Lessons That Took Me from a Mobile Home to Millionaire | Ep. 3

0:00 – There are moments in your life that don’t feel important when they happen, but when you look back you realize everything changed because of one conversation.
0:08 – And for me, that was a phone call, a call that forced me to confront uncertainty about money, about risk, and what it actually means to build something that lasts.
0:18 – That moment inevitably is what led to this show today and why I feel compelled to share the sage journey that I’m on.
0:25 – I’m Brian Spear, and this is the sage investor. It’s a podcast for people who’ve moved past chasing returns and started asking better questions about durability, downside, and long-term clarity.
0:36 – Today, I’m joined by someone who’s been part of that journey from the early days, Kevin Buck, who’s not only the engine behind our deals, but he’s also going to help unpack the story behind the call that changed everything and how it shaped the durably wonderful company that we have built over the past decade.
0:53 – This isn’t a story about success. This is my version of the American Dream and learning how to protect it.
0:59 – Brian, my friend, before we get into your backstory, I want to take a couple of steps back and I want to rewind back to our beginning, where we started off that first call that took place on a Friday afternoon that changed everything.
1:14 – And for those that are unaware, on my podcast, way back in the early days, I launched it back in 2014.
1:20 – I used to offer up, you know, basic 4 30-minute segments every Friday for a number of years where I would hop on and talk shop with anyone who was listening that wanted to talk real estate, talk business, whatever it was.
1:33 – And I really just wanted to get to know others. I wanted to get to know my listener base.
1:37 – One of those early calls was, was Brian’s the first time that we ever connected. So, you know, what do you, you just curious to know, Brian, what do you remember about that first conversation that we had?
1:46 – It was so long ago. What do you remember about it?
1:48 – Can you believe it’s been 10 years more than that, whatever the heck it’s been, it’s been so long.
1:51 – But yes, I couldn’t agree more a conversation that materially trained, changed the trajectory of my life and yours as well as we’ve kind of grown this thing over time.
2:00 – I know that that was the very first moment that you and I connected on the phone, but I felt like we’d actually connected a couple of months prior, right?
2:07 – So, I actually heard this beautiful golden pipes through the radio right in the podcast, other one and only Kevin Bup, and I mean, on real estate investing for cash flow.
2:16 – I’m like, you know, early adopter of podcasting, you know, auto-didactic, going through all the non-fiction books I could possibly listen to, trying to improve self-development, all the myriad of different things, right?
2:25 – And I stumbled upon real estate investing for cash flow aptly named and just loved all the various things that you are trying to achieve in the podcast.
2:33 – I think it resonated with me for a litany of different reasons.
2:36 – And so, you know, I knew that I wanted to reach out to you and ultimately it took me a long time to ultimately bring out this little momentum that I’ve held for over a decade and handed to you.
2:49 – But I think in everybody’s life, they’ve got a couple of really important momentos that they hold near and dear to them.
2:53 – One of which is this little tiny piece of paper, because when I scheduled a call with Kevin, he was booked out so far in advance like six weeks, eight weeks, right?
3:00 – And it was booked out so far in advance that I had another eight weeks to go back and I listened to all the episodes every single one of them, and I really listened to every single one of the episodes.
3:08 – And over the course of that six, eight weeks, I jotted down all the notes. I probably knew more about you than you knew about yourself in that period of time, right?
3:15 – You know, Kevin, seven years my senior, I knew his birthday, right? I knew your wife, I knew your kid, I knew you’re from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
3:21 – I knew your whole trajectory, your whole background and real estate, how you got to where you’re at, all the myriad of things.
3:25 – And I had written on this piece of paper all the things that I wanted to achieve in that call.
3:31 – And as opposed to simply looking at it as a random call with a random stranger, I went into the call and it took me an entire decade to pull out this piece of paper.
3:38 – This very important memo that I hold dear to my heart. And at the very top of it, it says, goal of the call, become a business partner with Kevin Buck.
3:46 – I went into that call trying to sell you on the idea and the concept of ultimately becoming a business partner with me in due time.
3:53 – I knew that that would be an impossible task in 30 minutes, right?
3:56 – But I wanted to provide enough intrigue for you and enough background about who I am, my background, what I was able to accomplish historically.
4:03 – All the things that I’d bring to the table, capital hard work, intelligence, a myriad of different things, and try to get you intrigued enough on that 30 minutes to maybe continue the conversation down the road.
4:13 – Because I knew that you had a lot to offer and I had a lot to offer you as well.
4:18 – And I just felt like if we could get in the same room for a long enough period of time, I could convince you of the value I could bring to the table.
4:24 – And I know that we can have a massive impact on a lot of different folks over time.
4:27 – So that was my personal perspective, buddy. I’m kind of that first call. That’s what I went into with framing it and looking at how I remember it.
4:35 – What about you? What do you remember from that call?
4:37 – No, it’s fine. I remember where I was. I was in my office when I had that call.
4:42 – I took those calls. I was on the road half the time in the office, right?
4:45 – I had different areas and I would just hop on on Friday afternoon and talk shop.
4:49 – But I do remember exactly where I was because I’ve had good conversations with some folks, some maybe lackluster.
4:57 – But yours really, it stood out. This guy is very intentional with who he is, what he wants out of life.
5:07 – You seem to have quite a bit of structure and maybe not everything figured out.
5:11 – But you had a plan. And one way or another, you seemed as though you were going to achieve that plan, whether it was with me or someone else.
5:19 – You were going to find your path there. And so I’d say that’s the doubt to me.
5:24 – And I don’t recall how much time went between or was between that first call to the next follow up.
5:33 – I do remember, and maybe we talked another time or two prior, but I remember you coming through town.
5:39 – I remember actually meeting you at a Whole Foods to literally grab a beer, which is kind of odd for those that don’t know Whole Foods actually have bars inside of them in some of their locations.
5:48 – So Ryan, I literally met at a Whole Foods and talk shop.
5:52 – And so I do remember that like the actual first time we, I believe that was the first time we met in person.
5:58 – And you know, just I remember your continued follow up like you were you were very persistent.
6:02 – And you know, at that stage of our business, you know, I’d kind of I’d gone through building up quite a big business, lost it all in 08.
6:11 – So it took a couple of year hiatus, kind of drove back into it and started buying again back in like 2011.
6:18 – And we were kind of just at the at a baseline of rebuilding, of trying to figure out, you know, phase two of the journey.
6:25 – And in mobile home parks were the pathway forward. But again, it was like the very initial stages.
6:32 – I don’t know if I call it a business, right? We had some great assets.
6:35 – We’re doing great things, buying great deals, you know, making money.
6:40 – But it didn’t necessarily have a super strong foundation into place.
6:44 – And I obviously I think you identified that as an opportunity on your side to where you could bring some of your, you know, your experience, you know, some better structure.
6:52 – And a lot of a lot of insights that you you took away from the company that you were even work for.
6:57 – You kind of start you got in the startup world at a at an early stage of your like the six person in line at the start up that ultimately went on to grow.
7:04 – To grow to a big scale company and sell for, you know, multiple, multiple millions of dollars.
7:08 – And so you felt as though you could bring some value to the equation.
7:11 – So again, I remember those early conversations. I remember meeting.
7:15 – I remember what when we finally agreed that we were going to do something together.
7:20 – And what I recall from that moment is you kind of all say, hey, let me put my money where I’m out is I got some money I wanted to invest.
7:28 – Do you guys have any deals? Let me let me kind of prove my worth.
7:31 – And we had we happen to have a mobile home park in Alabama at that time that was quite a bit of a turn around.
