Welcome to the Purpose Driven Investor, where we build more than portfolios, we build communities. I'm your host, Robert Howell, a real estate investor and founder of Define Communities. Each week, we'll explore how purpose and profit connect through affordable housing, land home packages, and impact-driven investing. If you're a lender, land seller, or a partner who believes money should move with meaning, you're in the right place. Welcome to the Purpose Driven Investor Podcast, the show focused on the people behind the deals, the values that drive them, and the impact they're creating through real estate and entrepreneurship. Today's guest is a real estate investor, operator, and founder of Onnix Investments, a company built around off-market deal flow through deep agent relationships and fast execution. Started as a real estate agent, turned into wholesaling, and over the last few years has built a strong team and scaled his business, even hitting six figure months by building systems and mastering his approach. On today's show, we're going to talk about his path into real estate, the lessons learned and scaling and team building and practical insights for any investors looking to grow with intention and with focus. So welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me, Robert. I'm excited to be here. All right. Thanks, man. I'm, I'm really looking forward to this conversation because I think you offer a very unique approach to the real estate business. And I think there's a lot that, that I can learn a lot that everybody that's listening can, can learn. So let's start first with your origins and your early mindset. So tell us about where you grew up and how you first got introduced into real estate. Yeah, so I grew up in a small town in Nebraska, kind of like 1200 people. And I was kind of a troublemaker in high school, right? I hated school, I'd do anything I could to get out of it. And the main reason being, I just hated sitting there. But I was always a very hard worker. So I was working from a very young age, I was always trying to start little businesses. but school just never clicked for me. And I remember one time, my mom called me, I was at work, it was probably my junior or senior year, and she was freaking out because she saw my ACT score, right? And the ACT score, for those of you that don't know, it's basically the test you gotta take to get into different colleges, right? And I literally bubbled in every single answer on that test. And that was kind of the moment where everybody realized that college probably wasn't for me. And then fast forward a little bit, I moved down to Arizona about a month after I turned 18. And I got into pools because I eventually wanted to start a pool company. And that seemed pretty cool at the time. And as I was working for this pool company, the owner was probably in his 60s. And I noticed that every time somebody would call out sick, he had to go out and actually clean the pools himself. And I was like, I don't want to be doing this till I'm 60. And knowing what I know now, if the business was built a little bit differently, that wouldn't necessarily be the case. But at the time, I didn't know that. And I'm like, there's no way I want to do this. So I jumped into real estate. As a real estate agent, I'm like, I'm going to get super rich, super quick, make a ton of money really fast. And that couldn't have been further from the truth because my biggest issue was what they call shiny object syndrome. So what I was doing for those few years that I was a real estate agent, although I was making some money, it wasn't as good as it could have been because I was bouncing around to different businesses every few months. So Amazon FBA, dropshipping, you name a business, I had probably thought about it or I had started it. And so I I wasn't seeing success because I kept losing momentum every few Right. That's incredible. I can't imagine just thinking even like moving to a new city at 18, trying to figure out life. I imagine that that in itself was a big challenge, right? And And the biggest, I wanted to move back probably about every day for the first six months, right? Because I didn't know anybody out here in Arizona. I didn't have any family. I was trying to meet friends. But the thing that held me back here, I just didn't want to go back with my tail between my legs. So I'm kind of stubborn. So I just stuck it out. And that was probably the best decision that I made was sticking it That's huge. That's great. Well, um, all right. Talk about a little more about the first job in real estate and how did that shape how you view the industry and where you're at My, my first job in real estate as an, as an agent was, it was awesome. It was my first little taste in real estate. I had a great mentor, Kelly cook. So he taught me a lot about sales, a lot about real estate. But I knew that that wasn't what I wanted to do forever. I was having to chase around clients. I was having to go show houses on the weekends, do open houses. And I had heard about wholesaling quite a few different times. And I'm like, that sounds pretty