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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 51: Evolve or Die: Adapting to a Shifting Land Market
🎙️ Welcome Back to The Ground Game Podcast! 🎙️
In this episode, hosts Clay Hepler and Justin Piché dive into the theme of “Evolve or Die,” discussing the critical shifts happening in the land investing business. They share their excitement about the opportunities in the industry while addressing the challenges many investors face today.
Key Highlights
Personal Updates:
Clay and Justin kick off the episode with some light-hearted banter, reflecting on their busy weeks filled with travel and family moments. Clay shares his excitement about visiting the Apki brothers in Ohio and his upcoming trips to Phoenix and Dallas, while Justin talks about his recent experiences at a mastermind event in Florida and the importance of maintaining life balance.
The State of the Land Business:
The hosts address the concerning trend of many investors exiting the land business, discussing the reasons behind this shift. They emphasize that "average is the enemy" and explore how some entrepreneurs may not have built the necessary skills to succeed in a challenging market.
Adapting to Change:
Clay and Justin share actionable insights on how to adapt your business strategy in response to market fluctuations. They discuss their recent changes in marketing strategies, including cutting PPC spending and shifting to SMS marketing, as well as the importance of targeting specific sub-markets for better lead quality.
Communication and Team Dynamics:
Listeners will learn about the significance of improving internal communication within their teams. Clay and Justin highlight how better communication can lead to increased efficiency and accountability, ultimately driving business success.
Founder Burnout:
The episode touches on recognizing and overcoming founder burnout. Clay and Justin share their strategies for maintaining balance while driving business growth, emphasizing the importance of self-reflection and prioritization in their hectic lives.
Tech and Data Management:
The episode wraps up with a discussion on the importance of leveraging technology and data management to streamline operations. Clay and Justin encourage listeners to utilize key performance indicators (KPIs) for informed decision-making, sharing their experiences with various CRM systems and the need for a cohesive tech stack.
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Clay Hepler (00:00)
Hello and welcome to another episode of the ground game podcast. This is take number 67 We've had some technical difficulties, but we will make it through this episode the problem is I can only say a couple of smart things every single day and So I'm afraid that I'm not gonna be able to say anything that's enlightening during this podcast because I've already used all of my enlightened credits
Justin Piche (00:27)
Yeah, we'll go back and post and see if there's any snippets that actually got saved. But just speaking was my co-host, Clay Hepler. This is Justin Piche and we're here to show you how to win the ground
Justin Piche (00:51)
Hey, Clay. Man, it's been a busy couple of weeks for me and my family, business. What's been going on with you?
Clay Hepler (00:59)
Dude, I'm just like excited about the land business. I'm just like really excited. ⁓ You know, and I also have been traveling a lot and went out to see the Apki brothers in Ohio, which those that don't know, they have like a data platform. They have a beginner education, community stuff. ⁓
Travel to the Catskills Mountains with my friends. Going out to Phoenix tomorrow to do a couple in-person podcasts. Then going to ⁓ Dallas. I'll be seeing you in Dallas in a couple days. It's interesting, I'm gonna meet a couple of my clients actually there in a couple days, which is gonna be crazy in person.
Justin Piche (01:42)
That's right.
Yeah, same. I always love that. really,
yeah, I love meeting folks that I've worked with for months and months, never seen in person and then finally get to meet them at an event.
Clay Hepler (01:57)
Yeah, yeah. And then, yeah, man, we get to hang this weekend, talk a little bit about some dirt. Exciting.
Justin Piche (02:05)
yeah, I mean, we've obviously been traveling to Seattle, came back, went to a mastermind in Florida, which was awesome. Dude, it was pretty sick. It was pretty sick.
Clay Hepler (02:17)
Any key takeaways, man?
Justin Piche (02:19)
You know, I think a lot of it was just like we did, we did kind of hot seat stuff. People talked about the issues they're having in their business and other thoughts and kind of getting over humps or just doing things that need to get done. And for me, it was more just like life balance. I'm a person of extremes. I can get, my wife likes to say, I get like obsessed with something and just like.
