00:05:00.280Yeah, I agree with you, Dan, that it's so rare to find a guy who has the experience, who could look down on everybody beneath them and say, like, oh, you whippersnappers.
00:05:11.360Just like you, again, we're making him sound really old.
00:06:25.380So I guess just give us a snapshot, elevator pitch.
00:06:28.000What is this book about, and how did you get to thinking about these ideas?
00:06:32.000Well, the first part of the question is, you know, what's it about? Essentially, there's no such thing as a risk free life. So I think we need to deal just forthrightly about risk avoidance and why it's a really risky thing to do and dumb.
00:06:51.180So now that you've got that idea in mind, then the question is, well, what sort of risks are smart?0.92
00:07:03.860And then since that's the case, what are some strategies for evaluating risks and taking good risks and so forth?
00:07:12.060And then, you know, I think a lot of folks understand that there is a kind of a risk reward kind of metric that is in play.
00:07:19.820the safer you play the risk game the lower your return is likely to be you know but that doesn't
00:07:27.540mean that every crazy risk is a good thing so you know then when you when you make uh you know
00:07:34.080decisions that entail risk how how do you protect the you know yourself on the downside how can you
00:07:40.720hedge that how can you make sure that your family is uh not put in a in a dangerous position those
00:07:48.140sorts of things so that's that's basically the the nature of it so it based you know the proposed
00:07:54.820title is uh you know risk with the exclamation point go ahead and take the risk and buy this
00:08:00.700book it might change your life that kind of thing that's great uh one of the things you talk about
00:08:06.380uh at least in the outline is your i think it's your great great three times or four times
00:08:12.380grandfather uh captain nathan boland so i i've seen some of the stuff on facebook about him but
00:08:18.020Tell me a little bit about him and his story and why that's why that's relevant.
00:08:21.100Yeah, well, he's someone I've been learning about recently, primarily because my sister has done all of the work on our family tree.
00:08:31.000And he's not the only one who had a really remarkable life, but he is the one who killed the corrupt marshal in Arkansas, William Morris, in an open gunfight in Gainesville, Arkansas.
00:08:46.800that's like kind of famous and I had no idea that you know but he he actually was a bushwhacker
00:08:54.720and the bushwhackers were confederate guerrilla fighters after the war even during the course of
00:09:02.320the war who fought in southern Missouri and in Kansas and the film I Outlaw Josie Wales is
00:09:09.560actually based on those guys. And so my ancestor, the Captain Nathan Bolin, this wasn't the only
00:09:19.160gunfight he'd been in. I've learned more about him and his history. But this particular episode,
00:09:26.000he was acquitted for. So he'd actually turned himself in after killing the marshal, but the
00:09:30.260marshal was so corrupt, everybody admitted he had grounds to kill him. So the marshal had
00:09:38.760had essentially said, if I see him, I'm going to kill him. And Nathan Bolin, my ancestor,0.94
00:09:44.020said, if I see him, I'm going to kill him because he actually had killed his brother, Jesse.
00:09:49.560His Jesse had been pursued by a posse and William Morris had him shot execution style right on the0.99
00:09:58.220spot when he was captured. So that was the blood feud that was between these two guys. But Nathan
00:10:04.400Bolin had been a captain in the Confederate Cavalry in Elliott's Rangers or something,
00:10:12.080kind of a famous company in the Confederate Cavalry. Anyway, I think it's Elliott's scouts,
00:10:21.740but this is following the war. What happened is, you know, my ancestor Captain Bolin went to pay
00:10:29.600his taxes so you know he went to town armed went to the went to the post office to pay his taxes
00:10:36.840and guess who was in the room when he walked in it was William Morris and while he's in the well
00:10:43.320he's in there and this is all uh you know we have you know multiple uh newspaper accounts of the
00:10:49.840fight so this is like highly documented encounter uh and when he my ancestor greeted everybody in
00:10:57.880the room except William Morris hi Bob hey Steve hey George then this skipped and went to pay his0.64
00:11:07.660taxes and while he's paying his taxes William Morris cocks his gun it's in his pocket cocks
00:11:13.560it everybody hears it and so Boland didn't even turn around he just walked out the back door and
00:11:20.620was waiting for Morris in the street and when he got outside they had it out and the first shot
00:11:26.680uh, Captain Boland took, he shot, uh, William Morris in his right arm and he was unable to
00:11:34.400draw his own gun at that point. So I don't know if that was intentional. That's like,
00:11:37.700so Josie Wales, you know, you wonder, is that a mistake or was that intentional? I don't know.
