New Episode: The Power of Teamwork in Ranch Real Estate

Teamwork is the topic of the day as Haley joins up with Jeff Hubbard and Pat Lancaster, one of Mirr Ranch Group’s longest-standing teams, to explore the value of working together in ranch real estate. From their early days in the hunting business to nearly 20 years of partnership, Jeff and Pat share how their complementary skillsets, mutual trust, and ability to divide and conquer have led to lasting success. They discuss how teamwork benefits clients, the lessons they’ve learned along the way, and even a few wild stories from the field.

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About Jeff
About Pat

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Haley Mirr (00:06)

Welcome back to the Land Bulletin Podcast, where every other week we bring you experts in the field to impart their knowledge when it comes to the ranch and sporting property market, buying and selling advice, the latest best stewardship practices, as well as topics that impact landowners every day. I’m your host, Hailey Mirr. Let’s jump in. Welcome back to the Land Bulletin Podcast. Hailey Mirr here. And in honor of our 20th anniversary, we decided to have one of our longest standing teams on the show to kind of talk about what it’s like at my ranch group to work as a team, how that might differ from being kind of a broker out there eating what you kill and having someone that you can work with. So without further ado, we have Pat and Jeff on the show today. Welcome to the Land Bulletin, guys. 

Pat Lancaster (00:50)

All right, Haley. 

Jeff Hubbard (00:51)

It’s great to be here. Yeah, good to be here. 

Haley Mirr (00:54)

Awesome. So you guys have been here since the beginning. I’d love to know kind of where this all started this teamwork How did you guys decide? Okay with your different backgrounds that this was going to be kind of a partnership that would work really well for you guys Kind of at the beginning of your careers at my ranch group Thank you. 

Pat Lancaster (01:15)

Well, I don’t know that either of us thought it would really work well or not, but it allowed. Jeff and I had just a friendship and a working relationship in the hunting business, and I was, I guess, basically at a crossroads in my career, in my life, and was thinking about a career change and looking to take a job possibly in Utah, and was driving back after a tour out there, and Jeff said, hey, do you want to work together in the real estate? And as they say, the rest is history. It’s kind of basically how it all started. 

Haley Mirr (02:02)

that one phone call, and Jeff, you had kind of been at my ranch group for a little bit. What made you feel like, okay, Pat’s the guy that I want to kind of partner with on this endeavor. 

Jeff Hubbard (02:13)

Well, you know, we had had Pat and I had known each other since probably 1995, um, you know, I spent five years in the guiding hunting, outfitting business and, um, I did some work for some guiding work for Pat and, um, we got to be buddies that way. And when I started with Ken in 2005, I found myself calling Pat, asking him about all these places and Pat had, uh, had in effect, he had sold three or four really prominent ranches without making any money. He had been the lessee, you know, the, the, the, the outfitter. And one of his hunters calls and says, Hey, I want to buy this ranch. So he calls the owner and he says, yeah, I’ll sell it. So they do the deal and that’s why I’m holding the bag. No money and no lease. So, um, to me, it seemed like a natural fit. Um, and, um, uh, uh, you know, I mean, that was almost 20 years ago. We’ve basically been with each other, uh, our whole career and, um, it’s worked really nicely. 

Pat Lancaster (03:25)

That’s awesome. I do recall when Jeff called and he said, you know, you can make money doing that. 

Jeff Hubbard (03:31)

Ooh. 

Pat Lancaster (03:32)

That kind of light bulb went off and I said, you’re kidding. 

Haley Mirr (03:37)

You don’t have to just be a nice guy. You can actually like profit off of this. Well, that brings up my next question. You guys are, you know, very, you’re different people and I think you have skillsets that meld well together. What skills do you two see in each other that make you think this works? You know, you kind of talked about Jeff, the knowledge that Pat has had over the years of working down South. Jeff, you’ve had a background in real estate. I’d love to know a little bit about how that kind of came into factor to make this successful. 

