← The Paul Morris Podcast
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- [00:00]
A
Mikey Taylor, welcome to the Paul Morris Podcast.
- [00:04]
B
Thanks for having me.
- [00:06]
A
Such a delight. And I follow you online among many, many, many other people who follow you online.
- [00:16]
B
I imagine we also have probably a lot of mutual friends.
- [00:19]
A
Yes. I mean, your career speaks for itself, but for folks who don't know you, professional skateboarder, you know, famous. I'm not from the skateboard culture, but as you know, you know, our cameraman is, and we've got a lot of respect, but you know, X Games fan favorite. When did you start skating? When did you know this was a gift for you?
- [00:50]
B
That's a good question. Well, when I started skating is an easy one. I started when I was 12 and it didn't come natural to me. Skating usually doesn't come natural to most people, but I have a very obsessive personality and I hate failing and I want to master things. So it was a perfect combo for skateboarding because it's so difficult. And I would say I actually never felt like it was a skill set that was just given to me. I felt like for me, I had to earn it. And I say that because I had friends that were always better than me and it seemed like it was always easier for them. And so I would say for me, it was more the way my brain was wired is why I got good at skating, not because it was just natural.
- [01:34]
A
I know enough about sports and have played enough sports that just starting something at 12 and then achieving the heights that you achieved is usually not what we hear. You know, what we hear is I'm friends with a pro MMA fighter and she started very young. It's just like these things, like, you know, to achieve high level success nowadays, you know, it's like, oh, you know, Tiger woods started playing golf at 3 years old or whatever, so 12. And then also to say that you're not, weren't naturally gifted is also an amazing thing to say because so many people try so hard hours and hours and hours to, to be good at skateboarding and they're, they're just not doing the stuff you're doing.
- [02:21]
B
So, yeah, you know, I should probably clarify that I'm coordinated. I am coordinated. But if you compared me to others, it would take me 10 times the effort to do the same trick. It just, I had to put in more work. I think it was more the obsessive side of me that got me to the professional kind of stage. Without that, I had no chance. And that's what you see, actually, you see the reverse for a lot of very talented kids, the kids where everything comes natural to them. They almost don't cherish it because it's so easy. And, and then you see some of the best skateboarders actually never go anywhere with it. That's the fascinating part.
- [03:02]
A
Well, that's the, it's the, it's the grit.
- [03:05]
B
Yeah.
- [03:06]
A
And thankfully I've taken grit into work. Yeah, I was and am, if I can still say, I was going to say kid, so I got to take that word out of it. But I was fast.
- [03:18]
B
I feel the same way.
- [03:20]
A
I was and am the kid that, you know, the thing especially coordination, the thing came very naturally, came so gifted to me that I'd be three years into somebody's progression after six months. But then what happened was I got that level out.
- [03:40]
B
That's right.
- [03:41]
A
And then I'm like, oh, okay, well, this isn't fun anymore.
- [03:43]
B
Yeah, that's right. That's right. That, that happened to me in almost every other sport. It just didn't happen in skateboarding.
- [03:49]
A
Yeah. I went from mediocre skier. I decided I was going to become an expert skier. I became an expert amateur, super amateur expert skier. Went heli skiing with the best of them. And then I was like, okay, no more.
- [04:03]
B
Yeah. So getting the cheat codes or beating a game, right?
- [04:05]
A
Yeah, I love it. Well, I imagine you were making, you were making good money. Obviously making good money as a skater.
- [04:12]
B
Is that I was making good money as a skater. If you compare skateboarding to the other sports, we don't make money compared to them. But for a 223 year old kid making 85 grand a year, that was crazy. That was a lot. And then I eventually started making more as I got my own product. But skaters typically don't make enough to not have to do something after most of us have to work almost day one after our career.
- [04:37]
A
What are the skills that carried over? And were there, were there any ones that surprised you? Like what, what? Obviously like grit. We, we could go with grit because that's so important in everything in life. And when you see somebody that's a professional, professional is different.
- [04:55]
B
Right, right.
- [04:56]
A
And, and I see somebody's professional anything, I'm like, they've got grit.
- [05:01]
B
Right.
- [05:02]
A
Did that grit carry over? Were there other things that carried over into, into your next careers?
- [05:08]
B
Yeah, the, for me, the stuff that I just had in me that were refined through skateboarding, it was, I will go through a wall to get there. You know, something like failure. That started becoming very natural for me. So that wasn't part of the equation any longer. The skills that I learned from skateboarding that I then applied afterward was, number one, skateboarders look at the world very differently. And then two, because of how our world, the skate world, is structured, we can't do a trick that's already been done at a certain spot. So, you know, for a. Let's say Tiger woods, right, if he's playing Augusta and hole one has been birdied, you can no longer birdie hole one. It's off the map. It's off the table. And that's how skateboarding is. So it makes us go to a spot and try to find a way to do a trick that's never been done before. And that actually changed the way I looked at life and business. What does everybody else see? And then what are they missing? And skateboarding taught me to focus on the thing they're missing. That's a very good thing to have in business. You have to be careful with it, because being early on, business actually can create a different type of challenge. And then I would say the second part was skateboarding breeds genius marketers because there's nothing really different about the product we're selling, Right? If you look at a actual skateboard, there's only two manufacturers that make every single skateboard, but there's a hundred different brands. Shoes. There's only a handful of shoes, shoe manufacturers in Guangzhou or somewhere in China that's making our shoes. So most of the shoes are the same. You have to get really good at making your consumer think that your product is better than the others, where, in theory, it's the same product. And that's a. That has absolutely crossed over for me.
- [06:57]
A
And one of the things, too, that I would push back a little bit on is every time I'm looking at starting a new fact, you know, doing something new, the first thing I'll do is go and see what everybody else has done before or who has created great success. Like, for example. For example, in real estate, you know, there's. I view it in such abundance that you really can. So that's. Let's use that, like, skateboard trick analogy or the birdie, you know, birdie. The whole. You know, okay, so somebody. Somebody, like, crushed that trick over here. We gotta. We gotta find something new. I almost view real estate as the opposite in the sense that I could go and take the fundamentals of somebody who crushed it in real estate in Austin, Texas. I have a friend and business partner there. I could take that model and run that model somewhere else.
