Creating Wealth and Purpose in Real Estate with Jesse Sells

In this inspiring episode, Dionne Malush sits down with Jesse Sells, a strategic leader in private equity, real estate acquisitions, and portfolio management, for a powerful conversation about building wealth with discipline, leading through adversity, and creating long-term value that truly matters. From humble beginnings to scaling millions in assets under management, Jesse shares the mindset, resilience, and decision-making it takes to succeed in high-pressure environments without losing sight of purpose.

Together, Dionne and Jesse unpack lessons on real estate investing, impact investing, affordable housing, mentorship, family, and the importance of designing a life you do not have to escape from. This episode is a reminder that success is not just about financial growth. It is about using your experience, values, and vision to make a meaningful difference while staying grounded in what matters most.

Connect with Jesse here:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesse-sells/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thejessesells/

Transcript

Growing Up Poor Without Quit

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Today's guest is someone who doesn't just operate in the world of investment and real estate, he transforms it. Jesse Stells is a strategic investment and operations leader with more than a decade of experience in private equity real estate, acquisitions, and portfolio management. He co-founded Impact Growth Capital and scaled it from an idea to 70 million in assets under management. He led everything from acquisitions and financial modeling to due diligence and post-acquisition execution, all while building and leading a 43-person team that delivered real results for investors. Before that, Jesse spent 11 years as an intelligent analyst in the United States Air Force. Thank you for your service, Jesse. That experience sharpened his ability to assess risk and make decisions under pressure and break down complex problems into clear, actionable strategies. What I like about Jesse is simple. He knows how to find opportunity to execute with discipline and create long-term value, even in the environments where most people freeze. This conversation is going to stretch you, so let's jump in. Jesse, welcome. It's so glad. I'm so glad we're finally together. And I'm excited to learn more about you on all levels, but this is like something I always like to start with. What is something interesting about yourself that most people wouldn't know?

SPEAKER_00 1:13

Most people would not know. Um, I think when you get into this commercial real estate world and the investment world, you rub shoulders with everybody and you kind of assume that everybody's was born with a silver spoon or rich. Uh one interesting thing is, you know, at certain points in my life, with seven, or I guess six of like the seventh from the baby, we lived in like an RV, right? We didn't have running water. Uh literally taking a bath in a horse trough with a little fire underneath it to keep it warm. So as long as you stick on the outside of it, you're fine, but get you close to that middle and get some burns on your bum.

SPEAKER_01 1:44

That's so wild. I grew up in the trailer myself, it was very small, and you know, we didn't have a lot of them moving around. There was three little girls in a bedroom, it's about as big as the like half of a room. And it's not quite the same as an RV, but but it's similar. So that's very interesting. So you started that's where you started from. So did you have a dream job when you were little?

SPEAKER_00 2:02

Of course, astronaut, fireman, you know, the normal stuff. You know, I I was kind of aimless for a long time, you know, because I always felt like there's so many different options out there uh going through high school and what I wanted to do, and even in college. I mean, I don't have a college degree, I never got it. I've been four classes away, 12 credits for about eight years now or whatever.

SPEAKER_01 2:21

So I guess you don't really need it now, right? You're good.

SPEAKER_00 2:24

Yeah, but I mean I've got a full ride for like some engineering, biomedical engineering, and then I change that for pre-med and I change that to business, and I I have like hundred something credits, it's ridiculous. So I I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 2:36

Just trick me a while. I know that long. I know.

SPEAKER_00 2:43

I just need to do something on my wall, right?

SPEAKER_01 2:44

Yeah, for sure. I leave it a little bit right there behind you.

SPEAKER_00 2:47

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 2:49

So was there a defining moment that led you into private equity, real estate, and acquisitions? I mean, it's it's interesting. It's a I mean, I've been in real estate for 21 years as a real estate agent, now brokerage owner. I have about 200 agents, and so I've seen a lot of sides of it. But what you're doing is so different, still real estate, but very different.

