Mastering the FinTech and PropTech Startup Scene w/ Ali Nichols | Ep. 107

In this podcast episode, David and Gary speak with Ali Nichols, Co-Founder and CEO of Getaway, a real estate investment company that works to bridge the gap between single investors and a lucrative portfolio. The conversation is both uplifting and a perfect testament to letting your passion fuel you.

Links:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/alicnichols/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/joingetaway/

https://www.getaway.co/

https://www.biggerpockets.com/

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David Baxter - CEO of Big Pixel

Gary Voigt - Creative Director at Big Pixel

The Podcast

David Baxter has been designing, building, and advising startups and businesses for over ten years. His passion, knowledge, and brutal honesty have helped dozens of companies get their start.

In Biz/Dev, David and award-winning Creative Director Gary Voigt talk about current events and how they affect the world of startups, entrepreneurship, software development, and culture.

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Transcript

David: 0:05

Hi, everyone. Welcome to the biz dev Podcast, the podcast about developing your business. I'm David Baxter, your host joined as usual by Gary Voight. How you doing, man? Hey, I was wondering pretty good. Yeah. How is your Chia Pet farm going? You were supposed to, or the grown well,

Gary: 0:22

yeah, but we're not announcing you said that was public knowledge. Okay, I might be the only one that can't grow Chia pets. So I'm having a little bit of a problem. Didn't want to bring it up yet.

David: 0:33

You have a problem performing? Is that what I'm hearing?

Gary: 0:36

No, the chia pets do.

David: 0:38

Oh, oh, okay. Just want to make. More importantly, we have ally Nichols with us who is the co founder of getaway, which of course, we're going to ask her all about. How are you, Ali?

Ali: 0:51

I'm fantastic. Thank you guys so much for having me.

David: 0:54

Hey, glad you're here. So I'm gonna dive in and get give me the 30k. What is getaway? Because I have so many questions.

Ali: 1:01

Yeah, so Getaway is a real estate investing platform really geared towards helping individual real estate investors to think you know, and I buy our own portfolios scale faster. And the way we do that is we offer lots of different tooling to help source and find opportunities, we offer a really unique financing product, which allows our customers to only put in five to 10%, down versus the traditional 25 to 30% as you're scaling a investment portfolio, and then we provide ongoing management services to really be able to manage properties across multiple states and GEOS, and things like that, as you grow from, you know, two to 10 to 20 to 50 doors.

David: 1:43

So these are residential, typically, or commercial or what?

Ali: 1:49

Yeah, so we're really focused on small multifamily units. So think two to 20, door types of units. So everything from a duplex to a, you know, 20 unit garden type deal.

David: 2:04

Okay, cool. So are these things not that I'm buying to live in? This is for me to own investment, have other people live in? And rent? Yep. And rent out. And so if I am doing that, and I'm only putting five to 10% down, I still have to have a pretty decent amount of capital upfront, but then I'm taking on a mortgage of some sort using you guys, right?

Ali: 2:29

Yep. So you're partnering with us, we have co investment model, which is our investment alongside of you, and that we also partner with a more traditional mortgage lender to bring a significant amount to the deal.

David: 2:42

Okay, so when you say you're a co investor, what does that mean? I put five to 10%. Down, you put five 10% down or and you guys oh, we own it together?

Ali: 2:51

Yeah, so we are actually bringing anywhere from five to in some cases, 20% of the deal for our investors, and then we own it together until you're able to either refinance or buy us out of the deal, which is our goal, that we want you to do that within five years. So it's like we co invest together for that first five year period, you hopefully refinance us out on that property 100% ongoing, and can continue to scale your portfolio much faster

Gary: 3:21

in larger complexes, or whatever do you take on multiple investors that you partner with? Or is it just a one on one,

Ali: 3:31

it's usually an individual relationship. So our customers, sometimes our customers are buying, like, you know, they've formed a group with friends or family members and things like that. So we'll partner but it's very much a one to one relationship, versus many to one. And then David, you're asking what if you can't? Five? Yeah, so you

David: 3:51

say it's, Hey, it's five years, that's what you want? Me too. And I can't, for whatever reason, good reasons, bad reasons, whatever.

Ali: 3:58

Yeah. So we've built in some protections in this world of, you know, it's a down market on your five, we you're able to extend up to eight years as one safety net. And then the other thing to do at a certain point would be, let's put the property back on the fair market and pull out as much equity as we can to repay everyone. And the most downside scenario.

