The Hiring Mistake Most Land Investors Make with Reggie Wright

Episode 12: I sit down with Reggie Wright from Generation Family Properties to talk about his journey from teaching history to becoming a leader in the land investing business.

We discuss company culture, hiring the right people, leadership lessons, team accountability, KPIs, employee motivation, and a unique competition we used to boost performance inside our land investing company.

If you're building managing a remote team, or looking for better real estate strategies, this conversation offers practical insights on leadership, culture, and growth.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:27

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 inland. All right, let's get in the episode. Hello, my friends, and welcome back to another Leadership in Land podcast. I'm your host, Dave Denniston of Generation Family Properties and the Land and Conference. Well, I am honored to have a special guest here with me today. You know, I like to say that I can't do everything on my own, and I am blessed with having a wonderful team. Uh, you guys heard Cameron on uh one or two previous episodes, and now we have uh and we had Eric on an episode and maybe another one coming up here soon. I am honored to have Reggie Wright here from our team. Reggie, what's up, man?

SPEAKER_01 1:54

How's it going, Dave? This is uh this is a lot of fun. I'm excited to be a part of the show today and um looking forward to the conversation.

SPEAKER_00 2:01

Absolutely, absolutely. Well, so so glad to have you here. I really feel kind of God's hand in bringing us together and totally very very blessed in in spending time with you and getting to know you. And you've you've kind of um had had a great journey that I thought it'd be interesting to tell everyone what's your journey been, what's your role on the team, uh stuff like that. So why don't you take it away and tell us a little bit about you?

SPEAKER_01 2:26

Yeah, so um quick background, I guess. I've kind of taken a circuitous journey to GFP and and connecting with you, but um uh so I started uh I was in a previous life, I was a uh middle school and high school history teacher. Um had always growing up, my my my uh grandfather owned a tile business. And I, you know, when I was in high school, I kind of worked on like remodels and home repair. So real estate had always kind of been something that I had wanted to explore. I was in uh when I was teaching. Obviously, that's you know, that's a whole whole world in and of itself where there's not a whole lot of time to do anything extra like that, unless you get uh, you know, like once you get a few years in, then you have some summers. But long story short, uh COVID had I decided to take a year off because my kids were doing school from home, and so I figured, hey, you know, I'm gonna take a year off. My my wife had a part-time job and they had been wanting her to go full-time for a long time. So so we kind of switched roles for a year, and then in that course of time, I connected with a friend of my family who had done some land investing. And that was I would always wanted to be involved in in real estate in some form or another. He asked if I'd have interest in kind of learning learning the ropes of of land investing and and how that goes. And so jumped on board with him and had a great, you know, obviously we went through the the COVID years together and and had a great time and uh just learned an absolute ton. Um fantastic guy. Uh, and then, you know, as as time went on, it was kind of making sense. I was going through some changes in in our family. We had kind of made some plans to to shift and and go on this big adventure where we would travel around the country and he was making some some changes in his business and his life. He had some things going on, you know, buying a house, doing some other things. And so as it happens, uh it was just at that point in time making sense for us to to do two different things. And I had happened to come across a post of yours on Facebook uh mentioning that you were looking for someone to do acquisitions, uh, which is what I had been doing for the four years previously. And so I just, you know, reached out and and uh obviously I'd seen you um or or heard you on numerous different podcasts and and you know, is um, there's a lot of folks that are, you know, as time has gone on, it feels like there's more and more people that are jumping into it, but the community is relatively small. And so, you know, your your degree of separation amongst different guys that are doing it is only a few ladders, uh, a few few rungs deep. So just kind of reached out to you. I known of you, and obviously you'd known the guy that I was I was working with previous. And so, you know, kind of connected that way. And then the rest is history. It just seemed like as we as I got to know you more and more, I just felt more and more like, gosh, you know, it would be really cool. I could learn so much from this guy. Uh, he just I love his I love his style. I like the way that you approach things. Um, and I've just been so appreciative of you know being able to kind of find a role where I can I can support your team and and grow our team together and just kind of be a part of of GFP and uh just continue to learn. It's been an awesome experience.

