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Konnected Minds Podcast with Derrick Abaitey
Entrepreneurial Mindset and Perseverance: Ken Banks on the Blueprint of Business, Success and Building Happy and a Healthy Life
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A
How many people are going to make a million dollars this year? If you want to start a business, you got to have a hunger in your gut. You got to have a hunger in your gut. You cannot be afraid of 18 hour days. You gotta think differently. And you can't be afraid. You can't have fear. You have to look forward. You have to say, you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do this. No matter what, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna get it done. When you're a business owner, you can't plan. I've seen a lot of people that are going to school, that are going to MBAs and all that and they try to start business, they can't do it. Yeah, there's, there's benefit in having a check every week.
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B
To an awesome episode of Connected Minds. Now if you're here once again listening to this podcast and I'm sure that you get value from the content that we release today, I'm going to have a conversation with Ken Banks who is an entrepreneur, a businessman, a strategist who owns Banks Global. Banks Global is a construction and development company in Maryland. He's done great works in the skyline of Maryland, up to a tune of US$100 million. Now if any one of you is here and is listening to us, then I'm sure you'd want to stick around and listen to the cues that he's going to give us when it comes to real estate companies, how he's done it over the years. Look, he's been in business for over 50 years and for me it's certainly a man that I want to sit down and have a chat with. Mr. Banks?
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A
Yes.
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B
How you doing?
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A
I'm doing great, thank you. Yeah, yeah.
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B
And today I really just wanted to find out, you know, what your background in terms of real estate is when you first started and the ropes that you've taken to get to this level.
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A
You know, I first started in the construction industry and so I was in construction for a number of years. I started my construction company in 1980. I was, I was 28 years old and went from doing work in the residential kind of construction and, and gradually went into commercial and then so we built some of the largest structures in the Washington D.C. area, Baltimore area and back in the States, one was a $600 million hospital for Johns Hopkins, that was a joint venture. Another one was the Hilton Hotel in Baltimore and another was a 5,000 seater. These are multi, hundreds of million dollar jobs USD. And so that's where I started I needed a, you know, I needed an office space. And so why not have an office space where you own the building? And so I bought a building and moved in with my offices. And economically it made sense because I'm paying myself rent from my company. You know, my company pays me rent, the owner of the building, that kind of stuff. And tax wise, it works, it works out a little bit better. And I use my company to do the construction. So wait a minute, this is a pretty good deal, right? And so I began to buy more and more properties and bigger and bigger properties. And I would find the financing, do the work, do the construction, and then lease them out or rent them out. And that was my model for a number of years. And then at a certain point in time, the projects, there were a couple of projects that came by. They were just too big. I just couldn't, I couldn't handle them myself. It was just too big. And so. And one was, this was my first one, but one was the redevelopment of 88 acres around Johns Hopkins Hospital. It was massive, multi billion dollar project. And I knew it was too much, too big for me. Right. But I had the political contacts and be able to be a strong person to be able to get that project done in the state of Maryland. And so I went out and found partners to be able to do this project with. And so when, when you develop a, find a partnership now, there's a couple of different joint ventures. The first joint venture venture I had was with the company and I had the job. And it was redevelopment of 500 apartments.
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B
Apartments.
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A
Just a redevelopment. It was just rehab. But it was a very complicated structure, financial structure, and, and a lot of paperwork that had to be done, et cetera, et cetera. And I wasn't really set up for that. We were set up to do the construction. And so my first joint venture with one of the largest construction companies in America, Whiting and Turner, and I said, look, you guys do the paperwork, take care of that and we'll take care of the construction. It was a 50, 50 joint venture. And so I came in, we put our superintendents on a project, we ordered the material, we had the subcontractors, and we did that work. And they did the other, the other side of that, the administrative side and all that. And it worked out beautifully. And so that was my first joint venture, which worked out very well. And joint venture that I booked to them. And so other joint ventures are much.
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B
Bigger, you know, with all the businesses that you've done.
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A
Yes, right.
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B
And all the Experiences that you built. What are some of the things, the struggles in between that you had to overcome?
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A
Struggles in, in usually manpower. Okay. In a, in a construction world, anyway, this manpower, because it's like a feast or famine. You get these big jobs and you hire people and you get all these people. Right. And at times I had almost 100 people in my, in my business, you know, not a huge company, but 100 people. That's quite a lot of people running around. Right. And, and you know, you, you're hoping that you, you have work for those hundred people all the time. But of course, sometimes it drops down. Yes. And so I know you don't need 100 now, you need 70. And so what do you do with the 30 people? Because you're thinking that maybe next month this job is going to come through. You know what I mean? So those are the kind of things in between. And there's also the cyclic kind of economic times that all countries go through. Yes. And so there's these down times, you know, and, or just right now where most of the world is in high inflation. Yes. So what do you do during high inflation? And so as a business owner, can you take advantage of that? Can you take advantage of. And you see a lot of businesses now have taken advantage of high inflation by raising their prices when they didn't necessarily have to. And so that's happening all across the world where, where businesses have, have, yes, their costs have increased because of supply chain difficulties. But when those supply chains difficulties became manageable, the costs haven't come down, they've stayed up. In fact, they, they keep on rising them until people scream. And when they scream, then they stop. Right. And so, you know, at any point in time, if you have money, you can make money doing high times of inflation, but if you don't have money, it's really difficult, very difficult, you know, because so many things and most people are at a place where, you know, when things cost 10 or 15 more than it did last year.
