The Ground Game Podcast

Episode 12: You ask, we answer: land investing Q&A with Clay and Justin

• Justin Piche and Clay Hepler • Season 1 • Episode 12

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🎙️ Welcome Back to The Ground Game Podcast! 🎙️

In Episode 12, hosts Clay Hepler and Justin Piche open the floor to their listeners in "You Ask, We Answer: Land Investing Q&A." 
This episode is dedicated to addressing your burning questions about land investing, sharing personal insights, and providing practical strategies to help you succeed in the real estate market.

Key Highlights:

  • Navigating Setbacks: Clay and Justin discuss their experiences with challenges in lead flow and team dynamics, offering specific strategies to overcome these hurdles and maintain team morale during tough times.
  • Proof of Concept: The hosts emphasize the importance of establishing proof of concept for new investors, outlining practical steps to validate your business model and measure success in the early stages.
  • Learning from Failures: Clay and Justin share valuable lessons learned from past deals that didn’t go as planned, highlighting the significance of thorough due diligence and the need to trust but verify.
  • Shiny Object Syndrome: The duo tackles the common issue of shiny object syndrome, providing insights on how to stay focused on core strategies while remaining open to new opportunities.
  • Mindset Shifts: Clay and Justin reflect on the mindset shifts that have significantly impacted their success in land investing, emphasizing the importance of taking ownership of your results and believing in your ability to handle larger deals.

This episode is filled with candid discussions, actionable insights, and real-world examples that can help you navigate the complexities of land investing. Whether you're just starting out or looking to refine your existing processes, this conversation is a must-listen!

Hosts:

  • Clay Hepler: A seasoned real estate entrepreneur focused on building an eight-figure land flipping and development business.
  • Justin Piche: A former US Navy submarine officer turned real estate entrepreneur, dedicated to building high-performing teams.

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Clay Hepler (00:00)
Welcome to the ground game podcast. This is your co-host clay

Justin Piche (00:07)
And this is your other co-host Justin, and we're here to show you how to win the ground game.

Clay Hepler (00:25)
You know, it's unfortunate every single time in my head, it's like, I think that, I don't know, it's some psychological principle. They're like, when you're like a little kid, someone says like, don't think about the elephant or don't, you're like, don't think about a pink elephant. And then you instantly picture it. So like every time at the beginning of this podcast, I'm always like, I can't say host. I have to say co-host. Cause I was, you know, people online were.

We're saying that it's my podcast because I always say host. Long story short, let's do a update on our goals as we do at the beginning of every podcast. Dude, how you doing?

Justin Piche (01:06)
Good man. A lot of man. A lot of things are happening in just life business in general. We were talking earlier but I just had a meeting with my general contractor on my house and was laying out the budget and he's like you're eighty thousand dollars over budget. like great. great. So now I'm trying to figure out like where do I cut. Is there a place to cut. Can I reallocate funds that I allocated for like landscaping and putting up a fence and other things that are kind of like.

Add-ons that aren't necessary and move that into what we've done so far to try to release some money from the bank just like a lot of a lot of stress in that realm, but you know Did to myself, but it's fun. It's fun. It's fun to see the house come together. So Yeah, I've been posting little videos walking around my house on Facebook so no big we got the windows in we got the roof on that we just need doors next I guess and a season

Clay Hepler (01:50)
Yeah, I mean, I've been seeing your videos. Those have been pretty cool.

Justin Piche (02:03)
Plumbing is roughed in, electrical rough-in starts today, and the goal, at least for my contractors, is have all the drywall complete by the end of the month.

Clay Hepler (02:14)
Okay, so what are your timelines to finish it?

Justin Piche (02:16)
May to June is the probably end of May, early June is kind of timeline to be totally done with the project.

Clay Hepler (02:24)
Okay, so I'll book a trip for September and hope that I can get in.

Justin Piche (02:27)
Yeah, yeah, man. Yeah, I'm excited. It is. It's yeah, it is. It's tough to be renting, paying multiple mortgages. It's like there's a lot of extra expenses because of this construction and then it's going over budget and I'm just coming straight out of pocket for that for architect fees. So you know what, though? It really puts a little bit of pep in my step to crush the business. Right. Because like, how am going to pay for it if not succeeding right in this business?

Clay Hepler (02:56)
That's right. So dude, let's talk about your speaking about succeeding. You had a big whopping massive goal. 800 K realized profit. How's that going?

Justin Piche (03:04)
Yeah, I think we might be there. If we're not there, we are really close. I should have added up the total through December 3rd, but between the last podcast we recorded and this one, we've had 90K in gross profit realized. I think we were close to 600 or just over 600 total before that. So think we're almost at maybe 700 or right around 700K gross profit for the quarter. And I'm looking at my acquisitions pipeline.

I mean my transactions pipeline right now. And we've got, let's see, TC dashboard.

We've got 16 properties right now under contract to close in December. I mean, but it's not, I'm not going to realize a bunch of like all of that as gross profit. It's a total, total contract sales price of 1.28 million. A lot of that, five of those are going towards a big subdivide. So those five will basically pay down the bank loan and start to return capital.

Clay Hepler (03:47)
dude, you're gonna, you're gonna, gonna...

