Speaker 1: 0:31

So my name is Jay Caputo. I am a residential real estate expert. I have a brokerage boutique brokerage called Brushstroke Properties, and we specialize in trying to help people craft their dream Like. The idea for us is that every client, every transaction starts out as a blank canvas. It's up to us to make it a work of art, and so we really try hard. We dive deep with our clients behind the scenes in order to understand their motivation, and we found that that helps us be successful in crafting a great experience for our clients. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:13

I love it. Now I did some deep diving on you and I saw that you used to be a chef. Before we get into your current career status, I'd like to know a little bit of a backstory about yourself and what? What made you want to transition from being a chef to now real?

Speaker 1: 1:31

estate. So it's true, most people are much more interested in my life as a chef.

Speaker 1: 1:40

It was definitely a lot more chaotic and dramatic. And so, yeah, I went to college. For a bit I was floundering, not really understanding what my true passion was going to be. I was an English major and a philosophy minor, which kind of meant I was going to be. I was an English major and a philosophy minor, which kind of meant I was going to be a professor or a vagabond or something like that. And so, long story short, I dropped out and went to culinary school. I was working in a restaurant. It was awesome, exciting. This was a long time ago by the way.

Speaker 1: 2:15

So they offered me the whopping sum of $20,000 a year to become a full-time employee uh, 50 hours a week, um and I was like, well crap, that's a, that's amazing. So, um, I took it and then I realized, you know, if I really want to make a career out of it, I should go to school. So I went to Culinary Institute of America in New York and then I moved all over the country. I worked at very high-end restaurants in San Francisco, Boston, philadelphia, and then I started opening restaurants in Rehoboth Beach. I lived there for a while.

Speaker 1: 2:51

I'm from Delaware, so I lived in in Rehoboth Beach for a while. We moved to the DC area in 2017. Um and I was still in the restaurant business, but over the course of time, I had um got engaged to my now wife and we had a young boy, um, who is now almost 10. And so I tell the story that I was the worst dad when I was a chef, because I was gone all the time, like I would wake up in the morning, play with my son, hang out, drop him off at daycare, go to work, and then I would see him tomorrow morning because I got home and he was asleep. And so I decided I liked my family more than I liked my job. That's fair.

Speaker 1: 3:40

That's very fair. So I retired and I needed a career that had a very low bar of entry, because I was not going back to college At that point. I was, you know, in my mid 40s, and so real estate has a very low bar of entry.

Speaker 2: 3:58

I've heard.

Speaker 1: 3:59

Um, quite possibly too low, uh oh. And so, um, I got my real estate license and then I was like, oh crap, like I got to figure out how to do this, because they don't give you a paycheck unless you sell houses, right? So, um, I would say I was a slow starter. First few months were pretty quiet and then I figured it out and the rest is kind of history. And that was about six years ago, wow.

Speaker 2: 4:24

Okay, and you said it was very dramatic. I'm just picturing, like Gordon Ramsay, like are you an idiot sandwich?

Speaker 1: 4:29

Yeah, so not quite that dramatic. That's certainly made for TV, but the real life. You know, when I got in the restaurant business there was no food TV or that was like brand new, and so nobody cared who their chef was. And so as food TV came out and becoming a chef or being a chef got more popular, the chef had to kind of evolve. You had to have a personality, you had to be, you know, in the dining room with your clients sometimes, and it definitely changed over time.

Speaker 1: 5:08

Back in the 90s there was a lot of screaming and yelling and you know wooden spoon throwing and stuff like that. As time has gone by there's a lot less of that. You know work environments and such. You know HR has problems with that. So you know it has evolved. However, it's still a very high-paced, high-stress environment, depending on the restaurant you're in and also when you reach a certain level. You get to travel a lot and do events all over the country. You're doing charity events in Colorado and San Francisco and you know, and all over the country. So it's exciting and dramatic and chaotic and it's late nights and lots of beverages and all of that. So I found that that lifestyle was not conducive to being a good father.

Speaker 2: 5:52

Yeah, makes sense. No at least you got that all out of your system.

Speaker 1: 5:55

That's right. I lived a lot of life before I did it.

