Jason Hogan grew up in an entrepreneurial Utah family where his parents built a network marketing empire spanning 32 countries, teaching him to work for everything he had rather than relying on handouts. He followed them into network marketing at 18, rising to a top rank before the company was sold and his income collapsed overnight. To make his mortgage, he secretly swept floors and built cabinets at night for a friend's construction company while maintaining his industry status publicly. A call from his father led him into the RV industry with zero experience, where he scaled a dealership from 10 million to over 100 million in revenue across nine stores in under two years, before an interest rate spike and inventory overexposure taught him a hard lesson about growth for growth's sake. He later realized three focused stores were more profitable than nine. Now he co-runs Blackjet Ventures, a self-funded holding group operating several companies including a marketing agency, focused on culture, marketing, and data rather than chasing scale for its own sake.
From secretly building cabinets at night to scaling an RV empire past $100M, then learning growth isn't always the answer.
What was it like as a kid watching your parents build businesses?
It was wild. We had a plane growing up but flew commercial while my parents used it for business. They never gave us money, made us clock in and out of jobs, and tracked our spending on a check register. They didn't take a non-business family vacation for almost 17 years. It was an unbelievable childhood, but also rough and tough in some ways.
You said you got straight A's growing up. Were you always competitive, or was that instilled by your parents?
I think they instilled it, but I'm just extremely competitive, my family hates it because I won't lose at anything. I had this weird respect thing where getting bad grades felt like disrespecting the teacher. I took everything seriously and pretty much kept a 4.0 my whole life. If I'm going to do something, I want to be the best at it.
You've said 'I didn't want to be known as Randy's son, I wanted to be Jason.' When did that hit you?
Probably in high school, I wanted to build my own name. Now that I'm older, it's a complete honor to be known as his son. What he and my mom really gave me wasn't money, it was knowledge, empowerment, belief, and business and life principles I still use today.
When the network marketing company got sold and your income went to zero, what was going through your head?
It sucked. We were pulled into a back room at a Vegas conference and told the company had a new owner, then flipped to another group weeks later. I had a young baby and was newly married. I try not to think about what I can't control, so I focused on what I could and made an uncomfortable call to a friend to go work for him.
You lost everything in 2018 and were building cabinets at night to make your mortgage. Take us back to that moment.
I called my best friend Deuce, who had a cabinet and construction shop, and asked if I could clean job sites just to pay my mortgage. I swept floors, then graduated to building cabinets, then installing, then design and sales. We grew that business together with no plan at all, just spinning as fast as we could, into what's now a very successful construction company.
You walked into the RV dealership as a 24 or 25 year old with zero experience. How did people react to you?
Not great, but not bad either, because we came in carefully. I started in sales and had to earn my own paycheck like everyone else, no handouts. After six months I became operations manager instead of general manager, which felt like a snub at first but ended up being a blessing since it forced me to learn the whole business instead of just managing schedules.
You've said scaling from one dealership to eight was actually a mistake. What went wrong?
Covid drove the market so hard you couldn't screw it up, and older owners panicked and sold us their stores cheap. We bought fast but our systems didn't scale with us, especially inventory. My credit line hit about 59 million, and when interest rates jumped from 3.25 percent to nearly 11 percent in 90 days, carrying and curtailment costs flipped our cash flow upside down by millions a month.
What made you decide to go from running dealerships to private equity with Blackjet Ventures?
It kind of just happened. After the dealerships exited in October 2024 I didn't know what was next, then I met my partner Vince at a golf retreat and we clicked on culture. We started buying small businesses together, self-funded, and it grew into Blackjet Ventures. We've had people ask to invest, but I don't know what to do with other people's money, so it scares me.
Building something daring? Sunny talks to founders like this every day. Fifteen minutes to see if your story belongs on the stage.
Claim your pre-interview