The best money you will ever spend is buying back your own paper. Welcome back to The Art of Connecting Podcast. This is your host here, Haydynn Fike, back with another episode today. And today I have Jeremy McDowell here with me. And as per usual, I always tell a little bit of a story on how I met the people who I'm interviewing. And I met Jeremy for the first time. We were at the office at Brickyard, and this. This country man comes up and former cowboy and he just started talking. And, and that led to us. We actually went and rode up to his house, got to see some of his cool collection that he has of many different awesome things that he's accumulated in his life. And I remember just having. A very good day up on Lookout Mountain. Get to spend the day with Jeremy McDowell, and I actually ended up being lassoed by the end of that day and have a funny video of that. So anyways, Jeremy, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. I am so excited for you to get to tell some stories to us today. Well, Haydynn, it's my pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me on your show. Yeah, yeah. So if you don't mind, this is the way I start. Pretty much every episode we got, if you just give a little a hundred foot intro of. Who Jeremy McDowell is. Alright, I'll give it my best shot. So I'm Jeremy McDowell. I was imprinted in the real estate and construction business. It's born into me and my grandfather was an earth moving contractor. My mother was in the real estate business at one time. My mother worked with a firm that owned 65,000 acres from here to Texas. And so I grew up around that. There was always real estate deals in our house as a kid, and inherently I absorbed some of that stuff just because it was. I mean, it was at the kitchen table. There was no way around it. My granddaddy, he was a lake builder and he was prominent in his field and highly respected. And so I grew up doing that and I guess to say I merged the two together and that's who I am today. My background, you know, like a lot of folks, I spent a lot of years trying to figure out who I was and what my gift to society was. If, if I had such a gift and, I didn't go to college. I graduated high school probably on a thin and narrow margin. I have some learning abilities or disabilities, depending on the day and how you use them. But I started in a vocation and I worked around construction heavy equipment, bulldozers, trackhoes trucks and that kind of thing, and I just kind of felt my way through it as the, the late Fletcher Wright would say. Feel your way through things. Mm-hmm. And so I started that way. Trial and error. A famous lawyer entered my life when I was about 21 years old. He said I wasn't doing enough and I was not using my talents the way that I should. His name was Bobby Lee Cook. He was a famous criminal defense attorney. And so for the next 6, 8, 10 years, every Saturday morning, he and I went fishing for fun. And I was imprinted by Bobby Lee and got to see his business career and the way he operated and the way he. Dealt with people and I was forever shaped. Mm. In that time, my mom, we had a, she had a home office. I'd moved back home and she had a home office and the phone literally was ringing all the time. People wanting to buy 50 and$60,000 lots around. In developments that she had an interest in and nobody was returning their call, and Bobby Lee encouraged me to get my real estate license. This was probably 2004. He said I was too smart to be doing what I was doing. So I took his advice and I thought, well, if Mr. Bobby Lee Cook thinks I'm too smart to be doing what I'm doing, I probably ought to listen to him. His report card would grade relatively well. So, so I did I got in the real estate business and I started seemingly picking up crumbs and returning people's phone calls. So that's where we got going. And I guess a couple of things that I'll try to explain. The first one is, ha have an open mind. You know, I remember calling people back and. Presuming to know nothing and just hear what they needed help with and tried to apply help where needed. And you know, that's, that's a key is figure out what people need and how you can help'em. I think looking back, it's been 20 something years now for me, but just looking what the need is and trying to fulfill the need. Mm. With an open mind, you know, give somebody a chance to say. And in the real estate business, it was amazing. It was almost like an interview process. You know, somebody would say they'd want a track of land, they'd want an acre, or they'd want a 10 acre track. And you know, they have this preconceived notion that may be wrong. So what you would do is you would refine the vision. Most people if they've not been around land, they can't tell you how big 10 acres is. They wouldn't know the difference between 10 acres and a hundred acres. So if you start expanding on those parameters and. Studying what they want to do, the use of the land, how they want to use it, kind of the way they live out their life and how you could serve'em. I, I got really good at understanding people and, and really telling'em what they wanted. And instead of taking them to see 15 properties that was on some MLS printout, we would do a reverse interview process. I take'em to C3. Mm-hmm. And usually I would say seven outta 10 times I already knew which one they'd picked before they chose. Hmm. So we had a lot of, I had a lot of success. Success early on by listening Well, having an open mind and not being afraid to ask questions. Mm. Pertinent questions. Well, you're, you're saying, you just said there is to me, the connector formula. Okay. And that's what I, what I use in my, as I go throughout and create connections with people, is when people ask, what do you do? And I say, I'm, I'm a connector. I, I connect people together. And they're like, what does that mean? I say, I figure out what people need and how I can help'em get it. Right. That's a simple formula, right, to becoming a connector is what is it that you want or need and how can I help you get it? And if you just ask that question, it's, it leads to a lot of amazing opportunities. Absolutely. And so just thinking about our conversation and what you wanted to talk about. I've talked about maybe an open mind, but the next thing I'll say in connecting with people is don't judge people on what you hear innocent