Photo Credit: Bravo
The season finale for Bravo’s new show Flipping Exes just aired last night with the infectious personalities of serial home flippers and former lovers Nina Klemm and Michael Lesure. Taking place in Carmel, Indiana which Klemm affectionately calls the Beverly Hills of the Midwest, the behind the scenes of this property duo in the luxury real estate market are on display which for starters, neither is hard on the eyes which makes it understandable as to how they got their own show. Being good at what they do helps as well, but we’re just saying. As crazy as the show’s concept seems, we’re sure that making a business relationship work with an ex is not that unfamiliar of territory for many. But making it work for the near 5 years these two have been doing it is another story. One key that Lesure says is important to working with your ex is establishing boundaries. Klemm says she has no boundaries. The Australian on demand television app Hayu said their favorite part of the show is watching Lesure nod and quietly agree with everything… which is true because he’s clearly lived long enough to know that the woman is always right. Smart man, Michael… smart man.
Speaking of how long Lesure has been around, it could be his Twitter name ending in 88 or the fact that black doesn’t crack, but it wasn’t until we saw an article referring to him as being in his late 40s that we ever thought either of these two could be outside of their 30s. It took a video of him saying it out of his mouth to believe it. He’s a professional bodybuilder who just entered his first competition in 2016 at about 46 or so. A former athlete with dreams of being in the NFL that turned his sights to business, it’s safe to say he’s doing well in his field these days. And he gets to be eye candy for the viewers. Even Klemm herself has said he looked like a stripper on the show. That scene alone could be enough to help with season 2.
Klemm and Lesure actually got their start on the path to television from a similarly named Youtube channel of theirs, Flippin’ Exes. That would explain why we kept screwing up the hashtag live tweeting the show alternating between #FlippingExes and #FlippinExes after hearing about their Youtube. Their charisma clearly won Bravo execs over. But even before that, Klemm says Lesure was her children’s Sunday school teacher. The saying is that you can find a man in church, but she lucked up and literally got a two-for out of the situation with a future business partner.
She said that the idea for the show came during a day of riding in the car together fighting, which is what she says they do best, when she told Lesure, “I have a good idea” to which he replied, “Let me hear this sh*t.” And that’s when the Youtube channel idea or idear as they’ve said (hehe) was mentioned where he told her, “That’s probably the smartest thing you’ve ever said.” The rest from there is pretty much history. And at the time that that car ride story was told on her Youtube channel in 2016, they had done a total of 10 flips in 2 years which is quite impressive.
A regular day of Klemm and Lesure working together can entail anything between lofty ideas from Klemm being met with objection from Lesure, the numbers guy to occasional pecks on the cheek, discussions about what Lesure used to like and our personal favorite of him buying houses without telling her, it’s hard to turn away. Four of the episodes I watched in a binge session back to back.
But more importantly than just making money in business, both have their philanthropic side with Klemm working with the charity Restored which helps human sex trafficking victims. (Restoredinc.org) Similarly, Lesure has said to their local NBC affiliate WTHR, “Hopefully this builds into something great that we can help other people.” And that’s just what the two have been working to do. He’s currently forming a construction company to help rebuild parts of the Florida panhandle damaged from Hurricane Michael that hit in late 2018. It may have been a full year but he says there’s still areas where things are pretty bad that he wants to help in, specifically Panama City and South Walton. And of course, he’ll be doing work in his own region of Indianapolis. “What I want to do is bring awareness and maybe that will employ or empower people to come back down and dedicate more resources and manpower to really accelerate the repairs.”
While the concept of exes working together flipping homes isn’t exactly an original one, with a few competing shows of Flip or Flop, they’re not Nina Klemm and Michael Lesure and these two certainly did their job in front of the camera. We’ll be keeping our fingers crossed that a second season comes out of this.
