His Land Business Changed When He Took Hiring Seriously (Client Story)

This client was stuck. Burned out, low deal flow, and buried in bad hires.

Then he got serious about building a real team.

In this episode, we unpack how one client turned his struggling land business into a scalable operation—using a hiring system that actually works. From cold callers to lead managers, he breaks down what changed, what didn’t work, and how he finally built a team he could trust.

If you’re solo and stuck—or scaling and drowning—this episode is for you.

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Transcript

Clay Hepler (00:08)
Hello and welcome to another episode the Landman podcast. It's really weird because I've never had anyone else on we're kind of sitting here. We got this great, beautiful, mean, look at this background here. For those of us that are listening or looking on YouTube or listening to this podcast, Derek, tell me about this background. mean, where are you? You definitely look like you're not in United States City.

Derek (00:33)
I'm in an undisclosed location in South America. Nah, it's a Sunseon. you just say, am I the first guest of the, the, wow. You didn't tell me that.

Clay Hepler (00:37)
Undisclosed, undisclosed. Okay.

You are.

It's been,

it's been all me. I'm just kind of a, you been doing my own thing. And, and so you're going to be, you're going to be the first guest. Um, and you know, one of the things I don't like to do is dude, I don't really like the whole background thing. Like tell me about your life story. I think it's relevant, but when I'm, when I listen to a podcast, I'm trying to get to meet like very quickly. So right. Right. I'm trying to learn. I'm trying to learn. So

To frame this for people watching, where are you today? What's your team look like? What's your deal flow look like? I know you have a pretty big month this month coming up. ⁓ Tell us a little bit about that.

Derek (01:27)
Okay, so right now got one land specialist, it's kind of his title, he's kind of a hybrid guy. does ⁓ some operations stuff, but mainly dispo stuff. he's based in Mexico in Guadalajara. I got another acquisitions manager, also based in Mexico, Monterrey.

Admin assistant in Venezuela. So that's like the Latin American team. four Egyptians. And one of them is a lead manager now. He started off ⁓ as cold caller, but he was just like a rock star. So he got promoted pretty fast. three Egyptian based, just full time cold callers.

Clay Hepler (02:06)
To frame this, we just talked about your team, right? And a lot of people that are hiring, they're learning this business, as you know a lot of people, how do I hire? Like how do I build my team? Tell me a little bit about how you actually built your team. You got seven total team members here. If I understand you correctly, obviously we gotta talk about Matt in this call. ⁓

And for the listeners, you'll know at the end of the call why I know Matt, I kind of like, I love Matt, but tell me about how you came to build your team. Tell me about a little bit about your type of deals, the niche that you're focusing on. Just give us a high level of your whole business.

Derek (02:48)
Okay, so about the team. I started off like being really bad at hiring and that's kind of like how you have to start off. Your first few hires are just going to not, probably unless you get lucky, they aren't going to end up too well, most likely. But it's just kind of a thing that you just got to get started. I kind of stepped up my hiring game is ⁓ I had a buddy.

that I shared an office with for a few months in Copenhagen. while we were in there, he was just like, he would be doing interviews every day. And he was just really good at it. And I was like, damn, this dude has like, this dude has a sick system going on here. I'm gonna like figure out like what he's doing. So I asked him about that and he kind of, ⁓ he kind of schooled me on LinkedIn. it's great. It's where probably LinkedIn and Indeed.

It's probably where I get most of the people these days. it's sort of more intimidating than like online jobs or whatever, because online jobs is just like a flat fee. basically LinkedIn and Indeed, you kind of have to run like basically a paid funnel where you're like paying a little bit money every day. So it's kind of intimidating. but I find really good talent there.

And that's basically where I find most of my hires. kind of built my friend showed me a system. Basically, got to build like a funnel, basically. Think of it like a sales funnel. So your post has to have like plenty, like more detail than you would ever think that you would put in there. It's basically like a long form sales page is the way that I look at it. Send that to like an assessment funnel.

Clay Hepler (04:15)
Okay.

