Michael S. Young - Princeton Pacific Properties

Welcome to another CEO Wisdom Pod. We have Michael S. Young with us today, a probate and trust realtor. He's managing principal at Princeton Pacific Capital. He's also founding broker at Princeton Pacific Properties since like 43 years. I've never seen that much years at one company. Pretty impressive, Michael. Welcome to the pod. Tell us a bit more about yourself and what you're up to.

Oh, thank you. Well, every day pretty much is the same, you know. For brokerage, we help people in life events— probate, trust, you know. That means death, disruption, divorce. And so we basically help people when you have these life events. When they have a residential property, we sell it for them and we make everything very simple and easy. High-touch, concierge-style, white glove.

Got it. And what got you into this? Why not go work at a corporation like most of your peers in the '80s?

I had no education. I barely got out of high school. And, um, you know, selling real estate was the only thing that I could do that I saw that you could get your license very easily. And then it was pretty much up to you, and there was no There was no ceiling, you know. Nobody told you you had to, you had to make this amount of money. And so that's what I liked about it. There's no limit to what a person can do. It's really up to them.

Interesting. And how was that childhood of yours? How did you grow up? Childhood?

I, you know, I, I had a mother and father and a sister, and, you know, you do the best you can. And I think my parents did the best they could with the tools they had. I, I, I like my childhood very much.

And the no education part, was it on design or, uh, purpose?

Well, I just wasn't college material. I, um, I, I, I loved high school, I had a great time, lousy grades, and I, I really am not an educated person as far as having degrees, but I Probably read, I don't know, try to read 100 books a year and to make up for that lack of education or that diploma that I should have gotten, you know, 47 years ago or whatever it was.

And the education system, what did you not like about it? Is it always like constraints and trying to put you into a cookie-cutter mold?

I never, I respected it, but it never made sense to me. The teachers that I liked and the subjects that I liked, I got very good grades. But most of it, math and science and things that I wish I would have done well at, that I actually deal every day now because the language that I use every day is numbers, I would flunk out all of those. So I had between a C and a D average all throughout grade school and high school. And that's not college material.

Yeah, in my case, I've been good at school. I've been bad after that. And then I lost I don't know, the passion for education, but that my mom handed me a book that changed my life. I think I was 20, which is Think and Grow Rich, right? Um, where or when did you rekindle your love for education and, and for books? When did you rediscover that?

Well, actually, I was very lucky. My mother, uh, gave me books when I was very young. I was always a voracious reader. I've always loved to read. I've always been very curious and to explore especially the mind. But I didn't understand. School didn't make sense to me. I remember when I was a little guy, I asked my teacher, how can I use this in real life? And she didn't have an answer. And so I thought, well, this is stupid. What am I sitting here for? So I just decided to have a good time. It didn't make sense to me. By the way, not that it doesn't make sense for certain people. I think if you're in finance or architecture or medicine, there are certain vocations you definitely have to go to college and then finishing school. But I think that for, for most people, they should learn a vocation of some kind and then master that, spend the rest of their life, you know, enjoying it, mastering it. I think there's a real lack of that today.

Huh. Medicine, I would agree, right? Like operating on bodies sort of needs some kind of regulations. Architecturing, I mean, technically, if you have the material, you can build some stuff in your backyard and A/B test, right? And fail. I don't think there's much regulations. And finance, I think GPTs know pretty much everything about finance. And when you study company, it is something that is secretly guarded, like how finance work and financial engineering, but you can work your way out through AIs with finance. Would you agree with that?

No. If I'm gonna hire a CPA or I'm gonna hire an architect, I wanna make sure that CPA is graduated from Stanford, Harvard, Columbia, something. Where they understand the tax law. They are a master of— I spend tens of thousands of dollars to attorneys and CPAs. These are highly educated people that have been in the business 30, 40 years, and their job— they cannot make mistakes. If I hire an architect, I don't want some guy that just went to AI and builds the house and screws up the foundation, the house collapses. I want somebody that has studied architecture and has done it 20, 30 years and really has a degree in that and, and is a master of that. So I think AI has a place, but, um, no, I don't want some 22-year-old AI genius that, um, is going to handle my books and, and handle my, my house. But that's— maybe I'm old school, maybe, maybe you don't need that anymore, but I don't surround myself with, with people that are going to handle my money or architecture that are not seasoned masters at it. I don't want somebody—

Yeah, yeah, we agree on that. Uh, just they would get the experience, right? Like, I'm talking figuratively because AI is somewhat new, right? But even before AI, there were like enough information on the internet to become very good at a lot of things, uh, especially finance, for example. But yeah, if you're talking about CPA, they, they are part of an organization, and if they mess up something, you can hold them up accountable. Yes, their mistakes, right? And they have insurances and so forth. So yeah, Yeah, that part is definitely true. What, um, what brought you into the real estate business? Did you have a mentor? Like, what was your first touch with it?

