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Show Summary
In this episode of the Real Estate Pro Show, host Erika speaks with Chase Collier, a successful real estate investor and founder of Quick Draw Lending. Chase shares his journey from being an engineer and bar owner to diving into the real estate world. He discusses the importance of relationships in business, the mindset of abundance versus scarcity, and the challenges he faced along the way. Chase also emphasizes the significance of coaching new investors and the lessons learned from setbacks in his career. Looking ahead, he shares his plans for a mastermind event and his personal brand, Engineer It, which focuses on holistic growth.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Chase Collier (00:00)
One of the biggest lessons, and this goes to all aspects of life, is scarcity versus abundance mindset. It’s a topic you hear, it’s flashy, but when you really look into it, like I can point people out now if they are scarcity or abundance mindset, and it’s been one thing through every piece of the journey that I’ve been in that does make a difference.Whether you’re newer or very veteran in the business, the people that are scarcity normally don’t grow as fast. They aren’t as open to asking for the resources, the help, and kind of the structure or the processes to scale faster. Where the people that do have abundance mindset are open to collaborating with other people. They’re not afraid to ask for help and they’re willing to go beyond just kind of the normal
layout or pieces to go find those resources.
Erika Proctor (02:28)
Hey everyone, welcome to the Real Estate Pro Show. I’m your host, Erika and today I’m joined by someone that I’ve been looking forward to chatting with, Chase Collier. He’s been making serious moves in the real estate world and gosh, the gears are already turning in my head with where we could go. Chase, I’m so glad to have you here.Chase Collier (02:48)
Yeah, thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity.Erika Proctor (02:51)
Yeah, so let’s jump on in Chase for our listeners who aren’t familiar with your world. Tell us about your journey. What was it like getting into real estate?Chase Collier (03:01)
Yeah, so real estate was one of those things that I was hesitant to do in the beginning just because it is a flashy word and it’s one of those things people think get rich quick and that is not what it is. You can do extremely well in it, but it took me years of just studying books, studying myself before I wanted to dive in. ⁓ My long story short is I’m an engineer turned bar owner.was a great learning experience, but don’t recommend buying a sports bar in my personal opinion. But ⁓ my wife and I owned that during COVID when I finally got my real estate license. And shortly after that, I started working closely with a local real estate investor and started just learning all the different pieces of real estate investing from him.
Erika Proctor (03:50)
Was there a particular moment in that journey that you were like, this is the path I’m gonna take, like this is it.Chase Collier (03:58)
Yes, so being analytical like I am, the numbers have to make sense to me just because that’s how my mind works. And shortly after getting into real estate, starting tracking all of the deals that I was doing in my pipeline, it kind of blew my mind at how fast this can grow if you are diligent and put the action into it. So about three months after getting into real estate, I actually left my corporate job that I was in.But there just came to be a time that there was so much opportunity in real estate. There’s so many different ways and kind of variants you can go into in real estate. And it just kind of blew my mind that the directions, but I wanted to just kind of hone down and run with a few of them. So I became, when I started real estate agent, but then started flipping homes, building rental portfolio, ⁓
doing a little bit of wholesaling and shortly after that getting into the hard money lending space.
Erika Proctor (05:47)
And I, know, tell us more about how that is. Now you have Quickdraw.Chase Collier (05:52)
Yes, so Quick Draw Lending, we actually founded that about four years ago in the fall of 21. And just a partner and I here in Nebraska, he’s another real estate investor who specializes in apartment syndication, but we both had this desire to get in the hard money space, but wanted to do it different. And kind of our different was being transparent and leading with relationships and values that cateredtowards that because hard money really isn’t a relationship heavy space, but that’s the way that we wanted to market it. And today, about four years later, we went from a million dollars in capital to just sitting around 23 million today.