Derek (04:20)
I think I've seen your hiring funnel. like you go to like ⁓ a type form or something like you can build one of those but there's also some services out there. I like to use one called test gorilla. And then there's just a bunch of assessments in there. You can like custom build it based on the role. it's just super basically I can't go without it now. And then like

One really big thing that I started doing that was kind of a game changer, I got this from, I think it was like one of Clint's YouTube videos, ⁓ is the disc test scoring.

Clay Hepler (04:52)
Okay.

Derek (04:53)
Once I started I used to think personality test was just like this is dumb but Once you start building like a sales team you actually realize they're like really accurate and They're gonna tell you a lot about that hire and and you don't you kind of you don't want certain personality types in certain roles Especially like sales roles you want someone that's more ⁓ More like a D or an I

And you don't want someone that's just like a pure C in there because it's just gonna it's kind of like you could you could put someone in that role, but they're gonna be kind of paddling upstream where as if you find someone that's like More naturally like their personalities like suits sales better. It's just gonna work out better So that's been a big game changer there Just giving my hiring on point

Clay Hepler (05:44)
Yeah,

man. And the one thing with like hiring is as you realize this, like when people work with me or in general and you've seen this, you you've been in a lot of different businesses. ⁓ It is the business.

You know, theoretically you could build a business that was just hiring people and they run the business for you. Theoretically. I mean, and there's a lot of people that do that. If you think about like Silicon Valley startups, you have one person that does a very specific role and then they hire a bunch of people, give them equity stakes. In a land business, you know, we don't have as much equity opportunity or cashflow or commission or whatever. It makes it worth hiring a bunch of like principal based person, people.

But what you're saying, what I'm hearing you say is like, I'm applying the same exact process to my business. ⁓ I'm going through the assessments. Instead of having to call these people, you're going through this process. LinkedIn and Indeed, most people don't use those for hiring online.

And frankly, I have a ⁓ job post right now for an acquisition manager, right, Derek? And ⁓ it's on LinkedIn indeed, but I wouldn't have thought of using that for international jobs.

Derek (07:00)
Honestly, I almost deleted my LinkedIn. like, I'm never going to use this again. Until my friend kind of dropped that sauce on me about how good it is for hiring. ⁓ So yeah. ⁓

Clay Hepler (07:12)
So you

built this team, started to hire people off LinkedIn, you used the testing grill, I think that's a great little tidbit. Where is your team right now though? What type of volume are you doing? What's your size? What does it look like? then what are kind of the, teaches why we should listen to you as someone that has a business like this.

Derek (07:32)
Okay. Well, actually I didn't want to come on a podcast or whatever until I was doing at least a pool in six figure months. basically I was kind of struggling for quite a while. ⁓ I started off with mailers, and kind of just blasted mail out. And that was one of my, ⁓ that was back when I didn't know how to hire. So I just, I just picked up like.

the first AM that looked good off of online jobs at pH. Funnily enough, think it was like Sumner's old acquisition manager. So was like, oh, she's just going to know how to do it, whatever. I'm going to hire her. Didn't train her, didn't mentor, just kind of like, I was like, all right, take over these leads that are going to come in. So yeah, just blasted mail out there. I didn't really scrub, right? I would just do like full counties that looked good and just go, Oh, everyone out of state.

like three acres and to like 50 acres or something. It like kind of just shotgunning it, not treating it seriously because I think I got, I was under the influence of like watching like material back when it was like easy mode basically during COVID. So just like, just shoot mail out there. You get deals, whatever. And the way that I thought about it was like, oh, I'll just like burn like 15, 20 K super fast, whatever. If I get one deal from it, break even, whatever, let's go.

Clay Hepler (08:24)
Okay.