Pat Lancaster (04:11)

Well, from my side of the equation, I did feel that I had a strong background in the field aspect. I knew a lot about the land, I knew a lot about the various properties, and we kind of focused on recreational type properties, hunting specifically, and I felt I had a lot to offer there. But as far as the business side, I was lacking there, and Jeff certainly was qualified to kind of take the lead on that, so it worked nicely that way. 

Jeff Hubbard (04:49)

Yeah, I mean, obviously, I worked in the real estate world. I think when Pat joined, I’ve been with Ken for a couple years, so it was a little bit dangerous in the ranch real estate world. You know, kind of fundamentals are sort of universal in real estate as it relates to the when we started, Pat was kind of the relationship guy, the hustle guy, call his contacts. And then I would try and execute the kind of the office part of the equation. But we both, you know, we fed off each other. Pat learned the technical side, and I learned the relationship side by getting to know all his contacts and generating trust with his people. And so we both, out of respect for each other and for the team, we both really honed our skills where we’re lacking at the beginning, if you will. 

Haley Mirr (06:01)

Yeah. And how would you say, cause you know, Jeff, you were in real estate kind of working alone there for a little bit. Um, how would you say this has helped your clients to have the both of you on there? You know, how has this grown your business? Um, and how is it different from being like a solo broker? Cause I think a lot of people in our industry, they really are just kind of like solo guys. How do you think this is kind of improved, um, your business? Well,

Jeff Hubbard (06:29)

Um, first and foremost, logistically, it’s, it’s a huge benefit to the clients because, you know, whether it’s a buyer or, or listings, um, the reality is when you have two experts and two people who are handling it and know the parties and know the property, it’s a, it’s a big advantage for the client because, you know, these are remote properties that showing them and dealing with them requires a lot of time and effort and travel. And, um, we, we all have our, we have lives, um, beyond selling ranches. And, um, so obviously we can cover for each other when one of us is, is occupied. And, um, so we can accommodate the client 99 out of a hundred times because of the reality that there’s two versus one. Um, so I thin k that’s very helpful. And, um, plus I think just the, the, you know, doesn’t matter what the business is. When, when you have a partnership, there’s a, um, there’s kind of a push and pull and, and, um, you know, checks and balances when it comes to decision-making. And, and, um, I think that that, that benefits the client, a customer. I think that, um, you know, there’s a level of, uh, analysis when it comes to making decisions and, and doing the right thing, uh, from a business standpoint, that’s just, it’s just better if you have two smart, capable people sorting through the, the, whatever the issue is or the problem is or the challenges and coming up with a solution, it’s naturally going to be better if you got two who kind of behind the scenes can sort it out and then come and come up with something. 

Haley Mirr (08:22)

Yeah, I would agree. I feel like that fiduciary piece, you fill up these contracts, you do all these things, it’s always good to have a second pair of eyes because you might look at things for hours and then you just get a little bit, I don’t know, you forget some things and the attention to detail  goes away to sort of have someone else kind of behind the scenes, helping you out and making decisions, I think is a huge benefit.And tell me a little bit too, you know, bringing on Willie now as part of the team, how has that kind of changed the dynamic or projected you guys in a different way, or if it has at all? 

Pat Lancaster (08:59)

I think it’s been a great asset. Willie’s a very sharp, motivated young man. And his detail to follow up is great. And maybe that’s been lacking on my part. I know I can say that occasionally. And so it’s really beneficial that way. And it frees, certainly myself up. And I believe Jeff too, to spend time in the field or with clients or pursuing new opportunities. And knowing that a lot of the details and things in the office will be taken care of promptly and properly. 

Haley Mirr (09:45)

Yeah, the, I feel like the admin piece, it’s nice to have someone kind of doing that so you guys can do what you’re good at, which is, you know, creating these relationships, getting these deals done and, and having someone else handle that, that backend stuff. 

