RPF0310-Warren_Prescott_Interview
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00:00:15.040 | Today on Radical Personal Finance, I've got something really special for you. If you had
00:00:18.240 | the opportunity to sit down for an hour with a man who started his business life with very
00:00:24.160 | few advantages, grew up in a poor farming town in central Florida, started his career as a plumber's
00:00:32.080 | assistant, and did poorly in high school, dropped out of college, but has gone on to become a
00:00:38.480 | respected member of the business community and a financially independent multi-millionaire,
00:00:43.120 | would you jump at that chance? Well today, through the magic and power of podcasting,
00:00:50.080 | I bring you just such a conversation and it's filled with little gems
00:00:55.280 | for you to consider to learn from and apply to your own life.
00:00:58.480 | Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance podcast. My name is Joshua Sheets and I'm your host.
00:01:19.200 | Thank you for being with me today. Today I've got a good one for you, an interview with my friend,
00:01:23.200 | one of my personal, I hate the word mentor, but just a personal friend. It's a man I used to work
00:01:30.400 | for, a man named Warren Prescott, who has exactly that story. I sat down with him and was able to
00:01:36.000 | pull a little bit of the story out of him and then now I get to share it with you.
00:01:47.360 | One of my goals with Radical Personal Finance has been to present a huge diversity of content.
00:01:53.040 | I've wanted to bring all kinds of topics to the show and I'm satisfied with some of the progress
00:01:59.600 | that I've made toward that. I've worked hard to keep the guests diverse, to not talk about the
00:02:04.880 | same thing over and over again. I've tried to bring all kinds of differing and disagreeing
00:02:08.720 | opinions and perspectives and give people an opportunity to share their ideas and perspectives
00:02:15.120 | and then give you a chance to judge and to learn. I think we can learn something from just about
00:02:20.240 | anybody. Who was it? Emerson, right? Every man I meet is my superior in some way, something like
00:02:25.360 | that. I'm really great at remembering the essence of quotes while butchering the syntax. But the
00:02:32.080 | point is I've tried to do that. I'll tell you that one of my disappointments for myself is I've
00:02:36.880 | brought a number of entrepreneurs on, but a lot of these entrepreneurs have had similar stories
00:02:41.920 | because they're from similar backgrounds. It is so easy for me to get a young entrepreneur
00:02:48.640 | who's built some sort of business in the tech space on the show. That type of person is easy
00:02:54.160 | for me to get on the show. I got lists of them everywhere. My email inbox is flooded with
00:02:58.640 | propositions from these types of people. It's relatively easy for me to get authors or speakers
00:03:04.160 | of people with a podcast and a brand on the show, again, a couple emails every single day
00:03:09.600 | with inquiries of this type of person. But you know what? In your town, is that type of
00:03:17.760 | person, that avatar I just described, is that the common multimillionaire?
00:03:22.400 | Or is the common multimillionaire in your town more likely to be somebody who has perhaps a few
00:03:29.440 | more years, is not necessarily on Skype all day, every day? Are they likely to be somebody who
00:03:35.840 | didn't start a web business and get rich in the last decade? Are they more likely to be somebody
00:03:40.400 | who just runs a large, solid business of some type? Well, in my financial planning career,
00:03:47.120 | we financial planners want to work with the rich people. That's where we make the most money,
00:03:51.200 | generally. And so I learned who the rich people are, and the rich people are blue-collar
00:03:56.480 | business people. Go and study Tom Stanley's work, just blue-collar business people,
00:04:01.360 | and they likely have brick and mortar stores, things like that. Now, there's nothing wrong
00:04:04.720 | with the transforming, changing world that we live in, but you got to recognize there's something to
00:04:10.320 | be learned from those who've been there, done it. So my intention from the beginning with Radical
00:04:14.160 | Personal Finance was to interview lots of these types of business people, and I've had a few on
00:04:18.880 | the show. But you know what? These people are tough to get to sit down for an interview.
00:04:25.920 | Number one, they're tough because usually I need to do it in person. And also, they're tough just
00:04:30.000 | because they're busy or they don't want to talk on a microphone. They don't have anything to gain,
00:04:34.240 | which here's a little secret for you. If somebody doesn't have something to gain,
00:04:38.320 | they often don't want to tell anybody about what they're doing. So I share with you lots and lots
00:04:43.360 | of opinions and perspectives, and these are just not all from me. There are things I've learned
00:04:48.160 | from other people, but there are people who don't want to get on a microphone. For example,
00:04:51.680 | I know a number of very experienced real estate investors here in West Palm Beach,
00:04:55.680 | and I've asked them, "Listen, can I get you on the show?" And I know their finances, and I know that
00:05:00.000 | they would have a lot of value to add, and they just, "I don't want to go on a show. I don't want
00:05:05.120 | to talk about anything." They're practicing, what's that concept? Stealth wealth. They don't
00:05:08.880 | have anything to gain from telling people how much money they have, so they don't really do it.