00:11:43.020So Morris ran, uh, ran home and his wife was waiting for him. Uh, and she had a loaded
00:11:49.520shotgun ready for him as he ran up. And so she just threw it to him. He turned around and unloaded0.74
00:11:55.200on my my uh my great great great grandfather and actually hit a couple of other people and because
00:12:02.700there were people in the vicinity of the fight my you know bolin kevin bolin uh he kind of you know
00:12:09.600didn't immediately return fire but but when he did he he put him away and then got on his horse
00:12:16.880and rode out of town but i guess the risk factor here is is just the danger of the moment and the
00:12:24.180coolness of his, you know, deportment and how he encountered this man he knew wanted to kill him
00:12:31.560going around town and taking the risk, this is the weird thing, to pay your taxes.
00:12:39.240I'm not going to let this guy prevent me from performing my civic responsibility of paying my
00:12:44.780taxes. I'm going to town. I'm prepared. You know, this might be how it plays out. And it did.
00:12:51.700But it's such a fun story that I just felt like I got to – he was also at the Round Pond Massacre and actually was one of the bushwhackers who attacked this union supply sort of mule train that came in, and he killed a couple of guys in that.
00:13:14.000But anyway, he's got a very, so I'm planning, I'm actually speaking at a homeschool convention in Branson, Missouri in March, which is only about an hour away from Gainesville.
00:14:11.400So I've got I'm just sort of exploring. So I might use her story as well in the book.
00:14:15.880Yes. Yeah, I was going to ask you, Chris, one of the things that it strikes with me is I think for a lot of men, we resonate with stories about Josie Wales and what you're talking about with your grandfather.
00:14:26.780But what we especially resonate with, I think, is that knowing like these risk taking bold, courageous men were in our bloodlines, too.
00:14:34.200Right. And the idea that their blood is still in us. So what do you think it is about men that make stories like that particularly enthralling?
00:14:41.400sprawling to hear and to want to somehow maybe even live out part of it in our own lives? What
00:14:47.040do you think it is? In 2023, Indigo Sundries became one of our sponsors. At the time,
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00:15:27.820Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. I know that when I learned these stories about my
00:15:32.320ancestors, I thought, wow, I mean, you know, I've got some examples, people in my own line that I
00:15:40.460can look to for inspiration. And, you know, I'm in some measure, I mean, it's pretty watered down
00:15:48.600now, of course, but in some measure, I'm connected. Maybe you missed your calling as a gunfighter.
00:15:54.180Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. But anyway, but I do think because generally speaking, men have historically been charged with the task of protecting their loved ones, but also taking the risks required to give their loved ones an advantage in the world, something that they could give to them.
00:16:18.560There's something in the way that God has, I think, constituted the masculine frame of mind that makes these stories appealing and inspirational.
00:16:29.260Say, wow, those guys did that. I can do something similar in my own situation.
00:16:35.320I'm not going to get into an open air gunfight with a corrupt police official.
00:16:39.960but but there are other sorts of risks that i can uh take that are going to if they work out
00:16:48.980be uh will enrich my family yeah i think it's a really good point one of the other questions i
00:16:55.140have is you know especially thinking about risk and generations one of the things i've tended to
00:17:00.680hear a lot of about say like the boomers is there's this critique that they were the risk
00:17:05.160averse generation so i guess my first question is do you think that's true is there any merit
00:17:09.580to that? And maybe if so, why? Well, I think in one way, boomers had a very unusual, kind of
00:17:21.680unprecedented sample of time following the Second World War. Essentially, all of our competitors0.92
00:17:29.960were like rebuilding after just, you know, being completely devastated, you know? Yeah.
00:17:35.500Um, so we had, we were basically unchallenged in the global marketplace.
00:17:40.880We had, you know, a country that's industrial machinery was still largely in place and functioning
00:17:47.160well, and people were returning home and there was just, it was the opportunities that their,
00:17:58.960And I think they squandered some of their inheritance.
00:18:02.880You know, you think about the 60s and what occurred during that time period.
00:18:06.420But I think because the frame of reference that they have is so unusual, they don't appreciate how good they had it.
