MMM Edition: 25,000+ Direct Mail Letters a Month with Jason Reynolds

What happens when a minor league ballplayer trades a shiny new car for a tired duplex—and then builds a real business from that bet? We sit down with Jason Reynolds to unpack how a $50k signing bonus became a launchpad for a scalable flipping operation, why active income beats slow-and-steady rentals early on, and the exact systems that keep deals moving from first call to closing table.

Jason shares the pivotal shift from collecting doors to building a sales and marketing engine. We get into his flip criteria—why light rehabs can run on slimmer spreads while heavy rehabs demand $50k+—and how he funds growth with a smart stack: hard money in first position and private lenders in second to cover closing costs and cushions. If you’ve wondered how investors scale without tying up their own cash, this playbook demystifies the process without hype.

We also dive deep into finding deals in a competitive market. Direct mail remains the workhorse at serious volume, but cost per contract has climbed, pushing fresh tests with Meta ads and continued cold calling. For first-timers, Jason offers a practical path: trade money for time, partner with wholesalers and agents, and use that first win to fuel marketing. On the sales side, his team runs a fully virtual process—intake call, underwriting, and a focused offer call—locking agreements via DocuSign before walkthroughs and renegotiating only when necessary. The real edge? Solve real problems like leasebacks, foreclosure timelines, and probate hurdles, and price becomes one part of a better plan.

Operations bring the profit home. Jason now runs projects with a W-2 project manager and specialized subs, anchored by a posted scope, timeline, and budget before work starts. KPIs stay simple: weekly leads, process calls, offers, contracts, percent of projects on time and on budget, and closings delivered as scheduled. If you’re ready to move from dabbling to doing, this conversation gives you a clear blueprint for active income, cleaner flips, and stronger leadership.

Enjoyed the conversation? Follow the show, share it with a friend who’s hunting their first deal, and leave a quick review to help more investors find us.

VCap Real Estate Podcast

Transcript

Welcome & Guest Intro

SPEAKER_00 0:13

Welcome to the VCAP Real Estate Podcast, where we talk about building physical empires. Learn from industry experts about all aspects of the business of real estate. You'll learn how to buy, renovate, manage, and sell deals by people who actually do it every day. People who build their fortunes doing this. I'm your host, Cole Farrell. Let's talk. So tonight we have Jason Reynolds. Jason is someone I'm lucky to call a friend. You focus on long-term rentals, you do flips, you're a man of many talents, and so you have a really cool background. I'm not even going to attempt to explain it. So tell us your story. Cool.

SPEAKER_03 0:59

Yeah. Did everybody hear Cole okay when he was talking? Okay, because I am not going to be louder than Cole, I can promise you that. My name is Jason. I'm originally from New Jersey. I was introduced to the Lehigh Valley when I went to college at Lehigh in Bethlehem. I played baseball there. I was fortunate enough to get drafted by the Padres in the 32nd round. They don't even have that many rounds anymore. Got a small signing bonus of 50,000 bucks. I was 21 at the time. Luckily, I was raised with a good head on my shoulders and thought, how can I do something useful with this rather than buying a chain or buying a car like all my teammates were, and uh bought a two-unit in Allentown that this guy now manages for me. Um and the rest is history. It's been that was about five years ago. We now really don't focus on rentals. We're really focused on I'm I'm trying to build a business out of flipping houses, a little bit of wholesaling here and there too. But really that building the active side of the business has been my focus for the last like two or three years. And I skipped a lot of steps, I'm sure we'll get into some of it, but that's that's the short version of it.

SPEAKER_00 2:07

Yeah, I got so many questions. So my first one is coming from professional sports, like what carried over into the business world?

