Scott Steps Down as CEO: A New Age for BiggerPockets Money
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Welcome to the BiggerPocketsMoney podcast. This is a special edition, and today I'm going to share a bittersweet announcement. What's going on, everybody? I'm Scott Trench, CEO of BiggerPockets, here today with a very special guest for a very special episode, and my last episode as CEO of BiggerPockets here. And that's the big announcement I wanted to make today, is after a decade of leading this incredible organization, I

I've made the decision to step down as CEO and refocus my energy full time on BiggerPockets money alongside Mindy Jensen. And as part of that, I'm welcoming the next leader of BiggerPockets here, Ale Aestran. How did I do? Did I pronounce that right, Ale? Yes. Well, welcome to BiggerPockets. Welcome as the new CEO. Thank you, Scott. I'm super excited.

to be here. I actually don't formally start until next week, but of course, you know, this is a big milestone for the company and I'm really pumped that we're doing this

this way, you know, actually letting the community know first. Obviously lots to discuss, but I'm really excited to be here with you today. Awesome. Well, we couldn't be more thrilled to welcome you. And in a few minutes, we'll get into your background and all those kinds of things. Before we get to that point, I did want to share with the BiggerPockets community some of the reasons why I made this decision and kind of the context behind it. So we'll jump right into that. The first reason is that this company, BiggerPockets, has been more than a job. It's

for maybe to an unhealthy degree, a little bit of an obsession here for the last decade. I've spent the entire time helping people retire early. It's time to take a little of that for myself here and practice what I preach. So I'm going to take a step back, doing the BiggerPocketsMoney podcast, even foolish time, I think that's the right word, foolish time, will be a much more sustainable workload for me and my family. And I'm looking forward to spending Tuesday afternoons maybe on the mountain bike or on a hike and those types of things. That's the first part of this.

The second reason is I think that folks who've been following BiggerPocketsMoney and me on the podcast here know that while I love real estate, I have an even greater passion for just the concept of early retirement. And I really want to focus on studying a lot more depth into broader portfolio theory, different tactics for financial planning,

preparing for college savings, all of those different aspects of personal finance that I really want to add to my skill set here and take that theory for traditional financial planning and perfect it or apply it to the pursuit of early retirement. And then the last reason, and this one's really important here, is I think that the next phase of BiggerPockets growth here calls for a leader with a different and evolved skill set here to take BiggerPockets as a business, as a platform, and as a community to that next level.

And I think there are three areas that we'll really emphasize here going forward. Those three areas are first building a world-class technology experience, especially on biggerpockets.com and particularly as it relates to personalizing the experience. I think people need to come to BiggerPockets. And if you're a rookie, here's a rookie experience. If you're an experienced investor, here's an experienced system for that.

Second, on that point, I think we've done a really good job here at BiggerPockets in helping new investors buy their first, second, or third investment property. And I think we have an opportunity to do a much better job of helping more experienced investors build larger portfolios, raise capital, or operate much larger businesses, the business of real estate on that front.

And then last, I think there's an opportunity to develop a lot more of a broad partnership strategy with many of the technology and services firms in the real estate ecosystem here. We have plenty of partners that are wonderful here, and I think there's a lot more we can do with a more sophisticated partnership approach.

So those three reasons for what I think BiggerPockets needs, in addition to my personal passions and pursuits, were the reasons behind this decision. And we actually began the process of looking for our next leader in December 2024 when I notified the board of my decision to take a step back and end my time as CEO of BiggerPockets here.

And we worked this entire time period to find the next leader. I'm excited to, again, welcome Ale to the team here as our next leader. And I think his experience that fits all three of those needs that I just described so perfectly. I mean, he's got a background in building great technology products and technology-enabled real estate services.

His whole background is in helping these more experienced investors and building the operations for huge real estate portfolios over at Mind, where he was the chief business officer and chief operating officer. So with that, Ale, one more time, welcome again to BiggerPockets. Maybe you could round out a little bit more of that experience, that background for folks wondering who you are and what your background and skill set are. Thank you. And absolutely. But before I talk about myself, I

First one, I for sure appreciate, recognize and congratulate you, starting with Josh.

