Latest / AI for Founders with Ryan Estes / The Asset Class Quietly Making Millionaires
Transcript
- 0:00What if the safest investment right now is the one that
- 0:02everyone's ignoring? And what if the assets people
- 0:04laugh at today quietly outperform everything tomorrow?
- 0:08Founders are chasing speed, markets are rewarding hype, and
- 0:12entire companies are getting erased overnight.
- 0:15One model update and your mode disappears.
- 0:17But if there's a different game being played, a game where
- 0:20demand is guaranteed or supply is artificially constrained, and
- 0:24where the winners aren't the loudest, they're the most
- 0:26durable. Mobile home parks.
- 0:28Yeah, not sexy. But here's the thing.
- 0:30Everyone says we need affordable housing.
- 0:32No one wants it built near them. So supply goes down, demand goes
- 0:36up. And the people who understand
- 0:38that imbalance, They win quietly.
- 0:40Now add AI. Instead of guessing on deals,
- 0:43you deploy AI to instantly kill bad opportunities.
- 0:46Flag hidden risks and surface a few assets that actually matter.
- 0:50Not to chase 100X but to never get wiped out because in this
- 0:53cycle survival is alpha. So here's the real question.
- 0:57Are you building something that depends on attention or
- 1:00something that compounds without it?
- 1:02Welcome to AI for founders. I'm Ryan Estes.
- 1:05This is for founders and investors who want to use AI to
- 1:08make smarter bets, build real wealth and stop playing fragile
- 1:11games. If you want to think clearer
- 1:13than your competitors, if you want distribution and insight in
- 1:16one place, if you want to build an audience that actually
- 1:19converts, go subscribe to our newsletter at AI for
- 1:22founders.co. And if this hits a nerve, leave
- 1:25a review for the podcast that's more honest than your last board
- 1:28meeting. Today's guest is Nathan
- 1:30Jamieson, and you'll learn how AI is transforming real estate
- 1:34investing, why boring assets are becoming a lead place, and how
- 1:38to build wealth that doesn't disappear when the market
- 1:40shifts. And real quick, if you want to
- 1:42get booked on the right podcast, not just any podcast, Kick
- 1:46caster.com is the agency's founders trust.
- 1:49They connect you with shows that drive real business outcomes.
- 1:52More authority, more inbound, more deals.
- 1:54Go to kickcaster.com. That's kick Caster by MO Burst.
- 2:03Nathan, good morning. Thank you so much for joining me
- 2:06on the show. Good morning, Ryan.
- 2:08Great to be here. Thanks for having me.
- 2:09Absolutely. I'm really excited to talk to
- 2:11you largely, and we're going to talk a little bit about AI.
- 2:14But you know, a lot of the folks I think listening to this show
- 2:17invest in AI companies largely as kind of like, well, it's
- 2:22their profession, honestly, but you work in real estate and have
- 2:26a family office that invests in in various real estate
- 2:29properties. So I think it'll be fun to kind
- 2:31of have a conversation on what might be seen as like an anti AI
- 2:35asset. Not that it's against it, but
- 2:37it's it's something real in the world, which might be a good way
- 2:40for people to kind of hedge some of their investments and think
- 2:42about, you know, growing wealth in different ways.
- 2:44So welcome to the show. Give us kind of an overview of
- 2:47your firm, which is arcsventures.com.
- 2:53Yeah, arcsventures.com, Arcs Ventures are the DBA for our our
- 2:57investment company Arcs Capital. Arcs very simply is Latin for
- 3:01Fortress. I wanted to name the company
- 3:04Fortress Capital, but for your investors, they may know that
- 3:07Fortress capital was taken. So I chose a derivation of that,
- 3:11which is the Latin word for fortress.
- 3:14And I started ARCS in 2016 after spending most of my career in
- 3:19land development at home building in in the East.
- 3:23I'm coming to you from outside Philadelphia and have spent most
- 3:27of my professional life in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic.
- 3:31And today ARCS Capital is investing in what I'll call a
- 3:35recession resistant assets where there's a significant tax
- 3:39advantages to doing so. And those tend to be real
- 3:42estate. When I talk about recession
- 3:44resistant assets, that means, you know, we're not looking to
- 3:47hit like 10X20X30X. You know, we're looking for kind
- 3:52of mid teens IRRS over the life of an investment, which
- 3:56generally yields kind of like a high 1, low 2X cut a multiple.
- 4:02And that's without accounting for the tax advantages of being
- 4:05able to offset either your investment returns or other
- 4:09returns and other investments through depreciation losses in
- 4:13our mobile home parks, RV parks and and self storage
- 4:17acquisitions. Amazing.
- 4:18So, and I'd love to hear kind of like the, the temperature of
- 4:21real estate right now. Now I, I'm in the bubble of all
- 4:24bubbles, you know, Denver, Co, which if you want, you know, A2
- 4:29bed, 1 bath, little bungalows, 100 years old, $1.1 million, you
- 4:34know, and there's a lot of belly aching, at least in Denver that
- 4:36people are getting priced out. So maybe we're starting to see a
- 4:39dip in the market. But you know, your career has
- 4:42really been in the absolute glory age of real estate
- 4:46investing. So talk about the temperature
- 4:48right now and how that compares to like the market over the last
- 4:51decade. Sure well, and you know, I can
- 4:54go further back than that. I was actually looking to invest
- 4:57in Denver in 2007, 2000, you know, early O 8 and you know, in
- 5:03my early career had a front seat to the Great Recession and what
- 5:06was happening. And I, you know, what's
- 5:09interesting is, you know, we've had a lot of success in our
- 5:11investment funds over the last almost 10 years.
- 5:15And as a result, I'll interact with kind of the large
- 5:19institutional capital on Wall Street, whether it's Blackstone
- 5:22or Brookfield or Bain, and then some of the smaller, you know,
- 5:26kind of mid tier guys. And for a while, I mean, even as
- 5:30recent as a couple years ago, you know, folks didn't want to
- 5:33talk to someone who was investing in say, the Northeast
- 5:37and their focus was we want to go to the smile states, right?
- 5:41You know, the curl from the Carolinas down through Florida
- 5:44and Texas and back up into the the Southwest.
- 5:47That's the smile. Well, you know, the problem, and
- 5:50this was always my feeling and I experienced this in home
- 5:53building is, you know, it's a supply demand imbalance.
- 5:56I specifically kept my firm away from those states because
- 5:59frankly, it's just too easy to get the right to build.
- 6:02Now over our lifetime, it will become harder as those states
- 6:05become inundated. I just am back from Texas and,
- 6:08you know, the building double Decker highways everywhere you
- 6:11you can see. And the amount of traffic
- 6:13yesterday 4:30 in the morning between San Antonio and Austin
- 6:16was unbelievable. That said, in the Northeast
- 6:20where we still have, you know, significant percentage of the
- 6:23United States population, it's next to impossible to get the
- 6:26right to build another housing unit.
