$20M in Real Estate in 11 Months: How Cody Mills Scaled His Fix & Flip Business Fast

Cody Mills (00:00)

We want to build a billion dollar business. And I know that probably sounds crazy to a lot of people, especially when it’s like our year one, and people get into business and they set these goals. And I’ve had the luxury of spending a lot of time around somebody who helped build Amazon. He was in my CEO group. And for the last few years, he’s been kind of challenging me to think bigger and really lean into the vision side of what makes me a good CEO. It’s like I’m really a visionary more than I’m an operator. I gotta surround myself with operators, or else my visions just die out, right? And I understand that about myself. And I have big visions and we’re shooting for the moon in things that we’re doing.

Issa Hanna (02:06)

Welcome back to another episode of the Real Estate Pros Show. I’m your host, Issa Hanna, and today I have somebody who’s rocking the real estate world: Cody Mills. Cody, welcome to the show.

Cody Mills (02:15)

Thanks for having me.

Issa Hanna (02:16)

Man, I’m super excited to have you. You’ve jumped from the seafood business, where you’re the CEO—scaled into one of the largest seafood businesses in the country and maybe even in the world—but in the last year, you’ve literally not dipped your toe; you’ve dived headfirst into the real estate game, and you’ve got $20 million in deals under your belt. So can you kind of tell our viewers what you’re doing nowadays, where your main focus is, and how you’ve been able to scale so large in less than a year?

Cody Mills (02:49)

Yeah, so basically what we’re doing right now is we’ve kind of attacked the Puget Sound market. We kind of look at that as Olympia to Seattle, Tacoma in between, and then anything that touches those counties. And we’ve been focusing on fix-and-flips, as well as we’ve been dabbling in other side parts of the market. We did a DADU up in Mount Rainier, the first one of its kind. We’ve developed one of the top Airbnbs in Mount Rainier as well.

It’s one of the top performing assets in that market, which is a top 12 market in the country. And the reason why we’re performing there is we use a lot of AI. And so some of the reasons why we’re scaling is we’re hungry, ambitious. We know how to scale businesses. Our seafood company is not one of the biggest in the country, but it’s the biggest in our sector, or one of the biggest in our sector of the market. And we know how to scale. And so we’re just kind of trying something new.

And we see a lot of opportunity. We kind of saw the blood coming into the water, and we think that’s the right time to jump in when everybody’s jumping out, or being scared at least at a minimum. And so we’re here kind of to talk about that, but we’re still learning. It’s our first year. We’re eleven months in, and gratefully we’ve doubled our goal of doing ten million the first year, and here we are just crossing over twenty million—closed on another property that bumped us actually over, I think, twenty-one million on this last Friday. And so

we’re trying to figure it out as we go, the same way any other real estate guy would do it. And we’re giving everything we have. Our philosophy is burn the boats. We’re all in, right? I love that, man.

Issa Hanna (04:15)

You gotta be all in in this game, especially when you first start. The fact that you guys just jumped headfirst in and are learning—you jumped in the water, you’re learning, you’re basically in the fire, you’re learning as you go—but twenty million in one year, you don’t hear those kind of numbers from amateur investors, let alone first-time investors. So I do not doubt that you guys have gotten years’ worth of knowledge already in this short eleven months. But I did want to ask you, because all us real estate investors have that moment where the light bulb turns on and you’re like, “You know what, I think I need to invest in real estate.” When was that moment for you?

Cody Mills (04:53)

So when I was really young, I started a general contracting business when I was 18 years old. And I was working for—I kind of like hoodwinked this one developer into letting me build houses for him. And I somehow managed to use his employees to do it after hours, giving him a second shift. So that was pretty slick, but I learned a lot working for this guy. And he kind of taught me a lot of lessons along the way. And I was a GC, so I had an understanding of like how the investors think because he became a mentor figure for me.

And I lost that business in 2008 when kind of the housing bubble busted and there was no new work, and I was a new construction guy doing new construction. And so I ended up doing weird jobs for real estate agents that were scrambling to sell houses. And then I met a few flippers and I started doing some jobs for them.

And then I had an engineer that was like, “Hey, you should flip a house with me.” And I was like, “Sure, let’s move into it,” because we’re young. And I was like, “I got nothing else going on.” So we did that. And so I’ve just been dabbling on the side. And I started the seafood business seventeen, eighteen years ago. And I’ve been scaling this business up to fifty million dollars in annual revenue. We’re operating all over the world; we’re the largest in the world for certain products that we do.

