How Jarrod Frankum Built a Real Estate Business From Scratch and Runs It Remotely From Brazil

Jarrod Frankum (00:00)
I could, I see the value of giving this to other counties, other people, because I know other people would want it. I just built it because I knew I needed to get a ⁓ lead source and that wasn’t waiting on inaccurate info that’s six months old. mean, a of these people’s problems get solved before then or something else happens or they lose the house, whatever. And so I built that truly to solve the problem in my business.

Cody Crabb (01:58)
Welcome back to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m Cody Crabb with Investor Fuel. Today I’m joined by Jarrod Frankum out of Lubbock, Texas, owner of Electrum Properties and a multi-strategy investor running wholesale fix and flip, buy and hold, and creative deals all under one roof.

He’s in that transition from doing everything himself to actually building a business that can scale. And we’re gonna get into what that shift actually looks like and what it kind of takes to grow in a tougher market like today. So Jarrod, thanks so much for joining us today.

Jarrod Frankum (02:20)
Thank you.

Cody, I appreciate you having me on.

Cody Crabb (02:28)
⁓ So to get started, I’d love to hear how you came to this point. How did you get started in real estate and what brought you here?

Jarrod Frankum (02:37)
Yes, so I started in real estate 2019 7 March 2019 seven years ago my goodness, and that was after spending several years wanting to get into it reading books finding stuff to listen to of course I stumbled on rich dad poor dad and that That book right there is what I remember it broke my brain chemistry, and I stood up with Goosebumps on both arms realize this engineering job I have

Not where I want to be and I was had it six months left to college anyway ⁓ So I knew I wanted to get in real estate finally had the the opportunities or I that’s not wrong I Took advantage of the opportunity because we all had the opportunity. We don’t need to be more I I was doing campus ministry in 2018 in Brazil and I had moved back to America and sold everything I

Cody Crabb (03:10)
You

Jarrod Frankum (03:34)
Used my last dollars to come back to America. anyway, just do it. That wasn’t making money in Brazil. But I knew that. That was OK. And I was skateboarding. I had a car, but I had very, very little cash. So I would drive my car into the middle of a neighborhood in Texas, in Lubbock, Texas, and pull my skateboard out of the trunk and ride my skateboard up and down the streets. I kid you not, with my phone.

And I would write down address. I had no clue what I was doing, but I thought maybe I could find some beat up houses. Those probably would sell faster. And that’s, I mean, that really how he did. had no clue. I remember thinking to myself, I have absolutely no idea what’s going to come next, but I at least got to start learning the area, learning what I’m doing, just figured out, right? And then I started, okay.

Cody Crabb (04:07)
Sure.

Well, so let’s pause for second.

Anyone who thinks, anyone that’s listening to this who’s like, I have no idea what I’m doing, I would pretty much guarantee you’re in a slightly better position than that at least. It sounds like you are really just kind of shooting in the dark. I have no idea what to even try. so, clearly that’s not an excuse because if you could start from there, where else can’t you start from?

Jarrod Frankum (04:47)
And this is pre-COVID, right? So pre-hyperinflation, but not that far away. I figured out how to eat on $25 a week. It was rice, chicken, and broccoli. And I would drink water and had oatmeal in the morning. Like, that’s it. Nothing else. I would go buy some paper from Walmart and stamps and envelopes. And I would write, hey, I like your house if you want to sell it.

Cody Crabb (04:51)
Yeah.

Jarrod Frankum (06:01)
Call me or email me and I would just send those off I remember thinking I would have this big stack of two three hundred letters because I had heard other people doing that and I was thinking man that could really Free up some budget room here. I was stressed about a couple hundred letters. I mean, that’s how tight things were and You know 55 cents a piece whatever you can do the math is maybe 150 bucks or whatever worth of mail

And I remember just dropping that in the shoot at the post office thinking man I just threw $150 whatever it was in the shoot here, babe My might as well just lit it on fire But I believe in this business that know it’s gonna work I’ve seen too many other people have success with it because I had heard and seen how people got started they did that they would write letters anyway Sure enough after a couple months of doing that I got someone I was in middle of church and I remember Sunday morning, of course and

