Funds on Fire
Welcome to Funds on Fire, hosted by Devin Robinson—a seasoned fund manager with years of experience launching, managing, and scaling multiple successful investment funds. Devin has also helped numerous entrepreneurs ignite their own fund ventures. This podcast is your go-to guide for mastering the world of investment funds and capital raising.
In each episode, Devin dives deep into the essential aspects of fund management, SEC compliance, and strategic capital raising, sharing the insights that have powered his own success. Alongside solo episodes filled with practical advice, you’ll hear from top fund managers whose funds are truly on fire. These industry leaders reveal the strategies, tactics, and stories behind their remarkable success.
Whether you’re an emerging fund manager or a seasoned professional aiming for greater heights, Funds on Fire delivers the knowledge and inspiration you need to take your funds to the next level. Subscribe today and turn your financial ambitions into a blazing success!
Funds on Fire
Raising Capital Through Social Media with Casey Gregerson's | Ep. 6
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Casey Gregerson shares his journey from oil industry engineer to real estate fund manager operating in the untapped markets of Wyoming and Montana. He reveals how leveraging social media for capital raising and having a mission to help 100 families achieve passive income goals has transformed his business model.
• Discovering Wyoming's competitive advantage as a market with minimal competition
• Transitioning from quarterback to engineer to fund manager using similar leadership skills
• Learning risk management and capital allocation strategies from 12 years in oil and gas
• Buying and turning around distressed franchises before applying those skills to real estate
• Creating content that builds trust with investors before the first conversation
• Developing the Passive Investing Playbook to educate potential investors
• Working with both individual investors and family offices depending on deal size
• Using vulnerability and sharing losses to create authenticity and credibility
• Launching a hybrid fund model with fix-and-flip plus long-term hold strategies
Check out Casey's free Passive Investing Playbook at caseygregerson.com or find him on social media to learn more about creating passive income through real estate.
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Introduction to Casey Gregerson
Speaker 1On today's episode I interview a good friend of mine. His name is Casey Gregerson, out of Bighorn Capital out in Texas. He lives out in Houston but he also operates in Wyoming, which is really cool because you don't hear many people operating out in Wyoming which is almost like a little bit of a secret sauce for him. So it's really cool to see what he's doing out there, how he's changing the game and how he's providing massive, massive upside for his investors and then what we really dive into that. One thing I love is we dive into raising capital with social media. So he really talks about the minutia of how to post, when to post the things that you should be posting, and how you can start attracting investors that way, and it talks about a really, really unique and cool method of getting people in the door to build massive trust with them that then end up being investors into his funds. And so I love to be able to chat with Casey, good friend of mine. I think he's done fantastic things. He has a huge history in oil and gas, does a lot of multifamily stuff right now and single family stuff and absolutely killing it. So I'm so excited for you guys to dive into this episode and it means the absolute world that you're here. So thank you so much. Enjoy the episode.
Speaker 1Welcome to another episode. I'm just excited to dive in because Casey is one. I think, casey, I would consider you a good friend of mine and I'm thankful for that man. We have known each other gosh I guess around three years now. We're in the same mastermind and it's funny because I feel like we've done a lot of the same things. Whenever in our mastermind people want to ask about social media or capital raising or funds or anything like that, they either go to me or you, and it's really cool because we've been able to grow together. We continue to leverage the same things. We both love things like artificial intelligence or scaling up with social media, raising capital, all that stuff.
Wyoming Operations and Competitive Advantage
Speaker 1But, casey, one thing I love about you are two things. One, I love how much of a family man you are. You always bring your family to the events. I get to meet and chat with your wife and see your kids. And then I also love just how genuine you are. You've been a really great friend to me and always so open and helpful and always so open and just a real go-giver for other people as well and so super excited to have you on here. Talk a little bit about your past, like what you've done in the past and then what you continue to do, because I think in our mastermind a lot of people they may not know and then they also see, you know, ours is more of a single family mastermind, but you're also in multifamily oil and gas, things like that. So, and your funds, that you're starting running and operating, and so I'd love to be able to chat about some of those and dive in. But really excited man, tell the people who you are and where you're from and what you do.
Speaker 2Man, you nailed it All right man, I do a lot of podcasts, but nobody can quite out top that introduction.
Speaker 1Devin Appreciate it man, you deserve it.
Speaker 2You hit it. You hit it well, man. Very similar, very similar paths we've had. I think we've had similar, really good mentors and people who have taught us. But yeah, a quick background is I grew up in Wyoming but today I worked in oil and gas for 12 years. That's what brought me to Houston and actually still today live here in Houston. So a lot of people are like wait, you're in Houston, but all your deals and all your markets in Wyoming and Montana.
Speaker 2But it's been very intentional because that's been like our niche. That I love because there's not a lot of competition. Because we go direct to seller, we also have in-house construction and we do property management. Because we go direct to seller, we also have in-house construction and we do property management. And a lot of that's out of me being an entrepreneur and wanting to build it out and be able to control the process and really help our investors and our people that are in my funds. But also, at times it's been out of necessity because there is a lack of contractors, there's a lack of good property management companies and there's no wholesalers. I always tell this story like I wanted to buy wholesale deals in Wyoming when I was working and doing deals in Texas, but there wasn't any. So we're like, all right, let's go figure it out ourselves.
Speaker 1Yeah, that's awesome, man, and I think everybody because you always are the only person doing anything in Wyoming, and so that's really a competitive advantage for you because you're the only one doing it out there. And one thing I know too, because we've talked about this in the past, is that actually has generated I think, almost even accelerated your growth into other assets, because of the fact that people would come to you and they'd say, hey, I see you doing this thing. Either you want to partner on this. Have you thought about this? Things like that, have you felt like that's been to your advantage?
