From TOTAL FAILURE to Real Estate Empire – How He Did It!

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Well, hello again. This is Tom Powell with the Powell Perspective. And joining me today on another segment is Casey Minshew with talking about ma Launchpad podcast, a upcoming program that you're running in Chicago, and all sorts of things. Entrepreneur extraordinaire. Casey's a longtime friend, actually did a number of different investments together over time, including one of his first ventures that he started with. Was proud to be an investor and a successful exit, which we always love. So welcome, Casey.

Tom, thank you so much. And, man, anytime you call, I pick up. It's just one of those things, you know, and the reason why it's reciprocity, because I used to call you and you would pick up, and you gave me a lot of incredible advice on investing, raising capital, and. Yeah, and you never bullshitted me, man. And. And that's why I think we'll be friends forever, because it's just, hey, not everything's perfect and we at least can communicate about it and be honest. I mean, that's the. Some of the best relationships in the world.

Yeah, I. You know what? I do remember that you would call and call. You were relentless. It was awesome. It was just great.

Tenacity is definitely something you do short for.

No, no, no, no, no. That actually could be like a mental problem or something. I don't know.

But.

It is, it is. It's like a pit bull, right? I mean, you are just. You got a bone and you are. You are just gonna get it. I love it. It's required, you know, you've. You've met, I think you met or knew of at least Bill Fisher, one of my longtime mentors and business partners. You've heard me at least tell the story. Yeah. So, you know, when I was getting started at Wells Fargo.

No business hiring me, I knew nothing about banking. Shouldn't have been in banking. Too young, not educated. All those wonderful stories. And I'm getting interviewed by Bill Fisher for this position of management.

And back in the 80s, the job paid well over six figures, right? Which you didn't think of with bankings and different things. And I was not qualified. But I did do one thing really well, is that I listened and asked questions at the end of an interview. I don't know why, because that's like, something they teach. I was not taught this, but I asked Bill Fisher, I said at the very end of all conversation, when I thought, there's no chance in hell I'm going to get this job, I said, you know, so, Mr. Fisher, you've told me about this job. What do you. If you had to pick one characteristic, what is that? One characteristic that causes someone to succeed. And he sat back and paused, which was not often with Bill. He sat back and he looked and he said, tenacity.

And I looked at him straight in the eye And I said, Mr. Fisher, I promise you, I'm one of the most tenacious people you will ever know. Said goodbye, walked out, walked out, walked out, went back to my office and said. Got to the manager, and she said, how'd it go? And I said, well, they're probably going to call and say I should be fired out of the banks. I don't know what the hell I'm doing here. I said, by the way, what's tenacity mean?

That is awesome.

Dead serious. True story. And it also tells you why those. Those root spelling tests. I have a really pretty good memory, you know, and I remembered that tenacity and tenacious, you know, that's the way that you could do that. And. And answered that question.

And.

And she looked at me, she said, well, it means you got big balls. And I said, well, I guess that's true. So, you know.

Got that right.

There we go. Yeah, so. And I lasted in banking, you know, as a Wells Fargo person, all of five years, and then went out and launched my own, because, of course, I knew more than the bankers did. At least I thought I did at that time. Good. Good luck with that. So it's been 40 years. Anyway, great to have.

I have a similar story. You know, I went right out of college, I got an accounting degree. I was told to go to school, get a good job, and this was going to be the path. And I got my first job out of college, and I was doing accounts receivable at Motorola. And I just looked at the guy who was running the company, I looked at the people, and I was like, this is just not what I'm hoping for when I'm at. When I'm there, you know? And I went and opened a bar. I started business, I raised the money, put a bar. Six months later, we're open, and, you know, we failed miserably. Okay? It was a miserable failure. It was a great, great, you know, you know, ready, fire, aim mentality. Didn't know what I didn't know. But here's what I did is I looked.

You knew how to drink, so you thought you knew about a bar, right?

