Losing Everything Made Him $80M/Year
no money to start the hardest part of starting the business was raising money lost everything in the last recession when you lose your money and you lose your friend and you lose that kind of stuff it gives you perspective and 2.5 million dollars in debt getting off hard money is probably the best thing that anyone could ever do nothing stopped Jay and mark from building a 85 million dollar a year Home Building business well you find all of our properties off Market that probably accelerated our growth let's Deep dive into the intricacies of this closely held industry is that 4.599 million 4.599 million to be successful it's the hustle factor it's what 99 of the people won't ever do from getting started with no money to Mark's profit margins in a secret Philosophy for a happy life big thanks to Constant Contact for sponsoring today's video all right Mark so where are we standing and uh what's up with this property so we are in uh Bellevue Washington just outside of Seattle we are going to be demoing this house it's going to ultimately be a brand new home it's all getting torn down it's all getting torn down today okay and we're even gonna get you uh on the tractor all right I've never done that before yeah it's gonna be like a little kid again all right so why are you tearing this down uh so our business is that we buy tear down houses in the uh in Infield neighborhoods and we build new houses on top okay how about your backstory how did you get into this industry when did you do that I started in when I was 23 years old started selling real estate and a year after my business partner and I started buying fixer houses and turning them into rentals okay and that was like our kind of like our side gig was he uh my business partner Jay he had a family furniture store I sold real estate we sold our DJ business that we had when we were 20 years old nice we made about 15 grand and took all that money and invested it into into real estate and that was how we got started buying remodeling uh houses okay by the time we were 30 we had about 30 rental houses one of those houses had a little bit of land on it yeah so we learned the land development business so we were doing house plus a lot house plus two lots we ended up creating a business that was developing like projects that were upwards of about 50 Lots at a time it was it was a pretty decent sized business but what happened was when the recession happened it was like a craps table and and uh lucky number seven came and all of the rentals and all of the land that we had we had to liquidate it all to satisfy Bank debt wow uh and the unfortunate part is when we were liquidated it all we still owed the bank about two and a half million dollars oh my gosh so he's told the bank um we said hey if you give us 20 years we'll pay you back two and a half million dollars so bankruptcy wasn't an option bankruptcy wasn't an option we paid that all off within seven years we wanted to be mean to our word I respect that thank you all right should we go in yeah let's go so you know what's interesting is that you know a brand new house could take about uh 10 11 months to build this house to get torn down will be about three days and it's all gone so give us an overview of this a lot how much did you buy it for anything else interesting about this place yeah so this lot we paid about 920 000 for 920 000 for a piece of junk house we made 920 000 for a house that we're gonna tear down yeah so this house will end up being 4 800 square feet and it'll sell for about 3 million do you know about how much profit you'll get on that uh we shoot for about a 10 profit sometimes a little bit more sometimes it's a little bit less depending on the market so what makes this house a teardown house well it's kind of like our business model is that we like this area right here we're about five minutes away from Microsoft we're about five to ten minutes away from Amazon's uh second campus we're about 10 minutes away from Google's campus that is Central it's infill properties and people want to live in close-in locations they don't want to live in the outskirts yeah so they pay a premium to be in neighborhoods that uh have great schools and our great neighborhoods and like most of these houses are built in the 50s about a thousand to 1200 1500 square feet and then ultimately we'll build uh 4 000 to 4 800 square feet on top of it okay and that's on what law says you know these are probably anywhere from 8 500 to 10 000 square feet okay so how did you find this house uh well you find all of our properties off Market really wow okay you heard it guys he doesn't find his best deals on Market he finds them off market so keep watching to find out how he does it what are the tools or systems you use to track and manage your business expenses well first of all we have the best accounting team and the best CFO Catherine she monitors everything you know profit ongoing expenses days on Market Days of construction like we are constantly monitoring every aspect of the business you know how long it takes us to go from design to submit for permit how long does it take for permitting in different jurisdictions how long does it take for us to to build the house we have cash flow spreadsheets that can track how long or what we're going to make you know next year based on you know the sales that we have and then once you get to a certain size of business you have to have audited financial statements and so we send financial statements every single quarter to the bank so that they know what