Why 90% of Her Real Estate Clients Quit Too Early | Jennifer Steward Reveals the Follow-Up Secret

Jennifer Steward (00:00)

Great question. So I would say, and I have no shame in saying this, most clients are out the door in two to three months. Because, and by most I mean ninety percent, the ten percent who stay with me become very successful. But let me tell you why ninety percent quit. Because they don’t want to follow up. Most people are trained by their jobs to get immediate gratification in the form of a paycheck. It’s very psychologically painful.

Dylan Silver (00:58)

Hey folks, welcome back to the show. Today we’re joined by Jennifer Steward. She helps investors behind the scenes with her team handling acquisitions, lead management, and cold calling. Jennifer, thanks for joining us here today.

Jennifer Steward (01:13)

Hi, Dylan. Thank you so much for having me. Really enjoyed chatting before the show. I feel like I know you better than any other podcast host I’ve ever chatted with before. So that was a great experience, great warm-up. And I’m so happy to be here. Thank you for having me.

Dylan Silver (01:27)

We did have a pretty good chat in the green room talking about actually some travel that we’ve both done. but I wanna ask you first about what types of conversations and deals and investor interactions are coming across your desk these days?

Jennifer Steward (01:41)

that’s a great perspective it’s not the newbies. I can tell you who it’s not with extreme clarity. It’s not the people that have just fallen off the guru truck anymore. There’s no more of those. I don’t know if the disposable income is gone for your regular working folks. The people who come to me now are the people who are taxed as real estate professionals.

During the time of the low interest rates 2020 2021, I was getting nurses for dermatology, I was getting psychiatrists, I was getting engineers, I was getting guys who do IT security for government facilities, I was getting you name it, oil and gas guys. everyone wanted to get a real estate side hustle on. I got a couple of plastic surgeons.

Those people are completely gone. Completely gone. Every single one of my clients is a full-time real estate professional now. And that has been a big change because they’re more competitive, they know what they’re doing. And if they’re choosing me, it’s because they’re choosing someone that they know reputationally knows what they’re doing because I’m not the cheapest, right? And so for the people who were trying to do a race to the bottom for cheap.

That is not me. And so the people who are choosing me, I don’t want to say they’re whales, but they are pretty close to whales. They’re established high intensity operating entrepreneurs who are used to at least a high deal flow. And if not a high deal flow, a high amount of profit per deal.

Dylan Silver (03:11)

The last couple of years navigating for really all folks in the real estate space has been tumultuous, challenging. Do you think that’s weeded out maybe some of those folks who were more hobbyists than full time investors?

Jennifer Steward (03:26)

I would say I don’t see any more hobbyists. I don’t see that. The hobbyists are all gone, at least on my client roster. And I do a lot of marketing. I also have a presence on Upwork. And so that definitely attracted more of the hobbyists. And they are all gone.

Dylan Silver (03:42)

Upwork is an interesting platform and I’ve looked at Upwork. I know people who’ve been successful on Upwork, and I know people who’ve been unsuccessful, and that’s far more in the unsuccessful category. There’s a lot of competition. what was it about your profile and your approach that helped you really gain traction on Upwork?

Jennifer Steward (04:02)

Because my first few clients gave me all five stars, well, at least the first one was 4.4. That put me higher up in the algorithm. Really, unfortunately, and business today, it seems like just about everything comes down to algorithm. And now instead of SEO, we have AIO, right? We all need to come up high in the AI algorithms now. And at that time, I was considered rising talent, which would put you at the top.

And I earned that through hard work. I would show up every day. I did exactly as I was told. And we still do that for clients. We do exactly as we’re told. And if we’re not, then that person gets replaced. now that I have a staff of 200. And so if you do everything the client asks you to do and you get them results, they’re gonna be happy with you. And then they give you a five-star rating after they’ve completed the project. You don’t get a rating on Upwork until you have completed a project.

And I was very fortunate. If I had been given a one star, I might have never gotten another client. If I had been given, a two-star, maybe not gotten more opportunities, but I would say that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and there’s a huge element of luck there in terms of building up your original momentum that the conditions are favorable for that.

Dylan Silver (05:15)

What do the scope of these engagements with investors look like on Upwork? Are these, month long engagements, are they longer than that? Is each one custom? What does it look like?

