A.CRE Consulting Podcast with Chris Moreno- Adventures in CRE

Welcome to another episode of the A.CRE Consulting Podcast! This time, we sit down with Chris Moreno, CEO of Infinite Niches, a serial entrepreneur, investor, and industry thought leader with a deep passion for real estate and technology. Chris has built and sold three companies, scaling innovative prop-tech solutions that have reshaped logistics, multifamily operations, and urban development. Known as “Mr. PropTech,” he brings a unique perspective on entrepreneurship, disruptive technology, and the power of collaboration. In this episode, Chris shares his journey from launching startups to mentoring the next generation of founders, offering valuable insights into building successful businesses and navigating today’s real estate landscape.

In this conversation, we dive into Chris’s experiences scaling companies like Luxer One, DropLocker, and Laundry Locker, his approach to identifying untapped market opportunities, and the critical role of technology in modern real estate. He also discusses his investment strategy, the importance of assembling the right team, and how AI and automation are transforming the industry. Whether you’re an entrepreneur, investor, or real estate professional looking to gain a competitive edge, this episode is packed with game-changing insights. Tune in to learn from one of the leading minds at the intersection of real estate, technology, and innovation!

Michael and Chris talk about Infinite Niches & Investing in CRE Tech

Or Listen to this Episode

Listen to More Adventures in CRE Audio Series Episodes

Resources from this Episode

A.CRE Consulting
Discover more about Infinite Niches
Connect with Chris Moreno

Episode Transcript

Chris Moreno – CEO of Infinite Niches

[00:00:00]

[00:00:10]

Michael Belasco:

Hello everyone. And welcome to another episode of the ACRE Consulting Podcast. This is going to be an incredible episode today. I’m here with Chris Moreno, the CEO of Infinite Niches. Chris is a successful entrepreneur, podcast host, writer, investor, and proud dad to three boys who thrives on collaborating with the sharpest minds in real estate and tech. With 20 years of experience in prop tech, real estate, and enterprise, Chris has successfully built and sold three companies known as Mr.

[00:00:46]

Michael Belasco:

Prop tech. Chris hosts the multifamily hangout. com podcast, where he engages in colorful conversations with the world’s leading real estate developers, investors, and leaders. Chris actively [00:01:00] contributes to several industry organizations, including the national apartment association. National Multifamily Housing Council, Urban Land Institute, and the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals. Chris, welcome to the podcast.

[00:01:15]

Chris Moreno:

Awesome. Thanks for having me on. That was such a nice, uh, introduction and, uh, it’s a blast being here in the studio with y’all.

[00:01:22]

Michael Belasco:

Yeah, I love it. I have to say you are light years ahead in your production quality on your screen here. So we got a lot to catch up

[00:01:30]

Michael Belasco:

here.

[00:01:31]

Chris Moreno:

Yeah, we’re going to have you into Atlanta. We’ll have you guys in the studio. This is an amazing studio as incredible lighting, DSLR cameras, great lounge, great, great drinks. So yeah, it’s a fun place to hang out

[00:01:43]

Michael Belasco:

excellent. Excellent. Yeah. Well, we’ll take you up on that offer for sure. Hunter’s not too far from you. One of our, one of our partners here. Um, I’m right outside of Philly, but he’s down short, I guess Charlotte’s a little far, not too far,

[00:01:55]

Michael Belasco:

but,

[00:01:55]

Chris Moreno:

few hours away.

[00:01:57]

Chris Moreno:

Love Charlotte.

[00:01:58]

Michael Belasco:

Well, it’s great to have you on. Um,

[00:02:00]

you know, I love, you know, we’ll kick this off. I’d love to have you give more color. I got a lot of great questions lined up and we’ll have this really, you know, hopefully very interesting conversation. I’d love to start off with you providing a little more color. You’ve you’ve you’ve. Grown. You have three boys. You sold three companies. So I’d love to hear more about just, you know, you are, um, uh, a creator here.

[00:02:24]

Michael Belasco:

And I always love talking to entrepreneurs that are just kind of fascinated with just tinkering and building things and partnering up with people. So I’d love to hear, give us a little more color on these three companies that, that you started and just more about your background for our audience.

[00:02:40]

Chris Moreno:

Absolutely. So I, I always like to say that, you know, you have to have bold ideas and take action against when other people tell you it’s not possible, first off. So one of the first things is being a dad. And I thought I would never be, I was like, I’ll probably wait till I’m like 60 years old to be a dad. That’s

[00:03:00]

just not me, especially when we were building our businesses

[00:03:03]

Chris Moreno:

and, um, you know, I’m glad I actually, you know, obviously looking back, I think it’s great to be a dad, you know, younger. Um, you know, we’ve got three little ones, a one year old, four year old, six year old. And it’s been incredible. We moved from California where we built our startups. Uh, you know, used to travel the country. Some years I was traveling when I was single. You know, a hundred trips a year and nonstop from city to city to city. I’d stay the weekends in cities.

[00:03:28]

Michael Belasco:

Amazing.

[00:03:29]

Chris Moreno:

Yeah, it was a, it was a blast. I got to say like, I love now spending time with my kids, but now I think the shift has been from where I was focused on one problem. Now, what I really love doing is working with other smart people

[00:03:43]

Chris Moreno:

and backing them, supporting them, giving them the support. And a lot of times it’s, it’s helping unblock them

[00:03:50]

Chris Moreno:

in certain situations and helping share stories of mistakes I’ve made, the learnings I’ve had, and then how to get them from zero to a million to a hundred million in ARR.

[00:03:59]

Chris Moreno:

[00:04:00]

That’s really what I focus on a lot. Um, but I think, I think the biggest thing, like, you know, going back to the companies, you know, I was lucky. Uh, I got the entrepreneurship bug when I was about eight years old and my grandfather, my mom would take me to go pick mistletoe out of oak trees. And so we would go. And, and literally, you know, take a, uh, you know, brooms and things and get that mistletoe out of the trees. And

[00:04:24]

Michael Belasco:

yeah.

[00:04:24]

Chris Moreno:

I would go buy bells and things. And I would literally sit in front of the grocery store when I was a kid, just for like a couple hours at a time. But, and I would make, it was incredible.

