Jordan Isham - Building A $3M/yr Revenue Company While Still In The Army
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE ON:
Many people in the real estate industry have reasons why they can't hit their goals. Meet Jordan Isham, founder of My Tennessee Home Solution, who is on track to do $3 Million in revenue with his real estate company, has led an acquisition of a $3 Million hotel, all while still serving as an Infantry Officer in the Army. This former West Point grad has built up a team of 8 people doing wholesaling, flipping, and consistently closes on 8 properties per month. He's just getting ready to finish up his service in the Army and is hopping over to his team that has been running on all cylinders for quite some time. Here how Jordan has been able to turn his side hustle into a business while serving his country at the same time.
In this episode, hosted by Mike Swenson, we discussed:
- Start with the end in mind and then plan backwards from there
- Real estate depends on dedication, effort and determination.
- Ways on how to grow and start business
- Decide on what you want to do
- Plan to make it happen
- Commit to it
- Massive action overcomes the fear or the limiting beliefs.
- It all comes down to just taking massive action and learning from experience.
- Do a little bit better everytime, just 1% everyday, let the rest take care of itself.
- There’s always a creative way to find money.
- Anyone without money can find value in acquisitions.
- We can capture the 100% of the value of a flip by renovating it.
- Focus on the real estate investment like commercial real estate side because there’s continuous cash flow.
- Focus on the priority, which is acquiring the properties.
- The rehab varies greatly based on what kind of investor you are and how you're going to do it.
- You can design your life, and live life terms in real estate. It creates time and space to have freedom.
Timestamps
0:00 – Intro to Jordan’s Career
1:39 – Background
3:39 – How He Started Real Estate
6:00 – From Learning to Execution Standpoint
11:19 – Passive Investments
11:52 – How the Team Started
13:42 – Inbound Marketing
16:26 – Multiple Exit Streams
20:10 – End Buyer
24:57 – Jordan’s Mindset
28: 44 – Commercial Real Estate
34:52 – How to find Jordan
Follow Jordan:
https://www.mytennesseehomesolution.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordan-isham-324ba610b/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/mths/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdCgCSZVN4GKS6zLT3pLGsA
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Full transcript here:
Mike Swenson
Oh welcome everybody to another episode of The REL Freedom Podcast where we talk about building wealth, and gaining time and financial freedom through opportunities in real estate. For so many in the real estate industry, they have excuses of why they can't do things. And so today we're going to talk about how you can be doing lots of other things outside of real estate and still build a successful real estate business.
Mike Swenson
And so, our guest today is Jordan Isham. And Jordan is the co-founder of my Tennessee home solution. And in addition to that, he was a graduate of West Point, and you still are in the army. And you're looking at kind of wrapping that up here. And so you've been able to build this business while you've still been in the armed forces, which is amazing. And so in addition to that, you have a real estate investment business. And so we'll talk about that you've purchased a hotel, which we'll talk about mindset. So just a lot of great information to be able to share, and how you built all of this while working in the military, and building it up. So now when you're ready to be done, you have a nice sustainable business. And so all those are things we're going to talk about today. So welcome. We're so excited to have you on the show.
Jordan Isham
Awesome, thank you so much for having me on. Like I'm excited to chat for a while,
Mike Swenson
let's just go ahead and get started and just kind of talk a little bit about your background, and how you got into the military, how that worked. And then how that funneled into you starting and building your real estate business at the same time.
Jordan Isham
No, definitely, I think I was always a little strategic and kind of what I was doing in life even at a younger age and kind of hustling for, for opportunities, whether when I was like 10 years old, I had a lemonade stand in the summers was making a few bucks. And then when I was later in the army and early on, like building and selling kitchen tables with you know, with with old wood that I could find it find around or from Lowe's and and make it that way. And then I stumbled upon real estate obviously. But yeah, I originally enlisted when I was 17 because I came from a small small farm town in Vermont and really just needed to find a way to pay for college. So I enlisted actually to like to help my chances of getting into West Point, because my grades weren't as good as I as I thought they needed to be.