Justin Piche (04:06)
And then the rest of them, one of them's a huge purchase, but was actually my first novation deal. So we've had under contract for 290. We're selling it at 360. I put about 20K of like clearing work and survey work into it. So we'll make, we'll make 40K on it. It's not like a huge profit, but I never had to take title, which is nice. I didn't have to come up with that 290 upfront. So basically a 20K investment for a 30K profit, you know, a pretty standard flip size deal, but we were able to work something creative with a bigger deal that we just couldn't get for a cheaper price.

So that was that one's kind of cool. And then a few owner finance deals are thrown in there. So we won't realize. But I think with this list we will hit we'll hit over 800 this quarter. So I'm pretty excited about that.

Clay Hepler (04:47)
Nice man and for us for the 720 and projected We are we're at about 620 Right now so yeah, so you know we rubber hit the road baby rubber hitting the road and We got some a really interesting deal that came across my desk

Justin Piche (04:54)
Okay, dude, three weeks left.

Clay Hepler (05:07)
That you know, it was it's basically buy for 700 sell for like 1.4 1.5 and I'm trying to work out all the deal currently It's gonna be a major subdivide though. So, you know, there's just additional complications there but

I looked at it, I have a pretty decent amount of confidence in the area. And so now it's kind of put in final underwriting pen and paper, could be a builder partnership. But I really, I think it's a good deal. I think it's a good deal.

Justin Piche (05:45)
That's awesome. That is awesome. Yeah, one, maybe. Yeah.

Clay Hepler (05:48)
So we're getting close for both of us to kind of hit our goals for the quarter. And things can change with projected pipeline profit. But I have a lot of confidence in my team to execute. I think we're going to probably surpass that goal by the end of the quarter.

Justin Piche (06:07)
Yeah, man. That's fantastic. Yeah, I haven't this actually been a pretty well, I guess we had one last week. only got one property under contract. We've got seven out right now. Seven contracts. We've all verbally agreed and working to get them all signed. And I know that's I know that's a big struggle for like a lot of people is getting the deals closed. Once you negotiate the price, you get everything lined up. You're ready to roll and then not getting them to closing. So.

kind of hounding my acquisitions team. Like we got seven contracts out. Every one of those people has verbally agreed to our price. Like, come on guys, let's get these things close. What's the deal? What's the deal? You know?

Clay Hepler (06:41)
What's the deal, what's the deal? Yeah. Well, dude, I think that leads us to our TBT this week. Team building tactics is hard hitting actionable tactics that we're actually using every week to enhance, manage and scale our teams. And this team building tactic is something that is quite relevant because I recently promoted...

One of my team members. I promoted a lead manager to a operations slash kind of Dispo role. So they would be doing a lot of transaction, like managing transaction coordination and a lot of like managing of dispositions, kind of doing some buy side stuff in terms of actually having conversations with buyers.

but doing the KPI management stuff like that. And she is actually a partner with someone that you work intimately with as well. Yeah, yeah. So, I'm gonna just kind of talk through the reason why I felt that a promotion was necessary and then what I saw in her and then how I rolled it out. So our listeners can kind of see tactically.

Justin Piche (07:43)
Yeah, that's right. That's right. That's awesome.

Clay Hepler (08:02)
Like why I thought this person was the right fit. So in our businesses, a lead manager role is a setter, right? Truly it's a setter role and you need to be good at two core things. The number one thing you need to be good at is you gotta be good at having quality conversations with sellers, right? And you gotta follow a script. follow a script and you understand how to handle objections, you're gonna succeed in this role.

You don't necessarily have to be a killer though because you're not the person that's actually closing the deal. You're not the person that's offering on to you as we kind of currently operate. And you also got to be good at comps. Like those are the two core functions of the lead manager role in my company. But really what you need for someone to succeed in that position is someone who is a salesperson but doesn't want the responsibility of a closer. So I find that global talent is actually really good to have in this position.

because they maybe they don't want the responsibility of being a closer, but they also want that sales, salesmanship, sales responsibility to a certain degree and they have maybe a little bit of an analytical background. This is what we look for in this position.

But there's a ceiling, right? There's not a lot of growth here, you know, as our business is currently functioning. Because they're a setter, right? And oftentimes, our closures are so good, we would hire outside the organization to bring on a new closer versus promoting a setter to a closer. That's just a philosophy that doesn't mean a setter can't be a closer. But in most cases, we're seeing that we need to bring someone externally to be our closer. And that's what happened in our...

and he crushed it, right? In terms of we did not promote him within. So you need a very specific type of architect, a very specific type of person. And this person who I promoted started to reach out to me and sort of add, be the person that was actually creating action plans and follow up boss for those that know follow up boss, talking about like managing our data better, talking about like,

uploading certain lists to call for a cold calling team. And these were all characteristics of someone who, number one, takes ownership of their department, but also someone that has the capacity and the willingness to look outside of their kind of insular world and add value from an operational and organizational perspective. So I saw that and I was like, this is someone that needs to be promoted and rewarded for these types of thinking.

They need to be put in a role that'll give them more responsibility and authority over themselves and other people and give them a bigger ceiling, right? Because their ceiling is gonna be very low if they're just sitting in the lead manager position at Infinitum. So I saw this, this person started to bring these up over a series of weeks, suggestions, and they're tenacious. This person is like, you want this person on your team, she's incredible.