Jennifer Steward (05:27)

Great question. So I would say, and I have no shame in saying this, most clients are out the door in two to three months. Because, and by most I mean ninety percent, the ten percent who stay with me become very successful. But let me tell you why ninety percent quit. Because they don’t want to follow up. Most people are trained by their jobs to get immediate gratification in the form of a paycheck. It’s very psychologically painful.

To have money going out the door and not close your first deal for the first one, two, three, sometimes up to six months if people are brand new and they’re having to put in their reps. So who in their right mind wants to shell money out the door before money comes in for two, three, six months? that is inherently difficult.

But the people who do, the people who stick with it and the people who can make it through those first six months, they kill it the rest of their lives. So I recommend having a long runway and to make sure that your expectation is correct. Otherwise, you might as well just set your money on fire. If you don’t want to commit for at least three months, don’t start. And know that it takes a lot of follow-up work, even though we do

The cold calling, lead management, and acquisitions, not everyone can start out and afford all three. I just had a guy start this week and he’s like, well, I’ll just do the cold calling 20 hours a week and I’ll do the lead management and I’ll do the acquisitions myself. But most people don’t have the psychological fortitude to push through. And the only reason why I do is because my W-2 job was as a lead manager for a company for a few years, right?

And as a lead manager, I saw the difference between whenever I was just a cold caller pitching the deals over to the investor who hired me to her putting me in that role as a lead manager. And she went from one flip a month to 10 flips a month because she had a full-time lead manager in there doing that boring day to day follow-up. Obviously, lead generation is extremely important. I don’t care if it’s PPC, radio, TV, side of a bus. It all works. It all works.

I do cold calling just because that’s what I’m good at. That’s what I got started in. And I see all these advertisements all the time, cold calling doesn’t work. I never advertise and say P P C texting and radio. I never poo poo on those other art marketing channels. The reason why people have to poo poo on mine is because we all know inherently it works. People answer as long as there’s a phone in someone’s pocket, it’s going to work, right? So how many people have computers? Well, not everyone has computers, but everyone has a phone.

There’s just so many different things that work and they all work. Whichever one you prefer is the one that you should stick with. Now, once your lead comes in, someone needs to nurture that relationship. That’s what the lead managers do. And then the acquisitions managers are the ones who close them and get them under contract. But out of the three roles, the one that really earns their keep and earns the gold and is worth their weight in gold are the lead managers.

and that’s the part that everyone wants to skip on hiring and skip out on budgeting, and then that same personality that does that is going to be the same person who doesn’t put in the lead management work themselves. So just be aware of that weakness that most people possess. And that’s why we hire lead managers because if it’s your job to do that, there’s no risk involved.

For the person doing the job, they’re getting paid, 15 bucks an hour, whatever it is, 12 bucks an hour, or whatever source you hire from. And that’s what they do. So there’s no risk on their part. The more time they put in, the more money they make. But you as the operator, you as the business owner, there’s a huge diminishing return and opportunity cost for doing that type of work yourself. And therefore, most people won’t do it.

Dylan Silver (09:01)

If I for a second wear my realtor hat and think about this, I think where most realtors don’t do a good job, and lenders for that matter on the other side of the house, is in that follow-up, right? And that’s when people get frustrated and they say, well, this client went with somebody else after I’ve been talking with them for X amount of time. Well, what are the touch points? What were those conversations like, right? And then of course, if we compare it with the acquisition manager analogy,

when they’re at that point where they’re ready to make a decision and potentially list their home, what was that coffee table conversation like? do you have that skill in order to get that deal to the finish line? And so that’s two different skill sets that not everyone possesses.

Jennifer Steward (10:23)

Very true. And if you want to earn that skill set yourself, you have to put in the reps. Look, I’ve said this in many other times speaking at many other facilities, and you have to give yourself the grace and space to be terrified and terrible. Look, I’m learning Claude right now, and I’m terrified and terrible. But I have to give myself the grace and space to get better so that I can build a bigger platform, right?

