Michael Kilner (00:00)
Hey everyone, welcome back to Agent Money. It's been a while, over a year actually, but we're finally back and ready to kick off this new season. I wanted to start by acknowledging my original co-host, Jordan Curnutt, who you may remember hearing alongside me on these episodes. He was the one who got this podcast off the ground. I would not have had this idea on my own, but Jordan was the one who championed this and got us into gear.

and got us our first two guests and really made this whole thing go. He's had to shift his focus to other parts of his business.

But while I'll miss having him on the show, he's still obviously an incredible professional and I highly recommend him for any of your financial planning needs.

You can find him by searching for Quantum Financial Planning on Google or by following the link in the description. Okay, so now.

With that out of the way, where are we headed? Our focus is still going to be squarely on you, the agent, and specifically the agent who is curious about their money, curious about how their money can be leveraged to build a business. We're here to help you learn about, manage, and master your business finances and a little bit of personal finances as well, because those things are so intertwined.

and linked together. So how are we gonna do this? We're gonna do this through a mix of guest interviews and some educational deep dives.

We'll be starting with the interviews. We've got a bunch of them in the queue. And in these interviews, I'll be sitting down with agents who have built seven figure businesses. Why? Why seven figures? Because these are the people who we know have executed at the highest level.

who have fought through the struggles and celebrated the wins to get where they are today. We can learn so much from both their successes and their failures. And having recorded a few of these prior to me recording this intro, I could tell you that I've already learned a lot. So enough talk, let's get to what you actually came here for for this episode. So in this episode, we are with Jake Rockwell.

a true entrepreneur who went from building a successful brewery and an online store to leading a real estate team that consistently sells hundreds of homes a year. Jake's Journey is great. It is a masterclass in turning business and sales acumen into real estate success. We're gonna dive into how he scaled his team to over 40 agents. ⁓ He's done that by focusing on systems and accountability, not just.

know, following the market up and down. He's also gonna give us some insights into his investment philosophy

how he has used real estate to build long-term wealth, which is truly a trend that you will see with folks who have built big businesses. They then get into real estate ownership themselves to protect that wealth. That's probably nothing new to you, but I think Jake brings a really unique perspective to it.

And then we'll also just hear a little bit about his partnership with EXP,

that has changed his business, how he has been able to leverage that platform.

So without further ado, let's jump in.

Michael Kilner (03:25)
Jake, thank you so much for joining me today.

I've done a lot of these interviews in the past. I don't always get the chance to interview folks who have

figure teams, right? Folks who have built teams as impressive as you. So I would love to just start, give us your

where is your team now? But where did you come from before you got into real estate?

Jake Rockwell (03:47)
Yeah, I've been basically an entrepreneur for years, even from a little kid, just trying to earn money, shoveling snow, doing all those kind of different things as we do as kids.

of college, I got a marketing degree in college. Went right to work in the enterprise management training program, which is a great company for, and they hire a lot of people out of college. And then from there, bought a failing brewery.

built that up to be one of the top places in town. Didn't know how to brew beer or anything and but learned how to build that type of business. Anyway, that kind of developed into an internet company and buying and selling stuff online. And we once had the largest billiards online store in the country with the most volume.

Michael Kilner (04:34)
wow.

Jake Rockwell (04:35)
doing hundreds of thousands of dollars a month in sales called RockwellBillyards.com. Had catalog, had a warehouse filled with stuff, had some of our own branded items and

so multiple business kind of led to 2013, I had financially crashed and always wanted to be in real estate, had a few rentals at the time and saw my real estate agent who was serving me.

doing well, cashing checks, that type of thing. And I finally decided to get my real estate license and with my back against the wall, had nothing, went all in.

Michael Kilner (05:04)
Mm-hmm.

Jake Rockwell (05:11)
I didn't know if I was gonna for sure succeed, so I went all in, showed up to the office, made calls, did everything I could to make, to see if I could make that work like I had previous businesses. And the, the only reason I crashed financially was more due to personal situation.

Not necessarily business stuff and because I had a lot of success in business but didn't have the right priorities personally.

Michael Kilner (05:29)
Mm-hmm.

Jake Rockwell (05:37)
36 homes my first year.

Worked 80 hours a week and it was so much and I had been used to having businesses with employees. told my wife, was like, it's great money, hundreds of thousands of dollars of income, but 80 hours a week isn't what I'm interested in. And just to add a two year old at the time and so forth. And so that's where we kinda got started in the business.