until proven guilty. Everybody's got somebody, if they've ever been successful, if they've ever had a minute of success, there's somebody that might say something negative about'em. And so I have a rule. I don't care if the person stepped on everybody's toes as long as they haven't stepped on my toes. We're gonna start and work from there. And a lot of times you find out for me. Some of the most valuable relationships I have in life and in business. They started in real awkward positions. You'd meet somebody and think, I don't like this guy. I'm not going to like this guy. And ironically, today, those folks that hit me with those terms are my closest peers and friends today. So having an open mind is paramount, and that's one of the pillars that Bobby Lee taught me is don't judge. Have an open mind, innocent until proven guilty. Hmm. And Bobby Lee was a neat guy. I don't know that you know, but the TV show Matlock was scripted after him. He was paid royalties by the show. Seemingly Andy Griffith played the part of my mentor, literally. He also represented a family down in I. Savannah, Georgia. John Bernard wrote a book called Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. It was a bestseller. They made a movie out of it. Bobby Lee was a, a criminal defense attorney, but he was larger than life and you know, he was a celebrity. I mean, I remember going tons of places with him and seeing how he interacted with the world and he tried to meet. Everybody on their level. So he could be talking to the farmer who had a limited vocabulary and he would treat him with the same skill, respect, and dignity. As you know, a businessman from Amman, Jordan, and I've been in deals with both of them, with people, the farmer and the guy from Aman, Jordan. Those are actually real people and real things that happen. Mm-hmm. So, you know, try to meet people on their level. Another thing I would say that's important is try not to put on false airs. Be you don't try to impress somebody, don't try to you know, Dale Carnegie talks about winning friends and influencing people. That's okay. I. I call it the Mr. Bojangles dance. I'm not big on doing the Mr. Bojangles dance. There's a song by a guy named Jerry, Jeff Walker, and it's a story of a guy named Mr. Bojangles. And you see salespeople do it all the time. You know, they think that the consumer wants'em to jump and hop and skip and tell'em what they want to hear. I just refuse to operate under those principles. I'm not Mr. Bojangles and I don't want to do the Mr. Bojangles dance, and I am turned off when I see people do it. So just. Again, be honest, be transparent, and be open. So I love it. Yeah. So something I wanna ask you about, because you've had some incredible mentors in your life and you've told me some amazing stories about it. Yeah. So how did you go about meeting those mentors? And this is a question I ask all the time, is how do you, how do you go about creating that relationship and starting to be mentored by someone who you really look up to? Boy, that's a big question. I would attribute some of my success to the creator Almighty God. I would say that if you read the, the scripture of the Bible God does not call. Let's see. How do I, how does he say it? God does not qualify. Let's see. Haydynn, help me here. Gimme just a second. God does not call the qualified. He qualifies who he calls, so sometimes just being available. Mm-hmm. Right. Bobby Lee Cook called me one morning. I was 19 years old, and I answered the phone. He actually called to go fishing. He asked about a lake. As I said, my mom. And her partnership. They had 10,000 acres in the area and some pretty big fishing lakes on. He wanted to go fishing. I could have said, well, I'm busy today. I don't have time. I don't want to go. He's better than me, you know, but I took it at face value. He says, good morning, Jeremy. It's Bobby Lee Cook. And I said, hi, Mr. Cook. We talked about how nice the morning was. I hadn't even looked out the window at that point. I was still in the bed. And I, I saw an opportunity and I pursued it. So one, you have to be available, but two, you have to pursue it. And I would say looking back, you know, and I've had a little success and I've had a multitude of failures, but I'd say looking back, you know, I think there's a grand design in the whole thing. I'm not the smartest guy in the room. I try to be nice. I try to be good. I try to always do what's right. And I try to be available and I try to be approachable. Mm-hmm. Right. I don't put my hand up and protect myself. Like we've got 57,000 things to hide and you, you know, love is a verb, I guess is another thing I would say. If you go around life with your hand up and you don't give somebody the chance to draw near and be close to you, you'll never succeed. And sometimes you get your feelings hurt, sometimes you get your heart broke. Sometimes you put faith and trust in somebody and they let you down and they hurt you. Mm-hmm. But you keep going and you don't judge the whole world from hence that day forward and say, well, that person hurt me, so I'm gonna treat the whole world according to this guy's trespass. I think you just keep going and doing the next right thing. Hmm. And being open and looking for miracles. I think miracles exist every day all around us. You know, I remember one time when I became friends with Fletcher Bright, awkward beginning. The first time I met him, I thought, this guy, I won't go into the story, but I, I thought he was a wretched old man. The Fletcher Bright, right? It, it was at a church table, our church. And I thought, wow. Somebody said something mean and condescending. And Fletcher just looked forward like he meant it too. I misjudged the deal and I thought, Fletcher. Felt the same way the other guy was speaking and I gave Fletcher the chance to find out. Fletcher Brought was one of the most loving people I had I've ever known in my life. He was very inspiring, he was very encouraging, he was very loving very supportive. And you know, I could have wrote him off in the first visit. We actually talked about it, had laughs about it. And so it's back to some of the best relationships you can have in life. May start, and oftentimes they do with an awkward beginning. Hmm. So it was that way with Fletcher Bright, and again, I spent seven or eight years with Fletcher as, as the walls closed in on