Speaker 2: 5:59

And now can you share the journey of founding Brushstroke Properties and your partnership with Side yeah? What motivated you to start your own brokerage and how has this venture aligned with your goals of providing exceptional client and agent experiences?

Speaker 1: 6:14

Yeah. So I got in the business, I had very little sense of what it was going to take. To be honest with you, I knew that I had a work ethic from being a chef for 24 years before I knew my work ethic would take me to, or could take me to, certain levels, but I had no kind of knowledge about the business. I bought and sold houses, but like that's a fraction of this business. And so, um, you know, I I got in. I I kind of like wandered a little bit and then, um, I got into a great position where I started to work smarter, not harder.

Speaker 1: 6:58

I wanted to elevate my price point. I wanted to elevate my customer service experience. I wanted to kind of marry my creativity with the technical side of real estate. We talk about it being art and science. The art part is the brushstrokes, like how do we make the craft, this experience, to be amazing for our clients? The science part is the data and the numbers, and how do we get our client what they want financially or what they can pallet financially? And so we try and marry that really well. So over the years I got more strategic with the way I was working. I got more intentional about the efforts I was taking, and so I worked at a few different brokerages. I feel like I grabbed some of the best things that I thought each place had to offer, kind of brought it under our umbrella. And when the opportunity to partner with Side Side is a white label, they operate behind the scenes, they handle the brokerage operations, and so the agent doesn't have to worry about being a broker and dealing with insurance All the things.

Speaker 1: 8:13

All the things that prevent an agent from opening a brokerage or are obstacles to an agent opening a brokerage, and so they handle all of that stuff. So they find motivated agents who are capable and who do a decent amount of business and partner with them. So they handle the brokerage side. I handle the actual client-facing stuff and it's really amazing partnership they have. I wouldn't say they have no say in what we do because it's partnership, but they don't micromanage or anything like that. They kind of let you go out and be who you are and thrive in the environment that you create.

Speaker 2: 8:56

That's good. Happy balance there.

Speaker 1: 8:58

Yeah, for sure, it's amazing.

Speaker 2: 9:00

Wonderful. And then your philosophy emphasizes helping clients achieve their desires, which led to remarkable results in your real estate career. How do you implement this client-centric approach in your daily operations, and can you provide examples of how it has benefited your clients?

Speaker 1: 9:17

Yeah for sure. So, like I said earlier, we try really hard to dive deep with our clients, right Like at the core of it. People are moving, right, they're buying, they're selling, they might be investing so not moving but ultimately we're trying to understand the underlying reasons that are causing them to move, whether it's they've had another kid and they need more space, or maybe their kids have grown or gone and they need to downsize. Or maybe somebody's renting yeah, exactly the reasons for moving are all the same. Maybe somebody's ran to yeah, exactly the reasons for moving are all the same. And so it's important for me, I feel, to understand what that underlying motivation is.

Speaker 1: 10:05

Because moving sucks. Yes, anybody who's ever moved one time knows it sucks If you have to move multiple times, like it just sucks, right and so, and eventually, as you get older, it's kind of funny because when you're moving, when you're young, you're like hey guys, can I buy you a case of beer and you come help me pack everything up and move it to the next place. And once you get older, your friends don't want to help you move. Right, I don't want to, I don't need a beer. That bad.

Speaker 1: 10:34

So, true, buy my own beard and stay at home. And so we've found that it gets more complicated as you get older, and so we want to take as many obstacles out of the way for our clients and also for our agents. But we want to remove as many obstacles as possible. But we want to remove as many obstacles as possible and we want to understand why they're moving, how this move will will positively benefit them, and then we you know, I talk about this a lot like I feel like, um, making deals happen for our clients and getting clients.

Speaker 1: 11:11

It's kind of like looking at a tetris board right, it's all these four different pieces and you can spin them around, and when you put them in the right place, it's a beautiful experience. But if you don't put them in the right place, it's just like you're jamming a square peg through a round hole, and so, again, it's all these underlying philosophies. It's kind of like the brushstroke. Like the brushstroke Like, if we do this correctly, that painting at the end of your you know journey of buying or selling a home is going to feel like effortless and amazing. And you know, if we don't, you know how do we handle those hiccups and what you know stuff like that. So we try really hard to focus on the client, not have not. It's kind of like an iceberg you don't want them to see all the stuff that goes on behind the scenes.

