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Show Summary
In this episode of the Investor Fuel podcast, host Olivia speaks with Sage and Hayden from Flight Builders, a real estate company focused on new construction in Northeast Florida. They discuss their strategies for maintaining a positive outlook in a challenging market, the importance of hard work and accountability, and their focus on building relationships within the industry. The conversation also covers their experiences overcoming challenges in new markets and their goals for scaling their business through development and collaboration with wholesalers.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Sage And Hayden (00:00)
When in other markets and other times in real estate, you could just kind of jump in and make money and be happy and everything was sunshine and rainbows. But for right now, we are in a bad market. It is hard.to money. have to be creative. have to do the hard work. You have to do the unsexy tasks. So I would say that’s the main way we are staying positive is we understand that there’s no magic bullet. There’s no magic pill. We have to do what’s right in front of us. The stuff we don’t want to do the stuff that irks us because it’s so difficult and boring and grueling.
Olivia (02:07)
Hello everyone.and welcome to the Investor Fuel podcast. I’m your host Olivia and today I’m joined by two hosts named Sage and Hayden and been looking forward to speaking with them. They’ve been making serious moves in the real estate industry space and they’re here to represent flight builders. I think our listeners are really going to take a lot away from how you’re approaching
all of your networking that you’ve gained, all the experience that you’ve had during a pretty tough market for 2026. So first off, for people who may not be familiar with your world, give us the short version. What’s your main focus these days?
Sage And Hayden (02:49)
So we work for Flight Builders. It’s a builder about three years old out of Northeast Florida. And essentially Sage and I’s job is to not only work with a team, but to try and get as much land as possible into our system, into our company. That way we can make sure that we provide the new construction housing at an affordable rate for just about everyone in our market.Yeah, and as far as the markets we’re operating in, it’s going to be pretty much almost all of Northeast Florida. Right now, the places that we want to work with people in as far as wholesalers or agents go is going to be Duval County, Clay County, and then parts of Nassau County being Uli and Callahan. Just those markets alone, there’s a ton of opportunity in. Just last year, we bought, I think, around 80 to 100 lots.
just in those markets. So definitely a lot of opportunity there and you know we’re looking to buy a whole lot more working with as many wholesalers as we can.
Olivia (03:51)
it. So what caught my attention about you was the way that you’ve been able to maintain such a positive outlook, positive energy towards being in a really tough market. And that’s not easy, especially these days. So what’s been key to keeping that positive outlook and just keeping your overall machine running smoothly?Sage And Hayden (04:13)
Yeah.I was going to say with Sage having a little bit more real estate experience than I have, he should definitely take the start of it. I would say for something like this, it’s really a time where you’re going to have to do the hard work in order to succeed.
When in other markets and other times in real estate, you could just kind of jump in and make money and be happy and everything was sunshine and rainbows. But for right now, we are in a bad market. It is hard.
to money. have to be creative. have to do the hard work. You have to do the unsexy tasks. So I would say that’s the main way we are staying positive is we understand that there’s no magic bullet. There’s no magic pill. We have to do what’s right in front of us. The stuff we don’t want to do the stuff that irks us because it’s so difficult and boring and grueling.
We have to do all that kind of stuff in order to see fruits because you know it’s not easy to make money in this in this business being a
builder but we are able to do well in a market like this just because we’re doing the hard stuff and we have a lot of people that are on our team willing to do all the hard work with us.
Olivia (06:10)
Lots of nights being slept over in the office, you were saying.Sage And Hayden (06:14)
Yeah, it’sa…
We’ll be here tonight. Yeah, you know, it’s one of those things where it’s we’re lucky to be this young for context everyone watching We’re both 20. I’ll be turning 21 in the next month But we’ve both been running our own businesses since we were probably 14 each I ran a t-shirt company and a Kind of like a kitchenette hot dog cart sage ran multiple like multi-level marketing not in the bad way but Facebook ads and basically selling everything that he can and got into real estate early and
And Sage got to see what it was like for everyone that was making money in 2019 and 2020 and who’s actually staying alive through 2026. You know, it’s not an easy business whatsoever, but being honest with yourself about what you expect and having a team around you that’s going to go the extra mile like Sage, like myself, like Jackson and all the beautiful people that we have at Flight. You know, if you’re honest about your goals and what work it’s going to take to achieve it, you really skip everything that would
be bad about working in something like real estate. You miss all of the unexpected falls, you miss all of the un-lost potential. You get to be real honest with yourself and get to see the real fruits of it after, like you said. Yeah, and the key to actually, because you might ask yourself, how am I going to stay motivated? How am I going to be able to complete all this really difficult, grueling, hard work? And I’d say the number one thing is doing it with people you genuinely like.
so our team, one of the core reasons why we’re so good, and not trying to fluff us up too much, but just our team in, in specific, the reason why we’re so well is because we have fraternity. have brotherhood. We are all super tight knit. we’re all super honest with each other. We hold each other accountable. If I walk into somebody’s office and they’re on their phone scrolling, they’re, you know, they’re getting yelled at a little bit. You know, I’m telling them to lock in where we’re all.
