Look Ma, I'm on TV!

In this episode, we sit down with Benmont Locker of RAMP REI, a seasoned real estate investor and entrepreneur who helped build a company doing 500+ deals per year. Instead of focusing on tactics or trends, the conversation centers on the core fundamentals that drive long-term success in real estate businesses.

Benmont breaks down how systems, processes, metrics, and culture allowed his team to scale effectively, create accountability, and turn their operation into a true business asset rather than a demanding job. He also shares how these same principles now guide his work at RAMP REI, where he helps investors avoid common growth mistakes and build scalable, sustainable companies.

This episode is a practical masterclass for anyone who wants to grow a real estate business that lasts and performs at a high level.

About Benmont Locker

Benmont Locker is a seasoned real estate investor and entrepreneur, best known as a leader at RAMP REI, a consultancy, community, and training organization dedicated to helping investors build scalable, sustainable real estate businesses.

Alongside his partners, Benmont helped build a real estate company completing 500+ deals per year, growing it into a high-performing organization built on strong fundamentals. His experience goes far beyond transactions. Benmont specializes in what actually makes a business work long term: systems, processes, metrics, and culture. He has a deep understanding of how to scale operations properly, create accountability across teams, and turn a real estate business into a true asset, not just a job.

Through RAMP REI, Benmont now helps other real estate investors follow the same proven blueprint. His focus is on building the right metrics, implementing repeatable systems and processes, establishing a strong company culture, and avoiding the common mistakes that hold businesses back as they grow.

Benmont brings enormous real-world experience, sharp insight, and a genuine passion for helping entrepreneurs succeed. He is known not only for what he’s built, but for his generosity in teaching others how to build it the right way.

Important Links

Watch & Listen

The Difference Between Running Deals and Building a Real Business ft. Benmont Locker

I can tell you one thing: technology is the single most important aspect of every business that has successfully scaled.

It’s time for That Real Estate Tech Guy. It’s your weekly chance to explore how technology can help your real estate business explode. Each week, you’ll hear from real estate investors who have been there and done that, and learn their favorite technology tips.

Listen in as Jordan speaks with tech companies and learns about new technologies and new ideas that will help you scale your business. And now, join your host, Jordan Samuel Fleming, CEO of SmrtPhone, for this week’s episode.

Hello! Welcome to this week’s episode of That Real Estate Tech Guy. I’m your host, Jordan Samuel Fleming, chairman of SmrtPhone. And this week’s episode is a cracker. I always say that, but it’s true. I have great people on, and this week is no different.

We’ve got Benmont Locker from RAMP REI. He’s also an incredibly experienced real estate investor in his own right.

Benmont and his colleagues built a company doing 500+ deals a year. They built an amazing organization, and what I love about this conversation is that it’s not as much about technology directly. It’s indirectly about technology, but more importantly, it’s about entrepreneurship and how to build businesses.

Benmont gives a real masterclass on fundamentals: how they built their initial business, scaled it properly, built systems and processes, created a culture of accountability, and used metrics to grow. If you want a real estate business that becomes an asset in itself, you need to get these fundamentals right.

Benmont really nails it in this conversation. We dive into a number of topics, and then transition into the work they’re doing with their consultancy, community, and training organization, RAMP REI, where he helps real estate investors build their businesses the same way they built theirs.

That means building metrics, systems, processes, and the fundamentals, getting culture in place, and avoiding common mistakes. Benmont has enormous experience and insight, and he’s incredibly generous with his time. I can tell that from personal experience.

You’re going to really enjoy this conversation. So, let’s get right into it, live with Benmont Locker from RAMP REI.

Thanks for joining us today. For those who don’t know you, give us a little background on you and the different companies you’re involved in.

Cool. Appreciate you having me, Jordan. Always a pleasure. We’ve been chopping it up recently about 80 different topics, and it’s cool to now have some time to dig in deep.

So what does anybody care about Ben? Weird name. I grew up in central Pennsylvania. I’ve always been part of startups, and I’m a nerd, so operational startups are my vibe.

I stumbled into real estate maybe seven or eight years ago when I got convinced to buy a fourplex in a college town with my brother for cash, and we were going to renovate it ourselves. What could go wrong, right? But we’ll save that for another day.