David: 4:25

So, I mean, there's a lot of risk on you guys, too, right? So right now we've been in this insane real estate market for a while. It will crash my dad was in he was a custom home builder for 40 plus years. So I watched that crazy roller coaster many times, right? He'd have amazing years and then boom, nothing and then amazing years and then. So how do you guys deal with that? If there's a two three year slump or 2008? Where it's a lot longer than that? How do you guys not just get owned

Ali: 5:00

Yeah, so we, because we're focused, our customer is a real estate investor. At the end of the day, you know, people are like, oh, you know, right now the big story lot and headline and things we're experiencing our high interest rates. Our core customer is a little interest rate agnostic, as long as the deal pencils. And we're, we're underwriting everything or determining what to buy, all based on the cash flows of the property or, or the rental expected rental income of that property. So we're very much looking at every investment decision as how can this do in month one, and if it makes sense in month one, and can cash flow today, and cover all of the financing costs, even at a higher interest rate. That's an investment that our customers want to be in, because they do see a longer time horizon, where there's gonna be an opportunity to refinance potentially into a lower rate. So like, we're going after a very specific part of the market that is a little bit more insulated from, let's say, a primary home buyer, which is basically like dead in the water right now. No one's by herself. They don't have to. But our folks are just always looking for an opportunity. If the numbers make sense, they'll move.

David: 6:19

Okay. Okay. So I think that gives me an idea of what you guys do. Now. I'm curious. How did you get into this? Where did this idea come from?

Ali: 6:30

Great question. So I previously was at a different real estate startup, I had the honor of working over five years, and really helping build that company from its earliest stages to pretty late stage startup. And what we had ended up transitioning. So it really had started around a tech enabled property management company was the core business model initially, and we transitioned that into becoming a tech enabled operator for institutional capital to go out and buy single family rentals. So just like last 10 years has been really, really exciting in the single family rental space, a lot of institutional capital, a lot of big guys have decided that that's an asset class that is worth going after. So we basically built all of the technology of the operation processes teams, to go out and deploy close to a billion dollars of capital into that asset class. And it was my dream job in a lot of ways. Like, if you can't tell, now, I'm a real estate nerd. But at the end of the day, you know, I looked around at the building my own portfolio, my friends and their struggles with real estate. I was like, you know, I don't know if I want to build for a hedge fund right now. And so I got obsessed with this idea of how can I help more individuals and like normal people become real estate investors. And I have this strong belief that the American Dream is shifting away from buying your primary home and actually building a mini real estate empire, there's so many folks and all of our customers, their, their goals are all the same by time, I'm 50. I want to own X amount of doors that I can live off of that passive income and not worry about continuing to work a W two job. And so I just became obsessed with like, How can I help people do that and do that faster.

David: 8:33

So okay, I'm gonna put on my Dave Ramsey hat for a minute, because I'm a big fan of his right. I've said that before. So how I have a friend who owns a lot of property. And he makes a lot of money each month off of that property, however, he still has millions, literally millions of dollars in mortgages. So in the classic Dave Ramsey story, if you've ever heard him tell his story. He was in the very same situation, he had that 25 years old, or whatever it is forever ago, but he had like $6 million in properties. The banks got spooked for whatever reason had nothing to do with him. But they all call it his loan. And that all started dominantly now, and that's where I'm like, my friend, I'm like, Dude, you're in, you're in Dave Ramsey's position Exactly. Where Yes, the money is great, and you're making cash flow, but you at any moment, that domino could start and then you're in a really rough spot. So are your customers in that similar kind of vein? Or are they paying a number? Obviously, they're not paying in cash or they wouldn't need you. So how does that work? I mean, where that you're not, is there any protection on that? Or that's just if this is your lifestyle, you're that person wants to be 50 and F 35 doors that they can live off of your float in some serious risk? No.

Ali: 9:54

Yeah, I think the biggest the biggest thing is is what is your strategy and how long Is it gonna take you to get there, like the customers that we support, everybody has a very long term view on holding the real estate. And with that means that they're, you know, building up equity paying off their loans as they go. And so they're, you know, it's it's the question the age old question of like, how much leverage is appropriate for somebody to use? And like, where, where do we go, the thing that we found, for our segment in our customer and in the market is, once you buy, like, if you own your primary home, you buy an investment property, you basically will not be able to get financing again, from a traditional bank. Now, is that right?

David: 10:47

I own my own home, outright. And then I bought, okay, I have a mortgage on two properties.

