E59: Investing in Passion with Miles Nadal

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This podcast is brought to you by Gensler Wealth. The information discussed today is meant to be general in nature and not tailored to your specific investing circumstances. This means that you should talk to your regular Gensler wealth advisor or your own advisor before acting on any information we discuss today. Nothing in this podcast is intended to be a solicitation and past performance does not guarantee future returns. If you are looking for get rich quick advice, this is the wrong podcast for you. As our guest will explain, the road to great wealth is great patience. Today on the Unlimited podcast we speak with Miles Nadal, Chairman and CEO of Peerage Capital. We discussed launching his first business at age 12 to how he's going to leave a lasting legacy, all because he dared to dream. Let's go. Well, welcome everybody to another episode of the Unlimited podcast. We have a great guest with us today, someone I've been following on LinkedIn and other social media and a number of his endeavors and activities and really excited to have a discussion with Miles Nadal. Let me give you a little bit of color on Miles and then we'll ask him to do the same because my bios are always a little bit formal and then we get the real story here. But Miles is a Canadian born entrepreneur, philanthropist and collector whose journey from modest beginnings in Toronto to founding Peerage Capital, a North American private investment firm, is nothing short of remarkable. Just some of Peerage's current businesses include Sotheby's Canada, Century 21, Chestnut Park, Echelon wealth and Arboro, which we're going to talk about in detail, I hope. Beyond business, he's known for his passion driven approach to life, exemplified by his renowned Dare to Dream collection of rare cars and sneakers which he recently auctioned off for charity. His philanthropic endeavors have left lasting impacts on institutions too numerous to name in this short bio, but we'll discuss some today. And Miles was named a Top 40 under 40 in Canada and won Ernst & Young's Entrepreneur of the Year award, also among many others too numerous to list. In my research on Miles, a consistent theme repeated over and over invest in passion, which clearly Miles applies to everything he does and I can't wait to hear hear a little bit about that philosophy. So Miles, thank you so much for joining us today.

It's a pleasure and a privilege to be here, Brian, and I've heard wonderful things about you and I've had the privilege of watching a number of your interviews and they're terrific and I was grateful for the opportunity to participate with you today.

Well, thank you very, very kind words. I will Admit your background here. I mean, I love the Beatles, which I have, but your background is way cooler than mine. And I have seen. I did a private tour of your Dare to Dream collection and I can see some of the, you know, figurines and cars and whatnot back there that you had the, it looks like you have the toy version or not toy, but and the real version, which is pretty unbelievable, I must say. So we can talk about that too.

You're very thoughtful. Thank you.

So maybe, you know, I'm getting to know you full disclosure to my audience here. I haven't known Miles for decades or anything like that. So just getting to know Miles would love if you can give us and me a little bit of background and color, like, you know, go back to the beginning. What was your upbringing like in Toronto? You know, how did give us, give us the Kohl's notes of how you got to where you are and then we'll, we'll dive deeper.

Well, you know, I, I have your typical entrepreneurial story. I borrowed $500 from my Visa card, but it was reverse family enterprise. The first two people I hired were my errands. We grew up in 900 square feet, two bedroom, one bathroom apartment. I think my parents combined income was about 10 grand in its best year. And as the expression goes, it's advantageous to being disadvantaged and it's disadvantageous to being advantaged. So I had the advantage of coming from very, very humble, modest beginnings. My mother was a legal secretary, my father was a retail clothing salesman. And I started my business full time in 1980 in between third and fourth year at business school. And I had to justify to my parents why I wouldn't graduate. And I said the consolation prize was I was going to give them a better job than they had themselves. It was, you know, it was a privilege to have my parents work with me.

What was the business?

I took pictures of kids at summer camp. I'm going to camp White Pine 55 years ago when I was 12. And then that was my first business. I took pictures of kids at summer camp and sports teams and that became a full time occupation. I started a company called Action Photographics when I was 21 and well, actually I started when I was 16, went full time when I was 21. And you know, there's a funny story my, the JCC is named after me because I got subsidized to go to summer camp there when I was 8 years old. And at the grand opening when they redid the JCC at Spadine and Bloor in Toronto. Someone came up to my mother and said, Ms. Dedal, you should be so proud of your son Miles. Look what he's done for the community. And look what, you know, he's been a real success in business. But that depended on the day. I could have been broke one day and okay the next day. And she said, yes, but you should see his brother. He's a doctor. So my entire life, my brother, My brother was the doctor and I was a guy who made a few bucks.

My mother says the same thing to me, too, which is, you know, it runs in the. In the bloods, I guess.

