Why Texas Is Booming: Land, Housing, and Infrastructure Strategy

The homeless issue is tied to housing. It's not at all. The people that you see on the street are chronically homeless, but it has nothing to do with the price of the house because this guy can't even take care of himself to get off the street.

Today we're joined by Scott Theringer, founder and CEO of M&A DevCo and a Texas-based real estate developer and private equity investor. Scott breaks down why North Texas is seeing strong demographic and economic tailwinds, how land entitlement and infrastructure constraints are shaping supply, and why Texas remains a long-term growth Texas Triangle is Dallas, Austin, Houston, San Antonio.

Yep. We have a private equity fund which is called the Texas Triangle Land Fund. Yeah. And that's specifically to meet the demand on housing in Texas.

There's a modeling and a forecasting of the growth in data centers.

Yeah.

Which also needs to be supported by the growth in infrastructure and energy. Are we getting ahead of ourselves in the data center or is this just a one-off issue?

I think as a whole, data centers are just growing tenfold. The only true solution is nuclear.

As a real estate guy, did you think we're going to talk this much about energy?

No, but that's what it takes to deliver a site. You have to have water, you have to have sewer, you have to have power. And if you don't have those things, basically all you can have out there is cows.

Yeah. Yeah.

Scott, welcome to— Thank you. Back to old Parkland. Welcome.

Thank you very much.

Delighted to have you on The Deal Table. Thanks for sharing your time with us. Absolutely. I'm the son of a real estate developer who didn't go into real estate development. After stepping on nails for, you know, 7 years getting paid $2.25 an hour by my dad, I decided that I had a different path. But I learned a lot watching him develop real estate in West Tennessee. I think about sitting in the seat of being a real estate developer. You talked about the Texas Triangle, and I was looking at stats you published on your website. And the Texas Triangle is Dallas, Austin, Houston, San Antonio. Yep. And that is the 5th strongest US economy, 66% of the Texas population, 3/4 of Texas's GDP, 7 of Texas's largest universities, 53 Fortune 500 companies. Based on some of our previous guests over the last few months, it sounds like with the Texas Stock Exchange and the new laws in Texas that are more favorable than Delaware, that that's only going to grow. Yeah, you forecast significant population growth to continue here. How do you take advantage of that as a real estate developer? Where are the opportunities?

Yeah, for us, what we focus on is residential housing. So whether that's single-family homes or multifamily, we have a private equity fund which is called the Texas Triangle Land Fund.

Yeah.

And that's specifically to meet the demand on housing in Texas. One of the things, stats that I always love to tell people is we have the stickiest population out of all 50 states. 87% of people that are born here stay here. So that is an organic population growth that you don't get in places like California where I'm from, where most of the people leave the state if they can or if they're smart. We also have 1,200 people a day moving to North Texas. So our average subdivision size is 300 houses. So that's 3 subdivisions per day, 365 days a year. And that's just North Texas. So the organic growth that we get is amazing. And then we have everybody moving in, all the— we now have more, I guess, Fortune 500 companies located here than anywhere else in the U.S. And so all that growth is feeding the Texas Triangle, which is why we believe it's another 20-year play.

Help me, as someone who moved here in 2019, understand what's happening in the housing market. Prices have gone up dramatically across the country. Certainly in North Texas is no exception. Is inventory catching up? Where are we in this cycle?

In the cycle? Yeah, great question. With, with what happened during the pandemic, obviously interest rates basically went to zero. Everybody ran out and tried to buy a house because we couldn't do any other things but paint our houses and fix up our kitchens and do stuff because we were all sitting at home bored. So that caused a mass— that ate up all of the inventory. And when the pandemic hit, publicly traded homebuilders always focused on quarter by quarter.. So they automatically went in and canceled all their purchase contracts because they didn't want to buy any more lots from guys like me. So they canceled everything. And then suddenly interest rates go to zero and all their inventory sells out. Now they're in panic mode. So now they're calling guys like me saying, I will buy everything that you have. So our business absolutely boomed for about a 2-year period until it started to catch up. It started to level off a little bit. The problem that we have is that You can't just go out and snap your fingers and create a subdivision. There's a year or two of entitlement process that you have to go through with the city. Then you actually have to physically build the subdivision, which can take 6, 9, 12 months. So it's a 2 to 3 year timeline just to be able to put inventory in the ground, and then you have to put a house on top of it. So when things pull back and ebb and flow as the market does, it'll suck up inventory, but then demand kicks in. There's no inventory, prices go through the roof. And you just— it's a longer cycle. It's a longer strategy timeline for guys like me because we're building for '26, '27, '28, those build seasons. And so it just— it can cause prices to go up because there's a limited supply of dirt.

Do you focus because you said single family and multifamily? Most investors I know or shops I know, it's— they do. They either or, not both. Yeah. Or they usually do this and they graduate to that. So is it important for you to stay in both? And if so, why?

Well, as far as we think of ourselves as dirt guys, we're out searching for a 50 to 100 acre, maybe 200 acre tract of land that's been owned by a family in Texas for the last 70 or 80 years. Now they're looking to liquidate. So we'll go into that market and it may be that the best and highest use of 10 of that acres is to put multifamily on it because it's near a major thoroughfare, it's near a highway, there's some commercial uses nearby. So we'll phase that subdivision in with multifamily on the front end, townhouses in the next phase, and then we move towards single-family or larger lots in the back end of the property as you kind of move up the economic cycle of a subdivision. So that allows us to kind of be flexible. For us, it's the same process. Get a piece of land, tie it up, do all the engineering on it, submit it to the city, get approval, and then we have something we can build. Would we do residential lots? We sell those to all the national public homebuilders. If we have a multifamily project, we go to large firms like JPI or Crow Holdings or any of the large multifamily holders and say, hey, we have a product. Would you be interested in buying it?

It sounds something similar to I've heard many years ago, which was a good investor will know exactly what they want to do with a contract or a property or a deal. A great investor can figure out afterwards.

Yeah, I have not heard that.

That probably freaks you out from the M&A world, but in the real estate world, but like you said, if you're thinking in terms of a dirt guy, if I can get this, this square meter of dirt and then what's the best, highest use of that? Yeah, that's the way to go versus having a preconceived notion on it.

