Wholesaling 6 Figures a Week, How Jason Lewis Did It?

Jason Lewis: Ultimately, when you're looking back at the end of your life, it's relationships are all that are ultimately gonna matter. Mhmm. So, you know, go work hard, do what you need to do, but don't do it at the expense of your key relationships. You're never gonna get your kid's childhood back. You're never gonna get those years of your marriage back.

You know, reach out to the estranged relationship. Ultimately, all of this is cool that we talked about, but it's really relationship with God, relationship with family, relationship with those closest to you, and even relationships with your coworkers is what makes for a rich life.

Steve Trang: Hey, everybody. Thank you for joining us for today's episode of Real Estate Disruptors. Here we got my great friend, Jason Lewis, with Creation Utah and Investor Machine. And Jason flew in from Salt Lake to talk about how he's having his best quarter ever resulting in 2 and a half million dollars in revenue in eight months from what's funny to me, 15 different lead sources. I'm on a mission to create a 100 millionaires.

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Alright. So ready? Ready. Alright. So you were on this show about a year and a half ago.

Things were amazing. Right? Like, everything that we touch was just gold. Mhmm. What's happened since that show?

Jason: That's a great question. So, getting ready for this, I was actually listening to, the the podcast that we did a year and a half ago. And as I was listening to it, I was like, man, I was excited. I was like, I had so much energy. I was like, dude, everything I touch is great.

Everything's working great. It's amazing. You know, the Utah company was doing great gangbusters growing. I was able to run that company as the CEO and the COO, at that time with very little of my own time. Mhmm.

Investor machine was growing great guns. Everything was absolutely, awesome. Right. So, that continued Mhmm. Through so, talking about what's happened since then.

I'm gonna break it into a couple of time periods from then until halfway through last year Mhmm. Halfway through last year to the start of this year, and then since then. Just a quick update on both the companies. You okay with little bit longer answer?

Steve: Of course.

Jason: Feel free to interrupt anywhere along the way. So we'll start with the Utah company. Mhmm. So one good thing that I did was I got a CLO in place. Mhmm.

You and I were just discussing in the hallway before. I was all cocky big guns when I was on your podcast before saying, look at me. I'm the CEO and the COO of this company spending less than five hours a week and it's going great. It was going great because times were easy. Mhmm.

Luckily, while times were easy, I got an amazing COO in place, got everything all set up there. So that's from to the 2021, that's basically the Utah company was get a great COO in place, kinda turn things over to him before the storm.

Steve: So he was prepared. He was prepared. Or maybe not prepared, but he was at least in the business Correct. Not overwhelmed.

Jason: Yeah. Unfortunately, he had been, I I got lucky. There's a few times that I've gotten I was actually just talking to, one of my, investor machine teammates earlier today. There's a few times I got lucky early on with hires. Like, now you and I know a lot more about hiring and predictive index and who who we're supposed to hire and what we're supposed to place in the seats.

And there was a few times where it's like, I had no idea what I was doing, but I got that one right Mhmm. Because I was lucky. And I part of it's lucky, but also it is when you're taking a lot of choices when you're taking a lot of chances and going after it, there's a lot that I did wrong too. Mhmm. And I, you know, I say

Steve: Some of them work out.

Jason: But some of them work out. Right. So he was one I got lucky. He was the acquisition manager, but also had a great profile to be a great COO. Got it.

So and I will say COO specifically of a sales company. Mhmm. So for for that role, he's perfect. Everybody loves loves him. He does an amazing job.

Yeah. So got him in place and then continue to grow. It was a great 2021 was a great year.

Steve: Yeah.

Jason: Same story for investor machine. 2021 was great. From your podcast, we had a bunch of additional people sign up. Everything we were doing was just adding more and more and more members to investor machine. Everybody was getting great results and our honestly, our biggest problem was all of our markets were full.

And it's like, alright, as long as you're in Des Moines, Iowa, or some other little place you can join, but like otherwise, sorry, you're like it was it it started to become harder to get sales because like Phoenix had a, you know, nine year wait list. Mhmm. Alright. In order to be able to get into. So now we're moving into, 2021.

Sorry. 2022. Mhmm. So, 2022, we had two acquisition managers drop down to one. So, that slowed down the Utah company a little bit because the market was still super hot.

I yeah. Listening to the podcast again, I was like, look at me. I'm wholesaling for 90% of ARV. I'm so great. Market.

But, went down to one acquisition manager. So nugget that I learned from that and as well as has really been hammered in recently as we've been having a great quarter and ramping up some of our marketing and things like that. And you're the ultimate sales trainer, so tell me if you agree with this.

Steve: Okay.

Jason: I have found that as low as five to as high as 10 appointments in a week is ideal for an acquisition manager. At least at least mine was seven being about the sweet spot. That's the goal and that's where we like to wind up.

Steve: Yeah. Face to face, two a day. That's that's a that's a reasonable target.

Jason: Yeah. And, yeah, and we're face to face.

Steve: Yeah.

Jason: And, my my belief is and we actually, I was just at a event with a bunch of other investors, and one guy there was doing virtual, and the rest of us just kind of pounced on him. I believe that virtual acquisitions worked, in previous markets Mhmm. Great. But in today's market, really, it's tough to compete.

Steve: You

Jason: know, we you talk about what's changed since then. We compete more on appointments now Mhmm. Than we have in my whole ten years that I've been doing.

Steve: What does that mean?

Jason: It's far more often that we're meeting with the seller and then our competitor is meeting with the seller right after and then competitor right after and competitor before. Interesting. Yeah. When in Utah, we're seeing more and I mean, there's always been competition. Right?

That's if there's one thing we love to do as real estate investors, we love to talk to each other about how competitive our markets are. Right. Mine's just so competitive. Mhmm. And you're like, I live in Phoenix.

Steve: Yeah. I mean, it's pretty hard. But this is, between Sean Terry, myself, Pace, Jamil, we're we're just pumping out wholesalers out here.

Jason: You you guys are doing really great. I was don't forget Bradley. Yeah. Yeah. You guys pump them out.

Yeah. So, so went down to one acquisition manager. And luckily, it was my awesome, like, willing to put in infinite number of hours acquisition manager. But even still, when you're when you're doing 18 face to face appointments in a week, it definitely slows down our numbers. So lesson I learned from that is number one, you know, your your target should be about, in my opinion, seven appointments in a week.

Mhmm. Up to 10. And then number two, you know, make sure have as much redundancy as possible because going down to one acquisition manager, I would say slow down our year. We still had a great first half of the year. Mhmm.

Investor machine, same. First half of last year, we grew really, really quickly. By the way, for those who don't know, Investor Machine so the Utech company is pretty simple. It's the fix and flip company. Investor Machine, high level list building, direct mail service provider Mhmm.

Company. Yeah. So, all was going pretty well till about June. Mhmm. June, fed raised rates over and over and over and over again.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jason: And, you know, depending on the market you were in, life got difficult. We were a market that already struggled with affordability, and we got whooped.

Steve: Yeah. I think if you start at Idaho, go down to Utah, right, and then all down to Arizona and everything west Yes. Is brutal.

Jason: Brutal. And I've actually since looked at a map. Realtor.com Mhmm. Did a map of county per county, you know, what the percent over the year from June to June property values going up versus down. Right?

And like dark gray is bad and red is good. And what's interesting is like America did not have the same experience. No. Last year, it all depended on the market you were in. There was splotches of gray and red Mhmm.

All over. And, yeah, Utah, Boise, California, Phoenix, and, you know, and a lot of other random markets Mhmm. Got hit pretty hard.

Steve: We just had an event in in Denver, last Friday. Right? Well Welcome. Yeah. And, one of the members, he's like, yeah.

You know? Yes. Last year was a blip. I was like, last year was not a blip. It's not a blip.

He's like he's like, yeah. I mean, we're in Kansas City, Missouri. I was like, yeah.

Jason: That's why. Yeah. It's a

Steve: little bit different.

Jason: What one of my journey lows was I was I think it was last it was almost exactly a year a year ago. I was in at investor fuel.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jason: Another mastermind in Dallas. Mhmm. And so, I act Rob, my COO, came with me to this, meeting and, we were getting whooped at this point. Right? Like, not doing well at all.

And there were there were people in the room and we're talking like, you know, 23 year olds that had been doing it a year or two. Mhmm. And, like, they're standing up there saying that, like, we're having our best quarter ever. This is easy. This is great.

And we're looking at, like, what are we doing wrong? Like, we are trying so hard, but we are absolutely getting crushed. Mhmm. So, it was a challenge, but then there was definitely some things we did wrong. Mhmm.

It was really hard to figure out, like, value and successfully wholesale it too because it was like catching a falling knife. Mhmm. We we felt like we'd finally reestablished what because really, wholesaling is the main thing that we do. And it it's not you know, there's this the the thing that you say in a podcast is like, oh, it's not hard enough in a falling market. You just buy for less.

Oh, for less. Piece of cake. Right? Yeah.

Steve: Obviously, that's it.

Jason: Yeah. It's easy. Right? Yeah. And then but yeah.

You say that till you live it. Mhmm. You know, we would think, okay. We think we've finally figured out, which by the way, all the other competition hasn't gone away. Mhmm.

They're still bidding on properties and trying to figure it out as well. So we're like, okay. We think if we price it this far down, that'll get it. But it was still moving down, down, down super quickly. Yeah.

So

Steve: Let's just say, I remember, like, because we were talking this whole time. Right? I mean, I I have a note here. We're gonna talk about, like, the group therapy we did, but we're talking this whole time. And I was like, yeah.

Like, how are you doing? I was like, well, my goal for this quarter is to not lose money.

Jason: Yeah. Right. And I was not successful at that goal

Steve: Yeah.

Jason: For two quarters.

Steve: Yeah. If you just keep everyone employed and not lose money, that's a win. Right now, I just want to out survive the competition. Yeah. That was the goal last year or a couple of quarters.

Anyway Yeah.

Jason: So couple things we did right. So my goal with each of these, as I'm going through each of these time frames, there's hopefully a couple of lessons from each. You're gonna get some from the things I did wrong and some from the things I did right. This is this is likely one of those some things we did right. Mhmm.

So first off, lost money, but I still look back on that time feeling like we did more right than we did wrong. Mhmm. So number one thing that I did that I'm really glad I did was I did not cut my marketing.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jason: And a lot of people didn't. A lot of people in my market, a lot of people went out of business Mhmm. In my market. I had friends that were losing 7 figures. I had friends that, you know, and sometimes it was going out of business.

Sometimes it was strategically pursuing a different opportunity. But I did genuinely lose, some competitors

Steve: Right.

Jason: Through that period. But I I made the strategic choice. I was like, look, I've learned my lesson on timing the market. Mhmm. For example, you know, I it's funny cause I, I preach this and I'm really good at this at real estate, not so much stocks, Bitcoin, right?

Bitcoin and stocks. I'm like, okay, once it's low, then I'm going to get in. I'm finally going to get into these things. But when you play the time the market game, it's okay. I think it's finally known.

It's like, I'll go look at some headlines. Right? You look at a headline that's like, Bitcoin's gonna crash 40% tomorrow. Oh, well, I gotta wait till then. But then you look at another headline that's like Bitcoin, you know, black black rocks about to invest in Bitcoin.

It's gonna go up 40%. Oh, what do I do? And that that decision fatigue and that analysis paralysis definitely comes in because it's like, do I get in? Do I not? Do I get in?