cool. And I knew that I wanted to invest in real estate at some point. And with wholesaling, you get access to all these off-market deals and can purchase them yourself or go and wholesale the ones that don't make sense. So when I started Onnix Investments, we asked a simple question. do most homeowners do when they decide that they want to sell their house, right? They go directly to a realtor. So that's what we did. Instead of going and chasing all these sellers around, we decided to go out to these agents and be a cash offer resource for them. So now we call and text agents and have a massive pipeline of these agents that we follow up with on a monthly basis. And in turn, they Love that. We're going to get into some more detail around Onnix in a second, but let's talk a little more about your early success. Tell us about maybe one of the real early successes that you had and really gave you I got pretty lucky in my opinion. When I first started the wholesaling company, I burned the boat. I was like, I'm going all in on this. I'm not going to touch anything else. I got a deal within my first 30 days and I made $10,000. Holy cow. I'm like, if I can do this once, I can keep repeating it. The next month I didn't have a deal, but then the month after I made another $10,000. I'm like, let's keep doing this. I was glad I burned the boats. Obviously, it was super, it was super tough starting any business, like lots of ups and downs. But once I got the hang of it, things were really clicking. Love it. That's great. What what sparked your transition from agent to wholesale? You touched on a little bit earlier, but let's dive into that a little bit more. And what eventually led to creating your your Yeah. The main thing was about real estate investing. I wanted to be a big investor in real estate, um, do fix and flips. So that was kind of the primary reason. And then as I started the company and started doing this, I realized that this can actually be a massive company, right? I'm like, this can, this can make a lot of freaking money and I can eventually get it to the point where I'm not even involved in the company at all. So that was kind of the biggest, the biggest thing for me. So I'm really glad I burned the boats and kind That's great. What's the what's the biggest challenge been going all in early on? I mean, I imagine it's now it's your challenges are Yeah, I remember I was sitting in my car late one night and I was working out of one of my friend's offices. He has a car dealership and had a spare office. So I'd go and work out of there. And I was leaving, it was late one night. And I was like sitting in my car kind of questioning everything because the income wasn't consistent yet. I was spending a little bit of money, not a ton, but I was working so hard, working so many hours. And kind of the hourly rate that I was essentially making was nothing pretty much. And I was like, is this worth it? Should I quit? Maybe I can go get a different job, a sales job somewhere else, or maybe go bartend." And I was sitting there contemplating it. And I was like, you're going to regret that for the rest of your life if you don't stick to this. So I just decided to stick it out and continue going with it. And if anybody else that's watching this is in a similar position, starting out a company, I found out that almost every single business owner goes through a similar phase like that. So you are not alone. And if you just stick to it and keep pushing, you're going to come out the other side, you know, I like that. And I think. it applies that that mentality applies not only to early on. Right. But probably at different stages throughout your company. Right. There's days early on where you're like, hey, I got to keep pushing. Right. Well, then what's your next goal? And then how do you push to that next goal? Right. Exactly. And there's yeah, that stuff comes up all the time. Right. I remember when I was hiring, I was like, it's almost It'd probably be easier if I just cut everybody, cut the office overhead, and they just kept working for myself. So you come across different hurdles and roadblocks like that all the time, but you stick with them because you know long-term it's going to be the most beneficial. Because I could have stopped hiring, fired everybody, got rid of the office, and then went and worked for myself and made pretty decent money. But long-term, that's not where I want to be. I'm going to be stuck in a Yeah, that's great. How did you identify the agent centric model that you use now? I think that again, as I made an introduction, I think that's a very niche business, very unique spin on wholesaling on So my mentor, Austin Zaback, he has a massive wholesaling company here in Scottsdale. So I learned just about everything I know from him on the wholesaling side of the business and they have a very similar business model. So I just copied and pasted Okay. That's great. So talk about your process. How do you reach out to agents? What does that look like? Yeah, so we have a couple different ways we do it. Three ways in specific. Number one being just cold calling