Derek (08:49)
⁓ so I just blasted out like 20, 25 K, ⁓ over like six months in, in mailers got some callbacks, but like, didn't really know how to work them. Well, ⁓ comping was bad back then. Didn't know how to comp them. Right. I think from all that, like I got like one contract and didn't even make it work out. Cause in hindsight, it was like just a crappy property. It was like a HOA, like with bad topography. ⁓

So that didn't work out. ⁓ So that was actually probably like the first six to 12 months I was just kind of doing that, just not really taking it seriously, flopping on mail campaigns. And then I kind of heard about cold email from a friend that was kind of testing it out. And ⁓ it just sounded pretty cool because I was like, like my major problem is like these mailers are just too expensive.

Clay Hepler (09:42)
Okay.

Derek (09:44)
My mail campaigns were just kind of trash looking back on it. It wasn't even blind offers. was just like ⁓ neutral letters, neutral postcards. And yeah, they were just bad. So I don't recommend that. Definitely don't recommend that. You can burn through a huge budget really fast doing that. So ⁓ definitely don't recommend that. then I started testing out email.

around year two, around the start, actually probably like the start of like month 12 or something like that. Got some pretty quick success with that. Got a couple of deals like right off the bat that were like smaller, probably 10 to 15 Ks. So it was good to finally actually get a deal through. That was actually the first deal that I got through was like from an email campaign. that was going well. So was like, I'm just going to scale the shit out of this.

It's like super cheap. Basically, once you set it up, was like, um, you just got to pay for data and skip tracing, but then you can send like infinite emails. I was like, Oh, it's just super cheap. I'm just going to blast emails. Um, and I was just like, whatever, I'm just going to scale this to the moon. Uh, so I like spun up like over like the next like four months. So I spun up like a hundred, uh, different email accounts, all different domains, crazy system.

Clay Hepler (10:47)
Okay.

Derek (11:09)
I sort of it was sort of like a ⁓ pot like a the frog in the boiling pot of water like my response rate just kept slowly going down and down and down like and then like suddenly it's just like Two months and you're like, like we haven't gotten a deal yet. What's what's going on? ⁓ So yeah, basically Google had done an update that just like slapped emails it was like one of the biggest ⁓

updates to email inboxing in years basically. was like, I think it was like if three people report you to spam, that email is basically cooked, that domain. So that kind of tanked my, that take my response rate, tanked my inboxing. So I was like, oh, this sucks. My AM bounced out because just like deal flow died down, whatever.

So then I was kind of back to square one at that point, just me and my, my, my admin. so that was kind of a rough couple of months there. I was just kind of like figuring out like, what's the next step with this? Should I just like throw on the towel here? I saw, I started looking up, some of this like cold calling stuff and I was like, this is, this looks pretty cool. Actually, this has been around forever. It's not going to be like email where it's like super complicated and like,

Email is basically just gate kept by one company. I just got tired of ⁓ traffic sources like that where it's just like one company can shut you down. So I was like, ⁓ cold calling. It's like been around forever. It's not just like regulated by like one company basically. So it's more decentralized, whatever. I'm going to get into this. So I tested it out actually with an agency.

And ⁓ it worked out pretty well for a few months, a couple months with them. So was like, I'm to do this myself. And ⁓ yeah, basically last ⁓ September, last September, I brought my first internal cold caller on board. That's ⁓ Ended up just being a rock star hire. ⁓ It's kind of crazy. He just took it and ran with it.

Clay Hepler (13:02)
Mm-hmm.

Derek (13:23)
He kind of, he had some previous experience in dialers before, so he kind of just like took over that whole part of it. ⁓ And yeah, just from there, we started getting, ⁓ with just Matt calling, at least like one to two deals a month.

Clay Hepler (13:42)
Mm-hmm

Derek (13:44)
So I was just like, this is awesome. Whatever, I'm going to scale this. And that's kind of where we're at now. Just been slowly adding more to the team.

Clay Hepler (13:52)
So you made a decision that a lot of people don't end up doing, is I'm going to go from an agency into internal team, right? You know, there's the cost saving perspective, but there's also the managerial perspective. You actually spoke with my cold calling manager a couple of months back. ⁓ But not a lot of people have that access to that person.

