Episode 004:
Experience Matters with Eric Newton: From Gridiron to Real Estate: Chad Carson’s Journey 004

Hello everyone. This is Experience Matters with Eric Newton. I’m Eric Newton and today we’re fortunate enough to have Chad Carson with us on the podcast. We really appreciate you being here today, Chad. My pleasure. I know you’re a busy man and you have a lot going on. You have your podcast and so I feel very fortunate to get a piece of your time here today. Yeah, I’m looking forward to it. It’s a lot of fun. Yeah. So…

Well, let’s just dive right in. I know, like I tell everyone, I want to be respectful of everyone’s time. So, I, I know, you know, I, I, I admire our Meyer, the heck out of you. You’re, you’re like, like, I always tell people like when I, when I grew up on and be like, Chad Carson, it’s the other way around. Can’t happen. It’s like, you know, you, you seem to have things figured out. and so, no, I admire, you know,

we’ve gotten to be good friends over the years and appreciate that friendship. And I’m wise. You’re also a client of ours and appreciate that as well. And you’ve taught me a lot over the years. You may not realize it, but I’ve learned a lot from you over the years. So appreciate that as well. Thank you. And I think your podcast is really cool. And you gave me your book and I’ve read part of it.

I’m not finished with it yet, but I mean, you’re, it’s very insightful and, you’re, you’re borderline real estate genius in my book. Man, you’re setting the bar really high. The people listening to this is going to be like let down after this. Yeah. So, and you have a, you have a pretty impressive resume. You, you, I mean, I know you’re from Georgia and then you came Clemson and you played football here. And, I don’t, you know, I know a lot of people know that, but a lot of people may not know that.

And I go back and I look, I went back cause I was just making sure I remembered like a lot of the, your stats. And I went back and I was looking at some pictures of you when you played football and your neck was like, you know, this big and you know, like you’re big. That’s one of my party tricks is I pull out my phone and show a football picture with me with like the goatee and they’re like, that’s not you. Yeah. It’s like, but really that can’t be. I’m like, yeah, that’s kind of a play. That was a theater act I did back in the day. I pretended to be a middle linebacker. Well, you, what are you six four? Six three, six three, six three. What would you weigh then? I was, I was undersized for a middle linebacker. I was like 230, 225, but I, I got up to 235 and by the end of the season, I’d be 225 just cause I had a hard time keeping on all the way. Yes. But yeah. So 225 to 235. And they said I was undersized and a little too slow to be a middle linebacker. So I don’t know what I had, but I played, I did, I was able to make it work. Yeah. Well, you were a beast out there. I remember watching you and,

 

I played middle linebacker in high school, but I didn’t have the size that you have that you had. So I heard about some of those Daniel high school hits at middle linebacker. The rumors got out. I love the hit, but I just, well, it wasn’t big enough. That’s why my neck hurts now though. But, no, I think it was Kyle young said one time that, sure. They were together. he said that one of the hardest hits he ever took was from you.

 

So we went after it and practice. Yeah. Yeah. Cause he was center. I was middle linebacker. So it was just, we had to hit heads a lot. We’re all like, Kyle, get out of my way. He’s like all American center and like, she’s always in the way. Yeah. Yeah. He was, he was a beast too, but did you like to hit? I mean, was that your favorite part of being middle linebacker? I mean, what, what did you like? I, that was the part that I liked, you know, obviously didn’t get to play the level that you did, but I loved, I was just, I loved the collision part of it.

 

Yeah. I was actually an offensive player in high school. Most of my high school. So one of the reasons I didn’t, I got recruited by Clemson. They were the first division one a offer. I got a Naval Academy actually was my first. and then, but I was kind of like borderline one AA one a, I think one of the reasons was I shouldn’t have a lot of tape at linebacker. Cause I played running back. I was a, I had a lot of touchdowns and running back, but I wasn’t a natural light fullback size, you know, fullbacks actually, they want you to be a little shorter, shorter, you know, under the blocks. So I was.

 

Reggie Herring recruited me as a linebacker and he’s like, I think you can do this. I think you can be a, you know, he’s kind of, he reminded me, he’s like, took a chance on you. Well, you know, come on, you know, scream at me and yell at me. but I did love, I evolved and learned to love it. Like the defense is a lot of fun compared to offense because it’s more intuitive and there’s less, there’s definitely a lot of thinking you have to set up before the play. As you know, you have to, it’s like, I always tell people, football is like a chess match, but it’s like in motion. It’s like a real life split second chess match where you have.

 

you know, a hundred different permutations of what the lineup could look like. And as a linebacker, if you can, a defensive player, if you can remember all of those, a lot of offensive coordinators have tendencies. So my favorite offensive coordinator to play against was Ralph Frijan. I don’t know if you remember him from Maryland and Georgia Tech. He was the offensive coordinator at Georgia Tech in 91, when they won the national championship. He was an amazing offensive coordinator. But one of the things he did was just have a ton of different setting setups and plays.

 

And I would study his film by the third or fourth year. I was like, I know, like if I know what he’s going to do, I know what he’s going to do. And the coach couldn’t translate that to all the players, but I studied film a ton. And so the running back was inched up just like a quarter of a foot. And if he was leaning to the left a little bit, I was like, screen, he’s going to, he’s running a screen right there. Or if they did another, the running backs a little wider, okay. He’s going to do a hit a route out to the outside. So you could pick up these things and that would give you.

 

like a one second advantage, which is huge. I would be able to beat the linemen to the, to the whole. So that was kind of the fun. That was the most fun for me was the, the mental chess game combined with just the camaraderie of teammates. I’ve, I’ve compared it. I’m not a military member. I’ve never been in the military, but I feel like it’s kind of got that tribal team, you know, in the trenches kind of feeling. So the combination of that, which is intensity with your teammates practicing all year, the game was kind of like icing on the cake, like, you know, the practice and the.

 

being in the, you know, underneath the Lake Hart wool and the humidity all summer long. And I always joke with my wife when we first met, I would say, let’s go out and run at 1 30 in the afternoon in July. She’s like, you can’t survive 1 30 in the afternoon and Clem said, yeah, it’s actually the best time to run. It’s easy. It’s easiest to breathe. Like I somehow brains brainwash myself to take that from all the workouts. Anyway, I loved all that. I love the kind of the grind, the teammates, the chess match. And then it was also, you know, kind of fun that.

 

80 ,000, 85 ,000 people come watch a game and got to be part of that. So it was, it was an amazing experience for sure. So I didn’t realize that you were running back. So what was your 40 time? I mean, like a four or five, five in high school when I was, wow. And then by the time I got to more weight on four, seven, somewhere in there, four, seven, five. Yeah. So you could move. Yeah. I could, I could, I could outrun people in high school and then you start building up weight, had a couple of hamstring injuries, but you know, it’s, it was.

 

you know, the level, the level of speed gets better and better. I’m just amazed by some of the like defensive ends and defensive line tackles who run, you know, this incredible times. They can dunk a ball. I mean, the athleticism of big people is what is underestimated in the football game. Like if I think if you do this mental experiment, if you took like a, 1920s football player, they’d be tough nails, but if you put them in a game, like a lineman,

 

with a 2024 defensive end who is 280 pounds running a four, six 40. You can jump 40 inches. Like it’s not, it’s a, it’s a whole nother game. Like they might be tougher. I would probably give them that. Right. Right. But it’s just the, the physics, just the pure physics of it is unbelievable. Yeah. It’s just really, really amazing. What’s the human body has kind of evolved to in terms of performance. Yeah. Cause you take a, you know, a five, eight, five, nine guy that’s good athlete, you know,

 

might weigh 180 pounds and then can run a, can run a, you know, four or five 40. And then you got a six foot two, six foot three, 225 can run the same like super strong. I mean, that’s, it’s just the physics of it. Yep. Then you got 320 pound people. Yeah. We had Tyler Davison here on one of our podcasts. And I mean, he’s over 300 pounds running a five over, you know, like a five flat 40.