Jordan Isham
So that kind of helped me a leg up on my application didn't get in the first time I was like, I'm still gonna go went to University of Hawaii for a year reapplied. And then it got old Bernie Sanders nomination, who was the senator of Vermont, at the time, and still is obviously and and so it was I was super pumped to go because coming from a small town, it was just like, West Point, it was such a community of high performers that just raised my game to a level that that wasn't even possible. And like, it was just a huge confidence booster to to, to join a group of people who were just like kind of just the best of the best and to be able to hang with them was like, okay, I can do this.
Jordan Isham
Now the sky's the limit. And I've never had a chance to really challenge myself and in a group like that before, so it was really cool. And then yeah, branches an infantry officer went to Ranger School, you know, platoon leader did the whole night in the army and now and at the close of my five years since graduating from West Point 11 years since enlisting when I was 17. And about to transition out of the army and take take this business full time.
Mike Swenson
What was it what was kind of the, the seed that was planted in terms of starting real estate? Why did you decide to get into it? And kind of how did that that build
Jordan Isham
For me again, it was always about starting with the end in mind and then backwards planning from there and and I've always had just, I think big, big goals or big vision for my life and especially after West Point when I was able to like I guess change my mindset and realize that I could construct my my life and live life on my terms. It didn't have to be what somebody else wanted or what somebody else thought was the perfect life and so I kind of like erase the drawing board and restarted with where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do and and with that, it was like okay, my income from the army is not enough to get there. And I know I'm stuck here for five years so I can't work another job you're not allowed to in the army camp two w twos and you've made a commitment you could deploy at any moment you go to a training mission at any any moment.
Jordan Isham
So it was like stocks, cryptocurrency or real estate or basically the options and talking to a lot of mentors and reading all the books I had the classic origin story of like, Rich Dad Poor Dad and and think Rich grow rich. You know, I was like a real estate's got to be the way to go here because you just find that gap between the owners perceived value and your your vision for the future value and close that gap through buying, renovating and you know, holding or selling a property. And it's like, just super repeatable and scalable.
Jordan Isham
I saw my mentors doing I saw that everyone was was significant wealth, they all have the, you know, the common theme of real estate, real estate assets owned in some capacity. And so, yeah, I started, I started the typical kind of like bigger pockets, path of like, buying a house with a VA loan house hacking, you know, cash flowing, buying another house rental property, and then doing a flip, doing a wholesale, and then just scaling from there to where it is now where we have, you know, a full business and full team of people. And we were able to turn, you know, eight properties a month. So yeah, real estate to me was always like, the way I could do it while I had a W2 job. That was was basically surefire, and it just completely dependent on my like, like, dedication, effort and determination.
Mike Swenson
How did you manage your time then, because obviously, you're you're working during the day, you've got a lot of stuff on your plate. And I want to get at this because there's a lot of excuses that a lot of people have, right, I've had conversations with people. And these are people in real estate of, you know, I gotta find the right lender, I've got to find the right contractors, and I'm sitting on a real estate license looking at properties all day long, and I can't get over the hump. And then there's somebody like you where it's like, I have a limited amount of time, I don't know anything about real estate, at least at the beginning. And so walk through your process of how you kind of, from a learning standpoint, and then an execution standpoint, how that knowledge base built and grew for you, and how you were able to assemble your team all on off hours, right? It's, it's not your day job. And so you're able to build this and so kind of walk through that process.
Jordan Isham
There's a, like three words that I think I try to use to explain, you know how to do it, it's, it's decide what you want, you know, plan, plan, how you're going to do it and then commit. And so the really the way to get started, and the way to grow, the way to make it happen is to decide what you want, commit to it, right and then plan. So it's just, it's just like you were saying, people just will always you always find an excuse for why you're not perfectly ready, why it's not 100% solution. And the reality is you just got to commit when it's at like a 60% solution instead of 100%. Because you're never going to be at 100%. So it all comes down to just taking massive action, and learning from from experience.
