99% Passed on These Commercial Properties. They Made Him a Fortune.

0:00Would you buy a property that nearly every sophisticated real estate firm in Boston had already rejected? 2 million square feet, 100 acres, thousands of broken windows, environmental problems, and on the market for more than 10 years. What if I told you the purchase price was a half a million dollars? Does that change your answer? Welcome back to the Real Estate Investing for Cash Flow Podcasts. I'm Kevin Bup, and today I'm joined by Bill Cummins. He is the billionaire founder of Cummings Properties, author of Starting Small and Making It Big, and one of the most fascinating long-term real estate operators I've had the opportunity speaking with. We're going to unpack what Bill saw in a property that everyone else abandoned, and why buying cheap only works when you actually have the people, the patients, and operating capability to solve the problems attached to it. And we'll explore what happens after more than five decades of compounding wealth when the question shifts from how much bigger can we scale? What is this all ultimately for? Bill, welcome to the show. I'm really looking forward to having you on here today. Looking forward to this for many, many weeks now. So excited to have you here.

1:00You're invited to be with you, Kevin. Yeah, so Bill, you've got quite the resume. You've spent more than five decades building Cummings properties into what a greater boss is largest commercial real estate portfolio is, but you've done it in a very different way than I believe most investors do it. You've stayed local, you've held properties for many, many decades, and have really operated with a very conservative balance sheet and really have built the organization to become one that really stands the test of time. So I think the best way to do is set a little bit more of a basis here outside of real estate and go back a number of years and really get an understanding of some of the earlier experiences that you've had in business to better explain the investor that you eventually became, the person you are today. So I know that after reading your story and hearing more about you, your father had a very significant influence on you and I would love to know from you, what did your father teach you about the difference between what something costs and what something is actually worth and ultimately how did that influence the investor that you eventually became?

2:05My dad probably talked more about pricing value in terms of what you have to pay to get something. And probably if something is sold for a certain amount of money, that's how much it was worth. At least it was worth that much to that person on that day. And I've used that as the basis of a whole lot of thinking for many years after that. At the time we were doing, he was letting me help buy boats, buy small boats or a boat in a motor in a trailer or just a boat trailer or things that they had to do with it, something you hook on the back of your car and take it out and play with it. And at the time we quickly found that using what most young people today wouldn't have any idea we were talking about. And by the way, we bought them from the classified ad section in the box in Globe, but that's what it was. There would be a couple of pages of advertising ads that would advertise a boat motor in a trailer. And gee, $400, that's too good a price. Let's put that on

3:12the first one to call. Okay, let's take a ride in the Boston. We've been picked up a paper today. We don't have anything in the yard. We need some purchases. In the yard being the backyard of our house, there was a two-family neighborhood in Medford, Massachusetts. And we'd go into City Square and Boston where the papers were going to get dropped off at the news stand there relatively early. Some usually at five at five o'clock, maybe a few minutes after you could buy the paper with the ads in it. It wouldn't have the sports pages there because they would add that in the morning. But we knew we could buy most of the paper all that we wanted for 10 cents for the Sunday Globe at that time. Oh, and we could home and read them immediately. Sometimes I'd call at seven o'clock at night to some of the chicken. I come take a look at that boat to get advertising the globe. What do you, what do you, I'm going to need a boat. I'm not, we got a boat advertising tomorrow. Yeah, but that's that's

4:16someone I want to look at. I was sitting there and we do it today. Oh, sure, you can go on over. It didn't seem like a right number. Well, maybe it wasn't a right number because there's a piece of crap. But most of the time, it was pretty nice. And I might be very nice. Yeah, my boy had this and he went off to you and I would, he would not have to the service and left it in the yard. And I've got to get it out of here. My landlord says it's got to leave this weekend. So, well, how about 400? It's take 400 for it. $400. You're going to pay me now. I see you. I would peel off the money and hook the boat on to the trailer. Now, the plate was already on there. If it didn't have a trailer with it and take it home or I'd leave my trailer parked there and pull his home and come back and get mine later. So, the next day, maybe we had a boat advertise ourselves, but now we had two boats to sell the next day. And $8,900 was easy for that particular boat. Nice boat. Most of the time,