Erika Proctor (06:35)
Yeah, that’s quite some feet. What’s been key to keeping that growth growing in smoothly?Chase Collier (06:42)
Yeah, so for us, the biggest thing again has been relationships. A lot of people have just been newer investors, either not using hard money or new to the space, but we also have acquired a lot of borrowers that were using hard money elsewhere. And just like our customer service, the way we presented things and how we take care of our clients, there’s been a lot of…pieces to it, but spending zero dollars on ad spend and being able to grow to this size has been tremendous. One of the hard things for us is in other businesses, if you want to scale, you can go hire somebody else. You can buy another van. You can get another work truck, whatever that piece may be. But for us, it’s the biggest struggle has been finding
more funding and working with more banks to scale as quickly as we’re getting more borrowers.
Erika Proctor (07:36)
Yeah, what are like some strategies that you’re using to overcome those hurdles?Chase Collier (07:41)
Strategies for that, I would say mostly come down to relationships and that’s gonna be redundant over this episode, but relationships are key to me. With growing our business, it’s been working with investors that see our results, they see our payouts and our growth, as well as banks that we can start building trust with. With most businesses in general, like your first three years are very make or break.Erika Proctor (07:50)
youChase Collier (08:10)
And there’s a lot of investors, banks, people looking at us in those first three years that were like, well, I don’t know if this is really going to pan out, so I’m going to wait. And kind of after we hit that two and a half, three year mark, a lot more people were open to that idea and have jumped in since then.Erika Proctor (08:28)
Yeah, and that takes time to build. Chesa, you’ve worn a lot of different hats in real estate. What’s one lesson from those early roles that you still carry with you today?Chase Collier (09:15)
One of the biggest lessons, and this goes to all aspects of life, is scarcity versus abundance mindset. It’s a topic you hear, it’s flashy, but when you really look into it, like I can point people out now if they are scarcity or abundance mindset, and it’s been one thing through every piece of the journey that I’ve been in that does make a difference.Whether you’re newer or very veteran in the business, the people that are scarcity normally don’t grow as fast. They aren’t as open to asking for the resources, the help, and kind of the structure or the processes to scale faster. Where the people that do have abundance mindset are open to collaborating with other people. They’re not afraid to ask for help and they’re willing to go beyond just kind of the normal
layout or pieces to go find those resources.
And just the abundance mindset, especially in the beginning, I invested in myself, went to a lot of great meetups, and some of the people there were on very high levels compared to me. But you need to have the confidence in yourself to go talk to them. And if you’re in the right rooms with the right people, they’re going to welcome you and welcome your questions.
because most of them were in your shoes in the beginning and they want to help and see other people succeed as well.
Erika Proctor (10:40)
Yeah, absolutely. When it comes to the scarcity and abundance mindset, how do you approach that when it comes to the lending space today?Chase Collier (10:50)
Yeah, so when it comes to the lending space, another thing that sets us apart is we’re, we are not opposed to talking to other hard money lenders. We’ve actually built great relationships with some other local hard money lenders that when we don’t have capital for stuff, we let our clients know ahead of time. We’ve heard horror stories of the day before closing, someone gets told they don’t have funding.Well, if that situation is starting to build on our end, we have those transparent conversations with our borrowers and we also reach out to other lenders and say, here’s the situation, here’s everything on this person, can you help them out? And that has been a big thing on a lot of different pieces of it because most people in this space are more, we’re in this box, this is our box, like don’t, don’t.
touch us where we’re like, let’s all work together. There’s enough people to go around. The other thing I would say is that the abundance piece has helped us get into more states, more territories faster. I would say 80 to 90 % of our business is Nebraska, Iowa, but we’re actually in nine states. And a lot of that has just come from going to other meetups and other states meeting.
good investors and them talking about our reputation to people around them.
