- 7 months ago
2025 tested real estate leaders, but it also revealed who was built to scale. In this year-end recap, Jason Mitchell sits down with Allison LaForgia and breaks down how belief in the JMG model enabled tough decisions, operational efficiency and continued growth despite market uncertainty. Mitchel also reflects on how leadership accountability and a service-first culture defined JMG’s success in 2025.
Looking at 2026, Mitchell details how those lessons are fueling an ambitious expansion strategy focused on national scale, stronger partnerships, and elevated service standards. This conversation offers a candid look on JMG’s blueprint to continue to raise the bar on agent experience, delivering a best-in-class consumer service in 2026 and beyond.
Looking at 2026, Mitchell details how those lessons are fueling an ambitious expansion strategy focused on national scale, stronger partnerships, and elevated service standards. This conversation offers a candid look on JMG’s blueprint to continue to raise the bar on agent experience, delivering a best-in-class consumer service in 2026 and beyond.
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00:00I'm Allison LaForgia, and today I'm with a guest who needs no introduction, Jason Mitchell,
00:08who is not only the leader of the Jason Mitchell Group, but he's also the founder. And today we
00:15are going to dig into some of the things that make the Jason Mitchell Group so stand out in
00:23an industry where there's lots of competition and market uncertainty. Jason, thank you so much for
00:28being with me today. Thanks for having me. It's good to see you again. So we are now at the end of the
00:34year and you're wrapping up a standout year, record closings, high transaction volume with another
00:41impressive year of year over year growth. Looking back, what do you think were three decisions or
00:47shifts that you made that were important in continuing to drive this type of catalytic
00:53growth that you've seen at the Jason Mitchell Group? Well, I appreciate that. And
00:57we don't think about it in terms of, you know, we have goals. I have goals that I want to achieve,
01:05but it's just about getting better every day. And I think you can look at the transaction count,
01:13you can look at volume. What I actually think we achieved over this past year that no one can see
01:20is the efficiency. And so operationally, we've been able to really trim up and really get more
01:28efficient through adding better cases of technology within the back offices that we have and more
01:34efficient processes through implementing strategies where departments are talking to one another more
01:42and work is getting done, not only more effectively and efficiently, but we didn't need any more bodies
01:49to do it. So, so we'll, we'll be up probably 18 to 20% this year when the year wraps up. I'm not,
01:57I'm not quite sure. I think we'll hit, you know, we should hit 12,000 plus closings in, in that like five,
02:05six, five, seven range of a billion in volume. And we actually cut staff in parts of our departments
02:14because we got better operationally. And so where you would think that you would need to add
02:21probably two to three bodies in processing, a body or so in accounting, onboarding, recruiting,
02:29we didn't. Um, in fact, there are several departments where we were able to lose some count
02:35and it's just simply because we really focused this year. I mean, and you always pay attention
02:41to it, but it was a high level of focus on how do we get more efficient internally to make the machine
02:48move faster. Um, but not skip a beat because the first thing you think about is, okay, as I grow,
02:55I gotta, I gotta add bodies. And that's not always the case. If your internal processes aren't where
03:02they could potentially be, we always look at overhead and adding resources from a human
03:07perspective. We're now, you know, Oh, we got this AI here and doing this, but like, you know,
03:13that's like the Vogue word is what we use AI to do this. And we use AI to do that. AI can only do so
03:19much, right? Like AI didn't build the efficiencies on the operational side of what we do. We use AI
03:26for more prospecting things and whatnot, but you know, a bot isn't going to go and do some of the
03:32things that we need to do in order to effectively pay out faster, pay quicker, close deals quicker.
03:37That's, that's internal technology that I think there's some ways that you can utilize AI for that.
03:43But really what it was is sitting down and paying very close attention and opening up the hood
03:49and saying, is there a better way? Is there a better way to do this? Find the better way. And so
03:56it's, it's not a me thing. It's, we have good VPs in our department that understand, don't come to
04:04work and just work. If you're a vice president of a department, come to work and think about how
04:09every day you can get your department better. Be proactive in your approach to work, not reactive.
