1360: Population Growth & Building A Vibrant Community & Hardwiring Excellence, Purpose, Worthwhile Work, Making a Difference by Quint Studer

Do your research. There are some providers out there, I mean, this is true not just in real estate, but in general in sales that just want you to get information from them. Do your research and you'll come to see, I think, at least for me, that Jason, you, you look out for your clients. You, I mean, I've, with my investment advisor, there were things that I was looking at initially and there was absolutely no pressure. There was, okay, yeah, keep asking questions, do that, research it. And not only is it better sales because you have a confident client, but also you become more knowledgeable. So I'd say do the due diligence, constantly, investigate, ask questions and also just look at the big picture. I think about that all the time. You know, there are going to be hiccups. I've already experienced some hiccups and I haven't been investing that long, but overall, even with those hiccups, it's still profitable.

Welcome to the Creating wealth show with Jason Hartman. You're about to learn a new slant on investing, some exciting techniques and, and fresh new approaches to the world's most historically proven asset class that will enable you to create more wealth and freedom than you ever thought possible. Jason is a genuine, self made multimillionaire who's actually been there and done it. He's a successful investor, lender, developer and entrepreneur who's owned properties in 11 states, had hundreds of tenants and been involved in thousands of real estate transactions. This program will help you follow in Jason's footsteps on the road to your financial Independence Day. You really can do it. And now here's your host, Jason Hartman with the complete solution for real estate investors.

