The Wholesaling System That Lets You Step Away (Finally)

🔥 How do you scale a real estate business without sacrificing your life?

In this episode, we sit down with real estate entrepreneurs to break down what it actually takes to build a business that gives you freedom—not just another job.

If you’ve ever felt stuck working in your business instead of on it, this conversation will shift your perspective.

🚀 What You’ll Learn in This Video:

💡 Business Philosophy & Scaling for Freedom

• Why your business should fund your ideal lifestyle (not just your bills)
• How to “buy your time back” as an entrepreneur
• What true scaling looks like (hint: it runs without you)

👥 Building the Right Team

• How to identify your first (and next) hire
• The mistake of hiring for loyalty instead of skill
• Matching roles to people’s natural strengths (“superpowers”)
• Why you need both visionaries and operators on your team

⚙️ Systems, Operations & Communication

• The importance of SOPs and documenting everything
• How to create seamless handoffs in your business
• Tools we use daily: Asana, Slack, WhatsApp
• Running effective morning huddles
• Building a culture of transparency and accountability

📈 Scaling Beyond Yourself

• Turning your business into a repeatable system
• How franchising can multiply your impact
• Why systems = scalability

🤝 Growth & Masterminds

• The power of surrounding yourself with high-level operators
• How groups like Investor Fuel accelerate growth
• Why you shouldn’t build your business alone

💬 Key Takeaway:
If your business can’t run without you, you don’t own a business—you own a job. Learn how to change that.

👉 If you found value in this video, make sure to:
👍 Like
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#RealEstateInvesting #Entrepreneurship #BusinessScaling #TimeFreedom #Leadership #RealEstateEntrepreneur

📲 Interested in learning more about licensing or mentorship?
Connect with our team here: homeguys.com/yt

🔗 Connect With Us

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:10

Welcome to the Investor Fuel Real Estate Investing Show, where I interview the nation's top real estate entrepreneurs, industry leaders, and other amazing entrepreneurs to help educate and inspire you to take your business and your life to the next level. My goal is to add tremendous value to you during every single episode of this show. If you get value, I'd love it if you subscribe on your favorite podcast player. Subscribe on YouTube. And my very favorite, please share this with your community so we can impact even more entrepreneurs. Let's start today's show. Hey everybody, welcome back to the show. Today I'm here with my good friend Jen Coldy from Minnesota Home Guys. We're going to be talking about really how to build a business that enables you to live the life that you want. I've talked about this a lot. If anybody's been, if you're a repeat listener of the show, we talk a lot about the whole purpose of business is to enable you, you know, it starts off as like I got to pay the bills, right? But that's that's not the goal. You could get a job for that. The goal with a business and why you might be willing to work hard is that it enables you to generate enough profit to live the life that you want. But that's very academic. So today we're gonna kind of get into like, well, how do you do that exactly? Jen's gonna share a little bit more about uh about that with us. Jen, how are you today? Good to see you.

SPEAKER_03 1:22

Thanks for setting us up. This is great. It's always fun to chat with you.

SPEAKER_01 1:26

Always good to see you. We were just down in uh New Orleans a couple weeks ago and we're just talking about that. So yeah, that was a good time.

SPEAKER_03 1:32

That was fun. That was a scene. But yeah, New Orleans is a it's a whole thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:35

Yeah, yeah, for sure. So I'm excited to talk about this. You I know that you guys have have scaled your business up quite a bit and you're teaching other people how to kind of do this now. Uh, you've been a huge giver inside of the investor fuel family. You guys have been members for a long time now. You're what we call OGs, been around for a long time. And I know you have a lot to share. So before we jump into the kind of the topic of the day, tell us a little bit about you and your background.

SPEAKER_03 1:58

So, previous lives, I was in nonprofits, development, customer service, all of the behind-the-scenes stuff, a lot of project management, a lot of special event management. So, more of that putting all the puzzle pieces together piece of it. So that's kind of where I started out of college. And um, just even I'm originally from Kentucky. And so even moving up here, that's kind of what I was into, the nonprofits and the organization piece of things.

