As co-founder of Assets For Acres and an expert in team dynamics, Ben dives deep into the secrets of building high-performing teams. His focus on discipline, leadership, and fostering a culture of excellence has empowered his team to achieve 7-figure results while operating autonomously. Tune in for actionable insights on building and leading a winning team!
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All right, everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Game Changers show. I'm your host, Mike McKay, based in Jacksonville, Florida. And each and every week we do this show with people who are changing the game of real estate all over the country. And this is a live show. So if you have any questions, please put them in the comments for our guests to answer. If anyone is in the Jacksonville area and you're in sales and you're thinking about getting into real estate, uh, send me a DM on Instagram. We are hiring one more salesperson for our acquisitions team. Uh, this week on the show, we have Ben Pijanowski. Ben, welcome to the show.
Ben: 0:35Thanks for having me, Mike. Excited to get into it today.
Mike: 0:38Let's do it. Um, so for the people who don't know you, uh, can you tell us a little bit about how you got into the real estate business and how that's led you to where you are today?
Ben: 0:48Absolutely. Yeah. So just to kind of start out with some context, I am a land investor. I'm a land guy. So when it comes to real estate land is our bread and butter here at assets for acres. So I started my own land business in 2021 because I heard of a podcast called RE tipster. From my friend, Ajay Sharma, who is now my current business partner. So in 2021, I bought the course REtipster just to learn about land and how a land business works. So I got the LLC ready. I got my Chase business banking account and lo and behold, I never did a single transaction in that business. So I just discovered that I didn't really like being a solopreneur. I wanted to be in a business with other people and collaborating because we talk about the e myth. By Michael Gerber, there are three different types of business people. You have the entrepreneur, you have the manager, and you have the technician. After I read that book, I knew that I was a manager and not the entrepreneur. So I knew that at some point I needed to be that manager within a business and being that solopreneur wasn't the right fit for me. So I was still working my corporate job at that time at KPMG. I'm a CPA by trade. So I was working at a big four accounting firm and it just wasn't quite the path that I saw for myself. For the future of my life. So I saved up 35, 000 and I said, you know what? I'm going to retire down to Mexico. So in Mexico, I could have lived for 200 a month. And kept my cost of living at 200 a month for the rest of my life and lived off that 35 grand. I went down to Mexico for a week and decided it was not for me. I had too much energy left and could not go into retirement at the age of 24. So, and, uh, I came back from, from Mexico after one week, came back to the States and I gave my friend Ajay Sharma a call at the beginning of 2022. Hey, you know, I'm thinking about getting a land business going again. I think it would be a good thing for me to get into. I had always loved real estate. I started listening to bigger pockets and I don't know, 2014 when I was a sophomore in high school. So I've, I've always had a passion for real estate. So I brought this up to Ajay and he said, well, you know, I already have my business running and it's fairly established. Why don't we just. Partner and try to JV some deals together. So I took an, I took a day to sit on it. And after that day I said, I'm all in, let's do it. So we decided to JV on some deals. He fronted the marketing costs. Then we worked together on the operations of figuring out what types of deals we wanted to do on the land side. So that was our first kind of. Test as to us working together as business partners, because we always like to talk about, you want a date before you get married. So that was our chance to kind of figure out, is this going to be something we could do long term? We'd always figured we had met each other in college. We always figured that somewhere along the lines, we'd be working together. We just didn't expect it to be this soon. So that was really nice that we could already test it. Out when we were really young and I had my cost of living really, really low. And Ajay was still working his corporate job. So we had relatively low risk to just test out the land business and see how we could build it and in what way we could build it. So that was a really good chance for us to figure out, okay, what does the future look like? And then from there, we just started building and doing more and more deals. So right now we have a team of seven. We have four overseas, three in the US and then me and Ajay running the business as co-owners together. So right now I am the integrator slash COO of the company. So everybody reports to me on a daily basis with any problems, challenges they have, and I try to build the systems and operations around the business to always funnel leads and opportunities into the business and try to get us to where Ajay's vision is. Leading us and Ajay's role in the company is the CEO and visionary. So he's trying to paint the picture for the business of where we're trying to get to where we can go in 10 years, five years, a year, a quarter, a month from now. And I'm saying, okay, here's where we are right now as a business. Can we get to where you see our picture getting to? What's the roadmap for me to guide this ship forward? To get us in that direction. So that's what I'm thinking about on a daily basis. Where are we at right now? Where do we need to get to and how do we fill that gap with the? Operational capacity, training, and skill sets of our team at the moment. And I tried my best to coach our team to its best ability and, and uplevel people as much as possible so that we can continue to grow on a daily basis and get, just get better, always continually getting better and growing as a company together. Our three core values are enthusiasm, dependability, and growth. So we focus. Solely on those core values to make sure that we're always coming back to those and operating our business based on our core values and trying to lead and take our company into the future and keep growing and getting better every single day.
Mike: 6:01Yeah, so you mentioned earlier, you were, um, you know, figuring out, like, what type of land you would want to go after. If someone were trying to figure out what type of land they should go after, like, how would you advise that they go about that?
