Latest / Go Big with Gib Podcast / From Worship to Wealth: Caleb Edwards' Diverse Career

Transcript

From Worship to Wealth: Caleb Edwards' Diverse Career · Go Big with Gib Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Go Big with Gibb podcast, where we talk to professionals, business owners and entrepreneurs about their big wins.
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: Welcome to this episode of Go Big with Gibb.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: Today I've got a very good friend with me, caleb Edwards.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: Caleb, how are you today?
• 0:21
  Speaker 3: Gibb, I'm doing fantastic man.
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: Thanks for having me on the show.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, brother.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: No, it's a pleasure to have you on.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: Look, if we could, if you could, start out and just tell us a little bit about yourself.
• 0:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely so.
• 0:33
  Speaker 3: I'm Caleb Edwards.
• 0:34
  Speaker 3: I'm a born entrepreneur.
• 0:36
  Speaker 3: I started my first company when I was 11 years old.
• 0:39
  Speaker 3: It was a landscaping business.
• 0:40
  Speaker 3: I started that company to help my mom who was struggling financially.
• 0:44
  Speaker 3: Her and my dad had separated.
• 0:46
  Speaker 3: She'd never worked outside of the house.
• 0:47
  Speaker 3: She had to go get a job at a Cracker Barrel restaurant as a server and at 11 years old I saw her struggling financially and I decided you know right, wrong or indifferent for me to do it.
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: I decided to start a landscaping company, fixed a push lawnmower that was sitting under our shed out back and got my first few clients.
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: By the time I was 12, I had a full client list, ended up hiring two of my buddies.
• 1:07
  Speaker 3: They were neighbors, you know, in the small community I grew up in in North Carolina.
• 1:12
  Speaker 3: They were my first two employees and then continued to build and scale that company all the way through middle school, high school, college and exited.
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: That company Got bought out by another large landscaping firm when I was 26.
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: And so I've been an entrepreneur literally all my life.
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: I like to tell people I came out of the womb building businesses.
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: It's in my DNA.
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: I think most entrepreneurs and business owners can kind of resonate with that.
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: But you know, over the last I mean I did.
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: I've been doing real estate since I was 18 as well.
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: I did my first fix and flip when I was 18 as well.
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: I did my first fix and flip when I was 18.
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: I, uh, I had some cash from my business.
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: I didn't have any credit, so I got my dad to co-sign a loan so I could do a fix and flip.
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: Uh, I did it through the winter in North Carolina, where I grew up, um, so that I could keep my crews for my landscaping company working, uh, and so I didn't want to lose those guys.
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: So we did a fix and flip and been investing in real estate in various capacities ever since.
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: And so when I exited my business at 26, I spent about a 10 year stint in missions work, doing domestic and overseas missions work and I'm still very passionate about that, gib.
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: But during that time you know you do that not for profit, right?
• 2:29
  Speaker 3: That's why they call it nonprofit.
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: So I tell people, you can take the boy out of the business, but you can't take the business out of the boy, right?
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: So I was always finding different ways to scratch my entrepreneurial itch, had quite a few ventures and then eventually landed.
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: You know, I'm sure we'll discuss more of this how, how, how I got to you know, kind of what I'm doing now, building this private equity firm backed by real estate, but but, but yeah, I mean, that's a little bit about me.
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: I'm, I'm married, been married for 15 years, I've got three beautiful children.
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: They're all full-blown miracles, and I'm not just saying that, it's a true story, and so, yeah, that's a little bit about me.
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and so, caleb, with the mission work.
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: I know you played music and that you were a musician.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: You did a lot of singing.
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: I know you're a guitar player as well, but I think your voice was your main instrument, if I'm not mistaken.
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, tell me a little bit about that.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: That sounded like you had some pretty amazing opportunities with your mission work.
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: So, you know, I think music is a language that resonates with every human being at some level.
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: Right, I don't think that there's—I've never met the person, at least yet, gib that you ask them hey, do you like music?
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: And they're like, oh no, I don't.
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: Now, maybe they like a different genre of music, maybe they like rap music or hard rock music or whatever, you know, country music, but I've never met someone that doesn't like music.
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: And so early on, you know, I realized I have this talent, this ability and this passion of music.
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: That was a hobby basically my entire life, since I picked up a guitar for the first time when I was 13 or 14 years old, completely self-taught, always had a knack for singing and writing music, writing songs, always loved it, for whatever reason.
