SPEAKER_01 0:00

Oil would be at seven hundred dollars a barrel. It hasn't hit yet. It won't hit yet. If it does hit that high, then you know we're talking about weapons of mass destruction, as Warren Buffett says, because that will send off like a two quadrillion. I I mean these are numbers we can't even talk about. They just sound so far out there. Trump's not gonna let that happen, of course. I mean, we're armed to the teeth and we're gonna protect that. And you know, if you look at Trump displacing 300 years of imperial rule with the shipping insurance business, like Lloyd's of London, he just replaced that overnight. So, you know, if you're a shipper, Carson Jones, you know, nobody's gonna give you insurance but Uncle Sam. And he's also gonna give you an escort with the Navy through the strait. So it doesn't get any better than that.

SPEAKER_00 0:39

Recently you had uh a couple uh allocations go with the Sovereign Wealth Fund.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

Am I correct? Yeah, as you know, we've done nine. We're doing our tenth allocation into SpaceX quietly. And uh the Saudi Piff also invested into SpaceX through AI five billion dollars.

SPEAKER_00 0:54

Just think a lot of the multifamilies that were built. It's not just uh interest rate. Some of these markets are just they're throwing apartments up left and right, and the vacancy is like 15%, and they're still throwing them up, and you're like, what in the hell are you doing?

SPEAKER_01 1:07

These guys, you know, developers would develop, right? They don't care, they're very myoptic, right? They are it's like we well, you know, we gotta go in and do the deal. We gotta go in and the deal, we gotta do the deal, they gotta do another deal. They don't care about vacancy, they're looking to get their promotes, they're looking to get their fees, right? So it's kind of um asymmetric, but you know, only guys like you and I in the industry know how that works, but you know, we we stay away from you only want to work with the right people because today, as I said before, capital's a commodity. Dodge told us this, right? Elon Musk. A lot of people made an insane amount of money, we don't know how, in a very short period of time. However, you know, you don't always want those people to be your partners. I don't disagree with that. Having the right people with some alignment.

SPEAKER_02 1:47

Welcome to the Carson's Quarter.

SPEAKER_00 1:51

All right, I'm sitting here with Mr. Sal Bashimi. He is uh on the move, but done some allocations with SpaceX, Stripe, AI.0io, um, has done some class A industrial and uh has a lot going on. Uh-huh. Uh Sal, how you doing?

SPEAKER_01 2:09

I'm exhausted. It's a long story, Carson. I mean, you know damn well how it's going, but it's a pleasure and a privilege to be in your corner.

SPEAKER_00 2:16

Awesome, man. Um, so recently you had uh a couple uh allocations go with the Sovereign Wealth Fund. Am I correct?

SPEAKER_01 2:25

Yes, that is correct. Yes, we can talk about those now. And I think it's perfectly uh timely for your podcast. So we're a uh family office. It's my partner and I, Albert Union, and we take our own money and money on behalf of 13 going on 17 families with um now worth between 100 million and 1.3 billion. And the whole proxy behind that is that we're giving them access, right? They're giving them access to certain deals. About four years ago, we made an investment into a company, what we call private direct investments. We don't do any funds, we don't have any funds, private direct um STV into a company, and the name of the company at the time was called AI Scout. Now it's called AI.io. Last year they received a$50 million investment from the Saudi PIF, which is a sovereign wealth investment fund. There is no gold-plated honor better than having that in your portfolio. And since then, um, you know, the price that we got in an evaluation say it maybe like$30 million. Now it's between five and ten billion dollars. So you know, that's great. And then, you know, yeah, as you know, we've done nine, we're doing our tenth allocation into SpaceX quietly. And uh the Saudi Piff also invested into SpaceX through AI five billion dollars. So when you're dealing with these people, you know that they're not screwing around. I can tell you from personal experience, these guys spent a lot of money on due diligence, fine-toothed comb, dotting the I's crossing the T's, and we really like that. So we're gonna be um probably prepared for at least two X's this year, which is amazing. And then, you know, what we do with that is you know subject of this conversation here right now.