Well, you go into— there's Cities always see a future land use overlays. So they decide, I want industrial over here, we want residential over here, this is going to be our retail sector. So you have to kind of be within the guidelines of what the city wants because ultimately you have to get city council's approval. So if places like the city of Dallas really want to see a growth in one particular area, they'll focus and do initiatives and create land use overlays and special districts which will enhance the zoning so guys like me can come in and go, You know what, I could do this on a piece of property and we could grow some in that area. If the city doesn't want it, you're never going to get it past zoning. You're never going to get it approved by council. And so the project just won't happen. The create— the guys to what you're saying that are really creative is when you put a piece of property in your contract, you have one use, and then you find out, oh, we can't do that. Now what do we do? Do you throw the baby out with the bathwater and just walk away from all the sunk costs you have in the project? Do you try to figure something else out? And that's where the creativity comes in. Figuring out whatever you can do. And you might have to go 2 or 3 rounds with the city before you finally get something to prove that you can actually build.

Texas is considered a very business-friendly state. I suspect that's part of the reason that you're here in the Texas, Texaplex. And as someone that's a somewhat recent transplant, I read about the complaints about the city of Dallas and the challenge in getting permits issued. How much of your choices are driven by local politics?

Well, I think that there are certain markets that we just stay out of. Austin is one of them, just because it is so arduous to get stuff done there. Cities like Dallas, I think they all have great intentions. I'm not going to say anything bad about the council people because I have projects that are going to go in front of the council. Yeah, but I, I— everybody has their own initiatives and everybody has certain issues. And when you have a city like Dallas that is experiencing this massive wave and this massive growth, a lot of the constituents that are here don't want it to change. But we have a couple million people moving here and there needs to be housing. So if you want affordable housing, you have to create programs and the city has to work with you. So it's this constant tug of war between— this is what the council has to go through, is satisfying their constituents' desires and needs, but also providing housing, which means you have to redevelop areas and you may not always make everybody in that particular neighborhood happy.

My bias is I come from the single-family real estate world. That's the world I was in before the media world. And it was always bootstrap. And you figure it out, you borrow, you beg, you plead to get hard money. And then as you grow, if you can find a family office to back you, a private backer or a private equity. In your journey, where were you? Did you, did you go that route or did you start with the backing.

Right off the bat? Now I've bootstrapped everything on my own. I started early in my career after school. I went into commercial lending and so I wanted to— I was a finance guy, I was a numbers guy. So I always wanted to know the back end number of everything inside of a transaction. And then from there, I actually went over to work at a family office. So I got to develop in Southern California and see stuff and have access and be exposed to a bunch of deal flow. But then after that, I ended up going out on my own and did a bunch of transactions, do a bunch of deals. So I flip-flopped back and forth between taking CEO roles at companies, but I always have my projects on the side. I'm opportunistic that way. I've done a lot of turnarounds, bought and sold 20 different companies. So in doing that, that's where our private equity roots come from, of doing transactions, doing deals, and you meet people along the way. So I bootstrapped most of it. Right now we have our private equity fund where we're bringing in retail investors. I can float 2 or 3 projects a year on my own. But when you see the demand that's out there in the Texas Triangle, you want to— we as I would say, you need a bigger boat. We need to go out and get more capital in so we can do more transactions, which is why we have 15 projects versus 2 or 3.

One thing that is beneficial about the, you know, going back and forth, like you said, is like, because when I was in the real estate world, I say it like a bubble because like I went to a lot of events, but they were only real estate related events. I met a lot of people, but they were only real estate people. And I didn't do any chamber events. I didn't do any civil service. I didn't really pay attention to politics. No continuing education. And, and I really am incredibly regretful about that period because I feel like I've lost 15 years of, of adult development.

Yeah.

And right now I always say, like, if you remember that game Hungry Hungry Hippo, Now I'm playing Hungry Hippo for like— that's not a fat joke, it just is. But like, for like, how do I get a part? How do I do SMU? How do I go to this group? How do I become a member of this club, this organization? Because I'm just like in this super sponge mode. So just listening to you and like, I think that's the biggest risk about getting into like single-family real estate because I see it all the time. Where people just like, they live in that bubble and that's the only thing because you live the deal to deal.

To deal to deal, which is why I never wanted to be a real estate broker. I mean, I had the opportunity to go on the mortgage side. I figured if I got to see a couple thousand transactions and underwrite a few thousand transactions a year, I would really know the numbers. But if I came a broker, then it's all about chasing the deal for your clients and then you're living commission to commission. And before you know it, You have a nice big house, you have a wife and two kids, and you need those commissions and you're never really able to invest in the deal. So I tried to intentionally stay out of that and stay on the real estate developer side, even if that means that I had to eat crow and do whatever, you know, bootstrap it to come along the way. I never wanted to be a slave to my career and not be able to jump in on that side.

Back in the day when I was in that world, the wholesaling world in the real estate, the goal was always to scale. How do I get scale? How do I bring on a team? How do I do this? And one of the numbers that I had heard back then was you can boot— you can do it yourself and get to that $300,000 to $500,000 a year of money. But then when you build a team and you scale, if you're not careful, you're still making $300,000 a year. Yeah. In order to really build a business, you have to have the systems and a real company, which most, most real estate people— and when I say real estate people, I'm not talking about the Crow Holdings or your company. I'm talking about like like me as a single mom-and-pop type shop?

Yeah. And I get that question all the time. People want to know, like, how do you break through the ceiling? Yeah. How do you take it to that next level? And it's just hard. It takes time. Took me 10 years of just bootstrapping it and saving and bootstrapping and saving. Then before you know it, equity starts to compound, things start to happen, and you're— now you have the capital to invest in deals. Our transactions now, our subdivisions are $20 to $30 million each. It becomes very capital intensive. Trying to do anything at scale, you were trying to scale yours while I go to scale mine, and there's only so big of a checking account that one guy can have before you need to go out and get partners.

You use some terminology in researching your firm that I'm not familiar with. I'm not a real estate guy, land development and entitlement, and the entitlement machine. Can you explain that to a neophyte?

It's a great question because the word entitlement always confuses people. Basically what we have to do is we have to put together a land plan or a design to be able to submit to the city and get that design approved and move it through the engineering, the platting, and the zoning and the permitting process. That process is the entitlement process. Okay. So it's a catch-all for a raw piece of dirt being converted over to some other best and highest use.

And you've, you've created a fund.

Yeah.

You have a couple of funds.

Yeah.

Or you have a fund and you're bringing one out for data centers as well.

Yeah. This is the fourth fund that I've done, and the next fund that we're going to launch next year just happens to be that we're out looking for dirt. And sometimes, you know, you're lucky and you stumble into something, and the city calls you and says, "Hey, that piece of dirt you have on our contract, that would make a great data center. And the power company just called us and said they want to put a data center there. So would you consider doing that?" Which happened on one of our projects up north. So yeah, next year is all about launching our data center fund, which will be focused on Texas. And it's maybe slightly outside of Texas, but primarily Texas because we believe in the Triangle so much.