 

You know, that’s crazy. And those linemen is not only the 40 is the first five yards. Like sometimes the alignment like that’ll be just as fast. Those first three steps as the running back will. So it’s like, that’s what’s huge football. Right. Cause the trenches happen two or three yard increments. And so there’s the big defensive lineman like Tyler Davis. They’re incredible. They’re there. If I were an NFL or a college coach, the defensive tackles would be my first priority quarterback, maybe quarterbacks, probably first, second priority would be.

 

defensive tackles. Cause if you look at Alabama and their best Clemson and their best, we’ve had really, really good D line. Yeah, you’re right. That’s, I didn’t really think about that, but that’s, that’s true. Yeah. So you talked about, you know, working out back when you were a player and, and the facilities then were very, very different than they are now. Have you had an opportunity to, I mean, obviously you’ve been over there to visit the facilities and do you get to go back much?

 

I could, I probably could do it more. My buddy, Nick Eason, one of my good friends that I played with, he came in the same time as I did as a defensive line coach now. And, and I’ve, over the years I’ve had different, Jeff Scott was my roommate for a summer in college. And so I know him and Tony Elliott, I played with him when he was here. So yeah, it’s all kind of come full circle, but yeah, going back, it’s just incredible. It’s, it’s just gratifying too. It’s like, it’s fun. We were, when I, I tell the story when I was getting recruited, we were in McFadden, all of our locker rooms.

 

And I thought it was nice. I was like, wow, this is a lot nicer than high school. And they had this little video game room off the side of the training room. And during your recruiting, they just try to like, you know, do things that are cool for a high school student. I’m wearing there playing video games and, and they’re like, yeah, you can play as many video games as you want. There’s, you don’t even put a quarter in, just come in here all the time, play these video games. And that was just one of the little cool things about the visit. And I got to Clemson and they’d taken the video game out and they put expanded the training room. I was like, where, what happened to the video games?

 

Yeah. Now they got like a whole studio and you can hit golf balls under the virtual screen and you got, you know, bowling alley. And so it’s, it’s come a long way. Yeah. I got to visit the facilities while back and I was amazed. I mean, the, everything they have in there is just super cool. And I mean, what a great recruiting tool. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. so what about the first time you ran down the hill? What was that like?

 

Another funny story. My friend, Matt Shell, you know, I don’t know if you. All these connections like here. Yeah. You need to, you need to remind Matt Shell of this one because he wouldn’t brag on this story, but we were, we were the very first game we’re playing against Furman and Matt was a redshirt. So he was not playing this freshman year and we all were excited. We’re going to run down the hill. We all ran down the hill. Like it’s just this, you know, you for it moment, 15 seconds. And we got to the sidelines and Matt had like grass stains all over the front of his Jersey.

 

He’s not going to, he’s a quarterback who’s, you know, retro. He’s not even playing like Matt, what happened? And he had just busted it going down the hill, hit the ramp, the base first down the hill. Yeah. There’s this really, people know the Hill. There’s this flat part that kind of, I didn’t even go flat. It kind of goes back up. If you’re not ready for him, you’ll run right out of your shoes. And so, but once you get experienced, like by my senior year, you kind of, you kind of time it and you can take a, you can jump from over the Hill to the over the flat spot and kind of land.

 

And so it’s kind of cool. Like if you get, I’ve seen pictures of that where you have somebody jumping up and like you’re jumping above the crowd and it looks like you’re a lot higher than you are, but yeah, it’s incredible. It’s one of the coolest experiences to have the whole stadium stand up. And it’s just this energy. And I can remember in particular, my sophomore year, it was the first year we had the Bowden bowl. And I don’t know if you were at that game, but it was Tommy Bowden, our coach versus Bobby Bowden and father versus son that had never happened.

 

It was the still, I think the biggest crowd that’s ever watched a game there. I think they overfilled it. Probably it was 86 ,000 maybe, or it was, it was the most electric atmosphere I’ve ever seen. I mean, you could feel it like in the air. And so running into the stadium at that game and Chris Winkie is the quarterback on the other side, worked on the running back, Peter or Peter work, the wide receiver. I mean, it was really fun to be able to, to play in that game. Would you say that was your, your favorite game day experience?

 

Yeah. I mean, all the game that there were games that went better. We lost that game. We were up 14 to three at halftime and ended up losing that game. But we showed that we were kind of in the same league with Florida state, which had not happened before that. and then it was a lot of fun moments. Honestly, those, some of my memorable moments were the end of games that we beat South Carolina my senior year. And that was kind of cool. And the field goal at the end of the game. Wait, who was it? Charlie? no, it was, what about Woodrow Dancer?

 

would would Yeah, what this is the catch where Rod Gardner. Yes, that was junior year, junior year we won. So Rod Gardner made a catch which South Carolina fans said he pushed off which we know didn’t happen. But he made the catch and then we kicked the field goal Aaron hunt kicked the field goal at the very end to win the game. So that was that was pretty cool. But that was cool. But honestly, going back to my reason I love football, like those are still the icing on the cake. Like you spent 99 .9 % of your time in the weight room with your teammates doing other stuff. And so I

 

I think I remember more of that. Coach Batson, Joey Batson, the weight coach, just mornings spent with him flipping tires. And, you know, it’s just going back into business world now and when we’re having kids and what do you want to convey to your kids? It’s like those moments that I think are more important. Like a lot of people see the limelights, they see the game days and they think, you can get hyped up for a game, but you can’t ever ride. You only rise the level of your preparation and the work you’ve put in.

 

the other 364 days of the year. And so I find that like, to me, that’s the most fun part about business. That’s the most fun part about podcasting, the most fun part about football. And maybe it’s just a weird mental thing I have. But like that, just the grind, like I love it when nobody else is in the weight room, and I’m in there working out. I’m like, here I am. This is like me, I’m working out or here I am running wind sprints after everybody else. And that’s like me. That’s how I do this. And then you show up in a game and they’re like, well, how did you do that? Like, you just

 

You weren’t, you didn’t want to do that other stuff. So I just found there’s still so much opportunity. This is, this is what, why I want my, I don’t know if my kids get this or not, but this is the kind of thing I’d like to convey to them is that there’s a enormous amount of opportunity out there and whatever field you want to go into. My kids are into music, violin, theater, whatever you want to do, but just like do it well. I do, you have the capacity to do it. Don’t, don’t kind of be apathetic and, you know, just go, go through the motions like that’s, that’s not what we’re made for. Like we’re, we’re made to be.

 

you know, do amazing things. And so I don’t care if you’re, you know, if you’re knitting or if you’re, you know, being a parent or, you know, it doesn’t matter what you’re doing, just do it well. And that’s, that’s, that was the cool part about football to me is that it kind of tested your limits to see what you could do. And, and you could, the fact that you could do it on a big stage is pretty cool too. Well, you know, I think part of the reason why we’ve always gotten along so well is because we, we, we think very similar. I mean, you’re way smarter than me, but yeah, I mean, I was just having the same conversation with my girls, my

 

a two older girls are dancers and tell them whatever, you know, you know, whatever you do, do it well, whatever you do, do it well, you know, always try to be the best. You know, you want to be the best player on the best team, the best dancer on the best dance team, you know, tell my young girls, they’re into soccer and basketball. And we have these conversations pretty regularly. It’s like, you know, embrace the grind, right. And, because your practices will dictate how you play in the game and all this stuff’s like, you know, if they,

 

You know, if the, if they end up playing at a higher level in college or whatnot, that’s great. That’s just like icing on the cake, but that’s not, that’s not the main reason. That’s not the main reason why I want them to be good at their sport. I want them to be good at their sport because all that will translate over into their, their business lives, personal lives and everything else. Like always try to do well at everything that you do, you know, cause that’s the thing you can control. Ultimately you can’t, you know, there might be 10 people who just have more talent than you who get the scholarship.

 

And, but you, you can control somebody’s six, five, 300 pounds runs a four, four, four. I mean, you can’t, you can’t beat that. Yeah. Yeah. But heart and character and preparation. I mean, those are, those are things we can control. And ultimately that’s what matters. I mean, right. Whether you’re bigger than that other person or whatever, like the people I admire, you know, admire you as well. It’s the people who you can see behind the scenes when nobody else is watching. What are they doing? How do they act? What’s their character like? That’s.