Speaker 2Absolutely. Yeah, man. And just leaning into content over the last several years, right, I remember we made that conscious decision like four years ago, like, hey, we're going to be consistent, we're going to really do this. And like. One example I would love to share is like it was in Laramie. This is a town where it's where I bought my first rental property in 2010. And a smaller kind of community. It's where the University of Wyoming is the only four year school in in Laramie and it's really tight, right, like when I was the first wholesaler there, like there was a lot of pushback. There still is this day.
Speaker 2Right, people, people don't understand what we do and and anyway, that's a different subject. But point is like I had one of the like. This is like the leading like land development guy. He's actually has a surveying company, an engineering company, there in Laramie and he reached out because he had seen my content and it was so cool Cause, like I was, this was a guy I was like man if I had to reach out to him on a couple other jobs, and I was just trying to get his attention and get his help.
Speaker 2Well, all of a sudden, he comes to me one day. He's like Casey, we need to get on a call Laramie, where they need like there's not enough developers. There's all these people and businesses that want to come into Laramie but there's not enough capital and I don't know how to put this together, but I see what you're doing on social media. He's like dude, how do we work together? How do we? How do we go develop? Cause he was already working all these deals from the land entitlement to like the construction, but he just was like I need somebody like you, casey, that thinks bigger and we can go put this whole project together.
Speaker 1That's cool. And that's cool because I think, ultimately, it comes down to the connections. Right, it's not what you know, it's who you know, which I think is just the most important part of it. And so it's so interesting because, like, when we look at your past right, so you grew up in a small town in Wyoming, and it reading your bio Cause we like to make sure we top that up I'm actually pretty curious because you were a quarterback on a state championship football. Is that right, yep?
From Football Quarterback to Business Leader
Speaker 1Yeah so and you also did the whole like math thing. So where do you see, Cause, like what I think is, I think there's a ton of a ton of connections and inner intersections between athletics and then just like excelling at a high level in business but then also having like that math experience where you did all that stuff when do you see that stuff translating and how has it shaped your approach to business and investing?
Speaker 2Yeah, it's kind of funny. It makes me think about like when I was doing my college interviews for it was actually to interview for Shell, which was my first job out of college, and I remember them like they would go through all these interview questions and everybody's all nervous, but when I got in there I just started sharing all these stories from like playing football, right, and being on a team and I played quarterback right, I was one of the leaders on the team and it was I was able to draw from all these stories and like the interviews like they just nailed them and I didn't realize at the time. But like, yeah, it was.
Speaker 2From like being on the battlefield, working, especially playing in college athletics, like you're, that was like a full-time job and you had to take it really serious and you did it all the time it was it'd be. I mean, I loved high school sports, just like anybody. I love my kids sports today, right, but like you kind of try to do everything, but when you get into college, it's like you got to focus on one and it becomes more of a job. So there's good and bad things about that, but I think it taught me a ton about being disciplined and really like honing your craft and getting really good at one thing right, and then, I think, being able to take that in and now I'm applied into my career right, I'm still a competitive guy, right, I still love winning, right, and then, but just, I've always been a math and a numbers guy and I don't know.
Speaker 2Yeah, I think it's probably been a little bit of. My unique advantage is like hey, I'm a competitive, athletic, personable guy and know how to lead teams, but just by nature I love math and I love numbers and I love spreadsheets. So I don't know.
Speaker 1It's kind of my jam and they just add up and I think, like I really do think that's. I mean that's covered, that's covered. Let me look down my next progression. And so you're always seeing ahead, looking ahead at what's to come, and I think that's interesting because you mentioned, I think you said, you worked at Shell Oil Company, and so if you spend around a decade with one of the largest players in the industry sector, like, what key lessons about capital allocation, risk management, did you take from a corporate environment into now, into your own funds with oil and gas and even into the real estate stuff that you're doing?
Speaker 2Yeah, man, so many parallels. And last thing, back to the quarterback thing. I think about it a lot, like I even talked to, like my kids when, like they're playing the position, I'm like there's not a more cerebral position in all of sports and it's it's kind of cool looking back on it to where, like, just even like the preparation for games and the amount of film you watched and how you understand, understand it, and then when you watch people that do at a high level, it's a different, it's different than anything else. And and I don't know those lessons and apply it to business. But back to these learnings with Shell, absolutely In corporate America, like so Shell as an engineer, as a drilling engineer we were, so our job was to go drill and frack these wells Time out, time out really quickly.
Speaker 1So I just got done watching Landman and I'm like hooked. I'm like this is awesome. I think of myself, I'm like I want to go invest in some oil and gas. This seems very, very interesting. How close is that show to like what it actually is? Because you're talking about like an engineer and I'm very curious if you've seen the show, what character would you closely relate to? As far as like what you did for show?
Speaker 2Oh man, such a good question that you haven't had so first off, incredibly factual. Like watching that, like I was pinching myself I've told this to so many people, even especially to my wife, like my wife wasn't actually out there in the field, but she lived.
Speaker 2we lived in midland, right right where that story is taking place, like I know midland from uh friday night lights exactly oh, yeah, man, or like even, like it's funny, even we lived on the golf course when we were there in green tree and I swear that that's like the little golf course they're depicting where, like, the big owners got this spot in the golf club right, so, like even them in the pool we're like that looks like the pool we used to live in. But anyway, yeah, dude, so it's. It's incredibly factual. Like I was telling my wife at the time, like I'm like this was everything, like every day when I left to go out to the field. Like that was me. So your answer is the main character. Right, billy bob thornton, like I was in that truck driving out to the field. Right, I wasn't a land man, I was actually the engineer, which is the long kind of heavy guy that's a little bit rough around the edges um that was actually my job, right, but I was.
Speaker 2I more relate to billy bob thornton because I was going out there checking on things every day. Um, in some of my roles also at times with the cartel.
