How Institutional Investors Move Real Estate Markets with Jake Rome

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Welcome to Raising the Flipping Bar, the go to podcast for aspiring and seasoned real estate investors.

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I'm your host, Derek Marlin, and I'm the CEO of Elevation.

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We're a real estate investment company based right here in Denver, Colorado.

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We'll dive into smart investment strategies, market insights, and essential tips for scaling your real estate ventures.

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Whether you're making your first investment or your hundredth investment, this podcast is your blueprint for success in the ever evolving world of real estate investing.

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Get ready to elevate your real estate game and begin your journey with me.

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everybody.

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Welcome back to another episode of raising the flipping bar.

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I'm your host, Derek Marlin.

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And we've got a great guest today.

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We've got somebody who's an experienced investor, their technology expert, and they're a co founder of an amazing company.

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We're also going to talk about the lending landscape.

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So I know a lot of our students and clients say, well, where the hell do I get the money from?

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This episode is going to help you with all those questions.

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We're also going to get some Colorado perspective, but then national perspective because their company is in a ton of markets across the country.

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So welcome Mr.

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Jake Rome from Backflip.

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Thanks.

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Really happy to be here.

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Appreciate you, having me in and the partnership so far.

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It's been amazing awesome.

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Cool.

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Thanks for being here.

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So what I always like to do to kick it off a little differently is I would love for you to tell the audience maybe a fun fact or something that's just doesn't have to be outside the box per se, but it doesn't have to be related.

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Like just some fun fact about you.

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So this may be surprising or not.

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I've always been an entrepreneur.

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My earliest memories are playing in the woods behind my house, extracting all the rocks, polishing them in the rock tumbler, selling them to the neighborhood kids and then building forts same kids.

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I've been in the real estate game one way or another for a while.

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Those folks, my brother included are now like.

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Praying victim, but I think there's a statute of limitations and That's really funny because that takes me back to my childhood.

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So I'm originally from New Jersey and we back to open space and we would do the exact same thing.

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We would just play.

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I mean, it sounds old school, but my parents would be like, get out of the house, go play.

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And we would go play in the woods.

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Many times we would get in trouble.

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And sometimes I'd actually have to call my dad and my dad actually worked.

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On literally on wall street and on a trading desk and we would call and there would be insanity in the background.

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And I remember him saying like, do you think I have time for this?

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You better run and hide.

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And when I get home, we're going to deal with it.

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And we would run and hide and we would play in the woods and you would see his car pull in and we're like, Oh, we're in trouble.

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And we would parade out, get in trouble.

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But the woods were our sanctuary too.

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So forts, dude, I'm down for it.

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special place special place.

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Yeah, that's awesome.

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cool.

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So let's jump into the more of the real estate stuff.

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After, almost you're coming up on 15 years of investment and real estate investing experience, instead of just saying, Hey, tell me your background.

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Maybe give us a couple of milestones of your professional journey until we start talking about what you're doing today with backflip.

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Yeah.

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Quickly.

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The back of the book is even in high school, my dad was a home builder, so like I've been in the sticks and bricks for a while and then coming out of school work for a family office based in, with the U S kind of real estate arm.

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It is a German family office.

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We did a bunch of cool projects.

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I just fell in love with value add real estate investing and opportunistic and value add kind of hairy projects, broken resort redevelopments and multifamily developments, that kind of stuff.

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And then, one milestone was the realization that I also like company building and so started working on the infrastructure and the models and the analyst training materials and kind of that side of things.

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Eventually the CEO of that business spun out, picked about a dozen of us and we started a pension fund advisory, which, we became a registered investment advisor, like institutionalized the, inner workings of the family office to serve these pension fund clients, which was my first, foray into company building, post college that was definitely a milestone and then in between backflip what i'm doing now.

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I had a startup.

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Where a colleague and I left I helped him Form a company that was in the real estate hospitality space that We bought big apartment buildings and then leased them to The residents in Airbnb with the residents were gone.

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So, you know, done a handful of different strategies, gotten more and more entrepreneurial, throughout my career.

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But the common theme is real estate built environment, technology overlay, kind of obsessed with that diagram Yeah.

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Okay.

