On today's episode of gathering the Kings, so many people they they they'd make a lot of money for a number of years. And they feel like it's just never gonna stop. They have the Midas touch. They get, they spend on things, fancy cars, big vacations, and they just always feel like they can refill the coffers. But the reality is is that the world is cyclical There will be times of great prosperity, and there will be times where it's really challenging. And so thi save your money.
Think long term never think that good times won't end because they will. It's a perfect time right now. Having lived through 2008, not having the advice of older Steve. I I had the fancy car. I had the nice house by the beach. I I did all the things. And then 2008 hit, and we got wallets. You are listening to Gathering the Kings with Chaz Wolfe featuring fellow 78 and even 9 figure business owners who have real battle scars.
From business and life, but have prevailed as the king that they are designed to be. We welcome high performing entrepreneurs to the stage in order to reveal the real of the real on what it takes to build a successful business today. We dissect the good and bad decisions they've made along the way that give a true and accurate picture of the journey of success and how you too can get there.
Through this dialogue, you will learn the value of growing your network and surrounding yourself with power players and kings like today's guest. Grab your pen and notebook because we're about to dive in. What's up, everybody? I'm Chaz Wolfe, gathering the king's podcast. Today, I've got Steven Ludwig on the king stage. My brother, how you doing? I'm great. How are you doing? I'm wonderful, man. We got this red background theme going on between the two of us here. We're clearly on the same page.
Appreciate that. We got the memo. We got the memo. It's a beautiful thing. I was gonna say, is it red Monday? Because the Chiefs or or I mean, I think it's I think it's the burial sign of my patriots. Oh, yeah. That could be. You know, here in Kansas City, people ask him, I Chaz fan. I'm like, well, It's the only thing that we have. So yes. Well, the good news is Chaz I was in Kansas City for the Chiefs Raiders Monday night game. And I've went down to a big sports store in town.
Yeah. I got him a phones jersey, and I wanted to participate at Arrowhead. Be one of the one of the locals Yeah. So now I brought it back with me, and I feel like I can just throw it on, walk into any bar and still have something to cheer about. Be ready to go. Exactly. That's awesome. Wolfe, we appreciate that from from Kansas City to to you. Thank you. Steven, what kind of business or in this case businesses do you have, brother? So I was very fortunate, lucky.
I took Chaz leap of faith when I was in my mid twenties working for a real estate private equity firm in Los Angeles. One of those scenarios where I don't necessarily think I fit into the corporate culture. Sure. Was smart enough to be there, but just wasn't looking to climb the corporate ladder. And I met a gentleman while at this company who Wolfe come in to pitch looking for private equity to a real estate investment And when he asked me, what do I need? Am I gonna get the money?
I looked him straight in the eyes when I was 26 and said no. And when he asked, why not? I said while your presentation just wasn't on point to raise this type of institutional equity. And he asked me, well, what do I need to do? To get money from a company like yours. And I said, well, you need to do X, Y, and Z to get there. You need to have an offering memorandum. You need to have a financial model and he's looking at me with kind of hazy eyes near the headlights.
And he's and he asked me, and he said, well, could you do that for me if I p ed you on the side? You wanna do some moonlighting. And opportunistically, I I looked at him, and I said, I'm already working a hundred hours a week to make a couple extra bucks. Isn't really worth the extra grind However, if you wanna give me a piece of the deal, make me an equity partner, I can always carve out a few more hours of my life. And so that's exactly what happened.
And and a couple months into this, I was helping them raise equity when the firm I was at basically came to me and said, Steve, we really like you, but you just don't really fit in. You're perfect. I think we gotta let you go. And I kinda turned around and handed on this, like, opera memorandum. And then when I said, I totally understand you wanna invest $20,000,000 in real estate investment. Hens. The rest is history. I was out the door.
Wow. Wolfe, with the investment, or or did they did they say, does it lead that investment belts through And a couple, a couple days after that happened, the guy that I was working with Yeah. Looked at me and said, this is 20 years ago, he said, Steve Unfortunately, this fell apart. I like working with you. What do you say on KU $3000 a month for 3 months? And let's see if we can find another deal. And when you have your back against the wall like that, oh my gosh.
You double down on your effort and Wolfe even harder. So if I thought a hundred hours a week was a lot of work, I crushed Chaz. And I eventually found another deal. It was a $16,000,000 investment in Sherman Oaks, California was an apartment in a 170 apartment units. Wow. And lo and behold, I was it's a it's a great story, but I was able to put the deal together investment number 1. And there's there's a lot of details in Chaz.
When you're buying a $16,000,000 building at twenty six years old with no money in your pocket. Right. How do you how do you do that? And that's that's really what I saw to kick off my, you know, career. And how do you do that? I went online at the time the internet was as prolific as it is now. Yeah. But there was a website that had a list of 300 private equity firms.
