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$80M Founder: The Tiktok influencer strategy that builds SUCCESSFUL brands & most AREN'T doing it! · The Hannah Hammond Show

• 0:00
  You guys are the largest financial influencers on TikTok
• 0:03
  and the oldest one is 22. You guys haven't even been
• 0:05
  through anything yet. How are you the largest
• 0:08
  financial influencers? If you're going to build a
• 0:10
  brand, you have to give people a reason to connect with something
• 0:13
  beyond the product or the service.
• 0:14
  How you do that you you've got to take people through the
• 0:18
  journey that you're currently going through.
• 0:20
  I get invited in 2021 to go to Fincon and there was this like
• 0:25
  TikTok influencer house that I got invited to.
• 0:28
  I go to this house and the oldest person is 22 years old.
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  You guys haven't even been through anything yet.
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  How are you the largest financial influencers?
• 0:38
  And This is why, because they tapped into something that we
• 0:41
  have forgotten, which was they weren't telling people how to do
• 0:44
  it. They were taking people along
• 0:46
  the journey with them, right? So you had this girl who was in
• 0:49
  college, she was learning about finance and she would build
• 0:52
  content going, this is what I learned today and I'm going to
• 0:54
  try it and let's download this app and I'm going to make an
• 0:57
  investment. So she was walking her peers
• 1:00
  through the journey for the first time.
• 1:02
  And that's what people are resonating with.
• 1:04
  I made a decision. I messed up, I lost money.
• 1:07
  Her audience is going, Oh my gosh, OK, I watched you do it.
• 1:12
  I saw the mistake you made. Now I'm going to try to do
• 1:14
  something different. That's what people connect with.
• 1:16
  It's difficult to bring people through the reality of your
• 1:20
  life. It's easy to just show them the
• 1:23
  wins. But the reality is people don't
• 1:25
  connect with wins. People connect with struggle.
• 1:27
  All right, so thanks for being on the show, Mikey.
• 1:29
  I'm super excited to hear your story.
• 1:31
  Thanks. For having me.
• 1:32
  Pro skateboarder to entrepreneur to politician.
• 1:38
  Yeah, that one's the weird one. Yeah, I know, right?
• 1:41
  I'm like, I don't know how to put my finger on the pulse of
• 1:42
  this one but. I'm still trying to figure it
• 1:45
  out too. When did you get into politics?
• 1:48
  I ran for City Council two years ago, so the 22 cycle and leading
• 1:53
  up to that, I never had a desire.
• 1:55
  I had never done anything like it.
• 1:57
  But I did follow politics, you know, somewhat locally, but
• 2:01
  definitely statewide because of real estate and so much of the
• 2:05
  the political decisions impact how we build.
• 2:08
  So I was following it on that kind of I was following it
• 2:12
  because of that. But no, I never thought I would
• 2:14
  be involved. That was, yeah, I don't know.
• 2:17
  Still trying to figure that one. Out.
• 2:18
  So, Mayor Pro Tem, I had to actually look up what that
• 2:21
  meant. Yeah, Mayor Pro Tem basically
• 2:23
  means you're like like right hand to the mayor and how we are
• 2:27
  we have a rotating mayor seat so it's for a year and then
• 2:31
  somebody else moves over. So typically mayor Pro Tem
• 2:35
  becomes mayor the. Following year.
• 2:36
  OK, cool. And is that your plan?
• 2:39
  It it might happen whether or not is my.
• 2:42
  Oh my gosh. Well, I think you'd be a good
• 2:44
  mayor. Yeah, I I think I'd be OK at it.
• 2:46
  You're like the least politician politician I've met.
• 2:50
  Thank you. I appreciate that.
• 2:51
  I will take that as a big compliment.
• 2:53
  Yeah, it was funny. I was at the Trump rally a while
• 2:56
  a little while ago and Trump was like, I, you know, I hate
• 3:00
  politicians and I I wouldn't call myself a politician.
• 3:03
  And whoever was interviewing I'm, I think it was Tucker
• 3:05
  Carlson was like, I'm pretty sure you, you're a politician.
• 3:08
  Like, you're to be the president of the United States.
• 3:11
  Yeah. It's weird.
• 3:12
  It's weird when it happens. You know, I think most of us
• 3:14
  have a distaste regarding politicians.
• 3:17
  And so once you get into it, you're like, does that mean I'm
• 3:20
  that now? And I don't know.
• 3:21
  That's at least what I'm wrestling with.
• 3:23
  Yeah, well, so for those of you who don't know, Mikey Taylor was
• 3:26
  a pro skateboarder and I've read like one of the best in the
• 3:29
  world, which is cool as could be.
• 3:32
  And then you transitioned into, you ended your career in
• 3:36
  skateboarding, which I'd love to learn how that identity shift
• 3:39
  was for you because I, I mean, I can't imagine like me having
• 3:43
  entrepreneurship taken from me. I wouldn't even know who I was.
• 3:46
  And then so you transitioned from skateboarding into
• 3:48
  entrepreneurship and you actually built a massive Archer
• 3:53
  Brewing brewery, Archer Brewery. Saint Archer Brewery.
• 3:56
  Saint Archer Brewery, Yeah, a Brewing Company out of San
• 3:58
  Diego. And then that was acquired by
• 4:01
  Willer Coors Miller Coors. Miller Coors.
• 4:07
  Miller Coors. Yeah.
• 4:09
  And you had an ended up having an $80 million exit on your
• 4:13
  Brewing Company, which is absolutely incredible.
• 4:15
  And now you have $315 million of assets under management and
• 4:19
  you're in the real estate space. So you manage a fund and you
• 4:22
  guys do construction and value adds, storage facilities and
• 4:25
  multifamily particularly. And then to on top of that, like
• 4:29
  we just started with now you're in politics and you're mayor Pro
• 4:32
  Tem of Thousand Oaks, CA. So and you have a family and a
• 4:35
  wife and kids and you're awesome and fun and happy and all the
• 4:39
  things. So I'm excited to hear how you
• 4:41
  do it all. All right, let's do it.
• 4:43
  So how what was like, what is your story leading up to
• 4:46
  becoming a pro skateboarder First off?
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  And then how was that experience and what was the most
• 4:53
  challenging thing as you realize that that career was ending and
• 4:57
  you had to make a shift? Yeah, so I it happened very
• 5:03
  organically, like I wasn't the kid who was nine years old who
• 5:07
  dreamed to be a pro skateboarder, told myself I was
• 5:09
  going to do it and dreamed it into reality.
• 5:12
  Not my story. I started skateboarding, fell in
• 5:15
  love with skateboarding. I have an obsessive personality,
• 5:18
  which can be very useful for trying to get good at something.
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  And I was just doing that until about 16 years old.
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  And at 16, I started getting pressure from my parents to get
• 5:29
  a job. And I didn't want to work
• 5:31
  because I felt like that meant I could skate.
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  I would have to skate less. And so I tried to figure out an
• 5:37
  alternative path to avoid getting a job.
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  And so I came up with this idea that I could get sponsors to
• 5:45
  give me free product like shoes and skateboards and clothes.
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  And then, one, I wouldn't have to buy any of that stuff.
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  And two, I thought I'd have leftover product to sell to kind
• 5:55
  of skaters in my neighborhood and that would be my income
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  stream. And so I pitched this idea to my
• 5:59
  parents and I think they thought it was so nuts that they were
• 6:03
  like, yeah, go for it. And, you know, figure it out.
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  Realize that you can't do this, and then you'll go get a job.
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  And I ended up getting sponsored, getting free product
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  by DC. In the beginning, No, in the
• 6:15
  beginning it was a shoe company called Duff's.
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  Most people are not going to know what that is.
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  And this skateboard company called Maple, those are my 2
• 6:22
  sponsors. And then that worked out until
• 6:26
  about 18. And from 16 to 18, some of these
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  companies started putting me in the magazines.
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  Like I started having ads for them.
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  And I started getting a little bit of name recognition.
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  And then my senior year, I got the opportunity to travel
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  throughout Europe. And so I looked at my parents
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  and I was like, hey, I have this like, cool opportunity to, you
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  know, go throughout France and Germany and Spain for like a
• 6:50
  month. Like, I think I could do
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  something with this and my parents were a little bit
• 6:54
  freaked out because what I was really talking about was not
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  going to school. And So what I thought was going
• 7:00
  to be a three-year kind of experiment of having fun and
• 7:04
  then wrapping back around to college, it turned into like a
• 7:07
  14 year career. Jeez, yeah, that's wild.
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  And are you from California? Born and raised.
• 7:13
  OK, cool. And you're never leaving, huh?
• 7:15
  I'm not, I have a couple non negotiables and we would leave
• 7:20
  because of that, but I'm trying not to leave.
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  That was a big reason why I ran for City Council.
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  I, I wanted to take as much off the board as possible.
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  That would potentially bring up the conversation between my wife
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  and I about looking for somewhere else to live.
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  Like I love California, I love where I live, like my city I
• 7:38
  think is the best we have. But, you know, I I also
• 7:41
  recognize that California's pretty bad at doing a lot of
• 7:43
  other things. Yeah, it's hard to balance
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  because it's beautiful. It's the best state.
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  You cannot get, you cannot get this weather anywhere else.
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  But you know, there's a lot of people leaving even with how
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  beautiful and how good the weather is.
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  And that's, that to me is a, that's a like, I, I guess this
• 8:01
  is the best way to say it. When I was skating, I would
• 8:04
  travel the world, but I would travel the nation a lot, right?
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  And everywhere I would go, Nebraska, Ohio, Florida, every
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  kid would be like mesmerized with the idea that we are from
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  California. And what you would hear from
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  these young kids is it's my dream to go there.
