We have a wonderful guest on Elevate Your Equity podcast, Jason Wright. Jason is a speaker, author, entrepreneur, consultant, and digital marketing architect with a passion for helping real estate investors and entrepreneurs with their sales funnels. On this show, he shared great stuff about growing your network including:
• How marketing and digital presence are a must do in this day and age.
• Best practices in utilizing social media play in digital marketing.
• His recommendations in setting up CRMs.
More about Jason. Jason prides himself on his ability to connect with people and speak to them in a language they understand. Jason is able to design successful marketing plans all while keeping a positive attitude and sense of humor along the way.
Thanks a bunch Jason Wright for coming on the show!
Unlock 3+1 degrees of freedom (time, location, financial + health) with our 5 Point Blueprint! https://elevateequity.org/podcastgift
If you really enjoyed this content and are looking for more, you can continue to learn more about us in several different places for free!
If you'd like to have a FREE copy of our 7 Ways Commercial Real Estate Syndications Protect and Build Wealth, simply click the link below. We are here and vested in your long-term success! elevateequity.org/7waysEbook
Unlock 3+1 degrees of freedom (time, location, financial + health) with our 5-Point Blueprint! https://elevateequity.org/podcastgift
If you really enjoyed this content and are looking for more, you can continue to learn more about us in several different places for free!
If you'd like to have a FREE copy of our 7 Ways Commercial Real Estate Syndications Protect and Build Wealth, simply click the link below. We are here and vested in your long-term success! elevateequity.org/7waysEbook
We have a wonderful guest on Elevate Your Equity podcast, Jason Wright. Jason is a speaker, author, entrepreneur, consultant, and digital marketing architect with a passion for helping real estate investors and entrepreneurs with their sales funnels. On this show, he shared great stuff about growing your network including:
• How marketing and digital presence are a must do in this day and age.
• Best practices in utilizing social media play in digital marketing.
• His recommendations in setting up CRMs.
More about Jason. Jason prides himself on his ability to connect with people and speak to them in a language they understand. Jason is able to design successful marketing plans all while keeping a positive attitude and sense of humor along the way.
Thanks a bunch Jason Wright for coming on the show!
Unlock 3+1 degrees of freedom (time, location, financial + health) with our 5 Point Blueprint! https://elevateequity.org/podcastgift
If you really enjoyed this content and are looking for more, you can continue to learn more about us in several different places for free!
If you'd like to have a FREE copy of our 7 Ways Commercial Real Estate Syndications Protect and Build Wealth, simply click the link below. We are here and vested in your long-term success! elevateequity.org/7waysEbook
Unlock 3+1 degrees of freedom (time, location, financial + health) with our 5-Point Blueprint! https://elevateequity.org/podcastgift
If you really enjoyed this content and are looking for more, you can continue to learn more about us in several different places for free!
If you'd like to have a FREE copy of our 7 Ways Commercial Real Estate Syndications Protect and Build Wealth, simply click the link below. We are here and vested in your long-term success! elevateequity.org/7waysEbook
Welcome to the Elevate Your Equity podcast, where we, as married busy professionals, leverage real estate investing to unlock the three plus one degrees of freedom, health, location, time and financial.
Derek Clifford:Today, we've gotten an amazing guests on the show. His name is Mr. Jason Wright. And Jason, for those who don't know him is a speaker, author, entrepreneur, consultant, and a digital marketing architect very interesting. With a passion for helping real estate investors and entrepreneurs with their sales funnels. Jason prides himself in his ability to connect with people and speak with them in a language that they understand. And Jason is able to design successful marketing plans, all the while keeping a positive attitude, and sense of humor along the way. And man, that is a welcome addition to this industry. So, Jason, it is great to have you on board. How are you today?
Jason Wright:I'm doing great, man. Thank you for inviting me on excited to be here.
Derek Clifford:Absolutely. Thank you for coming on the show as well. So let's start like we usually do at the beginning. Why don't we talk a little bit about how you got passionate about real estate investing in general. And then we'll start working towards the marketing after that.
