Episode 59: You’re One Relationship Away From Changing Your Business

Clay Hepler (00:00)
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Ground Game Podcast. I'm here with my incredibly talented co-host Justin Piche.

Justin Piche (00:10)
And I'm here with my incredibly talented co-host, Clay Hepler. And we're here to show you how to win the ground

Clay Hepler (00:12)
Yeah.

Justin Piche (00:28)
All right, Clay. So you're in Denver today.

Clay Hepler (00:32)
Dude, I've been in Denver since Sunday. We're running this Airbnb. It's actually got a dude, an Airbnb with a huge monitor. Yeah, it's so nice. It's so nice. You know how it is to have a big monitor. It's a game changer. Yeah.

Justin Piche (00:42)
that's nice. That's nice.

I do, oh dude, I got the 57 inch. People come into my office and

they're like, dude, what are you doing? What do you do that you need that monitor? Like I work on a lot of spreadsheets, that's what I do. I don't need a monitor this big, but it does, it's great for productivity to be able to have multiple full size windows. I know, which I don't ever plan to. I actually like in my background behind that banjo case and that other guitar case, there's two.

Clay Hepler (01:03)
problem is you can never go back.

Justin Piche (01:13)
old there's two computer monitors ones at 32 and ones at 34 that's what used to be my setup I replaced it with this 157 inch. Yeah, yeah, it's it's awesome. It is it is. The problem with it was the monitor arm because the monitor is so heavy. I had to get like there's there's only one company that made a monitor arm that was rated for the weight of this monitor and it was like $600 so the monitor was.

Clay Hepler (01:21)
Is it curved?

Nice.

Justin Piche (01:43)
1700 or something like that and then the arm just the arm to hold it onto my desk was was $600 so it's like kind of expensive to get a setup like this but it's all good. I got my camera and like a post you know I got like the mini or the small rig I think it's called small rig like little things to move the light the camera around and then I got the the Shure boom arm drilled through the desk.

Clay Hepler (01:49)
my gosh!

You

are in a good shape right now.

Justin Piche (02:12)
Yeah, yeah, got my, I just got, my wife and I went to this charity event this week, or Sunday night, which was actually my birthday. So my birthday went to this awesome, thank you, thank you, thank you, went to this amazing charity dinner and my wife put in the raffle for this painting and I put it behind me because I don't know where the heck I'm gonna put it. It's massive. It's like four, five feet by four feet.

Clay Hepler (02:23)
Dude, happy birthday man!

That's hilarious.

Justin Piche (02:41)
Anyway, right now

it looks pretty good behind. It looks pretty good behind me, so maybe I'll keep it in the office or something.

Clay Hepler (02:48)
Dude, so yeah, so I'm out here, my sister-in-law gave birth to a baby girl. And so I'm out here, yeah, super cool. now. And yeah.

Justin Piche (02:54)
Congrats.

Is that

your first niece or nephew? All right, man. Welcome to the Uncle Club.

Clay Hepler (03:05)
pumped. Yeah, so I'm out here, dude, trying to close like, trying to close deals. We've been closing a lot of deals. We've closed like, like probably 12 deals on this buy side this week. And like three deals on the sell side. And we have a bunch a bunch ⁓ going, going out. And so, dude, it's been hectic. But you know, when you're buying and selling, you're making money.

Justin Piche (03:17)
That's a lot.

legit.

Clay Hepler (03:32)
Right? So there's, there's a lot of good positive things going on right now. ⁓ but you know, I was with my son for a week and a half, as you know, right? Daddy duty. And then I came out here and, and now I'm in a foreign place and I'm sitting here and like, try to make it happen though, dude. That's what we do is as a business owners and family men, right? Cause we have both of those titles. So we got to be present for the people that are in life.

Justin Piche (03:44)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah, it can be tough to manage and juggle all the obligations. had, we were, you know, in our business, we, we, run off the entrepreneurial operating system. do level 10, we do, you know, all the quarterly planning, cetera. And one level 10, I had to like leave early or something. had something going on. And so my team continued with it, obviously, because like we got to complete the level 10. And one of the issues I came back to, I was on level 10 today and I was reviewing the issues. One of the issues was.

just how to like how to get more of Justin's time or something like that so I brought it up and I was like what's going on here and I was looking at the comments and the or like the the disgust part and they're like Justin is so busy it's hard to get like his attention on things and he often drops things for us for us to do like like god dropping like commandments or something I don't know it was like hilarious

Clay Hepler (04:37)
Thank

Justin Piche (04:58)
I was like, guys, is this really, so is this still an issue? First of all, they're like, no, no, no, you've been a lot better recently, even more like more available for us. But there was a season where I had just so many developments that needed so much work that I was just like raising money and talking to banks and underwriting and doing, I don't know. I just didn't have a lot of time to spend on the core kind of flipping business where the team is all, all involved, but.

Clay Hepler (05:00)
Okay. Let's do this.

Justin Piche (05:24)
Luckily we've moved through most of those closings. We still have a bunch under contract that we're working towards, but we've moved through the really challenging closings and raises and stuff. So I have more time to focus on the business now, which is good for everybody.

Clay Hepler (05:36)
I'm in that

season right now. I'm in the opposite, right? really my COO is out today and he has signing rights and the, he's in the army and you know, ⁓ they, they're doing like a army reserve, ⁓ reserve training in the woods of Kentucky.

