whether or not it’s viable for you to send out mail. You’re using data to make a decision about sending out offers. He’s asking, what do you include in that data? And the answer is you include in that data apples to apples for every single zip code, the stuff that’s provided by the data source.
    So, now it doesn’t really matter if it’s just land, if houses are thrown in there, as long as each of the zip codes are apples to apples comparison, you’re going to know whether or not there’s enough activity, the right kind of activity in that zip code to warrant you sending mail, and that’s the answer. For houses, it’s the same. For land, it’s the same. A lot of people don’t know that we have a program called House Academy, and I go over this in great detail in the House Academy program. In fact, if you go to houseacademy.com, check it all out. It’s very pertinent to what’s happening now from a demographic standpoint or from a… Geez, from a… Help me here.

    Jill K DeWit:

    I’ll let you flounder.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Why?

    Jill K DeWit:

    It’s kind of funny. No, I’m just joking. You know what’s funny about that? I recorded earlier today a podcast that’s going to air in a couple weeks with a longtime, eight-year member, her name is Bei Zhang, and she’s like, “Oh, we are still happily doing houses, too.” She’s like, “We just closed on one on Monday.” I said, “what are you doing? Are you going to keep it or rent it?” She goes, I think I might keep this one.” Keep it or flip it, it’s all done the Land Academy way, which is we don’t remodel, just buy it, right? “Are you going to keep it? Are you going to sell it?” She’s like, “I think we’re going to keep this one.” I’m like, “Good for you.” She’s like, “I’m putting more things in more buckets.”

    Steven Jack Butala:

    We’re doing a house mailer right now, too. Anyway, in these current economic times, it’s very valuable to start to consider buying and selling houses. Most of the members that we have, have had or have for a long time, nine-plus years like Bei, they do both and so do we.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Exactly.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Chris asks, this is question number two, “I’ve been working with a seller who wants to do a deal in a very strange manner. I think she’s pretty old. We are communicating via email only. At first, it seemed like she didn’t want to use a title company at all. However, now she’s saying that she’s okay closing with the title company, but she wants an earnest money deposit to be sent to her directly, rather than through the title company, so she can hold the properties for me.” I don’t know what that means.
    “I’m concerned that there’s a bunch of title work necessary to close the deal, as at least one of the properties was transferred on a quitclaim deed. By the way, this is a package of six properties. The margins are likely decent. I am not completely sure as three or four of the properties are not mapped and the county does not have a survey on file, so I would have to get a survey done to determine where the properties are. One of the properties should be able to sell for like 40 to 45,000, and the other one for about between seven and 10,000. One is an odd-shaped parcel that doesn’t have much use. The unmapped parcels are a toss up. I think they’re worth a couple of thousand dollars each at least if they have decent attributes, maybe more, like 10 to $15,000 each. She wants 32,000.” If I do real quick math on my head, it’s 45 plus 10, that’s 55, plus 30.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Buy for 32, sell for 70?

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Yeah.

    Jill K DeWit:

    I know what I think.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Go ahead.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Well, here’s my first thoughts on this one. Here’s an interesting side note, based on this information and what I know about the seller, and hard to find them, and the survey work and stuff, I kind of think I know what state it is.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    I think it’s Oklahoma.

    Jill K DeWit:

    I know you do that. That’s what I wrote down right there. All right, well, how scary is that? That’s why you’re here.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    That’s why you work with your spouse sometimes.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Holy Moly. Boy, those Landing Academy people know their stuff. We just read this question, they know what state it is. Yep, okay. That’s how long we’ve been doing this and how spread out we are in the country. So, that’s a side note, but you know what? I’m not going to play those games. I got to tell you right now, if it was buy for 10 and sell for 70, now I’ll jump through hoops for her, but I’m worried that the time this is going to take, and the cost, and the energy, and I’m very sorry, but I personally would not wire or send somebody money for them to hold it for me…
    That’s what I think he means. “Well, if you give me $5,000 right now, son, I won’t sell them to anybody else, too, and I promise when you’re ready to close, we’ll all be here.” Mm-mm, I wouldn’t do that. So, that’s not how… It goes into I do it the normal way, because no one’s going to play those games, too, kind of thing. She either wants to sell or she doesn’t. So, I think there’s two things going on here. She probably wants to sell, I do believe that, but I do think that there’s some hesitation in her and trusting you. I hate to say it, but that’s what I suspect, because I don’t have these issues. Maybe there’s more phone calls, maybe there’s something else, and I really wanted you to make sure, gosh, before you go down this path, is it worth your time?

    Steven Jack Butala:

    So, I’m filming ManPlan right now, manplan.com, which I’ll be releasing in September as an informal… It doesn’t matter, and one of the things that I really preach about in gaining wealth, I don’t care if it’s through land or houses, or metal stamping, or convenience stores, whatever you are doing, you have to do it within reason, within your acquisition criteria. So I can tell you right now, this does not fit our acquisition criteria.
    And that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t fit yours, it doesn’t fit it from a how much money you can potentially make, which I think is really best case, maybe 40,000 bucks or B, how much a pain in the ass it is, and so we’re just past it. Jill and I have done 16,000 deals. We’re past these kinds of deals. I’m not saying if you’re new to this, because I actually think you are, or newer, Chris, that you shouldn’t consider it, but this is just a lot of time and energy and I believe it’s easier to send out more mail, pick the best ones that come back from the actual mail that you’re sending out, and just do the deal.

    Jill K DeWit:

    And you know where they are.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Makes sure it fits your criteria.

    Jill K DeWit:

    The numbers, there’s no guessing.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    You have all the answers.

    Jill K DeWit:

    You know what’s funny? You can’t even get a real opinion on this, because you don’t know where they are.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    That’s right.

    Jill K DeWit:

    That’s the thing. It’s not like you can call like, “Okay, I’m going to go to a local expert and get their opinion.” Nobody knows where they are. I used to entertain that. We used to entertain that. Only when I would buy a big bundle, say we’re buying 30 or 50 properties for somebody in this state, in this situation, and there were just a couple, two or three that we couldn’t find them, that I entertained because those were gravy anyway. If I could find them, great. If I couldn’t, I didn’t care. All the other 27 properties that I’d bought from this person, I knew where they were, paid for the whole thing, so that’s how I rolled.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Any time Jill and I have ever done a multi-APN deal, 20, 30, 40, 50 properties, I’ve done them as high as, geez, 1,000. We made millions of dollars on it, and there were always amazing properties in that group, and properties that we just let them go back to the taxing authority, because maybe we couldn’t find them, maybe we don’t care.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Maybe it was a cemetery, maybe because-

    Steven Jack Butala:

    True story.

    Jill K DeWit:

    When people are offloading bundles of property, there’s going to be some junk in there that they’re like, “Just get it out of here. Clean out my garage, I want to put my car here.”

    Steven Jack Butala:

    So, my answer to this and he goes on. The question gets really long, but he’s like, “What should I do? What’s the worst thing that can happen? I pay the 3,000 bucks and I lose it, because she just goes dark?” Yeah, I guess that is the worst thing that could happen, or it could all go as planned and you get stuck with some property that you don’t know where it is. Now, you’ve got to do surveys to find it. My big fear with this deal is that the taxing authority, either the county has some crazy hoops for you to jump through, because now you own properties that weren’t… Why doesn’t she know where they are?

    Jill K DeWit:

    I know.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    They weren’t subdivided correctly, that’s why.

    Jill K DeWit:

    And there’s a quitclaim deed did he say on this one?

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Yeah, somebody isolated, they created an APN at the taxing authority several years ago probably, created an APN for a property based on a legal description, and it’s not on their books. So, it’s not the end of the world. You can work through this. Wouldn’t it be easier to do another 30,000 unit mailer, pick four properties out of there that you’re going to make 100 grand on? I think so.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Chris, don’t date this seller. I have six red flags right now.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Oh my God, Jill, you’re right.

    Jill K DeWit:

    She wants money up front. She’s like, “I don’t even know where they are.” Some of them were transferred funky with a quitclaim deed. Mm-mm, Chris, if I were your sister, I’d say move on. Call another seller. Call another girl.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    There’s more fish the sea.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Yep.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Today’s topic, the truth about working with your spouse in the land business or any business. Jill, give us the highlights of working with me.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Where do I start? Well, here’s a beautiful thought… I actually don’t know where to start.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    I do.

    Jill K DeWit:

    You want real highlights?

    Steven Jack Butala:

    No, I’ll start if you want.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Okay, please go ahead. You have a plan.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Jill is amazing on the phone.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Well, yeah, you’re great at data. All right, okay, I can jump in then, too.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Well, do you want me to start or not, because-

    Jill K DeWit:

    No.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    … I saved it right there.

    Jill K DeWit:

    You did save me. Now I want to take it back over.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Okay.

