Seth: Hey everybody, how's it going? Seth Williams and Ajay Sharma here. You're listening to the REtipster podcast.

And today, we are talking with Ben Pijanowski. Ben is the co-owner of Assets for Acres and he is what we call an integrator champion. For those of you familiar with EOS, Ben is an expert in discipline, leadership, and what it takes to push a team to its limits while creating a culture of high performance and high retention.

So Ben is the chief operating officer of Assets for Acres, which happens to be the same company that Ajay co-owns with him. I was lucky enough to have Ben in my cohort for two full days at the Land UnConference earlier this year. And no joke, over and over again, I was amazed at how great this guy's advice and input was for other people in our group. And when I saw his obvious level of expertise, I knew we had to try to bottle up some of that brilliance so we could share it with the REtipster audience. So I'm excited for this.

Ben, welcome to the show. How are you doing?

Ben: Thanks for having me, Seth. Yeah, it's great to be here. And you have listened to many episodes, so it's great to get a chance to sit down and hear, hopefully, drop some value for the community here.

Seth: Yeah. Is it weird being on the other side of this?

Ben: A little bit, but we're excited to get into it.

Seth: Let's start the way we usually start. What's your origin story? When and how did you discover land? And what made you decide to get into this business?

Ben: Yeah, so it started back in 2021. So I graduated college in 2020. And in 2021, I was working in Chicago. Ajay and I both had a corporate gig at that point. I was working for KPMG since I'm a CPA by trade, studied finance and accounting in college. And Ajay just came to me in 2021.

And he said, “Hey, I found this course on land,” because we had talked a lot in college about how we were both interested in real estate, but coming out of college, we didn't have a ton of funds to invest in said real estate. So we were thinking, okay, what are some ways that we can invest? And one of the ways Ajay found was land.

So he started his own business before me, but then he said, hey, check out this course. He knew that I was similarly wired and wanted to be an entrepreneur someday. So I took his advice and took this course called the REtipster course. And lo and behold, I started my land business, this, but I never did a single transaction. I sent out lists to all the tax delinquent lists in Texas and started my marketing and started taking some seller calls.

But I identified that I just didn't really want it to be a solopreneur. That was just not the journey for me. I had been watching Gary Vee since I was a freshman in high school. So I always knew that I wanted to do something business-wise and always provide value for the world in some type of entrepreneurial way. So I decided to quit my corporate job at the end of, or at the beginning of 2022. And I was kind of just figuring out what I wanted to do.

After moving to Mexico for a week, I came back to the States and I called up Ajay and I said, “Hey, I'm thinking about getting back into the land business because I was just really interested in getting back into some type of entrepreneurial space.” And he said, “Well, you know, I've been going for a little bit here. Why don't you just join me and we can test a partnership and see how it goes and just do some joint venturing together?”

So we weren't like technical partners or anything like that to start out with. We were just trying to do some deals together and try to figure it out along the way. So we started that for a little bit and then come towards the end of 2022, we really started to realize that I was starting to come into a lot of the responsibilities of the COO or the operations officer of the company. So then come the beginning of 2023, Ajay and I decided to fully become a 50-50 partnership because we just identified that our strengths were fully matched.

I always like how it's good to date before you get married in business. And that was exactly what we did. We just tested it out before we decided to fully incorporate as full partners. And that's the advice I always give to other people who are also looking for partners is always date before you figure out that you're ready to get in that full partnership. So that was great, really identifying that.

And I think a lot of this comes from the book, The E-Myth. I read that in 2021. And The E-Myth has three separate types of people. They have the entrepreneur, they have the technician, and they have the manager. And I read that book and I knew instantly that I was the manager and Ajay is the entrepreneur of our group.

And then we have a lot of phenomenal technicians. We have seven people on our staff who are amazing, exceptional people who we get to work with on a daily basis and they are supporting us.

And I just knew I was an operationally driven person. I love efficiencies, optimizing. And that was always my goal with being a business person was to not only be a coach but also just be an optimizer for a business to make sure that whatever we're doing is pushing the needle in the right direction.

I talk a lot with Ajay about how I think our success comes down to focus and consistency because we've been in business for almost four years and that's, I think, what has allowed us to grow is that compounding knowledge of being in the same space, the same business, being around people that are ahead of us and learning from them and trying to continually stack skills on as we're trying to build our toolbox in this land space.

So right now, like I said, we have a staff of seven. We're doing primarily land flipping. We do a lot of double close deals where we get under contract, find a buyer, and then double close them in the same day. We still do some of the primary flips, but then we also are working on some larger projects as well.

We have our first entitlement project where we're taking 80 acres and splitting into 64 single-family lots. And then we're working on a project where we're working on 107 acres, splitting those into five separate tracts. And then our third project is our first subject-to deal where we're taking on someone else's existing mortgage and then looking to flip that on the backend.

So those are all new projects that we've never done before. And that's what we're always trying to do every year. We're trying to get better, learn new things, and try to expand the business and not only our team but the ways that we figure out how to execute projects and solve problems.

Seth: Yeah. I think it was Pablo Picasso who was quoted as saying, "I'm always doing what I cannot do in order that I might learn how to do it." Sounds like that's you guys, right?

Ben: Yes.

Seth: Well, okay. So there's a lot to unpack there. Thanks for the backstory. That's really helpful.

So going back to your first interaction with Ajay, I assume you guys were in some class together in school or something like that. So where do you think you would be if you didn't know Ajay? Like, would you even be in the land business? It kind of sounds like he's a pretty critical component of making this work. Is that accurate?

Ben: 100%. I would likely be burring properties and trying to stack burrs if it weren't for Ajay. Just because that felt like the path for me was to work a corporate job and then just work passively on the side to build some type of portfolio.

So I came back from Mexico and I had this conversation with Ajay. I said, you know, I think I'm just going to be a substitute teacher and do some things on the side. And like, I was a minimalist at that point. So I needed very little money to keep up my cost of living.

So that's something I've always been very effective at doing is like I'm very effective with personal finance. And so it was always just easy for me to keep expenses low and burn rate low.

But I came back from Mexico and Ajay just spoke to me and he said, "You're destined for so much more, Ben. You can give so much more to the world." Nothing against substitute teaching, it's great. And there are a lot of people who are very good and change a lot of lives doing that. But for me, like once I heard that from Ajay, it just kind of lit a fire within me to be like, yeah, he's right. There is a lot more that I can do.

And I think it led us down this path where we complement each other so well. Ajay pushes me very much socially and then I'm more the discipline rock, like the consistency rock. So we balance each other. We talk how we're like the yin and the yang and I think that's important in a partnership to have people that bring out aspects in you that maybe you don't see yourself and that's something that we continually want to surround ourselves with people who have bigger visions for ourselves than we do for our own vision within ourselves.

Seth: So have you ever had any other business partnerships with anybody ever prior to Ajay or outside? Because I've heard the story countless times. I've experienced it myself, where you kind of get into a partnership with somebody and it falls apart. You know, there's that saying, what is it? The only ship that doesn't float is a partnership or something like that.

So it almost makes me feel like there's a little bit of luck involved here that you've got such a good partner as Ajay in terms of like, and he got a good partner as well. Like you both complement each other.

I'm just wondering, like if Ajay were to disappear tomorrow and you wanted to go form a new partnership with somebody else for your land business, how successful do you think you'd be at that? Like, would you know exactly what to look for or is it still kind of luck? What do you think?

Ben: I think that's a really good question, Seth. And this is something I always give advice to when people are asking about finding their partner.

I always say how it's so important to know what you don't want, and then you'll get it led to what you do want.

So something that I've been ruminating on recently is “what you seek is seeking you.” And this comes from the poet Rumi. And it was actually from an excerpt from Who Not How, which I've been reading recently. But I think Ajay and I are just so intentional with our lives that we just set such a high standard for the person that we were going to have as our partner. And we just knew we had spent so much time together throughout college. We had basically a bi-weekly call on Zoom during the COVID lockdown.

So we just identified so well the things that we connected with on our values. And I think that's the biggest piece, is looking for the person with the right values. That's something that I look for, not only in business but also in my personal life. That's what I would recommend for other people who are also looking for partners is think about your core values. Our core values are enthusiasm, dependability, and growth.

That's not just between me and Ajay. That's for me personally. That's for Ajay personally. That's for us together. That's what I always look for in my relationships. That's what I would continue to look for going forward here in all my aspects of life. That's what I hope other people do as well.