Jeff Hubbard (09:59)

Yeah. I mean, obviously we have very sophisticated client relationship management programs and it’s very organized. And Pat and I are basically old men and we’ve never been any good at editing. And Willie’s 33 years old. He’s just a whiz on that stuff. And it’s very, very important. And he’s generated a lot of business by maintaining, making sure that he’s on top of all that stuff. Pat and I for years, we’re just older school guys. We didn’t understand it. I didn’t care to, but that was stupid because you get business out of this stuff. I mean, that is to me, he pretty much handles all of that stuff. And that’s really helped us. And he also handles, he’s good at writing contracts and I mean, he’s good at everything. He’s good at showing ranching. He’s good at talking to people on the phone and sitting for presentations, for listings and so forth. And I feel very fortunate to have him as part of the team. 

Haley Mirr (11:29)

Well, it’s cool to have him see you guys kind of do the teamwork thing because I really do think it’s a benefit to have kind of multiple people on different listings because to all the points you’ve made, like the travel piece, the check each other’s work, like all of that is really collaborative. And I think what makes you guys the best in the business, in my opinion, I’d love to know now some more stories. When was there a time that, you know, maybe a specific deal where one of you guys stepped in, the other one wasn’t available. And because of kind of the teamwork piece, you were able to kind of figure out maybe a gnarly situation or something like that. And it could be recent, it could be, you know, if you can think back 20 years. 

Jeff Hubbard (12:17)

We can’t do that. I can promise you, brains don’t work like that anymore.

Pat Lancaster (12:25)

No, there was, there’s been times that, you know, just, and just like you said, timing and personalities, it’s like there’s been times when there’s some, you know, Jeff seemed to be a better fit for folks and sometimes I hit it off with him and we were able to kind of divide and conquer, so to speak. A couple of instances where we had both the buyer and seller and we’re able to kind of separate ourselves and each represent the other and I think do a, you know, a professional job and for both clients and, you know, to the benefit of all. 

Jeff Hubbard (13:17)

Yeah, and I mean, it’s a great question. I can’t, to the extent we have any juicy stories, it would probably be to talk about on this forum, but I- 

Haley Mirr (13:33)

Some of them might be fiduciary and you can’t really talk about it. 

Jeff Hubbard (13:38)

No, that’s another benefit of the partnership. I mean, Pat and I have a ton in common, but we’re two individual men and we have distinct personalities. We have a ton of respect for each other, otherwise it never would have worked. And a lot of mutual. I mean, trust is the most important thing in any partnership, whether it’s a marriage or business or whatever, but you gotta have ironclad trust with your partner. Yeah, we have that. And neither of us gets offended or possessive about a client. I mean, as Pat said, I mean, there’s some people that just connect better with Pat, some that connect better with me. And Pat will run with whoever that person is and I’ll run with whoever that person is. And if we get in a jam, then the other guy can come in and take care of things. Someone’s distracted or can’t execute the business for whatever reason. But yeah, that’s actually, it didn’t occur to me at the beginning, but that’s a very important part of this partnership. 

Haley Mirr 14:51

Yeah, I would agree. I think yeah, the relationship management, I know you talked about that, the tools, the client relationship, like the CRM that we work on, but what you guys are talking about is even more important, just really recognizing who works better with who, you know, how you guys can kind of fit the mold with different types of clients. I think that’s huge. 

Pat Lancaster (15:12)

You know, and just one thought came to mind. It wasn’t really a business issue that came up, but Jeff and I were touring a ranch for an absentee owner and there was a tenant there that didn’t know that we were coming and she wasn’t very happy when we came driving through the ranch and she came out with a gun in hand and she was waving it around pretty good. So Jeff and I, we came to teamwork. We were both talking really fast and to the situation. 

Jeff Hubbard (15:44)

I think she was, you know, this was like something out of Breaking Bad. She, she came out in a robe at about noon and, um, you know, she, she looked haggard and old and grumpy as she could be literally out in the middle of nowhere.And she, she pointed. I’ve never had anybody point a gun at me before, but we, we had, we did that day. 

Haley Mirr (16:10)

I didn’t know that. 

Jeff Hubbard (16:11)

You’re able to manage, but I forgot 

Pat Lancaster (16:15)

We’re both talking fast then. 

