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The Ground Game Podcast
Welcome to The Ground Game Podcast, where land investing meets real talk! Join your hosts, Justin and Clay, both 7-figure land investors and seasoned entrepreneurs, as they dive deep into the world of land investing, team building, and personal growth.
The Ground Game Podcast
Episode 46: The Death Zone; Scaling from $1M to $3M Without Losing Your Mind (or Margin)
🎙️ Welcome Back to The Ground Game Podcast! 🎙️
In this episode, hosts Clay Hepler and Justin Piché explore the nuances of time management and the entrepreneurial journey in real estate investing. They share personal insights on balancing responsibilities, the challenges of running a business, and the importance of prioritization.
Key Highlights
Personal Updates:
Clay and Justin kick off the episode with some light-hearted banter about how August is flying by. They reflect on their current responsibilities, with Justin sharing his experiences of juggling family life and business demands.
Scaling Challenges:
The hosts delve into the challenges land investors face, particularly the complexities of managing multiple responsibilities. They discuss how expanding obligations can make time feel scarce and the importance of focusing on what truly drives business growth.
The Importance of Feedback Loops:
Clay and Justin emphasize the critical role of feedback loops in entrepreneurship. They share their thoughts on how to assess whether their actions are leading to the desired outcomes and the need for constant self-evaluation.
Navigating County Regulations:
Justin reveals a significant development project in Spokane County, discussing the unexpected hurdles he faced with county regulations and financing. He highlights the importance of partnerships and adaptability in overcoming these challenges.
Data Management and Decision-Making:
The episode wraps up with a discussion on the significance of data in land investing. Clay and Justin encourage listeners to leverage technology and data for informed decision-making, sharing their experiences with various systems and the importance of a cohesive tech stack.
If you're navigating the complexities of time management and decision-making in your land business, this one's for you! 📌
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Clayton Hepler (00:00)
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Ground Game Podcast. This is your co-host, Clay Hepler.
Justin Piche (00:06)
And this is your other co-host, Justin Bichet, and we're here to show you how to win the ground game.
right, Clay, what's going on, man? We're in August now?
Clayton Hepler (00:27)
Dude, August. Whoa.
Justin Piche (00:29)
Feels
like the year has just like flown by. I mean, I think, and I think part of that is the older you get, the smaller increment of your whole life, each subsequent increment of time is. And so like, it just feels like things move faster. At least that's been my experience. I don't know what you feel or how you feel about that.
Clayton Hepler (00:48)
Yeah, I feel
like with like expanding responsibilities can press time. So like when you're a little kid, you don't have that much responsibilities except yourself. And so first of all, your concept of time is like, you don't really have a good concept grasp of time. And then also you have fewer responsibilities. So like you're doing you and so you're more focused on the present. So everything feels longer. Whereas like if you have three kids or you have a kid like I do.
You have three responsibilities, plus your wife, right? And so the response, like, you're dedicating time to those guys and gals every day, and it just, it makes it so that every unit of your time is no longer allocated towards yourself.
Justin Piche (01:19)
Yep. Yep.
Yeah, I guess that's probably, that's definitely true. I feel it's especially true on like work days, which is a lot of days, but I get to the computer and I'm working and all of a sudden it's 4.30 and my wife is standing at the door with like a baby on her hip and like, are you done yet? Like it's time to hang out with the family. And I'm like, already? She goes, we have this constant thing where she goes, she goes,
Clayton Hepler (01:55)
Hey honey.
Justin Piche (02:04)
When are you gonna be finished working? And I always think to myself, I'm never actually finished working. Like there's always more things to do. Like there is no, there's no end. And I was thinking about this the other day. I have never had a job ever since graduating college where I have not had to take work home. Like I've never had a job that has had like a limited amount of responsibility where when you leave work, like it's done. Every single position I've ever had has
Clayton Hepler (02:11)
Yeah.
Justin Piche (02:29)
always
been on call or like there's things and worries and planning and preparations and whatnot that need that responsibilities that still fall on my shoulders no matter what and running a business is obviously like the peak of that because everything depends on you as the CEO of your own company but there's part of me that thinks man what a nice life it would be
to work somewhere and just leave and be like, well, somebody else's problem. And I think like the epitome of that is my wife.
She was a drilling engineer for years. She just left her job here in July beginning of July But for years she rotated offshore to deep water drilling rigs And when she was out there, she was the girl like that's it like you're out there 24 hours a day You worked kind of 12 hours shifts, but it doesn't really stop like you're constantly getting called out of bed for some tests or from some engineering expertise or whatever but when you leave the rig and you do a crew change and the next engineers and the next people come on that rig and
the people who are on the rig, it's their responsibility now. You are not, it's not your responsibility anymore. You're off, you're home. You can completely unplug. So she would go like two weeks, she wouldn't even check her email before she had to go back to the rig for another two weeks.
Clayton Hepler (03:38)
Wow. That's pretty crazy. That's the ultimate.
Justin Piche (03:42)
But for me,
was a little different because when I would go on a deployment, I'd be gone for three, four months. And yeah, I mean, like you're always on, you're on the submarine in the middle of ocean. There's no break at all. You sleep for like three or four hours, maybe. If you're lucky, then you're back to work. But even when we got off,
Clayton Hepler (03:54)
Right.