SPEAKER_03 2:16

Uh a lot of things. Uh definitely uh delayed gratification, I would say, is one that's important for I mean, anybody, but especially an entrepreneur or business owner, like being able to put in the reps and like knowing that it's gonna suck for a while and then there's light at the end of the tunnel for sure. Um I always tell people that I think minor league baseball players are entrepreneurial to begin with. Like, I don't know, uh we have I don't know if we have any baseball junkies here, but minor league baseball players, at least when I was playing, my salary was twelve thousand dollars a year. Like yeah. Uh so you you're really yeah, you do get a I mean the the signing bonus, yes, but um I always tell people like you're it's the same thing as entrepreneurship. Like you're you're betting on yourself that you're gonna make it big, and if you don't, you'll never get paid. But if you do make it big, you you're betting on yourself to perform and eventually get paid. Yeah. I think that that like entrepreneurial spirit, being able being willing to grind it out for a really long period of time for sure. I mean, I have friends that played in the minor leagues for like 12 years before they debuted. Wow. So like I a friend of mine was I think 33 years old, had a wife and two kids, and he had been in the minor league since he was 21. Wow. You gotta you gotta be gritty for sure.

SPEAKER_00 3:38

Yeah. So and you talked about use your signing bonus bonus to get the two unit in Allentown. Like, why? Why not go buy a car? Like, what in you was like Allentown two unit?

SPEAKER_03 3:48

Uh there I mean that wasn't my first thought. I didn't even really know that real estate was was a thing then. Um I don't think there were I can't say there was anything special about me that made me do that. I think it was just I was raised with good parents and they I knew I didn't want to blow it. I wanted to do something responsible with the money. Um before that I had looked into like Roth IRAs, stocks, all that kind of stuff, and then I saw or just came across a podcast about real estate. I don't remember which one, probably bigger pockets or something like that. It just clicked for me, right? Like it's for me, you have more control over the investment, and it it felt more like starting a business for me that rather than like just putting your money into your phone, and then you don't know what's going on with it, you know. So it just clicked for me.

SPEAKER_00 4:33

That's awesome. So you bought that first two unit, and then take us from there to where you are now and kind of what your business looks like now. That's a load of the question.

From Rentals To Flips And Wholesaling

SPEAKER_03 4:42

Uh however you want to dimmy that up. Um I could just break it out by year, I guess. Maybe that's the best way to do it. Uh 2020 was when I bought that rental. Um it was just standard. I put my entire life savings at the time into that, and then I I got the bug, right? I had fun doing it. It was making good money. I was like, how can we do another one? Um that was when I really started listening to more podcasts and stuff. That next year was me trying to save up some money, just scrounging what I had, and I was like cold calling lists myself, like manually dialing every number, like in the morning before I would go to the stadium for the day. So it took me a whole year to get the next property. Um, that was a rental. Uh-huh. And then I think then so that was 2020 and 2021. 2022 was when I went full-time. I maybe bought a couple rentals before I went full-time in real estate, but uh once I went full-time, like once I retired from baseball, I realized buying rentals is not like a there's no quick path to be able to be full-time in real estate just by buying rentals, right? Like um, you could go the route that you've gone, which like with syndications and like raising capital and stuff together. Yeah, no, and that takes years to build up, right? But um for me, I felt like there has to be some type of active income to make this a reality, right? Like so uh 2022, I started doing some like wholesaling, I guess, to really just kind of pay the bills so I could find rentals. I was still trying to buy rentals at that point. 2023 was when things clicked by the end of that year. I was like, this is just not working. I gotta go figure something out. So I think I started flipping a house or two. I think my the first flip I ever did came from this guy right here. You remember which one I'm talking about?

SPEAKER_02 6:32

Ninth Street.

SPEAKER_03 6:33

Ninth Street, yeah. That was a really that was a good one. Thank you, by the way. Um and that was when the light bulb really went off. That like, hey, I can actually A, I can make money, but then I this is how I can scale, right? Like having an active income, being able to make money, right, rather than just putting all your money into rentals, which is a great long-term strategy, but yeah. Now I I was able to start scaling marketing, building a team, right? So that was 2023, 2024, and 2025 have just been the same thing. Building out the marketing, building out the team. Got a shout out to Tiago and Julio for my team who are here tonight. Uh and that's really the last two years has just been trying to build the flipping business and the active income side of it.

SPEAKER_00 7:16

That's awesome. I'm excited to get into that. It's I I love hearing that because I feel like so many of us get into this and we're like, let's get rich quick, let's figure it out. At least that might not be the goal necessarily, but it's kind of in the back of your head. And I think no matter what, some way or another, everybody figures out this is not a quick thing, and that you need that active income. It's something we always run into. So um do you have a question? I'm gonna hold on to the end if that's alright, and then we'll just do like a full QA. So just don't forget it. Um it comes to your deals, let's say rental or flip, you can focus on whatever. Like what determines successful flip or successful rental from not? Like what's a move forward or don't?

