Dewey Burke 00:05
We finance a lot of collectors, and collectors will leverage their existing portfolio to buy more. Where they need a couple 100 grand to buy a Pokemon card, or they need a couple 100 grand to close a real estate deal, and their next liquidity is not coming for four to six weeks, but the deal is happening now. They find their way to us. The opportunity cost of not taking the 100 to go do whatever it is you needed to do, and it costing you $10,000. Well, that’s really up to the the customer. We closed that thing in 24 hours. Ferrari, two Birkin bags, bunch of watches, and he was astounded at our speed. Starting with one little office, and we were down in Centennial, and there were four of us. And now we’ve got four offices across the country and institutional backing.

Dave Tabor 00:51
Welcome to the ProCO360 podcast. ProCO360 is for people who love Colorado and love hearing from Colorado’s most inventive and successful entrepreneurs. I’m Dave Tabor, and I was recently made aware of a niche company based in Colorado that immediately got me super curious. The company is Luxury Asset Capital, described at least one place as the pawn shop for the ultra wealthy, and I think that’s really true. Ultra wealthy customers who need cash fast can borrow money against jewelry, exotic cars, boats, six-figure watches, fine art, real estate, and so forth. So when I heard about this, I thought first question I had for myself was why would the ultra wealthy need fast cash? And the second is like there must be some really great stories here. So I’m sure that you listeners are going to enjoy this episode with me as much as I will. So, founder and CEO Dewey Burke is in the studio with me. Dewey, welcome to ProCO360

Dewey Burke 01:48
Thanks, Dave. I do have good stories, so I’m looking forward to talking with you.

Dave Tabor 01:51
Good. Now, all right. I gave the intro about luxury asset capital. What is the problem that you solve?

Dewey Burke 01:59
Immediate need for liquidity, you know. Really, we’re an alternative lender that operates much differently than traditional banks do. Anybody who has dealt with a bank, whether it’s for a mortgage or a line of credit or whatever type of financing you’re trying to put in place, they are not fast. And so, we’ve built a business focusing on assets banks don’t focus on, and being a lot faster than they are.

Dave Tabor 02:22
Well, you know, I I did have that first question, Dewey, about the notion of like why would someone who’s ultra rich need fast cash? So, what is the answer to that?

Dewey Burke 02:33
Typically, speed. And I will tell you this: I do think sometimes there’s an assumption that our business is putting financing in place for somebody that is in trouble or has an issue, and that’s really honestly not true. We we are more often than not meeting an opportunity for our customers, and speed is the calling card. So, I have stories, I have examples for you, but the typical situation is somebody’s closing a real estate deal, or needs working capital for their business, or even has a margin call that they have to make, and the liquidity need is now or yesterday or by Friday. Here we are on a Wednesday or on a Thursday, and it’s by Friday. And so we come in because we can move incredibly quickly. We focus on the asset, not on the personal financial statement, not on the credit profile. We are asset-based lenders and have become experts in certain asset classes, and we can figure out what we think it’s worth very quickly, and decide if we want to offer you some leverage.

Dave Tabor 03:29
So you know, because it’s funny because when when I first was learning about your business, I’m thinking to myself, okay, someone who’s ultra rich who needs cash fast probably was in Vegas, overextended, and now the mob boss is coming after them, and like I gotta hock something to get my bills paid before they break my legs. That’s not the case. Look, I’m sure

Dewey Burke 03:48
I’m sure there are plenty of times. Look, our clients are also not required to tell us use of proceeds. They volunteer it most cases, believe it or not. When we get on the phone, you know, our sales team, we pride ourselves when we get an inbound lead through a form fill on the site or an email that we respond within five minutes, and that helps the sales process go fast and smooth. But also, as I’m saying, the clients they will volunteer their use of proceeds. Why? Just it just comes naturally. Look, I need I need 100 grand, and this is why. This is what I’m doing. This is the deal I want to close, and here are the assets I have. So it just comes out naturally. Do you think

Dave Tabor 04:27
they tell you and tell the sales team because they’re embarrassed that they got to do this?

Dewey Burke 04:33
That’s a great question. They may be embarrassed. I don’t know, just because it’s something they’ve never done before or heard of. But that leads me into a great point that I think we want to talk about is the biggest hurdle for our business and growth is education, and what I mean by that is people don’t realize they can do this. People don’t realize that if they’ve bought luxury cars and fine art and watches and Hermes Birkin bags for their wife and and various other luxury goods, that those are actually. Imminently leverageable, and they’re just sitting there most of the time collecting dust. Like if you have 10 watches, you can’t wear 10 watches in a day. If you have five cars, you don’t drive five cars in a day. Those assets are are usable collateral. You just have to find

Dave Tabor 05:13
us. Yeah, so that’s true. You got 10 watches, you got five cars, whatever. But they didn’t buy them to become leverageable items, and I’m guessing you know if okay. I’m just going to ask. This is way down my outline, but I’m just going to ask like if I borrow against. Well, give an example of somebody borrowing six figures. What would they borrow it against recently that you’ve seen?

