How Jason Roberts Scaled From One Flip to Four Businesses

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0:00 Hello and welcome back to the Owner Meeting podcast. I'm Christian, your channel host. Today I'm joined with Jason Roberts. I am super excited for
0:08 this episode. Uh he has done a lot of different flavors of real estate. Um I'm going to have a ton of questions on
0:14 which ones are his favorite, how he's scaled the business, how he succeeded in multiple models. Uh there's a lot to
0:22 learn here. So if you're tuning in for the first time, you chose a good episode. Jason, welcome to the channel.
0:27 Christian, thanks for having me. I am excited to be here. I'm excited to have you. Okay, let's
0:32 let's start. So, let's give everyone some context. What does your business look like today? And then we're going to
0:38 work backwards, but today, what does your collection of businesses look like? Yeah, we've got four different verticals
0:46 um kind of all complimentary to each other, right? Uh our bread and butter is fix and flip properties at a pretty high
0:52 net margin. Um, and we've kind of branched off from there to build a
0:57 wholesaling business for deal flow. Um, we started our own luxury based and investmentbased real estate brokerage
1:04 here in Colorado. We have this fix and flip business that does roughly 20 or so properties a year. And then we also run
1:12 a mentorship course teaching other people how to fix and flip and and how
1:17 to start building their net worth. Oh, that's fantastic verticals. Um, and
1:23 a lot of those are are actual like active real estate income, which is a really great angle. So, I'm going to
1:30 have a lot of questions in here. Uh, which one of those did you build first? We started with fix and flips. I I never
1:37 intended to be in real estate. My parents were in real estate and got taken out in 2007208.
1:42 And so, it was something that was far on the shelf for me. I was an engineer who
1:47 was designing race cars, driving race cars and uh was working as an engineer in Colorado. Started saving, you know, got
1:55 financially literate, started saving 500 bucks a month and, you know, thought
2:00 that we were well off. We were making like six figures a year doing that and kind of realized like, oh, how do I
2:07 retire when I'm not 75 years old? Um, I don't know. [laughter] A good question to ask. That's that's
2:14 where most of us start. Like, wait a second, Matt. Yeah. This mutual fund thing seems like it might take 30 years or so to make
2:20 happen, right? Yes. And even then, you're you have market timing for like, hey, what if
2:27 exactly when you want to retire is not where the market is? 100%. So, there there's a lot of a lot of
2:33 problems with the conventional model. So, okay, you had that realization. Um, how did that get you into a fix and
2:39 flip? Well, engineering brain kind of kicked in, right? Like I looked at gold and mutual funds and crypto and all sorts of
2:46 investment strategies and then started looking at real estate, started looking at value ad and started to understand
2:53 like, oh, I can structure this with zero dollars of my own money. Um, it's an
2:58 asset class that everybody knows and likes and understands to some degree and I can go make on 120 grand a year or
3:06 120k in like three months, four months doing this. Like that was a a big light bulb moment for
3:13 me because now we can generate very high dollar figures in a very short period of time and really change the direction of
3:22 our finances to invest in other things from there. That makes a lot of sense. Now one of
3:27 the hardest deals that you'll do in your career is the first deal for most people. Uh you have no track record. You
3:34 haven't proven to yourself that you can raise capital if you are raising capital. Uh there's a lot of unknowns.
3:39 How did the first deal come about? So I got my real estate license um right about the same time I decided to fix and
3:45 flip and that was purely out of, you know, economic interest. Hey, we can actually get paid to pick up a property
3:50 and we can save the money on selling it. So it was a big swing for us. And when I joined a brokerage, I joined a very
3:57 small investmentbased brokerage. There was a gentleman named Shawn there and he co-owned this brokerage with a general
4:03 contractor and all they did was fix and flip. And this was in 2020 2021 and they're doing like 50 a year plus,
4:10 right? So they kind of I targeted them specifically because they could teach me that trade. I had no interest in being a
4:17 a retail agent, you know, and and so they started teaching me what it looks like, what the process looked like, how
4:23 they went about it, how they sourced deals, and um you know, found a deal
4:29 essentially through them or with them or on my own, but they they vetted that process. used one of the co-owners as
4:35 our contractor on that project and was able to to have family members help put
4:40 money down towards, you know, that initial fix and flip. We did we did use hard money on that. So, we needed to
4:45 come up with about 80k to do it. Um, but again, once that value
4:51 proposition is understood in terms of ROI, uh, we split 50/50 and it was like
4:56 that was a pretty easy sell to to raise that money. Oh, yeah. Well, and one of the one of
5:01 the nice things that I I think a lot of people don't realize because there's a lot of horror stories and this is why people stay away from the fix and flip
5:07 model is like, "Oh, well, first one goes wrong. I borrowed this hard money. It comes due. This is, you know, a recipe
5:12 for disaster." Banks are usually going to be or any private lender or they're going to be the most critical when
5:19 you're a new operator. So, typically, if you're working with a reputable lender, they're really going to do everything
5:26 they can to not let you do a deal that's not going to work. Uh, it's something
5:31 that I found. One of my early deals was a duplex that it it wasn't a fix and
5:37 flip. It was a fix and hold, but same concept. I I closed it with hard money. We then went and refi. So, it was like