And that’s great, but real estate was like silently in the background making me money. And we went through this terrible time where Trump got elected, started a trade war, and we saw a lot of seafood go to China and it like almost bankrupted our business. So we had to rebuild our business. Then COVID happened, and then that almost bankrupted our business because everybody we sell to wasn’t out in the restaurants anymore.

And so then we rebuilt our business again to sell to grocery stores, and then food got too expensive for grocery stores, people quit buying expensive seafood again. And then Trump came back, became the president again, started another trade war. I’m like, man, enough is enough, right? And I was like, “What should I do next?” And I just did some deep soul searching, spent a lot of time with my family, people on my team, my business partner, my COO.

At my seafood company, I was like, “Man, I’ve been making millions of dollars not putting any energy into owning all this real estate. This has been getting paid off over the last 15 years. Maybe we should look at that, you know? Let me look deeper.” And so I tend to go maybe a little bit obsessive on the research side. So I started taking classes I shouldn’t be taking while I’m running this company, and learning, and then going to meetups and talking to people and talking to investors and talking to other people that we were working with. And I met this

group of young guys called Saxum. If you Google them, they’re a development firm and they have like seven principals. They’ve been in business for like only eight years and they’ve built this three billion dollar business. I was really inspired to do a deal with them. And so I’ve been working on that, and they told me their origin story, their CEO, and he was a flipper, or actually he was a real estate agent

that became a flipper that started flipping commercial assets, small commercial assets at the end of the train lines out of New York City. That was like his business model. And then it just took off. And then he went to raise money, and he went out to raise a million dollars and he accidentally raised like 20 million dollars or something like that. And he was like, “Shit, I have all this money, what do I do? I gotta go find some properties.” And it’s like, you just swallow more than you can handle, and then if you’re made of what you need to be made of to make it happen, you’re gonna figure it out. So I kind of said, “You know what?

I’m gonna go do this. It’s what I want to do.” I went to school to be an architect and I never finished school because I became a builder and I loved building things. And I was like, so I understand building, I understand design. There’s a market for this right now. There’s a lot of people who want luxury houses in Seattle, not a lot of good builders that do it. It’s difficult to do new construction right now, too, as well. So I kind of just focused in on flipping and high-level design flipping, and that’s been working.

So we caught some wind, and so that’s what we’re doing and we’re going for it. So…

Issa Hanna (09:17)

Yeah, man. And you’re not an amateur. People that have a construction background in our business, in the flipping, in the rental game, just investing space in general in real estate, you guys do so well because you understand materials, timelines for projects, even design a lot better than just a straight real estate guy. So you’re coming in there with a beautiful little background, and then

scaling such a huge company. Business is business, whether it’s real estate, whether it’s retail, whether it’s a seafood company. You’ve got to scale, you’ve got your problems, you gotta identify your problems, and you gotta overcome them. So the background you’re bringing into this is super amazing. And now I’m starting to put it together why you guys have been able to do such huge numbers in one year. I mean, it’s truly remarkable.

But I kinda wanna shift gears a little bit because we all have it, right? You’ve done a lot of properties, it’s your first year, but we all have the story, the real estate nightmare. So give me a time where something went south and you had to pivot and like overcome it.

Cody Mills (10:19)

Oh man. So I’m in the nightmare right now, which is I bought—and we went out, our goal was to buy 10 million dollars in real estate in the first year and then spread that out throughout the year. And then I kind of underestimated our eagerness and we bought it all really, really quickly, like in a matter of months. And then it was just like drinking from a firehose of too much work and not enough team, right?

And so I’m like training my team. And then I’m thinking, all right, so I have great people that want to do this with me. That’s really important. Like you can’t scale anything without a team. But they don’t know anything about construction and they don’t know anything about real estate. And they all joined me, I said, “Hey listen, like we’re gonna do this differently. Everybody owns their own LLC. If you want to join me, you can invest with me. You can PM and then we’ll do it project-by-project basis, whatever. If you guys are interested; if you’re not interested, don’t join me.