Do I not? So I'm still not very well invested in crypto, not very well invested in stocks.

Steve: Probably a good thing.

Jason: Yeah. Yeah. Hasn't been a huge regret recently.

Steve: Yeah.

Jason: But over the long term, it absolutely will be. Like, no doubt, ten years from now, there'll be some regret there.

Steve: Yeah.

Jason: It's the same thing with real estate. Anybody who says, hey, I'm just gonna, like, pull back on my marketing or I'm gonna I'm gonna step out for a little bit and then I'm gonna wait for the market to turn and come back. Mhmm. No one times the market. No one knows exactly when the market's gonna turn and the same analysis paralysis that I have with stocks and Bitcoin are gonna come back for you.

So I said, we're I mean, cut a little bit of, waste, but actually wound up pulling that money and putting it into other marketing and we just kept driving forward. And even from a staff standpoint, I cut a few people that really should have been cut anyways that in a normal market, I would have cut that weren't performing, but, like, kept the whole team in place, and, kept going on marketing, and we just kept barreling for them. The other thing that we did is we really took that time to refine, and improve every part of our business.

Steve: The reason why you were, quote, unquote, losing money was because you did not cut back on marketing. So, really, it was a conscious decision. Like, yeah, we're not making money right now, but we fully expect this to come back and more later on.

Jason: I would say maybe more the staff than the marketing. Okay. Because the marketing was still producing a return. Like, on none of my marketing channels, I don't think I'd have to pull up a spreadsheet to be sure, but on I don't think on any of my marketing channels was I negative. But the problem is I have a I have a decent size operation.

Steve: Right.

Jason: You know, like, I have to be in the 6 figures before I break even.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jason: And so that's where and that's, you know, that's all all of my costs. But, like, when you have an operation that big, that's a lot of deals that need to move through. So, you know, there was money coming through all along the way, just not enough to cover all of the expenses.

Steve: Yeah. Got it. So because I had this it was a 100 k. We spent a 100 k a month, but not in one particular company. Yeah.

Right? It's combined. So for us, we made the decision, in hindsight, the wrong decision, but it was the the decision we made was we did cut back marketing and we kept the people. Yeah. I had to do it all over again, open the other way.

And I know that, but I was the only one that knew that, and everyone else disagreed. And I was like, well, you know, I'm gonna listen to my leaders. Right? Like, we this is what we're preaching. Like, hey.

You know? Give an opportunity to rise up and this and that, multipliers, whatever. But I regret that.

Jason: Yeah. Yeah. I, I have zero regrets. Yeah. So then the other part was we took and we refined and got better at every single part of our process.

Mhmm. And really, like, business for me has been a cycle of market slow and or we're suffering the consequences of our poor choices. Mhmm. And, the and business is slow, and that's the opportunity to refine. Right.

Then business is big and growing, and all of your time, effort, and energy is just going into keeping up with the growth. Right. And then, you know, and and so it's just back and forth and back and forth. So this was our most extended period of refine. And then a whole lot of What

Steve: does it mean to refine?

Jason: So essentially, it means I look at every part of the business. I break down every single marketing channel. I and then the whole funnel, we're looking at acquisitions. And when I say I, I mean mostly COO. You know?

If there's one thing we do best as a company owners, it's taking credit for things that everybody else does. But the reason I'm

Steve: talking about the refining is that, you know, one of my favorite Jason isms. Right?

Jason: Mhmm. If you

Steve: can close the gap between what you believe to be true and what it actually is, then you'll have more more money than you need. Yes. Something along those lines.

Jason: Yes. Right. And I was preaching that heavy through that period because I was finding everywhere the difference between what I was saying on a podcast and what was going on in my company. Yeah. Right?

Then what was going on in my company was not what I I wasn't being the type of person saying on a podcast, hey. It's this knowing that it's that. But getting in, it's like, that's a

Steve: Well, there were a lot of wake up calls last year because I had to get back in the business. Mhmm. Right. Right now I'm back in the living room. Right?

I'm actually enjoying it. I'm actually having a lot of fun. But, yeah, I mean, I'm I'm sitting in all these different seats to kinda see again what I believe to be true and what's actually true. And we're and we're closing that gap, and I'm sitting in between all these different seats in the company. I kinda feel like, I think Eric Gudison has this responsibility working with Phil.

Is that alright. For this quarter, you're in charge of this department. Alright. For this company, over this quarter, you're in charge of this department. I feel like I'm kinda going through that right now, and it's actually kinda fun because I feel like I'm not a starting company.

I could just fix this.

Jason: Just yes. 100%. Yeah. Going from department to department. So, yes.

That's that's a lot of exactly what it was. It's just this department, this department, this department. Take all of them, make it better. By the way, I had my first it was probably about a month ago, in three years, sit down knee to knee with the seller appointment. It and got the contract.

I do not remember the last business high I got equal to that. There is just something magical about going back and meeting with the seller. It was a referral from a friend and, and honestly, there was some specific things that Rob and I were struggling with figuring out how to help the acquisition managers. They were struggling. They were losing out on some of the, on some of the deals and, like, from the top, we couldn't figure it out.

So when they asked, I was like, you know what? My best answers always come from in the trench. So got back in the trench. And at the end of the appointment, I was like, oh, this is what it is. Came up with all of the specific things to do, got the contract, and it was it was awesome.

Steve: Yeah. You know, going back to, like, you know, like, getting back in the trenches, like, what's fun about getting back in the trenches, I get to go back and improve our sales training.

Jason: Yeah. Right. Yeah. And your sales training is much better Yeah. From in the trenches because you have recent relevant experience.

Steve: So I can say things like, oh, don't just talk about the grandkids. Let's name the grandkids. And you can see the different emotions that come through. We're talking about your grandkids or talking about Sofia. Yeah.

It's a completely different conversation. And I would not have been able to do that and and test it and figure out because I was losing control of the conversation. Right? He was going on, like, this other tangent. I was like, hang on just one second.

I apologize. I didn't even ask. What what are the name of your grandkids?

Jason: And he

Steve: went back, talked about the grandkids, and then, you know, like, the, the the what the origin, right, of his daughter-in-law and how they came with the names and this and that. And now he's, like, all emotional and excited about it. Great. This is where we need to be. We need to sit here.

Like, let's not talk about these tangents. Anyway, going back to your time on refining.

Jason: Yeah. Oh, the one thing I wanted to say with that is, I talked about my guys being your sales training last podcast. That's another thing that we stayed in and through all the way. Because I'm a believer in the power of education, refinement, getting better all along the way. Right.

And my sales guys have stayed in your training the the whole way through and I constantly get, like, great reviews, great feedback and everything else. I get absolutely helps them be the best. And that refining not coming from Jason and that accountability not coming from Jason or Rob has honestly been awesome. And it and it shows to my team like, hey, not only, you know, not only am I employing you, but I care about you. Mhmm.

And I wanna and I'm gonna I'm willing to spend money to invest in your growth because you're making a commit, you're making a commission, and I'm gonna do whatever I can to make sure you increase that commission including paying best of the best to train you every week.

Steve: Yeah. And I appreciate that. And, you know, that's actually interesting because the what I have found every time I bring in someone new and I train them with a third party was, like, I can't believe you invested this much in me. And I'm always of the thought, like, how come no one else is investing in their people?

Jason: Right.

Steve: Right. Right. That's where I get it from. Like, you know, we you and I are giant Darren Hardy nerds.

Jason: Mhmm.

Steve: Right? That

Jason: was one of our check mark for this. We had to make sure.

Steve: Yeah. And his hero was Jim Rohn. Mhmm. Right? And what's the quote from Jim Rohn?

Jason: You become the average of the five people you spend time around?

Steve: Or is that it's like, what happens if we train them and they leave? And they'll and it's what happens if we don't train them and they

Jason: say, yes.

Steve: I remember that quote. So yeah. Yeah. Just to your point, like, yeah, they're investing in them, and I greatly appreciate it. And, you know, we talk about the the group therapy.

So, like, when June occurred, we're kinda like, hey. What's going on? How's it gonna affect things? And, even Mike himself in Houston is like, hey, Steve. Like, how's your, education business?

It's slow down. I was like, no. Everything's fine. Like, everyone fortunately, I'm I'm built pretty tough, and everyone's in CG. Everything's fine.

And then October

Jason: Yep.

Steve: And November and December.

Jason: Yep. We're gonna head there next. So now so we, we talked about the Utech. I remember thinking if there's any other nuggets from there. So we kept the team, we kept the people, and then we'll we'll get to January.

So we'll move to investor machine now. By by the way, side topic. One of my goals with all podcasts that I'm on is I don't want anyone to ever listen to me at 1.5 speed. You're gonna you're gonna have to stay at one one hour or your brain's moving real fast. I promise I don't talk this fast all the time but we got a lot to cover in a little bit of time.

Yeah. So you can go point seven five if you need. So okay. Now we go to investor machine. So very similar with investor machine.

So Utah company takes a beating starting in June. Mhmm. Investor machine still growing level off to the races and it's like, well, this company went to zero, but good thing investor machine's the best ever. And good thing I built it so solid and good thing I'm the best and good thing this is amazing and and everything else and no one would ever cut their marketing and direct mail and everything else. Well, come later on in the year, September, October, November, that we you you and I have discussed this first and you we've discussed this with Stephanie.

We've discussed this with a lot of other service providers. As a service provider, you trail a little bit what's going on in the real market. Right. So eventually, you know, we started having people cutting back on budgets, not doing mail anymore, you know, business partnerships breaking, all sorts of other different things Mhmm. To start to slow down that business.

And we got to have the same thing happen in that business that happened in the Utah business Mhmm. Is a slowdown. So kinda similar following the same principles. Right. It was honestly kind of a little bit of a welcome relief because that company grew really, really fast, and for a long time.

I mean, we were tripling in years and just constantly hiring new people. Always ads and and just trying to keep keep up with the growth was difficult. So to have a little bit of slowdown was honestly kind of a a welcome relief. Like, it gave us a chance to rebuild our foundation, do the same thing, find all the things that were different between what I thought they were and what they actually were, and, you know, gave us the chance to make some pivots and roll out some new products.

Steve: Yeah. And I actually saw you do a presentation on, like, VA, org chart. Yes. I was like, holy cow. Like, that is not a small operation.

No. That is a significant company.

Jason: Yeah. So there's a perfect example of the difference between the two. Right? I, you know, when I was on the podcast before, I talked all about, hey. I've got all these VAs, and they're going directly to the county, and they're pulling motivation points direct from the county.

Right? I had a CG select member, kindly around that time. I think it was two months after the podcast say, hey, I double checked your VAs and, a lot of these motivation points were wrong. Like, I learned that it's hard for most VA. One of our one of our, motivation points was a beat up rental.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jason: Right? Like we'd actually scan through, all of the rental listings and if it looked like it was beat up, we'd throw that one in there so we you could reach out to them on one of our hot sheets, which is where you get the motivation points. So motivation point gets recorded, and then you call and then we get it to you and you can call them the very next week. So you're getting there before anybody. Right.

So beat up rentals are great because it's like, hey, you got this thing for rent. It's beat up anyways. You wanna just get a cash offer for it. Mhmm. So type of thing that in a podcast is awesome.

Alright. And you can sell and everybody's excited. I'm gonna sign up for investment machine. I get beat up rentals. This is great.