Ali: 10:56

Yeah, if you have a mortgage on your primary home, yeah. And then the third one's like, nearly impossible. Fourth, one's not yet out of town. So like makes sense. But if but if I'm somebody with half of the network and a little bit of wherewithal, I can go out and get commercial financing all day long, I can go raise a little bit of capital from my network, and do this all day long. But that gap is not bridged for, like, I call it a real estate entrepreneur, the individual investor that's trying to do that, that might not want to do a syndicate or doesn't have a network to go raise capital from and so forth. So a lot of what we're building is like, how do we bridge what's available on what's happening in the commercial financing market, and give those tools to folks that are really trying to bridge themselves out of mom and pop investor and into the next level, which I call it a small medium sized business and SMB type investor. And like, we're providing the toolkit to do so.

David: 11:56

So you guys, for lack of a better term, are providing a workaround. So a normal person who can be an accredited investor,

Ali: 12:05

not accredited, that's like a different different desks definition, in that sense more so around access to the financial products that exist in, in a commercial market, a commercial real estate market, which I can go be a sponsor on a project, I don't need to be accredited to do that, and get access to commercial financing.

David: 12:26

Okay, so And correct me if I'm wrong, the definition of an accredited investor is someone of individual wealth. And basically, the powers that be the government, whatever regulators kind of say, you know what you're doing, you're rich, if you want to be stupid, you can be stupid and take a

Ali: 12:41

risk. Yeah, if you make over 200k a year, for the last two years, the government doesn't care how you spend your money, which is over half a million dollar net worth. That's not your primary home.

David: 12:54

So do you guys, are you the bank, when you're working with me, I want to I want to use your product to buy a product A, because I'm guessing I'm not even seeing this, as you're saying, Hey, this is a good property, right? You're You're I've got a pile of properties. And you're trying to find buyers for them. I'm assuming you're involved in that.

Ali: 13:13

So we do source deals for our customers, especially just right now as as like the financing costs are so expensive, our product doesn't work with everything. So we're we're always sourcing opportunities to share, better prevented and pre qualified. But if you found a deal, or you negotiated something off market, you could come to us with that opportunity. And our team would happily underwrite it and provide feedback, if it's something we could work together on.

David: 13:44

This so interesting, I have to say, I think this is Gary, correct me if I'm wrong. But I don't think I've ever heard of startup in this realm. So this is very fascinating. You

Gary: 13:53

know, we've interviewed a guy who had a startup on the other side, the construction part of new homes and development. But this is interesting, because it's more of the investing side and larger communities.

David: 14:05

I am always fascinated by how startups you've been around. I looked at your LinkedIn, this is a little over a year ish. So how was your first year this we call this the you know, the first year always sucks? At least in my experience? It's hard, right?

Gary: 14:23

The way the housing market has been recently had to be yet.

Ali: 14:28

You know, it's interesting when we so my co founder and I became obsessed with this idea of like, okay, how do we help more and more people on real estate invest in real estate and we actually approached the business model from a different angle. And, you know, right out the gate, and so our first year was going through the trials and tribulations of trying to go zero to one on a business model that we then found out. didn't have that many legs, like me Didn't that product market fit? And so being able to then also, like, look at ourselves in the mirror and be like, Okay, it's time to actually listen to our customers and, and figure out a problem we can help them solve, versus like trying to push something that we're excited about down people's throats. So the first year was a lot of ups and downs. To say the least.

David: 15:24

Did you ever make your resume again? No. Okay. That's, I find that to be when you've really hit low, right is when you're like, this may not make it, I better go brush up my resume and get a real job, right? Yeah, I did that I will flat out tell you I did that. My it was right at a year. And I didn't think we were gonna make it and I was busted out. And I had done a resume in like, a decade. And so that was a super humbling experience, right? Yeah, just to be like, well, you suck at this time to go get a job that someone else brings in the money, right? Because that's the difference, I think between a startup founder entrepreneur, and a normal person, for lack of better term is normal people work where other people bring them the stuff, they kill it, drag it back to the cage, even if you're a sales guy, your job is not to keep the business afloat, your job is to kill something and drag it back to the gate, but not to kill everything, right. And when you're the entrepreneur, you're in, at least for a very long time. And that that pressure has to sit on you. And that's a scary thing. And so eventually, that pressure, I knew a guy who he owned his own, he was a doctor, very, very specialized cardiologist. But he had his own practice for 20 years. And he was like, I decided to go work for someone else, and just leave that pressure behind. I don't have to go find patients anymore. They just come to me, and I take care of them. Right. And I totally get that even though, you know, I would love for someone just to give me sales. That'd be lovely. But it's tough, right? So you guys did a big pivot, and that pivot is working? Are you still figuring that out?