him. And he's, he passed on from this life to the next. And what an honor, what a gift for me. I think if he were here, he might have said he enjoyed the time too, so. You know. Wow. And you know, we've talked about two of my mentors. I have many, I mean, I have a Rolodex of folks that you just go, wow, how do I even know these people? And I can't tell you, I'd attribute, attribute that to God. But I would say it's been a lot of fun and it's, you know, it's not always a rose garden. I mean, it's had bumps along the way. So I, I hope I've answered your question. I don't know that I did, but I tried. Nice. That's great. So I, I think the biggest thing that I got out of that is leaning on your faith and then also just being available, right? Being available to what your calling is, because if you're not open to what your calling is. You'll be prepared and taken up into what your calling is if you allow yourself to be right. So a absolutely. So one of my friends is a Kathy Ayre of the Kathy family, the Chick-fil-A restaurant brand, and he's mentioned several times of his grandfather Truet Kathy, who was a great businessman, great Christian man, and he talked about the, the third, the three m's in life. Pick your mate or your master, your mate, and your mission. So, you know, I always wait on a miracle. Hey, I'm sitting here, I'm ready, willing, and able to catch a fly ball if it's hitting my way. But you have to have your ball glove on. Mm-hmm. You know, you gotta be sitting there looking for fly balls if one comes across your area to, to catch it. Oftentimes when opportunity knocks, it's, it's a, it's a soft knock. You could miss it. I think you, and you need to be delicate to your, your senses on those things. You know, not everybody comes, says, help. I gotta have help. It comes at you slow and gentle sometimes, and you just gotta be looking for that. So if you spend your time focusing on. Yeah. Something good to happen, you'll see it. Mm-hmm. Likewise, if you focus on something bad that happened, we'll hit Shirley to come your direction too. Yeah, absolutely. So you mentioned mission. What is your mission? Well, I play in the dirt. As again, I told you, I'm not the smartest guy in the room. I love what I do. I love the earth. I love land. I love trading land. I love digging in land. I love planting trees. I love protecting trees through conservation easements. I guess I go around life with my heart on my sleeve, and I'm okay with that. I'm 46 years old in a day. It's all right. So my mission is to help people with really cool projects land related. That's what I know and love, and that's what I'm gonna do the rest of my days if the good Lord will allow it. So I want to talk about the construction company, okay. Because you, you told me some interesting stories about how, you know, your earth moving construction company came to be. So can you give a little bit of backstory? You mentioned your grandfather was in it. I know your dad was in it, and if I remember right, you told me you, you didn't want anything to do with the Earth Moving Business, but you ended up getting in it anyways. Can you tell us a little bit about how. How the construction company came to be? Yes. So the real estate market crashed about 2008. I was seemingly flying high. I had a house on the East Brow Lookout Mountain overlooking a 100 foot waterfall. I had my own real estate brokerage firm. I had a farm in the country. And then it got to a place where I didn't have money to pay the light bill. I had real estate assets everywhere, but I had no cash. Mm-hmm. Went to work with a big development. They asked for my help. It was about a hundred million dollars project all in, and ultimately it failed During the great recession about 2014. My wife and I, we went through a decade. Of struggles. I mean, it just seemingly went on forever in eternity. I thought we were never going to pull out of the hard sledding we were in. It just went on and on. And the company I was with, they had a fleet of heavy equipment we developed internally, and I've been around tractors all my life. I did work for my grandfather and one morning he asked me to do a task and I had to. Pull a front chunk, plug on a Peterbilt and check the gear roll, because we were moving heavy equipment that day. I took a bath under a tractor trailer in 80 90 gear roll, and it was July. And I remember thinking, oh, this is terrible. And I wore I 80, 90 gear roll, which is smelly and terrible all day, and I thought, I never wanna be part of this the rest of my life. So I ran from it. I got me an office job. I did well in the office, again, trading land with people, taking phone calls and listening. And the real estate market had gotten in the ditch and I helped sell a package of heavy equipment for the company I was working for. And Fletcher Bright was talking about revenue streams and the one thing I knew was heavy equipment. And so I took a bulldozer in lieu of a commission to create a revenue stream for me and my family. And so I started working part-time when nobody needed me in the real estate business of supplement my income. And I did it with a bulldozer, and I was a little bit afraid. And again, I didn't want the whole world to know and think, well, I'm a failure. I think the whole world, or at least I go through, or have gone through life with an inferiority complex. So I would think, well, I've been in the real estate business 15 years today, and people are gonna say, I'm an amateur. People are gonna say, I'm a bust out because I'm over here operating a bulldozer. And I was afraid for my friends to see that. And I got to a point I thought, well, I just really don't care. This is what I love. You know, I got to go back to my roots, the way I was raised up to honor my grandfather's legacy. That about tear you up. And so we started from there and one job led to another. The first job I took my bulldozer on, I went over there to get a couple of stumps up my, I told him what the hourly rate was and he says, well,$75 an hour. And he says, well, if it takes 10 hours, that's$750. I wouldn't want us to get sideways. I. I had sold the guy, the piece of real estate, brokered the deal, and I said, well, we might get sideways, but it won't be over. That I had all those stumps up in less than an hour. And that job before it was over, that owner spent$75,000 worth my company. So I went to do a couple