04:16Reactiveness comes from coordinators and directors that are given tasks on a daily basis. Your VP
04:22should be thinking proactively in terms of how do I get my, how do I get my department better?
04:29So you, what I think is stand out to me there is that you've continued to work in your business
04:36while you work on your business. How do you see that continual improvement being a benefit to the
04:46agents and team leaders that are continuing to produce under you? Have they leaned into seeing
04:53better turn times, better completion rates, faster and more efficient processes? Talk to me a little
04:59bit about their experience with this optimization operationally. Yeah, I think for, you know,
05:06you have ops and sales. And so externally, when you talk about sales, our org chart is we have two
05:12national VPs, then we have regionals, and then we have our corporate leaders and then team leader,
05:18traditional team leaders and corporate, corporate leaders. And that's in every state that we operate in.
05:23So for that, on the external approach, I think it's better communication and more clear, how to say,
05:32more clarity on what our expectations are of our leaders. Also, when it comes to being efficient in
05:39technology, giving them more visibility on their production, giving them visibility on reporting,
05:44it's not perfect, but we're getting better. And as long as our sales org can see this is much
05:52better than it was six months ago. We have some stuff to do, but they can see the changes that
05:58were like, as an example, this year, which was a big task, we launched our mobile app for our agents.
06:05And, you know, we acquired a company called Home Advantage several years ago. And we've been working
06:11very diligently on utilizing that technology of distribution, updating, reporting, reporting back to
06:17partnerships in real time, and building this to where we have these integrations now to where in
06:24real time, as someone updates, an LO is getting an update, the account manager is getting an update,
06:29we're getting the update at corporate, and it happens within seconds. Sending push notifications
06:33that your updates are now due. Our job is to service our partners. And the better that our agents are
06:39equipped to have tools and resources to keep them in the know of what is going on with the consumer,
06:46whether they're out showing a house, whether we just put them in escrow, whether you need to call
06:50them because you're getting shopped on the loan. These communication standards that we're setting
06:55forth all start in the field. It starts in Southgate, Michigan locally. It starts in Phoenix, Arizona
07:05locally with that agent who just left the client saying, here's the update, and instantly you can get
07:11that communication. So building those tools, and so we released that this year, and it's been a huge
07:16success. It's helped our updating times. We have a lot of partners, so our agents have to go into these
07:22portals and do these updates, and it used to be very monotonous. And it's still not perfect, but it is
07:27light years better because instead of having to spend 20 to 30 minutes a week updating your prospects, it takes
07:34two minutes because you can go in the app and bang, bang, bang, bang, update, update, update. And so as we're
07:40building the tools internally to be more efficient with ops, we've built a lot of tools and released
07:46technologies externally to our agents in the field, which helps everybody. Our mission control department
07:53truly is the air traffic controllers for our referral volumes, making sure that the girls there in that
07:59department know exactly what's going on in the field in case they need to be paused, in case we
08:05need to reassign a referral. And what ends up happening is your partners see that you're getting
08:09more efficient. They see that you're updating when you're supposed to. They see that you're
08:13communicating when you're supposed to. They see that conversion metrics have gone up. So all these
08:18things that you're trying to build to become more effective actually have a domino effect throughout the
08:24entire organization and most importantly to our partnerships.
08:27You just touched on something that I think is such a clear distinction in your business model and
08:33that is you are the best in the business with referrals. How do you continue to keep quality
08:42partnerships and conversion rates high?
08:45Well, you got to perform. And you know, I got a call from a guy I know I've known a long time that
08:54he's a former Zillow executive and we stayed very good friends. And he called me yesterday and he's
09:02like, hey, I have a relationship I want to open up to you. And I get these calls more often now.
09:07And it's such a good feeling to know that people that speak of your organization say the words best in
09:16class. And you don't get to be best in class when it comes to managing partnerships and relationships.
09:22If you don't have the tools and resources, but most importantly, the agents in the field to service
09:28the consumer. And, um, and I, I just push, I push myself and I push our team to, to want to get better
09:38all the time. But I believe the reason that JMG stands out above, um, anyone else when it comes to
09:46being best in class is one, our scale, you know, when you have, we now have 1300 agents.
