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Show Summary
In this episode of the Real Estate Pros podcast, host Michelle Kesil interviews Kevin Amolsch, a seasoned real estate investor and founder of Pine Financial. Kevin shares his journey in real estate, focusing on the importance of financing, client success, and the evolution of his business. He discusses the challenges and lessons learned in both investing and lending, emphasizing the significance of goal setting, transparency, and networking in achieving success in the real estate industry.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Kevin Amolsch (00:00)
See that here’s where people get tripped up in real estate, Michelle, especially for the listener that’s sort of new. They get scared, right? It’s fear that stops us from taking the action. And then we don’t have the success. And I was always, I’ll this a thousand times. What’s more scary, taking a risk and failing or not taking the risk and being in the same spot you are right now in five years. So what’s really the scary thing here? But one of the things that will help get over this fear, because I know that’s what stop people, is to create these little goals that you can accomplish.and don’t get hung up on the results. The results will come.
Michelle Kesil (02:07)
Hey everybody, welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Kesil, and today I’m joined by someone I’m looking forward to chat with, Kevin Amolsch, who is a real estate investor as well as the founder of Pine Financial. So excited to have you here today, Kevin.Kevin Amolsch (02:25)
I’m thrilled to be here. You’re like one of the hosts that separates themselves because you do a lot of prep getting ready for this call. So you’ve already challenged me once before we hit record. So I’m super excited to see what you have in store.Michelle Kesil (02:38)
Awesome, excited to dive in with you.let’s just go for it. First off, for those not familiar with you and your work yet, can you share what your main focus is?
Kevin Amolsch (02:49)
Yeah,so I fell in love with real estate investing on the financing side because look, you’re negotiating a deal with a seller or a buyer, really, it all comes down to how the financing is going to be put in place. And you can get really creative with how you come up with the money to do real estate deals. So I fell in love with the financing side and I started raising private capital for my own deals and I started taking that money and loaning it out to other people for their deals. And it turned into this business. So this was back in 2006.
And then my partner and I separated in 2008 when the world was sort of crashing down on all of us. And so in 2008, I started Pine Financial and now we’ve grown to a little over 250 in assets under management. And yeah, we’re just helping people fund their real estate deals.
Michelle Kesil (03:38)
Awesome. And which markets do you operate in?Kevin Amolsch (03:42)
And we, that’s an interesting question because there’s two sides of this.when we raise capital from our investors, it’s nationwide. There’s some limitations like New York, for example, it’s sometimes hard to raise money there because they put restrictions on you. But for the most part, it’s nationally. Now, when we loan the money out to our clients, we want to be very careful with that money. So we want to have like boots on the ground, people that can go out and inspect the projects, make sure we’re being safe. So we’re in four markets for that. We’re headquartered in Denver, so right outside of Denver. We do quite a bit of business
in the Twin Cities in Minnesota. So those are probably our two primary markets. But Wisconsin’s catching up very quickly and we also do business in DC. And we’re kind of spread out all over the country here and there’s a story for each move that we’ve made but those are the four markets we’re in now.
Michelle Kesil (04:35)
Awesome. And what do you feel are some of the main keys that make the biggest difference in your business growth and allowing it to continue to scale?Kevin Amolsch (04:47)
Yeah, so I’m going to answer that with a little story here, Michelle. And I think this is an important one because it’s the lesson that I learned. It was a tough lesson to learn and it was one that has really helped me. So when I was starting Pine, I was struggling because look, it was 2008 and everything was going. So I was really, I was really focused on putting food on the table,paying the mortgage, like paying the bills, right? So I was, I was hyper-focused on the transaction, which I think is a trap a lot of entrepreneurs get in.
into. If you need the transaction to happen so you can pull your your profit or your fees out and that’s how you you know support your family. So when I was focused on the business at the beginning I was hyper focused on the fee the transaction closing. When I was able to shift my focus to is my client successful in this transaction ⁓ then that’s when my income really started to accelerate and it was hard because sometimes you have to say I can’t do the deal because I don’t think you’re going to be successful.
But when you say that, they want to come back with you with the next one and they want to refer their friends. so there’s still a selfish motive here possibly, but really when you focus in on client success, that was one of the biggest keys for me for Pine Financial to grow.