- [07:58]
B
Yeah, correct. Real estate is one of those things that's you're tied to fundamentals and it's not. You don't have the same factors at play with something like a product, right. If you're selling product, it's a. It's a different type of calculation, right. We're not going to come in right now for the most part, and disrupt real estate. There are areas of how that's going to be done. But you can absolutely have a value add strategy that everyone else has succeeded at. Find a market where the supply demand is offset and go succeed there. You can, right? Probably the way I would compare the two is when I would go to a spot, I would find a different way to do the trick. But if you looked at the actual fundamentals of what I was doing, I was skateboarding the same way everyone else did. So if you look at that in real estate, right, Maybe the more fair way to say it is, okay, if everybody's doing self storage and you know they're looking at the same type of fundamentals, who are the major employers, what's the job growth, what's the population growth, et cetera, okay, I'm gonna find an asset that fits that. But my value add proper, the thing that's gonna separate me is maybe gonna be unmanned storage, right? Maybe that's the differentiator for, you know, something like multifamily. And I'll tell you how this applied to my current business. When we were looking at new apartments to buy, the fundamentals were still the same as the other, so that part could be replicated. But what we were doing was we were chasing the creatives, right? So there, there was a. There was a tendency or there was a path that creatives would go down, which was they would find markets that were cheap that weren't that cool. And once the creatives entered the space, the markets became very cool, right? They naturally would create the coffee shops and art studios. And what that would end up doing for real estate is drive the value up, right? So we would find a pairing where the maybe conventional fundamentals were there. We would be chasing the creatives. And then on some of our value add that we are doing to the apartments, it was aligned for a certain generation, which was the younger generation. And so that would probably be one way that we're trying to find a separation for what we were doing. But, you know, the numbers are the numbers. I'm still confined to a, you know, certain noi and cap rate and expense ratio and all of that.
- [10:22]
A
You transitioned that that really beautifully in the sense that that trick that has to be Novel, in a sense. You're using all your, you're using all the fundamentals, right? That you, that you learned the whole way. And, and that, and you really are. That really is in alignment with what I was talking about, because I'll look at the way that somebody's doing it, and I'm not really doing that full, you know, R D, rip off and duplicate. What I'm doing is I'm.
- [10:55]
B
You're taking the core. The core principles. You're taking 100.
- [10:58]
A
And then, and then what can I do to differentiate from that spot?
- [11:03]
B
Right. That's exactly right.
- [11:05]
A
And so that is. That really is a great analogy from the, from the, from the, from the trick that seems like, to the outside world, like, okay, we. Never mind. We can't do that anymore. We're. We're gonna go ahead and. We're gonna go ahead and, and, and really learn from it.
- [11:20]
B
That's right.
- [11:22]
A
One of the things I picked up from, from your podcast and some of the things you talk about is that, you know, sponsorship money is like, you know, there, there's. It's fragile, or there's, you know, it's not real money, or, you know, I don't, I don't want to put the words in your mouth, but give me that wisdom and distinguish it for me from the things that you do.
- [11:48]
B
Okay. So when I was a pro skateboarder, sponsorship money felt very similar to an employer. It's just a job that's paying you. For me, except because I picked a career that had a short timeline, I felt like my sponsors owned my future. And so I was making money while I was relevant, but once I was no longer relevant, that money went away. So I always looked at that as a risk. And so, yes, I was blessed by income coming in from my sponsors, but what I did not want to happen was I can no longer skate at the pace I did. Sponsors went away, income gone, and now I'm struggling. That was a risk I wanted to take off the table. So my whole model was, okay, where can I put dollars that can grow beyond my career? And if I can shift all of that income from sponsors into assets, I'm good. It doesn't matter if I can no longer skate. That applies for 99% of people, right? I've got a sales job, I'm making money, I'm eating good, my lifestyle is great. The second I stop performing, the second they change my comp plan, the second any factor comes into my life, I have challenge. And so the problem, the majority of us look at wealth through the amount of income we make. We don't calculate wealth based off how long do I not have to work. And I'm still okay. And I just had somebody come into my life and, and teach me this viewpoint early enough where I then just had to go execute. So that was, that was, that was one of the biggest blessings given to me was understanding that concept.
- [13:24]
A
Income, whether it's sponsorship money or not, is sort of. Is fleeting. And I look at it the same way. Having I came from a legal background, you know, the best you could do is. Is crush it in your area. Maybe, maybe you're a specialist enough where you're charging $2,000 an hour. When you're on the golf course, you're making zero.
- [13:48]
B
Yeah.
- [13:48]
A
When you're taking the day off, you're making zero. As opposed to assets that work for you.
- [13:53]
B
That's right. Right. Attorneys calculate everything by minutes. Right. Minutes are hours. But that applies almost every career. I mean, you know, real estate, right. Agents go sell homes. They got to sell a certain amount of homes to live. And one of the biggest challenges that agents have is they understand an asset class so well. And too many of them don't participate in the benefits that it creates. They just are tied to the income. And the problem is we end up putting ourselves in a trap that we didn't intentionally try to create. Right. It's a natural progression. We start making money, we get married, we have kids, we get the house, we get the car, we put the kids in school, they want to be in sports. Every kid's going to be a pro athlete. Now you have coaches, and before you know it, your lifestyle has matched your income and you have no room. Right. We've basically gotten rid of the margin. And that feeling sucks. And it happens almost without us noticing. And so one, it's important to know it first before it happens because it's easier to create the correct path in the beginning. It's really hard to change once you've already established it. It's like golf. Right. You brought up golf. If you learn without a coach, you're going to learn how to hit the ball. There's probably going to be things you do wrong. It's much harder to then change a habit that's already built in as opposed to learning right from the beginning. Same thing applies for, for money.
- [15:13]
A
There's a concept that, that somebody taught me. The guy wrote a book on it called Profit First. Did you ever hear that?
- [15:21]
B
No, I haven't.
- [15:21]
A
Okay, so. And he had built these giant companies. I Feel like in part, I still suffer from it. And that's, you know, building a giant company that's like a cash eating machine, you know, and you hear about this in, in all, in all phases of, of of life. I have a friend who's the daughter of a very famous and old rocker, and that rocker is still like traveling all over the world performing, like, why is he still doing this? And she's like, you got to feed the machine.
- [15:52]
B
That's right.
- [15:54]
A
Even at that level. Right. And profit first is a discipline that sets up separate bank accounts so that, because, because people will tend to manage their life based on their checking account. So, so if my checking account is full, then somebody says, hey, we've got this great new marketing idea. Sure, I might throw some money at it. That's not the best way to evaluate. And what happens is in a, in a business like, like this business, you've got to get the landlord paid, you've got to get the employees paid, you've got to get insurance paid, and then you pay all your bills. And at the very end, that's profit last.
- [16:37]
B
Yeah. So, yeah, so it's the pay yourself first model, correct? Yeah, they live by that model.
- [16:42]
A
Oh, you do?