So I, you know, I started in photography and then I branched out into marketing services. We went. I had this idea to go public to buy other marketing and advertising service businesses. And we went public on Friday, October 16 of 87, the day before Black Monday. We got listed in the middle of meltdown on Friday, October 23 of 87, the first day in the history of the Toronto Stock Exchange that they closed early. So, as Friedrich Nietzsche said, that which does not kill me makes me stronger. So, you know, we, we've been through more than our fair share of adversity, but thank goodness we've been able to, as I say, fail forward. And we, every business we went into at some point in time went through a lot of adversity. But, you know, Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald's, said persistence and determination alone is omnipotent. So in my particular case, I had no choice but to continue to persist through whatever the circumstances were because otherwise myself and my family would have all been on the street, and that was not a palatable outcome. And thank goodness, through my association with great people, great talent, pretty good resourcefulness on our part, and my part, and good fortune from the Lord, I was able to continue to move forward and create prosperity for my family and communities that we are fortunate enough to try and support.

Amazing. Okay, good. That's a great summary. Just going all the way back to the camp photographs. You're clearly a serial entrepreneur and founder and business owner. At age 12, you said, how did you figure out there was an opportunity? It seems like this is now a theme that you've done for all these decades. But what. How did you see that opportunity at 12 years old and get rolling?

So there was a great anecdote in the Globe and Mail that I use on an ongoing basis. It says, the young aspiring business student meets the successful businessman and he asked him, how did you become so successful? The older gentleman looks at Him. And he said, well, I jump at my opportunity. And the young gentleman says, yes, but Mr. Gensler, there's so many opportunities in the world. And Brian says, yes, but I, you know, the ones I figure out are, I just keep jumping and I figure out over time which ones are the ones that are worthy.

Right.

Nobody knows. People have an idea, they have an instinct, they have a gut feel. But you know, you've got move and pivot and try and fail and move forward, et cetera. And that's been the story of my life for 45 and a half years. Full time in business, you know, you, you identify opportunity. But I've always believed that wealth is created by being bold, early and right. But bold and early doesn't make up for being wrong. And so you, you know, you just gotta do your best to try and make sure that you are on the right path and hopefully that you have the resources to be able to, you know, see yourself through. Because at the end of the day a lot of times it's just the ability to just persist through adversity and have the capital to be able to see yourself through to the other side.

Okay, got it. So you told a little bit of your story from the photographs to launching a number of companies, eventually taking a company public after October of 87. That was MDC, I guess that's correct. And so just describe that business again and what were you doing there and how do you get it from, from start to be a public company? You know, it's a pretty big leap.

So we had this idea that the advertising and marketing services industry globally was a very large industry, highly fragmented, that if we could consolidate the industry by finding entrepreneurial firms that we could utilize this concept that I had called the perpetual partnership where we would buy 51 to 80%, management would keep the residual 20 to 49%. But we would give them the capital to grow and to pursue their entrepreneurial ambitions and vision that we could build this substantial enterprise. So I should explain to you that we, when we went public, we had actually done a reverse takeover of a public mining shell in December 19 of 86. We had the sum total of $2.3 million of revenue and $186,000 of pre tax profits. But I was able to raise a million and a half dollars at the time through 25 well heeled investors who just thought this guy is Miles Nadal, is a determined guy, he's a persistent guy, seems to have the gift of gab, and I think he'll be successful. But the Reality is we were tiny, tiny, tiny in the beginning. And we just continued to grow because the one thing I focused on was acquiring, raising money, raising capital. And so we got to after 35 years. So in 2015, we had approximately $2.1 billion of enterprise value, about a billion 5 of equity value. And I owned about 22% of the company before I retired. And so we just kept growing on an ongoing basis. And you know, as I said Friedrich Nietzsche said, that which not kill me makes me stronger. And we just kept trying to find opportunities. But our big breakthrough came, I guess, in 2001. We acquired an interest in what became the most talked about, written about, impactful advertising agency in the world called Crisp and Porter and Bugoski. And it grew 30 fold as part of MDC Partners. And that was our first foray into digital and interactive marketing, which was very early. Think about that. That was 24 years ago. And people couldn't spell interactive or digital marketing. And so we were at the forefront. We made other acquisitions in that area and we were lucky to have caught a trend that was extremely fruitful and was the key to our, you know, our dramatic success.

And is that where this, these and I'll talk to you probably about this more, I imagine, but this whole partnership model and sort of your key tenants of partnership, is that where all this grew and evolved from or was created along the way?

Yes. So David O. Lupy said, if you want to build a team of giants, surround yourself with people that are better than you and give them the incentive and motivation to continue their success. So it became clear to me that in order to have alignment, you had to have talent partners that were both financially and emotionally aligned with you. And that's why this perpetual partnership idea came about. Because I realized that it was not only important to have founders that were aligned emotionally and financially, but the next generation and the next generation. And that was the genesis of our idea of this perpetual partnership and the alignment of talent with ownership.

Okay, and it sounds, and we'll talk about Peerage in a minute, but it sounds like that's sort of carried on into Peerage and grown into a whole bunch of different businesses as well, with all you can.