Ali: 17:01

It is, it's really working, that we have, you know, incredible demand right now. And it feels good that our customers are coming back and saying like, hey, I want to work with you, like, hey, let's follow up on this. Let's get this done. So that's been a really, really big shift. So then it's like, okay, how do we figure out all the operational processes and like, build our product and, you know, technology to scale it faster. So we can serve as more people that's like, really where our focus is right now.

David: 17:33

So are you Would you consider your company, a technology company, or a real estate company?

Ali: 17:40

So we like to consider ourselves in the FinTech space, where we are building, you know, a lot of, I would say, we're hugging, FinTech and prop tech at the same time, but we're building a lot of product and tech. Specifically, like, on the real estate side, on the sourcing, an underwriting of opportunities, and then underwriting of customers. And then all of the efficiency of actually running a pretty hairy process and and we're trying to build on our own internal graphs.

David: 18:16

And how is you? How are you guys do your technology you do building that in house? You got buddies? Well, how's that working?

Ali: 18:22

Yeah. So we have an engineering team and house. They're fantastic. Big shout out to the Civic guys. They're all guys right now. But because

David: 18:32

it's tough to break that barrier. i Yeah, all the time. Very cool. Very cool. So you start with an ideal, like, walk me through that process, you and your, your co founder, because your co founder, I saw that you're not a founder. So what is your role? And what is I think you said he was a he? What is his role?

Ali: 18:54

So I'm the CEO, I run the business. Basically, everything business related, where we're going, how we're gonna get there, all that fun stuff. And then he is my technical counterpart and helps turn everything into a reality in our product is absolutely phenomenal. I feel very lucky.

David: 19:16

So he's the CTO type. Yep. Perfect. And so he's in charge of getting the engineers the bringing the nerds and getting them to do with.

Ali: 19:25

We're all nerds on our team. But yes.

David: 19:28

Are you technical? At all? Are you scary? Yeah.

Ali: 19:32

No, it's not scary. I'm not. I'm, you know, no, my way around well enough, but definitely, it's nice to have a counterpart.

David: 19:43

overture Yeah. Okay, so you guys got together. You had this idea? How did you guys know each other one of the things I find interesting, here's why I'm asking this question. I talked to lots of startups. I mentor a lot through the one of the colleges here, and a lot of them are business up But which I would classify you as who, probably, and you sound like you're more time to go than sound. But most people are clueless. When it comes to I've got an idea, and it's going to need software. And I'm scared to death because I have no idea how to do any of that. So you will see them. I'll give you my left kidney, if I can find a CTO. And so you have one, where did he? Where did how did that happen? Because that's where

Ali: 20:29

we were super fortunate we actually worked together before and hit it off. We were kind of inseparable in some in similar types of capacities before. And it was fitting, I always joke of like, we actually never talked about starting something together. Like we've never said, Hey, like, do you want to start a company together? We just organically started working on ideas on the weekends. And then all of a sudden, like, got obsessed with one. And, you know, it, we started doing some demand testing and felt like there were legs there and then just kept going. So it was really, really natural.

David: 21:09

And so you guys are together? Is he building the product? Initial your first idea that didn't go anywhere?

Ali: 21:15

Yeah, so we've been we, you know, team effort all the way around. But same same core tech team has has built everything along the way.

David: 21:26

So how did you so now you're coming from the point of my many questions. How did you afford that?

Ali: 21:32

So we were fortunate we raised venture capital funding right away. Oh, wow.

David: 21:38

So you had an idea with no product? And got real money? Like not Angel? Few 1000? Here a few 1000? Or like some you're hiring for devs? Or I think you said I don't know where four came from several devs? A few. That's, that's expensive, right? I should know, it's expensive. devs are not cheap. And you hired them all you got enough money is? How did that come? To me? That's a rare path. Normally, you got to have a product first.

Ali: 22:06

Yeah. So partially, it was 2022. The world had not blown up yet. The world have not blown up yet. No, I don't mean to put myself down. But we were super fortunate. Both my co founder and I we had worked together. We've both been at Super, you know, fast pace, scaling startups that had had some notoriety in the market at the time. And we're able to leverage our connections that we've met through being at those companies and our friends that have also gone out and started and or were in VC, to kind of get connected to the right people. And yeah, we just went out and basically fundraised on our own reputation, and our idea, and turned out to be successful.