- [16:42]
B
Oh, yeah. I had somebody instill that in me very early on. It's a, it's a, it's the, actually the only way I've ever been able to save. Because even like we're all human, right. It's like I make money, I pay the bills, what's left over, and maybe we have a couple months where it's left over and then we want to go on a trip. And that's human behavior. What you're talking about in the pay yourself first model is it just takes that calculation off the table or it takes that risk off the table. Right. Money comes in, you have an automatic withdrawal, puts it into a different account. You don't touch that account. Then the money that you have after is your expenses and your, you know, discretionary, non discretionary. And if you can keep that system at play, you always have that cushion of growth, whether it's 10%, 20%, 30%. And then as it starts compounding in investments, it starts getting fun. Just takes time.
- [17:33]
A
I was not, I did that also without the intention. It was great to hear somebody really explain how to do that with intention. And the profit first guys, you know, it basically talks about creating all these separate bank accounts. And you know, you, you're like, you just look at your, you look at your overall, you know, income and expenses and you can start small. You know, you throw in five grand a month. You know, I'm going to pay myself five grand a month. And it just like the first, the first bit of income that comes in over here. And then they would have a tax account so that you don't, you're not spending to the point where now you've got all this income that you received, you spent it. Now the tax bill comes and you have a crisis. And the funny thing is, before I heard this concept about profit first, I fell into doing it the right way, because what I would do is I would have this chunk of money come in. I wouldn't separate it. I wouldn't pay the taxes. I wouldn't. But instead of running out and buying a car, I'd be like, you know, there's this investment that's great. So I would over invest. And then actually what would happen is, is when it came time to pay my taxes, I didn't have money to pay my taxes any more than the person that blew all their money. But the difference was I had bought great assets that, you know, so then when I struggled and did whatever I do, I had to borrow some money to pay my taxes. You know, one year I, I, you know, I had to call the California Franchise Tax board and put myself on a payment plan. And it wasn't because I hadn't made a bunch of money, and it also wasn't because I'd blown a bunch of money.
- [19:07]
B
Yeah, you had the right, you had the right idea. You just needed a small tweak.
- [19:11]
A
Yeah.
- [19:11]
B
Yeah, that's good.
- [19:12]
A
Yeah, that's really good. I'm still ye. Maybe that tweak is going to happen pretty soon.
- [19:16]
B
It'll happen. It'll happen.
- [19:19]
A
A lot of athletes, you know, for one reason or another, they'll, they'll make a bunch of money. And I understand skate skating, you didn't make a bunch of money, but it was great money at the time. And they really, you know, sort of blow it all at the end and it doesn't come out well for them in the end. How are you able to sidestep that mistake? And what's your advice for people, for people that are facing that?
- [19:45]
B
Yeah, I sidestepped it because my parents panicked when I told them I wasn't going to go to college and I was going to try to be a skater. And the thing that my parents pushed on me really heavily was go get help. Just go get somebody in your life that will help you do this financially. And that mixed with a fear like, fear can be powerful, right? You can definitely use fear to get you forward. It can also, you know, hold you back at the same rate. For me, I was so scared of what my life was going to look like after skateboarding that that fear created action to stick to the plan that somebody, you know, built the blueprint for me when I was young. And so what I was doing was, Wasn't making an astronomical amount of money, but I was living off almost nothing. I. I took the Dave Ramsey approach. I just reverse engineered it. And instead of living off nothing to pay off my debt, I was living off nothing to invest as much as I could. And that was very, very powerful for me. Now, talking specifically to athletes, here's what happens with athletes. Number one, pro athletes don't like thinking about the end. And when they have to think about the end, it's typically when they're on their way up or potentially at their peak. What usually happens is as the wheels start falling off and your career ends, then you go into, okay, I gotta figure this out. And unfortunately, you just left yourself with no Runway. So the, the different perspective change that needs to happen is on your way up, you're not planning for the defense to protect yourself. You're ensuring a roadmap so that after your career ends, you keep moving forward and you keep moving up. So it's actually an offensive. Just most athletes hear it as defense. And then if you do this right, the options on the table when your career ends are. There are. They are many. And it feels very freeing.
- [21:46]
A
Yes. And very empowering, 100%. And I was very good friends with Ricky Williams, the famous pro football player. And one of the things that he said to me was that athletes feel like they're so in charge or they need to be the. In essence, they need to be the man. They need to be in charge. They need to. That. That in order to say, like, hey, I need help with my finances. You know, you. That it takes a level of humility.
- [22:13]
B
100. Yeah.
- [22:14]
A
And. And in your case, and in my case, that humility was easy. I think, if I may speak for both of us, because I didn't have a safety net. I was scared to death. So humility comes a little easier when you're.
- [22:29]
B
When you're freaked out 100%, you will get to a point where the humility will come. It's just, are you gonna wait until your back's against the wall or are you gonna accept it before the car crashes? You and I just thank God we picked it before the car Car hit.
- [22:43]
A
I love it. You had a great experience. Great exit with, with Saint Archer, which is the brewing company. Tell me, tell me how you, how you got into that and how did that wind up great and what did you learn from it?
- [23:04]
B
Okay, so I ended up being a part of building a very successful business that had a phenomenal outcome. We ended up selling the business, and that was in big part due to my father in law, because I was dating his daughter at the time and I wanted to marry her. So I asked if he would have lunch with me and I was going to ask his blessing to, you know, marry his daughter. And when I asked him, I was not prepared for the reaction I was going to get, which was an onslaught of questions. Great. What are you going to do after skateboarding? I don't know, maybe start a business. Okay, what type of business? I don't know. What makes you think you'd even be good at business? I don't know. Just hit me, hit me. Hit me to the point where I was like, is he gonna say no? Right? Long story short, he said yes. I've now been married 15 years. We have four children. We have one coming any day now. And two, it really made me start thinking about what was next. What was I actually gonna put my time and energy into after skateboarding. And that led to me connecting with two of my friends. We came up with this crazy idea that we could build a production brewery. And we took the same model that we were talking about, the beginning. What can separate us? And at that time, craft beer was really starting to grow. Like if you went to a party, you know, 80% of people would show up with the conventional beers, Coors, Coronas, modelos. And then 15, 20% would show with Ballast Point or Racer 5 or some of these, like, cool, unknown brands. And so we were seeing that trend happen. We looked at it and went, okay, there's something that these companies are missing, which is marketing, brand and community, right? All they're doing is selling product. So we had this idea that we could build a product which was a beer that could compete with them. So, you know the fundamentals that we talked about earlier, we had to have a beer that could win medals. But the thing that made us different is we built a whole brand around the California lifestyle that we viewed our state as, which was surf, skate, snow, music, art, culture. And so that was all of our marketing. We brought investors in, those investors became our ambassadors. All of our marketing material was their stories had nothing to do with beer. The only mention of beer Was this video is presented by Saint Archer. And then it was a video on Paul Rodriguez growing up skating in the valley and having a famous dad as a comedian and, you know, being a Mexican kid that's building this brand that became the greatest skateboarder ever. And we did that with all of our athletes, ambassadors. And what that did is everyone else that looked at California lifestyle the way we did, they were bought in. And then buying the beer just confirmed that they were a part of our world. And our brand exploded. We were, I think, the fastest growing brewery in California. And then we ended up selling our business in Miller Coors. So that's how we found a red ocean. Right, which was a growing industry and potentially saturated. We found the thing that we thought they were missing which put us in the blue, blue ocean scenario. We got to ride the wave of growth that was happening with the overall market. We had the separation and then we had the exit.