00:05:12.480 | Now, it's not to say that some people aren't willing. So my guest today, he is willing. He
00:05:16.800 | doesn't have anything to gain, doesn't sell anything that any of you can buy. He's just a
00:05:19.680 | friend of mine, and I used to work for him when I was a kid. But he has a lot to share, but still,
00:05:25.120 | to get him to sit down and do the microphone, I had to work really hard for a really long period
00:05:29.520 | of time to get him to sit down for an interview. And even in that, you're going to have to listen
00:05:34.640 | through. He's an awesome guy. He's not a dynamic presenter. He didn't belly up to the microphone
00:05:42.800 | the way that I do with a big smile on his face, lots of enthusiasm and emotion in his voice. I had
00:05:47.840 | to pull it out of him. But yet, this type of person can teach us so many gems, so much wisdom
00:05:54.080 | and knowledge. One of the things that I don't care for, a hallmark of my generation, I don't
00:06:01.360 | care for the way that we seem to ignore at the minor end and despise at the more harsh end people
00:06:13.120 | with age. It really frustrates me how in the US American society, we have a tendency to honor and
00:06:21.280 | revere and exalt the young and the beautiful. We have a tendency to shun and to avoid and ignore
00:06:28.240 | the aged and the ugly. But yet, don't the aged have something to share with us? I encourage,
00:06:34.880 | if you have a grandmother or grandfather, I encourage myself. It's been too long since I've
00:06:40.240 | called my own grandmother. My grandmother is 101 years old, almost 102. And to my own shame,
00:06:45.680 | it's been too long since I called her. So even as I begin the show, I'm reminding myself, but
00:06:50.080 | spend some time with people who have age and experience and learn from their wisdom,
00:06:54.640 | learn from their experiences. And most definitely, if they have some financial wealth,
00:07:00.320 | some financial independence and abundance, try to get them to share some with you. Just ask
00:07:06.240 | questions. I've had lots of friends of mine who have wanted to get on the show and they say,
00:07:10.560 | "Listen, will you?" I ask them, "Will you come on the show?" And I'm trying not to overstate my
00:07:18.480 | case, but due to my experience and where I live, I know a lot of really wealthy people
00:07:22.800 | and multiple, multiple people. "Listen, please, will you come on my show and share? I'll hide
00:07:28.800 | your name. I'll hide your identity." "No, no, no, I don't want to." But they will sit down with me
00:07:34.080 | over lunch and talk to me and share with me. And so that's some of the content that I bring you.
00:07:38.400 | Bit of a wordy intro here just to recommend to you that you take the time and also to say,
00:07:44.640 | "I'm working hard on getting this type of person on the show, but it's hard work for me to do it."
00:07:50.080 | It's a lot easier to get somebody who can sit down and talk with us over Skype.
00:07:53.440 | But today's guest is a man named Warren Prescott. He started his, as you'll hear in the beginning
00:07:57.760 | of this interview, he started his as in a little rural town called Belgrade, Florida, which is
00:08:02.800 | right here where I live in West Palm Beach. But Belgrade is the sticks. Even today, it is the
00:08:08.080 | sticks. If you've ever been to South Florida here, it's in Palm Beach County, but it's hard to get a
00:08:12.640 | more different urban. It's not even urban. It's hard to get a more different environment. It's a
00:08:18.640 | farming town. And my guest today, he started as you'll hear with nothing in a little of a farming
00:08:23.920 | town, but he has been extremely successful and has built a really cool business. I worked for him for
00:08:30.560 | a total of two or three summers, depending on how I count it, and some time when I was in college,
00:08:38.880 | briefly. And so he's always had a special place in my mind, and I really admire and respect him.
00:08:43.680 | And today I get to bring his story to you. Before I play his story for you, I just want to share one
00:08:48.880 | sponsor today. You're going to hear in today's show, Warren talk about the importance of savings.
00:08:53.680 | And you're going to hear him talk about, as I try to pull out of him the threads of what made you
00:08:58.800 | financially successful. You'll hear him talk about, well, I just invested. But the first thing was he
00:09:05.120 | had to have savings. And you'll hear through and through from the beginning of his life that he was
00:09:09.680 | always a saver. Well, guess what? You got to have a little bit of money to make some money.
00:09:14.880 | Now, you can start with your human capital and work and earn money, but then the first thing you
00:09:20.720 | got to do is save some. You got to pay yourself first. You got to save some. And the only way to
00:09:24.240 | do that is to put a plan in place that results in you getting some money out of the spending column
00:09:28.880 | and into the savings column. And so sponsor today's show is YNAB. You Need a Budget. YNAB
00:09:34.640 | is the very best budgeting software that I know of. And it's the budgeting software that I use
00:09:42.160 | every day. And here's why it's so great. When you need to save money, you can put on there
00:09:45.920 | a savings category on your budget. If you have a goal, and if that goal involves money, as
00:09:52.800 | all goals do, a little tentative with that all because maybe there's something that doesn't
00:09:59.280 | involve money, but basically every goal involves money in some way, whether it involves money
00:10:04.560 | in some way, you need to have on your budget category at least some kind of reminder,
00:10:11.120 | something. You need to do something towards that goal. For example, I have a budget category on
00:10:17.360 | mind for I'd like to buy an RV. And it's not appropriate right now, but at some point it will
00:10:22.080 | be. And I just have that on my budget category. And I fund that with a little bit of money here
00:10:25.680 | and there. It's not a major focus. It's too much of a consumption item right now while I'm still
00:10:30.960 | trying to build the empire with my investment items. But I still put it on there to remind
00:10:35.360 | myself, put a little bit of money into that account, put a little money into that account,
00:10:38.080 | put a little money into that account. I challenge you to do the same thing. If you're not using YNAB,
00:10:42.000 | at least check it out. You can download a free 30-day trial. You can try it without any obligation.
00:10:47.120 | You don't give them a credit card number or anything like that. Just go to radicalpersonalfinance.com/YNAB.
00:10:51.280 | That stands for you need a budget, an acronym affectionately called YNAB, radicalpersonalfinance.com/YNAB.
00:11:00.720 | Download a free 30-day trial. Make sure that after you download the software, make sure that
00:11:07.680 | you go on from there and take some classes because the software is somewhat intuitive,
00:11:16.560 | but the real power will come for you after you take some of their free online classes and learn
00:11:21.520 | how it really works. So radicalpersonalfinance.com/YNAB. Warren Prescott, welcome to Radical
00:11:26.320 | Personal Finance. Thank you very much, Josh. I've been looking forward to having you on the show
00:11:30.960 | because there's a bit of an age gap between us. I find it so easy to pin down the internet
00:11:39.360 | entrepreneurs, the young guys and gals who are out running around just doing things online,
00:11:44.720 | but I really don't want to spend all my time interviewing internet entrepreneurs. I want to
00:11:49.520 | interview some entrepreneurs like you who've been there, done that for decades, but you guys are
00:11:53.680 | always so busy I can't pin you down in front of a microphone. Absolutely. So I wanted to get you to
00:12:01.040 | share a little bit of your story, specifically with business, because you've been involved in
00:12:04.880 | some businesses that fascinate me. So I'd love to know, where did you and your family start?
