#4: Paul West, Managing Partner of Carson Wealth - The power of culture, managing generational wealth, and the importance of being present

I mean, I'm telling you, you just like, my gut stopped for a second there. You just, when I heard that because I'm, I got a 17 year old home and you said 90% of my time in life with them, I'm like, you just like almost made me lose my breath. So, man, I'm going to get so much just out of doing this podcast with you today. I want to share the stat with other people because, man, it's meaningful. It's think about, I mean 10.

On today's episode of Heading west, we have Paul west, the managing partner for Carson Wealth. Steve, that was amazing. I'll transparently I thought most of our conversation would be around the markets. Paul's an expert when it comes to financial advising the marketplace. I expected most of our conversation to go that way and we did go there, but there was so much more to our conversation. It just blew me away. What was something that stood out to you from our conversation today, Jake?

There were a couple things. Most people think that generational wealth is just money, but it's a lot more than that. And then the stat that you, you put, you threw on us about the time with your kids was a sobering and it made us think, wow, how are we spending our time? And I think Paul was taken back about that and it was quite impacting.

Yeah, I know when I heard the stat, it was a bombshell for me. And you could read Paul's face, that it was something that he had never considered, never heard before, but you could tell he's going to do something about it. So I'm excited for people to listen in and hear what that was about, to see Paul's reaction and to take action in their own lives. So let's not teed up anymore. Let's just head west. So stay tuned as we discuss the power of culture, managing generational wealth and the importance of being present with our guest, Paul West. This episode is brought to you by Skyline Point Capital. If you're anything like me, you're always considering where to invest your money. Stocks, bonds, crypto and rental home. The list is literally endless. As we've all seen over the past year, the stock market is unstable, the housing market is just weird and inflation is on the rise. In times like these, the clear place to invest my money is in multifamily real estate, AKA apartment complexes. Here's why. Returns on real estate investments have little to no correlation with the stock market. There's lower volatility, stable income streams, and the tax benefits are insane. And let's not forget that the apartments will typically appreciate in value over time, which means you can walk away with a pretty nice return when the complex is sold in three to five years. Best of all, multifamily investing is passive, so you get all the benefits without the hassle and headache of your typical rental home investment. Getting started has never been easier. Head to skylinepointcapital.com to learn how you can start investing today. I've met you once before, Steve. Knowing you for a while, but I'd love to hear your story about how you ended up at Carson. How did you end up in the role you're in? How'd you end up in financial advising? Like, what's the path look like for you?

I don't know why Steve was laughing there, but.

I'm ready for this one. Yeah.

Which part of this troubled past bring.

Out here and nobody's listening. So you can. This is cone of silence right here, right?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. This is the trust circle, right? That's what that www World Wide Web thing is. I would say the short form version, man, is I'm in Nebraska, local and native. Loved it. You know, went to the university here to be candid. Worked at a company here locally. Worked hard, became their youngest executive here. It's called securities America in town. Launched my own Co. In 2007 in the wealth management space. Loved it, built it and then sold it in 2012 and wasn't really sure what I wanted to do next really. Steve and Jake here and happened to meet the founder of this company, Ron, and said hey, kind of like here's our vision of how we think we can continue to change wealth management in a positive way. We kind of call the Wall street world the dark side and the approach there and how we can do it locally. So fast forward, when I started here as managing Partner There was 36 of us as again as we call them stakeholders, not employees to today we have about 385. Wow. We collectively help manage a little over 20 billion in assets for our families. What we advise on is in the hundreds of billions in terms of just helping them strategize because a lot of that is due to a lot of our family's wealth isn't in liquid all the time. It's in real estate. It's in their own privately held businesses. It's in alternative investments and other things. So we know we have to be good strategists on that front. So that's my short form story. Like everything though, it's not a vertical ascend. There's been some really good ups and some really tough times. Including. Right. The 08 financial crisis was tough on everybody back.

Yeah. What do you attribute that sort of growth of the organization to? I mean I'm sure there's a myriad of things but if you could narrow it down, going from 36 to 300 something in that relatively short amount of time, what would you attribute that to that growth to?

I would first say talent. I just like we've, we've been fortunate. We've hired great people and gotten the heck out of their way and let them do their jobs like and when you hire somebody you just, you have to let go and that's not always easy for us. Right. And as leaders and holding those roles and their approach. But we built like some internal core values. You know, first clients are always first. Right. Take care of your clients and take care of them the right way and correctly. Things always work out. Take care of your stakeholders, make them feel comfortable, give them an environment where they can personally develop. And what I think we also figured out is there's a way to replicate success. Right. So those people who are in the real estate sector, right. If they build one great multi family location, the second one they build, they can probably even do better because they don't make the mistakes they made on their first location. No different. We've learned a lot. So we've built a great company in Carson wealth, but we've built two other companies that benefit from what we've learned at Carson. Well, so we build a coaching company that helps coach now 1100 other financial advisors across the country on how to be a good advisor. And then we've also created a partnership company that plugs into Carson Wealth's system and platform. So think of it kind of like the intel chip inside and they can go run Steve's Wealth Management in Wichita, Kansas, keep his name, keep his equity, but run off of our world class platform to help them be more effective as a true CEO and entrepreneur and they don't have to get involved in all the weeds and minutiae on technology and compliance and all that stuff. So we've really done a good job of building one core business and now then multiple other businesses to resell those services.

