149 Houses Flipped—Working Only 5 Hours a Week!

Steve Trang: Hey, everybody. Thank you for joining us for today's episode of real estate disruptors. So we've got Jason Lewis with Investor Machine, and he flew from Salt Lake City to talk about how he did a 149 whole sales and flips last year working five hours a week. If this is your first time tuning in, I'm Steve Trang, sales trainer for some of the top wholesalers in the country, and I'm on a mission to create 100 millionaires. Question I get all the time is how to become one of the 100 millionaires.

The information on this podcast alone is enough to help you become one in the next five to seven years. If you'll take consistent action, you will become one. If you wanna get there faster, send me a DM on Instagram, and we'll see if we can help you get there a little bit faster. If you get value out of the show, please tag it from below. Share this episode right now.

That way we can all grow together. And before we jump into it, just a couple of quick, celebrations. We got Evan Gross, Jason Toledo, Solomon, Luma, John Kliesch, and Christopher Perez. Congratulations on winning the poker chips that we are sending to people for doing deals. And then this is a live show, guys, so please ask your questions for Jason to answer.

You ready?

Jason Lewis: Ready.

Steve: Alright. So the first question is what got you into real estate?

Jason: Great question. So my story is a little bit different. I know a lot of people usually get into it. So I graduated in 2011, 2011, 2012 with a degree in radiation therapy. So Radiation therapy?

Radiation therapy. Yeah. So I got back from my mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints in November 2008, which was, like, the bottom. So the name of the game at that point was security. So I was like, okay.

What's, like, the most secure thing I could possibly do? And I was like, well, cancer is not going anywhere. Yeah. So I picked that. So

Steve: It is stable.

Jason: It's yes. Quite stable. That said, I didn't take, like, enjoyment factor into account at all, and I hated it. I hated every day of school, hated my clinicals. I used to look up at the clock thinking the day was over, and it I hadn't even had lunch yet.

So, at this point, we just had our first son, and I told my wife, hey. I know we just went through and did this school thing, but, like, this isn't for me. So I'm gonna go pursue my passion now instead. So, I pursue there there were two different things I pursued. One of them was real estate investing.

And in 2011, 2012, real estate investors were a good deal harder to come by than they are than they are today. And so there was only one guy I knew that was doing real estate. So I went into his office and hit him up for a job, and he told me no. I hit him up again for a job, and he told me no again. And the third time, also no.

So on the third time, I said, alright. Here here's my proposition. I'm gonna show up tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that. And I'm just gonna keep showing up, and I'm gonna do everything in my power to be worth something to you. And if I ever become worth something, will you just pay me that?

And he was like, well, I mean, I guess I can't say no to that. So I showed up every day for free

Steve: free trial.

Jason: I was a free trial. Yep. So yeah. Brand new baby. Told my wife, hey.

You know, degree's out, career's out. And You need

Steve: to quit your job?

Jason: Yes. And, so and I actually at at that point, I was a fairly recent graduate. I only had a what's called PRN job because I was still in the job hunt. So, yeah, I told her, hey. So new plan.

I'm working, just not getting paid. So I have an awesome supportive wife. Yeah.

Steve: I do.

Jason: So, I did that for thirty days. Then at thirty days, I'd worked my way into the systems and everything enough that, I was in, started as the guy getting lunch, ran CMAs on houses, things like that, became company owners, right hand guy, COO, was there for five years.

Steve: How long did you go from, no. You're not eligible for a job to being his right hand person?

Jason: Honestly, I was pretty much the right hand guy pretty early on, like, within the first year because we were small. When he when I started with him, he was flipping, like, a home a month, 12 homes a year. When I left, it was over 150 a year. We were doing big commercial deals, things like that. Okay.

Yeah.

Steve: So alright. So you you were there for five years?

Jason: Five five years. Yep. Alright. And Grew up from small to big. So what were all

Steve: the different responsibilities that you had moving up the it's not corporate ladder, but moving up

Jason: I chain of command. I did everything that could be done in a flip wholesale business besides, construction. We had a really good construction manager, but every I mean, we started with listings being outsourced, and then I got licensed and took the listings in house and then oversee all the teams that was listing our flips. We had property management outsourced. I brought that in.

I did all of the sales, and then oversaw all the people doing sales, getting properties on it basically. Everything but construction.

Steve: And I think one of the things is interesting. Right? Because, those of you guys have been watching the show, you know, you guys familiar with talking about predictive index. And you're that odd duck like me Yeah. An individualist.

Meaning, you know, you you can drive. You don't want to deal with people. You you want people to, have a safe, stable career. How can that person possibly sell? And you did how did you do as a salesperson?

Jason: I've always done quite well. Even in my own company where I was my own acquisition manager, I got basically you know, if if anybody sold to a real estate investor, they sold to me. Now I will say my acquisition managers now get deeper discounts than I did. So I don't I wasn't the best at buying the best deepest deals Mhmm. But I walked away with the contract.

Steve: So can we talk a little bit about that? Because, you know, if you look at a lot of people that are starting, they wanna hire someone that's a high d, high I on this profile. You would not have been eligible for hire. And I've said this before, like, because I'm also weird. I've taken the, DISC, Myra Briggs, the AVA, which is what Keller Williams was pushing for a very long time.

Mhmm.

Jason: And when

Steve: I took the AVA, they actually said, like, there's literally no position that you fit in. Right? Your pro your profile is so odd. You're you don't fit in any of the boxes. Yeah.

Jason: And they they do MPA or the KPA now, and then they show all the different roles. Right? And anyone like agent, mega agent, leader of a team, any of the things that I do

Steve: Front desk.

Jason: It's like, don't don't do that. Just you're it's probably not for you. Yeah. You don't fit into

Steve: the boxes. So I would never been eligible for hire if anyone knew what they were doing.

Jason: Right. Right.

Steve: And so you're in that same role too. Let's talk about how you were able to sell seeing as how you're not supposed to be able to sell.

Jason: Yeah. So, I will say that's a good question. What what is it about me that makes me able to sell? I do consider I not social. That said, I do consider myself a people person.

I am still overall fairly quick to connect. Mhmm. And I do care a lot about people, but just, you know, relationships are more about a purpose than they are. Like, I don't I don't individually have social needs.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jason: Like, if you lock me in a room by myself for a week, I'm gonna come out feeling like a million bucks and having conquered the world. Right? Right. But that said, I still, you know, can connect with and do well with with people. And I'm also and I will say, when it comes to predictive index and all of that stuff, it's good.

It's it's important. I I do all of my hiring based stuff for predictive index as well, but it is not the end all. Mhmm. People can adapt and be and do whatever they wanna do. And, I mean, in in predictive index, sometimes you'll see this is, like, your resting state, and this is, what you're doing day to day.

Like, I've had mine where I look straight maverick. Mhmm. In terms of, like, who I'm adapting to be to be the person that I need to be, but then this is my natural resting state. So, you know, the they say people are more likely to burn out if they're out of their natural resting state for a little bit. But, like, the desire to win and accomplish and make the goal and, you know, achieve your goals overcomes all things personality, in my opinion.

Steve: And one thing that you talked about is you kinda helped this business grow from 12 a year to a 150. So more than 10 x. Yeah. As an integrator? Correct.

But you're not an integrator today?

Jason: I so in the Creation Utah Company, I sit in the visionary and the integrator seat. In the investor machine, I sit with Mike in visionary seat, and then we have an integrator. And I will say I do some integrating as well, but I have, like, an actual integrator in that company.

Steve: So I'm curious. You know, like, you were an integrator. You were happy at that company?

Jason: Uh-huh. For the most part. So then

Steve: there must have been something that prompted you as an integrator. It's just like, you know what? I wanna create my own vision versus an integrator because, like, again, we talked about earlier with our pro profile. We can be an integrator or we can be a visionary. Mhmm.

Something prompted you to wanna be a visionary.

Jason: Yeah. For me, it actually wasn't as much about visionary and integrator as much as it was about work life balance.

Steve: Okay.

Jason: So kids numbers four and five were on the way in five years, for my wife and I. So oldest was five, and kids number four and five were on the way. And the rate at which we were growing and everything else, it was like, I I can't have the work life balance that I need to here and be who and what I need to at home. So

Steve: Got it.

Jason: That was so it actually wasn't it wasn't I I wanted to work there for forever, but I just couldn't figure out a way to make those two things come together.

Steve: But basically, it just didn't work. Right. Right. Okay. And so you worked there.

You did everything, including working with a listing team and a property management team. What was, like, the transition away from working at a company that you built up to now you're on your own?

Jason: It was hard. It was you know? You ask a lot of people about, you know, highs and lows. Mhmm. It was it was a low.

Because, like, I put my heart and soul into that company. And, like, it was my family. Like, I cared a lot about the people. So leaving was hard. That said, so the transition itself and getting going, fortune I had the advantage of I had done this before just with somebody else's money.

And so while I didn't set up a very similar business, that business was much more about networking MLS deals, buying homes from homes wholesalers and flips. And I wanted to be a wholesaler marketing type of company, but I still understood overall enough of the the basics and everything else that I mean, right out the gates, I took Brent Daniels' TTP course. Mhmm. And, I started sending mail and, got good results fairly quickly from from both of them and was able to hit that glorious phase of reinvesting profits within my first couple months.

Steve: Couple Yeah. Yeah. That's pretty good.

Jason: Yeah. I mean, I was I started in September, and I think I was profitable in October.

Steve: Wow. So what was more stressful, quitting your radiation job or quitting that company?

Jason: That company by far. Not even quitting the radiation therapy job was honestly exciting, because it was like, hey. I can actually like what I'm doing Mhmm. Every day. And we had a couple of advantages too where I was living super

Steve: frugal Yeah.

Jason: On on very little. And so I didn't need to make a whole lot to be able to pay the bills. And we had some savings, so I had some runway Mhmm. To go make some mistakes if I needed.

Steve: Got it. Would your wife agree with all that?

Jason: I would say so. One of my wife's great strengths is, like, she has a lot of faith and trust in me. Like, she's like, if if Jason thinks he can do it, he can do it, and I I believe in him. So That's awesome. She was, yeah, she was definitely most excited to have me leave the company where I was putting in crazy hours.

Steve: Yeah. So when you say crazy hours, what what kind of crazy hours are you talking about?

Jason: Like, fifty, sixty hours.

Steve: Okay. And then I think what's what's really cool. Right? Because the first five years is you're you're working on somebody else. And you were working crazy hours, but were you doing well financially?

Jason: Yeah.

Steve: So, one thing that we have a lot of people say, you know, how do I get started? This and that. And one of the things I say is, you know, you can sign up for coaching and mentoring, whatever, but you haven't done a deal yet. Learn using someone else's money. Mhmm.

Go work on someone else's team. Right?

Jason: I I think it's a very underrated way to get started Yeah. In this space.

Steve: Where you can grow. You can get trained.

Jason: Mhmm.

Steve: You're not risking anything. You have less upside, but you have no downside.

Jason: Right. I will say if I had my five years to do over again at that company and I was told you have to do it again, but you can't get paid, you have to go figure out getting student loans, like, you have to work that five years entirely for free, I would 100% do it again Yeah. Looking back.

Steve: Yeah. So because, I mean, if

Jason: you think about it, a doctor goes into how much debt pays all that stuff. And, you know, doctors don't make what a lot of wholesalers and real estate investors make. Like, the education's valuable.

Steve: Yeah. And they're working seventy, eighty hours a week Right. Making, like, 40 to 80,000 a year in their first two or three years of residency.

Jason: Right. Right. Yeah. I'm complaining about my work life balance. I've got nothing on a doctor going through residency.

