Leadership in Land
Leadership in Land is a podcast for land investors who believe better decisions are made together. Hosted by Dave Denniston, this show focuses on the leadership side of land investing, how to think clearly, act responsibly, and grow with integrity in a business that is often misunderstood. Each episode draws from real-world experience, honest conversations, and the shared wisdom of investors who value collaboration over competition. As part of the REtipster Podcast Network, Leadership in Land is built for investors who care about long-term success, strong character, and learning from others who are walking the same path.
Leadership in Land
The KPI That Changed His Land Business with Josiah Ronco
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Episode 9: I sit down with Josiah Ronco to talk about leadership, systems, and what it really takes to grow a successful land investing business.
Josiah shares how he went from working as a guitar tech to building a streamlined land business with clear KPIs, forecasting systems, and a focused team structure. We also talk about business coaching, quarterly planning, and the tools helping his company stay organized and profitable.
If you’re a land investor looking to improve your leadership skills, simplify your operations, and scale with more clarity, this conversation is packed with practical insights.
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You're listening to the R.E. Tipster Podcast Network. Okay, so quick question for you. Have you heard of our school community? I just want to make sure to invite you to check that out. If you're listening to this episode, it's actually kind of old to be honest with you. And so if you want our latest, if you want our greatest content, we're putting out real conversations about leadership, decision making, building a land business that actually works in the real world. Get inside our school community where you get access to the free leadership course, plus bonus episodes, discussions, and insights that honestly just don't make it onto the podcast. So if you're serious about this, you want to learn more about leadership, get in the community, check it out, leadershipinland.com or school.com slash leadership in land. All right, let's get in the episode. Hey everybody, welcome back to another Leadership in Land podcast course, whatever this is that I'm gonna be calling it. I am uh honored to continue to try and help over a thousand different land investors to be the best leader that they can be. I am honored to have on the podcast with me a good buddy. We've we've spent some time in Puerto Rico together. He's hung out at the Landun conference, just a super cool dude that is running a killer land business. I am honored to have with us Josiah Ronko. Josiah, what's up?
SPEAKER_01Hey, how's it going?
SPEAKER_00I'm good. I'm good. We spent like the last 20 minutes just catching it and shooting the freeze. I was like, we got a podcast to record. We gotta do this. If people want to kind of learn about your background, which one do you think was super cool that they should check out if they want to know about your background?
SPEAKER_01Uh-huh. I don't know. I think um honestly, I feel like we've gotten into it on most of them. Maybe like the first time I was on Land Academy, also the RE Tipster, the first episode I did there. I think we get fairly into my background of being like a guitar tech and all that stuff, and background in real estate before getting into land.
SPEAKER_00It's blown me away as I've done these these interviews, and we'll make sure to link some of those in the show notes if people want to check those out. What's blown me away uh is just how diverse so many land investors come from so many backgrounds. And you you, as a guitar tech doing what what you did, like um, what did you consider yourself like as a leader? Like, did was there any kind of leadership role that you had there? Or was it just more kind of like uh okay, I'm doing this and just doing my job well?
SPEAKER_01No, there was I did two or three tours where I was also the stage manager, in addition to the guitar tech, and honestly, I did a horrendous job as being a stage manager. The only reason the wheels stayed on the proverbial bus there was uh just because they were such there was uh they were very small production tours, so there wasn't a whole lot for me to screw up, but I I did not do a good job. Like it's cringy when I think about it. I mean, that was ten years ago, so uh very different time, but yeah, it was pretty cringy with uh when I was in a leadership position there. But as a guitar tech, not really I mean, no, not really. I was just in charge of a department of one. It was me, you know. So yeah.
SPEAKER_00I know, I know you've been so many places around the world, and and uh you're like, I don't want to leave home um like like you do now. Um and I would love for you to to tell us a bit uh about your land business and the team in particular that you have today. Like who's on your team, what do they do, what's that like?
SPEAKER_01Uh I have an acquisitions manager, a marketing director who also does she does marketing data pricing, she does all of our comping, and then we have a full-time transaction coordinator who does um the TC work, but also a lot of due diligence, keeping all she's really managing every file from the moment something goes under contract to all the way to when we sell that property eventually, you know, four, six, eight months down the road. She is managing that through the through the pipeline. Um so that's that's a theme. And we have a we have a business coach who's like a couple hours a week.
SPEAKER_00Um every week. Every week you got a business coach coming in.
SPEAKER_01Every week he he leads our we do EOS, like a light version of well, I I don't want to say light, alternate. We do like an alternate version of EOS. We don't stick to the book strictly. So he leads our weekly L10 every week, and then I do go one-on-one with him every week, and then my team has access to his calendar as well. So within reason, and they don't take advantage of it. Not like they don't take when I say advantage, I mean like in a negative way. They don't they don't take advantage of his calendar, but they have access to book one-on-ones with him as well.
SPEAKER_00Um let's let's dig more into that. Like this this guy is he's an E EOS like implementer, consultant kind of a guy, or like this dude.
SPEAKER_01Not like I don't know if I should say his name on the podcast, because even like I don't know how EOS how aggressive they are with like he doesn't advertise like EOS on his website or anything like that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. We don't we don't need the name, just like how how did you how did how did you find him? What what was that like?
SPEAKER_01So I found him on Upwork, and it was actually on the advice of Callum Faulkner, who had, I think, done EOS with an implementer, like a certified implementer, and it was a positive I think it's been a positive experience, but also from what she said and some other people said is like, hey, it's really expensive doing it that way, and they make you stick strictly to the book. And I was like, I don't really there because there's some stuff in the book, you know, that I'm just not too keen on. And uh so I found this guy on Upwork, he started in January, and it's been great. He leads, like I said, he leads the L10s, he also leads our quarterly meetings, well, about half of the quarterlies. So since January, we've we've now done three in-person quarterly meetings. So um the whole the whole team.