5:42 the the classic burr method fix hold strategy. Uh, came together. the lender
5:50 really, really, really, really, really pushed to make sure like, hey, you've never done this project. How do we know it's going to work? We need to see every
5:57 piece of your business plan. You really have to sell them on the thing. So, one thing that I always note for people,
6:03 there's actually, if you go the hard money route, as long as you use a reputable lender, there's less risk than you think there is because they really
6:10 do not want to lose money on you. Yeah, I think it's a really good point. We play devil's advocate with that all
6:15 the time. Like sometimes there's hoops to jump through with a hard money lender and that's a pain in the butt. But then also there's a lot of protections in
6:22 there. Like when you ask for a draw and they send out a third party inspector, you can use that to your advantage. When
6:27 your contractor says, "Hey, listen. I've done 60% of the project. I need paid for 60% of the project." And the hard money
6:35 lender sends out a a photographer to make sure it all matches up. And they're like, "No, you've only done 30% of the
6:40 project. You can use them as the bad guy and say, "Hey, WTF, Mr. contractor like
6:46 I paid you for 60 like we never want to wind up upside down. So it's good to it's good to have these third party
6:52 checks in process because they don't want to lose money either. Yes. And it and it
6:57 it feels counterintuitive but it is better to have these checks and balances the newer you are when you've done it a
7:04 hundred times and you're raising private capital from your own network which is
7:09 usually the natural evolution of this where it's like okay I can cut out the lender I'll start raising capital. You should have done this a bunch of times
7:16 before you go or at least, you know, at least successfully done it. Uh before you start going like, "Oh yeah, I know
7:22 everything that's going to happen and all these deals are going to run smoothly." So the difficulties that you will face doing your first deal, I think
7:29 they're all to your advantage. They'll all make you a better investor like across the board. Firmly believe that.
7:35 Yeah, 100%. You've got to you've got to learn somehow and no matter how much teaching or learning you do, right? Like
7:41 you've got to experience it. like I I had to sue my contractor on my first flip and he was my employer. He was one
7:47 of the co-owners of that brokerage because nothing was happening. So there's always something that's going to pop up. And you know when I was doing
7:55 those early phase projects, we learned a ton about risk management. We learned a t ton about systemization
8:02 um and making sure that these problems never can occur again. And so, how do you set up systems to where, hey, we're
8:09 never going to get behind on our schedule or, you know, we're never going to get upside down on payments or how do
8:14 we vet individuals and put proper contracts in place? And so, there's just a learning curve that comes with all of
8:20 that and you just got to get started somewhere, right? The the key is can you
8:26 set up go no-go criteria or different exit strategies to protect yourself in
8:32 case things do go sideways on one of those first projects, right? Can you still recover? Can you still exit? Can
8:39 you not lose money? How did you buy that property? Like what was that criteria like? So that you're at least mitigating
8:45 the downside. Yes. Which is uh which is very critical. Okay. Let's fast forward just just a
8:50 little bit. So you do that first deal. How do you start scaling that into a
8:57 business? So another place where a lot of people get stuck, they do a flip and they become that like mom and pop one
9:03 flip a year investor. You scaled this into a full-on business. What was the
9:09 next few steps that got you from, hey, I've done a flip to this is a this is a
9:14 business in and of itself. Yeah, Christian, I love this question because I think so many approach this like an
9:21 HGTV show and their husband's going to demo it and do the work and like we're swinging the hammer ourselves. And
9:29 man, there's so many ways where you can find labor cheap enough to where it's almost going to be cheaper if you hire somebody else to do it. So I think step
9:36 number one is you got to look at this as a top-down organization. It's a business. It's your business. You got to
9:41 run it like a business, right? So for us in terms of scaling, there's a few
9:47 bottlenecks that you're going to run into. One is deal flow. You know, are you getting enough deals to support what
9:53 you need on the flip side? Are you getting pricing good enough with contractors? And those two things come
10:00 handinand. How do I get the best pricing from contractors? Well, I got to give them volume over time, right? And I that
10:06 only comes with deal flow. So, as I scale up, I can get better pricing and I can get, you know, people that trust me
10:12 more and we can start figuring out and ironing out the kinks. Um, you know, another portion of that is just
10:18 bandwidth and project management. Are you going to hire an internal in team project manager that you can trust
10:24 implicitly because they're on salary or are you going to rely on a contractor? So, I think having this perspective of
10:30 like, hey, uh, what are the bottlenecks? Another one of that would be private money. you know, how much private money
10:35 do you need to go out and fund these operations in a in a cost-effective but also in a low risk environment to where
10:42 you're not stretched thin and uh you know, putting yourself dangerously leveraged, right? So, understanding
10:48 those four or so bottlenecks and designing your business around those bottlenecks really really key. We jumped
10:55 in from one flip to four or five flips right at a time. Um, this was kind of
11:00 like again it was another aha moment. I was in sales for a long time. I was with Fortune 500 companies and the products I
11:07 was selling were really hard to sell. It was like pushing a rope. It was like we didn't have product market fit.