SPEAKER_03 7:52

I'll just talk about flips first. Alright, leave it at that. This is evolving. Uh these guys will remember from the quarterly planning we just did. But uh in the past, like when we were really trying to scale, it was just if it'll make$25,000 on a in gross profit on a flip, we'll do it. Yep. Now we're realizing, hey, if we're gonna have to do a full gut rehab, put an addition on this thing,$125,000 rehab, maybe we should try to make a little bit more. Because that$25,000 turns into zero real quick. So um we're kind of like coming up with something, and I don't have a crazy formula or anything like that, but now it's like if it's in a good neighborhood, it's a light rehab, I'm happy making$25,000. But if we're spending like$75,000 or more on the rehab, like we're trying to make$50 plus. Okay. Yeah. So it it's not an exact science. It really at this point does depend on the neighborhood and and things like that.

SPEAKER_00 8:47

But so just to simplify, it kind of depends on if it's a simple turn, easy flip, there's a bunch of things that look good, you're okay with kind of a little less profits.

SPEAKER_03 8:55

And that's yeah, and I mean that it that's just unique to us, right? Because we're able to like I'm not investing my own money into these, we're raising money from people, right? So I don't necessarily have to think so much about return on capital, but like if people are using their own money for flips, right? I wouldn't want to put a hundred thousand of my own dollars into this project, right? Flip it over six months, and then get fifteen thousand dollars back, right? That's not we're able to kind of use a model like that because it's a business and we're raising money from other people, but not necessarily what I recommend. Disclaimer.

What Makes A Flip Worth Doing

SPEAKER_00 9:26

I love that. So talk to me about structure, because you brought that up. So you raise money, and some people might be like, what does that mean? Yeah. How do I do that? So give me a high level first, and then we'll dig in.

Funding Deals With Hard And Private Money

SPEAKER_03 9:38

The vast majority of the deals that we're doing, we use a hard money lender in first position. What does that mean? Yeah. A hard money. That's a good question. A hard money lender is basically somebody who will fund both a purchase and a renovation for you. Most of them will make you put like 10 to 20% down. Um the one that we use is Kiavi, they're a national hard money lender. There's another there are there are so many hard money lenders. Most of them are very good. Kiavi is just who we've used. They give us some pretty good terms. Like we have 100% financing of purchase and rehab. Uh, they allow us to do second position notes, that way we can bring in private lenders for like the closing costs and stuff like that. So that's typically how we're structuring a deal now is we'll have them in first position and then a private lender. A couple of them are here. Um Jim, shout out to Jim. Uh and that's typically how we'll we'll structure a deal. Sometimes if if we have the right private lender and the right property, it'll just be a private lender in first position. And I guess I have I should explain. A private lender is just like family and friends, people you know that you can raise money from. A hard money lender is somebody who raises money from other people and then they'll broker it to you. Like they'll raise the money at 8% and they'll sell it to you at 12% with points, and that's how they make money.

SPEAKER_00 10:58

So you're saying you don't have your own money in these deals?

SPEAKER_03 11:01

Some of them we do. But like the majority of them we don't have to do that.

SPEAKER_00 11:06

I just asked that because I know there's I'm guaranteed a couple people sitting here going, like, wait, wait, wait, you're doing this without any of your money in there, very little. And so I suppose we'll highlight that. Okay. Um it comes to let's say private money, because hard money you can find somebody, like you said. When it comes to private, how do you find that? How is it, you know, you call your uncle and you ask him for some cash.

SPEAKER_03 11:25

You should you should be the guy talking about this. I feel like you're probably better at it than I am. Um I have not done a good job of going out and looking for it. I mean, everybody who lends to us is either my family or friends or just people that I've met along the way who are interested. I'm not necessarily going out and advertising, but I mean if anybody here wants to lend us money, that's that's cool with me. But uh I really really it's just happened organically. I'm not out there pitching it.