[00:04:32]

Chris Moreno:

People give me 15 bucks,

[00:04:34]

Michael Belasco:

Oh my God, a little kid selling mistletoe? How

[00:04:37]

Michael Belasco:

could they not buy it?

[00:04:38]

Chris Moreno:

about 12 years old. Incredible business. So I want my kids to do the same thing. I actually have been working with them on some little businesses, not yet, but as they get older, they’ll start doing like little things like taking the trash cans in for our neighbors, you

[00:04:50]

Chris Moreno:

know, maybe selling things and making things and crafts and then selling those.

[00:04:54]

Chris Moreno:

But I want them to get in that spirit of understanding

[00:04:57]

Chris Moreno:

economics, being creative.

[00:05:00]

Um, and so for me, I, I, my first job, I went to UC Santa Barbara. It’s very fortunate. I lived in California my whole life. And, um, you know, when I graduated, I, I went in for engineering, but I ended up graduating and realizing I wanted to be in business and I wanted to learn sales.

[00:05:14]

Chris Moreno:

And I learned if you could learn to sell and present something and understand your core customer, you could do anything. The world’s your oyster because you can have the greatest product in the world as you know, but if you can’t sell that product and you can’t get the word out about your product, people don’t buy the best products. They buy the best products. marketed, the best

[00:05:32]

Chris Moreno:

reputation, the best supported, and that’s how they get really sticky. So you can actually build the best product and you won’t win every deal. Um, and so I think about that a lot, you know, that especially if you’re in a space that gets really hot, you’re going to have 5, 10, 15 competitors out there, right?

[00:05:49]

Chris Moreno:

Just like, you know, NVIDIA does, just like Intel. You think about Amazon and Google and the wars they’re having. Uh, we, I used to be at a company called, you know, I was at Macy’s

[00:06:00]

Corporate, and I got to learn all about procurement, got to learn from the executive leadership team, went through their development team. It was basically like an MBA.

[00:06:06]

Chris Moreno:

Uh, and then I learned about remote work. Uh, we worked with them to roll that out and then technology. So that’s when I joined a startup called Laundry Locker,

[00:06:15]

Chris Moreno:

uh, with a great guy named Arik and I took a chance, took a bet on myself. And

[00:06:19]

Michael Belasco:

I think I was a client in San Francisco. Are you guys in San Francisco? I had laundry a lot. That was you?

[00:06:25]

Chris Moreno:

That was us. So Arik founded it. I, I was a customer too.

[00:06:29]

Chris Moreno:

I loved it so much. I joined him

[00:06:32]

Chris Moreno:

and then together we built, uh, several more companies. So we, we grew Laundry Locker,

[00:06:36]

Chris Moreno:

expanded to Oakland,

[00:06:37]

Chris Moreno:

you know, but it was a tiny business when I joined him.

[00:06:40]

Chris Moreno:

And he had already been building it for several years.

[00:06:43]

Chris Moreno:

I’ve been using it. And then, but I, when I, when I went to him, I said, you know, why isn’t this everywhere? You’re only in like 40 buildings at the time or something like

[00:06:52]

Chris Moreno:

that. Just a tiny sliver of San Francisco. I’m like, why isn’t this all over California? Why isn’t this on Oakland? Why isn’t this all over the world?

[00:06:59]

Chris Moreno:

And

[00:06:59]

Chris Moreno:

he’s like,

[00:07:00]

I agree. And I go, but couldn’t you do this for packages and food and other types of goods at Home Depot and other stores? And he’s like, we see eye to eye. And That began an incredible friendship, partnership. Um, and I learned so many things from our in that relationship and I learned so many things about focus.

[00:07:24]

Chris Moreno:

You know, he had already had a head start on me of building businesses

[00:07:27]

Chris Moreno:

and being a consultant. So when I joined him, I was able to start learning about that core focus about growing.

[00:07:33]

Michael Belasco:

So this is like 2016, 2017 ish.

[00:07:37]

Chris Moreno:

No, this is 2010 back

[00:07:39]

Chris Moreno:

way

[00:07:40]

Michael Belasco:

I came along like 2016 to San Francisco. It must’ve been established at that point. I mean,

[00:07:46]

Chris Moreno:

So it was, it was way back.

[00:07:48]

Chris Moreno:

Uh, I mean, give me one sec. Oh, it’s going to let me, but yeah, for me, it was huge to be able to have about, um, you know, a few years of experience from him. And then I learned

[00:08:00]

all about the front end. So it was like the front end of. Marketing and sales and expansion. Uh, learning what would work, what didn’t work.

[00:08:08]

Chris Moreno:

I didn’t know Jack about laundry and dry cleaning

[00:08:09]

Chris Moreno:

other than being a customer. And then we built a company called DropLocker. So DropLocker was the business that took all of our patents, our technology, our software and scaled it. Two other cities. So all over the country around the world, and then the, uh, next business we built.

[00:08:25]

Chris Moreno:

So we took drop locker grew that to New Zealand, Australia, uh, Europe. It was amazing. And then we took, uh, Luxor. So Luxor was the third business and the biggest business, which was a, uh, package locker for any types of goods and services.

[00:08:40]

Chris Moreno:

So we went from these, it was also a differentiation of the type of product, the type of locker we were building. And it was crazy because we couldn’t give the damn thing away. In 2013. So 2014, we got our first customer in San Francisco to try us at one of their apartment buildings.

[00:08:55]

Chris Moreno:

And the problem we had was we couldn’t get FedEx or

[00:09:00]

Amazon or UPS to deliver their packages into the damn lockers. So what do we have to do?

[00:09:04]

Chris Moreno:

We had to go out there and kind of be a guerrilla style and

[00:09:09]

Michael Belasco:

Like an intermediary from getting the packages from them into the boxes.

[00:09:13]

Chris Moreno:

Oh yeah. They come to the property and say, we’re not delivering this into your locker. We’ll dump it on the floor. So we tried to get Amazon, we tried to go to home to these businesses and they said, like, no, like we’re not going to. We’re not going to, um, deliver into your lockers and we’re like, well, you need to. So we kind of had to train them rogue,

[00:09:30]

Chris Moreno:

uh, in the early days of any startup, right? You do things a little rogue

[00:09:33]

Chris Moreno:

and eventually, uh, several years later, Amazon became a massive partner nationwide.

