Double Your Real Estate Profits: Unconventional Flipping Methods

Stephen S. (00:02.806)
Welcome to the show where we interview the nation’s leading real estate entrepreneurs. It’s your host, Stephen Schmidt. Welcome back. If you’re joining us for a second, third or hundredth time, and if it’s your first time, welcome, you’re in for a treat today. I have a very special guest in the studio. We’ve got Brooke Robertson in the house today and we’re going to be talking about how she was literally able to double her profits just by using untraditional flipping methods.

Brooke has been flipping houses for over 13 years now and now primarily runs a interior design company and has several other projects she’s really excited about that she’s working on. But one unique thing that you’ll find from our conversation is that Brooke has not done a single flip in over seven years that was less than six figures in profit because of her untraditional flipping methods. So we’re gonna hop right into it. Just remember before we do it, Investor Fuel.

We help real estate investors, service providers, and real estate entrepreneurs 2 to 5x their businesses to allow them to build the businesses they’ve always wanted to allow them to live the lives they’ve always dreamed of. Brooke, welcome to the show today.

Brooke Robertson (01:10.978)
Thank you so much, I really appreciate you having me on.

Stephen S. (01:14.114)
Yeah, I’m super, super happy we finally made it happen. For those that have no context, it took us about three weeks to figure this out. And then even on our show date today, it took us 30 minutes of technical difficulties just to get you in the studio. So it’s a special time that I think we’re going to have here. our listeners’ sake, before we really get into the meat and potatoes of this episode, could you just share a little bit more about yourself and how you got here?

Brooke Robertson (01:21.71)
Thank

Brooke Robertson (01:43.406)
Yeah, absolutely. I started out in corporate America when I graduated college and did the rat race for a while. In 09, I got laid off during the crash and started kind of reevaluating my career choices and life and went and had some fun in Costa Rica for a while and then moved back to Richmond. And the first house that I bought after I moved back from Costa Rica was straight out of foreclosure.

I flipped that house. I never had any intent or even interest in design prior to that. I just happened to buy a house and it needed to be fixed up and needed some upgrades and so my spouse and I jumped into it and started working on that house and eventually ended up selling it for a large profit. And at that point I wasn’t really sure what to do with the money and I was talking to a good friend of mine who was a real estate investor and she

She encouraged me to join forces with her on my first flip. So we partnered up and we bought a house for $40,000 in a neighborhood that at the time was very transitional. Not quite yet transitioning, I would say. But it was very close to downtown and we saw the potential. It was in such bad shape that there was actually a tree growing through the middle of the living room. And that’s how I got into

to real estate investing and she and I partnered together on that one. We had a great time. We’re still very good friends, but I kind of got bit by the bug and kept going and haven’t really stopped flipping since. I keep saying I’m not gonna do it anymore and then I find the perfect opportunity and jump on it and next thing you know I’m flipping one more, but it’s always just one more.

Stephen S. (03:38.05)
Yeah, it’s never ending, right? So tell us a little bit about your background in because you say that you had no intention of doing it, no even interest per se, if dare we say that, in design or flipping houses or anything like that. What was your corporate background in that you that you started out of college?

Brooke Robertson (03:40.994)
Yeah.

Brooke Robertson (03:59.566)
was actually all over the place and I didn’t realize it at that time but I think I was building my exposure and my skill set to become an entrepreneur and to launch my own business. I never would have said that back in the day but I started out working as an administrative assistant and HR assistant at a factory in Colonial Heights, Virginia and then I went from there to my job as a paralegal at a law firm downtown and then I left there.

corporate sales and have just like hopped from

career to career over the years until I landed in design and real estate investing. And that’s what really, I’ve never stayed in the same career path for more than four or five years, typically just because I get bored and I see another opportunity over there that sounds interesting. So I jumped to it. But I think real estate investing and design and all of the puzzles and just problem solving that it involves, you never really get to

get bored.