random agents. Number two, we send out mass text to these agents and get them to respond. And then we'll pick up the phone and call them once they respond. And then number three, which is one of my favorites, is calling about active listings that these agents have. Because cold calling and cold texting, it's kind of a warm lead because you're reaching out essentially as a buyer. So a lot of times they're still receptive. But when you call on a listing, you actually have something to talk about. You're not just giving them some pitch, you're actually getting to ask questions about the house and maybe building a little That's great. And your value proposition to them to say, Hey, bring, bring me the deals instead of listing it. Or, um, let me buy this listing that's been stagnant for a while. What's what's the value proposition. we want to be the tool in their tool belt. So anytime they come across foreclosures or homes with tax liens, probate situations, our goal is to just be that cash offer resource and the tool in their tool belt. And a lot of agents don't... There's two different types of agents that we see for the most part. Number one being that they don't necessarily know what to do with these investment properties. So they have these leads coming in from Google or Coldcoin, whatever it may be, And they see that the house is trashed, or maybe they have to be out in a week. And some of these realtors are like, I don't know exactly what to do with this. And so we would come in and be like, hey, let's get you paid. And this will be the easiest transaction you have ever done. And you're going to get paid in two weeks versus having to list a house and then do a 30-day closing. And then the second type of agent is the agent that's a little bit more seasoned and knows what to do with these houses. And then they have a small investor list. And they'll typically add that to us. And then we have to get a bit more competitive when those kinds of properties come in, because they're getting sent out to several other investors. Got it. That's great. How do you compare Open Door is clearly doing this similar at scale, right? Maybe not outreaching like you are, but I think they have a path where agents can propose to their clients to sell through Open Door. Is that They do. Yeah. I remember I was an agent and I would submit properties on open door. Um, the best, the best thing about working with, you know, a smaller guy like us, nothing, nothing wrong with open door or any of these other big companies, but it's, you know, essentially a lot of money going back into the local economy, right? Local crews for our flippers, local people that live here. And then our communication is top notch. You're not dealing with some massive corporation. Love that. Okay. Let's talk about team building and scaling your revenue. Um, you, you've talked about hiring and how you've, uh, you've hired people so that you can eventually maybe get out of the business or at least not working so much in the business. Um, talk about what's your process and hiring people and why Yeah. So I think, People are everything in this business, right? They're the hardest part about the business, but they will also make you the most money. And we have a pretty in-depth hiring process, in my opinion. But step number one, we get recruits coming in from Indeed or Instagram, wherever they come in from, and then we'll do a 15-minute phone interview with these people, right? Just asking some simple, qualifying questions. But my favorite question that we asked them is about some of their past job history. And we asked them. who their last three to five bosses are, right? And we have them spell out their bosses' names, and then we ask them how that boss is gonna rate them when we actually talk to that boss, right? You'd be surprised at how many candidates all of a sudden don't remember their boss from six months ago, or they say their boss is gonna rate them poorly, and then it just opens up a whole can of worms. So that weeds out a ton of people just by asking that simple question right there. And then if they pass that phone interview, And then we bring them in for an office interview where we go a little bit more in depth. And that's typically about 20 to 30 minutes of us asking them questions. And then I like to open it up and pretty much let them interview us for the second half Got it. That's great. What qualities are you looking for when you I think drive drive is the biggest one. There's somebody that has a good work ethic because I can train everything else. Right. I prefer some sales skills. prior before coming in, but that's not a huge thing because I can, I can train on all of that. I just need to see that they have a good work ethic and a good My biggest thing when I first started scaling and hiring people was wasn't necessarily the deals. It was, it was the people, right? Cause I always wanted to be the, uh, the cool boss in a sense, right? I wanted everybody to like me. So people would take advantage of that. So if you're just starting to hire, even if you only have one employee, make sure you set standards