47 Years of Indy Real Estate Secrets ($100M+ Invested)

47 years. That is how long Larry Browning has been investing in Indianapolis. Larry is a commercial real estate veteran with hundreds of millions in transaction volume. In this episode, he's going to teach you how to find deals and find the capital to execute through groups, relational equity, and highlevel networking. If you're looking to start a real estate investment business, you're going to learn how to get off the [music] ground and do it in a way that's both ethical and truly caring about the impact in your community. So, about 60% of our viewers are ages 18 to 34. So, we have a very young audience, which is probably no surprise. You've been in commercial real estate for over 40 years. If you were starting over right now, you had $50,000 of your own capital. What would you do with that? I think I would probably uh give it to uh roots and [laughter] say, uh, there we go. What can you do with it? It depends on their expertise and what kind of knowledge they have at the time. if they have the ability and whatnot in real estate, then they maybe should go acquire their first single family home and then do a rehab, fix up, flip, lease it out. If they don't have expertise, they need to put it with experts like yourself and let them let you guys grow that money for them. So, it depends on their experience. I love the kind of mentality of betting on the horse. You know, you don't have to go get the education to do real estate. Exactly. there are people to bet on that can carry the torch for you. Uh our team was doing a little bit of a deep dive into your background and just pulling in a bunch of material for us and and one of the things that stood out when I was reading through what they had is uh you graduated from Paul with a political science degree but ended up in real estate for 47 years. Uh take me back to that first deal. How did the transition from the pathway at Depal into real estate go? Actually went to Depal thinking I was going to be an attorney and Depal does winter terms where you can learn and experience uh various options for a month. Then I found out pretty quick I didn't want to be an attorney or be in the political arena. I wanted to go in the business arena. And yet I didn't have quite enough time to switch my major but I got a minor in econ. But one of my fraternity brothers dad was in real estate for many years. Did a lot of land deals and he's at a uh at Depal on one of the weekends and say what are you going to do Larry? And I said I don't know. He says have you ever considered real estate? I said no but real estate fascinates me and I'd love to explore that. So he introduced me to the all the commercial FC Tucker folks. Uh the minute I graduated from Nepal, I got my broker's license. uh started in real estate and primarily buying houses and renting houses and so forth initially. So uh fraternity brother's dad helped me make that change. Uh my first job actually out of dep I went to work for national homes which was the number one modular housing company in the nation at the time out of Lafayette. And so they moved me down to Atlanta, Georgia, and I worked with builders in Atlanta. [clears throat] But then there my job they kind of ended uh my job nationwide. And so I came back home and opened my own real estate office. So what did the time learning the construction of the house? How did that like kind of shape the situation? It was more me just uh trial and error actually, but I was smart enough to know what I didn't know. Yeah. And I would grab buddies and friends that knew the construction side of it and I'd bring them alongside. So, I've been a big believer for many years of understanding what you're good at and what you're not good at and bringing experts in when you're not good at that. So yeah, that's that's an adaptable skill that you actually have to work at to admit, hey, I don't really know what I'm doing here and and to ask the right questions for me. I don't know about you guys, but that is like anything handy. It's like the minute I'm stepping on there with stepping to the property with a hammer and some nails, I'm losing thousands of dollars just even trying. Yeah, I need to call the tradesman. Yeah, I wasn't very good early on. Now I've learned a little more later in life, but I wasn't very good either. So yeah, and uh Ethan kind of affirmed me in that. He was like he told me too. He's like I did my first one, renovated it, put the flooring in. He's like never again. He's like that's the most unprofitable thing. He's like I found you could find people that are just better than you enjoy that. Exactly. And I think that's that's just the abundant way to look at business in general with those single family homes. Um what did those teach you when you were investing in those single family homes early on? I was fortunate. I I went in 1978 into a group called the Indiana Real Estate Exchangers. And there were a bunch of