Prayer Before Profit: How a Faith-Driven Real Estate Investor Built a Seller-First Business

James Tebelman (00:00)
And so that’s been one of our superpowers as a business, and it’s not a manipulative thing, it’s just we care about people and that shows. And there are plenty of times where people have a higher offer and they go with us.

because they just feel like, I know these people will take care of me, they’re not going to take advantage of me. And we have so many cases where, you know, we’ve made less money on a deal because it was important to us to make sure the seller was taken care of.

Quentin (01:55)
Hello everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I am your host Q Edmonds. And you know, I say a lot, I’m excited to be here. And I say it, if you ever don’t hear me say it, that’ll give you a little clue that I’m really not excited. But I think most podcasts y’all hear me say I’m excited because it’s a privilege and an honor to be able to meet new people and to see things from their perspective. Y’all sure have heard me say that before.

And this gentleman, some of the things that he shared about him and what his partner is doing and the way they are doing things has really struck a chord with me. Just going back from my roots, how I was raised, me and my family, the things that we was involved in and the way that they are stewarding their business, it just really, really hits my heart. So I’m super excited for you guys to get to know and hear from Mr. James Tebelman. Mr. James, how you doing today, sir?

James Tebelman (02:52)
I’m doing great Q, really appreciate you having me on, excited to chat with you.

Quentin (02:55)
Absolutely, man. I’m so glad you’re here, sir. And listen, I am a type, I like to dive in. As we say in church, I want to decrease. So, so that you can increase just for, you know, for the stage that we on, you know what I mean? So, ⁓ yeah, absolutely. So, man, I would love for you to tell the people what your main focus is these days. A little bit of an origin story, kind of how you got to where you are. We love the hero’s journey. We love to see

James Tebelman (03:04)
Hahaha

Yep, let’s do it.

Quentin (03:24)
kind of how things master rated. So, and it also meant, you know, I’m not telling them what part of the world you’re in because it’s always like, want to know geographic, like, ⁓ this person right next door. Maybe I can connect with them. So what you’re doing, origin story and where you are. Mr. James, sir, you have the floor.

James Tebelman (03:41)
Thanks Q. Yeah, excited to share a little bit about our story. So beginning of 2020, my business partner and I started a wholesaling business and ⁓ that was an interesting year to start a new business ⁓ because some things happened a few months in. But ⁓ but it was it was really cool. So my one of my really good friends, I’ve known him for, you 20 plus years. He came to me. We had planted a church together and done a lot of cool ministry things. He’s he’s a full time pastor. And he came to me and said, hey, I got inspired by one of my mentors and said,

I want to start a part-time real estate business to replace my income so that way I can just work for the church for free and not have to take a salary. And I was actually personally just jumping into full-time real estate. And I said, okay, cool. That sounds great. Let’s do it. We’ll start it small and we’ll just build it and see where God leads us with it. And sure enough, year after year, we’ve grown it. And by the third year, he was able to go off salary at the church. ⁓

Yeah, it’s just been a huge blessing. along the way that one of the coolest things about it is ⁓ any of you who, know, wholesale or deals off market deals, ⁓ you know, you meet people going through a lot of rough stuff, man, you the house is rough, or they just got a rough situation. And so we’ve really been able to step into that and ⁓ pray for a ton of people and, you know, you know, lead people to Christ and, ⁓ and really disciple them.

Quentin (05:00)
Mm.

James Tebelman (05:50)
And so, you know, my business partner loves it because you know, he’s a

Quentin (05:49)
Mm.

James Tebelman (05:53)
He’s a full-time pastor and he’s like, a lot of days like my work as a pastor and my work in real estate ⁓ doesn’t look that different, you know? It’s just kind of a continuation of kind of where our hearts are at. And so, you know, we feel like that’s been a differentiator for us. We’re in San Diego County. So I grew up in ⁓ Vista, which is in Northern San Diego County. live in Oceanside. so Southern California, San Diego County is our sweet spot. And ⁓ we really just been focused here and it’s been cool to see.

as we started with wholesale deals, ⁓ we started trying to do novations before we knew what a novation even was. We kind of stumbled into it. We just kind of said, hey, like what if we could get a retail buyer ⁓ to buy our wholesale deals? We can make a lot more money. ⁓ And ⁓ so we started trying to just kind of search and if we happen through our network to know a buyer, we were trying to plug them in and through Facebook and things like that.