SPEAKER_00So I guess let me just take a let me take a step back and it's like you know, some sometimes in this business there's moments that we have. Like what led you? It sounded like you were influenced by Callan. Like what happened that you're like, I need this person in my business that you couldn't do on your own. It sounds like he's a vital role, you know, every week helping to lead meetings, stuff like that. Why why what happened that it's like, okay, I need this too.
SPEAKER_01Um I had read traction like three times at this point. I think I just felt like I'm pretty busy between my business and owning some rental properties and then just a lot of hobbies and everything. Um pretty busy dude. And I just felt like like I wanted help with just getting the ball rolling, you know? And so that so that's why I went this route of hiring the doing the doing the outside implementer thing.
SPEAKER_00Did you feel stuck that it's just like, okay, I like the concept, but I don't want to have to do all this myself?
SPEAKER_01Was that yeah, yeah, I felt a little stuck to get it rolling. Because I was getting stuck on like, do I have to create a core value speech? I don't even want to do that. Like, you know, stuff like that. Yeah. And I kind of felt stuck on the order to roll things out in. And honestly, I we had been doing weekly team meetings for almost a year already. And they were but they were really with me leading them. It was like there was no structure to it. It was just kind of like it was more of like a social hour, which was fine, you know, for connecting with everyone. It was like I said, it was we'd have a lot of fun and just like joke around a lot, but if we weren't really getting anything done. Um so now like having some structure to the meeting, um, as far as how we, you know, how we discuss issues, how we solve issues. And I just I kind of like that in the meeting I can kind of sit back and just participate and let's let our coach do his thing.
SPEAKER_00Um you're the first person I've I've talked with that is like hired uh an EOS coach, at least as far as I know, on the podcast so far. So I'm really curious to kind of dig dig into it. Like it seems like you haven't fired the dude, so it seems to be a good experience. Like what what's changed in your business since you you hired him? You know, how would you describe what the experience has been like?
SPEAKER_01I'd say the big the things that have changed that have affected me the most, like my day-to-day the most, are this might sound really simple to some people, but um we have a a really great working cash flow forecast now, and that was all I'm just gonna say his name, whatever. His name's so it was in our first one-on-one in January, we were just looking at um we were just talking about issues and everything, and I the issue I was having at the time was I was we were running low on cash, and I was stressed about it, and I told him that, and he was like, Well, what do you do now to figure out your position? And I was like, Well, whenever I feel like we're gonna, whenever I notice what I said there, when I feel we are gonna be running low on cash soon, go into Pebble, and then I build a little really simple Excel sheet over to the left on my on my other screen, and then I just put all the deals in there and then I total it up, and I'm like, oh, okay, uh, it looks like I don't have enough money, I better get some funding, or I'm gonna have to tap a line, whatever. And now what we and so I told him that, and he was just like, you need a cash flow forecast. And I literally had never even I didn't even know it. I knew what it was, like I didn't understand the words, but I was like, what's a cash flow forecast? Never had that. And so he just there's a lot of things like that where he's kind of just helped guide us to like what we need, and he's connected us with he's been great about connecting us with some people. Like we sort of have a I guess we sort of have a fractional CFO right now. Um this guy that Pete connected us with. Um not like an official fractional CFO, but he puts in a couple hours a month. We I do a call with him at least probably once a month, where we're talking about the cash flow forecast, we're looking at numbers and budgets and all that kind of stuff. And that has been really just really great. So I would say that's been a big difference, and we have a we've never had a KPI sheet, and we now have a working KPI sheet um that we we sort of retroactively punch numbers into there. So it goes back to January, January 1st. And then we're adding every few weeks, we've been adding another row here and there, like as we think of something that hey, we should start tracking this. And so that has also been really cool. I mean, to me, having a uh a KPI sheet that's legit is it's relieved a lot of stress for me because I think that now I can see as an example, like we might have a month of acquisitions where it's like it feels like it was slow. Um I can look at the data and say, well, we actually acquired you know $110,000 of gross pipeline profit last month. We're good. I mean, yeah, that didn't hit our goal. Uh if we keep doing that every month, if we keep doing that every month, we're gonna keep making money. Um having yeah, having a working KPI sheet, that's been really huge. And he was instrumental in just helping us get to that place.
SPEAKER_00Well, I'd I'd love to dig back into what you were saying earlier about cash flow, because I think it's one of those topics we don't talk about enough as land investors because you know we we have this awesome problem from time to time of we have like 200, 300, 400,000 or more in the bank. And then you have this roller coaster of crap, I have 30 or 40,000 in the bank. Am I going broke next month? You know, like and and the bigger you get, the the at least for me, I don't know if it's been true for you. Like, if I have below 100k in the bank, I'm kind of freaking out internally when I look at all of the costs.
SPEAKER_01I can't handle that.
SPEAKER_00And I mean the hardest part is, I mean, we we do these projections, right? Like you're talking about doing cash flow projections, but we have no flipping clue what's gonna sell next month or the month after or the month after that. Like for me, like for my business, we have a crap load of terms, and so is it guaranteed no? But I have a high probability of knowing some c cash flow is coming in every month. I know for you, for the most part, you have a lot of of cash sales, which is even more bumpy and you don't have the smoothness for the most part that I have. So, how how are you managing that and thinking about that with the the the fractional CFO type person and managing cash flow and projections? Like, how are you thinking about that? How are you maintaining your sanity? You know, what's what's in this crazy ups and downs? And um in a lot of cases, properties seem to be taking longer to sell this year for many of us. I don't know if it's true for you, but I know it's true for me in some many cases. A lot of properties aren't definitely aren't selling we thought they would.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Just pull I'm pulling it up here off to my other screen. Sorry, so it was the question kind of like how do I think about managing it?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, like how how has that changed in you? Like in you in your particular case, you're even probably you know bigger peaks and valleys than we are because we have a lot of terms coming in.
