The Long Game in Real Estate Development with Nathan Cox - TLP165

Nathan Cox shares how his time in the Marines influenced the way he leads and grows 68 Ventures. Ryan and Nathan talk about leadership, scaling a development company, building trust, and why forcing a bad real estate deal can cost you years.

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https://landdevpodcast.com/podcast/the-long-game-in-real-estate-development-with-nathan-cox-tlp165

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I feel like where we get blinded as real estate developers is it's like, man, I've spent two years on this. I've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on this. I've got reputational damage at risk in the community because everybody thinks I'm going to do this development, or I've told my customer I'm going to deliver them to this neighborhood and they're counting on this, that we go force a bad deal. And then the result of that on the other side is you now have 10 years of a bad deal. Whereas the best financial decision you could have ever made was losing two years of work, losing a couple hundred grand in pursuit and diligence, and just saying, I'm sorry, I did everything I could. It just doesn't work.

SPEAKER_01 0:56

Hey, what's going on, everybody? Welcome back to the Land Development Podcast. I am your host, Ryan Glick. I'm excited today to be joined by Nathan Cox, the founder and chairman of 68 Ventures, a development and investment company based out of Alabama. Nathan, thanks for joining me.

SPEAKER_00 1:11

Man, honored to be here. Thanks for having me. Look forward to the conversation.

SPEAKER_01 1:15

Yeah, for sure. And as I told you before we hit record, I haven't had any guests from Alabama. So I'm excited to uh excited for many reasons to have you on, and that is one of them as well, to get Alabama represented on the show. So really looking forward to our conversation. Well, I'll start us out with a big roll tide, Dan. So there you go. There you go. Well, you know, speaking of that, I I do think that's where I want to start is, you know, you're going back to your college days of, you know, your time at Alabama. When you started at Alabama, did you know what you wanted to get into? And could you share a little bit about what your whole what your goal was at that stage in your life of uh schooling, but also your time and experience with the football team as well?

SPEAKER_00 1:57

Yeah, sure. Um I don't think it's by accident that I ended up being a real estate developer. I've kind of always gravitated towards pain and whatever's the hardest path. You know, you could tell me go left and it'll be a day at the beach and go right and somebody's gonna shoot at you. And historically, I've always picked going right. And so uh chose to walk on and play football at the University of Alabama. That was back in 2000. My athletic ability was not SEC caliber. It was more Ivy League or Academy at best. But my dad had played football um at Alabama in the early 70s for Coach Bryant, and he also was a real estate developer. And so always had an interest in real estate. But I studied investment finance and economics when I was at the university and thought that I would probably gravitate more towards trading of some kind. Uh, but 9-11 happened my sophomore year. I'd always had an interest in serving in the military and uh thought about dropping out of school and enlisting, but ended up getting talked out of it by a Marine Corps recruiter of all things. So ended up finishing uh and getting my degree at Alabama in 04 and then went into the Marine Corps immediately thereafter. Uh, had gotten into law school, gotten into the NBA program, but really felt the call to serve and had always told myself when my generation's war came, you know, I'd answer the call and wanted to do that and be a part of it and absolutely loved the Marine Corps. Um, you know, wouldn't trade that experience for anything.

SPEAKER_01 3:25

Well, thank you for your service. And we've we've had a lot of veterans on the show, and it's kind of interesting how many um former military have, you know, got into real estate and development and in that industry. Um, I'm curious from your experience in the Marines, you know, are there things from your experience there that you still carry with you today that help you operate your company?

SPEAKER_00 3:49

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I don't think it's by accident that you do see a lot of military end up in a field like real estate. Uh, it used to drive me absolute nuts that if I was good at my job or I worked really hard, I got the same paycheck as somebody else every two weeks. And that's what I love about real estate so much. There's no real ceiling about what you can accomplish and what you can go out and make happen. Uh, but our culture is definitely built around athletics in the Marine Corps. Many of our core values stem from different things that I've learned in the Marines. But yeah, I think the biggest shift, and was talking about my with my third or almost 13-year-old son about this yesterday. You know, in sports, you were always taught, or, you know, it was ingrained in you that being a leader was being the best on the team. It was performance, it was getting player of the week, it was making all state, whatever that may be. And then you get in the military and that's flipped on its head to where being a leader is simply putting everybody else ahead of yourself. And if you take everybody that you're responsible for and all you obsess over is what's good for them and taking care of them and them getting the recognition. And when something goes bad, it's all your fault. And when it goes well, you know, they deserve all the credit. If you do those things, people will follow you anywhere. They'll follow you into gunfire, they'll follow you into a COVID environment where nobody knows if they're going to get a paycheck. You know, whatever it may be, if people genuinely believe you have their best interest at heart, and I think that's probably the biggest thing, you know, for me. Uh, our purpose statement as a company is to see all we can do with all we've been given, which comes from Luke 1248, to whom men have committed much, they'll ask the more kind of thing. You know, the too much is given, much is required, which is kind of what I've tried to live by. Uh, and then our mission statement is to inspire others to bet on themselves. So definitely have that entrepreneurial route uh in our organization to where we really want to encourage people to go for it because failure is not that big a deal. I mean, you can always come back for it. And if you want to be a real estate developer, you got to get real used to being disappointed. You know, that's just price of admission kind of thing. Uh, but no, it doesn't surprise me that you got a lot of ex-military uh in the real estate industry at all.

SPEAKER_01 6:02

Well, after you got out of the Marines, you started your own company. Uh, it looks like in 2008 you started as a Bellator, I think is the company that you started. Can you talk about that experience and why you decided to start your own company?