David: 22:59

That's amazing. That reminds me early on in the podcast, we were talking to a guy, and he wanted to build he had this dream of an I have a product and it was huge, pretty massive scope. And I flat out asked, How did you afford to build this? He goes, Well, I sold a company and put 16 million of my own dollars into it. I'm like, Well, that'll do it.

Ali: 23:23

That will do it.

David: 23:24

That's, that's a good way to do it. I'm like, Whoa, yeah. That's a different world. And I understand. But yeah, I mean, those people just, I was like, you see the news of Biz Stone. And those kinds of guys. Bid stone was one of the founders. Twitter originally, right? He's done many. And he's the kind of guy who can just have an idea, put a stake out, and his money attaches to it is, and he can just do that. And then of course, there are much smaller and it sounds like you guys had enough that you were able to pull off some of that yourselves, which is a pretty rare thing. So big congrats on that. Most of our clients are desperate for money, and they have to do some pretty crazy stuff to get it. And so it's pretty amazing. You guys were able to so are you still on that runway? Or are you okay? And how much when do you get scared again? When does runway run out? And when do you have to self be self supporting? Year two years?

Ali: 24:26

Yeah, we're super fortunate. We're close to still that two year mark. Next. So we're feeling very, very fortunate right now. I'm trying to still trying to make every cent count because I will tell you the funding markets are now brutal. I made that joke that 2022 was much different 23 but it's like the money it couldn't be polar opposite right now. So, you know, every VC I talk to every, you know, roundtable thing I go to or networking Everybody's like, I hope you have at least 18 months runway, like weather the storm. That's like been the advice?

David: 25:08

Well, yeah, I mean, and that's clearly I mean, even in the startup, mentoring space it that's the that's the drum that are beaten. It's, it's a rough market out there, the stupid money has gone, where the stock market was kind of boring in the bond market was non existent. So rich people wanted to get crazy. And that's where crypto came from. Right? I mean, when people have too much money, you start to see some really weird stuff. Crypto being a great NFT has been the best example. Just what anyway, yeah.

Ali: 25:38

And I live in Miami, so I'm in like, the epicenter.

Gary: 25:42

Yeah, I was gonna ask if you had some of that, like crypto investment guys trying to hone into your business.

Ali: 25:50

It's so funny. It was like so wild down here for a minute. And now it's gone. Very, very quiet.

Gary: 25:58

I've heard people started going to jail.

Ali: 26:03

Or disassociating themselves. Yeah, just from

Gary: 26:06

people that are going to jail. Yeah.

David: 26:10

But it's interesting, because it's not that they're gone. Not really, a lot of those people just switched. And now it's AI. Now, I truly believe AI is a much better technology. I mean, not that blockchain is bad in and of itself. But that's not what people are making money off of. AI is a neat technology and all sorts of amazing stuff will potentially come out of it, I think. But those those crypto bros.

Gary: 26:35

Yeah, it's got the same energy when it comes to, like social promotion and stuff like that.

David: 26:40

Yeah, how to how to prompt AI and all this crazy stuff. I mean, they're still out there selling their snake oil,

Ali: 26:48

like Twitter threads. But yeah,

David: 26:51

it's it's not Twitter anymore. I don't know if you know this. It's x now. Oh, sorry. Yeah, that's important. That's true. Anyone want to do predictions on how long that lasts? So anyway,

Gary: 27:02

it doesn't matter. Because any, you look up Twitter, you still get to Twitter. It's not.

Ali: 27:07

Here's Is it a tweet? Is it still tweet? Is it there's actually a

David: 27:11

post? You post and repost on X tweets are dead. They're dead. Elon says, Thank you. Can you give us a public service announcement? Yeah, because everyone, this should be a no to all startup founders, what you want to do is you want to build 15 years of brand recognition. And that worldwide and probably one of the most famous logos on the planet, and then just throw it out. Just totally throw it out overnight. That's what you should do. Over over, it wasn't your idea. So I'm just gonna throw the bird out and throw literally billions of dollars of goodwill out the window. I think Coca Cola should follow up with that. They should just toss it and make it it's just it's cola x. That's it. Get rid of it. Sorry, where are they see, Gary? I love it. It happens. Some

Gary: 28:10

might actually make it into the Edit though. So we'll try to get there funny enough

David: 28:14

they do this part right here that we're talking about this. This will totally get cut. Just so you know. Whenever we get super meta, it totally gets good.

