Episode 33: Forged by Fire, Clay Hepler’s No-Excuse Journey to 7 Figures in Land

🎙️ Welcome Back to The Ground Game Podcast! 🎙️

In this episode, hosts Clay Hepler and Justin Piche dive into Clay's inspiring journey in land investing, discussing the challenges he faced and the lessons learned along the way. They explore the mindset shifts necessary to overcome adversity and achieve success in the real estate business.

Key Highlights

Personal Updates:
Clay shares his experiences juggling family responsibilities while navigating the ups and downs of his business journey. Justin reflects on a recent birthday celebration and the importance of maintaining a work-life balance amidst the hustle.

Understanding Bottlenecks:
The hosts delve into the significance of identifying and addressing bottlenecks in your business. Clay recounts his early struggles with sending out 15,000 mailers without securing a deal, emphasizing the need to focus on core problems to drive meaningful outcomes.

The Power of Strategic Thinking:
Clay and Justin highlight the importance of thinking strategically about land investing. They discuss how Clay transitioned from flipping houses to focusing on land, illustrating the mindset shifts that led to his eventual success.

Hiring for Success:
They explore the common mistake of hiring based solely on cost rather than potential output. Clay shares his experience of hiring a lead manager and a texter to help scale his business, stressing the value of investing in skilled team members.

Funding and Leverage:
The episode covers the importance of utilizing funding options and leveraging other people's money to expand investment capabilities. Clay discusses how he used a HELOC to finance his first successful deal after a challenging start.

Building a Consistent Business:
Clay and Justin emphasize the need to build a business focused on volume and consistency rather than relying on one-off deals. They share insights on how Clay's perseverance and strategic decisions helped him create a sustainable operation.

This episode is packed with practical advice, personal anecdotes, and actionable insights that can help you break free from the cycle of struggle in land investing. Whether you're a seasoned investor or just starting out, this conversation is essential for anyone looking to transform their land investment strategy for success.

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Transcript

Clayton Hepler (00:02)
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Ground Game Podcast. This is your host, Clay Hepler.

Justin Piche (00:09)
And this is your co-host, Justin Piche and we're here to show you how to win the ground

First off, I changed the setting back on our podcast to record audio and video. For some reason, for the last two episodes, unbeknownst to us, there was some setting checked that had us only recording audio. So if you like to look at this on YouTube, I apologize. You're just going to see the logo. You might as well listen to it, but.

So we got the video settings fixed. So if you're a watcher of the podcast, you can see our smiling faces. And if you are, you'll notice that Clay is wearing a hat, which has not happened before on this podcast. I am a habitual hat wear. Some people may think I'm going bald, but it's not true. I just don't like to do my hair every morning. I like to throw on a cap.

Clayton Hepler (00:56)
⁓ yeah.

Got it, efficiency, It's like, know, there was a Kentucky everywhere a couple weeks ago and the horses have the blinders on and you have your little blinders on every day, you don't look up, you just kind of put your head down and you grind,

Justin Piche (01:11)
Yep, efficiency, exactly.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, you can't see my eyes right now. Grind.

All right. Well, this episode we're going to talk to Clay and I'm going to ask him some questions about how did he get to where he is? You know, we talk a lot about high level business stuff on this podcast, which is I think really beneficial to the community and we get a lot of good feedback from it. But we're going to do this time is really talk through some of the milestones and Clay's business. And I'm going to ask some questions. I'll be the interviewer.

Usually Clay is the one who kind of interviews me on a lot of things. I'm going to interview Clay today. So you ready? All right. All right. So Clay, what was your aha moment that made you realize land investing was the right path? And like, how did you come to that conclusion?

Clayton Hepler (01:58)
Let's go, man. Let's see how you do.

Yeah.

I didn't come to that conclusion actually so of those that don't actually know my story, essentially my background was household selling, flipping. I did some multifamily properties and I purchased a lot of real estate in a very short period of time. And the type of real estate I purchased was older 1900 built buildings, know, three tab shingles, single family. ⁓

You know, single family properties with single pane windows, sandstone foundations, plaster and lath instead of drywall. The asbestos, mean, uh, everything, everything. And you know, it's great when you're doing a little burr, but when rental rates go down 20, 25 % and you have to spend $25,000 on a terracotta sewer line, uh, life gets really real really quickly. In addition to that, I had an Airbnb out in Colorado that was

Justin Piche (02:45)
asbestos.

Clayton Hepler (03:07)
pretty close to Steamboat Springs, Rocky Mountain National Park. And the mortgage payment was five figures every month and we were not cash flowing. And so...