Clay Hepler (02:44)
Hahaha
Justin Piche (02:45)
Do that one thing to the expense of at the expense of everything else. And that's true to some degree. I think that's true of me is like when I get something I'm really interested in or want to work towards, I'm just like all in on that thing. So I need to be more balanced, I think, just as a person. Like I need to spend more time sleeping and like more time working out. And, oh, there's a lot of philosophy talks, a lot of talks about faith and
Just doing really cool things. I don't know if I shared about on the last podcast about the cave diving type stuff that we did. It was pretty sick. But. Did I talk about that with you yet? Oh. Oh, man. Quick anecdote. OK, yeah. So I bought these like many and some people think I'm insane. I had this conversation with like a veteran group that I meet with. One of the guys has been a certified diver for he said longer than I've been alive. And so.
Clay Hepler (03:25)
because it sounds amazing. You didn't. I remember you said you were gonna do the like.
Justin Piche (03:45)
He was like, you're crazy. But I went down in this cave at Jackson Blue Springs in Florida and I had a 1.9 liter bottle on which is at the surface. It's about 30 minutes of air. But I went I was down at like 60 feet of depth and probably like 200 300 200 feet not yeah, like 200 feet into the cave. And I was dude. I was religiously looking at my pressure gauge. It was incredible.
Clay Hepler (04:03)
my gosh, dude!
Justin Piche (04:13)
just like diving into this beautiful crystal clear cave. Like it's so big. You go in, I'm just like looking at the gauge, making sure I'm just exploring underwater flashlight. It was so cool. It was so cool. And those little scuba tanks, they work great. They really did. I mean, I wouldn't, there was a sign at the back of the cave. the cave goes really far. It goes like five, 6,000 feet. I only went in like 200 or 150 feet, something like nothing. Something where as if I ran out of air, I would,
Definitely be able to get back in less than a minute to the surface. I wouldn't be like stuck down there and have like five minutes to get out and like die. You know what I mean? I didn't want to die. Having young kids, like it's not something I'm interested in. There was definitely some risk, but definitely some margin of safety taken. I didn't wait till my air got out. When I got back, I had like two, three minutes of air left. Like I wasn't being super dumb, but a little bit dumb, but it was really cool. But there's a sign at the back of the cave where it has a grim reaper.
And it says, it's like this big white sign and it says, stop, like go no further. Like unless you have extensive cave diving experience and like all the right equipment, like you will die, basically is what it said. So I never went past that sign because you know, that seemed like a pretty good warning to not go past it. ⁓ But it was cool. It was really cool.
Justin Piche (05:33)
episode is called Evolve or Die. And that's it.
Clay Hepler (05:39)
That's it man. So yeah, think what's interesting is, yeah, you hear the signals, you see the smoke signals, you look around, you don't hear signals, you see the smoke signals, people are getting out of the land business. And I'm gonna say something that, the reality is this. Average is the enemy and
Justin Piche (05:39)
Next episode. Just kidding.
Clay Hepler (06:07)
I believe that the people that are getting out of the land business are average. They're average entrepreneurs. might not have never, maybe they shouldn't have gotten in the land business, right? Maybe they got in when it was easier or maybe they got in off false guru promises. And they didn't build up the business acumen that was required in order to succeed. That's probably, a lot of that's just true, Business is not all sunshine and rainbows.
pushed by sunshine and rainbows ⁓ into a business and your expectations change, I believe that your motivation wanes. I believe that you don't have the proper framework in order to execute and that is why people die and they do not evolve. But you see podcasts of people saying, 40 % of the people are getting out. There's a great podcast by Seth Williams from REtipster the other week.
