I build businesses, buildings, and the systems that run them.
Twenty-plus years leading product design for brands you know. Self-storage and multifamily real estate. Restaurants that feed my neighborhood. And every system I use, taught in plain language.
Faith first. Family always. Freedom as the fruit.
The Minute Underwriting Calculator
The exact model I use to size up a deal in about a minute. Enter a few numbers and you get a full five-year pro forma with NOI, DSCR, cap rate, and cash-on-cash, plus a clear Bad, Good, or Stellar rating against real lender thresholds. No sign-up, and exports to PDF, CSV, and Excel.
Operated hands-on, out of state on purpose.
California prices push yield out of reach, so I buy where the numbers work and run everything with systems, virtual teams, and honest underwriting. Storage, apartments, and value-add deals, all of it the same discipline The REbuild teaches.
The REbuild: everything I run, in one manual.
456 pages. Underwriting you can do in thirty seconds, entity structure, partnerships, storage operations, the deal machine, virtual teams, and the 90-Day Month. Written from the field, not the stage, with 53 worksheets and 31 formulas shown step by step.
Real estate education without the hype. Underwriting, partnerships, entities, teams, and systems, stated plainly by an operator who is still operating. The show is free. The REal Circle is the weekly live mastermind where we underwrite real deals together until yours is under contract.
The hardest business I own, and the best teacher.
A kitchen does not forgive a bad hour. Food cost, labor, ticket times, and covers report back before midnight, every night. I run Seoulicious KBBQ and Kokoroll in Southern California with partners who live hospitality, and we are opening more locations, and the discipline feeds everything else I run.
Design leadership with both hands still on the craft.
Twenty-plus years leading product and UX, from head of design roles to my own consultancy. I still ship: design systems, prototypes, and front-end. It is why my businesses look and work the way they do.
Finlistic is where the two worlds meet: mortgage and lending technology, designed and built by an operator who has sat on both sides of the deal.
“You are capable of far more than one job, one lane, and one paycheck. Build the system once, run it with discipline, and go live the life it pays for.”
I kept refusing to be one thing.
Pressure washing as a kid, a skateboard company, a food truck, a roofing company. Then twenty years of design leadership: Head of UX at loanDepot, VP of Product & UX at Big Purple Dot, Director at Veritone, Head of Product Design at Green Street, and my own consultancy, Kirkman & Company. Shipped for Honda, Kia, Activision, LG, 3M, Kaiser, Teradata, and Wolters Kluwer. Served as president of SDXD and OCXD, SoCal’s experience design communities.
The paychecks funded properties. The properties funded restaurants. All of it runs on the same operating system, and the whole story, scars included, is on the about page and in the book.
Family is the reason it all runs: my kids, my father, my sister near Dallas who invests alongside me, and the partner who makes the whole thing worth building.
Read the full story“The worst thing that happens is somebody says no.”
“Ninety-nine percent of what I feared never happened.”
“Delegate to elevate: buy back the hours you are best in.”
“Shoot for the moon: the clouds beat the trees.”
“A system that survives a bad week beats a plan that needs a good one.”
“Faith first, family always, freedom as the fruit.”
Take action on your first deal, or your next five.
Courses, one-on-one coaching, and a weekly live mastermind. My promise is simple: know your numbers, know the possibilities, and place your first confident offer within a month. The worst a seller can say is no.
Start free: run one deal through the calculator tonight. Then read the book. Then come sit with us live.
Tell me what you are building.
Deals, partnerships, design work, the book, or the Circle. Every note lands in my inbox at chris@chriskirkman.com and I read all of them.