7:37 – And I remember you not just diving in with money, but diving in saying, hey, put me on a plane, send me there.
7:43 – Let me let me prove myself to you and let me show you that just give me some give me a little bit of guidance.
7:48 – Tell me a little bit of what to do. And I’ll figure the rest out. And I’ll prove that I could bring a lot of value to the organization.
7:55 – And you did it, man. So I know there was a time time frame in between there.
8:00 – But I think the thing that just stuck out to me was like your persistence. I mean, like you definitely kept falling up.
8:06 – And I just didn’t know where to fill you in at that point. Like I didn’t know what I didn’t know about us rebuilding and actually trying to build a better company.
8:13 – Right. Build it better the second time around. But anyway, I am very grateful that our paths crossed.
8:20 – You know, you never know when you start putting those things out into the into the world.
8:23 – Like I remember thinking back of even the podcast, I’m her Joanne and my wife.
8:28 – I used to go in the garage. I had an off. I literally we had like this home office in the garage.
8:32 – And I would go out there on Sunday evening after the kids went to the after my my son Jackson went to bed after Jo and to bed at like 10 o’clock at night.
8:39 – And I would spend like 10 o’clock at night to like two or three in the morning, literally recording my show for that Monday.
8:44 – And that went on for, you know, a year or two. She’s like, what are you doing? Why are you spending all this time this podcast?
8:49 – I’m like, I don’t know. I don’t know the answer to that yet. All I know that it’s going to bring value to us to the business to you.
8:55 – It’s going to do great things. I can’t exactly answer, you know, what that means yet. But ultimately, Brian, like our partnership is one of those big things that that came from it.
9:04 – I mean, like literally, it’s a beautiful thing. So anyway, I’ll shut up.
9:07 – Couldn’t agree more, man. And you know, I appreciate that you giving me the chance, right?
9:11 – Give me an opportunity to go swing the bad as it were. It’s, you know, sometimes you’re sitting on the bench. You don’t even get an opportunity.
9:18 – But, but I knew that if I would be granted an opportunity that ultimately we’d we’d make the most of it.
9:24 – But I want to maybe share a little bit inside from my perspective of why is it even compelling? Why would I even reach out at the, you know, in the first place to a guy such as Kevin, right?
9:33 – So in those first maybe 20 episodes, whatever you rolled out, I can’t even recall in my mind. I’m thinking to myself, this guy’s seven years my senior.
9:40 – But he’s got years of wisdom well beyond that, which I’ve been able to achieve. I can accelerate the process tremendously at that juncture, right?
9:48 – You’d started a business. I always like to say, look, Kevin’s never really had a real job. He started buying real estate when he was in his teens.
9:54 – You know, he’s never really had a real job. He’s been doing it now 30 years, right?
9:57 – Originally was in the single family space built up about 125 single family homes by the time you were in your mid 20s doing all the amazing things, right?
10:04 – Got all the fancy toys, all the cool vehicles, all the fun stuff, you know, doing exceptionally well.
10:09 – But then the great recession hit you basically lose it all or a huge piece of it.
10:13 – And then you realize that you can’t just invest for appreciation, but rather you need to focus on real estate investing for cash flow.
10:20 – Then ultimately try a bunch of different types office, you know, multifamily retail, a litany of different types, but ultimately find mobile home parks.
10:27 – And at that time, you had proven the business model by buying maybe one or two mobile home parks, but I knew that you were all in on it.
10:33 – And I knew that the, you know, 15 years of experience that you had at that point, I could benefit from the 15 years of wisdom that you learned.
10:42 – And you, I know can benefit from the decade of experience that I have of scaling a company along the way.
10:48 – And I just knew that if we were able to put those two together, we’d be in a, we’d be in a really good position.
10:52 – So again, you’re seven years my senior. I was like, man, Kevin’s got it all.
10:55 – He’s got a wonderful wife, beautiful family, great kiddo, live in the life. He’s now got cash flow to do what he wanted in his own terms.
11:01 – I live in the life that you want really truly have real freedom, freedom of time, freedom of money, freedom of relationship, freedom of purpose, the things that you otherwise want in life.
11:08 – And I was like, hey, if I could be half as successful as what, as what Kevin is at that time, then I’d feel pretty good about myself, right?
11:13 – And that was what prompted me to reach out. And so in an event, appreciate you giving me the shot, man.
11:17 – And while, while, you know, it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows, it was a heck of a lot that ultimately went into building this thing over the past decade.
11:24 – I’m very, very proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish and the impact that we’ve made. And we’re still just scratching the surface, right?
11:29 – Yeah, yeah. No, so, you know, this is a question I never asked you, but I’d be curious to know now that we’re talking shop here and to talk about the beginnings.
11:36 – I mean, we’re talking, you know, 10, 10 months years ago, it’s a long time. I forgot what I even had for breakfast yesterday, let alone, you know, what else we played out 10 years ago.
11:43 – And so I guess from your side, just, you know, you know, a partnership, a business, you know, partnership is every bit of a marriage as a marriage is, right?
11:53 – I mean, and somebody even say it might be deeper-grained, right? I mean, like there’s, it’s, it’s, you know, you’re going into business and building something that is very difficult to, to ever unravel, right?
12:04 – And so like you better have the right intentions going in and, and being complete alignment, have a level of trust that is at its highest degree, right?
12:12 – And so I guess from your side, what made you trust me before, I guess you could say there was any reason to trust me, right? Like we didn’t, we didn’t really know each other all that well, like you’ve been listening to the show, we met a couple times, and we did work a little bit together before we really dove all in, but not really.
12:28 – I mean, I think once we truly started working together, it was kind of like, hey, we’re doing this thing, I guess this is it, like we’re rolling forward full steam ahead, right?
12:35 – But we’d love to hear, I’ve never asked you the question, but we’d love to know what, what really gave you that level of trust, because it’s a big decision on your part, right?
12:42 – Like you were kind of like ready for the next step, and you’re ready to go all in, and you chose me to do it with.
12:47 – Two things come to mind for me, one is regarding the philosophy of burning the boats, you know, Tony Robbins tells this beautiful story associated with burning the boats.
12:57 – And it basically is this individual that’s a captain of a ship’s going into battle with his fleet, and they ultimately arrive in the new land and they sit down, and the first directive that he gives to all of his associates in the Navy is to go turn around and burn all the boats, because they’re about to go into war.
13:15 – And the idea and the concept is we will either find a way or we will perish, we will either win or we will perish.
13:22 – And so if you burn the boats, you’re going to have so much more fire to be able to persist through the inevitable downturns and the issues and the difficulties that arise.
13:33 – So when I go all in, I definitely want to have that mindset at my back that I know that I will do whatever it takes to be successful.
13:40 – And so that’s one piece of it, wanting to ensure that we put all the chips on the table. I would say also secondarily, I’ve come to learn about my gut in time.
13:47 – Here’s what I’ve come to realize about my gut. The gut is not always right, but here’s what I know about the gut.
13:53 – Any time that I’ve had a scenario where my gut has been pointing in the wrong direction or something is a little bit off, and I don’t necessarily trust this person, I can’t put my finger on it.
14:03 – Something seems to arrive with this individual. I don’t know what it is.
14:06 – In 100% of circumstances where my gut has been telling me that in every single scenario my gut has proven me to be correct.
14:12 – However, the inverse where your gut is giving you all of the reasons to push forward and accelerate and lean into the relationship.
14:21 – Now that doesn’t give you 100% pass. It does not give you 100% pass.