I got an email from someone. Hey, yeah, I got your letter this and that I’m ready to sell and I just about blew out of the chair I had to it was hard for me to focus the rest of the time but sure enough the guy sold it he wanted to sell the house and we Long story short we got under contract. I had no clue what I was doing again. I found a contract well And I found someone else who could help me figure out how to write the contract and

Cody Crabb (07:07)
You

Jarrod Frankum (07:27)
They told me what they would pay for it. So I wholesale this deal. I didn’t even know it was called wholesaling I just knew man if I could figure something out I could do this one way or the other not that man if I could make Some money selling contracts. Let’s do that. So I did a few of those Boy, that was really cool. I stumbled into wholesaling by accident, but I always wanted to own. Yeah

Cody Crabb (07:46)
Well, ⁓ I’m curious,

how many letters do you think you ended up writing to get that one that responded?

Jarrod Frankum (07:52)
Man,

used to have, I probably have it somewhere, but I used to have a chart. I may have sent a thousand letters total. Maybe. But it was all, and I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you exactly what I looked for back then. So I know we we call that driving for dollars now, that type of, and this is, I didn’t have any coach, I didn’t have any mentorship. I had just found books and listened to free stuff online, okay?

Cody Crabb (08:02)
Still, that’s a lot.

Jarrod Frankum (08:20)
and there was way less of it then than there is now and Well, here’s what I look for it. There had to be no cars in the driveway. I Just look for houses no cars in the driveway There could not be any sign of electricity like the light was on I didn’t care I just wouldn’t write it down it had to look really banged up like something needed to be wrong like trash or busted window or like the paint falling off or stuff like that and ⁓

Mail like flood now the mailbox kind of thing it would only be those and so I Looking back now. I should have kept some of those other addresses, but it would only be those and I think I’ve mailed them once And if they didn’t respond they didn’t respond and so I just would go through the neighborhoods one at a time and sure enough I think out of my first 500 letters But it was a list of 500 people I think I got three deals out of it which is

insane now by the way like Whenever you script scaling or sending tons more letters try to reach more people you don’t get that good of response rate much less deals But sure enough it worked. Yeah, it worked is awesome

Cody Crabb (09:29)
yeah well I

wonder if that some of that was the personality of it like it was just a person doing that I mean I imagine that’s something to do with it

Jarrod Frankum (09:40)
So yeah, I think so too. And so I didn’t just get a white envelope I got like an either neon like highlighter yellow or a blue letter and I didn’t just go get the American flag stamps You just get by the roll or whatever I went to the post office and got like whatever because they have all these fans They don’t cost anymore the same price, but they got like Hot Wheels stamps or Queen Victoria, whatever mustangs cars I would just get whatever like whatever that looked like that handwritten and throw that on there

Cody Crabb (09:47)
Genius.

Jarrod Frankum (10:44)
It does not look like something you want to throw away. that make sense? Like who? At least!

Cody Crabb (10:47)
Yeah, I’m like, I’m getting

invited to Buckingham Palace from this. or at least a kid’s birthday party with the Hot Wheels stamp.

Jarrod Frankum (10:51)
Something yeah It’s something yeah, why why is

this and then I got tired of writing and so I end up getting a stamp And I got a stamp with my return address, and I put that on the back so that just made it faster to write letters, but I would still handwrite the Address of the the main house and sure enough that worked that worked so well my first my first deal we I made think 9500 no nine thousand nine hundred fifty dollars

Cody Crabb (11:09)
Yeah, wow.

Jarrod Frankum (11:22)
Yeah, no 9550 9550 second deal made 25 grand third deal made $15,000 and this is just my first in like a couple months of business it blew my mind

Cody Crabb (11:35)
Yeah, eating on $25 a week, yeah, that would blow your mind, it? Yeah.

Jarrod Frankum (11:37)
Yes.

mean, yeah. And after doing campus ministry, I was living on $500 a month. So yes, crazy, crazy, right? So grateful. And all I did was listen to stuff like this. Like it was just other people’s real life experience. And I just did what they did.