The thing that I realized was that entrepreneurial businesses whose principal asset goes up and down the elevator every day, it's very hard to institutionalize them without alignment, both emotionally and financially, because most people who are founders of these businesses used to work for a big company and they decided they didn't like the culture and they didn't like the lack of empowerment. And they wanted to be aligned, that if they could create value, they wanted to be rewarded in proportion to the value that they created. That's why we believe that equity ownership was so critical and it's been a tenant, as you say, of all of our businesses over the last 45 years.

Okay, so. So maybe we should switch, switch gears then. Not talk about cars, even though I said gears. But we'll get to that later. Talk about Peerage then. So how long has Peerage been around? And what is Peerage? I already mentioned at the beginning a whole bunch of well known brands, companies that you own. Maybe give us the color on that and then we'll dive deeper.

So I had started a family office kind of idea about 20 years ago. But 10 years ago, when I retired from MDC, I had a substantial amount of capital and I had a team of people like Trevor Monder and other people who work with me at MDC who'd been with me, helping me with my family office. And we had this idea to create, you know, F. Scott Fitzgerald said, there's no second acts in American lives. I did not believe that. And obviously we've learned, you know, subsequently with Elon Musk and Steve Jobs and so many other entrepreneurs that there is many more acts in American lives if you have the desire and will and ability. And so the idea of peerage is the British nomenclature system. And so we came up with that name. I mean, I had never had to come up with a new business plan or a new name or etc. In 35 years. So I was starting de novo. And the idea was, okay, where is their opportunity? So we'd already had a modest presence in the real estate brokerage and real estate service business because we owned Baker Real Estate and we owned Chestnut park, two well known brands in the condo marketing business and in resale of housing. Yeah, and we thought that there was a lot of similarities to the advertising and marketing service business, where it was large industry, highly fragmented. And from that we grew that. And then in 2019, we started to become more acquisitive in the U.S. today, we sell about $60 billion of residential real estate, but 80% of that is in America. Now, as you said, we have, we're the largest operator of Sotheby's International Realty globally. We represent about 30% of the brand's business. We sell 50% of all condos in Toronto that are not sold by the developer themselves. And we got about 8,000 agents across North America and we are virtually across the country, both in Canada and the Us, we then got into Self Storage because I had met a number of very successful real estate developers. And when I met with them, trying to find out how they were so successful, it became clear to me that we couldn't replicate what they were doing. We couldn't be in purpose built rental or condominium development, we couldn't build be in shopping centers or land development or apartments. And someone said, what about Self Storage? And I said, well I know a little bit about it because I have two daughters, two stepdaughters, a wife and an ex wife. We have a number of units. They said no, it's an investment class. And so as we did the homework, we figured out that the most successful REIT in the world was a company called Public Storage, the guys with the orange doors. And what became apparent was per capita consumption of Self Storage in Canada was about one and a half square feet, but in the United States it was nine square feet. So it was six times bigger in the United States and the costs were a little bit less in Canada and the revenue per square foot was a little bit more. So I said this sounds like a great opportunity, except we had no experience, no expertise, no knowledge, no track record, never built anything, never rented anything, never leased anything, never zoned anything. But other than that, we were well positioned to succeed. Fast forward 10 years later, we've got 30 shop self storage facilities under management, ownership and development. And it's been a remarkable success for us and we continue to grow. Although we're monetizing a few of the sites, our goal is to add probably five new sites a year for the next 10 years. And so, you know, we'll hopefully have 30 to 50 sites over the next 10 years. And that's been a focus of ours. We are, excuse me, in the asset management business. We have about 12 or 13 billion of third party money. 70% of that is in Canada and about 30% of that is in the US and we're in the land assembly business where we are a partner in a firm called BV Partners where we have about five and a half million square feet under management, sorry, under various phases of development. And I guess the last thing is we're a very big player in the new. Sorry. We are the principal sponsor of a firm called Arboro which is co ownership of housing in Canada business. So as I articulated, I grew up from the most humble of beginnings and we never owned a home and it bothered me. And we never owned a home because we never had the down payment. And I thought if I was ever fortunate Enough to be successful. I'd like to help Canadians buy their first home because I had a chip on my shoulder that, you know, I grew up in a reasonably affluent neighborhood, but we were renting in an apartment. And so about three and a half years ago, Trevor Mondor, our CEO, has been with me for going on 26 years, came to me and said, I have this thing that I think will be your legacy. He said, you're going to help 10,000 Canadians create $10 billion of equity value through purchasing their first home. So in simple arithmetic, it costs about a million dollars to buy a condo or a home in and around Ontario. Specifically in the GTA, you can get $800,000 in a mortgage from a traditional lender and you need $200,000 of equity. There are 2.7 million Canadians who want to buy their first home that are currently renting. They on average have about $50,000 saved up. So we are the provider of the additional capital required. In our particular case, we've held 250 families buy their first home in the last three years. Our goal is we're going to raise $500 million of additional capital to try and help 4 to 5,000 Canadians buy additional their first home. And the idea was we on average right now own about 60% of these homes because we put up 60% of the capital, which is the reverse of our co ownership partners putting up 40%. And we are, I've contributed this to our charitable initiative as a family. We've raised $50 million, I put up $25 million of my family's capital myself to get it off the ground. And now that we have momentum, we're raising institutional and financial sponsor equity to be able to get to that 10,000 homes. And we believe that one day we will have 50 to 100,000 Canadians buy their first home long after I'm gone. And so the idea is that when it's monetized, where 95% of all these homes gets sold or refinanced in the first seven to 10 years, we get our capital and what we will do as a family and peerage, we will reinvest back into helping more Canadians buy their first home. So when people say there's a housing crisis, I don't have a solution for supply, I don't have a solution for the 30% taxation that governments take. What we do have a solution for is helping Canadians transition from being renters to first time homeowners in a solution that if you don't have the bank of mom and dad arboro is the viable solution that helps Canadians get in the game of creating after tax, equity value on their first home.