Quentin (06:29)
I’m out of

Mmm. Mmm.

James Tebelman (06:47)
We did a couple of deals like that and then eventually, it wasn’t until a couple of years later, we learned how to do like, Novations the right way, ⁓ where we can actually ⁓ list them on the MLS and get full exposure and have a lot more predictability. ⁓ so majority of what we do now is Novations and it’s been a sweet spot for us and it’s helped us to continue to grow this business and ⁓ we’re just excited, thankful and excited for the opportunity that God’s presented us with and we’re gonna…

Quentin (06:54)
Yeah.

James Tebelman (07:12)
continue on this journey and just try to, I love the word you used of being good stewards. So, you we take that seriously. so actually three days a week, me and my business partner, we start the day at 6.45 and we get on a call and we just pray over our business. We pray for people that we’ve come in contact with, because we always ask them, hey, is there anything we can pray for you for? So we get together, we pray for them. We pray over the deals we’ve got going on that God would give the people peace that are going through it, give us wisdom to.

Quentin (07:27)
Mmm.

James Tebelman (07:39)
get the deal done for them to help them to move on. And we just pray over all the leads that we’re talking with. And we started that four months into our business, April of 2020. We said, I think we need to start doing this. And we haven’t stopped. And I have no way to know for sure that that’s a reason why we’ve been successful. But we’re sure not going to stop. ⁓ We love just covering our business in prayer and just saying, God, this is yours. And give us wisdom to do with it what you will.

Quentin (08:07)
I love it. And you know, I’ve said at the top of the show, I said it to you behind, you know, on the back end. Man, I just, love the way you guys are doing business. And I think this is first time I’ve ever said this on air, but I love how you said 645, you get up and pray over the business. Every podcast, I pray, I pray, say, you you got the conversation because

I think you probably know this scripture, probably can identify with this scripture, is that the scripture says, we make our plans, but he orders our steps. And so we make the plan. And so my plan, yeah, okay, I got James on a schedule today. I’m going to do a podcast with him, but yeah, that’s the plan, but I need you to order my steps. How are you and James and I supposed to interact? And so I stand with you, that’s something that I do. And James, man, I’m gonna love asking you this question.

James Tebelman (08:40)
Amen.

Quentin (09:00)
Cause I say probably once every podcast, and this is just for me to kind of dig deeper into the person. say that destiny has no wasted moments, right? No meaning what we go do in life for us, we say all things work together, right? But

It’s like at each moment it builds on the next and it kind of makes us who we are. And if it didn’t break us, may have bent us, but it didn’t break us. The trial came to make us strong. Like we’re here and we’re here because of these moments. And so when I listen about y’all starting in 2020, of course that’s just a, time that I mean, what a time to start a new business, right? It’s what in 2020, but how you’ve been able to help people. may be to pray for people, disciple people, started wholesaling.

But then you know, did innovations before you knew what innovations was, but now you really know what innovations is, so you’re doing innovations. So man, so Destiny, of course, had no wasted moments. I would love to know, James, what have these moments taught you about yourself? Like what has it revealed to you? Has it revealed discipline, being humble? Like what has these moments taught you about you, James?

James Tebelman (10:44)
I think one of the biggest things is ⁓ anybody who’s gone through real estate transaction realizes how not in control we are. And so, you know, it’s like you’re trying to hurt all the cats and you you’ve got your buyer and your seller and title and escrow and inspections and everything’s flying everywhere. And you’re doing your best to herd the cats and get everything to the finish line. But like, you don’t actually have control of any of that. And so, you know, that’s, mean, like I talked about, we come back to prayer all the time because it’s like,

Quentin (10:52)
Yeah.