00:12:10.640 | You had a privileged upbringing, right? Started with loads of money, I'd imagine. Where did you
00:12:14.880 | guys get your start? No, I started out... Let me see here. I would say I started out when I was
00:12:23.120 | probably 17 years old. I started out working as a plumber's helper, a plumbing company in Belle
00:12:32.720 | Glade, Florida. I worked there for a couple of years and decided I'd always wanted to be on my
00:12:41.920 | own. I never really wanted to work for anybody, so I went to college for about a year and didn't
00:12:50.320 | care much about college. I wasn't a very good student, so when I come back, I started working
00:12:56.960 | for the plumbing company. I worked there a couple of years and I ended up taking my plumbing test
00:13:09.040 | after a couple of years and got my master plumbing license. I was self-employed for 10 years.
00:13:17.200 | Working as a plumber? As a plumber, yeah. I did do plumbing and rough ends and things of that nature.
00:13:23.920 | Of course, I'd met my wife. I was probably around 29 by then. I met my wife from West Palm and
00:13:32.640 | my lovely wife, Lulie. I wanted to change my life and get out of plumbing, so I started...
00:13:42.880 | I was from the Glades, knew a lot of people in the sod business, so I started a little sod company.
00:13:47.600 | I actually borrowed $10,000 from a doctor friend of mine and started cutting Bahia sod
00:13:58.240 | there in West Palm off Southern Boulevard by Land Country Safari. I made some good money
00:14:04.880 | in it, so I said, "Heck, this is a job I want to do." I like the outdoors anyway,
00:14:12.080 | so I had another buddy that was running a big sod farm and ranch in the Glades and he wanted me to
00:14:19.520 | come cut grass there. What I did is I asked my wife at the time she was substitute teaching,
00:14:27.520 | I asked her if she wanted to get in the sod business and I talked her into going
00:14:34.960 | to her mother and borrowing $3,000 to start her company. I trained her and showed her how to do
00:14:42.960 | it and hired a guy that knew a lot about it. She oversaw that. By then, we had a couple of kids,
00:14:50.880 | so I'd get up in the morning, take the kids to school. She'd go to the sod farm and do her
00:14:59.520 | orders and stuff and then I'd go out into the Glades. I had another guy managing the farm in
00:15:05.040 | the Glades that I was cutting on and I started cutting sod out there. We did that for probably
00:15:11.280 | five years and I ran out of grass at this big farm. So, we started working together and decided
00:15:22.560 | that she needed to be a stay-at-home mom and I kept going with the sod business. In the meantime,
00:15:30.240 | I'd invest in real estate. We'd both always saved our money and invest in real estate
00:15:36.320 | and I'd buy little tracts and sell them and do odds and ends.
00:15:41.760 | - I want to ask you about the sod business and we'll go into kind of the real estate
00:15:48.560 | because you've got an interesting perspective on it, especially now.
00:15:52.320 | Was it just from working in the plumbing business that you met some people who were in the sod
00:15:56.800 | business? How did you get the idea of that being your entrepreneurial endeavor?
00:16:03.040 | - Well, I knew I wanted to get out of the plumbing business.
00:16:05.680 | - Why? What was driving you?
00:16:07.360 | - I was tired of it after 10 years of it. I made great money and everything. I just
00:16:13.600 | didn't want to be a plumber all my life, so I switched into sod. I knew of several friends
00:16:18.720 | out there that had sod farms that had done very well in sod.
00:16:22.640 | - Just basically explain the sod business. It all comes down to the margins? You just
00:16:26.560 | grow some grass and cut it out?
00:16:27.920 | - Exactly. It's all volume. You sell it by the semi-load. We sold it to landscapers
00:16:32.960 | and we just sold semi-loads of grass. I got out and talked to people, met people,
00:16:41.760 | and sold it to different companies. It worked out well. I got along with everybody. It just
00:16:49.200 | happened.
00:16:49.520 | - What was the foundation with the early part of the venture? Was it you going out and selling
00:16:54.960 | it? Was it your knowledge of the intricacies of the type of grass and how it worked? What
00:17:00.960 | was the thing that you did really well that led to it being successful?
00:17:04.240 | - More me selling it. Being able to go out and get the grass there at the right time.
00:17:13.040 | Delivering it at the right place at the right time and doing what I said I'd do. That was
00:17:19.840 | the thing. A lot of people would take an order and not get it to the landscaper in time.
00:17:26.240 | I was always good and prompt about getting it delivered on time. That's what did it.
00:17:32.160 | Do what you say you're going to do.
00:17:33.440 | - What was your secret to doing that? Were you a hands-on manager?
00:17:38.320 | - Absolutely. 100% hands-on. I'd hired a guy that knew the sod business. I really didn't
00:17:43.760 | know the sod business. I hired a gentleman in the glades who'd been in it for 30 years.
00:17:49.600 | He knew it well. I went out there and worked every day. We had long hours. We'd start at
00:17:58.960 | six in the morning and work to eight, nine o'clock at night. After a few years, I knew
00:18:06.720 | about it as much as you could possibly know in it. That's where I ventured into that.
00:18:12.160 | I just kept growing and growing. Eventually, I got in the golf course business.
00:18:18.080 | That's where I'm at today. I do a lot of renovation on golf courses and stuff.
00:18:26.400 | Of course, I bought my ranch. I bought several pieces of property,
00:18:30.000 | little ranches and bought them and sold them. I kept building up, saving my money until I
00:18:37.200 | bought a big one. I got a couple thousand acres now of my personal ranch. I lease probably 10,000
00:18:44.240 | acres of ranches now. - For hunting or just for fun or for grass?