 

That’s cool to be able to see that. And then the opposite is true. You know, you’re, you’re, you see, you’ve seen people too. I know who on the outside are famous or really well known. And then you see them behind the scenes and you see how they really treat people or how they treat a waiter, how they treat, you know, their kids or their families. Like, all right, that person’s famous, but they’re a loser. Like, why would I, why would I want to be like that? So it’s, you know, they’re both, they’re both the same, like either, either extreme. Yeah, for sure. So.

 

Since you, since you brought up family, talk a little bit about, I know that a lot of what you’ve done in your career has allowed you to do some really fun things with your family. You’ve done a lot of traveling. tell everybody like kind of the places that you’ve been and you’ve lived and how you’ve been able to set yourself up for that. Yeah. So the story.

 

starts with my wife, Carrie, so that when we first met, we met at the rec center actually, Central Clemson Rec Center and yoga class. So anybody who wants to give a plug for the yoga classes over there, you can meet your significant other perhaps. But I had good odds because me and one 70 year old guy and like 15 ladies. So odds were in my favor. Yeah, you know, that’s something I’ve never done as a yoga class. But I get why you were probably there. Yeah, exactly.

 

I like yoga as well, you know, football players, football and yoga go hand in hand guys. But I don’t know how I got off track on this story, but we met and we started the very first date we had was we talked about studying abroad and living abroad. And I played when I played football, I also had a love of, you know, classes and I studied biology, but I was a minor in German. I basically I could have taken one more class or test and had a major in German, but I didn’t.

 

whatever. I didn’t know that. I always thought you were Spanish. You speak fluent Spanish. Yeah, I can speak Spanish now. But German was my original. I took it in high school and then I took it in college. But I love this idea of learning like, wow, you can learn another language and communicate with people in that way. And it just opens up a lot of doors, which I know, you know, being, you know, I guess, dual dual language being speaking Spanish as well. But I, we started talking about that. And she’s like, Yeah, I studied abroad. And I lived abroad in Guatemala. I went to these places and my eyes just lit up.

 

that’s amazing. And I’m playing football, I got to do a little bit of studying abroad, but I only went for like two or three weeks to Germany and stayed with the family and loved it. When I got done playing football, I went for a month to Germany and did like a summer program and love that too. But I just wanted to do more of it. I had the itch to go travel and live abroad and meet other people. And so that just was a connection we had. And so even before we had kids, like when I started my business being an entrepreneur, the goal was always was

 

you know, making money, yes, but like making money as an end as a means to more freedom and flexibility to do some really cool stuff. And so for me, the cool stuff was travel and go and taking off and in 2009, kind of the depths of the recession and you know, things were hard. I know you’ve had hard, hard stories there too. I did too. It wasn’t easy, but we finally kind of got stabilized in 2009. We’re like, all right, we’re not going to go out of business. Let’s stay, we’re going to be okay. And then we’d saved up some money.

 

And we about 20 grand and we decided to just take off and and go we take this take a mini retirement is what I I heard him describe dies at the time I read a book called the four -hour work week by tim ferris, which is kind of sensational in this title but there’s a lot the kind of philosophy in there was that That there’s not money is not the only currency we’re after in business that we’re also at a minimum after Having more options like flexibility and then time. Like time is really ultimately what?

 

our life, you know, I forget what the quote was, but our life is measured in heartthrobs, not not, you know, like the watch, you know, your life, you only have a certain amount of time on the earth. And so you can make more money. Money’s cool. But the time you get to spend doing stuff. And so I realized that like, we were going, going, going in 2007 and eight, we were really busy, we’re kind of scaling our business. But my I’ll give credit to my business partner, Tommy.

 

He was like, well, we need to like slow this thing down. What are we doing here? Why are we doing this? And we did this exercise where we wrote down the things like if you had an ideal day, what would you spend your day doing? And this is pre -kids for me, but I got married that year and I wrote down things like, I like to play pickup basketball in the middle of the day for two hours. I was like the top of my list. I want to be able to take a hike. We live in one of the most beautiful parts of the world where you can go in the experimental forest in five minutes. It’d be hiking to a waterfall.

 

I want to be able to take a hike just anytime I want. I want to be able to, if I have a family, I want to be present with my family, my kids. I want to travel and live abroad. That was on my list as well. So I made this list and some of them cost money, but most of them were much more expensive in time and the pace I was going at and the pattern I was going at, I didn’t have the time to do that. So I was like, all right, maybe I need to rearrange my business a little bit. And Tommy and I worked on that to try to not be perfect, but just try to keep it as simple as possible.

 

so that the goal was to make enough money to also have an abundance, to be like a time billionaire and have flexibility and time to go do stuff like this. So long story short, Carrie and I, that was our experiment in 2009. We took four months off. She went to her supervisor at Tri County. She was a Spanish teacher there. She thought she was going to lose her job. She was all nervous and went in there and said, you know, I’d like to take a semester off and we’re going to travel. And I know that’s not normal. And her supervisor’s like, are you quitting? She’s like, well, I…

 

I just need to take the semester off. She’s like, can I have you back when you come back? And she’s like, yeah, yeah, that’d be great. She’s like, how about I throw some health insurance in to like her supervisor was like, we’d love to have you back because they needed Spanish teachers. So she was thinking she’s gonna lose her job. And she ended up getting a job when she got back. We just took this four month trip where we started in Spain. We ended up going there for six weeks and I took Spanish classes. We went to South America, which is a little bit more affordable and kind of we could stretch our dollar a little bit more. We spent a month in Peru.

 

and, I had to keep up Peru and Southern Peru in particular is like the second biggest city there. And I fell in love with Peru. Like Peru is amazing. not a lot of people know Machu Picchu and like the highlands where, you know, the kind of ruins are, but the whole country is just really amazing. It’s the, in terms of agriculture, it’s like the word potatoes came from, it’s where tomatoes came from. They have like a thousand different kinds of potatoes there. Really? Yeah. Just crazy. And then music, the culture is awesome. So, but by taking a slow trip, we were able to like,

 

get to know some of that stuff. We stayed with a family and I to keep I went took four hours of Spanish every single day to learn the language and by Carrie was as a language teacher after a month she’s like, I can’t believe like after a month you’re using like the subjunctive case and the past subjunctive and speaking pretty fluently. And then we just kept on traveling throughout South America with the Patagonia met met somebody from Buenos Aires, Argentina when we were in the trail in Peru and we ended up visiting him and

 

Buenos Aires and he took us around for a week. And so just some amazing connections, amazing people, but it was a different kind of travel that I’ve ever done where slow travel, where you just take your time and you, yeah, you see the highlights of the tourism stuff that is fun too. But then you, like your highlight might just be sitting in a park that day and journaling or reading a book or it might be just resting or, you know, just being like a normal person in that town.

 

And that was a totally different way of seeing things. And for me as like an A type goal oriented kind of person, it was almost like withdrawal symptoms. Like I was like, I gotta be like doing something, doing something. And it took me like six weeks to finally just relax. I need you to teach me how to do that. Well, I’ve got it. I’ve got the non relaxation back now, but I do think honestly, like people who are like A type go getters, we need, I need, I don’t know about we, but we, I need to.

 

Move myself to a different location at least for a couple weeks three weeks four weeks to detach myself Otherwise, i’ll just go go go go go and I like going like I know you’re you’re good at it You’re you’re a good go getter But I think that balance of particularly the latin american culture I think is the best at teaching me this is that there’s we would go and have a two or three hour meal It’s like really like you just sit there and talk and and have conversations and enjoy food for three hours like

 

before I went to Latin America, I didn’t know that was possible. Not only was it possible, they can stretch that out for seven or eight hours. There are some marathon parties where you eat, then you dance, then you drink, and then you eat some more, and then you form these bonds with people. And it’s like this human family connection, which even if they’re not, a lot of the places we weren’t, they weren’t wealthier than people in the United States. But there was a level of happiness and connection with people that I had never seen.

 

And I was like, okay, there’s that. That’s what travel to me is all about. It’s right. It’s not like judging them saying, Hey, this is better or worse. It’s just like, Hey, I’ve got something to learn. Like there’s a humility that it caused in me to say, not only do I have something to learn, but this changed this changed me. And so that’s what it’s all about. Yeah. It helps you put things into perspective. Yeah. Yeah. I need a, I need a, I have a really hard time relaxing. I really do. Like I think I’m.