09:52And so when you have that scale of agents who are all bought into not just the culture,
09:56but when you join JMG, there are non-negotiables. We expect these things of you. And if these are
10:02things that you're not okay with, then you just simply can't work here and that's fine.
10:07But if you're going to be a part of this and we're going to help you grow, and we're going to help
10:10you close more deals than you ever have, these are our expectations from the very beginning.
10:14And we breathe that in every market that we have. This is JMG. JMG is about servicing
10:21other people's clients. And you have to do that on both sides from the client side
10:26and the partnership side better be nice. You better communicate and you better show our
10:31partnerships as we open them up to you. If you're newer, that you are somebody that can be trusted
10:37because we, we have spent, I have spent so many years building this trust that, uh, it's more
10:44important than anything. And so when, when you have the ability to, to, to be honest and to look
10:53people in the eye and say, I can perform meaning new partnerships, you know, it's easier now to get
10:59new partners because you have so many that, that trust you and that you work with that people
11:03automatically go into the relationship with trust. Whereas before there's a lot of earn there
11:09because the resume wasn't quite what it is today. And so we've had to build that trust and integrity
11:14to the partnerships that we have. Um, and then most importantly, you have to perform,
11:19you know, we manage performance, you know, if you're not performing, you, you will be let go.
11:26And, you know, leaders talk about tough decisions and having tough conversations.
11:31You actually have to enforce them because the one things that tough conversations lead to is not
11:37only cutting the fat, what it leads to is people being able to see that they're not joking.
11:46And I don't want that to be me. That's tough leadership, but that's good leadership.
11:51Good leadership is making tough decisions for the best interests of the greater good.
11:55And so when you lead by that and you, and you honestly go out there with leadership to say,
12:02we need you to perform and we're going to track and monitor that it raises everyone's standard of
12:07excellence. And that's just kind of how we're ingrained. You know, I, I, I came from a culture,
12:14you know, I've been in real estate my whole career. I started in the corporate side at Pulte and at
12:18Pulte, it was, you're being measured. There's a leaderboard who's the best. And I just,
12:24I grew up with that mentality of, I want to be the best, but I want my agents to know that I don't,
12:32I don't expect anything more of you that I don't expect from myself. You know, I expect myself to be
12:40the best. I expect myself every single day to work as hard as I can to do what I need to do to bring
12:48more opportunity. And that's just like, that's the culture we've built here. And that's what the
12:54operational side of what we do too. As I told, I told our, um, our executive, um, administrator,
13:00Erica yesterday, I said, she said, you know, people love working here. And I was like, don't
13:08butter me up. And, and she wouldn't cause she's a straight shooter. In fact, we're both from Detroit.
13:13Like she's, she's tough, you know, and she'll shoot you straight. But, but what she, what she
13:18told me was, no, people like the fact that they know they have the freedom to make decisions as
13:27long as it's in the greater interest of everybody around them. And I'm like, damn, like that feels
13:32good because I don't lead that culture and operations. I tried to lead by people being able
13:39to see my effort, see that I care, see that I hold people accountable. Like a good coach isn't a coach
13:45that just lets you do whatever you want to do and you like them. Therefore you think they're a good
13:49coach. You look back on your good coaches and the best coach might be tough, but what happens is when
13:56you're not, but what happens is when you look back and you say, I got better, I got better because
14:04they made me better. They made me be somebody I didn't think I could be. And, um, I think we have
14:10that in terms of our culture at JMG. We want, we want you to thrive, but we want accountability in
14:18showing you that you can, you can do things even from a leadership perspective. You just, you have
14:24to get there, right? Like sometimes you got to break the mold and you got to get people to make
14:27tough decisions, but as they start to improve and get better, that's when I look around, you know,
14:32you walk around now and it's like every single department has a leader that is better at what
14:39they do than what I would be. And that's when you start to feel really good. I could not lead
14:45our marketing department better than our current leader in marketing. I could not lead recruiting
14:49better than our current leader in recruiting. I could not lead mission control better than my
14:53leader in mission control. And that's a, that's a good feeling.