I was trying to figure out how to make a deal work, how to make some cash flow work. And thankfully my wife had a job and then all of a sudden she didn't. The day before Thanksgiving, a couple of years ago, my wife got a call from her boss and her boss said, hey, we didn't get the investor funds. We're cleaning house. Everyone's fired. Effective today.

And she, didn't have her paycheck for two weeks. She, there was no severance. The company went under. And so I didn't have a consistent income because I was doing some flips here. I would flip an apartment building. Uh, I'd flip some houses. Um, we do the bird pull out equity, but there wasn't that consistent income. so dude, I was left literally with. Basically $30,000 in the bank, um, a wedding coming up.

And no, no idea of how we were going to pay for it. And the walls were closing in, man. It was a serious time in my wife and I's life. And it's not like a hyperbolic, you you listen to people's stories. You're like, how is this possible? ⁓ it was, it was real men and it definitely left a lot of, ⁓ it was hard, right? For two years, eight hour weeks, really hard type of deal. So I bought some courses, some land courses, cause I was like, Hey, I want to do this thing. ⁓ I want to.

⁓ learn how to flip land because I didn't want to do wholesaling house flipping because I thought we were going to actually move out to that house in Colorado that I mentioned. and so I was going to say, I don't think I could flip houses remotely, which was, know, obviously in my opinion now it's like, of course you can flip houses remotely, but land seems so much easier. So I bought the dream. ⁓ I drank the Kool-Aid and I went all in on land. started sending my mailers and

Dude, I didn't have an aha moment because there wasn't an aha moment. I didn't even have time to breathe. There was like, this has to work or I'm gonna have to tell all of our relatives that we can't go to Spain because our wedding was in Spain. We're gonna have to, we're gonna go face literal bankruptcy. unlike people that said, hey, I sent out some mailers and I'm like coming out of position of strength, I've never been in a position of strength in this business, never.

until recently and it has been an uphill battle the entire time.

Justin Piche (05:35)
Yeah, man, inspiring to just get through all that. I mean, that's a lot to be thrown when you're, especially at the stage of life you were right about to be married, you know, thinking you're entering this relationship kind of dual income things going well and the walls just crumble around you and having the resiliency to move through. One of the things you mentioned during your when you were just talking now was the courses that you started with. What were those courses and did you do any other?

coaching or mentorship? Were they effective? What did you take away that you still implement? What do you, what did you throw away?

Clayton Hepler (06:12)
Yeah, I would prefer not to say the courses because they kind of sucked to be honest with you

Justin Piche (06:19)
So I

think the audience can resonate with sucky courses. They're definitely a dime a dozen out there.

Clayton Hepler (06:26)
Yeah, so there was from what so you know there was a Some personalities they're both personalities one of them as one was the gentleman who'd been in the business for a long very very very long time and I took the course and I said wait I thought it was like when I took the course I Watched the videos in a couple of hours, and I sort of was like ⁓ I thought this was chapter one

And, then of the course, right. And then, ⁓ the other, the other course that I took was, you know, was pretty good. ⁓ but again, left a lot to be desired. And so I just had to figure it out on my own and that that's really what happened. ⁓ and I think, thankfully I had a background in wholesaling and house flipping. So I kind of understood the lead lead flow lead management process, how to, how to build a machine to bring opportunities in. But yeah, I mean.

I took two courses, like obviously, obviously I believe a lot in education, but, ⁓ at that point, I mean, of course I've taken more courses, know, different types of mentorships, mastermind groups, but at that point I took those two courses and then just sent out mail.

Justin Piche (07:39)
Was there any education free that you did for household sailing? That that gave you kind of gave you the base the the base the foundation rather to build your land investing business on

Clayton Hepler (07:52)
Yeah. I mean, I took like a cold calling course from Brent Daniels, like years ago. He was like a TTP guy, like cold calling. then, but I never took like a, like he had kind of a pseudo wholesaling and house flipping course, but I learned a lot from YouTube university and then actually build a wholesaling and house flipping business for someone else. And so I kind of learned through that feedback with what KPIs to track, things like that. but like it wasn't my business and I was just like director of acquisitions. And so.

That I never really took a super formal course on that, but I took the talk to people, which was a, which was a course at some point for wholesaling houses, like cold calling and wholesaling houses.

Justin Piche (08:31)
Okay.

Yeah.

Sweet. mentioned earlier you had basically 30 grand to your name when you started the business. What other resources did you have and how did you make the most of the resources that you had to start with?

