S1 E21 - Why Aligned Investors are Important

Welcome to the Broke to Woke podcast. Our mission for this podcast is to help each and every person out there in the world not only become a force for good, but also uncover those micro magical mental moments that help you become an absolute cerebral pyromaniac. Snapdragons. We're back in the building.

We're getting some life action, some goals, getting some things planned out. I'm talking to one of my biggest fans, people I love the most in this world, Brittany Faith Turner. All right, we left off with you kind of talking about the revitalization of communities, going through and really helping bringing what you learned in Africa over to the States. Even though while you're over there, you're thinking, I'm not valuable, I'm not good, I don't know anything. But boom. Turns out you knew all you need to know to help the communities over there. Do you start building new businesses? What does this transformation happen while you're now revitalizing communities?

I think the lesson I learned in that Africa experience is never curse the journey. You know, if your heart is set on your mission, which for me was elevating people in places and being able to wipe out poverty and human trafficking at its root, I didn't realize that my journey I was on was actually going to give me the answer to solve that problem. I think a lot of people get stuck on the how, exactly how, exactly how. And I want to challenge all of you to write your vision out. Surrender the plan. Know that taking the best step you possibly can every day with that clarity of your vision of the long term future, it's going to unfold in ways that you, you never could have imagined before. And for me, going over there and seeing that my skills were the gift to be able to actually do this was amazing, surprising, and really built up my faith in life. So I came back to the US and I'm practicing again, accelerating positive transformation so that I can do it in worse and worse areas and so I can eventually get to doing this overseas again. But you gotta learn, you know, I don't know what I'm doing most of the time, like we said, and practicing is. Practicing is good before you just move 36 hours away, flying.

Yeah.

With no resources. So we'd pick these, these areas and we found some different, larger pieces of land that were pretty empty and it was still in the urban core. And it was really fun to be able to design developments to, to own enough land to have a theme. And we talked about in the last podcast that we would design the first health and wellness community in Nashville. But then I started getting more land and saying, okay, I was pretty profound. You know, I walk in this just genius wisdom from above. And my source of finding this wisdom was Google. What are the top problems in Nashville, Tennessee?

No way.

Literally, that's all we did.

Oh, my gosh.

What are the top issues? And then we were just like, all right, how can this development solve those problems?

That's amazing.

If we're going to affect what people live in, exist in, and what their mind is going to think about, by the way we design things, then how can we possibly solve those issues? And so Google pops up a list. There's five things we find a way to creatively integrate them into the project. So, for example, there's no. We're running low on affordable housing. Why? Nashville's not evil. The developers aren't evil. There's no government programs. There was hardly any. I mean, there really hasn't been for years. Like other, you know, states and cities. There's a lot more programs in other cities. I mean, I really think Nashville is one of the farthest behind in this. And so it's a struggle because normally, either you build a really crappy development, you can't have any nice, nice finishes, or you have a government grant or program offset your cost. Those are really your options. Or you cut the legs off of somebody's the previous owner in buying it. So it's a very tough thing to do. And so we found a way, without any government grants, to be able to create affordable housing by creatively designing a project. And so we found ways to be able to attract artists so that we wouldn't leave lose our artist economy here in Nashville. And I'll have to show you this development. It's called north lights in north Nashville.

Tell me about it. So when you said, like, create, like, what are you doing when you're creative?

So, for example, instead of over designing the outside of the building and, like, putting stone or wood and, like, really over beautifying the outside of the building, we can use less expensive materials and spend our money on the artists.

Okay.

And so the entire development is nothing but murals. So it's just this amazing mural, and you spend money on lights versus, like, more finishes. So there's a way to glow it up and have this really cool experience. Again, attracting artists. But it's a less expensive building product. Still quality, it still works. It's not gonna fall down. But there's a way to shift cost to be able to keep it lower, to be able to keep it affordable.

You know what your Google questions reminded me of? Yeah, I had a story of you.

Found wisdom from above.