And, methodically, I called all 300 Wolfe, about halfway through that list, I think in, like, 156, a guy that I was speaking to who I thought would invest, said, say, hey, Kent. This sounds like a great investment, but I don't think you have what it takes to make it happen. So when you fall out of escrow, I'm gonna and hung up the phone on me. That's just Chaz just may be more motivated. Oh, a 100%. Don't punch the kid from Boston. No punch.
So by the time I got to the 300 literally, like, the 300th person on the list, it was someone that that I knew from my first job out of college and Real Estate Investment Banking in New York. He had left. I had left. I left a private equity firm. He was at a private equity firm. He calls me and he says, hey. I got this offering memorandum on my desk. Is this the same Steve Ludwig that I shared cocktails with in New York? We were twenty two years old. And I'm like, oh, yes. It is.
Chaz this looked like an interesting real estate investment. He ran it up of the flagpole at his company. Low and behold, we needed, I think, like, $6,000,000 of equity. And their company put in 8080 5 percent of it. We needed the balance. I didn't have any money. My partner, he put in some money. He had some friends who put in money. I called my grandmother. She put in 20 by a grant. I mean, we cobbled this thing together. Got it.
And then really the the rest is history since then, we've done almost a billion and a half of real estate acquisitions. Wow. Yeah. I I love the I love the story. I think that the intensity of those moments all entrepreneurs can relate to. And and I know that you've spun other businesses out of all this too, so I maybe those will come up as we just continue to talk, but My first question, my major question to all my guests is is why.
And so we were we were just talking about kids before we jumped on the record you talked about some big numbers here. You walked into your office before we were talking there and said hello to a few folks. Why are you doing this? Why are you still doing it? So let's see here. I feel like I'm a young 46. And I was very fortunate as kid. I grew up in a nice household, divorced parents. So I would say, emotionally challenging, but financially very stable. I went to private schools.
I went to a private university. I went to summer camps like a country club. I had the lifestyle of a kid that most people dream of us. Alright. But then when I got out of, like, towards the end of college, my mom looked at me straight, and she said, look, Steve, you've been very fortunate. My father was successful enough to pay for everything you've Chaz. Right? Everything. You've got no debt coming out of college, but I want you to know is this is 0 for you after that.
Wow. And so she had kind of told me that through the college years. So even though I was Adam University in Business School. I always kinda had a work ethic. I did it. Love class. And so I got internships and jobs throughout college in the real estate industry. And I'm really tough to those. So as much as I struggled in the classroom to get a decent grade, I was quickly selling these different insurance shifts.
And by the time I was a junior in college, I was eager to get into the workforce to start earning money and get out of the classroom. Yeah. And you know what? That that that desire is really never stopped. I love work. I love I I I'm passionate about different things and whatever I'm passionate about. Like, there's no there's no end in the energy. Passionate about family. I'm passionate. I still play Wolfe Crosse, starting to club La Crosse team.
And my my friends are hanging back and licking their wounds from their college days, and I'm still out on La Crosse field sashing people every once in a while Chaz a having a lot of fun and all these big bruises have broken bones, and I will everyone thinks I'm nuts. But, you know, I marched my own beat and, you know, the business world as an athlete, it's it's competition. I love competition. Tell me no, and that just lights a virus. Absolutely.
Do you feel like knowing those moments that you described, especially with your mom, like, kinda preparing you for this, like, hey. I hope that you don't turn out to be a spoiled brat because you got nothing coming. Type of a talk, do you feel like that, like, change the trajectory, or were you even if she hadn't said any of that, do you think that you'd be who you are? Like, you were already that Steve. It was just it just needed a moment. No. I was a pretty shy kid.
I had a I had a an older brother. Incredibly smart, outspoken. We'd be at family dinners, and he would be wowing the table of, like, family friends Chaz a teenager, and and everybody was enamored with them. And I was like the silence, little brother sitting at the table, totally muffled. He actually left to our household and went to live with my father in a different state. So I was growing up now more as a single child, and my voice was starting to come out.
Yeah. But I always found that excelling in sports. That was my comfort zone. It was really never about academic. But that competitive fire was intense. I worked hard. So it wasn't that I was a lazy person. I just It the the light bulb hadn't gone off in the classroom. Yeah. But eventually, it went off once once you find what you like, something that really interest you. As we were talking about before, I could sit in science class and totally disinterested.
No matter no matter how much I needed a good grade, I just wouldn't focus on it. Yeah. But if I went into a classroom where the topic was interesting, I did great. Yeah. And so then you go into the business world and you get to choose the things that you want to work on as an entrepreneur. So if you're choosing things that you really like to do Yeah. Then you're gonna have a lot of energy.
But even, like, even within the different businesses that that that I've co founded, but there are parts of the business that I don't really like. And so part of being a successful entrepreneur, I found is figuring out what you're really good at and what you're not really good at or what you'd like to focus on and do during the day versus what you don't. Yeah. But things that you don't like to do still have to get done.
So you can either, for me, recognizing those characteristics of myself, you find people who are really good at those things. Yeah. And you're telling it. And that is then done. What you keep what you couldn't do at a high level can then get done at a high level and that helps your business prosper. Yeah. There's some people that like science. Is that what you're saying? I do not like science.