Steve: Alright. So you're profitable right off the bat. And this is Creation Utah?

Jason: This is Creation Utah.

Steve: So Creation Utah, this is, like, what, 2017?

Jason: Yep. So I started September 2017.

Steve: Okay. So and then you said the first month was profitable and has been, like, the wind behind your back the whole time? Or, like, what were

Jason: I mean, fortunately, we were talking about this before. You know? 2012 was or, yeah, 2012 overall was a pretty good time to start in this. Right? Like, the the wave has been moving up this entire time.

So I will say, you know, year over year, quarter over quarter, continued growth. Mhmm. That said, definitely, ups and downs along the way.

Steve: Yeah. So what were some of the, ups or some

Jason: of the downs? So, I mean, I would say, I like a lot of business owners, I run a pretty common cycle of, you know, I go work on systems, processes. I work on marketing. I work on sales and everything else, and then it works. And then I get a whole bunch of leads, and I'm focused on the leads.

And then, and this was I would say this was earlier on. Then you get focused on the leads, the marketing, the systems, the processes fall off. And then pretty soon, you don't have any leads, then you keep running through that cycle.

Steve: It's this, kind of this roller coaster. Right.

Jason: Yeah. So my first year was definitely marked with plenty of that.

Steve: Yeah. And I think that's every solopreneur. Right? So Brian Buffini is you know, you're you and I are both licensed realtors. Yep.

Right? So I remember, Brian Buffini talks about, like, you know, this this is the evolution of every person that works for themselves. And the only difference is as you grow, is just the the ups are high, and the lows are not as low Right. But the swings are bigger.

Jason: Yes. Right.

Steve: Yeah. Which is also stress I know what our everyone else talks about.

Jason: Absolutely. Yeah. So because as much it's even though you may not be going into losing money, it still feels like a strong perceived loss.

Steve: Right. Well, you know, in one month, you make 200, and the month next month, you make 80. You start increasing your expenses to line up with the 200. Yes. But the expenses don't go down because the revenue goes down.

Right. Yeah. Okay. So then, so you got this roller coaster because you're run working by yourself. So then how did you fix that?

Jason: Staff. So, I mean, it started with a virtual assistant, as you know. Mhmm. I'm a fan of virtual assistants. And then I continued to add people and automate processes so that they happen without me.

So, you know, even though I'm busy in my first year, you know, working sellers, things like that, there's somebody in charge of making sure that the mail still goes out.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jason: There's you know, we've got KPIs starting to come in, making sure the phone's getting answered every time, it rings. And all of those key fundamentals that need to happen to keep a business running, I started to get someone besides me in charge of them and the KPIs where I can look and consistently see, okay. Are all of these numbers on track?

Steve: Got it. So you hire VAEs to start doing all this. When did you, start pulling data from the counties and so on?

Jason: Great question. So, when I when I first got started so, '20 in 2017, even 2018, all I really had to do to get a good result mail wise was I went to ListSource. I pulled you know, it started with, I think, the absentee equity. And then, you know, I I I continued to grow. Like, I you know, I kept getting good results.

So it's like, well, let's see how much more we can spend and keep getting good results. I reached the point where I was like, okay. I've got the equity list

Steve: Mhmm.

Jason: Now, in my in my favorite markets and year built and everything else. But then I started to see a diminishing return based on that because the markets continued to tighten ever since I've been doing this. You have less deals, more competition. And so at that point, it was like, okay. I've gotta start getting more creative on how I do this.

And that's when I started having virtual assistants going straight to the county and pulling because, you know, I started by going on to, like, your repo gateways and your list source and pulling lists. But, you know, what I would say, one of my strengths is I like to inspect things. I don't just naturally like, if someone says something's true, initially, I'm like, okay. I'm gonna go prove real quick why that's not true. So I kinda did that with, like, you know

Steve: So you're skeptical by nature?

Jason: Yes. Alright. So, you know, I get a list of notice of defaults from list source or repo gateway, and I said, okay. Well, I'm gonna go look and see what's actually recorded at the county to see, you know, what do these look like in real life? And it's like, this one's nine months old.

This one's six months old. This one never even happened. This one and I was like, well, how do I get, like, notice of defaults that just happened? And all and so I figured out that, really, the only true source is direct to the source, which is at the county. So I started paying virtual assistants to go log in to all of the counties and pull that information directly.

Steve: And when did you start doing this?

Jason: I was I probably started close to, like, 2018 is when I started doing that.

Steve: So really, in the grand scheme of things, not that long ago I mean, it's coming up on three years, but still fairly recent. Right. 2018.

Jason: My my whole doing it on my own real estate career is fairly recent. I mean, I started September 2018 or 2017.

Steve: Yes. It's but it's kinda bonkers to think about because of everything you've accomplished. Right?

Jason: Thanks.

Steve: So you start having to pull it, and then you start mailing to this list? Or what did you do do with this data?

Jason: Mailing and cold calling at the time. Texting didn't exist then.

Steve: And so you start mailing and cold calling this list versus the list source and whatever. How did your results, change?

Jason: Improved significantly. And I 2019 was the big year where I really realized the value of this. You know, I had pulled the big bulk list, as well as I had pulled the individual motivation points plus driving for dollars leads and things like that, and found that of my list based closings, 80% of them came from either direct VA pulls and or driving for dollars. And I was like, wow. That lined up really well with the 8020 rule.

Like Yeah. Because the 80% of my results came from, like it it wasn't quite as low as 20% of my overall list, but I was like, you know, this is the stuff that works.

Steve: The best bang for the buck.

Jason: Right. Right.

Steve: And so what did you do with that information?

Jason: So, so what started next, I had a friend, Stephen Williams Mhmm. Investor in the Bay Area who was like, hey. I can see you got a good thing going. He and I had actually worked together in Utah initially. And then so I started doing the same thing for him, and he got really good results as well.

And I was like, oh, if I can do this in the Bay Area, I bet I could do this most anywhere. Mhmm. So picked up a few other people that I was helping and then a few more that we were helping in Dallas. And then finally, January 2020 is when I officially rolled out Investor Machine with, Mike Hambright.

Steve: Yeah. And it's interesting because I joined Collective Genius, I wanna say, April 2020.

Jason: Okay.

Steve: And I was like, I watched your presentation because you were one of the top presentations at one of the events, I think, the March event. So I was like, okay. Well, I just joined. Let me go watch the previous presentations I watched. I was like, man, that's a really cool idea.

And so I was like, I better reach out to that guy at some point. I didn't. Not at least not then. So, again, not that long ago. Right?

So what is some of the success that you've seen other people have with Investor Machine?

Jason: So what so January 2020, I think we had four, five, six people. Today, we've got 116 members Wow. All over the nation. And by and large, like, results are awesome. Yeah.

So we're we're building their list for them based on the virtual assistants pulling directly from the county as well as we actually score the entire, county. So, I guess it was your team that did it. Yes. But so we we'll go and we'll score every aspect of the property, the ZIP code, year built, year zone, equity, everything. We score them all on a scale of one to five based off of what's your ideal.

You know, what's the ideal investor property? Then we layer in the motivation points on top of that, and what you wind up with is a list from best property, best seller, the very first person you'd wanna market to, all the way down to worst property, worst seller, the very last person you'd wanna market to, which in Maricopa County is what? 8,000,000?

Steve: I think we have

Jason: got 8,000,000 people.

Steve: 5,000,000 people. Not Maricopa County. Maricopa and Pinell.

Jason: Okay.

Steve: Alright. So Phoenix Metropolitan Area.

Jason: It's 5,000,000.

Steve: It's 5,000,000.

Jason: Yeah. So and so, basically, we take that 5,000,000 people worth of houses and sort it from the first one you'd wanna hit to the last one you'd wanna hit.

Steve: Of 5,000,000?

Jason: Yeah. And then, obviously, you're not gonna make it past the top I mean, here, you're not gonna make it past the top two or 3%. There's other markets where you may make it ten, twenty, 30% in. And then we actually run the mail for you. Yeah.

And we've got and we've got all sorts of cool things that we do mail wise, which is higher level than what your most people are doing traditionally on their own. And, really, one of the things that we prevent as well is that same cycle that I was talking about, The account managers are awesome. They make sure mail goes out every month, and the phone is ringing. Mail hits same day of every week of every month. And it it's consistent.

It runs like clockwork. Yeah. We got it. It's cool. So the results overall have been really good.

I mean, when you were just on stage with, Eric Brewer, he said that for every dollar he was spending, he was getting $7 back

Steve: Yeah. That's pretty good.

Jason: In his market, which is is great. It's exactly what I like to

Steve: hear. So going back to yours, right, a 149 transactions, wholesales and flips last year Mhmm. What percentage would you guess came from or estimate came from Investor Machine?

Jason: So I know for that one this year, it's, like, 70 or 80% of my overall revenue has come from investor machine. Wow. So this year, I've you know, different things. One thing I say all the time, the only way to have a stable real estate business is to have multiple strong marketing channels.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jason: Right? And multiples because I constantly have things that, you know, this one's up, then this one's down, and this one's up, and this one's down. This year, my investor machine has been definitely leading the way. Last year, I was probably closer to 40%

Steve: Mhmm.

Jason: Of my overall deals, but that's because I had a rocking relationship year last year, where everything we were doing with networking, relationships, getting properties off the MLS, co wholesales, things like that was working really well. And then starting January, you know, I I always think the market's, like, as hot as it can get. But starting January year, Utah hit just, like, crazy hot and crazy low inventory. And because of that, it everybody was kind of holding on to their inventory. Like, the person that would usually co wholesale with me Mhmm.

Wasn't anymore because they would just flip anything they could get. Yeah. And so, that said, my income has remained solid because investor machine picked up where, the relationship slowed down.

Steve: There's something I wanna hit on because we didn't, I remember you and I had a private conversation about this. Right? And everyone says they're good at dispositioning. Right. And you say, well, how good are you?

And there's an actual way we can measure this.

Jason: Right. Okay. So, yes, that that's one thing that I found. Everybody in real estate says they're good at dispositioning.

Steve: Well, I

Jason: can make one call, and I can sell this property anytime. Right? No big deal. I'm great at this. But here's my question.

Now I want you to sell that property at pick a number. 80, 100% of ARV. And then I want you to tell me that you're good at disposition still. Earlier this year when the market was hot, we were averaging over a 100% of it. We had a month where we averaged over a 100% of ARV.

So, like, the property hasn't been rehabbed yet. You still have to, you know, they still have to buy it, put all the rehabs in, cover holding costs, selling costs, and profit. But we were still selling for more than what we were projecting we were gonna sell it for after we had, after we had flipped it. Yeah. We're not that good anymore.

Market has definitely scaled back some, but we still are sitting above 80% of ARV is what we're wholesaling for. So that's in my opinion, that's a rarely tracked number in your business that everybody should track.

Steve: Well, I think, yeah, we're gonna score disposition. Right? Because one thing we track a lot is, like, how many new contacts did you make? How many new relationships did you make? How many people that we've sold to are you talking to per week?

Right? Those are the KPIs we're tracking.

Jason: Mhmm.

Steve: But you brought that up. It's like, oh, maybe we should also track what percentage of ARV are we selling for.

Jason: Because in the end, that's what matters. You can talk to people

Steve: Mhmm. Till

Jason: you're blue in the face. But what's that's those are all great lead indicators, but the lag indicator is what what percent of ARV are you selling for? You can also track it as what percent of ARV minus repairs.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jason: That's probably a more accurate number, you know, because if you sell a light remodel and you versus a heavy remodel next to each other, it's gonna throw off your numbers. For sure. A or but ARV minus repairs is also intensely subjective.