Dewey Burke 05:34
Somebody borrowed $215,000 on a rare Rolex Daytona like two weeks ago, and I’ll tell you what they borrowed it for. Yeah,

Dave Tabor 05:41
please go.

Dewey Burke 05:42
They were a collector, so that’s another thing I was going to touch on. Is we finance a lot of collectors, and collectors will leverage their existing portfolio to buy more. And in this case, it was a watch collector, but he was borrowing against this very rare Daytona to actually buy Pokemon cards because he was a Pokemon collector too, so those are the kind of unique things that we see in our business. The collector world is very eclectic. Those are interesting people, and you obviously can’t go to your bank and say, “Can I borrow $215,000 against this rare Rolex so I can go buy Pokemon cards? No, bankers probably no. They’re like

Dave Tabor 06:18
they’re like, “No, we’d like to keep your savings at our bank, but no, this stuff’s like no, right? Yeah, right. So, but okay. So, why is a guy in this case a guy? Are most of your clients men?

Dewey Burke 06:30
No, 54% women.

Dave Tabor 06:32
Wow. Okay, why is that?

Dewey Burke 06:34
I can’t speak to why that is. I mean, it’s roughly. I guess. Why

Dave Tabor 06:38
did I guess men? Because I think cars, I think watches, I think boats, I think men. Sure, that’s wrong.

Dewey Burke 06:44
But women have Birkin bags and other luxury handbags, Louis Vuitton. They’ve got watches, they’ve got diamonds, they’ve got jewelry, they’ve got art. They may have cars. So it’s interestingly, it’s 54% women, and and one of the things you’re getting at is so why do people come to you if this is a wealthy individual and a high and high net worth, as we would say?

Dave Tabor 07:04
Yeah.

Dewey Burke 07:05
Why do they need this slug of liquidity that is atypical?

Dave Tabor 07:10
Yeah. If they’re why do they have to leverage a watch to buy Pokemon cards if they’ve if they’re that deep? Why don’t they have the cash?

Dewey Burke 07:16
Sure. So my answer to that is most of our clients are entrepreneurs. It’s most likely that they don’t collect the w2 and have a regular paycheck on the first and the 15th. Right, they own a couple businesses. They’re getting K ones at the end of the year, and so that means they have choppy liquidity. They don’t get paid every two weeks, and so because of that, if they’re waiting on the sale of something, or they’re waiting on a dividend payment or a distribution from the LLC they own, but this opportunity comes up where they need a couple 100 grand to buy a Pokemon card, or they need a couple 100 grand to close a real estate deal, and their next liquidity is not coming for four to six weeks, but the deal is happening now. They find their way to us, so that that’s why because entrepreneurs, most of them, or a lot of them, I should say, they don’t get paid on the first and the 15th.

Dave Tabor 08:05
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m thinking of a story I read in the Wall Street Journal recently about someone who, I don’t know, got sucked into an addictive behavior on a on an auction website, and like these are not your kind of clients. These are not typically people who are getting themselves in trouble and looking for ways out. These are, to your point, people who just have choppy liquidity. Is that accurate?

Dewey Burke 08:29
That’s absolutely accurate. And and as I said earlier, there is I think an assumption because of the connotation with pawn that we’re financing people that are having problems. Do we have clients that come to us that have an IRS bill that they need to pay 100% Do we have people that come to us that need to pay private school tuition or college tuition, and they have to get that in? You know the bills due. Yeah,

Dave Tabor 08:53
yeah, of course. And again, because they have choppy liquidity, meaning that they have their income isn’t steady as though as for those of us who would have paychecks, these kinds of things can happen. These needs spike. They can use. They can use. They essentially borrow against an asset. So when they borrow against an asset, just pick. I mean, whether if a watch, that’s easy. They have to ship it to you, though, right? You take physical possession.

Dewey Burke 09:17
We take physical possession of everything, and so it does depend on where they live. So if they are in within a reasonable proximity of one of our four offices, so Denver’s headquarters, we have Beverly Hills in California.

Dave Tabor 09:29
Of course, we have that makes sense. Yeah, we

Dewey Burke 09:31
have New York City, and then we have Palm Beach in Florida. And so, if you’re in a reasonable proximity of one of our offices, you can make an appointment and you come in physically, and we’ll you know give you white glove service, and we’ll do our evaluation right there, and and then get the financing in place. Otherwise, clients in the other states, the other 46 or so, they will ship to us here in Denver, and and we will. So that’s a FedEx overnight, fully insured, paid by us, all the things you would expect when you’re putting a Rolex. In a in a FedEx box, well, especially

Dave Tabor 10:02
if it’s a $225,000 Rolex, right? So you’ve got staff that can determine this is real, this is worth it. This is obviously you’ve got people in your office just waiting to get this stuff.

Dewey Burke 10:12
We do, yeah. We have a robust valuation team across the asset classes, but then we also like to say very frequently we’re not afraid to phone a friend, and when I when I say that, I mean the Sotheby’s and the Christies of the world, the auction houses. We’re partners with them, and the reason they partner with us is because we help put inventory up for auction with them if we have something that’s defaulted. Yeah, which is rare, but if we have a default, we’ll we’ll a lot of times auction it with Sotheby’s and Christie’s. Yep. So they’ll help us out on the valuation side. We could bring a rare Rolex Daytona to them, as I described, and say, “Hey, if you were to put this off for auction, what’s your range? What’s your hammer price? Give us a little guidance on what you think this is worth, and we can use that alongside online comps. and And as you might imagine, AI has helped our valuation process quite a bit. I mean, using cloud and ChatGPT helps.