how what our performance is all right this is crazy I'm in an excavator and I'm about to demolish this house all right let's do this oh my gosh here we go all right watch out everybody oh my gosh this is amazing [Music] oh my goodness swing it over drop it down lift it up and smash oh my gosh let's go for a big another big Smash and grab three two one here we go I think it's got some pops like a video game but I don't know exactly what I'm supposed to do all right three two one oh oh yeah that's what I'm talking about that's as far as I can go all right that was so fun wow I highly recommend trying that my son's gonna love watching that yeah all right where are we heading next we're gonna go to a job site so uh come with us [Music] foreign [Music] Thomas one of our lead superintendents and we're in the middle of uh Bellevue we're uh closer to the city so this is a little bit higher price point of home where we were at before was about three million dollars so now this house is bigger than 3 million now what is this this will be about four and a half to five million dollars when we're all set up square footage uh this is what how big Mike yeah 5500 5500 square feet dang yeah so when we bought this property we bought it was one house and we divided into two so we built that house finished it and now we're uh onto this one okay and we've got our hard hats on is there anything I can help you uh get into the job site oh yeah we're definitely we're gonna get a tool belt on you a toolbox oh my gosh I'm getting the excavator and tool belt all right let's do it [Music] what was the most challenging part of starting your business and how did you overcome that the hardest part of starting the business was raising money to get up and going I mean we were since it was um middle of the recession and uh we had never built a house before I sent out 200 emails uh to all the friends and people that I knew and I got zero response hmm and I was deflated I was like these were all the people that I know and I learned a really valuable lesson about raising money people will not invest just from an email people will generally not invest even in a phone call but you get face to face and in early on I was like okay here is taking them to the job site of that the project that we bought so it was kind of like getting them visually into like into like what we were gonna do okay yeah I think that's really important so no emails just get them on the phone and say can I take you out to coffee or lunch yeah just get in front of them face to face yeah and then having a really good plan you have to have a plan in place okay so what is that plan what's the when you meet with an investor what are you talking about my responsibility was okay let's create what the future is going to look like and so I created the business plan it ended up being like a 56 page business plan of who is jmark what are we gonna do where are we going to build all that and like this is our goals and aspirations for a business and our culture and and whatnot so that was kind of like how we started the business like what are the value of the company and and what are you going to build and like how are you going to be out there in the in the world as a home builder yeah how are you going to be out there in the world with your business Mark may have struggled with using email in the past but guess what he didn't have a constant contact you may not get that big investment from a single email but you will get the first Contact done right oh my gosh I just got a client yes Constant Contact has your back they offer all the tools you need for smooth marketing they have a super easy to use email editor and pre-designed templates that will help you create a standout email to get you noticed you can send personalized messages based on customer actions track results and improve performance Constant Contact also helps you post a social media effortlessly post to Instagram Facebook Twitter and Linkedin with just one click you can even respond to messages and comments directly from your account and kiss writer's block goodbye if you provide keywords constant contacts AI content generator creates engaging messages in seconds and even suggests subject lines for better open rates try it risk-free with their free trial use promo code upflip 2023 and get 30 off your first three months click the link in the description below to sign up thanks to Constant Contact for sponsoring today's video and remember the first foot in the door will make a world of difference for your business now let's get back to see what more can lead you to success okay tell us a little bit about this home so we are about five minutes away from downtown Bellevue we're in Bellevue this is the Kelso it's uh 5600 square feet it's uh 4.599 is that 4.599 million 4.599 million oh my gosh you got venmo or cash out of that work yeah for sure definitely okay all right come on in let's go welcome home beautiful that is a four million dollar home for sure all right first question is how much did you initially invest to start this business jmr comes the last remaining assets that Jay and I had were our two luxury SUVs that we had paid cash for like three years before that's right we bought these 10 lots and we had to put a hundred thousand dollars down we sold our SUVs we made 100 Grand off those SUVs we put all of that money into uh as earnest money for those lots and then I we had to raise uh another million dollars we raised friends and family money for the million dollars and and uh but then the construction we got hard money lenders