Apr 19, 2022
If you’re stuck and struggling to scale your business, this episode is for you. We talk to Samson Jagoras, founder of Growth Vue Properties, and he brings with him 13+ years of experience in growing successful businesses. Tune in as he shares strategies on building wealth and how you can make your money work harder by investing not only in properties, but also in processes, people, and partnerships.
[00:01 - 06:49] Finding His Way to Business Success
- How Samson walked away from football and into the world of futures and commodities
- Scaling a startup from zero to a little over 100 million in a year
- Should you consider owning hard assets?
[06:50 - 14:09] Document and Delegate to Elevate
- This is why you need to have a playbook for your business
- Leveraging on technology so that employees can scale their activities too
- Putting together the perfect partnership
- Learn the difference between a visionary and an instigator
[14:10 - 17:18] Selecting the Right Mastermind
- The trap you need to avoid when building your network
- Why Samson thinks capital might be the weakest part of the deal
[17:19 - 18:32] Closing Segment
- Reach out to Samson!
- Links Below
- Final Words
Tweetable Quotes
“I think everybody is starting to realize that cash is trash, and you got to own assets and things that are income-producing if you are going to get ahead.” - Samson Jagoras
“Document early and often. You're always trying to move yourself out of a goal. You got to delegate to elevate. And you can't do that if you haven't documented the process.“ - Samson Jagoras
“It's not so much about how much money you have as much as how deep is your bench and who's on your team.” - Samson Jagoras
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Connect with Samson through the Growth Vue Properties website and follow him on LinkedIn if you want to know more about documentation, delegation, and how to put your money to work.
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I love helping others place money outside of traditional investments that both diversify a strategy and provide solid predictable returns.
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Email me → sam@brickeninvestmentgroup.com
Want to read the full show notes of the episode? Check it out below:
Samson Jagoras 00:00
Knowledge plus experience equals confidence. And in the absence of experience, you need a playbook. So document early and often, and then scale with leveraging technology. Like, you should be doing everything in your power to not necessarily just move to hire more people. Because it's very expensive to just bring on employees, especially if there's not systems that allow that employee to scale their activity as well.
Intro 00:23
Welcome to the How to Scale Commercial Real Estate Show. Whether you are an active or passive investor, we'll teach you how to scale your real estate investing business into something big.
Sam Wilson 00:33
Samson Jagoras is a real estate expert. He is an entrepreneur and a business advisor. Samson, welcome to the show.
Samson Jagoras 00:41
Hey, man, thanks for having me.
Sam Wilson 00:43
Pleasure's mine. Three questions I ask every guest who comes on the show, 90 seconds or less: Where did you start? Where are you now? How'd you get there?
Samson Jagoras 00:49
Yeah, so I grew up in Los Angeles, California, and heavy dose of punk rock skateboarding and sports. Found football when I was 14, fell in love with it, made it my life's goal to play college ball. I ended up going to a Division II school in New Mexico. After playing there for one season, I knew that I was not happy playing D2 ball. So I walked away from my scholarship after my sophomore year, take the walk on the University of Colorado and thankfully got put back on scholarship a year later. I went to school, studied Integrative Human Physiology, thought I don't want to be a doctor or do something like that. Playing college football at the D1 level and trying to keep your grades up, man, I struggled to have, let's call a "medical school GPA." So I started looking at the world of strength and conditioning, kind of a natural fit, which I really loved. But, man, it's a long, hard arduous road to become a Division I head strength coach. You know, you're talking maybe 8 to 10 years before you even get a shot. So I was very blessed. My wife, who I met when I was 20, her dad was in the world of futures and commodities. So I did the totally logical thing, graduate on a Friday with a degree in physiology and walked into a futures and commodities brokerage on a Monday, spent three months studying to get my Series 3 futures and commodities brokerage license. And, I'll never forget, it September 29th 2008, Dow Jones fell 777 points in a single day. Boom, got baptized in the deep end of the swimming pool. But it was the best thing that could happen to me because I quickly learned just the value of owning assets. I mean, my traders and investors who were just speculative got crushed. In the first time, we watched somebody run their account up to a million back down to 25,000. You realize that leverage cuts both ways. But my