Speaker 2: 12:00

It's seamless for them when they do it right.

Speaker 1: 12:02

That's correct.

Speaker 2: 12:02

That's correct I love all these analogies. You've said the iceberg, the Tetris, the brushstroke.

Speaker 1: 12:07

Well, I mean, it becomes visceral for people, like if I say it it's kind of this thing, this thing that's out there. But if I give you an example, it it's kind of this thing, no, it's great, it's out there. But if I give you an example like, you can visualize it and understand and that's how we live and work and I really believe this is how actually I was able to connect being a chef and being a real estate agent right. So when I was a chef, it was very high end restaurants, like we were cooking really fancy food.

Speaker 1: 12:33

We would customize menus for our guests and so people would come to my restaurant. You know, we had a menu that they could choose from, but if they wanted a special occasion or a tasting menu and do six or nine courses that were crafted by the chef, we would do that and we would craft an experience for that customer or guest. We called them guests because we wanted them to feel like they were guests in our home, absolutely, or guests. We call them guests because we want them to feel like they were guests in our home, Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 12:57

And so once I started realizing that, in the beginning I was like we've got to sell houses, like that's the result of the work we do throughout the journey with our client, Like I had to understand that I wasn't like get client sell house. It was like get client understand that person, connect with them, really try hard to help them achieve their goals and at the end of it, somebody buys or sells a house and there's a transaction and everybody gets paid, and so, once my mind flipped, I was able to become successful.

Speaker 1: 13:38

In the beginning, I was a chef trying to sell homes, and now I'm a guy who's trying to help people achieve their goals.

Speaker 2: 13:44

I love that. That's a wonderful way to put things. I guess I think your journey has been quite interesting and I like that you can find parallels between being a chef and being somebody who helps people buy, sell homes, become an investor or invest in their home.

Speaker 1: 14:00

you know, I mean it was truly imperative that I figured it out. Because imperative that I figured it out? Because you know you don't want to be a used car salesperson, right? That's the, that's the, the analogy. Like that's, people can understand what that is.

Speaker 1: 14:18

And so there's a lot of real estate agents I feel like that haven't had that switch flipped. And so they, in the business we call commission, breath, like you can hear somebody when they're chasing a commission, um, and, and we can't have that, like you, just when somebody is buying or selling a house, they can't feel that from you. You know that's the result of doing a great job, you know. And so I I really had to figure out what the parallels were between the two careers. You know why would people choose me to be their real estate agent? Well, I have all these tools from the restaurant business. I'm a multitasker, I'm a hard worker, I have customer service at my core. You know, I have all of these things inside me. I had to figure out how to apply that to real estate and once I figured it out, it was, you know, glorious.

Speaker 2: 15:13

Wonderful, I love it. So let's talk market insights and strategies. With your extensive experience in the Virginia, maryland and Washington DC markets, what trends have you observed in recent years and how do you adapt your strategies to stay ahead in such a dynamic industry?

Speaker 1: 15:30

Yeah, great question. So I feel like every year I've been in the business has been a whole market to itself. So, like 2019 was really good and you know I was busy, I was still trying to figure it out. 2020, obviously was COVID and that was just chaos. Everybody had to shift. I got really good at open houses in 2019. And all of a sudden, you couldn't leave your house, so open houses were gone. So I had to figure out how to adapt my business, which we did, and then 21 was still an extension of 20. 22 rates started to climb. You know it was like people were like, oh crap, like now it's 7% rates and then we've been there for the last few years, so there's been a lot of learning on the fly.

Speaker 1: 16:25

I really believe in myself. I know that. You know we have the, we have all the data right, so we have all the tools to help us understand the market, the trends, things like that. It's just we have to make sure we're using that stuff to inform our clients and really it's hard to.

Speaker 1: 16:48

I know we live in the DMV and it's DC, Maryland, virginia, right, but the markets are so vastly different in each space and then in each space, the individual markets are vastly different from area to area. So like Leesburg is very different from Arlington than Centerville, and then DC, like Northwest, is very different from Arlington than Centerville, and then DC like Northwest is very different than Southeast right. And then in Maryland, maryland is just like the wild west, like every county basically has different forms and so really understanding county to county, you can't really it's very hard to be an expert in all of that stuff. So we utilize our partners to help us understand.