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  I can't wait to go there. Fast forward now, when I tell
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  people, one, I live in California and then I match that
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  with I invest in California, I would say 60 to 70% of people
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  look at me like I'm crazy, right?
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  The fact that we are not like accepted by all as we're the
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  best state in the nation, I think is a what would be the
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  best way to say it? It shows that we have
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  significantly dropped the ball like that.
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  That is, we need to get back to that.
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  Yeah, it used to be the American Dream.
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  That's right. That's right.
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  Now that dreams on fire. Literally that's.
• 8:58
  Right. Yeah.
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  So and I could go on a whole tangent about that and I'm
• 9:03
  actually curious. We were, I was at my brokerage
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  dinner last night and we were talking about if it'll, if you,
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  if people think it'll affect property values in California or
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  the surrounding states or if it's not a big enough impact.
• 9:14
  I think prices are going to go up.
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  In California, not surrounding states.
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  Well, the hard part about real estate when we talk about prices
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  is real estate is very fragmented.
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  And So what happens in a certain county does not mean it's going
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  to happen in another county inside that state or a, a, a
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  state beyond that, right? My outlook is a little bit
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  contrarian, but one of the biggest reasons why I invest in
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  California is also why I think most people leave, right?
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  Our policy makers, I I think are poor at making good policy.
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  And so when you look at what it takes to build in California,
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  they basically do everything they can to de incentivize
• 9:53
  investors to build, right? And So what that has created is
• 9:58
  20 years of no significant added supply, which has brought
• 10:02
  California into the most extreme housing crisis we've ever seen,
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  right? So if California is 2 to 2.2
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  million units short and California continues to make it
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  harder to build, do you think we make that gap up or do you think
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  it just becomes worse or exacerbated?
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  I think it becomes exacerbated. So, you know, does that mean
• 10:22
  there's going to be an outflow of people into other states?
• 10:26
  Yes, but you're starting to see that number decrease, right?
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  Like we had two years of significant net migration loss,
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  which were 21 and 22. And then if you look at 23, we
• 10:38
  had net migration loss. But if you consider population
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  growth just from birth, we actually increased this year.
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  So I think now we're getting to the point where it's a financial
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  decision. It's just too expensive to live
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  in California. But then where do they go?
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  And then what's the policy in the states?
• 10:55
  They're going, right? Like Arizona, you saw a big
• 10:58
  boom. You saw this in a lot of states,
• 11:00
  right? Your Sunbelt states, Texas for
• 11:03
  sure, Florida. So you have an increase of
• 11:06
  demand because of people coming in.
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  But it's difficult to build in these states.
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  And if it's not difficult to build, you'll see the typical
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  development cycle, which is we'll build too much and then
• 11:18
  we'll have to give rent concessions to get occupancy up
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  and then you'll see the market crash and then you'll see the
• 11:22
  correction, right? So depends.
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  Yeah, yeah, 'cause we were talking about that last night
• 11:28
  and some one of the guys was saying, you know, it'll just
• 11:32
  make prices in California go up. Because a lot of the people that
• 11:35
  lost their homes and whatnot or not, they're wealthy people,
• 11:38
  they're not necessarily financially challenged people.
• 11:41
  And a lot of the, I don't know, migration is probably just going
• 11:45
  to be today outskirt cities and other cities throughout the
• 11:47
  state. Yeah, we're seeing right now
• 11:48
  like the the amount of people that were displaced.
• 11:52
  I think it was like between 7 and 10,000 families and they're
• 11:56
  entering into a rental market where there are no rentals.
• 11:59
  And so you watched, I don't know if you saw this, but the
• 12:01
  governor was basically, or the AG was coming after investors
• 12:05
  for raising prices beyond 10%. That's because you just
• 12:08
  exacerbated an already, you know, big challenge, which is
• 12:12
  too many people chasing too few of units or homes.
• 12:16
  So, and, and that happened, my brother lost everything in Maui
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  last year in the fires and same thing.
• 12:21
  There's even more of a housing shortage.
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  There already was a housing shortage, you know, now there's
• 12:26
  all these issues with tourism houses and Airbnb houses, but
• 12:30
  yet there's shortages for the locals and everything like that.
• 12:32
  And so prices have just gone up more so.
• 12:36
  That's right. I know.
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  I don't think it's, I think it's, look, you can make the
• 12:40
  argument that it, it can be good for investors, but for society
• 12:44
  it's I don't, it's not healthy. You're not seeing a free market
• 12:47
  be free, you know, right? So I wanna talk about the fund
• 12:51
  and investing in California because I'm terrified of
• 12:54
  putting, like most people say, I would never put my money in
• 12:56
  California, right? Thank you for that outlook.
• 12:59
  But I wanna hear, 'cause you're obviously successful at
• 13:01
  investing in California, but backing up just in the whatever
• 13:07
  the story, Yeah, story of your life.
• 13:09
  So how did you go from pro skateboard to starting a brewery
• 13:17
  company that ended up being worth $80 million and, and all
• 13:21
  this was in a pretty fairly short period of time?
• 13:24
  It was. And yeah, what did that look
• 13:26
  like and how did you start that company, get into that company
• 13:29
  and grow that company to 80 million and then have an exit?
• 13:32
  OK, so how I got there when I was skating, the cool thing
• 13:37
  about it is when you get your own signature line.
• 13:40
  Like I had my own skateboards, I had my own clothing line, I had
• 13:42
  my own shoe line. I didn't have to start the
• 13:46
  company, but I got to work with the designers to come up with,
• 13:51
  you know, what the products going to look like.
• 13:53
  I got to work with the marketing team to figure out how to market
• 13:55
  that shoe. I worked with the sales team
• 13:58
  because if I sold more shoes, I made more money.
• 14:00
  And so I got an inside look on what it took to actually create
• 14:04
  products and how to introduce that product into the market
• 14:07
  without having to learn how to bring a company to life, which
• 14:11
  was a great stepping kind of stone into creating the brewery.
• 14:16
  That mixed with I, you know, I, I was very entrepreneurial
• 14:21
  without realizing it in the skate industry.
• 14:24
  I would negotiate all my deals. I was like the DIY kind of
• 14:29
  person, which creates a different type of challenge, but
• 14:32
  I kind of always had that in me. And so now Fast forward to the
• 14:37
  brewery. I was with a friend who came
• 14:39
  from the surf industry and we were basically talking about
• 14:44
  what companies we could create that were outside of our norm,
• 14:48
  right? In the skate industry, it's
• 14:50
  always shoe companies, clothing companies, skateboard companies,
• 14:53
  or like a hat brand. It's never beer or it's never,
• 14:57
  like an outside industry that doesn't have such a small
• 15:01
  ceiling on it because skateboarding is a pretty small
• 15:03
  niche. And so we just kind of got to
• 15:07
  the point where we were like, what about beer?
• 15:09
  And at that time, craft beer was really starting to grow in
• 15:11
  California. And so we were just like, let's
• 15:14
  just do it. And so we, you know, went around
• 15:18
  the state meeting with other Brewers to figure out what it
• 15:22
  meant to actually brew beer and sell it.
• 15:25
  And we figured out that it was really expensive to do.
• 15:27
  And so we got introduced to somebody who helped us create a
• 15:31
  business plan and helped educate us on raising money because we
• 15:35
  didn't have enough. We we had to get investors for
• 15:37
  it. And then we went out, we raised
• 15:39
  money, we raised enough to start the company.
• 15:41
  We hired AI think we had eight people when we launched.
• 15:45
  And then we had an idea that was a potential disruptor that
• 15:48
  worked. And so when our brand kind of
• 15:50
  launched it, it was different than anything the craft beer
• 15:54
  industry had seen. And it just went nuts from the
• 15:57
  second we opened doors. Wow.
• 15:59
  And you make that sound super simple.
• 16:01
  We just got a mentor. It was.
• 16:02
  Brutal. Yeah, it was absolutely brutal.
• 16:04
  Raised some money at 8 people and voila we sold for 80
• 16:07
  million. Yeah, no, that process was
• 16:09
  awful. What was the hardest part about
• 16:11
  it and how do you overcome it? Like what?
• 16:14
  OK, there were a lot of hard parts to it.
• 16:16
  I would say the first part was raising money as someone who had
• 16:20
  no business experience, no experience in the craft beer
• 16:24
  industry and no experience raising money, that was, that
• 16:29
  was hard. We, we, we basically had to do
• 16:31
  it from friends and family. And the amount we are raising
• 16:36
  what's much larger than what we, I think thought we could do,
• 16:40
  even though we did it. We raised about two and a half,
• 16:41
  $1,000,000, which was nuts back then.
• 16:43
  Yeah. And then once this was 2011 is
• 16:47
  when we started working. On it and it was at the bottom
• 16:49
  of the. Market and then yeah, exactly.
• 16:51
  So even as you say that one of one of our part of our pitch
• 16:56
  back then was how well alcohol performs during recessions,
• 17:00
  right. Most people if if you didn't go
• 17:02
  through 2008 with money, you don't realize how painful it was
• 17:05
  for years afterward and how freaked out everybody was in
• 17:09
  2011, 2012 people were freaked out still.
• 17:12
  And so we would say look during a recession everyone buys beer
• 17:15
  and like you saw people get comfortable with that.
• 17:17
  So yes, that was a tough time to do it.