Steve: Yeah.

Jason: ARV in and of itself is subjective. And then you add in the repairs, it gets that much more subjective. I mean, when I have people fill out my offer form, I actually ask them, what do you think is the ARV on this house and how much would repairs be? And the variation in the numbers of people that The

Steve: owners or the buyers?

Jason: Wholesale buyers.

Steve: Okay.

Jason: So if I send out a wholesale contract, a wholesale buyer will go through and say, you know, this is what I think the repairs would be. This is what I think AirView. I'll be a $100 different between the highest one and the lowest. Like, one person will say 400, one person will say 300, one person will say 80 in repairs, one person will say 12. Right?

Like, those those numbers are decently subjective for sure.

Steve: Well, I but I like the you know, everyone thinks they're good at this book because they one of the challenges myself, right, as a sales trainer, every salesperson I talk to believes they're great at sales. That's true. And so for you, you're saying everyone thinks they're good at dispositions, but are we really scoring the right metric? And I think once we measure once we measure what their actual percentage of of dispo or dispo price versus ARV. We're gonna find out how good you really are.

Jason: So what's your favorite metric for sales?

Steve: My favorite metric for sales?

Jason: Mhmm.

Steve: I mean, the one that we are always harping on is really and maybe this doesn't translate necessarily, the best, but actual first appointments. And I think that's something that not a lot of people track. And the reason why is because if you ask a salesperson how many appointments you went on, they will count all the ones that were a second, third, and fourth appointment. Right? Right.

They'll count every follow-up appointment as an appointment. Like, no. I don't care about second, third, and fourth. How many opportunities did you have, Les? Like, how many real legitimate opportunities did you have last week?

And so we measure AFAs, and we're always tracking AFAs. So actual first appointments to held appointments.

Jason: Got it.

Steve: Those are the things that we're always tracking on because that tells us that lead quality and so on. Doesn't tie the closest, right, to to revenue, right, contracts and appointments. Those those will be more, but those are the ones I'm always always fighting with the team. I was like, are we are we actually measuring this? Because this tells us how much more marketing or less marketing we need to do.

Jason: Makes sense.

Steve: Yeah. That's cool. So the other thing too I wanna talk about, well, actually, before we go into that. So 80% of your deals this year are coming from investment machine leads.

Jason: Mhmm.

Steve: As far as

Jason: I would wanna have my KPI sheet up to you exact 80% in there.

Steve: Okay. But percent of the revenue. So then let's talk about actually marketing to it. Are you getting most of your business from direct mail, calling, or other forms of marketing that are NAS compliant?

Jason: All of the above. I do not do RVM. Okay. I don't have any interest personally in RVM. I feel like, you know, you have gray and you have more black.

I consider RVM to be more black.

Steve: Definitely more people have got in trouble for that one.

Jason: Right.

Steve: So, what percentage would you say direct mail is bringing to revenue?

Jason: Good question. I would say, again, it varies a lot quarter to quarter. The with with the with the up and down, I think my first two years, direct mail was probably, like, probably 70% of my overall business. Mhmm. I would say of that, oh, it's probably 50% now.

Yeah. But it also has to do with the amount I'm spending as well because I'm actually spending less on direct mail than I am on those other channels.

Steve: Is there a reason why?

Jason: I will say, no. There's not really good reason other than, like, you know, I continue to bring on great salespeople Mhmm. And I continue to pay them, and I continue to pay them well. And I've got that ship just, like, rolling.

Steve: Yeah.

Jason: And I'm continuing to turn it it's actually different than it is for most people. Like, for most people, direct mail is much easier to turn up the dial. You just turn it up. But, like, it's almost like, you know, these other channels just, like, continue to naturally grow and continue to produce a really good return and everything else, and people continue to come in. And so it just, like, naturally grew, and I just need to crank up the other dial as well.

Because that's one

Steve: of the things that we're gonna be focusing on is we're gonna start doing more direct mail. Right? We've had such success with direct mail. We're gonna turn the Navi on even more. And it's actually kinda funny because I told you, you know, like, we did our first deal, and I think we said, you know, in our first drop, we we got two deals, and it was, I wanna say 70 k in revenue.

And your first thing you said you said to Maxim is like, stop right there. I want you guys to know that's not normal.

Jason: Right.

Steve: Right? But it's been it's it's continued. Direct mail has continued to be great for us because everyone else is still texting.

Jason: Right.

Steve: Right? And we stopped texting, just, you know, kinda for us, it's that same thing. Right? Like, the gray, that's definitely in the gray area. Mhmm.

It's not black. It's definitely in the gray. So we stopped texting because we just didn't wanna deal with any of that. So direct mail's definitely been great for us.

Jason: So Yeah. I I love direct mail. I love the scalability of it. I love, you know, the nature of inbound calls, marketing. And I think that, you know, direct mail, even more so than, like, PPC, reflects on your sales process too.

So I would say that's probably a lot of why it works so well for you guys is you guys are rocking it sales, sales process, and everything else. And the better you are at that, better you are at lead management, the better you are at follow ups, the better your acquisition managers are, the better the results you're gonna get.

Steve: Right. One thing that I I thought was interesting is you're a very big fan of MAPS coaching. True. And MAPS, for those of you guys don't know well, I wanted to share with everyone what MAPS is.

Jason: So Keller Williams, for their realtors, has a company called MAPS Coaching. Gary Keller took their best, coach, one of their best coaches and started MAPS business coaching Mhmm. Which is essentially all of the systems and processes of that make Keller Williams so successful and, specifically, their coaching company so successful. And then they take and apply that to, traditional, businesses. Mhmm.

Steve: But you're not a traditional realtor?

Jason: So so not traditional realtor. So MAPS Coaching is for realtors.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jason: MAPS Business Coaching is for everybody besides realtors.

Steve: Got

Jason: it. So MAPS Business Coaching does not coach any realtors. They only to to my understanding, they only coach, like, traditional businesses.

Steve: So one thing that's really interesting is that you're a very big fan of personal development. You and I are both in Hero's Journey together.

Jason: Darren Hardy. That's one thing we both have in common for sure.

Steve: Darren Hardy nerds, insane productivity, Hero's Journey.

Jason: Which, by the way, I count my I'm when when I when I first heard your create a 100 millionaires thing, I was like, sounds like something influenced by by Darren. And I totally count myself as one of your millionaires because all the way up, when when I first started and was like, okay. I've done you know, I don't necessarily wanna do this exact same flip business. I gotta go learn what I need to do. The podcast I listened to is BiggerPockets, Wholesaling Inc, and Real Estate Disruptors, and this was the one that I never missed.

So I definitely a huge part of my business came from your guests on here in Real Estate Disruptors.

Steve: Oh, I appreciate that.

Jason: I wish you were selling as much stuff then as you are now. I would have been in in all of it and would have gotten even further faster.

Steve: Yeah. So but it so it's really cool. Right? Because, like, you you and I are both really, you know, big on personal development. But what's I find even even more admirable is that you will pay to develop your people.

Jason: 100%.

Steve: So can you talk about that? Because not everyone like, a, some people don't wanna pay for personal development. Like, why do I need this? Right? I can go do this on my own.

And I was that ignorant person when I first started. Right?

Jason: It's like,

Steve: why would I ever pay for someone? I could just learn on my own. You not only pay for your own personal development, but you pay for your teams. Can you talk about that?

Jason: Yeah. So I'm a I'm a big fan of the best investment you can make is investing in yourself. I I try to spend as much money investing in myself as I can, and I I usually get limited on time away from home and the family before I do on money I'm willing to spend on personal improvement. But, yes. So all of my key top sales guys have their own individual MAPS sales coach.

Yeah. So it's it's called MAPS business coaching, but these are guys that are, like, masters of sales. Mhmm. Oftentimes, they come from the realtor space. Like, one of my guys' coaches, the was top performing realtor in all of Florida, Greater Orlando area, tons of sales training, everything else.

And it's really cool to have somebody and Darren talks about this all the time as well. It's cool to have somebody telling them, here's what to do in holding you accountable, not name Jason. Yeah. Right? Like, it's the familiarity effect.

I'm continuing to tell people this. They don't it it doesn't have the same effect as hearing it from somebody else. Right. So I have gotten phenomenal return, on having weekly one on one sales coaching calls Yeah. With, with my people.

Steve: Yeah. So it's totally admirable. The other thing I wanna touch on as well is you and Casey Ryan

Jason: Mhmm.

Steve: Were on stage, not too long ago, six months ago, featured on stage to talk about running a profitable business. Mhmm. And my takeaway from watching both you speak and Casey speak, probably different than everyone else's takeaway. My takeaway was the guys that could run insanely profitable businesses are those that can sit in the divisionary role and the integrator role because that's you and that's Casey. Now I think it's kinda crazy to sit in both seats.

Jason: I I agree. It's something I'm working on getting out of.

Steve: But do you have any thoughts on on that? It's interesting.

Jason: I think that, you know, oftentimes, the person that is the company owner, most of the time is going to do things to the highest level Mhmm. Because they they you know, when when it's your money, you care a lot about it. Right?

Steve: Right.

Jason: And so I think that when that person is the visionary and when that person is the integrator, it helps them it it means that the person that cares the most is doing that at the highest level. I think the other part of it is when you're the visionary and when you're the integrator, you know, there there's there's difficulty sometimes that come from the visionary integrator relationship. Right? When you're just the visionary, you get to come up with infinite ideas. Right?

And just tell the integrator, go do it. Go do it. Go do it. Go do it. Mhmm.

But when you're the visionary and the integrator, you come up with an idea, and it's like, oh, do I really wanna do that? And so I feel like we're probably a little bit more selective on the things that we say yes to. You know? Again, to quote Darren from McSane productivity quoting Warren Buffett. You know?

Warren Buffett said one of the greatest keys to his success was for every 100 great ideas that someone rings my way, I say no to 99.

Steve: Right.

Jason: Right? So I think that being the visionary and integrator makes that a little bit easier because you know and even if you do wanna do a bunch, you can only do you can only integrate so many things at a time. But because we can integrate, we do integrate well Right. Those things that we do. So it's doing a few things excellently rather than doing a bunch of things, just okay.

Steve: And I apologize. I should allow everyone to understand further. Can you elaborate what a visionary and integrator are?

Jason: Yes. So this comes from, the books Traction, Rocket Fuel, basically anything written by Gino Wickman. He's kinda I correct me if I'm wrong. He's kinda the person that brings this to the place. So Mhmm.

The ideas, you know, people will oftentimes fall into one or the other. The visionary is the person who comes up with the ideas. Mhmm. The person who's always got the dreamer. Always got a new idea, but not the person who's gonna go actually make it happen.

Mhmm. The integrator is the person who goes and actually makes it happen, but isn't necessarily the first one to come up with an idea.

Steve: Yeah. So they wanna execute the vision Yep. But then add a dreamer. And I think for all anyone listening here, people that listen to this are more likely to be visionaries than integrators. True.

Right? And I think the other thing too

Jason: Even when we go to masterminds, I feel like it's probably 80% visionary or more and 20% integrator, unless the visionary brought their integrator.

Steve: Yeah. There you go. And I think the key here, right, is that there's hope for everyone that struggles in school.

Jason: Right.

Steve: Because if you struggle in school, probably a chance you were the visionary. Right. Right. So I think there's there's some saving grace there.

Jason: But you can do okay if you did it right in school too.

Steve: Oh, yeah. You could definitely do it right if you did okay in school.

Jason: But But a lot of people Yeah. And that's why you hear so many stories about the people you know, some of the wealthiest people that didn't do as well in school.