James Tebelman (11:13)
God, help us have wisdom to do what we have control over and then let’s trust you with the rest. And ⁓ that’s a tough lesson to learn. ⁓ But you go through enough deals, you realize, okay, like I need to stop trying to force things. I need to stop trying to make my will be done. Let’s let the Lord’s will be done. And sometimes we’ve learned, we’ve had some really tough deals where we realize, hey, that was a learning lesson for us. Actually, it’s…

It’s interesting because just last month, we closed our first deal that we lost money on. We had an ovation that didn’t go well. We had probate issues. had all kinds of it. I won’t get into all the details, but it was the first one where we like really lost money. We lost like 10 grand on the deal. And on one hand, it was kind of like, well, you know, this is our seventh year in the business. It’s kind of we feel good that it took us this long, you know, like to lose to really lose money on a deal. But

Quentin (11:45)
Wow.

Easy.

James Tebelman (12:07)
We look at that and we say, we definitely learned stuff, even in the product. We’ve had many other opportunities come up since we started that deal, because that deal took like a year. Since we started it, we’ve had many other opportunities come up and we look at it and we had some lessons learned from that and we talk about it, we say, you know what? This one looks kind of like Albatross. That was the name of the street. This one kind of feels like Albatross. I think we should stay away from this one. And so, you know, that’s how it works. know, God talks so much about how, you know, trials are what develop character and perseverance.

Quentin (12:24)
Yeah. Yeah.

James Tebelman (12:37)
And it’s the same in the business. at the same time, we’ve had some easy deals where we make a ton of money, and we need those too. But ⁓ to your point of not letting anything be wasted, we try to learn as we go and keep growing personally and in the business. And we like to believe we’re getting a little better every year, getting with more experience and just more tools in our tool belt.

Quentin (12:43)
Yes, sir.

Yeah, yeah, no, I love it. And I wrote down the word arbitrage because it’s like, because that is a signal now, right? And it’s funny because like in our doctrine, you know, the Israelites in time past, they would set markers to remind them what happened here. Right. Sometimes, you know, they put an altar, sometimes they would put a stone, sometimes they would put a marking on a staff just to remind, OK, this is what happened here. So arbitrage is a reminder.

This is what happened here. And I love how you you say track and say it took us seven years, but yet it happened and you want to learn from it. And there’s a way to look back and still give honor to God. Like, Hey, we went through that and we overcame it. So God, I’m grateful for the lesson that was learned. And so I wrote down arbitrage says that’s your Martha. Like, yeah, mine is an arbitrage, but I want to do this again. So what can we learn? What can we do different? And so, yeah, I love that. I absolutely love that. I love that freedom.

James Tebelman (13:44)
Yeah

Yeah, definitely.

Quentin (13:55)
Fast Solutions. I would love to know if there is, is there a story behind the name Freedom Fast Solutions? How did the name come to be if there’s a story behind it?

James Tebelman (14:07)
Yeah, there is. Me and my business partner, before we even started the business, we said, OK, well, what are we going to name it? Everybody wants to have some sharp, pithy name that resonates with everybody. And we just sat there. And we didn’t have like chat GPT back then to just be like, hey, give me 75 options. ⁓ And so ⁓ we’re just sitting there pen and paper at the church in the prayer room, just brainstorming, just throwing ideas out. And actually, I forget we had one.

Quentin (14:14)
Yeah. ⁓

James Tebelman (14:35)
we had a different one that we actually made an email for it and then shortly after that we said, no, it’s not it. And then we kind of really zeroed in, okay, well, what do we want to communicate? And so, you know, at the time we were planning to wholesale, so fast was an important piece. We want people to know that we can move fast. It’s kind of ironic that we’re doing innovations now which are slower, but you know, we give people the option, right? Like they can go fast if they want, we’re all about options now. And…

And we really said, well, solutions has to be in there because we don’t want to just be an investor. We want to be, hey, we want to listen to your situation and say, what are your options? We lay out all the options for people. You know, we say, hey, if you want the most money, invest in some updates and list it with the realtor. If you want, if most money is important to you, go do that. Like don’t work with us. We tell people that all the time because it’s the truth. And if we don’t tell them that we’re being disingenuous. And we say, but.