- 6:28And as a result, that supply demand imbalance has kept
- 6:32housing values high and has been really enabled us, I think to
- 6:35create, I'll say, asymmetric returns to other investment
- 6:40opportunities, which is really what we're looking for is we
- 6:43like real estate because of the lack of kind of publicly traded
- 6:45information where we can create, I think a distinctive advantage
- 6:49for our investment. So you're looking for places
- 6:51that it's harder to get the right to build because there's
- 6:54less competition? That's absolutely right.
- 6:57Amazing. And you're doing new home builds
- 6:59as opposed to like flips and things like that and or multi
- 7:02family units. So, yeah, so I spent a lot, a
- 7:06lot of my career building 55 and over communities and, you know,
- 7:11sold a billion dollars worth of real estate and exclusively 55
- 7:15and over communities. And that was ground up.
- 7:17That was finding the farm, getting it approved to build
- 7:20homes, on developing the land, building the homes, selling the
- 7:24homes, warranting the homes and so on.
- 7:26But over the last 10 years, we've really been more focused,
- 7:29I would say on acquiring existing properties.
- 7:33And those properties are largely almost exclusively mobile home
- 7:36parks, which is, I mean, frankly, I, I love it because
- 7:41it's an asset class that it, I'll say is disfavored by so
- 7:48many. So I was, I was on a
- 7:49conversation with, with somebody else recently where you think
- 7:53about what in an economy, a functioning economy, when an
- 7:57asset is in demand, if the market finds a way to produce
- 8:00more of that asset. And yet I'm in manufactured
- 8:03housing where the asset demand is through the roof because it's
- 8:06affordable. I mean, someone can buy a home
- 8:09for 75 to $150,000 and have a monthly lot rent payment and
- 8:14utilities, you know, of 500 to $1000 in markets where the
- 8:19single family home costs, you know, half $1,000,000.
- 8:23And yet we're producing effectively no new manufactured
- 8:27housing product or communities nationwide, particularly in the
- 8:30Northeast. I mean, the number is 0.
- 8:32And so we have increasing demand and we actually have decreasing
- 8:35supply, which is a market that's not functioning.
- 8:38But it's largely due to the fact that everyone wants affordable
- 8:40housing. They just don't want it near
- 8:41them. So if no one wants it near them,
- 8:43guess where it gets built? It doesn't get built.
- 8:48I know all about that. I'm in the NIMBY capital of the
- 8:51world, Boulder, Co, you know. Yes, sure.
- 8:56So I spent the first part of my career, Ryan, you'll, you'll
- 8:58like this and you can use it. We were in Greensboro, NC and we
- 9:02were trying to reinvigorate the downtown and we brought in
- 9:05Cooper Terry, a firm out of Atlanta, really nationally
- 9:08reputable firm, architecture and master planning.
- 9:11And they had a different word for the NIMBY's.
- 9:13They called them CAVE People then.
- 9:16CAVE is an acronym for Citizens Against Virtually Everything.
- 9:23Oh my gosh, with a canvas bag and some Tiva sandals on.
- 9:29Unfortunately, the United States has become kind of a, a nation
- 9:32of cave people, or at least run by The Cave people, right?
- 9:34Like if you go to a, you know, a municipal meeting, you know,
- 9:37most people are in favor of what's happening there, but
- 9:40they're not showing up because they're coaching Little League
- 9:43or they're working or they're, you know, at home with their
- 9:45kids. But the, you know, The Cave
- 9:47people are the ones who show up and scream with the lattice
- 9:49voice. Virtual or, or it's a
- 9:52recreational outrage, you know, and in it is kind of like
- 9:56irritating. And, you know, I don't get in
- 9:58too deep into politics, but everybody is kind of backed into
- 10:01their own corner and everything becomes politicized in some way,
- 10:04which is, you know, as a sportsman in Colorado, they
- 10:06released the wolves and that became a big partisan issue as
- 10:09opposed to like a, a rational common sense conversation about
- 10:13ecology. You, you know, people aren't
- 10:15trusting experts because their their guy said XYZ on both
- 10:19sides. It is kind of irritating.
- 10:21You know, do you run into that? Is that kind of the the reason
- 10:23why in the Northeast or maybe California, why there's so
- 10:27little building going on? Because just the the bureaucracy
- 10:29around it is almost like stifling?
- 10:33It's absolutely bureaucracy. And, you know, on one hand,
- 10:36you'll have, you know, middle age and later age folks who are
- 10:40complaining about the cost of housing and that their children
- 10:43or grandchildren can't afford to live where they have a home.
- 10:46And yet they're the same folks who will show up and oppose a
- 10:50developer's proposed project. So, you know, it's, it's like,
- 10:55you know, we stopped teaching basic economics, I don't know,
- 10:5830 years ago. And when we stop teaching it,
- 11:01you know, people don't understand the, the consequences
- 11:03of their decisions, particularly unintended consequences.
- 11:07You know, it used to be you could own a farm and that farm
- 11:10was kind of your retirement plan because you're going to sell it
- 11:12for development down the road. And my grandfather and my father
- 11:16grew up outside of Madison, WI. Well, Madison's a pretty, you
- 11:18know, liberal bastion of the university sector in Wisconsin.
- 11:23And So what happened was, you know, my grandfather had a 50
- 11:27acre farm that he could have built a number of homes on.
- 11:30Well, they, this professors in Madison moved, moved out and got
- 11:34on the boards of these, you know, suburban rural locations
- 11:38and they down zoned property so that you have many, you have
- 11:41many homes you could build on 50 acres.
- 11:42That's the new zoning that they implemented. 1 One new home on
- 11:4950 acres. Is that due to a like a, a
- 11:51romantic ideal? Are they really worried about
- 11:53the black glove ferret? You know, and they're they're
- 11:55breeding grounds and this episode is brought to you by a
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- 12:54Now back to the show. It could have been a bat.
- 12:56It could have been, we had a, a, a snail darter.
- 13:00But no, I think, I think there's a, you know, it's a kind of a
- 13:02combination of all that, right? Like there's a romantic
- 13:05romanticizing of, of the rural areas.
- 13:09Maybe there's a legitimate concern about sprawl, you know,
- 13:13but you know, effectively it's a taking that was uncompensated,
- 13:17right? Like you get your property down
- 13:18zoned and the government's taking it and they haven't paid
- 13:21you. Yeah, you know, and I tease The
- 13:24Cave people and I, I honestly think that people are trying to
- 13:27do what's in the best for everybody.
- 13:29And it's just the pendulum seems to swing too far, you know,
- 13:32every direction, you know, So it's like, yeah, I want to make
- 13:35sure that the ecology is intact of our environment.
