MI315: The Power of Mentorship w/ Chris Powers

24:57And, you know, getting like a typical minimum wage job was not going to also fund the bill either. I wanted money again, kind of for things trivial, like going to spring break and being able to travel and being able to buy kind of nicer clothes and things of that nature. And so anyway, I picked up the SCIF, which was the TCU newspaper, and I saw Entrepreneur of the Year. And my really good friend, Adam Blake, who's still a great friend of mine to this day, had just won Entrepreneur of the Year for buying rental houses as a sophomore. He was on the football team and had lost his scholarship, and he was going to have to leave TCU.

25:31And he basically had this remarkable story of learning to make money in real estate. So anyway, I got to know him. He basically told me what to do. I read a couple books and basically it was like, go down to Countrywide Home Lending, which at the time was still around. That was kind of one of the, during the great financial crisis, everybody knew about Countrywide. They were making some of the worst loans out there. But I was a beneficiary of one of them that actually worked out and got a loan for 3 % down, 6 % cash back at closing, leased it to some TCU students, some of my fraternity brothers, and was able to refinance the house not too long after, pull out cash, and was kind of off to the races and steadily kind of did that throughout college.

26:14And we can get more into it. But I think the quick lesson there was, I'm not even sure if I was 17 today in today's environment, I could have pulled off what we pulled off then because loans weren't floating around like that. But it was kind of good timing and good opportunity. At the same time, there's different opportunities for kids today. There wasn't the internet back then like we have it. Facebook wasn't even out until I think the end of my freshman year. So there's ways to make money today that we could have never dreamed of back then. But back then, that was a way to kind of make more than the average.

26:46And it really wasn't that difficult. And I started building from there. And almost 18 years later, here we are. So I wanted to touch on, is it Adam Blake? Was that his name? You're the guy that you, he was entrepreneur of the year. How did you befriend him? What were the books that maybe he recommended? Was he willing to share his playbook with you? It seems like real estate Twitter is like that. A lot of people sharing their playbook. Was he like that in 2004? He was as generous with his... I don't think he told me what books to read. I think I just found some like how to have a rental property.

27:19I don't even remember. People ask me all the time, what are the best real estate books you've ever read? And I just learned by doing. I more have people that taught me along the way. I didn't read a ton of books, but I read one that It was basically like rental properties for dummies, which is just like, what do I need to know to own a single family home? And I read that, but no, he was, I met him at a party and I asked him to go to lunch. We went to a Chipotle down on Hewlin here in Fort Worth that's still around today. And he was really generous. I just kind of picked his brain. I'm like, how'd you do it?

27:51And he kind of told me, and I'm like, how'd you fix the homes up? And oh, we have a crew. And this is how I found my crew. Where'd you get the loan? Here's where I got the loan. I was like, could I get a loan? He's like, I'm pretty sure you could. I'd go down and ask him. And these are the things I would tell him and be prepared to answer. And it was probably an hour and a half lunch. I can't quite remember, but it was super informative. And more than anything, it gave me the confidence that if he could do it, I could do it too. There was nothing you realize. And that's just kind of a lesson in life.

28:23We're all humans. Obviously, some of us are gifted and have different talents. But the truth is, is in a lot of things in life is like, if somebody else can do it, you can probably do it too, you know, in the right circumstance. And so I left there with a confidence I could do it. And it really wasn't that like at the time, I guess you're so naive when you're 17. You just really don't you don't even really know what risk is. It just seemed like a pretty straightforward path. This is how I was going to get a loan. This is how I didn't really need any money down. This is how I was going to fix up my house.

28:55I needed to find some students to lease it. This is where I got a lease form and I was kind of off to the races. And a lot of it was just kind of figuring it out along the way. I make it probably sound a little easier, but I also don't remember, you know, maybe this is just how I'm built a little bit, but I don't remember feeling like I was taking a ton of risk. In fact, it all felt pretty easy. And I remember telling people along the way, I'm like, I'm surprised not everybody does this. This is not very hard. And I remember always having that feeling like, why does not everybody do this. There's no money down loans.