Jordan Isham
And, and really again, like finding finding the models that work the mentors out there, provide value learn for free, in exchange for working for them and, and read the books and the secrets to be like a millionaire with a six pack are already out there. They're there on the internet, they're in the books, they've happened, a million happened to a million people. So it's just about following the steps. The biggest thing that usually I think holds people back and including myself early, it's just the mindset piece to take massive, massive action overcome the like the fear or the limiting beliefs. And so more so than anything, you know, to grow and learn. For me, it was just about taking action.
Jordan Isham
The first property I bought, like significantly invested in was an Airbnb that my buddy and I split 5050 and massive loss, we we like put a lot of work into it a lot of money. And it didn't go nearly as as well as we planned. But the biggest thing that happened is our identity shifted to become from, you know, just a person, the army to a real estate investor. When our density shifted, then we started to attract like minded people and join the Facebook groups and in the masterminds and read the books, and that just created exponential momentum. So it's really just about I think starting somewhere taking massive action and, and learning from it to do a little bit better every time just 1% Better kind of every every day every week and then letting the rest take care of itself.
Mike Swenson
Now you had mentioned about unibody started off and went in so is that money that you had previously saved up from being in the Army? Or did you get that as a loan from friends and family? Or kind of how because I think a lot of people want to know how do I go from nothing to at least something. And so we'd love to just kind of hear how that came together? How that 5050 You know what, what type of property was it for your What was it about that property that made you go from being on the sidelines to be in an action?
Jordan Isham
Yeah, for me, capital was pretty low. So I brought the work I brought the hustle and my buddy brought the money. So that's always a good way to do it is is to learn a process or at least have the confidence to do it. And then And then, you know, find a buddy who can bring the money and I mean I I had some capital I, but it wasn't enough to do it myself. So that's why I knew I couldn't, I couldn't tackle it alone. i Before that I just bought a house with a VA loan and house acted and saved up a little bit from the army, but really didn't need anything to get started.
Jordan Isham
Because again, I had the idea and found the property and found found a partner who would bring the money and let me do the rest. So that was the best way to do. And that's what I recommend for people who are low on capital, there's always creative ways to find that money, really, anyone without money can find can find value in acquisitions and finding a great deal because the money will find great deals. So if anyone can learn to find incredible deals, the rest of the rest will happen.
Mike Swenson
Yeah, I mean, there's really kind of three key components. It's money, it's time, and it's kind of knowledge and experience. And so you don't have to have all three. And for most people, it's I probably don't have the money. So it's, can you do the time? And can you put together the knowledge and experience or kind of learn as you grow? And that's valuable. And I think a lot of people sit in this spot of like, I don't have money, I can't do real estate, well, then focus on the time. And then in the knowledge piece, what can you contribute to somebody because there's a lot of people out there that, you know, we talk about passive investments, there's a lot of people out there that are busy professionals, or they have money, they don't want to take the time to learn, but at the same time, they want an investment that's going to work for them.
Mike Swenson
And I think that's the value of what you can provide is the hustle that that stuff really matters. So if you want to get to where you want to go, and this kind of comes back to mindset, put in the time, be willing to put in the time, and then utilize somebody else's money to get where you want to go. And then eventually the money will start to follow after that.
Jordan Isham
Yeah, that's it. I love that. That's a good explanation of it.
Mike Swenson
So as you started with your first property, so now now you have a business where you said, you know, doing eight deals per month, you've got wholesales and fix and flips. So how did that team start to form along the way,
Jordan Isham
it was mainly natural, natural growth. And this is something I always recommend to people looking to start businesses just to not necessarily debt finance, but reinvest your profits into growth. And, and so as for me, it started DIY, like I was doing the cold calling and marketing and advertising, just guerrilla tactics because I didn't have a budget to work with, I was just scraping and crawling for a deal. And then, you know, basically, me and a buddy found it found a great deal through like cold calling and and door knocking and we got it under contract and flipped it and had like a six figure profit.