And I think it's time for us, you and me to open up and share with our listeners some things that we're doing in real time in order to adapt and continue to excel. One last thing I want to add here. did talk about this on the previous iteration of this podcast, but I am more excited about the land business than I have ever been. And because I really think it provides
⁓ opportunity for growth. mean dude, you know, you've always been a year two years ahead of me ⁓ and you know Someone that I always say hey this guy's really got right got it going on and and I think that land has the opportunity to transform our lives and so for those of you that are poo pooing the business for those of you that are In between should I evolve or should I die off and try something new?
Let me tell you about our mission at Hepler Land Holdings and I hope that it inspires you to make one last reach to focus on finishing this year off strong as you and I, Justin, come up on our 52nd week, our 52nd podcast here. So Hepler Land Holdings transforms overlooked parcels into high value assets through development, through subdivision, through entitlement. Our mission is to live the strenuous life of land and labor.
engineering wealth for partners and communities, mastering rural development, accelerating timelines and defining what's possible in land investing. Like the pioneers who carved America from wilderness, we take raw ground and raise it into opportunity, strength and prosperity.
Justin Piche (08:48)
That's a big mission statement. I hope that's inspiring for some folks.
the idea of this land podcast or this this title for a podcast is really just going through a bunch of changes in my own business. Again, we've talked about this. This is like literally the fourth time we've recorded this. So it's hard to remember what's been said now and what's been said previously. But to get into the meat of it when you scale and when I've scaled this business over over the last four years, initially very involved in every single aspect. And then you've hired your key people that start to take over things. You buy back your time, you grow your
team, you scale your business.
Over the last year, I've been very involved, really more than that, the last year has been more so really involved in larger scale developments that are incredible. Honestly, it's like where I really love spending time, raising money, talking to investors, talking to engineers, pitching projects to people, what I so on and so forth. And those projects are great and they're going to produce a lot of income in the future. And we talked about this earlier, but you said, you it's probably the highest use of your time. If you, you're going to, if you're going to talk about a dollars per hour, like those things,
things
are obviously going to return more than the general land flipping business. But when things are going well in your business, you generally are not stopping as much to look at the things you need to fix.
If things are going well, you feel like, I've got it together. Like I'm confident. Like things are, money is coming in. My team is working. Our marketing is working so on and so forth. But in re the reality is that there's probably something that is your biggest issue that you need to be focused on fixing. And if you go too high and look at too many other things and you just look at the revenue numbers and that seems okay. I, you generally will have a bias for not taking action and digging in and fixing. You're like, fix it if it's not broke, right?
That's
kind of the mentality you can fall into, the trap that you can fall into. So I mean, yeah, I mean, vulnerable, we kind of fell into that trap a bit. And maybe I'll say like revenue is not in danger, but I'm not seeing the growth that I had expected to see this year. And that's kind of the main, you know, the main factor that's causing me to go and make quite a few changes, get a little more efficient in the business. So.
I can go through and talk about some of them, kind of at a high level maybe.
Clay Hepler (11:13)
I think what would be really helpful is if we dove into some of the things that you and I have, key changes that we made, and then we select one or two that are really, we think maybe three that are like really impactful, that our listeners can link up.
Justin Piche (11:28)
Yeah, I think that's good. That's good because we're limited
on time now due to these technical difficulties.