And so you'll find some people that you don't have the same values as, and that's okay. They're going to have their values, and that's great. There's nothing against someone having different values from you. It's obviously going to happen. So you just want to find the people who have those same values and that want to run with you and have the same mission, vision, and values. And then you just run to the end of the earth with them.

Seth: Yeah, I remember back when I was in high school and college looking at it more from a marriage standpoint. Like I would meet a girl and just think, I wonder if she's the one. Like, what if I got married to her? What would my life be like? And I would do this with like dozens of girls because I don't know anything. I hardly even knew myself or what I needed for my future.

But I almost wonder if you were to look at potential business partnerships that way, even from a young age, like if there's young listeners out there in high school or college, like you never know where that business partner is going to encounter you in life.

And it's almost like if you're looking at it through that lens, like trying to seize the opportunities as they come up instead of just letting them go by, it's worth thinking about, even if not like a business partnership, some other way that the two of you can help each other later in life. It's just good to always kind of keep like a mental Rolodex. I'm like, “Oh yeah, I know that person. They're good at this thing. Maybe we can help each other.”

I don't know. I know a lot of my life, I just kind of let those relationships come and go and didn't really think of it that seriously, but I probably should have been probably would have helped me.

Ajay: I think in that vein, Seth, you talk to a lot of people who are now married. Again, we're going to use this parallel because Ben and I are married, so to speak.

But you talk to a lot of people that are married and they'll say like, oh, you know, there was a point or very early on. I just, I just knew like it just clicked, things worked, like, cool, that's the one, so to speak. And it's funny, because Ben and I have talked about this now sort of ruminating on the past where we both knew in our subconscious pretty early from when we had become friends that we would end up business partners one day.

I don't think either of us thought it was going to be in our 20s. To be honest, I don't think we knew how quickly our entrepreneurial careers were going to take off. But like, I remember early in my relationship with my now wife, but at the time girlfriend, telling her like, oh, like I could see myself starting a fund one day and hopefully partnering up with Ben on that. And this is, you know, this is so early before we had any, any synergies and land, so to speak. So I joke a little bit as I say this, but there's some truth to like, when you know, you know, there were definitely very, very natural forces in Ben and I working together very early on.

Seth: Yeah. That's awesome.

Now switching gears a little bit. So I know we talked about how, or I talked about how Ben is an integrator champion. So for those who don't already know what an integrator is, what is an integrator?

Ben: Yes. Yeah. So I love this topic.

So it comes from the book Traction by Gino Wickman. A lot of times you have two partners in business. You have the visionary and you have the integrator. So the visionary is commonly what's referred to as the CEO and the integrator commonly was referred to as the COO.

So the visionary is a person who sets the vision for the business. Where does the business need to go in five, ten, one year, six months, three months, one month, one quarter? Where does that need to be? And then the integrator comes in and they are directing the ship from where the ship is to where the visionary thinks the ship can go.

So basically what an integrator is doing is every day monitoring the systems, the details, the problems, the issues, everything that's going on within the business and making sure that the boat is going in the right direction and then reporting back to the visionary about what you're seeing. So I am always reporting to Ajay about what I'm seeing within the business. And he's always reporting to me, hey, this is where we need to go.

I like to think that the visionary is very results-based and the integrator is very process-based. So from those two sides of the coin, you're always working in a direction, and you're modifying based on results and you're modifying based on process.

Seth: Now, I can see some potential conflict coming up between those two roles, just given that there's one person saying, hey, we got to go here, and the other person saying, I'm actually doing all the work. And I can tell you, we can't do that. Or it's way harder than you think.

Do you guys ever have conflict like that? Or are you good at, I don't know, like, how do you handle those things? Like if Ajay, I'm assuming it's Ajay who would say, hey, this is the vision. This is where we got to go. And Ben, you're like, no, no, you don't understand reality, Ajay. We can't do that. We can't do that as fast as you want.

How do you manage that if that ever comes up?

Ben: Yeah. So that's what I think the role of the integrator really is, is to be a filter for the visionary because the visionary is a person who's going to have millions of ideas all the time. And so the integrator needs to be able to filter through those ideas and be able to figure out if they can be integrated within the business.

So we'll have many conversations. I like to call them intellectual sparring matches, right? Where Ajay and I go back and forth about the things we're talking about, the ideas within the business and just like my brain here, here's how I see us getting to this point in the business. And then saying, Hey, I think we can get there or no, I don't think we can get there.

So Ajay also says he frequently has conversations with me in his head before he brings them to me. Right. So he not only has the physical filter, but also he has a filter in his head of like, okay, Ben's going to say these things probably going to be a no. Or yeah, this actually may be a yes because of where we are in the business.

So I think that's worked out really well for our relationship as visionary and integrator in that I can be the filter. Ajay can be the ideas person. And we respect each other so much that an idea will never be just shot down just out of pure volition, but it's just, hey, you come to me, you have an idea, we'll talk through it and we'll logic through it and figure out if it's exactly what the business needs. If not, maybe we try some other idea. If yes, here's how it can be done. Here's how I see it being implemented. And here's how we're going to take it forward.

Seth: That's actually a huge sign of maturity, I think, for somebody to be able to have these mental conversations ahead of time and realistically predict what the responses will be. I almost do this with my, it's kind of a different thing, but I almost do this with myself sometimes where I'll be able to sit outside of myself and say, look, Seth, what are you doing? Like I can almost look at my situation from the third-party perspective. And I've encountered people who don't do that well at all. They just kind of say what needs to happen and they expect it should be fine. And I'm just crazy if I disagree with them or that kind of thing.

Is that, I mean, a question for you, Ajay, like, have you always been like that? Or did you learn to be like that after working with Ben? Or how's that work for you?

Ajay: I wish I could sit here and tell you I've always been extremely mature, Seth. I think I'd be lying if I did.

But what I can tell you is part of the inspiration for me beginning that in any capacity, like that exercise came from, what's that famous Napoleon Hill book, Think and Grow Rich, right? He talks about the concept of, like, you have advisors, is that what he calls it? You guys remember, you know, you got your like painting of advisors, and whoever's in it frequently looks up and says, like, okay, what would this conversation look like with George Washington, or Abraham Lincoln, or Tupac, or whoever's on your inspiration board, right?

So I started doing this exercise years ago, especially when I was doing the business alone of, okay, I need to make this decision. Who's a mentor that is in a place that I want to be in, right? Let's say I take an Alex Hormozi or a Patrick Bet-David and I've consumed, you know, hundreds of hours of content from both of those guys. And so I can reasonably be like, hey, I have this problem. What questions would you be asking me, right?

And then I start to answer those questions to them and then think about what their opinions would be and get closer to where I should be. It's funny because we have a lot of these answers inside of ourselves already.

And so, you know, when Ben and I then formed our partnership, it actually was kind of natural for me at a certain point in our relationship where because we came in with a friendship, sometimes I just want to soundboard with him. But because he sits in the role of integrator, he might not know when to delineate between, hey, am I being a filter or a soundboard? And so I'll need to tell him, I'll say, hey, Ben, I need Soundboard Ben right now. I just need you to listen and spring with me, right? Versus like, okay, I'm thinking about this thing, like integrator- visionary, let's sit down and go, right?

So similar to how I just did a sales training not too long ago, sit down with you, Seth, and we talked about framing as a concept of, hey, before you get into the call, set the expectation correctly. Hey, Seth, I'm here to talk about your property in XYZ County. This call should take about 10 minutes, and at the end of it, we should achieve this outcome. Do a similar thing with your business partner, with your spouse, with your friends, whoever. Hey, Ben, I'm thinking about this topic. I need this version of you right now. Let's sit down and go.

But it served me really, really well to think through what questions is he going to have for me? How's he going to feel about this? And is this because like Ben's just right and we need to not do this thing? Or is there something?

So as the visionary, typically you should have a gift of being able to see into the future. Ben will tell you, he jokes a lot that I'm prophetic because I can typically see a problem five or six like sequenced activities before it happens. And so now I need to articulate to Ben, hey, so this is what's going to happen is blah blah blah, and then this problem is going to occur. So we need to mitigate for that. And sometimes we really don't because it's not a problem yet. And sometimes we do.

But because of that, I know what questions he's going to ask me. And I know whether I need to be ready to get into an intellectual sparring match versus be ready to be shut down.

And I'll say one last thing on this topic, Seth, is, you know, something Ben is so good at and something that is so needed out of integrators is just being blunt. And, you know, a couple of pieces of wisdom I've gotten from Ben over the years is number one, no is a complete sentence.