• 17:20
  And then I would say the second, the hardest part was learning
• 17:24
  how to manage people. That was something I had no
• 17:27
  experience in the how expensive the craft beer industry is to
• 17:33
  grow. It's it's really capital
• 17:36
  intense. And then the last one, I would
• 17:40
  say was building something with an exit in mind, but not knowing
• 17:48
  if it's ever going to pan out right, like starting a business
• 17:52
  at the end. And and when you get to hear
• 17:54
  about the story of selling something, you're like, oh,
• 17:56
  yeah, that was just like too easy.
• 17:58
  Every single day you think the company's going out of business.
• 18:00
  Like it's, it's such an uncomfortable feeling.
• 18:03
  And so I think we had to get used to that, that from the
• 18:06
  public, it looked like we were killing it because it was so
• 18:09
  new. And like internally we're like,
• 18:12
  are we going to do this? Are we going to do this?
• 18:13
  Where's our money? We need more money.
• 18:14
  It was hard. Yeah, managing cash flows and
• 18:18
  people and everything. And so did you work with a
• 18:22
  capital raiser where you paid a percentage or you guys just did
• 18:26
  it yourself? Did it all ourself.
• 18:27
  OK. And you just gave a portion of
• 18:30
  the equity or were you just doing like a percent of
• 18:32
  interest, like a note? No, we did.
• 18:34
  So we basically had a valuation and then we gave, gosh, if I
• 18:39
  remember right, I think we gave 45% of the business way to raise
• 18:43
  the money. I, I want to say we, we valued
• 18:46
  it a little over 5 million when we launched.
• 18:48
  I might be off with that, but that's what I think it was.
• 18:50
  And then we raised the 2 1/2 and they took their portion.
• 18:54
  Yeah. And so when, at what moment in
• 18:57
  time did you realize that it was going to be really successful?
• 19:01
  Like where you're like, OK, we got this.
• 19:03
  Well, I knew that we had something special.
• 19:06
  So this is this is kind of the hardest part.
• 19:08
  We open doors and it was a like shock to the system in the beer
• 19:14
  industry. It was we were doing something
• 19:15
  so different and really what that looked like in the beer
• 19:19
  industry. All the breweries at that time,
• 19:23
  they were selling beer because they would create these like
• 19:26
  specialty, like limited edition brews and that the the beer
• 19:32
  itself was driving the sale. And we came in and went, one,
• 19:37
  let's sell a brand and let's create a community so that when
• 19:41
  they're buying our product, they actually are buying it because
• 19:43
  they're feeling like they're one of us.
• 19:45
  And two, let's, let's water down beer a little bit.
• 19:48
  Like at that time, everybody was making beer so potent.
• 19:52
  Like, you know, you would drink 1 double IPA, you'd be smoked.
• 19:56
  And so we were like, let's make this more sessionable.
• 19:58
  Like let's make it so that somebody could drink multiple.
• 20:01
  And that like coming together and then using really Instagram
• 20:06
  to promote it through our investors.
• 20:09
  It was just like right idea, right time.
• 20:12
  And so like, we knew that everyone was talking about us.
• 20:15
  We had lines around the brewery for people buying it.
• 20:18
  Our growth was, I think we were the fastest growing brewery in
• 20:21
  California, but we were burning cash like we couldn't keep up.
• 20:25
  So it was, I knew we had something special.
• 20:27
  I didn't know if we were going to make money or not though.
• 20:29
  We had to sell to make money. OK.
• 20:32
  So was the company not profitable until you sold?
• 20:34
  Oh, really? And and you removed yourself
• 20:37
  from the brand. You built a brand similar,
• 20:40
  right? Yeah.
• 20:41
  So basically. The face of it.
• 20:42
  No, I was not the face. So basically what we did, we
• 20:46
  raised the money primarily through skaters, surfers,
• 20:49
  snowboarders, some musicians, artists, and then we made them
• 20:55
  our ambassadors. So our investors were
• 20:56
  ambassadors. A lot of them had followings, so
• 20:59
  did myself and so I just made myself one of the 30 people and
• 21:06
  we promoted it collectively. That's awesome.
• 21:08
  I know you know, a lot of like TikTok shop is a big thing right
• 21:13
  now and a lot of like Fleischmann and Josh Snow and
• 21:21
  like a lot of these big names, they promote through live, they
• 21:24
  promote through influencers basically.
• 21:26
  And so that's a really big thing.
• 21:28
  And I think that's a genius, brilliant idea.
• 21:30
  And so social media was a huge part of your strategy to
• 21:35
  building the brand. I think it was everything and it
• 21:37
  was on accident. That's the thing.
• 21:38
  Like this was 2011. There's no influencers at this
• 21:42
  point. And when we raised the money, we
• 21:45
  had like a very small marketing budget.
• 21:46
  And I can't remember who said this, Maybe it was my partner
• 21:49
  Josh, but somebody said, what if we saved the money or used the
• 21:53
  money in a different category and promoted it on Instagram and
• 21:57
  we're like, man, maybe that would work.
• 21:59
  And it just worked. You know, it's different now,
• 22:02
  like you can't do that anymore. It's.
• 22:04
  It's harder. You can.
• 22:05
  It's harder. Way harder.
• 22:06
  Yeah. So so so you you're a big
• 22:10
  believer than in social media. Oh yeah.
• 22:13
  Yeah, and you have your own podcast.
• 22:14
  My own podcast, yeah. Yeah, I'm heavy on social.
• 22:17
  I'm a big believer in the power of it.
• 22:20
  Yeah. Well, you do have like a million
• 22:22
  followers. Yeah, I'm active.
• 22:24
  I use it a lot. Yeah, that's so cool.
• 22:26
  Oh my gosh, okay, I love it. And so when you got out of you
• 22:31
  started the company after you exited or you stopped being a
• 22:35
  professional skateboarder, right?
• 22:36
  Or did you start it while you were a professional?
• 22:38
  Skateboarder. I started it technically while I
• 22:40
  was still a pro skateboarder, but it was kind of the tail end
• 22:43
  of my career. And the brand was so successful
• 22:47
  and so cool that it kind of gave me a little bit more relevancy,
• 22:51
  where without that I don't think I would have had it.
• 22:54
  And so it kind of was the beginning of me stepping away,
• 22:59
  and then by the time I exited the company, I was no longer a
• 23:01
  pro skateboarder. Either and so many athletes we
• 23:04
  hear about this all the time they, you know, sign these big
• 23:06
  contracts and then they end up broke later in their life.
• 23:09
  And do you did you like were you prepared for that when you were
• 23:17
  a pro athlete? Were you, were you like, hey, I
• 23:19
  need to build something else because this is going to end at
• 23:21
  some point. Or how?
• 23:24
  How did that process happen? OK.
• 23:26
  I was prepared for the financial leap, the emotional leap.
• 23:31
  I was not. So basically when I told my
• 23:33
  parents that I wasn't going to go to college and I'm an 80s
• 23:36
  baby. So like we were, it was drilled
• 23:39
  in our heads that if you don't go to college, you're not making
• 23:41
  money. And so my parents like panicked
• 23:44
  about me being a pro skateboarder because
• 23:45
  skateboarding was small. You didn't make a ton of money.
• 23:48
  And I think they were concerned that I was jeopardizing my
• 23:50
  future. So my parents strongly
• 23:54
  recommended that I get a financial advisor.
• 23:57
  And at this point, I'm 19 years old.
• 23:59
  I'm making maybe 1000 bucks a month.
• 24:01
  And I meet this guy. I'm not even making close to the
• 24:05
  amount that he should even be helping me.
• 24:07
  And he took like a Big Brother approach.
• 24:10
  And so he started teaching me about credits, about a budget,
• 24:14
  about asset allocation. And he started helping me figure
• 24:17
  out a path on where I could place dollars that were going to
• 24:21
  help me in the situation I was in, which was I was in theory
• 24:26
  going to make the most amount of money from ages 19 to 26.
• 24:31
  And in that, that's typically your wealth build years.
• 24:35
  And you don't put cash flow on till you know you're usually
• 24:38
  looking in your 60s, right? Well, I needed wealth build
• 24:42
  because of my age, but I needed cash flow to supplement my
• 24:44
  income once my career ended. And so he was a really big
• 24:48
  believer in real estate. And so I invested in my first
• 24:51
  storage property because of him. I started investing in debt
• 24:54
  funds because of him. He was the one who opened up
• 24:57
  commercial real estate to me. Wow.
• 24:59
  And how old were? You, Oh gosh, I started with him
• 25:02
  when I was 19. And so my biggest challenge was,
• 25:06
  and this is something that you hear a lot, so anyone who feels
• 25:09
  like, yeah, I would love to invest in real estate, but I
• 25:11
  don't make enough money to do it.
• 25:14
  I feel like that's what I felt also.
• 25:17
  But it can be done. I basically lived off nothing,
• 25:20
  right? I would make, I think in the
• 25:22
  beginning I started making 60 grand a year, then 80 grand a
• 25:25
  year and I started getting close to 100 grand a year.
• 25:27
  I was living off maybe 20 of it. So I was, I was pretending like
• 25:32
  I was broke and then all of that money that I was saving was
• 25:34
  going into investments. It was going into my savings
• 25:37
  account. And then after years of doing
• 25:39
  that, you look back and you're like, Oh my gosh, the dividends,
• 25:42
  I just keep reinvesting that When they're selling an asset
• 25:45
  that capital gains, I'll throw it right back into a new asset.
• 25:48
  And you get to a point where you have a pretty sizable investment
• 25:53
  amount. And then that put me in a pretty
• 25:55
  good position when my career ended.
• 25:57
  And so you were not investing in your own properties, you were
• 26:00
  investing in funds. Oh, great, great question.
• 26:03
  My philosophy was this. My career is skateboarding.
• 26:07
  My greatest opportunity is skateboarding.