Justin Piche (04:00)
I still had a division of 20 guys and we still had training. We still had things to prepare for for the next deployment. It never really ended. So anyway, it'd be nice sometimes, I think that. But then the opportunity is limited as well. That's the other side of the coin. If that is your job or your role, your opportunity is limited.
Clayton Hepler (04:20)
So here's
a question man, I constantly think about this but there are people who say that busyness is lazy because it means that you're not good at prioritization. What do you think about that?
Justin Piche (04:37)
don't know. Busyness is laziness because you're not, it's embarrassing thing, because you're not good at, you're good.
Clayton Hepler (04:40)
I think that's a Tim Ferriss thing.
Like if you're
super busy, then that means you're like, you're late, your thinking is very lazy, right? Because you're not disciplined in understanding what the priorities are.
Justin Piche (04:53)
I think maybe that is true if your busyness is not productive. Like if you're just busy for the sake of being busy because you can't get organized and you can't delegate properly, that's one thing. If you are busy because you're continually expanding and growing, that's probably a different thing, I think.
And then also it's like personality, right? I tend to be like a very high commitment, over commitment type of a person where like, I'm down to hang any night. So I've had friends at my church. If I get a text from somebody that's like, Hey, we're having a guy's night. You know, it's a Tuesday evening or Wednesday evening or Thursday evening. And I don't have something already planned. Like I'm going to do that thing. I'm like, yeah, I'm in, let's go play pickleball. Let's go, go to the arcade. Let's go hang out and grab a beer or something like that. Like I'm going to do those things.
always. My wife is very much the same way. And so we are busy because we're constantly with people and then we're busy because we're parents of three children and I'm busy because I run a business with a bunch of employees and a lot of people depend on me. But it's not busyness for the sake of being busy. It's more busyness because I just like doing things.
So don't know if you would even call it busyness, maybe just more fullness of kind of the things that you're working on and doing and your social, you know, kind of social life as well. But.
Clayton Hepler (06:06)
It's interesting,
I've been thinking a lot lately, it's like, you know, the feedback loops of how do you know that the things that you're doing are the right things in our business? We talked about this a couple weeks ago, like, what do you prioritize at different levels of your business? And that's a constant thing that I think about daily, right? Fortunately, unlike a lot of jobs, right, you don't have the feedback from your boss.
that you're doing the right thing, right? A lot of times it's a 180 day feedback loop or 200 days feedback loop or, that dude, that becomes like super, super interesting for us as entrepreneurs. Like how do we actually know that the things that we're doing are correct? I stumbled upon this concept, like the physics of business, right? Which is you have a goal.
You have a hypothesis. You test the hypothesis through thinking through the hypothesis. And then you do an actual test and you say, Hey, I have three things that I think is the right thing. Here's the thing that I think will get me to my goal in the best way. Here's why I think that I'm going to test this out and I'll get feedback from the market. And at that point, then I'll be able to say, Hey, this was the right decision or wasn't the right decision.
I think that's super interesting, specifically in being an entrepreneur, you gotta constantly be checking yourself. Constantly.
Justin Piche (07:33)
Yeah.
There's an easy trap to fall into as an entrepreneur who feels like you have a billion things to do. And this is probably even more true of people who are earlier in their businesses where they don't have department heads and strategic thinkers and kind of executive level employees who are thinking through growth and process improvement and handling a lot of like the high level, high skill tasks that need to be done for your business to grow and scale because it's all on you. And the trap
is when you have too many things to do or you feel like you have too many things to do to just start working on the stuff and get trapped in doing things that feel like progress but aren't actually moving your business forward. an example of that might be just kind of the necessary busy work to move things along but maybe not revenue driving busy work.
And maybe an example would be when I was starting my business and like, think you probably were the same way and many people are still doing this, but you were sourcing your own data. You were getting all of your marketing ready to go. You were pricing things, you know, potentially if you were sending mailers, you were skip tracing, you were formatting lists, you were doing all these tasks that need to happen. And they're relatively easy to do for a high level thinker. They may be kind of harder to do for, kind of a task-based VA, but
they're
certainly easy to do for a high level thinker. There's a process to it. And you can get trapped and do that for like four or five hours and not think about some of it, but not like do the hard work of designing a new process or investigating and planning for a new marketing channel or just addressing the KPIs in your current business to figure out if you're spending money the right way or if you're marketing the right way.
Clayton Hepler (09:16)
I think that's a great one. Another one I see happen, I fall into this quite often is like, or least I did was planning new initiatives, new opportunities, and like thinking through every single aspect of a plan. And like, if I'm going to do this, then I need to think about this. And then you end up spending multiple hours just planning. And it's just procrastination.
Justin Piche (09:41)
times it can be.
Clayton Hepler (09:41)
Do you have that problem as an engineer mind or
do you not have that problem?
Justin Piche (09:46)
I sometimes fall trap to this. I did this actually the other day.
One of my first larger developments called Woods Bend Shores was in St. Clair County, Alabama on the Cusa River. It's a river, but they call it a lake, Logan Martin Lake. And it was a solid development. think in all, took about two years, purchased about 700K, probably 400, 500K of additional kind of work into it, and total sales were somewhere close to two million. The project made significant amounts of money for me and for investors, and it was great. ⁓
great
time doing it. There were some hiccups, but figured out and learned a lot along the way. And so my realtor who lives right there, texted me and he texts me all the time, but he texted me that a 500 acre farm right across the street from where my development was, the owners were potentially looking to sell.