Yeah, I've been very familiar with Arboro. I've talked to your colleague Jay about it a bit, but just the whole home equity, shared equity ownership or whatever the correct phrase is. I mean, I think this is absolutely spectacular way for folks who, who don't have that down payment to, to get into the housing market. What I'm completely shocked and surprised about is why this is not. And you've been, as you said, you've done this for three plus years now. Why is this not front page of every newspaper in at least Toronto or the country every single day? Because all we hear on the media is there's no way for anyone, you know, younger folks to buy a home. What's I, you know, to me, it's almost a little bit like, you know, you know, you never want to talk about privatizing health care because that's like, you know, blasphemy here in Canada. Is it something like you don't want to talk about people have, you know, a company like yours having equity in someone's home because you can never share the equity in your. Anyways, I'm just trying to figure out why this is not getting much more coverage and why you don't have. Maybe you do. You can tell us. People literally banging down your door to sign up for this product. I'm just confused, frankly.

It's a very good question. It's a very good question. First of all, nobody wanted to talk about it until it was proven. So at the beginning it was a concept, but now we have 250 families who bought homes. So it's no longer a concept, it's a viable business.

Yeah.

The second thing is we were trying to moderate both the accelerator and the brake. There are 2,600 agents and mortgage brokers and real estate agents that are referring opportunities. There's been over 3,000 applications, so there is a fair bit of knowledge. But we also didn't want it to be on the front page of every newspaper because we didn't have the equity capital to keep up with dramatic increases in demand. But now that we are raising all this capital, you will see a lot more profile. Alex, our chief Product officer, she was just on BNN with John Ehrlichman talking about this. And so we are raising the profile through social media, through search optimization, through pr, and it is getting more attention, but we have to make sure that we manage the expectation of being able to fulfill demand. As demand grows significantly with additional equity, the mortgage part is easy. The banks and other mortgage providers are very interested and excited to continue to provide mortgage financing to these people that qualify. And what they didn't have, they qualified for the mortgage, but they didn't qualify to have the down payment of 20% necessary or the solution that is, you know, the substitute for the bank of mom and dad. So I think you're going to hear a lot more about it. And now that the government agencies are very interested in institutions and pension funds are very interested to support it, as we get more and more scale, I think you're going to hear more about it. But you're right, it's a fantastic solution for those people who are fortunate enough to have good income but not fortunate enough to have this sufficient down payment to make the purchase of their first home.

Yeah, good. Well, look, I hope it does help put many, many thousands of families. I think it's a great idea. It's very challenging obviously to buy a house these days, as they say. I want to move along from Peerage in a minute, but because this sort of principle, this partnership model is so core to everything you're doing. I read a little bit about your 12 principles of partnership. I don't think we should go through 12 or we'll be here for a while, but just some lessons for our listeners. It sounds like your expertise, one of your many expertise. Expertise is, I don't know how you say that is, is finding the right partners and bringing them into the fold and do you know, building your business through partnership. What's the core principle or principles of how are you how you find the right partner and make it work?