Yeah, my father, um, was an entrepreneur, and he— now we're talking back in the early, uh, mid-'70s and early '80s— he, uh, started developing mobile home parks in Sonoma County, California. And so when I was about 18, 19 years old, I, I I went to— I started going to a junior college for about 3 to 6 months, and I realized it was not what I wanted to do. I was a musician since I was 5 years old. I was playing in 3 different bands and not really attending school. And I said to him, I realized— I realized that I was not gonna go to New York or LA. Now, this is a long time ago when they had studios and you could become a studio musician. I realized that that wasn't my personality style. I didn't wanna take orders from some producer. So I went to my father and I said, can I just kind of hang around and see what you do? He said, sure, but you're going to start at the bottom. You're going to clean toilets and you're going to do it with everybody says, and you're not going to get paid much. And, you know, then it's really up to you. And that's, that's really how it started. Unfortunately, or fortunately, he— I should say unfortunately, he had started having heart attacks and cancer while I was working with him for the first 3 to 5 years. So he definitely mentored me, but it was kind of a sink or swim experience because he couldn't work out that time and we had a large project that we were doing. And so I would— he would tell me what to do. I would go out and do it the best of my ability and usually screw it up. And then I would come home and he would, you know, tell me exactly how I screwed it up and I would try again the next day. And that was about 3 or 4 or 5 years of that. So that was basically my college. And that taught me more about business and life than I could have ever learned, you know, from the age of 19 to say, you know, 24, 25 years old. And after, after he retired at that time, that's when I got into real estate heavily on my own. But I had already started working with people in probates and trusts because the clients we had, they were coming from those life event kind of scenarios, which is why they would buy a mobile home from us and live in our park. So I, I, when I went on my own, I thought, okay, that I understand. This is never going to change. People always die. People always have disruptions. They get divorced. That's what I'm going to focus on as my residential real estate career. And then with the profits from that, I'll buy on my own apartment buildings and mobile home parks. So it just was a constant. It's been a constant circle for the last 42 years.

Can you explain precisely what are probates and trusts?

Sure. Yeah. So somebody has a residential property, a home, or even a commercial property, and in a probate they have this asset, they die, but they don't have a will. So that is then what's called probated through the state of California. It's very complicated. The contracts have to be written a certain way, has to go by the Probate Code of California. There can be beneficiaries, there are attorneys involved, and it can be, it can be quite complicated. So it has to be handled a certain way. A trust is much cleaner. A trust has a will, a trustee, there might be beneficiaries, but it's really, it's very straight. The court can see what the intentions were of the person that passed away, whereas a probate, they may not know the intention. So a court might have to step in and regulate how that sale goes.

And from the age of 19, you were already familiar with these concepts through your dad?

I was, no, I was starting to. I started at 19. By the time I was 24, 25, after working with my dad and my family, and my dad had retired and we'd finished the project, he said, what do you want to do? I said, well, I, I think I like— I want to stay in real estate. And, uh, he said, well, you better get your broker's license because after working with us, you're never going to be able to work for anybody again. You're too— the way you are, the way you handle things, you're, you're, you're not going to be able to work for a corporation or a boss. And, and, you know, that's just the way my mindset has been. Not that there's anything wrong with that, it's just that I've always liked to do things, uh, to create and build on my own.

And probates and trusts, precisely what is intriguing about it to you? Like, people just lost, uh, loved ones, and often there are disputes in the family after that. Like, what is rewarding about that job of handling it and Making sure it goes well for them.