And I'm just constantly blown away by the suggestions that she brings up. so Justin, I was like, dude, I need to give her a position that will give her the, the ability to bring her talents in her work ethic to the operational side of our business, which frankly I'm lacking. We saw a couple of weeks ago, Justin brought on his disposition manager and we saw how talented he was. Right? This guy was the type of guy that completely took over Justin's dispositions department.

and probably told Justin, man, this is what I think we should do. And you've basically been able to forget that department to a certain extent because he manages it. You manage him, but he manages everything. And so I am still playing a lot of the different departments. We're still successful business, but there's a lot of stuff that I can, there are people that I need to put in different spots. And I saw this person as someone that can manage dispositions to a certain degree, like I'm gonna be the dispositions manager.

Justin Piche (11:45)
Right. Yep.

Clay Hepler (12:06)
but they also can play an operational role because they are process oriented enough to get into this role, right? So these guys for the listeners, like these are the thoughts that we see actions and we want to reward actions in order to promote internally, right? And so I saw these, I started to say, this is a person that needs to have this bigger ceiling. And I was like, there's a perfect position for this person. And

Most importantly, I did not promote this person and say, I just want to put you in this position. There is a very clear reason why we need this position in my company. It will enable me as the CEO and other people to focus on solving different constraints to growth. This is not just, I want to put this person in this position because I don't want to do this work, which is what a lot of people hire, right? I just got off a private coaching call with someone. He just hired an acquisition person.

And he's like, I don't want to do acquisitions. I'm like, dude, you're the CEO. You got to close deals. Like at the beginning, you got to be the buck stops with you. You're going to work harder than anyone. You're going to call people back. You're going to do everything you can. You don't have to be the best salesman in the world, but at the beginning, you really do that. But he hired someone because he just said, I want to scale. Like, you know, that's the whole thing. Like I want to scale. I'm like, dude, you can't scale out of a business that does a deal a month. There's no way you scale out of that business. And so

Long story short, this is a very long-winded team building tactic. So we see here why the characteristics of someone that was a clear person that would fill out an operations-based role, right? Fixing processes, managing processes and managing people. And having the capacity to actually do it at almost a director level. And the willingness and ability. So we talked about get it.

want it in capacity to do it weeks ago. So she can get it very quickly, right? She definitely wants to do this. She exhibited characteristics to do it and she has the capacity to do it. She's already shown me that she has the capacity. So she fills these out without me saying, so I was able to grab her and promote her. So what does a promotion look like? We want to talk about promotions internally as something that can be celebrated. So it's easy to say, Hey, you're going to go do this test now, right?

If we're doing a bilateral or a vertical movement within our organization, we want to make it seem like it's like a big thing so that they can be celebrated internally and externally, like we talked about earlier in a previous episode. And so we're going to do this big, at our town hall meeting at the end of the month, we're going to do a big introduction. Hey, this person is getting promoted to this position. And then after a period of time, after they groove into the position, there's going to be a financial.

Benefit to it right there's more responsibility, which is more compensation so the promotion was a Simple one-on-one call and saying hey I think you're gonna fit in this position getting buy-in for her from her to make sure that it's not a promotion that it's a one-sided promotion which I think a lot of people do specifically with global talent they just say you're do this now

I got buy-in right I got buying from her and then I'm gonna celebrate her at a company-wide Town hall meeting to say hey you're promoted to this position Congratulations, and everyone else can cheer yeah And so that's just kind of how I think about promotions internally And yeah, that's so team-building tactic this week TMT or TBT

Justin Piche (15:46)
TBT TBT TBT

That's yeah, that's great. I think there's most people they they need some sort of career advancement to feel fulfilled. There needs to be some opportunity to advance. And I think it's kind of hard when you have a smaller business to do this. Right. You hire these roles and sometimes, you know, it's like, what are you going to move these folks into? But I think that's where a lot of like the excitement, at least for me personally, comes in growing a business is when I can bring people in when the business is small.

grow it and have these new roles that can then be filled by people who are exceptional performers who get it, they want it. They have the capacity to do these increased more responsibilities, bigger output roles, and then actually rewarding them for their performance. And that is what keeps people engaged. That's what builds an incredible, that's part of what builds an incredible culture on a team too, because your other employees see that same thing, right? They're saying, wow, this person really delivered and Clay rewarded them.

with more responsibility, more pay. And like, I want that. I want that. Right. And it keeps them motivated, working hard. That's really good,

Clay Hepler (16:58)
Thank you. Thank you. And some one one last thing here is sometimes if you have someone in a lead manager role and they're crushing it, sometimes the way that you reward them is you just say, hey, you've been doing a really good job and you increase their pay. Sometimes you don't need a title change for someone to feel promoted. Sometimes the financial promotion is it's good.

All right, so we just talked about our TBT for this week and now we're gonna get into our main topic. So we have been getting people reaching out to us on social media in general, giving us reviews and also giving us questions for us to dive into. And so Justin and I are gonna tackle quite a few questions here until the end of our time.

and just handle some listener questions this week. Some Q &A from you guys. Where you can put more Q &A is in our YouTube videos if you have specific questions, reaching out to Justin and I on social media, and then we'll have in the future places where you can submit your questions on our website and in an email as well. Justin, I'm gonna go through the first one here.

