Living The Red Life - From Living in His Car to Building Millions

Episode Date: June 15, 2026

What happens when an engineer living out of his car decides that relying on a paycheck is the biggest risk of all?In this episode of Living The Red Life, Jason Roberts shares how years of homelessness, financial uncertainty, and career setbacks forced him to rethink everything he believed about wealth, security, and success. After transitioning from engineering into sales, Jason discovered a scalable path through real estate investing that transformed his future and ultimately led to multiple thriving businesses.He breaks down the mindset shifts, sales strategies, deal analysis frameworks, and wealth-building principles that helped him go from sleeping in a church parking lot to building an eight-figure real estate portfolio. Whether you're an entrepreneur, investor, or someone searching for greater financial freedom, this conversation reveals practical lessons on creating income, reducing risk, and thinking bigger than ever before.Key Takeaways• Why sales is the single most valuable skill for building wealth• How to identify high-margin opportunities with real product-market fit• The framework Jason uses to eliminate downside risk in investments• Why relying solely on a W2 job may be riskier than entrepreneurship• How problem-solving and persistence create long-term financial freedomNotable Quotes• "If you get rid of the downside, then all you're left with is upside."• "Learn how to sell. Sales is the number one skill that will help you build wealth."• "Everything in life is figure-out-able."• "Don't rely on anybody else for your success."• "You don't have to be exceptional, but your effort does."Connect with Rudy Mawer:LinkedInInstagramFacebookTwitter

When I first moved to Colorado, I was living out of my car for three months. My biggest transition into success was transitioning into sales. Learning sales was a critical skill for me because you can flip anything. You could flip cars, you could flip watches, you could flip real estate. And learning that it's easier to do the bigger deals is huge. Jason Roberts is a real estate investor, entrepreneur, and the founder of Better Blueprint Realty. Through his work, he helps aspiring investors build wealth, scale their portfolios, and create financial freedom through education, mentorship, and strategic real estate opportunities.

So we're chasing more of these six-figure net profit deals to allow ourselves the cushion and the margin for worst-case scenario at all times. You get rid of the downside, then all you're left with is upside. You know, that might not be the sexy answer, but it's the number one rule of investing, right, is don't lose money. Someone's getting into real estate for the first time. What's the number one tip you'd give them? Don't rely on anybody else for your success. Otherwise, you're going to be... My name's Rudy Moore, host of Living the Red Life podcast,

and I'm here to change the way you see your life in your earpiece every single week. If you're ready to start living the Red Life, ditch the Blue Pill, take the Red Pill, join me in Wonderland and change your life. Hello and welcome back. Today, joining me is Jason, and he's a real estate expert, and he's got a fascinating little niche, well, not a little niche, a big niche that we're going to talk about today that I think a lot of you're going to be interested in.

You know, we're all entrepreneurs here. We're all folks in our business, making money. And when you get to a certain point in your business journey, you go, where do I put that money, right? And I've always put my money in real estate. I actually bought my first real estate investment at 19, 16 years ago. And I've been buying real estate ever since. So I'm always fascinated about different ways to invest, right?

and you look a lot of the richest people on the planet. What common denominator of a lot of them is they put their money in real estate. I've always followed that rule. So I wanted Jason to come on and talk about, well, a lot about real estate. But one thing that he's really focused on with a lot of people is flipping single family home. So Jason, welcome to the show. Rudy, thanks so much for having me. Excited to be here.

Good. So let's talk about it. You know, there are a lot of ways to invest. You do a lot of different aspects of your real estate or the empire that will come to later. but, you know, I set it up with this thing that we were talking about offline. I mean, super applicable to people listening, right? Like they can invest with a smaller amount, high profit potential, and low amount of our investment. So, you know, that's got everyone's attention.

I'll hand it over to you. Tell us more. Yeah, flipping real estate is something that I never thought I'd be doing. My background is engineering. And I was just looking at a way to not retire when I was 70 years old. And you know, the 30 year journey through mutual funds was a long one. And so when I kind of stumbled into flipping, I was looking at it and like, you know, are you kidding?