- [26:19]
A
I love it. And it's one of the things I think and talk about all the time is the blue ocean. The blue ocean. Another phenomenal entrepreneur that has been massively successful. I interviewed, he called it white space. First of all, you have to have enough ability to enter that. But where are the white spaces? Where is the open opportunity? And like you said, the beverage world is. Is not the white space. It's not the blue ocean, it's the red ocean. The trend that you, you, you spotted the trend, which is. Which is very similar to what you were talking about with real estate.
- [27:02]
B
Correct.
- [27:02]
A
Which is one of the things I love to do is find that emerging neighborhood. Timing is very important because again, just using my own real estate, my own, my own, my own real estate experiences, you know, with. When I only invest in places I know. So I. The only real estate investment investments that I hold are in Pittsburgh, which is where I originally from a management company and the whole thing there and then in Los Angeles or nearby, because that's where you can see it. Where, where you can see it and feel it.
- [27:38]
B
Right.
- [27:38]
A
You can find these trends and you can find that emerging neighborhood. Even, even in L. A. There are the, there are the emerging neighborhoods. And there's a timing. Oh, that's always going to say in Pittsburgh, you know, there was a there' which was starting to blow up. And then there was the, the civic center, which is all the universities. And the distance between the two was so small. And I bought a bunch of property, you know, in between the two. The problem is it took forever. You know, I didn't sell at a loss, but I held it forever and sold it for a few dollars more. Now, you know, somebody now, 20 years later, they probably did the thing. That's great. So I have sort of a rule of thumb, which is. Which is really, you know, the neighborhood is already like 25%. You know, if you go at 5. And by the way, when it's 25% changed, here's what the people that know the neighborhood are saying. Did you see the price of that thing? Like, people have lost their mind. They're paying like it used to be half the price, like three years ago, but when it's only 25%, there's still a lot more room. And you're also the. The tide is also rising.
- [28:44]
B
Right.
- [28:44]
A
So you're getting in there.
- [28:45]
B
Yeah.
- [28:46]
A
But back to your Saint Archer thing is that making brand and. And seeing the trend and then the brand and the community and the marketing and that is. That is skateboarding, right?
- [29:00]
B
That's right. That's right. We apply. So here's a funny thing. I had two other partners, so there are three founders total. And two of us came from skateboarding, the other one came from surfing. We didn't know anything about business. We didn't know anything about beer. Right. We had to learn that as we went. Three naive kids that thought anything was possible. And what we did is we applied our world tactics, which was skating and surfing and how you have to market, and we applied it to an industry that had never seen that before. So, you know, that paired with. We brought people in that were. We were surrounded by great people. You know, there's two things that you mentioned that are very important to. To highlight. Number one, any successful entrepreneur, if they don't tell you that, hey, man, there was some time and some luck involved in it, they're lying to you. Like, truthfully, there's always a little bit of that. And then secondarily, the. The barrier to entry part, depending on what you're doing, if it's pretty high, a lot of people just don't. They don't think it's. They're capable of getting in, but it's actually not as high as we think. I think that's the interesting part. So you almost want to be naive to some level. Right. Like, I look back at my business now, if I know what I know now, I'm not sure I would have started it. And after we sold the brewery, knowing what I knew at the end of it, I'm not sure I would have started it. So I actually think there is some value in being a Little bit naive because you don't know how brutal it's going to be and so you just go and do it.
- [30:24]
A
When you then have that exit, now you're sitting, I imagine it's pretty good exit, now you're sitting on, on, you know, a decent sized pile of money. But that, that again is not an asset class. Correct. That is, you know, and again I have, I have friends that, that have made lots of money in products and one of the things that I will see, it's weird because I was in, I was in this peer to peer group with lots of, lots of very wealthy people. And when they were, when they were, when it was product driven or when it was a business, not real estate, it was weird how once the business was established, their income and their net worth were about 10x apart. So if guys that, you know, oh I'm making 5 million a year with this business, as long as it has some maturity to it, the net guy's net worth is about 50, $50 million.
- [31:22]
B
Right.
- [31:22]
A
It's 2 million a year, 20 million. And the math just went like that. Except for when I got to the real estate guys and then the real estate guy was like, oh well my net worth is 150 million so they should be making 15 million a year but really they're making like 4 million a year.
- [31:39]
B
Yeah, yep, yep, that's right.
- [31:43]
A
Right. I'm ringing a familiar bell.
- [31:47]
B
I think the important thing to highlight is it's dependent on what you're doing, right. Like if you're going to build a service based business like mom and Pop, it's the reverse. They cash flow very well. They just don't get the valuation. It's why so many people in their 60s now are trying to offload their business. But if they're pulling in seven, $800,000 a year, but they're only going to be able to get 15 when they sell it, they can't sell it. So that's an example of a cash flow heavy business. The reverse is absolutely at play. And that's what our brewery was. We, you know, I would still view a business as an asset but the way we were going to make money is on an exit. Right. Our value was tied up in equity so we had to get to an exit on real estate. You could probably argue that you could do the same thing. You can look for just cash flow assets that don't sit in appreciation markets and you're just going off a yield or you can go pure appreciation, California. Maybe your cash yield is three Three and a half percent, but you've got the equity, you know, Bump. I would say most real estate investors, though, are rich on paper and their cash flow is not crazy. That's most of us.
- [32:54]
A
That's right.
- [32:54]
B
Yeah.
- [32:55]
A
And it's amazing. It was amazing to see. It was to the person, you know, There were maybe 14 of us in there and, you know, 10 of them, 10, 11 were some form of business. It didn't necessarily have to be product, but whatever the business was, and it was like 10x, you could predict it. And then when you got to the real estate guys, you know, we had one guy in our group that, that, that, you know, had a net worth of 6, 700 million dollars. And his, you know, again, that math should be 60, 70 million a year. And he, you know, we're not crying for him, you know, but he was making 18 million a year. And you're just like, what, you know, what happened to the math? You know, And I believe it's because of this, and that is that real estate is such a stable asset class that, that it drives the price up and it drives the yield down. So that that means the cash flow is getting lower. But if you hold onto it long enough, you know, that's where you see people's. You know, one of the things I hated about flipping anything was, you know, you. I put all this time, energy and effort at the front end and then I'm gonna sell it, and then it's like starting over again. It's like being a real estate agent. You know, you're back. Yeah, you're back to ground zero. And I was like, you know, I can, I can hunt for property all day long and never get tired of it, knowing that once I acquire it, sticking it, you know, I'll. I'll reposition it, you know, take time on repositioning it and stick it on the back burner and then just.