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: And then, you know, kind of saw that that was an opportunity to get in front of people.
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: You know, it was an inroad to building a relationship with people through music.
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: And so that was kind of how, um, my missions were started.
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: As I would, I would do, you know, lead, worship, do music, things like that, and it would open up the door of opportunity for then, uh, me to have, you know, either a more practical, tangible impact in the lives of those people, or, you know, uh, share my faith with those people, with those people and give them an opportunity to enter into the hope that I've experienced through my faith in Jesus Christ.
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: And so that did open up a lot of doors of opportunity.
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: I've had the, you know and I don't say this to brag or anything like that but I've had the opportunity to lead on some pretty substantial platforms, do music on some pretty significant platforms.
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: I've led worship and music on, you know, stages of 30 to 35,000 people at big conferences, both here in the US and internationally.
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: I've been able to travel all over the world to, you know, to lead worship and sing and play my instrument and use that as an opportunity to bless worship and and sing and play my instrument and um use that as an opportunity to, to, to bless people and connect with people and find ways to be able to help them at a more personal and real level.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: I love that man, you know I I find that people that are successful are oftentimes, you know, successful in a lot of different areas of their lives, and you know you've had a lot of different transformations over your life.
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: You know times where you've you know, I'm going to use the word reinvented yourself.
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: You've, you've, you've changed, you know, but you've all you've done a lot of really great things.
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: So talk to me about trading.
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: At some point you were working, doing active trading.
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: I'm assuming this is stocks.
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: You're trading like a day trader, essentially right.
• 6:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so technically what I did is called swing trading.
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: It's very similar to day trading.
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: For those who are in that they understand the difference in terminologies.
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: Day trading is entering and exiting a position in a single trading day.
• 6:19
  Speaker 3: I never did that.
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: The detailed analysis that it takes to really be successful at that was not something I wanted to do.
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: So I took two to four week positions in trades, and so you're kind of zoomed for, you know, to kind of make it plain English, you're kind of zooming your charts out and your analysis out to a little bit broader time frames to, you know, analyze the tradeability of a position or a deal, of a pick.
• 6:49
  Speaker 3: And so, yeah, I would 100% self-taught.
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: I feel like almost everything in my life has been self-taught.
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: I think that, you know, the education system in America does a really good job of teaching people how to pass tests and teaching people how to, you know, get grades, but doesn't really teach people the skills that are needed to be successful at life.
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: And so I've just been a lifelong learner and almost everything I've ever done has been essentially self-taught.
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: Now I've had mentors, I've invested in masterminds and different things like that as well, but ultimately I self-taught myself in technical analysis using YouTube videos and different things like that.
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: So not, you know, not the sophisticated algorithm builder that a lot of these traders are.
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: It was very, very, you know, gritty and very.
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: You know, scrape claw, get as much information and understanding as you can, and I had some success at it.
• 7:50
  Speaker 3: I was active, you know, actively trading in swing positions for about five years.
• 7:56
  Speaker 3: My best year I had about 119% total return across my portfolio.
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: Percent total return across my portfolio, you know, in, in in my trading accounts and so, yeah, it was.
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: It was fantastic while I was able to give the time, but, as you can imagine, it was an extraordinary amount of mental energy and even time.
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: That that was that that it took to do that.
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: And so, you know I'm sure you know we may get into this, but had a substantial health crisis with my son back in 2021.
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: He suffered a stroke in the left side of his brain and it took me out man, like mentally, emotionally, practically.
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: I mean it was driving him to once he finally got through like the initial, like three and a half to four weeks real scare where it was really intense.
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: We still had to take him.
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: I still had to, you know, drive him to outpatient therapy like every single day for four and five hours a day, four or five days a week for about four and a half months, and it's all that I really had mental bandwidth or time bandwidth to do, and so I took my hands off the wheel of everything else all of my business ventures, my trading, even my mission work.
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: I didn't do anything during that time other than go all in for my family, and I don't regret it for a second.
• 9:11
  Speaker 3: I mean, my son is a full-blown miracle.
• 9:12
  Speaker 3: He made a miracle recovery despite what his medical team thought would happen.
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: You know how volatile the stock market can be, especially when you're doing it in higher risk positions, like what I was taking, that really need to be actively monitored and observed and paid attention to.