Clayton Hepler (08:50)
⁓ the, the perseverance that I would grind myself to the bone to, to make this work. Like it was that man. I didn't really like, I didn't have other people like you or other people.

in the space to help me out. I didn't have any colleagues. Like I took these courses and I was so like pissed off about it because I thought they were so bad that I didn't even like go into the communities because I was like, are we serious here? I spent money on this. ⁓ so I had been a loner in this, in the space for a while, man, like a year, year and a half until kind of you and I originally connected. And then I started to get open into the land world. ⁓ and I just had to figure it out myself.

Justin Piche (09:34)
It's possible, folks. You could do it all alone. I how about this? Maybe another question. If you could go back and kind of start over. What resources would you wanted would have wanted to have like what would have been the best?

Clayton Hepler (09:36)
You

this podcast.

Honestly, honestly, honestly, you know, cause like, think, I think that there's a inbuilt, uh, what is this person trying to sell me? Um, perspective around, I actually think Ken La June's podcast is pretty good too. Um, the only land fans, I think has a pretty good podcast. Um, I don't know if he even listens to this, but like, I think he's done a pretty good job.

Justin Piche (10:08)
Yeah, it is good.

Clayton Hepler (10:15)
⁓ I think previously, like his podcast last year, we're very good. I think he's taking a cut of it. Yes.

Justin Piche (10:20)
He's really, he's a good interviewer and he's very

consistent with how he gets, yeah, I really appreciate Kendall.

Clayton Hepler (10:26)
And Seth too, think Seth's podcast is really great as well. ⁓ He's just done an awesome job and I learned a lot from Seth, you know, osmetically. ⁓ I never took his course, so. But he, you know, I learned a lot from that. But, you know, going back, the question was, going back, like, what would you want to have? What resources would you want to have?

Justin Piche (10:49)
Yeah, I mean, not like the world is your oyster. You can just have whatever you want. thinking back, maybe another way of phrasing that would be, is there any kind of different education or maybe mentorship or coaching you would have done earlier? Would you have joined a community to be with, because you mentioned you were a loner for a year, year and a half before we connected and you started connecting with other land investors. If you could go back in time,

Would you have changed any of those things that you actually did have control over? Obviously not money. Who wouldn't want a bucket full of money or a ton of investors that had an incredible faith in you, but things that you could have controlled.

Clayton Hepler (11:23)
Right, right, right, right.

Yeah. I mean, there are other communities now, ⁓ that I think are better. ⁓ they're just more kind of ROI focused and there is good, good feedback there. think I probably would have been, ⁓ paid money to join maybe another community. ⁓ you know what, what you really need to look for as a practitioner, not a internet marketer. And a lot of times it's hard to find that. And so I, I was sold the trap of the internet marketer.

Cause they're just better than the practitioner at like paying, like, like, like posting. Like I haven't posted on Twitter in like a week and a half. Cause like, I'm so busy in my business right now. And you know, the people that are constantly posting. I I've done it in the past, obviously, but those people, like the internet marketers are very different than being the true practitioner. Uh, and that's, that's something that people obviously need, like I would have wanted to be aware of, but you're naive and you're like, you hear it from the people and.

Justin Piche (12:22)
Yeah.

Clayton Hepler (12:25)
You know, this is the biggest podcast and, ⁓ you don't really know if someone's trying to sell you something or if it's super legitimate. So I, that's what I would say. I don't know if that answers your question.

Justin Piche (12:37)
I mean, think it's yeah, I agree. think I think it like just to contrast briefly, I joined a community right from the beginning and I think it was really helpful to be in the room with other land investors struggling with the same problems that I was and bounce ideas off like not being a loner, you know, in that. ⁓ Sweet. Now, let's go. Let's go back to kind of you started this business. You took some courses, you sent out some mail.

Walk me through maybe that first year, which I'm sure was incredibly challenging, how did you scale? How did you think about scaling? How did you prove the model out to yourself? What were the key moments that were like, this is gonna work now. Like, I believe in this.

Clayton Hepler (13:22)
Well, that's yeah. So I sent out 15,000 mailers and didn't get a single deal. Um, and then I brutal 15,000 hours. No deal.

Justin Piche (13:29)
Brutal. That was your first marketing. Oh my

gosh, dude. That's brutal. I'm willing to money that if that happened to many of our listeners that it would have been like, okay, pump the brakes. I'm not ready to light on fire like $8,000 right now and just not get a single thing out of it. That's brutal.

Clayton Hepler (13:53)
It was brutal man.

Yeah, yeah, I mean I just like made the decision I just made the decision that I was gonna make it happen and ⁓ Like I said ⁓

Justin Piche (14:07)
So you went down to 22,000 left. had 30,

and then you went down to 22,000. You had nothing to show for it yet.