Hey Paul, when you talk about business, working with businesses and doing coaching and it made me think about, we come across people starting new businesses or trying to grow their business and you say hire great people. How do you find great people and then how do you motivate them so you can get out of the way.

So should I say the bar?

You mean the lounge? The lounge.

Talent acquisition, Steve, man, is the hardest thing, right? You know that from. It's so hard, especially right now in the current environment we are in with this low unemployment, you know. Right. And what are we calling this? The Great Retirement, The Great Migration. You know, all these, you know, acronyms people are using. You gotta. You really have to have this culture that people want to be a part of, right? And they begin to hear from their friends and their colleagues that, man, I really want to go there. They work hard, they play hard, they treat us well, they give us the opportunities for success. Right? The old acronym, right, Hire, Slow fire, fast has never been more important. We use multiple stakeholder assessment tools. So a big one we use is the tti, also known as the DISC Assessment. We use Gallup Strengths Finder, and we've used several others. My personal preference, Steve, is hiring people that are already in an existing role. Because if somebody's not in an existing role, there's usually a reason why. Either they weren't performing at their prior place, it could have been they were dissatisfied. So I'm more open minded to that. But if there's somebody who's at an existing place and can see the vision you're creating at your organization and want to come on board with that vision, then I think that's a great thing. I think it was Steve Jobs, and I could be wrong with this, so you two can correct me, especially since you're the techie, right? Steve, didn't he make a comment to one of his lead people? He's like, I can't remember who it was, but there was some old story. I probably have some iteration of this wrong that, hey, you know, do you want to. They were working. I believe it was either Coca Cola or PepsiCo. Do you want to keep making sugar water all day or do you want to change the world? And it forced them to come into Apple to really look at, right. The creation of, you know, the ipod, to the iPhone, to the iPad, and, you know, AirPods and now whatever else next they'll come out with has completely changed the world versus making sugar water all day. And I would say culturally, for us, we want to share that with them is we think the impact they can have on people's lives and helping provide this wealth strategy and wealth management advice can be a lot more powerful than any widget thing they were working on before.

I remember one of my peers, way back when, when my first career, I was interviewing for a job, and one of the main gentlemen interviewed me and wanted to find out my failures. Where have I failed? Where have I made a mistake or did something? And he wanted to know how I overcame that. And I asked him. That was when the early stages, I asked him, why did you ask that? And his comment was, everybody's going to tell you that they're, they're great, they are a superstar and whatever, but there are times in the macro environment, just like now and back in 2008, in that timeframe, if things don't go well, then they're out of your control. And it's more critical is how you respond to that adversity. You know, you get knocked down, get back up again. And he would only hire somebody if they had a war story or some failure in their life. He didn't want to hire anybody with no failures because he doesn't know how the guy would, or the gal would respond to that. I found that interesting. I've used that in my interview and I want to find out, you lost the football game, but did you, did you win the conference? Did you win the national championship? You're going to lose a football game, but how you respond to that is critical.

You must live in Nebraska. We lost a few games this year.

Hey, we're coming around.

Hey.

Yeah. I used to have a, I used to have a college professor who, in, in business, he didn't teach like investing or whatnot, but he often talked about, it was a management class and he often talked about how he often will. When he's assessing whether or not to invest in a company, he wants to know what the CEO has done in their past and how they failed. To your point, Steve, and he said he would never invest in a business unless the CEO had shown that they'd failed in a previous business. Because his, his, his thinking behind it was if this person is now being appointed to a new business, there's some, there's probably a good chance that they've learned from their mistake and will not make it again. And so you can, you can, you have a little bit more at least assurity that he's in a he or she's going to succeed in whatever they do going forward, you know, you're either winning or you're learning. And so if you can take those losses and put them back into practice, especially if you're, if you're building a culture of people or culture around people that you're going to underwrite their failures and they're allowed to fail as long as they learn from their failures and Then teach everybody else. You're going to set up a culture that people are going to want to come to. And more importantly, stick around for.

Paul. When your group is coaching other investment management offices, is there a common theme of what those owners of those investment, those owners of the investment firm, besides the technical back end side, what are they looking for? What do they need in this day and age with the craziness that's going on, what is the number one or number two things that they're looking from Carson for that coaching?

Yeah.