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Well, and you brought up something that I would love for you to maybe define a little bit more.

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And that is a family office.

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When you talk about a family office, it's great because you worked in it.

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Can you give our audience kind of more of a definition of what that is and maybe some of the functionality of what a family office does and why somebody would have one?

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Yeah.

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So a family office is, depending on the size of it, it can be like a type of institutional capital.

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Institutions are managing money on behalf of others.

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A family office is managing money on behalf of a family or a group of families.

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And the family office can take a little more risk, do little things differently than institutional investors that, that may be worried about losing their jobs or whatever the family, at the end of the day, there was a boss and that boss can want to do things that are, Exciting and interesting and make sense and things that don't make sense.

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So you get a little bit more, I don't know, volatility is the right word, but like family offices come to a lot of different flavors.

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As compared to institutional investors.

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Yeah.

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And, and is there kind of a dollar amount or range, you know, when somebody thinks of, Hey, I'm probably makes sense to start a family office.

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I'm sure it's a huge gamut, but like what would be maybe the sweet spot from an asset or assets under management Yeah.

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That's a good question.

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I think it depends on what the objectives of the family are, we managed about 800 million, of equity, which was just the real estate component of this, kind of Forbes, list family.

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And so I'm used to big versions of those, but it doesn't need to be that, you know, if someone has been successful, in their career and made.

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Enough of a nest egg to be able to invest that nest egg and cover the expenses, of the family on a go forward basis, then I think that counts as a family office.

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And that doesn't need to be a 60 person organization, which is what mine was.

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Cool.

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Well, and I think that's a perfect segue.

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So I know a lot of our audience are independent investors, kind of large, medium, and small agents that are doing both investment related business and traditional business.

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And a lot of contractors and vendors, as we call them people that we're working with.

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Can you give us an idea of, all right, so if somebody is out there and they're one of those three buckets, Why should they care about what Wall Street is doing or what institutions are doing?

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Because it's something that's really passionate to me and part of my background.

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And that's why I was pumped to get you on today.

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So like, why should the solo person listening care about what Wall Street is doing in our real estate Yeah, that's a great question.

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And, like, the short answer is that.

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Institutional capital moves markets.

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And even if you don't think it's involved, it's probably involved if a realtor is selling a house or a flipper selling a house, they're selling it to a consumer who's getting a mortgage and that mortgage is tied to institutional, capital.

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So it's always around the table.

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If you think about it, I think, let's just say 10 trillion is managed by institutional capital.

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If 10 percent of that is allocated to real estate, which I think is about right.

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That's a trillion dollars.

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If they decide that they want to go from 10 to 10.

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1%, you know, that's 10 billion of capital that needs to flow into real estate, almost instantaneously.

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And so that is one way that just kind of by turning the allocation pie chart dial, they can have us pretty significant impact the other way.

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And we're seeing this in our business with.

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You know value add single family.

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Most people call it flips.

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I'm just giving my background.

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I like the value add nomenclature.

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That product type is institutionalizing in real time and that has Incredibly positive impacts for folks that are in the game at that moment.

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We've seen this happen with other asset classes student housing self storage You know, if you own self storage in the nineties and cap rates were, you know, 10 to 12, all you had to do is hold it.

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Cap rates shrink to five and the value of your real estate has doubled without you doing anything.

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And so being in something sort of pre and then during the institutionalization moment is a great spot to be.

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So fix and flip housing, particularly on the credit side, is institutionalizing.

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And so it's a fun time to be building a business in this space.

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So you just brought up something, Jake, that I want to maybe ask you a little bit more about.

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And I think that's super astute and everybody should really listen when institutions or wall street or private equity firms or whatever people's definition of like big, big money.

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moves their decision making by 1 percent or 10 percent or, you know, a 10th of a percent, that's still to your point, billions or hundreds of millions of dollars that gets dispersed among, maybe let's just say the top 50 markets, which we are in Denver.

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That's a huge effect and people should really perk up to that, or at least read the wall street journal once in a while or tune into CNBC.

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Just that's why what we're doing is really important and things to focus on.

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Yeah.

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But, but being aware, to your point, is step one and maybe the only step for a lot of folks.

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Sure.