• 9:32
  Speaker 3: I lost about 40 percent of my net worth in the stock market in about four and a half months by having to take my hands off the wheel, and so it was a real wake up call for me, gib, realizing that you can.
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: The one big takeaway is that if you know you are your, you're born as being your only income producing asset.
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: Right, you know, unless you're born into some rich, super wealthy family where you inherit a lot of you know a lot of assets, which I didn't and I don't you know, I come from a, you know, a lower middle class family already told you I had to start my landscaping company to help my mom because she was struggling, and so I, for me, I, I, I started my journey as my only income producing asset, and everything that I was doing up until this wake up call moment, it was still me being the income producing asset, just using different vehicles to do that right, using different avenues to generate that.
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: But this was the wake up call for me that I needed to be able to do things that did not require, not necessitate, my constant active attention and involvement.
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: And that's when I sort of began to gravitate into the passive real estate investing space, at first as an LP investor and then eventually, you know, launching our firm.
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so.
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: So, caleb, we covered a lot of ground there, but I love the way that you tell the story.
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: Let's go back a little bit.
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: I want to get into the real estate thing.
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: I want to talk about um, oak IQ investments.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: I want to talk about, you know, all the cool things you've done in real estate, because that's how we met and that's kind of our common bond, um, even though we have a lot, a lot of common ground.
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: But let tell me a little bit about um, if you, if you don't mind, I'd love to hear a little more about the story um related to your son and his miraculous recovery.
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, man.
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: I mean, how much do you want to hear?
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: We can talk for hours, yeah.
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: I know we could, I and I've heard the story.
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: I've heard the story two or three times and you know, man, it's just such a powerful story.
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: But maybe give us the Reader's Digest version, you know, because I think I think the audience, I think that would really resonate with my audience, I think they're they're really wonderful are going to enjoy this story.
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, on June 2nd of 2021, my family had just gotten back from vacation.
• 12:04
  Speaker 3: We were.
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: I was on the couch ordering Mexican food on my iPhone, uh, cause we didn't have any groceries in the house.
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: We'd just gotten home, my son was nine months old.
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: He just started, uh, being able to set up on his own.
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: He was sitting in the floor near my feet playing, and he rolled over into the little Rubbermaid container that had his little toys in it and um, and I bent down to pick him up and set him back up and he fell over again.
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: And fell over again and he couldn't hold himself up and um, so you know, start to kind of wonder what happened.
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: You know, he, he, he seemed normal otherwise, but uh, and then, as kind of it progressed, we started to notice the muscles on his face were causing his face to sag on the right side and everything, and we ended up rushing him to the emergency room.
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: They did a bunch of tests they weren't sure, eventually got a neurologist in, because this was later at night by the time we were there at the ER.
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: A neurologist in because this was later at night by the time we were there at the ER.
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: And, long story short.
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: He gets rushed to Children's Mercy Hospital in downtown Kansas City in an ambulance and they MRI and they see that he had had a substantial stroke in the left basal ganglia of his brain, which controls all motor function in the right side of the body.
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: So he lost complete, he was paralyzed completely on the right side of his body.
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: Because of the severity and the location of it, the initial prognosis within the first few days, you know they ran substantial tests on him.
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: The initial prognosis was that he would likely, even though younger kids have a significant amount of what's called neuroplasticity it's their brains ability to recover and heal itself because it's in rapid growth mode.
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: They said, though, that, because motor functions are some of the earliest developments, that, and because of the location and severity of it, that the odds were that he would not regain all, or maybe even most of his motor function on the right side of his body.
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: It would also affect speech.
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: He would maybe never be able to speak, or at least speak clearly.
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: And we just, as people of faith, couldn't accept that right for our nine-month-old we just we just couldn't say okay, we just have to agree with that and start accepting what this is going to look like practically, and so I was filled with a lot of you know, as most men can relate to feeling like I need to be strong for my other two daughters, who are only, you know, three years old and two years old at the time right, as well as for my wife, obviously.
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: There wasn't a whole lot of space or margin in those early weeks for me to really think about what I was feeling, right, one day.
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: You know my son and his story sort of went a little bit viral on Instagram and social media with the hashtag PrayForZion, and so I would go through driving into the hospital every morning.
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: I'd go home in the evenings and, you know, be with my daughters so that my wife could stay at the hospital overnight with my son in the ICU, and then I would drive in in the mornings, you know, to go and be there during the day, and I was driving in.
