Unlocking Real Estate Success: Blake Selby’s Journey to Partnership Power

Dylan Silver (00:00.888)
Hey folks, welcome back to the show. I’m your host, Dylan Silver, and today on the show I have private lender out of the Pensacola, Florida area, Blake Selby. Blake, welcome to the show.

Blake Selby (00:15.658)
Thanks for having me on, absolute pleasure. Looking forward to this.

Dylan Silver (00:18.326)
It’s a pleasure to have you Blake. I always like to start off by asking folks how they got into the real estate space.

Blake Selby (00:26.974)
Yeah, my journey wasn’t that dissimilar to a lot of guys, you know, starting out with like rental real estate flips, just kind of taking a shotgun approach to everything. You know, I scaled pretty quickly, maybe even recklessly about 10 years ago. I remember that first, within the first year and a half, I think I was at like 80 units. So, you know, that’s a little bit, little bit more.

aggressive than I would recommend somebody do. But it was, yeah, it was a great way for me to start seeing patterns. When you’re at scale, you start noticing patterns. So that was kind of the thing that helped me. Gosh, that’s been like 10 years ago. That’s crazy to think about. I feel old.

Dylan Silver (01:09.622)
Is was that was that Midwest that you had these 80 units?

Blake Selby (01:13.512)
Yeah, Iowa, Illinois for the main brunt of them. And then I started scaling out after that and went to some other areas. But yeah, that was definitely an interesting place to have them. You know, it’s more of a cashflow area. They definitely appreciate in that area, too. But it’s it’s not like Vegas or California or Florida or something where the appreciation like skyrockets. It doesn’t really do that there as much. It’s more of a kind of an even keel market. But yeah, you can.

still appreciate it. For me it was more forced appreciation that kind of helped me out.

Dylan Silver (01:48.332)
These markets, know, Iowa, Illinois, of course you’ve got Chicago, but some of these other markets which people may not immediately think about, there’s still tremendous opportunities to cash flow. And I think a lot of the strategies which may be more difficult than other markets are still very viable in those areas.

Blake Selby (02:06.95)
yeah, can cash flow in an appreciation market, you can appreciate in a cash flow market. You just have to force it. Like I always say, a really strong person can even make a bad plan work.

Dylan Silver (02:20.172)
That’s true. I’m gonna steal that line. A really strong person can make a bad plan work. How did you get down to Pensacola? Did you say enough of this cold?

Blake Selby (02:28.96)
Pretty much, yeah, I actually just moved down here in January. So I was in the Midwest for all my life. This is the first time I’ve lived anywhere besides the Midwest. And I moved down here in January. I’ve got some family here. And yeah, I’ve really been, I’ll tell you what, getting out of the Midwest winter was pretty nice for the first time. But it’s nice to be able to walk around most of the year and I get to, you know, a little hotter in the summers.

Dylan Silver (02:49.283)
Yeah.

Blake Selby (02:57.278)
and I still have yet to experience my first July and August in Florida. for the time being, it’s habitable.

Dylan Silver (03:07.77)
I tend to think that there’s a lot of real estate magic that’s happening in Florida specifically. feel like I’ve had so many guests on the show talk to me about moving from these Wisconsin, know, Oregon, where else, Detroit area. And I’m thinking, man, these are not the warmest places, but then they go down to Florida and I’m like, man, there is some magic because I, of course you see Fort Lauderdale, Miami. I mentioned before hopping on here that I’m thinking about moving to St. Petersburg is actually because a guest on the show.

Blake Selby (03:16.309)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (03:37.546)
talk to me about it. And then you’re in Pensacola and I’m thinking, man, there’s so many, you know, enthusiastic, passionate real estate entrepreneurs out there in Florida. And I’m not in a bad market by any standard. I’m in Dallas, right? One of the one of the better markets for single and multifamily. But even still, I’m thinking like, man, it would be nice to have a beach close by or something.

