Real Estate Underground

From Oil Fields to Real Estate Empires with Casey Gregersen

• Ed Mathews

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  • YouTube: @CaseyGregersen
  • Instagram: @CaseyGregersen
  • LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/caseygregersen
  • Mobile:  307-317-2494


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Ed Mathews:

It is Ed Mathews with the Real Estate Underground. Thank you so much for making us a part of your day. I'm really excited because I discovered him when he was flipping houses in Wyoming and elsewhere, and now that company has grown into three companies plus. So with that, I'd love to welcome Casey Gregersen to the show. These days we're talking about the Bighorn Capital Fund, but we can also talk about Weill Homes and Gregersen Proper the show. These days we're talking about a Bighorn Capital Fund, but we can also talk about Weill Homes and Gregersen Properties and anything else you want to talk about. Welcome, Casey, it's good to finally meet you.

Casey Gregersen:

You bet Ed Pleasure man Appreciate the kind words, yeah of course, yeah, I can't remember.

Ed Mathews:

I think I discovered you on LinkedIn. That's usually where I find folks to have conversations with and pick their brains, and every once in a while they're kind enough to come on the show and have a conversation with me. So thank you for that. So, for those folks who haven't discovered you, why don't you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do?

Casey Gregersen:

Yeah, absolutely so. Just everybody right. You got your where you came from, where you're at now, where you're going, which I think everybody can relate to. I worked the W2 job for a long time. So I started in 2012 for Shell as a petroleum engineer. So I grew up in Wyoming and I still invest there today. So something you'll probably ask later why Wyoming? Well, it's where I grew up. It's where I went to grad school, but I had a great opportunity to go work in Houston for Shell Shell Oil Company as a petroleum engineer.

Casey Gregersen:

I went to Shell and I worked there for 12 years, but I had a really unique gig, which was good and bad. It also led to my true purpose, but one of the best parts about that gig is I would go out to the field for two weeks and I'd work on a drilling rig and I'd actually work nights or be the guy in charge or I'd be like a field engineer driving around locations, but for two weeks I'd be on a rig. Then for two weeks after that I would be off and I wouldn't even have to open a work computer or cell phone. I had zero work responsibilities. So that's when I started buying houses. I was buying my first rental, doing my first house hack, started fixing and flipping and eventually grew and scaled that company where just three years ago almost three years, it'll be three years in October I left my W2 at Shell to go do this full time and to leave a an oil and gas job you must be doing very well.

Ed Mathews:

So I'm curious about that journey from being the engineer to flipping houses and while you were keeping your W2, that man. That had to be one heck of a juggling act. I know you had time off, but still you've got family and other responsibilities as well. What's that one soft skill or habit that you learned in the oil field town that that is now like your secret powers in a real estate world?

Casey Gregersen:

Man, there's a lot of little ones right and I always there's lots of little jabs. I'll take it my old W2 job and there was like the one thing was there was so much red tape. It was like I was literally living two lives right. I would work for Shell where it was very slow, methodical. So much red tape to just get a simple basic decision, have to get it approved by all these different people, go through all these processes and it would drive you nuts and it was really. It became demotivating because you're just like I could do all this work and bring all this value and then if I can't get five sign-offs, it doesn't even matter. So it was frustrating for sure. But the positive was I learned a lot about building processes and building out SLBs and after action reviews right, like I feel like that's a very common thing in today's entrepreneurial world. But 10 years ago it wasn't entrepreneurial world. But 10 years ago it wasn't and we, ever since early days with Shell, after we finished drilling a well or whatever project we did, we got together and did an AR and went back and reiterated our SOP. So that was a really good thing. That's helped me build processes and, for example, the way I put this into play was when I built out my property management team and operations was.

Casey Gregersen:

I literally was actually during COVID when everybody's locked down had nothing to do and we were actually all post. We actually it's crazy Shell laid off 40% of my company that I was in at the time. They laid off 40% Because, if you remember, it's actually when oil went negative, so it was a really rough time. We were cutting 40%, so we were waiting and we didn't know if we had a job. So what I did is rather than just sit around and I don't know what everyone else did maybe watch Netflix I went and I was managing my rental properties at the time. So I was managing probably 10 to 15 units up in somewhere in Fort Worth, somewhere up in Wyoming, but I was in Houston.