hours worth of work, and by being a good steward of his money and our talents, my talents all by myself. It turned into something else. And on that job, I hired some help. Some guys I worked with in the construction business early on, and they clearly had a talent. I was able to see it. So that's another thing, being able to see through the fodder and the talent in everybody. Right. You know? It never looks like You think it will look. Yeah. But I, I had seen these guys on machines and I asked them to help me and I hired different ones. I hired Gary and I hired Dennis and I hired Monty. And you know, just the talents that they possess. So bringing in talent around you, that's a big part of my success. Everybody that is on our team today is better at their tasks they do for the company than I am. And I'm just fine with that. Mm-hmm. I, I'd love to embrace talent and people for who they are. Not who I want them to be, but who they are. That's right. So, again, I might have deviated from your question, but I tried to answer it. That's great. And so where is the, where's the construction company at now? Well, right now we're working on a 70 acre project here in Chattanooga, Tennessee. It's got half a mile of river frontage. We do a lot of farm work. Custom design work for folks successful business people. A couple are national brands and represent national brands. If I said who they were in this video, you'd know who they were, but we'll refrain. I. So we help people do custom design work. We've built several lakes in the million dollar price range. We're doing some commercial work in town. We did a big project at the church I attend. So we try to diversify. We do work for a high fit and finish clientele, and we also do work for the general public. And there's, the next question is, how do we pick our jobs? The answer is like, Fletcher Bright told me one time. I asked him one day, we were looking through a spreadsheet and how many shopping centers he had, and he said the answer. And I said, well, how many did you start with? The answer was zero. And I said, well, how did you do it? And his reply was one at a time. So we don't pick our jobs based on somebody's financial affluence on the, on a Richter scale. We decide, one, can we help them? And two, can we work together? And can we be a success? So that's how we pick our job. So we look at everything as it comes across the board. Again, we try to be available, have an open mind, and we go where the work leads us. That's right. I love it. That's so cool. And so I, I want to ask about the, the magazine, because you mentioned you've been on the, the front page of a magazine story. Did you see it right there? I didn't see it yet. Oh. So yeah. So in. 2005, I got a piece of property from Bobby Lee Cook I mentioned. He was a famous criminal defense attorney. Not everybody knows him. He's been gone a couple of years and I. But he took it in on a court case. And I built a house. I was in my mid twenties had some success in the real estate business. My office was in Rome, Georgia. I was representing notable people in the real estate business. So again, it's back to who you hang out with. We can talk a little bit about that. But I was making lots of transactions and I guess doing some development and making some waves in a magazine called Vinny Vici came to me and asked, could they interview me? Would I be interested in being in their article? And Vinny Vici is an Italian translation. It means we came, we saw, and we conquered. So in 2007, I was on the cover of the magazine. I'll never forget it, it was about my home on land that I bought from Bobby Lee. It was pretty neat. It overlooked a 100 foot waterfall in Cloudland, Georgia. I designed the house, probably do it on a piece of paper, something similar when I was about nine, 10 years old. Still have a copy at my house of what I wanted when I was a 10-year-old kid. So I drew it out. I made the magazine article and they talked a little bit about me and what I did. And I remember one day I was walking down the street in Rome, Georgia. I was going to Ingram Glass to pick up something. And I looked at the postman and our eyes met and his eyes said he knew who I was and he had a crate of mail and it was all these magazines. With my picture on it. It was amazing. And we looked at him and I thought, oh my gosh. And I scurried away. It, it, it intimidated me.'cause you know, so many people wanna be famous and notable and, you know, that five minutes of fame that I had, it's not that glamorous. It's not that fun. Having your anonymity is way cooler. I, I would say. But that's the magazine article. I mean, that's been. Gosh, a long time ago now. Seems like another world I've certainly grown from those times. But that's, that's that story. So do you, do you ever miss your property in that house or are you thankful for where you're at right now? I, I know you're thankful for where you're at right now, but like, no question. You ever miss that property? So again, I, yes. The answer is occasionally I would tell you that there's a grand design to the universe. Mm-hmm. And when I got ready to, to sell it, i'd held down the yard and prayed. I'd spent the weekend at my farm with my wife and I said, God, it's time to make a move and it's going to hurt. But if it's meant to be, help me and make it quick'cause I don't want the pain to drag on, put it on the market. The next day it was under contract. Two days later I sold it to the guy who bought it at the time he was president and CEO of Georgia Pacific. He bought it. He wrote a personal check for it about 14 days later, and he says, and my wife was pregnant with our first child, so we had a 50 foot rock face bluff in our front yard. We were outside of community as my wife wanted to be, and she wanted to move back to Lookout Mountain, Georgia proper, where she was from so that she would have her parents around and peer group and our church group and different things. And so I, I would tell you the good Lord knows more about this life than I do, so. Asked him if he was going to take it, make it quick, because again, I designed it as, when I was a 10-year-old kid, I drew it on a page. And so I created a baby and I sold it, and it, yeah, it was painful. And sometimes I drive by and look where we are today. And the answer is, and I said, we, you know, we went through a hard time and we moved in a