Dumpster Diving to Thriving ft. Allan Soto | EP. 25 | The LeadFast Podcast

Yep. What's up, everybody? Welcome back to the Lead Fast podcast. My name is Daniel. I'll be your host, and I'm joined with Tommy Wofford, our fearless leader.

Bro, I was about to say, what's up, guys? And, like, you just jumped in, you.

Know, I got you, man. I got this. I didn't have to write on the board. And I'm joined with. I did have to write this on board. Alan Soto, the CEO and founder of Near Capital. Right?

That's right.

Yeah.

I got it.

He did it. We were very worried, guys. We were very worried that he was totally going to screw the pooch on that one.

Yeah. My brain, it logs, like, two words, maybe three words at a time. And then once you get past that in a phrase I'm supposed to remember, it's like it starts making stuff up.

He's like.

He's literally Michael Scott. He'll start sentences and hope they find their way. He's like, he's 25% committed to this. When he gets started, like, he gets a quarter of the sentence out.

Yeah.

And then it goes wherever it goes.

And no joke, I'm not going to go into detail on this because nobody wants to hear this, and I don't want to admit all of this, but the reason I fell in love with the office is because a part of me did, like, resonate with Michael Scott. In particular his.

The.

The cringy side of his character.

So, like, yeah, I'm in the office with you every day, so I can attest he's equally as cringy. Maybe like 15% more cringy.

Yeah, well, mine was growing up, too. Like, I was like, God, that's me when I was in high school. Or, you know, like, looking at Michael. So, yes, I'm bad with phrases and.

Bad with remembering words, and it makes the office interesting. So we have one of my favorite people in all of Augusta. So Alan's with us today, and we've been waiting for, like, a week or so to make sure that we could fill it, find the time and. And get him in here. So welcome. Hey, wait. We have this thing. Watch.

Yeah.

Glad you're here.

Everybody's welcome to the podcast.

And he came in with an entourage you guys can't see, but they're like, three other people here, and one guy looks like Aquaman, and it's awesome.

I'm still not convinced he's not Aquaman yet.

If he starts swimming out of our toilet. Well, no.

Well, I haven't seen the movies, but is that thing they do in the.

I don't know, I just figured that was the closest place to get water.

Okay.

No, I'm with that.

Okay, cool.

So. So Alan's here now. Alan, like Daniel said, is the CEO and co founder, so not just the ce. And we were just sort of like chatting about that when we were trying to figure out what we were gonna. How we're gonna introduce him. Because it's important because I'm a CEO and co founder, right. And so it's one of those things where somebody didn't just hire you to come in here and pull off a vision. Like this is your vision. Like you're sticking it out, you're running the company. And really at this point, you don't really have to keep running the company. Like you've, you've had, you've had enough success that you could, you could sunset this thing and watch it from a distance. You're gonna get you some slack. Go ahead.

Oh, no, for sure. I definitely could do that. But what would be the fun in that?

There's no fun in that. That's right. He's Alan's. We've had one lunch together and I already knew. I was like, me and this guy are the same guy. I like that he's out here killing it in Augusta, but it's not always been a killing it experience. And so we're going to talk about that because I think you have one of the coolest entrepreneurship stories, how you got started and stuff that I've ever heard. I was telling Daniel bits and pieces of it yesterday and I was like, bro, this guy has. So tell me the dumpster diving story. Tell everybody the dumpster diving story. This is the best.

I think this is Life Hack 101. Like how to just make something happen.

Dude, it's just straight hustle and grind.

No, it is.

You gotta do what you gotta do to survive.

Yeah.

So in Miami. So you're from Miami originally?

Yeah, from Miami originally. So the story you're talking about, it's a little. Shortly after college, I'm trying to figure out what I want to do. And me and a buddy of mine look at Wendy's and you know up here in Augusta, there's like two or three Wendy's. Down in Miami, there's like 50, 60 Wendy's, like within a drive, you know, a 30 minute drive. And Wendy's at the time is doing this promotion with AirTran. And if you collect 32 of these cups, you can exchange them for a one way ticket anywhere. AirTran flies. And we decide, well, I'm sure people are probably not keeping these cups. They're probably just throwing them away. Yeah. Because that's what I do. You know, If I get a cup, I'm like. I'm like, shoot, I'm not coming to Wendy's 32 more times in the next four weeks to get enough of these cups. And these cups, normal Wendy's cups, are yellow and red. These cups were blue, so they stood out. Same color as the airline. And so we go into the dumpster, and luckily, Wendy's has clear plastic bags for their trash cans. And you look in, and you just see all these blue cups in the bag. So we're like, well, let's go get them. And initially we're thinking, like, let's just get ourselves free flights. And then as we're getting them, we got up to several thousand cups, and we decided, well, why don't we.

Sell. How many Wendy's are you at, bro? I just imagine, like, you're driving around in, like, a. You know, this is back when. Early 90s, maybe. Like, 80s.

No, late 80s.

I'm trying to think.

How old do you think I am, Dude?

Wait, Answer the question.

Late, late 90s, early 2000s. Right?

Like 2006.

Okay.

All right.

I'm older than you, so, like, my. My frame of reference on time is not as good as it used to be. It's getting worse.

Sorry. Slipping. You slipping, bro.

This is the kind of stuff that you were saying we would cut out, but we'll leave. So. Okay, so 2006. AirTran isn't even around anymore. So 2006. I imagine you're, like, in a Ford Probe, driving around with, like, stacks of cups. Like, thousands of cups. Like, in my brain. That's what that looks like. So, like, were you guys just going, like, do you have a circuit? You're like, Wendy's to Wendy's?

We did. My brain is very analytical. So we, you know, we developed a whole route based on. Based on timing, you know, like what the distances are based on, the highways and stuff that we'd be traversing going there.