SPEAKER_00 3:57

Awesome. Uh AI.io, um, they did like was that the Scout where they did the video with the people um doing sports and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01 4:08

It was like a video program where people in the in the outskirts could uh Yeah, if you have a son or a daughter who is into any sort of sports right now, let's just say soccer, um, although they'll be doing the NFL soon, all you need is an iPhone and you record, they do three sets of three different types of kicks or moves or something like that, and you can be ranked uh in the world in the top quartile or bottom bottom quartile. And it there's also an impact level to this as well, because in impoverished cities in India, where they have one cell phone for maybe 500 people, there have been people who have been recruited to go to, you know, basically play professionally for Burnley Football Club.

SPEAKER_00 4:48

Wow. That's a pretty phenomenal story. Um so um SpaceX, and then you're uh doing commercial uh industrial real estate, class A, right?

SPEAKER_01 4:57

Yeah, we only like class A. We only work with the best in class. We do not do any multifamily. Uh our families are already rich, they're not looking to create wealth, and multifamily value added is how wealth is created. Our families, you know, are already wealthy. Um if they're not, they'll be wealthier after the exit um with AI.io and maybe SpaceX and probably Stripe later in the year. And so they're gonna put it into class A assets that are much more stabilized. And they like that because there's a safety of having tenants that are richer than you are when you pull the covers up over your head at night, and that's really helped a lot. And you can actually get outsized returns competitively speaking. I mean, the last deal we did, we had a um it it was reported to have a, and and we underwrote this, of course, a levered IRR of 33%, which is great. The last one we did was with a major Californian family um in Las Vegas, and that gave us a 27% IRR. So we don't have to take on tenant risk or what we call credit risk in order to get these returns, and that's really what a lot of these families want is to be able to put that money into real estate and never sell.

SPEAKER_00 6:05

And you're able to get those kind of returns by basically acquiring it at a very low basis, um, going in and getting the land cheap and all that, right?

SPEAKER_01 6:14

Well, I mean, our operating partner does that. They're amazing, right? So they've already bought the land a long time ago. They bought it at a low basis, and that's why we're able to do that. Because in real estate, it's all about the basis. Nobody really understood that until it was too late when interest rates went up. And if you remember in 2020, people were people with neck tattoos who could barely graduate high school were buying multifamily because money was free, right? All of a sudden they had a billionaire. Where are they today? Well, unfortunately, all that equity has evaporated. A lot of the uh lower, you know, I would say like a lot of the middle class investors who gravitate towards that stuff. A lot of that LP equity has been uh vaporized.

SPEAKER_00 6:55

Yeah. I I just think a lot of the multifamilies overbuilt. It's not just uh uh interest rates, some of these markets are just they're throwing apartments up left and right, and the vacancy is like 15%, and they're still throwing them up, and you're like, what in the hell are you doing? Lake Austin. Yeah, like Austin. Yeah. Well, Nashville's another one. I I was just at a multifamily conference, and they were like, Yeah, you know, vacancy is about 13%, and we're we're building another one.

SPEAKER_01 7:23

These guys, you know, developers would develop, right? They don't care. They only have they're only very they're very myoptic, right? They are it's like we well, you know, we gotta go in and do the deal. We gotta go into the deal, we gotta do the deal. They gotta do another deal. They don't care about vacancy, they're looking to get their promotes, they're looking to get their fees, right? So it's kind of um asymmetric, but you know, only guys like you and I in the industry know how that works, but uh, you know, we we stay away from that, of course.

SPEAKER_00 7:50

Awesome. Well, uh let's talk about your book a little bit. I like the way you think and a lot of that stuff that you reflect in your writings. Um kind of shows how you think under pressure during capital raises, how you think when you talk uh go into investments and stuff like that. But um you have uh the investment legacy uh book.

SPEAKER_01 8:11

I have it right here, and anyone who emails me and I'll tell you my email at the end of the podcast, will get an autographed copy of it sent free of charge. Free of charge.

SPEAKER_00 8:22

I I like your book, the other the there's another good book that Sal wrote. It's um Calling the Capital.

SPEAKER_01 8:28

Yes, yes, that's a little booklet that I wrote, which is amazing. That's all the tips, tricks to use in order to raise capital very quickly but ethically, incredibly.

SPEAKER_00 8:38

I like the uh one about are you allowed to talk about the jerseys? Yes, I'm allowed to talk about the jerseys, yes.