Justin Piche (05:50)
Yep, yep, reserve training.

Clay Hepler (05:55)
So he normally signs for me. So I'm getting all these notaries because he's normally signing for me. And I'm also busy launching the deal engine, which has been a smashing success. And, ⁓ that's taken a lot of my time. And so I'm, I'm at the same exact position that you were talking about, which is, you know, my team not getting enough of my time, which is pretty, you know, it happens, right? If you got, if you, know, you're, you're.

Justin Piche (06:04)
Yeah, amazing.

Clay Hepler (06:24)
depending on what level you are, when you have managers in place, like you hope the managers can take care of stuff. And that's kind of where, where I'm at now.

Justin Piche (06:33)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's a good spot to be in where you're not focused on the ins and outs, but sometimes it needs you, you know? So I mean, I think, I feel like I've set expectations really clear with my team, which is, look, if something really needs my attention, like if I need to make a decision and you're waiting on me, you have to just tell me like, this is a critical decision you need to make now. Like I can prioritize around that. If you're kind of like, me an email late and I don't review it. And like, you know, I wake up and I got 30 emails in my inbox and like half, you know, there's,

Clay Hepler (06:57)
Thank Thank

Justin Piche (07:03)
there's a lot of things going on that I need to manage. ⁓ So if somebody texts me on my team or calls me or says,

hey, I need to talk to you because I have an urgent thing that you need to look at, like I'm going to do it like immediately. You know, one thing I've done recently, which is nice is I have, I've had some coaching students that if we've kind of finished working together and I have now brought on new coaching students. And so I have actually have a lot more kind of time back to focus on kind of the core stuff, which has been nice. It's been nice. I enjoy coaching, but sometimes

Clay Hepler (07:14)
Yeah, right, right, right.

Justin Piche (07:32)
can be a distraction from the primary thing, which is the business and the big deals. So that's been nice. It's been nice to have a little bit more time back.

Clay Hepler (07:33)
So.

Hey, what's what's new what's going on?

Justin Piche (07:46)
Business-wise, personal-wise, the whole gambit.

Clay Hepler (07:49)
Yeah, I know you were recently in a foreign state. So, yeah.

Justin Piche (07:52)
Yeah, that's right. last

last weekend, man, I went to the land operators Alliance in in Savannah, Georgia, which is a beautiful town. I really enjoy going and visiting Savannah. So the land lawyer, Brian Griffin, Billy Griffin and McGregor Bailey, who I think is like Henry Rourke or something or something like that on X. But those are the three guys that put it together. And it was it was a fantastic event. You know, I've been to a lot of events. I love going to land investment.

events, you anything with kind of in the, the industry. have to say no to way more than I can actually attend because there's just so many of them now, you know, and time is valuable, especially when you have three young kids and another one on the way. And so leaving my wife for multiple days to, to, to kind of like fight the natives herself is, is a lot. It's a big ask. It's a big ask. but thankfully she let me go. So I flew on Thursday evening, had a dinner there, met a bunch of

Clay Hepler (08:41)
Ha ha ha.

Justin Piche (08:49)
awesome guys, other, met friends that I knew, you know. ⁓ And then on Friday did a podcast with the Apki brothers. did, Ron is a machine. Ron Apki is a machine. He just, cranked out like eight podcasts live. They rented an Airbnb. He flew out his video editor, his videographer. They set up a studio, like a live studio in the Airbnb that looked real nice.

and he just like cranked it out with people that were attending the event. I was impressed. So it was a slog, I'm sure for him, but eight, boom, or seven, something like that, seven or eight podcasts in a row. ⁓ Then I worked, you know, a little bit and I was doing a presentation. So I was giving a talk at this conference and I'm like not the best PowerPoint maker, you know, I'm good at the content, but not actually making the slides.

And so I had already had the content, it took me so I was searching for an AI tool that I could just like plug in like slide one material, slide two material, slide three material, where it could at least just build me the words on slides so that I could then add photos or graphics or whatever. I don't know if there's anything out there that's quite there yet. Every time I tried these different AI programs, I was using Canva as well because I have Canva Pro. It would always change the words in some way. Like it never let me just put exact text.

Clay Hepler (10:03)
Yes.

Justin Piche (10:09)
to exact slide and format it nicely. So as soon as somebody comes out with that, it is gonna be a game changer. ⁓ So Friday night was the ⁓ welcome reception dinner at the Oglethorpe Club, which is an old kind of private social club on Forsyth Park, the main park kind of in the center of ⁓ Savannah. And it was.

It was awesome. We showed up, it's suit and tie basically. They had cigars out there for us, great appetizers, kind of open bar, lot of high level land investors, developers, people working on a ton of different stuff. We had a home builder, one of the biggest regional home builders in the Southeast was there. And then some experts on land mitigation or wetland mitigation banking, guys that are putting together 20, $30 million

mitigation deals and giving advice on how like you can identify those credits on your own developments and projects. It was just cool talking to everybody, seeing what people were doing. I met in person a guy named John Beatty who is a, who works at Exxon, but he's a note investor and he's been buying, he's probably bought half a million, $800,000 worth of notes, something like that from me over the last little bit. And so it was cool to meet him in person, somebody who I've been working with for years now.

