Why Most Doctors Go Broke in Business, The Brutal Truth Exposed

In this episode, Shawn Lynch sits down with ER doctor turned serial entrepreneur Dr. Abdulla Kudrath to break down how one man built a portfolio of emergency rooms, a rooftop lounge, an imaging center, and a growing real estate empire. If you have ever wondered how high performers turn expertise into ownership, this conversation hands you the playbook in real time and shows you why your skills are worth far more than a paycheck.


Shawn and Abdulla go deep on commercial real estate investing, from buying distressed industrial buildings at $50 per square foot to converting them into Class A flex space, understanding cap rates, carrying costs, and how actually to raise a building's value through occupancy. They get candid about why most doctors go broke in business, how to choose the right operator, the danger of ego, and the hard-won lessons that only come from getting beaten up like in kung fu. The conversation also covers AI and the future of work, raising kids without entitlement, the spilled milk approach to solving problems, and why traditional college may already be obsolete.

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Transcript

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Most doctors spend their whole entire career working for the traditional system. So there were times I worked 120 hours straight. My guest, Abdullah Kudra, walked out of medical school and started building his own. I'd go from $200,000 of medical school debt to $2.7 million of debt. If he thinks like an entrepreneur, there's many times where you work your debt and forget about everything else. If he talks like an entrepreneur, he doesn't want to lose so much of that. But it just happens to have an MD. This episode is one of the most detailed business conversations I've had on the show. You need to hear how this man thinks. Blame yourself for not knowing it. You'll take your lick and you'll get smarter. You'll put it to your repertoire and then you'll keep growing. Tell us your story. Tell us like take us back to the beginning. Where did you grow up and then you know what led you to the path to want to become a doctor? Yeah, you know, I um I got an interesting background because like my family's from Guyana. Okay, Guyana's in South America, the West Indies, Caribbean lifestyle. But the DNA is from South Asia, like India, right? But we've never been to India. I wasn't even born in Guyana. I was born in the Middle East, coincidentally. My dad was working at a hospital up there, right? I only spent a year there, and then we came to New Jersey because we had some family out here. But if you look at me, I don't look like an American, right? No. But I grew up in Jersey and then we moved to Texas down in the south, right? I still say you guys and not y'all, though. I say y'all. It's a useful word. Man, I say y'all. Yeah, so I'm kind of in between her. But did your family come here for work or why did why did they come to Houston or Texas? They they for well, they came to Texas because in Jersey it snows and they were in a really bad car accident. A car hit him in a red light, pushed them into an intersection, then a truck hit them. I mean, they're good now, but it shattered my mom's hips and broke my dad's ribs. I mean, we're he had to leave the hospital AMA because he had kids at home. But after that, they just didn't want to be around ice and snow. Yeah, makes sense. We were a little traumatized from that. And we had friends out there that had family in Houston, Deer Park specifically, and said, call my hair, it hardly ever snows. Come down here. So we actually just packed up and started fresh. I heard a family of seven. How old were you when you came to each? I was seven. Okay. So now, I mean, New Jersey, inner city, New Jersey, we were in the nice part. The Dare Park, Texas was a total culture change for me, too, right? Especially back then. Like I mean, it's not still the greatest, but well, yeah, in the early 90s, it was very different. I was the only brown guy. It was like whites and Mexicans. We didn't have a single black guy until I was a senior, all right? So people don't even know what to do with me. Right. Now I'm sure it's changed now. Yeah. By the time I was a senior, I think there was a couple more South Asian people, like from India or Pakistan or whatever. But I was the only one, and my first name is Abdullah. And people joke around and said, like, like, what are you? And then my friend said, He's Abdullian. Just because there was no one like me at the time. But, you know, that's uh, you know, that's my early life. And then I actually didn't be decided to be a doctor until halfway through college. Like I started college. My parents expected me to go to college. Uh I was doing computer science because I was good with computers, but I had no interest in being a doctor. I didn't think of it. It wasn't until like halfway through college I did some soul searching, did some traveling, got fascinated with biology. I ended up randomly in the Amazon jungle with some researchers that invited me. Took an interest in biology and the study of life. And then I was like, well, maybe that's what would motivate me, studying humans, right? Like how we work, how we break, how we can fix it. Volunteered at a hospital in the ER, and I loved it. I loved being there. I love the unpredictable nature of the ER. And and I and I think my central theme in life is I want to be useful, right? And there's so many ways to be useful, but I found a calling in that space, right? By the time my grades in college weren't that good. I was I was a slacker, you know. I was naturally pretty talented, you know, high school was easy, but you gotta apply yourself in college. You have to, right? Especially as you get further into it. So I was like, dang, no medical school in hell will take me with these grades. So then I applied myself, transferred to the University of Houston, and studied. I had to cut out old friends. Not that they were bad people, it's that we would ride our motorcycles and stay up at Taco Kabana till four in the morning, right? And that wasn't conducive to like studying. So politefully, I had to withdraw and just stay at school, get a new set of friends that were studying a lot. I wouldn't leave the campus until I hit my goals. And then thankfully I was able to graduate uh top of my class, you know, um, with a 3.9998 GPA for that second part of college. Not because I'm so smart, but because I was really applying myself, right? And, you know, was able to take the MCAT, apply to med school, get in here at Texas AM College of Medicine, and you know, become a doctor. And then I always I'm a uh a prepared kind of guy. Like I like martial arts. I'm gonna learn how to, you know, I learned how to use guns as soon as I turned 21. So emergency medicine kind of called to me. Like, you know, when things hit the fan and someone passes out here or someone's hurt here, you want an emergency room doctor, right? Because that's kind of our bread and butter. And I was like, I want to be prepared for situations like that. So the ER called to me. What specifically do you go to med school for if you're gonna be emergency room doctor? Is there like a is it internal medicine or what is it? Well, no, so everyone does the four years of medical school and then you apply to your residency. And my there's residency in emergency medicine. Okay. So it's what what they found in the late 70s is that most ERs were covered by internal medicine doctors, family doctors, surgeons, whoever, go cover the ER. But they realized they need a special type of doctor that focuses and trains always in the ER. Um, because if you're a family practice doctor, how often did you train to intubate or do central lines or do a core therapy? These are advanced procedures that they didn't really. Emergency, but it can come into the ER. So they created programs starting in the 70s, like just for ER. Now we go into orthopedic rotations, anesthesia, we're in the hospital rounds, the surgical ICU, the pediatric ICU, because all that can come into the ER. And then we spend most of our time in the emergency department training with doctors who are built for that. Uh so that's the kind of training we do. So the ER was three years at a county hospital I did in Fort Worth. And then how did I get into business? That's the next thing, right? I most doctors are not entrepreneurial. I know a bunch of them that have good friends that are doctors, and that's like the last thing on the like their mind doesn't even work that way. It doesn't work that way, and they get burned and they try and they fail. Because there's they've been focused on one thing for so long, they they uh yes, yeah, they're lending. I think there's two reasons, right? When they start getting too much, yeah, and then they're like, okay, well, let me invest in a business, let me do this, and that it's a whole different skill set. Yeah. Right. And and some of them, maybe they think uh doctors are usually pretty cool, but some can be a little cocky. But if you're a great basketball player, does that mean you can be drafted in the NFL and be good? So if you're a really smart dude and you're a doctor, doesn't mean you're really smart in this business knowledge, right? You got to start from scratch. And martial arts we call that beginner's heart. Take off your black belt, put on your white belt, and learn it that way. But if you come in with this black belt mentality, already no, you're not gonna learn the right way and you're gonna get hurt, right? So they do that. And two is doctors are very, very trusting, right? They've never they they they wouldn't do screw people over, so they turn over money and they get taken advantage of. And then they get so burned, they never want to do business again. Investing in every one of their friends' business ideas. Yeah, then they're okay. I'm just gonna stick to that. No, I just burnt 50, 100,000, $300,000. Now I gotta work my ass off in my day job. I don't want to do another business again. Yeah, right. Um thankfully, I think you know the thing that helped me in business is you gotta avoid ego in any business, right? Like you gotta have beginners' heart, you gotta know that there's a lot of stuff you don't know, right? And you have to treat people with a lot of respect and and be dynamic, right? So you can keep learning, mitigate your risk. I made some mistakes in business and I'm like, oof, I should have I blame myself, I should have saw that coming. I didn't even have a solid contract. Well, now I learned the hard way. How to because I got beat up like kung fu, right? That's exactly what happens. Yeah, and then you do it, then you have a contract and you get beat up again. You're like, dang, I just realized that I need to pick not just an attorney to write the contract, but I'm gonna only pick attorneys that litigated because they know how to really write a better contract. Yeah, you know or I just wanted the deals too bad, I was rushing it, I didn't pay attention to this and I didn't think it was a big deal. I mean, there's a hundred things that can be. So many things you learn along the way. But if you don't blame the world and you blame yourself for not knowing it, you'll take your licks and you'll and you'll get smarter, wiser, you'll put it to your repertoire, and then you'll keep growing, right? So I went into business because I I took a trip to East Africa, got a medical trip, and I was like, man, I I really like building systems, right? And I don't like to do the same thing forever. I don't want to be a doctor for the rest of my life. Yeah. So how will you because you're still trading your time for money, like a lot of money, but not right. And I couldn't have exponential growth like that. That's what I'm saying. It's capped. No, you're you only have X amount of time. And I mean, you can be the highest paid doctor in the world, is still trading your time for that amount of that high paid money. And then if I break my hands, how can I innovate on a ski trip or something, right? And I can't work. Now, again, this is not for everybody because there's a everyone looks at, oh yeah, do your business, you get a lot of money, that's sexy, right? But it's also a headache. And I'm never off. Truly, I can hit pause and go do stuff for friends, but it's just backing up on my phone. And there's something to be said about getting off from work and going home to your family and your kids, if you have kids, and not having any stress or worry in the world, right? And I get why people like I got family members that are like that. They don't want the stress, they don't want the extra money, they don't want the extra stress. I get so bored. Yeah, we're not built that way. Yeah, right. So you got to know who you are. We want the challenge, we'll take on the headache. Well, we'll, if you know, God permits us to get money, then we have a new challenge on how we're gonna spend that and account for that and take bigger risks, right? And that's what drives us. But there's an expense, right? Because we don't get to spend as much time with our friends, especially in the grinding period. We didn't get to go to that wedding, we didn't get to go on that vacation. We, you know, we didn't get, we delayed having kids in some cases, right? So there's a sacrifice, and there's not one fit for everyone. Like I my brother, he had got married, had kids, his kids are 12, 13. 