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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 53: How to Build Credibility in a Skeptical Market
🎙️ Welcome Back to The Ground Game Podcast! 🎙️
In this episode, hosts Clay Hepler and Justin Piché tackle the pressing issues facing land investors today, including the impact of inexperienced investors on the industry’s reputation.
Key Highlights
Personal Updates:
Clay and Justin kick off the episode with some light-hearted banter about their experiences at the Land Scaling Summit in Dallas. Clay shares his surprise at not owning cowboy boots despite living in Texas, while Justin reflects on his journey and the importance of personal branding in land investing.
The State of the Land Business:
The hosts discuss the concerning trend of inexperienced investors entering the market and how they can inadvertently harm the reputation of seasoned professionals. 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 differentiate yourself as a legitimate investor. They discuss the importance of transparency in transactions and how to establish credibility through online presence and communication.
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 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.
If you're feeling the pressure of the evolving land investing landscape, this episode is packed with insights and strategies to help you navigate the challenges ahead!
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Justin Piche (00:12)
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Ground Game Podcast. This is your co-host, Justin Piche.
Clay Hepler (00:17)
And this is your other co-host, Clay Hepler. Dude, I'm looking at this screen here. We have this awesome screen behind us. That's our podcast recording screen. I keep looking up there and I say, man, on Dallas, Texas, I gotta have some cowboy boots on. But I don't have any cowboy boots on.
Justin Piche (00:32)
You know, you'd be surprised to learn that I own no cowboy boots. Having lived in Texas the vast majority of my life, my wife has cowboy boots. I've just never owned a pair.
Clay Hepler (00:36)
That is a sh-
You would be really tall if you had a couple of this. They're like three, four inches, depending on what, you know, to give you a little lift.
Justin Piche (00:51)
I mean, thought about it. You know, actually, this is, I actually don't own a pair of jeans either. We were just talking about jeans. I wore through, I love nice jeans. I wore through a pair like three years ago and I just never bought another one. I also hate shopping for clothing. Like, despise it. So if my wife had bought me a pair of jeans, then you know, maybe I would have worn it,
Clay Hepler (01:12)
Yeah, these are some nice jeans I got them two or three years ago. Good jeans, man. They're, you know what I mean? Right? They're like a piece of land, baby. You know? Well, ⁓
Justin Piche (01:24)
How does that segue? I was hoping you were coming with like the perfect segue. Like talk about a good pair of jeans. There's nothing. There's nothing.
Clay Hepler (01:30)
Yeah, no there's
But I Do want to talk about I do want to talk about today a conversation I had yeah, so I was actually on the way to the airport So I'm in Phoenix. I did two podcasts out in Phoenix and one of them was Steve Trang's disruptors
Justin Piche (01:49)
yeah, I've listened to that a ton of times. That's awesome.
Clay Hepler (01:51)
Yeah, I was on Steve's podcast, which is great. We actually talked about AI for so long afterwards, like two hours, we're stuck in hang. And then I was with Brent Daniels. He does the wholesale hotline with Jamil Danji and page Morby. And then he has his own podcast, which we did a great time and it was really great. And so by the way, they way most there, you know, have you ever been in a way I've been completely autonomous. You get in. It's the weirdest thing. No one's Ryan.
Justin Piche (02:12)
in a way,
Nobody drive.
Clay Hepler (02:18)
It was a 30 minute drive from my hotel to Phoenix Airport this morning and on that way is I had a conversation with the broker and that is the crux of this conversation. And really what it came down to man is inexperienced investors are killing the reputation of investors like you and me because they don't trust us. So here's a deal, we get this deal on our contract in Kentucky, okay?
We get on a contract in Kentucky, not the greatest deal, but we say, hey, you know what? We can wholesale this. We could double close on this. Or maybe we just buy and list it. We're buying it for $22, which is lower than what we normally buy. We're like, we'll probably list it for $50, right? So I find a local guy, or my disposal associate finds a local broker. Guy is a land broker. He has 80 listings. mean, the guy is a land broker.
Justin Piche (03:10)
That's a lot of listings for any one person. I'm sure he has a team.
Clay Hepler (03:13)
He's got a team.
so, but this guy has been in the business for 20 years. Okay. So we hit it off. He goes out to the property and he's like, man, this is, this will be good. The neighbor actually said, Hey, would you, ⁓ are you listening to properties? Like, I'm looking for the buyer. He's buying it. He's probably, know, or the, the seller, he thought I was the seller. I'm listening for the seller. and yeah, of course I'd take an offer. So he gets an offer from this guy, right?
