Positive Talk with Kevin McDonald and Kevin Hipes

0:00There is a moment in every life when you decide to rise, to stand taller than your fear, to speak louder than your doubt, to chase the vision that sets your soul on fire. This is that moment, and here we walk it together with stories that awaken voices that inspire and truce that set you free. This is positive talk with Kevin MacDonald where hope has a voice, and that voice is yours. And welcome to the show everybody, you're going to have a great time today. For the next hour, we've got Kevin Heips with us. He is affectionately known as a forest comp of New York. He's got a book out that's called the Book of Me, and it's about his autobiography. He's got over 70 really funny heartfelt stories. He's done so much in his life. That it's really fun to have him here, and there's Michelle. Michelle, how you doing, kid?

1:06You know, everybody's got those days, and I'm fighting against it because these conversations are so important to be smashed in the middle of these two heavens. I'm like, I've prepared my face for lots of frowning maybe at the end of the day because I'm going to need it. We've already laughed so much. And Kevin, thank you again as Kevin said. This is going to be a low wear. Thank you for joining us in. How are you? I'm having a blast. It's been a long week. I'm glad it's Friday because you know, technically I'm still working. I'm a commercial real estate broker and developer. But that's just what I do to make money. Everything else I do for fun. So it's been a great day. And telling Michelle, and if you've listened to this show at all, you know that one of the biggest moments of my life was when I was seven years old and the Beatles were going to be on the Ed Sullivan show. And my parents sent me to bed because they wanted to watch Peninsula. That's how good they were about this kind of stuff. And so they sent me to bed and 72

2:13million people saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show. And my parents and my sister weren't one of them or three of them. And stuff. But he was in an actual Beatles tribute band. He was George. George, don't you know? And so he played lead guitar for the Beatles tribute band. And that when you were just a wee young and that must have been a great fun for you. I got to say it was a great experience. And there was a reason why we did it. I was in a rock band in an original rock band called The End. And we were very good. We had about three albums worth of music. And we wanted to be professional musicians and get a recording contract. And we played our original music a few times. Studio, we did a bunch of studio recordings. And the songs were available actually on Spotify and an Amazon music. I actually put 20 of the songs up. Professionally recorded 45 years ago. And they're still great music. But anyway, the management company said to us,

3:15you know, you guys are very good musically. But we're very boring on stage. Now we were like studio musician guys. You're back in the 70s. You just stood there and played. You didn't, you know, it wasn't until, you know, MTV that you had to have attitude and look good on stage. So they told us, you guys need some stage presence. You need to go on the road and get some experience. So we tried to play our original music and mix in a few 60s and 70s songs. And we were very good at beatle music because all the guys in the neighborhood were beatle inflows. So the management company said, you know, you guys do beatle so well. If you did a beatle mania show, you'd make a lot more money. I was the business guy as well as the guitar player. And I said, well, we don't want to be a cover band. You know, we want to be a recording on us. And he said, get off your high horse. You need money to record, don't you? And I said, yeah, he goes, how much are you making now? I said, well, we're making 300 bucks a night. And in New York, you had to play four sets, four, 45 minute sets. And you didn't get on till 11 at night,

4:16because the boys didn't close till four in the morning. You're making 300 bucks a night. So I said, well, 300 bucks. And he goes, he goes, listen, you guys do beatle so good. If you did a beatle mania show, you put on the Ed Sullivan things and the our sergeant pepper thing. And he goes, your price would go from 300 to 3000 a night. And I said, holy cow. I said, guys, we're going to do it. And it really was great experience because we were able to travel all over the northeast because it was, it was a show. It wasn't just a band. And we tried all over. He told me a story, Michelle, about the time that they were doing the Beatles. And, but they needed an opening act. Tell us that story. That's a great story. It's all in the book, of course, chapter 40, I think it is or episode 40. But you know, again, I was the business guy, you know, we had to be, we had a guy in the band named Roy. He was a, he could sing just like Paul McCarty. If you listen to our stuff, I could play you one of our Beatles songs recorded live and you would think it's Paul McCarty. That's how good the guy was. So, but anyway,

