Entrepreneurial Minds stops in Panama with its ninth episode, where we speak with Jimmy Stice a founder of Kalu Yala, a business that builds socially & environmentally beneficial towns. He shares with us all about a creating an individual settlement and the way that this approach to sustainable living is growing. Join us for conversations about choosing your journey, global growth, and sharing stories from around the world.
Entrepreneurial Minds stops in Panama with its ninth episode, where we speak with Jimmy Stice a founder of Kalu Yala, a business that builds socially & environmentally beneficial towns. He shares with us all about a creating an individual settlement and the way that this approach to sustainable living is growing. Join us for conversations about choosing your journey, global growth, and sharing stories from around the world.
spk_1: 0:02
welcome to entrepreneurial mines. I'm Valerie Donahue and on this podcast will travel around the world to learn everything that we can about individuals, which was too greedy. Businesses from scratch. We'll dive into what drives them. What stops them and what inspires them in order to identify are their common factors that unite us as entrepreneurs across continents. Here's your next episode. Jimmy Spice. So good to be here with you in this amazing, beautiful place with all of the birds we can hear in the background. I think it's actually a really big attributes to this interview to have these calming sounds in the background. Jimmy's the founder of Cal Ayala business that builds socially and environmentally beneficial towns. San Dimas. The location for the 1st 1 it's prototype for a settlement being established. With plans to grow into a thriving town, Caligula has had the ability to flourish, creating a way for sustainable living and the chance for students and interested individuals to be able to experience this concept in person. Kali Ella, after establishing a research institute for the last nine years, has begun to move into the hospitality face of his business to make the place more accessible through partnerships with Body Hostile and Selena hotels, one of the fastest growing hotel companies in the world. Jimmy, thank you again just to get started in to paint a picture for our listeners. Tell me a little bit about the story of this place and what its color yellow means.
spk_0: 1:39
Callie Allah is actually two words from an indigenous language, the KUNA people. And they were refugees from Colombia in the 18 fifties, and then they found an archipelago of 365 islands just off the coat Caribbean coast of Panama. They settled and began growing. A beautiful society there that actually builds towns on islands and then manages natural resource is on a communal level. So not only that, but they also fought for their independence from Panama in 1925. And so, instead of being on a reservation, they actually have their own semi autonomous province with their own Congress and their own property laws. So we were just very inspired by this, this indigenous group that was already here and so we look to their language and Kahlua can mean a lot of things, but it's typically where spirits are born, and then Yala means land. And so it's just where you know, it's a place for where the spirit of the land is being born.
spk_1: 2:41
Oh, I love that. I really love that. So So you're not from here?
spk_0: 2:46
I'm from Atlanta, Georgia. I've been coming to Panama. I started to come into Panama on moved here in June of 2006 and I've been here ever since.
spk_1: 2:55
Do you have co founders or your solo founder?
spk_0: 2:57
So I had co founders, Uh, Scott ROM's A and Kimberley Hall came down to Panama with me in 2006 in 2007 respectively, and Scott actually found this land. We were doing market research for a year and 1/2 looking for a piece of land, and we were sitting at a little refresh. Korea drinking, Coca Cola's and Scott started talking this old guy. His Spanish was much better than my time. It still is, and the old guy turned out to be a park ranger, and we said, Wow, the land here is so expensive in your country because there's so much capital availability and people think of it as a bank, and so people so the land prices actually very high compared to market. And we really want to buy something within two hours of the city. We've already bought this piece of beachfront and my family's fund had and uh, and he said, There's this valley that nobody in Panama knows about that My father used to own land in my wife's family, owns land, and you should come hiking there. It's really close to the city and nobody knows about it. And so Scott called me. I was sitting by a parent's couch back in Atlanta in 2007 and he said, Jimmy, I've just spent all the hiking, The most beautiful valley that I just no one even knows exists. And the land prices were very reasonable, and I didn't believe him could. Scott was always a little more with an optimist and a little less of an analyst. Maybe, and then I was always our He was always our emotional connector for what we did, and, uh and so I came back and I spent a day hiking and I said, Holy hell there since a beautiful and then my dad came and spent a day hiking it and he said. What we gonna do with all this landed me and I was like that. We just spent a whole day having a great time. And we did, knowing that nothing's even happened yet. There's not any amenities. There's not. You know, there's none of the things that normally you go somewhere and have a good time. It's just a beautiful piece of land like that already has inherent value in it from its beauty, you know. And so that was kind of how that started. Kimberly and Scott and I raised $1.78 million.1.92 million dollars in 2008. In October, if you remember October 2 dozen eight, it was the crash. And so we raised. We're raising 3.5 million. We only raised 1.92 and then the stock market crash happened. Never hit pause. And when the stock market crash happened, Panama's real estate boom from foreign buyers and larger kind of alien virus stopped completely. So our friends, who were selling 30 units a month in the mountains two hours from Panama City, started selling 3 to 5 units month and so this whole Jesus was immediately destroyed the day we went out and raised money for it. Uh, that was kind of Ah, where Kali, Uh,
spk_1: 5:39
kind of our first big inflection point in the project. Okay. And when you were saying about the about Cal Ayala and the name and you were inspired by the indigenous people what it made me think of Waas being an expat and coming to create this kind of a community, how do you create it so that the local people are are included in this space?