Steve: Yeah. And they're incredibly wealthy or so it's not that doing poorly in school is an indicator of success. Right. But the most successful people in school or the most successful people in life, financially at least, were not so good in school. Correct.

So then I guess if I were to you know, we talk about, you know, replicate your business. Right? If I wanted to build a business while doing I was doing just shy of a 150.

Jason: 149. We were talking about that before. If I if I would have seen that just a little bit earlier, I'd have done a deal for free to get to that 150 deal. But 149 is good too.

Steve: So if I were to try to go today to do a 149 transactions

Jason: Mhmm.

Steve: What bits of advice would you give to me starting from just doing a deal or two, a month?

Jason: So from small to big. Yeah. K. So, first thing, find a marketing channel. Get really good at it.

Steve: One marketing channel.

Jason: One marketing channel.

Steve: Focus.

Jason: I'm a big believer on master one marketing channel at a time and, ideally, a marketing channel that you can largely outsource someone else's expertise. Yeah. Right? So start with pay per click. Use a great pay per click company to run everything, and then you master building the sales company.

You know, it's funny as, you know, wholesalers and real estate investors now. People think that, you know, we're real estate investors. We're in real estate. We're living the HGTV life. Really, for the most part, we just run sales and marketing companies.

Mhmm. And so go build a really good version of your sales company that can be a really good funnel. Yeah. Once you have that one channel mastered, add another channel. Once you have that channel mastered, add another channel, add another channel.

Along the way, add key people. I'm a big believer in the importance of mastering the skill of hiring. So you said that most people think they're good at acquisitions. Most people think they're good at dispositions. Most people also think they're good at hiring.

The data doesn't show any of those to be true.

Steve: That is the biggest lie. If anyone thinks they're good at hiring, that's the biggest lie of all of them.

Jason: Right. So when when I first got started, when I when I first left the other company, one thing, you know, you and I are both highly influenced by Darren Hardy. Mhmm. He talks about don't just learn for the sake of learning. Learn to master a skill.

Yeah. Right? He's got his, like, ten, five, twelve, eight, six, four plan, whatever it's called, where he goes through and masters a skill. And so I decided I was gonna do the same thing, and there were I felt like if there were three skills I could master, I could really grow and do well. The first one was setting goals, and my favorite book for that is by Darren Hardy.

It's Living Your Best Year Ever. Mhmm. The second one was setting habits. If you can figure out how to goal set really well and then if you can figure out how to form habits around those goals, you can get a lot of the way there. Yeah.

My favorite book for that is Atomic Habits. But then that's only gonna get you so far. At some point, you're gonna have to turn it over to other people. So my third, skill that I wanted to master was specifically hiring. So Who The A Method of Hiring was my favorite first book for that.

But since I've taken a bunch of trainings, you know, I

Steve: Is that the book by Jeff Smart? Or is that

Jason: it yes. It's by it is. It's by not Brad Smart, but his son.

Steve: Yeah. Jeff Smart. Yeah.

Jason: Jeff Smart. Yep. Brad Smart is the top grader top grading guy. Yep. His son, Jeff Smart, did Houdier Method.

Steve: Yep. So alright. So, don't you wanna focus on sales and marketing

Jason: Mhmm.

Steve: And then hiring. Getting good at hiring.

Jason: Right.

Steve: So get really

Jason: good at working with them. That it's an actual skill to get good at hiring. So I put and and try to have, like, a system and a process, you know, and and and try to have, like, an actual scorecard for hiring people. Like, I'm looking know in advance what you're looking for and then have a scorecard for how well people fit in with that thing that you're looking for. Your gut is powerful.

Your gut's good, you know, but give it 30% of the Of the weight. Say, yeah, of the weight and then everything else everything else. And a lot of it for me as well, you know, I hire as much based off of core cultural personality, predictive index, everything fit as I do past experience. Yeah. Because, you know, especially in a wholesale company, there's no role in this company that I can't get somebody to pretty good at, like, to more than sufficient in less than 30 days.

Steve: Yeah. You can teach all the skills.

Jason: Yeah. I and and if, you know, if you can teach the skills in less than 30 days, you shouldn't be putting a super, super heavy reliance on already knowing the skills. You should be putting a much heavier reliance on the right person.

Steve: Yeah. And I think that's there's a lot of wisdom there that a lot of people kinda skip out on. And I think the other thing you, I wanna hit on, because you you mentioned this, is that the we are a sales and marketing business. And everyone kinda forgets this. Right?

Like, you know, everyone says I'm in the real estate business. I'm in the, insurance business, whatever. Like, no. We're all in the sales and marketing business.

Jason: Mhmm.

Steve: And a really cool thing right now, at least in our industry, is you don't even have to be a great marketer. You You can outsource it.

Jason: Right. Right. There's there's for for every different way that you wanna market, you've got somebody great at TV. You've got somebody great at pay per click. You've got somebody great at mail.

You just line up for those people.

Steve: Find the right people. Right. So and, really, we need to has one monitor the marketing, make sure that the the the vendors you're using are good, but really just sales management companies.

Jason: Right.

Steve: Right. We just need to find people that can handle the sales.

Jason: Right. We need to go create a net to catch fish

Steve: Yeah.

Jason: And not let any fish slip out that are throwing in the net. They're getting thrown in the net. Yeah. And I will say that was actually my biggest slower of growth in my first year was building out that net. I I always for I think because of my I wasn't naturally wired this way, but I think because of my past experience as well as, working with Steven, I wasn't scared to spend money on marketing from the start.

The thing that has slowed me down from the start is, just making sure I had a net to catch all the fish. So I put a lot of time, effort, and energy into making sure I I build that build that net to make sure that the all of the fish get caught.

Steve: And I think the one thing is that I'm glad we had this conversation because now I feel safer because the one thing I sell is sales training.

Jason: Right.

Steve: So if everyone has a sales business, then it's great that I have that one tool Right. That works for that.

Jason: And I will say, I'm one of your clients. My acquisition managers love it. We love your sales training. It's really good. Anybody considering it, I highly suggest you sign up for Steve's sales training.

Steve: I appreciate that. Thank you very much. So one thing we talked about in introducing the show, we haven't talked much about it, is you spend less than five hours a week on your company. Mhmm. How is that possible?

Jason: Really good. So let me let me rephrase that specifically. I spend less than five hours on my Utah company. Right. So most of my time goes into building, growing, perfecting investor machine, helping everybody like you, get the get the results that they're expecting.

So I set up really good systems, processes, and people to keep the results going. I mean, mail continues to happen because it's run through investor machine. I have somebody doing pay per click. I have, you know, training manuals. I have people in charge of making sure everything else is going like it's supposed to.

And I see the KPIs every week that let me know, you know, hey. Are we on track, or are we starting to fall off?

Steve: So then a lot of the right people in place.

Jason: Mhmm.

Steve: So then what are you doing for five hours a week?

Jason: Typically, it's what I just barely said. First, I do my so I run my whole company on the four disciplines of execution. That Great

Steve: book, by the way, if you guys haven't heard of it.

Jason: Yeah. So we do, so the first is, I never miss score, but we actually we were all in St. George for a company instead of doing a trip. It's the first scoreboard meeting I've missed since '20 whenever I applied the book, which I think was probably 2017. So being at the scoreboard meeting, reviewing everyone's numbers, KPIs is one of them.

Meeting doing one on one meetings with key team members. And then I would say the other part of it is answering the the random things that still come up that float to the top, which are growing increasingly smaller.

Steve: That's great.

Jason: And I will say, when I say the five hours is when I'm at when everything is running smooth and at its best. Anytime anything breaks, that number goes up because I'm, again, still integrator person going in and fixing that.

Steve: So there's no shortage of opportunities for me to travel the country. Everyone reaches out to me and say, hey. You wanna do this? You wanna do that? You wanna speak at this?

You wanna present here? I believe that. You wanna join this program? And I say to them the same thing you said to me once, because I have unlimited budget for most things except for time away from my family. Mhmm.

So how much is your budget for time away from your family?

Jason: So I am in, two masterminds

Steve: Mhmm.

Jason: Investor Fuel and Collective Genius. I'm a big fan believer in the power of masterminds. Anybody listening to this that's looking to grow their business that has at least a couple of deals under their belt, I highly suggest they join a mastermind. Yeah. And those are two excellent ones.

So, I would say I probably wind up taking a trip once a month to once every other month Yeah. Is about my travel budget.

Steve: And then do you have a a strategy? Because I struggle with this. Right? Is there a strategy for when you get in and when you leave?

Jason: For events? Yeah. You you know my answer. So the event starts at nine. I usually show up at about 09:30 because that's when the plane lands on Monday morning, and the event ends at one.

And I usually am flying out at two or at three. Right. So four hours. Miss out a morning of, and then I leave right again because because that means I can make one more event for sake of and and, you know, I don't wanna make that sound worse than it is. The idea is I wanna be my you know, the most important thing I do is being home with my wife, my kids, everything else.

I wanna keep that overall minimized. And with five little kids, it's a lot to leave, to my wife. So I do try to be back, as quickly as I can. I mean, even today for this. I flew in for I flew in now, and I'm on my way, once we're once we're done not spending the night.

Steve: I think that's great. So if someone wanted to find out more about Investor Machine, where do they go?

Jason: They're gonna go to the investormachine.com/steve. Because Steve's here, you get a buy one, get one market half off, because you're a, Steve Trang listener and you're listening to this podcast. So the investormachine.com/steve will get you a buy one, get one half off. If you just go to the investormachine.com, we're happy to have you there too. But then you have to pay full price for both markets.

And when we say market, we essentially mean counties. We sell because we we're so county based and we do, you know, county logins and everything else, we sell it basically by the county. Right.

Steve: And so you can

Jason: get a bunch more info.

Steve: We get and for us, we do Maricopa and Pinal. Yep. Alright. So, you're obviously a it is in some ways where you wanna do more things. So one thing you and I were talking about, many, many months ago actually was that there's one position that is the least appreciated, least loved, maybe most underrated position.

Jason: Mhmm.

Steve: What position is that?

Jason: First, I want everyone listening to take their guess in the whole estate. Obviously, we're not gonna be able to hear back from you. But in a wholesale company, what's the answer? Because I it it hits better if you've guessed yourself. In my opinion and in both of our opinion, it is the lead manager.

Yeah. The lead manager is the most overlooked position in a real estate investment company. Everybody puts all of this time, effort, and energy into the marketing. They put all this time, effort, and energy into cold callers and textures if they have them. They put all this time, effort, and energy into, their, yeah, their acquisitions, their dispositions.

And then there's just this person there answering the phone. Half the time, it's a VA and everything else. People don't give that person the credit, the attention, the training, anything else that they deserve.

Steve: A lot of the times, it's the VA. Yes. Not even, like, some of the times. A lot of the times, it's the VA. Yes.

So I'm sure you've been doing your research.

Jason: Mhmm.

Steve: Why do people do that? What is what do you what do you attribute it to?

Jason: Ease of hire. So it's it's hard to get a quality local person. Mhmm. It's much easier to hire a VA to do the job. There's a couple of reasons why I believe that logic is flawed.

And first off, I love VAs. A lot of people know me for being the guy that loves VAs. Mhmm. You know? Bill Bill Gates says you can solve any problem in the world through technology.

I believe you can solve any problem in the world through the right VA. Yeah. Which actually really isn't that true because I don't believe that you can solve lead management through the VA. Between the two companies, I have over 50 VAs. So, like, love I'm all in.

Love VAs. I do not have VAs as my lead managers in answering my inbound calls.

Steve: Okay. So I'll give you a chance here to to make that argument because there are a lot of people that disagree with this. Okay. So what is your argument for that?