Clayton Hepler (14:12)
Yeah. And then

look, look, so I, then I put a HELOC on my house hack. I put a HELOC on it because I didn't know about funders. Cause again, I was out of these communities, right? And I was so angry. was like, I got like these, you know, these people that taught me this business, I was just angry. was like, and I got to figure this out. And so I put a HELOC on my, triplex that I lived in my house hack.

And so I used the HELOC to buy this first deal after the 15,000. I finally got a deal back. I I made like maybe I got on a contract for like 21 and then a broker said, Hey, it's probably worth 40. And I was like, ah, like maybe I can negotiate it down. And so I negotiated down to like maybe 16 K or 15 K. And you know, after costs and everything like that, I might've made like 20 K and I was like, bro.

Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? So I paid off the HELOC and...

Justin Piche (15:06)
Amazing.

That's awesome. That's awesome. So first deal

was a solid, you know, 1516 K made 20 K profit. That's it. That's that's really similar to my first year. My first deal was a buy at 18 and sell at 38 right about right about a 2022 K profit.

Clayton Hepler (15:17)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, but you know, the thing is with, ⁓ with my position and like, also needed this money to live. So, I have been shoveling money back in.

Justin Piche (15:35)
Yeah.

Clayton Hepler (15:43)
to my life because I was like, okay, so I was thinking about how much money that I need to pay for my wedding and live. And so with my savings, like, how do I do this? Right? Thankfully I had a house hack man, because like I didn't have a mortgage payment. had an extra thousand dollars coming in every month, but like, I was like, what if a furnace breaks? What, like, what, what if my terracotta sewer line breaks? What if, like, what if I have to replace a w right? What if my car

Justin Piche (16:03)
Yeah.

Clayton Hepler (16:13)
breaks down. so at that point, you know, we got this deal and then I started cheering. like, all right, I'm going to figure it out. I'm to do it. I'm going do it. And started sending out more mailers, got more deals. Um, you know, got lucky on a couple of deals.

Justin Piche (16:31)
What was your what

was your second mail or volume? Do you remember you spent 15,000 the first time? What did you do the second time? And what did you change? Did you change anything about your mail?

Clayton Hepler (16:39)
Well, I sent out mailers to Florida. Santa Rosa County was the first county that I got a deal in. And I was pricing dude on a subdivision level. And it took me so long, and I was like, I'm not that guy. I was so burnt out. like, this is horrible.

I screwed up a bunch of subdivide pricing, which is probably why I didn't get any deals. ⁓ so that was, that was a huge factor in, in, and I just sent out probably 5,000 millers at a time. I would just add them up. I put load them into pebble. I had my little pebble and I sent them out with pebble, ⁓ as my CRM back in the day. And what else? Then I just kept sending, you know, 5,000 at a time. And I just probably was sending.

you know, 10,000 to 15,000 a month. ⁓ because again, like I just knew one thing, which was cash takes time to convert into profit. And if I were to hit, if I was going to hit my timelines, I needed to hit my timelines. And so I need to move quickly. And so on, on that second kind of huge batch, I got a deal that netted me 80 K and I was like, are you

kidding me and it was really cool is this like property that at that point I was I Found a funder who I've worked with on a ton of deals, you know and this funder we found this deal that I never knew even about subdividing but it was a minor subdivide a ton of red frontage was like a perfect rectangular shape and we cut this thing up and It just sold man. It sold so fast and it was just a

Home run deal and do that amount of money. I was like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. It was, it was my prayers are answered, right? And, but again, the problem is I couldn't take and reinvest that in my business. And so I had to take 40 % of that, 50 % of that to pay for my life and the wedding. Cause my parents didn't have the money to pay for my wedding.

Justin Piche (18:42)
Manna from heaven.

Clayton Hepler (19:06)
So when you hear 80,000, it's not like a normal land investor might take 20%. I don't know what normal people 20%, 30 % of profits, dude, I had to take more. And so I was stifling my growth. So anytime I got like a couple of inches ahead, I had to pull it back. ⁓ but that was, dude, that was, I don't know what would have happened if I didn't get a cut. And I started to get more consistent deals. got a deal that was like a small subdivide to

that we would cut these parcels into three and I was able to ⁓ pull some, maybe I made like 31K on that. And I started to get a couple of good deals. And look, mean, even for my wedding, which was June of that year, It was tough. I was watching the money. We had to pay for everything. And the honeymoon, I paid for it with points that I got from sending out all these mailers.

Justin Piche (20:03)
Hahaha

Clayton Hepler (20:03)
And

right. Like, and, and it was an amazing, it was amazing because we, the AMX platinum and because I was doing travel hacking, I love travel hacking and they upgraded.