Dave Tabor 11:03
Have you guys ever gotten it wrong where you said, “Oh, this Rolex is worth X, and it was fake, or or it’s just way off? I mean, you ended up, but but you don’t. Okay, answer the question. I got to follow. Yeah,

Dewey Burke 11:16
of course. You know, we don’t pretend to to bat 1000, and anybody who tells you they do is is lying to you. So have we gotten it wrong? Have there been fraudulent pieces brought to us? Of course. Have we overvalued something? Of course. The saving grace there is that our default rate is very low. It’s about 1%

Dave Tabor 11:34
Really, default meaning people who choose not to to buy back their asset.

Dewey Burke 11:38
Correct. Right. And it’s non recourse. Right. So again, we take possession, and that’s our that’s our recourse. So we mentioned earlier we don’t run your credit. There’s no personal hit to your credit profile if you decide not to pay your loan off with us, and then it’s our job to hope that we valued it correctly. We go to sell it and recoup.

Dave Tabor 11:56
But you only give somebody. I think I saw somewhere 50 to 60% of its estimated value. So even if you are off by 20% you are fine.

Dewey Burke 12:04
We should be covered. Yeah. So it’s very rare that we take a loss. It’s very rare that we have a fraudulent or a not authentic piece that comes in. But it does happen, and we have to you know constantly train for that and be prepared for that.

Dave Tabor 12:17
So what about things like cars and fine art. I mean, shipping those things a is slow and b is massively expensive. Do you have like escrow houses in different places that you? How does that work?

Dewey Burke 12:28
Exactly. Yeah. So titled assets, we we typically don’t try to move those out of state.

Dave Tabor 12:35
Yeah.

Dewey Burke 12:35
So if you’re a customer in Atlanta, let’s say, and you come to us with a Ferrari, we’re gonna work to find a luxury car storage facility in Atlanta where you can bring the car. We’ll meet you there. We’ll evaluate it, and then we’ll store it locally. We’re not going to try to bring your Ferrari from Atlanta to Denver. What do you mean you’ll meet?

Dave Tabor 12:53
You’ll meet them. You’ll fly someone there to take possession.

Dewey Burke 12:56
Sure. Yeah. And then they

Dave Tabor 12:57
sign something that tells that that storage facility you are now the lien holder until X.

Dewey Burke 13:04
Well, so that’s a good nuance to talk about. We will actually put the car in storage under an account in our business’s name, not theirs.

Dave Tabor 13:11
Yeah.

Dewey Burke 13:11
Right. So it’s stored under our name, so it’s under our authority. So we don’t release the car until we’re paid back. It just keeps it clean.

Dave Tabor 13:18
Well, yeah. Otherwise, you get into these. Have you ever had a scenario where? And okay, I’m going to ask you this question in a minute. First, I’m going to I’m going to thank our sponsors and remind listeners this is ProCO360, and I am going to ask a question about a time when somebody didn’t want to relinquish. But anyway, you are listening to ProCO360 named Best Colorado Business podcast since 2021. I’m your host Dave Tabor, and this is a podcast for people who love Colorado and the stories of Colorado businesses and entrepreneurs. My guest today is Dewey Burke of Luxury Asset Capital. Hey, I want to take a quick moment to thank Via Technologies. They host ProCO360, and their team gives me great help managing the website. These guys at Via Technology are building a growing business by working closely with really smart clients to partner on achieving client growth. They use web-based technology and digital marketing, and lately they’ve been doing a ton helping clients develop specialized AI-powered business tools. So, if you need some guidance in the AI area, call my friends at Via. All right. So, do you ever get into a do we where people are like, wait, wait, wait! Don’t sell this. Don’t sell this. I’m sure they can maybe extend their time, but how does that work when somebody really doesn’t want you to dispose of something they’ve since put in your possession?

Dewey Burke 14:37
Of course, we deal with this all the time, and our stated policy is my collections team is going to be willing to work with a client for up to 120 days to get back current. The law doesn’t require that. Our documents don’t require that. But I just feel like that’s the right thing in terms of a of a customer service offering. We realize that, like we talked about earlier, that clients have choppy liquidity. So we’re not like a credit card or not like a mortgage, where if if you miss a payment, you know the walls start to close in. We just want you to communicate. So you’re going to hear from us. We expect to hear from you, and let’s work out a payment plan. You know, make a half payment now, catch up next month, that kind of thing. So again, it is very rare that we deal with defaults because of that service level. The white glove is not just leading up to when we close the financing; it’s after as well. We try to take care of our clients, and the best indicator I can give you of that is we have a 74% repeat business rate. So three out of four people who use us use us again. Do

Dave Tabor 15:40
people who don’t who do that word default seems wrong to me because I know it’s a technical term in your business, but like they’re not really defaulting. They’ve just essentially sold you something under market.