A lot of issues with that, and I don't pretend to fully understand them. But clearly there's a modeling and a forecasting of the growth in data centers, which also needs to be supported by the growth in infrastructure and energy. Today there was news on Wall Street that one of the larger developers of data centers was having challenges and and stopping distributions from a fund. Are we getting ahead of ourselves in the data center or is this just a one-off issue?

I think that, I mean, I don't know about that particular issue because I didn't see that news, but I think as a whole, data centers are just growing tenfold. They're growing exponentially. It used to be that a 5 to 10 gigawatt data center was a lot of, megawatts is a lot of juice for a data center. Now it's 100. You know, so they scaled each year because the computing power is becoming so dense, it's drawing so much power down. I do think there's going to be a point where it levels off where the technology kind of outpaces the electricity required for a site and they become more and more efficient for the computer power that's coming out. But you have this massive project up in Amarillo that's happening, which is this massive site. You— and AI is just, is just absolutely soaking up all the extra capacity. In the system. So whether you're a corporate company like AT&T that needs a data center or, you know, a hospital that needs data center space, it's a fairly fragmented industry and everybody has different demands. So it's kind of like the Wild West right now. No one really knows the direction it's going to go. All we know is we need a lot more and we don't have enough.

Data centers like are these massive, massive complexes like Riot Blockchain. They have a facility in Corsicana just south of here. It's a 1-gigawatt facility. Like, the size of it is just massive. It has 165 employees. But like, this is not going to play well there. But like, look at the size of that thing. Like, that's a data center and that's what's being developed, right?

Million-square-foot buildings. Yeah. Draw more power than most cities.

Right. And I don't think people fully realize that. That's when people say data centers, maybe they think, oh, a couple of server cabinets. We're talking giant, giant facilities.

Yeah.

How does the energy infrastructure keep up with that?

Plus housing? It doesn't. It doesn't. That's, that's the problem. Everywhere that we go, when we look out new development, usually when everybody moved here in the, in the housing market boom like did over the last several years, it sucked up the 20-year plan for every city they have. Now they have zero infrastructures. So we're having to do a lot of municipal utility districts, a lot of what they call PIDs or MUDs or TURs, different tax bonding programs to be able to pay for the infrastructure to bring it in because there's no sewer lines. We typically have water because they've ran that most about everywhere and it's easy for them to put water towers in and wells in. But sewers is all has to go back to a central place to be processed. The next thing that is becoming really difficult is power. You usually have power nearby. And when I've developed industrial sites, you always kind of in the back of your mind thought, well, we're probably going to have to bring some power in. But it was a quarter of a mile away, still costs $500,000. Now you have to bring in enough to power an entire city and you have to bring it 5 miles. Wow. And so it gets extremely expensive. And that's where a lot of the companies where we'll be able to provide advantage for all the different types of data center clients is that we're really good at finding the site, getting it through the entitlement process, and then bringing in the infrastructure. So we'll actually deliver powered sites that we can basically serve it up on a platter to a data company and go, here you go, you can start construction tomorrow. I have zero desire to build a billion-dollar facility and put computers and stuff in it. We just want to be on the land side because that's where our expertise is.

Does that expertise also go into the wiring of the power itself? Because last time I heard, it was like a 2 to 4 year wait for transformers.

It is. Wow. And that's, that's the problem is that the only true solution— and I know people don't necessarily like this, but it's nuclear. And there's all this new different— there's clean nuclear, there's safe nuclear, they're doing nuclear package plants. SMRs.

Yeah.

And I've talked to a group out of Africa that's developing something that basically comes in a Conex box and it's a mini nuclear power plant. And so it doesn't have the same large-scale power delivery, but you can line them up in sequence and they're clean. You just flip them off and it runs. Fortunately, Texas has a lot of natural gas. So a lot of guys are trying to think of secondary power generation with generators running off of that gas. Elon Musk famously put a bunch of them around a facility and was running diesel off of it. And so you just, there's all these things because a data center needs to be powered 24 hours a day and needs to have backup power. So you start getting into these heavy, it's complicated. It's difficult to be able to figure out all the engineering behind it. And it costs millions of dollars and takes years to get there.

And one thing— sorry, one thing that people don't realize about that is it's not just nuclear. It's even if you did turn all these on, you still need the coal, you still need this, you still need it because those are what, a 20, 50-year rollout to like to weed off of. Yeah.

So yeah, you have to have multiple power sources. We can't just— we can't put our heads in the sand and just think that, well, we can just do this off of wind. Or do it off of solar or do it off of coal. We have to have a blended use of everything. But the problem is that regulation is so hard to get those projects online. It could take 10, 15 years to get a power plant fired up just going through the regulation process.

As a real estate guy, do you think we're going to talk this much about energy?

No, but that's what it takes to deliver a site. You have to have water, you have to have sewer, you have to have power. And if you don't have those things, you can— you can't put anything on the site. Basically, all you can have out there is cows.

Yeah, I think the Musk plant you're talking about is in Memphis, Tennessee, my former hometown. And it's become a societal issue because it was placed in a lower-income part of the community. And so it has become a social issue. And there's significant pushback within the community. So politically, I think it may become harder and harder to place those things. But is it fair to say that energy is really a state-by-state issue, that Texas has its own— Texas has deregulated energy to a large extent, if I understand correctly. But is it a state— is California a completely unique entity relative to power versus Texas.

Versus Arizona? PG&E out in California, they're historically known for all the blackouts and the problems that have caused out there, the wildfires and everything. So California has a lot of power issues, and power is extremely expensive. Most of the power grids are interconnected. Texas is the only one that's isolated on its own. So all the power could shut down in the United States and Texas would be fine, which is what I love about Texas. That's the good news. That's the good news. And if you think about, like, I always, I was just saying this in a meeting that I had right before this was arguably Dallas is the most important city in Texas, in my opinion. Houston's great. San Antonio, Austin's great. But Dallas is really the business hub. Texas is arguably the most important state in America. America is the most important state or country in the world. So Dallas is the linchpin of what happens around the world now. And so everything that we do here, we have to be the example of the better way to get it done. The regulations that we need to set, the way that we need to set up our schools, everything that we need to do, because everything is mushrooming out here. And I know it all gets passed through the legislature in Austin, But a lot of amazing things happen here that can have an effect throughout the world.

So that's a big tie back to the residential and housing needs and like the homelessness and just, just being able to— because like you said, 1,200 people are coming to Dallas every single day. Or was that Dallas or North Texas?

That's North Texas.