[00:09:39]

Michael Belasco:

So would you meet their drivers? Would you meet their drivers out on site and say, this is how you do it?

[00:09:44]

Chris Moreno:

we would literally go and work from a property for like six to eight hours a day and in the early days in San Francisco, and we would sit there and then help them and show them why it was valuable for them. So they didn’t have a stolen package. They didn’t have all these things. Um, but we started from one. Property a

[00:10:00]

month, if you will, to hundreds of properties a month coming on board. So now I think there’s 10, you know, over 10, 000 locations nationwide. Uh, millions of people use it.

[00:10:09]

Chris Moreno:

I think they just announced that they’ve done over three or 400 million packages. Uh, but we ended up scaling the business. Uh, and we sold that business in December, 2018,

[00:10:18]

Chris Moreno:

about 10 days before my son was born.

[00:10:20]

Chris Moreno:

[00:10:21]

Michael Belasco:

Oh man. There is so much value to unpack and all of this from like the marketing piece to just the grit, you know, like it was. You could be a genius, right? But you’re out there hustling, you know, and if it’s not top down, it’s bottom up. You’ll go to the lowest rung on the, on the org chart. If you need partnerships to make it work.

[00:10:44]

Michael Belasco:

Right. One of the, there’s a ton to unpack here. One of the things you said that I want to go deeper on is, um, it’s all about marketing. It’s never the best product. It could be the best product, but it’s not, it doesn’t have to be the best product.

[00:11:00]

Um, you know, when I was, I would call myself a failed musician, I can play guitar pretty well. However, I failed at the business before I went to business school and, you know, I sat in my, you know, right outside of Philadelphia suburb and there’s a ton of like wonderfully talented musicians and the question always was like, How is it that there’s so much garbage on the radio that is in credits?

[00:11:30]

Michael Belasco:

It’s just everywhere, right? They’re selling out arenas, they’re doing all this stuff and get the most talented people in the world are getting nowhere and it’s all, it’s, you know, later on when you kind of learn, it’s like, why didn’t we move to New York? Why didn’t we move to LA? Why didn’t you network?

[00:11:46]

Michael Belasco:

Why didn’t you, it’s, it’s all these tangential things. To the bit now you have to have a good product. Obviously, you know, music, it’s debatable. You give you some garbage out there.

[00:11:55]

Michael Belasco:

Um,

[00:11:55]

Chris Moreno:

well, you can have some catchy, right? So I, something I learned from a friend here

[00:12:00]

in Atlanta. Who’s incredible entrepreneur,

[00:12:02]

Chris Moreno:

uh, talks about finding people who are spiky.

[00:12:06]

Chris Moreno:

So you find someone like that. So my company is called infinite niches. So

[00:12:10]

Chris Moreno:

website, no infinite niches. com.

[00:12:12]

Chris Moreno:

And I believe in infinite niches.

[00:12:14]

Chris Moreno:

I believe that a lot of people like to be generalists. And I thought early in my career, I wanted to be a generalist. And so it’s almost like, can you play multiple pieces of music? Great. You know, you might play the piano, the harmonica, like blues traveler, right. Do all these different

[00:12:27]

Michael Belasco:

yeah, yeah,

[00:12:28]

Chris Moreno:

And you might, you might be really skilled at them all, or you can be really good at one thing and just find other people.

[00:12:35]

Chris Moreno:

That’s why I love your analogy of band. I love bands. I love athletes because, uh, you know, even like thinking about the military, you find the person who’s a great bass guitarist. I was a trumpet, you

[00:12:48]

Michael Belasco:

Oh, nice. There you go.

[00:12:49]

Chris Moreno:

So, you know, you find someone who’s a great, you know, percussionist, find a great singer.

[00:12:54]

Chris Moreno:

I was a horrible singer. But you

[00:12:56]

Chris Moreno:

find all these great people, you bring them together and you can make the best music in the

[00:13:00]

world. And I think a lot about that in business. If you find people who are really spiky as financial gurus who can raise a lot of money, people who understand customer experience, people who are AI and product and technical people, and you surround yourself with the smartest people, I believe, my whole thesis is, you surround yourself with smarter people than yourself. And you win together.

[00:13:24]

Chris Moreno:

I love like people ask me if I ever want to found a company again, absolutely with other people, but I want to back smart people. I know a lot of times those people don’t want to necessarily go work for somebody else. They want to build their own thing. And, uh, so that’s what I look for is people who are spiky.

[00:13:41]

Chris Moreno:

Also notice this shoulder is about six inches shorter than this one

[00:13:45]

Michael Belasco:

I thought you were just leaning.

[00:13:46]

Chris Moreno:

Yeah. So this is, it’s cause I have about 8, 000 chips on the shoulder of people telling me I can’t do stuff.

[00:13:52]

Chris Moreno:

And so that’s why I love, I love, you know, looking at businesses that people said, Oh, that’s already been solved or, Oh, that can’t

[00:14:00]

be solved or that’s not going to work. I love when people say that when someone tells you it’s not possible, but you know, there’s a massive pain point and there’s a lot of margin to be made. You know, there’s a great business model to be made. It’s just that someone who said this won’t work because people tried lockers before us. And people would tell us, Oh, good luck with that.

[00:14:20]

Chris Moreno:

But they were really like laughing at us,

[00:14:21]

Chris Moreno:

right? That won’t work. There’s all, they give us 20 reasons why it won’t work. 10 reasons why they would never, ever be a customer of ours. And I, and that, but I said, you have this pain. They go, yeah, yeah, yeah. But you can’t solve it. That won’t solve it. It’s too expensive.

[00:14:35]

Chris Moreno:

It’s too that. And what happened? They bought it eventually,

[00:14:38]

Michael Belasco:

What was the differentiator there? Like everybody else failed. What was it? The fact that you sat and train the, of the necessary pieces, meaning like the Amazons and the UPS, like what made that, and that’s not the specific. There’s a macro concept there about you. It’s metaphorical almost. Is that it that you think, like, what is it? You know, you have this concept of, you know, spiky

[00:15:00]

people, experts. Is it, is it a bit of everything? Is it the grit? Is it the, the team? Um, what, what do you think was the difference maker?

[00:15:07]

Chris Moreno:

So I never think it’s one thing. I think there’s a, but, but if I think about what’s really important is. Going back to the core, uh, issue of what is the pain point for the customer?