 

I’m happiest when I’m productive, but I do realize that I need to relax sometimes. And, you know, and I’m, you know, like you, I, I feel like I got to get away to do it. Cause if I’m here, then I feel like I got to be, you know, on top of things. And so like, I have to literally get away, go somewhere. Like we’re going to next week, we’re going out of town for a few days. And cause if I don’t, I’m just going to continue to work and, and try to be productive. Cause

 

That’s just the way I am the way I’m wired. But I do, I do, I do have the desire to want to try to figure out how to better relax. That sounds like crazy, but you have to like train yourself, train yourself to relax. I know. I know. If people listen to this, like, really, you guys are strange. You know? Yeah. I mean, I’m like, I’m, I just, I get anxious. Like, I don’t know what, like, you know, I like to read, I read a lot. I like to read trade articles, like read books, you know? so, but you know, when I, when I’m,

 

And when I have downtime, I just have a really tough time. I feel like I need to be doing something. It’s like, I feel guilty about not. So I got, I got a, I got to figure that out. Something I got to figure out. And I know you’ve given me pointers over the years and I need to, I need to get some more. Well, we’re all a puzzle. I think we all have to figure out. I was actually listening to a podcast this morning about Leonardo da Vinci and his, he, they interviewed, there was a, he has his notebooks and he was telling people there’s like sometimes the most creative genius he had.

 

were times when he wasn’t working on something and when he stepped away, like when he painted the last supper, people were like, why aren’t you working on it all the time, Leonardo? He would come in and put like one brushstroke and then leave for the day and go do something else. It’s because he was like letting it incubate. And like the more important thing is sometimes stepping away from it gives you creative insight. And I found that to be the case when I came back from that four months. And I know this is a long diversion from your original question, but I was much more engaged with entrepreneurship and business. I had, I feel like I had more energy, more.

 

or drive, I was better at what I was doing because I had stepped detached from it. And so I’ve, I’ve built this into a habit now. Like it doesn’t happen every year, but my family, once we had kids, we went for 17 months to Ecuador. And I realized this is very like fortunate to be able to do these kinds of things, but it’s also part of the architecture of what is important to me. Like everybody’s got different priorities, different things they want to do. But for us building those into our lives was like, to me, like top of the list is the most important thing. And so when we had,

 

kids were three and five, being foreign language family, we wanted them to learn how to speak Spanish. So we just moved to Cuenca, Ecuador. And thankfully I had, you know, part of that architecture is having team back at home. So like having a property management team that could help us do that. I mean, we did one of the bigger projects we’d had done at that point was you and Jessica helping us remodel some properties and turning that property around. And so, you know, this isn’t a solo sport, just like football, but it’s.

 

being able to do that and travel abroad with our family was awesome because they became, the kids became fluent and hopefully they also maybe garnered their own kind of experiences and lessons from that. And then we did it again in 2022, 23, we lived in Spain for 12 months. So we’ve done that. It’s kind of mini retirement thing three times. And I’m kind of torn between it because I feel very rooted in Clemson. And obviously we can talk about some of the projects that were important to us here in town.

 

And I had this itch to travel and my wife does too. So we’re kind of feel in between. And the best thing we’ve compromised, we found is to do that is to spend some time abroad. By the time we’re done, we’re like, yeah, let’s go back. Let’s go back to our house. We’ve ran our house out when we’re gone. And it makes us feel even more connected to our place in our community when we do that. Do the kids enjoy it? Yeah. Maybe we should ask them. I don’t want to put words in there, but I think it was a good experience.

 

when they came back the second time when they were older, when they were younger, it was kind of like they just along for the ride and they did enjoy it. They made a lot of friends and had a great experience. When we were in Spain, my older daughter, if I could speak for her, it was, she was in sixth grade and it was a little harder for, she’s pretty quiet, very artistic and creative, but definitely very quiet. Spanish culture is very extroverted in general. You know, if you, if you’re the person who’s quiet, not saying anything, they’re like, what’s wrong with you? Like, do you not like me? Like, so it was a little harder to.

 

make connections in that way. And so I think she never really felt like, you know, in place, whereas Allie, my younger, she’s like, party animal, let’s go, you know, jump in, let’s just do this. And she was, she really, I think connected more, but they both, when we came back to our house, we finally got back into our house. They were like tears running down their face, doing snow angels on the floor, like, this is our house. Hardwood floor. You know, it was just like, they were, this is home, but they, yeah, they feel at home here. Yeah.

 

they were happy to come back. And they’re so going into ninth grade eighth grade, eighth grade and sixth grade. Yes, we have to. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, that’s really cool. They’ll, they’ll appreciate it one day. Yeah. You know, there’s a part of me that wishes that we could have done something like that, but I always, you know, have a project that ends up screwing it up, you know,

 

For some reason people want me around when I’m doing my project. Everybody’s got a different, different path. I’m glad. I’m glad you do what you do because you do some cool stuff. Yeah, it’s, it’s fun. Yeah. Eventually I’ll get to the point. I mean, you know, I just want to be in a position one day. I don’t think I’ll ever retire. I just want to be in a position to, to do it’s that freedom, the flexibility, you know, if I want to go travel for a month or two or whatever, just do it. I mean, I could probably do that now, but.

 

not now, now, but I could do that at some point in the near future. But you know, we have a lot of things going on. And so, but yeah, like, just, I admire that you just did it and you made it happen. And I know it’s been an awesome experience for y ‘all. And so, well, that’s really cool. So as a perfect segue, you know, I think,

 

for those that may not know it, but Chad and I were real involved with the Green Crescent, friends of the Green Crescent. When was that? When did we start that? 2014 was when we first started having coffee shop meetings about it. I’ve sometimes reflected on that because it’s been so long, almost 10 years now. Yeah. Isn’t that crazy? Yes. And when we knew that it was going to be a marathon, not a sprint. Yeah. And it’s really cool. And thanks to you, mainly, you have

 

really, really pushed it and kept going with it and made a lot of things happen. I mean, even when you were out of town, when you were out of the country, you still participated and were very involved in making things happen. And you’ve cultivated relationships and you’ve used your network to really make things happen. And like tell the viewers like kind of the things that we’ve been working on and the things that have happened in the last…

 

in the last 10 years, we’re really in the last couple of years, there’s some really big things that happened. Yeah, we finally have trails on the ground. Maybe we can start with now and then kind of go back to where we tried to start with this. There’s a first segment of trail of the Green Crescent Trail in Clemson prop city that connects to Clemson University. So that was a big accomplishment where you could now park at Clemson Elementary, hop on your bike or walk or jog or push a stroller all the way from Clemson Elementary to Clemson Park.

 

on to Gateway Park, which is right on the edge of Clemson University’s campus, and then go from Gateway Park onto campus by the botanical gardens. And you could almost go all the way to the football stadium. The perimeter road expansion has a side path there now as well. So I think that’s 3 and 1 half miles, which is great. And especially for the inside story of this, people might have heard of the Swamp Rabbit Trail, even the Doodle Trail in Easley and Pickens. Those are amazing.

 

They had the benefit though, and as hard as they were, they had the benefit of having a railroad. And so that typically with these recreational trails, you see there’s an easement. The land is always the hard part and the money and all that stuff too, but getting the land to put the trail where people actually want it is really hard. And so if you have a railroad easement that’s abandoned, like an old railroad, then a natural kind of segue for that is to build a trail, a multi -use trail on it. So that’s what the Swamp Rabbit Trail was. There was a railroad that went from downtown Greenville all the way to Traveler’s Rest.

 

And in one fell swoop, they had 16 miles. Still took like seven years to do the whole thing. The history is really interesting on that too. You know, back and forth, should we do it? Should we abandon it? Should we not? But ultimately it became, and now look at it, it’s like 20 something miles. They have cross segments now going. It’s becoming like the skeleton of amazing development, like really good development, like development that’s like core urban, super valuable, but also walkable and enjoyable. Like I’d love to talk about that a little bit more.