Mhmm. Challenge. Training virtual assistants from The Philippines on what's a beat up rental turned out to be harder than I thought. He was looking at the, you know, he sent it back to me. I was like, these mo like, these are brand new houses and you're calling them beat up and these other ones you missed.

I was like, Oh, shoot. So, you know, I sat down with some people and it's like, okay, we're gonna look at this house. Now I want everyone to put a or b beat up versus not. Fifty fifty. So then we train and train.

We do it again. Fifty fifty.

Steve: This is the when you go get your eye test, like one or two.

Jason: Yes.

Steve: One or two.

Jason: Yeah. So what started out previous to that as I just had a bunch of VAs pulling motivation points turned into that graph that you were talking about, which is now not only do I have all these virtual assistants, but I also have a six man QA team and I had to adjust the software to be able to make it. So not only do you put the motivation point in, but you have to put the link to the motivation point in so that it can be QA able. Mhmm. And then we have leaders of the data miners.

And then we have, you know, a person in charge of just opening up all the new markets and counties and everything else. You know, it's that that difference between what you say it is Mhmm. And what it actually is.

Steve: Right. But now you can say you could just it's this is right.

Jason: Yeah. I can tell you exactly what right it is that week. Mhmm. And it's never it's never a 100 Mhmm. Or at least yeah.

It's never a 100 because they QAM, but we sit consistently in the 90 to a 100%.

Steve: Yeah.

Jason: Every single time on correctness of motivation points. But that's that's the type of thing that we got to go through and work on through the whole business is closing the gap between what what it is and what you think it is. And honestly, one of the crappy parts about investor machine compared to the Utah company is Utah company, wholesale company. Like you see something, you fix it, you see something, you fix it. Investor machine, you see something, you talk to the developers.

The developers build this. You work on that. You do this. You do that. And it's, you know, it takes a little bit longer turnaround.

Like the gap between when the, CG member told me, hey, I you got this problem and when it was actually fixed was months Yeah. Versus, you know, you got a lead manager who's not answering the phone. You go say, hey. Lead manager, answer the phone, and I'm gonna track you, and you can be getting results the next day.

Steve: Speedboat versus a battleship. Yes. Yeah. So talk about the the the, the difference, the gap. So you had two transactions or potentially two transactions, right, in one weekend that had completely opposite results.

Jason: Yes. So this was this was within the last month. Mhmm. So this this is what we were talking about out there. Mhmm.

Yeah. So, you know, there through through working on the company, it's been, I've gotten to where there's less and less things that are, that are happening that, I think about exactly how I wanna wear this. There's less and less things that are happening that, are like, oh my gosh, this is terrible. The gap between what it is and what you say it is. So we had one, home that we just got that that we just closed on where everything went perfect.

It was 19 follow ups. Like you you go through the CRM and it's like this purse, this this lead manager tried it like seven times. Then they passed it to the other lead manager. Like, look, I can't get a hold of them. It was just a digital lead that came in.

They never answered. It's not even like the first time they answered and said, hey, we're interested. It was a they never answered. Followed up seven times, said can't do it. Pass to another lead manager.

They followed up 10 times. Calls, texts, voicemails, emails, all of it. Nothing. Said, hey, this one didn't work for me either. Passed it to the third lead manager.

Third lead manager follows up a couple of times and finally say, actually, you know what? Yeah. I'm interested in an offer. Mhmm. Acquisition manager goes right out, and, gets it under contract.

Turned out to be a great deal.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jason: The day after that, I'll I'll change it from two to three because we had three. We had another one. Mhmm. So it was a Friday. My one acquisition manager had started his his first appointment.

This is one of those you say you want two appointments in a day, but sometimes it works out to be more than that. Mhmm. So he'd started out at the very south end of my market for an appointment, probably thirty minutes from his house south. The next one, hour and a half to two hours further north. I think he got no showed at this one and then no showed at that one.

Turns around, drives all the way back to the south of the market again. Mhmm. Two hours. And either no showed or one of those where you show up at the door and they're like, honestly, like, my wife scheduled this but we're not interested. Right?

It's now, I think it's 03:30 or four. Four for three. On a Friday. Yeah. Lead comes in, lead manager says, hey, we got another appointment hour back north.

This is heavy traffic time. And if any of you have been to Utah, there's one road that goes North and South. It's called I 15. Right? It's not like Phoenix where you've got this beautiful working of free.

There's one road that goes North and South. It's a Friday. He's just over three and he's like, you know what? I'll take it. I'll go.

So appointments at like 05:30 or six on a Friday. Turns around, drives all the way back North. This seller had a bunch of meetings on Monday. Meets with the seller. It's gonna be one of our, you know, awesome deal.

One of our our better deals Yeah. Of of the of the year because he was willing to do that extra. So you look at that and you're like, yes. Same weekend. We we work the MLS too.

Mhmm. We had an agent send a 5,000 higher counter. And team member that was in charge of that one, busy weekend, didn't get to it. I think it came back on Saturday. On Sunday, counter withdrawal, we got a better offer, lost out on the deal.

Mhmm. Now this one we got lucky. The offer actually wind up not working out. They did come back to us and we did wind up successfully moving the deal. So that one was a all's well that ends well.

But you know, looking at all of those together, it's like, wow. But that I realized so I'm I'm moving through timeline on this a little bit. So we were, you know, I'm going company timeline time and time, but we're just gonna skip ahead Mhmm. For a second to now. One thing that I've seen in the market of today is the market of the today rewards the excellent operators.

Mhmm. Leon, one of your, CG guys, one of your part in the disruption guys, one of my favorite people on earth. He and I were talking about this, and he's seen similar trends across, the nation that the the big excellent operators are and I mean, keep in mind, when I say excellent operators, we all still have our troubles. Right? Like, we all Rob and I sometimes will say to each other, sometimes I swear we're successful despite ourselves rather than because of ourselves.

Mhmm. Like, so we're we're definitely not perfect, but the people that are operating over on a high level are having the best years that they have and the people that are operating lower level are really struggling right now. And those are just a couple examples of almost every deal we get is within inches. Mhmm. Right?

We were an inch higher and we got a great deal. We were an inch lower and there's no way we got the deal.

Steve: I kinda like in this right now and it sucks for someone that's newer. It's it's not an inspiring message.

Jason: You and I are good at that sometimes.

Steve: Yeah.

Jason: It's why it's why we don't have, like, the best podcast out there is because sometimes we we do a little too much, like, not the inspiring message, but this is the stuff that's actually gonna make it work. Yeah.

Steve: This is what's real. Yeah. So I kinda look at, like, running a wholesale in business. It's kinda like the Miami Heat last year in the finals. He gets the nuggets.

Right? You can win a game. Yeah. You can win a game. But look

Jason: Jokic. You gotta have the

Steve: lead manager on point, gonna answer the call as it comes in. Yep. If you don't answer the call, you gotta get back to them within, like, three minutes. Not five minutes. Forget the five minute rule, like, three minutes.

Mhmm. You gotta sell the appointment, and the acquisition manager go out there and actually work the appointment the right way with the right numbers.

Jason: Mhmm.

Steve: And then

Jason: That with the right numbers is huge. That's been a I talked about refining each part of the business. That's been one of the biggest and best things that we've refined this year. Yeah. The the top and sorry to interrupt you.

Having the best numbers and I actually just argued with Cody Hofhein and Mark Stoodler about this, at the event I was at last week because they're on team. Numbers don't matter. I'm on team numbers. Do matter. Mhmm.

Especially when you're competing, he who's most confident wins. Yeah. When you've got multiple people in there, he who actually knows what they can pay and move it for Mhmm. Wins. And I actually believe getting good at numbers has been one of our biggest

Steve: Confidence is huge. Mhmm. Yeah. So with the right numbers and then having the TC maintain a good relationship with the homeowner this whole time and having the dispo manager do a decent job of moving the property, having conversations with the best potential buyers for that deal. And that's assuming everything goes right there.

And if you don't answer it, having this follow-up, you start with 19 follow-up touches. Right? That's what I'm saying. Like, this is the Miami Heat. Like, you have to have everyone Yes.

Everything on point. You have to

Jason: play the perfect game Right.

Steve: If you wanna make it right now. Right? If you're gonna play, you know, the imperfect game, you're gonna get beat by a better operator, I believe, right now. Not to say that you couldn't do it. Like, if solo solo operator that's running lean, they can crush you right now.

But this guy that's trying to go from, like, two person team to I want to have a bigger company, there are so many things that have to go right.

Jason: Right. Because the market is the one seed right now. Right? And we we're still the eight seed. Mhmm.

And we're proud of what we've done, but we're still the eight seed. And and ultimately, what's driving that is inventory.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jason: So, if this was a presentation, I'd pull up my graph of what inventory's done for the last little bit. And you can see, like, inventory nationwide is down, like, 20 to 30 as much as in in markets like yours can be as much as like 40% down. Now when I say inventory, that means total number of sellers that choose to sell a house. Right? Here's the thing about our business.

We only make money when a seller chooses to sell a house. And if you have a third less of those sellers choosing to sell a house

Steve: out of the market or two thirds opting out of the market.

Jason: Yeah. That that plays a big effect. Now, again, on a podcast, you can come back and say, oh, but motivated sellers are different. And that's true. Like realtors are definitely getting hit harder than us.

Mhmm. But, you know, this is this is why I think my investor machine list has performed so well is because we are so motivation centric. We're finding the people that have to sell because the ones that we lost are the upgraders. Mhmm. You know, it it it it used to be like, you know, my home's a little bit of a dump.

I'm gonna go buy a home just like mine, five streets away. And now I have a shiny new house. Problem with that, you buy the exact same house next door, your monthly payment just doubled because of the difference in interest rates. So all of those people are choosing to stay.

Steve: What, let's finish the the the the story, and then we're gonna talk about comps.

Jason: Okay. So you wanna finish the timeline?

Steve: Yeah.

Jason: Or well, okay. That's great. So, rewinding back, now we're so we we've been hanging out in 2023. Now we're rewinding back to, 2022.

Steve: Mhmm. Q four.

Jason: Yep. Q four twenty twenty two. So investor machine. So this gave us the chance to do a whole lot of refining, which I I was grateful for and excited about. So but again, took longer to get all of that and you have the delayed effect.

Yeah. So we also were able so one one thing that we found at investor machine is, you know, we we had our recipe. And the the thing that I found about every service provider out there is they have their recipe. And and by service provider, I mean, marketing company specifically. So you can talk any of your PPC companies, any of your, PPC, SEO, cold calling, any of the list providers, etcetera.

We all have a specific recipe. TV would be another good example as well. And even like last last week on the boat, we would bring up a service provider that we that a lot of people use. Right? Could be Darren for TV, could be Tony Javier for TV, could be Bateman, could be, you know, PBC force, could be any of those.

Right? And we would say, okay, who uses this service provider or has used a service provider? And, you know, everybody would raise their hand and be like, alright, who's crushing? And keep my this this this trip I was on was just excellent operators. Like I was in the bottom half of the room.

This is five, six, seven, eight million, a year operators. Right? And one person would be like, you know, so we'd be like, okay. You know, who's using the service provider? Raise your hand.

Who's crushing it? Half the hands would go up. Who is doing terrible? The the other half the hands would go up. Right?

So in this market, this service provider is doing great in this market. The service provider is doing great in this market. And and it was just like a mix of all of them. There was no one that was even me with investor machine. I was we had I have it was a small group.