spk_0: 6:02
I mean, I think you've got to do it by looking in every stakeholder. And so by stakeholder, we have Panamanian investors. We have Panamanian architects and engineers and construction partners and supply chain partners. We are in a beautiful county called San Martine. And, you know, most of our staff is from San Martine. We also teach in the school system in partnership with a National Education Ministry for four schools. We toast private after school tutoring at our house in San Miguel and Russ. Callie Allah can't be a success unless the people in San Martine are able to participate in it. And all of the jobs that it's going to offer. It's really about kind of your full spectrum stakeholder representation, from the wealthy Panamanian in the city to the government, agencies that we have to deal with to the people who actually live next door to us in our neighbors on about how they feel about us. Funny story. You know, when you come down here and there's a bunch of young people in, you're in a town of 150 you've got 50 students of your own and they're 18 to 25. They buy maybe more cigarettes or alcohol on it Looks like a ton thio, a town of 115. So we had to talk to our students about the fact that we're making about impression, since we teach in the schools for them to be buying out. Said they were buying that much already. There's just looked like a lot to a small town out rope. So so those that was like one of the early hiccups we had to overcome and becoming accepted by the local community. Just how we looked in public when we were twins are students were buying booze. That's a podcaster exciting. It's definitely where we realize Oh, gosh, we've stepped in it This time we actually didn't know we were doing wrong. We didn't see anything going wrong with the students, but we just realized we're such a small group of people that it seemed
spk_1: 8:00
like a buying power. Yeah, yeah,
spk_0: 8:02
some people like them. They're the ones teaching in the school.
spk_1: 8:06
That's funny when you say, like buying power, right? Like you think that? Yeah. Yeah, it depends on the on the population of the location, right? So you wouldn't think that that's that's new people wouldn't make a And Plus it's Panamint, right? Like I think like that goes into, like the larger, like topic of Panama being this community, that I think you've been outside of here. But in Panama City, Um, it's just a really tight knit place, and everyone kind of knows each other.
spk_0: 8:38
Panama is the most it's it's the smallest big city in the world, and the people who have been here doing things for a couple of generations or the small group. And then there's all of us newbies who have flown in here, whether it's Americans, whether it's whether it's Venezuelans. During the crisis. They're Colombians, the Chinese now coming in large droves to do commerce it there. It looks like there's all these new buildings for all these new law firms and banks, and it's true, Um, and these multinational corporations that have all moved here. But when you get down Thio, who's who's really been controlling the direction of Panama long sentence, the Panamanians and there Is there a pretty small group beyond the high rises that you see
spk_1: 9:26
one plan. So let me go back to what we were talking about, and yesterday, and you and I had a quick chat. And human should something about anecdotal evidence be, you know, being important. And obviously you guys, you've been here for 10 years, so you're obviously on. You have all of these partnerships, so you're doing quite well. But in terms of any anecdotal stories, do you have anything like that in in relation to the community, where aside from from the from the student tail, in terms of how you're feeling, you're impacting the community?
spk_0: 9:58
The community of San Martine of the Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm just anecdotally is that when I go to have breakfast at the little Fonda and San Miguel, which is like a treat to drive out of the jungle and go have a little breakfast by the river Chou fees Fonda, where trophies, family runs Everything we've known them for. I guess the whole time we've been here since we were always eating there, we started looking at the land. Uh, you know, every time I go Trophy was trying to see what's jobs were available, like that her nephew her son could work in. And so it's just there's like little indicators of the fact that people, when there's a job available here, they want their sister or their cousin so work here because they feel like working years. It is a really positive experience, and that's whether you're talking to Kendall in the kitchen, who's young and is, you know, on the route to being a professional chef, whether you're talking to some of our our older generations, that Ramon, who owns 200 acres next to us but helps work on our farm, and he taught us how to build our first house when he was here, we saw it. He saw it. Ramon would come peek over the fence while we were out here intense like green goes getting rained on. And you kind of found us a curiosity. Come peek over and talk to us a little bit. And finally, he said, guys, what if we build you like a structure that has a roof over it? Yeah. I mean, is that what I'm supposed to be in the business of doing his building houses? But what did I have never done it out in the middle of the jungle before? On So our first building, trace Process Outfitters, which you've been in is actually Ramon is the architect builder on DDE that he's kind of been our friend for 10 years since. Since
spk_1: 11:40
that, Yeah, what was the process off of bringing this to life? Like, how did this come from Just an idea that you had that you were inspired and actually actually making a little communities.