small house, in a small neighborhood on a small street. And I remember thinking five or six years later, if Mike, the buyer called me and says, Jeremy, I'll trade you your keys back for where you're living now. His house was nicer. I mean, we were living in Norville, I guess, and I was at a place where, you know, my community was more important to me than a house. Mm-hmm. Or a, a, an asset. So I wouldn't have traded, and that may be stupid, but I got to a place where that, I was comfortable with that. So, no, God took me from one place. He took me somewhere else. He moved the farm boy to town. You know, if I hadn't have moved to town, I'd have never met Fletcher Wright and his, I kept my farm, my farms. Six or eight miles up the road. And sometimes I do go to my farm and, and tell myself, well, I, for a minute I'll say, I never moved to town. I never met those sophisticated business people. I never left the farm. I. And after about two days of that, guess what, Haydynn, I'm ready to go back to home and what I know, and I want to go back to my post, you're ready to be in the air conditioning again too, I'm sure. Well, you know, the farm's got air conditioning. It's pretty comfortable. It's a simpler way of life. It's a simpler way of living. We were on a boat with one of my teammates this week and a partner here at Fletcher Bright Company and we're, he said he'd never be rich, and I looked at him, I says, well, van. You know, rich is a state of mind. Rich is not a whole bunch of assets. The wealthiest people I know, they never get to let their hair down and have fun because they've always got a guarded personality. Mm-hmm. It seems like the whole world, if you get something, everybody's there for a take. Everybody's there for something. So rich. Rich is not your bank account. It's having time to spend with your friends. Rich is having time to go fishing and not worry about the payments of next month or all the things that go with having assets. Right? Rich is getting to go fishing and relax and think about fishing or play your guitar for a couple hours. Rich is sleeping in late and thinking, well, nobody needs anything outta me so I can. Have a little time to myself. I think that's the definition of rich. It ain't zeros on a bank ledger. I don't know that I'll ever have that reality. Well, like from, from the moment, not the moment I wake up, I, I do build time in for myself. You know, I'll, I'll take an hour in the morning. I don't, I don't look at my phone, I don't do anything. I read meditate, so I have that time. But as soon as that phone comes on, pretty much from, you know, eight, nine o'clock until. Hm, six, seven at night, there's something to be done, you know? And I wouldn't trade it for anything, though. I love what I do. Well, everybody needs to be needed, right? So if you can find your purpose and you find your need, I mean, everybody wants to have some sense of purpose and self-worth. My phone starts ringing and text messages coming through about six 30 in the morning, and a lot of times it's 7 30, 8 30, 9 o'clock when it stops. And yes, I get inundated. Yes. I've looked at my wife and children sitting at the dinner table and I'm in the mother-in-law suite doing business, and they're thinking, we just want you to get off the silly telephone and come in here and sit with us. Mm-hmm. That's one of my pitfalls, and I'm working through that right now. I, but I don't know if that gives you any insights. No, but I'm trying. That's great. I I'm the same way. I mean, I think your definition of wealth really. We will make some people that are listening to this think about it, you know, and that's what we're here for. Wealth is a state of mind. Mm-hmm. I have had my power turned off because I didn't have the money to pay the light bill. Yeah, right. We don't have those problems today. We got different problems. Right. I've got trucks and equipment running around the countryside with my name on it. We dig on top of water lines, gas lines on the bluff of the mountain. So now I worry about different things. I worry about people's safety and are we going to be profitable at the end of a job and we are gonna create enough value for the customer so that we can maintain. So you worry about different things. So it's all relative. Mm-hmm. Sometimes I would like to go back to the simpler life. On the farm where I came from, I think of the night at my grandparents. Very important, very valuable. Yeah. Hmm. That's great. Yeah. So how I want to ask you this and, and. I kind of already know the answer to it, but this is just for the audience here. Alright. How, how important have connections and relationships been if as you go through and build your business? So, if you were to ask me the most important thing in life that I possess, I. It is not a bulldozer, it is not a piece of real estate. It's not some toy that I like to play with a, an antique firearm that I like to shoot in our collection. It's not a fishing pole. The number one thing that I value in my life is relationships, right? The scripture talks about to obtain friends. One must show himself to be friendly. So I would tell you that relationships is the most paramount thing I have in this life. That's awesome. Yeah. And, and when you're walking into a conversation, you talked about, you know, assume innocent until proven otherwise. When you go into a new conversation with somebody, are you looking, what are you looking to get out of it? So like, say for, you know, when you came over to Brickyard and we were talking, are, are you, I guess I'm trying to figure out how to word this, like. When answer a conversation can answer question. Yeah, go ahead. So I think if you go into a conversation looking for an answer that's the definite, you know expectations. It can be premeditated anger. Mm-hmm. You know, when you go in to meet somebody, have an open mind and just say, well, if it's meant to be, it'll work out. Yeah. You know, I never go into a deal and go, how much is in it for me? Well, I make some money. Is this the next greatest thing? I think you just be available and be yourself and try to be helpful and. One of the pillars I live by is if you do the right things for the right reasons, the right results will come. Yeah. Can you repeat that back to me? What I just said? If you do the right things for the right reasons, the right results will come. Yeah. In time. In