    Jill K DeWit:

    All right, the highlights of working with you-

    Steven Jack Butala:

    See that flexibility with working with your spouse-

    Jill K DeWit:

    There you go.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    … In front of a camera?

    Jill K DeWit:

    That’s what we’re talking about. Highlights of working with you, you definitely fill in the gaps on the things that I’m not good at, and part of it is luck and… No, I’m serious. No, part of it is that luck that we got together that I to have a different talent. I have different talents and you have different talents.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Oh yeah, that’s for sure. Pure luck actually.

    Jill K DeWit:

    So, that’s what I mean. So, that’s really great. I don’t have to explain what I’m doing every day. You understand what’s going on. My team is your team. Now, I’m ready to hand the torch back.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    I’ll save you as we go here. I know how this is going to go.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Oh, great.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Jill’s amazing on the phone. We have very separate talents, but here’s the thing that if you want to know in less than 30 seconds whether or not you’re supposed to be working with your spouse or maybe supposed to be with her at all, ask her this, what is your long-term goal? And this is not gender-specific. If you’re a woman listening to this, ask your man, or vice versa, what is your long-term goal? When you look out as far as you can see, based on your age or whether you have kids or not, or everything that’s going on, what your jobs are, what’s that look like way out there?
    What’s your house look like? Where do you live? How much money do you have in the bank? Where are the kids going to school? And on and on and on, and then sit quietly and listen to the answer. Don’t steer them. If they answer the same way that you… Because answer the question first for yourself before you answer it, if they basically have the same answer, then you have hope that you can work together. So, Jill and I have very different talents. I’m a data person and all the decisions I make are data-driven. She’s all social, social on the phone, she’s got innate corporate sales in her fiber. That’s what she is.

    Jill K DeWit:

    That’s what I did for years.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    She didn’t make that up. I didn’t make this data thing up. We both got stuck with it, I think at birth, for better or for worse, and it’s not an opposites attract thing, because I think Jill and I are very similar. We are very technical, both of us, when it comes to just approaching anything.

    Jill K DeWit:

    True.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    But I did ask her that a long time ago, and she described to me almost to my vision what I wanted. In fact, she improved my long-term vision on it in a bunch of areas, not so much with accumulated equity, but how we got there, and how we got there through real estate, believe it or not. I was doing this 15 years before she and I met. So, I thought I had it licked really successfully, crazy successfully. Then, we joined forces and it was times 10. So, ask your partner that stuff, and this next part, in my opinion, is not just spouse specific, but with any business partner. Two people who are salespeople are not going to be good business partners. One accountant and one salesperson are probably going to do really well together.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Yin and yang is the best.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Yeah.

    Jill K DeWit:

    So, I actually have four points.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Oh, good. You had some time to write some stuff down?

    Jill K DeWit:

    I did, while you were talking, I tuned you out, and I thought of my own things.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Tuning your partner out is an incredible attribute.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Actually, that is an attribute. I need to write that down. So, you just covered the first one. I’m giving you credit for the first one, which is sitting down and making sure you have the same goals. Like, “Okay, we’re going to start this land company together. Is everybody all in?” If someone’s like, “I don’t know, land is kind of stupid,” you shouldn’t convince your spouse/partner about this business, because that’s number one will sink the ship right there. So, once you have the goals out of the way, then the second part is you got to divide up your day-to-day operation, your day-to-day responsibility. Who’s on the phone? Who’s doing the data? Who’s doing the trolling? And our recommendation is more division the better. You should not be sitting down together to troll. Could you imagine if we did that?

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Oh my God.

    Jill K DeWit:

    How about, “Hey, Jack, I noticed you’re running the red, yellow, green test for those zip codes. Do you mind if I sit down and weigh in?” I’m going to tell you-

    Steven Jack Butala:

    That would be so bad.

    Jill K DeWit:

    And every time you mark something as green, I’m going to go, “No, I think that’s yellow.”

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Could you imagine if you got off the phone with a seller and I said, “I don’t think you handled that too well.”

    Jill K DeWit:

    You could have got more.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    In fact, I listened to your whole conversation and I made notes and I would… Let’s sit down.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Here’s what I think you should do?

    Steven Jack Butala:

    It’s going to take a couple hours to go over these notes and I want to critique your performance. That would be it.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Exactly, and even if, okay, we both help with this, we’ve gone down that path. So in the beginning when I stepped in, there were times in Jack’s career, he did every role, every single last one. So, he would just sometimes just jump in like, “I know how to do this, I can talk to these people,” and he would undo some of the work that I did. So, you have to divide it up, stay out of that person’s lane, and what if we divide it up? Does that mean rock, paper, scissors? We don’t want to stick one with all the crappy jobs. You want to first, I would say sit down and write down all the 20 things that are part of your world, your day-to-day operations. Together, pick and choose what A, you know each person’s good at, each individual’s good at and they want to do. Let’s start with that. Can I finish?

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Yeah.

    Jill K DeWit:

    What they’re good at? And then there’s going to be some stuff at the bottom. I promise you there’s going to be three or five things that nobody wants to do, but you work out some agreement like, “All right, I’ll take this, because I know I’m better at it, if you take these two things,” done. That’s how you get everything done. And then like I said, you stay out of each person’s lane. You’ve committed… Write it down, we have had so many contracts over the years. You know what’s funny? I can’t remember the last time we’ve had a contract.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    No, that’s right.

    Jill K DeWit:

    It’s been a couple years now.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Things go sideways and we read a contract.

    Jill K DeWit:

    I’m telling you though, the first 15 years, or the first five years I should say of us doing-

    Steven Jack Butala:

    We didn’t know any of this.

    Jill K DeWit:

    … Deals together, we wrote so many contracts and signed them and taped them everywhere just to remind the other person, “You’re in my lane,” kind of thing. Like, “Oh, you’re right, got it.” So, that’s not wrong, that’s okay. My third thing is, so we got the goals was one, two was… Gosh, dividing the day-to-day responsibilities, and C is now you got to support each other. What if one day’s harder? What if he’s really… God, he’s struggling on something and I pivoted all my sales, I’m not doing any sales myself. I’m just managing a bunch of brokers, so my day’s easier, but boy, his part’s still harder. And wow, I’m seeing him… Whatever area we’re going into is having a hard time getting the data and getting enough data and maybe there’s just some extra things he’s got to do, something like that.
    Support the other person, and I don’t mean sit down with him and go, “Gee, show me what you’re doing. Let me help you.” Mm-mm, support him another way, it’s like, “What’s going on and how can I help you?” Well, you know what? I’m hungry. I could use a sandwich.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Yeah, it’s as simple as that.

    Jill K DeWit:

    I use that a lot, because it’s really real and we do that for each other all the time. You made me a salad today.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Yeah.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Honestly, you did this exact thing for me today. We are here in the RV and I’m working on household things, seriously, around the RV, while I recorded a podcast by myself today. You’re working on a presentation for today, and at that moment you were done and I was still knee-deep in a bunch of things. And you’re like, “How about if I make you a salad?” I’m like, “God, that’s great. I appreciate that.” So, little things like that, supporting the person, maybe it’s with the kids, running errands. Who knows? Ask them or surprise them, depending on the person, but that’s really important. My final point is… Do you want to talk more about the positives, and I’ll leave my final one?

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Here, I’m going to take this back to the original point and we ask that person, what does it look like when you look way out there? Because I’ve asked people this in the past where I’ve had relationships with them and they will say something like, “What the hell are you talking about? Are you kidding me? What does our house look like? We’re going to live here forever.” I don’t want anything to change there. As far as work goes, oh, I’m just going to have this job that I have right now. I like it. I like my boss and I like the people that I work with, and I hope that it just… And then at the end of it, what they have said in the past is, “Why are you thinking that far ahead anyway?” This only works, these things that Jill’s telling you works between Jill and I, because we have real estate and our soul.
    When we got here, we’ve been here for a week. We’re going to be here for several more weeks. She said while we were driving here in the RV, “What do you want to do when we get there first?” Because we’re in a place where there’s a lot of stuff to do. It’s a hiking mecca, hiking, biking, we have a motorcycle with us. There’s a lot of fun stuff I want to do. And I said, “Well, there’s these 14 pieces of property that I’ve been tracking on the internet that I would love to go look at.” And she said, “Me too.” So, you have a lot of hope when… And the person that Jill interviewed for the podcast that she’s talking about today works with her husband and it’s the same situation. They just have real estate in their soul, and so that’s pretty unusual and the odds are stacked against you that you can work with your spouse.
    The odds are stacked against you that you’re going to be with your spouse forever. I’m not joking about this. This is tough. These are tough odds to beat. You got to have a lot of stuff going for you before anybody even opens their mouth in the first sentence, “Should we do this together?” So, I’m not trying to be negative. I’m just saying avoid a lot of problems and really just be honest with everybody. You want to buy and sell some land? Yeah, not really. I’d rather just be in this job.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Makes sense.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    “I’m just doing it for you.” That’s the last thing you want your spouse to ever say to you. “Yeah, for the last two months I’ve just been doing this for you. I’m not interested in doing this at all.” Maybe you could have told me that day one.