5:21they were and we saw it. And it was as simple as that. And literally, sometimes we'd buy it out of the Sunday Globe on Saturday and sell it's a bright double the price. Why didn't everybody do that? It didn't think of it. And we just happened to stumble into that. So, that was my first, probably my first real business experience. How do you feel that those early experiences buying and selling boats with your father shaped the way that you either later or even now today evaluate real estate? It certainly taught me not to be bashful. And recognizing that if somebody doesn't like the offer that you make, they did job to tell me so. Maybe I'd let me talk to my dad and see if we know the $50 make a difference or I can get him to come up a little bit. I he'll be sitting over there and say, oh, yeah, wow. Yeah, okay. All right. Okay. And I go back over

6:23and tell the seller, we'd have a deal. It was some usually as simple as that. Nothing extraordinary. Do you feel that you were naturally entrepreneurial as a child or did much of that influence come from your father? Though I was very much naturally entrepreneurship. My entrepreneurial, no question. So, one of the things that you have to read in your story, but one of the things that I feel, one of the big takeaways that really separates Cummings properties is what you didn't do throughout your career in the many decades that you've been in the real estate space. You didn't expand all over the country. You very rarely sold successful properties. And you didn't really build the business around having to bring an outside cap or raise outside cap and said, you know, you've really spent, you know, 50 plus years investing primarily within a relatively tight area around greater Boston and holding the majority of properties for many, many decades. So, why did staying local and holding properties for a long time becomes such an important competitive advantage for you? Probably just because it worked.

7:25And we found out how well it worked. We didn't need to travel to other cities. Certainly in the real estate field, we've never gone more than at most distant property from Woolburners, Alboro or Beverly at 22 and 32 miles away maybe. And we've also almost never sold anything. It's rare that we'd be selling anything that they'd be building. We sold them raw land occasionally. That very marked increases in profit, but buildings themselves. Now, the buildings are the same buildings today as one that we're building this year. They've got the same kind of concrete in the floors, same kind of steel beams, hold them up, steel deck under the concrete floor. They have steel studs in the wall that looked just like the ones that were used 50, 60 years ago. And the first buildings we built, and the first buildings go back to 1970.

8:31And those buildings were like the ones that I'm in here, cost seven and eight dollars a square foot to build them. Then they got up to nine and ten. That was, oh my god, ten dollars. But in today, they will cost us to build a single-story concrete block building. It's more likely about a hundred dollars a foot or ninety dollars a foot if we do the same thing. You know, it's certainly 12 times what it used to be. It's a more, a lot more than that. Do you feel as though that after operating in the same geographic marketplace for nearly 50 years that you've been able to gather some localized knowledge or specialized knowledge that, you know, an outside investor simply can't know or can't replicate easily? I'm not sure of it's the having a competitive advantage that other people couldn't do easily, because it's the biggest thing we do is to work hard, work diligently, and to use the experience

9:35that we have to make the right decisions, not to waste money by over detailing something and adding extravagant things that don't need to be there. The other big thing that we do is to pay our suppliers very promptly. We're well known for that. We absolutely don't want to work with someone else's money at all, whether we're borrowing the money or just extending people out. They had much more likely to charge us more in the next building than the value we'd get out of their money if we could use their money inappropriately. We kept, if we didn't pay them probably. People value that enormously, especially if you're dealing with a subcontractor that's been burned. And then I used to pay legal fees and having to stop work and because it goes into the courtroom for trial, it doesn't happen. Collect money through legal means. Legal attorneys is very, very expensive.

10:39From their perspective, the fact that they know they're going to get paid and typically we'll tell the contractor if they want to get paid every week for the job as it goes on, we'll tell the contractor if they get us their invoice by Wednesday noon and we'll have the money for them, Friday noon. And there's always a few people who want to get that and it's important to them to get it right then. And some of them, they'll do it, give them a year after year. They're in here on Friday afternoon. And they know each other well and they're joking back and forth. It's a pleasant, fun atmosphere because everyone and everybody trusts each other. We know that we can't. And we value that so much. And we all the other thing that's so valuable around here is that in our company, we've got a lot of seniority. There's an executive company, it's 360 or 70 people all together of whom

11:4360 are managers of one type or another, many of them in the field, many of them in the officer environment. And the institutional knowledge that they have is huge. Our executive committee is 12 people. That's the 12th most senior myself and 11 others with the most senior people. And we've had this year alone, we've had a little epidemic here, a people retiring because they've gotten enough over 65. They feel there's no reason they've done well. They can afford to retire. Hey, it's been a lot of fun, but you know, which time for us to go. But before this year started, we had an average seniority on that group of 26 years and about the two maybe. And that doesn't happen. People don't, so many companies believe in the rent of president, they hurry, they're going out and they're trying to hire new senior managers all the time.