00:18:48.560 | - For cattle. I'm big in the cattle business too now. I have cattle. I have hunting. I lease some
00:18:55.040 | of the hunting rights out to people. I'm still heavy in the sod and both in the Glades Inn and
00:19:03.120 | Okeechobee. - When you look back at your real estate
00:19:07.040 | investment career, what was the first piece of real estate you ever bought?
00:19:09.280 | - I bought a ... Well, I'd always been in real estate. Even when I was 17, I bought my first
00:19:16.560 | house, $11,000. - Really?
00:19:18.800 | - I paid for a little house, yeah. - Did you pay for it with cash,
00:19:22.000 | a mortgage, or how did you buy it? - No, I paid cash for it.
00:19:24.880 | I saved my money in the plumbing and I bought it. Paid 11,000. I kept it probably 10 years.
00:19:31.200 | Sold it for, I think, 28,000. It worked out well. I liked that. It wasn't a big problem.
00:19:40.240 | Renting it, only had one of them. Then later on, right after I got married, I bought a trailer
00:19:47.200 | park and a motel. - Cash or did you finance those?
00:19:50.960 | - You know what? I'm pretty sure I paid cash for that because I'd already flipped the real estate
00:20:02.160 | and saved a pretty good amount of money. I had the motel, which was kind of a pain. I kept that
00:20:09.520 | for a couple years and I flipped that and made a nice little profit. After that, I went on.
00:20:18.560 | Once I got married, I moved over to Wellington and then we bought a home in Lying Country Safari
00:20:27.600 | in Fox Trail. Then I started buying stuff in Wellington. I bought a 20-acre piece of
00:20:36.480 | land in Wellington in the horse country back there. This was in probably the early '90s.
00:20:46.560 | Right when Wellington was starting to really crank up. Actually, I went to the bank and I
00:20:53.920 | was going to finance that. I talked to my banker and had the money set and ready to go. I told my
00:21:02.480 | wife one night I was going to buy 20 acres and she said I lost my mind. I had another older
00:21:10.960 | gentleman that worked with me. I asked him, I said, "You want to be a partner in a piece of land?"
00:21:19.360 | He said, "Yeah." I said, "How much money do you need?" I said, "None. I already got approved.
00:21:23.280 | I'll just go ahead and buy it." I talked to a realtor and the realtor had told me if I buy it
00:21:28.560 | and hold it for a month that he'd be able to flip it. I bought it, paid $200,000 for it. I flipped
00:21:36.640 | it the next month for $300,000. I made $100,000, gave him $50,000. He didn't put a dime on it.
00:21:43.600 | What did he do in the deal? Why did you even have him in the deal then?
00:21:48.240 | Because my wife didn't want me to do the deal. I wanted to do it. I went ahead and did it.
00:21:54.000 | She respected him a lot. He said he'd be the partner with us. That's how it worked.
00:22:01.840 | We had a little argument over it, trust me. In 30 days, I did what I said I was going to do. I
00:22:09.120 | gave him half the profit. From that day on, I could have bought anything I wanted. He'd
00:22:13.920 | finance me in anything. We really never did any other deals other than that.
00:22:19.040 | Over the years, do you have a strong conviction about always using your own money,
00:22:26.480 | always borrowing money? How do you decide between using your own cash versus borrowing money?
00:22:31.040 | Well, on smaller stuff, I do. $300,000 deals, I do my own money. When I started buying ranches
00:22:41.040 | and stuff and getting up in the millions, then I'd get it from the bank and everything.
00:22:46.720 | I did a couple of deals. Flipped it and made a lot of money. Worked out good. I still do it to this
00:22:56.480 | day. What's the best deal you've ever done? The one that you came away to say, "Man, I can't
00:23:01.760 | believe that worked out." I bought a 3,500-acre ranch. Is this here in Florida? Yeah. Okay.
00:23:10.400 | Yeah. Up in the Port of St. Lucie area. Right before it was going to go crazy in the early
00:23:18.800 | '80s. No, it would have been in 2006 probably. I bought it and I kept it for a year. I flipped
00:23:30.960 | it and sold it for four times what I paid for it. That's awesome. Four times what you paid for it
00:23:38.640 | in one year. Who was the buyer? Was it a special deal? It was a big company out of the Carolinas.
00:23:48.480 | I had to take on some partners on that. I had three partners and then myself. We all made
00:23:55.760 | well, just hit it perfect. What's the worst deal you ever made?
00:24:02.960 | I don't know. As far as real estate, I've really never lost any money in real estate.
00:24:13.360 | When the economy took a hit, we had already quit buying stuff. I bought a rock pit one time and
00:24:22.160 | I just sold it here in the last year or two. I lost money on that. It worked out. Some of you
00:24:30.960 | win, some of you lose. Did you expect the decline in real estate? Change in economy?
00:24:37.120 | I knew it was coming. I got an old saying, "When the taxi driver tells you it's a good deal,
00:24:43.120 | it's time to try to sell." That's what was going on. I think most people knew we were fixing to go
00:24:50.560 | into a bad economy in 2008 or whatever. I'd already had a couple of deals going. I couldn't
00:24:58.720 | get out of them as far as I'd bought it. We were getting them developed. We weren't developing.
00:25:03.840 | We were actually getting the PUD on it. Then we were going to sell it to a developer. That's how
00:25:09.920 | I got caught with one piece of property. Your wife told me to ask you a question
00:25:14.800 | about the quail. Tell me the quail story. I think she's trying to throw you under the bus here.
00:25:19.440 | I was always busy doing something. I raised quail when we first got married in about '84.
00:25:31.760 | When I was a kid, I always raised quail. I always had wildlife. I bought 12,000 chicks and raised
00:25:40.960 | them up for a hunting preserve and ended up selling them to a hunting preserve, which was
00:25:45.680 | Bonnet Hunting Preserve. That was some of the hardest work I ever did. Real estate's always
00:25:56.400 | been good to me. You're in Florida. Anybody that buys in Florida and buys a halfway right,
00:26:02.400 | if they can hold on to it, they're going to be all right because everybody's going to eventually
00:26:06.400 | come to Florida until we're built out. That's the way I look at it now. I do think we're fixing to
00:26:12.880 | go into an economy that's going to change year again and the next year or two. It's going to
00:26:18.880 | take a downward hit. Everybody needs to be prepared for it. What are you doing to prepare for that?