00:18:14.940And they don't appreciate how things have changed for even their own children and grandchildren, how things are not the same.
00:18:21.740And risk averse, yes, in a lot of ways, I think they just found themselves in a world where things were being done for them that hadn't been done for other generations.
00:18:34.140And in many respects, it was sort of an easier world to live in, a more comfortable world than even, like I noted, their parents and grandparents had known.
00:18:45.440I mean, they're parents and grandparents that experienced First World War, the Great Depression, you know, Second World War boomers as the as, you know, they're part of the baby boom that that came on the scene after the Second World War.
00:18:59.080So the 50s, 60s is pretty, yeah, we had the Cold War and, you know, there's Korea and Vietnam and so forth.
00:19:05.860But nevertheless, they had a boom economy that they enjoyed and a lot of economic opportunity that their parents and grandparents hadn't enjoyed.
00:19:17.780And I think their children don't enjoy today.
00:19:21.180It doesn't mean that there aren't opportunities today.
00:19:22.940I do think that there are, and I do think that there are things that young people can do that will put them in a really good position going forward, but it's not the same.
00:19:35.320I think something that at least we've noted, I think you've probably seen too, judging on some of your Facebook posts, there seems to be a divide between boomers and really Gen Z, millennial.
00:19:49.860And for my money, it's kind of an interesting one because you have boomers and then their offspring who, you know, there's animosity on both sides.
00:19:58.780We got the OK Boomer movement sort of dismissing the older generation.0.50
00:20:03.740But then on the flip side, too, you also have, you know, boomers saying it is the most selfish generation of all time.
00:20:10.220And we might retort, well, they're also like you raised them.
00:20:14.620so one one way or the other that you can know that there's generational divide so my question
00:20:21.220to you is do you see that and and what do you think is contributing at the core to that division
00:20:27.220so i'm a bit of an odd duck so i was a late boomer and my parents were kind of bohemian
00:20:34.380my father was a professor all right or on faculty june very junior at washington u in st louis and
00:20:42.420then before that at University of Buffalo. So I, in my, in my early years, I was in this
00:20:47.680sort of artsy, experimental, everybody's seeking kind of environment. And, and one of the things
00:20:54.600about the me generation is that there was a deep conviction that you didn't really, uh,
00:21:00.440you weren't really defined by your social roles, uh, that you had to find yourself that self that
00:21:06.740you were looking for invariably was in California or someplace you weren't, you know?
00:21:12.420And it was always somehow found when you abandon your your dependents and stuff like that.
00:21:21.360So that's what happened in my case. So I was kind of an early, I guess, latchkey kind of kid.
00:21:26.820You could say I was pretty much on my own by the time I was like nine years old.
00:21:30.980And then when our household fell apart, I was word of the state, lived in public housing and so forth.0.86
00:21:39.040So I got acquainted with a whole other kind of world, which was sort of the underclass and, you know, people who are dependent upon the state for their survival and stuff like that.0.96
00:21:52.300So I've had that. And then my family was kind of, this is really weird, kind of wealthy.0.98
00:21:59.820So my grandparents were pretty well-to-do.
00:22:04.140So I've got kind of these segments or slices in terms of my life and my experience.
00:22:11.800And so I'm comfortable in a wide range of environments for those reasons.
00:22:17.800And then I spent my teen years in western Pennsylvania in a very blue-collar.
00:22:21.800This was during the period of time where I was awarded the state.
00:22:24.080a very blue collar environment where there were a lot of men who worked with their hands that I
00:22:28.400came to admire and, uh, was really positively influenced by. So there was some surrogate
00:22:34.160fatherhood, uh, kind of dynamics there with those guys. So that's why I have a, an interest in sort
00:22:41.020of blue collar interests, you know, trades and hunting and things like that. But, um, in terms
00:22:47.720of this dynamic, the two generations, I think partly it's due to a reaction that some boomers
00:23:00.420had to the neglect that they felt that their parents were guilty of. So they became the kind
00:23:09.060of the helicopter parent generation and didn't give their children enough room to really
00:23:18.100kind of encounter the world in the ways that maybe would have been more conducive to success.