Gary: 28:21

Anyway, that's another company he

David: 28:26

you know what's so interesting about meta and again, I'm gonna go on a tangent here for a second whether it makes it or not, I'll let the powers that be meta announced there. Instagram reels I think makes more money than Tik Tok does by a lot. And what that what you basically Mehta has figured out is when it comes to the conversation, tick tock wins all day. When it comes to the cultural impact. Everyone talks about. Tick tock, no one talks about Instagram reels. However, Mehta knows how to make money. They know how to make a lot of money. They can just turn that spigot on and bam, billions come down. So

Ali: 29:06

if you think about it, too, it's like, Instagram is still geared more towards millennials, millennials have more money than Gen Z. So advertisers want to be in front of the people with the money. And this is coming from someone who, who likes lights advertising dollars on fire on Facebook. So the users

Gary: 29:28

of Instagram will rant and rave all day about how it sucks and it's just so full of ads and blah, blah blah, yet they're still posting nonstop and still looking at it non stop.

Ali: 29:38

So shocking. Stories.

Gary: 29:41

Yeah, when you get that one slide of like 15 images that are directly geared for you and you just start sliding through them and then go to the store as soon as you press that shop now button money.

David: 29:53

So Instagram, I don't use Instagram anymore. I find I find social media to be is the ultimate time waster. And so I tried to stay away from it because you'll look down and then you'll look up an hour is gone. But I will say when I was using Instagram, I have never been so impressed by an ad algorithm in my life. Every product they'd show me I was like, yes, yes, I need that. Just they had me. hook line and sinker, just every gizmo and do dead. Yeah, some impulse valentine's day would come up. I'm buying junk from my wife. Yeah. Man, they were masterful anyway. So you mentioned Facebook, and I want to ask this, so it's been a year you're finding traction. You mentioned that you are burning money on Facebook. That is that where your audience is? That makes sense. Because Facebook tends trends older, right? My wife again is on Facebook. I am not and she is not a young spring chicken anymore.

Gary: 30:55

So Christie, edit that out.

David: 30:59

Hey, it is what it is. We embrace it. I'm 45. I embrace it. It's fine. I have no hair, otherwise it'd be gray. But it is Facebook is where our people live. Then my kids live. We don't allow them to have tick tock. So they live in Snapchat, but they're in the millennials, like you're saying they live in Instagram. So you're saying we burn money on Facebook? Our

Ali: 31:23

Facebook, it's Facebook, Instagram. Like it's one umbrella. And it better? I should say the metaphor is nice. The members.

David: 31:33

Well done. So how's that working for you? Is it successful?

Ali: 31:39

It's really successful back to your point of how well they are targeting. Specifically when it comes to folks that are really interested in real estate investing. Meta knows who you are based on the content you consume. So for us to get in front of those, that audience is, is super helpful and fruitful. And I would say of all of the advertising platforms by far the strongest for, you know, pay off perspective. Dollar in versus dollar out.

Gary: 32:14

I can tell you for sure that when I freelanced though I had a lot of clients that were realtors and involved in real estate one way or another advertising. And I even have family members that are brokers and realtors and Facebook, the meta advertising platform is the best source for them. And everywhere, just business to business business to customer finding customers just posting anything they post on MLS, always double it up into Facebook, even their own websites slack behind the Facebook, for sure. Like advertisements for sure.

Ali: 32:47

And what's crazy to me too, so for our space is like you call it 20 years ago, there'd be like local real estate investing groups and people would meet up and talk about their deals and have a community well now that's gone all digital. And it shockingly like it still lives on Facebook. You know there's a little bit on reddit but that gets that can get a little funky because people go crazy there. But hands down like face. Yeah, exactly. Hands down. Facebook has the strongest like group. You know, I'm interested in investing in short term rentals multifamily this market. I'm a female investor, I'm investing in college housing, like whatever you're looking for it exists on there. So really, really great platform broadcasts,

Gary: 33:38

and then they connect groups with other groups. So it's not just Yep. Connecting people and individuals based on your algorithms. Yeah, yeah, that's spiderweb spreads fast.

Ali: 33:48

Really, the only other one I like is big for us is bigger pockets. Have you guys heard of that? Okay, no, okay. I'm gonna cue to give a shout out to bigger pockets. I'm not affiliated with bigger pockets at all. But it's an online community of 2 million real estate investors, individual people, they call themselves like do it yourselfers. And it is one of the strongest online communities I've ever experienced for a specific topic. People are so active and like all over it in terms of sharing tips, tricks, vendors, everything.