If I Chaz to be If I was a sign if I if I like science and then I went to medical school, you would not wanna be on my operating table. Yeah. Exactly. It would be a bad outcome. Chaz that's awesome. Oh, I think that just your journey is obviously very entrepreneurial, the way that you've described, just your ability or lack of to focus is great. I think that we all have that capacity or at least flowing through us to a degree. It's just a matter of our awareness.
And and then, like what you said, What are we doing about it? Are we only focusing on the things that probably we're best at, or are we trying to do too much? Which Chaz it takes us to a place where we don't like what we're doing. We're overwhelmed, stressed out. Like, all the things that you probably felt in school, doing the things that maybe you didn't have as much engagement Right? You know, even even not only to school, but even when I sound, I always knew I liked real estate.
That's the only job I've ever had. I've had a lot. I Chaz a lot of them early on. But, my last stop at this private equity firm, I had a lot of self doubt for a couple of years that I was there, because I'm working for people. It's very corporate in Yeah. Competitive and backstabbing. Yeah. And I didn't I didn't like that. And so there was a period of time where I was like, is real estate the job for me? I'm in Los Angeles. Should I be in the entertainment industry? Should I do something else?
Yeah. And it wasn't it wasn't that it was the wrong industry. It was the wrong company. It was the wrong place for me. And then as soon as it's challenging as it was to go out on your own with no money in your pocket. I mean, there was a day where I remember I looked at the bank account, and it was literally $150 in my Wells Fargo checking account. That was a bad day.
Yeah. Soon thereafter, there was a there was a bit of fortune where I put a properties in escrow and fortuitously, through an in a mutual introduction. I met a gentleman, and he said, Steve, what do you have going on? I'm sitting down talking at a Starbucks and I'm telling him about properties. There's 3 properties I have in Espoo, and he goes, oh, that one property, tell me more about it. And I start telling him about it, And he goes, alright. I'm gonna make you an offer.
If you assign me the contract, I'll give you $400,000. I was like, internally, I'm like, Holy shit. Right. Just everything just blew up. Exactly. But at this time, when I had negative $250 in my bank account, because I don't write through a check right now. And I was like, oh my gosh. Like, that's that's amazing. Now take it back a little bit. I started my company with this partner who I left, you know, was looking for help to institutionalize and find equity. At the time I was 27, he was 47.
So the where I am now today Yeah. We had bought a property together that first building. We had 3 more in escrow, the ones that I was sitting down and discussing. He had literally just died in a car accident. He drove his Porsche accidentally lost control 650 feet over a cliff up in big sur passed away. And so I was in a really tough period where I'm sad. My business mentor Chaz just passed. I have 3 deals with escrow. I've got a widow who is breathing down my throat. I've got no partner.
Don't really know which direction to go. Low money in my bank accounts, and all incentive guy comes in. And I had a friend of my original partner give me a $200,000 check to put a one of these properties in escrow. And so and he actually gave me the check while driving me to the funeral. He Steve, is there anything I could do to help you beyond driving you to the funeral? And I was like, I need a $200,000 check, put a deal on escrow.
And he's like, well, your first business partner thought highly of you. Basically, here's a blank check to make it happen. He had really no idea what I was using it for, but just implicit immediate trust. Based on the reason. It it it was incredible. And so I'm sitting at this coffee meeting. The guy says, tell me about this property. Tell him. He's like, I'm interested. I'll give you 400,000. In my mind, I'm like, wow.
Take this, but that's the in there interview on the exterior I'm staying very calm. And I looked at him and I said 400 would be a great offer. I can't accept Chaz. If you had said 500, I probably would take the deal. He goes, I I can't do that. And he goes, but, look, thanks for the coffee. Shakes, like, yeah, he gets up to walk away. And I'm like, I'm an idiot. Holy cow. And as he gets halfway down the block, he turns around and goes, Bullmont, Steve, and he comes back.
He goes, give me a minute. He comes back and he shakes my hand. He goes, Steve. Alright. You got a deal at 500,000. And I was like, really? And he goes, my word is my bond. Call my attorney. My real estate attorneys like Steve Lock. I've heard a 1000 situations like this. They never work out. Don't get your hopes up. Right? All I can think about is $500,000 versus the negatives balance of my checking.
Yeah. And so 10 days later, my attorney calls me after some legal paperwork, and he goes, Steve, you're not gonna believe it. I got $700,000 in my bank account. A 200,000 dollar deposit plus the 700,000. What do you want me to do with it? Yeah. So if he wires it to me, I I call this guy that won't get a check, Jerry, who was about a fifty year old guy and significant. I'd like to meet you and your wife for dinner.
So couple days later, we show up to dinner, and I said, Jerry, I I can't thank you enough We're putting trust in me. Here's your $200,000. Can I hand him the check? And he goes, what what happened? And then I hand him another check for 250,000. Half the profits And I said, well, I slipped the property. This was 29 days later after he wrote me the check. Yeah. And I looked at him, and I said, will you be my new partner? We're coming up now on 20 years that we've been business partners together.