Olivia (07:52)
Take the floor.Sage And Hayden (08:12)
super hard on each other and we’re that that’s one of the reasons why it works so well is because we’re all best friends at the same time as people trying to succeed in a business together so it it’s absolutely imperative to have that kind of a culture around you you know what they say you know if if you got or you’re the product of the five people around you and if everybody’s around you is a millionaire or if everybody around you is you know working super hard you’re gonnaend up working really hard and becoming a millionaire.
Olivia (08:46)
Very nice, yeah, accountability buddies.Sage And Hayden (08:49)
Yeah, 100%.Olivia (09:25)
So now every operator that I know has a moment where things got real. Maybe a deal that went sideways or a time that they had to pivot fast. Would you mind sharing one of those moments for you?Sage And Hayden (09:37)
I think I’ve got probably a pretty quick one on the top of our head. Like we said, we work for a new builder that’s about three years old and new construction. So for context, our boss mainly operated in fix and flips and buying and holding land and rentals. So getting into new construction during the time that we’re in was not the easiest by far. The biggest thing that we’ve come across was probably a couple months ago, Sage and I broke into a new market and we’ve locked upprobably 25 lots within a week. And we were really excited. We put our marketing towards it. We were pushing everyone that we knew to go towards there. And we found out halfway through that the county was gonna have permitting and impact fees that would make it basically unfeasible to do anything but two lots out of 20 that we locked up within a week. And instead of panicking, instead of getting upset and getting mad at our underwriter or him getting mad at the county, we were honest with ourselves.
hey we jumped into this early, let’s build what we can, what makes sense, let’s pivot back into what we know. You know the biggest challenge that we’ve overcome getting into a new market too early was understanding that we want to set up our wholesalers and our investors for the best and that makes sure that we’re really aligned in what we want to do here. Yeah I would say another time where things really got real is you know probably a couple months back we were told we needed to buy
Basically triple the amount of lots that we were originally thinking we needed to buy so we had to figure out as many ways as possible to You know get lots and source deals and then obviously we’re doing all the wholesaler stuff now working with people going that absolute extra mile to You really teach people how to do it so we can have even more You know people working with us and being easy to work with but I would say that that’s a moment. They got really real fast
us and we knew like you know we’re working hard now but we’re gonna have to work twice as hard. I sleeping in office two nights a week and it was wonderful. So it’s definitely that was one of the times where it was like okay like we need to figure this out and we to figure out right now.
Olivia (11:49)
So it’s back to that accountability, right? Just taking full accountability for what needs to happen. And I love what you shared, Hayden. You guys are really just there for each other. You’re holding each other accountable. you’re being honest with yourselves. So yeah, the accountability, it’s real with you guys. That’s awesome.Sage And Hayden (12:12)
It’s absolutelymassive, yeah.
Olivia (12:14)
Not trying to sugarcoat anything, right? so let me ask you this. What are you most focused on solving or scaling next? And what is the next real goal for you?Sage And Hayden (12:25)
I would say the next thing that I’m really focusing on is figuring out developments better. We have one development going on that’s 30 homes and like I just mentioned before, we about to go under, or we just went under contract on a development that’s going to look like it’s 50 to 60 homes. So figuring out developments in the best way possible would be one of the things that I want to heavily focus on and also, you know, along with⁓ Another thing that we are focusing on heavily is just working with wholesalers and being you know, very very user-friendly to work with I would say that’s a huge thing for us We want to be top of mind and all these wholesalers minds when they get a deal and it’s land They’re sending it to us and the way to do that is just to give out as much free value as possible So they want to work with us and that’s really what we’re here to do. Yeah, I mean he he said
to a T. You know, in this quarter, the first quarter of 2026, Sage and I are making sure that anyone that wants to wholesale land out of Florida and the coming markets gets connected with us and understands not only how we do things, but how to make a profitable business for themselves. know, Sage and I did not come into this career after going to college and having four to eight years of fun. You know, we took the risk and straight out of high school decided that this is what made the most sense for us. ⁓
And once we nail that done this quarter, which hopefully with this podcast and a few more we’ve got under our belt will be done. We’re going to take all those wholesalers, arm them with the tools and equipment that we’re learning this quarter to buy all the developments as possible going into the rest of the year in 2027.