29:27You don't need any money to buy these houses. You have to rent them for more than your expense. Here's how you take care of them. So anyway, that was kind of the start of it. Did you have fraternity brothers that were like, Chris, this is great. I want to do this too. Did anyone kind of tag along and follow in your footsteps? Not really any of my fraternity brothers, but there was a group of broader guys that I got to know. And there was probably four or five of us that were kind of the guys around TCU buying houses and figuring it out. And to this day, there's still like three or four of them.

29:59We don't talk all the time. Some of them I haven't talked to in a while, but we all kind of stayed in touch even all these years later. And it was kind of a little fun group to be a part of, the four or five guys around campus that were buying up rental houses while still in college. So I heard you also tell a story that there were no listings of available apartments online, and you organized that at TCU. Tell me, by the time you graduated, you had like 12 homes. Is that right? Yeah. I had 12 properties. Some of them were duplexes. I had a few more units than that, but yeah, we started rentbytcu.com.

30:34And again, 2004, 2005, just to give listeners perspective, Facebook was still not out, which when I tell people that 20 years ago, Facebook wasn't out, that people can't wrap their minds. But not only that, you didn't really get online to go look for houses. The way we were looking for houses or the way most people did was you drove down the street, you looked for a for-rent sign, you called it and you leased it. And so first need that needed to be solved was how could I get everybody to aggregate all their houses onto one website so people didn't have to guess where houses would be? Or you would see fraternity members pass the house down to the next generation in their fraternity.

31:18So it never hit the market. You also had all these owners that really didn't know the market. They were either parents whose kids had gone there, but they didn't sell the house after they left, or they were kind of out of sight, out of mind. And so you would drive down the streets and you'd have one three bedroom, two bath leasing for like 1200 a month. And then one, four houses down leasing for 1800 a month. And if you were asked why was there such a discrepancy, it was like, one knew the market better than the other. There really was not any magic to it. And so my pitch to people was one, let's make it easier for students to find your property.

31:55But two, if I can raise the rents on your rental property, there was a bonus system I had in place. And so essentially over the course of a few years, we got hundreds of homes on the website and I hired a few college students and we would lease houses all summer or really all throughout the year, if kids would move in throughout the summer. And that was a great business. And again, lessons learned there that are still applicable today is you really get to know the market. You really get to know what your customers want, which are what students want. I really got to know what landlords wanted. And there was a point in time around TCU where there was probably not a house on 50 different streets that I didn't have known by photo memory, knew who owned it, knew what it leased for, knew how many bedrooms it had, and really mastered the TCU market in every which way you possibly could.

32:46I mean, I really think there were two or three years there where probably nobody knew that market better than I did. And that is how you get good in real estate or really probably anything is you get to know the markets that you're investing in really, really well and understand how to learn them really, really well. And so, yeah, we started a leasing and property management business while we were in college. So did you study finance? Because I heard you mention you thought about becoming an investment banker, going to Wall Street. Obviously, the real estate started to take off, so that altered things.

33:17But you're basically running a business all throughout college while going to school. Talk to me when you graduated in 2008, that was a bad time to be looking for a job. Bad time. I mean, real estate obviously started to, for some people, was really bad. For some, if you had cash, it was good. Talk to me about in 2008, when you were graduating, what was going through your mind? So this sounds crazy, but again, you're right. I thought I was going to go to Wall Street. So I actually measured in finance and marketing, and this wasn't your question, but I actually think I got way more out of marketing than I got out of finance.

33:49But I thought I'd become an investment banker. I think maybe now I think tech is the thing, but back then, investment banking really was the thing. It was a high paying job. It was on Wall Street. It just seemed like the best path forward to, again, make a lot of money. And you just saw people. It was almost like a sure career path that if you get good in investment banking, it opened up tons of doors to go make a lot of money somewhere. But I also really was not taking into account that I owned all these houses. I had this business. I don't really know what I was thinking other than I thought, well, I'll just sell all the houses when it's time to leave and graduate.