Wow. And so it's a it was a special moment an incredibly loyal person. What he did for me was, like, changing. Oh, yeah. I'll never forget it. Wolfe, 29 days later, I think he made the best of that that opportunity to not only return his money, but but you doubled it more than doubled it. You know, in hindsight in hindsight, if the world was different, I'd probably this I wasn't 26, and it wasn't a time of tragedy. I probably been like, oh, here's your 200. And here's, like, another $20 on top.
Right. Right. Yeah. And he would have been happy with that a bet. Well, why don't you know what? He's this this Jerry's been a father, say, you're a mentor, business partner, a friend. Yeah. I would never have done anything differently. I'm blessed.
Yeah. It it in all of that story, I think that what I picked up, what I would love to hear, what I would love to have the listener here at a deeper level, is you just you just kept making moves, even though there was no money in the checking account, even though your business partner, you had a super tragic scenario, which, like you said, you were sad, but, like, I'm sure there was some deep stuff going on on the inside of you, but you, for whatever
reason, this fortitude that you had just to keep going, to be able to do this deal, on the way to the funeral. You'll have the poise. Obviously, you had done a bunch of work ahead of time to, like, lead yourself up to that moment where a guy would write you a blank check. I mean, right? Like, you don't just auto auto automatically just get the trust of a guy like that. That was years of stuff that you had been doing with with the other gentleman that that led to that moment of trust.
And so there's just a lot of things that you had been doing and that you kept doing even through the sticky. And so I just wanted to point that out to the listener Yeah. Maybe there were some fortunate moments Chaz you talked about, but we all have those. They all come to us. It's just a matter of whether we had been doing the work, and if we keep doing the work. Would you add anything to that? Yeah. Look. I think I think reputation is everything.
If you are known to be honest and ethical and moral in your business dealings If you are known to work the hardest, not like putting good work, hard work, like the hardest work, or people take notice of Chaz, And when someone's sitting at the dinner table with their buddies Chaz, you know, it's like, hey. I got this Ludwig kid. You would have believed here we are. It's midnight we're on our 3rd wine. That kid will be in the office another 3 hours Yeah. Trying to find a new investment for us.
Yeah. Yeah. So but it it it it and I think a lot of it too. I mean, I I go back. Was I crazed in the classroom? No. Was I incredibly apart working on the sports field? Yeah. If you were down by 3 goals going into the second you give up? No. Did you maybe change your mentality and say, hey. What wasn't working in the first half? Yeah. We gotta change some things. And in the second half, Let's go about it differently. We still have an opportunity to win this game and ain't over.
They can score 3 goals and a half soaking wheat. I'm not I'm gonna I'm an optimist. Yeah. In the realist. Yeah. Yeah. The realist has to put together the plan. The optimists can't float away in the hot air balloon. And so we gotta be able to do both. What would you say kinda in that same vein there? What would you say is a characteristic trait that has led you to success?
The something that you've held onto that you think is probably unanimous across the board that This is a characteristic trader, maybe a personality trait that you have that has led you to success. So I'm gonna I'm gonna stick with the optimists in real estate. But Okay. I like it. I like it challenged. I I'd hate to put it in this light, but call it a little bit of the angry bostudian in me. Okay? And push me into the corner and slap me around. Yeah. I'm not throwing in the towel.
I'm coming back swinging and watch out because when I when I when I come swinging and and not, you know, not literally. But figuratively, when I come out swinging, like, I just there's there's just no leaks. There's just no leaks. And it doesn't mean you have to win in this first round of the second round. Maybe it's the 13th round. You know, but you see oh, hey, Dean. You just she had give up. Yeah. And if you say, oh, like, you're gonna get down.
You're going to get knocked down, and it's not if you get knocked down. It's just how you get That's right. Yeah. What you just said, I think, is so profound. Obviously, simple. We can all follow along with that, but it's the it's the the, I guess, the the fortitude, the the the keep at it, the the willingness to fight. But beyond under that, what I heard you say, it was like this conviction of when I come back, watch out. Like, when you come back, it's a done deal.
Like, I'm I'm writing the story. It may not maybe it's in the first, maybe it's in the second, maybe it's in the 13th round. I don't know but I know that there will be victory. Right? That's not well, so it's interesting, and it's funny it just never stops. So so start the real estate investment company. That was in 2002. 2000 and d kits and the real estate world implodes. We have a global financial crisis. At the time, it was just myself and 3 other people in the office.
It we had we had a don't know, a dozen properties at this point. And what we realized was we had 3rd party property management. And those companies Chaz the world is imploding, you gotta work harder than you were when times were good to get 70% of what you were getting when times were good. Right. With those outsource management firms, they weren't working to partner. So we felt like we weren't, like, slapping around with somebody else's baby trying to get them to behave, but they wouldn't.