14:26 – But it does give you the green light to continue to persist and persist and persist until you’re proven wrong, until you’re proven wrong.
14:32 – And so just listening, right, having the ability to understand a little bit more about who you are in your character, just by virtue of the podcast, you know, you listen to somebody long enough, you get to know them a little bit.
14:41 – It’s not perfect. It most assuredly isn’t perfect, but it’s a very good barometer to understand how you tick.
14:47 – And I knew a little bit more about you than you knew about me at that time, which gave me more comfortability with you than probably you had about me.
14:54 – But it was enough to get me comfortable pushing my chips and knowing that I would find a way to figure it out.
15:03 – You know, fail forward. And that’s kind of been my philosophy in life over and over and over again.
15:08 – We might not win in every single scenario, but it’s win or learn. We never lose. We’ll continue to get better.
15:14 – We’ll continue to fall for fail forward and we’ll eventually figure it out.
15:17 – We’re sharp enough. We’re smart enough. We’re young enough. We’re hungry enough. We will eventually figure it out.
15:21 – We’ll have the scar tissue to prove it at the end of the day, but we’ll eventually figure it out and make it to the other side.
15:26 – That was kind of how I felt about it and got me comfortable kind of in working with you, right?
15:29 – I’d seen you’d already had the scar tissue. You’d already learned the philosophy.
15:33 – You’d already understood it. It shouldn’t be about investing for appreciation.
15:37 – You knew the wisdom behind real estate investing for cash flow had the scar tissue to prove it.
15:41 – Decided you were going to persist with it anyway, even with all the struggles.
15:45 – And that’s the sort of stuff that got me comfortable knowing that you had the persistence similar to that which I did.
15:50 – Just an a mirroring effect if you follow my logic there.
15:53 – Yeah, yeah, no, I love it. I love it. For those that did provide some more context.
15:56 – You know, what burning the boats meant to Brian?
15:59 – Call me off guard. I remember you call me one day. You’re like, Hey, by the way, I just signed a lease. I quit my job.
16:04 – I quit my six figure high paying job. I just signed a lease down about 20 minutes away from from your office.
16:11 – And we’re going to figure out a way to do this together, man. Like I don’t think we we hadn’t said really yes yet.
16:16 – And but you’re like, Hey, man, I’m here. We’re going to do this thing. Heller high water.
16:20 – Let’s make some magic happen. And so I to be honest with you, buddy, I looked at you and I was like, I’m excited.
16:27 – This guy, man, like he’s he’s got something going on. And and like he’s got some energy about him that that you don’t see all that often.
16:34 – I was like, But I might also have a stalker, honey. I was like, I don’t know.
16:40 – I was like, he moved down here. We didn’t talk about it too much. He moved down here. He’s here.
16:45 – And he wants to come to the office Monday morning. And it’s anyway, this is funny. Look at looking back. Now that it’s a beautiful thing, man.
16:52 – And what we build is is absolutely incredible. So appreciate all that you brought to the equation, brother.
16:58 – And it’s been a fun partnership. And you know, we’re roughly a decade into this thing.
17:03 – And it literally just feels like yesterday that we got that we got rolling. Right. Again, I don’t remember I have for breakfast.
17:08 – Yes, I say you think about 10 years. It’s been a long time. But it doesn’t really it feels like a long time.
17:12 – But it doesn’t really feel like that long with time. Right. And we both have grown families. And you know, you were you weren’t even married back then.
17:19 – Right. Like you got engaged. You’ve had to you have two beautiful children now. And like you really built a family over the past couple of years.
17:25 – And you know, times have changed. But you know, one thing has remained consistent. And that’s our commitment to one another and our commitment to the organization.
17:33 – So it’s an amazing thing. I can’t wait to see what the next decade holds for us. Right.
17:37 – It’s beautiful to pause, reflect, look back and see what we’ve been able to achieve. But I can’t wait to see kind of what happens as we progress into the next decade as well.
17:44 – Yeah. So I want to I want to I want to go back even further now because I want to I want to go back to where the where the seeds were actually planted.
17:52 – You know, back back in your childhood right back to the formative years, where the grind actually started.
17:59 – I know that you know, you moved in with your mom early on and and you know, kind of a single parent household.
18:05 – You know, a split in time between your mom and your dad and like that. That’s that’s tough for any child to to weather.
18:11 – I know there was some volatility in your early childhood years. And so just curious. No, how did that shape your sense of just independence and drive?
18:19 – Great question. There’s this phrase that’s basically if you want to understand the man, study the juvenile delinquent.
18:27 – Understand what occurred to him in his in his childhood years as formative childhood years. And you’ll understand a little bit more about what makes him tick.
18:33 – So I’ll run it back. I’ll run it back to my childhood. And while now today it’s amazing to look and say, hey, we’ve done, you know, mobile home park deals in about 20 different states hundreds of millions of dollars of transaction.
18:43 – 16 full cycle mobile home park deals on stuff all over the country, right?
18:47 – My first experience with mobile home parks was when I lived in one when I was 10 years old. My parents got divorced and my dad moved to Gary, Indiana during the 1990s when it was known as the murder capital of the world.
18:58 – And my mom moved to a mobile home park on the south side of Chicago. And that was the moment in time where I decided that, you know, I was going to do whatever it takes.
19:08 – I don’t care how hard I have to work. I don’t care what profession I have to go into to ultimately navigate this to ultimately ensure that when I get kind of the same age as what my folks were.
19:16 – That I would put my family in a better financial situation. I just was determined to do that. So what are you doing your 10 years old?
19:23 – And you want to get out of that situation. Like you start asking these very fundamental questions. Okay. How do I get out of this situation?
19:29 – Well, I need money. How do I get money? I can’t get a job, right? How do I get a good job? I better get a good degree. How do I get a good degree?
19:38 – Why don’t have any money to pay for a college education? I better find a way to get some scholarships. So I worked really hard academically and athletically to get scholarship offers to a litany different folks places throughout the country.
19:48 – And so I graduated, by the time my high school career was over, I graduated fifth of my high school class. And a lot of the different individuals above me went to really high quality schools, Ivy League style, et cetera.
19:57 – I chose to get a scholarship and go to the University of Kentucky, right? So I also not only wanted to get academic money, but also athletic money if I could find a way to do it.
20:06 – I wasn’t tall enough to play basketball. I wasn’t strong enough to play football. But in baseball, you could be any size and shape. So I taught myself how to hit both right handed and left handed so I can get more notoriety from college scouts.
20:17 – And by the time that I was a senior, got scholarship offers to a lot of places. And again, landed at the University of Kentucky where I played baseball in the SEC had an amazing run.
20:25 – By the time that I was a senior, I was captain of the team on a team that had six different big leakers on it, right?
20:30 – So the pinnacle of amateur baseball loved every minute of it. And it was an amazing ride. Those were the glory days from my perspective.
20:37 – Way back when I had hair man, you should have seen it. It was unbelievable. But, but you know, I would say in that period of time when I was at the University of Kentucky,
20:45 – is one another one of those fundamental moments in life that changes your trajectory. So I was a business major. And I remember being in an accounting class in Memorial Hall, beautiful, beautiful building in the University of Kentucky campus.
20:58 – And I walked into this accounting course. And the professor is preaching to about 200 different students about compound interest. It was the first time that I’d ever heard the concept of compound interest and somebody explained that to me.
21:12 – And everybody’s, you know, half asleep at eight in the morning, you know, still wearing pajama pants and the like, right? And here I am.
21:21 – What seems to me to be the only one paying attention. It’s one of those light bulb moments. You just hear it and it resonates with you. And the light bulb goes off. And at the time, I literally have a negative net worth. I’m worth zero dollars.