Justin Piche (20:14)
I used to have that

card when I was in the Navy. We got rid of it when we started having kids, but it was a great card.

Clayton Hepler (20:19)
Right. Exactly.

It doesn't. Right.

Hey guys, wanna interrupt your podcast here for a reminder. We put out this content for free every single week. Justin and I selfishly love to do this, but the way that we receive feedback is for you guys reviewing and subscribing to the podcast on all the channels that you listen to and sharing it with a friend. We really appreciate it. Now back to my monologue about my experience in learning about.

my background and how I got into land investing.

And so, but the thing is with the card man is you could upgrade your room. And so we went to this awesome resort and we got like the base level room, but they knew it was our honeymoon. And I told them, they said, Hey, it's an American express up. You, you get an American express upgrade to whatever, know, the next level. And I, and I negotiated with them and I said, look, it's our honeymoon. We've been, you know, we had a really tough year.

This is, we've had the greatest wedding of our life and we wanna celebrate this. Exactly, exactly, Absolutely, absolutely. And they upgraded us to a beachside villa.

Justin Piche (21:23)
Hopefully the only wedding of your life.

⁓ that's sick.

Clayton Hepler (21:35)
And so I was like, yeah, maybe it was awesome. It was awesome. It was the absolute, was in Mauritius, which was incredible. We paid for the whole thing with points and we were watching what we ate during like, dude, we were, we were eating, they had a complimentary buffet and we were eating the buffet in the morning. Um, and, like not eating lunch so we could afford dinner so we could pay for dinner.

We were at that level. And so we refused to, ⁓ not live that lie. We refused to say, we're not going to do this because this is such a special event, but we were so thoughtful about everything because we had to be right. use the resort credit with Amex to pay for our spa, right? The majority of our spa. And, and it was like that, man, it was, it was so hard. ⁓ but you know, we're here. We're here now.

Justin Piche (22:32)
Yeah.

I mean, that's crazy. Walk me through when you made your first hire, who it was, why you decided to make that hire. Like where were you in the business? Where was that during all of this?

Clayton Hepler (22:41)
Yeah.

Well, that was actually right before we got married. ⁓ because I was like, okay, I don't want my business to stop when I was married, but like, I'm a good husband and, I want to spend this time, special time with my wife and I don't want to be present. And so I had worked probably 90 hours a week since my wife, like through the Christmas time that year, since my wife lost, you know, lost her job and

I was like, I need to hire a lead manager so that that person could basically set appointments for me when I come back. And we also, I was also like, Hey, direct mail is super expensive. We need to still send direct mail. But I also want to add at that point, texting was kind of all the rave. ⁓ and so I added that, outbound function and I hired a texter and then a lead manager back then. ⁓ obviously it's very different now, but.

The response right then were crazy, crazy. And, and so I hired a lead manager and I hired a texter. And that, because I wanted to have that lead flow when I was gone in my wedding and when I was gone on my honeymoon, cause that was like, the wedding was on the weekend. It was on a Saturday and my wife was like, you know, you need it. Cause I hadn't taken off like any days. She's like, you need to take off. Basically we fly to Spain on Monday.

Justin Piche (23:43)
Crazy. Yeah.

Clayton Hepler (24:10)
or Sunday and we get to spend on Monday, you need to take off that weekend and next. And I was like, Oh, I mean, I, can't, don't know if I could do that. So I took off like that Tuesday to that, that next weekend. And, um, yeah, man, it was, it was super stressful, but it was just the time of my life. But I had those people because I needed them.

Justin Piche (24:30)
Yeah. So you hired, so it's right about the same time you get a texter, you get a lead manager, you come back from vacation. What did that look like? Did you have an inbox full of appointments that you had to close? How, yeah, how did that work?

Clayton Hepler (24:41)
⁓ yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, ⁓ you know, I did check my Slack a couple of times when I was on the honeymoon, ⁓ like, you know, cause I'm thinking like, okay, so what's my mortgage payment or not mortgage payment, like car, whatever car payment and groceries three months from now. And so I'm checking it. Obviously my wife's super cool about it too. And, and, and so I, of that day, like, I remember giving out like 10 offers.

Justin Piche (24:48)
Of course, how could you not?

Clayton Hepler (25:11)
the day that I came back, I was just on the phone grinding to try to get some deals. And yeah, man, from there, you know, we got some, we got some momentum in that first year. And, and again, was 80 hour weeks, 90 hour, like constantly working all day Sunday, like 12 hour, 13 hour days, Sundays, Saturday mornings, all like every day, Monday through Friday, just seven to 7 PM, 5 a.m. to 7 p.m.