SPEAKER_00 3:08

Yeah, there's a couple of defining moments, and I think that's kind of how life is, right? It's just moments that you have to make a pivot and decide what you're gonna do. I've always had this kind of mantra that's been passed down to me from my father. Uh said, we're not white trash, we're just poor. Well, what that essentially means is that you know, we're not gonna accept our situation. We're going to, you know, and just kind of live in squalor. We're going to put our head down, we're going to work our way out of this. And he did that. He graduated with his degree of 29 and six kids, you know, which is crazy. Uh six, seven kids. So I've always had that mindset, and we that's how we lived our lives. So I was constantly remodeling homes. Uh, we were flipping homes. I I every single brother, brother-in-law, everybody I had being the youngest, I was always on the renovation crew on the roof or doing something. Uh, so I saw the power in real estate for a long time. And I did 11 years in the military, like you said. Uh when I was getting out, I kind of how do I get into this? Ride the statistics, like 90 something percent of a millionaires own real estate. So I knew I wanted that financial stability, that financial freedom. And uh I didn't really know how to get into it. So a lot of research, a lot of YouTube university. That one's actually worth it. Good for listening. Yeah, uh and uh just discovered syndications, and that's how we got up to about 70 million uh assets under management as a GP uh within about three years as just all syndications, joint ventures, institutional partners, some family offices after a while, and started doing that.

SPEAKER_01 4:27

So, how many transactions is that, or how many units like in in my world?

SPEAKER_00 4:32

At the top of about 1,500 units, a little, I think around 1400. Uh, and then there's 25 different projects, however you want to call it. At the end, we're mostly focused on capital preservation, just especially with the market going crazy. It's more about, you know, it's that military that I was an Intel guy, so it's that paranoia of are we doing this the right way? What could go wrong? And that's kind of how I've I've looked at everything uh in real estate is can we hedge can we protect against the downside as as best as possible, right?

SPEAKER_01 5:02

It's funny because I have we own 45 doors and we're I'm ready to sell. Like we started too late, I don't, you know, so I'm 57 and we started this five years ago, and I'm like, I you know, at the end of it all, like 15 years from now, I don't it's I'm gonna be 73. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 5:19

It's oh wait. I I swear I'll pass you like that's like tell me the 35.

SPEAKER_01 5:23

That's I mean you're my best friend right now. You know, so it's like crazy to think about that other side of it. You know, if I had started this when I was 30, you know, it would be different. But now we're, you know, a couple of them we still have mortgages on. So when those mortgages are gone, vacations are different at 57 than they are at 77, right? So I want to leave now. So we're looking at right now, we're just packaging them up, getting ready to go. Because I feel like now's a good time to to move on and you know, try to figure out the rest of my life. But yeah, so, anyways, that's where we're at.

The Reality Of Owning Rentals

SPEAKER_00 5:53

We're doing the same thing. We're we've gotten rid of quite a bit of our uh assets over the year, especially the smaller ones, because they're just too big of a headache, like you said. You know, you don't get anything that something bad happens, or you know, God forbid you have those uh cast iron pipes, which is the band of my existence, you know, these properties.

SPEAKER_01 6:09

Uh last week, you know, we had two really wild stories. One night we got a call of our one in the morning, and one of our tenants said there's a raccoon inside sitting on my couch, and we're like, What? It was literally cleaning itself on the couch. Like we get up, my husband gets up there, he looks hammered, he takes a picture of it, and it was just sitting there hanging out. Like it was yeah, so it was hurt, so it was wasn't doing anything. And she went out the door, and then last two weeks ago, one of our tenants called and said there's a dead fish outside of our door inside of a 12-unit building. I'm like a mafia symbol, like uh she broke up with her boyfriend and he left the dead fish in his culture. That's a thing, right? And so really we're cleaning up dead fish in the middle of an apartment building. We are, yeah, it's insane the crazy stuff that happens.

SPEAKER_00 6:58

Yes, yeah. I I I had one with a lady called me, it's a Thanksgiving, uh like 11 o'clock at night a couple years ago, and she said, These boys are lighting my butt on fire. I'm like, what are you talking about? And so like I didn't call her back because I was like, This lady called, you know, those people that just call for every little thing. Her butt's yeah, that one's a call of cops. I don't I don't know what's going on. We found out that the next day she was she wouldn't tell me anything. So I found out that started went to the property, started asking the maintenance guy, like, hey, what's going on with Miss, you know, and found out that we literally had a fight club, like that we had one of those uh like what do you call them where there's an empty space in the middle of like a courtyard apart.