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But at least you have more context to what's happening in the market.

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If you think about, what an institutional investor is and does, there's limited partners, so LPs, those are pension funds, endowments, sovereign wealth funds.

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Kind of characters like that, their only job is to allocate capital.

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And so they have a pie chart and they say, I want real estate to be 10%.

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I want fixed income to be this, I want oil to be this, right.

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And they just try to build a resilient, portfolio.

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And then within each of those pie chart slices, you then have the opportunity to diversify more.

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So like, let's double click on real estate.

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You can diversify amongst geographies.

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You can diversify amongst asset classes.

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So hotels, office, residential, et cetera.

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And then you can diversify amongst strategies.

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So opportunistic value add core plus core.

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And so all of those things, it's like a, you know, 40 chess board where you're trying to figure out the right mixture.

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And so people are always turning the dials and single family, fix and flip loans, for example, maybe the beneficiary of.

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A dial change, right?

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And so that's what's happening.

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That's what's happening now.

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They also importantly aren't investing themselves typically.

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So they identify investment managers, which would be private equity funds to execute on these strategies that they have determined they want to be long on.

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And so, that's post family office.

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I was working for a pension fund manager.

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And so we were Doing value add and core plus deals of all asset classes within the U.

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S.

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And so I've got exposure to that through that.

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That's awesome.

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Well, and the cool thing about that is I really want to kind of drill down into maybe an applicable, explanation that you can give us.

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You did a really cool project of part of your career with a whole foods conversion.

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Can you tell our audience about that?

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Cause I think you'd set this perfect 30, 000 foot.

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overview.

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Now this is something that you can kind of say, Hey, this is the type of project that we did.

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That was a bit of a tiger by the tail.

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So my first startup kind of after leaving the private equity world, the strategy was to buy trophy, highest rent in the city type apartment buildings.

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Whole Foods.

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lease them to primary residents.

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So not taking any units out of the housing stock, but then when the residents traveled, we would home share on Airbnb, their unit and manage the whole process.

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And so generating some extra NOI, on that unoccupied square footage while the flight attendant is, at work for a few days and then split in the economics with the underlying resident.

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And so that was the business plan.

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We were looking at big buildings, small buildings, just trying to get something done.

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And we ended up buying the Whole Foods building at Union Station.

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Which if you're in Denver, you've probably, eaten there or seen that building.

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I think at the time it was like a 300 million acquisition.

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It was the largest apartment acquisition in the state of Colorado ever.

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When my partner, Dan Cohen, he's a local real estate guy here.

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He's awesome.

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Bought that building.

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And so that was in 2018, I think.

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Okay.

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Awesome.

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Yeah.

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That's a really cool experience.

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And that's why I was so excited to have you on is you've got such different background from some of our other guests.

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And I really want to give kind of our audience a different breath of all the different styles of investing.

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So this is gold.

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Before we get into kind of talking more about what you're doing in backflip, and then we're definitely going to extrapolate this to what's going on in the Denver market.

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Maybe tell us a little bit about what you're personally investing in, or I get it.

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You've got a lot of time and energy and money into backflip, but maybe something that's on your radar.

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If you're not saying this is where I allocate my investment dollars.

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I try to diversify a bit, but as you correctly stated, I'm pretty, you know, a lot of my eggs are in the back basket.

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I've got, Condo in Austin.

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Cool.

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That I've owned for, five or six years we were gonna be the equity on developing the condo and then didn't end up doing it.

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But I liked the developer, like the project.

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We ended up buying it.

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And frankly, actually right now I'm trying to sell it 'cause I don't have enough time to manage it.

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It doesn't even take a lot of time, but it's not actually passive.

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And I totally screwed it up because we had a tenant that was paying good rent, been there for three years.

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You know, we said, Hey, I think we're going to sell this paid to stage it, get it cleaned up, put on the market, absolute crickets.

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And now we're talking about leasing it again, for a lower rent than we had before.

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So it's a hard game.

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That's the direct, side.

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And then I put, money into some of my former colleagues deals.

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They do apartments or industrial development or retail value ad.

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And so I kind of stay close to them and support them and diversify in that way.

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And then in terms of equities and personal portfolio, I do like REITs.

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Yeah.