SPEAKER_01 8:44

Okay, I am now that now that this has been public information, we can say that. So I'll tell the story real quick. I was sitting in East Hampton four years ago on in August. And if anybody knows anything about the financial services industry, is that nothing moves in August? And if I'm calling any of my investors or families in August, they're gonna think something's on fire, right? Um and I had to come up with a way to be able to raise a million dollars in relatively short order. And there was a change of ownership for the Chelsea Football Club. It was Roman Debrandvich that sold to Todd Bowie. Todd Bowie was also an investor in this company called AI.io. And I called the CIO and I said to him, like, I'm pretty sure I can do this, but I got to get people's attention. I said, Can you call Todd and ask him if I can get 10 autograph jerseys by the entire Chelsea football club with the last name of each investor on the back of it for a minimum investment of, say,$250,000? And guess what happened? We were oversubscribed. Uh only one person clicked on the data room and they still invested. Yeah, you want to treat your investors the same. But I just knew at that point, like they were like, I don't care if I lose$100,000 or if$250,000 because they think that the price of the jersey is much more than it is the price of it. But really, what we were selling at that point was status. So people have homes that are, you know, they're from like let's just say Salt Lake City, Utah, or Newport Beach or areas kind of far removed, even Dallas for that matter. Um, and you go to someone's house and they see behind you is behind a um UV protected plate glass is a uh jersey, like you see at like high-end sports auctions with your last name on it, signed by the entire f ⁇ ing Chelsea football team. People are gonna ask you what that means because automatically, Carson, it makes you look sexier, smarter, more sophisticated, more connected than your peers. And that's how I was able to raise a million dollars in four days.

SPEAKER_00 10:36

I love that. I I had to tell that or ask you about that story, so it's a great one. So anyway, that kind of reflects into the mindset of like when you're in the middle of a deal and how do you think and shift and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01 10:49

So yeah, because you know it'll everybody it's amazing. I can tell who the novices are in the business. They'll just send me a deck, right? Like I there's so many of these like Miami yacht parties and parties, you know. Last week we just had eye connections, and somebody's gonna ask you, some bro is gonna ask you for the number, right? And then you like you might have had like maybe like three, you know, tequila sodas, and then you give the guy your number, and then you're getting inappropriate deck picks, you know, the next morning. And I'm like, what what's a deck pick? I didn't say what I I didn't say what you thought I said, I said deck pick, which is them sending a three-megabyte PDF for you to look at on your iPhone, and that's the one you just block them. You're like, I don't, you know, this is terrible. I still got guys asking me, you know what I mean? I'm like, dude, you are definitely on the spectrum. I can't work with you, it's a smart idea, but you know, it's just this is not something that uh is for us. And because really, when you make these investments, you're investing in people, and it's all about the access. We would not be in, we would not have done SpaceX nine times already, going on 10, Stripe four times, maybe going on five, um, and going into Neuralink and other names that you haven't heard of but are just as important. Um, they aren't really household names if we didn't have a reputation for execution. Um, because really finance comes down to one thing, and a lot of people don't understand this. It's about trust at the end of the day. Finance is about trust.

SPEAKER_00 12:10

Yeah. So the way you get those deals is they trust that you'll be able to come through with the investor capital and all that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:17

