Life of Ken – Vol. 2

---

Happenings from the Homefront

The best news on the homefront is that Grace and Knox are both home for the summer from Auburn. Grace has been lining up seemingly non-stop babysitting jobs to earn money for the summer. She has a full time internship next Fall (her last semester at college), but it is unpaid, so she is saving up as much as she can over the summer. Knox has an internship at CHC Development to learn about the commercial real estate development world. A huge thanks to Rian and Rory Maguire for giving Knox the internship opportunity.

It looks like we will soon be having an unanticipated kitchen remodel. We recently found out that our dishwasher had been leaking. Looks like it could have been leaking for 1-2 years, according to our appliance repairman and the insurance adjustor. Now we will be ripping out cabinets and flooring to see the extent of the damage. Stay tuned for more updates.

Kai wrapped up his last season of coach pitch baseball with the ULL Stripers. His coaches were Cory Boggess and Jeff Murray – both were absolutely outstanding coaches and mentors to these young kids. Kai’s development as a player has skyrocketed this year. Amber and I are now very excited about the upcoming fall season.

Kai is now officially out of school for the summer. The last day at Tanglewood was Thursday, May 23. Now it is time for camps, sports clinics, and summer time travel!

Our home has been a busy hub of activity lately. We hosted our annual Wimberly Group Real Estate Advisors Crawfish Boil a couple of weeks ago. It was our largest attendance yet and was a big success. There were over 100 adult and 20 kid RSVP’s. We cooked six sacks of crawfish and all the amazing fixings with them! For a full wrap of the event check out this album of photos!

Then less than a week later, Amber hosted the end-of-year 2nd Grade class party for Kai’s class. Again, the party was a hit. The kids swam, played Gaga Ball, ping pong, had water gun fights, and took lots of silly pictures. The mom’s and teachers were breathing a sigh of relief that school is finally out for summer. Although in a few short months I suspect all the mom’s will be ready to get those kids back in school and out of their hair! 

Lastly, we just got back from a great Memorial Day Weekend trip to the ranch. This is where we find our true peace and happiness. Time at the ranch with family and friends. Great conversations, great food, hiking around, ranch work, fishing, hunting, swimming, dogs playing, stars shining, laughter in the air…yes, THIS is what I love.

Work, work, work!

We have officially begun the process of preparing to franchise the Laundry Luv brand. We executed an agreement with a franchise consultant and development company to help us through the process. It should take roughly four months to wrap it up and be ready for expansion. We are already in talks with multiple veteran organizations about how to support our nation’s heroes and help them start their own laundry businesses. More to come on this front.

I am looking for industrial zoned land that can be used for development of flex warehouse products. Ideally this would be 7-20 acres located within a 45 minute drive from downtown Fort Worth. If you know of anything, please let me know!

The interest rate environment has definitely slowed the pace of commercial real estate investment sales. Deals are still getting done, but not nearly at the velocity as they were 18 months ago. It is requiring much more work and more time to find the right buyer. 

On the flip side, Amber has had an incredible start to the year with her residential real estate business. She has been able to help MANY families sell and buy homes since the beginning of the year. Our commercial and residential business is almost exclusively repeat and referral business. So we are incredibly grateful for those that continue to put their faith in us to help them with their real estate goals. 

We recently hired two new virtual team members to our team. We are happy to welcome Davidson Reyes as my new Executive Assistant and Cliff Ang as our Client Success Manager. As you have interactions with them please welcome them to the team and let them know if there is anything we can do to support you and your business. 

Brain Food (what I am reading, watching, and listening to)

It has been an active month of reading, listening to Audibles and listening to podcasts. I just finished reading George S. Clason’s classic, Richest Man in Babylon. There are so many great and timeless nuggets of wisdom in the book. The simple takeaway is to take 10% of every dollar you make and keep it for yourself (to start growing your wealth). Then take 20% and use it to pay off all your debts. Then live off the remaining 70%. Clearly, this is not what is generally happening in the world.

On Audible, I listened to another classic by my spiritual father, Richard Rohr. I listened to The Art of Letting Go, and, like his other books, I loved it and it made me think deeply. I also continue to read a passage each morning from Ryan Holiday’s The Daily Stoic.

There was a rather fascinating episode of the All In Podcast featuring Sam Altman. The discussion of the future of AI is both exhilarating and sometimes terrifying. It is not too hard to let your mind wander to some dystopian future!

Amber and I are watching the most recent season of F1 on Netflix for our adrenaline thrill. And as a family we are really enjoying Young Sheldon. We are now on season 3 and loving almost every episode.

Kaizen

Eliud Sangabriel and I did it once again. We completed our 5th annual 24-Hour walk. We started with 9 people. Our friend Kendall, who just had heart surgery, walked the first 4 hours with us. Then 2 others completed a full 8 hours, one person finished 12 hours, and 5 of us made it the distance for the full 24-hours. We walked over 53 miles and endured a thunderstorm for the last 3 hours of the walk. You would think this would get easier over the years…it doesn’t! I am very proud of the fact we were also able to raise some money for Freed People and Operation Enduring Support with our efforts.

I attended the Front Row Dad’s Spring Retreat a week later and it was absolutely amazing. The conversations we had were deep, piercing, and meaningful. For a recap of the event you can read the blog post I wrote about the experience.

I recently attended the Excellence in Laundry Conference in Palm Beach, FL with Schuyler Williamson (my partner in Laundry Luv). It was exactly what we needed to rekindle some key relationships, get the latest updates about the industry, and find some new technologies that could help us as we expand the Laundry Luv brand.

I FINALLY started the “cut” process with my workout plan. Nate Palmer has been my guide over the past 6 months and we have been attempting to bulk up by eating 200+ grams of protein per day. As it somehow happens in my life, some less than ideal food also shows up in my daily diet! SO, I was really happy to start this week off with a very clean eating regime and some weekly fasting as well. Looking forward to seeing the results in about 5 weeks.

Random Musings

Amber and I recently moved our offices home. With Knox and Grace about to wrap up college, we had an extra room in the house and decided to make use of it. This one small move will save us almost $40k per year! Once they graduate college, that savings will double. Good times ahead!

Unless Grace gets her Masters Degree in Auburn, this may be our last year of spending much of the Fall season at Auburn. And with the new entrants in the SEC, we are looking forward to the football season! We will soon be posted up at the University Station RV Resort for another great season of football, friends, kids, tailgating, bonfires, and great food.

Lastly, if you have not discovered the Yuka App, let me be the first to introduce you! This app has become my go-to for making healthier choices by simply scanning barcodes to get detailed health ratings and ingredient analyses for food and personal care products. What makes it even better is that they don’t take any money from the food industry, ensuring their recommendations are unbiased and truly in the best interest of the users. It’s also a great way to get your kids thinking about healthy choices. Kai loves to pull out my phone and scan items in the grocery store (until he learns some of his favorite foods have terrible ratings!).

Until next time.

Take action and be grateful!

-Ken

Share