Truth about Taking on New Employees (LA 1673)
Transcript:
Steven Jack Butala:
Steve and Jill here.
Jill K DeWit:
Good day.
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 the truth about taking on new employees.
Jill K DeWit:
I'm excited.
Steven Jack Butala:
This is a requested topic by one of our really active members. And it's very timely because we just took on a new employee and it's actually going really well. That's not always how it goes.
Jill K DeWit:
It's true.
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 and comment on the shows you like.
Jill K DeWit:
Okay. Luke wrote, "Do you pull out any recently bought properties from your list?" So in the mailer I'm about to send, I noticed some I've just sold in the past three years and the buyer paid at least three times what we're offering. And this is good because you have a couple comments that you added in here. So one of them is... Is it just one comment or more than one?
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, just one.
Jill K DeWit:
Okay. So another person chimed in and said, "Oh, here's what I think." So Aaron comments, "Results will vary. But a few months ago I bought five acres from a guy who bought only two years ago with his now ex-wife. They just wanted out and to split the proceeds and go separate ways. They got back almost what they paid for it. And that was a buy for 12,000 and sell for $39,000 for me. I wouldn't scrub too hard." I believe that too.
Steven Jack Butala:
Don't scrub too hard. Here's the math on scrubbing too hard. You're going to sit down and do a mailer, or you're going to have Concierge Data do it. You're going to spend the money and the time and the energy, you're going to do the red, green, yellow test and all of that. And then at the very end or very close to the end, right before you price it, are you going to go in and take out 25% of the mailer, which is just a tiny little cost when you look at the actual cost and the time. It's hundreds of dollars on a multi thousand unit mailer. Hundreds of dollars that you're trying to save for what? That could be the diamond in the whole mailer, just like just what happened here. So I've been saying this for years, years and years, don't scrub the data too hard. Just send it.
Jill K DeWit:
I agree. And you never know what happens. Like we talk about this often. It could have been a transfer. Maybe dad just passed on and the attorney put it in the kid's name. And three months later, your kid gets your letter. And you wouldn't have known what the situation when the kid is so ecstatic, that you reached out to buy it, because he was trying to figure out what to do with it. You can't assume.
Steven Jack Butala:
So please... Jill and I have been saying this for years, what you're buying is a situation. In this case, Aaron bought unfortunately a divorce liquidation situation and he bought for 12 and sold for 40. And so you can't tie that, in the data, you can't know what that is. You have to just blanket it out and see.
Jill K DeWit:
And it's so funny. It's like the whole back tax thing. If you're not sure about it, try it and watch. We've been doing this now for, golly, decades combined. You decades, me a decade, in this business and by taking stuff out, you never know what you're missing. That's the main thing. And like you said, just let it rip and see what happens.
Steven Jack Butala:
This whole business of decades thing makes me think.
Jill K DeWit:
Uh oh. Are you feeling old? I'm sorry.
Steven Jack Butala:
No, no, not at all. It's not that. I never feel old. That's not it. It depends on where you are in your life.