Blake Selby (03:39.062)
yeah.

Blake Selby (03:58.933)
Yeah, that’s a blessing. know, having a beach 10, 12 minutes away is a really nice thing. And I don’t take advantage of it as often as I should. But I, know, especially when I first got here, I was going there almost every day. But yeah, mean, as you kind of get spoiled after a period of time, seems that’s what I’m falling into.

Dylan Silver (04:18.818)
You know, with that though, it’s kind of like having a pool in your backyard. Just because you’re not using the pool every day, it’s like the pool’s right there. Like you walk home and you’re like, I bought a pool. So it’s like you got the beach. Are you still very involved in lending out there in Iowa and Illinois?

Blake Selby (04:24.159)
Right.

Blake Selby (04:27.516)
Exactly.

Blake Selby (04:37.408)
Yeah, I’m doing a lot more like the flip partnerships, like joint ventures and equity partnerships. I’m trying to get away from the actual just like regular lending. So I haven’t been, I still have some mortgages and loans and things on my books, but I’m really enjoying like the partnering aspect and I can do a little bit more to help move the needle for my clients. I can help vision shape a bit, I can help them avoid mistakes, I can help them figure out what they should be doing.

You know, for my people, it’s like, I don’t just set it and forget it. mean, I’m on calls with them, you know, every couple of weeks trying to check in with them, see, hey, what do you need from me? Do you need any advice? Do you need to get hooked up with the right person to do Dispo on this house? Like, what’s the situation? So, you know, even if they’re needing it, I’ll even help them get discounts on materials and stuff using my accounts or whatever, you know. So I do a lot more than like a typical lender would do.

I’m more in the joint venture slash equity partnership space. But yeah, that’s I do it in the Midwest a lot still. And but yeah, I’m definitely in a lot of I think we’re in like 15, 16 states right now with active deals. So it’s I’m not opposed to going to new states. just again, I go where I’m sort of getting the requests. Right. So if people from California like I’ve done one deal in California only, not because I wouldn’t. I just only got

Dylan Silver (05:48.174)
Mmm.

Blake Selby (06:03.444)
you know, one request.

Dylan Silver (06:03.842)
Yeah. How much of your business is those two states you mentioned like Iowa, Illinois, and you mentioned, you know, 13 others, and how much of it is where you’re at right now, Pensacola area?

Blake Selby (06:14.227)
Yeah, I’d say Pensacola is probably less than 5 % of the business right now. would say Iowa, Illinois is probably like 20, 30 % of the business. And then the rest of it’s just scattered among the pretty evenly other states. I have stuff in Ohio. I’ve got stuff out in North Carolina. There’s definitely a good bit of, which I actually prefer. I would prefer to not have all my eggs in one basket. I’ve got a subdivision I’m developing in Michigan.

Dylan Silver (06:38.659)
Yeah.

Blake Selby (06:40.701)
Right now, we’re finishing our fifth house right now. These are all executive lots and putting up half a million dollar houses up there in northern Michigan near Traverse City, which is actually where I grew up. So yeah, there’s a lot going on and it’s definitely not centralized. It used to be centralized in one area. I’ve got two employees that are back in Iowa, Illinois area, Quad Cities, one’s in Illinois side, one’s in Iowa side.

Then I’ve got one that doesn’t live in there. But yeah, it’s definitely a You know a good solid area to be in I’m glad that I was able to build the business there because of the the market the way it is the cash flowing back in 2015 to now Has been pretty good. I would say it’s the the market has become less relevant to me in the last four years But yeah, I’ve still done deals there. I mean, it’s it’s I would say I’ve got probably

20 active things there.

Dylan Silver (07:41.75)
I want to talk about

partnering and you know doing a joint venture versus lending. So this is a very niche I would say very niche strategy and maybe not so niche to you because you’re in it you say I know a lot of people do this but as I’m a wholesaler I’m passionate about wholesale I’m also a licensed real estate agent in Dallas and I think a lot of people kind of when they graduate from fix and flipping or from doing the rentals themselves will go into lending but you’re still staying involved because you said you know the lending isn’t so much my

Blake Selby (07:44.605)
Yeah.