So we would very much segment that for groups that are really producing less than 2 million in revenue. I don't like to talk about asset size because I like real dollars, which is revenue. They need just pure order. I mean like a process. Like, hey, here's what we do, here's the hats, here's job descriptions. Right. Most of them are entrepreneurs that, you know, they've now begun to build a business. There's some form of profitability with it. They need some structure to the order. Right. And what we see that happens is people get to this tipping point of about 1 and a half to 2 million in revenue and they can either become what we call a lifestyle practice or if they want to be a growth based practice and continue to operate like an entrepreneur, they need this next level of coaching which is how to have a growth mindset. And that is very much giving up some control and hiring people to take on specific roles in an arc chart. And we help lay out and coach for them how to go find and hire those people and how to build your value proposition around whatever you're trying to deliver to your family. So that's kind of the first part is all about just, just I, I hate all this operation stuff. I hate all this logistics. Help me just figure that out. You've, you've walked this pathway, you've done it before and the next is, hey man, I made it. I'm comfortable, but I want to grow more. Help show me the pathway. Should I hire a coo? Should I hire a cfo? Should I hire a head of sales? Should I hire this, like what's kind of the natural. And I think it's super smart of them and to say, hey, why recreate the wheel if they've already coached other people? Why not just help me and put, give me the plays to put on the field so I can go lead, you know, the team.

That's awesome.

Is there, is there a component of the coaching there too that where you're. Because when you're Going from maybe a solo financial advisor to I'm hiring a team now that I've to scale and I've got to pass that knowledge on. You're also taking on the leadership role of now I've got to lead these people and coach them myself. So is there a part of your coaching where you're training them to go from a solopreneur entrepreneur to now you're a leader, now you're a CEO, now you're a manager of people. Is that part of the training as well?

Yeah, very much so. But I mean, I think at first starts with we take them through a process we'd like to call our blueprint. Process is like, hey, it's 10 years out. Where do you want it? Where do you want this to be and what do you want it to look like? And so do you want it to be, hey, this close lit knit family of five people and this is the business and we're happy with it, or do you want to build it to wow, a conglomerate, an ensemble that's 25 to 50 people who are working for you and what that is. So it has to get them out, visualizing the future of what they want. And it's so hard for a lot of people to look that far out in the future. But you can pretty much tell how they're wired, you know, what they want to do next or how they want to approach it. And for us, man, I love having this coaching company because we get, if you think about, think about the data we're getting.

Sure.

Because they share their data with us. How many revenues, how many clients? So how many people does it take to service their clients? How many households are they servicing? What are they offering? So the data collection we get is fantastic. And we get this pulse. Not just like, how are we feeling at Carson wealth, but how are these 1100 other financial advisors feeling? And what. No better time right than right now when there's some, you know, liquid stock market volatility to kind of get a good collective pulse from everyone on what they're thinking and feeling.

That that's a good segue. What are you hearing about the market right now? I would love to get a little, a little snapshot into what you're hearing from these coaches, what you're hearing from your, your stakeholders, your clientele. Next 30, 60, 90 days. What's, what's the market look like right now?

Great. So is this where I get held accountable and you replay this?

Yeah, we'll have a disclaimer ticker.

What's the timer right now we're going to put this at this timer.

Yeah, yeah. You know, my compliance department can listen to this. So if I.

Yes, yes, we can edit it all.

Out, make any recommendations that I go trade on. And we're, we're all. What are those things you called, you put behind your back if you're in trouble? Handcuffs. Yeah, I'm in trouble there. Listen, we're at, you know, one of the, you know, again is always we have unprecedented times and think about how many times we've said that over our lives and just through our history, obviously, oh one, you know, with the travesty that occurred that created some, you know, significant pain, probably most emotionally with what happened in this world with nothing, 9, 11 to, you know, everyone now is like, oh, I saw the 08 financial crisis coming. Well, if we did, why, why didn't most people get out of the way? This residential real estate boom that's just been going like crazy the last few years. Listen, I've lived in Nebraska, I've shared. We couldn't be more stable in the residential real estate market over our life. And all of a sudden we're doing, you know, this crazy ascent, yet nobody's really making adjustments. Right. They're just kind of riding with it until now. You know, I think we're starting to see the reduction. Right. For the first time here recently. So this is presenting challenges in the liquid markets. Right. And the big challenges created is in 2020 with COVID the world stopped. And when the world stopped, we still had to consume things, food, we still drove our cars, we still had heat, we still utilized energy, but we didn't have ways to disperse it. Thus we created this gigantic supply chain problem that just radically drove up the cost of prices, slowed things down. Maybe you're building a home and it's taking way, way, way longer than you ever wanted or expected intent. Yeah, you're welcome. I'm sure that'll get edited. But this, it's created this massive issue that therefore drove inflation. And we've never seen inflation move for a long time at this velocity. So the Fed has now, of course, had to make major moves to combat it. So at the end of the day, here's where we are as of today. 30 days from now, man, it's still going to be a roller coaster. There's just this no way to look at that. Strong factors. Unemployment still great, right? I mean, it's still super low. But that's a challenge for me because if I can't find people, what lever do I have to go find good people, pay them more. What does that do? I'm just raising my cost and I'm not helping inflation at the moment. So you could actually look at the opposite side. This low unemployment isn't helpful. I think mortgage rates for residential as of today in the upper sixes is healthy. I think it's starting to move a lot of buyers out of the market. But the concern is you're not going to see people refinancing. How many people are you going to see downsize and take out a loan? So if I got a house today of, you know, 4,000 square foot, 3,000, and I'm paying 3.75%, why would I downgraded 2500 square foot? You know, if I still needed a mortgage and pay 6.75, it's probably less to stay in my house with more square foot than it is. So we may be creating a new bottleneck going the opposite way in the market. That'll be something really interesting to watch in residential real estate. On the positive note, 60 days from now, 90 days from now, we'll be past November. We'll get some more data on what this midterm election means to us. So as we look at always the four election years, whenever we hit the market low in the year, in a midterm election cycle, which we're in, statistically Speaking, the next 12 months has tended to be the best for the stock market. Now, that doesn't mean it's going to be that way, but statistically, we've been there before. On average, in a midterm election year, there has been a 17% decline in the market at some point in the year 17 on average. And this is data going all the way back to 1950. So we have been here before, but then we use the phrase unprecedented. Right. Inflation covet, obviously was new from two years ago. Unemployment, yeah, A low unemployment, you're right. The next 30, 60, 90 days, there's so much, I'll call it focus on these inflation data, like it just everyone's reacting emotionally to that. So I think it's going to be a little rocky in the market in being again in the market. I mean, the S P500, the liquid stock market, to answer your question there, Jake. But long run, we're not concerned about it. And I think a statistic I've shared with a lot of people, over 90% of your rate of return in the long run is on asset allocation versus asset and market timing. So if somebody said, hey, I'm gonna Get out of the market today and it goes down 10%, they're gonna think they're awesome, right? But the problem is they guess right once, they're gonna have to guess right when to get back in. And the odds of that happening aren't that great.