Michael Kilner (06:00)
Yeah, you know, there's so many, I already have notes and there's so many different ways we could go with this, but because we're agent money and we want to actually focus on the finances, ⁓ try and keep it a little bit more focused. There's actually so many things that are, that are really interesting about what you said. So I think the first thing is when you got your start in real estate, was there any, were there any like resources or books or training courses that you

Jake Rockwell (06:10)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Michael Kilner (06:27)
took right away? Or did you just jump in and you're like, I'm going to work every

Jake Rockwell (06:33)
Yeah, no, I just jumped in. I mean, I had a little bit of money in the bank and I went into marketing because that's my background. So I spent money on

Michael Kilner (06:42)
Mm-hmm.

Jake Rockwell (06:43)
made calls and did some of the things that made me feel uncomfortable getting onto social media and just made sure that everybody knew that I was a full-time real estate agent. I had business background, so I knew how to talk to people and I just jumped in that way.

Michael Kilner (06:48)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, and think that's, know, that so many folks want to come up with kind of a perfect plan. And then the perfect plan will materialize when you just sell, right? Like when you have revenue, you can do all sorts of fun things with the revenue, right? And build a business plan and build a model off of that. But if you wait to have a perfect plan and you forget to sell, like you're just, not there.

so tell me about your team now. Like how many agents roughly, what volume of sales do you guys have?

Jake Rockwell (07:29)
Yeah, we have about 40 agents in probably three or four different markets and we'll sell four or five hundred homes a year. We've done that consistently over the last two or three years, three or four years. Really looking to expand that and now we know what the path is to do that. And then we have some administrative staff that help with, we've got a general manager, helps more with the day to day. We've got ISA team.

administrative manager and some other leaders on the team that

really it all got built through necessity, know, from the first, you know, when I first started brought on someone to help and then that just kind of snowballed from there as we did more and more business. We needed more and more people to to help manage the business and not let, you know, opportunities fall through the cracks.

Michael Kilner (08:19)
Right, so it's not that you guys have ever struggled with lead flow, it seems like. It was always about who can actually service these folks.

Jake Rockwell (08:25)
No, we-

Yeah, lead flow

pretty easy. Obviously, you're either naturally creating

to do high volume, it's tough to do high volume without generating and paying for some form of leads, whether it's Zillow or Realtor.com. So lead flow is never been an issue. It's just a dial. It's just how much are you going to spend on it, and then obviously fine tuning how you're spending on it.

But no, how do you process those leads is really where it's at. And you need people to do that.

Michael Kilner (08:58)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah. So I think is kind of going back to where I started on this sort of thread was, you know, is that something that you find with the agents that you recruit that

people will just try and put together a perfect plan and then they don't, but they can actually just execute on it. Rather than like, you'll have agents who are just like, yeah, I'm just gonna execute and you know.

We'll see how turns out.

Jake Rockwell (09:26)
⁓ Well, you mean like for agents that we recruit to our team?

Michael Kilner (09:29)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Jake Rockwell (09:31)
Yeah, mean, we really try

obviously set the expectations of what it takes to be successful. We give them a proven process and plan and guide on this is how, you know, and it really is simplified down to, you know, having conversations with people, right? Real estate related conversations. That's really where it's at. And yes, there's some agents that'll come in and they have this idea that they're going to do it a different way.

Michael Kilner (09:38)
Mm-hmm.

Jake Rockwell (09:58)
and think that the phone's gonna ring. But we know that that isn't really how it works. And we've got to make the phone ring. And so we really, we have an onboarding that really promotes a path on how to have success in the business. So we provide the plan for them. But obviously there's, when they have goals, say they give us a goal of income that they wanna earn in the first year, second year, five years down the road,

Michael Kilner (10:01)
Mm.

Awesome.

Jake Rockwell (10:22)
we can back that down into how many conversations and how much time they need to put into the business to do that.

Michael Kilner (10:29)
Yeah, well, that seems to be so much of real estate business planning is, you know, I think I talk to folks all the time and I will say, what are your goals? And they'll tell me, my goal is to sell 30 homes, right? Or 36 homes like you did in your first year. And you're like, well, why?

Why did you pick that number? Right? So I always try and get them to think about it in terms of, like you are with your agents, in terms of net income, right? In terms of income. Like, let's start there.