[00:15:21]

Chris Moreno:

So the more like we spent a lot of time with the customers, we didn’t just install it a property and say, good luck and try to go sell 10 more. We did the opposite. We actually didn’t expand other cities. So by the way, we weren’t the only successful people. There were other people who were successful, our competitors. I actually know them very well. I’m friendly with, with a lot of the companies out there. Again, I’m no longer part of the business, but, um, I, I think that, You know, everyone had a different route and what was really great for us is that they had actually raised a lot of money.

[00:15:51]

Chris Moreno:

We didn’t. They were spending going to conferences and trying to educate the industry. The industry wasn’t ready yet.

[00:15:57]

Michael Belasco:

Yeah,

[00:15:58]

Chris Moreno:

In 2013,

[00:16:00]

2012, people were probably getting 10, 15 packages a day at a property. At a big 200 unit property wasn’t you weren’t getting packages every week for a lot of people

[00:16:09]

Chris Moreno:

2014 rolls around and some of the properties start getting like 2025 30 a day. And then, so we’re like, okay, now it’s becoming an issue. And so we didn’t spend a ton of money. We, we, we stayed really lean and I still to talk about this a lot with founders and CEOs, I’m still lean. I act like it’s my grandma’s credit card and her bank account, anything I spend going to hotels, travel, et cetera. And so we were just so focused

[00:16:35]

Chris Moreno:

on getting it, creating the playbooks that were scalable. Whether it was the laundry and getting laundry and dry cleaning delivery. And getting that scaled so we could do it in Chicago, you know, we partnered with like Thai dry cleaners,

[00:16:48]

Chris Moreno:

a friend of mine, Vijay Patel out in Chicago, great guy, press dry cleaning, another team in Atlanta.

[00:16:53]

Chris Moreno:

We had all these teams all over the world. And I created, we created playbooks that we could scale to every city.

[00:17:00]

And the same thing with packages. We had to figure out to your point. He was a three legged stool. We called it. He was the carriers. It was the property and it was the software. And all of them had, by the way, it was really the carriers, the residents.

[00:17:14]

Chris Moreno:

And the, uh, and the property, all three had to be happy. So I actually now have like a quadrant where I think a lot, because I think a lot of people, a lot of times we forgot that with a fourth piece, which was the software. So we were leaving ourselves out of that equation that it had to work on all four pieces.

[00:17:31]

Chris Moreno:

And if one of those pieces fell, the whole table fell over.

[00:17:34]

Chris Moreno:

So if, if UPS won’t deliver to it. Then how the heck do we do it? Well, we could have a person go on site us or a property manager, but the property manager didn’t want to do that. That’s why they were paying us. The resident had to experience, have a great experience.

[00:17:47]

Chris Moreno:

They had to go to the locker and you look at Amazon. We told Amazon circa 2015, probably 2016. This is going to be a huge, this is going to be big. And they kind of laughed in our face. It wasn’t until about 2017, 2018, when they

[00:18:00]

said, Okay, we were wrong.

[00:18:01]

Chris Moreno:

So a lot of people told us, the experts told us we were wrong. And that’s what I realized is most experts are right about a lot of things that have happened in the past.

[00:18:13]

Chris Moreno:

They aren’t as good at looking into the crystal ball and saying, you know, this is exactly what’s going to happen in the future. There are certain people who are good at that, but that’s what I think about is like, who are the people that are trying to break things?

[00:18:25]

Chris Moreno:

Who are the people that are trying to change the laws or change, change the habits in our lives? And then people are like, Oh, I love this. You know, like you think about Airbnb in the early days, you think about Uber, right? When it became Uber X, you know, so you think about these different types of businesses, whether it’s door dad, my sister worked at door dash in the early days.

[00:18:41]

Chris Moreno:

Now she’s at a company called notion.

[00:18:42]

Chris Moreno:

And,

[00:18:43]

Michael Belasco:

Yeah. We use notion.

[00:18:45]

Chris Moreno:

and you think about like, well, why do we need notion? You already have, um, you already have Google docs. You already have Microsoft Excel. Why do I need notion? Well, why do we need Canvas? Why do we need all of these different types of tools?

[00:18:59]

Chris Moreno:

It’s because it

[00:19:00]

fills a niche.

[00:19:00]

Chris Moreno:

It fills a need that’s big enough that that business can become a billion dollar company.

[00:19:05]

Chris Moreno:

And one of the companies that started here, which I absolutely love the story, is, um, in Atlanta, was a company called Calendly. And you think about calendar app, similar to the story of zoom. There were already people in the ecosystem, whether it’s a Google calendar or Microsoft calendar. And it’s like, you know, people kind of laugh at it, but that became a multi billion dollar business. So I love, I love small, infinite things that you can really hone in. We just honed in dry cleaning the laundry. People said, you could do lockers, you could do food restaurants. You could do retail. We said, nope, we’re going to focus on dry cleaning the laundry. Then when we saw the opportunity and we were ready, then we went to packages.

[00:19:42]

Chris Moreno:

And then we were ready. We went to retail like Home Depot and Home Depot became one of our biggest customers. You go to any Home Depot in the world, they have a Luxor locker in the

[00:19:51]

Michael Belasco:

A little bit like a blue ocean type straight. It’s like the unsexy, just like, where’s the need, you know, calendars, right. You know, uh,

[00:20:00]

Michael Belasco:

laundry

[00:20:01]

Chris Moreno:

you want to know something else that it’s funny again, why the shoulder is so low and saying I always had several people here. I talked to, you know, chips on shoulders equals chips and pockets. Right. And so. I, I just, I laugh about it every time someone says to me, Oh, I, you know, Chris, Oh, you do hardware, you do prop tech, you do real estate.

[00:20:20]

Chris Moreno:

My whole thesis is around logistics, real estate, the physical built world.

[00:20:23]

Chris Moreno:

That’s what I love. And there’s some great people in this world, like Brad Hargraves, Brendan Wallace. Um, you’ve got the team, you know, John Helms, you’ve got, um, Matt Knight. So a PP ready, you know, all these incredible builders, you know, the property brothers are now doing a fun, great people who love this space.