Ben: 6:15Yeah. I really think you want to start with the shotgun method if you're really starting out brand new. And a shotgun method I say is just all the land because you don't really know what you're going to get back. So I think it's really, if you're trying to get a land business started, my recommendation would be to start with cold calling because you can buy a list from prop stream for 99 a month. That's P R O P S T R E A M and just select vacant land. And then from there you can skip trace. We use a service called direct skip. You can skip trace for a couple hundred bucks for 2, 000 records. If you have 2, 000 records for about 300, 350, that gives you plenty of records to call. And we use a service called Open Phone, which is 15 a month. So, about 350 to get you started on 2, 000 records. If you call all the landowners in the county you live in, that's my recommendation. Pick the county that you live in, all the vacant lands, that means you have to deselect for bedrooms, deselect for bathrooms, deselect for garages, deselect for units. You don't want to have any livable square footage on your. Property record that you pull. So everything within PropStream that you want to pull, those 2000 records, it's going to just going to be vacant land. So you pull 2000 people, you call them and you see how much they're willing to sell their land for. If you call 2000 people, there is a good, good chance. That somebody will want less for their property than market value.
Mike: 7:55And then, um, so I know that's your advice on how to people should go about it. Is that how you went about it?
Ben: 8:02How did I go about it? I started with direct mail So I learned from the REtipster podcast and the REtipster method is to start with a delinquent tax list So what I started doing was mailing delinquent tax owners for their vacant land And just sending direct mail postcards, which was great because you get a lot of motivated sellers And so I got a lot of good motivated leads, but I just did not have a lot of sales training at that time because I was deep spreadsheet monkey, just doing my thing in corporate America. I did not have a lot of never split the difference training. So I. Admittedly was not a great salesperson at that time. So I did not convert a lot of those deals. Somebody may who has a lot of sales experience, maybe able to convert those really well, but that's where I just think that the reps is the biggest piece. If you can cold call 2000 people, you're just going to learn more about the area, learn what land is valued at, how much per acre, what people really do with their land, what the goal is. Of the asset class, because it's so important to know what commodity you're trading, whether that's mobile homes, single family homes land. And the more time you spend talking with owners of that commodity, the more you're going to learn about that commodity. And I just wasn't spending enough time with a direct mail leads because it was more of an inbound marketing channel. So that's where my recommendation, if I was starting again, And I had to give advice to myself. I would say cold call 2000 property owners because you're going to learn a lot about land and learn a lot about value of land in your market.
Mike: 9:40What's your favorite type of land to, to buy or favorite type of land? Deal to do.
Ben: 9:46I'll tell you about a project we have right now. So we have 107 acres just South of Waco, Texas, and it is a beautiful piece of property and it is just wide open 107 acres right on a highway, which can be a plus and can be a minus. It's right close to town. But it's also got so much road frontage that it allows us to split it into separate tracks. So we're splitting the 107 acres into five, 20 plus acre tracks. And then we're going to sell each of those off into individual tracks to individual owners at the end of the day. And what you can do, it's, it's very similar to if you go to Costco and you buy a full packet of water bottles. And then you take individual water bottles and you sell them out on the street. You're going to be able to charge a lot more for the individual water bottles than you are for that full pack from Costco. Let's say you paid 5 for a 24 pack at Costco, and then you end up selling one or 2 per bottle. Of that 24 pack. That's 24 to 48 on that 5 pack of water that you bought at Costco. That's a pretty good margin, but it just takes work to find that end buyer and that's our job is to find the end buyer for those smaller tracks.
Mike: 11:16And in a deal like that, like, are you buying it, closing on it, subdividing and selling it? Or is it like, or how does it work? I guess.
Ben: 11:25That's correct. So we're working with external funders outside of our business. So we have relationships with people who have the purchase price was 560, 000 all in, and we're putting 80 to a hundred thousand dollars into the property. And at the end of the day, it's going to be worth 1. 2 to 1. 5 million. So our investors are going to get preferred returns on the equity within the deal. And then we get our split as well. And then we, so that we're technically taking down the project, we're buying it. It's in assets for acres ownership right now at the moment, we've already closed on it and we're doing all the improvements while it's within our ownership. And each of those tracks will be, will be sold from assets for acres to an end buyer.
Mike: 12:12And then, like you said, you were spending about 80 to I think 80 to 100 on it. Like, like, what are you doing? That, like, cost that,
Ben: 12:20Yeah. So we're putting in culverts into, so right now that it's, it's vacant land, so there's no improvements on it. There's just trees. There's a fence there. There's a big ditch going from the highway to the property. So in order to get through the property, you kind of have to jump over the ditch, which is not what we want for our end buyers. We want our end buyers to just drive. Right onto that land. Right, Mike? And just smooth sailing into their driveway and can just picture this beautiful fantasy for their future family or whatever they want to do with their property. But right now they can't do that without the culverts. So we have to put in culverts, we have to put in driveways, we have to get all the permitting from Texas Department of Transportation and we have to have all the water taps ready for The, and buyers, because in Texas, water is a very precious commodity, because it does not rain.
Mike: 13:23so do you envision like, what do you envision that your end buyers doing with the 20 acre tracks that they buy from you? Yeah.
Ben: 13:32So a lot of people are looking to move from the city to more rural areas. We're finding, especially in Dallas, people love having places they can go to to just escape from the noise. So people want to have that home outside of the city where it's 20 plus acres and they might have a pond. They may have a couple animals out on the property. And really they're just able to hunt, fish, do whatever they want with that property. So sometimes it's going to be a second home for people, but most times it's just going to be a principal residence. Whether they have a mobile home, a manufactured home, or a large residence, they're going to have that space to have some privacy out on their acreage, which is what they're looking for.
Mike: 14:21Do, do like tracts of land that are that large, like, do they take longer to sell than, I don't know, smaller tracts of land or than single family homes?