guys in there that were very good at homes and so forth, but they also had a lot of education. And I uh there were three or four of us that went down to Florida and took a class by John uh Miller and I mean uh Jack Miller and John Sha. And they were experts. They owned two to 300 homes and they had a very particular system on how they managed homes, ran them and so forth. And so I took those classes and a follow-up class actually out in Las Vegas. And so I started using the Miller Shop management system and their whole way that they lease and so forth. And so I I knew they were better than I was at it and they had a really good system. So we operated in that way on on that level. And so we uh basically followed Miller shop system initially. Interesting. And that was just basic single family rental like Yes. Like no, not really value ad just was it build to rent or you just bought it existing? We uh it was we would buy and uh usually we had minor rehab or so forth that we had to do with it. Um but for the most part just buy at a good value and rent it out. At this time, this was when in 1980s or when was this? 1970s to early 1970s. Was this a really profitable ordeal buying single family homes just renting them market? Right. You could buy at pretty good values back then as you can imagine. And so the values were good. Now rents, you know, were not levels they are now, but they still the deals would work. Uh were using any institutional money or was it all cash? I can't imagine interest rates were great. We always tried to do the creative if possible. So we'd try to see if there'd be a seller carryback or if or sometimes even in our Indiana real estate group, we had guys that made hard money loans. Sometimes we'd do a hard money loan, sometimes we would do a seller carryback, and sometimes we we got institutional financing. It just depended on each deal. Yeah. How did you go from cool one Z2 Z3 we got 10 15 single family homes to deciding I'm gonna start to buy bigger uh more expensive assets that require more capital. I found that when we were owning homes um I found that um I didn't have the patience of you know that wallpaper's a different color and I found that I was wanting to go commercial as soon as I could but I knew it was would take me a while. So in the Indiana real estate exchangers uh I don't know if you guys are old enough to remember but used to have these little convenience stores all around Indianapolis called the lender dairies. and Mr. Linder came into our real estate exchangers meeting and presented a small 6,000 square foot strip center in Shelbyville, Indiana where I lived and he would do a carryback for most of the money. Had to 10% down. And so I bought my first little strip center in Shelbyville, Indiana with a carryback. and I brought one of my fraternity brothers in with me and and we did it for two or three years and then flipped the property and I made more on that little strip center than I did in my seven homes I owned at the time. And I uh decided I'm going to move into the commercial full-time. So I went to work for Beard Realy on the southeast side of Indianapolis. I was trying to get into the Indianapolis marketplace and um I primarily worked I also worked early on with farmers. My dad was in the farming industry and I wor worked with farmers and tried to work with them on farmland deals and so I became the commercial guy at Barrett Realy and so we explored uh how to get heavier and heavier in the in the commercial real estate business. Quick pause here because if you're an investor in Indianapolis, access matters. That's why we work closely with Tony Bros at Indie Homes Reborn. He's one of our main sources for offmarket wholesale deals and consistently bring strong opportunities to our agents in our investor network. Click the link in our bio to get access to what Indie Homes Reborn has available. How did you break in? Was that just networking? Go into groups. I know you're a part of the Redemptive Real Estate group here in town with Greg Unice. um you're recognizable obviously you're on this podcast like everyone kind of knows this is what you do has it always been that approach yeah it networking is from day one was the primary way that I got involved in real estate I'm very much believe that you uh build your business through people relationships I'm a relationship guy and so was relationships that was the key so I would go and I would also education I would go to every education class that anyone had and I took them all. And so I learned a lot through the education, but I also networked a lot. And Indiana Real Estate Exchangers was one of the primary that there would be offshoots and stuff that I could go to. In 1983, I joined a nationwide group called the Society of Exchange Counselors. And it's a there's no way to explain it's very unique group about a 100 members, invitation only. Um, but we probably do 75% of our business through the Society of Exchange Counselors. Um, heavy