spk_0: 11:54
So when I was in high school, I I realized that I thought that where somebody was born was probably more important to their outcome in life than, uh, that person's work ethic or the government policies around them. People born into nice neighborhoods ended up doing well on people born into bad neighborhoods ended up being less likely to be successful. And I thought, What a silly set of policies from our government and of investments from, uh, Banks, who's all should be trying to create the highest possible outcome for each individual in order to build the most abundant society. And so this really started is a social project. And as I read more and more in college, I came to see that most of these issues already had solutions, and most of them actually had precedent where you could demonstrate that those solutions had worked. And so I started putting together of real estate development thesis based on the outcome of that development being conservation, environmental benefits and socioeconomic mobility for the people impacted by the project rather than real estates, tendency to segregate people by income or gentrifying neighborhood. Um, all that idea kind of culminated in a market study here that found this beautiful piece of land almost by luck. A year and 1/2 of market study. I was getting ready to go home, and this park rangers showed us this beautiful piece of land, and we ended up buying a 575 acre farm here. We did that right at in October of 2008. The market crashed. There was no invest no more. And all the plans of how we would do this and with the traditional real estate finance model were gone. And and so was the home sales in Panama. And all of a sudden, enough word had gotten out about the project in its intentions, and the techniques were planning. Thio apply that students started calling us about wanting to come to research studies for us, for their internship credit or for their major, or just because they wanted to get professional experience. And so 10 students showed up and what we thought was a three month experiment, and at the end of it, they had produced these incredible reports that no real estate developer, no matter how good their intentions are, had access to about environmental tourism in the region, about the aggro economy of Panama, on how we could figure that into any farming that we plan to integrate into it on dhe. And we said and they didn't want to leave, and we still didn't really understand how to employ them being a company and they said, Well, what if we start? What if we give you budget proposals? What we write curriculum? And what if we do the recruiting and we start this institute? So Whole Institute was and acts of students initiative that we allowed to happen. So you come down, give us some free studies that and then they turned it into an organization where they went and recruited from their oncologist, recruited. They're friends, and all of a sudden we had 50 students down here doing research in five different disciplines, and that's kind of where the institute came from. And the institute is really drove us through that recession and gave us this tool that I don't think any other new town development has, which is a civic institute performing research and development toe. Hold us accountable to our mission and help us achieve it faster. And so everything you're looking at is really the result of student projects. Really, there's a research determining what is the best practice, and then us following that best practice and then as we started following best practices, what ended up having a people who were in their fields that were very interested in kind of places that wanted to promote these best practices started gravitating toward us. So all of a sudden you see Pete exceptionally talented people start showing up. The students were talented people who actually work experience. So now we're sitting in a beautiful building built by who I consider to be the best builder of his age in the world. West Steiner. And, um, the sophistication, you know, is 1/3 generation builder. He's got a five year architecture degree. He apprentice had hoped for architecture and he showed up at Kali Allah because we were doing things that were really interesting to him. And so I think that's what's cool. Ryan are biologists, was in Costa Rica for seven years, was lecturing at Johnson and Wales, has a masters and tropical soil ecology, and he showed up on you know, when you go to the bar at Cal Yala right now and you're just surrounded by these fascinating people with these really good intentions that air very grounded in reality on and have have specialized in these things that just to be honest, we all had. It is an idea of a part of this But we never had the specialization to go as deep is there going? And that's really what makes Kali Allah feel like Kali Allah is all of these people who have come called to the mission of the company, and now we're being called to the results of that research and how we're turning that into a town.
spk_1: 16:55
Yeah, let's talk a little bit of other infrastructure. This is one of the things that I think in pictures. It's it's it's impossible to describe. But when you come here like you said, the level of everything is so simple. But the level of sophistication with how it's built and it's it's so aesthetic for me, like that's just like you makes like such like a difference when I'm like when I mean any kind of space, and I'm just I'm I'm really in off of the space and the different structures that you guys have here. Can you do think that it's possible to inwards to color for the listeners? Like what? I
spk_0: 17:33
mean, you know, I'm the Selina site that we're sitting on right now, so you had a group of hope for architecture builders, which is the best organization. I know for training builders in the world, um, came And you usually these people, these buildings were built for very wealthy families. Uh, but West, who I got from that organization he's 27 take the whole Appalachian trail by himself. He really wasn't looking to go build cathedrals for rich families to live in. Uh, and so we have this very sophisticated builder come and build us a camp, you know? And so it's a beautiful. I always joke with him that this is like a Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy Roosevelt goes to the tropics and builds a U. S National Park camp like that. It's so it's so it's built so tough. It's built so thoughtfully. It's built in a way that people haven't built in 50 years, and so I don't know how to say it, but I think it's a lot. You've been to a national park if you've been to Yellowstone or anywhere else on you, seeing whether it's the public bathrooms or whether it's the camping facilities or the different places to stay. You know, I was to say that we're jungle redneck tough, but we're hope for architecture. Pretty. I know That was a good answer. Your question or not? Um, I could we could shut try it again if you got a d.
spk_1: 19:00
O. I think I think that's perfect. And and then in terms of the land that we're sitting on, so one all of the structures are incredibly beautiful. They're they're incredibly simple, and they they blend in somehow in into the beautiful land. I know that you mentioned that when this particular land that we're sitting on it was it wasn't this green, right? You guys, you guys had to do a lot of reforestation to bring it back.
spk_0: 19:26
Yeah, I mean, we bought a cow field. Uh, you know, uh, there's, you know, I'm I'm actually I'm not against the cattle industry. And I think that families who were doing what they needed to do in their economy to provide for the next generation when they came and they cleared about 50% of this valley from its rainforest in the 19 fifties to turn it into cow pasture. And so we bought a very beautiful cow field. But there were no trees around us, every almost every trees together than the very old large ones that were left on the property, um, are have grown within the last 10 years.