time, yeah. It, it don't always happen, you know, there's no such thing as overnight success. It is a, it is a misnomer in life. Everybody would like to have it. And then you go to Proverbs, it talks about wealth earned hastily. Will dwindle. Right? So I, Fletcher Bright and I had many talks about the early years of Fletcher Bright Company, the early years of what I was doing. And, and you're getting too comfortable. You know, I remember what it's like for my wife to call with a child on her hip and say the power man just turned off the power He said he had hang out and go for a ride and. Give us a few minutes. If we could come up with an answer, he'd turn our power back on. And there were people I could have called and says, Hey, I got a problem over here, but nobody wants to do that. So we did the best we could and we were able to get on through it. But I am imprinted by that. I will never forget that. I am grateful for those times and those chances in my life. One, you learn empathy when you need help, you learn how to give help. Mm-hmm. Two. When you go through the narrow places, when you hit the easier patches, if you can just remember that it will help you to keep a little bit of a reign on discretion. Mm-hmm. Two of the greatest qualities a person can possess in my opinion. The first one is discipline, and the second one is self control. They're kind of the same, like into the same discipline and self control. Right. And, and that can be the, the, the war within inside where you think, well, I got plenty of money. We've heard the saying of, you know, weekend rich, you made a big check, you made one deal, and all of a sudden you're rich and you adjust your lifestyle and next thing you know, you're worse off than where you started. Mm. Discipline and self-control. I have had days when I've made$150,000 in a day and you wouldn't know. I have walked, I the next day. I was the first guy at my construction site. Nobody knew. Now I might have paid off some assets. And, and that's what we try to do. One of my wife talks, one of the things that my wife always talks about is match expenses with revenue. If we take in a big paycheck, the first thing we do is. Who helped us with that? Who, who do we owe money? And so we always try to pay our debts. First thing. You know, you see that with so many contractors, they'll take in a big check and they'll forget the pipe supplier, the fuel supplier the labor, the parts man, the mechanic that gave you 30 days credit. You know, we pay those guys straight off the top. And then what we got left on, then we can decide what we're doing. You see so many people. In the boom years in a construction business, they'll go out and finance a bulldozer, finance an excavator, and they put no money in the deal. They have a few wind in the wind column, but they don't service their debt properly. Hmm. Charlie Munger, Warren Buffet's partner talks about what gets people into trouble. The three L's lady, ladies Liquor and Leverage. Right. So I always look across my hand and go, okay, we had a win. Where can I buy some of my own paper back? What banker can I get rid of and service his debt so that I'm not paying? Interest on something. Right. So, you know, I've been feverishly, I don't know that I want it on your podcast, but we've been trying to service three to$500,000 my debt every year. So if you think about paying off$300,000 in debt service every year, well in 10 years, that's$3 million. Mm-hmm. Right. It, you know, debt service used to cost four and a half, 5%. Today it's closer to 10. Mm-hmm. So you think about if you got a a, a A. A$3 million debt service, you got$300,000 in interest. So they call that the eighth wonder of the world compounding interest. So if you have some wins in the wind column, don't pat yourself on the back too fast. Go service your debt. The best money you will ever spend is buying back your own paper. Hmm. Right. Yeah, that's, that's awesome advice. Not, not a lot of people talk about it either, right? Because it's in, in my world, in the, in the mastermind business world, it's get as much leverage as you possibly can use OPM to build your empire. Oh, hey there. It's me again. I know you expected Morgan Freeman to come on and talk about the biggest company in the world. Well, I'm sorry, but you get the next best thing. This show is sponsored by the company that I co founded, Acadia Capital, and acadia is a hard money lending fund originating loans in Southeast Tennessee and Northern Georgia on residential one to four unit renovation properties. We are regulation D five Oh six C fund and are actively seeking accredited investors. We provide fantastic first position real estate back returns. If you're ready to get your tired and lazy capital to work with a minimum 8 percent return, go to Acadia loans. com backslash invest. Not only do we accept standard investments, but we can also accept self directed IRAs and other self directed retirement accounts to take advantage of tax advantage investing. Thank you so much for listening to Art of Connecting now back to the show. and I mean, I own a debt fund, right? So I lend on properties, but we only lend on deals where our investors are gonna be making return. So but you, I, I see it all the time. There's a guy that I, that I'm acquaintances with, and he sells commercial real estate. And every time he hits new win, there's a new Ferrari on the story or a Mercedes or something. And one day we, we met up together and he was driving a Ford Mustang. I'm like, oh, what happened to your Lamborghini? And he goes, oh, oh, well, you know, I had to sell that. And, you know, we had. I gotta get another deal under my belt. And then he got another deal under his belt and all of a sudden he is got a new car again. Right? And and you wonder what that, what that ego cost to service the dead on that ego. That's really what we're talking about. He probably is gonna hear your podcast. I don't think, I don't know who this guy is, I don't think, I don't think he's listening to podcast, but it is what it is. I'd tell him too, we might need to adjust our priority. So that's the next thing you know, we have. High times, and we have not so high times try to live in a way that when the, when the low times come, you can survive and maintain. Mm-hmm. I was talking about guys going out and buying five or six new pieces of equipment. Things are