Well, what's rewarding about to me is that first of all, you're serving people, which I love to do. I think that, um, first and foremost is to serve the client or the public. These clients that come to us, they have problems. They've never maybe owned a home before. They certainly have probably never been in a probate or a trust situation before. Somebody's passed away, there's emotions involved. There might be an aunt and uncle involved where they're fighting, or even if they're not fighting There's money that has to be split up. There's attorneys involved. There's rules and regulations involved. So somebody has to be an expert at coordinating getting the house ready for sale. Many of the time, most of the time, these homes are in disrepair. Could be a hoarder situation. There could be a body in the house. We've had that before. And these homes have to be getting ready, prepared for sale. We take over all of that. We manage it first. And then we get the house ready, and then we sell it for the highest price possible. This is not a normal, regular residential realtor. This is not a normal residential real estate sale. This takes extreme expertise, coordination, leadership, a certain temperament. You have to be calm. You have to bring calm to the chaos. That's what we do because it can be very chaotic. We are like this. The clients, the situation may be emotionally like this. We are like this, like an attorney, like a doctor. You go to an ER, you're bleeding, you've been in a motorcycle accident. The doctor doesn't start talking to you about golf or the dress you're wearing. The doctor goes in, assesses it, takes care of it with the team. No emotion. You know, you've been accused of a crime. You go to an attorney. There's no emotion. The attorney has his paralegals working with his team with you. They're getting the information. They're going to give you 2 or 3 options, just like a doctor. That's exactly what we do. We see what the problem is. Every house, every client is different. Every situation is different. We're going to assess the situation, tell the client what we think are the best options. Then it's up to the client to decide how they want us to execute. And that's what I do every day. And that's what I've been doing for 5 decades.

And is it fun to put that mask on? Like, aren't there like side effects to, to bring like your poker face every time, or do you just like it?

Mask or poker face? Um, you have a problem, you're my best friend, or it's a business thing. I'm gonna listen to what you, what you are telling me, and then you're asking my opinion. Michael, what should I do? You're asking for my expertise. I'm going to say, you know, Charles, based on what you've told me, here's 2 or 3 different options. Pick one and then I'll execute it on your behalf. It's no different than going to a doctor or an attorney. You go into a doctor, you've broken your arm. The doctor's to say, Charles, we have 2 different options. One is this, one is that. Here's the X-ray. Here's the data. Like a market analysis, we'll have the X-ray, the data. I'm going to suggest what I would do if you were my best friend or brother, but ultimately it's up to you. We are here to serve the client. I'm going to execute on whatever the client wants to do. And sometimes I will not take the job because the client has a lack of motivation or it's just not a match. And I'll say respectfully, I don't think I can be of service to you. I'll give you 2 or 3 names of people I think will do a fantastic job. But I don't think I'm the right person. Thank you for your time, and I'll extricate myself from that situation.

I love that. How do you get these deals? How do they come true? Is it— do you invest in like PPC, SEO, or does even the state give you some contracts sometime? Or—

Well, I work with probate attorneys, estate attorneys, trust officers, professional fiduciaries. I belong to estate planning councils and fiduciary associations. So I'm asked to speak at those, asked to present those. And so, you know, I've been doing it for a long time. And so I try to find attorneys and fiduciaries that we can be of service to. That's a good match and they understand our expertise. There are very few people that do what I do. There's certainly nobody that I know of in California that's done it longer or done, you know, thousands of transactions like this specifically. So, you know, either I find them or they find me.

And how do you make money with this? Is it hourly? Is it, uh, commission? Like, how does it work?

Purely commission-based.

Okay, so help me understand a contract here. Like, let's say the value of the house is $500 grand, right? And you help them with all of that. How much do you earn?

2.5% to 3% at close of escrow.

Wow, that's cool. That's— I didn't know that. So it's like typical realtor commission.

Yes.

Interesting. Hmm. Why do you think there's not more realtors doing that, or like people specializing in that?