SPEAKER_00 5:33

Love that. Love that. Well, it's I have to imagine it's so different being in a classroom and being a history teacher versus like uh small business owner. Um what what I think is great about you is you have a I think that teacher kind of comes out, you know, where it's like, okay, everybody calm down, everything's okay. You know, I could very much see that coming out at you at various times. But certainly you you had to deal with like leadership there, right? You're dealing with principals, teachers, leading students, stuff like that, versus small business. Obviously, hey, we're we're leading small little groups rather than you know hundreds of kids in a day. How do you look at just just advice, you know, to myself or other business owners? Like, what how should we attract good employees? What do you think from your perspective that should look like to help everybody out there?

SPEAKER_01 6:33

Hmm, that's a great question. So, how to attract good employees? Man, obviously, if if there was a simple solution to that, nobody would have that problem, right? I mean, I think it's an ongoing process of trial and error. I think you do learn things as as time goes on. One thing that I think really does separate good companies or healthy companies from organizations or businesses that struggle, though, is that I do think from a leader, a leadership perspective, if your leadership team or if your CEO or or whoever, whoever is in charge of the organization, if they are leading by example and if if they are are showing earnest care for their team as individuals, I think that tends to attract the people that are are reflective of that character. Um I would say if a culture's not healthy, it's not always because the leader is the issue. You know, sometimes you just have you have uh folks on the team that that aren't great team players. You know, I think over time, though, the employees that may not end up being the best fit for the organization will kind of weed themselves out, you know. I think I think it becomes evident over time. And and um, you know, it kind of goes back to what is it, the book Good to Great by by James Collins or Jim Collins. Um, you know, having the right people in the right seats, it does take time. And I think if you from a leadership perspective, if you are putting an emphasis on a healthy culture and you are trying to uh embody that in a leadership role, I think over time it does attract the right people and the right people hang on.

SPEAKER_00 8:16

What what do you think from an inside view, which you know, please just be like bluntly honest? You don't need to sugarcoat this at all. Yeah. What are things that you think in in GFP we do well that other people could learn from? And what do you think from your perspective that maybe other people do well that that we could learn from and do better in? I'd be curious to hear both of those things.

SPEAKER_01 8:41

That's a really good question. So I think one thing that that that we do well at GFP is I do think um again, I think culture is an emphasis for us because and because that's the case, I think we've attracted a lot of really good people. Um you know, and and I think we have a lot of a lot of good people in a lot of in the right seats. And that's because again, culture has been emphasized. You know, uh, I remember when I was going through the process of going through the hiring process, trying to feel each other out to see if we'd be a good fit. Um, you know, it was a it was a pretty rigorous process, and that's something that's that's unique, like not just to the land space, I mean, I think it's very unique to the land space, but also just in general, um, it was like a a multi-round interview process uh with a with a heavy emphasis on um company culture, you know, core values. Um and so I think that's something that we do really well. And because we put an emphasis on core values, I think we have a lot of people that embody those core values. And I know that there's been a lot of thought and effort that have gone into what the should those core values be, and that translates into how we operate on a day-to-day basis, you know. And so I think that's something that that's a long answer to your short question. And that's what I think that's one thing that that GFP does really well. Things that we could learn from other folks, I think, you know, there's always especially in the land space, it feels like it's always kind of a moving target, right? The market's always changing, the processes are always changing, leads are responding to different channels at different rates, and that changes. So I think there's always room to grow and learn. That's another thing that we do really well in terms of what we could learn from other people. I think right now we're going through a process of trying to figure out, you know, what's what's working on the marketing side and also in terms of expanding our processes and adopting, you know, AI or or whatever, like different things that that might help implement or or or improve our marketing. Or so gosh, it's hard to identify one thing. I do think I think processes is maybe the biggest thing. Just just kind of identifying how other people are going through their due diligence. And and as we think about expanding and growing into new strategies or or different things, just kind of learning, learning how other successful investors are establishing their processes. That includes that would be like KPIs and all kinds of things.

SPEAKER_00 11:22

I feel like um for us, we're like um um a big ship, you know, like a not quite a Titanic, but you know, like something really big relatively. And I feel like a lot of other investors are just more nimble because, you know, us, we have a lot of terms, which is great and wonderful in that it helps to keep the lights on. But on the other hand, we have to dedicate time and energy to maintaining that and dealing with payoffs and you know, all of the administrative stuff that comes along with that. And so it's it's kind of um an interesting time where I've never like I've seen some investors, they will just like burn the boats and they will be like, this is the way we used to do it. We're not doing that anymore. We are now all in on subdivides, or now we're done with that, we're all in on messy title, and they're like done with anything that had gotten them there in the first place, which is good in that I think they're all in on something and a hundred percent of their energy is dedicated towards that. Whereas I feel like for us, we're very divided and we're constantly balancing these different streams, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, it's just different than uh a lot of the peers that I feel that we have. What's your take on that? I'm curious to hear your thoughts and reactions.