14:57What I think is so standout is how you've explained not just expectations or not, not even
15:05the goal of excellence, but the continual work towards striving towards excellence and maintaining
15:12excellence. And it's interesting that you're continuing to use that as your North star because
15:18the market has remained challenging. And yet JMG has continued to not only thrive, but grow.
15:25How have you maintained a growth mindset despite that market uncertainty?
15:32Even a flat market or a slightly declining market, there's still opportunity to grow.
15:37And the opportunity to grow is more on the new market centers.
15:44One. So adding more coverage of agents to receive opportunities from our partners.
15:49So you have to maintain that level of trust with partnerships and you have to perform.
15:53So even when things might be down, you're still best in class in those markets to get more
16:00opportunity from partnerships. So that's the current partners, expanding markets and earning
16:06their trust in those new markets. And then there's biz devving, which is bringing on more partnerships.
16:12What we found is that as things have gotten more challenging, partnerships start to look at
16:18are there better alternatives out there or should we seek new partnerships? And that's where we kind
16:25of fit in where, you know, we were working with so-and-so, but we feel like they might be able to do
16:32a better job or that we should see if there is somebody else out there that, um, can compete.
16:41And so we want to measure that. And so it's like, um, it's like in real estate, if you have,
16:47if you have a lender and they do a good job, but they don't have all the products, you need other
16:55products. So you need other lenders to help and support you. It's like, you always need to have
16:59two or three just in case. And I think in almost every phase of business.
17:05And so when we come into the fold as, as receiving an opportunity, we want to show
17:10new partnerships, what we can do to enhance their value proposition and make them and help make them
17:15more successful. And most of that comes through conversion, right? Um, and so when we get a crack
17:21at it, I think people and partners see that, Hey, these guys are really good at what they do here,
17:25because this is what we do. We service, we're a servicing organization that happens to sell real
17:32estate. That's what we do. And, um, I think we do it really well, but I have to push ourselves to get
17:43better and better. So you, you grow and thrive even in flat markets through new marketplaces and adding
17:51new partnerships, but also enhancing the relationship value of the partners that you have
17:59by getting better. Like I said, those applications that we've rolled out this year, we've gotten better
18:04with our current relationships. And so they have allowed us to go into more markets because we beat
18:10the competition. We're typically not everyone's, we have a lot of coverage, a lot of markets, but in
18:16those markets, we have competition that we have that we're trying to be best in class for the partner
18:22because they have multiple partnerships, but we want to be best in class in every market that we're
18:27in. And if we are, we'll get more opportunity. You know, we, we, we've had several large national
18:33partners this year that have turned off other partners and turned us on, uh, to where they're like,
18:39look, you've just proven that you guys really have your stuff together because it's not just like
18:45conversion is critically important. And that is number one, but it's also being easy to manage.
18:51JMG is such an easy account because in one phone call, we can change 1300 agents at a dime.
18:59And that's why it's nice to have everybody under the brokerage because of that ability to be nimble,
19:05flexible, get messaging out, and then have accountability to that instantly. Whereas if you don't have that
19:12and you have agents that are all over the place in different brands, and we work with a lot of
19:16networks by the way, but in the, and they would admittedly say challenges are communication and
19:22messaging because not everyone's under the same CRM. Not everyone's under the same SOPs. Not we have to
19:28deal with different leaders in these different organizations to get messaging to these agents.
19:32It's harder. Um, and so, and that's just a fair statement. It's just harder. We're,
19:38we're so easy to be that account because in one phone call, everything can get done.
19:44So the scale of JMG with having a universal approach to everyone on the same systems that
19:50are utilizing the same partnerships on how to update, how to do all these things,
19:56because it's all centralized. It doesn't matter if you're in Miami, if you're in New York city,
20:00or if you're in Tacoma, Washington, or if you're in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, doesn't matter where you're at.