SPEAKER_01 7:35

Yeah, like a ring or something, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:37

Yeah, uh, there's a word for it, I'm blank. But evidently the maintenance guys and and other people would just like have fights and people bet, and people be up on the patio on the balconies with betting on this, and while that was happening, somebody literally took a match on her butt to think it's funny and lit her butt on fire.

SPEAKER_01 7:53

So she was not lying, she was telling the truth.

SPEAKER_00 7:56

She wasn't lying, but then she didn't want to fess up. We have like 40 residents here, no one wanted to fess up that this was happening, it was going on for weeks, and that's what like after finding out what happened there, it's how we found out there was literally a fi club going on at the property. Wow, people think you're landlord, you're just collecting checks. No, you're dealing with dead fishes and fight clubs and hanging out.

Market Shifts And Partnership Breakups

SPEAKER_01 8:16

Oh my gosh. That's just the that's just some of the things. But so let's talk about adversity because the reason I did chine on success was to talk about pushing through adversity to get to the other side. So can you share a significant challenge or adversity you've had to face and how you overcame it?

SPEAKER_00 8:29

Oh, I mean, that's an easy one right now with the where the market's gone since 2021. If anybody bought around then, you're hurting. Uh or starting to turn around, but it's slow. I'll start since we talked about the properties quite a bit. There's always adversity, there's always problems, there's uh things. Um, there's you know issues where you get too close to tenants and then you have to evict them. And for me, I did a lot of only did affordable housing, right? It's recession resistant. I'm talking about market rates affordable, like naturally occurring affordable, as well as uh section eight. And a lot of sad stories about somebody on section eight who was just a great person that you know their their nephew got out of jail and they just came and tore stuff up, or we had a guy that some kids that was funny thought it'd be funny to defecate in the halls, and uh, we eventually had to evict them and their whole family because just wouldn't stop. And you just thought it was funny at 14-15 years old to do it.

SPEAKER_01 9:18

Yeah, not funny.

SPEAKER_00 9:19

Yeah, not funny, not funny to the all the neighbors, that's for sure. But you know, the hardest things were so I went in business with my brother. Uh, we're still in business together. Uh just yeah, kind of got a borrowed approach.

SPEAKER_01 9:29

The two of you together, that's how it all started.

SPEAKER_00 9:31

Yeah, pulled our cash together. Um, our our dad joined us later on too to help with the development side because he's been in construction his whole life. We since we're able to retire him, so that's good. A lot of these that's good. Family's fun, right? You work with family, it's it's good and bad. It's it's ups and downs. But a lot of these partnerships we made along the way um just fizzle out, and some of those are personal relationships you have that when push comes to shove or when times get tough, it's hard to fire your friend. It's hard to break up a partnership with somebody you've known for years and years and years. And it really shows you uh maybe not who people are, it's you think we're all good at different things. And but when push comes to shove, you know, and times get tough, it's it's hard to to break up those relationships and know that they'll they'll never be the same again. So that's really be careful what you partner with.

SPEAKER_01 10:16

Yeah, for sure. I've been in a couple partnerships so far. And one thing one of my business coaches taught me that I thought was so good friendly, not friends. And when you get that close to them, you it just caused you can't say goodbye, you can't let them go, you can't you it's harder to yell at them or have a I mean, not that you're yelling all the time, but there's some times when you have to be more stern. But when you're so close to them, it's it's very difficult. So yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 10:39

And and the um that's why it's the same thing with taking money, I'm sure probably happening to you. We now uh the way I look at these things, it's uh I have an application if you want to work with us. I guess I just I will not take your money. There's some money is not worth it, you know. Gotta have the right partner, and it's uh it's a marriage when you have an investor because they're with you for five years, you know. Yeah, uh so it's it's different now.

Time, Health, And Letting Go

SPEAKER_01 10:59

So I don't know how old you are since I kind of gave up my age, but is there anything else that you look that you want to do in your life outside of this?

