The Beginning of Black Kanyon

This whole journey started in 2013 with the purchase of a trailer house.

Peyton owned a Custom Agriculture company from 2013 to 2020 while doing real estate as a side hustle and part time passion.

He realized that real estate could bring opportunities for the team that agriculture couldn’t. After that realization, the team pivoted. We liquidated the agriculture business, bought out the two real estate partnerships that we’d shared and started focusing full time on real estate.

We specialize in value add, multifamily, real estate and our secret is…we have an amazing deal finder, Peyton.

That isn’t all Peyton does, he’s Black Kanyon’s Visionary (which is an EOS title if you want to look it up). This means that he is in charge of creating the vision, path and direction of the company while also creating a great culture and increasing team health. He’s involved in every hire to ensure that they fit the four core values of Black Kanyon and are 100% onboard with the vision.

His systems are built, maintained and improved by his Executive Assistant, Jalayna Haug. She started at the agriculture company in July of 2019 and has stuck around through the pivots. Her responsibilities include rooting out inefficiencies in the company, all things Marketing as well as HR. Jalayna also helps with vision alignment and company growth.

Much of the value in multifamily, value-add, real estate comes from getting a great priced, off-market, deal. We often get creative with sellers and sometimes they’ll carry upwards of 30% of the purchase price back into the deal as seller financing. That way we can get ownership of a property without putting in a ton of equity and the sellers have a way to instantly deploy their capital and receive a return on it for the next five years or so. It can work the same way with the businesses we look to acquire. We work hard to come up with a deal structure where both parties are mutually benefitted. No one should feel like they lost, that’s the true sign of a good negotiation.

There isn’t a rule book on this, cold calling doesn’t work for everyone. It takes more grit than most jobs. In some instances, Peyton has been in contact with people for 3-5 years before they decide to sell. It’s all about good follow up and building a relationship with these sellers. You need to genuinely care to be fantastic at Acquisitions.

Once the deal is under contract it moves to our Pre-Closing team, Jared Gass & executive assistant, Hilary Rossow. Jared started at Black Kanyon in December of 2021 after being Peyton’s personal attorney for about seven years. He shut down his law firm of twelve years to come work for Black Kanyon. Hilary moved from Minnesota to Brookings in December of 2022 to become the third assistant on the Black Kanyon team. They take care of everything legal. This could be agreements, contracts, title work, deeds, even forming entities. Financing debt and equity also lands on Jared’s plate. Working with our current investors as well as building relationships with new ones, this part of the team completes the capital stack before the closing date arrives.

Once the closing day arrives and paperwork is completed to take ownership of the real estate or the new company, the responsibilities move on to our Operations team. EJ Drake joined the team back in 2020, in the midst of the “Great Pivot”. He fills the Asset Manager role and makes sure our assets are performing at the expected standards and hitting the KPI’s we track. He wants to increase the NOI of our assets, which in turn creates value and increases equity. He followed the best advice he ever received and hired Matt Schreiber in November of 2021. Matt Schreiber is a numbers guy and loves a complicated excel spreadsheet, that’s why he’s our Operations Analyst. Matt spends his days tracking property profitability and flying around to our properties. He catches any out of line expenses and ensures our property managers are held accountable. The Operations team takes a struggling asset and figures out how to make it print cash.

Now we’re forgetting about one very important piece of the puzzle. If you walk into the offices in Lake Norden, SD you’ll see none other than MaKenna Hallstrom, Administrative Assistant. She was hired in March of 2022 and keeps everyone in line. (Basically, the babysitter) MaKenna makes sure the office operates like a well oiled machine, she also handles AR/AP, payroll, and marketing efforts. She’s the utility knife you didn’t know you needed. MaKenna’s the support system that allows our team the time they need to focus on the big picture.

In recent years we’ve shifted to view ourselves as a Venture Capital company, investing in a couple of startups. Some good & some bad. We’re also working to grow, in addition to the real estate, with purchases of Operating Companies that fit our values and vision.

Overall, it seems hard to track. Hard to explain what we do, when the simple answer is “a little of everything.”

We’re an opportunistic and agile company and are strict in the effort to stay that way. We don’t have certain boxes that need to be checked. Every deal has its own unique challenges and with our creative approach can be taken down. Nothing’s impossible, you just haven’t figured out how yet.

If you still don’t understand what we do, reread the article. That’s the best we’ve got for now!