I have this homework and I’m working this program with Mike Sherrard? And what if I was like, this is too hard? I’m not gonna work this program. I guess I’ll just keep my tech skills stuck in, 2025. It’s 2026 right now. So I’m just using ChatGPT. I don’t know anything about clock or grok or claude. And so let me just skip on that and stick with my chat GPT. It’s like, no, I’m taking the time to learn Grok from Michael Robertson. I’m taking the time to learn Claude from Mike Sherrard. And

If you want to build the skill set of doing the lead management, you have to put in the reps and you have to be terrified and terrible at first. It’s okay. Guess what? No one’s judging you. No one remembers. People care too much about their own backside to care about your embarrassing moments, if that makes sense.

Dylan Silver (11:27)

Yeah. And I think it goes back to what you said earlier, six months to kill up the rest of their lives or to kill up the rest of your life. That is so true when it comes to specifically single family investors, but that can be applied for many different types of entrepreneurship that require follow up, or for folks who are trying to figure out right now what’s hot, what you were alluding to is

how to utilize AI to really empower your business and to minimize the time that maybe we’re doing mundane tasks maximize

Jennifer Steward (11:58)

god.

Dylan Silver (11:59)

the time that we’re doing problem solving complex tasks.

Jennifer Steward (12:04)

Exactly right. Yeah. And my coach Michael Robertson says, 85% of your business can be automated now with AI. But you can’t outsource the relationship building. Until people can buy and sell real estate like listing it on eBay, which would be a lawsuit factory. Until people can just list their house like a pair of used shoes on eBay, relationships are going to be part of the equation.

Dylan Silver (12:26)

It’s no question about it. And I actually had this discussion with a gentleman who was involved in brokerage in Beverly Hills, and what he was explaining to me was that there comes to a point where you need a human in the loop to increase trust. Now that may seem counterintuitive because it can seem like, well, these machines aren’t gonna flub the math, they’re not gonna make

maybe a grammatical error or a typo, why should I trust it less? There’s just something about having a human in the loop, certainly now, where folks need to feel like they’re not all in this thing alone by themselves. Just like you mentioned your mentor Mike with the AI, if you were going about it by yourself, might be more challenging.

Jennifer Steward (13:10)

Exactly.

Yeah, I could have saved myself a few thousand dollars, I suppose, and figured it out myself. But would I have really taken the time to hit a hurdle and then hit another hurdle and then hit another hurdle? Or should I just save myself the time and the compounding effects of implementing it into my business quickly versus trying to teach it myself and knowing my personality? Just like I know I will never go to the gym by myself. That’s why I’ve had a same personal trainer for seven years.

And I know I’m never gonna clean my own house. So I have a housekeeper. Not because I’m above it, but because I have horrible old school ADD, right? We didn’t used to call it ADHD. There’s no H in my ADD, it’s just attention deficit. And if it doesn’t get me towards my goals, which I’m obsessed with, I struggle to do it. So I just outsource the things that I know I’m not gonna do. And it was the same thing.

with this AI. I know I’m not going to take the time to do something that unpleasant. I’m not. I’m gonna float. I’m gonna drift towards low-hanging fruit. I’m gonna drift towards scrolling on Instagram, right? I know the limitations of my own willpower. I am great at doing things that I’m good at. I’m terrible at doing things that I’m not good at or that I don’t enjoy. And so for that you need to outsource it. And so yeah.

Dylan Silver (14:29)

On a granular level, lead management and those conversations and those touch points, for distressed sellers in particular, we come across these leads so many different ways. If we’re in Texas, we’ve got, the Roddy report, pre-foreclosures, we’ve got tired landlords, absentee landlords, right?

What do those touch points look like for lead managers? What do those conversations look like?

Jennifer Steward (14:52)

great question. Okay, so we’ve already had the cold callers, right? And we’ve already made the decision. Okay, is this someone who has a specific reason why they want to sell? When you’re doing follow-up, you want to make sure that there is specificity there. So if someone says, yeah, sure, markets gone up, or in this case, market’s going down, I’m just curious to see, what would you offer me? What would you offer for me? What would you give me?