For someone that's starting and they want to actually build a internal cold calling team, what would you, what advice would you give them?

Derek (14:28)
That's a great question. I guess you have to ask if if you if that's the type of business you want to have because I completely understand the people that just want to send mail out have like a super lean team and keep it like one at 1 a.m. one Dispo and like one admin and just send mail out whatever I completely get that ⁓ but for me I kind of just have fun like it's kind of fun for me man.

be honest, it's been really fun. basically I would say you want that for that first hire, want to filter really hard for it. You want to filter really hard on that first cold caller because they're to be helping you get it off the ground.

So if you don't have someone really good, ⁓ they won't be able to help you in that capacity. ⁓ Yeah, so luckily I found Matt to just spearhead that. man, I don't even know how to use ready mode. Matt just, he just got the reps email, got on email threads with him every day, watched, they have like a tutorial library. He just watched all that, just like learned that. He already had some experience, but he had to learn like more of the backend stuff.

And ⁓ yeah, he just took over that. ⁓

Clay Hepler (15:48)
It's extraordinary. You know, it shows you, were talking about hiring, dude, hiring is everything. It is literally everything. And finding the right people, I find so many people will build a skeleton ship. They'll get a lot of low cost VAs that are not qualified for the position that they want them to be in, right? And then they'll expect them to produce outsized returns.

And the reality is they're not gonna produce outsize returns. They're gonna just be average, if that. They might be worse than average. And so, what would you have to say about someone who's used VA's for a long period of time? Obviously you have the LinkedIn funnel, obviously you have the Indeed funnel, but like, any other ways that you've used to find the right people for the job?

Derek (16:39)
you know, it's just like doing it more and more. Like I said, like there's probably a lot of people that did that, tried it out like a couple of times and just, you're just not good at it when you first do it. So you probably just thought it was bad. Like, this person's taking more of my time. They're like, I have to repeat things to them a thousand times. This is dumb. Like I'm just going to do this myself or stick to like US based only hires. ⁓

If I think back to like the first VA that I ever, ever hired, yeah, it was just like, just not like, if I was like my only experience, I'd be like, no, I'm just never going to use VA's like they, don't work. ⁓ So it's just something that you just got to keep doing it. You just got to make mistakes. ⁓ And yeah, I mean, with a good assessment, like

and filtering, that's what you gotta do. You gotta filter. ⁓ We do like three interviews even after we filter super hard on the front end. We do three interviews just to see like can this person show up to a meeting on time three times in a row. ⁓

Clay Hepler (17:48)
Yeah,

yeah, which is, unfortunately that's the barrier, right?

Derek (17:52)
Yeah, I don't know. just geeked out on it so hard because I looked like, I think there's like two areas that are like the biggest leverage in this business. It's like one is sales. I'm not good at that. Two is hiring. Cause I think it was like Henry Ford or somebody said like, you don't gotta be smart. You just got to know how to hire smart people. People that way smarter than you. So. ⁓

Clay Hepler (18:03)
Yep.

Derek (18:21)
Yeah, you just got to do it a few times. honestly, try to do it yourself because hiring agencies are really expensive.

Clay Hepler (18:32)
Yeah. You know, think some of them, yeah, some of them take 25 to 30, 35 % of the first year salary. And so, you know, if you're out here with $30,000 a year employee, that's

Derek (18:33)
if you can crack it yourself.

Clay Hepler (18:46)
11,000 bucks, dude, that is expensive as hell. That is expensive as hell. Right? You're basically paying 40,000. Right? And so yeah, I agree. I agree with you completely. You can self source and there are plenty. The reality is at this point, there's so many VA's after COVID. There's so many VA's. It's becoming competitive even like, I don't know, like I have you found that it's becoming more difficult to source good, good talent.