00:23:25.440So there are, I think, some challenges that millennials face in kind of getting over the
00:23:32.400sort of the cocoon environment that maybe that they feel like they were raised in in
00:23:37.840certain cases and kind of get out there and experience the world. And I think that's one of
00:23:44.280the unintended consequences of the way boomer parents work with their kids or treated their
00:23:51.100kids. In terms of how the world has changed, I think that because obviously people are super0.53
00:23:58.040connected through social media and stuff like that, there are things that young people have
00:24:03.720access to today that boomers just simply didn't have access to i mean when i was a kid we know
00:24:09.280there were basically three networks television networks and pbs you know so you know everybody
00:24:15.140was watching the same shows and they were you know they were pretty mainstream i mean like
00:24:20.620partridge family was maybe the most risque out there you know you know so so there's there's
00:24:28.740that dynamic. And then, of course, because of globalism and because of the way that the sort of
00:24:35.240the global economy has transformed the American economic landscape, there are just certain things
00:24:43.060that are different. So like when I was young, I knew a lot of guys who really did see the blue
00:24:50.300collar life as really the life to pursue. Their fathers had worked in the factories. They intended
00:24:57.000uh, to pursue the same kind of life. Uh, you know, those were the days where you could really
00:25:02.220afford, I mean, there really were people who were working, you know, for like, say Pittsburgh
00:25:07.540plate and glass, PPG, PB and G who could afford a home. Uh, mom could stay at home and raise the
00:25:14.060kids. Uh, you know, they could still afford a pickup truck and a car, you know, and, uh,1.00
00:25:20.120So that was normal. That's not the case, generally speaking, today. If you're going to pursue that kind of life, you've got to do it very intentionally. And it's just not a given like it was at that time.
00:25:33.500And, of course, you know, during the late 70s, early 80s with offshoring, all those factories were shut down.
00:25:41.620Those places that had been, you know, vibrant blue collar communities were in just a state of depression economically, but also just sort of in terms of demoralized.
00:25:53.920And then everybody was encouraged to go to college.
00:25:56.200And, you know, that was seen as being the only legitimate avenue to kind of get ahead in life.
00:26:02.760And then people pursued that. And initially, it was, you know, not all that expensive. But over time, you know, we've seen inflation in higher educations, you know, outpace inflation in the rest of the economy several times over.
00:26:21.100So now we find a lot of young people who find themselves almost in a state of indentured servitude.
00:26:40.080These are women who are, you know, want to be nurses or elementary school teachers.
00:26:44.240And they've got $60,000 of student loan debt plus the loan on the car that they feel like they need to have, which they think, you know, needs to be new because they don't want to have it break down, you know, somewhere and not have any way to take care of the problem.0.99
00:27:02.160They just don't have that wherewithal to do that.
00:27:04.600And so a lot of the institutions in our society have taken advantage of the situation that millennials and Generation X and so forth find themselves in.
00:27:21.580You know, when my wife and I graduated from college, our combined student loan debt was $20,000.
00:27:29.120dollars that was you know in today's money not insignificant but we were able to handle it it was
00:27:34.900but it was also the lower cost of living in every other way i bought we bought our first
00:27:40.400two family for 135 000 in the south uh section of boston it's worth almost a million dollars today
00:27:48.120you know it's just yeah you know it was it was just a different time so there are significant
00:27:54.220differences today. And, and I don't think that boomers are fully, fully appreciate those0.76
00:28:00.380differences. Now that's not to say those differences can't be, or the new challenges0.94
00:28:05.580can't be met. I think they can. There just needs to be an approach taken that our public institutions
00:28:13.040are not encouraging young people to take, but you can do it. So I know young people who are doing
00:28:18.760just fine. But they basically defied the conventional wisdom every step of the way.
00:28:25.080Right. Back in the day, you could just sort of follow the conventional wisdom and do fine.
00:28:30.460Today, you've got to defy the conventional wisdom in order to do well.