That’s not who we want to follow up with. We want to follow up with the person who says, ever since my neighbor turned their house into a rental, I’ve got these crazy tenants next door who are stealing water from my water hose at night thinking that I’m not going to notice. Right? I have hundreds and hundreds of stories like that because I’ve got fifteen thousand hours on the phone with sellers personally, not even counting my team, right? So we’re looking for people who have a

definitive reason why they want to sell. It could be, I’m hearing this more and more on the phone recently, and it’s November 5th, 2026. because occasionally I pick up contracts myself just to keep my chop chart, to keep myself relevant in the algorithm, and so I can relate to my team. So I was doing acquisitions about a month ago.

For a company. And they know for me it’s short duration, right? Let me come in, let me get things set up for you, and then I’m gonna replace myself. I rarely, rarely do that. So nobody asks me for that. That’s just something I do whenever I feel like it. And I heard more on the phone, like, hey, I need to sell. Before you would hear little hints like, well, we’d be interested, and then they stay on the phone with you for a long time. That’s a clue that they probably need money. But for people to straight up tell you no subtext.

I need the money. That is extreme distress. And all of my years of doing this, I’ve been doing this for 11 years. Only in the last three months have I heard people straight up tell me without me having to pull it out of them like I’m starting a lawnmower. I’d have to pull it out of people that they needed the money. Now they’re straight up telling me, Jen, I need the money.

That’s pretty specific. Okay, why do you need the money? I need the money because, my property in Florida, they’re forcing me to put in a seawall, whatever that is. I live in Texas, I’m ignorant to It’s just what she was telling me. And I need to sell this land in North Carolina because I need to pay 18 grand for this seawall. or whatever it is she needs to do, right? And so that’s the specificity that you’re looking for in order to know who to follow up with in the first place.

And then as you’re following up, you want to do what’s called a callback. Whenever you’re writing or you’re doing stand-up comedy or something like that, there’s something called a callback. So you want to do a callback to the original conversation. So I might say, hey, Dylan, I know that you were in the Dominican Republic and I know that you were thinking of, selling your property here in the United States. So maybe you could move there full time. when exactly were you thinking of moving? Or are you going to stay here through the winter? Or

I’m just curious, what’s the plan for you? And I don’t want to make it painful for them, so I want to talk about hey, what were your favorite dishes out there? This is the relationship building part. What were some of your favorite dishes out there in the Dominican Republic? What was it you were telling me about nobody wears shorts? Gosh, that’s so different, right? And so you want to build that you don’t want to waste time. Anytime you’re building rapport with someone who has a reason that they need to sell.

That’s not a waste of time. And I see a lot of people want to skip that. Not skipping that is why I’ve been in the business for so long. I’ve seen so many people, literally thousands of people come and go since I came in this business. And it’s because they want to wham bam, thank you, ma’am. Don’t warm it up, don’t, all business. Great, that works for a little while. Okay. But you’re going to run out of that low-hanging fruit. And then it comes down to relationships.

And in relationships, you genuinely need to care about that person. Can you scale that? Yes, if you have a team of people who are trained to care about that person, which is what I have done, praise God, through having a small group that then referred me their friends, referred me their friends, that referred me their friends, because winners hang out with winners, losers hang out with losers. I don’t take referrals from losers, right? I only take referrals from winners. And so you want to build.

That relationship and then circle it on back to business, right? This is a question that I learned from this wonderful lady that I used to work with out of Denver for years and years. And this question is still relevant today. It’s like, if a genie were to come down and grant your wish, how soon would you be selling? And how much money would be in your pocket on closing day? Right? Anytime your conversation gets off track a little bit.

you can bring them back with that question. it’s never awkward to ask that question. So build rapport, ask genuine questions as a lead manager, and then bring it back to business. when would you like to close and how much money is in your pocket on closing day?

Dylan Silver (19:34)

When I’m hearing this, I’m thinking about some books that come to mind. Never Split the Difference, great books. and hearing about a concept of an arc of a conversation, right? Which is what you’re describing, right? Building rapport, ask genuine questions, bring it back. And then while you were talking about my time in DR, talking about, hearing nobody wears shorts, what type of dishes, I’m even thinking like

This would work on me and we’ve been talking here for, an hour. And so for folks who are getting all types of calls and no one’s asking these questions and then to use those callbacks, it’s shocking. I’m sure you’ve experienced this and your team has experienced this. No one else is doing this. Zero other people are doing this.