Paul, one of the things we see at Skyline Point Capital on the multifamily marketplace, that right now, as compared to nine months to a year ago with the interest rates going up, that the supply of available multifamily is diminished and what we're seeing now that the ones, the multifamily apartments that are for sale are still at the pre increase in interest rates, the returns are less, the cash flow is less, and for that dollar amount, the risk is even higher. So the common trend is people to sit on their dry powder because things are starting to fall out. People are getting retraded both in debt and in price. And with what we're doing at Skyline Point Capital is just kind of taking a breath. Let's see what the next 90 to three months to six months happens. But there will be some deals, but it has changed the dynamic of this industry and some guys are doing well and other ones are going to be having a really tough time in the future.

Yeah, I think it's smart, Steve, for you at Skyline Point Capital to do that. But what are you seeing, right? I mean, isn't don't the trends still show us, you know, the demand, right, is out there to access that from people wanting to live there and now are they getting priced out of, you know, their own personal residential home? Like, but are you, what are you, are you all saying, like, hey, so many people got in and now the, the pure speculators might be getting retraded on the market because they didn't know what they were doing or just they didn't know how to price it. And so you're just being smart and saying, hey, let's wait and see how this all pans out.

Well, you bring up a good comment. What we're seeing is that if you stay in the Sun Belt areas or the cities, the Dallas's, the Nationals Charlottes and the southeastern area, you're still getting a lot of movement into that area, but we're starting to see some decrease in rent month over month. It's just starting to come, come around. But it's, you know, it's not a drop off, but there's a little decline. But the increase is still in those time frames are double digits over last year, the rent increases, but they're not growing at the same rate as it has in the last couple years. And they're still, it's a, we love buying in very high growth areas from that side of it. But the supply of people selling now because as the interest rates go up, the price of the properties go down and there's less supply that's there, but there's a big pent up demand of dry powder that's still sitting out there. There's a lot of dry powder sitting out there. So we look in underwrite properties but we are seeing that the returns are less and not favorable for our investors due to the risk involved. And if we find one, we're going to go after it. But we're very cautious in what we do.

Yeah, I think it's prudent. You probably know, right. Run a wealth management firm and we work with lots of families but even me and my specific private client team and working with our largest families, I get to see a lot of stuff. And the syndicate offerings that we saw a year ago in the multi family space or through the roof guys, high win for the owners of those, maybe not as strong a win for the investors. I haven't seen one of those cross my desk in easily over two months. So again there's a visual shine sign to share with both of you. Yeah, yeah, that, that, that's a good signal to me too. Like okay, wait a minute, you know that's an issue, right? Because a couple years ago I'll use another real estate technique of opportunity zones. All of a sudden everybody's putting together these opportunities on syndicates you're not seeing anymore. And I think investors got smarter too. Is like nobody likes to buy a package of fees upon fees upon fees.

That's right, absolutely. So in this time with your investor or not investors, but your, well, your customers that hire Carson, how are you advising them in the way for generational wealth? I'm assuming some of your customers or families that are passing wealth to the next generation wisely. But how are you advising them? How are you guiding them? Because I know people in the real estate business that will be passing their wealth or want to do it wisely and judiciously to the next generation without screwing them up. How do you recommend that?

