Ep. 366 — Brian Roers: People and Numbers, and the December 23rd Bankruptcy Call That Built a $2.2B Empire

6 min read

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Episode Summary

You’re a few years into building something real, you’ve got investors who trusted you with their retirement money, and the market just turned against the one thing you concentrated in. On December 23rd, while everyone else is wrapping presents, you’re on the phone with a bankruptcy attorney asking what you can protect on the personal side. That was Brian Roers and his brother Kent in 2015, when oil prices collapsed and took the North Dakota housing market they’d bet on with it. Brian is the co-founder of Roers Companies, which today owns over 10,000 units and $2.2 billion of real estate, almost all of it funded by 650 individual investors who write $100K to $1M checks. He started at KPMG, co-founded a CPA firm, bought his partner out, and went all in on real estate in 2012. We got into how he and Kent decided to run wide open instead of folding, why they answer their cell phones to investors in the bad years and the good years, how transparency with banks during a crisis is what actually keeps the bank in your corner, and why their original Module 1 — Ownership Goals got blown out three years early and had to be reset. And the line I keep coming back to: when people show you who they are, believe them.

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## Top 10 Takeaways
  1. Your people-and-numbers stack is one thing, not two. The numbers create the trust your people can stand on when it gets ugly.
  2. Concentration kills. You can build 13 buildings in one market with one industry as your tenant base, and one commodity move erases all of it.
  3. Call your bank before your bank calls you. Transparency in month one is leverage in month eighteen.
  4. Hope is not a plan, but a model is. Even a model showing 50% occupancy is better than a story.
  5. When people show you who they are, believe them. Most owners stay too long because firing feels like admitting the hire was wrong.
  6. Set a Module 1 — Ownership Goals you can actually feel, and reset it the moment you outpace it. Lofty goals are the point.
  7. Commit even when you disagree. The brother dynamic only works if the fight ends at the conference room door.
  8. Bring construction in-house when you need a lever to pull. Owning the cost stack means you can lean profit toward the project that’s hurting.
  9. Define your culture in writing, or it drifts the moment you start flexing to hire faster. You can see it and feel it, but if you can’t touch it, it isn’t real.
  10. Activity breeds activity. The mornings you can’t see a win are the mornings you put one foot in front of the other and pick up the phone.

Sound Bites

“I will do today what others won’t so I can do tomorrow what others can’t.” (@TBD) — Brian Roers

“We had one of two options. Either we go through bankruptcy, button it down, see what we can save as personal assets. Or another idea is blow the doors wide open and run wide open to see if we can outrun this problem.” (@TBD) — Brian Roers

“Hope is not a plan. I’m like, I got it, you know, as he’s trying to take my house.” (@TBD) — Brian Roers

“I want to be the guy that just pushes you harder than you thought you could go. I want you to look back and be like, I never dreamed I could do this.” (@TBD) — Brian Roers

“At the end of the day, you’re really invested in us. Like, do you believe we can do what we say we can do? Because anybody can put a number on a performa.” (@TBD) — Brian Roers

About This Episode

Brian Roers is the co-founder of Roers Companies, which he runs with his brother Kent. Since 2012, they’ve built a vertically integrated multifamily real estate firm that owns over 10,000 units and $2.2 billion of real estate across multiple states, funded primarily through 650 individual investors who commit $100K to $1M per project. Before Roers Companies, Brian started his career in tax consulting at KPMG, then co-founded Anderson Roers CPAs, working with hospitals across the country on Medicare and Medicaid recovery. Roers Companies also recently brought construction in-house, which is now the eighth-largest construction firm in Minnesota by volume. Brian’s throughline across all of it is “people and numbers,” the idea that the financials build the trust, and the trust is what holds when the market turns.

Resources Mentioned

  • Roers Companies — Brian’s firm. — roerscompanies.com
  • 10x Is Easier Than 2x by Dan Sullivan & Ben Hardy — Referenced for the mindset of dropping the 80% that doesn’t compound
  • EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System) — Roers Companies runs on EOS; foundational to setting and resetting BHAGs
  • Chris Carlson — Investor and Vistage friend who gave Brian the line “when people show you who they are, believe them.” Featured on Ep. 201 — Chris Carlson
  • Tommy Boy — “You’re either growing or you’re dying” reference

Connections

Phase + Module:

  • Module 7 — Leadership Team — Brian’s belief in following leaders, hiring people better than him, and putting them in charge to run the 250-person team
  • Module 1 — Ownership Goals — The BHAG framework Brian and Kent reset after hitting their 2025 target three years early

Milestones:

Concepts referenced:

Related episodes:

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