Mike: Hey everybody.
Welcome back to another episode of the Richard Geek Podcast.
Today we have Casey Gregersen.
He's the founder, CEO of Bighorn Capital Fund.
He's a real estate investment expert based in Laramie, Wyoming.
And we'll get into some details on, why he's picking Wyoming.
It's very interesting.
He's got a decade of experience at Shell Oil Company and a successful
transition entrepreneurship.
He's managed multiple business ventures, including seven Pure Barre franchises.
Now he's leveraging his industry knowledge to help professionals
achieve financial freedom through strategic real estate investments.
Casey, how are you doing Bud?
Casey: Doing great.
Doing great.
Excited to be on the show.
Mike: Absolutely.
So I always start every episode, give us a little bit about, who you are and
what was that transition moment that you decided, what real estate is it?
Casey: Yeah, you bet.
My path was probably a lot different than most other people coming
from oil and gas background.
Growing up, I didn't picture myself being a petroleum engineer.
I was always a math guy, got into engineering and I was a big
opportunity I had in grad school to be a petroleum engineer.
Which led me to work for Shell, actually down in Houston.
The nice thing I had though is when I went to work for Shell,
I was an engineer, right?
So after six months in the office or so, they put us out in the
field, like on a drilling rig.
I was out there like drilling and fracking and doing all that on site.
But the cool thing I had was I would work for two weeks on
the rig, right on the site.
And then after that I go travel home for two weeks.
And on those two weeks off.
I didn't have to pick up a my work phone or open the laptop or do anything
when it came to working for Shell.
So during that time, that's when I started investing in real estate.
I'd actually bought my first rental property when I was going to school
at the University of Wyoming.
I grew up in Wyoming, right?
Bought my first rental property there in college.
And then during those two weeks I got that bug right.
I started listening to BiggerPockets Rich Dad Poor Dad, and listened to podcast.
I was consuming it by day, working in the field.
And then on my off days I was actually going applying it, right?
I was fine rental properties, I was doing fix and flips and it
was really like guess like kind of perfect storm to really get started.
Mike: Yeah.
You know, it's like everyone, if you could raise your hand and you're in
real estate, who read Rich Dad Poor Dad.
I was so lucky enough a couple months ago to go to a party and Kiyosaki
was there, so I got to bend his ear.
Because he was kind of like the grand mentor for all of us.
What is your why as far as with the real estate?
A lot of people say, well, time freedom, all these different things.
You probably had a good salary with the oil rigs and things like that.
Now you're doing the real estate.
What's the why?
Tell us a little bit about what was going on inside your head?
Casey: Yeah, it's a combination of things and I'll try to keep it concise for you.
It started out working in the field, being away from my family.
And if you guys, if anybody watching this has seen the new series
Landman, incredible depiction of what it was like working.
I was in West Texas working out there away from my family in
a dangerous sort of setting.
It wasn't that dangerous working for Shell, a big company it was much more
safe, but it was being away, right?
And I was asking myself this question, right?
It was like.
But what if I didn't have to choose work over family?
What if I could make this living?
Not have to be away from my family for two weeks.
So I was able to manage that for quite a few years, while my kids were young.
But what really hit me, and it's a longer story, so I'll give you
the cliff notes, but I came back to Houston and was working a day job.
So I gotta see my kids every night.
And at this point I had.
I had three of 'em and I'll never forget it actually.
Not many people know this, but when COVID hit a couple months after
that is when oil went negative.
It was a crazy time in the markets.
But here's where it really clicks, right?
My new job is to go out to the Gulf of Mexico on a platform, right?
And I had to go leave for like indefinitely.
I actually had to go sit in a hotel room for a week and sit in there in quarantine
before I could even get on the helicopter to fly out to the platform, right?
So I'm going there for a week, waiting three weeks, three to four
weeks on a platform before I see my kids again and my wife, right?
He was seven years old at the time.
He was my oldest.
And I'll never forget it.
I'm driving out to the hotel in Houma, Louisiana, so if anybody's ever been
out there, they know where I'm talking.
And my wife calls and I'm about halfway through the drive and she's
like, "Casey, just checking in.
But I dunno if you saw this, but when you left your son, he chased after you.
I had to chase him like two blocks down the street and trying to tell
him like, Hey, dad's gotta go.
He's leaving."
I'll never forget that moment.
