EP 198: Jesse Ray and Doug Clark Aspiring and experienced entrepreneurs' THRIVE in the Growth House

[00:00:00] Hello and thank you for joining us today on The Gentle Art of Crushing It show where we focus on learning and sharing with our listeners all there is to know about how to create success in our lives.

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[00:00:24] together. Welcome to the show. Okay, well thank you all for joining us on another episode of The Gentle Art of Crushing It. Today I have my friend Jesse Ray with us and so super excited to dive into this

[00:00:39] with you Jesse. Why don't you just please start us off with telling us a little bit about yourself, what you're up to, your mastermind, the growth house and maybe share something fun that most people know about you. Ooh, something fun that most people don't know. Maybe we'll

[00:00:54] start there. So when I graduated college, my whole life was all about basketball, right? And after basketball, my second love was music. And so for a while, about two years stretch actually was a

[00:01:06] ghost writer, which means I would write reference tracks for other artists locally. And then one of our artists got signed by ACON. And with that we actually opened up and went on tour with a

[00:01:16] big artist named Young Thug, which he's locked up right now. So I won't say too much about that, but it was pretty cool just to have that experience for a couple years.

[00:01:25] No, that's incredibly cool. And so are you saying that you're a ghost writing like lyrics or raps? Or I mean, that's what typically it is, right? I mean, you have ghost writers in writing books

[00:01:36] and then also like in raps. That's the only areas that I'm aware of, right? But that's so fun. And that is the whole thing is difficult. In my opinion, I've done some raps, right?

[00:01:49] It is hard, all of it. But writing lyrics is, I don't know, to me the hardest part. So sounds like you're super creative and obviously a poet that's really, really an eye opener. I did not know that. Most people don't. That's great.

[00:02:08] That's huge though. So much fun, man. I love that. But yeah, tell us a bit more about what you're up to with your real estate and what you love to do there, please.

[00:02:19] For sure. Yeah. So high level, what we got going on right now is that we have, it's called growth house company. We started kind of a couple different branches of it. One is growth house living where aspiring or current entrepreneurs come live in a house with other

[00:02:32] entrepreneurs. And we have these all across the valley here in Arizona. And then our goal for that is to have two to three major in every major entrepreneurial city where we have these growth houses. And what comes with that access to capital, angel investors,

[00:02:49] kind of a programmatic approach to how do you actually scale to seven, eight figures and also become profitable? And really kind of the plug and play for anyone who wants to get started, whether it's aspiring to get into real estate as an investor or their own business.

[00:03:04] So that's like the living growth house living. And then we also have a community that we recently launched online virtual. And with that, we also host two in-person masterminds I was just telling you about every single year. And I like to go all out. So, you know,

[00:03:17] we host it in at least a $5 million mansion every single time is very intimate, very selective with the people that we want to bring in. I fly in my top network. So top 10 to 15 people from all over the country, Puerto Rico, Nashville, Dallas,

[00:03:30] our friend Dave is flying in for this one at the end of May. So this is incredible. Do I get to basically create, you know, the environment and association that I wish I was a part of younger and I get to create it for other people?

[00:03:41] Yeah. I mean, that's so huge and so important. And most people are aware that, hey, I need to have a mentor. And then they might know some people that they're trying to build a relationship

[00:03:55] with as far as them being the mentee. And the way that I look at it is, you know, come to that sort of activity of building relationships with mentors from abundance, right?