guys who kept making money were producers, farmers, miners. You know, guys that actually owned hard assets, right, and they would just use the market to hedge. That opened my eyes to just the world of hard assets. And then you know, just started pursuing this idea of passive income and cash flow. So after doing trading for about four years, sleeping with a laptop, next my bed watched markets like the coffee market open at one in the morning, I decided I was gonna leave, I was gonna go be a financial planner. And then I got blessed with the opportunity to join a marketing and technology startup called Madwire. And we took that company from zero to a little over 100 million a year in revenue and about 600 employees or so. About 2018 started to get a little burnt out on that. And I was also responsible for, we were I think hiring about 150 people a year at that point. And so I think unemployment at the time was like 2.89%. We were in the largest expansion since World War Two. So I started looking around, having been baptized in 2008, going, "Man things are just a little too good." About every 8 to 10 years, something falls apart. So I started unloading my smaller real estate portfolio, you know, singles and doubles, things that I didn't think were that well-positioned and I started working towards scaling up into large commercial multifamily, found a good mentor, started finding some good partners in 2022. And now I'm we're just putting together deals and I'm also the VP of Strategic Investments for RE/MAX Commercial Alliance here in Colorado, so really, like, the investments arm of with commercial platform for the Alliance team. We got about 100 brokers, so really trying to help grow that piece of their business as well.
Sam Wilson 04:00
That is awesome. Now, you called the company Madwire. Was that the one you had scaled to 600 plus employees?
Samson Jagoras 04:06
Yep.
Sam Wilson 04:07
Have you exited that or you still have...
Samson Jagoras 04:09
I'm a shareholder, yeah, I mean, I'm not actively involved in the business anymore. Still cranking away. Well, obviously, a lot changed during COVID, the dynamics of that. But all for the good, you know, some of that was forced change on the business. But yeah, marketing technology so, you know, working with small to medium-sized businesses specifically. So you know, this podcast is all about scaling commercial real estate, right? So it's no different than any other business. So how do you do that, you know, and how do you leverage technology and outsource talent and whatnot in order to drive more leads. You know, that's basically what we were doing for customers.
Sam Wilson 04:41
I, too, have had my Series 3 and my Series 30.
Samson Jagoras 04:45
Oh, wow. That's a rare, rare to meet a fellow futures broker.
Sam Wilson 04:49
Right. And so I have a unique understanding of that 1 AM, checking the markets, like, "Oh, crud, beans are going down." Like, whatever it is. And then the reason I touched on that is because you mentioned something that was your producers. It was your farmers. It was your, you know, miners. It was the people that own hard assets. I mean, they were just using the market to hedge. Right. And for those of you that owners don't we're talking about, it's A-okay. The point here is that owning hard assets has value. How much of that do you think ties over into the investor conversations that you have, you're seeing or hearing people talk about today? The value of owning hard assets?
Samson Jagoras 05:26
Yeah, I mean, you know, I think in the fiat money world that we live in today, we're seeing, you know, $7 gas prices, I think in California. I know, it's just cracked over four bucks in Colorado. So I think everybody is starting to realize that cash is trash, and you got to own assets and things that are income-producing, if you are going to get ahead, you know, so it comes up quite a bit. We also talk about just coming from the world of futures, which are highly, highly leveraged, you know, you can get 10 to 1 on a crude oil contract, right, which for those of you don't understand that world, you know, $5 swing is 5000 bucks in your account. You know, most stock traders couldn't handle that over six months, let alone just a couple hours. So yeah, so getting de-leveraged, de-risking your assets and we've talked a lot about just Sharpe ratios and risk rewards. If you look at the Sharpe ratios on futures contracts, it's pretty much zero. Like, it's just a matter of time before you lose everything. Where, you know, commercial real estate is, you know, some of the best Sharpe ratios you can get, right, the best risk-adjusted returns. So that comes up tons of more when talking with investors. I think what would shy most people away from investing in real estate is it's a work, man, it's not easy, especially in this current environment when everybody's chasing deals. So you got to work with guys like us who are actively building a pipeline, and networking with brokers and property managers to actually find those deals, and manage those assets, and go do what you do. Be a lawyer, be a doctor, whatever that may be, you know.