spk_1: 19:58
That's like, to me, that is impossible to believe, because they're like, you can't like. The listeners can't see it, But there are so many trees, like we are inside of
spk_0: 20:07
a forest. And so yes, so we've been some of it's been where we just are, does not we just didn't maintain it. And some of it's where we're planting. We're planting about 2000 trees a year. Most of the trees were planting our hardwood fruit bearing trees were doing that to sequester carbon. Uh, in the hardwoods. We're doing it to restore soil because this was pretty much dead pan hard clay on. We're doing it to eventually, uh, create our own abundance of food for ourselves. But we've chosen to go with these trees that take 5 to 7 years to produce fruit in order for them to establish their root systems in order to start doing soil restoration and to get them going since they take longer and then we'll come back and we'll plant, uh, your perennials bushes that have fruit with into the for 1 to 2, even three years and then we'll come back and we'll plant your starches. Things like plantains, potatoes in between all of these hardwood trees so that we're harvesting, you know, somewhere between 50 and 80% of our food here on
spk_1: 21:12
the property and in terms of in terms of reforestation, what do you So this is Well, I wouldn't say that on a smaller scale, but compared Teoh, you know what we have in the world right now? What does reforestation looked like on a large scale?
spk_0: 21:33
I mean, right now, if you're paying attention to climate change, the most cost effective, easiest solution that we all have across all of our a political and socioeconomic beliefs and where we may be in the world is planting one trillion trees planted one trillion trees is planning a louse like in the eighties. Don't chop down the trees. But it was kind of Now it's you're looking at what Paul Hawkins done with projects are all down and his comprehensive research of every method for offsetting climate change, whether it's technological or natural, and, uh, planting trees is the cheapest way that we can not stop reverse climate change. But we can stop global warming from advancing any further. And one of the cool things is in the last 35 years, we've actually seen Forrest coverage on Earth go up, not down as we move to more high intensity agriculture. Agricultural land is being given up, and it's reforesting naturally, you know. And so we just need to keep encouraging policies for people to put their private land into conservation, for people to build new towns that are intentionally built with trees and them rather than destroying trees on for farmers to be given environmental service benefits for growing trees instead of cutting them down.
spk_1: 23:00
So do you have a positive outlook for our environment into the future?
spk_0: 23:04
We're 100% positive here. We feel, uh, human. Our species has the knowledge, the consciousness, the knowledge and the technology to be aware of climate change and the ability Thio eventually control. I think we're in overshoot right now. I think a lot of people, especially people, but you don't have the economic resource, is toe to be in control of their own lives. As much as more privileged people on our population are going to suffer due to climate change where we already are. No matter how fast reacts, you're going to see a refugee crisis accelerate. You're going to see financial instability and see all sorts of problems that are going to hurt large groups of people. But as a species, are we going to survive and also, uh, help become stewards to the planet? I think that that's the great phase we're about to go through as a civilization. Is humans turning into the steward species because we have no choice?
spk_1: 24:05
Where do you see your role in that? What role do you play? I
spk_0: 24:10
think in terms like my goal was to create a business model that is replicable. There's open source and that maybe it is not more profitable, but it's at least the risk adjusted rate of return on. The investment is lower s O that investors can, whether they're environmentalists or social rights activists or whether they're just old bankers. I can see that there's a business model for at least making safe for money if not making more money by being ahead of the curve on taking care of the people that your project impacts around your project. The people who were going live in your project, their Children's outcome and the environment, the environmental impacts of your project. So for me, I still am. At the end of the day, I'm a hippy with a beard espousing social rights and environmental rights. But at the end of the day, I'm a I'm a banker's son who's really tryingto have make this project demonstrate to finance people on real estate people that our industry can do better and get paid just a cz well, if not better, by making the right decisions. To me, it's the way the way that we raise the money, you know, when you say it in. In 2008 sustainability was still pretty scary word, especially with Southern investors. And the way we raised the money was not by screaming about climate change is the same building was by saying, Look, guys, sustainability is what your generation called being pragmatic. It's about using. Last Resource is to create Maur abundant outcomes, and when you said it like that all of a sudden, these old old high net worth individuals suddenly made it didn't sound like a high tech risk play that I was making and sounded kind of like a back to basics, uh, way of thinking about building where we should be cost conscious, not just in the short term, but in the long term. So we try and build buildings that last for 100 years on DDE. That was very appealing to them. And now I think that since 2008 the environmental movement has accelerated so much that now you can just say it a little more aggressively.
spk_1: 26:27
Jimmy, what is you talk about? Citizen equity? What is that?