I did. And I know how to socialize. And so I was like, this is. These two things together work, right? I got these skills. Yeah, but what I. What I did realize is when I sat down with my dad after the failure, he's like, are you gonna go get a job? And I realized that I had to draw a line in the sand. I'm either an entrepreneur or I'm not. And the road to entrepreneurship, it doesn't have to be this way, but for me was 10 years of making no money, struggling to figure out what I'm good at, what I'm not good at. And you know, I kind of take that hindsight. If I was, if I go back and talk to myself, you know, I was like, I should have took that job with, with, with PricewaterhouseCooper to go do auditing. So those things, I could have learned business through that, but I didn't. And so you can't really look back. And I'm really one of those people. It's like matter of fact, you know, like I drew the line, I'm not going backwards. And, and, and that's been the case and, and I wouldn't advise that to really a lot of people, but it goes back to being tenacious.

So it only five years. That's amazing. That's a fast, fast learning curve. Because I'm 30. What I'm. I'm coming up on. Well, this year is. Is 45 years of being in business for myself at different times. Had a couple W2s, but not very long. Well being one of them. But I'd say at 45 years, I am like as naive and unknowing as I was 45 years ago. It's like, fuck, I don't know what the hell I'm doing.

No, I have those same days. You know, what I do know is the things that I'm not good at. And we've talked about that before. I'm very aware of a. There are just people that are smarter than me. They're faster than me, they're better than me. The light bulb comes on a little later for me. Sometimes it takes a while for the dot connect, but when the dot connects, I get it. I'm like, ah, that's why we're doing this.

That's. Yeah, I'm a very slow. So you mentioned a book and I love this book and I love the guy who. Who created the book with the co author, but Dan Sullivan and the who not how.

Oh, shoot.

Great. And one of the reasons I love who not how from that, from that standpoint is it really is. It's not even just about there are people smarter, better in every single thing that I Do. There's always someone that is the expert, really, truly expert in that. Right. It's also, they love doing things that I hate. Like, as much as I love skiing, you know, I'm a huge skier, right?

Yep.

There are people that love doing certain tasks, like organizing your workshop. They love it as much as I love skiing.

Yeah.

So that's the person you go hire?

No. And look, I love spreadsheets. I love them. I love the data, I love the exput. But if you want me to sit down and build that Excel spreadsheet to do what it does. Can it be done? Yes. It's going to take a really long time, and there's probably a 75% chance it's not going to be right. So I need to find those people and surround myself with people that can do it and do it way better than me.

Absolutely. You know, I wrote code back when Lotus 1, 2, 3. So pre Excel spreadsheet. Right. It's what kind of grew into being what Excel was. And so I have a reasonably good understanding of the back inner workings of that, as well as having, you know, finance degree and stuff, so have built lots of spreadsheets. And I remember that day when we got our first real analyst in the company. And you met Josh. Right. And so I remember Josh. And I've got this complex 42, you know, file folder, Excel sheet that I'm so proud of. He looks at it and he takes, like, about five minutes and he builds some macros in the thing. And all of a sudden I'm like, yeah, I'm way out over my skis. This guy's way more knowledgeable than me. And it was great because it freed me up. I didn't have to be the Excel guru anymore.

Yeah, it makes a big difference. But, you know, it kind of goes back to the things that we learned. Like, if we're going to find who, not how, right. And we're going to find those people that are better than us, we have to be real with ourselves. And that is. And I think that's been my biggest struggle. If you said, Casey, what has been your biggest struggle in your journey is my ego. Right. Because, you know, it's really hard to just to really look at yourself and go, man, the truth is, you're just not that smart. You're creative as hell, you're a hard worker, but you're definitely not the smartest guy. So surround yourself with them and not be afraid of them correcting you when you're. Yeah, that was hard. And that's Been really hard. That's been 20 years hard. If I go back to a lot of things, I'm like, God, why didn't I just listen? You know? And it's the tenacity. It's the hard head. It's the ego.

Yeah. You just. I'm a really slow learner. And so this goes to. Back to Dan Sullivan. Dan Sullivan said his client, his best client is a slow learner with cash flow.

Hey, in the coaching program, that is great.