11:13 I came back, we went to a Thanksgiving after doing our first flip and uh I didn't know half the people at this
11:18 extended family Thanksgiving and was just chatting up a bunch of them and was super excited about what we were doing.
11:24 And I left that family Thanksgiving with 400 grand like to go do investment properties with. And it was like another
11:30 aha moment of, oh, there's product market fit here.
11:36 We're offering something that is extremely valuable to these investors because otherwise they're just getting
11:42 7% return on their money, you know, in the in mutual funds or in the stock market. Whereas the way we structure it,
11:48 if they keep their money rolling with us, they're getting like 52% return on their money year-over-year. So, it
11:54 became very easy to scale the capital portion. Do you know what you you said something in there that I actually I was
12:00 just thinking about this that uh is really interesting. You were an employee
12:06 and successful as an employee prior to building this. And something that I have seen a lot is a lot of people who find
12:13 any small business, real estate, flipping, wholesale, like anything in our space, a lot of the people attracted
12:20 to it are people who actually are not super successful in their careers. And what ends up happening is they're like,
12:25 "Oh, I think I'm going to do well in business by myself." They end up not being successful in business because they don't approach it like a business.
12:31 The best, in my opinion, the best entrepreneurs, the most successful ones typically were already successful
12:38 outside of being an entrepreneur. It's very rare that someone just I I I have a friend Caleb who did it and he's like
12:45 he's like one in a thousand. It's very hard just to go straight in like, "Hey, I'm just going to be good at running
12:50 businesses. I'm going to see business like a business." I I love the entry point of you know how to attack a
12:56 business and it a lot of it seems like it stemmed from I've had this job. I've succeeded in this project. I've worked
13:02 with other people. So you're engineering out of a context of you worked for companies successfully. I I think it's a
13:09 a an indicator of success that people ignore. You should be able to work well with
13:16 others. If you want to build a company, you're going to end up creating a job for almost everyone. You better be good
13:22 at working a job if you want to be a successful entrepreneur. 100%. Not that not sit back and just collect
13:27 checks. I started my company at 27, which was a lifelong dream for me was to own my own
13:33 business. And I look back and I would not have been successful had I not built
13:39 skills that I felt like were super important. And it sounds cliche, right? Everybody builds skills. It's generic.
13:45 Who cares, right? But the things that I think mattered a lot were was learning how to think and then learning how to
13:51 build systems. And when you start out, it's just going to be you. Like, and so while the systems might not be super
13:59 important immediately, if you understand that, hey, I've got to design my way
14:05 into this to where I'm not putting in a ton of my time or um this mistake can't
14:11 happen more than once. That's my big thing. Mistake happens. It goes on a list. we design a system to where it
14:16 cannot happen again. That and that's just continuous improvement. But if you can learn sales, if you can learn um
14:23 basic math to do like real analysis that's like actually going to serve you well and you can learn to consistently
14:31 improve yourself, then I think you can do well as as a business owner, as an entrepreneur, because you'll first do it
14:38 for yourself, make a try to get the margins up and make a ton of money to do
14:43 it for yourself to where you're making three, four, 500 grand a year just as a single operator. And now, okay, what did
14:51 am I doing right? What am I doing wrong? How can I scale this in a way to where I don't have to work like a dog for 20
14:57 years, you know, um, in this scenario, right? So, that's step by step kind of how I approached it, but I agree. I
15:04 think if you're I mean, it it it sounds simple, right? If you're failing at what you're doing now, what makes you think
15:09 you're going to uh succeed when the stakes are higher and it's your own business? It it seems to be a common belief, though.