It was like one of the hardest moments, like having to hear that and then having
three or four more weeks of work just about to start, like I was just going.
So that was one of the pivotal moments of "Alright, I was already hustling
and going hard in real estate," but I'm like, "I'm going to supercharge
this because again, I don't want to have to make that decision anymore."
Mike: Yeah.
It's definitely family.
It's definitely security.
A little bit before we get start getting into the details
of Wyoming and what you do.
How did an engineer's mind help you in looking at real estate and with the math
and engineering and the ability to look at an asset and say, "You know what? This
works mathematically, or this doesn't."
Casey: Absolutely.
I didn't realize it at the time how much synergy, but as I've gotten older
and done this for more and more years, I realized, "Oh, wow, there's these
little skills that I picked up." Whether it was being an engineer and just
being, always being math minded, right?
And just doing underwriting.
Not many people, I realize it's a skill I take for granted, but just being able to
pull, open a spreadsheet and underwrite a deal quickly and be like, "Hey, can
I analyze this? This makes sense." That's probably the biggest asset but
other ones that I learned was, even we working for Shell in a big company, like
we were very process oriented, right?
And everything had an SOP, we were drilling wells in the West
Texas or middle of Gulf of Mexico.
And it was all about repeating it and starting to streamline it.
So learning those processes and then.
What I did is I simply like the first thing I automated
was property management, right?
I was doing property management from Houston and I was doing it
on properties up in Wyoming and a little bit in like Dallas-Fort Worth.
Like I wasn't touching any of my properties and I was doing it all.
So one of the first things I did, and this was another thing I did during
COVID, when everybody was locked down, I'm like, "Alright here's an opportunity to
develop this system." Basically, I wrote out all my SOPs in like Microsoft Word.
I recorded myself doing it, and I built a system or virtual assistants could
do everything that I was doing and be able to do, managed property from afar.
I had that experience of building out SOPs and standardizing, and then every
time you do it, you go back and do an after action review and you go have
this feedback loop, or you go implement what you learned and do it again.
Mike: Absolutely.
So let's get into what you're doing.
You're out in Wyoming for the rest of the United States, it's like, "Okay, is
there a capital of Wyoming? What's in Wyoming? People live in Wyoming?" You
know, that's just one of those kind of forgotten states, and that's probably
good for real estate and picking up multifamily and single family houses.
So tell us a little bit about why Wyoming and not Houston.
Casey: Yeah, you hit it on the head, Mike, you, that's literally my exact
story and why it works so well.
Let's get started in Wyoming.
Because one of the first things was like wholesalers, right?
Not many people maybe know this in the real estate industry, but you can
relate this to any industry, like a really easy way to get started in real
estate is just go find deals, right?
Just do marketing, find the deals, and then go find the end buyer.
I was doing that in Dallas-Fort Worth.
And I had owned a couple properties in Wyoming.
This was like 2017, right?
And I'm like, "Man, I wish I had a wholesaler in Wyoming I
could buy deals from, rather than having to try to buy off the MLS."
But I saw there as an opportunity.
I'm like, " Why don't I just go do that myself?
Because there's no competition.
Why don't I go do it?" So we started doing marketing postcards, direct mail,
radio ads, Facebook ads, you name it.
And what I found was my cost per lead was so much cheaper in Wyoming versus Texas.
And as I started to become part of other masterminds and see what other people
that were doing this on a high level across the country, when I compared
my cost per lead compared to what they were paying, it was considerably less.
And even when I was negotiating, right?
When I'm like having the conversation with a seller that wants to sell their
house off market, like all my buddies here in Houston, they're looking at it.
They're bidding against 5 to 10, maybe 20 other people that do
the exact same thing as them.
Versus in Wyoming, I'm the only one having the conversation.
And the other kind of superpower or like niche I like about
it is I grew up there, right?
I know how it ticks.
It's kind of funny, but it makes sense.
Like Wyoming's like 20 years behind the rest of the country, right?
Literally.
And just the way they operate and their technology and if you've been up
there, you know what I'm talking about.
And if anybody listened to this, they have, and that, but
that's why they love it, right?
That's why people wanna live there.
But I like, it's my little unfair advantage because I get it.
I can speak to that, I can cater to that, but at the same time, I can
come in and apply like technology and marketing and different innovative things
that I'm learning here in Houston and across the country and apply to Wyoming.
