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Show Summary
In this engaging conversation, Jason shares his journey from professional sports to real estate investing, emphasizing the importance of embracing discomfort and learning from failure. He discusses his current focus on multifamily investing, the challenges he faces, and his aspirations to create generational wealth. The dialogue highlights the significance of community, mentorship, and the mindset required for success in business.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Jason Surat (00:00)
So these days, when I got into the real estate, I figured out through some trials and tribulations that I’m really chasing cashflow, right? Because cashflow is whatthat what pays the bills. know, everybody, there’s that saying cash is king, but I like, probably want to get a shirt that says cash flow is king, right? So ⁓ in order to create cash flow, believe that also is what is ⁓ part of the equation for time freedom.
Q Edmonds (02:01)
Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I am your host, Q Edmonds, and I’m excited. As you know, I always say that because, you know, if you’ve been listening to me long enough, I love to get a chance to peek at things through other people’s lenses. No matter what we all may do, be involved in that similar, everybody have their specific nuances, specific expertise, specific journey, and specific story.And so today is no different. have someone here. So I’m at, he’s, we’re going to dig into some things. He has a hunger for learning the ability to be inspired. And I’m going to say to inspire, but also looking for just for something bigger. And I love that. And he has proudly said he is comfortable with being uncomfortable. I’m still learning that skill set, but he has it. So we’re going to talk, probably talk about that too, but.
I’m excited to introduce you all to Mr. Jason Mr. Jason Surat.
how you doing today,
Jason Surat (03:04)
Thanks so much, Quen. Thanks for having me on today. Appreciate it.Q Edmonds (03:08)
Absolutely, man. Glad to have you here. And listen, I’ll be honest, I want to dive in. I want you to tell the people what your main focus is these days. If you want to give us a little bit of an origin story, Jason, of how you got to where you are. We love the hero’s journey. So you want to tell us how you got there. And then also tell us what markets you’re operating in. And so Mr. Jason, you have the floor,Jason Surat (03:31)
Thanks so much. so much. The origin story is a long one. So I’ll try to keep it short. the idea is that I’ve always been enamored with the idea of having freedom, right? Being able to control your time and. ⁓choosing to spend that time where you see fit. And for me, that’s usually doing some sort of experience. And as I got older, it was always about creating experiences for my family. I’m a big proponent of experiences are the best teachers of life. And so ⁓ that kind of got me started in my real estate journey, if you will.
I had been working at a corporate company for at that time, probably the better part of five, six years. And, I had come from, ⁓ the pro sports world where I got to play one year of professional baseball and landed in the corporate world. Cause, wasn’t really sure I wanted to do something like coaching or anything like that yet.
And, ⁓ from there.
about five, six years into that, I realized that, or I should remember that I wanted to get back into being an entrepreneur. So I had more control of my time, didn’t have to report to an office, you know, everything that kind of what people talk about these days, right? And, you know, entered again, real estate. And I guess to give you context why I say entered again, straight out of high school, ⁓
I have an interesting sports journey. So straight out high school, wasn’t even playing sports yet. ⁓ I worked for a construction company. During that time, we would do ⁓ remodels and stuff like that. Nothing like fixing flips, but that’s how I was thinking to myself like, when I get older, I could probably do some fixing flips. like, you know, kind of fixing things and taking old stuff, making it new. And this is way before like HGTV made it popular.
So at my corporate job, started thinking, maybe I can get back into real estate. And the other thing that kind of coincided with that is the ability to create generational wealth. I know it’s kind of a buzzword right now, but ⁓ I always was enamored by those who were wealthy and had a legacy that they left behind and had children who would keep it going and stuff like that. that’s.
what first attracted me to generational wealth, so to speak, before it became sort of a buzzword these days. ⁓ And I thought real estate, what better of a vehicle? It’s the most time-tested proven vehicle to create time freedom, to create generational wealth. ⁓ The system of taxes that we play in here in the US is heavily slated towards owning and being a real estate investor.
or a business owner, entrepreneur, if you will. And so I said, let’s get back into it. And that’s kind of where my journey started. ⁓ And then it goes on from there, but ⁓ just depends on what aspect of the journey you’re looking to learn more about.