Jason: So I have a couple. The first one comes from Austin McCurdy, who is works with Gary Harper Mhmm. Sharper. The people that have brought PI here. Mhmm.

Love those guys. Highly suggest them too. So, you know, people struggle hiring acquisition managers as well because they're trying to hire someone directly as an acquisition manager. The best way, in my opinion, to hire an acquisition manager, especially as a smaller company, is to hire a lead manager who you can train up to be an acquisition manager. Mhmm.

Much easier to hire as hard as it is to hire a lead manager, it's even harder to hire an acquisition manager. Hire a lead manager who you can train up to be acquisition manager. I have one of my my first acquisition manager, I did that exact process. And he's still with me today and is still fantastic. So that's number one.

Number two, this market's more competitive than ever. Think about this. You're a seller.

Steve: This industry.

Jason: This industry. Yes. More competitive than ever. You're a seller. You got and let's say we'll pick paper we'll we'll pick mail.

As good as investor machine is, we're not mailing people that no one else is mailing. Mhmm. And anybody who's selling you that, is if if no one else is mailing them, there might be a reason. Yeah. But, you know, if that that's great.

We're really good at finding probates,

Steve: notice of defaults, whatever. We're not the only ones that

Jason: have, that have that information. Yeah. So, it's gonna be you know, I mean, statistically, those people are way more likely to sell. They're still who you wanna mail, but the problem is they've got a stack of postcards.

Steve: Right.

Jason: So if they call the first person, they they're already 50% sure you're a scam. Right? Like, the we buy house of signs, like, people are already pretty sure that we're scammed.

Steve: Especially if it's inside a road.

Jason: Yes. Right. But, like, even postcards, people kind of assume the same thing. Right? Like, real estate investors seeking trainee, $20 plus a year.

Like, this whole industry, people are still convinced we're a scam. Right? So if they call and, you know, what they get is a voice that doesn't sound like someone local to them, like, theory confirmed at this point. Right?

Steve: Mhmm.

Jason: And, sure, they're gonna hear them out, but, and, you know, they make

Steve: really high. What's that? Their guard is really high.

Jason: Their guard is incredible. And you can hear it. I mean, I listen to I listen to the calls. You can hear. Guard is high.

And, you know, sure, they can get the low hanging fruit. But in this market, you cannot afford to just get the low hanging fruit.

Steve: Especially with how much money we spend on marketing.

Jason: Right. And especially with the value of a closing Mhmm. In what we do. So, so, you know, you've got that base level, and then you get even and then you get even better. You you wanna be too than just an appointment setter as well.

Mhmm. Because the problem is if all you have is an appointment setter, no problem has been solved here. Right? So I call the first postcard. This person answers and says, okay.

Great. We're gonna come, you know, Tuesday at eight. Great. Okay. My problem is not solved at this point, and I have no faith in this person.

Steve: You as a seller, your problem is not solved.

Jason: That's the problem. Right.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jason: And so they just keep calling through. Mhmm. So if you can get someone that can actually build rapport with the seller, and have them feel like their problem is solved and that and the type of person that's actually going to make sure that whatever the very first appointment the sailor possibly has is when the acquisition manager is going, you're gonna get a far better return on your marketing than you are. So, I mean, really, like, the thing that the first level of comp the first layer of competition in the war, I guess, is really initially how do we do it our marketing. Right?

What's your creative on your pay per click ad? What's your creative on the,

Steve: That's our first impression.

Jason: That that's your that's your very first impression. Right? Very next impression is the lead manager. Mhmm. And it's okay.

Is this company as good as they say they are, or are they not? And we've done well at this. We've done not well at this. I was recently listening to a group of calls, and I actually heard a seller say, even to me, from my local lead manager, okay. I'm gonna go.

Looking at your guys' postcard, I really thought you guys were the professionals. I thought you could help me. I was clearly wrong. I'm gonna go. Right?

Those phone hurts horrible. Those phone calls hurt so bad when when you hear those phone calls and things like that. Right? Right. So opportunity lost.

That's not to say that that seller would have been our exact seller. Right? But they very well could have been. You get five, ten of those in a row, and, you know, you've you've lost a dealer too, which Yeah. Far more than pays for the difference between an overseas lead manager and a local lead manager.

Yeah.

Steve: I mean, you can hire someone at $4 an hour, Right. Or you could pay someone on commission Right. That can close a deal. Right.

Jason: And, you know, fortunately, I listened to this call and knew that this happened and can do additional training

Steve: Mhmm.

Jason: With the lead manager who's the right person. But so many of us never listen to calls, never do any additional training. We just assume it's going until we randomly one day listen to a call, and it's like listen to a group of calls. Like, how did we get this far off?

Steve: Yeah. I mean, again, I do sales training. Hang my head on sales training. And I listened to a call, I wanna say, like, eight, nine months ago. I was like, are you guys serious?

Jason: Right.

Steve: He's not with our company anymore. But I was just thinking, like, are you serious? Like, I train against this specific behavior.

Jason: Right. Makes you feel like a total fraud. Right? Happened to me once where I, mailed I I I mailed myself on a house. Right?

And I was so mad because, like, there's no reason this house should have been mailed. Right? It should have never come up, and I was like, a fraud. I'm I'm supposed to be the guy that's so good at data and everything else, and I was so mad. And I did a whole bunch of research into it and found out that I didn't pay my property taxes.

So then I I paid my property taxes. Right? But I know I know that feeling of, like, I'm the guy that people rely on for this, and I can't even do it for myself.

Steve: Yeah. So because of all this, you and I, we collaborated many, many months ago. Mhmm. And we were doing a lead manager training.

Jason: Mhmm.

Steve: Now it's not out yet, but we're gonna be doing this out come November 1. Mhmm. But we're only allowing a handful of people to sign up initially because we wanna do it right. Mhmm. I've been a part I've been a participant in too many programs where they were testing on us, and I was not excited about that.

Right. So we're only allowing 20 people to sign up for our lead manager training program in November. So if you guys are interested in joining the wait list, go to disruptors.com/leadmanager. And before we go into the questions for everybody else, guys, we're giving away $10,000, for our new podcast, disruptors remarkable influencers. If we were to do the drawing today, we would only you have a one in twenty chance of winning $10,000.

Now those 20 people

Jason: How do I sign up? I'm in.

Steve: Yeah. So you just gotta go to stevetrainmoney.com, and you have a chance to win. I hope you win. I'm in. Alright.

So you just go stevetrainmoney.com, and you can enter to win your chance enter to get a chance to win $10,000. We're gonna be giving away $10,000. I'm surprised by how more people doing it. Alright. So let's go to the questions.

Boy, we got a lot.

Jason: While you're pulling them up, just a little more the sales training thing. I'm really excited. First off, the the two of us together, we're gonna be able to do something awesome. The combination of Steve's sales training plus our systems behind is gonna be awesome. Basically, the system that we have is it is a artificial intelligence software that will take and listen to all of your calls and then come back and give the seller a score and and the lead manager a score.

Because no business owner likes to go I I know it. There there's little in this world that I like less than listening to every call that comes in. Right? Most of us don't do it. And even, you know, it even a lot of people won't even hire a VA to do it.

They just don't let it happen. Mhmm. So the idea is we we've had a software solution. This software will listen to all your calls. It will give your lead manager a score.

It will give your and it will give the seller a score. So we we got that far, but then we were like, that's okay. But just knowing what it is is one thing. Actually making the training happen, that's even more important. So that's where you come in with the excellent sales training to say, okay.

Here's here's what everybody's calls look like. Here's what we want them to look like. And then we can tailor the software around listening to how well are you fitting in with the formula and, answering questions like you should, asking questions like you should, and moving a call through and just, like, an easy natural just push button way to have your lead managers level up.

Steve: Yeah. And I think that's a great point. I forgot to mention that. Is that we're actually using software to diagnose the calls. Right?

We got AI listening to every single call, right, whether it's CallRail, Salesforce, and Podio or

Jason: cell phone. Right right now, the ones that we're live on is, CallRail, and soon to be Left Main. Mhmm. But as as people sign up, we'll add additional other, you know, based on how many people sign up for one you know, if we've got a huge group of people that are on RingCentral, we'll add RingCentral next. So Right.

Steve: So if you're using one of the four major Right. Programs, then we'll be able to have AI listen to the calls and diagnose how the lead manager did and how good of a seller lead this is.

Jason: Mhmm.

Steve: It's powerful. I don't think there's any reason not to use it. So so on Facebook, Victoria McKenzie, asked this is an early part in the call. When did you start flipping it? At what point?

Jason: Good question. So I have always been a small scale well, so in my previous company, we were heavy flippers. I mean, I think we did, like, two or three wholesales a year. Basically, everything else was flips. I have always been a cherry pick flipper since.

So I think I capped out at eight homes at a time, and have probably averaged closer to three or four homes at a time. So I did my first flip probably 2018, maybe even 2017, so pretty early. Yeah.

Steve: Do you enjoy it?

Jason: I don't hate it, but that's because I do it like, some people, like, hate the idea of flipping. I do it small scale. I have great construction crews that I've had for quite a while, and I'm minimally involved. Like, I walk it at the start. And I don't even I I do this at this part now because I want to more than because I I have to because I like the creative element of it.

I'll walk it at the start, say do this, and then I walk it at the end and say, good job. Here's your check.

Steve: That's awesome.

Jason: And I've got I actually don't even I'm a realtor, but I don't sell my own houses. Haven't for a long time. I've got a realtor that sells them. The whole process goes pretty smooth. So I

Steve: like it. Is not relying on you.

Jason: Right. Right. But, you know, that took effort to build and plenty of failures and frustrations. So, I mean, I've got a contractor that, you know, I trusted too much, and I paid most of the way to I think there was one where I paid, you know, the this is the early lessons that you learn. Right?

I think I'd paid him a 110% of what his bid was, and he was through demo. Right? And then he took out he actually wound up going to jail for nonrelated charges. I lost money on that house. So now I've had my fair share of construction fun, and lessons learned the hard way and things like that.

But at this point, it runs it runs pretty smooth, I like it.

Steve: Well, my hat's off to you. I can't do it. For me, it's the it's just more people to manage. Right. I wanna manage as few people as possible, which you wouldn't know it walking around here.

But

Jason: I saw a lot of faces. Yeah.

Steve: But I wanna manage as few people as possible. Alright. So, Instagram, Najeeb Passion. What do you do if I'm a professional sprinter? Alright.

We're gonna skip that question.

Jason: Lotto Not listen to me. That's for sure.

Steve: Yeah. I mean, I don't get paid to Sprint, so I can't say I'm a professional sprinter, but I wouldn't be opposed to it. So Lotto on YouTube, how can you having a real estate license become benefit when negotiating deals that you would like to keep? K. So I think so that might be a question of transparency or you know?

Jason: Yeah. So, I'm licensed. I like being that way. I feel like there's nothing that you can't do as a licensed person. Like, you know, people say, oh, there's too much regulation if you're, a real if you're a realtor in doing this.

Right? My feeling is if you can't do it as a realtor, you probably shouldn't be doing it whether you're a realtor or not. Yeah. Like, we try really hard to be the professionals and the good guys. And being realtors and, I mean, all my acquisition managers are realtors as well.

Oh, they're

Steve: all licensed?

Jason: Mhmm. My disposition manager, all my relationship managers are licensed. I pay for, like, nine licenses, I think. And we haven't Yeah. I think, one of my relationship managers just listed as mom's house.

Right? Like, we we don't use our license as much for traditional real estate, but I feel like it helps because, you know, it it plays to our persona, which is we're the professionals. We're, you know, we're licensed. We're we're the big guys in the room, and we're we're here to do things at a higher level.

