Leap Academy with Ilana Golan - Entrepreneurial Instincts: Gary Beasley's Playbook for Building A Successful Company

Episode Date: September 29, 2023

Ignore the naysayers. trust your gut.  Take risks, make quick decisions and stay true to your mission.  Many times the best entrepreneurs are people that don’t play by the rules.  In this fascinating episode Ilana speaks with Gary Beasley, CEO & co-founder of Roofstock about his journey starting and growing a successful company.  Watch this episode on YouTube - https://youtu.be/21ARHuLLiNo More about Garyhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/gary-beasley-956647/ About Ilana Golan & Leap Academy:Website - https://www.leapacademy.com/Follow Ilana on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ilanagolan/YouTube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/@ilanagolan-leap-academy

All of you probably should not start companies. It's a different skill set. People also shouldn't feel like a failure if they're not an entrepreneur. But if you are, and you feel like you've got that sense of adventure and risk tolerance, then I say go for it. Welcome to The Leap Show. In The Leap Show, we're here to bring experts from around the globe who share inspiring stories, concrete tips, and insight on what helped them become the best version of themselves and who they are today and create the incredible life that they wanted. Subscribe and follow us. Share this with friends who are also driven and aiming for more because you'll hear stories

and tips that you'll hear nowhere else. Hi, I'm Ilana Golan, CEO of Leap Academy, which helps driven professionals reinvent, leap their careers to the next level. Now let's get started. This episode is for you if you're seriously driven, if you like to do big things, if you wanna hear about someone

who is really doing the incredible, but also maybe you're curious about real estate, maybe adding that and different investing into your portfolio. I want you to meet Gary Beasley. He is a co-founder and CEO of Roofstock, which I've been following for a while now. We'll talk about it. They're making ownership of investment in real estate simple. And he'll talk more about it. But in the past, he's led big companies, small companies, but really two companies through IPO, Zeep Reality as CFO and Starwood Waypoint Residential Trust as co-CEO. Seriously,

an incredible person. Gary, I'm so excited to talk to you today. Great to be here. Nice to see you. Amazing. Last time we met was many years ago in Vegas, right? That's right. I'm really excited. So, but tell me, Gary, again, there's a big portion always to where people were born and how they grew up, right? So tell us a little bit about how you grew up and how has that influenced who you are today?

Sure. So I grew up in a small town in northwest Indiana, probably an hour and a half from Chicago. But it was a world away from Chicago. It was sort of the intersection of steel country and farm country. So, you know, town of 25,000 people, high school of 2,800 kids, you know, maybe 25% went to college. So yeah, the vast majority of my friends from high school just never left. So it was a, I like to feel there's a really strong gravitational pull. People just stayed. And I was just back for a reunion, and I saw a bunch of people who've just been doing the same thing since high school. It's really kind of fascinating. But I like to say it was a great place to be from and to grow up. It was very safe. And people were sort of very comfortable with what they were doing. But for whatever reason, I had the itch to leave.

I felt like there was something beyond my hometown and that region. But it's really, really hard to leave. And I ended up viewing education as sort of my path out. And it turned out it was. I ended up going to Northwestern for college, which again was only an hour and a half away, but it was another world. I met people from all over the country, all over the world, and really opened my eyes to stuff. But I did it against the recommendation of my high school guidance counselor, who said that I should go to Indiana

or Purdue or one of these state schools where I would have a full scholarship, a free ride. He told me that I wasn't smart enough. I didn't have enough money. All these other rich kids from prep schools are going to be, you know, but I didn't listen to him. And, you know, that was one of the lessons I learned. Sometimes you can't listen to everyone who's in a position of authority, which he was. I remember talking to my parents about it, and they said, you know what? He's a high school guidance counselor. It's one data point.

Do you want to go to Northwestern? You should go to Northwestern. We'll kind of figure out the money. And so it formed a lot of my kind of worldview, and it helps when I go back. I go back once a year or so and it does keep me grounded. I've done a number of different things since, but I still feel like that's where I'm from and I can relate to the people there. They're still my friends. But it was, like I said, great place to be from. Incredible. So Gary, you basically decided not to listen. And which is a theme we'll talk

about. I feel a theme here. And you trusted your gut, which I love. And but then you, you know, your first job out of college sometimes really, you know, has a big influence on you. Tell us a little bit what happened there. Yeah, that's an interesting story. So somewhat naive college senior coming out and a company came and recruited, hired six of us from Northwestern out of, I think, 18 around the country. They offered a lot of money. It was in Newport Beach, California. It was a chance to kind of, it was a combination of a finance and sales role in computer leasing, which was kind of new back then. And I thought, I has a chance to get some sales skills, make some money, live in a great part of the country. I'd never been to California. And it turned out to be a disaster where this company had no ethics. They were keeping people's money. They were lying. I mean, it was really horrible. And so I remember calling my dad and saying, dad, is this the way business works? And he said, no, son, that's not the way business works.