- [34:36]
B
Yeah, you're creating.
- [34:37]
A
It'll grow.
- [34:37]
B
Yeah, you're creating a machine. The, the. Yeah, you answered, I think similar to how I view it. We don't like including risk into the calculation. We typically just focus on return or cash. Right. And how it's supposed to work is if you're going to do something with less risk or a lower risk profile, usually the return is going to reflect that. And real estate is just one of those asset classes. It can go wrong, but the risk profile is much lower than me starting up a brewery, you know, and the numbers reflect that. The return I got in the brewery, you can't get in real estate. But the probability of me losing everything in the brewery was much higher than our apartments that we do or our storage units, you know, so it's just part of the equation.
- [35:19]
A
Yeah. One of the guys in our. In our group who. Who does private equity started with a beverage product, and, you know, they. They. He and his brother killed himself doing it. They had a great exit. And they were just like, let me tell you, the 9,000 reasons we would never do a beverage again. You know, they like. They just. They just happened to get, you know, one of the big companies to buy their thing. And if they didn't, they would have been.
- [35:49]
B
Yeah. So I'm gonna maybe assume this is not for everybody, but I bet to assume that the guys in your group, even though from a revenue to equity standpoint, the real estate guys were, you know, a little bit off kilter, probably the stress levels that they held versus others were much lower. Right.
- [36:08]
A
For the most part. For the most part. You know, there was a woman in our group, and I just interviewed her, and she and her husband. Her husband in particular was doing massive developments, and, man, they had the roller coasters. And it was driving her crazy because she's like, are we rich or are we not rich? And you can fall into that, into real estate. That has not happened to me because I've taken a much more conservative approach.
- [36:38]
B
Yeah, that's right. If you're a flipper or you're flipping development, it's a different risk. Yeah.
- [36:42]
A
I could have the. You mentioned Dave Ramsey. I don't listen to enough of Dave Ramsey that I could risk misquoting. But I know that he is very against leverage. And I can tell you that if I did not use leverage, I really should do the math. Someday. If I didn't use leverage, I mean, I would have 25% of the wealth that I currently have. And leverage is definitely an accelerant. So therefore, it will really accelerate your upside and it will really bury you. What do you think about leverage?
- [37:23]
B
I love leverage.
- [37:24]
A
Yeah.
- [37:24]
B
It just needs to be done. Right. Right. The thing about Dave Ramsey, and it's important to know this, you need to know who he's talking to. Dave Ramsey is not talking to you and me. Right. Dave Ramsey is not talking to people who are building wealth. Dave Ramsey is helping people get out of debt, credit card debt, not the debt you and I are talking. Talking about. So in that sphere of people he's helping. Listen to him. Like, he's totally right. But Dave Ramsey is going to get you from defense to neutral Dave Ramsey is not the guy that then takes you from neutral to offense to freedom. That's, that's not his lane. And so how I've always viewed debt is, you know, through a few different lenses. Number one, an accelerator, right? If I bought an asset for $100,000, all cash, and it appreciates by 10%, I made 10%, right. If I put 20% down, I financed the other $80,000 and it goes up by the same 10%. That's a totally different return profile, right. I just got 50% of my return, so it's much greater. So it's important to know that, sorry, excuse me, 100%. Where people go wrong with leverage is they start understanding that the more leverage they use, the higher return they can make. And then they get starry eyed and they give themselves no cushion if things go wrong. Right? This is what you saw in the last three years in the commercial real estate space, right? Interest rates are an all time. Low cap rates are compressed everywhere. Everyone's doing value add, right? Which is bridge debt. So they're now taking out 80, 90% loan to cost at a super low interest rate and a low cap rate. And what happens rates, triple cap rates soften and their debt is going to mature. And once their debt matures, now all of a sudden the value is gone and they can't replace the debt. They're underwater. And so now you run the risk of either having to put in more capital or losing the asset. So you want to be very careful with it. But if you're using it accordingly or you understand the risk and you're comfortable with it, I don't, I don't know why you would not do that. Secondarily, you're not taxed on debt. Like that's, that's the thing that most people don't realize. When you hear somebody say you're not taxed on debt, usually the pushback is, yeah, but you're paying interest, right? But that's a flawed calculation because that comes from the type of interest we're used to paying out of our pocket. I go buy something on credit and I got to make that interest payment. That's money out of my pocket. When you're putting leverage on assets, you're not paying the debt service, right? Your tenant is paying the debt service. And so now you're making a different type of calculation. Do I have enough income coming in to comfortably pay my debt service? And then if I ever want to pull capital out, it's done through a debt instrument. You're not taxed on it. So understanding that will. Will change your investing path completely.
- [40:16]
A
That is, you know, and I've been doing this so long and, and I appreciate you saying it that way because it's just. It's just a much better way to explain it than I've ever. Than I've ever heard. And that is, you use a perfect analogy. I haven't thought about it that way because I'm so used to thinking about real estate that I don't think about debt in the same way. But you've said it in a way that's phenomenal for our listeners. And that is, you know, you buy a car if you pay all cash or you buy, you know, something on your credit card that you can't afford. So now you're paying this high interest rate, and it really is. It's money coming out of your pocket, the debt. Used correctly, the tenants of the. Of the property are paying. They're the ones that are paying.
- [41:06]
B
That correct? Yeah. And I think the thing that really adds to that is home. Homes. When we buy a house, we pay the mortgage, right? So we're looking at interest rates. I mean, that's a big factor. Why it's so hard for people to buy homes right now because the interest rates are high. So we calculate a home based on what we can afford every month. And as rates go down, we're stoked. But we are used to fronting that payment out of our pocket every month. That's not how assets work. That's why the big discussion around is a primary residence and asset. And people say, no, it's because of that component. Right. And that's not how. That's not how investment properties work. It's a completely different income structure. So you view debt. Did you view debt differently?
- [41:46]
A
And I've used my houses as, as a way to build wealth.
- [41:52]
B
Yeah, you can do that. Like, and this is what gets people ratt say something like, a home isn't an asset. And people go, are you kidding me? I've got $500,000 of equity in my house. I've got $2 million of equity in my house. What do you mean it's not an asset? Right. All we're saying is that when you own a home, you are paying the mortgage, you are paying the expenses. When you have an investment property, you are not. That is the difference. Right. One brings money into your pocket every month, the other takes it out. Doesn't mean you can't make money on both. It's just, it is a different thing.
- [42:23]
A
And Ultimately, you know, you have to live somewhere. So you're either going to own a home or you're going to pay rent.