Well, so look, I think it's the same principle but how do you choose a life partner? How do you choose the best friend? You know, it's cultural fitting, chemistry are to me more important than even competency. So you know, just quickly partner only with people that you like, admire, respect and trust. Partner only with people you're prepared to have breakfast, lunch or dinner with a second time. Partner only with people that you're prepared to have a long weekend in a small cabin, small boat, small ranch or small rv. Partner only with people that you trust enough to make the executor of your estate. Partner only with people that have large craniums, big candle power and good judgment. Partner only with people that have the human compassion gene. If you don't want to give time, talent or treasure to the benefit of others, you're usually selfish. Partner only people that are kind to animals. If you're mean to your dog, you're a bad guy, in my opinion. Partner. Partner only with people that have the same passion, dedication and willingness to sacrifice for the common mission. Partner only with people that understand arithmetic. If you can't count, you have no business to be in business and you can't be time bound and measurable objectives. Partner on with people that understand God gave you two ears and one mouth in proportion and they use them accordingly. I said, my children, I've never learned anything by talking, just by listening. Partner only with people that understand who luck that a lot of our success in life has nothing to do with our determination, our commitment, our intelligence and abilities, but just our good fortune of the people we meet along the journey of life. I partner only with people that are good listeners. Because at the end of the day, in order to have successful partnerships, you've got to be able to be sensitive and empathetic to your partners as people go through the. The vagaries of ups and downs in business and in life. So you can't do a good deal with a bad guy. Okay, first thing is there is no basis by which you should go into business with people that don't fundamentally follow those kinds of principles. And at the end of the day, you've got to say to yourself, is this somebody that I can grow old with and that you know will be there for me in time of need and I'll be there in time of need for them. I think the most important thing though is follow your gun. I think people are far too focused on things like how intelligent they are, how accomplished they are, et cetera. But most partnerships fall apart for cultural fit and chemistry reasons, not for competency.

Yeah, wow, okay, that's a good run through. I didn't count on my fingers to see if you did say 12, but I trust you because you seem to know that like off the back of your hand or whatever, like whatever that phrase is.

If you're watching for 12. It was close.

Yeah. Oh, for sure. Okay, so let's, let's have some fun, I guess, or talk about some fun stuff. Not that we haven't been talking about fun stuff, but this Dare to dream collection that you built, I don't know if many folks know what we're talking about or what it is. A huge collection of rare and to me, unbelievably exciting rare cars, sneakers, and a whole bunch of other stuff. As I said, I. I did have the privilege of getting a nice tour and it was, you know, second to none, frankly, of, of a collection that I've seen. So where and how did that start? What was that all about? And was there maybe just to give our listeners a sense of one or two or three pieces there that were pretty unique that people would get, give them a flavor of what we're talking about here.

So where did the name Dare to Dream come from? In 1996, I bought a firm called Davis and Henderson. They made checks.

Yeah.

And there were three firms in the industry. And I said we should be the single source solution for check providing in Canada. Dear to Dream. And that's. And, and we went from three providers to one, and we made almost a billion dollars over a six year period. The idea of the dear. So everything became Dare to Dream, the name of the collection became Dare to Dream, My Airplane, you know, et cetera. So the idea was we never owned a car growing up. I was the first person in the family to own a new car. And so I started collecting cars. And as my wife would tell you for miles, done is never done until it's overdone. So went from zero to 175 cars, 75 motorcycles. And then one day I was sitting in my cottage and I read that Sotheby's was auctioning off something called the ultimate sneaker collection, which was 100 of the rarest sneakers ever in the world, including the Bill Bowerman waffle sneaker, which was. Bill Bowerman was the coach of the Oregon State track team. And he and his wife created a track shoe with a waffle iron in their kitchen. And so we bought that, the entire collection. And then I hired a gentleman named Shawn Goh and I said, your job is to find the most iconic sneakers in the world, anywhere in the world. And we, we assembled about a thousand pair of sneakers, most of which were Air Jordans. The two. The most important sneaker was during COVID There was a documentary on Michael Jordan called the Last Dance. And they auctioned off in his 1984 rookie season, Air Jordan 1 Chicago basketball shoes. And we bought that for, I don't know, half a million dollars. And so that became, you know, the basis of building this collection. And then when I turned 65, I realized that a lot of my labors of love and collecting became laborers of labor. And I thought that the capital could be repurposed better to benefit those less fortunate. So we sold the Stinker collection for a foundation. And the rest of the. I think I kept 100 pair of sneakers. And I think I've got about 25 cars and the Rest of it gone to our foundation, our family office. Because, you know, a hundred years from now, no one will ever remember the car you drove, the house you lived in, and for that matter, how much money you had in your bank account. But the world may be a different place if you've made a difference in the life of a young person. That was a Forest Witchcraft quote and it's had a profound impact on my view of the world and my motivation to try and make a difference. Dynastically amazing.

Well, good. Great way to get, hopefully exponential value from a great collection that could be potentially priceless. What you've done as part of that.

Thank you.

But Bear is asking if this, if you finish collecting the cars and the sneakers, is there the next passion collection pack passion that you might have your eye on or are you done with collecting and let's, let's move on here.

I always have something that's interesting to me, whether it's watches or fashion or leather goods or whatever, but nothing like that. I think my passion now is transition from, you know, capital formation and collecting to more contributing to the world. You know, to me, you know, I'm 67 years of age. I think I hopefully I don't think I'll live to 120. I wish I would, but I don't think I will.

Yeah.