My professional career in real estate started about six or seven years ago. I joined a phenomenal organization and came in with my operational background to deploy that skill set alongside a phenomenal sales organization in an effort to scale the business.

Our goal was to build a bigger, more stable organization that served a greater area and helped more sellers. We were able to do that in multiple markets and copy, paste, and repeat it into an organization of about 50 people and a couple hundred deals a year.

Then I migrated more into the consulting and education space to share some of that journey. We stay very relevant and still do a lot of deals today, and we try to share best practices with our community to prevent others from wasting brain space on problems we already went through over seven years of building things well.

And I think you started with a really important part: scale. Any idiot can start a business. That’s not hard. But scaling one is hard. Scaling is where the real skill is.

When you can scale a business to a certain level and have it function, where you’re serving 50 or 60-plus people, that level of scale is one of the hardest things you can do. Once you get to hundreds of people, I’m guessing at some point it becomes its own thing. But that scaling phase, where you’re really trying to build something, that’s where the magic is, and that’s where fundamentals come into play.

So if we can dive into your experience of scaling up: you had an operational mindset and background. What are some key things you brought to the table from an operations and process point of view that are hugely important when scaling to that level?

Yeah, great question. The key components that stand out to me are: a visionary or CEO who gets to that point obviously has a valuable skill set. They’re generally good with people, momentum, velocity, and can make money and drive things forward. That’s an important piece of the equation.

But it’s only a piece. And sometimes the only thing standing in the way is ego, in the most kind way.

To preserve running an organization like that for the long term, there’s a leadership transformation that has to occur. There’s no way to brute force and rely solely on intuition to build a bigger organization.

Scale is a buzzword I generally hate because it’s unclear. Maybe you “scaled” to two people and have the best lifestyle business ever. Or maybe you scaled to enterprise level with a million people involved. But being clear on what you want your journey to look like is key.

Then it’s about switching from intuition and small-business velocity. Not suppressing that, but converting it into operations. How do you take the wisdom and intuition from someone who got you where you are and create it on a repeatable platform?

That’s exactly what we had to do. We had to take a guy’s brain and 20 years of experience and systematize it through data, integrity, decision-making continuums, processes, and technology. We got as close as we could to that person’s instincts, but in a proportional way where we could do more of it.

Otherwise, we were always stuck being a person instead of a machine.

Absolutely. You see a lot of people plateau. They can’t get past a million a year, or can’t get past five deals a month. They hit a level and everything breaks when they try to grow. Then they fall back.

To me, technology, processes, and operations are the key to breaking through that. So when you look at technology, what were some key parts of that journey as you pushed up to that level?

It started with an enterprise-level CRM. There’s nothing wrong with Google Sheets, and there’s a season for that. But having everything at your fingertips to objectively get data is imperative.

Data tells a story. Sometimes it can manipulate or tell the wrong story, but having every variable, metric, and attribute you want to at least have conversations about matters.

For us, that meant consolidating a lot of different platforms into one. In our case, we went down the Salesforce path and pushed everything into it: project management, finance, marketing, everything. We got everybody into one cohesive platform.

That shortened feedback loops, improved data integrity, and reduced a bunch of duplicated subscriptions and operational drag by consolidating it into one place. Then we all spoke the same language. We had this system you couldn’t ignore.

So when I had a rambunctious CEO saying, “Now we’re going to do this and this and this,” I could say, “You’re working really hard on where we made 2% of our revenue last year.” It changed the trajectory of our conversations. Decisions became data-driven.

Ultimately, we learned to take that data and combine it with the enthusiasm of whoever is leading, and apply it to areas where you can do more of what’s working.

Because sometimes you get to a million bucks in revenue and that’s amazing, but you probably did it the hardest way possible. People sometimes believe they need to do things the hardest way, but that’s not the case.

The best thing is to take all the things that worked and were good, and write them down. Systems, processes, documentation of the things where we made a lot of money that were also easy and enjoyable. Then go do more of those. That’s scaling to me.

That’s a really good point. And it brings up two things.

First, regardless of how big you scale, you build your business for reasons that usually have nothing to do with money. Sometimes it’s money, and that’s fine, but most people who employ a lot of people have something deeper driving them.