Dewey Burke 15:53
That’s right. They’ve just let it go.

Dave Tabor 15:54
Yeah. So do those people come back and do it again?

Dewey Burke 15:58
Absolutely. Now we’ve had plenty of clients who may have defaulted, or we have foreclosed on an initial asset, and they’ll come back with a different

Dave Tabor 16:06
one. So, when somebody does put a product on, and we’ve used watches and cars, let’s let’s use a different example.

Dewey Burke 16:13
Handbag.

Dave Tabor 16:14
Handbag. What would what would a handbag be worth, by the way?

Dewey Burke 16:17
Depends on the manufacturer, obviously. But Hermes Birkin bags can be 2030, $40,000, and then some of the rare ones can be hundreds of 1000s.

Dave Tabor 16:26
Seriously, oh

Dewey Burke 16:27
yeah,

Dave Tabor 16:27
oh my God, that’s mind-boggling to me. But okay, let’s just say you got a $20,000 handbag, and you’ve lent $10,000 against

Dewey Burke 16:34
it.

Dave Tabor 16:34
Right, that might be the case. So, what’s that? And and typically, how long? What’s an average length of time that you would lend that money against the product. So

Dewey Burke 16:42
short term, relative to traditional financing, our loans last four to six months. Usually, we try to get our clients to take the liquidity, go do what they needed to do, pay for a couple months, and then pay it back. It does lead me into a good part of our business I want to talk to you about which is a luxury line of credit that functions like a home equity line. We can get to that. Let’s yeah, let’s hold off on that because that’s what I’m really four to six months. Four to

Dave Tabor 17:08
six. So, what’s the annualized interest interest rate then on that loan?

Dewey Burke 17:12
Yeah. So our rates are going to be comparable to credit cards. So in that two to two and a half percent per month, right? So on an annualized rate, you’re talking about around 30% But again, our loans-they’re not meant to be in place for 12 months and rarely are. So the way to think about that, in my view, is if you borrow $100,000 from us to go do the deal you’re working on, close something, buy something to add to your collection, you borrow 100 grand, and let’s say it’s two and a half percent a month. That’s 2500 bucks. If you have that loan outstanding for four months, it costs you 10 grand, and then you pay us back the 100. So the opportunity cost of not taking the 100 to go do whatever it is you needed to do, and it costing you $10,000. Well, that’s really up to the the customer. Is it worth 10 grand to me to be able to go do that?

Dave Tabor 18:00
Let me push back on you about that a little bit because when I think of those, all right, I’m really gonna push back hard here because when I think about what credit cards charge in interest, to me it’s predatory 20 22% 24% feels predatory, and maybe it’s because their audience is different from your audience. In your case, your audience is often thinking about it as a

Dewey Burke 18:26
bridge.

Dave Tabor 18:26
To your point, is it? Pardon me. It’s

Dewey Burke 18:28
a bridge.

Dave Tabor 18:28
Yeah, and it’s but it’s it’s to make an opportunity or to they know they’re going to pay it back, or at least 99% of them do pay it back. That feels different from my perception of predatory pricing on credit cards, where people never do have the capability to pay back, is that fair?

Dewey Burke 18:46
I think it is fair, and I think there’s another set of nuances to it as well. When you sign up for a credit card, you’ve given them your social security number, you’ve personally guaranteed that, and they have the ability to have recourse. Right? They can come after you if they get a judgment. They can garnish your wages. They can, they have all these things they can do that you agreed to, and

Dave Tabor 19:05
screw your credit.

Dewey Burke 19:05
And screw your credit. I have none of those things. Everything is non recourse. I have effectively jumped into bed with you from a risk perspective that I valued your $20,000 Birkin bag correctly, because if I didn’t and you default, and I go to sell it. If we can’t sell it for what we have in it, or you know, we try to make a little bit of profit. But if we don’t, and I take a loss, I can’t come back to you. You borrowed 10,000 on a $20,000 bag, and I sell it for seven. I lost three grand. I can’t come back to you and say you owe me three.

Dave Tabor 19:37
That’s right, right. So

Dewey Burke 19:38
all of that recourse that a credit card has, or a traditional bank has. I have none of it, and so for that risk that I take, we charge more.

Dave Tabor 19:46
Yeah. Now, do you percentage of profits? It sounds like if you’ve only if only 1% are defaulted, that you make most of your money from interest. That’s

Dewey Burke 19:57
right.

Dave Tabor 19:57
Yeah. Yeah. So. Do you even my one of my questions I was going to ask you is like, do you want people to default? No, and it doesn’t sound like you do. That’s not really your business model. It’s not like a pawn shop.