I'm just gonna read it out loud and then you can start us off here. So navigating setbacks, in previous episodes you both mentioned experiencing setbacks in lead flow and team dynamics. What specific strategies have you implemented to overcome these challenges and how do you maintain team morale during tough times?

Justin Piche (18:33)
Great question. You know, I think one of the things that personally has helped me overcome these setbacks, you whatever they might be in the business, whether it's slow sales months, capital crunch, big deals falling out of contract. I mean, these things happen all the time. The first is just the scale of the business. Having consistent deal flow really helps smooth over the bumps. You know, I think when I was starting the business,

you'd start, you'd have one or two deals one month, you'd have a few next month, then you'd have zero the next month. And that lumpiness in income, that lumpiness in kind of wins can wear down on a team. And so for those periods of time, it was really all about believing in the model, Believing that this would work and putting in the effort to make it work. And just being that like stalwart in my own business that it kept encouraging the team and had the conviction that

the consistency would be rewarded with results. So that's kind of how it started. Now, we implemented the EOS strategy, We are every week during our level 10 meeting analyzing the issues that we have in the business and just putting plans in place to solve them. Literally assigning people tasks to move through them. And that has made it really, really, just a lot smoother to work through these inevitable issues that come up. And I think what the team sees,

is they see you as a leader, not letting things continue to kind of harm the business. They see you tackling problems and getting a plan together to solve them and then holding the team accountable to actually solving them. Without that weekly cadence, it's easy to get overwhelmed. feel like, especially if you're in a stage of your business where you're managing by your email, you know, and you're, you're just kind of letting like the work trickle up and you just handle things as they come.

If you don't have a time set aside to actually look at these issues that are popping up and get a plan together to action and remove them as issues, solve them, move past them, then they're just kind of fester and they're just going to fester and the team's going to feel it. They're going to feel like you're not taking action. They're going to feel like this, these challenges that they keep running into aren't being broken down for them. And it just gives you the rest of your team, a lack of confidence in you as a leader. So that's what's helped me. It's just the constant focus every week, an hour.

a straight hour set aside analyzing what issues are we facing and how do we move past them.

Clay Hepler (21:04)
So yeah, I want to just dive into this because I'm going to talk about IDS too. Do you have, how do your individual team members bring issues? Are you the primary driver of the issues? How do you, and how many people and who is qualified to come to your level 10 meetings?

Justin Piche (21:23)
Yeah, level 10 meetings is only the leadership. So it's me, my assistant who kind of like manages the meeting, if you will, my sales manager and my acquisitions manager. That's who is attending our level 10 meetings. And so any issues that the team is experiencing, they come up to the department heads and then the leadership discusses them in the meeting.

Clay Hepler (21:47)
Yep. Okay. That's important to break down. If you have a smaller team, right? And you don't have actual department heads like Justin does, you know, sometimes it's not necessarily just about, and this is what I found in my experience. It's not necessarily just about having a department heads there. It's more about having people that are willing.

to have critical conversations and willing to bring up issues. So you might have a very high performer, but they're not the right person for a leadership meeting, even though they might not, they might have a higher title than another person because someone else might bring up an issue, right? Again, talking about this person I promoted, she was a person who was always bringing up issues.

Everyone else just sits there and doesn't bring up issues. And that has part to do with the leader and part to do with the actual people that are coming to the meeting. Do you have anything else, Justin, before I answer the question?

Justin Piche (22:40)
think you want, I mean, you just on that note, you want a culture on your team of people that are raising issues,

You want to foster a culture on your team of people that bring up issues that aren't afraid to raise issues. I mean, this is something that I talk about on our weekly team meetings every week is just if there are things, if there are barriers that you are facing, you need to bring them up because you as the owner of the business, the leader, you should know everything that's going on in your company, but you're not going to know.

the individual system software process lead flow, what takes an extra five minutes, 20 times a day that could be automated. You're not gonna necessarily know all those little details, but your team does. And so having a forum where they can bring up those issues, where they can send an email, we have a Slack channel that can put improvement requests and things in. So when we see those improvement requests, that becomes an issue that we will then look at and see how do we solve this? How do we make this more efficient, this process more efficient for the team so that they can accomplish more?

with the same team, right? You don't necessarily need to throw people at it. Sometimes you need to get better at the processes and make your team more efficient so you can do more with less folks.

Clay Hepler (23:52)
I love that, like little stuff like this guys, the improvement requests Slack channel. mean it's just so easy to do stuff like that and a lot of times it just comes as intuitive, right? So we have a problem, how do we communicate? How do we give this, open up the channel for improving the business? We make it.

Starting with the leader we make it a clear way like a way to submit improvement requests, and we make it easy for Anyone and in the company to do that so What specific strategies have you implemented to overcome these challenges, and how do you maintain team morale during tough times so for my answer for this question

When you face setbacks and lead flow or team dynamics, it all comes down to the leader. The way that you respond to setbacks, lead flow, has everything to do with how your team responds.

And they look at you as someone who is running the business and they look at you as someone who they trust. And if you respond by saying, let's figure out a solution, like Justin was just talking about with IDS, identify, discuss, solve, which is an EOS concept of a level 10 meeting. And you're always focusing on how do we actually solve this problem versus we have this problem. Man, it really makes an impact. And so you get through problems faster.