Mike: Discuss with our listeners a little bit about what it is you're doing, if it's
multifamily, what are the type of things that you're doing inside of Wyoming?
Casey: You bet.
Initially like a lot of people started doing single family, small multifamily.
We've really found a big opportunity is in the multifamily space in Wyoming.
So we're still doing like my marketing, we still do a ton of the single
family and small multifamily stuff and we will fix them up and flip them.
Because one big thing I haven't mentioned got to yet is the contractors, right?
I think one of the biggest drivers, other than just simple supply and
demand, there's not enough houses, which again is related to contractors.
There's not enough supply of housing in Wyoming, and that's
what's really continued to have the market be very stable.
For example, you could say that is Las Vegas, Boise, California.
Like prices, some of those have had a big swing when interest rates went up.
So prices drop, we just stabilized, right?
It stayed flat because granted, it wasn't appreciating at 10 to 20% a year.
But we were still getting appreciation.
And it was stable, right?
Because again, of that constant need for housing.
I think one of the biggest things that's just stable, right?
And that's allowed us to do single and multifamily and then the last
piece is the multifamily space, right?
Again, like Wyoming being 20 years behind the country, I can't tell you
how many big multifamily assets we bought where they're still paying cash.
All the leases are paper leases, right?
There's no technology being applied.
I mean, I love doing value add in general, and I know I'm going, like you could
see we do a lot of different things, but I'm just finding an opportunity to wear.
If we just go in and operate it like more professionally and implement,
even, not even talking ai, but just start to put in processes and systems.
It's helping us bring value to the multifamily assets.
And as we all know, when it comes to buying multifamily,
it's all about value add.
And we're able to do that with forced appreciation and improvements, but we can
also do it by just improving operations.
Mike: Now are you seeing that there's in Wyoming it might be
some of our assets that we have in the Midwest.
The difference is Arizona, Houston, you get a lot of appreciation
because there's a lot of the growth and maybe a little less cash flow.
But I noticed that like our Midwest and mountain type state assets.
There's a lot of cash flow, but the appreciation is very small things
don't increase their value as quickly as the hot states or the hot cities.
Is that what you're seeing in Wyoming?
Casey: Yeah.
Wyoming historically has been like that, right?
Yeah.
And if you, again, go back and we talk about this all the time.
If you go back and look at like the year over year home values in 2008, 2009.
It was everywhere else in the country.
It was like rough, right?
It was a flat line in Wyoming, it was just steady.
Call it a blip.
But ever since then, it's been slow and steady.
And historically Wyoming's always been, it's not like Utah surrounding it.
It's not like.
Denver, I mean, at least not yet to where it didn't see these crazy appreciations.
It's been three to 5% year over year.
I mean, during the COVID years and interest rates dropping, you
saw like the five, 10% jumps.
But yeah, it's typically been a slow and steady one.
And I think what you're heading at, Mike is the cash flow, right?
Because prices haven't surged.
It's been a good cash flow market.
And again, the reason I love it is Wyoming's, so you've
got Colorado, that's blown up.
You got Utah, salt Lake City, that's blown up now.
Montana's even seeing a big surge.
Oh yeah.
It's got all the same geography, right?
All the same demand, just less people.
From a cash flow perspective, you can still buy multifamily,
even small, single family assets.
And they could still cash flow kinda like in the Midwest, but I just
think there's a lot of upside just based on what's happening around it.
Mike: Yeah.
Very cool.
So let's get into your company, what you're doing, what you're offering.
You've now gotten to the point where in order to grow, let's get some investors.
Are you doing syndications?
Are you doing funds?
And what does that entail?
Casey: You bet.
So back to the sort of supply and demand and what we're seeing in Wyoming, again,
it can be a blessing and a curse, but actually I think it's a double blessing.
So the blessing again, is low competition.
We're able find a lot of deals and we get it at a lower cost.
But typically you would say the curse would be, all
right, well now it's harder to
go flip and sell this to another cash buyer.
Like it is definitely difficult Wyoming to be a wholesaler because there's
not as many cash buyers and investors.
But the way we've actually created an advantage to that
is we've become our own buyer.
And that's what I've done for years and years.
But to really scale now, because now I've got a full marketing company, I've
got four different construction crews that do our work and we manage all
of our property management in-house.
But to continue to feed all that.
