BY DANI TIETZ
dani@sjodaily.com
Jake Pence isn’t a man who waits for an opportunity to come to him.
Instead, he creates them.
The 22-year old St. Joseph-Ogden alum has always had his sights set on three things: creating opportunities that are sustainable, taking care of his family and being a respectable business owner.
As Pence joined his classmates in the University of Illinois Class of 2019, he wasn’t pining for a job after graduation.
Instead, Pence had already fulfilled the requirements to become a licensed real estate agent within the state of Illinois and established Blue Chip Real Estate with his uncle, Jared Blaudow.
Blaudow has always been instrumental in helping Pence see the world in an entrepreneurial way.
At the age of 14, Blaudow gifted Pence with “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” by Robert T. Kiyosaki. The book about personal finance, real estate and wealth, piqued Pence’s interest.
“That got my wheels spinning when I was young,” Pence said.
Pence added that watching his mother, Kendra, grow her photography business also showed him that hard work and sacrifice matter.
“I’ve grown up around her business, and seeing the way she does things,” he said. “She’s the most driven, caring, down to earth person you will meet.”
Going through high school, completing his school work and participating in athletics, Pence also continued to read other books, listen to podcasts and take college courses offered through St. Joseph-Ogden High School, giving him a good start to graduating with a degree in finance within 3.5 years.
While ambition played a part in Pence’s work ethic, he also thought about the sacrifices his mom made for him while he was enrolled at the University of Illinois.
“My mom helped me pay to go there,” he said. “Being able to graduate early that’s less that she needs to do. She has really bad rheumatoid arthritis. Getting out quicker means less work for her.
“Being able to get her to take some more time off was really the main thing.”
At this time, Kendra will continue to build her photography business while her son puts his foot into the real estate investment business, but he hopes that one day soon he will be able to hire his mom full-time.
“One of my goals of starting my own business is to make it a family business,” he said.
“I hope that my mom is the first person I hire. She has a physical disease that makes it tough for her to carry a camera around all the time. I’d like to help her transition into something that is not as physically labor-intensive.”
In the meantime, Pence knows that his mother is his biggest supporter.
“(My parents) instilled a lot of those small-town values into me at a young age,” he said.
“Athletics really emphasized those. And then when I went to the University of Illinois, a lot of those values reinforced how you treat people.”
One pillar of Blue Chip Real Estate is relationships.
“We are going to do business and treat people the right way,” he said. “We want to be the type of company people want to do business with.”
Although Pence is a licensed real estate broker with eXp Realty, he will not be looking to represent home buyers or sellers. Rather, he will use his license to represent Blue Chip Real Estate as they buy, sell, or rent real estate.
Additionally, Pence emphasized that Blue Chip Real Estate is not a real estate brokerage company and can not sell your property. Blue Chip Real Estate’s sole purpose is to buy and invest in real estate.
“I took the concept of We Buy Houses for Cash, taking that concept and applying a little more professionalism, transparency, and growth capabilities to that concept,” Pence said.
“We will buy any type of real estate, anywhere.”
At times, that means that they will flip a property to resell at a later date. Other times, it will mean making the necessary improvements to a building and rent it.
“Our main interest is single-family homes, small apartment communities, mobile home parks,” he said.
“There are so many different things that you can do with real estate, which is one of the most exciting things about it, really.”
Pence is also excited about hanging his license with eXp Realty.
As the first cloud-based real estate brokerage, agents who registered their license with eXp Realty grew by 145-percent from 2018-2019.
“eXp is growing really fast because of the flexibility that it offers,” Pence said. “It’s kind of disrupting the traditional real estate brokerage industry.”
While Pence is affiliated with eXp Realty, he does not go to an eXp Realty office and does not have a boss to report to.
Instead, Pence and Blaudow are held accountable to hitting their targets to create something great for their families.
“Jared and I want to build a sustainable, scalable, multi-generational family real estate business that gives our family the security and freedom to do as they please,” he said.
Pence said he is comfortable setting goals and meeting targets.
“When you’re running a business you can’t hit a target that you don’t see,” he said.
As a business owner, starting at ground-zero, Pence sees that possibility may be limitless.
“I think what I always try to remind myself is that any person that reaches some sort of level of success in their life didn’t start (at that point),” he said.
“Everyone has a different starting point. What excites me is that I am starting when I am 22.
“By going all into it now, there’s the lowest risk in my life. The opportunities and the ceiling are much higher. That really excites me.”
