Episode 320 – Marnie Blanco, VP of Industry Relations – Pacaso

  How does real estate technology help you grow your business? This episode is just right for you to answer that question. Marnie Blanco has 24 years of experience in industry relations, business development, product management, product marketing, training, and support, with 19 years focused on the real estate vertical. In this episode, she shares insights on the technological aspects of real estate. Learn what Pacaso is and how Marnie manages her team effectively with the latest innovations! --- Marnie Blanco, VP of Industry Relations, Pacaso We're going to talk about fractional homeownership. Some of you know what I'm going to say, that's Pacaso. This was the Austin Allison, Spencer Rascoff company that was started a few years ago. It makes it possible for more people to enjoy the pleasures, joys, and experiences of owning a second home without having to own the entire home, fractional ownership, either an eighth, a quarter or a half.   We have Marnie Blanco. She is the Vice President of Industry Relations. We're going to chat with her about first of all how she got into the business. Second, we're going to talk a lot about Pacaso, how it works, how it can be used by agents, and get an in-depth look at this new model. Let's get this thing started. Marnie, welcome to the show. Thank you. I am excited to chat with you. Pacaso exploded on the scene. I don't know any other way to say that. When Austin and Spencer got together, it makes perfect sense that those two guys would figure something out. First, we're going to talk about you. I want to find out about you. Specifically, you live in the Denver area, is that true? Yes. I'm a little bit South of Denver in Castle Pines, Colorado. You were born and raised in Colorado, correct? Born and raised and I tell everyone I will live and die here as well. Why Colorado? I don't want to say sell me on Colorado because you don't want more people moving there, but what do you love about Colorado? It's funny you said that. I do always tell them. I'm like, "People, it's horrible here. No more people come." Born and raised and my family is here. It's all I've ever known and all I've ever lived. I am a creature of habit, but I can be that way because every job that I've had in my career for several years now has had some travel involved in it. It's pretty extensive travel. I still see all parts of the country. I still get to get out and spread my wings, but Colorado is special to me. [caption id="attachment_4278" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Real Estate Technology: Take that leap and don't be afraid to make changes in your professional life.[/caption]   The number one reason is my family is here. Particularly, my sister, who lives about five minutes down the street from me. She has two girls. I have two girls. They're all a year apart from each other. They go to school together. I always say, "I would live and die here," with the disclaimer that if she decides for some reason to get up and move, then I would follow her. You both are probably saying the same thing about Colorado. All is good. You're going to stay there. I asked this question a lot to people when we talk about where they grew up. Give me the biggest misconception about your home state. Every time people hear Colorado, they say skiing. All you do is ski. People ask me all the time if I ski, and I did as a younger kid. I had to come to grips with the fact that if I'm being honest with myself, I don't like skiing. I'm not going to do it anymore. The biggest misconception is people think Colorado is all about skiing, where in fact, it's more of an outdoorsy type of state. We have our Colorado mountains that are famous for skiing, but people go there just as much in the summer and other seasons than they do in the winter. It's a year-round type of state. We have 300 days of sunshine. You can't beat that. The climate is wonderful because you get a little piece of all four seasons. You get the snow, spring, and the falls are beautiful, and then summer and warm temperatures as well but not horrible. Colorado is a little bit of something for everyone. It's a beautiful place. I've been there a few times. I'm always blown away by the vistas. I remember traveling to Grand Junction one time to help a buddy pick up a vehicle. It's a whole different part of the state. It's not the same thing. There are lots of different places. I'm sure you're a Buffalo then. You had to go to school in Colorado. I did go to CU. What's funny too is in high school, I was a Buffalo. I went to my local high school here. We were Smoky Hill Buffaloes. I said, "Once a buffalo, always a buffalo." I then went to CU and I was Buffalo. If I'm being honest though, back to my sister, I went to CU because that's where she went. I didn't even apply to any other school. As my kids are getting older, I have a high schooler and I have a niece that's graduating and going to college, I was like, "How dumb was I?" What if I didn't get accepted into CU? I didn't even apply anywhere else. Again, because I'm a creature of habit so if my sister did it, that's what I did. Luckily, I got in and it was a great experience. It was good to be able to stay instate, be close to home, and then also get a great education at the same time. What was the plan after you graduated? Was real estate even a little blip on the radar at that time? My college experience was a little bit different. I graduated from CU in three years with a double major because both my parents passed away while I was in college. You work hard in college. I was like, "If I'm going to work this hard, I better start getting paid some money." I needed to move on with the next chapter of my life. [bctt tweet="Everything is about the consumer. That's the North Star to every company, every business." username="billrisser"] When I graduated, I graduated with a Marketing and Information Systems major, so straight out of school, I was a developer. I was a programmer. I was horrible at it. It was so bad. It was a bad choice on my part. For two years I wrote code. I even did it for a little bit like a side gig after I left the consulting business. I went into telecom consulting and I wrote code. I did a lot of systems integration work and technical work within the telecom industry for about five years. That started my travel gig when I was working. I literally traveled to Kansas City for two years, Monday through Friday, every single week. I spent weekends at home here in Colorado. My husband and I got married. We wanted to have kids and that is difficult when you're not in the same state. I decided at that point in time that I needed to make a career change. It so happened to be that my sister's next-door neighbor was the HR director of RE/MAX, the franchisor, which is headquartered here in Colorado. That's how I got connected to RE/MAX. There was a position open ironically enough called an IT Marketing Manager. It took my two majors together and stuck them together. I made the leap into real estate. I didn't know anything about real estate other than the fact that my mother was an agent. She was a RE/MAX agent. She was an agent for a few different companies in her younger years, but I didn't know anything about it. I knew about marketing and technology and whatnot from my degree and my experience, so I made the leap. It was a little bit of a scary leap though because, in the mix of it, I took a good 50% to 60% pay cut. I knew that that lifestyle of being on the road, every single week, Monday through Friday was not going to work. I took the leap and I couldn't be more happy that I did. When I look back, what a great change that was for me. How convenient that RE/MAX happened to be located in Denver? It's like fifteen minutes from my house. I would think that having that coding background, even if it was not the highest level had to be a huge help moving forward in your career. You've worked with a lot of companies now. There are dev teams, the marketing side of things, and operations. There are all these things working together. You have a great opportunity to be the person that can drive some conversations. Is that the way it worked? You hit the nail on the head. While I was at RE/MAX, at that point in time in real estate, nobody had all the listings on their website except Realtor.com. As a franchisor or broker, you couldn't have them. A part of my journey at RE/MAX was we built the first national website that brought on all listings in the United States. Remax.com was the very first to do that and part of my career there is building that. [caption id="attachment_4279" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Real Estate Technology: The entire mission of Pacaso is to make second home ownership more accessible