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B
Yeah.
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A
It's difficult to survive.
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B
I've actually just seen in an email that the UK are preparing to increase the minimum wage.
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A
The minimum wage, right.
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B
Yeah. But it's, you know, it's funny you speak about economies and, you know, the, the current struggles that countries are going through. Again, the UK also released, I think a few months ago that they're in recession now.
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A
Yes.
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B
I mean, I think they've been in recession for years before now, but it's come out and it's official. Do you still think that real estate is A good investment.
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A
Now of course you, when you say real estate, real estate is, has a lot of different pieces to it.
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B
Okay.
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A
You can't say real estate and say is this good or bad? You have to say what part of real estate, like I would say office space is probably real bad right now because in, in, in an age where so many people can work from home, businesses have gone to the point where they don't need 50,000 square meters. Right. Or you know, they, they need 10,000 or whatever. Everybody's almost, almost everybody's cutting down, cutting back in terms of the office space needs. So if you're a, a developer and you are in office space needs, it. It's not, it's not a good, it's.
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B
Not a great place to be. Yeah.
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A
Now if you're in medical, if you're in.
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B
Rental.
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A
What kind of rental? You know, if you're housing, you know, that's rental, but business rentals is not what I was going to say, storage, what do you call that? Storage units, you know, for your computers and things of that nature. This distribution is, is, is very good in certain, in certain areas. Just, you know, because of, you know, companies like Amazon and, and you know, it just. All the distribution centers are, are doing well and medical centers are generally doing pretty well. So you got to kind of say pick, pick your field. So if you're in residential, it might be very good according to what area you're in.
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B
Yeah, yeah, that's true. You know, when most of us, when we start business, we don't have the first hand experience. We've never done it before.
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A
Right.
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B
Because I remember coming out of university and saying, look, I want to register a business and start a pharmacy. The only experience I had was what I had in me.
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A
Right.
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B
Which is Derek saying that he want to do business. Now what sort of mindset do you think an individual needs to be able to pick themselves up to say I want to have a startup business?
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A
You know, there's I, I think that's a good, great question. That's a great question because I've seen a lot of people that are going to school, they're going to MBAs and all that and they try to start business, they can't do it. Yeah. Because I think it takes more than that. And, and I'll say that I was fortunate enough to have a very poor upbringing and so a desire burned within me and I think that many business owners, not people who get money handed to them and continue business, but if you want to start a business, you Got to have a hunger in your gut. You got to have a hunger in your gut. You cannot be afraid of 18 hour days for months on end. You can't be afraid of that. If you, if you, because you know, if you want. And, and the other part of that is you have to be not, you know, there's, there's benefit in having a check every week from, from an employer, right? Yes, get a check. I know, you know, I, I can plan. Yes, everything is safe when you're a business owner, you can't plan. You, you, you know, you, you might get a big hit, but you might, that might be the only hit you get for a couple of months, right? So you gotta, you know, you, you gotta think differently. And you can't be afraid. You can't have fear. You have to look, you have to look forward. You have to say, you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do this. No matter what, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna get it done. You know, you have to take, what is that? Japanese general who, when they, when they, they were going to war, right, and they had, they got into these ships and they took these ships over to the island, the other island, when they were going to fight. And the general turned around and they burnt, they burnt the ships in the line.
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B
It's actually a think and grow rich.
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A
You said, Is that what. Yeah, he said, you know, we, we either, we either, we either win or we die. Yes, there's no, there's no option. And so sometimes when you take the option away, when you take the option away from that. I used to tell people, you know, I give a speech and I say, look, how many people are going to make a million dollars this year? You know, let's say a thousand people in honest. Maybe one person raised their hand and he's, that person's lying, right? I said, I'll tell you what, what if I told you that if you don't make a million dollars a year, you're going to lose something very valued like your children. You're gonna use your children, you're lose your children or your parents or whatever, you're gonna lose them if you don't make a million dollars this year. How many, how many of you now are gonna make a million dollars a year? All the hands go up. I said, what's the difference? What's the difference? The difference is we know we can do it. It's just that we don't feel like doing it. But when, when something is given to you that you have to get it done. And you will not take any other answer except to get it done. You're going to get it done. And so that's what business takes. You have to have that, that fearless attitude. You have to have that mindset that I'm going to make this happen no matter what. And you're going to run up, you're going to wind up seeing adversity. You're going to, you're going to, you're going to come into the almost looks like a hard stop. You're going to have hurdles in your way. You're going to have people telling you you can't get. Get it done. You're going to have all kinds of things happening. But, but at the end of the, at the end of the line, your mentality is going to be, I'm going to make this happen. It's going to happen for sure.