Casey Gregersen:

I read a book that some of you guys maybe your listeners have read and it's four-hour workweek. So I read four-hour workweek and they talk about hiring virtual assistants and that's when the light bulb goes off. I'm like, wait, if I can manage these properties from Houston and I don't even live in Wyoming or in Dallas-Fort Worth where I have properties why can I not train a VA? So that's what I did during COVID is I buckled down, used some of those shell corporate America skills, wrote out everything on a Google doc and recording myself doing everything everything from getting a property, getting photos, creating the marketing, creating the Zillow post, the Facebook post to tenant screening, everything literally wrote it all down. And then I hired a virtual assistant and I trained him. I'm like all right, here's the SOPs, go follow them.

Ed Mathews:

And now they own the SOPs and they're the ones To translate just in case you're not in corporate America out there, ar after action report, it's the constant loop of hey, we did something, hey, we broke some stuff, here's how we fix it, here's what worked and here's what we're going to do going forward, basically. And here's what we're going to do going forward. Basically, an SOP is the standard operating procedure that comes out of, typically, an after action report, or at least it's the doc that gets refined. So if you've seen any of our videos or attended a training or anything like that, we talk about this all the time and it's really how the big players have scaled their businesses, because they don't rely on a guy named Casey to do everything. They've got a team that understands exactly what their role is within the machine, and so if Casey decides that he would love to go on vacation with his beautiful family for a week or two, turns out the machine continues to roll and when he gets back, everything's fine. Yep, yeah, right on. It's something that it's a common thing that I see in all of the businesses that have figured out how to scale, and that is how to create operational leverage. Right. It's how to build that team and slowly but surely remove the president, founder, ceo, whatever your title you want to wear out of the day-to-day.

Ed Mathews:

A friend of mine, charlie Mills he was my business coach for years always talked about the sovereign right. So you want to be the king, not the warrior. The king is the person who works on the business. The warrior is the person who executes. And it was revolutionary for me because I come from a similar business culture, but not your business. I'm a Silicon Valley techie guy.

Ed Mathews:

The interesting part about it is the early stages of particularly when I went full-time. I had to really fight, doing it myself right and really because I came from environments where people were so off the charts smart and so competent and so accomplished. If we gathered three or four people in a conference room, came up with a game plan and left, everybody knew exactly what to do. Here I had to take the virtual assistants and train them step by step. We're going to break it down. I know you've done this before and I get that, but here's how I want it done right. And then the next step is something that I think you just alluded to, which was not only that, but also, now that you understand what the standard operating procedure is, you now own it Right. So you're the one who's going to execute this. My way doesn't have to be the way. I don't care about being right, I care about getting it right, and so if you come up with a better way, then let's rewrite the SOP and let's do it your way.

Casey Gregersen:

Exactly, that's exactly how I built it. Same fundamentals.

Ed Mathews:

Part of this is that I'm literally writing a presentation for a group of folks that I'm mentoring in October, and I'm literally writing about standard operating procedures right now and why they're so important. So, in terms of the business, we started off flipping houses. Obviously, that went extremely well. It sounds like you evolved that into a rental business and now we're into private equity. Talk me through that maturation cycle, and it seems like you talk about going full-time three years ago, but that's not when you started the business, right? Let's talk about where you started and the journey to get to where you are today?

Casey Gregersen:

Absolutely yeah. So I'll give you in a nutshell how I built the property management company and, as I mentioned, that had been like 2020 COVID, right. The other one that I built a couple of years before that was direct to seller. So up until about 2019, I was finding deals like on market. I could go find a distressed property, fix it up. I was doing just commercial loans and I could go a lot of different ways today, but that's been one I'll give you in 30 seconds.