Yeah okay so number number one is just
marketing strategy. First thing, I plan cash flows out a quarter. So I'm always looking like what's coming in, what's going out, where are we going to be as a cash position in the next four months? ⁓ And recently we've had a drop in leads, drop in quality acquisitions contracts. So I see the future pipeline not looking as great as I would like it to be. That combined with a little bit of a slower sales market, a lot more owner financing, less cash coming in now. So like I see some tightness
coming and so that was the first kind of issue that I saw that called okay we need to cut some costs so you go to the data you look at your marketing channels you look at your ROAS you say like what is the worst what is it what are my levers I need to pull to be able to reduce my OPEX relatively quickly to be able to obviously last much longer in a low kind of a slower sales market and so the first thing is we cut PPC
We were spending about $10,000 a month on PPC budget. We hired an agency who was ⁓ ex-Google employees, not kind of your e-comm agency turned marketing agency for PPC. ⁓
quality agency and we just we didn't we didn't we were not getting the type of leads that we wanted. We were getting plenty of leads just not the type that we wanted. A lot of lower dollar properties that we wouldn't even take into inventory even if they just like offered it to us because it wasn't worth the juice wasn't worth the squeeze in a lot of cases. So that was a pretty easy cut to make for us. There's a couple of reasons we talked about this earlier. There's a couple of reasons why I think we failed with it. I I think our website probably could have been better optimized
for
PPC. think that's a really important companion to any online marketing. We did update the website. We did some SEO stuff. It just wasn't probably enough to really make a big impact in it. ⁓ But I think more so it's just it's hard in PPC to target specific types of properties. You can market general to land. But as we know, who are the most likely people to sell land? It's people with garbage hard to sell properties like the other ones who are the most likely to
search
for how do I sell my vacant land. Not the high dollar subdivisions, not the trophy properties, not the 30 minutes outside of a major metro type five acre home site lots. So it just wasn't the product type fit for our business model. Not to say it can't work. I know plenty of people that are making it work. just...
We didn't get it done, you know? And it's something I think I'll consider in the future, but just not right now. And you wanna save some OPEX, you cut what's not working, you double down on what is. So that's first change.
Number two, SMS marketing.
Everyone remembers October, 2023, text apocalypse. don't know what you would call it, but it's when launch control went down and, you know, people were reeling. It's when we started cold calling. But after that, you know, went through a couple of iterations of different product types, launch, or smarter contact, and then ended up settling on Roar as a texting platform for a couple of reasons. One, it was way cheaper. I mean, that was the main reason, way cheaper than other marketing sources. And two, it had some like flexibility at the other
ones didn't. But over time you you get enmeshed in this this marketing channel you text you produce leads things are looking good.
Response rates starts to drop. We flow starts to drop the other competitors who had issues of their own, get better. These other tools, these other things in the marketplace get better. And there's this bias for inaction when things seem to be working. When you are getting good lead flow and you're getting good contracts and your return on ad spend seems to be in a good spot. There's not this motivation to go out and get the best thing. You think I'm all right because it's producing results. When the reality is you could be producing substantially better
results with something else. So this kind of cash slowdown forced me to go in and look at some of our tools and some of our you know our lead flow metrics and like what is producing and what is not and then benchmark against other investors and see what they're producing and realize wow we're really leaving money on the table here by sticking with the software that has not kept up with the times. So rolling out smarter contact about four times the response rate that we were receiving and it's more expensive on a per-text basis but not
four times more expensive, know, gotta measure, obviously you gotta measure those two things and the churn, the amount of data you have to go through, et cetera. So that's change number two. ⁓ Change number three, and I'll stop here and let you get through some stuff is over the course of this business and scaling the teams and the amount of data that we've needed to sustain the business, it's a lot. mean, we're pulling every, gosh, how many are we pulling? Like.
couple hundred thousand records in a month at this point. ⁓
Clay Hepler (16:28)
Mm-hmm.
Justin Piche (16:32)
There's a temptation to go broad and like just market to whole states. And if you have talked to me over the last couple of years and you've asked me what my strategy for picking a market is, I will have told you, we just need a lot of data so we just go to the whole state. And we pick like eight states and we just like market to those whole states. And until really this summer, it has worked really well. I mean, we have pulled deals out of markets that nobody would ever think about going into and they've performed exceptionally well.
Clay Hepler (16:35)
Mm-hmm.
Justin Piche (17:01)
But it's a new market. Sales are down, sales are slow. We're in this weird kind of spot right now is what it feels like. And we're going to little slightly more expensive marketing channels. And I just don't think that the mass approach is really going to be the way to do things for me anymore. lots of people have done tons of different marketing approaches.
We still need a lot of data, but we can be a lot smarter about it and go into more markets. And so that's kind of, that's the trend that we're, we're, moving towards.