We can we can come out of pocket zero dollars of our own money and we can average $120,000 in net profit per project. And these are short term projects or four to six months. You know, again, we can raise money through a variety of sources. And so I think for those individuals that want really high margins, or individuals that don't have a huge nest egg to get started. Maybe they are closer retirement age and haven't quite saved for retirement

the way they would have liked. I think this is a really good opportunity. We work with people that have a broad spectrum of wealth, right? People with $0 or $5,000 of net worth all the way up to $3, 4,000, $5 million of net worth. This is a really good opportunity to generate a lot of cash quickly, to then kind of multiply your real estate portfolio

in a way that doesn't take all of your money up front. So let's break that down. Let's say there's two types of people listening. Someone that's more a startup, wants to do this but doesn't have a couple of hundred grand line around. Say there's someone like myself, big company, you know, lots of money set, not lots of money, but money sat around.

They want to invest some a bit, right? They don't mind putting their money down. Tell us about the difference and how to go, you know, through those two routes. right, if I'm going to try and raise some money or how much if I'm using my own would I expect to invest? Yeah, so if you're starting on your own and you don't want to put your capital at risk or you want to start somewhere that's reasonable, you know, you've got 20, 30 grand, maybe 100 grand, maybe 200 grand, like all of those are reasonable expectations to get started. You know, we utilize some funding mechanisms like hard money and we use other people's money on short-term loans or on joint venture agreements to kind of pool everything together to come. come in and flip these properties.

And so you can start with five grand, you can start with 200 grand, and we can get a hard money loan with that down payment to fund the entire purchase of the property and all the construction for these properties. And that really lets people get in at a very low dollar perspective

and be able to make 90% return on their money in four months, six months, and really multiply that. For the larger scale entrepreneurs that wanna do this at scale, at scale, you know, we, matter of fact, we teach an entire program at doing this at scale. We need to kind of approach it from a top down perspective

of number one, you can invest in somebody else's fix and flip business and make a great return there. Or you can go out and you can hire an operator and you can build it out as a team to do 20, 30 of these projects a year. I mean, we're doing 20 projects a year at about six figure net profit per project. So you can turn, you know, a half a million dollar investment back into about two, two million dollars a year.

Um, if you structure this properly. Okay. So, so let's let's go through, um, you know, that side of it. Say, I want to start. Is this something that, you know, I work with you. You teach me how to find all the deals and stuff or, you know, work with you and you just go find the property and to take a percent or do you have both those options? Like how would I, or anyone listening?

get going with this. Yeah, we teach a mentorship program, Better Blueprint Academy, that brings in new individuals and experienced investors, right? And that was local to the state of Colorado. We were teaching it in person for about three years, and we just launched nationally to all of the other markets in the U.S. And so, you know, people can jump in really wherever they're at. It's about learning and tying into the community

so that you can actually get started. Again, we have probably about 24 hours worth of content that people can dive in and really figure out, hey, based on where I'm at, my resources, how hands on, how hands off I want to be, like how much time do I want to invest in this? And there's multiple avenues. Like you can scale a business to do 20 a year,

you can invest passively with us, or you can do one or two a year and make two, 300 grand and, you know, take six months off and just enjoy the time with your family. Got it. And then what are some, you know, I'd love to pull out a few nuggets just for anyone listening out, out the gate. So give us a few tips, right? Like if someone was trying to get into this, what are some general? I know it's obviously specific to the type house, the location, all those things. But are there any sort of key guiding principles you love to teach in general for investing? Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, we did a lot of.

lot of learning the hard way when we got started, you know, in this business. And there's a lot of common mistakes that I see from new investors in the space. And number one is that they just chase too small of a margin. You know, they go after very, very cosmetic flips with small margins, $20,000 or $30,000 net profit. And, you know, most people would say, hey, 30 grand in six weeks is pretty appetizing. But the reality is, is as a percentage of, you know, your profit, is you just way too small. If you go over on your timeline, if you go over on your budget, if the market dips, like your capital is at risk. So number one is just get really, really good at deal analysis and make sure that you have some very specific go-no-go criteria to say, hey, listen, this is or is not a