And the team at BiggerPockets past and present on the amazing company and business and community platform that you've built. Really the envy of the real estate industry, especially for individual and what we used to call at Mind the Retail real estate investors in contrast to the larger institutional players. It is just an amazing company and you should feel very proud of everything that you've

I really mean that. And, you know, I wouldn't have taken this opportunity if there wasn't a very, very strong foundation to build upon. Well, thank you. And I'm so glad you mentioned Josh Dorkin. I mean, Josh, you, if you're listening to this, built

And there has been a true pleasure to join as an early member of that, building off of what you and I'll call out Brandon Turner here and many of the other content creators really, really built over the years and push that flywheel forward to, you know, we'll talk about a little bit about later about the aggregate impact we think we've had here at BiggerPockets. But it's just it's just been an astounding experience.

outcome here, really the privilege and honor of my career. So super lucky to have that start and foundation poured by those folks. And then to work with everybody else, all the stakeholders, the community members, the sponsors, the team here at BiggerPockets, our investors, everybody has just come together to really build a really special company, I think, here. I'm really incredibly excited. Let's see about myself.

I am originally from Argentina. If you can tell from my accent, I'm not a native English speaker. Grew up actually in the very south of Argentina, in a region called Patagonia, in a small town. So a very idyllic upbringing, I would say. And the reason I even started as far back as

my childhood is, I really cherish and remember fondly those moments when I was growing up because it really was about community. This is a small town in the most remote part of Argentina, which makes it one of the most remote parts of the world. You would know everybody, your neighbors, the principal at school, the mayor, the owners of the businesses, the farmers. We were really a strong, neat community. And I think that has really shaped the

who I am and what I value, because I only wish for my kids now, I formed a family here in the US with my wife, that they get to experience just even a little bit of what it is to be part of an amazing and tight-knit community. I moved to Buenos Aires right before my university years. I studied engineering there. That's something you all should know. I'm a

I'm a geek, I'm a technologist, I'm a builder at heart, and I just was and forever will be an engineer in that sense. I love problem solving, specifically with technology. And after a few years working in Argentina, I actually started to have an international career with the Boston Consulting Group, which is a leading strategy consulting firm.

Working elsewhere in Latin America, I spent some time in Europe based out of Paris, which was an amazing chapter and ultimately came to the US in 2010 to pursue a master's in business administration and MBA at Stanford University. And that was an amazing inflection point, sort of literally landing in Silicon Valley. You land 15 minutes off.

I knew right away that I would want to spend the rest of my career and life here. I was fortunate to meet my now wife on campus. She is Mexican and had moved also to start her program. And so upon graduation, we decided to stay in Mexico.

in the Bay Area. We married a couple of years after. We currently live in San Francisco. We have three kids and both her and I have had careers specifically in technology companies since. Now, as I look forward, my last chapter was at Mind. And I would say so far that has been one of the richest chapters in my career because I really got to

flex all the things that I'm super passionate about all my muscles. You know, Mind is one of the largest property management companies in the world, right? Could you tell us a little bit about your experience there and what you did? What was the secret sauce behind Mind? Might be a known fact to some of you, but maybe not widely understood that Mind as a third party property manager, meaning as a company that doesn't own the assets,

And like an invitation homes, you know, think one of the larger owner operators of single family rentals. Mine manages on behalf of other investors, both retail individual investors, even, you know, single unit lenders to large institutional players that own hundreds, if not thousands of units.

And they currently manage very close to 20,000 single family rentals all across the US, which is an incredible feat given the variation in geographies, unit types, investors buy boxes and preferences makes it quite challenging to account for all those differences.