[00:04:07] There is a lot of them out there and you want to consider like, you know, adding value and all that. So if you're, that's if you're doing it from scratch, but you know, I was involved with

[00:04:18] the action Academy in, you know, I'm involved with Jason Dries coaching where both of these sort of areas have access to mentors, right? And I will tell you, you know, that is probably

[00:04:31] the fastest way to grow that in being tied with, you know, people that also want to take massive action. Right? So but so I love that you're doing that. And, you know, can you share with us maybe

[00:04:44] just one or two quick testimonies that you've seen, you know, people come into the growth house and actually, you know, have just, you know, awesome amazing success. Absolutely. Yeah. One of my best friends, Derek. So when I was just starting all this,

[00:04:59] you know, you got to paint the vision, right? So I went to Facebook and said, all right, here's what I'm looking to do. We're going to have these entrepreneur houses. I didn't have

[00:05:06] any branding. I didn't even think I called it growth house at the time. Long story short, this guy Derek reaches out to me on Facebook. He said, Hey, I'm interested. I'm sleeping on my friend's couch right now, but I just started my Airbnb property management business.

[00:05:18] I'm making, you know, maybe a thousand bucks a month. I have four or five properties under management, but I want to be in this type of environment. So I invite them over.

[00:05:26] I just bought the second house at the time, which is going to be the first official growth house. And it was being remodeled and he's like, wait a minute, why is your bed in the kitchen?

[00:05:35] I swear to God, I slept in the kitchen while the house has been remodeled for like a month. And so he comes in, he's like, well, what is this? And I'm like, no, no, don't worry about it.

[00:05:43] Like I'm painting the vision of what's going to happen here. We're going to have master classes. We're going to have the cold plunge outside. We're going to have, you know, accountability groups. I'm going to have a bunch of the top speakers come flying.

[00:05:55] And so I painted this vision and he looks at me kind of crazy, but he's like, I'm in. And from that point within six months of him joining the growth house, being around other entrepreneurs, he literally added two more states to his Airbnb property management company,

[00:06:08] 35 properties. And now, you know, two and a half years later, he's going to hit over a million dollars of revenue. And the last year he had over half a million dollars of revenue. So it's incredible just what happens when you're around

[00:06:19] the right environment, a right association. That's astronomical growth, dude. That is off the charts. Huge. And yeah, I love that. And you know, I mean, we don't need to say anything else. You know, we can close the podcast right now. Go sign up for the growth house,

[00:06:38] everybody like seriously, that's huge. And that's part of the reason why I asked that question, you know, about testimonies because I really want people to understand that these, you know, masterminds in joining groups like this, they are worth it. There are some funky

[00:06:57] gurus out there that you want to be careful, always do your research, but, you know, like the growth house is obviously super solid. And so yeah, these things work, the growth house obviously works. I know that you have at least 10 more of those stories,

[00:07:14] but I will let the audience reach out to you to find out more, you know, about those testimonies. But that's crazy. And that's what people are looking for. And the truth is, and so I want

[00:07:25] to ask your opinion on this, the truth is if you are willing to put the work in and continue to have the mindset or to continue to grow your mindset into abundance and do this will work, you know, you can make big things like that happen. Right?

[00:07:40] 100%. Yes, having the clarity, putting in the work and also being around the right environment, like you said, mentors is such a huge thing for me. Once I started getting serious with mentorship and actually paying, even like we have people in our life that like, oh yeah, I'll,

[00:07:53] you know, help coach you or I'll kind of guide you along a certain path to get to where you want to go. That's awesome. But the extreme accountability that comes from actually paying someone to be your coach or joining a community like Action Academy,

[00:08:05] which I'm a part of too. Crazy story about how I met Brian. Love that dude. We're actually going to go travel to Europe in a couple of weeks. So yeah, that's my guy. That's great. Yeah. Brian Leibin is super amazing. I love him also. He's,

[00:08:17] he's like just always crushing it and he's one of these guys that's thinking on a whole other level and just exposing what that mindset, you know, looks like to the rest

[00:08:26] of the world helping us rewrite our futures in our lives. Right? And I agree with you. Once you pay for a coach, a mentor, a mastermind, it's powerful and for multiple reasons. But one of

[00:08:40] the biggest reasons for me is that, you know, you have to like take it seriously now. Most people are not really into wasting money. Right? And so even if you can't really afford to

[00:08:53] do it, that probably is actually an illusion. You probably can take a look at where your money, you know, your budget and find some room because if you can't really afford to join a mastermind or hire a coach or get like spend some money on yourself, some books,

[00:09:10] trainings, courses, that's when you really, really need to do it because you can potentially stay stuck there for your whole life, which nobody wants. Right? I got a perfect example of this. So before actually hiring my first coach, I was in analysis paralysis for five years,

[00:09:26] five years analysis paralysis. I told everyone I was living in Portland, Oregon. I'm like, Hey guys, I'm going to start this real estate journey. I'm gonna buy my first house in Arizona.