SPEAKER_01 2:24

Yep. And then talk about what when you got started in in real estate. So just for some context, you work with your husband and you guys have a partner.

SPEAKER_03 2:32

We do, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:33

So three headed monster.

SPEAKER_03 2:35

We were just uh yeah, doing the W 2 corporate thing. James was a firefighter. Jaden was an engineer by trade, and he had gotten out of the W-2 corporate world probably a couple years prior and decided he was gonna dive into real estate. We had no background in real estate, didn't have any rentals, didn't have anything like that. James was kind of handy. He'd done some projects and um had been and kind of dabbled in the construction and various jobs. But he and Jaden just we were neighbors, got together uh in the neighborhood and James was working 10 days a month with his fire schedule and board because our daughter and I'd go to work and she'd go to school, and so he'd be sitting around. So they got together. Um he helped Jaden out on a couple projects and they sat down and went, you know what, we we might be on to something here. We can maybe do something with this. And once they turned on the marketing, it kind of took off. So within a couple months, they realized that was something they wanted to do. So James and I both quit our jobs and dove into the real estate industry. My dad laughed at us. He's like, What do you guys know about real estate? That's how we're gonna nothing, but we'll figure it out. I don't know. Yeah, it was absolutely a leap of faith. We um did not know what we were doing.

SPEAKER_01 3:45

Sounds familiar. I I I remember our family thought we were absolutely nuts. Like, why would anybody sell you their house at a discount? Like nobody does nobody does that. I was like, No, I know people do. We'll show you.

SPEAKER_03 3:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:55

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:57

So and you and and going this route versus even just getting a traditional real estate license and going the real estate route is kind of a career change change, which you know might have made sense, but we Yeah, we went a different direction.

SPEAKER_01 4:10

Yep. And as far as the kind of the leadership team, I know you're you're the operationally minded one, which is why we're talking about this today. Uh, because you got to reel those guys in. So but you know, what one of the things that I talk a lot about is like, you know, I think for people that spend a lot of time on social media, it's there's a lot of kind of gurus out there, people that are teaching like you can make a ton of money and buy exotic cars and do all this like crazy stuff. And there's nothing wrong with that. But the first thing you should do is buy your time back and be build a business that's sustainable, that doesn't require you to, as Gary Vee says, work your face off and stuff like that, right? And so I know you guys are are uh lifestyle seekers, a lot like Lindsay and I are, and you want to be able to travel the world and do amazing things, which you do and we've done together and uh right, done some cool things. But just you know, maybe share your thoughts on the purpose of business and how it enables you to kind of live the lifestyle that you guys want to live.

SPEAKER_03 5:01

Yeah, well, we got into this again, we didn't know what it looked like. James is just an entrepreneur mind. So we were excited to just be our own boss and kind of run it our way and and you know, not really answering anyone. Jane used to call the corporate space soul crushing because you go, you clock in, you get your watch after what 20 years, and that was kind of his. And so that piece of it is liberate liberating in itself. You just kind of able to kind of set your pace to your thing. But yeah, for us, it was, you know, the first few years as you're getting going, and especially for us not knowing what we were doing and and what building a business looked like. It takes a little while to find your stride. But James and Jaden are the visionaries, and you you need both. Um, you also need someone behind the scenes to kind of pick up the puzzle pieces for the visionaries and figure out, okay, how how does this fit together? How do we keep this moving forward and build some of those systems? Because especially if you want to scale, there's a lot of chaos that comes with having your own business, your own company. And so just having that piece behind the scenes so that the machine like having the machine running so that those guys can continue to build. They realized quickly that they they were not that. And their minds were more of that visionary entrepreneur brain, and that was not their skill set. So they brought me along with them to organize them.