David: 34:26

No, I haven't heard of that. I should tell my friend I was telling you about earlier about them. And I bet he's probably heard.

Ali: 34:31

I'm sure if he owns that many properties. He knows that bigger pockets.

David: 34:36

You guys mentioned knowing who you are. And I'm gonna I'm dating the podcast, but did you hear about Walmart and ozempic? Have you heard about this?

Ali: 34:49

I know about ozempic. What's the Walmart tie?

David: 34:51

So is Olympic for those who don't know is the miracle weight loss drug that is currently sweeping the planet. And Walmart came out with a study that showed that people who take ozempic order less groceries. And they just said that like kind of casually, but then you're like, how did you know that? Wait a minute. Oh, you're not? How would you know what drugs I'm taking? Well, it's easy, they have pharmacies. But now you're this little casual thing that they meant that they've mentioned, just in passing, has turned into kind of this little burning smoldering kind of issue, because that means they say we've anonymize the data, but it's pharmacy stuff is super sensitive. And they're basically feeding it. And now it changes how they sell to you and how people buy because they know what drugs you buy, which is like, wow, anyway, talk about knowing you. Yeah, they know you real deep. So careful. Yeah. And I mean, that they they all and I've said this before, if you ever want to know the most evil companies, when it comes to who knows you the best. It's your it's your phone company. They sell your data constantly, and you have no idea and you can't stop them. So that's fine. So we're gonna bring it back around here. How? What do you see as success for you guys? Say in 510 years? What does that look like for you? How big do you get? Are you? Are you unicorns? Dreaming? This dream? Yeah. Are you a unicorn? Are you? And that means a billion dollar or more? Or are you? Is that not where you want to be? Like, is that a dream? You have to be a massive company? Or Okay,

Ali: 36:34

she's not all right. Definitely. Yes, yes, we definitely I believe, though, I mean, the market is huge. That we're going after i It's very underserved market right now. And so the opportunity is, is really there to build something amazing. And dig, I think, for us, it will be adding more and more products to get there. But we have a pretty clear roadmap of what we want to do. And I think it's definitely possible.

Gary: 37:02

What is your geographical reach right now?

Ali: 37:06

Yeah, so right now, just given where the cost of capital is, and like, basically, like where real estate makes sense for our investors, it's very much focused on the Midwest, and then some parts of the southeast. So places where rents are still growing and strong. But the entry point to the owning real estate is much less than call it like, California, or the northeast, or even Florida.

David: 37:40

Do you see you're a unicorn, we're fat, we're casting forward, or you're on your way to become a unicorn? Yeah. Are you still the CEO?

Ali: 37:49

Oh, that's a good question. Um, I will always do what's best for the business? 100.

David: 37:58

Very nice.

Ali: 37:59

I don't, what No, I'm serious. I don't have any. I don't have any goal. But I think you know, there's some founders that are like, I could never give away my baby. And I'm like, No, I want to turn this into something real. And if there's someone better than me to do that, at that point in time, like, let's have a conversation about it. I hope that I can always be involved. And, but I'm very, very realistic that I'm not always going to be the best at everything.

David: 38:34

Is this and tell me if I'm over shooting or pinpointing it, whatever? Is this what you dream of being when you I mean, you're a young person. So 2030 years from now? Is this where you are? Or are you? You know, is there something else you want to do?

Ali: 38:57

Yeah, I will always be in the real estate space, like 100%. Now, what that exactly looks like I can't tell you for sure right now, but I, I love the space. I really love our customers like and I love helping them achieve their goals. And so that's like, really what's motivating me right now. But this space is just like, I get it. I love it. I want to keep doing it forever.