So if I've got 20 odd years left or 25 years left or whatever, how do I make the last, you know, 25% of my life or 30% of my life, you know, impactful and meaningful and I'm at a beneficial stage of my life where there's not much materially that will be either emotionally gratifying or, you know, practical, incremental practicality for me. So building the foundation is really critical to me. I, I'm very excited about our co ownership initiative because I think it would be something that I would be proud to be associated with besides the jcc, besides the Mount Sinai Heart center, besides a number of other initiatives that my family and I are privileged to support. But this is one which I'm very excited because I think it's a combination of entrepreneurship and philanthropy. It's using the ability to identify opportunity and capitalize on it and using sort of our capital, both human capital and financial capital, to create something that may not necessarily happen. And so we're very proud about doing that. You know, at this stage of my life, what's really motivating to me is meeting interesting people who do interesting things in interesting places. So I try to meet, you know, Three to six people a day when I'm around and whether it's for coffee or breakfast or lunch or drink or dinner and just trying to understand, you know, the motivations of people because, you know, some people watch Netflix. I tried to live, you know, I meet the. I learned through meeting fascinating people and asking interesting questions. And it's interesting how you can get people to talk for an hour and a half to two and a half hours about themselves, their values, their knowledge, their information, their industry insights, et cetera. And so I think I learned a lot. I've got 25,358 contacts as of this morning in my phone. So I, I'm very blessed to know remarkable people and I think it's what keeps me youthful is the idea of being in the perpetual pursuit of knowledge and information and relationships.

Yeah, well, I, I've definitely seen some pictures of you with some very well known folks across all aspects of sort of world expertise, etc, Michael Milken, Jay Leno, Bill Gates, Izzy Sharp, Brunello Cuccinelli, Ray Dalio. So I believe you when you say your goal is to meet and spend time with and learn from great people. Maybe, you know, doesn't have to be from those, any of the folks I just named, but any. It sounds like you're trying to learn from, from all of these greats of the world. Any big lessons, takeaways? Just an interesting story from any recent or otherwise meeting.

Well, look, you know, success, entrepreneurial success is a journey, not a destination. And most people's entrepreneurial successes were accomplished over long periods of time. There's a great story about Elon Musk being interviewed in 2009 by Scott Pelley for 60 Minutes. And he said, Elon, you had $30 million left and you had to fund SpaceX and Tesla. You were facing great adversity. Did you ever think of quitting? He said, no, I'd have to be dead or incapacitated. Most entrepreneurs have gone through a lot of adversity, but they have persisted through and they never lost sight of where they came from. I think that's really important. I think humility is the most important attribute because no matter who you are, no matter how successful you are, everybody is one move away from oblivion. Brunello Cucinelli has a remarkable philosophy. First of all, he gives 10% of all of his profits corporately to charity. He feeds all of his employees at lunch for an hour and a half. They're not allowed to work overtime. And he cares about the idea of being kind and generous and Gracious and grateful to everyone that he interacts with. And he doesn't let the almighty dollar rule his value system. Look, Izzy Sharpe is a remarkable person. I've had the privilege of knowing him for, I don't know, 45 years. And, you know, he's got an incredible global success story from humble Canadian roots in 1967, and he started from nothing. And he's built a globally recognized luxury brand. He also happens to be the finest, kindest, most generous, thoughtful, remarkably well preserved father, husband, grandfather, community leader, philanthropist, and business builder. And so to me, I think when you meet people like that or any of these other people, Mike Milken, I mean, you know, I just was. I'm a founder of the Milken center for Advancing the American Dream. Because I've known Mike for 38 years and you know, he talks about the American dream, but it's really, we've discussed, it's the universal dream of being able to provide for your family and to those less fortunate, a better standard of living and to be able to fulfill their ambitions in life. I was in Washington and he's put up a billion dollars to celebrate universal dream of entrepreneurial success around the world. So I think one of the things that I have learned is that beyond creating a foundation to support your family and God willing generations of your family, giving back to communities to help those less fortunate is something that is very fulfilling to your soul. And people think, well, you're fulfilling an obligation. I say, well, it is an obligation, but as they say in the Bible, to those who much is given, much is expected. I think people who are generous and I feel this way do it selfishly because it feels so good to help those less fortunate. Why wouldn't you want to at this stage of your life? What could be more valuable and more enjoyable, more emotionally and intellectually and spiritual rewarding than to help those people who don't have the opportunity you've had and to see them hopefully pay it forward. And that's what people say, what can I do to repay you? I say, pay it forward. Find somebody else that you can help. But if you do, the world will be a better place if we do this in many permutations, accommodations.

Yeah, that's a good philosophy. Speaking of the world, maybe let's focus a little bit on what's going on in the world these days. In Canada, of course, you know, you have an interesting vantage point as a multiple business owner and the career that you've had. Just as a broad question, any comments on what's currently happening with, you know, the U.S. tRUMP tariffs and you know, how you have to think about running. I mean, you're, you're operating in Canada and the U.S. how do you think about running your businesses these days with what's going on, you know, Canada and US and then maybe just a little bit about Canada and what we're doing over here or not doing or what should we be doing? Because we feel, I feel, I think a little bit behind, behind here relative to all the forces that are around us.