But the secret sauce there really to scale at that level and do it with great outcomes for the investors and with good profitability for the company is with technology. So I learned a great deal through that chapter, but I'm even more excited to, in a way, continue the mission, which is, you know, my mission is to help individuals achieve their goals.

dreams and achieve financial freedom through real estate, which I'm almost shocked it almost matches one to one to bigger pockets mission, which is to help people

you know, individuals achieve their dreams, create wealth through real estate and other means, certainly real estate, a big, big aspect of the mission. But it is actually doing it at a scale that even though mine is one of the larger property management companies out there, we're talking thousands, tens of thousands of investors.

Whereas BiggerPockets really plays a part in shaping that journey for millions of members of our community. But I think that's just the beginning. I think the potential that BiggerPockets has, that we have ahead of us in terms of reaching, you know, the next million and the next 10 million of aspiring and existing investors, both domestically and internationally. Because, by the way, I think this is very much a universal concept.

I think is unparalleled and unmatched. So I'm just really excited to, in a way, continue the mission, but at a much bigger level of scale and impact. I feel like there's a lot of things I'm super proud of and that opportunity on the scaling property management and operations and helping people, again, turn these small mom and pop portfolios. That's, you know, the retail investor, the small investor. That's who we serve here, right? I mean, most people in this country who own real estate own 10 or fewer properties.

And I think it's something like 70 or 80% of the single family rentals in this country are people with just one or two rentals.

outside their primary residence. So it's a huge, that's the population, but how do we help those folks in that next phase, you know, determine which properties to sell, which properties to keep, how to generate much more operating income from those properties and actually have those properties finish that play and make them feel financially free. And that's why I'm so excited about your arrival here at the home here at BiggerPockets. So, but what are some of the things that maybe you most appreciate about BiggerPockets today? And what are some of the opportunities you see

coming up. There's so many things that I'm really excited about. So the business is incredible, but I think it starts because of its community. I think community is really hard to create or recreate or replicate. You earn, you earn community through a lot of hard work, really being there for each other, for the members. I'm just thinking if I were to start a company and many companies, many founders out there are trying to launch community.

businesses in different verticals and they only wish they could have a community to build upon. It's almost impossible to... There's no playbook that will tell you how to create community. It's through the many years of hard work and just being there for the customers, for the members and for each other that you create that. So the fact that that is BiggerPockets' starting point, it's, as I said, it's the envy of the industry and one...

thing I'm going to be very focused on building from is that community, which I think is incredible, the power of the brand.

Second, of course, BiggerPockets has been affected by the macro in real estate. There is no one company I have yet to find a company in prop tech or real estate that hasn't been massively affected by the macro in the last few years. And BiggerPockets is part of this industry, but it has been incredibly resistant, resilient and resistant actually to that macro. And that just shows to me again how

much value, vehicle pockets continue to create for its members and customers, right? Where the business, despite challenges, continues to thrive. The early inroads, you know, some of them actually, you know, we have real evidence that there's a big opportunity to continue to lean in, as you said, on technology, right? The launch recently of the mobile app. Of course, the forum is at the core of the experience for many members, but I think there's a lot more

bigger pockets we can do with technology to improve the experience and add even more value for our members and our partners. So there's definitely success to build from, but way more to do. And that gets me obviously excited. Love it. You talked about that macro impact. And I think that's

I think the best way I can articulate that is transaction volume. So the number of investors who bought rental properties in 2021 was 1.4 million per our estimation. There will be different variations of that out there. And we believe that number dropped to 760,000.

by in 2023 and has stayed about the same in 2024 and is within a couple of one or one to three percentage points of that in terms of pacing here in 2025. Is that the problem you're talking about from a macro perspective in terms of that? And what do you think is the biggest challenge for investors that's causing that drop off in transaction volume?

You know, first and foremost, if you're a real estate investor, you are an investor. And I think so some challenges that we're facing in this industry are challenges that we're facing just because of macro conditions that affect everybody. Volatility, we had the pandemic, crazy supply chain, you know, backlashes, right? The rate environment and how rates not only moved, but moved at a pace that was

Basically, unprecedented. And so those all those macro uncertainty on the on the economy and like some years of high cumulative inflation, those affect all asset classes, all investors. And so we just are in that backdrop now specifically for real estate. I think rates and what that means for cap rates and yields just has meant that there has been fewer transactions recently.