[00:20:41]

Chris Moreno:

And for me, I love it because so many people go after software, they go after fintech, they go after martech and they’re like, I’ll get people who tell me, Oh, you know, I don’t look at hardware because hardware, I like high margin businesses. It’s like saying, Oh, I, I like, I like to wear nice

[00:21:00]

clothes. I like to eat nice food, Chris, you eat that slop over there.

[00:21:03]

Chris Moreno:

And I’m like, what are you talking about? Like, this is actually a way bigger market. Number one. And number two, yeah, the margins might be a little bit lower, but you can always change the systems

[00:21:15]

Chris Moreno:

if you think differently and where you’re not just selling a piece of like flock safety here in Atlanta,

[00:21:20]

Michael Belasco:

But you have to have a vision, right? Like that’s the thing. It’s like nobody, maybe these people don’t have that vision or the determination or just, you know, or the right spiky teammates as you know, kind of refer back. So they default to. What has already been proven out where, yeah, the margins, it’s softer.

[00:21:36]

Michael Belasco:

I mean, we, ACRE is fundamentally at this point, it’s not, we train people through our software and, you know, and, but you know, we’re all real estate guys too, we’re all in real estate and we all have our own projects and stuff going on, but, but to your point, it’s like. You’re being the contrarian and having the right people that see the vision.

[00:21:56]

Michael Belasco:

It sounds like is it. And the other thing I wanted to like, when I hear you

[00:22:00]

talk, and this is one ingredient that I think we didn’t talk about, there is passion and Spencer, my, the co founder of ACR, we always said. The second this stops being fun, we’re going to stop doing it. It’s not that it’s not hard work and there aren’t days that are gritty, but you have a passion and it’s like a passion.

[00:22:16]

Michael Belasco:

I mean, we had a passion for Excel, financial modeling, a bunch of Excel nerds building financial models. Like you had a passion for, for laundry and uh, you know, and maybe it’s not, it’s not the laundry per se. It’s the medium by which you can create a band, you know, create something that everybody goes after it, whatever it is.

[00:22:36]

Michael Belasco:

Right. And that’s why I found such. I’m so content in the real estate. I’m in your, you’ve expanded into many different industries. I’m in the real estate industry, but I’m so content here because I satisfy all those needs that I get, like forming the team, you’re working together, it’s music, it’s creating this, this music.

[00:22:54]

Michael Belasco:

And one of the best things I’ve learned throughout my career and you hit on it, it’s,

[00:23:00]

it’s maybe word a little different, but the spiky people, right. It’s bringing people onto the team that maybe have no business in that industry, but are very smart and have insights that you might have never thought of. You know, prime example, ACRE, we brought in a third partner, Sam Carlson, little bit of real estate background, but a marketing expert and just bringing him in. Like flip the switch on for the company that grew us like four X in the first year he joined. Right. And when I used to work for this company stable, what I’ve wanted was one of the, uh, I was a COO at the time.

[00:23:33]

Michael Belasco:

We brought in a guy who had no real estate experience, but was in major league baseball. And he was a data analytics guy in major league baseball. And like the insights he brought were just. Incredible. So it was that team, right? It was sort of this, this ability to work with a team that all became passionate and then all kind of pushed for the same thing.

[00:23:49]

Michael Belasco:

So I want you to speak to that a little bit, because passion is gotta be a big piece to this, that, that we haven’t really hit on yet on your side.

[00:23:57]

Chris Moreno:

Yeah. I mean, um, at the end of the

[00:24:00]

day, I think a lot, so I’ll get an example, like. For the podcast, like why I do the podcast and real estate. So we started investing in real estate back in 2019, uh, after we sold the company and our family, my grandfather was a developer, so I learned from him about real estate development.

[00:24:16]

Chris Moreno:

He would break up plots of land, he’d build towns and then he’d keep some homes for himself and it was a lot of single family stuff. Um, so I think for me, he was really passionate about math. He was really passionate about outdoors and like being one with like the land. So my grandfather loved water. He loves studying math. So he would in California became the head of the water resources board for California. So he built a lot of the dams and water systems and knew where the cities could be built. He worked, you know, land surveyors. So I got to learn all of these tips about real estate.

[00:24:49]

Chris Moreno:

One of the things he taught me is like, you know, you can take, Something and do it multiple times, then you’re going to be much better off and it lowers your risk.

[00:24:57]

Chris Moreno:

So he would build multiple cities at once [00:25:00] in towns, and that’s where he kind of taught me about multifamily. So I, I love that. And so as you know, that’s why I’m a much bigger focus on multifamily and commercial

[00:25:09]

Chris Moreno:

at scale than I am as much the single family now, you know, I do like 10 homes or 20 homes, but you’re always going to be at scale. Um, and I think the other thing is, is that technology can scale as well. So when you start having a 200 unit building versus 200 units spread across

[00:25:26]

Chris Moreno:

200 homes, you know, um, you can really have, uh, you know, flywheels happening where you can also save a lot. Like, you know, 20, 000 units, you can, your cost comes way down.

[00:25:37]

Chris Moreno:

So I serve on a couple of boards and one of the things we look at is like, how do we scale things, but how do we create an incredible experience? Um, I think one of the biggest things I love is I have a thesis as well that they say, you know, if you’re using AI, you know, it might, people are gonna lose their jobs sadly, but the people who are the best at AI will be the best in their field.

[00:25:59]

Chris Moreno:

[00:26:00]

marketers, you use AI and you’re going to be the best at that. And I believe in real estate, the best people who use technology

[00:26:07]

Chris Moreno:

and figure out how to find tools that scale their teams and support their teams to be better and make the best decisions. They can move incredibly fast. So like here in Atlanta, there’s teams who are using a lot of technology and they’re outperforming other people.

[00:26:20]

Chris Moreno:

And it’s funny because I watch, I get to, I kind of call like I’m the, I’m the commissioner of MLB baseball. Cause I get to see all of these different operators.

[00:26:28]

Chris Moreno:

And it’s really interesting to hear the different perspectives of what people are using, exciting to hear how they’re using it to have better experiences. I’m seeing a lot of overlap too, from hotels into housing, into retail, Uh, just to an amazing former hotel here near next to Georgia Tech called the Biltmore, which was a originally hotel and now it’s office space and they’re really kind of transforming it. University owns it again. But I think about like, how do people, I believe the winners are going to be ones who are creative, creating amazing experiences

[00:27:00]

because let’s, let’s face it, we want to have great food.