Oh, my gosh.

The Wendy's had different closing times. So we would go. You know, we'd start the ones to close first. That way you don't have people coming out to the dumpster and telling you to get the heck out of there. Which we had several times. And, yeah, so we were probably hitting 25:30 Wendy's a night. Yeah, Wait, let's.

Let's back up for a second. Because I want to know how that, like, how did you get there? Did you, did you just look in a dumpster and see the cups and be like, okay, we can make money here, easy picking. Or were you just sitting around one day and like, I got an idea. Like, I know what we can do. We can go get the cups. Like, how did that, how did that idea come to you?

No, it was just we wanted to go do it to get ourselves some free flights.

So it was pre thought, like you.

Told selfish motivations at the beginning. No, I love that. I love that.

Yeah, I just like to picture like you were just asleep and this woke up and you had this epiphany.

Like, I can go to the Bahamas.

I know what I'm gonna do right now.

I'm going to Wendy's right now. All right, so how did that, how did the, how did the Wendy's thing turn into a business? Like, because you had several. Okay, so you got several thousand cups.

What was time limited? All right. Because they've only run this promotion for like four or six weeks at the time, and it had already been running a little while when we finally said, hey, why don't we go get these cups? And so we, we went to the dumpsters and we're collecting all these cups and then we're figuring out, all right, how do we, how do we sell them? We're not just going to go around the streets or something and ask people they want to buy flights. So we decided ebay was up and running by then. And you know, it wasn't the early 80s. So eBay existed.

Internet was around it.

Yeah, the Internet was around. And we put them on. We put them on ebay and just started selling them at the max that Wendy's allowed. They allowed you to redeem four one way tickets. So we started packaging them in 128 coupons and selling them, and they started selling really fast. We had a PayPal account because at that point you had to have a PayPal account to get paid.

Because also not the early 80s. It wasn't the early 80s.

Elon Musk was around, luckily. Yeah. And then it just, man, it's all like, like wildfire. So much so that PayPal is like, all right, you guys just created this account a week ago and all of a sudden you've got, you know, the.

Feds are not going to tens of.

Thousands of dollars and they're in Miami. Yeah, this is definitely cartel for sure. Cartel business.

They thought something because they froze all of our, all of our assets. For six months. What? Yeah.

That put a damper on the business model, didn't it?

Well, sort of. We could still. Is the weirdest thing. Yeah. You can still keep selling and depositing money in there. We just, we're not going to give.

It to you for six months. What blows my mind is. So you put these up on ebay, right?

Yeah.

That means there was an equal amount of people who were like, I wonder if these cups are on ebay. So you had the, like the right end of the equation because you knew somebody out there was searching. That's crazy. Yeah, that's mind blowing.

I love that. So what was the, what was the total figure? What did you guys end up selling your thousands of cups for?

I forget the exact amount that we got, but I know that I walked away of just over 10 grand from the whole thing. It was me and one other buddy of mine.

Did you get your free flight out of it? Did you save enough cups to get your free flight?

You know what, I never actually got a free flight myself. That's awesome.

But you walked away with that. That's dope.

We sold them all. Yeah. So, yeah. So, and, and yeah, then the money was held for six months, so I couldn't do anything with it. Which was probably a blessing in disguise because, you know, if you handed a 23 year old $10,000, I probably would have spen.

Oh yeah.

Yeah. And in the interim then I started searching for what I really wanted to do because the Wendy's promotion was over. So that wasn't going to be the multi million dollar idea.

Yeah, I mean that's still. It's phenomenal that it was just a multi thousand dollar idea. You know what I mean? Like, and what's the saying? The window of the opportunity.

Yeah, you got. Opportunity of a lifetime has to be seized during the lifetime of the opportunity.

And that's what you did because you only had some. And then you like, you know, two weeks into it or a couple weeks into it, you're like, hey, you lost some, some, what is it? Some units on that.

I wonder if anybody else did that, like nationwide, if somebody else was smart enough to be like.

There were some. Because I searched on ebay too. When we were deciding to post them on there, there were some people signing them, but I mean nobody that we saw was doing at the volume that we were.

You had them bundled up, ready to go.

Yeah, yeah, I remember we'd get home and the first thing we do is we'd throw them in the backyard and just hosed them all off because there'd be all these used cups. You know, some people are drinking food, fruit punch, coke, all sorts of stuff. Ketchup on the side of it. Every time it's got a nasty business. And then, you know, then we cut them all out. And to get as small as possible, to package it, to ship it.

So you're just cutting the tab?

Yeah, the little coupons. Coupons on the side, yeah.

That's some work, you guys. You earned that money. Like, you put that in.

I did. I remember the first time we're there, you know, you're apprehensive. I'm leaning over the dumpster, we're pulling it out. And after about 30 minutes of doing it that way, you're like, ah, screw it. And you just, like, you just get in.

Oh, man.

So there I am standing in the middle of a dumpster, and you're pulling the bags out. And again, we had the same route, and these dumpsters get cleared out, like, every three days or so. So we're like, oh, no, these are the ones from last night. So we'd get to the bag that we already ripped open the night before.

Oh, so you. You saw your trail. You left, like, a little trail. You're like, oh, we've been here.

Let's.

Let's move on.

And they only had to go through the bags that were new bags because they could see the old rip bags from the night before. So that's made it even faster.

One time, I remember we went to one dumpster, and somebody already picked it. I'm like. I'm like. I'm like, what the f? So, yeah, you start.

You start shaking down your business partners. Hold up, bro.

We. We changed a route to get there a little earlier.

I love that.

That's good data, man. And had he not good. Like, we sort of. Listen, this is good because we. We laughed a little bit when he was like, yeah, because the nerd me was like, I've got to make a route and everything. But had he not had all that data.

Yeah.

You could have made that change.