Finding Private Lenders Organically

SPEAKER_00 11:52

But that's what I love, and that's why I just wanted to highlight is like it's it's so real, right? You're talking to friends and family, you're doing deals that are local, and it just works. And so I just think that's awesome. Yeah. Um sticking on kind of marketing, but I want to dive so deep into how you market because you specifically are renowned in this entire Lee High Valley for your marketing. And so tell me about what it looks like. And I guess what I want to know is a lot of people here are saying, I want to buy a deal. I want a deal. I can't get a deal, there's no good deals, etc. So how are you finding deals?

SPEAKER_03 12:24

Yeah, I I feel like we could we should I could talk about marketing for hours, but I mean we do a lot of different things. Um I don't I almost don't want to go so deep into like all the different channels because I don't know where everybody's at here. Like I don't know. Is there anybody here who is marketing direct to sellers for to find deals? I don't know.

unknown 12:44

I don't know.

Marketing Mix: Mail, Meta, Cold Calls

SPEAKER_00 12:45

Okay, a few. Real quick, can you guys hear us or do we need a mic or something? You can hear. All right. All right. Test? Okay. Test test. This is weird. Anybody double know? Were you guys hearing me or no?

SPEAKER_03 13:00

Test?

unknown 13:01

You can hear you, but a mic wouldn't be.

SPEAKER_03 13:02

Test, test. Perfect. Nice. Is that coming out or am I just I'm like blowing my throat out here.

SPEAKER_00 13:12

Test? Hello?

SPEAKER_02 13:13

Yes, you can. Can we hear? Can we hear?

SPEAKER_00 13:16

Wow. No, we're just gonna pass this back one more.

SPEAKER_03 13:19

Nice.

SPEAKER_00 13:19

Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 13:27

I can I can take it from here. I just uh wanted to know if I should take it from more of like uh looking for your first deal kind of approach, how I would structure that.

SPEAKER_00 13:36

Or if I can closer, sorry.

SPEAKER_03 13:38

I can walk through like There we go. Um I can walk through exact what I said was I didn't know if maybe people get more value out of me saying if I were looking for my first deal, what would I do? Or I can just walk through exactly what we're doing today, but that's gonna look a lot different than what I would have done back then. So both. I can do both. Start with first trick.

SPEAKER_00 13:59

Sure. Did you ask the question of who markets directly? Yeah. There were a few people.

SPEAKER_03 14:05

So I could give that answer. I think people get more with that. Um let me start with that. I'll come back to if I were looking for my first deal. What we're doing now is a lot of direct-to-seller marketing. Like we send mailers, we run meta ads, we are cold calling, we do a lot of different things. Um we also do get deals from wholesalers, realtors, like connections that we have, but the vast majority, I mean probably 90% plus, is direct-to-seller. Um I can dive super deep into what channels we're doing, what mail pieces we're sending. I don't know if it would be a value for everybody, so I'll I'll just kind of cut it there. Maybe if anybody has questions, if they want to ask about what kind of marketing we're doing, I can dive into it later, but I don't want to just wait.

SPEAKER_00 14:49

So let me ask you this, just kind of bandwagon, we'll bandwagon on that, which is just what is your favorite thing to do right now? And you don't necessarily have to give most effective, but like what do you like doing now, what's working now out of everything?

Mail Volume, Cost Per Contract, Pivots

SPEAKER_03 15:01

That's a tough question because uh direct mail is has been our bread and butter, our golden goose for like the last two years. Um it's still where the majority of our deals come from because we're spending so much on it. We're getting a better like it's Roas return on ad spend, like we're getting a better return from other channels like Meta now. Um but they're kind you can spend more in a market like ours on mail than you can on Meta. Um so I would say if I had to pick one, it's mail. But it's kind of a complicated answer.

SPEAKER_00 15:36

Okay. Um, hold on.