Ben: 14:34It really depends. I will say that the single family homes definitely move a lot faster than land in general. Just because it's more of a known commodity and more of a an asset that people use continually every day. Meanwhile, land has to be more so improved. So we find that infill lots are gonna be the fastest. Infill lots are. Let's say you have a hundred to 120 lot subdivision infill lots are just a quarter acre lot that you're gonna find next door. To you in Jacksonville, right? So those are infill lots. We, we work more in rural recreational land, which is five acres plus. So you're going to find all different builds and shapes and sizes for these lands, but It's probably going to take a little bit more time to sell unless you're in a really hot market. So this property is in Hill County, Texas, which is a very hot market in Texas. So we're thinking a lot of times land can take three to six months to sell. We're hoping that we can sell these in just a couple months, if not sooner, because the market is so highly in demand.
Mike: 15:48So, I guess, like, how are you, like, what made you decide to go after the Rural Recreational Five Acres Plus versus the infill lots?
Ben: 16:01So we found that there was just a lot of competition, especially at the end of 2022 in the infill lot sector, because a lot of builders started marketing to our sellers. So builders were able to pay 80 to 90 percent of market value. And when we're going in offering 50 cents on the dollar for a lot of these lots, we're just going to be outbid by these builders 10 times out of 10. But we find the builders don't really market to these rural recreational tracks because they have no use. They want a tract of land that's already shovel ready. So we're working on another project, an entitlement project, on the east side of Dallas where we're creating these paper lots. 64 one acre lots out of an 80. Plus acre tract. And we're passing that off to a horizontal developer who's going to create them and grade them and scale them and get them ready shovel ready for the end builder. And that builder just wants them ready to go. They don't want to do the horizontal development. So they just want the lots ready to go. And that's who they're going to be marketing to is the. Infill lots that are already ready to go. So we just find there's less competition when we are looking at other competitors within the market, especially big scale competitors. When you talk about the DR Horton's or the large corporations that are publicly traded, it's harder to compete with them. It's easier to compete when you're playing in more of a local sandbox where you have more of a chance and can have more of an authentic trust and rapport built with the sellers on an individual basis.
Mike: 17:39Gotcha. And, uh, we were talking offline before, uh, about some leadership stuff. So do you want to share a little bit about your leadership background?
Ben: 17:48For sure. So just some context. So we have a team of seven right now, and that is part of the job that gives me so much life because it's just so enjoyable to work with other people within a business, people who you really care about, people who, you know, you can help build their dreams and goals. And that's what I think is so unique, unique about small business is you really feel like you're a team. You feel like you're in a boat rowing together. And my goal is to. Be a general of that team and just guide everybody together and help them see the best version of themselves. Because I know when I'm the best version of myself, I'm the best contributor to my team. So my hope is that if I can help everybody else become the best version of themselves, they're going to bring their best to our company as well. So where does my leadership background start? It starts in 2014, 2014. I was nominated by my high school guidance counselor to be our representative from my high school to a leadership camp called Hugh O'Brien youth leadership. It's called H O B Y Hobie. And I went in 2014. So I went to Hobie, Indiana cause I'm from Indiana originally. It happened in Indianapolis, Indiana, and I went for four days and learned all about leadership. Now I was just a sophomore in high school going into my junior year of high school. And I really had no idea what leadership was about. I was more of a shy, reserved kid at this time. And I didn't really think. See myself as a leader within the community, but that's where leadership really came into my life because I got to go to this camp and they talked about the different types of leaders, about how there are so many different archetypes of leaders and how every archetype is important and how no matter who you are or how you're wired or how you're built, you can be, you can make a significant contribution to any team, any group, any community. Any community you find yourself within. So that was important for me to see that. Oh, yes. I'm very detail oriented. I like spending more time by myself But I can also make a significant contribution to a team if I understand everybody else And help put the pieces together as best we can. So fast forward from 2014, I volunteered for seven years after that and went back to the camp and helped volunteer with the camp to give back. So I would be in various roles throughout the years, just trying to, uh, Put on the seminar every year. And finally, the last two years I got to have my own group and that was such a blessing because I got to see it from the other side of being a facilitator of these high school sophomores and speak into them, this leadership concept that, Hey, you are great. You are more, you, you can be a leader and just seeing so much potential within them and helping them realize that potential. So I learned so much from that camp. That I have then taken a lot of that and repurposed it within the business. So we like to use two main personality tests. We like to use Myers Briggs and Enneagram. Those are the two main tests we live by because Ajay and I love them personally to use in our personal relationships. So we feel like it's been good to use them in our business relationships as well. So everybody that joins our team, they take the Myers Briggs assessment and they take the Enneagram assessment as well. And what I do as a COO, I feel like it's my duty to understand the team as best as I can. So what I do is every time somebody joins our company, I read through their entire assessments and understand, okay, how, how do they want to be treated? What do they need? What are they motivated, motivated by? And how are they going to be most fulfilled within their role? Because I want them to feel like they are coming like their true selves to the, to the table. And don't feel like they need to put on a mask when they're with our company. That's the goal. So I read, I read through the Myers Briggs. I see the Enneagram. The Enneagram also has a great tree of how Enneagrams work with other types of Enneagrams. So it helps me understand how certain people are going to work with each other within the team. So maybe one person will work better with this person, or maybe this person won't work well with this person. So then we put, We interchange all these pieces. So I really see my team as like all these interchangeable parts of how they can be most effectively working together within a daily basis and, and operationally how they can best be utilizing their full potential. So I try to understand my team as best as I can. And then keep them motivated and also show them, Hey, this is the future vision I have for you. I think you can be great. Let's get you there. I'm going to challenge you in a couple of these areas and it's going to be a little bit uncomfortable, but discomfort is where we have the most growth. So I'm going to challenge you in ways that will seem weird, but trust me, you're going to be much better because of it. And I have so much belief, so much trust in you that you're going to be so good. And I can't wait to see this next version of you and where it takes you in our business.