    Jill K DeWit:

    That’s funny, I can think of a handful of Land Academy members that are here, because they bought this for their wives like, “Yeah, that’d be something for my wife to do on the side and now I’m doing it.” Well, yeah, because they weren’t interested. They didn’t come up with it, it wasn’t their idea, and they may never get interested about it, and that’s okay. As long as they’re interested that you’re interested, that’s what counts. Since you started to talk about it, I have a couple things I want to [inaudible 00:26:07] and we’re doing the truth, because we don’t know how not to.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    That’s true.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Poor Greg’s like, “Thanks, you guys kind of…” Was it Greg or Chris? No, Chris.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Chris.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Poor Chris like, “Thanks, she kind of chewed me up and spit me out on my idea.”

    Steven Jack Butala:

    You really didn’t.

    Jill K DeWit:

    I didn’t mean to, no.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    We have a Land Academy Pro member who eats these kinds of deals up. This is her specialty. It’s take these wonky… No ones ever going to do this deal unless you do it.

    Jill K DeWit:

    True.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    And so, she’ll go talk to the person and convince her that we’re going to do this and sit everybody down, and she unravels deals and does really well financially.

    Jill K DeWit:

    True.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Anyway, Jill.

    Jill K DeWit:

    So, I want to talk a little bit about the truth and what could go wrong. What should I be watching for? Well, number one is you’re going to drive your friends nuts. Think about this, and you got to be really careful about this, because you’re going to be out to dinner, this is all you guys have to talk about.
    Your friends are going to be like, “Oh gosh, do we have to go out with those two again?” That Jack and Jill, all they talk about are deals and even though it’s home run deals, I’m so sick of hearing about their land business. And if I hear one more time about how their transaction coordinator did fill in the blank…” So that’s the thing. It’s easy to slip into this weird world where this is all that you talk about and it spills into other things. And even for us, we have to… I’ll tell you right now, I get in the car and we’re going to dinner and we have rules about it. We’re like, “It’s very natural and very easy to go, “Now that I have you alone, I need to run this by you and this by you.” And so, we have very nicely said, “All right, I’ll give you this, but boy, when we pull into the parking lot, that’s it.” I’m like, “You are right.”

    Steven Jack Butala:

    We do that all the time, actually.

    Jill K DeWit:

    We do.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Now that I’m thinking about it.

    Jill K DeWit:

    That’s a natural thing for us. I try not to. I try to get it done before we leave the door, but there is some time that… And we very nicely will say, “Can I talk to you about this?” We’ve learned you can’t just launch into the other person. You can say, “This is really in my mind. I’m having a struggle making a decision on this property, here’s why. I think access stinks. I know you looked at it. Can we talk about it for a minute and have a plan?” Sure, but like I said, we’re parking. Doors open, work stops.
    So, you have to be mindful of that for yourselves and every single person around you or you will drive them bananas. The second thing is it’s going to get heated. You are 100% going to not agree on something and when you’re starting out, it might be something every day, at least every week. I can pretty much guarantee once a week when you’re starting a land company and you’re bringing in some family member, even if it’s not your spouse, oh, it’s going to get heated. You’re not going to agree and you’re going to both be finding yourselves digging in and you cannot let this break you up.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    So, what’s the point to getting in an argument of any kind? I can answer that. It’s to get out of the argument and to set up some parameters that everybody agrees to, not reluctantly. Everybody willingly agrees that this is what caused this, and this is what we need to do in the future to make sure that the percentages are higher that we won’t have this confrontation at all. The point is not to ever have confrontation. That’s not realistic. Everything’s to explode at some point if that happens. There’s going to be confrontation with any business partner that you have. The point is to say, “All right, what we’re arguing about is seller wants to do this. This is going to happen, this has to happen, and this has to happen.” And to which I say, whose responsibility is that? Is it your responsibility or mine? And I don’t care which one.

    Jill K DeWit:

    That’s where the trouble starts.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    That’s where the trouble ends, because that’s on your side of the sheet.

    Jill K DeWit:

    True. It’s true.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Here’s some fast and simple, one-sentence things that Jill and I live by, and believe me, it did not start off this way. I know about this, because we’ve been working together for almost 15 years. Number one, do not work in the same space. Do not connect your desk. I don’t care, do not connect your zip code, quite honestly.

    Jill K DeWit:

    That’s good.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Jill and I, when we’re not here, work in different zip codes, and what we just did yesterday-

    Jill K DeWit:

    Meaning back at home.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Yesterday, Jill and I literally just went and got some office space, this office space sublease, and we got library cards, amazing, brand new library where we are right now with little rooms and stuff, and it doesn’t cost anything. It’s beautiful piece of real estate and a beautiful building, because we can’t work together. After a while-

    Jill K DeWit:

    Nor should we, it’s not bad. It’s not a bad thing.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    No, it’s not bad. After ton of time, you forget about this stuff, because at home we work separately and now we’re in a small space and she’s on the phone all day and I can’t stand it. So, I went and did something about it. Don’t work in the same place. Do not work on the same stuff. You have to have completely and totally separate responsibilities and the more separate, the better. I do data, she does sales, and anything to talk that has to do with a customer or talking of any kind, she handles. We don’t even talk about that anymore. And anything to do with data or accounting or finance or legal stuff or any of that, I handle, and she blindly trusts me. And the same here, I blindly trust her. And so, you see what I’m saying about how important this is that first point? Do you guys want to do this anyway? What kind of house do you want to live in?

    Jill K DeWit:

    There’s a lot to it.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    If you really… Jill and I now wake up in the morning wanting to accomplish stuff.

    Jill K DeWit:

    You know what’s funny about this? It sounds all dreamy. Here’s the thing, everybody’s like, “Oh, we want to be like you guys?” And I get it. I believe that and thank you. We’ve heard that often over the years. It does sound very dreamy when we started this like, “Wow, we could work together and share this bond and share the highs and share the lows.”

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Men have never had that thought.

    Jill K DeWit:

    I wasn’t referring to you.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    I don’t want to share highs and lows with you.

    Jill K DeWit:

    But you do share the, hey, the schedule and the flexibility like, “Hey…” Because come on, let’s be honest, you start this and what if you’re at some point you can leave your W-2… One of you leaves your W-2, but one of them stay at the W-2. You’re still tied to a W-2, so that’s going to slow you guys down. So that’s where it gets dreamy like, “Oh, wait a minute. If we’ve been successfully being able to make this work with one of us working full-time on the land business and replacing their income, what if both of us work full-time at the land business and replace the other income? Now, we are free.” So, that’s where I’m saying it sounds romantic and exciting, but you do need to really go into this with your eyes open and test it. And I do agree with there’s something to be said for being land people.
    We both have the bug, and so we are so lucky. If one of us didn’t, if you were dragging me along all the time saying, “Did you call these people back? I’m waiting for these answers from the county,” because it involves talking. What if there’s something he’s waiting for me? He needs to know something from the county about some zoning or something like that, and it’s kind of my side of the sheet because it involves this and, “I’ll get to it, I’ll get to it.” Now, he’s nagging me. It just won’t work, because I don’t have the bug. But on the flip side, what I do have, which is really lucky that I can’t wait, we do really seriously drive around, look at property all the flipping time. It is so weird. I know it’s weird.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    It’s not right. It’s not healthy.

    Jill K DeWit:

    It’s not normal.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    It’s beyond a healthy level of real estate looking.

    Jill K DeWit:

    But you know, it’s who we are. I did the podcast today with Bei, and Bei and I talked about that. This is my life. She loves it. She’s so happy and that makes her so good at it, and that’s because she’s like, “I’ll handle anything.” I can’t remember what the term was, closing the circle she was using. You got to start this and keep closing the circle. You got to keep it going, always going. You can’t just start and stop. And I said, “Bei, that’s beautiful. You’re right.”

    Steven Jack Butala:

    You have to finish stuff.

    Jill K DeWit:

    And she’s like, “And you can’t let…” She said, “Just like anything you’re going to do, any business you’re going to start, you’re going to have obstacles, and struggles and there’s going to be things you have to overcome and you have to do it, period.”

    Steven Jack Butala:

    I’m trying to get through a list of simple stuff.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Sorry.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Have you ever… You’re fixing the dishwasher or something like that, and your wife is standing over you and telling you how to do it better? “Well, if you crank that…” Because you’re struggling with it. I can’t get the nut off the pipe. “Well, if you do it this way and hold it that way,” and she’s standing over you for a half hour critiquing what you’re doing, that only ends one way. Everybody’s angry.