SPEAKER_01 6:19

I think that there's a lot of there's a lot of, as you know, there's a lot of real estate investors that even if so, first off, there's a huge the the largest section of want-to-be real estate investors never get out of the gate. They probably do zero deals and they just feel defeated and they give up. And there's lots of reasons for that, maybe. And then there's the people that start to have some level of success. Maybe they make more money than they would make in a W-2 job, but there's they still very much have a job. They're still doing, you know, maybe a couple deals a month, and they still do a lot of the things themselves because they can't, you know, in their mind, they can't afford to bring on an acquisitions person and an operations manager and an office manager. And maybe they have uh an admin or they have something going on there, but they don't have like a true business that can operate even if they decide to go on a vacation or take a week off or take a month off or whatever that might be, right? So maybe just kind of share your you guys' philosophy on. I mean, you guys have scaled your business up quite a bit, but it would have been easy for you know, the the path of least resistance is to just kind of do it all yourself.

SPEAKER_02 7:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:23

Right. And some people get stuck there, and then some people realize I I don't want to be stuck here. Those are the ones, those are a lot of the ones that come into like investor fuel, and we like show them the process for how to scale so that your business can enable your life and not be a noose around your neck, but maybe kind of share your philosophy on the purpose of a scaled up business that it enables you to kind of buy your time back.

SPEAKER_03 7:44

Yeah, and it's hard to because letting go, um, you know, it's kind of your baby. You've built this up. And so finding the person you trust. So that's why the three of us worked really well. We all, you know, knew we had each other's back and we had the same goal and the same vision. As far as, you know, people don't know where to start with like, well, they're so overwhelmed with all the pieces, like they ha they're wearing all the hats. So which hat do they hand off first? Where do I need to start? So we've coached a few other people, like we have a team in Knoxville, and it was exactly that. Like, I'm doing everything. What do I need to do? And so breaking it down, and okay, first we need to get you a leads manager, or we need to get you, depending on their needs, we you know, and then it's really having a lot of that documented too. Like, okay, what are the different job descriptions? And you've done a great job with that. I know, Mike, we've borrowed some of your job description books and tailored it to our business, but it's a great great place to start and figure out, okay, what tasks can I hand off? Am I comfortable handing off? And then finding finding the right person for that seat too. So you don't have to like hire an entire team, just start small and start handing off small pieces. And that's kind of what we did.

SPEAKER_01 8:54

How do you decide who to hire first? This is always a question. And I have, yeah, as you know, I have opinions on everything. But how do you decide if you're gonna bring on let's just say there's somebody with like no employees? Like, how do you decide who's what that first person you're gonna bring on and the second one? And and you know, how do you decide that as a uh as a real estate investor?

SPEAKER_03 9:12

So for us, it was really what is taking up the most of your time. Um, and we that you know, you talk about$10 tasks or for us, it was where are you really feeling overwhelmed and bogged down? What what piece can we hand off? And then for us, it was the leads manager. It was really finding someone, and this was, you know, 10 years ago. So we didn't have AI and we didn't have all the tools that we have right.

SPEAKER_01 9:34

Nice, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:34

Which is amazing. But we James was answering the phone 10, 11 o'clock at night, book um, you know, because that's speed to leave. You want to make sure that they're not, you know, waiting around. So that was a piece like first thing, like, we need somebody in here answering the phones because James was also booking the appointments, then he was going out there the next day, and then he's doing the site visits, and then he's crunching the numbers and doing the underwriting scope of work. So then, and I didn't have the time to be answering the phones, which I was doing also. So everybody, if the phone will bring, anybody that was nearby is grabbing it.

SPEAKER_01 10:03

Like you're just it's the hot potato that like everybody knows it needs to be answered, but nobody wants it.

SPEAKER_03 10:09

Right. So that was that was the first piece, and for us, it was just what piece can we is is really taking up a lot of our time. And then it was, you know, but obviously finding that right person went we went through the like we need a body. Hey, you're breathing here, sit and answer phones, which you know, you panic. You kind of panic higher, is what we were doing in the beginning.

SPEAKER_00 10:32

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SPEAKER_03 11:02

And you know that that does not help the situation. Honestly, it it can hurt more down the road than it actually helps.