A specific strategy that I've implemented is leading by an analysis of the bottlenecks versus like a feeling. A lot of people, especially early on in their business, they're saying, hey, I'm experiencing this problem, this team dynamic problem, this lead flow problem. And in reality, the lead flow problem might actually be able to be solved by just having a better disposition process, because you can reinvest in

Justin Piche (25:49)
you

Clay Hepler (25:51)
more marketing, if you have a faster speed to sale, right? Things like this, we don't necessarily always think of, because we just think of the problem is the problem. But we have to look at problems holistically. So we have to the way that I do it is saying, Hey, what's the core bottleneck here? What's the core constraint here? And how do I solve the constraint? And it might not be at the actual point of pressure, it might be somewhere else located.

Justin Piche (26:04)
you

Clay Hepler (26:18)
in that business. And then team morale again is all based on the leader. But the team morale comes with encouragement, but team morale really, in my opinion, comes down to accountability. And accountability is culture-wide accountability, like core values, but it's also team-based accountability, which is an individual. And the individual accountability is based on metrics. So we're focusing on having clear metrics of success.

Right? A lot of times team morale dips because there's not clear metrics of success. And people are wading through a difficult time, but they say, hey, I trust that if I, if I'm a salesperson, I might have a tough week or tough two weeks, but if I just follow this process, I know that results will come. And a lot of times people, their morale dips and it just keeps going down because they don't have clarity on How the heck do I get out of this?

Justin Piche (26:57)
you

Clay Hepler (27:15)
And so that would be my answers to the navigating setbacks question.

Justin Piche (27:22)
Next question. We've got proof of concept. And this is a this is a really big one, I think, for for newer investors. You discussed the importance of the first six months in establishing proof of concept. What are some practical steps new investors can take to validate their business model early on and how can they measure success during this period? Maybe I'll take

a crack at this first clay. This is a question I get all the time from newer investors. And I think it's a question that anyone who's starting any kind of business is wrestling with. All right. The fear of the unknown. And I'm not going to sugarcoat it. And I think Clay and neither of us are going to sugarcoat it. This is not an easy business, especially an easy business of scale. Right. And the market has changed significantly.

from the time that either of us started to where it is now. And it requires a higher level of professionalism, a higher level of tenacity and consistency than it used to. It really does. The industry is maturing. The industry is moving more towards exceptional systems, follow-up processes is what's going to get consistent deal flow and kind of gone are the days of being able to blast out mailers and just roll in with deals that you can make money from. That's my opinion, gone are those days.

I think a lot of investors who are coming in don't have the right expectations for what the effort level and maybe marketing spend and follow up work is going to take early on. And so they worry about this proof of concept. But what I can tell you is if you are putting in the work and you are putting in the spend of marketing and maybe that looks like six, $7,000 a month they spend.

to do at least a few deals, one to two deals a month, if you have the right expectation for how much it's gonna cost and you just stick with it for a six month period, you're going to see results. You are going to see results. It is going to happen. I think the trap that a lot of people fall into is they're not willing to go past a certain kind of spend until they prove the concept. And so what they do is they end up going into this very, maybe like almost like dipping your toe in the water. Well, they'll say, okay, I'm gonna spend,

$2,000 a month on marketing and I'm just going to see if I can get a deal or two. The problem is that amount of marketing spend may only get you a deal in three, four months from now. It probably isn't enough to generate deal flow right from the beginning. And a lot of folks during that period, they doubt themselves. say, man, I'm just dumping money into a hole. I'm never going to get it back. And so they don't really get to even that proof of concept kind of part or that point proof of concept like decision where like, okay, this is definitely going to work for me. So I guess my

My advice and the way I think about it is you need to be willing to commit a certain level of capital and time investment to see this through for six months or you're probably not going to get that brief concept.

Hey guys, this is Justin, your co-host of the ground game podcast, interrupting your podcast to just say, Hey, if you're getting value from this, give us a follow, give us a subscribe. And more importantly, leave us a comment with questions and topics that you want Clay and I to discuss, because what we want is to deliver incredible value for our listeners. And we want to talk about what you guys actually want to hear anyway.

For now, back to your regularly scheduled podcast.

Clay Hepler (30:51)
Right. And I think it's all about the mindset going into this. Right. So what we're what we're facing Justin is a lot. I'm seeing this. make I do memes about this all the time on my social my Instagram. Did you see my late like the one meme about like you were like Conor McGregor, you know, you know, there's he's fighting a guy and a guy talks and he's like, who the

Justin Piche (31:06)
Yeah.