SPEAKER_00 11:06

Outside of the real estate? Yeah, yeah. Want to get one day I want to sell everything. If they guys can trip to outer space, wait for me, Alan, make that commercial. Yeah, still gotta do it. Yeah, better make five-year-old me proud. Uh there's a lot of things. I uh so being a veteran, uh, being in for 11 years, being I I worked with some teams, type sub special, special operation stuff. I I know a lot of guys that didn't come back right or didn't come back at all. So I work a lot with different veteran organizations. Uh that's near and dear to my heart. Uh, I want to expand upon that Wind Warrior project, things like that. Uh, get more involved that way. Um, doing it through housing, I want to do it in a bigger way in the future. That's a big one. Personally, I love to travel. My goal is to hit a hundred different countries, but it's before I hit 50.

SPEAKER_01 11:50

Wow, how many have how many do you have so far?

SPEAKER_00 11:53

15. So I gotta get to work.

SPEAKER_01 11:56

Yeah, I know. Oh, that's cool. I never even thought about that. Like I've I've hardly left the North America. So yeah, I've never gone to overseas or anything, you know. So I do feel like it's time to do something new because it's you know, I've seen a lot of America, but there's still a lot I haven't seen. You know, in Canada, I've been in Canada, it's beautiful, but yeah, so I I love that you want to travel more and and do that. You know, that what I just said to you earlier about things happen at 70, 50, like taking a vacation at 57 is different than taking it at 77. So if that's any advice I can give to anyone listening, really think through that because it hit me like a ton of bricks when I heard that. And I thought, oh my gosh, you're so right. Like it's 77. I might not even I I may not be healthy, I may not want to go anywhere. And then I lost all of this opportunity because I had to work so much now that I I didn't do anything for myself. So yeah, my husband had a liver transplant 10 months ago. So I was his primary caregiver for four and a half months. So my company still ran while I was help taking care of him for four months. Like I literally didn't leave his side and he was so sick. And but my company still ran because I was able to do stuff from home, thankfully, and I had a great staff. But now I have now we're at a point where two more months will be at one year, and it's time for us to live a little. And I'm I'm excited about that opportunity. So that's why I want to sell all the properties so we don't have to deal with that while we're on vacation.

SPEAKER_00 13:16

So question for you though. But so did that kind of force you to to to almost fire yourself from things and let other people do those jobs for you, or were did things not run as smoothly because you weren't there?

SPEAKER_01 13:27

Yeah, no, that's fun and interesting. It's you know, what happened was first five years of our company, we had the wrong people in the wrong places and we didn't know we were friendly. We had all these friends, not friendly, we were friends. We had friends, we had all these people, and then I find out years later that you know the whole time they were just they were making so many mistakes I didn't even know. I mean, we were successful in spite of ourselves. We were both real estate agents. My partner was a chiropractor, I had a graphic design business, and then we went into real estate. We didn't know how to manage a 200 people company, right? We had an idea, and so we in in fact there's been over 300 agents in our company, but through attrition and people leaving and companies handing them checks to leave. It's you know, there's been a lot of recruiting and meeting with people and a lot of ups and downs, things I never expected. And you know, we give away most of the money because that's how the mar the uh the model works, it's very lucrative for the agent. So we have to have a lot of transactions. So yeah, so going out three years ago, I we would have been out of business. I don't think we would have lasted. But then all of a sudden we started getting the right people, the right place. Everybody's learning, everybody's teaching from each other. So I could still do the lot of work sitting here because I would have him just sitting on the couch behind me, but I had to let go, and I was it was very difficult because I wanted I I'm that person, like I'll just do it myself. It's it's faster if I just do it myself.

SPEAKER_00 14:45

Yeah, but then you hold yourself back from everywhere else, you know. Yeah, that's a hard thing to do, isn't it? I had to keep reteaching myself and relearning it's because I'll let go of this and then I'll hold on to this over here, so tight, and it's just it's a hard thing to do.