Speaker 2Yeah, I did not ever have to deal with the cartel, but I say that, though that's the only thing that is a little bit embellished. But, that said, when I worked in South Texas, I remember we would go back on these lease roads and it was closer to the border of Mexico and I remember they're like do not, because we would go on this ranch that had all this security. But they're basically like you go to the location and it would be like you'd get off the main road and you go on this dirt road for probably sometimes like 20 minutes and you'd be hoping you didn't get lost. But they're like if you run, if you see if somebody else tries to pull up and talk to you, like do not talk to anyone, Right, and a lot of people definitely were carrying and it was like it was.
Speaker 2They took it serious because there were people that were. Yeah, there were some pretty crazy stories about people getting like jumped or taken away or anyway. Yeah, I won't go into the gory parts, but it was. It was rough. You stayed in your lane and got to that location as fast as you could as going the speed limit as fast as you could I can imagine.
Speaker 1I can imagine now, do you and I'm curious because I know you do a lot of real estate stuff, so we'll talk talk about real estate in a minute Do you currently have anything that you're investing into or anything that you're either like LPG peeing with in in the oil and gas industry right now, or have you moved most of your stuff into real estate, cause I know you do a lot of multifamily and things like that?
Speaker 2Yeah, and you know what I haven't, and then I'll. I'll answer your other question too you said earlier and loop it to this so I actually have not invested in any other as an LP or GP in oil and gas and man, it still kind of scares me and I'm a pretty aggressive investor. I mean, we've always learned how to mitigate risk which is actually the answer to your earlier question is like one of the biggest things I learned working for Shell was they did this extremely over the top, honestly, at times where I'm like how does shell make any money? Because we say no to every single thing and we can't be, we can't be adaptive, like, okay, I'll share this story.
Speaker 2So I had a job in west texas in in midland. My job was because I was an engineer. I'd worked and done the operations, my we had all these jv ventures with shell, with like anadarko, oxy, all these other big companies in the permian Basin, right, so we had access to their data of like all their reports and everything they did. So my job was I was called a competitive intelligence engineer. So my job was to go look at every analyze, like all their reports and all their costs and all everything they were doing because we were a JV partner and feel like, okay, now what can we do? What learnings can we take from these other operators that are really good? And at Shell, at a big company like Shell, we were terrible. Right, because we were. Shell was built on drilling these big wells in the Gulf of Mexico, these super complicated or in the North Sea or all across the world. Right, we weren't small enough to adapt, to be like these little companies in West Texas that were smaller, had less overhead, less like guidelines, right. So my job was to try to go, hey, what can we do that they're doing and how can we apply it to Shell? So that was my job.
Speaker 2But I mean, I guess the not so exciting or frustrating part was I went out and did it. I'm like, hey, this is what they're doing, here's the analysis, here's how we could save like millions of dollars like on our wells, doing exactly what they're doing. There's here. Well, here's how we mitigate it, and I built this whole project out. And then we get 10 people in a room which is this is why I hated corporate america.
Speaker 2You get 10 people in this room, all poking holes in it, and I'm like I've mitigated this guys, I know it and I've looked into it and this is safe and we're gonna make money and, yes, can we mitigate every last little thing from it? It's like an attorney, right. When you go talk to an attorney, they're going to tell you every reason why you can't like, yeah, but we could also never do anything. But anyway, I built this all out, they turned it down and I'm like at that point I was pretty demotivated. But point is like, yeah, you've got it, we learn how to mitigate risk and I've definitely taken that and apply that big time in investing. Right, if you know the numbers, if you know the risks, you just got to be like, hey, what can we mitigate and what can't we, and then we can make a safe decision.
Franchising and Business Turnarounds
Speaker 1Yeah, that's awesome. Now I know you've gone from working in a corporate environment like Shell to being a passive investor and then you moved into owning. I think you said you sold over 50 properties and seven Pure Bar franchises in less than five years. I'm really, really interested in for you. Franchising isn't typically associated with fund managers or what they have. You've bought and sold those franchises. What did the experience teach you about turning around distressed assets like single family and franchises, and how do you apply that to like the real estate stuff that you do now as you go into multifamily, and even just what you've been currently doing? Because you've gone through the risk mitigation, you've learned a ton in that sector and then now you've almost like it seems like you almost went in a completely different area.
Speaker 2Yeah, for sure, man, and it's definitely. It's a long, I'll give you the cliff notes, but the quick thing is, when I was doing the franchises at, the biggest lessons I took there was like learning how to run a business, learning how to manage payroll, learning how to do marketing and sales really well. So I hadn't, I didn't learn marketing and sales as an engineer, right. We just learned how to mitigate risk and save money, right. But learning that helped me a ton. So I was able to really parlay that into like my direct to seller marketing company and ultimately finding more deals. But to your point of like buying distressed assets.
Speaker 2One of the coolest things we did when I own these franchises is we we. I saw what it cost to build a new one from the ground up. It was about 250,000. And in a lot of other cities it was like 500,000 just to get that franchise off the ground right. And we made our just quick numbers like we were making around 100 to 125 000 ebita. So like our profit after paying everybody was 100 to 125 and I had, but just my build out was 250 000. So I saw this opportunity to where we could go pick up other locations that were like losing money. So technically their negative, their ebita was negative, so they were technically worth nothing and we were actually able to find those deals and this is where I bought four studios in San Diego, california.
Speaker 2And the whole play was like, hey, can we go in and can we turn around the payroll, can we do better marketing and can we improve this? The whole kind of private equity model where, like, let's go roll these up, improve the operations and scale it right. But unfortunately, what I learned is in this model and in this franchise, it was heavily driven by the owner Right, and it was a really hard one to scale and be able to go hire a really good GM or somebody who could run the business Right, and if you did anyway, the margins just weren't there to go really get somebody really competitive. But there wasn't all loss right, because what I was able to do is I was able to take these learnings right and start to apply it into real estate.