21:32 – But I know in that moment that if I simply put a little bit of money away every single year over a long enough period of time, inevitably, I know with assurance, I’m definitely going to become a millionaire.
21:44 – And it was the first time that I knew that I was going to be financially successful. I knew that I’d be successful in a myriad of different ways or whatever and various things that I did. I feel like I’ve got a healthy amount of talents was blessed with a lot of things in life. A strong hairline wasn’t one of them.
21:59 – But you know, I knew I’d be successful in some things, but I knew in that moment that I would definitely become a millionaire because I’m willing to delay gratification and sacrifice and be a little squirrel and put a little bit of a of capital away in order to become successful financially over the long term.
22:14 – From that point, it was again, hair on fire trying to learn as much as I possibly could about investments. I thought I was going to go into investment banking.
22:21 – But eventually, as you go down the rabbit hole of self education, it was more simple to understand real estate and take control and grab the wheel and go down the alternative investment path and choose real estate.
22:32 – So from that moment, I knew that I was going to get involved in investments. I knew that I was going to go get involved in building a real estate company, but I still have no capital to really start a business.
22:40 – So when I graduated, I was very, very fortunate to get calls from several different professional teams. I was asked to go take a free agent deal with either the blue jays or the Indians.
22:52 – That was one option, one path to go play free agent ball or alternatively, I had six different job opportunities.
22:59 – I was one step in the academic all-american when I was at the University of Kentucky. I was an ESPN magazine, co-side at ESPN All District of all those job opportunities.
23:07 – I chose to take the one that was going to end up making me the most money, not because I’m the greediest guy in the world, but because I knew that I needed a bank role, fuel to ultimately go start a real estate company.
23:18 – For the next several years, I traveled throughout the country as a telecommunication socks auditor, doing really well, making six figures right out of the gate, putting away as much money as I possibly could, building piles of cash all the while knowing I wanted to turn it into streams of income.
23:31 – And then as I’m going through my university on wheels, traveling around learning about investments and so on and so forth, I hear this one random guy named Kevin Bup on the podcast, giving me the juice associated with real estate investing for cash.
23:42 – I said, you know, I’m a schedule to call on Friday, and that’s really what ultimately allowed me to take the leap of faith and start entrepreneurship, buddy.
23:48 – Yeah, no, we’re going to back it up a little bit, we’re going to pack some of this.
23:51 – Okay, so I want to go back to the to your college class where everyone else was sleeping and ultimately that’s a day that compound interest became a thing.
23:59 – Do you remember the example that that your professor shared was it the whole like a penny a day, doubled every day for 30 days versus that of a million dollars a day, which would you rather have?
24:07 – Is that was that the example or just I guess what I’m trying to understand is like what really made it clicked where you’re like, holy shit, this is so simple, but so profound.
24:16 – So really, it seemed like the spark happened during that class where your professor really started speaking about compound interest. So anyway, just would love to understand a little bit more about that period and then, you know, we’ll pass forward a little bit.
24:27 – Yeah, to me, you know, from that moment on, I knew what I wanted to do for the rest of my life was to be involved in investments period. That’s what I knew what I wanted to do from that moment on.
24:37 – I didn’t know exactly what it meant in terms of investment banking or real estate, but I knew that I wanted to be involved in the investment world.
24:43 – I believe the example was the penny, penny, you know, doubled every single day and then that’s exemplifies it and then they extrapolated to over the course of 40 years if you put away whatever $100 a month or $200 a month at a reasonable percentage interest rate.
24:55 – Right, over 40 years, this is what happens. They show you the math and it’s iron clad, right? It is irrefutable evidence of ultimately how you can very simply become a millionaire. And to me, that was the pinnacle, right?
25:06 – If you, you know, that’s the the is Brian Tracy would convey like back in the day, it was like, what do you want your kid to do? Either grow up to be president or become a millionaire by the time they turn 30, right?
25:16 – Like do do those two things and your kids are successful. And that was what I wanted to do, right? Just put my family in a great financial position. And from that point forward, I knew that I could do it. And I was, I was just dedicated driven to do whatever it takes to ultimately make that come to fruition.
25:31 – So yeah, that’s the best I can remember it, buddy.
25:33 – Yeah, yeah, no, that’s great. I know the delay, we talk about delay gravitation quite a bit in our business. I mean, in real estate, it’s a long game, right?
25:41 – Like you hit some, you know, some, you know, some triples or some homeruns or even some grandslimes every once in a while, but really it’s, it’s a long game, right?
25:47 – It singles and doubles and delay gravitation really, really comes to play as you build a real estate organization that will stand to test the time. And so would love to understand from your perspective, you know, how did delay gravitation really show it for you knows earlier years?
26:01 – I mean, I know that, you know, we can talk about the curl. I think that’s, that’s a fun story. I learned a lot of things about you when we first met that really resonated with, I think we had, you know, somewhat similar up brings, I’m not necessarily the same path, but just, you know, very humble upbringing, brings blue collar, you know, parents, just everyone, everyone’s working hard, everyone’s grinding away.
26:19 – You know, looking at a bigger picture, but knowing that it’s going to take some time to get there. So when did you first realize, you know, delay gravitation was, was, you had importance to you and then how did that show up in your daily life?
26:31 – We’ll give you the example of, you call it a Toyota Corolla. I call it the Silver Stallion.
26:36 – Oh, it’s beautiful. Love that vehicle. Four cylinders of raw power.
26:40 – But all over the country, right? So, you know, I was one of these guys that didn’t have a vehicle, didn’t get a car when I was 16 years old, didn’t get a new card, didn’t get a used card, didn’t get anything.
26:52 – And got my license, but didn’t really, wasn’t really worth much. Ultimately went to college, still didn’t have a vehicle until I think I was maybe a junior in college.
27:01 – And my, my dad, you know, worked his fingers to the bone and ultimately purchased it was at the time a brand new Toyota Corolla. And whoo!
27:11 – Was it the best thing that I’ve ever seen in my life? Freedom on wheels, right? So I, I have this vehicle. What you’re pointing out is that I kept that vehicle for as long as my now wife, my beautiful bride would allow me to continue driving it.
27:26 – You didn’t want to get rid of it. I remember the day you traded, then you told me you traded, then I’m like, you did what? I feel like you should have like, I mean, it should have been in a museum. Honestly, I wrapped it up in like cellophane and put it in the backyard. It was like a decorative ornament or something.
27:40 – I thought about getting the classic plates, you know what I mean? The whole thing, but I, that vehicle was everything to me. And it was an example of delayed gratification to your point, right? So like on my, in my 20s, I was a university on wheels, right? I’m traveling throughout the country, hit all 50 states by the time I turned 30.
27:57 – So I’m driving all over God’s green earth, just a university on wheels learning as much as I could possibly learn about investments as I’m working, right? But I’m simultaneously learning as much as I possibly can.
28:09 – And every way shape or form that I possibly can, I’m beginning the process of building fuel, a nest egg, my bankroll to go start a business. So I’m living like a popper. You got to remember, I grew up with very nominal means, right?
28:24 – Like when we moved to Gary, Indiana, the furniture that we had, we moved into the, the house in Gary and Indiana, there was literally nothing there. My dad went to the Walmart, bought two little bean bag chairs, threw them on the, on the, in the living room, we’re like, that’s our, that’s, that’s, that’s, that was the furniture that we had, right? Plopped an old tube TV on a, on a nightstand, and that was the living room, but welcome to the house, right?