But if you want speed and convenience, we have some options for you. have the wholesale option, where we can close really fast, and you don’t have to do anything, and you have the money quick, but that’s going to be the lowest option. And we have the Novation offer, which we call our resident investor offer, because nobody knows what Novation is, at least when we’re talking to sellers. And we say, if you have some flexibility with the time frame, some flexibility with us being able to show the property, we even go in on a lot of those cases and do a little bit of renovation work.

to make it more marketable, which helps it sell quicker. And so we lay out all the options for them. So we say, we want to be a solutions company. And then freedom really just resonated with us of like, you know, we’re coming to these people, we have a ministry mindset of how do we help people? I mean, we can give them freedom from, you know, from this house, that’s a problem for them. But Q, you know, we offer a freedom in Jesus Christ that’s way more powerful. And so, you know, we…

Quentin (17:05)
Okay.

James Tebelman (17:08)
that we wanted that to be as part of our name as well. Freedom Fast Solutions, when we kind of bounced different names, we that’s the one and we’ve stuck with it and we’re really proud of it because, ⁓ you know, so many people feel trapped and they don’t feel freedom and we want to help people, know, God wants to give them freedom and at least more than they’re experiencing right now and we can help them show them steps in a way to get there.

Quentin (17:32)
I love it. I think it’s interesting James, because even if I talk to people and their faith is not that forward talking as we talk, it’s still, it’s just some principles there that are just a glaring of why the business is successful. And so when I talk to people, if we’re talking about faith, we’re just talking about business and they come in with a servant’s heart.

James Tebelman (17:43)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Quentin (17:57)
I always tell them, I said, believe at the foundation of any successful business. I was about to say ministry, I said successful business is servitude. even like, again, if they’re not leading with their faith, I can still tell that that is a foundation principle that we know is in scripture, but it it repeats itself over and over, no matter what generation, what decade, if you’re serving people.

James Tebelman (18:03)
Yeah, yeah.

Yep.

Quentin (18:25)
you’re going to be successful because you’re going to reap what you sow. If you sow it, you’re going to reap it. And I’ll drop this proverb. I won’t say it’s proverb. Sometimes I do, but it’s Proverbs 11 25, I believe. If you refresh others, you in return will be refreshed. So if you are refreshing people, you can’t help but be successful and be refreshed. It’s just a kingdom code that if you put it in the plate, it has to work.

James Tebelman (18:29)
Amen.

Absolutely.

Quentin (18:53)
And so that’s why I said, I love having you here. I love when we can talk about our faith freely. Because I believe there are just so many, more I study, the more there’s so many business tools and scripture, man, that we can build on and be successful with. So yeah, man, I love it, man. ⁓ So what’s the next goal with FreedomFast Solution? What are you guys looking to solve with Scale Next?

James Tebelman (19:08)
Absolutely.

Yeah, so I mean, by the grace of God, we’ve steadily grown this business. ⁓ so we have one full-time employee right now, and he’s our lead manager. Actually, it’s funny, my business partner’s name is Jim. My name’s James. The lead manager we hired happened to be named James. And ⁓ he’s also a pastor, so we all have that same heart. But on our website, and our whole thing is meet the Jameses. Like, here’s our team. And so it’s fun because of that.

Quentin (19:25)
Bye.

James Tebelman (19:41)
Some of the people we work with, they’re like, hey, am I talking to James number one, two or three? Like, which one is it right now? ⁓ So we have fun with that. we want to continue to grow, but we want to do it very strategically. We’ve always said, it’s not our goal to 10x every year, ⁓ but we want to just be faithful stewards of what God’s given us. And if we can continue to grow that, develop better systems, delegate better, get people plugged into what we’re doing.