Stephen S. (05:07.276)
Yeah, for sure. Everything you’re saying reminds me of this joke. Do you know what an ADD person has for breakfast? I don’t know, you wanna go color with crowns? You know what I mean? I love it. But it really is, it’s so incredible because none of that relates really other than maybe the processes and like back end systems of.

Brooke Robertson (05:17.804)
What?

Stephen S. (05:35.34)
building a business, none of that relates to creativity and design. So what was that experience that really stuck with you when you decided I’m all in on this?

Brooke Robertson (05:40.256)
Yeah, not at all.

Brooke Robertson (05:55.694)
I finally found my, I don’t even know how to pronounce this word, but it has been a driving motivator for me ever since I left corporate America. And there’s a Japanese word called Ikage, or Ikagai, and it’s the combination of your purpose and what you love and finding that perfect target that kind of incorporates all of the different elements that you’re good at, you thrive in, your personality type.

Stephen S. (06:10.913)
Yeah.

Brooke Robertson (06:25.648)
it matches, you know, what drives you. And so I’ve really found that problem-solving, recognizing patterns, there’s a lot of different elements that have to do with real estate investing and empaths. I consider myself a strong empath. And so being aware of the things going on around you, understanding what people want and what they’re looking for. Like as the city that I’ve been primarily focused in is Richmond, Virginia,

We were a very small city when I first started real estate investing and as Time goes on our city is growing and growing and the population is getting denser the Traffic’s getting worse You know being aware of what’s happening in the city and being able to identify the pockets that I believe are going to pop next and then also to be able to understand what type of consumer is going to be purchasing in

that neighborhood and building the house not only around that consumer and what they want but also around the experience as they walk through the house. some of the things that I really do focus on and think about when I’m designing is as you walk into the property what’s the first thing you’re going to see. As you walk down the hallway and you look into the bathroom what kind of wow moment can I give you whether it be beautiful tile or a beautiful vanity.

set up but maybe you have a plastic tub surround in the tub. You know it’s thinking through the experience and walking the house as if you’re the buyer envisioning the things that you can do to make them fall in love with the house and to give them those wow moments every time they turn a corner or look in a room.

Stephen S. (08:16.418)
What a great answer for anybody that wants a visual on on what Brooks said there too as far as the the Ikea guy It’s IK IGA I and if you go look it up It’s almost like it’s it’s like a Venn diagram on steroids when you find a kid visual for it because like you said it blends your Passion your purpose what you’re good at what you can get paid for and what the market needs all in one thing So it’s almost like finding that

Brooke Robertson (08:33.762)
Yep.

Stephen S. (08:45.762)
That North Star if you if you can find it and so many people are still looking for it. So Let me let me ask you this about some design specifics What are some of the tricks for like finding affordable designs without going overboard on a flip?

Brooke Robertson (09:03.808)
So one thing that I think is really interesting about the way that I approach FLiPS is I’m not professionally trained in interior design. I’m not professionally trained in real estate investing. So I’ve kind of been self-taught in trying to figure out how to get things done in an affordable way. And so if you can step out of how other people are doing it and thinking about how can I do this but more affordably, you can really save a ton of money.

One example is this one time we had, we were flipping a house and we couldn’t figure out what to do with this long, narrow office. It was very narrow, it was very long, it felt odd shaped, but it really needed to be the office for this space. And so we wanted to do built-ins, we couldn’t do it affordably, and so what we ended up doing was I found two matching bookcases on Facebook Marketplace.

place or Craigslist I think it was at the time. I think I paid $28 for the two bookcases and then my carpenter screwed them to the wall. We custom painted them, added some baseboard and crown to them and made it feel like a custom built-in and it cost us $27 in a few hours of his time to accomplish this really nice built-in high-end look.