• 26:09
  So I want all of my focus towards that, right?
• 26:11
  If I'm making like I got to a point where I started making
• 26:14
  pretty good money when I was selling shoes and it just didn't
• 26:17
  make sense for me to take half of my time and go flip a
• 26:20
  property to make a 20% return when I can make a 200% return if
• 26:25
  I focus on my actual craft. And so all of my investments
• 26:28
  were done passively until I started the brewery.
• 26:32
  Do what you do best and hire out the rest.
• 26:33
  A. 100%. Yeah, I think so many people,
• 26:36
  they're such, I don't know, control freaks maybe or fear
• 26:40
  driven or they're like, I can do it.
• 26:41
  I was talking about this with Shawn Lynch, our friend, you
• 26:44
  know how he just did it all and he didn't delegate anything for
• 26:47
  so long. And he was managing, you know,
• 26:49
  building a logistics oil company.
• 26:51
  He was managing 66 rentals. He was doing all these things.
• 26:53
  And his biggest regret was not delegating sooner. 100% We have
• 26:58
  a lot of investors that go through the path of Airbnb or
• 27:04
  storage or whatever the the trend is at the moment and then
• 27:08
  they'll wrap back around to us and go.
• 27:09
  I am so sick of doing this all myself.
• 27:11
  I thought it was passive. It is not.
• 27:14
  It's like a second job. There you go.
• 27:16
  And I think that's the the I think that's the smart way to do
• 27:20
  it unless you want to build a business in the asset class,
• 27:25
  Right, right. If you want to get started.
• 27:27
  Yeah, if, if, if that's your end goal, then yeah, go do it
• 27:29
  yourself. Which is what you ended up
• 27:31
  doing. Which is what I ended up doing.
• 27:33
  So for people who may not know, and that's the thing, I think
• 27:36
  there's a big misconception that you need millions of dollars to
• 27:39
  invest in real estate and you really don't.
• 27:41
  First off, you can invest in funds and there's different
• 27:44
  funds. Some you have to be an
• 27:44
  accredited investor, which means you make a certain amount of
• 27:47
  money or have a certain net worth.
• 27:49
  Some you don't. You like Pace Moreby, he is a
• 27:52
  fund where you can invest like, I don't know, 1000 bucks or
• 27:55
  something like that. So there's different funds and
• 27:57
  you can invest that. The real professionals do it.
• 27:59
  It's completely passive and then you get your return and you
• 28:01
  still get some like depreciation tax benefits that you get from
• 28:05
  real estate and you can do what you do best where you're going
• 28:08
  to maximize your returns there. So I wouldn't just like you
• 28:12
  said, I wouldn't be your own DIY real estate investor unless you
• 28:16
  really want to get in the business of real estate
• 28:19
  investing, like owning a fix and flip company or owning a
• 28:23
  construction company or owning a property management company or a
• 28:26
  development company or whatever, right?
• 28:28
  Or being a real estate agent and having a brokerage, all these
• 28:30
  things. And so there's different kinds
• 28:32
  of funds. So you have an equity fund, I
• 28:34
  have a debt fund, and I also invest in other people's funds,
• 28:38
  you know, as someone who has my own fund, which I'm just getting
• 28:41
  it off the ground. So I can't even really say that.
• 28:44
  I can't wait to talk to you about the debt fund.
• 28:45
  I had those. I I wound them down.
• 28:47
  Really. Yeah, Well, we'll have to talk
• 28:49
  about. That I know.
• 28:50
  I can't wait. Yeah.
• 28:51
  But yeah, so I think that's really cool that you invested in
• 28:54
  funds and then you end up starting your fund.
• 28:57
  But now, so you went, you had an exit on that company.
• 29:00
  How? How long from start from the
• 29:02
  time you founded it to the time you exited?
• 29:03
  We started working on it in 2011 and then we sold it end of 15
• 29:09
  basically like I, I think we closed November of 15.
• 29:13
  I know, I know. We weren't expecting that.
• 29:15
  We thought it'd take us longer. Yeah.
• 29:16
  Well, that's nice. It was nice.
• 29:18
  Yeah, that was cool. That's crazy to, to build that
• 29:21
  much value in four years. Yeah.
• 29:24
  Oh my God, that is awesome. I know we're stepping on the
• 29:26
  gas. We're going for it.
• 29:28
  Yeah, At that time you had, you had Coors, you had Anheuser, you
• 29:32
  had Consolation and all the Giants buying brands.
• 29:35
  And so you were watching multiples basically increase
• 29:40
  because, you know, it was a frenzy.
• 29:42
  And so we knew we had a a moment in time to get to the exit.
• 29:45
  And I think that's why we're going for it so hard.
• 29:48
  So we felt like once they backed out, everything was going to
• 29:51
  soften. What is like the best advice
• 29:54
  that you could give to someone who's looking to create a
• 29:59
  startup and have a multi million or $100 million exit?
• 30:05
  Best piece of advice I can give you, if you're trying to start a
• 30:08
  business to sell, you have to start with the end in mind.
• 30:12
  Like if you don't do that, you're going to it's going to be
• 30:17
  very difficult for you to build something the right way.
• 30:20
  The reason being when you know where you're going, then the
• 30:24
  question just becomes are is the decision I'm making today help
• 30:27
  me get to that goal? And if the answer is no, you
• 30:29
  don't do it. But if you don't have a North
• 30:31
  Star, especially in startup, it feels like you're just, you
• 30:35
  know, trying everything and it, it can feel like you're
• 30:37
  drowning. And so figure out where you're
• 30:41
  going, build the vehicle to get there.
• 30:44
  And what I would say most importantly, do a business plan.
• 30:47
  Every time I start a business, I don't want to do 1 and I force
• 30:50
  myself to do it. It is so valuable.
• 30:52
  Build a business plan as if you're going to raise money from
• 30:54
  investors even if you don't need to, and go present it to people
• 30:58
  and let people poke holes in it and give yourself kind of the
• 31:01
  highest chance of success possible before you launch.
• 31:04
  Yeah. If you don't know where you're
• 31:06
  going, any road will get you nowhere.
• 31:08
  That's right. Yeah, that's right.
• 31:09
  I think that's great, just reverse engineering with the end
• 31:11
  in mind. And I'm actually listening to a
• 31:13
  book right now, B2 Point O, like Beyond Entrepreneurship, 2 Point
• 31:16
  O, and it's talking all about the visionary and the leadership
• 31:20
  and everything from the biggest brands in the world and the
• 31:22
  greatest leaders in the world. And they say that nothing is
• 31:25
  more important than having a very clear vision because that's
• 31:29
  what creates like, extreme performance. 100% I think it
• 31:32
  goes beyond business too. I think it goes to us
• 31:34
  personally. Like if you don't know where
• 31:37
  you're going, how are, how do you even gauge your metrics of
• 31:41
  success, right? Why are you here?
• 31:44
  What, what's the purpose of all this?
• 31:46
  What do I want to be when I'm older?
• 31:47
  What do I want my kids to remember?
• 31:49
  Like that's something we all need to address, yeah.
• 31:53
  I agree. And how have you?
• 31:55
  So we didn't really get into the emotional side of your life yet.
• 32:01
  And I want to dive into that because I think it's super
• 32:03
  important. And, you know, we go on these
• 32:05
  podcasts or people see you on social media and they're like,
• 32:07
  well, this guy's fucking cool. You know, he built this big
• 32:10
  company and he's a politician and all this stuff.
• 32:13
  And they don't really see like what it really takes and what
• 32:16
  the pain that we had to go through and like these rock
• 32:18
  bottom moments in our life. And, you know, I'm super open
• 32:21
  about many rock bottom moments in my life and my struggles with
• 32:24
  anxiety and depression and eating disorders and all these
• 32:27
  things. And, you know, being suicidal
• 32:30
  when I was 21 years old and having to, I used work as a
• 32:33
  coping mechanism and a fear driven thing for a long time.
• 32:38
  But yeah, so like what, what was a what was the rock bottom
• 32:41
  moment in your life? And how did you overcome that
• 32:45
  and and get through that? OK, the biggest rock bottom
• 32:48
  moment of my life so far was 2017.
• 32:51
  And for me it was. And this is something athletes
• 32:55
  struggle with. And you also actually see people
• 32:58
  when they retire struggle with this as well because a lot of
• 33:00
  times our job becomes our identity feels like athletes
• 33:04
  even more so. But I didn't realize how much of
• 33:06
  my identity was wrapped into me being a pro skateboarder.
• 33:09
  And so when we sold the brewery, I'm no longer a pro
• 33:13
  skateboarder. I found myself 2016, 17 trying
• 33:20
  to figure out who I was, what I was doing.
• 33:23
  And in that like moment of despair, my wife basically like
• 33:29
  hit me with this isn't working like our marriage, this isn't
• 33:32
  the marriage I want. And I had two little kids at
• 33:35
  this time. So basically this is how I had
• 33:38
  gotten there to become a pro skateboarder and tapped into
• 33:42
  kind of the obsessive personality type that I am.
• 33:45
  It was all my career, like 100% basically went into my career.
• 33:50
  And then my wife and kids got like a distant, distant second.
• 33:54
  And then even to like, you know, compound that I was travelling 6
• 33:58
  months of the year. So I wasn't home a lot.
• 34:00
  And then I decided to start a business on top of all this.
• 34:04
  And then when you stripped it away, like the two things that
• 34:08
  are more important than the business and the career were my
• 34:10
  wife and kids. And they're, you know, the
• 34:12
  three, they're looking at me going, this isn't it.