SPEAKER_00 6:16

Yeah, I mean, really the best thing that ever happened to me financially was going into the Marine Corps. And that's because I missed that last few years of the absurdity and the run-up in real estate. And with my personality, I'm a very risk-on kind of guy. I can promise you I'd have been bankrupt by the time I was 25. I mean, make no if uh, if, ands, and buts about it. I would have been the guy that had 100 condos that were 100% leverage to the hilt, and I'd have been bust. Um, no way around it. But, you know, got out in uh 07. Uh my dad had been a real estate developer. He was already retired, so not really a family business or anything to come back to, but you know, did have the advantage of having a really good reputation from the standpoint of inheriting his last name kind of thing. And and he had been a very successful real estate developer in our market. And I think it's relevant for for your show. But, you know, my dad was a true real estate developer. So his value was always the next project. So when he retired, there was nothing left. You know, like he had he had obviously made some money and and been successful, but there was no business to pass down to me, or there was no, I'm gonna go have the next generation take over and still be an owner in the company and make money that way. It was purely I'm done, so there's nothing else left. So when I started getting into, you know, envisioning my future, I wanted to have a real business, you know, that was much bigger than me, that could create opportunities for people, um, that would keep people interested in the company uh generationally. And if I did want to take time off, there was still an engine there that would keep churning without it solely relying on me. And I've been fortunate at this point, I'm 44 now, to have people that work in this organization that are all way better at what they do than I am, to where if I do disappear for a month, you know, we don't skip a beat kind of thing. Uh and what I enjoy is the deal making side, the relationship side, you know, solving problems at a high level. I do enjoy the financing, but I'm not an operator by any means. It's not interesting to me. I don't like going to meetings. I don't like talking about going from revenue uh to bottom line. But going back to Bellator, you know, it started out as just a one-person real estate company. And I had had a background in investment finance, so I understood the math side of things and thought that I would orient more towards commercial real estate. But it just turned out the opportunities in our market uh were more land-oriented or busted neighborhoods. So started buying up some of those and then um quickly realized I had nobody to sell them to. So ended up starting a home building company in 2011, TrueLin Homes, and ran that until 2023 and sold that to DR Horton. I became a top 100 builder in the country, and it was a move up, second-time move up type home building company. So not pure production, a little bit more of a step-up kind of thing. But in the meantime, was always developing uh as well. So at the height of it, we had 18 operating businesses, about 800 employees or team members. Uh, today we're nine operating companies and about 250, 300 team members, but we're much more geared toward single-family residential development. So uh just closed the deal in Riley, North Carolina for D.R. Horton a week or two ago. Uh, and then we've got some stuff in South Carolina, Tennessee, a new one we're hopefully going to do in Greenville as well as Jacksonville, but our core market has been the Gulf Coast, which is Alabama, Northwest Florida, and then moving north into Alabama, Montgomery, Birmingham, Auburn, those type of areas, uh, Mississippi as well.

SPEAKER_01 9:55

Well, I definitely want to dig into 68 Ventures here in just a second, but you know, you had talked about starting your company as a one-man show, and then, you know, realizing that there was a there was a need for, you know, home building. And so you started a company in 2011 to, you know, build those homes and then end up with, you know, over 800 employees and everything in this company in the in the full operation. I would have to imagine, when you look back on that, were there any points during those early days where you questioned whether you were headed in the right direction, if you were making the right decisions? Because obviously the end, you know, where you ended up ended up in a really good spot. But I think a lot of people find, you know, when you're in the thick of it, sometimes you really question yourself on like, is this the right decision? Do you have some of those moments you could share from early in uh your journey?