SPEAKER_01It's very lumpy. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I mean, we only have we have like four notes, four or five notes, so not not much.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I'd say the way I'm thinking about it right now is like to keep six months of our burn rate in cash.
SPEAKER_02So that's that's everyone's pay.
SPEAKER_01And that that's six months of burn with normal marketing spend. So you know, that's six months of just hard expense. That's with the marketing spend. Because obviously, if we're gonna be in business, we need to be spending money on marketing. So um, yeah, so I I I like to keep a minimum of six months of I guess operating expense uh in the bank. And then and then I guess from there we just kinda the forecast can go out as far as I want it to, but really it's only really useful. It's only useful as far out as we have contracts set to close. So for us, that's the furthest out closing date we have right now is not including double closes. The furthest out closing date we have is sometime the week of September 8th.
SPEAKER_02So a month out of a month out, basically.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I guess so. Yeah, in this case, yeah. So it's like we're not even going out the full eight weeks. I mean, I'm looking out eight weeks, but it's not really necessary to look out eight weeks. It's really um only necessary to look out to that. But the the forecast has just been um I mean for us, we we just have so many l little and big deals in the pipeline. I mean, if if we count it from everything that's in escrow to purchase all the way through to stuff that's in escrow to sell, and then our inventory and like everything in in between. I mean, it's a lot of it's like and and including double closes. We've got like fifty-eight deals in the pipeline right now. So it's like we're way past the point when I when it you know when I first started, it's like you know, you have maybe three properties in inventory and like one under contract to buy and two under contract to sell, whatever the numbers are. You know, it's like you could just figure that out in your head, yeah, really easily.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01It's funny because I'm kind of starting, we're actually my wife and I are starting to work on creating a budget for ourselves personally, which we've never done. Because again, it was like when it was just when we had like one house and you know, we're both working our W-2 job, and I got the rent, it's like you can just budget in your head. Like you don't need but then once you have if you have two houses and multiple vehicles and a bunch of rentals, and you know, you're spending more money. I mean, we spend a lot more money now than we did five years ago, because also it's like I'm spending money on trips like going to Puerto Rico or whatever. You know, you have more expenses when you make and uh so I think having a having a and actually this is something where at first I thought this cash flow forecast, so I'm kind of jumping around a little bit. I was just thinking about this. The cash flow forecast was something that I thought I would outsource to someone to fill out. Like I thought maybe I'd have our transaction coordinator fill it out every week. But now I'm starting to think like, you know what, even with a pipeline as big as ours is right now, it doesn't take me that long to keep this thing updated every week. I mean, it's like I'd say on average, it's like I don't know, maybe 20 minutes every Sunday that I spend on this. And to me, it's like it is crucial that I trust the numbers in here because this is what I'm basing so many decisions off of. So I'm a little bit like I also like to really be in touch with the numbers. It's kind of like the same as the KPI sheet. I think it's so it's such a high leverage activity to really know your numbers, um, and it doesn't take a lot of time. So this is something where for me, I just I like doing it myself. Um, like staying in touch.
SPEAKER_00What's what's on there, Josiah? Like what what are you what are you tracking? Like off the top of my head, I would think, okay, there's money in the bank, right? There's planned purchases, there's yeah, sales that are under escrow, there's um um labor costs, marketing costs, stuff like that. Am I missing anything here majorly? That's part of your thing.
SPEAKER_01No, you're basically hitting. I mean, we have like net proceeds from we have a cash inflows section, which is basically net proceeds from closings and and then payments from terms sales, and then we have cash outflows, which is like cost of land purchased, and then our budgeted amount for marketing. We spend a pretty consistent amount of money on land surveying and maintenance every month. And then, and then you know, payroll and setting aside money for payroll taxes, all that kind of stuff. The deal sheet for us is really it's it's a two-part sheet. I would show it, but it's got a lot of like very obviously like private stuff I'm not gonna share on here. But the deal sheet is kind of like well, basically the deal sheet, each row is a deal, and and we have there's a like a status tag for each of those deals. So, and whatever the status is tagged as is how it influences the forecast. If we have, and also like let's just say for stuff that's in escrow to purchase, whatever the purchase date is in that column for purchase date is where the money is going to be projected to leave our bank account on the cash flow forecast. And then the same thing goes for a sale as well.
SPEAKER_00You're doing this on like a just a Google Sheet or something, or do you have like a Google?
SPEAKER_01No, it's just a Google sheet. Yeah. Love it. I mean it would be great. At some point, I would love to have something. I'm sure there's a way at some point to especially if we ever went to like a Salesforce or whatever, I'm sure there's a way to have this just automatically created, you know, from our deal board, from a Kanban board. But for now, it's once I went through the initial work of putting everything in there, now it's easy because it's just like every Sunday, it's like I update statuses of things, I add new deals, I remove deals that have fallen out of contract because of you know phase two due diligence problems or title issues or whatever. We remove those. So it's like updating it every week is just like easy maintenance. And this has also helped us having this has given us more a more clear picture of. Things we want to track on the KPI sheet, such as contracts that fall apart because of phase due diligence, phase two due diligence, and title issues. And that's been eye-opening for me. I think our number, it's it's gotta be like 30%. I'm not sure. We'll we'll know uh fall out. They fall out. Yeah, I think it's gotta be 30%, 35%. Which again, for me, has kind of like I feel like it's allowed me to be more even keeled as a business owner because now when we get a great deal under contract, I legitimately like I don't feel I feel almost nothing. I'm just like, hey, that's cool. That's great. I feel very like Zen about it. It's like, hey, that's cool. We got it under contract, but we have no idea if we're doing anything with this deal until we get a title commitment back and until we do phase two due diligence. So I'm just much more calm about that stuff, which is really nice. I like being calm, you know.