 

what a place, what makes a place special. Cause that’s part of my interest in this is public spaces, trails are essentially just public spaces, just like road or the state owns them. But think about how much real estate that is, like the roads of your community, like that’s a lot of space. And we, the taxpayers, like we, the community members own that public space. And what’s so interesting about the green Crescent trail to me is that it’s a rethinking of our community. It’s like, I think it takes in all these issues that are really important to Clemson. How do we maintain this?

 

small town village feel in the midst of the inevitable, I think you and I agree, inevitable that the university has chosen to grow. And we could argue with that we could fight that and, you know, scream at the mountains. Don’t be a mountain, you know, like that’s right, that doesn’t work. Like, that ship has sailed, universities growing, there’s financial reasons why that happened, the entire upstate’s growing, entire upstate’s growing. So like, we can fight that growth shouldn’t happen. Or what I think the more practical,

 

approaches to say, I love the small town feel of Clemson. I love the natural spaces of Clemson. I love the fact that we have experimental forests around that we should maintain the things that are special about Clemson that it’s like the identity of Clemson, the small town, the nature, natural spaces. Like we need to find a way to build that into the fabric of whatever community we become as we grow. And the green Crescent trail is not the only answer, but I think it’s like,

 

The reason I’m so passionate about it is I think it’s an essential answer to how we do transportation in a community that’s growing. Because the alternative, I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia. And for better or worse, I love Atlanta. I’m a Braves fan. I like a lot of things about Atlanta. I choose to live in a small town, though, because the sprawled out traffic, I think anybody who’s been in Atlanta can testify that it is an experiment. This has never happened in the human race before until 1950.

 

when we started building huge roads and we just, the idea was let’s just keep widening roads. Let’s just keep widening roads. Let’s keep making bigger. And that allows people to go farther and farther out. And there’s a benefits to that, right? Originally the benefit was you can work in the city and live out in the country. And isn’t that amazing? And it is amazing. But the cost of that, cause there’s always a cost, is congestion and traffic. And so it’s really bad. And it’s horrible. It’s, it’s so the answer has been for 50 years or 60 years just to keep widening roads.

 

Now there’s no like perfect solution to anything, but my, my idea of what would make Clemson better is we’re growing, is that we have to fix the transportation idea. We have to kind of think differently about transportation. And there’s a couple of reasons that’s true. One is the reason I got motivated to do the green Crescent trail was I was pushing my daughter who’s now 13. She was three at the time and a stroller from my house in Delwood to get to Ashley Dearing park.

 

And I had to cross over Issaquena trail and Berkeley drive. And it was hostile. There were trucks going really fast. There was, you know, very dangerous protective data. I’m like, this is how come I can’t go a quarter of a mile from my neighborhood to a park and get there safely and have, have the public infrastructure, our space that we’re creating say to a person who’s on their feet, walking or pushing a stroller. This is your space. You’re invited here. This is where you should go. Instead, the way we’ve built it, it says, this is not your space.

 

This is for fast cars and fast trucks only, and you’re not a priority. And so that’s the opposite of what we should do. If we want to build spaces that are built for people. So like, if you want to imagine this, think about downtown Greenville. Downtown Greenville, if you study the history of why downtown Greenville is the way it is today, is because 60 years ago, some leaders who had forward thinking were like, we need to transform the space into a space that’s not going to outlaw cars.

 

Cars are still important. I love cars. Like we’re going to use cars less important, but in this space and this town center, cars are second. People are first. And so that is really what this is about. This is about if you want to get on your feet and walk, if you want to push your, you want to ride on a bike, your kid, your eight year olds on their bike, this space is for them. And we’re going to make it safe, interesting, convenient. And then in the green Crescent vision is to have a network of those kinds of transportation spaces alongside our roads.

 

in between parks, from downtowns. So if you’re a business owner, wouldn’t it be nice? Like downtown travelers rest. Look at how that’s flourish because people are getting out of their car and walking. And that’s what’s beautiful. It’s like, it’s a, it’s a, it’s the only project I’ve ever seen. This is one of the reasons I’m so passionate about it, where there’s an economic benefit. It’s like pouring miracle grow on a downtown. If you’re a small business to have people out of their cars, walking. It’s also, a traffic benefit in.

 

Traffic is kind of a mixed thing. Like there’s always going to be traffic, always always going to be traffic. But if you can get more people going to campus, riding on scooters, bikes, things like that, they’re going to leave their car in the parking lot. They’re still going to have their car, but they could, if they have 10 trips a day and they do five of them with their bike or they’re walking, that’s going to be for the citizens. We’re going to have who are not students. You’re going to have less traffic. And then there is also the social, which I think is the most compelling because I’ve made so many friends, like some of my best friends here in Clemson.

 

we met walking to Clemson’s campus every single day. Amazing. When you’re on your feet, you meet people and face to face. We human beings, that’s how we, what’s the opposite happens when we’re in cars? I’ve been in the car line at Clemson Elementary and a natural inclination is you cut me off and you’re like getting mad at the person who’s the parent of another student because in cars you have this big, you’re going fast, you’re in a hurry. Now I’m not like,

 

downing all that, but I’m just saying, if we want to make choices as a community of what to invest in and how to build our community, it seems like perfectly logical that 20 years from now, we want it to be a more human space and to put that kind of hierarchy of what’s more important in its place. And that’s my personal, I know everybody’s got different reasons to be interested in the green Crescent and I think that’s awesome, but that’s my personal, I think it’s like an imperative that if we don’t do this, if we don’t have,

 

this kind of transportation infrastructure and land use land use is another topic. If you don’t build land use around transportation corridors that are alternative transportation, walking, biking, buses, then it’s just going to be a sprawled out Atlanta, but just in a miniature version, you’ve got people living a six mile commuting and student housing all the way to campus in their car instead of kids walking the campus or walking to the grocery store. So that’s a long winded answer, but the green press and trails is great. I mean, that’s you, you hit it on the nose. I mean, it blows my mind.

 

You know, we spend the tax dollars get spent on road expansions. And there’s like, I mean, we, we dropped Davis off at camp Sunday and it feels like that section of, she’s at camp Cherokee. So from Greenville to, Gaffney, right? Gaffney. I mean, there’s just all this road construction. It seemed like it’s been going on forever and we spend all this time, money and effort into expanding roads. It’s like, could you imagine if we spent 10, right? Tenth of that fraction of that money on.

 

other types of infrastructure. I think it would be really cool conversation for another day to get some kind of train system. You know, like the ones they have over in Europe are credible. I know like Florida has one now it goes from Orlando, a high speed rail that goes from Orlando, I think down to Miami. Charlotte’s doing it. They have a light rail system and it’s expensive too, but you know, expensive people, relative people call our trails expensive. They’re like, that cost a million dollars for a mile and a half. I’m like, well, have you,

 

seen what it costs to widen the road or repave the road. Like it’s a lot more. And we in South Carolina, we can’t afford our roads, by the way. Anybody studied the politics of roads? Like we have built more roads than we can actually pay for. It’s our local – To maintain, right? We can’t maintain them. Yeah. And where do we get the money? Much less expand them. Yeah. We got the money from the federal government in the 50s, 60s, 70s, and we built it while on their money. And we never thought about, I guess we thought about it probably, but we said, somebody else would deal with this.

 

that our tax revenue can’t pay for the roads. Right. And we can’t. It’s, it’s, it’s, that’s a whole nother topic. But the thing is that we have to invest going back to economic development all the time. There’s, you know, coming up with ideas on how to attract this big company and let’s build a, you know, a park to have this big company with all these jobs. A trail will, will, will grow like the miracle grow. It will grow more businesses or not just a trail, like a public space. Like if you build a public space,

 

that attracts people and you can have an events and you can have just a culture of people who just hang out there. The businesses will come like you don’t, you don’t have to like go recruit some big corporation to come to your business. You need to like, it’s like a, you build the ecosystem of the infrastructure as a public infrastructure and you do it thoughtfully and you choose where it’s going to be. And then the business like we know this, like entrepreneurs, they’ll, they’ll, they know how to make money. They know how to go in and do things. But right now we’re getting in the way of that. And we in downtown Clemson, like,

 

This is a, I know this is a taboo topic, but the problem isn’t the tall buildings for students. Although that that’s controversial. And I know that the problem is it’s not a place that community members want to go. Right. There’s not, why would you go downtown? Yeah, exactly. And we’ve talked about this a lot, you know, we tend to focus on the things we don’t want and not the things that we do want. Right. And so to your point, you know, there’s just not a whole lot for.

