Ended 15 Years in Medical Sales and Led to Land with Larry Jarnigo

Larry Jarnigo shares his journey from medical device sales to the land business after a pivotal moment when a surgeon called him during a family Fourth of July outing, forcing him to confront his lack of work-life balance. After 15 years at Johnson & Johnson and later Abbott—where he managed teams and developed leadership skills—he decided to explore entrepreneurship. With his wife's support and proof of concept from test mailers, he left his corporate job to pursue land investing full-time.

In his land business, Larry initially handled everything solo but recognized the need for help. His first hire was an assistant from HireMyMom.com who had entrepreneurial experience running a clothing boutique. Rather than hiring a traditional acquisition manager, he focused on offloading tasks he disliked. His assistant now handles Facebook inquiries, seller conversations, deal coordination, and transaction management—earning a base hourly rate plus 3% of net profit from each deal, giving her incentive alignment.

Larry emphasizes the importance of hiring right and firing fast, having learned this lesson the hard way with a Philippines-based texting coordinator who produced volume without quality results. He's evolved his leadership approach to set clear expectations with team members, have them repeat back their mission and specific metrics, and review expectations at least monthly. He's also implemented a system of making training videos in Google Drive, and now encourages his assistant to create videos for processes she handles, building institutional knowledge.

Rather than hiring a full internal team, Larry has strategically outsourced various tasks: a mailer specialist for pricing and setup, an access scrubber, a photo/image creator through Landmaster, and most recently a cold-calling company based in Houston that operates like an acquisitions manager. These contractors work on a project or part-time basis without requiring the overhead of full-time employment benefits.

On communication, Larry meets weekly with his assistant via Zoom to review deals, discuss what's working and what needs fine-tuning, and maintain personal connection by asking about family and weekends. They use Slack for daily communication and Airtable with a Kanban board view to track deals through stages (new lead, mapped, spoken to seller, offer made, due diligence, title sent). He uses Monday.com for the cold calling pipeline.

He acknowledges a challenge with maintaining boundaries—he sometimes jumps in to map properties his assistant should be handling, and she's called him out on overstepping. He values having a team member who will push back rather than be submissive, recognizing that smooth operations require clear role delineation.

For the next 12 months, Larry plans to scale mail volume from 2,500-3,000 per week to $5,000 weekly and potentially hire a full-time transaction coordinator if a large development deal closes. However, he's explicitly stated he doesn't envision a large W-2 employee team, as he finds individual contributor work more rewarding than managing many people. He's open to both domestic and international hires depending on the role, noting that transaction coordination—requiring communication with title companies and sellers—is better suited to domestic staff.

Larry cites "Who Not How" as a guiding principle and emphasizes the value of networking within the land investing community to find people already vetted by other investors. He's paid one-time fees to have someone improve spreadsheet automation, saving the team hours on repetitive tasks. He encourages experimentation with different channels (TV ads, mail, cold calling) to see what generates quality leads, viewing each as a business development experiment.