Casey Gregersen:

But one of the best things I did early on was I started working in small banks and, instead of going to big mortgage brokers, I went to a small bank locally in the town I was investing in and I did a deal with them. They got to know me. So I did a lot of deals like that where I'd buy it on the market, fix it up, rent it out or buy it, fix it and flip it Right. But I started building that. But then, as the market started to heat up, I realized I was buying from wholesalers. Actually, this is how it started. So I'm buying from wholesalers in DFW and I'm like man, there's deals that I'm actually losing money on a flip and those guys still made money on the front end, right. I'm like, how do I figure out how to do that? This group out in Midland they were called the REI Game Changers. At the time I met them presenting on the strategy back in like 2017 in Midland in the little cafe presenting on the burst strategy. But I got to know them. They built out this training course for wholesaling. So I went and took their course the best $11,000 I've ever invested because I literally had to close one single deal to pay for that course. So, anyway, I started doing direct mail, texting, facebook ads, paper lead. We've even done radio. A ton of direct mail has been one of our best ones and yeah, so we built that company out. So that was in 2019.

Casey Gregersen:

And I built it out in a market like Wyoming where there was nobody doing any marketing right. There weren't any wholesalers back in 29th Louis and even today there's not a whole lot. So that started leading up my deal funnel right. So again, now I feel like I can find the deal. I can manage it long-term Now.

Casey Gregersen:

The one in the middle, which I think was one of the biggest problems I had to solve, was instructing. I mean, everyone struggles with contractors everywhere, but in Wyoming especially, they're just not enough. And honestly, that's why I love the market so much because the construction can't keep up with the demand. Right, there's not enough contractors and there's still a lot of people that want to live up there, especially since post COVID. Right, they want to be up there but they can't keep up with the demand.

Casey Gregersen:

So I had to figure out how do I make my business more predictable. And again it came down to as soon as I can get enough rental properties and enough flips going on, I can afford a full-time person. I'm going to hire him, cause then at least I got one guy I can rely upon. So that's what I did. I hired the first one, he hired some just kind of laborers and subs, and then I hired the second one and third one, fourth one. So now today I have four to five different breweries working on all of our four pipes. They're spread out throughout the region. That way I can be getting.

Casey Gregersen:

If I got a rental property that needs a quick little handyman, I send a guy over there, like I can move quick. And the biggest thing is on my fix-it clips. Now I bring so much more predictability across the business, right, even in my buy-in holds that I know I got to fix up or rent out. I've added so much more predictability on timelines, right and budgets. So now when I actually go look at a deal, I'm sure you'd probably agree, ed, one of the biggest risks, like when you're doing construction or value add, is like are you going to be on target? Are you going to hit your scope? Are you going to hit your timelines? Carrying costs, sir, and it was continually like the only when we were like doing after action reviews, we're looking back, we're like this is where we're missing, because we were working with a GC, or we missed this or missed that, or we are over timeline. So anyway, it was one I iterated and fixed.

Casey Gregersen:

But to answer your question of like how it goes full circle, I found in Wyoming it was really hard and then I fought it for a long time just trying to be like I want to wholesale, like all my peers that I'm learning from are they're just finding deals, locking them up and wholesaling them and not doing any work and they're making whatever 20, 30, $40,000 a pop. And in my market it was just hard for me to find in cash buyers. But then I realized, wait, I don't get to have a bulk ways right because I have way less competition. There's not a bunch of wholesalers competing with, but there's also not a whole lot of buyers like investor buyers.

Casey Gregersen:

So my solution to that was raise more money, take more deals down myself, because if I could find a deal I could do the construction, I can manage the property. Now it just becomes my solvable problem was we need to raise enough capital to take down these deals, because the retail market in our markets in Wyoming and Montana there's still plenty of people buying. You just got to be the guy that fixes it up and gets it there. So that's where kind of Bitcoin Capital Fund came into play. It's like I got to have a way to scale, keep growing and deploy more money on deals because it gets expensive, right?

Ed Mathews:

You've mentioned a couple of things along the way here that I want to unpack. One of them was predictability in terms of your construction, so tell me more about that. I think I have a preconceived notion of what you're talking about but I'm going to make you explain it instead.