You'll be able to close and you'll be active and you'll communicate. I always over-communicate. You know, there's someone that we worked with, a very prominent Southern California family office that you know very well. Um, and he's become my bestie, even though I've known him for nine years. Um, we're always working together hand in hand. He's probably the best um, you know, person I've worked with. He's a strategic advisor to Bravin Partners, our family office. Um some point that might elevate, but um, just working with that guy is just an absolute joy. But that doesn't necessarily mean that I need to uh you know sit on my coattails. I need to really follow up and and and sh and come through um for things. And you know, these deals are never easy. We don't like funds. Funds are a four-liver word for family offices. Um, a lot of these funds people are in today, they can't get out, or they've locked up redemptions or things like that. So we make private direct investments. So the structure is amazing, but that also means we have to go out there and call the capital. So what happens is that Albert and I basically put money into a hat or own money, and then we pass it around. And that's how it is. Now, sometimes it passes around, and sometimes somebody puts money in, or sometimes you know they don't, but that's fine. But there's always going to be those idiosyncrasies where it and we we ran into this with one of our CEOs, who's a very, very, very um prominent family where he wanted to invest in a real estate deal, but the problem is that his brother, who he hasn't talked to in the trust dated 1968, um, did not want to do the deal. So, you know, there's all sorts of f family dynamics that come into this, although that's changed since then, uh, since he recently sold Colgaard uh to Abbott for um the highest price paid ever for a diagnostics company, which is$23 billion. He's got his own money now. So, you know, he's got his own, you know, he doesn't have to worry about he was he wanted to do it in the trust, but now, you know, he's gonna be doing it with his own things. And, you know, it's those relationships that you build with the trust. People, you you you have to, you know, people are always gonna be looking at you, um, and I'm telling you this to your viewers because I'm imagining some of them really want to raise capital, but you've got to treat these people as if you're courting them for marriage because they're courting you for marriage. This is a long-term relationship, it's illiquid. Um, you got to make sure they understand what a liquid it means that they're never gonna get out unless there's an exit or or refinancing in real estate, and they need to really understand that. So you only want to work with the right people because today, as I said before, Carson, capital's a commodity. Dodge told us this, right? Elon Musk. A lot of people made an insane amount of money. We don't know how in a very short period of time. Um, a lot of Ferrari and Lamborghini SUV sales, right? However, you know, you don't always want those people to be your partners.

SPEAKER_00 14:53

I don't disagree with that. Having the right people with some alignment. Um that's interesting stuff. Um, you know, you talk a lot about trust, and I think a lot of it is in is there's a short attention span, and I think right when people log in online, they see AI videos, so they're instantly trained to say that's fake, and they're I don't know, there's something about that, but knowing them in person and growing strong relationships over time, you know, long periods of time and delivering on what you do and communicating and all that's a huge deal.

SPEAKER_01 15:26

It's a skill set, it's a skill set. And the problem is that the people right now who are coders who are graduated of computer sciences, they don't know anything. They they don't, you know, they just know that they were told to sit behind a computer. They don't know anything about communicating with people, talking with people, following up with people. Uh and I'm not saying that this is mostly uh people who are developers, what I'm just saying is that this is a different skill set that to many is very foreign. It's like almost asking, you know, it it's it's uh it's like bringing someone to the gym for the first time and they've they've never used the gym, right? You're exercising muscles that you never thought were there, but that's really where the real um you know the real dig is, especially with venture. Like if you can't communicate your deal, nobody's gonna trust you really to uh execute. If you can't communicate to your investors, how are you gonna communicate to counterparties? How are you gonna communicate when things go sideways? What happens? And you know, I'm very frank as a New Yorker, I'll tell you the good, bad, the ugly. I don't care how you feel about it, but you're gonna hear about it, you know. And we've we've had some ugliness, you know, I've had to step in and sort of be like the fall guy for a very prominent family in New York. That was many, that was, geez, almost 10 years ago now. But looking back at it, if I hadn't done that and made the decisions to continue to build the relationship, there are certain things if you look back, I might not have been able to get into. Does that make sense? And there's even like parties in Palm Beach, you know, where I met investors, you know, that was an invitation from this one guy who helped them and who I helped who is very, very gracious. He's like, You gotta meet my friend Sal. He's coming to Miami Beach, let's meet at the seafood bar, you know, at the uh breakers, and and that's really what it looks like because relationships and integrity um compound over time, if that makes sense. It compounds. But if you have poor character, that's gonna show, right? Poor character or character in general is like pregnancy. You can only hide it for so long.

SPEAKER_00 17:18

You know, one thing I do like about you is you speak your mind, you might not always like what Sal has to say, and he might shoot you down and hurt your feelings, but you know, if you don't like a deal, you're picky about what you get into. You're like, now, you know, for whatever reason, you'll tell people. And I think that builds trust too. You're not some guy that's out fishing into every deal that you can get into and throw clients into any deal left and right. You're very selective about the deals and the people that you get in bed with.

SPEAKER_01 17:46

And you've seen this first hand, right? And there'll be other opportunities where you'll be out to Miami and see this pretty soon with the same people we were talking about. But it comes, you know, it's really like I think a lot of people it comes down to your agency and your access, right? If you don't have a good reputation, you're gonna be seeing all sorts of consumer discretionary crap that's similar to Shark Tank, which could be knocked off by a kid in the garage or someone in China. Yeah, absolutely. Anyone who goes crowdsourcing, crowd has never been synonymous with the word smart, right?