Speaker 2And now the biggest one I can relate this to is when I go in and buy a big multifamily. I see it all the time, especially in Wyoming, where these guys, like they're still handwriting their leases right, or their written leases, they're still collecting cash there. They don't even have a payment processing. I'm like, because I love doing value add right, I think that's one of my favorite things to do in real estate but I'm realizing, immediately do that with just technology bingo.
Speaker 2I don't even have to do it all, like I can just go buy an existing one that's in decent shape and just go apply technology and payroll and all these little things I was learning is improving businesses, so I don't know. And then, and then you do it a scale, which is what I love, yeah.
Speaker 1And then you can wrap it up and, just like you said and I'm very curious too, like if you'd ever think about moving back into the PE model, cause that's that's just what it is, it's going in value add and then adding, like the economy of scales model, to where then you sell it at instead of three, four X EBITDA. Then you're selling it at 10x EBITDA because you're packaging it all together and being able to sell that. I'm curious, with that experience, would you do that in a different type of, I guess, a different type of asset or a different type of business?
Speaker 2Absolutely. I mean, I've thought about it a lot with just all the assets we've been accumulating in Wyoming. Because as I talk to other investors like I live here in Houston and I kind of tell them about the numbers and our operations, they're like actually I'll never forget. I've had lunch with this guy several times. He's like because he's done this and he's packaged this stuff up and then he sold it to these big institutional buyers. He's like Casey, he's like that's right.
Speaker 2Not everybody's going to know there's going to be a day that'll come that not everybody is your little honey hole in Wyoming. Everybody's going to excited for that day. But my hope is like yeah, oh yeah. So bundling all that up right, even if it's just bundling up single family or small multifamily assets that are all managed in-house, and because we again we manage it in-house, we got the contractors, we got all the vertical integration right. So I've been excited about rolling that up. But I mean, I'm like you right. I'm thinking about look at all these other services we do and could. How do we keep those in house? So that would be the other one I'd love to look at down the road. It's not on my immediate roadmap, but like rolling up like plumbing companies, electrical roofing, like being able to do that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1Yeah, that would be, um, that would be really cool and and that's the whole. I mean we see that a lot with, like Cody Sanchez that's something she's making really popular is like making I mean making millionaires out of, like the mundane, the businesses that are. That are these mom and pops, cause we are entering into the largest, the I mean the largest transfer of wealth in history. I think it's trillions of dollars worth of companies and I think it's like I can't remember the number, but I think there's a million companies for sale in America right now and only 16% of them will actually be sold and a lot of them are doing over a million dollars a year in revenue and they're just probably mom and pops who haven't actually a lot of them are mom and pops who haven't actually even just like done any kind of technology. They've just been doing everything the same way they've always done, or integrating any type of marketing, and so that kind of moves me into the next section for you, because it's so interesting.
Speaker 1Like you actually mentioned it, you have an engineer who worked in oil and gas and now somebody who's raising capital through social media and is teaching about social media and then leveraging artificial intelligence and technology to be able to scale that.
Speaker 1And so I'm really curious for you because I love talking about the nitty gritty of raising capital and raising money, and so for you I'm curious are most of your deals won 506Cs and are you leveraging a lot of social media to be able to gain and raise capital for your deals? And then what are you seeing to work Because we talked about it before this podcast as well is like the networking aspect of it can allow you to scale that substantially to like a whole different asset class, and so I'm curious to see how that journey for you because there's a lot of people listening that should get started in social media and have no idea how or what to do or when to do it. So I'd love to hear how it's been effective for you, maybe even some of the strategies that you've worked out and how you've used that to raise capital.
Speaker 2Yeah, man so much there.
Speaker 1I love it yeah, a lot, and you're good at it. I want to take a quick second to talk to you guys about something that could completely change the game for you. If you're serious about launching and scaling an investment fund, If you've ever wanted to start a real estate fund, private equity fund or syndication but didn't know where to start, this is for you. Fund Founders is giving you free access to Foundations 101, a step-by-step course designed to help you to structure your fund the right way so you stay SEC compliant, raise capital like a pro, even if you don't have a network yet, scale your fund without constantly chasing investors, and avoid costly legal mistakes that could shut you down.
Raising Capital Through Social Media
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Speaker 2The quick answer is, yeah, we're a 506C, so we can market toward accredited investors, and that's always a hard decision too, right, because, like, there are a ton of people that are coming to me through social media they're not accredited, right. So we've found different ways to balance that, but we've definitely what I found most effective is work with accredited investors, and I'm still in the process of like kind of stepping up and scaling up and getting in front of even the more accredited people, right. But first off, let's just start with the maybe. The basic is, yeah, just being consistent on social media and talking about what we're doing and showing it right and do it. As I mentioned, I started doing that consistently several years ago. And showing it right and do it as I mentioned, I started doing that consistently several years ago and we got really intentional about it.
Speaker 2It's obviously here's maybe the best example of how it pays dividends for anybody who's thinking about it, and maybe on the fences is when you go into, like an investor call, right. So if you're gonna raise money, typically you'll get an introduction, or maybe the lead comes from. Who knows where your lead comes from? We're in a referral, maybe he watched an ad, but when we or maybe it's just an introduction and I've been doing this for years right. But when you go on that investor, that initial call right, typically like it's a long process for like, hey, they get to know you, then they start doing their due diligence and there's just this process, right.
Speaker 2Very rarely do you have somebody come up at where you have a lunch and they're ready to raise you a hundred K check after lunch, like, hey, man, let's go. Where do I wire the money to? I mean, it happens sometimes, but just in general doesn't. That's not usually how it goes. But now, because of social media and because a lot of these people have been seeing me over and over for years now, seeing the journey, seeing the deals we're doing, seeing the social proof, right Now, when they do come out, come in on one of these initial calls, they are ready because they've been seeing it right and maybe they've been waiting for an exit from their business or waiting to change jobs so they could roll in their 4K or have some sort of event, or they've just been saving and now they're ready to do a deal.