28:44 – And so I was accustomed to having minimal humble beginnings, right? So I didn’t need a ton. I still was living like a college kid. And I traveled all over for the next seven, eight years with a very, very minimal expense load.
28:58 – And I was trying to obviously make as much as I could, but what I, you couldn’t control the top side of how much you earned in that respective role, but what I could control was the expenses. So I minimized it to the best of my ability and continued to save as much as I could for an entire decade, right?
29:13 – That vehicle, you know, ended up having hundreds of thousands of miles. I had, you know, enough, enough cash in the bank account to be able to go buy whatever vehicle I could possibly wanted, right? To go and press the girls and this, that and the other.
29:24 – But it was more important to me to ultimately delay gratification with some of those material things so that I could build a nest egg that would allow me to launch a business. And that’s kind of the example of delay gratification, right?
29:36 – But if you’re going to use the marshmallow test over at Stanford, I was the kid that was definitely going to get to and I would have followed up and said, Hey, man, if I outlast every other kid, can I get like five marshmallows?
29:46 – I’m that kid. I’m that kid. Patient as the day is long, right?
29:50 – I’m excited to kind of bring the listeners up to speed with with, you know, where we’re currently at with sunrise and really we’ve got some amazing goals that we’ve got jotted down and really excited about the next couple of years and just some big things that are happening, right?
30:05 – And kind of anchoring back to the early days. So you know, we committed like, Hey, we’re going to do this thing together. We’re going to build something together. We’ll be curious again, this is we’re talking 10 years now that we’ve been at this thing.
30:16 – Any vivid memories that you might have from from those earlier days, like, yeah, we had a lot of different fire drill moments.
30:22 – One that comes to mind is Cedar, Hurston, and we bought those properties. We stolen those today and one of our old legacy funds, but lots of just
30:31 – haphazard stuff, you know, just fire drill moments kind of flying by the seat of our pants and anything that comes of mind when we first started bringing in homes to one of our first JV deals that we did with our own personal capital in Alabama.
30:43 – And we start bringing in new homes. We got to do the dealers license thing and we start bringing in new homes from Clayton.
30:49 – I’ll never forget at the time our onsite manager was was a very interesting character.
30:57 – And this was a more modest size community, but I remember a phone call that we got from Frank, amazing, amazing individual.
31:05 – But the tone in his voice, conveying that when the home was being dropped off that the double wide was stuck in a mud, and we couldn’t get it turned around and actually put prudently on the site that it was supposed to be.
31:20 – These are sorts of little tiny things that you you you come to appreciate years later as you work with bigger vendors, more professional operations, so on and so forth.
31:29 – Just throwing stuff together with bubble gum and duct tape trying to make things happen, right. That was kind of how it was at the very beginning.
31:36 – We were doing an exceptional job, but I think it was more done with grit and determination than anything else. And you know, I would say just buying cigar, but businesses, right, where you’re just doing such a good job.
31:47 – I’d say you on the front end right on the acquisition side, buying deals with such a margin of safety, you can’t go wrong.
31:52 – But operationally, I don’t think we were as near as tight as we need to be, right, to be successful in the business today. That’s kind of how I feel.
31:58 – What about you, man? What about any stories that you remember from those early days?
32:01 – Yeah, no, I mean, again, as they say, you build the you build the plan as you fly it, right. And I don’t know if there’s a, you know, a different way when you’re kind of bootstrapping things.
32:09 – Like I think that’s the only way, right. And so like you just take one day at a time, one foot in front of the other and you just you figure the issues out and the challenges out as they as a get thrown at you.
32:17 – And you get so many that are thrown at you that you just start prioritizing like what are the biggest ones that are going to potentially sink the ship.
32:24 – Let’s let’s focus on those first. And all the other ones will probably just fall off. And if they’re important enough, they’ll circle back around, right. And we’ll address them at that point.
32:31 – So, you know, you know, I just, I, one of the ones I remember vividly was and I mentioned it, you know, was wallston and sea to Hearst.
32:39 – It was probably the first big acquisition that we ever did. It bings all relative now because we’ve done some, you know, pretty significant size deals over the last couple of years.
32:48 – But back then, that was huge. It was two mobile home parks closing at the same time, you know, 180 lots and totals.
32:55 – If I recall, I think it was $2.6 million or $2.65 million.
32:59 – Like to a acquisition price. And that was that literally up to that point. That was the biggest single deal that we had ever done at that time.
33:06 – You know, we had, we had a community manager that we thought was lined up to step in to oversee these communities. They’re in Maryland.
33:14 – So they’re quite a ways away a thousand miles away from us here in Florida. And what our member is is about two or three days leading up to the closing.
33:21 – We couldn’t get hold of the community manager that we had hired, you know, two days before the closing a day before the closing.
33:26 – We don’t have any management on site and we’re about to buy these properties. And I just remember you and I flying up there. I mean, we both fly a flu up there.
33:36 – I flew back alone and you stayed behind. You took one for the team and we posted you up in a whatever hotel brand it was.
33:45 – It wasn’t a motel, but it also wasn’t fancy one somewhere in between. And it’s where you you called home for like two or three weeks. I don’t remember how long it was.
33:54 – Maybe it was even a month. And I just remember you out there, you know, literally physically walking around these communities handing out, you know, welcome letters to all the residents and dealing with all the shrapnel that was coming your way.
34:05 – You know, as we went through that transitionary period and again, just like moments like that that really helped just you know, just shape who we are what the company was who we are as individuals.
34:17 – And just know that I knew at that point, moving forward, like you were always willing to take one for the team, right?
34:22 – Like I just had Jackson Jackson. It was only I think a maybe a year or two old. I think I don’t know, Joe, Joe, maybe Joe was pregnant with with Julian at that time.
34:30 – I can’t remember, but like I kind of had some additional obligations that you didn’t have yet at that point. And so you kind of raised your hands like, look man, I got this.
34:37 – We’ll figure this out. I’ll go there and so that that’s a big Vivo on my mind. And again, I think just goes back to really cementing who we both are as individuals and why we work so well as partners in the business.
34:49 – This bit, I think just business in general is about long term relationships and trying to ensure that you are striving forward for the best interest of both parties at all times.
35:02 – And there will be periods of time where one party has the upper hand and then the other party has the upper hand. And this ebbs and flows throughout the course of a 20, 30, 40 year relationship.
35:13 – But you always have to ensure that you have each other’s backs and are willing to do whatever is necessary on behalf of the other party, right. I knew and again, again, everybody’s memories a little bit fuzzy.
35:22 – So similar to what you’re referencing. I couldn’t agree more. I remember we were trying to solve the riddle the day before we were closing the property and it was like Friday night at 7 p.m. or whatever it was.
35:31 – It must have been during the week. But it was like 7 p.m. during the week. And I was like, man, well, you got a wife, you got kids, you got obligations. It looks like I’m taking a red eye up there this evening. I remember flying a red eye overnight just to be there on the morning.
35:44 – So that there was somebody on site. And I actually lived in a single wide. I didn’t get to stay in the old super eight down the road.
35:50 – Oh, that’s right. That’s right. We kept it that I was staying in a single wide for ever.
35:53 – I forgot about that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that’s where that’s where that was what it was. So again, you know, over the course of, you know, a decade, you start to understand, right?
36:01 – If you wear every single hat in the business, you you come to appreciate every single role that is necessary to grow an organization. We’ve learned a ton along the way, but I would never ask anybody in our organization to do something that I’m not willing to do myself.
36:15 – Right. It’s one of those things where you roll up your sleeves when when it’s necessary. And you know, it’s not like we’re living up here in an ivory tower.