relationship oriented, extremely creative people, but they're doers. They're most of them are are brokers that are entrepreneurs. And so that connection through the society exchange counselors was was major. Now, the society has six meetings a year all around the country and uh they're actually coming to Indianapolis in September. I would be glad to invite either of you guys to that meeting cuz it's we're both sitting here like why are we not going to this meeting? It's like I wanted to be there yesterday. It's uh it's it's the Indiana Real Estate Exchangers on steroids. It's uh real estate. I like the word exchangers instead of like exploitators or like return makers. We're exchanging and one person is you know we're both going to win together and line up the creative within that. Um is there a typical creative style you guys go to often or you go to that you've learned and really enjoy exchanging? We have several books with formulas on how to put deals together and uh we have a lot of the guys on our group that will teach formulas and how to make a put a deal together. But the uh society of exchange counselors is heavy heavy relationship oriented. So a lot of them are partners in my deals. I'm partners in their deals. Um and I said like I said there are six meetings a year. So we see each other almost every other month. Um and so it's a group that's very unique. Now it started out of the CCIM program back in 196061. A lot of our uh SEC members were instructors in the CCIM program and the CCIMs were so heavily oriented to the numbers. Do the numbers pencil out? society very much believed this was a people business and there should be counseling along with the numbers. That's why it's the society of exchange counselors. And so they believed that you should take the motivations, the circumstances of the people side of the business and incorporate that into the deal and factor that in and try to make the best creative deal for that person. So a straight sale may not make sense because they may get heavily taxed. Maybe an exchange makes sense or maybe a a carryback makes sense so they can spread their tax out. So it it came out of the idea of CCIM's uh not factoring in as much the people side of the business. Hm. One thing that keeps being a reoccurring theme, at least in my life, and learnings in the last quarter, it seems, is the like your personal balance sheet. There's no relational equity item line, but I feel like there should be uh of like how much you're pouring in and loving on people and and how that can return back over time. Talk to me about raising capital a little bit in the creative finance uh lane. That's something that we're certainly dipping our toes into exploring over the next year. Um, what advice would you give to to young bucks that have some relational equity? Well, you're hitting right on it. The relational equity is critical. So, I just left an Indiana real estate exchangers meeting. The guy sitting next to me that I've known for 30 years has $2 million in cash right now. He wants to invest. He's retired. So, he wants to invest it with someone who have who he trusts and has a relation. [snorts] people out there with these problems. This is insane. Well, in the opposite in the Society of Exchange Counselors, a typical meeting will have typically $100 million that are presented at the meeting. Some of them need a tax-free exchange. Some of them just want to invest. So, when we were going hard and strong, we had 28 partnerships um and all around the country of properties we owned. that I would say 60 to 70% of the cash we had came through the society exchange counselors that they invested in deals with us, but it was all because of relationships. Um, and they knew they could trust us. They knew that we would communicate with them every month. They could trust us. And so, uh, it was just building on that relational equity you're talking about. Yeah. Uh, what's one of the like favorite standout deals you have? We had a couple that really stood out. So, Indiana Real Estate Exchangers, a broker kept coming to our meetings and saying, "Larry, I got this land out on the west side. You should be the owner. You're the only one that can make this deal and it's $7 million." And and he came about three different meetings and he finally said, "Larry, I'm telling you, you should make this deal." So, I took my friend, my partner, John Levenson at the time. I said, "I I'll only go out there if you step aside and let me talk to the owners and counsel the owners and understand their objective, what they're trying to accomplish first, and then let me see if the deal does make sense." So, it was the Hobbs Nursery site, 283 acres on Washington Street on the west side, just by the airport on County Line Road. So, it was a Planefield address, Avon schools. It was all mixed up. But what was interesting, they're asking $7 million, but they still had an operating nursery on the land. [clears throat] So, they