Haley Mirr (16:17)

Yeah, seriously. Well, I think that’s a huge thing too. I mean, I’ve gone on some of these tours alone and it’s, you know, you run into those situations and if you have someone with you to kind of handle some of those things, I mean, you don’t even think about that. But this is different than just like residential where you can get back in your car and drive off. Like you’re, you’re out there a lot of the time in some of these things. So it is nice to have someone with you if it comes out of her bunker and like doesn’t want you on her property.So that’s, that’s another kind of unforeseen thing. What have been some of your favorite projects that you guys have worked on together? Some of the, maybe the most challenging where kind of the end goal was awesome or the clients you worked with were some of your favorites. Tell us some of some of those kind of beneficial stories of working together. 

Pat Lancaster (17:06)

I think one of my favorites is a property in Oregon that we’ve been fortunate enough to sell a couple times now, but it was just a long time friend of mine that owned a property and he was always telling us about this great ranch he had in Oregon and I was going, yeah, right, whatever. Can’t, it’s in Oregon and finally got up there to see it and it was extraordinary and we got the ranch sold and then a few years later, or several years later, we were working with another buyer client and he was, we looked at a few places and he told me exactly what he wanted and Jeff and I talked and, you know, another good partnership example and Jeff suggested maybe we call the guy that had bought this particular ranch and so we called him and sure enough, he decided he would sell it and we were able to sell it again, but it’s just an extraordinary ranch and it was nice to be able to sell it twice and we had an opportunity to sell it a third time, but didn’t quite get it done, but just a fun ranch as far as I was concerned. 

Haley Mirr (18:23)

How do you hear about Oregon? Was it just like someone of your clients from years past and they had this property? Because to your point, Oregon is further away than you typically do business. 

Pat Lancaster (18:36)

Yes, and we had we just sold a big ranch in Oregon So we we had a little I think a little publicity in the area and and but this I knew this guy from the hunting business probably from 40 years ago, I hate to date myself, but and we just kind of remain friends and You know kept in contact occasionally and one thing led to another and winded up selling this ranch. So it was It’s just one of my favorite ranches actually

Haley Mirr (19:07)

Love that. What about you, Jeff? 

Jeff Hubbard (19:09)

Listing and selling Seal of Vista was very special for me, it’s where I spent five years of my life guiding elk hunts. It’s got a storied checkered past, history, very interesting place, probably the most extraordinary piece of feed of ground out in North America. But nevertheless, the sellers for whom we were working are guys that we’ve done a lot of business with and they’re easy to work with and just extremely challenging deal. And a lot of our competitors said, ah, there’s no way they’ll ever get that thing sold. And sure enough, we did. And so that was very satisfying. And then I know they’re a little bit different, but we love working with buyers too. And we have a couple of buyers that we’ve become very close with, guys that both of us are good friends with that we didn’t know before the business, but now we take trips with and they’re really good friends. And one of the guys we represented, a Texas guy’s first acquisition was in Angel Fire, New Mexico. And this guy was a really talented man. He made a lot of money in a business not related to ranches, but he owns ranches in Texas and really knows what he’s doing. And we put him into that. We looked at a lot of spots and kind of got close with him and put him into that place in Angel Fire. And he really improved it and we ended up selling it for him and he made a very nice return. And then he ended up buying a place up in a steamboat and the same model. He spent a bunch of money on it, did the right things, improved the roads, developed some water. And this guy’s a fun, particularly with a guy that we consider a very good friend to see what one can do with these properties and to be a part of that experience. 

Haley Mirr (21:39)

And I would say too, you brought up buyers. I feel like you guys really know properties even when they’re not on the market. Like that’s a skill set. I don’t think a lot of brokers have in this industry. And I feel like you’ve been able to place buyers in ranches that aren’t even listed. How do you guys kind of go about that? Or is that just knowledge of the space, knowledge of these different areas, kind of knowing the landowners? I know you guys are very good at kind of like Southern Colorado and things like that. How did that kind of manifest and without giving any secret sauce away to the people listening? 