Clay Hepler (11:31)
Oh my gosh,

you know, I think I've sold notes to John

Justin Piche (11:34)
Yeah,

probably JB. Yeah. John Beatty. So he's awesome. Super awesome guy. He gave me a ⁓ gift.

So he's living in London right now and from the Belfast Bow Company bought me this sweet pocket square. He was always wearing, was dressed up real nice. He dresses real nice. Awesome guy though. And so that was really cool. Food was fantastic. And then Saturday was the event, like the content. So he showed up in the morning, breakfast there, and I stayed up so late finishing my slides and woke up so early to finish everything and presented on

Clay Hepler (11:53)
That's cool.

Justin Piche (12:16)
big deals and partnerships. of like the theme of the presentation was partnerships. And that kind of leads us into what we, the theme of this podcast today, which is you're one relationship away from changing your whole business.

And maybe I'll talk about it I talked about it before, but I'll maybe talk about kind of two of the critical relationships recently that I've had that I think have completely changed my business and the trajectory of my business. And maybe I'll share one. You can share one. We can go back and forth a little bit. What do think? Okay, so the first person who's like, I feel like it's completely changed my trajectory of the business is one of my development partners, Ben Baker.

Clay Hepler (12:32)
Yeah, man.

Love that.

Justin Piche (13:01)
You've met Ben, we all sat together at Ajay's event and we were there. Yeah, he was in Denver as well for Drew's event. And he's just an incredibly smart, driven guy who shares very similar, who has similar goals. He's the kind of guy that will do what it takes to get things done. know, like when we were first doing our, when we were putting together our first couple deals, we would be like regularly up.

to like 3 a.m. working on decks and Excel models and finding somebody that kind of compliments you in that way that you share a vision for what you are trying to build is just really unique. And it's easy to start this business flipping specifically and like going after off market deals, et cetera, by yourself. Like you don't necessarily need a partner. A lot of people like having a partner, especially when they're stepping out and taking a risk.

Clay Hepler (13:33)
Okay.

Justin Piche (14:00)
But you don't need a partner, right? You need good people.

You need to have a lot of drive energy to build out this business yourself. lot of like long hours, et cetera, to understand the process. And then you need to figure out how to lead and manage higher people to scale and grow. But when you start getting into bigger deals, more complex deals where you lack certain things, like maybe you lack the financial.

like the financial strength personally to guarantee debt or contribute to GP raise or whatever it might be. Maybe that's what you lack. Maybe you don't lack that. Maybe you lack the ability to find and seek out deals and build the relationships to get a deal pipeline flowing. Maybe you lack the connections to people with money. Maybe you have people in your network that can help fund a 20, 30, $50,000 flip. But when you need to raise 2 million, 3 million, you might not have enough people in your

in your network, you might not be plugged into the right circles to raise that kind of money. Maybe you do, but you don't have the credibility as a developer or as an operator yet to for them to invest 100, 250, whatever, $300,000 with you in an entity. And so there's, there's, got to be able to look at yourself and understand what you're good at and what you lack and be really, really honest with yourself. And I think that

doing that will give you an idea of what kind of partner, what kind of relationship you need to be seeking out. Like what do you have to offer and what do you need somebody else to bring to the table that they and maybe they lack what you have, you know, and I feel like that was kind of the thing with Ben and I wasn't wasn't necessarily one of us lacked or had something that the other didn't. I think we're pretty actually similar similar people when it comes to business. But ⁓ but he certainly has like the complimentary drive to get things done somebody I can trust. And so that was part of the first game changer.

relationship recently, you know, after you and I met, course, Clay, that I wanted to highlight. I can talk about our relationship, but we've talked about it enough that it's like, let's let's introduce some new characters to the scene.

Clay Hepler (16:08)
Yeah, it, you know, I was actually just talking to a guy before this, ⁓ that he, he said, yeah, he'd been listening to you and I chat for a long time on the ground gate podcast. And don't know if, you experience that in Savannah and where people remarking on the ground gate book.

Justin Piche (16:24)
Yeah, they're, yeah,

they're, yeah, actually, who was it that was talking?

Somebody was talking to me, it's like, hey man, I go outside, I'm walking a lot and I'm either listening to your podcast or something else. I was just like, that's awesome. I appreciate that.

Clay Hepler (16:41)
Yeah.

Well, so long story short, yeah, this guy was talking about that and we talked about partnerships and everything like that. But I mean, for me, I think the biggest thing is like every jump in my life has come as a result as a relationship. It's, it's always come as a result of a who, not a how. And no matter how much I like, I think, Hey, I can do it myself. ⁓

I realized that there are things that I'm good at and there are things that I need help on. And my business over the past two months has completely changed since I brought on a COL. It has completely changed. We have a high functioning organization now. And, and this guy has an immense motor. He has a drive. He is smart. He's capable.

military guy. dude, mean, having an integrator like this, I think it's completely changed my business. so that sometimes it's a relationship through connections. Sometimes it's relationship through when you become a part of sometimes it's a relationship through bringing someone on your team. But dude, I still think hiring good talent is the alpha in this business.

It is the alpha in any business and being around good talent, whether you partner with, or you bring them on, hiring them, it is everything. And so I would say, you know, what, what does this actually look like? looks like we're closing transactions, more transactions on time. ⁓ we're doing a, we're locking up about two to three deals a week right now. ⁓ in our acquisitions team at this point and you know, smaller flips and we're transitioning into larger opportunities, but.