41, I don't have any kids. So that's a huge sacrifice that I took, and and I might regret that in the future. We were we were really late because my wife's an entrepreneur, and we were 36, and she goes, Hey, you know, I know we talked about having kids at some point, but we're both still weren't like ready to have them that day, but we didn't want to rule it out forever. That's kind of how it was. And she goes, We should go do IVF and then we'll freeze embryos. That way, if we want to have kids in three or four years, I won't be too old, is what she was saying. I was like, you know what? That's a good idea. So we went through we did the whole IBF process, and then after we did it, it's a I mean, it's a lot on her. It is a lot, and so she finally, like, after we did it all, she's like, Man, I'm already 30, about to be 37. We might as well just put one in. She's like, I don't think we should wait. So we put one in, she had a miscarriage, and then she had our the next one, she had our son. And so that was seven years ago. And then luckily we did that because then we had a surrogate that had our, we have a one and a half year old daughter, our surrogate had our daughter. And the same surrogate said, Hey, I'll have another one for you. And we're like, Okay, yeah. So we are actually going to Fort Worth next week to pick up our another baby. I'm 45, she's 44. But you know, it was really cool because I'm in it, like you said, like I'm in a different place in my life where I can actually spend a lot more time. It's just a different level. Right. When I was grinding, when I was coming up, there's no way it would have been, you know, I know people say work like balance or whatever, but there would have been none, right? I would have either sacrificed the business or sacrifice spending time with them. Uh it just it would it would have happened. I mean, there's no, I mean, you're when you're building a company, it's so hard. And and I say there's no true balance. I warn people like if you balance, you're not gonna succeed. No, I integrate everything. Like mine's all like just my kids are involved. I mean, it's like everything. My balance comes in time. Yeah, it's weighted over time because there's gonna be if you think you need to work this hard in the middle and that's your balance, good luck. Yeah, there's gonna be times where you work your ass off and forget about everything else. There's gonna be times when you can relax, and there's gonna be times when you're gonna work your ass off again. Always, and then in the end, you get to defer you make more money, then you get to relax a little more than the average person, right? But there's not an actual balance day to day, maybe year to year, maybe decade to decade. Hey everyone, real quick, I just want to let you know this podcast is 100% independent. No ads, no sponsors, just real. If you're finding value in whatever we're doing here, the biggest help that you can give us is hitting subscribe and sharing this with someone who you think needs to hear it or someone that it will provide value to. That's how we continue to grow. And if you did that, I would really appreciate it. Most people that make a lot of money want to work more. But you everybody out there that you see is a billionaire, nobody's like sitting on the beach and like just hanging out. I mean, very little. They want to keep building something. They like, it's not the money, it's like building the next thing, or you know, I'm sure they don't want to always be CEO. I mean, Elon's like a different level, but it's it's like with me. Like, I don't want to be the guy putting out fires at two o'clock in the morning, but I still want to start businesses and be involved and be an advisor, and but I don't want to be like the main operations guy, like that. Because it's work, but it's not work, right? Work, I like is when you work for someone else, you go to nine to five, right? This is a responsibility. You took on a project, yeah. You work hard for your responsibility, but it to your head it's different. It's just like any responsibility in life, we just got to do it. We just gotta make it work. We took it on, we got to make it work. It also took me 20 years to realize to hire good people instead of trying to do everything myself, you're able to go hire great people and make way more money. I know. How do you choose who's a good person? And how many times did we choose the wrong person? I guess that's a good way to look at it because I always like, man, I would have I wish I would have done it sooner, but I did everything for myself for so long that I'm I I I mean, I kind of have an okay judgment now. I'm like, okay, I know what it takes. And so I'm like, I try to find those people, you know, not always. And then when you find good people, you could put them in a structure that ruins them and they find ways to be lazy or slack off or this, that take advantage of a system. So then you have to learn how to create supervision protocols, right? And and benchmarks and this kind of stuff. But again, another skill that is learned over time. Because some people say, like, oh, just delegate that. Like it's not that easy. It's not that easy. I mean, managing people is the hardest part of every business. Yeah. Uh, you know, every single business. It's labor, it's people. It's like that's why the robot thing is gonna get a little weird because most business owners would probably hire a robot because they don't have to deal with lawsuits or like, you know, people not showing up or training people, especially in like a lower level um labor type job that can be replaced. Yeah, it's gonna be it's gonna be weird. So whenever you're so you graduate, you're going, you go to the ER, you're working. How did you start? When did you, what made you decide you what business was the first business you just started? You said you went to Africa and you're like building structures, right? And then uh, you know, half of me was like, okay, well, I don't want to do this forever. I mean, I'd want to be a doctor forever, but not only a doctor forever. So then I was like, well, I did once hear that you should your first business should be in your area of expertise. I agree with that. Because that way you bring insights and free labor, right? And that was really important for me. Now, to build an emergency department is not a 11-8 stand or iFoom shop or it's a big undertaking. It would take me two and a half million dollars for my first one. So I'd go from $200,000 of medical school debt to $2.7 million of debt, right? Um and and it's very complex and it takes hundreds of thousands a month to be open, right? So the very cost of build, it's the cost before you have enough business. So you're burning cash every single month. Yeah. Now, thankfully, I am an ER doctor, so I don't have to hire an ER doctor. I can work and keep and not pay myself. And thank God, because I would have failed in the first one because my billing company wasn't that good. We were seeing patients, but they weren't collecting, they were leaving, they just weren't doing their job. So I'm not making money, but I'm seeing patients, they love us, right? So there was times I worked 120 hours straight. I threw my first Christmas. We opened in the early November that Thanksgiving. I worked 90 hours. Christmas, I worked 120 hours. I mean, I had a call room in the back, so I'm sleeping. It's slower when you first open, right? So I'm getting six, seven hours of sleep. It feels like my home. Doesn't matter. Shower, put on my scrubs, go see patients. As I see the first couple months of patients, I'm like, oh, well, let's add this. Well, this printer's not working. Let's do this. Let's, and I'm I'm getting feedback. Oh, how do you hear about us? Oh, so you have to be there, one, to make dynamic steps. But you had to put in the grind, right? I had to work for free for myself and 120 hours, no problem. Through Griffiths, no problem. How old are you at the time? I was 32. Okay. Yeah, because from you know, I didn't get out of my training until 29. And I think I was 31, 32 when I opened my first business. Okay. And thankfully, you know, sometimes you gotta learn the hard way. Money wasn't coming in. Um I talked to a friend that understood billing who I met, and I'm like, hey, go through my stuff. We audited it. She was like, Oh, it's bad. I learned it. I was still in the contract. I taught my billing company how to do it right, at least until the contract was over. Is it is it a third-party billing company? Or is it okay? And are they billing insurance mostly? Exactly. Okay. Right. But they just weren't even following things right. Right. So and then I switched, and then now the second billing company is better. Now we're making income. Now I can breathe a little bit, right? Yeah, afford to hire somebody to help. Yeah. And and and now yeah, I can hire the doctors. And now, if you ask me that time, are you ready for a second location? I'd be like, heck no. But now I got all these people that want to work for me because I got a good reputation. I got cash coming in. I don't want to spend it. What am I going to do? Right? I got I got a cool car already. Got a second cool car already. I don't really care about other stuff, right? Um, I don't care about fancy clothes or anything like that. So I'm like, shit, I'm gonna reinvest it into my next location because the pieces are coming together. The scalability is there now. All these doctors, like, hey dude, when do you do your next one? I want to work for you. All right. Then then the market's changing. It's creating openings in places where I thought were too saturated. Right? People are closing down because how do you pick a place for ER? How I mean, is it just like density and demographic and like how do you know where to put a location or what's a good area? Yeah, all the above. Like you want to have the right population density. You want to have at least enough people that have medical insurance to because it is expensive to pay these doctors. Like, if I and cash prices are really cheap. Like I try to help people out with really cheap cash prices, right? Uh I mean, if you broke your arm, if you hit your arm and you're a young guy and you don't have insurance, you go to the hospital's gonna cost you like eight, ten thousand dollars. Cash price with my place is like 500 bucks. That's how much it's cheaper than a monthly premium. Oh, your copay, yeah. Yeah, or a copay, or it does, right? So I don't make money off that, but you know, enough in insured patients, right? It it averages out. But I try to discount it for people who have hardship, right? Now, got a good demographic, a good population, but even then you can fail. Like my second location was an ER that closed down. And everyone was like, why are you taking it over? It's been closed for two years, it's a bad location. Well, I I looked into the management, I looked into the the details, I'm like, I think I could run it better. And and even if I can barely make money, I've created great jobs for people, and I've got a location, you know, in the center of Houston in a cool spot. And it was already it was previously in ER, so like less build-out, right? Or less than that. Right. I saved $1.8 million on building it out. They're expensive to build out, right? I just took over the lease. Right. Was it 100% closed when you took it over? Or for two years. Okay. Oh, yeah. So that's I'm just gonna have to buy a cat scanner, x-ray, all my medication equipment, right? But again, patient care is something special. It's about how you take care of people, right? And a lot of people mess up with that. Even big hospitals, they can't do it, right? Because it's very, you know, you can you can have the machines and the people, but are they inspired? Are they supported? And will they take care of patients like they would take care of their family? Right? I make sure my staff are supported. Uh I make sure we build a facility that they would bring their own family to. I would say my own mama, they're not even called who's working because that's what we built. That's the processes, right? No, no weird billing practices or anything like that. I'd rather lose money than do something shady or do something that hurts somebody else, right? And over time we're gonna keep growing. And that's what happened to us. We kept growing. People trust us, they know that we're always gonna do the right thing for them, that we're you know, the best option in town. And that's how we keep growing. And that's how we could, you know, go to our third and our fourth location. How many do you have? Uh we had four and then we recently sold one. Okay. Um, hospital in the area really wanted it. And I was like, okay, well, let me go through my first sale. You know, and then now I'm gonna look for another one. Because if you expand too fast, it's hard to maintain quality. Yeah, in any business, it's really that's really tough, especially like when you're you have a physical location like that and there's a lot of like your your biggest thing is c I mean, it's technically it's customer service, like like you're talking about the care that somebody's given. And if you just open a bunch at one time, like the the quality of the employee. Yeah, where am I gonna find all these great doctors? Yeah, and all these great nurses. That's gotta be hard. It's tough. So I I try to grow slow, right? And as I see that the pieces are coming together and I have people that want to work for me, I see another location, then I can say, like, okay, it's time. Let me put it all together and invest the money. Or is everything in town or is in the suburbs? Is some of the stuff in the both, you know. My first one is actually way down south in Angleton. Okay. Um, why? It's because there's tons of ERs in Houston. They didn't need another one at the time, right? Yeah. But here's a good group of people that could use access to cure. So we started there. And