Flexibility Comes at a Cost: Jase Leonard's Time-Blocking Blueprint for 228 Deals a Year

Guest BioJase Leonard leads HousingAroundAZ, a real estate team based in Chandler, Arizona, in the Phoenix metro market. Before real estate, he built and directed a corporate call center — and walked away from the job rather than lay off half his staff. His first six months in real estate produced exactly one transaction, and his wife gave him one final shot to make it work. Eleven years later, Jase runs a 14-agent team that closed 228 transactions last year, built on a foundation of expired and canceled listings, pre-foreclosure and probate outreach, and one of only 23 Zillow Flex partnerships in the Phoenix metro area.Show NotesTim sits down with Jase Leonard, an 11-year real estate veteran and team leader in Chandler, Arizona, who came into the business with a strong sales background from running corporate call centers — and still nearly quit in his first six months. Jase is candid about what it actually took to turn things around: watching and emulating agents who were already succeeding (specifically Joshua Smith), leaning hard into the one lead source that fit his strengths (expired and canceled listings), and slowly building the discipline his wife's ultimatum forced him toward.The conversation is packed with tactical detail: Jase's "stool of the chair" philosophy on lead generation (3-4 sources, never fewer, never chasing more than you can master), his team's "War Report" system that scores every agent's weekly money-making activities, and his exact follow-up philosophy — including the specific, permission-based language he uses to justify calling a lead six times without it feeling pushy. He also gets into how his team diversified beyond expireds into pre-foreclosure and probate outreach as DNC regulations made cold-calling harder, and how Zillow's lead-referral partnership became an unexpected lifeline during COVID.On AI, Jase describes something few other guests have mentioned: building a custom Claude skill that generates an AI-created CMA specifically to preempt tech-savvy sellers who've already run their own numbers through Gemini or ChatGPT before the listing appointment even starts. The episode closes with his take on what can't be taught — strive — and his prediction that agents will increasingly resemble lawyers: less about search, more about advice, negotiation, and guiding people through a process AI still can't fully see behind the curtain of.In this episode:From building corporate call centers to walking away rather than laying off staffOne transaction in his first six months — and his wife's "one more chance" ultimatumLearning the business by emulating agents like Joshua Smith on podcasts and YouTubeBuilding a career on expired and canceled listings — and why it still worksThe "stool of the chair": why you need 3-4 lead sources, never fewer, rarely moreHow DNC regulations pushed his team toward pre-foreclosure and probate outreachBecoming one of only 23 Zillow Flex teams in the Phoenix metro areaThe War Report: scoring every agent's weekly money-making activitiesTime-blocking as the antidote to "flexibility comes at a cost"Jase's follow-up philosophy: 14-15 touches, task-based, and the permission to "blow them up"Why he built a custom AI-powered CMA to preempt sellers who've already Googled their priceThe one thing Jase says he can't teach: striveWhy he believes agents will start to resemble lawyers — advisors, not searchers