Who is eager to learn and get better. Right. But they're a slow learner. And so that. That is me to a t. It's been 24 years on strategic coach. Right. Type scenario, and really have, you know, gotten way over educated. But it's just like, it's slow. It's painful. It takes me forever to learn something. But. And so how do you deal with that, of recognizing that you're not the smartest in the room and actually not wanting to be the smartest in the room? Because if you are the smartest in the room, you need to get in a bigger room. Right. So you're running this workshop, but how do you do in this age of where people say, I've got imposter syndrome, and you're hearing it all the time about I've got imposter syndrome. Right. So half the time, as an entrepreneur, you have to have imposter syndrome. You're making shit up as you're going along. Right. And. But you also are recognizing you aren't the best at anything. In most cases, you're the best at probably synthesizing stuff. In your case. I know you. So you're the best at synthesizing an idea, right?

Yeah. And organizing. Yeah, I'm good at organizing people, finding.

The right people that can do that. Right. And seeing their. Their worth sometimes more than they see it.

Right.

So. But how do you not struggle with imposter syndrome? Then when you're sitting there going, everybody's going like, wow, you drive a big fancy car, you live in a big fancy house. You've got this, you know, just amazing everything else. And you're like, I'm one decision away from it all going away.

Yeah. And I think one of the things I have to do, and I think it's important for everybody, is, you know, I have a spiritual practice. You know, I. I meditate. You know, I'm a big Wayne Dyer fan. You know, one of the things Wayne Dyer says is that we're spiritual beings having a human experience. And if you remind yourself that. Right. I Don't matter what deity or what religion you are and all that. We all have a spiritual path. And I think, you know, one of the things when I was with you guys and Jackie and meditation and just taking time to breathe, you know, you learn a lot about, you know, hey, you know, I'm here for a purpose, whatever that purpose is, and then I just need to allow things to manifest, right? I gotta. I've got to put it out there, be a visionary and be okay with the outcomes and then learn from those outcomes. And that is so hard because we want the result, we want the outcome, we want to be there. And there's just some things. Like my wife, she just laughs at me sometimes. I shouldn't laugh. She's frustrated as hell a lot of the time, but she's like. She's like, why didn't that work? You know, I was telling her about this recent acquisition we did in May of last year. You know, 170,000 square feet of manufacturing. You know, you got 150 employees. I've never done that before, Tom. I've never even worked in a manufacturing plant. But of course you bought it. Yeah, but, but, but it was, it made sense. And then I told her, I was like, while we're working on our next deal that we're buying, which is a waste water treatment facility, general contractor, down in the Rio Grande Valley, my wife looks at me and she's like, so what do you know about these things? And I'm like, I don't know anything about the products, okay? But what I know is people and processes, right? And I'm surrounding myself around those people. But I'm learning every time I do it. Because this is stuff, Tom, that you can't get out of a book. You have to do it. No, I sat back 10 years ago. It actually was 12 years ago now. I said, I'm going to be an M and A. And I was working at a company called Wowee. We had started it up. I had a mentor helped me start it. I was with him. We were doing startup and I called a guy, Billy Herdrick, my dad's friend, and he's in private equity. And I said, hey, how do you get there? He said, you need to build a company and sell it. And he was like, and most likely they're going to want you to do it. So what do I do? Went over to Energy Funders and we built Energy Funders and we sold it, right? So it's like this journey of, like, how the hell do I get there? Because I don't have the Ivy League school degree. I didn't have all the connections and the relationships. I do not come from wealth, you know, so all of these things are kind of against you, but. But, man, I think anything's possible.

Yeah.

Right. So you got to go for it, and you got to learn from it. That's really hard because you're going to be met with a tremendous amount of failure along the way. And I think my quotient for frustration and failure is extremely high. And I think if people that are in that space that can handle those things, I think entrepreneurship's for them because it's just really, really hard, and it's really, really frustrating.

Yeah, there's a great. I mentioned Genius Network. There's a great.