Pat Lancaster (22:14)

Well, I think that’s one thing, just experience and time, unfortunately, been bouncing around for a long, dang time and you meet a lot of people and just developing relationships with people and conversations, maybe they’ll say, hey, there’ll be a time when I wanna sell my property and you just continue to touch base with them and a lot of times they’ll say, yeah, I’ll go ahead and sell my property, but I don’t want people to really, my neighbors to know my business or anything and so we’ll sometimes get lucky enough to have a buyer that we can place in there. But I think it’s just a lot of time, a lot of boots on the ground for a long time and just getting to know a lot of people. 

Jeff Hubbard (23:04)

Yeah, I think it’s simple as that with, you know, collectively, between the two of us was 40 years business. That’s a lot of people are a lot of land. And, and that doesn’t even acknowledge, you know, Pat’s time in the in the hunting business and my little bit of time in the hunting business. But it’s just like any business you you, if you if you’re good at it, you’re honest and straight, you know, you’re nothing if you’re not honest, but straightforward and treat people right. It comes back around. And as Pat said, a lot of these people don’t want to list. They don’t get warm and fuzzy out of listing properties. And they just say, hey, if you guys can sell it, take care of you. And a lot of times it works. But it’s tricky because you’re going on faith in those deals. So but it’s we’ve never gotten far. Yeah. 

Haley Mirr (24:03)

Well, it’s good. You’ve created the trust piece that you guys have talked about so often about trusting each other, trusting the clients you work with and kind of manifesting that. So hopefully that continues with the clients you work with behind the scenes that aren’t listing. I hope you never get burned.But I’d love to know just like looking forward, I know you guys are working on some really cool projects right now. We talked about Willie a little bit. What are you guys excited about the most with regards to maybe some more? Smaller projects you’re working on, markets of the industry that you see potential and kind of seeing where this partnership leads in the next 20 years. 

Pat Lancaster (24:45)

Well, hopefully, we I make it there. I’m excited.I’m actually very excited about the future. And it seems, you know, businesses, it seems to be a challenging market. But I think there’s still a lot of a lot of opportunities. And we’re just kind of continuing to work hard to take advantage of the opportunities that come our way. As I said, I’m very should be challenging, but really an interesting next couple of years. 

Jeff Hubbard (25:25)

I feel, you know, talk to friends, family, just people. I know, you know, clients about what we do for a living. And I feel very fortunate to have chosen this as a career, just because I think it’s such a strong asset class. I don’t, I’ve talked about this before, but, you know, we don’t, we don’t take the big hits like equities, stock market, whatever, or or residential real estate or commercial. We’re just pretty steady.And even through all the shocks, whether it’s 2007, 2012, COVID, we were one of the businesses that benefited greatly from that. So I just don’t, I don’t just think the, you know, the horizon is bright for us. And I think the addition of Willie being able to manage some of the things that Pat and I were not so good at is going to really help our, our business. And, you know, hopefully we were able to execute some, some pretty prominent deals here. And then when we just have done, we’ve had two great, very nice years, but I just think that the future is bright and I’m looking forward to, you know, we all, we all get worried about our age and our health and all that stuff.But I can’t ever imagine not doing this. I’ll do it as long as I’m physically able. So I’m enthusiastic about the future. 

Haley Mirr (27:08)

Awesome. Well, I just love working with you guys. It’s been a pleasure and I’m excited for the next years to come and kind of all these different interesting projects you guys are working on. It’s really neat to just see the impact that you’ve had on the West and some of these land stewards that you’ve talked to and worked with and been there for and just seeing your partnership has been awesome over the years too. So thank you for everything you do from a ranch group.I’m excited to see where this all goes, but I appreciate you being on the land bulletin set. 

Pat Lancaster (27:42)

Thanks for that, Kaylee. 

Jeff Hubbard (27:43)

Thanks guys. 

Haley Mirr (27:44)

Thanks for joining us today. To learn more about the Ranch Real Estate Market, or our ranch marketing process, make sure to subscribe to our newsletter on our website at mirranchgroup.com or give us a call at 855-340-1162. See you next time.