Transcript:

Steven Butala:
Steve and Jill here.

Jill DeWit:
Hello.

Steven Butala:
Welcome to the Land Academy Show. I’m sorry, the House Academy Show. Entertaining real estate investment talk, I’m Steven Jack Butala.

Jill DeWit:
And I’m Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny Southern California.

Steven Butala:
Today, Jill and I talk about how your job is just not enough anymore.

Jill DeWit:
Boy.

Steven Butala:
When you think about it-

Jill DeWit:
If you still have it.

Steven Butala:
Your life is riddled with single points of failure.

Jill DeWit:
One marriage.

Steven Butala:
Yep. You’re taking the… you read my mind.

Jill DeWit:
If you have one marriage and one kid and one dog and one house, what else?

Steven Butala:
And one income.

Jill DeWit:
But one income.

Steven Butala:
You know, under Jill’s scenario there… we’re getting in the show already. Under Jill’s scenario, you have everything to lose and one thing’s going to break, your J-O-B.

Jill DeWit:
One thing goes wrong-

Steven Butala:
Then all that others, they’re dog stuffers.

Jill DeWit:
Exactly. Especially if a dog gets sick, it’s going to affect the whole family and maybe… who knows?

Steven Butala:
Like everything, it takes getting burned a few times for that. You fix it because we’re humans.

Jill DeWit:
It’s awful.

Steven Butala:
Humans just want to do stuff that’s easy, not hard. I’m as guilty or more guilty of that than anyone.

Jill DeWit:
That’s funny.

Steven Butala:
Before we get into it, let’s take a question posted by one of our members on the houseacademy.com online community, it’s free.

Jill DeWit:
You know what’s funny about that? When you line us up, I always thought that I was the lazy one. I always want to goof off and you… my way is I goof off as I work, that’s my way and your way is to just blow out whatever work it is-

Steven Butala:
Yeah.

Jill DeWit:
And get it done as fast as possible, it may not be perfect. So at the end, we have the same result.

Steven Butala:
You know that’s how men and women mate.

Jill DeWit:
Oh.

Steven Butala:
I just want to blow it all, be done with it and you just want to go slow.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah. A little bit of fun. A little bit of rest. A little bit of fun. Got it. A little bit of work. A little bit of fun. That’s true. This is good. I’m sure that was a good code for any kids in the car, they don’t know what that is.

Steven Butala:
No.

Jill DeWit:
Okay. Claudia wrote, I see on the course, in the Land… or House Academy course?

Steven Butala:
We’ll see.

Jill DeWit:
All right. Steven pulled all the “data” in quotes, but I really don’t see it’s ever used. Okay, correct me if I’m wrong, but according to the Pareto Principle, in what I see, we’re only really needing a few fields for slicing, dicing, analyzing the data and keeping it as a reference because when someone calls, [inaudible 00:02:31] we’ll look up the full record, please advise.

Steven Butala:
That’s all. I just put that there for us, and then there’s a big long… if you go onto landinvestors.com you’ll see in the note, there’s a big long list of the data.

Jill DeWit:
Can I make a comment here?

Steven Butala:
Sure of course.

Jill DeWit:
What this means is when we go into… whether it’s land or houses, and we download ownership data, we have 300 and something [crosstalk 00:02:51] fields of stuff that I may or may not use. For houses, I may not… I may use… I’ll probably use three bedroom, two bath. I might want to know that versus a two bedroom, or a one bedroom, or a studio. I also might want to… but what I might not care about is it got an enclosed garage or a carport?

Steven Butala:
Or a pool.

Jill DeWit:
Or a pool. I might now know. Or does the door face north, south, east or west?

Steven Butala:
Yeah.

Jill DeWit:
I might not care about that, but those are extra fields that I might have available.

Steven Butala:
This data, bear in mind, the root of this question is okay, there’s a ton of data. 311 columns, or data fields. I only need 20 of them.

Jill DeWit:
Okay.

Steven Butala:
Why do you make us pull all this data Steve? And I don’t.

Jill DeWit:
Right.

Steven Butala:
Bear in mind, this data is for assessors. So assessors set values on asset, whether it’s land or houses or anything, or an office building so that they can assess it and set a tax rate.

Jill DeWit:
Right.

Steven Butala:
So the more cool stuff you have on a house generally, or the closer it is to the ocean or however it works, the better attributes that there are, generally it’s going to be assessed for higher. So there’s a lot of stuff in there that makes sense to an assessor that we don’t care about. However, if there’s data that I can look at to make either consciously or subconsciously help me price things, or I’ve always said pull all the data-

Jill DeWit:
Right.