Yeah, well, one of the crazy stories was early on, we were driving in, like, this tinted old. What is it, like a Chevy Tahoe or something? We're driving down the street, and we had already done this a couple nights, so we had, like, all black clothes on. Like, it's almost like track suits, right? So that. Because, you know, we're jumping in these things, we're not trying to wear, like, nice cotton. You don't want anything that absorbs anything like when you're inside of a dumpster.

So we're good to know. Note for the listeners.

Write that down.

We're driving down. Yeah, I had already put on the gloves, my latex gloves and stuff. So I'm in all black, you know, put on latex gloves and somehow he runs the light. So the next thing you hear is woo. Like right behind us. And I'm like, I'm like, oh, my gosh. And we're all dressed up in black. We have latex gloves on. This is like 11 o' clock at night.

And in Miami.

Yeah, in Miami.

So they go back and search for a body, because not even a body.

It is unreal that they did not call canine. And like, like, literally. And like, wait, what did they do?

What'd they do?

Well, luckily, luckily the. My buddy that we were doing this together was actually an off duty cop, so.

Okay, okay.

But we weren't in his place. But he's like, he's like, just shut up and stay quiet.

I'll slip you four cups. And you saw nothing. That's funny.

All right, so. So you walked away with 10 GS. So. So how did you parlay that into like a life of entrepreneurism? Because the story's great. I mean, the Hustle is awesome, but if it's just a story about hustle, anybody can do that. Not everybody can take the Hustle and turn it into something meaningful.

Yeah, I mean, when we did that, I didn't know what we would end up doing with it. Like, in my mind, it was just a way to make a quick buck. Initially, it was just a way to get free tickets to go somewhere. Then it ended up becoming, hey, let's make some money off of this as well. But I knew that I needed to do something with my life. And I am not wired to take directions from other people or to carry out other people's visions for them. Like, I very much like, you know, I'm in my head way too much. I dream way too much. I want to make stuff happen. I want to. I want to build like a kingdom that does good for other people. So I was trying to think, what do I want to do? I'm out of college. I got $10,000 in the bank right now. And I decided at that point to actually go into elder care. Early on in college and late in high school, my grandfather ended up in a nursing home. And I just remember walking into that nursing home. And if you guys have ever been to a nursing home, the hallways are usually lined with wheelchairs or you walk by the rooms and it's very lonely and depressing. It's really a weird idea because there's a lot of people there, but they're all really isolated at the same time. And I just remember, like, man, this really horrible, horrible way, like everybody that's in here lived the same type of lives that we lived. You know, they fell in love, got married, had kids, found jobs.

It's crazy.

Yeah. And then to end like that, it just didn't seem right to me. I remember we ended up getting my grandfather there, so he was able to die at his home, you know, with his, with his wife there and his kids and stuff. So that was a very redeeming end to that story. But I decided, well, let me go try to do something. And again, we're back in 2006 here in South Florida and this was. The real estate bubble was peaking at the time. And you know, I'm down there 23 years old. Yeah, I got $10,000 in the bank, but that's not going to buy anything. Nursing homes and assisted living are controlled by multi billion dollar corporations that just popped them up everywhere. So heard about this place up in Washington, Georgia, which everybody here in Augusta tends to know Washington, Georgia as the place they have to drive through to get to Athens to go to the usa. So ended up moving up here and thinking I was gonna do elder care in a. In four manufactured homes around a parking lot. I had to go there and convince the gentleman and his and his mom to lease me the property of an option to buy it. The down payment for it was $10,000. Was to buy that. Yeah. And got started and ended up shifting a little bit because I thought, let me do individuals with developmental disabilities instead of caring for elderly individuals because it was a little easier to get into and the competition won't be as fierce. And I figured I'd do this for a couple years and then I'll have enough clout and cred to get into the elder care game. But what ended up happening was like anything, you know, if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans. And I did that. And he obviously had much different plans for me because 14 years later, you know, we're still working with individuals with developmental disabilities and now even working with children of autism. But started that business, just me and my sister. First two years we were the only team members there doing everything and slowly.

That's crazy, man.

So how many, how many individuals were you caring for at that point?

At that point, we opened up one home. So that that home ended up opening in July 21st of 2007 we opened up and there was one individual. And in August the second one came. In October, third one came and then in January we got our fourth individual, which is, that's the maximum amount that you can have. Because the whole premise of the program is to get them out of institutions, you know, to get them into the community. And if you start putting 5, 6, 7, 8 people in one home in a community, all you're basically doing is running a mini institution in the community.

Oh, sad. Yeah. I've never thought about like the back end workings of that, but I mean, I know it takes like a special. What's the word? Like predisposition, like personality, a kind of person to take care of people like that. That's insane. Like, that's crazy.

Dude, I did not have that at all.

He's like, you're right, it does take that. I'm not that guy.

So here we are today. Wait for Wendy's to roll back around the promotional deal.

Dude, but I'm hiring. I'm going to one of the high schools and I hired a bunch of kids to pick them out of the dumpsters.

Dude, that's smart. That's Entrepreneurship 101 right there.