Well, I'm probably gonna say two different ways here. One is just, I would say the structural element of it and two would be the behavioral and the legacy impact. So. Right. One, there's structural stuff that needs to happen, just contractual through certain types of trusts or what we call estate planning to put Those together in a way that just legally transfers and hopefully avoids as much taxes possible. Because I still yet to find someone that wants to pay more tax to the government. We want to find ways to pay less tax. But I think the more important question is how do you do it? Not screw your kids up or screw your grandkids up in a way of generational wealth. There's some great studies that by the time wealth gets to the grandkids, that over 80% of it is gone. And to me, that's screwing it up. And I don't ever hopefully right. With passing generational wealth, I don't want to be sitting up above and I'm making a big, you know, statement there that I'm actually going to make it up above and looking down on earth. If I'm not here, man, I want to be able to look out and see kids and grandkids flourishing and living out lives their ways the way they want to. So one of the biggest things you can do for generational wealth is support the family in the following way. One, maintaining an entrepreneurial mindset and psyche of being open to starting businesses, failing at businesses and not failing catastrophically businesses, but finding that way. No different than your story earlier about one of your best interview questions is finding people who have failed or made a mistake. I think the same way happens with generational wealth is there's some evidence that getting their families involved in an entrepreneurial way and real estate can be a great way. Teaching their kids or grandkids to get involved in the development deal and learning from mom and dad or grandma and grandpa how those things worked, it's a great thing to do. But I think also passing the beliefs and values, there's a reason why the best of the best charitable foundations work. And again, I think about some of them here in Omaha. The Walter Scott foundation, the Sherwood foundation, the Kiewit Foundation. I mean, we're very lucky here in Nebraska. We got some of the best philanthropic foundations in the country. Each one of them would say one of their secrets to success as I talk to their executive directors is each one of them passes along and they say, Peter Kit's beliefs were this. Walter Scott's beliefs were this. So if I'm transferring generational wealth, I want to say Steve Navity's beliefs and systems were this. Jake, actually, I don't even know how to pronounce your last name. Jake, how do you pronounce your last name? Pr I don't butcher it.

Yeah, it's prayer.

So Jake Preer and his Beliefs and values were this. Paul west and his beliefs and values were this. So it's, it's. We have to help be open minded to have these communications with our families because I think a lot of us don't want to give money to our kids in the thought of screwing them up. Right. I think so. We're humans, right. We don't, we're, we're risk avoiders. The last thing we want to do is corrupt our kids. But I think if we look at it as a tool with a belief and value system behind actually can become an enabler for that multigenerational wealth.

And when you do this and you put your programs together, are you bringing in all members of the family or certain individuals and get them all part of the process or is this the, the, the mom and dad of this family and let them just do it themselves? How does somebody get going if they want to do this?

Yeah, so I'd say it varies, Steve. Right. It's everybody's level of comfort, right. Some of us are emotional and we're very willing to cry and bear our feelings to the world and other of us bottle it up and are, you know, super. I don't say risk avoiding, but more conflict avoiding. And so what tends to happen is, I'll use your phrase that you used mom and dad. If mom and dad are open, transparent, share their emotion and bringing the kids in, then what tends to happen is we follow those people before us, right. And we follow our leaders in business, then we follow our leaders in our family. So, right. Once they're open minded to it and the children become, then ultimately maybe the children become with their children and thus the grandchildren of mom and dad. And then the more and more you can bring them in is actually the better, you know, and people can go from, hey, just talking about it to we have some families that want in depth coaching. They want to build, you know, a family crest, they want to build a family mission statement, they want to build a multi generational thought about, hey, here's why we invested in real estate, here's why we've transitioned around family, here's our beliefs, here's where we want to go with it. So part of it is just how vulnerable do they want to be in this process? Because the more they are, Steve, I think the more comfortable they get. It's just hard to do that. Right? And a lot of times people who create generational wealth, they worked their rear ends off, had to work hard and had to drive a tough P and L. And sometimes it's hard to shift your brain from that to this. I hate to say it, but being like a. I don't hate to say it, I like to say it. A spiritual visual CEO, leader of transferring wealth, but with a beliefs and value systems rather than the spiritual visual leader who drove by a P and L statement in the past.

It kind of. They're on opposites end of the spectrum. It's. I could see that.

Yeah.

Well, they're not because they're leaders. Right. But it's just changing it from, you know, leading by maybe, I'll say quantitative numbers to more qualitative metrics that go along with it. And that's hard. It is a little bit different. But it's fun for me, Steve, to watch people I would call go through the transformation process. And I think I've shared or I've told this story to you guys in the past just through other conversations. There's actually a study from Columbia University that when someone sells their business, they suffer a period of time of an identity crisis.