to ultimately Finance the the building and construction so good job and being that we were a brand new Builder it was a recession and we had no money we had to use hard money lenders for about three years lots of lessons learned by using hard money lenders they're not all the same I was fostering a relationship with one of the bigger Banks here in Seattle uh Columbia Bank and David Adams and he gave us our first opportunity with real financing it took us three years to prove the business to show them that we could build houses and sell them and that there was a formula ultimately when he gave us financing we had like a half a dozen other banks that were willing to give us financing it just took the One Bank yeah he needed to prove it and I'll tell you that getting off hard money is probably the best thing that anyone could ever do it's really hard remember that get off hard money as soon as you can so welcome to jmark offices we are located on Mercer Island uh which is super convenient it's 5-10 his way from Seattle and five to ten minutes away from Bellevue let's check it out all right welcome on in hey thanks we moved into this office about a year ago we bootstrapped our office over the course of the 12 first 12 years where you had 12 different kinds of desks old carpet old everything uh and then finally about last year we decided that we wanted to have an office that is all synchronized so how do you keep so many people in line and growing in a company like this we have monthly meetings and we go over what are things called rocks we follow a principle called the Rockefeller habits that kind of give us the framework for having these monthly meetings Rockefeller yeah Rockefeller habits I haven't heard of that but hey guys stick around Rockefeller habits are apparently what he uses to scale his company so stick around if you want to find out what that is so we hear that there's waves in the real estate cycle right for sure okay so last major economic downturn was when well the last major one was 2008 9 10. but in between 0 8 9 10 like 2018 was a tough time because interest rates shot up from three and a half to five okay what would be your biggest piece of advice for somebody who starts in a downturn maybe we're not in one right now but How could somebody get started if that's the case the thing that's important that I don't I don't know if it's stressed enough is how important cash is amen because people want to like Leverage and how they can grow as fast as they can leverage you hear that a lot you hear that a lot and what I've experienced is that your investors don't want to see this massive growth like two of my investors are CFOs of of large puzzle League traded companies that are based here in Seattle and when they ask me like okay tell me about about what your plan is they want me to have slow and steady growth rather than something that is like shooting for the moon and they always ask me kind of funny wise how are you not going to lose my money and the other one is more conservatives like what's your plan B what is it that you need to know that if something happens or what's your plan in place that if something happens you have the plan in place in order to execute and help save the business but every single one of those is making sure that you have enough cash how do you discuss the risks with the investors I always tell investors that we are going to be world-class operators we're going to do our best to build a house then be profitable and do it as as fast as we possibly can and make as much money as possible the challenge is the macroeconomics you know you don't know that there's going to be a pandemic you don't know when there's going to be inflation and interest rates go up and so our job in the real estate business is to ride the waves up and to ride the waves down and so I just tell them like I can control everything except for what happens in the macro economics okay all right Mark what is this beautiful home well I want to invite you guys to my house and I think that we've told you the story and the journey of of jmark and it's important for people that are viewing this to really understand [Music] like the power of manifestation the power of goal setting one of the things that's been really important for me over the course of the last 30 years is setting goals and intentions about what I want out of my life and so 2010 had not had didn't have a paycheck I wrote out the goal you know my dream home and this is what my dream home would look like I would have this view I would have this kind of kitchen I would have that the TV room and why would I wanted I want it because I want to entertain I love to have people here and it really empowers me and so I didn't know how that was going to manifest but in 2012 I found this piece of property while we were door knocking or well we were walking driving Street by Street I brought my wife here in 2012 and said this is my dream piece of property we made an offer on this property five years in a row until finally one day while we were in the middle of building another house they said we're ready to sell and so I brought my wife onto this deck and I showed her the view she's like let's do it that was the manifestation of of living here it wasn't that long ago that Jay and I didn't have any money and we didn't know where our paycheck was going to come from you know when you think about you know just any goal that you have in life and it'll ultimately being able to happen like I'm grateful every day when I come down here and go this is where I I get to live yeah