Outsourcing to Scale Your Land Business (LA 1693)
Transcript:
Steven Jack Butala:
Steve and Jill here.
Jill K DeWit:
Hello.
Steven Jack Butala:
Welcome to the Land Academy show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala.
Jill K DeWit:
And I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from the Valley of the Sun.
Steven Jack Butala:
Today, Jill and I talk about outsourcing to scale your land business. Every 10-
Jill K DeWit:
This-
Steven Jack Butala:
Go ahead.
Jill K DeWit:
The topic for me is, kids, we need to talk.
Steven Jack Butala:
Really?
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Jack Butala:
Every 10 weeks we teach a course called Career Path. We're about the third week, third let's say module, third week in the 10 week class.
Jill K DeWit:
Where we are now.
Steven Jack Butala:
And every time we teach this, there becomes a theme. And last Career Path was pricing, and this Career Path is scaling up. And the only way to do that is through outsourcing, so I wanted to share some of the highlights with everybody on this, because it's incredibly important, and we're all here to make money.
Jill K DeWit:
Yep.
Steven Jack Butala:
Sometimes we forget that.
Jill K DeWit:
Isn't that funny, where I've got to pause on that. That's a good note. We were joking about that the other day, because everybody was talking about hiring. We're going to talk more about that, but they were talking about hiring and how do you motivate them, do you pay them per transaction or whatever. And we were kind of saying, you would be shocked and amazed how many people at that level, like a transaction coordinator position, they're not there for the money. They're not there to get bonuses when they close something. They're there to make sure they have a steady paycheck. And it's so amazing, you need to ask people by the way what they want. Usually they want flexibility, consistency, I know I'm going to get a check, that kind of thing. But we both chimed in and said that's not how we are.
Steven Jack Butala:
No, no. No, every-
Jill K DeWit:
The owners are not that way.
Steven Jack Butala:
Totally off topic already, but I ask everybody before we hire them, what are you motivated by? Not a single person in my entire career, hundreds and hundreds of people, have said, "I'm motivated by money."
Jill K DeWit:
Except for me.
Steven Jack Butala:
Which is my only motivation. Except Jill, which is now why we're here in front of you after all these years later.
Jill K DeWit:
Thank you.
Steven Jack Butala:
And I never wanted to hire you anyway.
Jill K DeWit:
I know, [crosstalk 00:02:12].
Steven Jack Butala:
And we're kind of in this together.
Jill K DeWit:
Just kind of, I fell into it backwards.
Steven Jack Butala:
Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community, it's free and don't forget to subscribe on the Land Academy YouTube channel. Comment on the shows you like.
Jill K DeWit:
Luke wrote, "I'm assuming that most, not all, parcels from county to county labeled NEC are unusable in some way. Not much on the interwebs from my initial search, but after getting a signed contract back with one of these designations, I discovered it was mostly wetlands and in the FEMA flood zone. Just curious to everyone's experience with the properties they have that have these zoning labels."
Steven Jack Butala:
Okay, so Luke, I'm not picking on you here, but we need to make some definitions. There's two designations that these data aggregators, national data aggregators, put properties in to make them different from each other. One is land use, and one is zoning. They're very, very different. And some counties, most counties, don't use both. They just use one. NEC is short for something not yet classified. I'm not sure what the E is, but that just means we don't know what to do with it yet. It's another way of saying it's really rural. It doesn't mean it's bad.