- [42:29]
B
Correct.
- [42:29]
A
So, so there's going to be some, there's going to be some cash outflow for, for where you're living. And I don't blame people. My business partner, smart guy, you know, we, we invest together and I, when I buy a house, I buy a value add house for myself.
- [42:46]
B
Correct.
- [42:47]
A
And he just went, look at, you know, I work hard all day, you know, I've got a wife and a kid, I want it, you know. And he bought a house that was done, done, done. Beautiful. There's no value add. Possibly, of course it did go up in value.
- [43:00]
B
Right.
- [43:00]
A
But there wasn't any value add possibility. You can't blame them for that.
- [43:03]
B
No, not at all. And I think you nailed it. You're, you are going to have a cost of living period. Do I want to rent or do I want to buy? But you're going to pay to live, right? Just if you're, if you're paying to rent. I think the calculation is I'm going to do this for a time to then buy a house or I'm going to do this so that I could put money into assets and then I'm going to use those to help me buy the house. So I think that is more the full, full circle or the, the total picture that you need to pull from. And then, yeah, the value add, like, you know, I'm built to, to find value. Right. It's like I'm just like you. Let's, let's find the fixer upper. Let's add the value. It's going to, you know, force appreciation. But I also have a wife with kids. And so you have to calculate that it is part of a, it is one of the factors. Sure.
- [43:53]
A
And you know, they don't want to, they don't want to live in a construction site. No, yeah, I, and I, and I totally appreciate that. So. Okay, so, so you really used what you had. I mean somebody, somebody had me watch really for branding the, the documentary Dogtown and Z Boys and it was just like there was, there's a whole like branding aspect to it. How did you, how did you then what was your gateway to real estate? And then bring me from, from that to present where you're running private equity.
- [44:28]
B
I was investing in self storage passively is what I was doing. And so I started off in the stock market. Very conventional. I was funding things like my ira, my SEP and all of that. And then somebody introduced self storage, and I had no clue what it meant, but he was a mentor of mine, and I liked the sound of it. So I made an investment. And then I got to experience cash flow coming in and appreciation. And there was something about the tangible component of real estate that I liked. I'm not going to say I didn't. I felt like I trusted real estate more than the stock market because I can go there and see it. Right. When I sold the business in the beginning, I was like, okay, now I have a lot of cash. I put that into real estate. We stayed with the company Miller Coors for about a year, and then I was the first to leave. My other two partners stayed a little bit longer, and then before you know it, we were all gone. That's a whole other podcast if you sell a business to somebody else. Interesting experience. And so I was in a position where I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do next. And I noticed that I was in a very unique position compared to my friends because pro skateboarders don't usually build companies, invest in real estate. Career ends, and they're okay. Most of us have to scramble. And so I really had this idea of trying to, you know, replicate what I had done and build that structure for basically my friends and family. And when I started looking over the last 20 years, the one thing I had was education. I had somebody come in and teach me, which gave me the tools to then go out and apply secondarily. I had opportunity. So I landed on. I want to create a business that has opportunity. I made that opportunity in multifamily apartments. And then I wanted there to be an educational component so that all of the wisdom that I was given I could pass out to others through social media and they could take with it as they will. And that's how we got going well.
- [46:19]
A
Okay, so how do you do real estate, though? Yeah, no, yeah, Right. So explain to me. You know, sometimes listeners will hear private equity, and they'll think Wall street or they'll think, like, the, you know, Apollo or some, you know, some of these massive private equity companies. So just break it down for me. What. What. What's private equity mean? Where do you. Where do you. Where are you in that?
- [46:48]
B
Yeah, that's a really good one. So private equity traditionally means that you are going to pool capital together, and that capital is not going to come from the private markets. So it's not going to come from the stock market. And then usually traditional private equity invests in business. Right? So what for the listener, you're going to hear this one because it's trending everywhere. Private equity right now is doing a roll up strategy. That's the hottest strategy. And they go out and they buy service based businesses, they buy financial businesses, they buy marketing agencies, they package them up together, they try to find some efficiencies. Right. They're cutting down expenses or increasing revenue that's ultimately going to increase their ebitda. Then they're going to offload it. That's traditional private equity in real estate, really what it means is that you're bringing investors together to go out and buy real estate and you're doing that on the private side, not the public side. So for my business we go out and find limited partners. So that's investors that want to own real estate. They want the benefits of real estate appreciation, cash flow, depreciation, loss, but they don't want to be active, they don't want to find the assets, they don't want to manage it, they don't want the phone call at night. And we basically bring the two parties together and then when done right, our investors make a return and then we get to have a percentage of the profit. And that's basically the nuts and bolts of the business.
- [48:08]
A
Sure. I, I, I had done syndication. Yep. You know, and I view the difference between syndication and private equity is basically syndication, just a smaller version of it as opposed to private equity would be like a real estate fund.
- [48:28]
B
Is that, yeah, you can, that's a totally fine way to look at it. Like if you're looking at my actual business, there's projects that we do as a syndication. So a syndication just means that you're creating an offering for a singular project. And then a fund means you're going to create an offering for multiple projects. That's really the only difference. There's some, there's some more complexity into it, but that's the biggest difference. Private equity really is just a flow of your capital. Where's your capital coming from? And you can almost look at it as crowdfunding. You're crowdfunding one project or you're crowdfunding multiple. And then there's different sizes. Right. I would probably be viewed as a boutique company. And then you have the monsters, you have the big players.
- [49:11]
A
Right. Do you, I don't know if you discussed publicly, but assets under management, how big is your.
- [49:18]
B
Yeah, we're about 350 to 360.
- [49:23]
A
And do you use, how much debt
- [49:27]
B
do you use on our storage portfolio? Our storage Portfolio is valued probably around $180 million. I think we have about a 50% debt, debt, debt, debt to equity ratio on that portfolio globally. And then when we're doing multifamily, what we do we put a pretty big equity check down. So on all of our deals right now it's about 40%. So we do a 60% loan to cost and then we develop. So we're driving value up. And then when we refi out we're usually going into more institutional loan, Freddie Fannie and usually we'll land around some, somewhere around 60%, 60 to 63%.
- [50:04]
A
So when you say develop are you, are you building ground up multifamily?
- [50:09]
B
Yeah. So we go out and we find a property and then we go through the entitlement phase, we go through the permit phase, we build it, we stabilize it, we want to refi out and then we hold.
- [50:18]
A
Mm, that's great, that's great, great, great strategy. Where are you, where are you buying now?