[00:27:02]

Chris Moreno:

We want to have great stories. We want to have great experiences. We don’t want to have. Boring things in our life. So we want to share those things and people have options, you know, right. You know, the consumer has more options to just go into YouTube than they’ve ever had before. So for me, it’s diving into your point, finding your passion, what you’re passionate about.

[00:27:22]

Chris Moreno:

It’s not easy for everyone to say, you know, and do,

[00:27:24]

Chris Moreno:

but I, I love what I do. People say, why do you still work in this space? I love real estate. I love because I get passionate about it. I like talking about the numbers,

[00:27:33]

Chris Moreno:

uh, the challenges, what is the future? What’s the next cycle going to look like? Bye. Man, I get, I get super stoked on it.

[00:27:40]

Chris Moreno:

And then I, I really like helping people go through the challenges that I faced. So the same kinds of challenges that we had, if I could help unblock. So we had a venture capital firm, uh, that was a hundred, a hundred million dollar fund called on deck. And we would invest in early stage founders. And our core mission was to unblock our

[00:28:00]

founders and our CEOs. How do we, what’s the one thing I can do this week to unblock

[00:28:04]

Chris Moreno:

it? That’s what I ask a lot of people is what’s one thing I can do to unblock you. Because if I can help make an introduction, if I can help with a question, if I can help think about frameworks of, you know, two way doors that you can experiment or test to get around something, or if I can even help a team, I help a lot with finding great talent. So a lot of times I can help find great CROs or CTOs or other types of roles. I love that.

[00:28:29]

Michael Belasco:

yeah,

[00:28:30]

Chris Moreno:

someone who’s not happy at a company today and helping them find their next role and position. I do a lot of that. So I’m very proud of those things.

[00:28:38]

Michael Belasco:

love it. That’s a great and we on our size. We are, you know, a Siri consulting. We’re seeing a lot of these, these, I would say these challenges, you know, in a different lens than you’ve seen them. Um, and we’re also seeing you talk about AI. We’re seeing a change. In like what people are coming to us for. So my, my co founder Spencer just left.

[00:28:58]

Michael Belasco:

Um, he was a president at

[00:29:00]

Stablewood, uh, properties and is launching CRE Agents, which is digital co workers for commercial real estate shops. And, um, he has a ton of interest and, um, you know, he’s been, we’ve been producing a ton of content on that. And, you know, what, what we’re seeing here Is a lot of, um, you know, even at the larger institutions where they are in some, some ways, a little bit of this, like this array, like it’s, it’s a mess in terms of a lot of the processes that they’re doing things that should be automated in the future that aren’t yet like the hundreds, if not thousands of hours, just doing reporting and things like that.

[00:29:36]

Michael Belasco:

So to your point, you know, are people going to lose their jobs? That’s like a big debate and a big conversation we have.

[00:29:43]

Michael Belasco:

As well, like a lot, but like it also helps people elevate, like, is your analyst or associate going to be, you know, spending hours on a rent roll or are they going to be able to elevate and, you know, work on networking and, you know, be able to oversee an underwriting model more so than just spending all their time on this, this

[00:30:00]

busy work.

[00:30:00]

Michael Belasco:

So to your point, like, I’m very excited at what, like, you know, this whole new world is, is bringing to us, but, um, you know, just the fact that like, you’re, you sounds like your core thing is. Maybe we provide capital, but the biggest thing is like, how can we help? Right. And how can we help you elevate to the next level?

[00:30:18]

Michael Belasco:

So, you know, are you guys invested in other, is it strictly multifamily? Do you guys expand another asset classes

[00:30:25]

Chris Moreno:

commercial. So commercial real estate, uh, whether it’s retail, storage, uh, other, other areas, uh, generally it’s going to be multifamily for the

[00:30:33]

Chris Moreno:

most part. And then, uh, it’s just, we’ve seen storage come down about in some markets, 15%, some markets, 25 to 30 percent for the last two years, it’s just overbuilt and no offense to, you know, I, to me, everything is very, very, you know, Location based. So you could be one mile away. I mean, I was just buildings yesterday where one building is 98 percent least one, two blocks away is 20 percent least.

[00:31:00]

Chris Moreno:

And that, to your point, it is so different to watch operators. I see some apartment buildings that are 97 percent full a building 2 blocks away, 89 percent full,

[00:31:11]

Chris Moreno:

and that is a massive difference.

[00:31:13]

Chris Moreno:

So one of the things I work on is a lot with The leaders in real estate, so whether it’s National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals, we have 45, 000 members. Every major bank, brokerage, uh, firm, developer in the country. Um, and, and that’s a great organization. NMHC, which is the National Multifamily Housing Council, and they have a whole technology division called RETSI. And it’s incredible. Like we’re bringing together VCs and developers and owners, and these are the largest, you know, groups in America. Uh, but I also like ULI. So, you know, I, I love learning from the experts in architecture, development, um, going to the white house, uh, coming up. So I’ll be in Capitol Hill in the white house in a month.

[00:31:54]

Chris Moreno:

Uh, so that’s really exciting. I’ve never been to the white house

[00:31:56]

Chris Moreno:

before. So we meeting with, with, um, you know, hopefully the HUD [00:32:00] secretary, um, some of the, the folks in development. And, uh, so Yeah. I think the challenge is. always bureaucracy holds back our industry, right? Real estate has always been held back.

[00:32:12]

Chris Moreno:

They say roughly about 40 to 42 percent of every build is bureaucracy, you know, slowing things down. So how do we speed that up? How do we move faster? And it comes down to risk, right? Everything we’re doing, like you think about a cap rate, cap rate is really a comparison of your risk. Um, it’s an easy way for you to compare what your investment is going to be in a new development versus an existing asset. versus the stock market or other types of businesses. And so that’s how we analyze, you know, when I’m taking bets on early stage companies versus betting in a stock market versus betting in a fund. Um, I’m I’m also just diversifying my portfolio. So one of the things I really enjoy is again, winning with others.