And that was all the data that I had on it. He didn't say like they were listing it. He didn't say anything else. He just said, hey, this amazing farm, it's got thousands of feet of shore frontage on the lake. And like, this could be a huge, and I love underwriting deals. And I love looking at like the potential of deals and figuring out if they're going to work. And so I spent like five hours probably in maybe, maybe not five. It was probably about five hours total over the course of two days, like drawing out a development
there,
trying to optimize the road and power and water and getting an ideal kind of lot count and then running it through a cash flow model and going back. And then I was in the process training my own underwriter project manager to do a more advanced cash flow model, which is what I do on these larger multi-year deals now that are in the millions of dollars. Cause I don't want to see how cash flows are going to come out and how my LPs are going to get paid, what the IRR is. And it just takes a lot more work to build those models out. And so I,
I had her get on a call and we like did it all together because I had her just try her hand at it and it wasn't quite where it needed to be. There's a lot of nuances to the sheet that needed to be updated. And so we got to the end and the deal.
worked at a certain purchase price as most deals do. And then after all of that, I also sent my ops manager on kind of like a goose chase trying to track down like the air and anyway, it was like a lot of, I love doing that. And so I spent a lot of time doing it and I got a text from him he's like, no, I just found out the father who passed away a couple of years ago.
restricted the land and said no development can ever happen on the farm. The farm has to stay a farm with no further subdivision.
So dumb, I, and those are like the pitfalls that I used to fall into all the time, but have stopped falling into because they're not productive time. Like if you spend a ton of time investigating a deal before you have the thing under contract, it's like, it's like, if you get a big development and you're like, man, I need to know what, what I want to make an offer on this, but I got to find out, I to call the water company and I to get exactly what the water situation is. And I got to call survey or I got to get quotes and I got to get soil quotes and I got to call the county and make sure I can do what I want to do. And you do like hours of work.
But you don't even have the property under contract yet. And you don't even know if you will or can. But I did it because I love doing it. But it was a waste time. was procrastination from what I really need to do right now, which is get my books up to date and get my taxes done for 2024 and go through all these transactions and categorize them. that's what I have. I need to do that because it needs to get done. But I was procrastinating doing that. And so I did something fun. Perfect example.
Clayton Hepler (12:55)
Right,
right, right. No, I think that's big. I think for a lot of like, everyone's a little different, like what they procrastinate with, not to say what yours are is yours is a procrastination, by the way. It's like, that's a revenue driving activity. but there's, think everyone falls into that trap, right? That's just, I've been thinking about that a lot lately. Like the person that executes better, like they just do the right things. If you could do all the right things, you could scale so much faster, but it's just, it's, it's
hard a lot of times to know what the right things are. It's just hard. And we talked about the past two episodes, but this is really a recap for the listeners to kind of think that through. Like, what's actually going to drive revenue? What's actually going to be big? And usually it's something in the acquisition department and something in the dispositions department. And everything else can kind of wait, like everything else can kind of burn down a little bit.
You know, right? Like it doesn't have to be perfect. If you're getting leads in and you're converting them well and you're selling them fast, dude, there's not really that much else that really needs to happen.
Justin Piche (13:57)
I have some great news this week that I can kind of share. One of the things we've talked about before is kind of the shiny object syndrome and the danger that...
kind of killing your golden goose of maybe land flipping or like small subdivides and chasing entitlement deals or chasing large scale developments that require a huge debt component, equity component, and a lot of improvements to figure out if you can even happen. And I have a deal right now in Spokane County, 465 acres across two tracks, $2.3 million raise, purchase price is $4.45 million, debt 3.1.
and so for the and I got this property under contract these two properties under contract back in like January February I've had a long contract I've had to exercise all my extensions I have been trying to get the debt component figured out for months and I have been turned down by six different lenders for it and not just like immediate turned down like
gone down the process of credit underwriting, gotten through credit underwriting, like, yes, you, your group as borrowers can get this loan from us. And then had it get shut down by, because the bank either didn't have room on their balance sheet for this type of loan. Like a bank, you know, they want to make sure their risk is adjusted across their entire portfolio of debt. And if they're too heavily weighted in one category, maybe it's residential, maybe it's commercial, maybe it's land development, so on and so forth.
then they can't issue more debt in that area. They need to issue debt in other areas to kind of balance their portfolio. And so we've gone down this road with multiple banks only to be told, hey, sorry, we don't have room on our balance sheet. I've got about $150,000 non-refundable for due diligence and earnest money into this deal. And I've just been worried, right? Because that's a lot of money to put into a deal that isn't for sure. Like it's not for sure yet. And I've seen people
people I know personally who have lost their shirt because they took on too many of these big deals at a time and they did not pan out. They've lost hundreds of thousands of dollars of due diligence, earnest, et cetera in these deals and they couldn't raise for it or they couldn't get the debt or whatever it might be. And so was really worried, obviously, for obvious reasons. But one of my partners introduced us to a couple of lenders and one of the lenders is willing to move forward.