- 13:38I want to make sure that like we're we're building responsibly
- 13:41and like the if there's artifacts found, there's all
- 13:44these different things that and safeguards put in place.
- 13:47But on the other side, you are starting to look at a demand
- 13:49issue where like, people aren't being able to realize the
- 13:52American dream. And so if if I'm to make a
- 13:55decision, I'm going to be on Team Human forever.
- 13:58And I like to look at examples of like where it's been done
- 14:01well. And in fact, I kind of put my
- 14:02money where my mouth is last year because I lived in Sloan's
- 14:06Lake, Denver, you know, Northside Denver for pretty much
- 14:09my whole Dang life. And we recently moved kind of to
- 14:12the sticks to a development called Sterling Ranch.
- 14:16And what's really cool is they kind of have have learned it's,
- 14:19you know, they're, they're looking to build, I think
- 14:22probably like 13,000 homes. They've probably built about
- 14:241300 so far, but they're they're doing a lot of things right,
- 14:28which is like using big greenbelts because there's a
- 14:31herd of like 300 head elk out here and they want to make sure
- 14:34it has migratory patterns. And so they're they're building
- 14:38in a way that's constructive. So, you know, there it's this
- 14:41amazing community that's completely engineered from the
- 14:43ground up, but also taking the consideration skylines and views
- 14:47and taking into consideration water rights.
- 14:49You know, we were also looking at a place over by by Morrison
- 14:53and Red Rocks, but they didn't have a meter yet, You know,
- 14:57they're they didn't have water. So, you know, we ended up
- 15:00choosing this place because they had spent, you know, a half a
- 15:03billion dollars digging their own well.
- 15:05So it's supported with its own water, which this year becomes a
- 15:09massive issue because, you know, Denver is bone dry.
- 15:13And we'll kind of see how that plays out.
- 15:14You know, have you seen good examples of like, let's just
- 15:18call it ethical building, mindful stewardship of the
- 15:22earth, these kind of things where you can kind of point and
- 15:24be like, hey, guys, if we can just have a civil conversation,
- 15:27we can do things like this. Yeah, I, I think those are
- 15:31really important conversations and I'm, I'm fully behind those.
- 15:34I think about like, you know, on the, on the hunting side, this
- 15:36guy like Steve Rinella, you know, and conservationists
- 15:39where, you know, you'd have some people on the far left who would
- 15:42say, well, you know, you can never cut down a tree.
- 15:45You can never harvest an animal. And then you have the people I
- 15:48think who really understand how these systems work together
- 15:52that, you know, if you don't, if you don't cut down trees and do,
- 15:55you know, fire mitigation, guess what?
- 15:57You know, guess what, you end up with like every scene in
- 15:59California we've seen in Colorado at times.
- 16:02And the same thing with with, you know, with the the
- 16:06ecosystems and the overpopulation of certain
- 16:09certain animals in real estate. I mean, let's let's be honest, I
- 16:15think we haven't always had the best actors, right?
- 16:17I think there is, there's legitimate concern that I don't
- 16:22want to poo poo that, you know, some, some developer says, well,
- 16:24just give me one more unit or give me two, one more unit per
- 16:27acre, five more units per acre. Then I'll be able to get, you
- 16:31know, I'll make the numbers work or I'll, I'll make a, you know,
- 16:34a boatload of money. I think what's really lost in
- 16:37the conversation is, you know, somehow in kind of the planning
- 16:41era, I don't know, last 50 years we became about the single
- 16:46family home. We we became about the half acre
- 16:48lot. And, you know, it's my
- 16:50perspective that, you know, if you want to preserve open
- 16:53spaces, which I absolutely do, and particularly and protect,
- 16:57you know, areas outside of the urban core, even suburban core,
- 17:02you've got to make a commitment to build as densely as you
- 17:05possibly can where you're going to build.
- 17:09I, I like to say, you know, in 1/2 acre lot, A1 acre lot, you,
- 17:11you know, that's not open space, that's somebody's private
- 17:14property. If you want to create more open
- 17:17space, you aggregate it by allowing to, you know, people to
- 17:20build it, you know, 4 to 10 homes per acre, whether that's,
- 17:23you know, a single story home or whether you start to stack
- 17:27things in apartments or other structures to maximize density.
- 17:30And you aggregate open space. And you say what we're going to
- 17:33create that pocket park in the center of this development that
- 17:36is preserved and cared for by its residents or by the
- 17:39community. And you get ensure that you
- 17:41don't get kind of this urban sprawl or suburban sprawl.
- 17:44If you go to Europe, right? And you, you leave, you know,
- 17:46Paris, you get outside the the urban core and it's just fields
- 17:51everywhere because they, you know, many centuries ago, right,
- 17:55they decided they weren't going to run Public Utilities out out
- 17:59there. You know, I think we're pioneers
- 18:01by nature. It's in the American culture,
- 18:03you know, go West, young man. And so it go West with a sewer
- 18:06line ensures that you keep building.
- 18:10Totally. Yeah, Well, and, and we've
- 18:11learned, you know, 'cause the other thing that's interesting
- 18:13about Paris is there's like one blade of grass in the entire
- 18:16city, you know, So, you know, kind of what people want is
- 18:20starting to get fleshed out. And I, I love this idea of, you
- 18:22know, of density, you know, as we kind of move out because on
- 18:27one side everybody has this romantic image of like a picket
- 18:30fence and no neighbors. But then they want the amenities
- 18:33and the Starbucks and they want all this.
- 18:35So there's a bit of a sacrifice. But kind of what I'm noticing
- 18:38kind of out here is like, you know, proximity to neighbors is
- 18:41one thing, but like they provide a balcony, so you have access to
- 18:45outdoor space. They have a Commons park.
- 18:47And then of course, we have the National Park, which is just
- 18:50like, I live right by Roxboro. So there's all these
- 18:52opportunities to get outside, which seems rational and
- 18:55reasonable, you know, so there's there's like this kind of edge
- 18:58that everybody plays with. And then of course, there's the
- 19:00people beating the drums that we need to privatize the state
- 19:02national parks to start building in there.
- 19:04It's like, wait, let's, let's not go crazy, you know, but, and
- 19:08I'm glad you brought up Steve Rinella, because if people
- 19:10haven't watched Meat Eater, which is his show, it's a really
- 19:14intelligent take on environmentalism and ecology
- 19:19because largely he, he works with the scientists and he cooks
- 19:22food, which is a great part. But he, he relies on the, the,
- 19:27the scientists in, in the, in maybe in kind of like stark
- 19:32contrast to the Disney of fication of nature that a lot of
- 19:35us have grown up in cities where, you know, we do need to
- 19:39manage the earth at this point, you know, in, in order to, for
- 19:43it to sustain. And I just, I, I bring him up
- 19:46only because he is not a partisan person.