Quentin (19:46)
Yeah, yeah.

James Tebelman (20:09)
to really go deeper in San Diego County and Southern California like we’ve talked about. We want to do that. so now interestingly with AI and everything going on, we want to also leverage technology better. So that’s a big piece of it as well of, I think we can scale this business without having a huge head count. And so that’s one of the things we’re really focused on right now of, when we talk about stewardship and I love talking about like financial stewardship,

It’s more than that. When we think about stewardship, I always think about it, it’s your time, your talent, and your treasure. How do we steward those? More recently, I heard Ryan Pineda talking about, he says, one of the things we need to steward well is technology. Because that’s just a huge thing at our disposal. And why wouldn’t God want us to use that to expand our reach, expand our voice, expand how we make disciples in the world? And so we’re having a much bigger focus on that this year because

We don’t want to get left in the dust. ⁓ We want to make sure we’re good stewards of that as well.

Quentin (21:13)
Yeah. So when we get off camera, I’m going come back to this. think what I want to bring up, it may be a little bit too much for the people on camera, but you love it. I’m going come back to this and I’m going tell you something. I’m on a back end man, once we say goodbye to each other. I’m going to love asking you this next question because I’m going love just hearing just your organic perspective. I always like to end probably with the last question about the word relationship.

James Tebelman (21:22)
Alright.

Quentin (21:41)
because I believe relationships are important, but I want to hear your philosophy on relationship building. And when I say that, I just want to hear your answer on a broad term ⁓ or a smaller term. Like if you want to talk about business relationships, relationships with your clients, relationship with people, I would just love to hear James, your perspective when it comes to the word relationship.

James Tebelman (22:08)
Man, that’s a powerful question. Thanks for asking it, Q. I really believe, I’m going to explain this in a way. So I have a math degree. I’m very analytical. I’ve been in meetings before where people are talking about, OK, well, what people are going to get into place for this problem? And I’ve actually said in meetings, I said, you know what? I’m not a people person. Like, I’m a systems person. I’m a strategic person.

And I’ve really been convicted of that as of late, that that’s not the way God views the world. You know? And so that’s been a thing God’s working on my heart of like, no, when you look at scripture and you look at history, what God’s done, it’s always about people. God cares about the relationship. Why does God want us to come to Him every day in prayer? Because He wants the relationship with us. Why does He say, you you’re daily bread, that you should be reading scripture daily? One, it’s because, you know, we get distracted and we just

forget very quickly who God is and who we are, so we need that reminder. But God wants that relationship with us. That’s why God doesn’t just give us all the answers and say, just run away with it. He wants that relationship. So for us, that’s one of the things I love is my business partner, he’s as a pastor, he’s one the most relational people I know.

And so that’s been one of our superpowers as a business, and it’s not a manipulative thing, it’s just we care about people and that shows. And there are plenty of times where people have a higher offer and they go with us.

because they just feel like, I know these people will take care of me, they’re not going to take advantage of me. And we have so many cases where, you know, we’ve made less money on a deal because it was important to us to make sure the seller was taken care of.

And so we take that seriously because we know God takes that seriously. And the more you read scripture, the more clear it is that He just cares about relationships. You know, He wants that relationship with us. you know, Jesus said, you know, I will know how you love me based on how you love one another.

That’s how I’ll know that you love me. And so that’s a huge calling for us, right? You love one another and go and make disciples. Like, think we’re doing pretty well if we do those two things, but we’re also really selfish. So it’s like, it’s this battle, right? Like, ⁓ and so that’s that daily battle and we need the Holy Spirit, we need God’s help. But that’s what we’re trying to do in our business, man, is make sure that relationship is highly valued and we honor God by loving on people.

Quentin (24:17)
Yeah

Whew. So from your mouth, man. So people that been watching me, know I often bring up the term community. And I say, James, say healing happens in community. And I say that based on principles that I see in the word of God. Right. And most of the time I say it in a way that’s digestible for somebody that may not be, you know, Bible heavy. But

James Tebelman (24:49)
Mm-hmm.