So the challenge is keeping the core essence of who you are and what you want as an organization, while also scaling it.

Second, leadership can get in the way. Sometimes the top people become the bottleneck. They hit a point where they either have to shift their mentality, or you have to shift the person.

Yeah, 100%. And the inverse can happen too. If you suppress that person too much, they’re the heart of the organization. Then you end up with a skeleton, where the life gets sucked out of it. You see that in M&A all the time.

There’s a balance. But it’s hard to make informed decisions outside of a very small organization where you can see and feel everything. At higher volume, the data becomes your eyes, and that becomes the tipping point for growth.

You mentioned going deep into Salesforce. What were the visibility points you didn’t have before? Why was having everything in one place so critical as you grew?

Two key components.

First, personally, I’m a relationship-friendly guy with high expectations. Accountability is a challenge for me if I don’t have data. Without data, I might preserve the relationship and let things slide.

But if I have the data, I can still be friendly, and also have challenging conversations. Not yelling or cursing, but saying, “We already agreed we needed to do the job, and here’s what’s actually happening.”

That created autonomy for me to lead better. We led to the metrics, which were simply the commitments we already made and the required results to get to profit. There were no surprises. Hard conversations and attrition became manageable.

Second, it helped us replicate faster what we were doing well. When we scaled, we incurred cost, like pulling back a rubber band. More infrastructure, more people. The data helped us see where to apply effort so we could do more of what worked.

So it helped me lead the team better, and lead strategy better.

That’s a great point about leading with metrics. When you’re small and everyone’s friends, you let people slide. When you don’t have metrics while scaling, people can hide.

True visibility strips emotion away, not in a cold way, but in a realistic way. If we’re going to fix a problem or understand where to go, we have an obligation to look at the truth.

Now, metrics can be a double-edged sword. People can obsess over too much data and miss the few things that actually matter. What’s your approach to avoiding data overload and staying focused?

Same belief system. Our rule was: never measure anything you’re not going to do something about. If you measure it, it has to be hyper-accurate. If it was new to us, our CEO was great at poking holes and asking, “What’s the point of doing any of this if it’s not 100% accurate?”

At first it was annoying because we’d be at 90% and improving, but he was right. If you’re going to hold people accountable, it has to be accurate.

So: don’t measure it if you won’t act on it, make sure it’s accurate, and measure as little as you can.

Otherwise you get stuck in indecision where something is green, something is yellow, something is red, and you don’t know why. Then you effectively do nothing.

We boiled it down to six core metrics inside our organization. If one of the six underperformed, there were underlying metrics we’d dig into. We called them nested metrics.

We used a “double click” method. We could see the high-level view. If everything was good, great job everyone. If not, we zoomed into the department level, and then the person level.

We always wanted a decision-making continuum to isolate and take action quickly. We didn’t care about blame. We wanted to know what was broken: a person, a strategy, or a process, so we could train, fix, or adjust.

Now, I’m sorry to interrupt this amazing conversation, but I wanted to make sure you knew that SmrtPhone, the only phone system built for real estate investors, connects to best-in-class real estate investing CRMs.

And because it’s my show and I’m co-founder and chairman of SmrtPhone, I’ve got some great deals for you. Click the link and take advantage of 5,000 minutes of free calling with SmrtPhone, the only phone system built for real estate investors.

Click and call. Close more leads.

Back to the show.

That’s so important. To your point, I was CEO of SmrtPhone for eight years and now I’m chairman. At the board level, there are only four metrics I really care about on a monthly basis because they indicate whether there’s a problem in a specific area.

If everything is green and trending the right way, things are probably fine. If one is off, that’s when you dive in and ask why.

I focus on four because too many becomes a hindrance rather than a help. We’ve both seen people fixate on minutiae instead of moving forward.

Yeah, and even in small businesses, meeting cadence matters. You’re a board member, so you look at board metrics. If you show up every morning and look at board-level metrics, you’ll drive yourself nuts. You can’t turn that many dials at once.

It’s imperative to discern and educate yourself on what to measure. If you only measure net profit and you’re disappointed, take a hike upstream and find something you can actually control.