You can apply the same thing to being a parent, being a spouse, is that, you know, if you lose your spouse or your kids move out or you sell your business, there is a loss of identity there because that's all you've known for so long. And now you've got a piece missing that you've got to try to step back and say, okay, well, who, you know, not who am I? Because, you know, you're being a CEO isn't who you are. It's just something that you do. But oftentimes we spend so much time on running our businesses that those borders do sort to bleed a little bit to where there is an identity crisis in. After selling your business or again, kids moving out of the house, which, Steve, I'm sure you, you had that same thing when you were empty nesters. You're like, wow, that part of my life.

Now what do we do?

Yeah. Right.

Away. We're both here at the same time.

Yeah.

Or when you, when you, when you start dropping your kids off at college for the first time and then you're driving home, you know, it's a lot of tears. A lot of tears happen.

Oh, yeah. Courtney, my wife, would share. You know, we just went through that, you know, again a couple months ago, Steve. Like, we get in the car and we're both on opposite ends. And she's probably gonna appreciate me sharing this story. Right. Because this is a private conversation on podcast. She's like, you know, in the emotional, you know, just kind of grasping you know, what's going on? And I'm just asking her question, let's talk about it. And she looks at me, she's like, will you just shut up? I just want to process and I process things differently. And she's right. Right. I have to learn from that as a spouse. But it's hard, right, with your identity is you got them around like with kids at that point, you're the Uber driver and you're all these things. And I tell all my friends, like, man, I can't wait till my kids are 16. I said, it's a mistake. Yeah, you don't see them as much anymore because they're on their own. And you may hate driving them to volleyball practice and piano and everything else because it takes your time, but this is some of the best 5 minute, 7 minute, 10 minute conversations you're going to have. And you need to enjoy that chapter of your life journey with your kids.

That's so true. My wife shared a staggering stat with me. Steve and I, we might have talked about it before, but the stat was when your kids move out of your home when they're 18, and assuming they don't live in the same town that you do, you will have spent 90% of the time you'll ever spend with them in your own, in your life. So that means, uh, yeah, when they, when you, when you become nesters, you got 10% of time left with your kids. And that's it. That's a sobering, that's a sobering stat. Because then you start saying, well, I'm not gonna, maybe I'll put my phone down when my kids are practicing so I can actually watch them. Maybe I won't complain about, you know, dropping them off at school. Maybe I'll, you know, you know, sit and talk to my, my kids a little bit more. It's just, it, it, it's a change of perspective that all things come to an end. And so just to cherish the moment while you're there.

Dude, you just said it was sobering, man. I mean, I'm telling you, you just like, my gut stopped for a second there. You just. When I heard that, because I got a 17 year old home and you said 90 of my time in life with them, I'm like, you just like almost made me lose my breath. So, man, I'm gonna get so much just out of doing this podcast with you today. I want to share the stat with other people because, man, it's meaningful. It's. Think about, I mean, 10%. I mean I just, I got sad a little bit thinking about that. I hope that's not true for me. But you could be right.

Sure.

Or the stat could be right. I'm not blaming you, Jake.

Yeah, I haven't, I haven't checked his, his, his research, but I'm pretty sure he's, he's probably right.

And think about that time, that 10% over how many years is that? 90%. And, and was it up till 18 years old?

Yeah. So they move out at 18 till your death.

So you know, 30, 40 years and that's over. Let's, let's just say 50 years in. But at my point, it's a long time just to have 10% of that time. It's not much, it's not much at all. Scary. It is so scary.

But I'm glad we're, I'm glad we're talking about it than avoiding it because like, this is where I thought you're gonna ask me earlier about, hey, what major mistake did I make in my life and did I learn something from it? I thought you're gonna put me, hey.

Paul, what mistake did you make? Well, in your early life then what'd you learn from it?

I'll tell you. So when I ran this business from 7 to 12, you know, I had the moment of, oh crap in 08 when I went to go close my first M A deal and my financial partner backed out of the deal in the way crisis. And I needed a million and a half for a deal closing that wasn't available and found out a way to get it done. So adversity. But what I learned was from 07 to 12, I traveled too much and I lost five really good years with my three kids. So then post then, right? I've tried to spend a lot more time with them and I can never recover those five years. So now like your 90 stat is super sobering to me because I probably missed more time with them. But I also want to maximize, you know, the time I do get with them. Listen, I'm driven like both of you, right? We all have tendencies. We get anxious, so we, what do we do? We pat on our desk with our hands or we stomp on the feet with our floor. You know, some people call that add I call it just removers. Right? You know, I had lunch with my college son, was back over the weekend and we went to lunch and we're sitting there and I'm like, all of a sudden I could feel my foot tapping because I felt like I needed to get going and doing something. And I have this phrase in my head that I said to myself, which was stop, be present. Is the phrase be present. He's here with lunch with me. How many of these chances do I get? And I made that mistake way too many times in the past. I was like, oh, I traveled, I came back and I always took my kids out to lunch. But it was always like 30 minutes gone and off to my next meeting. And what I would do to get that time back to be more present with them. So trying to learn from it now when I get those moments, to be as present as I possibly can with.