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I think REITs are very under appreciated.

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I'm familiar with real estate.

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Of course I see you know, a bunch of startups because I'm paying attention to that space closely when it's like by a fraction of a single family portfolio and, it's all this buzz around it.

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And when you peel back the layers, I'm like, all right, I could buy a REIT that's tax efficient, liquid, no startup risk, and diversified, or you could lock money up into a REIT.

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high risky, getting off the ground, non-tax efficient, non diversified, non-liquid.

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It's like kinda hard for me to justify that.

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Yeah.

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And so comfortable with Reads.

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Yeah.

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No, I think that's really smart.

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I think that's something that people should look at more.

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I come from two different schools of thought.

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One's more of a wall street family on my side.

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And then my father in law was a real estate guy.

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True and true.

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With self storage with mixed use with, some land and development.

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And so I, I have this nice blend of both worlds and yeah, people, I think sometimes in our real estate space, people get so enamored with the types of businesses we're doing and we get it.

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We're in this day to day, but they forget about the market and you can have that exposure to something like a REIT, and you really gain so much of the benefit without, to your point, a lot of risk.

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And the liquidity is super important too, to take advantage of other opportunities.

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You can't lock your money up for seven years.

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It's tied up.

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Yeah.

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There's a moment in time.

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I don't think it's the situation today where you can buy REITs and yield, you know, significantly more attractive from a cash flow perspective than investing in the real estate itself.

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This is true for more stabilized or core properties.

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And so, if I was still doing, institutional investment management at that time, I'd say, why would we buy this apartment building when we can just buy A REIT that returns more and has all these other benefits.

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I think it's tougher to do that in value add.

00:15:07.996 --> 00:15:16.716
So people, that are doing, fix and flip projects, like you're not going to beat those returns on a well executed project by buying REIT shares, but something to keep in mind Yeah.

00:15:17.047 --> 00:15:24.886
Well, and before we dive into what backflip has going on, is there, you're obviously a student of real estate, you're a student of the market and investing.

00:15:24.886 --> 00:15:35.096
Is there something that you do, whether it's working on your business versus in your business, That you can kind of maybe share with folks is we've got other entrepreneurs out there of what they're doing.

00:15:35.096 --> 00:15:41.817
You're, you're busy day to day, but is there something you try to zoom out and say, Hey, I'm kind of trying to think of on the business versus just down and dirty in the business.

00:15:41.817 --> 00:15:43.287
Like that's hard to do.

00:15:43.297 --> 00:15:50.706
You mean like just kind of learning generally or maybe just learning generally, or whether you call that personal development or things that you're trying to better yourself with it.

00:15:50.746 --> 00:15:52.807
Of course, hopefully translates into running your business.

00:15:53.756 --> 00:16:05.236
Yeah, I think consuming content, and being very open minded about the type and sort of breadth and depth of content that is consumed as a good way to just continue to become more well rounded.

00:16:05.756 --> 00:16:16.687
Example, I'm naturally an equity investor, but given what we're doing at Backflip at this stage, we're credit investors, making loans and it's actually a completely different, mindset shift, in credit.

00:16:17.721 --> 00:16:21.101
It doesn't matter how there's no upside, right?

00:16:21.101 --> 00:16:23.831
Like all you can do is get your interest in and loan back.

00:16:24.192 --> 00:16:28.251
And so it becomes more about avoiding losers than it does picking winners.

00:16:28.782 --> 00:16:31.481
Which is just kind of an interesting, an interesting mindset shift.

00:16:31.711 --> 00:16:37.802
The venture capital model, for example, is going to invest in 10 companies and those that eight of them are going to go bust.

00:16:38.162 --> 00:16:40.621
And one of them will return the whole fund and they don't care about the eight.

00:16:40.621 --> 00:16:41.211
They go bust.

00:16:41.211 --> 00:16:43.241
Well, they care about the founders and all that stuff.

00:16:43.251 --> 00:16:46.152
But like from a financial perspective, that's the model.

00:16:46.547 --> 00:16:51.096
And so I've been trying to get just more familiar with how credit investors think.

00:16:51.116 --> 00:16:55.027
Recently read a book called the price of time, by Edward Chancellor.

