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Guest Bio: Jason Farris is the founder of FresYes, a Fresno, California media brand built around storytelling about local people, food, and lifestyle rather than traditional real estate marketing. He leads FresYes Realty Group with roughly 80 agents under eXp, and serves as the 2026 president of the Fresno Association of Realtors. He also recently acquired the domain Fresno.com, which he is building into a community-wide directory and media platform.

Episode Summary: Jason Farris explains how he turned a quirky domain name into an 80,000-subscriber newsletter and a real estate business built on community storytelling rather than listings. He walks through the origin of FresYes, the lessons learned from Facebook and Twitter experiments, a jaw-dropping broker's open that used actors and horses to sell a stuck 20-acre property, and why he restructured his brokerage to put more money in his agents' pockets. He closes with blunt advice for agents who want to grow fast: find the inefficient, unscalable actions everyone else avoids.

What's Covered:

• How Jason went from running a youth entertainment rental company to land sales with his uncle to founding the hyperlocal brand FresYes.com, named after his old company's YES logo
• Why the FresYes newsletter hit over 80,000 subscribers with an 83 percent open rate, and the personal unsubscribe outreach and door-hanger campaign that built the list from scratch
• The story of staging a 20-acre horse property open house with hired actors, catering, and classic cars that sold the home the next day and led to 50 additional condo sales for the same client
• Why Jason broke up his traditional brokerage of 80 agents and moved everyone to Real Broker, giving agents large raises by cutting commission splits from 65 to 70 thousand dollars down to 12 to 15 thousand
• The strategic purchase of Fresno.com to build a community-wide directory and real estate search platform now launching, separate from the FresYes brand
• How Jason uses AI for offer analysis tools, digital staging, and calendar management while insisting the newsletter's opening and closing paragraphs stay 100 percent in his own voice
• His closing advice that real value lives in the inefficiencies, illustrated by an expired-listing experiment comparing letters, phone calls, and door knocks

Timestamps:

00:00:54 - Guest introduction and episode roadmap

01:27 - Jason's path from youth entertainment business to real estate

04:10 - Origin of the FresYes name and brand

07:17 - Building an 80,000-subscriber newsletter from door hangers

11:08 - Lesson learned losing subscribers to Facebook

20:00 - The 20-acre property broker's open with hired actors and horses

27:16 - Restructuring the brokerage and moving agents to Real Broker

37:01 - Buying Fresno.com and plans for the new platform

43:06 - How Jason uses AI tools while keeping his voice in the newsletter

45:20 - Tactical advice on doubling your business through in-person effort