[00:32:51]

Chris Moreno:

So I, um, have made it a fundamental thing like with my kids to always make sure like sharing. You know, I believe in sharing. I

[00:33:00]

believe in, um, learning from others and then knowing what you’re really good at and also being honest about what we’re not good at. So like me, I’m, I’m not a programmer. using all types of great tools and innovation, but, um, I like surrounding myself with people because there’s, it’s changing every day.

[00:33:18]

Chris Moreno:

That’s the greatest thing I’ve learned about technology is always changing. But I think one of the other things I get really excited about, like I love. Working with CEOs, you know, so like company I’m working with right now just raised, uh, you know, tens of millions of dollars They’re expanding their business. I love those like series a till they’re like, you know, those those series D companies companies who are working You know almost the name of the company but companies who are working in hardware technology defense security cyber Um, marketing tech, fintech. So I like kind of these worlds that touch real estate in different, unique ways. Um, and it’s just a blast to like get to learn from these people who built

[00:34:00]

incredible companies, sold them. Uh, a friend of mine who I had lunch with yesterday, he retired at 55. And then now he’s back and doing his next thing. And he’s back. So I love connecting with those people who have, who’d love to just jam on the difficult challenges and getting really, really focused and then

[00:34:19]

Chris Moreno:

helping unblock them, giving support.

[00:34:21]

Chris Moreno:

And it’s not always about like, my whole thing is I learned from my grandfather, give first and give without ever realizing you might get something back in return. Um,

[00:34:30]

Michael Belasco:

is our motto, by the way, and how A.CRE became to be what it was. But keep going. Cause that is the pinnacle and

[00:34:37]

Chris Moreno:

a good example. When I moved from California, I had a great network. Um, you know, in New York as well, but not a big network in Atlanta. When I moved here, I met some people who connected me to the tech ecosystem. So whether it was like Atlanta Tech Village, uh, you know, uh, off tech, Alpharetta, ATDC, Georgia Tech. Uh, and there’s, there’s several funds here from engage VC, but I got to meet these people and they

[00:35:00]

connected me and I’m, I’m indebted to them because they not only connected the dots for my life, but they But it was, those are the people I became friends with and how you get to start going to, to, you know, the schools and the playgrounds and church and, and, and all the different places you see.

[00:35:16]

Chris Moreno:

So for me, it was really influential. And then obviously my wife, my wife as well as my partner, uh, I think that was the biggest decision I ever made in my life was it wasn’t what school I went to. It wasn’t what job I had. It was actually the person who I chose to partner up with and that’s Carlisle. And so I’m very lucky to have met her in San Francisco. People think, Oh, she brought you back here. Uh, uh. It was actually a joint decision. It

[00:35:37]

Michael Belasco:

she grew up in Atlanta.

[00:35:39]

Chris Moreno:

It was more me wanting to move out here to be with her family. Uh, you know, there was a family issue at the time, but we, um, I wanted to make sure we were with near our family. We could raise our kids in a great place.

[00:35:50]

Chris Moreno:

And I, I am, I believe Atlanta is the most overlooked. Big city in America. I don’t think it gets enough love and I’m really passionate about its development. I think the leaders here [00:36:00] are bringing great companies here. I get really excited about that. I didn’t know this. The biggest surprise for me was how many, um, uh, that Georgia Tech puts out more engineers than any other school in America.

[00:36:13]

Chris Moreno:

I had

[00:36:13]

Chris Moreno:

no clue. So you have

[00:36:14]

Chris Moreno:

all these, you have Microsoft, Amazon, Nike, Facebook, all these companies, Salesforce setting up all their headquarters around Georgia Tech

[00:36:23]

Chris Moreno:

and recruiting all the talent. So they don’t have their main, some of them have their main headquarters here, but a lot of them actually have it elsewhere,

[00:36:29]

Chris Moreno:

but intercontinental exchange, New York stock exchange. Those are all based here and they’re recruiting engineers out of schools here.

[00:36:36]

Chris Moreno:

And it’s just brilliant. And you’re seeing more and more companies opening up headquarters here. So I love it. It’s a great place. I also didn’t know this a little tidbit. Atlanta is the most dense forested major city in America.

[00:36:49]

Chris Moreno:

And I have no clue.

[00:36:52]

Michael Belasco:

It’s cause there’s a lot of sprawl. Isn’t there? Yeah. Yeah.

[00:36:59]

Chris Moreno:

realize how

[00:37:00]

economical it is. It’s, it was, for me, it was about probably about 50 percent less than living in California, I thought it’d be like a 10 or 20 percent

[00:37:06]

Michael Belasco:

Yeah, I, I, I moved back the same reason kids moved back here and just the cost of living was, I mean, it’s an amazing, it’s amazing when you leave places like California. So I wanted to ask you what, you know, before we wrap up here, so you’re, um, are you actively looking for new companies still? Are you, do you ever look at pure real estate play shops or do you invest based, you know, directly in real estate curious about that?

[00:37:32]

Michael Belasco:

Cause a lot of our listeners are in, you know, they’re, they’re in pure real estate place, a

[00:37:35]

Chris Moreno:

do a combination. So I’m not a GP, so I’m investing in funds with other people and deals. Um, I trust other people who I’ve gotten to know over time. So I like looking at, you know, and learning and then getting to know people. So it’s a lot of trust built up and reputation. And then I think, you know, for me, you know, obviously. I get excited about startups. It’s usually earlier stage that I’m investing in

[00:37:58]

Chris Moreno:

and then advising, you know, I’ll

[00:38:00]

sometimes join a board or come in and coach a CEO one to one, but again, it’s based on relationship and trust.

[00:38:05]

Michael Belasco:

yeah,

[00:38:06]

Chris Moreno:

Um, but yeah, I, I think for me also advocacy, obviously is like one of the biggest things I’ve learned is like, how do we help the people in DC or in the city to make the right decisions?

[00:38:16]

Chris Moreno:

Because it’s very hard to make the right decisions. You’re going based off of back to the marketing and the lobbying.