Clay Hepler (31:18)
F is this guy like he looks up at him. It's actually pretty funny. If you follow me on Instagram, but I see new people like new gurus in the space and I'm like, dude, I know this guy hasn't done a quarter of a million dollars. Like I just know in a yearly basis, like there are people that come for, for, know, to me for private coaching and they're like, Hey dude, I've done 700 K this year. I just talked to that guy before this podcast and I want to take my business to the next level. It's like,

How do I double it? And getting from 700k to 1.5 million is difficult because you cannot be the same person. You're doubling your business. And so what I'm trying to say is these gurus are talking about, it's so easy. It's this untapped niche, which in reality, it is less competitive than pretty much any other real estate niche. That's still true today, but it still requires hard work. And so a lot of these gurus,

Justin Piche (32:00)
you

you

Clay Hepler (32:16)
They don't actually have businesses. What they did is they sent some mailers, they got a couple of deals and they're like, dude, would be cheaper and easier for me to build an education company. These are the same guys that were in crypto five years ago, right? Or three years ago, right? They just can't stick with it. And so they'll sell a crappy course and they'll say, hey, you can do this really well if you spend $2,000 a month. And the reality is it just does not work like that. So here's the tough love.

Justin Piche (32:22)
Okay.

Clay Hepler (32:45)
If you want to get fit, you have to work out. Now there are different ways to work out. What is the difference between someone who is really jacked and someone who is 10 years in that is not that jacked, right? Well, the difference is how hard they work and the expectations that they set with themselves. And so the real difference between someone who succeeds in the launch period and not is the mindset, right? And you need to know

Justin Piche (32:52)
you

Clay Hepler (33:14)
Basically, I'm going to invest money for six months. I'm going to commit to six months and I can virtually guarantee can't guarantee But if you send out enough marketing over his period of six months, you will get leads and you will get deals Right, but people are set made the wrong expectations there they're told that they can do the you know the Roomba dance class and get apps right and I'm telling you you got it You got a deadlift some some heavyweight, right?

Justin Piche (33:21)
You

Clay Hepler (33:43)
In order to get to put on weight, right? That's what Justin and I talked about we talked about you've got a bench press You got a deadlift. You got a sprint You got to do hard hard stuff to build a business and you got to have the expectation that when I go into the gym Which is when you step into your office every single day that you're gonna do the work that needs to be done But people are sold the I saw a video of a guy like sitting on a beach

I do this part time four hours a week and I made, you know, 200 K in my first whatever doesn't work like that anymore guys. So the expectation is go into the first six months and imagine it's going to be the most difficult six months that you'll ever have in business. And if you work like that, if you focus like that, if you commit that type of time, it will not be the most difficult six months, but you will set yourself up to build a very profitable landflipping business.

Justin Piche (34:42)
Agreed. So I think maybe last thoughts on proof of concept is. You just have to have the right time expectation and the design and the willingness to put in the work. think that can kind of sum it up. You have the right time expectation, the willingness to put in the work and the resources to get started. We talked about this in previous episodes. How much money does somebody need to get started in this? I think we're somewhere in the 30, 40 K.

you know, to fully invest in your business, to expect to see some sort of consistent results in your proof of concept. I don't want people to think that's the only option. certainly people have done it with less money and certainly there's a bit of luck involved early on. Sometimes you can send out a mailer and just hit jackpot. It just happens every once in a while, but it's not the expectation. That is an abnormality. That's kind of what people I think need to understand.

Clay Hepler (35:34)
That's right.

Justin Piche (35:35)
All right, why don't you take this, I'll read this next one. can take it. Learning from failures. Both of you have shared experiences of deals that didn't go as planned. Can you discuss a specific failure that taught you a valuable lesson and how that lesson has influenced your approach to future deals?

Clay Hepler (35:54)
Yeah. I think I've actually talked about this one on the podcast, but I bought a property in Williamson County, Tennessee, which is the wealthiest County in Tennessee. The nicest areas, the biggest homes right outside of Nashville and a broker that I trusted a broker blindly. And it's interesting. I was doing this sales, sales call.

training this morning with my team focusing on disk profiles in one of the the profiles of a high D is someone in high D high E I is someone that like is not super detail oriented and will will sometimes like just rush through things guilty as charged and I rushed through the this due diligence and it cost me like 60k of my own liquid money this year

And this is after I've done like dozens and dozens of transactions, profitable transactions, my only unprofitable transaction because I trusted a real estate broker who said, if it doesn't perk, you won't have to worry.

in and I anticipated that being I can put an engineered system in but I didn't ask the second and the third question and I realized if it doesn't perk it doesn't perk in this specific county there's no engineered systems that allow it and so I went from a parcel that was buying for 180 sell for 400 I thought I was like dude I'm gonna make so much money on this like through buying for 180 selling for 180 on an owner finance contract

and selling the owner finance, selling the note on the secondary market and taking a massive haircut.

Justin Piche (37:35)
Yep. Well, there you go. Lesson learned. I actually had a similar lesson on a property. didn't, well, thankfully didn't lose money, but it was a property that in North Carolina that did not have an engineered septic design that was approved by County Health. And so we bought the property. There was already previous perks, but we didn't know that because we didn't check the environmental health records to see the perk tests that had failed in the past.

So we're marketing to sell this property and the broker found it. So then we had to disclose that it didn't perk. We hired a new soil scientist to test it again. It didn't perk in those areas, but they were able to find an area in the very back of the lot, basically across a ravine and stream that did perk. And so we were able to sell it, but because the septic design for wherever the home site was going to be would have been so expensive, we basically broke even on the deal, maybe made a thousand dollars. But my lesson is on for subdivides.