00:16:55.027 --> 00:16:55.527
It's a great book.

00:16:55.527 --> 00:16:57.236
It's the history of interest, basically.

00:16:57.856 --> 00:17:00.567
And so it's kind of start to today.

00:17:00.667 --> 00:17:05.557
And then podcasts like Howard Marks, who runs Oak tree.

00:17:05.606 --> 00:17:08.557
He's been putting out an awesome memo for decades.

00:17:08.557 --> 00:17:12.326
Now there's a podcast called behind the memo where he dives into all these concepts.

00:17:12.426 --> 00:17:17.326
Apollo's got a pretty good podcast with Torst and their chief economist, view from Apollo.

00:17:17.356 --> 00:17:23.176
I think it is so, just, you know, trying to stay, when driving or love mowing the lawn or whatever.

00:17:23.257 --> 00:17:24.136
On top of what's going on.

00:17:24.267 --> 00:17:24.567
Yeah.

00:17:24.616 --> 00:17:25.287
Well, that's awesome.

00:17:25.567 --> 00:17:28.287
So let's shift gears a little bit and let's dive into Backflip.

00:17:28.567 --> 00:17:31.846
The great thing is that people that are already in our community know Backflip.

00:17:31.846 --> 00:17:32.186
Yeah.

00:17:32.196 --> 00:17:39.436
We've worked with you guys for, we're now starting on our sixth project with you guys, but can you give us kind of an overall summary of what backflip is right now?

00:17:39.436 --> 00:17:40.317
So everybody goes, Oh, okay.

00:17:40.317 --> 00:17:41.317
I know exactly what you're talking about.

00:17:41.567 --> 00:17:41.926
Yeah.

00:17:41.946 --> 00:17:44.116
First of all, thank you for being a customer.

00:17:44.396 --> 00:17:45.737
You're one of our favorites.

00:17:45.767 --> 00:17:50.217
We can't say the favorite cause that would have, you know, offend somebody, but like you're the poster child.

00:17:50.267 --> 00:17:51.047
So it's been awesome.

00:17:51.557 --> 00:17:57.977
Backflip put very simply, our mission is to empower local entrepreneurs to rejuvenate homes so people can love.

00:17:58.227 --> 00:18:04.987
The tailwinds of the business model are under supply of housing, aging housing stock that doesn't get as many headlines.

00:18:04.987 --> 00:18:10.186
But if you think about it like that, homes on average are old and obsolete and not affordable because of the first thing.

00:18:10.186 --> 00:18:12.426
So it's a pretty clear problem.

00:18:12.467 --> 00:18:17.487
I've always said when I want to pursue a business, it's going to be something that's on Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

00:18:17.787 --> 00:18:20.707
Like everyone's got to live somewhere that need is not going away.

00:18:20.757 --> 00:18:40.289
And so, you know, by executing on our mission, it's very fulfilling, both in terms of what we're doing to helping facilitate in the housing stock and the positive impact that has on families in the built environment also supporting these entrepreneurs, which are part of this creator economy that's really interesting and really just getting started, I think.

00:18:40.329 --> 00:18:41.990
So that's our customer.

00:18:42.089 --> 00:18:43.359
That's what we're trying to do.

00:18:43.660 --> 00:18:46.650
We do it by providing a couple of different types of products today.

00:18:46.980 --> 00:18:50.000
Technology products and capital products are kind of the two big buckets.

00:18:50.170 --> 00:18:55.349
And then we really focus on community to which we haven't productized, but it is really important in this space.

00:18:55.349 --> 00:18:56.009
I'm going to talk about.

00:18:56.464 --> 00:19:02.785
What that means on the technology side, the easiest way to think of it is like Zillow with investor goggles.

00:19:02.924 --> 00:19:03.164
Yeah.

00:19:03.275 --> 00:19:11.375
So very data heavy and trying to give, our customers, we call them members that, the data at their fingertips, it's a mobile App.

00:19:11.375 --> 00:19:19.345
So in the palm of their hands, you know what they need to make a good investment decision and to look at a significantly more number of deals.

00:19:19.634 --> 00:19:22.904
Then they were able to previously, the old way of doing things without backflip.