But yeah, I mean I learned a lot. I developed a lot of patience. That was something early on as an entrepreneur developed a whole lot of patience and at the same time too, learned a lot of what I didn't know. And you just have to be willing to do whatever you have to do. Like if you have to dive in a dumpster, you have to dive in a dumpster. We had several obstacles come up early on. Like the fire marshal comes out and tells us, yeah, you can't use these four properties for what you want to use them for. I was like, what do you mean? I already signed the lease. I already gave the guy every penny I had. He's like, well, they're too close together so you can't do it. So I'm there like pleading and begging with the guy. And the guy was a super nice guy and he found some, I don't want to say loophole, but some, some ways to kind of get around certain rules. Like, alright, in lieu of doing this, you can, you can do this instead. And that will, that will offset that potential deficiency. And so there we are. Like I'm, you know, in the middle of the night, I'm installing fire alarms in the house, I'm putting in emergency lightings, I'm building special handrails so that. And putting together ramps, all that sort of stuff. I didn't know how to do any of that stuff. I'm a Miami kid. Like, we don't do that. I didn't grow up on a farm or anything, so. But you learn what you have to do to get to your goal. Right? And so that's what we were doing, me and my sister, like, literally sometimes staying up the whole night, prepping for some inspector coming in the next day. And we got it all done, and we got it all open. And then fast forward 13, 14 years, we go from that one house, just two of us, to 40 locations all the way from Washington and Augusta and Savannah. Close to 300 employees.

Wow.

It was literally a bootstrap. Yeah. Operation. Yeah.

That's incredible. Like, three. The infrastructure that it takes to grow that and do that and being really. I mean, like, how fortunate the timing even there was, because with the. With the increase in awareness for mental disabilities and the. The assistance for that and all the things that you. I mean, you guys can take advantage of from a business standpoint, but also the rising need. How, Like. Because I know that, like, your. Your standard of care isn't institutional. So we've talked a little bit about that, about how, like, how what you really want to do is have an organization that helps people. Like, you're not. You're not a baron robber, like, sort of entrepreneur, where you're like, give me.

The cash grab and let me just.

Go and, like, do my thing. But, like, you. You really have a business with a heart for people. And so that's incredible. That. And probably one of the reasons. I mean, you gave, you know, God a lot of credit for having different plans, but your heart for people probably is a lot of the reason that you were able to be so successful and have all these things line up for you, too, which is great. I love it when I see good people, like, get forward, because that's good. It's good for the whole community when the best people rise.

Well, thank you.

Yeah, man, it's good. So. So then. So then you got to 300 employees and 40 locations. Right. That was the number. And. And you're crushing it. Like, the business is running, and at that point, if you're. If you're at that scale and that sort of, like, critical mass, the business has got to be doing pretty well.

Right.

At this point. The business, like, financially, it's got to be in the black, and it's doing pretty well.

It was doing all right. Yeah.

That's the I've seen that face before. That's the humble entrepreneur. Yeah, we were crushing it. We were demolishing it. But I'm not going to say it out loud.

It allowed us the opportunity for me to start doing some of the other ventures.

Yeah, obviously, because I want to get to how you got to Vinea Capital from. I'm running an organization that is for disability care. So you guys at some point in time had sort of a liquidity event. You had an acquisition, right?

Yeah, we took on a partner with Soto. LG was the name of that company that worked with the adults with developmental disabilities. And that really just freed us up both in terms of financially and time. Like they're, you know, they're a major player internationally. So they were able to bring some resources and back room business components that we didn't have in place that frankly like two or three of us were doing. And now they've got departments with dozens of people running just single facets of.

That and at scale, that works for them. You could have. It would have. It would have been a different business metric for you to try to put in departments to run a single facet, but. Oh, yeah, because they do it nationally, they can.

Yeah, that little thing with some of those elements, I mean, you know, running a business, there's some little small elements that are just annoying, but they have to be done, you know, and you can't afford to just hire one person to do that. It's not big enough for that. But, man, it feels like it's way too much to just throw on your plate. And it's real nice to partner up with an organization that has scaled to such a level where they literally have whole departments to work on those little pieces. And the people that run them are annoyed by those things. Like, that's actually their call.

They're super stoked to put receipts in all day long.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, that's. That's the one here, by the way. That's the personal.

TPS reports.

Yes, it's the exact same thing. Like legitimately, when we go travel, like, I hate receipts so much that I know I don't have to keep them for under 50 bucks. If I'm putting gas in my car when it gets to 48 bucks, I don't care how much gas, I don't care how much else it is to fill it up. I'm stopping because I'm not bringing a receipt home. If we go out to dinner, me and two staff members, and it's going to be $49, I'll tip in cash and just eat it because I don't want to take a receipt home.

I hate receipts.

Receipts, it's my personal thing. So, yeah, if I had someone all day long just knocking out receipts, that'd be a beautiful thing. By the way, we should all get together, pull our money and go build a piece of software that does that. Just the thing. Hey, so.

So I'll chip in six bucks on that.

I'll chip in. 49.

Nice. 49.90. I feel like we're bidding here, so. So you guys had brought in our partner, freed up some cash and. But like we said earlier, like, you're a hustler, so you're not going to, like, sit on the cash. Like, so then what's the next move? Like, how do you figure out, like, how do I reinvest this? You obviously picked Augusta, Georgia as a community to like, kind of sort of put your stamp on. Like, you've done some. We'll get into, like, all the cool things you've done here, but, like, why not go back? Is Miami home? Why not go, like, find an office park in Miami? The weather is much better.

Okay, well, we're dealing with two different ponds there.

Okay.

Yeah. But no, I mean, I've been here. I've been in Georgia now for. This will be the 14th year that I've been here, and I've fallen in love with it. I mean, this is where I've gotten all my opportunity and where the community has embraced us and what we're doing, and I've embraced the community back and we've all embraced the community back. So, I mean, I can't turn my back on it. Oh, yeah. Now that I've. Now that I've got what I wanted, I'm out. Like, that's just. What would that say of me as a person and the companies that we've built?

That's so cool, man.

Yeah, we're not. We're not just carpet baggers. We're here to make a difference.