    Jill K DeWit:

    True.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    What your wife needs to do is walk out of the room, maybe out of the house until it’s done. It might take you a half hour, it might take you three hours, and then it’s done, and she never knew. We referred to that as the transmissions out of the car. We say that sentence to each other every couple of months. “This doesn’t look right at all.” Yeah, because the transmission’s out of the car. It’s not done yet.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Walk away.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Yep, get out of there.

    Jill K DeWit:

    I’m like, “I’m walking away now.”

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Not gender-specific [inaudible 00:35:44]-

    Jill K DeWit:

    And I usually walk away like this, like I don’t want to know… Why, what? It’s true.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Here’s another thing, I believe that all talking will eventually lead to an argument. So, what do you do? You talk as little as possible. So, all the deals that Jill and I do and all the tasks and stuff that we have to get done, and believe me, it’s not a lot now, because we have staff and all that, but it used to not be that way. We put an Airtable, so we don’t talk about it.
    She’ll say, “@Jack, I need to know about this, this, and this. I know you’ve done 62 deals in this area. Should we be doing this deal at 32,000 bucks or whatever the numbers end up being?” I get a little notification, I go in there, I look at the deal. No one’s talked about anything yet. There’s no verbal exchange. “Oh my God, yes, we should absolutely do this deal. In fact, I think we probably could pay 50 to $60,000 and still make 120 grand on it. Please purchase it within these parameters,” and then we never talk again. It’s the most beautiful thing ever. No talking within a professional relationship, in my opinion, is the best thing ever, unless there’s some really quirky, weird stuff. Most of the world believes that more communication is better, more clarification is better. Absolutely not for what we do here. I disagree with that.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Please tell me how we got to be on a podcast together based on your whole… I hate your whole speech-

    Steven Jack Butala:

    We’re not talking to each other.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Oh, okay. Oh, that’s it.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    We’re talking to them.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Oh, thank you. Okay, that’s it. Well, that’s great, babe. And the truth is, I wasn’t supposed to be sitting here, but here I am.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    It’s the truth. People that I had lined up several years ago, almost 10 years ago to be on the show, just kept not showing up.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Or they weren’t good.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    They would come downstairs. I’m like, “We got to do it again,” or they weren’t any good.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Or they really stunk.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    So then eventually, Jill, we went back to just once a week with Jill and the whole community said, “Hasn’t Jill with you?”

    Jill K DeWit:

    Oh, yeah.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Then, it became the Jack and Jill Show-

    Jill K DeWit:

    That was sweet.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    … For a long time.

    Jill K DeWit:

    That’s really good. Hey, my last point is just make sure you don’t let this break you up. This beautiful thing, this path that you’re trying to do, going down, working together in your land business, you can’t let it sink the ship.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Unless you think that you’re just saving a bunch of time, unless you just cut to the chase long before it ever got to be a point where you’d have to break up then 15 years later.

    Jill K DeWit:

    What are you talking about?

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Maybe working together with your spouse sped everything up and you found out what you were going to find out anyway 15 years later.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Holy Moly.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Then, pat yourself on the back. Nice work.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Those of you watching my face right now are probably like, “Yeah,” at my face. Like, “What the heck?”

    Steven Jack Butala:

    We can wrap the topic up like this, it works for Jill and I. It took a lot of patience, a lot of practice, and a lot of screwing up.

    Jill K DeWit:

    And tears.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    And a lot of tears, and we figured it out. Is it for you? You’re going to decide, but I’ll tell you, you really need to be on the same page about where it’s all going eventually and when to stop, when to start, when to stop, what kind of deals you want to do if you’re really into it.

    Jill K DeWit:

    True.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Those are indicators of a relationship anyway, not just a professional relationship. It can work. We have multiple examples in our group of where it works. We have more examples where it didn’t work.

    Jill K DeWit:

    True.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Jill, you have something to share?

    Jill K DeWit:

    I was thinking about the podcast I did with Bei earlier today, and, God, she’s such a sweetheart. You know what’s so great about Bei? Bei’s been with us so long. Every live event, Bei’s there. Bei’s been just every time we’re like, “Here’s what we’re pivoting to and why, and here’s what we’re working on now,” Bei’s like, “I’m on it. I’m following you. Okay, and now we’re doing this,” doing it, and she kills at everything she does. And so I was thinking, so today was more than a podcast. Today, it was me sitting down and getting to visit with my friend, which was so nice, and we were talking about just being an entrepreneur, and then it went to that next level. I’m like, “You know what, Bei? Hold on a moment. We need to pay attention to this, not just that we’re both entrepreneurs, but being a female entrepreneur is a whole nother level.”
    And so, we really dug deep into that and I hope you listen to that. I don’t know when it’s going to air. It’s coming sometime in the next couple weeks, but watch for Bei Zhang, Z-H-A-N-G, B-E-I is her first name, and with me, and we were talking about, “Wow, you’re right,” because as a female, we are naturally tasked with other things, making sure the family’s taken care of it. We rattled off things like there’s work, there’s family, there’s our family’s health, there’s all these things, and often at the end of this, the very bottom of the list is our wellbeing, and we both talked about how important that is. So, it’s just so much that goes wrapped up into being female entrepreneur by nature. We can’t help but focus on all of those things, and I shared with Bei how I know that I’m guilty of saying yes too much. I still do that. I know I do that, I’ve given up.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    You mean taking on too much?

    Jill K DeWit:

    Yeah, that’s just who I am. I have a very hard time saying no, so that ship sailed, so I just deal with it. It’s clearly my happy spot.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    It’s a good thing you can’t get pregnant anymore.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Right? Oh, yes.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    You can’t say no.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Thanks. Yeah, it was my Indian name that he gave me a while back. Anyway, that’s another story, but we were just talking about the complexity of… And that layer-

    Steven Jack Butala:

    She can say that because she’s Cherokee, I don’t want all these angry emails coming to me.

    Jill K DeWit:

    True, I am allowed to say that. My card’s coming. So anyway, it was about that. Did you want to ask me anything about that?

    Steven Jack Butala:

    I think Bei, it goes without saying, you are and have been just a model investor. Forget about being a female investor, so I know that there’s a layer complexity on top of that, but that just makes you shine more. I think the tougher the road, the more the spoils. I don’t think that… If it comes easy, it’s just not as valuable. It’s just how it is. It’s everywhere in nature. There’s always a hunt.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Boy, that’s true. What about you? What do you want to share with us today?

    Steven Jack Butala:

    I am formally announcing through here and other places that Land Academy will be launched this fall.

    Jill K DeWit:

    You said-

    Steven Jack Butala:

    I’m sorry, Land Academy, ManPlan will be launched, manplan.com. You’re a man, you need a plan. I did a lot of research. I’ve written a lot. I’m in writing and filming right now on it, and there is no group that I can find on the internet that helps men or anybody who’s really interested in having a plan and being successful. It’s not just for men. Taking a step-by-step approach to accumulating a bunch of money, accumulating let’s say $10 million and how many real estate deals does it take, what do you have to do?
    What are the things that you have to line up in your life? It’s not just about sending a mailer out like Land Academy is. There’s a huge component that’s behind the mindset of being wealthy and getting wealthy and-

    Jill K DeWit:

    That’s good.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    … And having an amazing life. You only get one turn around on this thing and that’s what it’s all about. I will actually be filming it on a motorcycle… It’s going to be very, very interesting. We will launch it in the fall. If you’re interested, go to manplan.com. It’s all set up now. Put your email address in there and you’ll get notifications about how it’s going and actual dates of when everything’s going to get released.

    Jill K DeWit:

    Awesome, I’m excited.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Join us next Wednesday for another interesting episode, You Are Not Alone in Your Real Estate Ambition. We are Jack and Jill.

    Jill K DeWit:

    We are Jack and Jill.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    Information.

    Jill K DeWit:

    And inspiration.

    Steven Jack Butala:

    So, buy undervalued property.

    https://youtu.be/0Z4kMug2Pe0

    Thanks for listening, and finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts.

    45 min
  • Land Academy Success: Michelle Bridger’s High-Dollar Deal Profits Revealed (LA 2010)

    In this episode of “The Land Academy Show,” host Jill DeWit interviews Michelle Bridger, a successful female member of Land Academy. Michelle discusses her initial success with over 160 properties sold on terms, the challenges of scaling her business, and how joining Land Academy provided the solutions she needed. She highlights the impact of detailed training and expert advice from Land Academy, which helped her transition to larger, more profitable deals. Michelle also shares insights into being a female land investor, building rapport with clients, and strategies for evaluating properties.

    Transcript: N/A

    https://youtu.be/60Bjk9aMU4Y

    Thanks for listening, and finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts.

    54 min
  • How To Manage Land Sellers Who Have Unrealistic Expectations (LA 2009)

    Join hosts Jack Butala and Jill DeWit on this week’s episode of “The Land Academy Show” as they dive deep into the common challenge of dealing with land sellers who have unrealistic price expectations. From understanding the reasons behind inflated prices to strategic responses and effective negotiation techniques, this episode provides invaluable insights for anyone in the land investment business. Tune in as they share: real-world experiences, practical tips, and answers to questions from the Land Academy community.