So that’s one of my favorite tricks another one that I’ll do sometimes is a lot of people will invest if they’re doing a higher-end home they’ll invest in a glass surround for the shower and Depending on the space you’re working with a lot of times You have to go custom in order to maximize the space in the shower And I actually figured out a way to bypass the custom While still maximizing the size of the shower because what you can do is instead of

just getting a surround built to it, you can build your shower to fit the surround. And what I mean by that, for example, I had a shower, think it was, we wanted it to be about 39 inches on the inside perimeter, or inside…

Brooke Robertson (11:15.726)
the rectangle, wanted a 39 inch spread and you can’t do that with a typical glass shower. So what we had to do was we built a curb on the wall in order to make the L-shaped shower the size and shape that we wanted it to be without having to go custom. So we were quoted $3,800 for an L-shaped glass surround for the shower and we ended up being able to find one on Wayfair for $700.

and then we just built out the curb on the wall in order to extend the glass around to reach the measurements that we wanted it to reach.

Stephen S. (11:57.184)
So it’s finding creative ways to not have to pay full price through more traditional methods.

Brooke Robertson (12:03.334)
Exactly Exactly and then another trick that we really use is mixing a lot of highs and lows So I really think it’s important to incorporate some quality pieces no matter what the bathroom is or what the kitchen is you need to even if you’re trying to save a ton of money and keep it really affordable there are ways to incorporate higher-end pieces whether it be using used light fixtures or you know a nicer

faucet for the sink or for the shower head but then you can kind of buy

budget friendly pieces for the other areas. One place that I love to save money is like mirrors. You can get the best mirrors from Target, Kirkland’s, Walmart even. You can’t tell that they’re low end. You pair them with a really nice vanity or a nice faucet and you can’t really tell as long as you’re mixing and matching the different pieces and not having them all be super low cost.

Stephen S. (13:05.634)
Yeah, that makes sense. let me ask you this. Why do you think that your flips when you started where you’re averaging pretty decent profit, but not really focusing a lot on the unique characters and things along those lines of the houses that you took on. Why is it that once you started doing that, your profits doubled to where you’re bringing in just crazy amounts of profit compared to the average flipper?

Brooke Robertson (13:35.256)
So that’s actually really a question that I’ve been wondering myself over the years and really tried to analyze like why when I got this one house and changed my approach did my profitability increase so much and I truly believe that if you’re creating something unique people will fight for it. So if you have for example I just did a flip this past fall in Northside in Richmond, Virginia and

The house was nice. It was fine, but it didn’t have the wow factors and it was a little bit of a strange layout and so one thing that we did in order to really make it a standout was we barreled the the ceiling in the walk-in pantry that was visible as soon as you rounded the corner you could see this walk-in pantry all the way from the front door area and you could look all the way through and it wasn’t an expensive ad to do but it just gave it

so much personality and character that when the people came to see it and they were interested in this house, they were willing to fight for it because if they loved it, they can’t find it right down the street. They can’t find a similar product, a similar aesthetic in the same neighborhood. so making the house stand out, making it special, making it feel really turnkey for people who do have a design eye or do have that kind of elevated aesthetic instead of them.

going in there thinking well I’m gonna have to add wallpaper in here and you know there’s gray or cream walls everywhere so I’m gonna have to paint some interesting colors to get it to my aesthetic and stuff. If you can provide that as the investor you only need one person to love your house and to fall in love with it. Now if you can create the bidding wars you can also create your own terms so you can save a ton of money. So if you do find those three people that love the house one

person gets it but you make the three fight over it as the investor when you’re selling it you can say you need to guarantee your appraisal or you need to waive the inspection repairs. mean inspections a lot of our inspections we do try and honor the house and do the best job possible but sometimes you just can’t do everything and make the house perfect especially with these historic homes and so it’s really important

Brooke Robertson (16:04.816)
for me at least to be able to wave make the buyers wave the inspection and You know understand that it’s a historic home because you can find anything wrong with the historic home I mean, there’s just too many things and in Richmond we I mostly work on historic homes because they’re of interest to me and so I think just being able to have the peace of mind of they’ve Guaranteed the appraisal they wave the inspection

they really want the house even if something goes wrong they love the house enough that they’re gonna fight for it. I really think that that helps you become more profitable is to have a unique product that people are willing to go the extra mile for.