⁓ this guy is, I'm like, shoot, man, this is going to be great. I'll double close it. So we have an icon for 22. We're going to sell it for 39. I'll take that hit. I'll take that hit. But he starts to get sketchy. He's like, well, we just sent it over to the title company and you guys don't own it. And I said, look, I got on a call with him a couple of days ago. said, Hey man, this is, we do this all the time. Double closing, whatever.
Justin Piche (04:03)
own it.
Clay Hepler (04:13)
And he starts to get like ghosting me over the last couple of days. So the crux of this podcast is this conversation that I'm having in this way, right? So I get on a call with him, 30 minute call. And he's like, I looked you up online and I looked up your company. read all your and he starts to get really sketched out. He's like, there's so many land scams, which is true. There are a ton of land scams. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We dealt with, we dealt with them. Right. But the problem is
Justin Piche (04:35)
I mean, I've dealt with multiple.
Clay Hepler (04:43)
how do you tell if you're a broker, if you're a seller, how do you tell the difference between a land scam and inexperienced investor, which is basically a land scam, and you and me? And that is the point of this podcast. So how do you differentiate yourself as a business? And I'll go into the conversation, the end of the conversation is pretty crazy, but I'll go into the end of the conversation towards the end of this podcast, but tell me how you differentiate yourself.
Justin Piche (05:11)
Well, one we have, we are honest with people. Like that's, that's like the number one thing. If we were doing a double close, the seller knows we're doing a double close.
So we may do test marketing on a property, but with no intent to actually double close it, with 100 % intent to close and then sell. So I think that's probably the most important thing. Secondly, we do exactly what we say we're gonna do.
So if we're talking to somebody and we say, we're going to call you back in this time, or we're going to get this thing and then you're going to get an email from this title company or whatever, like all that stuff happens because we're actually doing our job. We're not just taking a contract and like holding it and then, you know, trying to sell it, not going to title and paying any money to title until after we found the buyer, et cetera. Like there's actually a title work happening on this. One thing we don't have to deal with though from a broker's perspective,
The only deal right now that I have a broker listing that I haven't already purchased is an entitlement deal. So like it's pretty normal to be listing and selling an entitlement deal to find a buyer, find a builder for it when you don't own it yet because you have this long contract. So that's, and it was pretty clear upfront that I wasn't the owner of the land. So I didn't really have to deal with that so much. Hmm.
Clay Hepler (06:34)
So you're saying you're basically saying hey, know do I'm gonna stick to what I say do I'm gonna be honest But what happens if that doesn't work and that's the point of this conversation. Okay, so this guy looks me up online he's like, I see you have a YouTube and I see your your wife and and Your Instagram and everything like that. And so he's like my parents have been scammed twice ⁓ They were buying a piece of land
and they put $15,000 down and they were gonna owner financing, the guy left. I've been scammed once on land and how do I know you're legit? How do I know you're legit? And so I said, look, this is important for investors to number one, do. They have to have transparent conversations.
have a online presence, have a Google My Business profile. That's huge. Google My Business profile is huge. Maybe a Trustpilot profile. Even though the Better Business Bureau was set up by the mob, I don't know if you knew that, did you know that? Literally set up by the mob, Better Business Bureau. Look it up, Italian mob, total fake, but boomers, which is the majority of our buying and selling profile, they, ⁓
love the Better Business Bureau. So having those types of third party credibility, whether that's on social media or these places, will immediately establish yourself as a non tire kicker. I think honesty is a big thing. If I get on the call with a seller, or a broker, I never get on calls with seller actually anymore. But if I get on a call with a broker, or I have to get into to make sure that a seller is you know, is like, Hey, I'm
I'm going to back out whatever I'm feeling comfortable. That doesn't ever happen. But in that case, I would jump in. I just say, yeah, I can totally understand. I lead with honesty and transparency. I can understand why you feel this way. Check us out online, but making sure you have a legitimate website. You have a legitimate Google My Business profile. If you don't maybe Trustpilot or maybe Better Business Bureau or some other form of verification.
Justin Piche (08:38)
Yep.
Clay Hepler (08:50)
It's so weird, man. People trust Google My Business more than they trust the title company.
Have you noticed that?
Justin Piche (09:01)
Established credibility for us from from sellers or buyers. We've had multiple times when people have been like, I don't know You know, this is some kind of scam and we're like no like this is the title company. working with We have title opened up here Why don't you give them a call? I won't even give you their number just Google them and call the phone number that you get from Google and Ask about scat land group or ask about land legacy partners or whatever like ask about us We've done hundreds of transactions with this title company or that title company or whatever it is and that's worked every time we've ever like been in
out and needed to establish credibility. However, I'm sure there's other times where we didn't even know, right, that the person didn't want to work with us or didn't call us back because they thought we were not credible, right? I'm sure that's a, there's a lot of that that probably happens. mean, we're some marketing to thousands of people.