SPEAKER_00Love it. No, that's good. The peace of mind. Uh, one other thing I want to talk about with cash flow real quick. Something I do, which I'm curious to see, if you do something similar or different. So um w we have try, I've been trying to actually extract money out of my land business so that I'm not don't have too much money in one place. Plus, now after folding in a business, I have a partner. So like uh I pay myself a relatively minimal salary out of the company, like five grand a month. Which basically goes all to the tax man with all the taxes we gotta pay, right? Like it's it's nothing relative to a typical year. And so I basically look at my bank account and I say, hey, at the end of the month, if my bank account is over for me, it's like over $110,000. Basically, I'm gonna extract the rest of that excess over that and put it in my other bank account. And now today I'm doing a lot of hard money loans. So that way it's actually still land related, but I'm helping other people's deals. But that's like Dave lending personally, me, Dave. So not my land company. It's something I own 100% of as opposed to my land business now. I currently own 90%, but I'm planning on selling stuff, some of my shares to employees in the future. That way they can own it and whatnot as well, as well as me. That way everyone has that. How do how do how do you think about that as an owner? Because you're a sole owner, you don't have any partner or anything. Like, are you just wanting to plow everything back in? How are you are you extracting cash flow you're putting into other stuff? You know, how do you think of that?
SPEAKER_01Right now, I don't I'm not interested in putting money into other asset classes, really. Uh, I've done the opposite since 2021. I've done the opposite. I have sold off rentals. I sold I had a bunch of crypto and did did well on it. Not like I didn't I don't have a Lambo from it or anything, but you know, I we did we did well from crypto, but it was a distract. To me, it was just like it was a distraction, and also I was like, I just wanna I just wanna keep I want to put all my eggs in this basket and then watch that basket, you know, Andrew Carnegie, right? Like watch that basket really carefully. So I've done the opposite as far as diversifying. I'm less diversified than ever now, I guess, but diversified amount of many pieces of land, but um and and also at a average cost basis of probably 45 to 50 cents on the dollar. So I feel really good about that. I feel like the real estate, I feel like the real estate market could take a massive hit and I'd still be fine, you know.
SPEAKER_00Um so then how do you think about cash flow for yourself personally? Like, are you you are you you set yourself a salary? Like, when do you take owner's draws with these cash flow projections?
SPEAKER_01We are just starting to do this. I have never taken a draw until this month was the first time. Really? Um yeah, because I had so when I started the business, I had I don't know if I I don't know if I've been just full disclosure here. I mean, I might not be the best person to be giving advice on like personal stewardship of cash. Like I think I'm frugal. I've done well with my money, I guess, but uh what I did was I sold some rentals. Thank you. I sold a couple of rentals in early 2022. So I was I was on I still had a day job until September of 2021. Started in the land business 2020, had a day job until September 2021. So I was getting my salary up until then. And then I don't know, I just had like money and savings that I was kind of living off of. And then I sold some rentals in 2022, and I basically lived off the money from those sales, that's what we were using to pay expenses. And I just kept the money in the business, just stayed in the business and just kept growing. But now I'm at a point where we have spent through the money from those selling those rentals, and so now I'm at the point where I need to start taking a draw. So I think where we this is where again we have to figure out exactly what our personal burn is. I think I'll be paying myself a salary of like probably like $10,000 a month. I mean, I pay myself a higher salary than $10K a month. I pay taxes on much more than that, obviously. Right. We pay we pay FICA, I don't I don't know exactly what. My CPA manages that. Um so we we pay FICA and federal income tax on whatever they whatever my CPA says is like this is well above the this is what you should be paying yourself and not worry about getting audited, and IRS won't have a problem with it. They'll be good with this, whatever, if you ever did get audited. So we do that. Maybe that's a quarter million a year that we pay taxes on, payroll taxes. But then as far as like a draw, I think probably gonna take like 10k a month out, and that should be more than enough. That should be more than enough for us to live off very comfortably. And then I guess the one other thing is I max out right now. I do uh solo 401k. Um so I max that out every year. So that's been like, you know, whatever, what was that last year, 62,000 or something like that?
SPEAKER_00Included the profit sharing, sure, sure, sure.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, the employee and the employer contribution. We max out both of those. So I do that, and then I fund the deals for other flippers from the okay. I do not self-deal. Don't worry, Dave. I know better. I've never done it, and I never will. I like you you told me this.
SPEAKER_00Well, to to your to your question earlier, though, like you are extracting money out of the business, you're putting it in a retirement account and not just in your own business. So you are doing it. There you go. It's just I guess I am, yeah. So um let me get back to because your time is precious. I want to value your time, and I I there's some really cool stuff I think will just help people this think about what are they doing in the business that we've talked about so far. You mentioned KPIs earlier. Like uh KPIs, like for a while I was very resistant in my where I was like, I just I want to it was very easy for me, and I set up a system. How many have I bought, how many have I sold? I have all these terms, so how many are defaulting and and being returned to us? Those are like my three-man statistics, and then what's my note portfolio paying me? So I would track what my note portfolio is doing, and then starting a year ago, I really started changing my business. It was like those KPIs don't matter anymore, right? Like if I bought two properties for $80,000 and I sold them for $170, well, that's still a hell of a profit, right? Like, um at that, so two buys don't necessarily matter anymore. It's you have different statistics and different leads. So what are what are you looking at? You mentioned earlier, you've really just started digging into KPIs, like what's yeah, what's important to you today?