We have such a backlog of deals that we got to get under contract, whether it's from people that are requesting funding from us, or if it's just from people that are past sellers that we've gotten under contract. And dude, our transactions department is now running like a well-oiled machine and we are just putting deals on the board. And it is exciting. It is so exciting. But that's like, so in August,

And in, in July, yeah, dude, we're making money, right? But we weren't functioning that well. Our transactions department was absolute cluster. And I made a hire and I'll talk, I could talk about the next hire that I made, but I made a hire through my COO dude. It has been, it's like, it's like, yeah, this is what it feels like to hire a true, right? Like, this is what it feels like to hire a true adult. This is what it feels like to hire a top performer.

I also really like working with the guy, right? So I think he has a lot of characteristics and skill set. And by the way, he's paid well. He's going to make a lot of money this year and not skimping out on someone's pay. get the like pay to get in the right room, pay to get the right person in the seat. I over relative to his experience in the small business world, I overpaid him in terms of his compensation package. But

would rather overpay and have a guy that's gunning for, we're going to do, you know, our goal is this level, you get this huge kick. He's going to go after that big kick.

Justin Piche (20:20)
Yeah. You know, one of the things that the said at the conference, Christian Ruff, who runs Uncommon Elite, who I know that you worked with to find this exceptional operator, gave a presentation. And I mean, he's a really impressive guy. Helicopter pilot in the one sixty sixth special forces, like basically helicopter pilot flying at night. The night stalkers is what they're called. And he he as you know, but maybe the audience doesn't.

Clay Hepler (20:31)
Yep.

Yep.

Justin Piche (20:50)
After he got out the military, he did some different things, but then he started a essentially a headhunter recruiting business to put special operators, high performance, high ⁓ attribute guys into small businesses. And one of things he talked about in this presentation is they, he showed this graph. Okay. So on the Y axis of the graph, you have ⁓ experience. Yeah, you have experience and on

Clay Hepler (21:14)
Thank

Justin Piche (21:19)
⁓ Yeah, sorry, have Y-axis, have level of experience, and then you have like productivity or results essentially. And then you have two lines, right? One line was the guy who starts at a higher experience level, but maybe doesn't have the attributes, but they're really good at their job. So let's say you're hiring for an ops role and you hire somebody who's been an operator, who's been a COO or been an ops manager or something in a similar type of company, ⁓ and they're looking for a new job.

And then the converse is hiring somebody who has exactly the right attributes that you're looking for, maybe doesn't have the experience. And what you'll see in terms of productivity is that obviously the person who has more experience at first is gonna have a little bit more kind of productivity for the company, but pretty quickly the person with the right attributes crosses them and far exceeds what output the person who doesn't have the right attributes, but maybe has the experience ⁓ is going to give you. And so that is what the military, that's what the special forces.

kind of hire for and screen for is does this person have the attributes we need because we can train them to do the operations. If they have the attributes, we can train them to do the operations. It's really similar in small businesses like ours is you can train somebody to do what they need to do, but you can't kind of train the underlying attributes of that person that make them the driven go getter, gonna crush it type of person that you actually want in this role.

Clay Hepler (22:46)
Yes, yeah. Yeah, the more I...

The more I learn about hiring people, the more I care about hiring based on character, character traits and attributes versus resume. I don't like resumes are fine, but ⁓ Christian pohmi about this guy. I hope he doesn't listen to this, but he said that he would, he probably doesn't. know, but he said I would hire this guy for my company in a year.

Justin Piche (23:09)
He probably won't. ⁓

Yeah,

he told that story at the event. Yeah, yeah, he dropped your name. He's like, know, Clay, like I told him if he doesn't hire this guy, I'm hiring him.

Clay Hepler (23:19)
He told the story about me.

no he didn't, that's crazy.

Justin Piche (23:31)
He did.

Yeah, yeah, he did. Yeah.

Clay Hepler (23:33)
I did

and did he say in this story, did he say the feedback that I gave him?

Justin Piche (23:42)
No, no, no, no, what's the feedback?

Clay Hepler (23:45)
Well, obviously, it's this conversation. it's totally true. Christian was right on. I he was right on. And I interviewed a lot of guys. I interviewed a lot of guys. But I think that's what it comes out to. This guy didn't necessarily have land-specific experience. He didn't have development experience. He had some real estate experience, but not that much. He owned some rental properties, but he was working in a big corporation.

And so again, I hired it based on this guy is a motor man. has a motor. ⁓ and, that's what really matters. And so, and the right, the right, ⁓ kind of orientation too. So that, that was a big unlock in my business. would say recently that would be a huge unlock that, that I kind of experienced. What was your next

Justin Piche (24:34)
Yeah.