Blake Selby (07:50.039)
yeah.

Blake Selby (08:11.22)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (08:12.794)
my avatar, I’m really more of a joint venture, I’m trying to do more of that. Why did you pick that versus, you know, maybe be more hands-off and be a lender? Strictly.

Blake Selby (08:21.471)
Yeah, so you’re exactly right. Like I scaled up to a whole bunch of houses and stuff and like in basically in 2020, 2021, I sold a bunch of them off and I had some money to lend out. So in 2021, I was going just gangbusters on the actual lending side. Like I was doing that real hard. And what I found was I didn’t enjoy the foreclosure risk associated because it could take like over a year to get your money back on those. Yeah, you still get paid back, but it’s

Dylan Silver (08:37.134)
Yeah.

Blake Selby (08:49.855)
I didn’t have very many of them, there were a lot that I avoided because I know how to structure deals and be creative. But I didn’t love the foreclosure risk. And honestly, I kind of like being more involved. I like doing the vision shaping. I like working with my clients and helping them. honestly, I think that they can move faster if they have somebody experienced like me in their corner giving them advice. It’s like if we can churn and burn the same money.

you know, multiple times throughout the year instead of like taking forever on the same, you know, then your annualized return just multiplies. So I don’t even need to charge that much as long as I can get them to move a little quicker and get things done in a timely fashion. It’s like, you know, if I can make 10 grand on a hundred grand, you know, we can bang that out in four or five months. I mean, that works for me. I mean, I’m not looking for I’m not looking to take half their profit or anything like that. I’m giving them most of the upside. So it’s

It’s really a win-win for them because they don’t have to deal with the red tape. I don’t require appraisals. I’m not doing the monthly payments. I don’t require any of that stuff. So with me, it’s a simple deal. I have a little more control than I would as a lender. But also, if you’re smart, you would want a guy like me to have some more control because I’m going to make sure it doesn’t fail.

Dylan Silver (09:50.658)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (10:09.186)
That’s a really interesting strategy, especially as someone who’s looking for capital, right? So if I’m looking for capital, frankly, you’re probably looking first for a partner like yourself to come in on that front versus just strictly going with a hard money lender, for lack of a better word, because you know,

Blake Selby (10:14.941)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (10:29.164)
you’re like you mentioned, there’s appraisals, you know, don’t also have the guidance, you’re more hands on in that sense. So I’m sure there’s probably a lot of people who are looking for someone to partner with and you’re probably, you know, one of a few options that they have. Did you come up, I don’t want to say like you invented this and maybe you did, did you come up with this strategy on your own? Were you seeing other people looking for partnerships with flippers and you said, yeah, that’s kind of a better idea than lending.

Blake Selby (10:36.04)
Right.

Blake Selby (10:48.265)
Mm-hmm.

Blake Selby (10:57.437)
No, I definitely didn’t come up with it. There’s a lot of people that do joint venturing and equity partnerships. They’ve been around for a long time. I think it’s a smaller subset of people that are funding deals that are doing it that way. I think a lot of people that are in the lending space, they don’t want to really be involved. They kind of want to just set it and forget it. I’m not that way. I actually enjoy this. So I like to be involved and try to help things along. was just on the phone. I’ve got a…

Couple of properties, talk about some weird states. I’ve got a property up in North Dakota and one in South Dakota that I’m helping the same guy on. We’re doing two at the same time. One’s a duplex and one’s a single family home. And I’m walking him through, he’s kind of in that phase where the properties really aren’t moving for him and he’s trying to figure out how much work do I need to do to these to make them pretty? How much should I put into them? Should I do price reductions? Should…