Casey Gregersen:

So when a deal comes in my pipeline, my acquisitions team gets a deal and they're bringing it to me and we're trying to figure out okay, how much is this going to cost? What's the timeline? We now know that I'm talking to the guy that's going to do the work and he's quoting it and I know his schedule, I control his schedule and that's probably the biggest thing I'm going to get at is I get to control the schedule. Versus most fixing flippers, or even if it's your first one, you find a deal that on paper, it looks like you're buying it at the right price. Let's just say you got a good price for the rehab budget and you know the ARV. You're like, okay, this deal makes sense, but who's going to come do the work and when are they going to go do the work?

Casey Gregersen:

And you just talked about holding costs. Right, I can time these things out and it just brings so much more predictability to my investors, right. And the guys I partner with, I'm like, hey, guys, when I say this is our timeline, this is our budget and I know we can actually hit it because it's not a third party. I'm relying upon those guys. They got to make money, they got to appease, I don't know, four or five, maybe 10 different clients. I just like the control and the predictability that they're in-house guys. It's just so valuable, Even if you just purely timeline, even if it's not cost. Fortunately I get cost and timeline or control.

Ed Mathews:

Yeah, some of the other things that we've also done. I've done both. I've done the captive contractor relationship, where they're pretty much working for us, although they're separate they're in a 1099, not a W-2. And we've also brought people on and I'll tell you that was a dream for the exact reason you just laid out Because between balancing the flips and the rental properties, we could always keep them busy and there was always an expert hand that we could throw at a problem and get it solved very quickly with somebody that we knew and trusted. The other things that we have done over the years is, you know, having the same labor is huge, but also we use the same materials everywhere same cabinets, same flooring, same paint, all of that and I'm curious, is that something that you do as well?

Casey Gregersen:

We have not taken the time to completely like. We have same general paint and flooring, same paint, all of that and I'm curious is that something that you do as well? We have not taken the time to completely like. We have same general paint and flooring, but our deals are so diverse. Right, every remodel and new construction is very tempting and exciting for me, and we want to do more of it for that exact reason.

Ed Mathews:

But remodels are.

Casey Gregersen:

Yeah, they're so different and I even like our like, like even my guys, I love they finally think like me, right, Like it was so cool we were at. We have every year we have base camp and we bring all our teams together. This last year we were right outside Park City in Evansville, Wyoming, had everybody there and it was cool hearing those guys talk about they're like we got a fix and they're they've just I've just trained these guys. They budget everything and they know they get rewarded in there. They just and they're just principally rewarded.

Casey Gregersen:

We created a competition right, we're being on budget right and be able to keep our costs down. So ultimately they just I give them really full autonomy. They'll work with an agent to make sure they don't go do something crazy or ridiculous thing and sell right, but yeah, I give them a lot of autonomy to go figure out, like, what is going to make sense, Because the other thing is sourcing right, Wyoming it's a lot harder to sort materials, so it's like we got to put together what's available and I give them the freedom.

Ed Mathews:

And so how far out are you in terms of ordering materials and things like that? Is it just in time, or are you building inventory, or how do?

Casey Gregersen:

you do that we would love. We're eventually going to get to that point. So I did a 66 unit value add and we probably touched almost 30 to 40 of those units. So on that one we were able to order a bunch of cabinets, order countertops, order appliances, order windows, right flooring and we had enough space to where we could do it. We're doing it now on a hotel conversion up in Wheatland, wyoming, where I was just visiting a couple of weeks ago, and one of the units is all loaded up. When you can do it right, it does save them a lot of time. But we work with Home Depot. They're probably a pretty good distributor to get stuff, but the majority of the time if it's a fix and flip, they just they go get what they need at Home Depot or whatever else and they go.