I’d rather someone have fewer metrics that are accurate and understood. That’s more beneficial for small to midsize organizations.

And beyond organizational metrics, people metrics matter too. Having tough conversations is still tough, but with clear metrics it becomes more black-and-white.

Having the right metrics for each person, and having each person understand expectations, performance, and how it’s measured goes a long way. Not just for leadership to measure them, but for the individual to know what success looks like.

Very few people wake up and rush around every day to come to your organization because they want to do a bad job. If someone got fired and it was a surprise to them, that’s poor leadership and a lack of using data to help them.

Unless it’s a core values infraction, people should go on a performance improvement plan first. If relationships end, it should almost be amicable. Like, “Hey, I let you down. Maybe it wasn’t for me. I learned a lot.”

People metrics are crucial. For us it was a huge cultural shift. Culture wasn’t pizza parties and happy hour. Culture became team bonuses, and having clarity of expectations so people held each other accountable.

We got to the point where peers held each other accountable because the team bonus mattered. That was a winning culture for us. Everyone knew who was performing and who wasn’t, so nobody could hide.

I love that. A good team holds each other accountable in a supportive way. People can have a rough month for human reasons. But strong relationships help drive improvement without being destructive.

Yeah, and that comes over time. It’s funny: we just started a new wholesaling investment company, and we’re back at the beginning. I struggle with that balance.

I have a director of operations who messaged me the other day because I missed a meeting, and then I was two minutes late for another. He said, “Second meeting you’ve missed today. Just checking in to make sure you’re okay. Can I do anything to help your day?”

My immediate response was, “Pound sand, bro.” But then I reflected. His intent was good. It was accountability. I would be annoyed if he missed two calls and I was left hanging.

So there’s grace to be given, but it’s something everyone should strive for. Culture is defined by performance. You can’t throw money at things and build a culture on hype. Ultimately, winning is what people want to be part of.

Not in a mean way, but if you build a culture that’s okay with being mediocre, that’s what you’ll attract. And you can’t fake losing money forever. Eventually someone says, “This sucks, there’s got to be a better way.”

It took us about a two-year journey to corral all of that and build a solid foundation.

That leads us into the next phase. You transitioned into consulting to help people avoid pitfalls and build these skills. Tell me about that journey and what you focus on now.

We were always big on giving back to the communities we were part of. As we went through the journey and were blessed to build a 500+ deal-a-year organization, we realized it was special, especially for central Pennsylvania. We had an unreasonable market share, a desirable place for people to work, and we helped a lot of sellers and buyers.

We served 18 counties in Pennsylvania. We were boots on the ground, in living rooms across half the state.

As we copy-pasted and repeated this in new territories, we saw it worked. We built a sales training organization because sales skills were critical to our progress. The longevity came from operationalizing sales. You didn’t want to rely on outlier entrepreneurs or reckless rainmakers.

So we leaned into CRM and metrics, then made the sales process the constant so the data became consistent in the CRM. That was the ticket to repeatability.

I personally focus on the 0 to 80% projects, and I learned not everybody is built for that pace. Inside our ecosystem, I’d do something new and people’s heads would fall off. So I detached from day-to-day, formalized the sales process, and spent about a year building it out.

We called that company RAMP. We built a training platform to scale internal operations and became a vendor to ourselves.

Then shortly after, we went to a mastermind, and unintentionally left with about 20 clients. We didn’t know we were building a forward-facing organization, but we got great feedback. We brought in friends and family, and now we have over 450 people in the community.

We serve investors internationally. Our sole goal is to build and operationalize a sales machine so whatever you pour on top, it converts. Metrics, process, culture, language, all controllable.

We share it in group formats, one-on-one, two-day onsite office visits, events. We’ve got people flying into the Tampa area tomorrow. We offer different ways to share that multi-year journey of building a sales process that converts real estate deals really well.

I’m excited to bring you into the SmrtPhone community because we’ve got 2,500+ real estate investors using us daily, and most have aspirations to scale. You offer a “cheat code” of lessons learned and the confidence to take the leap.

Now, are you set up to help people all over?