Derek (19:06)
Really? ⁓

No, I've found that there's more like I feel like there's a Lot of businesses that are kind of laying off talent right now AI is replacing a lot of basic positions If anything, I feel like there's just more and more people looking for remote jobs ⁓ That can prove that they can work from home ⁓ One really big key as well is hire slow but like fire quick ⁓

Just had to let one go last week. Super overqualified dude. Looked like he had crazy good experience. Showed up to three separate interviews, nailed them all. And then he just had too many, in the first couple weeks, he just had too many attendance issues. So, if they can't, we do a 30 day probationary period. And if they get more than a few warnings during that period, it's like.

We just kind of got to let them go. Because they're not going to get any better in the long term if they can't show you their best in that first 30 days. ⁓

Clay Hepler (20:14)
That's right. That's right.

100 %

you that's a huge point and and I love that, know fire facets. It's you know, a lot of people wait and I've waited right and it's just better to just do it, know, one thing I will say is like the reason why the hiring process is so important is because if you get a good person in man, it's everything especially in our business, right we can hire someone to come in and ⁓

run our sales for us and a really good salesperson could produce a million dollars, two million dollars of top line gross profit in a year, right, in our business, right? A really good salesperson. And the difference between a good and a great salesperson is massive. It is massive, right? ⁓ I think for a difference between a good, I mean anything, talent matters, right? But when you're in the front lines, you you're getting an administrative role or

more of a task-based role. I find that the difference is not, usually it's not proportionate to the amount of increased pay, for example. But if it's something like you said, a high leverage role, it's the amount of ⁓ additional...

leverage, I'm using leverage again that you can have because of that role, man. It's huge. has been your most critical hire and what is the hire that you're thinking of making that you think is going to take your business to the next level?

Derek (21:46)
Probably have to go back to Matt. I've had just like really good hires lately. ⁓ But yeah, I got to give a shout out to Matt. He's a savage. Team leader is managing the freaking, he's doing lead management now, crushing it.

Want to get two more cold callers and a slot them in like in the next couple of weeks ⁓ And then I think the next big hire is gonna be SMS

Clay Hepler (22:08)
Okay.

Derek (22:14)
I kind want to find the new mat of SMS, like somebody who knows how to manage the backend stuff right away and get that off the ground and then scale that to like two or three textures.

Clay Hepler (22:28)
Yep. Yep. Um, yeah, man, that texting is another beast too, because you have to have two X three X more data, uh, then you do for cold calling. Cause cold calling, know, a cold caller could be anywhere between 10,000 to 12,000 lines of data per month and they're good. One, one per, but if you're texting, depends on how much you're texting, but a text or can manage anywhere between 3000 and 5,000 texts a day.

And so if you're at 5,000 techs a day, that's 100K a month. And it completely changes the amount. That's 10 callers, right? So 10 callers can get that output. And usually it's the same exact like, 10 callers equals five to seven contracts, usually per month, depending on how good your callers are. Could be eight, could be six.

Texters it's usually you know it's one lead one deal out of every 15 to 20 thousand texts So you know if you do a hundred thousand you know you could probably get any what you could probably get oh? Man my math like eight eight deals six to eight deals, so it's pretty similar But if you're 20,000 you get five deals you end up closing only 30 % of those so How do you make decisions today versus how you made them six months ago?

Derek (23:51)
I'll say like one big thing that ⁓ we worked on together was getting the KPIs dialed in.

it's something that I knew I needed to implement, but, ⁓ sort of clay becomes like your, personal trainer, basically, ⁓ like your accountability guy that, kind of pushes you to do these things that, ⁓ it's on your project list, but it's on your project list forever. need someone to like push you, push you through it. So that was, that was like the KPI dashboard for me.

Clay Hepler (24:17)
Hahaha

Derek (24:24)
⁓ Once you have that data, you can just make way more calculated decisions on your business. See exactly where like your pipeline's broken, your acquisitions pipeline is broken. And you can just hold everyone on your team accountable for those KPIs. It's not just like, I feel like you're not making enough offers. It's like, no, you got the data there for like offers every single day. You got the talk time. can see everything and you can see that.

Clay Hepler (24:52)
So did you end up firing

the guy that we spoke about? We're not going to turn this into ⁓ a call, but okay, so the offer acquisition manager is still offering.