00:28:34.340Yeah. So I think part of the generational divide is that millennials and Zoomers1.00
00:28:38.180find boomers advice to not be very helpful in the current situation because, like you said,
00:28:44.600they don't know the times as well. So just, I guess as like a father, what sort of fatherly0.99
00:28:50.780advice would you give to, to men today? You know, that would be helpful for them to build their
00:28:59.320house. Yeah. Well, I have two grown sons and so I've, I've done it. Yeah. And then maybe you could
00:29:05.520have them on the show sometime and they could tell that their side of the story, but they're
00:29:11.180both married. They both have children. Uh, they both own their own homes. So, you know, they're
00:29:15.880doing it. So my oldest son went to Wheaton college, uh, married a beautiful girl there, uh, and kind
00:29:22.320of did the more conventional approach to things. But, you know, I, all the way along, you know,
00:29:27.480we would talk about these matters and talk about getting into property and how to, how to go about
00:29:33.940it. Uh, so I, I actually, uh, was involved with the purchases of this, of the homes for both of
00:29:40.180my sons. I didn't give them money directly, but because I still had my real estate license,
00:29:48.460I was in a position to give them the referral that I had received in both cases. And actually,
00:29:56.760in my second son's case, I actually represented him and his wife. And as for their housewarming
00:30:01.320gift, I gave them my commission. I said, here you go, and a little money to help you get started.
00:30:05.520And actually, in that case, I actually negotiated a really sweet deal for them. I actually was able to get the house that they ended up buying out of another contract and put them in a situation where they had great equity from the get-go in the house, far more than they actually put in.
00:30:24.580but uh that's because i had you know uh you know a high degree of involvement in their lives
00:30:32.980without controlling i didn't i never try to control i don't try to control them at all
00:30:37.680but you know we we talk all the time we have we've got good relationships uh so my oldest son
00:30:43.140works with us in the theology podcast he's he's our our tech handles all the stuff with that
00:30:48.600but he's an audio engineer and works in nashville and has many clients there and you know works with
00:41:06.680They worked with their hands. When I was in seminary, I worked for a commercial contractor, worked my way through seminary initially with him.
00:41:16.640And then I was in a collaborative with a bunch of other seminary guys and we built decks and did framing and stuff like that all over Kansas City.
00:41:28.060So I learned the trades that way. So, you know, this is this is the fun thing.
00:41:33.340I look back in those days with great fondness.
00:41:35.540So we would all jump in our trucks after class in the morning at seminary and head out to the work sites.
00:41:58.380But anyway, that's what introduced me personally to the trades after having, you know, those models back in western Pennsylvania that I admired.
00:42:10.680And then when it came to just the subject of patriarchy, because I knew that the left was not sound in terms of its approach to family life, I took an interest in learning about how the household was understood prior to the modern era, and that's what got me into Xenophon and Aristotle and so forth.
00:42:36.080And as I worked with those writers, I came to see that they were misrepresented by modern thinkers and that essentially they were libeled.
00:42:50.940You know, they weren't presented in the best light, not even in a good light, but just simply their motives, their ways of doing things were dismissed as benighted and cruel and so forth.
00:43:04.140But once you get into it, once you understand what actually was sort of required in order to make a household work in a world prior to the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the welfare state, you see that it had to work the way it did.
00:43:20.760and what what i needed to do at that point is say you know is this still the case is it still the
00:43:27.640case that we need men to to think and behave in these terms or are men actually obsolete and i
00:43:35.320came after thinking about it maybe two minutes no you know they're not obsolete in fact every
00:43:42.600single household that I had personally seen that was successful was headed by a father
00:43:52.340who authoritatively cared for his family and did so in ways that were patriarchal in character.
00:44:00.220That doesn't mean that they didn't love and appreciate their wives and didn't respect
00:44:07.360the the choices their kids made but they they comported themselves with a level of personal
00:44:14.340authority that most people think uh is either impossible to practice or if it is practice it's
00:44:22.840got to be horrendously oppressive and but i saw those guys raise young women who went on to be
00:44:29.700happy and fruitful women, happy and fruitful sons, and so I said, okay, I need to be the advocate
00:44:38.920for this truth, this reality. It's in the best interest of men and women. It's in the best
00:44:45.440interest of even our political order, because if the household collapses, if we don't see
00:44:51.600functional households, you know, thriving, well, the welfare state's just going to continue to
00:44:58.360absorb you know these desperately needy people who have no other recourse but to rely upon it
00:45:06.060so anyway all of that was in play when it comes to real estate I just always wanted to own my own
00:45:14.140stuff and that was really all there was to it initially but as I started as I grew in my
00:45:19.780appreciation of the household and its basis in it as a productive economy I came to see that
00:45:26.600So in antiquity, Middle Ages, whatever, productive property was always at the center of every household enterprise.
00:45:36.740And since that was the case, I thought, well, we need to see that today as well.
00:45:40.840And I think we're actually in a great moment where the prospects for recovering the productive household are as good or better than they've been in a century.