Them, that's a, that's gotta be a constant daily reminder for yourself, you know, like I had that just the other day. You know, we, my wife and I put our girl, I have a five year old and a three year old daughter. Every night, just about every night we, we sing to them, we pray with them, we read a Bible story, a kid's Bible story. And I got done reading cause I usually always read the story and my wife sings. And as my wife's singing, I whip out my phone and start checking like I think like a football score or something like my fantasy football, like you know, super important and yeah, call it the Lord, call it, you know, whatever it was. But I had this check of like there's going to be a moment where your kids don't want you to read and sing to them. That's coming. So it really enjoy these moments, you know, and, and you know, I choose to think about it not in a sad, somber moment, but wow, I get to cherish this moment today. That's exciting. I'm gonna, I'm gonna embrace it while I still got it. I'm gonna keep cherishing these moments because yeah, they will end. But hopefully we keep doing this enough and I'm present enough that my kids are gonna want to keep doing it. They're gonna want to keep coming back. And I think about that stat I share with you. It's like that's, that's a sad stat for people who aren't willing to do something about it. You know, for, for me and you and, and Steve, it's, we're gonna do something about it. You better believe my kids are not gonna see me once a year when they move out. I'll move wherever they are. We'll find a way to flip that step. But it's a constant reminder of be presence.

One thing is we're talking about kids after they've left the house. Chloe played competitive Soccer and we travel the Midwest at soccer tournaments. And I can remember back then, then I just wanted my weekend and Chloe to have a soccer tournament come up. And my first reaction was, ugh, not another soccer tournament. It was weekend after weekend after weekend. And now that Chloe's 30, she's not playing soccer anymore. There's times my wife and I would go, we would love to go to a soccer tournament and watch Chloe play soccer. And you get to the point when you're in the, the thick of things with your kids, but when they're gone and they're out of the house, as Jake, you mentioned, you're in that 10% window now. I'll tell you, I wish I would have done more back then. It's easy to be that and think about that. So. But I, I'm proud of you guys that you're thinking and addressing that issue because you still are in the, the 90% time and you can make a difference. So to turn that 90 down to 80 and 20 on the upper side. So, yeah, I'm proud of you guys. Good job.

Oh, Steve. I mean, right. We learned through our mistakes.

Yeah.

So. But I think like projecting in the future, right? I mean this is very much the convenient society that we live in today. And it's going to be really interesting. Right. Covid's changed the world forever, especially real estate forever. You know, it created this boom. Whether it's over now or not, the people value the time in their own houses and less, you know, on travel and will that ever change again or. Right. You guys know this better than I do. And your expertise, Skyline Point Capital. The convenience society is like, what are the, the features people need in a multifamily complex are probably different than they were before. To have gathering areas or, you know, a grocery store or delivery mechanisms or whatever that may be, or that all the places need a third bedroom instead of just two bedrooms because they want a spot for the in laws or stuff like that. Like it's, it's going to change real estate forever because of that balance people want in life or whether it's even they want to work from home, right. And they need that spare room now as their office.

Paul.

We even see, for example, in one of our properties in Nashville, we are putting in micro offices. Even though they're working from their apartment, they want to have a physical office that would hold a desk and all the amenities. And you're starting to see those things to make the multifamily unit a self contained environment. And so they really don't even have to leave. It's crazy. It is. But it's really, it's. You have to start thinking about when you talk about what, what's the next generation look like in your company? What's the next generation look like for multifamily? What are they looking for? And it's always ever changing. So you've got to be nimble to think about that and adapt to the changes that are going on. Because it's very hard to predict the future. Yeah.

So are you building spots on the roofs or the locations? So when we have evital vehicles, so electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles, we're not doing that.

But.

George Jetson far.

Oh no, no, no, no, no, no. That's. But we laugh about it and we can joke about it, but I could see in the future, I don't know if it's five years, 10, whatever you'll probably see on the top of apartment complexes, the vertical takeoff vehicles. It's. And things are always changing. So you got to be ready for it.

Yeah.

I'm a big believer that it is going to happen. So I've just studied a lot guys and looked at it. The state of Arkansas is the first state that's actually hired a position to focus directly on this. They kind of want to be the first state and the leader in that. I'm on the chamber board here in Omaha. Like I've brought it up a couple times and you know, I might be looked at occasionally as I'm crazy or too far, but at least like I like that you guys have thought about it and what you do at Skyline Point. Right. Because you're thinking about what could change or what behavior changes. Because if you're going to go, especially in a ground up project, you've got creativity but you're, you're building cash flow models in, I mean, for how many years?

Absolutely, absolutely.

So you got to be smart about man. We're building a, you know, X million dollar building and all of a sudden the world changes and everybody's doing that. What. How much additional capital do you have to put in to, you know, keep it modern for you at that point?

Well, and is. And it's also, as you know, is when you're building something ground up, who's your target market? Who are you looking for? And as you move up in the classes, the class A properties and et cetera, that's going to be more feasible in the future because people will be asking for that type of stuff 100%.