Jason Wright:So, real estate investing, it's interesting. Hunter Thompson's a friend of mine, and a client of mine, and for the longest time, we worked with high ticket service providers, right? If you're online at high ticket service, I liked working with them not as much, you know, with E commerce or things like that. So I met Hunter, and he was working with me through one of my programs that we don't have currently, but it's evolved into something else. But it's with Active Campaign and started learning about his business. And he kind of said, Hey, we're not selling a service, per se, but we're trying to attract investors. And I kind of learned about that a little bit. And I was like, that's really interesting, because it's similar to service, but it's a little different. So as I learn more about it, I learned about some of his peers and met his peers, I started realizing that what I do, as far as help people at the back end of their sales funnel right after they opt in the list. I was like, man, there's a huge need in this industry for this, right. So in January of this year, I met hunter in LA and we talked, you know, face to face. And he's like, man, there's nobody doing this for real estate investors with ActiveCampaign. So like, if you want to be really really niche, he, I think there's a lot of people you can help and also interesting. So I said, I'm going to pivot towards a little bit, same thing we've always done, I'm just going to start speaking to one audience and, and just the amount of people I've met and the amount of people we've helped and taught things to very, very cool space to be a part of man, I've done some investing in crypto, no real estate yet. But I promise I will become a passive investor when the time's right, it makes sense to me. But it's just a fun group of people to work with. There's people part time in it, there's people full time in it, you know, people trying to get a corporate America, which I love, because I was the same way. And we just have a really good offering to help people in the space. And it's rewarding, and I enjoy it. And there's a big need. So that's the kind of the high level way of how I've got into this. But I've worked with, I don't know, 40 or 50 real estate investors at this point. And hope to do that many more by the end of the year. But it's just great, great field to focus on.
Derek Clifford:Yeah, you know, I agree with hunter in the fact that there is a huge need and demand for this service. Because real estate for some reason, even though right now it's making headlines everywhere. The actual industry and the infrastructure behind it is actually very antiquated. It's a lot like the oil industry that I used to work for, like you keep doing the same things the same way for many, many years. And it's about rife for a revolution of some sorts, which is where you enter the equation. And I love to hear that you're also going to become a passive investor, or maybe even an active investor later on. That's always good to hear. And one thing that I want, let's go ahead and jump into digital marketing strategy, this will probably be more useful to people who are looking to outreach with more people, or maybe just entrepreneurs in general that are looking to build their brand. First question I have for you is would you say that marketing and a digital presence is kind of like a must do in this day and age? What's your thought on that right now?
Jason Wright:Yeah, absolutely. I think pandemic in the shutdown, sent that message loud and clear to everybody who was awakened listening, you know, I remember I was already working at home when that happens. So for us, we were already kind of positioned for it. But for a lot of people who either went remote or lost their jobs, they had this moment where they were like, holy crap, this can happen. And I tried to tell people if it happened before, something like that could happen again. So if you're not focused on digital, like, you're just going to become a dinosaur. So and I've been saying that for years, but that wake up call was so loud and in your face. I don't know how anybody could deny it. So absolutely.
Derek Clifford:Yeah, you know, I have to admit that a lot of my business started because of the pandemic. Because of the pandemic. People were much more willing to sit at home and do networking in front of their screens. And that will was a huge thing for me because I had a demanding job, Jason, I couldn't just drive from a remote area of California where I was working at the time in the utility industry and drive to a meet up in on the opposite end of town. Right? It just wouldn't work. For me, it was very inconvenient. But when everything shifted, being mobile or remote, it made things so much easier for me to schedule out when I could be available in certain meeting people. So I think that that's going to accelerate more and more, and even as we ease out into the post COVID era. And have you been seeing the same thing been happening? Like more marketing attention? And the more people engaged with electronics and the Internet, things like that?
Jason Wright:Oh, yeah, absolutely. And I'll say like, I'm the biggest fan of digital marketing automation, but there is no replacement for the face to face interaction. Right? I'm doing a couple events this year, and just getting to see people face to face. It's a piece of the equation for sure. It's not our major focus, but it is a piece because it is incredibly powerful. So but yeah, I do zoom calls all you know, every week, absolutely love it. Even if the other person's not on video, I'm always on video. There's great advantages to be on video for everybody watching and listening for sure. It just shortens the amount of time for the other person say, Do I trust this person? Do I believe they believe themselves? Right? Am I getting the right vibe? Because we read people much more quickly than we think we do. And it doesn't take long at all. So video helps make that a more authentic process.
Derek Clifford:Yeah, I would agree with you there. Thanks for sharing that. So what tools would you say are essential for either investors and multifamily real estate to use to accelerate their reach? And, you know, I don't know if there's maybe a distinction that you can make between entrepreneurs in general and just real estate investors. But let's talk about some of the tools that you think are a must do people like this starting out?