Mike: 23:05I, I've never really heard of the Enneagram. So what does that do that's different than the Myers Briggs?
Ben: 23:11Yeah, so the Enneagram really gets into motivations. Who do you want to be as a person? So it's Enneagram Institute, E N N E A G R A M. They have plenty of free assessments on there. But we have a lot of type 1s, type 2s, and type 7s, just for an example. So type 1 is a perfectionist. Type 2 is a helper. And type seven is an enthusiast. Okay. Aja is our only type seven and he's the enthusiast and we love him for it. So the type seven is the fun person. They want to have fun. They want to be, they want to have variety. They want to enjoy and have a lot of fun within their lives, right? The type one is the perfectionist. The perfectionist wants to make sure that the systems are running perfectly, that everything in their life. is set and routine based and they're very disciplined and they're going to continue to show up as themselves and try to get better every single day. I'm a type one. And then type twos are helpers. Helpers want to contribute and help as much as they can, sometimes even to the detriment of, of their own incentives. So they'll try to help and give as much assistance in whatever way they can. So a couple of our team members are so good at just always being ready. Like whatever we need, they'll step in and they'll help. And that's just so helpful to have within a business because you're always having to stay adaptable. You never know what the next month is going to look like because you always come into new challenges. So having type twos on the team has been so valuable for us to know that whatever comes and what, whatever challenges come across, we're going to We'll have people ready to help because people are always ready for a new challenge. So we're really happy and proud of the makeup that we have right now on our team. But like I said, just understanding those motivations and understanding those personality assessments for me as a leader of the company, I think is, like I said, is my duty to understand, okay, what do people want out of their daily lives? How do we make sure that what they're doing on a daily basis at work is fulfilling them and serving their purpose?
Mike: 25:12And then, um, what, what, uh, what profile your salespeople? I'm curious.
Ben: 25:19What pro profile are our salespeople? So.
Mike: 25:21profile? Yeah.
Ben: 25:23our acquisitions manager is a type two, so she's a helper. And then our dispositions manager is a type one, a perfectionist. Yeah. So I like to say that there is no right type. For a role, because we really feel like you can train up skills, but you can't train core values. So we always hire by our core values, enthusiasm, dependability, and growth. And we know that no matter what personality type we have in those roles, we know that if they bring the core values to the table, we can train them up. I also think it's something you can consider when you're hiring as well. I mean, I like to think of acquisitions more as like lion personalities. When you think of just the animal kingdom and then similar with dispositions managers, you probably want more of a lion personality, but in terms of like lead managers, I like to think of more like a golden retriever. So lead manager is what some people call intake managers. People will just build the rapport on that first call with sellers. I like to think of more like golden retriever energy, where you're just getting to know the person. Maybe you spend 30 minutes on the phone, just building that rapport, talking about dogs, talking about colleges, talking about high schools, whatever. Just spending time with that person. And that's really where the golden retriever energy, I think comes into play and is really important for that front end, whereas opposed to when you're getting into negotiations, you need a bit more of an aggressive approach where you're more fighting for your price. Which may be harder for the golden retriever personality to do. That's, so that's where we get a lot more specialized within our company because we have a lot of specialized roles and I feel like that has been effective for us to treat the various pieces of our pipeline in different ways, based on what personality type we have sitting in each seat.
Mike: 27:23gotcha. And then what about your hiring process? Because obviously part of being a good leader is hiring the right people to start.
Ben: 27:33Absolutely. And definitely a big piece too is firing. So we, we fire, we have fired, unfortunately, three people. Uh, within our company and we are not slow to fire. We are fast to fire. So unfortunately we had to let someone go the day we hired them. We had to let another person go a week after we hired them, but we are so. Intent on our core values. Like I said, that if people do not fit our core values, they will not last long here. And we have such a great team that has instilled in themselves, our core values, that is just such an innate, natural piece of our culture that if somebody comes into our company and doesn't exhibit those core values, it's like scratching a chalkboard. You can tell right away when people don't fit. And that has been so helpful for us to kind of weed out the people that don't have a long term future here. But when it comes to the hiring process, I can kind of break down how we go through our process. So it starts first with the group interview. So we have some pre screens before the group interview with someone on our team, just a five, 10 minute phone call to make sure that people are qualified for the group interview. And they have to pass through all these detailed tests through our job descriptions. Say you love your favorite food or your favorite color. You gotta, you gotta send those to us in your response email. That way we know you're detail oriented and are not just clicking apply, apply, apply, apply, apply, right? We want to make sure that people, we also have a loom video on our job listings. So people will watch that loom video. And hopefully resonate with something. Usually it's Ajay giving the presentation. Hey, these are our core values. We hope that people will go through our job listing and resonate with that loom video and want to apply to our position. So then once we get through that screening process, five to 10 minute phone call, we go into that group interview in that group interview. It's going to be 10 to 15 applicants that we send an invitation to, because not everybody's going to show up because people are applying to jobs all the time. People are getting jobs all the time while they're applying to jobs. So. We, we assume about 60 percent of those people are going to show up. So six to 10 people are going to show up for that group interview. And we're going to know immediately who's qualified for that next round, just based on vibes, based on values, based on answers to the questions. So then people who are qualified from the group interview, one to two to three, we'll get individual one on one interviews with me and Ajay
Mike: 30:08Okay.