Steven Butala:
Take a look. If you’re in… I don’t know. Schenectady, Illinois and you’re looking at houses, the data sets going to be a little bit different. They may not include a lot of stuff. Basements are important in that part of the country for some reason, not so much out in the desert here. So pull all the data, take a look at it, there might be some stuff in there that really makes you say, “Wow, I really do only want four bedroom houses instead of one bedroom houses.” Or maybe it’s San Francisco and there’s a bunch of one bedroom houses and that’s the norm. So it might not be in the universe of how you buy and sell houses, it might not make sense to you, but it should. Pulling all that data and taking a look at it if you’re a data person should influence how you’re pricing it.

Jill DeWit:
Have you ever heard of the Pareto Principle?

Steven Butala:
No.

Jill DeWit:
I hadn’t either.

Steven Butala:
I think it’s use [inaudible 00:04:57] in all. Use what you need.

Jill DeWit:
I’m like, “All right. Now I have to go look that up.” Thank you.

Steven Butala:
I think it’s only use what you need, take what you need. If you’re at a buffet, don’t take it all and then choose at the table what you’re going to eat.

Jill DeWit:
That makes sense. Leave the carbs out, we all know what happens.

Steven Butala:
We’re going to get a million emails on what this is, where it’s come from, why we’re idiots.

Jill DeWit:
I’m going to get a book. Jill, read this dumb book.

Steven Butala:
Yeah.

Jill DeWit:
It’s important. All right.

Steven Butala:
There’s a lot of people that really want to help us like, “Steve, you need some help. So I’m going to help you.”

Jill DeWit:
I love it, but you know what’s funny Claudia? I do use it sometimes. It depends on… you know, for houses versus land. So for houses, I’m not eyeballing it the same as land. I’m not worried about drive up access. I’m not worried about utilities and things like that. So when the calls come in for a house, in the past… this is also before we had NeighborScoop, in the past when I had ParcelFact, I would go look at that spreadsheet and I would eyeball it, and I would think about… I could visualize the square footage and I could think about some of the lines on that, because I hear what you’re saying now. They’re going to call back, I might not even look at the spreadsheet. I might just go straight to NeighborScoop, and you’re right. So that’s what I do now. But-

Steven Butala:
Pareto Principle is 80/20 rule. So 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes, so what you’re saying… and she’s not wrong. We know Claudia, she’s smart. You know, 20% of the data set is really going to get you there. It’s going to cause what you really want it to cause, which is 80% of the effect.

Jill DeWit:
So no need to send us a book, we looked up the guy’s name. All of you who wrote that down, you can take that off your to-do list.

Steven Butala:
What we would do without Google?

Jill DeWit:
Could you imagine when we do the… oh, I know. It’s amazing.

Steven Butala:
On the fly on a live show, I can look it up.

Jill DeWit:
Exactly.

Steven Butala:
Hey stop it, your job’s just not enough anymore. This is why you’re listening.

Jill DeWit:
Who wants to be dependent on somebody else anyway?

Steven Butala:
Who wants a single point of failure at anything?

Jill DeWit:
Yep.

Steven Butala:
There’s a reason that… again, all week we’re going to talk about the business side of buying and selling real estate. Some people take it that far. Jill and I have made a lifelong career out of it, both of us. We have multiple companies that do this stuff, including this one. Including the show, so… we don’t have a single point of failure anymore, why? Because I got burned a long time ago. This whole business model is set up to have 90 properties going at the same time.

Jill DeWit:
Even if you have a job, you should always be bettering yourself and thinking of the next game, don’t you think?

Steven Butala:
Or, if you don’t have that personality type, you just need to say in the mirror, “I don’t have that personality type. I’m a W2 person. This is the job that I want. I don’t want any trouble. I don’t really want to deal with any of this stuff. I’ve got… I’m going to get the most secure job that I can, maybe a federal government job,” but even now, who knows about that? “That’s cool, and I’m going to retire when I’m 48 or whatever.”

Jill DeWit:
Not me.

Steven Butala:
There’s nothing wrong with that. It is a single point of failure.

Jill DeWit:
Yeah.

Steven Butala:
So you got to be careful because what’s stable now, might not be stable a year from now.

Jill DeWit:
You know what’s interesting? I’ve been in those environments years ago, and you could tell who were the people that were going to stay and who-

Steven Butala:
Yeah.

Jill DeWit:
Were not going to stay. They dress a certain way. I’m not kidding, they got certain haircuts. We used to joke about it. There was a girl bob haircut, I’m not kidding, that meant you were management material.