5:18he was the music genius. And I was the guy that just held the money because he didn't want to deal with it. So every, when you become a specialty act, you want to do two sets instead of four, which is great. But you have to hire again. You have to hire an opening band. So you have to, because you're a show now. The problem was when we traveled the places like Connecticut, Massachusetts and Maine. Well, we didn't know any bands up there. So we'd always have to call the bar owner and say, Hey, we need an opening band. You know anybody. And they would always know some local group. They say, Oh, I can get these guys. They'll come in and play a 45-minute set for you for a hundred bucks in the front every time we get there. Either they don't show, or they show up drunk, or they get on the stage and they mess up all our equipment. And it was just a nightmare for us. And you know, one of these problems solving kind of guys. And I'm saying to myself, how do we get around this issue? We got to find a better way to do this. So one night, it's a great story. One night, I'm watching TV. She's a Lily Tomlin special. This is background Lily Tomlin was, you know, big, you know, whatever. She was a big community.

6:18And she had these specials where she would play five or six different characters. She was, you know, Ernest in the operator, or she was a bad lady, where she was the kid on the rocking chair, or she has one character she played named Tommy Valour. And he was a 50s Vegas act. And she would come out and she'd have hair glued on her chest and a mustache and her hair was kind of up in a pompadour kind of thing. And she'd be kind of a crooner. And I saw that and I said, that's it. I called the band meeting. And I said, guys, I got the answer to our problem. So the old got in the room and they said, well, what is it? I said, we're going to be our own opening eye. We can't do that. People know who we are. I said, don't they won't see when we did the Beatles Mania show, we had two guys that played behind curtains. One was a guitar player, one was a keyboard player. Mainly because those two guys that were in the original band didn't look like Beatles. I mean, what was a long blonde hair guy with a gypsy and SG. And the other guy was a keyboard player, long hair and the whole deal. So they agreed to play behind curtains. These

7:19wonderful guys. And we hired a guy to play Lenin. So these guys played behind curtains. And I was see that enabled us to play like Abbey Road Medley and stuff because we had strings and we had double guitar parts. I said, Mike and Steve are going to be the frontman. And we're all going to say, we're leather jackets during the first set and we're sunglasses. And Mike, we're going to call Johnny Valor and we're going to be the RPMs. It's going to be called Johnny Valor on the RPMs. And I'm going to tell you, it was a great band. We'd play, you know, all these Chuck Berry's songs and rock and roll this and that and beat them all over Beethoven. We'd have so much fun playing the 50's songs. And then when we came back on as the 60's Beatles, it was a perfect merger. And I got to tell you that 50's band was so good that people would come off the stage. You have to show like girls and stuff. Say, we're all those guys. We're really good. We want to meet them. And we'd say, well, you know, those guys are kind of dangerous. We keep, we keep them in boxes in the back crates. We can't let them out. At the end of the day, Long Island had a top 20 bands list.

8:21You know, every year, good times magazine, mystery tour was the name of our band. We were called the mystery tour. And we called it the tragically missively poor. But that's a different story. And we really did. And mystery told me like in the top three, fourth most popular band on Long Island, Johnny Valor on the RPMs. And nobody knew it was us. True story. Did you ever think about doing some recordings with them and then taking them and making them the main band? You know, we probably should have because they were really good because we were very loose and have a lot of fun. But you know, you know, what hurt us was that because we were all very beetle influence. We were always very, we were all about harmonies and stuff. And our song was Power Pop. So we was heavier guitars, but it was very melodic and very lots of great like beetle type harmonies. The problem was that in the late 70s, that was going to go in a way. And the new wave stuff was coming in like the police and all these other groups. And people thought our music was great, but they just thought it sounded to 60s. And of course the other band was a 50s