SPEAKER_01 11:08

So Yeah. Yeah. I think that that that challenge of like finding out who to put on your team, and we're all we're all guilty of it as just like I I literally used to have like a catchphrase that I said is like, if I could find a good athlete, I I always find a place for them on my team. And and then that's evolved. It's like, well, like I need to hire for because what what I would end up doing is like, well, they're uh they're they're loyal or they're a hard worker, or like they have some things that are that are important, but it's like but they don't have a specific skill, so I'm just kind of making a role for them, and inevitably there's some things that that role requires that I'm like, well, they're not very good at that. So like I'll just have somebody else do that task. And it's hard to run a business that way because like if you're building the team around the skills of the people versus like the roles require a skill, and if you don't have these things, then you can't have this job. Yeah, you can't really scale it because it just ends up being this like it's almost like a puzzle. You mentioned that before we jumped on, you said something about putting the pieces of the puzzle together. It's almost like having most of the pieces, but a couple of them are cut wrong, and you just like get this mallet out and you start like just hammering them together. It's like it kind of looks okay. It's like this isn't the right puzzle piece, but I'm gonna make it fit.

SPEAKER_03 12:18

It'll be fine. It'll be fine. We've got somebody in the seat, it's fine. They'll figure it out. Yeah, and we learned through trial and error and all the blood, sweat, and tears that that doesn't always work. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:30

Yeah, it never works over the long term. Like it might feel like it's almost like I don't know if you ever go to the chiropractor, and like I go to the chiropractor and like, how do you feel right afterwards? I'm like, well, I have a bunch of endorphins running through me because you just like cracked my back, so it feels good. But did you fix anything? Like, I don't know, time will tell. And you know it gives you an endorphin rush because you're like, I got it off of my plate, but it's not necessarily the right thing to do.

SPEAKER_03 12:52

Absolutely. And that's so we have become you know, a few years in it was very apparent, and you know, just my background was I'm I'm I'm very like document everything. What's the job description? What do we want this person to do? What are the expectations? Like, what are some goals that we have for them? So and it doesn't have to be that complicated. I mean, it's especially starting out, what do you want this person to do? Um you know, do you have so many calls or appointments or making sure you have those expectations set and communicated? Um And then that's when it falls into kind of finding the right person. Like yeah, you absolutely might have somebody in your network that we threw out on Facebook, hey, looking for a marketing intern to manage social media leads. It was kind of a catch-all position at the time. And we that was seven years ago. Matt out of college replied and he's like, Hey, I'll come in, and we laugh, and he's gonna kill me for telling a story because I was telling But Jaden and I he came in and he we were, you know, we're casual. We're in jeans, Jane's in shorts and a t-shirt, got his hat on, tennis shoes, whatever. Matt comes in in a suit, and uh because you know, first big boy interview out of college. Yeah. But he's been with us for seven years, he's moved through different departments of the company, he's learned different things, and he's one of our top acquisitions agents now.

SPEAKER_01 14:10

So that's great.

SPEAKER_03 14:13

You know, he had those initial skills and but also finding people that can grow with you that are adaptable because this that is one of the big keys in this industry too, is even even for you know, an accounting position where it's very black and white, like they just need numbers, they've got to be able to pivot, as we always say, because this industry is not this industry moves. And so there are a lot of pieces to finding the right person, especially in this investment industry and side of things. It it's a little different than a normal industry and job. Yeah. Yeah, those are you know, I would start out just saying being very specific about what the role is. I know I kind of wandered there, but um that's that's been a big thing for us is like what what are the expectations?

SPEAKER_01 14:58

Yeah. How do you, with your team, how do you manage them to, you know, have kind of clear goals? How do you make sure they have clear goals like KPIs or whatever that you kind of track? And then also you kind of mentioned this word a couple times, pivot. And I know there's been a lot of pivoting over the past few years as the market's kind of shifted, and it's inevitable in every industry, in every market, there are tweaks or things that are coming at us, could be changes in the market, it could be you know adoption of AI. Like how do you how do you kind of instill those things in your team so that they're always looking for how to get better? Because quite frankly, there's a lot of people that have a, you know, that might be the more of the employee mindset that just will do the thing over and over and over again, and they're not necessarily looking for ways to improve.