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: It's about a 25-minute drive and I I just made it my habit to check Instagram stories and thank people and all that kind of stuff while driving.
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: I know that's super responsible of me, right, but long story short, I may be giving you more color than you anticipated, but the truth is I got really, really angry that morning when I was going through those feeds and I saw someone who posted this beautiful post about my son on their Instagram stories.
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: And then their very next story was them sitting outside in the nice you know summer sun with their best friend drinking a boba tea, living their best life.
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: And I got so angry in that moment because I was thinking like you have no idea, I'm sitting here, frozen in time.
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: The only thing that matters right now to me is my son, and whether he lives or dies Right, and you can just go and post and feel good about the fact that you shared my son's story and then go on living your life as if nothing is wrong.
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: And I know that I shouldn't expect everyone to enter into the level of pain, but at that moment I was in that level of pain and I think the natural human tendency is that we want other people to really feel what we're feeling in order to feel like they actually care.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: This episode of Go Big with Gibb is brought to you by Irons Equity.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: At Irons Equity, we specialize in helping investors like you create long-term generational wealth and save money on taxes through recession-resistant real estate investments that create passive income for you and your family.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: If you want to secure your financial future, go to investwithgibbcom to schedule a 30-minute introductory meeting with me.
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: Gib Irons Again, that's investwithgibcom.
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: So I got angry, man, Like I don't know of another time in my life that I've gotten that angry, and I literally began pounding the steering wheel wheel, hitting it as hard as I could, cuss like I can't tell you how many times I said the f-word to God, like I literally was like f you, God, like all this kind of stuff, right.
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: And I realized, like in that moment, when I got super, super honest about where I actually was and what I was actually feeling, I just felt this little drop of faith come in and I was today's the day my son's going to move the right side of his body.
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: He hasn't moved it in, you know, almost three weeks, but today's the day.
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: And I just had this insane amount of faith, Gib, and it began to grow and grow and grow.
• 17:55
  Speaker 3: As I drove into the hospital, I literally walked in with my phone right, I've got it walked in with my phone on video, like video recording on my phone told my wife I said lay him on the bed.
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: She's like what.
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: She'd been up all night, you know, not sleeping.
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: Lay him on the bed, he's going to move the right side of his body today.
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: Put the phone on the little plastic sheet that covers the bed, Cause we were still kind of in COVID protocols, right.
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: So put the phone on there with video going, began to pray over my son and declare healing over him and within four minutes he moved his right arm.
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: He picked up a toy and moved it up toward his head and I've got it on video right.
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: And from that point forward, when the doctors came in later that morning and I showed them that video I mean the rehab doctor and the neurologist that came in they visibly like were brought to tears.
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: They couldn't believe it.
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: They said this is this, this is not possible.
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: And he went on to make a full blown recovery.
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: Now, it was a hard journey.
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: He still did a lot of therapy and things like that, but there's not a single person on his medical team that said this is how this should have turned out.
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: All of them said this kid's a miracle and they credited it to him having great parents or whatever.
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: But I know that it was the blood of Jesus that healed my son and I am not ashamed to say that.
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: I love it, man.
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's a real-life miracle man.
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: And what it, man, I mean, that's, that's a real life miracle man.
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: And uh, what a beautiful, what a beautiful story.
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: And now today, um, what's he like?
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: What's his personality like today?
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: I, he's a pretty active kid, isn't he?
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: He's a he is a as as, as my late grandfather would say.
• 19:41
  Speaker 3: As my late grandfather would say, he's a ball of fire.
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: Gib, he is.
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: He runs around my house man.
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: He loves baseball.
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: He's almost four years old now.
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: He loves baseball.
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: I pitch a little baseball to him.
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: He can hit it 50%, 60% of the time, five, six times out of ten.
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: He smacks it.
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: He never shuts up.
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: He talks hit it 50, 60% of the time, five, six times out of 10.
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: He's, I mean, he smacks it, he never shuts up, he talks all the time and and if you were to see him right now you'd have no idea that any of this ever happened to him.
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: I mean, he's a normal almost four-year-old boy.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: That that's beautiful, man, that's beautiful.
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: So so, yeah, so let's transition a little bit into your real estate journey.
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: So you have this life altering experience and you realize, gosh, you know, this swing trading that you've been doing is just, you know, it's definitely not the kind of thing you can take your hands off the wheel, definitely not the kind of thing you can take your hands off the wheel.