00:45:54.720Well, it has to do with, paradoxically, the Internet and what we are able to achieve today.
00:46:02.460So what we're seeing is kind of the diffusion or the decentralization of even the industrial machinery of our society.
00:46:13.520And because of the ability to communicate and work together intellectually and even manufacture and ship things, I think that we are at a point where we could see people being able to live where they want to live and still participate in the global economy.
00:46:36.620I think that there are great things about the past.
00:46:39.560I think there are great things about the present.
00:46:40.940what we need to do is find creative approaches to bringing the best of both together.
00:46:47.500Yeah, I think that's really important. One of the other questions related to this
00:46:51.400in the real estate, you know, you kind of have two sides, right? Where people right now are like,
00:46:56.300oh, everything, you know, it's going to crash, whatever. But I think you've said there's actually
00:47:00.060a lot of opportunity. So for somebody who wants to get into it, sees the value of it, says,
00:47:05.360yeah, I want to get into the real estate. Just curious, like where you started, maybe that's
00:47:10.020different than what you would recommend with today, but what would you say is a good place
00:47:13.980for people to begin? Well, I think small town America is where the opportunities are today.
00:47:19.380When I was getting started, the opportunities were in the inner city. It's hard for people
00:47:24.880to appreciate just how different life was in inner city Boston in the late 80s and early 90s.
00:47:33.280When we had the crack epidemic, I was mugged by two guys outside the Ashmont Tea Station with a
00:47:39.220machete uh i was in the i was at the shabu gang fight that made the front page of the boston globe
00:47:45.400uh my truck was stolen from from uh the cobbman square in the middle of the day
00:47:51.120uh i remember pulling pulling away and i'm running down the street after it
00:47:55.100it was a wild time man it sounds like you should have been a gunfighter
00:47:59.400well actually we even had a crack addict who lived with us for a while oh wow it was a different
00:48:06.180world i mean so if you remember like films like escape from new york or escape from la the reason
00:48:11.860why those films were like uh produced is because people were wondering are we descending into that
00:48:18.560kind of chaos like like even uh like charles bronson uh oh yeah oh yeah yeah death wish
00:48:26.700yeah it was about like surviving new york and getting mugged like oh yeah yeah so i remember
00:48:32.720the 70s i remember being in times square and being propositioned by prostitutes every every like
00:48:38.300block uh you know the only people who were selling anything in new in times square at that time were
00:48:44.200guys who were like trying to sell stolen goods uh out of their like trunks stuff like that that
00:48:50.820was that was new york it was a wild world and if you said you know i i live in dorchester people
00:48:58.920would say, oh, that's dangerous. How do you live there? That's where I bought my first property.
00:49:05.480And they were desperate. So banks and municipalities, cities across America were
00:49:12.120giving you great deals. So I got in at like 5% down, but the interest rate was eight and three
00:49:18.280quarters. So it was a great opportunity, a great time to buy precisely because no one wanted to
00:49:25.320lived there no one no one anticipated the really Giuliani you know broken windows policing thing
00:49:30.320having the impact that it did no one anticipated so that was so I got into a little spat with
00:49:35.080Tim Keller the other day on Twitter I basically said the reason why your whole model worked is
00:49:41.640because of really Giuliani and he took a issue with me on on some things and anyway but it's but
00:49:48.560is true today that's where you know cool hip people want to live nobody was thinking that
00:49:55.380in the early 90s so today it's a different scene everything is gentrified everything is priced way
00:50:01.660out of sight that was a big deal right i mean i know i saw you talking about that too but this
00:50:05.620whole like for 20 years i mean early ministry and pastorate that i experienced everything was about
00:50:13.000for the city yeah for the city for the city you know and some of that now i i don't know if you
00:50:17.940think it's shifting, but it seems like people are starting to realize, well, actually a small town
00:50:22.160would be a lot easier to capture if you wanted to change a place and really invest in it and see
00:50:28.360change. There's that. But the other part of it is a lot of these urban leaders don't have the best
00:50:34.040interests of the young people that they're talking to in mind. Essentially, let's say you want to go
00:50:42.260to San Francisco. What's your prospects for buying a house in San Francisco? What's your
00:50:47.420prospect for buying a house, even in the great. Yeah, that's exactly right. You are an indentured
00:50:52.140servant for Jesus. You know, that's it. You know, you've got zero chance because you're not just
00:50:59.480competing with other people like yourself. You're competing with investors. You're competing with
00:51:04.160foreign money, wealthy people. So here's, let me give you an example. When I, I remember being
00:51:10.120in the Lambs Club in Times Square. I was involved with a kind of consultation on urban youth
00:51:17.320ministry. And it was still very seedy, run down. I remember there was this protest that occurred
00:51:26.060right outside the building with a bunch of Marxists going down the street, beating drums. And it was
00:51:30.160just nuts. Today, the Lamb's Club is the home to a five-star restaurant that one of the Iron
00:51:39.860Chefs has established. And the airspace above the Lamb's Club was sold for $100 million. I'm
00:51:46.640talking about vacant air space i know the guy who did the deal yeah i know the guy who did the deal
00:51:53.240he's an old mentor of mine but anyway uh you think about that that is now uh the most expensive
00:51:59.800hotel in new york i think it's like it's like ten thousand dollars a night to stay there
00:52:04.420think about that so you go from this like charles bronson death wish scene that nobody wants
00:52:11.840anything to do with where you could people were like begging you like and i lived in central
00:52:16.060Square in Cambridge back during the days of rent control, you could buy a two-family in Cambridge
00:52:22.080for $150,000. Today, that same property is $2 million. It's a different world.