12:44In many places, it works. But if you're talking about a set set of buildings in real estate, brick and mortar buildings, getting to know those buildings is extremely beneficial. And you know what's a real problem and what's a not very much of a problem oftentimes. Well, I think just to speak into the average of 26 years with the company, you know, your executive team, I mean, that really is a testament to the culture that you've been able to build now for multiple decades. That's a beautiful thing. And you know, that's a, it's an incredible amount of institutional knowledge that you have there. I'd be curious to understand your perspective on how much of the success of Cummings properties comes from building people who think like owners and understand how to actually solve those problems, identify those challenges at the property level. Oh, huge percentage of our efficiency is where it shows up. The ability to get things done and to communicate with a minimum of

13:44expense. And we're also 100% on-site employees. We don't have, we don't have outside people working. And that's such a sham on the national economy right now today. The number of companies there's, you know, you have senior people saying, this is working wonderful. Madam Stockholder, there's no reason to change it. I love it. My family loves it too. It doesn't work though. How do you transfer, how do you transfer culture, company culture? And how do you, there's so much of that that happens because if you're standing somewhere in a room or walking by and you hear something and stop and add something to the conversation. Those things are irreplaceable. The contact that people get on the job. I love to keep in this context of company culture and the amazing culture that you've been able to build over these last five plus decades. There's a lot of different real estate investment groups out

14:49there. Many, many out there that are doing similar things to what you and I are doing the various different asset classes. But there's many that don't make it very long. They might make it 10 years, 15 years. But there's more businesses that fall by the wayside than that survive, you know, five plus decades. But I think a big piece of being able to attract that type of talent and retain that type of talent is ultimately what also is attributed to the long-term success of an organization. And a lot of companies, more companies than not fail at achieving this is getting the employees to to really think and act like owners when they aren't the actual owner. How have you been able to achieve that? A huge part of that in creating that feeling is giving people real responsibility. Then you make the decisions. If Charlie is in doubt about what to do about a particular way of something should be done. I said, no, don't do it that way. This other way is better. Sometimes it's much better to do it Charlie's way. The C-Know's how it's going to work out. And he's a competent

15:51person or she's a competent woman and whatever it might be. But if you're allowing people to have the responsibility for their own decisions and letting them know that we'll let them know if we see something or I'll let them know if I see something wrong. But by and large, if they just say a job, please do it the right way. And that's what we want. Have you found that difficult over the years to give that complete autonomy to different leadership executives within the organization? You can't give all the autonomy away. You've got to retain some of it and have some input, especially when that input is warranted. Have you found a particular process that you've taken over the years that's allowed you to achieve that balance? Yes and no. Sometimes you just go ahead and let it happen. Do it and now it's a little bit. You see if they see other ways that might have been done better. Might make a better project or a faster project or a more beautiful project,

16:56whatever it might be. Whether it's so easy to get wrapped up in little details and just spend money. Not getting a job done and getting off and getting away. That's an important part of it. Not wasting the time on the job. I want to spend some time with the bill here today on what I feel is one of the most fascinating deals of your career, which is the former United Shoot machinery property that's located in Beverly. I think my data points are correct here, but this is a massive property. And I believe it had been marketed for many, many years for roughly $79 or $89 million. It sat in the market if I recall for maybe a decade or more. Had very low occupancy deteriorated a lot over the years and significant environmental uncertainty that's rounded that property. And then I believe in 1995, correct me if I'm wrong, your firm bought it for roughly a half a million dollars. What I would love to know is when you finally walked the shoe,

17:58what did you see that made you believe that this was an opportunity rather than just a very cheap building with a lot of expensive problems associated with it? The big thing I thought I was scared when I started walking through it. I'll be at war. I was getting lost there. I can't afford this. But we really took it and the way they talk about it, you know, is the boat leaves the war, heading to some other part of the world. And that first wave is you get through the first wave of the next 5,000 of the same. And maybe there'll be different eventually, but the issues were the same. Though we were, we didn't invest anything. So we didn't have any great losses. We didn't have any valuable assets behind it. And we knew that if we didn't expect it would turn out poorly. And it didn't. But if it had, we knew that we could walk away from it. That was a marvelous advantage to