- 19:49I don't think he has very clear politics on either side.
- 19:51He's kind of a centrist and comes from a very rational
- 19:53place, which I just think is important when we're starting to
- 19:56think about the growth and development of our cities
- 19:58because housing is such a big issue, you know, and.
- 20:02Yeah, and since it's an AI podcast, right, I mean, you
- 20:04know, I think in tying to this housing issue, you know, I, I
- 20:08think something we're completely unprepared for in these
- 20:12municipalities and bureaucracies is a shift toward automated
- 20:16driving and self driving cars. You know, like one of the
- 20:20biggest inhibitors to development is the parking
- 20:23requirement, right? Like, oh, you know, zoning codes
- 20:25have just been written ad nauseam.
- 20:27So, oh, you build a dwelling unit, you need 2 parking spaces.
- 20:30Well, what if, what are we going to do when people don't own a
- 20:32car and they just, they Uber because the cost of Ubering is
- 20:35so much less than the cost of ownership.
- 20:37Or as you know, I've got a friend in Santa Monica, he's got
- 20:40his Tesla and Tesla's enabling you to just, you know, it can
- 20:44drop you off at your apartment and then you can send it out to
- 20:46Uber autonomously. And so it doesn't need a parking
- 20:49space. And you know, our planning is so
- 20:52far behind thinking through those things and, and, and, and
- 20:56I'm not actually not taking a position, whether that's good or
- 20:58bad, but I am taking a position that it is going to happen and
- 21:02we're not prepared for all the ramifications.
- 21:04Yeah, that's really interesting. And I mean that's like tomorrow
- 21:07really like that's coming so soon.
- 21:10I mean, I'm in a position now where I got a couple cars that
- 21:12are up from lease. I was thinking, you know, I, I
- 21:15mentioned I'm a pick up guy, but about a year ago I traded in my
- 21:19F-150 and got an Aria because it was like $100 for a lease.
- 21:24Like the incentives for these electric cars were insane.
- 21:27And I was like, you know, my yoga bag will fit in this Aria,
- 21:33you know what I'm saying? Like heavy haul.
- 21:36I mean, 550 horsepower is amazing, but like going to yoga
- 21:39class, who cares? So, you know, so I'm thinking
- 21:42about that now because, yeah, you have the, the Waymos.
- 21:44And then of course, Uber is about to come online with the
- 21:48the Tesla's that'll be totally self driving.
- 21:50And it kind of changes the paradigm of your lifestyle being
- 21:53a Colorado guy. It's like, OK, could I go from
- 21:55three cars to 1 car? And that car is just my
- 21:58funmobile. That's, you know, a 1996 4runner
- 22:01that I want to trick out and like put monster truck tires on
- 22:04on it, you know, and, and then that will shape kind of like,
- 22:09well, I mean, it's again, it's America.
- 22:11You got to have A2 car garage, right?
- 22:12Do you anymore? You know?
- 22:15Well, you don't. And I I think like here's like a
- 22:17really crystallized example. So one of our other businesses
- 22:21is entitling land and selling it, either developing it to for
- 22:26apartment or or single family builders or developing it
- 22:29ourselves. We we've got a property in
- 22:32Central PA, the capital of of Pennsylvania, Harrisburg and
- 22:37it's known for apartments. So you'd say, Oh, well, the
- 22:38municipality wants to have apartments built here, which is
- 22:42pretty rare, frankly. You know, apartments fall into
- 22:44that, that cave people classification where very few
- 22:47people want it. So we get, you know, we get kind
- 22:50of an approval to build apartments, but we need a
- 22:52reduction in the parking requirement to maximize density.
- 22:56So the zoning says 2 parking spaces per dwelling unit, even
- 22:59if it's a 650, you know, square foot studio, you need 2 parking
- 23:03spaces. So we did a survey of the all
- 23:06the apartment communities in the region and found that the
- 23:08average park parking in these communities was about 1.41.45.
- 23:13So we went to the zoning hearing board and we said, hey, let's be
- 23:16reasonable. If you give us 1.6 instead of 2,
- 23:19which is more than everybody else but less than what's
- 23:22required, you know, we'll be able to have a few more units
- 23:25here, be able to provide more housing in the municipality.
- 23:27Well, goodness sakes, the zoning hearing board said we agree with
- 23:30you and they approved it unanimously.
- 23:33The next week, again, these political bodies, the, the, the
- 23:36supervisors who were the, you know, elected officials, they
- 23:41filed A lawsuit as a Township to sue themselves, their zoning
- 23:46hearing board to keep us from getting the right to have 1.6
- 23:50parking spaces. And so we're in court now,
- 23:52spending 10s of thousands of dollars to to to try to
- 23:57intervene where municipality is suing itself to keep us from
- 24:00building more homes. Walk me through the rationality
- 24:03of that. What what happened did did they
- 24:05get an angry letter or? You know, I would just say in
- 24:10Pennsylvania we have a lot of like little fiefdom, right?
- 24:13Like, so I grew up in the South. I grew up in North Carolina and
- 24:17I think Virginia, Maryland. In North Carolina, states I'm
- 24:22pretty familiar with are tend to be governed by counties.
- 24:25I don't know how it is in Colorado, but the county is the
- 24:28kind of primary planning authority and you're getting
- 24:32approval from the counties. Maybe the city in the county,
- 24:35you know, would be kind of the two the two bodies in
- 24:37Pennsylvania, you know, we've got literally hundreds of small
- 24:43municipalities, boroughs, townships.
- 24:46And then we have of course, have have cities, but the it's the
- 24:48borough and the Township drive decisions.
- 24:51And these folks are they're governing, let's call it, you
- 24:55know, 20 square miles, if that in some cases, right.
- 24:59And so they're generally are not motivated politically to think
- 25:02beyond their small border. And as a result, we get kind of
- 25:06very hodgepodge development that isn't well thought about.
- 25:11Whereas I do think at the county level, I mean, you could argue,
- 25:13well, that's maybe a bigger bureaucracy and so on.
- 25:16I do think they're planning tends to think about, well,
- 25:18we're going to build this road here and what's the impact?
- 25:21And you know, if we have this zone where you can build X, roll
- 25:24into this zone where you can build Y, those play together.
- 25:28You know, we don't. We don't really generally think
- 25:30about those things in Pennsylvania.
- 25:32Unfortunately, the county, while it exists as an authority, is a
- 25:35paper tiger. Interesting.
- 25:37It seems like a lot of what you butt up against are these kind
- 25:39of like tribal affiliations. Do do you find yourself focusing
- 25:44on like branding and marketing? I mean, on one side you could
- 25:47say like, hey, this is a mobile home development we're looking
- 25:49to do and there might be people that are vocally against it.
- 25:52But if you're like, hey, this is Hashtag Van Life Cafe, then
- 25:56they'll be like, wow, that sounds cool.