Stephen S. (16:50.498)
And you know, Richmond has a very distinct blend of history and modern style. So how would you say the local character influences your design choices?

Brooke Robertson (17:02.254)
That’s a good question. I always try to honor the house and the style of the house, but I do like to add modern elements. So there’s a lot of different personalities, a lot of different houses in Richmond. One of my favorite approaches is to go into a previously flipped house and fix it and put the character back and put the original wooden doors back instead of the hollow core.

And sometimes character, the personality and the soul of the house comes from the dented trim around the doorways or the gouges in the wood floors. And there’s so much history. It’s something to be celebrated and honored instead of just encasing everything in LVP.

Stephen S. (17:54.914)
Right, tell me a little more about that. You kind of laughed when I asked that question, almost like there was a specific story that might have come to mind. Tell me more about a really interesting deal you did there.

Brooke Robertson (18:09.486)
Well, the one that made me change my approach to flipping was this hoarder house that I bought in 2018 and it was such a strange house. The previous owners, had been a one family home. They had built it and as they had more kids, they kind of added on and they did some weird additions that most people wouldn’t do. But the house was so strange that I couldn’t continue with the vanilla approach that I had been taught when I first started flipping and

people like how to do it and they said stay white, stay neutral, universally appealing. Like this house was bizarre and strange and I just couldn’t, I knew that it wouldn’t sell if I went back in with boring or vanilla finishes and fixtures. So I really had to add a ton of personality and it had this really cool mid-century modern vibe to it in the sense that it was a brick ranch.

but they had turned it into a split level off the back. So what I imagine was probably the original door into the backyard. It was wider, about six feet wide. So I imagine it was like a sliding door in the 60s or something into the backyard and they added a split level right there with a skylight above it. And that informs the entire design for that whole house and set my entire career in a different direction.

Stephen S. (19:40.098)
Why did it send it in a completely different direction, do you think?

Brooke Robertson (19:44.876)
Because I realized that I actually love design and that you know, I got excited about different elements on that house. We took a live edge slab and we created a waterfall edge off of the peninsula so that when you walk through the front door, you saw this live edge slab coming right off the side of the cabinet and we just started playing with light and

the different ways that we introduce light into the different spaces and I started getting a little more creative. And so I think if I hadn’t had that one house that made me change my tune, I probably would have continued with my career the same way I have everything else. Do it for four or five years, get a little bit bored and move on to the next shiny object or the next interesting problem to solve. I think because I was able to, like I said, add, find my Ica guy of like problems

solving, design, the interest of real estate investing. I think that helped me stick with this career a lot longer than I would have had I stayed with the white subway tiles and vanilla walls.

Stephen S. (20:58.252)
Sure. Do you brand, I feel like I know the answer to this already. Do you brand your flips with like a pretty consistent style that’s Brooke Robertson like when you see it or do you shift your designs kind of depending on the price point and neighborhood to where almost everything you do is like avant-garde.

Brooke Robertson (21:19.118)
I definitely shift my designs depending on the neighborhood, depending on the climate, like the real estate climate and where I think that’s going. I try to embrace the personality of the house and run with it as much as possible. So if I’m doing a historic four square, I’m probably not going to go as mid-century modern. I’m probably going to lean more into transitional style.

If I’m doing a ranch house, I’m going to go really high design and try and add some elements that you only see in magazines. And that’s because a ranch house can just be so bland with the one level and the three bedrooms. So I especially elevate ranch house designs when I’m doing like the outside is basic. I’ll add some wallpaper or some funky light fixtures and stuff like that. So I kind of bounce

around but I think I have a very unique style because I’m not professionally trained. I just kind of grab elements that I love and I love to mix historic with modern and clean with like maybe a little bit more rustic. I love that dichotomy of the different styles running together and I also think that that really helps attract the right buyer who might have a little bit more expendable income. it’s sometimes it’s really fun to take a super historic house.

and renovate it with a nod to the historic and the nod to the traditional but then when I go to stage it I’ll stage it with really cool funky modern items or you know just giving people that vision of what it could be and I can’t tell you how many times people say can we also buy all the furniture that it’s staged with? I’m like no no no that’s out of my own living room

Stephen S. (23:09.634)
That’s awesome.