then after that two years, people started closing down in Houston. And that's when I was like, okay, let me take over that space. And let me run it hopefully run it a little better. Yeah, I feel like the I guess ER is different than just a standard clinic, like a um right, because you're billing emergency room rates instead of just like a um like a ready clinic or whatever. Yeah, they're a little different and they can say no to people. Yeah. I'm insurance they're not gonna pay you to say no. ER, I'm never gonna do that. Someone really needs help, we're gonna help them. And you know, if it's an emergency, we gotta help them. Right? So there's it's a little bit difficult to manage that because it's there's so many like dynamic gray areas in emergency medicine. They have to be careful that your front desk is not turning away people because of money. Right? It's like, whoa, they need help. We're gonna help them whether we lose money or not, because that's what we swore to do, right? So that is different than than clinics, right? So we're gonna eat a lot of cost. I eat a lot of cost every month, and that's fine with me, right? No clinic is ever gonna eat a cost. They're gonna send you a bill or they're not gonna let you come as a slip run door. That's what I was thinking. I was like, you see so many popping up. I think it was a thing for a time, but I feel like it's not, is it kind of slowed down where the competition is well, yeah, because people thought that you can just build it and make a bunch of money, but I'm like, you can also burn a lot of money too. I would imagine. Right. And then people lost their lost their lunch on some of these places, right? I know one where like these 10 doctors like all pitched in, did it, they closed within a year and a half, and they're still all paying this huge note. Yeah. They all gotta come up with a ton of money every month to pay for that. Yeah, that's what you know what it kind of is. It's like one of those things where it's like, oh, that makes sense. We're in the medical field, and like somebody probably came to those doctors with a business idea and they're like, oh, that's great. Yeah, and then you're in a bad situation. Because everything has to come together from the staffing to the advertising to the marketing to the processing to the billing, and and and there's then there's a bunch of little insights into all those things. And if you if you don't get it all right, it'll crumble pretty fast or it'll start going downhill. And they know you're bleeding out, like any business, right? Yeah. Uh so but then I diversified after like a few years. I was like, look, I I want to do other stuff. So that's why I opened up a midtown like rooftop lounge. I like to be a host. Do you have anything else in the medical? What other businesses are in the medical group? In the medical, I did a um, I had a physician group and I staffed ERs for other places. And then I had a uh I have an imaging center, which has MRIs and you know outpatient imaging. And then I diversified outside to hospitality. I've got the food court and the galleria area with some partners. And then I'm the only owner of a rooftop lounge. And that taught me a lot and also brought me into new networks, right? I met the mayor that way. I met a bunch of ball players that way, a bunch of artists that way. To me, it's fun. It makes some money, right? It's decent money. I think people would be happy, but my core competency makes me more. Yeah, of course. So if it was purely a m monetary decision, I would have not have done it and done my core competency. But then I would only have money and I like experience too, right? And and I'm glad I did it because I was able to provide a really good space for the city of Houston. It's been three years and we're still growing. And that's a tough industry. And I've seen people open and close. I'm a risky guy, but the only thing I probably won't do, and I just don't want the in my headspace right now is you know, restaurant and the hospitality industry. I mean, we're closing on a hotel in about a week. It was my it's a it's a smaller hotel, but I think that's as far as I'll go in like the the hospitality space because I understand it. And the one of our partners in the hotel, they've done a couple of them. So and it's a boutique. It's like we're trying to create no, we're trying to create experience and uh it's outside of roundtop, but okay. Yeah, it'll it should do really well, but it'll get me into that, I think the the hotel space like by doing this first one and figuring it out. But yeah, restaurant man, I just don't want any part. I I know a bunch of restaurant owners, and I mean the ones that are good are good, I mean they're good operators and they do well, but there's a lot of people that fail all the time. Well, you know why I talk about this sometimes. You know why restaurants fail? It's because somebody was a really good chef and all their friends said you should open a restaurant. And they went and raised the money from a bunch of rich people. And yeah, or they spend their life savings on it, right? And they open a restaurant. Okay, good. The food is good. But step one, how do you build it out? Okay, they figured out how to build it out because how do you make two costs? How do people get in the door? Your friend showed up on the grand opening, but how are you gonna get people to come? Yeah. What do you know about social media marketing? What do you know about advertising? What do you know about Google Words? Oh, they were a chef, they didn't know anything about that. And then they got taken for a ride by a bunch of marketers that sell themselves, but not you, right? And then, okay, say they got a little bit of success and people are coming in, word of mouth. Well, now they're too busy to be the waiter and the chef. So they got to hire a waiter. Are they good at hiring people? Are they maybe sometimes they're mean and they don't get along with people? So everyone high turnover. Nobody wants to work for them. All right. So all these things you have to do to run a business. And you said, like, you got to be a good operator. Yeah, it's hard. If you're a good chef, you're not a good, you're not necessarily a good operator. So who's gonna be the operator? I'm actually not good at operations now that I look back up. I mean, I did it uh because I had to and you know, made those businesses successful, but there's somebody that could have done it way better than me or could have done it way better than me now that I know. I'm like, I I and I don't want to be that's just not my thing. Like my wife is probably one of the best people I've ever seen at operations. She's so good at like having systems in place and and following procedure and like coming up with the right things. I mean, she's just so good. Like, I I there's no way I'm ever that I would be ever to be that good. So like I'm more visionary, put the deal together, get everything going, definitely hire operations guy and kind of steer the ship a little bit. But that's important because you really can only be an operator to one or two companies, is what I was saying. And that's what I was doing too. I was I was involved in a couple other things, not a bunch, but uh you know, it I should have hired a good operator earlier on, and it would have saved me a lot of stress and and and it wouldn't have capped out the company. That first company got capped out because I just did as much as I knew and just wasn't that good at operation. So yeah, and and it's tough because if it's an what do I know about a coffee shop? How do I pick a best operator? I can pick a really good operator for ERs if I needed to. Yeah. Um but I don't know how to pick a good operator for it. So then what do you do? You always look at the track record and don't listen to what they say. Too many times people will oversell themselves. Well, then and then they'll try to trick you, like, oh, I opened this and that, but you have to really look. Did they truly open it from A to Z? Yeah. Or were they just a part of the process and somebody else was the X Factor? So to I mean, that's a really important thing in business. How do you select an operator? So what we've been doing that's been fairly successful for us over the last like five years for all these extra businesses that we've opened or invested in or founded, um, we've, you know, let an operator earn in equity for sure. Like, you know, we'll put up the money and then the operator will come in, but we do the same thing. We're getting somebody with like a really good track record, uh, somebody that we know can perform. And it it's worked out really well that way. And then they're incentivized to also do better. And yeah, and they can earn in over time. I mean, I can't say all the numbers because we we had an NDA, but we sold one of our companies, and um the guy that we gave the equity to did really, really well in three years. And he you know, even along the way, it did really, really well. And he was a guy that came from a corporate, you know, place. So it was it was really cool. But then in but he earned it. Like he are, you know, he he hit all his numbers and like he earned everything he got. And so we've just kind of done that same thing with the rest of our stuff lately. And that's what it's all about. It's worked out really well. And that makes you happy, I'm sure. Yeah, it was amazing. Like we work hard, we make money, but we want everyone around us to make money. Yeah, right. Oh, I'm like that now. I want everybody to do good. Like, I've I mean, that's probably what motivated you to do this podcast. How do you disseminate information so that people have have access to information to where they too cannot be in the dark? How can we shine a little bit of light for them and light the way so that they can find their path? I think mine came from being a lost 18-year-old, and like I'm like, man, I wish I would have known all this stuff when I was 18. So like that's where my mind is. And that's kind of my third phase of my life is like I want to help younger people kind of not be in that same place. Because I think traditional education is is pretty outdated. It just doesn't it doesn't set you up for success. And I think it's obsolete now with AI. It really is. And then forget K through 12. They don't teach you about money or life skills or or anything. And so it's just sad. I feel bad for a regular 18-year-old. That's why they're so lost because they don't know what to do with their life, because they haven't learned anything. They're just, I mean, they know reading, writing, math, right? And some other stuff, but they don't know what they want to do because they haven't learned anything about anything. No, and so they haven't done anything hands-on, they haven't learned how the real world works. And so, like when you're 18, you're just like expected to go figure it out, and that's why you can't. And so it's just kind of sad. They need exposure to mentorship. And if their parents then do business, or maybe they're unfortunate, they don't have access to, you know, their parents even, then where will they get? And I say two camps of knowledge. One knowledge is how to be as a person, and the next is how to survive financially. Yes. Right. Where are they going to find that if they if they don't, if they weren't blessed with parents to give it to them or mentors to give it to them? You don't. It takes you 25 years to learn, you know, and then and then when you're 45, you're like, well, I guess I learned a lot in the last 25 years, but it doesn't have to be that way. And so that's why I I I started a kind of mentorship thing. And um, you know, I'm building a school for my son. Like I want to start my own school for my son. And that's awesome. It's the same thing. It's like, it's not rocket science, but it's things that I know. And and will he be an entrepreneur? I hope, but he might not, but I'll give him all the skills that no matter what he decides to do, he's gonna have every skill, whatever it takes, he'll be successful at it, I think. And so that's the goal with the school. It's like just provide all the stuff that traditional school kind of left out. Yeah, that's really cool. And yeah, it's more targeted, right? And and it'll be interesting. We talked about AI earlier and how and we try to predict, right? Right now, like AI is always gonna be better than any teacher, unfortunately, like for the teachers, right? And now, teachers can inspire you, but most of the teachers aren't doing that. They've got a couple of rotten eggs in their classes because their parents didn't train them. And I I got friends that are teachers and they tell me the stories. I've learned so much, right? They they struggle through this period or that period because of these two bad kids that are just destroying that period. No one else gets to learn, right? Principals can't deal with it. They'll get mad at the parents will get mad at you if you say anything to them. You go you're like walking on this weird line of Yeah, so the system is is breaking, right? You can't discipline kids like I got swatted in in Deer Park. I didn't. And that's why we didn't challenge our teachers. Even if it was a lady, she'd call the assistant principal to SWAT us. One pop in the butt with a paddle, I think it's not gonna hurt us. I mean, it hurt, but it's not gonna damage us, right? Yeah. And we learned respect real fast and we would never do that again. And nobody, and anyone who heard that pop would never do that again. Now you're like, oh, he got in trouble. Yeah. And and now I I hear these horror stories about kids. You obviously they got rid of popping them, right? Yeah, because that was a