19:04have that that $500,000 price. And what your viewers would be most interested in was that that $500,000 price was for 100 acres of land in the middle of the city. This wasn't out in the woods or along the waterfront or some dingy part of town. This was right in the middle of the city with Beverly, with saltwater and a fresh water pond right here in the middle of it. And the two million feet of building. And the whole thing, we were paying about five cents of foot for the building. The old and 20 cents of foot for the land. It was virtually nothing. I'm curious to know, just given again, the location of that property, was it a historically protected property at that point when you purchased it? What's part of your thinking when you looked at the just premier location of the land, obviously it had a very decrepit structural

20:05top of it, was that in the event, you couldn't make the economics work with the building, was a plan B potentially scrapped the improvements and be left with a raw piece of land that equates to 100 acres, which probably carried a much higher valuation than that of what you would have paid and had invested in the project. Was that a potential plan B? We didn't have a plan B really. The property was a very rugged building, poor concrete, most of it and our pre-cash on site and raised up and put in place. It was reinforced concrete. It was a building built by Leslie Ransom. It was a patented process that he had had. And I believe the Thomas Edison was the person behind him back in 1903. And concrete itself was as good as it was 100 years earlier. And the problem was that if we didn't make something of it, the cost to take it down

21:11would have been huge. And that's what turned everybody else off. They couldn't see using the building like it was. It was, again, 100 acres. And it was just one big block of land in the middle of the city with this big, called a concrete monstrosity on it, four stories, all on 1600 feet long. It was places in the building, central hallway, that when it was stretched 1600 feet long. Wow. And into the other, we wouldn't recognize each other with the other end of the hall. Your party would be down there. You would know it. Yeah. And that, that was a property to virtually driven. And they all thought about it and just didn't mind. So I think I read somewhere that you initially didn't even want to go look at the property. I guess what ultimately changed your mind and got you off off your office chair to go take a look at this opportunity. Well, I wasn't like you're sitting around you. You have bond bonds all day.

22:15You're busy doing other things. And the broker who had the original listing still had the listing 10 years later. Now, exactly that happened. I don't know. But he did. It was owned by Black and Decker Corporation. And the Black and Decker Corporation had 35, maybe 40, that kind of a number full-time people who worked on it and provided security 24 hours a day. It was maybe 10% occupied. No more than that. And hadn't been during all of the time they had it. But it was the type of thing that Black and Decker was spending so much money on it every week that they just had to get rid of it. And so the price was dropping from 80 million to all the way down to 2030, 30, 2010. And the broker came in one day and told my colleague Jamie

23:23McEwen, which is named, that Hollywood, give me an offer five minutes. I'll even take that in. They told me 10 minutes as far as ever going to go. Give me an offer for five minutes and I'll take it in. And he came back and talked to me and told me about all the broken windows. There were thousands, literally thousands of broken, painted glass. This was a day-lit factory. Windows were 10 feet high, five feet wide, and every six feet between them all the way down 1,600 foot of building. So it was just an enormous process. All the broken windows and encouraged thousands, literally, of pigeons to be nesting inside. And a pile of good food. And there was a environmental problem because there was a lot of cutting oil from the machines. And they manufactured shoe machinery. There was a steel mill that cast iron

24:30pieces for these shoe machines. And they would bring them back to the factory when they were off lease and literally smashed them up. They had a railroad flatbed car and a big steel wrecking ball. Yay big 5,000 miles and they would drop around the machines. And the oil would pick the sandy area. You heard this appeared. It was beautiful. It worked very nicely. But it left all the cutting of the oil in the soil. And that was the problem that they had to get rid of. So it wasn't. It wasn't an oh my god problem. You've got to get rid of it. And you've got to get rid of it. What they finally decided to do was to make asphalt out of it and building a new parking lot. We put the asphalt down a foot thick. I had to burn it out. I was a solveness. It could be. But it was it was scary to anybody. It might come along. And

25:31eventually we decided to let's make an offer. Let me determine. We'd make it at $500,000. Why conductor was sounding Baltimore. And there was another property in Greater Boston. So by Wayne Computer Company. They were weighing laboratories. And they had two beautiful 14, 15 story govians right up in the middle of this thing. It was at landmark. Those sold for $500,000. We took the I took the whole paper with Sunday paper, comic strip and all. Rapted up in a FedEx box and sent it to the Board of Directors, President of the Board of Black and Decker. And the headline was weighing a soul half million. And that's what this Black and Decker I think to say maybe we should go in and take this creeps off for up here in Beverly. A few months before we signed our purchase and say we looked at probably nine