SPEAKER_01 12:49

Yeah, no, I I think you're absolutely right. And I, you know, again, I see um I see I see benefits and I see drawbacks to to both approaches. You know, on the one hand, there's a little more stability when you when you have multiple channels that you're having to to manage or keep up, that that's the drawback, and it can prevent you from pursuing things quicker or um but but it also kind of protects you from from shiny object syndrome, right? Which is a problem that that we all talk about in this industry because it's so easy to fall into that trap. But yeah, I mean it it does uh, you know, uh I think uh the the drawback to to that or or maybe the benefit for someone who uh for a business that that is a little more nimble is that um you know we might not be as quick to the party, you know. Um and so timing up the again, this is a moving target business, you know, the market's always changing, things are always changing. And so, you know, you in an ideal world you could always come in at the top of the bell curve and time it right, but sometimes um sometimes you can't. So um I think I you know, again, I I I I don't know, I guess, I guess that those would be the the the the benefits and the drawbacks to to both. I I see, you know, I I think it just kind of depends on the situation and in the size of the team and you know the goal, the goal of the comp and that's another thing that's really important too, is is I think at GFP we uh spend a lot of time talking about what our what our goals are and what what targets we want to hit. And so um it's it's important to have that plumb line or that uh common goal that we're all moving towards so that we don't get distracted or fall into uh you know the the cycle of chasing shiny objects.

SPEAKER_00 15:39

No, I love that. I think um but we haven't talked a bit about your job yet and what what you do at GFP. Let's let's circle back on on that a little bit. So what what do you do at the company just so people know, hey, here's here's what I'm doing. Like it's like, okay, there's this guy, Reggie, he's worked for other land investors. Well, what do they do?

SPEAKER_01 15:56

Yeah, I'm well I'm Dave's therapist, and we uh, you know, it goes in now. So I what I started as acquisitions and sales. I that's basically I, you know, I kind of have my my hands in both the acquisition and the disposition side. So kind of managing both of those, and then now uh I'm I'm in a role where um trying to support the team as best as possible in a leadership role in terms of doing doing some sales side coaching for our intake folks, sales and acquisition coaching. Uh gosh, I I kind of have you know, I'm I'm kind of all over the place. I I do most most client-facing stuff. So um talking to property owners, talking talking to interested buyers on the dispo side, um, working with the teams, working with our internal teams that that are on both of those sides. Um the only thing that I don't do a ton of is like transaction coordinating. Um not not talking a title a whole lot, or thankfully.