[00:38:24]

Chris Moreno:

And the sales teams

[00:38:25]

Chris Moreno:

and a lot of it is bullet points. You’re like, Oh, great. This sounds great. Let’s put that through. And you don’t realize the repercussions of what you’re doing

[00:38:32]

Michael Belasco:

I mean, they’re thinking of thousands other things and they were relying on whoever’s in their ear and they’re not as deep. You know, I think everybody in every industry gets that feeling when they think about the

[00:38:42]

Chris Moreno:

for me. For me, it’s techno and it comes back to technology. If we can educate people of why technology is a force for good, why technology creates strong economies, can help when there’s job deficiencies or labor issues,

[00:38:56]

Chris Moreno:

especially when we couldn’t be near each other during COVID. Our business

[00:39:00]

exploded. In a good way, like, and so I always think about like, you know, supply chains take a long time to build up, you know, if we, if we look at history and you, I like looking over cycles, so a lot of my mentors own a lot of real estate and they’ve been through cycles and they’ve bought and sold, I’m really on that look of when I’m looking at a partnership or someone I want to work with or someone I want to invest with, I’m looking to possibly never sell in a cashflow at some point, And do we actually ever have to sell it?

[00:39:26]

Chris Moreno:

Now, of course, you know, company you might sell in three years, you might sell in eight years, but in real estate, is it going to be a good enough play to where you can survive if the price comes

[00:39:37]

Chris Moreno:

down in three or four or five years, can you survive to that seventh year or that 10th year or their 15th year? So for me, it’s a lot of like, you know, thinking about generation. And passing it on to others. And then how can I, you know, get to a point where I’m giving, you know, I like to, my wife and I like to give back. I’m on a nonprofit board, but how do we help other families? How do we help other people? To learn and to have the same resources

[00:40:00]

we had.

[00:40:00]

Chris Moreno:

So I really, I care a lot about that. That’s, that’s big to me.

[00:40:03]

Michael Belasco:

amazing. Chris, you’re, there’s, first of all, this episode is, has tons of just nuggets of wisdom from you and your wealth of knowledge. Um,

[00:40:11]

Chris Moreno:

You’re a great, great interviewer. Thank you for that.

[00:40:13]

Michael Belasco:

Hey, y’all.

[00:40:14]

Chris Moreno:

It was great to talk with you. You got a lot out of me.

[00:40:16]

Michael Belasco:

Yeah. I wanted to add one final question for our audience. Um, there’s so much advice you’ve given anything else you want to give for people who are just starting out.

[00:40:25]

Michael Belasco:

You know, we have a lot of people that are just hitting the ground running on their real estate career. You know, I mean, there is a guy, if you listen to this episode, there’s like a book’s worth of just gold. So I

[00:40:36]

Michael Belasco:

honestly,

[00:40:36]

Chris Moreno:

been asked to write a book, but one day, one day I’ll write a book. But, uh, so there’s actually some people, I have some friends of mine who’ve written great books. So, uh, saw help bloom, just wrote a great book on life. James Nelson over at

[00:40:46]

Michael Belasco:

yeah, we were James. We, we, uh, he does it. We do AMA’s monthly with him.

[00:40:50]

Chris Moreno:

Okay. James wrote a great, great book about real estate.

[00:40:53]

Chris Moreno:

I think there’s, uh, Brad Hargraves has a great writing about, uh, about, you know, Brad Hargraves has a great

[00:41:00]

thesis driven, uh, writing that he does. So I think for me, um, the best advice I’ve learned is, is that be careful of advice. Most advice is bad, especially my own. And that’s what I share with people a lot. I don’t, I no longer try to share advice. I try to share stories. of things I’ve been through and I tell people, take with it what you want. And oh, by the way, do your own diligence. So whenever I’m sharing a deal or analyzing a deal, I say, don’t invest because I’m investing. Like, I want to know your red flags. I want to know your honest opinion. So I think too many people, when they get into something, they trust everything that’s said to them and then they follow it to a T. And that’s not a good thing. You actually want to come to like, come to the table with your own creativity. You want to come in and when you see something, say something. I remember like when I worked at Macy’s corporate and why I realized big corporations move at molasses speed and you would come up with a great idea. You’d work really hard on it for six months only to have someone high up say, we’re not going to do that.

[00:41:56]

Chris Moreno:

I want to do this instead. You’re like, wait, wait, why? And you’re like, well,

[00:42:00]

that didn’t work. I tried it 10 years ago. And you’re like, but we’ve done the homework. What did you do? I thought we said that you tried it, but you did this. We’re going to do this. And this is why we think it might work. And it got killed and it blew my mind. didn’t

[00:42:14]

Michael Belasco:

that led you down your path to entrepreneurship.

[00:42:16]

Chris Moreno:

and could crush it or try something a new way. So I’m always looking for people in a space that’s crowded, like in the logistics space, in the apartment marketing space, in the AI space. What are they doing when there’s eight other companies? What have they discovered that no one else

[00:42:30]

Chris Moreno:

has?

[00:42:31]

Chris Moreno:

What’s their one little differentiator? Because that could be worth, I’m not kidding, hundreds of millions or billions of dollars. And that’s, that’s what happened to us, right? Changed our lives forever. Uh, and again, I, I, I did not do it myself. I joined, I took a bet on myself to join somebody else

[00:42:46]

Chris Moreno:

and to join other people.

[00:42:47]

Chris Moreno:

And we all won together, which was really exciting.

[00:42:50]

Michael Belasco:

Amazing. Chris, this has been an incredible episode.

[00:42:54]

Michael Belasco:

Um, and just, you know, grateful to have you on. Um, you know, hope you’ll join us again in the

[00:43:00]

future here. Maybe we’ll make this, uh, an annual thing or something. Maybe even

[00:43:03]

Michael Belasco:

more frequently if you’d have us,

[00:43:05]

Chris Moreno:

One, one, one, one person I’ll recommend. So Toby Vizzuto, who has his name on a lot of buildings. Now he’s nationwide.

[00:43:11]

Chris Moreno:

Toby’s a great mentor to mine. And Toby said something is that we have a responsibility. We have, we have the privilege, but we also have the responsibility of building sanctuary for people to live their lives. So we make a living off of these buildings. So we have to make sure that we’re kind, we care and we pay it forward to others because we’re building not just for us, we’re building for other people and their families. So we, we, you know, I’m a big believer that we have to look out for others, right? We have to think about others. Um, but yeah, I really appreciate you spending the time with me. This

[00:43:43]

Michael Belasco:

Yeah. Beautiful. Great. Well, Chris, thanks so much. And to our listeners out there, I hope you really enjoyed this episode and we’ll catch you on the next one.