I'll say that again. No is a complete sentence.

Like, I don't know about everybody else here. I don't know about you, Seth, but like, I'm a little bit of a people-pleaser, or at least I have a proclivity to want to people-please, I should say. And because of that, you don't like disappointing people, especially when you care about them, right? So because of that, especially us Midwestern folks, right? From Michigan, we're from Indiana. We have this proclivity to explain why we're saying no and go into that stuff.

And in reality, no is a full sentence. Like you just don't want to do it.

Seth: So do you think it's a rude, complete sentencese or does it not matter? I mean, maybe it just is what it is.

Ajay: It's like another expression that Ben has taught me is that guilt doesn't serve anyone, assuming you've done nothing wrong. And then we can get into a whole ethical discussion of like what's right and wrong.

But I remember when I was moving out of my mom's house, it was a really, really taboo topic because typically in like Asian culture, especially Nepalese culture, your sons grow up and they stay within the parental household. And eventually the financial burden kind of switches and now like sons take care of parents and that goes on and on. So for me to move out, it was like this really big thing.

And I remember telling Ben, like, I should feel so guilty. And he's like, who does that help? Right? Like, what is you feeling guilty do for the situation? Nothing. Guilt doesn't help anyone. So get rid of it. Just lose it.

So in the vein of like, is no being rude? Maybe, maybe not. But as long as you're not explicitly doing anything that's like hurting other people, which again, very gray ethical discussion we can get into. No is a complete sentence.

So my whole point here though, is the other night I literally called Ben because I was like, Hey, like I had this influencer reach out to me and they want to do this thing. And like, I don't know. And like in my heart and in my brain, I knew I just like, didn't want to do the thing. And I don't want to go into details because like we all share some circles, but Ben was just like, don't do it. If it's not an F yeah, don't do it.

And I'm like, yeah, you're right. I knew that. I think I just needed to hear it.

Seth: I love that. I use that all the time. But if it's not a heck yeah, it's a no.

Ajay: Yep, exactly. Exactly.

Seth: So on this whole thing of both of you guys staying in each other's lanes or in your own respective lanes, maybe you do, maybe you don't, I'm not sure. But do you ever reach over to the other person's lane? Like, Ajay, do you ever go and say, Ben, I know this is your job, but I'm going to handle this.

And the reason I ask that is because, Ben, I know you kind of like, and I think if I understand it right, you basically run and manage the whole team. Whereas, Ajay, do you manage the team too? And if you're both managing the team, isn't that kind of both reaching into the same pot? Like, how do you determine, okay, this personnel issue is for Ajay to deal with, and this one is for Ben, and this is why.

Ben: Yeah, so I feel like a lot of this just comes down to strengths and weaknesses. I don't think that Ajay or I have things that we like have to be doing, but there are things that we like to be doing. And there will always be things that you are doing just a bit outside your comfort zone that will help you to stretch and do new things. And that's exactly what we're trying to do as entrepreneurs.

But running the day-to-day business is just where my creative genius is. Like I see myself as a coach. I think that that's what I was put here to do. Because I am really good at seeing where people can be and seeing where they are right now. And then seeing exactly what they need to get over that hump.

And like Ajay was talking about with my directness, it just allows me to say those things that maybe other people won't say to people that will unlock something within them that will then break that ceiling.

So there are many things within the operations of the business that I just love getting into. I love talking with the team and figuring out where they want to go, what their professional and personal goals are. I've read every single personality assessment for everybody on our team to see what their personality motivations are and just seeing exactly who they want to be as people because our job as leaders is to allow that dream to become a reality.

And I think what Ajay is so good at is connecting with people on that deep emotional level and that's where he comes into play, right? Having those deep conversations with our team if they're going through things with family or things with their partners. He's so empathetic and that's just such a strength of his. So there'll be situations where I don't think that that's the place for me to be. And I'll say, hey, Ajay, I need you to come in and have this conversation with this team member, right?

So I think that self-awareness within ourselves, between me and Ajay, allows us to know that, hey, this is Ben's strength. He's really good operationally. Hey, somebody on the team, you go talk to Ben about this. Because this is not my creative genius. But it is for him. And then we just have such a respect for one another where it's like, hey, you go and run and you do your thing. And then I'll go and run and do my thing. And then we'll come together and figure out exactly what happened in the meantime.

So there will be certain situations where I talk to vendors, Ajay talks to vendors. So like there's no set specific, like, hey, you have to do this. Hey, you have to do this because Ajay and I don't want to be put in boxes. That's why we're entrepreneurs, right? We're out here trying to do our thing, live exciting lives, do epic things. And sometimes that's going to come just without structure. We have a structure within our business, but it's not so structured that you can't be creative.

And that's the beauty of entrepreneurship, at least for me, is the creativity, the connection, the beauty of not knowing what's going to come next, but the beauty of knowing you're going to figure it out. So I just know that we'll continue to figure it out and continue to put each other in the right places and continue to surround ourselves with the right people. And at the end of the day, that will allow us to do the right things.

Seth: If there's ever something that has to be done, both of you would be good at doing it, but neither of you want to do it. Who does it? Do you flip a coin or something? How do you decide that?

Ajay: Kayleigh.

Ben: That's a good question.

Ajay: Kayleigh’s our assistant, so that was a joke.

Ben: Yeah, I would say that I don't think that this has ever come up where something just has to be done that neither of us want to do. Just because both Ajay and I are so willing to get our hands dirty to do the thing that needs to be done.

And we're just a partnership. And that's what being in a partnership means, is doing the things that have to be done. And one of us will raise our hand and do the thing. And I know there have been countless times where Ajay's raised his hand. There have been countless times where I've raised my hand and we don't keep score. That's not how it works in our business. We don't keep score to say, oh, just because you did that one, I'm going to do this one.

It's not ticky-tacky, anything like that, because we want to solve the problem. And in order to solve the problem, it doesn't have to be the perfect solution. We always talk about how progress over perfection gets the job done. And I can't think of a single time where neither of us has been like, well, either of us has been like, no, just refuse to do that. We also just have so much respect for the other person where it's like, okay, well maybe I'm not going to be great at that the first time I do it, but I'm going to figure it out because I want to serve Ajay because it's a privilege to be his business partner. It's a privilege to run a company. It's a privilege to be a leader of a company.

So in order to fulfill on that privilege, I got to do the things that are hard. And I like to talk about how, if you're a leader, you have to follow through on three things. You have to follow through on courage, confidence, and calm.

Courage is doing the things that scare you. Confidence is doing the things that you say you're going to do. And calm is doing the things even when you don't know what's going on around you and times are uncertain. And as a leader, that's our responsibility. And that means that everything that comes up in the business just has to get done. If it's got to get done, it gets done. No questions asked. That's just the reality of it.

Seth: Yeah, it reminds me of, I think it was a quote from Nietzsche who said something like, "He who has a big enough why can overcome any how." Like if there's a big enough reason, like nothing is too hard to be done. Does that sound accurate to you?

Ben: A hundred percent.

Ajay: Absolutely. And I just want to add a little more to that too. It's so good what you said there, Ben. I think there's an added level of consideration that Ben and I have for each other. Like for example, Ben, so cool. He went out to the Philippines a month and a half ago for one of our staff's weddings. And it was like a week and a half before mine. So it did not make sense for me to go. But I was so happy that Ben could go represent us as leaders, be there for them, experience that on his own.

My point, though, was he was working on the opposite time zone, definitely not easy to work in Philippine time. And there were times there where like maybe one of those things would come up, Seth, that might not necessarily fall under exactly mine or his purview. But because I know he's not in an optimal situation, I'm trying to not throw extra work on his desk. So I'm just going to go ahead and take it as long as it's like reasonably something I can be good enough at, right? Progress over perfection.

I think the contrast to that would be recently I was on my honeymoon and I deleted everything off my phone, Slack, email, social medias, everything was gone. So anybody that's out here that tried to DM me or email me and I didn't respond for a few weeks, that's why. But that being said, like Ben just handled everything, right?

So there's an element of consideration there too. I think we have our natural roles. Like I'm never going to go and be like, "Hey Ben, I'm going to run the standup today," unless there's some very unique case as to why I need to come in. And even then, typically what we'll do is I'll jump in at the end or something. And in the same vein, like I'm visionary. That doesn't mean I just tell Ben what to do all day. It does mean I cast a vision. It also means he brings me really difficult problems, right? What are the most difficult problems in the business that none of the smart people on our team can solve? Ben's struggling to solve himself that he then feels is a benefit for either us to collaborate on together or for me to work on, right?