Clay Hepler (17:31)
So do you want
to go in deeper into that if you have anything else to go deeper in? So like, you know, this is something that we've definitely done. actually
Justin Piche (17:37)
Yeah.
Clay Hepler (17:44)
just core states that we know really well. ⁓ and we have expertise in, but do you want to kind of deep, deep in what you're talking about?
Justin Piche (17:50)
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm actually going to go
do something a little bit different. ⁓
The way we used to market was like, general, Texas, like who cares? I don't care if it's landlocked, as long as it's not like all wetlands, you know, I don't care. Cause I had this, I've pulled out some freaking crazy deals from landlocked properties through some like challenging title issues, you you can sue for access, you get a survey, do some crazy deals from that. So it's like, yeah, we'll just throw in the landlocked in there and we'll market to them. Cause we've, we've pulled out crazy deals from it. ⁓
Clay Hepler (18:19)
Right.
Justin Piche (18:24)
However, when you have people talking on the phone all day long, you have all these cold callers talking, like the best use of their time is not talking to a landlocked property where they're just gonna disqualify it. Like you really wanna set those people up with legitimate leads. ⁓ I mean, that's really the crux of it. We've been able to produce with this kind of really broad market.
And now that it's been a little bit harder to get these contracts, quality contracts and a little bit harder to sell. I don't want to waste my time anymore with. This is not some revelation guys. You are probably not doing what I'm doing. You are probably already much more niche in your market and much more specific with the type of properties that you go after than I have been. I'm just going to now be a lot more niche and more specific at a large scale. Take the team and set them up for better quality properties. And there's one more thing.
I could before you go that maybe they'll make this make more sense. We have traditionally been a 100 % buy properties and then sell them a 0 % double close business Which is different than I think a lot of people in this space We were talking earlier and you mentioned you're somewhere around like 80 % kind of take title 20 % kind of double close issue. I mean double close Dispo and and we've sort of started to trend that way. We like look searching out those opportunities
But now I really see that as probably the preferred business model right now in a challenging sales environment ⁓ is not taking as much risk by purchasing those properties and the more opportunities you can have to be straight up with the sellers and let them know what you're doing and double close the property, be an expert marketer, find the end buyer. I see that as a really, I don't know, I see that as what we're going to move towards. With that though, you cannot market
general like you cannot market to rural middle-of-nowhere state where you might be able to get a sick deal on a property but it's gonna sit for a year if you're double closing like you can't do that that's not the market that you double close in so if we're going to focus our team on a really streamlined double close process at scale we have to change the source of data to markets that have high sell-through rates that have a demand in the market ⁓ to be able to move that property otherwise we're just gonna waste our time and waste money so that's kind of like the two there are two reasons
why we're shifting the data strategy from general whole state data to specific sub markets, sell through rates, proximity population centers, and just going to more areas than more states than we were before. That's kind what we're changing.
Hey guys, this is Justin interrupting your podcast to say thank you for listening. We had some technical difficulties, but I'm confident there's something worth listening to in here. If you guys are getting value from this podcast, please leave us a review, let us know. And if you're going to be in Dallas this weekend at the Land Scaling Summit, say hi. We love connecting with people, especially people that are listening to the Ground Game podcast. Back to your regularly scheduled programming.
Clay Hepler (21:22)
Yeah. I mean, I would agree with you when you were saying, Hey, like a lot of people already do this. and I actually look to, I try to look to other industries in order to get context on what to do next as a business owner, like how to move next. And there's a guy, a marketing guy named Jay Abraham and
He talks about the strategy of preeminence, which is essentially you are the ⁓ strategic advisor, the preferred vendor, the preferred person to work with in any asset class, right? It could be selling chalk. I don't know who sells chalk, but it could be selling chalk. It could be selling land, right? Or a client service. And preeminence is more than just ⁓ category defining.