Speaker 1: 17:30

If we have a client in a certain area and I'm not the expert in that area, we'll refer that to an agent who is the expert in the area that's nice who kind of believes the same kinds of things that we do. And so we know that when we pass that client off to a referral partner or something like that, they're going to get there. The partner is an extension of breaststroke properties and so it has been learning on the fly. It's been a little chaotic, I kind of like that. I've been used to it for a long time, yeah you were a chef too.

Speaker 1: 18:03

Exactly, I used to get hit with wooden spoons. Oh no, I'm glad those days are over for you, ben Same.

Speaker 2: 18:09

Now your portfolio includes new builds, residential properties and investment real estate. How do you balance these diverse areas of expertise and what unique challenges and opportunities does each present?

Speaker 1: 18:21

Great question. Investors are about finding out what's important to the investor and where their sweet spot is. It's also helping educate them along the way of you know what can they expect from this each individual investment property? Because they're all very different and even though the investor has certain goals, obviously they want to buy real estate and have it cashflow but every unit, every property is different, and so helping them understand what they're going to get from each one is great.

Speaker 1: 18:59

Residential real estate is more about connecting with that client, finding that motivation, helping them move on to the next phase in life, which we love. The new construction is. You know, personally, I'm finding that's where I love spending a lot of time, and so what we do is we've partnered with some builders, not like full-on partnership, but loose partnerships. Where we're? They give us an idea of kinds of properties they're looking for to develop, and then we go behind the scenes and look for, you know, those specific things. It's a lot of like nuanced work, not really finding a client, but finding a property that fits and then trying to figure out a way to help the person that owns that property see the benefit, and working with a developer. So, whether they sell the property to the developer or they partner with the developer. Again, it's like Tetris, right, right yes finding the right fit for each thing.

Speaker 1: 20:10

But I do love and this is one of the things smarter, not harder. I love finding properties to redevelop because you know it's a teardown house. You know like typically you drive around these old brick houses right that are on a nice piece of property, have been in the same family or something for 34 years. Finding somebody like that to help move on to their next phase, getting them a really easy, low-stress offer where you don't have to prepare your house, you don't have to stage it, you don't have to go through open houses and open market. You just get a check from a developer and you move on to the next phase in your life. And so I have found that's where I'm spending a lot of my time. And then the resale stuff we work with the clients, but usually I'll bring in one of my teammates or something like that to actually handle the transactions.

Speaker 2: 21:07

Nice, love it, thank you, and then being recognized as one of my teammates, or something like that, to actually handle the transactions. Nice, love it, thank you. And then being recognized as one of Delaware Beach's most influential residents speaks to your community involvement. How do you integrate community engagement into your professional life and why do you believe it's important for real estate professionals to be active in their communities?

Speaker 1: 21:26

Great question. I think always when you have an opportunity to give back, you should, right? I'm trying really hard to set a great example for my son and so he's the most important thing to me, To the point where he's in fourth grade. We had a parent-teacher conference a few months ago and he's in fourth grade. It's awesome, but it's probably not the most important stuff he's going to be learning in his life, right? Not that it's not important I'm not downplaying the importance of education, so anyway. So he was struggling a little bit with some of his test scores and stuff like that. And so we get to a parent-teacher conference and she's telling us about the minutia of you know, fractions and this and that.

Speaker 2: 22:23

And I'm like.

Speaker 1: 22:26

I was kind of quiet, my wife was handling the meeting and so finally the teacher kind of looked at me and was like you know, how do you feel? And I was like, listen, I don't care about his ability to work out fractions in fourth grade right now, how do you find him as a person? Is he kind, is he helpful? Is he, you know, kind to his classmates and stuff like that. She was like, oh my God, this is such a revelation Like everybody wants to come in and know why their kid didn't get a 95 on the test score. You know, and personally I couldn't care less about that. You know, eventually that's going to be very, you know, important Fourth grade.