00:52:31.020So where can you find good deals today? Small-town America. They're begging people.
00:52:38.180You got the same kind of dynamics even. Opioid crisis. People say, oh, I don't want to live in
00:52:44.860this uh you know sort of depressed area that's where the opportunities are now if like the state
00:52:50.980of vermont will will pay you twelve thousand dollars to move there so if you're a remote worker
00:52:55.500they set it up precisely for this purpose they said we need people we need young people please
00:53:01.200move to vermont now people say well it's liberal it's yeah of course whatever you know but you've
00:53:06.780got opportunity there and i and you can buy some beautiful old 19th century you know 19th century
00:53:12.600early 20th century homes, you know, for like $200,000 or less. Yeah. They need a lot of work.
00:53:20.300Yeah. You're in Rutland, Vermont, which is economically depressed. Yeah. You're surrounded
00:53:24.100by people in opioids and you got Bernie Sanders up the road. Yeah. That's all true. But, but if
00:53:29.600you, but if you're telecommuting, you know, you know, you may be working for some, but some firm
00:53:35.220out of San Francisco, you're making good money and you're in a place where you can build some
00:53:39.740equity so and i i i identified eight states that will pay you to move there and move into an
00:53:48.360economically depressed yeah yeah there's i mean arkansas because i thought it was just alaska
00:53:53.620alaska is one of them iowa is one of them minnesota is another one so there are a lot of
00:53:58.940places where you can get some uh there where there's real opportunity and if you're either
00:54:04.460an entrepreneur and you want to like start something, you know, you got all kinds of,
00:54:11.620you know, tax incentives, you know, even capital that people want to invest in efforts to start
00:54:18.000businesses in these areas. And, you know, cash, you know, Arkansas, I think Arkansas will pay you
00:54:24.680like $12,000. West Virginia. Now, so let's say you don't like, you know, Bernie Sanders, but you
00:54:30.160love mountains and greenery. Move to West Virginia. It's great. It's a beautiful place.
00:54:35.540It's as beautiful as Vermont. I've been in both places. They're both great.
00:54:38.620That's crazy. So I'm interested, Chris, we've seen a lot of shift and change the last couple
00:54:43.880of years, people moving for various reasons, COVID, all that. I wonder, being in real estate,
00:54:50.260have you seen any patterns develop? Is there a settling theme happening? How do you see the
00:54:57.120change resulting, I guess, in fruit. I don't know if it's too early to tell.