But this is what I want to do.” And I kind of went to all my shareholders at my seafood company and told them the same thing. And they were like, “I want to do it with you.” And I was like, “Okay, great, but this isn’t the seafood business, this is gonna be my own business. So like we got to figure that out.” And it was just a lot, man. It’s a nightmare. It’s like we didn’t have the GCs figured out. And the GCs today, like I was a GC, so I’m thinking, all right, this is gonna work. The people doing construction today aren’t the same as the people who were doing it twenty years ago.

They need a lot more coddling, a lot more handholding in the younger generation than the older generation. The older generation were like always trying to impress their boss. The younger generation’s like, “You need me, fuck you. Like take care of me, man. There’s not enough of me that want to do blue-collar things.” Like, you’re kind of going at it. And so that wasn’t going so well. And I was building my own crew. And I’m like, man, I did not sign up to be a GC again. That’s not what I’m doing.

And we ended up having to do that because we couldn’t get the contractors to do the jobs right. And so I had to quickly go figure out how that contractor game’s working again. And so luckily some of my friends are still GCs from back when I was doing it and I saw that network and I was like, “Guys, help me, like what am I doing wrong?” And it was a nightmare. It’s like, you’ve got 10 houses under construction and you haven’t been doing any project title construction,

it’s a lot more to figure out. We had to get the systems going, we have to get the accounting going. It was just a lot. Like it’s not easy to do what we’re doing. We know that we’re trying to set the bar fast and we’re really not gonna back off from that. And so that’s the nightmare. We’re in the nightmare, but I love the nightmare. I love the chaos, I thrive in it. And my group of people that decided to do this with me, same thing, they seem to love it. And so

we finally found some GCs, we got them going and we’re able to like get them to try and help tackle that project management. But that’s not easy either, right? Because they don’t see the design I see. Contractors, most of them aren’t design-oriented. They’re really task-management oriented. They’re like, “I just want to build the framing.” And I’m like, “Yeah, but it needs to look good, right? Like we need to have the shapes right. Like we need to fix the space, not just build the space just because you want to.”

So we’re in it, man. It’s just like we’re in the nightmare, but the nightmare is a dream. Like I asked for it, I got it, and I’m grateful to have it.

Issa Hanna (13:20)

And the smile on your face tells me all I need to know about how successful you’re gonna be in our business, because you’re in the nightmare—a lot of people get overwhelmed, they can’t sleep, all this—you’re like, “You know what? I’m gonna figure this out. I got my boots on the ground, I’m knee-deep in the game, and we’re gonna keep scaling.” And those are the people that do major, major things in our business. So I can already see you in a year from now doubling what you’ve already done, and smashing those

goals constantly. I wanna now ask you, speaking of the future, five years from now, you’ve done twenty million. What’s the dollar amount? What are you projecting in five years at this rate?

Cody Mills (14:00)

We want to build a billion dollar business. And I know that probably sounds crazy to a lot of people, especially when it’s like our year one, and people get into business and they set these goals. And I’ve had the luxury of spending a lot of time around somebody who helped build Amazon. He was in my CEO group. And for the last few years, he’s been kind of challenging me to think bigger and really lean into the vision side of what makes me a good CEO. It’s like I’m really a visionary more than I’m an operator. I gotta surround myself with operators, or else my visions just die out, right? And I understand that about myself. And I have big visions and we’re shooting for the moon in things that we’re doing. And it’s like we want to

build a billion dollar business and we’re gonna give it everything we fucking have. And if we die on the mat, we die on the mat, but we’re gonna go out swinging. That’s just the way I tend to live life and do things. I’m all in when I’m in, and I’m all in, right?

Issa Hanna (14:50)

Mm-hmm. You said it, you have the vision, you’re a visionary. Like I keep saying, people like you do great in our business, in our space, because we see that vision. The fact that you’ve already built successful businesses, scaled them, you know how to delegate to your operators so that way your brain can be free on the big-picture thinking—

man, I’m telling you, I see huge, huge things on the horizon. I don’t doubt that you’re gonna smash that future goal. Now, you’ve got a fund that you plan on starting for other investors to get involved with. Can you kind of tell us more about that?

Cody Mills (15:25)

So we’ve been looking at a couple of different formats. I’m actually heading over to China because we do a lot of work over there. We actually have our business partner for our seafood distribution company. He’s flipping in Hong Kong right now. So we’re testing out different markets, which I don’t know anybody else in their first year is trying to do things like that. And we’ve been getting people over there offering us money. Chinese love real estate.