Erika Proctor (12:15)
Yeah, that’s great. Chase, I also want to talk about the coaching that you do with your experience across the spectrum of real estate and business. What’s the biggest red flag that you see with new investors or people new to real estate? And what kind of advice would you give them?Chase Collier (12:35)
So, there’s a lot of things that come up with people new in business. ⁓ One of them, I would say, is analysis paralysis, and this goes to real estate and business, is people just get so much information from the internet, from networking events, from everything on their phone, and they’re like, I don’t know where to start, there’s so much to do, and it’s like,Put everything down on paper. Start building a blueprint for what you’re trying to do. Put timelines with it, put action items with it, and just go after those. Don’t look at this big giant scary picture in the beginning, because there is a lot to digest, but if you can just take it piece by piece, it will make it so much easier. And there’s a lot of things that, yes, you should have it develop later down the road once you’re
Couple deals in or you have some motion going but you don’t need it on day one And I would say that’s one thing that I encounter a lot is people are like I need this 20 page business plan to get my first deal done And it’s like no like let’s put that over here for now. You don’t need it at the moment Let’s focus on the things that we do need right now and just go down that that path of timelines and action items
Erika Proctor (14:37)
Yeah, absolutely. It makes a lot of sense to focus on the most essential stuff. First, Chase, you’ve built quite an impressive networking and education group too with 200 locals. What’s the secret sauce to scaling a community like that?Chase Collier (14:53)
There’s a lot of pieces that I would give credit to on that. One of them is having great business partners. I am one who loves business partners. I know there’s people out there who want to be a lone wolf and go tackle business themselves. That’s perfectly fine, but I like finding strengths and weaknesses in other people and using them as a synergy. And that has been a big piece of that.One of the guys who actually brought this idea to us, he’s the main face of the company. It’s called the Elite Referral Network that we founded two years ago, but we’ve brought a lot of different pieces together for referral networking where we do talk about business education in our weekly meetings. We give back a lot to nonprofits. We help educate nonprofits.
We do events multiple times through the month. And for us, yes, there’s a fee to it, but it’s not our main moneymaker. All of the business partners have their own businesses. And this is something that we get so much joy and fulfillment to give a safe space to other business owners. ⁓ Last year, in our first year, we gave back almost, I think, $50,000 to our nonprofits. And this year, it’s going to be over six figures.
We did just expand to Omaha as well and we’re starting a scholarship fund there. So for us, we want to help put people in the right room because we know how important that is and just set up the local community for more success.
Erika Proctor (16:28)
Yeah, absolutely. What is your favorite part about being involved in creating a group like that?Chase Collier (16:34)
My favorite part of something like that is seeing people grow. A lot of people ask me, how do you wear so many hats? And for me, I tell people all the time that motivation is a byproduct of action. You can either get it from other people on YouTube and the internet, or you can get it from yourself. And as I’ve grown in my journey, a lot of the motivation that keeps me going is what I’ve put in place.and the discipline. When motivation fails, discipline’s there, all that fun stuff. But seeing other people’s businesses grow and thrive brings me so much joy that I want to keep doing that. Whether it’s small local businesses, big national businesses, I want to be able to make an impact and help change other people’s lives. And some people in this space focus on the business owner. But to me,
It’s not just the business owner, it’s their family, it’s their employees, their family, and how many people is improving one business impacting because it’s not just one person. It’s a lot of people in the local community.
Erika Proctor (17:44)
Yeah, absolutely. When you had talked about seeing people grow, made me think about your own growth. There might have been a moment in your journey that a deal went sideways or you really had to pivot with what you were planning. Can you share one of those moments in your real estate journey and how it helped you grow?Chase Collier (18:05)
Yes, so I’ve been through a lot in a short amount of time is the best way that I can put it. ⁓ I’ll give a couple different scenarios and again, transparency is one of my values, but I believe that you grow the most when your back is against the wall. Like when you get up to speed and everything’s going well, you’re really, you’re still learning, but you’re not learning as fast.is when your back is against the wall and you have to pivot. When we had our sports bar before I was in real estate, like we own that during COVID. Everyone knows what happened during COVID and there were times that I’m like, are we gonna have to file for bankruptcy? Like that is never a conversation you want to have. My wife and I worked and owned that together and it was a tough time. But because I figured out what we needed to do, like,
That is what I put all my time and effort into was to prevent that, to pivot and to do things differently. When it comes to real estate, there’s a lot of different situations that I’ve been into. Your first couple deals are always ones that you’re so anxious for. You want it to close. You want to get that final paycheck. And I’ll be the first to say that I haven’t made money on every deal that I’ve touched. I’ve lost money on two deals.