Jason Wright:Yeah, I'll focus on real estate forever. And there's a lot of overlap. But if I'm a brand new real estate investor, and I want to go past or I want to go active, this is what I would do. Calendly, you know, a tool like Calendly, where you hook it up to your your main Google Calendar, wherever you're using Outlook, and kill the back and forth when trying to schedule time, right. But the after the work, that's a must. I'm a big fan of loom, I make a ton of screenshare videos to train my team to educate clients answer questions, it's phenomenal, absolutely phenomenal. For an investor you're going to need, I'm going to kind of go outside of the question a little bit, but I'll circle back. There's basically there's three parts of the sales funnel, and everybody wants to focus on them the wrong in the wrong order, naturally. Right. So the first piece is traffic, you should be doing that last night first. Second piece is the front end. So that's in the good number two spot. And then the final piece is the back end, the back end is going to be your CRM slash email marketing, or marketing automation tool. Because why would you invite people over to a party, the party doesn't have a location, and there's nothing there yet, right? It's a little awkward and weird. And you're wasting people's time because there's nothing waiting for them. So we think of your marketing in the same way, before you start talking to potential passive investors have a plan on what's going to happen after they join your list. So I would recommend some kind of a tool like Active Campaign to help with the CRM and the marketing, you probably want investor portals, especially if you're working on your own deals. There's a bunch out there, he probably could give better recommendations. And I but big ones that I see that play well with other tack are like, I think it's invest in X syndication Pro, there's a million more, and then having some kind of a website right website is good for giving information, terrible for conversions. What do I mean, when I say conversions, getting people on your list from your website, you might get a half to 1% of people. So for every 100 people that see your ebook, you might get one. Now if you take the same ebook, and you put it on its own landing page, or the only thing they can do is either opt in or leave conversions are gonna go up 20%. So some things to think about there. But suggest a couple, you know, three or four basic tools can really take you a long way, you know, doing this online, and also it's very scalable as well.
Derek Clifford:Yeah, I love this. I love this concept for sure. As far as like website goes, Do you think that it's absolutely essential for someone to have a website to start out with? Or do you think that like having some offerings, like maybe what we call lead magnets in this business, which is essentially like a you know, a packet of information, that's a takeaway thing that you can envision as an electronic binder, or a PDF that's got some sort of powerful message in it or that caters to some audience? Do you think that just having those and then supplementing that with a website is good for like presence? Or like, how would you recommend some people start out with that?
Jason Wright:Yeah, I'll even I'll even help further to find a lead magnet anything of value exchange for somebody's time? Right? So booking 20 minutes on my calendar, you're giving me your email address, that's essentially a lead magnet, right? Anytime you build a lead magnet, if you always think it should be worth $25 or more, you're in the right ballpark. We tend to go fast and cheap with lead magnets and then we wonder why nobody wants our stuff. Something to think about there. But you could use a LinkedIn profile and a couple of landing pages and probably do just fine. Honestly, people would have people use my website my blog for I think they go to check on me right after people hear about me, I see him. They'll look at me on LinkedIn, the jump and some Facebook groups and like, okay, they're checking me out to make sure things feel the same everywhere. So is a website essential? It's not essential, but I would say, at least a LinkedIn profile and a landing page would be pretty good. You know?
Derek Clifford:Right. I think one thing to that I'm just going to share with you, Jason, that's maybe useful to you and the audience as well, this thing here, check my analytics on my website. And it turns out that my most visited page, even more than my own homepage, at least in terms of like time, right, the amount of time people spend is the about us section, which points exactly to what you're saying people are looking around to kind of sniff and see whether or not who you are as a person is in alignment with what message is getting out there. So I love that advice. It's good stuff. Yeah. Now we also use, you know, our website right now is like a hub for a podcast or book, and things like that. So I'm selfishly asking you right now, whether or not you think it's a good idea to tie them together, or if it's good to just instead direct people directly to the page. So they have the option to navigate to other parts of the website. But that's kind of what I have right now set up whenever you do lead magnets. You know, our Menu Bar still shows up for them to click out into, but they have their own landing pages. Is that something you recommend?
Jason Wright:Yeah, I think it's smart. So my website is admittedly a blend of WordPress and click funnels. So you've got three or 400 blogs on there. So we've got the blog page have a podcast, it's been on kind of a hiatus for a bit 199 episodes there. In the website. Like I said, it's great for information, it's good for SEO brings people in. But when we shared our podcasts, a lot of times, we would share them to those individual podcast pages as well. Something else you could do in the footer of your email, is you can have what I call a a passive, like potential investor journey, basically. And it's like step one, here's our social stuff and our podcast. Step two, schedule some time with me to talk about your goals. Step three, you can sign up for my portal if you want to where you can basically, quietly walk people kind of through your value ladder or your funnel without talking about it in your email. So giving people the option to kind of navigate their own journey is a really nice tip as well.