Jennifer Steward (20:15)

And maybe it’s because this industry is, male dominated and respectfully, historically it seems like men want to keep it short and keep it to the point and whatnot. I’ve been with the same guy for twenty five years and we’ve never really been that gabby between us, right? But me and my Gabby friends, my god, I was on the phone with one of my Gabby friends for four hours.

The other night, and he just so happened to be a man, but I find him to be the exception, not the rule, right? And so in a male-dominated industry, respectfully, right, I do see differences in communication styles. That’s neither good nor bad, right? Everybody brings assets to the table. I’m simply making an observation, and anyone is welcome to disagree with me on that.

Dylan Silver (20:55)

No, I think it’s spot on and I think a lot of people have noticed is those differences. And I think even some people might go so far as to say, you have to build rapport before you can talk about business, and that if you don’t, like you alluded to earlier, you might have a short because how long will that last? But you mentioned earlier a different type of market trend that you’re seeing.

Where folks may be moving more directly right now. Yeah. Where they’re being very upfront and direct. I’ve seen this from a different side working with folks who are moving in and out of apartments in Austin, Texas, and seeing the Texas landscape at large. is there right now more distress than we’ve seen maybe in the last ten years?

Jennifer Steward (22:15)

From my calls that I’ve seen, yes. Now I have heard, and I’m not an expert at this, so if anyone feel free to correct me, the reason why we’re not seeing more foreclosures is because now the banks have instated these loan modification programs that have made it so people can stay in their houses longer. People say, unemployment is fine. Okay, let’s say that’s true at face value. Have you tried to apply to a job lately? You put in a job, basically you might as well

Throw it into outer space and just let it float for eternity out to the next planet because that’s what happens whenever you put out an application now on LinkedIn, indeed, all these things. Even if you try a $15 an hour job, okay, because I put applications out there for health insurance purposes.

And just to see what the market’s like, right? Because I don’t believe the Bureau of Labor and Statistics. I want to test for myself. Well, as you can imagine, I have pretty decent resume. I have a good educational background. I have everything that people be looking for in sales managers or whatever. And nothing, nothing came back, right? It’s not just my experience, I’ve heard that from people over and over and over again. And people who’ve lost their jobs that I know personally, well qualified, great workers, great people.

can’t find a job. So it’s like if you lose your job right now, you ain’t getting a new one. And so yes, I think the unemployment numbers are interesting because I don’t feel like they’re reflecting what I personally am seeing from not only my immediate sphere of influence, my own experience, but also talking to sellers over the phone who

Are not subtle anymore about the fact that they need money fast. So I love this market. This may be the best seller’s market I see for the rest of my life. because we have high interest rates, we have the stock market just majorly crashed today.

Dylan Silver (24:06)

Today. Yeah.

Jennifer Steward (24:07)

Yeah, and thank God I moved all my positions, most of them out two months ago, and then my holdouts that were still doing pretty well last week. I broke even,

I’m out of the casino and in cash. which is super boring, but I’d rather have it in cash than be losing capital. So if I’m doing that and I spend more time investing than I do in operations these days, again, praise God. I give God all the glory for that. and I see nothing compelling to invest my excess capital in, then what are we gonna do here? I’m looking at

doing rental properties for the first time ever because of the fact that I’m seeing so much distress, right? and then we have winter coming too. So for all of the northern states where they have true winters where nobody buys and sells unless they have to.

Dylan Silver (24:53)

I’m in one right now, yeah. New Jersey.

Jennifer Steward (24:55)

So

in Texas, Florida, I don’t feel like we have that. I feel like our market really isn’t that different due to weather. It’s more about the holidays. So I feel like we’re going into winter. The stock market is crashing. Democrats just took over. Some people are happy about that. Some people are not. Right? Either way, it’s a change. And we have the economy, even though the numbers say everything’s fine, from what I see, it looks like we’re at a screeching halt. And

What a great time to buy. I keep hearing my flipper clients saying, there’s no demand. I have lost a lot of flipper clients in the last few months because they say, Jen, I’m sorry, my deals are just sitting. But the people who are moving them, like we talked about before, they are buying deep and selling cheap. I didn’t have an exact figure to it, but I told you I follow Eric Brewer and he said sell 10% less than MLS.