[00:09:34] Four years goes by five years goes by. And at the fifth year, I was like, you know what? I'm going to hire a coach shout out coach Brad main overseas and I found him on bigger

[00:09:43] pockets and I reached out to him. And at first I was just providing him value. I'm like, Hey man, really appreciate this. I want to shout you out on all the Instagram stories.

[00:09:50] But then I got serious. I'm like, actually need you to help me, you know, get started in this real estate journey from there. I also then put pen to pad, which I think is super

[00:10:00] important. I wrote out my goals and with exact date of when I'm going to get this house, kids you not within about 30 days of saying, Hey, I'm going to close my first house February 1st, 2021. This was like end of December. I put an offer in,

[00:10:16] like I think it was June or January 1st 30 days later, I had the first house. It's just like, that doesn't happen accidentally. Like you actually had to be intentional the whole time, but also now I had someone that was helping me with the process, but also holding me

[00:10:31] accountable to it. So yeah, it's basically skipping all the steps that you want to just kind of skip because you don't have to go through all the pain or the, you know, the resources that you have is just so much more available when you have someone guiding

[00:10:43] you through it. Yeah, I mean, I agree 1000% is so powerful and could host you for pulling that up. I was pulling that off. I also love that you wrote it down, right? And you were specific,

[00:10:55] you put the exact date and I'm a big goal setting guy. And to be honest with you in the audience, I set way too many. However, you know, what would every once

[00:11:07] in a while, I'll go back and review them. And a lot of those are actually being hit without me being aware of it, right? And so it does work. And so I love that. I want to kind of switch gears

[00:11:18] and ask you this fun question is sort of two in one. One, how do you define success? I love for everybody you think that, Hey, you can just, you can define it for yourself, right?

[00:11:28] So how do you just see defined success? And then would you mind sharing with us, you know, one or two successes that you've created within the past few years now that you're experiencing all this growth, or it could be throughout your life really?

[00:11:40] For sure. Yeah, how I just find success definitely has changed at first. I thought success was just, you know, financial success, right? And the same coach that I had, he said, Hey, Jesse, there's another step. And that's a level of significance. And so I was,

[00:11:56] you know, making six figures my corporate job. I felt like I was a man. I was barely working. I was in a sales role. And I thought that was success. And then I realized, I got to think

[00:12:07] bigger than myself. And there's other people that I can actually serve and help. And that's what's most fulfilling. So for me, it's actually going out there and helping other people, especially people that were in a similar situation that I was in. It's hard to find

[00:12:20] like my two people, especially where you're on the grind. I was in my early 20s. I'm like, who else is thinking this way? No one. And it was just hard to find that type of environment.

[00:12:27] So for me, success is now that fulfillment from helping other people achieve what they want to do and their goals. And also just take care of my immediate family. Cause I mean, obviously,

[00:12:37] you know, I have little siblings. I'm the, I'm the big brother. And I just want to make sure that my family's taken care of. And then also just have fun while also serving, helping other people. So right now that's my current definition. I would say of success.

[00:12:48] It's a lot more than just finances. I love that man. I wanted to just interject something. It's while you were telling me that I had a flashback because I got to interview Brian Leibin on this show also a while back.

[00:13:00] It was the same, like almost, you know, the same thing that he said verbatim practically, like really once he discovered, you know, how good it feels to serve others and help people basically like level up, which is what you and he are both in the business of doing.