Derek Clifford:Yeah, love this. Thank you for sharing that great stuff there. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about social media. I know that right now, we've been talking about funnels, and you know what the funnel looks like. But what about getting people in? That's going to be the general thing. And I know that it like you said, it starts with making sure you have a party to go to, you got to have a lead magnet. And some people refer to a deal package or sample deal package, especially if you haven't done one yet, right saying this is kind of what I want to pursue, or this is the type of criteria that I'm going to buy. And here's what's going to look like. So having something they're assuming that that's already in place. Do you recommend or do you have some sort of social media strategy that you can advise people on to getting people inside the funnel?
Jason Wright:Yep. You know, you'll hear different thoughts on this, but I'm a believer in consistency is even more important than content. A lot of people go ooh, are you sure about that? Yeah, I'm sure. So think about a good example, let's think about losing weight or going to the gym, right? You may have great workouts, but if you do them for six weeks and take three months off, you're never going to see progress. So consistency is number one, very closely followed by content. So a lot of people in this industry with a focus on his podcasting, because being a host is great. But being a guest is also great, because you get in front of new audiences. And that's huge. Okay, LinkedIn is really big. Facebook's got value Facebook groups, but the challenge is when you're posting, you can't just post about here's many podcasters. When you blog, you've got to mix in other things as well. So that's where the challenge lies. What I challenge people to do is think of your business in terms of five buckets. And the reason I say five buckets, there are different perspectives on your business, that there's some overlap, but they're different. The reason why it gives you variety when creating content, whether it's posts or blogs, or whatever the case may be, and it gives your readers variety when digesting content, right? People don't want to only hear about deals, maybe some do, but they want to kind of know who's driving this ship, what's going on with them. It's okay to be authentic and vulnerable. As an entrepreneur, even in this space, I think you'll connect with people in ways that you never expected by doing that. So I challenge you to take some risks step outside of your comfort zone and you know, share a little bit more and that will I think work to your advantage. So there are tools out there like buffer and HootSuite that makes social scheduling easier trying to do that natively yourself whoo boy, you will hate your life quickly. It gets overwhelming. Overwhelming. I'm lucky my wife's in charge of that. We've got a content team of four and that is run on autopilot, away from me for like four years, which is fantastic content sales or distribution. But yeah, there was a day where I did it all myself and I spent a lot of time doing it going, why is nothing happening? Why is nothing happening. So I was stuck in that traffic mindset like I don't, I don't really have anything to offer. So in person events are still a great thing to do, especially if your dream passive investor is going to be there. You don't only want to associate with competitors of yourself, right, you got to get in front of those folks with money that want to return but don't want to maybe don't want to know everything about how it works, just want someone they trusted to go with as well.
Derek Clifford:This is such good advice and a couple of things that I wanted to add on to the social media. And I want to underscore the fact that social media is so important, because it's an organic place where people even if they do meet you, they can really easily access some of your live content, right, like right there. your website's there, it's polished, but I think there's more opportunity for them to see who you really are as a person through social media. And one of the things that I want to say too, about the algorithms, at least, I've been studying them quite a bit on LinkedIn, that I've noticed. And I think it's the same for some of the other like Insta and Facebook is that the more engagement that you have with people that appears in your space, the more that you're going to tend to have a quicker impact. It's not only because the fact that like you're engaging with other people who are doing what you're trying to do, and so they're going to reciprocate, it's just human nature, right. But the fact is, is that in LinkedIn, if someone comments on your content, then their audience becomes yours, at least for that one post. And that gives you an opportunity for you to give another data point and you know, someone can like or thumbs up something. And as soon as they thumbs up something, then you know who that person is. And you can if you're set up on the back end, have a virtual assistant help you and pull that information out to either send an email or direct message out, however you want to do it, find out what it is they liked about that content or that comment. Right? That's one thing I wanted to ask, you know, if you found that to be true, that's the first part. And then the second part is, I heard Hunter Thompson talk about the JK five strategy. Have you heard of this? Okay. He had a podcast out there, or no, I'm sorry, it was bronze. It was a Russell Brunson who had this. So click funnels also. So you're familiar with him too. But he had a podcast where he was recapping the JK five, or the Jenna Kutcher five. And she said to your point about people wanting to see who you are, you've got to have five different things that you're talking about on social media. So for instance, I'm just pulling stuff out right now, let's say you're really into real estate, that's one thing. The other thing is mindset. The other thing is travel, family, and then maybe something weird off the wall like cats or something like that, right? If you have these five things that you're constantly posting on, you'll have the cat audience overlap with your travel audience. And you'll have your travel audience overlap with your mindset. And then you'll have your cat audience also overlap with your real estate. And what happens is you really start to draw in really dedicated people that are interested in one or multiple things that you're into, and you're just broadening out your reach. So I wanted to get your take on a engagement on social media and be on the JK five, if you've seen that work. So sorry to throw a lot after there.