530, whatever, and that's how I got through that first year.

Justin Piche (25:46)
Man, forged by fire. Maybe that's what we call this episode. Forged by fire, Clay's journey through land infesting. ⁓ Was there ever a moment that you felt like just utterly giving up on the business? I mean, obviously you went through some hard things. Your your mailers bombed.

Clayton Hepler (25:54)
haha

Justin Piche (26:07)
⁓ you had to pull out way more profit than you would have liked to because it would have been more profitable long, like in a shorter period of time to reinvest, but you had to because you didn't have other sources of income at the time. But even past that, have there been any moments where you're like, I don't, this, this may not work. This may be it for us.

Clayton Hepler (26:26)
Yeah, so I never considered going back to get a, maybe, no, that's not true. That maybe like once or twice, but the thing is going back and like figuring out like a sales job or something like that. But I was like, man, I can do this. I can do this.

Justin Piche (26:40)
Considered what, going back to like getting a job?

Clayton Hepler (26:53)
I've seen everyone people, other people have done this and if other people can do it, I can do it. And that's the benefit of like surrounding yourself. think I met you kind of like, I don't know, like halfway or three quarters of the way through the year, something like that. And. You know, we didn't talk a lot then, but you know, I, I'd met a couple other land investors, ⁓ at that point, but. You know, I, I was like, I'm committed to this, man. I'm going to make this happen.

And I didn't really give myself the option. It's sort of like when you marry someone. Like, I'm, there's no other option, right? I'm with my wife. I don't even consider any other option. It doesn't even cross my mind, because that's the reality. That's the facts.

Justin Piche (27:38)
That is some perseverance. Yeah. That's awesome, man. It's really inspiring to hear. I mean, it's like a mantra. It feels like it's a mantra that you just kept repeating to yourself. Like, I can do this. I'm going to do it. Other people have done it. Failure is not an option.

Clayton Hepler (27:38)
Okay.

Yeah, that's so true. I you know, it's like it didn't even occur to me. It did like I didn't even it's just like I'm already in this I got to make this happen. Period.

Justin Piche (28:10)
Yeah.

Man, you know, a lot of things you've told me have been like 80 hour weeks. You just had to grind so hard because there was no other option and you had to make it happen. How did you balance like being newly married, you know, with incredible workload? How did you make sure that

the growth of your business didn't come at the expense of your personal life and did you for, know, and if, if you didn't at the beginning, which may sound like you probably didn't except for your honeymoon for that period of time, when were you able to like, what, what changes in the changed in the business that now I was allowed you maybe a little bit more. I don't want to say work life balance because you know, that's a kind of a weird thing to say when you love what you do. is it work is like, can get, it can blur the lines. We maybe have different theories on that, but ⁓ when did you feel like

My life is kind of how I want it for now in this season. Or have you ever gotten there?

Clayton Hepler (29:09)
Yeah, so,

yeah, so the thing is I was so hungover man from like this whole time I'm dealing with an Airbnb in Colorado that my wife has to fly out to because we had a well problem and we had to change all the shower heads and toilets in our

$6,000 square foot house because they make them all low flow because our well was getting When we had 10 people over which is the only way we were able to cash flow our well was getting so over flooded that we had to Or you know overuse and it stopped water stopped going so like that was happening like we were having two star reviews on Airbnb because The property that we had was just so crappy ⁓

Justin Piche (30:02)
Man, that's brutal.

Clayton Hepler (30:02)
It was, it was really nice,

but like we had to finance, uh, hardwood floors because the top floors, we ripped them up. We ripped up the carpet and we realized it was plywood underneath. And so we had to paint the plywood because we didn't have enough money to put flooring down.

Justin Piche (30:19)
God.

Holy moly.

Clayton Hepler (30:22)
And so then

we had to go there and, ⁓ then we had to finance, ⁓ hardwood floors on the tops on the top of the property and then fly out another time to, ⁓ you know, do, like I said, the low flow toilets, we thought we had to do a new well, and then we had to paint the house

flying back and forth. ⁓ yeah, I mean, it was like crazy. It was, ⁓ so I'm, I still have that hangover. I have just left recently. I have left the, that sort of launch pad. I'm still, I'm still kind of in that mode, but when you're close to bankruptcy for that period of time, like every month you're debating, like, do we have enough? ⁓ and you're grinding so hard.