SPEAKER_01We're very new to it, so I'm sure this is gonna change, but we're tracking total call time on a weekly basis.
SPEAKER_02So uh sorry, let me back up.
SPEAKER_01On a weekly basis, we're tracking um raw responses, like total responses, which includes hate calls, and then therefore, and then we're tracking how much mail we sent that week, because we only do mail, and then we're tracking the response rate percentage weekly, and then monthly we're tracking the total number of calls, purchase agreements sent, purchase agreements signed, and then we're tracking that lead to contract ratio.
SPEAKER_00So let me let me just go ahead and stop you because there's a lot of different that's a lot of KPIs, right? It's not just like three, but it's all good stuff from I think of how we do it, like if we're tracking phone time or calls, well, we're getting that in open phone. Contracts gets to be a little bit harder. Like you could get that maybe from a Pebble, for example, or you have to like manually get it someplace else, you know, the the total number of leads responding that could come from Pebble or someplace else. Like it does. How are you doing it and where are you pulling data from? So it's not it's not too bad.
SPEAKER_01And we I think I talked to you about this some in our uh because I was in my hot seat was in the room with you this year. And I talked to Ajay and Ben about this a lot. I've talked to Calent. I've talked about this like ad nauseum, and we we really try. I've really it's important to me that this is not super hard. Maybe this is getting into some leadership stuff here. I don't want this to take a shitload of time for whoever has to do it because it's like it's like I don't want Cheyenne to have to spend an hour putting her KPIs together because it's like, well, she she's got calls to make. We have an abundance, we always have an abundance, we always have more leads than we know what to do with. So it's like it any time that Cheyenne is spent, Cheyenne is our acquisitions manager, any time she's spending not on the phone with leads is like I'm not gonna say it's wasted time, it's not, but it's just like the highest it does, yeah. Because it's like she's good on the phone, and we have leads, and so she needs to be working those and not spending an hour a week filling out a KPI sheet, you know? Like that's not that's not what we're here for. So the yeah, I would say as far as like the call time, anything to do with the phone is so easy to get from open phone, it takes very little time. It's like two minutes. The the as far as the response rates, we we also break down those response rates so we know what our total response rate is, and then we know of that total response rate, like how many of that was like actually a decent enough lead for us to like work the lead, and then we also know how many of those were just leads that went straight to the do not mail list. So it was like a hate call or usually it's a hate call. Or or maybe it's not a hate call, maybe it's just like, hey, take me off the list, you know.
SPEAKER_00Is it is it your CRM that you're getting that data from for that kind of stuff?
SPEAKER_01We have like kind of a workaround to I could I could get into it if you want. It would we have like a workaround for how to do that inside of Pebble so that it doesn't take a lot. Because maybe similar to you do you use Pebble? I can't remember.
SPEAKER_00No, we we've custom built out podio. Got it. I've created for me what I'm doing is I've created all these custom fields now, and it's been an iterative process. And my my my staff's gotten pissed at me because Dave has another change this week. You know, I keep on on iterating and adding improvements, and it can be hard for the staff, which I think maybe would might be interesting to talk to as leadership with you've made all these changes this year, and how the the staff takes it. Like they've been frustrated because I keep adding more improvements. Like here's something else we're gonna be tracking in the database, you know. So that's how that's how we've been moving towards, and it's it's been a learning process and just trying to figure out okay, hey, we need this data, how can we get it, but not have it take a bunch of time. But then as a leader, emphasizing to people, please put this in the stupid system so we can actually do it, which is not always easy, especially for people that now we've added this, this, this, and this, now it's a long list of things they need to be inputting.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, so that as far as long lists goes, one of our rules is that if we have to scroll, at least at our current size of a team, uh obviously this could change. If we grow to a team of 10 or 12 and we start doing a bunch of term sales, we're gonna have to break this rule at some point. But right now, the rule is if you have to scroll down, there's too many KPIs. We have too many things on the sheet that we're tracking. So the the the rule is obviously we gotta scroll over to see that you know you can't have it all on one screen. You're gonna have to scroll at some point. But for us, the rule is we can only so that's we still have room to add some more. Like we have, you know, we still have some space on a normal laptop screen. We still have some space to add some KPIs, but that's our rule. Maybe that'll change. It's pretty simplistic, but um that's that's good.
SPEAKER_00So you get you guys basically Pebble isn't providing the data upright, so you guys have to work around it a little bit to fix it.