long time ago. That's barbaric, right? So they say. So we'll see what the results. And then you can't put them in detention because now they missed a bus and the parent can't pick them up and they're mad at you. Teachers don't the principal doesn't want to deal with it so it's like you deal with it. Because I can't even raise my voice at these kids. I can't. It's a challenge. I'm not saying what's right or wrong, I'm saying it's challenging. Yeah, right. I agree. And how does that impact education for everybody in the class? Tremendously. So we're creating an obsolete system, and you know, good teachers are gonna drop off. It's hard to be that teacher from like beautiful minds or whatever that show was that can like go in there in the inner city and teach. So we're gonna have to rely on AI. But not school is also our daycare. Yeah. It's really for a lot of people, it's just daycare. Well, yeah. I So once we have the robot at home that can watch your kid, or one for a bunch of kids that could watch him, right? That may be the future of teaching. Yeah. I think the model needs to be more doing in some teaching, like where they're applying some of the stuff, because like you said, like it just with anything, it's like, hey, I'm gonna teach you how to use these tools, you know, in a mechanic. You could sit in class all all you want, but until you actually go like start you applying, like this is this is what you're supposed to do with this tool, but until you start like applying how to use it uh in the real world, like that it just you're you're always gonna have that limitation. So it almost needs to be like um you know, a couple hours of like learning, like learning, learning. Yeah, and then it needs to be like life skill kind of applying it to your life type of something type of learning. Scenarios, walking through that personalized, anything, just not going to each class in class and doing the same thing and memorizing the information. And again, with AI, it's just not it, they're not gonna need to do the same thing anymore. Uh, I think the education is super valuable, but having the right education is gonna be extremely valuable. Yeah, I think the what's gonna be weird is there's gonna be this gap where schools and colleges aren't gonna move fast enough because it's just it's the system, right? It's gonna take forever. And so over the next like 10 years, while AI is like this, there's gonna be this huge gap where they're not where those kids are gonna be probably the worse off. And then AI will force them to make a change at some point, and then the newer kids, you know, whatever the system turns into. But I think the next like 10 or 15 years is gonna be really weird. Oh, yeah. I mean, college is gonna be a thing in the past, unfortunately. It's gonna go all the way to tech. And I was a big proponent of college, right? Now, if you're going to like even doctors, lawyers are gonna see like, eh, we could probably shorten this college time and get people out faster, right? Make it a little more efficient. But for everything else, where people are going through degrees and they're not getting jobs in that particular career path or it's not helping them, or they're coming out with huge debt, the prices went skyrocketing as people started offering loans, right? Yeah. Third-party paying systems that are just going, that can't last. That can't last at all. So we're gonna see colleges just fall by the wayside and get replaced by technical training. Um, and if it's whether it's servicing and programming AI bots or whatever the future holds. I mean, it's hard for me to even imagine what that would be. But even in our in the oil industry, I'm in, these companies were all these frack companies were only oil oil, right? They're they're service companies, they deal with Chevron, they deal with Exxon. And something that popped up recently is like they're starting to generate power for, and so some of them are becoming like part power companies. Uh and so it's just weird. It's like I would have never thought that. And then you're like, okay, well, you know, these are like these were solely oil and gas service companies, and now they're finding these new avenues and starting to generate powerful people and like doing different stuff. And now these data centers out in West Texas, like it's just hard to know exactly what everybody's gonna need. Where where I predict, I think most industries, because people do go, what about doctors? What about attorneys? You still need them? I'm like, yeah, you do. I just think the industry gets smaller. Like you don't need a thousand partners at a law firm or but you know, a thousand attorneys. Yeah, it's more assistance, people working with AI, a handful of guys that are kind of like managing the ship, but I don't, I just don't think you need as many of everything. Right. Yeah. I mean, even everything is replaceable. That's the one truth about everything. Everything is obsolete, right? Doctors can be obsolete. At first, I work with my hands as an ER doctor, right? So it'll be a while. Yeah. But a telemedicine doctor, yeah, it can be replaced. Now I will caution though, it's frequently confidently wrong right now. Will it get better? Of course, over time. I also feel like, yeah, if we're like, we're in the like I like flip phone stages. It's like this is like so early. But people are putting a lot of trust into it. Yeah, you it's got a while before you're replacing things, but some jobs, of course, you're gonna replace. But yeah, there's certain things that you're still gonna need some human oversight or some sort, but it's gonna assist because who are the lawyers are gonna sue when the AI is, you know, because a lot of things are chance, right? As a probability of this diagnosis versus this diagnosis. Yeah. Right? You can, okay, well, you had this chest pain. I don't think you're having a heart attack. But if it's a warning sign and they die the next day from a heart attack because it's a pro a numbers game, then who will get sued? Will it be the AI? Will it be the supervising doctor? You know, we're gonna go into a whole new realm of liability. I was on a a call today with some attorneys and we asked the question because it is like weird, is like, is your how your your emails are can get subpoenaed in a case? Can your AI chat get subpoenaed in a case? Yeah, and they're trying to make an establishment on that. But the the real problem is a lot of companies are buying backdoors into AI so that they can have your data. Of course. But and so I guess if it's on a closed network, so if all your all your people are talking, I don't know. We're at the subpoena your Google searches, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's probably the same thing, right? And so, like to see if you've been feeding it whatever, you've been feeding it your emails and you've been like trying to be careful what you tell your AI, right? Or if you want to be, you know, like how they do in court, how log lawyers talk, you'd be like, if somebody were to do this, right, don't tell them all your personal problems. It's actually really good for that because it gives you something to talk to. And I've heard friends that swear by it, but just keep that in mind. Like, if you don't want it out, don't tell anyone. Don't tell AI. Yeah, it's gonna be a crazy world. Where do you think it goes in the medical field first? Like where are we where are you using it? First, it's gonna help us with efficiency, right? Yeah. The average doctor spends 30% on the computer writing things up, right? Boom, okay, that's it. Nice machine learning AI, note-taking, catching missed documentation, blah, blah, blah, right? Spend more time with the patient. Then, two is like, you know, the simple things don't have to come to the ER, right? Because talk to AI, AI will help risk stratify you, give you some advice to try, and then an algorithm to get to the ER. Eventually, well, I mean, primary care might get hit, you know, maybe they'll have AI teledoctors that will actually prescribe for you once they allow somebody to take the fall for the the mistake. Yeah. Because if it makes a mistake, and I found a lot of mistakes on AI, it's gonna get better. But if it prescribes you something that you're allergic to and then there was a bad outcome and this and that, who's gonna get sued? Will it be the AI company? Are they practicing medicine without a license? I don't know how they're gonna do that, right? Yeah. So there's some hurdles that we got to figure out. And then later there'll be a robot just like me that can sell you up. Right? There's gonna be a robot just like me that, okay, you're in a car accident, it's gonna cut your ribs open and put a tube and do this, bah, bah, bah. Maybe it'll do it'll do it faster than me at some point. Yeah, right? Doesn't get tired. Yeah, maybe I'll still just be there at the head of the bed, making sure like, well, they'll do this, right? And eventually be completely replaced. Am I worried about that? No. If I was the milkman, should I be like, oh, I'm gonna become obsolete? No, we're all gonna become obsolete, right? But that may it'll get bad for a little bit for you if you lose your job first, and that does suck. You're gonna have to be dynamic and find something else. But then it's gonna get better for everybody because now even I don't have to pay a doctor because my robot can be programmed to do it. I don't have to pay a painter because my robot can be programmed to do that. I think the biggest thing the biggest help that the robots will be initially for just everyday people, doesn't matter who it is, is the house stuff. Because a lot of families just spend a lot of time away from their kids just like just doing house chores and cleaning stuff up. And like I feel like when the robot can come in, like almost everyone could have a nanny for like a hundred bucks a month or something. You know, like when you can lease a robot or whatever you do, whatever finance it and it can share it amongst your family, it can do everything in your house, and then you could spend more time with your family, you could work a little bit more, whatever you want. I just feel like that'll probably be the greatest like initial benefit to like just ease people's stress in people's lives. Cause when you have a little bit extra money, you can afford a nanny or you can afford a housekeeper, you can afford this. A lot of people can't. Oh, yeah. And so I think that it'll be it'll be a huge help to uh help manage people's like home life a little bit in the very beginning. Oh, yeah. You know, I used to be, you know, the talk about Skynet, right? And the AI. I'm not even worried about that anymore. I'm I'm not even worried about AI taking jobs. It's gonna get worse before it gets better. I'm not even worried about Skynet becoming a sentient being and taking over us. I'm actually more worried about a few people using the robots to control the many. That's all I'm worried about. Because all it takes is a corrupt evil people to have power over our data and robots, and now a few can control all of us, and we will never be able to revolt against that. That's the real worry to me. Yeah, that's definitely a good point. Because the only balance in history was revolutions between people to be like, whoa, we're not gonna be under your tyrant rule, but how are we gonna go against millions of infinite robots? It's not gonna be the robots that we're fighting, it's gonna be the controller of the robots. Yeah, that's true. And that's more likely because people can be evil. Always. Well, anytime there's something that's that powerful or some technology that's that big, even the internet. Like, internet's got a lot of good, but like there's bad people on there. Like, it gets that popular. Five percent of people on there are terrible people. That's kind of how it'll be with this new technology and these new robots and all this stuff. Like, yeah, it's gonna do a lot of good, but there's gonna be these crazy people out there that can program it to do what they want, or like you said, just control the robots and take over what they want to take over. I mean, it's gonna be weird. Oh, yeah. So it'll be interesting. I mean, like you said, predicting is important, not just for the future of AI and five, 10, 20, 30 years down the line, but also the future of any business that we're in. How can we be dynamic? What are the trends, right? Um, what are the market dynamics so that we can choose carefully and be on top of that? And truth is nobody knows. So sometimes people freak themselves out prematurely. Can't do that. It's got to be reasonable. The one thing I learned in business is I don't freak out about anything anymore. I've I mean I've just 26 years of problems. You just have to think about logically on how you're going to solve the problem. Like there's always problems. There's going to be a problem tomorrow and there's going to be some meltdown the next day. Something else bad's going to happen. But um, you know, it's made me pretty like always look at things in like a logical problem-solving way. Yeah. It's like, how can I fix this? What's the solution? How can I get there? Like that's going to happen every single day. And and that's the key. But you know, some people can't do that. Some people really get anxious and they really break down over problems. Oh, I know. I've I mean, you can tell of, you know, we you know, you deal with a lot of people in business, and some people are very reactive and emotional. And man, if you do that every single day, you're gonna be have a heart attack by the time you're 40 because you're gonna be react you're gonna be overreacting to every single day of your life. Yeah, you