9:26band. So yeah, we were just, it was just bad timing for us because we weren't willing to change our sound just to try to get a recording contract. But we have, I mean, in those one or two chapters about the beetle mania band about the band. There's so many funny stories. It was like spinal tap. It was that kind of thing. I mean, we had some crazy stories. You know, in Maine, we played in Maine and in Maine, you know, they're a little naive up there. I mean, they thought we were beetle mania. I mean, the bounces had to like clear a path to get us to the stage girls would jump on the stage and get thrown them off. One girl threw money at me. I thought, what do bounced off my chest? I'm like, holy cow, we're going to be famous. We thought we were famous. And then the next night they took us in a club in New York called ACE and the whole as a biker club. And you feel like a bunch of lollipops and they're throwing bottles at you. And you're like, I'm in the wrong business. What am I doing? It's trying to be trying to be in a rock band. It's a very interesting experience. I got to tell you I got to believe that because you know, in the late 70s and people may not know

10:27unless you were alive then, but this thing called disco took over. And it became, you know, like the Bee Gees and Saturday night fever and all of all of that state of life, state of life and all of that kind of stuff. And he ruined everything and then stuff. But but by the way, we're talking with Kevin Hyde. He is the, I'd buy the way. Why do they call you the Forest Gump of New York? Well, you know, I kind of gave that name to myself because I said, maybe I'll sell more books by Colman. It's so far as gum. No, that is kind of true. But the thing is, I've done so many different things in so many different decades. Now think about it. Forest Gump was really based on a southern guy who probably had maybe what was it three decades? Like it was like the 60s, 70s and 80s I think it was. Yep. Well, I've lived in eight different decades from the 50s to 2020. I mean, and I've got stories in every decade. So I said to myself,

11:30you know, I'm kind of a New York Forest Gump and think about it though. If they were ever going to do a sequel and they tried to do a sequel, I did a little research on this. In like 1999 or something, they tried to do a sequel and they really couldn't come up with it. It's very hard to do a sequel, especially of a movie that was so successful. It's very hard and they tried to do one. And they really couldn't come up with it. But if you're going to do a sequel of a movie like a Forest Gump, what better way to do it than to use a New York guy? That's a whole different angle on this thing. I mean, the first one was a southern guy with that heavy southern accent for a New York guy. I mean, I even thought about it, you know, instead of, you know, they had the feather floating down. I said, I, I envision me like in a straw or my mother pushing me down your streets, bumping up and down the curves because they didn't have those curkers back then and a pigeon flying over Queens and it drops a feather. You know, I said, wouldn't that be a great opening? I really think it would. So that's how I deal with it. I have to tell you, Michelle was holding on to her face

12:37because she was smiling. Oh, and then she disappears again. She were having connectivity issues with her, but she should be back. But while she's away, Kevin, I want to introduce somebody to you. His name is Sam. Well, he is in Kenya. He's got a program in Kenya. He talks to us a great deal because he is, he feeds and they're up. It's midnight there, they're time. And on Saturday morning, he feeds 350 kids because because they need, they need to and and greetings elder brother Kevin and my sister from another mother, Michelle and guest Kevin hypes. We are watching you live from Cabirius slums in Nairobi, Kenya. Great work with our favorite show. We're listening till till the end. Cabirius slums is tuned in and they have like 20 or 30 people that are standing around or sitting in their, their, there's a little school and they're watching the show. So you are

13:40legitimately making people laugh all around the world, Kevin. I'm international. That's unbelievable. Thank you so much for listening. And I'll keep you guys in my prayers too because that's a good work that you're doing down there. There's a lot of folks on this planet that don't have it made like we do in America and sometimes we don't appreciate that. So thank you for your service. We don't appreciate that nearly enough because I have a friend that drove a bus with me and Seattle and who's from Kenya and he lived in a village and they hid the women every morning. Had to walk six miles to the river to get water. And then they would bring that back. But like Kevin hypes it with us. The, the book of me is the book that he has out and you have, so what you did and I just love it because you've got so many stories that you just decided one day, well, I'm going to write all these down and I'm going to put it into a book. Is that kind of how it went? Yeah, basically what I did was I've been a storyteller all my life and you could tell I'm kind of an animated guy. Yeah, very positive guy. I've been blessed with a very positive personality.