spk_0: 26:34
Citizen equity originally was. So after we bought the property in 2008 the financial crash happens literally. The pause button was pressed way done some design work, but no, no real estate was selling in Panama. No realistic finance existed to do way originally do this progressive development using a traditional real estate finance model. And we saw that that we were gonna have access to this capital sources anymore. On dhe. I went home and I spent a year just reading books all day, just to be honest, reading books while this land sat here and trying to figure out what the hell caused the financial collapse. How was real estate involved. And how do we get to a point where really real estate and the finance industry threatened the entire global economy and put us in the worst recession since the Great Depression? Um, and essentially, what it all blow down to to me was absentee ownership. It was the fact that the stakeholders in the investment we're not we're not the people who are on the ground experiencing the impact of the product. S citizen Accuracy is essentially about building things like he stops like an employee stock ownership programs, co ops, Um h always like cops like like New York cops, where people actually get to we're gonna do this is a homeowners a horizontal condominium ownership structure where people will actually have ownership in the town. So therefore they will be both buying into the mission and incentivize thio want to project the at that the value of their asset. So that's really the technical definition. Is that exactly it's the idea of localizing the investor as much as possible so that we don't have absentee investors because I think that's the biggest problem that the finance and real estate industry has in terms of how they've caused these traumatic catastrophic, uh, problems for at everyday people. Um, it's expanded so much to really mean state stakeholder, actually, its meaning. How do we make sure that we're representing every stakeholder, whether it's because they have a job here, whether it's because they're growing up in the county with the village seven kilometers away from us, whether it's how we're impacting our Panamanian political stakeholders by doing this? Um, it's really about all of these citizens around us having a stake in our outcome and knowing that we're listening to them and representing them as we take our cautious steps for it.
spk_1: 29:18
So as you were creating this community and and I think it's such a big undertaking and obviously you know, when it comes to like building a business to me, something about the tangible like to be able to see it. It's a really community, is feels like such a big, big undertaking. When you were when you were thinking about starting when you had committed to this project on, Gyu started to think about obviously the land, and you started to think about, you know, creating Thea architecture and building up the spaces and the community here in terms of community values and in terms of how you wanted people to be interacting, what were what were your original thoughts and how did you then go about translating those values about your community to the people that were showing up here?
spk_0: 30:13
Sure. So on Author named. So we have this ideal, idealistic vision of a community that's very utopian terms of the way we're thinking about it. And I was having lunch with the author of Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser, and he read through my pitch and he's like, This sounds amazing, But you better figure out a put a really strong no assholes claws into everything you're doing because human beings will screw this up. No matter how much you want to believe in our good nature, I thought that's a bit of a buzz kill. Uh, and then we kind of started taking off in 2000 and late 2010 when the institute formed and the students were saying, Well, this is all great, but what? We really need to have some way of vetting who gets to be a minute they're gonna actually own part of calorie Allah and have saying it. Then we need to really vet them to make sure. And I just thought, Wow, guys, the idea of vetting who gets Topolanek? Ali Al. It starts to sound like a country club. Or, you know, I mean, it starts. That sounds that I hate the idea that we're gonna have a fraternity, that black balls. You, uh, if you don't have the right moral attitude or more, or you don't come off as having, you know. So I said, that doesn't seem very inclusive. How did we do something inclusive? And that's when we sat down and we wrote a Kali Al a dictionary of words that have implied values to them. And we started building all of our language, whether it was our investor decks or are public facing websites, all with this vocabulary of inclusivity, of, of responsibility for the environment, and just saying our values out loud, you know, And by doing that, it really people who didn't get it. It was like we were speaking a foreign language they couldn't understand, and people who got it really resonated with them. And that's when we started attracting these superstars. Uh, we're making this place so beautiful and so just speaking with values and then really being held accountable turns your transparency of falling your values. And that's what the institute does now a CZ, much as it does research, Uh, students pain, intuition to come out for one semester, do not care about investor profits. They care about the discipline there studying, and they will call you out so fast because they because they paid you on time and money on. So if you're doing something unethical there up in your business, not just in your business there literally doing field research on your business. And so it's this beautiful kind of accidental we we thought we were getting a competitive advantage of research on what we also got was a moral compass that prevents us from strain from our mission and kind of guarantees that to the outside world that we have this civic institute watching our every move and making sure that we're following that mission so that the values were true.