00:19:23.615 --> 00:19:34.575
You write down the address, you go home, you open your spreadsheet, you open Zillow and Redfin, a few different tabs, and you try to like put together this comp set using tools that are built for consumers, built for investors.

00:19:34.964 --> 00:19:37.115
And so we wanted to build the investor version of that.

00:19:37.505 --> 00:19:41.394
Um, we wanted to get that away for free, which is what we're doing.

00:19:41.394 --> 00:19:43.984
We monetize on the capital product side.

00:19:44.295 --> 00:19:49.394
So we then have a, you know, pretty seamless, like the deal, it's your buy box apply for a loan.

00:19:49.714 --> 00:19:51.755
There's a digital loan application experience.

00:19:51.785 --> 00:19:54.724
And then we fund, we fund the loan with our own capital.

00:19:55.055 --> 00:20:00.525
And then we deal with it on the capital markets in the backside, but that's how we're generating revenue to grow the team.

00:20:00.535 --> 00:20:07.615
We've gone from, just really two of us, my co founder Josh and I in late 2020 to there's close to 80 people on the team.

00:20:08.384 --> 00:20:10.674
So it's, uh, That's becoming a bit of a machine.

00:20:10.795 --> 00:20:11.674
Yeah, it is.

00:20:11.674 --> 00:20:13.805
Well, it's been great for us to work with your team.

00:20:13.805 --> 00:20:15.404
You've got great marketing staff.

00:20:15.674 --> 00:20:16.914
You've got great underwriting staff.

00:20:16.914 --> 00:20:18.234
We're working with people all over the country.

00:20:18.234 --> 00:20:23.285
Maybe talk a little bit about the markets that you serve from a lending perspective, but even just dip into your right.

00:20:23.285 --> 00:20:27.765
If you've got 80 people, you guys are all over the place, which is really a cool way that business is now getting done.

00:20:27.765 --> 00:20:31.305
It's going to be nice if they're all just sitting in a room in Denver, but that's not reality anymore.

00:20:31.305 --> 00:20:32.674
So I'd love maybe hit on those two things.

00:20:32.684 --> 00:20:32.964
Yeah.

00:20:32.964 --> 00:20:44.634
So from a market's perspective, fortunately this loan type business purpose, non owner occupied, those are two keywords is not nearly as regulated as a consumer mortgage.

00:20:45.039 --> 00:20:51.690
And so we're able to get to most of the country to most of the rooftops in the country without, having to cut through a lot of red Tape.

00:20:52.079 --> 00:20:54.769
So we're in about 43 states now.

00:20:54.799 --> 00:20:56.509
Colorado is one of the top five.

00:20:56.910 --> 00:20:58.380
Texas is number one.

00:20:58.869 --> 00:21:04.220
Florida, Ohio, Tennessee, a few others, you know, tied for second through fifth.

00:21:04.220 --> 00:21:07.009
But we like, we like Denver and Colorado a lot for.

00:21:07.085 --> 00:21:08.663
A lot of reasons Yeah.

00:21:08.663 --> 00:21:14.203
And what's maybe as of last year, what are the number of loans that you guys have done, overall Yeah.

00:21:14.203 --> 00:21:16.124
We're doing north of a hundred a month.

00:21:16.213 --> 00:21:16.513
Nice.

00:21:16.513 --> 00:21:17.173
At this point.

00:21:17.203 --> 00:21:22.153
Which is about $30 million plus or minus, depending on loan sides.

00:21:22.334 --> 00:21:24.854
So that's, I remember we did.

00:21:25.253 --> 00:21:26.443
In 2021, we got started.

00:21:26.443 --> 00:21:28.163
We did like 4 million worth of loans.

00:21:28.663 --> 00:21:34.104
2022, we did 35 million, 2023 was 135 million.

00:21:34.324 --> 00:21:38.403
And now we're approaching 200 million and we still have the fourth quarter to go.

00:21:38.403 --> 00:21:41.433
So, it's been, well received by the market.

00:21:41.534 --> 00:21:45.324
And partially what's really cool about this business is repeat customers like yourself.

00:21:45.324 --> 00:21:56.364
So if you're in a consumer mortgage space or, doing any real estate prop tech business plan where there's a retail buyer at the end of the chain, you're spending money to find that buyer.