Ben: 30:09all of our questions, Mike, within our hiring process are based on our core values, enthusiasm, dependability, and growth. And so we may not say them explicitly. We're not going to ask, Oh, are you enthusiastic? Oh, are you dependable? No, we're going to ask it in different ways, you know, throughout the interview process, maybe eight to eight to 10 questions for these people that are applying in different ways. Oh, well, what is something you really enjoy doing? And then we're going to see, Oh, do they light up when they talk about books? Oh, do they light up when they talk about kayaking? Whatever their, Excited about. We want to hear that excitement because we want them to have that same excitement when they come to work. And then we have dependability. What would your, what would your coworkers say about you in the past? Because we want to hear, Oh yes. My coworkers would say, I show up every day and I do this, the things that I say I'm going to do. And then growth. What do you feel like you're learning about right now? Oh, I love learning about nutrition or something like that. Oh, okay, great. So you're always learning. You're always trying to do new things. That's exactly the type of people that work here at assets for acres. Right. So then from there, we may give an offer to one or two people out of those one on one interviews. We may give an offer to zero of those people from those one on one interviews. We, we, it's hard to know. It's never going to be the same process because it's just very much like sales. You're always going to have a pipeline of people. Some will convert, some won't convert. So we go through that process. And then once the people are hired, they've signed their contract with us. We then onboard them. And part of the onboarding process is going to the core values once again. And then we highlight. Okay. These are some of the rules we have within the business. We use the one three, one three, one rule by Dan Martell. You have one problem. If you have a problem state, what the problem is, you have three suggestions for me before you come to me. And then you have one recommendation of those three suggestions of how you would solve the problem once you bring the problem to me. So that's part of our process of onboarding is, Hey, we, we instill this within our company because we think we have problem solvers within our company. Okay. Ajay and I don't solve all the problems within our business. Our company solves the problems within the business as a collective unit, as a group. And that's what the goal is of this whole process is to make sure that we have an autonomous team that is continually pushing the business forward all together, not on one person's shoulders, but all as a collective unit, because we are rowing the boat as a team. That's the
Mike: 32:36Yeah. What, like, what kind of questions are you, is it similar questions on that group interview? And like, how do you kind of handle that? I mean, you got 10 people in like a zoom room or something that could feel like a little hectic. Like, how do you structure that?
Ben: 32:51Yeah, like I said, so you usually only have six to ten people within that thirty to forty five minute interview And you'll find very quickly that some people just have one to two word answers. So we ask Two to three to four questions of those six to 10 people in that group interview. And you'll tell very quickly who is engaged, who's ready to go, who's ready to attack the day, who is very excited to come to that interview because you may have some people who are sitting in that interview and just haphazardly showed up and really don't want to be there. And you'll tell right away. So it's very, very telling on that group interview, who's ready to, who's ready to go and who's ready to go to the next level. And that 30 to 45 minute group interview has proven to be very effective for us to save a lot of time on the front end, to weed out candidates who are just not qualified and not ready to go to the next level with us.
Mike: 33:44So if you have a, like, you know, two to four questions, are you asking the question and then saying, candidate one, give your answer, candidate two, give your answer to the same question is, is that how it works or?
Ben: 33:55Exactly. Exactly that. And we'll usually go in the same order for the group. We'll start with Joe and then go to John and then go to Sarah. And then the next question, we'll say, okay, Joe, you start us off again and then go to John and then go to Sarah. That was very consistent. And everybody gets time. And if anybody's going too long, we'll say, Oh, sorry, Joe, it's been two or three minutes. We're going to have to go to the next person, but thank you for your response, just so that we can keep things moving and everyone gets time to say the responses, but I mean, we've even had people leave mid call during interviews because they just. Ready to do the thing. So you never really know what's going to happen throughout that interview, but we want to make sure we at least give everybody a couple of minutes on each question to prove that they're ready for the next round. And like I said, we'll tell very, very quickly who's ready to go to the next round, just based on vibes and based on if they're ready to show up.
Mike: 34:54Gotcha. And then you mentioned a little bit about onboarding, what you said with kind of the Dan Martell role. What else do you feel is a central part of onboarding for you?
Ben: 35:04Yeah. So I give like a full presentation. I have a full PowerPoint. Presentation that I give every time someone joins our team with our core values and our definitions on our core values. And then we break down the strategies within the business. Why we do what we do. What, what is land? Why do we trade land? We have several podcasts that Ajay and I have been on that we use as training. To say, Hey, this is what we do on a daily basis. This is what we believe in. Learn a little bit more about our company through the owner's interviews and then give us some of your takeaways. And then from there we'll explain more about the job, what the individual job looks like and give specific training on that job. So let's say we have a lead manager join the team. We'll give them lead manager calls, sample calls that other people have done before. And say, Hey, listen to these, let me know if you have any questions, you're going to be doing a lot of this on a daily basis, we want to make sure we're getting this right. So making sure that we're not rushing people into the business, but also pushing them enough to say, Hey, you're going to be making calls by Wednesday. That's the hope we need to make sure we have any questions ironed out before Wednesday. So we want to make sure you have as many resources as you need to be successful. And we always say, who's the most important person in charge of your success at this company? And our hope is that the answer is always going to be me, right? Not, not me, Ben, but me, the person on the other side of that call. Right? So that's the goal is every person that comes through the business. We talk about autonomy. We want to have a group of workers on. It within our company that are autonomous and happy to show up every day for work and taking ownership of their role and taking ownership of the results and taking responsibility for pushing their side of the business forward. Because we know we, we do that in our position and we hope that everybody who comes to work for us does the exact same when they join assets for acres.