- 26:00Yeah, I think we have had success over time, you know,
- 26:05marketing what we've done somewhere else, right.
- 26:08So you can you can step in front of municipality and say, hey,
- 26:11here's what we did. You know, in a neighboring
- 26:12municipality there becomes kind of a proof of concept.
- 26:17It does not necessarily get you past that, you know, that one
- 26:21political representative who just doesn't want anything
- 26:24built. And then the other challenge is,
- 26:28boy, I'm, I'm, I'm off, you know, kind of on a tangent here,
- 26:31Ryan, but you're giving me a soapbox.
- 26:33You know, there are municipalities who will just
- 26:35flat out choose to ignore the law.
- 26:39So the law says, hey, if you, if you create a plan that meets the
- 26:45zoning and the subdivision law, then you're allowed to build it.
- 26:49Well, there are municipalities who will just deny it.
- 26:51And, and, and in denying it, they know ultimately, like
- 26:54they're, they're wrong, but they're basically playing a game
- 26:58of chicken to force you to spend money, to sue them, to force
- 27:02them to follow the law and hoping that either you don't
- 27:06have deep enough pockets or that the economics won't support you
- 27:09spending legal dollars. Because, and I don't know if
- 27:12this exists in other states, but in Pennsylvania, municipalities
- 27:16are immune from paying, you know, legal penalties for, you
- 27:20know, there's no damages if they, if they delay my project 2
- 27:23years and cost me $300,000 in legal fees to make them fall the
- 27:27law. You know, I've got to work that
- 27:29into my numbers. They don't have to pay it.
- 27:32I mean, there's just such over legislation in the in the entire
- 27:37country right now. It's it's got to be incredibly
- 27:39frustrating. But yeah, from an ethical
- 27:41standpoint, I mean, if you're building, you know, manufactured
- 27:44housing, you're building mobile home parks on places that are
- 27:48undeveloped. And do you have the zoning and
- 27:50permissions to do so? I mean, don't they feel bad?
- 27:52Ultimately, this is like robbing young families and people that
- 27:55are kind of getting their, their foothold in, in the economy
- 28:00there. It it's robbing them
- 28:01opportunities. I mean, what, what is their
- 28:03rationale? Is it just kind of like kind of
- 28:05a, just a, a viewpoint like we don't want to, we're not okaying
- 28:09anything else. It just kind of heels in the
- 28:11dirt kind of thing. Yeah, I think, I mean, I think
- 28:14The Cave is so good because it is an accurate representation
- 28:18of, of, of many people's feeling, which is I just don't
- 28:21want anything to change. You know, So I'm against
- 28:24virtually everything because I just what, what I have right now
- 28:27is what I want to stay forever. And you know, I think, you know,
- 28:31we all know like the only constant is change.
- 28:35And the question is, are we going to, are we going to, are
- 28:37we going to create the change or are we going to submit to the
- 28:39change? Right.
- 28:40And so, you know, I, maybe I'm doing what I'm doing because
- 28:43I've always been somebody who wants to create that change.
- 28:46And they're, you know, a fair bit of people in our in our
- 28:50political systems who are, you know, interested in maintaining
- 28:54power through, you know, what comes to mind.
- 28:56You remember in Yellowstone when John Dutton stands up, is
- 28:59running for governor, he says, I am against any any progress.
- 29:04I'm actually really, I actually really enjoy that show.
- 29:08So I'm not giving John Dutton a hard time or or Kevin Costner,
- 29:11because I think a piece of me kind of resonates with that in
- 29:14that place. But you know, it's, it's not
- 29:16suburban Philadelphia, right? Like Wyoming is not suburban
- 29:20Philadelphia. It's.
- 29:20Also easy to be against progress when you got a 30,000 acre dude
- 29:24ranch. Yeah, it's it's right.
- 29:28I. Got mine and I'm building a
- 29:29fence around it. Leave me alone.
- 29:33Yeah, I, I will say, Ryan, I mean, you know, this AI, I'm in
- 29:40real estate and I, and I mentioned earlier, I can't think
- 29:42we're notoriously it's slow to adapt.
- 29:46So like for instance, I was, I was helping run with my
- 29:49partners, we were running a home building company through the
- 29:51Great Recession of tremendously successful.
- 29:55And, and I and I learned at that stage of my career about real
- 30:00estate in the real estate industry.
- 30:01And there were so many. I mean, there used to be a page
- 30:04in O8O9, there was a web page dedicated to the counting the
- 30:09number of home builders who went bankrupt, who filed for
- 30:11bankruptcy. I mean, it was, you know, 10s of
- 30:14thousands, right? It just kept growing, like the
- 30:15number of home builders filing for bankruptcy.
- 30:18And many of them, in my experience, you know, had a
- 30:21perspective based on maybe their history and prior recessions was
- 30:25we're just going to wait it out. You know, that their mantra was,
- 30:28you know, we've seen this before.
- 30:30We're just going to wait it out. And unfortunately, you know, I,
- 30:34I was ingrained. It was ingrained in me in the
- 30:37whole building business that, you know, you figure out how to
- 30:40adapt. You figure out how to, to get
- 30:44your product in the hands of consumers to make it easier for
- 30:47them to buy even in challenging times to be financially strong.
- 30:52You know, I learned you're strong when you when you owe the
- 30:54bank a ton of money, when you owe the bank no money.
- 30:57And I always wanted to be in a position where I could pay the
- 30:59bank off. Yeah, I just learned the pain of
- 31:01having too much leverage in that environment because we were
- 31:04super successful by not over levering through that
- 31:07environment. But you know where I'm going
- 31:09here. Is this real?
- 31:11The real estate industry is just slow to adopt, right?
- 31:13That that idea of we're just going to wait it out permeates
- 31:18particularly, I'll say that the residential industry and you
- 31:21know, multi families probably the best.
- 31:24Then the home builders, you know, they're, they're not
- 31:26awesome, but but they're getting better.
- 31:29The better ones are getting better.
- 31:30This is technology and AI. And then like even below the
- 31:33home builders is like manufactured housing, right,
- 31:36which would be like viewed by many as the lower rung of, of
- 31:40home building. And so as a result of that
- 31:44experience for my firm, you know, I would say we're, we're
- 31:47trying to be on the leading edge of our industry in adopting
- 31:54artificial intelligence within our, within our company and, and
- 31:58figuring out how do we deploy it.
- 32:00And you know, I'm happy to say there are some really good use
- 32:02cases and I and I'm a little disappointed that frankly it's
- 32:05not as good as as we'd like it to be right now.
- 32:08Do you think there the reason that that real estate is kind of
- 32:11slow to adapt is just because it attracts kind of people with
- 32:14like a lower risk tolerance profile?
- 32:20Yeah, I hadn't thought about that question.