Clay Hepler (09:50)
So I think that there's the third party credibility, which is super important, right? Google my business. ⁓ Better Business Bureau Trust Pilot. You know what I love to do? I love to get testimonials from sellers. So we have video testimonials from sellers that we will send. What do you typically do to get that?
Justin Piche (10:06)
Yeah.
We do for that. Yeah, because
we I mean, we've looked at it a whole bunch of times. And it's always been right. That's what I've told that I like give my gift card or whatever, give them cash. But it's always been something that has fallen below all of the other priorities. We've never really put test.
Clay Hepler (10:17)
I pay them money.
Dude, testimonials can't be more important. You can't fake them. It's like, you know, when someone comes to, perfect example, right? There is the testimonials, which is third party, then there's like you talking on this podcast, dude. You sound like you know what you're doing. Hopefully people think I sound like I know what doing, right? They're like, this guy's like, why is he on this podcast? Get him off, right? But ⁓ that, like just being able to speak.
Cohesively up with confidence and clarity about a specific subject gives you authority right? Yeah, cuz you can't I I have a BS detector I think I have a good BS detector and you can tell pretty quickly if you listen to enough podcast 52 podcast 53 on this one Who's legitimate or not? ⁓
But that's why we love the testimonials, My point was, people come to you to invest with you. People come to me. They want to invest with me. They want to do deals. They want to do coaching with you, whatever, because we actually execute. We actually know what we're doing. But the testimonials are this. And so you can think about lining this up. think about three. Like if you're thinking about a bowling alley, but you have three pins. First pin is online. Google, Facebook.
Credibility you can have Facebook post to Google my you know I keep forgetting better business bureau trust pilot then you have that the center one is the testimonials right a video testimonial nothing is better than that and then you have your profile your online profile and so in your your your business and so That you can always just point to that right, but illegitimate investors. Don't spend the time to do that
They don't spend the time to build up the credibility online. imagine the biggest credibility would be like a real estate broker.
Justin Piche (12:23)
Right, with 80 listings.
Clay Hepler (12:25)
Right. ⁓ That has their name on the line and say, I like Clay, I've worked with Clay, he's a good high integrity guy with like his branding on it. Get out of here.
Justin Piche (12:37)
We've done that on, we have Facebook reviews. So I guess we do have some reviews. We don't have anything on our landing page. ⁓
Yeah, I think that I agree. I agree. Getting a broker to do one of our brokers did that with us and I think that was helpful. We've also gotten bad reviews from people that have never worked with us before. So that's the other side of reviews on Google and Facebook is it kind of sucks. This is just a quick aside and we'll get back to the real topic which is what are inexperienced land investors doing that is making it harder for the rest of us to do business. But we developed this property.
barren, scarred, timbered land. 50 acres, clear cut. I mean, anybody who's been in the land space knows what a clear cut property looks like. It's bad. It looks terrible. So I bought it really cheaply. It's in Alabama. 50,000 for 50 acres, 48 acres. It's like a thousand an acre. Road cutting through the middle of it. So with water line and power. So water, power, road cutting through the middle of it.
There were some houses around, but it was pretty rural.
So I bought it. I put about $45,000 into it. had bulldozers clear the stumps and like clear everything down to dirt for the first like front half of the property. It was eight, five to seven acre tracks basically. So the first half of all the property off the road got totally cleared for grass to grow and like for plants to grow. So it wasn't just this barren wasteland anymore. And then I sold the lots and it ended up being a fantastic deal. think I, my total, I did it
all cash. My total investment was like 88, 89,000. I think our gross profit at the end of it after we sold all the notes was like 110. Let's go. So it's good. It was a good deal. It was a good deal. However, because of that deal, I got one horrible Facebook review from somebody that was like, this company just comes into your town and they just split up land and sell it off to anybody or like something like that. Like, yeah, like we turn crappy land into something somebody wants to live on.
Like we're providing the American dream. Yeah, the American dream. We're making it affordable. We owner financed it. Like there's so many things we did. I think that we're good. We created value out of something that was had very low value.
Clay Hepler (15:02)
But yeah, those those dude those properties are the worst. You actually did you beautify the neighborhood?
Justin Piche (15:04)
They are the worst.
Yeah,
I mean, it didn't work. didn't look great, right? Because it was still barren in the back. Not barren, it was totally packed and tree limbs and stumps and stuff in the back acreage. the front, people could see, it's like, wow, they really cleared this land. All the stumps were gone. It's not like it was perfect virgin dirt, nice and smoothed over. But it was like, we could put a build pad here. We could put a driveway. We can plant grass. We could put trees. We don't have to wade through thicket of random tiny trees and stumps and stuff.