going gangbusters. Next thing you know, you have a downturn in the market. Headline risk is real. I mean, right now, this week the United States of America has dropped a, the largest non-nuclear bomb on, iran. Iran, yeah. Old Persia. And, you know, that's a headline risk that scared everybody across the planet. Now, the s and p 500 index, it's not getting too excited yet. But you start talking about dropping the largest non-nuclear bombs, that's a headline risk. So the newspapers catch up. You have a downturn. In the economy and all of a sudden, the guy who's went out and financed every machine in his fleet, he has a couple of slow months. Well, guess what? Then he is calling somebody like me, who's been a good steward of his debt, and they acquire his equipment through the process of attrition just because they were a little smarter in the high times than in the lean times. Mm. So Ron Blue talks about Spend less than you earn. Right. Live on the cheap as long as you can. Right. It's advice that I need to hear. Well, I hope that I always, I'm, I'm usually the dumbest guy in the room. Yeah. And what I'm talking about is not rocket science. No, that's not another deal. I, I met a guy, he works for TVA, made a hundred thousand dollars a year. He and his wife were trying to buy a house. They could not get qualified to buy a house. Their pastor asked me to sit down and talk with them. And it was eyeopening. I said, well, let's talk about your debt. Well, we've got$40,000 in a savings account. And I said, well, that's great. That's, they said, we got$40,000 in a savings account for an emergency. I said, well, what kind of interest do you have? Do you have any credit cards? I said, I bet you got six credit cards. Turns out they had seven. And I drew a debt service chart and said, whoa, okay, this card. And I wrote down the card names, I've seen it. And I got caught in that trap once too. Right? In the lean times I had to live off of American Express or Visa to survive. Yep. I made a promise to myself, my wife, and the good Lord Almighty, we don't wanna do that again. So you sit there and look and I showed him a collective debt service and you know, he had$30,000 in credit card debt and average, interest amount on that was about 12%. And I said, look here at what you are spending in interest, you got the money to pay off this stuff right now in your bank account. You're looking at it all wrong. You don't need money in your bank account. You need to service this debt, get rid of this debt service and have a credit card for an emergency. Right? So he's paying them. A combined variable, 12.5% on somebody else's money, and he is got$40,000 sitting in a bank account thinking he's being smart. Well, in reality, he's penalizing himself by not looking at his financial picture and not, these are smart people. Mm-hmm. Smarter than me. I mean, I couldn't get a job at tv, eh? And you go, oh my gosh. Eighth wonder of the world compounding interest. This guy's being smart. He's got this money in the bank and he's paying. Paying debt service on credit cards. Mm. I mean, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand that. Right. Spend less than you make service your debt, buy it back as quick as you can. The best money you will ever make is buying back your own paper from the banker. Right. What, so what would you say that your favorite lesson that you've learned from your mentor Fletcher? So, and for the people who aren't from Chattanooga, Fletcher Bright was a, a real estate juggernaut in Chattanooga. I mean, he, he owned. Hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars of properties. At the time he was alive, Fletcher Bright was one of the largest real estate. He was a famous real estate businessman entrepreneur, philanthropist. He was a lot of things. Mm-hmm. He was like a grandfather to me. I adored Fletcher Bright. I loved him. And I think if you were to ask people that ran, they'd say he loved me back. What did I learn from Fletcher Bright? So I'd been up and running in the real estate business. I had earned some pretty good commissions trading land. I remember closing my firm and you know, ego always is, gets in the way and successful business people. I remember a couple people said when I finally submitted and said I'd worked with Fletcher, they said, Fletcher Bright is going to teach you the real estate business. And I thought, my goodness. I hated that remark. And, and as it turns out, Fletcher Bright did not teach me the real estate business. What Fletcher Bright taught me was finance, right? Simplified finance. And we have just expanded upon a bunch of that. Spend less than you earn, live on the cheap. Watch what you're doing. Have some discipline, have some self-control on your spending habits. And I can tell you sometimes my wife will tell you I'm guilty. Sometimes I might go out and buy an old cowboy gun that nobody's ever heard of, but I want it and I'll do it. I but, but I don't finance it. You know, I don't, I've never bought a pair of Lucchese cowboy boots. It costs$3,000 and put'em on a Visa card. Right. Wait till you can afford it before you buy it and you'll have time. But Fletcher Wright taught me finance. I remember we bought a tractor land. It's about a million dollar purchase. We sat on it for about two and a half, three years. We cashed out for about 1,000,008, but we had a column on our debt service. Fletcher put in some of the money. We got the owner and the finance, a portion of it for us, and you sit there and looked at the interest column over time. I had worked around wealthy business people and they would always not figure their money into the deal time value on their money. They'd put a couple of million dollars into a real estate transaction and they'd just say, that's cost doing business. There wasn't a line item on a spreadsheet for that. Fletcher would say, well, it is his money or somebody's money, and here's what it's burning in interest. What Fletcher Bright taught me was time, value of money. Mm-hmm. And how to buy back your own paper at a feverish rate. You know, my friends and mentors today in, in the business say, man, you always live in a, you seem like you're in a tight cash crunch. And the answer is, yeah, I'm always buying back my own paper. And you can look back in the rear view mirror and go, well, I paid off some debt. Think about it. You service$5 million of