14:43And I've just always been a storyteller and for some reason I can remember the intimate details of some of the things I lived through even when I was five years old all the way up to 70, which I'm 70 and I'll be 71 in about 45 days. So people would tell me you have so many stories you should write a book and I'd say I'm just so busy and I'm just a hundred miles an hour all the time. I can't sit still long enough to write a book. And then one year, a couple of years ago I ran from there of my town, you know, Vito here in Florida. And I had a young lady who was my, I guess, videographer and she filmed a few commercials for me and she was very good. And somebody was telling me you should be writing a book and I said, I don't have the patience to sit and write. I just can't do it. It's painful. And she says to me, you don't have to do that. And I said, what do you mean? And she goes, it's all you got to do is tell your stories into the camera. She goes, we can open a YouTube channel and you, I'll film you and you could just sip on your desk at your office and tell the stories into the camera and then we'll download them into a manuscript and you got a book and I said, holy camera, that's a great idea. And I did it.

15:46It wasn't easy. It still took me three years because I took a hundred miles an hour and she kept getting me to try to, it was so funny. You got to watch the videos. You got to go on planet hype. It's H-I-P-E-S because that's my video channel because it's funny because in the video, she's behind the camera and and she's giggling over some of the silly things I say and she's like 25 and I'm an ancient guy. So she doesn't understand things that I'm saying. For example, I'd say, I had this rock band. We were great and we produced about three 45s and she goes, what's a 45? It's not a gun. It's a record. So this is a banter that goes back and forth on the things I say. So it's pretty common. She's behind the camera saying, tell them to click, subscribe and tell them to do TikTok. I would be like, what? I'm like, I'm supposed to be telling you to watch me on TikTok and she goes, no, it's TikTok and of course, I would make that mistake on purpose

16:47just for fun. So the videos are really entertaining but the stories are pretty good too. So that's how it happened. But it did take me three years because I have to get photographs and downsize it weed out all the crazy things I said that don't really pertain to the stories. But I'm very happy I did it because this thing is 500 pages. Holy mackerel, that's a lot of pages. And the people that I had another guy, young man, very nice guy, I got him an upwork to kind of help me because I don't know how to write. I mean, I'm never with the cards. I'm a streak of some queens. And so I needed somebody to kind of, you know, sometimes you got to put things in quotes or use italics and, you know, there's ways to make it look readable. So I had this young man on upwork, great guy. We became great friends. And he kind of helped me make it look like a book. And he says, well, it's a memoir Kevin. He goes, it's supposed to be like, 10,000 words, 150 pages. He said, you can't do 500 pages. And I said, it's my life story. I said, I want it all in there. And he said,

17:49well, yeah, yeah, but you can't sell it. I'm like, well, I'm not really here to sell the book. This is really going to be a coffee table book for the kids. But I do kind of want to sell. I said, okay, what do you want to do? And he goes, well, he goes, if you want, he goes, I'll take out the stories that I think aren't the best. Well, we'll try to get it down. And you can always do another version for the family. And I said, okay, maybe that's a good idea. So he gets about 20 chapters into it. And he says it to me. And I said, where's the needle boy story? He goes, well, that wasn't a very good story. I said, are you kidding? That's a great story. Put it back in. And they're like, where's the first, the first, my first girlfriend story. He goes, everybody's got one of those. I said, down, are you, I did you read it? I said, there's a connection there. I said, you know, it was, yeah, it was, it had to do with this. The girl's name was Judy and my sister, my older sister used to listen to these records back in the 50s. Judy's turned to cry. And I remember, I used to hear that through the wall. And when Judy left, and I didn't see her again, every time the song came on, I thought about my first girlfriend, I get a tear mile and I heard the song, Judy,

18:50and I say, isn't that great? Yes. All right. I'll put it back in. And then I finally said, you know what? Put it all back in. Well, and it is what it is. And if it's, and it's one of those, it's one of those books because it's story by story. You can read a couple stories and then put it down and then pick it up again. But I guarantee you that when you start getting into the stories and you find out the type of man that he is and the adventures that he's had, you're not going to want to put it down. So you're going to, because there are fun, fun things about it that, that, and the stories, we were talking about this before that you could be a stand-up comic. And you said, yeah, I don't like to memorize jokes and stuff. And you don't need to. All you need to do is tell some of your stories. And you'll have the entire room cracking up because that's the kind of guy that you are. And I imagine now as being a real estate developer that you have a lot of fun with your customers and with folks and they must think that you're a kick. Well, you know,