Jason Wright:You're fine. So the JK five sounds very similar to what I'm talking about. And it does work, it is nice to see, you know, to show people different sides of yourself in the variety thing for the content creation side, man, you get to a point where you need that desperately. You're like, what else can I talk about in this space? You know what I mean? So there's definitely truth to that. And obviously, guys, like Russell are so successful that he's, he knows what he's talking about, as well. So I like it, it will push you away out of your comfort zone. But remember, growth never occurs inside the comfort zone. So if you feel fear, you're doing something correctly there. Huge difference, especially with LinkedIn and Facebook. Those are the two platforms I focus on the most thing I like about LinkedIn, though, they play by their own rules, I still feel like it's the least tainted of the social platforms, you know, the Facebook world, they're all pay to play, but you can still get some really amazing social reach, not only through comments, but people sharing stuff. So they are all social platforms for so when people engage in if somebody comments, man, make sure you comment back. You know, if you comment back, you just miss a big opportunity, because your next comment might open up 100 more you have no idea but yeah, it's a big deal. And I understand that may be hard to do by yourself or like you mentioned the VA may be able to help with that for sure.
Derek Clifford:Oh, yeah, definitely. Or you can set up a process to help you get that situated. You know, Jana, Jana Weiss is legendary at marketing on LinkedIn. So for those listeners who are interested in commercial real estate and just networking in general, you've got to follow up on all of his stuff. He's an expert at what he does, and he gave the advice to Jason of sometimes you don't even have to have your own content. That's the beauty thing. That's the beauty of this. If you find a piece of content that It's really good and you have a very thoughtful, insightful thing to say about it right? If that post goes viral, your comment as the top rated and most viewed comment goes along with it. And that's one way to really enhance your network. As a matter of fact, that happened to me with one of Ray Dalio, his posts, where Ray Dalio actually sat and wrote back to me on my comment and my question on one of his posts that went viral, and I was able to increase my following by like, 200 people, it was insane. Keeping up with all the connection requests that came in, it was an incredible way to kind of, you know, get some of this, this social media following there. So I just thought I would bring that up. But yeah, these are excellent strategies for people who are starting up in their own business and looking for some social media reach. I would say to that social media isn't everything right, you got to have some follow through behind it. So can you talk a little bit about what you know Hunter does with social media and his funnels, how he sets it up for success, or what you've seen work for a lot of people that are doing great things in multifamily.
Jason Wright:From a high level, I think social media can will say start the conversation. But having a process behind that right to you know, a lot of people in this in this industry, it begins with a phone call, right? If somebody's potentially interested in investing or in a deal or whatever, you're got to know who you're talking to, you got to know what's going on. So having a plan beyond the initial interaction, to give them a call is probably my best advice. And then, when you have a call, this is the biggest mistake I see in this industry. Nobody has a plan, what happens after the first phone call, right. And automation can be wildly helpful to you, as far as maybe nurturing a potential accredited investor to become an investor with you, nurturing them through email, text, ringless, voicemail all the above, those are things that nobody does, we can make a really big difference. So don't rely on the legal pad, don't rely on one phone call, but thinking a little bit longer term like, hey, this new relationship, this journey may take longer than one interaction. And it mostly always does. So having a good solid plan for that, in the fall of his mind what I would say, I love
Derek Clifford:this great advice. I think it's something that's overlooked. And I'm actually guilty of this to myself. But the good news is, though, is that you know, you know, JSON, as soon as it becomes visible, then you're making progress, right? Because you realize what it is that you're doing wrong. So okay, one thing that I want to ask about, because you're well known, at least in the race masters community that Hunter Thompson is set up is CRMs, right, and managing the content that goes out to potential investors or contacts and getting the CRM set up. Would you mind walking us through a little bit about what it is that you can do for people who are getting started and why it's important to have a CRM for all of this automation?