SPEAKER_03 15:41

Let me I'm just thinking. I want to I want to come back to the if I were looking for my first deal. Yes. Uh I'll I don't want to go super deep in any more like marketing stuff. If anybody has any questions, I'm happy to dive into specifics on mail or whatever. We can go through what it like what the average cost per contract is or something like that. But um if I were looking, I mean I found my first deal by having relationships with people who just and then telling them what I was looking to do, and it just came about, right? Like I will say our average cost per contract, like how much we have to spend in marketing to find a deal, is it usually I would say around five, six thousand dollars right now. So like that can be hard to shell out if you're looking for your first deal, like and you get to spending six thousand bucks, and like you and that's with us having a really defined sales process. We know what we're doing, we know what our buy box is. Like you could spend a lot more than that. That's hard to stomach for some people. So I feel like if I were looking for my first deal, probably networking with wholesalers, realtors, like trying to find some way to do it for free on your first one uh and use your time rather than your money uh to find that first deal. But and then maybe leverage that into marketing for the next one.

SPEAKER_00 16:52

I love that. Just something I want to point out real quick is we always talk about direct mail and is that mic working?

SPEAKER_03 16:59

Is that better?

unknown 17:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:01

Cool, good.

SPEAKER_03 17:02

Okay. I feel like I can't even hear the speaker when you're talking about.

SPEAKER_00 17:09

I can hear you though. That's fine. I just want to point out with direct mail, though, we always talk about how many pieces. And I always get somebody that comes up to me and says, like, hey, I sent out a hundred pieces of mail, five hundred pieces of mail. I didn't get any calls. And when you talk to someone like Jason, you're spent sending probably what, 10,000 a month? Or what are your numbers right now?

SPEAKER_03 17:27

No. Right now we're sending 25,000 a month. A month. Yeah. Um and we have so back when mail was just like crushing it for us, like two years ago, maybe a year and a half ago, a year ago, we were our average cost per contract with mail was like would float between 2,000 and 3,000 bucks, which is really good, right? If you're making 25 to 30 on a flip, um that has gone up. I think mail's gotten a lot more competitive. I've told everybody here, if you know me, that mail works really well, so a lot of people are doing it. So it's getting more competitive. Um, our cost per contract right now with mail, just for this year, has been like upwards of$10,000, which is crazy. So uh we're sending 15,000 pieces to get a deal, which is bad. It's bad. Uh so that's why we're pivoting to other channels as well. Um but I would say for somebody, if you're just looking to start direct mail, do your first deal, I would plan on spending, like I said,$6,000, which is like$10,000 letters. So if you're sending$100 a month hoping you're gonna get a deal, it's it's unfortunately just not gonna work. Now, if you're like sending handwritten letters to like a super niche list of like you went driving and picked a bunch of houses that need work and you're writing handwritten letters, that's different, right? We're going for like a bulk, like I'm not writing 25,000 letters, right? We're just we're going with a super broad list and we're trying to hit everybody, basically.

Virtual Sales Process And Offer Calls

SPEAKER_00 18:56

Yep, love that. All right, I want to transition a little bit into seller conversations. And whether it's you or your team, again, somebody might send 10,000 pieces of mail, or they send 50, whatever the number is, they get a deal and somebody calls them or a lead per se. What are you saying to get that deal done? Because I think a lot of people fumble it right there, and that's that's over then. So what works?

SPEAKER_03 19:20

We could have a seminar on that one. Um I'll just ramble a little bit. We'll see if uh if it works out. Um we run our sales process entirely virtually, which might be crazy. We're local, right? Like we only do deals in the Lehigh Valley. We're all local. I'm I technically live in Jersey now, but local enough. Um but we do everything virtually. So if we get a lead that comes in, we'll do what we call our process call. It's like an intake call. We're going over details about the why they want to sell, what their situation is, when they're looking to sell, timeline, roadblocks that they might have, why they like why are they calling us, why don't they want to list it, just having a conversation with them about that. We're spending 15 minutes at least diving into the condition of the property. And then now that we I my team is doing that, after that process call, they'll come to me, we'll underwrite the deal, we'll and then we have a separate offer call, and then we sign the agreement via DocuSign, and then we go out and check it out. Which might, I don't know if your question is gonna be on like, wow, you're locking stuff up before you even go see it. And yes, we are, and it's worked. I mean, we only end up having to like renegotiate with the seller about 10% of the time.