19:53it's interesting. You know, when I first, you know, I was a street gif from Queens and then I was a hippie. And then I had the long hair down to my backside. I wore it in a ponytail and I worked in a factory. And, you know, then I got into the rock band. And so I was never really a business professional. I did work in a bank for a year or two before I went on the road to rock band. But and when I came out of the rock band because I was trying to, I was really trying to, to, to, um, man to my first marriage, which was blowing up my face. And my brother, who's a preacher, tapped me down and I said, Mike, in my marriage is blowing up. What do I do? And he says, well, the first thing you got to do is get your acting into a god and I said, Mike, my wife won't even visit you because she thinks you're a crazy, holy roller. I said, so what's the second best thing I can do? And I think that eventually got my act together with God, but that time I couldn't. And he said, get out of that rock band, get a real job. And I said, you know, you're probably right. So I actually left the rock band. And it was, you know, it was four years. I was almost 30 and I had to make a decision. Do I get a real job or do I end up, you know, a wedding singer for the rest of my

20:54life? So he set me up with a meeting with a real estate developer who was a very wealthy man, who was a member in his church. And of course, I met with that, that man and I've always been good with numbers. And you know, I found out over the years that, you know, real estate is very simple. You don't need a college degree to be good at real estate. Real estate is very simple, good with people and good with numbers. That's real estate. And I've always been good with numbers. I was eight years old. I had a shoe box with envelopes in it and I had a budget, two bucks for this, two bucks for that. I mean, I really didn't. I just thought everybody was like that. Nope. I didn't realize that most people had no idea what to do with money into the room. They're 20s or 30s. So I was a natural for real estate and didn't realize it. But when I got this job, I'm wearing three-piece suits. I'm sure I put on an office and I was very intimidated because I had all these college grads and these Harvard grad kind of guys in the office. And I'm this, you know, street kid former hippie, you know, who knew nothing. I was very intimidated. And I guess I'll

21:56continue to tell the story. I mean, the good news is that because of my personality and my outgoing storytelling, people liked me and people liked doing business with people they liked. And that's how I became successful. But at the time, I didn't know that. I thought I had to be, you know, smart and good at things. And I didn't realize that a college degree doesn't really make you smart. It proves that you can remember things. And it does prove that you can think, I guess, logically, I guess. But that was never a problem for me. But the funny part is that I was I was in this office and I'll tell this very quick. It's in the book, too. And I'm sitting there and what I was doing is that he had me doing analysis to buy shopping centers. And this is back when there was this thing called, I forgot what it's called now. But it was a certain type of real estate where we used to buy shopping centers. And we would buy them cheap. And we would put wrap mortgages on them and make them show losses so that people was called syndications. And we so that doctors and lawyers could buy

22:56a percentage of the shopping center and show a huge loss and then offset a lot of their income. So they never bought the shopping center to really make a profit. They bought it to write off all their income. Now that became illegal in 86, but in 83 when I got that job, it was legal. So my job was to analyze these old rundown shopping centers that were half empty. And I used to do it on green sheets, which were like these, these things would spread out. And there were like 8 million columns. And I have like, I would have to do an analysis. I do a performance. And I would use a calculator and a pencil with an eraser and everything. I wanted to change the percentage of growth on the performance, three percent. But I'd have to erase what I wrote, read through the calculation, put it down. And I mean, it took forever to do it right next to me. This is a good story. Hang in there with me right next to me. It's true. Right next to me was this computer. It was an Apple 2 on a card. And it had a cover on it. And I remember looking at the thing, and I remember seeing Apple 2. And I said, I said that kids in the office, the girls in the house,

23:56what's that? And they said, it's a computer. I said, does anybody use it? They said, no, it's just been sitting there for like a year. No one uses it. I said, really? I said, well, do you mind if I take it with them? They said, no, go ahead. So I took it off. I sat down with it. Well, there was this program on it called Lotus 123. Now that was the spreadsheet program before Excel. That was the original spreadsheet. Yeah. When there was five and a half inch sloppy discs and all of that, right? So I saw this thing. And I said, the spreadsheet program. So I started playing with it. And I figured out that I could put formulas in the little boxes. And they would automatically do the calculations for me. I just have to tell it where to draw the information from. It made so much sense to me being a numbers guy. So I built a program to do all my analysis on the spreadsheet for me. So that is all I had to do was change one box. So what do you want to see? You want to see a four percent increase every year? Four percent. Push the button. All the numbers changed. It was like that. And I was like, holy cow, this is amazing. Nobody figured this out. Nobody was using this thing. I even took it to one one step better than that. I said, well,

