Anshul Sharma

Anshul Sharma came to the US from India with an MBA scholarship, a work visa, and zero connections. Eight years later, he's running a 17-person land operation sending 200,000 texts a month,  and he did most of it while legally unable to quit his corporate job. This one is a masterclass in building smart, staying consistent, and scaling past the break points that kill most land businesses.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back, guys, to the Closers Podcast. I am sitting here with a good friend of mine and kind of a legend in the land space. I'm sitting down with Anshul Sharma, who, if you don't know him, you're probably living under a rock. But the reality is this guy has been one of the most consistent land investors in the space. Staying profitable year after year, no matter the market changes that have happened, growing teams to sizes that most of us could only dream of, and continuously learning skills in leadership and sales and so much more. We're going to be diving into how he's faced different personal headwinds, market headwinds, and what he's growing into right now. So, Andrew, welcome to the Closures Podcast, man. Thank you for being here. Thank you. This is exciting. Yeah, it's going to be fun. I never imagined that I'll be on such a good podcast like that, Janice. It's an honor to be here. You're too kind, man. But for um for people that maybe don't know your full story, man. You know, we were we were talking about it as we were walking in. I know you come from a um smaller town in in India that you said you had to zoom in 17 times on Google. Still, I can't find my home. Yeah. I was very upset.

SPEAKER_02 1:02

Like, how did Google skip that?

SPEAKER_00 1:04

Tell me about how you grew up, man.

SPEAKER_02 1:06

I grew up in a in a very good family. My family is awesome. That's great. My my my my grandfather has been uh has a very long successful political career. And so I kind of like, you know, I was kind of um uh under his wings uh a lot of years when I was back in India. So yeah, very different growth. When you're coming from a high profile uh family, and you know, and he was, uh so you kind of learn things differently. But I think I give a lot of credit to whatever I'm able to do to my grandfather. And my father was is a businessman, so I kind of take a little bit of work ethic from him.

SPEAKER_00 1:45

What kind of business did you run?

SPEAKER_02 1:47

Transportation business. Okay. The most unsexiest business that you ever want to do on your lifetime. But he's a hardworking guy, work ethic, so I stole that work ethic from him, and maybe I do 10% of what he did. So Is he is he still with us? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:04

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 2:04

Yeah, just retired and having a good life. That's great.

SPEAKER_00 2:07

Okay. So when you were younger, you watched work ethic through your grandfather. He said political career, your dad ran a transportation company. And then at what point did you come to the US? Uh 2011. Okay. And was it grad school that brought you here? How did how did that all happen?

SPEAKER_02 2:23

Yeah, so I just wanted to be state. Everybody keeps talking about America.

SPEAKER_00 2:27

Sure.

SPEAKER_02 2:27

And we didn't have all that kind of television and everything back back in the days. I'm 42 guy, I'm not that old. But you know, the kind of YouTube and everything we have today, I was like, dude, I want to see this place. Yeah. I want to be in America. Everybody keep talking, like everything that happens, happening in happens in this country. I'm like, I'm in the wrong place. Sure. And so I was like, what's the best way to get here? And it seems like that I probably have to get some, you know, schooling program or something. And I say, you know what, I like business. MBA might be a great idea. Okay. Because I'm gonna learn business in MBA school. What was your undergraduate? Uh engineering, okay. Electronics, communication. Okay. Learned nothing from here. If I could have taken those four years back in my life, that'd be amazing. What it did give me, though, a four-year degree. So it's kind of a checkbox for a lot of universities here in the States. Definitely. So I was like, I think I think that worked out pretty fine.

SPEAKER_01 3:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:19

So I came over to 2011, uh, got a merit-based scholarship in Penn State, didn't have to spend the time, got a graduate assistantship. And from there that things got changed, man.

SPEAKER_00 3:30

But how'd you get a how'd you get a merit-based scholarship as an international student? I feel like that's really difficult when you're coming from overseas. Not for smart kids like me.

SPEAKER_02 3:39

Uh well, again, it was a little bit of strategic. Somebody told me you need to have a little bit of working experience. Okay. So I worked in India for a couple of years. Yep. Um, it was a low salary, but the exposure was great because I was working with one of the biggest IT companies, Big Dog Company. So it kind of gives you that thing on your resume.

SPEAKER_00 3:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:55

And then I got really good GMAT scores.

SPEAKER_00 3:58

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_02 3:58

I surprised myself. That's great. But somebody told you if you have a GMAT score, that's like probably a golden ticket.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 4:04

Yeah, I was like, okay. And I've been a C plus student. And then I'm I'm like, you know. They don't need to know that. Yeah, yeah. Probably you didn't need to, but I don't know. But if I was C plus all my career, I was like, how can I score on GMAT? Yeah. That's like challenging all my cognitive skills and critical thinking and mathematics at the same time. But that was like somebody told me, like, dude, you gotta have a score on GMAT because all these immigrant kids, they bring like 740, 760 on a GMAT score. You stand no chance if you do not have a high GMAT. I was like, all right, GMAT it is. Wow. So yeah, I kind of pounded through that thing, brought a good score.

SPEAKER_00 4:38

Yeah, Penn State hired me, brought you pick Penn State, was it because of the scholarship or did you apply to other schools?

SPEAKER_02 4:43

I picked him because of the scholarship. Okay, yeah. Yeah. And they looked nice. You know, it was like nice, nice university, big university. I was like, look, I I was not here for MBA. I was here to be in America.

SPEAKER_00 4:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:55

And I want to come the right way.

SPEAKER_00 4:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:57

And I didn't knew anything better. So I was like, okay, if hard if working hard and getting an MBA degree is the way to kind of get into the country, so be it. I'm gonna do it. Somebody would have told me you don't have to do MBA and you still be here. Guess what? I'm not doing MBA.

SPEAKER_00 5:08

Totally.

SPEAKER_02 5:09

Because I was never that smart of a kid to be in MBA school.

SPEAKER_00 5:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:12

But I have to kind of do it just to just to be here. So that's the story. Okay. That's how I end up with an MBA degree. I love it, man.

SPEAKER_00 5:19

And then was your first job out of MBA? Was that with Dell that brought you to Texas?

SPEAKER_02 5:22

Yeah, it's funny because I got a great mentor. That's the thing about mentors. So when I was in uh Penn State, um there was a there was a guy who was at a very VP position in Dell who came recruiting and he found something in me. He said, Hey, you're a street smart. I didn't know what that is. Sure. Because I'm coming from India. We don't say street smart. Everybody has it though, man. That's how you survive there, right? Yeah, yeah. So you're like, you're street smart and you are hired. I was like, okay, whatever. So he got me down in Texas for an internship. And then ever since, ever since then got me back for a full-time.

SPEAKER_00 5:54

What was your impression of Texas the first time you were there? Man, I found it home.

SPEAKER_02 5:58

Yeah. I yeah, dude, the first time I got into Texas, I was like, this is it. I found it home for whatever reason. Maybe the weather was there. We have a different kind of culture in Texas compared to some other states, you know, up there. So I was like, man, this is home. If I can be here forever, this is it. That's great. And I stuck here like 16 years now.

SPEAKER_00 6:16

That's awesome, man.

SPEAKER_02 6:17

Yeah, man. I don't want I don't have any intention to go anywhere else. Yeah. I'll be in Texas, somewhere in Texas. I love Texas, man. I love Texas. I don't know. I mean it's kind of hard to define what you love about Texas. Maybe not the most scenic state. Sure. But there's a culture to it though. It is culture to it, it's food, there are people. Yes. You know how we greet each other. Big airports, easy. Big airports, yeah. Not to talk about Austin, but yeah, big airports. I have to take my trips from Dallas if I go to the yeah. Yeah, okay. There's not many flights from Austin. Okay. That's okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:45

But around the US, you know, pretty museum. But that's okay. Okay. Great. So now let's let's fast forward because I know you jumped into land in 2017. Yes. Right. Tell me about how you found it online and what was your trigger to say, okay, I'm gonna try this. Hey guys, quick announcement. If you're watching this, you're probably a land investor. So I want to meet you in person. If you didn't hear, we're doing our third land scaling summit this fall, October 15th and 16th in Dallas. We've got the biggest room we've ever rented to bring in the best minds in land. So if you're looking to sit down with several big names in the industry, myself, Seth Williams, Clay Hepler, and so many more, I'd love for you to come to the land scaling summit. We're going to be touching topics like growing your business in a way that you love. So it doesn't have to be big teams, but it can be big profits. Doing things that are more niche, like we're talking about in this video, how to actually do subdivide and value add deals without losing money and so much more. So if you're interested in meeting the best group of land investors out there, meeting in person and getting to be in the room where these real conversations happen, check out the link below to the Land Scaling Summit. It should be landscaling summit.com October 15th and 16th here in Dallas. I can't wait to meet you.