Olivia (14:53)
that’s big, especially when you’ve already got so many other accounts in place. So it sounds like that next move can either compound things or create chaos depending on how you play it.Sage And Hayden (15:06)
actually depending on the team. There’s always opportunity and chaos so we’ll figure it out one way or the other.Olivia (15:11)
You guys are the best. So now I know a lot of people listening are either earlier in their journey or looking to level up. And I think that benefit hearing from this. When it comes to building relationships and growing your network, what makes the biggest difference for you?Sage And Hayden (15:28)
You know, I would love to take this one talking about like what makes a different You know the biggest difference between connections and networks We actually talked about at this meeting in our development meeting our icebreaker was you know what? character trait was the most important and a friend and Sage and I actually were trying to figure out what was better between integrity and loyalty But if we had to sum it up those with two, right? You want someone whether it’s your buyer your builder like us or your wholesalerYou want someone that’s in your corner and is fighting to see you succeed. And in order to set that up, they need to believe in you and your vision. You we wouldn’t have the probably 190 texts from new wholesalers we got in the last couple of weeks from being a builder that cuts out short or underwrites people without them being involved in the deal. You know, that’s not how you build relationships. By being honest, being yourself and making it clear what goals you want and aligning yourself with people like Sage, like
the whole sales we work with that have the same vision. That’s the key to making success and making a business that you want to keep operating in. Like Sage said, we genuinely hang out probably five times a week. You if we weren’t working together, we’d be playing poker, grabbing beers, you know, just shooting the stuff about whatever made sense. And because him and I are that close, I get to be honest with him about his deals. And he gets to be honest with me about, Hayden, you know, this is your second weekend when we’re in
on a Saturday and you’re not. And you know, I get to take that and understand it’s coming from a real place and I get to follow suit and say, Hey, you know what? I’ll spend the night the next four nights. We’ll make sure that we get this done. And as far as if, if you are a person who is new and really wanting to get started, I would say that the number one thing you can do is just instant action. Don’t wait because the worst thing that you can do is inaction. Action is almost
always better than in action. I would say, you know, go to all your local networking events around town, talk to people who know what they’re talking about. Go on YouTube. You need to, you know, look at as many YouTube videos as you can on whatever you want to learn. Try and get educated. Immediately start making phone calls. I don’t care if you’re terrible on the phone. You can randomly find somebody who, you know, is really hurting for money and they want to sell you their property and then, you you can come to me and I can get
paid. So it’s not that hard. People always, always hold their self back by just not taking that first step and that first step is what really propels all the successful people these days. So that’s what would say.
Olivia (18:09)
Great, a lot of great advice, thank you. And yeah, you really can’t fake that integrity and honesty that you first touched upon. I think maybe might try, but it’s gonna come out sooner or later, Yeah, and what a great friendship you guys have. Relationships are everything in this space. You can really tell that you guys have been friends for a while now.Sage And Hayden (18:21)
It’s gonna work. You’ll find out one way or the other.My best buddy right here.
Olivia (18:36)
Alright, so before we wrap up, if someone wanted to reach out, connect with you, maybe collaborate or learn about what you’re doing, what’s the best way for them to reach you?Sage And Hayden (18:47)
This is the most important one. can’t mess it up. If you have a deal or you want to what it looks like to create one, you reach out to [email protected]. And it’s going to be in the description. This is our shared email that anything we get sent across, we will review it and we’ll probably reach out to you with our personal cells or our personal emails. That’s the number one way that you could send something through. If you forget that for some reason withWithout doubt, you pull up Flight Builders, our official website. You can have a system where you can call through or you can send an email with your description about what you’re looking for and how you could use our help. We’ll make sure that we get back to you as soon as possible.
Along with that, we are going to be creating a school platform. This video will be on our channel as well. So we’re going to have the school in there and then also a lot of videos to be able to help you out if you have no idea what you’re doing, we’ll teach you. So just reach out to us via that email from there. If you’re a real person, we’ll probably hop on a phone call with you, answer any questions you might have and make sure that you’re getting paid.
Olivia (19:59)
Great, so would you mind repeating the email for our listeners? It’s Sage and Hayden. It’s spelled S-A-G-E and Hayden is H-A-Y-D-E-N.Sage And Hayden (20:04)
Yeah.See you.
Exactly,
s-a-g-e and h-a-y-d-e-n 2828 at gmail.com.
Olivia (20:17)
Perfect. All right, now we know how to get in contact with you. Well, listen, I really appreciate both of your time, your story, your perspective. We definitely need more people in this space who doing it the right way. Thanks again for being here. And for those of you tuning in, if you got value from this, make sure you’re subscribed. We’ve got more conversations coming with operators, just like Sage and Hayden from Flight Builders, who are out there building real businesses.and we’ll see you on the next episode. Thank you.
Sage And Hayden (20:47)
Yeah, subscribeand call me if you want money. Thank you again, Olivia.
Olivia (20:51)
Thank you.