Sam Wilson 06:50
Yeah, that's absolutely valuable. Scaling a company to 600 employees, especially that quickly, what were some things that, as you went through that process, that you would say, "Hey, if I had to do that, again, I would do it differently"?
Samson Jagoras 07:05
Yeah. 100%. Document early and often. You're always trying to move yourself out of a goal. You got to delegate to elevate. And you can't do that if you haven't documented the process, if you're the only person with the esoteric knowledge. It's so horrible for training and scaling people. Most employers who don't have good documented systems or processes default to the "Watch Me" method. "Hey, Sam, I'm gonna pick up this phone and make this phone call. Watch me," and I'm just supposed to absorb and assimilate. There's a reason that, like, the highest level athletes... Let's talk about NFL professional athletes, there's a reason they have a playbook, right, so that they can go be great athletes. So I can hire somebody with all the intangible skill sets of being a great salesperson. But if they don't have a playbook, then they're going to struggle, right? Because knowledge plus experience equals confidence. And in the absence of experience, you need a playbook. So document early and often, and then scale with leveraging technology. Like, you should be doing everything in your power to not necessarily just move to hire more people. Because it's very expensive to just bring on employees, especially if there's not systems that allow that employee to scale their activity as well. So, you know, everybody, at least in the world that I came from, marketing and technology, everybody's trying to find this, you know, singular solution where they can get more done with just one platform. And you gotta find good platforms where you can find good integration points. So those are things that I've carried over into my business today. I mean, we document everything from top to bottom from, you know, how we solicit and communicate with brokers to how we run a financial model, to how we move deals through the system, to what happens when a new employee comes on board, you know, how does that system actually work? And you know, we're just a small company in comparison to some of these larger entities. You know, we're at 600 employees, and there's still some processes that were broken. In that company, we really saw the effects of that once we went remote, right? Because when you're in a completely decentralized company, it's a lot harder, right? Because maybe your workflow, you're working from eight o'clock at night till one in the morning, but I'm working at, you know, seven in the morning till 12 In the afternoon, How do we have good asynchronous communication and line of sight into what your workflow is, when you know, we can't communicate in real-time?
Sam Wilson 09:07
Yeah, that's absolutely valuable information there. What are you using? Because it's one thing, it's one thing to document. It's one thing to put something in a Word document, it's another thing to put it in a Loom video, or Screencast-O-Matic, or whatever your source of, hey, recording it so that someone else can then take it and repeat it. But once you've done that, then how are you building... Is there a software you're using that puts it in, plugs into the system where they can say, "Okay, this is what this person is, this is what their role is, this is what they do... Or how do you organize even all that information that you've created?
Samson Jagoras 09:38
So we have a combination of, we use Google Drive heavily, but we use monday.com. So monday.com works phenomenal just from a deal flow standpoint. Tons of workflow automations built in and auto-assignment features built in. So as we move things through our deal flow process and move from one stage to the next, the appropriate people get notified to then take action, so I don't have to call them, send them a message, send them an email. And then everything just lives and breathes in there, even if it's a link to our deal room, which exists inside of Google Docs. As the deal evolves and it gets through pre-underwriting within permission, a folder that has all the financial modeling, financial documents, contracts, so on and so forth. And then that grows over time. So it's all in one place. Beyond that, I mean, Monday pretty much solves everything from our, you know, marketing cadence to our to do system, we operate using the Entrepreneurial Operating System. So we're huge advocates of that. So our scorecard lives inside of there, our real-time metrics that inside of there, to-do's live inside of there. And again, those will have automations, like, when people aren't getting things done, they're getting notified "hey, this is past due." As well as the integrator on our team, who's our partner, Brad, who is actually a lieutenant commander in the Navy. He's a really good XO. He operates all that so that he gets notified on who's not doing what, and then he can circle up with those people. So everything's designed for us to just operate asynchronously, as well as decentralized. And, man, it's been incredible to see it work. I go to sleep and wake up in the morning, and the analyst has got, you know, 32 notifications for me, which is awesome.