15:15 I hear it. I hear it very very often. And then I know you also are in the uh coaching and mentorship space. I know
15:21 we'll touch on that, but I I hear it a lot with people who are trying to enter real estate is like, "Hey, I hate this
15:27 job. I haven't had success here. I'm struggling here." And so I've decided real estate is the answer. And that is my like that is the number one way where
15:34 I will absolutely my my coaching to that person would be like go find a job that
15:40 stacks some skills and succeed in that job and then come back and do this. I I I do not want to coach someone who is
15:46 not going to be successful or who hasn't already stacked a series of skills where
15:51 they're likely to succeed. And so fantastic lesson,
15:57 I coach people all the time not to quit their job as they start real estate because you never want to put yourself
16:03 in a position. Listen, flips are gonna are they're amazing. Like again, we're averaging 120k net profit per deal, but
16:09 they pay you once every four months and they have overhead costs, right? So if you quit your job and things don't go
16:16 well, you have nothing to fall back and rely on, nothing's stable, and then you're making decisions from a
16:22 financially for poor foundation where you have to sell something to survive,
16:27 right? Whereas, if you are stable, you're in your job, you have all of your bills accounted for and taken care of,
16:33 and that's not going to change, then you can go be profitable on the side. And if you do fix and flips, well, one fix and
16:39 flip can be seven hours a week, you know, on the side of your job. So, I think there's a lot of ways to ease into
16:45 this until you say, "Okay, yep, I can be successful here." And it doesn't take,
16:50 like you said, it doesn't take 20 years. It also doesn't take for most people 12 months. Like for for most people getting
16:57 into it when you're when you are focused it's a three to five year runway of building the business to where it's
17:03 sustainable to the point where you can consistently say hey I have recurring income consistently where I can
17:10 responsibly leave a job. Now I've I've had students who've done it in a year but it's few and far between. I've seen
17:17 people do it in one deal. It's also not common that's probably not going to be you. I would never go into it saying
17:23 like, "Oh, I'm just gonna go find the deal." That's G. You said it exactly right. If you leave your job too early,
17:29 what ends up happening, and your second point is my favorite of all reasons not to do this, your decision- making is now
17:36 put through the filter of I have to make this work. That is where people start doing deals they shouldn't have done.
17:42 They try to make things work that [snorts] shouldn't have worked. You get sloppy underwriting. You make bad
17:48 decisions. That's where businesses fail. having that mindset of, hey, I don't
17:53 need to do this deal, but I'm intentionally trying to build a business in a sustainable way so I can build it
17:59 once and not lose it. The job will really help you keep that context. So, I am a huge I I advocate for the exact
18:06 same thing. I am one who left too early, so I cannot coach that from practical experience. 2020 hit, I was an outside
18:13 sales rep. You couldn't go outside in Washington State for two years. I was like, "Screw it. I'm out.
18:20 Just because it worked for me does not mean that it's a good idea or it will work for you. Past uh past success does
18:27 not dictate future results. Uh you will not uh it was not the best idea. It was
18:33 more stressful. Uh just because it worked doesn't mean it was the best way to do it. And certainly if you can keep
18:38 a job and continue to succeed there, give it two again two and a half to
18:43 three and a half years. that for most people it's that 3 to 5 year window is where you really get the legs under your
18:49 business where you're like, "Hey, this is outperforming my job. If you're not there yet, stick it out."
18:54 Yeah. And and that's the switching mechanism, right? This is outperforming my job. I
19:00 did one fix and flip. We made 80k. Um I started kind of wholesaling on the side just to to get my own deal flow for fix
19:06 and flips and then selling. Um, and it became to a point where it was like, man, I it just doesn't make sense to
19:12 keep the W2 job anymore because the economics aren't there. Like, if I'm making 400 grand a year in real estate,
19:18 I'm literally throwing money out the door sitting at my W2, right? So, that
19:23 became the switching mechanism. And it's so counterintuitive to pop culture, right, of like who's going to carry the
19:29 boats and no plan B and go all in. And it's like your decision-m is going to be
19:35 terrible if you do that, right? Because again, the stress is now on. And if it's any consolation, I coach tons of high-
19:41 netw worth individuals that are making 500 grand a year at their W2 job and not one of them has quit their W2 job until
19:48 they start earning that money on the side. And now this is a way out of their golden handcuffs to work for themselves
19:54 in a parallel environment that gives them a lot more freedom, but they're they're wise enough to have that runway.
19:59 And that's a great way to do the architecture for this. If you're setting up your your goal for like, hey, when do I leave my job? When do you consistently
20:06 make equal to or greater than your existing income? So, so instead of going in saying like, hey, I I want to make
20:12 $100 million in real estate, you just go like, hey, if you're someone who let's let's say you earn $10,000 a month. This
20:18 is an example. You're $120,000 a year job. If you're trying to replace that, make decisions around does this deal get
20:25 me closer or further from a recurring $10,000 per month in income? And only
20:31 make your decisions around that goal until you hit that goal. And then you can set new goals, but replace your income. If it's 20,000,
20:38 same engineering, you in a six cap market, though cap rates have changed a
20:44 little bit, but you find a six cap market, that's $4 million of equity is $20,000 a month, making 8%.