[00:13:15] You know, he said it's just an amazing feeling. And so that ever since he told me that I'm kicking around in my head, like, what does that look like? What does that feel like? Right. And so just hearing it from you again is huge. I love that.

[00:13:27] Do you have a fun success story that you wouldn't mind sharing with us? Sure. That can share the story about how I got out of corporate America. I think that's a fun one.

[00:13:37] Yes, love it. So during the years of working in corporate, kind of the main things was delayed gratification, living below my means, saving everything I could. So I lived on a small base salary of $42,000. Even though I was making, you know, over $100,000 in commissions,

[00:13:54] I didn't look at that. I was just putting everything I could after taxes away, save it, save it, save it. Wasn't really sure I was going to do, but I just knew that some point

[00:14:01] I wanted to, you know, achieve financial freedom. And so my first house, I get it. I'm very intentional. I started inviting other entrepreneurs or aspiring entrepreneurs to come live with me once I moved to Arizona. And then from there,

[00:14:13] I get another house when more people are reaching out saying, Hey, Jesse, we want to be a part of this growth house that you're creating. And so long story short,

[00:14:20] we now have these two houses. And at the same time I have these two houses, I got hired at a different company. Everything's going great, you know, six figure salary. And this is where it

[00:14:31] got kind of interesting. I get the second house and I remember back in my journal, for whatever reason, I put down February of 2022, I want to quit corporate. And this is probably November, December of 2021. So it's only, you know, a few months away from this

[00:14:47] deadline that I set, but I totally forgot about this deadline and this goal that I set. So I have these two houses and all of a sudden I go from being the top sales guy at my previous company

[00:14:58] to now joining this other firm. And I'm in training and I get an email from HR. This is how naive I was. I thought I was getting promoted. I was like, Oh, cool, like HR's

[00:15:08] reaching out. I'm excited. I like, what are they going to talk about? Not realizing that, you know, potentially my job might be on the line. So long story short, I get the email,

[00:15:17] hop on a call with HR and they say, Hey, Jesse, you know, unfortunately, I know you haven't been able to produce because you're still in training, but we're cutting half your team and

[00:15:26] you're one of those people. And from there, I just like was shocked. I was like, Damn, this is, this is real. I never thought this would be real because, you know, I got paid for

[00:15:34] my results and I was very good at sales. And so I go, Okay, well, let me, let me talk to this other manager because they have, they want to meet, they wanted to offer me another role.

[00:15:45] So I go talk to the other manager and the manager for whatever reason just had a weird like we just rubbed each other the wrong way. And I usually don't have confrontation, but during this whole process, there's like, why should we, you know, hire you? I'm like,

[00:15:59] in my head, I got hired for a couple sales positions above you. Why are you like trying to be trying to big dog me? This is what I would all say at the very end, they say, Jesse,

[00:16:10] sell yourself to us. I go, What do you mean? They say, Well, you're in sales. So why should we hire you sell yourself to us? I know what they're talking about. I know what they were

[00:16:19] trying to do. But for whatever reason, all this together just rub me the wrong way. And in my back of my head, I start adding up the rental income that I have. I'm like, okay, that bedroom's $1,000. That bedroom's $1,000. The casita is bringing me, you know,

[00:16:32] $2,000. So I say, Hey, let's just stop right here real quick. Let me ask you one question. Remind me what the salary is for this job. They told me the salary. I said, You know what guys?

[00:16:44] I'm not going to sell myself to you because you can't afford me. That's exactly how I left corporate America. And that felt so freaking good because at the end of the day, I dug my

[00:16:54] well before I was thirsty. I had no idea I was going to end up being on a chopping block to get fired. But that's how I ended corporate America. So for me, I think that was a success even though I got fired. So all that entrepreneurship.