SPEAKER_02 7:59

Before I got into LAN, I don't know if many people know this, but I'm a professional options trader. So I was trading options. I still do. Really? Yeah. Profitably? Yeah, profitably. It's easy. You know what? Option is like selling insurance. Really? It's very hard to lose money when you sell insurance.

SPEAKER_00 8:18

Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:18

Yeah. So that's something you know people don't know about options. Because most of the people are buying. They're on the wrong side of the options. If you sell, you're collecting premium. So, and again, found the right mentors, taught me how to do options, but I'm like, dude, this is a money game. Yeah. You need money, you need a quarter of a million account in order to kind of say, hey, I have financial freedom. I'm like, dude, I need to go find money now. So I had this thing, options, going on. I know how to make money through options, but I'm like, I need capital. And if I work with like my W-2, it'll probably gonna take me years to get to that point. Definitely. So, anyways, I say, hey, you know what? I gotta venture out. I gotta see something. I was always looking to do something on my own. Yeah. Whatever I ran into, I kind of embodied that, learn it, see if it works, it doesn't work. For a short period of time, I kind of ran myself into digital marketing. I published a book uh on Amazon in the whole process because I was trying to do a like an MBA coaching career because I just want to do something. Yeah. I was getting bored at my job.

SPEAKER_01 9:19

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 9:20

So I wrote a book, that didn't took off. I mean, or maybe I lost interest. But, anyways, one day, scrolling on Facebook, I found this guy and said, hey, you can make money in land without having no money. I was like, perfect. That's a great pitch. That's what I need. That's a great pitch. And you can do it while you are at home. You don't have to drive for dollars. Because I learned that too, yeah. That there is a concept of driving for dollars. Like, crap, I can't do that. I don't have time for that. I don't have time for that. Like my manager will be driving right behind me if I drive for dollars. Like it will be two of us for a dollar. Yeah. So when he said you need no money and you can do it from home, like boom. Check check. Check check. Yeah. Let's get into it. Okay. And the numbers were pretty easy for Lane. You know, it's flipping like there's nothing to it. So for a guy like me with low kind of IQ system going on, I was like, geez, I can do this. Like buy for 20,000, sell for 40. Sure. This is easy math. I cannot screw this up. Yeah. I was like, okay, let's roll with Len. Yeah. And so found my first deal. Uh, that didn't work out. But I have to buy it. Somebody asked me, hey, you've got to buy that deal. See, wrong mentor. Found a wrong mentor, say, you've got to buy it. I couldn't sell that deal for the next one year because the road access to the property was actually absolutely horrible until the neighbor called me one day and said, Hey, you own this parcel, I want to buy it. And he bought it for $12,000. Isn't that funny? Yeah. So it happened about a year after I bought that thing. So that was my first deal. The my first successful deal when I flipped it for that $47,000 deal. Yeah. And I got on the phone with the seller, negotiated the whole deal, and the whole motion of finding a buyer and double closing it, that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_00 10:59

Yeah. Okay, so how much time passed between your first deal that you bought and then your first deal that you actually made money on? Uh, three to four months. Three to four months. You know what's funny though is so I had a similar experience where the first deal I bought was successful, the second one I bought was a dud. Yeah. I ended up breaking even on it, right? But that second one that I bought kept me in the game. Yep. You know? And so I'm I asked that question because I'm like, man, even though that first person parcel you bought was bad, mentally you felt like you had momentum. Even though it wasn't there, right? So it kept you in the game. Yeah, I had a contract, yeah. So I I I want to hear this story because I know I've heard it before, but when you had this property under contract, you had the buyer, and you had to figure out how to do the double close, man. Talk to me about you when you were at you had to find the right title company because I think there's so many lessons in how you did this. Dude, first of all, I didn't knew the lingo of double close and pass-through.

SPEAKER_02 11:53

So I was like, it's funny because I thought I figured out a telecom new way in advance, and I had them on standby. Say, I have a contract coming in. Sure. And she's like, Yeah, we can double close. I didn't ask the qualifying question what double close mean to them. Well, their double close is you send the wire, yeah, and maybe in three, four days we turn around and sell this. And that was their like that was the lock-in period. Right. So I got the contract, called these guys. Like, let's double close. The whole, the, the whole pitch changed. I was like, damn, this is not gonna work. This is Friday morning. And this lady on the buyer's side, she's like, hey, I have my attorney, she was so excited to buy the property. Yeah, she's like, I have everything ready, I have the retirement for it, I have everything ready. I was like, no, don't worry about it. I've done this, like, oh shh, I got this. Take it till you make it, man. Yeah, man. Like, and it was like, and I call every single tile company that I can get hold of. And I think I went through 10 to 15 tile companies in the in the city of Austin. See, that's another limited thinking. Why I was just looking for Tile in Austin. Yeah because never done this before. Yeah. Right? If somebody wrote elsewhere, tell me like I can call the entire state of Texas. Again, where a mentor is helpful. You just don't know what you don't know. I don't know what I don't know. So I start calling. Until 3:30 p.m., I call one tile company and and I explained to her because I didn't know what double quotes and pass through. I was like, you know what? I was like, I have a contract. Yeah. But I don't have money. But I have a buyer.

SPEAKER_00 13:20

So I was doing this. How do I make the money in between?

SPEAKER_02 13:23

So I was like, uh, is there a way that I don't have to send you money and we can get this done? And she's like, Oh, you want to pass through it? I was like, that might be it. She's like, send me both contracts.

SPEAKER_00 13:36

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 13:37

And she responded back in like 10 minutes. Oh, I can I can take care of this. Wow. Next thing I know, I Then what did you do you remember?

SPEAKER_00 13:44

How did you feel?

SPEAKER_02 13:44

Because this is almost 10 years ago. I was like M-I-A for the entire day. My manager called me or whatever, he DM'd me. I don't remember, but it was a little bit of conversation there. I was like, dude, I was not feeling great today. I tried to crawl up to my computer, can't do it. And he's all done. I've done this enough.

SPEAKER_00 14:11

Oh man, that's funny. So okay. So yeah. But you got the deal done. Yeah, got the deal done. You made $47,000. What did the rest of that first year look like for you? Dude, the day I made $47,000.

SPEAKER_02 14:23

I was like to my wife, can you pinch me? I don't think this is real. Because I've never seen five, zero or five numbers in my bank account in dollars. Yeah. Yeah. Right? Because I'm coming from India. Yeah. I'm like, dude, it's $47,000? If I tell my mom that's like how many? 30 lakhs, my mind was like. Yes. Yeah. That's life-changing money over there. You told me that's life-changing money. But I think about it like that's so silly when you think $47,000 is gonna change your life. Because it changed nothing. Right? It kind of gives you momentum, but $47,000 is not life-changing money. Yeah. It takes a lot more to change your life with money. But anyways, so that was that was it. That was it.

SPEAKER_00 15:07

Wow. So and then in 2017, what month was that when you got that deal done? Do you remember? I was sweating, probably in summer, some summer. Summer sweating. So do you remember the rest of the year? How much did you end up making?

SPEAKER_02 15:18

No, I did not do much uh business the rest of the year. I did maybe one or two small deals. Okay. Because I was still kind of working thousand letters a month.

SPEAKER_00 15:26

Okay. So you were doing small volume.

SPEAKER_02 15:28

Yeah, what I was doing, I sent letters and then I um I have Pad Light back in the days to take those phone calls. Yeah. I used to come the same day at night when I come back, and then I used to send offers as they come in, and then I used to follow up on Saturday.

SPEAKER_00 15:46

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 15:47

So that was the rhythm.

SPEAKER_00 15:48

That was your system.

SPEAKER_02 15:49

That was my system.

SPEAKER_00 15:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:50

And it was me. And until the property gets under contract, and then my wife comes in and she helps me with Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace. But that's pretty much it.

SPEAKER_00 15:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:58

That was the business. So yeah, that went for like about one to two years. Yeah. Before I hired somebody. And now we are here, man.