Speaker 2Well, you know what? Because they've been seeing the consistency. Now the trust is there, they're ready to go and, man, it's a capital raiser in terms of your time and bandwidth. When you have somebody teed up ready to go, it's like it's a game changer.
Speaker 1How are you? So you mentioned and I love this, you mentioned people kind of already know you coming into the meeting Other than and I think it is enough to just do social media and be fine how are you bringing them into your ecosystem? Because I know, like one thing that's great about you is and we like to think about a lot of times too is like how are we capturing people's attention? Keeping their attention and not just keeping their attention? Here's the big differentiator that I think people don't think about but you and I think about as marketers.
Speaker 1How do we own their attention? Because if it's just on like Facebook, it's just on Instagram, we don't own their attention. We're at the mercy of an algorithm, we're at the mercy of Zuck, right Like we're at the mercy of Elon Musk and whatever he decides he wants to do, like those are the things that that can take. But how do we own their attention? Through bringing them into our ecosystem of like an email list and then and then nurturing them. So then, when they do come in, they're like I feel like I know so much about you because I've been following you for so long and you've kept them in that ecosystem. Are you doing anything like that to be able to draw them in and keep them?
Speaker 2Yeah, for sure. I mean, one of the first steps, if somebody hasn't done it, is getting a CRM, and we all learned it from our direct to seller companies. Right, we had our CRM and I learned it way back when I had the franchises. Right, we had our CRM. Keep a track of our clients right, but the biggest thing is your investor CRM. And again, you're kind of hit on it. But the goal is we post on LinkedIn, facebook, instagram, all these different places, right, but our goal is to get them from there, from our DMS or from our posts, into our mailing list, right. One another thing I've done is it been a kind of a good little funnel for me and good people to get to. Where I can actually stay in constant and keep their attention is I have our passive investing playbook, which is a little play on words from playing football and being in real estate and really I've positioned it like this is the lessons I've learned in the last 15 years of doing deals in real estate.
Speaker 2I just recorded a bunch of videos for free that people can come in, download that and get in and just start watching, right. And I've got like a little. I kick it off with like a little avatar series where, like, hey, cause, everybody's different, right, some people want to go in and they want to be fixing flippers, like us, right. Or maybe they're like no, forget that, I want to. I want to buy turnkey, I want to buy a rental, rental, but I don't want to have to manage it, I just want to. But I want to own the asset, right. And then the third one is typically people are like I don't want them on the asset, I don't want to worry about financing it, I just want to be passive. I want to be able to give you a hundred K and you go make a return, right. So I have a little avatar series where it's like go watch that first to figure out which which one of those getting more educated and that's the last one Devin, is like I've just found, and I know we've learned this from Lance Peterson, who's been a great mentor.
Speaker 2Lance, is like you've got to people don't invest in things they don't understand, right. So really nurturing them by educating them, showing them, hey, here are different options, because a lot of people haven't invested in alternative investments and you just got to walk them down that journey. One of the best ways to do that is to teach them and show them. And some of these people might go do it themselves and that's great. Maybe we could partner on a deal or they could go buy something turnkey. But a lot of people will go through that and realize this is a lot of work, but now at least I'm more educated, I feel more comfortable. And then now you've built all that credibility because you're the one that have shown hey, this is my process, this is how we do it. It makes it a much, a lot. A ton of trust is built doing that.
Speaker 1Yeah, and you've mentioned you and I have talked about this previously, but you've mentioned that's kind of a big goal of yours too. It's like sure, right, sure, you can raise capital and you can raise capital and then you can invest their money. But I think you have a much bigger why and a bigger goal that you want to achieve when it comes to helping people with that goal of investing passively, and I'd love for you to talk about that a little bit, because I think that also plays into, honestly, it plays into your marketing, because then they build up a ton of trust and then, if they're going to put money somewhere, of course they're going to put it with you because they trust you, like and trust you absolutely, man.
Speaker 2I could share some longer stories, but I'll keep it. I'll keep the short stuff, but it really came down to think about land man, right? If you guys have watched the series, think about when you they depict it really well about they're always away from their family or they're always having to say work first, I gotta make money in the oil field, honey first before I come home, right, I that, and I asked myself that question years ago. I'm like, but what if I didn't have to be out here in the oil field away from my family? What if I didn't have to work in this volatile industry that's up and down and there's always layoffs, right, and I think everybody can relate to this in any industry, especially when it comes to being away from your family. But that's something I asked myself over and over and it drove me to start hustling, to start buying rentals, right, and start doing fix and flips, and I and I totally recognize I took it on the extreme like I wanted to build out a big company that could do it all.
Speaker 2But as I built all that out, what I found was and it was especially, it was really in conversations talking to other people that were in those same shoes, right, that were had those same stresses, right.
Speaker 2They were the guys that, like, were tired away tired of being away from their kids' soccer games or football games, or they were tired of being away from their family. Or they were tired of like, if I get laid off this month, because oil's always up and down, what am I going to do? So I just wanted to help those people and give them the stability that I had. So that's why I've made it my goal to help 100 families achieve their passive income goal. And again, it comes down to I want them to be able to make that choice. I want them to, and this doesn't happen overnight, right, you're going to have to work toward it, you're going to have to set goals, but I want you to get to the point where I was able to be like, hey, I'm today, I'm choosing family over work, and that's ultimately why I left my W-2 job. And I'm not saying everybody should do that, but at least I want to be able to give you guys the opportunity to make the choice.
Speaker 1Yeah, and for you? Are you doing that through, like trying to achieve that, 100 families? Are you doing that through just kind of like social media, reaching out to them and pushing them towards your essentially your passive, investing, educational platform? Or are you doing that and like having them, like you know, going places, having them come to you or engaging them personally? What's that look like for you? Absolutely.
