DLP Capital

DLP Capital is a private real estate investment and financial services firm driven to solve America’s affordable housing crisis while helping investors build financial legacies for their families through impact investments. The firm’s core focus is on investing in, developing, and financing attainable housing for working families

Together with our team members, we continue to grow and succeed by living our mission to change the nation through the building of thriving communities centered in safe and attainable housing. We also lead and inspire the building of wealth and prosperity for our partners and employees through the relentless execution of innovative real estate solutions. This fulfills our founding purpose: Dream. Live. Prosper.

We are a culture-first organization. We believe in heavily investing in our employees’ personal and professional development, as well as their and their family’s mental and physical well-being. For example, in addition to providing a competitive compensation and benefits package, we offer our team members generous PTO policies, flexible work schedules, time off for volunteering, a headspace account, marriage counseling retreats, and much more—all on the first day of employment! We also have many ways to celebrate our team members’ milestones, life events, and accomplishments, such as a peer-to-peer recognition program, small pick-me-ups, personalized rewards to acknowledge big moments in our employees’ lives, and a DREAM On program that grants wishes to our team members that wouldn’t be possible without our support—such wishes could be as small as having a family spa day or a fully paid vacation in one of our rentals, to as big as providing traveling assistance for employees wishing to visit their home countries.

DLP employees also greatly benefit from our revolutionary Elite Execution System (EES). This ground-breaking business model was originally introduced by DLP Capital’s founder and CEO Don Wenner in his bestselling book “Building an Elite Organization,” and now it is widely executed by businesses across the country. The EES tools presented in the book help to scale a high-growth, high-profit elite organization while not losing sight of the most important things that build a fulfilling and purposeful life, what we call the 8Fs—freedom, finance, fun, family, faith, fitness, friends, and fulfillment.

But that’s not all—following the success of his first book and understanding the importance of investing in employees, Don wrote another bestselling book, “Building an Elite Career,” sharing actionable strategies that enable employees to move beyond just having a successful career to having a successful life supported by a great career. We live and breathe the guiding principles shared within these books, including providing access to all EES tools to our team members for free and supplying them with the DLP Elite Journal—the working journal that frames a vision of an ideal future, plans the steps to get there, helps to execute with massive action, and tracks the metrics along the way.

As an Elite organization, we regularly provide training around the EES tools and have supporting conversations about our team members’ fulfillment and life purpose: from setting personal rocks—SMART goals for every quarter with 6 bi-weekly milestones—to creating a personal compass focused on long-term goals and annual priorities while finding fulfillment in all areas of life to having weekly and monthly alignment meetings with their leaders to get aligned on the company and personal career goals.

To measure our company’s productivity, we use productivity per person (PPP) that
essentially measures the revenue-producing ability on a person-by-person basis. The great thing about PPP is that it is tied to an employee’s 401K match, providing an additional annual compensation of up to 2.5% and increasing our donations to DLP’s non-profit, the DLP Positive Returns Foundation. We are proud to be able to make a significant impact on our employees’ retirement accounts and allow them to do well while doing good. We started calculating PPP at the end of 2017, standing at $108,496—and now we are at an astonishing $490,711 as of May 2024. Such a significant increase in PPP further reinforces our successful business approach to our employees.

In addition, we continually win Best Places to Work awards year over year. Among the ones we are the most proud of are the “Best Places to Work” by Jacksonville Business Journal (for 4 years In a row), No. 32 out of 300 worldwide “Top Impact Companies 2023” by Real Leaders, No. 1 “Top Impact Companies 2023” among Real Estate companies by Real Leaders, “Healthiest Employers 2022” by Jacksonville Business Journal, “Best Places to Work in Multifamily 2022” and “Best Places to Work in Multifamily for Women 2022”, and Inc. Magazine’s “Best Workplaces 2020”. We have also been recognized as the Inc. 5000 Fastest Growing Private Companies in America for 12 consecutive years.

Driven by our core values and inspired by our mission, we have a mantra of “leaders made here,” that underscores our commitment to providing opportunities and resources for personal and professional growth. We are always looking for new ways to act on that commitment and offer our team members various opportunities for development: from our leadership-focused book club with guest appearances from renowned leaders, such as John C. Maxwell, to Toastmasters where you can develop and strengthen your public speaking skills, to spiritual-focused programs such as our prayer group and bible study, to wellness programs that offer fully personalized personal training and nutrition programs.

Our commitment to helping our employees become the best leaders they can be comes from our deep belief in promoting and developing from within. In 2023, we had an astonishing 32% rate of inside promotions and a 65% retention rate—which further highlights our impactful company culture and our faithfulness to our employees.

As a faith-based company, we also provide optional opportunities for our employees to participate in the volunteering and charitable activities of DLP Positive Returns Foundation, including going on mission trips to the counties of the organizations we partner with.

About the Author

Taye Shobajo