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: And so now you've built your business, your real estate business, like one of the main goals is to help business owners and entrepreneurs to find investments where they really can be passive.
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: Tell me a little bit about Oak IQ.
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so Oak IQ Investments.
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: My business partner, aaron Leatherdale, started the firm years ago primarily as an operations and acquis deals, and then partnered with another private equity firm that brought the capital side of the business, brought them manage renovations, you know, launched a construction company as a subsidiary of Oak IQ to do all the renovations and control everything in-house, you know financial asset management, operational asset management, property management, everything.
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: The one missing piece when Aaron and I began talking was having an internal equity division where we could actually source and raise capital directly from the kind of investors that we wanted to help.
• 22:08
  Speaker 3: And I had developed this real passion.
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: Having been on this journey myself as a passive investor.
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: I'd really developed this passion to help other entrepreneurs like me be able to secure their investments in a way that you know, even though I hope that what I went through with my son never happens to anyone, I don't want the fallout of that to have to happen to anyone, and I can't control and neither can you and neither can anyone control something crazy like what happened to my son happening Right.
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: But what we can control was the fallout that I experienced because all of my investments and all the things that I was building from a wealth perspective, required my constant attention, my hands on the wheel and my active involvement.
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: I lost 40 percent of my portfolio in four and a half months and I feel like you know a lot of entrepreneurs who are driven, who are builders, who are laser focused.
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: They don't understand sometimes how fragile life is until they get hit in the mouth.
• 23:10
  Speaker 3: Right, it's like the, the, the.
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: I'm probably going to get it wrong, but you know the Mike Tyson quote, are you know which one I'm talking about?
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: Like, everybody's got a plan until you get punched in the mouth out like everybody's got a plan until you get punched in the mouth.
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: I love, I love that quote and it applies to to to business owners and lawyers too.
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: Um yeah, love that quote.
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: So I got punched in the mouth hard by life and I said you know what I?
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: I I want other entrepreneurs to not have to ever go through that part of what I went through, other entrepreneurs to not have to ever go through that part of what I went through.
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: And so, you know, we launched our equity division for Oak IQ Investments in 2022.
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: And we've had the privilege to be able to serve a lot of entrepreneurs to achieve, you know, or begin at least building onto that end right of having a better way, a smarter way, a stronger way to invest that doesn't involve their constant attention and active involvement.
• 24:04
  Speaker 3: We primarily work with entrepreneurs that already love real estate and they maybe already have real estate in their portfolio, but they're kind of at that juncture of realizing that they can't build their primary business in e-commerce.
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: Or, you know, even as the you know, the owner of a, of a successful law firm like you, right, or what about?
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: It takes a tremendous amount of time, effort, energy and laser focus.
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: And if you're going to do it right, then you're, you're, you're working 50, 60, 70, 80 hours a week on that business, and then you know to have to have a tenant contacting you or even a property management contacting you with issues on a, on a, you know, three single family homes that you have in your portfolio.
• 24:43
  Speaker 3: It's like that's a hassle, that's not even worth it, right To have to manage that and then figure out a way to grow that and scale that, and you know, you're basically signing up for a second job.
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: Um, and so we've.
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: You know the way we do it is.
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: We source, you know, larger institutional, quality, multifamily investments that we're personally investing in, that that we're personally operating, whether it be ground up, development of new, you know, of new luxury class A product or existing product that we're running a value ad play on.
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: And we invite other entrepreneurs to partner with us on that journey as passive investors so that they, you know, get the full visibility and transparency and the connection and the growth and the education, um and learning the space, um, but they don't have to risk or commit their time, and so they give up a little bit of control of the asset itself because they're depending on our team's expertise, but they what they get back in exchange for that in terms of control of their time?
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: Um, you know it, it almost always makes sense for our investors.
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Super, super impressive.
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: Now I know you're.
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: You're living near Kansas city, right?
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: Yep, I live in Kansas City.
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: Okay, and I know you invest in that market as well.
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: Tell us a little bit about, for folks that don't know, tell us a little bit about the Kansas multifamily market.
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so Kansas City, which sits on the border of Missouri and Kansas, is right now just kind of highlights of why we love the market, why we've loved the market for a long time.
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: It's not just because we live here.
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: That is a big part of it, because we're very active, like I said, in the management and overseeing.