SPEAKER_00 10:44

Oh, sure. I mean, there's a million mistakes uh and still got plenty I'm living with today that have been made too recently. Yeah, and it's funny if you look back at your mentors who were 20, 30 years older than you, and you would go sit down with them and and ask their opinion on something or tell them what you were about to do, and and they would give you feedback that you're doing the wrong thing, it's never gonna work, and you're like, oh, well, it's different, you know, this is gonna work because of this, and they're like, no, it's it's really not. I've already made this mistake. And sure enough, 100% of the time they were right. And and now I've seen that transition a little bit in my career where somebody can bring me something, and it's like, man, I can write down on a piece of paper, stick it in this envelope, and let you open it up a year from now, and I will tell you exactly how this is gonna play out. But yeah, I think some of the main thing was um as it relates to people. You know, I'm one that probably tends to see more good in people um at times that maybe is deserved at that point. And uh setting things up the wrong way to where I had kind of all the risk or all the downside on me and somebody else had nothing but upside. And uh that's created some problems for me, you know, over time. But when you get the right ones, there's nothing better. I mean, there's really not. And that's where I get most of my fulfillment is trying to give people a platform to where I can provide resources, which is mainly financial and then relationships and wisdom earned through things that that I've already screwed up. So back to your point, I think one of the most amazing things in my journey, and probably anybody who's had any kind of level of success, uh, been blessed with that, is that when your back really gets the wall, there's always like just that one thing that seems to happen to get you to the other side. Whether that's a person that shows up or a deal that comes together, or I mean, you even look at COVID. I mean, that I thought that was going to be the end-all be-all. I mean, my wife and I had zero savings, everything we had was levered, and the business had been doing really well, but then all of a sudden it was like, man, we can't make it through the end of next week. And sure enough, like, you know, one thing led to another, and PPP money came in and allowed us to buy a little bit of time, and then all of a sudden, real estate went gangbusters, and we ended up having the the best few years we ever could have fathomed. So it's kind of that old stoic philosophy: what's good can be bad, and what's bad can be good. And I think that's why you just got to be able to rely on your relationships. I mean, that's what will see you through. And if somebody's listening and they take one thing away, it's man, be relationship-oriented, don't be transactional. You know, our ethos is always do the right thing for the right reasons. And if you can be somebody who can be counted upon and your word means something, it will truly get you through anything. Yeah, and you gotta just never let money get in the way, never let a roadblock stop you from doing whatever you say you're gonna do, whatever that is. Even if you don't like somebody, even if you feel like they've wronged you, if you've told somebody you will do something, you've got to do it. You've got to honor your commitments. And that's probably the biggest snowball effect that we've got right now in our organization is that we are trusted. That doesn't mean that we agree with everybody or everybody likes what we stand for, but we are trusted. And my favorite core value of ours is love, hate, don't tolerate. You know, and what that means is I want you to be a raving fan of me and our organization, what we're all about, or I want you to give me the middle finger and move on. Like I don't want fake relationships, I don't want lukewarm relationships, I don't want you to smile at me and act like you like what I stand for and then talk noise about me behind my back. You know, like I want to know where I stand. And if you don't like me, that's totally fine. Like I can get along with people that don't see the world the same way I do, that don't like what I do. I don't even like what they do. But if they're honest, yeah, we can have a relationship. And I think that's just so important in real estate. I learned that from my dad, you know, is always give people more than what they're expecting. You know, if you're in a position of strength, don't beat somebody up to death. You know, leave a little bit for them on the table. Um, so you know, that's just kind of one thing that I took away. But, you know, going back to it, I mean, there's a million stories, and a lot of times there's so many you even forget them until somebody who's been with you brings something up. You're like, man, I've just completely blacked that out and forgot that even happened. But there's been, when I say not dozens, but hundreds of times where it was like, I can't make payments next week, something always came up. An investor called and said, I got a million bucks, you got anything I can do with it? I'm like, yes, I can get it right now and uh pay you 15%, but I need you, I need it this afternoon. But yeah, it always kind of showed up when you needed it the most. And I feel like that's, you know, not just fortuitous, but God's plan one way or another.

SPEAKER_01 15:34

So so many things there that uh really stood out to me that you just talked about. One one of them is uh one of the first things you were talking about was the uh you know, you you have a mentor or someone who's been there done that that's talking to you about some of the decisions you're making or some of the plans that you have. And for some reason, and I've I've experienced this myself in my own business, is uh, you know, they they guide you a certain way, but at the end of the day, it's your decision, right? Uh for some reason, you know, there's times where it and for some reason there's times where you have to make the mistake yourself to really understand and believe them and experience that pain. And then it just sets in and you're like, okay, I should have listened, but now I know.

SPEAKER_00 16:14

Yeah, and real estate is something that takes so long uh to make something happen. I feel like where we get blinded as real estate developers is it's like, man, I've spent two years on this, I've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on this, I've got reputational damage at risk in the community because everybody thinks I'm gonna do this development, or I've told my customer I'm gonna deliver them this neighborhood and they're counting on this, that we go force a bad deal. And then the result of that on the other side is you now have 10 years of a bad deal. Whereas the best financial decision you could have ever made was losing two years of work, losing a couple hundred grand and pursuit and diligence and just saying, I'm sorry, I did everything I could. It's just it doesn't work. But every time I've forced a deal over my career, it has been a problem. You know, not 90% of the time, 100% of the time. And you know it in your gut that you're forcing it. I mean, you know it. You can lie to yourself, you know, you can fool an advisor, you can make a spreadsheet say whatever, but you know in your gut if you're forcing something, and it just never works out. It really does.

SPEAKER_01 17:25

Do you think that's like an emotional connection that people have, why they continue to try to push a project through, even though everything's telling them they should stop?

SPEAKER_00 17:33

Sure, sure. I mean, I'd say most real estate developers are type A personalities, and we all got some ego. I mean, God's humbled me enough that I'd like to think I've got some humility to me, but there's still some ego in there where we think that we can be an end-all, be-all problem solver. We can make things work, we can be an earth mover, whatever you want to describe it as. And that's just us battling inside of ourselves. Again, that ego is a super powerful thing. I would be willing to bet that ego has brought down more real estate developers than anything else there is.

SPEAKER_01 18:08

This episode of the Land Development Podcast is brought to you by Maverick Water Group, a trusted water partner to some of the largest master plan developers, builders, and leadership teams of the fastest growing cities in the country. With a growing portfolio delivering more than 1.5 million gallons per day, Maverick is a purpose-driven water infrastructure company that is addressing our growing water stress and supply crisis by bridging the gap between rising demand and limited public funding. They accomplish this by designing, capitalizing, owning, and operating non-potable water systems that are fit for purpose, reduce infrastructure costs, ensure supply certainty, and improve land stewardship. To learn more about how Maverick saves developers and builders between $5,000 and $15,000 per lot versus traditional potable water infrastructure, visit maverickwater.com. That's M-A-V-E-R-I-C-K water.com. All right, let's get back to the show. Well, let's shift into your company today. So you know, your company is 68 Ventures. Uh, for those people who aren't familiar with your company and what you do, could you uh share with everybody uh how you operate, what type of projects you work on?

