Life of Ken – Vol. 25

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Happenings from the Homefront

May kicked off in style. Kasey and Elizabeth Mock hosted their annual Kentucky Derby party at their ranch just outside Stephenville, and with Amber away on a GoBundance wives trip, I had the best date in the room: my daughter Grace. She is 23 and has outstanding taste, so I had to bring my A-game on the outfit front. Turns out that was a good call. For the second year running, I took home Best Dressed Man in the classic style category. Back-to-back. I will not apologize for it.

The Mocks put on a genuinely great event. The food was outstanding, live music set the right tone, and a chipping tournament kept things competitive between races. The weather cooperated, the hats were spectacular, and Grace and I had a wonderful afternoon together. Kasey and Elizabeth, well done again. This one is already on the calendar for next year.

A week later, Grace and I made our way to Via Real in Las Colinas for dinner with one of my favorite people, Nate Martinez. Nate was in from Phoenix for his daughter’s ice hockey tournament, and we grabbed the chance to catch up in person. Nate and I go back over ten years. We both joined GoBundance in 2015, and our friendship really took root on a GoBundance international trip to Vietnam in 2016. That kind of shared history has a way of making the miles between Phoenix and Fort Worth feel a lot shorter. It was a great evening, and having Grace there made it even better.

With the school year winding down, Kai wasted no time getting summer started. He and a crew of his buddies spent a good chunk of time in our pool, then celebrated one of their friends’ birthdays by heading out for a night of caution taping. For the uninitiated, caution taping is the new toilet papering. Four houses got the treatment. Amber and I played chauffeur for the operation, which mostly meant driving slowly through neighborhoods at night trying not to laugh. Good-hearted mischief, every bit of it. Kai is 10, and life is good.

One Monday I ducked out of work a couple of hours early and headed down to the ranch with Knox. He had picked up a shotgun from his grandfather and wanted to put it through its paces. We hit the range and worked through several guns, then set up the trap machine and got after some clay pigeons. Knox’s new gun performed exactly as it should, and his aim was on point. We wrapped up with a little time out with the cows, which is always a good way to end an afternoon. There are not many better ways to spend a Monday than that.

Knox also turned 22 this month. We were a few days late getting to the celebration, but the tradition held. Every year since Knox was about five or six years old, we have made the trip to Pappasito’s for fajitas on his birthday. That is nearly two decades of the same order and the right kind of company. He is 22 now and the fajitas still hit the same way. I am extremely grateful we have kept that one going.

Not everything in May was a celebration. Our HVAC system picked the worst possible time to give out, right as the Texas heat was arriving with its usual lack of mercy. The home warranty company did not make it easy. They pushed back hard, tried to deny the claim, and did their best to avoid covering the full system. After two weeks of sweating it out in the house and plenty of back and forth, they finally agreed to cover the entire cost. The system is back up, the house is cool, and the warranty company has been reminded that persistence pays. More to come on that one…

At least the HVAC situation came with a silver lining. We headed out to Smokey’s ranch early for Memorial Day weekend and got in a few nights of the good stuff. The work was real. We wrangled cows, ran them through the chutes, loaded some up for transport, and worked the ear tags while one of the ranch hands handled antibiotic shots and another followed up with anti-fly spray. It is the kind of work that reminds you what your hands are actually for.

The weekend brought rain, which meant it was the perfect time to knock out a couple of burn piles we had been stacking for weeks. There is something deeply satisfying about that. Good friends, good land, good work.

One of Grace’s closest friends, Casey, got engaged this month. Casey has been in our world long enough that I have long considered her one of my bonus daughters, so this was a celebration that hit close to home. Grace threw her an engagement party, and Amber and I were grateful to be there for it. Watching the people your kids love hit those big milestones is one of the quiet gifts of this season of life. Congratulations, Casey.