SPEAKER_00 18:20

Well, yeah. I don't know, you see things and you're like online and you're like as soon as certain people start pitching it, you're like, run.

SPEAKER_01 18:28

Yeah, yeah, I run. Oh my god. Ty Lopez is pitching this, oh my god, Rich Dad's pitching silver. Of course, he's making a commission. Of course he's gonna sell something, you know, liquid, right? So I mean, I get it, you know, and I don't blame those guys. You know, they gotta make ends too as well. But I'm not gonna sell myself out to do that because we put our own capital into it. And if I have, and you've met some of our families, Carson. And I would rather streak naked than uh down Brickle Avenue in Miami than to tell these people I made a mistake that was so glaringly obvious that you know I should not have done it. But we have our own, you know, we have two rules when we go into venture, what that looks like. And that number one, no first-time operators. We're not, you know, we're not providing uh tuition for you. Uh we're not Shark Tank, you're not gonna have Mr. Wonderful looking over your shoulder. Although those guys have lost a tremendous amount of money over the years, but you know, they've built the brand, I guess. And number two, I want them led by in-kind family offices. I don't I don't want a uh you know, a Palo Alto Sandhill Road, as we say, venture firm on the couch table because I know that they have no alignment of interest with me, my family office, or any other family offices in there.

SPEAKER_00 19:35

Yeah. You can tell being around you and uh the families that you deal with that they really trust you. You know, they they they look up to you, you know, they trust your judgment. You seem to be really good friends with them. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:47

I mean, you got to treat these people. The family office is family, right? I mean, I've known a lot of these people uh since leaving Goldman. Albert's works with these guys and girls, I mean, uh respectively, since he was 22 working at the Rockefeller family office. So, you know, that's why we came together. Technology and life sciences, and of course, I'm just the the real estate guy. Awesome.

SPEAKER_00 20:07

So uh do you have an event coming up in Miami? We do.

SPEAKER_01 20:11

We have uh so what we did recently, and um for anyone who's interested and they want to see that, they can email it. But we had a a meeting with some of our best investors, one of your besties from LA, who you like, John. Um and uh you'll be seeing him again. But we do have an event coming up at the end of May. I do um, you know, we we put something together and I've been refining it over the over the past few years, even though we've been kind of busy, but it's really a mess. I would say it's a I hate to say it, but it's a mastermind. And the way people participate in it is, and there's everybody out there who's raising capital. So we always meet with my investors. We we're privileged to have a law firm that gives us free space. We also have another building that we were just using last Friday over in the Bank of America building because we sort of outgrew that. But everybody from Palm Beach, Miami, Chicago, and New York, um, who are already down because of the iConnections conference that was going on, uh, we decided to invite. Um, and then other investors, and the model that we're gonna use from that is that if you want to come into the room, then you're gonna pay a hefty price, but you get to meet world-class people. Does that make sense? So you either invest or you write a check. Either way. And that's the model that we're gonna use going forward. And we're gonna have our next meeting uh towards the end of May. Um, not coincidentally, but it happens to be when everything sort of ends, and that happens to be what we call Miami Swim Week or Bikini Basel. So I'm sure, you know, I would love to see you there, Carson. I know you'll be there. Right? Yeah. No, our conferences are a family show. It's not like this happened, but you know, afterwards, you know, there's all sorts of events that go on. And we like to put on events that correlate to other what we call high trafficked events. For example, every uh right before right at the first Monday, two the actually the first Tuesday after Thanksgiving, we have our LP appreciation dinner for uh for our investors during art bossel. So anybody who's coming into town from New York, Chicago, California, it gives them an excuse to come. We're gonna capture all of them. I want their attention when they're in the room. Interactivity is a new currency. So, you know, Carson's a huge investor in one of our deals, say. Um, and you know, he he's gonna be down there and he gets to rub elbows with other people and see things, and you know, that's really how it works. But everybody has to have skin in the game, right? And that's really what it is, because the moment you start opening this up to people who can't afford to be there or look like they can't, you know, they they they don't belong there or they didn't pay to be there, then you lose the integrity of their relationships.