Ed Mathews:

Yeah, it's interesting. I was just talking to a buddy of mine down in New Jersey who does this and he was doing so many flips and converting so many apartments over the last five, six years. He ended up buying a kitchen cabinet distributorship. He's his own biggest customer, so it's, but he's getting them at manufactured direct prices. I was like, wow, that's really smart. But he's a lot bigger than me, so maybe I'll just buy from him instead, which is actually what he was trying to do. That's tempting. It is right Because it actually, in terms of cash outlay, as long as you can commit to a specific amount of sales which you have access to, because you know what your sales were in terms of your material costs last year, In the last two, three years, you know exactly what they were and you know what your pipeline looks like, so you know what it's going to look like more or less in the future. All you have to do is commit to a certain level of purchases from the manufacturer and they'll approve you for distributorship.

Casey Gregersen:

Wow, you just gave me a new project for one of my one of my project.

Ed Mathews:

All right. So let's move on to the lightning round here, and I'm always curious about folks that have reached a certain level of success. The mortgage is paid, the car payments are taken care of, the kid's, college education is all lined up, things are good, right, and nevertheless you get out of bed on Monday morning and dive right back into the office, and so for me that comes down to purpose, because it's not money that's driving you anymore, it's something else, and I'm curious what that is in your life.

Casey Gregersen:

Yeah, it's two parts, right it's. I still am driven by still having even more freedom, like I'm still in the building phase and building out different attorneys. The latest thing and I'll explain it with the latest thing I'm building, but I'm building. But I'm really excited for the day where I can do a lot more public speaking and help more people, which I guess that's the purpose, and I'll explain a little bit more. Back to that COVID scenario.

Casey Gregersen:

I told you about where I was at home. 40% of our team was getting laid off. I'll never forget the conversations I was having with my colleagues. They're about like, oh man, what's going to happen if they call my number? What am I going to do? Obviously, no one's hiring right now, or not. There's not many jobs right now in oil and gas. What are we going to do? And they weren't building this off ramp to go right into real estate. They had given everything. They just had their 401k and maybe their severance and they were going to have to figure it out. So I just realized at that time that while it was really fun building out these companies, building out my direct-to-seller company, building out construction, building out property management, what I found was those conversations.

Casey Gregersen:

And now since then, like anytime, like right now, I'll give you an example. Last night I went and did a presentation here in North Houston and I was presenting on the revive method and if anybody's interested later I'll share a link. It's a way we structure our fix and flips and we're able to de-risk almost every fix and flip because we partner with a seller. All right, but anyway, I'm giving the presentation and I'm sharing my story, and there's several other oil and gas folks in there that are still working 12-hour shifts, like I am. They're still in the grind and being able to connect with them afterward. So my next workshop is in October. It's in Houston and I'm like come to the workshop Because what I built this workshop around was helping families achieve financial freedom.

Casey Gregersen:

So they're like my perfect avatar of folks that are still working their W-2. They're doing well, right, but they want something more. But a lot of times they don't have time and I had to get older and more mature and realize and more self-awareness to realize not everybody's like me. On their off days they want to maybe chill out and go to the lake. You guys want to throw a hook in the water. That's right, exactly. They're not all built, like me, but I still want to be able to help those folks to where they could still. They're still doing really well and they still have an opportunity if they just knew how.

Casey Gregersen:

And I'm telling you like I'm lighting up right now, just thinking about the first workshop, because there were so many things to be covered. First off, we helped them like what is your 10-year vision? Let's actually get together, get around the right people, take some time and think about that vision. Where are you going? That was the first core thing we did, and the second thing was now how do we start to get there? What do we do over the next 90 days?

Casey Gregersen:

And this is where I get lighted up, because I'm like I've just been through it. I know what banks they should be talking to, how they should be leveraging their credit, zero percentage credit cards, leveraging self-directed IRAs, all these different ways that they can deploy money that they already have that they probably don't even realize they have, and deploy it into real estate or other avenues. So that's a cup I really like, because I've been doing it forever and I'm like I know your position. I've been doing it forever and I'm like I know your position. I've been there. Let me help you start to create financial freedom. I want people to be able to make the decision I made. I finally, after 12 years or whatever, decided I was going to choose family over my work. Right, and I want everyone even if now's not the right time, I'm not at all proponent about everyone burn the ships, quit your W-2. I just want you to be able to have that choice Right on.