SPEAKER_00 16:55

But what what I what I thought was so refreshing about yourself as you came into these roles, you had actually done it before, which for the first time in my LAN career, both you and Joe on our team had gone through other people's training. And I was like, oh my gosh, I don't have to explain the concept of land flipping. This is awesome. Like, just like not to have to train someone from absolute scratch, which I've done many, many, many, many, many times, but it was absolutely refreshing. That's one thing I really appreciated about you as a candidate and coming into it. It's like, okay, he gets it and he he knows what's up. I think um one one of the things that I noticed with you is you you have this desire to mentor and you like helping other people, kind of the coaching aspect. And that's why we then raised you up to be part of the the leadership team, which you earned, you know, that that that title. So you are on one of the four people on our leadership team, including me, to really know what's going on in the business and what what's happening and be able to have some agency and into um decision making and and what we're doing. Um, so I think you've stepped into that role beautifully, which has been awesome. Um as as as we look back on leadership and kind of your role, one of the things which I wanted to spend time on in this podcast was uh the idea of a contest. And so uh I want to lay a little bit of the foundation of okay, how why did we decide to do a contest? What what uh what things did we determine? And and then I'd love to hear feedback from you on how do you think it went. So I'm gonna blather on here for a few minutes just to let everyone know here's what happened. So last year in 2025, we're recording this in May of 2026, um, we we were really going balls to the wall, trying to take risk and really see what we could do as a company. So we were sending out 50 to 60,000 mailers a month from about July through the the end of November is what we originally targeted. And so we had at the time yourself, Jacob, so both of you guys were acquisition and a little bit of sales at the time. And then we had Casey and we had Joe as lead managers. So there were four of us total at that time. And so with us putting so much money into the marketing, I mean, we're talking, you know, $25,000, $30,000 or more a month that we were putting in the marketing. What what I came up with my own head was, man, wouldn't it be fun to be able to have a competition of a sorts to be able to hopefully motivate everybody with something a little bit more and to have something for us to talk about every week as as we were meeting to give an update on, hey, here's where everybody's everybody's comparing, who's gonna win this, and and really, really hopefully take the team to take advantage of this time where we're spending so much money that hopefully we can get a really nice return and everybody wins. And so the as I went back and forth with Chat GPT and our leadership team a bit, uh this was before Reggie was was on the leadership team, I came up with the idea of I want to do several things with the contest. One is I really wanted to reward people for their their hard work. And so, but I wanted a situation too where everybody could win some money. That way, if someone didn't win, if they've worked really hard, hey, at least they get some sort of reward at the end of the rainbow kind of a thing. So, how I designed this particular contest was a thousand dollars. This was over a period of about two months, where you were earning one point for every KPI that was green, which everybody had six KPIs. So, over the the time period, I guess it was six weeks, so 36 points possible. So the person with the most points wins, which then the the tiebreaker being the lowest number of yellow or red KPIs. So it was kind of a consistency thing. How often are you in the green on your KPIs? And then the next $1,000 prize was someone uh was based on the per average percentage performance across six KPIs over that six-week time period. So not necessarily measuring are you green every week, but more the overall time period, how did you perform versus your goal? The idea being whoever exceeds their goals the most on average wins. So that way, hey, people are incentivized. Even if you had a bad week, well, maybe you ended up having a great period of time, despite the whole thing that maybe you had one blowout week. That was absolutely awesome, even though the other weeks didn't go well. And then I said, in order to have everybody have the opportunity to be some money for each of the six KPIs that were above 100% cumulatively over the contrast, you contest, you earn $50 per KPI. So that's everybody could win $300. Um, so that way uh that even if you were behind and someone was blowing it out, right? Hey, you could still make some extra money on top of it. Now, on top of that, one of the other things, some of the other things that I put as criteria is people had to submit at least 90% of their end-of-day reports because in order to be eligible, right, I want to make sure that they're doing the daily activities. I want them to be on time for at least 80% of daily stand-ups, and it had to be using open phone because we had one of our um team members using Google Voice quite a bit, and we wanted her to use open phone. And so that way I was trying to make sure everyone was doing that uh too. And so that that that was basically the contest. So technically, one person could have won 2300 bucks. And Reggie, I believe you were the winner at the the top KPI performance, the second part of the contest. I'm curious to hear hear from you as you just reflect back on it. This was now, I think, August through the end of September or something like that, I think last year. Yeah. What was your impression of presenting it? What did you think about this this idea when you heard it? Were you skeptical? Were you like, oh, this sounds like a lot of fun? And then I'm curious to hear what what maybe was happening behind the scenes that I didn't get to hear from staff. Like, yeah, I would love to hear hear that.

SPEAKER_01 23:30

Yeah, I think um, gosh, you know, I like I'm I'm trying to think. back to when you first you know when we first kicked off it just sounded like a fun idea at the time like hey this is a kind of like a like a change of pace something different um I think in retrospect looking back on it it couldn't have come at a better time um you know just because of like you mentioned it we we were um it was like the end of the third quarter you were trying to do a strong push we had a whole bunch of marketing going out so everybody was busy and you know like I think um you know that that can very easily we have we have cycles in this business that get challenging you know and and so I think it was a fun shot in the arm to help prevent burnout you know it'd be really easy if we were just kind of like putting our heads down and going through the grind but what what it allowed us to do as as a team or a staff is you know when we get together for our daily stand-ups or whatever you know just kind of an opportunity to to share some friendly trash talk or just you know kind of like like bond around it and just kind of joke with each other. And it was again it just kind of it allowed us to divert the attention from kind of just the same like you know we're just making the same call every day, having the same conversation with you know just a a new set of property owners or whatever. So I think that that aspect was really fun and the timing of it was great. I think if it were something that we were doing all the time then I think it would definitely lose lose the impact. You know it's like something that that that would um uh like opportune times you know like like used sparingly I guess I I should say but I thought it was great. I mean you know we had a good obviously at that time Casey and Jacob and I, you know, we'd we'd message each other back and forth on Facebook and just you know kind of like again come up with hypothetical ways that we could you know quote unquote sabotage each other just in jest, you know so I think it brought a lot of levity to our stand-ups too. Again, you know like during a time that could be just uh so so easy to burn out when there's so much going on and everybody's trying to keep all the balls in the air and the plate spinning and you know you're having a a bunch of challenging conversations along with some wind sprinkled in here and there. So I think it just it was a great opportunity to just connect on a on a different level you know kind of just be human together which is hard in this business you know because everybody generally tends to work remote it's not often that people are are working in the in the same office together or whatever. So it just again provides provides some common ground or a connecting point for for a team to kind of bond around and I think I think it it definitely succeeded in that way for us.