- 32:23That is, I think there are certainly drivers of that.
- 32:28And and if you dug into the kind of psychographics of who's more
- 32:31attracting to lower risk profile, there's probably all
- 32:33these other kind of aligned factors that make them less
- 32:37likely to adopt. I think it's probably a fair
- 32:39characterization. It's interesting and it maybe it
- 32:41presents opportunities from startup community.
- 32:43I mean, what's what's kind of very appealing about real estate
- 32:47from my perspective is as an asset class.
- 32:49It's something that you get to see being built and then people
- 32:52move in. It's like, ah, there's something
- 32:55very satisfying the, the, the feeling and kind of startup
- 32:58community, you know, everything from precede all the way up to
- 33:01the enterprise. I talk to them all, all the time
- 33:03is everybody feels behind, like everything is advancing so very
- 33:08quickly. And as people are kind of
- 33:10placing bets, there's like a lot of anxiousness.
- 33:12I mean, the, the, the, the startup finance market is so
- 33:16frothy. I mean, people are throwing
- 33:18money at everything right now hoping that one thing sticks out
- 33:22of 100 because ultimately it's like, dude, will my whole
- 33:25category be absorbed by the next model update?
- 33:28Like nobody really knows. And every single models update
- 33:33is like a major release on a weekly basis.
- 33:35So the the hype cycle is at an absolute peak, you know?
- 33:39So for me looking at a different access class to park some cash
- 33:42real estate looks it does look romantic.
- 33:45You're like, oh man, cool manufactured.
- 33:47Housing, Well, that's interesting.
- 33:51That's interesting perspective. I think I was recruited to
- 33:56investment banking, to investment banking, right on a
- 33:58college, you know, I was an academic, all American, played
- 34:01basketball and and Lehman Brothers, actually this is all
- 34:03pre 911 had a program where they recruited people who had
- 34:07achieved that designation. And yeah, the truth is at 22
- 34:10years old, I didn't really know what investment banking was.
- 34:12I was a liberal arts undergrad and I was, I was married and so
- 34:17I wasn't going to move to New York and leave my wife, who was
- 34:19still had a semester remaining. But but as I've kind of moved
- 34:24beyond that, I spent my career in real estate.
- 34:26You know, what I really enjoy is something you mentioned is like
- 34:29it's tangible. I can drive by, I can see it.
- 34:32You know, I don't get if I don't over lever and I operate well, I
- 34:37know I'm not that that investment is not going to zero.
- 34:39Yeah, right. And and you know, I've, I've,
- 34:42I've been fortunate to be able to invest not just in real
- 34:45estate, but other things. And you know, there, there have
- 34:47been investment losses where you go like, oh man, like that kind
- 34:51of went poof. And if I'd have bought a piece
- 34:54of dirt or bought a cash flowing property, you know, guess what
- 34:57that doesn't, that doesn't go poof.
- 34:59You may maybe you're not thrilled with it, but it
- 35:01probably doesn't go poof. It's probably pretty
- 35:03inflationary, probably protected against inflation.
- 35:06And then I think what I discovered after, after home
- 35:09building Ryan is you know the the tax advantages of investing
- 35:14in existing real estate like mobile home parks through
- 35:18depreciation are, are so significant that frankly for
- 35:23investors who are investing in tech and looking for a way to
- 35:27offset those gains, investing in manufactured housing, whether
- 35:32with us or somebody else is really a great way to offset
- 35:36gains in those investments. 100% because there's certain tax
- 35:39incentives. Well, and, and not just
- 35:43incentives, but you know, effectively because of the
- 35:46losses someone gets through depreciation and a manufactured
- 35:50housing investment or RV investment or even self storage,
- 35:54which are all asset classes we're focused on, You'd have to
- 35:58get like a third higher return in any other asset class, right?
- 36:02Like if you're saying, oh, I can get 10% in the market, well to
- 36:04get an equivalent tax adjusted return in the market reaction to
- 36:08get a like 13 or 14 to to get the same return and we can
- 36:12provide a manufactured housing because of the tax.
- 36:15Benefits amazing and I'd like to talk about arcs a little bit
- 36:18because you know, before we we started recording you just said
- 36:21something that was really cool. It's like, hey, this is this is
- 36:23where my family office invests their money.
- 36:26If people want to jump on board, that's great, but like this is
- 36:28going to happen for us. And so you you kind of take in
- 36:31like a a position of it just gives you I think like a ring of
- 36:36integrity that like you're vetting the deals by the
- 36:39standards that you have and that's where you're you're
- 36:41placing your book. I mean think about thinking
- 36:44about the other side. What should people be aware of
- 36:47when they're starting to think about real estate investments?
- 36:50And I mean a kind of the classic like Florida condo scam or well.
- 36:58You know, it's, it's interesting.
- 36:59So you know, I've, I've always invested in my own businesses
- 37:04and, and it was fortunate to have capital to be able to do
- 37:07that. And I didn't start with a grand
- 37:08plan. Like when I started Arsen 16, I
- 37:11didn't start with like, hey, I'm going to build this thing up
- 37:13with other people's money. I really just said, well, I need
- 37:16a place to invest. And, and I would say maybe in
- 37:19the back of my mind I had a thought like if I'm successful,
- 37:23Well, I had two thoughts. One is I can't ask other people
- 37:25for money until I prove what I can do on my own.
- 37:28And the second was, you know, once we do that then maybe we
- 37:32would invite some people to invest with us.
- 37:34Well, frankly we've been way more successful than I probably
- 37:37thought we'd be. And that's a that's a credit to
- 37:39our team. We've got AI sit outside
- 37:42Philadelphia in the Philadelphia suburbs and we've got a a team
- 37:46of about 25 people, maybe 1/3 of that is our corporate team,
- 37:50including in house counsel and CFO and operations and so on.
- 37:53And we've got property managers spread out throughout,
- 37:56throughout the region, our properties.
- 37:59But I would say that you see like, well, what, how do you
- 38:03pick a real estate investment right now?
- 38:05And you mentioned this earlier, Ryan, you said, oh, well, it's
- 38:08been the golden age of real estate investing.
- 38:10And I, and I think you're right, like if somebody lost money in
- 38:14real estate investing between like 16 and, and 22, like, boy,
- 38:20I mean, they should just like split burgers or something.
- 38:22I don't really know. I don't really know how how that
- 38:25was possible. Now the challenge that I think
- 38:29the market, let's say the market has, is it's been if we take
- 38:33COVID out, how long has this been since we had a real
- 38:36recession, right? It was, you know, O8O9, right?
- 38:39Like, so it's, it's this, this boom is growth is a little long
- 38:43in the tooth. We're coming, we're nearing 20
- 38:46years, which would be the longest now.
- 38:47And constantly, Oh, we had a COVID recession.