00:26:26.080 | Well, I'm not really purchasing any land right now. I'm selling some pieces that I got. I got
00:26:33.200 | contracts on a couple of ranches that I have. The ranches are moving real good, but the value's gone
00:26:43.440 | up so much now. It's time to get out and do a little fishing, play a little golf.
00:26:51.440 | I'm interested to know, how do you and your wife handle your business practices and your money?
00:26:59.680 | Because she is heavily involved in the business even, as you said. Do you guys work together?
00:27:04.800 | How do you guys handle that? Well, we're partners. I pretty much do
00:27:10.960 | most of the business stuff. We sit down and talk about things that we want to do.
00:27:17.760 | I do have partners now that we work with because I buy bigger tracts of land now.
00:27:24.640 | I think the biggest tract I ever bought was 7,000 acres. We do buy large tracts of land.
00:27:35.520 | Right now, nobody's getting interest on their money. It's so cheap. Money's cheap.
00:27:42.960 | Now's the time to borrow as long as you can make the payment on it. That's the thing. You got to
00:27:49.360 | be able to make the payment and still survive. How do you find a good business partner,
00:27:56.400 | good investment partner? Well, through the years, I've dealt with a lot of guys.
00:28:01.520 | We've become friends. I've never really had to go look and ask for anybody. I've always done
00:28:10.960 | good deals and people come to me and want to invest with me all the time. To me, it's kind
00:28:16.640 | of dangerous because you don't want to take somebody's money, invest in it, and lose.
00:28:20.800 | It's hard to do. My people that I deal with are sound people. They understand the downwards
00:28:32.720 | part of what could happen. It will happen, but you just got to be able to hold on to it and
00:28:40.640 | wait it out. We don't go in and buy any commercial real estate or anything like that. We buy cheaper
00:28:46.080 | land. I don't like buying $25,000 acres. I don't do it. When you're analyzing a real estate deal,
00:28:57.520 | are you a real number cruncher sitting down with a spreadsheet putting together comparable
00:29:02.080 | properties? Are you kind of just immersed in it and you get the feel? How do you actually
00:29:06.000 | analyze a deal? What are you using to make a decision? Well, I'm from the old school. I try
00:29:12.560 | to figure out a 5% or 10% return. I really don't look at anything I don't get 10% on.
00:29:20.080 | I just look at the deals. Now, my partner is a number cruncher. I find a deal. I take it to
00:29:30.080 | them. I tell them what I think. I've never been turned down on any deal I've ever done. I deal
00:29:35.280 | with some very sophisticated people that are sharp as they are in the country. I just know
00:29:44.080 | good deals when I see them. The thing now is I'm able to go and if I saw something I wanted to buy
00:29:51.520 | for $5 million a day, I could go tell somebody and put a deposit down on it and go buy. I'd call
00:29:57.760 | them up and say, "Hey, let's put the money together and do it." It'd be done. I've worked
00:30:03.520 | hard to get where I'm at on that. There's probably not a deal that I couldn't do if I wanted to do it
00:30:10.320 | as long as they agree. I've always made them money. I made them a lot of money in the past.
00:30:18.240 | They all listen.
00:30:19.280 | How in a normal week? I've always been interested. I worked for you when I was a kid.
00:30:29.920 | Exactly, in high school.
00:30:31.280 | You were a good worker. We all enjoyed you.
00:30:36.640 | Thank you. I learned a lot and got exposed to some neat things when I worked for you.
00:30:40.880 | In many ways, I always admired the type of business you seem to be in. It was always my
00:30:46.480 | dream to drive around in your pickup truck and do nothing all day except talk on the phone.
00:30:50.000 | That was always what it seemed like to a youthful kid. I was like, "That's my dream of
00:30:55.840 | the kind of businessman I want to be." I'm interested to know, in today's world, from an
00:31:04.720 | experienced perspective, obviously it was different 30 years ago, but today,
00:31:07.520 | what does your normal week look like? What do you actually do?
00:31:11.680 | I don't sleep very well. I get up early. Deals come to me all the time. People are always calling
00:31:24.960 | me with things. I don't know why, but they do. They call me about stuff all the time.
00:31:30.640 | I get up and I work every day just like everybody else. I love it. I get up. I'm probably the
00:31:41.920 | happiest guy there is. I enjoy what I do. I enjoy the golf construction better than anything.
00:31:47.440 | I get to deal with all the superintendents and stuff now. That's kind of my little pet peeve
00:31:52.800 | right now. I'm doing several golf courses every summer. It's very rewarding as far as I'm concerned.
00:32:02.800 | You get up early. Do you read the newspaper? Do you watch the news? What do you do?
00:32:07.760 | I don't hardly ever read the newspaper anymore. I watch a little bit of news in the morning,
00:32:12.320 | see what's going on. I have a plan of what I'm going to do that day because I've got so many
00:32:20.000 | things to do. You call me from time to time. I can't hardly meet up with you. I feel bad about it.
00:32:26.880 | I'm always wheeling and dealing. It's kind of sad, but I do take off from time to time.
00:32:37.440 | Right now, I'm getting a little older and I'm kind of going to slow down and let my daughter
00:32:42.960 | and my son-in-law run the company. I'm going to back down and just do my little play things,
00:32:49.280 | which is real estate. I love real estate. That's what I do best.
00:32:55.440 | So do you schedule a breakfast meeting three days a week with people? At this point in time,
00:33:02.400 | the deals just come to you? No. I do have meetings all the time.
00:33:07.680 | My life's a chaos, really. I'm not very organized. That's one thing I'd say. I'm not very organized
00:33:18.880 | on what I do. If somebody calls me on the phone, I go beat them then if I can, if I can't.