Dewey Burke 20:08
This is a great point to make because before I founded this business, I worked for a family office and they owned eight brick and mortar pawn shops. So I know that business very very well. I understand it. I understand the customer. I understand the average loan. I understand the interest rate. I understand the default rate. If you were to study the two publicly traded companies in the pawn space, they run about a 20% forfeiture rate against my 1% Their interest rate is about 120% APR against my 30,

Dave Tabor 20:41
wow,

Dewey Burke 20:42
right, and that’s legal. That’s legal. So we’re fundamentally different, but here’s here’s the point I want to make, and this is I think going to be interesting for you to hear. The average brick and mortar pawn shop operator has limited cash in the till. So let’s say somebody walks in with a Rolex, and we all agree that Rolex is worth $10,000 on the open on the open market. That brick and mortar pawn shop operator is going to try to get that loan done for as little as possible. Hey, I’ll give you three grand, 30% LTV. Oh, okay, I’ll give you four. I’ll give you trying to get it done for as low as they can. Let’s say they settle on four grand, they hand you four grand, you walk out, and their genuine hope is that you never walk through those doors again to make a payment. Because if you don’t, after 30 days, they’re going to forfeit it and they’re going to sell it for the 10, realize the gain of six, and now they have 10 grand in the till to try to repeat that process. That is not fundamentally, in any way, shape, or form, how we run our business. We focus on customer lifetime value.

Dave Tabor 21:44
Yeah.

Dewey Burke 21:45
In the same example, if you come to me, I’m probably going to loan you six grand or 6500 on the very same watch. I’m going to charge you a a quarter of the interest, and I’m going to work with you to make sure you stay current because three out of four times you’re going to come back, and if you lose that watch, now you don’t have that watch to use as collateral again to come work with me again. Yeah, so it’s just so fundamentally different, and part of that is we’re big enough and have institutional backing, so we’re not cash strapped. So I can afford to wait for that client to get current and work with them on a collections process, whereas your typical brick and mortar, they can’t.

Dave Tabor 22:20
That makes that makes perfect sense. I was going to ask you where your money comes from, because is there a deal that’s too big for you?

Dewey Burke 22:28
Too big, just in terms of where we get comfortable and and how much money you want to put out. Yeah,

Dave Tabor 22:34
if someone had a $10 million house or condo in New York City and they wanted to borrow, you know, it’s worth 10 million. They wanted to borrow six or 7 million against it. Do you have the ability? Do you have the the financial bandwidth to do that?

Dewey Burke 22:48
Absolutely, we do. And we’ve done some deals, and the biggest deal we’ve done was seven and a half million. What was it? Real estate, as you say. Yeah, yeah. So we’ve done seven and a half on real estate. We’ve done a couple $5 million deals. Oh, and that’s

Dave Tabor 23:02
a lot of interest.

Dewey Burke 23:03
Well, that’s the point. Is you know I need to. I’m going to do different diligence on a $5 million deal and understanding repayment strategy and time, because to your point, a four to six month loan on $5 million gets expensive very quickly, and so we’re going to treat that a little bit differently. Might negotiate a

Dave Tabor 23:22
different a different interest rate, even

Dewey Burke 23:24
different interest rate, lower LTV, and try to protect ourselves a little bit more. But no, look, we we have no liquidity constraints. You know, we’ve got equity investors that that have backed us all the way up to a certain point, and then we got a credit fund from New York to to give us debt to grow. So we’ve got plenty of capital. That’s not the issue. It’s choosing the right deals, making smart decisions from an underwriting perspective. But now we can do we can do big stuff.

Dave Tabor 23:48
So you don’t have to borrow money to lend money. You have access. Well, but maybe I mean, do you have to use a lot? If you ever for those big deals, do you have to do you have to borrow money?

Dewey Burke 23:58
Yeah, I mean we have an institutional line of credit that we can draw on if we need it, but it’s you know it’s fully secured right because we have all this collateral from all our clients, so it’s a pretty straightforward line of credit that we have.

Dave Tabor 24:10
That’s interesting. What a great business! Is there any overlap really between you and traditional pawn shops?

Dewey Burke 24:17
I think the only thing is the fundamental way the transaction works. I give you my watch. You give me money. Yeah, you know, and that’s my collateral. Outside of that, really no. I mean, it’s it’s a luxury offering. The way we treat you is is different, and that’s not speaking poorly about brick and mortar pawn shops. There are plenty that have great service, but it’s just it’s a fundamentally different offering. Your experience in our office is going to be different.

Dave Tabor 24:42
So, at what price value? You mentioned the $10,000 Rolex watch. Should that person have called you?

Dewey Burke 24:47
Absolutely.

Dave Tabor 24:48
At what price does it? You know, what value of something?

Dewey Burke 24:51
Sure.

Dave Tabor 24:52
Does it make sense for them to contact you?

Dewey Burke 24:53
Our typical minimum is going to be about $2,500. So, if you have an asset worth in the neighborhood of 5000 bucks. You know, we think it makes sense for you to come to us. You’re going to get a better rate. Yeah, you’re going to get a different experience. But I will say, we do have plenty of customers, plenty of customers that test us with a lower value asset, something that’s worth maybe $2,000, and they borrow 1000, and they tell us, “Hey, I’ve got a bunch more watches, I’ve got more handbags, but I just want to see how this works.

Dave Tabor 25:22
Yeah,

Dewey Burke 25:23
and they’ll do the first deal. They’ll feel happy and satisfied with the service we offer, and then they’ll come back with more.