gotta you gotta stick to a pragmatic approach. And how do you separate anxiousness and fear from decision making, right? And that's where people can sometimes struggle, and that's what prevents them from taking their first step into making their first business. It's a risk profile thing. It's not a knowledge thing, it's not a money thing, it's a risk profile thing. They're like, what if? They're like, I I can't take the risk, I can't risk my kids' college fund, or I don't want to risk this, or I don't want to lose. And I yeah, of course. That's you gotta have a healthy fare, right? And and then once you get into your business, you can't be paralyzed by problems, right? You can't I guess it boils down to you don't cry over spilled milk. Right? The problem happened. Come up with your plan, vet your plan, and then forget about the problem and just take your steps on your action plan. I tell people that too. It's like focus on the actions, not the outcome that you want. Like, okay, these are the actions I need to take every day to fix this issue or or to hit this thing, this achievement that I'm trying to hit, and only focus on that. It's hard. But then if you do that, you're less like anxious every day and worried about what it's gonna happen. It's like I know I need to do this, this is all I can do, and just perform those actions. That's right. So then how do you do it? It's easier said than done. Just immediately go to your action plan. So if that milk spills right here, ah, the milk spilled. Oh my god, the glass is no. Blame it on the kids. Like, ah, he keeps doing that, he spilled it a hundred times. It's like, nope. It's gonna be like, ooh, okay, I need a towel. Okay, clean it up. I'm gonna need another glass. That one's broken. I'm on Amazon ordering a set of glasses, I'm gonna get some backup ones, right? And then I'm gonna need some milk. I'm jumping on it. Now I don't have time to cry about it. The spilled milk. I've already got a plan, I've already done it. So just jump straight into your action plan. And then my next one is like, how do you prevent it from happening again, right? So you're like, okay, my kid keeps doing this, and like you said, and like you're going in on the prevention mode. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's super important too, because if you keep getting the same problem, then you've got to come up with a process to prevent it from happening. Yeah. That's kind of how I teach my son. So people are like, how do you discipline your kid? I was like, well, I really don't have to, because if there's some issue that I perceive as issue, or it's, you know, some something he's doing that's probably not great, I'm like, okay, what can I, what, what process can I teach him on how not to do it again? Right. Instead of just being like, hey, don't do that. I told you not to do that. Hey, don't do that. It's like, no, no, no, hold on. I'm gonna teach you on on how we're not gonna do that, right? Like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna come up with a process or a skill. Like, so we were working on skills every week. And so then the stuff, instead of me yelling at him every week for the exact same exact thing, I don't have to because he's like kind of learned the process and the skill not to do that thing anymore. And so that's kind of how I've been trying to teach him. Instead of just, I mean, me yelling at him every single week is not gonna teach him. I mean, he's gonna probably get upset with me over time, but it's not gonna teach him how to fix it, I guess. Right. That's that's a poor thing. It's like a it, it's like all my 26 years in business. It's the same thing. It's like I I have to fix the problem. I can't just expect somebody keep yelling at him every week to not do it, right? It's like, hey, we gotta train you the right way. We have to um figure out a different way to do this because it's not working. Like you can't just go and yell at the warehouse every single day because they're doing stuff wrong. Like you have to come up with a process to fix it. I think that's right. I think, yeah, the the the skill set and also the personality is important too. Like, um, because sometimes you can still have a solution in a wide range of emotional behaviors, right? You can still get the result, maybe by being condescending, maybe by being rude, maybe right. And and catching is and kids learn the model early on too, usually by emulation and seeing other people. But also like those little things, I think go a long way too from the greeting, like, oh, before you get make sure you greet somebody correctly when they walk in the room. I find manners like set the stage. If they create this bubble of like a way to behave, an etiquette, and a protocol, then their solution comes from the right place too. Because if you got that skill set coupled with how to be as a man or a woman, and I think, well, how do you be as a man or woman? I think it starts with like a lot of respect and zero tolerance for disrespect. That's one thing my dad was big on. I could not disrespect anybody. Yeah, it's he was real chill until I did that. Yeah, I'm I'm kind of like that too. Like we're I mean, I say it all the time too, like discipline kind of solves every problem in life. Yeah, in life in in in general, because like just the things that you want, if if you just apply more discipline or learn more discipline for whatever you're doing, it just it's it's kind of the answer to everything, really. And yeah, the respect thing's a big thing for me. My kids growing up a lot different than we did. Me and my wife didn't have anything, and that's the only thing that fears me in the back of my mind. It's like I don't he has all you know, he's growing up around this just this different lifestyle. We have nannies, there's you know, he's driving car, you know. I mean, he's a kid, but I'm like putting him in the driver's seat, he's driving Farries, and yeah, and I still have to keep him hungry. And I think as long as I don't give him anything, and you know, I teach him all those skills that we've been working on, and he knows he's not gonna get a handout, I think it's gonna be okay. Yeah, that's that's a tricky thing, right? Because I I worry about that too. Like, you will become a spoiled brat if you were raised with stuff, right? Exactly. But but I think in the conversations, in the etiquette, because usually spoiled brats lose their manners and they lose their respect, right? I think so too. So if very, very I mean, people the problem is people wait until they're four, five, ten to try to correct them. No, it's like when they're two, when they first start acting up, you got to make it uh-uh, and then like uh, and then they they they get in line. That's super important. And then do then I struggle with this. Does a kid need to go back to zero the way I did? Or can he stand on the shoulder of me to grit reach even higher? I want him to do better than me. So how do you find that balance? I think he can, to me, in my mind, I think he could do better than me. That's what like I'm the hope, right? Yeah, well, I'm in my mind, I'm like raising him in a way to where again he's gonna have all these skills. And by the time he's 18, he should be like way past everybody. He's like, Because I've been all the stuff, mistakes I've made over those last 26 years, he should be better than me. And there's gonna be new stuff out that I'm not gonna know how to do. Like in my mind, he should definitely be better by the time he's 18 at me than in a lot of things. You know, there's probably gonna be some things he's not. Yeah, the emotional part's the hard part because everyone's gotta come into that part. But if you can give them the guidelines, I guess maybe they can succeed a little bit smoother through that part. Yeah. I I don't think they have to go to zero. I think as long as you don't they know that there's not a handout and they have to work for everything no matter what it is, I think that they'll be okay. I think it's whenever you, in the back of their mind, they know they have a trust fund, they know they have whatever, oh, mom and dad are gonna take care of me. I don't really care about this. I think that's where a lot of the like laziness, that's where a lot of the entitlement will come from. If they sub, if they know that, and that's in the back of their mind, like they're not gonna work as hard. I think that's right. Entitlement, right? Yeah, and that's hard. I'm not gonna shield him from our lifestyle or anything that's going like I involve him more in it. I'm like, hey, this is how you, you know, this is how you get these. He knows more about business than a lot of 18-year-olds. Yeah. And I think they have to know who they are without you and who they are without the stuff that you provided. I think when that gets cloudy, the self-image, like, oh, well, I'm in a BMW, I'm in a Ferrari. Yeah, I'm in the Ferrari. They forget the fact that they didn't earn the Ferrari. Yeah. And that doesn't happen to every kid if the way if your approach is, we got to figure out that approach. That's the hard part. But if they know who they are and they just appreciate what is around them and it doesn't become a part of their self-esteem, then hopefully that prevents that entitlement. And that happens to even adults. Yeah. Right. I've seen it happen to adults all the time. Like it could be happening to significant others, right? You have their friends and business partners, right? It does. They start tying their self-esteem to stuff that is around them or attached to them in some way, and not realizing that it's not fully yours. Right? You have a part in that, and that's cool, but it's not fully yours. Yeah. And but you're you're making this who you are. You're making this car who you are, you're making this purse who you are, you're making this personality. Eh, it's cool. But if I one is you gotta give credit where it's due, you had good mentors, or you had good parents, or you didn't have catastrophe, you've got a brain, you could have been born with half a brain, right? So just be appreciative. And and two is realizing that you also want to be a good person without all that stuff. Strip it away tomorrow. Will anyone be my friend? I hope so. Yeah, I agree with that. Right? Take away all the cool cars, take away this and that. Will people still say, like, hey, that's a good dude? He tries to take care of people whenever he can. I said, of course I'm still gonna be his friend, right? I think that's what it has to boil down to. You still have to be proud of yourself without that stuff. Yeah. I think so too. That's kind of how I'm raising him. So hopefully, not hopefully, I mean, I'm I'm I think effectively working on it. Yeah, every week. I mean, we I because again, that's my biggest fear. Like, I I feel I would feel like a failure if he grows up with his handout for sure. Like, there's not like that would probably bother me more than anything. Long other than that, like we're gonna be good, but if he because we're I work on it every week to keep that from happening. So I don't I don't see it happening, but again, you never know. But uh that's definitely what I'm working on to to prevent. And it's important because we're talking about that for your son, but really we should talk about it for ourselves always, too. Yes, right? Because just like a a young man or young woman can become entitled or corrupt, we too can become entitled and corrupt in our older years, right? I was I'm always worried about that, you know. Oh no, you're not the type. I'm like, well, hopefully, and hopefully I'm not the type because I'm worried about it. But the second I stop worrying about it, it's a slow creep. Yeah, right. And most people will never admit to it because it happens so slow over time. Yeah, that's true. So these these principles we should always remind ourselves at every stage of the game. I mean, I've seen people in the hood getting toddled over having wheels or Gucci belt, right? So it can happen at every level, right? Or or in this small neighborhood, someone has this one thing, right? So we have to make sure that we understand that this is a real risk for every human being. Corruption is real, corruption comes with position, corruption and and and and and resources, right? So then how do we do the best to be responsible with our position, to be, you know, stewards of whatever possessions we have, but not let it corrupt us? Right. And that's it's it should be a lifelong challenge. Yeah, I agree. Hey everyone, real quick, I just want to let you know this podcast is 100% independent. No ads, no sponsors, just real. If you're finding value in whatever we're doing here, the biggest help that you can give us is hitting subscribe and sharing this with someone who you think needs to hear it or someone that it will provide value to. That's how we continue to grow. And if you did that, I would really appreciate it. Money and and a lot of things are like kung fu. You can read the book all you want, but are you good kung? So you start you gotta fight, you gotta win some, you gotta lose some. And then you really remember the ones you lose. You just don't want to lose so much, you die. In kung fu, you don't want to die. Yeah, yeah. And then but you wanna get beat sometimes. And then on your on your first deal, you don't want to do something that's like hard to catastrophic, bankruptcy, all this kind of stuff that would take forever to come climb out of. So that was my thing. I was like, okay, worst case scenario, someone buys the land from me and I lose a couple hundred thousand dollars. But in the meanwhile, I'm using it, right? But then you gotta think of carrying costs because