spk_1: 33:14
I so love that. And I so love that that its students doing that, um uh, and I think that that's incredible. Yesterday's oh, he said something interesting, she said, that by interacting with the students and some of the questions that they haven't some of the things that they say that sometimes if she's, you know, if she's feeling discouraged about the state of things are of the state of the world. When she when she is interacting with the students, she has a thought like It's all gonna be okay,
spk_0: 33:42
not just our students at our institute. But she'll say the same thing about the students from the Junior high's the public Junior eyes that come to visit the private schools that come to visit, she says. We've got There's kids in rural educ public education in Panama who are concerned about plastic who are concerned about global warming, their 12 years old, and they're already talking to their parents about this out here in a little town of 500 people. Not our town but the town near us, you know, and so that really is always like worlds. If all the kids in San Miguel are talking about organic farming and climate change, animal rights and pollution, like the messages out, you know,
spk_1: 34:22
yeah, yes, it's incredible. So going back to the values What are some of the, uh what are the What are the pillars for the values that you guys have here
spk_0: 34:34
s o the pillars of the values. I would say if we want to go out like pillars being KP eyes just to get this back to our business folks, um, you know, for me, I want to see San Martine the county were in. If it does not become the most educated roll county in Latin America, I would feel is that we'd failed them as a neighbor. Okay, The reason for that is because if this place creates has the ability to create jobs that create socioeconomic mobility, that means that we need to have students who are well suited to be able to take advantage of that, the potential for socioeconomic mobility. I don't just want people moving here from outside the county Thio get that advantaged, whether they're foreigners or whether they're people from Panama City who had access to more education. I want to see San Martine become the most educated roll county in Central America and therefore Kali Allah to connect this little village middle of nowhere to a global economy. So that those kids can choose to stay where they live instead of having to ride the bus for three hours a day on, they can stay closer their families when they have kids, they can not waste three hours on a bus, and they can have associate ability in the place where their families have lived for generations. That would be kind of my tube main social. I guess the other would be the diversity of housing and making sure that it's affordable. Everyone says, Who's gonna live it calling out? I say, I can't tell you that because I'm not picking them. They're picking me. But we're trying to make sure that we have apartments starting $80,000 whom starting in $120,000 so that we qualify for all of the government assisted financing for low cost housing so that we're without compromising our environmental mission. That's only we can't quite get down to the $50,000 home that while out without compromising our environmental values. So okay, so as long. But but most educated county in Central America, highest degree of socioeconomic mobility for people living in the county because of what the economics we're creating here and then, eh? Socioeconomic diversity within our home owners and residents would be my social, environmentally carbon, sec astray shin soil restoration. And then the big big goal is in All of this is the fact that I've got 32 families that own 7000 acres around my Finca who we've been the weirdos from from with the with the liberal beliefs. But we just slowly become friends with them. I want to show that we've got a model. Now that the cattle industry is no longer making money, their Children no longer want to take the farm. But the farm is the inheritance. And so I want to show we've got a model that you guys can copy that we could help you Copy Thio, help grow this to where this whole valley is a beautiful set of villages. Uh, that is not just owned by me, but it's on by multiple people on and be cut by expanding it to them, having a better business model for their land and cattle. They're building wealth and their families, and they're also taking our best practices and expanding it to reforest their properties and to have their properties be platforms for that socioeconomic mobility. And if I could those jobs that we're gonna need, Um, I went a little off track.
spk_1: 38:00
Your perfect. Um, so you have partnerships now with a Selina. Oh, and with, um, with body, too. Yeah, you have. You have partnerships now, with the body hostile and with a Selina, how did those partnerships come about? And how long did it take for, um, for for other companies to start noticing your presence here?
spk_0: 38:26
We did a pretty good job of getting out. Beating the street's like Google used to host meetings for us in New York. And, you know, we were getting introduced toe, You know, one I'm not gonna drop names, but, like, wonderful people who really supported this idea in the U. S. And in Panama, starting in 2000 and 11 2012. And then in 2013 and 14 we really started to take off on social media. We started to have a lot of students coming down, and, um and so that was really where people started hearing about us and talking to us, and it was easy to make a phone call and have people take your call. Um, Then we had vice come down here and one of my friends who's won Sundance twice used the only woman everyone in the grand jury prize twice got convinced me to have them make what was supposed to be a docuseries that turned out to be a reality show in Wolf's clothing and vice didn't 10 episodes about us that pretty much told a complete lie about this place in order to get ratings on completely damaged our reputation made it where our institute from having 90 students stabbing 12 students on, made it where we were socially dangerous to talk to. We were a little bit of a pariah because either maybe vice. What they said was true, but it doesn't really matter their vice. And now the Internet says what they said. And so it became very complicated for us to talk to people. Um, and since then, you know, we just keep doing us. We keep living our values, trying to take the high road. And luckily Selena has been here the whole time watching us body. We've been friends with those guys for for for years, and so they know the truth about this place on so the people and that's really where we started rebuilding was okay. We've got friends who have brands. Uh, know that we're good people, know that we're doing the right thing. You don't care about the failed by show that they wasted all that money on on DDE. And so we started partnering to rebuild credibility. So now we'll do a conference, Uh, you know, it gets videos of students talking about their experience here after having been here for 10 weeks to demonstrate that what vice made was completely fictional on. Now we've got Selena a $1,000,000,000 hotel company here, and we've gotten a bit Siri's coming this summer, which should pretty much with our brands and partners in outdoor sports and music and thought leadership and in culinary arts should we're using other people's established brands to demonstrate our credibility through friends we've had this whole
spk_1: 41:09
time. So how have partnerships like like this Selena, um, enhanced the, um, groups coming in here. And are you seeing that there are now, you know, obviously, with a big brand like Selena, you're getting more interest in the place. Um are the types of people that are coming in different from the kind of people that were finding you before that partnership
spk_0: 41:36
right now. Right now, um, we're finally, after all of this time, Selena has made it where we've become a real destination for Panamanians and Latin Americans who are traveling Panama, which is very cool. We're speaking more Spanish than ever before. Um, all of our conference is a really targeted towards people already living in Panama City that we're doing with summer Siri's. And so they've really introduced us to Panama. Even though we've been here? Yes, with our with an open door to Phantom on this entire time. That's really the biggest difference is I think we're becoming even more Panamanian than we already were because of silly enough.
spk_1: 42:16
So you guys were using still a very small percentage of the land that you own, So they're scarce. You have, We're used. You're using seven acres and you have about 500 acres. Is that right?