It was eight people. I had four people using investor machine, three crashing, one not doing well. Mhmm. And so the the thing that I've learned is, we have this recipe where it's like, okay, we're gonna go get all the motivation points directly from the county and then you're gonna fill out your buy box. You're gonna score the property type.

You're going to score the seller type. You're going to score the zip code. And then based on that, we'll rank everybody. And I, you know, I will give you some insight in terms of how I think you should probably do that based off of what we've seen that's traditionally worked. And it creates the buy box just like we've done for you.

This is who you should market to first. This is who you should market to last and everyone everywhere in between. Problem with that. Couple people that you and I were talking about earlier. Jimmy Vreeland, St.

Louis. Been with me for since 2020. Yeah. And, consistent great quarter after quarter results. Mark Dela tour, Kansas City instead of Saint Louis.

Very similar market. Struggled. Had multiple people in Kansas City struggle. So we learned you can't just apply the same formula across all markets because we would say, okay, a notice of defaults worth four points. The zip codes, we're gonna score a five.

A, out of state absentees were two points. An eviction's worth this many. You know, a code violations worth that many. And we would apply that same formula across the nation. Mhmm.

But what we learned is in one market, absentee's great. Right? Like in St. Louis using Jimmy as an example, absentee owners crush it because that's that's a turnkey market. It's great.

His burned out landlord is his favorite list. Now I come bring that exact same formula to Phoenix. Sun City. How's that going to go?

Steve: Not so good.

Jason: Not so good. Right? Because I'm going to mail all of these, second homes that are probably in pretty good shape of people that aren't interested in selling.

Steve: Right.

Jason: So what we did is we hired a data team, spent hundreds of thousands in data and development and everything else and figured out, okay, in every market who sold to investors.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jason: And then we can then build the buy box market specific around who actually sold to investors. So that's been huge. I mean, it's it's we're just rolling it out to to a lot of our members now. But I mean, one of the first ones I did it with in North Carolina, guys that have been with us for years already, they're actually their return beats my return. It's always funny when that happens.

It's like, I'm the guy that owns the company and you're doing even better with this than me. But, even from there, they said after we did this, their call volume doubled with us because it's like, hey, we're market. So not only is it the fresher motivation points, but it's also exactly which ones work to that specific degree in that specific market.

Steve: And there you're still using the the public record data points.

Jason: Mhmm.

Steve: Got it.

Jason: In addition to the scoring and everything else, but rather than we were scoring based off of our best guess and what we thought worked.

Steve: And that was kinda universal across the country.

Jason: Kind of unit yeah. So the actual buy box, in terms of what ZIP codes matter, we would fill that out individually Mhmm. With you. Or, you know, which which seller type is most important, which owner type is most important, which, property size, which value is most important. There's there's some pretty easy ones.

Right? Like Yeah. Is a million dollar seller, is a million dollar home or a, $250,000 home more likely to sell to an investor? Obviously, a 250. But every single time I sit down and go over the members buy box with these and say, hey, this is our guest and this is who actually sold to investors.

I'm always like, oh, oh, well, shoot. One one that get one that gets me all the time is evictions. Mhmm. I used to think evictions with bomb and, like, best motivation ever. Like, you just evicted a tenant.

Yeah. You hate your life. Mhmm. You hate that rental. You wanna get rid of it.

That's what intuition would say. That's

Steve: what makes sense.

Jason: So it makes sense. Go look at it. In a lot of markets, someone having an eviction makes them less likely to sell to an investor than if they were just absentee. Why? Makes no sense.

It does not track logically, but it doesn't matter. Like, you you logic is about, you know, ego. What matters is what does the data say?

Steve: Right.

Jason: So that, you know, the slowdown give us the opportunity to do things like that as well as be able to, add, add in additional marketing channels. So one of, one of our visions is the one stop shop. You have your dedicated account manager and billing team who you love, who's looking across all of your marketing channels partner and partner with the best service providers out there to then be able to say, okay, you know, you've got this much marketing budget. We're going to send this much to mail. We're going to send this much to pay per click.

We're going to send this much to cold calling. We're gonna send this much to, you know, wherever else with highest level KPIs data and tracking back so that we can then meet consistently and say, hey, this is how much that, you know, this one's performing at this level. This one's performing at this level, and we can move each of these up and down based off of that. Right. So I think that pretty well wraps up, 2022.

Mhmm. So 2022 feeling it. Right? Doing a good job at focusing on what we control and doing a good job at rallying the troops, which was one of them, I will say, one of the more difficult parts. Right?

It was fairly honestly, I don't know how people did it in 2008 because you look at the down in 2008 and it was like 2008, 2009, 2010.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jason: Like, it kept going down. We were like six months, but even still it's like, don't worry guys. It's gonna turn around. We're gonna like continuing to rally the troops and luckily creation Utah coming back over to the wholesale company. Now January is when latter part of January is when it finally picked back up.

And fortunately for us, the team was in place. The marketing was in place. Everything was set so that when it went up, we went up.

Steve: Alright. It's kinda like a book, shift by Gary Keller.

Jason: Yes. Read it more than once including recently. And what what what do I call the meetings in investor machine that we did that we do every, like through we went we went to doing them weekly in, from like July, August, September in the heart of it. The shift meeting. Right?

So every week we got all the investor machine members together and said, okay. You know, what are we doing? What's working? Presented to them. Because my thing is I can I can be the best service provider ever?

I can provide great lists, etcetera, but the operator also has to be able to perform. And so we do we provide consistent training and things like that as well to try to help the operator be able to perform at a higher level.

Steve: So now 2023, having your best year ever.

Jason: Yes.

Steve: So, one thing we talked about is February revenue year to date

Jason: Mhmm.

Steve: From 15 lead sources. Yeah. Typically, we hear it's like, you know, what's your best list?

Jason: Mhmm. Or,

Steve: you know, what what's working for you? It's like, ah, you know, there's two things, three things. I've never heard anyone having eight or more. I think, like, seven is, like, the most I ever heard. Yeah.

So 15.

Jason: Mhmm.

Steve: What's the theory behind that?

Jason: So I am a very big believer that the only way to have an established business Mhmm. Is to have multiple well performing marketing channels. Mhmm. And, you know, I'm in a variety of masterminds and I'm in the space and basically every traveling salesperson who says, hey, can I give you leads in exchange for money? I say yes to the most recent one.

And it did I already have the 15, but on the flight here this morning, I got a cold text. Hey, I do, digital SEO leads, pay per lead. It's gonna be like $200 a lead. You wanna test us out? Yes.

Actually, it's not true. I was a good visionary. I said, hey, Rob. I've got a, actually, it while we're here, we might as well be truthful. I told him yes.

And then I thought, you know what? I should be a good visionary. And went back to Rob and said, hey, I've got a new service provider. I think we try them out. And he was like, okay.

We can do it. It's $3. Right? So the idea is like every traveling service provider that comes through Mhmm. I'm like, sure.

Let's do it. I'm like, you know. Have I lost money on plenty? Yes. Because again, that same principle from before, different markets, things work better, things work worse Mhmm.

Up and down and I just try them all and the ones that stick, I keep.

Steve: Alright. So you're always testing.

Jason: Oh, always testing.

Steve: And 15 have survived the test.

Jason: Currently there's there's there's some that that won't make it, but yes, 15 have survived the test. And the other interesting thing, I did this presentation once for CG select. If you go quarter over quarter all the way back to 2020, they're doing this. All marketing channels, they're going up and down and up and down. Each one, you know, is different.

I will say if I had to pick my most solid consistent channel, it would be my investor machine mail. Right? Mail is like the backbone. It just keeps on going. Now that's probably year over year, quarter over quarter.

I have a quarter where it wins and then I have a quarter where it comes in third or fourth. You know, right now, this quarter I think it's my relationships that are first followed by, and this is an interesting one. This one has never made the top three before, but my SEO is number two this quarter. And then but I do everything based off of revenue because as you know from talking to me, do I care about deal count? No.

No. I don't care about deal count. If I can get all the revenue I want on one deal, that's great with me. Mhmm. You asked me what my deal count is for the year before we started and what did I do?

Steve: You had to look it up.

Jason: I had no I I don't even think I could have guessed within twenty five Mhmm. What what my deal count is because deal count is about this. Mhmm. Revenue and especially net revenue, that's all that ultimately matters. I work for net revenue.

I don't work for deal count.

Steve: So 15 different, lead sources, I imagine. And maybe it's no big deal. But it's gonna be a little bit of a nightmare to track, is it not?

Jason: I have a good team. Yeah. It's not bad because, I mean, they all have different numbers. It's all on an individual spreadsheet. And I think 13 of the 15 have performed this quarter.

Mhmm. Oh, but what I was saying with the SEO, the thing about me tracking revenue is all you need is one $80,100,000 dollar deal Mhmm. And it greatly skews the numbers for that quarter. Right? That's why you can't give give a marketing channel too much weight Mhmm.

In in in one quarter and everything else, but they're all going up and down. My my top performer from q one that was my top performer by a lot is doing terrible Mhmm. Right now.

Steve: One, one thing we look at in our in our ROI calculator is we have it thirty, ninety in twelve months.

Jason: Mhmm. I was

Steve: like, how did it do in the last thirty days? Right? How did it do in the last ninety days? How did it how did it do in the last twelve months? Because it's so like, you can spend the money every month, but you don't know when exactly it's gonna pop off.

Jason: And and they're all different. And the reason I honestly believe a big part of why I'm successful is because I have all those marketing channels. So when one goes down, I'm still okay. Yeah. So, so For example, relationships.

'20 I think 2020, I had over $1,000,000 in relationship deals. Yeah. And and and they were crushing. Mhmm. So and I I talked about on the last podcast again.

I was, ah, look at me. I'm so great. Shortly after that podcast, I think we went like six months without hardly a deal. Because in that super hot low inventory stuff selling immediately off the MLS and harder to find deals, everybody was keeping their deals. And no one was taking any type of lowball on the MLS.

Right? Like, you know, you listed on the MLS and someone's like, you know, I'll give you $50 over list price. No due diligence and I don't care what it appraises for. And we're like, well, I'll give you 30,000 under list price with due diligence. Yeah.

But I'm an investor and people are like, buzz off. Right? Yeah. So in that market, relationships were crushing. But if I had an all relationship business Mhmm.

You know, 2022, my business would have been done and gone.

Steve: What, so just to argue the other perspective, why not just go all in on just investment machine only?

Jason: Because even it goes up and down. Mhmm. And if you're okay with the roller coaster, that's okay. Right? But even still, I feel like you reach a point of diminishing return in all marketing channels.

Now I've had people spend as much as 150,000 a month with me in investor machine, but that was across multiple markets. Like there's really only so much you can spend in one market, in one marketing channel. So that's the other reason why I have so many is because I'm constantly like, okay, how much can I spend? And I did it just a couple months ago. Like we're just gonna creep this up and see what happens to the the return.

Right? My goal is I want, you know, it's like and and it's funny that we don't see it this way as real estate investors. But if I'm like, hey Steve, I'm gonna give you a dollar and you're gonna give me 4 or five back. The first thought that goes through my mind is, how many dollars can I give you? Mhmm.

How long and

Steve: how long can we keep doing this?

Jason: And, yeah, how long can we keep doing this? But so many and again, I'm I'm on both sides of this because I'm the investor, but I'm also the, on the service provider side too. Right? I'll talk to people and like, oh, yeah. I'm getting a 10 x return with you guys.