Hey guys, this is Justin interrupting our podcast. Say thanks for listening. Today, Clay and I are talking about the relationship that can change your business and partnerships that we've had along the way that have really taken us to the next level. If you're getting value from this, please leave a comment, subscribe to the podcast. I know there's people, they've talked to me that have said, I feel guilty every time I listen because you guys ask us to do this and I don't do it. Now's your time. Now is the time. We appreciate you guys. Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Clay Hepler (25:07)
you

Justin Piche (25:08)
Well, just real quick on that. I was reflecting on my experience working out of the military. And while I was not in special, special forces or special operations, I was in maybe the NA, not the SEALs, but the intellectual equivalent of that for the Navy, which is the nuclear submarine force. And, you know, I went after kind of the safe, relatively high paying W-2 with very limited upside. ⁓

And I just, I don't necessarily regret it. gave me a great kind of, I don't know, base to really understand what I didn't want to do and who I didn't want to work for. And knowing just how I am, I like, I wish that if I were to go back in time, I could work for an operator like me or like you in this business and be given a great base and a ton of upside.

to really go get it. Because that's what would have driven me better at working at a big company was if there was an incredible amount of upside for putting in the effort, the work, solving challenging problems. But just too often, people who are really driven like that fall into these W2 roles where they can work really well and they can make a decent salary for themselves. But upside is limited. And if you're super motivated by results and

and have this kind of feeling of wanting to be compensated for the results and output that you bring to a business. Going to one of those big companies where the upside is limited is almost like, it's just kind of breaks you down. It kind of beats you down little by little where you're just like, man, I don't really matter here. know, like when I was in the military, like I mattered. maybe didn't get compensated particularly well, but I had a huge impact on the mission, the team.

the guys that worked for me, I had a ton of responsibility. I had a huge amount of trust that was given to me. And then you work for this big company and it's just a little bit different. It's just, there's not as much. I didn't have nearly as much responsibility. We were producing lots of financial results, but no upside. Yeah, it's just kind of demotivating for somebody like me or like you, I'm sure it would be demotivating for someone like you as well.

Clay Hepler (27:25)
Yeah.

So dude, tell me about your second kind of big relationship unlock besides Ben.

Justin Piche (27:33)
Yeah, I mean, the second the second big unlock recently is Trey, a guy named Trey that I've talked about before. He's a partner of mine and Ben, actually. Ben, Trey and I are all partners in our development kind of company called Triumph Capital Partners. ⁓ And so Trey and I maybe I told a little bit of the story, but I'll tell it a little bit more detail. So Trey. So when Ben and I were putting together the first couple raises for a deal in Burnett and a deal in Stephenville or Erath County, Texas.

They're both going to be about $2 million raises. And we had networks of people, know, we had both of us have done deals before. I had not done a deal that that large for either of those yet. You know, one one was a four point eight million dollar purchase. The other one was a two point seven million dollar purchase. And so and I'd always been able to get bank loans based on my own balance sheet, my own financials for all the properties that I had worked on, which was which was like, you know, I'm getting a four hundred thousand dollars.

I'm getting a $200,000 loan. I'm getting a 500, 600, whatever, $1,000 loan. That was about the limit of the loans that I was getting. And so I was like, oh, I'm probably good. You I got a huge net worth on paper based on all these real estate assets. And so like I should be good. But pretty quickly after raising, it was clear that wasn't going to be the case. And so I talked to my buddy of mine at church who is in the wealth management space. He works for kind of a few billionaire families that

put together a family office for kind of people that have lower net worths. And by lower, I mean, still astronomical, still like minimum net worth to come into their thing is like 20 mil. So these are people worth 20 million to like 250, 500 million or more that come in and they want access to the level of service that these billionaires have because they've built out this whole team to manage their wealth. And so they're basically offering that service to other people. And

So he's like a ton of connections. One of the most connected people I have ever met in my entire life. And actually he's the board, he's the board chairman of the board for this. I was talking about the painting for the, for the life house ministry that we went to that dinner earlier this week. So he gave me seven or eight names to call. And these are like huge players in the Houston market in terms of real estate development, funds, et cetera.

So I set up calls with all these people, you I didn't really know what I was doing. I'm kind of trying to pitch this deal. I don't even know what the right structure is of this deal at the time. I'm trying to be as generous as I can, but it doesn't look normal to them. So people are kind of pushing back and having questions. But I called Trey. I was driving home from, I think I was driving home from the property. I went to go visit one of the properties on my way back from it. And I called Trey and I'd sent him the deck via email. And I was like, hey, Matt, you know, give me your phone number.

I'm looking for a race. And he just right off the bat kind of started asking me questions about myself and my faith. And he's like, look, Matt is one of the most trustworthy people I know. If he vouches for you, I feel confident, just from his recommendation. And so we scheduled a meeting at the Houston Country Club, maybe a couple of days later, went and met him for breakfast. And he's like, yeah, I'll put in a half million. I was like, half a million? That's like a quarter of our race.

That's crazy. And so that's kind of how the relationship started. And we just kept talking, you know, and then we came time to where we needed this guarantee essentially. And we're like, Hey, like we can't get this guarantee. And he's like, look, I'm, I've been looking for something where I can be more involved in the GP side. I'd like to be a co GP with you guys. And if, you make me co GP, like I will, I will put my kind of personal financial strength behind the deals that you're bringing. And I was like, man, I mean,

Talking to Ben, know, because this is our first time doing these larger deals and we don't know exactly how everything's supposed to be structured when you first set it up. You you're learning kind of as you go. And we both like, yeah, we need this. You know, we need somebody who has the financial strength to get us in the room with these banks and with these big investors that adds, you know, credibility from a professional standpoint that with this audience that we don't necessarily have. And yeah, he's not the expert on the deals. Like he's not finding deals, but he is an expert on relationships. He's built.

multi-ten million dollar, multi-tens, whatever, eight figure business, sold it, et cetera, very accomplished individual. And since then, man, he has, he's just an incredible Christian, an incredible father and husband, an incredible friend. He's a mentor. And honestly, like there's just no way we'd be able to go after the shots that we could go after without him as a partner, frankly.