had as much nursery stock on the land as they did in value of the land. So, I structured a 7-year option, rolling option on the land that fit them well after I counseledled with them, understood their objective, and we would tie the option, we would tie the land price to whatever we got the land zoned for. So, we would have so much per acre if it was industrial, if it was retail, and so forth. But we also said we will give you an advanced notice of six months on which parcel we're wanting to take down so you can get the nursery stock off of it and sell the nursery stock. So that fit everything they were trying to accomplish. We counseledled and tried to accomplish. And so what was interesting though, uh, we ended up out of the 283 acres in and we had one other little clause that was interesting. If we're having trouble getting it zoned or have any kind of issues with government, we can skip a year, but we [laughter] give you a $50,000 down price deposit. So, we had a 15-year rolling option technically if we skipped every other year. So, it fit really well, but we ended up uh having a good relationship with CP Morgan at the time, David Morgan's dad, and uh and they were the largest home builder in in Indiana at the time. and we made a deal with them and we sold 200 of the acres to CP Morgan for housing developments. But when we talk about the redemptive side, in the middle of one of these uh parcels was this house, and I went out to see the lady that was in the house to see if we could acquire it. Um, [snorts] and I find out that her husband had died a year earlier. She was probably 70 years old. and that he had handled all the business and she wasn't sure what to do and naturally she didn't know me from Adam and so I tried to build a relationship with her and said ma'am you can be assured I'm going to take care of you CP Morgan is going to build housing development around you but I'm going to make sure that they accomplish everything you're trying to accomplish and by the way I want to introduce you to an real estate attorney not mine one for you that will you can trust intimately that'll take care of you. What was really cool when the all the smoke cleared. CP Morgan built all the houses around her. They up put a beautiful driveway into hers and made everything look like she had been there in that subdivision forever. Paid her handsome pricing on the stuff that we did there. And she just loved it. accomplished everything she wanted to accomplish. And so we back then we were dealing what we called ethics dealing and it all right on our website it said uh needs to be a win-win transaction. We didn't understand at the time you could go further than win-win transaction. Yeah. And we started learning that later in life. Yeah. Where uh what's the housing development? What's it called today? To be honest, I don't remember the subdivision name. They they did about five different ones out there. Okay. So, it's right on County Line Road in that it was spread way beyond County Line Road. So, there there's a there's the new Hob Station that just opened or is in development. It's not far from Hob Station where she lived. Okay. But it's dredged a long way out. It's a long ways. Yeah. Yeah. With us growing up and going to Avon High School, I'm like I passed by it a million times. Didn't even go to the house. biggest challenge I had on zoning was Avon High School. I met with the superintendent numerous times. At the time, Avon was growing too fast. They were having mobile classrooms out in their parking lot. Yep. And they wanted no more students and they did not want us to build more homes. They didn't want more homes and they didn't want want any any kind of multif family hand shaking. So they they fought everything we did. I'm I'm pretty sure if I'm not mistaken it's a settlement is what this turned into. Might be. Yeah. This is the settlement. Oh yeah. That was a big development. That's crazy. Your involvement. You just did the entitlement. You we would take down the land then we would sell to CP Morgan and what and we if you don't mind me asking what's the spread for that kind of work that you did there. A quick aside, most people overpay for insurance or worse, they're undercovered and they don't realize it. We partner with Jackson Blevens at Core Insurance Solutions. He's a full-ervice broker here locally in Indianapolis who handles everything from home, auto, boat, he can do it all, and he understands the retail side and investor side of the game. If you want someone who can shop the market for you and tailor correct coverage for your property, connect with Jackson in the description below. Um, we were typically acquiring that land. It was about It would have been about 30,000 an acre spread. Yeah. Nice. Wow. Yeah. In the office. Something like that. Yeah. And we sold 200 acres to CP Morgan. Then we had the 83 acres that was commercial development. If I'm right on the dates and time in my head, my wife grew