Yes. Anyway, okay. So back to, and one thing I'll say real quick for newer land investors who might be listening, you are not a scammer. Like we get it. You're not a scammer. We've been there. We started there, but you need to quickly establish a level of credibility online or else you might get confused for a scammer. Right. Especially with buyers and sellers. That's the big, the big challenge.
Clay Hepler (15:38)
I do know.
Yep.
Yeah,
I think that the inexperienced investor makes us seem illegitimate because they communicate once and never again. They make a call, they don't follow up. They say that they're gonna do something they don't. And the way that we buttress against the, hey, you guys are scammers, whatever, is you have an online presence, but you also do what you say you're gonna do. I love that point that you made earlier.
And the reality is you just see every other guru, dude, I get it all the time. These guys are like buying this info lot, whatever in Florida, or I see all these people popping up, selling courses and they teach the wrong thing. ⁓ I think in general, there is a level of professionalism and integrity that true business owners have. Well, I wouldn't say true business owners. Some business owners have, some people don't.
And you have to fight against the tide of the people that we were talking about in a previous podcast that have came in scorched earth and they're like, ⁓ shoot, I don't actually run a legitimate business. And one of the key things is accountability in communication, which is calling someone up saying, I'm gonna call you up. I'm actually gonna call you in the time I say I'm gonna call you. So that's why I think man, they're just.
People are tearing through the reputations of land investors. That's what to do with house slippers. Investors are like developers. Developers are good for a lot of communities, but people just glaze over and they just make hasty generalizations. And then we have to fight that.
Justin Piche (17:48)
Yeah, I agree. There's a lot of, I think, misconceptions of most quality land investors. One is, I've seen this before, and this is true of wholesalers, this is a complaint against wholesalers as well, is you just call up old people and take their property from them and then make a bunch of money on the backside. Things like that. And there are people that do that. I specifically talk to my team.
about if anybody sounds like they need or should have somebody else involved in this decision, you cannot sign a contract with them. Like you've gotta get somebody involved. And on no less than 10 occasions we've asked them to speak, if they have like family members we can also speak to. Because I would call it amoral, right? Yes. Amoral rather is the right thing, not without morals, but no morals or anti-moral, I guess, if you will, to do that type of thing.
Clay Hepler (18:44)
So the step by step process is like at the base level, there's like the macro thing, there's the philosophy, it's like do what you say you're gonna do, and then you can start to build up the actual ⁓ presence online. So like how do you start this? Like Google my business, you can get a Google my business profile pretty easily, and you just gotta pay to play with ⁓ websites.
Justin Piche (19:03)
Yeah, you gotta have a website.
I it's,
think, I mean, you don't, you don't have to have a website to actually operate a business, but if you want more credibility and less people thinking that you're a scam, you need to have some sort of website that talks about who you are. And I think the no name websites at this point are a disadvantage. I think if you have a website that just says that's basically like a carrot site or some kind of like generic sales by land for cash now website, I think you're at a disadvantage when it comes to establishing.
Hey guys, Justin here interrupting our podcast to say thank you for listening. Today, Clay and I are talking about some of the mistakes that new investors make that make it more challenging for the rest of us. How do you not make those mistakes? And I share a story at the end of this podcast about a mistake that I recently made and lessons I learned from it. So stay tuned to the end. Now back to your regularly scheduled programming. Well, think without any personal stuff on there, you know, and I think I'm open to people pushing back on this. So I'm not saying that I'm like the absolute
right thing. My belief is that adding your own kind of personality, a photo of you, like a little bit about your story, yeah, it opens you up to kind of like less privacy online because now your like story is on your, you know, on your website, but it does add to your credibility. And if we're talking about establishing credibility as a land investor, then that's an easy step someone can make is like actually put themselves on their website, stay behind their brand.
Clay Hepler (20:32)
Right, I agree with you. think the boilerplate website is
Justin Piche (20:36)
Nothing against carrot or SEO optimized like sales websites. No, they're those those serve a great purpose I just mean the no name ones the ones with no face no name a generic business photo of some guy You know holding a calculator or some random thing like that, you know that type of website ⁓
Clay Hepler (20:43)
Yes.
You ever
like the shop images? Yeah. Like a guy with like...
Justin Piche (20:58)
Yeah, it thoughtful. right, right. Like a little background. You know who has like the best website?
Clay Hepler (21:01)
background with like windows.
I know who you're gonna say. Who? No.
Justin Piche (21:09)
Yes, that's
exactly what I was going to say.
Clay Hepler (21:11)
He spent a lot of money on that one.
Justin Piche (21:14)
He is he's Josiah Josiah Rocco is amazing amazing guy friend We were just yeah, he his website that it's amazing and his video dude Best video from any land investor. I have seen just like immediate trust Like sitting down with Pete like amazing amazing. Yeah. I sent that to my to my ass manager I was like look at this website like
Clay Hepler (21:22)
It's amazing.
testimonials are in there.
