Be a Magnet in Your Market

Mike Hambright (00:00.874)
Hey everyone, welcome back to the show. Today I’m here with Jason Lavender. We’re going to be talking about becoming a magnet in your market. How do you become a market leader that creates opportunities for you to not only leave a big impact, but to joint venture and find ways to work together with other people in your market. So Jason, welcome to the show.

Jason Lavender (00:14.264)
Thanks

Jason Lavender (00:18.392)
Thanks Mike, I appreciate you having me.

Mike Hambright (00:19.87)
Yeah, glad to have you here. So looking forward to diving into this. This is something that’s kind of near and dear to my heart. I’ve always been the community builder type guy, right? And so even way before I was even in real estate, actually. So I know we’re going to talk a lot about a lot of stuff here that I’ve ever done or I’m fascinated with. And so looking forward to jumping into that. So I know you’re based in Wichita, Kansas. I do probably 80 to 100 deals a year, have a rental portfolio, all that stuff. So tell us a little bit more.

Jason Lavender (00:39.31)
Please.

Mike Hambright (00:49.696)
Tell us a little bit more about yourself other than that, I guess.

Jason Lavender (00:53.326)
Yeah, born and raised here, like you said here in Wichita, Kansas, is my investing market. I don’t chase the shiny objects, but I haven’t chased any other markets. Thankfully, I’d probably drive me nuts. yeah, before I got into real estate in 2017, I was a painter. That was my gig. I had a painting company. I loved what I did, but I saw the writing on the wall. It wasn’t going to last long. There’s not a lot of old painters. So I just started researching, researching, researching and

I’ve always loved fixing up things. And so I jumped in in 2017 and started fixing and flipping houses. And from there, you know, grew a fix and flip business and a wholesaling business. I love the hands-on aspect of most every part of real estate. And like you said, I’ve really enjoyed building community. I mean, I’ve learned a lot from, you know, people like you watching from afar, but just the value of growing a community, being a go-giver and the reciprocity that comes from.

you know, really being the magnet in my market.

Mike Hambright (01:55.158)
Yeah, yeah, I love it. So let’s talk a little bit about just what that’s meant for you kind of business wise and why you wanna do that. mean, there’s always, it’s gotta be a win-win situation, right? Like a lot of us wanna give, we wanna share, but at some level it has to make business sense too, right? And it creates opportunities. If you do the right thing, opportunities kind of proverbially fall in your lap, right? But it’s because you created the atmosphere for that to happen, right? So tell us a little bit more about just the power of.

Jason Lavender (02:13.72)
peace.

Mike Hambright (02:24.348)
of focusing on your network.

Jason Lavender (02:24.718)
Yeah, I love what you said there. Yeah, stuff doesn’t, know, sometimes people think things fall in your lap, but it’s a very, I mean, it’s a very calculated process that I’ve adopted and, you know, the groups that I’ve built, the connections that I continue to make and, know, you know, much like you, I mean, you see the value in that. Nothing’s accidental. It’s very intentional. So yeah, building community, it’s something that I, you know, when you jump into real estate, most people say, hey, find a good RIA.

You know, get a good local event, go find a RIA. Well, I didn’t have one. There wasn’t one. I mean, I think there was one, but it was terrible. So I knew the power of networking and building a community would be something I wanted to double down on, so I did. So I started Facebook Group, you know, started very small. I I really fumbled forward mostly, but providing a very high quality, very valued, sought after Facebook Group here locally in Wichita.

has been the best decision I’ve probably made. From that, we’ve grown local meetups. I’ve grown and established local mentor group, is really several things in mind there is helping people get established and get their foot in the door in investing and offering collaboration and partnerships through that. In-person meetups have been really good. Putting butts in seats in

You know, again, a lot of people, you know that you don’t know what you don’t know. And so if you can offer, you know, sometimes our events are free and sometimes they’re, know, they’re always low cost. You can eliminate that, you know, that barrier to entry where people might otherwise be very skeptical about. And, know, they come, they walk away and they’re fans and you know, they’re interested in real estate. And we doubled down on that with follow up and, you know, continued engagement. And, you know, many of those turned into partnerships that.

that I’m doing to this very day.