That's what I meant to say. It reminded me of a story. I have a friend who's a cellist and he has a few Grammys randomly. And he was talking to me about music and he said, you know how Mozart probably ended up finishing or Beethoven ended up finishing some of his symphonies? How, like how he's like procrastination. He waited to the last second, got real hammered, had to turn it in and just went at it. Because a lot of people think when they see something grandiose like this perfect work of art, they're like this person speaking, spent hours perfecting it and they were so genius and they were thinking through all this incredibleness. And when he told me that, yeah, Beethoven is just a normal person, man, like he just, he sat down and probably procrastinated, finally finished it at the very last minute and turned it into the person you need to turn into. I was like, wow, that's incredible. Because sometimes you got to realize that it doesn't have to be this majestic unicorn.

Right?

Sometimes it can be like, like me, I googled silver stocks to buy.

No, I love that story.

And then you googled, you know, how to what the changes to make in national problems, top issues that are here, right here.

Let's find a way to solve them.

Which ones did you end up solving or which ones did you end up attacking?

So we've worked on again, the health and wellness, the need for green building, transportation centered development. And then we've got the affordable housing and keeping that artisan community around. So it's been really fun. And then we've also had a lot of different programs go out on education so that people can pull themselves up financially.

Did you have to hire someone at like a company or a team or a consultant to help you with the ideas of all that?

No, I couldn't find anybody that thought like this. And it was so weird because everybody just how many buildings can you shove on? A lot. And I said, before you do that, what I've learned is the most frustrating thing for me starting out was I had so many people say, I've been doing this longer than you've been alive.

I don't mean to laugh so hard.

But I've heard that so many times. And I'm like, then how are you still missing this? Yeah, I'm not going to say I was that confident even thinking that. So again, always questioning, am I wrong? Am I wrong? Am I wrong? But understand that you may be given a gift of seeing something that's never been seen before.

Bingo.

Same world.

Yeah.

Not way of doing it. And now it's a cool word. By saying disrupting. That wasn't cool when I was starting out. That wasn't a thing. And so being confident in saying let's do the same thing you've done longer than I've been alive with different filters.

Yeah.

Here are the filters in which you can now go do your expertise. But I would have to confidently create those. And for us it's. Does this elevate people in places? Does this create positive transformation? Does this honor what's come before so we won't go destroy a bunch of historic houses? For example. Does this make the planet greener so we're not just destroying all the trees? So on East Greenway Park I had to make a million dollar decision. I would have been a million dollars more profitable if I tore down all the trees.

But do you tear down all the trees? And people won't pay more for the houses necessarily. If the old trees are there you can plant new ones.

Yeah.

But the site worked. Just easier to just kill them all.

It's definitely easier.

It's easier. Faster project would have gone faster. And I didn't do it. I did not do it. I built all of the houses around the trees. Looking at the trees. So they're like in their own little jungle in this amazing East Nashville neighborhood. And again you're stupid. Nobody cares. You're a tree hugger. Blah blah blah.

So just to make sure you left a million dollars on the table. Could have made a million dollars more.

And my investors money too. That's the thing. When you have investors. You have to make those kind of decisions for them. And I can't stress enough how important it is that you get values aligned investors.

Yeah.

When you're new.

Thanks for bringing that up.

And stressed and trying to just survive and make money. You have to really figure out you're never going to be everything to everybody. So what are the most important things to you when you're leaving a million dollars on the table? Which million do you leave?

Yes.

And making sure your investors. I've had some just greed centered people who don't care.

Yeah.

They don't live in the neighborhood.

Yep.

They're not here for the legacy. They just want to make a greater return. And they will fight you when you're making decisions like this. So you just have to.

I like telling people to put it in their brand. Like you talk about the things you care about in your Instagram and your social media and your website because then you're more likely to attract people and weed out the junk.

Right.

So if you take a picture of a tree and talk about the importance of why you kept that tree, for example. Yeah. You'll deflect some of the junk from coming your way versus, like, look how much money I made on this house. Yeah, you're going to attract some different investor than just bingo. Look at the beautiful tree that we saved.