    Transcript: N/A

    https://youtu.be/Wmm0hGTyXoM

    Thanks for listening, and finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts.

    49 min
  • Bei Zhang’s Land Business Journey: Insights from a Land Academy Member (LA 2008)

    Join Jill DeWit and Land Academy Member Bei Zhang, as they share their real estate journey. They cover everything from their shared experiences, to Bei’s inspiring career transition. Explore their philosophy of living like you’re retired, while still working, with insights into business operations, goals, strategies and more. Hear personal stories, tips on balancing work with personal health, and reflections on their journey. Don’t miss this engaging conversation packed with valuable insights for real estate enthusiasts and entrepreneurs!

    Transcript: N/A

    https://youtu.be/8O_y66uBWGQ

    Thanks for listening, and finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts.

    54 min
  • How Long Does it Take to Make a Million Dollars with Land vs. the Stock Market (LA 2007)

    https://youtu.be/039wYrOPTRo

    In this episode of The Land Academy Show, hosts Steven Jack Butala and Jill DeWit discuss the time it takes to make a million dollars with land compared to the stock market. They emphasize the importance of consistent and controlled growth in the land business, where doubling or tripling your money on each deal is more realistic and achievable.

    Steven and Jill compare the potential returns of investing in the stock market versus investing in land, highlighting how land can provide a much higher return on investment in a shorter period of time. They also stress the value of continued education and staying involved in the land business to maximize success.

    Tune in now and discover how to fast-track your financial goals!

    Listen to the podcast here

    How Long Does It Take to Make A Million Dollars With Land Vs. The Stock Market (LA 2007)

    I’m Steven Jack Butala.

    And I’m Jill DeWit, and this is the Land Academy Show.

    This is episode number 2,009 and we’re talking about how long it takes to make a million bucks with land versus the stock market. Here’s why? The Dow hit 40,000 today, this is when Jill and I were recording it, it’s I guess May 16th. That just shocks me.

    Right.

    Everybody’s celebrating.

    What’s limit up and limit down? I can’t remember any of it. You know what I’m talking about?

    Yeah, there’s daily limits.

    Well, then they stop it. It can’t go so high. Did they even bring that up today like we’re pushing it or everything?

    No.

    Okay. I didn’t even know.

    Because it wasn’t-

    It wasn’t-

    It wasn’t a huge jump from the previous day.

    Astronomical.

    And my philosophical question to you Jill is … There’s a lot of celebration today. When in real estate do you celebrate when things are at the top of the market? Do you celebrate and jump around? Are you happy when the land is selling for the most it’s ever sold for ever?

    Not really, no.

    How about houses? Do you love to go into a market and see people just hitting the top of the market with their remodel?

    Nope. No. I see where you’re going with this and I understand your point. Okay. So everybody’s high-fiving each other because it’s the most expensive that it’s ever been, yay. It’s only good for one person who sold that stock at that time. Everybody else is going, “Oh, I blew it” kind of thing. That’s it. So you’re talking about our world and what really makes sense to us. What you can do consistently which is a lot of getting to second base I guess. First base, second base, I’m happy with that all day long. You know what? To me-

    I like getting to second base too.

    I know you also like a home run but we won’t go there. Home runs happen once or twice a year for us, let’s just say that. What happens more often than not, second and third base which is doubling my money and then a little bit more than doubling my money. There’s just like oh my gosh, I can’t believe I bought this for 20,000, sold it for 120. That’s a home run. First base is I bought it for 20, sold it for 30, 35. It didn’t go that great but who can complain about making 10 or 15 grand? This is all very consistent. And then second base to me is I bought it for 20 and I sold it for 40, 45. This is great. Third base is I sold it for 60 to 70. And then you know what home run is. I’m more happy with that. You never want to be the most expensive house on the block, I’ve always believed that.

    Here’s some things-

    And you don’t want to reset the market-

    Here’s here some stuff-

    worth I don’t believe in that.

    Real Estate Vs Stock Market

    We’re going to talk about today in a big picture. We’re going to talk about the stock market versus land investing, and we’re going to dabble a little bit in comparing those two. Also with owning a different business like a convenience store or a manufacturing facility. They’re all not apples to apples. There’s a different amount of energy that you can put in. This is super important for Jill and I. Control that you have over what you’re trying to accomplish financially. I mean, here’s a little prelude to that, and then we’re going to take a couple of questions. When you go out and buy a piece of … A share of stock or a block of stock, you’re paying retail for it. You’re paying retail for whatever it’s worth that day. When you buy a piece of real estate you’re paying, if you do it our way, 20 or 30% of what it’s worth that day.

    I would like to point out one thing before we get into the big topic which is I want you to pay attention as we’re talking today about start-up costs.

    I love that.

    Thank you.

    How Long Does It Take To Make A Million Dollars In Land Vs Stock Market?

    That’s an integral part of actually when we get into the real in-depth in this. And we will answer the question. How long does it take to make a million bucks in land versus the stock market? There’s a bunch of variables. The percentages never change in these things. What changes is your activity and your personality type. I will tell you it’s 10 to 30 times longer to make it in the stock market versus land.

    That’s true.

    And I’ll give you all the numbers.

    Cool.

    Each week on the show we answer a question from the Land Academy member Discord forum and we take a deep dive into land-related topics by popular request from our Land Academy community. Today we have two questions. Go ahead, Jill.

    Trolling For New Markets

    Okay. So the first question today is from Jamay. Jamay’s a sweetheart. Been with the Land gals for quite some time now. So she wrote, “Good morning, guys, quick question. How long is too long to troll for new markets? Over one hour, over two hours? I’m finalizing my weekly schedule.”

    Good.

    “Awesome video that Jack and Jill dropped yesterday has me looking more into scheduling my time more efficiently and to have an actual schedule. So I’m thinking to start one hour to troll, two hours for the red, yellow, green test. Test for reason, not sure how long to spend on that, and so on. So how do you guys schedule your time? Thanks.”

    So Jill and I are very, very, very fortunate that I do the front 30%, maybe 40% of the work which is what you’re asking about here. And then unfortunate because she takes over. Once the mail goes out she takes over. She just counts on me to find good places to send mail, spend the right time analyzing whether or not they’re actually real good places from a data perspective, and then getting a mailer out that’s priced correctly. I hate to answer questions like this but it really depends on you. I spend a tremendous amount of time trolling, it’s actually crossed over into a hobby of mine.

    It’s an unhealth, Jamay. It’s an unhealthy amount let’s just say.

    You never want to be the most expensive house on the block. You don't want to reset the market.
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    I can’t tell you what-

    “What are you doing over there?” “Nothing. Looking at a real estate.”

    I can tell you what houses. Here’s an example, here’s a great example. I mean, I can tell you what houses in Juneau, Alaska are worth, I just can. We sat down during the college basketball tryouts at a little neighborhood bar, and these two people sat down next to us and we started talking to them. They’re in town from way out of town. In town for watching college basketball.

    It was the Final Four tryouts. I’m sorry.

    We just got to talking, they’re real interesting people. This guy renovated old buildings and condos and he was, I guess, sort of retired but not really. They had a place in Florida. We had a lot to talk about and a lot in common. They were from Michigan, so am I. And they described where they’re from and I said, “Oh, you mean Sturgis, Michigan?” And they both just like, what the heck are you talking about? That’s a direct result of my unhealthy trolling all over the market, and looking at all these little areas, and trying to find the best places to send mail. And when we do we send mail there. One hour to troll for a normal person, I think that’s a little bit light. I think I would spend … I don’t want to put a time limit on it because when you’re done trolling you’re … The data’s going to tell you-

    Well, can I ask a different question?

    “I’m done trolling.” Yeah.

    Okay. Let me ask it this way then. How many zip codes or counties should I have identified to sit down and run a good red, yellow, green test?

    I would look at no less than five separate markets.

    There we go, there we go.

    If you like Wisconsin, for whatever reason, and there’s three markets there and they’re very different markets … Maybe one’s outside of, geez, Milwaukee, one’s in … Way north close to Canada, and on and on. Those are three separate markets. I would look at no less than five. Maybe they have five to 10 zip codes in each.

    There we go. All right. I’m going to argue that that’s a day. Have you spent a day on that?

    That’s what everybody’s answer was in here.

    Yeah, I’d spent a day on it.

    And I was going to try to avoid that-

    That’d be my Sunday.

    But the truth is I really think that it’s going to take you a day.

    This might be your Sunday. Today’s trolling Sunday, that’s fine.

    And then the next time you go do it’s going to-

    Trolling Tuesday.

    It’ll take less time. And the next time less and the next time less. And I include the red, green, yellow test in that.

    That’s good.

    A whole day.