Mike Hambright (04:24.725)
Yeah, same for me. I’ve got a lot of people that I’ve worked with over the years that’s just created business opportunities and lifelong friendships with people. In fact, I had somebody on my podcast a little while back that right before, most people that are on my show, we’ve got a couple shows now, the ones that I host, are people that I either know really well or I know of and I want to get to know better, for the most part. And a couple people kind of snuck on there, I like, I don’t know who this is.

Jason Lavender (04:29.262)
Thank

Jason Lavender (04:37.41)
me

Mike Hambright (04:52.371)
Which is fine. And I was like, do we have we met before? And she was like, yeah, I went to one of your events like five years ago and she was a principal at a high school and she like left that job and got into real estate and now she does that full time. And she’s like, you know, basically you were the catalyst for a lot of this, right? She didn’t even join my program. She just came to an event and then did it on her own. But it was so cool to kind of hear that of just, you know, just like you being a go giver like.

Jason Lavender (04:54.913)
Okay.

Jason Lavender (05:03.918)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Hambright (05:16.745)
You’re planting seeds out there and you don’t know what’s gonna grow, but whenever something does, it’s really cool to kind of see that come back around.

Jason Lavender (05:22.786)
Yeah, I love that. I got a message before we jumped on this call today, somebody that I was like, hey, I’m interested in this package of properties that you’re selling. The numbers look pretty good. And he’s like, yeah, actually, you wholesale me half of these. I like, thought your name sounded familiar. Yeah, let’s talk. Stuff comes full circle.

Mike Hambright (05:37.487)
Hahaha.

Mike Hambright (05:42.909)
That’s funny. Yeah. So what we’re gonna do today is jump into some of the different platforms you use to kind of become a magnet in your mark, some of the things you do to kind of become a leader. So let’s dive into like meetup groups. So you’ve got a group or you have just one group there. Is it multiple groups or

Jason Lavender (05:47.363)
Peace.

Jason Lavender (05:59.138)
Man, don’t know, Facebook groups, probably have about six or seven. Yeah. Yeah. So we do a, networking is huge. And so I preach that all the time. And so we do a really laid back networking lunch. We also have a pints and properties, you know, for after hours, but I started that about five years ago, simply

Mike Hambright (06:02.421)
Well, let’s talk about the meetup like that. Do you have an in person kind of RIA club style meetup group that you host? Yeah.

Jason Lavender (06:25.678)
just to have networking, connect contractors with lenders to, you know, title companies, to investors, landlords, flippers, wholesalers. I just put them all in a group, you know, I’ve rent out a space, we throw them all in a lunch, I pray for the lunch and that’s it, it’s free. We’ve been doing that five years and simply doing that has domino effected so many, I mean, I’ve picked up contractors, I’ve picked up lenders, I’ve picked up tons of private money lenders from that.

And you know, I make friends and then I, you know, I had this idea, like I need to monetize this. Let’s bring on some sponsors, some people that see the value of what I created. And, you know, we’ve got a list a mile long of people that want to continue to be sponsors. And so, yeah, just a, just a monthly lunch networking meetup, has paid off in spades. And then from there we’ve, you know, we’ve got some one-off events. We’ve got a monthly pints and properties. meet at a pub. again, just the value of networking can’t.

cannot be overstated.

Mike Hambright (07:27.187)
Yeah, it’s interesting because, you we’re at this space where there’s, you might’ve heard this phrase before I hear it, sometimes there’s a trust recession. Like nobody trusts anybody because it’s just been a weird time polarizing world and like everything we’ve been through like since COVID really, you know. So there’s this like trust recession where everybody is like Facebook friends.