So we had the call on Monday and I was honestly expecting, like they said, hey, can we call? We'd like to talk to you guys about the deal. I was honestly expecting them to be like, hey, sorry, we don't have room for this deal on our balance sheet. But they actually said, yes, we can do this. It looks different though. It's interesting, right?
Normally when you get a loan for a piece of property, what my experience has been is that the loan is based on a your ability to pay the debt. And so if it's a non income producing property, like a land development where you don't have a builder contract lined up to take down all the lots, or you're not producing some sort of cashflow because you're not building vertically and building like a house or apartment complex or something that is going to cashflow. The bank needs to see income enough to cover all of debt
service and keep your global debt service coverage ratio above a certain amount. And I'm saying a lot of acronyms and words, but basically they need to see you making a lot like in excess of the amount of debt you have in order to feel comfortable that your other sources of income can pay the debt because this income, this property is not income producing at all. And normally if you meet that criteria and the property appraises for enough above what the debt is for them to meet their kind of loan to value threshold, they will issue you the loan.
But this lender is requiring an equivalent amount of ancillary collateral pledged. So the land is worth, let's just say it's worth four and a half million. That's what we're buying it for. It's probably worth about that, maybe a little more. That's what we're buying it for. Once we develop it, it'll be worth substantially more. So the after development loan to value is like 32 % or something like that. It's crazy once we develop it. But.
Clayton Hepler (17:48)
When you see developing,
let me just jump in here for listeners. Are you saying you're entitling it or are you actually putting in roads? Are you actually?
Justin Piche (17:53)
This one is actually,
this has road furniture all over. This is literally just taking it from the 465 acres and splitting it into 43 lots. So once we have this subdivides approved by the county and our inventory is now 43 10 to 20 acre lots, those lots at market are worth nine and a half to 10 million versus the purchase price of four and a half million.
But the bank is, so the land itself obviously fully collateralizes the debt. So if we were to default, the bank would be able to sell this property, recover all of their money, no problem. On top of that, they're requiring liquid assets pledged, equivalent amount to the loan.
So the loans for 3.1 or to 3.5, it's gonna be somewhere in that range. So they need liquid assets, 3.5 million, pledged as collateral in addition to the land itself in order to issue the loan.
Clayton Hepler (18:42)
That's excessive.
Justin Piche (18:43)
Right?
And so obviously, I mean, I don't have 3.1 million liquid assets that I can pledge to this low. I just don't. I've got a lot of illiquid assets, but they don't want additional real estate pledged. They want stock portfolio, not retirement accounts, like outside of retirement accounts, stock portfolio, cash, bonds, whatever, things like that pledged. And this is where partnerships are so vital and so important because there's deals that you, when you're in the financial position that I am, which is
actually like a very good financial position but not good enough to have three million plus liquid. Yeah, you need good partners or people that have access to that type of liquid capital. And so one of my partners is just an incredible guy and has put a lot of trust in me to develop this property, but he has access to that type of thing. he is willing to do that, put additional collateral on the line.
Clayton Hepler (19:17)
That's all. That's all. Yeah, that's an excessive amount.
Justin Piche (19:36)
It's incredible and it's a huge blessing and certainly an answered prayer for me to find a partner that is like this. But the other thing is for the bank, I would consider this a zero risk loan for the bank. Because they're, they're, they're, eeh, yeah.
Clayton Hepler (19:48)
Right, because they have two things that they can, they have
double the loan value that they can pull.
Justin Piche (19:54)
Not only do they have like quadruple the loan value that they can pull to recover any losses on their side. It's crazy. It's why banking and lending is such a profitable enterprise. But the good news is the bank is willing to move forward. My partner is willing to pledge. I mean, it's not like he has to sell assets, but he has to pledge these assets as collateral for this loan. And the only reasonable way those would be liquidated and have to be given to the bank is if not only do we default, but also the land is worth
outrageous amounts less than what we actually are paying for it and certainly outrageous amounts less than what it's going to be worth after we develop it. So I mean it's an unrealistic situation but even still it's a huge blessing because now we're moving forward with that with that loan.
The interest rate is also fantastic. It's like 6.1, 6.3%, which is crazy because almost all the loans I get from smaller regional banks are like 7.5, 8.5, 8.8. They're kind of up in that upper range, but this is like a really, a relationship bank and a private bank. And so they, guess they just, they're willing to offer lower rates. So that's pretty, pretty
Clayton Hepler (20:47)
Yep.
Justin Piche (20:59)
Hey guys, this is Justin interrupting your podcast. Say thanks for listening. Clay and I are talking about some data, data platforms, what we like to use. If you guys are getting some value from this, please subscribe.
Give us a review, give us a comment. We love to hear from our listeners. Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.
Huge win.
Clayton Hepler (21:15)
Dude, that's a huge win. When are you guys gonna close on
it?