SPEAKER_03 15:42

Yeah, so we, you know, we and also, you know, being a small company, most of real estate investors, they're either monopop or they're smaller offices, smaller teams. So staying connected for us is huge. We use Asana, WhatsApp, we have each department, each team has a morning huddle. We do Monday morning meetings. So we have everybody log in and we'll review kind of what's happening, what happened last week in the business. If the Monday morning meetings, we'll do what happened last week in the business, what's going on this week. It's kind of a quick touch base. Anybody have any anything going on? But throughout the day, like the WhatsApp is blowing up. People are asking questions, they're connecting, and in the in there, we're able to share information. Those morning huddles also are a good touch point for anything that the management team is like, you know, again, pivoting. Oh, hey, we're gonna go this direction now. So those morning huddles, like, hey guys, we're this is setting priorities for the day. Um so and it takes 15 minutes. We jump on for 15 minutes, it's not an hour-long meeting. And I think this is just across the board. Communication is key. That's keeps everybody on track, keeps everybody on the right informed. So it's just little things like that. Again, it doesn't have to be a big um production or a big meeting, but just um making sure everybody's kind of kept in the loop. Yeah, and we use all the tools, like people will you will use one, use Asana or I use you know, Slack or whatever it is. We have all the tools. People are getting it kind of multiple times.

SPEAKER_01 17:10

There's no shortage of tools you could use out there. That that's that's the next uh we won't talk about that today, but the next thing is like how do you have just the right amount of tools, but not too many?

SPEAKER_03 17:19

Because without overwhelming yeah, people just getting bombarded with information. So we we use a lot of that and just we check in with people. Those are those tools, like we use the WhatsApp also for um for us, it's a culture thing, like making sure you're building that culture out of the gate. And people that have been with us for a long time have kind of have seen it evolve, and newcomers are like, this is great. Like, wait a minute. They feel like they're being informed, um, but it's also to celebrate wins, you know. Hey, great job, Ashley, on getting that contract signed, or you know, happy birthday, happy anniversary to you know, whatever it is. It's it's keeping people engaged.

SPEAKER_01 17:55

Right. Yeah, yeah. Let's talk a little bit about systems, having the right systems in place. And we just talked about that a little bit. There's a lot of tools that we all use. And you know, one of the problems with a lot of these tools is they all have a little bit of scope creep. Like they do a thing and then all of a sudden they start to add on some features. It's like, well, I already rely on this other thing. Like, for example, uh, we use Slack for a lot a lot of our communications. My I have a I have a huge team, it's all over the world. Yeah, so Slack is an easy thing. Well, yeah, there's tasks inside of Slack, but like Asana is way better. So we tend to use Asana for more tasks and projects and stuff like that. But um just, you know, just talk about the importance of having the right systems and and even not just softwares, but also just kind of your systematic approach or your processes for how you do things and how that's allowed you guys to kind of scale up. Maybe talk about that and maybe even share some tips on what you do to continue to let that evolve because it needs to continue to improve over time, right?

SPEAKER_03 18:49

Right. And as we've grown and as, you know, we continue to grow and especially stepping in the franchise space, um, you know, we've realized it's very important. Again, it comes back to documentation, like making sure everybody is aware of their their role in the company, like their piece of the business that they own and giving them that extreme ownership. We've been diving into that more this year, really, again, from the beginning, setting those standards, communicating the expectation, communicating the vision and keeping those lines of communication open, first of all, besides just you know, like you said, the systems, having this the CRM in place, making sure they're set up for success, like as far whether it's training or whether and even training like the managers. Here's your onboarding process. Like when you're hired here, and and again, it doesn't have to be elaborate, but hey, we spend usually a day going through here's what the company looks like, here's you know, the history of the company, here's our vision, here's our you know, mission statement, here's how we approach every transaction.