And I always tell people, look, it’s gonna be like a price problem or a promotion problem 90 % of the time, right? It was one of those two. He’s got it listed on the MLS, both of them. And we’ve reduced the price, but they’re not moving. And so I’m telling him, look, obviously the day’s on market right now, the market’s softening nationwide. If you just Google real estate market, you’ll find 100 articles saying that. And so for him, I’m like, hey, what have you done to make the outsides a little bit better? Have we tried staging? Have we done,

All these little tiny pieces of advice that seem common sense to an experienced guy, but to somebody who’s a little bit newer, it’s like, look man, get some bags of mulch, throw them around the outside, do a little touch-up painting on the outside, take some better photos of the outside, get some staging in there. If there’s an awkward bedroom that doesn’t look like it should be a bedroom, throw some furniture in there, make it look, because people don’t have good imaginations, a lot of buyers don’t.

Dylan Silver (12:41.005)
Yeah.

Blake Selby (12:49.586)
They wanna see things that are more turnkey and the turnkey stuff is what’s still selling. Stuff they can pass and then it’s like what’s your buyer pool? Like are you selling to FHA people? is your house, it even qualify for that? Or if it can’t qualify, then you’re pretty much stuck with, know, even if some of the houses that I’ve seen can’t even qualify for conventional, so it’s like you’re pretty much stuck with investor buyers, you know, for these things. So you’re gonna have to.

If you don’t want to fix anything, you’re going to be stuck with a tiny little buyer pool and it might be better to fix stuff because then you have more options to sell it. Yeah.

Dylan Silver (13:20.398)
a lot much larger buy a pool. You know I think the this this idea you know of of being a partner with with people in this space. I think there’s a lot of people who are looking for this type of partnership specifically newer investors. How do they find someone like yourself. I think it’s kind of.

Blake Selby (13:30.056)
Mm-hmm.

Blake Selby (13:36.989)
Right.

Dylan Silver (13:41.166)
I don’t want to say that it’s super rare, but it’s rare to me, probably less rare to you, but I think there’s a lot of newer flippers who are like, I need to partner with somebody, and they may be going to their local RIA, they may or may not have success. How does someone find someone like yourself?

Blake Selby (13:45.671)
Right.

Blake Selby (13:57.789)
Yeah, doing what you just said. mean, going to like, you know, organic meetups. mean, going on like Facebook groups or, you know, social media. That’s a great way. Be careful because there’s a lot of guys that aren’t really doing it. You know, they say they are, but they don’t actually have money. They’re like middle people, you know, which is fine, you know, but it’s like, you just run a higher scam risk, you know. You don’t want to, I will say this. If anybody asks you for money, like,

Dylan Silver (14:18.54)
Yeah, for sure.

Blake Selby (14:24.762)
I don’t ask people for money. I don’t need your money. It should be going to a title company or something like that. If anybody asks you for upfront funds, super check them out because that’s a really quick way to get scammed. I should be, I’m the one, you’re coming to me for money, why am I asking you for money? You know what I mean? It’s kind of strange.

Dylan Silver (14:43.84)
It is that would be something to look. mean, this is again, Blake, it’s new to me, know, this idea because, you know, outside of this podcast, I’m working with a couple investors and we’re looking at, you know, how do we maybe get a hard money loan? These are new flippers and I’m a new realtor. And so it really never occurred to us that we might have the opportunity to potentially, you know, do a JV with a more experienced.

Blake Selby (14:48.04)
Yeah.

Blake Selby (14:59.038)
Mm-hmm.

Dylan Silver (15:08.418)
flipper and because that to me was like well why would they choose us so I would ask you that too you know it maybe seems like more of a headache to sometimes be involved in these deals so how are you selecting your partners

Blake Selby (15:09.564)
Yeah.