Do you wanna make $100,000 a year or do you wanna make $500,000 a year? Or you wanna make a million? So we can get there. There's a way to get to all of those, but that's really going to dictate how many deals you need to close, at what price point, at what commission. And then we can backfill that knowing what our typical conversion ratios are. We can backfill the number of conversations that you need to have. And that I think,

Jake Rockwell (11:05)
Right.

That's right.

Michael Kilner (11:29)
That is what good teams do. It sounds like what you guys are doing is you're saying, look, what do you want to make? And here's what that is going to take, right? Rather than just being like, OK, yeah, 30 homes, great. Let's just do that. That's not a real plan. shift a little bit. Now that you've built your team, you're focused on expansion, it sounds like. ⁓

Jake Rockwell (11:39)
Right.

Yeah, I mean,

not as much as expansion as just growing, right? But sometimes that includes expanding into other markets.

we're expanding down into Arizona is because I've moved down here. And so now, naturally, we need to expand here. And it's a huge market, right? But if we expand to other markets, it's normally only because we found the right person to expand into that market.

But ultimately, the growth comes through agent count. And though we put everything we can into each additional or each agent on their success, naturally there's still an 80-20 rule that exists, right? And we can recruit, we've got, 40, 50 agents on the team. 20 % of those are going to produce 80 % of the business. That doesn't discount the other 80 % by any means, but.

Michael Kilner (12:36)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jake Rockwell (12:48)
If we're doing 400 500 transactions and we've been around the same agent count for the last three or four years, because we just naturally recruited. And then when we naturally recruit, people come and go, right? And so we're bringing in about the same amount of agents that are maybe moving on or falling out of the industry or not having success or whatever. But to grow, we need to bring in more people than we lose. And we don't normally lose a lot of people.

Michael Kilner (13:01)
Mm-hmm.

Jake Rockwell (13:17)
⁓ for any other reason than, you know, they want to go build their own team, which is awesome, we'll help them do that, or they just aren't showing up to the game, right? And so we need to recruit more. And if we want to do 800 transactions a year, we need to double our agent count.

Michael Kilner (13:35)
Yeah, well is that where you guys wanna go? Is that a goal?

Jake Rockwell (13:38)
That's the goal. That's

the goal is to increase the amount of agents because that's the only way to really grow for our team. And most teams, you know, you can get, you know, 10 rock stars all put together, but their life, their time's going to be limited too. So, you know, you're limited on growth. And really when you look around the industry and the largest teams and the ones that are doing a thousand, two thousand transactions, it's coming down mostly to that, that how many agents are on their team. And the only way to grow a team.

Michael Kilner (13:53)
Mm-hmm.

Jake Rockwell (14:06)
with lot of agencies to have the right

benefits, and structure that allows them to thrive.

Michael Kilner (14:14)
this is, know, I'm...

I'm not a member of a brokerage. I don't have really any cards at any particular brokerage. But do you, what uniquely about EXP, because that's where you guys are, like what is unique about them that you feel like allows you to grow? And obviously, know, if I'm gonna interview an agent at Real, agent at Compass, agent at KW, you know, they'll all have something, but it's really interesting just to hear perspectives. So what's your perspective on like how has, how,

Jake Rockwell (14:26)
Right.

Yeah.

Michael Kilner (14:43)
How has EXP enabled you guys to grow?

Jake Rockwell (14:46)
Well, you know, I mean, there's so many things about EXP and obviously there's lots of great companies out there. We've been with them for about seven years, but they're just set up for teams in the way of their structure, their fees. They allow us to operate our own brand within the brand. So I feel like I have a brokerage within the brokerage, but probably the most important thing is, is when I'm recruiting to the team, I have the benefits that EXP brings to the table for those agents.

Michael Kilner (15:14)
Mm-hmm.

Jake Rockwell (15:15)
On

top of what Rockwell offers, now there are there's stock incentives, there's revenue share, there's discounted health care. There's all these other benefits that EXP offers. Well, I get to add that to the benefits when we're recruiting to our team because it includes both what our team provides and what EXP provides. So it's a stronger value proposition than what a lot of other companies might be able to offer. So that's where.

It's not a franchise, it's a little bit different for people wanting to expand. So like when I want to expand into other markets, the brokerage I was at before, they weren't in other markets. They were only in four or five states, so I couldn't really expand. And even then, it's a franchise model. So now I'm dealing with two different owners and so forth, where EXP is just one company and easy to expand into other areas.