Cody Crabb (11:52)
No kidding.

Wow, wow, that is maybe one of the more wild starting stories I’ve ever heard on this podcast. And I love it because it just goes to show, like I said, mean, literally everybody is in probably that position or better that’s listening to this. So like you’ve already got it. So okay, now let’s just kind of fast forward. So where are you now? Give me a snapshot of your business now and what it looks like.

Jarrod Frankum (12:26)
Well, funny enough, so even the whole reason why I’m changing from being a solopreneur into having a team, I’m back in Brazil right now. So long story short, my wife is Brazilian. I’ve been trying for years to bring her to America legally and we have not had success. So I ultimately moved back to Brazil. Can’t believe it. Married her and I thought this was going to be an eight month thing and it’s now we’re two years in and still no end in sight. However, we’re getting close.

And so just out of pure necessity, I’m having to run my business truthfully virtually. I mean, I’m just like 5,000 7,000 miles away from home. Different time zones, OK? And I have to do it. And so I realized, OK, I don’t even want to be LeBron James, so to speak. I want to own the Lakers. I want to build a team. I want to have other people who share the same core values, who can be blessed by this business, because it served me so well.

So that’s where we are now. So now my wife actually is doing transaction coordination. She’s a nurse by trade, but just out of interest and whatever, she’s coming on board and doing that and not even doing nursing. She’s just enjoying doing transaction coordinating and learning about what we’re doing. And then I’ve got ⁓ boots on the ground. I’ve got someone doing acquisitions with me in Lubbock. And we’re growing. And now we even see what’s our path. What do we want to do? What have our

One, what are our goals? Where do we want to be? And then two, what are the actual steps that we have to do to get there? How many offers do we have to make? How many people do we to contact? How many all that? And so it’s really cool as knowing all of those things, we can really see how a business will grow rather than I just need to make more money. I need to find another deal. I need that, So that’s really where we are is growing from just I know I can close. can talk to sellers. I figured that out.

teaching someone that, giving them the ability to go do that and depend on them without me having to hover over them like a hawk. That was the hard part for me, is to really let that go.

Cody Crabb (14:29)
Because you literally can’t.

You’re a hawk that lives in Brazil. I mean, that’s not gonna happen. they have to be completely reliable like that. that’s, even if you wanted to micromanage, you’re not gonna be able to do that. Wow. Okay, well, I’m always, I’m just like, there’s so many things I could ask right now. So, okay, being that far away, what is the first, what’s the first kind of thing that you noticed like, oh, this is like the first moment where you’re like, we need to get a team together.

Jarrod Frankum (14:33)
Right! Yes!

Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Cody Crabb (14:57)
Like what was the first thing that started to go south?

Jarrod Frankum (15:41)
Well, several things started changing. course, COVID, once it all slowed way down, cold calling changed a lot. Cold texting changed even more so. And that was really where I got so many of leads from. And ⁓ I had gotten so many referrals. And I’d gotten comfortable. But when I moved here, back to Brazil, I just wasn’t getting the same amount of referral volume, I guess, because I wasn’t going to the RIA meetings and stuff like I was before.

because I can’t. And so I realized, OK, we need to turn the gas back on and really start marketing. And man, I used to show up to the appointments and meet sellers face to face. I can’t do that. So there were so many things that happened all at one time. And I moved back to Brazil May of 2024. May of 2024. And I still go back. So I go back once a quarter or so. Go check on things.

and meet people and go look at my rental houses and just make sure life is good because… No!

Cody Crabb (16:42)
That’s still not very often.

You say that ⁓ is a precarious situation for someone that doesn’t have a good team. One question I guess I would ask is what was the first kind of role you had to replace and how did you find someone for that?