Poster. He's got great posters everywhere. He uses the same cartoonist, I think, as Dan Sullivan does for Strategic Coach. So Joe Pol. Joe Polish is known as, like, the best marketer copywriter in the world, right? And I mean, every. Every big name that you think of goes to him at some point in their life. So, like, Richard Branson picks up the phone and calls Joe, right? So in his. In his office is one of his little characters. And it's like the life. The daily life of an entrepreneur. And it's like, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. Yay.

Yay.

Yes.

And we just live. I mean, it's worse golfing. You live for those yay moments. Right. Type scenario. But we know they're coming. We know if you hang in there and you learn and you go along, hopefully it becomes a little bit better. A little bit better, A little bit better as we're doing stuff.

And I've learned to be. Also get around people, you know, like, I mean, just to have lifelines, people that also understand. So one of the things here at Equity Launchpad, I have two partners that constantly, you know, they've got $900 million of assets under management. They've been buying multifamily since 14. They've got a property management. They've got property insurance. They've got all these things that they've created, right? They're young guys, and, you know, they're always frustrated. They're like, things are always going wrong, and. But they. But they smile most of the time, and they're like, hey, you know, we want to. We're going big here. Welcome to going big. And we all sit there and really realize, like, if there was another way, just tell me, I would do it.

I could learn this faster somehow, you know, for whatever. I. You know, I Know, with my own kids, that there. There were. You know, one of the kids was.

Brilliant from a standpoint. I always said, boy, you know, she really gets ope other people's experiences. She doesn't have to test the stove to see if it's hot. And then another child. That's like you said, it's hot. I saw my other sibling get burned, but I have to feel this myself.

That's me, and that is me.

It's like, what is hot? Well, is it still hot? Oh, let me try that again. Has it cooled down at all?

It's just crazy. But when you get around groups of other entrepreneurs and there is a difference between being an entrepreneur and being a business owner, right? There's lots of people that are business owners. There's very few entrepreneurs. And it's a. As my wife says, it's a. It's a. You know, it's probably in the. The DST book, right? As. As one of these, you know, it's. It's an affliction that you get it or you don't. You don't get to grow into being an entrepreneur. It's either. You're. You're just, you know, we're probably Adderall. Half the kids that are today are entrepreneurs of the future, right?

My issue is just authority. It's always been that way. I've just had a problem with authority. And so it's just innate teachers and, ah, so what do you do? You can't hire that guy. That guy is not a good employee. And so I want to win. And so I had to go and figure it out how to. How to deal with that.

Not employable. That's the biggest problem of being an entrepreneur, right? Is. Is. It's not a problem. It's. You want to be employable. You want to be. And, boy, you are. If you were in that bar and you had the job of being just even being the bar back, you'd be the best damn bar back for about four days. But by the fifth day, you'd be saying, I can own this bar, or I should do it this way, or I'm gonna.

Why do you do this?

And you'd be figuring out other things. And the owner's like, I don't want you to figure things out. I just want you to stack the bar.

Exactly.

You're gone. You're gone. And that. That has been really pretty much. That's why I haven't had any. Any other than being a professional ski coach. That's the longest W2 I've ever had. Right. Because I didn't own the ski mountain, so I had to work for somebody at that point. But it's pretty cool.

It's a pretty cool job, I got to admit. Great conversation starter. You know, it's one of those things. You're a professional ski instructor. Like, wow, that's awesome. Oh, and I'm an entrepreneur and I have a private equity firm and I buy real estate. I mean, it just goes on and on.

Oh, you know, you're riding up the chair with somebody from Silicon Valley and it's like, so, you know you're a ski instructor and it's like, yeah. And then start finding other things. It's like, well, yeah, you know, we have two and a half billion under management.

Conversation just stops. Okay, I need to learn more about what the hell you do. It's like, I don't know, I'm really just a ski instructor at the end of the day. And I do that other stuff. But, you know, I did have, I did have somebody. It may have even been you. It was years ago. Somebody said, as much as you love skiing and you're passionate about skiing and you're passionate about being an entrepreneur, if you had to give up one, which one would it be?