yeah well thanks for sharing your story that's inspiring all right we got Blitz questions you got 10 seconds to answer each of these questions all right fair enough so here we go Abdul asks what method do you use to manage a lot of tasks I look at my tasks from a weak standpoint and so I like okay what are all the things I want to accomplish for the week and then I start plugging it into my calendar of getting those accomplished good job tibibo asks how do you deal with increasing cost of materials it all has to do with relationships with the subcontractors is like when the pricing were going up we were asking the subcontractors okay what is another alternative to that particular item okay so that they were giving us suggestions of like hey this is where you could change this window package or go to this kind of appliance package and last question from Sergi is how do you handle stress in life I try to keep a really balanced approach to uh to life where my life is not all about business okay good job you did it thanks all right what's the biggest thing that you have learned from losing it all having my own definition of success I think that we grew that business to have a thousand lots and that thousand Lots was sheer like pure ego like a thousand there was no sound business plan from it but I wanted to prove that I could be that person or be somebody and in reality I didn't need to be that person it was my ego that was driving that that goal from then on it was okay have a sound business plan how can somebody get away from chasing that ego I think it starts with perspective and the things that are really important in life and I think that for me I want to be the best husband the best father the best leader like those are the things that are I think really important and I think deep down when you lose your money and you lose your friend and you lose that kind of stuff it gives you perspective and too many people realize it way too late in their life all right so tell us a little bit about marketing so we're a luxury brand and our marketing plan is this all about the experience for our clients and so we spent a lot of money to have amazing model home so that people can come here and really experience what it's like to live in a jmark home and the experience when they walk into the door we have their houses open uh seven days a week and we have someone that's in that's a sales rep that all they do is sell jmark homes and so when the client comes in whether they're relocating from California or Texas they're greeted with somebody they're able to talk about the brand talk about the house and really just give them the feel of like what it's like to work with jmark and it's just like little things like you know we have our own J Mark chocolate where you know we get about 500 mag one of those yeah for sure we get about 500 pounds of those a year and and it's just like leaving them with something sweet so that they remember jmark but really it's just about out a feeling that they would have from being in one of our homes and once they have that feeling you have them hooked the house sells itself it's then like okay tell me about the Builder tell me about the experience that you're going to have after you move in every experience that a client has you just want it to exude your brand whether it's uh your website you know it's like okay how does that look and feel that is exemplary your brand social media you know what are the things that you're putting out there so that people can really get a sense of who you are and so it's kind of like we have an overall essence of who we are and so we just cater our marketing to them okay hey if you want to hear some more insights on another important part of home building which is Land Development and learn how you can take 300 and scale it up to seventy thousand dollars like Seth Williams did go listen to episode 15 of the upload podcast and you won't regret it is it important to pick a niche and what is your Niche well our niches is one we are luxury homebuilders in an infill market and so we don't deviate much from us being a luxury brand we're not going to then go build a lore and project yeah just because you can doesn't mean you should but when you have a niche and you know it backwards and forwards like we know Street by Street neighborhood by neighborhood we know who the buyers are we know who the agents are we know you know we know what things are selling for we know we know all of the details associated with our particular Niche but someone coming into our Niche would be like a fish out of water we know them backwards and forwards we know what we can pay for land we know what we can sell it for we know what we can the construction costs we know all the things that belong in the house when you try to expand what it is that you do you don't have that inherent knowledge and so you pay something called the dumb tax it's like the dumb tax of learning the business until you actually become profitable okay aim at everything hit nothing that's smart I like that how long did it take for you to become profitable in the business we were profitable the first year or two that was in the business Jay and I didn't take a paycheck for like two or three years we even reinvested all of our money back into the business and hiring people to help us grow that probably accelerated our growth just by sheer like compromising so that's crazy how do you and Jay even work together like that you know keep in mind that as of today this will be 33 years of us being business partners and he has been the