because I didn't really have standards in place. I'm like, Hey, go, go start making cold calls and do this. Right. And people would take advantage of that and be lazy and wouldn't show up on time. And so it wasn't until I implemented what we call our performance accountability system that, you know, some good results started to actually show up. Yeah. Got to hold them accountable, right? Exactly. And look at the metrics to prove that, hey, you are doing what you're supposed to be doing. Yeah. All right. That's great. So talk about how building a team allowed you to scale your revenue. And you talked about a six figure month. How's how's the team really So it's been kind of like a game in my eyes, like I kind of gamify the business. So when I first started out, it was just it was just myself. And then after that, I hired a transaction coordinator who could handle the paperwork. And the next step was hiring an actual sales team and getting those people in place. But I was still doing sales myself. And then late last year, I finally got out of the sales completely where I'm just jumping into a managerial role. So now I'm managing these people and coaching them full time. I'm focused on hiring. So that was an awesome feeling, being able to get out of sales and seeing my guys bringing enough revenue where I don't have to do sales anymore. And it was funny. Something that happened, kind of a good lesson for some people here, is when I switched into a managerial role, coming from sales, my calendar was really stacked and blocked in like 60 to 90 minute increments. And so when I jumped into the manager side of things, I was just dealing with constant fires all day, every day. And then I was starting to get really burnt out and I couldn't figure out why in the moment. And it made me realize that Burnout doesn't always come from too much work. Sometimes it comes from a lack of structure, because I then had to go and organize my day in 60 to 90 minute blocks, even as a Love that, because there's lots of days I feel that way, where it's like, man, I mean, today, as an example, I have 10 meetings on my calendar. It's like, dang, that's a lot of meetings, right? So talk about more about how you block your time. everything If it's not in the calendar, it's not happening, right? I have my wake up time. I have my drive time to and from the gym. I have getting into the office. So if I don't have that and I have a lot of white space in my calendar, like me personally, I will bounce around. I'll try and fill it with random crap. I'll context switch and do something different every 10 minutes. So I have my day blocked out. And typically I have like a lot of deep work and CEO work in the morning, cause that's when I'm freshest. and OK, that's great. All right. Let's talk that that kind of leads us into a bit of the mindset and growth lessons. You talked a bit about the shiny object syndrome. How have you managed now to avoid What really comes to mind when when talking about that is thinking about, thinking about different things that are unfocused thinking. So I went, I go deer hunting every single year. I go back up to Nebraska and we hunt in the Sandhills. And when you're out there looking for, you know, a big buck, it's like all you're thinking about all day, every day. Right. And after a couple of days, something weird starts to happen. right? Everything starts to turn into a box. So the rocks, the trees, the shadows, you start, you start seeing these bucks everywhere. And it made me realize that business and life are essentially the same thing. Whatever you focus on long enough, your mind's going to create evidence to justify that focus. So if you're constantly thinking about negative stuff or thinking about what you don't have, your mind will create that evidence and you'll start, you'll start seeing why you don't have this. So people really underestimate how dangerous that unfocused thinking really Man, that's powerful. I love that analogy right there. You know, it's like, man, you want to, you want a buck, you focus on a buck, right? You want to win in business, you focus on winning. Right. And, uh, that's huge. Yeah. Um, all right. What, what advice do you wish that you could give to your younger self? Let's say the 18 year old has just moved. What, Don't drink. don't drink. So I, I Even when I, after I started on X and investments, right, I was drinking almost every single day and it wasn't, it was essentially just to numb something. Right. I was, I was bored, wanted to numb, numb something. It was easy. Uh, so if I could give that advice to my 18 year old self, I would say to stop drinking. Right. Cause I gave up drinking about a year and a half ago. And it completely changed my trajectory. But I didn't realize, I don't think it was ever a problem, but it was just constantly chasing comfort and chasing easiness every single night. So as soon as I gave up drinking and raised my standards, everything kind That's great. That's great. What mindset shift has helped you most in scaling your business? Discipline. just staying disciplined and following the calendar has been the biggest