00:55:01.900Well, this is my fourth correction. So each one has its own flavor. So the thing that happened
00:55:08.760in 2008 occurred because of the subprime mortgage thing and then the bundling of mortgages. So
00:55:14.520that's not the case this time. The case this time is there were a lot of investment firms that got
00:55:21.120into residential real estate. And they were buying up entire neighborhoods and then just
00:55:28.200renting them out. It seemed to make sense in terms of return on investment, but now it no longer does
00:55:34.560and they're starting to lose money. And many of them are losing so much money that they're going
00:55:38.820out of business. And I think that what we're seeing now is a lot of property kind of just kind
00:55:44.620of working its way back onto the market. Now in the, in the first phase of this process,
00:55:50.340there's a lot of money that's been sitting on the side waiting that has to be exhausted before the
00:55:55.520real opportunities are there for people. So we may be, you know, nine months to two years out
00:56:01.020from the real bottom, uh, cause it does take a while for these things to play out. But I do think
00:56:06.440that even then, you know, there are, there are still opportunities. I was just talking to somebody
00:56:11.820about places in Connecticut that I think have a lot of upside and I encouraged him to look at
00:56:17.220those places they tend to be kind of gritty areas but a lot of character and I think could be
00:56:24.420turnaround communities so you can do something today you can wait I think I think I don't know
00:56:33.080if we'll see the same kind of correction we saw in 2008 they were like huge opportunities then
00:56:38.340I bought a two family for 50 cents on the dollar right after the crash. It was owned by Deutsche Bank. They were in Connecticut. I don't know why they were in Connecticut. But anyway, it was a foreclosure and I got it. And that was actually a property that my boys worked with me on and we still own it. So I don't think we'll see that kind of collapse. But I do think we're in the midst of a correction that's going to take a while to play out.
00:57:01.740Yeah. Really interesting. Yeah. So I'm just curious, you know, we've been talking a lot
00:57:06.740about millennials, economic opportunities and things like that. I guess just what words of
00:57:11.620encouragement would you give to younger guys right now that probably feel like they're beat up?
00:57:15.780I know like just counseling men right now that I've got some guys who are blue collar guys,
00:57:21.160they have degrees in like welding or CNC machining and they can, they can't even buy a house,0.54
00:57:26.540you know, like what kind of, what encouragement would you give to these guys?
00:57:30.760Yeah, I think that there are a couple of things to keep in mind. I bought my first property when I was 33, 34. So both of my sons are doing better than me. One of my sons bought his home when he was 28 and the other one bought his home when he was 23.
00:57:49.380I would encourage them to not be discouraged to see that, particularly if they're in their 20s and early 30s, they should be working to position themselves to take advantage of the opportunity when it arrives.
00:58:04.080I would encourage them to keep their eyes open and become familiar with the market.
00:58:08.600I must have looked at, I don't know, 20 places before I bought my first place.
00:58:13.200You have to have that kind of exposure to the market to recognize the deal when you have it.
01:00:40.480So I did really well on it. But a mentor like that will say, I know. So in his case, I, this is kind of funny. He, he said, I'm on the board of the bank. Let's go talk to the senior vice president. So we did. And before we went in, you know, my, my mentor said, you know, bankers aren't all that smart. He said, if they were smart, they'd do what we're doing. And I was like, really? So we were, we were in there and I'm, I'm like, at this point, I'm maybe like 40 years old, 41, something like that.
01:01:10.480And we're sitting talking to this senior vice president of commercial lending at this bank.
01:01:14.880And we're working out the arrangement to actually make the deal happen.
01:01:18.400And he looks at me and says, I should be doing what you're doing.
01:01:22.600I looked over at my mentor and we just both smiled at each other.
01:04:03.200So when it comes to this illustration of the barbell, I got it from Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the guy who wrote The Black Swan and Anti-Fragile.
01:04:12.860And his point is that for every risk you take, you need some kind of counterweight.
01:04:35.040It's tied in to the building at the far end.
01:04:37.800So generally, a cantilever is as deep into the structure of the building as you see it go out on the other side and anchored in a way that makes it capable of bearing the weight that it's going to have to bear when you're on the end of it.
01:04:51.860And that's the way you should think about risk.
01:04:53.960If you're going to take a big risk like I took at that time, you know, I was probably at my net worth was probably as great as I was borrowing.
01:05:04.580So there's there's that. But the other thing is my networks were really strong.
01:05:13.500I had a really solid trusting wife. And that's super important.
01:05:20.620And, you know, your wife and your relationship with your wife is one of those anchoring points.
01:05:26.280So we would talk, you know, what are we going to do if this blows up?
01:09:51.180We wanted the conference to have that church family feel, and so we are putting it on at Refuge Church at our historic church building, and we only have so many seats.
01:10:58.780And we will catch you next time in the King's Hall.
01:11:19.660Overall, it's a great time, so I'd encourage you to head over to patreon.com slash thekingshall if you'd like to support the show and get some extra content.