34:26Well, that got derailed because I graduated in December of 2008, which was the worst economic time maybe in the country. I think October 2008 was like the worst stock market drop of our generation. And every job hope that I thought I had disappeared, but I still had this business, this small little real estate rental company around the university and selling the homes off really wasn't an option. And so we kind of stuck with it. And I got a line of credit right before the crash from Wells Fargo tied to a bunch of the equity in my houses, which was a godsend. Basically allowed me to pull on the line as cash.

35:07And before I knew it, foreclosures were hitting the market left and right. And I basically started buying rental houses or basically started buying foreclosures down in the south of Fort Worth worth little brick homes, three bedroom, two bathroom brick homes that have been selling for call it 120 grand. We're buying them for 40, 50 ,000 bucks, you know, a year later. And we'd, we'd put some, uh, we'd update them a little bit. We'd paint them. We'd put a new carpet, maybe redo the foundation or whatever it needed. And then we were flipping them and turning around and selling them. And that was kind of what I did right out of college.

35:44When you say we, was it you and like the subs you were working with, or did you have a partner at that point that you were doing all this with? No, it was me and the subs and the folks I had. I didn't have a partner until a little bit later. So it was just me at the time. Wanted to touch back on Sam Zell. I know you said you didn't read a bunch of real estate books, but I think you read, what's his book? Am I being too subtle? I wanted to hear a little bit. I read that one. That's a great book. Highly recommend it. Sam Zell is such a character, was. But I wanted to hear a little about what you learned from Sam and some of the takeaways, just like how you've modeled your own real estate career based on what he's done?

36:23So I think it's pretty simple, the core tenets of what I've taken from Sam, who was just a legend and tragic to see him go this year, but he didn't develop. And he didn't develop because he basically just said, well, he said a few things, but he just said there's so much risk that's out of your control. So there's so many things that even when you're great, you can't control certain factors. And so even the best developers can really get annihilated at certain times in the market. You know, he basically said that as basically like developers always imploded themselves because at the very, very top of every cycle, like everybody was adding new supply.

37:03And so that was really tough. And so lesson one was it became apparent to me that although you can make money developing real estate, he had this quote that for most developers, half of the return is just the satisfaction of seeing a new project go from nothing to something, which is very true because I developed several projects and it was satisfying. But he basically just said, there's no reason to develop. It's way too risky. It's hard to build. Obviously, there's companies that have done it, but it's hard to build a really great company just doing development. And he said, instead, you should just buy real estate that it's already existing.

37:40And you're really two inputs that you're solving for is like, what's my cost to buy this? And what is my cost to get it leased up to a rate that's acceptable? And that's really what you're solving for. And the other thing he talked a lot about was trying to buy into asset classes where new supply was going to be hindered or limited. And for me, when I looked around at what we're doing today, we buy Class B industrial real estate. You really can't rebuild it at all, especially in the cities that we're buying it. In fact, people are tearing it down to build other types of projects. So I think if there was the lessons I learned, and I think these are timeless lessons, I don't think they ever go away, was don't develop, instead buy, and then try and look at buying things where there is not a lot of new supply of that product coming online at a fast pace, if at all.

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41:51That's theinvestorspodcast.com slash tip-finance. All right, back to the show. He also reminds me a lot of Warren Buffett, just buying below replacement costs, buying below intrinsic value. That was one of his other key things was just like buy stuff that we'll touch on John Marsh, but irreplaceable real estates. If you can buy irreplaceable real estate below the replacement costs, kind of a no-brainer. Yeah, I mean, that's spot on. And especially like in the cycle we're in right now, there's going to be so many opportunities to buy it, fractions of what you could actually build new for. And that further makes the development industry, you know, you might not see development for another couple of years because of that.

42:34So let's touch on John Marsh. You said there's a couple other guys that have really built into you besides your father and that's John Marsh. Pete Chambers is another guy. Talk to me a little bit about Pete Chambers. I know it came first. So let's touch on Pete, how you guys got connected, just the role of men and mentorship in your life. I had a guest recently that wasn't a big believer in mentors that you could kind of figure this all out on your own, but I think you can save decades by finding the right people. Yeah. I think you, I mean, you just said it right now. I think one thing that's always come really natural to me before I even knew what a mentor was or that you called them mentors was there's all these people, no matter what you're trying to do, if it's build a real estate company, if it's be a good dad, if it's, you know, be better in your faith, whatever it may be, there's always, there's people around that have already walked the walk and they've already done the thing successfully.