Welcome to episode number 1360. 1360. And of course, once again, happy New Year to everybody listening. It is going to be a pretty exciting year if you ask me. I've got good news and bad news and of course, it depends on which prognosticator you're listening to, right? Some say the economy is going to be booming this year. Many say we are in the roaring twenties again. Again, we had roaring twenties 100 years ago, as it was commonly called. Who knows, who knows, who knows what's going to happen, right? At the end of the day, it's a bit of a roll of the dice. It really is. The bad news is that long term, you know, when you take and you do the lag, the demographic lag. Harry Dent, our economic demographer, who's been on the show many, many times, doesn't say it in that way, but essentially that's what it is, right? You just extrapolate from population growth. And of course when you look at population growth you have to look at a few things. It's not just people having babies, its births, its deaths and immigration. Those three basic things are the basic components of the population trend. Birth, death, immigration or out migration. Right, that could be another one. And when you look at that, at least the birth component of it, that one of the three major components of that triad. And you take that lag from 33 years ago today, which 33 years old is the typical area, you know, give or take, where people buy a house, okay, at about 33, and you look at that, you see that the home buying market right now and for the next several years is looking good. It's looking good. There's a lot of demand for properties. But the long term, you know, we've got all these lefties talking about overpopulation. Well that's not the trend folks. The trend is like the, the name of that book, Empty Planet. Okay? The birth rate overall is not looking good in the sense that if you want to perpetuate the species, so 33 years from now, that'll be three years after you make the last payment on that beautiful, wonderful 30 year fixed rate, awesome, artificially low interest rate loan that you're going to get from a property you buy from us@jason hartman.com properties that loan would be paid off three years earlier. And that depreciation cycle on that property you buy today or this week or this month, that would have already run. You know, ideally you probably don't keep your properties past 27.5 years because that's when your depreciation schedule runs. But whatever. Those are long tangential discussions. But the long term trend in demand for housing is not that great. When you look at the birth rate and you take it out 33 years. Now that's the bad news. But you don't have to worry about it. Don't worry about it. It's not going to affect anything you're doing now. That's a hugely long term thing. In fact, some of you listening might think you're not even going to be with us in 33 years. Hey, I hope I'm still here. I hope you're still here too. And we'll be on episode number 96,253. I don't know, that's a rough guess. But whatever, whatever episode number it'll be and you'll be having it download directly into your brain. You won't even have to listen to me, just the Knowledge itself will just download instantly into your brain. Pretty darn cool, huh? So those are some things to think about. The long, long play for real estate. As far as the birth, just one of the three triads. Part of the triad for the birth rate is not looking great. Okay, but that's many decades into the future, so it's nothing we need to think about right now. However you say, Jason, but you have this other podcast called the Longevity and Biohacking Show. Well, aren't people going to be living longer? Yeah, probably. Probably a lot, lot, lot, lot, lot longer. In fact, many say. And hey, I don't know, you know, it sorts. This is wearing on me a little bit because they've been saying this for a while, but. But maybe this time is different. Many will tell you that we are on the verge of some major, major discoveries, or maybe not discoveries, but innovations. In terms of longevity, you know, it's not just about lifespan, but it's about health span as well. So that's exciting. But it has huge implications for the economy. Number one, I say it's an inflationary pressure. Now you have to mix that with everything else. But there are some deflationary pressures out there for sure. But overall, that in and of itself would be inflationary. And it would also mean higher demand for housing. Look, if these people don't kick the bucket, they still need a place to live rather than a plot in, in the cemetery, right? They need a place to live. That means they can rent it from you. So that's good. But if you look at the past decade, wow. It is absolutely shocking how the construction just, it was just anemic. I mean, the home building industry in the 2010s, it was like asleep at the wheel almost. Housing starts were historically low in the 2010s. If you compare it to the 1960s, they were much higher. I mean, the lowest point of the 1960s was ever so slightly lower than the highest point of the 2000 and tens. In terms of home construction. The lowest point in the 1970s was higher than the highest point in the 2010s of housing construction. This is unbelievable. Unbelievable. There's a shortage of housing, like, wow, wow, wow, wow. Good news for you because the value of anything is determined by scarcity and utility. And guess what? Housing has both better than almost everything else. Scarcity and utility. The 1980s, the lowest point of the 1980s at the beginning of the decade was just slightly lower than the highest point of construction in the 2000 and tens. Same is true for the 1990s. And certainly for the first eight years of the 2000s. Now, of course, when the Great Recession hit, everything came to a halt. Do you like my sound effects? They're pretty lame, aren't they? And during the 2010s, as we came out of the Great Recession, you know, construction has been steadily rising, but it's still, it's not even close to where it was before. So we'll talk about this more, but there's just a structural, pardon the pun, shortage in structures. Okay. And that's good for you, that's great for you. So Today is a 10th episode show and our guest is going to talk about vibrant communities. And you know, this almost didn't have to be a 10th episode show where we go off topic, talk about something of general interest because this is to a large extent about real estate. But we put it in the 10th show category because it's also about societal things. Sociology, interestingly one of my favorite subjects and I never even took it in college. Actually, I sort of did. I signed up for a sociology class just because I find the topic so fascinating. And I went to two classes and then I dropped it because the teacher was such a brainwashing PC liar that I just, I couldn't deal with her. You know, I thought it was absolutely ridiculous. It was. Everything was with had the spin of the professor. These colleges nowadays are just. Don't get me started on this, okay? It's absolutely ridiculous. It's totally ridiculous the way, the way the college brainwashing, debt, enslavement, industrial complex has, has gone. And that was many years ago, by the way, that I signed up for that sociology class. It was not even recent. I can't imagine how much worse it is today. But hey, without further ado, let's get to our guest. Go to Jason Hartman.com connect with one of our investment counselors. Let them help you make the Roaring twenties a roaring decade for you. That's what we're here for. We, we are now 15 years in to helping investors invest nationwide. I'm approaching 10,000 real estate transactions. That's a big number. Bigger than anybody else you're going to hear from with any other podcast. I bet my number's bigger. So that means more experience. And you've got it right here on this show and with our company and our great investment counselors to help you make your financial freedom dreams come true and help you reach your financial independence day. So more on that@jason hartman.com of course. But without further ado, here is our guest for today. Let's talk about vibrant communities. It's my pleasure to welcome Quint Studer. He is founder of Studer Community Institute and he is also co owner of a minor league baseball team, the Pensacola Blue Wahoos. He's author of several books including Hardwiring Excellence, Purpose Worthwhile Work and Making a Difference and Building a Vibrant Community. How Citizen Powered Change Is Reshaping America. Quint, welcome. How are you?