Blake Selby (15:21.596)
Yeah, so I mean the biggest thing is I need somebody who’s got the time. So like who’s my ideal partner, right? Is it the guy who’s like doing like 30 flips a month? Probably not, honestly, because you know, they’re so entrenched in what they’re doing. They can’t give enough attention to this deal, right? I actually find more success with people who have smaller amounts of things going on because they can give more attention to the thing that we’re doing. And so at least to start.

And then once they get, once I can kinda, they’re more coachable too. I feel like guys get a chip on their shoulder when they’ve done a bunch of deals and then they don’t think that my advice is valuable or something, because they’re like, I’ve already done a bunch of this. And so once I can coach somebody how to do one or two deals, then like, look, maybe I’ll bankroll them on like three of them at a time or something. You know what I mean? We’ve done that a handful of times. Or maybe they like doing one at a time, but I certainly.

Dylan Silver (15:54.029)
Yeah.

Blake Selby (16:18.92)
think I have more success with people who have a little bit less in the pipeline that aren’t necessarily doing like 20, 30 deals a month or something. I think those guys probably are either they already know enough or they don’t know enough but they’re not gonna take my advice.

Dylan Silver (16:35.744)
It’s interesting, you I think a lot of I’m speaking for myself, but I think a lot of people listening will feel the same way when you’re just starting out. You have to think, well, what do I have to offer? Well, you just alluded to it. You’ve got kind of economy of time and your attention is focused on one thing versus you mentioned like 30, right? So more malleable. You’ve got the time. You’ve got focused attention. These are actually valuable for folks listening and, know, to myself, selfishly, these are valuable to to investors.

Blake Selby (16:48.488)
time.

Blake Selby (17:04.446)
Right. Yeah, it’s time capital and that’s something that I don’t have. So you’re providing me with boots on the ground. I can’t be in 15 states at once managing contractors and job sites. I probably have an aneurysm if I tried. And so it’s like going and doing all these multiple deals at once. I need to be doing 50 to 100 of these things at any given time, like on my books. And so for me to deploy enough capital in one market is probably not likely.

And then if I have them in all these multiple markets, I can’t be omnipotent. I can’t be everywhere at once. So I kind of have to partner up with people that are doing what they’re doing because I love single family homes. I love like smaller multi like duplexes and stuff. I’ll do other stuff too. It’s just not as common. Like sometimes I’ll do land and sometimes I’ll do commercial strip malls and stuff. But I don’t really do those as often these days. It’s like single family is pretty much my bread and butter and single family flips. I’m not a huge buy and hold person.

You could use me to acquire the property, but I like shorter turnaround stuff. Let’s do a round trip on something and actually make some real money.

Dylan Silver (18:12.652)
I want to pivot a bit here Blake and talk about scaling a business remotely. So you have your business in multiple states and I think a lot of people kind of dream of this right but it may be not necessarily self-explanatory. And so how did you end up scaling the business remotely? Was it very organic? Was it intentional that you were going to do it this way? How did you scale the business?

Blake Selby (18:14.375)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Blake Selby (18:23.304)
Mm-hmm.

Blake Selby (18:35.678)
No, it definitely wasn’t intentional. Like I had an office building with cubicles and everything back in Davenport, Iowa for years. I I started this in 2015 and then, you know, really we had that office until 2024. So for about nine years, I had a physical office. At one time I had two offices. I had one in Peoria, Illinois. I at one time back in late 2022, I had also a large property management company that I owned. so that

We had like 11 employees working and doing work. So some of them were virtual, but a lot of them were in person. And so I was opposite of remote back then. And in just a few three years or whatever, we shed the management company or sold it. And then the employees count went down from like 11 to three plus me. But basically, now that we were that lean and mean, we…

we really started becoming less centralized. Like we were spreading out into other states. We weren’t really all in Iowa, Illinois. And it got to a point where, you know, it’s just sort of naturally, it’s like, why do I have to be here again? Like there’s no, it’s like, why am I not down in Florida? And then like, you know, I asked the employees, was like, do you guys like want to work in the office or do you want to work remote? And they’re like, we want to work remote. That’s great. You know what I mean? And so that, you know, that I think they enjoyed being able to work from home and still do. So.

