Chris & John
- Sep 24, 2020
- 3 min read

Ep 89: Finding Your Blue Ocean with Ellie Perlman

Finding your blue ocean in the syndication world can be challenging, but we all have unique selling points and our own personal stories for investors to relate to. Today’s guest is Ellie Perlman, a real estate investor who owns multifamily properties across the U.S. Ellie is the Founder and CEO of Blue Lake Capital, a real estate investment firm specializing in multifamily acquisition and management. At Blue Lake Capital, Ellie helps investors grow their wealth by investing alongside her in large multifamily deals, and she also leads a mentoring program, Ready 2 Scale, where she coaches people to become multifamily syndicators by building and scaling a syndication business. In this episode, Ellie shares a bit about her story, her virtual office, and how she attracted investors when she was starting out, and she explains how she differentiates herself using the blue ocean strategy, which helps investors relate to her and allows her to grow her business. Tune in to find out more!

Key Points From This Episode:

Ellie introduces herself and shares a bit about her story and what she does.
From Israel to the US – Ellie wanted to move, and she made the decisions to make it happen.
Getting into real estate, Ellie approached it like a startup, not like a traditional company.
While having a more flexible, virtual office, Ellie still wanted to hire highly-skilled, local people.
The higher the role, the less it matters to Ellie where her employees live, as long as they are in the same time zone, preferably.
Initially, Ellie made a mistake by hiring cheap but, over time, she learned to hire experienced people who understand the culture of the company.
The first role Ellie hired was a virtual assistant to help her schedule meeting with investors.
While Ellie was educating herself, she spent time building an investor base so, by the time she had a deal, she could raise the money.
You have to master one piece of the business before you can move on to tackle another.
How to attract investors – Ellie suggests getting deals under your belt through passive investing or hiring an experienced team member.
Ellie thinks the best way to attract investment is to team up with an experienced partner.
The best way to grow your reputation is to add value – you don’t need to be an expert.
Ellie talks about her mentorship program, Ready 2 Scale, and how she helps attendees.
Ellie differentiates herself using the Blue Ocean Strategy and her story, which people relate to.
It’s challenging to find your blue ocean and have a unique selling point, but it’s possible!

Tweetables:

“When it comes to acquisitions and underwriting, you have to be extremely detail-oriented, because if you miss one sale, that can throw the entire calculation out the window, and the IRR you see as 15 is maybe 13.71.” — @PerlmanEllie [0:13:19]

“While I was underwriting, learning the markets, building relationships with brokers, and understanding what type of assets I want to purchase, I spent time building investor’s pipeline so, by the time I had a deal, I was ready to move forward and I could raise the money.” — @PerlmanEllie [0:14:59]