I'm fine. Thank you very much, Jason, for allowing me to be on your show.

Good to have you. I believe you mentioned you were in New York City today, but are you, do you live there or in Pensacola or somewhere else?

I live in Pensacola, Florida. I happen to be doing a lot of work lately and ended up in New York City today.

Fantastic. Well, that's a place. I own some properties and we've done some business, quite a bit of real estate investor business there over the years. So let's start with the community issue, if we can, and then let's just talk more generally about how we can all become more excellent. You work with a lot of smaller cities, or maybe they should even be called towns, population under 70,000 people. I believe there's a bit of a brain drain, I think, in this category. Tell us about that and, you know, what's changing or how and why it should be changed.

Sure. Well, thank you. About 2004, while I was with my company I owned, I was talking to Jim Clifton, the chairman of the board at Gallup, because he was looking at what I did in healthcare and he shared with me that they had just done the biggest study ever on economic development to why do some communities thrive and some don't thrive. It wasn't based on location. It was based on some other characteristics. So I got very interested in that. And then I also, as I traveled all the time, I would notice communities that were just popping and communities that weren't. And I came back to my own town of Pensacola and we were in the we weren't popping. And a group of us started getting together and implementing some strategies which led over the last 15 years. This year being named the 15th most desirable city to live in the United States by U.S. news World Report, the 17th best place for a startup company by Go Verizon American planning association named Palifox, which is our main drag, one of the 10 best streets in America. And Strongtowns just last week named us a Strongtown recipient or the Strongtown recipient this year for building a sustainable community. So that's sort of what we've done. And I'VE gone back now and documented this in my book Building a Vibrant Community so other communities can reverse that migration. Because the real key is to get keep your talent home and get your talent back.

So what caused Pensacola to turn around like that? And by the way, as a real estate investor there, I'm very glad to hear all of that stuff. What caused the turnaround?

Well, I think the turnaround was really four key components. Number one is truly looking at your downtown as a place making. And we learned this from Pat Whalen, who's deceased now at Asheville, who's really trying to control some of that vacant property. Because the right thing in the right location can create a great community. The wrong thing in the wrong location can kill a community. And then you get into these four points. You have to program the hat to have the community. People think it just happens. And what Gallup research showed is young people want a vibrant downtown so they're willing to leave the big cities because they're too expensive. There's not as much opportunity, but they don't want to go to a place that doesn't have some of the same vibrancy as the bigger cities. So you need to program the heck out of it. And most small communities just don't have a programmer. So we recommend you get somebody that wakes up every day says, how do I get people down here? The second thing you look at is then how do you create those small entrepreneurs, those retailers, those people in bars and restaurants? And that takes a lot of training. Even though they're willing to do it, you have to really build that skill set. The third thing is you have to make sure, even though you don't think you need it, you have some pretty good office space. Most towns say, well, we got empty office space. Well, all of a sudden you build or you rehab a building that's really cool. And. And you find out people do want to be downtown and office space. And the fourth item, Jason, which is the toughest, but you do get it once you show what's worthwhile is the residential. You know, people always say, well, if we had more residents downtown. Well, they're not going to come downtown if you don't give them a good reason to come downtown. So we built. You talk about real estate. Our first 258 unit apartment we built downtown. First one at 30something years is 100% occupancy. And the average time a lease is available is 42 minutes here.

40, 42 minutes. I love that. Yeah. Okay, so the first. Go back to the first One, let's just go through those, drill down on them a little bit more if we can. You said have a program. What do you mean? You, you have someone or a whole department that's dedicated to the mission of making the city or the town attractive. What did you mean by that? You just said have a program. I don't know what that means.