Jason Lavender (07:42.818)
Thanks

Mike Hambright (07:48.598)
but nobody really knows anybody, right? That’s how it feels in social media land. We’re all just like a click away, but nobody really knows who anybody is, And so I think when you’re doing events like that and you start to build relationships, that’s how you build trust, is people just, see you, they see you’re genuine, they see you’re trying to add value, and then ultimately you stand out from everybody else because you’re a real person doing real things and really there to help people.

Jason Lavender (07:57.934)
you

Jason Lavender (08:07.853)
Really?

Jason Lavender (08:15.598)
Mm-hmm. I totally agree. Yeah, I mean it’s You know meetups and actually talking with people and going having copy, you know, I don’t know if it’s a lost art or a dying Thing but that’s I’m old school. I love it and Yeah, and as far as my business and you know, I’ve got this kind of ecosystem that I’ve just kind of built again I I think of it in terms of I want to be a magnet in my market. And so what different things am I doing to?

Mike Hambright (08:29.887)
Yeah.

Jason Lavender (08:45.004)
establish credibility, authentically and genuinely help people. I talk to people all the time. create within our Facebook group. We’ve got so many different initiatives where people are being helped. mean, there’s newbies come in all the time and like, I can’t sit there on the phone with everybody. That’s ridiculous. But I can refer them to and they find our Facebook group and there’s just tons of value, tons of value. And if people see what the value that you’re giving

for free on a Facebook group, they wanna know what’s behind the curtain. So we’ve got a few curtains that we can help people with too.

Mike Hambright (09:21.929)
Yeah, and also talk a little bit about, I know we’re gonna talk about Facebook groups here a little bit more, but talk about just the power in kind of bouncing people around. Like they might join in your Facebook group and next thing you know there’s a local live meeting and it creates a lot of opportunities for people to get exposure to different things you have going on and meet other friends and stuff like that. Maybe talk about just like the power in kind of bouncing people around to different things you’re doing.

Jason Lavender (09:30.464)
me

Jason Lavender (09:47.598)
Yeah, I mean, it’s interesting. Yeah, when I, you know, we talk to people, you know, sometimes they’ll say, hey, I went to that one thing you did, you know, a year ago. And then I went to the other thing and, you know, I’m finally wanted to come up and introduce myself. I was like, hey, I’m so glad you did, you know, you should have came a year ago. I would have loved to talk to you. But yeah, again, just the value of building a community. I mean, at the end of the day, Mike, we’re, you know,

We’re humans, we crave community. So much, oftentimes we lead or tend to go in the isolation, but we really crave community. so that’s what I, I knew that there’s human nature there and building authentic community and in-person meetups, being a place where you can set eyes, hands, be in front and be with one another.

Mike Hambright (10:18.869)
Yeah.

Jason Lavender (10:44.494)
And it’s super, I mean, jeez, Mike, I’ve heard so many stories about every, every meetup I’ve ever done. I hear stories later about the connection was made, the contractor that was hired, the partnership with this that was struck. Uh, you know, people have gotten married for meeting at our meetups. I mean, it’s like matchmaking or something. I mean, it’s just, you create a community, you create an event or a series of events that people want to go to and amazing, cool, awesome things happen. And

Mike Hambright (10:59.797)
Wow. Yeah.

Jason Lavender (11:11.63)
I’m here as a business owner. I want cool, awesome things to happen that obviously help people, but help to add to the bottom line. I’ve heard those stories over and over over again. And I’ve got meetups coming this month and I’ll hear the same stories the next day. You could bank on it.

Mike Hambright (11:29.205)
Yeah.

Yeah, any tips? unless you do events, you don’t realize how hard events are. So we do events. So I know that and you know that. But maybe any tips for how to simplify that? Because I know people that have tried it before. They’re like, yeah, I’m going to start doing a monthly event. And they usually do two or three, then they’re gone. Or maybe one sometimes. Because they realize, like, man, this is like a job. There’s ways to simplify it, especially if you do it over and over again. But any kind of tips there?