best business partner I could possibly imagine and he will grind he will be relentless in the pursuit of any goals that we set and he lets me dream a big dream he lets me think about the vision and the culture and the strategy he just gets done that's his uh job title his chief do a lot that's great what's your average revenue look like in a month well home building it's not in any specific month because it's it's it kind of is staggered yeah um it is about 85 million dollars and that combines the for sale side of the business and the custom home side of the business we have two parts of our business one that we build for sale and one families come to us and they wanted us to build homes on their property which one of those two is most profitable Ebbs and flows but they're about the same uh Custom Custom takes more people but they have about the same kind of profit margin at the end yeah okay so two main pillars of business all right two main pillars yeah what profit margins do you normally see from that Revenue it depends on the year oh come on it's it's the honest to God truth is that you know in the recessionary times you're hoping to get a five percent profit in a normal year just a regular year it's about 10 when it is booming it could be 17 and when it is like through the roof it could be 27 percent and I think that in a 10-year timeline you touch all of those profit margins yeah seriously so what's the best way to grow Revenue in this business is it just a matter of finding investors and finding Properties or how do you grow it's kind of all intertwined you need properties uh you do need investors um but I think the the primary uh is growing a business that requires people creating a great culture so that people want to work for us empowering them to do great work yeah and then taking really good care of them so I think that's kind of like yes you need to have a strategy for acquiring land and you need to have a strategy for having investors want to participate but really the key is people okay how did you find investors in the beginning you need to meet investors before you need them and it's fostering relationships whether they're friends family other entrepreneurs and you you build trust with them and so when it is comes time that you have an idea you're not just going there and needing them you're going there and saying hey I have this idea is this something that you would be interested in and so too often like people need to find investors at the last minute and it's like that's the worst time because no investors wants to feel that stress yeah they want to have time to look it over and make a decision what are the main skills that are needed in this business and why yeah you know it It ultimately is about hiring the right people and not having turnover because you know people don't realize that turnover is one of the biggest expenses that you could have and if you have a team that is happy they come to each house over and over again they know our systems they know our processes they know how we work it makes things so much easier when you have to train a new subcontractor based on what you do like it makes it more difficult the same thing goes for employees is when you have an employee that is with you for five years for 10 years they become more efficient and they do and end up doing more work and so the skill is really just all about the people and how you can become a better leader in in the process of growing your business yeah when did you gain those skills or how did you learn them well I think failure has an incredible opportunity for Learning and I think I I grew the last business I was leading more from my ego versus letting other people have the control yeah and I think that was probably the greatest one of one of the biggest lessons that I learned is how do I let go of control and letting and empowering other people to to do what they do best yep yeah delegation delegation and empowerment yeah so you have a lot of cubicles a lot of offices going on here so how many employees are we talking we have about 45 employees about 30 are in the office and about 15 are out in the field 30 and 15. okay cool can you talk us through your hiring process and how do you find great employees well first of all we hire uh generally almost everyone here has been recommended by somebody else in the organization we create a culture where people want to come work here and and when they're here they want to tell their friends to come and so we have people that have left companies that have been there for 20 years and then they come here and they hang their hat and this is where they want to be for the rest of their their work life and so it's a process but that's kind of how we go about it okay so before you mention that you don't find any of your best deals on the market you find them off the market what does that mean over the course of our 30 years of doing real estate we've learned the valuable lesson of driving Street by Street neighborhood by neighborhood and writing down the houses that we think are the best opportunities really wow because you can't like here's an example this house right here that we're tearing down was a rental house and it was not well taken care of this house right here looks like someone lives there brand new roof and it's and it's really nice yeah it's it's relatively nice when you drive Street by Street neighborhood by neighborhood you know every single house and you know like okay that one's a rental that one's dilapidated that one's not well taken care of and so what we've done is