It's still relevant conversation. Yeah. So when you have— because I think it's at 3,500 lots when you're building like the single-family houses, are those Is it best case in terms of what society needs or what that neighborhood needs or what the, what the money will provide?

When we sell a subdivision, it's 30-foot or 40-foot wide, 50-foot wide, or 60-foot wide lots. And some are larger areas that might go up to 70, but the product is relatively agnostic. Then I go to D.R. Horton, Lennar, Meritage, all the big public builders, and they bid on our projects and buy up the inventory. They may want to stick a $300,000 house on it, $400,000 or $500,000. They do their underwriting for the area. So every market has average price points like you're going to get stuff in Denton priced different than Prosper. And so one market, because the schools can be twice as expensive as the other market, and now a lot of that goes into the land basis and the size and cost of the home. Most of the product that we deliver is first-time buyer, first-time move-up. We're not doing houses in Highland Park. It's not what we do. We're doing volume. And I have a soft spot for homeless because a lot of people think that the homeless issue is tied to housing. It's not at all. The people that you see on the street are chronically homeless. And I was actually with Tan Parker, the state rep down in Austin, meeting with all the city heads talking about this not too long ago when the legislature was open. And what I found out there, first of all, I was impressed with everybody that was in the room. They were amazing. But there's a lot of laws that need to take effect that would give the cities the power to be able to do something about it. The people that you see on the street are what they call chronically homeless. So they're also— 85% of them are either addicted to drugs or alcohol. So they can't take care of themselves and will most likely die in the streets, which is extremely sad, especially a man of faith. Your heart goes out to people like that. So, but it has nothing to do with the price of a house because this guy can't even take care of himself to get off the street. The people that they have in the system, the single moms that are temporary housing, the state actually has capacity and handles that very, very well. That's not who's chronically homeless. It's the veterans. It's the ones with PTSD that have drug and alcohol issues. And these are the ones that are really in danger of us literally losing them if we don't do something about it. So I'm working on different initiatives with the state to try to help that out.

That also comes back to sort of local politics as well.

Yeah.

I don't go to Austin a lot, but when I do, you're aware of a homeless problem that I don't see. Now, that may just be a visual thing of where I am in Dallas, but it appears they're being handled very differently. Can you, can you help me understand that?

Well, I think that Austin is kind of permitted it for a while. They've allowed it to happen. They put together some legislation which was an anti-camping law, which an ordinance to be able to prevent people from doing campgrounds. But there wasn't the political will among the people on council to be able to really do a lot of initiatives to it because it wasn't that unpopular with the constituents of Austin. Right. In Dallas, it bothers people a lot. And I think it bothers— business people want to be able to have their employees walk out of their office building and not have guys doing drugs.

Right.

Or doing, you know, illegal activities on the corner. Not that they all do it, but, you know, there's that environment, that perception. It scares your office workers. Right. And drives people out of downtown. I think there's a lot of amazing places in Dallas, but there's a few areas of town where there's homeless shelters or food kitchens and soup kitchens that the homeless are drawn there. There's some great, great programs happening throughout the state. We're trying to bring those to Dallas. They're just not quite here yet.

Yeah. Ironically, we're on a site which used to be a homeless encampment here at Old Parkland. As I understand, the old Parkland Hospital fell into disrepair. And became a homeless encampment before Mr. Krove purchased it and ultimately turned it into this wonderful campus we're here today. I'm really affected by your, your statistic. 85% are drug, alcohol. Can we extend that to mental illness? Is it fair to throw it under that umbrella as well? And that evokes, should evoke compassion, right? That these people are in a place they don't want to be. It's not about the lack of affordable housing. And as a society, that presents a different challenge of how do we help these people.

Yeah, the head of Health and Human Services for the state of Texas in the hospital system said that he is only legally allowed to hold someone for 7 days. Yeah, but it takes them 90 days to get to what they call stabilization to where they can take care of themselves and are off of any addicted drug or alcohol. So if it takes 7 days, if you only have 7 days to hold on to somebody, if it takes 90 days to get them better, how are you supposed to do that? And that's some of the legislative gaps I'm talking about. We need to give the people that are trained to do this, professionals, the people at the state hospitals that are at the municipal level, we need to empower them and give them the laws to allow them to pull these people off the street in an ethical and caring and loving manner, right, and help them get the services that they need to get them to where they can be stabilized and start to move through the process of getting out on their own, which can take another year.

Yeah, I'm so glad that you are thinking about that from an empathetic and compassionate place. I hope more people will embrace that as well, as opposed to seeing them as a problem, to see that as— they're human beings, they deserve compassion and need help and assistance.

I think in the real estate space, there's probably You know, it's too often to think in terms of curb appeal and it's like, oh, there's a homeless person that's affecting my curb appeal. Sure. And I think that is a compliment to you to actually get past that, the financial impact and then really lean in on that human impact. Yeah. One thing I'd like to dig into is like when cities, municipalities mandate certain real estate guidelines. And one of the examples I have is how like Frisco mandated like X percentage of green space per commercial space. And there was a lot of pushback, a lot of people didn't like it. And then all of a sudden Chipotle, they're like, who was not happy about it, that's their number one store in the country because so many people appreciate the green space that they can eat their lunch at. Where have you seen that done right? Where have you seen that done wrong? And what's your overall opinion on that?

The biggest challenge that we have with cities is it's a lot of, I don't want it in my backyard. So they say we need housing for our people, but we want million-dollar homes and create these luxurious neighborhoods with gated communities. And the tough thing is that's not going to solve the housing problem. That's not what your market necessarily needs. So cities get into designing and putting these elaborate things in place to try to drive developers like myself to deliver product in that area when there's no demand for product in that area. There's a city— I won't name names— in South Dallas that I just went through this process with where they have messed up the entitlement process for a subdivision that they approved, and you legally can't build on the site. Their city won't accept the plans, and they won't accept the process— the, uh, the drawings from the engineers and approve it because they've, they've messed up the PD and there's conflict in there and the city can't get out of the way. And I spent a year and a half trying to convince them what they did was wrong and they need to fix it. And we have to put in larger parks. We have to put in really wide roadways. All of that stuff is pretty and it's amazing, but it also affects the economics of the projects and makes it to where we can no longer afford to do that project because there's not enough housing that actually goes on it. So if I had to put in a beautiful 30-acre park on a 100-acre piece of land, that doesn't leave much for housing in the end by the time you take out the streets and all the other requirements you have. So cities can be fantastic and they could be great partners, but they can also be their own worst enemy.