 

non -students to do downtown. There’s not, there’s not really an attraction there other than the novelty of the town. I mean, we love the downtown, you know, we love downtown Clemson, but it’s, it’s t -shirt shops and bars and which are great. And I love going to those places, but if you want something else, you know, you got to figure out a way to track those things. And so look at game day. Anybody’s been to game day in downtown. It’s an amazing environment. Amazing. People are all over the place. Look at the happy smile on people’s faces.

 

It’s like Disney world. I think about Disney and they’re not all they drive to get there, but then they walk. Yes, exactly. So it’s not anti car. It’s like downtown Clemson is a week. We have some negative things there. We have one road in one road out, which is horrible for like town planning. It just is what it is. Yeah. I, the only way I think it can work is like, you can have to create like parking lots on either side, you know, Clemson university side, the 123 side, and then people need to get out of their car and walk. And we can have a little trolley going back and forth, but you, but.

 

Here’s what like the city, like we said, we’re not think we need to invest in like Abernathy park needs to be an amazing park and it needs to connect to downtown. Like it’s been so frustrating to me is like downtown is amazing old, old downtown, all the shops, judge Kellers, Tiger town. Like that’s a cool place. It is, it is amazing, but it’s not connected to the park. It’s not connected to Abernathy park. So think about Greenville West end falls park. When it finally got connected to the rest of downtown, boom, the whole thing took off.

 

And then you create another anchor. You had a baseball stadium built there. Downtown doesn’t have anchors. It has the downtown as a parking lot. But it’s not that we don’t have opportunities there. We have the universities that anchor the downtown. The next one, like Abernathy Park, we’re physically connected with not only safe infrastructure, but interesting. When you walk down College Avenue, it’s not interesting. It’s like, huh, OK. It’s like a lot of our.

 

the land use and the construction hasn’t, and the public investment hasn’t been built to make that a safe, interesting corridor. And we have plans. We have tons of plans sitting on the shelves, but we have it like that. That needs to be the priority like that to invest in making downtown this amazing space. Yeah. You like, you go downtown Greenville and there’s all these things you can do. Like you, people go down there, they park. It doesn’t matter where you park. Really? I mean, everybody gets hung up on, I can’t park right in front of where I’m going. Like park.

 

And then walk and people will go down there just to walk around because there’s all these cool things that you can do. You could walk several miles and see all kinds of cool things. Like I want, you know, I find myself like, okay, I want to go downtown, but take the girls, but the girls don’t necessarily, there’s nothing for them to really, really do. It’s more fun for me than it is for them, but there’s not a, there’s not a lot. There aren’t a lot of cool things for, for younger families and.

 

A lot of attractions down there other than spill the beans, ice cream shot, and now handles and. It could be small stuff, you know, and this is where the trail infrastructure like public spaces. I think about downtown Greenville, some of the magic that happens there, the little mice on main. Yeah. You take your kids down there and you’re like, let’s go find the mice on main. What do you have to do to find the mice? Got to walk. You got to walk. And what do you do along the way? I’m hungry. I want some ice cream. I want to get some, you know, that mommy and daddy want a beer. Like it’s like, right. You stop, you make like a two or three hour trip out of it.

 

And so that’s like the mechanics of design is really important. You know, this is a builder, like a developer, like design is important, but it’s the, it could be art, it could be culture, it could be history. Like what a history our town has. Can we not tell the story along these walking paths of, of how, you know, cadets got off here in 1910 and got off the train and walked right on this place and they got their hair cut at Judge Keller’s. And could you not tell the story even like, I think some of the amazing stories about the African -American history of our town now and the work that Rhonda Thomas is doing.

 

we not tell that story in downtown like storytelling, human culture, ice on Maine. Like that’s the loser, like imaginative creative things. That’s what Walt I mentioned Walt Disney earlier at Walt Disney. You park your car and you walk down main street. It’s a make believe place, but they’re copying like the best real places. That’s what Walt Disney did is the genius of Walt Disney. And here we are building roads and widening roads. And like, we just totally like, don’t get it. Like I think, I kind of think,

 

I have a lot of engineer friends, so I don’t want this to go the wrong way, but like engineering has to be matched with like leadership and design in order to build a great space. So the engineer is like build it, they’re central, but it’s beyond engineering. It’s more like art and liberal arts and culture and human beings. And that’s the way a good place is, you know, it’s more organic, right? It’s not a, it’s not a mechanical thing. And so that’s, I think that’s what’s missing. And not that you asked that, but like downtown,

 

No, I was going to get into this. It could still be a really awesome place, but it’s got to have like, it’s got to have that. It’s got to have that it factor, which is, comes from, I think public spaces, walking. And then the public spaces are like the, the palette or when you know, like the place where the art, the culture, the humanity can happen. And we have that opportunity. So since you brought up Abernathy park, what do you think about the hub?

 

I’m not, I’m not elected officials. I can say whatever I want to say. Well, you hope the elected officials speak the truth. Yeah. I’m not a fan. Like if I, if I could wave my magic wand, what I would see in uptown, I was, I was actually on the one year committee to build like the original plant, like the, to get it started, to think about uptown. And I think that was such a good process we did. I still think like the consultant we brought in of thinking about weird.

 

student housing should be like, we did the right thing. Like that was a smart move. I think the practical reality, if I waved my magic wand, I wouldn’t have a seven story building overlooking Abernathy park. Like I’m not a big fan of that. I also think like the scale of that. I’m not a fan of like the, I think the road grid could be better there. Like what I would love to see in uptown, if you just like wipe the whole thing clean, which is not possible because you have multiple landowners, you’d have this like small little downtown grid of like,

 

you know, six roads, four roads, they would all be like very walkable. They’re, you know, be, they feel like a little downtown. And then you’d have like more symmetrical. Yeah. You’d have three story, three to four story buildings, but you have, you have the same amount of density that they’re going to have there. So like bring, you gotta have student housing there. Cause that’s the engine that’s going to make that work. But by making it a little village feel, I think it could be a cooler place, but I’m also a realist. And I think, I think the fact that the lawsuit,

 

fact that the moratorium drug on and on and on and you had the reality that the people that some of the policies have changed from the time they bought that property. They bought the property thinking they could go up a certain amount. I think it was a force my understanding. Correct me if I’m wrong. I think you could have five stories and then during the moratorium or after it we change the three stories all of a sudden. I mean we have just kicked those property owners around and you might not feel bad for property owners. You might say this is our town. I don’t they’re just moneymakers or whatever.

 

that’s beside the point. They had the right to do that and they can sue the city and they had a really good case. My understanding of it is that, you know, the city has changed multiple things that took away a lot of the value of their property, not to mention the timing of it. You can maybe make the argument that, hey, the city has to plan, cities move slowly. It’s going to take time to do anything right. All right. I was actually a fan of that. But the fact is you’ve, when you’ve taken away that value, millions of dollars in value from someone,

 

whether we as citizens agree with that or not, they can, we’re a landowner, we have their property rights in our state. There’s a lot of good reasons we have that. And so they can sue the city. That’s the reality we’re facing. We want to be sober reality. And so then we have to make the best decision about a particular development given that reality. So kind of my thought on the hub is like, kind of bad taste in my mouth. I don’t really like the size of it. I don’t like the design of it. I think it’d be better to be spread out a little bit more, but given the reality of what we’re looking at there, I think it’s like,

 

Okay, compromise and I don’t think it’s going to ruin a lot of people are like doomsday about this is going to ruin downtown. I don’t think I think it’s going to be not as pretty as it could have been up town. I said, but I think the main point that was back to my original point is doing Abernathy Park, right? And connecting Abernathy to downtown and making the space that they do create that there’s going to be a one acre Plaza space there. Make that do it right. Like invest the money.