And it's like, I live in a world of like Captain Kirk. I would reset the rules. There is no such thing as an either or for me.

Is who you are. It is who you are.

This is just core value. This is core of who I am. Right. It's that freedom. It's your. You're right. It's the problem with authority, which also gets me in trouble. So.

So one of the things I was talking to Stephen the other day and he told me that you're. Tiny homes. Small homes. What is this, what is this venture that you're thinking about? Because I, I literally look at these container homes and I look at these things and I'm like, this stuff is brilliant. It's so awesome.

You know, one that you talk about that, that imposter syndrome. Right. So I have a doctor, doctorate of law and policy, so earn my doctorate Eastern school North, you know, Northeastern University. And I'm considered an expert in middle income workforce housing solutions. And I walk in the room and I'm like, I'm the least knowledgeable person in this room. Yes. I know how to do research. I can do quantitative and qualitative. I can get, you know, empirical data to back up what I'm saying. Yet the people around me know way more. And in that space, in the ADU space, accessory dwelling unit, granite college cottages, whatever you want to call them, it's an amazing infill product and it's something that I am passionate about. And my daughter Candice, who you know well, she is a great designer. So she and I match skills up really well in that she's not an architect, she's not an interior designer, but she's able to use that, that property, that real estate and figure out how it can look.

I'm the last homes in Tahoe. They were absolutely gorgeous.

Aren't they beautiful?

Absolutely gorgeous.

I am the last person to be able to look at a piece of real estate and visualize what should go there. But if there's a piece of real estate on there, I can tell you how it could be better, right? Or if I'm looking at plans, I can make the plans better, but I can't see it from no visibility. I can tell you, because you saw the stuff in Atlanta that, that I said was some of the best in the world, been on properties all over the world, some of the largest developers. And when I was on that property that ended up Microsoft ended up buying for $74 million, $76 million, I'm like, this is one of the best projects I've ever stepped on. That's a, that's a redevelopment project, right? And it was, and it really, and it really is. So I have that kind of expertise, but I can't design crap. And so this ADU is all about bringing great design to small spaces. So if you're going to live in a, in a 800 square foot property, you're going to want a great kitchen, a great bathroom as part of it. You're going to want functionality. You just don't want just a box. So you can take that container, but then you're going to need to do other things with it, which is super cool, right? And so the best part about it, there's lots of good parts about it. It's not inexpensive because of the two things I just said. You're putting the two most expensive parts of a house into the smallest square foot. So when you build a 2400 square foot house, you can have a kick ass kitchen and a kick ass bathroom because that cost gets dispersed along the whole other 2,400 square feet, right? When you're building 800 square feet and the two most expensive rooms that you care about are only, they take up a big chunk of that 800 square foot, your cost per square foot is not low, it's high. You don't get this from Amazon for 30,000 bucks as you think you can and get a pop up. Right. You're not, you're gonna get crap. So it's not a cost saver. Right now the biggest problem that is an opportunity. Casey, in this space is financing. And we've come up with a brainchild that you know, I've had certain governors reach out to me and say, okay, we want to start implementing this scenario. And again it is my background and my doctorate is in this space and with all the bank you know, we've done, I've got what, 35 years of financing and banking. So it brings interesting things. So we've got some large funds that we're working with about bringing a solution of how to finance these ADUs that aren't, you know, a second home loan that's going to be a 9% and you've got to worry about LTVs. It's not about, you know, putting the home buyer at risk with their other primary loan. Some interesting ways. But that's a future show because I.

Can'T look forward to it.

It is exciting. Tell me about this, tell me about this workshop that you've got coming up.

Yeah. October 26th. You can find us at m&a launchpad conference.com. we'll also put it in your show notes. I'll send you some information and your listeners definitely will have a discount. No question whatsoever anybody wants to attend. But it's really focused on the lower middle market, on acquiring businesses from retiring owners. We've got a 20% of the population could retire by 2029 and 10,000 baby boomers a day, 70,000 a week. Crazy. And if you start thinking about it, there's a shift in 46% of the small to medium sized businesses are owned by baby boomers. And a lot of those don't have exit strategies. And so we're going to get into that stuff. We're going to talk about taxes, we're going to talk about section 1202. Buying a company using qualified business stock. And if you exit that company after 60 months. Right. Every shareholder gets a tax free up to 10 million dollar exit.