SPEAKER_02 19:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 19:50

Um, and just setting that from the beginning. Then the tools are the tools, you know, you whether it's Asana or Slack or, you know, Pete or Salesforce or whatever it is you're using, making sure that they're comfortable, they're trained. And for us, it's it's very hands-on. Like, especially if they're from outside um the industry. We've hired quite a few people from outside real estate. That's you know, that learning curve is a another piece, but it's you know, not required. Like we're working with people now that no, you don't have to know real estate. It's fine. Well we can teach you we can teach you that. It's like we're we're looking for people that have um, you know, they can connect with people, they can network, they can build relationships. That's what this is all about. But behind the scenes, making sure everything like having you know SOPs, standard operating procedures, this is how our leads team handles a call, this is how our acquisitions team handles an appointment, or this is how our transaction team handles once it's signed, they're getting it closed. And so the machine, like once there's a handoff, you know, they trust that the next next step in the process is like, nope, they know what they're doing. I've handed it off. I can continue doing my thing and it's gonna keep moving through the through the pipeline. So for us, it's you know, we've been in business almost 10 years and and I think Minnesota's running like a like a machine now.

SPEAKER_01 21:17

Yeah, yeah. Well, and you just mentioned kind of franchising for some for some context there. You guys have uh built out a franchise, the home guys franchise system, where you're teaching other people how to use your systems and processes in place. And as you know, I had some franchise experience in my background as well, which I I appreciated early on because we are, you know, Lindsay and I are like she's way more operationally inclined than I am, but I appreciate the value of in many ways uh somebody else showing you how to make shortcuts. I mean, in fact, that's the foundation of what investor fuel is all about is like you don't have to climb the learning curve on everything you do by yourself. You could surround yourself with people that can show you how to get there, right? And so maybe just talk a little bit about, I mean, I think, you know, talk about maybe some tips for smaller businesses, those that are doing a few deals, or maybe they're, you know, not newbies, but have done a little bit, but understand they need to have uh a systematic approach to their business. Maybe you could share a few tips for those folks based off of, you know, what you teach your franchise.

SPEAKER_03 22:11

Yeah. So you know, we found that as we've grown and stepping in this new franchise site, surrounding yourself with people they're gonna use their superpowers. Like we talked about, like I'm more behind the scenes, I'm more operational, organized, having the people behind you that allow James and Jaden to continue to move forward. So finding those people and so now, you know, they trust that Minnesota is just gonna keep running. We've got Paul, we've got Anna, we've got people over there, and we're like, nope, that's they've got that, allowing them to step into this new space. And yeah, but the franchise side, it's you know, we're taking we've got Knoxville, Home Guy, San Antonio, and Orlando. And they've I'm gonna say they've been our guinea pigs because you know, we stepped into this going, okay, guys, we don't really know what this looks like. Um, but we have all of these tools and all of this information. Finding, you know, we and we talk about this all the time, especially at Fuel, we use the predictive index um to find as a tool, you know, it's not the end all be all, but we use that as a tool to gauge, you know, is this the right person for the right possession? And so helping the franchises lean into those as well. We when we talked to Knoxville, for instance, like we had all three of those guys take the predictive index and like, what is your role in the company? What is your superpower? Um, and then how do we surround you with people to support that? And we've taken taken that, taken the SOPs and taken the job descriptions and just kind of help them build that team.

SPEAKER_01 23:43

Yeah. So I think the importance of uh some of the things you said there are that for all entrepreneurs, like you have a skill set, and I think what ends up happening is a lot of entrepreneurs, especially we'll just talk about real estate investors, they tend to like try to find a way to do everything.