36:21 – And aren’t willing to go do what’s necessary to make this happen for everybody involved. All the different stakeholders, right, from the residents inside of the communities to the teammates that we have here.
36:29 – It’s sunrise to all the different partners that we have throughout the country. So again, you got you have to do what you have to do. Right. Whatever it takes again to make it happen. Right. So I’ll leave it at that, buddy. That’s how I feel.
36:42 – Yeah. No, that’s great. We’d love to maybe pivot a little bit here and talk about being a husband, being a father. You point out quite often. I’m seven years old. I’m old. You keep saying 30 years of me being in a real estate business. It’s more like 25, right?
36:56 – And so stop trying to age me. Um, that’s why I’m wearing my hat so that I’m covering up all the grades that I have now. I got the whole racing stripe of grades down down my scalp. Distinguished man. Distinguished. Yeah. Yeah.
37:08 – Yeah. You know, I think we all define, you know, success, maybe differently and wealth differently at like a young age. Right. Like I, I remember even, even back when I got my first paper out and I shovel snow, mo grass. Like to me, you know, success was having enough money to go buy the latest and greatest like BMX bike or whatever.
37:28 – You know, cool toy was out in the marketplace, right? That my parents couldn’t afford to buy. And so I had to go figure out a way to buy right. It was material based. And even in my, you know, early 20s, it was still very much material based items, you know, whether it be a house or a car or just, you know, having, having money, like having cash to go do what I wanted, but a lot of it was really revolve around material items.
37:48 – It wasn’t necessarily like experiences that I think about them today are creating, you know, fond memories with my, with the fan with the wife with our kids and all that. And so, you know, I obviously when we first met, I, you know, was already a father, a very young father. I just had my first Jackson. He’s, he’s 12 today. And then I had my second son, Julian. And you were still, I mean, you, you, you got married a couple years back. You’ve got two beautiful girls now. But I was a little further ahead in you, right? Of the whole, you know, you know, I was like, you know, I was like, you know,
38:18 – father and husband thing and so from my perspective, I saw some beautiful changes happen in you as an individual to where you’ve always been a grind restore today.
38:30 – You’ll, you’ll work literally you’ll beat anyone. If it comes to the competition is like, who can work harder? Like, you always went, you’ll come out ahead. Right? Like, that’s just, that’s who you are. That’s, you know, like, doesn’t your DNA.
38:41 – But I’ve watched you evolve into a husband, into a father,
38:46 – and maybe you don’t notice, but I notice it,
38:49 – like a real balance in your life,
38:51 – and some intentionality behind showing up for your wife,
38:55 – showing up for your girls,
38:57 – and really always putting them, putting all of them first,
39:00 – like family is always first,
39:01 – and we really resonate that message to our organization
39:04 – as well, like you’ll never miss a family moment, right?
39:07 – Because of a work obligation,
39:08 – like family always first,
39:09 – and so I’d love to know from your standpoint,
39:11 – just how marriage and fatherhood,
39:15 – you know, maybe shifted your definition of success.
39:18 – If it did or if it didn’t, right?
39:19 – But what does that look like for you today?
39:21 – Love this, and I would say first and foremost,
39:24 – kudos to you.
39:25 – I think that you lead the charge in the organization,
39:28 – and ensuring that one of the core values
39:32 – is emanating throughout the entirety of the organization.
39:34 – One of the core values we have here at Sunrise
39:36 – is enjoy the ride.
39:38 – And that derives, I think,
39:40 – you know, you embody that better than anybody
39:42 – that I’ve ever been around on a day-to-day basis.
39:44 – It’s absolutely beautiful,
39:45 – and everyone should aspire to have that
39:48 – as a key principle in what they do on a day-to-day basis, right?
39:51 – You know, we’ve come to learn that,
39:53 – you know, after having a thousand calls with investors
39:54 – and learning a ton over time,
39:56 – guys that have been unbelievably successful right,
39:57 – multiple eight figures, nine figures,
39:59 – you know, multi-millionaire, all the sort of stuff.
40:01 – What you come to realize after having thousands
40:03 – of conversations is that nobody that I’ve ever spoken to
40:06 – said, I wish I would have made a little bit more money, right?
40:09 – When they’re towards the end of their life,
40:10 – I wish I would have made a little more money,
40:12 – I wish I would have had another zero on the income statement
40:14 – and another zero on the balance sheet.
40:15 – It’s always, I wish I would have been able to spend more time
40:18 – with my family.
40:20 – I wish I would have been able to pass along something else
40:22 – besides just a little bit of money along the way, right?
40:25 – And so for me, what this is all about,
40:29 – it’s about freedom, freedom of time,
40:31 – freedom of money, freedom of relationship, freedom of purpose,
40:34 – and not only passing along wealth,
40:37 – but also passing along wisdom to the next generation,
40:40 – we will have learned so much over the course of our decades.
40:44 – And we want to be able to pass along not only
40:46 – this unbelievable amount of wealth
40:49 – that we will have been able to accrue over that period of time,
40:51 – we already have everything that we could possibly want
40:53 – to do what we want in all the endeavors in life, right?
40:55 – Now it’s about doing more so that we can have a bigger impact.
40:58 – But so it’s not just about passing along the wealth,
41:00 – it’s about passing along the wisdom
41:02 – along the way to the next generation.
41:04 – And I will convey to you, right,
41:05 – that I will forever be indebted to my beautiful bride.
41:08 – She is a wonderful woman,
41:10 – and I have no idea how she puts up with my craft.
41:12 – That’s exactly how I feel.
41:13 – Like she’s unbelievable.
41:16 – So when we first started dating,
41:18 – we still were in the Chicago Land Area,
41:20 – that’s where we’re originally from.
41:22 – She is, at the time, she’s a dance teacher.
41:25 – And at the time, she had a position
41:27 – up in the Western suburbs of Chicago,
41:29 – and she could have stayed in that role.
41:30 – Once you are a teacher,
41:32 – and you’re kind of solidified inside of that respective district,
41:35 – you could stay there for literally decades,
41:37 – and you know, have your entire career
41:39 – trajectory laid out in front of you.
41:41 – And when I told her,
41:42 – I remember sitting down in the couch and I told her,
41:43 – I just unilaterally made the decision.
41:45 – At the time we were still courting,
41:46 – we weren’t yet engaged, we were dating.
41:48 – And I said, I’m moving to Florida
41:50 – because I had it in my bones, deep in my bones,
41:53 – that I knew that I had to go down
41:55 – and try my hand at this venture.
41:57 – And for the rest of my life, I would regret it
41:59 – if I didn’t take that leap of faith.
42:01 – And so that was very difficult for her.
42:05 – But she, prior to us even being engaged,
42:08 – was willing to walk away from everything,
42:10 – walk away from all of her friends,
42:11 – walk away from all of her family,
42:13 – walk away from her career,
42:14 – and come down and follow me into a venture
42:17 – that we hadn’t even begun to build yet.
42:20 – Again, talk about putting all your chips on the table.
42:22 – Again, I will forever be indebted to her.
42:24 – She’s an angel.
42:24 – She’s either an angel or she’s crazy.
42:26 – That’s what people have been telling me, right?
42:27 – But so she took the leap of faith
42:31 – and came down with me.
42:32 – And again, I will forever be indebted to her for that.
42:35 – So I put in a lot of long hard hours
42:38 – to get this business to the point
42:40 – where we’ve got a really solid foundation.
42:41 – We’ve now built it and we’ve impacted
42:43 – so many different folks right over 1,000 different investors
42:46 – and we’ve done some amazing things.