That's great. You haven't moved your budget in like a year. Why? Oh, I don't know. I just thought that, you know, $8 a month was good.

On my on my side, I'm like, I wanna keep giving more money until you start giving me less dollars because seems like, you know, like and my my target is I wanna be in the four to five x. Mhmm. I'm okay with two to three to hang on to it. Hopefully, getting up if we're in the one or below, obviously It's a

Steve: waste of time.

Jason: We we we can't keep that. Now that doesn't mean the second it drops down to there, I cut it. Otherwise, I'd have to cut every marketing channel I've ever had Mhmm. Because they're they're all doing this up and down and up and down. I like to look at it over here.

Steve: So it's really the roller coaster and diversity. What,

Jason: but I want I wanna add one thing to that though because, you know, sometimes I say things like this up from stage and podcast and people like, I took that one sentence that you said and I went all in on it. You know? Like, I think one person came up with me and I said something one time, and my first hire was a COO. I was like, oh, no. What did I do?

Like, I am so sorry that I said something that made you think that you needed to bring in a high level COO before you had revenue. Like, one at a time. Mhmm. If you go start 10 marketing channels, you will fail, and you will spend a lot of money. So this is because I've been doing this for years and years and testing them out and bringing them in one at a time and have a company set up and things like that.

So start with direct mail. Mhmm. Start with online lead aggregators. Start with your pay per click. Mhmm.

Most people are gonna start with TV. But if you're really feeling it, just we'll go straight to TV. Yeah. You know, start with one of those.

Steve: Are you doing TV?

Jason: No. It was one. Utah and TV are not friends. What I remember what I told you about market to market. Right?

Like, when when Darren first came in and everyone in, CG was absolutely crushing it, TV. I we I tried it. Other people tried it. Multiple service providers, just Utah and TV, just have not been a fit. But on that boat that I was on, there were people all over last week crushing it in TV.

So, like, absolutely. And I wish that TV worked because TV is everything. Like, you know, I love the idea of the higher barrier to entry, the higher amount that you can spend to be able to get an ROI and everything else. Like, TV is awesome. But, none of us have figured it out yet in Utah.

I'm sure give me give me a little bit of time. I'll probably Alright. Try it again. But

Steve: so thirteen, fifteen different lead sources. Talk about, like, eighty twenty rule still applies here, though. Right? Like, 20% is still providing 80% of the revenue.

Jason: Has not been the case for me. No. But I do but I do watch that and was much more so the case. That's part of why I started Investor Machine, is because the eighty twenty, I I noticed from doing my own, you know, all of my own marketing for years. That's like, wait a minute.

This, listen, this, listen, this list is producing 80% of the revenue. Why don't I just go all in on on this? Yeah. So, I've definitely seen the 8020 principle, but what I see much more so over the years is they're all going

Steve: up and down. Up and down? Yeah. Okay. So about Investor Machine in this time?

Jason: Okay. So we're in the second half of the year. Mhmm. Right? So Investor Machine really had continuation of rolling out all of these things, diving in, refining, improving every different aspect of the business.

So Utah company picked back up, started the year, took investor machine a little bit longer to pick back up, but has finally picked back up. I think we signed up 18 new members, last year. And the nice part is we have open slots in some markets again, because, you know, be because we we lost some people along the way. So we've got the we've got the opportunity to grow quick again before we get all of our spots full again.

Steve: So, I don't know which providers got cut the most, but I suspect it's probably direct mail because of the longer cash conversion cycle.

Jason: You got a couple of challenges with so you got some challenges and advantages to every different marketing channel. Yeah. TV and mail would be my guess as two of the ones that got hit harder because longer conversion cycle, and they're typically more of like your, your bigger budget item marketing channel. So when you're, when you're thinking I need to cut back, I need to save money. You're looking at like, Oh, there's a big one.

Your big advantage to direct mail is the ability to be targeted. Mhmm. With and and in this, you know, in this lower inventory market, the ability to actually dive in and hit the specific people that are, that are the ones that are genuinely going to be most likely to sell the ones that have motivation. That's your big advantage with mail. Your big advantage with the digital leads right now in a lower inventory market is the paper lead.

Steve: Yeah.

Jason: Because if you think about it, TV and direct mail, you're paying for views. Mhmm. Digital, you're paying for actual clicks Mhmm. Which has an which has an advantage in the lower inventory market. So, you know, they they have different advantages and disadvantages in different markets, but I'm seeing them all work.

And when I talk about TV, seeing them work for friends more so than us specifically in Utah. I don't know what it is about us Utah people, but TV marketing doesn't lead to choosing to sell your home.

Steve: I wonder how much Avatar has to do with this, because I don't I don't really understand it. I haven't looked into the demographics in Salt Lake City. So, again, I was kinda mentioned earlier. So all this time, me, you, and Stephanie Betters, right, with Left Main REI, because we're both operators and service providers. Mhmm.

So it was a group text. It was like, hey. How are you doing? Right? There's like a month, month and half, and then you guys are like, yeah.

We're doing good again. I think Stephanie first. I'm doing good again. And you're like, oh, we're picking things back up. I was like, I'm gonna sit over here by myself.

Jason: But You can call me anytime.

Steve: So but in this time, right, we're we're doing a little bit of group therapies. So you meant you meant you mentioned a couple of things. More competition, you feel like right now.

Jason: Mhmm.

Steve: That has not been our experience, but our marketing is different. Right? So talk to me about right now, you feel like when you're going into the living room, it's more of your competitors are talking to the same seller right now. True.

Jason: Yes. Yeah. So I believe couple reasons. One, we did not have a huge winnowing out of, competition. Yeah.

We had a huge winnowing out of sellers though. Mhmm.

Steve: Yes. We did.

Jason: So I believe that's part of it. Another part of it is, the specific marketing that's working best for us right now is investor machine mail, which actually interestingly, I have quite a few rentals myself and there's a lot less people. I get a lot less postcards in like 2021. Every single time I got the mail, you could take to the bank that I got a postcard. Yeah.

And now I'm lucky if it's one a week, one every other week other than obviously my seed letters. So I think the fact that mail as well as the the digital marketing is is a lot of where my budget is right now probably contributes to it as well because, you know, we talk about different channels having different advantages and disadvantages. One of the disadvantages of digital is that your competition's a half an inch away. Mhmm. Right?

Like they click on yours, they click on the next one, they click on the next one. It's one of the worst parts of lead aggregators too. Right? Like, you know, if you have a couple of lead aggregators and you get a shopper that, you know, you you sit down with that seller and that could be a thousand, $2,000 that thousand, $2,000 lead by the time they clicked on multiple different sources.

Steve: Definitely.

Jason: So that can be a downside to

Steve: that. And then comparables. So you were saying it's really important to know the number before you go. So I believe that. You believe that.

Jason: Mhmm.

Steve: Right? Because you're if you know your number is, you're confident, like, hey. When I pay this price, this is the money is gonna show up when you close. Yes. Right?

Like, you can deliver that confidence. What's the argument for the other side?

Jason: It's actually it's so we we had this. I know

Steve: what you're saying.

Jason: So the the primary argument for the other side, do do you know Cody Hofhein's definition of ARV? I think it originates with Tom Kroll. But Tom Kroll, Cody Hofhein, ARV in their opinion stands for assumptions reduce victories. So

Steve: Assumptions reduce victories. I haven't heard that before.

Jason: Yes. So there we go. Something new on the podcast. So the idea is you're coming in confident what you're gonna pay. Right?

You're saying, hey, I know what ARV is and I know what I'm gonna sell it for. Are you right? Because, you know, let's take a house in Mesa Mhmm. And let's send seven appraisers through the house. Mhmm.

These guys have thousands and thousands and thousands of hours of experience and they have it's crazy what they have to go through to become an appraiser. It's honestly crazy what appraisers have to do. Yeah. Are you gonna get seven of the same number?

Steve: No. But they should be pretty close.

Jason: In in theory, oftentimes depending on the house. Right? Mesa was probably a bad example because I'm guessing a lot of the houses are probably pretty similar.

Steve: I mean, we're in Arizona. Everything's pretty cookie cutter.

Jason: Yeah. So, you know, I had it happen once, a house in Bountiful where and it was a very cookie cutter house. Like in Utah, we love we would call it the tri multi level. It's got four different levels, like, I'll spare the explanation of the house, but one of the most cookie cutter houses. We had an appraiser go out, praise for 300 or praise for two fifty.

Our offer was 300. We panicked. Luckily, it was conventional. We threw the appraisal away, had a new appraiser come out, appraised at 300. Right.

So the the the argument back is and, you know, we see it. We and I mentioned this on the podcast last time, but I'll mention it again. We have a spreadsheet where anytime someone fills out an offer, we ask them, hey, what do you think repairs are? And what do you think the what do you think it'll sell for after it's done? And the only consistent thing is that every answer is different and sometimes there'll be a $100,000 swing between them.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jason: So the the argument back is you don't actually know anyways. So just go for the lowest that you can Mhmm. And it'll mean that you don't make a mistake.

Steve: Right. Which we want to do as well because we don't wanna make offers as far as for the house. I mean, like, he's kinda upset with me, frustrated with me. Because my contract just says, like, $10,000. I'm paying him $10,000 on top of what he owes.

Like, that's the agreement. Mhmm. Right? So that's the actual contract I turned in on on Monday. They're like, what is this?

Like, yeah. We're paying him $10,000 to close. Right? That's what he's walking away with.

Jason: Yeah. Yeah. There's no purchase price. Right.

Steve: And so they're saying since the number isn't realistic or you can't really know, then what's the point? Right.

Jason: And just go for as low as you can. Well, I agree for

Steve: as low as you can.

Jason: Yeah. And we we do that too. But and when you're just meeting with a seller one to one and you're the only person that's meeting with them, you can get away with that. But when it's you followed by me followed by the next person, you know, you can just lock it up if you want, but you're most likely just gonna waste your disposition team's time and disappoint the seller.

Steve: And the TC's time.

Jason: And the TC's time.

Steve: Yes. Inside our company.

Jason: And and everybody's time. Right? And and then my wholesale emails are extravagant. We do Matterport tours. We, you know, we do, drone wide over footage.

We, you know, it takes us a lot of time. We do a cut we do two different walk throughs. You know, there's a there's a pretty decent cost to send you a wholesale email.

Steve: We've we've got our quarterly this Friday, right, in two days. Amanda Dean's coming in to run our quarterly. Nice.

Jason: And one of our objectives She's so sharp.

Steve: Yeah. She is. One of our objectives There's

Jason: your takeaway. Have Amanda Dean do your quarterly. There you go.

Steve: Sharper solutions. One of the things we're talking about potentially doing a quarterly is hiring an underwriter. So what are your thoughts?

Jason: I did it. It's been great. Yeah.

Steve: So you have an underwriter.

Jason: I did. And it's the best thing and it's it's the best I I'm gonna I'm gonna do that thing where we take it. It's the best thing I ever did for my CEO. It's the best thing my CEO did for himself, that I gave that I that I was okay with.

Steve: Yeah.

Jason: Because he was the one ultimately doing the final number run. Because ultimately, if you're buying a house, it needs to be done based off of a fairly intelligent ARV. Right? And it it saved him from being able to do that. And it's been one of the better hires that that we've made.

Steve: When did you pay that person?

Jason: So he is a college student. Mhmm. And I believe we're, like, like, 20 an hour?

Steve: 20 an hour? Yeah. Yeah.

Jason: And that's a local.