So really, really good takeaway. Honestly, it's a big deal. Gloss over that. Because when you're talking about getting aligned investors, a lot of the people listening to this podcast hopefully are either real estate investors or they want to invest with you and I on a project or something to that extent. But bottom line, same thing with me, like with my clients that I work with and the traders that I work with. I don't work with penny stocks. That's just not my world. And you've seen a lot of my material. I don't promote money. It's not about the money. I don't really. I mean, every now and then we'll say, hey, this person, did they renovated their home or they, they bought a vacation for their family or they're taking a trip with a cruise or their whole, you know, generational families. And that's exciting to me, but the money is just not personally my thing. It doesn't really drive me. But penny stocks, also really low volume, really weedy, sketchy companies. I just don't play around with those things. I like to play around with the big boys and just make money with the big trades. But again, you're very. That's a huge point. Because as an, as an investor, you need to make sure people know you'll get a return on your money.

Yes.

It might not be as much of a return as you could get if you go this person. And you need to know that. But I will be protecting these things, the values I'm hold, and these are the sacrifices and these are the goals that I will not step over.

Right. And that can be very hard to sell people on. And it's interesting when they say their values aligned and then when it comes to making that decision, well, I mean, does it really matter? I mean, we can plant some trees, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And am I evil? For I did tear down some to build any of the houses, but we saved all the big ones.

Yeah.

And so what's really cool, and I've never had this not work out. And I've taken what you would call some pretty big risks. So I left the million dollars on the table. This is what that neighborhood has ever sold for. You know, we've got a mixed income neighborhood that we designed. That way we could have made so much more money if we just did all high dollar houses. But I wanted different people to be able to afford there without a government grant. Again, getting creative.

Sure.

And we ended up being about double more profitable because we left those trees. You could never have put it on a Performa. You can't prove it was gonna happen. But what ended up happening to that neighborhood and the people living there and the desire for people to like, want to be part of something that special. It's crazy. And you're not gonna be able to talk your accountant into it because they're just, it doesn't work.

And you're like, but these are the numbers.

I know it will.

2 times 8.

I don't know how to tell you exactly, but I know it will. There is a human element and I want you to, when you're running your numbers on any real estate deal, I want you to think about it as a human being, an authentic human being who wants to experience life and what resonates with their soul. And if you can think about those elements, it may or may not end up to work out on paper, but if you can think about those elements.

Real estate specifically is such a cyclical market, an opportunity never goes away and only switches places. So if this is normally your buyer pool and now this is your buyer pool, they're gonna pick yours versus somebody else's. And this is literally your market cycle security of building something more special. I know I'm nerding out about my niche. It's an approach.

That's why I wanna do this too. It's not nerd at all. Because this is the thing. As someone progresses through life, real estate is absolutely an asset class that should be understood and used appropriately. Maybe not necessarily in the exact same direction as you, but they, they need to understand it, they need to know how it works. And then again, you have a lot of investors going to be listening to podcasts, are going to work with you on some things. Right. You probably have other ideas with houses and trees that you want to implement in the future because trees are beautiful. And like you mentioned the, the, the human element.

Mm.

That we do like beautiful trees. Like when I, when I bought one of my houses, I was like, I don't want to be in a new neighborhood. I had tons of my friends, man, you gotta buy these new neighborhoods because they're popping up and you're gonna get a huge return, like quickly. I'm like, yeah, I know, but I like big trees. I don't want the small bloop, you know, those trees. I don't want those tiny little things. It's not my. I want like a nice tree, a few trees.

Honestly, people try to take the human out of real estate a lot. They'll run the numbers, run the numbers, run this many houses. X dollars, xyz da da da da da. Like, you can look at that as a mass builder, but if you really want it to work, and I think this is one of the biggest differences with stocks is if you really want it to work, you have to look at a human and their environment and what matters to them and why. What feeling does it give them in order to sell it? It's just different. You have to. And I think as the human species progresses, that's going to be more and more and more important than shove me in a box, a vinyl sided box next to all these other people. And we all look the same with.

All these other vinyl sided boxes, garage in the front.

Because from all this you also started creating other ventures and other businesses that started tying into all these ideas as well. Are we allowed to talk about that in the next episode?

It is, yeah. I'll tell you how creating a media production company changed everything because that was.

An idea that you were having as you were progressing. There's like, wait a minute, if I can get the vision out, how can I get the vision out? So if more people can see what I'm trying to do, then that can increase the appeal manually.

I'll tell you how in the next episode.

Perfect. I'll see you guys there.

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