Justin Piche (21:18)
We're targeting end of August. It's all going to be contingent upon the commercial appraisal So I was talking to the bank yesterday and they said that they they're just finishing up all the kind of paperwork I've got them all like the the entity documents all of our purchase agreements and extensions all of our kind of due diligence and Stuff on the on the property so they have everything they need I think at this point and then they're gonna order
They're gonna put it out for a national bid and national appraisers gonna come and look at it We're gonna see if we can get somebody to do it in the next two weeks So we can close by end of August, but I'm at the end of my extensions, too So I don't have any more guaranteed extensions by contract. So if we're gonna go longer the the sellers They don't want to go longer, which I don't blame them But I think they probably would When we get like the letter from the bank, which should happen either tomorrow or early next week the letter from the bank that says hey these people have the ability
to borrow this like here's their you know approval letter for this amount of loan pending appraisal and I think that will probably be enough but the other thing is we also got
The sellers have kind of tentatively agreed for the larger parcel, which is the $3.4 million purchase for owner financing. But it's a 15-year AM, two-year balloon at 9%. So it's not as attractive a debt component, but it still makes a lot of sense for the deal. And then I was able to line up a hard money lender on the smaller purchase, which is $1.05 million. But that's three points up front, 13 % interest.
Clayton Hepler (22:39)
But
why are you then getting a commercial bank? Right, right, okay, so you had people lined up, that's what you're saying. You had people lined.
Justin Piche (22:43)
because it's just so much more attractive debt. Yeah. That had happened like a few
days before. So that was like the first answered prayer was the hard money lender agreeing to fund one of the deals and the owner financing on the other one. So like the deal wasn't totally dead, but the commercial lender is much, much, much preferred partner for this. So yeah, thank you.
Clayton Hepler (22:59)
Got it.
Absolutely Dude, that's huge man. Congratulations on that deal that I
know you've been working on that for a while talking about that for months And I'm glad to hear that that's starting to pan out
Justin Piche (23:09)
Yeah.
Yeah,
yeah, it's exciting. So you got anything going on?
Clayton Hepler (23:15)
I know you something else that you really wanted to touch on here. ⁓
Justin Piche (23:19)
Yeah, well, think one
of the things, I think what we're gonna talk about today was back to kind of what I was talking about where I was spending a lot of time early on in my business with data. Figuring out what market I was gonna be in, downloading my data, skip tracing my data, formatting my lists for my cold outreach, for my CRM.
that whole planning my marketing, like how was I going to market all of that stuff? That was a huge time suck at the beginning of the business and took me away from focusing on negotiating deals or figuring out what strategic hires I needed to make or doing larger developments and focusing and spending time on that. And it was one of those critical pieces of your business that has to be done to keep generating leads. Like it's gotta be done. It's gotta be done on time and it's gotta be done right from the beginning. yeah, otherwise
Clayton Hepler (24:09)
That's right.
Justin Piche (24:10)
you're gonna be incredibly disorganized, you're not gonna be able to track your KPIs properly, and your team is gonna be waiting on you to do these things. And so one of the kind of early on hires that I made was one of my best friends, his wife, who's also my friend, has a master's in data science. Her name's Courtney, my buddy's name is Skyler, and she had a...
Anyway, she just, I texted her messenger and I was like, Hey, is this something you're interested in doing for me? Like pulling the data, planning marketing, skip tracing, getting lists organized, like getting like this important vital thing done and making sure I don't have to think about it anymore. And she was like, yeah, I'll do that. And so that was back in 2022. She started doing that for me and has been an incredible resource and a huge reason why we've been able to scale this operation because everything like data is the lifeblood of the whole business without.
it, we can't market, can't fit, you know, all that. And she's gotten so efficient over time and as we've scaled, our costs have come substantially down in terms of how much we pay for data, how much we pay for skip tracing, the Python scripts that she's able to write to get lists formatted with very little work that she went from working 10 to 20 hours a week in my business to like two to get all the data and everything organized. And so she has decided to start a company called Terra Data Consulting.
It's the name of the company and there's a website up now and she is going to do this, what she does for my business, for other investors. And I think it's a niche in this market that is not really being filled right now.
I think the general progression and maybe you can enlighten me on like how you do your data, but the general progression is, know, a business owner is doing this. They're holding onto this as one of the very, very last things they kind of give away or hire out or replace them as. And typically they're hiring a VA overseas to get this data done, to get these things done. And they can hire, you can hire really high quality overseas folks who are very data centric to export your list, get them, skip trace, get your marketing.
stuff done, but the cost of it is still quite high.
And there's tools now that are great. Land Insights, fantastic, unlimited data, 4500 bucks a year. It's data tree data, it's fantastic. That's what we use now. There's Versium for skip tracing, which is what we use as our primary skip tracer. You got direct skip, which obviously you can buy in bulk for five cents a record. And I think if you call them and buy substantially more, you can get the cost down a little bit. And then there's, deal, the,
Clayton Hepler (26:15)
Yep.
and I can see that you're going to be to that.
Land portal, the land portal.
Justin Piche (26:30)
Landportals, another place you can get your data from. I think they probably have an unlimited plan now. I imagine they had to to compete with Landinsights. Datatree, right? There's people probably out there still using Datatree, which is crazy to me nowadays because it's so expensive. Like even in crazy amounts of bulk, it's very, very expensive, much more expensive than these other platforms. Anyway, there's all these tools and they cost a lot of money and skip tracing is one of the biggest ones.
Clayton Hepler (26:35)
They do?