So I was there all of three months and I quit. That was the first of my class to quit of my training class. We'd barely finished training and I was doing the job a month and I realized this was not for me. So I took a big chance by quitting my first job three months in because people say, yeah, you got to stay for a year or two. But, but, you know, what I realized was had I stayed, the longer I stayed, some people stayed and kind of got sucked in and lost their moral compass. And so I went back, used the placement center at Northwestern, and I ended up getting a job at LaSalle Partners, which was the opposite of the spectrum. It was like one of the most ethical companies in the world. And they actually liked the fact that I left for the reasons I did.

So I found my people there. I learned a lot and then ended up being there for, you know, between that for, you know, over three years before graduate school. And that was a phenomenal experience. And that's incredible. So that's another place where you followed your instinct and you let that guide you more than what you should do or what society may expect you to do. So you kind of chase that. And you've done that as well in grad school, right? Because you didn't necessarily take the easy path. You decided to go to Stanford.

So tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, for whatever reason, I really wanted to go to Stanford. And because I just from what I read about it and the people I'd met from there, I really liked. It's a very entrepreneurial place, and I felt like I had that in me, but I didn't have an outlet for it. And the Midwest tends to be more conservative. People don't take as many risks, and certainly some of the East Coast business schools I looked at were much more of a traditional path, investment banking, consulting. And so the guy who ran my group at LaSalle Partners went to Stanford. I really admired him. He wrote one of my recommendations. I did not get in the first time that I applied. And so he came and I was really bummed. I'd gotten

into some other business schools and I was thinking about going. And he said, if you really want to go to Stanford, here's what you should do. I know why you didn't get in. I talked to the admissions director and she told me, you're a qualified candidate, but you don't have quite enough experience and you haven't led anything. You haven't led any projects and your GMAT scores were good, not great. So he said, listen, if you want to go to Stanford, stay for another year. I'll give you two projects to run. You'll take a Stanley Kaplan course and nail the GMAT because I know you didn't really study. And that's important.

And reapply. And I think your chances will be much better. And that's what I did. And I reapplied and I got in. And so forever grateful to him. In fact, I just had breakfast with him a few months ago in Chicago. We've stayed in touch. They changed my life by taking that extra effort. And I try to do that now in my life. If there are people who I could help with a 20 minute phone call or, you know, taking them under my wing. I do try to do that. And so, so we did. And so that put me on a totally different path there.

And, and it turned out to be just a life-changing experience for me to, to be thrust into that, that environment. Tell me more. Why Stanford? Why was, why was that such life-changing? Yeah. So at Stanford, it's such an interesting collection of people. And the whole Silicon Valley environment for me was eye-opening. Everything's possible. And failure's okay. In fact, it's actually celebrated. And if you haven't had any failures, you're not trying hard enough, right? People who are skiers, if you never fall, you're not skiing hard. That's kind of what it's like.

Where I remember, I actually applied to Harvard as well at the same time. And when I got into Stanford, I pulled my application out at Harvard. So I don't want to take, I don't know if I'm going to get in, but I don't want to take some stuff. Well, why would you, this is the biggest mistake you're ever making, pulling out of Harvard. I said, it's really not because I know about your program. You have a very different philosophy. It's phenomenal school, but I don't like the 10% forced failure, which was the case back then. Stanford had no grades.

It was like the different. So if you got into Stanford, you were the only person to know your grades. You couldn't tell employers. They couldn't ask you, which I thought was really phenomenal. I think it might have changed. It might be different now, but that was the case back then. That to me was the environment I wanted. So it lets you take academic risks because otherwise you just take the classes you're good at because you want to have a good GPA. And so now they did recognize the top 10% of the class, but the rest of us were in the next 90%. So we were all equal. So anyway, I like that philosophy. Lots of people talking about starting businesses. I still do some guest lecturing back there. And I'd say half the class

at the business school is involved in the startup while they're in school. So I thought it was a really healthy environment for me and really just kind of showed me the art of the possible and how you, you know, you can really kind of connect dots differently and look to disrupt things in ways that you otherwise don't, unless you're in an environment that kind of takes the shackles off and lets you think about things differently. So you talk about taking risks and you talk about thinking differently and you literally implement it right after, right? Because you actually go with a job that offers the experience, not necessarily the money. So tell us a little bit about that and why make that decision. Is that the right decision?