spk_0: 42:29
Depends on how you say Yes. We have 575 acres. Right now, this village it's kind of sprawled out, is on about 40 acres. But as you can see most of that. Still trees, you know. So I'm not sure if we added up all of our building footprints If we'd be one acre. Um, but we're using a very small percentage of the land right now. We plan to use, um, about we plan to develop about. It's about 200 of our 575 acres. So we planted about about 200 or 575 acres. But in that development, 50% of that will still be hardwood trees on green spaces. Eso really? It ends up being about 100 out of 575 acres that have built infrastructure on
spk_1: 43:17
them. Okay. And who will that space before
spk_0: 43:23
space is going to be for everyone that we can possibly get to want to come here because they want to come to a place like this, You know, that's gonna be for way. Have we have Junior High's come out here? We have families. Come out here. We have 25 year olds. Come have big parties out here. You know, we have entrepreneurs from around the world stopping here and co work, you know, And we hope that you know the neck. The generation growing up in San Martine We hope that, you know, maybe that will be the new neighborhood they move into away from the city rather moving toward the city, which has been the population trip.
spk_1: 44:01
So, Jimmy, you mentioned the co working space and and I think that what's what's brilliant about, You know, what Selena is doing throughout their locations is the benefit of the co working space. That's what really draws me until the all the spaces. And when I was. And I know that you guys have the partnership with Selina, I didn't expect for there to be a good working space here. Especially that everything aside from the house that you guys are currently building, there are no walls, right for our listeners. Don't just stand there. You're just outside, wherever you are. Um, and And I saw the space that you guys were gonna use for the co working, and I think that that is just such an unusual draw for entrepreneurs who I want to get away from from the city. But they still need to work. You're actually like it is shocking to me. You're actually offering reliable WiFi. And there is this, like, amazing outdoor coworking space. I've never seen anything like that.
spk_0: 44:55
It's different way, you know. I mean, we, uh I always I gave a lecture at the interview semester of the students to talk about what I've learned getting my ass kicked here in the jungle on dhe. One of the things I always tell them is when you're at a decision point, you've got Thio. Go go five or 10 years into the future and look back and decide if you chose the decision that made your life the most beautiful it could be. And so there's a lot of obsession re obsessed with metrics and performance here. But at the same time, we're always looking for, like, that pattern language of what? What makes something beautiful and technically, uh, technically efficient for the task at hand. So, for us, you know, they say nature relieves anxiety. Um, and, uh, so we've got the ability to have birds chirping in the background and the beautiful temperature of just humid enough air floating over you while we still give you all the amenities of a regular co working space. So why put you in another office somewhere that could be anywhere in the world when we can put you in a collie Alico working space with birds tripping behind you.
spk_1: 46:08
Yeah, I agree. No, 100%. So you mentioned stress and kind of being in this environment, you're in nature. Um, you know, my assumption would be that your stress levels are lower than the average entrepreneur. Is that Would you agree with that? Do you? You know, how do you, um, you know what? Your what? Your biggest kind of concerns for the company now. And how do you How do you experience stress
spk_0: 46:34
that that's complicated? You know, ever since the snuff job by vice and we had to fire 30 30 of our employees way to cut everyone's salaries. And so we've we've had I have the same stress every on it's like I'm in 1/3 startup face. It's like it's like we were there were doubling revenue every year. And we got you know, we had that catastrophic event that we've been having to fight back against ever since. And so I've been fighting. When I was, I used to be stealing people from our instant young uh, now, you know, I'm fighting to make payroll every two weeks, which a lot of entrepreneurs can relate to on at the end of the day, payroll to me. More than anything else, it's about keeping promises you made to the people doing the hard work. And when you when you you know, when the biggest stress idea, what is disappointing? The people who come to Cali, Alec for the dream. So we try and be Tell them about the reality of how hard the dream is on when they feel is, though. Maybe I maybe I my optimism caused me toe miss. Label it. So that's that's my big stress is always tell everyone I'm happy when our team is happy on our team's happy when our clients are happy, you know? And that's that's the truth here. Um, as far as at the same time, on my darkest day when I know that I know we had to do some layoffs recently and really good people who didn't deserve termination for anything other than my inability to produce the revenue that I needed to make to be able to carry that size team, uh, my darkest day you Still, you still hear these birds chirp in the air, still blows over your skin and gives you that feeling in the tropics And even those folks who we laid off we're all we're all sitting there together looking up with this guy and how beautiful it is toe live in a place where we're looking at trees and we know everything is going to be okay. You know, we still feel very privileged that this is what we get to call work, even though some of the work is very hard and very, very stressful.