00:21:56.374 --> 00:21:57.983
You're developing relationship with them.

00:21:58.263 --> 00:22:00.594
You transact with them usually just one time.

00:22:01.193 --> 00:22:06.044
And so that results in a lot of things like one, they don't really have a true product need.

00:22:06.044 --> 00:22:07.644
The most important thing is pricing.

00:22:07.644 --> 00:22:08.673
It's not the relationship.

00:22:08.673 --> 00:22:11.334
It's not, it's just, you treat the customer differently.

00:22:11.653 --> 00:22:16.233
From our perspective, our customers and our repeat customers are like just amazing.

00:22:16.263 --> 00:22:25.604
And so like we work really hard to build and maintain good relationships and to provide value to them in everything they're doing, from beginning to end.

00:22:25.604 --> 00:22:31.957
And so, that's something that we've always known to be true with this business, but as we've gotten into it, it's pretty magical.

00:22:31.957 --> 00:22:41.957
Something that I'd love to kind of like talk a little bit more about is you talked about, the consumer side or the client side, you're running a great remote business.

00:22:41.957 --> 00:22:50.446
Maybe just touch on that a little bit, because we do have a lot of entrepreneurs and people that, yeah, they use real estate as a way to generate wealth, but you guys are doing cool things on building a business too.

00:22:50.457 --> 00:22:51.477
Just tell me a little bit about that.

00:22:51.537 --> 00:22:53.277
Yeah, that's been, I appreciate the question.

00:22:53.287 --> 00:22:54.467
That's been really interesting.

00:22:54.517 --> 00:22:56.126
And we started in 2020.

00:22:56.207 --> 00:23:00.106
So it was remote from day one and Josh, my co founder and I are in different cities.

00:23:00.126 --> 00:23:01.047
He's based in Dallas.

00:23:01.267 --> 00:23:02.517
So the way that we communicate.

00:23:03.001 --> 00:23:04.311
is remote.

00:23:04.811 --> 00:23:07.711
And so that's enabled our culture to be set up in a way.

00:23:07.711 --> 00:23:12.501
I think of it as like an operating culture that is, remote work is productive.

00:23:12.832 --> 00:23:17.001
we don't email each other internally, which like I tell people when they're like, how does that even possible?

00:23:17.352 --> 00:23:19.372
We use Slack, we use instant messaging type tools.

00:23:19.372 --> 00:23:21.721
We work within docs and projects themselves.

00:23:22.017 --> 00:23:32.196
And we do a lot of video recordings and audio messages and just like a whole reprogramming that people need to go through when they transition from working usually anywhere else into a backflip environment.

00:23:32.596 --> 00:23:37.156
That said, it's been quite successful where we've got folks in, it's probably approaching 40 states at this point.

00:23:37.156 --> 00:23:39.856
So you can't really put the toothpaste back in the tube.

00:23:39.916 --> 00:23:47.916
What's really interesting is you mentioned like, if, you know, it may be nice if everyone was here in Denver, and, There's some truth to that for certain things.

00:23:48.436 --> 00:23:50.636
Everyone would be quite like each other.

00:23:50.977 --> 00:23:58.027
And what we found with hiring remotely is the backgrounds and perspectives of people is really unique and different.

00:23:58.307 --> 00:24:03.817
And we've got people in, you know, Kansas city to Napa Valley, to New York city.

00:24:03.826 --> 00:24:07.666
And like, it's just a really interesting and awesome group of people.

00:24:07.777 --> 00:24:13.501
We did a During a standup yesterday, I think a prompt, what was your first job?

00:24:14.102 --> 00:24:18.471
And, you know, in my old world, the first job would be like, invest in baking McKinsey.

00:24:18.521 --> 00:24:21.481
Like, just like five different things.

00:24:21.481 --> 00:24:22.392
Right here.

00:24:22.392 --> 00:24:29.852
It's like Amazon fulfillment center or like your veterinary clinic or like wrote poetry, like just completely all over the board stuff.

00:24:29.852 --> 00:24:31.162
I thought it was really, really cool.

00:24:31.357 --> 00:24:31.622
Yeah.