up in what that neighborhood. Oh, cool. That's very neat. [laughter] Talk about full circle. If you never would have listened to this broker who showed up the siding exchange, she would have been homeless. She would have been homeless. Yeah. [laughter] Very good. That's super. That's the fun thing about real estate. It all ties in back together. Spans generations. Yeah. Well, somewhat tied to CP Morgan, our other fun deal. CP Morgan, right after we're doing that deal, came to us and said, "Would you guys buy our home office?" And their home office was on Caramel Drive in Caramel. They said, "We're out growing it. We're building a new home office on Grey Road and we will lease back our space in the interim while you're buying it until we get ours built. And so we bought a 52,000 foot mixeduse development off them on um Caramel Drive right next to the Caramel Racket Club and on the other side was that fancy uh wine place [snorts] that sat right between them. Um, and so they had two retail buildings on the front and four office buildings to the rear. So we bought that off of uh CP Morgan and [clears throat] we paid uh 34 million for it. It was a nice attractive deal for us. Made sense if I remember right. is around a 9% cap rate and uh made a lot of sense and we operated it for three or four years and then u we had a group coming along that wanted to acquire it out of um Portland, Oregon. And so we bought it 3. 4 and this group uh was doing undivided interest. So they would bring people that did exchanges stuff into the deal. Well, they bought it from us for 7,70,000, which naturally was a good return for us, but they were not very smart. They fired our leasing agents. They fired our management company, brought all their own in. And this was in the downturn in 2008. They did everything wrong you could do wrong. And so about 2 or 3 years later, I'm looking at my emails and this property comes on the market from a broker out of Michigan. And uh so I call him up immediately said, "Tell me about this property, what you're doing." Said, "Well, they've lost the property. The the CNBS lender out of New York has it." I said, "Okay, well, what are they trying to accomplish?" says they want a fast deal that they where we don't do a lot of due diligence where you're not the deal goes away two or three times. Uh I said, "Well, I used to own it." I said, "We know we know every square inch of that." And they had dropped the occupancy from 100% down to about 70%. At the time, I said, "I'll do a very fast deal with you. I'll do very minimal due diligence and close quickly." He says, "I think they'll do that." And then he came back to me about a 3 or 4 days later and says, and I made a verbal offer and he came back two or three days later and said, "Well, we got a guy that's offered a million dollars more than you did." And but I don't think the guy can close, but they want to take 30 days to find out if he can close or not. And so they took the 30 days. He called me up said, "Nope, they couldn't close. couldn't couldn't make the deal. He says, "They'll take your deal." Why buy it back at 2. 6 million? That's wild. Wow. So, did the bank took the hit? The bank took the hit and I did what we did before. It only took me maybe 60 days, 90 days to fill it back up cuz we were very hands-on with with tenants. We would go into each tenant and tell them that we kind of operate different than most. We're not here to just maximize your rent and we're distant and whatnot. We're trying to help your business flourish here so that you take more space and you want to do more or you out we want you to outgrow this and we're going to go build a building for you. Wow. And so we filled it up very very quickly. got it filled up and then and I brought an investor out of the Society of Exchange Counselors with us on it. And um we three years later, I think it was, we sold it to a guy doing a 1031 exchange, the the guy that used to run Cook Medical out of Bloomington, and we sold it for 7 million7 this time. So, I'm hoping he loses it and I can buy it back again. [laughter] Oh, man. I don't think he'll lose it, though. Yeah, it's just the rinse cycle. [laughter] You can come back. Those are two of my favorite deals. Oh, those are awesome. Uh, you talked a little bit in the in the first deal, the land exchange, about a win-win. And at the time, you didn't realize there could be more than that. Um, what's more than that? Well, I've determined uh I determined that there had to be some sac sacrificial nature to beyond win-win. Back then, I mean, I was winning, the other side was winning, but not that I lose, but it's okay if I don't win win. uh that I can uh provide something that enhances the deal. But almost all investments I'm looking at nowadays, there's got to be some kind of impact, some kind of impact, whether it's on some individuals, a group of individuals, a church, whatever it is that we have to have some kind of impact as the investments I'm