26:36or ten months. And then we made the deal just around election time. We're supposed to close in January, but it closed in April. So it was a lot it was very slow movie. I'm sure. I'd probably $50,000 deposit on it. I'm assuming that there was a headline in the newspaper as soon as that deal closed for $500,000. And I'm guessing that you probably had multiple phone calls coming in. Just amazed that you were able to pick that property up for a half million dollars. Is that correct? The comments were far more derisive than what you're to be implying. How could you possibly think you're going to make money up there when all the big firms in Boston looked at and I had a you and none of them weren't it? If somebody even showed us the roster of all the firms that had been there and who had seen it and they had logged them in for purposes of the real estate transaction. Think of the commission the broker was getting on a $500,000 sale. That was something that if it had been 80 million, I think it was something like

27:45not a five and a half percent of five and a quarter versus five and a quarter percent of $50,000. It ended up we pay the brokerage on it. Somebody at the broker chain quarters figured a way that they didn't have to pay the commission and they wouldn't pet. So it's to keep you really funny. We bought two buildings on Route 3 ourselves in Benford in December going January 10th. Two buildings, 350,000 square feet on and it was located on a road called the Middle Six Turn Pike. There were 54 acres. The backside of it was running on US 3, it divided highway. The last previous purchase for the property 22 years ago had paid 96 million for it and we paid five minute, five million, five thousand. And that was recently? Totally empty in this year. January of

28:48the actual sale took place January the 10th of this year. Not a broken window in the whole place. Zero and it was owned by some readout in Arizona who didn't seem to care too much. They kept it 20 years. They made good money on it. We were told it was at least $40 and 10 cents or something had a good return. They were quite happy, probably, for what they have. But nobody had paid much attention to that. People knew they owned it. They had somebody else out here managing it and they realized so much money they were spending to heat it. The taxes on the building were phenomenal. It was based on that kind of a net worth all that those years ago. They never fought it pretty much. And what we bought it for. So we think we're not a learn on the other sale or something. Sounds like you have a playbook that works at Bill. So it's it's it's a sound like this is your your MO. I'd be curious to know the backstory of the of this most recent transaction. It's not it was vacant when you acquired it. Was it was it a corporate

29:52headquarters that they just moved their entire division out of the two buildings or was it a longer duration of vacancies that compounded over over many many years? No, it was a one shot in. They vacated all at one time. They stripped clean the clean to building out totally including you know and things that might have a nicer if they left it. But to have the building be clear all the improvements in the building were stripped out ahead of time. So we bought 350,000 square feet of the air concrete floor. Nothing on it. There wasn't there wasn't a roll off or dumpster roll off of trash in the whole site. And we've got it now. It's leased above maybe 10% the leased are about to be signed some of it by half and a half. And it'll take us three years probably to fill it up. The former tenant was one major listed firm, a small national type security business or some sort. They just didn't pay attention to it and the people who moved out went

30:53in state and town or stay within a mile or two of that location and doing fine. And the building just sat there. They had people in it every day to protect it. They had it a public auction and more other party had showed up as an affected bidder and they were quite surprised that that there was another bidder. They wouldn't show it to us at a time inside. We couldn't see inside. It looked a lot like maybe somebody was trying to save it for a friend to buy it. And they wouldn't they wouldn't lease anything less than the whole building all of them one buyer. The one let's see at our you reference demo RMA I'm always we've got a huge variety of clients and tenants in the company and we'll lease any size whatever they want with the northern inordinate variety of firms. Some of our buildings have a lot of physicians and dentists and healthcare people and others of a lot of laboratory space. They probably are still as in making it keeping them up, maintaining them well, giving good service, giving people what they want at least. And it's it's served as well.