I had a deal in Alabama, Shelby County, Alabama, actually, that was a 12 acre lot, perfect for a subdivide, in my opinion. It had beautiful road frontage. was kind of like a second addition to a small neighborhood development that just wasn't developed. But it had stormwater drains, had underground water, it had power, had fiber, high speed internet, had everything. And it had

2,000 feet of road frontage or 1,500 something like that feet of road frontage along it So I hired a surveyor who was local to the area and a lot of I put a lot of kind of trust in surveyors to be able to know the regulations for developments and subdivides in that area, especially if they tell me yes We've done these plots. We've done these developments before And so I got my bid I had to say, you know the lots all surveyed out and it got time to submit the preliminary plat to the county and we got rejected when their comments were You know, you don't have highway department approval

I was like, what do mean highway department, road department approval? Well, the road, it was great, beautiful road. But at the end of the road was essentially like a almost like a Y turnaround, like a Y intersection where it looked like they had stubbed, they had stubbed two roads where they were going to continue these roads for more small lot developments. The highway department required a cul-de-sac turnaround. They wouldn't let you do it with the Y kind of turnaround that was there.

That was the minimum required turnaround. so the cost of engineering and actually putting in that turnaround just completely destroyed the subdivision. And I was lucky to walk away making a little bit of money on the property, but I bought it for 90. And I bought two of the smaller lots and this bigger lot. And I ended up maybe making 30K on it, but I was expecting to make about 150. So, I mean, it wasn't like this huge loss, but it was a lesson learned of,

There are extra things in the subdivision. Like you really need to review your subdivision regulations very thoroughly. And there was nothing in the subdivision regulations about it except for kind of an in the plot approval process, highway department signature, and then if you go into the highway department road regulations, there they defined the acceptable types of turnarounds. And we just didn't go that extra step, put a little bit too much trust in the surveyor. So now we check. Now we check the road requirements everywhere we go. What do we need to put in?

Clay Hepler (40:54)
That's good. That's good. So let's talk about shiny object syndrome. I've mentioned in the past, the dangers of changing directions too quickly. This is the thing that really pledges and plagues new investors significantly.

How do you recommend investors stay focused on their core strategies while still being open to new opportunities that may arise?

Justin Piche (41:25)
is actually something that I think about. This is not just for your business. I think this is life in general. You only have 100 percent of you. OK. Like your time you have 24 hours in a day. Right. That's all you get. You've got to sleep some of it. Right. You got to take care of yourself some of it. You got to take care of your family some of it. You only have a certain amount of time that you can spend on your on your business. Right.

If shiny object is going to take you away from that minimum requirement in your business, you need to not do it. Okay. You need to not do it. I think, I think people, people always want to, it's just like kind of general, maybe human nature to try to find the path of least resistance for the maximum benefit. And a lot of times that's what shiny objects, that's what we feel like when we see a shiny object, we see somebody doing an entitlement deal and they may make $500,000 on one deal

but they fail to recognize how much work, expertise and risk comes with some of these shiny objects. And then how much of their time is going to have to be spent focused on that that's going to detract from what's currently working in their business. And then they tend to then the habit is to just kind of neglect your business in a way that hurts it significantly. I've seen this happen with a bunch of different investors that have kind of fallen prey to this on the on the upside. You want to take advantage of new opportunities as they arise.

But when you do that, you've got to make sure the systems and people and processes are in place to keep what is working, working so that you can allocate more of your time to these other things to help grow and expand your business. So it's like, there's a difference between shiny object where you're just chasing after all these different things and a focused and measured approach to bringing on new opportunity in your business with planning and work that goes into making sure

the existing business can continue operating with you spending less time in it. I think that's the kind of critical step in between falling prey to shiny object syndrome and actually taking advantage of additional opportunities because you have the bandwidth to do it.

Clay Hepler (43:23)
Mm-hmm. That I think that's an amazing Amazing answer Justin. I was talking to one of my coaches and I Have I'm coached as well And I was talking to him actually about partnerships. He's he's a very very very well known real estate educator sales educator

has run successful wholesaling businesses, is in a ton of different masterminds. And this is partnerships with Shiny Objects, but they're also ways for you to accelerate what you're doing. you know, a guy reached out to me earlier today and he's like, hey, don't only have the money to join the accelerator, but there's, I'm thinking about having a guy that would fund all of my marketing and all of my education and he would get a cut.

equity split. And to me, that's like a really good way to structure it, right? But he had a goal in mind. So what here's the here's the how to avoid this shiny object syndrome. Does this get me closer to my long term vision?

Right? And intuitive, know intuitively, we know we might even be just starting out our entrepreneurial career, but we know if it brings you closer to your vision. So if something doesn't bring you closer to your vision or you're not sure that's where you lead. You work with coaches, you work, talk to your friends, you talk to mentors to get a different viewpoint.

Justin Piche (44:55)
you

Clay Hepler (45:05)
I've had this policy that I've implemented any really big decision in my life. talked to at least three people that know me well, that are that I respect or just people that are like a mentor. Maybe they don't know super well, but like I respect their thought or how they think about it in weighing options. Right. And some of the song can give me a a bias viewpoint. So before you make a big decision, before you, you go after a shiny object,

You ask first, hey, is this going to get me to my long-term vision? Then secondly, then you can rely on a coach. You can rely on a mentor. You can rely on a friend, a colleague, someone in a, mastermind group with you to help you make that decision.