 

And connections. Connections are what the Green Crescent Trail is all about. It’s not just the thing itself, it’s what it’s connected to. So in downtown Greenville, I know we’re going back to that example a lot, but having West End connected to Main Street with a comfortable, interesting path that you can stroll down and enjoy and you feel safe, but you’re also like interesting windows to look in and mice on Main. And so if we can get that right and we can get parking, like I think parking’s maybe a little bit of a missing thing.

 

But eventually we got to get some kind of better parking so that people who want to come down there and walk can do that. I think that can come though. I think all that can happen. So that’s my opinion on a hub is kind of like, you know, there’s the just the ultra practical reality of it. And I just, I think it’s, and I think the leaders are doing this. Like I think Robert, Robert’s a friend of mine. Like I think big picture vision for what this can be is still on the table. Like it’s still, it’s still there.

 

Is it exactly what we want to see? No, but like this is every single decision we make in the public realm is a compromise, like all of it. And this was a good attempt, like the attempt of uptown, the whole planning process was to balance the rights of the landowners who have real rights with the public good. What do we want as a community? What do we want to see? This was an attempt to do that. And it wasn’t, was it perfect? No, it was imperfect.

 

Could we, would it, could it have been better? I’m sure like that, you know, some little things here and there could have been better, but I’m kind of, I’m looking forward with it. I think let’s, let’s use the good things about it. And one of the good things is, is that we are not having 1300 students live in six mile or Oconee County somewhere. Right. That is a good thing. Yeah. And I think if you operate under the assumption that growth is inevitable, instead of taking the approach, let’s, let’s see how we can stop growth. Cause that’s not going to happen. That’s just not going to happen.

 

You know, take the approach, let’s figure out how to make the projects are to attract the projects that we want. And those, those individuals, and this is always in popular is probably why I’m not as I’m not, I’m not very popular at the moment, but you know, being doing what I do, but it’s like, you know, instead of spending a lot of time and effort into poo pooing an idea, let’s figure out how to make it better. Like what, cause a lot of developers will come into.

 

a deal, they just want to, they want to do, they’re entrepreneurs, they want to do deals and they want to figure out how to make a deal work. And so if, if, if the community or government officials are involved really early on in the process and have a lot of say in how it gets developed and you create something that, that everybody would be, would be proud of not. And not again, not to beat a dead horse, but just not spend so much time and effort like, like, you know, making it your life’s mission to push things away.

 

You know, I, how many projects have you seen that they come in? They, they come in with these really cool ideas. They look, look like this. And then they get, they get a lot of negative attention and then they end up looking a lot worse than they did to start with. Where if you said, yeah, we want your, we want your, your project, but have you thought about doing this? Have you thought about, you know, adding this architectural component? Have you thought about adding this, this type of business or this type of space to the, you know,

 

to the building, you know, work with the developer instead of trying to fight them, put all that effort into fighting them the whole time. And they, so they spend time, they spend time trying to figure out strategies and how to combat the, you know, all the fighting and all the opposition when they could be putting all those resources towards making the project better. And that’s what you should ultimately want. Cause I just, I have a hard time with just, with just saying kind of to your point, it’s like the land.

 

The land owner should have their rights. I mean, they own these properties and they, within reason, should be able to do what they want with them. And I understand that that’s why zoning, you have zoning laws and everything. I mean, that’s to kind of help steer and guide things, but you don’t want to take their rights away. But there are ways that…

 

the ways that there’s a different approach and, and it’s more, it’s a more proactive approach. It’s a, it’s a, it’s an approach that’s more friendly and that will allow you to eventually get the things that you really ultimately we should want, you know, but just saying that you don’t want the town to grow. That’s silly to me. Yeah. I’m going to say something that might make me maybe you too, even more, more or less popular regarding zoning. Like number one.

 

town is growing. We have to acknowledge that. I think that’s what we’re agreeing here on is like, there’s an argument out there that like, we either shouldn’t grow, or we should grow. Like that argument is off the table. And if we make our policy no growth, which we can do, right, like Charleston, Charleston, they haven’t grown for 300 years. Look at them. Isn’t that great? Well, there’s a consequence of every decision. And the consequences is like, think about this, like, physically, like if you press down on something that has like a pressure, like, you know, like, let’s say like, there’s just pressure cooking there.

 

Like in a pot and it’s boiling if you press down on that spot, it’s going to escape somewhere and originally it’s eventually it’s going to explode. Right. And so what’s happening in Clemson and this is where the zoning comes in is that we have the consultants came and they showed us that over half our town is single family house, large lot zoning. This is where I’m going to get unpopular. That is the reason we have all this pressure.

 

to have big, huge apartments. Cause we were basically like putting our hands down on the, on the say, no, no, no, no. We only have single family. That’s what we like. And so around the edges, but then you have this huge pressure cooker of demand for more student housing. And so what happens is around the edges where you can’t have it commercial spaces, multifamily, there’s a huge pressure to go up and build this big stuff. What the, here’s the alternative. Here’s like the big picture alternative, which I think is a small.

 

Small Mighty Investor. That’s the name of my book that I wrote. I think small entrepreneurs just like small businesses. I would rather have like a small boutique retail company than Walmart or Amazon. Yeah, I’d rather go to my local barber where I know my barber and I can I can talk to him. Terry, here’s my barber in downtown Clemson like what a beautiful thing is small commerce, small entrepreneurs. We know because of our thinking we’re helping the problem. We have like client we’ve tried to put our all of our zoning and like

 

The name of mystic name is preserving your neighborhood or like the character of your neighborhood What that’s saying is we want to make our neighborhoods museums, even though the whole world around us is changing So what and let me give you a very specific example property you manage for me people want to go look this up They can look it up. I’m being transparent here. I’ve got a triplex at 270 Riggs Drive and That property is is it has three units as legally we can rent it to people but the town

 

because they said that’s a single family zone that you have this is called grandfathers grandfathered and it’s what’s it called nonconforming use. I think forming you know, so part of zoning is we want to like make this order out of the whole community and say only single family in this area. So if that place were built again, you can never build that triplex right? You couldn’t build the small small rental units. So what’s the only thing you can build million -dollar houses so we can have wealthy people live in the neighborhood, but we can’t have renters who rent for 1200 bucks.

 

live in that neighborhood. So what inevitably happens is when you have really in demand properties and then you limit the supply. So instead of instead of being able to build like, for example, we should, I think every house, you should be able to like build a little cottage on there and rent that out. And I think in Clemson you can, you can build like a 700 square foot cottage in your backyard. But I think it should take a step further. Like if, if people, if there’s demand to build two cottages, they should be able to build two cottages. Right. And think about that, like the character of the neighborhood.

 

If every theoretically every single house like 500 lots built two cottages, then let’s say like two people can live in each cottage. So 500 times two is a thousand and there’s two people live in each one. That’s 2000 people. You could absorb right there. You could absorb this by more than the hub. Let’s say you didn’t want hubs. So, well, the reason we have hubs is because we can’t do that, but we can’t, we, we don’t allow our neighborhoods to, to grow it a bit more organic, small scale.

 

If you had a couple of cottages and every single family house in the backyard, you’d have grad students living there. You’d have people who lived in the front of the house, renting it to the back. It wouldn’t change the character of the neighborhood. In fact, it would add to it. It would make it more interesting. You’d have a mix of really wealthy people with students and you’d have different age groups. What a better place to live. And yet we outlawed that it’s illegal. And there, and there’s your workforce housing. There’s your affordable housing component. And with the, and with the government have to spend any money. No, it’s the private private.

 

The only thing getting in the way of us having a better community with not having a bunch of high rises and big apartments is ourselves. We zoned ourselves into a corner and we did it in the name of quote preserving our neighborhoods. And if I went in and tried to propose that and I have actually, you’d have pitchforks of saying, don’t put my more dense quote density in my backyard. And yet that kind of gentle density of just like letting the neighborhoods slowly evolve and get better. Having a duplex or fourplex.

 

a small multifamily property next to single family is very natural. There’s nothing weird about that. Right. And yet that is the way we could change our town without changing the character of it. Going back to what’s Clemson all about, it’s the village, it’s the community. Yet we’ve held onto this idea of this museum neighborhoods. And we’ve now we’ve brought on the devil. We brought on the, you know, so -called big, huge thousand units due to housing. And yet we don’t even know why that’s happened. Right. And the, the more barriers to entry.