property tax is high in Texas. That's man, the property tax thing is what it really gets you. Like, even to hold a property for a long time. Yeah, we're talking about like okay, two and a half percent. So a three and a half million dollar property plus something. I need two hundred thousand dollars a year just to float this to carry this thing. Now, I hope that it appreciates two hundred thousand a year, then I'm break even. But I can come up with ways to offset some of that cost too. Again, this is more of a passion project. I want a headquarters that saves me from renting office space. So Bike Barn had it. So they had seven offices and a uh um I'm trying to think of what building that is. I'll have to look it up. You'll have to send it to me. Yeah, I'll send it to you. And the reception of seven offices, cool. I'm saving on buying office space from someone else. I move, I have different industries. I've got medical, I've got hospitality with my rooftop bar reset, I've got imaging, and then I've got some I'm building some lake homes in Lake Conroe. Okay. So I can create office space that we can use and have some synergy there. Then I love cars, so why not have the car stored in the middle, build out a lounge? Some people want to offset the costs. Hey, I'll I'll pay for a spot for you, right? We can build up a little clubhouse right there. And then on the last part, I got two ideas for that. My friend calls me, my last name is Kudrath. He always jokes and calls me Kudrath the king of side quests, because I love doing and learning new things. So whether it's learning how to fly planes, um acting, right, doing all this stuff. So I've always wanted a coffee shop. Now they don't make a whole lot of money, right? Compared to like other businesses I have. But to me, it's fun. Like I spent a lot of time at coffee shops. I like to have a meeting there, take out my laptop. So I want to own my own. The only problem that you may have with that, not problem. Um I don't know what the parking looks like around that building, but it might clog it up parking, might clog it up a little bit. Yeah. And that's why I love this property. It's on an acre and it's already got like some gravel parking. I can by AI calculations, I could put 48 spots. You cannot find 48 spot parking lot in the heights. Except for mine. So actually, I have the only, so I have the only one. Um, or close to it. So that's worth a lot, right? So next next to the property I was just telling you, we're developing, it's not 48, it's 42. But legitimate, like I mean, like striped and everything. Nice. I I would have to put asphalt, that might cost me 100 grand to asphalt all this and stripe it, right? But also with the cafe, with the room behind it, which is a pretty big open room. Everybody, now that I have a rooftop lounge, people want, hey, can I throw a birthday party there? Can I do an engagement party? An event space. An event space. As long as you got space and parking and bathrooms, people will take it. So that whole man cave lounge I told you I was building with those two parking spots, it's super high end. Looks like a restaurant. I mean, it looks like kind of a restaurant bar. And then you walk through there, and then my gym has like floating stairs, and then you have the 3,000 square foot on top that looks at downtown. But I was thinking, I was like, man, I could like every I mean, so many people I know would want to rent this just for like a little corporate, like one day for whatever. I was like, I could make more money off this than like renting it to a regular tenant, like way more. Yes. And it could be a commercial client, right? They just rent it for a Thursday night or whatever it is, but it would be really unique because the parking, there's a hotel next door that's brand new. Oh, that's a big one. Brand new hotel. And we'll get tired of hotel rooms, they're boring, they're stiff. Yeah, and then um, but anyways, it like I could the the event thing could probably really work. There's just not anything like it. I think, like you said, in the with that much parking and like the location, easy to get to from wherever in town. So I don't know. We've been meeting we've been taught to play. What building you have there? Is it is it your personal use or is it are you monetizing it? Both. So my corporate office is across the street. We were gonna monetize the one across the street. So what I did was uh the 44 it has 4,400 square feet in the front, and the title company leases uh you have one tenant. I have one tenant now, the 4,400 we were gonna lease to. So which was like would because there was two, there was one little kind of house office thing on the property that I renovated and the title companies in there. My corporate office is across the street. So I was either gonna lease my corporate office or and move across the street to the same building as the gym and whatever, or just lease that front 4,400 square feet. They're both on the market, yeah. Uh, and then that will cover all like everything that I have going on there. Um, more than more than enough. And then I kept the back. And I kept the back, yeah. And I kept the back, yeah. Okay. Yeah, I own the whole block. So I own the building that I'm on in, which is about 5,000 square feet, not a huge lot on that side, and then across the street, I own the from where the light bulb depot is, which is that Arlington, is that fourth? Is no, is Arlington this way, and then fourth is this way. And so then I own that block all the way to where the Marriott is. And so it's like kind of a whole, it's not a it's not a complete acre, it's just a whole, it's a block the way the property's laid up. That's really good. You have all these access points, yeah. And uh, yeah, you know, that's the thing. It's like I'm trying to learn because there's some foresight in any deal. Like, what are all your options? Yeah, because you know, you may think, uh the coffee shop may barely cover the carrying cost, and in five years I'm done with it. Maybe my best option is to sell it to a developer who wants to do a mid-rise, right? They can do a three, four-story multi-unit because they got 0.92 of an acre. Yeah, the one thing, the one thing that you don't have to worry about for interloop stuff, like especially like really close in, it's not gonna go down. Like you're like the worst case scenario is not that bad. No, no, no, you're not gonna go from three million to zero. No, there's no way. Impossible. Yeah, even three million to 1.5, like it it it's probably impossible in that location for that area. So it's just really your carrying costs, and you know, will it go up over time? 100%. Uh especially just anything inner anything inner city, inner loop, like it's always just gonna continue just to be higher and higher. It's hard for me to find deals inside the loop. Like all my buildings are like every everywhere, like they're in a lot of the refinery towns. Um, because we do office like space for service companies. So, how many how many buildings do you have? I mean, round about I don't know. Over 20? Yeah, over 30. Yeah. So here's my question to you. Like, I'm getting into commercial real estate. I got one building. There's compliance and property tax and all this kind of stuff. My executive assistant, oh hey, like can you do this? I got this other property on my warehouse. Hey, can you how do you keep organized and manage this many? It's easy. Do you use a third-party like property management? No, we do all of it. Because whenever it whenever you have businesses as a tenant, I used to have 66 rent houses. That was fucking terrible. Rent houses, yeah. Dealing with the tenants, yeah. Well, that and like I I didn't have an assistant at the time. This is when I was younger, not crazy amount younger, but it was a while back. And I was answering all the messages and for some stupid reason, and then you're fixing everything for them. But in commercial, like, unless the fucking roof caves in, you're not, you don't hear from them. I forget that I have if my good tenants, like, I don't I don't even remember that I have the building sometimes. I have to look on the spreadsheet. Like, you don't ever hear from them that because they fix the case right there. Yeah, but no, they're triple net lease, yeah. So you're not, you don't man, again, unless like some major shit happens and the the walls cave in or the roof is like collapsing, then maybe the parking lot or something. Yeah, it's usually it's on them. They'll fix that up too. Almost everything, so it's usually all on your lease, and so it's very easy to manage as far as like the the manpower side. Like, I'm not sending contractors to go fix my houses. I had I couldn't even fix them all, but like because they were so spread out, I was sending contractors all over the city. It was terrible, like it was hard to keep up with. The buildings are very, very low. Now, in that setting, when you have that many properties, what is a typical property management charge like? I think like 10% or 15%. It's a little high, that's a lot. But if you had that many, it is if you want to be like hands-off, like we I am always buying new buildings, and so I have an assistant that runs everything, and I have a construction manager, and that's it. And so, and it's me and my business partner. And my assistant, my construction manager manages the jobs, and my assistant does the invoicing, she sends it all all to me for approval, but she works with him. Like, he doesn't, I don't, I don't really talk to the trades directly anymore and manage all the jobs, right? My construction manager does, and I mean I will. I'm I mean, I'm still there, but I'm not going every single day. But we're always buying new projects. Like, I have one in our contract now that we're supposed to close in 15 days. And then how did you find that deal? Did you mean did you Google LoopNet? I use I use LoopNet a lot. And somebody do people bring you deals a lot, yeah. Yeah, just from me knowing me being in a like, hey, what do you think about this? And so you look at it and you're like, it's kind of like yeah, oh dude, you know, a lot of deals I find on loopnet and Crexy and stuff, and I buy uh I don't buy anything over $50 a square foot. So I'm usually buying So you really focus on the industrial right now, yeah. Yeah, I mean people But we convert it into like flat class A flex space, like it looks like you won't once I'm done with it, I buy it in a way to where like when I'm done, it looks like a new you won't even tell if it's a brand new industrial building. Like, I mean, but like my shit, my product looks better than everybody's on the market. So it's it's super easy to lease. And then we chop up smaller spaces. So like you know, I'll take a 20,000 square foot building. You you should drive by. You're by my you're close by my new one. So on north of 610, and right next to Oak Forest, yeah, I bought a 20,000 square foot old um, it was on an acre. It was old, two metal buildings, just look like tan metal buildings, one garage was like electrical guys sold stuff. I don't know. Yeah, but we converted everything into flex space, and so you have uh so you brought your architect, you're like, hey, how do you use the same designer? No, yeah, and I'm like, hey, this is my idea. Can you split it up? Use the uh she gave me like 1500 square foot spaces, and we have one roll up door and one, you know, pedestrian door, and then we'll build them out a little office. So I have four units leased already, and we're not done yet. One's a gym. Yeah, one's a one's a gym, and one's for car storage, one's a guy in our our car club. Yeah. Well, he lives next in Oak Forest, so he's like that's gonna be like he's like the ultimate setup. He's like, yeah, it's he said it's cheaper. And my I can have put my boat in, I can put my two cars. Now they're like everywhere. They're all split up. Um okay so so you you got the architect you have people that can do this metal construction, right? Some parts are going to be AC'd so you have I also I can give you the trades too. So if you like if you buy this building like if you need metal guys dude kind you've taken good care of me offering me all those not like you're buying a hundred buildings you're going to use all my trades like like I like to give them work. I mean we don't that's true we keep working a lot but they do other jobs and I have really good metal guys I have really good asphalt guys like I have really good trust them I'd love to talk to your asphalt guy for this big parking lot. Yeah. All right. Yeah yeah okay so you so they're they're gonna build it out for you and then now do you have a leasing company to help you find tenants? I just use my broker. I like that so brokers commercial brokers suck really really really I keep hearing that and people keep flipping through commercial brokers. Well they're just they're they just don't answer the phone. Yeah they overpromise under deliver it sits on the market you're wasting money it it's really because they don't communicate like if I find a broker that's like a hustler and he answers the phone all the time like he's a good broker. Like and so this new guy have not new he's been he's been with us for like the last four or five projects man he's he's a hustler and um he answers the phone and like that's all you dude if you answer the phone my prop my product is good. It's like the other brokers don't get back to you for a week. I it wow it bothers me so bad when I'm buying a building and I can't get a hold of the broker and I have been to have to look up the owner off HCAD and I'm like hey you want to sell your building and then they'll call you back like a week and a half later I'm like dude I was