A Letter from Jen: The Evolution
Working on the next Empire Brief
You may have been listening, reading, and investing alongside me for years. The feedback you’ve given me along the way has shaped a lot of what I do. The messages, the questions, the deals that started with, “I heard you say...” I don’t take any of it for granted, as it’s created the business owner I am today.
The content we’ve published over the years has worked well. It’s been honest, it’s been useful, and the response from you has been a confirmation of that. But I realized it was time to level up. My team has leveled up. The businesses have leveled up. And the education has to grow with us to meet today’s and tomorrow’s goals.
The road less traveled
I didn't get here through a degree in business or a corporate track. I built my businesses through years of grit and self-education and the desire to serve. Every deal taught me something new. Mistakes happened, but I learned how to fix each one fast and learned from them all. Every investor relationship I earned, I earned the hard way.
When I say the work has gotten sharper, I mean it. This isn’t a pivot. It’s what happens when you do this long enough and refuse to stand still.
Humbler than ever
I don’t like talking about myself. I’d much rather make it about you, who I’m here to help succeed. In the past, we shied away from social media and “beating our chests” about what we do. I didn’t feel comfortable trying to compete or copy others in the business. Our work speaks for itself and our team serves our clients with great respect.
However, that will be changing. We don’t want to keep our proven methodologies and solutions hidden in obscurity. As a result, you’ll likely see us sharing more on the social platforms to improve our exposure and to help those asking for guidance as they venture deeper into exploring passive income from real estate.
Time to enter a different league
What has resulted in what we’re referring to now as our “Empire Ecosystem,” is five businesses all working together and all designed around one thing: serving sophisticated real estate investors better than anyone else. We now use technology most operators haven’t caught up to. We read the market in ways our competition doesn’t. And the returns we deliver to our partners are not the returns being delivered by the people copying our model.
I share this because I’m proud of what we’ve built and because you deserve to know that the standard behind what we publish matches the standard behind everything else we do. Being an advisor to your capital is a privilege and I always have appreciated every investors’ trust.
The principle of it all
Every year I do this, I get better at it. Every deal teaches me something I didn’t know the year before. Every client I work with shows me another layer of what real, sophisticated capital investors want to understand.
Expect our content to be even more useful and relevant than ever before because I’m a better operator now and you’ll be the beneficiary of everything I’ve learned and continue to learn. As we grow, the content grows. As we sharpen, the education sharpens. That's the deal.
Where to find the goods
Our podcast, Growing Empires, is where you can hear how I think, who I’m learning from, and the deals I’ve worked through as it all relates to how the market has shifted.
Growing Empires rotates a variety of episode structures:
Lessons from the Front Line. Will be a short, punchy episode where I share a story about a real situation I’m working through such as a current deal, a market shift, a capital decision that came down to a judgment call. The story isn’t the point—the lesson behind it is.
Inside the Deal. I walk through a deal case study that will include such things as the structure, the capital stack, the waterfall, the risks, the moves we made, and the outcome. This is where you see how a real deal gets built and operated, not how it gets pitched.
Capital Conversations. These episodes include lively conversations with operators, allocators, and specialists I’d write a check next to. I ask every guest questions such as: how do you vet partners? How do you size up a deal? How do you allocate capital? It’s about exploring frameworks, thinking, and examining the lessons they’ve learned.
Investor Intel. This episode will be a short and specific tactical masterclass on one concept, taught the way I’d teach it across a conference room table. We define it, walk through real examples, show how it plays out in a live deal, and end with something you can deploy immediately.
These episode types will rotate and occasionally I’ll drop an ad-hoc episode such as a market alert, a special interview, but it will always something timely.
Empire Briefs are complementary articles to the podcast, delivered to Empire Investment Club subscribers via email every other week. Briefs will explore frameworks. Underwriting logic. The filters I run a deal through. The mistakes I’ve made, what they cost, and most importantly, what I learned and do now.
We will cover how we communicate with investors, including when a deal is going sideways, how we read a market before we enter it, and how we know when to exit. The hard questions we ask sponsors before we put one dollar in. How having vertical integration, property management, construction, brokerage, title, and capital under one roof changes the way we underwrite. What rising insurance and operating costs mean for the next 24 months of deals. Tax structures, capital stacks, waterfalls. The mechanical stuff that quietly builds returns or quietly kills them.
Some will be technical. Some will be straight from inside a live deal. No filler!
Why you need both
If you’re an accredited or sophisticated investor, an allocator, or an operator, you’re in the right place. Empire Briefs are written assuming you already know the basics, which lets us get to work on the deeper layers where real decisions happen. Growing Empires is the place to hear the inner workings of the most critical moments of any deal whether you’re in due diligence or when you’re ready to exit.
If you’re earlier in your investor journey, the podcast or our vault of curated content will meet you where you are and grow with you.
Read Empire Briefs the way I write them; as a letter from one operator to another, not as a marketing fluff. Push back when you disagree with me. Forward them when something hits. Tell me what you want me to go deeper on in the comments. The Empire Investment Club is where you get to shape the content that will help you succeed, so be sure to let us know.
If you’ve been here from the beginning, thank you for being a continued subscriber. I mean that. The work from here on will be built on everything you’ve helped shape and the trust you’ve given me over the years isn’t lost on me. The way I pay it back is by getting better at this every year and bringing you along with me.
If you are new to us, welcome and fasten your seat belt as it’s going to be a fun ride.
As we grow, the content will grow. As we sharpen, the education will sharpen. The value we deliver to you will keep moving alongside the businesses we’re building.
Thank you for being a part of the evolution!
—Jennifer