SPEAKER_00 22:45

Absolutely. Is John gonna be there? Yes, he will. He's a celebrity. He is he's my bestie. He should have been a movie star or something. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 22:55

There's something about he's just Well, his great, he's third generation real estate, but the generation before that was Hollywood. Oh, really? Yeah, oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:03

Oh, well, he got on a call and I thought he'd just break right into real estate and he just starts talking about other stuff, and he was hilarious.

SPEAKER_01 23:10

But that's why people like him, right? You see, these other guys are like monotone nerds, like we're gonna give you a 17 IRR, you know, unlevered. I'm like, sure.

unknown 23:20

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 23:20

That's what I was you know I was expecting that. I was like, he's gonna break into the spreadsheets and then he just starts talking like he's like on some comedy show.

SPEAKER_01 23:28

Oh, he roasted Albert and I for like five minutes. It felt like 15 minutes. I'll send you the video of uh of uh Darry Hart Appreciation there called Albert Asian Brad Pitt, and we made fun of some smaller lower tier banks. It's amazing. But we're I'll send it to you, not to everybody else. It was a good time. It was a good you should have been there, Carson. You should have been there uh next year, though, for certain. But this will happen in May again, too. And we like it because we like fostering that kind of interactivity with our families, and people want to work around people who are fun, right? If you look at like on the most extreme example, can you hear me, Carson? Am I right?

SPEAKER_00 24:09

Yeah, you're not out there for a minute. I just texted you and said you tried to. I got it.

SPEAKER_01 24:13

All right, I'm here now. But if you look at it, people want to do business who they feel comfortable with. And if, you know, I I I learned about this in 2000, which is interesting, and I've always been a student of marketing, even though I was an investment banker at Goldman Sachs, because you have to continually learn salesmanship and how to persuade people and influence people. And one of the things that this really stuck out to me during the campaign in 2000 between Bush and John Kerry, or George W. Bush and John Kerry, was people felt much more amicable and liked George W. better than John Kerry. And the reason is is like, who would you rather have to go out to dinner with? George W. who I've seen in Utah and he is funny, he is really funny, or stiff John Kerry and his wife that has a lisp or starts smacking her lips all the time. And that is really the whole point of it, is that people only want to do business that they can stand to be around with. And if you are not someone who is entertaining, doesn't have any charisma, nobody wants to hang out with you. There's too many fidget spinners I know who are texting me their business plan, you know, what do I do? I don't want to hang out with this guy. I'm sure it's a great idea, but I don't want to work with them for the next five, 10 years.

SPEAKER_00 25:26

Yeah, I think uh it's a rare quality too to have like the you know, a little bit of fun, but also be disciplined at the same time. Because most like people in the business world, if they have fun, it gets taken way too far.

SPEAKER_01 25:39

Well, yes, and I I see this all the time, and it's like usually married mortgage brokers or people in real estate, and they're like they come down to these conferences with a head of steam, right? I'm trying to get their attention, they're trying to get attention from other people. You know what I'm talking about? So, you know, these guys, I'm just like, all right, it's just you know, it's it's kind of a waste of time. You know, I'm not married, I'm single, so I'm not easily distracted, like these guys are. Yeah, but you're right. I mean, these guys, uh, it's just yeah, it's like squirrel, it's like, you know, bikini.

SPEAKER_00 26:12

You know, it's like you've never been to Miami before.

SPEAKER_01 26:16

I've never been to Miami. I'm like, dude, can you like put it together for like 10 minutes so I can find out what you do? Can you just keep it together forever? Like just 10 minutes. That's all I want. Ten minutes, have your vodka. I don't care. Just give me 10 minutes, and then I'll introduce you to this girl. Okay, that's fine. But from town, let's get some business done here. Let's bump the phones, you know, all that stuff, so that I can follow up with you, give you a copy of my book, and add you, or as I say, onboard it to our family office so you can see everything that we do.

SPEAKER_00 26:44

That's pretty funny, man.

SPEAKER_01 26:46

Oh, I got plenty of stories. I mean, every the most stressful day for Albert and I is February 13th.

SPEAKER_00 26:52

What the day before Valentine's? Yeah. That's pretty funny. Why? I don't know. I'm February 13th? Uh-huh. It's the most stressful day for you and Albert. You tell me.