looking at nowadays. And so I determined there was some and the Greg Enuses, the Scott Lingals, the Tony Millers of the world were helping me learn that and figure that out and how to do it better and well. So my my faith-driven investor group have had a tremendous impact on me and I really enjoy working with them and vesting with them and looking at deals together and doing life together. So, I've been learning a lot from practice, from Greg Enis, from Scott Lingal. Um, it's been very very beneficial for me. I I love the I love that we've gotten pulled in early to that. And uh I want to know what the impact ends up like. I wish I could see uh 50 years down the road to know what the impact of like two, three generations of faith-based investing in indie, what happens out of that. Um because those groups just keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger every time that I go to them. Well, I always when I my buddies ask, give me an example of a deal. I always take them out to P30 at 30th and Post Road. Uh Ethan Fernho six years ago, got maybe seven or eight of us together in the room. I says, "I'm buying this 250,000 foot warehouse. Here's my vision. what I want to do in here. And most of us thought he was crazy or wacky to buy something at 30th and Post Road. And we thought his vision was pretty that God would have to be totally in it for him to accomplish what he was trying to do. And yet we all wrote some checks to help him kick it off and start it. And I just left there this morning. Um, it's one of the nicest buildings you'll see in Indianapolis. We've formed 20 plus uh businesses for black businessmen and women out there. Um, I'm mentoring two of the black uh business men and uh one of the black pastors that went through their real estate uh base camp. Um, so P30 up front's flourishing. The parking lot was 100% full because they're employing about 140 150 people in the rear in volume mod on the modular housing. And I took a group of developers through there this morning to see volume and went had a did a presentation for them. And about oh probably when when um just after Ethan started that Greg Enus and I said how can we enhance this deal? So I had my pastor come out and we brought 34 black pastors together out there to talk about how can we change the east side of Indianapolis. And I tell you the meeting was magical. I thought tongues of fire were gonna come down from the yeah ceiling. It was magical how everybody connected the thoughts, the ideas that they wanted to implement. So we did a followup. We asked the uh police commissioner and the area commander to come out and meet with us because crime was a true issue out on the east side at the time. And it kind of blew us away. We brought the same group together, the black pastors, our pastors all together. And we, the area commander and the police commissioner had the exact same comments. They said, "Gentlemen, we have reduced crime about 17% in this area in market." Said, "We can't do anymore. We've done all the things we know to do." And this is what blew us away. That both said the exact same thing. We can't accomplish anymore unless you get involved because this is a spiritual issue here on the east side. So, we need you to get involved with us to solve this problem. And we about all fell off our chairs that they acknowledged that it was a spiritual issue. So, I'm always the guy that puts my hand up. It's great that we're talking about this, but tell me what we really can do. What are steps we can take? And and it was pretty cool. One of the pastors said, "Do you still do roll calls every morning with your policemen?" Said, "Yes, we do every morning." Says, "Would you consider holding one at P30 and at our churches?" Said, "We'll start next month." And you ought to see the pictures I have. They're out at P30 and we've got all of us guys with our hands on these policemen praying over them out at P30. Then they're doing the same thing at the churches and they're whole having roll calls out there. Another pastor says, "Are you still doing ridealongs?" And they said, "Yes, we do ride alongs." Said, "Can us pastors do ride alongs with your policemen? We welcome it. We can start that next month." So the pastor started doing ride alongs. Third, the police commissioner said the number one issue we have out here are domestic issues right within families and said, "So we um why don't we set up like an Amber Alert system where we set up a text system where we text you pastors and we want you to land at the house before the policeman gets there and you disarm the situation and you handle from a spiritual standpoint before we get there. They put that into place. H and I haven't seen the latest numbers, but literally based out of P30, they are changing the east side of Indianapolis. Wow. It's it's blown me away. And I have a lot of my guys from site exchange counselors nationwide come in and they're saying, "How can we replicate this in our