That's the visionary's true job is I like to say it's to solve the highest level problems today and choose which problems we want to solve in the future. And so it's that plus a combination of I obviously manage all the sales training on our team. So like sales with our acquisitions and dispositions, which Ben supports a lot of times, right? There's ancillary activities that come off of that.

But we have our relative expertise. And the last thing I'll add is Ben, he has so many of these little quips and expressions he has either come up with or read in a book or taken from some blogger or something. But it's this expression of “do what excites.”

And I think Ben does this so well, where we just lean into the things that give us energy. If a staff member isn't giving us energy, is there something wrong there? Is there a disconnect in core values? Do we need to fire them? What's that? Patrick Bedeva calls it a crap magnet. People that just bring in and crap when they're around, right?

So do what excites is a phrase that we use a lot and that kind of drives a lot of our work as well. What's exciting? What do we want to do? What should we be doing?

Seth: So I want to pivot a little bit, talk about some more mechanics of managing your team, because I know that's a big part of what you do, Ben.

So talk a little bit about comping, for example. Like comping is a pretty important thing in terms of understanding what comps do you use when you're trying to figure out the value of your property? Are those appropriate comps? What conclusions should you draw from those? How many should you get? All this stuff. It's a big job, but it's kind of like a monotonous, but still really important. And that's something that your team does for you, correct?

Ben: That's correct. Yeah. We have two team members who are both dedicated to comping. They do other tasks as well.

But in terms of how to comp a property, we start with Zillow and Land.com. Those are our primary channels. So we'll go into the solds for the past six to 12 months, and we'll take a look at what properties have sold for in the past six to 12 months.

And so it's going to be different in different states. So in non-disclosure states, you're not going to get the full selling price. So in Texas, Texas is a non-disclosure state. So you're not going to see what the end closing price was, but you will in Florida. But in Texas, you do see a pending price.

So we take a look at the pending price and we shave off 10% to 15% from that pending price to say, okay, well, it's sold at a hundred thousand. We're going to say it's probably between 85 and 90 based on what timeframe, right? So if the property sold in a week, that's fast for land. We primarily see land selling between three and six months. So if it's sold in a week, that's fast. That tells me that the property sold below market value because it sold so quickly.

But if a property is sitting for 16 months and sold for a hundred thousand dollars, I'm going to say that a hundred thousand dollars is probably above the price of what it should have sold at if we're looking to sell in 30 to 60 days. So we would definitely take that $100,000 comp and say, okay, we're probably going to try to be closer to 70 to 75 if we want to sell it in 30 to 60 to 90 days.

And then we'll also look on the for sales, because if we see a for sale and it's getting a ton of activity, and what I mean by activity is a lot of views and a lot of saves on Zillow, then we know that property is accurately priced.

But if that property has been sitting for 300 days and has one view and one save, that is not a good comp for us to use. So we will not factor that into our pricing, or we will say that is way above market value. So $100,000 for a property that's been sitting on the market for 300 days is going to be way above where we would value it at.

Seth: And that's a really good example because that kind of thing you just explained, that's something that I think anybody can do if they're just paying attention and have their eye on the ball and understand what they have to do.

It's still kind of monotonous, but it matters every time. There's never a situation where you can be like, yeah, it doesn't matter. I'll just click zoom through this. Like you always have to pay attention to the details and you have to maintain that level of competence in what you're doing. And if it's done incorrectly, it can screw up a lot of stuff about your assumptions and how much money you will or won't make.

And so I'm wondering with a task like that, or a task like, I don't know, pulling the list, you're sending the mail or whatever it is you're doing where the details matter. How do you manage that kind of thing? And how do you know when you can let go and trust people to do it? And even after that, how often do you check in to make sure they're still doing it right? Like maybe they were doing it right last month, but then they kind of got lazy this month and now they're not good at it anymore. How much management should be required when you have a good employee and how do you know, okay, I'm having to manage this person too much. Like this is a problem.

Ben: So I'll start with one of our onboarding aspects. We talk about autonomy with our team. We want to make sure that our team has the ability to manage themselves. They can come to us any time with problems, but we want to make sure that they are keeping themselves accountable.

And we also like to talk about how sometimes the activities that you don't like are somebody else's playground. So that's my job as the integrator is to identify the roles within the company and then also identify our team and see where I can mix and match and put the right people in the right seats.

So right now we have a marketing manager. She's phenomenal. She's very detail-oriented. She does our comping and she prepares our lists. She's phenomenal at what she does. She started with us as a texter, but I could see the vision for her in the future of becoming a marketing manager. And I think that's the role of leaders of companies is to have a vision for your team that is greater than what they have when they're coming in.

So for this individual, I saw that this was a potential path for her. So what I did is incrementally, we talk about the skill stack. One by one, here's one list. Here's one comp. Here's one activity within the marketing sphere just to test because you could test with your team on some task and they could not like it at all. We've had that happen plenty of times where they're like, "Hey Ben, like, I just don't want to do that. I don't think that that is right for me." And I'm like, "Hey, okay. Thank you for telling me. I just need to know that it's not the right fit."

But with this team member, I could see that it was starting to light her up and she was getting excited about this challenge. And we talk about how we need to get our team to 80% before we can offload the task. So that was my goal. We always talk about how we start with training as I do it, we do it, you do it.

I, meaning we hop on a Zoom call, I do the activity myself, you watch me on Zoom, we do it, we hop on a Zoom call, you share your screen, and I'm just watching you do the activity. And then the third call is you do it yourself, where you do it, no Zoom call, you just let me know if you have any questions that come along.

So I know by the time that we're done with those three calls, that we are very, very close to 80%. And the only issues that arise if something breaks in the process, if we're not getting leads coming in the door, if leads are coming in some way outside of our buy box, outside of our acreage range that just don't fit for what we're looking for.

And we get feedback across the team. That's what the daily standups are for. Monday through Thursday, we have daily standups from 10 a.m. to 10:30 Central every single day. They look the exact same every day because a tribe is built on routine. So every day in those daily standups, we talk about what happened the previous day and what the game plan is for today, for everybody on our team. It's me and six of our team members because our seventh person is Ajay's executive assistant, who is also having a standup with Ajay separately. One-on-one.

And so those standups allow us to figure out the operational frictions within the business and solve them on a daily basis. So every day, we're working through those problems. And that way, I can know if there are any issues that come up. And then I know that once we're at the 80% and we're having the daily standups that operationally, that person is going to be ready to execute on that task going forward.

Seth: Sure. You ever have it where employees have questions or they don't understand it, but they're like afraid to say that or ask the question because they don't want you to think that they're dumb or something. And so they just do it wrong. And if so, like how do you maintain a safe environment where they can openly bring problems to you and know that it's not going to be a penalty against them if they do that?

Ben: We have just been so intentional about fostering an environment where our doors are always open. And I think part of that is having that daily check-in. If you see someone's face every day and you see it on Zoom, we require all of our team to have Zoom, the cameras on. It's a lot harder to lie to someone when you're spending every single day with them and they're looking at you in your eyes, right?

So having that daily touch point where you're visually seeing the other person makes it a lot easier to stay accountable, but a lot easier to also ask those questions. At the end of every daily standup, I say, are there any topics, questions, or concerns that the team has. I say in those exact words, they could vouch for me. It's the exact same every single day. So there's always time every single day for the team to bring any questions they may have.

I also have quarterly check-ins with the team every quarter to ask them if there's anything that they need help with that they feel like they could have improved on, that they feel that they're not being served in any way. So like that's a time just one-on-one because it's a lot easier to come to a leader in a one-on-one setting. We talk about how you praise in public and you ask for improvement in private. So that's the goal is having that one-on-one time quarterly to make sure that they can always come to us with problems.

When it comes to daily tasks, interesting thing about our team is that we have a lot of type one Enneagrams on our team, which is the perfectionist Enneagram. So we have a lot of having a bunch of those on my team. It is phenomenal. I'm also type one. So I'm all for the type one army, right? Right. So we have a lot of perfectionists on the team, so they want to do it right. And when you have people on your team that want to do it right, they're going to ask the questions to be able to allow themselves to be able to do the activities in the right way.

So just having those open doors, knowing what your team is about, knowing their personalities and just investing in them as people, seeing them as people. We talk about how at our company, we don't want anybody to come to our work feeling like they're wearing a mask. We want you feeling exactly how you feel with your family, with your friends, anybody you interact with on a daily basis. That's how we want you feeling here at work, because that's when we know we're getting a person in full integrity. And that's what we want to be.