• 34:16
  And so 2017, I had to make some pretty big decisions and figure
• 34:21
  out really what I wanted to do, what I wanted to be known for.
• 34:28
  And I kind of had to rebuild what I neglected for a long
• 34:33
  time. And so I started with my wife,
• 34:36
  started working on our marriage, started with my kids and
• 34:40
  bringing them into being a priority.
• 34:43
  And then once I had that right, I started working on the
• 34:46
  business and I tried to build the business this time with them
• 34:50
  in mind as opposed to I'm going to be successful first, stop at
• 34:54
  nothing and kind of justify that through being a provider, right?
• 35:00
  And I was terrified. Like when I started this
• 35:03
  business I was very scared that the model of success that I knew
• 35:08
  wasn't going to be applied because this time I had non
• 35:13
  negotiables with time spent with my family and I wasn't sure if
• 35:17
  it was going to be successful as I was definitely concerned with
• 35:19
  it. And that's commune capital.
• 35:21
  That was commune when I launched Commune.
• 35:23
  And, and so I, there's a, a man named Garnett Morris who's
• 35:30
  amazing and he's, I don't know, 70 years old and he's Centi
• 35:35
  millionaire built, had a really rough background, lost family
• 35:40
  members to suicide, struggle with addiction, was had like
• 35:43
  hundreds of pounds overweight at some point in his life.
• 35:46
  But I was in one of my masterminds last week and he
• 35:48
  said that we all are walking around with bricks on our head
• 35:51
  and like, what do you need to let go of to really become the
• 35:56
  person that you want to be and live the life that you want to
• 35:59
  live? And so I, when you said that, it
• 36:02
  just reminded me of that is like you had a brick on your head of
• 36:05
  in order for me to be this version of success that I
• 36:10
  believe in, I have to sacrifice time with my kids or my wife or
• 36:14
  my friends or my whatever, right?
• 36:16
  Like I have to go all in on this.
• 36:18
  And so it's, you had to let go of that brick and realize you
• 36:22
  can still have the time with your kids and your wife and
• 36:25
  whatever else you're prioritizing and still probably
• 36:29
  you ended up be building something way more successful
• 36:32
  and things like that. And so I have, I'm struggling
• 36:34
  with that right now, like this little bit of an identity crisis
• 36:37
  because my whole identity's always been in business, always
• 36:40
  been in my success, always been in what I can produce because I
• 36:44
  had no self worth as a child growing up.
• 36:47
  And so I have, you know, I've, I always said I was going to be a
• 36:50
  billionaire and I was going to build a, a billion dollar brand.
• 36:53
  And because the more money I have, the more impact I can make
• 36:55
  and da da, da, da, da. And, you know, some people
• 36:58
  started to challenge me on that of like, oh, that's just an ego
• 37:01
  thing or oh, that's just you being disconnected and you're
• 37:04
  not actually fulfilled and whatever.
• 37:06
  But then Garnett re challenged me on that because he said he's
• 37:09
  going to be a billionaire and he's almost there.
• 37:12
  And and I and, you know, I have a brick that in order to become
• 37:18
  a billionaire or build a billion dollar company organization, I
• 37:22
  have to sacrifice joy, peace, purpose, relationships,
• 37:27
  friendships and all those things.
• 37:29
  And so I've had this little bit of an identity crisis lately.
• 37:32
  Like is that something I really want?
• 37:34
  Or do I want to be peaceful and happy and whatever?
• 37:38
  And then he's like, well, you can have both.
• 37:41
  Yeah. That's interesting.
• 37:43
  Interesting. I would have told you something
• 37:44
  different, I think. Yeah, I think if you, I think it
• 37:47
  actually, you all, you're always making a decision on what you're
• 37:50
  willing to sacrifice and for what.
• 37:53
  And you know, for me personally, like if you look at our
• 37:56
  business, our business, we're going to be pretty soon managing
• 38:00
  a billion dollars. That doesn't mean the business
• 38:02
  is valued at a billion. But I've always looked at like,
• 38:07
  like let's say I have a goal of being worth a billion dollars.
• 38:11
  I feel like what it would take for me to get there would be a
• 38:15
  sacrifice that on some of them I'm not willing to give.
• 38:19
  So I don't know. That's interesting.
• 38:21
  That's an interesting idea. It is, yeah.
• 38:23
  And I think I'm playing with it, right?
• 38:26
  I'm playing with this idea 'cause it's like, is that really
• 38:28
  a reality that it, you know, is that really just a brick on my
• 38:32
  head? And it.
• 38:33
  And we were talking briefly and how's this guy 70?
• 38:36
  Yeah. And he said, you know, it's not
• 38:38
  to say that you're not gonna go through discomfort.
• 38:40
  Of course you're gonna go through discomfort.
• 38:41
  Like it's like growing a muscle. You go to a point of failure and
• 38:45
  then your muscle heals and grows and then you grow stronger and
• 38:48
  then becomes easier and you keep doing it.
• 38:49
  And so same thing with this, but it doesn't, you know that I
• 38:54
  guess the theory is it doesn't have to be 1 or the other.
• 38:56
  It doesn't have to be peace, joy, good relationship, good
• 39:00
  husband, Good Wife, good parent, all these things.
• 39:02
  Or I'm an absolute, you know, I, I build this beautiful big
• 39:07
  creation that is beyond what most people will ever even
• 39:11
  attempt, right? And so I'm playing with that
• 39:13
  too. Is like, is that true?
• 39:14
  Is that not true? Because I feel the same way is
• 39:16
  like I will never again sacrifice my joy and my peace
• 39:23
  for just over accomplishment and more and more.
• 39:26
  And so like I just want to grow both of those I want to
• 39:29
  maintain. Here's my time blocks for my
• 39:32
  family, for my partner, for my friends, for my gym, for my
• 39:36
  health, for myself. And then here's my time blocks
• 39:39
  for my business and see what we can create given that.
• 39:43
  That sounds similar to me. I think we're aligning that.
• 39:46
  Yeah. It's not Yeah, I don't, Yeah,
• 39:48
  it's a good question. That's a good question.
• 39:49
  I think for me, there's like you, I think you're going to see
• 39:52
  similarities in overachievers, right?
• 39:54
  Usually there's like a point we're trying to prove that came
• 39:58
  from, you know, some issue we had when we were young.
• 40:01
  And for me, like when I was skating, I always felt like
• 40:06
  everyone was better than me. And so I felt like the way that
• 40:10
  I would succeed beyond them was just by putting in more time.
• 40:13
  So if they were skating 3 hours a day, I was going to I was
• 40:16
  going to skate 6. And I even remember like my wife
• 40:19
  looking at me when we first got married and she was like, you
• 40:22
  are too much with this. Like the second you wake up, you
• 40:25
  leave the house at 8, you don't get back till six, you're
• 40:28
  skating non-stop, you won't miss a day.
• 40:30
  And I don't, I always tell her I have to do this to compete
• 40:33
  because I'm not capable of competing with them if I'm not,
• 40:37
  you know, over delivering. And I think that carried over
• 40:44
  with me being fearful for starting the new company.
• 40:47
  But here's what I found. And you kind of nailed it.
• 40:49
  And I was very encouraged by this.
• 40:51
  When I started trying to build the business with my family in
• 40:54
  mind, it forced me to delegate more than I had prior.
• 40:58
  And it finally put me in a situation where I was building a
• 41:01
  business the correct way, which is that it's, it's being put in
• 41:06
  a position where I can run without me.
• 41:08
  And that is like when you first brought up, most entrepreneurs
• 41:11
  struggle with control and fear. You're correct.
• 41:15
  And they're always the entrepreneurs that don't build
• 41:17
  anything of size because they'll never let people be put in a
• 41:20
  position of authority or control or decision making, which is
• 41:24
  limiting. And when I finally got
• 41:27
  comfortable with that, I mean, this company, this company is
• 41:30
  not even close in comparison to the brewery as far as size,
• 41:33
  scale, complexity. This is a completely different
• 41:37
  monster and I could never have done that if I would have
• 41:42
  attempted to build it the way we built the other stuff.
• 41:45
  Yep. And that's where the brick comes
• 41:46
  down to, right is because you know, you were doing, I don't
• 41:50
  know, how much revenue were you doing at the brewery?
• 41:53
  Not not a ton, like just under 10.
• 41:55
  OK. And then now you're doing, it's
• 41:58
  different. It's different, right?
• 42:01
  And you probably spend more time, you're probably working
• 42:03
  less than you were with the. Brewery.
• 42:04
  I am working less with my company today than anything in
• 42:08
  the past. Skateboarding, everything.
• 42:11
  I have non negotiables now like I, I, you know when I was
• 42:14
  skating or the brewery I wouldn't take one day off.
• 42:17
  Now Saturdays and Sundays I do not work.
• 42:19
  There's no phone, there's no work.
• 42:21
  That's family time. Monday through Friday is all you
• 42:23
  get from me. Yeah, I love that.
• 42:25
  And that's that's so because you, I actually, I was on
• 42:28
  Twitter and Mr. Beech was like, I make $1,000,000 a day and Elon
• 42:33
  Musk goes I make a million a minute.
• 42:35
  You know, it's just savage. Man.
• 42:38
  So they're just like, there's different levels to the game and
• 42:41
  we all have the same 24 hours in a day, correct?
• 42:44
  So it comes down to how good of a leader are you?
• 42:46
  How, how good are you at encouraging people to want to do
• 42:53
  what has to be done? And at that, if you can do that,
• 42:57
  your capacity to build is infinite.
• 42:59
  Really. Right, 'cause I mean, like you
• 43:04
  have a really massive, incredible company, but to some
• 43:07
  people like Elon Musk, you have a really tiny easy operation.