Speaker 1: 23:06

I don't care if he got a 74 in his math test, he's going to learn fractions, like it's going to happen, and so she was like he is so kind and sweet and blah, blah, blah, and I was like that's great, like that's what I care about. I care about how you make people feel, you know, and so we feel the same way about our community, like we want to give back as much as we can, whether it's little things like donating blood or, you know, doing a co-drive or volunteering for events. You know we did that when we had restaurants. We would always donate food and do charity events and stuff like that.

Speaker 1: 23:44

And now, as a real estate agent, it's a great way to connect with the community, become ingrained in the fiber. But it also is the right thing to do. And so you know, I've had a lot of ups and downs in my life and you know, here clearly we're glossing over the downs and that's fine. But learning from your mistakes understanding, like you know, I haven't always done the right thing a hundred percent of the time, but making sure I don't make those same mistakes twice that's the kind of legacy I want to pass on to my kid and that's the kind of person I want to be in our community. Wow.

Speaker 2: 24:21

That is awesome and the fact that you have your kids back and all in due time it'll come.

Speaker 1: 24:25

You're not saying he's super smart, but yeah you know, he's in fourth grade and he likes to talk about Minecraft and Fortnite and stuff like that, you know, and so I love it. No.

Speaker 2: 24:34

I, I 100% support that. I wish more parents could see that as well. It's not saying like no who cares, but all in due time 100.

Speaker 1: 24:43

Like we, we do focus on the education, but, like there's, you've got to be a well-rounded human being in life, right, you know, and certainly we want them to excel at school yeah but I also want to be really kind and and understand like there's life's not going to come at you the way you want it all the time right, and you have to be adaptable. You have to recognize that in other people too, right? Sometimes when people are buying and selling homes, it's because somebody died or they got divorced or something like that, and it's not always the most positive experience. So we have to be able to have compassion and understand you know that motivation and and be a resource for that person, not like that's the whole house.

Speaker 1: 25:27

Yes.

Speaker 2: 25:27

No, I'm glad you touched on that. Thank you for sharing that. I really do appreciate you sharing some of that personal stuff so for sure. And now is there anything that I have not touched on that perhaps you would like to share about yourself or your business, or maybe you have a client event coming up or anything new that you would like to share?

Speaker 1: 25:44

We have all kinds of stuff happening we're going to do. One thing we like to do at our group is hold junk events in neighborhoods that we work in, so like we hire a junk truck to come to the neighborhood and we park it and people can clean out their, their garage or their attic or whatever and stuff that they've been trying to get rid of for a long time. They can just throw them in a junk truck and take it away. So, um, we're doing that in mclean and oakton on the same day, april 26th. Um, you can go to our website, brushstrokepropertiescom to find the details which are escaping me right now as we're talking, no worries.

Speaker 1: 26:30

Yeah, what's your website, so that way they can just find that information? Yeah, brushstrokepropertiescom or wwwbrushstrokepropertiescom, and we're always doing like smaller events. So I do a big client event in my house every year where I cook something.

Speaker 2: 26:43

At your house.

Speaker 1: 26:43

That that's very personal people always want me to cook, right, so that's right you know I have been, I haven't been great at marrying the two worlds in terms of like how I, everybody wants me to do cooking demos or like um, like recipes and stuff like that, and so we're starting to get into the recipes. My, my house isn't, isn't big enough to do like cooking events, you know, um, but my, we have a huge yard and so we've done outside barbecue for our clients and stuff, and I'll do some stuff, cater, some other stuff, um, so that's been a lot of fun and you know, I think I think that's it Like you know nothing too exciting on the horizon?

Speaker 2: 27:30

No, that's pretty exciting the fact that you're going to be cooking and it's going to be public somewhere.

Speaker 1: 27:34

Okay, I think that's pretty exciting. Well, hey, if you, if you sign up for our mailing list, you might get an invite to the party. Alamontstudiocom is going to be signing up real soon, that's right.

Speaker 2: 27:44

All right. So now for my final question. Do you have a quote saying or a mantra that has inspired you or resonated with you in any way, and would you like to leave that as a final message for the listeners?