Mike: 37:07Gotcha. And then like, as you, you know, have people working for you and probably some people work for you for quite a long time, like, how are you making sure that you're continuing to be an amazing leader to them?
Ben: 37:20I always. Like to say to people that asked me about leadership, what are you doing to be a leader that you would follow? Because that's a question that I'm asking myself continually every single day. I know that I push myself harder than anybody could possibly push me because I have these standards that are so high for myself. So I know that I have to be a good role model and a good example for the rest of my team. So I push myself so hard. I have no vices. I go to the gym six out of seven days a week. I eat very healthfully and I make sure that I am in a position to show up every single day and give my best version to the team. And I know if I'm doing that, it's going to raise everybody else's standards to meet me. Now I also give some grace for people because I don't expect everybody to have the same standards that I have. And that's, that's an important aspect of being a leader as well as you need to have empathy. And I know everybody has a different situation within our team and I'm going to meet them where they are, but I'm going to push them just a little bit more, just a little bit, because I know that where they could possibly get to. far off from where they are right now. They just need a little bit of a push and I'm going to be willing to give them that push. We have quarterly check ins, quarterly one on ones every quarter, and that's my opportunity to give each of my team members a little bit of a push because we talk about, Hey, where you are from the past quarter, where are you going into this coming quarter? What can we do to continue to uplevel you? And that's, that's always a great opportunity to say, Hey, I think this might be a little challenge for you. What do you think about this? Do you think, do you think this is a worthwhile thing to take on? Yes or no. Do I have your permission to challenge you a bit? Yes or no. Okay, great. Let's try to get there together because it's not just me trying to push my team. It's me trying to push my team to push themselves. And that's the beauty in it. If I can get them to raise their standards for themselves, then that's, that's a goal accomplished for me. Because I want to see everybody living their best lives and proud to be who they are, because I know I'm proud of where I've gotten, but I know I have so much further to push and I hope everyone else around me feels the same. And that's a goal for me as a leader.
Mike: 39:44Gotcha. And then how you said meeting people where they are, how are you figuring out? they are.
Ben: 39:52Yeah. I feel like it just comes down to listening. Being an active leader within a business requires active listening. Active leadership is active listening. So we have weekly calls. We have, we call them weekly culture calls where we share with wins on a weekly basis with the team. We also have a weekly team time team team time time where just the team meets without us. So we put a lot of
Mike: 40:24without the leadership.
Ben: 40:26exactly. So we put a lot of emphasis on our team bonding, not only with us as owners, but with themselves individually as a team. So. Like I said, when it comes to active listening, when a team member tells us that they're struggling with something or they're pushing or pursuing something outside of the business, we're going to celebrate them and we're going to be excited for them pushing themselves or really trying their best to show up even on hard days, because we really consider ourselves to. Be a full team of leaders. Every person within our company is a leader. So we want to make sure we're understanding that we are serving our team as best as we can. So I always ask within our quarterly one on ones, are we serving your professional goals? Right now as a company, if yes, grace, if not, how can we serve you better? Are we serving your personal goals right now? If yes, in what ways are we serving your personal goals? If not, how can we serve you better? So that's a question I ask every single person in our quarterly one on ones every single quarter. So that's the opportunity for me to understand, okay, are you, are you doing okay in terms of your fitness goals? Are you doing okay in terms of your financial goals? Are you doing okay in terms of your family goals? Yes or no. How can we serve you and support you in a better way to help you get to that place that you want to be? Because that's our goal at the end of the day is that our business serves our company and our, our, and our workers as much as it serves our clients.
Mike: 42:07Yeah. And then you mentioned like the personal goals. So what are you doing to help identify? Because sometimes like people start working for you like and people don't have goals. Right. They may be driven, but like, they've never actually like sat down and like I thought about their goals. So I'll start with how are you helping them identify their personal goals?
Ben: 42:30Yeah, I think that really started at the beginning of the year, and I think it always starts at the beginning of the year, because when you get it to the beginning of the year, everyone's in New Year's resolution mode setting, right? So when everyone else is in that setting, it makes it easier to fall into that setting. So we had several conversations at the beginning of the year with our team around goal setting. What are your goals for the year? Where do you want to get to? Where did we go last year? And what are some reasonable goals here for this year? And then from there, that's where the quarterly check ins are super important to make sure that, Hey, I noticed you mentioned this at the beginning of the year. Are you still tracking on that? Are you still pursuing that? Are you still On track to get to a certain milestone that you were hoping to buy this point in the year if yes, great, if no, what do we need to do to help you get there? And just taking time to really, like I said, listen to the person because goals may change. Goals always change. Sometimes they may change throughout the year and if a goal has changed and I'm not aware of it and I'm trying to serve a goal that is no longer a goal that my teammate is trying to pursue. Then I need to be back in alignment with that goal. And that's where I think a lot of that personality understanding comes into play is when you understand the personality of the person, you can understand, okay, I see a change here. I see a change in motivation. Let's talk about this. Is this still serving you? If not, what do we need to do to change to make sure that you're feeling like you're valued and feeling like we're making progress towards where you want to go? Because our hope is that every person that joins our company has a place to grow. And that's our job as leaders within the company is to set a vision so big. And this is something that Ajay puts, pushes me on so well. Is he's always challenging me on what's our Mount Everest for the year. Do we have a big enough Mount Everest that everybody else's dreams and goals can fit within our Mount Everest? And that's a hard challenge to push for, but that's, that's That's the hard that we want is to have a hard challenge to push so big that we have that capacity for everyone else to have big dreams within our company.