Michael Kilner (16:00)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, no, it's really,

realize

corporate structure, right, where it's just one single entity that goes across, you know, the entire United States, even into other countries, right? Like it's a lighter lift for team owners, right?

Jake Rockwell (16:26)
Yeah,

and there's just a different mindset within this company, and it might exist in other

a mindset of abundance where every, I mean, I can call the top team leader in any state, anywhere in the country, and they will share without a doubt every secret that they have in building their team or building their business or whatever.

And agents do that too, just like me sharing that, everything that we're doing with people. And it's just built into the culture of the company. And that's probably one of the biggest benefits that we have is just the collaboration that we get. it's, I mean, you got some big, big, big teams that are, and high producers that are moving to the company. And obviously people bounce from company to company, but there's a lot of other companies that are similar to ours now.

Michael Kilner (16:56)
Yep.

Jake Rockwell (17:14)
But it's a true collaboration mindset in this company, which helps us build by learning from others.

Michael Kilner (17:21)
Yeah, no, you

know, it's, you said like, you can even, if somebody is, wants to build their own thing, EXP still in many ways, because of revenue share, Yeah lets you guys benefit from people, know, who may not, they might not be working for you directly, but they stay in your network and they stay at EXP, right? You can, you've helped them launch that, right? And you can help them build their own businesses and you're still on the same team. Yeah, so that's.

Jake Rockwell (17:28)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Exactly, and

that was one of the reasons we moved to XB seven years ago. I had my own brokerage and it was great. We were doing awesome. The agents were like shocked. Why would we do anything different? But one, it was the benefits. But now, because when someone would leave our team or leave our company back then, it, you know, even though true leadership allows, you know, should be happy for people to make whatever change is going to make them happiest or better, you know. ⁓

improve their business. I didn't get that when I left my first brokerage. But now there, like you said, there is, you now I can, let me help you build that team, right? Because yes, there is some additional incentive. That's not necessarily why I lead that way. So I want, you know, at the end of the day, you want people to succeed and the more you help people succeed. I truly believe that the better we all do, right?

Michael Kilner (18:25)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah, you have to take a really long term view of it, right? As like, you're not just here to extract value out of folks. I mean, we get that. Like, we'll have teams that go through phases and maybe they, you know, they'll hire somebody in-house and you're like, look, I'm really happy for you. I don't always agree that it's your best, but you're not in a position where, you know, that's what you want from me. What you need is like a smooth transition.

Jake Rockwell (18:45)
Exactly.

Michael Kilner (19:03)
and you need to be set up for success because we only work in this one industry and your reputation is everything. And yeah, you should just, if you take a long-term view, if those people do

all do okay. That's a

better way to look at life.

Jake Rockwell (19:17)
Absolutely.

Michael Kilner (19:18)
one thing I kind of wanted to circle back on was,

You've had this journey, right? And so it's like, we've only been on for like 15 minutes, so we can't go into every phase of the journey. But was there a part of your journey that

particularly difficult in terms of profit?

So this is sort of, I sort of see this trend and I'm really interested to hear what you have to say about it because I think there are phases where things can get really, really tight even though the revenue is really strong. I'm curious if you ever ran into that.

Jake Rockwell (19:58)
I mean there's been times where we've had really, you know, I mean, you know, we've netted over seven figures one year. We're not doing as much of that now. But that's We're in a little bit different mode right now. We're kind of, I'm trying to

I know. mean, we've always had pretty good revenue. I think the

points in our journey was a couple years ago when the shift happened really fast. And what happened was

it takes a little while to unwind some of the expenses and some of the process and some of the systems. then, this was during, this was post COVID where

Michael Kilner (20:31)
Yes.

Jake Rockwell (20:36)
everybody in the industry was a rock star, right? All they had to do is look at their phone and somebody was calling. And because of that, their mindset was they were a rock star. And it's very difficult to get those people to switch to like, hey, we actually have to work now. We have to make calls. We have to create conversations. And so that the timeline it takes to do that on top of

Michael Kilner (20:40)
Yep.

You

Yeah.

Yes.

Jake Rockwell (21:04)
the timeline it takes to backpedal some of your expenses and prepare for that. And we did a little of that ahead of time. There was a point to where, yeah, I mean, we never went into the red, it was a year that I scratch in my head. I'm like, I could have made more money selling 15, 20 homes myself, right, or properties. But that's, know, which is fine. It was a...

Michael Kilner (21:23)
Yeah, yeah.