That's awesome. Yeah, I had a lot of people ask me that same question because, you know, we started here, we grew it here, we had all the success and then. But a lot of, like, my friends and business colleagues are in LA and New York and it was like, you know, and there's opportunity to move to LA and New York and Chicago and go be part of these larger corporations and do this stuff. And so then what do you do? Do you move or do you stay? And we just said, no, we're going to put down roots, and our kids are going to go to school here and all that stuff. And it's worked out really well for us, but it's also worked out incredibly well for you. So Vinea Capital is, I think, one of these, like, beautiful, like, beautiful mind moments where you're like, I can see where I can do the most financial gain, but also do the most, like, community good. And I love, I love that about, like, sort of your ethos of how you do business. So talk a little bit about that. Like, sort of the, the goal of that. That company and how you're spinning off other companies that are doing great things here in Augusta.

Yeah, I. I guess we can circle back to some of the companies that started along the way, too, because, yeah, we're kind of jumping over them. But basically what happens is after we have this partnership opportunity, and we do have, you know, a lot more financial resources to do bigger projects, some of the bigger projects that we've kind of wanted to do, but have never really been able to do or had the time or money to do them, we start noticing that all these. We have a spider web of companies all of a sudden. And how do we manage these things? Because we're just, you know, you're running around like a chicken with her head cut off, so to speak. All right, this company needs help here. This company needs help here. So what we want to do is create more of a structure and a balance to it all. So we say what we really need is, like, a parent company where we can kind of centralize some of the core operational needs that all these companies are going to have. You know, like your legal and your IT and your marketing and your financing. Like, you can handle those at the top level, and it really won't impact the identity or the service delivery of the. Of those businesses themselves to remove those from the everyday needs. So we did that. We created. We created this parent entity, and now we're trying to think of a name. Well, what do we want to name this company? What is it we're trying to do here? And so we came up with Vignette Capital. It was actually me and my buddy John, who's a pastor here in Augusta. We're trying to think of something that incorporated both the business that we wanted to do so that people would know this is a business. But at the same time, the values that existed within the business and the core tenets of why we do what we do. Like Simon Sinek talks about it all the time, people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it. And so I'm a strong believer in that. And so we circled around, had lots of dinners and beers and stuff. That's where some of my best thinking happens. So all the best thinking happens. And we started looking at this one group of verses in the Gospel of John, and it's John 15, 13 through 17, where he talks. Jesus is telling his apostles that I am divine, you are the branches. No branch can bear fruit without the vine. I'm like, man, doesn't that make sense for this company, though? Because that's what we're kind of trying to do. Incorporate all these businesses, AKA branches, into this one entity and helping them be fruitful and do what they were meant to do. And that started looking up different names. So what? All right, so what do we want to name it? How do we incorporate that? We found this verse that's very inspirational. It's kind of like guiding us. This is what we want to do. This is how we want to be identified. So we just took the word vine and started looking up other translations of the word vine. First, we start out with, like, synonyms and stuff, because we don't want to be like Vine Capital or Vine Partners. And we looked up the Latin root of it, and vinia was the Latin word for vine. And I thought, man, that looks cool. And you start thinking big picture. Like, I could totally see, like, one day you know, being on. On Bloomberg or something like that. Alan Soto, CEO of NIA Cavano. You know, like, just put like, oh, like, yeah, I can see how that's legit.

That sounds good.

And then you got. You guys are techies. So, you know, next thing is. All right, is the IP address available?

Yeah, yeah, you're out on GoDaddy immediately.

Oh, man.

Oh, I've bought so many domains on GoDaddy just because I thought it'd be a cool name.

You don't use them, do you? Buy some. You don't use them.

Squatting.

Real estate 9.99.

Like, yeah. And then you get so mad when you see a domain you want and you go to the page and it's nothing, and it's just a cyber squatter. And say, like, this is available to you.

It's real estate. It's real estate speculation.

I literally, yesterday, actually, I was looking through and I picked out five different domain names. I was looking for five of them. Each one of them was anywhere. Like, the first one was like, 2,000. I was like, good Lord. You know, and it went all the way up to 33. For my name. For my name. It went up to 33, 000. I'm like, who is sitting on my name? Like, why is. Does somebody own that for $33,000? It's just insane.

I don't know. I bought my name as soon as I saw how chief godaddy was. I'm like, oh, what the heck?

Yeah.

TommyWofford.com was very affordable.

Was it?

It's like 99 cents. Somebody wants.

I'm gonna look this up. There's a Daniel Gutierrez out there who's killing it somewhere. Somebody's like, all right, let me get all the rest of these before he gets them. And $33,000 worth.

So.

So I feel your pain, man.

So you get the name. So you've settled on the name, and now it's time to start putting sort of like action to it. What's step one for you?

Just centralizing everything. All right, what key components do we want up at the Venea capital level? Now, if we have this parent company, what do we want? So it's like developing a marketing department and a plan for that, developing a legal, developing technology, and centralizing some of the operational strategical stuff. Like, we still want very much all the tactical and service delivery to occur at the business levels themselves, but we kind of want Vinya capital guiding all the strategy and the growth for all these companies. And then also. Okay, so what does Vinaya capital exist to do? So it exists to promote our three areas of focus, and our three areas of focus being individuals with special needs, underserved children, and generational poverty. So all of our businesses, we want them to address at least one of those levels, One of those areas of focus, either by the customers that they serve straight up or through the team that works there. But we don't. We don't undertake ventures, at least not to this point. We've never undertaken a venture just because it makes money. Like, it actually has to have meaningful impact. Like, at the end of the day, money is great, but none of us are gonna be sitting here when we're 89 years old. So glad that our bank accounts are so big. We're all gonna be thinking about the stuff we did and the people we did it with.

Yeah, man, that's. Well, I told you.

I told you he was cool. Talking about. I was like, this guy's the. He's the real deal. He's legit the real deal. So that's exciting. So went. So what? I'm just not gonna guess at a year now. When. So when, when did vanilla come to be?

When was that?

In 1960 when you were.