He said, bro, you know what? We're gonna start our own property management company, and that's what we did. And today, I think we have 70 employees on the property management side. Well, the next step was our the general contractors that we were using to renovate the apartments and the buildings that we're buying. That's right. We just kept trying to push them harder. And they just couldn't be pushed. So he said, you know, let's screw it. We're gonna start our own general contracting company.
Today, we it's thirty five people on the corporate side there, and we probably work with several 100 independent contractors out in the field daily and subcontractors renovating departments. Yeah. Then the next step was every time we place an order with 1 of the big box retailers to get the building materials we needed for the renovations, They just weren't coming in on time, and we felt like we were getting core value in the materials that we were buying.
JMP Fox, it was, Yeah. So we started off making one type of building material with flooring. And then it was like, oh, let's we could make cabinets, and we Chaz make st1, and we can make faucets and sink and tubs and toilets and blah blah blah. So now we have a full blown building materials company that's branded and being sold nationally. I think our clients include 5 of the top 25 Apartment owners in the country, and it is booming right now.
Well, a couple of years ago, right before the pandemic, I was talking to a friend He has all he was working for a lending platform. His lending platform was getting sold to a big bank. They were making first trustee bonds to multifamily owners like me. Right. And I asked him. I said, you you're gonna go work for a big bank?
And you said, no. And as we're sitting there at that dinner, I was thinking to myself for 20 years I've been buying properties, but if I have, I'm gonna pinch and I can't go to a traditional lending institution and I need a short term fast closing bridge loan. I don't even know who I would call. How's it possible after 20 years? So I looked at this guy and said, hey. What if you and I start a a lending platform together. And we did.
We about 6 months later, and then we raised about $400,000,000 of capital. And now my partner runs it day to day, but we have a a full blown lending platform. And then most recently, my ten year old son, he's playing lacrosse at the club lacrosse team. Unfortunately, the head coach and I met in a lacrosse game. He's 30. I'm 46. We met in a hard collision, which I gotten the better of.
And so I built a cross field with my son, he looks at me, and he's like, oh, you're that jerk that cross checked me in the face. And I'm like, no. That was just a hard queen hit. But he actually took it pretty personally. And he he buried my son on the bench. And then most recently, he just kicked my son off the tee. And he wrote a letter to my wife and I say, hey. It's nothing personal against your son. So it's personal against me. Right. So what am I doing? I'm like, it's for this.
Across here. We're on Starbuck Chien's lacrosse program right now. Hey, Kings and Queens. Chaz Wolf. I wanna talk to you about something that's super important to me. We put a lot of time and effort. We, meaning myself and my team, into this podcast, into the content that goes out every single day. And if you have been getting any sort of value or insight from this, we want it to be able to reach other business owners too.
So we would love if you would like, comment, share, leave a review, post, share again, all of the things on social media, on all the different platforms, or even on the podcast mediums of Apple and Spotify, we would love to be able to get our content into more hands, more entrepreneurs so they can grow their business as quick as possible. Together, we are building a community of like minded entrepreneurs who are committed to growing their businesses to new heights. So let's do this.
Let's help each other. Let's help each other grow. Yeah. Wow. I I would my next question on my list was who inspires you, which I still wanna ask you, but I think you've just inspired all of the the listeners of it's it's everything that an entrepreneur thinks that they're made for. It's well, what about this? And what about that? Oh, it's it's the ultimate ADD, what we described. Right? It's let me do this. Let me do that. Let me do this. Let me do that.
The interesting piece about all that is you didn't just do it all at once, which this has been something for me as well in in my A lot of people look at me. I'm in different industries. Got a lot of things going on. But similar to what you just said is that one thing I did one thing very well. You did one very well. And then that led to the next kinda, like, this makes sense. We add this on. We do this well. And then we add this on. That makes sense.
And so you didn't do all these things all at the same time. You can't. You can't. You can't. And even and even having your hands in in multiple different buckets, so to speak, I can't We've got 5 businesses, and I'm gonna call it 6 now with this lacrosse team. Yeah. You can't do them all. And my My my MO Chaz always been surround yourself with great talent, not just employee talent, but partners.
And so the different people running each one of the businesses each have very meaningful, oftentimes equal ownership stakes and the businesses that I do. They're well paid. They've got the same amount of upside that I have. So they're never looking over their shoulder and in my opinion, and I believe in there as well in saying, hey. You know what? The compensation structure isn't there. Steve's not in this business day to day. Screw him. It's never like that. It's, hey. You know what?
I was given a great opportunity to group if it's a the the compensation structure is fair and equal. I have ownership stake in the business. There's tremendous opportunity if we could make this thing grow. And that's that's just kind of been my the you can't you can't do everything at once. But the people, if you try to, you're going to fail. Right. A 100%. On that note of finding good people and or good partners, Is there a formula? Is there an attitude?
Is there, something that kinda, like, catches, like, first thought of you, like, what you're looking for? That's a that's a great question because what my wife has been critical of me early on. She's critical of me early on because she said, yes, Steve, you keep hiring friends. And I've had it. I've had times where it hasn't worked out, and it certainly has been impacted a friendship. Yeah. But at the end of the day, we spend a lot of our time working.