Sam Wilson 11:05
Now, you said that Brad is your integrator, what does that mean?
Samson Jagoras 11:09
Yeah, so when we first launched, I was the one that's probably the most familiar with the system. But inside the world of EOS, you basically have a visionary and you have an integrator. And usually people are one or the other. They're one part visionary or integrator. I'm a little bit of both. I'm probably better as a visionary just because I tend to get bogged down in the operational logistics. In the world of the Navy, you have a CO or commanding officer who's like looking outward, and you have an XO, who's looking internal. And so that's kind of how we think about it. Brad's incredible at that. So he's just responsible for, you know, running the meetings, making sure that people are executing on their to-do's, and making sure we're hitting the scorecard metrics, and kind of seamlessly integrating sales and marketing operations, HR, and finance. Obviously, we're all involved as principals on that. And Brad is incredibly tactical as an EOD specialist. But, man, you need somebody who just sits in that seat and owns that every single week.
Sam Wilson 12:01
Yeah, that's absolutely true. I love what you said there, you know about the difference between visionary and integrator because it is true. And it's tough. I think for a lot of people who are scaling their businesses to find that complementary partner. You're either one, if you're one or the other. And especially if you're, you know, if you're not a mix, like you are, it's tough to find that person. How did you guys form your team and the partnership? And when did it make sense for you to say, "Hey, look, let's join forces"?
Samson Jagoras 12:26
You know, we were all going on the road, in this mastermind, just learning the multifamily business. And Jeremy, our partner who came on this podcast, he's a very analytical mind went to school for finance, you know, as a commercial loan originator. So being, you know, I spent nine years of my career in strategy, right, so I'm really good. My superpower is identifying other people's talents and helping them get into the right seat to execute and, like, orchestrating that, is part of what makes me a pretty good visionary. So I saw his talent. And I can underwrite, just like, I can replace the shingles on my roof. I probably shouldn't, right, there's people that are just better at it. And then Brad, you know, he's being in the Navy, he's traveled all around the United States, as well as around the entire world. So you know, leading, being high-level ranking officer, he's obviously an excellent communicator, but he's also just really well connected. I mean, we can go to pretty much any state, and he knows somebody, right, via the Navy. So that kind of made him a natural fit to be leading capital development. And then my background, I'm probably the most seasoned as it relates to just scaling the company, and raising money. And so that kind of made me the natural fit as for the President or CEO function. And so we all just had a shared heart for what we wanted to do, which is we're all chasing more time, you know, with time comes more impact. Because if I had time freedom, what would I do, I spend more time with my family. But there's only so many hours in the day that I can do that. And there's things that are important to me, like getting more involved in my community and my church and whatnot. So we decided to come together not only to create time, freedom for ourselves, and for our investors, but also to create our own endowment. So part of what we're working on is building our own endowment, that takes equity in our deals, and actually creates revenue in perpetuity for charities that we care about versus just making like a one-off charitable donation.
Sam Wilson 14:10
That's fantastic. I love the organic kind of way you guys, you know, put that together. Let's talk about a mastermind real quick. It's probably the last thing we chatted about before we had to sign off. But when it comes to getting into a mastermind, what would you recommend to somebody when it comes to selecting one?