He crushed it.
Justin Piche (21:42)
We need to do something better. We don't need to copy it. Obviously it's like it's his website, but like we need something better than what.
Clay Hepler (21:49)
Yeah, I that I love that just said yeah, he is amazing. He's an amazing website Yeah, so I mean a world part the
Put some personality. You know what's something that we did do as well is so we had the prong approach. I told you three bowling balls or the bowling pins. But we also have a credibility packet that we created. So we say, hey, we've done this subdivide. We've done this flip in this county in this area. Here's me. Here's my executive team. And we send it to every single person that comes in. So we have a credibility packet. Text and email.
Justin Piche (22:24)
Send it via email.
Text an email. Yeah, that's legit. I like that.
Clay Hepler (22:28)
People come in and it's like, here's our credibility pack. Here's the CEO. Here's our acquisition manager. Here's our COO. This is the universities. Here's their background. Here's quick write up.
Justin Piche (22:40)
I love that. That's a great idea. And it's a simple automation. Somebody submits their email. Boom. Boom. You send it.
Clay Hepler (22:44)
Simple.
Yeah, or right, what we like to do is right after the lead manager qualification call. Because at that point...
Justin Piche (22:54)
regardless
of what they fall into just send it. Told you in the last podcast, I take something away every time we talk.
Clay Hepler (22:57)
That's a great idea. So we do it right after.
So right after the lead minute you qualify them like, look, before the next call, feel free to check this out. And immediately we have credibility. So we never deal with that issue because, check out this subdivide that we did. We work with this seller. ⁓ here's a testimony from this seller on this subdivide deal. Here's a testimony for this seller on this flip. And we probably have like six, seven deals in there ⁓ in the Canva, like literally showing before, afters, drone shots.
Justin Piche (23:11)
Yeah.
Clay Hepler (23:31)
testimonials from sellers. And just do the sellers read it? Yeah, they probably open it up and read it like we see the open, but it's an instant credibility. So that's
Justin Piche (23:42)
Yeah
It
does have an air of professionalism. It does. 99%. We did, what we did on our acquisitions website was I changed it. So when I started, it was, it was a, it was a, ⁓ a pebble website, like one of the, one of their lead, whatever one. And it worked. mean, it worked fine. Right. ⁓ but it was, it was one of their templates. So I like, didn't put a lot of effort into it. I was just starting my business. I was like, I just need something to capture leads from my mail. If people end up wanting to check me out online, they go there. I get, I get this, this form submission and like, I have a lead that I
can call. But then we started doing a lot more developments.
and targeting subdivides and targeting market price on high quality subdivide land, right? Not necessarily needing to get any kind of discount to market. We just needed the right area where we could force appreciation. And we changed the brand completely from like a we buy land cash type of a brand to a land legacy partners. Like we can joint venture. Our goal is to get you the most value for your land. We can subdivide. And we started putting blog posts of like subdivides that we'd done. So like write ups.
pictures, stuff like that on the website. It's not great because I stopped doing it. I could probably update it with 50 more sub-devices. We've done it. I probably should or just tell somebody to do it. Although most of the information is up here, right? Because I remember how the project went and what issues and challenges we had. But that was kind my idea for credibility was why don't we just have it on our website of the types of projects we've done. So when people come to us, they can see similar projects. They can say, this is what they did in this land. This is what they did in this land.
longer feel like you're just trying to make a quick buck off of them by flipping their parcel they think these people legitimately like improve this land and which which a lot of cases we do.
Clay Hepler (25:28)
I like that. Yeah, so it's just like again
the different type of testimonial, but you're showing them, we've actually executed these projects in this specific way. Here's how we've helped people. Here's what people have said about us. And you're just having these little nuances at every stage of the, you you think about it like a customer journey, right? So we reach out to people outbound, right, or inbound, whatever it is, and they're looking for our service, which is I want to exchange my equity and my land for cash. And so throughout the whole customer journey, by doing what we say we're gonna do throughout the whole,
customer journey, we'll call you on this date at this time by setting credibility and slowly dripping, it becomes their more credibility. It's like, you know, imagine you were teleported into 2025 and everyone in the world had iPhones. You'd be like, everyone has the same phone. You like didn't know anything about an iPhone. You'd be like, okay, well what tell me about the iPhone. They'd show you the iPhone and then you'd be like, that's pretty interesting. And you check out other phones, but you keep seeing everyone has the iPhone. And so you'd be like, there's some credibility here because everyone else is
using it. And so that's the same thing that we think about with the customer journey, kind of having that credibility through, everyone's worked with a
Justin Piche (26:37)
Yeah.
and his team.