42:48 – And now for me, why do you do all that?
42:51 – The old adage goes, you should be willing to do
42:54 – what others are not willing to do for a period of five years
42:57 – so that for the rest of your life,
42:58 – you can do what nobody else can do.
43:01 – And so I feel like we’ve crossed that chasm
43:03 – where we’re willing to do things that no one else
43:06 – is willing to do for a period of time
43:08 – so that for the rest of our lives,
43:10 – we can do things that nobody else can do.
43:12 – And I think that flip occurs for me when I get married,
43:16 – when I have children, now we have the luxury and the freedom
43:19 – because we’ve been able to be successful
43:21 – in building the business to a size and scale
43:23 – that allows us to make the biggest impact possible
43:26 – so that I could spend more time with our wonderful kiddos
43:29 – and kind of mimic what I would say the success
43:31 – that you’ve created along the way with you and your family.
43:33 – So kudos and thank you for kind of leading the charge
43:36 – and charting out a path to follow in this regard.
43:39 – It’s been phenomenal.
43:40 – And it’s again, something I’ll forever be appreciated
43:42 – and forth, buddy.
43:43 – Yeah, no, no, that’s a beautiful thing.
43:45 – And yet to your point, bless, she’s an angel.
43:47 – Joanna, angel is well for dealing with my craziness
43:52 – and all the crap I put her through, right?
43:53 – And you know, it really, and it goes with that,
43:57 – it’s having a supportive partner, right?
43:58 – Both at home and in a business, right?
44:00 – Like literally, we go back to talking about a marriage, right?
44:04 – Like business is a marriage
44:05 – and like you gotta have a supportive partner
44:06 – that like, you know, can see your vision,
44:10 – can help you see it through and you’re better,
44:12 – you know, as a pair than you are as individuals.
44:15 – And so I think you’ve got that at home,
44:17 – I’ve got that at home
44:17 – and we’ve got it inside the organization.
44:19 – So, you know, which kind of, you know,
44:21 – I guess bring it up to the present day,
44:23 – you know, we’ve got a lot of cool things happening, man,
44:26 – you know, inside of Sunrise and this great team members,
44:29 – you know, I feel like we’ve really done a incredible job,
44:33 – you’ve done an incredible job
44:34 – of really help finding the right individuals
44:37 – that have the right alignment of character
44:39 – that have, you know, that believe in our core values,
44:42 – like really hiring by our core values
44:44 – inside the organization that have really turned something
44:46 – that was pretty cool, you know,
44:48 – looking at it five years ago,
44:49 – pretty cool thing that we’re doing to a,
44:53 – to just a, you know, a living, thriving organism
44:57 – that’s full of just beautiful people, right?
44:59 – Beautiful souls that are helping, you know,
45:01 – push the momentum forward.
45:03 – And so what fires you up?
45:04 – I love to answer the question as well,
45:05 – but I love from you.
45:07 – I’d love to know what fires you up
45:08 – about this next chapter that we have here at Sunrise?
45:11 – We’re trying to help as many people as possible
45:13 – live their version of the American dream
45:16 – and have the biggest impact that we possibly can.
45:18 – America’s in an affordable housing crisis, right?
45:20 – We know this, everybody knows this, it’s common knowledge.
45:22 – And I know that I can’t personally solve it.
45:24 – You can’t personally solve it.
45:25 – We can’t solve it ourselves,
45:27 – but we can flick ding, make a dent
45:29 – in the affordable housing crisis.
45:30 – Every single time that we buy one of those communities,
45:34 – it’s an opportunity for us to sell and provide a home
45:39 – to a resident that might be a single mom
45:41 – that’s down on her luck with an opportunity
45:43 – to live her version of the American dream.
45:45 – And every time that we do that,
45:46 – I just genuinely think of my situation
45:49 – when I was 10 years old
45:50 – and my uncle gifted my mom the down payment
45:53 – to go buy a mobile home in a community
45:56 – on the south side of Chicago.
45:57 – So I know that this is one of those business models
45:59 – that’s the definition of a successful business model, right?
46:01 – Where you have the luxury of doing well financially
46:04 – while doing good socially as well.
46:05 – And so when people ask,
46:06 – hey, when are you gonna retire?
46:07 – When are you gonna retire?
46:08 – Retire from what?
46:09 – I mean, what could I possibly do
46:11 – that’s better than this?
46:12 – We have a situation where we can provide
46:14 – the American dream to thousands of families
46:17 – throughout the country,
46:18 – the American dream of home ownership.
46:19 – Every time we grow the organization,
46:21 – we can hire phenomenal people,
46:22 – exceptionally well deserving people
46:24 – that have great core values that benefit them
46:26 – and their families.
46:27 – And every single time we go need to buy a mobile home park,
46:30 – we have to go bring in capital.
46:31 – And to do that, we can bring on partners
46:33 – and help them achieve their dreams along the way.
46:35 – They have different dreams than our residents undoubtedly, right?
46:38 – But they still have hopes and wishes and dreams
46:40 – for their families,
46:41 – things that they wanna pass along wealth, wisdom, et cetera.
46:44 – And we can help everyone in the entire stakeholder chain.
46:46 – So for me, it’s about impact.
46:47 – How much can we do?
46:48 – How big of a dent can we make along the way, right?
46:50 – We got a long runway.
46:51 – I know, I look like I’m 50, 60, 70 years old.
46:53 – I’m still a relatively young guy, right?
46:55 – At least you have all your hair, buddy.
46:57 – But I mean, we still got some room to run here.
46:58 – That’s kind of how I feel.
47:00 – I just wanna make a big dent.
47:01 – But what about yourself?
47:02 – How do you feel about it?
47:02 – No, and one more question.
47:04 – I wanna ask one more additional follow-up question there
47:06 – before I give my feedback and answer that question.
47:09 – But I guess for those that are like any potential partners,
47:12 – investors that might be like listening to the show,
47:14 – there’s multiple impacts on many different levels
47:17 – that we can make throughout the organization.
47:18 – You know, from the residents all the way to our partners
47:21 – that really have helped us grow
47:23 – and build a thriving organization.
47:25 – So paint your picture.
47:26 – You know, like, you know,
47:27 – the impact that happens on our partner level,
47:29 – do you wanna continue attracting the sunrise?
47:31 – Like who’s the ideal fit
47:33 – from a partner perspective for our team?
47:36 – You know, I think for me,
47:37 – after having a thousand conversations,
47:40 – and then bringing on an investor success team
47:42 – that’s now had thousands of more conversations,
47:44 – we’ve actually brought on
47:46 – about a thousand investors when I look at the individuals
47:48 – that ultimately resonate with us.
47:50 – It runs the gambit, right?
47:52 – We’ve, I would consider folks very high net worth folks
47:55 – that have been quote unquote successful in the eyes of society,
47:59 – but are still looking for a little bit more.
48:01 – They still have this feeling,
48:02 – this lingering feeling of being unfulfilled, right?
48:04 – They still have fragile income streams.
48:06 – They get taxes are eroding their wealth left and right,
48:09 – and they’re fine in a situation where like,
48:12 – they know that they have no margin for error
48:14 – where one wrong deal, one bad deal,
48:16 – one loss of material investment
48:18 – could wreck decades of hard work
48:20 – that they’ve put into build this gigantic nest egg
48:22 – along the way, right?