community?" And you know what people are asking is, "What's the P&L?" Exactly. [laughter] It's like you laugh literally like, "Oh, what what does it matter uh like obviously pay your bills, make it sustainable, but we're investing in eternal impact." Amen. And so every deal you're doing with um you said you don't do a deal now unless it has impact. That's because it doesn't end when you die. Oh, absolutely not. It never ends that type of impact. I invested in a company out in Oklahoma City and I consider because of the work they do. I considered that any dividends I got were eternal dividends. So I felt like I was getting not only the any returns I got but I was getting eternal dividends. How do you take risks this big? You know sitting here 30 it's like man I have you know bills to pay you know wife and kids at home. uh how do you get to the spot of where you and ether are at where you're taking big swings? Is that something that just happens over time once you meet some level of financial security or um yeah, how do you take risks like this? It's it's literally I see you guys doing it now, but it's literally a phased in situation. It's a process. So, I started with $5,000. Yeah. Then I did a $25,000 deal. Then I did a $50,000 deal, but I always almost always brought a partner along of some kind that also had 5,000 or had 10,000 or 25,000, but I only brought partners along that were aligned. We had the same goals, same mindset, and so uh and same things we wanted to accomplish. So, uh, 90% of my partners now today are Christian partners that are redemptive in thinking and thought, um, or someone that I'm bringing along in the redemptive thought. Most of my life has been based around uh, disciplehip. So, I've done a lot of individual disciplehip with men. And so if I have somebody I'm bringing along, then it's that's the type of thing where I'll put them in a deal with me. Something like that. Yeah. Give us the call. Yeah. [laughter] Yes. Yeah. I think I think you and I and your dad are going to do some little apartment deal of some kind for sure. I I think we abs Yeah. The minute I get a lead on one, I know who I'm going to give a call. Exactly. Um just because we align in that mission. In fact, there's there's dozens of people that have said, "Oh, I'll do a deal with you." you know, have coffees with people, but unless we're missionally aligned, it's like, yeah, this could be a cool 5year play, a 10-year play, but how do you do an eternal play? It blesses people beyond. Quick break for a second. If you're doing any kind of renovation work in Indie, you already know finding the right vendor partners is half the battle. It might be the entire battle. Best Flooring is one of those partners for us. Phil Nelson and his crew offer the best selection out there, from a single bathroom refresh to a full gut job. Check them out at Best Flooring on Lake Plaza Drive. Use Apple Maps to get there or Google Maps, whichever one of your choice. Phil's got floors and you need them, call them up. I do want to place one caution. Um, I think the only money I've lost was with a Christian. He proclaimed to be a Christian, but [clears throat] he didn't operate as a Christian. So, when you do a line, make sure there's substance there. And it's real. This is important. Yeah. Not just lip service cuz a lot of people out there will everyone likes when you talk about God and impact. And nobody wants to be against that. So when you actually look at Yeah. where is the money going and like what are the actions that are happening behind closed doors. Yeah. See their fruit. See what they've really done. You'll know a tree by its fruit. That's good. Yeah. Good call out. Some chiseling to do there. This has been great. Uh, we have a few rapid fire rapid fire quote unquote questions that we wrap up every episode with. Um, they aren't meant to be short quick answers. It's okay if they're a little long and and thoughtful, but I could get to Tyler for the first one. Yeah. Before I ask this first one, just making sure. Are you in Shelbyville? Is that where you live still? Still live in Shelbyville. We we uh I took care of my parents who were elderly and then we've been taking care of my uh wife's parents and plus my wife's father passed away last Thursday. He was 97. Wow. And so we took care of him daily. But also my wife's aunt is 99 and we're taking care of her. So our kids are up here in Indianapolis. Uh but we had responsibilities in shovel to continue to take care of our parents and aunt and uncles and so forth. So we're still down there. We have a beautiful homesite. We're on about 3 acres on Blue River and Solid Woods and deer and turkey in our backyard. Don't ever leave that spot. Die there. Get buried there. It's tough to leave there. It's beautiful place. So what's your favorite date night spot in Shelbyville? My what date night spot in Shelbyville? We go to a it's not night but we have a little restaurant called Just Peachy in Shelbyville