I said come in less than MLS. I didn’t have an exact figure to it, but I agree with him. buy deep enough to where you can sell at ten percent less than all comparables on the MLS, and that might be your only prayer on doing a transactional deal right now.

Dylan Silver (25:57)

I agree with almost everything you said to a T, I think. And the two things that stuck out to me, the job statistics thing, I have trouble sometimes talking with people who need like a survey in order to believe anything. I’m like, okay, you’re one of these survey guys, like, okay, here’s my survey to back up everything. But qualitatively, experientially,

Right. Going in and applying for jobs, similar experience, right?

You need to have the approach that you take to sellers in order to get a job. You need lead management. You need to ready to close. Yeah. You have to have Excel spreadsheets or Google Sheets where you’re doing, 75, 100 jobs that you applied to and your last point of contact and the person’s name and their interest and you know what the next step is. And have you met this person in person? Have you set up a Zoom call? People who are college graduates and folks who are not.

They’re not taught this skill of lead management thing. When there’s two hundred people applying to a job that’s like you mentioned entry level job or not even entry level, just retail what have you. and so what I ultimately think is there’s a lot more nepotism than people are aware of, that there’s a lot of people are in the know even for these lower jobs.

they know somebody, they’re a friend, so on and so forth.

Jennifer Steward (27:16)

That’s the only way. That’s literally the only way you can get a job right now.

Dylan Silver (27:20)

Right

now. and so particularly in real estate, when we look at the number of realtors who survived, in two years actually done a transaction, it’s very, very shocking to see. I don’t forget what the exact statistic is, but it’s certainly a majority after two years have fallen off. And so you look at that and then you say, Well, how do we marry that with what’s happening in the statistics? And

To be honest, I don’t know how we do it, but hearing your story about the sellers being so direct, and then hearing your story about the jobs and me seeing something similar, it feels like there’s two different versions of America. There’s a version of America for homeowners and for folks who have substantial savings and a four one K and an IRA and they’re not affected by this. And then there’s the folks who are coming into the job market or who are building something or who are check to check and that is a totally different

Version of things for folks.

Jennifer Steward (28:12)

Well, and what’s painful about it is I’ve always said that you can sell your way into wealth. I think sales is the greatest career for building wealth. But if there’s no demand, you have to be selling something that has demand. Period. Or there’s no wealth to be had. You have to control the supply, and then you have to sell at a price that people can do. Otherwise, as we all know, there is not going to be demand. And I have a bachelor’s of science, okay?

And so I had to learn about the importance of data and aggregate data. So I’m not just going based on poo-pooing on the data because of my anecdotal experience. But what I’m saying is the disparity between my anecdotal experience and what the actual Bureau of Labor and Statistics numbers are saying is so wildly different that I have to cry a little bit foul. And as my dad says, when you smell smoke, right, there’s probably a fire. When you smell poo, there’s probably poo.

So there’s just too many things that just don’t smell right in terms of what’s going on with what I see. And I hang out with winners, okay? Not sound like Donald Trump, but I don’t hang out with losers because it’s a waste of my time. I only hang out with winners. And if winners are seeing this type of onslaught of difficulty, roadblocks, hurdles.

then how are regular folks feeling? And I think we saw it this week with the way people voted, right? the people who probably are more moneyed, et cetera, I don’t think they showed up, right? But the people who are disenfranchised and don’t feel seen and heard, they clearly showed up. why is that relevant to what we’re doing? Because if people are willing to show up to the polls because they’re in that much pain, then we as marketers, cold callers, lead managers, acquisition managers, operators in this space.

That’s an opportunity for us to come in and provide financial relief by giving them cash for the properties, novations, listing, however it is you move the deals. we need to listen as operators and hear what the real data is, not just the Bureau of Labor and Statistics and whatever the official records are. use your eyes and use your own common sense.

Dylan Silver (30:11)

haven’t mentioned this on previous podcasts, but there’s this term in financial, budget planning and financial well being, like the emergency fund, six month savings. I look at it right now, especially six month savings, it’s like, what is that? am I gonna be able to find a job in six months? Right? Like six months savings, like what if I don’t have a family, but if I’m supporting a family, what happens if there’s a hospital bill?