Jake Rockwell (21:26)
kind of a reset year and that made me realize that I never want to have a market or agents define the success of our business. And so we made some big changes during that time, not only expense wise, but mostly with our process and our systems around the leads that we have coming in, how to process those leads and basically implementing an ISA team.

Michael Kilner (21:28)
Mm-hmm.

Jake Rockwell (21:51)
to help with that.

Michael Kilner (21:52)
Yeah, I mean, think if, I mean, that what you just said feels like the biggest nugget of value that you are not going to, you're no longer going to allow agents or market to dictate the success, right? I love that, that's amazing. Because I think that's right, like that is, that is the heart of it, right? And that's why good teams can survive and thrive in,

Jake Rockwell (22:08)
of the company.

Michael Kilner (22:21)
down markets is because they have that mentality and that mindset. And then that actually informs what they're telling their agents and the types of people that they hire and the systems that they put in place and the accountability that everyone in the company has. So I love that. mean, that's a clip right there for social media. So thank you. Okay. So I never want to make these particularly long. So.

I want to touch on two things before before I let you go. So the first is taxes Right, and we don't have to go. I don't we don't need to like go through last year's tax return, but

there's this really strong trend with strong real estate agents to also be real estate investors. And it makes a lot of sense. So I wanted to know what is, if you're willing to share, what is some of your investment strategy? Because you're actually, you're earning a lot of active income from this team. And that opens up a lot of opportunities for more passive things, right? Other businesses, real estate. So give me a little bit, like a glimpse into your investment

Jake Rockwell (23:23)
Right.

Michael Kilner (23:28)
strategy.

Jake Rockwell (23:29)
Yeah,

it's buying multifamily residential properties. I mean, I do a little commercial, but I mean, some of that's commercial because it's more than five units or more than four units. But buying multifamily properties, I'm trying to buy, it's a nonstop every year battle against taxes. And when you buy real estate and you use accelerated depreciation, bonus depreciation, which just got bumped back to 100 % for this year.

Michael Kilner (23:53)
Mm-hmm.

Jake Rockwell (23:57)
It can really fight off a lot of income. And so that's one that fights off the active income from the brokerage. I do sell properties of my own when I'm upgrading or, you know, jockeying around our portfolio. And I own, you know, 70 something doors now and constantly building just bought 11 more in the last two weeks. But but a lot of it is for to grow the portfolio and to fight taxes. And it's like I

Michael Kilner (24:01)
Yes.

Awesome.

Jake Rockwell (24:27)
I can either give a hundred thousand to the tax man or I can put it down on a on a property that's going to save me, you

X amount of taxes. So that's one avenue. Obviously, when I sell, I try to do 1031 exchanges as much as possible just

kick the can down the down the road. And then the third way is it's not necessarily tax saving for now, but tax saving for later is really

trying to get as much into a Roth as possible, whether it's

or crypto or self-directed, right? Mm-hm I really wish I would have done more of that earlier and put the properties in that self-directed Roth, because that would be a game changer. And so for people that are younger that have the ability to do that, try to get as much into a Roth with like a

Michael Kilner (24:59)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Jake Rockwell (25:15)
There's multiple, Solo 401k or whatever, talk to a financial advisor on different ways to stuff more than your 7 or 8,000 a year into a Roth. And it can be built quick, you can do some flips in there, you can do some private money lending or whatever and build that Roth because the growth and the withdrawals from that Roth are obviously all tax free later on.

Michael Kilner (25:38)
Yeah,

this is awesome,

I actually didn't know any of that about you, so I'm really glad you went that direction.

Jake Rockwell (25:43)
Yeah.

Michael Kilner (25:44)
are there any things, sort of secrets, I don't know if they're secrets, but any things you really look for in a real estate deal? Are there things that you're just like, yeah, I know those deals, and that's a slam dunk for me.

Jake Rockwell (26:00)
Yeah, so obviously there's long term and then there's short term holds. Like a triplex landed in my lap, one of the agents, someone's dying and it was just an unbelievable deal so I had to jump on it within a week, week and a half. That one is more of a flip to just add to the kitty for future. But really when it comes to analyzing a multifamily residential, I'm looking at cash on cash return mostly.

Although I've eased off a little bit because of the benefits of the tax depreciation, the appreciation and the debt reduction. But I try to push for a 10 % cash on cash return, a true cash on cash return. And it's really, I put in $100,000, am I getting 10,000 in my pocket after expenses, mortgage, insurance, everything, right? Property management.