that we love and a lot of the community just congregates there for breakfast and for lunch. So my wife and I have two standing dates uh Friday afternoon. I I took a vacant shopping center and put a 10c screen cinema theater in there out in out in Shelbyville and redid a total shopping center. So we would go to the and I used to own the movie theater and we would go to on a movie date every Friday afternoon and we still try to do that if there's any good movies and then Saturday mornings we go to just peachy for breakfast and so wow I love that. I love the Friday to Saturday morning just a whole little marriage retreat baked into the week. And I do want to encourage you young guys especially when you're having young kids keep doing date nights with your wife. Keep doing date night. This is so important. Yeah. So important. So important. That's how marriages slowly die. Yes. Just don't spend any time together. Yeah. Yes. Just you. What's one habit that's changed your life? One of the um I think the greatest change the last 10 years is I spend about an hour and a half every morning in with the Lord. Uh so I'm typically doing four or five devotionals. I love some uh uh but I also spend a lot of time in prayer. I'm on our prayer team at church and so I I spend a lot of time in prayer and and devotional but I think that morning time with the Lord has impacted me dramatically. I [clears throat] I on a new study recently by Tyler Stton on called the familiar stranger and it's about the forgotten person of the Holy Spirit and uh that's really impacted me lately just being co conscious of the Holy Spirit's involvement in our life daily minute by minute. So that's been a tremendous impact for me. Um is that a devotional or a book? It's a book and it's uh videos also. So, uh I I have both, but I finished all the videos and I'm doing the book now. So, and then he has a second book called Praying Like Monks that I'm just starting. Um so, that's one, but I I go through seasons of certain authors I like or certain pastors. And yeah, and I'm blessed to be in a great church on the south side, Redeemer Bible Church down in Greenwood. and I'm just blessed with a great community there. So, I love that. That's huge. Well, of our listeners hopefully check out Familiar Stranger, Praying Like Monks. I'm going to check it out at least. Um, if you could describe Indiana in one word, what would it be? What I usually tell my buddy, especially in the SEC, about they said, "Why are you in Indiana? What's good about Indiana?" I said it's act Indianapolis is an amazing city but uh I think the number one thing that I've seen is we've had great conservative government for a long time that's pro business. I mean how can we do the amateur sports capital of the world and all the crazy stuff they do that's the final four and the Indianapolis 500 and you just go on and on and on. But it's always been a pro business environment. So Indiana always said, I don't know if conservative is the right word, but pro business conservative Indiana. But I, my wife and I have always liked four seasons also. A lot of people try to escape here. And we don't like extreme cold or extreme ice, [laughter] but we like there's certain aspects of every season we like. This guy loves to be on social media talking about how you have to have four seasons to to go through trial to appreciate the good and and you like to call the California people little puppies and stuff. I see stories and then I go to Florida. And then you go to Florida during the winter. [laughter] Hey, a week or two out there does make a big difference. A little vitamin D. We've been taking our major trips in January, February instead of going to Florida. So, we just got back from Egypt and Jordan and next year we're going to South America in January, February. So, there you go. Go to the other hemisphere. That's one way [laughter] to do it for two weeks at least. Well, this has been a great episode. Thanks for coming on and sharing time with us. Yeah. Where can people find out more about you? My my phone number, I'm glad to give it out if anybody wants to come. I have no problems. 317-4450644 and I'm glad to take a call and and help you in any way I can. I was fortunate to have a lot of people that poured into me when I was a young real estate guy and so I really appreciate that and love it. Yeah. Yeah. That's what's so special about the show is everyone we've had on is accessible. Like I've had a coffee meeting with all of them even before I knew what I was doing. That's what's special about Indiana as well. I loved your session with Tad Miller. Chris, I I'm a big believer in what Tad does and his philosophies, and that was a great session. He's very softspoken, but big ideas, just soft spoken. What a smart guy. What a smart guy. He's brilliant. Yeah. Yeah. Makes you think bigger. Well, this has been another episode of the Roots Podcast. Make sure to like and subscribe and tune in to the next one. Peace.