Derek (24:55)
No, no.

Yes, sir.

Clay Hepler (25:08)
Cool deal, cool deal. So, could you walk us through one of your favorite deals, kind of step by step?

Derek (25:15)
it actually just happened this month. basically an abandoned house property that came in. And I thought it was really funny. I thought it was going to be like a big headache. I was like, barely wanted, I almost disqualified it. It was abandoned house, like a really good location actually.

Next to the city, the community recreational center is literally a minute walk away. Next to the library, road frontage on three sides. So I was like, oh, it's too nice. was like, even though it's got an abandoned house with sometimes camper issues, I was like, whatever, we'll take a shot at it.

Clay Hepler (25:42)
Wow.

Derek (25:50)
We tried to reach out to realtors on that one and they're just like, nah, screw off. Like we don't want, we don't want to deal with this. So was like, no, this is going to be a problem. So we just threw it up on the flat fee and literally first day we have people just calling us nonstop. got like an offer, $1,000 over listing price. Just took it first day. then yeah, it was kind of funny the next day people were still calling cause it hadn't gone pending yet.

and someone gave us even $5,000 over that. But yeah, it was just like a really quick 25K profit deal, just like super easy. It's closing in like 10 days.

Clay Hepler (26:25)
That's awesome dude. That's awesome. How much earnest money is down on that one?

Derek (26:31)
Like 200 and like a box of cookies.

Clay Hepler (26:37)
Got it, got it, you got it, box of cookies. you talked to us a little bit about how you got into the business. ⁓ What do you think is the biggest problem that land investors need to solve in order to take their business to the next level?

Derek (26:55)
probably have to go back to hiring Figured out how to hire because it's one thing that I noticed I actually I went to the ⁓ Sumner meetup in Las Vegas last last year in October and What I noticed was like probably

70 % of there were just like lone wolfing it and didn't have any hires. it's just the way that I think about it is anytime I do something that I don't like doing, I'm immediately kind of thinking like, how can I get this off my plate?

Like just stuff like once you once you find someone that can just like do something like I don't know. I just like hated like like ⁓ reading HUDs. But then I found a dude that's just like he's super good at it. basically could have been like an accountant. So he like takes that off your plates. ⁓ Reading, Dispo, Purchase Agreements for like little clauses, like little sneaky clauses and stuff. I hated doing that. ⁓

Just anything that you hate doing, just like write it down in your notebook. I hate doing this. And then just figure out someone that can do it for you. Because there's somebody that will do it for you for a lot cheaper than what your time is worth.

Clay Hepler (28:06)
And so when you do something like that Derek, where do you reallocate your how do you think about reallocating your time?

Derek (28:14)
Yeah, basically anything that I enjoy doing. basically consulting calls with Clay.

Just hiring, because actually I really enjoy that process. Figuring out where the bottlenecks are in the business from a high level. Like how to make things more efficient in the CRM. Adding new stuff like texting. All that type of stuff is what I enjoy.

Clay Hepler (28:46)
The you know the classic entrepreneur you like to build and you hire someone to maintain

Derek (28:52)
Yeah, exactly. Anything paperwork involved or emails, anything like TC emails, I don't even want look at them.

Clay Hepler (28:59)
You don't do email. You don't do email. I love it. ⁓ Yeah, man, I'm with you. I'm with you. ⁓ Derek, where can people follow your journey or connect with you?

Derek (29:02)
⁓

Probably Instagram. DM me on Instagram.

Clay Hepler (29:17)
If someone's on the fence about getting help or mentorship, right? What would you tell them?

Derek (29:26)
I would say.

Clay Hepler (29:26)
And this doesn't have to be

a plug for me, right? This is just in general.