- [50:26]
B
So our self storage platform is everywhere. We've got two assets in California, everything else is spread out and then our multifamily, I am exclusively in Southern California. So you know, you brought up. This is a conversation we had in the beginning. What is an opportunity that others are missing? When I started investing singularly in SoCal, that's when everybody was flighting. That was when everyone was chasing the Midwest and the Sunbelt states and they thought we were nuts for investing here because the regulation sucks, the politics are crazy, it's difficult. All the reasons why people left make sense. But my thesis is this. If our state is experiencing the most extreme housing crisis we have ever experienced because we don't add supply and all the investors are going elsewhere, what happens? Values go up, occupancy goes up. You're in an unhealthy market if you're just looking at where costs are. But if you're owning, that's not a bad place to be. So we tried to find those most under supplied markets and add supply and that's what we've been doing. Yeah. So right now that's, you know, I've got a handful of projects in Ventura, I've got a project we just completed in north park in San Diego. And then I have two projects that I just took closed on in the San Fernando Valley and then I have about eight to follow and those ones are actually all affordable housing. So that that's our newest platform is on the affordable side. And then everything else that we've done historically has been more market Rate.
- [51:52]
A
Oh, so what, what are the sizes of the projects?
- [51:55]
B
Cost or unit wise?
- [51:57]
A
You know, I'll take both, I guess.
- [51:58]
B
Okay. Where we want to be is sub 100. So I would say ideally I want to be around 90 units. My range. Well, because it's who you compete with. Right. So what I like doing is I want to be above the mom and pop and the, you know, the beginner syndicator, but I want to be below the institution. So what happens on the mom and pop investor is they don't totally know yet why they're or how they're underwriting deals. So they're kind of making decisions based on feelings. And when you're trying to negotiate against them to buy the property, they drive values up to a point where it just doesn't pencil for us. I don't like competing with them on the other end. Competing with the institutional capital, who has a 10 to 20 year timeline and a 5 to 6% projected yield. Very difficult to compete there as well. So what I like is buying assets where both sides are not trying to buy, building them to a point where the institutional investor then comes into play to be my buyer. That's what we like doing. So what does that look like? Most of our apartments range from 40 to 100 units, and then the cost of that can range from a $14 million cost to about a $45 million cost is, I would say, our spread.
- [53:15]
A
The properties that you're buying, do they need work and are they in emerging markets?
- [53:23]
B
Almost all of the properties we're buying are scrapes. So we buy them, we put them under contract, we go through the entitlement. Once we're entitled, we will then get our permits, scrape them, and build brand new. That's the majority of our assets. Wow.
- [53:37]
A
That. Yeah.
- [53:37]
B
And emerging markets. Yes, I want to be emerging markets, but the caveat is I don't want to be too early. So usually like, what we say is like, chase the home flipper. The home flippers are usually the first ones in. And if you start seeing the institutional investors dumping capital, you're usually on the tail end. So I want to follow the. The home flippers.
- [53:58]
A
That's cool. Also, what you described is the blue ocean. The blue ocean. I have a good friend who won't come on the podcast because he likes to fly under the radar and he built a portfolio and it was really institutional. He sold it to. I don't want to go too many details, but he sold it to Starwood Capital for several billion dollars before they're now Having a bit of difficulty. Right. But I recall asking him questions and one of the things that he said was, I can't look at anything under 200 units.
- [54:42]
B
Correct.
- [54:43]
A
So you're, you're, you're nailing it exactly in terms of. And then the mom and pops. I would argue it may, it may be what you say, you know, an underwrite. Oh, they just don't know how to underwrite it in the same way. But they're also, in a sense a retail buyer.
- [55:00]
B
That's fair.
- [55:01]
A
Yeah. So they're a retail buyer. So even if they do a beautiful job underwriting it, they're like, well, you know, it's the, it's the fourplex down the street from me. You know, it makes more sense for us as a family to own that.
- [55:14]
B
Yeah, that's fair. Probably. If I'm like, if we get really specific on, on who the bigger challenge is, it's the up and coming syndicator is the bigger challenge. It's the one that hasn't gone through the reps yet to know that things don't go according to plan. And so when they're looking at their underwriting, they're expecting a 3 cap on exit and, you know, no cushion for their, you know, development to go too long. It's that person. And so when they're looking at their pro forma, which we would say there's not enough factors at play, they think that they can buy more than us, but we just won't buy at that rate because we bake in that things will go wrong. That's probably the bigger challenge for us.
- [55:51]
A
How are you able to successfully navigate the entitlement, the entitlement problem? Because that, you know, and it's such, the entitlement can be such a value add that there are people, I'm sure you know better than I do that they get good at the entitlement thing and they'll just be like, okay, they'll buy it entitled and then, and then sell it. They won't even build the thing.
- [56:17]
B
Right.
- [56:18]
A
Because there's so much value added, 100%.
- [56:22]
B
So there are people that flip paper. Our view has been like, where do we add value that others don't? And how we time it is we go through the entitlement phase. We don't bring investors in. And then once it's entitled, that's when we bring investor capital capital in and close and we typically don't increase the value. And so that is part of our, our room to grow their investment at a higher rate. So that's one. Part two, it's reps. We've been building here long enough where we know how to go through the planning commission and the city council to get things entitled. And then now I, I don't do business in my city, but I'm the mayor of Thousand Oaks, so I understand the entitlement phase very, very well.
- [57:07]
A
Yeah, I did know that. And that's super cool.
- [57:09]
B
It's interesting. Yeah.
- [57:10]
A
Yeah. And you know, again, like you said about another topic, you know, that could be a whole podcast. I love the, love the community service piece that you bring and knowledge that you offer to so many people. Definitely North Star and someone to follow because you can tell from, you're giving this advice from the heart.
- [57:41]
B
Right.
- [57:43]
A
One of the things that you talk about, I talk about financial freedom. What, what is financial freedom? What does that mean to you? Do you have a def. Do you have like a solid definition for that?
- [57:55]
B
Yeah, I would say the two definitions of financial freedom are one, when you have enough income coming in passively to cover your lifestyle so you don't have to sacrifice your time. Another way to look at it would be how long do you have of not working while you could still float your lifestyle. Right. Those may be two ways to look at it. I view financial freedom as just options. When you get to financial freedom, there's more options on the table and there is a feeling of freedom in that because options are. That's upside in a lot of ways.
- [58:25]
A
You know, I do this thing, you know, this step one, which by the way would be like a magnificent step and that is to. If you created enough passive income. And by the way, a business that, that you're receiving dividends from is generally not a passive income because, you know, I own a bunch of real estate offices. If everything's going great, you know, it feels like passive income for a minute until it goes wrong. And then I've got a like full time job and a half. But real estate really can be. And it's a huge step to cover your, to cover your lifestyle.
- [59:03]
B
Yeah. It takes time.