SPEAKER_01 14:57

And as an office entrepreneur, I'm always wanting to do something else. Like in my head, every day it's like I want I have this idea, I want to do this, I want to do that. You know, it's just inevitable. And I I had it come to the realization that I'm not gonna get everything done that I want in my life. I'm 57, so it's not the end of my life, but it's the last third. And I gotta seriously think about that. Like, do I want to just spend it sitting in front of this computer every single day? Because then the whole thing I'm just telling you about the whole 57 to 77, I'm gonna miss a lot. So yeah, so it's been a lot, it's been a really challenging couple of years for me and personally, but you know, professionally, our we're stable, our company's stable, we're debt-free, we're you know, doing all the right things. But I really would like to grow, I'd like to see us have some incredible growth. But the market's shifted, right? We like you said, things have changed. COVID gears were amazing. Like we didn't work for three and a half months, but when we came back, we never stopped working for three years. It was in it was just amazing. So, you know, I don't look, I don't want that to happen again, of course, but it was really good for real estate.

SPEAKER_00 15:55

Yeah, it was. And then the uh fallout on the other hand was not very good.

Mindset For High Stakes Decisions

SPEAKER_01 15:57

So that's how it works. Let's talk about that. So, how important has mindset been in your career, especially when making these high-stakes decisions that you have?

SPEAKER_00 16:08

Oh, yeah, it's mindset's everything. I think it's really interesting because uh one of the things I think about when you first had that mindset is being needy. Uh, because yeah, you you have to be resilient when you uh are doing this. There's always gonna be good days and it's gonna be even worse days, it's gonna be terrible days sometimes. Um, but also it's as an entrepreneur, as a uh investor, and you're constantly looking for other investors. So then now you can't show up and be needy, you have to have something an opportunity for people, and I think that's a big thing that people don't get either. It's it's it's a shift of your mind that you're not begging for money, you're actually giving people an opportunity, and there's a scarcity to that. So I think that's a hard thing for me. That was a really hard thing for me to get over because growing up, we didn't ask anybody for any help, period, right? That's just how you were on a man, I could do this. Yeah, uh, but I couldn't do it.

SPEAKER_01 16:54

I didn't know you know, it was just my me and my sister, so I was always sticking up for them. And you know, just last week something happened, and my youngest sister said, people that know you know that when you hit that point, it's it's unbelievable. Like you're gonna you're gonna react, you're gonna kick somebody's ass, you know. So it's I'm super nice until I'm not, you know, because they keep pushing, pushing, push. But that's what they did when I was little, they keep pushing and pushing and push, you know, and I have to take care of my my sisters.

SPEAKER_00 17:17

So you have to, but then also now you gotta learn how to turn it off, right? That's because you're talking about it. I don't want to burn out, I don't want to burn out my family, you know. It's you gotta have a a way to turn off that switch too, so you can actually be present.

SPEAKER_01 17:35

And I'm being positive in this crazy world, it's not easy all the time, but I wake up every day, you know, starting the day that way and and hoping for a great day because you know it's going through you know, a transplant like that is really hard. But then my dad passed away a year before I found out he had to have a transplant. A year later, my dad a year before my dad died. So these are my two tough guys, you know, and here I am, tough girl again, gotta get up, take care of everybody. So yeah, it's been it's been wild, that's for sure. But I am sure you get it. You've been younger. Yeah, you you know. So let's talk about you and who's been an important mentor to you.

Mentors And The $200K Lesson

SPEAKER_00 18:10

That's a great question. So I talked about my dad, he's a huge hero in my life, just that the mindset of we're not gonna accept where we're at, we're always gonna push forward. But let me kind of steal your question here a little bit. The importance of mentors I want to touch on first, and I can answer that. So, like I said, I I I could flip out. I I I don't know how to do remodeling, I know it's important, I know I'd like you know how to save money on stuff and what needs to be done and to raise value, right? So we put in on our life savings, Boston Mobile Home Parks, convinced tricked people to invest with us because we've only had YouTube university. Not tricked, and I'll never do that. Uh but one of the things I did wrong, I did this great idea, got brand new, uh sorry, ugly, the ugliest mobile mobile, the ugliest mobile homes you've ever seen in your life, right? Got those, but I was like, hey, they're dirt cheap, but basically free. We can just renovate them. I know I do this. We got yeah, I got cruise. Good plan. But if I had a mentor, somebody else had done been there before with mobile homes, I could have shifted that plan like three inches to the left or right, and it would have worked out. Instead, we lost like$200,000 worth of uh CapEx capital expenditure money that we had saved up, and that deal went sideways for a long time until we could fix it. So the the importance of mentors in every field. I have four or five people I can call today about different aspects of business, whether it's public speaking or raising capital or you know, how to structure these deal, capital stacks. Now it's I'm I'm learning a ton about tax credits and how to apply those and who's buying them right now. So it's you just have to have mentors in your life in all different areas. Yeah. So yeah, personal mentors, uh I have too many to name, but my family is always important to me. Like my parents are really important, as was their ability to kind of be there in the good times of the bad.