What do you think? Yeah. Well, it was for me. A lot of my friends at the time, some were starting companies. I didn't feel like I was ready to do that. A lot were going into consulting and investment banking, private equity, kind of the typical path. I went to work for a guy who had started a real estate private equity shop that was doing some really interesting things in the real estate space. And he was forming REITs and taking them public. And this was his vision.

And I got a chance to basically carry his briefcase for a year. That's how he described it. He says, I don't have a job description, but you could come be in all my meetings. You could help me travel with me. And so I did. And he didn't pay me very much. It was less than half of what my other offers were. But I said, you know what?

I'm going to be embedded here and I'm going to learn. He's one of the best fundraisers I'd ever seen. Great strategic thinker. I got to attend board meetings with him. So it was just a really, really, I felt like I got several years of experience really compressed into 18 months of working with him and then ended up getting tapped for another, another role that one that liked my skills that I had developed there. And, and I went into the resort business after that with a KKR owned or sponsored vehicle called KSL. And, and again, went with, with no promises of equity, just, we can pay you.

And if it works out well, it's going to work out really well for you. So I sort of bet on myself and my ability because I love the team and the strategy of buying resorts after the RTC crisis. They had a great business strategy and they were super smart. I said, you know what? I'm going to throw myself in here. And if I'm successful, I trust them. And it worked out. And so rather than go in and sort of demand, what I see happening more today

is people sort of demanding things up front as opposed to sort of betting on themselves. And I'm not saying that you shouldn't advocate for yourself, but I think early in your career, I would say maybe bet on yourself more and know that worst case, you're going to learn a lot. And best case, there's some financial upside there, too. But I tell people even today, playing the long game, I think, is smart. I would totally agree. And I see it in my career when you say it. But you have this instinct of following, you know, your instincts, trusting yourself and knowing that in the long run, that's going to work out. But you also describe your career as kind of nonlinear, right? You kind

of went, it's not the typical, although we see less and less of the typical one. Right. But yours is really kind of long, you know, not linear. What is the common thread? And tell me a little more about that. Yeah, I would say I like to go into places that I think will have some secular tailwinds, which helps if there's a rising tide, you know, I kind of joined KSL after the RTC crisis. You just felt like real estate prices needed to come up. I went to Zip Realty in the early 2000s after the Internet bubble burst. And it felt like, wow, here's a chance to really build a company from a attract a lot of talent and figure out how to apply technology to the real estate industry, which is not using technology. So it was because I felt like there was going to be, you know,

we were the one of the first to put listings online, for example. It just made so much sense. So, and if that takes off a lot of models like Redfin and things followed Zillow was right soon after us. And then when I was at Waypoint homes, Models like Redfin and things followed. Zillow was right soon after us. And then when I was at Waypoint Homes, we started buying homes during the downturn, the great recession, great financial crisis. And we were buying homes that we knew that were $400,000 at the peak. We're buying them for $120,000 and renting them out.

And we knew prices would recover. But at that time there were no buyers. But we just had a lot of conviction and we raised a bunch of money around that and eventually formed a vehicle to take it public. But it just felt to me like it was inevitable that prices were going to recover. And the best case was we built a platform as well that we could monetize. Worst case was we had a lot of cheap houses that were going to be worth more. So kind of putting yourself in the path of growth, that's what I've tried to do. And in places where you can apply innovation and new business models, new ways of thinking to large addressable markets. Those are kind of common threads that I think as I kind of take a step back, say each time I've made a move,

it's been, those have been considerations, whether they were conscious considerations then or not. I think they probably were at least unconscious in my mind. Right. And it feels also that you're able to see the problems and you're actually solving problems that are needed and you're seeing them. And when you solve a real problem, like you said, the outcome will be there. The only question is how much, how wide, how much impact, right? But are you going to solve a real problem? So tell me a little bit about funding Roofstock, speaking of, you know, leaving a big thing. So tell me a little more