• 43:10
  Totally right. And same with me.
• 43:11
  It's like Pebble in the pond. Yeah.
• 43:13
  Like to, to my family, I'm like the richest person in the world.
• 43:17
  And to the people in my network, I'm like pond scum, you know?
• 43:20
  And so there's always, there's, there's levels to the game.
• 43:22
  And it all comes down to people. Because if you and I are just
• 43:27
  sheer competing on our 24 hours and what we could do with it to,
• 43:30
  to go operate a task, we're never gonna get anywhere.
• 43:33
  It's seeing the vision, being the creator, being the visionary
• 43:36
  and and inspiring people who are better than you to actually
• 43:41
  operate in like in their unique gift and their ability, which is
• 43:44
  so hard. Like that's the hardest thing is
• 43:46
  the people management, the leadership and trusting and
• 43:51
  being able to like track, like have metrics on where things are
• 43:58
  AT and know when things are are clogged or broken or need to be
• 44:01
  improved or whatever. So yeah, because I want to have
• 44:05
  a $315 million fund too. I want to have a $500 million
• 44:09
  fund. I want to have a billion dollar
• 44:10
  fund, right? I'm with you.
• 44:12
  But then it's like the whole thing sounds so overwhelming to
• 44:15
  I mean, because when for those who don't know you when you're
• 44:19
  so you do you guys focus more on development or value add?
• 44:23
  Pretty much all development. Pretty much all adaptive reuse
• 44:25
  and development. OK.
• 44:27
  And and are you pretty equal multifamily storage?
• 44:31
  We were, our storage fund was larger than multifamily until
• 44:35
  this last year. We have feels like 6 multifamily
• 44:38
  deals for everyone storage deal. There's just more demand right
• 44:41
  now for multifamily. And how much?
• 44:44
  How many projects do you have going at a time?
• 44:45
  Right now we have let's see three that are no, we have 4
• 44:51
  under construction and then we have 3 pre construction and then
• 44:56
  we have about starting April, we have a closing every month for
• 45:01
  about 15 months that's we have a lot coming up.
• 45:05
  Yeah, that's a ton of project management and how many
• 45:08
  employees are or crews? Are we have about 20, we have
• 45:11
  about 20 people inside of my firm.
• 45:14
  And then when you do a deal that kind of splinters off into a lot
• 45:19
  of people being involved, you, you know, you have your, your GC
• 45:23
  and your Superintendent and all the way down to, you know, once
• 45:27
  it's complete, your property manager.
• 45:28
  So we typically have asset managers overlooking a handful
• 45:32
  of projects. And then, you know, in a perfect
• 45:35
  world, we'll do a handful of development deals in the same
• 45:37
  area so that we can just move a crew from one over to the other
• 45:42
  once they finish their stage. Yeah, but it's a lot.
• 45:44
  We have about 100 and maybe we have 140 million under
• 45:47
  construction right now. That's crazy.
• 45:49
  I think we have another 200 slated for the next 15 months.
• 45:54
  We have a lot going on right now.
• 45:55
  Yeah, that's. And so you have these massive
• 45:58
  projects, tons of people to manage, tons of and in
• 46:03
  construction. And I used to own small
• 46:05
  construction companies. Yeah, yeah.
• 46:07
  It's a lot of people. It's.
• 46:08
  Horrible. Well and then you have materials
• 46:10
  like and everything dominoes like one thing, one domino goes
• 46:13
  down, the whole thing goes down. I was not happy, Hannah, during
• 46:17
  that time. It was very difficult but and
• 46:20
  then you have the fund and then you are you raising from retail
• 46:22
  investors or you have institutional.
• 46:24
  Money, basically everything's retail.
• 46:26
  We have about 8, almost 800 investors.
• 46:29
  Yeah, so for those of you who don't know, retail investor just
• 46:31
  means like you, you're a retail investor, I'm a retail investor
• 46:34
  institutional would be, you know, BlackRock or one of those
• 46:37
  bigger funds. So that's a lot of people to
• 46:40
  manage. And and when when you give
• 46:43
  someone your money, you wanna know where's my money, How's my
• 46:47
  money doing? When am I getting my money back
• 46:48
  or if there's any problem, it's this whole, you know, nightmare.
• 46:51
  And then there's it, it's a lot. So the fund is its own, its own
• 46:55
  company in itself and you have investor relations and you have
• 46:59
  fund administration and you have all these things.
• 47:01
  And then you have your development and your property
• 47:04
  management and your acquisitions and trying to source these deals
• 47:06
  and then your dispos and trying to sell these deals or repuy
• 47:08
  these deals or fill these deals. So it's like so much.
• 47:12
  And the only way you can do that is by learning how to be a good
• 47:17
  leader and learning how to find those right people.
• 47:19
  Yeah, that's right. It's a business.
• 47:21
  Yeah, 100%. Yeah, So what?
• 47:23
  What have you learn? Like how did you get into the
• 47:27
  fun space? I know you, you knew real
• 47:29
  estate, you believed in real estate.
• 47:30
  You'd be investing in fun. And so you go from exit the
• 47:33
  company, prioritize my family, get your emotions and identity
• 47:38
  in check. Figure out who I was, Yeah.
• 47:40
  And then how? Yeah.
• 47:42
  How'd you go from and what year did you start?
• 47:44
  The company, yeah. So I think I started working on
• 47:47
  Commune the end of 17, OK and the OK.
• 47:53
  So this is basically how it happened.
• 47:55
  I was, so I was a really well known skater, right?
• 48:00
  And skateboarders, when they finish, they typically move back
• 48:04
  into the industry and they start working for a company or they
• 48:07
  become a team manager or something.
• 48:09
  I didn't do that. And in this time of figuring out
• 48:13
  what to do, I had other skaters calling me going, where'd you
• 48:16
  go? Like, I don't see you or what
• 48:19
  are you doing? Are you OK?
• 48:21
  And every single one of them asked me the same question, how
• 48:24
  are you making money? And because that's the biggest
• 48:27
  fear for us as skaters, like, how do you make money after
• 48:28
  skateboarding? And so I basically would tell
• 48:32
  all of them, well, I've been planning for this for 15 years
• 48:35
  and, you know, I'm at the point where I don't have to work and
• 48:39
  so on, so forth. And one of my friends named Sean
• 48:43
  Malt, who's very known pro skateboarder says, dude, how do
• 48:47
  I do that? Like I need that also.
• 48:49
  And when he said that, something clicked and I went, Oh my gosh,
• 48:53
  I had somebody come into my life when I was 19 years old, helped
• 48:57
  me build the path to the position I'm in today.
• 49:01
  How do I do that for the skaters?
• 49:03
  And so I created this concept for Commune Capital and I built
• 49:06
  out the whole business plan, right?
• 49:07
  And in at this time was probably A10 page deck and it was built
• 49:12
  around the idea of what I felt in skateboarding, which was
• 49:15
  always US against the world type of community.
• 49:18
  It felt like it was family, you know, no one could mess with us.
• 49:22
  It was awesome in that regard. So I wanted to create this
• 49:25
  company that had the community feel, hence the name Commune.
• 49:28
  And I wanted the mission to be kind of two parts.
• 49:31
  One, we were all going to put our money together to kind of
• 49:34
  strengthen numbers and buy assets that we can't buy alone.
• 49:37
  And two, I wanted it to be an education vehicle to do what my
• 49:42
  mentor did for me, right? Like, I didn't just give him
• 49:44
  money. And he placed it.
• 49:45
  And here I am at, you know, 30 years old with an exit, you
• 49:50
  know, behind my back. It was, OK, this is what you're
• 49:52
  going to do and go do it. That's what that was his model.
• 49:56
  And so I started the company. I built it originally for
• 49:58
  skaters that then moved into just athletes in general.
• 50:02
  And then before I knew it, there were, you know, people in sales
• 50:06
  that had the same concern we had.
• 50:08
  Hey, man, my, my salary, you know, starts over every month or
• 50:11
  sorry, every year. And I got to get back to the
• 50:14
  grind. If I let off, it's, you know, my
• 50:15
  lifestyle's done. And I haven't been investing.
• 50:18
  I've been spending. And I don't know what to do
• 50:20
  either. And then the company just kind
• 50:22
  of became something greater than I even intended it to be in the
• 50:26
  beginning. But all that to say, when I was
• 50:28
  building out this business plan, I had, you know, our mission,
• 50:31
  our identity, what we're setting out to do, why we were
• 50:34
  different. And then I had a part that said
• 50:37
  fund with a question mark. It was the only part of this
• 50:41
  thing that I didn't know, right. And if you go back to my last
• 50:44
  business, I knew how to build a business plan.
• 50:46
  I knew how to raise money. I knew how to build the
• 50:48
  organization. But that was not a fund.
• 50:50
  We raised money for just the expenses and, and you know,
• 50:54
  operating capital for the brewery.
• 50:57
  And so I brought it to my mentor and I was like, hey dude, I need
• 51:00
  you to like run through this business plan.
• 51:02
  And I, I don't know this page. I need you to like either teach
• 51:04
  me this page or like show me who I need to hire to build it out.
• 51:08
  And So what I didn't mention to you is he connected me with his
• 51:12
  brother who operated the storage portfolio that I made my first
• 51:16
  storage investment in. And so I sat down with them and
• 51:20
  they presented the idea with me about actually starting this
• 51:23
  company together. And so we started commune
• 51:27
  together. And at this time, my partner
• 51:30
  owned the storage portfolio that I was passively investing in.