Q Edmonds (07:39)
Nah man, I’m just learning more about you. So everything you’ve given me, I’ve enjoyed. I love hearing. I don’t want to put a cap on how much you share or a cap on how little you share. So I appreciate that. So what are your main focuses now? Like when it comes to business, what are you passionate about now? What really has your engines running now?Jason Surat (08:01)
Great question. I would say the passion has always been the same. It’s that time freedom, right? Because again, I want the freedom to create experiences for my family on my time versus, you know, retiring and then enjoying life then, right? And by then we’ve all seen it from our grandparents or other people or ⁓ people maybe that we know, ⁓ you know, your health and your,even your cognitive abilities, right? They’re not guaranteed in our retirement years, especially our health. You never know what’s going to happen with that. And I’ve always been a big proponent of enjoying life now. You know, I was fortunate enough to travel a lot before, after I graduated high school and before I sort of got into my baseball journey. know, I went and went on the Great Wall of China, went to the Eiffel Tower.
⁓ so places like that, when you do stuff like that, it opens your eyes to, ⁓ realizing that there’s a whole world out there. And so if you just kind of live in your own bubble and just work and, and don’t travel, you don’t get a chance to experience those things. So that’s still my main focus.
So these days, when I got into the real estate, I figured out through some trials and tribulations that I’m really chasing cashflow, right? Because cashflow is what
that what pays the bills. know, everybody, there’s that saying cash is king, but I like, probably want to get a shirt that says cash flow is king, right? So ⁓ in order to create cash flow, believe that also is what is ⁓ part of the equation for time freedom.
So what drives me is, is that is cash flow, ⁓ eventually equity. And so right now I,
I’m focusing on transitioning from an STR portfolio, short-term rental portfolio that I had built when I first started getting into the real estate world. And that’s kind of what allowed me to start chasing cashflow without a big barrier to entry, is I built a cashflow, I’m sorry, a short-term rental portfolio in California. And then I was gonna parlay that into multi-family because…
I just felt like multifamily was the long play game and short-term rental was more of the what’s happening in the market now, right? But both were under the real estate umbrella, if you will. So I’m trying to stay focused in one area because there’s that adage that, know, he who chases two rabbits catches none until I’m successful enough in real estate where then I could start to venture out onto other things. So now it’s transitioned from short-term rentals into multifamily.
Q Edmonds (11:26)
Gotcha. I absolutely love it. So I love how, you you talked about baseball, you know, you and I was talking a little bit before, you know, we’re both stellar athletes for both, you know, Clydesdale, you know, ⁓ but one thing I know we probably could agree on is that, you know, sports have a certain way of teaching you like certain certain set of disciplines, right. As you know, and soJason Surat (11:43)
longer.Q Edmonds (11:56)
I always have this saying where I say destiny has no wasted moments. Meaning like as you go through your life, certain destinations, you pick up things, skill sets that are just transferable to your mindset, to your psyche and different things like that. And so I would love to know, have you identified or can you identify some core strategies, personal strategies that you know help you out as a businessman and just as a person, as a man in life. So are there some core strategies that you-can pinpoint to say, this definitely helps keep me grounded, keep me motivated when I go off course, gets me back on course, different things like that.
Jason Surat (12:33)
Great question. And it’s funny you bring that up because I played the game of baseball, but I guess it’s similar to a lot of, you know, athletics, right? You think of Michael Jordan and the Nike commercial where I missed, you know, 7,000 shots, but I made 3,000, you know. And so if you think about that in the game of baseball, it’s literally a game of failure, right? Only the whole of famers who, whothe top 3 % of any baseball player to ever play who hit 293 hundred ish yet to go to the hall of fame. means you’re getting three out of every, you know, 10 at bats, you’re getting three hits. That means seven times you’re doing something wrong. Right. And so that, that love of the game, understanding that it’s all about failing and less about succeeding.
that allows you to keep going and looking for what to learn in those moments. And I’ve always wanted to kind of write a memoir just about how the relationship between, for me, playing baseball and life has been because when I left baseball, I fell into sales ⁓ as far as the corporate world goes. so sales is also a game of failure.
And so the relationship between the two was so similar that I started to see that early on and started realizing like, okay, I can take all the skills that I learned from failing, making adjustments, willing to have coaches, willing to be teachable, willing to be a student, willing to be humble. There’s just so many lessons that I pulled from baseball and translated those into the sales world and just into life in general, because
⁓ That’s really what it is. It’s really about figuring out what, you know, what you’re after, what you’re looking for. And then once you find that out, now it’s about learning the knowledge and then learning is all about trying and figuring out what works and doesn’t work. And that may look different for each person. So, ⁓ yeah, I would say that that is probably the most transferable thing that I’ve taken across all aspects of my life.