SPEAKER_00 16:06

Man, that's great. And you say we're here, I don't think most people understand the size of your business. So oh man. Oh, actually, I before we get into that though, I want to know how long did you continue working at Dell before you left?

SPEAKER_02 16:18

Uh four years or something. Four years.

SPEAKER_00 16:20

So 2021 when you finally left?

SPEAKER_02 16:22

Yeah, and the reason that and the reason for the whole reason for that was because if I do not work for Dell, I have to leave the country. It wasn't because of money that I was working at Dell. I was making way more in my business than I than Dell was giving me that per month.

SPEAKER_00 16:36

Man, that's gotta be hard.

SPEAKER_02 16:37

And so I basically kind of two, two and a half years I was just there because if I leave the country, I I leave Dell, I leave the country.

SPEAKER_00 16:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:45

On that visa. Because I was on a visa.

SPEAKER_00 16:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:48

And so finally, you know, and then COVID happened and all that kind of stuff. So that like, okay, I I can't leave nowhere. Because no country no country is accepting me at this point in time. It's hard to like travel, like leave your house, like leave alone country.

SPEAKER_00 17:02

Airlines were shutting down flights.

SPEAKER_02 17:03

I mean it was I was going back to India and never coming back. So I thought I can't I can pull the trigger right now. Yeah. So I just kind of derailed my plan and and then I finally left. I left Dell in thirty thirty days I left the country. That was the hardest moment for me in my life. Yeah. I didn't leave I didn't want to leave uh Texas. I didn't want but I have to just I have to do what I gotta do.

SPEAKER_00 17:23

Yeah. So 'cause you're doing it the right way, man. Yeah. Yeah. So I met you in person, I think it was in 2022 at a Learn Land event, right? With our mutual friend Clint Turner. Um at that point you were living in the States.

SPEAKER_02 17:34

No, I I think I came from from Mexico or Nicaragua.

SPEAKER_00 17:39

I didn't realize that.

SPEAKER_02 17:40

Mm-hmm. And the next time when I met you in your event, I came back from Egypt. Really? The night before.

SPEAKER_00 17:45

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 17:46

Yeah. Yeah. I didn't realize that. Yeah, I just I just took the flight and came over and that kind of stuff, man.

SPEAKER_00 17:52

So it's just been years of chaos while you've been building the business. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 17:54

Yeah, it was a lot of chaos, a lot of going back and forth. Yeah. And I'm I I'm a guy who's who's not very high-level concentration. So if I keep changing things and it kind of really tried to lose focus. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, lose focus.

SPEAKER_00 18:06

Okay, got it. Well, man, it makes me respect the way you built your business ten times more. At what point did you switch from I remember you were one of the first guys to do texting, like kind of big? You know, we were both good friends with Mrs. Callan. Shout out to Callan. Shout out to Callan. We love Callan. She's doing a bunch of AI stuff now, changing the world, man. She's amazing. She's amazing. She's amazing.

SPEAKER_02 18:25

So back then she was teaching land investors how to text. It's funny because Callan called me or texted me, Anshul, I want to show you something. And I was, I don't know where I was, but I was carrying my laptop. Sure. And I said, sure, Callan. When Callan calls you and texts, you pick up, yeah, yeah. You pick up and you pay attention. I'm like, all right, Callan, what you got? Yeah. And showed me text, and you know, funny enough, I ran my business for a couple years just texting. I stopped completely mailers because I kind of lost faith on mailers, they were not responding the way they used to. I was pre predominantly in Texas, that was another problem. Yeah. The mailers got shifted, everything got shifted. So I was like, okay, text it is. And we started with launch control and kind of took from there.

SPEAKER_00 19:05

Yeah, ramped it up. That's great. Let's fast forward to what your business looks like now. Um could you break down the team size that you have and then kind of respective roles between your lead gen team, Compers, acquisitions, dispositions?

SPEAKER_02 19:20

The team is changing. So before I go into like teams and everything, the business is changing, and this is the probably the most biggest transformation in me as a leader and and team and the way we are approaching the land business. Okay. So with that premise, um, right now we have a team of 17 to 18 people, depending day you call me, because we are hiring and then kind of letting people go at the same time just to have the right fit in the company. About 17 to 18 people um sold his hair with me a local in my office. Um let uh my executive assistant go, but I'm actively hiring. Okay. So basically the plan really is to have uh on-site team and then have an overseas team.

SPEAKER_00 20:02

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 20:03

And I think over the years I found the right balance what that looks like, which I'm very excited about. And so that's what it is. Now going to your question about where are these what their roles are. Um we have about about I would say ten, uh 11 people in acquisition. Okay. Uh we have three closers. We have four or five people texting. Okay. We have about four to five um underwriters who do comms. Okay. Um so that kind of makes up the acquisition team.

SPEAKER_00 20:37

Yeah, so um I know we talked a little bit yesterday about your texting volume. If I remember correctly, you're doing about 200,000 texts a month? 8,000 a day. 8,000 a day. Is that 30 days a month or how many days? 22. 22, okay. 22 days. So that's the texting. Eight times 22. Yeah, so just just shy of 200,000 a month, right? So you said four textures, so each texture is about 50,000 messages a month, give or take, kind of 2,000 a day, I guess, is uh the number. And and I'm drawing this out just for people that are listening because I think sometimes people are trying to figure out, hey, as if we can hear from how a larger team is doing it, we can understand whether our smaller team is actually constrained right now or not. I think you know, you and I both know a lot of businesses' first problem is really just volume, right? Hey man, I'm not getting any deals. Okay, how many messages are you sending a month? 10,000. Yeah. And you gotta jack that up, right?

SPEAKER_02 21:28

You got one deal a month then. Yeah, maybe. Maybe if you're good, if you actually get on the phone, right? Yeah, exactly. But yeah, so probably um individual does 1,500 to 2,500. Okay, depending on the county response. Some counties are more responsive than others. Okay. So we just kind of you know ramp up or ramp down accordingly during the day as day progresses or you know, during the week.

SPEAKER_00 21:49

Yeah. And then do you know how many leads they're pushing on any given day?

SPEAKER_02 21:53

Uh we're getting about about twenty five to thirty qualified leads. Qualified leads. The way you want to think about It every hundred people that respond back to us, any kind of respond, it could be F you or I I'm interested in selling and everything in between. We probably turn over four to five to comps for underwriting. Okay. So we we we we remove most of the noise up front. Yeah. So four or five highly qualified from those hundred that responded. Okay. Yeah. And then they they that goes to the underwriting team. When it goes to underwriting, about forty to fifty percent they they they reject at their level. So think about five reads, probably two will get rejected either price or the properties is not a good fit. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 22:36

So are you getting price at the texting level from the seller? We try to. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 22:40

Uh if if we get it, then it's an easy easy way to reject them, especially if you're asking very high value. But um but usually 40 to 50% of the properties get rejected at the at the time of underwriting. Okay. So think about 100 people responded, five people got qualified, got pushed to the underwriting team, underwriting team look at it, and probably rejected another two of those five. Okay. And then they're left with three. The three goes down to the closer and they go and close the deal. Now, how much leads does it take for a closer to close a deal? That depends on the platform. Uh, for mailers, I would say it would take probably 10 to 15 good contracts. For texting, it would probably take around 35 to 40 qualified leads who said, hey, I want to sell my property. Yeah. Yeah. And that kind of changes, but that's the that's the kind of stuff you're looking at.

SPEAKER_00 23:33

That makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 23:34

Letters make probably letters are better at 3 to 4x closing versus text.

SPEAKER_00 23:39

I would agree. They're just so much lumpier, man. You know, I can't control when there's a I remember in uh 2022, I I can't remember which hurricane it was. One of the hurricanes hit, and all the mail, everybody's got slowed down for about six weeks. You know, you have the holidays come, mail is slowed down. Um, you know, it it's interesting in all the different patterns. Thanksgiving to Christmas, I don't even send mail, man. I would never I would never send it out. Sure. Uh Easter would be slow, you got packages and Passover and all those things. And so it's it's interesting, but like the nice thing about texts, about cold calls is you can really control and then go up and down based on responses if you need to. Whereas the feedback loop for mail is just so much slower. So much slower. It's harder to work, but the leads are more qualified. So it's a trade-off. Yeah, there's a trade-off there. Um in your business, um with your closers, you know, are they um are they just getting the leads pushed to them? Or remind me, do they have a lead manager in between, or are they just going outbound mostly on these when they come in?