deal. So we're chasing more of these six-figure net profit deals to allow ourselves the cushion and the margin for worst-case scenario at all times. I always love to say, like if you get rid of the downside, then all you're left with is upside. You know, that might not be the sexy answer, but it's, it's the number one rule of investing, right, is don't lose money, right? So I think having a solid deal analysis there is huge. Yeah. And when you look at like, all there are some principles that like make a better deal, you know, you talk about a lot of people get these smaller ones. Maybe it's just more cosmetic. Are you like, do you have some guiding kind of rules like, oh, you know, it's generally got to be over

half a mill or it's got to be, you know, more total renovation or you're going to add to the property. Are anything you're always looking for to get more out of a deal? Yeah, I think, you know, from my perspective personally, the larger the scope of the project, usually the more net margin there is, right? Like a lot of investors are scared of structural work or scared of changing layouts or scared of doing permitted work or whatever that looks like. But those types of property especially coming from a sales perspective, right? When you're talking with a seller or a wholesaler or somebody like that, you have so much more room to negotiate on those

because there's less competition. Less people want those properties. They're not financeable via traditional means. And so it allows you really to dive in and get them for much cheaper and increase these margins along the way. So you're going to get your profit on the buy side when you buy this property.

That's how you set yourself up for success. But if you can learn how to handle those, things well what is an ideal property layout how do I change my layout to match those things and meet the largest sectors of the market can I take on structural work and can I do those things well with high urgency to complete my projects on timeline that's gonna get you the highest net profit deals you know we we really operate in a market with an average price point like six seven hundred thousand dollars you know Colorado is a more expensive market

nationally and so yes homes in that price point it's easier to make 100K on an $800,000 home than it is to make 100K on a $200,000 home, right? So there is definitely price point plays into that, but you can flip anywhere in the nation. Yeah, and I was going to ask, like, is it the same over there versus if I buy Miami or New York or L.A.? Like, are those sort of same guiding principles and rules? And obviously, you're teaching students all over. Do they generally apply to any state, any deal? For the most part, yeah, I mean, your material or sorry, your labor, rates for construction are going to change based on your local market, right? Texas is cheaper to

build than California. And some of that comes down to code compliance. But, you know, that we can dial in per market and that's not a huge change. Really, if you're sticking in these major metro areas, Denver, L.A., New York, Miami, where the population density is there and there's a high demand for real estate, then the principles are going to be the same. And these are going to be areas that are established over a few hundred years. So you're going to have homes that are older and you're going to have brand new construction. And that disparity, you know, between the ages of those homes, allows for a lot more opportunity to fix up properties rather than these new construction areas that are from 1970 and newer. Love it. Okay. So I don't know, I mean, we could talk all day about

this, but I know you have tons of information, education, courses, coaching, everything that people can check out if they want to kind of go down this rabbit hole. I do want to save a few of my last questions about, you know, you feel a big company too, right? You have all these facets. You're an investor, but you're also an educator, speaker, all these things. So what was your entrepreneur journey like? I know, you know, you have this story. You went from, you know, five grand to 400 grand in just a few months, right, flip in. And then that led to now like being an online business owner and having staff. Can you talk a little about that? Yeah. I mean, I'll take it. a step further. When I first moved to Colorado, I was living out of my car for three months in the winter out here and just sleeping in a church parking lot. So, you know, I, my biggest, you know, transition into success was transitioning into sales. Again, my background was engineering. Learning sales was a critical skill for me because you can flip anything. You could flip cars. You could flip watches. You could flip real estate. And learning that it's easier to do the bigger deals.

is huge. So when I got into real estate, you know, as you mentioned, we started with five grand. Like we just bought our own primary residence and started flipping homes and raising money. And my biggest kind of aha moment was, hey, listen, I was in sales for five years and, you know, I worked with Fortune 500 companies and we had to negotiate multi-million dollar deals for engineering services. But it was really, really hard to sell those. services and it was like pushing a rope it didn't quite feel like we had product market fit it felt like most people wanted to keep that intellectual property in-house we were expensive it was a challenge right whereas when we transition to real estate it became really easy to sell these products and these services meaning it was really and this is going to sound maybe arrogant but it was really easy to raise six hundred thousand dollars to go do these projects because

it's a known industry we're not reinventing the wheel it's really really high margin. Everybody knows about this type of the thing, right? So once I kind of realized, oh, hey, there's product market fit here and this is very scalable. Like things changed dramatically, right? So we started flipping homes, made about 400K that first year. And we've doubled our income every single year since. I think my biggest focus was how do we find the high margin, high net margin deals and activities? And then how do we scale that business? We're very much the lean entrepreneurship minded company. Don't take on a lot of overhead until it's absolutely necessary. So keep that margin to yourself. And so we just focused on our bottlenecks.