20:52 If I'm doing my mental math right, yes. So, if your average return in cash flow is like 8%, you need to create $4
20:59 million of equity. You can do that through active income. You can do that through P like you can buy and hold, fix
21:07 and flip, wholesale. There's a lot of ways to build money, but you need to have $4 million of net worth deployed.
21:13 Come up with that plan or you need to find returns that are twice 8%. So if you're like, hey, my average cash flow is 16%. You need $2 million of equity,
21:21 but do the math and engineer your business so you're making decisions around the business that you're trying to build first. don't
21:27 it's a it's a super interesting point that you brought up that I don't think most people believe in themselves enough
21:33 to to think this way but because what we're essentially saying is hey with 10% of my time or 30% of my time right we'll
21:40 call it 30 you know weekends and you know 6:00 to 9:00 whatever it is how do
21:45 I replace my annual salary with 25 30% of my time like that's not realistic it
21:51 it is this is a high enough margin business this is a high enough margin business to where if you build the skill
21:57 sets to succeed in this, you will far exceed your annual salary with 25% of
22:02 your time here. And then it's very clear that's your signal. Let's go all in.
22:07 Yes. Well, that's the beautiful thing with any business. So, for me, it's a little easier to illustrate with buy and
22:13 hold because it continues to pay you forever. But you close a deal, your income goes up, it stays up. So, it
22:18 think of it kind of like a video game. And I I will relate this to all of the other business models that you're in as well, but kind of you get to save your
22:25 progress. So, while your job is a fixed income and you hopefully progress through your career and it will go up in
22:31 in jumps or may go down if you lose a job, you get to save your progress in
22:36 your business. In a fix and flip or wholesaling business, you have your lead
22:42 genen, you have your staffing, you have your models. They scale. They you don't you don't move backwards
22:48 in huge steps. So as you grow, even if you're only putting 10 to 25% of your
22:54 time towards it, it will just continue to grow. So eventually,
22:59 it will outtake your job if you're running it responsibly and optimizing for cash flow. It it just scales. The
23:07 amount of time you put into it will dictate how fast it scales, but you just keep moving forward until
23:13 it hits critical mass. That that's essentially how any business works. Agreed. So, if you like board games or video games, uh, good news. Real estate
23:20 kind of plays the same way. So, okay. Uh, you you do the fix and flip model. Um, you you've done wholesaling. Um,
23:27 you've done multiple companies. I'm going to ask you a question that, uh, I was asked early, and this actually kind
23:33 of defined a lot of my decisions around which companies I did. If one of those is successful, so you're doing well in
23:40 flipping. Wholesaling was a way to get more stable income. I understand those two. You then get multiple divisions. So
23:46 now you have you mentioned four companies. How do you determine which companies are taking away from others or
23:52 is the right move? How do you determine yes we should do this or are we going
23:58 somewhere that's taking away from another business? Because what I see entrepreneurs do is if you're excellent,
24:03 you vertically integrate fantastically in a measured way and you get a collection of companies that all feed each other. Most entrepreneurs
24:12 will get start a company syndrome and you'll have a whole portfolio that is a distraction from the main thing. So how
24:19 do you determine which is the right path to take and which things move you
24:25 forward not laterally? It's a really great question. Um I don't
24:30 know that I have the perfect answer for this because it's something that I've struggled with. And I think we've recently recently um come to good
24:38 conclusions here, right? Where fix and flipping was an amazing business model and is an amazing business model. Um but
24:46 with supercharged from 2011 to 2022, right? And then from 2022 until 2026,
24:53 you've got to be much wiser as you approach that strategy. It can still be a great strategy. we started, you know,
25:01 building other, we'll call them methods of income, right? Yeah, they're different business verticals, but
25:06 they're all complimentary. They're all very high margin, and they all play to the strengths of our core business,
25:12 which is investing. Um, so that's where the wholesaling came out of this was,
25:17 hey, that pays us every two weeks rather than once every four months. There's no risk
25:22 to it. It helps us with our our deal flow and our main business. um you know, it's just a win-win-win. Um and we learn
25:29 a lot about marketing and the market and all these other kind of benefits along with it. So, so long as you can staff
25:36 that appropriately and it's got the ROI there that it's not dragging this other business down, then it's worth it. Okay.
25:45 What about the other two? Is it worth staffing up a real estate brokerage to 100 people, you know, among all of this?
25:52 Most people would probably say no. Those are really low margin businesses. Like really low margin businesses. Like you'd
25:58 be surprised to hear like a remax net margin in real estate. It's like 1% 2%.