SPEAKER_00 19:21

Yeah, absolutely. Uh, you know, you mentioned it on your lead in, but we're a development and investment company, which is a big shift from we used to be what would be described as vertically integrated. So my initial vision was more of trees to keys uh to where we could go find a piece of property, have a vision for it, develop it, uh, build the homes, have the mortgage company, insurance company, pest control, landscaping, plumbing, trash, I mean, you name it. And at one point we did um get pretty far along in that vision. But the big learning lesson there is that we were effectively subsidizing the success of many of the other companies by forcing businesses to use other businesses of ours. And that works fine if everybody's great at what they do and you've got the right partner running every single one of them. But what it created in our world anyway was complacency, entitlement. People weren't competing for the business, they weren't putting their best foot forward. You know, maybe they weren't charging what they should be charging because they weren't running a fully efficient operation. So when we decided to sell our home building company, we use that as an opportunity to hit reset and kind of revisit those and then make that strategic shift from vertical integration to development and investment. So today, 68 Ventures is the organization that we develop under and mainly single family residential. So those are neighborhoods for our primary customer, which is DR Horton. Uh, we do develop for other builders, but 90, 95% of what we do is for Horton. And we love working with that organization. I've built my whole career around trying to take care of them and doing a good job for them. I already mentioned we sold our home building company to them. And for somebody listening to, I think that's a wonderful part of my story. Yeah, my relationship with Darren Horton started in, you know, call it 2009, 2010 with me calling somebody on the phone and trying to sell them two lots for 20 grand each. And they were like, man, we like to buy a lot more than two lots. I'm like, okay, well, maybe I should try to figure this out. Because at the time, they were the only public builder in our market. And so started doing business with them. I think my first development for them was maybe 37 lots or something back in 2012. And now we've developed over 13,000 lots for them and probably got 4,000 under development across the southeast for them today, and another 10,000 under contract. So that whole relationship just started out of a cold call. And then me spending every day for the rest of my career thinking about how can I do a good job for them? How can I take care of them? And everything I've done for them. They've returned to me 100x. And that's a publicly traded company. You know, so having that mindset of what can I do for you instead of what you can do for me can really get you far. But it's a long game. Nothing in real estate happens fast. Everybody wants to make money immediately, and that's just really not how it works. But going back to our organization today, yeah, that's the that's the biggest thing of what we do is single family residential development. And so we'll go out and buy the land and then sub out the utilities, the streets, landscaping, amenities, entrant features, those kind of things, and then typically sell uh developed lots back to D.R. Horton or another home builder. Uh we do have nine other companies inside of our operation as well: commercial construction, siding, plumbing, landscaping, industrial door, uh, pest control. Uh we have a fuel business, uh, metal building manufacturer, and I'm probably leaving one off. So, oh, and we have a site contracting company uh as well. So uh enjoy all those, but again, I view those as an investment in that person who's our operating partner, as much as us actually running those businesses day in and day out. And then lastly, we do have some other real estate stuff that we're involved in. Uh, we've got a marina, dry storage operation, self-storage, light industrial. We just sold a senior living. Uh, we've got some self-storage stuff. We're working on four or five big mixed-use master plans inside of Baldwin County, which is our core market, and then also have a high-end boutique hotel uh that we're getting close to being able to start early next year in our hometown, which I'm really fired up about, which has been a fun learning experience for me.

SPEAKER_01 23:47

You had mentioned how the, you know, when you're vertically integrated, it can provide a lot of value, but it also can lead to some complacency in some of those internal businesses when they're not necessarily having to compete for the job, right? Because it's going to them. And now with the companies you have uh to do, whether it's the landscaping or the plumbing and so on, how do you keep those internal companies hungry?

SPEAKER_00 24:08

Yeah, so we bid out everything now. Like nothing is a guaranteed you're gonna get the work kind of thing. And that was a change we made uh a while back. Now, obviously, we'd love for our businesses to be the best solution uh for a given opportunity. And sometimes we will go into something with more of a design build uh mentality, but you know, we've run everything through the grinder and tried to look at it with an objective lens of do we have the right setup with our partner? Is it the right partner? And then again, not they're not the best fit for every job. But I'm again 44 now. If I could go back and only focus on Baldwin County and developing neighborhoods for DR Horton and building homes like we were doing, would I be better off financially and probably have less gray hair? Yeah. But I mean, I'm an entrepreneur, like I love the deal making side of things. Like I am a true deal junkie. Like I got a team of trusted friends and advisors that work with me that have to tell me no, you know, 10 times a day, or just like, man, can you sleep on it for two or three days before you say yes? And I have found that as I've gotten older, you know, you do lose some of that excitement. A lot of it just has to do with experience because you realize how hard it is to make anything work. And when something is not ideal, how miserable it is to endure. So I am a little bit slower these days to raise my hand and say, yeah, I want to do that or not. But I think another like really powerful takeaway, which is challenging in development, is scale. You know, like can this be something that actually matters? Can this be something that moves the needle? So try to stay away from penny businesses, try to stay away from things that are gonna quickly hit a ceiling, that that's really all you can do. And I think that's something that for people on your on your podcast to really think through if they're at the early stages of setting up a development operation, is are you trying to build a development operation at scale with a massive team and a lot of overhead that's gonna require a ton of capital and resources? Or are you trying to be an individual operator to where you are the guy doing everything, but it's low overhead, and you actually see cash flow when you get to a deal because if you're running a big capital-intensive real estate operation, it doesn't matter how much money you make, you're always gonna be broke. I mean, you're always gonna be looking for the next dollar. Now, you may be able to have a good quality of life and you know good lifestyle and that kind of thing, but you are gonna always owe more money than you can pay back, and the deals are just gonna get bigger, and that beast is gonna get hungrier and hungrier and hungrier. Like it never stops. It never stops, it only gets harder. Uh, and so I think that's something that people need to go into, you know, eyes wide open. It always cracks me up when people say they want to be real estate developers, but they don't borrow money. I'm like, well, what's your plan there? Yeah. And I think that's what's allowed me to be really effective raising money over the years is that I always had my ass on the line. Like I always signed the note, I always put whatever I could into it. I moved fees to the back end where I only got paid if we were successful, you know, that kind of stuff. But folks that are trying to go put deals together and it's no skin in the game, and it's all upside for them, and it's big money throughout the process. Yeah, I've never understood how any of those folks got people on board uh with putting money into them. Maybe the deals were just that good and mine were marginal, but yeah, I've never understood how they've been able to pull that off.