You know, we started flipping five at a time, which led to 20 a year. And we asked ourselves, like, all right, what are the challenges doing this at scale? Well, deal flow is a huge issue. Right. So we started our own business around finding off market distressed properties. So Now we've got four full-time employees just going out and finding off-market properties that can be fixed up. Then we opened up our brokerage to sell these properties on the listing side and work with all these wonderful investors who are looking for luxury properties, but also want to invest in these types of businesses, right? So I think building complementary verticals that all work towards increasing your total opportunity and total margin just changes the game because now, you're, you have an opportunity to make money at four stages along a transaction rather than just one stage and that really increases your margin overall. So yeah, I mean, it's a wild journey from your car to

doing all this. What do you, you know, I always like to ask at the end, that's great success. Where do you see this going? What's next for you? Well, this mentorship program is scaling nationally right now. And so we're looking to compete in the education space with the Pacemore and your buddy Cody Sperber and the rest of the bigger real estate gurus out there right now. We're continuing to increase our own investments in the space. So we're kind of graduating from flipping as a company right now into larger development projects. So 30, 40 lot new construction subdivisions is kind of where we're headed next.

So we've started a private equity firm to raise money to go do those types of projects. And that's a natural progression. right rather than sticking at 100k a project now we can make five to seven million a project and we're only managing one thing at a time so that's really what's next for us is we want to educate and help as many people as possible like there's so many people out there that don't know how to retire want to do something on the side maybe feel the golden handcuffs of a two to three four hundred thousand dollar a year job and they want to make 200k in six months or 300k 400k a year and this is just it's a no-nonsense, very practical way to get there.

You don't need to be a software engineer to make that happen. Yeah. Good. And last question, you know, we talked a lot, right, about different real estate investment strategies that you do and ways your firm and your business helps people. And you obviously have courses, mentorship. You know, we focused on kind of a single family sort of home. I think it's a great first step for a lot of people maybe listening that want to

to get into real estate. That's kind of how I started, not flipping, so to speak, I bought and renovated and rented. But, you know, it's a good getting your feet wet before you maybe buy a big moody family or storage units or whatever you end up going into, right? So where can people go deeper down this rabbit hole, right? They want to, you know, wet their appetite here and they want to learn more about you. Maybe if you have some books, podcast courses, how can they find what you do? Yeah, the easiest place to find us is just better, Blueprintacademy.com, right? Our socials are live under the same handles or under Better Blueprint Realty,

but Better Blueprint Academy is where they can go to really dive down. We've got free 90-minute trainings out there to really give them a good, solid foundation to get started. Love it. And any last final tips I always like to ask someone's getting into real estate for the first time. What's the number one tip you'd give them? Don't rely on anybody else for your success.

uh, meaning that if there is a skill set that is crucial for the success of your business, whether it's estimating construction budget costs or estimating a final finished value for the price of the home, you need to be able to build those skill sets in house. Otherwise, you're going to be you know, you're going to struggle. Uh, you're going to be drug kind of left and right. And, uh, you're going to be relying on somebody else's capability for your success and they might not have that capability. Good. Love it.

All right, guys. Well, that's a wrap. Hope you enjoyed today's episode. You got to learn a little about real estate, maybe where to start, obviously, introduction into what Jason does and maybe how he can support you if you're trying to get into real estate or looking where to maybe invest your earnings from your main business. And hopefully you may be inspired a little too. You know, it's quite the story from sleeping in your car and the cold winters to, you know,

know, flipping homes and, you know, making obviously a big sort of firm out of it. It's multifaceted. So congrats to you and hopefully inspired other people that are in, in, in their journey, you know, hopefully not in their car, sleeping, but in their early phases of their journey. So I kind of mind me that. So Jason, thank you guys. Hope you enjoyed today's episode. Keep working hard and I'll see you all soon. Take care.