25:01I know what these doctors want. They always want a two to one right off, a three to one right off, four to one right off, depending on their trade. So I built the formulas to be in reverse so that I could just put in the amount of right off. I wanted one, three, one. And it would back into the whole performer, back into the interest rates, back into the wraparound mortgage, back into everything, and tell me exactly how much to put to pay for the for the shopping center and how big a mortgage to put on it and what kind of interest to charge to show the maximum loss. It just seemed easy to me. So when I, when these Harvard grads and doctors and lawyers came to me and they said, and Mr. Hanson says that you've got my analysis on the performer, show me the performer. And I said, well, I have it on the computer. They're like, what do you mean on the computer? I said, yeah, I built it on a program. They said, what? I said, well, come on over. These guys are looking over my shoulder and I'm saying, what kind of a rot if you want? They said, what do you mean? I said, just tell what you want. I said, well, I don't get a three to one. Okay, three, one. Okay, you've got to buy the center for $11 million. You got to put an eight and a half million dollar rat mortgage on it. It's six and a half percent. It just over 30 years. And you'll get your three to one right off.

26:04These guys just dropped. I was like, who is this guy? It was just common sense to be in that's when I realized that these Harvard grads were not smarter than me just because they went to school. As a matter of fact, I realized I was probably smarter than most of them. The thing is they knew a lot more about college football and golf than I did because I never played those things. To me, college football acronyms gave me a headache. There was so many acres. I couldn't figure out all these things. It's funny how things turn out. Let's see if you're good at following college football and golf and you go to your Harvard grad, you'll go places in this planet. It is amazing. You know, we're talking with Kevin Hypes, by the way, and he has done so many things. And when I want to ask you when we come back because there's a franchise thing and because you're in the real estate business, I work for a company called Garcia's of Scottsdale. And they told me what the business model was for them. When we come back, because this is kind of how restaurants seem to be working in the franchise

27:07model or what they're doing. So I would love to talk about that a little bit when we come back. We're going to take our halftime break. And hopefully our friend, Michelle, who's having connectivity issues will come back in and see it's because she's missing them. Really? Come on back. Come on back, kid. And so we will be right back right after this. You were listening to Brushwood Media Network, the best, Incindicated Talk, News, and Entertainment shows. Are you looking for your daily dose of inspiration they connected to all your favorite shows, music, and news with a Brushwood Media Network app from positive talk radio to greatest vibes unplugged and so many more uplifting voices around the world. Everything you need is right in one place. It's easy to use too. Always available and designed to keep you inspired 24 hours a day. Go to BrushwoodMediaNetwork.com and download the app and you will always have

28:12Brushwood Media available on your smartphone. Download it now and make inspiration and music and conversation part of your every day. And welcome back to Positive Talk. My name is Kevin McDonald and we've got the Forest Cump of New York. Can I now know why you will call yourself the Forest Cump of New York because your stories go from the 50s and then the 60s and the 70s and the Aeds for seven or eight decades and the interesting thing about that is there are people in our audience because they didn't when they weren't alive then. They have no earthly idea what a floppy disk is. Can you explain to our audience what a floppy disk was? Sure. Well, it was a, I guess it was an information disk that we used to use on computers back in the day. Today it's kind of like a thumb drive I guess.