I'm I'm a bot like they don't know that I'm like ready to buy you know um so it's just weird uh and it's unfortunate in that space no big company just one broker he gets it done yeah yeah I don't have any there's no special recipe there's no no these big old names and just a hustler no and then so that means he has a network or he knows how to advertise it list it and then but he also answers the phone like he he I mean he's a hustler like other those those big guys they don't answer the phone they'll call you back like to get people to to see your product or see the space and call and online he knows how to list it loop net whatever is yeah he'll list it on all the multiple listing services and then if you use a big firm I mean they blast it out to their network right I mean that's the benefit of that but my spaces are better than all the other spaces that are out there. Like I just need somebody to answer the phone. Yeah uh and it's I'm splitting them up into small enough spaces where I'm I don't need like a 3000 square foot tenant. You know that's hard it's harder to find a few yeah yeah but a 2000 square foot tenant's really easy like it could be a sign shop it could be a whatever it's a PPF guy the other guy that was looking at like it it's those type of people like service industry stuff and it's just super easy a lease. So then you fill it up and that's where the real return is right because now you've got occupancy. So you have the the value of the property coupled with the value of the the leases that they're locked into. So usually it'll sell on like flex base like very very conservative at an eight cap which would be super conservative would put the value of this building at like 4.6 million. I bought it for 1.1 uh I'll have 1.7 okay dumb dumb question dumb question yeah eight cap rate eight percent capitalization rate yes and you and you so then if you take the value of the property it's making eight percent so a year yeah a cap rate is you is the NOI of a building so after all net operating income yep and yeah that's a good way to look at it so if you were to pay cash for this building you would make eight percent on your money at that at an eight cap right yes if a building if a if you have like ultra class A tenants people are willing to pay more like paying a lower cap rate right you'll have institutional stuff that'll come in like oh it's a Starbucks I'm willing to pay a five cap or a four and a half cap or whatever right because they're getting the appreciation for the real estate so eight the higher the cap rate the more conservative is like I know I could sell it at an A cap for a flex space like that. There was class A. Okay so I've read these terms but I haven't done a deal yet so you got a $1 million property. Yep and it's full. Yep. Right? So and it that's $80,000 a month. So it's making $80,000 a month from your rental it'll be worth that that'll put it if it's making $800 a month it'll put it worth a million dollars or at an 8% cap rate. So then that means I mean $80,000 a year I'm sorry. $80,000 a year is what you're making. So your your eight percent cap rate is how much will I sell it for what's it worth 8% no that's what I'm saying. So it would be worth a million dollars if you value it at eight cap. Well say say I bought it for a million dollars okay just a property. Okay and then now I filled it up. Well it depends if it's still only making 80 grand a year then it would be worth a million dollars. Okay so just go by your okay what if you so what if you buy it renovate it put new tenants tenants in it and now it's making a hundred and thirty thousand a year your your value of your building just goes up like that. Okay. I got you so right at the same cap rate so it could still be an eight cap but we'd have to do the math. Yeah so it's just like you know any company if you if you if you make more money at the end of the year people will spend more on buying it the the more net operating income to the building the higher the value. So like if you're able to go in and buy a piece of shit building that's why people buy apartments they go in they think they can clean them up and they raise everybody's rates and the value of the building is worth a million dollars more that's why people like it. Same with storage. So like you go in you buy a storage unit there's those are those are hard to find now but like you find an old owner and he hasn't raised the rates in 10 years and you can just buy it raise everybody's rates and all of a sudden your building's double in value you know yeah it's interesting I was living in a high rise in the med center you know and that they got sold for like 85 million. I'm like okay cool they'd buy it and then they try to just fill up the document C raise the rates a little bit then they turn around and resell it sold it in a couple years for like 99 or 100 million. So I'm like that's not bad. Right. I mean that's a big purchase but you just made $15 million in like a short amount of time. The big money is in like commercial big commercial real estate deals that's when you see these big developers that are making like crazy money it's like huge deals that um doesn't take much to increase the value of the building right yeah so a bigger barrier to get in because to buy that property you need 10 20 30 million dollars. Correct I've never played in that world by the way my my deals are typically almost all between 5000 and like five million okay purchase price like I have some that are worth 11 12 million dollars like we have a shopping center right now I normally don't do any shopping centers. It's our only I have one other retail building but that's my only one and that's because you've just found a niche in industrial I wouldn't have done it myself. My partners that I buy a lot of industrial stuff with their their sales team found it it was off market. We just thought it was a good deal but it was out of state and we don't normally do a lot of stuff out of state either it will work out but it was a lot of work we got fucked by a contractor because we're not from the area it was in Alabama or something. But it like that's what come you know and not terrible but even us experience right like you just don't know the area they they kind of walked off didn't finish but at the end of the day we'll have about we bought it for two and a half we'll have about five point eight in it we're almost done it's 70% occupied it was very there was like one tenant we have united healthcare in there we have O'Reilly's super staple tenants. Yeah O'Reilly signed the anchor O'Reilly superstore they have these big like 4000 square foot superstores or something they're almost done with their build out um we have a couple other really good tenants in there but it it same thing it like okay now you got some badass tenants how did you score then did they come to you did you go to the just the broker putting it on the market listing and then yeah just over time the other thing too is like a building that size those deals take a usually a long time to get done so you're talking if the building's complete let's say you haven't leased anything and you finish the building it's probably going to be about 12 months before you get like yeah but because you'll be negotiating the lease for a month it'll take four months to find the tenant um or attorneys take a while and then the build out and then so they're not paying rent for another five months or whatever. I mean whatever it is but it it's not a fast process. That's kind of why I like the smaller deals will we make money on this deal? Yes. But I didn't have to run that job my business partner did we gave him some extra money. I mean he was involved he loves it and but still it was we won't do another one out of that's way out of state not where any one of us lives um we do a lot in Texas that is like kind of close but not get on a plane and go. Yeah so anyway. This conversation is blowing my mind no it's good because I I watch a few things online and all it is like the the cursory overlook we're getting into the nitty gritty. I'm asking questions do you got to get answers because you're so involved right and this is how you really build a knowledge base. Yeah otherwise people like oh you want to get rich get into real estate okay thanks hard to decipher the thing if you want to do this now now granted not not all of the listeners are ready to spend three million dollars but they will get there. Yeah and the principle's still the same whether you're buying a $3000 building or a three million dollar building yeah my first building was um it was when I was still buying a bunch of rent houses and it was like it was like $150 grand. But back then and now it's like a $9000 building or it's over a million I think we've had the same tenant in that building that my first building 22 years. Wow it's like a family business type thing it's no we this by the refinery and it's a safety company that's been working with a refinery like has a contract with Shell or somebody and they just not have a good business and it's right across the street from the refinery and like we still own that building today. That's a sweet deal that long can yeah it but dude most commercial I've I haven't had I haven't had a lot of bad commercial tenants like I really haven't like my I've had really good tenants and like that's the other thing is what about people who their business crashes and they can't pay that's usually probably something you run into we went through 2008 and we didn't get hit too bad. Mo again most of our stuff's industrial so it didn't it wasn't like this like oh my buildings are empty yeah yeah it wasn't that bad in a couple people but in most of them are like hey you know we're struggling and like can we get a month of rent or you know they're later like they're yeah they're not trying to screw you they're just like hey this is what's going on in the industry and you try to work it out sometimes they'll have to move but I I've hadn't had like tons and tons of turnover like we usually when we're probably a good landlord yeah because that we've all dealt with bad landlords oh yeah I guess so I mean we work with everybody I'm a business owner like I on top of that I own a bunch of businesses so like I know what it's like to like go through what they're going through. Yeah some people if they're only in real estate or only a landlord like or they have a job and they go buy a building like I know what those business owners are going through. Like I went through the same shit they did. Yeah so I'm used yeah we I mean we're pretty fair um in all of our stuff if they got a concern they could talk it through I've had a landlord of one of my companies companies today and man you can't get them on the phone right you can barely get property management and then well the newer ones a little better but also they just they're unreasonable on everything you know and you're like I just don't I don't want to call them I don't want to deal with them you know yeah that's odd man I we have good relationships with all of our people I mean sometimes you don't hear from them for a long time but like we I mean we're trying to work with the title company and now because they're out of space and we're like okay how can we work you in they do we're trying to get to take our whole building but they're like man we just can't get it approved by corporate it's just outside that's not our model like we always stay in this amount of square footage but we need two more conference rooms and they're the one in that property and so I'm I'm trying to work something out. I really don't want them to leave so I'm trying to work with them um and not that they would leave I just I know they're out of space and they're like growing yeah so I I think I can cut in the building next to it and build a little walkway and not mess up especially if we're moving across the street like I'll make it work and then I'll do you'll never know that's part of the same building you have to go look at it. I'll have to show it to you since you're in the heights that's awesome you you help the situation you look at it and you and you have creative thinking yeah you got to come up with solutions. Again I'm a business owner man like I've I've been in their shoes for a probably a lot of those the same shit they're going through. Yeah and that's why now man I I really I'd prefer to just have the land play like own the property myself yeah if I'm running an because I still do business that are in operations. Yeah we talked about that earlier it's a headache right anything that you have operations is a headache but I still love it. I love running my medical practices I love running the rooftop lounge in midtown right but I don't want to be a tenant anymore if I can help it. Now sometimes it's such a good property it makes sense I'll do it but I'd rather own the building now that I can do that right finance it own it and then be my own landlord. Yeah that's how we got into the building business because we had businesses before and one of my partners was like we were talking about another business to open and they're like man I don't remember what the business was. This is a long time ago but he's like those businesses just some of them go out of business some of them come and go but he's like you know who makes money the landlord all the time somebody else just goes right back and so we kind of started looking into it and um we were from down that area where there is a lot of industrial so that's kind of like how that started. It wasn't that we like honed in on that one thing we just kind of I guess got lucky and that was the majority of the buildings around there