Dave Tabor 25:29
That’s interesting. What about what about products that are hard to sell or that don’t have a big market? You know, where yeah, somebody believes that my painting is worth $100,000, and it might be to the one person who would buy it, but it’s not, you know, easily sold. How do you think about that?

Dewey Burke 25:51
Well, we we refer to that bucket as auction quality collateral, the type of rare asset, maybe a one-off or a painting that has a small collection of followers, or a painter, I should say. Yeah, yeah,

Dave Tabor 26:04
yeah.

Dewey Burke 26:04
We throw that into the auction quality collateral bucket, and that’s where the Christies and the Sotheby’s and heritage auctions-they’re so valuable to us as partners. They can help us with a range, and then we’re going to do it off the low band of that range.

Dave Tabor 26:18
Yep. All right, that makes sense, and that that sort of shelters you a little bit from the difficulty of finding the right buyer and stuff like that. So, all right, you’ve got some really interesting stories. Before we shift gears, I heard one story about somebody who leveraged guitars. There are probably other stories. Share a couple more stories that are kind of okay. I’ll just say entertaining about your business.

Dewey Burke 26:39
The guitar story is a great one. I can’t tell you the name of the wildly popular 1980s rock band that this person is a member of, but he came to us and borrowed two and a half million dollars on 170 of his collector guitars, and I got to go out to the band warehouse with an appraiser from Heritage Oxon and see everything from 45 years of touring that this band had in their warehouse, and then got to go into the guitar room and allowed the appraiser I brought with me to to do evaluation that ultimately led to a two and a half million dollar loan. So that that was a great story. Yeah, certainly. What was the

Dave Tabor 27:19
money for?

Dewey Burke 27:19
Cool experience. It was actually during COVID, so they couldn’t tour, and he wanted the money to keep paying their road family while they were not out on the road, which was pretty cool. So that’s a great story I have. Yeah,

Dewey Burke 27:33
we have a lot of stories, a lot of real estate related stories where it’s it’s a Tuesday, somebody has a closing on a Friday, and if they don’t close, they lose their escrow, their earnest money, and whatever last slug of capital they thought they were getting, either from a partner or their lender, fell through. And like one comes to mind, a guy needed 600 grand to close this real estate deal, and he got recommended to us by an M and A attorney, and we do get a lot of referrals from professionals out there, which which I think would make sense to you. And he brought us a Ferrari, a couple of watches. I think he had two Birkin bags from his wife, if I remember. Anyway, but we flew on that deal. It was out in L.A. He came to us on a I think on a Wednesday, Tuesday or Wednesday, and we close that thing in 24 hours. Ferrari, two Birkin bags, bunch of watches, and he was astounded at our speed. And so that that’s what we’re about. If we can get comfortable with the assets that you bring to us, and we understand the need, we can we can roll that quickly.

Dave Tabor 28:38
That’s fast, and because you don’t have to go through the typical stuff. You just if if it’s in your possession and you know it’s worth X, you can lend against it.

Dewey Burke 28:46
That’s right. I haven’t said this, but again, it’ll make sense to you. We do obviously have to make sure it’s unencumbered. Yeah. So the car can’t have a note against it. You can’t have existing financing against any of these things. Right. Right. So we do run UCCs. You know, just to make sure that there’s not a blanket lien out there. Yep. But we don’t run credit, as we’ve said before, so we we do have to make sure it’s unencumbered, so that we can be in first position against it. Yep. But other than that, the process is pretty straightforward.

Dave Tabor 29:12
All right. So that’s cool. That’s a cool story. Now I am curious though, because you’ve said you’d like to get back to people within five minutes, which is great. Now, that makes me think. Like the way you service them, you don’t have a call center in you know Asia somewhere. No. So it’s

Dewey Burke 29:29
in Denver.

Dave Tabor 29:30
Okay. So, but these are people that you’re paying to answer the phones. How do they relate to the ultra rich who like want to talk to somebody who’s understands them.

Dewey Burke 29:44
Sure. Look, I think it’s like anything else in sales: a lot of reps, a lot of training, a lot of trial and error. We have what we call the lead hub, which is any inbound communication, whether that goes to any office, whether that’s a phone call that goes to somebody thinks they’re calling. Beverly Hills, it gets routed to our lead hub here in Denver, and we have a team led by our chief revenue officer Caitlin that is responsible for picking up those calls, answering those texts, that form fill on the website that comes in, like we said, within five minutes. And I just think you know we’ve been doing this 10 years, we’ve sort of seen everything at this point, and have been able, you know, when we started, I was taking those calls, right, and and I was trying to get those deals closed. So I think my experience, my team’s experience, we’ve seen enough that we can provide surface service with empathy. You know, know that the customer is going through something, and is trying to meet the opportunity and just be nice and be fast, but be nice. Yeah, and it served

Dave Tabor 30:48
us. So before I shift gears, I want to ask you about your background. Before I do that, though, like when you do these extravagant deals and you fly to somebody’s warehouse to look at 170 guitars or whatever, like is that just betting on the come, or do is there a fee associated that you charge them to come evaluate their deal? It

Dewey Burke 31:09
depends, you know. In the case of the the guitars, I was so interested. Yeah, in that you must have

