Reverse-Engineering Real Estate Deals With Jason Lewis

A lot of real estate conversations sound good in the moment, then fade as soon as you close the tab.

This one had staying power.

Jason Lewis is sharp on marketing, lists, and direct mail. He’s built Creation Utah into a $4M-plus flipping and wholesale real estate business, and he co-founded The Investor Machine, which has sent more than $50 million worth of lists and direct mail for investors.

But the most useful part of the conversation was not a new tactic. It was the consistency of his thinking.

In business, he studies what works, then builds a system around it. At home, he applies the same mindset. He creates real opportunities for his kids to earn confidence through value creation.

Same principle. Different arena.

In this Thought Leader Spotlight, Jason Lewis breaks down his list and direct mail playbook and the family principles that keep him grounded. If you want the full interview, watch it here:

Jason’s Core Strategy

Jason reverse-engineers who already sells to investors in a specific market, builds a seller profile from that data, and markets consistently with direct mail. At home, he ties privileges to value creation so his kids learn to earn, not expect.

Who Jason Lewis Is And Why Investors Pay Attention

Jason has been in real estate since 2012. He’s the founder of Creation Utah and the co-founder of The Investor Machine. He’s also a long-time DealMachine user and a believer in driving for dollars as a foundational lead source.

In the interview, he laid out two tracks clearly:

• How he finds and ranks sellers using market-specific data
• How he builds a family culture focused on earned confidence

It does not feel forced. It feels like one mindset showing up in two places.

How He Broke Into Real Estate By Out-Serving First

Jason’s early story is not the typical “I always knew I’d be an entrepreneur” script. He grew up middle class with a standard plan: get a stable job, build security, keep things predictable.

After a two-year mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he came home in late 2008, right as the economy was crashing. Security mattered more than ever. So he picked radiation therapy. As he put it, cancer is not going anywhere. Stable field, stable demand.

Then he got into the work and realized he could not do it long-term.

So in 2012, he decided to break into real estate investing when the market was still cold and investors were not easy to find. He tracked down one investor and asked for a job. He got told no three times. The fourth time, he did not argue. He offered value.

He said he would show up the next day and provide as much value as possible for free. If he became valuable, the investor could pay him what that value was worth.

He worked for free for a month, shared a desk in a small office, and eventually the investor said something close to, “I don’t see how I keep doing this without you.”

Over the next five years, Jason grew into an operator role. The team scaled to around 150 deals a year. Then he launched Creation Utah in September 2017 and scaled quickly:

• Around $1M in year one
• $2M in year two
• $3M by year three
• Holding in the $3M to $4M range in assignment fees since then in the Salt Lake City market

The point is not the timeline. It is the pattern. Jason builds systems, shows up consistently, and lets the work compound.

Why The Best List Depends On The Market

This is where a lot of investors get stuck. They want the best real estate lead list. Jason’s take is simple. The best list depends on the market.

A list that performs in St. Louis may flop in Tampa. Boston behaves differently. Salt Lake behaves differently. Even within the same state, results can shift. So instead of asking what list should I pull, Jason starts with a better question.

Who is already selling to investors in this area?

Not a generic motivated seller category. Not a national one-size-fits-all list. He wants to identify:

• Who sold to an investor before
• Who sold to an investor like Jason at a similar buy box and price point
• What that seller profile actually looks like in that market

This is reverse-engineering in real form. You are not guessing motivation. You are matching reality.

How to Reverse-Engineer The Seller Profile

Jason described an ideal process if you have the resources to do it right. First, build a buy box around sellers who have already sold to investors in the past. Then analyze what those sellers have in common:

• Property size ranges
• Home age
• Ownership length
• Equity
• Owner demographics such as age
• Distress indicators like probate, code enforcement, eviction, and water shutoffs

One important point is that it is not binary. It is not yes or no. It is about likelihood. Once the seller profile is built, the next step is the unlock. Score every owner in the market against that profile, then rank who is most likely to sell next.

Practically, it looks like this:

• Study what worked
• Quantify what mattered
• Apply the pattern at scale
• Spend where the odds are best

That is how marketing stops being a guessing game.

Why Hard-To-Get Data Creates An Edge

There are lists that almost anyone can buy. Then there are lists that take extra work. Jason leans into the second category. He talked about going directly to the county, courthouse, or city for records like:

• Probates
• Water shutoffs
• Code enforcement
• Divorces
• Evictions

Every jurisdiction stores data differently, and there is no perfect national source for many of these records.

That is exactly why they can work.

When data is harder to access, fewer people do it consistently. That often means less competition and better conversations. Then he stacks those records with driving for dollars, because driving for dollars validates distress at the property level.

When you combine hard-to-get data with real-world verification, your odds tend to go up.