characteristics, right? Preeminence is taking the best of other businesses and then applying them to your business, right? So perfect example would be someone that goes into a dry cleaners or don't know, plumbing company and they bring ⁓ the setter closer model instead of the owner just sitting there and taking sales calls, right? So you have a setter closer,
which is a different type of model or the recurring revenue model that's originally from SaaS. So you kind of roll up strategies from different businesses and bolt those onto your business. Now with our business, the land business, it's kind of like a very transaction heavy business. So you can kind of think, okay, so what are the things that other businesses have done really well? ⁓ And maybe I look at
an adjacent similar business that is a couple steps ahead of us, right? So, for example, would be wholesaling, right? What are the wholesalers and what have they done really well? Well, they have perfected, really good wholesalers have perfected like list stacking strategies, right? Which is they stack motivation and target only motivated sellers with certain motivation characteristics. Now with land, it's a little bit different, right? Because we do target a lot of different ⁓
areas, right? We have to in order to get the volume that houses do. But there are those sort of things. So when I think about, what are key changes that I need to make, I try to look outside of the industry versus inside. And so for a change that we kind of recently made is the best organizations have very streamlined communication, right? So if you can think about like
the Ford assembly line, which revolutionized car manufacturing. There was a very clear person at each part of the assembly line, and there'd be a manager that would communicate between all of them and make sure that this person is talking to this person and the assembly line was always improving at all times. But our business was like an assembly line that was separated by a bunch of walls at every stage of the process.
And so we didn't know what, ⁓ you know, the guy that's putting on the wheels down the line is doing. ⁓ I knew right as a CEO, I knew, but our acquisition managers, our lead managers, our transaction coordinators, our Dispo, ⁓ our marketing, they did not have, they did not know what was going on. So our marketer was good at putting the engine in the car. Our acquisition manager was really good at.
paint in the car, whatever these positions were doing. But we didn't have any communication between the engine and the painter and the person putting on the wheels. And so what that caused is even though we were all looking at the same KPIs, we weren't improving. We would improve in silos, right? And so we would say, okay, we're gonna work on offering on more deals.
but no one knew how offering on more deals contributing to get right. And so this might be, oh my gosh, Clay, another thing it's like Justin saying like, oh, we're just focused on how to sell through eight markets. You're like, oh, but it's like, right? We have our own journey for every business has their own journey, but creating communication protocols between teams has started to dramatically improve morale, accountability, productivity.
Inefficiency and the reason why I'm so encouraged is because we're doing this and we're starting to really talk with each other and It all it's it's it's getting out of the head of me as the CEO and it's getting into accountability of these meetings and So now that I bring in the operations guy Then it becomes this guy runs these meetings and he improves the throughput of these meetings and the feedback loop
And so this creates a compounding of internal IP which makes us better every day. So instead of going out and chasing new opportunities, going into this or this or this, we get better incrementally in each stage of our business because we have very good clear feedback loops between departments. So that's something that was like, you're like, man, so you communicate.
Justin Piche (27:08)
Huh.
Clay Hepler (27:11)
It's kind of like, yes, so we communicate, and we communicate better, right? So we don't create barriers between the painter and the engine guy and the wheel guy. It's like, no, we all know what's going on, and that improves every step of the business.
Justin Piche (27:29)
Yeah, I mean that's essential. Yeah, it's easy to just not do because you see your different departments of your business as these separate things. It's like there's a handoff point and then it goes there and they've got it and they're responsible for it.
But we're going through an exercise right now because we have a lot of transaction volume. frankly, like you said earlier, it's a very transaction heavy business. There are a million things that can happen in any one transaction that will kick it back to a different department.
And we have one core transaction coordinator who's fantastic. She's really good. But everybody has limits. And when you throw 70 deals and at a time and with half of which have issues at somebody like frankly, they just it's not going to be possible for very many people to really handle that without the right feedback, loots and systems and automation set up. So we're going through an exercise right now of mapping out every place that transactions interacts with every other department.