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: You know everything of the assets themselves, you know on the ground, being boots on the ground for every deal that we do.
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: But the market itself, you know one of the big things is it's, you know, one of the top five metros in the area for net migration gains, specifically because of a real surge in tech employment in the Kansas City area.
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: Google, years ago, launched Google Fiber as the first gigabyte-plus Internet service, and Kansas City was their very first city to install Google Fiber.
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: Kansas City was their very first city to install Google Fiber, and so Kansas City has about five and a half million miles of fiber deployed throughout the city and so it's the number one most connected city in America.
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: And so what that's done is drawn a lot of big tech businesses and, you know, high paying tech jobs, which has then drawn, you know, attracted people.
• 27:16
  Speaker 3: You know kind of gained it the nickname the Silicon Prairie, you know, because of all of that, all of that growth in the tech industry.
• 27:26
  Speaker 3: But despite the growth in the tech industry, the employment diversity of the KC metro area is some of the strongest in the nation, with no single sector making up more than 15% of the total job market.
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: And the reason that's important to our investors is because you, you know, you compare that to, let's say, a more extreme example like Detroit.
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: You know, where, what is it like?
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: 50% of the jobs were in the automotive manufacturing industry.
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: When that one industry got hit, the city turns into a ghost town, right, and it affects everything the values of real estate, there's, you know so many vacancies and abandoned homes and all that kind of stuff, whereas, you know, when you've got a city that's a lot more diverse, like Kansas City in terms of its employment, then you don't run that same risk.
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: One single sector can take a big hit and it doesn't destroy the city's economy, right, and so that's another big attractive thing about Kansas City.
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: And the last kind of bullet point that I'll give is we focused a lot on new development because nationwide, since the you know huge interest rate spikes of 2023, you know, the fastest rise in interest rates.
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: You know, in the last 40 plus years the fallout of that has meant that new development, specifically in the multifamily space, has kind of fallen off a cliff.
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: We're down in the Kansas City market, 70% of our 10-year average in new multifamily starts and if you forecast that out two years from now, that means that there's going to be 70% less supply, new supply coming onto the market, supply coming onto the market, and so it opens the door for a really lucrative window of opportunity for those who are able to put new development multifamily deals together in this window of time.
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: While very, you know, while 70% of the market is sitting on the sidelines, then we're going to have a, you know, a very competitive advantage come 2026 when these units are coming online.
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: Because you know, when you look at come 2026, when these units are coming online, because you know, when you look at the absorption rates and the lease up rates for the Kansas City market, they're staying stable and continuing to climb because of all of those net migration gains.
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: You know there's a good floor to the economy because of that economic stability, because of the diversity in the job market.
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: And then when you look at, you know, a supply and demand conversation.
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: You know, over the next 24 months, we're going to I think we're going to see a significant amount of growth in the market in terms of appreciating value of assets, and so couple that along with year over year, from 23 to from June 2023, june 2024, kansas City had the second highest rent growth in the nation of the top 100 largest MSAs and so, and it was at 3.8 percent.
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: You know, the only one that beat us out was New York at 3.9 percent, and that's because of rent control, inflation adjustments, right.
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: So that wasn't really.
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: That wasn't really growth in the market as it was.
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: You know, the government told landlords finally that they could start raising rents right Because of how much inflation has impacted everything.
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: So, caleb, talk to me a little bit about the project that you're working on now.
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: I know you've got a big project that you've been working on and it's a really good one, really exciting opportunity.
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: Tell me a little bit about that.
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so we're building a 289 unit class A luxury apartment building in Lenexa, kansas, which is one of the fastest growing sub markets of the Kansas City metro.
• 30:53
  Speaker 3: We're building it in a neighborhood called Falcon Ridge, which is the top 25% most desirable neighborhoods in America, and there isn't currently a large supply of multifamily apartments.
• 31:07
  Speaker 3: There's some duplexes and fourplexes and things like that, but it's primarily higher end single family homes $750,000 to $1.5 million homes and so it's a place that's in a significant growth mode, a highly desirable neighborhood in the KC metro for people to live in, and there's a lot of employment and economic development that's happening in the kind of immediate vicinity surrounding where we're building this asset.
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: For example, panasonic is building one of their EV facilities EV battery facilities about eight minutes down the road from our property.