Which is, you know, for us, one reason why members, customers, you know, can't come to

to the community to learn from each other you know to get that content and expertise so there's less demand for that for sure i'm also thinking like what happens when those wins change from headwinds into tailwinds as i was sharing the news of this next chapter for me and talking catching up with with some friends and mentors they were like oh my god i love bigger pockets i used to

listen to the podcast, I would go in, I was learning, and I was like, okay, you said you used to, why are you not doing that? Well, I was more actively buying then,

Not so much right now. So I think the demand is still there. Of course, we are being affected by, as you said, the transaction volume. To me, that's opportunity because those headwinds will turn into tailwinds. But it also makes me wonder how might we continue to help investors even when the conditions for buying are maybe not as favorable? Might we help them with thinking through how to optimize NOI?

how to think through OPEX, are there opportunities there? And so I think there's a lot we are doing and we can continue to do, even in an environment where investors, some transaction volume is depressed.

and more about managing and optimizing an existing portfolio, right? Because there's always opportunities to do that more effectively. What are some of those, like you said, tailwinds that you kind of think might manifest over the next few years for investors in particular? What's going to help them maybe solve this problem of, you know, I think the way I've raised the problem is it's hard to make a property cash flow with six and a half or seven percent interest rates at max leverage. And

That is really keeping a lot of people out of the market. Fundamentally, it's really hard to just find that something that works at a basic level in that environment. What are some of the tailwinds you think that might change that dynamic or help investors succeed despite that dynamic? Yeah, taking the long view here, which I think is the right view to take if you're going to get into real estate investing, you ought to think, you know, this is a...

an asset class and a play that really pays out over the long haul in terms of just cumulative risk and tax adjusted returns. One is that the industry is being professionalized and institutionalized at a rapid pace. Now, I don't think we'll get to like in MFR multifamily

you know, to anywhere close to 50% institutional ownership of rental units. Most rental homes are and will continue to be owned by individuals, by families, by mom and pop, as you said, investors. But the reality is that the institutionalization of the asset class does have an impact. There is almost a Cambrian explosion of new software solutions, service providers that are

going and meeting those demands for institutions. But I think then what happens is some of those solutions can be also made accessible for retail investors. I like to think of Formula One and then mass market cars. You know, the Formula One teams are innovating with

you know, engines and fuel types. But eventually we all benefit from those innovations in the mass market cars that we purchase and drive. And I think the same thing is happening at a rapid clip in real estate where institutional investors have a different level of requirements in terms of how

They get the reporting and the data that they use to make decisions, portfolio optimization, asset management, how they go about leasing and managing vacancy and turns and OPEX and repersonal maintenance. And all those solutions, where it's a service provider, a software provider, are increasingly becoming available for us as individual investors. So I'm excited about...

really having bigger pockets be almost that orchestrator and helpful guide to investors in knowing and being aware of, hey, what are some things that I should be looking out that might be helpful to me in my unique situation, right? That, as you said, that personalized experience.

So that is one. It's like there are so many solutions out there. And notably, many are technology solutions, right? New entrants, many venture-backed companies, not all of them. And specifically, of course, with generative AI.

where the pace of innovation is almost accelerating. And AI today is the worst it's ever going to be. It's going to be better tomorrow and then the next day after. And so while real estate is sometimes a bit of a slow-moving industry, I think that pace of adoption is actually accelerating, which to me is exciting because that's where I think we can guide each other, guide our members and investors in

in finding ways to drive an OI despite the macro today. - A couple years ago, there was this thing of like the institution's gonna take over the industry. It's gonna be all owned by corporate America. And they get the head on. Institutions own like 3% of single family rentals in this country. Of single family rentals, not of single family homes, single family rentals. The 15 to, I think it's 18 million single family rentals, give or take, in the United States.

