Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another SLG meetup, your host, Alvar Nunez. Now, for this particular episode, we're gonna bring Jason Mitchell. So, let's get him on. There it is.
Hello. Hello, friend. What's happening, Jason? How are you?
Well, I just thought you'd jump in at a point, I'm glad you're safe. I gotta say, we're a nice first-medient person at our real estate conference, that was such a pleasure because you're not only a successful real estate broker, but also an incredible human being. Like, you've built a huge brokerage with a lot of agents, you're selling multi-million dollar homes. Like, how do you get from being a regular agent all the way to being at the top of the game?
Well, I'll tell you, so to make the story quick, I was in the field and I was doing well here in Arizona. I was the number one agent in Arizona for 2015, 16, 17, 18, so for quite some time. What I noticed was that we started to get a lot of referrals from some really big partnerships across the country. And I used that tool as leverage to build our real estate team to become the number one real estate team in the world.
You know, we'll do over $5 billion this year in production, somewhere around 10,000 transactions. And the majority of that business comes from partnerships. And so we're partners with huge companies like Veteran United, Rocket Mortgage, Freedom Mortgage, New American Funding, you name it, Open Door, Zillow is a big one. So these organizations utilize our company as the real estate service to their consumers.
And so we utilize these referrals. So to give you an example, what that means, this year we'll distribute somewhere in the ballpark of around 75,000 referrals from these companies. And so we have about 600 agents across the country that are a benefactor of these referrals. And our average agent actually adds about 32 deals a year to their book of business.
So if you work under our umbrella, you're going to enhance your book of business by over 30 plus transactions a year because we're going to provide you with a lot of referral opportunities. And so we took that model and we brought it across the country. So we're now in 34 states, about 110 MSA's. And the model is very simple.
We continue to add partnerships so we can add more referrals and grow the company. So smart, Rich, how can you start building those relationships? Yeah. And you know, what I always say is to, you know, what I get now, when I go to speak, where I go somewhere, people say, well, that's easy for you to say when you're doing, you know, $4 or $5 billion a year in business.
But the reality is, yeah, but I wasn't. You know, I mean, the reality is it was just me. There's nothing different about me that separates anybody else out there. I was an agent.
I got back in the real estate residential in 2010. I had a finance company. I started in new construction. Then I went back then I went to the field when I was like 26, 27.
Then I got in finance for a few years and I went back in the real estate in 2010, I'm 42 right now. And so in 2010, I didn't have a client. I mean, there was no business to be had. We were going through the meltdown.
But I pounded the pavement every day and I grind it. And so as I started to do more business myself, I had some doors open up to where I added one partnership. Then you had another partnership. But when people say, well, you know, like if anything can't be done, like I would look at you, I'll grow and I would say, well, there's no way I'd ever be able to go have, you know, multiple million followers and do all these amazing things that you get to do.
And your answer would be, yeah, but I had to build that. You know, I remember you telling her the story with your wife when she's getting all this stuff centered her and you're like, this is amazing. I would capitalize on this. And the reality is, is something always starts from somewhere.
But if you're not willing to put in the work to come up with a concept, to bring that concept out, you'll never get traction because all you're doing is sitting there saying, yeah, but there's no way I could do that because of this. And the reality is you can do whatever you want. If you, if you follow your own like determination to get somewhere and to say, any agent that's watching this, if you're in 10 million a year, 20 million a year, you want to get to $100 million of your introduction. The only thing that's holding you back is you.
But the reality is, is that at some point you have to build process. You have to build efficiency. For all the people that work around you, Alvaro, they have a job to do. But you have that in these certain roles that they have to fulfill.
If you have booking people to book things like this, your job is to book clients and make sure that they show up so we can have discussions. If you have travel people, if you have brand people, it's the same thing with us. You ultimately end up getting there. But as you build that journey, 10 million after 10 million after 10 million, you have to find ways to create the ultimate world that I've been using all year this year.
That's leverage. I mean, if you can't create leverage, you will ultimately find yourself at a peak. So where, because when you start doing 20, 30 million a year in production, that's where usually the breaking point is because you're so busy in the field, you're working on new deals, you're working on prospecting, you're working on closings, and you're trying to wear all these hats. And when you want to get into 100 million a year, you have to understand, you can't wear all the hats anymore because you can't do all the work.
And that's when the leverage starts to come into play. You leverage an administrator, you leverage a buyer's agent. You travel more than anyone I know. When someone needs to show a house, there's someone in Miami to show a house for you.
That's ultimate leverage. But people had a really tough time understanding that you can't control everything. You've got to let go and trust your own process. Whenever you took that leap of faith and you started to go towards that journey of growth, what was the biggest obstacle that you faced and how do you overcome it?
Well, biggest obstacle was that I knew I had to take a backseat to my income. Because when I really started focusing on growth, it was 2018. And I was doing about 160 million in personal production. And my team was doing about 250.
So I was a big chunk of what the team was doing. But I realized I had something special here. I had partnerships that trusted me. That said, if you build it the right way and you can deliver, we'll trust you as you expand.
But in order for me to do that, I had to get out of the field and focus on actually building a company. And it was one of those things to where I felt so strongly on what our model was, that I knew it could be done. But I had to understand that when you're making four plus million dollars in the field, and all of a sudden, you can still make a good living, but my income was cut by 70% in 2019 and 2020. And then in 2021, it started to catch up and last year just exploded.
