← The Digital Executive
The Digital Executive
Ken Burrows on Blending Crypto with Luxury Travel and Real Estate Innovation | Ep 1058
00:08:55
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Foreign.
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Welcome to Coruscant Technologies, home of the Digital Executive podcast. Welcome to the Digital Executive. Today's guest is Ken Burrows. Ken Burrows is the founder and CEO of Ken Lux, which is redefining luxury group travel by merging crypto with real world assets by tokenizing real estate. A serial entrepreneur, Burroughs is also the CEO of Mortgages for America and a partner for Team Whiskey Liquors. Over the last three decades, Burroughs entrepreneurial ventures have taken him across various businesses and industries, including advertising, business brokerage, e cigarettes, his whiskey company, mortgages and vacation rentals. He has also been a licensed mortgage banker for over 30 years. Additionally, Burroughs is the director of a 501c3 nonprofit named c saveunited.org whose objective is to help grow small businesses for the overall health of America and abroad. Well, good afternoon, Ken. Welcome to the show.
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Thank you for having me.
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Absolutely. My friend. I appreciate it. You're hailing out of the great state of Nevada there in Lake Tahoe. Beautiful place, love going there. And I'm just in measly old Kansas City, but we love it here. We love our barbecue and our tornadoes. So, Ken, I'm going to jump right into your first question. You've built businesses across so many industries, from advertising, email, e cigarettes to whiskey and mortgages. What underlying principles have stayed consistent across all your ventures?
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I think the underlying, you know, circumstance behind every business I start is, I guess, my drive to succeed. Even at a young age. When I was 16, 17, I was wanting to open a subway, but my mother wouldn't let me. I've always been very entrepreneurial and it's fun for me. It's, I'm also, I used to be minored in art, so I look at this as my paintbrush. It's fun for me as an art piece almost to put things together and build different businesses. I also run a nonprofit called saveunited.org that I come in and help people do that at no charge. So like I said, the whole thing is just more of a, an art piece for me and the drive to succeed for every business that I run.
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Thank you. I appreciate that. I love the story entrepreneurial as a, at a young age, which I think is phenomenal. Sometimes our parents think they know more better than what we know and a lot of times they do. But it would have been interesting to see if you had opened up a franchise at maybe age 18 that have been pretty cool. Again, love the story, love what you're doing, building. You believe in that art piece, as you mentioned. That way you can help the community help the world. And I love your nonprofit as well because you give back. Ken. Ken. Lux is redefining luxury group travel by merging crypto and real world assets, which is becoming very popular. Can you walk us through how tokenizing real estate creates new opportunities for travelers and investors?
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Yeah, we would definitely believe this is the wave of the future. Even with governments coming in and looking at bitcoin and different reserves on the crypto market. We've been watching the market Quite extensively last 15 years. I've been in the mortgage business about 30 years in real estate. So the new concept and the new wave is actually merging that digital crypto world with the real world assets. And we feel it's a strong point because a lot of crypto, you got meme coins and things like that, there's really nothing attached to it. I mean, it could drop to nothing. And with a snap of your fingers with this program system, it's going to be set up on a blockchain. It will be attached to the real estate that we own, which makes it a bunch more secure investment for different investors. But a major reason, we've been in the real estate market quite a long time, but the major reason we are wanting to merge the crypto as well is get the crypto investors into real world assets because a lot of them aren't, you know, you got a lot of whales out there with a lot of crypto, but they really don't have many properties. So it's a good way for them to get into the actual property market and actually help build up the economy and adding jobs and things like that. So that's really where we feel, bringing the two together and, and also bringing real world asset property owners into the crypto world because that is the way of the future. We just feel it's, you know, just merging everything together is going to be the way of the future. Like I keep saying, it's just going to help the economy and the world in general.
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B
Thank you, I appreciate that. And we, gosh, I don't know how many guests I've recently had on here. Ken, we talked a lot about tokenizing real world assets. But you bringing your real estate background mortgages to this space where, where we can tokenize real world assets, bring it into that digital economy, it's really another way for people to provide a secure investment opportunity. So I appreciate what you're doing there, fully support it. That's what we love here on this particular platform. Ken, how did your experience as a licensed mortgage banker for over 30 years influence your decision to explore blockchain and real estate tokenization.
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Well, being in the mortgage side and of course I've seen all types of financing. We've done a lot of residential, commercial, apartment complexes. I've done large projects throughout the world even. It's really giving me that insight on what makes money, what doesn't, you know, because I'm looking at all the profit and losses when I do a mortgage, I know that person or that company inside and out. So that's really where I've learned a lot on what to do and what not to do. We started getting into the vacation rental market back in 2016 in the Lake Tahoe area, and we found a really good niche with that. And another thing that's also we've learned is the residential side of it is starting to fizzle out because there's so many jurisdictions and municipalities starting to regulate these residential neighborhoods. So that's where, you know, I've had clients all over the nation now that are struggling with that. So that's another concept I'm bringing even to the table with them is. And myself of course, is coming into the commercial market and labeled as a motel. And that's fitting a niche because that's what people want to do. They want to rent these homes with their family's family, their kids, kids, cousins, kids. They don't want to rent five, six hotel rooms all in one strip. So it gives them that entertainment aspect of renting. But bringing that also into the crypto world is where I made some okay money at different cryptos, xrp, Doji coin and things like that. So that's where the concept of trying to merge the two together is going to be beneficial all the way around for the concept and the business.
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Thank you. You do have a lot of experience in this realm. You talked about having both investing in large national and international commercial real estate opportunities over the years, which obviously you learned a lot through that and that knowledge. Obviously you're crossing over into the digital asset realm. And you talked a little bit about how residential is a little bit more difficult, but you're dabbling in there as well. And I think that's important to share some of the challenges that people are seeing. Different laws in different places, jurisdictions. So I appreciate the insights. And Ken, the last question of the day. In an industry often slow to adopt new technology, how are you helping traditional luxury travel clients understand and embrace crypto based investments and ownership models?
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I think, you know, bringing in the crypto with rentals, there are quite a few people out there that do dabble in the crypto market and they'll be able to rent homes, even purchase properties in the near future, all through their crypto. We even set it up now we've got 20 different cryptos you can invest within. So that's where we feel it's bridging the two ideas together with the real world assets and the crypto, where let's say someone has $300,000 in crypto right now, they have a little trouble spending it. Well, here, if you want to go rent a Kinlux property in Lake Tahoe or elsewhere in the world, you're going to be able to do that. And if you're an investor of Kinlux, we're actually giving major discounts for being part of the club. And that's going to be our main website once we get more properties here. It's Kinlux Club. So that's really where I think the concept is going to help again merge the two worlds together and help people understand like the crypto people understand the real world assets and properties and the real world property investors understand crypto and help the whole economy grow in every asset aspect.
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Thank you so much. I appreciate that. Love what you're doing there. But also with Ken, Lux and I know that the more that we spread the word, some of the things that we're doing with real world assets, you're of course exploring the tokenization of rentals right now to merge the best of both worlds. But the more we can get the word out, the faster this digital economy and digital assets will be adopted quicker. So I appreciate that. Ken, it was such a pleasure having you on today and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
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Great, thank you for having me on.
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Bye for now.