we've gone City by City neighborhood by neighborhood and we've spent probably thousands and thousands of hours really indexing properties and we know which house we want to buy and we Foster relationships with all of those landowners to be successful it's the hustle factor it's what 99 of the people won't ever do we want to control price but we also want to control terms see when you buy on Market they're bidding worse and so you don't want to be a part of that when you're when this is your business you want to be the one that controls it yeah and I'm not to say that we don't have other builders that we compete against that are looking for these properties but we're competing against maybe one other Builder not could be up to 10 people looking for a teardown or fixer property so you've been talking about company culture so tell us about what makes your company great one it's the first week when people come and work for jmark we're not having them go out in the field we're not having them do work we're actually introducing them to everyone on our staff and so they get to know each and every person what they do you and then they they have a sense of belonging they start to feel like part of it they start to feel like family and it's like that first week is so important to how people think and feel about the company that they work at so number two is we have everyone read the book exceptional service exceptional profit after that what happens is we do what's called a naming ceremony and it's a rite of passage and what ends up happening is we we list all the adjectives for that particular person hard-working charismatic energizing fun and you could go your entire career without ever hearing adjectives of like what people think of you in time in and so you do that within 90 to 120 days of being at jmark and then after that we go through a naming ceremony and people have nominations you can get like 40 50 different nominations and at the end we kind of vote for which one is the right nomination it becomes really cool and there these are like the pseudo names of for our uh for our team so the third thing that I we think that is is one of the valuable parts of jmark is it's an exit party so when we have team members that decide that they want to leave and they want to pursue other interests or go to work for another company we celebrate them and so we always will have a party for them and and we tell them how much they meant to us at jmark you know what's crazy is that 10 of our Workforce over ten percent have left and then come back really and that that kind of like reaffirms is like when people leave yeah the grass isn't always greener or the extra five you know extra dollar doesn't necessarily isn't necessarily worth it to leave because you have this and the company and the culture that's a really good sign cool can you talk us through the design process for a new home uh well the design process really has to do with the lot that we buy we start with okay what is what can you put on this piece of property and uh in the future what would it sell for and so the formula that we usually use is about a third of the property is land a third of the property is about construction costs and a third of the property is financing Marketing sales costs and ultimately you know the profit that you make yeah and so and then when you design the specific house it's kind of like the features and benefits that a buyer would want you know like the outdoor patio a massive you know kitchen like this that's open to the great room like these are all things that you know people want they want the open floor plan they want the ability to have the beautiful to be able to have indoor outdoor living um and you know outdoor barbecue fireplace it makes it where it's you know families want to be what information do you need to get from customers when they contact you and before you begin the design process yeah so for the custom home part of our business which is about 50 percent families come to us and they own their land and they come to us and say okay what can we build here and what we try to do is say okay here is a portfolio of 100 houses of the hundred houses these are about the five to eight that fit on your lot and it's based on square footage it's based on their price point and so we kind of guide them down a path of uh designing a house that is already in our portfolio Okay how many people choose that portfolio design there's probably about two or three because we have our in-house architectural team that would kind of guide them down that path of like which houses would fit and then they ultimately pick what houses that they like which exterior design and or I like this exterior design but this floor plan and so then you intermix you kind of can intermix the two nice so you mentioned the Rockefeller habits earlier um can you go more into detail about what that is and how it's helped you grow your company sure the Rockefeller habits is a structure that guides your business to Future growth and then Works backwards to the present day okay and so what it is is it's a one-page business plan that talks about your strengths weaknesses opportunities and threats it then kind of shows you okay what are you going to do for the year you know what are you going to do in three years as far as your goals as the company like where do you want to go in the future it brings it to okay what are you going to do for the year what are the goals here's our 2023 goals that we tell everyone and this is what we're looking to accomplish we want to do this many any