00:33:24.720 | Just like with you, you call me three or four times. I'm always busy. I'm fixing to have to
00:33:31.920 | leave here in just a minute and go to interview an architect. How do you keep your business going
00:33:40.880 | if you're disorganized? What have you done to keep your business going to account for that?
00:33:45.200 | I do have people that are organized. You can hire these young people that got good worth ethics.
00:33:53.760 | They're organized. You got to find somebody like that. You got to be organized now. You got to
00:34:00.320 | know your costs and everything. That's what I do now. But I used to work off a shoestring years
00:34:08.720 | ago. I didn't do a financial statement every week and whatever. I still don't do it. At the end of
00:34:15.920 | the year, I sit down and figure out what I've done. It's a nightmare for the accountant,
00:34:22.160 | but he understands me and he's been with me for 20 years. It must work. I always pay taxes,
00:34:29.440 | so something must be right. That's a good thing. Do you set goals?
00:34:36.000 | I did years ago when I was young, but now I'm on the cruise. I'm getting on up there now where I
00:34:46.960 | don't want to do all this stuff. I want to play a little golf and go fishing and hunting and do
00:34:53.280 | the things I've always wanted to do. Of course, I've always done that too. I've always taken time
00:34:59.760 | off of the family and done that. But now it's getting more aggravating for me to have to
00:35:08.640 | get out and do the hustle and bustles of everything. I guess I'm getting a little
00:35:14.320 | lazier in my old age. In fact, I know I am. How old are you now?
00:35:17.760 | I'll be 62 in June. When you look back, so to say 62, you must have gone to your
00:35:26.400 | 40th high school anniversary. You probably know some of your friends that you graduated
00:35:30.400 | from high school with out in Belle Glade. If you were going to look and see, what would you say
00:35:35.680 | would be, can you identify any character traits, personality traits, things you did differently
00:35:41.360 | than some of maybe your friends that you graduated from high school with that have led
00:35:46.000 | to a major difference in your lifestyle over the years?
00:35:51.120 | No, I was always motivated to work for myself. I never thought about working for anybody else.
00:35:58.160 | That's what I'd recommend to anybody, be self-employed. I've just always been that way.
00:36:04.640 | I never wanted to work for anybody. I've been fortunate enough that I did that. I've only
00:36:10.800 | worked for a couple of people in my whole life. I've worked for a lot of people now when I do
00:36:15.440 | golf courses and stuff. I get up and go when I want to and do what I want to do. It's like being
00:36:22.800 | retired as far as I'm concerned when it comes to that. I'll tell you, if you would have took a poll
00:36:31.280 | of me in my high school days, most of my teachers would have probably told you I'd have been a
00:36:39.280 | definite failure. I was a terrible student. I was a C student if I studied. I mean, it was that bad.
00:36:47.200 | I went to college. I went to a little small college in Georgia for about six months. I'd
00:36:54.400 | taken classes and stuff, but I just didn't like school. I was a terrible student.
00:36:59.040 | I worked hard. My dad died when I was 18, and he taught us the work. As long as you got good
00:37:08.160 | work ethics, you can do it. But you got to have a goal, too, to say, "Hey, I want to have something
00:37:14.400 | one day." I'm not a nine-to-five guy with a job at Walmart or what have you. That wasn't never what
00:37:21.200 | I wanted to do. I just always liked trying to make money, and I saved it. You got to save it.
00:37:30.080 | That was going to be my next question, was as far as saving money. Obviously, you were a saver.
00:37:36.240 | From 17 years old, you said you bought an $11,000 house and paid cash for it for money you had
00:37:41.200 | saved. Two questions. Number one, how did you earn that money before you were 17 to be able to save
00:37:48.160 | it? Number two, did your parents teach you to save? What was the factor that caused you to feel
00:37:53.920 | that savings was important? My father always told us, "You need to save your money and spend it
00:38:01.680 | wisely," and all that. Actually, in high school, I took probably my junior year, I did what they
00:38:11.520 | called DCT, where you went and you took your main classes in school, your English, your math,
00:38:16.880 | your history, and you'd get out a half a day. I had a job. That's where I worked for this plumbing
00:38:22.560 | company. I worked and I saved my money. Matter of fact, I was working when we did a place in
00:38:30.320 | Port LaBelle, Florida. I never will forget. It was a golf course community in LaBelle, Florida,
00:38:36.080 | called Port LaBelle. I'd saved up $4,000. I wanted to buy a lot. They had some golf course lots over
00:38:43.920 | there. I asked my dad about it. This was before he got sick. He said, "Well, I'll tell you why."
00:38:50.240 | Because I had the money and the savings at the bank. He said, "You go to the bank. You need
00:38:55.520 | to start your credit. You need to learn how to have credit so you can deal with these banks in
00:39:00.880 | the future." He sent me to the bank, Bank of Belle Glade, Wayne Michaels. I told him what I wanted
00:39:09.920 | to do and everything. He said, "Well, being that you got the $4,000, I guess because I was so young,
00:39:15.680 | you probably ought to just pay for the lot and not really borrow any money." He was probably
00:39:20.800 | nervous. Here I was probably 17 years old wanting to buy a lot. Who thinks about doing that at 17?
00:39:28.000 | I ended up buying the lot. I kept it a couple of years and I did sell it. Then after that,
00:39:36.080 | I bought the house. That's how it started. - How did you train your kids to handle money?
00:39:44.880 | - Well, I've spoiled them. They both manage money pretty well. Just through the years of seeing how
00:39:56.000 | we were always open with them, they never knew what we had totally, but they knew we went and
00:40:04.480 | did. We had a place in the Keys and we'd spend the summers down there. I guess it was bred into
00:40:11.600 | them to save, but they both save right to this day. They're just young, getting started now.