Q Edmonds (15:33)
I appreciate you sharing. I’m gonna say something I’ve never said before and you tell me if it connects with you. I’ve never said it before, but as you was talking, I was inspired to write this down. Failure is fertilizer. Failure is fertilizer. And when you think about some fertilizer, some of it stinks, some of it’s manure. But there’s benefits once you get that thing down to the roots. And so as you was talking, the stinkiness of failure.Jason Surat (15:47)
So.Q Edmonds (16:03)
The messiness of failure is fertilizer for growth. so I’m going say this and pass this on to you, but you tell me, when I think about baseball, think about there’s different components to it. You got to stretch well. some people, you got to, sometimes you’re hitting stands, you know, the proper swing, the proper footwork, like all these things are important to the success. All of these things you do on a constant basis.just to strike out how many times, just to hit the ball 30 % of the time, right? And so as you was talking, it made me realize that the little things matter, but what matters more is your mindset to keep going, to make every, take every advantage of the success that you do have, but knowing that just a failure is fertilizer. Does that connect with you at all?
Jason Surat (16:58)
That is mean just like I said when you said it that is absolute fire ⁓ I have not yet heard that and that’s I mean you got a coin that immediately is That is absolute truth right there because of exactly what you said fertilizer Just like you said you think of like manure it stinks stuff like that ⁓ And that’s the thing failing is it’s messy. It’s miserable⁓ And it all comes down to perspective, right? You can look at it as if you’re failing or you can look at it as if you’re learning. And that was me with baseball, as I was looking at it, as I was learning. I wasn’t failing because to me, I had gotten nowhere near my goal. And so every step of the way was just learning how to get better. Plus I understood that I was starting much later in life and
I needed to get those reps in and fail quickly and faster so that I can catch up to the guys who’ve been playing since they were five or six, which I had not been. So yeah, that resonates. That resonates. need to get that on some t-shirts and some hats and some bumper stickers or something.
Q Edmonds (18:12)
Got you.Well, man, I’m with you. I wrote it down. I’m gonna start saying it more, but I’m gonna make sure I give you a shout out to you because as you was talking, that’s when that thought came to mind. And so we did it together. You know, it’s part of the shit, You know, let me ask you, I’m gonna move on to my next question, but I do want to ask you, have you heard of the book Atomic Habits? I already saw about this book a lot, but have you heard about the book Atomic Habits?
Jason Surat (18:36)
Okay, so anybody who’s aspiring to be do have better than what they are now. ⁓ That’s that’s got to be a book that you’ve at least thumbed through if not written early.Q Edmonds (18:51)
Yeah, right. Yeah. So of course, I think about his baseball, we talked about his baseball story, like the different things that he did. So as you was talking, those are some of the things that came to mind. So, so yeah, man. ⁓Jason Surat (19:02)
Hesays is true. He says we don’t rise to our, occasion. fall to our habits. The thing in baseball, it’s the same thing with sports. That’s why practice, you know, the whole thing. That’s why I just thought about Allen Alverson and talk about practice. It’s like, because that’s what made, that’s what made Jordan the man. He practiced so hard. The games were easy. hard. The time for.
Q Edmonds (19:08)
Come on.So yeah.
Jason Surat (19:31)
execution becomes easy.Q Edmonds (19:33)
Yeah. I’m sorry to cut you off, you, when you talk, I don’t know what it’s about you. When you talk, things just start like really clicking in my head. Another book that I absolutely love is a book by Dr. Karen, non-leaf is called switch on your brain. That’s the name of the book. And so she talks about how, you know, there’s, there’s like protein branches. I think she calls them that’s connected to your thought process.So when you train, when you consistently practice, in her words, she was saying, you’re actually doing brain surgery on yourself. You are training your brain that this is the pattern that we’re going to go after. These are the habits that we’re going to pick up and that’s going to hit you in every part of your life. We’re going to practice it, but not only just we’re going to practice, we’re turning our brain that when it gets hard, we keep going.
When I find, when I come up into a place where I get stuck, find a way to maneuver around it. And so like you literally, when you have this, when you adopt a mindset to practice and be disciplined, you’re telling yourself this is where we’re going to succeed. And you know, the body don’t go nowhere without the mind. And so you’re literally, your body starts to go towards success. It goes, start going towards the answer. It’s not going towards getting unstuck because you have telling your brain like, no.
This is what we’re going to do. And so again, as you talk to these different things that start clicking, man, so I’m really appreciating this conversation.