thing. And talking about comfort a little bit more, the biggest issue that I see with a lot of people nowadays is they're constantly chasing comfort. So they're staying up late watching Netflix, they're sleeping in, they're not going to the gym, they're having a couple of drinks at night, they're eating McDonald's instead of eating clean, which all that stuff is hard to do in the moment, but it feels really good. It's really easy in the moment, but long-term, it's bad for you. And that made me realize that in order to be successful in business, I'm going to have to deal with a lot of discomfort and a lot of pain. And if you're constantly chasing comfort outside of work and outside of business, that's definitely going to translate over into your business and into work. Love it. Love it. What's success mean to you today? My perspective on that has definitely shifted a lot in the last two years since getting married. Before, all I determined success on was simply just money, right? And then I met my now wife and we got married last year. So my perspective has changed a lot more. And success to me has a lot to do with family and happiness and fulfillment now. Got it. All right. Well, we've talked a bit about success. Let's talk about your goals for 2026. Have you set some goals? What are you trying to achieve this year in business and Yeah, absolutely. two biggest personal goals this year. I'm going to read 50 books and then go on 50 podcasts. And then for business, we want to hit a million dollars in revenue this year. We have a team trip planned. We're going to go to San Diego if all That's great. That's great. I love how you made that little bit of switch. You said, I want to read 50 bucks. And he said, no, I'm going to read 50 bucks. Right. That's a back to mindset. That's cool. How many I believe it's about 66. And we're bumping our average deal size up. So our average deal size last year was just under 10,000. But we're building up the disposition arm of our company, which in turn is going to raise the average deal size to hopefully about $15,000 this year. So I believe it's right at 66 deals. Let's Definitely is. And we did, you know, mid forties last year. So we're already going to be two thirds of the way there if we just get the average deal size up. So it's really not too much more of a Yeah, that's great. What's the one book that you're looking forward to There's a new one I just ordered by Jefferson Fisher. I listened to his podcast the other day and I think it's like, argue less, talk more. So it's all about communication and stuff. So I'm really excited to dive into that one. A couple of good books that I love if you're just getting started in your journey, whether you're starting a business or just getting started in a new sales role. The number one being How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. That's just a classic. That's a great one. And then Jocko Willink has two great books that I revisit typically every year, Extreme Ownership and then The Dichotomy of Awesome. Appreciate that. All right, let's do some rapid fire here and we'll close up. What's the biggest lesson that real estate has taught you? Stay consistent. Got it. What's one habit that you credit your success on? Going to the gym, right? If you can, if you can build that discipline and build that muscle to wake up early and go to the gym every single day, that's going Got it. All right. What's purpose driven investing mean to you? What does purpose driven investing mean to you? Yeah. Like what's your purpose? Like when, when you think about your purpose, you talked a little bit about it earlier. Um, you know, for me, as I think about what I do every day, every day, day in and day out, uh, on the, um, in the manufactured housing, mobile home world, My purpose really is, can I show people God's love through affordable housing? If I can do that, then I can be successful. That comes to life in many different ways and how I interact with people and such, but that's really what I'm driving to day-to-day. Long-term, of course, there's retirement and setting Yeah. No, mine is number one for writing for my family, but also providing for my entire team. I love seeing them make more money than they've ever made before. And I want to create several millionaires That's awesome. That's awesome. All right. Talk to us about where Yeah. Follow me on Instagram at Jaben underscore Makings. And you guys can message me. I'm always happy to answer questions. I have a ton of free content on there talking about Awesome. Well, hey, Jaben, I appreciate you joining and sharing your story, sharing a bit about your business, your family. It was awesome. And for you guys that are listening, feel free to reach out. I'm sure Jaben would love to hear from you. Get a message from me on Instagram. Thank you for joining. Thanks for listening to The Purpose Driven Investor. If today's episode sparked an idea or inspired you to make an impact, connect with me at howellandsons.com. Join our community of purpose-driven investors who are helping families find stable homes while building real returns. Because when