Justin Piche (26:54)
I imagine most people listening, probably you included and definitely me, when I first skip traced my first kind of data, I was paying like 10 cents or like nine cents or something to skip trace and get those records. It was crazy expensive. And then I found direct skip and like started buying in bulk. So then for the longest time I was paying five cents a record to skip trace in bulk. And then I found Versium.
which is great high quality skip tracing data. And then that brought my cost down to like two cents. And then I upped my plan even more and it was 1.7 and then I opted even more and it was 1.2. And as I've scaled, the cost has continued to come down. But if you're a new investor or you're doing 30, 50, 70,000 records a month, you can't get that pricing.
You're not gonna get one and a quarter cent or one and a half cent or 1.7 cent. You've gotta buy these bulk plans potentially upfront at a cost of seven, 10, $15,000 a year to get these plans. And especially if you're new and you haven't proven it out to yourself, that's a big chunk of change of OPEX to spend, right? When you started your business, you had $30,000 to start it. Could you imagine having paid a third of that to skip trace upfront? No, you've gotta pay these
Clayton Hepler (27:59)
No way. No way.
Justin Piche (28:03)
higher bills but spread out so that you can go month to month and generate revenue. And that's a huge burden for a lot of investors. So the point of Teradata Consulting is to hire a high quality data scientist that can handle your data, your skip tracing, your list formatting, and forward on to you that bulk pricing that she's able to get through a much higher plan like with Versium and pass some of those savings on.
And I told her right from the get-go, I'm like, only way you're gonna get clients is if you make this more attractive pricing than what somebody can get themselves, and you save them a ton of time by not having to worry about it and do it all themselves as the business owner. And so that's how she's designed the pricing. And I think it's huge. think it's gonna be a really valuable resource for a lot of land investors. I am their biggest client right now. I pay Teradata Consulting to do all of my data and my skit tracing, my list formatting, my marketing. So.
I'm the biggest proponent of it, obviously, because through my business and my scaling, that's where Courtney has learned all the kind of skills that she needed to be specific in land. I mean, the data analysis skills she's had herself, that's why I hired her. But to figure out how to run data and marketing and skip tracing for a land investor, she's got a lot of experience doing that.
Clayton Hepler (29:11)
That's awesome. I I think that data is the key right now, right? Like we were talking about earlier that it used to be just bulk, like sending out bulk messages, sending out bulk lists. And in 2025, data is the differentiator. we've done, we have access, like my private clients have access to bulk pricing for data.
for data sources like the land portal and things like that, other data sources. But if you don't have like, you you have to pay a good amount of money, right? To get in my ecosystem and you get access to saving thousands of thousands of dollars every year on data. But if you don't want to pay the money to work directly with me, you know, maybe looking at, this is the first time I've heard of Terra, right? On this call. ⁓
Justin Piche (30:04)
Yeah.
Clayton Hepler (30:05)
but,
I think, you know, you, you, you have to leverage what you can leverage. And so sometimes it's, you know, you build relationships with, or you get private coaching and you can leverage that, or you work directly with someone and, and have them kind of, I do it for you and you do it for a little bit of a less of a cost.
Justin Piche (30:22)
Yeah, as a full disclosure, I'm a minority partner in Teradata. I don't run the company. I don't have even close to an ownership share of it. But I believe in Courtney because she is obviously a very close friend of mine, but also highly skilled and has been working with me and for me for over three years now doing this very thing.
But I think that people will find, especially smaller scale investors and even larger scale. mean, the plans, the way the credits and plans work is such that if you were to go out and buy your own Versium plan, you're going to get charged the same amount as that Versium plan by Teradata Consulting. They're just going to make a small margin because they have an even bigger plan.
that gets the records for cheaper for them. So you don't pay anymore. They make a small margin on the skip, but it's not like charging five cents or 10 cents or seven cents or whatever per skip, which is a lot of people when they're offering skip tracing services, that's what they do. They white label Versium, they get it for much cheaper cost, and they give you the data at a huge markup. There's no huge markup. The business is really meant to flourish on high volume and not maximize returns on every individual client. But I think the bigger thing, honestly, is like
the list formatting.
I don't know how much time you've used to spend or I certainly used to spend a ton of time from my data export and then I've got to mess with the data to get it all perfect to upload into my skip tracing platform. Then I've got to mess with the data after skip tracing, then scrub it and get all the bad, know, get everything out that I don't want and all that. And then I got to get it formatted for uploading into my whatever cold calling platform, wherever other marketing platforms that I use into my CRM, all that kind of stuff takes a lot of time and thought. that is all stuff that Courtney will
Clayton Hepler (31:52)
Mm-hmm.
Justin Piche (31:57)
do for the client.
Clayton Hepler (31:59)
that's pretty cool,
Justin Piche (32:00)
And it's monthly,
it's monthly. It's like month to month. You get a certain number of credits. You don't have to buy a $10,000 Versium plan. You can just go to her and go for one month and you get the same price of the same credits for that one month of that $10,000 Versium plan. It's pretty sweet.
Clayton Hepler (32:14)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. I think that, you know, data is like getting, getting access to data, is, is important. And, know, you want to check all these data sources and compare and contrast. Like what is, what is the benefit of someone being able to give you that ready-made list? You might pay a little bit more, but it could be for you at this stage in your business. It could be the benefit that you really need, right. To, kind of get you, get you off the, get you off the ground. So yeah.