about that, Gary. Sure. So we had taken my company public, Starwood Waypoint. I was running it. And a couple of things. One of the things I realized about myself is I really like building things. I like the growth phase a lot. And once we had sort of built it and we were now a public company, what was happening was we were just having our quarterly earnings calls. And I really wasn't having much fun. I was just talking to analysts all day and investors, talking about the business rather than innovating quarter after quarter after quarter. And it was just a grind. And I said, do I want the next five or 10 years of my career to be this? And by the way, it's a great job, but it's a job, right? And I wasn't ready for that at that point in my career. I wanted more a chance to have a bigger impact than just grow a platform that we had

taken. So my co-founders and I really had this idea of building a platform for investors in the single-family rental space, which was a nascent industry. To put it in perspective, in 2012, in the first quarter, there was basically no institutional ownership of houses for rent. We were the first group to get to 1,000 homes. And it took us a few years to get to 1,000. And that was the first quarter of January of 2012. By the end of that first quarter, Blackstone, through their invitation homes platform, was buying 1,000 homes a week. So that's how quickly, and that's when actually home prices, after dropping for five years, bottomed in Q1 of 2012, if you look at the data, and they started going up. coming in put a bottom in the housing market, invested in all these homes that needed to be renovated and provided rental homes for those who could no longer buy homes, but they needed

places to live. So it was this perfect storm. But what I realized was now there's an industry that had started to become institutionalized and we're trying to unlock access, not just for institutions, but also individual investors. Why can't we build a platform that can bring buyers and sellers together, source inventory of really high-quality investment homes, make it easy to provide all the services? And really how I describe the model today is really what we built is like the real estate investment cloud. It's like real estate investment as a service. So you could come in much like you use Salesforce. You used to have to buy servers and software. You used to have to build your own real estate operating and investment platform. Now you can rent ours. So you just come in and you could see all the inventory. We can help you with the acquisition, renovation, management, and ultimately sale.

And we have a lot of data to help inform those decisions. And so we just make it super easy and accessible. So with that simple idea, we just started Roofstock eight years ago. And it's been quite a journey over those eight, yeah, it's been, it's been quite a, quite a journey, um, over, over those eight years, but it's been a lot of fun. And it's been growing incredibly well. You raised how much? We've raised just under 400 million of venture capital. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we've, we've done probably 6 billion of transactions. So through the platform so far. So yeah, it's been, you know, we a little bit right place at the right time,

for sure. You definitely, like I said, putting yourself in the, in the path of secular growth is a big part of success. If, you know, we had started this company at a different time, it wouldn't have hit that same wave. But still, as you know, a lot of things have to go right with these companies to work. And I want to talk about that, right? Because the beginning is, well, the whole journey is never easy, but the beginning is really, really hard. And there's always challenges that blindside you a little bit. Tell us a little bit about maybe a challenging moment or a few moments that you remember that, you know, kind of shook you to your core a little bit.

Yeah. Well, one that comes to mind was, well, there's two that are related to the launch, like very early. But one seems like kind of a minor one. One was more of a big deal. But the minor one was we were just opening up the site to 100 users. We had like a waiting list. We picked the 100. We made a big deal that we're going to launch the site and open it up. And we did.

And we sent an email out to invite everybody to link into the site and open it up. And we did. And we sent an email out to invite everybody to link into the site. And the email was the wrong email. It was actually a test email that was gibberish. It was literally like the sentences made no sense in a paragraph form. And it was signed by me with my picture. And so it went out. And I was at the movies with my daughters at the time. And my phone buzzes. And my CTO said, Gary, we have a problem. He told me what happened. I said, Amit, don't worry. We're going to make lemons into lemonade here. I'll call you after the movie. And so I did. I said, listen, what we're going to do is send out an email to everybody and own it and say, hey, we're going fast, blah, blah, blah.

We need your hoodie size because we want to send you all hoodies. Right. So so we turn them into kind of like advocates. And so a couple of times I've met people who were the first hundred who got hoodies and said that was really cool. But he's like, it was so good that you didn't freak out because he thought he was going to be fired. Like, I'm not going to fire you. Yeah, we got this thing up quickly. This is, again, how you deal with failure is important. Another thing that related to our launch was we didn't own the Roofstock URL. It was owned by a gentleman who owned a crane company. And he wanted to have these Roofstock baskets and build a website around it.

So we owned the URL. So anyway, we hired a guy who said, no problem. He's like the fixer. He goes, I could buy any URL. I've seen this before. This link, Roofstock actually goes to a bowling alley. They're not using it. We'll be able to buy it.