43:28And so for me, it's always been really natural to go, why wouldn't I just seek those people out and ask them how they did it? And not just how they did it, but what are all the mistakes you made along the way? And so, I mean, like from a business perspective, I think our business has been infinitely better today because of all the wisdom that we've gotten from people that have already built huge real estate companies and done it really successfully over multi-decades. And a lot of lessons, they're not short term in nature. A lot of this stuff is timeless. And so for Pete, Pete and I really, we met at the golf course years ago.

44:03He was really good friends with my father-in-law. But I think he saw in me basically this young kid that was trying to be a superstar entrepreneur. And he basically saw the early signs of like, this kid is going to lose it all. And he's going to think that he's getting it all. Again, this goes back to what we talked about. I don't think anybody wakes up every day and goes, I'm going to make, I'm slowly going to destroy my life. They don't. They always are. I actually think most people are trying to better their life that day. Now, humans are messy, so it doesn't always look that way. But I think he saw this young kid that cared a lot about things that he probably would regret caring too much about.

44:43And so he, at an early age, like we just started talking a lot and he would. And to be honest with you, it's not like day one. I want to be really clear. Day one, it's not like he said these things to me and I was like, oh, you're right. In fact, I think the first year or two of him saying it, I was like, I don't know why he keeps telling me this stuff. I mean, I get it, but that's for the birds. So lesson one was he was super consistent. He didn't just tell me something once and then expect I got it. And if I wasn't really listening, give up on me and move to the next guy. He was super consistent in my life.

45:17And it's not like I wasn't listening or being rebellious. I just, again, when you're so in the trenches and you're so focused on something, be like, yeah, that's never going to happen to me. I'll always keep it all together. And then I think what happens is some of the things he was saying started to start materializing, coming true. It was like, oh shoot, there is something to this. And we built this incredible friendship and this incredible bond. And I think he would tell you he's probably learned as much for me as I have from him in some ways. But for me, it was this clear realization of this is a guy that has walked the walk in so many facets of life that I really admire.

45:59He's got great girls. He's raised three girls. He's got a wife that he loves and he's raised a great home. He did really well in his business and treated his people really well and was financially successful. He's super generous. He has a really strong faith. They're just all these components. And the other thing I've learned from him and from others is none of those things happen by accident. What's funny about a lot of folks is they'll work really hard on their business and they'll plan really hard for their business and they'll do all this strategy and think all this. But then you ask them, what's your strategy at home?

46:35Or what's your strategy with your kids? Or what's your strategy? and there really is no strategy. It's kind of like they'll wing all that, but they'll work really hard on their business. And what I found out from him and Marsh and several people were the folks that had a really well-rounded life put as much effort into every area of their life as they did their business. And I think if there's one thing I could say about the genesis of my relationship with Pete over the last 11 years, and again, we have lots of fun together. We travel now, I mean, we travel, we do a lot together, But the genesis of him and I's relationship is he's taught me the importance of investing in more areas of your life than just your business.

47:15And he's shown that to me in so many different ways. He spent hundreds of hours talking to me at my lowest. And we don't have to go all into it, but I've said it on other podcasts. I hit rock bottom at home in my marriage. Things were not going well, all for the same reasons you could expect. And Pete was also the person that was like, I'm here for you. You're not getting a divorce. I'm making sure you all stay together. I will be here for you no matter what. And I think a lot of men, whether it's with their wife or any situation in their life, without Pete, I probably would have made decisions that would have impacted the rest of my life that I would later regret.

47:56And I think that goes to the importance of having, for me, men in my life that really didn't want to see me fail and really poured into me, even at my lowest. And it's made all the difference. You talked about a little bit about being at your lowest with Brent Bashore. I'm not sure how to pronounce his last name, but it made a huge impact on me. I wanted to hear about the role of faith for you, how you got connected with John Marsh. And I know that he went through a period of his life where he was totally focused on business. He took a step back and he just devoted every, actually is his wife devoted most, I don't know, I think he said four or five years of just like focusing on his marriage.