Justin Piche (32:36)
Yeah.
What do you use for data right now?
Clayton Hepler (32:43)
For just like a bulk data land portal Yeah
Justin Piche (32:45)
Yeah, LAN portal. Have you compared
LAN portal, LAN insights? Do you have a feeling?
Clayton Hepler (32:51)
Yeah, I mean,
so I think they're both good. I found land portal to be a better, a more consistent data. you know, no, no shade on the guys over at land insights, but I found like, I don't know, for some reason, a lot of the data, like there's formatting issues. A lot of times there's like, you know, 0.4 acre tracks are, actually 40 acre tracks and vice versa. We found that a lot. know that they use data tree.
So it's as good as the county. I think they use data tree in core logic. So I think, yeah, it might be something with core logic. And yeah, I I really like their data. I think it's between 600 and 800 a month.
Justin Piche (33:18)
What is LAN Portal? Do you know what LAN Portal uses?
So they supplement with CoreLogic.
How much is their unlimited data plan?
Okay, that's comparable, maybe a little more expensive than Land Insights, but Land Insights, I think it's $4,500 for a year.
Clayton Hepler (33:46)
I think they have more, they have more
like, what, what I've found is they, they have more custom, customizability of when you're pulling the data, it's much more like the filtering, the, the road access is really good. They have like build ability scores on properties. So you can go in and look at a property and it uses AI for like the actual build ability of the parcel, which is like really cool.
Justin Piche (33:55)
Okay, like more filter access. ⁓
Yeah.
Clayton Hepler (34:11)
I just find that the data in general is just better. I think it's probably because they started as a data platform. They didn't start as a market selection platform, which Land Insights started as a market selection platform and then became a data platform. So I think that the land portal is more ahead on the data. And obviously Land Insights is way ahead on the market selection.
Justin Piche (34:33)
Yeah, what
does, because I used Land Portal for a while. We used it primarily because they had the road scrubbing filter.
Clayton Hepler (34:40)
Yeah.
Justin Piche (34:40)
And
that before Land Insights did Land Insights didn't have it yet. And so we used Land Portal. And then when Land Insights rolled out their scrubbing, their filter for road frontage, we switched over to Land Insights. So we're using Land Insights. And then they rolled out the comping tool, which I find to be incredibly helpful to speed up the comping process. Does Land Portal have a comping tool and stuff now? They do? Yeah, because they didn't have it. then they saw Land Insights. They're like competing against one another for... ⁓ that's funny.
Clayton Hepler (34:58)
They do.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
So, and another thing with land portal is, you know, they're, you know, like I said, with my private clients, they get a incredibly like 150 % reduction on skip tracing costs because they're working with me at the, at the bulk level. so I think that,
I can put something below in the show notes. So if a listener is interested in like connecting with those guys, if they're ground game listeners, I'm sure that they can get like a beneficial skip tracing rate. But man, I found that the LAN portal is just like really good for using for the LAN portal comping is pretty good. I think LAN insights comping tool is probably better. It's just more user friendly, I think. ⁓
Justin Piche (35:49)
Yeah.
Clayton Hepler (35:51)
That's what I really like about Land Insights is like incredibly user friendly. But I just find the data in navigating of the land portal just to be easier. And we have both, by the way, we have both. So we have the Land Insights data and we have the land portal data.
So I mean, look, think that the thing is with like the LAN portal versus like LAN insights, the core thing is like, they're both good tools. I think that you need to use the tool as they should be. I think that LAN insights really shines with.
The market selection and the user interface is incredible and I think land portal really signs with data like they're very they very good data and the platform itself is built around that so you can use these in tandem and You know, can also use like land stats for market selection I was talking with Tim Jensen who is the founder of land stats and it's a really good tool and they have this new feature like
It's a spreadsheet feature that you can basically look at every county in every state and even down through a zip code for sell through rates and, and, and property counts. And it's only a hundred. Yeah, dude. It's amazing. It's only a hundred bucks a month. it's really, really good. ⁓ yeah. Yeah.
Justin Piche (37:00)
I've never heard of land stats.
And it has full access to the whole country. That's awesome.
And stats.
Clayton Hepler (37:10)
It's incredible.
yeah, we can, we'll, we'll make sure that we'll put, put that link in the show next to, for people that are interested in checking it out. But, we were, you know, Tim is the founder. He's an ex private equity guy, like VC private equity guy. and he built it and it's like, I would say the interface is not as good as land insights. my insights is really built. It's so solid.
Justin Piche (37:31)
They're, yeah, they're solid. They're solid. And they keep shipping
out more stuff. mean, like, I don't know if you've met, all, were there at the Denver conference with Rylin and Sumner and Kyle and their whole, like, they brought like a whole freaking crew. and a bunch of other people were there from Landinsides team. I just, yeah, I really respect those guys and what they're trying to build for sure. I've actually never met, I've never met.
the Apki Brothers. It's like one of the few, I feel like the few segments of the land investing group that I've just, never met. I know they own, they bought droners.io, which we use all the time. It's our main platform for posting drone jobs. I know they bought that. They obviously own the land portal, but I've never met either of those guys. I've just never been to any of events that I've been to.