So I'm like, great. So that's when we finalized the name and we went through everything. Turns out he then so so we get ready to do the launch and the guy doesn't want to sell the URL. It's just not for sale at any price. Like we're about to launch our company and we can't control the URL. So so we had to actually launch with my roofofstock.com, which is not great. But I flew that he wouldn't answer my calls. I flew to Chicago where his crane company was just to see him. And he wasn't there.

And so I sat with his assistant. I left a long note. And I said, please, please, please let me at least have a conversation with him. So anyway, I emailed him every three days for a couple of weeks. I finally get an email back from him. I'm willing to sell my Roofstock email or URL. And the price was around $30,000. It was like very exact figures, like $29,136. Because

that's how much he'd invested in this Roofstock Basket Company. In his mind, that's what it was worth. I'm like, fine, done. And so we did it. And it was really hilarious. And I said, would you like stock for any of it? Or do you just want cash? He no one cash so um i'm not i'm not going to tell him what his his you know stock would be worth today had he um taken stock but he just he's a midwestern guy and he he's like okay this is what i had invested i'm not going to do this now this is what i'll sell it for but i was freaking out um you had me not been able to control that url people would be typing in roofstock.com all the time and going to Bluebird Lanes, which is a bowling alley somewhere in Illinois,

and be like, what company is this? But again, you had to be persistent. I was not going to relent. I even told them, I said, we'll build your, do another URL and we'll build your website for your roof stock baskets and all that. And it's like, anyway, that, that was the, the URL. And I love that. And I want, you know, I want to make sure that, you know, you as a listener,

listen to this because it's really about not giving up and it's about being relentless, but also not freaking out because the mistakes are inevitable. The suffering is a choice, but the mistakes will happen. Right. But tell me, Gary, what in your past, you know, that maybe some, you know, usually people don't know has built you to who you are, because that is these are really special stories that you convey here. What do you think? You know, I don't you know, it's a really good question. You know, I've certainly had my share of I think some to a degree, like you say, it's a way that you perceive things. And I've I've, I think this came from

my family. I had a very strong family unit. We never really had money, but we had a very supportive environment and a very, and the glass was always half full. You know, a lot of people are, can complain and we never complained and it was always okay this happened what do you do about it and I just sort of grew up that way but I do think especially as an entrepreneur you you have the glass has to be half full it really does it's not like you can't be paranoid about competition and all that stuff but you but you really need to be optimistic because that's the only way you could go through walls because otherwise you're going to give up. And I remember one of my business school classmates is a good friend. Anil Bhusri runs Workday. He founded Workday with Dave Duffield.

And he was telling a story about how Anil, he said, you know, he's a glass half full kind of guy. And he said, it's really good to have a partner who's got a little different point of view. Because with Dave, his glass is 100% full. You'd expect him to say his glass is half empty, and they kind of counter each other. Dave's is he's the supreme optimist. So compared to An Neil who's only half full, he said, that's what it takes oftentimes to kind of drive forward. So a lot of it, I would say has been, I've been kind of blessed for whatever reason with a positive attitude. And that's been really, really helpful throughout my life, professionally and personally. And that's incredible because I think there's a saying, and I don't remember exactly by who,

but when you're willing to go on when most other stop, you're able to live a life that most people will only dream of. Right. And there is something really true about that because the main difference is that most people will just halt and stop and not bug that person every three days, right? Like, they'll just stop and they'll give up. So, you know, maybe this is a great segue, like any tips to, you know, a listener here that is, you know, having big dreams, but afraid to maybe take action and just wondering, is this right for me? Is this the right time? Am I made for this? Do I have what it takes? What would you say, Gary? Yeah. Well, I would say I had a lot of these thoughts when I left my public company that I was running. I was comfortably compensated. I could sort of do the job fairly

easily because there was like a playbook for it to take the leap into starting something where you have no team, no products, nothing. You have to you have to get at the right point in your life where you're okay with that failure and maybe set yourself a timeline, maybe some parameters around it. What I eventually got comfortable with is what's the worst thing that could happen? The worst thing that could happen is I can't raise the money or I raise the money and it fails. Does that mean I'm unemployable? No. Does that mean I can't try something else again? No. Does that mean I'm a bad person? No. Because so many things have to, and so once I kind of got comfortable with failure and said, okay, what does success look like? And there's all sorts of wild, you know, positives on the success side, but feeling comfortable with that failure and saying,