SPEAKER_01 27:07

Because everybody wants to buy flowers for their girlfriend and use our credit card. That's trust. That's trust. Okay. Yeah. That's trust. People who have seven figures with me, they trust you. You know, all of a sudden you become like Father Guido, you know, Sarducci. Um, and you know, they're like, can you call and and all these people, they'll be like, and and and you know, these merchants, these flower merchants in Miami are smart. They're like minimum$500. I'm like, okay. And I just belled back to them, you know. Um, but it's just, you know, that's kind of like we know we're gonna get hit with at least five guys that are like in Europe or in New York, be like, can you buy my girlfriend, you know, flowers, you know.

SPEAKER_00 27:48

That's pretty funny. See, I was kind of like a little like, what why is he what's he getting at? So you have clients that actually have you do that. You know each other that well. That's all that's incredible.

SPEAKER_01 27:57

So it doesn't show up on their credit card, it shows up on our credit card.

SPEAKER_00 28:01

Oh, oh, okay. I gotcha. Gotcha. I I got it. There we go. You got it? You're picking up what I'm putting down?

SPEAKER_01 28:07

Yeah, yeah, that's crazy. Yeah, they can buy their own flowers. Why do they need Sal? Yeah. Off balance sheet, that's what they need. Off balance sheet support. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 28:15

It took me a minute on that. That's not really my world right there, so anyway. Yeah, but it's somebody's, a lot of people, so anyway.

SPEAKER_01 28:25

But that's what we call, you know, being a coverage banker. You know, you're always on top. There's a video from a guy, I didn't work for him, but uh, it has like over two million views, and it says, Are you destined to deal? And it was a VP, Jim Donovan at Goldman Sachs put it together, and is he's in a college auditorium at the University of Virginia, and it's probably one of the more prolific discussions because you have to be of service to people. You know, people, you need a lot of people were like, Oh, I'm not gonna buy flowers or anything like that. The problem is the next time I go around asking for a three million dollar check for, let's say, a Dallas deal with our friend John, he's not gonna say no. All right. If I say no and I'd be like, no, I can't, he's not gonna like it very much. But if I go out of my way and I say it's gonna be 500, you know, here's the invoice for, you know, whatever, management fees, or we call it, uh, then, you know, fine. You know, that's just the way the game is played, whether, you know, you want to play it or not. But I think a lot of people have to understand that you need to be somewhat of a people person in this business. Nobody gets far in life without some sort of salesmanship or being a people person. I don't care if you're Larry Ellison, I don't care if you're Donald Trump, I don't care who you are. Today we're in the name, we're in the, you know, and and and Elon Musk is gonna actually probably solidify this and formalize this with X money and all of this, where your activity and your brand on X is gonna give you certain benefits that were no longer afforded to people, you know, probably you know, generations before us. Yeah. Are you on X? I am. I'm getting into it. You know, I always thought before uh Elon bought it, it was like a you know a knife fight, right? Everybody arguing politics and stuff. But there's some interesting things on there. I like going down the rabbit hole at night, you know, with certain things as it relates to like geopolitics. You know, I'm very into like, you know, the whole I've been calling you, if the street of Ramu is ever closed, and I wrote a tweet on this yesterday, oil would be at$700 a barrel. It hasn't hit yet, it won't hit yet. Um, if it does hit that high, then you know, we're talking about weapons of mass discretion because destruction, as Warren Buffett says, because that will send off like a two quadrillion, I I mean, these are numbers we can't even talk about. They just sound so far out there. Um, you know, explosion and derivatives. Trump's not gonna let that happen, of course. I mean, we're armed to the teeth and we're gonna protect that. And, you know, if you look at Trump displacing 300 years of imperial rule with the uh shipping um insurance business, like Lloyd's of London, he just replaced that overnight. So, you know, if you're a shipper, Carson Jones, you know, you're a big, you know, big Greek shipper, and uh, you know, you got like five, you know, tankers, you nobody's gonna give you insurance but Uncle Sam. And he's also gonna give you an escort with the Navy through the strait. So it doesn't get any better than that.

SPEAKER_00 31:17

Yeah, that's interesting stuff. Yeah, I just um I've gotten on X and uh Facebook, but I'm not real big on there. I'm not that active, you know.