Steve: Yeah. And I think going to your point. Right? Anyone that says don't get licensed, like, what are you trying to do that you can't do without a license? Right.

Or, like, what what what are you trying to do that having a license precludes you from doing? Right. Yep. Alright. So, Steven, a on YouTube, what questions are wholesalers now asking themselves when it comes to transitioning their side hustle into a business?

So if they're doing this on a side right now, what questions should they be asking themselves before they turn into a business?

Jason: I mean, I think the question I'd be asking myself is what exactly does this need to look at

Steve: Mhmm.

Jason: Before I'll make it happen full time. Right? Yeah. Like, what what are my what's my exact number that that I'm okay with? And then go and then figure out what are the steps between Gary Keller calls it setting goals to the now.

Mhmm. Right? You set the goal. This is what it needs to look like. What are all the steps along the way?

And then just focus on taking that one step at a time until you get there. So And

Steve: I think it's great. And this is actually something that, you know who Russell Shaw is? Mhmm. He's one of the biggest dogs in Phoenix on the on the traditional side. And I'm aware I was in a session with him.

He said, look. If you just write down right now what you want your business to look like in three years, just take five to ten minutes and describe it. And you can spend the five to ten minutes just describing it. Now you can break down what you need to do Yeah. To get there.

Jason: Right.

Steve: Yeah. So exactly what you said. Just said in a different way. Peyton Birx on YouTube, what was your first hires in order to scale? And if you start over, what would be those same hires?

So what were your first hires, and would the would those be the same first hires today?

Jason: Great. So I started with a I think my first one was actually someone to help me with cold calling back in the day. Mhmm. And then, virtual assistant, then lead manager, acquisition and project manager at the same time, bookkeeper in there. That one is another one of those very underrated positions.

If you wanna be good in this business and if you want there it I'm amazed how many people don't know what their net is and don't know their books. Everything that that's one thing that I constantly reach as well is know what your net profit is and make decisions around net profit Yeah. Rather than just around gross number of transactions, deals, etcetera. And, really, you can only do that with a good bookkeeper.

Steve: I think a lot of us are spoiled because I experienced it on the realtor side, and I experienced it on the wholesaler side. Yeah. The reason why we can get away with it and it's not a good reason. But the reason we can get away with it is because we're in a very high margin business. Right.

And high margins cover up a lot of mistakes. Right.

Jason: But when you look at those numbers every month, it's amazing how many things you see. Mhmm. And it's amazing how different it is than what you think it is. If there's one thing I've learned from being religious and looking at KPIs and books and everything else, it's amazing how even still how often I think it's something's a certain way Mhmm. And it's different.

Steve: Alright. Yeah. So one of the best things you can do for everyone listening, hiring a bookkeeper, is that you get to keep more of your money, which is more fun, I think. And then would those be the same hires if you were to order if you were to start over today?

Jason: One thing I would do different, and Gary Herbert finally convinced me of this, I would have hired the integrator much earlier.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jason: Rather than building it entirely myself, I would have and playing visionary and integrator. And in all businesses I'm doing going forward, integrator is, if not the first hire, very close to the first.

Steve: Yeah. And then one thing I would challenge you on, right, is if I were to talk to 201718, Jason, is don't hire a cold caller in the beginning. I see a lot of people, and you never talked about this. See, a lot of people try to hire cold callers upfront. And how are you gonna get good?

Jason: Right. And that that cold caller left me.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jason: And then, like I was talking about before, I took Brent Daniels' thousand seller challenge. You shouldn't hire a cold caller till you've talked to a thousand sellers because you're not going to be able to manage it. You're not gonna be able to understand it until you've done that. So I I learned that lesson after, that very first one that didn't work out.

Steve: Like, you're a great entrepreneur.

Jason: That's right. But really, like, I've got you know, my my path to success is full of countless little failures like that. You know? The the the my definition of a successful person is just a persistent failure. Yeah.

Just a failure who keeps keeps trying and keeps going.

Steve: Yep. Keep tripping and getting back up. Billy on YouTube, how are you selling a property that's at 80% of 80 plus percent of ARV, which, you know, we were talking earlier. Here's how you measure if you're good at this point or not. So this is scratched at 80%.

How were you for a whole month selling for a 100% of ARV?

Jason: I was finding sellers or I was finding buyers that were very happy to bank on appreciation. Mhmm.

Steve: And

Jason: as and, honestly, as long as they flipped the houses fast enough, some of them were okay. I mean, here's another thing about my market. We just barely got Opendoor. By just barely, I think they've been around a year. They're the only iBuyer.

We don't have a whole lot of hedge funds or things like that. So by and large, this is just traditional

Steve: Count your blessings.

Jason: Yes. Yes. More more coming. Yes. You're in Phoenix.

Counting my blessings. So, it's I mean, this is I could do a whole podcast on this. It's everything. Mhmm. You know?

And, really, the the secret to anything that I'm good at or even anything that, like, my competition is better at than I'm at is just consistently getting 1% better at every day at something. You know? Find something at minimum viable product state state Mhmm. And roll it out and then get a little bit better every single day. That that's what drives me is and and I I try to do that with every aspect of my business.

And I feel like most people assume that they were good at dispositions and didn't need to worry about it and so kind of forgot about it. Right? But for me, I found little ways to get better at dispositions. And it's it's a 100 little things that I do. Right?

Like, I've, in one other part in investor machine is I have that a whole big training library Mhmm. Where I go through every aspect of the business and say, hey. Here's a big breakdown of how to do this aspect of the business at the highest level. I've got a whole, like, hour and a half one just on dispositions in there. And I go through in that every different little thing that I do and the deal that caused me to get an extra ten, twenty, thirty, forty grand because I went and did that one thing.

Right? And it's things like I do Matterport tours on every wholesale email that I send out. Some people just take No

Steve: one does Matterport tours.

Jason: No one that right. It's not common. Right? But when I have that random guy who's in California flip now. I can look through this one.

Great. Okay. Yep. Let's do it. I'm gonna buy this one because I can buy it there.

Maybe one in ten, twenty. The other ones, it's a total waste of money. Mhmm. Right? But for that one,

Steve: I

Jason: made an extra $10.20, $30. It was worth it. Yeah. I got and I I just have I have a ton of little things like that that I do. I will you know, if a home is trashed or smelly or whatever, I will buy it, clean it out, get it clean, ready to go, and then I'll sell it that way.

I did two houses back to back that were like that. And this this was a perfect example because it was the same seller the same end buyer offered me $5 a piece for each of them. And these things smelled. He told me I owed him lunch because he took a step in and a step out and lost his lunch. Right?

And so I owed him that lunch. Mhmm. But I bought it, fully cleaned it out, and then wound up, and, I mean, I literally had to have, like, meth remediators come in and clean this thing. They cleaned it, like, 18 times. The smell was finally gone.

I sold those same two houses and made over a 100 on those two. Yeah. Right? So it the the answer is so many little things. But each of those little things just just set a goal of I'm gonna do this with excellence, and I'm gonna figure out how to get 1% better.

And I'm gonna slowly implement new ideas, and then you start to see the results. That's how Investor Machine came to be and why we get the results we get in mail. That's why I disposition the way I do. That's why I do all of the things that I do and have a great team to help Yes. Do it as well.

Steve: Latto on YouTube. Do you have any do you have your acquisitions guys' dispo as well?

Jason: I do not. So but, again, keep in mind, I'm I'm fairly large. I'm at I'm doing this at scale. So my acquisition guys are just focused on acquisitions. I actually have my, a disposition manager, an assistant disposition manager who's the one that goes and does all of the Matterport tours.

And then I have three relationship managers. These are guys that are constantly networking, becoming friends with other investors in the space further them to, a, bring us deals to co wholesale, but, b, for them to buy our deals. Mhmm. So So when I send out a deal, I send it out with each of my three guys' names instead of just one disposition manager's name, and I make them all compete to see who's the one that's gonna sell it. And the person that sells it is the one that gets paid a commission based on the sell.

So they're all fighting against each other to sell for the top dollar. So, no, I do not have them crossover.

Steve: And Peyton wants to know what would be the first few key factors at mastering hiring?

Jason: First few first few key factors. So number one, know what you're looking for before you hire for it. You know? Alice in Wonderland, Cheshire cat story. She walks up and says, hey.

Which way should I go? And he says, where are you looking to go? She says, I don't know. And he says, you can go either way. Very true of hiring.

If you're just hiring someone waiting to feel good about them, not good. Mhmm. Start with so I tried to build a business based off of the book, The E Myth Revisited. Mhmm. So the goal is you wanna build, like, a franchisable business.

You have cooks. You have cashiers. You have people, and you have role you know, you have specific roles, and then you wanna hire the people to fill those roles, not vice versa. Not, oh, I have this person. I really like this person, and so I'm gonna go create a role around this person.

It's these are the roles, and I hire people to fill those roles. So the first thing that I would do is I would build out and understand what are the roles that I need, who and what exactly am I looking for. Here's my quick tip number two. The lowest form and way of hiring is buying homes off is and what I would call equal to buying homes off the MLS is hiring people off of WiseHire, Indeed, ZipRecruiter, whatever website you wanna use. This is 2021.

Hard to get people that way. The best people you're gonna get are gonna be through networking, Facebook posts, someone that you know, someone that someone that you know knows. Lean much harder into that type of hiring. One thing Keller Williams teaches to do is to literally cold call. Like, pull out a list of 50 people that are most likely to, want to be with and support you.

Like, the people that, that, like, would most likely wanna help you call them and say, hey. I'm looking for this person. Who do you know that I should talk to? Keep them on the phone till they give you two or three people. Call them.

See if they might be willing to make a move.

Steve: Yeah.

Jason: That type of hiring is what gets you good quality a players. And even people that work for you, assuming you have a players that work for you, incentivize them to find other a players. When I was in building phase of Creation Utah, when when we had our wildly important goal from four disciplines of execution, we had the revenue goal, and we had to build out the team goal. So I actually had, like, an org chart. In order for us to win at the end of the corner and get quarter and get our incentives, we had to hit x in revenue, and this org chart had to be filled out.

And there was, like, blank names highlighted on there. And once all those names were full and once we got the revenue, then everybody got their rewards and everything else. And when I did that, people were far more incentivized to give me great referrals of people.

Steve: So it's a team sport.

Jason: That's right.

Steve: Yeah. Let's see what else is there. Ethan, the connect, Instagram. Any tips after you get a couple of deals how to turn that into an actual system? I think we kinda talked about that already.

Fallen gamer. Any advice on list pulling? He's in Dallas.

Jason: A lot of advice on list pulling. I mean, that that's kind of you know, if the if there's anything in if there's anything that I specialize in, it's list pulling. So, I mean, it would be go straight to the source, and try to get items directly from the the county, the courthouse, you know, classified ads. I mean, we'll even look at, like, estate sales, things like that. Yeah.

I would say go deep with great records.

Steve: And, you know, it's interesting great because we use an investor machine, and we have PropStream.

Jason: Mhmm.

Steve: And PropStream is great. It's just not as fast Right. As an investor machine because you guys get directly from the source.

Jason: Mhmm.

Steve: So by the time it was on PropStream, there's a lot of competition.

Jason: Right. By the time yes. That hits a lot of competition. And and in many cases, it's already sold. Mhmm.

And and one thing I know from being fairly deep in the data space, if there's one area where PropStream is least accurate, it's on recent buys and sells. Yeah. So the it it it's it's worse than that. It's even worse than what you think because not only did you miss it, but you're also wasting time, effort, and energy, and money marketing to it even though you already missed it. Right?