Ajay and I talk about integrity all the time. We have to be in integrity to feel like we're being our true selves. And that's what we want for our team as well.

Ajay: So I want to touch on something here, Ben, because, gosh, you're such a good leader for our team.

You know, something you do so, so well, and we've been pushing on probably the past six, seven, eight months has been up-leveling our team to solve their own problems. So I think, you know, Seth just asked a great question around, like, what are you doing? So people feel comfortable bringing you problems, no matter how stupid, so to speak.

At the same time, though, I mean, we've seen a lot less hit both of our desks. Right. So can you just speak to for everybody listening here that is so sick of, gosh, my team just asks me all these questions every day and every day I have to tell them what to do. And whereas our team comes in and they tell us what they're doing every day. It's very different dynamic.

Can you just speak to how have you up leveled our team to be problem solvers by themselves and how you continue to reinforce that on a regular basis?

Ben: Yeah, so I'll just call this out. So this evolution kind of came from a conversation that we had with Jenny Hudspeth, who is a sales trainer and absolute wizard in the house wholesaling and land space. So I highly recommend her. If you haven't been able to connect with Jenny Hudspeth, she's a phenomenal sales trainer. She's helped us so much in our business.

But we were having a conversation with Jenny Hudspeth, and I was saying how I was wondering if I was going to be operationally tapped out after we had made our most recent hire, which was our seventh hire for the business. And Jenny called me out, and she said, well, seven is not that much. Maybe you're just not being an effective enough leader.

And that was a gut punch for me because I pride myself on being an exceptional leader, and I try so hard to be an exceptional leader for a company. So that forced me to do a lot of introspection and think about maybe I'm not doing the right things by trying to solve all the problems in the business on a daily basis.

So how my approach changed was most of the questions that our team came to me with, I started to respond with my own questions. And those questions look like, hey, we have a seller that's having an issue with such and such. And I'll respond with, oh, what do you think our next steps could be here? Or what are you thinking here? Or what do you think our approach should be? Or what do you think that next conversation should look like, right? So answering that question with a question allows the person on our team to start asking themselves their own questions.

Another thing I did in our quarterly meetings, in those quarterly one-on-ones, was I challenged our team, hey, I think you have the ability to make these decisions for yourself. I'm going to to challenge you a bit here. I think you have all the information you need to make this decision. You go and make the decision. I trust you on this.

Trust is a big part of this too. Just knowing that your team knows that you trust them. So me just calling up to the team, hey, I trust you. You're going to make the right decision here. You just let me know when you make the decision. You let me know what the decision is and we'll go from there.

That way it kind of takes me out as a a middleman in the decision-making process, which can sometimes be a bottleneck. If every problem is coming to Ben and Ben has to solve all those problems, Ben is going to become the bottleneck in the business. And that's not the right thing for the business.

So if every person is able to solve their own problems, just based on asking their own questions to themselves, then only the highest leverage problems will come to Ben. And the highest leverage problems that Ben can't solve will then get elevated to Ajay.

Seth: I'm curious, how much time or like how many hours a week do you spend just managing and communicating with your team? I know you talked about these like daily calls that you get on with people. What portion of your 40-hour work week or how often you work, what portion of that is dedicated to just managing the team?

Ben: I would estimate it's around 10 to 15 hours a week of having calls, having one-on-ones, having sales meetings, having our weekly team meeting, and then also just managing on Slack. We have a lot of the day-to-day conversations on Slack. And then Pebble is also where we run our CRM for all of our land deals. So we have a lot of communication through there.

But I would say 10 to 15 hours dealing with problems within the business and trying to push things forward and making sure that we're going in the right direction with all of our projects. That's about where I'm at. And then the rest of the time is spent on the bigger projects. Spent time brainstorming with Ajay, figuring out the big pushes. We need to be making on a weekly basis in the business.

Seth: So like, what are some examples of these big pushes or higher level discussions that you have?

Ben: Yeah. So every Tuesday we have a level 10 meeting, which is another thing that comes from Traction, the book by Gino Wickman. So the level 10 meeting is where we go through our metrics. We go through our goals for the quarter and we go through what we like to call the “big thing.”

So the big thing is just one thing every week that gets assigned to both me and Ajay once a week on a big push we need to make in the business. So, like this week, we have a lot of properties in inventory. So Ajay's push is dispo conversion. And also we're trying to scale up RVMs, so ringless voicemails. So my big thing is focusing on scaling up RVMs.

There are a lot of other to-dos that we have that come out of that level 10 meeting. But for the big focus, for a time that we have outside of those day-to-day tasks, we're going to be thinking about that big thing.

Seth: When you say dispo conversion, is that just a fancy way to say sell?

Ben: Correct.

Seth: Okay, gotcha. Selling. You guys are getting all fancy on me.

So this makes me wonder, given that you guys are really good at finding and hiring good people, if you wanted to replace yourself with someone as good as you, how easy or difficult do you think that would be?

Ben: It's interesting because it's not something I had really thought about much. We talk a lot about how we want to create a life that we don't want to escape from.

And honestly, Seth, I am living such a life that I don't want to escape from right now that I haven't even put the problem-solving into thinking about how I could replace myself. I just get so much value from leading our team, from coaching our team, from working with Ajay, from working on the big projects, that I'm not really trying to escape from anything right now.

And when my brain gets put on a problem, I try to solve it right away. So there are a lot of things that I've worked on figuring out how to solve. And that is just honestly not something I have really considered because I enjoy my role here so much right now.

So I'm not sure I need to find another me because I'm finding me right now. And that's enough for me to be happy doing what I'm doing. And I just want to double down on what we're doing. And like I said, that focus and that consistency, I think is so crucial.

Can we be put in higher leverage situations? I like to talk about how it's important to resign from either your full job, your entire job, or resign from a position. Once a year or once a quarter, if you're thinking more about the position-slash-task side.

So that that was a very huge starter for me in my own personal life was when I had my job at KPMG, it was such a good opportunity, but it wasn't aligned with who I wanted to be. It didn't fit my dreams and my goals. So I said I just had to resign in order to figure out what that was. I just had to create that vacuum in order to figure out what the next step was.

So I resigned. I had nothing lined up. I just said, hey, I'm going to figure it out. Because once a year I got to resign if this is not the place that's going to be the ultimate place that will allow me to unlock my dreams. And I'm in that place right now, Seth. I'm in the place where I can reach my dreams, sitting in this seat, sitting in this company and taking this company to the promised land is where I think we can go. So I haven't even really thought much about it. And I think that's kind of why.

Seth: Yeah. Well, I can totally relate to that because I'm kind of in a similar place where I just really like the work I'm doing. I don't really want to get out of it but sometimes I think about why a person would do this, like why would a person do this, what would motivate them to replace themselves? And maybe there's a lot of different reasons.

But one big reason might be so that I can leverage my abilities to do something bigger and better and make more money. Possibly, I guess.

I don't want to read too much into it but it almost sounds like maybe you don't want more money, like you'd rather just do the work you're making right now, making the money you have? Because I don't know, am I misunderstanding that?

Ben: Believe me, Seth, we want to make a lot of money. That's the goal. Because I mean, money is the score right at the end of the day. And we feel if we have a lot of money in our bank account, it means that we have served the world well. We have provided a lot of value.

And Ajay and I think we have the ability to do that on a very, very large scale. We just think that we're in a great opportunity vehicle in land to be able to scale through opportunities. There are people that I've been talking to who are doing $40 million projects. They're doing $20 million projects in land. So the scale of this game is unbelievably high.

It's just a matter of skill, tools, connections, relationships, ability, and just sticking with the game. And I know if we stay in this game, it's going to be dynamite for the abilities that we can double down on and the connections and relationships we can build. So we just feel that there's just a ton of exponential growth that's possible in this opportunity vehicle.

And that's why even if we keep the business as it is right now, we don't change anything operationally, but just go higher up the stack in terms of the zeros that are on the numbers of our projects, then exponential wealth is definitely possible and definitely a goal for us and a dream for us and something that we think is definitely possible and will eventually happen.

Seth: Yeah. What do you think is Is the bottleneck or what's keeping you from doing those $40 million deals like next month? Is it just access to capital or not knowing where to find the deals? You're like, if this is possible, how come it's not happening?

Ben: That's a great question, Seth. I think we think a lot about ceiling. I think a lot of it comes down to mindset. When you get into rooms with people who are doing these types of deals, it forces you to rewire your brain and wonder why you're not doing those deals exactly what you're saying. Right?

So we just know that we want to be in those rooms where people are saying that this is easy, because right now that seems exceptionally hard. But that's just because of what our brains are telling us, not because of the actual reality of the matter.

So just continuing to be around people who speak in a way that makes us feel like we have to come up is how we think. And I've been reading Who Not How, right? That's what I've been reading. And that's where my brain has been recently: just being around people, absorbing by osmosis that mentality and figuring out who we need to be around to get that mentality to the right place.

Seth: Yeah, that's huge what you're saying there, about being around the right people who just think at a higher level than you, and they just kind of blow away these barriers that you have in your own head. Because I've experienced a lot of that over the past year or two, just like at the UnConference that we were at just a few months ago, just that room that we were in just hearing how big people think. And honestly, it's way bigger than I thought 10 years ago. I kind of just saw this as like, yeah, if I could make half a million bucks in a year, that's about as good as it'll ever get. It's like, not really. Eco is so far beyond that. And if you just kind of limit yourself to that, thinking that's the limit, you're going to be sort of unnecessarily selling yourself short.

So, and I think a lot of that value just comes from rubbing shoulders with those people at those kinds of events, which, I mean, maybe you can find them in Facebook groups, but there's just, it's hard to substitute actually seeing somebody in person and the humanization of that, realizing like, this is real, you know?

Ajay: Yeah, no, I agree. I agree. And I just want to add like two things here. I think the first to bring up a use case.

Ben was on the phone with a multi-eight-figure, maybe nine-figure developer just yesterday. We were debriefing after this conversation. It's like, "Oh, what types of projects are you working on?" Ben proceeds to tell him about the two bigger deals we're working on, both of which have over a half-million-dollar spread individually, right?

So, not to toot my own horn or anything and say this is super impressive, but like, we've got two deals that alone are going to bring in over a million in profits before we pay our partners. So, that's not going into my pocket, it's not going into Ben's pocket. We have partners on this and costs. But there's over a million in profit between these two projects.

This proceeds later in the conversation and just be like, "Yeah, like, hey, here are some rooms you guys could get in. I mean, you're still like super green, so like, you know, just as you start working on basically like real projects, here's what you can expect."

And it was just such a slap in the face to sit here and be like, "Dang, here I was thinking we were actually doing something. Like, oh man, look at this. We've got cool projects going," right? And it's again, "You guys are, you know, like you're green. So when you start doing real big boy stuff," and I'm like, "Okay, we should talk to this guy again. That's a room I need to be in. Like I need people to tell me like, you're not it, dude. There are so many more levels."

Because it's tough sometimes when you get in rooms where people, you know, like Seth, you know, some people in this niche just want to make an extra 50 grand a year, an extra hundred grand a year. And when you're around that, you're like, yeah, we'll sink back down into it a little bit, right? Yeah, I'm doing pretty well, right? And it's like, okay, we need to be in rooms where people are telling us you're green because you're only doing a million in profits on two projects this year.

So just a good kind of reframe and shift. Is there something you wanted to add there, Ben?

Ben: Yeah. And just to kind of speak on this concept, if you're listening and wondering, how do I end up talking to someone who's doing a $40 million project? I kind of want to speak to the zero to one, right? I have this concept I like to talk about called “fast flow.”

Fast flow is being around the energy. Ajay and I have gone to, what, eight to ten conferences this year. So we go to a lot of conferences, land, house wholesaling, RIA meetups. We meet people at the gym all the time. It's just, we try to be around the energy where people are. So if land investors are congregating in a place, we're going to go, we're going to be there. Not sure what's going to come out of it. Not sure who we're going to meet, but we're going to meet people. And when you meet people, Bradley likes to talk about how the more hands you shake, the more money you make.

So our goal is to meet as many people as possible because the more people we meet, the more people we can connect, the more value we can spread amongst everybody we meet. And we're just in all of these rooms. So I think starting from zero to one, if you're listening and you've never been to a conference, highly recommend going to a conference and just checking it out, meeting one or two people, seeing what it's like, and just figuring out if that's the right room you want to be in.

Maybe you don't like the people. Great. It's just as important to know what you don't like as it is to know what you do like. But I was very, very anti-conference for a while because I just wanted to build my business. But then Ajay pushed me outside my comfort zone, said, "Hey, come along with me to this one conference."

And I did. And I loved it. It was great because I found a lot of people that were wired exactly like me and I wanted to be around them even more. So then that just started the catalyst of starting to be around more and more people, network more with more and more people. And you just find people that you want to be friends with.

And I like to talk about the spider web. The bigger you can build your spider web, the more you can pick from to pick the spiders you want to run with. So if you find your spiders, just run with them. But if you haven't found your spider yet, keep searching. You'll stop searching when you know you found it.

Seth: So I have a question about consistency. I've heard you talk about how staying consistent leads to massive results and how that's a big part of your success.

How do you know when it's time to stop being consistent? Like stop what you're doing and start something else. Like, for example, I know you guys have tried, you know, a number of different marketing channels over the years, direct mail, texting, cold calling. Like in a world that's constantly changing. If we're all talking about staying consistent, like sending out blind offers at 20% of market, what worked 10 years ago probably wouldn't work so well today.

So how do you know when it's time to change? Or like when you switch from direct mail to texting or whatever, adding a new marketing channel, what criteria did you use to make that decision? Like, why did you decide that was necessary?

Ben: So much of it comes down to data, Seth, honestly. That's why we come through our KPIs on a daily basis. And that's why I think it's essential for everybody listening to this call to have some type of KPI in your life, whether that's for financials, whether that's for your business, your day-to-day, whatever you're doing. Just seeing the trend lines makes it so much easier to make decisions based on logic rather than pure gut emotion.

And this came a lot from working with Chandler Saine, who was a house wholesaling coach we worked with for a while. He just spoke about how highly important it was for us to dial in our KPIs, so then we just knew we had to have those dialed in in order to make the right decisions based on logic.

So that's what we're always looking at in terms of trends. Are we just not getting the lead flow that we need in order to justify this spend? So we try to get at least a 5x ROAS on our marketing spend. And if we're not, we're going to reevaluate that marketing channel.

So ROAS is return on ad spend. So if you're looking at how much you made from a mail campaign and say you made $50,000 and you spent $10,000 on that mail campaign, I would double down on that mail campaign because you're making a 5X ROAS.

But if you're making $20,000 from a $10,000 mail campaign, then we would reevaluate either that area, that marketing channel, or that marketing strategy, say it's a blind offer, a postcard, we would try to change it up because marketing at the end of the day is just an experiment. You're always experimenting. You're always testing. There's no right answer when it comes to marketing. That's the double-edged sword of marketing.

So we're never going to have the right answer for when we need to change, but we're always going to have our metrics and the metrics are going to allow us to drive in the right direction.

Now, I also like to think about this in a personal way as well, right? In terms of like, if things aren't going right, how do you know when to change? I like to think about your internal compass. I like to think about what's that voice going on in the back of your head that's telling you, "Oh, maybe this isn't right." You're always going to have an inner compass that's pointing you in some direction towards something.

But usually what you have to do to ignite that inner compass is to do something that scares you. So if you do something that scares you, that feels new, one of my favorite YouTube channels is called Yes Theory. And their motto is called “seek discomfort.” So if you seek discomfort and look to do the things that scare you, I always have this feeling in my chest whenever I feel like something is scary. And I say, "Go do it. Do it. If it scares me, do it. If it scares me, do it." And I just keep thinking that over in my head. And then I do the thing.

And just because I have that internal monologue and do the things. It allows me to keep expanding to higher heights and figuring out new things to always do because I need variety in my life. I love the routine, but also I love pushing myself and seeing the things that I can do that I never thought I could do.

Because I always like to talk to Ajay about how I want to continue to surprise him as his friend. Because I know that if I'm surprising him, he will be inspired by still being my friend and vice versa. I'm continually surprised and inspired by the ideas Ajay comes up with. So I want to have that same standard for myself. And the only way I can do that is if I surprise myself by doing things that scare me.

Seth: Well, on that, you seem like a pretty disciplined guy. Like you're always trying to improve yourself and all this stuff. Just wondering, where does that come from? What do you want out of life? Because I know a lot of people who are not that way. Why do you think you're wired like that?

Ben: Yeah. So it really came down to cutting out the vices in my life. After college, I went through a decent period in college where I was partying, and I had my time in college and enjoyed it and it was fun.

But then I finished college and I realized that I was living my life for the weekends when I first started my full-time job in Chicago. And that was just not a life I wanted to live. So I read this book. It's called The Easy Way to Stop Drinking by Allen Carr. And I read that book and I have not picked up a single alcoholic drink ever since. It is insanely effective.

So I cut out drinking. I've never smoked. I very rarely have sugar. I don't like desserts is what I like to say. And I've just cut out all the vices in my life. And when you strip that down, all the vices, you realize what you actually want to live for.

And it was interesting because through that period, when I quit drinking, I felt like I went through a period where I was very lonely because I had such a period of my life where my identity was locked into that college mentality of, I am a partier. This is what I do on the weekends. And when I cut all that out, it left a void. And in that void, I had to find my true self again.

And what I came back to was that routine, that discipline. Who I was in high school was that same person. I was always going to wake up at the same time, do the things, show up, always be on time. And it's just my core natural ability is to be disciplined.

We talk about how some people are just wired a certain way, and I think I'm just wired to be disciplined because that's what gives me value. That's what I have fun doing. I want to shoot for really high goals, and the only way for me to shoot for really high goals and hit them is to be disciplined.

Showing up in the gym and giving 70% every single day is way better than showing up once a week and giving 150% because I know that those compounding returns are going to get me to my goals. And I just know that I can't live life not trying to hit big goals because that's what gives me energy every single day to wake up and be like, "Oh man, that seems challenging."

My goal for the end of the year is to be 210 pounds and 9% body fat. That is a very hard, very hard goal. I'm at 209 pounds right now, and I'm at 13% body fat, and I'm 6'2".

Seth: You are so undisciplined. I can't believe that.

Ben: In order to get down to single-digit body fat is going to take a lot of work by the end of the year. But that's the goal. That's the dream. I'm living that dream.

So I just had to strip out the things that weren't what I wanted, weren't what I needed, weren't going to point me in the direction towards the life I wanted to live, and then create that vacuum and then see what was left. And then with what was left, build from there and just build the bricks every single day and figure out where that wanted to lead me going forward.

Seth: You sound like somebody who's been really successful in this business. You have a lot of this stuff figured out. I wonder what has been the hardest part of this business for you? What right now, today, are your biggest challenges and struggles?

Ben: I think the issues for me definitely came a lot earlier in the business. It was our first year or two of working together, me and Ajay. There was just all this headwork where it's like, "Is this going to work? Is this the right thing?"

And I read this book, it's called Outwitting the Devil. And Outwitting the Devil, one of the major concepts, it talks about drifting. You want to be a non-drifter in your life because drifters jump from thing to thing to thing. And when you do that, it's so hard to compound knowledge.

But when you're a non-drifter, you're continually compounding that knowledge and you're staying in the same activity. You're staying in the same discipline, the same niche. Then you're going to meet people. You're going to be in the game. You're going to have the opportunity to have bigger projects come across your desk. You're going to have all these types of leads that you've never seen before. And you're thinking, "Oh, this is cool."

But when you're in your first year or two, you're like, "Can I sell a property? Can I buy a property? Like, what's going on here? What are the mechanics of this business?" You're really just trying to figure it out. So I would say that was the biggest issue for us.

Right now, it goes back to that headwork. It goes back to that mindset. It goes back to being around the people who will look us in the eyes and be like, "You're really doing that? You really think that that's big? That's not big time," right? Because we have exceptionally big dreams. And it's hard. I mean, when you're at that level of doing major projects, there aren't a ton of people in that sphere.

So trying to find those people is probably our biggest challenge right now. And that's why we're working so hard at networking and trying to find the people who will just challenge us because that's what we want to be around.

Ajay and I work with the same trainer, Bernardo Costa, who's phenomenal, shout out, at costafitnesslc on Instagram. He's a beast. We love that guy. We started working with him, and I said I was a disciplined person. And I said, "I go three days a week to the gym." And Bernardo said, "A disciplined person to me is someone who goes to the gym six days a week." And I told him I wanted to look like Michael B. Jordan someday. And he said, "Well, if you want to look like that, you're not going to be getting that three days a week.”

So we need people in our lives who will say, 'Oh, we want to make $3 million next year.' And them being like, '$3 million, like you're doing this? Well, why don't you think about $10 million and then try doing this?'"

So it's all a mindset game. And that's the level we're trying to up-level into right now. Because we feel like we have the mechanics of the business and we know the inputs and outputs that are required to trade properties. And we just want to keep going to the next level because that's the goal for us is to always keep growing. One of our core values is growth, and we're always going to keep growing.

Seth: Yeah. Well, on that note of growing, when will you have reached the summit? What would have to be true for you to say, okay, we're there, or does that not exist? Will you just keep growing just because?

Ben: I think that's the game, Seth. I think that's the game is to just keep growing. And like I talked about that internal compass, that internal compass is just going to keep pointing us in the right direction.

Say we're like 20 years down the road and Ajay and I want to do some other type of business and we feel like that's the best opportunity vehicle for us because our internal compass is pointing us in that direction. Sure, maybe we'll change. Maybe we'll leave land. Who knows?

But it's hard to know right now, but I know that our internal compass will point us in the right direction and that we're going to continue to grow for the rest of our lives. And that's the fun. That's the journey. That's what it's all about. I think we're having a lot of fun on this journey.

I think about the times that Ajay and I just get to drive and go out on the dirt and just have road trips and meet sellers and feel like we're making an impact and really shaking hands and doing cool things out in the community. And I think we can continue to do that. And the goal is to just inspire as many lives as we can and bring value to as many people as we can because we have a short time here.

So the goal is to touch, at the very core, many, many different people's lives and really pay it forward as much as we can.

Seth: Yeah. It's interesting, this idea of growing infinitely. So I don't know if you guys have ever seen the movie Wall Street, Money Never Sleeps. It's like the sequel to the original Wall Street movie. But it's kind of interesting.

In that movie, there is a scene where I believe it is Shia LaBeouf. His character is asking Josh Brolin's character, "What's your number? Like, how much money would you need to make before you've got enough and you can call it quits?” Or something to that effect.

And Josh Brolin's character, he said, "No, my number is more. That's my number."

And I almost felt they didn't explicitly say this in the movie, but I almost felt like it was framing that up like that's somehow immoral. Like it's wrong to always want more and to never be satisfied. Like shame on him for just constantly... again, they didn't say that. I felt like that's kind of what they were trying to say.

Part of me gets that, but on the other hand, I know this book, Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell. One of the things he says in that book is, "A decision not to grow is a decision to die."

And I'm learning that to be very, very true. Like that's just what businesses do. Like a healthy business is going to grow. And if it's not growing, it's because something is wrong with it or something is, you know, there's a problem that needs to be resolved.

And I guess I'm kind of with you, Ben, in terms of like, it's not that it's, I don't know if arbitrary is the right word to use, but a business that just never stops growing. Like that's kind of how it's supposed to be. I mean, that's just the way businesses function when they're doing what they're supposed to do. So especially if there's like a mission and a purpose behind it, why would you not want to expand that and continue doing more of that and making that a bigger thing?

Ben: Yeah. And I'm a big Ryan Holiday fan. He's big into stoicism. He's my favorite author. He's written so many phenomenal books. The Obstacle is the Way, Courage is Calling, some of my favorite books of all time.

He likes to talk about how the reward for good work is cooler work. So you just keep up leveling to cooler projects as you keep going higher because, number one, you've gotten good at what you're doing. So people want to engage you on a project level. And then number two, you can be more picky about what you want to do when you've been more successful.

So I always like to think about that as like the reward for what we're doing is just cooler work as we continue to go up to the scale and the chain of how this game works.

Seth: Yeah. I actually heard somebody say just yesterday, "Pressure is a privilege." Or another way I've heard it said is, "The feeling of stress is what it feels like to grow."

So like if you feel difficult things in your business, like it's not a bad thing necessarily. That's just what happens when you're growing and doing better. And if you feel pressure, like good for you. Like you're actually in a spot where you have warranted that kind of pressure. Like people don't feel pressure if they're not capable of doing that.

So yeah, interesting way to look at it.

Ajay: Yeah. I think Alex Hormozi says, "You can't grow without growing pains," right? It's gotta come from somewhere.

I really like the image that Patrick Bet-David has around growth where like, I think Seth, you've talked about the book, 10X is Easier Than 2X, right? And a lot of times to 10X, you basically have to kill the version of yourself that was trying to 2X. I don't know if that word "kill" is okay on the pod, but you essentially have to reinvent yourself.

Patrick Bet-David's view of that is like, you need to commit to completely reinventing who you want to be. If you want to reach this new pinnacle, you can't be the exact same guy doing the exact same things. It's either in 10X, I think it's in 10X is Easier Than 2X's quote that I've heard. Cause we've all heard, "What got you here won't get you there." Right? And even one step further is, "What got you here will keep you here." That one hit me to my core.

Ben: Yeah, me too. I wrote that down when I heard that.

Ajay: We've got to do something different. I don't know. Just fun quips on growth for people that need them on their vision boards right now.

Seth: Yeah, that's hard, though, man. It's hard to continually reinvent yourself. It's a big part of me that doesn't like that. Like, I want to get good at something and then double down and keep doing that thing really well. But what I hear this book telling me is like, no, no, you can't do that forever. Now you got to rethink the whole thing and get good at something else. And I don't know, but I get it. It's true.

We're getting to the end of this. So, would you have any words of advice for new land investors or people who are looking at this land investing business? Or maybe even trying to build a team? I know sometimes that's a big speed bump that people have where it's like, I can handle this on my own. But if you tell me to go build a huge team, like that's a whole different skill set now. I got to find and hire people based on your expertise and the things that you're good at.

Whether somebody is looking to enter the land business or do what you've proven yourself to be good at doing. I don't know, any advice for them? It's kind of an open-ended question.

Ben: Yeah. So the thing that comes to my mind starts with core values because I think that that has been a big part of Ajay and I's success and that we've been very, very true to our core values, which are number one, enthusiasm, number two, dependability, and number three, growth.

So how do you come up with core values? Think about the three most impactful people in your life and think about the most important traits or characteristics that they have exhibited for your personal growth. So I thought about my AAU basketball coach back in the day, how he was enthusiastic, how he was dependable, and how he really wanted the team to grow every single practice.

Those were three, three of five to ten characteristics, maybe for each of each of those three people. So let's say you get five to ten characteristics for each of those three people that you think of in your life. So you have a list of what, 15 to 30 traits. Cut that down to ten. And then once you cut it down to ten, if you have a business partner, bring it with their ten, and then you guys bring it down to three. But once you get down to ten for yourself, bring it down to three for you personally, for your own personal core values.

So then you know the three traits that are most important to your life for not only people that you want to surround yourself in business, for people you want to hire, but for friends you want to have in your life as well.

So I think core values are just so important. It's helped me identify who I want to run with, not only professionally, but also personally.

And then my next piece of advice is just ask for more help than you think you need.When you're just getting started, everybody can feel like a Titan. We're all just normal people. You can reach out and just ask for help, and we'll help you. It's a way smaller community than you think it is when you're just getting started. But I like to just say, ask for more help than you think you need, and people will help you out. Because when you start to think of the world as givers, you'll start to see everyone around you as a giver.

And that's exactly how I see it. I know that's how Ajay sees it. And once you start seeing the world that way, it's hard to see anything as anything less than an opportunity to grow and to give and to get better every single day. So those are my two main things that I would advise if people are just getting started.

And it's going to be okay. If you're just getting started and you're worried, stick with it. Give it another year. Don't drift. Read Outwitting the Devil. Read the chapter on drifting. Don't be a drifter. Don't go to some other opportunity vehicle because the other opportunity vehicle you're going to go to is going to have its own set of challenges.

You found yourself in land for a reason. You were gravitated to it for a reason. Stick with it. Stay with it. You have to be gritty to be successful, and the people that have stuck with this game have grit and they've exhibited that grit to get where they are now. It requires grit to be successful in this business.

Have you started? I'm guessing you have some grit in you. Just double down on that grit and it's going to happen.

Seth: So as you were just talking there, two new questions came up. I've got a couple more minutes for me. So when you talk about asking for help, are there any areas in hindsight where you should have been asking for help where you didn't realize it at the time?

Ben: So this is actually something we've gotten a lot better at, where if you have a problem in the business and you have absolutely no idea how to solve it, somebody knows. There's somebody that has the answer for you that is either in a Facebook community, that has been on a podcast that you know of, that your friend may know that will be able to help you. Somebody will be out there to be able to help you.

There's a big piece of ego in there as well. Because when you're just getting started, you want to figure it out for yourself. One of Ryan Holiday's books, Ego is the Enemy, has been one of the biggest, biggest things for me in that swallowing that pride and accepting that other people are better than you hurts, but it's essential to getting better.

And I think that we have gotten a lot better at asking for help, but I really wish earlier on, I would have gone to more events, talked to more people on Facebook groups, just engaged more to say, "Hey, I've got this issue. Can anybody help me?"

Some people may not respond. That's okay. I like to say that persistence is polite. And you may have to follow up with someone three, four times before you get an answer. That's okay. It doesn't mean that they hate you or they have anything against you. They just may be a busy person. But maybe after the third or fourth time, they're in a mode where they're ready to help.

But you have to be persistent in this game to get the help you need. So stay persistent, stay asking for help, and swallow that ego, and you'll be A-OK, and you'll get to where you want to go.

Seth: Gotcha. No, that's awesome.

And then last question about the drifter thing about bouncing from one thing to another. So this is actually something I heard when I was getting my MBA. One of my professors told me that when he got his PhD, what he really learned was how much he didn't know because you just learn a ton about one very specific subject and you still can't really get to the bottom of that. And as far as you get, you realize, wow, as much as I know about this, I don't know any of that about everything else in the world.

And there's also this idea of becoming a well-rounded person. I went to a liberal arts college where, you know, the whole point is to learn a bunch of different stuff so that you understand a little bit of all these different specialties without being an expert in any of them. I wonder where the line is. I'm sure there's some value in that, but there's also probably a lot more value in just building expertise, like getting really stinking good at one thing.

Would you consider yourself a well-rounded person then or not necessarily? Because you've kind of doubled down and gotten really good at this one niche of the real estate business.

Ben: There are many, many, many, many things that I know nothing about. And I am very, very okay knowing nothing about that.

There are also a few things that I know a lot about, which I want to know even more about. I like to talk about the priority stack. So this is a macro decision that you make for your life. You choose three things. And in my life, I've chosen bodybuilding, number one, business, number two, and pickleball, number three. That's my priority stack, my macro priority stack right now.

So, in order for me to be the business person I want to be, I have to have a great body because that's just the agreement I made in my mind. I need to have that ship that can have the capacity to work long days and not feel a thing because I've built a body that is capable of going through that wear and tear. And that's the decision I made.

And then pickleball comes when I've reached my goals on a daily basis for those two things. Say I finish business at 8 p.m. and we're all done with our tasks. I don't get to go to pickleball because the next day I have to be up at 5 a.m. to go for a lift. So there's no negotiating with myself because of the macro decisions I've made. And that allows me to double down on being good at the things I'm good at.

I think you can be a renaissance man and do a lot of different things okay. And that's the way some people want to live their lives. And that's great for them. I just know that I prefer to be exceptional at a few things and bad at a lot of things rather than okay at many, many things.

So I think it's up to you, who you want to become. I think it's an important internal discussion about what goals and dreams you have for yourself. But that's just the approach I've taken. And I'm very happy in this season of focusing on those three things. And that's what I'm going to continue to do until I'm ready for a new priority stack.

Seth: Awesome. Well, Ben, thanks again for talking with us. It's been awesome to get to know you a little bit better. Hope we can talk again more in the future.

If people want to find out more about you or connect with you in any way? Is there something they should do or any thoughts on that?

Ben: Absolutely. So the best way to connect with me online is at my Instagram page, @benpijanowski.

And if you want to connect with me in person, Ajay will be throwing a Land Scaling Summit September 27th and 28th in Dallas, Texas. That'll be a phenomenal event. We talk about getting from zero to one in terms of scaling your land business. More information at landscalingsummit.com.

And I'll be giving a fireside chat with Ajay just about the day-to-day business and really just scaling day-to-day operations. So that'll be a portion of the event. I would love to meet anyone that's listened to this podcast and has identified with any of the concepts I've spoken about. I love talking about this kind of stuff. Love having deep conversations.

So please, if you're able to come down to Dallas, if you live in Dallas, it's going to be a great event. And Ajay is going to crush it, I know. And we'll have a great time and hope to meet anyone who's able to make it.

Seth: Awesome. Thanks again, Ben. Audience, we'll talk to you next time.

Ben: Thanks, Seth.