Jarrod Frankum (16:59)
I tried hiring VA cold callers and I didn’t have much success because I didn’t train them. ⁓ so we kind of shut down cold calling and I went to digital advertising, long story short. So the thing I realized is if I want to build a business, I need to bring someone on in acquisitions and training. So that’s really what happened first was I brought on my guy who’s doing acquisitions and I’m working with them and showing them creative.

deals, how to make creative offers and how to negotiate. And even when sellers say no, that doesn’t actually mean no all the time. just a confused mind will always say. So anyway, training all of that, that’s really where the focus is. And then now what’s really cool with what I’m working, that’s freed me up to work on. I just finished building a tool that it’s an AI, it’s an AI based platform that sucks in all of the county data.

As it gets posted so it’s not you don’t have to wait six months for whatever data provider to get it Like prop stream or deal machine or whatever these services are and send it to you. It pulls it straight from there I get a report daily and so that’s what i’ve been working on and in fact, I just got launched Yes, or this this morning? Finished it last night got it launched this morning and sure enough it pulls records and so now we’re able to fire that off so Our whole marketing is changing but it’s because of it and I couldn’t have been able to work on that

if it wasn’t for giving the acquisition role who’s doing the follow-up calls and all that to someone else. And so I realized it’s not about I have to keep all of the deal and keep it tight. No, if I want to grow, I need to enable others to serve and fulfill their part and build something bigger than any one of us.

Cody Crabb (18:45)
Yeah, mean, ⁓ having a team is one of those things. there’s only, like I was saying, there’s only so much of you. There’s only so many hours in a day. There’s only so much you can do. And ⁓ I think it’s, as soon as you start realizing, like, only I can do this, that’s a problem. ⁓ And then, like you said, getting, recognizing kind of where those roles are first. I mean, that’s huge. That’s huge.

Jarrod Frankum (18:54)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Cody Crabb (19:11)
What you’re seeing in the market I mean you probably have a little bit of a different view of being kind of cool kind of from the outside looking in a little bit ⁓ So I mean I’d love to hear your thoughts on kind of what you’re seeing in your market and kind of and also you said you’ve mentioned Expanding markets, so I’d love to know what you’re what you’re wanting to do there

Jarrod Frankum (19:26)
Mm-hmm.

Yes, Lubbock, Texas is pretty small, like 300,000 people. And that’s the whole metro area. So even like all the small cotton towns all near around. So pretty small. ⁓ Last year, and you asked about the market. Interestingly enough, even though 20, 25, 24 and 25 was rough for most of us investors who were used to that COVID era boom. I know a lot of people who really lost their shirts and

and or Lost a lot of revenue 2025 actually was our peak our highest grossing year And it’s just because we started hustling harder and getting very serious and dialed in about what it is that we want to do Amidst a number of challenges, however Even though so that happened even though across the board deals are sitting or houses are sitting on the market much longer They’re not selling at top dollar stuff is going down in price

Lot of my buyers list no longer buys a lot of my rentals that I have are harder to get rented however, the key is Understanding that and we have to just match our our offer price ultimately To make all of that work. It makes me grateful that I didn’t over refi before during the boom over refinance a pull a bunch of the cash back out and Leave a lot of these properties too thin as far as margin

So I think really getting deep in the sales and negotiating on price, and not just because we want to chop the price at the seller’s feet or whatever, but because this is what the market will bear. And where we were used to before offering much higher because there was less risk, now we’re really happy to get deep. So I’m really excited because we’re learning how to really get

good at figuring out where the true best price is. So that way when a boom does happen again, boy, we’re going to be ready. And this is very exciting. So I think right now is a phenomenal time to get into this. that COVID peak, there were so many investors. I mean, it felt like, I don’t know if you were in the space at the time, but there were so many investors.

And it felt like everyone and their mom was getting into wholesaling or flipping or something. I want to say it was like 92,000 that was counted by someone somewhere. Now it’s like 12,000 real estate investors who are. So sure, deals are fewer and further between, so to speak. But there’s so much less competition. And there’s ton of opportunity right now, especially because homeowners also, builders aren’t able to sell their houses

A lot of people are falling behind on mortgages or they’re having to sell. And here’s what’s happened is ⁓ short sale opportunities are getting a lot higher because values have creeped down a little bit. And so when people that bought their house in 2023 or 24 don’t have any equity and they have to sell or they’re out and they can’t refinance, they can’t sell, they have to bring a ton of money to the table. And so they’re stuck and short sales are happening. So we’re saving people from foreclosure. I’m sure it’s still short sale.