48:37So I wanted to hear how you and John got connected and a little bit about like the role of faith in your life and business career and maybe how it's changed your trajectory. Yeah. So I've always gone to church. I would, I would have considered myself probably a Christian since birth, but I think what I really didn't have until the last four or five years is what I would consider like a relationship with Jesus Christ. And so I think there's one thing to be religious, which is singing songs and rituals and doing all this, but there's another to kind of lay yourself down and go, there's this much bigger God in Christ that loves me for me and that created the world and created the universe.

49:19And it's very humbling to understand that the world does not revolve around you. And I think a relationship with any type of God, no matter what your religion is, should do that to you. And in a world today where we're so individualistic and we care so much about ourselves and we're at this peak, me, me, me world, having faith in something much larger than you makes you realize like, this is really not about you. And you're a speck of dust flying through the universe. And it really humbles you to you know, if that's the case, then what is my purpose here? And so I can get more into faith in a bit, but how I met John again, this is something I think only God could provide for me is you have this developer in Opelika, Alabama, which is like the middle of nowhere in Auburn.

50:07And I had had another gentleman on the podcast, Bobby Feehan. And I just asked him at the end of our podcast, I said, Hey, who's your favorite developer that I should have on? And he was like, this guy, John Marsh from Opelika, Alabama, you should talk to him. So anyway, we get in touch. And to be honest with you, I probably, I put like no stock in this. I just thought another guy I'm going to meet, he's from this weird town in Alabama. And we got on a pre-call to talk about the episode that I was going to do with him, which I'll usually do with people to gather some facts and get some interesting talking points.

50:40And he starts the phone call and he starts telling me this story about how 25 years ago, he was locked in an attic and he was on the verge of committing suicide. His wife was cheating on him with one of their employees. He was addicted to meth and this story. And he was super vulnerable with this stranger, which immediately, what does vulnerability do? It let my guard weigh down. Because I think in the world we live in, especially men, they have it all buttoned up together. They project strength, even when they're going through a tough time. And that's just kind of how we're raised is that's just how we're raised.

51:19And so it was this perfect timing. So we have this whole conversation and he tells me this incredible story of being broken in an attic to obviously he did not hang himself. He cleaned himself up. He found God. He reconciled with his wife. And 25 years later, they've led a ministry helping hundreds of couples across the country reconcile their marriages. And then at the very end of the call, he's like, well, how are you doing? And the truth is, I was like a week away from filing for divorce at the time. And I think I could have taken that moment to say, I'm great. And they just hop off the call and we'll do our podcast and move on with life.

51:59But he kind of gave me the permission through telling of his own story for me to be like, hey, I'm actually really not great. Things are actually really shitty right now. The whole world probably thinks things are great because we don't talk about our problems. There was a few people in my life that knew things were not good, Pete being one of them and a few others, but I just, I was pretty open with them. And I got to give them a lot of credit. I mean, you talk about a guy that walks the walk. He goes, okay, don't do that. Get on the phone. Will you and your wife get on the phone with me and my wife tomorrow night, which would, this was, a call was on a Thursday.

52:34So this would have been Friday. At the time I was not living at the house and we get on a call and we really don't want you to do this. So in my head, I'm like, yeah, I'm going to call my wife who we're having a tough time. We're obviously at rock bottom and I'm going to convince her that the real estate developer from Opelika, Alabama is going to help save our marriage. And the truth of the matter is we got off the call the next night after two hours of them kind of pouring into us. And we at least got to a spot in that call where like, okay, we'll press pause. And the Marshes and again, a few other folks in our life are just other examples of people that unselfish people who put their interests, who put our interests ahead of theirs and poured into us at a time when we really needed it.