That just doesn't go, right? That doesn't leave you. And so, I have not slowed down. I've kept the pedal on the metal because I know how quickly it can go away because it's happened to me before. And the thing is with land, you don't have any money and you have to build this thing from scratch and you don't have a ⁓ W-2 to support you and your wife isn't working because we made that decision together,

You have to build this thing brick by brick. it's not like, as you know, if your cash conversion cycles are six months, man, like if you start to hit, hit it well in this, and, at the end of your year one, you don't start to feel until Q two of year two. And it doesn't really start to happen until Q four of year two. And then like today is like where we're at and it's starting to finally click. Cause I actually have people in my business, but man, it's been like, you know,

I am not slowed down. I am going as hard as I was going when when I was in that position because I'm not out of the woods yet, man. I don't feel that. I don't feel it. And because I haven't I didn't start with that much and I had to throw out this whole thing, you know, pay for the Airbnb, which I sold at a loss and I lost so much money on it. It's just insane. And still have to deal with the residential real estate that we currently have. It's still

⁓ And so, you know, it's my fault, right? take responsibility for it and it's my responsibility to, manage it and handle it. Like I'm not, I'm not saying this for people to say like poo poo, but here's the reality. If, I can do it, like there are no excuses. are none zero zero.

Justin Piche (33:02)
You

Clayton Hepler (33:07)
So, ⁓ to answer your question, the gas, the floor, there's no balance at all, doesn't exist. I really, I'm a father, and I'm very deliberate about my time with my child, and also my wife, but like, I don't have a lot of hobbies, I'm in work mode. I have dear friends that I really invest a lot of time in, and I really care about my relationships with my friends, and, but.

Justin Piche (33:11)
There's no balance. There's no, there's no, yeah.

Clayton Hepler (33:37)
I mean, work, you know, workout physically fit, et cetera, but like, don't have a lot. There's not a lot of margin on the pages for what I'm, what, for what I'm currently doing. And look, I don't think that's a bad thing, especially now when you're building this thing, you're building this, I can see this engine that's really going, it's been scaling the amount that is scaled. ⁓ it's been really, really amazing. And, ⁓ I don't think you need the balance, man. I honestly, I think for most people, they shouldn't.

They shouldn't worry about the balance, especially when they're starting out because that's how you get through it. Having that kind of obsession to the building, building this craft, building this craft of this ship that's going to be your well ship. It takes a lot of effort.

Justin Piche (34:26)
What do you, I guess if there's one thing that you've learned about yourself that you didn't know before going through the journey of building the business to where you've built it today, what is that thing?

What do you know about yourself now after going through the last several years of challenge, hardship, scale, growth, grinding, pedal to the metal that you know now that you didn't know before you went through this?

Clayton Hepler (35:04)
I can do it.

And that, you know, when you look in the mirror, when you're by yourself and you have that, that sense of pride, not for anyone else, not, not because it's a vanity thing, not because of extrinsic motivation. look at yourself and you said, dude, you did this man. Like that, that that's so powerful. That's a gift that you can give yourself. Right. And you can achieve that through getting to the body of your dreams or, ⁓

You know, nowhere near where I want to be right. But the, I've, from where I've come, ⁓ that's a gift, man. And so many people I feel are kind of walking. are these walking, ⁓ and I was this person, right? Like I have so much potential here. have so much raw potential and I'm not, I'm not chasing it. I'm not chasing that thing.

And the amount of fulfillment, man, we're on this earth for a very short period of time. And if you can leave it all out on the field, the way that you know it, man, you live your days in a way that's so much better, right? And of course there's the frustrations of the day to day, right? But that's one thing, the fact that I'm like, dude, I went out there and I said, I called my shot and I said, I'm gonna do this and I did it.

There's the mentality that I can go through that really difficult time. I'm a part of a group of people that can manage that and there's a lot of pride in that, man.

Justin Piche (36:43)
Yeah, no, I completely agree with that. ⁓

Maybe a kind of last question and then before we wrap up here, what advice would you give to somebody who's looking to replicate your success? What advice would you give? Maybe what's like the most important advice to give to somebody who is starting from a similar position to where you started?

There's a lot of advice you could give and there's already a lot of advice and just thoughts and lessons and that you've already talked about as we've been as we've been talking over the last 35 minutes or so. But if you could distill it down.

Maybe a mindset. I don't know.

Clayton Hepler (37:31)
If it is to be, it's up to me.

It's our responsibility.

And as trite as that sounds, it's true. It is our responsibility. No one's going to change our life. And I always dealt a pretty difficult hand. A lot of it's to my own doing. being, you know, right, right, right, right. Right.

Justin Piche (37:56)
You were trying things, you know, I wouldn't be too hard on yourself, man. I think,

I think you were actually doing things and did you, did you make all the right decisions? Did you, did you, did you predict how the economy would change and did you foresee all these issues? No. All right. I you're young, you were young, you're, you were taking shots. You've learned a ton. You learned what you didn't want to do. It would hurt, but look where you are now.