Wow.

You can do that with QBS stock. So all of this stuff we're going to talk about at the conference and one of your favorite things, we're talking about why wouldn't get a life insurance policy? Use the leverage of your business to get a life insurance policy. And if all shit goes wrong. Right. You've got an asset that goes with you.

Yeah.

If it goes, right, you've got an incredible retirement plan that you can draw tax free income from, so. Or a line of credit for your business. We get into these things, right, that a lot of places don't. We're not doing. We're not selling a bunch of products, not a gimmicks or that we're getting into how to buy companies or invest with the right people. And it's incredible networking. We had about 300 people attend our Houston event in May. Chicago is going to be great. We'll have a great group of entrepreneurs, people that are looking and man would like to invite everybody out.

And you know what? That's an important, important part is.

It'S about getting in bigger rooms and it's about being in the right rooms, right? And I do remember I kind of joke about this story, but my wife is a Michigan State grad and their rival is University of Michigan. Now University of Michigan people do not think Michigan State is their rival, but Michigan State people think University of Michigan.

So we're at a game, it's New Year's Eve, we're in Ford Stadium, we're staying across the street. It's New Year's Eve in Detroit, right? I don't know how I ever got talked into that, but I'm there. And this guy has been just an arrogant pain in the ass the whole time that we're around. We're not with him as a guest, but he's sure enough a University of Michigan person. Reeva's like, see, see, see, this is why, you know, and it's no dis on people that are University of Michigan people because obviously Harvard and everybody else has the same problems, right? But I'm wearing, it's two in the morning, we're riding up the elevator and it's a very small elevator and the guy is drunk as crap and he looks back and he goes, harvard, huh? He goes, did you go there? Did you just get this? The sweatshirt? I said, well, yeah, I went there. And I also taught there, you know, and that was kind of my end of the conversation. And then he makes some ass comment. He goes, man, I'm usually the smartest one in the room. And it was just perfect because we're in this tiny elevator and I go, maybe you should get in bigger rooms. Door opens, I step off, I go into the room and I'm like, oh, I need to pay penance now because I was just an asshole to this. And I tell my wife and she high fives me and goes, that's so good. This is what you're providing is people to get into bigger rooms, to be around brilliant people. And I don't ever want to be the smartest one in a room ever, ever, ever. It's like, get in a bigger room, Right? And it's not about the education. A lot of times, it's about the experience. So, anyway, Casey, you're the best. As you know, we do this enough to be dangerous. What's the enough to be dangerous? Right. Point. I want to get into business, but I need to learn more. You've mentioned a couple books. You've had some other ideas, mentors. What is that next step, the who, not how.

Yeah, I would definitely, man. You know, the coolest thing about, you know, how much information we have access to. I mean, you can do. I mean, everything's out there. There's gurus, there's all kinds of things. Right. But to me, I think that Harvard Business Review has a book on how to buy a small business. I have listened to it at least 15 times. I advise if you're tired and you're driving, don't, because you'll drive off the road. It's very, very, very much like stereo instruction. It's very dense, but it's excellent, right? And then that right there gives you enough to be dangerous right there alone. And then it will pique your interest to learn more, because it is a pretty incredible opportunity and timing and, you know, to be able to take advantage of, you know, legacies, businesses, people that have been a business 50 years, to be able to be a part of that. I think that's pretty incredible.

It is awesome. Well, Casey, it's always a pleasure to be around you. Thank you for taking up the. The invitation to be here. Much success in your new ventures and this podcast that you have and the workshop you have or the seminar in. In October. But it's always a pleasure to be around you.

Same with you, Tom.

I'm Tom Powell. This is the Powell perspective, and have a great day.

Thank you, Sam.