I just feel like, know, honor, it's like one of those relationships where you just feel honored to have met this person and not just to met him, not to have just met them, but that they're in your corner, they're in your court, they're working for you and with you to move forward with a common goal. ⁓ So yeah, that's probably the second one that I'll say to people that have really impacted me over the last kind of year and a half towards stepping from this.

flipping, minor subdivide, things I can basically handle myself to kind of the next level, if you will, of deals.

Clay Hepler (32:50)
Yeah, yeah, man. I that I think that's the biggest jump from going from the regular flipping to the next level. A lot of times it comes down to your ability to execute on these larger deals and you just can't borrow net worth.

Justin Piche (33:08)
You can't borrow net worth. You can't borrow relationships either. And you can't borrow the types of relationships that have the level of trust where people are willing to put in a quarter million dollars or more into a deal. Or another example, I talked about the Spokane deal that we put together. Because the bank wouldn't assign collateral value to the property, this $3.4 million property, they wouldn't assign collateral value to it. We had to get ancillary collateral.

liquid ancillary collateral pledged. So our loan amount was two and a half million, 2.55. We needed people to pledge 2.805 million in liquid assets as collateral that the bank could take in the event that we default on the loan. It's like, how do you do that? Okay, it's hard. And if you have a super rich parent or uncle or somebody like really close that has a high trust for you, you might be able to, you know, talk to them about getting that done. But if you don't have that,

Where are you going to get it? You need relationships. and, know, that is, I met with this gentleman, uh, his name is skip that, that is an investor in this book and deal. And was one of the guys that puts it, put some of this, a significant amount of this ancillary collateral up and went with Trey. You know, we met him in his office down in river Oaks area of Houston, which is a really nice area of town. And he looked at me. He's like, you know, Justin, I don't want to do this. I don't want to do this.

Clay Hepler (34:15)
Okay. you

Justin Piche (34:36)
But I trust Trey, I trust Trey, and I'm gonna do it for you guys. And it's just, I can't, yeah. Can't replicate that, you know? And partnerships are just, there's just this huge unlock for building more. I think, what is it, the subtitle of my presentation was called From Submarines to Subdivisions. Submarines to Subdivisions. ⁓

Clay Hepler (34:44)
Wow, you're right, you can't replicate that, you can't replicate that.

Justin Piche (35:06)
The subtitle was building bigger with partners.

Anyway.

Clay Hepler (35:13)
You know,

it's interesting, the biggest, the biggest companies in the world that have the highest hit rate are private equity companies. dude, private equity companies raise 80, 90 % of the capital stack. And they have 10 % and then they get a kicker to perform at the end. And so it really comes down to this collaboration in order to get

to the next level.

The sooner you realize that, think the sooner your business changes. The sooner you let go of the vine, you let go of the ego, and you say, dude, I can't do this alone. I can't. Now, I have good attributes, I have good skill sets, but no one's ever done it alone.

Why do I think that I'm better than other people that can have help? I ask for help. And I shouldn't bring my full self and be a giver in the skill sets that I have and also have the ability to other people's skill set and acknowledge those and allow that to help you and in your business. Dude, I love that. I love that story.

I mean, the right partners is critical. mean, same thing with this podcast. It's two people, it's all one. It's two people. two, and it's brought you and me more opportunities than we probably can even say on that, know, on a single hand, two hands, right? But it's not about just one of us, it's about the collective genius, both of us, that we bring every single week.

Justin Piche (36:42)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah. Any other critical partnerships or relationships other than your wife? Because that's another one we could probably talk at length about.

Clay Hepler (37:15)
Yeah, man, that's a bit that's a bit that's a big one. ⁓ I would say I have two guys that ⁓ are very passive investors that have entrusted me with a lot of money ⁓ that are high net worth and they're two, one of them owns a private wealth practice and another one's a very well known doctor in ⁓ Pittsburgh.

And they, about a year and half ago, two years, they trusted me with ⁓ a lot of money. And, and we've just been rolling it. And we've been rolling the cash and I basically have, I can sign any document. I can make any investment decision based on what I believe is the right thing to do with the money that we have. And we've just been compounding it.

And they don't look at the bank account. They trust me completely. And it has allowed me to get into deals that I wouldn't have been able to get into. Execute subdivides I wouldn't have been able to execute. Execute partner relationships without having to go through a bunch of red tape. And it's been this unlock that I've had and it's a similar thing. It's an investor relationship.

They just wrote a check. They just put it in the bank account and say, Clay, tell me every quarter how I'm That's a lot of trust. That's a lot of trust. And we've taken it really seriously. We're going to do a really good job. We're going to do a really good job for these guys. But we've taken it super seriously, man. that was just a relationship that I got through another relationship that someone introduced me to these guys. And we did a good first deal and they kept investing and investing. And so it's been, I think it's been a

Justin Piche (38:48)
That's a lot of trust.