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B
Whoa now. Yeah, Whoa. At what point did you feel you got very close to giving up? And what happened? What was the turn?
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A
I can't. I can say I've been very discouraged. I can say I've been very discouraged. But I, and I, and I can say that I had to stop a business, right? I had to stop because I just, I had to do something else. I had to, I had to make money. You know, and sometimes, sometimes you fail, but you don't fail. You fall down, but you don't stay down. The only, the only, the only. There's no shame in falling down. The only shame is not getting up again. And so, you know, I was a martial artist. You know, I was world champion martial arts. Yeah. Yeah. And, and years ago. And, you know, you get knocked down like I got teeth knocked down. I got, I got a broken hand and all that kind of stuff. And, you know, but you, you can, you can get knocked down, but you can't stay down. You got to have the attitude, I'm going to get back up and I'm going to be successful. I don't, I don't care what. And, and you can get knocked down once, you can get knocked down twice or three times. So I, I have never, I've never come close to quitting my dream. That's what I'll say. I've been discouraged. I've been, you know, all kinds of stuff, but I've never come close to quitting my dream. If I have a dream that I want to see happen, I want, that's what I want to happen. And so I can't. That's it.
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B
You know, some of us Right? Yes, we, at any, any point in time there's a thought in our mind. Are we doing it right? Are we doing it right? Are we doing it right? Because you move from this business, then you add on that business, then you add on that business. Yeah, it never stops.
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A
Yeah, you can't know. You can't know, but you got to take a step down a path and the path will show you. You know, we can't, we can't predict, we can't know. But you know, you have an idea and, and you, all you got to do is be right 70% of the time. That's all. You can't, you're not going to be right 100% of the time. It's not going to happen. But you, but you're going to just along, you write most of the time, right. And you make, you make some decisions. I, I can look back on my life and say, oh my God, how did, why did I do that? That was, that was pretty dumb. You know, that was pretty dumb. But, but overall most of the decisions have been, have been proper. And so yes, you start down a path and usually you, you have to be a left or via right. That, that path is not quite what I want but I have to move, move a little bit to the left or right. So those, those things are, are going to happen. But you can't know. It's like all the lights are not going to be green when you start a journey. It's not going to happen. There's going to be some red lights somewhere and you're gonna, you're gonna hit those, you gotta make a left or right, you gotta do whatever you got.
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B
To do, you know. In your own words.
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A
In my own words you said yes.
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B
If I was to spend 90 of my time in life doing one thing, then I'll miss out on life.
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A
Yes. So that referred to living a well rounded life and, and not being, I, I said before not being afraid of working 18 hour days. You know, that's a, that's a period in life and sometimes a startup of a business, you have to dedicate yourself fully. But there's also family and so I'm not going to neglect my family. I'm not. I'm still going to have family and I'm still going to have exercise. I'm still going to. So I believe in the well and I still want to travel, I still want to see the world. Certain things couldn't happen at a certain point in time, but I, but I understand that we want to be holistic beings. You don't want to say, you don't want to have a billion dollars and look around and say Shaq said something recently. Shaq said something very profound. The basketball player.
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B
Yeah.
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A
He said that he was talking to somebody else and he, and I don't remember who he was talking to, but he said to the guy, you did it right. You, you, you've gotten all this attention. You become world champion. I was a football player. You, you know, you got, you got a ring and you have your family. He said, I messed up. He said, I live in a hundred thousand square foot house all alone. Whoa. You know, he said, I'm alone. And so, you know, family has become very important to me and my wife has shown me how important family is. I grew up in a situation where family was, was tough. It was ra. Being raised with an alcoholic father was, was tough. Right. It was just different, different dynamics. But yeah, live a well rounded life, church, whatever. If that's, you know, spirituality, family, friends, all of that is important, I think.
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B
Yeah. So, so when I, when I heard that quote.
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A
Yes.
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B
That you said, then the next question that came on my mind was then, how do you, you know, balance, you know, family, business and you know, relationships, friendships, you know, how do you balance it? How do you do it individually?
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A
I don't know. I've done this for so long now. You don't have to, I don't have to work. I don't have to work as hard as I used to work. Right. So I got a little bit of extra time, but I keep in contact with my friends and I try to do that on a daily basis. My family is important. So, I mean, every year we're doing something. Every Thanksgiving is like a Thanksgiving and family reunion at the same time. Lasts for a week. We take our grandchildren out for almost a month every summer. You know, just things like, like that, you know, and so I'm, I, I like spirituality and. And so I'm, I meditate every day for, you know, an hour or so in the morning and sometimes in the evening. And so there's this. I find. Well, everything. Yeah, well, I want to find space for everything.