SPEAKER_02 24:38

No, so they're they're they're there are multiple filters, right? Okay. So uh we try to get on the phone with a text lead. Okay, yep. We really push hard for that. And we call it. How fast?

SPEAKER_00 24:49

Like you have a yeah, right away.

SPEAKER_02 24:50

I mean, you know, they say, hey, can we get on the phone right now?

SPEAKER_00 24:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:53

And you know, there's a there's a cat there, hey, I think I have an offer ready for you. Can we get on the phone? Yeah. And then kind of the conversion gets higher because then, oh, you have an offer for me, and then they kind of work their way to say, hey, you know what? I need a little bit more information. I have some new information. Let me pass it to my underwriting team. I just want to make sure we get you the highest and the best offer. And that's when the compers come in. And then the compers come in. Okay. And then they vet the property, make sure there's no excessive floodplain or wetland or too much slower, you know, with kind of a high-level due diligence. And the price is kind of in the ball part that we can work with them.

SPEAKER_00 25:25

Right.

SPEAKER_02 25:25

Um, and then and then that's the time when it comes to the closer.

SPEAKER_00 25:29

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 25:29

Now, don't they do they find surprises? Sure they do. You know, something that we didn't catch, or the seller is asking a totally different price because they didn't they might not have told the price to the person who qualified, say, I don't know, or I don't want to tell you. Sure. You come with your and but once closer goes on the phone, they get surprises around prices, what they're asking for. Sure. And they kind of work their way, whether nurture the lead or keep following up or negotiate, whatever the scene is.

SPEAKER_00 25:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:55

Okay, that makes sense. Um, how many leads um will a closer get on any given day? Um, we strive to get them six to eight.

SPEAKER_02 26:05

Six to eight new qualified leads every day. Contracts.

SPEAKER_00 26:08

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 26:08

Negating contracts. When when when when the deal gets to their table, they have a contract, they have a lead, and they have a whole uh conversation. What happened when the qualifier spoke with them or texted them? Yeah. So they have that background, so they pick the lead and kind of work their way into the conversation accordingly. That makes sense. Either re-qualify them, because if we didn't got much in the first qualification call, they're re-qualifying the lead. Yep. Or if they have enough and the price is kind of where we need to be, then they're going for the close. Yeah. Kind of relatively quicker versus some we really don't know where this is going. Right.

SPEAKER_00 26:43

That makes sense. Okay. Yeah. Now I'm curious as you're looking at because I know you're in an explosive growth year, man, as we've been having these conversations, and even before we hit record, you said, man, this year is my 2.0 year, right?

SPEAKER_02 26:55

So Yeah, it's 2.0 because the way I'm structuring the business, you know, having an on-site team is part of that. Finding the right balance on-site and offshore, that's another piece of that. The way we are approaching our deals, underwriting them, the whole filter that I told you, we didn't have that kind of great filter. Yeah. So if you don't have that filter, your closers will be like, you know, trying to find that one deal, and there's a lot of churn because closers wants to close. It's true. And if you just keep throwing garbage leads, which like you have embedded early in the process, then you're just wasting closers' time. Closers is is is the person on your team who is bringing you contracts. Yeah. And, you know, so you really be mindful of their time, then you gotta bring you gotta do everything before the leads or the contract comes to them. Because when it comes, you want them to do their job. Yeah. It's like a doctor like surgery, dude. Um if I'm a surgery, my job is to do surgery and you want to do everything else or set up the room, set up all this kind of equipment, like that's a time waste. Yeah. I'm here to do the surgery.

SPEAKER_00 27:57

Definitely. So yeah. That's good, man. I want to call that out too, because I think um there's there's two sides to that, right? We talked about this yesterday at the sales blitz, where I think there is um there are a lot of business owners that aren't doing enough volume at all, right? Maybe sending 10,000, 20,000 texts a month and they're saying, Hey man, how do I qualify the lead? I said, Man, your your issue is not qualification right now. Yeah. You can't even really get to qualification because you need volume, right? Oh, well, I I don't wanna I don't want to send out too many texts, I don't have time for this data, this that okay, then you just gotta hit all the leads, man. You know, because you might pull something out. But I think to your point, when your business evolves and matures into that, you know, kind of two levels beyond that, where now I have a good set of staff to qualify, right, and manage this lead to the point where when it gets to the closer, I'm not saying they don't have to work. They gotta work. Yeah. Right? They gotta work. But that work shouldn't be um, you know, gosh, is this thing anywhere near a deal, even? Yeah. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 28:59

That work should be different in it should be more around persuasion. Right. It should be more around follow-up, right? It should be more about building credibility, it's more about giving them options. Yeah. It should not be about whether it's even a lead, you know, like a meaningful lead or what you were saying in uh what's a lead, like a like a legit lead. Yeah, like a good lead. Yeah. That shouldn't be their job.

SPEAKER_00 29:22

Yeah. Yeah. I agree. I agree. Um with with your business where it is now, what's the um what's the target typically for your closers per rep? Meaning uh like what do you want each closer to bring in, either in contracts or revenue? Or is is it different per some reps maybe?

SPEAKER_02 29:39

Yeah, we look in terms of deal spread. Deal spread. Deal spread is forecasted gross profit that we're gonna go and close from those deals. Um depending on what level closer you are. If you are uh entry level, I uh would like to see $100,000 in deal spread. Okay. Every month, right? Every month. And if you are next level where you get higher level contracts, uh then probably we're looking at bare minimum $150. Makes sense. $200,000 is you're doing your job, $250, uh, you're killing it.

SPEAKER_00 30:08

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 30:08

Anything above that, uh I I I I never want to leave you. You are you are you are here forever. Yes, you know that kind of stuff. So yeah, well, I would say $100,000, $250,000 bare minimum.

SPEAKER_00 30:20

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 30:21

And the thing is, like, you know, half of these deals will will be gone. Yeah. Right? 50% or 60% of the closed rate. That's true. So if you're bringing 150, right, cut that in half, set 75,000, that's true, and put your commission on top of it, depending on what you let's say you do 10% commission on that, then you're making 7,000. Closers want to make that because 7,000 times 12 is 96,000. Now that's a hundred thousand six-figure package. Yeah. And that's what closers are here for. 100%. If they're not doing that enough, then they'll be like, dude, I'm better off somewhere else. Definitely. Making $4,000, $5,000, and I don't have to do all this I'm doing right now. Yeah. Because closers' job is like of an artist.

SPEAKER_00 30:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:59

And it takes time to get into that rhythm and get to that level and do it consistently, month over month over month. I agree. So the reward has to be aligned for them to stick around with you for a long period of time.

SPEAKER_00 31:12

100%, man. I think there's a couple of things here that I want to call out just for newer people that are hiring maybe their first set of salespeople, is um, number one, A players need to make a player money. Yes. You know what I mean? Because we we talked about this a little bit yesterday, but if you as a business owner can't give an A player an opportunity where they can make, you know, 90,000, 150 a year, correct, like, man, they're gonna go somewhere where they can. They're gonna learn from you and they're gonna leave to a better place. And I can't blame them. Yeah, no.

SPEAKER_02 31:41

I mean, they're here for at least six. If you are not giving your six closer a six-figure opportunity, yeah, they won't be around, man. Why would they? Yeah, why would they? They can make more money somewhere else, they have a skill, and you know, somebody else is gonna hire them and give them that kind of volume. That's exactly right. I think number two. That's why you need to scale. Like people like like I don't want to scale, I don't I wanna stay skinny. Yeah, like do you you can't hire great people if you don't want to scale.

SPEAKER_00 32:07

And it's more stressful actually to be small.

SPEAKER_02 32:10

It's small because they come at a price tag. Yeah. And you can't afford that price tag if you don't scale. Exactly. Like it's not even an option for you. Or you go close for the rest of your life. Right.

SPEAKER_00 32:22

Which is fine, just acknowledge you have a job, not a business.

SPEAKER_02 32:24

Yeah, you have a business. Yeah, you don't have a business, you have a job. Yeah. Right? No, I'm in the office every day for nine hours. Yeah. Okay. Because I want to build something big. Right. And it takes me every single moment of my life, professional life, to be there and build that. But even if you want to build a four, three, five million dollar revenue company, you need to have enough for somebody to say, this house is big enough that I can live here. I'm not running into each other. There's not enough room for me to grow. Right. And I don't think business owners or our land community realize that.

