Member Steve Manus Shares Mobile Home Lot Success Stories (LA 981)

Member Steve Manus Shares Mobile Home Lot Success Stories (LA 981) Transcript: Steven Butala:                   Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit:                            Hello. Steven Butala:                   Welcome to The Land Academy Show, entertaining land 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 with member Steve Manus, who shares his Land Academy success stories. Steve comes to us from Palo Alto, California, and BlueSkyLands.com. Before his land career, he worked with grad students and professors at Stanford University in the Department of Chemistry, and I'm sure there's a lot more to this story than I know at all. Steve Manus:                    Okay, good morning. Jill DeWit:                            Welcome. Steven Butala:                   Steve, tell us a little about your experience at Stanford and how it ultimately led to this conversation we're having. Steve Manus:                    Sure, and it actually did, there is a direct route. It's interesting. I had been mostly in sales my whole life. I'll give a very brief background, but I was not... I was always smart and did well in college and all of that, but I wasn't some driven or motivated student in particular, and I didn't have a real career path. In fact, I remember vividly the day I threw out all of my law school applications. Steven Butala:                   Oh, that's beautiful. Steve Manus:                    It was, it was a very fine day because that's sort of the track that I was on because I grew up in a family of lawyers and my Mom was also a paralegal when that actually meant something in the early days of paralegals when it was more of a substantial position. I just thought, "Okay, of course, I'll just go to grad school." I was a history major, I'll go to grad school or I'll go to law school in this case, and I just... the thought of actually becoming a lawyer was so abhorrent to me that I couldn't do it. I couldn't even apply to the schools. Steve Manus:                    I'm sure I would have gotten in somewhere, but you grow up in... There's a lot to say here, which I won't, but I just remember years later going back home. I moved out from Chicago to California and I've been here for more than a couple of decades in Northern California. I went back for my Dad's birthday one year, a few years ago, he's since passed, but we were sitting around the dining room table and all of a sudden it turned into this political discussion and my politics happen to be different from theirs, it was if I was sitting in the witness chair. Prosecutor... They're just grilling me relentlessly. I thinking like, "What has happened? In two minutes' time I've gone from loving son who flew in for your birthday to God knows what?" Steven Butala:                   That's [crosstalk 00:02:31] the Midwest. The culture in the Midwest is like that. I'm from there, too. Steve Manus:                    Yes, yes it is. We've talked about this. In fact, the Detroit, the... Yeah, because Chicago and Michigan are connected. Anyway, I went into sales and I enjoyed it and was good at it and I just didn't have direction for many years. I wound up at Stanford some years later. I needed a job and there it was, and it was a good job. It was administrative work in the Chemistry Department. I was familiar with universities. I went to grad school myself ultimately, but this was a different world because it's a very, very high-level world. Very high achievers, incredibly hard-working individuals. Those who become professors at Stanford, and particular in the science and engineering, are just the very best in the world, and there aren't that many of them who qualify. Steven Butala:                   You [crosstalk 00:03:22] mentioned in the earlier part of the pre-show that's not on air that they were also the most...