00:40:17.440 | They're in their early 30s. They're starting. We don't try to give them a whole lot. They need to
00:40:24.480 | earn it themselves. It's worked out so far very well. - You say they need to earn it themselves,
00:40:32.400 | but you also said you spoiled them. Did you do something differently now than you did when they
00:40:37.200 | were younger? Did you do it differently when they were younger? - Well, they didn't get allowance.
00:40:44.160 | If they needed something, we'd get it for them. They never asked for a whole lot. They always had
00:40:49.600 | pretty much. Just like the average family, I'd say now, for sure. I guess just hearing us talk.
00:41:02.960 | We were always an open family about things. They had a question, we'd answer it. We had a question
00:41:07.520 | about them, we'd ask them. It's all open. Always been open. To this day, they got a question,
00:41:14.560 | they ask. I give them my opinion, whether it's right or wrong. They understand that too.
00:41:20.800 | But overall, I think it's worked out very well. - A few final questions here. You ever invest in
00:41:28.960 | stocks? - I have, and I've made a little money, and then I've lost a little money. I don't like
00:41:36.880 | the stock market. I've got a saying that I'm not sending my money to New York. If I'm going to mess
00:41:42.880 | it up, I'll mess it up myself. I've stuck to that. I've seen a lot of people make money. I've seen a
00:41:49.280 | lot of people lose money. But I can invest my money as good as anybody can as far as I'm concerned.
00:41:57.440 | That's why I buy term life insurance. Why am I going to spend it and let them invest my money?
00:42:05.760 | I've borrowed money from life insurance companies that buy real estate. Why should I be borrowing my
00:42:11.760 | money as long as I can raise my own money and do it or have partners that do it?
00:42:16.160 | - Do you feel like your approach and your buddy's that you hang out with, go hunting with,
00:42:26.320 | do you feel like, do they believe similarly to you? They're going to invest their own money,
00:42:31.840 | or do you find that you're unique in that regard? - Well, most of them that, you know,
00:42:37.280 | I'd say the most guys I run around with are probably self-employed, but most of them don't
00:42:44.000 | move like I did. I don't know why, but not a lot of people jump out and invest like I did. I was
00:42:55.280 | always able to do it because I had a backup in case, you know, if I bought a piece of land I
00:42:59.760 | couldn't afford it, I always could afford it. I never bought anything I couldn't afford.
00:43:03.600 | So it never put me in a bind. The worst thing that could ever happen to a couple is not having
00:43:10.720 | enough money to make ends meet, pay the bills at the end of the month or the first of the month.
00:43:16.880 | That's where these marriages go sour, as far as I'm concerned. We just managed our money and
00:43:26.960 | we never really had a money problem because we just saved. - When you look at my generation
00:43:35.920 | and you kind of think about our future, do you look and say, "Man, these guys are really
00:43:46.160 | doing things well," or do you look and say, "Man, they got some problems"? What advice,
00:43:50.880 | like, how do you perceive it? What do you see people doing that you think they should, you know,
00:43:56.480 | if you could give words of advice, let me rephrase it this way, if you could give words of advice to
00:44:02.400 | guys like me, just based upon your experience, people that work for you and your experience
00:44:06.560 | with the kids, friends and things like that, what do you see that people aren't grasping that
00:44:12.080 | you believe is important? - Well, the worth of it, you know, people don't want to work. They think,
00:44:18.560 | you know, I mean, if you notice, everybody drives a brand new car and got a big old car payment.
00:44:23.600 | I mean, I drove my car for 10 years and never thought anything about it, you know? And people
00:44:32.400 | are much more intelligent than they were back in my days. To me, it appears that way. I mean,
00:44:39.120 | these kids nowadays are brains, you know, they can do anything, but they want to make it too quick
00:44:45.280 | and they think it's easy and that's why you have a lot of bad things happen with, let me see how I
00:44:52.800 | wish to phrase this, you know, people don't want to wait. These young people don't want to wait
00:44:58.640 | their turn, you know? Wisdom, being older and wiser really matters. And I mean, even though I
00:45:05.600 | started out young, you know, I hung around with a lot of older people. I had a veterinarian doctor
00:45:11.520 | that I dealt with and I did plumbing for him and, you know, I mean, I always worked hard. You got to
00:45:18.320 | work hard if you're going to make it. As far as I'm concerned, you can't rely on somebody else to
00:45:23.520 | do it for you. And I mean, I got up my, to this day, I can go run any piece of equipment I got.
00:45:29.840 | I mean, I do. I mean, heck, I get on a tractor and mow, that's my therapy, going out every morning
00:45:36.400 | on a pasture, you know, getting away from the phone and just relaxing, you know? And, you know,
00:45:43.520 | to me, not everybody's, you know, qualified to go to college. Everybody goes to college now.
00:45:52.480 | There's people that should be in college that need to, you know, be electricians or things like that
00:45:57.440 | or what have you. I would recommend all these young people, you know, start up something,
00:46:05.280 | but stay with it, you know? I see them where they get bad credit right off. That's the worst thing
00:46:11.200 | you could ever do. If you go to the bank, you borrow money, you better be willing to pay it
00:46:16.320 | back because the first time you get bad credit, it's a nightmare. They'll ask you. I remember one
00:46:22.960 | time years ago, I had a Sears. I bought something for my mother after my father passed away and I
00:46:29.760 | missed the payment at Sears Ropa. That thing haunted me for 20 years. I mean, on your credit
00:46:36.000 | report, they put it down there, even though I paid for it and paid it off because I was late that one
00:46:41.760 | time when I'd go and borrow money from a bank, you know, for a line of credit for, say, my plumbing
00:46:47.360 | company or whatever. They'd always ask me about that thing. It was amazing. I couldn't understand.
00:46:53.920 | It was probably a $30 a month payment and, you know, I just missed it one time by probably over
00:47:02.080 | looking it because I definitely had the money, but it haunted me. I never will forget that
00:47:07.680 | because, I mean, I probably had two or three banks that asked me. Even when you go borrow a car,
00:47:12.160 | they look up your credit and they'd say, "Well, what happened with this payment here on this one?"