26:04 Like it's not it's not good. Uh but it takes a lot of effort and really it
26:10 starts coming down to you're going to hire a lot more staff that is non um
26:15 commissionbased for me personally, right? And so all of the staff and individuals and people that we've
26:21 brought on have always been basically 100% commission. Uh and so that's been
26:27 the big switching mechanism for me is like, hey, can we go into these adjacent markets that are high margin that are
26:33 only costing me overhead when we transact, when we do deals. Therefore,
26:38 they're not additional risk. You know, two months ago, three months ago, we had about 120k of overhead every month in
26:46 just standard operating costs for our business. We've cut that now to about $45,000 in costs. And it's because we
26:54 got away from what we're talking about. Yeah. Wow. That must that must feel unbelievably different. That's uh we're
27:00 a lean machine now. Yeah. you you saved about a uh I mean that has to be somewhere in and around
27:07 the average household income in operating cost instantly. That's that's huge huge savings per month that like
27:14 the annual annual earnings of a household every single month saved in expenses. What was the what was the
27:20 change to bring the overhead down by that? Because that's that's super dramatic. Yeah, I think some of it was um a lot of
27:27 it was marketing costs in uh divisions of the business that were still newly
27:33 developing, right? So, you've kind of got this infantile setup that's going to
27:38 take a lot of money and a lot of runway. Um some of it is some of our portfolio
27:43 costs where we weren't turning a profit on some of the portfolio. Um some of it was staffing, you know, so it was a
27:49 combination of things. it wasn't one, you know, silver bullet. Um, but we
27:55 brought in a COO, uh, who was very close to me, a lot of gray hairs, a lot of wisdom, somebody that I can trust to
28:01 kind of help with that. And so, you know, you ask the question, hey, how do you determine which ones are distraction and which ones are not? One, I would say
28:08 a mentor or some some some somebody that you can bring in with a lot of wisdom has been very very helpful for me
28:13 personally. Um, you know, and then two, you just got to focus on the high ROI activities and just scale the crap out
28:20 of that. I think sometimes, like you said, entrepreneurs have their ego in it and they just want to open 12 businesses
28:25 because they think they can and then they suck at all of them, right? Um, yes,
28:31 common of all entrepreneurial outcomes. Yeah. [laughter] For me, the the last vertical for us is
28:38 the mentorship program. And that came out of like a I went from 100k to 400k a
28:43 year and I'm not doing anything special. Like there's no magic. Yes. There's no it's not complicated. I don't need to be
28:48 a software engineer. I don't need to be Elon Musk to make this happen. Like this is one of the oldest asset classes in
28:55 the book. If you understand systems, you can build this income for yourself. So I just wanted to give back with the
29:00 mentorship program. So, that maybe wasn't even a wise business decision overall, [laughter] but it does tie into all of our other
29:07 verticals because now if we have excess uh deal flow, we can sell the excess deal flow into the mentorship program
29:13 and those things like that. It's one of the things I'm really grateful for with AI is that it's made informationfree
29:20 which in my opinion has made mentorships more valuable because now you've you've cut down on the learning curve but the
29:27 practical how to do it the blueprint and the experience you can't replicate. So
29:34 everyone in my opinion by the end of the year all those online courses that were so popular during co so dur I just said
29:41 the word so we'll see if we get we'll check how the views do on this episode now [laughter] the uh we'll see if
29:47 that's still in effect uh but in uh the 2019 2020 2021 in that in that realm you
29:53 saw a million online gurus start a course because everyone is at home watching YouTube so you had just like a
30:00 million $700 courses and Now you said the exact words that I I I would hope
30:06 that you would say it mentorship which is different than hey watch my course grab my content now that information is
30:13 free having people who have done what you are trying to do is premium value uh so I'm
30:20 really I you've done the exact thing right you've gone through struggles in business you've figured out a lot of
30:27 things that work you've built a business that is 400,000 is would be lifechanging
30:33 for a lot of people. So, you've done the thing that is relatively unique that a lot of people would like to scale to and
30:38 now you're going back and teaching from there. That is what I think is going to be the most valuable over the next
30:44 several years. So, I think as a business person, you chose the right vertical because you did it in order. You built
30:50 the businesses, you did the systems, you have the experience. Market timing wise, I don't think it could be a better time
30:56 to have a actual mentorship, which is awesome. What is uh if you don't mind me asking what what structure did you
31:03 choose for the mentorship high level? Yes. So we have kind of three levels. We have an entry course gives you the
31:09 tools, get you access to the community. We have kind of our breadandut um online
31:15 course uh that we've recorded over 24 hours worth of content for and have 36
31:21 different tools in. And again now you get access to a premium version of our community. um
31:28 and and you get monthly coaching and those sorts of things in there. That's the national version because again we can't be everywhere at once. Um our time
31:35 is limited and um yeah, this scales to just about any market in the US if you're wise with how you uh you know vet
31:43 your contract labor. Like this is a doable strategy. Um but then the third tier of this, which is kind of what I
31:49 think I really appreciate your comments on, is we've got a fasttrack coaching version of this that is live. It's in
31:56 small groups. It is taught via Zoom like we're doing right now. And you know,
32:03 we've been doing this in the state of Colorado for three years now. Um, and we're I think that's what sets us apart.