Right. No kidding. my goodness. I love that. Well, let’s I’ve got this new segment. I wish I had one of those roadcaster podcast deals where I could like play some sort of like game show music. But I’ve got I’ve got this new segment I’ve started doing literally yesterday called the speed round. And so if you’re down to play it, what it is, I’m going to fire off four or five just rapid fire questions because we’re coming up to the end of the show.

Brooke Robertson (23:33.899)
Okay.

Stephen S. (23:41.982)
And so it’s just designed for like quick decision, like one word answer, like very, very short. You want to apply? Awesome. Okay. And it’s all going to be related to, it’s all going to be related to something in design. The last question I ask is going to be something that’s more of a thinker for you so you can take longer to ask it. Okay. Or answer it. So, okay. All right. Drum roll. All right. So we’re starting the speed round. Most overrated design trend right now.

Brooke Robertson (23:42.432)
Okay.

Brooke Robertson (23:47.702)
Okay, sure.

Brooke Robertson (24:03.723)
Okay.

Brooke Robertson (24:12.738)
Gray LVP.

Stephen S. (24:14.498)
Most underrated paint color.

Brooke Robertson (24:19.136)
Chantilly Lace Benjamin Moore it works everywhere.

Stephen S. (24:22.882)
Chantilly Lace Benjamin Moore. right, fantastic. Best room to splurge on a flip.

Brooke Robertson (24:30.168)
Kitchen.

Stephen S. (24:31.49)
kitchen. If you could redesign one famous home, what would it be?

Brooke Robertson (24:37.08)
Ooh, the White House.

Stephen S. (24:39.586)
I knew you were gonna say that too. Oh my gosh, I love it. shoot, I lost it. What’s the greatest lesson that you’ve learned off of one of your biggest mistakes or someone else’s biggest mistakes?

Brooke Robertson (24:57.326)
Contracts before pay. Always get a signed contract. Yep, always. No matter what. I don’t care. Just do it.

Stephen S. (25:00.578)
Mmm, that’s a good one. That’s really good.

All right, and then last question, this is more of a thinker. So what’s next for you now? Is it more flips, design firm, something else? I know you’ve got a lot going on.

Brooke Robertson (25:15.554)
So speaking of my Ica Guy, I am taking what I love and that’s designing flip houses and I’m taking it and releasing all of my designs to real estate investors online. So we’re basically, I’ve got over 60 bathrooms designed, several kitchens and all of this is out on a portal. It’s design-delivered.com is our website, but we’ll be sharing our designs where people can shop them or they can pay us to place the

orders, order an entire bathroom or kitchen at once and ship it, all the pieces to their job site to be installed right then and there. So I’m taking my love of designing real estate investing properties on a budget and taking it where and putting it online where I get to also travel and do the fun things that I’ve been wanting to do and combining the things that I love with ways that I can help other people achieve higher ROI.

And then also me being able to have the lifestyle that I’ve always dreamed of having and haven’t yet gotten to have with Corporate America and Flipping Houses in person.

Stephen S. (26:24.892)
Mm, love it. Brooke, thanks for joining us today. If anyone wants to learn more about you or what you’re working on, where should they go for that?

Brooke Robertson (26:33.248)
Instagram, I have an account called That Flip Chick and that is more about my house flipping journey and that’s That Flip Chick. I talk about some design, some house flipping, and then if they want to learn a little bit more about the actual design service for real estate investors, they can go to our website, designs-delivered.com.

Stephen S. (26:54.37)
And there you go. Well, go drop her a fall y’all show her some love from the investor fuel community. And if you reach out to her, let her

Stephen S. (27:05.186)
you enjoyed today’s show and we’ll see you on the next episode. Thanks again.

Brooke Robertson (27:09.784)
Thank you, I really appreciate you having me on the show.