Michael Kilner (26:33)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Jake Rockwell (26:51)
and I find that to be a good, that's a great return. Now will I take something

six, seven, eight percent? I will because there's additional benefit with that depreciation. If I'm to pay taxes, I mean there's got to be some value there, right? And so you add the value to that. And there's long term, you're going to get those kind of returns in two years, three years, especially if the rents are under market. So I'll look for properties.

Michael Kilner (27:06)
yeah, yeah.

Jake Rockwell (27:17)
that are maybe distressed, under market. The one that I just closed on Friday, eight units, it hit above the 1 % rule, which is hard to find. $900,000 property, getting close to 10,000 a month in rents. that was, obviously the expenses matter too, but that's one where it was just a no brainer.

I jumped on it right away and negotiated pretty hard. was, you know, I got a 75 under asking and so that was a goodbye. And then there's ones that you can get creative with where, you know, like I've got 10 houses on one commercial lot that I'm in the process of splitting all of that. And I may unload that, but I would do it per house.

Michael Kilner (28:01)
wow.

Mmm. Yeah.

Jake Rockwell (28:06)
and then there's a much larger

gain there and then do 1031s or not to upgrade to maybe newer units and so forth like that. Trying to shift some of my portfolio down to Arizona which is a little bit more landlord friendly than Oregon.

Michael Kilner (28:21)
So, mean, once again, so many ways we can go with this button. Do you, this is one of the things that I think I run into a lot with clients and networking in the industry is folks who are buying into markets that they have never been to or markets that they're not familiar with. Yeah, I'm not gonna say, I'm never gonna put a blanket statement out there like don't do that, know, that's terrible. I don't have that perspective.

It seems like you focused on markets that you know. Like is that a strategy or do you also have, do you have properties that you hold in markets that you're not as familiar with?

Jake Rockwell (28:58)
Yeah, I know. mean, there's obviously a comfort zone there. so Southern Oregon, where I've been for 30 something years or where I was, I know that market. So it's easier. And I, know, as much as I want to buy stuff here in the Phoenix Scottsdale area, I'm not getting multifamily to make sense to me. And I don't know it quite as well. I've bought in short term rentals here. I know those and I know the locations for those I have. I've bought in. I bought a fourplex once down in Texas.

that I never saw, bought it, held it, sold it, never saw it once. I don't mind, it's just a little harder because you gotta find the team there, right? You gotta find the property manager, you gotta find someone to help with the work or whatever. And I know there's better areas than Southern Oregon and Phoenix area for investing, depending on your goals. it's a cashflow and appreciation or if it's just cashflow, there's...

Michael Kilner (29:33)
Yes. Yeah.

Jake Rockwell (29:49)
obviously great places in the Midwest where you can get good cash flow. But is that better? You know, there's different ways to look at that because appreciation, when something appreciates a decent amount, that can account for years and years and years of cash flow. You know, when you can, you know, pop $100,000 on a value of a property in one, two years, how long will it take you to profit that much cash flow in rental cash flow, right?

Michael Kilner (29:56)
Yeah.

Jake Rockwell (30:16)
I think you just got to be careful and the golden rule is invest in your backyard. But you become limited if your backyard is not landlord friendly or not great, right? So.

Michael Kilner (30:26)
Yeah, yeah,

yeah. No, think you're bringing up all these great points where a lot of it is just risk tolerance, right? And managing your risk and so, you know, that's, but, you know, where you've brought us is from the active real estate team to making that transition to real estate investment and just the tremendous tax benefits that come with that and, you know, and you're really building.

you know, a legacy, you know, of,

a foundation of assets. And like you said, you mentioned it earlier, but like you wish you had started earlier. And I think so many people will say that, right? Investing earlier. But like the best time, right, to invest is now, right?

Jake Rockwell (31:07)
Well, yeah,

I mean, I've been in business for 13 years. I had nothing 13 years ago, and here we are, right? So in that short period, what can you do? And I think it's important for agents and team leaders to know is, and so we really promote our agents to start investing into real estate and get their first rental or second rental or whatever. But I think a big mistake that people do when they start making hundreds of thousands of dollars, hundreds of thousands of dollars,

is they're spending it on the wrong things, right? And because I crashed financially, I learned the hard way. And so buying the boat, the fancier car, this spending that money rather than putting it to work. And so I feel like I went through the great depression when I crashed and what did they do? You stuff, I just stuffed money into cash flowing assets. And that has generated much more wealth than just the brokering side of things. And...

