About
A real estate veteran. A working professional who built her own portfolio. The pairing is the point.
The Closing Class exists because we built it inside our own household first — and wished it had existed when we were starting out.
Founder
John Lee
Real estate has been part of John's life from the beginning. Early in his career he worked alongside family members managing a diverse investment portfolio — neighborhood shopping centers, franchise out-parcels, more than 250,000 square feet of industrial space, new construction projects, and residential rental properties. That hands-on exposure built a practical foundation in underwriting, leasing, asset management, and deal execution across multiple asset classes.
In 2014 he relocated to St. Petersburg to build his own path in the industry. Working alongside two of the market's top-producing agents, he learned the day-to-day realities of agency work — prospecting, client management, negotiation, and transaction execution — and developed the disciplined, execution-focused approach that continues to guide his work today.
Today, after more than two decades in the industry, John leads several real estate ventures: an investment firm focused on multifamily acquisitions and development, a title company supporting residential and commercial transactions, and a land-development business delivering affordable manufactured housing in rural markets. He has been on nearly every side of the closing table — buying, selling, financing, developing, and operating across residential, multifamily, retail strip centers, NNN, outparcels, and industrial — and the frameworks taught here are the ones he uses every week.
John is also married to a pediatric nurse practitioner. The realities of a clinical schedule, a demanding healthcare career, and the trade-offs that come with both aren't abstractions to him — they are the conditions of his own life.
Co-founder
Alex Brandimore
Alex is a PhD speech pathologist. She spent years inside academic medicine — earning her doctorate, building a clinical research career, and ultimately serving as a professor at a large R01 university. From the outside it looked like the destination most healthcare professionals are taught to aim for.
One day she had an epiphany. It was a stable income. It was not a wealth strategy. The longer she stayed, the more obvious it became that the highest-leverage thing she could build with her time was something her academic career couldn't give her: ownership.
Today Alex is actively building a portfolio of long-term rentals, short-term rentals, and flips. She is married to a dentist, which means she has done all of this from inside the same kind of household this site is written for — two demanding careers, a high-W-2 tax picture, limited time, and the constant decision of where to put the next dollar of energy.
Alex is the reason this isn't a generic real estate education site. She knows what it actually feels like to weigh a property decision against a demanding career, a W-2 tax bill, and real fatigue — because she is doing it now, in her own household, every week.
Our philosophy
The third path.
High earners — business owners, attorneys, engineers, clinicians, and every other busy professional — usually get handed two options for their wealth: a financial advisor who points them at the market, or a syndicator who asks them to write a check and trust the process.
There is a third path. Active ownership. Real architecture. Real decisions. Real returns you can see and verify. It is harder to start, but it is the one that actually compounds — and the one most professionals are never shown.
Plain talk
What you will never hear from us.
- "You'll be financially independent in five years."
- "Quit your practice and do this full-time."
- "Real estate is passive income."
- "Returns are guaranteed."
- "Here's a syndication you should write a check into."
- "Spots are limited — sign up by midnight."
We do not promise outcomes we can't deliver, and we do not use urgency tactics. The work is real, the timeline is honest, and the decisions are yours.
We are still actively in the work — and we built the resource we wished existed when we were getting in.