SPEAKER_00 20:35

So I was just gonna say I love that. I think that's incredible. I was actually gonna focus on um when you're having the offer call with them, I think that's where it gets tough. And I think most people can wrap their head around, okay, I'm gonna have a conversation, I'm gonna ask questions. Um, but when it comes to presenting them with the offer and/or negotiating, because everybody gets that person that says they want a million dollars, etc., you don't have to give me the exact talk track, obviously, but just how do you approach that, the offer and giving them that?

Solving Seller Problems To Win Deals

SPEAKER_03 21:03

So first of all, we when I tell Fisher and Todd, my our two acquisitions guys, I tell them this every day. All we talk about is what the seller's asking, and I don't care what the seller's asking, right? If there's urgence, at the end of the day, a deal gets done on urgency and motivation. If the seller has a reason to sell and they have problems that we can legitimately solve, right? Reasons they can't go on market. Some of these would be they're going through foreclosure, they don't know where they're going to go after they sell the property, we can buy it and lease it back to them, right? We're solving that problem, we're helping them build credit, we're helping them find a rental. Like, that's our ideal customer profile. That is what a deal gets done on. Like everybody, I feel like flippers get a reputation for like, oh, you just like making low ball offers and like the seller, it's worth 200 and they just sell it for 100 because they don't know any better. I mean uh this guy right here, Julio, can tell you the stuff that we do for sellers, man, is out of control. Um the they get deals get done on the problems we can solve. So, really getting to your question, how are we structuring the offers? It's really like we're talking for three minutes about what the process looks like if they do decide to work with us, bringing up, doing a recap on their motivation, right? Getting them into that like a decision-making mindset, right? Reminding them why they're trying to why they want to do this, uh, addressing any roadblocks they have, presenting the solution if we're leasing, if we can lease the property back to them or help them go through probate, whatever it is, and then we deliver the offer. And then take it from there.

Renovation Structure: PM And Subs

SPEAKER_00 22:37

I love it. I just want to highlight the reason Jason does so well with this is because, like you just said, you find the solutions. And that might go over a lot of people's heads, but I just want to like really nail that down. Every single deal we do, every single time, and just like you're saying, what makes you so successful is that you're finding all these weird and I'm sure one-off situations for all these people to make the deal work. And so I just want to highlight like that's what it takes. It's not just here's a bad offer and then kick sand. Like you work with them, you warm them up, all those different things that you're doing. So um I really also want to get into, I love your processes, which is why I'm so into this. Your renovation process is also really popular, maybe just with me, but I think it's a big thing. So how do you structure them? Um, how do you work with your contractors? Just what does that look like? And again, that's a very general question, but uh that's come a long way.

SPEAKER_03 23:29

Um I wish Ken were here. We have now so now we have a project manager in-house who manages everything for me. So honestly, I don't I'm not an expert at construction. I I'm still uh Inspector Mike back there. Uh I'm still I didn't even really I couldn't tell you what like a septic tank even really did a few months ago. So I don't know. Like I know next to nothing about construction. Uh the main thing I've learned is hiring people who are good at construction. When you can get to that, like hiring a project manager has been game-changing. I don't I don't want to go too deep into that. Yeah um when I first got started with flipping, we were using mainly general contractors. Um it has pros and cons for someone starting out. I I don't think it's a bad idea. It's somebody as long as you find the right one, uh you get screwed, of course. But um eventually we move to how we do it now, which is a project manager managing subs. I could go super deep into the process of like how we're how he runs things. Honestly, he would do a better job than me, but um, in general, how we structure construction right now is we have Ken, our project manager, he's a W-2 employee, um, and he manages, we sub out the trades, right? HVAC, electrical, roofing, plumbing, and then we'll have we call them crews, but they're subcontractors more or less that we'll do the meat and potatoes of the job, vanities, cabinet installs, flooring, paint, framing, drywall. Um, and that's pretty much how we're doing it. I don't know if that answered what you were looking for.

SPEAKER_00 25:10

Yeah, perfect. So I guess my next question is since you started from doing it one way and now you're doing it a totally different way. If somebody was sitting here and they're doing their first renovation, or maybe their fifth renovation, whatever it is, how would you advise somebody to start and you know, as an early stage?