spk_1: 48:40
Yeah, and I hear in your language use of a lot of accountability. And from what I noticed from conversations and meeting entrepreneurs who are successful, that comes up as, um as a big pattern that no matter you know, there are so many people working for any given business or an organization. But at the end of the day, I find that the founders who speak in the kind of way that you do where they take extreme ownership of of, ah, of anything, um, that might not be positive. That happens in the organization. Those were the ones that actually foster a lot of loyalty from the people that work with them on and that you know that that take the actions that are needed to course correct. When there's anything, um, you know, that kind of goat goes off key, so
spk_0: 49:30
it's been getting easy. I'll tell you, it's I always say that, uh, I started out thinking this idea was right eye with the kind of the when the market crashed and I realized that the real estate industry was was really responsible for so many people being harmed. I got really righteous, you know. And then we started the scale and that righteousness became hubris because we were just growing so fast, and I just felt like you validated, and I and I used to be. I come from the very come from a competitive background, and so I think of competition is normal, and I used to have this terrible saying with our whole team, we're trying to a very flat organization, but it was a very aggressive, flat organization about We're kicking. We're doing this for the environment. We're doing this for social rights and to survive on this team, you better be, you know, going full speed, and I had a horrible saying when we talked. It was first of all, if you believe in your idea, you better have the guts to say you won't have a job here. Second of all, we put all the ideas on the table and only the good ideas survive in the bad Ideas die. And it was It was a very, you know, cutthroat way of achieving social justice and environmental was righteous. And then vice came along and, uh, you knocked out 90% of my revenue. And at the same time, I have been this really competitive, potentially less emotionally sensitive, still trying to do the right thing. But doing so in a from a world do that thought that, like competition, is the ultimate way to create greatness. And it's been very humbling for the last 22 years. Thio learn how much how many ways there are to take care of people rather than just financial advancement because you created a great product with them, but that you know you can make life very pleasant when you're working with even less. Resource is if you actually are able to empathize with everybody around you and really understand why we all have bad days at work And why, um, how to show somebody that you support them in other ways, even if you can't support them financially as well as you used to. So saying I'm your maybe talking to a slightly kinder version of myself, I guess, to get a long way to go.
spk_1: 51:53
Well, that's the whole right for all of us. That a new point in the future that we're just, you know, kinder, better versions of ourselves. And then we are today. So I think that's a great way of looking at it. Um, you mentioned, uh, well, you mentioned that you started to get this. You know, the thoughts about an idea like this starting when you were 15 years old? Um what would knowing what you know now, Um, And having lived this experience, what would be the advice that you would give to your 15 year old self?
spk_0: 52:25
You I think about this. And every day I'm just like, I can't regret any of all of the horrible decisions that may cause I love my life so much, but, uh, but the advice I would I would give is really actually the advice my dad gave me when I was 22 which is like, Go do what you want to do for somebody who already knows how to do it for 2 to 3 years at least before going out and trying to do it because you read a bunch of books and thought you could Yeah, I think the easiest thing I could have done was found a great town builder and gone and taken an internship. And, you know, Paige gotten paid. Nothing to start, however, had to get in the door and learned about how that person lead in this very complex systems environment of building the town and have a structured things. And I think that we could have just short cut it a lot of the different parts. But then maybe I never would have accidentally created the institute. So it's tough for me to say that that's what I should have done. Sure, I guess the best thing I could say is, if I could if I could have learned to be a little more humble and a little ah, little kinder a little earlier, it probably would have most any bad feeling I have about the Kali al a journey has been when I've made somebody else feel bad. Uh, you know, about coming and being part of this dream on having it not always be a dream.
spk_1: 53:52
Jimmy, thank you so much. I Actually, I I can't thank you enough because this has been such a, um it's been such a cool experience. It's Ah, It has been one of my favorite opportunities to interview someone so far, because, well, you and I were just gonna meet in Panama City as you were passing, buying, and then you gave me this opportunity to come here and actually check it out on dhe, live it and to see how everyone functions here. And it's, um I wouldn't have understood what it is without coming down here. Um and I you know, I felt so welcome here. I just feel so at home. And, um and I really I've never ever been in this kind of environment before. Um, you know, to me, it feels like, you know, like adults Dae Kim.
spk_0: 54:38
It is a little bit of an adult camp, but it's just kind of more. It's an adult camp. It's an adult destination in the
spk_1: 54:46
woods. Yes, but also what I've learned from your staff here. So, you know, with the tourist that you guys D'oh! I think that's incredibly impactful. And especially for me being from New York. You know, I mentioned to you yesterday like I'm embarrassed to say, but, like, sustainability is just not top of mind for me all the time. And so having to be here and actually one of the one of the one of my biggest takeaways is actually going through this land. Ah, with Zoe and having her, you know, show me of what you guys are bringing to life. Like, where there is nothing. There are now trees, and it's, um and and and And it is just amazing. And so he really opened up my mind and it opened up my world to what's possible? Um, I honestly, I've never thought of a reforestation until I saw this to see that this is this is just a few years. It now also gives me so much hope. This place gives me a lot of hope for the future. Um, so again, so much gratitude. I really, really appreciate this opportunity and I'll be watching for what you guys do,
spk_0: 55:54
just so little closing out for me. One of the funny things that we never intended. We've wanted best practices, but we never intended for this toe really transform people, I guess just cause it was two we go to stick up for me to think that it would be that we you could transform people. And we've found that we 100% transform every student who come for 10 weeks. And as we've done events in the past, and if you have visitors now are that's what we're thinking. How do we take all of that stuff that we have learned in the last 10 years and give it to somebody who's here for two or three nights and have it completely transformed the way they look at the world, if not themselves? So we really appreciate you visiting. And, uh, this has been fun.
spk_1: 56:35
Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank
spk_0: 56:40
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