They just had the largest real estate failure in human history in China. Most people don’t know about that. The big companies like Evergrande, these are like the largest real estate companies in the world, just completely ceased to exist overnight. And so they’re all kind of looking at other markets outside. So we’ve been considering that. I don’t know if we would take that capital in there, but we’ve also been looking at capital clubs, right? Where people pool resources together. We can have accredited and unaccredited investors. That’s a kind of interesting way that we could get more people involved.

Like we’re on a podcast, somebody’s like, “Hey, I’m not an accredited investor, I’m not worth a million dollars, and I don’t have a hundred grand, but I got forty grand. I want to get going, but I don’t want to lose my job.” That’s what’s good about the capital clubs, is that you can do that. The SEC allows that; they get a vote and they have to take a vote, because you have to have their vote to be a capital club rather than be a fund. So we’re kind of exploring these two options right now. We’re gonna launch something, people are following us and they stay along. Like, you don’t build a billion dollar business using your own money; that’s not how it works.

You do it by making other people rich. And so our goal is whoever gets involved with us, we need to make them money, right? So like that’s the goal, right? So hopefully as we get that organized, get the paperwork settled up, which we’re working on in real time right now, people will be able to jump in with us. And we’re gonna need people to jump in with us, whether it’s private investors, which we have some private investors working with us already, or it’s

public investors. We’re organizing, figuring out which approach we’re gonna take right now.

Issa Hanna (17:04)

Yeah, man. I don’t doubt that, like I said, these future goals are going to be smashed. This fund right here that you’re starting, the way that you’ve been able to set up your infrastructure—right, a lot of people collapse under their own weight because that foundation isn’t set strong. You guys have the foundation laid out, you have the team laid out, you’re learning as you go, but the knowledge is there, the knowledge is coming,

the knowledge of how to get through problems is there. So I mean, the more capital you raise, I mean, just the more damage you’re gonna be able to do to the market, man, and wreck it. So I’m super excited. And for our investors that watch this, because we have quite a few investors, if they wanted to reach you, keep an eye on this fund, and get involved with you, how could they reach you?

Cody Mills (18:31)

Yeah, just on Instagram, @codymills.ceo. I’m on there. Follow me up. Strux Co. (@thestruxco), we’ve got a page for the business as well. Just reach out to us. That’s the best way. Get on there, DM us, whatever, right? Give us a follow and stay tuned up because we’re coming, we’re growing, we’re moving, and pretty soon we’re gonna need them to join us.

And so yeah, reach out to us that way is probably the best way, right? We’re really leaning into social. I’m a behind-the-camera kind of guy. So this is new; podcasts are new. This is my second one, and I’ve got my third one coming up. And it’s like, no idea what the heck I’m talking about here, but we do the best we can. But the social side, we hired a firm for that as well, right? And our firm just told us yesterday—we didn’t even know this—they were shooting for our local football team yesterday. It’s like,

we’re really trying to find the best people to do their jobs for every step of this, and be high-level executors. So when those people, when the moment comes and they can join us, I think we’ll be worthy of what we’re asking for.

Issa Hanna (19:30)

I am super excited for what your future holds. Guys at home, your ears perked up, you’re listening to Cody talk, you see the excitement in the game, and you see the damage he’s already doing in the real estate game, his proven track record. You want to get involved with him, slide into those DMs on Instagram. Very personable guy, he’ll be more than willing to talk you through current investments he’s got going, and when that fund starts, try to be the first one on there, because I see the CEO of the next billion dollar real estate group sitting right in front of me here on Zoom. So Cody, man, thank you so much. I do want to invite you back on the show. I want to check you guys’ progress in a year just because it’s super exciting what you’re doing, man. You’ve got me excited for you. So in a year, you’ve got the invitation, man.

Cody Mills (20:19)

Yeah, we’d love to be back. Thanks for having us.

Issa Hanna (20:21)

Thank you for being on the show. You’ve got my blood pumping. You’ve inspired me, as a real estate guy that’s been sitting on the sidelines for a few years, you’ve definitely got me almost feeling like I got bit by the bug again. So thank you so much for coming on—a true, true breath of fresh air on the show. And then to our viewers at home, if you enjoyed my conversation with Cody and want to see more like it, make sure to hit like and subscribe. I talk to people every day that can bring us different knowledge on every aspect of the real estate industry.

Until next time, The Real Estate Pros are out.