I mean, it'll be one thing to just miss it. It's another thing to be putting all of the time, effort, and energy into marketing to it. It's porn.

Steve: It's all

Jason: in the woods. Right.

Steve: Arafat on YouTube. How do I tell the address of the wholesale property to the cash buyer before I get proof of funds, or it's better to have the address after seeing a proof of funds from the buyer? So if you're trying to sell the property, do you disclose the address? I guess, ask another way. If you were to blast a property Yeah.

When you're disposing the property, is the address in the email blast?

Jason: There is. Yeah. So for me, it's with our whole process. So we we're pretty upfront. Again, we try to be the good guys.

We try to be the professionals. We're pretty upfront with our sellers on what we're doing. Mhmm. Right? Like, we're not going in and saying, we're gonna flip your house, and we have 30 contractors that are gonna come through at the same time on Tuesday, but we're only going to flip your house.

Right? Yeah. So, because of that, we just and we we overall trust our buyers process everything else. And so, yeah, we we

Steve: see But your buyers are screened. This is not a buyer that you pulled off of a Facebook post, right, when you're email blasting. These are vetted buyers that you're blasting.

Jason: I would say not really. No? No. I mean, it's it's a big list. I mean, we're we're constantly adding people.

Now that said, you know, in order for someone to know when they can walk through the house Mhmm. They have to get on the phone with us. But, yes, I mean, we do send it out to a list, and we do risk somebody trying to go around behind us and things like that. But in all of the deals I've done, it's almost never happened. So I will say, you know, probably a little bit of a limiting belief.

Like, you can you can share the address of the property and everything else, and it's pretty rare when it doesn't work out.

Steve: Yeah. Do you agree? Well, we've had someone, like, screw us. Cost us money. Like, we still close on it.

Right.

Jason: Yeah. Because here's the thing. You're in the right. All that happens when someone does it is it winds up worse for the seller Mhmm. And can turn into be, you know, a longer legal process and everything else.

But in the end, you still buy the house.

Steve: Yes.

Jason: And, you know, I've seen I've done some I mean, I'm working on a co wholesale right now with someone that brought me a deal. We're going through that exact same thing. I just helped him move one where we went through the thing where he went through that a while ago. Like, you you still wind up with the house Right. In the end, but it's not fun.

Steve: So in Salt Lake, Treehouse wants to know how big is that list that you're pulling?

Jason: What list? The Everything you're pulling from the from the county. Great question. So we're a little diff so this is the way we build the list on investor machine. I buy every record in the whole county.

So, like I said, every single person that owns property in there. And then we find every motivation point that can be found anywhere. We score every aspect of the property on a scale of five to zero, and then we take that county and sort it from the first person you'd sell to to the last person you'd sell to. We do pull in PropStream motivation points as well. Mhmm.

You know, anything that you can find online plus anything that you can find directly at the courthouse. So the answer is it's everything that's recorded at courthouse, at county, at random newspaper sites, you know, anything that can be found most most anywhere. And but we layer it in with the specific score of the property as well, run it through our algorithm, and that's what sees the magic the that's where the magic happens.

Steve: And Alexis Adams wants to know on Facebook, how often are you marketing to the same list?

Jason: Great question. So we take the best of the list. So, basically, if we can find three or more stack motivation points, and we will hit them every 30 days. I mean, these are these are good people. They got they're delinquent on their taxes and their approbate, and it's an absentee home.

Mhmm. Right? Those people, we feel like we hit them every 30 days. If people have two or less based on budget, how much you wanna spend, we hit the best of the list every 60. And we will hit them until they tell us to stop, they die, or they sell the property.

Steve: Yeah. And then Rudy Guerrero on YouTube, do you use realtor contracts for all your transactions?

Jason: I do. Yep. So, I use the official real estate purchase contract, because I'm a realtor.

Steve: And then Treehouse on Instagram, how do you invest in real estate now? It's funny because you and I just did a TikTok video

Jason: That's true. About Airbnb. So how do

Steve: you invest in real estate now?

Jason: So basically, everything I flip right now, I I wind up keeping as a rental. I either keep it as an Airbnb or as a traditional rental. I also have invested in a couple of syndications.

Steve: So if you flip it, you're keeping it?

Jason: Basically, everything at this point.

Steve: Okay. And then syndications, what talk talk more about that.

Jason: So, basically, a syndication is somebody else, one of our friends from Collective Genius, is buying, fixing up, and selling a 50 unit apartment complex. The bank will lend up to 80% of the purchase price. They need the other 20%, and the repair is done. And for that, they give you equity in the deal. Mhmm.

Steve: So

Jason: you get a bunch of depreciation upfront, and it usually winds up 15 to 20% interest rate. And it's the closest thing to passive income that I'm aware of.

Steve: Yeah. It's nuts the opportunities we have because of the friends we have, because of the masterminds we have.

Jason: 100%. They're not inexpensive, but the value is 100% there on masterminds.

Steve: Yep. So Latto, again, on YouTube, how do you compensate your project manager?

Jason: My project manager specifically. So my project I don't know that I'm the perfect one to ask this question for because my project manager is focused between my project manager is my dad, who is a, who is a senior software developer at UnitedHealth Group, but got through college on remodeling houses, and things like that. So he's familiar with that stuff. So he oversees a few contractors, but spends most of his time helping me build the software that runs investor machine. So I'm just gonna say I'm not the best one to ask that question too because unless you're planning on hiring your dad and having him be 80% software developer and 20% project manager, I don't have a repeatable solution.

Steve: Or Jason's dad.

Jason: No. I'm not hiring Jason. Not an option.

Steve: So what are disclosures that you use to cover your, your rear with the vision of real estate?

Jason: So I'm actually a pretty good person to ask this question to. And I will say every state's a little bit different. Mhmm. But we had a solid year where me and Cody and Clay Rock were were all very tied in with the Utah division of real estate. Mhmm.

And so, here's here's the biggest, most important one. So disclosure is the right word because as long as everything's disclosed, it's totally fine. So I disclose I'm a realtor. Obviously, you have to do that. I disclose I also disclose when I'm marketing, sending out a wholesale email that I'm a realtor.

Mhmm. I disclose that, I am a wholesale property buyer and that the offer that I'm giving them is not fair market value. I also typically will have them sign something called a for sale by owner agreement, which says, hey. I'm a realtor. You're not you don't owe me a commission.

I am representing myself. You don't have representation, and you're fine with all of that. Mhmm. That's basically it.

Steve: Yep. All the same things exactly that I do. Yeah. Because the last thing you wanna do is get dragged in front of the board.

Jason: I have been there. It's not fun.

Steve: It's not fun.

Jason: Most of those things, a lot of those questions, so I got fined for not using the real estate purchase contract and not doing not what I forgot to include my brokerage picture on one wholesale email. That was what started it, and then I hadn't done the real estate purchase contract and a few other little disclosures

Steve: violation Monday.

Jason: Really?

Steve: My very first one ever in my entire career, and it was for failure to managing one of my realtors who's wholesaling.

Jason: Darn it.

Steve: Right? And it wasn't like he did anything wrong. He did everything I told him to do. Turns out everything I told him to do was not necessarily correct. Got it.

So, technically, I was in the wrong, but I was looking at it. I was like, I made an honest mistake. Got hit with my first violation of my career in fourteen years. Congrats on making it fourteen years. Thank you.

I made it that far. I wish it was the first time, you know, I've been sued multiple times, but that was the first violation. Treehouse again on Instagram. Where are you finding your buyers?

Jason: All over. So Facebook groups is one of them. Networking groups is another. I have, a well SEOed website that has a lot of people come through. Honestly, one of the best ways to do it is when you have deals, have an easy way for people to join your list.

Mhmm. Like, if they click on any pictures or anything else, because it's amazing how many buyers come from my existing buyers forwarding an email to somebody else, And then have them be added onto the list as well.

Steve: So, let's just say that again in a different way. How do we have it? So you email blast. Mhmm. They forward it.

That person that receives the forwarded email clicks on that email.

Jason: Yep.

Steve: And from there, there's a pop up?

Jason: No. If they click on any pictures so, like, I have almost I have a lot of the things on there Mhmm. As a hyperlink to signing up for the list as well as Got it. Big wording on there that says, hey. If you were forwarded this, we'd love to have you sign up directly.

And then just and I will say, like, most of my list growth has come organically plus time, which has worked. Because in my opinion, the most important part of your wholesale list is not the size of your list. I mean, again, I have the national database. Right? I can go pull a list of everybody who's bought an absentee home with cash in Utah, and I can have 40,000 cash buyers like that.

And I can I can skip trace them all, get all their emails, and start spamming them? Right?

Steve: Mhmm.

Jason: What matters is how many engaged buyers do you have on your list? I'm constantly tracking what was my open rate, what was my click rate, you know, how many people are actually going and taking and looking at this. And we try to sit between 3040%

Steve: Are you of everybody that

Jason: we send emails to, and then click rate being, like, eight to 12%. So they opened it, and they actually looked at the Matterport. They looked at the photos. They looked at,

Steve: you know Are you actively calling your list, though?

Jason: Uh-huh. Yeah. I've got that's what the three relationship managers do.

Steve: Got it. Pace Morbius says hi on Instagram.

Jason: Hi, Pace.

Steve: How are you determining this one, Warner, on Facebook. How are you determining if you're flipping or, to keep or wholesaling?

Jason: Again, so there's some answers where I feel like I've got a good answer and some answers where it's what works for me, but not necessarily for everybody. So the answer is I do it entirely based off of when one of my three construction crews is ready for a next house. So when one of my I again, 149 deals, I have a decent amount of volume. Every every week, I've got a few more coming in. And when I'm getting close to a construction crew ready, as long as it's a light remodel and, you know, the type of home that I would wanna keep, then that gets moved over into, I I like, ideally, for the homes to only sit for, like, a week or two Mhmm.

Beforehand and then have them go jump on and start the next house. Otherwise, they're cycling through. Sometimes I'll have a home that I just fall in love with that I wanna keep that I'll let sit a little longer than that. But, that's that's it. If I were not me, right now, construction like, if if I was just an average, like, person not following my same thought process, here would be my governing rules.

One of the one of the resources that I don't think people give enough credit to is how much construction man hours. That I mean, that's if I had one most limited resource, it's construction man

Steve: hours. Mhmm.

Jason: And in this market, it's incredibly difficult to come up with construction man hours. So, I I would focus in on light remodels to flip the carpet, paint, lipstick stuff, not your more major remodels because, you know, if you can only flip so many and if you make a whole bunch more on flips, the more you can flip, the more you're gonna make. Focus on the light remodels in good neighborhoods, you know, the the no brainer stuff. You get to if you're a wholesaler, you get to be a cherry picker, so cherry pick.

Steve: Yeah. And that is the best thing about being a wholesaler.

Jason: Mhmm.

Steve: So, Andrew Aron, if they wanted to copy your business model, how would they do that?

Jason: The Utah one?

Steve: Just your business model, period.

Jason: So, I mean, do everything that I said in here. I mean, it it's kind of the start of when you ask the question. Right. Start one marketing channel at a time, hire people in that order, and really focus on hiring. I mean, honestly, most of my success has come from hiring good people, setting up good systems, and getting out of their way.

Yeah. So that that's really important. Like, get good at hiring. Get good at, you know, leading, setting up pretty good systems, and get good at get good at getting out of your great people's way and helping them feel appreciated and wanna stay.

Steve: And I think that's one thing you and I have in common is that we got amazing people. Mhmm.

Jason: And it

Steve: might help that because we have the same idol.

Jason: Right.

Steve: Darren Hardy. Darren Hardy.