Quentin (24:58)
I’ma say it now, I’ma be point blank. There’s scripture. First, we can go to Genesis when God says, it’s not good for man to be alone. So boom, so that we know that, that ain’t good. But then James 5 16, it says, confess your faults one to another so that you can be healed. And so that lets me know that healing happens in community. And even just going on a business perspective, when you surround yourself with community, with common unity, healing happens like,

James Tebelman (25:00)
system.

Absolutely.

Mm-hmm.

Quentin (25:28)
You find that probably your business is going to be more whole because you’re not just leaning on your own understanding. You’re partnering with people that can do things that you can’t do. So it brings healing to your business. Mentally, it’s going to bring healing to you because you can take some of the load off mentally, because you like that. I don’t got to do this part. He has his part. If I’m in trouble, I got a mentor I can talk to or support system. And that’s going to bring financial healing, mental healing.

James Tebelman (25:55)
Yep.

Quentin (25:57)
Heal you physically because

James Tebelman (25:57)
Yep.

Quentin (25:58)
stress, with that hands on the heart. Like I tell people all the time, healing happens in community. So for you to talk about relationship and just to bring it full circle, even from a biblical standpoint, I try to tell people, if we ain’t talking about, we’re just even just on a foundational level, healing happens in community. Relationships are so, so, so important. And so I mean.

James Tebelman (26:03)
Absolutely.

Absolutely

and Q one more thing I’ll add on that is you know I have a business partner we’ve been 50-50 from the beginning and And we’ve said multiple times, and I’m not saying everybody needs to have a business partner There’s there’s pros and cons you know to that, but we’ve both said many times Because there’s a lot of challenges in the last seven years and we said if we weren’t doing this together I’m sure we would have quit by now. You know you you need you need that community You need people that are gonna say no. It’s okay keep going like we’re gonna do this and and

So that can be a business partner or that can be, to your point, just other community of people that are on that similar journey to you.

Quentin (26:54)
Yeah, man, it’s so much. There’s so many scriptures I could just download. I think that’s watching this particular episode. If you ain’t if you ain’t logged on by now, I appreciate that allowing us to be us like we can’t separate who we are from what we do. Right. This is like this is that’s part of our identity. So it’s going to play a role in just albinaclar and our nomenclature. Like it’s just it is we are. And so I appreciate you indulging us. Hopefully.

James Tebelman (26:58)
haha

Quentin (27:21)
you know, you really take to heart some of the things that we said. But James, man, this has been fantastic, brother. I greatly appreciate you. If someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, collaborate with you, learn more about what you’re doing, how can they get in contact with you,

James Tebelman (27:39)
Yeah, you can definitely check us out on Facebook or Instagram. FreedomFastSolutions is where you’ll find us there. Or just shoot me an email, [email protected]. I’d be loved to connect. I’m always looking to network because some of our best ideas have come just from talking to people in other markets or even in our own market. We just get together and talk about how things are going. And that’s when sometimes the brilliance, the light bulb goes on.

Quentin (28:02)
Absolutely. Well, listen, sir, allow me to say three things to you sincerely. First, thank you for your time. You could have been anywhere in the world, but you was here with us. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your story. Thank you for your narrative, the things you talked about within your business and how you do business. I often say Jesus taught in parables. So stories are so powerful. And if Jesus led with it, I believe us leading with our story of our life, our business, our ups and downs is so powerful. So thank you for your story.

Lastly, thank you for your perspective, for your mindset, literally the way you think and bringing that mindset to this platform. I greatly appreciate you,

James Tebelman (28:42)
It’s been a pleasure, man. Really appreciate it.

Quentin (28:44)
Absolutely. So listen, y’all hurry James, look into the show notes, get in contact with him, check him out, but definitely make sure you’re subscribed here because I promise you, they’re going to continue to bring up amazing people just like Mr. James. So sir, I say thank you again. To everyone else, y’all have a fantastic day.