Jordan Isham
And so then we reinvested you know all that money into like, into a CRM into into an increase marketing budget, so we could create more leads and then into a mastermind so we can learn how to convert the leads. And so we like reinvested that money into all the things we thought were were necessary for us to keep growing and build towards stabilization as a as a repeatable process. And then from there, you know, we were able to close a couple more flips the next few months. And then now we have more money to reinvest, now we're able to get the right CRM, we need to increase our marketing budget and then hire a sales, a sales agent, right? And so it's just this natural growth that we were able to generate from starting DIY guerrilla tactics, low budget to then just take anything we can make and reinvest it reinvest it. And so we're at a point where it's stabilized and consistently cash flows with the process we have in place.
Mike Swenson
What's the messaging out there that you are targeting for people? So you said, you know, cold calling people you said your door knocking? What were you looking for here just looking for distressed sellers? People looking for a cash offer on their home? Kind of what was the, you know, that initial pitch to people?
Jordan Isham
Yeah, I mean, for us, it's all about, you know, finding motivated sellers or who want to sell off market for cash. And there's always a plethora of reasons that someone wants to do so at first I thought, like, we're like, it feels like we're taking advantage of people sometimes when they're selling off market. But now I realize when when we go in and tell them like hey, you can make more if you watch this on the market with a realtor. There's just so many people in unique situations that that doesn't fit what they want to do, whether it's an inherited property and there's like complications with title and they don't they don't want people walking through and they just want to like they just want to cash out in the next couple of weeks and go separate ways or if it's like a pre foreclosure and they need to close within two weeks which is a lot of the properties we buy actually. And you know, they're behind on bills and the banks about to possess it well, we can get it closed out within two weeks and and have them on their way.
Jordan Isham
So it's a plethora of reasons but yeah, through the process we we identify, identify who wants to sell off market and If we only use actually inbound marketing, because we're all virtual, and like have w two jobs, we need to be really efficient with our time. And so we need really high quality leads. So we don't do any outbound marketing. We don't do any cold calling or cold texting or door knock door knocking now, we do all basically Facebook ads, Google Pay Per Click SEO TV ads, so all the leads already, like they come to us to say, Hey, I see your service, I want this service, I see your reviews and your brand and I want to sell to you. And you know, now what are the next steps and then we were sent out acquisitions agents work the process from there, but that way we you know, we only get, we only get like 60 leads a month. And from that, you know, 60 to 80, probably 80. And from that, we're able to convert 10 to 20%, because they're such high quality leads. And so, you know, the inbound marketing method? Well, it's expensive, we spend 25,000 a month on on marketing, you know, we were able to generate 6080 leads and close 60 properties a month from that. So it's really efficient, but it's also the system we need being being virtual.
Mike Swenson
So some of these properties, you're physically buying yourself to do the flips, some of them are just kind of wholesaling. How are you making that decision for those folks that are out there that are new to wholesaling, or don't necessarily understand what that's like, or people that want to do flips? How are you kind of deciding what what's my strategy here and I and that the answer that I've always used is sometimes it the house speaks to you, right, like, depending on what needs to be done, what the price point is, what you can sell it for the house kind of tells you what maybe the best strategy is, but but walk through your decision making process and what you're going to do with that when that lead comes in, it's like, Hey, this is legit, I think we've got something here, what's what do we want to do with this property?