Jason Lavender (11:33.943)
Yeah

Jason Lavender (11:51.436)
Cough

Jason Lavender (11:58.734)
Yeah, you’re right. mean, you know, far more than I do. Events are crazy and can get super expensive. When you’re doing a small meetup like a networking or a pints and properties or something like that, or a RIA, you’re starting a RIA, my encouragement would be find sponsors. You know, get with, you know, local trusted, you know, people in your community that would see the value of the party that you’re throwing, the group that you’re putting together and have them foot the bill. So that was something I didn’t do initially.

You know, since then, you know, we’ve got our preferred partners. You know, they’ve got a voice and they’re a moderator in our Facebook groups. They pay a monthly fee to be a part of it. I give them a few minutes at every one of our lunches and meetups to share how they can actually help investors. And with really the mindset of being this go-giver, you know, this idea that this is not, hey, so why don’t you stand up for three minutes and tell everybody how great you are? don’t you instead stand up for three minutes and tell how you can actually help investors? Because, you know, while you think maybe

you know, your website 10 times is going to be the best fit for your business. Actually, what you’re the best thing for your business is really solve some problems. so, but yeah, just, you know, bring in sponsors for these events, make it simple. You don’t need to overcomplicate it. You know, people are in my market, people are gravitating, you know, mostly towards Facebook, but find a social media platform that your audience is going to be at and, you know, just build a community around it.

And the rest, I don’t know, you fumble forward. I’m a big fan of not overthinking things. And so when new opportunities or problems arise, we figure it out.

Mike Hambright (13:40.886)
Yeah, so maybe you can share a little bit more about Facebook groups. Obviously, everybody listening to this is probably in some Facebook groups, right? But we all know that they tend to be kind of like, for the most part, a lot of them are like the public restroom, right? They’re like, it’s a good idea, but these things are gross. This full of junk and clutter, and I’ve run, I have some groups, I’ve run some groups, but it’s a lot of work to kind of keep those things up and keep them kind of pure, keep the spam out. I mean, you could.

Jason Lavender (13:53.985)
Okay.

Mike Hambright (14:09.557)
There’s a lot of things you can do, but just talk about, guess, maybe the power of those Facebook groups for, I think the other thing that’s interesting that I’m gonna talk about is the local Facebook group, right? mean, a lot of the groups out there, people just try to like, know, everybody all over the world’s kind of joining these things sometimes and they get huge and then they’re very impersonal and then it’s like, what’s the point? But maybe talk about like, you know, the power of kind of a local curated group and then also like maybe any tips you have on how to keep it good.

Jason Lavender (14:15.918)
K.

Jason Lavender (14:38.23)
Yeah, so I can speak to the local group, the national groups like you mentioned, I think they get diluted and spammed out. So I tried that and it failed miserably. But as far as the local groups, bring in partners, bring in, I have trusted friends of mine that helped me manage this group. I’m not the only one sitting there trying to filter through all this.

know, spam and you stuff like that. So we run a very high level, high active engagement. I I monitor the statistics, you know, Facebook gives you all kinds of analytics, you know, find out how many posts you’re getting a month. You know, I set goals for our growing our group. I mean, it’s not just growing our numbers because to be honest, we’re a local South Central Kansas group. I, you know, we get we get people trying to join all the time. And, you know, we decline about half of them, you know, because they’re out of state, they’re

somewhere out there, whatever, out of the country. They have no business being in our group. But so being very proactive on high quality people coming into our group, the engagement, I’ve just borrowed tips from other people. We’ve got questions that we post every day. I want likes and comments. I want people to come to our community to hang out.

And that’s what it is. I people come to our community to hang out. I mean, they happen to have a common thread of real estate, but you know, it is, you know, where people want to come and hang out. I’ve asked other people. I mean, we’ve got tons of different admins and moderators. know, the easy lift on that is spreading the job around. It’s not just me trying to monitor all this, because I think that’s where groups get diluted and, you know, turn into absolute garbage. mean, most groups are that way.