SPEAKER_01 31:25

I'm not that active either, but I think it's something that you and I both need to pay attention to as time goes on.

SPEAKER_00 31:31

Yeah, it it's another avenue to communicate because I've talked to numerous people that have built huge brands on there. You know, I think you're missing 30% of your audience if you're not on there. Um so anyway, I've had investors reach out on Facebook and I've only been on there a couple months, you know.

SPEAKER_01 31:50

You should keep it on Facebook. Facebook is is uh it's safer, it's more I wouldn't say family oriented, but nobody goes on there for business, really, you know, and LinkedIn is just an entirely different thing in and of itself. But there's a lot of people you'll find on Facebook and be like, hey Carson, I I like what you're doing. Can we talk more? And then you give them a copy of your book, right?

SPEAKER_00 32:10

Yeah. Absolutely. See how that works, Carson? Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I was on Facebook, had a lot of uh personal friends and on there, and I just deleted that account. So like my I deleted it years ago. Did it and I was like, I felt like I was missing something, so I set up another one, you know. It's like in the last six months.

SPEAKER_01 32:31

So and it's to me, hey, you just don't know. I mean, everybody has different proclivities or biases. You know, I I post a lot of LinkedIn because professionally people are, you know, even before I go to a party that I pay two hundred dollars a ticket for, I have to put my LinkedIn profile on it, right? So you gotta maintain that. But I also just copy and paste the same crap from LinkedIn over to Facebook. Yeah. And you know, it it's you know, and then because you're reaching a different audience there. So you gotta look at it as it's just another avenue to get to where you want to be. Yeah. Um anything else you want to share? I just am a huge fan of Carson Jones. I can't wait to see you in May. Um you're probably gonna be in Dallas with a drone crew for our real estate deal we did with our friend John at some point in April. So I would look forward to maybe breaking bread with you again.

SPEAKER_00 33:21

Um, I'm in Tennessee, man. You're in Tennessee.

SPEAKER_01 33:24

All right, well, scrap that. All right, all right, all right. Well, all right, never mind. Then I'm not gonna go. I'll just hire someone to take drone photos. It's not gonna be fun anymore, right? You know, you can find someone on Craigslist to, you know,$500 to do drone video in Melissa, Texas, right?

SPEAKER_00 33:39

That'd be go.

SPEAKER_01 33:43

Right? I mean, that's really what it is. But I think, you know, Carson, you're doing a great job. I love what you're doing here. I want to support you a hundred thousand percent. I expect to see you in May for bikini week in Miami, but most importantly, my conference, right? I mean, business first. Okay. Business first. All right, good.

SPEAKER_00 34:02

Absolutely. Uh, Sal, what's a good way for uh people to reach out to you?

SPEAKER_01 34:07

People who want a free autographed book on me, and I'll pay for the postage. Uh, we'll send an email to Sal at investinglegacy.com. You get a copy of this book, Sal at investinglegacy.com, and it talks about really my story of getting the Goldman Sachs and then building, you know, basically running my own balance sheet for the past 20 years since leaving them, going into institution, you know, starting my first institutional hedge fund at 29. It was really just a, you know, we were buying uh you know defaulted loans from Bear Stearns, to be honest with you, and then uh doing it again, and then how we got to where we are today with venture and the successes we've had in the exits and the access. So I would um anyone who is really interested in investing and seeing how like the point zero zero one percent invest and they're willing to shut off CNBC for a little bit, um, are gonna learn a whole hell of a lot more than you would ever learn uh from any Susie Orman uh show. Or Kramer. Or Kramer. I don't know why he's not dead with you know on the bottom of the Hudson wearing cement shoes. Like I talked to our friend John about this, and it's interesting because he just makes you know day trading like WWF, right?

SPEAKER_00 35:15

So Yeah. Yeah he's always been a character. Yeah. So we appreciate you coming on, and I look forward to seeing you soon and uh all that. You know, stand up guy and got a lot, a lot going on. So congratulations with everything you've been doing.

SPEAKER_01 35:30

And free copy for Carson's, you know, corner people. All right, yep. Sounds good, Ruby. I appreciate you. Thank you. Bye. Yep, thank you, sir.