Clay Hepler (39:11)
You know, it's been about, it will be about two years in January and we've done, we've done well together and we're going to continue to do well. We have some really big subdivides that we're doing that I think that it's going to continue to compound and continue to get bigger and bigger. So I would say that that relationship has allowed me to purchase deals and scale with velocity that I probably wouldn't have been able to do, whether that was with other partnerships ⁓ or what people bring me opportunities or just our own internal opportunities.

closing deals. ⁓ When you maybe I didn't have enough cash or when when didn't want to allocate my own cash and or also, you know, going after bigger swings that maybe I wouldn't have felt as comfortable with, but I had the backing of these two guys. So that's been an incredible relationship.

Justin Piche (40:05)
What do you what was it maybe maybe we can pivot a little bit and talk about like what how did we find these partners like what what what are the things that you know, you either did or built or proved to be able to find folks to that trusted you like this, you know, because I look introspectively especially, you know the relationship with Trey and. Like I didn't necessarily do anything.

myself to for him to just trust me like that. It was a recommendation for a fan. So maybe it was, I guess if I really think about it, it's being a high integrity individual and having a really good friendship with my friend, Matt, who knows a lot about my life and my family and what I've done and what I'm working on and having him have a high confidence in recommending me to this other person who he really trusts and has high integrity. ⁓

So like maybe that's it. Maybe it's just like being a good trustworthy person in general and operating with high integrity and everything that I do. ⁓ That led to it. I mean, I don't know. I don't know what else it was other than the Lord, you know, his divine hand introducing us to one another to work together. What do you think it is for you?

Clay Hepler (41:21)
I would agree with that. think that when you operate with integrity and honesty and you do what you say you're going to do, you show up when you say you're going to show up, things happen. Period. Period. And this was an introduction. didn't know these guys. They introduced, I showed up, I showed up ready and prepared. I don't know why these guys trusted me.

I don't. asked myself why these guys just wired me this money. We have a bank account. It's a lot of money, right? I asked myself why did these guys trust me? It was a relationship. I showed up, man. I know what I'm talking about. I what I'm doing. have a track record. I execute. I showed them the 100 plus deals at that point that I completed.

And I was like, this is how much I made on this one. This is how much I made on this one. This is how much I made in this one. And I just showed them a spreadsheet. And so when you show the proof, when the proof is there and you know what you're doing and you're also a high integrity person, then it becomes a no brainer. Plus these guys were super wealthy. They're very wealthy. And so their equivalent of what my equivalent of a lot of money to them is nothing.

Justin Piche (42:31)
Yeah. Yeah.

Clay Hepler (42:42)
So they're willing to place a bet to say, dude, I got to place bets in order to get alpha. And so I'm going to place bet in this guy because I think that he is young, hungry, has the credibility, has the execution ability as evidenced by his red sheet and photos and huds and everything. And so they trusted in me. And I think it just comes down to that.

Justin Piche (43:11)
You know, there is an aspect as well, because this isn't possible for everybody. I wouldn't go out and say like everybody could find these people and convince them to trust them. You there's like, you're, you're obviously a very driven person, but you're also like, you're, you're intelligent. You're it's clear that you're smart and you know what you're talking about. You're confident, but not in the way that makes it make overconfident in the way like, don't worry about it. You know, ⁓

And so like that helps too. mean, it helps to be a person who can speak to other people, convey points clearly. ⁓ But I think probably the most important, and with that though, the reason why you're able to speak confidently about your performance in the past and why were you able to pitch these folks on like, hey, this is what I expect to be able to do in the future. And here's my goal is because you built up a track record without that for a long period of time. And I have a really kind of similar stories that I did before I ever.

Clay Hepler (43:47)
Ha ha!

Justin Piche (44:09)
took money from anybody, right? I just did a ton of deals and had a lot of really high performing deals. And so when I came to raise my first fund to fund flips, it was pretty straightforward. I just showed the spreadsheet of the deals that I had completed, what we bought them for, what we invested in them, what we sold them for, what the turnaround time was on that investment and just sent that to whoever was interested in putting money in. like, ⁓ okay. So there's like, you've done the...

300 deals and one of them was a loss. mean, that seems pretty good. I feel good about investing in these types of deals. The track record definitely matters. So for those of you who are listening, who maybe don't have this money partner or this critical partner that got you over the hump with something that you need in your business, you can build up to that by building credibility, by executing the basics and just being a high integrity, high trust operator.

Clay Hepler (45:07)
Yes. Yeah. mean, think on, you know, on that note, man, I think we're, know, for me, it's like, that's what you need to take away with from this podcast, right? The relationships matters, putting yourself out there matters. But we all know the people that are as as my

been locked at perfectly says, and this is my favorite expression. No cattle, baby. I'll had no cattle. Right. And look, if you're raising money, you can't be all had no cattle. Right. And so you got to the proof. And when you add the proof, it makes it easier. So Justin, any last any last thoughts before we we sign off here for this for this week?

Justin Piche (45:52)
Now I think you summed it up well, maybe just a couple of quick plugs. I'm wearing the Terra data consulting hat today. my good friends Courtney and Skyler run Terra data consulting. They can take care of your data needs. They can format lists. They can pull the right type of marketing for you where you want to go. They can do a whole bunch of stuff, but if you're interested in that, you know, it's something that I outsource in my business pretty early. I was finding myself as a bottleneck in just building lists of like, where was I going to target? What types of properties?