- [59:04]
A
Yeah. And the issue that I see with that is that, you know, then you've got lifestyle creep. Yes. And that. And you know, and so I, there's a thing that I look at which I call defying economic gravity. And that is, it's just, it's just a couple, it's just a few more steps more than lifestyle. So, so I take and, and I'll even do it in stages so, you know, the lifestyle I currently have or maybe then There's a lifestyle. I'll call it the dream. I don't, I don't have a dream board because, oh, I'm gon take, I'm going to take a, you know, whatever the latest jet, you know, G45 and you know, have somebody Photoshop my name on the side. That's not going to get me up in the morning. But when I think about the life that I, that I live now, the life, an aspirational next step. What does it cost to do that? And then you break all that down. That's the lifestyle piece, right. And then I have, then I have. And you do net of taxes, of course. And then I have the savings piece, which given my philosophy, you know, is less than you would think it would be because it's basically retirement account money. And then I have an investment piece and that's the big piece. And then I have a contribution piece. And so when you have enough passive income to where it pays your lifestyle, pays for your savings, pays for your investment, right. And your contribution, that's, that's the number that I like to calculate. And then that's where I say define economic gravity because then you really can.
- [60:43]
B
Right?
- [60:44]
A
So if you don't have to quit, quit working, you don't have to quit doing your thing, but you absolutely could.
- [60:48]
B
Yeah, that's, that's a good way.
- [60:49]
A
That's your, that, that's a, that's a jump off.
- [60:52]
B
Yeah, I like that.
- [60:53]
A
And I think it was, it was the Milken Institute, but I think it was Charlie Munger, you know, years ago and he said that when you have enough assets, when you have enough income, passive income coming from your assets, that you can buy more passive, you can buy more assets with a passive income. That, that's when the, like the wealth snowball just 100%.
- [61:17]
B
Like there's, there's a now for a lot of, a lot of us that feels very far away. But I think it really is good to focus on the goal. And the ultimate goal is when income is coming in passively and you want to increase your lifestyle, the move is not okay, how do I make more income? It's, how do I get more assets on the board to then give me more passive income, then I'll increase my lifestyle. What Charlie's talking about is the next level to it where the income's covering lifestyle and all growth you want, plus growing more assets, which then grows the revenue. That, that's autopilot. Autopilot. Autopil.
- [61:55]
A
I love it. What, what do you tell people who are getting in the game now, you know, maybe they have a little bit of money, maybe they have 50 grand. What's a good way to get started?
- [62:14]
B
Okay, so this is what worked very well for me. I started with where I wanted to go. The end. The end game in mind. And when I first did this exercise, I was 23 years old, and I was a skater, so factor that in. I wanted to make, at that point, $180,000 a year passively, because I was like, that's a good life. I can have kids. I'm good. And so I reversed it and went, what's a conservative yield? I can get off that, and that could sustain during downturns. I picked 5%. Okay, I need about $3 million invested. And then I just started putting money in those assets that would get me to that. In the beginning, the calculation is this, you need to grow your wealth. So even though we're talking about passive income coming in, if you pick passive income over growth, it's gonna be a smaller return. So in the beginning, I was focused on growing the wealth, which was gonna be, how do I double my money every three, four, five years? And then once it's at the number I need it to be, I'll switch over to income. That was my blueprint. And then once I knew where I wanted to go, it was like, okay, can I get nine and a half percent in the market? Cool. Money's gonna go there. Can I get 15% on this real estate deal? Money's gonna go there. And then as I became more sophisticated, it became a game of taking risk off the table while still maximizing upside. And how you do that is just making sure that your investments aren't correlated. Right. If something happens, does every single one of your investments drop? Or do you have a piece of real estate that you have equity in? Do you have some private credit in? Do you have venture? Do you have stock market so that they e and flow together? And then my path became very clear once I understood all of those components. So once you do that exercise, just get started. A lot of people go, it's only 50 grand. It's only 20 grand. My first investment, I think, was $5,000. The $5,000 then led to 10, then to 20, to the point where now you're cutting million dollar investments. Just get started. It's not about the first deal. It's that the first deal opens the second. That's the framework.
- [64:21]
A
I love it. And, and also just get off the sidelines because you, you know, another thing I'LL do with the podcast is interview people that are, that do something else. You know, I interviewed actually my chiropractor, you know, who has bought and flipped and made a lot of money in real estate. He ends up making more money in real estate than, than, than being a chiropractor. And, and you just have to get off the sidelines in order to learn and make those mistakes and do, do the things that.
- [64:51]
B
100. Yes, 100.
- [64:53]
A
I love it. Phenomenal information. I so appreciate, I so appreciate your time. We do a fire round and so these are just questions. They, they could be deep and you could go back and forth forever. But just quick, give me your, give me your. Yeah, give me your thoughts on it and, and we'll, we'll go from there.
- [65:14]
B
Fire around. You want one word answers?
- [65:17]
A
They definitely do not have to be one word, but whatever, whatever comes to your mind. What's your favorite childhood memory?
- [65:26]
B
I don't know how to answer this quickly. My dad and I were in a. It wasn't Boy Scouts, it was called Indian Guides. And we went to the snow and every kid had to memorize all the names given to them, right, Their Indian Guide name. And if you said everybody's name correctly, you won a badge and everyone got through it easily. I struggled. And I sat there, which felt like an hour, trying to remember names, and I finally got it right. And I remember afterward my dad, I heard him talking to one of the other dads and he goes, I'm so proud of him for not giving up. And I always remember that that was a pretty, pretty good memory for me.
- [66:14]
A
Wow.
- [66:15]
B
Sorry I just blew your fire around.
- [66:17]
A
That was great. What's your idea of perfect happiness?
- [66:23]
B
A life that's aligned with your purpose.
- [66:27]
A
What's your greatest fear?
- [66:29]
B
Maybe something happening to the kids.
- [66:32]
A
What's a talent you don't have that you wish you had?
- [66:36]
B
Efficiency.
- [66:38]
A
What's an insult you've received that you're proud of?
- [66:42]
B
You're crazy.
- [66:44]
A
What's the quality you most like in a person?
- [66:47]
B
Honesty.
- [66:49]
A
What's trait you most dislike in a person?
- [66:54]
B
Untethered emotion.
- [66:56]
A
What's your greatest extravagance?
- [66:59]
B
Like, what's the thing I splurge the most on? Probably equity. It's probably that equity.
- [67:09]
A
If you could be remembered for one thing, what would it be?
- [67:13]
B
You made very deep questions part of the fire round, I think. Trust. Trustworthiness.
- [67:22]
A
Nice. So LA has a lot of great hikes. You go on a hard, difficult hike by yourself. You get to the top, you look down. Wife, kids, business, partners, investors, community. And you shout one thing. What do you shout?
- [67:46]
B
I'm going to meet my creator.
- [67:49]
A
Wow. That's awesome. Hey, Mikey Taylor I love it.
- [68:06]
C
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- [68:34]
B
Experian.