David: 39:28

I mean, the passion I think is so I always have yellow flags, and not as opposed to red flags. When I hear a founder tell me, I'm going to sell this in five years. I'm really looking to Google, right? This is a common thing. 510 years ago, Google is going to buy me right now they don't do that quite as much. But that was the goal. And I'm like, Dude, you are not going to last until you get that check. Based off of that dream. If that passion isn't what boil in Indian and I can see it in you which I think is Lovely to that passion to keep going when things get rough, like they were that first year, those ups and downs are real, and they're scary. And they happen to everyone. I don't care how good you are. And it doesn't mean you're bad. I think that's the other thing a lot of people get confused about. But that passion that you're clearly have, I think is, is very cool. And I think it's very neat to see. So I just, I just want I always like to see, because I'm fascinated by when people decide, I this is as far as I can take this company. So I'm going to do this, whatever this is, and let someone else take it to that next stage. We've interviewed a guy who the founder of the company sold it to him, he was an employee, after 20 years, and the guy was he had like, had this idea that 20 years was as long as I need to be in this company. I'm gonna go do something else. He was like, early 50s. I'm gonna go do something else. That's like, that's very interesting. Like he had it was a timeline for him. That was enough time. I'm moving on. And I, it made me think, well, I'm 10 years into this into my company. And I'm like, I don't think I'm gonna be done in 10 years, but we'll see. Right? It's like, who knows? But anyway?

Ali: 41:11

Did he do something similar or something completely different? Totally exact.

David: 41:15

They were competitive. They are competitors. That's on the podcast. We interviewed him a few weeks ago. And he Yeah, he's a competitor like 50 miles away from me. And that, to me better

Gary: 41:24

to us is too big. I think she was asking, what did the founder do after

David: 41:30

he gave? Oh, strangely enough? No, he went totally random direction. Like, clearly he had a passion for this other thing, which had nothing to do with his original business. Which is lovely. Sorry. Yeah, I misunderstood the question. But But no, they did not compete. He was just off on his own. Took his took his big paycheck and did something totally random, which is lovely. Maybe that'll be me and Mike, my coffee shop idea someday?

Gary: 41:58

Well, Ali, there's one thing we ask every guest that we have in the podcast. What are your three pieces of advice for any entrepreneur, new business, or startup?

Ali: 42:08

Oh, gosh, number one is definitely like, and we talked about this a little bit earlier. But the days that you want to give up, give yourself a time period that I'm going to come back to this in three days, because in three days, you're going to feel better. There's so many times where you could be so down in the dumps. But if you give yourself time to process like you can pop out of it. So don't give up in that sense. The second one is like more of a personal one, where and I haven't always been good about this, but creating some separation and like space for your family specifically, and your significant other and things like that. Because what I've learned in last, just over a year is like your startup will take everything at can from you all the time. So you have to be responsible that like creating a little bit of separation to keep your like relationships healthy. And then the final one is kind of corny, but like, you're doing this for a reason. Like believe in yourself, like, give yourself the grace that you've got this, because it's so easy to be negative towards yourself all the time. But like also remembering to like, give your own self a pat on the butt because no one else will do it for you when you're working for yourself.

Gary: 43:27

Those are three unique courses advice. No, not really. I mean, I'm just happy that they weren't we didn't get any kind of cliche, you know, social media entrepreneurial advice, answers with, you know, hustle hard. Yes, good that no, those those were actually quite unique. Appreciate the

Ali: 43:45

most important one is the time for your family. Because you're gonna be a really unhappy person if you let it take over your whole life.

Gary: 43:52

And I could say just when I was a freelancer before I became part of big pixel, not on the same scale as running a business where you're responsible for other people's money, but just in the same sense that yeah, if you're the only one doing your job, and you're literally working from your home close to your equipment, and it's hard to tear yourself away from that enough. So yeah, I agree. It's it's definitely good to carve out some space for other people around you, especially family.

David: 44:22

Well, thank you so much for joining us. This has been a whole lot of fun talking to you today.

Ali: 44:27

Thank you guys so much. This has been a blast.

Gary: 44:31

Now, if anybody wants to learn more about CPE pause for too long.

David: 44:37

Fine, whatever you do, just wrap it up. I'm out of here.

Gary: 44:43

And Ally, if anybody wants to learn more about you or your business, how can they get in touch or how can they reach you?

Ali: 44:48

Yeah, so best way to learn about the business is just check us out@getaway.co It's just dot C O and then if you want to connect with me, best way is on LinkedIn. It's under ally Nichols, and it's a ally.

Gary: 45:03

We'll put those links in the show notes too.

Ali: 45:06

Awesome. Awesome. Thank you guys so much

Gary: 45:11

for joining us today.

David: 45:14

All right, everybody. We will see you all next week. Have go.

Christie: 45:18

Hi, I'm Christie Bronto, Content Marketing Director here at Big pixel. Thank you for listening to this episode of the biz dev podcast. We'd love to hear from you. Shoot us an email Hello at Doug big pixel.net the biz dev podcast is produced and presented by big pixel. See you next week. Until then follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook threads, YouTube and LinkedIn