The month closed out with a Fort Worth tradition. Amber and I made it to Colonial this year, and for the first time I discovered a program that provides two free tickets to active duty military and veterans. We took full advantage. John, an F3 brother who goes by F3 Spike Strip and works with JP Morgan Private Banking, got us into their tent for the afternoon. Good conversation, good golf, and a Friday in Texas that did not ask much of you except to show up and enjoy it. A fine way to close out the month. 

Work, work, work!

The work month opened with a trip to Hilton Head, South Carolina. There are worse places to have to travel. I arrived a day early to get in a round of golf with Brian Grell and the Eastern Funding team at Anson Point, a relatively new Ben Crenshaw course. Good company, good course, good way to set the tone for the week.

We were there for the Excellence in Laundry conference, and I was honored to be one of the featured speakers this year. My topic was real estate site selection for the laundromat industry. I put in a thorough amount of preparation for the presentation, and if you want the full breakdown, I covered it in detail over on LinkedIn. Schuyler and I also made the most of the time on the ground, connecting with key vendors, sitting across from some of the top operators in the country, and doing the kind of face-to-face networking that you simply cannot replicate on a Zoom call. A productive week by any measure.

May also marked the tenth annual Wimberly Group Real Estate Crawfish Boil, hosted right here at the house. Ten years. We cooked over 175 pounds of crawfish, welcomed more than a hundred guests, kept the kids busy in the pool, and brought in the bubble bus and a 360 photo booth for good measure. The weather cooperated almost perfectly, which in Texas in May is its own kind of blessing. By every measure it was a success, but the number that mattered most was this: we raised over $6,200 for Love 4 Locals, a local non-profit serving one of the most underserved communities in Tarrant County. Year ten was a good one.

We also closed on a 93,000 square foot industrial portfolio just outside of Mansfield this month, in partnership with CHC Development. This marks our second deal together, and if the first one set the standard, this one confirmed it. The CHC team is made up of outstanding professionals and genuinely good people. We are honored to be in business with them and are already looking forward to what comes next. 

I will close the work section with something that does not fit neatly into a spreadsheet but deserves its place here. My good friend and partner Matt King is in the middle of something extraordinary. He is riding a bicycle from Mexico to Canada, averaging over 150 miles a day, raising one million dollars and giving it away along the route to those in need. The physical feat alone is almost impossible to wrap your mind around. But what Matt is really doing is something bigger than the miles. He is a shining example of what it looks like to put your gifts in service of others. Kudos to Matt and the entire team supporting him along the way. The rest of us are taking notes. The cinematography and storytelling are outstanding. I encourage you to follow along here and here!

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

Amber and I got word that Ted Lasso is coming back for a new season, so we did what any reasonable person would do and restarted the entire series from the beginning. I had forgotten just how good it feels to spend time in that world. We just finished season one and are heading into season two. Ted Lasso is a beautiful reminder that goodness is not weakness, and that lifting people up is its own kind of superpower.

On the reading front, I am continuing my daily Bible reading alongside a weekly Bible study with Schuyler and a small group of men. It is something I have never done before in quite this way, and it continues to surprise me. There is always something new in there.

On a recent F3 ruck, one of my brothers recommended a book called Extreme Prayer. I pulled it up on Audible and am about halfway through. He told me the real gold is in the specific prayers addressed later in the book. I have not gotten there yet, but I am looking forward to it.

We also discovered Love on the Spectrum as our feel-good family watch. We burned through season one and have already started season two. There is such a genuine innocence to each person on that show. It makes you smile and then it makes you think. Maybe we have had it backwards all along, and they are not the ones with the disabilities. Maybe that distinction belongs to the rest of us.

Kaizen

The daily work continues. I am still logging my workouts in the Hevy app and holding to the morning routine that has served me well. There is something worth appreciating in the simplicity of showing up every day and doing the work. Small improvements, compounded over time, add up to something significant. Do not overlook the ordinary.

Random Musings

This is our cat Yin. We could buy her hundreds of dollars worth of toys and she would walk right by them to hop in the leftover Amazon box. Gotta love her!

Until next time.

Take action and be grateful!

-Ken

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