A Direct Mail System That Works Through Consistency

Jason’s direct mail advice starts with a line that sounds almost too simple.

Send it. Consistency is the first lever.

Before he outsourced his mail system, he realized he was mailing about three out of four weeks. He would miss weeks because he was busy, waiting on a list, testing, or reacting to leads.

And those gaps mattered.

Sellers call those they remember. You do not become memorable if you go silent. From there, he broke mail down into a few levers.

Budget Matters More Than Most People Want To Admit

Jason is direct about this. If you want to spend $500 on mail, save it.

He recommends building up to about $3,000 to $4,000 per month so you can test properly and withstand the lag time. He also emphasized being able to wait one to three months for the first deal.

Mail is a compounding channel, not an instant channel.

Timing And Cadence Matter

Not every segment should be hit the same way. Some should get mail every 30 days. Others every 60. Some should not be mailed at all. Even the day of the week can matter. He shared that Saturday deliveries can underperform compared to Tuesday.

Creative Helps, But It Is Not Where You Start

This is where most investors obsess early. Jason has a better order of operations. Get consistent. Get enough volume to learn. Then refine creative.

Across large-scale tracking, he has seen patterns that tend to hold:

• A person’s name often outperforms a company name
• Female names frequently perform best, with male names close behind
• Putting a website on the mailer can reduce response
• Color can matter, but the best color varies by market
• Check-style letters can work, but they can also create noise
• Postcards tend to stay cleaner and simpler

One more insight that surprises people. Ugly postcards often win.

Jason would rather send a polished, professional piece. But he consistently sees simpler pieces outperform glossy branding because they feel human and easy.

How The Investor Machine Started

The Investor Machine did not start as a company idea. It started as Jason solving his own lead flow problem. Then a friend in the Bay Area asked if he could replicate the system. Jason hired a driver and VAs to pull local records and run driving for dollars there.

It worked.

Then more people asked. Over time, it scaled through relationships and results. The model is straightforward. Clients fund the plan, and the team runs list sourcing, direct mail execution, and call tracking.

How He Applies The Same System Thinking At Home

Jason has six kids, ages 13 to 1. He talked openly about building companies while staying present at home. His approach is consistent.

Build systems that make the outcomes more likely.

Build A Team So You Are Not The Bottleneck

He emphasized having a strong COO at each company, supported by strong teams, so he can focus on vision and protect family time. Across his companies, he said roughly 80 people work for him.

Balance does not happen by accident. It gets designed.

Treat Family Like A Priority Now

Jason shared a simple perspective. The idea of focusing on family later is a trap. You do not get these ages back. Work will still be there. Your kid being 13 will not.

Teach Kids To Create Value, Not Just Receive

Jason referenced Scott Donnell and the book Value Creation Kid, along with the Dinner Table app. The principle is that kids need a reason to create value. Parents stop paying for certain wants starting around ages six or seven and scale up over time.

It starts small:

• A gift for a friend’s birthday
• A gift for a sibling
• Extras beyond the basics

Jason is also not a fan of allowance because it teaches the wrong model. Money should follow value creation.

He gave a grounded example. That night, he was going to one of his flips to do a trash-out demo because his kids and their friends wanted ways to earn money for what they wanted to do.

He has done nearly 900 transactions in this company and more than 1,000 in the previous one. He joked that the number of times he has personally demoed a house rhymes with zero.

But he was doing it anyway because it creates a real opportunity:

• Safe work
• Clear before-and-after
• Payment tied to effort
• Confidence built through earned outcomes

Then the money goes into three buckets:

• Spend
• Save
• Give

The give bucket matters because the family gives from earned money, not dad’s money. That makes generosity more real.

He also described kid entrepreneur fairs where his kids sell things like flavored sodas or cotton candy and popcorn, then iterate on what worked and what did not.

That is value creation in real life.

Practical Takeaways 

Here is the simple version of Jason’s playbook.

For Real Estate Investors

• Reverse-engineer who sells to investors in your market
• Stack local records with driving for dollars
• Rank owners by likelihood instead of marketing to everyone
• Mail weekly without gaps
• Avoid testing direct mail with a tiny budget and no runway
• Keep postcards simple and human
• Track responses so your data guides the next send

For Parents Building Capable Kids

• Stop paying for every want and scale responsibility over time
• Replace allowance with value-based earning
• Create safe ways for kids to work and earn
• Use spend, save, give buckets
• Encourage iteration through real projects

Closing Thought

Jason’s edge is not a secret list or a magic mailer. It is the discipline to reverse-engineer what works, then do it consistently. If this resonates, start simple.

Pick one market, one list strategy, and one weekly mail cadence you can sustain. Then let the results tell you what to refine.

Progress beats pressure. Consistency beats guessing.

FAQ: Seller Lists, Direct Mail, And Value Creation