You talked about hypergrowth and you indicate that by 2030, Dallas-Fort Worth population should be almost 8.5 million. I think it's 7, closer to 7.5. Yeah. Houston, 7.92 million, San Antonio, 2.8, Austin, 2.44. I went to a, I don't know what the hosting organization was, but Ross Perot Jr. led it. And you had the head of Southwest Airlines and Burlington Northern. They had a longer-term view. And they were talking about this hypergrowth and how it would affect the airport and the railway and the roads and all of the infrastructure. And It was pretty staggering where they think this Texas triangle will be in 5 years, 10 years, 20 years. It does appear to me that the leadership here in Dallas particularly— I don't, I don't have a view on Austin and the other communities— they seem to be working in concert in good faith to try to figure out what's coming down the pike. And how do we— where do you see the strain, though? Where, where does it— where are you concerned that we might fall behind?

Well, I think the biggest thing that I see, and I, I, we, we've joked around as, as locals that 35 has been under construction for the last 50 years, right? So I, I do believe TxDOT has actually done a fairly good job of keeping ahead of it. We're widening the highways, we're getting the infrastructure put in, airports are expanding. So I thought— I think a lot of the basic services are being kept up to date. Where I really think the challenges is under the housing component. In the city of Dallas, it's extremely hard to find a site that's greater than just a couple of acres where you can put housing. I can't put a subdivision in Dallas because there's not 100 acres of raw land available. That's astronomically expensive. So that's going to cause density. And what happens with density is you need to tear down the existing infrastructure that's been here for 40, 50, 60 years to be able to put in higher density houses. And as I was saying earlier, there's a lot of pushback from the people that live in that community. Right. So there's this rub between everybody's moving here, but I don't want to give up any square footage of my backyard to be able to allow for another house to come in.

Yeah, I'm living through that. I live a few blocks from the old Parkland campus here, and we've had multiple teardowns and high-rise or mid-rise multifamily built in place. And so I've been living in a construction zone for a few years, and I appreciate the beauty of the new construction and replacing something that frankly probably needed to be replaced. At the same time, it's certainly impacting the traffic in my little neighborhood and, and sort of the general quality of life. Walking my dog has become much more challenging now.

Yeah, in my neighborhood. You have to step over potholes and sidewalk is getting redone and construction workers.

And the volume of people walking their dogs. Due to the hundreds of new units in proximity to me. At the same time, I recognize the desire of people to live in the neighborhood I desire to live in. So there's a balance there somewhere. But it's easy to say, I don't want that. I don't, I don't want anybody else. Now that I'm here, I don't want anybody else encroaching on my thing here.

Yeah. And I do think it's important as developers, we would never try to put a multifamily project or a high-rise project in the middle of the M Streets or in the middle of Highland Park. It just wouldn't go there. So we do need to protect that neighborhood feel of some of the neighborhoods. And as you just head north on Oak Lawn, there's some great neighborhoods off in little pockets around town that this should absolutely be protected. We don't need to go there. But if I've got an old industrial Raytheon site on Lemon Avenue, that should definitely be up for, you know, up for consideration of putting a better and higher use for multifamily on that site. Or single-family housing or attached family housing. Any of the product will work there. Yeah.

I've got a fun question for you and I think you'll like it is— and this is all anecdotal just from the previous world I've been in— can you make money in real estate right now? Because the reason I preface it like or say it like that is, is in the late 18, 19, 2020s, you had a large number of people get into the multifamily world driving prices astronomical. And it used to be you would buy a, you know, Class Z property, value-add, to get it to a Class A or whatever. Or that's not the right terminology, that's more commercial.

What it was, the— for Class A, Class B, Class C, right, right, right.

But like value-add, value-add, but getting from a very low value to a very high level. And then, but it got so competitive and you had so many people teaching apartment complex or apartment investing that people then were buying at an A-, trying to value-add an A+, and then the end, then they lost their asses, you know, like, and then you, and then everything with 2020 with COVID and all this other stuff, I just seen a lot of people in the real estate space hurt, especially even now. Like, I just wanted to open the door to open that dialogue because I'm sure the answer is absolutely you can make money if you know what you're doing, But it also seems like you.

Can lose money if you don't.

But there's a lot of people who know what they're doing that can't figure it out, though.

Yeah, there's a lot of people that when, when you get behind and ride that wave of real estate growth, anybody can make money. And so it's can you make money in the down cycle? And for us, what that really means is discipline, staying to your core investment strategy, not getting distracted by sparkly things. Doing the fundamental underwriting. And if a deal doesn't pencil, a deal doesn't pencil. The pump and dump multifamily type of thing that you've seen in the past, I think is coming to an end. But I've also seen a multifamily building get purchased, renovated, purchased by somebody else, renovated, and then purchased by a third person and be torn down and a brand new one goes up. And so it just depends on where rents are at and we're in a constant inflationary environment. Rents will go up in DFW over the next few years. All of the projects and all the people that I know that deliver multifamily, when interest rates went up, a lot of people got squeezed. Insurance rates went through the roof, so expenses went up. Expenses out far exceeded what rent growth was. A lot of guys got squeezed and those are the guys that are getting hurt. But they were also not necessarily the most disciplined one because sure, we can put a coat of paint on the wall and add $150 a month to a unit. Well, you may not be able to do that every time in the future, but with that squeeze that's happened, that's also had a lot of real estate developers. I know one group here in town particularly that had 6 new projects that were supposed to go underground in '25, and they did 2. And so if that inventory keeps getting pulled back, eventually there's going to be lack of supply. Rents will start to creep up. Rent growth should happen and rent growth is healthy, but vertical rent growth just means that you're taking excess capacity out of the system for a short period of time. It is going to catch up with you. You can't do 8% to 10% rent increases year over year every year. This is not going to work.

How does the World Cup— how does that affect you in North Texas?

That's a great question because I know it's supposed to be the largest event. I think it'll be great for the hotels. I think it'd be great for the restaurants. I think it's I think it's great for the exposure because a lot of people even— it's still funny to this day, I say Dallas-Fort Worth and people say, does everybody wear cowboy boots and hats? I'm like, no, we don't ride horses. This is more— it's more like Wall Street here than it is necessarily that cowboy mentality. But I think it stimulates the economy. I think it drives stuff. As far as housing, I don't know if it'll really affect us. I don't know if it was— it was 3 years ago. People might want to move here after they come and visit. I'm saying how nice it is, but I don't think it's going to be a direct shot into the real estate market. Yeah.

If anything, maybe the Airbnb world, but.

Not— Yeah, Airbnb guys will do great. Hotel guys will do great.