00:24:31.771 --> 00:24:32.201
Well, it's cool.

00:24:32.201 --> 00:24:39.281
You say that because one of my first interactions with part of your team was Mariah from the marketing perspective and she does an amazing job.

00:24:39.281 --> 00:24:40.461
And then I saw where she's.

00:24:40.721 --> 00:24:44.271
You know, working from Bozeman, Montana, I'm a fellow fighting Bobcat.

00:24:44.271 --> 00:24:48.511
I went to college there and I was always a little jealous cause it's like, damn, you go there and this is a long time ago.

00:24:48.511 --> 00:24:50.652
So it's dating me, but there were no job opportunities.

00:24:50.662 --> 00:25:00.971
Now you can have somebody who's a super smart person adding value to the company, living in an amazing part of the country that I wouldn't move from back in the day had I not had, you know, unfortunately not as many opportunities.

00:25:00.971 --> 00:25:06.557
So that's really cool We've now got two people in bozeman, Maria, who's absolutely crushing it.

00:25:06.557 --> 00:25:09.426
I think she does like 200 events a year or something like that.

00:25:09.797 --> 00:25:13.176
And then Richard who I'm meeting after this, he's flying down for a day trip.

00:25:13.497 --> 00:25:15.047
Richard runs capital markets.

00:25:15.336 --> 00:25:17.047
And we joke, it's not really even a joke.

00:25:17.057 --> 00:25:20.507
We operate the largest trading desk in all of Montana.

00:25:21.037 --> 00:25:22.916
So, yeah, that part's been, it's been fun.

00:25:22.916 --> 00:25:24.037
It's a different challenge, right?

00:25:24.037 --> 00:25:32.426
Like you're solving a problem for our customers and then we're also figuring out how to build a company of this type remotely and there's no playbook for that.

00:25:32.606 --> 00:25:34.446
gosh, this has been such a great episode.

00:25:34.457 --> 00:25:35.846
We've got Jake with backflip.

00:25:35.876 --> 00:25:38.356
And so I actually have a lot more questions.

00:25:38.576 --> 00:25:41.047
And so what I'd love to do is wrap this one today.

00:25:41.057 --> 00:25:43.727
We're going to come back and give you guys a second episode.

00:25:43.987 --> 00:25:49.336
We're going to dive deeper into what backflip is doing on a day to day basis and also dive into the Denver market.

00:25:49.336 --> 00:25:51.707
So stay tuned for episode two with Jake from backflip.

00:25:51.747 --> 00:25:54.737
Thanks for tuning into this week's episode of raising the flipping bar.

00:25:55.106 --> 00:26:08.426
If you found value in our insights and stories, let's keep the conversation going, connect with me on social media, and be sure to share this episode with friends or colleagues who might benefit your feedback and reviews, help us grow and reach more listeners like you.

00:26:08.767 --> 00:26:11.997
So please, if you enjoyed this episode, leave us a review.

00:26:12.767 --> 00:26:15.717
Thanks again to the elevation Academy for sponsoring today's show.

00:26:16.336 --> 00:26:22.366
If you're interested in learning more, click the link in the show notes below and remember every property tells a story.

00:26:22.707 --> 00:26:24.027
Every deal brings a lesson.

00:26:24.567 --> 00:26:27.376
Keep reaching for those goals and we'll catch you on the flip side.

00:26:30.116 --> 00:26:30.707
Hey everybody.

00:26:30.727 --> 00:26:33.926
Thank you so much for listening and watching, raising a flipping bar.

00:26:34.227 --> 00:26:39.586
Just a basic overall disclaimer is that a, This is not legal advice.

00:26:39.767 --> 00:26:41.297
B, this is not tax advice.

00:26:41.307 --> 00:26:42.957
C, this is not financial advice.

00:26:43.287 --> 00:26:47.277
I hope you get the gist, but I'm obviously not a lawyer, not a CPA hell.

00:26:47.277 --> 00:26:51.656
I'm not even a real estate agent actually, but in general, we hope you get a ton of value out of this, but there is a bit of a disclaimer.

00:26:51.656 --> 00:26:55.217
Please consult a professional if you have any questions whatsoever.