31:59We've got 11 billion square feet of space all together and 12 communities all of them north of Boston. A couple thousand tenants and all together. And it works. I'd be curious to know Bill with this most recent acquisition. This is a generalized comment. You know with the vacancies that apply the the office sector to shift from work from home and hybrid work environments and companies downsizing there you know the leaseable square footage and and the need for space. What do you feel as though is the the playbook of how how you guys be able to lease it back up and get it stabilized in a in a few short years? We haven't been below 90% occupancy since we started keeping numbers. We've always been up there and we lease our largest our largest tenant. We've got one tenant who leases space and three buildings here in Cummings Park and Woodward SDR corporation. Does government defense work and they have got all three and a thousand feet of space? Most of our

32:59tenants are under five five thousand feet. We spend a lot of effort. There's a dozen people, dozen men and women in our leasing department. And then another dozen who do we call our operations department? Leasing department brings in new tenants, new clients, operations department deals with clients who are already here and extending them or closing them up or enlarging them or handling canico changes and new construction for them. It's expensive to do all that but we do it and try to build personal relationships with them deal with whatever problems they have and we're providing something that most people won't. Do you feel as though that given your your low basis now? I know obviously the building you know the build out build out costs are probably quite significant in the various other improvements that probably need to be made to the building are quite significant but you're going in basis is significantly lower than that of probably what other similar buildings have traded for I would think so in that sub market. Does that allow you to somewhat undercut the market and have a competitive advantage in that manner to where you can essentially offer a

34:02brand new built out product for substantially less than that of what other competitive properties are going for? No absolutely definitely. Again five decades of doing this what makes you I know you don't walk away from this one but I'm sure there's many other deals that you have walked away from. What would make you walk away immediately from a property regardless of how cheap it is? What would be the one big red flag that would just even if you gave it to me for free I don't want it. We don't want chunk. We wouldn't mind buying or something but we were briefly new in one of the land and we just going to take the building as it was along with the land and build something new on it. I'm not talking about that kind of jump that would be fine. Most of the time where we're talking about if we're buying an existing property we're really looking and I really get secret of what we do so often is to buy a property that's got what we call extribilability empty with this plenty of room to add in more space which the seller of the building is only concerned about

35:03selling that building they're not thinking what what might the buyer do with the extra land this off on the north-south west or all around the broader property for two million dollars another one in Beverly that was the form of home of Parker Brothers monopoly Parker Brothers games could be we sold four parcels of land we bought up and two and a half a minute and had a nine million dollar mortgage on it we got there and the bank just was pushing the head to get rid of it they had seized it and a hundred for a couple of years nobody else seemed to want it it was looking pretty ragged around the outside there's nothing wrong with it we bought it we some divided it and sold about four pieces at average about six and a half million a piece and we still own the original building and we still own two others that we built on it for leasing and are both a both full and that's always a big part too most of the time and I'll always batowns them they'll us they're smart enough to work with us and try to cooperate help us to

36:03expedite through permitting process not everywhere you've got a sticky work at somewhere as we we just dealt with one recently I won't mention the city but we had to go to the architectural barriers board and and plead with them to just let us get in here and get over rid of these problems that are there they were things that we did or intentionally did to anything but something needs to happen you helped to facilitate it and show them our records show what's what's happened to the other properties we've built and they usually quite quite comfortable with that that's that's playing off the the reputation I've had occasion to speak it at Harvard Business School and just fascinating how uniformly the students who question why aren't you scaling what we we're doing all we want to do we're doing what we can do with the people we have and it's working very well we've got a foundation that everything we make these days goes to the foundation I'm 89 and

37:07and we're my mortality and I'm feeling great but how much do I want to to deal with I'd be curious to dissect that a little but I know that I know that you've been asked that many times so I'm glad you brought it up so I think that segues into something I'd love to have a better granular understanding of your perspective on you've been asked why aren't you borrow more money scale acquire more property to expand geographically right do all those things become a larger organization and I think the answer that I derived from from a couple of interviews I read was that your statement was how much richer do we need to be and so you know I guess at what point did building a bigger business and becoming personally richer become two different things to you to where it just hey I've made made it enough we're good like what we're doing works at what point was that always your mindset or size is much more important when you're young and struggling how then you once you've got it organized and think you're working well but caused me to realize that that when it was something differently because I believe determined that I've got four kids my

38:11my wife and I have as a tomorrow will be very sixty years tomorrow so we've got four adult kids and all of them have worked in the business at one time or another but they don't want the business they don't want to run the business they don't want to do any part of that they just don't and they're doing but they want to do and doing it well and they're secure and they have enough that their their kids have all they want to give them and they're all are interested to some extent in the philanthropic side of what we do the foundation is is very wealthy the last 20 years I haven't taken anything out of the business at all it's all gone to the foundation and then feels worthwhile to be getting up in the morning and hustle and get to get here on the right time because something's going to happen that I want to happen I enjoy it and it continuing to build it we just build the new building from Winchester hospital and we started it in February and we opened it nine or 10,000