SPEAKER_01It kind of it kind of is. It's we get the raw well it kind of is, you just have to create deal cards and put them in the right stages so that you so that we get that data easily. I don't know if that makes if anybody uses Pebble, I think that would make sense, but as long as we're using the CRM correctly, we we get this data from there. It's not like any it's not on the on Pebbles dashboard like raw leads and filtered leads, but we have a way uh to do it that's very easy. It's um exporting out some data or something out of it. It's not even that. It's it's you know what it it's basically essentially we have a we have a you can have different deal boards, and we have a deal board that is a do not mail board. Anytime somebody calls and says, take me off the list, we just create a deal card, and then it goes on that board and it goes in whatever month we're like in this case, we have a stage for July of 2024. So I'm looking at this right now, and this is literally the first month we started doing this, so and it's not even been the full month, but in July of 2024, there's 14 people that have called and said take me off the list. So now we know what that number is. We know there's 14 people that have called and said, take me off the list. And if I go to our dashboard, uh, you know, in the month of July, I think we've had 120 raw responses. So now all we do is subtract that. So we look at that and say, okay, we've we got 120 uh total responses. 14 of those were do not mail, so that means we got 106, you know, net leads, filtered leads, whatever you want to call it. Um, so that's how we're tracking that. So again, that's pretty easy. What as far as purchase agreements sent, purchase agreements signed, that's probably the most manual one on here right now. Cheyenne has to go into we use sign now. So she has to go in and basically go through the previous month and just calculate, okay, how many purchase agreements did I send, and then how many got signed last month. And so that but I think she said because I told her, I was like, if this is taking you a lot of time, please tell us and stop doing it. But she said it's not bad. And she's really interested in this data as well. That's one of the things I think that's been really cool. Diane has probably been the most put the most emphasis on like we really she really wanted a KPI sheet and she really wanted her acquisitions goals spelled out very clearly. She's very goal-driven and she has background. She used to work at a uh like a interior, not design like picking out pillows, like this is serious, serious interior design projects, like more like architecture. She used to work at a company like that. They had a very detailed KPI sheet and they had quotas and goals built into there for each salesperson, and she thrived on that, and so she really wanted that here. So she was really pounding the table for this, which is why I was like, okay, like if she's pounding it, like we need to, I need to get off my ass and like because I like I like you was very resistant. I was like, I don't want to do this KPI stuff, it's boring. Now that we're doing it, I'm freaking stoked on it. Uh yeah, so that that one's manual, and then we're just tracking like we we track the number of APNs that we purchase, and we track the number of deals that we purchase or close. Because for me, I want to see the difference because we do a lot of multi-parcel deals. So I just think I think it's interesting to be able to look and see, you know, because it I just think it's interesting to look at that. What is our lead-to-deal ratio, and then how many properties do we, or how many, or what is our mail-to-deal ratio, and then how many properties are we buying for how much mail? Because as an example, last month we did a deal where we bought eight properties from one seller.
SPEAKER_00So I want to see I like to see both ratios. So what's how how are you using these KPAs, Josiah, to help your business? Like it's okay, you're collecting the data, which is cool, yeah, but maybe you haven't collected enough yet to really help your business. Like, where are you at with that? How do you think about that?
SPEAKER_01Right now I'm more like more like just starting to track it and then just to get into the habit of it. I don't know. I'm not sure how much it's influencing decisions yet. I think it's provided us more clarity though about exactly how much land we need to acquire every month to hit our goals. So I would say the way that's influencing us is just we actually have I mean, what what's every have you ever read any of those studies on like weight loss where people lose people lose weight when they just start weighing themselves? That's it. If they just start weighing themselves, and people tend not everyone, but they tend to lose weight, and it's like, why would that be well maybe it's because they're thinking about it a little more and it's driving maybe like they maybe they get a salad instead of friends as their side dish, you know, without even really thinking about it that much. And so I think that I guess like with our we track something called uh we call it we call it estimated retail profit. So we track how much estimated retail profit did we acquire last month, and we're also looking at okay, based on our goals for this year, how much estimated retail profit do we need to acquire every month? Like for us, it's like we need to acquire our I think our goal we want to acquire $230,579.31 of estimated retail profit every so and I love having that kind of clarity around like this is what we're trying to do every month. And now it's like everybody's on the same page. We know, you know, and we've kind of worked backwards, all right. This we think this is how much mail we need to send to do that. Um so I would say that is how it's starting to influence decisions now.
SPEAKER_00Well what one of the things with being being a leader that can be hard for staff, I mentioned earlier, but tough for us too, is change. Like, I know both you and I this year went into Georgia, and now there's a lailing in Georgia. I know, right? Like we we bought a deal that we bought it for 60k. We have it listed right now for 600 in Georgia. That's what I'm talking about. It may not sell for 600, it might sell for 120 or 200. So what? Like that was a pretty flippin' good deal.
SPEAKER_02You know, that's pretty sick. Hell yeah.
SPEAKER_00So how are you leading your team with that kind of change where it's like you just get slapped and it's like What do you do now to pivot?
SPEAKER_01Specifically with that, we just said, hey, I I said, let's just pull everyone from our list. Well, let's stop mailing Georgia just for now. We're not I'm not saying we're never gonna mail there. We're definitely gonna mail there again. We but right now we're not mailing Georgia at all, and then we're pulling everyone from our list that has a mailing address in Georgia, which I actually don't think we even need to do that. I'm pretty sure mail people that own property in Florida, I think it only applies. Anyways, it doesn't matter. That was just like a quick decision, like, hey, let's just let's pump the brakes on this. We got plenty of deals to do in Florida, plenty to do in Alabama. Everybody stay calm. It's all good.
SPEAKER_00What did they say? Like, or whereas like Cheyenne like pissed, is like what the heck.
SPEAKER_01No, honestly, I think she's I think she probably prefers. I mean we all kind of prefer doing deals in Florida because the areas we continually remarket to in Florida, we just know them so well. And we have great vendor. It's so easy to do. It's I always forget like to do even when I do a deal in a new county in Florida, like we're doing a couple deals this month in Putnam County. Never done a deal in Putnam County before. I think a lot of land flippers have. We never have, and never mailed there. And it's like it's funny. I was on a call with our broker in that area. I was on a Google meet call for two hours this morning talking. We have a bunch of stuff under contract there, and we're just going through, like talking about it, just getting acquainted with the market. I always forget about that hump of you know getting to a new place. So, anyways, I think that I think we all sort of prefer to just stay. Florida's becoming almost like a comfort zone for us, like certain markets. So I also think at a certain point we'd probably need to push ourselves maybe outside of that comfort zone some, but for now we just keep remailing there, and yeah, we just stuff like Georgia. It's like, ah, you just pivot, pull the plug. Honestly, I think what I told them too is like, hey guys, honestly, this is probably gonna be like better in the long run for us because it just creates another barrier to entry. Typically, whenever whenever government sticks their nose into things more, it actually creates more profit for the people that are willing to put up with it. You know, so I just told them that I was like, it's all good, like don't worry about it. Love it.