SPEAKER_00 26:06

So if if you're running it we're we're doing it again let's say what what would you do different? You know or was was there any feedback that was negative that you heard back from any of the the other staff that was like ah this sucks I don't like this or something that they wished it would have changed different I would love I'd love to hear the feedback or thoughts on how how can we make this better or something that didn't go well that's like ah we should tweak this if we did it again.

SPEAKER_01 26:34

Yeah well I think one one change that I would make is I would definitely change the rules so that there's no way that I would like win no matter what. You know like no nobody be able to beat me because of the way that I set the rules up that's probably the first change that I would make. Otherwise though you know I I don't I don't know that we really like I don't know that there was really any negativity around it. I think it was just kind of fun. One thing that I could think of of like maybe a way to try to make it better or or to like improve it even further. Like I thought I like again you know I think it definitely accomplished the purpose and it was timed perfectly and and it was just um I don't really think that there was any negative like I don't think I don't think any you asked you know what were some grumblings or whatever I don't think that happened. I think everybody was kind of like hey this is kind of fun you know is something different and and we're just you know kind of you know riding it through and seeing what happens I do wonder like if okay if if we were gonna look at maybe doing it again opportunities to maybe make it better maybe injecting like a a couple of different benchmarks in the middle where not necessarily that there's like a reset of numbers but like you know somebody's fallen too far behind maybe giving them an opportunity to like hey we're gonna do like net so maybe it's like a six week contest but hey we're gonna do a special contest just this week or who can make the most calls today or whatever you know I'm just kind of sprinkle those things in to give everybody a shot if they're falling behind.

SPEAKER_00 28:02

You know but I I think uh again we we were there was there was a team there were four of us and we all I think we were all fairly engaged and I think more so than anything the fun part of it for us was just the opportunity to rib each other a little bit you know and and um you know an an excuse to to um you know just tease each other so do you do you think the financial reward was enough motivation or do you think it was like you know it'd be great to have but it's like I'm not people weren't really driven you know like was that too little just perfect you know if if we're redesigning that again?

SPEAKER_01 28:45

That's a great question. I you know I'm probably not the right person to ask because honestly that what what motivated me was just the competition aspect of it. I'm fairly competitive and so you know whether whether it was going to be a thousand dollars a hundred dollars or ten thousand dollars I think I probably would have put in the same amount of effort just because I I enjoyed you know having something to tease Jacob and and Casey about um so I you know I don't know that's a great question I I I but I know that I'm not everybody you know I know some people are are very motivated by by that by a financial reward so and I think also the makeup of the team that's doing it has an impact on that right so so like a financial reward means different things to different people across the team so gosh you know that's a great question. I that's a really good question. I have to sit in that for a little bit my my gut says it was less it maybe made less of an impact than just the competition itself but I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 29:44