Advice For First Renovations

SPEAKER_03 25:28

It depends what your goals are, but the the first property I ever bought, I just lived in it and renovated it with my dad. That's how I would do it. I mean you learn a lot. I go back, I've gone back to that property, I'm just like, what the fuck was I doing? We got transition strips in the middle of the rooms for the floors. Like, it's just bad stuff. Like uh, but I definitely what I know the what little I know about construction, I learned by doing that. So I think your first deal is about what you can learn rather than how much you can make. So uh flipping houses is a really I think flipping houses is more of a sales and marketing company, but you need to have some level of construction experience. So if it were I don't regret having done the renovation on my first property, for sure. And if I were recommending to somebody else, if you're doing a full gut rehab, A, you probably shouldn't do that for your first flip. Uh hopefully you're just doing something that's like paint, flooring, maybe a kitchen and a bathroom, and and do it yourself.

SPEAKER_00 26:26

Love it. I love that. And just to bandwagon off of that, I think this is potentially controversial, but before I started kind of hiring people and doing that, I probably did, I want to say 30 or 40 renaos, complete renaos by myself. And it was horrible. I hated my life, I was miserable. It sucks. But I will say the leg up, just like that you talked about, is you know. You know the things, you know how to do it. It doesn't mean you're the one there forever and you know you become an expert, but you know enough not to get, you know, we'll pull over your eyes or whatever that's saying is. So I think that's awesome. Um my last question before we transition into kind of a different topic is what is something that you think we should talk about that we have not talked about yet? Something we totally missed.

Leadership, Systems, And KPIs

SPEAKER_03 27:13

I don't know. I feel like I got I would. I would like I feel like my my day-to-day life and like what I can really, really like I'm not an expert at construction. I'm becoming an expert at like uh what I'm really working on these days is building a team and becoming a better leader and becoming a better business owner. And I I feel like I could really talk all night about like systems, KPIs, gen just generally how I'm trying to level myself up as a leader. Um but at the same time I don't want to like I if we got people here who are looking to do their first deal, um I I do want to provide value to that person as well. Um so I don't know. I don't think I think we're touching on a lot of good stuff. Hopefully people are getting value. I maybe we can hopefully we get some good questions.

SPEAKER_00 28:04

Hit the high level a little bit, because I think it's a couple people here that would love that. So I would I would say let's go to the high level for just a minute and talk to me about KPIs, because I think that's probably a lot of the bread and butter, right? That's what you're watching to know if things are working. So I guess I have a two-part question. One, what are your KPIs that you're watching? Um, and two, separate from that, what are you doing to become a better leader? Okay.

SPEAKER_03 28:32

So KPIs, I could I could talk a while about KPIs. Because I've tracked uh just about everything, and most of it was meaningless. So um you can track everything in the world, but unless it actually moves the needle, it doesn't really matter, right? Um I think uh what we're doing today and what has seemed to work pretty well, especially when you start to if you have people on your team or if you're managing anybody, like um picking A, the so number one, especially we have a room of entrepreneurs, this is gonna be the most difficult part. Less is more, right? Picking one thing that you can focus on that will actually move the needle is what you need to do. Um as we've started to make like build the business and have real like departments with people who have ownership of those roles, giving each person one thing that they can focus on. Um and we're like building scoreboards out now and stuff like that to make it like visual and just easy to track, right? People should be able to look at what they're doing and they know within three seconds. Even uh I can show my wife like, hey, like how's the team doing this week? And she knows just by looking at the scoreboard, right? So keeping it simple and focusing on just a couple things is what I would say about KPIs. Um but I've done everything, right? Julio can tell you we our team meeting on Mondays used to be me with a whole wall of Excel, like 87 numbers, and we would go through all these different KPIs about the business, and like I would get lost in the sauce. And like uh so I think less is more, 100%, if I could. Say just one thing about it.