But that’s a lot better than them losing their house, totally. ⁓ So anyway, it’s just.

Cody Crabb (22:51)
Yeah, I mean that’s like a win-win

right there. No one loses in that situation.

Jarrod Frankum (22:56)
Right, right. And so it’s just we’re learning that how to play the game of where the market is real. It’s always gone up and down. We all know that it’s not fun while it’s down technically. But when you learn how to play with the cards you’re dealt, you can still enjoy the game. So

Cody Crabb (23:14)
That’s a good life lesson and a good real estate lesson. ⁓ all right, so as far as like, ⁓ you’ve given me a lot of really interesting things to talk about here. One question I have is, you’ve built this kind of lead machine with all the AI and the fancy stuff. Is that like something you’re trying to like make a product or is that something you just built for you? I mean, that sounds pretty amazing.

Jarrod Frankum (23:29)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

I could, I see the value of giving this to other counties, other people, because I know other people would want it. I just built it because I knew I needed to get a ⁓ lead source and that wasn’t waiting on inaccurate info that’s six months old. mean, a of these people’s problems get solved before then or something else happens or they lose the house, whatever. And so I built that truly to solve the problem in my business.

But how much power I’m seeing out of it now.

Maybe I should. don’t know. didn’t intend to start a software product here, but man, maybe it should.

Cody Crabb (24:13)
Yeah, just send me a little thank you card if you end up making billions off of that. Yeah, thanks. ⁓ Nope, but really though, I think ⁓ I’m just thinking of all the people that are gonna be like, how do I get access to that? Like listening to this episode, like I need.

Jarrod Frankum (24:18)
Okay. ⁓

Dude, it’s freaking sweet. I’m about to

hook up the MLS to it, and so it’ll pull all on-market stuff that’s 60, 90, 120 days plus. It’ll pull ⁓ records that say, like, motivated or as-is or whatever. And so all that will pop up in the dashboard at the moment it gets listed. Yeah.

Cody Crabb (24:47)
Yeah, that sounds like a dream. I think, I mean, that just goes to show that I think playing with the hand you’re dealt is probably the theme of this episode, as you just said, because you’re like, well, I’m moving to Brazil. A lot of people would have been like, guess I can’t be a real estate investor because I live in Brazil. But you’re like, nope, we’ll figure it out. And then you’re like, oh, the market’s not doing so hot. Let’s find a way to capitalize on it. And I think that should speak to a lot of people that are kind of getting into this or are of early in the process because, I mean,

it’s never gonna be perfect time to start. It’s never gonna be a perfect time to do anything. And so, like you said, just do your best with the hand you’re dealt and that’s all anyone can do. Do a little bit of homework and see where it goes. My favorite part of your story is for sure, I don’t know, just write down addresses of crappy houses. I love the idea that you’re just like, all right, I’ll try it. And anybody could do that.

⁓ Thank you so much for sharing all of this stuff If people want to get in touch with you if they want if they’ve got a referral for you that you want to get in touch Somehow with you. How can they do that? Where can they find you online?

Jarrod Frankum (25:57)
Yeah, find me on Facebook and Instagram. I’m there all the time. ⁓ Jarrod Frankum is my username on both.

Cody Crabb (26:04)
Awesome. Cool, yeah, we’ll link that in the show notes there. But yeah, thank you, thank you so much for this. ⁓ And audience, thank you for joining us as well. If you got something out of this, and I’m sure you did, because I sure did, please go ahead and like, subscribe, follow, do all the things so you don’t miss another awesome episode with someone like Jarrod. Jarrod, thank you so much. This has been fantastic. And yeah, we’ll see you next time.

Jarrod Frankum (26:23)
Of course, thanks Cody, very cool.