Ed Mathews:

Yeah, it's the whole concept of time freedom. You don't realize how amazing and important it is. I have kids, you have kids, but even a spouse or a life partner or whatever. My grandfather said it best, and that was you only get 18 summers with them. I was like, oh yeah, you're right. And I'm at the end of that cycle where my youngest is starting her senior year of high school on Tuesday, so she's gone. And the older one is graduating from college in four months, so she's gone.

Ed Mathews:

And so now my wife and I are looking at each other Okay, we still like each other, so that's cool. But now what? Having that time freedom to be able to go to that parent-teacher conference or the soccer game or go on vacation and not have to sweat or even ask a boss? Hey, I'm going to take 10 days off and we're going to go to Hawaii, is that okay? There is no, is that okay? That conversation is happening at your dinner table, not in a conference room, right, that's right. So and that is probably the most valuable thing that I got out of this whole experience and sounds like you're similar is that time freedom is just immeasurably valuable.

Casey Gregersen:

Oh yeah, exactly so if I can wake up every morning helping more people feel that same feeling, because a lot of people don't even know what it feels like yeah, they think in future state, when I'm 65, this is going to be awesome.

Ed Mathews:

No, you can do it when you're 40, if you want. Yeah, you can only affect today and tomorrow. So I'm also curious about the mentors that you've had in your life. You mentioned the wholesaling training that you got, but I'm sure there have been other really important people in your life that have guided you along the way or kicked you in the pants when you needed it. I'm curious what's the best advice you ever?

Casey Gregersen:

got and who gave it to you. I'll give you a unique one. It was in a tough time where I was doing a bunch of fixed flips and we were using hard money and we were combining with private money and it was going really well. But all of a sudden, we hit some bumps in the road and properties wouldn't sell. I literally had to call my hard money lenders and I had two of them. One of them was like a shark and they were absolutely terrible as well, but one was really good to me and he's the one I want to share. He gave me good advice. He goes Casey, because I called him up. I'm like John. His name's John. I'm like John, we're in trouble. I can't get these properties sold and we got to get properties moved and I need some flexibility on our payments. He goes all right, casey, that sucks. I'm sorry. I wish I could say I haven't, but I've been there and he's like all you can do now is drop price. You need all those properties on the market. You need to drop them 10,000 every week until you get it sold and could keep dropping. So that's what we did. We dropped them After three or four weeks. It just keep dropping. So that's what we did. We dropped them. After three or four weeks it finally sold and to this day I've just learned that whenever I go and I list the flip, and it's actually why back to that revive method.

Casey Gregersen:

The revive method is a strategy I do now to fix some flip properties and it's again I'll share. I can share a video, maybe in the notes of more about it. But I was thinking about that the other day when I was doing this property where I'm partnering with the seller, to where now the house isn't selling. And I'll tell you, as a fixed flipper and those of you guys have done it, the worst feeling ever is when you've got a property that you just finished flipping right. You've got through all the contractor stuff and fixed it up.

Casey Gregersen:

It's on the market and you're all excited and guess what? You don't get any offers. One week, next week, no offers. Now all you're showing start going away and you're just sitting there stagnant, like, oh my gosh. I got to go back to John's advice. I just got to drop 10,000. Keep dropping. But the revive method helps me. We can drop price because we're doing a profit share with a seller and we could still make our money. Anyway, that's the advice I always think about. Is that guy could have been like the other lenders, have been like I'm foreclosing on you tomorrow and been really difficult. But he's no you, I underwrote this deal correctly. I'm still going to make money. So Casey dropped this house until you could sell it, and then you got paid back. Yep Good advice.

Ed Mathews:

So, from a, I fundamentally believe and I've learned this in the years and years that I've been in the actually probably teenage years where I made the most mistakes, but over the course of my career, I fundamentally believe that we learn way more from the mistakes we make than from the successes that we have. And so I'm curious about a decision that you've, professional decision that you've made over the years, that you look back and go man, I'd love to have that back and what'd you do?