Steve: That's a steal.

Jason: You can get somebody really good overseas potentially for less than that. And I'm sure that there's, and it it it just worked for us. We had the relationship. It's it's a win win. It's great.

Steve: Yeah. Anyone knows anybody else that needs a job underwriting, let me know, because we're probably gonna have a decision to hire one, in in q four.

Jason: Phil and Eric really did a good job at opening up the potential Mhmm. Of that too. You know, because the idea is you need someone genuinely looking to see what's everything you can do with this property. There's nothing worse than wholesaling a house making $10 that had a zoning on it that could have been knocked down and made into a tenplex that to the right person could have been a $300,000 wholesale fee and you just let it go for $10.

Steve: I mean, that's like best deal ever. We made, like, a quarter mil on it. Right? Close to. And all all we did not all we did, but one of the things we were able to do was say, oh, that's a lot split.

Yes. Right? So let's sell the lot for what we bought the house for.

Jason: Right.

Steve: And then the other lot with the house is all profit.

Jason: And if you're relying on your acquisition managers to figure that out, that's not I mean, tell me, sales trainer. Is that a good idea?

Steve: We want you to sell. Yes. Right? And even, I actually had a conversation with Eric Brewer about this, because you're saying, like, we get our our salespeople who are generally emotions driven. Right?

Jason: Sign up for novations.

Steve: Yeah. They're generally emotions driven. Maybe they're drinking a monster or whatever. Right? Getting amped up to go to the appointment.

And right before they do that, hey.

Jason: Why don't you run some comps? Right. So I actually still make my acquisition managers run comps. Mhmm. So we do it somewhat redundant.

I make the acquisition managers run comps as well as the analyst run comps because, I still want my acquisition managers to have the confidence Mhmm. Of this is this is what's going on in this market. This is this is, you know, the comps that I see and, you know, this is what the the analyst shared with us, but this is what it actually is.

Steve: Yeah. Well, the one thing I liked from Eric's presentation back then was, yeah, we have underwriters. And then once a week or once a month, they just train the acquisition managers on how to do comps. Don't do the comps so they know how to do comps Yeah. If necessary.

Alright. So then another thing too is, I mean, Investor Machine, I think one of the things I love about Investor Machine, the reason why we went why we work with you guys was that, you know, was that what's that, not only am I the president, I'm a client too. Yes. Was it, HairClub for Men?

Jason: Is that what it is? Something.

Steve: Yeah. Right? So I know, like, when I this right around when we joined Collective Genius, and it was a question about direct mail. Right? It wasn't a Jason Lewis presentation.

It was like, hey. Let's all talk about direct mail. And you were on the call.

Jason: I remember this. I was actually at a Sharper event in Orlando

Steve: Yeah.

Jason: On the call. I remember exactly where I was standing. Yeah.

Steve: And they're like, hey, Jason. Like, what do you think about this? And, like, well and then you went on, like, this fifteen minute presentation on analytics, profiles, who reads what, this and that, rotation, like, how often they should be mailing, what works in this market, what works in that market. I was like, I don't know anything this guy's talking about, but he's clearly passionate about it.

Jason: Right? He's fine.

Steve: Right? And anyone who's passionate about it, there's something, you know, you and I are both again, you know, we're Darren Hardy geeks. Right? Like, there's something that I love about someone else who loves what they do. It's addicting.

Right? So, like, my kids, the oldest dude have dropped out of the piano since, but, like, I was so I love that they were going through East Valley Yamaha because the guy that was teaching them happens to be a world class maestro. Yeah. Right? It just happens to, like, when he left his when he fled his country, he was a world class maestro.

And now he's the maestro at, Chandler Center of the Arts now. But before that, like, you got this guy you watch, like, these movies with these super intense, you know, like, screaming at the violinist, whatever. Like, he's that guy. Mhmm. I loved it.

My kids, I put them in kung fu lessons. I'm watching this guy teach my kids. It's like, oh, this guy's legit. This is not like he's interested in this. Like, he is, like, devoted his life to this.

Yeah. Right? And I believe he's world class. I even though he's 60, I will feel totally comfortable. Like, hey.

Go in a ring and go fight somebody. Right?

Jason: And you wouldn't fight him.

Steve: No. He throws me around like a rag doll. Right? But I signed up to learn from him. Right?

So there's something about, you know, people that are world class and passionate about something. When I saw that, I was like, alright. We're signing up for this.

Jason: You have to be or you won't see through the hard times. And yeah. True. To me, being a wholesaler, one thing that I didn't realize when I got into it, you're not a real estate investor. No.

You you run a sales and marketing company and your widget is real estate.

Steve: Exactly.

Jason: And fortunately, I really like sales and marketing. So, you know, it went from I do this on my own for myself to, hey, can I do this for other people? Mhmm.

Steve: Yeah. Well, you have success. Hey, Jason. I like what you're doing. Can you do this for me too?

Yeah. It's actually how my sales training started. Right? It wasn't like, hey. I'm gonna have this awesome sales training program.

I was like, hey. Let me talk to you about what I'm doing. And they were like, that looks cool. I want that. So, yeah, it's that obsession.

So the other thing we did, you and I, was, hey. We should have this lead manager software thingy. I remember.

Jason: It was very early on in the AI days. Yeah. And we wanted because one thing you and I are both passionate about is answer the dane call and make sure your lead manager doesn't suck. Yeah. Right?

And even still, I've got lead managers that aren't with me now, that, you know, I get in and listen to the calls even when we were working on rolling this out that I was like, oh my gosh. This is so bad. Mhmm. Right? Like, that was totally a motivated seller and they were they were gone.

And so, you know, in working with a lot of my investor machine clients and realizing, hey, one thing that you guys are not doing is, like, answering the phone and if you could hear your person, it would be so bad. So what I do, I got out my drum. Listen to your dang calls. Listen to your dang calls. Listen to your dang calls and no one marched to my call.

No one marched to my drum. So then it's like, okay. This is and this is always the way my mind goes. Right? It's like and this is the reason why investor machine is almost entirely done for you is because all of the things that I try to convince you to do, you don't do.

So it's our final, just do it for you. And that's what works. But I will say as much as I talk a big game, previous to investor machine, the biggest thing that held me back from ROI on mail, I would look at the end of the year and I would be like, hey, I got, you know, four or five x return on mail. This is great. Why did I only spend that?

Oh, yeah. Because I only sent mail eight of the 12 Mhmm. Or nine of the twelve months because those other three months I was tinkering or I was twisting or I wanted to try a new creative or I wanted to mess with a new list and I didn't send it out. Mhmm. Turn my mail over to investor machine.

I have not missed a week of mail in years because they do it for me. So even though I'm talking about beating the drum, but I I couldn't even consistently send mail out when I was doing it by myself. Right. So, you know, beat the drum, listen to the calls. And then like, okay, we're gonna do it for people.

Hence, the software came in, partnered with a software, trained it to and basically it was a call center software to be able to, and basically we were making every different lead manager for every different person our, our call center. Train the AI software to be able to pick out keywords. I mean, eight, you know, sounds sexy AI. In the end, it was just keywords and connecting keywords and things like that. The company and software proved to be exceptionally difficult.

Mhmm. It's one of those things that you sit down and you talk about, you get excited about, and you sign the big contract, you announce it in the podcast, not that we did that. Oh, wait. We did. I think we still have a wait list waiting waiting out there for us as soon as we're ready.

And we

Steve: They're ready.

Jason: We announced that in, October 2021. And roadblock after roadblock after difficulty, company wound up difficult to work with. And then along the way, in all of our challenge of figuring this out, rolling this out, all the different challenges and and everything else, tons of resources dumped into this. AI evolved so fast and became, you know, normal enough that now it almost doesn't matter what your call software is. It has that same degree of AI and it do the same thing.

And the value proposition was essentially not really there. We could really hammer a bunch more, like marketing and sales and everything else into this, but it's not necessarily to something that's like truly wildly valuable. So we, said, you know what? We're gonna cut our losses and continued losses because the contract's not done yet.

Steve: After everything's said and done, might be a difficult number to say on there. How much do you think you besides the time and effort and everyone's time worth.

Jason: Oh, yeah. If I'm if I and especially if I'm including that, it's 6 figures.

Steve: Yeah. So excluding all that

Jason: Potentially even without that, I might be flirting with that, like, 6 like, coming up to 6 figures and then potentially multiple 6 figures after that. Yeah.

Steve: Yeah. So, a case in point.

Jason: Yes. A

Steve: whale club. We're going

Jason: we're going whale club. Yeah. Yeah. My I will say, like, times like this is when you're grateful for great partnerships.

Steve: Yeah.

Jason: Right? Like, you were a champion through this whole thing. Mike, the other owner of Investor Machine has been a champion through the because this was my this was my thing. I was the one that was excited about it. I was the one that was driving forward on this.

They included, you know, and everybody believed in me, supported me, you know, jumped in and dealt with the, you know, embarrassing, like, we announced this on a podcast. Nothing came from it.

Steve: Yeah. Well, I mean, these things happen.

Jason: Right. Well and you cannot make every shot you take and you have to just be okay to just keep taking shots. But, yes, coming back to Whale Club, case in point.

Steve: Yeah. So, like, I mean, even, like, for those of you guys that ever watch me, my Instagram, right, where I'm doing, like, podcasts other people's podcasts, and behind me is a canvas. The canvas is still there. Right? And it's a canvas of an NFT I bought.

Jason: Oh, you told me about this.

Steve: Yeah. Like, I bought I bought NFT. Right? It's a $142, but it costs. I still have it.

It's not worth a $142. Right?

Jason: What's it worth?

Steve: I don't know, but it won't sell for 20 because I listed it for 20. I I could stomach a 120 k loss, but we're not even there. But this goes back to, you know, the case points I'm on the well cloud, like, you know, collect, analyze, strategize, execute. Generally, are you a quick start? Do you know?

Jason: I'm not a quick start.

Steve: You're not a quick start. So, generally, I'm a quick start. Like, hey. Should we do this? Yes.

And what about yeah. Let's do it. Right? Yeah. And so, like, we can avoid these expensive mistakes if we take the time to collect and, strategize and execute, but we don't.

Right? And it and it's not like well club was the first one to come up with this. Right? Because, Keith Cunningham already had that book, The Road Less Stupid.

Jason: Mhmm. Right?

Steve: Have you read that one?

Jason: I have listened to Keith Cunningham, but I have not read his book.

Steve: Okay. So talking about Whale Club then, like, how does this apply? So, like, you're you since joined the Whale Club. Mhmm. Love it.

What is your perspective on the Whale Club?

Jason: I find myself quoting something from Whale Club, Dan Nicholson's, Rigging the Game book all the time. Now, like, a part of my teaching, talking to my team, everything else, like, I find myself quoting something that I heard from you or Paul Sparks or Dan Nicholson all the time. Like, one of my primary go tos is well, the the my top two go tos are one, solvable problem. Mhmm. Two, closer over more.

Steve: Right. Yeah. And and for me, it's it's the biggest thing and it's, I think sometimes it drives my team crazy. Yeah. Right?

But But

Jason: I feel like it's grounded, you and me, a lot. And a lot of these principles has definitely made us better business owners.

Steve: Well, it's gonna keep us out of more trouble.

Jason: Yes.

Steve: Right? Like, it's not that we can't do things. It's just before we do those things, let's just Go through a process. Yeah.

Jason: Yes.