And if you're not working with people that you really like and trust, then work isn't fun. And if work's not fun, then It's a grind, and you're not gonna put the energy and effort into it that is required to make it grow and be successful. Yeah. So I also think that it's there's a there's a big danger in it because I've always said that it's it's really hard to work with your friends, but it's really easy to become friends with the people you work with.
And assuming that balance, right, is is is challenging. And you you just Some of 2 of many of my partners, I'd say it's probably 5050. Some half of my partners are friends who became partners, and half of my partners are were employees who demonstrated, incredible attributes. And, yeah, I I wanted to be in a compensation structure to lock them down forever. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
I think, but I think oftentimes, for me, so there's a a a commonality with the people that I wanna work with, and it's outgoing. It gets some are more educated than others. So some app or speak smarts than academia. But all have an incredible drive. All have an athletic team oriented backgrounds. I'm really just drawn to the athletes of all sorts because they have that that the unwillingness to quit mentality Yeah. You have that that that desire for victory, my guide?
Yeah. Yeah. I like the way you say that the the desire for victory, and there's a lot of people I've talked about over the years. Some are motivated that they can't lose or don't wanna lose, and then there's some that are motivated just to win. And there's a big difference between, like, loving to win and hating to lose. What would you say you are? I think I might hate to lose. Yeah. I think I might hate to lose. I think I think about it all the time. Which view the corner?
Yep. Don't don't do it. Don't do it. Thanks, like, I oftentimes, again, like I've said, I'm an incredible loyal person. And so when I feel like I've been stabbed in the back Sure. The best and the worst of me that comes out. Uh-huh. Yeah. Some people would just say, hey, Steve. Take the high road. Look the other way and move on. And I'm like, oh, hell, no. I now have a new mission. I'm not gonna come in with Ben. So I'm gonna call it motivation. 100%.
Well, that's exactly what's gonna drive this new Lacrosse team to be very successful. It's gonna be successful. Yeah. 100%. I I think you might you might end up stealing a couple a couple of coaches, maybe a couple of players. I never it's interesting. I I might do that, but actually it's not what I want to do. I wanna come in. I wanna come in. I wanna come in through an entirely different door.
And what's actually fascinating about lacrosse, and what we're seeing right now is in San Diego where I live a lot. The the club lacrosse team had immers in at the high school level to the to schooch schoochastic lacrosse team. And so it's just this really political, terrible Wolfe, and I really wanna step away from that. And part of Chaz well is that the club teams that feed into the high school teams they're very expensive. So it's become a sport for the, you know, affluence.
Yeah. And I actually wanna go the other way. I'm gonna subsidize Chaz the cross team. So that way, we could bring people in to us at Proletic, and it has nothing to do about money. If I've gotta provide your equipments, You're you're paid for everything. Like, I'll do it because I wanna have athletes out there who have a desire to win. Yeah. Not Chaz not the Pamper kids with the silver spoon. Who say, I've got the best across equipment. So I'm I'm gonna be the best. I'm on the nicest team.
We have the Chinese gear. I kinda want not the bad news bears. Like, I want the scrappy team. Yeah. Yeah. Scrappy, I think, is probably a good word. You described this. Put me in a corner. This is scrappy approach, I think, is I think I think that all that that that fight in us. We have all that. It's just a matter of how it comes out when we when it comes out. And then more importantly, maybe how we use it. You said, it's not necessarily out of a, like, a negative vendetta.
It's it's, you know, it's motivation. It it the that lacrosse thing has at this point no longer to do with that guy at all. He just set you in motion. Now you're like, I'm taking over the road. That's right. I mean, look, you could take you could take it back to the beginning. You know, high school, I was 62, a £150 with a with a big schnoz. And everybody was like, hey. We're gonna punch this kid in the nose. And there wasn't much I was gonna do about it in high school.
But then in college, you start listening. You got more time. You learn about maybe something like creatine. You start putting on some muscle. Right. And I got into Moi Thai in Brazil. And all of a sudden, it was like me waving my face and running someone. It'd be like, I'm gonna give you the first three swings at bay. And then we're gonna settle the score. Yeah. Well, you you had a definitely, a a more balanced body structure. I was 63, a £145.
And so tall lanky, I still am a little bit, but, man, you like you said, I've been I've been using that credit team the last couple of years, and I'm just kidding. If you look good, you look good. I appreciate it. Thanks, man. Snow, I literally still think about in college. They said to me, I I I pledge it for charity and may have an intro for charity wrestling tournament where it's really just a bunch of college fraternity pledges money kicked the crap out of each other.
And they wanted I wanted to rent what a £153 and they were like, we're sorry, Steve. You're just too small. Or the 153 l a plus. I weigh 210,000 right now. And so the body has evolved quite a bit. I was pretty thin. Like, you, my friend. Yeah. But it's you never lose that mentality of someone saying, you're just not you're just not good enough. You're not tough enough. Not thinking of strong enough. Like, we're gonna choose somebody else. Yeah. Yeah. It's a big deal.