Like now it's all about raising capital for our fund.
And to kind of go a little bit back to my story and I remember telling
you guys about how I had to make the decision, do I choose business or family?
I can't, I gotta go to the rig, I gotta make my salary.
I gotta be away from my family.
Well, again, I pushed right?
And I didn't give up.
That supercharged me to like, "Hey, I'm gonna go hustle and I'm gonna figure
this out." So I could eventually have that freedom and make that choice, right?
And now the, where this all kind of blends together is.
I found that by building out these three companies, again, finding the deals,
fixing it up and property management.
I found that I love processes and I love building stuff, but really I
love being able to help other people do the same thing because I know how
that felt for me and I've just had so many conversations with other like
passive investors, and maybe they don't have the time or the resources.
It's mainly usually a time thing, right?
They're still in their W-2 job and maybe whether they want to leave that W-2 or
not, they have a time constraint and they also just don't understand all the
ins and outs of real estate like I do.
So what I found is my bigger passion, and it's actually a goal of mine I set a
year ago, was to help a hundred families achieve their passive income goal.
And to do that, they can invest in things like my fund, right?
There's a lot of people that are just like, Hey, I want to, I wanna
get in on a deal up in Wyoming.
Maybe they just wanna come up and visit it in the summertime or winter, or
they will like it because of cash flow.
But by helping these a hundred people, naturally, they love partnering in
our fund which is a great opportunity.
But at the end of the day, like I've had really good mentors that have helped
me and helped me to get to where I am.
And I found that was one of the biggest thing that helped propel
me was surrounding myself with people who thought similarly.
It's been really important to me to give back.
So I'm really excited to help other people.
I'll summarize it with this I want other people to be able to
make the same choice I made when it comes to family or business.
And whichever one, just at least to be able to make the choice.
Mike: And how is the fund set up?
Accredited investors only?
Casey: Yes.
I have our accredited fund, which is Big Horn Capital Fund.
We have limited partners.
This is for accredited investors.
So we have a couple different options and I'll just quickly highlight it.
Yeah.
I created this customizable fund to give people multiple options.
But we also have equity ones and that's the one I'm actually working on right now.
And we're raising for really, actually currently we're have an
ongoing raise and that one's a more equity role where people can come in.
It's a longer term one where we're gonna hold for five years.
But they get the equity upside and the probably the biggest thing is
because he talked to a lot of investors is the depreciation, right?
Because we're buying and holding real estate, we get the depreciation
and they get the upside.
Again, I've just found investors are, it depends, right?
Some people, they wanna be in and out and be flexible and have a fixed return.
because that's the easiest to understand.
But other investors are like, you know what?
I don't want you to give me all my money back in six months on a flip, Casey.
I want you to keep that money working and they want the depreciation.
Mike: Absolutely.
Casey, how can people find out more information about the fund?
Casey: Yeah, absolutely.
So you could go to bighorncapitalfund.com is one easy way, but also I
just encourage people, I wanna help people out any way I can.
Just go to my website or find me on YouTube, Instagram, whatever you guys use.
It's just caseygregersen.com or Casey Gregersen on YouTube.
As long as you guys spell my name, you'll find me
Mike: And the ladies gnetlemen, it's C-A-S-E-Y.
Greg, G-R-E-G-E-R-S-E-N.
Casey, thank you so much for coming on, The Richer Geek.
Is there anything before we leave that perhaps I haven't asked you something
that you'd like to inform our guests?
Casey: One last thing Mike, I'd like to share is working with oil and gas
professionals over the year, like I've just found that a lot of those guys,
they didn't have the time, right?
And they didn't have the experience to invest in real estate, and it's
just been really fun to help those guys because it's the perfect
combination for me and them, right?
They don't have the time.
But at the same time, for me to scale in Wyoming, as I mentioned,
like it becomes a capital game now.
'because we can find the deal, we can fix it up and we can rent it out.
I just love being able to partner with people to where I can grow, they can grow,
and it's just a really cool relationship.
So again, I just really encourage people if I give you my time, like I'm giving
you my time 'cause I want to partner with you guys and I wanna make it a win-win.
Mike: Absolutely.
Casey, thank you so much for coming on The Richer Geek Podcast.
Hope you have a wonderful night and good luck with the fund.
Take care.
Casey: Perfect.
Thanks Mike.