Dave Tabor 31:15
fun looking. It was fun. It was

Dewey Burke 31:16
a great. It was a great experience. You know the the fee for the appraiser we had the borrower pay, which wasn’t crazy. It was like five grand. You know, wasn’t wasn’t anything nuts. You know, so it is case by case. We will travel for the right car for the right art portfolio and be happy to cover the cost of that if it’s a deal we really like. If it’s something that’s too small, we may turn it down or we may ask the customer to help offset some of that cost. It really does depend. It

Dave Tabor 31:45
varies. Got it. All right. I do want to shift gears now because you’ve got an interesting background. You come from a family of entrepreneurs, which makes sense. We also come from a family of athletes, and you you were an athlete. So talk about what role your background has played in setting up your company and how you run your company and how you think about your company, all that.

Dewey Burke 32:05
Yeah, I think you you mentioned the two pillars of how I think about leadership and running a company. The fact that I’ve got entrepreneurship in my blood. My dad ran his own financial services firm for 44 years before he sold it, and so I grew up watching him, you know, coming down for breakfast in the morning, and he was working. Then he, but he was at every sports game that I had growing up in the afternoons, and then after dinner, he was back in his office working. So I started to understand the grind that an entrepreneur has to know at a really young age. My mom’s dad was an entrepreneur. He was a builder and a developer, and you know, spending summers with him, I understood that he was constantly on the phone. Even if we were out fishing or out on a hike, he was constantly fielding calls and having to to deal with stuff that was coming across his desk. So I saw that at an early age, and it it definitely shaped me, and then from an athletic perspective, I probably give the most credit to my college coach. I was so fortunate and blessed. I played for Roy Williams, who was my coach at North Carolina. He’s a Hall of Famer, and he is truly the most competitive person I have ever met in my life. And I learned so much about him about being competitive every minute of every day. I mean, literally, that guy. We would land our plane from a road trip, and he would be hoping that his bag came off the plane first. I mean, he he was that competitive, and so watching how he operated, but then also also watching how he led us, and probably the biggest mantra I got from him because he he deployed it with our basketball team and we’re talking about five star guy I played with 14 NBA players when I was in college so I mean the elite of the elite from 2004 to 2007 we were as good as anybody we won the national championship in 2005 I mean we were we were excellent and I watched how he coached our guys, and his his innate ability to treat every player the way they needed to be treated. He used to talk about this all the time. I don’t promise to treat you equally. I promise to treat you fairly, and fair is different to every one of you. And so you’d have a five star all American that he could scream at and jump and you know get on and they would respond and you’d have another five star that was already playing so hard and giving every effort that he had that he couldn’t yell at at all because that was how that player needed to be coached. So I learned a lot from watching that and I and I try to bring that to leadership and we have 25 employees. I do not treat them equally, but I treat them fairly. I don’t always get it right, but that mantra I think stuck with me from him.

Dave Tabor 34:49
Yeah. So how did he coach you?

Dewey Burke 34:52
Fairly. Yeah. Yeah. But

Dave Tabor 34:54
but in what way? What was sure? Yeah.

Dewey Burke 34:56
Yeah. You know. Look, I was a walk-on. I was. I was not a highly recruited. Athlete, so I did it the hardest way you could do it, which was you know go to a a student tryout with 80 players, and you know was lucky enough to get picked at the end. So I did it as as difficult as you could possibly do it. But my role there was to to be a practice player to help the guys get ready for the playing against Duke and Kentucky and the teams we played, and you know by my senior year I had become a leader of of that group of the walk-ons, and so he and I developed a really special relationship. That when we were you know running the scout team or running the other team’s plays, he and I had a communication on what he wanted me to do to help prepare the guys, the starters, right? So he and I had this rapport that became really cool. I think because I earned his respect with my work.

Dave Tabor 35:50
Yeah,

Dewey Burke 35:51
but I had to earn that because when I first got there, he didn’t even speak to me. Yeah, you know, because he didn’t have time. He was worrying about bigger things. But I earned his respect and remain close with him now. Gotten to play golf with him a lot, but again, other than my dad, the most influential person in my life, I don’t respect anyone more than him, and the most competitive person I’ve ever met.

Dave Tabor 36:13
So, is being that competitive a happy way to live your life.

Dewey Burke 36:23
It’s a great question. You know, I if he was sitting here, and I think if you asked him that, he would tell you that he took the losses way, way worse than he enjoyed any of the wins. And so I do think there’s a line where where you know that’s athletics, and that’s what that’s about.

Dave Tabor 36:41
Yeah,

Dewey Burke 36:41
and this is just business, and you know, people are are coming to work and need to earn a wage and take care of their family. So I don’t treat our business that way, right? I’m not insanely competitive as it relates to running the business. I think I I try to have an appropriate level of understanding of what my team is going through and needs, so it’s probably. I think he would tell you. I think it’s unhealthy to be to be that. Well, that was my question. Like, if you’re that

Dave Tabor 37:08
competitive in a sports team, which I think, look, you either win or you lose as a sports team. There’s a it’s a on on off switch, but in business, there is a I think somewhat of a continuum, although you do have to win, but it’s different, don’t you think?