Derek (29:31)
I would say just, get a couple of deals, get a little bit of a war chest built up It's completely worth it. the way that I think about it is it's something like maybe one or two deals can pay for consulting where you're going to get, potentially multiples and multiples of that from ROI from it. Just like a few small tweaks in your business because

There's stuff that you're probably doing in your business. don't know if you've seen those like gym compilation videos of like Planet Fitness, people just like working out wrong on the equipment, just like doing crazy stuff. You're doing that type of stuff in your business, like goofy things that you don't even know that if you changed it, it can make a huge difference in your results. And that's what, that's what Clay, someone like Clay can do for you.

Just look for those weird things that you're doing in your business, get it fixed. It's not even that big of a change a lot of times and you can produce a huge return from it.

Clay Hepler (30:28)
And, I said that was my last question, but here's my last question. What's the number one thing that you've learned working with me? I have actually never asked you this and I'm kind of curious.

Derek (30:41)
Okay. Yeah, I'll say, okay, there's a few things, but I'll say, ⁓ getting on that call with Brian was super good because that's the point at which we changed, to like the lead manager framework. And basically I would almost say that that, that setup is kind of basically essential for cold call leads. Just the nature of cold call leads. Like if you have your closer.

on those, it's gonna burn your closer out. ⁓ So you need like a strong, assertive dude like Matt to like tank those, ⁓ like warm those leads up and send the good ones to your closer. Yeah, so that was probably the biggest game changer recently.

Clay Hepler (31:12)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. That's pretty cool man. Yeah, that's he's talking about the the outbound marketing into a lead manager to qualify into a closer versus a closer qualifying which some people do a closer lead manager hybrid I don't think that's good closes one of clothes the lead managers are more like almost customer service reps Right like that except Matt probably not Matt But yeah

Yeah, Derek, I wanna open the floor up to you for at the end here, right? This has been a pretty laid back podcast, just kinda talking about your business, kinda what you're doing, like what are you excited about, man? What are you excited about in your business or in your life right now ⁓ that you, you know, that's interesting, maybe the listeners can benefit from.

Derek (32:10)
I guess what's kind of cool is through this business, it can kind of make you a better person. you can kind of look like managing a team. Like I never thought I would like manage a team of like over a few people. what I noticed is like it like brings the better out of you because you're

Clay Hepler (32:21)
Thank

Derek (32:30)
It's like, you're not just like grinding for yourself. It's like, I gotta like, if you actually like your team, you're like, gotta like, I gotta like move the, move the needle here for my team. I gotta support my team. And like, once your brain like shifts to that mode, it just makes it more fun. Just makes the whole business more fun.

Clay Hepler (32:48)
Dude, I love that. think a lot of times this business is super lonely. And, ⁓ you know, when you're an entrepreneur, it's really hard to get to talk to people that are, ⁓ that understand the struggle. Like my wife and I, it's funny. we'll go out and try to meet like a new couple. And for me, I always kind of struggle with it, right? Because I always am kind of

don't know, most people don't understand the craziness of being an entrepreneur. You gotta be a little bit tapped in the head in the wrong way, in the right way too, right? But that's the really cool thing about being an entrepreneur. And as it relates to having a team, when you have that camaraderie, specifically remote, right? Specifically remote team. That camaraderie is really healthy for everyone too. If you build that bit, you're the leader.

Derek (33:20)
Yeah.

Clay Hepler (33:40)
in your business, you build that camaraderie and it ends up being a really, really healthy thing. So man, thanks for sharing that. That's super cool. Any last minute thoughts before we hop off here?

Derek (33:50)
Yeah, one more thing that I'm excited about is I definitely want to go to more meetups next year. I'm going to try to go to one like every quarter because I've been really bad at like networking in this industry. I'm just excited to like get out there, meet more people, make more connections. So yeah, it's something I'm going to do a lot more next year. Probably actually relocate a little bit closer to the States. back to Mexico maybe or Lima.

Clay Hepler (34:13)
You're gonna live in fly

the Carmen.

Derek (34:16)
Yeah, great spot.

Clay Hepler (34:18)
Yeah, nice. right, dude. Thanks again for being on the podcast. I appreciate your time. And I also appreciate your backdrop we'll talk to you soon,

Derek (34:24)
sunset.