Jason Wright:Sure, no problem. So we help clients, we're very niche, right, we work exclusively with real estate investors now exclusively an active campaign. So this little tiny blue ocean that I don't think anybody else is playing in, which is great for us. But what we do is we take somebody's business where it's at, we work on the back end of their sales funnel, right? I said earlier in the show, we always recommend starting with the end in mind. So work with the backend first and the front end, and then the traffic. And what we can do is we can either bolt off that CRM to the website, if it exists now or in the future when it's done. So we help once people join the email list. The one thing that everybody's interested in is nurturing potential new investors, right, whether they have a traditional syndication model or a fund model, everybody wants to be passive investors. So we help with that, through automations, we run through a welcome series, overwhelm them with value, and flow them into automations, that book that nurture book calls, etc, etc. We also help with reengagement automations, that fire up, you know, once people stop opening your emails, and going to your website. And then if you do have a syndication model, and there's a new deal, we do help with the active capital raising side through automation, right, you're gonna pop in the content and the pictures of the New Deal or whatever. But we've got a nice pipeline and process, it's easy to look at, easy to understand, we give you screenshots of videos and share how it all works. And it really helps you miss those easy opportunities that you're going to miss without it. So from a high level, that's kind of what we do.
Derek Clifford:That's fantastic. Do you have any advice for people who are trying to get themselves set up to a point where they're ready for your services? Because maybe some people who are just looking to get started maybe don't have a list? Or maybe they've just got friends and family in their CRM. And so they're just trying to get these things started? What would you suggest people do before approaching you? Or how big should they be before they start working with you guys?
Jason Wright:And I'll actually come in a different angle and say that that's one of the biggest mistakes people make is to get to a certain level first, you know, as an entrepreneur, as the guy that quit corporate America twice because the first time didn't go so well. Right. And I had to beg my aunt to buy us food because they couldn't feed my family for six months. And gosh, I tell people that you can come to me with no list. To nothing because you still need the foundation, right? If what we do is a foundation of the house, don't start building your dream house roof first, it doesn't make any sense. So you don't need anything when you come to us because it's all foundational. Anyway, that's what I would tell people. A lot of people will get in their own head, and they'll say, No, I've got to get to, I can't decide on which color blue, I want my logo. And I'm like, take sloppy, imperfect action, make forward progress every day. And three years from now, you'll be glad you did. Because you can always improve stuff on the way. But waiting till things are perfect, say a limiting belief. It's a struggle with what's between your ears has nothing to do with your business or my business. I have that conversation all the time. So I hope that resonates with somebody.
Derek Clifford:It does. Yeah, absolutely. And now that I think about it, I realized ask the wrong question. So unfortunately, don't have the ability to go back and edit that out because he had such a good answer, that it's going to make no sense without context behind it. So it is what it is. So one thing I want to ask you, before we head into the final segment of the show here is you talked a little bit about how you tried to escape your W two or your corporate America twice. Can you talk to us a little bit about that, because, you know, a lot of people are trying to also do that themselves. And maybe you can hear a good story about about how that worked out for
Jason Wright:Yeah, I was an HR worked in HR for about seven you. years, and some sales as well. And it was working for this family owned company. And the old man that started was making like 300 million bucks a year. I'm like, good guy, this guy's got houses all over the world. But he's not even a nice guy, like, Sure, can make this kind of money. Surely I can just make enough money from home to pay my bills. Like, I'm not asking for much. So I was tired of the commute. Tired of having no control, tired of just not having any interest. That's what I was doing. Right? I was like, I'm going to make something happen. So I couldn't get my wife on board with let me just quit my job and figure it out. So I'd have some kind of a plan. So have you seen those high end neighborhood magazines that a lot of communities are doing? Have you ever seen those? Yeah, so it's trying to start a magazine with best version media. And they were great. But my heart wasn't in it. So I convinced her let me quit my job. The day after I quit, I went and bought a brand new Infiniti with no job, which is the first red flag for my wife. I said, it'll be fine. I've got six months where the savings will be good. So I started selling these ads in this magazine, but it never went to print. So I didn't sell enough. So it means I made $0, right? Two and a half months, we were out of money. I remember sitting down actually on the floor above where I'm at now going, Okay, next month's bills are due looking at the bank going, we've got a problem. Like I have no idea. So I had to reach out to one of my mom's aunts and say, Hey, I'm in this situation. I'm not sorry, because I believe in what I'm doing. I just don't know what I'm doing yet. Can you help me buy food because I can't feed the kids. And she