The Few Metrics That Matter

SPEAKER_00 30:01

I was just going to say, what are you tracking now then? Give me a couple of the actual KPIs that matter. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 30:08

So for marketing, we're just tracking leads per week. For sales, we're tracking how many process calls we're doing, how many offers we're making, how many deals we're getting. Like at the end of the day, those are the things that contribute to revenue. With operations, we're we're tracking how many per like what percentage of projects are on time and on budget. That's more of a we could talk about lead measures. I'm just going to say that. Yes. So like that's the lag measure that we're tracking for construction. That's how we know big picture, are we doing a good job? The lead measure on that is before the the day before the project started, do we have a fully built-out scope of work, timeline, and budget, and did it get posted on site for the contractors to see? That's the thing we're tracking. That's the lead measure that we've decided is the number one thing we can do to make it more likely that we're on time and on budget. Those are some that's construction. TC, we're tracking on-time closings, right? What percentage? Because some people will track like overall success rate, but deals fall apart for so many different crazy reasons. So of the deals we close, we're looking how many are we closing on time. Because if you're there's so many, especially when you do a lot of deals at a time, like there's so many moving pieces. It is so complicated to get a deal to close on time when you have seven other people, title companies yelling at you. So uh if we can keep everything organized enough to have a lot of these transactions closing on time, we're doing a really good job.

Five Final Questions And Closing

SPEAKER_00 31:36

Awesome. All right. So we'll start wrapping up and then we'll hit QA. I have five final questions that I ask every single one of our guests. And so first question is what separates top performing investors from the rest of the crowd? Time.

SPEAKER_03 31:55

Just like you gotta you gotta go through I I think it's Hermosey maybe, his podcast, Alex Hermose, his podcast. Like he talks about his rock, the Rocky Cutscene, right? Like you just gotta always be focused on learning and consistently leveling up and for your first three years or whatever, like that's not gonna amount to much. But um and something that I say at every single one of our quarterly, like team quarterly planning events is people overestimate what they can do in one year, but they underestimate what they can do in ten years if they stay focused on one thing. So I think at the end of the day, what separates people is just sticking to one thing for long enough to have success.

SPEAKER_00 32:37

Love it. What is the daily habit habit that contributes to your success?

SPEAKER_03 32:47

Making offers? Does that count? Sure. I'll take it. Yeah, I mean at the end of the day, like that's just uh right. If you're for our business specifically, flipping houses, we make money by buying houses. What do you have to do? You have to make offers. So that's a daily habit. I mean getting good sleep. I don't know if uh that's a good habit, but uh that's that's all I got for that one.

SPEAKER_00 33:10

Perfect. What is a piece of advice that you would give to yourself if you're starting over? Should have given me these before.

SPEAKER_01 33:19

I'd like to think about them with the.

SPEAKER_03 33:36

The past version of myself who was buying his first rental, um, I would tell that person to make the transition to focusing on building a business and active income sooner rather than later. Like I definitely wasted a few years trying to just focusing on keeping everything as rentals, and like it was really hindering my growth because I never had any money. I was always broke. So um, but at the I I hate that question because at the same time, like that was what forced me to learn that lesson, and that's why that's why we're here now. So um, but if I had to like practically give myself one piece of advice, it would be focus on building an active income and making more money, and then the wealth building and buying rentals, that that's easier when you actually can make money.

SPEAKER_00 34:22

Sounds good. All right, what is your favorite real estate or business book?

SPEAKER_01 34:41

I've got so many.

SPEAKER_03 34:43

Uh I read a lot of books. Uh the first one that's coming to mind is How to Win Friends and Influence People. Um not a real estate or even really a business book, but just like good for everybody can learn something from reading that book. I've had my wife read it. Unfortunately, now she knows like all the she'll she'll recognize if I'm like uh doing something I've learned from that book on her, she's not falling for it anymore, but um just really a good book overall.

SPEAKER_00 35:14

Love it. Alright, my last question is do you have any final advice in general?

SPEAKER_01 35:23

Wow, what a question. Uh I don't know. Be bold, take the risk.

SPEAKER_03 35:36

That's about it, right? I think uh a lot of what we want is on the other side of your comfort zone. So, and that can apply to so many different areas in life, not just business, right? Like I feel like anytime I have a problem, anytime I'm stressed about something, it's like on the other side of a difficult conversation. Um and leaning into that is is what's made the difference for sure.

SPEAKER_00 35:58

That was awesome. All right, let's uh give Jason a round of applause. So thank you. Thank you.