SPEAKER_00Well, I don't I don't wanna I don't want to I could keep talking forever about all this stuff.
SPEAKER_01Uh I have some a little more time if you want to stay on, but also it's all good. I know you're it's like it's it's probably past your quitting time there, so whatever you want to do.
SPEAKER_00I uh my my my uh youngest daughter where we go see my parents' cat about this time because my parents are out of town. So I got a cat I gotta take care of soon. But we we'll we'll wrap this up here shortly. Um gosh. I think um one of the things that I appreciate about you and your leadership that maybe you don't think about a whole lot from getting to know you over the last year is um you've been so laser focused with your team, right? Like you just talked about it as an example. Hey, we're doing Florida, we're we'll spread out a little bit, but it's we're gonna use some of the same people. Um you you really um laser in on blind offers. This is how we're gonna market. You and I have shared frustration with texting, and it's just like screw it, I'm gonna keep doing what I'm great at, as opposed to many investors, me included, get shiny object syndrome and will go chasing another thing. I I'd be curious to hear you speak to that as a leader and leading your team and what that's like for you and how you see other land investors in that light.
SPEAKER_02Um I guess as far as staying focused, like are you saying like well th first off, thank you for the compliment.
SPEAKER_01Um because I that is a uh that is definitely something I make an effort at. Um I think I I feel like I did the shiny object thing for a long time. Um and you know, just listening to real estate podcasts, I'd listen to something about this strategy or that strategy or this niche or that niche, and now I'm kind of like just really I don't know. I think it's just you know what, it's like this is working, like let's just keep doing what's working. Like and if we get bored, it's like we can just go like for us. I think like if we get bored, it's like well, we're just what we're starting to do now is work on more deals with like difficult title issues, you know. It's like and that is not boring, and there is no shortage of deals with title issues out there, so you know, we're to me it's like what am I gonna go and why would I try and go and wholesale houses or whatever? Like that's I'm sure we could do it, we could probably do a good job at it and make money at it, but it's like I mean, there's there's a billion things we could do to make money. It's like we have something that's working, let's just keep doing that. Um, I actually have a friend of a friend that um was kind of trying to get us go in on some like vacation rentals in the Philippines two months ago. And it's like, I mean, the numbers look great. It it looks like uh amazing returns. And I'm just like, I'm not doing that. Like we're doing land in Florida, like we're not buying vacation rentals in Manila. That's not what we're doing. I don't know. I just you know what I think I said that I quoted that Andrew Carnegie thing, or that Andrew Carnegie quote at the beginning of the podcast, but that's just I have that up on my desktop.
SPEAKER_02Hmm.
SPEAKER_01He doesn't say diversification is for idiots, but like I just love I love the paraphrase of that. It's just like diversification is for idiots. Put all your eggs in one basket and then watch that basket. I mean, I don't know. I'm sure there's a lot of people that have lived that way and then are broke and you don't hear their story because they went broke. Um survived survivorship bias, right? But for us, it's just I just want everybody really honed in on like we're doing land, and yeah, there's plenty of land in Florida. Uh, maybe we'll branch out a little more, but I just think we can just keep ratcheting up our competitive advantage in this area right here. Because you know, it's like the more the more you know a the more deals that you're gonna be able to do because you have the information.
SPEAKER_00Uh absolutely, absolutely. No, that's that's good. I mean, you could just tell in your passion about it, like, no, this is my lane. I'm sticking to it. Yeah because of what we're doing. I mean, and as as a leader, that's gotta feel good for your team too, in like, okay, this is what we need to do, right? Yeah, like they're not getting distracted by a bunch of different things. So I think that's that's awesome.
SPEAKER_01Um you know, even our we just did our third our July quarterly meeting. We meet in at the end of the quarter. It's usually the first or second week of the month after the quarter ends, you know. So we did our end of second quarter, beginning of third quarter meetings. And one of the things, I mean, it was something I was leaning towards the decision, but we really as a team, we all made the decision together was that we each have one rock this quarter. That's just one just one. I think that's huge. You just like two is maybe fine, depending on what it is. Three each is too much. I just unless they're if you can do three rocks in a quarter, then they probably weren't rocks to begin with. They were probably like one or two of them was probably just like a tiny project, you know. That's been another one where I was just like, let's just do one each, let's make sure we each have one rock that is really well defined and very like crystal clear as to like what the goal is, when it's completed, spelled uh that's just important to me. Just to be able to focus. Because now I know what I'm supposed to be working on every week. I don't I don't wake up on Monday like, oh, what am I supposed to work on? I know what I need to be working on because we already planned it out.
SPEAKER_00Well, that's that's another thing.
SPEAKER_01Same for my team. Same for my team.
SPEAKER_00Did you have experience where it's like you gave people three rocks and then they weren't being accomplished, kind of a thing? Or like it wasn't big enough, or like what made you decide on the one?
SPEAKER_02Basically, everything you just said yeah, too many, everything wasn't getting accomplished, just bleeding into the next quarter. Not well defined from the start. So we really spent a lot of time defining those rocks, like what does done look like and what does good look like when it's done.
SPEAKER_01We spent a lot of time on that.