I think what happens, Jason, is people aren't going to come downtown if there's nothing downtown a lot of times so you really sit here and say what's going to bring people downtown? Of course Farmer's market has become very popular. But things like in Pensacola we started out with a gallery night where you close your streets and it ends up being sort of a family thing from about 5 to 9 and then more of an adult type entertainment from 9 to about midnight. We do what we call sort of the slow rides with bikes or with runners. We have something called Foo Foo Fest which is a 12 days arts downtown. It's constantly thinking what events can we have down here? We had a chalk thing where people came down and did chalk art on the sidewalks. It's just I'm constantly thinking about what event or activity can we have downtown that's going to bring a lot of people downtown. And then the stores start to see, we start getting foot traffic and then your early movers start coming in in the retail and entertainment area.

Okay, so retail, now that you mentioned that is obviously going through what is known as the retail apocalypse. Very much struggling, competing against the online component. What is changing in the retail world? I mean, actually that's the wrong question. The question should be what is working? Is it really kind of the retail entertainment concept where people kind of hang out, it's not really where they sort of focus on core shopping, if you will, is it? The complexion of retail has really had to change.

I think that's a little bit of it. I think certainly when you see now Restoration Hardware has put restaurants in their places. So that's part of it. But I think what happened is the online shopping is personally hitting the malls and the big box players more than anything. And I think what you see in downtowns today is what I call the shopping experience. So for example, you have an olive oil store where you can buy that online but you can't talk to somebody about how to use it, what recipes, it's hard to take back. So what we're really seeing is more the sense of place in shopping. They're looking for that experience. They're looking for the chef to come out of the restaurant and talk to them. They're looking for things that you can. They can go out on the street, they can sit out on the sidewalk and so on, but it's really the service is what you're looking for. Because if they want service, many times they can come to the small mom and pop shop, which sort of are what happens in downtown. Now, if they're just shopping for price, maybe online is the place to go. So I think downtown specifically have a great opportunity, an experience that people can't get when they go online or even through a big box store.

Okay, good. What's the formula for the residential? I mean, you've got one apartment complex sounds like, you know, the 42 minute rental time, which is just phenomenal and 100% occupancy. It sounds like there was a shortage to begin with and you just sort of satisfied that need or what was. Was there anything unique about that apartment offering?

Well, I think a few things. And yeah, there was a shortage, but no one really knew it because there wasn't availability. So people really didn't know was there a shortage? We were fortunate. I believe in real estate you do good market research. So we did very good market research. What we found out is once people saw the fun downtown, the walkability of the downtown, the entertainment downtown, now they want to live downtown. And so we really basically did market research and found out, what are you looking for? We wanted a diverse housing stock, so we wanted enough studios, we wanted one bedrooms, two bedrooms, a few, three bedrooms, because you really wanted to make it inclusive. And so when we did our market research, it showed that we had lots of opportunity for residential, but they wanted amenities, they wanted it close to Palafox so they could walk to it. And it's been interesting, of course, seeing that this first one was so successful. Now there's a number of other ones. And it did something else, Jason, that I didn't even think about till two weeks ago. There's a young man that said, by so many people moving into the apartments, it also opened up housing stock that normally wouldn't be available elsewhere. So we've seen our assessed property value in our community go up 34%, the new investments go up 67% in the last five to six years since we started really focusing on making this downtown a place to go. But like I'm saying, the places around downtown also benefit because that housing stock now becomes more available. So you have new housing stock new and you have openness of existing housing stock.

Okay, good. Any other tips or concepts on, you know, how to address changing lifestyles, make rentals more attractive to people. Please share anything else you have there.

Sure. I think we did something else, which I think we didn't know it was going to be this powerful. We did something called civic engagement or civic con, civic conversations. And we started bringing in expertise around the country. So we brought in the Donald Trump to talk about parking, the Chuck Marone to talk about strong towns, the Jeff Speck to talk about walkability, Ed McMahon to talk about community character, Emily Callan to talk about social equity, Charles Montgomery to talk about how to create happy cities. And about once every month we bring in somebody like that because you got to communicate and educate your community that slowing down traffic is not bad, it's good. Reducing lanes is good, you don't need parking requirements. And these are really foreign concepts to a lot of people in the community. And they push back. But by educating the community, the civic iq, not only was there not pushback, it was pushed forward on how to make our streets safer, more bikeable and so on. And I didn't know if anyone would show up. And we actually have a facility that seats 275 and we always come close to filling it. Many times we overflow it. So we put them on live stream. And our last ones have been getting somewhere between 6 and 7,000 people watching it on live stream.