Yeah, no, I like that.
Clay Hepler (26:43)
So long story short with this conversation. So I'm in the way Mo, we're getting close to the airport and basically the way I ended it was like, look, Brad, he's a guy's Check us out in all these ways and I'll just CC you at the title company. We'll just CC you when we're doing a double close with the title company. And so he is the our broker, but he's also representing the seller, right?
And so I was like, look, we'll be totally transparent. I err on the side of being excessively transparent.
right, could have blow up the deal, maybe, maybe not. But I'm saying we'll literally, you're not a part of this transaction, the buy side, but we'll show you exactly what's going on. You'll know exactly what's going on. Cause we're, he's like, I needed a title, the title, ⁓ I'm like, well, it's going to be weird because we're buying it. It's not going to be like the same exact one from us to you or us to the seller. It's going be a little different. ⁓ but so that's why I'm going to actually put you on here. So I think it comes down to like problem solving, Like, you just got to problem solve. ⁓
And that's how I think you can establish more credibility ⁓ as a land investor in general.
Justin Piche (27:57)
What are some of the hardest things to overcome as an experienced land investor when there's a problem that comes up in some deal or whatever that you know was caused by an experienced land investor? Like what are the things, what are the common problems that you run into? And maybe I'll start because I have one propped in my head that I'm thinking of specifically. ⁓ It's the somebody else has this property under contract.
and the seller has forgotten or doesn't even know it because they haven't heard anything from that investor in months. I have seen this happen a dozen times where we have gotten something under contract only to find out there is another contract somewhere on this property and the seller had no idea. They were like, I haven't heard from that guy in six months.
But somehow he has signed some like crazy long contract or a random memory. We've got a deal right now where somebody filed a memorandum of contract and never released it a long time ago. Another land investor. So anyway, that's something that popped into my mind. Have you ever dealt with that? I have. Yeah.
Clay Hepler (29:13)
look i mean i also you get competing bits from people you know the other land investors trying to buy land and i just scorched the earth i tell my guys just scorch here just say how much money are they putting down how much they're in this money they put down how serious are them because most land investors can't just throw down 10k so i'll just
Justin Piche (29:31)
Yeah, that's true.
They actually try not to. I mean, on the flip side, like don't want to tie up 10k. I usually do 1%. But even still, that means I don't. Yeah, because at most of the time, have a lot of money out. Yeah.
Clay Hepler (29:37)
Exactly.
don't even do 10, 1%.
Justin Piche (29:50)
That's operating cash that could be used for other things. it does. did talk to the team about kind of lowering that recently. like, guys, I've got a lot of money in earnest right now. Let's dial it back a little.
Clay Hepler (30:00)
Yeah,
right, right. So that's, yeah, so when we're competing against another person, that's what we do. But yeah, think the biggest thing is like, this property's been under contract two or three times. I'm not trying to BS with this. I don't want a long contract. I want it to be 30 days. You guys want 60 days. I don't want to deal with that. Have you experienced that?
Justin Piche (30:24)
Yeah, like the feedback from the seller. Yeah, yeah, many times. ⁓ Like I don't understand why you need three months or four months to sell it to buy this. And in most cases, it's like we will we don't if it's a really good deal, we're buying it deep enough at this price, we don't need that much time. At this price, we need a little more time.
Clay Hepler (30:26)
Exactly.
Exactly.
Exactly. But the problem is that that's what it comes down to. Here's the biggest one that I think you and I have not touched on that we're of skirting over that we don't really realize. Other land investors setting unrealistic prices.
Justin Piche (30:59)
expectations. ⁓
Clay Hepler (31:03)
People can't
well, right? And so you have these guys that aren't comp ⁓
Justin Piche (31:07)
use a
service like maybe I shouldn't name drop certain pricing services that send your mail for you.
Clay Hepler (31:16)
Right.
That's right. I have this letter here, Justin, that is 30 % higher than yours. Why is that?
Justin Piche (31:24)
Yeah, already know.
They offer you offer me 70 there. I already have an offer for 100.
Clay Hepler (31:29)
That's right. That's right. And so that then becomes a sales thing. And are you going to logic someone's way out of logic? Probably not.
Justin Piche (31:39)
Yeah, is challenging to overcome that. I mean, there's obvious talk tracks. Is it assigned an executed offer? Are you in title?
Clay Hepler (31:41)
So.
Right.
Exactly. Right.
Justin Piche (31:50)
Did it come in like a, did they write you a nice letter with an offer number and like your APN and they didn't sign it yet? Or is it like a printed signature from like a printing press? Like there's a lot of questions you can ask to try to determine like the legitimacy of that offer.
Clay Hepler (32:05)
So how much earnest money is down on that? Oh, when's their closing date? so you have, did you sign it in DocuSign or did you say, well I haven't signed it yet. Oh.