    Okay. And so that’s a separate day or the same day?

    The same day.

    Okay. All right, so there’s your answer. Plan on blocking out a whole day, at least, to troll and test for reason. Troll and the red, yellow, green test, not the test for reason part that’s separate. Okay, got it. And then test for reason which is … This is after you run the numbers. You download, scrub the data, you priced it, you pulled down some comps. I’m guessing right now that the way Jemay’s asking this is she’s using Concierge in the middle there.

    I hope so.

    Or her kid. Her data, nutty kid who she said “Do this.” I don’t know. I’m guessing Concierge in the middle there. Because then they would take the zip codes that Jemay gave them, download the data, scrub the data, pulled comps, took out the outliers, gave her a graph, gave her the comps that they pulled, gave her the numbers she came up with, and then came back with “Here’s what 20% looks like.” Now is time to test for reason, and that’s where she’s at here. And then what are you thinking about that?

    I can’t get past second base.

    Okay. There’s days-

    Can I tell you … Can I tell you-

    There’s days I don’t let you get past second base, that’s true.

    Can I tell you about second base?

    Okay, go ahead. Sidetracked.

    Second base is just a stop off for most … For young men. I don’t know how it works for girls, I don’t want to know actually. For young men at second base is just to stop off on the way to hitting a triple or whatever ends up happening. You get older, and I just think you got to take the bases slowly. Enjoy the bases.

    Enjoy the bases. That’s hilarious.

    Tell me I’m wrong.

    I don’t even know how to answer that. And there might be kids in the back seat.

    They don’t know. We’re talking about baseball.

    That’s true, they are little kids.

    It’s baseball season.

    This is baseball. That’s true, it is baseball season. Okay, you’re right. All right.

    So you’ve got a day’s worth of trolling and red, green, yellow tests. You count-

    Concierge.

    You’ve used Concierge, that’s going to take-

    Now it’s back.

    When you buy a piece of real estate, you're paying if you do it our way 20 or 30 percent of what it's worth that day.
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    You’re going to allocate, depending on how busy they are. Offers to owners.com, how busy they are. It might take two days to turn it around, two working days. Maybe it’s one if it’s real light. There’s another day. You’re going to get that back and you’re going to have probably a lot to say about it. They will input probably 20% for you. I just went through this with one of our-

    Arbitrary number.

    One of our children I just went through this because he’s smashing it, he’s sending out all kinds of mail. It’s a new rekindled interest and I hope he keeps up with it. We went in and adjusted pricing all over the place. Some of it was 20%. In some cases for large properties that were really rural, we were down as low as 3%.

    Let me take a second and explain this. We’re not mailing out price … Property. We’re not sending mail out at 3% of the retail price of properties, there’s all kinds of other things to consider. If you solve for retail price per acre, or Concierge did, and it’s $10,000 an acre, that’s not going to apply to a 150-acre property, that’s way in the north end of the zip code. You just have to test that for a reason. You have to look it up as if the things came back signed. The purchase came back agreement signed. We did this many, many, many times and he said, “Oh my God, this is $180,000 for a $25,000 piece of property.” He’s coming up with that stuff, not me. You know how to price. When you’re having these independent thoughts, regardless of who you’re sharing this with, it just doesn’t make sense to me. That’s why it’s called test for reason. That’s going to take you a whole day.

    Perfect.

    The longer the better.

    That’s it. And there you go. And I would say Jamay, the last little piece I would add to this question before we move to the next one is, give yourself … Do enough of this that you’re covered for a couple weeks. I would do this once a month. Because you can’t do this every week. If you spend all this much time every week you’re not going to have time to do your due diligence, close deals, all that good stuff. Find a broker to sell these deals. So if you’re doing this every other week, or most preferably once a month, you’re doing this so now you have your next four weeks of mail done. That’s going to be I think what makes the most sense.

    The calendar that … Or the schedule that you come up with this week might change, will change next week, and then on and on, and then stuff’s going to happen. Maybe you have a funeral to go to, unfortunately. The calendar’s just not that’s it, it’s not finished ever.

    I’m going to read this one because it’s for you.

    Oh, okay.

    Evan says, “I just wanted to share a quick reminder that the right agent, real estate agent changes everything. I bought a commercial property back in March of ’23 for 53,000 bucks. I hired a local,” and he means real estate agent, “That I thought was a good fit. She put together a good listing, appeared to promote the property, and communicated well. After listing it for a year she never brought one offer. I gave a listing to a Mossy Oak agent” … Mossy Oak is a nationwide land brokerage that we use often. “That did a great job selling a residential parcel for me. He listed the property for 150,000 bucks, same as when the listing expired with the first agent, and brought me $135,000 cash offer in three weeks. We closed 30 days later. Lessons learned colon. Really spend time researching and interviewing your agents and no 12-month agreements.”

    The Right Real Estate Agent

    I never do a 12-month agreement because here’s why. Here’s my conversation when I’m looking for an agent to sell a property for me. “What price do you think you could sell this for in, let’s just say, 90 days? There’s no fire, I don’t need it gone next week. And I’m not trying to reset the market here. I’m not looking for top dollar, I’m going to sit on it for a year and a half.” They’re like “Okay. 90 days I think we could sell it for X.” “Great.” And we all connect, we move forward.

    So when we do the listing agreement, it comes back, I go, “Nope.” Cross that off right at six months. And if they ask, “well, what” … “I usually do 12 months.” “Well, you know what? We all agreed we’re going to sell it in 90 days. So we’re going to do six months, and if we need to, something weird happens, we will totally look at it, revisit this again at the end of six months.” And I’ve never had anybody say no. That’s the answer. Because if you don’t have a good one then at least you can get out of it after six months. You were stuck for a year. That’s painful. $53,000 is nothing to sneeze at. That’s not in your account that you could be using for other things right now.

    I have to tell you-

    Glad you brought that up, Evan.

    Me too. Our responsibilities and what we do here, I feel like I have mine licked. I think doing a mailer hasn’t changed that much. The data we use has changed and the methodology of trolling changes but the basic stuff … If you said-

    The concept.

    “Please go do 150,000 unit mailer,” I would come back probably in-

    A couple days.

    Two working days with a pretty real good solid let’s send it out. The stuff that changes on Jill’s side it changes all the time. And it doesn’t seem to disrupt you. You don’t even have a thought about it, you just adjust that … For it and move forward.

    No, I think it’s nature. I don’t know. Or is it nurture? I don’t know. I’ve learned, especially with you, to roll with the punches.

    Isn’t that bad, Jill? Is it?

    I had to say that. No. No, not at all, it’s not that bad.

    Finding the right real estate agent. We’ve had great real estate agents and then they just go dark. We do a couple of deals with them, they get a girlfriend, and it’s over.

    Oh, yeah. Oh, these are all real stories. It’s true.

    Or they change brokerages, or they move to a different state, or all kinds of stuff happens and then you got to start the process over of looking at who’s got great listings. It’s very inconsistent finding a great land broker. We have a lot of land brokers that are in our group as … And they’re buying and selling their own land and they’re real distracted.

    Oh, yeah.

    And rightfully so. They’re distracted with doing their own deals or raising capital to … Or whatever, as they should be.

    Right.

    So stuff changes. How Jill answers the phone changes all the time based on how … Where we’re sending mail, and who’s calling back, and how-

    Savvy they are or what’s going on.

    Whether or their property tax bills just came out.

    Yeah, time of year.

    On and on and on.

    Thank you.

    A lot of variables.

    Thanks.

    Today’s topic, how long does it take to make a million dollars in land versus the stock market? So let’s just think about this for a second philosophically. You’ve got 30 or 60,000 bucks to spend … And we’ll get to that in a second because you don’t need 30 or $60,000 to spend on … In real estate because we’ll fund you. But let’s just assume, We’ll try to be as apples to apples as possible, that you got $60,000 to spend and you dump it into the stock market.

    I wish you all could see this, this is cool.

    Oh, they can, here.

    Oh, can they? Oh. You don’t mind doing that?

    No, not at all. They see it.

    Give us a second, we’re going to add screen share here.

    You have to take the bases slowly. Enjoy the bases. Enjoy the phases.
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    You’ve got $60,000 to spend. There’s three stock markets: the Standard & Poor’s, the New York Stock Exchange, and the NASDAQ which is in an acronym for something. They all have indexes to indicate how well they’re doing without looking at the entire exchange. The S&P has the S&P 500, the New York Exchange has the Dow Jones Industrial Average, and the Nasdaq, I think they have the NASDAQ 500, I’m not exactly sure.

    The National Association Stock … I don’t know.

    You’re just guessing.

    I totally am. I bet I’m right.

    Historically-

    I don’t know.

    This is a 10 years trailing because all the statistics came out because again, the Dow hit 40,000 today. If you put a dollar in the S&P 10 years ago it would be worth 13% more. In our case here we put $60,000 in, it’s worth 60,000, $7,000 10 years later. The Dow Jones, a much better performance, it went up 131% so $60,000 would yield 138,000.