that I’ve personally owned, but that is a learning experience and people shouldn’t get discouraged when they don’t make money. You should take it as industry tuition. Like no matter what space you’re trying to grow in, you’re going to have to pay tuition one way or another, whether it’s paying for your coach or not making money on a deal. It’s just bound to happen. I, I owned a portfolio of properties with somebody and
essentially long story short, is that the partnership dissolved. And like there’s a lot of growth and learning that happens through that time of figuring out did you set up the legal side right from the beginning. And that’s one thing I love teaching on now because if you don’t set it up from day one correctly, one of the partners is going to not have a happy ending when it does dissolve.
So like there’s been a lot of strength through growth on that and it’s been stuff that when those situations do happen, that’s when I have the late nights, the super early mornings, trying to educate myself, speak with the right people and just be able to get to a resolution that is amicable for everybody involved.
Erika Proctor (20:38)
Yeah, you talked about late nights, early mornings. Sounds like you’ve had that mindset just with all that you’ve accomplished. So Chase, I want to know what’s next on the horizon for you.Chase Collier (20:50)
There’s a lot of things that are next up. I have some short midterm stuff and I have some long-term goals as well short term ⁓ My partner and I were hosting a five-day mastermind in Montana later this month. I’m super excited about it I’ve spoke on stage dozens of times both locally and out of state but this event is Made for executive level people doing over a million dollars a year in revenuewhich is awesome to be putting on an event like this. And my favorite thing about it, there’s actually two. One is it’s in the middle of Montana on a hot spring resort, like it’s going to be an experience. But two is we’re not just doing rah rah motivation stuff, which people see all the time, but we are doing full six to eight hour days per person that is speaking and coaching that day.
So it’s going to be very intense, hands-on, intimate work setting, and I’m very excited for that. The other thing for me, everyone can see the gears here on the wall, but engineering, since that’s where I came from, is close to me, and Engineer It is the brand that I’m building for my personal brand, because it’s not just about business, it’s not just about finances, it also is about your relationships, your fitness.
your health, the things that you’re putting into your body and engineer it is going to be a my personal brand that’s all encompassing about building a blueprint reverse engineering and putting in goals for all those different aspects in life because you do need alignment in all of them.
Erika Proctor (22:30)
Yeah, absolutely. Well, we love what you are, Engineering Chase. Before we wrap up, if someone wants to reach out, connect with you, or maybe they need help with some lending, what’s the best way for them to reach you?Chase Collier (22:44)
Yeah, so most of my socials, my Facebook and my Instagram page are both at chasecaller55. And our website for Quickdraw lending is www.qdlending.com. But feel free, anybody to reach out. If you are new, I’ve been in your shoes and I love to giveto people that are newer or need some advice, so feel free to reach out. I’m here to help the best that I can.
Erika Proctor (23:17)
That’s great. you you’ve I’m sure you’ve helped someone just through this episode right right now and that I, you know, love that you’re giving back and helping people. It’s really exciting.Chase Collier (23:28)
Thank you very much. I appreciate the kind words. again, relationships matter and I appreciate your time today, Erika.Erika Proctor (23:37)
Yeah, thanks again for being here, Chase. And for our listeners, if you got value from this episode, make sure that you’re subscribed to the Real Estate Pro Show. We’ve got more conversations coming up with pros like Chase who are out there building incredible real estate businesses. We’ll see you on the next episode.Chase Collier (23:39)
Thank you.