Thinking about how a lot of real estate deals get financed. And I understand you have funds where you're raising capital and you also have personal equity. I used to be chairman of a bank, Triumph Bank in Memphis, Tennessee. And so I, you know, realize most banks are— their loan portfolios are real estate based. Yeah. Even if they're not directly real estate, there may be real estate pledged as collateral against the loan for some other.

Purpose.

I don't know where we are in the commercial. You're not on the commercial side, but in office space and all of the effects of the work from home and where we are in that cycle. But I read anecdotally that there's still a big overhang on bank balance sheets on underperforming office real estate. And I wonder if that will spill over and affect all real estate because the regulators tend to look at real estate almost in a monolithic way. Yeah. As opposed to saying, well, this real estate presents this way and this, this, this other way. It sounds like that doesn't directly affect you in the way you finance your projects. But how do you see that? How do you see the office space? Do you agree with what I'm reading anecdotally that there's still, you know, that hasn't played out fully yet?

I think it's, it's, I think we're over the hurdle of the major disruption in the market. I know definitely because I just look for office space and I lease downtown Dallas. And so I actually know every single building here in Dallas really, really well. But there's a flight to quality that's undeniable. There's new buildings going up that are getting major leases signed. And now that Dallas is becoming Y'all Street, we— our rents here are still half the price of stuff in New York. I have a friend that has an office on the north side of Manhattan and he pays $225 a foot. The most expensive space here in Dallas is probably— we're sitting here at Old Parkland— is $70 a foot. And so if you compare the two, then, you know, firms coming in from the outside going, that's so cheap there. Yeah. But guys like me that paid $25 a foot up in Addison off the tollway years ago, that this has gotten so expensive. And so I think there's that flight to quality. And what does go into a new space, they're reducing their footprint. They're not taking 10,000 feet. They're taking 5,000 feet because they want it to be quality for the people that are going to be showing up at an office. And there are— I still talk to people every day that they're working remote. A guy that I worked out with this morning at the gym, he's 100% remote and has been since the pandemic. And they're not going back that way. They're just all remote now. Before the pandemic, I think I did 2 Zoom calls in my entire career. Now I have 2 to 5 a day. And so I just— I don't get on a plane like I used to. I used to fly 4 or 5 days a week to be able to go around the country for different real estate transactions. So I just think that we have fundamentally changed. There is a flight to quality, but I do see new office buildings going up and they're getting leased up. So it becomes like my building, the B of A Tower. A couple of local developers have a plan to redo that tower. If they bring that quality, I believe it'll get filled up.

I've heard Michael Levy, who's been on the podcast before, talk about They're extremely bullish on Class A real estate because obviously with the commercial the past 4 or 5 years, you drive down, it's just for lease, for lease, for lease, for lease. But the Class A is in high demand.

I think that there is that flight to quality on the retail side where Chanel's doing amazing, but the Gap is not. And that Amazon effect has got a hangover on the retail industry that everything that can be commoditized is. But you can't commoditize that experience of walking into a Chanel store and getting the luxury good that you want.

The, the remote work is a fun conversation as well because you've got on one end of the spectrum like a Jamie Dimon who's like 100% in the office, and the other end, other end, you have someone like a Brent Ryan who's like, we've been remote for years. Yeah. You know, where, where are you in alignment with that?

I think for, for us there's a lot of collaboration around the coffee pot. Right there, the water cooler. We need to be— we throw stuff on the screen. We have a war room in our office where we have two massive TVs. We throw projects up there. We bring in consultants, we bring in engineers and architects, and we brainstorm. We'll have 12 people in a conference room working through a project together to be able to figure it out. That collaboration is really tough to do over Zoom. I think Zoom— we have a project we're doing with GFF here in town and we do all the meetings over Zoom with them. And it's really efficient to be able to get those updates on that multifamily project. But when it comes to working through a problem, we want them to come to our office to meet with our people and get everybody in a room and work it out. So we're big on having everybody be in office.

I think on that, with AI, I think for the high-dollar conversations and meetings, it's going to go back to in-person because you can't just— you can't trust the computer anymore. You can't trust Zoom because it'll get to the point where Lane's avatar will be on the call, and I think I'm having a call with with Lane, but Lane's on the beach sipping his Mai Tais.

Yeah. Sort of like the intros you're doing with AI with my voice. Yeah. For our podcast now.

Right. So the intro is not him, but just behind the scenes.

I listened to it for the first time.

I was like, wait, I didn't say that.

Yeah. What I'd like to get into, because you're from California, Dallas versus California. And I, I don't necessarily want to go down the line of just like Texas because that's easy and it's always right. But from an investment and from a real estate standpoint, what are the lessons that you can learn from California that can be applied to Texas? And/or is it all just universal and dirt is dirt?

Well, I think that the regulations in California and the entitlement process they put you through is they just put you through the absolute wringer. And the last project I did there, we had it for 4 years. We went through the entitlement process, massive rounds of P&Z and meeting with counsel. And the very last council meeting, they decided they needed a botany study. So we had to shut down the project and watch flowers grow for a year to make sure there was not an endangered flower on this site. It was a 7-acre project where we were going to put a gas station, a couple fast food restaurants, and a retail building. This was not a protective reserve. It was in the middle of the city. And so stuff like that, how do you forecast a 5-year hold on a deal when you think you're going to be in and out of the entitlement process house in 2 years. That's the stuff that I'm worried comes to Texas, that there is— there should be regulations, there has to be guidelines. We need to have zoning, we need to have, you know, we need to protect a certain flow and ebb of a city. But you can get the requirements so stringent that, for example, in our projects out there, we would always have— there's a line item for lawsuits because you knew as soon as you pulled, as soon as you broke ground, you were going to get sued. So it'd be— to be that litigious to where I had the Sierra Club send me a cease and desist order because I wanted to do a subdivision. So that's the kind of regulation that if we're not careful can come here.

In the last 10 years or last 20 years, we've seen so much regulation, clean energy, clean energy, that— but now that you have the rise of China, the rise of Russia, the global power of the United States lowering, them raising, a lot of that regulation is— it may be still in the books, but it's not— it's kind of ignored. So as there's more global competition, Do you think some of that trickles down where it's like, you know what, this is stupid, let's get it off the books because the only way we can be competitive on the global scale is if we can churn and burn and get these things done?