Samson Jagoras 14:25
Well, in this particular case, if you want to get into the world of like multifamily investing, right, you got to go find a niche. So ours was like mastermind meets mentorship. I would say you gotta be cautiously optimistic, right? A lot of these groups are just using their mentees as a way to build their own capital raising pipeline. It's just a glorified multilevel marketing campaign is what it is. And so a lot of syndicators get caught in the trap of just becoming capital raising companies. And you know, my take on that is there's plenty of capital. In fact, capital might be the weakest part of the deal because it's so plentiful. There's just so much of it. So if the only thing you have is the ability to raise capital, then you're 100% stuck on somebody else finding a deal. And so we did the exact opposite where we just focused on deal sourcing and acquisitions. So be sure that what you're getting yourself into actually aligns with what your business goals are. We did not want to be a capital development company. We wanted to be an acquisitions and asset management company. So we sought out people who were doing that, who are acquisitions, and asset managers, not capital development companies.
Sam Wilson 15:32
That is interesting. You know, the two things I say over and over on this show is that you need deals in money. So let's say, just for sake of argument, you guys went out, you found your first deal, how did you then have the capital to back it up and say, "Hey, we're actually going to get this closed"?
Samson Jagoras 15:46
Well, it's, you know, you're always raising capital, right within your own network. But on top of that, you're just developing strong joint venture partners, right? So you really need five people to get a deal done. You need somebody to find the deal, somebody to get it over the line, somebody to make it viable, somebody to bring the money in, somebody to sell it on the back end. That's 100% split five ways, that's 20% a piece, right. So there's always somebody who has too much money and not enough deals, right? Or they have not enough time. So one of our Co-GP partner is a very large, very successful storage acquisitions and developer, so they know exactly what they're doing. It translates perfectly over to multifamily. They have a construction company as well. But what they don't have is deep end roads into the 300 brokers that we have in our network that we consistently call on every single week looking for deals, right. So to them, we're really valuable, right? And so through that network, you know, it's not so much about how much money you have as much as how deep is your bench and who's on your team. And then through those, you know, joint venture partnerships, we have access to capital groups who want to raise on our behalf. And then if you don't, you know, you don't have that, then you have equity brokers. And if you don't have that, there's other capital development groups that you can work with. And you can do a combination of raising your own equity, and working with some other capital developers and carving up the acquisition fee. In a market like this, it ultimately comes down to finding the great deals, because if there's great deals, then there's more meat on the bone and everybody can eat. But if you're just focused on being a capital guy, then you're gonna have to take the scraps of, like, "Hey, well, this is what we're willing to give you," Because you're just another capital guy. You're not the lead sponsor on the deal, right?
Sam Wilson 17:19
Yep, that makes all the sense in the world. Samson, thanks for coming on today. You've shared with us quite a bit of things to think about, through your you know, experience scaling, a marketing company. We talked a lot about tech. We talked, you know, just about documents, what you call a document to delegate, documentation and processes, and the kind of the ways that you guys have been able to grow your company. I certainly enjoy your thoughts also behind, you know, how to provide value as a multifamily syndicator. And, you know, according to you, you don't want to be just that capital raiser. So certainly love and appreciate that perspective. If our listeners want to get in touch with you or learn more about you what is the best way to do that?
Samson Jagoras 17:55
Check out our website. It's thegrowthvue.com or you can connect with me on LinkedIn, Samson Jagoras. I'm sure Sam will drop it in the show notes and shoot me a DM. I'm always happy to chat.
Sam Wilson 18:04
Absolutely, will do. Thank you again, Samson, appreciate it.
Samson Jagoras 18:07
You bet.
Sam Wilson 18:07
Hey, thanks for listening to the How to Scale Commercial Real Estate Podcast. If you can do me a favor and subscribe and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, whatever platform it is you use to listen, if you can do that for us, that would be a fantastic help to the show. It helps us both attract new listeners as well as rank higher on those directories so appreciate you listening. Thanks so much and hope to catch you on the next episode.