Mike: 44:56guys mostly remote? Uh
Ben: 44:59That's correct. So me and Ajay, we are in the same house right now. Um, and so we've been working together physically here, which has been phenomenal. I think it's just dynamite when you can be in the same location as your business partner and anybody else on your team. So that's been phenomenal for us. We have two other. Three other people in the U S who are spaced throughout the U S geographically. So they are virtual. And then four overseas in the Philippines who actually visited in May. So I have met them in person and then we were having, uh, have an event September 27th and 28th here in Dallas. And I'll be able to meet the rest of our team here in Dallas. So 2024 will be the year that I'll be able to meet every person from assets for acres. In person. And I'm super stoked for that because I had such a great time meeting our team in the Philippines, just connecting with them, understanding their culture, just hearing their language and being with them, being present. I was able to go for a team member's wedding. So being able to be a part of that experience for something that she'll remember for the rest of her life, and just be able to share that with her and her family and the rest of the team from the Philippines came to that wedding as well, and attended. And we all got together and just spent that the, those couple of days there together, just celebrating her and celebrating what we've built so far at assets for acres. So we had a lot of fun over there. I'm glad I was able to meet everybody in person because I feel like that human to human interaction is so valuable. You get that time to really be face to face and just really. Show people that you care about them, you know, spending time, no phones, just sitting and being with each other. Just having those hours was so valuable and it was such a, such a rewarding experience to go over there. So I'm excited for the 27th and 28th when I get to meet the rest of our team in person, because I know that'll be so valuable as well.
Mike: 46:54Excuse me. What, um, specific challenges you feel that you face from a leadership perspective with a remote team and how have you overcome those challenges?
Ben: 47:10I feel like this is a big thing I've been working on this year, Mike, because. With leadership, you're always learning, you're always trying to get better. There's always some new spot that you can learn more about, and that's the beauty of it. It's never complete. Just like business, it's never complete. And you're always learning, always growing, always getting better. So this year, my challenge has been To more so relinquish control of a lot of tasks and let things go from my plate that I know my team is capable of doing, but maybe that I have trouble letting go. So a lot of that has come down to giving trust to my team, believing in my team. Telling my team, Hey, I think you have the information you need here. I trust you to make the right decision. I believe in you to make the right decision. You just tell me when you make the decision and what the decision is, and we'll move forward from there because I had to take myself out of being the approver or the approval person and put myself into being a collaborator as opposed to the person with the answers. So I decided to take more of a step back and say, Hey, I don't know everything. I think my team knows a lot more in a lot of ways than I do in many situations within the business. And I think they'll make a better decision than I would. And I'm going to let them know that. So I've had to have a lot of growth this year in terms of just saying, Hey, I honestly don't know what the right decision is here, but I think you do. And I'm going to let you make that decision and we're going to be okay with whatever happens from that decision. And we're going to move forward and I'm excited for the decision you're going to make, because I think you're going to make the right decision and we'll see where that takes us.
Mike: 49:00Hmm. What other challenges have you faced with a remote team?
Ben: 49:06With the remote team, also just not having that daily interaction where you see each other, where you have that face to face interaction, where you're learning about each other's families, we have to be really intentional about that culture meeting to say, we have 30 minutes for wins every week. Everyone shares their wins from the week. And that's where we've just had to really be adaptable to give that time. Yes. It might be important time to generate leads, to have sales calls, but we, we really think that that culture time is essential to us just getting to know. Everybody on the team. So I think we've just had to be really strategic about the time for those meetings. We've actually cut down a lot of our meeting time because we got some feedback from the team. We used to have daily standups Monday through Thursday with the entire team. And I got some feedback in our quarterly one on ones. That's why the quarterly one on ones are so good that our team said, Hey, I don't think everybody needs to be on these standups every single day. I think it might be wasting some people's time. And I think it might be better if you only have a couple of people on the standup every day. And then the people who don't have problems can just go and do their work and generate leads. So that's where I said, okay, I may have started the daily standups, but I'm not going to say we have to do the daily standups every day with everybody because that's not serving everybody, especially when I get that feedback. So I hear that and I say, okay, that's great feedback. Let's adjust. And it's been an adjustment period, especially for me, because I was so used to every day. Having this full daily meeting. So now saying, okay, let's adjust a bit. Let's see if these meetings are actually serving the team. And if we're actually getting better, if we're actually solving problems every day, or if we're just reporting, because reporting versus problem solving is a very different thing. Reporting can be done on a spreadsheet and problem solving cannot be done on a spreadsheet. So it's a very different approach. And I think that's been helpful for me to kind of understand, okay. Daily standups every day, maybe aren't exactly what we need. But that's why I try to get the feedback from the team because the team is in charge of their success. And when they're in charge of their success, they're gonna bring me issues of roadblocks that are getting in, in the way of their success. And that daily standup was getting in the way of their success. And my job as a leader is to take away roadblocks as to put, as opposed to putting roadblocks in front of our team.