Jordan Isham
Now? That's a great question. It really it's changing too, as the market is shifting. So I mean, it was so easy last year, and I know you know this that like we could we could wholesale a deal off market and get a 90% offer on it's like, on it's like all in value. It's like if we were flipping we'd only make a few more 1000. Why Why even go through all that, you know, all that just to make a few more bucks. And now right where the offers are a little more or a little lower, investors are a little more wary just because interest rates are higher, and they're like what's the market doing? Whether it's like speculative or not and investors Park, it behooves us to flip flip it if you know the margins, or the like the real value is higher for our profit. So I mean, the three numbers that really matter when evaluating a single family deal is like purchase price rehab, an ARV after repair value.
Jordan Isham
And so obviously ARV and rehab are two subjective numbers, because like, what you do to it depends on what the ARV is, and the ARV is also subjective based on how you evaluate the comps. And so those are the numbers that vary. But generally we try to get a property under contract that somewhere between 60 to 70% of all in to Aragvi value. So the purchase price plus the rehab needs to be 70% of the ARV, because then we'll get we'll be able to find buyers who will buy it as high as 80% of the ARV that, again, purchase price plus rehab 80% of that ARV, and then that's how we make our margins as a wholesaler. Whereas, you know, when you look at it through the lens of a flip as well, we can capture 100% of that value by renovating it and, and, you know, flipping it and then selling it.
Jordan Isham
And so it's just, it's a matter of really like what the numbers are, and how easily we can wholesale it, which is like, you know, very quick and easy and there's no risk associated versus flip, it takes more time. There's more variables, there's more overhead, and then, you know, usually make more so for us, we we evaluate it based on how many flips we're currently doing. And then like how juicy the margins are. So I mean, it's really case by case, like you said, and the House does speak to like all of this, we got to flip this one, this one's a cookie cutter one, we generally try to be pretty like risk adverse, because we'd like to turn and burn properties and keep going. Again, this is for us a cash flowing business more so than is like a real estate investment business. We we we focus on real estate investment with like the commercial real estate side. But this is more about continuous cash flow.
Jordan Isham
So if our projections for a given month are lower, we're like, hey, let's wholesale this, we want to, we want to you know, keep our margins up for this month. And it just depends on the cash flow of the business. And we try to keep it pretty consistent, but it's nice to always have that opportunity as an exit strategy to do either. I mean, we've done like four flips at a time before just because they all look good and we had the appetite and time that month and the patience to do it because we had already had plenty of wholesales come through. So yeah, it's nice to be able to have multiple exit streams. I'd use as an option. And really just focus on the priority, which is acquiring the properties. Again, if you can do that the exit strategy, it's all that's all the fun stuff.
Mike Swenson
Talk me through kind of the the end buyer. So if if you decide this is a property that we want to wholesale, I think that's a that's a hard thing for people new into wholesaling is like, well, how in the heck am I going to find somebody to buy this? And how I'm going to do it within two weeks, you know, if it's if it's a time sensitive thing. So So walk through kind of building up that cash buyers list and how that work to where you feel confident, telling a seller? Yes, here's the price, I can get this thing closed in under 14 days for you. And then now it's K. Game on, let's go, let's get this thing sold.
Jordan Isham
Yeah, yeah, we're in the Nashville market. And so there's a lot of real estate investors, which, which probably helps. But even if it were even mainly in the secondary markets around Nashville, which, which I think is a great place for anyone to focus as the secondary markets around any Metro as it grows out, right, you capture that gentrification, but like, like, the easiest way to do it is just join all the local real estate investing Facebook pages and see who's posting, you know, who's posting the wholesale deals, and then who's commenting to say, their investor, but then, but then also the search tax records, you can see who's buying houses for cash.
Jordan Isham
And really, once you start joining the communities and networking around the area, like going to the local meetups and talking to people, you realize that there's probably like, in any given secondary or tertiary market, there's probably 20 People 20 investors separately that are buying about 90% of the wholesale deals. And so it's really about We call those like the whales. So it's really about finding like the 20 to 30 whales in the market. And because now we're at the point, it's all relationships, it's all we build relationships, we build trust, we don't put bad deals out there, so that we don't ruin our reputation, we want people to, like, see an email from us or a deal from us and be excited because they know it's going to it's going to mean something, it's going to be an opportunity, not just trying to scrap a few dollars, you know, at the expense of our reputation, because that that is really what matters long term.
Jordan Isham
So we're at the point now where we can text you know, those one of those 2020 whales in the market and and have it assigned, you know, at the price we need. So it's it's nice, it took two years to get to that point two years of networking and adding people from the Facebook pages and emailing people pushing out good deals and sitting down for coffee and looking at the tax records, see who's buying cash and go into the UPS. And you know, so it takes time. And it takes a lot of networking relationships, but then you're at the point again, where you can text a few people and, and have it closed out within within a few hours.
Mike Swenson
You know, maybe we can touch on this next a little bit more kind of talking about the mindset piece. Because as an agent, where it kind of we're in my agent hat, and working with investors, like I'm looking at wholesalers, I'm looking for people out there who have good deals. And in a lot of times, it's kind of like, you got to try to find the red flag because with a lot of wholesalers, it feels like they're trying to pull something over on somebody. And so going back to beginning with the end in mind, you have to realize that people want to invest with you long term. And if you're just trying to screw people over, then you can't it's not going to work. And so a lot of times you'll see in these groups, people will post like, hey, you know property for 200,000.
Mike Swenson
And you know, repair value is 50,000. ARV is $600,000. And then you're like, where does that come from? And everybody in the group is like interested interested interested, email me, email me. And then you find out like no, the it's either the you know, the price doesn't work, the renovations is actually going to be 200,000, not 50,000, and the ARV is not 600,000. It's 400,000. And so obviously, those are extreme examples. But that tends to be how it isn't. So as a wholesaler, like yeah, you want to be reputable. You want to put out good information. And so it's not like, Hey, I screwed somebody over on this property to get my check, because they're gonna come back to you later, possibly as a future buyer. And so I think kind of, like I said, coming back to mindset that's really important.
Jordan Isham
Yeah, no, I love that. It's so true. Like, it is never good short term to make a few extra dollars at the expense of the reputation long term. And so And another thing we do on that note specifically is we don't ever we don't ever put the rehab in our like deals because that's like the beauties of the eyes of the beholder. We'll add that in for the ARV. Again, subjective number to some extent, we give a pretty wide range just because we don't want to be like held responsible for for like letting someone down we know the purchase price we know the ARV generally to be in a certain range. The rehab, you know, varies greatly based on what you know what kind of investor you are and how you're going to do it.
Mike Swenson
So talk about mindset then where you want to go Oh, and we had a little bit of a conversation offline talking about, you know, building wealth doing bigger deals and commercial deals. So kind of share what you're looking to do in the future and why you're trying to do that.
Jordan Isham
Yeah, yeah. And just on that note of mindset, it's just like, investing in yourself, like the human capital piece to me is like, I continue to prioritize that. And I'm glad I do is just like, it's, I guess, it's all about, like, believing in like, what you can do. And not to say that someone's bigger goals are any worse or better than someone's smaller goals, whatever smaller means. It's just kind of what what fits for you. What's cool about mindset is you really get to, like, design your life, and live life terms. And that's what real estate is, for us. It's like, creating time and space to have the freedom right to live life on our terms, real estate, and, you know, well, is a vehicle to, like, enjoy your time and, and have high impact in your, in the world, really, so.
Jordan Isham
And that's kind of what it's all about. And, you know, through like, individual counseling with the counselor understand, like my childhood relationship with my parents, how that shaped who I am today, and, and a performance coach to help me like keep me on track and accountable and growing. And then through like journaling and gratitude. It's like all these things to cultivate, like, what where I am, what I'm doing and why and where I'm going right, and to make sure that I'm aligned, because if you ask most people, Hey, what's your purpose in life? They'll be like, Well, I've no idea. I have no idea. I'm thought about that. And that's kind of scary, right? It's like, what are you you're working so hard every day and you don't even know what you're doing it for.
Jordan Isham
So those kinds of things, I think, are important to prioritize and understand the purpose and the vision and where you're going. Is been huge. So I mean, for us, it's about like, the sky's the one that we have we have a business process that works it's it's the Good to Great Jim Collins calls it the flywheel. And it's really about like taking our flywheel and we can now apply this to anything we do. It's you know, it's about building building hiring a players and building a great culture number one and then generating leads, converting the leads through sales, exiting on the on the on the contract or the client, and then celebrating as a team and readjusting and refining to repeat. So you can take that in of itself and apply it anywhere.
Jordan Isham
So we we plan to continue to grow our current single family business to franchise it in other country and then and then to grow in commercial real estate as well by continuing to acquire more doors for the single family business is like the cashflow that that kind of pays our salaries or pays the bills and commercial real estate's more of like long term generational legacy wealth building. That that is an awesome nest egg and tax benefits and passive income, you know, that allows us to have more freedom of time as we go through life and do less of the day to day stuff. But you know, we can take we can take this business processes flywheel and eventually to turn into private equity, which is something that excites me, it's just being able to like buy smaller businesses and take them to 10x next level, and then exit via either just hold it and hire out CEO team or, or sell it.
Jordan Isham
And so it's kind of cool to think about like, hey, you know, just by baby steps, starting with like house, hacking a VA loan, turning something into a business and finding a model that works, you can now scale it to an unlimited degree. And now it's just a matter of how hard you want to work in life versus how much you want to kind of kind of hang out and just enjoy it. So now the balance is kind of up in my hands to figure out and same with our our team. And that's a cool spot to be in is choosing you know what you want to do and where you want to go?
Mike Swenson
Yeah, yeah, that's, that's awesome. And share with us just a little bit about the big deal that you guys did the hotel.
Jordan Isham
Yeah, well, I remember a mentor telling me this isn't like a mastermind, you know, the best time to I was like, I was like, Man, I want to get into commercial real estate I see everyone's doing I see that bang for buck is so much better. Like, we don't have like too much money. Like when would you recommend I'm like ready to do it. And he was like you buy he was like you were ready yesterday. And the best time to start was yesterday. So you might want to start. And so I remember we were like we just blindly like we're one of my lead measures, which is like, basically inputs that were all assigned lead measures that were held accountable to every week. And one of mine at that point was submitting allies on commercial commercial deals.
Jordan Isham
So which is letter of intent, basically an offer? So I was just submitting like, five offers a day on different properties. And we got one accepted as a backup offer. And then you know, at the time we were like had no idea what we're doing. We're just super excited. So started doing due diligence. You know, I had some underwriting experience from working for a mentor. And so we did the underwriting, tried a business plan top shared it with all these people we knew who knew what they were doing And they're like, Yeah, this was this good deal partnered with somebody as a general GP who, who had experience in the syndication space. So we had credibility. And then we're like, alright, we got the deal. Now we got to figure out how we're going to make this happen, which is again, like the spot, we kind of tend to live our lives and is like, like, commit to it, and then figure it out.
Jordan Isham
And so yeah, I mean, naturally, we were able to hustle and grind to raise the money, which was a great experience, even though we had no idea how to do it at first and tackled the deal. It was a 2.2 point $4 million dollar boutique hotel, we're putting about a million dollars into it, and, you know, hoping to exit at $7 million, which will be two to three times equity multiple within, you know, four to five years there. So, like, really just trying to build momentum into commercial real estate space before we move on to the next one. And, you know, build confidence in our investors that we can see a deal, apply business plan, make them money and keep going in. So that was an awesome experience. It's still ongoing, but we're really, really excited for kind of the credibility and trust though, it'll create for us. Yeah,
Mike Swenson
yeah. And it's hard. I mean, you're gonna have hard deals in the future. But the hardest one is kind of the first one here, where it's like, you're building all your processes, you're figuring out how it goes. And I think, you know, for us kind of having been through this recently, too, it's like, we you feel dumb doing it like, because you're like, you're asking questions that you're like, oh, my gosh, like, I should know the answer. And they probably can smell me as new from a mile away. But at the same time, you now have gone through it. And the reality is, is you're not new, you know how to do this in a different asset class, you know, how to get leads, you know, take care of them. Yep, analyze numbers, put processes in place.