SPEAKER_01 27:41

Well, you mentioned your team and the team that's around you and everything. And, you know, you started out again as a one-man company, and then over time you had to bring on other people. And at a certain point you had to make decisions on uh being willing to let go of some of your responsibilities and hand those off to other team members. How did you was that hard for you, number one? And then secondarily to that, how did you make sure that you were handing off the right things to team members and still holding on to some of the things that you were really good at?

SPEAKER_00 28:10

Yeah, delegating's never been an issue for me. I mean, that's one of the first things they teach you in the military is the power of delegation and surrounding yourself with people that are very well suited for that specific task. So that's never been a problem. If anything, I've probably pushed things off too quickly, you know, at times because honestly, I didn't want to do them because I'm not an operator. I'm not somebody that enjoys the the daily grind of doing the same thing over and under, which is really what it requires to be great at anything. So at times I've probably forced people in positions that they weren't ready for or weren't even the right ones for them. Uh, but also I think, you know, going back to the pain of it is when you're a value-based organization, which we are, I mean, you have to live and die by those values. I mean, I've I've had, you know, two of my godfathers of my kids that I've fired. I had another godfather who's still one of my best friends in the world today that a business endeavor we had together didn't work out, uh, that was no fault of his. It just didn't work out. Yeah, I've had to fire my brother, you know, for a values violation. So, yeah, it being a leader is not easy. I mean, you got to make a lot of decisions that are very, very difficult over time. And yeah, I look at me again at 44, and it's easy for somebody to be like, man, I want what you have. And you go back to that quote, well, will you do what I've done? You know, will you get up at two or three o'clock in the morning, you know, six days a week for a decade? Will you sacrifice every hobby you have, your health? Will you put every dollar you've ever made back on the table, you know, at risk? Will you give up relationships that compromise who you say you are? Um, you know, I wouldn't trade it for anything. Like it's been an amazing journey, and I love it. I feel like we're just getting started. But you can't grow if you can't empower other people. And we see that all the time when we look at buying relatively small businesses, 3 million, 5 million in revenue type businesses. The impediment to growth for them is not the opportunity set, it's the owner, it's the founder. They want to keep every single thing under their thumb, and you cannot grow that way. So look, there's no right or wrong, but if you're one of those that can't turn stuff over, you can't trust people, or you can't let somebody look at your tax returns, then you don't need to have an organization like ours. You know, you need to have one like my dad had, you know, where it was just him, a secretary, and a bookkeeper. And that was it. You know, and he was very successful and did some amazing projects, but he doesn't have what we have now. And there's no right or wrong, but you gotta know who you are. You know, there's an expression, a zebra doesn't change its stripes. You know, we are all who we are. No matter how many podcasts I listen to, it's not gonna change who I am. I'm not gonna all of a sudden become a conservative person from a risk profile because I read a bunch of books. Like I'm still gonna be me. Yeah, and I think the sooner people can embrace that, the better as well.

SPEAKER_01 31:13

And well, and that makes sense too, that you you then have to complement your own skill sets with the you know, the things that you're not as good at to bring people into your team. So it sounds like you're pretty aware of that at a pretty early age, probably largely due to your experience in the Marines. Um has it ever been uh something where you've had, you know, where you've brought people onto the team thinking that they were um that they were going to fit your values and everything. You had mentioned the people you've had to let go, but you brought them onto the team thinking they're fitting your values, but really you brought them on because maybe they had a certain skill set, but they were missing the values. You kind of overlook the values at times because you really wanted something, yeah, with that skill set.

SPEAKER_00 31:55

Well, I can tell you've done over a hundred of these at this point because your insight and questions are pretty spot on. So not not to toot your horn there, Ron, but you know, you're very insightful to what they say. But I I I'll go ahead and tell you that. Like if if you are compromising your values in any way, shape, or form because you think this person is just exactly what you need or there's God's gift to the world, whatever, it will not work. You will be humbled. I mean, you will have a clash with inside your organization, they'll never fit in. It doesn't matter how good they are, you know, it will never work. And as a leader, you know, if you say you're one thing and you act like another, like if you if I preach to you that if you see trash, you better pick it up and you watch me outside your window walk past a piece of trash, you'll never look at me the same again. And it's the same thing. I can let go of people that I've loved or have been in my life the whole time. And the first time I overlook something or let something slide or don't deal with it, then I've compromised every single thing that I say I stand for and what this company says it stands for. So yeah, I'm sure I've made that mistake. Like, yeah, they're good enough and I need the help, but it has never worked out. And when we hire people, like we are very, very transparent on our culture and our expectations. And um, you know, people will either raise their hand and say, I'm out, this doesn't work for me very quickly, or our team will self-select someone and tell them to go be awesome somewhere else if if they're really not one of us and bought in. And that doesn't mean that, you know, we're a uh you got to be here 20 hours a day, seven days a week. I mean, we don't keep office hours, we don't track vacation days, but you know, if you're not somebody who cares about other people that's gonna celebrate the victories of your teammates or do everything you can to help others inside and outside this organization and you expect things to be done the right way, like you won't last here. Now, regardless of intelligence, regardless of experience, if those intangibles aren't present, you know, you will be very quickly out the door.