SPEAKER_01 19:46

I agree with you. If you find someone that's already had the success and you follow them and learn from them, it just takes so much time away that you you could have been doing something else, just trying to learn everything on your own. So we flipped a lot of houses ourselves here, and like we when we our first one was a mobile home too, and uh it's wild. Like we get some really good deals here. Where are you from?

SPEAKER_00 20:07

Uh originally Texas. From Texas.

SPEAKER_01 20:10

So, you know, in Pittsburgh, we we've had deals like I always tell this one story where we bought this duplex for$9,000. We put a roof on it, did a couple other things, and ended up renting it out for$900 a side. And I was like, wow, that was a really good deal. I mean, they're not as good right now, but we've had some deals where someone will call we have one right now where someone called us about a property, and I'm thinking, boy, we could just we get some good prices, you know, here still after all these years. But you know, we don't also have the huge gains either. We might have the great price, but the gains aren't gonna be huge like they are in other areas, you know, we're gonna make less, but we're also gonna pay less. So bad.

SPEAKER_00 20:46

Stuff in all the base hits, yeah, and that's that's better. I'd rather do that and yeah, be de-risk than big big swings and miss.

SPEAKER_01 20:53

So, what motivates you to keep going in the high pressure field like this? Because it is high pressure. People, like you said, they think you look at it and you're like, Oh, that's easy money, and it is not easy. There is nothing easy about it, people.

Motivation, Family, And Giving Back

SPEAKER_00 21:03

Nothing, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And if you mess up your SEC, yeah, it'll get you. Uh uh, what motivates me? So, another thing I want to do. So, our parents are retired, they they have a little bit of money, but I want to kind of fund them because they're that age now, too, upper 70s, that I want to pay for them to go travel, kind of force them to kind of go do that and go they're right now they spend all their money on visiting grandchildren and everything else, which is great. But I want to pay for them to go see elephants in Thailand, like I saw. I want to go, you know, go around the world and while they still can. So that that's big motivation for me is being able to support my own family and my extended family. There's I still have people in my family that aren't food stamps and kinda, you know, that that need some more support. Uh, or just paying for my nephews and nieces, um, livelihood, college. That's that's something I want to be able to do. Uh, I don't have any kids, so I'm not worried about that. Yeah. Uh so it's fine. But I want to be able to pay it forward as much as I can.

SPEAKER_01 21:55

Oh, this someone told me about a book called Die with a zero, I think it's called.

SPEAKER_00 22:00

That I've heard about that earlier this week too, actually. You just told me about that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:03

Yeah, I think it's let me just double check it because I was just looking it up and I thought I I'm gonna get this because I you sit there and think, like, I don't have kids. What am I saving all? What am I doing? So live, die with zero, that's what it's called. Yep. So you'll have to check it out because you know, we don't have kids and we we can live more and help. Like my biggest goal in my life until my dad passed was helping my parents because they were struggling and I knew that. I mean, I would do so many little things just to to give them money that they didn't even know I was giving them. But I even opened a little Christmas store here because my dad loves Christmas so much, and I would I would just tell them this is how much we made, and I'd give them the money, and I wouldn't tell them you know the truth. And so I just did that because I love them so much and I didn't want them to feel like you know, bad that I was helping them, but I loved helping them, it it meant so much to me. They helped me until I was 25 and I moved out, you know. They did everything, they took care of me, and I love them so much. So yeah, it's been it's been wild for sure. But it's it's it's it's a great cause, you know, for us to take care of the people we love.

SPEAKER_00 23:03

And they did so much for us, you know. So it's gonna go back.

SPEAKER_01 23:06

Yep, and I love that your your dad is your hero. That's cool. He was my mine was too. So, anyways, all right. So, how do you balance the intensity of this industry with life outside of work?