32:09 We are so hands-on. I want our mentees and our students to succeed so badly
32:15 that we are teaching you the 14 weeks worth of content. Then we are going out and we are finding you the deal and
32:21 helping you acquire the deal. Then we're helping you with the contractors. We're helping you with the project management. We're helping you with the design. And
32:28 then we're there to list it on the back end. And so you have our full support, you know, from start to finish in a very
32:34 intricate manner. And that FastTrack coaching approaches this business from top down. So that is now designed to
32:42 transition from you know uh our our middle tier or standard tier which is uh
32:47 how do you make six figure net profits flipping homes to how do you become a sevenf figureure earning earner building
32:54 a fix and flip business scaling the fix and flip business getting rid of the bottlenecks in this phase with our
33:01 hands-on support in that environment. So, that's the structure that we've, you know, uh uh deployed with this. And it's
33:09 it's funny. Maybe it wasn't a wise business quote unquote decision, but it's I've gotten some of my best friends
33:14 out of this mentorship course. We've gotten all of our employees have come out of this mentorship course. Uh
33:20 they've stuck with us that long because they like the content that much. I I I have a I have a a theory having having
33:27 scaled this business uh before I have a theory that over the next couple years
33:32 your top tier product will become your flagship product. I I I would not be surprised, but when I hear the three of
33:40 them, and all of them I I'm sure have fantastic value, the direct the ability
33:45 to have a not all the way done for you, but done with you almost to the extent of done
33:52 for you. I I I think that is the I think that is the future of courses and I think that's
33:58 where the most value is. So, uh, if anyone's listening, uh, to this podcast
34:03 like, "Hey, this is these are the types of things that I want to learn, uh, highly recommend you check it check it
34:08 out." And if you do anything, uh, I'd look at I would look at your top tier thing because I think that's going to become your main thing. Uh, it's just so
34:15 valuable having the actual tangible experience. I think that's what most people who want to build a business are
34:23 really looking for. and and and frankly that's what I pay for when I look for mentors or when I attend any sort of
34:30 mastermind mentorship program retreat. I'm looking to be in the room with the
34:36 people who have built the business at the next level of where I'm trying to go. Uh but fantastic. I like the way
34:41 that you're doing it. I also like the multi-tiered approach that is uh that should serve you well. I think that that
34:46 that plugs in nicely with what you're doing. Um and then yeah as the one thing
34:53 that uh all course creators and uh and mentorships learned they take a lot of
34:58 time if you if if you run them right uh they they are they're going to be your most time inensive. Uh that being said
35:04 they're also the most rewarding and they're also the most fun and they can be uh the most lucrative depending on
35:12 how you position and and how it works. So I like the vertical uh and and I like
35:17 that that is something that that I'm really happy that you said that where it is mentorship and that is part of the
35:23 program that people can opt to actually work with you on their portfolio. I think that's hugely valuable. Hugely
35:29 valuable question that we always ask the stupid tax. So not saying that you're stupid but I'm saying you were
35:35 definitely the dumbest that you've ever been before you started compared to where you're at now because you haven't learned all the things that you've
35:40 learned. Uh the farther back you go the the dumber you were. That's just how it works being a human. So the highest
35:46 stupid tax you paid, the most expensive mistake monetarily or personally could
35:53 be just burned a friendship, burned a there's there's I've heard a ton of them. Uh but what's the most expensive
35:59 mistake that you made early learning how to be who you are today? Yeah, I think there's two. I think this
36:05 is repeated time and time and time again with new investors, new fix and flippers. It's something that we've worked to address tirelessly in our
36:13 mentorship course. Um, number one was trusting contractors um to just do their
36:19 job, right? And this this if you're a contractor, I love you. Trust me, this is not harsh on you. Um, but this is not
36:25 an industry where you can say, "Hey, listen. This is a professional and I hired them to do this job and it's going
36:30 to get done on time and on budget." It just doesn't happen. Um, you have to be actively involved in project management
36:37 and you have to have contracts that provide fair like fair structure so that
36:44 everybody's on the same page as a team, but also have penalties and teeth in
36:49 that contract for being late. For example, on that very first fix and flip project that I told you about, um the
36:56 owner of my business was my contractor and we got into this project and he's doing it for us and four weeks go by and
37:03 nothing has happened in four weeks and I'm getting cranky. I'm calling him. I'm trying to get in touch with him. I'm
37:08 doing whatever. This is around Thanksgiving. We go on Thanksgiving break. He comes back and I we come back from Thanksgiving and it's finally
37:14 demoed and some progress is being made. Another four weeks goes by. Nothing is happening. It's been eight weeks and the
37:20 home has been demoed and that is it. And it's supposed to be an eight-week project from start to finish. And we
37:26 learned very quickly, like I had to sue him. I had to issue a demand letter. I had to get him on the right track to get
37:33 him to finish this project out. But we learned very quickly that like, hey, I didn't have a contract in place. And even if I did have a contract in place,
37:40 if I don't have a penalty for you being late, like a dollar per day beyond a reasonable timeline, I have no ability
37:47 to motivate you to move forward. If you think you're not going to make money on this project as a contractor, all I have
37:53 is the please, would you maybe could you possibly show up today? And you have no
37:58 leverage, right? To whereas when they're two, three weeks late, you say, "Okay, listen, we're two, three weeks late. How
38:04 are we as a team going to rectify this? um because right now this is the amount that we're holding back from the
38:09 contract and that's going to motivate them to perform as they promised they were going to perform. So that was a
38:15 monster lesson for us. We have a very strict set of contracts that we put in place with all of our GCs and our subs.