Clayton Hepler (38:04)
Ha!

Yeah, so I appreciate that man. do ⁓ It's about the ownership. It's about taking that total ownership and insane yourself Dude, you can do it It's just up to The mentality you have and honestly a lot of it's that the relationships the connections

You can shrink that time by working with someone or hiring a, I took masterminds in between, right? And I spent a lot of money, a lot more money than, you know, probably I should have at that time, but to collapse the time in between. ⁓ But I always knew that if I would do that, that I would be the student that extracted it out, right? When people are not like getting the most value from it.

When you're not sure that you're gonna take that ownership, it's really hard to invest in yourself Because you'd rather invest in something else because you don't want to take the onus of the investment on you And so if it is to be it's up to me

Justin Piche (39:31)
What would you say to listeners who after listening to this think to themselves? Man, I don't know if I want to go through that or I don't know if I have the right mentality to put up with all of that and actually make it through. I'd rather I'd rather do something else or invest in somebody else or help somebody else.

Clayton Hepler (39:42)
Bye!

If you're saying that, then you should definitely do that.

you know.

The democratization of information because of the internet, because of podcasts like this has reduced the barrier of entry of being a business owner. It's really just not for everyone, period. And if I were to tell you this story, Justin, when you started out and you're like, but what's this guy's revenue now? Like, where is he at now? Like, what's he doing now? And I would tell you where it was.

I'm, I guarantee it. You'd be like,

Justin Piche (40:36)
Amen.

Clayton Hepler (40:37)
Right, right. You wouldn't even think about it. You'd be like, sure. This guy made a ton of dumb decisions and I'm sure I won't make that many dumb decisions. so, ⁓ so I'm going to, I'm going to, I can do it. Right. You wouldn't even, it wouldn't even cross your mind. Right. I think that there is a beautiful blissful bliss for ignorant ignorance. And by, by no way am I saying this is going to be your experience. If you're starting out, you're listening to the podcast and you're like, dude, this

Justin Piche (40:48)
Hahaha

Clayton Hepler (41:07)
this guy sound like who is, don't want this. Okay. Like it's, it's most people. not that experience, right? Uh, definitely it wasn't your experience, right? You had a different experience and it doesn't, and it, and it, right. It doesn't make a good or bad mind or Justin's or whatever. It's where you are. And that's, that's the whole thing. If it is to be, it's up to me. I'm, I don't feel sorry for myself that Justin, you know, had a different experience than I did, or someone else had a different experience than I did. Like what am I, what's that going to do? It's not going to change my life.

Justin Piche (41:17)
Right. I had a very different experience.

Clayton Hepler (41:37)
And so to answer your question, I think that it's not going to be as probably, it's not going to be as hard as it was for me. Right. And also if you're asking that question, you might not be fit for the position. You can always increase your mindset. You can always, you can always develop into someone that can manage this. Cause I think you can develop into an entrepreneur, but that's the wrong question to ask.

Justin Piche (42:04)
Yeah. Well, that brings us to the end of the podcast. As you know, guys, the gentleman's agreement, this is usually Clay's spot, but I'm going to take it over here on the interviewer. As you know, the gentleman's agreement is each week, Clay and I are coming together and trying to put out as much good information as we can for you all. And we appreciate when you all review, rate, subscribe to the podcast. You can leave on this specific podcast a review that says, Clay, you killed it.

But every other one, should say, Justin, I really appreciate your skill as an interviewer and podcast host and just leave Clay out of it. No, I'm just kidding. But Clay, I really, I really appreciate the vulnerability on this one. I really do. I think, I think, I think listeners will get a lot out of it. Just understanding your beginnings and how much hardship you had to overcome in the business. And, you know, I think it's an allegory to life, right? Suffering.

Clayton Hepler (42:45)
Hahaha

Justin Piche (43:00)
creates strength. If you can get through suffering, you are going to come out stronger. It's the same principle when you work out. mean, you restrain against a force and at the end you're stronger for it. And I think as just a human being, as a father, as a husband, as a leader in your business, you're certainly more resilient and stronger now because of what you've been through and what you've overcome. And I think that's inspirational for people. I hope it is at least. If you're a listener, that's what I probably would take away from it.

Clayton Hepler (43:27)
Thanks Justin. Appreciate it man.

Justin Piche (43:29)
You got anything else for the group?

Clayton Hepler (43:31)
Just make sure to put my name in the review

Justin Piche (43:34)
We still need to go back and tally them up and see who's winning. All right, until next week.

Clayton Hepler (43:37)
I know, I know.

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