Balance, Rewards, And 5AM Habits

SPEAKER_00 23:16

Oh, that's that's that's a hard one. Uh not well, I'll tell you that, right? Uh yeah, that's a bad question at the beginning of the year when everybody disappeared for three weeks and now it's yeah, long, long days every day. I think you have to find a way to to figure out some kind of balance, and I think that's an individual. You know, it since I don't have bed, this is easier for me to work longer nights and know that you know uh I'll schedule something for the weekend for me and my girlfriend to go to do or something, you know, to make it make it up. But you have to have that balance or else you'll get eaten up and seeing a lot of people just burn out and their health goes away because there's a lot of stress in this industry and there is a lot of pressure. So I I think that's individual for me. It's Sundays. I my phone's off. You're not each of me on Sunday.

SPEAKER_01 23:59

Do you have any fun? Do you have fun?

SPEAKER_00 24:00

Oh, yeah. I have a lot of fun. Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:03

That's funny because I just put together my goals. It was a seven layer of goals, and the last one was fun, and I was blank. Like I was thinking, I what can I do? You know, I've been going so I'm in we're not having much fun right now, but fun is gonna be tonight when the Pittsburgh Steelers actually win against the Houston Texans. That will be fun. I'll be sweet. So are you are you a football fan?

SPEAKER_00 24:23

I am, yeah, absolutely. I'm a Cowboys fan, so I'm a glutton for punishment.

SPEAKER_01 24:27

So oh that was I'll tell Dallas and Pittsburgh had one one great rival years ago, but now it's Baltimore and Pittsburgh. I did you watch that game last week? Baltimore and Pittsburgh, it was so good.

SPEAKER_00 24:38

Yeah, it was one missed kick, huh? One big difference. I will say I think you need to reward yourself. I think a lot of people don't do that and feel guilty about it, but I need to you gotta find a way to give yourself a reward. I think it's I don't know where I think it's also just like brainwashing yourself, you know. Oh, I did great, close this deal. I'm gonna go. Yeah, I don't know, whatever it is, buy a wash or something, you know.

SPEAKER_01 24:56

Yeah, I mean I I want to get a boat because we have we we we sold our boat last year, which was so silly. We had like the because he was not feeling well, right? So we said, We're used to the our boat. Now I'm like, I need a we need a boat again.

SPEAKER_00 25:06

Oh yeah, I love this.

SPEAKER_01 25:09

So do you have any daily habits or routines that fuel your success?

SPEAKER_00 25:12

Uh a 5 a.m. book club.

SPEAKER_01 25:14

Oh yeah, that's a great book.

SPEAKER_00 25:16

So I follow that one. That's a weird book, uh, but it's uh it's pretty good. It's one of those you can get pretty quickly, but it's a quirky book. But yeah, essentially that one is get up early by 5 a.m. before everybody else does, uh study, like actually make sure you're always the expert, do some workout, get your body moving. So I'm up at 5 a.m. I go to the gym first, I try to listen to some podcasts or a YouTube video uh or a Bloomberg on in the morning so I can hear what's going on in the market, and then I uh meditate. I'm not a good meditator, but really I just kind of sit here and just focus on my 80-20. What's the most important thing that I have to get done today? And then make sure I do that because I don't know about you, but I live on Zoom. I usually open up Zoom at nine and I turn it off and I'm just zoom, zoom, zoom, zoom, zoom all day, and then look at the pile of emails and cry at night, you know.

Impact Investing Through Affordable Housing

SPEAKER_01 26:00

So much. I mean, it's it's sitting in a chair all day long. It used to at least you could drive places before and you think and listen to music on the night, but now it's like you just sit here and you just start another one. So it what message would you like to leave our listeners with today? What's important to you to share?

SPEAKER_00 26:14

Yeah, so I've once again I focus on affordable housing. I didn't really touch on this. I I focus on uh impact investing, uh, which is huge for me. And there's a lot of definitions of impact investing, uh, which I uh frustrates me. For example, I've had met people that say they're impact investors and all they do is solar panels. Okay, great, uh good for an environment, but the single mother with three kids doesn't care that there's solar panels on the roof. Maybe it saves her some money in utilities. But yeah, so what I focus on is uh working in in workforce affordable housing and then partnering with nonprofits to actually help the people, and that looks different everywhere you go. I've got one property with 51 different nonprofits just for that property we work with. That's after school programs. One thing we did there, we moved the bus stop because in that region, or sorry, move the GPS location of the property because in that region uh it has to be over a mile, and then the bus can get there, and the property was 0.9 miles away from like elementary, so some kids and middle school. So kids are walking to school, and guess what? When it was cold or rainy, they don't go to school, you know. So by moving the GPS location of the property over a little bit to the very edge of it, we could trick the system because that's all they used, and then now we've got a bus stop. Boop. Um so it's that's impact right.