• 51:33
  And so we launched the brand. It's only focused on multifamily
• 51:36
  at this time. We, you know, have our marketing
• 51:39
  campaign, we're using social, we're building our brand
• 51:41
  identity and it's, it is growing at such a faster rate than my
• 51:46
  partner's storage portfolio. But the thing about a storage
• 51:49
  portfolio, this has been a Grand Slam of a portfolio, right?
• 51:53
  Like 21 X return for the original investor.
• 51:56
  It's been a monster and we're outpacing him on growth and he's
• 52:01
  going what is happening. And so basically what we
• 52:04
  realized was he built his traditionally the old school way
• 52:07
  you're, you know, when you perform for an investor, that
• 52:10
  investor tells a friend, then you get a new investor and over
• 52:13
  time it becomes something of significance.
• 52:16
  We're building a brand. And now all of a sudden we have
• 52:18
  investors coming in online, We have brokers giving us off
• 52:21
  market deals as if we've had like 10 year relationships with
• 52:23
  them, didn't know who they were. We had everybody wanted to work
• 52:27
  with us. And so in 2020, they actually
• 52:31
  presented the idea about us merging our companies together.
• 52:34
  And then I think at the end of 20 or 21, we ended up merging
• 52:37
  the companies together. And then I inherited his storage
• 52:40
  portfolio, one of his debt portfolios.
• 52:43
  And then since then, we've launched like, I don't know,
• 52:45
  seven other offerings. OK.
• 52:47
  And are these five year funds? No, we typically go long.
• 52:51
  So no longer I'm I don't sell assets, OK.
• 52:57
  So there are so many different ways to do this.
• 53:02
  For me, what I found is every asset that I've sold, I look
• 53:06
  back and go, gosh, I shouldn't have sold that.
• 53:08
  I should have just refined again, right?
• 53:11
  And So what we do is something called a tender offering.
• 53:13
  So we target to do this every five to seven years.
• 53:16
  And basically my firm will OfferUp or offer to buy shares
• 53:21
  from investors who want liquidity so that we can offer
• 53:24
  liquidity without having to sell assets that we want.
• 53:28
  And so that's what what we've been doing.
• 53:30
  It doesn't mean we don't sell assets like we did sell 4 assets
• 53:33
  in the last four years. But what it takes for me to sell
• 53:37
  asset means I'm getting an offer that makes no sense and you
• 53:40
  don't get those everyday. Yeah, Yeah, that's, that was
• 53:43
  always my challenge with the real estate equity funds is you,
• 53:46
  you don't want to sell these assets.
• 53:47
  That's the whole, I mean the whole point is you buy low or
• 53:49
  you develop then you add the value and then you cash flow and
• 53:52
  you have, you know all the depreciation you don't have
• 53:54
  recaptured and the whole thing. So OK.
• 53:57
  So that's been a good model for us that's been working.
• 53:59
  So it all comes back to building a brand always and what always,
• 54:05
  always. Yeah, I love that.
• 54:07
  And I think that's that's in a world where we're so
• 54:13
  disconnected. I mean, we're connected through
• 54:15
  technology and stuff, but we're disconnected as people, right?
• 54:17
  Like we're, I think in a world where AI and technology is
• 54:22
  everything that like emotional touch and somebody doing
• 54:27
  business with a, a, a person like an, an actual real thing.
• 54:34
  I think it's just so important for moving forward.
• 54:37
  And I don't know, building a, a brand and a personal brand and a
• 54:40
  brand of the company. Like think of Coca-Cola or I
• 54:44
  mean, any of the big brands, right?
• 54:46
  I actually am reading the book right now called the Birth of a
• 54:49
  Brand and I saw him speak the founder of Ugg and sharing that
• 54:53
  story on how he built the brand. And yeah, so I guess what is
• 54:57
  your, because you're so good at building a brand, What is the
• 55:01
  most important thing to do that? How do you build a successful
• 55:04
  brand that people are so loyal to And it's like a cult like
• 55:08
  following and that they everybody knows it when they see
• 55:10
  it and. That's a good question.
• 55:13
  So you, if you're going to build a brand, you have to give people
• 55:18
  a reason to connect with something beyond the product or
• 55:21
  the service, right? That that's really what it comes
• 55:23
  down to. We spend so much time trying to
• 55:26
  create the best product and we think the product sells.
• 55:29
  But if you ask me why I wore Nikes, it was because of MJ.
• 55:32
  It was the only reason. When I put on MJS shoe, I felt
• 55:35
  like I ran faster and I jumped higher.
• 55:37
  That was only because of him as his brand, right?
• 55:40
  If you ask me about Tesla, I'm on my third Tesla.
• 55:42
  That's because of Elon yes, his product is great, but I actually
• 55:46
  bought the car for the first time because of him.
• 55:49
  I, I wanted to support what he was doing because I thought I, I
• 55:52
  bought into his mission, right. And so how you do that, you,
• 55:57
  you've got to you've got to be a real person and take people
• 56:01
  through the journey that you're currently going through, right?
• 56:04
  And that's the tough part. And I think this has been
• 56:07
  something that we've known for a long time.
• 56:09
  Just social media has kind of muddied the water a little bit
• 56:12
  because it's difficult to bring people through the reality of
• 56:18
  your life. It's easy to just show them the
• 56:20
  wins, right? We talked about this in the
• 56:22
  beginning, but the reality is people don't connect with wins.
• 56:25
  People connect with struggle, right?
• 56:27
  So this is a perfect, perfect story to articulate this.
• 56:30
  I get invited in 2021 to go to Fincon.
• 56:34
  It's like this big financial conference and it's in Texas
• 56:37
  this year. And there was this, like, TikTok
• 56:40
  influencer house that I got invited to, right?
• 56:43
  And it was like 10 or 12 of the largest financial influencers on
• 56:47
  TikTok. We're going to be staying at
• 56:48
  this house. And they're like, Mikey, do you
• 56:51
  want to go? And at first, I'm like, I'm 38
• 56:55
  years old. I don't even think I'm an
• 56:57
  influencer. I'm just using the app to, you
• 57:00
  know, build brands. But I was like curious to see
• 57:03
  like what it was about. I don't think of an influencer,
• 57:05
  I'm just using the app to I'm. Just using the app, yeah.
• 57:07
  So I go to this house and the oldest person is 22 years old,
• 57:15
  right? So the range was 17 to 22 and
• 57:18
  I'm out here almost 40 years old, right?
• 57:21
  And here was the irony. I was like, you guys are the
• 57:23
  largest financial influencers on TikTok and the oldest one is 22.
• 57:27
  You guys haven't even been through anything yet.
• 57:29
  How are you the largest financial influencers, right?
• 57:33
  And This is why because they tapped into something that we
• 57:36
  have forgotten, which was they weren't telling people how to do
• 57:39
  it. They were taking people along
• 57:41
  the journey with them, right? So you had this girl who was in
• 57:45
  college, she was learning about finance and she would build
• 57:48
  content going, this is what I learned today and I'm going to
• 57:50
  try it and let's download this app and I'm going to make an
• 57:53
  investment. So she was walking her, you
• 57:56
  know, center of influence or her peers through the journey for
• 58:01
  the first time. And that's what people are
• 58:02
  resonating with. I made a decision, I messed up,
• 58:06
  I lost money, right? I bought NVIDIA deep sea dropped
• 58:10
  the price. I got scared.
• 58:11
  I sold and Dang. And I shouldn't have sold
• 58:13
  because it rebounded the next week.
• 58:15
  I don't know if that's going to happen, but I'm just saying her
• 58:17
  audience is going, Oh my gosh, OK, I watched you do it.
• 58:21
  I saw the mistake you made. Now I'm going to try to do
• 58:23
  something different. That's what people connect with.
• 58:26
  But it's scary to show, show, show yourself going through
• 58:30
  something you don't know yet, right?
• 58:32
  This is a big thing with real estate agents.
• 58:33
  You sell real estate, right? So real estate agents, if you
• 58:36
  look at the people that do the best, they're not showing like
• 58:41
  highly, how would you say it? They're not showing, you know,
• 58:46
  perfect picture photos of the houses they're, you know,
• 58:50
  selling or they're not doing walkthroughs in these huge
• 58:54
  luxury homes. That's not the people that
• 58:56
  resonate, right? It's like the the girl in her
• 58:59
  car that's crying because she's done twenty open houses and
• 59:03
  hasn't sold a project and property and doesn't know what
• 59:05
  they're like. The audience is like, Oh my
• 59:07
  gosh, keep going, girl, you got this.
• 59:10
  And then you get a win and they're rooting for you now.
• 59:12
  And that's what builds the audience.
• 59:14
  It's funny because one of my most viewed videos was just a
• 59:18
  casual video of me being like, I lost 450,000 of escrows this
• 59:21
  week. And like it's not all sunshine
• 59:24
  and rainbows, you know? And that's what people resonate
• 59:27
  with. And I think it's so we started
• 59:30
  the conversation with that. You know, so many people just
• 59:33
  share their wins, but that's just like icing on the cake.
• 59:36
  It's the tip of the iceberg and there's all the mud underneath,
• 59:40
  but that's where the growth happens and that's where we
• 59:43
  become capable of whatever we're going to do.
• 59:45
  How you know if you're doing it right?
• 59:47
  When you finally do promote the win, your audience is like so
• 59:52
  well deserved. I've been watching you for two
• 59:54
  years. So proud of you for sticking
• 59:56
  with it. Like they feel vested as well,
• 59:58
  right? If you show in your audience
• 1:00:00
  feels like they won with you, that means you're doing it right
• 1:00:02
  because you're taking them along the journey.
• 1:00:05
  You're not just showing how good you are.