Casey Gregersen:

about it. I'll tie it to that kind of same story. Right, we were buying properties in and around like Fort Worth, around like the campus, like TCU, and we were buying them at a good price. We had a good GC. It was actually doing a really good job for us, so we would buy them cheap, fix them up, and we were refinancing, getting all our money back. And we did it on four or five properties and we got this sort of false sense of wow, what do you do? It's not easy, but let's nail it.

Casey Gregersen:

Here we go and again I'm like path leading my W-2. But we started going and we're like, all right, let's now go do some fix and flips at higher price points, which again got away from exactly what we were doing. Well, and let's go hire a project manager to put these together, cause now our current GC is probably not there. He was doing these houses that were buying for a hundred, putting in 80 and selling an ARB was like two, 40, right, low price points. But now we're going in some houses that were like five, six, 700,000, completely different animal. And so new crews knew everything. And that's where it started to unwind is now new contractors and they weren't following through and the biggest wine is now new contractors and they weren't following through. And the biggest here's.

Casey Gregersen:

The biggest decision is like when those properties wouldn't sell, I had no choice but to do what John said drop 10,000, drop 10 and lose money. What I learned was in Wyoming I was having the opposite right. I was still able to buy houses at maybe 150,000, put 50 into it and sell it for 300. But those houses, if you're fixing and flipping things are inherently you're going to miss stuff, especially when you work with GC and you don't have your own. But on those houses I didn't have to take a bath, I just refinanced, put a tenant in there and I could cover the debt.

Casey Gregersen:

So this is a long way of saying I wish I would've told myself back then Casey, always have two exit strategies, right. Don't go do a fixing float where your only exit is to sell at that ARV, because if you miss the ARV you miss the contractors, all these things that happen, and you only have one out right. So I always try to have the two exit strategies. Or I do that other thing, which is the revive method, where I'm not taking all the risk. The seller is going to, they're going to make a little bit less on a deal like that Every single one has a curve ball, every single one.

Ed Mathews:

If I find the one that doesn't have a curve ball, it goes exactly as planned. You're going to be able to hear me. All you have to do is open your window, because I'll be shouting from the hills because I've yet to find one, and I've been doing it a while Plan A, plan B, sometimes plan C and plan D as well, sometimes plan C and plan D as well. So, yeah, that's excellent advice. So how do you take in information Like what is the proverbial book on your nightstand and who, specifically are you paying attention to these days?

Casey Gregersen:

Yeah, I've been really fortunate. I joined the sub two community a couple of years ago. I just started diving in and I was already doing deals. I got into it and I was surprised at how much content there was out there, and I've since joined Pace Owners Club. So there's about three or 400 people that have joined that and it's all the higher level people from the Sub2 community. That's where I like listening in.

Casey Gregersen:

Pace spends a little bit more time with that group and he's able to give us access to his resources and, like his marketing guys, he just brings a lot of other people in so they just have weekly calls and blend, so they just have weekly calls. And that's where I just listened to one last night. He's done a lot of good things, but one thing he's great at is vision and marketing, and those are two things that get me excited and just hearing that. I've always just loved listening to webinars or workshops or whatever, or books and learning and implementing, because I'm like, hey, all right, I can hear something and I could see it and I can go do it.

Casey Gregersen:

It could be a flaw too, cause if I go to like here, in a couple of weeks I'll get a collective genius, which is a high level mastermind. I'm in and I'm going to get 50 ideas that I want to do and I'm going to be like we're going to do all these and I'll go back to my team and they're like all right, casey, my COO, like what he can filter them. But I just love being able to bring in information like that, adapt being always course correcting, right, yeah, and adapt or die right yeah.

Casey Gregersen:

I couldn't agree more.

Ed Mathews:

I'm a similar personality. When I go on vacation, it's the most dangerous thing ever when I come back, because I come back with 30 different ideas. My operations person would be like time out. Let's pick one, all right.

Ed Mathews:

Like all right, that's her big mantra. Let's pick one. I don't know which one to pick, so I'll let you. Eventually I get around to it. Last question in the lightning round I'm always interested in learning about how people define the pillars of their life. Right, I'm curious how you define. I suspect I actually know thinking about it, but how do you define success in your life?

Casey Gregersen:

Think about this for my kids. I think about what I don't think is successful and what drives me nuts, and it's when people won't just move forward, take action and go with it. To me, if you are constantly pushing forward, iterating, going for it even if you aren't successful originally, I love it, and I heard this from Chip Gaines years ago in his book everything I go out and do, it's a win-win. Either way, I either go and crush it and I do well and I'm excited and successful, or I do it and I'm not as successful, but I learn something and then iterate and get better.

Casey Gregersen:

You don't have to win every single one of them, but to me, success is getting up every day and going for it, trying something new right and giving it everything you got. I always tell my kids love sports and more athletic than most. There's always going to be somebody faster, bigger, stronger than you, but you control how hard you work and if you outwork everyone, that's the one thing you control right. Outwork every single person out there, and that's going to apply on the sports field, that's going to apply in business and in life. So I would say it's a combination of taking action and failing forward, but also everything you have needs to be followed.

Ed Mathews:

Yeah, jay Wright, who's the retired basketball coach of Villanova, always talks about you can control two things on the athletic field, and 100%. I couldn't agree with you more is that everything else is a reaction, but those two things you bring to the athletic field, the business scenario, whatever, even relationships. I couldn't agree more. Difference between and I tell my kids difference between good and great is hard work. It's all it is. You get on some of these athletic fields or swimming pools or whatever sport your kids are into, and there's a lot of talented kids, but you can tell the ones that work and the ones that just rely on the talent. It becomes obvious. So when you're not conquering the real estate world, what do you like to do for fun?

Casey Gregersen:

Yeah, this is an easy one. I'm in the middle of it right now and I wish I could do it all the time, but it's coaching my son's football team or any sports. I love coaching the kids all four boys and that's why I love keep having boys, since I just get more and more boys sports to coach. But yeah, my favorite is football. Right Right now I'm coaching tackle football. I've got a sixth grader and being able to like break down, film and go to practice. People get paid to do that. I would do that If everything would just be covering. I could spend half of my day getting ready for football and in practice and prepping. You can't beat it. There's so much fun.

Ed Mathews:

You have to talk to your wife one more and you get a starting five for basketball, too, working. Yeah, there you go. I'm working on her, all right, man? Hey, I've really enjoyed the conversation and getting to know you a little bit. If people want to get in touch with you and learn more about you, or a Bitcoin capital fund or any of your other businesses, what's the best way to do that?

Casey Gregersen:

Yeah, I'll give you guys a couple options depending on where you're at. If you're on Instagram or YouTube or anything, it's really easy. I'm just , you'll be able to find me. Just make sure you spell my last name with all E and you'll find me. Also LinkedIn If you guys are on LinkedIn, just search my name. If you guys are just like, hey, I want to like directly reach out to Casey because I'm interested in his summit, or interested in Big Horn Capital, or just hey, I want to talk to you about the revive method, how you start to be able to whatever it, I'll just give you my number it's 307-317-2494.

Casey Gregersen:

And you mentioned your summit real quick. Why don't you tell us about that real quick before we sign off? You bet yeah. So our next one. We do them every quarter, but the next one's here in Houston October 23rd and it's a two-day workshop. So if anybody wants to come down, it's actually incredibly affordable. Now, eventually, we want to grow and scale these things, but right now I just want to get the right people in the room. I just want to cover my costs to do the events, because to me it's like I want to have the right people in there and then I want to see what grows after that, because right now our first one. I've stayed in contact with all those people that came to the first summit. You guys could swing it and make it to Houston. The first group loved it and I would love to have some of your audience there. Houston's real nice in the fall, that's right. We'll come in July, so I'm like this end of the fall will be great All right, casey, thank you so much.

Ed Mathews:

It's really good to see you and I wish you nothing but continued success. Be well

Casey Gregersen:

Awesome.

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