What information they need to know when what decisions get made by whom when when that happens, what actions come back to transactions or go back to acquisitions or go to dispositions or whatever, like where in the process are all of these interconnections? Because we've got it. We've got to get those communication lines ironed out very clear in order to continue scaling without just growing the transaction. Like, of course, you could just say, OK, well, let's put three more people on transactions and like hand each individual deals to each one so they can manage and see it.
through but that creates bloat and an OPEX bloat that you don't want to create like I don't want to create that I don't want forward transaction coordinators to handle all these deals I want the right process so one person can handle but it starts with communications I think that's a great point and that's a good thing to improve and change
Clay Hepler (29:18)
Yeah, yeah, and so like, you know every step you get a little better and so You your organization just gets more efficient over time And so, you know a lot of people say hey Clay I need more consistency people say okay Clay I need more consistency and I'm giving away the thing that people pay me a lot of money to do and you a lot of money to do which is like consistency is created from within not from without
it's created from understanding levers in your business and not having them like unrelated to one another. It's like you know as the CEO, you are the only person with night vision goggles and you're like telling all your team members like, you know, in this dark room, you're like pull the levers and they're like, well, am I pulling the right one? Right. And I feel like that's what a lot of people do.
When you get KPIs when you have accountability when you have communication The lights are on man, and you got the stickers on the levers so you know which levers you need to pull because you're like This is red. is yellow. We got to figure this out
Justin Piche (30:33)
Yeah. You know, one thing I was just thinking about when you were talking about lovers in terms of, and it relates back to this kind of evolve or die to give my team and like business credit. One thing that we are able to do really well is, is like pivot drastically and quickly, like change the way things are, what we're doing drastically and quickly. One of the things that is very clear when people
come and fall out of this business or give up or die, whatever, is they've been doing the same wrong thing for too long.
They've been doing the same wrong thing for too long and they may not know what other things are out there that you could do. I think one of the benefits of having listened to as many podcasts as I have in the land space, having been to as many events, having had as many conversations as I've had and just being like constantly up to date with and understanding what things are out there, what people are doing. And then having done a ton of different things in my business over the last several years and done things that worked and didn't work, et cetera.
is that there's no fear about a Jurassic and in fast change in terms of marketing and we have the team and structures and in place to execute it immediately like pivoting entire marketing channels at scale in a day got it done which is a superpower for staying alive but it definitely
Clay Hepler (31:58)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Justin Piche (32:03)
I prefer to not have to do that, right? I prefer to slowly and incrementally improve every part of the business over time. That's the way everybody dreams, you know, or quickly implement or improve every part of the business every day. ⁓
Clay Hepler (32:16)
Yeah, I think that goes
to the reason why people are not good at this because and you we've you and I failed in our individual ways across different initiatives is again what I learned from being out there with Tom Bill you said in his $35 million mansion. The reason why people entrepreneurs fail is because they lie to themselves or they become emotionally overwhelmed and lying to yourself is
saying, I'm just gonna keep doing this, right? Now, I think that there is someone who, there are good entrepreneurs and there are not good entrepreneurs. And it's just a scoreboard, man. It's just a scoreboard. And you can become better through listening to podcasts and studying your business and going to events and all those things. But if you are not,
If you were lying to yourself, it doesn't matter how many events you do or podcasts you listen to, sometimes you gotta pivot and the numbers do not lie and it's like numbers don't lie, right? And so I think you made this great pivot, which I acknowledge and think is great that you guys are able to do this and you're like, okay, we got it, no problem. Because the business comes before everything else. It's not the emotions that you have about I need to go down this
marketing channel, need to do this, I need to have this software, I need to have this person. It's like, no, the survivor of the business is what's important. And that's why I think people can't adapt or die. They can't evolve or die because they think about the survival of an idea versus the survival of a business.
Justin Piche (34:01)
Right. I agree with that.