• 1:00:07
  You know, and so you've been the part of your strategy's been
• 1:00:10
  very authentic about the challenges of the journey that
• 1:00:14
  you've gone through. Yeah, to tell you the truth, I
• 1:00:15
  actually learned this one from my wife.
• 1:00:17
  So when I was skateboarding and you know, adding on to this, the
• 1:00:22
  thing I was talking to you about where I felt like I wasn't as
• 1:00:24
  good as everybody when, when I would mess up, right, when I
• 1:00:29
  would struggle, this part of my personality that was very
• 1:00:33
  comical would come out like I, I'm very entertaining to watch
• 1:00:37
  when I'm struggling. And so my wife was the one that
• 1:00:41
  challenged me. She was like, look, all people
• 1:00:43
  see is you landing tricks. Why don't you show them what it
• 1:00:46
  actually looks like for you to suck because it's so funny,
• 1:00:49
  right? And so I created this kind of
• 1:00:52
  webisode. It was, it was in like 2007.
• 1:00:55
  So this is before social media and I picked up a camera and I
• 1:00:58
  would basically film myself and my friend skating and I would
• 1:01:02
  basically show the outtakes of me struggling.
• 1:01:05
  And when that launch, it was called Mikey Days.
• 1:01:08
  It went nuts. Like my brand grew so
• 1:01:10
  significantly because the kids actually got to see their, you
• 1:01:15
  know, maybe potentially favorite pro struggling just like them.
• 1:01:18
  And so I've tried to take that kind of that path into what I do
• 1:01:22
  now, but it's not as easy today as it was when I was skating.
• 1:01:26
  I think because I'm managing so many investors dollars that like
• 1:01:34
  you got to be careful that you're not giving mixed
• 1:01:36
  messages. Like this thing's blowing up,
• 1:01:38
  like you have to maintain confidence and also show
• 1:01:41
  struggles. But that's that's actually been
• 1:01:45
  harder for me these days. Like how do I show something I'm
• 1:01:49
  struggling with and still uphold confidence from all of our
• 1:01:54
  investors to want to keep working with us?
• 1:01:56
  Right, because now it's not your, not just your mistake,
• 1:01:59
  it's affecting, you know, hundreds of people and hundreds
• 1:02:02
  of millions of dollars. That's right.
• 1:02:03
  Yeah. So what's been the most
• 1:02:05
  challenging thing? I know we're going to wrap up
• 1:02:07
  here in a couple minutes, but the most challenging thing with
• 1:02:10
  building a large fund has it. Yeah, because I'm doing it.
• 1:02:14
  I'm embarking on this journey. So selfishly, I want to know,
• 1:02:17
  you know, what should I be looking out for or anybody else
• 1:02:19
  be looking out for who are starting a fund, building a
• 1:02:22
  fund, My fund's Evergreen. It just means it's not going to
• 1:02:25
  shut down. But yeah, what what advice would
• 1:02:28
  you give to somebody like me who said to going down this?
• 1:02:32
  Role I have Evergreen funds or open-ended funds, not all of
• 1:02:36
  them. Those were so hard for me.
• 1:02:39
  Yes, they're the best to have because they're the the cleanest
• 1:02:42
  to operate, but they were always the hardest for me to raise
• 1:02:45
  money with. So we could talk about that at
• 1:02:49
  dinner. I would say 1, the hardest part
• 1:02:53
  about growing funds or you know, on the private equity side of
• 1:02:58
  real estate is they're not revenue generating businesses.
• 1:03:01
  They're well filled businesses. So you feel like you're, you
• 1:03:04
  know, your net worth is cranking and you're just cash poor.
• 1:03:07
  And so the growth of your company feels slow because
• 1:03:11
  you're raising money for projects.
• 1:03:14
  That project does give you an acquisition fee and it does give
• 1:03:16
  you a management fee, but it's not a lot.
• 1:03:18
  So that basically just keeps your lights on.
• 1:03:21
  And then as you hire, it just feels slow.
• 1:03:24
  And So what I would say is have a strategy that gives you
• 1:03:30
  liquidity events without having to deplete all your assets.
• 1:03:33
  So a strategy that we've been on that's been really helpful is
• 1:03:36
  build 3, sell one, right? I'm telling you that we never
• 1:03:38
  sell them, but when you sell it, you participate in your profit
• 1:03:43
  split or you carried interest, that's the money, right?
• 1:03:46
  And so if you're trying to grow, you just want to be mindful that
• 1:03:49
  those big capital infusions that's going to be very
• 1:03:53
  significant for you to hire out your team to get to the next
• 1:03:55
  level. Gosh, regulation is brutal here.
• 1:03:59
  Like, be very careful with With what?
• 1:04:01
  California can do no. Our our our industry.
• 1:04:04
  Is SEC yes, yeah. So what you can and can't say
• 1:04:08
  is, you know, when we talk about building with the end in mind,
• 1:04:11
  build this thing as if you are not only regulated by the SEC,
• 1:04:15
  but potentially regulated by FINRA.
• 1:04:17
  Like, you know, don't do anything today that's going to
• 1:04:19
  get you in trouble 10 years from now because you're small.
• 1:04:23
  Do the things that are going to be successful for you down the
• 1:04:25
  road. And then the second you can
• 1:04:28
  bring people on, bring them on. You know, for me, I'm not an
• 1:04:30
  operator. I'm, I'm a visionary.
• 1:04:32
  So my first hire is always the operator, It's the COO.
• 1:04:36
  So that's always kind of what I, I look for the CFO or the, the
• 1:04:40
  COO, then it's the CFO, then it's, you know, splintered out
• 1:04:44
  business development compliance or legal and all of that so that
• 1:04:48
  I can just focus on where we're headed.
• 1:04:50
  Thank you. Yeah, yeah, I'm visionary too.
• 1:04:53
  Yeah, the book traction for anybody who's a visionary.
• 1:04:55
  Read the book Trash. Do you run your fund on EOS?
• 1:04:57
  We do. Nice.
• 1:04:59
  We do OK, cool. My partner runs it.
• 1:05:01
  He's $500 million and fund and he runs on.
• 1:05:04
  EOS it's a great system. Yeah, it said.
• 1:05:06
  He said it was life changing. It's life changing for a
• 1:05:08
  business owner. Yeah, especially a visionary.
• 1:05:10
  Yeah, the visionary is life changing.
• 1:05:12
  For yeah, I'm rereading Traction right now, it's so good and just
• 1:05:16
  started working with an implementer so EOS and
• 1:05:19
  entrepreneur operating system. Best way to run a business
• 1:05:22
  under? What do they say under?
• 1:05:24
  Like I don't, I can't remember what it's under.
• 1:05:26
  Up to mid size, I forget what the government considers mid
• 1:05:29
  size business, but it's up to a pretty big business.
• 1:05:32
  But awesome. All right, cool.
• 1:05:33
  So we're going to wrap up here. What's next for you?
• 1:05:37
  Good. Question.
• 1:05:41
  OK, real quick business, we're launching a affordable housing
• 1:05:47
  fund and tapping into a government incentive that was
• 1:05:52
  created in California to build more of these.
• 1:05:54
  So that's going to be the 15 projects starting April.
• 1:05:59
  We have, you know, our financial goals.
• 1:06:00
  We, you know, want to double AUM in the next three years.
• 1:06:03
  I want to get to a billion 5 and, you know, potentially 6 in
• 1:06:06
  the next 10. I've got 4 beautiful kids, 3
• 1:06:10
  girls and a boy. And so that's a big goal.
• 1:06:12
  I want my girls to be, you know, phenomenal women and, you know,
• 1:06:15
  eventually moms. And I want my son to be a great,
• 1:06:18
  you know, father and and man. And so, you know, teaching them
• 1:06:22
  how to do it. That's probably the hardest
• 1:06:24
  thing I do. And then, you know, making sure
• 1:06:26
  I have a great relationship with my wife and that we're thriving
• 1:06:29
  together. And then, you know, if I become
• 1:06:31
  mayor next year, I'll have to navigate all of that, you know,
• 1:06:34
  for 26. And then and then and then.
• 1:06:37
  And then and then. That's right.
• 1:06:38
  The list is always going. That's right, but it's fun.
• 1:06:41
  Super fun 100%. And then I I'll finish with if
• 1:06:45
  you could give any piece of advice to your 18 year old self,
• 1:06:47
  what would it be? OK, forgive me 'cause this is
• 1:06:51
  going to be very specific to my personality type, but my
• 1:06:56
  personality type is, and even to go more specific, my love
• 1:06:59
  language is words of affirmation, right?
• 1:07:01
  You tell me I'm doing a good job.
• 1:07:02
  That's all I need to hear. I feel good, right?
• 1:07:04
  And so the risk if you have that type of personality is you start
• 1:07:08
  trying to be what you think the person in front of you wants to
• 1:07:11
  see. And that almost killed my joy
• 1:07:16
  because I was kind of everyone, everything to everyone.
• 1:07:20
  And I had to really get comfortable with who I was and
• 1:07:23
  the fact the fact that if I was being myself, they're going to
• 1:07:26
  be people that didn't like me. And I'd be OK with that.
• 1:07:29
  Once I learned that, I became so much happier.
• 1:07:31
  But I didn't learn that. So I was probably 2627.
• 1:07:35
  If I could have picked that up at 18, I would have been much
• 1:07:38
  more happier. I would had a larger skate
• 1:07:39
  career and I would had a larger business faster.
• 1:07:42
  Love it, be your authentic self. Just be yourself and let the
• 1:07:46
  chips fall where they fall. Thanks for being.
• 1:07:48
  Here, Yeah. Thanks for having me.