and so we've stuck to what we've known over the last like 25 years. Again I've like bought a couple different things but um office is probably the only thing that I've never really like had I never really bought it turned out not good. Yeah and I don't know with COVID and everything like yeah it's interesting everything worse than these cycles right COVID office space they all cleared out they're empty people learned how to work remotely then you saw people coming back in offices because they got tired of being home. Yeah they're like I I think it's a high it's a mix like you don't need as much but you still have to have some it's just like massive offices like you don't need no when you have an HR department and this department academy department a bunch of AI yeah so on top of like the whole COVID thing offices kind of got weird and now with AI and you need a little bit less people or it becomes more efficient. Like you don't really need as much office like I don't know our industrial stuff, you know, knock on wood they need space to work. Has been it's service businesses like it's been pretty strong. Building things yeah it's been pretty strong uh or there's like service companies like I said we have like sign companies and service companies for the chemical plants we have gyms we have just like all these little small businesses that I don't really think a lot of our tenants are going to be AI is not going to have a huge impact on. I think it'll help most of them I mean of course there's probably going to be some help make them efficient but not more efficient obsolete no no no I think the type of businesses they have most of our tenants um it should be fine like I was thinking about that the other day I was like I wonder what happens to real estate over the next like six years or 50 years. Yeah yeah that'll be interesting I mean storage for robots manufacturing plants for robots service centers for automatic cars the stuff that you can't predict right it's like all these other things yeah you're gonna have all these warehouse for whatever so I think I'm good as long as I'm not in office like that's the only thing that I can't yeah the robots feel space not even that just like just all the other things we just talked about I I just luckily I just never got into that anyway so I'm not I'm not skilled in it so I don't buy them. So but I don't see where that long term could be more all the class A ones are probably going to be fine you know in and we say class A that means like just prime location Exxon is the tenant like all like the class A offices are brand new like stuff that's like in the middle of downtown or the middle of you know uh galleria like all that stuff is gonna be fine. But I'm just saying all that stuff just like in suburbs and all the surrounding areas when you just keep building and building those like I think the office is just going to be probably the least valuable stuff at some point I think or just the least likely to keep increasing for sure. Right and then as people I make people still go to restaurants but the smaller restaurants people would rather order online and get it delivered. I've been trying to predict what's going to happen with this AI thing and I think what happens is you have two restaurants right so like there's always going to be this restaurant like this Chipotle with robots like giving you know scooping you stuff and it's super cheap, right? But then you still like want to go at the steakhouse and like you're still going to have the social thing. Yeah no matter what you can't be cooped up in your house all day remember during the pandemic and there you could you like I just want to go outside and like go to the restaurant and go to the grocery store. So walk the aisle I think there's always two products and I think that product becomes premium is like the old steakhouse you know just the restaurants where you get the waiter and there's like bartenders and it's like there's a bunch of people in there. And then if you want to save money and it's cheap and it's like quick you're gonna go into the robot thing and just grab your food real quick and then like take it delivery is huge right that's if it's just fast food it's gonna be delivered. If it's sit down social they need the pay but you're going for that reason too like me and my wife you're going to dinner there's a bunch of people you know we're sitting at the bar they're sitting by other people it's not like I don't know you just want to go experience it sometimes. Yeah and as you get more time because of AI then people are going to be one maybe being more social less time working more time interacting with other humans. That's kind of what I think I don't know because I you know I've been good about predicting stuff like an investment wise when I'm like oh you know and I don't really know what's gonna happen. Like I'll be like I I'm like I it's a huge guess. I mean I kind of can think usually when something skews too far one way like people still want crave like that old classic way of doing something. I don't know. I think it'll be probably yeah yeah yeah and and I feel like things do work in cycles like we try something and then we go back to the old and then the the younger generation thinks it's brand new that's how it was done like same thing with music and dress right it's like oh it's a brand new thing it's like no that's sampling a song from 30 years ago or those denim pants were big in the 90s it's not that new. And then now you have people that are our age driving up the classic car market like it's like insane like a half million dollars million dollars seven hundred thousand and you're like holy crap really it's getting crazy in the the car stuff is like the value of things is just insane. Yeah I'm surprised I mean some cars just holding value like crazy classic cars are getting you know I I drove my um I was in my Chevelle 72 Chevelle and I was up on a popular street next to some bars because I was talking to the the door guy he's a friend of mine a parked up front and I thought only the the old gearheads would love this car right but we were young people like a 23 year old girl walks by and she's like oh it's my dream car I'm like your dream car is a 72 Chevelle that's that's cool that the classics are coming to their radar too and then I noticed when I was watching a lot of music videos that a lot of music videos aren't rapping with the Lamborghini and the Ferrari behind them. They're rapping with a classic behind it. You know why they're way more unique in so on social media you're always seeing the young kid with the Lambo right like that it's it's very common now to see a Lambeau on social media. So it's technically they don't see it in person but you see it all the time but you don't see like a show you don't you're not scrolling through and see all these classic cars. So when you see one in person you're like man that's like so different. Oh yeah and celebrities seem to set the trends right whatever this girl is painting her nail color everybody else starts doing it or how they dress what this dude is doing like in his music video is what the younger cats are going to want because it's glorified. Yeah right which is a good thing and a bad thing sometimes they'd be glorifying stuff I don't think they should glorify but the cars I'm cool with if you could go back and tell your younger self one thing what would it be? I guess it'd be like no I didn't go through a lot of phases in my life where I was like a different person. Yeah I was the same since I was like five years old I remember since I was five four or five years old I I thought the same I just got more knowledge and that's a little different than other people but I would just be like yeah keep doing it keep doing what you're doing right keep sticking to what you believe in. Don't change for anybody else only change for the better right don't give any peer pressure and thankfully I never did right yeah that's what I regret peer pressure not not necessarily a peer pressure not necessarily a peer pressure but just wasting you know there was a handful of years after my dad died when I was 18 but I I don't think it was here I probably wouldn't have made those decisions but just you know going off the rails blaming the world for you know two three four years just stupid stuff I like I I hate that I wasted those years and people are like oh made you who you are I'm like no that's not what it was I promise you it was it was like failing and in and taking on challenges and learning and like that's who makes you who you are it's not from like partying drinking beer with people at the river. It's just not like that that that didn't like make me grow into a good person. But you know we we want to have time for enjoyment and we want to be hard on ourselves yeah but and and being hard on yourself is okay. It's not like we're gonna cry in our beds. We just want to be hard on ourselves and we want to do better. So some people don't want to be hard on themselves and they make excuses for themselves like no don't do that. It's okay. Yeah that's my goal it's like I'm trying to improve as I get older on everything like everything. Like I always want to improve a little bit on something. Now I want to be a better parent now I want to do this like I want to um you know make more people around me more money. Like I like I'm always trying to like how can I like progress just a little bit and if I if I don't have that I'm like oh I would be fucking bored. If I if I if I I could never retire I would and again I don't want to be the like point man operations guy phone calls at two o'clock in the morning don't want to do that. But there's no way I could ever just not do anything. That would be a terrible life for me. That would feel like I had no like I would feel like it'd just be miserable. And then that's probably because your your reasoning for doing something is not a certain target of dollars. It's not like I mean it's just who you've become like you want to build you want to learn and and that's and that's I think the right mindset that people need to like it's not about the money. People come up to the cars all the time they're like hey man what do I got to do to get a car like this I think when you're 18 it's about the money. Like you you're you because you want to take care of yourself a little bit like you're like how and they don't learn it in school so it's this weird like how do I how do I do something because they don't know anything. So I think early on it's about that but later definitely as your life goes on you start going okay maybe it's not all yeah and and how do I answer that question to this guy and and what I told this one guy was honestly don't worry about the car right find out what interests you and what your passion is. You can appreciate cars I loved Lamborghini since I was like five years old right but I wasn't sad that I didn't have it and at no point was I ever said it just when that moment came when I could get it I was like oh cool I'm gonna get it that's kind of how I was like I put every cent that I had back in the business because I knew like I thought it was always going to end. So I'm like oh I need to invest in this I need to do this so like for a long time I like it would have put everything back in I needed more income bigger bigger bigger more diversification and then finally I'm like got to a point I'm like you know like I I can probably get something like I have enough going on where so in that case the Lamborghini wasn't your goal the progress was your goal. Yeah mine was progress and then the Lamborghini doesn't is not a distraction. I used to where I I used to compare myself to like Steve Jobs I was like I'm not I'm like I'm not doing enough I'm like he he's doing so much more than me like I'm sitting in my little business you know doing all my business myself running my company and um that that's what I was like striving to do. I just want to build a big company when I was younger and then of course make money right like and then yeah because that's a measure of some success. Yeah and then when I started making money I really enjoyed real estate and that's how I made my first dollar anyways it's like my first chunk of money. So I poured a lot of money back in there because I enjoyed it and I knew how to make money from it. So that's why I still do it today. I mean I still have businesses in a bunch of industries but real estate like I'm I'm probably more active in that than than the other things as far as like day-to-day um building the portfolio like I'm I'm super involved in that yeah so that's what I'm saying if you have any questions when you're doing your thing I appreciate I promise you I've made every mistake and I can also connect you to any trade or anything that you need to just from people that are reputable at least will like give you a super good price but also not screw you over and show up. Oh man that that means a lot to me because you learn so much by other people's experience and even just sometimes uh the question to the right answer can change everything. Right? The person who's been there and done that can give you the right answer. Well as long as again it's one of those things can I keep you from making a catastrophic business deal right there might be minor stuff but as long as I can say hey you need to look at this before you close or whatever it is, you'll be all right. Yeah well well I appreciate all right man well I gotta go because yeah my wife is probably gonna kill me. She's waiting on me for dinner. All right well the pleasure talking to you thanks for having me on the show thank you so much man it was awesome. Yeah thanks