SPEAKER_00Um, let's uh let's let's start to wrap this up. Josiah, thank you for being so generous with your time and just sharing what you're going through. We've talked a lot today about uh hiring consultants with your team and kind of what what that was like and what that was about. We talked about uh KPIs a good bit and how you're collecting them and what that's like. We talked about your laser focus, you know, in terms of uh some stuff you do so super well with that. Um do you have any just kind of other tools we haven't talked about? You mentioned traction, you mentioned EOS, we talked about Pebble, uh kind of a KPI sheet that that you're keeping, uh your what your weekly cash flow, monthly cash flow that you're going through on Excel. Any other major tools you think might be good to share or books or podcasts or something that you think would be you guys need to check this out. This is sweet. We started using Basecamp as a team.
SPEAKER_01We've taught you to use Basecamp, don't you? I do. I'm a big fan. I'm a big fan of those guys and their podcast and their books and everything. Yeah, we're using Basecamp for our projects that aren't, you know, I've deals are in the CRM and people. Right. Other projects, like we're we're working on a new website right now. So that's a shared basecamp project. You know, the KPI sheet was a basecamp project until once now that it's up and running, now it's just uh now it's just a sheet, and we just we'll make updates to it in our weekly meeting if we feel we want to. So Basecamp's we're also managing all of our subdivides. We are doing because right now we've got um as a team or deals that I'm involved in or whatever. We've got like six subdivides going on right now, so we're managing those in Basecamp, which is really nice. And it's great because you can, you know, you can add your surveyor or a deal partner or whatever, you can create a free account for them to be able to collaborate on that project. So that's been really cool. It's limited, have way less emails now because it's like it's in Basecamp and it's all in there. It's so much more it's just a much more efficient way to communicate. So I would say Basecamp.
SPEAKER_00One of the things I like about Basecamp too is we end up making separate departments. So we have like an intake and mailing department, we have a sales department, and then we're we're keeping our SOPs within Basecamp and documenting like lead managers have their own folder, which now has a bunch of different stuff in it. With hey, here's your first script, here's your second script, here's um the expectations of what you're supposed to be doing and how to do, like all that kind of stuff. You know, what should you be saying in voicemails? Like it's all there within Basecamp as a holding spot, which is super sweet.
SPEAKER_01Which we're gonna need to do a call so I can see how um we have like an HQ project where it has like RSOPs, it has like you know, stuff that's more like company-wide stuff, not one project related. I would love to see in detail sometime how you guys are utilizing it though. That's cool.
SPEAKER_00It's a work in progress, but happy to share um kind of a thing. We have a separate pricing department, you know, where we're keeping track of pricing and how we do pricing and all that kind of stuff. So I love it for that. And like you said, you can add people to the team, you can have people give free access, like there's no user limit on Basecamp, which is awesome. I find for me too, like the uh due dates are so helpful with automated emails that hey, you need to get this done. Like there'll be bills I have to pay, right? And so I'm having staff assign me tasks to you need to get this done, or this needs to be notarized, right? It gets uploaded right there in Basecamp and there's the file, right? If I lose it for some reason, you can always search it and find it, you know, pretty easily depending upon how you label it or whatever.
SPEAKER_01So that's cool.
SPEAKER_00I'm with you.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I would say that would be one for personal, we don't use this as a team, but I use a tool called Omnifocus, which is like a task management app. I mean, you could do the same, it's similar if if you've ever used like uh to-doist, it's probably a little bit similar to that. It's kind of it's loosely based on the principles of getting things done by David Allen. So I I use Omnifocus just you know, I have one that just helps me keep track of like what are all the phone calls I need to make. I have an agenda folder in there for each team member, and then other people I just interact with regularly in my life. So, you know, that that has been really helpful though, Omnifocus. And then the books I always recommend Deep Work, Cal Newport, Getting Things Done, David Allen. Traction, obviously. Right now, man, I'm re-re-reading rework by the guys that started Basecamp. I'm loving that. That was I only read that for the first time earlier this year because Peter Nucasani recommended it, and I was like fired up about it. I love reading, I read like a couple pages a day. It's almost like a little business proverb kind of book. I love rereading that. But um rework.
SPEAKER_00Love it.
SPEAKER_01That's what that's good, man. That's what I would say. That's good. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, just any final thoughts you want to share with other land investors? Inspire us with something about leadership. Throw it to us. I don't know.
SPEAKER_01Well, I don't know if I have anything inspirational to end with.
SPEAKER_00What's just any final thoughts on the land business, you know, being a leader?
SPEAKER_02Um.
SPEAKER_01Man, I don't know. This is I guess getting into another recommendation thing, maybe, but I just put on you know what I do like every morning? I have a John Maxwell, something from John Maxwell is on in my AirPods, on YouTube while I'm stretching and making my tea or coffee in the morning in here, while I'm in getting in the cold plunge and all that stuff, walking the dog. I just have that that stuff is just on John Maxwell's just like on repeat, basically, and I'm just trying to like I take notes, but also it's just like I think he's quite a dude to try to embody as a leader. You know, he's like, he just commands respect, he's so calm. And I just love his voice, and so I just have that on all the time, and I'm just trying to kind of brainwash myself with his thoughts on leadership all the time. So I'm just like right now, I'm listening to uh the 21 indispensable qualities of a leader. It's great. So I don't know. I'm just trying to, I'm new to being a leader, you know. I I um so I just feel like I need all the help I can get. Audiobooks and podcasts and YouTube videos from proven leaders is a great way to just kind of soak it in.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. It's like through through through osmosis. You're just exactly getting getting it programmed. Love it. All right, Josiah, people want to hit you up, they they want to connect, say hey, you know, get get to to help you maybe with anything that they might be good with, or you help them would be a good way for them to reach out.
SPEAKER_01Josiah at acrevault.com. Boom.
SPEAKER_00Josiah, appreciate you, buddy. Thank you so much. Thanks, Dave.