Yeah, I think if, if you have people from Texas leading the charge, absolutely that will happen. If you have people from California leading the charge, it'll never happen in a million years. So I do think that we've— we have to think differently now because there are other superpowers now out there that are arguably larger, more powerful than we can be. I don't think anybody beats our military, but China has definitely been doing things with rare earth minerals and going to Brazil and going to Africa and going all the places. And while we're sitting here at home arguing with ourselves or what we should do, they're expanding their footprint. And then we get put into a position— unfortunately, the current administration looks like they're making an effort to change some of that stuff and do rare earth minerals because we are becoming so technology driven. So battery pack, you know, software oriented with the processors and CPUs and everything that if we don't protect ourselves, which is what I liked about the CHIPS Act, is it allowed us to be self-sufficient. A lot of the, you know, Samsung came here. We've got a couple of plants here with TI. And so some amazing thing happens here specifically in Texas, which was great. But if we don't safeguard for that, we don't protect ourselves. Ultimately, something negative is going to happen.

We're talking about the global power. I just did a quick look. China is building 28 to 33 new nuclear plants. USA is only building 2. And this goes back to— I'm surprised we're building 2.

Right.

But if they're building 30 and we're building 2, that just highlights if we're.

Not careful, we'll be overtaken very quickly. Yeah, we have this cognitive block about how dangerous we think nuclear power is or was, but that was based off of 1950 technology that was built in the '70s. I think things have changed a little bit that we could probably manage it a little bit better now. So there's just, I think one thing that might actually help it is that the tech industry is behind it. And so you have that money and that tech wanting it. They're firing up nuclear power plants that have been offline just to do data center sites. And so you have that money behind it. So there could be a lot more and that might help open up the regulations on it to get it to prove faster.

One of the things I learned a week ago was no nuclear power plant has ever lost money once it's been turned on. Like it's, it's just a money pit while it's being developed and being turned on. But once it's on, none of them have ever lost money. And that's just like huge, but also Fukushima, nobody died from the— they died from the earthquake, but nothing from the nuclear. And I believe there were multiple being in development at that time, but once that happened, those got squashed.

Yeah. And I think that it just scares everybody. Everyone is worried, you know, it's a nuclear bomb that's going to go off, and that's not actually what happens. My son is really into nuclear energy and wants to be a nuclear physicist, so I hear this at home all the time. There's all these different types of matter now that they can do and different types of energy that they can produce in nuclear power. So there's some amazing technology happening around it.

Well, if you're into that world and you want to get it from an investment side, I know a guy.

Fantastic. I want that guy's number. Okay.

So how long have you lived in Texas?

I've been here since '99.

Since '99?

Well, you're an OG California transplant. So I grew up watching the Cowboys, was my favorite team. Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders, was a fan of the TV show. Like, just absolutely loved everything about Dallas and came out here to visit some friends of mine and their family for Christmas. And first time I was here, 60 days later I moved. Oh, wow. And I've been here ever since and love it. I've gone back and forth between here and California for projects and for business. But what I say about Texas, it's faith, family, and football. Yeah. And so I just love that culture. Most important thing in my life is my family. That's what drives me to get out of bed every day. And I just love meeting other business guys that operate and think the same way. And we can be open about our faith. We can be open about our values and what we think. California can't. California, you got to kind of hide because if you're going to get blackballed or you're going to have something, negativity thrown at you, and it's just, it's not a way to live.

So it's a great environment for you and your family.

You have children? Yeah, I have two boys. Grew up here in the Park Cities area. My freshman, my youngest is a freshman at SMU. Okay. So we're local guys and been here forever. I volunteered at the PTA stuff and all the Park City schools and done the whole thing. It's an absolutely awesome place to live.

It is.

Well, we have an SMU connection. Ryan's in the Executive MBA program. I lecture in the Executive MBA program.

Fantastic.

And what a great community SMU is.

It is.

Yeah. My football tickets are more valuable now. Than they were when I arrived here.

Slightly.

Slightly.

Yeah. They've done good for themselves.

They've done really well for themselves.

So you said your daughter's a freshman at SMU? Son.

Oh, son. My youngest is a freshman at SMU.

And what is he— what, he's studying the nuclear?

Yeah, he, he started— he said he wanted to go to real estate and finance and come work with Dad. Since then, he really got into physics and wants to be a nuclear physicist. This last week when I talked to him, he was getting into politics. He thought it might be political science. So like every freshman, he's evolving. Yeah, he's evolving. And I'm not pressuring him. You know, I want him to make up his own mind. As long as he's getting passing grades, I'm like, but you have your first year to figure it out. By the end of your freshman year, you need to pick a path and go with it. So we'll see where he lands.

My father was a Holiday Inn franchisee and his high school classmate, Kemmons Wilson, founded Holiday Inns. And my dad was a homebuilder. And Mr. Wilson went out to his friends that were homebuilders and said, have I got a great I've got, you know, a deal for you. And he pledged my mother's wedding ring and the cash value of his $10,000 life insurance policy to borrow money to build a holiday inn in Tupelo, Mississippi. And off he went. And he told me when I was a senior in high school, son, you go to college, I'll pay for a state school within this radius of Memphis. And you go study whatever you want because it doesn't matter. You won't really learn anything important and you can come go to work in the family business when you graduate. So I went to college and I found that I really liked philosophy and psychology. And that interested me more than finance and numbers. And I, you know, my senior year, I think around Thanksgiving, my dad called me and he said, I've got great news. I've sold the Holiday Inn's, I've retired.

So I graduated with a philosophy degree.

Yeah, I waited tables for a year, right? Yeah, that's what you do when you have an undergraduate degree in philosophy and psychology. That's probably very interesting later.

But yeah, you know, very deep thinking waiter. Yeah.

And I You know, stumbled backwards into financial services. But, you know, sometimes your plans change.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I feel very fortunate with what did transpire. And actually, I think if I'd worked with my dad, it might have been— might have made both of us terribly miserable. But I learned a lot of great things from him as an entrepreneur, somebody who was willing to risk everything he had for an idea and work hard to make it happen. And sitting at the— we had a rule that we had meals together. We had breakfast together and we had dinner together. And it wasn't optional. Or it wasn't like I could go— never enough cell phones, of course— not like I could go hide in the house. We had dinner and we had conversation. And I think that's a lost art these days. I read about this kind of lost generation of youth. I hope your son is an exception to that. But a lot of them are living with their parents into their 30s and really struggling to sort of find their path. And I think sitting at the table and having to have a conversation and engage with my parents and listen to my father talk about business and entrepreneurship, you know, had a profound impact.