No, I guess we officially like really launched it. It would have been 2019. Technically it existed on paper since 2017. But 2019 was when you really started to visibly run things as Vinya Capital and started trying to centralize all those components and have like an actual management team at the Venia Capital level.

And you guys are committed because you have put your stamp on downtown.

Yeah, we're trying. I mean, you asked earlier, like when you had this partner come in and now you have all these financial resources, what did you do of it? And something that pretty early on had been a calling to us was downtown and the revalidization that was going on and generational poverty that exists in some of the areas in Augusta. And. Well, what can we do to ensure that all this cool stuff happening downtown, the people that are here actually get to partake in it. The ones that want to participate and be uplifted by this revitalization can actually do so. A lot of times you see all these high end jobs come in that none of the people that live down there can get. So what's the point? It ends up just displacing them and moving them to another location. That's not the goal of business. That's not what should be the desired outcome for us as entrepreneurs and creators and movers and shakers. So we decided, well, let's start doing some stuff downtown. Let's just start buying buildings and creating businesses. One of the things we like to do is we don't buy a building just because it's cool. Like we look at the building, it's like, yeah, it's cool. What can we do of it? Yeah, one of the things that's like the cyber squatters, you know, you have a lot of, a lot of individuals around, sorry to say it around this area. I'm just going to call it out that just like to buy buildings and do nothing with them. Yeah. And hope that the people around them do something so it drives up their value, then they can cash out. Yeah. And that's just, that's counterproductive. That slows down progress, it halts progress.

That was a big deal. Like when we. So you know, our company was one of the very first companies and Will sitting over here off camera, but like Will was, Will was around when we moved downtown and we were like the first software company to move downtown. It was like before Tax Slayer and like it was weird. And we took a building and we turn it around. And we. And we started like, all of our employees rode bikes around town to get to restaurants. We incentivize them to stay downtown for lunch and to, you know, patronize the businesses downtown and get there early and park off street and walk and go see our downtown and do those types of things. And that was, you know, Jesus, 2016. So, I mean, it was like back before they had announced cyber and, you know, all this other stuff, but. And then. And there was all this all of a sudden, like, Tax Slayer. It seemed like there was this big move to come downtown and really help our urban core. And then they announced cyber and all the prices tripled, like, over, like, artificially tripled overnight. And all the progress happening downtown came to a screeching halt.

And you got a lot of people with money that just went down there and bought stuff just to do nothing.

And then there were a lot of people. I mean, there were probably four names that own 80% of downtown. Some of that crowd downtown, they need to. One, just fix some of the buildings and make them where they can be rented so that the economy can happen. But they're just holding on to them forever and ever and ever. And that's like helping anyone at all.

Yeah, I think. I think some people are coming around and you. And you see some movement where there wasn't movement before to kind of revitalize those buildings and actually use them for something that changes and helps shape the community for the better.

Yeah, I think Alterman's getting rid of some of his buildings now and. And liquidating some properties. Just good for everyone.

Yeah. Brian. We've bought a couple of our buildings from Brian. Yeah, so that was. That was really good. We were glad that we were able to come to an agreement and do those. We moved our Vineyard Capital offices from Columbia County. We used to be off of Washington Road in Columbia county, and we moved it down here into the Leonard Building.

You guys have a beautiful space. Like, the Leonard Building is one of my favorite buildings downtown. It's a great corner location. It's fantastic.

It's a great building. And I mean, I just loved it just because it's such a nice facade. When you're walking downtown, you see a lot of buildings that are kind of falling apart that you wish somebody would do something and help restore them to their former glory. And this building actually still looks like something out of a time warp. It is a. It was built in 1899, so it's going to be turning 122 years old this year. And it's still pretty impressive when we went in there. It's like, it's got really good bones.

It's a rock solid building. Yeah, it's fantastic. I wish. We want to do something. We've got a. Andrew, my business partner.

And I have a.

Have a Oz. An opportunity zone fund that starts next week. And so we're going to start checking out some buildings downtown. But I really love the old JCPenney building. I feel like it could be. It could be Pont City Market, but downtown Augusta, it's got the space to do it.

It's a lot of work.

It's a lot of.

Oh, yeah, it'd be really cool. Somebody does it.

It's a lot of work. And it's probably right now 140% of what it's actually worth is what they're asking for it. But whatever. At this point, you're gonna. You're gonna overpay to buy something substantial downtown. Because if you're gonna get it right now, because that's where the prices are.

Yeah.

So you just got to know that. Suck it up and get through it. So. But I don't want to talk about. This is not a real estate show. But this is what I'm. Super can be. This is all I've been looking at lately. So my brain.

Let's talk off camera. I got a. I got an opportunity zone Fun as well.

But yeah, let's, let's definitely stop the recording. Let's get into that. So, yeah, so we're doing that right now.

Welcome to our new show, how to invest in downtown real estate.

Glad you guys could make it. I'm joined with Tommy Alan Soto.

Oh, yeah.

There we go. There we go, everybody. Welcome back to the Downtown Augusta Real Estate Hour. No. So we should do a show about that. That'd be fun.

We should.

So now you guys have got a great building downtown. You've got a headquarters. You're. You're moving into lots of square footage downtown. You've got a restaurant downtown. That and I have. So I've got good friends at Whiskey Bar. So I hate to say this, but it's my. You guys have my favorite hamburger, like cheeseburger in all of downtown downtown. And that's a big deal because.

Wait a minute.

No, you've never. Okay, so I've. Listen, it was like, like, I've, I, I, I used to love farmhouse. It was like the jam. I've got a. I've got a set menu item there. And then Whiskey Bar opened and we went and it was like, oh, they have this thing, the breakfast burger, and it became like it was the thing. It was my favorite. But then I got to go to meet Alan for lunch, and we ate at Pineapple, Inc. And I was like, you know, I'm just gonna get a burger. Can't go wrong with a burger. No, you legit. Can't go wrong with this burger. It is the best burger in Augusta.