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B
Very holistic.
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A
And then we, you know, we travel, we get to see the world. We've been in Africa for, for the past month, three different countries. You know, I mean, that's, that's living a life, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's living a life. And to me, yeah, I mean, I could be sitting home. I got some friends that sit home. But I, I think also just Staying healthy. I wanna. I wanna be as healthy as I possibly can. You know, I told him, be 72 in a couple of months. And, man, just. I want to keep on going. I want to break a world record. I'm not. I do. I want to break a world. There's a world record in rowing that I, that I became aware of from my age group that I'm talking about.
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B
Right.
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A
And I said, man, I think I can do that. I think I can. So I'm going to start working out in terms of doing this, you know, not, you know, the rowing machine. Yeah. The indoor rowing. And so what, you know, just a goal, Just something to do. Just something keep me in shape. Right.
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B
And. And I mean, you look fantastic. You look amazing. I mean, if I get to your age and I look like you, then I would say, hey, God, thanks.
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A
Well, that's what I do.
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B
I thank God every day you look amazing.
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A
Because it doesn't have to be like this. You know, sicknesses can come and. Yeah. You know, but yeah, life is important.
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B
Excuse me, I've got a very, very important question. Okay, Right. And it's, it's important to me because I believe it's a misconception. You know, there's a lot of misconception about having a woman with her own money.
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A
Yes.
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B
Her own path, her own dreams, aspirations.
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A
Right.
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B
And you, you, you yourself as a successful businessman, is married to a lady who has. Is also very successful.
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A
Yes.
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B
And I'm sure the time you met her, she was as successful as you were.
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A
We. Well, we met and we were both fledglings in our businesses. Right, right. I mean, we weren't. But, you know, we, we met at a certain point where she was getting started in her business, I was kind of getting started in my business. And, and we just kind of grew. Our businesses grew. We grew together. Our businesses grew together, but we had similar ideas about business and about how to grow business and about how to be successful and about how to present yourself to the world and how to. And how to sell. Because every, every business is you got to sell no matter what you got, you know, you got to sell. And so, yeah, we. Having a, A successful wife, I think is a blessing. I don't know. I know some people are intimidated about that, but, you know, we, we both have our own success, we both have our own money, you know, and we, we. There were times when she was traveling a lot, I was traveling a lot. We might be apart from one another almost 100 days a year apart, but when we came together, was it was fantastic. You know, now we're together much more. You know, we might skip 10 days a year or something. You know, somebody looking and saying, well, aren't you going somewhere? Don't you have someplace to go? Yeah, but we just. I think, why not? Because, you know, the way I look at it is, you know, if you're a successful man and your woman is waiting for you to come home every day, and you don't come home, and she's worried, and, you know, Gloria, my wife, has something to do. I have something to do. We have our lives to live. Right? And she has her dreams and a vision. Why would I want to get in the way of her dreams and visions? I don't want her to get in the way of mine. And so we, we have free freedom to go to. To do whatever it is that we think we need, we need to do. And that entails travel, and it did entail travel for quite a bit. But, you know, now. Now it's a little different. But I, I, I enjoyed that. I enjoyed us being able to talk about our successes and our. And our failures and, and, you know, what they mean to each other. And we just found that that relationship has brought us closer.
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B
Wow.
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A
That being able to talk about those kinds of things has brought us closer rather than, you know, apart. And she, you know, she had a lot more. Because she was in a. She had a lot more notoriety than I did, you know, in terms of people all over knew her because she was her business, and my business was in, you know, certain area, what I was doing. Her business was national, so a lot more people knew her. But, you know, so you have to be comfortable with that as a man.
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B
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, but thank you so much. Thank you so much for your time.
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A
Thank you.
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B
I, I think you've done fantastic. And, you know, you've.
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A
I think I got energized about 15 minutes in. I got a little.
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B
Yeah, yeah. But, but I think, I think it's been. It's been great. I think it's been great. I've learned a lot. You know, I'm on the journey. You're almost living the future that I want to live.
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A
Right.
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B
You know, so this is a lot of learning, you know, and even for the people that are listening to us, you know, gonna watch this podcast as well. Well, I appreciate you because I think when you came in, I said that, look, I want to get into real estate properly, and that's construction. So the workers doing all that projects, they work under me, right? So I want to learn the ropes.
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A
Yeah. Yeah.
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B
You know, so. Yeah.
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A
I hope I was helpful. Yeah.
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B
No, thank you so much.
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A
Thank you.
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B
Thank you so much.
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A
Thank you, Derek.
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B
Take care.