And then, you know, some of other things that we’ve done, you know, I’m trying to, again, just be a magnet in my market. I want to provide great value. We’ve started an investor advisory panel. I’ve just invited 10 of my friends that, you know, kind of hit different niches as far as like commercial and, you know, short-term, medium-term rentals, you know, market analysis. I’ve got a, you know, tax guy, finance and wealth guy. You know, they contribute articles every week.

Jason Lavender (16:55.822)
to our group. so, we’re just trying to create what people are craving and wanting and be the place that people stop and check in at. It’s always a work in progress, but that’s how we approach it, and that’s what we’re doing.

Mike Hambright (17:11.167)
Yeah, that’s great. Yeah. think, you know, people get hung up on social media with…

the vanity side of it. Like I have so many people in my group or I got so many likes or whatever. But it’s like, yeah, if they’re all like folks or people that aren’t even in your market, like it doesn’t mean it’s never going to add value to you. And it’s only going to get harder to manage, you know, the spam and the other crap that’s there too. so what you do is because I’ve got this myself is like people can’t just join the group. They have to apply to join the group, right? And they have to answer a few questions and you kind of filter them out that way.

Jason Lavender (17:23.361)
Okay.

Jason Lavender (17:47.224)
Yeah, 100%. Yeah, they’ve got to answer some questions. They’ve got to provide an email. And that was something I didn’t do early on, was start curating email lists and the power of what that is. We fixed that a couple of years ago. But yeah, and then again, just having other admins and moderators that I know and trust help with the job of managing a pretty active group makes the much easier lift.

Mike Hambright (18:14.741)
That’s great. And then you also do some live events locally as well,

Jason Lavender (18:21.036)
Yeah, so again, just as a kind of a springboard off of our Facebook group, we had people start asking like, what about, we’ve got some networking get togethers, what about some other events? And so a few years ago we started, we do a bootcamp or we do a jumpstart event every January and then we do a bootcamp. So the purpose of those are, they’re not really moneymakers per se. They helped fill our private.

mentor group and lead to a lot of really great partnerships and deals and you know, it’s amazing. You over the years doing that, like, you know, I’ll just continue to partner with people, you know, multiple deals and it’s been, you know, been amazing. But so for instance, our jumps, I always just do one day events, you know, keep it clean and simple. do, you know, it’s a full pack day. I’ve got sponsors that are paying for the lunch and paying for coffees and stuff like that.

We do a happy hour afterwards. And yeah, we try to deliver as much value as we can. mean, it’s really a high level overview of the topics that we want to cover for. And so we’re looking at how to identify properties, how to analyze properties, the ABCs of renovating. And then we do some boot camps again. We’ve done a few of those where it’s been more fix and flip focused.

And some other events, I’ve had people come out, friends of mine come out and we’ve done live events on a one off throughout the year. I just see the value of having butts in seats, captive audience. And again, if I can deliver some value that’s gonna help somebody and if I can put 85 people in a room and two of them wanna partner with me after the day’s over, that’s a win for me.

Mike Hambright (20:12.565)
Yeah, I think getting people to commit to something like that is it says a lot because you’re basically and I’m sure you do this upfront you’re like look Get clear all your distractions like let’s just focus on this today because other things like you know There’s a place for meetups and Facebook groups Facebook groups people are just scrolling them during the day and they’re distracted right and Meetup groups they think they’re gonna make it and they miss it and they might stop by every once in a while But life gets in the way

But when you do a one day event or a three day event or something like that, like people are kind of dedicating like, hey, I’m gonna kind of really focus today. it allows you to take people kind of deeper. And in fact, you know, a lot of those people, I’m sure that most of the people that come to your live events are in your Facebook group and have been to your meetup group, which is more of like a mixer, right? And then that’s kind of like the graduation is to come, let’s come spend some time together now, right?

Jason Lavender (20:50.349)
We

Jason Lavender (20:59.938)
all over the world.