Dylan Silver (19:46.114)
You

Blake Selby (20:03.517)
And that’s kind of where things are going, right? I mean, it seems like every since the pandemic, a lot of people are going remote. You know, it sure is nice not having to have office rent and, you know, separate office utilities, Wi-Fi, blah, blah. You know, it saves some money. And I think it actually allows me to have more flexibility with the employees. Like, I know they’re probably not working every single hour that I pay them for. But, you know, they’re probably goofing off a little bit. But it’s.

Dylan Silver (20:05.581)
Yeah.

Blake Selby (20:31.958)
It allows me to not worry about it so much. like, yeah, they probably are, but then I also don’t have to pay like office rent and stuff. So it kind of offsets it. So the employee gets a relaxed job where they have a lot of flexibility and can take time off when needed. And then I don’t have to sit there and micromanage them and feel bad about not getting every value out of every hour that I’m paying them for.

Dylan Silver (20:52.15)
I think for the remote lifestyle, building a remote business, you kind hit the nails on the head as far as the logistical steps. From scaling down to you don’t need a dedicated office space to then understanding that productivity may not be as much as it was beforehand, but then you also have kind of more dedicated people because they have remote situation, I would say, generally happier. For folks who are potentially

Blake Selby (21:02.332)
Mm-hmm.

Blake Selby (21:17.734)
Right. Yeah.

Dylan Silver (21:22.154)
looking at doing remote work or scaling a remote business? Do you have any general guidance and feedback for them based on your experiences last year?

Blake Selby (21:32.838)
Yeah, you have to know, obviously I got to know these employees in person, so I kind of understood their capabilities. But if you’re hiring VAs, which I do have one VA, and if you’re hiring VAs, especially foreign VAs that aren’t hip to some of the things going on in your country or your market, you have to…

just be mindful, you have to have a way to understand what are they actually doing, do you have a way to track sort of progress, what are the KPIs, the key performance indicators of that employee, what is them doing a bad job look like? What is them doing a good job look like? And you have to communicate those expectations to them and say, I kind of have expectations on some of my employees, I’m a little more lax probably than some.

some other people, at the same token, look at, I try to like zoom out and I’m like, okay, this employee, can tell they screwed around a little bit this week, right? And didn’t get a ton done, but I’m like, okay, then this other week, then they hit it hard, right? And so I look at it over a one year time for the amount of money that I paid them total and the fact that it’s a tax write-off, right? Like, am I happy with the amount of like, would I have wanted to do all that work or would I have paid if it was in one lump chunk, would I have paid 40 grand or whatever it is, you know, for that year?

for all of that work to not be on my plate? And generally that answer is yes. And if it is, and they’re doing a good job from like a macro point of view, when you like zoom out a little bit, I think if you’re happy with the annual result, maybe if you’re unhappy with how it’s going for a month, you can get over it as long as you’re happy with the total result after a year, if you kind of zoom out, I guess.

Dylan Silver (22:55.406)
Okay.

Dylan Silver (23:13.902)
That’s really, really good feedback. I’m gonna take that one as well. This idea that people’s productivity may wane, but over the long term, are you gonna do the work yourself, or are you gonna pay someone in person maybe more to do the work, or are we satisfied with the results here? That’s great feedback. Blake, we are coming up on time here. Where can folks go to get ahold of you?

Blake Selby (23:21.756)
Yeah.

Blake Selby (23:37.18)
Yeah, Selbyrentals.com. started out as a rentals company and so I still have my regular website. I probably change the name at some point. Selby, that’s my last name, S-E-L-B-Y, rentals.com. That’s the easiest place to go to figure out, submit your deal and get funded.

Dylan Silver (23:56.846)
Blake, thank you so much for coming on the show here today.

Blake Selby (24:00.38)
Of thanks for having me on.