Jason: We just We're both in the leadership training.

Steve: Yeah. Both in leadership training, both in the productivity training.

Jason: Yep.

Steve: I I imagine you listen to Darren Daily. Of course. Right? So my poor kids, they have to listen to it with me every single morning.

Jason: Is that the guy with the annoying voice?

Steve: Yeah. That's they know the music.

Jason: The yes.

Steve: They they know the music, and they have to participate. And I I quiz them after everyone, like, what did you learn from them? And I think that as a testament though, like, if you can build your business the right way, it's if if there's one thing you can do to build your business the right way, it's the right people. Right. Now, I will also add is, investor machine, the investormachine.com/steve.

You also record all your processes for all your investor machine clients.

Jason: Correct.

Steve: Right?

Jason: Yes. In in there is a training manual for I take every aspect of the business and spend an hour and a half on it. There's an hour and a half on lead management. There's an hour and a half on dispositions, hour and a half on acquisitions. There's an everything.

Steve: Yeah. So there's also that. Right? But if you guys don't want to do that, then what he said earlier. And then Kelly Ventura wants to know what measures have you taken to automate this position so that something cash buyers is continuously a smooth process, if a smooth process is possible?

Jason: I mean, I feel like that comes back to a lot of the stuff that we've talked about. Mhmm. And it also comes back to having great people. I mean, I have a, I mean, it I don't have any, like, magical cool softwares in this regard. Like, I mean, it's it's Google Sheets and Mailchimp.

Right? So one okay. So I'll give one cool takeaway, that that I think would be that that that has made a huge difference for me in automating things. So, I have one of my favorite things that I've ever come up with is my submit offer button. So it's just a Google form.

I actually, put it into the my, website myself. All it is is a Google form, and I have people answer, their name, what their offer is, what the address is. I ask them, have any of is there are you 100% sure done? Like, there's no due diligence left. And I actually have a disclaimer on there that.

It says, if you still need twenty four hours of due diligence or something, let me know. It doesn't disqualify you. It's less than ideal, but you may not tell me your due diligence is all the way done and then come back and tell me you need a little bit of due diligence.

Steve: Right.

Jason: I also ask them, have any have all of your money partners seen and approved? Because there's nothing worse than, having someone say, yeah. I'm a 100% in, and then you find out that he's got some guy behind him that's lending him all of the purchase price and the rehabs. And and then he takes a look at it, and he's like, I'm not lend I'm not lending that much for that property. And they're like, yeah.

I don't actually have a dollar to my name. I just thought this guy would go for it. That's where I said I asked them what they think the property, is worth and what the rehabs are. And then I asked them what date they would ideally like to close and what date would be the soonest they could close. And I will say that has saved so much time, effort, and energy trying to find all that stuff in emails, making you know, going on assumptions.

Oh, the other one I ask is, do you have a realtor you need need to pay? Right? There's nothing worse than I take this offer, and then,

Steve: I had to pay commission.

Jason: And then they're like, oh, yeah. By the way, you know, you have to pay this person a commission. So my net's really less than your other buyer that you already told that they were out. Yeah. So I add I ask all of those questions, and it it definitely has made the disposition process much smoother because it's just then it's just looking at a Google Sheet Mhmm.

Of all of the offers lined up. You can take and sort them by order. You know, everybody's right there, and you know all the information that you would need to know. And I will tell you, oh, this is the other question I asked them that was is super valuable. I say, tell me about your financing.

Is it all cash? Is it 80% or less, or is it, borrowing 80% or more? Mhmm. And when the pandemic hit in May, those people that were borrowing more than 80% of the purchase price were were gone.

Steve: Right.

Jason: They were eliminated. Right? They they couldn't buy houses anymore because no one was lending more. You you could still get 221280% of purchase price money, but any money other than that right after the pandemic was gone. So for the homes that we wholesale, I told the relationship managers, hey.

Here's a list of people that can buy with cash or I actually knew from my list. These are people that have offered on our properties before that have the means to continue to offer. We got every single one of them on the phone. And, every time we got a deal, we focused in heavy on those people, and my numbers did not drop in terms of percentage of what we wholesale for right after the pandemic. And most of those deals we sold with one offer.

Yeah. Like, now you've got, like, thirty, forty hours. But, like, we squeaked it out with one offer, one offer, one offer. So that was there you go. There's a

Steve: that was a huge win in that period of time. Yeah. So Lada also wants to know what market metrics are important for you to select the market. But before we talk about that, you're only in Salt Lake.

Jason: I'm only in Salt Lake.

Steve: And have you

Jason: ever wandered? I have not. Investor Machine is my wander. We're nationwide. I'm in all markets there.

And at this point, my only intention for being in other markets is to help other people achieve their goals in other markets instead of me. I think most people can do more than what they think they can in their own market and that the grass is always greener on the other side in another market. But I've known many a great investor smarter than me that went to another market and came back with their tail between their legs.

Steve: But, Jason, you don't understand. My market's harder

Jason: than yours. That's probably true. Not that Salt Lake isn't hard, but you are in Phoenix. There's not a whole lot of people that, you can have that. But, Salt Lake comes with its own incredible challenges as well.

I mean, I was just talking to Brandon Bateman, PPC guy. He was on here a little bit ago. Mhmm. He great. I highly suggest him.

He was saying of all the markets he's in, he has a harder time in Salt Lake than almost any other market just in terms of cost per click and everything else. It's it's competitive, and everybody it it all comes down to your mindset, your view, your overall abundance. There's value in every market.

Steve: And I think you also shared with me that was Andy McFarland was the other one. Uh-huh. Like, the two best PPC guys in the country Yes. Or at Salt Lake.

Jason: Yes. Correct. And I've hit both of them up multiple times to help me. And I refer people to both of them, and I'm still left outside.

Steve: So what is your biggest struggle then today with everything you got going on?

Jason: I will say I've reached a point where, like, in continuing to level up the quality of like, for for me to continue to get to higher and higher levels is higher and higher levels of staff that I need to be able to add. Mhmm. Like, I'm I'm not getting to bring on as many like, for for the growth that I'm looking for, I'm not getting to bring on as many entry level people. Right. So making that move into getting people that have had careers and that really, you know, know what they're doing, making the switches and everything else, like bringing on, like, COOs, integrators, high level developers, things like that.

That's my that's my challenges now.

Steve: And I completely agree Yeah. Because some of my most recent hires have been some of my most expensive hires.

Jason: Right. Me too.

Steve: But also the right hires. Like, I absolutely need them because I can't do my crazy, you know, the the the BHAG. Right?

Jason: Or the

Steve: was it is it is it the wig?

Jason: Wig. Big, hairy, audacious goal. Darren Hardy says it, but he doesn't originate with him. It originates with, the Jim Collins book.

Steve: Good to Great?

Jason: Good to Great. I think it originates with Good to Great.

Steve: But the WIG, right, the wildly important goal, from for disposition of execution Yeah. Right, is I can't hit my goals with the people Without that are entry level. I need world class people Right. In all seats. Right.

So then, would that be your biggest struggle today, how are you dealing with that? Is it just spending more money? Or, like, what is

Jason: It's digging down on everything that I said before about hiring. Just made some good progress in the Utah company. Got some good, you know, high level experienced people, and am constantly working on the same in investment machine company. So I would say it's the struggle, but it's not something that's necessarily going poorly

Steve: Mhmm.

Jason: Right now, but it's the big struggle right now.

Steve: Yeah. It's the hardest thing to do. Yeah. What is your superpower?

Jason: I would say probably setting up and maintaining good systems to make things happen. If if I had a if I had a superpower, it's probably that as well as finding, retaining, and keeping happy really good talent. Yeah. I would say that's probably if I had superpowers, it'd be those.

Steve: And what is the greatest lesson that you have learned?

Jason: Probably what I said earlier, successful people are persistent failures. Go, it's a combination of start with a minimum viable product. Get out of analysis paralysis. Don't you know, we we had a guy once that was building a CRM for us at the last company that built, he built this CRM for, like, a year, basically. And every time we came oh, I came up with something else I wanted to do.

It could be so cool. This, this, this, this. We'd I think we wound up spending 6 figures on the guy and never got a CRM. Right? Because it just kept got bigger, cooler.

It's not ready yet. It's gotta be able to do these things. In whatever it is, go get a minimum viable product. Go take max of action, and then go figure out how to get 1% better every day.

Steve: Yeah.

Jason: And you're gonna be able to achieve everything you want. Go read Darren Hardy's The Compound Effect. Mhmm. But it but it's two parts. One, you have to get started.

There has to be a point where you're like, okay. This is good enough, minimum viable product. And then two, then go make it better consistently. And I would say that's probably another superpowers. I have I feel like I have a good ability to look at something

Steve: Mhmm.

Jason: And then figure out what the next percentages need to be for it to continue to get better.

Steve: Got it. Is there a book you've given more to any other?

Jason: Living Your Best Year Ever

Steve: Got it.

Jason: Is my is my most gifted book. I also have gifted quite a few times The Rhythm of Life by Matthew Kelly. That's probably not a commonly one.

Steve: Yeah. I've never read that one.

Jason: It's really, really good. It's by a, Catholic guy. Has some religious elements to it, but is it's it's all about pursuing and becoming the best version of yourself. One of the most influential books I've ever read. I highly suggest it.

Steve: Oh, alright. I'll have to check that one out. Think about what you wanna leave the listeners with while I make a just a couple of quick announcements. Guys, if you guys are interested in the investment machine, it's the investormachine.com/steve. We wanna get on our wait list for lead manager training.

It's disruptors.com/leadmanager. And I'm still trying to give away $10,000. Apparently, my money is not good. It doesn't spend. If you guys are interested in trying to win $10,000 at stevetrainmoney.com.

And then please like, subscribe, share, comment, because the more you tell the algorithms this is good content, the more people we can actually impact. What, oh, and we got Luke Rothwald coming in next week. What would you like to leave the listeners with?

Jason: I would say this, kind of a summary of a lot of what of what we've said. Pursue excellence in all that what you do. Get 1% better. Work towards becoming the best version of yourself. Be authentic in what you do, and people will recognize that.

Have multiple solid streams of marketing. Focus a lot on hiring and taking good care of your people, and, you know, find those tweaks within the company to be able to consistently get better. Data lists are really important in what you do Yeah. Especially with as competitive as things are now. But this business still works.

Keep an abundant mindset. I think, you know, it'll it's gonna be interesting to see what happens in the next few months even to a year in the market, but regardless, like, this business works in all market cycles. And then lastly, track your net. That's the in my opinion, net your net income plus how your net worth increases is the ultimate score that you should know. I mean, in the end, that's why we're all doing this, just to make money.

And what you don't wanna do is realize that you worked for an entire year, and all you did was pay a bunch of bills. And you hit your goal, and you're so proud. You flipped a 100 homes, You paid a lot of salaries and things like that, but in the end, you made nothing.

Steve: Yeah. No. And and I've been there. Right? The first many years of my business, that was me.

Because I didn't I wasn't tracking. Yeah. How can someone get a hold of you?

Jason: Probably best is, you've got my Facebook link on there. Shoot me a message on Facebook. You've got my Instagram on on there as well. Those would be

Steve: Yeah. So we'll have that in the show notes on your Facebook and your Instagram. Right? Yep.

Jason: Is that

Steve: what you said? And then,

Jason: And unlike Steve, I don't have 5,000 friends yet, so you can still friend me.

Steve: And then, yeah, make sure you use that link because you're not the only Jason Lewis.

Jason: That's true. Not even close.

Steve: Alright. Thank you very much.

Jason: Thank you. It was an absolute

Steve: pleasure. Thank you guys for watching.