 

the more attractive the market looks. Yeah. You’re one of the good guys. You’re a local developer who lives here and who can actually take into account that this is what I want my community to be like. The rest of the developers, I know they’re probably friends and they’re nice people and all that, but they don’t live here. They’re taking Wall Street money and they’re investing $50 million in our town and they’re not part of our town. Whereas that other proposal I’m talking about, that’s us. Those would be…

 

Eric Newton, that would be me. That would be people, you know, who you see at church, you see at your community. Like they would be in not only us, it would be like homeowners. There’d be like a 500 homeowners would be the developers. We would be the people like, right. So it’s, it’s a totally different way of thinking about it, but that’s not even on the table. That’s not in the conversation if that’s ever brought up. So maybe I’m just like, you know, talking about La La Land here. No, I think that’s a fantastic idea. It’s a fantastic idea. And I think it should be brought up. And I think.

 

As time goes by and mindsets change, I mean, that might be something that could become more of a reality. I think a lot of it’s generational. We’re kind of a, we’re in a transition between being young adults to being seniors. That’s hard to believe. But,

 

You know, like our kids, our kids are going to have a totally different mindset. And I try to, I try to think about that as well as I think about the future of, of the town and everything. Cause you know what, what, you know, what our parents want maybe way different. It’s kind of like your analogy with the football player, you know, the football player from the twenties. I mean, it’s a totally different profile. They were mean, tough and they were great, you know, great athletes, but it’s way different from the, you know, the athlete of today. And that’s going to continue to change. And same thing, same thing with.

 

You know, like our kids, they want, they want cool things and, and they, they want a more pedestrian friendly. They may not realize it, but they do a lot of the things they want to do. Most of them don’t have driver’s license. If you look statistically, the people under 20, like voluntarily don’t have a driver’s license in a higher number. Of course some people drive, but there’s a bunch of them who don’t want to drive. And then what do we talk about self -driving cars and things like that? Like things are changing fast and we’re stuck. Like we get stuck in old. And I want to say that like with a respect, like.

 

I think our history is awesome. Like, and I think we should respect that. And, and we have to figure out a way to embrace the change. And that’s the, we can do that. Like there are places that have done that and we can be respectful. That’s where telling stories and building, building our storytelling into our current fabric. And some things are off limits. Like maybe we say main street, downtown Clemson, that should never be more than one story or something. That’s cool. Like I think we can do that. And we have to like embrace like our next generation and what.

 

what the new thing is that people want to have. I’ll tell you a funny story. I think I’ve told you this before, but, you know, the newtons have been here a long time in the, in the area of Pickens Anderson County area. my kids are eighth generation and, but my, my grandfather was a builder, started out as a rock mason, grew up in six mile area and became, he was a part of the rock mason ended up being a builder and later developed as well.

 

He built a lot of the houses downtown Clemson and that was very, very close to my grandmother growing up. And she used to, I used to sit in the, in the chair and the recliner next to her and she’d tell me stories. And she used to tell me how, how, back in the, you know, forties and fifties and sixties, how people raised cane because my grandfather was building, building single family houses on like Riggs drive and Strode circle. He built.

 

built Banks McFadden’s house. And in fact, Banks McFadden, legend that he is at Clemson. Every time I saw him, he always brought up my grandfather name and built his house and it was an awesome house. But it’s hard for me to believe that Strode Circle, Riggs Drive, those single family developments that come up in a lot of conversations in Clemson politics right now, it was controversial to build single family back then. And now you see it, and you’re like,

 

This has been here forever and this is, this is what you’re trying to preserve. Right. Right. So I always, I always thought that was funny. She’s like, they gave him, they gave us a hard time because he was building houses, you know, when, when they were dirt roads going back in there to him. But yeah, this thing’s changed, things evolve, you know, and. You know, I think we, we have to be respectful of our history of obviously very, very respectful of history, but you also have to think about, you know, what might be best for future generations for our kids too, you know, and.

 

I mean, there are a lot of things that I don’t like. I don’t like phones. I don’t like, I don’t like tick -tock. I don’t like, you know, I don’t, you know, even though I I’m on social media, you know, you know, those platforms, I, I, you know, I still, there are lots, you know, I don’t like it as much, you know, I don’t, the reality of it is that, I mean, that’s just the way the world is, is, is going. And I mean, you think about AI and I mean, the

 

faults of all that just make my head explode, but you gotta, you gotta kinda, you kinda have to embrace certain things and then, but be respectful of the history too. Yeah, that’s it can happen. That’s, that’s, that’s, that’s a, that’s a compromise and a balance, but we’re, we’re my point is I think we’re, we’re too, too balanced. And I think we’re, we’re eating some of that. We’re seeing some of the consequences of us being stuck kind of 30 years behind. I agree. I agree. And this time.

 

Blue by, I know I, we got to do this again. All right. Anytime you tell me, I would love to, I want to be respectful of your time. I know we’ve been doing this for about an hour and a half now. So, yeah, I mean, there’s anything else you wanted, wanted to add. I know, I know you’re doing a lot of cool things with your podcast and have a lot of fun topics. You have a major following. I see some of your, your, your, your podcast get, you know,

 

tens of thousands of views and it’s a broader, it’s a broader topic. In some ways I’m more passionate about the topic you’re doing. I’m really glad you’re doing this podcast. I hope you, you know, if 50 people listen to it, that’s, that’s in a town the size of Clemson. I think that’s appropriate, you know, but it’s, this is awesome talking about the city of Clemson. It’s great. I do a lot of podcasting about real estate investing and I’m blown away. It’s kind of a weird thing. I had to start putting videos up on YouTube where I was drawing how to run the numbers on a rental property or something. And.

 

It was just me like on vacation one time. I’m just let me just do this thing and I threw it up on YouTube and and then 20 ,000 people watched it eventually. But it’s just it blows my mind like YouTube is this this thing is this discovery machine where if you put some topics up there that are interesting to a wide number of people. I’ve gotten people from I got somebody last week from South Africa who watched one of my videos and was like,

 

this is great. I’m going to, can I try it? Do you think this will work here in South Africa? I was like, I’ve never been to South Africa. I have no clue. Maybe, maybe they will. People from the Netherlands. I mean, so most of my audience, most of my audiences in the U S like 95%, but then there’s 3 % from Canada and then 1 % from great Britain and India. Like, wow, that’s no, no clue, but it’s, it’s been cool. You’re making an impact. Yeah. So I’m, I’m a, I’m a T I think I’ve decided that my most identity that I really resonate with as a teacher.

 

And so like, you know, I think you’re like the ultimate entrepreneur. Like I think you’re, you’re a builder and a literal builder. And I like building too, but like to me, teaching is kind of my calling. And so this is, this is kind of, I’m kind of leaning into that where I’m teaching and, and sharing with other people. And like, if I can get a bunch of other people who can have two properties that help them supplement their retirement and they can have a little bit more freedom and flexibility and spend more time with their kids and take their own trips, that would be a success for me as a teacher. Have you.

 

Have you had any success stories real quick? Like that? Yeah. Yeah. It’s been a lot. I have this little folder on my computer called the sunshine board, right? It’s like collect stories of people who’ve, you know, there’s this, thing called house hacking where people you live in a duplex or you let, and you rent out the extra unit. And I’ve had tons of people who like read my article on that or read my book and they’ve now kind of gotten the courage to go buy their own rental property or like move out of their house and keep that as a rental. So it’s been a lot of like small stories, which are my favorite.

 

that I think has been amazing. Like people have got, they have five rental properties now that produce, have like supplemented their, what they thought was going to be their retirement, but it’s like blowing away their social security check. Now they have these five properties that they’ve paid off and they own free and clear. And, that’s, that’s amazing. Like that’s really cool. That’s very cool. Well, I really appreciate you coming on the show. let’s definitely do it again.

 

Sorry, I was, I got a little long -winded and passionate on some, no, we went long on that. Look, we got it. We got to do it again. We’ll, we’ll, we’ll get you back on the show again. cause there’s lots to talk about a lot of fun things to talk about.