00:47:16.880 | You know, you'd have to—I mean, I was wondering if I was ever going to get that off.
00:47:20.880 | Your credit's very important. Your words are very, very important. If you tell somebody you're going
00:47:28.160 | to do it, you better do it or you'll get a bad name and it travels, you know. To me, it does.
00:47:34.880 | I try to do whatever I tell you I'm going to do. I try to do it, you know. I'm bad about my
00:47:41.120 | appointments. - Do you think you'll ever retire? - No. I mean, I'm talking about now slowing down,
00:47:49.760 | but no. I love the art of the deal, man. I live for it every day. I get up and got up this morning,
00:47:59.200 | I was just as happy as a lark knowing that I'm going to go out there and wheel and deal somewhere
00:48:04.400 | and do something. I mean, it's like a big game, really. As long as you don't jump off in quicksand
00:48:12.560 | getting something you can't handle. But no, overall, I love it. I wouldn't change anything
00:48:22.080 | about what I do. I'll tell you that now. I don't spend time with my buddies and go play golf like
00:48:29.120 | I want to. I can go play golf at all the courses in the county and I love golf. I'm just so busy
00:48:35.440 | right now. That's what I kind of miss right now because all my buddies are playing, they call me
00:48:40.320 | all the time. I can't go because I'm doing something. - You're working. - Yeah, I'm working.
00:48:47.760 | That's it. I love it. - Warren, thanks for coming on. I really appreciate it. - Thanks a lot. I
00:48:52.640 | appreciate it. - Three major lessons I want you to learn from the story that Warren shared with us.
00:48:59.840 | Number one, savings comes... Let me rephrase that. That's going to be number two. Number one,
00:49:07.040 | hard work is mandatory. Warren isn't kidding. You haven't known him, haven't watched him,
00:49:13.520 | hard work is mandatory. Now, I've seen him coming along after the fact. I came along after he had
00:49:19.440 | done pretty well and he certainly likes his toys, but hard work is the foundation. If you don't have
00:49:26.240 | that work ethic, it's going to be very difficult to build wealth. Number two, savings and capital.
00:49:32.800 | You've got to have savings and capital. So if you don't have any money, go to work and get some.
00:49:40.720 | It's mandatory. You've got to have savings and capital. Now, notice the trend that I have pointed
00:49:48.400 | out, that he maintained control of that savings. He has had the ability to invest it into various
00:49:55.600 | operations that he's had control of. The IRA wasn't the magic ticket. It was the savings and
00:50:04.320 | control of it. And then finally, point number three, notice that he invested in terms of an
00:50:10.640 | appropriate scale. I need to do this show. The title of it is written... I mean, I can give you
00:50:16.000 | the... Here's the 10-second version. You have to always apply the lens of scale to your investment
00:50:20.080 | activities. Very popular, very important show that I did. I forget the exact title, but in the past,
00:50:24.880 | search the archives, it was lens of scale, applying the lens of scale to what you do,
00:50:28.960 | but you've got to apply it to the investments. There's a stage at which buying and flipping a
00:50:34.560 | $4,000 lot is really useful. And that $4,000 lot can lead you into buying and selling an $11,000
00:50:42.240 | house. But then there's a stage at which you do $3,500 acre deals. And once you reach a certain
00:50:50.080 | stage of wealth, buying and flipping an $11,000 lot, it doesn't do much for you. You got to find
00:50:56.560 | those bigger deals. So the key is to learn and practice the principles when you're small,
00:51:02.800 | so that you're ready for that next stage. But if you don't have any money, I mean,
00:51:08.640 | hey, if you can put these deals together, fine. But if you can go out and find a $3,500 acre ranch
00:51:13.360 | and you don't have any money and your flat broke, you can put together some partnership deals and
00:51:17.680 | you can make that work, go for it. You call me and tell me you did it and I'll interview on the show
00:51:21.600 | and we'll share that with others. All right? I'll believe it when I get the email and the call and
00:51:25.680 | I see the check that you did, that you put together. But until that time, here's my
00:51:31.360 | recommendation. Start small. Start where you are with what you got. Teach your kids to buy an old
00:51:40.000 | bicycle and flip it up. That's going to be fix it up and then flip it. Buy an old car for a couple
00:51:46.480 | of thousand bucks, paint it, flip it, clean it up and flip it. Keep your eye open on the side of the
00:51:51.040 | road for, I don't know, I bought a trailer one time, this big old 20s, huge trailer. I could
00:51:57.840 | barely pull it at the time. It was so big, but I bought it cheap and I fixed it up and cleaned it.
00:52:02.000 | I think I doubled it. I think I bought it for like $1,500 and I sold it for three grand,
00:52:06.960 | something like that. So it worked out. Keep an eye out for those little deals. When you see a little
00:52:13.920 | piece of real estate, a little $4,000 a lot, go ahead. Buy the house, flip the house. Look for
00:52:19.200 | something that's appropriate to you. Keep your eye out for those business deals that are around you.
00:52:24.560 | Some of you guys, I mean, sod, kind of a strange business, right? But Warren saw the business. He
00:52:30.960 | saw the opportunity and got involved and he's a huge sod farmer here in Florida.
00:52:34.800 | So look for those opportunities around you. You can do this with kayaks or sod or fishing boats
00:52:42.800 | or tractors or skyscrapers. It doesn't matter. It's all the same. It's all the same as far as
00:52:48.720 | the fundamentals. Yeah, it's a little bit different. You got to go in line with the market,
00:52:52.080 | find there's a demand. But ask you a question. With what Warren described, if you pulled him
00:52:58.080 | out of South Florida and put him somewhere else in the country or in the world, do you think he'd do
00:53:02.800 | about the same thing he's done? I'll let you answer that question. Thank you all for listening
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00:53:48.480 | Got a few people that do that as well. RadicalPersonalFinance.com/patron for all those
00:53:53.120 | details. And I'll be back with you all soon.
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