And I'm not gonna lie.

Like, I'm. I'm picky about my food.

No, I know. I know.

You know. Yeah, you've eaten with me a lot. Yeah, it's incredible. We'll go. We'll go tomorrow. We'll go to lunch there.

But I do love whiskey bar, though. They're really good.

No, whiskey bar is good.

I go there, get a beef bowl and a Sazerac. I'm good.

For Tommy. For Tommy to say it's the best. So Tommy has. He has introduced me to the best steak I've ever had.

Yeah.

What was it was the other one? Best macaroni cheese. Yeah.

Best desserts.

Like, I trust his opinion. If he says it's that good, like, it's got to be that I want him.

But I'm calling him out on something because they got the Elway Burger. They need to make the Brady Burger. The Brady Burger. Seven onion rings on it.

Made of.

Made of goats. Goat meat. Goat meat. Seven onion rings, seven rings. Goat burger. It's the Brady. Yeah, I love it. I think that is.

That's free.

That's free. You guys can take that. They're never going to hear this podcast, so it's all good. Oh, yeah, they will.

They might listen to a real estate podcast.

So. So you've got all this stuff happening downtown Augusta. What's. What's your favorite project that you're working on right now?

Oh, wow. That's like asking somebody what's. Who's their favorite kid?

I know, but I can tell you mine. I've got three, and I know which one's my favorite. The only reason people say that is because they don't want an answer, not because they don't have one.

The other two kids don't listen to your podcast.

They're too young. That's the oldest. It's definitely the oldest.

Wow. I mean, I don't know. They all have. They're all so different. Like, obviously, I love the restaurant. I mean, I started the restaurant. That was like a. That was a pure hobby, passion business. Like, what guy at some point doesn't say, man, wouldn't it be cool? To own my own bar and restaurant one day and bring my friends. Everybody has, I said it and then.

I did it and then I sold it.

And then you start your restaurant. You say, what idiot would actually want a restaurant?

Yep, that's why we sold it.

No, obviously I love the restaurant. I've always been big into food and stuff. I think one of the things that really excites me just being in downtown Augusta is the redevelopment. I'm so stoked about the 702 building, the Leonard building, that we're literally like gutting that whole building and rebuilding. And we've got some really cool ideas. Vina Capital's offices are moving in onto the fifth floor. We should hopefully start that actual construction. The build out, the demo's done, but the build out should start next month. And we're super stoked about just being able to be really tough, be firmly entrenched in downtown Augusta and continue to acquire more real estate and redevelop it. That's something that kind of got into the whole real estate. Not intentionally. I just got tired of paying other people's mortgages for them. I've noticed if we're leasing, that means we're paying somebody else's note and investment off for them. I'm too much of a numbers guy and a spreadsheet nerd and I look at him like, holy cow. The payments that we're making to them. We could have this thing paid off in eight years if we bought it ourselves. That's crazy. So, yeah, so we started just acquiring real estate more and more. And for the first, first like 10 years of buying real estate, it was all owner occupied real estate. It's only recently that we started buying some of the stuff downtown that was more space than we needed. Like, we would still do something in, in the building itself, but then we would lease the rest of it out.

Right.

But it. But it's really cool to be able to go in there and kind of just learn the history of the building and then. And then build something. You know, it's like, it's the whole entrepreneur thing. Why do you like being an entrepreneur? You like the creation process? You know, it's this redeveloping. Some of this real estate is even more hands on. Like you're literally seeing it.

The moment it's built, I'm done. Like the moment it's built, I don't want to manage it anymore like somebody else take this thing I built and run with it. Make it, make money. I want to go build something new.

Yeah, we're totally wired the same way I am. I'm totally a big picture, hard charging dude. And then once the ship is built, like, all right, you steer it. Don't crash in any rocks. I'm going to go build a new ship.

That's Tommy, man, that's so fun.

I'm going to go get this ship that's pointing the wrong direction. I'm going to point the right direction, and then I'll hire somebody to drive that one for me. That's what I enjoy doing the most. I noticed that a couple years in the business once we kind of, like, were building and building it, and then you kind of hit little lulls. It's like our growth hasn't happened on a real nice rising curve. It's kind of been real choppy. You go up, then you flatline for a little while. You go up, then you flatline for a little while. But, man, those little flat line plateau marks, those were brutal. It was just beating your head against.

The wall the whole time.

People that can't see me, like, I'm, like, clenching my fist because I just. I want to do something. I want to make something happen, you know? Like, it's the growth and stuff that excites me. And that's probably why I started businesses on the side. Just because, like, I needed something, you.

Needed something to do.

I have terrible business add. Like, I cannot focus on one thing. I'm much better at doing five, six things at one time than I am doing one thing at a time.

I told him before you got here, I was like, this guy's me. He's just me.

This is getting. This is getting creepy now. Like, you guys are the same person. I know.

I'm just a younger version.

Yeah, it's late 80s, man. What are you talking about?

That's so funny.

So how old are you? Let's ask that question.

I was born in the 80s.

You're born in the 80s? All right, so I'm a 79, baby. So I'm a 70.

So what are you talking. So what, you look at me and somehow think I'm older than you then?

No, no, I'm just bad with time.

Shots of being fired.

Bad with time. Altogether bad with time. All right, so you. You. You kind of reneged on the which project is your favorite and gave an okay answer, but you didn't pick one. So I love the restaurant. The restaurant's great. What's the. What's the thing right now that's doing the most community good? The thing you're Proudest of right now. Will's Dills. Is it Will's Dills. Is that what we're.

I got. I. I have nothing to do with that one.

I just wanted to plug it because he's in the room.