SPEAKER_02 23:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:57

And uh the problem is you're not good at everything. And as an entrepreneur, sometimes we just are forced to adapt. We're like, well, I'm gonna figure this out no matter what, because it's a survival mechanism, you like you have to to survive, right? But I think as you scale your business up, it's like, okay, just focus on what you're good at and you enjoy doing instead of doing a bunch of stuff that you can figure out, but you're not good at it and you don't want to do it. I mean, that that's how you get burned out for sure, right? So then it's like make sure you're generating enough leads in the business to get enough sales to be able to pay for the team that you need to make sure that you don't have a job and you you truly are a business owner, right? And so but I think a lot of times people focus on trying to level up the things they're not good at or they don't like doing versus find somebody else to do that. Because I I was talking to somebody the other day in the past week when this kind of came up is like for some of the things that we like absolutely hate, like let's just say most real estate investors hate bookkeeping and accounting, like they hate it, but it has to happen. But what what was crazy to me was an early epiphany that there's somebody else that is like, man, I love being around the real estate space, but what I really love to do is accounting. And I just like there's somebody that loves that, and it doesn't have to be no, no, but they are out there. There's people that just love, like, hey, I know who I was talking to, so uh somebody that you know as well. But they're like, hey, my brother does all the accounting, and and he like loves it. It's just a puzzle for him. He likes to put it all together, he likes all the tax planning. I was like, that's a rare breed. That's a rare breed, but they are out there, right? And so as an entrepreneur, that's your key, that's your goal is to find those people that like to do the stuff that you hate because it has to get done.

SPEAKER_03 25:33

And early on, you know, and again, we were just throwing things out there looking, like looking for that person like on your personal face. Anyone have any accounting background, like I need a bookkeeper, da da da. And we had someone jump in and it ended up, you know, being a mess that we were cleaning up years later.

SPEAKER_02 25:49

Right.

SPEAKER_03 25:49

But, you know, so finding uh and so you do have to be a little bit more deliberate. And I know, you know, James and Jane, like, we need them right now, like just like you know, guys, give me a week. Like I will find somebody, but find yeah, like you just said, like utilizing surrounding yourself with the people that have the skills that you don't. And I think someone was talking at the last fuel event that was, I don't know if it was their acquisitions or or dispo or somebody, but anyway, they're he said they're not proactive, they're not doing it the way I would do it. And that someone raised their hand and said, You don't want them to do it the way you would do it.

SPEAKER_02 26:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:24

Like that position has a different mindset than you know, yours, then you know, as an owner position or a visionary, like you want this person to be more deliberate and they're not gonna move at your pace, they're not gonna do it your way, but that's why you've hired them. You don't if you had a company full of James and Jadens and you know, yeah, we'd just be spinning in circles doing this and they'd be, you know, running all over the place. But you know, putting people in those positions that'll that support you basically is has allowed us to continue to move forward. And and you know, all the people we have to have grown with us. They've they've kind of suffered through some, you know, some of the growing pains that we've had, and they're like, no, we get it, we're in.

SPEAKER_01 27:06

It's inevitable, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 27:07

Yeah, what do you need us to do? So during that interview process, and again, I mean, it doesn't need to be elaborate, but we have gotten to the point where we're very deliberate in our hiring process. You know, you have the conversations, you do the predictive index out of the gate, make sure they're even just a right fit for the job. And then we set up meetings with team members. We're very clear about our culture. Like, here's how we operate, um, good or bad, you know, whatever you think you're used to or whatever you think. It's like this is our business. And if it's not gonna be a good fit for you, um, you know, you don't want to force a square peg in a round hole and kind of try and um kind of put them in a position that's not gonna set them up for success too.

SPEAKER_02 27:51

Right.

SPEAKER_03 27:52

So yeah, and that's kind of how we've gotten to that point and now we're able to coach um and and not even just our our franchisees now, but other people. Like I know I've met people at Fuel and they've called called up and they're like, hey, how what's your hiring process? What is your screening process? What you know, how do you you know, what's your communication process for the leads team? How do they hand it off? Or how does the acquisition some of the systems behind the scenes that and they've been able to kind of step out and focus on other things and kind of take things to the next level? So yeah, that's great.

SPEAKER_01 28:24

Uh Jen, would you would you mind? So you guys have been a part of Investor Fuel for quite a while now, five plus years, maybe six years, yeah. Yeah, a long time. Um and we've done a lot of amazing things, you know, together. We've traveled the world together, done some cool stuff. Uh, would you mind just sharing a quick testimonial on your experience as being a part of uh Investor Fuel?