Steve: Ask just a few more questions, which goes the other thing. You know, one thing I stole from you before Whale Club. Right? So right around the same time, I I partnered with Paul Sparks. My, accountability partner, you know, my best friend since, middle school was frustrated with me.

And there's a friend who's you know, he sold his company for $80,000,000. He knows a thing or two about business. Right? We talk every single month. And he's frustrated me.

He's like, Steve, you're always chasing more money. Right? He's like, you need to sit down and write a bunch of questions to ask yourself before you're allowed to start a new venture. It's like, okay. And I put that as an ask.

Right? And CG and Eric Brewer says, oh, you should watch Jason Lewis' presentation. Great. So, you wanna share some of those questions?

Jason: Who? Yes. I'll share the I I remember giving the specific presentation, and essentially it was and it came from what I actually picked it up from was the I think it was the gap. It was either the gap in the gain or be your future self now. One of, Benjamin Hardy's books.

But essentially it was yeah. Before you start, you want to make sure that it's past your your tests. Right? And ask the question and every person has their questions that ultimately matter the most to them. Right?

And it it it stems from what are your core values? What are what matters the most to you? Right? Like, for example, one of his at the time was like, I cannot start this venture, you know, will it allow me to be if I if I do this thing, will I still be able to take two weeks off and come back to not a significant amount of work? Right?

That was one of his rules. So I wrote out all of mine. I'm not gonna be able to get them all on the spot, but I know it was like, you know, it is doing this going to make me more money than just one more deal. Mhmm. Right?

Because oftentimes we get excited about all these other ideas and we do all this stuff, but in the end, we have a pretty profitable business and wholesaling. And if you would have just gotten one more deal Mhmm. It would have been better. I think one was, is this something that's gonna energize me or is it gonna drain me? Is this something I'm gonna enjoy doing?

Something I'm not gonna enjoy doing? Yeah. Is it market resistant? Is it putting more eggs into one specific market? You know, what's the actual time commitment going to be?

Am I still gonna be excited about this three months from now? Does this line up with something I'm inherently passionate about or do I just like the idea of starting something up and getting it going?

Steve: Yeah. And one of the ones I put from it was like, will this be fun?

Jason: Will this be fun? Yeah. Yeah. Which at this point in my life, that matters way more to me than it did five years ago. Yeah.

Five years ago, so I don't care if it's fun or not. I'm gonna I got lucky, but it was like, I'm just gonna do what's gonna help me achieve my financial goals. Now I'm much more interested in, am I passionate about this? Yeah. Am I excited about this?

Is this the type of thing that I'm gonna like? And is it gonna have me doing things with people that I like?

Steve: Yeah. And I think go go back to Creation Utah, investment machine. Clearly, like, they both passed that test really, really well. One of the other things I liked a lot was, you said something. My wife also enjoys this message.

Right? It's like, I've got unlimited budget except for one thing.

Jason: Yeah. What is it? My travel budget. Mhmm. I said that once to Jason Medley.

I was like, yeah. Sorry. It's just not gonna be my travel budget. He was like, are you kidding me? He said, you make how much of your travel hang on.

Hang on. Didn't say my financial travel budget. I said my travel budget. It's my most limited budget that I have is my travel away from family budget. Yeah.

I have a certain number of days that I'm willing to sleep in a bed other than my own. And I'm in multiple masterminds.

Steve: Right.

Jason: And I've never so the the masterminds that I'm in have four events. Never been to all four events in a year. Probably probably never will because one of my rules in terms of the travel budget is June, July, and August, I don't leave. Like, it would take an incredible opportunity to get me to leave in June, July, August. I always miss any event that's in June, July, and August because I don't leave Utah in June, July, and August.

That's the summer. I live for the summer. And I love spending time with the kids. The kids are home from school and it's like, I've got all this work that I have to do, but every second that's not keeping the businesses going and growing is spent with the kids. And if I if I can take three days for a mastermind, it means I can take three days to go do some type of vacation with the kiddos during the summer.

Steve: Yeah. My wife's opinion as well. What is that? Is there is there a certain number of days or how do you calculate that?

Jason: I would say I don't actually have, like, a set set budget. It's more a I try to keep it as limited as possible. I don't do the summer. Mhmm. And also, it kinda depends a little bit on how the family is is doing as well.

Like, I I do try hard to be a genuine contributor at home. Even my my COO thought the opposite. He's like, you know, I thought you'd be the guy that was like, you were all in on business and your wife took care of just absolutely everything at home and you didn't do any of that. I I do a lot of that. I help with laundry.

I do a lot of the cleaning. I help with the kids to bed at night and all of that stuff because that's the stuff that matters. Like, in the end, you know, let's say right now, you found out you got cancer, you got three months to live. You're gonna care a heck of a lot more about what your wife and kids think about you Mhmm. Than the money that you have in the bank.

Right. You'll be grateful that your family's taken care of and everything else, but none of that stuff ultimately matters in the long run. And I've talked to many, a CG vet, you know, one one cool part about CG is you get the and you get in in investor field as well. The the older guys that have been doing this a long long long time. Mhmm.

You talk to them and, you know, a a message I've heard is I would give it all back if I could have a relationship with with my kids. Yeah. Or if I could still be married to my wife, etcetera. All that stuff is way more important. Our relationship with God, a relationship with your kids, a relationship with your wife.

Gary Keller does a really good job at explaining how to do it well on the one thing. Mhmm. He calls about he calls it intentional counterbalancing. Yeah. Where in order to really make progress in any aspect of your life, you cannot be in perfect balance.

Mhmm. And people always think, like, I gotta be in balance. Meaning, you know, it's gotta be exactly this much church and exactly this much, family and exactly this much work every day all the time and whatever they're doing, they're feeling guilty about everything else. Mhmm. That's not how it works.

Yeah. You have a season of counterbalance. Mhmm. But you have to make sure it stays a season. Right?

It's like, hey, I just had the shift happen. So I'm in a counterbalance season of work. Hey, market picked back up, so I've gotta catch it back up. I'm in a counterbalance season of work. Hey, like, you you can find an excuse to be in the counterbalance all the time.

Right. But one of my one of the things that I try and this is on try to do is counterbalance a little bit back towards the family in the summer. But then, like, January, February, March, Utah sucks. Mhmm. So I I get that people fly there to ski and everything else and it's fun to ski for a couple days.

But in my opinion, Utah sucks in January, February, March. And I I push so hard in business during that time because I got nothing else to do.

Steve: Yeah. I was supposed to visit you one of the spring breaks we didn't do.

Jason: I remember you were close. Yeah. I you were you were gonna stay on one of my Airbnbs.

Steve: Right. Yeah.

Jason: Yeah.

Steve: That's still gonna happen. Powder Mountain. We gotta figure out when we're gonna do. That still gotta happen. And then you were talking about collective genius.

You know, you're you're you're multiple masterminds. Collective Genius, Investor Fuel. Just those two. Oh, just those two. Yeah.

Yeah. You're not even an all four for Investor Fuel either?

Jason: Never. No. No. I don't I don't go to all four. That'd be eight events.

Yeah. Yeah. No.

Steve: Why no I I I see that you're not at all four at CG. So that's the reason why you're not in any additional ones either.

Jason: Correct. Travel budget. There's a lot of other great events.

Steve: Third one.

Jason: No. No. Alright. Unless you count CG Select. That kinda does count as a third one.

Steve: It does. Yeah. My wife does not like the fact that I'm trying to go for CG and CG Select.

Jason: Yes. Yeah. And it's Tampa.

Steve: And it's Tampa. Yeah. I did one I spoke with the

Jason: I'm, I'm in one of those seasons of more travel right now. I'm here this week. I was at the Lake Powell event last week, but I brought my wife with to that one. Mhmm. This this week, c CG next week.

Two weeks later, Investor Fuel. Two or three weeks later, c g Select. Mhmm. Month later, I'm doing that c g premier again, but bringing the wife and twin five year olds to that one.

Steve: And then but you have a team also that goes that covers. Right?

Jason: Yes. For, investor machine. Right. Like, the salesperson goes in in the vicinity. No.

That's Bateman. Masha is who goes for me.

Steve: Yeah. So but so you have it covered.

Jason: That's also Masha. If if anyone's interested in investor machine, that's who they'll talk to. She's amazing. Nice to discover. While we're on that topic, if anyone is interested, the investormachine.com/steve.

Mhmm. Nice part about knowing Steve and listening to the podcast is, our traditional sign up fee has been 10,000. Mhmm. Mike and I talked about it. We will and when people signed up last time we were on the podcast, if they said the investormachine.com/steve, it was still 10,000 because that's not something that we traditionally discounted ever.

But for this, we will do, 3,000 for the sign off fee for the first market. 70% off if you will do the investmentmachine.com/steve.

Steve: Wow. So we didn't talk about that before. That's awesome.

Jason: Yeah. I didn't tell you that.

Steve: Yeah. No. That's really cool that you guys are offering a discount. I think that's huge.

Jason: Slash Steve.

Steve: Other thing is really cool again because we're involved in CG. We go out, you know, dinner, do whatever. You had this b hag, which I guess has changed a little bit. Yes. But let's talk about your your your b hag.

Jason: So, which one do you wanna talk about? You wanna talk about the new one or the old one?

Steve: It's like what the new one? Okay. What's what's firing up right now?

Jason: So, and actually we were just on this boat with, Jerry Norton, who I think is awesome. And his wife, Ann Marie, is absolutely amazing. Yeah. So, we like the idea of freedom. Mhmm.

It's part of being a man. Tony Robbins does a really good job at this. He's like, men, see how you feel at the end at Date with Destiny. One of my favorite events I've ever been to. If you were to pick, like, a single event, it's probably a favorite.

I would say it's Tony Robbins' Date with Destiny. Just amazing for living a highlight. But he, at one point, goes like, man, how does it make you feel? Freedom. Mhmm.

And you just like something about it. So

Steve: I mean, that was a a an iconic scene in in Braveheart.

Jason: Yes. Braveheart. Yes. Yes. So during the pandemic, one of the things that we did was we took three months.

We we were homeschooling anyways. I could work from anywhere. So we were like, you know what? And everything was cheap and so we rented an Airbnb for three months in Orlando. Mhmm.

And we got season passes to all of the different parks and things like that. And we were like, this is the best. Like, I've walked on to almost every ride in Orlando because no one was at the parks and we rented, you know, it was like a 10 bedroom house for like like $90 a night or something like that. Yeah. Because it was ghost town.

Mhmm. So we wanna be able to eventually pull off that life Mhmm. Where, and, Jerry and Ann Marie have pulled it off for what they did with 10 kids, which is a lot. But They had

Steve: more than a 10 bedroom house.

Jason: Yes. Yes. Correct. They need one for each of the kids. So, you know, they've got two tutors and people like that to help with homeschool and they can go to Montana and they can go to Puerto Rico and they can be wherever anybody is anytime.

I think that life would be absolutely amazing. And having control and influence over what your kids are learning, be able to have the opportunity to teach them more about entrepreneurship and the things that that matter most, that to me is just the absolute dream life.

Steve: So Grant Cardone does this. Okay. Chris Roode does this. Right? I've seen it, and it's cool.

It's appealing.

Jason: It has a it has upsides and downsides. I

Steve: I think I would go crazy.

Jason: Yeah. I will say we, two or three weeks ago, put all five of our kids on the same bus to go to the same elementary school. We've got six down to kindergarten. And it that's actually honestly pretty nice too. Like, there is definitely another side.