debt. And you know, pay it off early. Boy, that has lasting consequences. You can look back and go and my wife and I have had this talk. You know, the goal in business probably is to beat the s and p 500 index, right? And so you look at that and I would ask anybody, well, how do you beat the s and p 500 index? Well, my company that I know and understand can day after day, year after year, we can beat the s and p 500 index on a pretty strong and significant margin. And so I told my wife, well, she was talking about buying some stock, and I said, well, why wouldn't we buy stock in our own company? She says, well, we, we don't have shareholders. I said, well, in the general sense, we don't have shareholders. But I would look at the banker and I would say he's a shareholder in my mind. Mm-hmm. You know, it was the borrower signed at the bottom of the page. They have invested into our vision. They have put money in it, and they're getting a dividend check. We'll call it interest. It's the same. They are profiting on our vision. So every time I can mitigate the banker my exposure to the banker, that's great. Mm-hmm. And so that's what I wanna do. I wanna get rid of the banker. I feel like I'm buying up more shares of my own company. How do you feel about using debt to expand your business? Is it, do you think it's necessary? Many times, absolutely. Another principle is good debt leverages bad debt, destroys, right? The Fletcher Bright Company, and I don't wanna get into their financials. I, you know, that's, but, but I would say at the end of the day, you know, anybody who's ever been in business has had to borrow some money that is a cost of doing business. Borrowing money is fine and it's a accepted business practice, right? Good debt leverages bad debt destroys Fletcher borrowed money. Fletcher got where he was lending money because of his spending habits when times were good. So it is just a cost of doing business. I think it's. Arrogant, naive to think that you don't need the banker's help. I, and, and I'd say if you get to the place where you've got a whole bunch of money and you're not using the banks, that's kind of, that can be arrogant in some ways as also, arrogant may not be the right word. Naive may be a better fit. So we all have to borrow money to ever grow. I mean, I remember another one of my friends and a mentor who will remain nameless. He says, well, to start a business, you need a war chest. And I remember looking at him, it made me mad. I wanted to slap him, and I thought, well, just, damn, not everybody has a war chest. Mm-hmm. That's not an option to everybody. It's certainly not the American way. You know, when I started my bulldozer business, I had three five gallon buckets that I would get diesel fuel in for my one bulldozer that I told you about operating. So I would go and get. Three five gallon buckets. A culmination of 15 gallons of diesel fuel, right? 15 gallons. Last year, I think my company burned$181,000 of diesel fuel. I don't know how many gallons that was, but I don't think I could carry it in those five gallon buckets we did to start with. But you know, I've, I've got debt on my company. I think it's good to mitigate your risk and not carry all of it so. Good debt. Leverage is bad. Debt destroys again, that's, you know, just the cost of doing business. Yeah. Well, I can't believe it, but we're already at our time on the episode and it flies by. Wow. We're having fun. So I wanna ask my final question that I ask each guest that comes on my show and I, I. I don't know the answer to this yet, actually, so I'll let you answer it. But the, the question is, what is a connection to a person or maybe even a group of people that changed the trajectory of your life or career? Ask the question again. So what is a connection to a person or a group of people that changes your trajectory of your life or career? That's a great question. What they all have in common is they have faith. They may not be Christian, they have faith that. A vision, something they've done, they, they chased a dream. Mm-hmm. Right. To be successful, you have to chase a dream and it's not always safe. Chasing a dream taking a risk. Right. You've gotta take a risk. If you don't wanna take a risk, you'll always work for somebody. Again, I told you I'm not the smartest guy. And I've got a lot of folks that work with me and around me that are way smarter than me, but I'll take a risk. They might not take. It. So everybody that's helped me get to where I am if, if that's of value, they've all been risk takers they've all lived life at its fullest and jump out of the boat and swim a while. I don't, I don't know that that answers it, but take a risk. All right, so if people, some people are in Chattanooga and some people are all over the world listening to the show, but. If people want to see a little bit more information about your company, maybe if you wanna share your website with them, or if they are looking to get some work done, where would they go to find out more information about your company? Well, if you wanted to find out who we are and what we do in the dirt, you can look online. You can find us at www.jmcdowellco.com. www.jmcdowellcocostandsforcompany.com. Awesome. And, thank you. I just wanna thank you for coming on the show. I really, I enjoyed getting to this interview and getting to learn a little bit more about you and, and I always just enjoy getting to. I feel like I'm sitting by a fire listening to a story from my, from my grandpa when I get to talk with you. No offense, I'm not calling you a grandpa. Well, that's all right. I look for the day I become one. I I always enjoy. Not too soon though. Enjoy getting to hear your stories and I'm sure the audience did too. So guys, if you're still here, I just wanna thank you for listening to the show without you listening to the show. This is just me talking to my friends into a microphone. So thank you for being here and listening to the Art of Connecting. If you got value outta the show. Truly the best way for us to grow a podcast is for you to share with a friend. So that's the one thing I ask of you if is if you can share this episode with a friend if you got value out of it. And leave us a five star rating and review on Apple Podcast, Spotify, wherever you're listening to this show. Thanks for listening to our connecting, and we'll catch you on the next episode.