Positive. Yeah, absolutely. I sat down with my son at a very early age and helped him create a stock portfolio account and taught him how to calculate P/E ratios. He was always very money motivated. So, yeah. Anytime he wanted money, I'd make him work for it. Anytime that he wanted to, he's like, "I want to buy some stock." I'm like, "Great. You need to earn some money. Let's get you some stock. Which stock do you want to buy? Why do you want to buy that stock?" And I'd show him how to download earnings reports and go through everything at 12 years old. And he just got into it and he loved it and he thought it was a lot of fun. I always tried to convey in them personal responsibility, whether it was with their daily behavior and how they conduct with people in the outside world. I'm very, very fortunate that my youngest son is just really— he goes to church on the SMU campus. He's really just developed his own faith strong, and he's got his own self-identity, and he's doing fantastic. And you just— that's what you hope for as a father, is that they can just kind of get out of the house and go out on their own and hold their own.

Well, it's great that he has a father that's willing to engage him in that way. I remember when I decided I wasn't going to wait tables for the rest of my life. I ended up going to work for a Wall Street brokerage firm, and they sent me to New York for training. And I discovered that training was sitting in a room at night and cold calling people out of the New York phone directory to pitch them on something, which they were never going to buy. It was all, you know, just getting rejected. And we were basically building calluses so when we went back, we could we could do that. But I, when I got back to the office and I was actually having to sit there and make a living starting at zero at the beginning of each month and selling something on commission, I called my dad, right? For my first, you know, who else are you going to call? So I called my dad and I pitched him Southwest Airlines stock. I had, I wanted to develop a story around something that I felt really comfortable with and excited about. And I got excited about Southwest Airlines. He had a different business model and they were growing and Walmart was was another one, which was regional and based in Arkansas, and the Sam Walton story. And so I called my dad and I said, I think you should buy this stock. And he said, well, how will that work? And I said, well, I'll place an order at the exchange. And he said, well, who will sell it to me? And I said, well, somebody that wants to sell it. And he goes, why would anybody want to sell it? He forced me into this sort of Socratic argument about, well, who would possibly sell me the stock that you think is so great?

Well, I think that's fantastic that you had that, the reps of getting the nos and having that. I think that's a lost art now. Yeah. With our kids, just don't have to go through that. They don't have to go through the same challenges and conflicts that we did. My first job was telemarketing job. Yeah. Doing sales. Yeah. You get it then. You have to. But we didn't have a rapid dialer like you had to literally dial the phone. Thank God it wasn't a rotary phone. Right. And I would have to dial the phone 100 times in an hour. Yeah. And you do that for an 8-hour shift and your fingers get really sore, but it develops a muscle of being able to go through that. So when I got into the commercial lending side, I applied the same thing. 100 phone calls in an hour is what I tried to do. And I became the highest producing broker in the office in 6 months, not because I was more experienced and more brilliant than the other guys in the office. I just worked from 7:00 in the morning to 7:00 at night and I worked everybody. You got the math. I got the math. And that's what I do is just— it's a numbers game.

We had a guy that trained us called the Cold Call Cowboy. That was his name. And he had a book that he published, you know, the Cold Call Cowboy. I remember him, you know, coaching us up and he said, every no gets you closer to a yes. And I was like, wow, well, how many nos exactly? And it was a pretty staggering number that you had to call. To your point, I read something recently again about this sort of, you know, challenging generation of young people that says that that 80% of young men had never asked a woman out in person. They do everything by cell phone because they don't want the rejection. They don't even call people because they don't want to deal with rejection in person. And so it's really an interesting dynamic that we're dealing with now in the age of technology where people really aren't communicating directly. And this fear of rejection seems to really be driving them. I still have no fear of— I have some fear, but very little.

It's a muscle that you develop. I remember hearing this thing where eventually you won't hear the nos. You have to take multiple nos to get to the yes. And what didn't dawn on me at the time when I first heard that was you literally don't hear the nos. You just— you're in explaining it and you're talking it and it doesn't affect you. When you first start, the first no hurts really bad. Your ego takes a check and you're disappointed. But after a while, you develop that muscle. And I think it's an amazing internal fortitude. Strength that we developed to be able to get on the phone and dial. And I even implement that in our current company. We make 400 phone calls a day searching for property. We do thousands of emails. We do thousands of mailers a month because all we're doing is constantly hunting for property. And so I have an entire team of people that I've taken that literally the same mentality from when I was a teenager. Yes. Dialing for dollars and selling that you had to do and implement that on our acquisition side. Because it's a numbers game. Yeah. And I know that there's somebody out there that has a piece of property that's been in their family for 2 or 3 generations, and dad's no longer allowed to take care of it himself. Well, that family— there's a family in particular that I can think of in the Rockwall area where they were cotton farmers and the grandmother used to— was a sharecropper and took care of the property. And they bought the land for $50 an acre. Wow. And I was offering them $50,000 an acre. Yeah. So, what we do, one of the amazing things is we create generational wealth. We're taking a family and we're giving them $5, $10, $15, $20 million. And that does a lot to fund college funds for the grandkids and be multigenerational. So, something that we really enjoy that.

We can— That's a feel-good. One thing that we were just talking about, I mean, this is a quote that everybody's heard all the time, but the whole hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times weak men, weak men create hard times. Obviously, we hear that all the time from a cultural standpoint. But when we were talking just a second ago, I've never thought about in terms of the work culture as well, because like what you're just saying is, you know, people are afraid of no. But if you're a, if you're a strong, you know, man or person, back to this quote, it's like the no, it just rolls off your back. Yeah, you know, and it'd be interesting to see that quote in the business world. What, what will happen? I mean, I've heard before that if you've got a 20-year-old that actually has work ethic, they'll just be a savage and conquer everything just because most 20-year-olds don't.

Yeah, and I 100% agree with that. I love that, that phrase that you just brought up because it's true. We, we see now as we recruit people in, because we try to bring in guys that are— and gals that are in their 20s and 30s and try to bring them up in the organization, and they have a hard time making eye contact. They have a hard time talking on the phone. They want everything to be automated and processed for them. Like, no, you have to do that. You know how this gets processed? You do that, and then you give it to me. That's how this system works. And so it's just the— it's a challenge that this younger generation has to overcome. We were the fast— what I call the fast food generation. I want it now. Now they're the instant generation where they want it instantaneously because everything is Uber Eats and Uber rides and, you know, everything is done for you electronically.

Yeah. Well, Scott, thank you so much for coming in. I don't know if, Lane, if you have any final thoughts or anything like that.

No, it's just been a real treat meeting you and learning about your business. Congratulations. That sounds like you've got an exciting couple of years ahead of you. You've got funds that you're raising capital for. Data Center Fund, housing development. You got a tiger by the tail with this Texas Triangle. So we look forward to reading about your continued successes, and we're delighted to have you here on The Deal Table.

Yeah, I appreciate your time. Thank you very much.