48:23 – So the people that have resonated with us the most
48:25 – are founders of businesses, executives, entrepreneurs,
48:28 – professionals, folks that distrust Wall Street,
48:31 – they value transparency, they love, you know,
48:34 – tax advantage cash flow, they wanna build legacy wealth,
48:37 – they wanna pass along something more than just wealth,
48:40 – but they also wanna pass along wisdom
48:42 – to the next generation, right?
48:43 – The type of individual that’s making a conscious decision
48:47 – between choosing the path of the Vanderbilt’s
48:49 – and choosing the path of the Rockefellers,
48:51 – wherein the Vanderbilt’s, again,
48:53 – both in their individual ways,
48:54 – were the most wealthy individual in the country,
48:56 – but within three generations, right?
48:57 – The Vanderbilt’s had squandered, unfortunately,
48:59 – all that respective capital,
49:01 – but the Rockefellers literally generations
49:03 – and generations later now hundreds of individuals
49:06 – still live off the original principle amount
49:08 – that was built by John DeRoccofeller,
49:11 – the original patriarch,
49:12 – based on his ability to appropriately structure
49:15 – their family’s obligations,
49:17 – their family, their entity, their structure,
49:19 – their holding company, and manage capital
49:21 – in an exceptional manner,
49:23 – so that they’re not just passing along wealth,
49:25 – that’s not enough, but you’re passing along wisdom
49:28 – so that you have a legacy that will last
49:33 – for generations to come, those are the individuals
49:36 – that really resonate with us,
49:37 – based on how we ultimately manage capital,
49:40 – why we do what we do, right?
49:41 – These are individuals that believe
49:42 – in kind of Warren Buffett’s philosophy,
49:43 – and that’s what we do.
49:44 – We manage capital the way that Warren Buffett does,
49:46 – and we apply his principles to essential use real estate.
49:50 – So anyway, I’ll stop there.
49:51 – I could go on and on and on.
49:53 – You’re no better than anybody,
49:53 – how long will it end?
49:54 – But that’s my perspective, buddy.
49:56 – How do you feel?
49:56 – It circles us back around to the theme of this podcast, right?
49:59 – The reason why you put together this podcast,
50:02 – I mean, you’ve been sitting on this knowledge
50:05 – and information, my friend, for so many years now,
50:07 – internally, for those that don’t know,
50:09 – internally, myself and others in the organization,
50:11 – have been pushing Brian to get this show out,
50:14 – to get this podcast released,
50:15 – because we know the amount of knowledge and wisdom
50:18 – that he has will have a profound impact
50:21 – on those that tune in and listen.
50:23 – So anyway, I just, I appreciate answering the question,
50:26 – and I just, I want to bring it full circle,
50:29 – and just really let folks know
50:31 – that you’re only a couple episodes in here,
50:32 – and what Brian has in store is significant,
50:37 – and I think you’re going to get a lot of value
50:39 – from tuning into the show.
50:40 – I’m so excited, my friend, that you’re finally doing it.
50:42 – It’s been a long time coming,
50:44 – but all good things are worth the wait.
50:47 – So it’s going to be an amazing thing, amazing ride.
50:50 – Well, Brian, this has been fun, my friend.
50:52 – Fun conversation, this is the first time in the United,
50:56 – well, made it the first time,
50:57 – but it’s been quite some time,
50:59 – since we’ve got on, actually just talk shop,
51:01 – and really going back and reflected down memory lane,
51:05 – now a decade plus, and so it’s been a fun conversation.
51:08 – Hopefully very insightful for those that are tuning in,
51:10 – listening, learn a little bit more behind the scenes
51:13 – of our story, not just the story of sunrise,
51:15 – but the story of our humble beginnings as well,
51:18 – and kind of where we came from, what we’re all about.
51:19 – But we’ve learned a lot along the way,
51:22 – done a lot of cool things, made a lot of mistakes.
51:24 – We’re going to keep on growing day and day out,
51:26 – but as we wrap this up, Brian, I’d ask you,
51:28 – if you can go back and have a conversation,
51:31 – with a 22, I’m going to say 22-year-old, Brian,
51:35 – because I think that was the moment
51:36 – where you learn about compound industry,
51:37 – but I think some light bulbs went off in your head
51:39 – at that point in your life.
51:40 – So if you know what you know today,
51:42 – if you can go back and have a candid conversation
51:44 – at the age of 22, what would you tell that younger Brian
51:48 – about the road ahead, what to expect,
51:50 – and how to navigate it?
51:51 – Man, this is so much fun to reflect back
51:55 – on those humble beginnings, but where my mind goes,
51:58 – is that when I was 22,
52:00 – I was at the University of Kentucky,
52:03 – and when I was there, our coach handed us a wristband,
52:07 – and you guys might remember the wristbands
52:10 – that would have like WWJD, right?
52:12 – What would Jesus do, or various different things.
52:14 – The one that he handed us was FIO, FIO,
52:18 – and what it stood for was figure it out, figure it out,
52:22 – and what he meant was, you’re now in college,
52:24 – I’m not your high school coach that’s going to pander to you,
52:27 – I’m not going to make sure that you go to class,
52:29 – I’m not going to make sure that you do what you need to do,
52:32 – you’re an adult, you’re a grown-up, you’re a man,
52:34 – you need to figure it out.
52:36 – And what I would convey is that he was right.
52:39 – If you have that mindset that you need to figure it out,
52:43 – and you need to push forward,
52:45 – I’ll tie it into what I consider to be a book
52:49 – that I sing, read every single year.
52:51 – It’s maybe my favorite book of all time.
52:53 – It’s Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich,
52:56 – and the main tenant of that book is Sage Wisdom,
53:01 – is that in order to be successful,
53:04 – you must have a burning desire to achieve a specific outcome,
53:10 – and it must be backed by ridiculous amounts
53:13 – of perseverance and persistence.
53:16 – And if you have those two elements,
53:18 – that you’ll figure it out, you’ll figure it out.
53:20 – You don’t have all the answers, and that’s okay.
53:23 – But you have to begin, you have to start,
53:25 – you have to have a burning desire to achieve XYZ goal,
53:29 – whatever it is in front of you,
53:31 – backed by ridiculous amounts of persistence,
53:33 – and if you have those elements,
53:35 – you will eventually figure it out.
53:36 – And so I’d go tell that guy, just do that.
53:38 – Just do, trust the process, and you’ll figure it out.
53:42 – That’s exactly how I feel.
53:43 – Man, this is a lot of fun.
53:44 – I really appreciate you giving me the opportunity
53:46 – to turn the tables on you,
53:48 – and just really go back memory lane,
53:51 – take a travel down memory lane
53:53 – and talk about all the cool things we’ve done, man.
53:55 – It’s a beautiful story.
53:57 – One that we’re going to continue writing, right?
53:59 – Like we’re writing it today.
54:00 – We’re going to continue writing it 5, 10, 15, 20 years from now,
54:03 – and really excited about what the future has in store for us.
54:07 – So with that, my friend,
54:09 – I think we should probably get out of here.
54:10 – What do you think?
54:11 – Yeah, that’s right, man.
54:12 – Let’s get the heck out of here.
54:13 – There will be many, many more.
54:14 – I’m sure to come, but this was a phenomenal start,
54:16 – but looking forward to many more to come.
54:19 – Everything we talk about on the show,
54:21 – discipline, structure, patience, downside protection,
54:25 – all came from lived experiences, not a textbook.
54:28 – If this episode resonated,
54:30 – the next ones are going to go deeper
54:32 – into how those lessons show up in real life and real decisions.
54:36 – I appreciate you being here at the beginning.
54:38 – The rest of the journey builds from this foundation.
54:41 – So until next time, you’d be great.