I mean, it's hard sometimes to admit your own failure, but that's where lying to yourself comes in, right? It's like, it's much easier to just say, hey, I think things are going to get better and keep going down the path. It's much harder to say, I have made the wrong decision. I have not done something I needed to do and I need to do something else. Admit it to the team, make the change. That's a lot harder to do. I think, I think a lot of, mean, there's a lot of successful entrepreneurs that are
not humble in any way, shape or form. And so I can't say this is a blanket rule, but I do feel like being humble is a way to win in this business. And maybe being humble is the wrong term. Maybe it's, ⁓ I don't know. I don't know how you would frame it, but.
Clay Hepler (34:55)
Yeah, I would say that as a public figure, in the micro niche that you and I are in, how many people are listening to this podcast? Five. Hi mom, hi mom. But like, it becomes even harder when you become successful because then you think your ideas are the right ideas. And so it's like requires a self-awareness, man. It's like, would you rather be right?
Justin Piche (35:01)
Micro, micro, niche. Like, yeah, 10.
Clay Hepler (35:25)
and fail or wrong and, you know, succeed. I just think it's, right? It's just about self, right? It's a very simple answer. like, would you rather eat the cake or lose weight, but people still eat the cake, bro?
Justin Piche (35:32)
Pretty obvious answer, I hope.
Clay Hepler (35:42)
Right? ⁓ So anything else you wanna talk about, about evolving or dying, I know we're coming out on the end of the podcast here.
Justin Piche (35:49)
Yeah.
Yeah,
man, I know we missed a much of gold in the first couple of recordings that we may be able to save. We'll see. We'll see. But not really, you know, next episode is our one year anniversary, one year of doing this. So it'll be episode number 52. We're going to be in Dallas this weekend at Aje's land scaling summit. And so I think we're to try to find some time to record something in person, hopefully without Internet issues for episode number 52.
Clay Hepler (35:54)
Ha ha
Yeah, and look, if you guys listen to this podcast, like please come up to us and say, what's up? ⁓ You know, we always love connecting with people that listen to the ground game and get suggestions. ⁓ But when you come up to us, make sure you tell us which person you voted for in your review. And if you don't have a review, you haven't left a review, do not come up to us because there will be a physical altercation in the middle of the event.
Justin Piche (36:48)
That is totally not true. Please come up anyway. Well, let me just come up to me. I'm a lot nicer. You know, I'm not going to have a visit. That's funny. But in all seriousness, give us a review. Come on.
Clay Hepler (36:57)
Just kidding, just,
yeah. No, but no, but so I think that the big thing here that we're kind of just, and so I'm Justin, I know we're coming to the end here is like, look, we are changing too. We are not dogmatic, we're changing our views and so the challenge that I would say for everyone is like, where are you not seeing parts of your business?
that need to be changed. Oftentimes it's easier if you are someone that Justin likes bigger deals and he missed something that was in his business that he needed to address. Now, in his case, the bigger deals yield a way bigger profit, right? But you might be like Justin in a different part of your business. You might like putting together SOPs and Justin has, know, fortunately this is a big deal, he's gonna make a lot of money off of it.
And his small thing with his marketing is a lot less important in terms of an ROI lift, right? A actual profit to his bottom line. But you might not have that luxury. You might be focusing on SOPs or something else in your business that doesn't actually drive revenue. And so if you want to solve the problems, if you want to adapt or die, comes down to evolving the marketing, evolving the revenue producing activities in your business. ⁓ And I think that that's a good thing to end on ⁓ because
We evolve when we bring in opportunities and we die when we don't. When we don't focus on, am I spending 95 % of my time in prospecting and bringing in new deals or increasing my profit per deal or making my customers, interacting with my customers more.
Justin Piche (38:41)
Yeah. All right, we'll end the plan there.
Clay Hepler (38:45)
Land the plane. All right guys for those of you that have made it this far, please We would love to see you in Dallas all joking aside. We'll love to connect with you guys Please if you get any benefit from this podcast rate review subscribe Let us know we'll have some links in the show notes from this podcast for some stuff that we talked about ⁓ and ⁓ Justin anything else before we tap out my man
Justin Piche (39:09)
Nope, we'll see you guys next time for episode number 52, the one year anniversary of the Ground Game Podcast.