Speaker 2The best, easiest step for anybody which is the natural like progression is to go into our passive investing playbook, right, and you guys can go find this on our website, caseygregersoncom. It's the thing right on the top passive investing playbook. So that's the first step. Right, get in there. They can start to watch a couple videos and figure out hey, do I want to? Am I really serious about this? Am I going to lean all like, go, all in, right.
Speaker 2And then the next sort of step is we're planning these two-day workshops, right. So I'm here in Houston, we're going to be doing them there and we're actually looking at other locations. But in that two-day're going to talk about like 10 years ahead and work back to five years and three, and once we break all that down now, we can plan out the next 90 days. So the workshop is when you're like all right, I'm going to go in and we're going to build a plan to actually put this in place. The thing is helping a hundred people. It's going to be a hundred different financial situation and goals and lifestyles, right. But in that workshop, that's when you can build out your sort of custom plan.
Building Trust With Potential Investors
Speaker 1Yeah, that's cool and so like that's something where you're and cause I just even think about that. That that's where you're trying to get, and this is a cool model, because a lot of people they don't think about going right. They try to go a mile wide and an inch deep when trying to raise capital from investors, and it sounds like you're really trying to invest from certain people that are passionate about creating passive income, not just creating, like, good returns or decent returns. They want passive income, and so I'm also thinking about this too, because that's a really good way to raise capital. Now, does that mean that you kind of you currently and maybe for the foreseeable future, aren't thinking about raising from institutional investors or anything like that? You're more concerned with helping people who want to start getting into passive or getting into passive investing and then replacing their income with it?
Speaker 2Absolutely Well. It's a two-pronged approach, right? This is just a passionate one. As I mentioned my why is I want?
Speaker 2to help more people have what I have Right and it's in. Obviously, naturally, there's going to be a lot of people that want to invest in our deals from that Right, but I'm also like right, but that's it's a long right, that's a long game and we've been talking it's a long game to go create passive income, right, but some of my like sort of short wins is I've really enjoyed. Again we're talking about the oil and gas industry is working with more family offices. For example, we met a family office, an oil and gas one met them actually through a podcast and they'd been doing really well and had a lot of cash and ready to go into real estate, but they couldn't find an operator. They actually had been bidding on multifamily deals and they kept getting outbid and they're like Casey, I we're starting to wonder if, like, how does anybody even actually truly make money in multifamily? And I'm like guys, you, you need to see these deals. I'm looking at Wyoming, right, not everybody knows about it yet.
Speaker 2So it was a cool partnership where I met with them and obviously they're a family office. They've got a lot more capital that they need to deploy, but this is great for me and my operations because we're seeing opportunities now, right, and this passive investing playbook and these passive investors that I want to help. Unfortunately, I don't have them ready to write a $5 million check today, right. So it's been cool finding people like that in the short term to where we can grow in these bigger projects. But then we can still help people on the smaller level Because, even like the fix and flips right Devin like, you've always got to have the little kind of short deals that continue to feed the engine, right.
Speaker 2And those are great for that.
Speaker 1Yeah, that's right Now. It's cool because it sounds like which is fascinating is for you. I want to. A lot of the listeners that we have right now are people who one are either fund managers, learning to raise capital, learning to do all those things. It sounds like you've done a really great job of getting out there, one with your why, talking about who you are, the things you're passionate about, getting out there on football fields and creating really cool moments, and then even getting on other podcasts to find other investors.
Speaker 1If somebody's listening and they're like, man, I want to start using social media or even podcasts. What would you suggest? Like even the platform is it LinkedIn? Is it Facebook? Is it Instagram? How would you suggest them to start getting out? And then, what would you suggest them to start honestly posting about if they want to, like learn how to zero to one, get started in a direction that helps them to raise capital using social media, or or Sorry, and I don't mean to ask another layer, another question on this even just talking about the importance of a personal brand after that. After that, so, like the zero to one and then the importance of a personal brand, or you can talk about the personal brand first, I don't care.
Speaker 2Love it man? Yeah Well, first off, this is such a good question, Devin, and I appreciate there's not really anybody talking about how to do this, so the fact you're showing your listeners how I've got to have you on if I'm going to show them how to do it.
Speaker 2Love it, man. So I would say, think about who your audience is right and maybe where your quick wins is what I would say, like, if you're my and I'll tell you my example, my example was oil and gas professionals right, I could relate to these people, right, but everyone's different. Maybe you're a doctor or maybe you used to whatever I would, initially, your former industry or the industry you're currently in is a great place to start. And then I would think about where are those people at Right? Are they on LinkedIn? Are they on Facebook, instagram, like, where are they at? And and maybe they're on all three, and you should use all three, but I would definitely put the most emphasis on the platform you think that they're on, or maybe there's some other way that they like take in information, but start marketing on that platform and getting in front of them there. And then to your point of like, what are you going to talk about? Start sharing what you're doing. If you're raising capital most of these guys you've been doing deals yourself, right? Or maybe you're partnering with other operators who have done a lot of deals, so then it's just like explaining and showing deals that you're doing and and the last piece is sort of your brand and like why, what is your, why? Why are you doing it Right?
Speaker 2Like one of the things I lean into is like I love I did this all because I wanted to be home with my kids, I wanted to coach my kids sports. Like I didn't share that part earlier. But what the the straw that broke the camel's back with my W2 was? I kept having to miss my kids games and I said I'm not going to do it and I basically laid an ultimatum with my boss and like I'm not going to miss these and if I have to leave this job because I had a sweet kid, guys, I was making 200k a year working for shell, working for 21 days in the office which was like five minutes away, and then I would have 21 days off and I would, but I'd work.
Speaker 2A 12 hour schedule was the problem. I'd go in from 2 am to 2 pm but during that or sorry, it's 2 pm to 2 am but I would miss all my kids' stuff. Right, but I was working half the year. I was getting all the bank financing I need because I had the W-2, had this really cush easy job, but I wasn't there for my kids' games. So that was like what my passion was and now I continue to lean into that in my personal brand and share that. So I would encourage people do the same thing. Figure out what is your passion about right and talk about the deals you're doing. But don't just talk about that right. Be a human. Talk about what makes you tick, because when you can resonate with those same people, those are the people that you're going to want to invest with right. Those are the people who are going to say yes and they're going to stick with you and they're going to tell more people right, the people you can have that connection with.
Speaker 1Yeah, and I think too, when you share so much about who you are, what you do, what you're passionate about on social media, you have people that come to you with instant trust and so they trust you, so they're more likely to invest with you, and then their initial capital investment is typically going to be a little bit higher, because you're not just a cold like whoever. They've seen a consistent, steady growth of you and even just the asset classes that you've doing. They've seen that you've been a good fiduciary. They've seen like the ups and downs, and so I'd love for you to share, like how vulnerable should people be when they're, when they're on social media? Like people are like I don't want to share anything about my family, but like has that played a role in for you to raise capital? And because I just think it can, it can foster so much trust that actually helps you to win in the long run. And so, for you, where have you seen that that play off and play well for you? Yeah.
Speaker 2And it's not for everybody, right? There's a lot of people who are like, make that in. You got to choose for yourself, right? Can do you feel comfortable sharing stuff about your family, sharing stuff about your losses and your personal life and all that? But if you can get comfortable with it, I yeah, it's, you've hit on it, devin. It's extremely powerful because people, you're going to stand out and and again, there's so many people out there telling about all the money they made. But if you can go out there and say, hey, here's how I lost a hundred K, here's how I like, like, go tell them the bad stuff. Like I Like go tell them the bad stuff. Like I'm telling you.
Speaker 2This is another it's the same guy that I talked to that was like hey, casey, someday you're gonna have institutional buyers come in and buy all your stuff in Wyoming. This guy, when I had lunch with them, I was telling him about these horror stories in like when we were fixing and flipping and using private money and hard money and bad contractors, and he was like, when I shared that story and I shared all the stuff we're doing now, he's like he really didn't. I mean, he loved the cool stuff and all the big stuff we're doing, but he was interested in that. He's like Casey real estate's been up and up and up since 2008,. Right, and everybody's been riding this wave, right. And he's like I see it in all the young people. They're like they've never your teeth kicked in, right, and we've had that. And you guys, if you can share that and be vulnerable like it's going to make, bring so much credibility to what you're doing.
Helping Families Achieve Passive Income Goals
Speaker 1Yeah, and I'm experiencing that now because, you know, in single family, we have a single family fund and we got our teeth kicked in last year, but I share a lot of that stuff and we have investors that are extremely empathetic about it because they understand, hey, it was the worst housing market in the past 30 years. But, like, we trust you, we know that you're doing what you said you'll do, and then they also are like you're not on Instagram flaunting a Lamborghini while we're, you know like while the fund is, you know like, while the market is taking a nosedive, like they know. They know they see me posting about my family, they see me posting about the things that we're doing and they see me posting about the lives that we're changing and for them, like, that's a bigger impact for them, and so I would imagine that translates into exactly what you're doing, and even the care that you have for them to grow as passive investors probably brings a lot of trust as well.
Speaker 2Yeah, absolutely, man. I think you're a great example for Devin just how you share your family and what you're like more passionate about right, you do it all across your companies, man. So, yeah, it's huge man cool video.
Speaker 1I thought it was an awesome video because it was like a hey, come follow me. Come follow me as I do this, and you had somebody running behind you with the phone as you were going in and it seems like you were sponsoring an event where one of the students or somebody from the audience had the chance to win a prize and stuff like that. Have you seen things like that? One help your personal brand, but then also help your company when you're investing into charities or schools or you're giving back like that. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2That was a fun one too, and again, it's a cool thing where you can also give back to something you're passionate about, right? I graduated from the University of Wyoming, grew up watching those games, grew up going to those football games and being able to go to the game, be able to take my son with me, and we got to go out on the field and and be a part of that event where a fan was going to throw a football through a house for 50,000. Right.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2And yeah, so it's been huge from the exposure and we've been just working on like, hey, how do we like, what sort of exposure do we want to get and how do we want to maximize it? Right, our when is wild houses and it's like a local branded Wyoming company. Right, but we're also wanted to kind of speak to, which we actually didn't push it too much there, but I think we're going to do that next year. It's like, hey, now let's talk about Bighorn Capital and how anybody could go invest in real estate, and you don't have to know all the answers before the test. You know what I mean. So, yeah, it's been huge and we're still leveraging it. But brand exposure, it's been great.
Speaker 1Bighorn Capital is such a great name Awesome name, I think so for you. You know this podcast is called Funds on Fire. You've talked about what fires you up from like a personal standpoint and typically we'd say this at the end but fires you up from the personal standpoint of being able to help passive investors and families to be able to create passive income through passively investing in an educated way, not just throwing money at something, but something that they either love or know really well. Are you working on any deals right now? Are you GPing any deals right now that fire you up right now?
Speaker 2Yeah, 100%, man, glad you asked. Right now we're working on a fund where we're integrating fix and flip and like single family multifamily. So we've got a component buy and hold along with fix and flip. And the reason I love this which again this, is you guys will like this, right, people that are doing funds, they might think, oh man, why would you mix those two? But I love it because one of my biggest lessons I've ever learned is having two exit strategies. So I think, right now in the market because, to answer your question of why I'm fired up now, is we you mentioned it earlier right, it's a tough time in the market right now in real estate and especially in single family fix and flip, but I do think it's going to come back. We all know it's going to come back and I think it's an incredible time to go by.
Speaker 2So right now we're actually doing a ton of marketing, getting a lot of deals and we feel like the market will heat up, even to seasonality, right. I think this summer it's going to heat up and we're going to be able to move a lot of these. But let's say that it doesn't. We're still going to go buy these, we're going to underwrite them to flip two ways right, we're going to underwrite them to flip it. And if we flip it, awesome. We can or we can roll that into more investments or roll it into distributions Right, but let's say that it's a continued down cycle a little bit longer. These are deals that will still pencil as rentals, right, as STRs, long-term rentals, even co-living, right. So we're going to use all these different exit strategies and I'm so excited now because we're using our fund to go take down more deals.
Current Fund Strategy and Market Outlook
Speaker 2And I'm just telling you guys, like they always say, you want to, everyone wants to time the market and and I don't think anybody should invest only because they want to time it. But I feel like, right now, timing is just crucial because, again, things are sitting, it's going to come back and if we've and that's why I love the fund, right. One last thing I love but the fund is like I'm working with people who have a longer horizon, right, and, as you probably felt this last year, like when you're fixing and flipping and you've got to deliver short-term returns, like that's when the pressure comes and you can be forced into like selling and not making a big profit. But I'm excited to work with investors that have a five-year horizon, because now we can go collect these properties and then, when the time's right to sell them all, boom. Then we'll sell it then, and then we can really play the long game.
Speaker 1And that's what I was going to ask you next, because I think one of the mistakes that I made in my fund is I only made it like a two-year horizon, which was not great, but when you're working with funds, people that have that five-year horizon and understanding of it, it makes the world of difference, man.
Speaker 1And so I'm excited that you've extended that to be longer than what I had, because really you do, and I and I and I say it's almost like what you're doing then, because you said that you can have distributions and returns off of your flips.
Speaker 1You're almost playing off of like a PE and real estate hybrid, because you have the PE standpoint of them, kind of investing into the company that allows you to go to market and then that allows you to flip from it, and then they take the distributions from if you're doing profit splits or whatever I don't know. If you're doing profit splits, if you're just doing a pref, then you're just doing prefs, but then they also get to claim the depreciation from the assets that you're holding over time, and so it's a really cool model that allows you to do both and allows you to leverage when markets are hard, but then you know that it's an appreciating asset because it's real estate. It just needs to really just go through that cycle, or going through that up and down markets that we've experienced. I'm pumped for you, man.
Speaker 2Yeah, man, you nailed it, because what I like to say is like me and you get this benefit as active and real estate investors right, where we could go buy a rental property. Well, first off, we'll go fix and flip a house and make 50K, but then we can. Then we're going to. Most people would pay taxes on 50K. Well, we actually go buy a rental property that we can depreciate that 50K through a cost segregation and then it all washes out. But most people can't always get that benefit. But what's cool about the fund is now we can do that at a fund level, have the fix and flips and have the rentals and then that way a lot of those profits are going to be tax deferred. Right, you can kick that can down the road.
Speaker 1That's exactly right, man, and I'm pumped. Deferred right, you can kick that can down the road. That's exactly right, man, and I'm pumped. I feel like we could talk for hours, but I want to value your time, man, and I appreciate you being on today. Casey, is there anything you know? There's the always leave the listeners with, but if there's anything one thing that like let's say you had it was you had one last thing that you could say to people. Maybe if it was like I don't want to be, like if you were going to die, but if it's like you had one last thing, one last message that you wanted to get out, doesn't matter what it is, what would you leave people with? It doesn't matter what it is, it could be about anything you want it to be. What would you leave people with?
Speaker 2Dan man, it's been a huge one for me and a huge people I think people miss out on. And it's starting today, right, whatever you're doing and I'm going to relate it to real estate right, there's so many people that have been thinking about it, been learning about it and interested and want to do it, but like, oh man, it's a down market or real estate's been going up since 2008. Like, it's got to crash. Right, there's all these doomsday things. It's get started today because those same people that have been saying that for years didn't get in the game, right, and all these people who did get in the game, they've bought assets and they've appreciated, so I would liken that to buy and hold investing.
Speaker 2And I would encourage people whether they're raising money for a fund or they're just a passive investor or somebody who actually just wants to go buy a turnkey property I would just say, man, get going today. And if you don't have all the money or knowledge, or if you can't do it by yourself, go partner, right, you could go, do that within a fund or there's a ton of different ways to do it. But the biggest thing, man, don't wait because time is your friend, especially when you're doing buy and hold real estate.
Speaker 1Yeah, that's awesome, man. Thank you so much. Well, man, I appreciate you being on. Where can people find you? And then, where can some of those passive investors go and check your playbook out? At, man, you bet man.
Speaker 2So anybody, wherever you guys are at, you could go to any one of our platforms, but the easiest one is just to go to my website, caseygregersoncom, and you'll see a link to my passive investing playbook right there. But also, yeah, if you guys are on social media Instagram, facebook, linkedin, wherever you're at just spell my name, right.
Speaker 1I'm typically the only Casey Gregerson that spells it with all E's, so you guys should be able to find me there. You go Well, cool man. I appreciate you on it, thankful for your time, thankful for who you are as a friend, and I'm excited for your journey. Man, I'll talk to you later. Appreciate you Likewise. Thank you, devin. Wow, I hope you enjoyed that.
Final Thoughts and Where to Connect
Speaker 1I have a quick favor. If you've been enjoying the show, there's one simple way you can support us and it's by hitting that follow button or that subscribe button on the app you're listening to. I want to level this podcast up in every single way possible, bringing you more value, incredible content and guests and new strategies. Following the show and leaving a quick review goes a really long way in helping us to grow and continue to deliver top tier content. It's the only free thing I'll ever ask you to do and it makes a bigger impact than I can possibly put into words. So thank you for being a part of this journey and I'll definitely catch you on the next episode, to great success and greater impact. Peace.