Dewey Burke 37:25
No doubt, no doubt, it’s different, and it’s we’re also not a hyper competitive industry. You know, this is not high stakes sales. This is not Wall Street.

Dewey Burke 37:35
You know, let’s be very honest. We lend people money on their stuff, and I say this to my team all the time. You know the proverbial comment, like we’re not curing cancer, but we’re not right. We’re not. We’re not saving lives. We’re not curing cancer. We’re we’re offering a product where you send us your stuff and we give you some money. Yeah. So I think we take ourselves the appropriate level of serious.

Dave Tabor 37:57
Yeah. But

Dewey Burke 37:58
we have fun. You know, my leadership style is I as I said is is fair. I think very balanced, not not overly emotional, and I think being steady is as valuable as anything. Yeah, and that doesn’t

Dave Tabor 38:11
work in sports unless you’re Ted Lasso, maybe. But right, you know, which which isn’t really the real world for the most part, right? No. So your dad, you said your dad was in financial services. What’s he think of what you do now?

Dewey Burke 38:25
Yeah, he’s just like most. Kind of scratched his head when I told him I was going to start it, and he said, “You really think there’s a market for this? I don’t think anybody realizes they can do this. And I said, “Well, that’s my point. That’s exactly what I’m trying to go discover. So really, it was a science experiment. If you want to be honest? I mean, I raised some venture money early on, and just said, “Hey, I want to go try this, taking the the pawn shop market upscale, yeah, yeah, and and online, and

Dave Tabor 38:51
seems kind of brilliant. Like

Dewey Burke 38:54
so far, it’s been good.

Dave Tabor 38:54
Yeah, 10 years.

Dewey Burke 38:57
Yeah,

Dave Tabor 38:57
yeah. Okay, so what do your friends and family say about this. Obviously, your dad understands it differently. But when you go to parties and talk, like, yeah, I mean, people must be fascinated by your stories and your products and all the things that you’re. I mean, it’s got to be kind of fun for you.

Dewey Burke 39:12
It definitely is, and you know, not not just the the business we’re in and the product that we sell. That that’s been great and is fun to explain and tell stories, like you said. But I would honestly say just just the effort of building something that’s been successful, you know, starting with one little office, and we were down in Centennial, and there were four of us, and now we’ve got four offices across the country and 25 people and institutional backing. Right? I mean, this is a this is a great story, not just because it’s mine, but just about what you can do if you start something, have an idea, a dream, and then get really good people around you. Like I’ve been so fortunate that the the team that I’ve hired, the people around me, have been fantastic. They’ve been really sticky. People haven’t. Left and those original four. Well, you’re doing well. Yeah, but I, but you know, you got to treat people right, and you’ve you’ve got to keep it interesting. And so those first four people are still with us, which is something I take a lot of pride in.

Dave Tabor 40:12
That’s cool. Now you’re based in Colorado, headquartered here. Is that what’s that about? And I mean, Colorado’s not the luxury capital of the world, like even Beverly Hills. So, yeah, talk about that. Yeah,

Dewey Burke 40:24
why Colorado? So, my wife, who was also a college athlete at North Carolina, she ran track, much better athlete than me. She’s a Colorado native, so I’ll brag on her quickly. She, in her high school career here in Colorado, she went to Smoky Hill. She was a 15-time state champion, two-time national champion. She’s in

Dave Tabor 40:44
what

Dewey Burke 40:44
in in track, middle distance, middle distance. Yeah, yep. So she was a miler, a 5k, and she’s in the Colorado Sports Women’s Hall of Fame. Wow, tremendous athlete. And so we met at in Chapel Hill as athletes, and then we moved back here about 15 years ago. So she

Dave Tabor 41:00
hasn’t she hasn’t borrowed money against her trophies.

Dewey Burke 41:02
No, no, no. hasn’t hasn’t needed to yet. That’s good.

Dave Tabor 41:06
All right. Last question for you, Dewey. Is there something you haven’t yet collateralized that you think would be so much fun?

Dewey Burke 41:16
You know, we haven’t done a plane yet. I think we will at some point, my my sense would be at at some point we’ll be able to leverage a jet, but we haven’t been able to do that yet. My investors don’t like boats, so we we have you mentioned that earlier, but we we don’t do boats, just just not not our thing. But I’m hopeful that one day we can do a plane. Cool. All

Dave Tabor 41:37
right, well let’s wrap up there. Today on ProCO360, you’ve been listening to my conversation with Dewey Burks, founder and CEO of Luxury Asset Capital. Dewey, what a fun and fascinating! I would have talked for a long time, but we’re about we’re kind of wrapping up. So, but thanks for being on ProCO360. Thanks for

Dewey Burke 41:53
having me. Really enjoyed it. Good

Dave Tabor 41:55
listeners, glad you’re here too on ProCO360, where we say live, work, love Colorado, because you and I and my guests can be successful anywhere and choose Colorado, you make the show successful by subscribing to the ProCO360 podcast, and it’s a huge help if you submit a review in your app. That’s the show Live Work Love Colorado.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai