April 2, 2024 • 26 mins
The 2008 Global Financial Crisis was hard for almost everyone. Fuquan Bilal remembers it like it was yesterday. A real estate investor, among other things, he came home to the news of the crash and the sharp realization that he lost $2 million overnight. That could have been the end with advisors telling him to file for bankruptcy.
Join Ben and Tanya as they chat with Fuquan about how he fought to keep his companies afloat. Discover how he brought his business back from the dead, ignoring common sense, for his own gut instincts, his investments to diversify his income, and back into better communities for all. These are The Unshakeables.
The Unshakeables is brought to you by Chase for Business and Ruby Studio by iHeartMedia
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
For Fukuan Blal, CEO of the nerg Capital Fund. He
still remembers the two thousand and eight housing market crash
like it was yesterday.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
I came home and me and my wife actually was
in our room and she had the news on, and
she was like, oh my god, do you see what's
happening to market? This is crazy. Brokers were calling me saying, hey,
the deal is going to close. The bank pulled out.
I'm like, what is going on? And then overnight, boom,
the lights just went out, just like that. I was like,
the rug got pulled from under my feet. The banks
(00:30):
stopped lending. I had deals literally at the closing table,
lined up the clothes, and all the funding got pulled.
So when they stopped funding the closing, my business was
on standstill.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
You took all the losses two million dollars of your
own money out the door.
Speaker 4 (00:45):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Welcome to the Unshakables from Chase for Business and Ruby
Studio from iHeartMedia. I'm Ben Walter, CEO of Chase for Business.
Speaker 5 (00:59):
And I'm Tanyannie Well, a lawyer and consultant for business owners.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
We're sharing the daring stories of small business owners facing
their crisis points and telling the stories of how they
got through it.
Speaker 5 (01:10):
Hey Tanya, Hey Ben.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
I think today's episode is really inspirational. There's so much
to learn from Fukuan, how he's persevered in life and
in business, and how he's using his company to give
back to his community.
Speaker 5 (01:20):
Can't wait to hear this one.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
On today's episode. An MG Capital Fund from Newark, New Jersey.
Now here's a little behind the scenes about the show
for you. We recorded a lot of this in New
York City, but Fuquan is from Newark, which is only
about thirty minutes west of here. Now the Newark from
when Fuquan was growing up, it looked a lot different
than it does today.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
If you can remember early eighties, it was a lot
of drugs an the area. To walk out your door,
it is crack bottles, dope, syringes. But we were sheltered
from that from my mom putting us in private schools.
Speaker 4 (01:52):
My mom was a single mom of five kids when
I grew up.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Remember having candlelight dinners because the powers out having no electricity.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Fukuan's mother had cleared a safe path for her children,
and while he didn't fully realize it at the time,
she'd also given him the foundations to one day start
his own company.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
When we were younger, my mom would take us to
Chinatown to get the scarves, hats, gloves, and then we
would go back to Noork at the bazaar and we
would sell them. Me and my younger brother would sit
there and sell items from the table, and every one
hundred dollars worth of items we sold, we would get
twenty five dollars and pretty good margins. Yay yeah yeah,
Well she would slit the profits with us fifty percent,
(02:29):
and I loved it.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Fuquan knew he liked talking to people, but he didn't
think a ton about starting a company someday. For him,
it was more about making money.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
My first real sales job was in telemarketing, and that's
when I learned what they say, you had the gift
the gab. So within six months I went from starlin
on the phone making minimum wage to having the night
shift as a manager, to be in a direct.
Speaker 4 (02:51):
That sells for this company.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
But he saw a cousin of his in arch Nemesis
his words, not mine, making a ton of money working
solely for himself.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
He was started off FM real estate before me, and
I remember him doing a deal and making like forty
fifty thousand dollars something like that, and he was like,
I make more than you, and you working for the
man and everything else. So I started to shadow home
around and speak to contractors and I was like, Wow,
this is really great.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
So Fukwan quit his job and started working at his
cousin's business full time. His role was to consult with
prospective homeowners and build a network of potential buyers. To
get people in the door, he would hand out flyers
for free seminars where he'd teach aspiring homeowners about how
to qualify for loans and earn passive income for mental properties.
It made him feel good to pass along what he
(03:36):
had learned about real estate from his cousin to his
own community.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
We was never taught financial literacy where I grew up
at let alone, you know how to qualify for home right,
it was only for middle class and upper class people.
So being able to do that value add and give
that back to the community from education I knew and
nobody was doing that. Nobody was coming to the hood
so to speak, and educating people on how they can
get a foot in and get a lake up. So
(04:00):
it felt good That was what gave me my full
of the importance educating the community on.
Speaker 4 (04:04):
What they can do to have financial freedom.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
And his seminars they were working. He was helping dozens
of people learn how to become first time home buyers
and passing along those connections to his network of realtors
and loan officers, and timing was on his side. Around
this time, banks had made it really easy for folks
of all financial backgrounds to qualify for loans.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
The banks were literally approven any and everybody, so it
made it easier for people to qualify. So you would
actually go out to a seminar and educate people, and
then people would take the leap forward and take action,
and then that would spread like wildfire.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
He was also helping his cousin's company fix up and
flip properties for profit. He focused on reinvesting in his
own community, Newark, New Jersey, where he grew up. How
did you make that happen in a way that was sustainable.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
There were a lot of dilapidated properties, a lot of
burnt out properties, vacant properties, and it was just a
war zone pretty much. So being able to start going
and repair properties block by block and bringing the community
back gave us an opportunity for the town to get
properties back on the tax road and give the residents
a better place to live.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
And it wasn't just properties. Fu Quan also gave formally
incarcerated people jobs that they usually couldn't get.
Speaker 4 (05:21):
Growing up in NewYork.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
These were the people that were in my community, friends
and family members of course, who ran the streets and
got involved with the wrong thing. And I know these
were good people, right, there's good people in bad areas.
They just set caught up from what's happening in the community.
So for me, it was an opportunity to kind of
throw the lifeboat in, right. So hiring these people gave
them more of a chance to be employee, first of all,
(05:45):
and have the confidence that they actually can do something
besides being in the street doing the wrong thing.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
After a few years, Fuquan and the business were doing great.
They had a solid customer base, they were giving back
to their community, and they were financially stable. One was
riding high until one day something happened that changed the
direction of his life forever.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
So it was my cousin's birthday and the day before
we were actually visiting a lot of construction sites, and
we were talking about a celebration party he was going
to have the next day. Then the next day came
and he came to the office and said, you know what,
I'm not going to work the full day. Let's make
payroll early. So we did that. He left for the
day and I stayed to work and then I saw
(06:27):
someone just walk past the office and I'm like, well,
we're closed today, who can this be? And I saw
this shadow walk past the door, and I got out
to approach the person to figure out, you know, who
they were looking for. And by the time I walked
out the door, the gentleman was turning back around and
I said to him, Hey, who are you looking for?
Speaker 4 (06:43):
And a guy turned around and looking for you. Boom
boom boom boom boom shot me five times.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
And I had to play dead actually for him to
actually stop shooting. I like lay it on my back
and then he ran off out the door. And it
was such a rush I was able to jump up.
Adrenaline was going in down nine one one. I just
remember being in the back of the ambulance and going
to a university hospital.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
The surgery was extensive, and after he was stitched back up,
Fuquan was in the hospital for a week, he went
home and that's where he stayed for the next six
months while he recovered.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
For me, it was at six months of healing, it
was a lot of self searching and just went more
deeper within, kind of separated myself from a lot of
different people and figure out how can I add more
value to my life and started to build the journey
from there.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
For most people it would have been very easy and
certainly understandable to slip into why me, why now self pity,
But not Fuquan.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
I think that was the best thing that happened to
me because it really taught me to real value of life.
And at the time I didn't have kids, and it
really made me appreciate the simple things that people don't
even pay attention to every day, like tiny shoes, right,
So I started to appreciate the simple things in life.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
I'm going to pause for a second because I to
hear that story and then say someone say that's the
best thing that ever happened to me is pretty astonishing.
Speaker 4 (08:08):
Well, it's a life lesson.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Fuquan and his girlfriend decided to get married and start
building a family. The aftermath of the shooting also changed
how he did business.
Speaker 4 (08:19):
That kind of went into a shell.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
I couldn't trust anybody around me, so I disconnected from
my business partner and started my own venture and started
to go off of my own.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
The company did exactly what Fuquan was doing before, but
this time he owned one hundred percent of it. Though
he'd still be flipping homes. He wanted to do things
differently from his cousin.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
And then started to focus on business from there, and
how can I structure a business where it was a
lifestyle business? And I really wasn't killing myself, so to speak.
And that's when the light bulb went off, Hey, have
you build your own construction team.
Speaker 4 (08:51):
You can control more.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Costs and that way you've been doing less and still
make more profit and still have a quality life.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Luckily, he had a large client list from working at
his cousin's company and running the seminars for so long,
and by the end of his first year he had
a portfolio of thirty properties that he had flipped and sold.
He reinvested any profit he made right back into the business.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
I was hungry. I had something to prove. I had life.
I knew the meaning and value of life, and I
knew that I had a purpose. And in fact, I
did more deals that year than I did the year previously.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
The real estate market continued to boom.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
It started to develop fast because I had a lot
of people my network who were looking for houses. I
had a lot of people who wanted to sell me houses.
I had lenders who wanted to loan me money. So
I started to put all those pieces to the puzzle together,
and that's where my business really started to accelerate.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
He also took the opportunity to diversify the business.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
I had a transportation business. I had a here studio
with twenty five cheers, So I was using real estate
to kind of fund other businesses. I had a car wash,
all these business at the same time.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Majority of what he did and his passion was still
real estate. By the end of that first year of
setting out on his own, he was a millionaire. Things
were great, but he wondered if it was all too
good to be true.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
It was unbelievable. It was mind blowing for me because
where I came from and where I was at the time,
it was almost like a dream. But it was scary
too at the time, because you would see people just
getting into business and taking off, and I was like, okay,
this is too easy. And when I was speak to
the loan offices, they would tell me, hey, they got
stated programs out. People just need the state how much
they make and they qualify. And I was like, well,
(10:33):
they don't do like income verification, they don't do any
of that, and no, they just fell out the information
how much they make.
Speaker 4 (10:39):
Something is not right.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Unfortunately, Fuquan's instincts were right.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
I left the salon and I came home and me
and my wife actually was in our room and she
had the news on and she was like, Oh my god,
do you see what's happened in the market. This is crazy.
Brokers were calling me saying, hey, the deal is going
to close. The bank pulled out. I'm going to switch
it to another bank. I think I could make it happen.
Then two days later, this bank pulled out, and I'm like,
what is going on? Things started to tighten up, but
(11:08):
I was sitting on a lot of inventory and then overnight, boom,
the lights just went out, just like that, and then
everything just froze. It started to be a downward spiral
from there.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
The global financial crisis. Now most of you will remember
it well, but just in case you don't. For some reason,
in two thousand and eight, the entire housing market went
under and financial markets were in upheaval.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
I was like the rug got pulled from under my feet.
The banks stopped lending. I had deals literally at the
closing table, lined up the close, and all the funding
got pulled. And during that time I was just flipping properties.
I had no cash flow. It was just by fixed cell,
by fixed seal, so I had no income coming in
from rental properties. So when they stopped funding the closing,
(11:51):
my business was on standstills and I.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Stuck with These properties were sort of mid.
Speaker 4 (11:55):
Renovation, absolutely, and then values dropped. Fifty percent.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Of the twelve properties Fuquan's company had in closing, nine
of them fell through. Fuquan owed his lenders money for
every property he was renovating. He sold off all of
his other businesses, the car wash and the transportation company
to fund those properties. And still it wasn't enough.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
You took all the losses, two million dollars of your
own money out the door. Absolutely, His accountant advised him
to file for bankruptcy.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
I said, I'm not going to do that because I
had some investors that is still with me today that
believe and said, well, you have our money from our ira,
our retirement. You know what's happening while everyone else was
not paying. I stood tall fire, sold the properties, paid
them back, and I took the loss.
Speaker 5 (12:39):
Ben Wow, Fuquan loses two million dollars of his own
money and still decides to go against his accountant's advice
and not declare bankruptcy. I think that was a really
bold decision.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
Yeah, I suppose it was bold, but it's easy to
say that now. You know. Everything looks good in hindsight,
but it must have been terrifying at the time.
Speaker 5 (12:56):
I want to make sure that we circle back to
this part of the conversation because this is something that
so many business owners have to think about. You know,
they might disagree with how Pukwan handled it, but I
want to make sure we talk about this later.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
It's way too important to miss. But taking back to
the story, like for so many others, Fukuan had to
completely change his way of life after the crash. He
sold his single family home and moved into one of
the apartments his company had been renting out with his
two young sons.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
So I moved from a five bedroom, four bathroom house
to a two bedroom, one bathroom apartment. So I did
what I had to do to cut my expenses down
to survive through it. You know, for a couple of years.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
At any point along this series of woes, did you
think about giving up?
Speaker 2 (13:44):
No, Because for me, it was I fight better with
blood in my mouth. Right, It's I grew up through adversity,
So growing up through that was really made me who
I am today. So going through that, especially after getting shot, right,
you get shot five times and you still live, It's like, Okay,
what's next?
Speaker 1 (14:01):
What's next? Was well a lot of thinking. You see,
the real estate market would be frozen for a few years,
and for Kwan was now divorced, his entire life and
his business had to pivot.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
I remember sitting on my bed watching the silling fan,
swinging around like, you know, what am I going to do?
Because real estate was my identity and that's all I knew.
I didn't know anything else, and that time was really
quiet time for me, and it was time for me
to go within. During that time, I learned the only
way that my business is going to grow is when I.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Grow amazingly enough. Just like getting shot. Fuquan considers the
global financial crisis to be one of the best things
that ever happened to him.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
That was the second pivotal moment in my life that
I look at that as something that was a blessing
that happened as well, because at the time I worshiped money.
I was a slave to it, and I thought that
was the value. So until you learn when you don't
have it, where the really value is. I learned that
the true wealth it was within and it really value
was in family. I spent a lot more time with
my kids, becoming the best father I can be, and
(15:00):
that's what really build a stronger foundation. So this helped
me see that you can get to the other side.
You may have to jump through a couple of hoops
with fire, but the other side is they're waiting for
you if you're persistent.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
But the housing market wouldn't be recovering anytime soon, so
he had to pivot once again. He learned about short sales,
the process of buying foreclosed homes for less than the
value remaining on the mortgage. Fuquan found himself a mentor
who could teach him the trade. He decided to shift
his business completely towards short sales. It became so successful
(15:31):
that he started running seminars again to build an investor base.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
Before I was teaching people in a front part. Hey,
this is how you buy a house. This is how
you qualify, it's what you do, It's how you get tenants.
Now telling people this is how you buy debt. You
guys don't know about the debt business. Let me teach
you about the debt business. You don't have to deal
with no tenants, tallest trash, turnmites, you have to deal
with any of that. You can help home uner stay
in the house. You buy debt at a discount, and
(15:56):
this is how it works.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
And in twenty thirteen, Fukwan decided to start Energy the
National Note Group.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
And I said, I'm going to create a vehicle where
I can raise capital, buy notes direct from the bank,
sell some off to people who want to buy them,
and work them out myself to make a great return.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Four years into the business, Pukwan decided it was time
to diversify again, so Energ started to do fix and
flips again.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Beyond that, and then in twenty nineteen, we started to
do rentals. So now we have income from rentals, we
have income from Fix and Flips, and we have income
from the note business. So those three different verticals help
us stay afloat, help us navigate the narrows, help us
continue to be able to pivot. So, for example, if
(16:43):
foreclosure happens again, the note business.
Speaker 4 (16:45):
Would be booming because banks would be selling debt.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
Right if Fix and Flips slowed down because interest rates
are high, we have revenue coming in from multifamilies. Rent
is not going down. Rent it's really expensive. Rent keeps increasing, right,
So we have those three different verticals, and that keeps
us aflow.
Speaker 4 (17:01):
In today's mark is.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
With Neng up and running, Fuquan could return to doing
something that was at the heart of his business all along,
giving back.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
So we raise capital from accredited investors, and then we
take that capital and we invest it into our impact projects.
So in the Southeast and Alabama and Georgia, we invest
into a lot of the multi family apartment complexes, and
we keep thirty percent of those communities with subsidized rants
for their Section eight. Bad women and children, seniors who
(17:32):
can't afford rent, bumps.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
For anyone listening who thinks you have to work all
the time to win big take this lesson from Fuquan.
His focus on himself and his quality of life has
paid back big time for his business, and today he's
doing more than ever before. The Energy Capital Fund owns
twelve hundred properties, with a goal of getting to five
(17:54):
thousand in the not too distant future. They moved way
beyond New Jersey and are now working on projects in
Georgia and Alabam too, and giving back to the communities
they develop is still at the very heart of their business.
Speaker 5 (18:11):
That is such an inspiring story.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
Yeah, that one had a lot of ups and downs.
I mean he has really ridden a roller coaster. Yeah,
he really has.
Speaker 5 (18:19):
And there's so much we can talk about here, and
I'm excited about jumping into it. But let's start with
Wakwan's decision to not file for bankruptcy. You know, like
everything else, there are benefits and drawbacks. But Fukwan took
a very long term approach. All right, he was an
entrepreneurial guy. It was not going to be a good
look for him to fail on the people who invested
in his business and invested in him. For him to
(18:39):
just simply say, oh, I sorry, I need to file
bankruptcy and by the way, forget about your money. And
I think it's important that business owners do take a
long term approach, because you essentially have to weigh the
benefits of getting your debt extinguished versus the long term
consequences of possibly not being able to get financing again
for another several years.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
I would go step further, Tanya. He didn't just take
a long term approach. He took a principled approach. True,
I think they were equally important. Now that doesn't mean
it's always wrong to file for bankruptcy. There are situations
where it's appropriate, don't get me wrong. But for him,
I think it was equally about his long term reputation
and his principles, and he put those both to work
and he came out exactly where he was meant to.
Speaker 5 (19:19):
Yeah, and you make a good point, like, I'm not
anti bankruptcy, I'm just thinking throughing it better, really make
damn good sense approach, That's what I'm about.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
Yeah. The bankruptcy Code exists for a reason, and part
of the reason that it exists is to encourage risk
taking so that lenders and borrowers have a common framework
for when things go wrong, because if they don't, then
it will make lenders more hesitant to lend and borrowers
more hesitant to borrow.
Speaker 5 (19:47):
It.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
So it exists for a reason, but it exists as
a last resort. Right as long as the bankruptcy is
on your record, it's going to be very tough to
get credit. You're typically only going to be able to credit,
if at all, from alternative lending sources tend to be
very expensive and the terms can be onerous. One thing
I always remind people is in small business, it's not
just business credit, it's business and personal credit. Indeed, small
(20:11):
business debt in almost all cases requires a personal guarantee,
which means it's not just reflecting on the business's credit,
it's reflecting on you as an individual. So it can
affect your ability to buy a house, or buy a car,
or take student loans or any other kind of credit
that you might want to use to finance your life.
Now that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it, but it
means you need to go in eyes open, and so
(20:32):
business and personal credit are kind of the same thing
in the small business space, and that's why it's important
to consider that when you use debt as a tool.
Speaker 5 (20:40):
I'm so glad you brought that up then, because there
are so many business owners and aspiring business owners who
come to me and don't realize how integrally tied their
personal finances are to their business credit. And they think
that just because a certain contract or a certain obligation
is put into the business's name, that it is not
going to matter as much what their personal situation is.
(21:02):
And they even think that, you know, those who have
been in business for a while and have you know, substantial,
very successful while performing businesses, they don't realize that they're still,
even at the multiple million dollars in revenue level, they're
still tied to that small business. I try to express
to people that their business has to be so extraordinary
(21:23):
for their personal assets and their personal credit to be
completely separated from their business.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
That's right. I mean that only happens when it is
truly a professionally run business where the owner could leave
tomorrow and it kind of wouldn't matter because it exists
as an entity under itself, and then you can do
entity financing, but that typically comes much much later. That said,
we've worked with lots of businesses who have used credit
in really smart ways, in ways that kept them from
(21:49):
having to take equity financing and dilute their ownership in
the company. So debt financing absolutely has a place in
the capital stack. It absolutely has a place as one
of the sources of growth capital, and every entre has
to evaluate which one is right for them and evaluate
the trade offs that you have to make between them.
Speaker 5 (22:05):
I like that financing and a small business level, especially
because so many people do want to maintain control, and
we know that a lot comes with getting other people's
money if it's an equity position, right, And so those
entrepreneurs who are saying I really would like to maintain control,
I encourage them to strongly consider getting just traditional financing
(22:26):
because then they can keep the control, but they still
get access to the capitol.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
But all of that comes after putting your own money in.
If you don't have a dollar to put in your business,
you don't have a business. You need to be working
and saving and have some seed money to start at yourself.
Because I can tell you that whether you're raising equity financing,
debt financing, or anything else, if you won't put a
dollar in, why would I put a dollar in.
Speaker 5 (22:49):
Exactly, and circling back to Fuklan, that's what he had
to do to get what he was trying to get
done done. He needed to show that he had skin
in the game, and you know, when things didn't go
we well, his two million dollars was on the line,
and that's kind of how it goes, and.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
He stood by it. The other thing that I loved
about Fuquon's story is how much his business is tied
to his community goals. And what that means from a
practical perspective is that the mission of the company is
deeply personal and it's driven by his connection to his
community and where he comes from. And so this isn't
(23:26):
just about making another buck, although he does well financially.
This is about delivering meaningful, lasting change to a community
that he feels like is a part of him.
Speaker 5 (23:36):
He found a way to pour back into his community
while building a sustainable business that served not only him
his own purposes as a business owner, but also the
purposes of the community and goes to show there's so
many different ways to do this right because earlier in
his story he did it by hiring people who were
less likely to be hired by others. So that was
(23:58):
how he was pouring back into his community and supporting
members of his community. When that kind of went badly,
he then shifted to doing it through his business. And
I like saying how people engage in the community in
a way that resonates with them but also is in
line with their business.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
What I particularly love here, though, and I'm going to
share a personal view, is I love purpose driven capitalism
as opposed to just philanthropy. Because he wasn't saying I'm
going to make a bunch of money and give it away.
He was saying, I'm going to do something that will
help my community and make me money at the same time.
Because when you do that, everybody wants to do more
of it, and I think that's great. So when the
purpose of the company is fundamentally to uplift a community
(24:37):
and it can do that in a profitable way, it's
becomes self sustaining. He even said he keeps thirty percent
of his units for low income families or people with disabilities.
But he's not doing that and losing money. He's doing
that and still generating a healthy return for his investors
and himself. And that means at that rate, you want
to do more of it, and that's great, and you
want to You don't have to have a special Hey,
(24:59):
can you come do this investment. You won't make your
normal money, but we're doing good. No, no, no, you're going
to make your normal return and we're going to do
some good. That. That's a home run.
Speaker 5 (25:07):
It truly is, and people can't help but want to
support that. And even further, Ben, he's showing people how
it can be done, which is inspiring, right, and I
love how he went about doing it.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Yeah. Look, and now he's expanding. He's in the southeast,
and so I'm looking forward to seeing where he takes
it next.
Speaker 5 (25:23):
Oh yeah, I have no doubt with the way he
operates and just the clarity of vision that he has,
I have no doubt that.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
He is just going to continue to sore Tanya. Let's
go to the advice Caucon wanted to share with our listeners.
He thinks every business owner needs to ask themselves two
questions when starting a business.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
Wish of value, d what is your impact? Always think
of business from that point because most people think of it. Okay,
I want to make a lot of money for what
reason you know you want to travel, you want to
do what right?
Speaker 4 (25:53):
What impact are you going to do?
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Like I explain, my wise is providing quality housing and
I wake up out a bit every day and that's
mission right. So I would definitely say find out a
way where you can add value to others, and the
rest of procy definitely will come back to you ten times.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
Thanks so much for listening to The Unshakables. If you
liked this episode, please rate and review it. It'll help
our show find more listeners. On the next episode, we'll
be back with a story about a college dropout who
started his company the way every great innovator does by
selling stuff out of his dorm room. I'm Ben Walter
and this is The Unshakables from Chase for Business and
(26:29):
iHeart
Speaker 2 (26:30):
The Unshakables is a production of Ruby's Studio from iHeartMedia
and Wheelhouse DNA.
For Fukuan Blal, CEO of the nerg Capital Fund. He
still remembers the two thousand and eight housing market crash
like it was yesterday.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
I came home and me and my wife actually was
in our room and she had the news on, and
she was like, oh my god, do you see what's
happening to market? This is crazy. Brokers were calling me saying, hey,
the deal is going to close. The bank pulled out.
I'm like, what is going on? And then overnight, boom,
the lights just went out, just like that. I was like,
the rug got pulled from under my feet. The banks
(00:30):
stopped lending. I had deals literally at the closing table,
lined up the clothes, and all the funding got pulled.
So when they stopped funding the closing, my business was
on standstill.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
You took all the losses two million dollars of your
own money out the door.
Speaker 4 (00:45):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Welcome to the Unshakables from Chase for Business and Ruby
Studio from iHeartMedia. I'm Ben Walter, CEO of Chase for Business.
Speaker 5 (00:59):
And I'm Tanyannie Well, a lawyer and consultant for business owners.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
We're sharing the daring stories of small business owners facing
their crisis points and telling the stories of how they
got through it.
Speaker 5 (01:10):
Hey Tanya, Hey Ben.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
I think today's episode is really inspirational. There's so much
to learn from Fukuan, how he's persevered in life and
in business, and how he's using his company to give
back to his community.
Speaker 5 (01:20):
Can't wait to hear this one.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
On today's episode. An MG Capital Fund from Newark, New Jersey.
Now here's a little behind the scenes about the show
for you. We recorded a lot of this in New
York City, but Fuquan is from Newark, which is only
about thirty minutes west of here. Now the Newark from
when Fuquan was growing up, it looked a lot different
than it does today.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
If you can remember early eighties, it was a lot
of drugs an the area. To walk out your door,
it is crack bottles, dope, syringes. But we were sheltered
from that from my mom putting us in private schools.
Speaker 4 (01:52):
My mom was a single mom of five kids when
I grew up.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Remember having candlelight dinners because the powers out having no electricity.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Fukuan's mother had cleared a safe path for her children,
and while he didn't fully realize it at the time,
she'd also given him the foundations to one day start
his own company.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
When we were younger, my mom would take us to
Chinatown to get the scarves, hats, gloves, and then we
would go back to Noork at the bazaar and we
would sell them. Me and my younger brother would sit
there and sell items from the table, and every one
hundred dollars worth of items we sold, we would get
twenty five dollars and pretty good margins. Yay yeah yeah,
Well she would slit the profits with us fifty percent,
(02:29):
and I loved it.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Fuquan knew he liked talking to people, but he didn't
think a ton about starting a company someday. For him,
it was more about making money.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
My first real sales job was in telemarketing, and that's
when I learned what they say, you had the gift
the gab. So within six months I went from starlin
on the phone making minimum wage to having the night
shift as a manager, to be in a direct.
Speaker 4 (02:51):
That sells for this company.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
But he saw a cousin of his in arch Nemesis
his words, not mine, making a ton of money working
solely for himself.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
He was started off FM real estate before me, and
I remember him doing a deal and making like forty
fifty thousand dollars something like that, and he was like,
I make more than you, and you working for the
man and everything else. So I started to shadow home
around and speak to contractors and I was like, Wow,
this is really great.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
So Fukwan quit his job and started working at his
cousin's business full time. His role was to consult with
prospective homeowners and build a network of potential buyers. To
get people in the door, he would hand out flyers
for free seminars where he'd teach aspiring homeowners about how
to qualify for loans and earn passive income for mental properties.
It made him feel good to pass along what he
(03:36):
had learned about real estate from his cousin to his
own community.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
We was never taught financial literacy where I grew up
at let alone, you know how to qualify for home right,
it was only for middle class and upper class people.
So being able to do that value add and give
that back to the community from education I knew and
nobody was doing that. Nobody was coming to the hood
so to speak, and educating people on how they can
get a foot in and get a lake up. So
(04:00):
it felt good That was what gave me my full
of the importance educating the community on.
Speaker 4 (04:04):
What they can do to have financial freedom.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
And his seminars they were working. He was helping dozens
of people learn how to become first time home buyers
and passing along those connections to his network of realtors
and loan officers, and timing was on his side. Around
this time, banks had made it really easy for folks
of all financial backgrounds to qualify for loans.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
The banks were literally approven any and everybody, so it
made it easier for people to qualify. So you would
actually go out to a seminar and educate people, and
then people would take the leap forward and take action,
and then that would spread like wildfire.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
He was also helping his cousin's company fix up and
flip properties for profit. He focused on reinvesting in his
own community, Newark, New Jersey, where he grew up. How
did you make that happen in a way that was sustainable.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
There were a lot of dilapidated properties, a lot of
burnt out properties, vacant properties, and it was just a
war zone pretty much. So being able to start going
and repair properties block by block and bringing the community
back gave us an opportunity for the town to get
properties back on the tax road and give the residents
a better place to live.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
And it wasn't just properties. Fu Quan also gave formally
incarcerated people jobs that they usually couldn't get.
Speaker 4 (05:21):
Growing up in NewYork.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
These were the people that were in my community, friends
and family members of course, who ran the streets and
got involved with the wrong thing. And I know these
were good people, right, there's good people in bad areas.
They just set caught up from what's happening in the community.
So for me, it was an opportunity to kind of
throw the lifeboat in, right. So hiring these people gave
them more of a chance to be employee, first of all,
(05:45):
and have the confidence that they actually can do something
besides being in the street doing the wrong thing.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
After a few years, Fuquan and the business were doing great.
They had a solid customer base, they were giving back
to their community, and they were financially stable. One was
riding high until one day something happened that changed the
direction of his life forever.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
So it was my cousin's birthday and the day before
we were actually visiting a lot of construction sites, and
we were talking about a celebration party he was going
to have the next day. Then the next day came
and he came to the office and said, you know what,
I'm not going to work the full day. Let's make
payroll early. So we did that. He left for the
day and I stayed to work and then I saw
(06:27):
someone just walk past the office and I'm like, well,
we're closed today, who can this be? And I saw
this shadow walk past the door, and I got out
to approach the person to figure out, you know, who
they were looking for. And by the time I walked
out the door, the gentleman was turning back around and
I said to him, Hey, who are you looking for?
Speaker 4 (06:43):
And a guy turned around and looking for you. Boom
boom boom boom boom shot me five times.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
And I had to play dead actually for him to
actually stop shooting. I like lay it on my back
and then he ran off out the door. And it
was such a rush I was able to jump up.
Adrenaline was going in down nine one one. I just
remember being in the back of the ambulance and going
to a university hospital.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
The surgery was extensive, and after he was stitched back up,
Fuquan was in the hospital for a week, he went
home and that's where he stayed for the next six
months while he recovered.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
For me, it was at six months of healing, it
was a lot of self searching and just went more
deeper within, kind of separated myself from a lot of
different people and figure out how can I add more
value to my life and started to build the journey
from there.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
For most people it would have been very easy and
certainly understandable to slip into why me, why now self pity,
But not Fuquan.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
I think that was the best thing that happened to
me because it really taught me to real value of life.
And at the time I didn't have kids, and it
really made me appreciate the simple things that people don't
even pay attention to every day, like tiny shoes, right,
So I started to appreciate the simple things in life.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
I'm going to pause for a second because I to
hear that story and then say someone say that's the
best thing that ever happened to me is pretty astonishing.
Speaker 4 (08:08):
Well, it's a life lesson.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Fuquan and his girlfriend decided to get married and start
building a family. The aftermath of the shooting also changed
how he did business.
Speaker 4 (08:19):
That kind of went into a shell.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
I couldn't trust anybody around me, so I disconnected from
my business partner and started my own venture and started
to go off of my own.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
The company did exactly what Fuquan was doing before, but
this time he owned one hundred percent of it. Though
he'd still be flipping homes. He wanted to do things
differently from his cousin.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
And then started to focus on business from there, and
how can I structure a business where it was a
lifestyle business? And I really wasn't killing myself, so to speak.
And that's when the light bulb went off, Hey, have
you build your own construction team.
Speaker 4 (08:51):
You can control more.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Costs and that way you've been doing less and still
make more profit and still have a quality life.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Luckily, he had a large client list from working at
his cousin's company and running the seminars for so long,
and by the end of his first year he had
a portfolio of thirty properties that he had flipped and sold.
He reinvested any profit he made right back into the business.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
I was hungry. I had something to prove. I had life.
I knew the meaning and value of life, and I
knew that I had a purpose. And in fact, I
did more deals that year than I did the year previously.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
The real estate market continued to boom.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
It started to develop fast because I had a lot
of people my network who were looking for houses. I
had a lot of people who wanted to sell me houses.
I had lenders who wanted to loan me money. So
I started to put all those pieces to the puzzle together,
and that's where my business really started to accelerate.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
He also took the opportunity to diversify the business.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
I had a transportation business. I had a here studio
with twenty five cheers, So I was using real estate
to kind of fund other businesses. I had a car wash,
all these business at the same time.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Majority of what he did and his passion was still
real estate. By the end of that first year of
setting out on his own, he was a millionaire. Things
were great, but he wondered if it was all too
good to be true.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
It was unbelievable. It was mind blowing for me because
where I came from and where I was at the time,
it was almost like a dream. But it was scary
too at the time, because you would see people just
getting into business and taking off, and I was like, okay,
this is too easy. And when I was speak to
the loan offices, they would tell me, hey, they got
stated programs out. People just need the state how much
they make and they qualify. And I was like, well,
(10:33):
they don't do like income verification, they don't do any
of that, and no, they just fell out the information
how much they make.
Speaker 4 (10:39):
Something is not right.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Unfortunately, Fuquan's instincts were right.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
I left the salon and I came home and me
and my wife actually was in our room and she
had the news on and she was like, Oh my god,
do you see what's happened in the market. This is crazy.
Brokers were calling me saying, hey, the deal is going
to close. The bank pulled out. I'm going to switch
it to another bank. I think I could make it happen.
Then two days later, this bank pulled out, and I'm like,
what is going on? Things started to tighten up, but
(11:08):
I was sitting on a lot of inventory and then overnight, boom,
the lights just went out, just like that, and then
everything just froze. It started to be a downward spiral
from there.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
The global financial crisis. Now most of you will remember
it well, but just in case you don't. For some reason,
in two thousand and eight, the entire housing market went
under and financial markets were in upheaval.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
I was like the rug got pulled from under my feet.
The banks stopped lending. I had deals literally at the
closing table, lined up the close, and all the funding
got pulled. And during that time I was just flipping properties.
I had no cash flow. It was just by fixed cell,
by fixed seal, so I had no income coming in
from rental properties. So when they stopped funding the closing,
(11:51):
my business was on standstills and I.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Stuck with These properties were sort of mid.
Speaker 4 (11:55):
Renovation, absolutely, and then values dropped. Fifty percent.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Of the twelve properties Fuquan's company had in closing, nine
of them fell through. Fuquan owed his lenders money for
every property he was renovating. He sold off all of
his other businesses, the car wash and the transportation company
to fund those properties. And still it wasn't enough.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
You took all the losses, two million dollars of your
own money out the door. Absolutely, His accountant advised him
to file for bankruptcy.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
I said, I'm not going to do that because I
had some investors that is still with me today that
believe and said, well, you have our money from our ira,
our retirement. You know what's happening while everyone else was
not paying. I stood tall fire, sold the properties, paid
them back, and I took the loss.
Speaker 5 (12:39):
Ben Wow, Fuquan loses two million dollars of his own
money and still decides to go against his accountant's advice
and not declare bankruptcy. I think that was a really
bold decision.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
Yeah, I suppose it was bold, but it's easy to
say that now. You know. Everything looks good in hindsight,
but it must have been terrifying at the time.
Speaker 5 (12:56):
I want to make sure that we circle back to
this part of the conversation because this is something that
so many business owners have to think about. You know,
they might disagree with how Pukwan handled it, but I
want to make sure we talk about this later.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
It's way too important to miss. But taking back to
the story, like for so many others, Fukuan had to
completely change his way of life after the crash. He
sold his single family home and moved into one of
the apartments his company had been renting out with his
two young sons.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
So I moved from a five bedroom, four bathroom house
to a two bedroom, one bathroom apartment. So I did
what I had to do to cut my expenses down
to survive through it. You know, for a couple of years.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
At any point along this series of woes, did you
think about giving up?
Speaker 2 (13:44):
No, Because for me, it was I fight better with
blood in my mouth. Right, It's I grew up through adversity,
So growing up through that was really made me who
I am today. So going through that, especially after getting shot, right,
you get shot five times and you still live, It's like, Okay,
what's next?
Speaker 1 (14:01):
What's next? Was well a lot of thinking. You see,
the real estate market would be frozen for a few years,
and for Kwan was now divorced, his entire life and
his business had to pivot.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
I remember sitting on my bed watching the silling fan,
swinging around like, you know, what am I going to do?
Because real estate was my identity and that's all I knew.
I didn't know anything else, and that time was really
quiet time for me, and it was time for me
to go within. During that time, I learned the only
way that my business is going to grow is when I.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Grow amazingly enough. Just like getting shot. Fuquan considers the
global financial crisis to be one of the best things
that ever happened to him.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
That was the second pivotal moment in my life that
I look at that as something that was a blessing
that happened as well, because at the time I worshiped money.
I was a slave to it, and I thought that
was the value. So until you learn when you don't
have it, where the really value is. I learned that
the true wealth it was within and it really value
was in family. I spent a lot more time with
my kids, becoming the best father I can be, and
(15:00):
that's what really build a stronger foundation. So this helped
me see that you can get to the other side.
You may have to jump through a couple of hoops
with fire, but the other side is they're waiting for
you if you're persistent.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
But the housing market wouldn't be recovering anytime soon, so
he had to pivot once again. He learned about short sales,
the process of buying foreclosed homes for less than the
value remaining on the mortgage. Fuquan found himself a mentor
who could teach him the trade. He decided to shift
his business completely towards short sales. It became so successful
(15:31):
that he started running seminars again to build an investor base.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
Before I was teaching people in a front part. Hey,
this is how you buy a house. This is how
you qualify, it's what you do, It's how you get tenants.
Now telling people this is how you buy debt. You
guys don't know about the debt business. Let me teach
you about the debt business. You don't have to deal
with no tenants, tallest trash, turnmites, you have to deal
with any of that. You can help home uner stay
in the house. You buy debt at a discount, and
(15:56):
this is how it works.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
And in twenty thirteen, Fukwan decided to start Energy the
National Note Group.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
And I said, I'm going to create a vehicle where
I can raise capital, buy notes direct from the bank,
sell some off to people who want to buy them,
and work them out myself to make a great return.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Four years into the business, Pukwan decided it was time
to diversify again, so Energ started to do fix and
flips again.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Beyond that, and then in twenty nineteen, we started to
do rentals. So now we have income from rentals, we
have income from Fix and Flips, and we have income
from the note business. So those three different verticals help
us stay afloat, help us navigate the narrows, help us
continue to be able to pivot. So, for example, if
(16:43):
foreclosure happens again, the note business.
Speaker 4 (16:45):
Would be booming because banks would be selling debt.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
Right if Fix and Flips slowed down because interest rates
are high, we have revenue coming in from multifamilies. Rent
is not going down. Rent it's really expensive. Rent keeps increasing, right,
So we have those three different verticals, and that keeps
us aflow.
Speaker 4 (17:01):
In today's mark is.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
With Neng up and running, Fuquan could return to doing
something that was at the heart of his business all along,
giving back.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
So we raise capital from accredited investors, and then we
take that capital and we invest it into our impact projects.
So in the Southeast and Alabama and Georgia, we invest
into a lot of the multi family apartment complexes, and
we keep thirty percent of those communities with subsidized rants
for their Section eight. Bad women and children, seniors who
(17:32):
can't afford rent, bumps.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
For anyone listening who thinks you have to work all
the time to win big take this lesson from Fuquan.
His focus on himself and his quality of life has
paid back big time for his business, and today he's
doing more than ever before. The Energy Capital Fund owns
twelve hundred properties, with a goal of getting to five
(17:54):
thousand in the not too distant future. They moved way
beyond New Jersey and are now working on projects in
Georgia and Alabam too, and giving back to the communities
they develop is still at the very heart of their business.
Speaker 5 (18:11):
That is such an inspiring story.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
Yeah, that one had a lot of ups and downs.
I mean he has really ridden a roller coaster. Yeah,
he really has.
Speaker 5 (18:19):
And there's so much we can talk about here, and
I'm excited about jumping into it. But let's start with
Wakwan's decision to not file for bankruptcy. You know, like
everything else, there are benefits and drawbacks. But Fukwan took
a very long term approach. All right, he was an
entrepreneurial guy. It was not going to be a good
look for him to fail on the people who invested
in his business and invested in him. For him to
(18:39):
just simply say, oh, I sorry, I need to file
bankruptcy and by the way, forget about your money. And
I think it's important that business owners do take a
long term approach, because you essentially have to weigh the
benefits of getting your debt extinguished versus the long term
consequences of possibly not being able to get financing again
for another several years.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
I would go step further, Tanya. He didn't just take
a long term approach. He took a principled approach. True,
I think they were equally important. Now that doesn't mean
it's always wrong to file for bankruptcy. There are situations
where it's appropriate, don't get me wrong. But for him,
I think it was equally about his long term reputation
and his principles, and he put those both to work
and he came out exactly where he was meant to.
Speaker 5 (19:19):
Yeah, and you make a good point, like, I'm not
anti bankruptcy, I'm just thinking throughing it better, really make
damn good sense approach, That's what I'm about.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
Yeah. The bankruptcy Code exists for a reason, and part
of the reason that it exists is to encourage risk
taking so that lenders and borrowers have a common framework
for when things go wrong, because if they don't, then
it will make lenders more hesitant to lend and borrowers
more hesitant to borrow.
Speaker 5 (19:47):
It.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
So it exists for a reason, but it exists as
a last resort. Right as long as the bankruptcy is
on your record, it's going to be very tough to
get credit. You're typically only going to be able to credit,
if at all, from alternative lending sources tend to be
very expensive and the terms can be onerous. One thing
I always remind people is in small business, it's not
just business credit, it's business and personal credit. Indeed, small
(20:11):
business debt in almost all cases requires a personal guarantee,
which means it's not just reflecting on the business's credit,
it's reflecting on you as an individual. So it can
affect your ability to buy a house, or buy a car,
or take student loans or any other kind of credit
that you might want to use to finance your life.
Now that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it, but it
means you need to go in eyes open, and so
(20:32):
business and personal credit are kind of the same thing
in the small business space, and that's why it's important
to consider that when you use debt as a tool.
Speaker 5 (20:40):
I'm so glad you brought that up then, because there
are so many business owners and aspiring business owners who
come to me and don't realize how integrally tied their
personal finances are to their business credit. And they think
that just because a certain contract or a certain obligation
is put into the business's name, that it is not
going to matter as much what their personal situation is.
(21:02):
And they even think that, you know, those who have
been in business for a while and have you know, substantial,
very successful while performing businesses, they don't realize that they're still,
even at the multiple million dollars in revenue level, they're
still tied to that small business. I try to express
to people that their business has to be so extraordinary
(21:23):
for their personal assets and their personal credit to be
completely separated from their business.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
That's right. I mean that only happens when it is
truly a professionally run business where the owner could leave
tomorrow and it kind of wouldn't matter because it exists
as an entity under itself, and then you can do
entity financing, but that typically comes much much later. That said,
we've worked with lots of businesses who have used credit
in really smart ways, in ways that kept them from
(21:49):
having to take equity financing and dilute their ownership in
the company. So debt financing absolutely has a place in
the capital stack. It absolutely has a place as one
of the sources of growth capital, and every entre has
to evaluate which one is right for them and evaluate
the trade offs that you have to make between them.
Speaker 5 (22:05):
I like that financing and a small business level, especially
because so many people do want to maintain control, and
we know that a lot comes with getting other people's
money if it's an equity position, right, And so those
entrepreneurs who are saying I really would like to maintain control,
I encourage them to strongly consider getting just traditional financing
(22:26):
because then they can keep the control, but they still
get access to the capitol.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
But all of that comes after putting your own money in.
If you don't have a dollar to put in your business,
you don't have a business. You need to be working
and saving and have some seed money to start at yourself.
Because I can tell you that whether you're raising equity financing,
debt financing, or anything else, if you won't put a
dollar in, why would I put a dollar in.
Speaker 5 (22:49):
Exactly, and circling back to Fuklan, that's what he had
to do to get what he was trying to get
done done. He needed to show that he had skin
in the game, and you know, when things didn't go
we well, his two million dollars was on the line,
and that's kind of how it goes, and.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
He stood by it. The other thing that I loved
about Fuquon's story is how much his business is tied
to his community goals. And what that means from a
practical perspective is that the mission of the company is
deeply personal and it's driven by his connection to his
community and where he comes from. And so this isn't
(23:26):
just about making another buck, although he does well financially.
This is about delivering meaningful, lasting change to a community
that he feels like is a part of him.
Speaker 5 (23:36):
He found a way to pour back into his community
while building a sustainable business that served not only him
his own purposes as a business owner, but also the
purposes of the community and goes to show there's so
many different ways to do this right because earlier in
his story he did it by hiring people who were
less likely to be hired by others. So that was
(23:58):
how he was pouring back into his community and supporting
members of his community. When that kind of went badly,
he then shifted to doing it through his business. And
I like saying how people engage in the community in
a way that resonates with them but also is in
line with their business.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
What I particularly love here, though, and I'm going to
share a personal view, is I love purpose driven capitalism
as opposed to just philanthropy. Because he wasn't saying I'm
going to make a bunch of money and give it away.
He was saying, I'm going to do something that will
help my community and make me money at the same time.
Because when you do that, everybody wants to do more
of it, and I think that's great. So when the
purpose of the company is fundamentally to uplift a community
(24:37):
and it can do that in a profitable way, it's
becomes self sustaining. He even said he keeps thirty percent
of his units for low income families or people with disabilities.
But he's not doing that and losing money. He's doing
that and still generating a healthy return for his investors
and himself. And that means at that rate, you want
to do more of it, and that's great, and you
want to You don't have to have a special Hey,
(24:59):
can you come do this investment. You won't make your
normal money, but we're doing good. No, no, no, you're going
to make your normal return and we're going to do
some good. That. That's a home run.
Speaker 5 (25:07):
It truly is, and people can't help but want to
support that. And even further, Ben, he's showing people how
it can be done, which is inspiring, right, and I
love how he went about doing it.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Yeah. Look, and now he's expanding. He's in the southeast,
and so I'm looking forward to seeing where he takes
it next.
Speaker 5 (25:23):
Oh yeah, I have no doubt with the way he
operates and just the clarity of vision that he has,
I have no doubt that.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
He is just going to continue to sore Tanya. Let's
go to the advice Caucon wanted to share with our listeners.
He thinks every business owner needs to ask themselves two
questions when starting a business.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
Wish of value, d what is your impact? Always think
of business from that point because most people think of it. Okay,
I want to make a lot of money for what
reason you know you want to travel, you want to
do what right?
Speaker 4 (25:53):
What impact are you going to do?
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Like I explain, my wise is providing quality housing and
I wake up out a bit every day and that's
mission right. So I would definitely say find out a
way where you can add value to others, and the
rest of procy definitely will come back to you ten times.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
Thanks so much for listening to The Unshakables. If you
liked this episode, please rate and review it. It'll help
our show find more listeners. On the next episode, we'll
be back with a story about a college dropout who
started his company the way every great innovator does by
selling stuff out of his dorm room. I'm Ben Walter
and this is The Unshakables from Chase for Business and
(26:29):
iHeart
Speaker 2 (26:30):
The Unshakables is a production of Ruby's Studio from iHeartMedia
and Wheelhouse DNA.
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