2 reasons. They don't know the process, they don't know the laws, and it's a very sticky subject. Most people don't want to deal with a situation where there's been death or disruption or divorce or emotions. They have to deal with not just a You know, if you say, hey Michael, I'm moving to Denver, that's a typical realtor. Great, we're going to put your house on the market and you move to Denver. In this case, I'll get a call from you. You live in Oklahoma City, we're never going to meet, and your uncle passed away and left you a house in San Francisco, California. And you're going to send me the key, or the attorney is going to send me the key. I'm going to look at it, take pictures and videos. Um, Charles, based on this, this is how I would get the house prepped for sale. We'll handle all of it. We'll get all the people, the crews ready. You're going to write the checks for it, but we're going to coordinate and handle all of it so you can do your life. You're a podcaster. You're not going to fly out to San Francisco. You're not going to hire, you know, the, the, um, the people to prep the house, the plumbers, the haulers, the cleaners. You're not going to do any of that, nor do you want to do that. Plus you're fighting with your cousin and your uncle. You know, it's a lot of stuff going on. So there are very few realtors much less professionals of any kind that are going to have the systems, have the knowledge and the background and the temperament. That's the keyword. Just like Warren Buffett would say, you don't have to be a genius, but you have to have the right temperament to be able to handle the emotional ups and downs and keep everything calm and have a plan and then execute it. And there's very few people that can do that. That's why there's not a lot of brain surgeons. That's why there's not a lot of, you know, $10,000 an hour trial attorneys. There are very few people that can do all of that and do it with a smile, be calm, get up at 4:15, have their team ready by 5:30 AM, which my team is. My team works from 5:30 every day onward. I work for, you know, I'm up at 4:15, I'm at the gym by 5:30, at the office by 7. I work till usually 6 o'clock at night. I've been doing this for 5 decades. There are very few people, respectfully so. I know it sounds arrogant. I'm not trying to be. I'm just saying you're asking. I'm telling you, there are very few people that can do that day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, decade after decade. But I have a passion for what I do. And again, I love serving people. And this is a very, very important service we offer that when people are in need, people are in need of this. And my feeling is if I don't get in front of them, if they don't have access to me, if something goes wrong, that's my fault, not theirs, because I didn't approach them to say, hey, Charles, you have this situation. Would you like me to be of service to you? If I don't do that, that's on me, because now you're going to get stuck with a regular realtor who may be a great realtor, but they're not going to do the job that we're going to do. Totally different. It's like going— if you, you drive a Mercedes and you take your Mercedes when it breaks down, you take it to a Toyota dealer. Great dealer, but that's a Mercedes, not a Toyota. They're not going to know what to do.

I fully get everything you mentioned. How long did it take you to develop that Uh, temperament, and what's your backend system to manage that stress? Like you mentioned the gym, do you have like other habits?

You know, I have a very full life. I have a wonderful, um, family and I have a, um, a girlfriend I'm very passionate about. I love her very much and, and, and she brings a lot of peace to my life. I'm very fortunate to have her, um, in my life. Um, And I believe very strongly in God. And I, you know, I work on mindset all the time. I work on my faith all the time. When I get up in the morning, that's the first thing I do is I work on mindset. I'll spend half an hour visualizing, writing my goals down, saying affirmations. I also have a lot of accountability. I have 5 people that hold me accountable. One of them, if I don't do what I'm supposed to do, show up at the gym at 5:30, He cashes a check for $1,000. So the first thing I do every morning after my mindset is I videotape to those people I'm being held accountable so they can see I'm up, I'm ready to go, doing my affirmations, I'm at the gym. So I'm really boxed in, really boxed in. I can only go forward. I can't because I— and then end of the day, those same 3 to 5 people I do a video thing, text, so they see what I did at the end of the day. What did I do right? Where did I get off track? What's tomorrow gonna be? So there's no room for guesswork. And I have an amazing team. I have an amazing chief of staff and wonderful teams that they're all in their 20s and 30s, much smarter than me. So all I do all day long is I prospect for business. Make presentations and close deals. That's all I do. And then my personal life, I do Krav Maga, I work out, I have a wonderful life. We travel and we, you know, we just have a great life. But, but my main focus is my profession.

I love that. At your age, you've accomplished a lot of things. Pretty sure you were wealthy even in your 30s, right? So what do your goals look like nowadays? Like, uh, You've climbed many mountains, right? Like, how do you motivate yourself to climb the next one?

Well, I have a daughter who's going to be 22 in October, and she's, you know, obviously the love of my life along with my girlfriend. Um, so I, I want to leave something for my daughter. She actually works with the company, and so if something happens to me, I want to leave a legacy to my daughter my family that they can, you know, have some safety and security. So that, that's a big, that's a big driver. And just to be excellent what I do and offer a great service.

Love it. Michael, where can people find out more about you and the company?

Well, my cell number is 415-215-3925. The company website is princetonpacific.com or Princeton Pacific That's our private equity arm. And my email address is michael@princetonpacific.com.

With Michael and Charles for another