Right? Yeah. Or any number of things can come up. Right? it may seem like a black swan event, but some type of weather emergency and we have to go somewhere. Yeah. That happened in Texas before. Yes, many other states, right? And so I look at it, I’m like, how long of savings do what I personally feel like I would need? And in posing this question to myself the other day, I was like, I literally think

For me to not have to worry about, well, this job and this, I would need four years money saved up. Yes. because at that point in time, the home that I own can appreciate in value and so on and so forth. I’m rolling the dice that the market’s gonna be good enough, the jobs are there, that the job that I find, they’re gonna stick around that

even government jobs are afflicted by this type of thing. Yes, they were. it’s not as straightforward as just have a little money. You need a mountain of money in order to feel bulletproof at this point.

Jennifer Steward (31:26)

that is so well said, Dylan. I can’t even add anything to that. you really said it all there. And we try to diversify our assets as much as possible. the good thing about a business like what we do, there’s labor arbitrage there because you can get money either by leveraging your own time and labor, other people’s time and labor, or capital. Now I’m most comfortable with the business model where I’m leveraging other people’s labor because

When capital’s gone, not only is capital gone, sometimes it’s hard to get it back. And the time that you put in is gone with it. So my heart is out to anyone who stayed in the market, the stock market, through today. But with what we do in off-market acquisitions, we know the labor is relatively cheap. Okay. My lead managers are $13.50 an hour, and that includes the data and skip tracing, same with the cold calling. I know our cold calling is expensive, but that’s because we’re the best. If you’re looking for cheap cold callers, we’re not your person.

And then my acquisition managers are fifteen dollars an hour, but on a full time contract, they’re getting five contracts a week on land deals, maybe like two on single family, right? So that’s gonna pay for itself. That’s labor arbitrage, right? There’s not as much capital in that as there is, say, like what I had in the stock market. Okay, that’s all capital.

and it’s not any management on my part on the fact that I had to check it. and last week a lot of my trailing stops hit. And I always put trailing stops on big positions. That way if it goes down, you might lose money there are certain stocks where I knew that if they went down they probably wouldn’t go up because they were AI related. Now your grandpa blue chip stocks, okay, maybe you don’t need a trailing stop so much on those as long as you don’t need the money. But these were heavy, heavy AI stocks.

And I knew the AI bubble was likely going to burst. So I had these trailing stops on it. When that money is gone, it is gone, right? And all the time you put into it. But if you’re doing labor arbitrage with your business, then that has less exposure in terms of capital loss and then your cash on cash return for the deals that you’re getting, right? So try to have as many income streams as possible to get you through that. Having a business.

That has demand even through downturns. a lot of people are buying these boring businesses now. I feel like my business is a boring business, my business is a dirty job. Nobody wants to get on the phone and talk to these sellers. It is a dirty, dirty job. And yes, AI can do some of it. And I am a big proponent of AI. I think like I said before, AI can do 85% of what you’re doing. But until we can sell properties like old shoes on eBay.

There’s a relationship component and AI cannot do those relationships. So we still have to do the relationships. It’s a dirty job and someone’s gotta do it. So I’m happy to provide that as a boring business myself.

Dylan Silver (34:10)

we are coming up on time here. anything you’d like to mention directly to our audience?

Jennifer Steward (34:14)

Say buy deep and sell cheap. If you normally bought at 60% ARV, sometimes we’re buying at 3540 right now. That way, instead of selling it to wholesalers at 60, maybe we need to sell it at 50% ARV. If you’re buying it as a flipper instead of buying it at 70 or 70 minus repairs or whatever the formula flavor of the day is.

Go 10%, 20% deeper if you can. And if you’re like, well, Jen, the sellers are stuck in 2021. There are fewer and fewer sellers, thank God, stuck in 2021. There are people who truly, truly need to sell. And that all comes down to your data. You want to filter your data so that you find people who have low income, you find people who have low credit scores, you find people who are advanced age, you find people who have.

dilapidated vacant properties, tax delinquent. so it really is going to come down to filtering your list so that the people that you’re speaking to are actually truly motivated to sell. And that’s going to make all the difference.

Dylan Silver (35:10)

Jennifer Steward, thank you so much. Thanks for joining us today.

Jennifer Steward (35:13)

Thank you, Dylan.