Michelle Kesil (06:49)
Yeah, absolutely. I think that integrity piece can take you a long way. And like, what are the type of clients that you serve? Is it all real estate investors or is there a specific ideal client that you normally work with?Kevin Amolsch (07:07)
Yeah, and it’s such an interesting business and every business owner says that, Like, look, I’m so unique, but in this specific industry, there’s not a set app.that we’re targeting for our marketing because we have two sides. We do have to raise capital and that’s a whole different avatar, right? And then you have your people that need to borrow the money. You need to get that money out the door and put it into assets. So then we’re trying to attract borrower clients. So it is a little bit unique in that we have two sides that we have to go after. So our marketing team is always, you know, focused in these two areas. But let me just take the borrower side for example, so I could try, I’m not trying to dodge your question here. ⁓
side it really is the mom-and-pop fix-and-flip client. So think about some of that maybe got real excited about watching an A &E flip this house TV show or something they want to go out and they want to do it but now they’re they’re starting to scale and they might be doing two three or so houses so it’s usually between two and five houses per year is who our target is small mom and pop and they need the funding to do it so
Yeah, that’s that is the dream client for us. Then on the investor side, I could go into more detail exactly who we’re targeting because we do get we do narrow that down. But someone who wants a passive return that doesn’t want to worry about tenants, toilets and tantrums.
Michelle Kesil (08:31)
Yeah, amazing. And I know that you’re an investor yourself. What does that aspect of the business look like?Kevin Amolsch (08:41)
It’s been evolving over the years. I’ve been so focused on the residential side Michelle. loved it because it’s so simple right and the houses are the most liquid real estate asset you could get. The buyer’s the buyer pool for housing is much larger than any other asset class. Okay but with that comesheadaches and hassles right you have a you have ⁓ it’s hard to get the cash flow in rentals compared to maybe a commercial asset so your cash flow is less vacancies are lower it’s like good and bad and and you have the the retail tenant is the one that’s going to call you when their light bulb goes out or they’re going to call you when they lock themselves out of the door or if you have small multi-families you’re going to have them calling you because the neighbors are fighting with each other like those are difficult problems to even manage that you don’t have
with commercial. So as I’ve grown through my career and it’s more recent really within the past like five years I’ve started really focusing more on the commercial side and I’m highly attracted to retail like small
neighborhood retail centers. So think about your inline like strip center and industrial that you could split up into small smaller bays. So let’s say you take a 20,000 square foot warehouse for example. If you could figure out how to turn that into four or five or six three thousand foot.
warehouse bays like small flex spaces,
then you can really increase the value of that asset. And then you get those tenants in there and they’re signing three or five year, sometimes longer leases and it’s their business. So they take care of it, right? They don’t want to not take care of their business home. Very different than the tenants who don’t take care of your properties, right? So I’m evolving more and more onto the commercial side. And in fact, I probably won’t buy another residential property. least that’s what I’m saying right now as we’re recording this, who knows that could change.
But right now I’m really pushing more towards the larger projects as I grow my own personal investing side.
Michelle Kesil (11:20)
Yeah, amazing. And what is an obstacle or challenge that you have faced on your investing journey that now looking back in hindsight, you can see the lesson.Kevin Amolsch (11:35)
Yeah, I could think of quite a few. I’ve had lots of mistakes. I’ve had a million dollar mistakes. So we can definitely talk about mistakes, but I’ll tell you one of the ones and I do share this when I guest on other podcasts and I like coming to this one because it was so impactful for me. And that is when you say, when you set your goals, how you set your goals and what you’re actually trying to accomplish matters. Like we talk about, let’s set our goals. have to be smart goals, know, measurable, attainable, all of thosethings that we learn and then we put them on a vision board or whatever and then we don’t look at them all year or maybe we’re highly or high achievers which a lot of your listeners I’m assuming are high achievers tend to set goals and they actually try to hit their goals right and that could be even worse because here’s the mistake I made I was so focused I was ego but I was so focused on what people were thinking about me and I was successful very young I was 22 23 years old and
I was doing transactions, which is, guess, sort of rare. And so people were like, how are you in college and still buying all these houses? I was buying one or two a month. So I was getting that attention and I was feeding on that attention. Well, what happened Michelle is I set my goals based on number of transactions. And this is common. I see it all the time. I would like to do 12 deals, 2026. Okay, well that’s fantastic. But does that mean you’re doing 12?