SPEAKER_00 32:59

I agree.

SPEAKER_02 33:00

Right? I mean, there are so many wrong ways to scale the business, don't get me wrong. It's uh you know, but I think we laugh both because we've seen it with some friends that maybe are no longer in our industry and then also we made mistakes, right? Yeah, but like people like I want to do, I want to stay mean and lean. I respect that. You can scale the company and still be lean and mean. Right. But if lean and mean is like I want to have three people team and I want to build a four million dollar business or three million, good luck.

SPEAKER_00 33:31

Good luck, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:32

It's not happening. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway.

SPEAKER_00 33:34

I think the only guy I know that's even you know, a funny example of that, but those numbers, you have to be doing like big development projects. Like John Jazniak style, right? Unless you and and you know, we say he's got lean and mean team in-house, but how many contractors and attorneys is he working with you have to look at it one way or another, right?

SPEAKER_02 33:51

You just have a d he just have a different set of team and members on Steam to execute on those projects. Exactly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:56

So yeah, even then, I mean then you have investors as well on the back end, and then you'll have no buyers because he's moving, you know, 20 lots in a project or whatever. Like it's it's just different.

SPEAKER_02 34:06

Everyone likes others' business better. Isn't that funny? Unless they know what's going on. Like I don't want to be part of that system. Yeah. I love my business. It's true.

SPEAKER_00 34:15

It's true. And it's funny too, because you the more business owners you spend time around that you know build for three, five years plus, you see the business begins to model based around the business owner's strengths a lot of times, right? So like my team were very sales heavy because I'm a very comfortable salesperson, very comfortable training sales. Yeah, I think other teams, you know, rest in peace, all the guys that only ever did blind offers, they were very analytical, very, you know, kind of scared to be on the phone. Now I think anybody can learn the phone, at least enough to make money, right? Yeah. But um you you do see the team's model based on what people are good at at some level. Um now, just to make sure, you know, we're we're digesting this correctly. So you got three closers on your team, right? Every single one is is bringing in at least six figures of gross profit pipeline every single month. Obviously, not all of that's gonna close. Um, but you guys are running a good, good seven-figure business right now, right?

SPEAKER_02 35:12

No, now now we are back to the point. I have a lot of ebbs and flows last year. Sure. Uh because I was experimenting the last two years, right? There is there is no there is no map to this thing. How to navigate this jungle. Right? And when you are inside the jungle, it's even get harder. Yeah. What your exit looks like. Yeah. And you know, when the when is the next meal coming from? Right. And all that kind of stuff. So to your point, yes, um, now we are back, I would say, back on track on, and you know, again, it's a combination of better training, better system, better compensation, yeah, better lead flow. Yeah. All of that matters. 100%. So yeah, but I would say, yeah, that that's true what you're saying.

SPEAKER_00 35:54

Yeah. What's the average margin on some of your guys' deals look like, either when contracted or when realized?

SPEAKER_02 35:59

We pick anywhere between 50 to 70 percent of the value of market value. Okay. Yeah, if you get lucky, maybe 40%, 30%. Sure. Those deals are there, but they're just not as many as they used to be.

SPEAKER_00 36:11

I miss those days, man. But that's okay, it just takes work now. Yeah, that's right. Right? It's still a good business. Um, in in terms of uh can we talk dispositions for a second? Dispo, because I think it's important, and I know you know you were the one that asked this question yesterday, but ironically, you may have some of the strongest dispo in the room, maybe, you know. Um you guys are moving, you know, how many properties on a month? Five, ten, fifteen, ten rooms, ten, ten properties.

SPEAKER_02 36:35

Under contract with earnest money deposit kind of thing.

SPEAKER_00 36:38

Okay, so seriously moving about ten a month. Um what are you seeing is successful right now for moving your properties, both between listing strategy, pricing strategy, uh, markets you're in? Kind of give us the overall framework. Yeah, market is overall okay, I would just say.

SPEAKER_02 36:55

We are not living in a land market where where uh it can be assumed that if property is in a great market, it would just sell. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:05

It's not 2021 anymore.

SPEAKER_02 37:06

No, yeah. Not even 2021. We it was just kind of maybe 2016, 2015 kind of market. Okay. It's okay, you know. Yeah. Land is another asset class, people look and buy.

SPEAKER_00 37:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:17

And they're not crazy about it. Sure. But there are some land lovers or people who like to invest in land and they want to buy a land kind of situation. Yeah. Uh, which is a reset from 2021. Where things like, hey, you stick a property and it's gone. It's gone, yeah. Regardless of size and price tag. So we're kind of normalizing that because we got to a point where we used to close on an average, we used to find a buyer anywhere between 40 to 45 days. Okay. And I think that's we're still maintaining that, but we have to do a lot more price drop, not steep price drop, but multiple price drop. So frequency and stuff. Frequency has increased, and uh, we hustle more to find that buyer, either as I said, like outgoing, outgoing realtor campaign, proactively reaching out to realtors, neighbors, builders, like more hustle and grind. Yeah. Uh, in order to demand for the same price tag that you would have in 2021 by sticking just on MLS and having the realtor call you and say, Hey, I have a buyer, I have a contract, let's go.

SPEAKER_00 38:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:15

So that's where the dispo is in general, I believe, in the land market.

SPEAKER_00 38:19

Remind me how many people you have on your dispo team, right?

SPEAKER_02 38:21

I have two guys who sell, I have two people who stick those properties up uh on the market. Okay. So, like a core team of four. Yeah. I think I'm missing working on it. Sure. Uh, but that's what I have today.

SPEAKER_00 38:34

Okay. That makes sense. Yeah. Um, we talked about the team, we talked about the volume, we're talking about dispo. I want to zoom out now because I know you've spent a lot of time and money getting education throughout your career. Um, you know, I remember the first couple times I met you, I was a little bit intimidated. I knew you were a Cardone guy. I'm like, man, man.

SPEAKER_02 38:54

I just want to make it clear. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:56

They have a lot of education out there. I've heard uh, you know, a lot of people talk about, oh, Alex Hormozy's blowing up. It's like, man, Cardone's kind of the OG in that space. He makes more money online than all these guys combined. Combined, yeah. Yeah, it's it's monstrous what they've built. And I think, you know, maybe he gets a bad rap sometimes, but the guy knows how to build a business, right? Talk to me about what you've learned through your time with them. Yeah. Because I think it's made you such a strong leader, um, and you don't even realize it. Maybe you do, maybe you don't, man. You know? Yeah. Tell me about that experience.

SPEAKER_02 39:28

If if I would have not followed Grand Cardone, I would have not embarked on the journey of scaling my business. There was nobody, nobody in 2018 and 2019 thinking of hiring 10 to 15 people.

SPEAKER_00 39:45

Isn't that funny?

unknown 39:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:47

In the land business specifically. Yeah, in the land business. There was not one human body who was thinking of doing that.

SPEAKER_00 39:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:53

And I happened to be, you know, in his company, Grant Cardone went for his conferences, and probably, you know, certain levels kind of mimicked his brain, how he thinks about business. Yeah. And he all in always has a saying, hey, um what what's the what's the top line look like? What's the revenue? Okay. You're all gonna be have expenses. Don't bitch about expenses. He has the saying, don't be a little don't be a little bitch. Wow. Yeah, he has like a not a bad saying.

SPEAKER_00 40:22

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:23

He has this, he has this t-shirt and I don't be a little bitch. Wow. And like people bitch about expenses going up, taxes going up. Yeah what's the top line? And ever since then I've focused on one thing. What's my top line? And I gotta double that top line every single year. And I did for the first five years. Dude, I take a took a hit on my expenses. Yes, I did. But that really kind of put me in positions where I kind of took the leap and said, hey, this is how we scale business. I did it a very wrong way in certain aspects, but I was right in others. Okay. Right? And so you gotta kind of learn, right? But that's what I learned. Like he he has this saying, if you're not if you're not growing, if you're not scaling up or you're not scaling down, you're scaling down. Like there is no business who can stay at one level and be there forever. Businesses are meant to grow. Some grow slower than others, or you're meant to grow. So if you want to be like a four million dollar revenue business for the rest of your life, you will not have a business. Right. It will be gone. There's nothing like I don't want to grow.

SPEAKER_00 41:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:29

So that kind of mindset, sales, a lot of sales stuff, my closing style is absolutely polar opposite to yours. And Whitney tells me every single day. If Ajay will be on the phone, he will he will get a little bit more out and he will he will have the seller tell their problem and all that kind of stuff. And unchalie are like boom, boom, boom, and that kind of stuff. And say, hey, you know what? Just adapt to what you like and what works for you. You don't have to follow me. If Ajay does a better job, which he does, go follow that guy. Yeah, find your mentor. Yeah, you don't have to look for a mentor in me. If you found a better mentor, which really suits your personality and you jive with them and makes you real, that is your mentor. Definitely. And that is you for the majority of my team members here. Yeah, that's it. You know? So, you know, that kind of stuff. But the mindset. If I stole anything from Grand Cardone, was the mindset.

SPEAKER_00 42:20

So you actually um, you know, there's three things I want to touch on there. I think the first one was I remember you said this expression to me from Cardone one time. What was it? You would say the goal, and he said, Are you complaining or are you what was it? What was it?

SPEAKER_02 42:32

Yeah, somebody, you know, like, man, I have so many contracts to follow up, dude. Are you complaining or are you bragging? You gotta you gotta you know you gotta pick a side here.

SPEAKER_00 42:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:41

Like if you are a closer, yeah, and you are telling me you have so many contracts, dude, that is heaven. Yeah. For a closer. I want more leads and contract, not less. Yeah. Because they will be days when you got no contract. That's true.

SPEAKER_00 42:53

And you'll be like, man. Well, there's two sides to that mindset, right? Because on one, you complain about the things you should be grateful for. Yeah. Right. But number two, it's always a reminder where sometimes you are bragging and you actually should be complaining, man, I made a hundred grand last month. Bragging or complaining? Bragging and complaining. Complaining, man, I should be making more. More than making more. So there's this cool little mindset to. I remember the first time you said it to me, it really stuck with me. Um what's what's interesting about Cardone, because I think he was also one of the first major sales trainers nationwide. You know, but he he was big on auto, I think, is where he started and he's opened up across industries. The guy's, again, man, he has more volume than I have in my entire career, right? Um, I think we're we're I'm grateful I've been able to help in our niche, is um getting specific with our avatar.

SPEAKER_01 43:37

Yeah. Right? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 43:38

And that's where um I think there are different styles, but to your point, at the end of the day, I always tell people, man, you gotta sell with integrity. Yeah. Right? Like, I don't need you to sound exactly like me. Yeah. Because if you do, it's gonna come off as inauthentic if that's not you. You know, I make jokes, man. I make jokes when I talk to sellers. If you sound weird, it's not gonna hit. I'll tell you a funny story, man. I'll never Forget. I had this one closer at one time, and uh I was experimenting with the script non troll is a terrible terrible idea, man. You gotta you gotta test the script yourself a number of times before you teach it to the team. I didn't know that yet. This was you know three, four years ago. Give me some grace, you know. But uh uh in the script, you know, you you you gotta ask the question sometimes like what are you gonna do with the money? But there's different ways of asking that. You know, it's the way I was experimenting at this time was like, hey man, so are you just gonna kind of put it in savings or are you gonna take your money, run off into the sunset? You know, okay. It's kind of fun with that you think. It's funny, it's cheeky. If you if you use it the right way with the right seller, it can work really well. I'd say probably 20, 30% of the time, if you have a seller that's kind of bubbly and friendly, they might get a laugh and tell you what they're gonna do. Right. Because you're breaking the tension, man. That's the point when you can use humor, you break tension. When you break tension, the conversation doesn't feel like it's you versus me. It feels like we're just we're at a bar, we're sitting at a table, we're just talking, right?

SPEAKER_02 45:04

Now this is where this guy shines. He knows how to use humor uh in the most tense situations when you're on the phone.

SPEAKER_00 45:11

Man, yeah, it's it's it's important though, because uh but to the other side, if you don't know how to use humor, and this was the point I was making was this closer, she she delivered the line, and it was like, so are you gonna take your money and run off into the sunset? Girl, what are you saying? I was like, hey, we're we're cutting that from the script. I don't even want you to ask this question anymore right now. We've got to work on training right now. You know, and we we did role play every day for the next two weeks, and then we ended up having to let her go because she just didn't perform. But that's okay. Um, you know, there's there's seasons to that stuff, man. But I think there's actually a really good point that uh, yeah, man, when when things are tense, if if you can add humor. Oh, yeah. Um, and and you see it, you see it not just in sales conversations, you know, it's historical. I'm gonna get a little bit um almost controversial for a second, man. Let's talk about when uh 9-11 happened. Yeah. Okay, it was obviously a very tense time in the country. We had a uh terrorist attack that was on US soil that hadn't happened at that scale since Pearl Harbor, right? Years, years, years ago, the 40s. And so um, you know, I remember studying this when I was younger and seeing that the first time there were public jokes about it was on that TV show South Park. And although, you know, South Park is very uh uh uh it's it's vulgar humor, right? But a lot of people watch this show and it was the first time people could laugh about what was happening. And you know, and it's not that we're laughing at the fact that it happened, but when you can laugh around a topic, it eases the tension.

SPEAKER_02 46:40

Which is yeah, yeah, lighten things up here.

SPEAKER_00 46:42

And so it's the same thing, man, because in these conversations, we deal with a lot of elderly folks, man. They've dealt with death, they've lost their homes, they're working towards retirement, maybe they are retired. And if if we don't figure out ways to make people laugh, man, yeah, like you lose touch with the ability to break this tension that we all feel every day, man. I agree with you. Every day, man. So a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 47:03

That's why you need this guy. You need to, that's the reason you need to hire this guy. You don't want to learn humor from an immigrant, it can come up you know, you know, you know, you know, very differently, but that's why you need this guy. I mean, this is good, man. Yeah, but I look, I did not have all of this when I started five years back. Yeah. The only person that was loud and made sense were Greg Cardone. Yeah. And so I gotta roll with a mentor. Totally. Because I realized very early in my career that I have strengths and weaknesses. Yeah. And one of my weaknesses is that I'm not that smart. When you know about yourself, you gotta you gotta get cling onto somebody who's way smarter and successful than you, yeah, and just roll with them. And for me, that was Grant Cardone and his entire crew.

SPEAKER_00 47:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 47:48

That's what I did. Alex Hermozzi wasn't on the scene at that point.

SPEAKER_00 47:52

Or he wasn't loud at all.

SPEAKER_02 47:54

Yeah, he wasn't loud at all. Yeah. So what you gotta do in a country where I knew nobody. Yeah. Nobody. I got no friends. Yeah. Not at least the one that I can talk about my business. I gotta find a mentor. Definitely.

SPEAKER_00 48:06

There you go. So, yeah, man, you're uh I didn't pay him to say all that. But uh, I will say I think there's a lesson there, right? Of like, yeah, man, when you don't have the network, you have to pay to play, right? And it's just you you you always have to choose your your suffering. I think there's this concept from um uh uh Mark Manson's book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F, right? And he basically says that we get to choose our own suffering. There's always a trade-off in whatever decision you make. So some people might say, Man, I don't want to pay Cardone, I can figure it out myself. Right. No worries, man. Just know it might take you five, ten, fifteen, twenty years.

SPEAKER_02 48:41

You gotta pay, yeah, you're gonna pay some ways.

SPEAKER_00 48:43

Yeah, one time or another.

SPEAKER_02 48:44

It's either time or time or cash right now. 100%.

SPEAKER_00 48:47

And so I think that's what you've always been so good at, man, is you're willing to pay to just learn as fast as you can.

SPEAKER_02 48:52

What else to do with money? Totally. Like my money, like I cannot just go and buy a home. Like, that will not satisfy me. Totally. That will I will not enjoy to be in a half million dollar, million dollar home when I'm still trying to figure things about my life, my business, myself.

SPEAKER_00 49:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 49:07

I'd rather pour that money back in me versus a house that I don't even know what to do with. Yeah. Like we have a condo right now, and we're like, why do we have a third room? Why? I like, I don't know, maybe some guests. Yeah. Your mom comes like three one in three years. We still have like a whatever.

SPEAKER_00 49:24

And when you say it like that, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 49:26

Close the door, move on, man. Like, this is this is this is still us thinking why we have a third room in our house. Because nobody like it is what it is, dude. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:33

So, anyways. No, it's good, man. Let's take a second and talk about recruiting. Uh huh. I think you're somebody who's done a lot more recruiting than you know most other people in our niche. Um and somebody who's still learning, so still learning, of course. Um, but I want to talk about your experience with it because I think you've you've done some things really, really well, man. You've had some great talent come through your door. Um, so let's let's start with the international recruiting. Because again, you've hired probably hundreds at this point over the past you know couple of years, right? Um I don't want to talk about your experience doing this in person yet. Okay. But, you know, first, as you've hired remotely with a lot of your staff, talk to me about what you've seen work well over the years. You know, where are you posting? What are you posting? How are you vetting? You know, walk me through kind of the recruiting funnel.

SPEAKER_02 50:18

You know what? I got lucky. I would say this. When I hired my first, what I would call real person in my company, she's still with me.

SPEAKER_00 50:26

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 50:27

Shout out to Leslie. That's awesome. Okay. And when you get an A player who helped build your business, and she helped build my business, and I had real faith in hiring people overseas. Right? But I got lucky in hiring my first, and then she's still with me. Then I hired more people along the way, and I started finding good people. Right? It kind of thing, right? When you attract good people, good people attract you know, people around them and all that kind of stuff. So that kind of took off. That's great. Right.

SPEAKER_00 51:00

And the culture multiplies that way too.

SPEAKER_02 51:02

Yeah, the culture multiplies. But then as we start scaling, we also had some bad apples come in, and we didn't realize that and destroying the culture of the company. But since you had built that fate in hiding overseas, you don't see that coming unless you, you know, it takes a little bit of time to say, you know, this is not going the right direction. Yeah. I need to let people go. Yeah. And so that's another thing about scaling. Like, you know, like culture becomes a thing.

SPEAKER_00 51:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 51:26

And it is up to you how you maintain and keep that culture as a business owner. Right. Because if you don't, then probably you are better off running this business all by yourself. Right.

SPEAKER_00 51:38

And you're gonna lose some of the best talent too.

SPEAKER_02 51:39

Bad talent too, and you will have worse days uh running the business because now you have all these people that you're paying payroll, they're on their payroll with a bad culture. And that's not fun. That sucks, man. Sucks, man. Like you build something, yeah, and now it stinks. Yeah. How about that?

SPEAKER_00 51:56

Why would you build a team you don't want to work with yourself? Who don't want to work with? Yeah. I tell that to people when they're learning their first hire, especially, man. We do like uh um I learned this from Gary Harper. He runs like Sharper, I forget the name of their companies, but um, they call it a road trip test, right? Would you go on a road trip with this person? If you couldn't be in the car with them for four hours, man, don't hire them. I think I can go on a road trip with Saul. Yeah, there you go. There you go.

SPEAKER_02 52:17

And what I what I had since Saul is here, what I really liked about Saul until this day, a couple months here, he shows up every day on time. Every day. I might be late to office. This guy is not.

SPEAKER_00 52:28

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 52:29

And he leaves right about the time that he, you know, he's supposed to offer, kind of completing his whole motion and sales thing, right? For me, that is way better than somebody telling me I have closed hundred land deals and I want to work for you. Yeah. And and he could be great, but he could be like, hey, dude, I know how to close land deal. I can be here for three hours, whatever time I want, I can do this stuff. No, you will absolutely smoke, destroy the culture of my company. I do not know the I I don't care how many land deals you have closed. Right. We're not a cultural fit. Yeah. I rather work with the person who shows up every day because that's how who I am. I'm an average guy, C, right? I show up every day. That's the only reason that I'm able to get myself where I'm today.

SPEAKER_00 53:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 53:11

Right? And so for me, work ethic is super important. That's the number one thing. I love it. That's why it's all this here.

SPEAKER_00 53:19

How are you uh how are you screening for that in your recruiting? And I know we we we started with recruiting and ended up kind of in culture, which is almost more retention, but also like company building, right? Yeah. Um, I think there's a there's a ton of value there. Uh, but in terms of just like finding people, man, where are we finding them?

SPEAKER_02 53:35

Dude, I mean, now we are finding people here locally in Round Rock. So if you happen to be in Round Rock or Austin and looking for a great company, great culture. Come work with this guy. Um, or work with this guy if you happen to be in Dallas. Always hire a man. As long as you're a cultural fit, right? Definitely. We always have space on our team for a great, you know, for you know, for a great player. But I'm finding these indeed. I mean, it's just it's the same places that LinkedIn and everybody goes, but how you hire and what the process looks like, that's more important where they're getting hired from. I agree. You can hire somebody from Craigslist. Or from a restaurant, yeah. Or from a restaurant. Yeah. Some find green great job, there might be a great closer. I don't know. Sure. It's not a rocket science thing. Okay. Where doesn't matter. How you are bringing them in, what kind of expectations do you have? If you're not clearing expectations, they probably come do and their own thing. We're not gonna we're not gonna be great because they are here for a month or two and then they're gone. Yeah, and then you lost money in hiring that person, that two-month of business. Oh, there's a lot of loss to the business when you hire a wrong hire.

SPEAKER_00 54:38

Definitely.

SPEAKER_02 54:39

Yeah. Did that answer your question?

SPEAKER_00 54:41

I think so. Yeah. Um, you you mentioned too, if I could just drill down maybe one layer deeper even in your hiring funnel, because you said it matters less where you post and more about like how they go through in that process.

SPEAKER_02 54:53

Um, are you willing to open up that playbook just a little bit to see you know, like, and I do not have a quite a kind of crystal ball on this, but the way I see that even when you hire, you haven't really hired them.

SPEAKER_00 55:06

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 55:06

When Saul came to the team, he's not he he was he wasn't closing. Yeah, he was cold calling, cold texting, and qualifying. And like if he can stick around doing that for a month, he's got thick skin, he'll make it. Probably the right guy. Yeah. So he can disqualify himself, and that's what you want to do. That's fair. And rightly so. So you don't have to make this a dramatic thing. Now you are hired. Like, okay, you are hired. What that really means, I got a contract, you sign the damn contract, I got you an email address, and I get you a phone.

SPEAKER_00 55:35

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_02 55:35

That's what hire is. That's true. Okay. But the real work, the real test begins now. Yeah. And we we kind of make it into a contract that you are here 60 days, like temporary, whatever. And if you go through all of this, then you survive. Otherwise, you don't. I just hired my transa I just fired my transaction uh person. Great, great person, genuine person, nice person, but uh he wasn't just you know competent to run a four or five million dollar revenue company anymore. That's okay. And that's okay. I like, you know, I and I'm again I told her that hey, you know what, if if this were about like your persona, demeanor, you're you're great. Yeah. But I don't think you just you just not yet there to kind of run that kind of operation at the point.

SPEAKER_00 56:18

I think I saw a stat from uh Dan Martell, and it was when a business grows, I can't remember if it was 20% a year or if it was doubling every year, but if they grow aggressively, yeah, every three years, you only have 20% of your original staff remaining. Because somebody who was a good culture fit at, you know, one to two million dollars a year just might not be there when the company grows into four, five, six million dollars. I mean, even you know, you think about the guys like Mark Zuckerberg and he, you know, Jeff Bezos, they did great jobs replacing themselves as the company grew. And of course, they continue to have their own leadership positions, but those guys grew because they knew I don't know everything about this industry, I need to go basically recruit the best person for this for us to hit that next level. And it sounds like you're doing the same thing.

SPEAKER_02 57:03

Yeah, I think they grew because they they realized that they need to scale in order to buy these people. I mean, yeah, what Zuckerberg is doing right now with AI, he's trying people. Yeah, it is no different. He bought these people back in the days when he was doing Facebook, it was just not that popular and everybody knew about it. Right. But now AI is on the thing. Like he he he bought these people back in the days too. Yeah, just nobody knew about it, right? So he's doing the same thing, and so you know, any every other player. So yeah, so that's why that's the reason like people talk about like working on the business versus in the business. Yeah, dude, on the business is like you need to you need to scale the business to a point to be on the business. You might think you're on the business. Yeah, people want to work on the business because it sounds sexy, it sounds sexy, and it is sexy. Like I work on the business or I want to work on the business, but they're not making any money. Or maybe you are making money, but not enough money to be on the business. Yeah. Because you gotta replace yourself, and that replacement is expensive. Right. And if you do not have that big of a company, you cannot attract that talent. Yeah, it just you can. If you think like you can bring like a $30,000 or $80,000 base and all the kind of guy to replace you, good luck. Good luck. Yeah, you gotta pay at least a quarter of a million for a real legit replacement. That's true. And we're gonna bring that money. Unless you have a million dollar company and you want to work on the business, good luck. You can work on the business. The mat the math doesn't add up there. That's true. So if you want to work on the business, I think the true number probably is ten million dollars in top line sale. If you're not there, you will never be working on the business. You will always be in because you haven't got those people in who can truly replace you. Yeah, they're expensive.

SPEAKER_00 58:47

Yeah. Just the reality of it. That is the reality of it. So let's take this um kind of the last few minutes of of our time on this interview, troll, and and talk about um, I guess, where your business is going, right?

SPEAKER_02 59:00

Man, where business is going, I'm opening an well, I we have an on-site office. Yeah. But uh where business is going is I'm building that leadership layer where I can take the business to ten million dollar top revenue and then bring those people in, put that talent in that can run at least part of that's another thing. You just don't have to abandon your business and say I work on the business. They are part of the business that you need to start replacing yourself to to eventually kind of have the business run on its own. Totally. People want to make it like a kind of a switch. Yeah. It's not it's not that way, it doesn't work that way. Right. But you gotta find five pieces in your business that you can start slowly replacing yourself with uh a same or better talent. Right. Right? And so to answer your question, where are we going? I really want to do like 10 million to bring that talent in to uh replace at least the operational leadership of the business. Okay, so I can just still continue to own the strategic and the visionary side of the business, which is a lot right now with AI. I have a lot of things that are running in my head right now with AI. Uh just from an IP standpoint, they got nothing to do with that. I want to sell AI services. Sure, sure, sure. This is very internal. How I can build IP around uh using some of the AI tools because we do so much volume business. Right. And we have algorithms, we have data and all that kind of stuff. I want to be more in that arena and hire people who can run the operation side of the thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:30

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:30

That's where I want to go in the next one or two years.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:34

Okay. That makes sense. That makes sense. So um we're gonna head to 10 million in the next one to two years, man. It's gonna take some fun, fun work and some fun recruiting, right? It's gonna look uh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:45

One of the things I learned from Cardone, and I spent a lot of time on the Cardone venture side, which is like buying businesses and that kind of stuff. Every almost every business in America breaks at the three to four million revenue mark.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:00

Interesting.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:01

It is it is a number, it is a statistic.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:03

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:04

Most of the businesses who think they got it, they break at three to four million.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:11

So if you are a business who are hovering around four to four three to four million dollars, that's that's the trap right there. That's the trap right there. If you think you what you did to bring the business to three to four million will take you to ten million, yeah, you're kidding yourself at this point in time. Because when you take to ten million, true leadership layers start to come in and it's a whole different game. Like, yeah, so that's statistic and that's where we are right now. There's so many ways that this business can burn to ground. And which is kind of funny because we have all these processes, systems, and people around, but this business can burn to ground because we are at that tipping point right now, and I have to start layering the business differently if I want to take it to ten million dollars, or I'm gonna burn myself out and it won't be fun going to ten million. There are different ways to do it. Yeah, you can be absolutely horrible working 16 hours a day and trying to push it to 10, or you strategically build a leadership layer and get to that point.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:14

Definitely.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:14

So, but three to four, that's the that's the number to watch out, top line sales.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:20

Yeah, it's reminding me of a quote from uh Dr. Benjamin Hardy, another guy that wrote 10x is easier than 2x, right? Um, he says, um, we've we've all heard the expression, what got you here won't get you there. Right? He takes it a step further and he says, What got you here will keep you here.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:37

Probably.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:38

Yeah, if you don't, yeah. If you don't change, right? If you don't change. What's interesting if you take it a layer further, though, and I don't say this to scare people, but you know, you said it earlier, if you don't scale, you're gonna die, man. Because here's why is is we talked about it yesterday, but the um, you know, the cost for attention is always gonna go up. You know, texting gets more expensive, mail gets more expensive. Cold calling will get more expensive.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:59

Compliance is always gonna change, and so because of that, the market's gonna change, the margins get compressed, like breaking news, the margin will alwa only get worse from hair.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:08

Isn't that crazy? Right?

SPEAKER_02 1:03:12

For the remainder of your life.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:13

Yeah. What are you gonna do about it? Yeah. And so the reality is you just you have to get better to make the same amount of money.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:20

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:20

Right?

SPEAKER_02 1:03:21

Because that's where sophistication comes in. Exactly. So that's where leadership comes in, that's where everything comes in. And that's why it's not a hobby anymore.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:30

Yeah. It's a business, man. So interesting. All right, Anshral, as we finish up here, um, you know, just for folks that are interested in well, I guess first is is just any final words of wisdom for people. Yeah, I got no wisdom, dude. Come on, I want to take wisdom from. Come on. I know you got lots of wisdom.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:48

Nah, I don't know. Uh I mean, I don't know what your audience wants to do. They want to scale? Oh, what's the what's the goal here? Usually, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:54

A lot of our folks are, you know, already running a business. They want to do more deals, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:58

Yeah. I mean, you know, what I really learn is, and I have been to a lot of these sessions. Ultimately, I want to sell the business. Which is not talked about much in our land community. Right. Because a wholesale business, if you look about, if you think about it, there's nothing to sell.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:14

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:15

The deal stops, it's an empty shell. Right. So it's gotta be a machine. A guy machine. And in order to do that, um, there gotta be leadership, they gotta be systems, maybe some kind of IP, which people don't think about. You have something that others don't have. You have a system, you have a repeatable process, you have data points. So one of the things that I, you know, I really started paying attention to is data. And you gotta have data and all that kind of stuff. Otherwise, the day you stop doing this business, your business doesn't really have any value. That's true. Maybe the cash reserves. And a business owner's biggest asset is what can I sell my business for in five to ten years?

SPEAKER_01 1:04:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:54

But if all you are doing is like wholesale deals and you don't have data, you have don't have processes, you have nothing, you're basically running an empty shell. That's true. And when you stop, this business will come to the ground and I got zero value. Yeah. So I have very uh consciously started looking in my business, saying, hey, what can we document? What can we IP? Is there something to IP? Because if there's nothing, something to IP, there's really not a business here. It's true. There is no inherent value in business. The only value is you. Yeah. And you die, your business die, and come down to zero, which is no better than you working for somebody because that's what happens. When you get fired, you're done.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:30

Yeah, it's true.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:32

So, anyways, that's one of the themes that I'm really like uh working on with all the stuff that we do. If there's something that I can produce which kind of carries some kind of IP value. Yeah, that's fantastic, man. Especially with AI coming in, uh huge opportunity. Yeah, huge opportunity there.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:48

Yeah. Okay. Well, um, for people that are listening, if they want to, you know, work with you, JV deals with you, get a hold of you, what's the best way for them to reach out and try to connect with you?

SPEAKER_02 1:05:58

Reach out to Ajay in the Just text me. My number is just text Ajay and he's gonna kinda connect me on a you know, three-year conversation. No, um I think the best way is to can I just say my phone number?

SPEAKER_00 1:06:09

Phone number, email, whatever you want.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:11

Yeah, guys, text it at 512-640-9550. 512-640-9550. One more time. 512-640-9550. Text me. We are hiring in Round Rock Austin, Texas. If you are a closer or you think you want to contribute to an amazing land business, um, hit me up. If you want a JV, hit me up too.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:30

I love you.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:31

If you just want to have a dinner, hit me up, man. I gotta pay for the dinner. Let's go.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:35

Okay, you won me over, man. We'll be in Austin. There we go. Well, Anshell, thank you so much, man. This time is so valuable. I know I got a ton of value out of sitting down. I'm no doubt everybody that listens will too. I'm always so grateful when we get to spend some time together, man. It means a lot that you uh take the trip up and and um stay here on a Saturday morning to go through this.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:54

So and Aja did not pay me for this podcast.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:58

Yeah, you know, no, yeah, and no biased opinions here.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:01

That's right, that's right. Well, thank you for being here, man. Absolutely, dude. Honor, pleasure. I can't even believe that I'm here. I kid you not. This is cool. It's the first of many. We'll have you back. Yeah, okay, cool. I think I did a decent job. Yeah, I think so too. Okay, I got I got rehired, man. That's good. All right, thank you, man. All right.