I don't know that's an interesting thought I think um if I was to run in again part of it I think to your point is it depends on who's on the team. Like with having Joe who was an international VA like to me that was like one month of him getting paid. So it was significant from a percentage standpoint on his income whereas for yourself or Casey it was substantial but it wasn't the same as like one month if you will that exactly you could you it make a big impact financially. Which I think part of that as you think about as we think about these contests like okay well how how big of a deal is it? I think you you you have to take into consideration is this something that oh gosh it really changes the business and then you have a big financial reward for it. And I think as as now as we're specializing more and more in subdivides and those kinds of things as we look going forward for our company the financial reward is that much greater. So from my perspective I think having more reward would make sense but we're not going to be doing that same level of marketing we we did before either. So it would be interesting to redesign this based on where we are today. You know what does that look like I think part of the hard thing for us right now as we're transitioning and trying different things like we just had KPIs for some of our staff that now it's like that isn't relevant anymore. And now we have other new KPIs. So I feel like for someone that that is kind of uh more hey we know exactly what the KPIs are and you are just honed in on that I think it's a great thing for someone doing that. If you're kind of in this transitionary phase we are we're we're we were doing one thing and now we're moving towards doing another I'm not sure we know what those KPIs would be. It would have to be a different kind of a contest that that I don't know what that would look like. Like if if I end up when we do end up hiring like an acquisition manager type person for messy title. Okay, well it's not the same job but how do we excite and and incentivize this person and get some of that trash talk and going with the rest of the group but we have other people that their whole job is looking at subdivides and stuff like that. Well there's not a whole lot of KPIs we can measure off of that. So definitely something we'll have to put some thought into anything hitting you off the top of your mind just as I'm talking about it that was like this would be an interesting twist or maybe this is a way we could take that concept that it sounds like from your perspective worked really great and was fun and energized the team and I saw lots and lots of green. So I feel like mission was accomplished in terms of what I wanted to happen, which was seeing increased production and fun, you know, um from from the team. Anything hitting you just as I'm talking about this that we could think about in the next six months or something because it's been almost a year since we had had that other contest.

SPEAKER_01 32:42

Yeah. I I you know again I think uh I think the timing of it the last time we did it the timing of it was great. So anytime that we're anticipating something coming up where there's going to be a lot of change or it's going to feel like a grind to the team because of you know we're we're transitioning to a new process or we're we're we're hoping to you know exceed a certain goal or or you know make make X amount of things happen. I think I think as we think ahead uh timing is huge. And then also I think it's really important as much as possible to try to tie it to effort where where the team feels like you know whether they do well in the contest or not do well in the contest or whatever, it's it's within their control. You know they you know because again like this business is one where like you don't always have control over like you don't have control of the market but you have control over you know how many calls you can make or how many people you how many conversations you have the quality of those conversations or the number of number of properties that you comp or or whatever you know like a number of different things. But you don't always have control of the results directly and so you know I just think about especially some of our international folks you know they they work hard and so I you know I I think it'd be an awesome opportunity to reward some of that effort.

SPEAKER_00 34:02

Well it's interesting it reminds me of we were having our monthly team meeting earlier today and Christy was noting hey this is the the highest number of properties we had sold in April. It wasn't the biggest dollar volume but in terms of number of properties which was really exciting. And it was like Cameron was asking her okay well what was different and she was like you know what I was doing the same stuff I've always been doing is almost like it just you know the karma gods went and lined it up and finally the karma paid off kind of a thing. Which which is definitely as you said it is one of the frustrating things that I'm doing all the stuff I've been doing and you know just not getting the results that I want. And I think that that's something that is worth spending a little bit of a time on because obviously something you're passionate about in that hey I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing trying to do the stuff that I'm doing in control versus as business owners, you know, a lot of us land investors, certainly you have to require some amount of production, right? Because otherwise like why are we here? Like we are not a nonprofit business. We are in this business to make money. And so it's this really fine and difficult line especially for someone in your seat acquisition sales where um on one hand well there's certain things you're expected of but on the other hand hey there there's got to be production and and we we need to pay everybody and support the company otherwise why are we here?

SPEAKER_01 35:35

Right so how do you think about that from your seat, you know and being on the leadership team but also someone that that is required to to produce I would probably view it different from someone in my seat versus from a leadership role right like if I think about it from from a leadership perspective I'm looking at my team and I'm saying okay um you know where is the effort coming from where is like like who's doing well where you know um are we are we the the people on our team are they do we have the most talented highest effort people in the right seats and like you know are they like in terms of like where where they're going to be able to produce and maybe that means keeping them in a place that is you know I don't know like maybe maybe that means like you know doing some of the harder work like the the stuff that that maybe takes a little more effort or or a little is a little challeng more challenging maybe putting those maybe that's the best seat for them or or not maybe you know I don't know but it's a really interesting question you know like I again I think maybe this is just me um uh and and who I am as an individual I just look at it like obviously I'm never gonna be perfect nobody's never gonna nobody is ever going to be perfect in their role everybody's always gonna have room to grow but at the same time you can there's you know like you can just do what what you have control over. And so if you can be can like consistency and effort and and pursuing growth and and trying to get better in terms of skill within your role on a team I think is is all you can do. And if if that ends up working out uh which more often than not it will then then the team benefits then you benefit everybody benefits. Sometimes it doesn't always work out. You know again like this is a market dependent business and and things can happen and um it's not always someone's fault. It's just the way that the way that the dominoes fall I guess but uh you know I think it's so easy to get lost in that and and to look at like oh geez you know what what's outside of my control and then and then you then you don't have any agency to to really change the situation.

