I recently went one-on-one with Matt Lavinder, founder and President of New Again Houses.
Adam: Thanks again for taking the time to share your advice. First things first, though, I am sure readers would love to learn more about you. How did you get here? What experiences, failures, setbacks, or challenges have been most instrumental to your growth?
Matt: Well, the first act of my career was in higher education – I taught Western Civilization at King University and also coached the collegiate soccer team there. At some point, I realized I wanted to build my own business. Growing up, I watched how hard my own parents struggled to maintain profitability as small business owners and didn’t want to go down that road myself. I wanted to challenge myself at a higher level. Both real estate development and franchising have allowed me to use the leadership and teaching skills I developed early in my career for something more challenging.
Adam: How did you come up with your business idea? What advice do you have for others on how to come up with great ideas?
Matt: Initially, I became interested in real estate after my wife and I flipped a couple of rental homes, and I got the bug – it was my first encounter with generating wealth from other people’s capital. While I never had an emotional connection to real estate development and virtually no construction skills of my own, I became sort of fixated on creating a scalable business model for flipping houses. I wasn’t necessarily passionate about the houses, but I was passionate about building a business around adding value to properties. I think the product matters and real estate can be a low-volume, high-margin business that allows a unique quality of life. It’s also possible to leverage outside capital, which was important since I had spent the early years of my career in education.
Adam: How did you know your business idea was worth pursuing? What advice do you have on how to best test a business idea?
Matt: I’m attracted to big problems that can be solved with small teams and great systems. My leadership style is much more effective with smaller teams than large organizations. Here in the U.S., we have a big housing problem to solve. We haven’t built enough middle-class housing or single-family starter homes in the past 50 years because the unit economics just don’t work for constructing new entry-level single-family homes. So now, there’s plenty of deferred maintenance issues on what little blue-collar housing is available, and a shortage of skilled labor and available capital to address the problem. What does the fix-and-flip industry look like? It’s mostly mom and pop contractors operating in a highly fragmented marketplace with no discernible industry leader. Real estate and residential rehab are intensely local, so the mom and pops have an advantage over large centralized entities. But the institutional entities are capable of creating competitive advantages with scale. Franchising allows us to create competitive advantages in lead generation, analysis, capital access, and construction while empowering local franchisees to leverage those competitive advantages. We spent five years scaling our local operation and proving the concept with our systems. We then developed the franchise business model in 2015 and launched our first five franchise locations in 2019.
Adam: What are the key steps you have taken to grow your business? What advice do you have for others on how to take their businesses to the next level?
Matt: As I’m sure you’re aware, the franchising business is vast and competitive, with about 4,000 or so different business concepts to choose from. Only a very small percentage of them will ever surpass 10 units, so you know what you’re up against. One of the most difficult parts of franchising is making the competitive advantages accessible and usable to franchisees. For New Again Houses, the key has been the training and support we provided to the new franchisees who helped our brand proliferate throughout the country. Simply put, we provide a business in a box and teach them how to be successful – all they have to do is follow the proven model and rely on our advice and help. My best advice for others on how to take a business to the next level is to build a culture and ecosystem around core values and offer real ownership and buy-in. Surround yourself with talented people, set them up for success, and allow them to earn and own their success – that’s the definition of a win-win proposition.
Adam: What are your best sales and marketing tips?
Matt: To enjoy success in marketing and sales you really have to identify your company’s value proposition and key differentiators. We can take a candidate with no prior real estate or construction experience and show them how our franchise system sets them up for success. In today’s world of short attention spans, the difficult part is telling that story in a few seconds. It’s not easy, which is why I believe effective storytelling is one of the most important jobs of a leader and not just in marketing. Ultimately, we are inviting strangers to be a part of the story we’re telling. That involves truly understanding our story and then communicating at the right time, with the right person, and the right way. Skilled storytellers understand how to do that effectively.
Adam: In your experience, what are the defining qualities of an effective leader? How can leaders and aspiring leaders take their leadership skills to the next level?
Matt: Leadership is ultimately about getting others to buy into an idea. I’m really interested in how leaders do that in such different ways. The great leaders find a style that is consistent with their own authentic self. I think it’s nearly impossible to copy someone else’s leadership style because we’re all unique. Sure, we can learn from others, but the great leaders are authentic and consistent. How do you do that? I think it begins with better understanding our own selves and that is a lifelong pursuit. I’ve found the leadership styles of strong leaders evolve as they continue to better understand themselves.
Adam: What is your best advice on building, leading, and managing teams?
Matt: I think encouraging innovation at every level of your organization is important – it can’t just be a top-down endeavor. My best advice is one you hear often – surround yourself with capable and talented people and give them the ownership they need to perform and their maximum levels of productivity. Leaders need to be vulnerable enough to delegate whenever they’re building, leading, and managing teams. If you want your teams to assume ownership of your shared success together, you have to give them certain responsibilities that reinforce the reality that they have skin in the game too.
Adam: What are your three best tips applicable to entrepreneurs, executives, and civic leaders?
Matt: My three best tips that would apply to entrepreneurs, executives, and civic leaders? I’ll go with:
- Embrace your own journey of self-discovery and self-awareness, and never stop trying to figure out who you are and what you do best. If you can’t easily define your own passions and motivations, you’ll have a hard time figuring that out in others
- Do whatever is necessary to build an ecosystem of high-quality partners, all of whom are squarely focused on long-term, win-win relationships
- Finding, achieving, and maintaining success can be a long and winding road, but keep your foot on the gas and keep believing in yourself and your own abilities. Expect setbacks, failures, challenges, and obstacles. That’s how you learn and it’s also what makes the journey more interesting
Adam: What is the single best piece of advice you have ever received?
Matt: Mine wasn’t advice per se, but rather a quote attributed to Hannibal when faced with the daunting task of crossing the Alps. “Find a way or make one.” I believe it reinforces the notion that our biggest opportunities come from solving our hardest problems. In almost every instance, that requires an innovative approach to problem-solving, which happens to bring me the most joy and satisfaction.
Adam: Is there anything else you would like to share?
Matt: I’m very appreciative of the opportunity to participate in this interview. Your reputation as an authority on executive leadership and achieving success precedes you, and I’m honored to have had the opportunity to share a few of my insights with you and see them published on your site.