53:20And years later, I can sit here and say, I can't imagine having made that decision. my relationship with my wife is extremely better in so many ways. And the truth is the hard, cold reality of all of this journey of learning is the man in the mirror was the biggest problem in my life and I couldn't see it for a long time. And I think that's the beginning for me of finding a relationship with Jesus Christ is you start to learn that the man that you're staring at in the mirror is actually the root of your problems, not everybody else and everything else. And that's why in a lot of the developing world, some of the poorest areas of the world is where Christianity is flourishing the most, where people have the least.

54:07And in Western societies, where we, from a worldly view, have the most, we're losing God at a rapid speed, is because we have, as a Western society, basically built this common belief that we have it all and we don't really need a God. We don't need a God when you show up every day and you have air conditioning on at your house and plenty of food and you're relatively safe and all these things. You start to build over time, like why do you need a God? Things are pretty good. And then you go to places in the world where it's really tough and that's really all they have to lean on is God. And so anyway, it's been a humbling experience.

54:44And I share all that to say through John, through Pete, through several others, the core lesson that I think I've learned is one of like humility and realizing like as much as I thought I had it all, I didn't. And the more I'm willing to let go and not control the things around me, life has seemed to settle down a little bit. And it's not as tense as it once was. again, it doesn't mean I don't want to go build a great business and have a lot of fun and meet a lot of great people. It's just not the end all be all anymore. Yeah. It just sounds like your priorities have shifted quite a bit. And I, for one, I just want to thank you.

55:21I want to thank John Marsh if he listens to this. You guys have made a big impact on me as well, just being open and honest and transparent about your stories. I don't want to get too emotional, but it's really been a big deal for me. So I want to say thank you. I appreciate it. Of course. Well, and I think that's the gift of vulnerability is you don't, and especially with the internet and podcasts now, like you don't really know who you're reaching and, you know, it's helped save my life. And, you know, I think we all have a story to tell. And if anybody's listening, I just give them permission.

55:53You don't have to go say it on a podcast, but if you're struggling with something like you won, you're definitely not the only person. Part of being vulnerable is you realize everybody else is actually struggling from something and that's okay. I think pain is your friend in a lot of ways. It's where you gain wisdom and it's where you learn a lot about life is in your darkest moments. And so it's, yeah, it's been a hell of a journey and I look forward to seeing where this life takes me. Yeah. I mean, like you said, I think it unfortunately takes great suffering to take us to this point. It did in John's case.

56:27It sounded like it did in yours. I really feel like John is criminally underrated. I wish he had a bigger following. I just think that the guy's just an incredible man. He's definitely impacting a lot of different people, but I'd like to see more be touched by him. I think he will. He jokes, but he's like, being friends with you guys, it's changed my life. Every time we do a podcast and now thousands of new people learn who he is. He's one of the most special people you'll meet. You talk about a guy that's got a heart of gold and really walks the walk. John embodies that in every sense of the word.

57:02I had the same exact experience. Interviewed Bobby Fionn, asked the same question, who should I interview next? He mentioned John and I was like, Opa, like Alabama. But yeah, you dig deep and it's like, wow, there's a wealth of wisdom in that guy. And for the record, he's an incredible real estate developer too. I mean, I think the work he'll be known for, I think he'll definitely be known for his real estate, but he's as talented as they come in the real estate world too. So he's multifaceted. I don't know where we go from here. I wanted to talk a little bit about good to great, but in the Fort Capital flywheel, we haven't really touched on Fort Capital.

57:43We haven't touched on the podcast. You've got a lot going on. Actually, what I want to ask is in 10 years time, where do you see yourself still doing the podcast, involved in real estate? What do you want to be doing if we were to talk in 10 years from now? It's funny. I'm asking myself some of those same questions. Four Capital is an incredible company. It's got incredible leadership. And I think the sky's the limit for what will be accomplished there. And we can talk about the flywheel and good to great and how that company's come to be. As far as the podcast goes, I love doing it. I mean, I actually on, I think Monday was my five-year anniversary of doing it.