SPEAKER_01 34:03

Yeah, I love that. And I love the the thought of you know, every nobody's too good to do something either within a company. And you do get some people in in those seats where you talked about the picking up the trash. It's like, you know, you're not too good to pick up trash, you're not too good to clean the toilets, you know, whatever needs to be done, you lead by example. So I love I love you talking about that.

SPEAKER_00 34:24

Yeah, I mean, it's even my kids who really good kids, uh, my two daughters are 17 and 15, and my son's 12. Yeah, it's never like you didn't make all state or you didn't make a hundred on your test that burns me up. It's the things like you didn't turn out the lights, you didn't clean the dishes, you know, when you got done, you didn't take out the trash. You know, the dog went to the bathroom and you walked right past it. It's all the little things that we can control that don't require intellect, they don't require talent. It's just give a damn. I mean, it is simple care factor. And there's nothing magical about me from an intellectual level or some kind of savant type gift. I mean, it's just a high pain tolerance, an ability to take on a lot of risk, and you know, just to keep going, keep going, keep going. And most of the really successful people that I have been enamored by over the course of my life, it's the same way. You meet them and they're pretty normal folks. I mean, there's very few that I've met that I'm like, man, this person is so out of my league intellectually, and they're on a whole different level. Um, it's really just folks that over a long enough time horizon have done the right things, have put themselves in the right position, they've told the truth. And time is the most powerful force multiplier. I mean, it really is time and consistency. You show up and do the right things long enough, it'll work out. I mean, real estate's cyclical. We're all gonna ride the waves here and there, but if you do it long enough, you know, history has shown you'll do really, really well. I mean, you will. There's very few industries where you could be rewarded financially, like in real estate.

SPEAKER_01 36:04

Well, I know we're getting a little close on time here. I got a couple of things I want to get your thoughts on as well before we wrap up. One of those is um, you know, before you started 68 Ventures, you had your two companies, uh, your home building company and uh your real estate company that you ended up exiting. I think something we haven't really talked about on the show before or got uh the perspective of somebody who's gone through a couple exits. What how did you come to the conclusion that it was time to exit those companies and uh kind of move on to your next venture?

SPEAKER_00 36:36

Yeah, I mean, it's a really good question. And the home building one's probably the best one for me to talk about uh because it was a really big organization. I mean, we were, oh, I don't know, probably would have done 300 million in revenue um in 2023, the year that we sold over a hundred team members, I believe, in that organization. Um, so you know, that was one that I had gone back and forth on many times uh for a few reasons. One, because DR Horton and I were so close on a personal level and a professional level, and I was developing so much for them that that was kind of always a standing offer of, hey, if you ever want to get out of the home building business and just focus 100% on developing for us, that's always on the table. And so at various times, you know, I had uh gone back and forth on having that discussion, you know, very transparently. Before I sold the home building company, my personal interest burn on a daily basis was over six figures. I mean, over $100,000 a day, I was having to figure out how to pay by myself. Um, you know, so that was just another like, man, even though we're doing well on paper, I don't know how sustainable this really is. Um, and then I think also I just hit like a personal, I hate to say breaking point, but I was just like so frustrated and I was ready for a change in my life, I was ready for a change in our organization. And our CEO of 68 Ventures Today was running uh Truelin at the time we exited, and he had no experience in home building. I had finally just run through enough presidents that I was like, man, you may have no idea what you're doing or no experience, but I love you, I trust you, I got total confidence in you. It's your job. And he was like, I was kind of worried you were gonna say that. And he did a terrific job, knocked it out of the park. But honestly, I was interacting with him less and less as he was running that company. You know, I enjoyed the development side more, and I was like, why don't we just go ahead and make this sweeping change, bring him back over here, uh, pair him up with another guy who'd headed up our development for with me for over a decade who was fantastic, and let's kind of focus on being really good at something instead of just stretched out everywhere, and also circling back to our other operating companies that I told you I had a lot of frustration with, and that was my fault, not somebody else's, on how they were set up and some of the deals I'd made. I was kind of like, all right, if I make a change with our home building company, which was the tail that wagged the dog, everything else just kind of fell into place on, hey, I'm giving you this business, it's now yours, or I'm selling this one, or whatever else it may be. So all that to say is it was a chance for me to hit reset. I mean, it really was. I wasn't looking to go sit on a beach and be done working. I just wanted to reposition our organization differently. And one of my other best friends from the Marine Corps, who was a Harrier pilot, uh, had come back to work with us as well as our president. And he had taken over a lot of the operations um side of things, and he really felt like it was a need to reposition some stuff with some of our operating businesses. So it was just kind of a perfect storm of everything coming together and saying, all right, I'm ready to do something different, and don't regret it at all. Uh, I mean, yeah, I definitely had that period of depression that you read about with entrepreneurs that have a big exit or accomplish some goal that they'd set out to where like you do it, and then all of a sudden it's a drop off the cliff because you realize it's not that big a deal. Like nobody really cares, you know, and it's not that rewarding to even yourself. You miss the buildup, but then once you get to the podium, I mean, it's it's a pure crash. So after getting over a few months of depression, yeah, it was definitely the right decision.