Okay. I got I got two questions that Wolfe lead us to the end here, but kind of an associate. So that's why I've kind of grouped them together for you specifically. I wanna know of a a character trait or a personality trait and attribute we talked about the good side. I wanna know something that you have that maybe you didn't realize until recently. It unexpectedly held you back for more success.
Something that you have in you that you've recognized recently or even the last couple of years, maybe. Yeah. I think that's I think that's a great question. I think that the I think that's come with maturity. I think that was a a bleak bloomer in life. Okay. And so the we talked about ADHD. We talked about the competitive fire. Yeah. That can lead you to be more emotional in your decision, Mickey.
Sure. And I think that as the years have got by and you mature, you learn to team that tiger a little bit. Yeah. And so in terms of a characteristic trait that held me back, Chaz seemed fire in that desire probably led me to make rash decisions. Even if it was in the moment in a conversation, business decision. And as you mature and grow bolder and things slow down for you Yeah. The common tranquility and ability to be more cerebral Yeah.
In all things and all actions, conversations, decision making, Whether it's a business partner, I just settled up 5 years of a 7 years of a bad business partnership, Wolfe. And I went into, could be a whole episode on decision making a business structure. Yeah. I was the non majority owner of a real estate partnership on the other side of the country in New York, the majority owner turned out to be a crook. And a bad operator.
And that led us to all kinds of litigation outside of the partnership within the partnership and finally settled. And early in that, I was so emotional You know, again, this is 6, 7 years ago, so I'm not a young guy in my late thirties, and it really shouldn't chewed me up internally. I mean, it made me angry. I was an angry person because of all of I felt like that person was attacking me. Like, you were doing this against me.
And over the years, as it rolled by, and I had matured calm down and slowed down Yeah. In my thought process, it was this person's not doing anything to me personally. It's who they are. They just can't help themselves, and they're going to they're going to live in their own swamp. It has nothing to do with me. If it was somebody else, they'd do the same thing. So it's not personal against me. It's just who they are, and they can't help themselves. We're gonna manage through the situation.
We're gonna resolve the issues. We'll battle to the litigation. I might have to sue this person to finalize things. But it's just what it is. It's business. And so no longer a couple of years ago, I came to the resolution internally that I'm not gonna let this upset me. Yeah. Because I it wasn't my fault. Yep. And Move on. I just hand be a business person, handle it one step at a time, methodically get through it.
Yeah. Super encouraging what you just described because there's a lot of what you've been through that several business owners have yet to be subjected to. And for you to be able to have not only just the vulnerability to share, like, not only that it pissed you off, but that you felt like it was a personal attack against you, but I'm sure that there was, like, a rise that that put me in a corner. I'm come out swinging. Like, I'm sure there was a bunch of stuff there.
Probably affect your family as well. For 14 years, I've tried it myself. I said, oh, Wolfe never been in a lawsuit. And then I've gone through, like, 5 years of litigation now. And it's I mean, it's cost me 1,000,000. It cost me 1,000,000. So it's hard to process all that, all the find you're bleeding Chaz into the situation. Right. It's a big deal. Big deal. It's a big deal. It's a big deal for you to say now that it's poised. I've learned more from this situation.
You've learned from your losses, not from your successes. That's right. That's right. That's right. So good. Like you said, we could probably take a whole a whole episode. Maybe we'll be watching for a whole episode on that. Got one last question for you. Don't call in less than 51% of a business that you're signing loans on, and then she can have liability on seeing where. Beware. Yeah. No. Very good. There's there's lack of control in that, and and people can take advantage of that for sure.
Even if it's a close friend because people cheach. Yeah. People each. They do. They do. Or or maybe maybe along the way, things happen that just revealed who they really were. Just hadn't had that opportunity to see that yet. Right? I've had that. That's right. Absolutely. Alright. Well, we're gonna cap off the episode with this last question. I wanna know. You could whisper in the younger Steve's ear. What would you say? That's a great, great, great question.
I would say that the the world is cyclical. And so when you have times of great success, so many people, so many people, because I don't have anybody tell me or teach me how to handle my money. Yeah. And so so many people they they they make a lot of money for a number of years. And they feel like it's just never gonna stop. They have the Midas touch. They get they spend on things, fancy cars, big vacations, and they just always feel like they can refill the coppers.
But the reality is is that the world is cyclical There will be times of great prosperity, and there will be times where it's really challenging. And so think save your money. Think long term never think that good times won't end because they will. It's a perfect time right now. Having lived through 2008, not having the advice of Boulder Steve. I I had the fancy car. I had the nice house by the beach. I I did all the things. And then 2008 hit, and we got wallets.
And then post 2008, we took a more conservative approach. May I have left some money on the table? I probably did. But here we are now on another, transitioning time cyclic within the, for me, the real estate cycle. Right. And because I was because I had lived through 2008, we were relatively conservative over the last few years as things were getting frosty. Yeah. So it didn't have that experience in 2006, 2007, 2008, and Chaz knowledge and experience in 2019, 2021, 22.