[00:17:07] There's a huge success, man. And yeah, you got cut from that one role, but you said no to the other one. And in Kudos to you, man, because like you were able to walk away like with your

[00:17:17] dignity, right? And how often have we had jobs in the past where we go, you know what, looking back like I should have told that guy to take a hike and quit right then and there,

[00:17:27] right? But that was a legitimate righteous thing for you to say. Like they had to sell themselves to you. They had it backwards, right? So Kudos to you, man. And I also think our perspective is important, right? So some people will look at getting cut from a role

[00:17:47] as a blessing and some people will look at it like a curse, right? And so it's up to us. We get to choose and some things are out of our control, right? That's really what extreme

[00:17:57] ownership is about is how do we respond to these things? Some are out of our control, some are inner control. And I love how you handle that, dude. Like you kind of done a better job

[00:18:09] there. So here's when I knew that it was God as well because remember I told you February of 2022, I don't know why everything was February on my goals, but for this one, it was February

[00:18:18] of 2022. I wanted to quit corporate, right? So I get let go and I say no to that role. This is December of 2021. And I go back to the HR lady say, Hey, you know, love you guys, great company,

[00:18:31] but I'm going to have to, you know, look at other opportunities. And she goes, well, we do have that severance package. I said, okay, well tell me about that. And then she says, well, Jesse, you'll get paid until February 2022. And that's why I just looked up and I

[00:18:44] smiled at her. I said, all right, God, I'm all in. There's so many times in my life where like I've set goals to like be done with corporate, but this just aligned perfectly. And I knew,

[00:18:56] you know, it was God saying it's time. I love that man. And I love that you're bringing up God because for me, I'm a Christian and what has been awesome. I love it. And what's

[00:19:08] been happening for me lately is, you know, I've like usually when I'm working out, I am listening to an audio book that's about real estate. And I flipped it recently because

[00:19:19] a couple of weeks ago, I had like a couple rough days and I was feeling like just off, right? Funky. And it's just so crazy how good I'm feeling. And honestly, I wasn't like regular

[00:19:29] at church. And now we are back again, I'm getting tied in with just other Christian guys and stuff. And I couldn't sell that. Like if I was going to be a sales rep for anything, it would be

[00:19:45] number one would be God, right? Because the impact that he has on us and has on our lives is unreal. But also like you showed there as we continue to trust him because what I'm trying to say is when you did choose the right path on that day,

[00:20:03] you are now where you're at today. Like you decided to build your dreams. We are born and put on this planet and only have one life to live. And it's up to us to make the best out of it, right? And I

[00:20:15] believe we were not born here to be clogged in a wheel, right? Or absolutely. Whatever it were. So I love that so much. So let me kind of shift gears here and ask you this fun question. If

[00:20:29] we were to shift back in time to age 18, and you could bring your current mindset with you, what are some things that you would share with yourself that would fast track success if anything?

[00:20:42] You become who you surround yourself with hands down. Like that's our growth house motto. Obviously we kind of took the longer quote, which is you become the average of the five people you

[00:20:53] hang out with the most. And it is so true. My environment and association back then was, you know, go have fun on the weekends, go party, nothing really to live for.

[00:21:04] And if you keep living that way, then nothing else is going to change. But it wasn't until I changed my environment. And the reason I actually moved to Arizona was there was a tweet that I

[00:21:13] saw from one of my favorite influencers and he said, life hack move out of your hometown in your twenties. And along with that and being intentional about who I surround myself with,

[00:21:22] that's 100% what I would tell my 18 year old self. I don't know my 18 year old self would have listened. But if I could go back, I would just say if you're in that position right now,

[00:21:32] you're 18 or even early mid twenties, even later in life, it doesn't matter what age you are, you can't outrun the fact of how important it is to surround yourself with the right people.

[00:21:44] And even the people that you think might not be negatively impacting you, but if they're a negative person, if they're not having the same goals as you, that's going to slowly just start

[00:21:53] to rub off. I've seen it happen with myself after I'm already out of, I thought I had the impeccable mindset and nothing is going to penetrate what I think into my positivity. But if I start hanging

[00:22:04] around people that are cussing all the time, going out all the time, that's going to end up rubbing off on me. So that's what I would say, just surround yourself with the right people.