Steven Butala:
Wow.

Jill DeWit:
That you were committed to staying the course and being with this company. I’m like, “Oh, I am not going to get that haircut.”

Steven Butala:
So that’s my nightmare environment.

Jill DeWit:
Isn’t that funny? So like you said, there are some people like that, that’s just not us. I don’t that’s our community, because we wouldn’t… we’re all rule break… not rule breakers, but we’re all just entrepreneurs, go with the flow, figure it out, find your own way.

Steven Butala:
Now is… it’s never been easier to start a company than now. When Jill and I grew up, we’re in an environment, an entrepreneur or somebody who was started a company would have a store, or a chain of stores, or a pizza place, or some type of boutique, or a manufacturing company. I’m from the Midwest, so it wasn’t this… it’s never been so inexpensive and cost efficient and time efficient to start a company, an online company like we have.

Jill DeWit:
Right.

Steven Butala:
Than it is right now. So if you do have this inclination to… this is what I would teach. This is a show, so it’s not a lesson. There’s no reason for any type… if you’re listening to this, you have an entrepreneurial flare. There’s no reason not to do a couple of deals on the side. I’m not saying join our groups. In fact, I don’t want you to join our group. I want you to go do deals, a few deals on a… if you go on landinvestors.com, the vast majority of the people in there aren’t in our group. They’re in there just talking about stuff. The serious ones join the group after a few deals. So your job’s just not enough anymore. Wages are-

Jill DeWit:
I think-

Steven Butala:
Stagnant. If you look at the macro level… and sorry Jill. If you look at the macro level, wages are completely the same. They don’t ever grow really. They grow very small, but the price of real estate goes up constantly. Way… in a disproportionate manner, which means job obsolescence is ultimate.

Jill DeWit:
Like I was saying, everyone should have a backup plan. Every single person, now more than ever, it’s proven that you need a backup plan.

Steven Butala:
Yeah.

Jill DeWit:
How many people thought that… by the way, heck you could have been… dream it up, company du jour, that’s been around for over 50 years just laid off in masses. I don’t have to list them, we all know they’re out there. So my thoughts and this is what we’re telling our kids, “I hope you never need it. I want you to have a backup…” If you are that person and you love your W2 income, this is just something you’re thinking about doing, you know what the best case scenario is you make some money on the side. Touche. You pay for your kid’s college vacations. You get to pay off your house that much quicker. You get to travel by the yacht, whatever it is, you have extra money. You just want to have a backup plan. You never want to-

Steven Butala:
We all started this way. If you’ve read the e-book that… one of the e-books that I’ve written, this all started for me in the early 90s on a coffee table buying a piece of property off of eBay. An 80 acre property in Arizona that I paid eight grand for, never went there. Just did the paperwork on it. Repackaged it up and sold it for 16 a month later. In the same venue, on eBay. So was it luck? No. I did it 16,000 times after that. So no, it’s not luck at all. That sung to me, but did I quit my job? No, I had four jobs after that.

Jill DeWit:
Right.

Steven Butala:
Until the point where it was just silly for me to have a job, it was costing me money. You have nothing to lose to do a real estate deal, if you do it right. Especially properties now, the way we have this mailer situation set up, so you can buy it super cheap. The way you can lose at buying and selling real estate is if you pay too much. Everything else will fall into place.

Jill DeWit:
And that’ll be another show. Happy you could join us today. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday you can find us over on the Land Academy Show. Tuesdays and Thursdays, we’re right here on the House Academy Show.

Steven Butala:
Tomorrow, the episode on the Land Academy Show is called “What is really possible flipping land? You are not alone in your real estate [crosstalk 00:12:47]” Jill, what’s possible flipping land?

Jill DeWit:
Oh my gosh.

Steven Butala:
What are the limits? There’s no limits.

Jill DeWit:
Well I want to get into this, because the numbers that we’re doing and what I’m coaching people to do right now are crazy. It’s funny, you don’t know it until you try it. It’s like you put your toe in the water and you’re like, “It’s not cold.”

Steven Butala:
Yeah, or it’s cold for a minute.

Jill DeWit:
Oh, I got this. The House Academy Show remains commercial free for you, our loyal listener. So wherever you’re watching, wherever you’re listening, please subscribe and rate us there.

Steven Butala:
We are Steve and Jill.

Jill DeWit:
We are Steve and Jill.

Steven Butala:
Information.

Jill DeWit:
And inspiration.

Steven Butala:
To buy undervalued property.