Well, Paul, we, we end, we're running up out of time here. And I'll honor your time, but we end every episode with a speed round of questions, really just to get to know you a little bit better. And so I'll ask. I'll fire off questions, you give me your quick responses. And. And. But there's just seven, so don't worry. We're not. It doesn't take too long. Do you have eight? Do you have any daily rituals that you swear by?

Yes, I do. One is what I call my six most. I write down my six most important things I need to do that day so I can always see where I am at that. And getting that done.

Oh, that's really good. What's one item you could not live without?

One item I couldn't live without my iPhone. Well, besides my family. Right. Family first and foremost. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I guess I think I should add.

That to the question. Just. Just so they know. Families assumed. What's one business you wish you could go back and start or invest in?

I wish I would have launched a Delaware statutory trust company five years ago.

Okay, you gotta unpack that.

We don't know that in the real estate sector.

Give us a little. Elaborate that a little bit.

Oh, man, I love to. And I know we haven't talked about in this episode. I think there's a whole new world coming, guys. And I still may. No one likes to pay taxes. The whole 1031 marketplace and very few people in real estate understand the complexities of DSTs for short or Delaware statutory trusts. It's a way to bring in some diversity. It's still in. I'll call it more of it. Not in its infancy stage, but people are now starting to understand it further. I probably should have started one a few years ago because I think the opportunity out there is pretty significant, especially in the Real Estate channel.

I think we need Paul back for another podcast. Okay. You're coming back.

As long as there's some either wine or bourbon afterwards, I'd be happy to do it.

Deal.

You can do it from the barn.

No problem.

Let's do a roundtable there. Yeah. What's one? This is. I want to hear this from you because you're from a different perspective. What's one piece of real estate advice that you'd give to others?

Know what you're getting into? I still believe that everyone thinks real estate is easy because of the VRBO marketplace.

Sure.

And I think we're gonna be in for some rude awakenings here in the next 12, 24 months. As things soften.

What's one thing in life, business or real estate that you're really excited about, man?

I'm super excited on a lot of stuff. You guys know me well enough in life for me, man. I'm looking for what I call my own personal next chapter of. I feel like I've been here 10 years at Carson for the next 10 years are even going to be better. And I think we're going to be building something super cool that continues to leave a legacy. From a personal perspective, I might change my answer now because you've completely sobered me on this before an hour ago. Plus, I was like, I actually can't wait to see my kids grow, spend time with them post college, travel the world, maybe more with them when they're more mature. Maybe they have grandkids someday. And I'm actually excited for that chapter with them. We probably started earlier than a lot of people, right? We were married at 25. My kids are 19, 19 and 17 today. So I'm actually really excited to see what they're gonna do in life. You know, for me, that's exciting. And personally, I guess I'll throw on the. When I'm excited for travel, I'm going to Scotland and Ireland next year on a father son trip with one of my sons who wanted to go eight days in Ireland and Scotland to play golf with him. So I'm very excited. That's a good one.

Yeah, that's great.

All right, last one. We often talk about heading west, and heading west is this. This process of you start from one point, go to the next, and along the way you learn, you grow, you evolve. So the question is, as you head west in life, where do you hope end up?

Wow. Philosophical there. For me, man, it's pretty simple. I think about legacy, and I've kind of already built this out as part of my own personal blueprinting process, as I call it. So one, legacy with my family, like, if my kids, I'm sure I'll predecease my wife the way I act and behave. So if they're standing on the pulpit telling their stories, their stories of joy and happiness and time together. So that for me is important to legacy with the families I work with. I feel like I get to spend time with them and if I can help them live more meaningful lives. Three, I've put legacy for Nebraska. I love Nebraska. I love Omaha, and I want us to continue and grow and thrive and finally legacy and giving back. I feel fortunate. Been able to work hard and, you know, Just accumulate great relationships, great people, some capital along the journey and man, what can we do to give back just to make this world a better place. And it doesn't have to be dollars and center sense. It can be in time. It can be in coaching, helping this next generation of philanthropists, entrepreneurs and other people like that. So right. I want to look back and have man, I'm so I want people to be able to say hey, I'm so glad I got a chance to know him and affiliate and look what he helped me do or be part of it. It doesn't have to be again financial in any way, shape or form. It's more that from the legacy perspective.

That's a great, great answer. Paul.

Working cool.

Where can people find you if they want to look you up?

Yeah, lots of places, Hope. Thank goodness. Not the prison directory but.

I'm on.

LinkedIn so you go to LinkedIn, find me. You can go to Carson wealth website, find me. My kids make fun of me. My Twitter handle is Paul west coach. So they find that entertaining for whatever reason or another. So yeah, I'm very visible if you just Google search me.

Wonderful. Well Paul, thank you so much for joining us on this episode. It was just a pleasure to talk to you.

Yeah, thanks guys.

Really good.

Enjoy talking about both of you and man, you've changed my life today. I'm going to tell you on this 9010 stat. Holy cow. So I appreciate that because I'm going to do something with it. I just, I want to use that with other people. That's that was powerful.