And, you know, they were net sellers, I believe, starting in 2023. I believe that was the case in 2024. And I believe it'll be the case again here in 2025. So that share is actually diminishing. The retail investor is the one buying most of the inventory for sale here. And, you know, I go to these conferences like IMN, Single Families Rental Forum or whatever,

And everyone's been on the institution. I'm like the only guy who's like, guys, this is a bigger pockets industry. Like the people that buy these rentals are, you know, somebody who works a full-time job or has a small business and buys one, two, five, 10 properties over a lifetime.

And there's a small, tiny tale of people who go on to buy more than those 10 properties in their lifetime. But these investors are, in many cases, every bit as sophisticated as the institutional investor in terms of the specific property that they're buying. They're going to get to know that property. That property is such an all-in bet for this individual, right?

It's, it's, it's multiple times their annual income, especially the first one, two or three. I mean, these, these are just all in bets, the terror and fear that go into buying that. And, and, and, but you know, in the hope that, that they will appreciate and produce that cashflow in time that I think has generally been rewarded by and large to those investors. But that there's a, there's, it's funny that the rookie investor, the people who listen to the bigger pockets of real estate rookie podcast, right. Is our, our,

actually the most sophisticated investors on bigger pockets, even though many of them don't own a property. Like if you put a test in front of them about real estate knowledge, they're actually the most advanced ones here because of that dynamic. And these powerful tools that were built for these institutional investors, these sophisticated software systems, I think the people who really will benefit the most from them in the end

We'll be the rookie who spent a couple hundred hours listening to a bunch of podcasts, reading a bunch of books, getting fairly sophisticated and is ready to use that knowledge. And I think that there's a really good application for those. And I think that's where that partnership angle I was discussing earlier comes in. And obviously your knowledge of that space is going to be so critical in translating these solutions that have been built hundreds of millions of dollars invested in many of these solutions and helping to make them accessible to the BiggerPockets members.

Yeah, there was a lot of fear mongering about, you know, Wall Street is out here to get our homes. The data doesn't show that. In fact, there's actual research that shows that when there is increased levels of institutional investment into SFR, that actually helps community because they will typically rehab stock, you know, improve ultimately.

you know, those homes and neighborhoods and create more rental supply for folks that don't want to or can't afford to actually buy. And that so we can talk, obviously, probably a whole episode on that. But it is I 100% agree that just because of how they configure a buy box and the fact that they need to deploy capital at scale, they have to work with pretty narrow buy box, three bed, two baths.

right, in certain locations. And there's so much alpha you can get if you're going to approach investing that way, which they have just because of the amount of capital. But as you said, if you're going to buy one unit, two to three, right, over the course of some

period of time over a few years, you can really find those unique opportunities that would fly under the radar where institutions can't actually access. So yes, it happens that sometimes you lose out on a deal that is also being considered by an institutional investor and they can pay cash and they can move quickly. But

As you know, next to that deal, there are going to be many opportunities where you being local or partnering with folks who really know that market can help you find that alpha. And that is what we see in the data. As you said, most investments, most purchases of rental units are still done by individuals. Awesome. What are some of the first areas that you're going to dive into here in terms of exploring as the new CEO? First, I'll say that I'm really excited to build from scratch.

a very strong foundation. And my first order of business will actually be to listen and learn. Obviously get to know our team, talk to them, learn from our customers, our members, our partners. And I'll just put it out there from day one. I'm a big believer in feedback, so I'll be seeking out feedback. You'll find me in the forum. You know, there's, you know, any way that you feel comfortable with reaching out, please do so. I want to hear from you.

Now, in terms of opportunities, I'm excited to actually-- I think we can invest really a lot in one technology. I can only imagine what would an AI-enabled experience look like in the forums. MARK MANDEL: It's so funny. I got to chime in here. The bigger pockets-- we have spent the last 10 years that I've been here building a lot of cool features. We built 100 features.