Right, how do I get all that information? How do I get it formatted into my CRM, into all of my outbound marketing? How do I look back and see the performance of those lists and get data out of that? Those are all things that Teradata Consulting can do for you. And so I use them. I'm their biggest customer, I think, right now. And then the other quick plug is, so I started a skip tracing company called SolidSkip. And SolidSkip is not designed to be some big moneymaker. It is designed to deliver skips to people.

⁓ At bulk prices and without having to pay for bulk upfront. So if you're looking for skip tracing I'm pretty sure we're the cheapest high quality skip trace are out there. So quick plug solid skip comm I'd love to provide skip tracing for you. There you go

Clay Hepler (47:10)
I

assume. Look at that, at marketing 101. you know, anything, the thing is, you know, like, I'm sure whatever you got, man, it's whatever you're affiliated with, you got high standards, right? And so I know that you, I know that these both would be an amazing product that any land investor could benefit from. So I'm sure of that. I'm sure that.

Justin Piche (47:14)
Yeah.

So man, talk about the deal engine.

Clay Hepler (47:37)
Yeah, man. it's something we recently, we recently launched ⁓ a lot of success. Basically it is for a long time, I had been doing private consulting and I really, really like private consulting. I like the private coaching, but a lot of people cannot afford to get that type of ⁓ one-on-one help because my prices have continued to go up because my time on a one-on-one basis, you know,

as your time is, it's more more expensive, right? Because we have more skill sets, we have more connections, we have more ideas, and we can help people execute better, right? So, you know, I was approached a while ago by a couple of my students, and they're like, hey, man, you should totally do something that's a little bit more accessible to a lot of people. And so the deal engine is the, the operate, we've operationalized what it does, what it takes to go from one step of the land business to the next.

so it, it, I would analogize it to, know, you have the best soccer coaches in the world. They can coach a five year old and they can coach Lano Messe. Now I'm not saying I'm the best soccer coach in the world, but what we've done is we've truly operationalized every step of the land business, which we have an exciting announcement coming out with the land ladder, which is the scaling roadmap, but anyone from beginner to someone who's hustling, so who's someone who's an existing operator that needs to add.

more consistency, more predictability in your deal flow, and add one to three extra deals per month ⁓ and go from where you are to the next level of your business. That's what the deal engine is for. And it's really a collaborative community of people. It's not about coming in and learning passively through ⁓ video modules. It's about coming in, being aligned with an implementation plan of where you currently are, what the constraints your business is facing. Solve those constraints so that you actually get

benefit from it and it's not all had no cattle. So if you're interested in that, we can throw a free strategy call down below in the show notes. I love to talk to you about your business and help you with kind of breaking free of kind of some constraints that you're currently going through. And then, you know, if it makes sense to take the next step and work together, great. And if it doesn't, then you get a free strategy call with with me.

Justin Piche (49:59)
I've looked over the land ladder right up, by the way, that you have on Notion. And for the listeners, it's really detailed in terms of what does the roadmap look like? What do your tools look like? What do your KPIs need to look like? What can you expect as results if you're operating at a high level, which you are going to be operating after working with Clay? And so anyway, just another little plug. is, I think it's.

I actually get a lot of questions from people about, hey, people who like book a call with me and they're like, hey, I want to do coaching. And recently I've just been like, hey, I'm not, I'm not doing this. And I'll refer them over to you for like high level coaching. But I, now I feel like I actually have something to refer people who I know aren't going to meet the bill for one on one coaching, right? They're just too early in their journey. They don't have, they're not going to have the budget to pay somebody for the level of coaching that it would take. ⁓ People are, people have asked me many times,

recently is like, what's the best land education platform to go through? Like, how do I do that? And there, I just, there's a lot of courses out there and there's a lot of like avenues that are worth pursuing for people at a really low level, but there aren't any that show you how to get from beginner all the way up to the highest levels of the business. So I'm excited that you're offering this. I think it's needed in the space.

Clay Hepler (51:16)
Yeah, man, Mustafa actually joined the Deal Engine. So he joined the Deal Engine, dude, and he's already like...

Justin Piche (51:19)
Yes!

Clay Hepler (51:24)
He's like that first call man was totally like he was, he was super pumped because we have two calls per week and he was just at like, he was like, no, man, this is amazing. So thanks again for that, that referral. And you know, it's been, it's been really, really beneficial to him already. So yeah. All right. Well guys, thanks again for listening to the, the, ⁓ ground game podcast.

And, and, you know, Justin and I bring this every single week to you guys. Like, you know, we bring the heat, we hope you get benefit from it. You know, the gentleman's agreement for those of you who've been listening long enough that guys, we love to do this. We would probably do it selfishly if we didn't have people listening. But if you get benefit from it, helps us continue to stay relevant and the algorithm, the crazy algorithm and giving us a like and subscribe and a comment letting Justin know.

who your favorite co-host is. ⁓ And yeah, right. Who has the better hat? Who has the better hat every week? That's a good hat. That's a good hat, no man. So guys, thanks again for listening and as always, keep flipping dirt and keep having success.

Justin Piche (52:22)
⁓ yeah, right now it's me.

All right, we'll see you guys next time.