So I think, you know, Warren Buffett is somebody I have followed since 1987. Okay.

Yeah.

When Warren. In 1990, Warren Buffett was 65 years old. In 2015, he was 90. His net worth grew tenfold, not 10% tenfold. In that 25 year period.

Yeah.

During that period of time, Berkshire Hathaway stock went down 53% or more three times. So the question you have to ask yourself is, will any of this be relevant 25 years from now? And I will say to you, you know, like the American economy, it's been through recessions, depressions, you know, terrorist attacks, all kinds of other problems, and it still continues to grow. I believe that in North America we will come to a trade agreement. I believe that Canada is potentially opportune to experience. The next 10 or 15 years could be the best in the company's history, depending on Mr. Kearney and the leadership. But we have a uniqueness of rich in natural resources and water and land. We've got 42 million people that are reasonably productive but could be more productive. And so we have the foundation to have a better growth in GDP prospectively than we've had retrospectively.

Yeah.

I still believe that America's innovation is remarkable. And I would never bet against the US Economy. So you got to ask yourself, nobody knows what's going to happen next week, next month, next year, three years from now. You have to say, where do I want to deploy capital, in what way? That I think over the next five to 25 years we will be successful. I believe in real estate. I think it has been successful for hundreds of years and it will be successful in the future. As my partner and friend Steve Pust always said, you just gotta be able to live long enough sometimes. And modest leverage is critical in that regard. I believe in terms of investing. I have six criteria for investing. What's the rate of return? Once the risk adjusted rate of return, once the liquidity adjusted rate of return. In other words, am I getting paid a illiquidity premium doesn't mean that if it's illiquid, it's bad, it's just, am I getting paid a premium now? What's the priority? Adjusted rate of return? I used to think I had unlimited time and unlimited money. I never had and I don't have today either unlimited time or unlimited money. And the last two, the David Letterman last two. What is the time invested, rate of return? So if you said to me I've got this great opportunity, I'd say, Brian, if it requires a lot of time from either me or my colleagues, I'm not interested in the last one, the most important. What's the aggravation? Adjusted rate of return. And that's really critical. So look, during that I sort of. When Buffett's net worth went up tenfold from the time of 65 to 90, his rate of return was 9.6%. Terrific, but not like astronomical. So I started to do some homework and I figured out that The S&P 500 will give you about that over the last 10, 20, 30, 50, 100 years. So yes, there are other things to do. But I still think if 85% of all managers never beat the index index, investing is a low cost way to get a very good risk adjusted reward over a long period of time. Not for two years. I'm talking if you have a 10, 15, 20, 25 year horizon, it should be part of your strategy in my opinion.

Yeah, I agree.

Other alternative. I like other alternatives. I like, you know, I like infrastructure, I like AI, I like electricity, I like alternative debt solutions. But I still think the vast majority for most people throwing darts and picking stocks is a mugs game.

Speaking of AI, so we have a little bit of a theme we're doing throughout the summer here is just focusing on AI a little bit, which may be obvious given the huge changes and advancements and opportunity that AI is creating. What's your thoughts? How do you touch AI either personally or in your business? What do you think in terms of what the world looks like in the next number of years as a result? Any insight from your vantage point?

Look, if I was that smart, I'd be Ray Dalio. And I'm not. I'm not Michael Dell, you know, I'm not Tim Cook, I'm not Elon Musk. I think AI from all the people I talk to will be the greatest revolution in value creation and transformation of human activity, mostly for the good, somewhat to the bad, maybe in the last century. And I think the applications are just being seen. If you look at Nvidia and what was it 10 or 15 years ago maybe it had a market cap of I don't know, 2 or 300 million and now it's 4 trillion. It's pretty remarkable what's transpired. So I think it's going to transform labor. You know, you saw Goldman Sachs thinks that 95% of all the activities of insurance can be done by AI. You know, I think it's going to transform a lot of industries and it's going to increase productivity in a significant way which will be part of the drivers of the economy in those countries where AI is adopted. And I think we haven't seen anything yet. I think we're just in the first inning of a 980 ball game in that regard. But that's sort of my, just my point of view. I, I wouldn't tell you that I'm the most informed guy, but I do talk to a lot of people. But I see it as a, a fantastic opportunity for a lot of industries and you know, it will also disrupt a lot of industries. So you know, you got to know where it's, you have to have an instinct and a point of view about where it's going to have positive influence and where it's going to have disruptive influence.