SPEAKER_03 28:40

Yeah, and uh it was funny. We talked about this before we kind of jumped on here, but you know, James and Jaden in the beginning, they did all the masterminds as people do when you're starting out and you're trying to get all the information. And for a couple of years, they were running all over the country. And, you know, they they weren't they were giving a lot, they weren't getting a lot back out of it because they were at a higher level. I mean, they they started out and they started running. We found investor fuel, and I can't remember how they found it, but found investor fuel. And from the minute you walk in, everybody is just there to support you. I mean, yes, they have their own business, they have their own, you know, vision of success, they have, you know, their own life. Like everybody's just, and we joke about this, but we we call it just doing life with everybody. But it's from the minute you walk in, everybody is so supportive. Um, you've done a great job building that culture that's like we talked about. Or you always say it at the fuel events, like you just leave your ego at the door, and everybody does. No matter where you are in your business, uh, we always walk away with something, always walk away with a new tool, a new tidbit, a new, you know, friend, a new networking opportunity. Like, you know, we were in Las Vegas for a different convention. I ran into a guy that I'm like, I I think this would be a good connection for Mike. So we have built, you call it the fuel family. We've we've definitely built the fuel family. And we had fuel member, you know, they were struggling in their business la end of last year. They're like, We're we've been doing this for a while, we're kind of stagnant, we're like, we don't know what which where to go next. And they came out to visit the office for a day, went home and and you know, just encouraging each other.

SPEAKER_01 30:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 30:14

Without, again, without the ego. So that's it's been a not to sound cheesy, but like a breath of fresh air in this industry where everybody's just out to hustle. We look forward to the events. We just take a minute and decompress and kind of connect with with people in in the same space.

SPEAKER_01 30:30

Yeah, that's great. I appreciate it, Jen. If folks, and you've been talking about uh you guys are now franchising your model and helping other people uh take their business to them to another level across the country. If folks want to learn more about that or more about any of the other things that you guys are doing, where can they go for that?

SPEAKER_03 30:43

Um so if they're interested, interested in the franchise um opportunity, we have homeguys.com. So www.homeguys.com. Um there are a bunch of videos, reels out on social media, um Homeguys USA for the franchise opportunity. Um you can follow Minnesota Home Guys on Facebook, all the socials, um, for tidbits. You can see a lot of James and Jaden out there, truck talk with James. He likes to ramble as he's driving around, whatever's popping into his head at the time. Um, and then um, if you want to reach out to me directly, it's Jen at homeguisemn.com just to get information about whatever business, systems, life.

SPEAKER_01 31:29

Awesome.

SPEAKER_02 31:30

Fuel, whatever.

SPEAKER_01 31:33

Well, thank you for joining us. Good, always good to see you, Jen.

SPEAKER_03 31:36

Yeah, absolutely. We'll talk to you soon.

SPEAKER_01 31:37

Yeah, I appreciate you. Um, everybody hope you got some good value from today. Again, I think your business really is at the end of the day, as an entrepreneur, sometimes you just go hustle, as Gary V says, work your face off, right? To do whatever it takes to survive. The goal is not to survive, the goal is to thrive. And as an entrepreneur, there's going to be ups and downs, but your business is a lot easier to ride those ups and downs if you're not doing everything. So, really important to learn how to build a true business that you could be the owner of and certainly step out to step out of periodically to enjoy life and the fruits of your labor. So appreciate you guys so much for joining us. We'll see you on the next show. Thanks for joining us for today's show. You can learn more about the amazing benefits of the investor fuel mastermind community, including surrounding yourself with hundreds of other rock stars, 100% financing on your deals, and members-only discounts from vendors you're likely already using that, as a member of Investor Fuel, will save you more than the cost of your membership. Visit investorfuel.com to learn more. You can also check out the show's notes for access to free resources, how to get access to world-class lead generation, and even how to work with me directly one-on-one. Don't forget to subscribe so you never miss another episode. See you on the next show.