SPEAKER_01 27:25

That's when you're saying impact, that's impact right there.

Learning Fast And Connecting Online

SPEAKER_00 27:28

Right, that's that's huge for some kids, right? That's huge for parents. Yeah, that yeah, especially if you're working and you just can't get the kids there. So it it's some of it's hard to quantify like that. Like, how do I put that in a presentation? Um, but also I think it's just it's finding what matters to people, whether it's mental health, there's tons of programs out there at or it's food bank. Um, we've worked for a lot of veteran organizations, from um near homeless people, it whatever it is, I focus on that. And uh that's what matters to me. Yeah, and finding that way to do that in a way that's repeatable, scalable, one more thing. Uh, because if you're a nonprofit, right, you're always begging for cash. Yeah, same thing as I do for buying properties and stuff like that, right? But you're begging for cash and stay alive and eventually you're out. If we can do this in a for-profit manner, where now we're having impact and changing people's lives, we're providing affordable housing, which is is massively needed right now. We can make a huge change in the world.

SPEAKER_01 28:19

Have you ever read Think and Grow Rich?

SPEAKER_00 28:21

Yes, of course.

SPEAKER_01 28:21

Yeah, there's so many times I asked that, and people are like, no, I never even heard of it. I'm like, oh my gosh, so good. So many great ideas in that book. Yeah. So is there anything takeaway from that book that helped you in your career?

SPEAKER_00 28:34

Oh, that's a good question. Let me think.

SPEAKER_01 28:36

So for me, I'll just tell you my mind seek expert counsel, like what you said earlier. If I if I don't know, I go find it now. I'm not waiting to research it for three years. I I need to know now. And so that was a big deal for me when I read that, just constantly going after the people that are more successful than I and help learning from them.

SPEAKER_00 28:52

Yeah. I think so that to me, I I'm uh I love reading or audible link. I love being read too. But uh there's certain books that actually change your brain chemistry, and that's one of them. A lot of business books can be boiled down to a short thing, like that 5 a.m. book club, you don't even read it and told you what to do, right? But it's that seek that's a good point with the seeking expert counsel. I think what's more important now than reading a million books on a subject is finding the right person or the right subject manner, diving into it and learning everything you can about it. Yeah, so that's huge.

SPEAKER_01 29:23

And you know, I was just thinking to say if something happened and I was not in this career anymore and I had to start all over, I would go straight to YouTube and I would spend hours learning. I would pick Gary V, who's the best on social media, right? And learn everything I could from Gary on how to do it the right his way, to then try. You know, there's so much opportunity out there. There's our mind can just be fulfilled with so much. But the learning that's free, yeah, like you did it, right?

SPEAKER_00 29:49

Yeah, yeah. Just do the research, it's all out there. You can find some people that actually know what they're talking about. There's a million of these gurus online that are selling snake oil or never done it before, you know. But yeah, you find the right person, right YouTube channel, whatever it is, you can make a huge difference in your business.

SPEAKER_01 30:05

So, how how can the listeners connect with you online? I guess is my next question.

SPEAKER_00 30:09

The best way to connect with me is probably LinkedIn. I'm on the most because it's just my profile's uh jesse-sells, S-E-L-L-S, on there uh or impactgrowthcapital.com.

SPEAKER_01 30:20

So thank you so much for being on here with me today. I mean, you're honest and it's it's you're like a breath of fresh air because you've been through some of the things that I have, and I can see that you're you're just an amazing human being, and I can tell. So to our listeners, if this conversation helped you, please like, subscribe, and share it. And to Jesse, thank you, thank you, thank you again. Thank you for your 11 years of service. We thank God every day for people like you and so appreciative. So thank you.