Yeah, I agree with all those comments. Okay, as we get to the end here, always like to ask, you know, some folks like, like yourself with, with a humongous history of experience, you know, if you had to look back and maybe you've covered a little bit of this and maybe a lot of this throughout the discussion, but if you had to look back and had to give, you know, one or two key pieces of advice to aspiring entrepreneurs, leaders, etc, any, any summary and you know, you know, snippets, 30 seconds a minute of like, you know, what's the best, the biggest piece of advice you would give. What was biggest piece of ice you'd give to yourself 45 years ago maybe.

So the biggest mistake that I ever made was I didn't look after myself physically or emotionally. I weighed 90 pounds more than I do now in 2017. I had high blood pressure, high cholesterol, hypertension, diabetes and sleep apnea. Other than that, I was healthy. My doctor told me when I was 60 I wouldn't leave Blitz to see my 65th birthday. I figured out that affluent and debt was a bad combination. I should never have allowed myself to get to that position. When you're growing, no matter who you are, no matter what your priorities are, whatever your responsibilities are in business, you should never allow yourself to get out of control from a health and well being perspective, you should make sure that you, you know, keep your weight in check, your physiology in check, that you exercise, that you take care of your family, et cetera. That's the single most important life lesson that I have learned. And I regretted that I allowed myself to go, you know, get out of that. So out of, out of, you know, out of shape in every way, shape or form. And I'm lucky that God gave me the wherewithal to bounce back because you wouldn't have bet that I would have been able to correct my physiology based upon what I experienced. The second thing is everybody, especially younger generations are always in a hurry. But great wealth is created over long periods of time. Wealth is created as a marathon, not a sprint. And everybody wants to invest in crypto because it's going to go to 400,000 tomorrow. And everybody wanted to be in the cannabis business because it was a licensed print money tomorrow. But you know, what Buckvitt said was, you know, the most successful investors, they don't have the highest iq, they just have the temperament to be patient. You know, Howard Marks from Oaktree had a great expression. Love Howard Marks and I think he's brilliant. He said, wealth is not created in the buying, it's not created in the selling, it's created in the waiting. All are not have the temperament and patience to wait. They want to see everything happen tomorrow, but that's not the way life works. And you know, the critical thing is, is to have the patience and have the temperament to see things come to fruition. You know, when, when was the S&P 500 down? 15 or 20% like this year through a year ago, like within the last 12 months, right?

Yeah, in April it was for sure.

Okay, so. And now it's back hitting all type high. So, so if, if people try to time things, that's amongst game in my opinion. You have to have at least, you have to be prepared to have this stick to itiveness and the determination and patience to see it through on the long term. And you know, Buffett talks about the fact that if you own a farm or you own an apartment building or you own, you know, anything else that produces income, you don't need the stock market to tell you what it's worth. And, and the problem that most people have is they look at the stock market every day and they think if things go up, that means it's more valuable and if things go down, it means it's less valuable. But they don't have the ability to assess fundamental value. And so I think looking at things on a mark to market basis, hourly, daily, weekly, whatever is gives you a urge to try and make decisions that are not necessarily the right long term decisions.

Right, I agree. Patience.

I can give you one more life lesson.

Yeah, please.

At the end of the day, very few people, and I am one of these people who will never be remembered for any accomplishment of what I've done in business. No matter how successful I think I am or will be, it will be irrelevant. Elon Musk will be remembered. Steve Jobs and Tim Cook will be remembered. Michael Dell will probably be remembered. But most people won't be. But it's the relationships you've established along the journey of life that will actually be the most meaningful to you and the people you interact with. And you hope that, you know, if you are fortunate to be successful and you contribute back to society in some modest way, you will make the world a little bit better than when, you know, after you've left, than when you started in the world. And if you can do that, that's very, very rewarding and fulfilling. And whatever that is of time, talent or treasure that you contribute. If you have the passion to do something in that regard and it helps those less fortunate, you're a lucky person and you will benefit from it.

Yeah, amazing. Well, appreciate the comment about relationships. You meet three people a day. I'm glad that I was maybe the fourth today or maybe the third. And it's a pleasure to establish a relationship with you and I thank you very much for that and for your time. So I'll say thank you, great lessons and very much appreciate you joining us today for a little bit and sharing your wisdom.

Well, thank you for taking the initiative to contact me. And I think what you're doing is fantastic, Brian, because these kind of people that you are able, insightful, privileged to meet and to get to share their wisdom and ideas is beneficial and your audience will be that much better off as a result of it. And I think what you're doing is fantastic and I'm glad that you were kind enough to invite me and I hope there was some nuggets of information that might be beneficial to your audience. But I've certainly enjoyed it and I'm grateful for the opportunity.

Amazing. They're definitely very valuable. Okay, sir. Well, I wish you the best and we will see you soon.

Ryan, thank you very much.

Thank you, sir.

Take care. The unlimited podcast is hosted and produced by Brian Gensler and is edited and mixed by myself, David McMillan, this podcast is not to be taken as investment advice. If you like what you heard, don't forget to rate the podcast and follow us on Social medianslerwealth. Thanks for listening and see you next time.

Time.