It's like, they're all gone. Right. My wife and I home during the day.

Steve: Yeah. You don't have an office you go to?

Jason: Offices or prisons.

Steve: Let's talk about that.

Jason: That's my so I love virtual, and everybody's different. So I'm not saying that's what you should do. Again, on the boat, Cody Hoffine, and Mark Stuber are all in on everybody in the office. You clearly are too. You have a big beautiful office.

Yeah. I love virtual. Both investor machine and the Utah company run entirely virtual. Mhmm. Funny part is almost everyone in the Utah company lives in Utah.

So we'll get together about once a month, and I'll do a lunch, do something just for sake of the camaraderie. But, yeah, every single person works from home, has great advantages. The younger generation definitely prefers working from home. Mhmm. I love providing freedom in the workplace as well.

Mhmm. Freedom is, you know, they say freedom isn't free, but freedom doesn't cost me a whole lot. Right? And I think it's part of what helps me to have great retention is it's people genuinely enjoy. Hey, get get the job done, get the work done, and otherwise, you're free.

People don't get tied up in commutes and we've got really good systems and processes around it. And honestly, we did all virtual before it was cool. Mhmm. Like even before COVID, we were we were all virtual. And so because of that, I hired for it and built a culture largely around it.

Steve: How many salespeople do you have in Creation Utah?

Jason: So acquisition management? Let's see. Say, like, eight or nine.

Steve: Okay. So, I personally believe that in order to be able to lead an organization virtually of salespeople, you gotta be next level leadership. Yeah. So what are you doing to lead an army of salespeople effectively virtually?

Jason: I will be happy to answer you with what Rob is doing to be able to effectively lead a group of salespeople virtually. So daily huddle, every morning everybody gets together, shares what they're grateful for, shares what they're working on, shares their number. Amazing sales training. Steve Train. We do our scoreboard meeting, which is where every Tuesday, we, we get together and we, go over all of our numbers and get rewarded based on specifically what we do.

Mhmm. Every Thursday based on the day, there's acquisition manager further training. There's lead manager further training. You know, each different sales department gets deeper individualized training every single week from Rob. And then about once a month, we try to actually get together in person.

And then, I mean, they are calling him all the time. Every day it's like, hey, let's talk this specific one through. Let's look at this. Let's look at that. Let's look at this.

So as much as he's COO, he spends a lot of time wearing the sales manager hat.

Steve: Yeah. It sounds like it.

Jason: And then I have Carrie on my team who oversees a lot of the specific like office administration Mhmm. Behind the scenes, KPIs, number tracking, things like that too.

Steve: Yeah. Gotcha. So I'm trying to think. There was something else. What have we not talked about that we wanted to talk about?

So what are you excited about for the rest of this rest of this year?

Jason: Because we're

Steve: we're in pressure q four.

Jason: That's true. So, you know, we talk and I think that from the timeline standpoint, we've pretty much got up to today. Mhmm. I'm excited to be watching both companies grow, and our goal so in, Creation Utah, Rob and I kind of intentionally wanted to master the fundamentals and keep the company pretty close to the same size. Some reasonable growth, but pretty close to the same size.

We're looking to double it or more next year and believe we have the the systems, the infrastructure, the the market timing, everything in place to be able to really, really make that happen. Yeah. Which which we're excited about because we haven't even had that as a goal up to this point. So for the end of this year, it's laying the foundation and building all the pieces and putting everything specifically together to be able to make that happen. And same thing with investor machine.

It's been a long period of investment into this ability to see exactly who sold to investors in your market and setting up the right partners and right systems and right processes to be able to help with multiple marketing channels. And all of this stuff has been, you know, it's been a lot of work kind of all coming into a confluence of now we can really start to see the benefit from a lot of this stuff. So I'm actually really excited about the rest of this year and next year. Yeah. Well, on a lot of this stuff, we haven't been benefiting this whole time yet.

We like, investor machines specifically, we've been building all of this, to now really start benefiting Yeah. From this. So I've been dumping all the resources in without seeing a lot of the benefits yet. And now a lot of the benefits is going forward.

Steve: And then one thing, I don't know if we're allowed to talk about it here, is diversifying, the clientele. Yeah.

Jason: In regards to, like, multiple industries and things like that. That that hasn't that hasn't turned into too much. Yeah. You know, we we looked at, hey, could we help people in in solar specifically as well? And so very early stages with that.

We've got a customer right now that we're going through working on testing things like that, and that'll be we're talking about once it's something.

Steve: Yeah. That's, because we're actively diversifying ourselves training.

Jason: Yeah.

Steve: Right? Not me leading it. It'd be someone else spearheading it. There's another guy, Ian Ross. He's been on the show, and the guy is masterful in sales.

Just doesn't have a brand yet. Right? So, we're actually launching another podcast soon, sales disruptors, where he's gonna be running that show. Right? And we're gonna be, you know, targeting other industries, solar, auto, whatever.

Right? So we'll see where that goes. We see a lot of

Jason: you do. Look at what, oh, shoot. What's his name? The guy from Phoenix that came in

Steve: Jeremy Miner.

Jason: Jeremy Miner. Look at what he's been able to do across multiple industries, and it's impressive.

Steve: Incredibly impressive. Right. Yeah.

Jason: I saw your picture on your Facebook. You got them for breakfast.

Steve: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's one of the cool things about Collective Genius. Right? It's, like, they all bring all these awesome people in, and then I'm able to work my way in to having a conversation with them Yeah.

Exchange numbers. And, hey. Let's let's collaborate.

Jason: Yes. So we had I got to talk to Benjamin Hardy, which is really exciting. Now that said that he was all in on, 10 x and focus and, like, just look you know, eighty twenty principle. Mhmm. Very, very big on that.

And I mean, he made it very clearly on, like, I basically am working on a couple of things I'm not looking for friends. But like Jeff Hoffman, I still have his cell number. Mhmm. Billionaire, most impressive speaker ever, and we still will will chat back and forth. Absolutely amazing.

Steve: That's awesome. Yeah.

Jason: So they opened And I've learned the secret, by the way. Anybody from CG watches us don't steal my secret. The secret is do your research on the keynote speaker Mhmm. And talk to them before they speak. Mhmm.

Because after they speak, everybody knows what they are now. They're swarmed. They're excited. But I always am lingering around looking for the person and have done research onto them and sometimes I'm a super fan. Anyways, but that's when you can talk to the big keynote speakers is

Steve: That's smart.

Jason: Before before they talk because after it's done.

Steve: Yeah. So, I'm gonna I want you to think about what you wanna leave everyone with as far as last thoughts. Guys, hopefully, you guys got a ton of value. I mean, Jason, over the course of almost two hours, basically shared how to build this

Jason: insane business. In relative to today because it's very different today is different than when we talked in 2021.

Steve: Very different. Yeah. I mean, we went through closed Olympics.

Jason: Right?

Steve: And we're watching these guys close. Like, yeah, that stuff used to work. The way you're talking to sellers is that way. It used to work. It doesn't work anymore.

Jason: Mhmm.

Steve: You actually have to build a relationship. You have to get them to trust you before going for the close.

Jason: Yeah. That was your seller appointment that I did Mhmm. Two hours. Yeah. And and I wasn't the high offer.

Mhmm. But the high offer was in and out in fifteen minutes. Yeah. And they went with me. I was 60,000 less Yeah.

Than the high offer, but they went with me because I was there for two hours. That's part of why I was so excited. Yeah. Well, you got trust. Something magical about knowing your offer was 60,000 less than the high guy, and they still went with you.

Steve: Yeah. We had the same thing. Not 60. It was 15,000, but it was yeah. You know?

They went with us even though they told us they had two other higher cash offers.

Jason: Mhmm.

Steve: And then, even I'm timing these appointments. I'm also recording them. Like, even in a non, full appointment. Like, these are, like, partial appointments where the I showed up because our acquisition manager couldn't get it, and I went in to get the contract. Or, like, hey.

We couldn't come to terms today, but you go do some more work. I'll go do some more work, and we'll reconvene. It's not a full appointment. It's just a part of an appointment, and it's an hour. Right?

Because they're talking about, like, when we're negotiating, it's like, what do you need? Like, what boxes do you need checked? Yeah. Right? And we could check these boxes.

What does that mean to you? Right? Okay. And then once we've discussed all these things, now I'm prepared to make my formal offer that checks every single one of your boxes. Yeah.

That's a fifty minute conversation. I was like, man, I can't believe I was in there that long.

Jason: Minimum. And yeah. And it's a lot of seeking first to understand. It's a lot of asking questions. It's a lot of figuring out what they want.

And I found the best acquisition managers or if you're doing appointments yourself. The person who's most likely to win is the one who took the time to truly understand what they wanted, came across as the expert, and then presented a genuine solution to what they were looking for that they felt confident in was gonna give them the certainty and convenience that they're ultimately looking for over price. Right.

Steve: Yeah. If it's just price, we're not gonna win.

Jason: Open door.

Steve: Yeah. Open door.

Jason: But if

Steve: you want a solution where you can sleep well at night.

Jason: Yeah. Opendoor is gonna come back to you with a different offer later on. You can take that to the bank. Yeah. It could be good.

It could be bad. Who knows?

Steve: We had one that came back that came back 95,000 lower. Yeah. So, guys, hopefully, again, you guys got a ton of value. If you guys did, subscribe. Do not keep us a secret.

We do have our sales leadership next week, so scratch that. It's probably too late for you guys. We do have our, live sales training in a month, month and a half. If you guys are inside our sales community, you guys get a better price. So if you want a discount on our future events, join us at salesdisruptors.com.

So what are the last thoughts you wanna leave everyone with?

Jason: Ultimately, when you're looking back at the end of your life, it's relationships are all that are ultimately gonna matter.

Steve: Mhmm.

Jason: So, you know, go work hard, do what you need to do, but don't do it at the expense of your key relationships. You're never gonna get your kid's childhood back. You're never gonna get those years of your marriage back. You know, reach out to the estranged relationship. Ultimately, all of this is cool that we talked about, but it's really relationship with God, relationship with family, relationship with those closest to you, and even relationships with your coworkers is what makes for a rich life.

I would say that's probably what I'd what I'd leave it with.

Steve: Yeah. It's all for naught.

Jason: And that's from a low b. So that should mean something from one low b to another.

Steve: Yeah.

Jason: We both have Steve and I both have the same predictive index profile, so we have a deep understanding of each other. So from people that are task oriented over people oriented

Steve: Yeah.

Jason: Even from that standpoint, relationships is ultimately what matters the most.

Steve: Fairly antisocial. Yeah.

Jason: That's right.

Steve: If someone wants to get a hold of you, what's the best way for them to get a hold of you?

Jason: You can find me on Facebook. I just got asked that question too. Not everyone has all strengths. I'm not as good at social media as you are. I'm sure I'm on Instagram too.

I don't know exactly what, my Facebook or my Instagram, specifically is. So but I'm very searchable, and I'm friends with a lot of real estate investors. So we'll probably have a mutual friend.

Steve: Look for the Jason Lewis in Salt Lake City.

Jason: That's the one. Yes. Because there is one in Denver as well. And we've never met, but we're going to someday.

Steve: Yeah. One day where, like, the the universe might might collapse.

Jason: That's right. Yeah.

Steve: Thank you so much. Thank you. Alright. See you guys next week.

Jason: Steve train. Jump on the Steve train. We real estate disrupt us.