    Interesting.

    NASDAQ 260% because of the tech stocks and the tech presence there would yield $200,000. Tripling your money in 10 years is amazing by anybody’s standards. That’s not what happens every 10 years. And I will tell you that if you look at it year over year, there were years where I had lost money and then made up for it and then lost again and made up for it. When’s the last time you had a losing year in-

    Isn’t that what this is right here? It’s showing-

    Yeah, that’s the Dow.

    Okay, got it. It’s a screenshot of what happens year over year.

    Well, I’m mindful of the fact that not everybody can see this. Most people are listening to it, not seeing it.

    Well, hopefully, they’re on YouTube right now going … Or they paused and they went over to YouTube so they can see it. You’re good.

    With land, it’s tied to inflation. So you would pay retail price for a piece of land and it’s … You do it the Land Academy way, you don’t buy a piece of junk. But you pay 100% of what it’s worth the day you buy it which we never do. It’s tied to inflation. Inflation went up over the last 10 years, if you combine it all, about 25%. So $60,000 would yield $75,000.

    Wait, back that up again a minute. You’re saying retail is $60,000 for the property?

    Yeah. I don’t do it the Land Academy way. I go out on the MLS, I choose a piece of property, I buy it for $60,000, and I let inflation do its thing.

    This is what not to do.

    You should never do this.

    Okay, got it. I’m like where are you going with this?

    You should never do any of these four things.

    This is true. Now I understand where we’re going here. Because I’m like why would I buy something for 60 and hang on it for 10 years for 75? I’m not doing that.

    Here’s what’s great about putting money into the stock market. Depending on how you look at it, you have to do nothing, especially if you put it into an index like this like the Dow Jones, or the Nasdaq, or the S&P 500. You put the $60,000 in, you turn the computer off, 10 years later you turn the computer back on and you see what it’s worth. Does anybody do that? Hell no. Does anybody put $200 on the roulette wheel and then come back 10 years later and see what it’s worth? Yeah, it’s worth zero. With land, no, you get up every morning and you do some stuff. Not a lot but you do some stuff. So here’s the deal. Those are the basic numbers. I wasn’t prepared for this.

    Thank you for doing that though.

    Hopefully my guys will edit this out. If not, we probably just lost you.

    No. A good guy, you’re good.

    There’s a lot of variables. Here’s the most important variables, in my opinion. The first one is time. So you are doing nothing in these stock investments annually. If it were a regular year-over-year annual return you’d get about 1% on the S&P, 10% on New York, and Nasdaq would generate 20% return a year. Again, some years you lose money some years you make a lot of money. These last two years have been huge earners for all three so they’re skewing the hell out of these numbers. What I prefer is control over my money, control over my time. I want control over everything except Jill, that’s about it.

    We want the same thing.

    If you buy a piece of property and you sell it for twice what it’s worth … You buy it for 60 sell for 120, buy for 30 sell for 60, you just … You make twice as much money which is our … If I look back at 16,000 transactions that Jill and I have done, I see what we bought it for, and I see what we sold it for, and it’s like 52%. We’ve doubled our money if you look at all the average deals. Buy for 30 sell for 60. And you buy one piece of property every year, one piece of land every year and you make $30,000 on it, you will have had, at the end of the 10 years, turned that $30,000 into 330,000. That’s 1100% return. Now we’re-

    It’s just one a year.

    One deal a year.

    A year.

    Now we’re talking about comparing the Dow Jones at 130% return over these 10 years versus an 1100% return. I would argue that doing one deal a year would take oh-

    An hour an month.

    I mean, you could just do the deal in January and then you never work again. That’s not taking into consideration, well, I got to have a mortgage. I’m not saying drop your life I’m saying, you have a little land business on the side, go to college, continue to be a real estate agent, raise your children. Do what you’re going to do, just do a deal a year. Get into the land business, learn how to do this. Buy one freaking piece of land a year, 1100% return if you double your money. You could buy for 20 and sell for 40, buy for 30 sell for 60, buy for 50 sell for 100. All of those work.

    This is a lot harder to do, full disclosure if you’re … You’ll see in a second … If you’re buying for 100 and selling for 200, that’s tougher. It’s totally possible, Jill and I do it all the time. If you’re new at this it’s just … There’s a lot less people to sell a property to for 200,000 bucks than 80,000 let’s say. Moving on to what really happens. These are all screenshots. Now Jill’s yelling at me to go back into the camera. Go ahead, Jill, say what you need to say now that the camera’s on.

    Funny how you were looking at the camera and making your point but nobody could see it. You’re good. I think they got the gist of it now.

    No, it gets better.

    Oh, it gets better. You want to show this again? Okay, cool.

    They got the gist of it now means Jill’s bored.

    No, it’s all good.

    We’ve burned it. Burned through her attention span.

    You’re good.

    What really happens, and what we teach, is you take that same 30,000 that you’re … And you turn it into 60,000. It might take you that January. It might take you January through the first quarter. You take that $60,000 and you turn it into two or three deals, or you use our money to do it. So what you often hear us talk about is do a deal a month, do a deal every three months. Or, as fast as you can, or your time allows, to buy and sell land pretty consistently and double your money as successful as you will be. Now I’m going to answer the question, how long does it take to make a million bucks? It takes about three years, probably less. I did a whole talk on 24 Month Millionaire and how to accomplish that. It’s very, very realistic if you work at this and understand it versus 30 years in the stock market based on the performance of the last 10 years.

    That’s a point, I get that. I talked about this a little bit. I brought notes.

    Yeah, I’d love to hear it.

    Are you finished?

    Yeah, totally.

    This is what I talked about last week in our Land gals. We meet the first … Or two weeks ago. Anyway, we meet the first Tuesday of every month, we get together for a couple hours. And my whole presentation was, the most important things you’ve got to be doing right now today to be successful. And it was really cool, I acted like a crazy person. I talked about this recently on a podcast too. I gave them some math. I’m like, why would I do it? Why would I push so hard? Whatever. I’m like “Hold on everybody, let’s just do some” … “This is Jill math.” I love your beautiful spreadsheet, I just have one equation here and I’ll hold it up. It’s great because we’re both thinking on $30,000.

    Okay.

    And here’s why. Making $30,000 per deal is so flipping easy it’s not even funny. It a great sweet spot. You’re selling things for sub $100,000. You bought it for sub $50,000, right? You bought it somewhere below 50 you’re selling below 100. Your only goal is to make 30,000. And I want you to make 30,000 after commission, after your mail costs, and that … And your data and your … Whatever it is. This is not nuts. My goal was a little … Because I was really trying to push people, my goal was a little more than one a month, mine was three a month. I was speaking to a group that they either are or aspire to be full-time at this, we’re not messing around. Here’s your carrot.

    If you come at this like a crazy person like this is all I’m going to do, I’m going to say no to everybody, I’m not going to take these trips, I’m not going to do this stuff … Yeah, I’m going to put my head down. I’m like big deal. You spend two years of your life, you put your head down, and you go like a crazy person. You try for three a month … Excuse me, try for four a month, you try to do one a week. But you’re like “I did three a week. What would that look like Jill?” So three deals a week for 24 months and you’re making $30,000 a deal period. You know what that is? That’s $2.16 million. Okay, wait a minute, say that again. This is how it went on the call. On our thing. Two years so 24 months, three deals a month making $30,000 a deal is $2.16 million. Come on. Okay. Jill, I can’t do that.

    What if you do half of that?

    That’s my point. Okay, you screw it all up. I averaged a deal and a half a month, okay? I went at it like a nutcase and I did a deal half a month. I did all this stuff, said no. Family was on board, they all understood. So what did I make? Over a million bucks. So it’s 1,500,000 whatever. Not even that. But anyway, you make a million bucks. So what. For me, that’s the whole point here.

    My other point I wanted make today, that’s really important, since we’re talking big picture and comparing … Right now just stock market. I can’t think of any other avenue in real estate. We’re all [inaudible 00:30:41] money be made in real estate, right, we all know that check. So many people are still coming at this like I need to take out loans, I’ve got to get someone to back me because I want to do a flip. Well, these homes are getting more and more … I’m just comparing it to doing a $30,000 … Say you want to clear $30,000 on a house flip. For a lot of people that’s just fine, especially if they’re doing a house flip a month, they’re happy with those numbers. You can’t get started with the same cash we need, you need a couple hundred thousand dollars to come at that.

    Oh, way more than that.

    You probably need $300,000.

    Oh, no, about 500.