Terrible deals just so you can hit your 12 deal goal and feel good about yourself and all of a sudden you lost money for the year So what I’ve decided to really narrow down is why do I want to do the 12? Okay, I want to make money and why do I want to make that money? I want it for this reason or this reason and I’m trying to dig in a little bit to set more powerful goals with true intentions and get the ego out of the way
Michelle Kesil (13:26)
Yeah, absolutely.Kevin Amolsch (13:27)
That was a mistakefor sure. That was definitely a mistake. yeah, important how you set your goals would be my lesson.
Michelle Kesil (13:34)
Definitely and so how do you set goals now?Kevin Amolsch (13:39)
So like I said, so I will ask the questions why, why, why. you know, it’s cliche, but it really does work. If you could dig in five whys, you could really get to what you’re trying to accomplish. And then once you know that, that’s the target, right? I want to help, let’s say I want to help 200 kids in need this year. And just if you could define like how you’re going to do that. Okay, well now I get back in. Okay, now I’m to need this much money to do that. Plus I need all my living expenses and whatever other goals you have.over here but I know I need this pot of money to accomplish that goal and then you get back into that well I know if I’m fixing and flipping let’s say I know my average profits 35 grand or 45 grand or whatever the number is for your listener well now I know I need to do now I need to I need to do X number of deals to hit that money right so now it’s just an exercise of backing into what you need to do and I’ll even take this a step further it is vital that we set goals where we can actually achieve them and here’s what I mean by that
I can’t control necessarily the profit I make on every single deal. Like things happen. Maybe there’s problems that I find when I open up the wall and I find where the wiring is bad and I got to reduce some of the wiring or there wasn’t a permit closed out from a previous owner. Now I got to have a permit come in and they need to I need to expose the plumbing so they can inspect it. Whatever the issue is. So I can’t always control that. But what I can control
is how many people am I going to call? How many doors am I going to knock on to go find those deals? How many offers am I going to make?
to find the deal. And so now it’s an actionable goal, not a results driven goal. And now I know I could hit it. Now, whether it provides the results I want, I can only try to get as close as I can. But what I can control is the actions I’m going to take to do that.
Michelle Kesil (16:07)
Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s great advice.Kevin Amolsch (16:07)
Is that help?And that’s one of the things that.
See that here’s where people get tripped up in real estate, Michelle, especially for the listener that’s sort of new. They get scared, right? It’s fear that stops us from taking the action. And then we don’t have the success. And I was always, I’ll this a thousand times. What’s more scary, taking a risk and failing or not taking the risk and being in the same spot you are right now in five years. So what’s really the scary thing here? But one of the things that will help get over this fear, because I know that’s what stop people, is to create these little goals that you can accomplish.
and don’t get hung up on the results. The results will come,
but that is a great strategy to help you overcome your fear because you can control it.
Michelle Kesil (16:54)
Yeah, definitely. think the action is where people get the most tripped up.Kevin Amolsch (17:00)
Scary, scary out there. Dude, podcasts are scary. Like, you were probably scared the first time you did what you’re doing right now. I can imagine that was probably not comfortable for you, but look at you.Michelle Kesil (17:02)
Sure.Yeah,
everything starts uncomfortable.
Kevin Amolsch (17:13)
Yep.Michelle Kesil (17:15)
Awesome. So what are you most focusing on solving or scaling to next in your business?Kevin Amolsch (17:22)
Yeah, the scaling is where we’re hyper-focused. We’re definitely at that spot. So there’s 18 of us on the team now. So we’re right at that inflection point where it can really take off. But to do that, you have to have the systems in place to build on. So 2025 was hyper-focused on foundation. So we got into an office that we could grow into, so we’re not so tight. So that’s one example of a foundation. setting up the, you know, we talked a little bit before you hit record about the tech stack. So now we have a CRM customer.⁓
customer retention or whatever CRM is your customer contact.
You know, so we use HubSpot now and we’ve been bouncing around to different systems and we can never get a grasp and get everyone’s buy in. But now we have one. So that’s a big piece to a foundation. So that that would be example. Now that most of the foundation is in, now we’re starting to upgrade systems. So how are we handling the process for a new client that has this situation? Let’s figure that out, document it so that it’s like McDonald’s. Anybody can run through that.
process and that’s really the key to scaling.