38:22 That one was probably about a $40,000 swing in the profitability of that project. We still made 80k on that
38:28 project. We were very blessed to get out of that very first project successfully. Um, the second one was a project that I
38:37 just shouldn't have bought. I bought it incorrectly. It's in the middle of three neighborhoods in Denver that are all
38:44 prime neighborhoods. Uh, University Hills, Virginia Village, Holly Hills. Holly Hills was voted the number one
38:50 place to live in all of Denver and potentially in the nation. And so I was like, sweet, I can't lose. But this
38:55 happened to have a very, very specific subdivision, specific pocket. And in that pocket, although I am surrounded by
39:02 Primo subdivisions on all sides, it was a different school district. Every home
39:07 in that subdivision was built in the 1950s, whereas these other were built in the 70s and 80s. And the highest comp in
39:14 my little pocket was about $250,000 less than everywhere else.
39:21 [laughter] And so I thought I was going to be selling for $870. The highest comp in my subdivision was
39:28 580. And I did. No, did we did not sell for 580. We sold for like 720 or
39:33 somewhere in that neighborhood. We still crushed the comps in our particular neighborhood and pushed the price up quite a bit. But that was a $100,000
39:40 loss, an $80,000 loss. Like flat loss, not, hey, I broke even or it was, you
39:47 know, less profitable. No, we lost 80 grand, you know, on that deal. So, that's the number one mistake I see a
39:52 lot of newbies make is comping properties incorrectly or buying properties incorrectly. And that one,
39:58 that one was an easy mistake to make. Oh, and that's why I'm so such a huge advocate of the direct coaching because
40:05 that is something where someone with experience can look at it, give you direct feedback. Uh those are the
40:11 mistakes where, you know, you see a mentorship and I don't know your pricing, but for a lot of these you pay
40:18 5, 10, 15, $20,000 depending on what the program is. And it's like, hey, you're
40:23 going to learn something there. Like if you're going if you're if you already decided you're going to buy a deal regardless,
40:29 it's saving that $80,000 mistake. Uh early in my career, I made a a a mistake
40:34 that cost me about a million4. Um if I could save you a million4 or if Jason
40:40 can save you $80,000 on a transaction, that's in my opinion, that's the value
40:45 mentorship. And that's why I asked the stupid tax question. Like if you're listening to this podcast, get get tidbits from every episode of what not
40:52 to do. Save yourselves tens, 20, 30, hundred million dollars depending on how
41:00 large the mistake is. Don't make the same mistakes that we make. Uh yeah. No, that's uh fantastic uh fantastic lessons
41:09 and they're all avoided by working with people who've done what you want to do. If you can get the right mentor and the
41:15 right people on your team, you're going to cut those costs down dramat. Yeah, a thousand%. If you're going to spend 10k on a mentorship and it makes
41:22 you 120k in six months, was it worth it? Of course. And if it can avoid you
41:27 making that 40 to $80,000 mistake because we've made them along the way, um I'd rather you not take your lumps.
41:33 Like, you know, maybe you're not as profitable as you want to be on the first project because you're learning, but um that safeguard is is huge.
41:41 Yeah, I absolutely 100% agree. 100% agree. Well guys, this is uh that's a
41:48 wrap for this episode, but I will uh I'll link below in the description if you guys want to follow up with Jason,
41:53 you guys are curious about the course, the mentorship, you have questions from this episode, uh Jason, what's the best way for people to reach you? People can
42:00 just go directly to betterbloopprintacademy.com. Uh and that's where we house everything
42:05 from our educational arm. Otherwise, better blueprint realy has all of our businesses kind of wrapped into one.
42:12 Oh, that's fantastic. Well, thank you so much for joining us today, everyone. This is another episode of the Owner
42:18 Meeting Podcast. If you enjoyed this and want other practical advice for your business, like, follow, subscribe to the
42:24 channel, and we'll see you guys on the next episode.