- 38:49But but I, I think that's a little bit of a blip.
- 38:52It's not a traditional kind of economic recession.
- 38:56There are a lot of people in my opinion, that are swimming
- 38:59naked, right? But as a Buffett who said, you
- 39:01know, when the tide goes out, you find out who's swimming
- 39:03naked. And one of the truest tests to
- 39:06me is you find out like who actually has invested their own
- 39:10capital, real capital in these deals.
- 39:12And you know, we've got a system that doesn't necessarily
- 39:15incentivize frankly, you know, I call them young people, but you
- 39:19know, now they're in their, you know, mid 30s maybe and early
- 39:2140s where they've only known up and to the right.
- 39:24They've only known low interest rates.
- 39:26They've only, no, no, it's time to refi.
- 39:28And, you know, no problem getting refinancing.
- 39:31And I am, for better or worse, I think mostly better.
- 39:34I'm scarred forever by the Great Recession and that, that website
- 39:39of how many thousands of home builders went out of business
- 39:42and understanding what it looks like when you know what, when
- 39:45you've got $30 million borrowed and you're building, you know,
- 39:49100 homes and you've got to navigate through that.
- 39:53And so I'm just, I'm unwilling to, to do that with other
- 39:56people's money and not do it my own money.
- 39:58Yeah. So what that means for us is,
- 40:01you know, our family is we, we make the 1st and largest
- 40:04commitment to any one of our offerings.
- 40:06And yeah, we're, we're big believers in them.
- 40:08And, you know, are we perfect? Absolutely not.
- 40:12But we do, we do believe that we're very, very aligned with
- 40:15with our investors who choose to to join us.
- 40:18Amazing. How do you source deals?
- 40:22So we we have a combination of I'll say inbound and outbound.
- 40:26We are. I wish AI could help us here.
- 40:29Maybe it does a little bit, but you know, in manufactured
- 40:31housing. Like, if I want to buy an
- 40:33existing mobile Home Park, it's probably not the case that the
- 40:36owner lives in the park, right? So if I was buying land, you
- 40:42know, I drive by and maybe that person lives there.
- 40:44They probably live there and knock on the door and ask him if
- 40:46I can buy their farm. Buying a mobile Home Park is a
- 40:49little harder. So, you know, we're trying to
- 40:51leverage AI to get those lists of people, you know, who owns
- 40:56what and get their mailing address.
- 40:58And other people are doing that because my phone rings off the
- 41:00hook with, you know, somebody from the Philippines calling me
- 41:03trying to buy my mobile home parks.
- 41:05So the outbound looks like postcards and and referrals.
- 41:09I mean, frankly, many mobile Home Park owners, no other
- 41:14mobile Home Park owners. And when we do a good job in
- 41:17helping an owner transact, sell their property, move into
- 41:21retirement, you know, they're happy to, to share their
- 41:24experience with, with other owners.
- 41:27And then we, we do a fair bit of inbound, you know, I wouldn't
- 41:31say that it was ever anti broker.
- 41:32I, I think the challenge is, you know, like many industry, many
- 41:35industries, right, Like 20% of the people do 80% of it the
- 41:39business. So we need to find that the
- 41:41right network of brokers who brought us deals that were
- 41:43properly valued, expectations properly set with the sellers.
- 41:47And so we we do work with brokers in the space who who can
- 41:51deliver us properties. Amazing.
- 41:53We just got a couple of minutes left, so I want to take us into
- 41:55the quantum round. Are you ready?
- 41:59Well, you know, does it matter? I'll be ready.
- 42:02No, the quantum round is more of a black hole.
- 42:04You're getting sucked into it against your if you don't want
- 42:06to. OK, here we go.
- 42:08First question, why is there a human skull on your desk?
- 42:14That is to remind me of my mortality, that this life will
- 42:18end. And you know, hopefully on a
- 42:21daily basis, it keeps me focused on the longer term.
- 42:27Being kind. My faith is really important to
- 42:29me. To me that, you know, there used
- 42:33to be a bracelet. WWJD.
- 42:34What would you just do? I certainly don't always do that
- 42:37perfectly, but that skull reminds me that there is life
- 42:41beyond this one, and I shouldn't just be living for this moment.
- 42:44Love that. You know, it's, it may be, may
- 42:47seem morbid, but I'm a school guy too for much of the same
- 42:50reasons. I think it's it's important,
- 42:52it's it, it's kind of a a stoicism maybe that was lost in
- 42:56the culture. But like in Europe, of course,
- 42:57they have those incredible catacombs where you can just go
- 43:00see your great, great granddaddy and all his cousins all spread,
- 43:04spread out. It's very cool.
- 43:06OK. You talked about like
- 43:08integrating AI into real estate and looking for opportunities
- 43:11there. I know a lot of people are going
- 43:12to be listening to this conversation and seeing an
- 43:15opportunity of like, oh, hey, real estate, it might be a good
- 43:19place to start build tools. So maybe talk a little bit about
- 43:22which LLMLLM tools you're using and kind of in what capacity
- 43:27what you're using them for on a daily basis?
- 43:30George sort of the team here. We are using both Claude and
- 43:33chat. I think our team is really
- 43:37enjoying the Claude Excel widget.
- 43:41We're using that quite a bit. And I think, you know, frankly,
- 43:46over the last like 3 months, we probably have transitioned
- 43:51primarily to Claude versus chat. Sometimes we'll pop back and
- 43:54forth, but Claude seems to be a little more, I'll say, built for
- 43:57business. And so that's been our
- 44:00experience there. It's funny, before this call, I
- 44:02jumped in and was talking to our analyst and one of our
- 44:06accountants to understand how they're how they're using it.
- 44:09And I would say that it is on the underwriting side.
- 44:16It's helping us decide which deals to kick out and ignore.
- 44:20And we get a lot of deal flow. But we could waste waste a lot
- 44:24of time on the human side digging through a deal,
- 44:29underwriting and then finding out, oh, there's this
- 44:31characteristic that like we would have never even
- 44:33entertained it if we would have known this.
- 44:35Well, AII think Claude in particular is helping us parse
- 44:39that out earlier. So we're just saying like, Yep,
- 44:41you know, we've got our list of kind of non negotiables.
- 44:44If it has one of those on there, boom, it's out.
- 44:46So we're really able to, I think, do deeper dives on the
- 44:49stuff that maybe we wouldn't have gotten to or we were not
- 44:53doing as deep a dive as we needed to in order to focus on
- 44:56on acquiring an asset. So I think Claude has been
- 45:00excellent at helping us sift through and eliminate things.
- 45:06I think I think that's clearly the case.
- 45:08Yeah. I mean there's there's probably
- 45:10applications there for just ongoing Cron jobs that are
- 45:13pulling deals and opportunities and you know, using them to
- 45:16disqualify with those kind of red flags.