39:12foot building we started in the middle of February and opened it last last month and with a snowy winter in between we do all these things in house you know we've got a design department and they have the ability to do these things Kevin and and if we didn't continue to build somewhat we lose them we don't want to do that and these are people that have staked their careers and the fact that we're building are always going up a little bit up all the time as as as simple as it can be they stay here because they have the opportunities to see interesting buildings they see us involved in in lots of interesting public service type things that we do as a company they get involved and actually give me money away we've got 170 volunteers for we call them professional volunteers professional because they're mostly people who have had professional positions and most of them are in my age but they're in their 60s they've got the time to go out and do these things they have love given away the foundations money and they do such a good job of it we couldn't possibly pay

40:17people we couldn't have we need we need a whole group over here at this time of the year reading initial applications and screening them then we need to double bound over here follow up with our existing recipients and so the volunteers come in they work most of them for a couple of three months there's a group that do site visits there's the plan that gives out right now it's at the level of 50 million dollars a year that those volunteers distribute all the funds from that we've been doing that for 13 years and then we have another group they are our coming coaches and they coach small people how to go about getting a grant not just a coming grant but any grant it's such a it's just smooth running a nice thing to be hard up no it sounds like it Bill I will say that you're an incredibly humble man and obviously one that's got a ginormous heart you go into some detail but I think you've glossed over maybe the extraordinary decision that you guys have the extraordinary thing that you've done by building the Cummins foundation all the good that you've

41:18done how did you and your your your wife Joyce arrive at the decision to give away the majority or well how did you come to that decision that decision was relatively easy we joined the giving pledge and we knew something about it obviously before we did it and one of the things the giving pledge asks it's members to do is to pledge to give at least half of their their net worth to give away half of it before their death or upon their death and that wasn't hard for us to do with our we're already doing it we'd already done it naturally at that point the basic thrust of the organization is that is to get people to who have philanthropic to carry it all the way and to try to give it away during their lifetimes and enjoy it and it's a marvelous experience it really is it's I was losing interest because I didn't I just didn't want to make one money to put it in the box somewhere and somebody will give it away someday but to do it people say how

42:18long are you going to be able to keep this up well foundation is continuing to make have more income coming from the company and from its own earnings on the investments then it gives away every year or we're giving away more and more every year the given about 700 million dollars away actually made the grants at this point yeah that's a beautiful thing how do you make life more worthwhile yeah and and do good with it and and make things happen I just like doing it like making things come out and then be you the still in service of all and making the world a better place I guess making the world that else about to say to say I think to summarize make the world a better place and you've been doing that now for many many years that's a that's a beautiful thing though I do appreciate you sharing it and in all the you know charitable work that you do through the Cummings Foundation appreciate you sharing all the details and that and it sounds like you built just the phenomenal organization through and through and just really appreciate you sharing the time and and sharing your story with us today I think there's quite a bit of lessons that that I've taken

43:21away over this last hour together again you've been at this way way longer than I have my wife Joyce and I look at the winners list in this 50 million dollar thing each year we look at it and say how many of these organizations do we really know that's not the question how many have we ever heard of if you know it because they're operating and lots of our volunteers come from the organizations which are recipients most of them of more of them are college professor types of retired school teachers or letter carriers or firefighters or whatever but there's also a bunch that are active themselves in support services and they help us select other people that they come to know in their own service areas they're a terrific group and we're just so glad to be a part of it. Well we'll bill again appreciate you coming on and we're going to make sure that we get all the information about you your organization your foundation as well as your book starting small

44:21making it big and inside the show notes for for all those that are tuning in here that want to learn a little bit more about you and all the all the great things that you have going on through the foundation as well as the seventh edition of your book that you have out now it's a phenomenal book I definitely suggest everyone that's listening grab a copy and read it lots of lots of incredible life lessons in there but I do appreciate your time it's been an absolute pleasure having you on the show and a pleasure getting to know you a little bit better and you as well Kevin and thank you very much and guys if you enjoyed today's episode please do me one last favor before we wrap it up here do subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast platform leave us a rating review and do share the episode with someone that you think would benefit from hearing bill store I know I did so until next time this is Kevin Bup wishing you huge success take care now