And I focused on saying, I don't care about the dollars right now, I want to build something that has value. And I think the value word is what team leaders need to understand, is that if you're running a brokerage or you're running a team, you come last. If you decide that you're going to manage people, they are your responsibility to make sure that you give them a value proposition that is better than anywhere else out there, otherwise they would leave you. And so you have to put other people first.
You have to make sure like for me, it's putting partners first, it's putting our agents first. And that was the whole goal. So if I was to hit the road and start recruiting agents and say, you want to work these referrals, I'd better be able to live up to the expectation that I'm setting. I was just in the walk in Chicago this past week.
And I was talking to a room full of agents, we have recruiting events. And I said, very simple. If I can't deliver on what I'm saying, they're going to leave anyway. So what's the point?
And so we have to make sure that we're bringing value to agents. And if we're not bringing value to agents, ultimately, they're going to find a new home. So that's what I had to entrust in myself was, if you're going to do this, if you're going to leave the field and you're going to build something, you better make sure you got rock solid relationships. And I felt strong enough about that that we did.
But that was a big gamble because it did work in our whole process. We served as 34 states, 35 starting next month centralized here in Scottsdale. Where we're constantly just handing out referrals, managing referrals, call center experience. I never thought that we'd have all these different departments to run an organization.
But now we have to because when you're managing, that 75,000 referrals is about $45 billion in referrals this year is what we'll manage. And when you're managing $45 billion of referrals, that big partners are sending to you, you better have your stuff together. And so it was scary, but I felt so confident. It's like when you were telling me when you were in the desert, there was just nothing that was going to stop you.
At some point you say, I'm going to finish. I don't care what it takes at this point. And that to me was kind of the mindset. If you had to tell something to your younger self, what would you say?
I think when it comes to selling real estate, having a good mentor and somebody that you can really rely on where you can ask them things, I think that's my team's become even bigger nowadays. And they ever have because you need guidance. I think on the investing front, when we start making money in real estate, we're always trying to find ways to invest in certain things, whether you're doing wholesaling or fixing flips or loaning hard money or multi-family. When it comes to that stuff, you finally got some coin that you can throw around and invest.
What I will tell you is make sure to try to mitigate your mistakes because you're going to make mistakes. But the thing is ask questions. What I would have done in the past is some of the partnerships that I've made that I've thrown a lot of money at that I've lost on. I didn't do my due diligence on the person.
And it's really important that we not only try to understand what we're investing in, but we also understand the person we're investing with. I have contractors in charge of stuff that have blown so many of my flips to partners that embezzled money. When you don't know people, do the best they can to find out who else have you done business with. And I want to talk to them.
We're going to make mistakes, but the morning that you slow down, we think everything is just an opportunity to you. It's like, look, it's a great deal. And you feel so compelled to be like, oh, I'm listening because the greatest people to be sold are the greatest salespeople. We're easy sales.
And sometimes you've got to pump the brakes of it. And you've got to say, let me understand this before I jump into something. I would have slowed down a little bit. Now I learned a lot, but I've made a lot of mistakes that if I would have just taken my time more or been more apt to ask more questions about people and the investing themselves and understanding things, instead of coming out with so much trust in others, I think I could have saved a lot of money.
But in real estate itself, in the business itself, what I would say is, I would tell my younger self that you did a really good job because you worked really hard. And that's what people need to understand is this is a really competitive space. And it is something that if you simply have it and the it is, can you motivate yourself every day to try to talk to as many people as possible about real estate? And if you can do that, you're going to ultimately win.
But do you have the wherewithal to withstand a month or two months that you don't sell something, three months that you don't sell something? Like live below your means as much as humanly possible until you're comfortable enough to buying that $100,000 car or that million dollar house or whatever it is, because this isn't up and down business. And until you've been established super consistency within your deals, you never know what a month may bring. So just be smart.
I know that you have a lot of things going on. So I'm going to just wrap it up with our question. What is luxury to you? What is luxury to me?
Luxury is something that people gravitate to because they feel like it's the be all end all in life. They feel as though I want that luxury car, that luxury home, the luxury lifestyle. And to me, in my life today, we have what people would say, you have a luxury life. You know, we have a beautiful home and beautiful cars.
But I don't care about that stuff. I really don't. I think luxury to me is first and foremost, what is luxury when it comes to your character? What is luxury when it comes to you as a person?
Are you a superstar when it comes to being a good person and a good human being? And I believe that if you are, that things will start to come with you when you start putting other people before yourself. I think you are 100% as a human being, Albera, when I'm talking about you, the fact that people want to be around you because you have this, you just have this aura about you that people just trust you and they want to be around you. They want a piece of what you're doing.
They want to feel it. And you've done an amazing job of building this luxury to bring it out, but without being a good person, that all means nothing. And so, you don't have to, you don't have to sell luxury houses to live a luxury lifestyle. We sell, we sell 10,000 houses a year, our average purchase prices, I have a million dollars.
We're not luxury, but we serve as a lot of people. And to me, to be, even though we're not a luxury brokerage, to be the number one real estate team, to me has meaning. It means that we're doing a fantastic job with our brand and our character. And to me, that is luxury.
To be a great person is luxury, in my opinion. Thanks again for tuning in. We'll see you in the next one. Thank you.
Bye Jason. And thanks again for everybody tuning in today. We hope you enjoyed it. I remember, embrace it's beautiful success in life.
My name is Alvaro and I'll see you next time.