That's amazing. And how many people, how many voters, for example, like, give us a relationship, you know, what's the per capita viewing rate and participation rate on that?

I think when you look at voting, ironically, that's another thing. We did a community dashboard. Our registered voters have gone up 16% in the last couple of years because all of a sudden people, they don't pick up the phone to call Washington D.C. or they stake capital, but they want to have local input. I think what we're really trying to do is people are hungry to have input and we're just amazed. We brought in a company called Scape out of New York to look at our waterfront downtown, which basically was industrial and really wasn't accessible. They ended up coming in and spending a day with our community and ended up now creating a whole project to make our waterfront more accessible. It was really through a lot of civic engagement. So I think that's been our biggest surprise. People can go to pnj.com civicon and they can look at all these tapes, all these speakers and so on, because we've been real fortunate that the local newspaper, the Pensacola News Journal, really, really partnered this and really stepped up their local coverage, but most papers are reducing it. We've got a local newspaper that actually increased their local coverage and that's been a big help.

Very, very good, very good. What else do you want people to know about the communities, the civic engagement, anything there advice to small towns on how to make them better and more prosperous and beat the brain drain problem.

I think you've got to really invest heavily in, in what I call skill development. 80% of small businesses don't make it five years. So even though you can get people to start a business, it doesn't do much good if they're not going to last. So we created monthly programs using a lot of local talent on such things as maximizing social media, how to hire better, how to figure out cost of goods, how to do process improvement, how to create better customer service, how to satisfy customers that are unhappy. And we've so many small businesses. And then the other thing that small businesses want is mentoring. So we created a system called roundtables where you can sign up for a roundtable once every 90 days. You get together with a mentor that we assign to that roundtable to sort of help you be successful. In my book, vibrant community Partners, I have a whole chapter on. You've got to really grow that because 99.9% of all jobs are going to develop locally. But these people need skills and that's probably, I think one of our huge wins is giving people the skills and talent. Plus it creates networking opportunities for these small businesses. So many times don't join a chamber, they're too busy. Don't go to Rotary, they're too busy. Won't go out of town for a conference, they're too busy. So we've really, I think hit that sweet spot and that is really getting these small businesses and getting them training every month to run better operations.

Yeah, that's great. You know, it's just so nice to hear community, the concept of community, something that is just being ravaged away in today's world with, you know, all the technology and everything we've got. Let's switch gears and kind of wrap it up with hardwiring excellence, purpose worthwhile work, making a difference. I think that's one of your top selling books. Is that your first one?

My first one. It's like one of these record stars where their first album is their bestseller, then they keep trying to duplicate. I wanted to write a textbook with passion and it was truly about how do you create consistent culture in an organization that attracts and retains talent and then Gets them to consistently do it even when the boss isn't around. So they can have a place that just has unbelievable great customer service. So you have to capture the hearts of your employees before you can capture the hearts and minds of your customers. And that's what hardwiring excellence is all about.

But not just from a business perspective. From a general life perspective. Right. You know, maybe someone listing doesn't own a business. Right.

Well, I don't think people can separate. You know, one of the myths that somebody told me when I was growing up, which didn't help me as a leader, is they said you have to separate business and personal. People can't do that. And I go into that workplace, you know, I have somebody that works for me. I need to know something about what's going on in their life, because the number one reason somebody quits a job, because my boss doesn't care about me. And it's great places for people to work. They start then even practicing those things at home, and they find that if I have a better professional life, I'll have a better personal life. And that's how you really create loyalty in workplaces today.

Yeah. No question about it. Good stuff. Good stuff. Well, give out your website and tell people where they can find your work.

One website is Studeride.org and the other one is Vibrant community partners.

Fantastic. Well, Quint, thanks for joining us, and thanks for all your hard work.

All right, well, thank you, Jason. I appreciate the opportunity.

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