Jason Surat (21:07)
Yeah, same here. I love it. You’re speaking my language just because I have a degree in exercise science and sports medicine. you know, I would say I have a basic understanding of how the human body works. Yeah. And when it comes to the brain and neuroscience and all that stuff, we are malleable in terms of rewiring our brain to do things that it wasn’t used to. And that’s exactly, you know, what you’re saying, just, guess, maybe in layman’s terms, you will. Yes, sir.And that’s what it takes to obtain or achieve things or the dreams that we have, because usually the dreams that we have, we’re not yet that person. And so in order to become that person, we have to train ourselves to think, be and act differently. And that’s where I think kind of the whole, know, fake it till you make it saying comes from. I think that’s kind of what the foundation is. It’s act as if, so that your body and your mind and
you’re preparing to do.
Q Edmonds (22:08)
Absolutely,man. You I couldn’t have said it any better myself, sir. So let me ask you, what are your next real goals? Like, what are you looking to scale, solve next? What’s next for you, Jason? Help me out, man.
Jason Surat (22:21)
Yeah, right now the goal is multifamily. So for me, it’s about going from, ⁓ I guess, an LP, a limited partner, to the GPC, the general partner seat. And I need to get there to understand if that’s where I want to be. Again, ⁓ time freedom, things of that nature are important to me. ⁓ I got a young family that I want to be there in all themoments of their lives and things of that nature. so time freedom is a big thing. so being a GP, feel like gives me the financial freedom, but will it give me the time freedom? And so that’s what I’m working on trying to figure out and actively working at having a seat at that table, because there’s a lot that goes into it. think a lot of people, you know, with all, if you subscribe to YouTube University, as they call it, a lot of people are on there. ⁓
you know, trying to get you to click on their course or their whatever. And they tell you, know, land your first multifamily and I don’t know, 30 days, 60 days or something like that. And it’s like, look, I’m a big believer in a lot of things are possible because I actually lived it, especially with my baseball story. But there has to be a reality to it. Right. So, and I tend to play in the, in sort of the general circle, not sort of the outliers because outliers are outliers for a reason. Right.
I generally tend to play in that circle because that’s probably where my outcome or things are going to happen for me. And if they go outside of that, that’s just gravy on top. Gotcha. And there’s a lot more to multifamily than landing your first deal in 30 to 60 days. So it’s a little bit more complicated than that.
Q Edmonds (24:14)
Just little,just tiny bit more complicated. Just a tiny bit. Yeah. Listen, Jason, this conversation has been incredible, man. I easily could talk to you for another 30 minutes. And that’s on the easy side. Probably could go more than that. But listen, man, if someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, learn more about what you’re doing, how can they get in contact with you,
Jason Surat (24:38)
Yeah, I appreciate it. You can reach me on LinkedIn. I’m active there. You know, I try, I’m not really active on any of the other social media. try to play in the sandbox where quote unquote my people would be. So LinkedIn is a big one. We, could also reach out to a website we have for some property that we have. It’s called sunsetmanagementgroup.com.Just fill out your form there and we’ll get back to you. It showcases a specific property that we’ve got under contract.
Q Edmonds (25:13)
Gotcha. So man, listen, I want you to listen to me. I’m going say this sincerely. ⁓ One, thank you for your time. You’ve talked about time throughout this podcast. And so we both know time is very valuable. Like our time is a premium for us. Right. And we can put whatever value we want to put on our time. Right. Because it’s our time. So I want to say thank you, sir, for your time sincerely. Want to say thank you for your story.Now I put high value on people’s story because all of us have a story to tell. The late great Kobe Bryant, before he passed, he says, nothing in this world moves without story. Nothing. The cement truck, the houses that built, the computers that we own, the lights, everything has a story to tell. So thank you so much for sharing your story. And lastly, thank you for your perspective. Thank you for the way you think.
and bringing that thought process to this platform. So sincerely, Jason, I want to say thank you, man. appreciate you so much.
Jason Surat (26:19)
Appreciate you having me on, Quentin. I appreciate the kind words, Those are good to hear. I appreciate that.Q Edmonds (26:26)
Absolutely. Allright. So listen y’all heard Mr. Jason y’all got the value I think gave you a pretty good episode if he asked me and so Definitely make sure you subscribe because I’m telling you we’re gonna continue to bring up incredible people Just like Mr. Jason and let y’all hear these stories that are really just so impactful and I just want y’all to keep coming back So definitely make sure you subscribe. So Mr. Jason, want to say thank you again and to everyone else
We’ll see you on the next time.