for sale houses we want to do this many Custom Homes and this is our goal as a culture our cultural goal is to come together hold each other accountable as a work as a team and uh and and I think that kind of exudes the entire essence of our company is that we're all here working together to accomplish the goals and then it breaks down into what other things called rocks rocks are what are the things that you're going to do on the business they're working on the business versus in the business you guys have heard that before so working on the business are just things that are going to help improve it to take it to the next level yeah every single month our company talks about our rocks where are we going to go how are we going to get there and every Department reports on their rocks two times a quarter okay and every quarter we talk about the progress we talk about our successes and then the next month we talk about what does the future quarter look going to look like okay in a team meeting or they said yeah no in a team meeting so every one is like constantly sharing what it is that they're doing and it's kind of like a bragging session of like okay here's what we accomplished for the particular quarter and that's where you create a a culture of everyone is accountable to everyone else because you hear like hey I want to accomplish X in my department and then they run with it for the quarter yeah okay all right so you've won a few really important Awards such as nhq Golden Nugget best of America is that right yeah those are some of the awards that we've won and National Housing quality award is is one where it took us 10 years to finally get to a place where we could apply the application took us about six months to fill out and uh they brought a team of people uh to come and interview our employees interview our clients and interview are invendors and at the end we were recognized as being one of the best operators in the country uh based on that award congratulations yeah thank you it was really a great accomplishment for the team the second award best American living and the gold nugget those are both for design and we've won national awards for the design of the homes that we've built and that's always amazing to be recognized to be some of the best of the best but the one that we're most proud of is the house award and houses for customer service we've been one top one percent of home builders across the country for providing uh best customer service seven years in a row and so that's the one that I think the team really rallies behind you know we really cater towards providing amazing customer service so how can businesses get these kind of awards and what's their benefit Beyond just bragging rights yeah you have a philosophy as a company you know for us we're aspiring to be world class it's from a design standpoint it's from an operational standpoint it's from a service standpoint and so when the entire company knows that that's who we are and that's that embodies it's like we're always striving to be the best of the best it's really about doing good work and there's an application process with every single one of you also run a webinar series is that right yeah we have a webinar series that talks about how to build a custom home oh wow okay why did you start doing that uh we started it uh kind of during the pandemic before the pandemic we would have once a month open houses where people would come to an open house and we would talk to them about you know how to build a custom home and the pitfalls of building a custom home and then during the pandemic we couldn't have the open houses anymore and what we ended up doing was we started doing it virtually and where we would get 20 to 30 people that came to our open house once a month we were now getting 20 to 30 people that would be on the virtual every single week wow and so then it became where it's ridiculous yeah we had you know we had probably we have six different classes or six different things eight different things that we talked to them about we like custom home 101 we talk about interior design we talk about feasibility we'd have Architects on there we talk about financing and so it's like you Encompass everything associated with custom homes and people show up every single Wednesday and learn learn about how to build a home so post pandemic is that still working people are still joining a lot yeah it's it has been one of the best marketing things that we've done and we just do it consistently wow okay and where can people find that webinar if they want to go on our website yeah jmarkhomes.com
and they're gonna they're gonna be able to find it soon it's gonna be on YouTube but right now it's so cool right now you can find and and learn all about it on our website so you offer this free what's the benefit for you well what ultimately happens is when you teach people and they ultimately trust you more and you they become like a the trusted advisor in this particular industry and um you know ultimately we grow our business based on education and they respect and they look forward to those series and and ultimately um they want to build a custom because they know us and they like us yeah and trust us and that's a wrap I hope you enjoyed this episode before you go make sure to check out our other interview with thatchwin who used his experience as a real estate agent to grow an eight hundred thousand dollar per month Real Estate Investment Group like this guy did I hope to see you guys in the next episode that is my boy go see it [Music]
2023-05-26 00:04