SPEAKER_00 37:44

So it it was balancing that line you know from your perspective. Which certainly as as a employee you know it's like okay hey I'm doing what I can do and let let the chips fall where they may is kind of what what I hear from you I think um which which is a fine attitude to have on the other hand I think there should be seasons where it's like just like we do with the contest hey I'm gonna give extra I'm not just gonna do the minimum. I'm not saying that you you are just doing the minimum but in general to employees like are you the kind of person that's gonna go above and beyond or are you just going to do the bare minimum to skate by and too often I think as employers we see a lot of people do the minimum rather than really push themselves to try and get to the next level or get through that barrier or whatever. So I don't have any right answers, but just something for everyone that's listening to think and consider, you know, how how do we do that? What does that look like? And I believe some of that comes from the values you know you have as as a company as well as obviously the the people that get hired and how hungry and gritty are they to be able to to grind that out. So it's it's a combination, you know, I think of of those things there's certain seasons, right? There's going to be seasons where people produce more, certain seasons where they produce less and figuring that out and determining is this person a right fit for my organization or not um which it's so easy just to go off of numbers, which absolutely you have to look at that. You cannot close your eyes and pretend and stick your head in the sand and pretend like things aren't happening. You have to look at those numbers and KPIs and stuff like that. But on the other hand, I think there should be grace in there too for someone in a certain timeframe and you might have to renegotiate and whatnot. And sometimes that may lead to a good employee leaving just because that's just the way it is that they can't accept the way things have changed. So I think it's such a difficult path to walk down and certainly in this time period a lot of us including myself have been in the land business like as employers we want to be generous. We want to have amazing rock stars. And I would just encourage everybody out there is of course focus on the numbers but also just have some means of comparison which is why I've always liked hiring two people at the same time so you have some sense of what is the production of this person versus that person kind of a deal which is not always possible for people to do but anyhow I'll get off my soapbox.

SPEAKER_01 40:31

Any any closing thoughts you have Reggie as we wrap this up yeah I mean I think um you know again I think uh a lot of it just goes back to you know I I I guess from a leadership perspective the type the type of employee that you want to see and one thing that I think you you do so well Dave is you demonstrate that. You know like I know I know that you're going through a season right now where you're making hundreds of messy title calls all the time and you know you're willing to roll up your sleeves and get into it. I I know it's very easy for a lot of entrepreneurs or business owners to look for a way to scale themselves out of the business. And I I do think that that's you know we always talk about like working on the business versus working in the business. That's important too. However, you know I I think it really goes a long way for a team to be able to see their their supervisor, their their leadership team whoever you know kind of going through some of the same things that they are so there's not a disconnect in terms of what they're experiencing versus what the expectation is. So you know I again I think that's something that you do really well Dave and and you know it kind of plays a factor in all these things that we discussed today. You know like you know how what it's like to be on the phone so you know what it's like to set up a contest around getting on the phone or or having you know you know how hard it is or how easy it is at times to to produce or not produce. And so you have an understanding of it. So I think I think that's really important just uh you know staying connected with the team in a leadership role um and and kind of understanding each facet of of what it is that they do too.

SPEAKER_00 42:09

Well Reggie thank you so much appreciate you thank you for hanging and um of course if if people have questions they're they're welcome to reach out or whatever. So I'm happy to talk through and consult with uh you and your team we love talking with other land investors we have love having other land investors and our leadership meetings and our monthly team meetings not a whole bunch of you guys but you know if you want to be a part you want to see what we're doing the culture we're trying to set forward we welcome you in and welcome thoughts and and advice we don't pretend to have this all figured out but we're we are dedicated to learning and growing and to serve. So thank you everybody for listening this is Dave Denniston and Reggie Wright of Generation Family Properties and Leadership in Land. And we'll talk to y'all later. See ya