Michelle Kesil (18:34)
Definitely. And so are you most focusing on scaling the pine financial aspect of the business?Kevin Amolsch (18:43)
Yes. So I’m a strong believer in this. And this is not a popular opinion, but I’m going to share it with you. think.Going to real estate investor full time is very difficult. You could have success with it and a lot of people do. But what I often find is someone who knows how to make money in something else and then they extract the money from that task. So maybe they want to be a doctor, for example. Well, you’re very good at that. You enjoy that. Go do that. And then when you get your paychecks, put a little bit aside to invest in real estate. And I think that’s a good way to go. So for me, I love both. But my bulk of my income comes
from pine so that’s where the bulk of my focus goes and then I’ll extract the capital and I’ll go invest it into properties.
Michelle Kesil (19:30)
Amazing and what has been something that you have overcome as a lender because that’s not an easy industry eitherKevin Amolsch (19:44)
Right.What if I overcome? So here’s, here’s what I can share with you. I’ve, I’ve had problems, right? We, we do foreclose every once in a while. Um, and every time we do that, we re-under at the file and say, what mistakes were made? How do we get better? Right. Sometimes it’s nothing that we’ve done. Maybe there’s a partnership that just, there was a partnership divorce. That’s pretty common actually. And there’s not, there’s no way we could foresee that. Right. But when you have those types of problems, especially early on when you’re
pretty small. One problem like that is massive to the company, right? It’s much easier to absorb it for us now. But back then it was very hard. But here’s what I learned. If we could have radical transparency, that’s actually one of our value transparency is one of our values. If you could have radical transparency, we actually raised more capital and grew faster when there was a challenge. Because I guess it’s rare when you invest with somebody if they tell you when there’s a problem. So we’re just very open about it.
exactly what happened. is exactly what we’re doing.” And they’re like, they get comfortable with that and they went out and their friends and then more money comes in. It was the most bizarre thing I’ve ever seen.
Michelle Kesil (20:54)
Yeah, amazing that transparency was able to grow the business in that way.Kevin Amolsch (21:04)
Yeah, and it’s all, it’s the transparency, but it’s the challenge and knowing that you’re going to stick to the challenge. You want to invest with operators that you know are going to fight through the challenge because we all have them.So, I mean, it worked for us. had a challenge. Here’s what we’re doing about it. And we would just, sometimes I’d meet with the investors when I was just getting started, because I had such a small amount of them. It was okay for me to do that. So I’d go out and have coffee and say, okay, here’s what we’re dealing with. This is what I’m doing. And that just went a long way.
Michelle Kesil (21:37)
Yeah, absolutely. And are most of your investors also local to your area?Kevin Amolsch (21:45)
Yeah, I gosh I say most well if there was a pie chart There would be a big piece of the pie from Denver. There’d be a big piece of the pie from Minnesota But we really do have investors all over the country Because look when you do what you say you’re going to do people talk about thatSo we’ve we’ve we get a lot of referrals and it’s all over the country because we can accept investors from all over the country. Yeah, but to get when you’re getting started, you got to grind. It’s not like it’s not like you just sit back on the desk and set up an LLC and people start calling you. Right. So it was very much coffees, cocktails, networking meetings. like you’re not in the office at all. You’re always out talking and meeting with people. So there was.
Bootstrap, guerrilla marketing you might say. Some people would use that term, but it’s really just trying to build connections and ⁓ grit.
Michelle Kesil (22:41)
Definitely, think networking is one of the most important aspects of this business.Kevin Amolsch (22:46)
Yeah, 100%.Michelle Kesil (22:49)
Awesome. Well, before we begin to wrap up here, if someone wants to reach out, connect, learn more about what you’re up to, where can people find you and connect with you?Kevin Amolsch (23:00)
Yeah, I think that’s a question. The best way to reach out to us or to learn more about Pine Financial Group in general is pinefinancialgroup.com. But look, we do a lot of videos and we’re getting amazing feedback. They’re very short, like less than 10 minutes, five, seven minute type of videos once a week. And it’s current. What’s happening today? What are we seeing investors do?What am I doing to have success? And sometimes you’re navigating tricky waters, right? The economy, there’s a little bit of noise right now. So how do you manage that? What’s going to happen when the Fed share turns over, right? That’s an example. How is that going to impact you as an investor? And we’ve seen that impact, right? With ⁓ Bitcoin, what happened there? So understanding those types of things help you be a better investor. So we have a lot of people go to the YouTube channel too, and it’s just YouTube backslash Pine Financial.
Michelle Kesil (23:53)
Perfect, well, appreciate your time and your story. Thank you for being here. Awesome. And for those listeners tuning in, if you got value, make sure you have subscribed. We have more conversations with operators like Kevin who are building real businesses, and we’ll see you on our next episode.