• 31:47
  Speaker 3: It's expected to contribute about $400 million a year to the labor market and about a $2.5 billion annual total economic impact.
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: It's a $4 billion investment by Panasonic, which makes it the largest single economic development in the state of Kansas history, and it's about eight minutes down the road from our property as well.
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: As you know, meta is growing its footprint in this area, google is growing its footprint in this area.
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: There's a lot of commercial and retail amenities that are being developed in this area of Kansas City.
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: It's called the K7 Corridor.
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: It's one of the fastest growing areas of the KC Metro and we're building 289 units, luxury class A, giving people the opportunity to live in one of the most highly desirable and growing areas of Kansas City at a fraction of the cost because they can rent an apartment.
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: You know our top line pro forma for year three is twenty two hundred dollars a month versus the average rent across the whole metro area.
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: When you come across the whole sub market, from single families to duplexes to four plexes, when you average everything out, it's close to $3,400 a month just to rent in that sub market.
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: You know and we're building apartments that folks can rent for a lot less than that and so it gives people access to that desirable neighborhood and that you know that desirable area of Kansas City at a much lower entry point.
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: No, that's fantastic.
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: What kind of a hold are you projecting on that particular investment?
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we've got it modeled on a five-year hold up to seven years.
• 33:24
  Speaker 3: We want to have the flexibility to be able to hold it for up to seven years if needed.
• 33:30
  Speaker 3: We don't want to be forced to sell if the market is in a weird place at year five, and so we've got it modeled from five to seven years.
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: Also, these larger development projects, they take a lot of time.
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: You know it's not like buying an existing asset and renovating it.
• 33:48
  Speaker 3: I mean, there's a lot of steps and moving parts to these.
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: And so, just, you know, we try to build into our models a significant amount of contingencies, not just on financial budget but also on our time budget as well, and so we like to build in enough contingencies to be able to kind of navigate any unforeseeable or even foreseeable potential snags or delays or things like that that are inevitable in any project of this magnitude.
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: You know you can control what you can control, but then there's things that you can't, and so we try to, you know, really be conservative in building out significant contingencies for time, and so we think it's going to take us about two years to build it once we start vertical construction.
• 34:27
  Speaker 3: We anticipate we'll probably start vertical construction either, you know, between November and December of this year, or or maybe possibly be into January.
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: You know, we want to, we want to, we want to plan for, you know and we want to.
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: You know, we want to over-promise and under-deliver right or vice versa.
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: We want to under-promise and over-deliver, right?
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: We don't want to, and so we, you know we, we want to be real conservative on that.
• 34:53
  Speaker 3: But but yeah, I mean that's the long answer to your question is it's five to seven year projected hold period on the deal.
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it sounds like an amazing opportunity.
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: So, if anybody's looking for a class, a investment in Kansas city, um, caleb's your guy, I think.
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: I think it's a I'm really excited about, about what you're doing.
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: Um, so, caleb, for people that want to get ahold of you, what's the best way for them to reach out to you?
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: I know I do want to mention you've got your own podcast.
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: You've got a very successful podcast called Own the Exit Podcast.
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: I definitely encourage people to go if you like what we're doing here.
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: I think you'll really love what Caleb's doing on his podcast.
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: But, yeah, how can folks get a hold of you?
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I would say, just look me up on Instagram at Caleb investing.
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: Um, that's, that's going to be, you know, the the best way to get ahold of me in the immediate.
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: You can shoot me a DM there and uh, and, and we can start a conversation and then, you know, I can kind of point you to some of our other resources and ways you can get connected with us, either with our podcast or or with uh, with Oak IQ investments, or just with me personally, I like to meet new people, I like cool people and interesting people, and so, uh, yeah, I'd love, love the opportunity to, to, to, to meet some of, uh, some some of the listeners here.
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: Caleb, that that sounds great, look.
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: Thank you very much for coming on the show.
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: It's been a blast.
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: I I'm super excited about what you and Aaron are doing and look forward to watching you guys continue to be successful, man, and continue to enjoy a lot of success.
• 36:24
  Speaker 3: Man Gib, I really appreciate it.
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: I wish you the same.
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: I really appreciate you for having me on the show.
• 36:31
  Speaker 3: It's been a pleasure, man.
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: Thank you, brother.
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to this episode of Go Big with Gibb.
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: If you haven't already, go follow us on social media at Gibb Irons.
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: We'll see you next time.