    If you put your head down for two years and go like a crazy person, trying to do three deals a month, making thirty thousand dollars a deal, that's 2.16 million dollars.
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    Minimum three to five, okay? Three to $500,000 to come at this to try to make 30,000, maybe 50,000 a deal on a house flip. You can’t. And most people, that knocks them out of real estate right there. And I feel bad, there’s some smart people out there. Not to mention, I’m not even comparing the time, and the energy, and the costs. Cut this in half. I’m doing my one-and-a-half deals a month to make a million dollars in two years. Well, shucks, I can do it … That from anywhere. I’m not tied to this project. I don’t care what storm rolled through town and ruined the roof with hail damage or whatever it is, fill in the blank, it’s land.

    We’re not philosophically talking to you about what’s possible here, we’re telling you what happens to us every single year. Every year Jill and I make about … These are gross numbers without expenses and stuff. This is the difference between the prices that we pay for real estate and then what we sell it for. Between 2.5 And $3 million. If you average everything out for the most recent years it’s about $2.5. And so if you divide $2.5 million, we try to make a 100 grand. We don’t always but we try to. That’s 25 deals. That’s a couple deals a month. That’s two-

    That’s not all the we have going on but that’s a good thing.

    That’s what we do. We’re not holding anything back from you. We’re not doing something special that oh, well, let’s not tell them about that. Nothing like that happens. We tell you exactly what we do. We send out a ton of mail. I do my homework with pricing and trolling, and all of that, and Jill smashes it on the phone. A couple of weeks ago we were talking … There’s a huge issue with the perception of saturation out there in competition. I don’t know why this industry is … Well, I’m sure it’s because other groups that are popping up are saying that they’re having trouble with saturation. Well, I asked Jill several times, “Are you concerned about saturation?” And she said no over and over and over again. And neither am I.

    It’s like saying I’m sad … Worried about too many houses.

    I think in the back of a lot of people’s heads they just say, “Well, I don’t have” … They’re trying to get out of it. I heard a sentence a … A couple days ago, because I’m taking a different course on a completely unrelated scenario, and she said, “I mean, are you more comfortable doing something or nothing?” Because she’s very more comfortable doing something.

    That’s very sweet.

    And so if it’s easier for you to do nothing then this is not the podcast for you, it isn’t.

    But you know what? Put your head down for two years you can do nothing.

    You can put 30,000 bucks into the stock market and do nothing-

    True.

    And get a return.

    True. I’m more happy doing something.

    I am too.

    What are you most happy doing? Let’s have a sidebar conversation.

    I like to diversify my activity.

    Are we back to second base?

    Yeah, I love second base.

    That’s really good.

    I like being on a motorcycle these days.

    That’s good.

    I love that, actually. Jill and I are about to embark on a three-month, maybe four-month RV trip-

    I’m planning for five.

    I’m very excited for that. Are you really?

    Because you know what? I did the math, we’re … I think potentially we could be gone for five months is what I was looking at.

    Are you excited?

    And I’m craving that. Oh my gosh, yes.

    So am I.

    Oh, yeah. That’s so fun.

    We’re leaving in three days. We’ll do the show from the road, you’ll see.

    Oh, it’ll be fun.

    Oh, we’ve got a bunch of interviews coming up but-

    It’ll be good, you’ll see us.

    You’ll see it sooner than later.

    It’ll be great.

    Jill, you have something inspirational to share with us.

    The Importance of Continued Education

    Yeah. You know what I want to talk about? It ties into what you just said about, are you more happy doing something or doing nothing. I’m more happy always doing something, obviously, I can’t sit still. What was I going to say? So for me, it ties into what I do in my free time which is, I’m always learning something. And I want to remind everyone the value of continued education. There’s this sweet couple that have been a part of Land Academy not that long and they’re like “Oh, we got this.” And they stopped showing up, they stopped being involved. I’m hearing little snippets of their struggling. And I’m like you know what? Because they’re not staying involved.

    There’s always things that come, up even within our group. For me, I personally pick up and read all kinds of books on all kinds of topics but it all ties to building a business or being an entrepreneur or being better at something that we do. I love sales, that’s been my whole life, right? I will still pick up sales books, I will still go to sales things. I might pick up a little nugget, I don’t know. Doing things a little bit differently. I’m never going to stop. I’m always going to stop learning … I’m always going to stop … I’m always going to keep learning, that’s what I’m trying to say. I’m getting tripped on my own words here.

    Even in Land Academy, this was a discussion recently. Even though you come into Land Academy, you watched it your first year, went off and did some mail, go back and rewatch it six months later, watch it a year later. Not even just our updated versions but the same version that we have. As someone very nicely said on our member call, you’re a different person now that you’re watching it. What you knew when you first watched this one year ago, and you’re watching now, you are so different. And what you’re going to pick up on is going to be different because of that too. I’m just reminding everyone, don’t let off the gas, don’t get too comfortable, and keep pushing and you’ll get better, and more efficient, and it’s just all going to get better.

    Here’s my inspiration and it was … I bled into it on the regular topic. Continuing education is imperative. I am much more comfortable doing something versus nothing. I used to race motorcycle, superbikes, back in the day, drag your knee on the ground but I’m much more into the dirt thing now. And so I’m going back into continuing education, like Jill is saying, just watching videos, and taking classes, and everything. And it occurred to me, and I didn’t even realize that I was doing this but … One of the courses that I’m taking said that if you get on your bike … It looks like there’s nothing going on when you watch somebody ride a motorcycle. But for me, what’s happening, especially in the dirt is every single turn that I’m taking, I … The next one I try to make it better somehow. I try to lose … Choose my line better, implement the gleaning techniques, and all that stuff so there’s a lot of mental things that are going on that I don’t think are apparent when you watch somebody else do it.

    That’s continuing education, and I’ve been doing that since I started riding. Just try to become a better rider, trying to improve track time or dirt time, or get out there more, and all of that. You learn all about yourself, and what you’re capable of, and where your limits are. And this is no different. I’ve been watching CNBC for hours now because of this 40 … Because I’m just fascinated at the reactions of people and this 40,000-point milestone.

    Continuing education is imperative. If it's easier for you to do nothing, then this is not the podcast for you.
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    Have we ever hit this before?

    Never.

    Oh.

    It is the first time ever.

    That’s it.

    Ever. And I don’t think it’s something to celebrate about, price-to-earnings.

    What do they to tie it to?

    Price-To-Earnings Ratio

    So they spend a lot of time talking about that. And price-to-earnings ratios have never been higher also. So price-to-earnings means the price of the stock divided by the actual earnings for the same period or the period, however they defines it.

    Meaning the profit the person made, the profits.

    The profit that the company’s making. So Microsoft has a PE ratio and the price of the stock should be within a reasonable gap, within an acceptable earnings place. Theoretically can’t just have an amazingly high stock price with absolutely no income or no earnings, especially if it’s in a … In the point in its lifecycle. A company’s in its lifecycle where it should be throwing off some earnings like Apple or Microsoft or Ford or any of those companies. When you have a higher and higher and higher price-to-earnings ratio, it’s way more dangerous in my point … In my opinion, then having just a high stock price. It becomes a perception. The value of a stock becomes perceptional or with … More than it does reflecting the reality of the value of the stock. And that’s been going on for as long as I can remember. I remember when it hit 10,000 and everybody thought the world was going to end. People were talking about watching it hit 1,000 in the 80s … I think in the 70s when we were really young kids-

    Wow.

    And they thought then the world … And all kinds of stuff happened after that. We went off the gold standard, all kinds of crazy stuff. I don’t think this is a good thing but everybody seems to be really happy about it. I don’t know if it’s just clickbait or what. Probably some of that.

    You’ve been watching Jack and Jill on Money Matters. I’m just kidding.

    My big point, picture point is here … If you have control over how much money you buy a piece of real estate for, buy a piece of dirt and it’s way less than you’re going to turn around and sell it for two weeks later, where’s the risk in that?

    I know. This is why I hate the stock market, I have no control. I hate it. This is why I hate … I’m trying to think of so many other things. Well, I won’t do a terms … What am I trying to say? A wholesale deal. Those of you who know know what I’m talking about. I’m not going to take it into contract, try to go sell it, trust my buyer’s still going to … Or my seller’s still going to be there. Trust it’s all going to go okay. Trust the state will let me post the property for sale because I don’t own it, I just have an equitable title. I’m not going to mess around with that I’m going to buy the dumb thing.

    We’re here to reduce risk and reduce variables just like in a motorcycle seat. You don’t want to go into a turn all risky and with a ton of variables where you’re doing all kinds of stuff instead of just trusting your soul and utilizing the years and decades of experience that you have. That’s what you want.

    Totally.

    I don’t not know of any way to improve guessing at what stocks and what indexes to buy the way that we do now, the way that we do here.

    That’s good.

    Join us next Wednesday for another interesting episode, you’re not alone in your real estate ambition. We are Jack and Jill. Information-

    And inspiration-

    To buy undervalued property.

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    Land wholesale experts, Steven Jack Butala and Jill DeWit, share their personal land investment/real estate business achievements, answer questions, share valuable tips, all in the name of…