Speaker 1: 27:56

There's a book that has become kind of ingrained in me called Unreasonable Hospitality has become kind of ingrained in me called unreasonable hospitality. Um, and I kind of live my life like that, like how can we do something like that so unreasonable in a good way, um to someone where they're like Holy crap, like I can't believe that Jay did that, or brushwork did that with me, and so that's kind of how we're training our agents as they come in. I have a great story from when I worked in this restaurant in Boston. It was really high end, really expensive, and our customer service was so over the top it was ridiculous.

Speaker 1: 28:37

So at one point this young couple came in for anniversary, birthday, something like that, and the owner of our restaurant, christopher Myers he was this, like you know, kind of crazy, crazy hair, like really interesting, intelligent human and they came in and had asked the valets not to park the car too far away because they didn't have a ton of gas. They were kind of stretching themselves to have dinner at a restaurant and stuff like that, and so Christopher overheard this. The valets actually passed that on to the host. The host passed it to Christopher. The kids came in, sat down. We took the menus away from them, asked them if it would be okay if we cooked for them, you know, and ended up making a 17 course meal for them that was specific to them. Obviously, we asked them if there's something they wanted yeah um, and the whole night they were just like effusive.

Speaker 1: 29:35

oh my god, this is amazing. Um, meanwhile, while they're there, christopher hops in their car, drives it to the gas station, fills up their gas tank, puts a, gives them a $100 gift card, brings it back, unbeknownst to them, and so they left, and so we comped their entire meal right. So probably $500 meal, you know, $150 in gas and you know all that stuff and all of which is meaningless, right, the money is meaningless, right. What we did that night was create an experience for those kids who and this is probably 1997 or 1998. And so I guarantee those people are still talking about it to this day, you know. And so it left such an impression on us as employees on how we could really go over the top for someone in craft and experience, and that's what we're trying to do at Breaststroke Properties for our clients. It's not always not every person who comes to work with us wants creative experience. Some people just want to buy a house, you know, but when they want it, we're here to give it, and that's that's kind of what we do.

Speaker 2: 30:48

That's incredible. No, I'm sure they'll never forget Cause like when does that ever happen to anybody, right?

Speaker 1: 30:53

I mean it was amazing and listen, the 600 bucks or whatever it was probably came back to us tenfold in terms of those people going and telling their friends about our restaurant and having them come in. And so same thing like in real estate. Like I want referrals from our clients, I want to make raving fans out of every person I work with so they'll go tell 50 other people. You know I'm not chasing every nickel with each deal. I'm chasing the relationship with these people who will go out and tell all of their friends. And so that's what Brushwork Properties is all about.

Speaker 2: 31:32

I love it. That's very inspiring. Thank you for sharing that story.

Speaker 1: 31:34

That's incredible.

Speaker 2: 31:35

I love it and I love the mindset of not chasing nickels and dimes and dollars. It's all about making those connections and letting people know like, hey, we offer great services here. Bring your family and friends here so they can also get a piece of that pie.

Speaker 1: 31:47

We want to share it. You're stepping over hundreds to pick up nickels, right, yeah. And so not that we're chasing the dollar, but there's a stat in real estate one transaction, whatever your price point let's say one transaction is worth $10,000, right. But if you create a lifetime client, a lifetime fan, that person could be worth up to $115,000 by creating a relationship and getting referrals and helping them move to their next house 10 years from now, stuff like that. And so you know, we believe that if we do the right thing for our clients, you know it might not work out the best way financially today, but over the course of time it's going to, you know, exponentially grow, and it's the result of crafting that experience 100%.

Speaker 2: 32:39

Well, thank you so much for being on the podcast. I really appreciate you sharing all these personal stories, experiences. I think that's amazing and I like what you're doing. I think it's incredible and I wish you all the best to starting your own new studio and podcast. Hopefully other people can hear it and they can maybe be guests or whatnot?

Speaker 1: 32:58

Stay tuned, yes, maybe we'll have you.

Speaker 2: 33:00

That would be great, that would be awesome. We would love that.

Speaker 1: 33:03

We got to dive deep with you.

Speaker 2: 33:05

Oh, I'm scared. Now I do all the talking but on the other side.

Speaker 1: 33:10

Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me, I appreciate it yeah.