Jason Lavender (21:04.94)
Yeah, so I’m just laying stones in the path is how I’ve heard it put. I’m creating little baby steps for people to dive into real estate investing and to be part of a community and to know trust and like me. Then I’ll put another stone out in front of them, another stone, another stone. it’s not rocket science. I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed, but I can do simple things like that. these simple things pay off. It takes time. mean, you know.

I mean, it takes years. You’re not going to build. I tried to force build a group, you know, through, you know, Facebook ads. And like I said, I’ve built some other Facebook groups and, know, there’s just no, in my opinion, there’s no substitute for, you know, a slow growth organic, like high value group. I mean, I’ve done the paid ads and slam it and promo cycle them and, you know, hit them from every angle. And it’s very expensive and it’s not as effective at all.

Mike Hambright (22:04.469)
So what is all this, obviously you’re helping a lot of people in your market and then one of your goals is to find ways to collaborate with people and kind of win from a business side too. So talk about like the types of opportunities this creates and maybe what some of the, what a typical, you know, collaboration looks like.

Jason Lavender (22:16.981)
BANG!

Jason Lavender (22:22.392)
So I first started that idea as like, well, I’m happy to partner on fixing flips with people. You bring the deal, I’ll flip it. We’ll flip it together. I’ll show you the ropes. Finding the deal is always the hard part. Lining up contractor, I mean, after you’ve done it, lining up contractors and fixing a house is the easy part. It’s always finding a good deal. So that was simply my message. You bring me the house, I’ll show you the game.

And we started doing that, and we still do that to this day. But it’s led to other partnerships. I’ve partnered with people on commercial deals. We’ve started lending. People know, like, and trust me, and we’re able to partner up. I mean, I’ll lend on the deal. There’s no shortage of creative ways to partner with somebody.

easiest, you know, foothold into it is part fix and flip, you know, partner on a fix and flip. So once you establish that, you know, you can you can get much more creative and you partner on storage unit deals like I just did and, you know, on and on and on, you know, commercial deals and things like that. So it’s kind of the stair step evolution. I mean, I look at it like I, you know, I didn’t know what the heck I was doing when I started and, you know, I knew I could buy a crappy house, fix it up.

But then you just quickly realize, I don’t want to be doing that forever. I mean, I want to grow as a business owner and entrepreneur. And so now progressing into bigger deals and things like that. That’s what I do anyway.

Mike Hambright (24:04.713)
Yeah, that’s awesome. That’s awesome. Well, thanks for sharing some insights with us today. Yeah. If folks want to connect with you or kind of learn more about what you’ve got going on, find a way to work together, something like that, where should they go?

Jason Lavender (24:09.366)
Yeah, of course. I love it.

Jason Lavender (24:18.926)
Best place probably that’s JasonLavender.ai or you can find me on Facebook. I that’s where I’m at. Jason Lavender in Wichita, Kansas on Facebook. Hit me up. Like I said, I’m a open book. I love helping people. I love connecting. If anybody knows anything going on in South Central Kansas, let me know. Trying to be.

Mike Hambright (24:39.391)
You’re the man, right? Yeah, that’s awesome. Good stuff. Thanks again for sharing today. Yeah, everybody, there’s a lot of power in kind of building your network and collaborating and.

Jason Lavender (24:44.737)
Yeah, appreciate it.

Mike Hambright (24:50.133)
And ultimately taking that offline to meet people for real, because I think there is this trust recession and there are people ultimately want to work with people, right? And so the more they can get kind of get to know you and your market, if you create that opportunity for them, I like to say that karma is alive and well. So the more you can help people that will come back around, it might not be tomorrow, but down the road at some point there’ll be opportunities. When people say they’re lucky and I kind of say you make your own luck, that’s how you make your own luck is by impacting a lot of people, improving the lives of

and opportunities will start to, quote, fall in your lap, right? So, appreciate you guys for joining us today. Go check out and learn more about Jason, and we’ll see you guys on the next show.