SPEAKER_01 40:26

Did you know you were going to be starting 68 Ventures um at the time of doing the exit, or did that come after you were out of it for a little bit and you're like, I got to get back in?

SPEAKER_00 40:35

No, no, no. So 68 Ventures started actually beforehand. So I had a company called Battle Plan Capital that that I had some other investor partners in, and they were wonderful. They were amazing people, could not be where I am without them. But in 2016, we had kind of reached a point where they didn't want to sign on any more debt, and I wanted to keep going, so it just made sense for me to buy them out, and that's when I formed 68 Ventures. So 68 wasn't started after we sold. It was just basically a uh reorienting our organization, restructuring it and coming out of it as more of a development investment company instead of 68 being a holding company and more of a vertical integration strategy. I'm a lot happier when I have stress and pressure and things to do and things to figure out. When I look at my day and there's nothing to work on, you know, I don't get in a real good headspace.

SPEAKER_01 41:30

Yeah, I'm the same way with that. And I I was gonna say the what's cool about talking about those exits is that really everything came full circle back to relationships. Because you talked about it the way outside of our conversation, you talked about if people only get one thing out of this conversation, it's the it's the importance of relationships and doing things with people on projects to help benefit them, not just in it for yourself and being transactional. And I'm sure one of the big reasons you had the ability to sell your company to DR Horton was because of the relationship that you built with them a long time ago and continued to build it over the years. Even if they, you know, even if it's somebody who's a competitor of yours, you know, maybe they're the opportunity for you to have an exit at some point in the future by keeping things, you know, keeping that relationship alive.

SPEAKER_00 42:17

You're spot on. And again, like I can't tell you the amount of things that I've been able to do or still do just because of that inherent trust with people that they know that I would never screw them, that, you know, no matter what. And even with Horton, they'll tell you that was one of the easiest transactions they've ever done because there was so much trust. And a lot of the value we bring them even today on the development side is how many things that we can just have a conversation about and say, hey, we'll figure that out later. And a lot of people don't have the ability to do that because they don't have a decade plus or 15 years worth of relationship history there.

SPEAKER_01 42:53

Well, do you have a project over the years? I mean, I I know you've been involved in a lot of them, but do you have any projects that stand out in your mind as ones you always think back on that maybe were your favorite or uh even a turning point project in your company's history?

SPEAKER_00 43:07

Ooh, man, there's been a lot that I've learned different things on, you know, over the years, but I would say there's one called Stonebridge, um, which is an over 4,000-acre uh master plan that we've been involved with. And that was one that was actually across the street uh from the farm I grew up on. So it's been pretty neat to get to work on that one now for almost 15 years. And we've got over 1,500 homes in there now. Our old home building company built in there. Uh D.R. Horton has built the preponderance of the homes, but we just built our first gas station uh inside of that development that our company owns and operates. We've got a multifamily uh project that we own in there. We've got an elementary school that's been built. We built a new $100 million workforce um preparatory school called Baldwin Prep. that we donated the land for that the county and the state uh helped pull together, which is just absolutely amazing. Eventually we'll have a new middle and high school there also. Uh we just got some new funding put together to build a new bridge and boulevard connecting another major thoroughfare that we're working on in partnership with the county and city of Loxley. So from a personal level that's been one that's just been fun uh because the the property had some emotional tie to me growing up here. And then as well as just like so many people have come together to make things happen there from a municipal standpoint, utilities uh you name it. That that one's been really, really neat. It's fun to fly over and see it and how it keeps growing and expanding and the amount of folks that call that home. That's pretty cool. And hell that's probably one my kids will still be working on too. Yeah, that's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 44:51

Well let's go ahead and shift into the last segment which is the lightning round. So I've got five questions for you related to your uh experiences and everything over the years. Um first one what's a lesson that you've learned in business that has really stuck with you?

SPEAKER_00 45:05

Yeah I'm gonna go back to the same one with leadership and and that's put everybody else ahead of yourself and and things will work out. Uh you know maybe not how you initially envisioned but they will work out one way or another. Uh you keep showing up, you do the right things, like there will be a a good story for that. And then and secondarily one like people don't have to lose for you to win. I think that's another one that really came to me later in my career. Like starting out I had to do every deal. I didn't wish success for others that were in my space and then you learn that man there's enough to go around for good people. So I always welcome trying to help anyone I can that I view trying to do it the right way and and being a good person 'cause I've had so many people do that for me also.

SPEAKER_01 45:52

All right, second one. When you're hiring or building a team, what's one thing you always look for in people?

SPEAKER_00 45:58

Yeah, so I want to hear about a time you've had your ass kicked and you've come back from it. Uh you know, the people that want to just tell you all the awesome things that have happened in their life and how they've never experienced failure and everything's just gone terrific. One, they're full of it because that's no one. Uh and they wouldn't be asking for that specific job if they'd just crushed it at every single stop of the way. But you know, the people that I have found to be the most amazing, the most interesting, the ones that show up with empathy and drive and selfless behaviors are the ones who've really been humbled. And that could be anything. I could be you know parents getting divorced when you're young or having some kind of tragedy or dealing with an illness or an injury or sports or addiction uh bankruptcy. Like, you know, I don't care. I don't want to hear about when you were at your best. I want to hear about when you were at your lowest and somehow, some way you overcame it. And that's why I always love you know athletic backgrounds, military backgrounds, higher education, whatever that may be, people who have intentionally chosen a harder path um I think are always a great indicator.