Clayton Hepler (38:14)
met him. I met him multiple times. Yeah. Multiple times. and you know, not in person, but like all over, over zoom. yeah, they're good. They're actually really good dudes. Yeah.
Justin Piche (38:14)
you ever met them? Okay.
Yeah,
I believe it. I believe it. I'd like to them. I feel like it's weird that I haven't met them. This isn't a huge community. If I had a celebrity, I wouldn't go that far. I wouldn't go that far,
Clayton Hepler (38:29)
Yeah, dude, you're celebrity. You're a celebrity.
So, yeah, so look, I mean, what I was saying about data is this, like...
There there I think the differences between land portal and and land insights is nominal right we're talking about the clear differences. One chances market selection the others data but the reality is it's like a CRM right it's like you know.
Everyone uses different CRMs. Some are fit for certain things. Some are fit for other things. You got to know what you're trying to optimize for. And that allows you to pick the tool that you're really looking to optimize. So that's my spiel on whether or not you should pick one or the other.
Justin Piche (39:11)
Yeah, I have a question for you, Clay, since we're kind of spitballing and talking about a bunch of different stuff today. I've got a development in Texas. It is exempt in every which way. Greater than 10 acres, all parcels have road frontage. By every definition of the Texas Development Code, if you will, it's exempt. And yet, the county engineer...
has put on all of these additional restrictions. He wants me to do a drainage study on this hundred plus acre property that I'm splitting into six lots, all with red furniture, all greater than 10 acres. He wants me to drill wells and make sure the well water is good. It's absurd. I'm going crazy. Have you ever dealt with...
development like this where you've done something and by definition and I just said it's not the first time this has happened to me by definition by the codes by everything in the paperwork and the subdivision ordinances that you that the county has you don't require any of this additional stuff but you've run into the person who's responsible for making sure it gets stamped will not do it without all these made-up or additional requirements.
Clayton Hepler (40:11)
Did you
ask him why he's asking you he's making you do this? Yeah, I know but what did he say?
Justin Piche (40:14)
Yeah, yeah, of course, of course. He said,
he said, because I know that area has issues with drainage. He's like, well, that's not a great reason. There's no floodplain on it. There's a little bit of water wetlands, like a little pond here or there, but there's no.
there's some slope to it. So I know the area has air shield drainage and the water is I know there's oil and gas activity in the area and so I won't let you do this exempt subdivision without testing the water first. Which we did, we drilled the well, you know it was kind of expensive but whatever, drilled the well, water came back in, but still.
Clayton Hepler (40:47)
I
mean, I've never dealt with something like this. Cause usually that's a gun in the head for me. Like usually that's like, that will kill a deal. But yeah, man, I would try to understand like the psychology behind why he's making you do that. Maybe he doesn't want development.
Justin Piche (41:00)
Yeah, think that's it. really, I think he doesn't want anything. I think it's more that he doesn't want to...
He doesn't want to have to do a whole lot of stuff, but he doesn't like I could just subdivide this and record the plat and be done with it. I think but but because he's told us all this stuff, obviously we're going I want to I don't want to do that and have some random crazy thing happen where he like says I can't do it or I can't sell these lots or I get fined or something like that. I've been threatened to be fined by a county before I did it. I did a deal in one of my first kind of like six figure deals actually in Morgan County, Alabama.
It was a 40 acre tract that I bought and when we went through to sell it, not when we bought it, when we bought it, the title company did not find these issues, but when we went through to sell it, the original parcel,
maybe 15 years ago, had been bought by these two friends, or business partners, whatever, who had had a falling out. But either way, they were supposed to, the attorney that did this deal was supposed to have one tract of 40 acres for one guy and one tract of 40 acres for the other guy. But somehow, all of it got deeded to the other guy, not the guy that I was buying it from. And so his name and his wife's name were on all of the parcels.
Luckily, they're all like upstanding people and like nobody like the friend who didn't really like this other guy anymore Could have totally screwed him and just like taking the land because he was on title and there's really not much the other guy could have done But I was able to work with them to get it all done But because the subdivision wasn't done properly of this 80 into 40s, and I was trying to sell this land I had it marketed the county engineer of Morgan County called me and he's like hey you you don't have a plat or approved subdivision here at all and Like you haven't listed
and like we can fine you for this you need to take your listing down I was like whoa let's pump the brakes here like this is not the situation that I thought this was so we did end up pulling the listing hired an attorney hired another surveyor got everything kind of corrected I had to get this other guy and his wife to sign and deed the property back to the other guy so then I could buy it from him and then sell it it was kind of kind of crazy but it happens you got to make sure you're following the process
Clayton Hepler (43:02)
Dang man, dang, that's crazy,
that's crazy. guys, we're coming to the end of today, as you know. The gentleman's agreement is if you get benefit from the podcast, please rate, review, and subscribe. Let us know what you're thinking. And Justin, anything else before we wrap it up today?
Justin Piche (43:16)
Yeah, if you guys have any crazy stories about things that did not go as you expected and maybe even county engineers making up restrictions, I would love to hear about them. So leave them in the comments. Let us know. I'd love to hear some stories from the listeners. That's it. See you guys later.
Clayton Hepler (43:28)
Love that dude. See you later.