Mike: 51:40that's a really good point. Um, we're getting close to the end here and there's always two questions I like to ask at the end versus just kind of a fun one, which is, what is the craziest or most uncomfortable situation that you've ever experienced in a real estate deal?
Ben: 51:57So the craziest story we have is from a property in Texas, a vacant piece of land. It's in Hidalgo County, which is on the Southern tip of Texas. It was a small 0. 2 acre lot in Hidalgo County, Texas. And we were double closing this lot. We were going to make about. 5, 000 on it. So not a huge spread for us. We typically try to do between 000 on our double closes. So this was much, much on the smaller scale for us in terms of double closes. So we were having issues with the surveyor getting out there. So he goes out to the property and he says, well, there's a full fence up in front of the property and I can't get behind the fence cause it was all barbed wire and it was all the way along from one wall property to the next wall of the next neighbor's property. You had a fence in that whole portion and it was all barbed wire. And he said, there's no way I can get on the property to survey it. And we said, okay, well that's a fair issue. Yeah. You probably can't get in there to do the full survey. So we went on Craigslist and we hired somebody to take down the fence. Well, that person goes out there day of, takes down the fence, And then he texts us a photo of a cow. Now this, mind you, this is in the middle of a small town city. This is just a regular subdivision, like normal single family homes. And there's just a cow on this less than quarter acre lot sitting there. And he said, What do you want me to do about the cow? And we said, well, we didn't know there was a cow on there. So he says, well, there's a cow and it's tied up. So it looks like it should be fine, but I took down the fence and I just wanted you to be aware of that. So a couple of minutes later. He gives us a call again. It's the neighbor. Apparently it's the neighbor's cow and the neighbor does not speak spanish But luckily he has a friend there or he does not speak english But luckily he has a friend there who does speak english. So his friend gets on the phone with me He says oh, yes, sir. It's it's our cow. Um, do you need us to take the cow off the property? I said, uh, yes, please. Yes. We need you to take off the cow from the property He said oh, okay. Okay. Yeah, we can get that taken off today. I was like You Okay, I don't know how you're going to get rid of this cow in a day. I hope you have a trailer or something. I don't, I don't need to know what you, what you're doing with the cow or how you're going to get rid of it or where are you going to put it, but you do, you do what you got to do. So he's like, yes, sir. I'll, I'll get rid of the cow. So he takes the cow away and the surveyor goes out there. We get the property platted, we close and we make our 5, 000. Uh, but for, for about 24 hours there, we were, we were just laughing like crazy cause we, it was such a story that we had never come across before. So that was, that was probably our craziest story that we've had with, with a cow on an infill lot in Hidalgo County, Texas,
Mike: 54:57I thought you were about to say that, uh, he sent you a picture of the fence and he took down the neighbor's fence by accident. Um,
Ben: 55:06something much more unexpected happened for us.
Mike: 55:13well, the 2nd question I always ask, um, is if you could go back in time, give yourself 1 piece of advice when you were looking for your 1st deal. Knowing what, you know, now, what would you tell yourself?
Ben: 55:26I would tell myself to purchase my first. Property in my personal name. I thought that building a business meant having a business But now I understand that having a business means doing business. I'll say that again. I thought that having a business meant having a business, but now I understand that having a business means doing business. When I first came out of the corporate world, I didn't really understand how you made money without having a salary. So I understood it as you have to build a business that is worthy of. Doing business. But now I understand that, okay, you have to do marketing. You have to have a sales process. You have to do fulfillment. These are all the activities within a business that constitute a business. And if I could go back in time, I would tell Ben. In 2021 to just go through and purchase a property in vacant land somewhere in Texas and just buy it in your personal name and try to find a way to flip it. And I think I would have been much better served to have built a business by doing the business as opposed to having the business.
Mike: 56:41Yeah, that's a great piece of advice. A lot of people go out and start the LLC, get the business cards, but haven't made a phone call to a seller yet. So,
Ben: 56:51Exactly.
Mike: 56:52well, Ben, if, uh, people want to reach out to you after the show, uh, if they have questions for you about leadership or maybe they want to JV some land deals, uh, how can they go about reaching you?
Ben: 57:02Yes. Yes. So the best way to get in contact with me is through my personal Instagram. And that's going to be at Ben Pijanowski. That's B E N P I J. A N O W S K I. I believe we have that on the screen right now. So if you want to connect with me on Instagram, that would be the best way to reach me. And then if you want to see me in person, I'll be in Dallas where we're having an event. Ajay Sharma is throwing it. He's my business partner, September 27th and 28th in Dallas, Texas is, it'll be called the land scaling summits. And if you want to go to landscalingsummit. com tickets are available. I will be speaking at that event, having a, Fireside chat with Ajay just about leadership, day to day operations, routine, how to run and scale and systematize a land business. We're going to be having a full hour long discussion together. Should be a lot of fun. But if you want to meet me in person and have a conversation about any of these concepts I've spoken about here with Mike today, I would love to have a chat. I love those events. Just getting to connect with many different real estate professionals. If you're excited about land, if you think it's something interested that you would want to get into. I would love to talk with you at that event. Like I said, it's September 27th and 28th here in Dallas, Texas. That's landscalingsummit. com. We would absolutely love to have you and would love to see you here.
Mike: 58:22Awesome. Well, Ben, thanks for being on the show.
Ben: 58:25Thanks for having me, Mike. It's been a pleasure.