Yeah. Keeping well employed is probably the biggest community. Golly. I mean, they're all doing something. I mean, obviously building businesses downtown Augusta and being able to hire people down here. Something that we're really passionate about. That's why we're down here. Our largest business right now is actually able kids, and that's a. Autism clinics and we provide ABA therapy for children with autism, and then we also provide speech and occupational therapy there as well. Yeah. And we've got. We've got four open locations for that right now. Three in the Augusta area, one in Savannah, and we have six right now that we've actually acquired locations that should be open in the next 90 days. So that'll get us up to. To 10. And that's kind of. That's kind of.

You guys don't mess around. Like, hey, we got four and we'll just go double that now. Yeah, I love it.

That's. Yeah. So. Well, we have. We have a very good model that we feel is doing really well. And there's a lot of need for our services. All of our locations have wait lists, and the wait list got big enough that they could. The wait list was big enough to open up a new location. So we're actually. We've got a second one in Savannah that we're opening up. We've got two in Columbia, South Carolina that we're opening up. We've got two in Atlanta that we're opening up. We've got another one here.

That's so cool, man.

Yeah.

Congratulations, dude.

Thanks. Thanks. Yeah, so we're. We're continuing to expand and that'll be. That'll be the first time that we actually, like, cross, even though we're right across the river. That'll be the first time we actually crossed the state line. We have a business, so now we're in multi states, so that's cool. That's really exciting for us. Yeah, my attorney was excited, too. It's like, all right, that means more paperwork that you gotta file.

Like, darn more billable hours. Like, they're just looking at you like, your attorney's got to love it, like, as fast as you spend. Like, if you're. Or anything. Like, our attorney's a great friend, but he still charges us and he. We've started 10 LLC in the last six months. And so he's. He loves us.

That's me. I learned how to start my own llc. So they're not that. That, that hard. I don't want to.

I don't want to know it. I don't want to learn it. I want to make a phone call and be like, hey, Brian, so I'm going to send you an email. Start me a new llc. I need to ein by Friday. And then it happen. Like, that's.

Yeah, that's where I like to be. No, my. My attorney is one of my. One of my best friends too. So it's. He. He definitely likes me, though, when, When I'm doing all this wheeling and dealing and stuff, because it's. Yeah.

All right, so let's, let's.

Let's get.

We haven't done this in a long time. I want to pull a card.

Oh, no.

Yeah, we warned him about it. So, like, they're different. So, like, there's some.

I don't know.

I don't know if I don't want to ask him a yellow card question because I feel like to him, I'm.

Not so good on the spot with. With these type of questions.

I'm not either, but I'm not either.

We'll find a good one.

Wait, is it just. Or am I. Am I doing it too?

No, I'm gonna.

I'm gonna ask him this one. So this is like. This is a dice card. So this is like. So. So people who haven't watched this before, sometimes we pull out these cards and they're. They're great questions. Some of them we've.

We've. We've cried.

Some of these questions have been a little too deep than we wanted to answer.

Maybe I didn't cry on camera, but I definitely did.

Cried later. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So this is. We're going to roll the dice here, and it doesn't give us a subject matter, but this is a great question, so I'm going to ask it. So assuming your life is a story and you're the author, what does your happy ending look like?

My happy ending? Yeah.

So if you're writing the story, if you're the author of the story of your life, when you get to the end and it's time to wrap the story up, what does the happy ending look like? You sitting on a porch in a rocking chair with your girl, looking off into the sunset. Are you gonna die at your desk like me? Because that's what's on.

No way.

I mean, what's your happy what have you accomplished? What have you done? What do you want people to say about you?

Oh, wow.

See, it's not easy.

This was. This was a pretty on the spot question, like you. I don't know that.

What is the meaning? What do you want the meaning of your life to be, Alan?

I'm like, okay, yeah, quick 10 seconds, fire it off, let's go.

I don't work this hard just to keep working.

That's good.

You know, I very much want this. This is a big world. I love Augusta, but there's a lot more to this world than Augusta. I want to see it. I have a three year old, three and a half year old son who lives with me, so I would like to build something that he can be proud of and that he can partake in one day. I'd like to have a kingdom. I'd like to do something good for God and use all my resources to make sure that people know that the reason we're here is because of what he's done for us. So I want to keep spreading that. I'm very much a Christian. You could tell that from the moment I was here. Yeah, I think, you know, I did it. I'd like to find someone to share all that with and have other kids and. Yeah, be on that. On that rocking porch or on that boat or riding around in an airplane, just exploring the heck out of this world. And I mean, I'd like to make a difference. I mean, at the end of the day, if you say, well, what is the happy ending? It's. I heard this once from some guy on a podcast, and he said his goal was to outlive his body. And physically, you can't do that, but you can do that in the impact that you make in other people's lives so that people actually remember you even when you're gone in the right ways. And I would like for people to remember me as, like, man, things were a little better when Alan was around, or difference that I made in somebody's life or the team that we have together, the difference that our business has made in people's lives. If as long as we leave stuff a little bit better than it was when we got here, I think that's. That's successful and that would be a very happy ending for me.

That's awesome. Well, I feel like we need more. More Alan on the podcast. I feel like this. I feel like we didn't scratch the surface really, of what we could be talking about. So will you come back and hang out with us again.

Yeah, absolutely.

All right, you guys heard it.

We've got it locked.

That's the only reason. Reason we recorded it is that. No, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding.

So you want to take us out, see if you can hit the post?

Yeah. So thank you guys for tuning in, for watching. If you don't know, we have a website, leadfastco.com and you can always follow us@lead fastco. On Facebook and Instagram. That's it, right? We don't have Twitter.

Yeah, just.

Just Facebook and Instagram.

The creative director just asked me what social media platforms we have.

It's been a long day, so, yeah, we'll see you guys next time. Thanks for watching.