Some of them people completely forgotten, never use. No one cared about. We built them. We spent a lot of time on. Some of them are integral parts of our site and our major revenue centers and clearly driving a lot of value for customers as well, like our agent finder, for example. But we've never figured out how to...

say, oh, you're on this site looking for this. Here's how to instantly find it. We just have like a big like navigation bar in that. And I just think this concept of personalization and AI is one of those things that's a no brainer for our site that I'm just so excited to see you come in and help us solve for along with our new chief product officer. Yeah, a hundred percent. It's funny that you mentioned personalization because I think we're finally at the cusp where we will, and by we, I mean,

companies that can actually be at the cutting edge of technology offer personalized experiences. A couple of months ago, I was at an event with one of the world's foremost experts in personalization, kind of wrote the book in the late 90s. But he was also secretly, you know, not so secretly, I guess, in that forum, admitting like we couldn't really do that, you know, or

But now I think we can because these latest generative AI technology, the underpinning of that is large language models. I mean, it's in the name, right? They are great at parsing out

And as you know, how we go about searching for things, right, is changing. We used to be keyword-based, right? Now we're very much used to Googling things. It's a verb. But think about that search experience. You're still, you know, forced to go through a lot of links and click and still do a lot of work yourself to actually get to the answer so you can make the decisions that matter to move forward with whatever it is that you're doing. But now...

These models are great at helping you move more confidently because they can summarize. Now, of course, our members can and I'm sure are already going to ChachiBD or Google to get those summaries, but you're going to get the sort of off-the-shelf generic answer. We are in a privileged position where we have first-party data, meaning the real-time data

conversations and content that we can provide and they can provide to each other. And so if you have a query, which right now, you know, these days you can actually like write the whole question, like what are you actually trying to accomplish? It doesn't have to be like a three word search. And an AI can be great at helping you move forward more efficiently through that journey. Yeah, I've always articulated like, you know, if you're a flipper from Atlanta, Georgia, right, you want to come to bigger pockets and then you don't want

Here's 1,200 episodes of the BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast. Here are the 10 best ones to start with, ranked in order of best, based on what other people that are in your geographic, demographic area, all those things, like to consume. Listen to those. That'll give you the foundation. Here's a book for that. Here are five other flippers that

in Atlanta, Georgia that are currently doing deals, what they've done, what those projects look like. And here are the professionals you want to talk to, agents. There are three agents to interview that specialize in working with flippers. Here are lenders, whatever. We've got all that on bigger pockets right now that all exists.

We just like you have to figure it out as an investor. And so only a small percentage of people are actually then able to get through all of that stuff and find those answers. It's still a good number of people, but it's it's it's right there. And I think that's what you're talking about. And that's that again, that's the piece that I'm so excited to see us solve for in the coming the coming months and years.

Yeah, 100%. And then tie that to really reasoning about what is it that you already own or are trying to accomplish in terms of your investment thesis, right? So it's one, bringing the best content in a personalized way for the investor. But also if we can reason about, okay, maybe you own two other rentals or you have a short-term rental. This is where they're located. How is that portfolio performing? The answer you can get in terms of like, okay, the next best move for this specific opportunity in the context of your overall portfolio is,

I think that can be also very powerful, right? So what would that cockpit or dashboard or control center for the investor look like, right? Where they can connect data sources, share what portfolio they have and what their goals are and such that then our tools can help them reason about that context to prepare them for the next move. That gets me really, really pumped. I think there's also opportunities to invest beyond technology in companies

actually reaching more customers, more members. Great as BiggerPockets' awareness is and the millions of members that we have, there are still many more out there that would benefit from even knowing that we exist and then actually developing a deeper relationship with us. So I'm also excited about growth investments to just reach more investors. I can be both.

So proud of what we've done so far and so excited about your skill set and the strengths that you bring in that I have not yet developed and get to learn from you in a lot of these areas over the next couple of years about how to do those two things, right? Reach that next level of the audience and then build this personalized technology experience.

that I think is going to be the underpinning of everything. It's the expectation people have today is for it to be easy to find what you're looking for. And BiggerPockets has built what you're looking for, but we don't make it easy today to find what you're looking for. And that's going to be the

the really superpower I think you're going to bring in here. Oli, what's the best way I can help you going forward here following your start date next week, Monday the 18th? To help me, it's really about helping each other. The reality is that if we think about our customers, our members, it is...

you know, murky out there, you know, the macro economic uncertainty. And that's where I think the power of communities really shine is in these times of uncertainty. And so what I'll be doing and what I hope we all continue to do is just to be there for each other, which is, you know, the foundation of this company.

So it's almost do continue to do that. Be there for each other, help each other, navigate situations, ask questions, be available. I will be asking tons of questions. So I ask for patience and patience.

And, you know, helping me get ramped at the beginning. I'm coming in with a very optimistic outlook. There's plenty of opportunity ahead. It's just really helping me get ramped and continuing to help each other as we navigate, you know, the macro around us. But it is still an amazing asset class experience.

as the saying goes, the best time to buy real estate was yesterday and the next best time is still today, right? We just need to be there for each other and helping find all those opportunities. Well, I'd love to close out with a little farewell to BiggerPockets, if that's all right, here in the community on this. So I wrote a little note here that I'll pull up for a second. But yeah, my...

My announcement and stepping down here as CEO comes after about a decade here at BiggerPockets. For those who never heard the story, I joined as the then third full-time employee back in 2014. And my last day as CEO will actually be just over 11 years after my first forum post, which was in May 2014. You can still see that newbie from Denver, Colorado in there.

And I'm talking about how I'm going to buy three properties by the end of the year. Well, that didn't happen, but I did start a few months later as the director of operations and joined BP. And again, while I'm obviously sad to be leaving the home, I'm excited to work on BP money. And I'm also very grateful for the countless people who have poured their hearts into making bigger pockets today.

transformative, I think, force it is today. I also, I'm a little proud here, you know, there's been ups and downs along the ride, of course, but

10 years ago, I guess eight years ago now, when I was not just an employee, but starting to take over a leadership position here at BiggerPockets, this is kind of a fun story. Team was giving me some props for being a good operator, VP of BP of operations at that point. But they were saying, Scott, you're not visionary enough. You got to think bigger and bigger. And so when we were setting a BHAG, a big, hairy, audacious goal at that point, partly out of annoyance,

and partly aspirationally tied to the mission of BiggerPockets, I said, all right, guys, you want a big goal? How about this one? We're going to make a million millionaires, a trillion dollars big enough for you. Kind of like that vibe a little bit in the room there. BiggerPockets is going to help a million people build a million dollars in personal net worth, in part through real estate. And at that time, Apple wasn't a trillion dollar company. There was no trillion dollar company. So it was a preposterously large goal befitting a BHAG.

And I was doing some reflection about how silly that seemed at the time and how we've easily, really under any way that you want to measure it, achieved that goal. Obviously, people's journeys are their own, but we were at least a small part of the journey for at least a million millionaires. And here's some math for that.

If you look at right above me here, if you're watching on YouTube, there's a counter here which has the total aggregate number of people who have ever created a free account here on BiggerPockets.

And that reads at 3.16 million members, 3,167,328 at this exact moment here on May 14th as we record this podcast here. We know that 29% of those members are millionaires based on exhaustive survey and data and research that we've done here. So that's about 913,000, not quite a million there. But wait, let's talk about, let's just add in BiggerPockets money, just BiggerPockets money.

75% of the people who listen to BiggerPockets Money don't listen to any other shows on BiggerPockets.

And we know that 29% of you guys on BiggerPocketsMoney are millionaires based on that similar survey data. And we know we've had 5 million unique listeners to BiggerPocketsMoney. And really, no matter how you want to slice and dice that data, it gets you way over the edge from a million. And that doesn't count the millions more people who have been a guest on BiggerPockets.com, not logged in and created an account, who have absorbed even one piece of information there, the

So that's a that's a staggering item there. That's not just a statistic. That's millions of lives change. That's a bunch of dreams realized. That's a bunch of legacies built.

on there. And it's strange, I think, to think about that cumulative impact, right? There was never an event. There was never like a moment when bigger pockets surged and you're like, whoa, you know, that it just took off. It's just a slow compounding of like 1% a week for 10 years in a row,

to get to this kind of outcome here. And again, that goal was so big when we initially said it that it seemed silly. And today, at the end of the journey, it feels ridiculous to reflect that literally several trillion dollars of investment decisions were likely influenced, at least in a small way, by this platform. So...

