Interviews

Movers and Shakers Interview with Polar and Melissa

Published

4 years ago

October 23, 2019

Tell us your name and a little about yourself.

Polar and Melissa. We are a power duo that flips houses in Southern California (LA and Orange County). We are healthcare professionals (nurse and pharmacist) and we have two kids.

We’ve been investing in real estate for about 4 years now and we hope to continue to grow our brand and business.

What exactly does your company do?

We renovate homes in the Southern California region. We also providing staging services and Realtor services, but our main focus is flipping houses.

What were the biggest challenges you have faced and how did you overcome them?

1. Getting over the fact that just about everyone will say you can’t do it. We both come from traditional “Asian” cultures where the idea is that you go to some sort of grad school and work your life out with a great company. Hearing that you’d rather take a position where you have to work off profits or commission is a scary thing to most especially if you already have a steady job that pays well.

2. Learning how to fit into our market. Southern California is one of the most expensive places to purchase properties. Where we are purchasing home for $500,000, our friends are doing the same in other states for $60,000. Therefore we really had to research how to get started in this business and learn how to make our numbers work for us and our business.

3. Figuring out our system. We still continue to learn about how to be better at what we do. We continue to learn from every flip and streamlining our process has always been something we wanted to do. We’ve been doing pretty well lately with some changes we made to our strategy but we still have a long way to go.

What piece of advice do you wish someone had given you at the start of your career?

Take action and don’t be afraid. Most people get into a state of analysis paralysis. Sure, you want to do your homework but there comes a time where you need to just take action and do it. There’s no point in practising that great dance routine if no one will ever see it. Put your efforts to work and prove to yourself that you did your homework.

Who are your biggest influences and people you admire and why?

This is a hard one and we have different people. Our parents do come to mind, though. Their struggles growing up was something they didn’t want for us so teaching and instilling the virtues and qualities that we would need as adults have definitely helped shape us.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are?

Definitely each other for sure. Fortunately for us, we like working together. We’ve learned to lean on our strengths and we are able to leverage that knowledge to better our business.

Aside from each other, of course, family has played a huge role. After getting through the hurdle of being concerned, they have all been very generous and supportive. Moreso after our first flip where we proved that we could do it.

What do you see as your greatest success in life?

Actually making this happen. There are so many people trying to get into investing. Our market is saturated with investors. TV shows are in our area so the dream of flipping houses has always been present with everyone who lives in our area. We were told before that only a very small percent of people actually get things done and will become successful at this business. I’m not sure if we’re at that point yet to call ourselves successful but we’ve sure been able to grow as a business and we’ve been able to do more like a family because of real estate.