Michael Kilner (31:40)
Yes.

Mm.

Jake Rockwell (32:00)
⁓ And it gets really fun when it grows and grows and grows. It starts to compound, things get a lot easier, cash deals happen, that type of thing. But you have to start with the first one, And then it just develops and builds. And so we gotta choose to use our money wisely rather than spending on the wrong things.

Michael Kilner (32:20)
Yeah, no, I love that. So many people go out and buy depreciating assets with their money rather than a...

Jake Rockwell (32:26)
Right. And I've done plenty of that. I've done plenty of that and I can't stand doing it, but it's like spending $100,000 on

a car. can buy a door for that. And yeah.

Michael Kilner (32:35)
Yeah, it's so interesting when you start to really look at opportunity costs, right? That's the opportunity cost of buying the $100,000 car, you know? It's like, is the next investment property? But you're also in a space where you recognize that. Like, you can see that, and you're very aware when you're going and spending those dollars, like, I'm doing this. So what we wanted to is like, what we want to...

Jake Rockwell (32:44)
Exactly.

Michael Kilner (33:00)
help people understand is like just to think in that way, just to think in terms of opportunity cost, right? The time value of money, compound interest, those types of things. Right So just the last thing, leave it here. If somebody wanted to get in touch with you, Jake, right? Like you've been super generous with your time or just learn more about your team, opportunities like that. What is the best way to reach out to you?

Jake Rockwell (33:10)
Right.

Yeah, I mean you can obviously Google my name. Just don't mix me up with the superhero Jake Rockwell because there is an old superhero. But I'm on Facebook, Instagram, our websites rockwellrealestate.com and you know anybody can call me. You I've got you can look up my number or whatever, but easy to find online. And if someone just wants help with their team or their business.

Michael Kilner (33:46)
Awesome.

Jake Rockwell (33:50)
I'd be happy to jump on a Zoom with them and share everything that I've ever learned. If they want more information about our team, what we do to help our agents build their business, be happy to jump on a Zoom for that too. If they want to learn more about EXP, obviously most of them have gotten calls from 100 other EXP agents. But sometimes hearing an experience from someone else maybe can be different for somebody.

Here to help however I can.

Michael Kilner (34:19)
No, ⁓

I love that. I think that's, it's, think folks don't realize how generous that offer is because of, you you have a large team, you have a family, you have, you know, obviously a lot of other investments going on. So, you know, that is really generous for you to spend time with me, with other folks who might want to reach out. The last thing is you alluded to it, but what is next for, not just.

The Rockwell Group, but Jake Rockwell. What's next?

Jake Rockwell (34:47)
So in the process of a property management company with a partner, so one thing that we like to do is if I have people on my team that wanna grow, maybe there's other business opportunities and I don't mind partnering with people on that kind of stuff. Property management's gonna come naturally. We've got a lot of doors to manage and I think there's some improvement in that space in our areas. But ultimately growing our team and

Michael Kilner (35:01)
Mm-hmm.

Jake Rockwell (35:11)
stepping out of some of the day-to-day myself and getting to where it's really truly coaching, not paid coaching, but helping others. I like this kind of stuff. I like one-on-ones with agents. I would like to lose my email box. In fact, I've already told my staff, we're gonna do a test. I'm gonna have everything forward to them. They're gonna take care of everything. Anything they can't, we're gonna teach them how to take care of it, right?

Michael Kilner (35:22)
Mm-hmm.

Ha!

I love that.

Jake Rockwell (35:37)
⁓

I want to get some of the, I'll just call it chaos, because when you run a large company and a large team, there's just a lot of different things. And so I need to slowly get some of that more, more of that off my plate and spend more time with my family and more time golfing.

Michael Kilner (35:42)
Mm-hmm.

Jake Rockwell (35:56)
and so forth, I'm still pretty young. mean, I'm 50, not much is gonna be changed, but just growth. I'm tired of being plateaued at that four or 500 transactions a year. It's time to take it and double that. And so that's really our next big push.

Michael Kilner (36:13)
Awesome. This is so helpful. ⁓ Thank you, Jake, for being on. And yeah, hopefully we can connect again in the future. Appreciate it.

Jake Rockwell (36:15)
Yeah, thanks for having me.

Yeah, awesome.

Take care.