- 45:19What? What's that list of red flags
- 45:21that disqualifies a deal? Non negotiable, you know.
- 45:26The property in a floodway, you know, kind of a regulated
- 45:29floodway that that'd be a non negotiable, you know, as the,
- 45:33the, is there private infrastructure that needs
- 45:37significant capital improvement? So for instance, you know, a 60
- 45:41year old wastewater treatment plant where I'm not opposed to
- 45:44wastewater treatment plant, but a 60 year old treatment plant
- 45:47means I probably need a budget, you know, 1,000,000 1/2 bucks
- 45:51out of the gate. And, and guess what?
- 45:52The broker and the seller, you know, we're hoping they're,
- 45:55they're going to find a sucker. And you know, we're still
- 45:58operating in a space where there's, there's still kind of a
- 46:00Wild West characteristic to it versus maybe the multifamily,
- 46:04which I think has become more institutionalized manufactured
- 46:07housing still has a lot of suckers out there.
- 46:09And we got to make sure that we're, we're not one of those.
- 46:13I think on on the I was just, you know, my team said like
- 46:15formatting, whether it's on the accounting side or underwriting
- 46:20and reporting, you have it. These these feel like they're
- 46:23kind of low hanging fruit is like formatting reports that
- 46:27frankly, you know, somebody without kind of who was an Excel
- 46:30whiz would have spent a lot of time on and now focus their time
- 46:34elsewhere. And do we do, do you do I really
- 46:37want to pay for somebody to be an Excel whiz in today's world?
- 46:40I mean, no, like why would we, why would we invest in that when
- 46:43we've got a system that can do it as well?
- 46:46Yeah, it's, it's interesting because my, my daughter's a a
- 46:49freshman studying finance at Mizzou and she had a whole Excel
- 46:52class and she was kind of struggling with it.
- 46:54I was like, sweetheart, Claude just did a Excel integration.
- 47:00Just get that. I mean, you learn for the test,
- 47:03but you will never need this information ever again, you
- 47:06know? But it, it, I, I think it'll
- 47:07serve her maybe like have the basis of understanding.
- 47:11But yeah, it's, it's moving very quickly to that point.
- 47:14If you were a freshman in college right now, what would
- 47:16you study? I would, I think I'd study
- 47:20exactly what I did study, which was I was a double major in
- 47:23communication and political science and I'm a big believer
- 47:28in the liberal arts undergrad. I just, I think that as we begin
- 47:34to commoditize or increasingly commoditize some of these
- 47:39electronic functions, I can remember when I was really
- 47:43jealous of a Co worker who was like an excel whiz and a new
- 47:46macros and all this and I just thought I just went to school
- 47:48for the wrong thing. I just think we're going to
- 47:51we're going to place a much higher value going forward on
- 47:54some of those softer knowledge, softer knowledge, softer
- 47:58abilities. I would have studied history a
- 48:00little more. Now I enjoy reading history
- 48:02outside of school, but I probably would have spent a
- 48:04little more time studying history and maybe even
- 48:06philosophy. Yeah.
- 48:07Cool, amazing. Now I know that the
- 48:11International Justice Mission and Tim Tebow Foundation are
- 48:14important to you. Maybe maybe talk a little bit
- 48:16about those nonprofits and why they're important to you.
- 48:21Yeah. Well, yeah, I think people who
- 48:25people who are focused on it understand that we've got a mass
- 48:28epidemic of, of modern day slavery in the United States and
- 48:32around the world. And, and, you know, some of the
- 48:34things that happened to the US perpetuate that and that that
- 48:38slavery looks like child and, and women enslavement both for
- 48:43for labor and for sex trafficking.
- 48:46And that is something that's near and dear to my my wife's
- 48:49heart and, and as a result, my own heart.
- 48:51And those two organizations, I think are really at the front
- 48:56lines of trying to deal with the bad guys and make sure that's
- 49:02brought to the light and rescue the folks who are who are
- 49:05enslaved. And so I'm we're big supporters
- 49:08of of those two organizations. Very important work.
- 49:11And it, it probably doesn't get mentioned enough that like those
- 49:14two organizations in particular, like literally doing sting
- 49:17operations, reclaiming these girls and, and, and boys, you
- 49:22know, and then bringing these people to justice, you know,
- 49:24which I, I think there was a statistic that like, there's
- 49:28slavery is more prevalent today than it's ever been in human
- 49:31history, you know? So, yeah, shout out to those
- 49:34organizations and we'll put those in the liner notes.
- 49:36You can learn more at ljm.org. And then the Tim Tebow
- 49:39Foundation is all over the Internet.
- 49:41You can find that as well. Shout out to to Tim Tebow, a
- 49:44Mile High salute to him. Last question before we wrap
- 49:47this up, are the 76ers going to make the playoffs this year?
- 49:54I love Philadelphia sports, Ryan, but I don't think so.
- 49:57I've been down on the Sixers for a while and I'll tell you, I
- 50:00don't really call into radio shows.
- 50:02And we've got really good talk radio, sports talk radio in
- 50:05Philadelphia. And when Joel Embiid won the
- 50:07MVPI did my only call in and I said trade him, trade him now
- 50:12you know, his value is never going to be higher.
- 50:15And of course, you know, the owner didn't listen to me and I
- 50:19think the feedback was he puts too many bucks in the seats to
- 50:21trade him. But I don't think he's going to
- 50:23win in today's game with a centre like like Embiid, and I
- 50:27don't think the Sixers are going to make the playoffs.
- 50:29He's a great player and he had a great season, but we all know
- 50:32Jokic was the actual MVP that year.
- 50:35Well, he he, he feels like he's the MB MVP every time he steps
- 50:38on the floor. Amazing Nathan.
- 50:41This has been awesome man. I really appreciate the
- 50:43conversation. Everybody check out
- 50:45arcsventures.com. There's an opportunity if you
- 50:48want to invest in the fund or just to see kind of what, what
- 50:52Nathan's up to and like how he's evaluating deals and where he's
- 50:56moving. Really cool.
- 50:58I, I love this conversation. Again, that's Arcs venture.com.
- 51:01If people want to connect with you online, Nathan, where's the
- 51:04best place to do that? They can DM me on LinkedIn or
- 51:10they can just e-mail me nathan@arcsventures.com.
- 51:13I'd love to interact with our investors.
- 51:14And you know, as as our largest investor, I have a lot of great
- 51:18conversations. We've been fortunate to, to many
- 51:22of our investors are business owners themselves and
- 51:24entrepreneurs and I've really appreciated learning from them
- 51:27as we've built this business. So I love talking with folks,
- 51:30whether they invest or not, just I'm always edified by those
- 51:33conversations and I hope they would be too amazing.
- 51:35Reach out to Nathan. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you
- 51:37so much for joining me. You are about to spend anywhere
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