Yeah. Continental U.S. so far, some Canadian clients. And inside our community we support investors all over, and help train virtual teams in Latin America, the Philippines, Egypt, and other places where investors hire VAs.

We’ll serve anyone and everyone. Domestic for sure, and if you want to pay for travel, I’ll take a nice overseas trip too.

We’re nimble. The team loves traveling and having hands-on impact. We’re pragmatic. We’re not guru-esque. No dramatic backstory. We’re just people that use data and have a proven sales process.

Sometimes when people seek mentorship, it doesn’t come from a place that emulates what they want to do. It’s not about being me. It’s about choosing people who can guide you because there are a lot of ways to do things.

We’ve done nearly 5,000 transactions by the end of this year. We’ve lasted through cycles. If you want a big team, cool. If you want a small team, cool. Pick someone with receipts.

Integrity is critical for us. Two of our other companies have the word integrity in the name. We want to provide an authentic place for people to trust.

We share what’s currently working because we do it at high volume every day, and we’ll also tell you what lost us money so you can avoid it.

That’s a great approach to mentorship. A good mentor doesn’t make things easy or promise a Ferrari. A good mentor helps you build a lasting business that becomes an asset.

It’s not about sexy things. Fundamentals of business are the same. If you’re not watching cash flow, you’re waiting to fail.

Your approach is refreshing because it’s foundational, pragmatic, and real. In a world of fast delivery and instant everything, people think there’s an easy fix, but building a lasting business takes time and hard work. These are 20- to 30-year journeys.

And mentorship can prevent costly mistakes. That alone is a win.

Exactly. Keep it simple. There’s no secret sauce. Find a sphere of influence that is actually doing what you want to do.

And yes, all that glitters is not gold. Real estate investors chase shiny objects. Dreaming is good, but keep your feet on the ground.

If you want motivation, go watch David Goggins running in the rain. If you want to know what to do today to get deal flow tomorrow, that’s our vibe: principles, what to measure, what to work on, how to build pipeline.

It’s like sports. You don’t know Michael Phelps’ coach, but he probably wasn’t doing flashy stuff. He kept him on the rails of the most important things, and after time, results showed up.

Discipline beats motivation. Reality is the only lasting approach. Transparency and doing things the right way wins.

That reminds me of a conversation with my eldest daughter. I used to be a professional musician, and now with YouTube and Instagram, there’s sometimes a false impression that success is a trick. But it’s talent plus work. Execution requires repeatable, structured process. That’s how you build a business. I’ve never seen anything else that works.

Yeah. You can’t cheat time. Even when we spin up a new market from scratch, we’re still bound by time. It takes more work than you think, and it takes longer than you think.

But technology helps now. You can make fewer mistakes, consolidate knowledge faster, and build a respectable business in a year or two instead of a decade.

Fantastic. It’s been an absolute pleasure. Before you leave, tell everybody how they can get in touch with you and find RAMP REI.

Yeah, I’m the world’s worst salesman, and my name makes me very easy to find. Facebook or social media is a great place to reach out. If anyone has a question like, “What’s the number one thing?” or “Here’s my problem, what should I do?” I love connecting and giving back what I’ve learned.

If you have a team or want a sales community and want to level up sales skills, ramprei.com is a great place to check out what we do. We offer free trials. Join a free call. Do whatever is helpful for you.

We serve in group formats, one-on-one, onsite visits, and even partner with people and help scale businesses. Wherever you are in your journey, we’d love to get involved if our skill set can help.

We appreciate everything you guys do. We’re avid users of the SmrtPhone products every day. Technology and data matter, and you help us do that. Appreciate you having me.

Absolutely. Thanks so much for coming on. I’ll make sure to put the RAMP REI website in the show notes. And as he says, his name is unique, so he’s not hard to find on Instagram, Facebook, etc.

I can tell you from experience: no ego, super approachable, and I encourage everyone to reach out because he can add tremendous value.

Thanks, my man. Likewise. That’s why we’re here together, to help your listeners. Reach out to you, me, anyone, any way we can help. Appreciate it.

Thanks, man.

Thanks for listening to another amazing episode of That Real Estate Tech Guy. Head over to thatrealestatetechguy.com to check out all episodes and get special discounts on tons of awesome real estate technology platforms.