SPEAKER_01 47:10

Well I'm gonna call an audible here because of what you just said there and I'm I just swapped out my next question for this one. What's the time you got your ass kicked and how did you bounce back from it?

SPEAKER_00 47:19

Man, I think I've had a lot. There's a lot, a lot of scars, but I I'll probably tell you um one of the more you know important ones was probably I had my midlife crisis in kind of my late thirties and alcohol had become a a dominating factor in my life and I had never been a day-to-day drinker but had always abused alcohol. I mean ever since a teenager I was the one that could always outparty everybody else until I couldn't and uh got arrested on a Tuesday night for a public intox you know not doing anything bad just being an an arrogant idiot in my hometown and was like here I am with an amazing family, a wife I love, three awesome kids, business is going terrific, hundreds of people that work with me and trust me, and I'm acting like a selfish, arrogant um you know person sitting in a holding cell on on a Tuesday night in Daphne, you know, my hometown and went to everybody that worked with me and told them that I'd gotten arrested, you know told them I was going to make some changes, apologized to them and didn't have a drink for three years. And you know fortunately alcohol's not a big part of my life today. But you know that was something to where I went to everybody. Yeah, I called every banker, I called every investor and it was very humbling, you know, to go have that transparency and show that vulnerability but everybody rallied around me. And I had nothing but support but you know that's probably not the hardest thing I've ever gone through. But that was definitely a big learning point for me on you got to own your mistakes. And look, people will show you grace if you're honest about it and you actually do something about it and make some changes. But that was a big one for me.

SPEAKER_01 49:02

All right fourth one a lot of people you know listening in are trying to go from doing you know one deal a year to building something much bigger. What advice would you give to those people on that journey?

SPEAKER_00 49:14

Yeah I mean I I would just say be prepared to take some steps backwards to go forward. And a lot of times people will think all right if I'm making money doing one deal if I do two deals I'll make double that or three deals I'll make triple that and that's just not the case that you know as you hit your different trajectories in the business life cycle, you got to be prepared to go way backwards from a cash flow perspective. Like you may be making money on paper, but every day you're gonna be looking for a dollar to get to the other side if you're gonna run a capital intensive business and own assets like in real estate. We had plenty of years where revenue was growing and growing but bottom line was decreasing or cash flow was becoming more and more of a problem. More businesses go broke from too much opportunity than not enough. And we even have to guard against that even still today. So I think you've got to make up in your mind what's more important to you to have cash flow in the short term and be making more money that you're actually taking home on a monthly basis, quarterly basis, or are you building something for the future because that's a trade off because if you want to grow, every dollar you got has got to go back into the business. It's got to go back on the table. It's got to go back at risk. And if you're not prepared for that, then you're never going to grow you know anything substantial at all.

SPEAKER_01 50:32

All right last one if you had to start over today what would be your first move?

SPEAKER_00 50:37

Ooh uh probably hiring my top people again. Yeah yeah I I wouldn't want to do anything again you know by myself. Like I I've done the employee one build it from scratch and I know how hard it is and you know I've got mentors who are still in their 70s that have a motor like no other but I'd be lying if I said my drive my energy at 44 is the same as it was at 24. So if I was going to do it again tomorrow, I would have to count on me being able to do it smarter, me being able to do it more efficient, me being able to do it better and try to not make the same mistakes that I've made before. But my first thing that I would do no matter what was make sure I had the right people beside me because man, that's what makes it all fun. Yeah it's it's not that much fun to do it by yourself. It's the people that you've got around you. And that's the most rewarding thing about having a big organization is how many awesome folks that I've got in my corner day in and day out. And I wouldn't trade that, you know, really for anything. Doing it by yourself, there's there's a time and a place for it. But man, I would not want to go back to employee number one and only one again. I'd rather cheer somebody else on doing it. Yeah I love that.

SPEAKER_01 51:52

Well Nathan I really appreciate you hopping on here and and sharing your story and and talking through a lot of your experiences and everything. It was really uh it was super interesting and I know people listening in will get the same value. What's the best way for people listening in to uh you know connect with you and learn more about your company yeah I'm not really on social media.

SPEAKER_00 52:10

I know we've got a bunch of stuff on LinkedIn at 68ventures uh our website's got all of our contact uh my emails ncox at 68ventures com. Kim Garrett's our head of communications she's extremely responsive and does a great job getting in touch with anybody but uh I always try to make myself available to everyone. So if you do email me, I can promise you I'll get back to you one way or another. But you ought to be able to find us on LinkedIn or through our website or anything else. But we do some really cool stuff throughout the year. One of our favorites is Chasing Greatness, which is a leadership and entrepreneur event that we do uh in South Alabama. We had uh over 800 people last year. This year we'll have over a thousand uh it's in January each year uh to be in downtown mobile but that's a really fun event we have people from all over the country that come in for it. So if you uh have enjoyed hearing um our conversation today and like all of our stuff on the website that may be a fun one to put on your calendar and come see us and meet us in person too. Cool.

SPEAKER_01 53:11

Yeah so for those of you listening in if you look at the description for this episode you'll see a link there to the show notes page on the show notes page will be the links that were just discussed so you can access them there. Again, Nathan really appreciate it. And for all of you guys tuning in if you're not already subscribed please click that button we'd love to have you back for the next one. Otherwise we will talk to you all next week