Justin Piche (32:14)
Why not? There's something telling you in your heart of hearts that it is not a lie.
Clay Hepler (32:16)
Right.
Exactly.
that's I dude I think that's the most nefarious one people just throwing out numbers because you got the guys that are coming from the infield lot world and they want to wholesale everything and so everyone's trying to wholesale stuff and so not only you're dealing with the I've had this thing on a contract for
Justin Piche (32:32)
Yeah.
Clay Hepler (32:39)
six months and I want to close if you're getting on a contract. I want more in this money because the guy didn't put any on his mind down and I want to I want this thing closing 30 days. That's impossible Mr. Seller and and just along with that you're offering me 25,000 and this guy was I was in a contract for 45,000. Exactly exactly but that's hard to swallow.
Justin Piche (32:49)
Yeah.
Well, that's why you didn't close.
Yeah, it is hard as well.
Clay Hepler (33:04)
Because it's the sunk cost while I had this, right? I think that's the biggest one. I mean, there's the, don't, like we were talking about earlier, what Brad, this agent and I.
How do I know you're legit? can handle that through building an online presence, credibility testimonies, all that stuff. But dude, I think that the people throwing out crazy numbers and also brokers throwing out crazy numbers.
Justin Piche (33:33)
brokers are
the worst. They're the worst. And let me say real quick, I know a ton of fantastic brokers. If you're a broker and you're a great, legitimate broker, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You provide an incredible service. But man, there are so many brokers that are inexperienced and they're in sales too, right? They only make money if they earn commission. They only earn commission if they get the listing. They usually get the listing if they tell people they can sell it for the most money.
Clay Hepler (33:41)
You know what?
That's
That's right. So whenever a broker's in the conversation, I actually had a deal that some guy submitted to me, okay? I was on the, we have a school community, right? Lamine school community. And last night I was on this call with this guy and he sent a blind offer to this seller for like 60,000.
the broker has it listed for 300,000 with a photo of the survey from like the county courthouse. It's like a picture. So I underwrote it with this guy's like, you know, we were on the call together. I underwrote it with the guy and dude, it's worth 180,000. And so I'm like,
Justin Piche (34:52)
Was it worth like 200? 180? Yeah, okay.
Clay Hepler (34:58)
Dude, offer 80. He's like, what would you find out? I like, probably 100, probably 100, maybe 90, whatever. But the dude, it broke. It's like a blurry plot map in like an off-color yellow room, like not all the lights look like they're on. And it's like a zoomed in. was just, it's so. And here's the funniest thing. He calls the buyer, the guy that wants funding.
Justin Piche (35:17)
Poor seller.
Clay Hepler (35:24)
calls this seller and he's like, well, what is the broker said? He's the seller is like, I haven't been able to get a hold of him in like two or three weeks.
So in other words, we're dealing with a lot of different people. And so we were talking earlier on 52, right, episode 52 about ⁓ the compression, the slinky of information arbitrage, right? But that is not helped by wholesalers asking too much and brokers asking too much. So that comes down to sales ability and your own credibility. What else do you think?
Justin Piche (35:40)
Yeah.
Yeah, no, no, I agree. I think also systems and follow-up and persistence is what makes a legitimate operator more successful. If you just say okay to the no, like if you're just like cool with the no, know, they're like, somebody else offered me 300K. My broker says it's worth 300,000, so no. And that's the end of that deal for you. You're not gonna be as successful.
I think legitimate operators realize that. mean, land sales is not the same as house sales.
in a lot of different ways. But one of the key ways is that generally with a home or house, if somebody wants to move the property for lower the market value, it's because they have a need for that money, because they have some debt payment or they have something really wrong with the house and it's costing them a lot of money. Land is pretty cheap to hold in almost all places. It's relatively cheap to hold, usually doesn't have leverage against it. There isn't like this credible need for most sellers. Sometimes they come up, right? And so it's almost like opportunity.
We could send the same mailer, you and I, to the same place or have our teams call the same location and you're gonna pull some deals out of it and I'm gonna pull some deals out of it. And it's just because we're talking to that person on that day at that time. And there are like...
There are legitimate needs to sell and if you can identify those needs lists and list stacking and getting, there's totally those niche legitimate lists. ⁓ But for the most part, it's kind of more opportunistic. So if you're in the back of that seller's mind because you have had a conversation with them, you've established credibility in their minds, and then every so often you reach out to them, you will win more deals than folks that don't do that for sure.
Clay Hepler (37:50)
Yes, sir. I'm with you. ⁓ Any last minute takeaways, man, before we eat? This is a short and sweet episode. think very valuable, because it's a pain point, man. We all feel it.