was like, I don't know, I'll get back to you. So she agreed to help me with food. I wouldn't got a job at FedEx for the insurance. And I started landscaping in the neighborhood and selling outdoor stuff, anything I could do get going, started making a little money online writing content, blogging. Upwork was my big lead source. And then I eventually started noticing like, hey, a lot of people looking for the marketing health that I'm just learning how to do for myself. So I pick up some of those jobs. And I was like, Okay, I'm making a little bit of money. Fast forward, I went back to corporate America for about a year and a half and started making more on the side than it was in the day job. Then my wife's like, now you go. So we quit in. We quit in March of about four years ago. So that'd be what 2018 And by the end of the year, we did 100 100 grand in revenue, digital services, you know, nine months, so I was like, I think we can grow this from here. So we've just niched down and pivoted ever since. But it's having control over your time and having no earning potential is a wonderful thing. If it were easy, everybody would do it. Oh gosh, sure. As I say that one big piece of advice, I'd give people two pieces. And this is me giving myself advice and four years ago, so you get to be a fly on the wall. And number one, the timeline is unknown. So be patient dammit. I was telling people, I'll replace my income in three months, like we're gonna come up with that. It took like three years, you know. And the other thing is, be careful who you share your dreams with. Don't talk to your non entrepreneurial friends about becoming an entrepreneur because they're gonna make you feel like you've done something wrong. You're gonna be like, Oh my god, I'm crazy. Am I crazy? I think I'm crazy. Everybody says I'm crazy. That may include your parents may include your spouse, if people aren't in a place you want to be. Be careful what you share with them because you may not like what they have to say, it's all i got.
Derek Clifford:That's beautiful. I love it. I think one thing that I really want to expand on here too before we start heading into the final segment of the show, is that I noticed that your wife was really hesitant especially when you bought your luxury car and It, it for me, at least for me, my wife is my source of strength, it there would be no way that I'd be where I am right now without her visionary mindset and her ability to test the norms, right what life says you're supposed to be doing and doing it. And so she knows my blind spots, she knows where I'm upset and happy. And so I think there's something to be said about that intuition there where you could have saved yourself a lot of pain and suffering, although you could make an argument to that you got to where you were, because of all of that, right, because you put yourself on the line. So I figured, like, there's a, there's a good message here that listening to your spouse, if they're worthy of your trust. And hopefully they are because you've married them is to really understand their intuition where they're coming from, and listen, right, like engage, test your theories out on them, right? Like, if it's a really good idea, then your wife is going to be or your husband is going to be extremely excited about what you're trying to do, and is going to be on board as long as the vision is the same. So having the support of your spouse while you're trying to do something entrepreneurial, and they're working full time and supporting. I think that's just a match made in heaven. Even if they're not supporting directly they're supporting passively by giving you the time, money, energy and physical space to be able to do what you love to do. So that's just something I wanted to throw out there. And hopefully you agree with that as well.
Jason Wright:Oh, yeah, you know, it's crazy. As I look back, when I quit the first time, my wife was not working, right? And she said, like, what's the plan? Like, I didn't really have much of a plan. So I can see why she was like out of her mind and angry with me for like, two years. Now. I mean, you know, she'll walk, she's obviously 50-50 business partner, but completely behind the scenes. Now, she'll come up and say, Hey, none of those deals have closed yet, get them closed. And I'm like, Okay, do I work for you? Now? Apparently, I do. So apparently, she pays attention to things. But you know, she's definitely behind the scenes. But we've got her and I plus six of those on our team. So we got a lot going on. But we have a good time with it. We enjoy it. She loves the business. Now she gets it, she believes in it. She understands this great niche that we found, and we're going to serve at a very high level for a long time to come.
Derek Clifford:Yeah, definitely, I have to underscore that because I saw a lot of people in our group that are working with you very happy with the work you're doing. And I'm really glad that we got this chance to talk because it serves two purposes, me to be able to have a podcast and learn incredible stuff from you and share with the audience and then do what you do more specifically, so that we can work together on our side potentially even as well. So love it. Anyway, let's go ahead and wrap the show up. I know that we could talk forever about digital marketing strategy and working with your spouse, all these great things. But let's go ahead and head into our Rapid Round, which is the same five questions that we asked every one of our guests and they're meant to be answered in about 30 seconds or less. And we're just going to kind of rapidly ask them to you if you're ready.
Jason Wright:I'm ready. I was born that way.
Derek Clifford:All right, let's do it. I love that answer. Number one, what book has had the biggest impact on you and why? And we ask that it not be the purple Bible, Rich Dad or the actual Bible?