Mike Swenson
So it's just an asset class that you haven't done that too. And so you're using all your problem solving skills, all your judgment, skills, talking with mentors, asking questions, using the resources available to you, where you can do it. So you're not new, it's just a new class for you and kind of figuring out how to do that piece. But once you do, now, you've got all the systems in place, you've got all the processes, you've got the strategy. And so now you can just go take it and do it for bigger and more deals.
Jordan Isham
Yeah. And it's fun to operate in that like impostor syndrome zone, where you're right, you're a little uncomfortable and pushing, you're pushing yourself to a point that you haven't been before. I mean, that's what it's about. And I remember hearing the other day, like, if you're not embarrassed of like, what you were doing, or where you were a few years ago, then you're probably not pushing yourself hard enough now. And I really think that's cool, cool thing to think about is like, what, three years ago, like, I can't believe I was just doing that, like, what was I? Like, what was I doing? I was wasting time, right. And so it's cool to say, to think about how far you go, and just two to three years really anybody and to take that and keep going.
Mike Swenson
And yeah, just to kind of recap here. I mean, you built and grew a real estate business that's doing, you know, eight transactions a month, you've got a team of eight people, and you helped acquire a $2.4 million hotel, that you're going to eventually turn into $7 million. And this isn't even your full time job right now. And so just just imagine what happens now when you're done. And you have the ability to put more time into this.
Mike Swenson
And so that's, that's the cool thing that I want people to understand is, you've done all this with what a lot of people would call kind of the remainders of your time, and you've been able to scale this. And so there's really no excuse, if you're out there listening right now you're, you're on the sideline, you're waiting to take action, or you've taken a little bit of action. And you see what, what you've been able to do. It's like, well, no, it's so worth it. And you have to be comfortable being uncomfortable. You have to be comfortable feeling dumb, sometimes not knowing what to do. But it's that's what's gonna get you where you want to go.
Jordan Isham
Totally. I love that. And it's, again, it just always goes back to mindset because like, there's so many people I've talked to where, like they, they make all their excuses, right? And I shadow their excuses. Because I've been there I've had the same kind of thoughts. And I say, No, that's invalid, that's invalid, you do this, this and this, and it's gonna happen, and they still won't do it. It's because there's like, there's limiting beliefs. There's, it's deeper than just, you know, the excuse itself. It's, it's and so if you're not getting down to the core of like, why you're not doing it, then you're never going to do it. You always make the excuse, there's always going to be some excuse, right? And so it's where I like, I like that you're, you emphasize mindset and, and it's something that's important to me, too. It's just you got to overcome that in order to take massive action. It'll work. It always does.
Mike Swenson
Yeah, yeah. Cool. Yeah. So So Jordan, for people that want to you know, learn more about you and what you're doing. How can they, how can they find out more?
Jordan Isham
Yeah, I would say just connect with me on LinkedIn. That's usually the best way or or shoot me an email at Jordan I show outlook.com. So either of those two, right I love I love connecting with people in the real estate space or entrepreneurs, business owners or anyone just looking to get after it.
Mike Swenson
Well, thank you so much for sharing. It's such a cool story. And we could, we could chat for hours but yeah, I appreciate all that you've shared. There's a lot there and to be able to do it while you're you're working your W two job is just amazing. So best of luck to you in the future and excited to see where the journey takes you.
Jordan Isham
Awesome. Thank you so much.