okay, worst case it fails and I'm going to have some learnings from it that I'm going to be able to leverage with whatever I do next. And so I would say just getting comfortable with failure and being at the right point in your life to do it are things that and make sure you're wired wired for it because there are not everyone is, when I talk to the students at Stanford, this is one of the things we talk about because everyone wants to start a company. And I'm like, all of you probably should not start companies because there are a lot of people who are good lieutenants, good COOs, good CFOs. It's very different to start a company, lead a company. It's a different skill set. There's great ways to have a phenomenally rewarding career, but people also shouldn't

feel like a failure if they're not an entrepreneur because it takes a special kind and a special kind of risk tolerance. So I really ask people to really ask themselves those questions and not try to be someone they're not and not feel like a failure for not doing that. But if you are and you feel like you've got that sense of adventure and risk tolerance, then I say go for it. And because, I mean, literally, I mean, you only go around once and you don't want to have that those regrets saying, gosh, I really, you know, I did a lot of things, but I just never took that swing. And so if you're at that place where you can and you're comfortable with the downside, then I think, you know, it's yourself to try. Otherwise, you know, you're going to have some regrets.

I love that, Gary. It's such a beautiful share. First of all, we agree 1000%. Not everybody's meant for it. I mean, you know, we look at the big failures, but the truth is I eat failures for breakfast. You know, there's constant, you know, stuff going on. And you need to be okay with that. I don't necessarily think everybody's made up for that. What do you think about burning the boats versus experimenting and just putting your toes a little bit in the water? I think there's times for doing both. And this is, it's interesting because we think about this kind of all the time. When you're an entrepreneur, you have a strategy. And some people, businesses fail because they stick to that strategy so rigidly and they never make pivots.

And it's almost impossible to get your strategy right out of the gate before you've started engaging with customers and building products and things like that. Then you have companies that start to pivot way too early and have no conviction, no North Star, and those are likely to fail too. So the hardest thing, there's a lot of hard things about being an entrepreneur, is knowing when to stick to your strategy and when to modify it. We've made a number of modifications or expansions to our strategy, but our North Star has stayed the same, but staying in the same sector, improving access, reducing friction,

all that kind of stuff. But we've had a lot of different decisions we've had to make. So, and I think once you go down a path, there's a point of no return. Then you say, okay, there's no going back. Then there's a point where you say, okay, we're doing this. Then you burn the boats and then you just go for it. Say, we're committed to this. We're going to do it. So it's a great sort of

philosophical question. And my definitive answer is it depends. Right. And we totally aligned. I was curious what you're going to say. So first of all, this is incredible, Gary. Again, I am a big believer that what we call portfolio career is and multiple streams of income is the future of work. So, you know, and Roofstop is exactly, you know, on the path to that, right? Like if you want to have more investments in real estate and understand what's going on there

and have it safer, have it simpler, you know, Rooftop is the greatest platform that I know. Gary, just final words to kind of the audience that maybe are trying to figure out if Rooftop is the thing and maybe, you know, who should look into it? Yeah, well, I'm a fan, as you say, in diversification of not just careers, but investments. And so, you know, I do think that owning real estate, whether it's through Roofstock or through REITs or through other direct means that you do is an important part of anyone's portfolio. It's uncorrelated to equities, which is a big deal. It's great tax advantages. It tends to be

up into the right in value over time. So figuring out what is right for you as an investor, how active do you want to be, or passive, and figuring out the right structures. But I do think it's hard to get that exposure for many people, which is one of the reasons we started Roofstock. It's easy to set up a brokerage account and buy stocks. If you really want to have a portfolio of homes or own pieces of homes, it's complicated. It's hard. You've got the management issues, all this kind of stuff. So I would say, yeah, explore platforms like ours and others and sort of get that exposure. And I also caution people about putting all their eggs in any basket too, because sometimes people will come to us with enough money to buy a single house,

but nothing else. And they've kind of swept out the corners and like, you know, that's probably not the right solution either. Maybe what you should do is stay a little bit more diversified, kind of leg into an investment here. And so diversification, I think, is key. But, you know, having real estate be a component of that, I think is, is helpful. Gary, this was a phenomenal, phenomenal, phenomenal discussion. Thank you for inspiring. Thank you for the beautiful stories and sharing, and thank you for what you're doing. It's really inspiring and beautiful. I appreciate it. Delightful to spend time with you. Thank you for listening and hope you enjoyed this show. Don't forget to subscribe,

follow, share this with friends. I'll see you in the next Leap Show.