[00:22:13] Yeah, I love that man. And very, very similar advice to what I give myself in. I love that life hack. For me, we moved out of, I grew up basically in San Francisco Bay area, California. We moved out

[00:22:27] of there six years ago almost. And that's been one of the best things that I've ever done. We don't know anybody like I don't have family out here. And I love my family. I love my friends.

[00:22:38] And I do miss that in them, you know, my hometown. But with that being said, like I've grown so much because I'm now in this opportunity where I can pick who I'm hanging out with. And that's so

[00:22:50] important man. And your friends will either drag you down or they'll lift you up. So be aware of that. And I think the only thing that would piggyback onto what you said is that

[00:23:01] we also need to be aware of when we're hanging out with mentors or people that are more positive than us or optimistic. I'll say we want to be careful with our own mindset and

[00:23:11] we want to continue to give our friends and the people are trying to level us up the benefit our mentors, the benefit of the doubt. Right. And so yeah, that's great man. Super, super cool.

[00:23:22] And I think the only person that you know, I would have listened to at age 18 is, you know, the older version of myself potentially because we got a lot of that advice growing up right.

[00:23:32] Yeah, our parents always try to protect us. Like don't hang out with Johnny because Johnny's a bad influence. But you know, you don't realize that until you look back. They're right. They're right. I like one of these conversations through my head,

[00:23:45] you know, about, you know, my mom saying no, this guy is not a good influence on you. And now that my parent, I'm like, yeah, 1000%, you know what I mean? And so it's true.

[00:23:55] You know, I do want to really be respectful of your time, Jesse. I am looking forward to flourishing in awesome friendship with you. I can just tell that's one of the things that,

[00:24:06] you know, I think people really are drawn to you about is like your inner joy, your personality and your willingness to bless others in help other people grow. Right. No pun intended. But

[00:24:18] so with that being said, you know, how can people find more about you? Are there any particular deals that you are looking for that our audience can support you with? And how can people connect with you? Yeah, how people can connect with me? Probably Instagram.

[00:24:34] I'm the most active. It's at the Jesse Ray, T H E J E S S E R A Y also on LinkedIn, very active as well. And as far as the deals, since we have our community and a lot of people are following

[00:24:47] my method of financial freedom, which for me was real estate, but specifically through co-living. And so if anyone has any, you know, co-living type properties, you know, our community is always looking for those looking to potentially start a fund at the

[00:25:01] beginning of next year. So we're diving into what that looks like. And, you know, we're both inspired by Brian Lubin. So whatever he has on our eyes and we're like, oh, maybe we

[00:25:09] should start thinking bigger and look at doing something like that. So big shout out to him. And I appreciate you, man. I just listened to Mason's episode. Mason's a great guy as well. I've connected with him. So I'm just super honored to be on the podcast here.

[00:25:23] Yeah. Well, I'm super honored to have you man. Really appreciate your time, Jesse. And yeah, Mason is incredible. It's almost like, are you a genius? Yeah, I think you are. Same with Brian, right?

[00:25:33] And so it's like just don't question that these guys are awesome. If you can connect with Brian, Mason or Jesse, please do so. And, you know, again, thank you so much, Jesse, for your time with that being said, I'm going to go ahead and wrap this episode up.

[00:25:47] This is the end of another episode of the General Art of Crushing It. And thank you so much again, Jesse. Appreciate you. I appreciate you, my man. Well, there you have it, ladies and gentlemen, another episode of the Gentle Art of Crushing It.

[00:25:59] It was an amazing episode. We know we sure learned a lot, and we hope you did as well. We want to take a second and thank you so much for viewing or listening to this episode.

[00:26:09] And please just know that we only ask for one favor, and that is to make this life magnificent. Thank you and have a wonderful day.