Justin Piche (45:54)
It brings up a really good point, which is, do you have a long-term vision?

I think a lot of people have kind of a short-term vision and maybe their short-term vision is, I want to make more money and I want to have more control over my time. But like what goal are you working towards? And one of the things when we were starting this podcast, we wanted to make sure we were talking about is our planning process, our quarterly, our annual planning process. Like what are our goals and what is our long-term vision? So we've been focusing on discussing.

quarterly goals or primary quarterly rate revenue goals either revenue or like gross profit in the pipeline or realized gross revenue and those are great goals but my long-term vision isn't to make eight hundred thousand dollars in gross profit this quarter right my long-term vision is to substantially scale the business to eight figures right at least business-wise that's kind of the primary long-term vision so to your point if I see something come across now my desk some other opportunity to make more money I have to ask myself a is it gonna get me closer to that goal in my business

And B is by doing that, will I hurt my existing business? I hurt my goal in the short term or medium term or long term by focusing more energy and time on that? And if the answer is yes or maybe, then it's a shiny object, right? I love your policy, man, of asking trusted friends, family, mentors, et cetera, how to help having other people kind of looking at your decision and giving you advice from a external kind of unbiased opinion.

think that's great. That's a great way to help steer you, especially for really large kind of big decisions. That's really good advice.

Clay Hepler (47:30)
Right, right. Because we intuitively know a lot of things that we like that we know what we should do a lot of times. a lot of times we hire a coach or a mentor because we want them to tell us what they already, what we already know, but in a way that we can absorb and implement.

Right, we know that we need to find more leads in our land flipping business. We need to build processes to get more leads. But oftentimes we work with someone who is a couple steps ahead of us, or like a friend, like a good friend that's maybe in the business or in whatever life decision we have. And we can just absorb that knowledge. I've made it a standard practice for me to...

solicit people that are a couple of steps ahead of me to help me make my decisions. So let's talk about a lot.

Justin Piche (48:21)
Yeah, let's let's roll one. Yeah, let's do one more because I've got a my my daughter has piano lesson here in a bit and I got to go downstairs and watch the other kids. But let's just crush one more of these questions. Which one you want to do?

Clay Hepler (48:34)
Let's do the mindset shift. So we both emphasize the need for a strong mindset in overcoming challenges. What mindset shifts have you personally experienced that has significantly impacted your success in land investing?

Justin Piche (48:36)
All right.

Yeah, I'll do it. I'll give it kind of a short answer. think one of the biggest barriers to me entering this business and like scaling it was deal size, like deal size. What am I comfortable like taking down and actually doing right when you don't have a lot of experience and you start to see numbers like buying something for 200 K 300 K 500 K a million, two million, whatever dollars. It's a little nerve. Like it really is. It's like if you're not used to doing deals at that size. It's really stressful and kind of.

scary to take them down. Like, what if I fail? What if I lose money for people? What if I can't do it? Those thoughts come in and they cause you to either have indecision or turn down opportunities that could be really, really good. And so think when I started my business, I had a bit of that mindset. I'd seen people have success in this business with these smaller flips, with the kind of desert square parcels.

But when I started marketing to larger value or like higher value properties, it took a bit of convincing myself personally that if the deal is good, there will be funding. If the deal is good, there's profit to be made. I can handle larger deals. I can handle more deals. that it's kind of like it's you were talking about going to the gym, right? Earlier and like making an illusion to go into the gym building muscle. It's kind of like that. Like you, you need to put in the work and time obviously, but you need to trust that you can do it. you and

And you just need to know that, and I think everybody needs to know this, if the deal is good, there is money there. Even if you don't know where you're going to find it, there is money there. There is opportunity there. That was a yeah, that was a big mindset shift for me, taking down bigger deals.

Clay Hepler (50:21)
I that. I love that man. For me, I entered this business with limited cash, with limited time to make money. I can say with confidence that it was the toughest two years of my life.

Like with total confidence, the stressful nights having to pay for my life my wife my wedding my honeymoon The amount of work that I had to put in, to just build a freaking parachute To build something hurt was herculean and I Had belief in myself that

that I could do it. And the reason why is because I just said it's just up to me. It's not that someone else. It's not up to the government. It's not up to the some some force outside of myself. It's not market statistics. The only person that's going to be as dedicated to my success is me. It's not someone else, a coach, a mentor, anyone.

Justin Piche (51:00)
you

Clay Hepler (51:23)
It is if it is to be it's up to me

buck stops with me. Period. And so taking total ownership of your results and your outcomes was the biggest mind chip shift I've made. So we're gonna wrap it up here today. Guys, thanks for listening to the Ground Game Podcast. As always, the gentleman agreement of the Ground Game Podcast is if you've gotten benefit from this, we see that only about 10 % of the listeners who have been listening to our podcast actually have liked, review, and subscribed.

So if you're one of the 90 % that gets benefit from this podcast, please leave us a review, give us a rating, subscribe to the podcast so that we can continue to put out this free material and more people can benefit from the ground game podcast. Until next week, Justin, you have anything else to say?

Justin Piche (52:14)
No, sir.

Clay Hepler (52:16)
Beautiful. We'll see you next week.