So when I'd say the the change was interest rates spiky for, I mean, real estate world and every really facing some challenges right now. I'm in a pretty darn good position. I'm sleeping well at night. Yeah. Yeah. It's such good advice. And I think it's one of those things where we we know and we heard you, but sometimes, most times, we hear those things, and we don't we don't really take heed to them.
Because we have to experience it for ourselves, but if somebody wanted to take heed to what you just said, what would what would you suggest that they do? Well, now, I mean, Again, when when site when when the market changes, you've already made your bets. So if you were too far extended. Again, depending upon what you're doing. But for me, let's just say talking to people in the real estate Wolfe. You bought a bunch of properties. You syndicated.
You know, you're gonna go through some paid and some capital calls. I would say the number one thing that you can do is to communicate your position to your investors. If you're going to lose money, don't bury your head in the sand. Let them know. Hey. You know what? We all went in this together We thought it was a great business plan, and nobody forced you to invest or me to invest, but it didn't turn out how it would be wide. You're gonna lose money.
I'm gonna lose money, but we're gonna walk through this fire together. Yeah. And it doesn't mean I'm a bad real estate investor. Just means that either we got unlucky that we missed something in our business plan, but I'm going to fine tune it. And for the next go around, we're gonna come back even stronger in smarter.
Yeah. Just to echo your thoughts there, I've had other people on the show that it not sure the exact word, but they've been through something where Either they were the investor and got communicated to like that. And then, like you said earlier in the show, that breeds loyalty because it's vulnerability. It's real. You're gonna fix it and change it. And so most likely what you're doing actually is securing their next investment potentially.
Yeah. Well, we had a we had an investment in 2000 and gate that went very south. And it was in Arizona. Arizona was a difficult world than it is today, and we couldn't get even though we saw we bought property Wolfe, the good price, we couldn't get people to the property that just weren't renters. And so in a hundred degree seats, I was out literally Bliring cars and, like, low end strip centers, looking to the renters.
And while I wasn't telling anybody what I was doing, somehow the big private equity firm that was invested with us caught wind of it. And even to this day, what is it? Almost 15 years later, Yeah. We still talk about see, we actually lost that property. It's one of 2 properties that I've lost at the hundreds Chaz we bought. It's one of 2 properties that we lost to foreclosure.
And we need to move a foreclosure, but they say, you know, Steve, everybody got humbled in 2008, but you were one of the few guys that did something that really stood out to us, and that's the kind of operating partners we wanna partners with. Right. What's the next deal you got? Let us know. Yep. Yeah. There's that there's that, that willingness to fight. Right? I'm not gonna lose. Right? They hate to lose. Like, I'm I'm gonna go all the way down to the very end.
Like, I'm gonna put on I'm gonna put on it's Arizona. I'm gonna put on my pin stripe Wolfe soup from New York City Right. 100 degrees heat and flyer cars hoping to get a, a renter. Exactly. Actually. Steve, you've been absolutely incredible. How can the listener find you? Whether they maybe wanna do a deal with you, or or maybe they just need to find out where your products are so they can buy some or they wanna pick your brain as How can they find you? You can certainly find me on LinkedIn.
That's the best place. Steven Ludwig, our companies are cosigned real estate advisors. Turnaround solutions, Tesoro Products, Valeda Capital. Love it. We'll have links for all Chaz in the sense. If you have a kid who wants to play Youth Hawks the PROS program. Go Hawks, baby. I love it. Look. Hey. There's there's a there's some high performing lacrosse people all across the country. Hopefully, they're listening here, and they can tune tune into you.
But, we wish you nothing but blessing to all of your businesses, your family, kiddos that we talked about earlier, I just cannot thank you enough for being willing to share your time and a precious wisdom with us. So, Steve, thank you for being here. This is great. Thank you so much. Have a wonderful year. Thank you for listening to Gathering the Kings today. I hope that you were able to pull out a few nuggets to go apply into your business right away.
More importantly, though, I hope that you're realizing that it takes more to be successful than just being by your self doing it all on your own, carrying the weight all by yourself. What I have realized, not only in my own journey from multiple businesses in multiple different industries and now interviewing over 2 or 300 other very successful 7, 8, and 9 figure business owners is that It's tough to do it alone. And so gathering the Kings exists to bring together successful entrepreneurs.
In fact, we are putting together 1 1000 kings, specifically who are grateful, but not done. We're intentionally assembling kings who fight tooth and nail for their business, family, and communities. And here's what we believe Chaz in the pursuit of excellence in those areas, that it ignites within us the responsibility to govern power and forge a lasting legacy.
So if that relates and and resonates with you, and you know that you need people around you, sharp, qualified other very successful business owners. I want you to go to gatheringthekings.com. You take a look at what we're doing and see if it makes sense for you to be part of our pursuit to 1000 kings. Talk soon.