Jason Wright:I've been asked this question a lot recently. I'm gonna keep sticking with it. But Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill, you know, introduces the mastermind concept. I love how timeless it is. It's just a powerful mindset shift for me when I was reading it, you know, after that big first fail, I was like, Man, I can do this people can do this stuff. I'm gonna make this happen. So it was very, very powerful for me. Everything started mindset period.
Derek Clifford:Yeah, that's great. Love it. Love it. Actually, just FYI. We just had rod Cleef on the show, and he had the same answer for you. So that's, that's good stuff right there. Love it. Number two, if people wanted to emulate your success, personally, what is the first actionable thing that you say that they could do to follow in your footsteps?
Jason Wright:Try to make forward progress with what you're going after every day. Right? Set goals, celebrate your success. Some days, you might have very little success, celebrate anyone just don't stop. Right? You got to be absolutely intentional. And you've got to be relentless with your pursuit. So if you're not that way, no one's gonna do it for you. So that's, that's step one.
Derek Clifford:Great, love it. Number three, and I'm very interested to hear the answer to this one. What is one new tool process or hack in the last three to six months that you've recently employed to help save you time and or effort?
Jason Wright:I think it's it's more of an internal thing with my team, right? Getting my team more involved with what I was doing a year ago, I was drowning in the fulfillment piece of my business so over the last year just training people to take away stuff that I'm doing that's that's not easy stuff to learn. getting them more involved in the business is probably the thing. So it's not a real clear answer, but it's given these people more control a bigger knowledge base. It's allowed me to focus more on sales and the high end customer service strategy that I do. So there you go.
Derek Clifford:Love it, is it like standard operating procedures?
Jason Wright:we have some of that but you know, there's so much kind of requests for custom stuff. are things that we do can't really teach it. So you can teach fundamentals and teach people to think outside the box. But the challenge is, there's four or five ways to do everything. So it becomes very, very complicated.
Derek Clifford:And sorry, this is a really brief but important question to me. Are you guys using Slack to internally coordinate or how are you guys doing? Okay, cool.
Jason Wright:Oh, yeah, we're Slack and Asana junkies, Doc, the workflow slack for sharing screen, share videos and message and then we use boxer heavily as well. We don't use Boxer with clients. That's a horrible idea, because I've never stopped for the team Boxer and Sack, absolutely.
Derek Clifford:Perfect. Love it. That's a lot of value for the listeners there and also what we use too, so good. Good to hear that I'm on the right path here. Number four. If the people that you know had to describe you with one word, what do you think that word would be?
Jason Wright:Intentional.
Derek Clifford:I love that word, too.
Jason Wright:I'm gonna do something. I'm gonna go hard. And I'm not going to stop till I get to where I want to go. Yeah, literally, I'm one of these people that believes that he can't fail. So if I tell you, I'm going to do something, the only thing that stopped me is my premature death.
Derek Clifford:Oh, my goodness. I love it. All right, number five. What small thing do most people not know about you?
Jason Wright:People that haven't met me. I don't know why on video, they always assume I'm like five foot tall. But I'm actually six foot five. A lot of people have always been like, you look really small on video. So if people haven't met me, they assume I'm really small for some reason.
Derek Clifford:I think all you got to do is maybe go up and get some bluetooth earphones and go up and grab a drink of water like I did before. People are realizing they're talking to so I love it. Well, thank you so much, Jason, this has been so great having you on to talk about all this incredible value, adding things like marketing relationships at home and starting a business. Why don't you tell the audience a little bit more about how they can find out about you? And if they want to work with you? How can they do that?
Jason Wright:Yeah, the I think the answer to both of those, we just go to intentionally inspirational.com. That's our home base. So you can check us out there. And there's opportunities to book a call all over the place.
Derek Clifford:Sounds great. I love it. I would expect nothing less from a marketing expert. All right. Well, Jason, thank you so much for coming on the show. Once again. It was a pleasure having you on.
Jason Wright:Yeah, thank you. This was great. Appreciate. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Derek Clifford:And for you listeners out there who have listened to this point, we want to thank you as well. And please, wherever you're watching or listening this podcast, we'd really appreciate it if you could like comment, subscribe, rate, or review the podcast itself on iTunes or Spotify and just engage with us in general because the more engagement we get, the more as Jason can tell you we're appeasing the algorithm Gods and the more we appease the algorithm Gods The more exposure we get, and then the more great guests like Jason we can have on the show to add more value to you and your fellow cohorts. So, this is Derek. We are signing off for the day. Thanks, everyone.