20:06If you're at JMG, it's always the same. Yeah. The implementation and rollout being the same
20:12is reliable. It makes it consistent and you continue, can continue to deliver on that excellent
20:18experience, which is a type of reliability that you don't see too much. It's fun to see where,
20:24what it's become versus what it was. Um, yeah, I look, it was a gamble for me. And before we went on
20:34air, you were mentioning people don't see that. And what we were talking about was
20:39when I see team leaders and broker owners, and, you know, we're talking about things. Sometimes you
20:47get the feeling that, and sometimes they even say it where it's like, yeah, but I'm not in your
20:52position. And my rebuttal to them all the time is, yeah, but I wasn't. I built this and bootstrapped
21:01this thing organically from day one. This is all effort. And what, what you see now isn't what it
21:08was three years ago, five years ago, and certainly not seven years ago, right? Like this is brick by
21:14brick. It's building an organization. And so when you, when you look at, yeah, but that seems
21:21impossible. Nothing's impossible. You can do anything you want if you, if you really set your mind to it.
21:27But the risk that I took was I was in the field and I was doing really well, you know,
21:32I was selling $150 million in real estate a year. And so my risk was leaving the field to build this
21:40company. And you look back and people would say, well, it worked out. Yeah. But if it didn't,
21:47all of a sudden, my entire book of business that I've worked for 20 years, if I've been absent for two,
21:53three years, you know, they stopped calling cause you're not servicing anymore. Right. And so that
21:59risk of leaving the field to really focus on building this company was a real risk. But I
22:04believed in the model so much that we are getting to a, and this is years ago, but we're getting to a
22:12place that the real estate community needs to be servicing, servicing organizations that have the
22:21consumer from the very beginning. So whether that's in search or whether that's in lending or whether
22:27that's in reload, consumers are finding ways to speak to these segments of business before they're
22:34coming to the real estate professional. And it didn't use to be the case. It used to be the case.
22:40Like when I got started in 2002, the real estate agent connected all the dots. You were first,
22:46you recommended a lender. They had to use your MLS listings, right? And a lot of that stuff was
22:53still on paper. And so that's all changed. And, and, and what I saw was I want to partner with people
23:01that have the channel of business. Not only how do I do that, but how do I do it better than anybody
23:08else? And then how do I recruit around that to get great agents to buy into? I'm going to help you
23:15grow your business through the relationships that I have. And then it's, how do you scale that?
23:20And so it's been a long road. This isn't something that's just happened overnight. In fact,
23:25being a great partner of ours, Housing Wire, and doing a lot of the reporting that you guys do in
23:31terms of teams and numbers, you can see year over year, over year, over year, over year. It's just
23:37consistent focused growth year over year, 15%, 18%, 15, 22. And that's just effort. That's effort of
23:48believing in the model and building a company, you know, but there's risk with that, you know, like
23:54you, people don't look at when you're an entrepreneur and you're making tough decisions,
24:00you really got to believe and be convinced that you got something. If you're going to,
24:05if you're going to dedicate your life to it, and we believed in our model that much.
24:10Jason, looking to the future, what's the boldest goal you're aiming for, for JMG?
24:15The boldest goal. Well, it's, it's not going to happen next year. It's going to continue
24:20to snowball, but the boldest goal is I want to have servicing in every major metro market and every
24:28mid-level MSA market in the country. I want to be able to provide our partners with the best agent
24:35experience that they can ask for, for their customers and continue to raise the standard of
24:43who's best in class to service. And, um, and that means that we need great agents all across this
24:50country that understand who we are, what we do, and that it's about others rather than about ourselves
24:59that we need to be best in class and servicing consumers. And so it's expanding the coverage
25:04and working with every major partnership out there that we can help support their business,
25:10um, and drive the outcomes that they're looking for on a national level.
25:15And so it's just, I don't look at anything except we're just going to get better and we're going to
25:21grow and it's going to continue to be brick by brick until we look back and say, we have 85% of the
25:29country covered to where we can service you as an organization. Jason, I look forward to watching
25:34you achieve your goals. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining me. It's always great to have the
25:39pleasure to talk to you.
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