Justin Piche (38:00)
We all feel it. I mean, I don't want this to come off as like a woe is me, like new investors are making it harder for the rest of us. Because it's not like that. But if you're a new investor, take some of these words of advice, establish legitimacy, and make sure you have your numbers dialed in. That's why I really don't love blind offers, frankly. I'm not the biggest fan of blind offers, just because when you're dealing with the way most people do it,
is they take too much data and do like too broad of a geographic area and price. And I was guilty of this. I did range offers, I never did blind, but I did ranged offers and I would go by county.
like whole county to do pricing. man. I know, right? And we got deals from it, but we also got when we mispriced a mailer, we got so many calls, so many calls. And you could always tell it's like the properties you really want to buy near the population centers, you offered way too low for them to bother calling you back. And the properties that suck on the edge of civilization, you offered way too much money. And there's only a couple of properties that you were generally right on. And so, ⁓
That's what kind of leads to this. I was that inexperienced investor offering too much on properties. Now that's it. That was This is a good topic. ⁓
Clay Hepler (39:11)
It's funny, man.
Yeah, I would echo that like, look, like, there it is a responsibility that we all have as entrepreneurs to carry the torch of, of like, this is me. This is how I think but like, conducting business in an ethical way, right in a way with integrity. And that comes down all the way down to doing what you say you're going to do. And that reflects on how your online presence is right. So
We have this amazing responsibility to build these incredibly profitable businesses and we can do it ethically. I think we, I take a different approach. I think we should bash the people and call the people out that are doing it in an unethical way because it's not cool to the people and the sellers that are.
experiencing it and just people not being able to conduct business transparency. If you're going to wholesale a deal, just tell the person you're going to wholesale it. That's fine. So if you're listening to this and you do that, I'm talking to you. ⁓ But yeah, dude, that's
Justin Piche (40:25)
Actually, I had something popping in my head. Yeah, go go go. ⁓ I So we got my team got a property under contract And this is this can happen to anybody but let me just I'm gonna maybe just tell you what happened to me I got this property under contract in Tennessee five acres ⁓ This is one my team got like I didn't even look at this property. I never valued it I never comped it it was comp by the team. We got it under contract. We put earnest money down. We shot drone I think we intended on buying it
title took forever, and so we burned.
And at that time in our process, we did not have as quick of a sales feedback loop, like where we get the proper dinner contract on acquisitions. It goes to sales to price. You were actually just talking about on the APT brothers podcast. Yep. The video. I watched that this morning. You look great. I watched the video. thanks bro. I put it on two times speed. So was pretty fast. Yeah, but it was good. And you talked about this and got me thinking about this example of a time where we did not have a quick enough sales feedback cycle.
Clay Hepler (41:28)
Okay.
Justin Piche (41:29)
And so we waited all the way until we had all the drone work back and all the title work back, which took like two months. ⁓ And so we're, we've only got like a month left in our timeline to buy this property. And I think like there are things happening. like fell down the thing. And then finally we valued it. And we're like, wow, we paid way too much. Like we can't buy this. We're buying it all basically at market value, you know, and we had to cancel the contract.
And the seller was an older lady. And her daughter found me and like messaged me these crazy long messages on LinkedIn, on Facebook, like very angry at me. And I like, I felt really bad.
was like my mom was relying on this money like this was like huge expectation you guys just backed out at the last minute and I felt like terrible but like I you know it's my responsibility as a business owner to like make sure right like that don't happen and it's not like I was trying to screw this woman by any stretch it's just we had 60 properties under contract people were overworked we just missed it you know we just missed it ⁓
And so like you can make honest mistakes. You know, I was, I tried to be as polite as I can, ⁓ to, I was polite, frankly, she just like attacked me back and I, I continue to be as like polite as I could kind of explain what happened. ⁓ I even offered to say, Hey, look, we will sell this property for you. Like for, like free, like we won't make any money. We will just like keep the lit, like create a listing for this and use our buyer pool. she never replied to it. I tried to make it right, but it's still like, I still think about kind of how they felt.
by me without any ill will of any kind like I didn't try to wrong anybody so it can happen even to people who are trying to operate legitimately and
Clay Hepler (43:20)
100 %
100 % yeah, well look Guys, this is the first episode of the second year of the ground game podcast Thank you as always for listening if you got benefit from this podcast, please rate review and subscribe down below We will be returning to our Riverside won't be in person not as dynamic, but we will
Justin Piche (43:41)
Yeah.
Clay Hepler (43:44)
Keep bringing the heat every single week. Again, we always appreciate you guys and how you show you appreciate us and give us amazing topic ideas is rate reviews, subscribe, leave me some comments down below. We appreciate it. Justin, my man.
Justin Piche (43:57)
No, that's it. We'll see you guys next week.