58:24I've met an incredible amount of people. I've learned a ton. And I feel like we've just scratched the surface for what's possible. It's generated opportunity for Ford. It's generated opportunity for my family and I. It's generated opportunity for the guests. The guests get a lot out of it. It's like a win-win all the way around. And look, it's kind of, I wouldn't say a hobby, but it's like my personal, I think if you looked at it over a body of 15 or 20 years, you'll just kind of be able to see this arc of like how I changed over time and the things that were important to me. And I think I'll be doing it in 10 years.

58:58I have no intentions of stopping. In fact, the plan for next year and going forward is to add more resources to it, build a team around it to help grow it. I've thrown a couple of events where I've gotten to get people together to gather that I've loved doing, bringing people I've met from the online world and meeting with them in person and different settings on different topics. I want to do a lot more of that, but I love investing. So it's something I've loved forever. I am thinking of a couple of different ways in which I will continue that outside of Fort on a day-to-day basis. I have a lot of inspiration from folks that have done it before me.

59:35But right now I'm really trying to think of what does that next 10-year vision look like? Like Fort, I have not been the CEO now for four years. Like I said, it's one of the joys of my life. It's got incredible leadership. I've got an incredible partner there who's our CEO. And so it's given me the flexibility and the opportunity to kind of think about the next 10 years. Forever, that next 10 years was only at Fort. And so I'm kind of in a process right now. I've actually hired a coach that's helping me get some clarity around some things going on in my life. And maybe if we did this another year from now, I'd have maybe a greater vision or a better answer for what lies 10 years ahead.

1:00:15But what I can say now is I'm having a lot of fun. I love the podcast. I love hosting people. I'm building an incredible network. And I love the business that is Fort Capital. So what's an average day looking like for you? Is it mostly devoted to the podcast? Because you put out a lot of content, both on Twitter, the podcast. or is a lot of your time spent with Fort Capital still? Or is it a mix? It's probably a mixed bag. Not every week looks the same. I still meet with my partner every week. And then depending on what's going on in the business, if we're raising capital or we have some big need going on, there could be weeks where I'm highly focused on that.

1:00:56I have a great team with the podcast. So a lot of my time is either spent researching the guests or just recording. Most everything else is taken care of. But I would say at least a fifth of my week goes there. I'm on the phone a lot talking to people, and then I read a lot. I spend a lot of time just reading different things and staying up to date and current. I like to invest, like I said, so allocating some of the capital that I have made takes up some of my week. But I keep a pretty loose schedule now for the first time in my life, so I can work on what I want to work on. I traveled quite a bit.

1:01:31I think one of the things about having a podcast and Twitter and maybe being a little more public facing is there's been a lot of opportunities to go to things. And so last year, I was on the road quite a bit. I'm going to try and dial that back this year, but got to, again, meet incredible people, go to some incredible events that I never imagined I'd be at. And so it's been great to kind of keep expanding my network, which has been a lot of fun. You mentioned a couple of things, keeping an open calendar and reading a lot. both two things that like were a Warren Buffett, you know, kind of reminds me very much of Warren Buffett, like how he structured his own life.

1:02:06I forget what he read, 500 pages a day or something like that and kept a very open calendar. And yeah, it's, it's awesome. So Chris, this has been a lot of fun. It's been a pleasure having you on here. What's for our listeners that want to find out more about you? I know Twitter, any other ways that they can get in touch with you? Yeah, you're an incredible host. I really will say this was, this was one of my favorite interviews. You'd really did great research and I appreciate it. Um, the fort podcast is my podcast on Twitter at Fort worth Chris, or you can check out for capital at fortcapitol LP.com.

1:02:39Yeah. Reach out. Would love to hear from you. Awesome. This has been great. I had another half a page of questions I could ask, but, uh, I really appreciate your time. That'd be awesome. That'd be awesome. Merry Christmas, happy new year and a best of luck to you in 2024. You too. Thanks, Patrick. Okay, folks, that's all I had for today's episode. I hope you enjoyed the show and I'll see you back here real soon. Thank you for listening to TIP. Make sure to subscribe to We Study Billionaires by the Investors Podcast Network. Every Wednesday, we teach you about Bitcoin and every Saturday, we study billionaires and the financial markets.

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