And again, I want to give full credit to Josh Dorkin, our founder, and gratitude to him. His vision laid the foundation for this journey. He got the flywheel going. He did that hard work you talked about earlier, Ale, of starting the community flywheel. There's no playbook for that. It's just hustle, hard work, and one relationship at a time with the most important members of that community, the power members, the moderators, the contributors to our forums, the blog authors, the podcast hosts, the

the book authors, all of those folks one by one. And I just had the privilege of pushing that flywheel forward, following that handoff there. And it's been the ride of a lifetime here. So I'm really grateful to Josh, obviously all of our content contributors from Brandon to David Green, to David Meyer, to our dedicated team, past and present, really grateful to you, your creativity, resilience, and commitment turned that idea of BiggerPockets into a nationwide movement here with a little bit of international overlap.

moderators, content creators, contributors, our ambassadors, all of you, current, former, you fostered a community that's as welcoming today as it was when I joined

in 2014. And it's, you know, an empowering, protective, wonderful community that does its best to give back real advice to people to help them make better decisions. And then, you know, obviously every single person who's ever browsed the site, posted a question, uploaded a post on BiggerPockets, participated in any social media interaction or offered advice and given back, you guys have been the heartbeat of BiggerPockets. So it's been really empowering to see your triumph, your struggles and

your first deals, your financial freedom, and the setbacks that others can learn from on those journeys. So the next couple of weeks, I'll spend thanking as many people as I possibly can here personally. I'll thank a good bunch of folks before this episode airs as well out there, both for what you've done for BiggerPockets and for what I've done personally. And then I'll kind of finish off by saying, when I reflect on the last decade of my life and career here at BiggerPockets,

I see a web of moments, right? From late night strategy sessions or late night apprehension about big decisions there.

Electrifying conferences where you look out over a sea of 2,500 people and you're scared out of your mind to talk live in front of them. The quiet victories in forum threads where we out somebody who maybe wasn't working on best practices or trying to scam our members, or we suspected perhaps there. I recall relationships built, conflict and resolution, wins and losses.

Personal one-on-one advice given from so many members of this community to me directly that directly led to better real estate and investing decisions in my personal portfolio, including one-on-one mentorship from some of our most prominent forum members helping me make better decisions. Shout out to Jay Heinrichs, one of our all-time leading poster who personally mentored me on how to do private money lending. Huge advantage in my personal portfolio.

I see a community that didn't just chase wealth, but redefined it. You prioritize freedom and giving back to the next community member. And you prioritize investing in real estate the right way for the long term and treating buyers, sellers, tenants, and team members with respect and dignity.

And I see the contributions from our team here at BiggerPockets from technology products that they built, breakthrough insights, new strategies, new acronyms, new resources and guides and mental models to think about real estate investing and the countless resources that derive from those ideals. So.

It wasn't perfect here at BiggerPockets. Nothing ever is, but this was incredible and the highlight of a career, an opportunity of not just one, but maybe multiple lifetimes. So I'm very proud of what we built and I'm even prouder of what we've become. I look forward to what we will become under your leadership, Ale. And thank you to everyone here at BiggerPockets for trusting me to lead this journey. It's been the honor of my career.

And again, I won't be going that far. I'll just be over there at BiggerPocketsMoney, continuing the work that many of you know there in the personal finance space. So I'll be there. I'll see you. I'll be in your earbuds if you're in the gym or in the car with you on your commute to work or wherever you watch or listen to podcasts. So I'm excited for the future and grateful for the past. Thank you so much, BiggerPockets. That's me, Scott Trench. My title is now real estate investor and co-host of the BiggerPocketsMoney podcast.