29:17We store information but back in the early days of computers it was actually a disk about this big five inches I think or five or a quarter inches and it slipped into like an area kind of like a CD slot that you have in a car into the computer and it read information or it stored information and like everything else on this planet it evolved just like records turned into you know eight tracks turned into CDs and into cassettes and all that evolution and now it's now it's a thumb drive or it's in the cloud today that's where it is so. Can you believe that people that were born in 1990 which I remember well are now 35 years of age and they've got children and you would be somebody's grandchild or a grandparent and are you grandparent by the way? You know I'm not I got three kids three adults I love them all they're all wonderful kids 26 35 31 and 36 Oh there's two young my two all this are daughters and they're just like they're very smart

30:21too smart I think they scare the boys off they're very good. You gotta let the guys think they're smart or they're never gonna marry you you know they're very self-sufficient but I know God's got the right people picked out for them so I don't stress about it and I'm gonna live to be 100 so even though I'm 70 no grandkids I got plenty so I'm not worried about it absolutely you you're and you're and living to 100 when you have the type of life that you do and the and the and the zest for life that you do it makes it easy to live to be 100 well we'll see if God wants me here I'll stay. Well you got so much work to do and so and but I wanted to ask you about um restaurant um I was working for Garcia's Scotchdale and they were putting up restaurants all over the place and they were and it was because they were becoming a real estate company and they were making money from the restaurant but it was really the real estate value that they were

31:24talking about that was important to them is that common because they're out of business now but was that common at the time? It is and it still is and really what it depends on is the company's business plan. Most companies I I know all about this I own to franchise myself I used to own a mouillard burger fries in the shakes out of Texas and I ran it for four years that's a hilarious story too so we'll get to that but you see every every business has a business plan and change that one to expand very quickly like Starbucks for example they don't like putting their money into the real estate because it takes a lot of cash to buy a piece of land and spend two millions to build the building now also they got to invest three million dollars four million dollars to get up a building well you got to raise an enormous amount of money to open hundreds and hundreds of stores when you got to put out four million every time it was more important to them in their plan to open stores quickly so they went the way of leasing space from developers who buy the land

32:29build the building and rent them the space for 10 years then as all they have to do is fit out their space at maybe set on a grand and they can open stores fast so that was their plan it makes sense others like let's say McDonald's or you know Chick-fil-A and skies like that the real estate is very important because the bottom line is the value in real estate is location location location and we all know that these kinds of real estate companies especially fast food guys they want to be right on main and main they want the corner a lot they want to buy the corner and they want to own their real estate because what they do is they buy the real estate and then they franchise the location to somebody else who's going to who's going to run the store own the equipment but not own the building see so they and then if that guy goes out of business they still got themselves a piece of real estate and you know what that land that they might have bought if they go into an area that's just beginning to grow and maybe they buy the land for 500,000 600,000 in 10, 15 years and that market fills in matures and builds out that lands worth two three million dollars

33:34at the end well that times a couple of thousand units and they're a powerful real estate company and to franchisee if it goes out of business they own the real estate just they just put another one in so there's many ways to go about it that's what's great about America there's so many different ways to to put together a business plan to be successful and once they learn something they they figure out and you know when there's tough times and I've been in real estate for 40 years and I've seen I've seen you know boom and bust happen what's great about America is entrepreneurial people and not to pranero country companies once they make if they if there's a mistake made and they start to lose money they learn from it and then they figure out how to fix it and they sometimes even shut down for a while so they come up with a better plan and then they reopen with the problem soft and I'll give you a quick example of that what I went when the when the bus came in 2007 and everybody kind of went out of business but everybody got hurt from 2000 banks stopped lending money which was the stupidest thing to do because

34:34all of these guys exist on their credit lines you start to tell a store a corporate store I have this corporate store very successful but he had to borrow money on a credit line to stock his corporate to sell it and when that black money came to banks cut off all these more business credit lines and they immediately went out of business because they couldn't buy their stock to go put people's compets down so they just cross the story so anyway big companies raw stores a great example they used to have these 30,000 square foot stores and when the tough times came they stopped opening new stores they cut people down and they figured out how to get out of it and they if they waited for 18 months and they came up with a new business plan and then they went back out again they changed their footprint from 32,000 to about 18 to 21,000 so they lowered their employee need they lowered their overhead in terms of electric they lowered their lowered their rent and they went into secondary markets and since the times

35:36were tough they could get building to three four five dollars a square foot if they spent their own money building out the store instead of paying 15, 20, 25 dollars a square foot to a grand to a grand zero location and quadrupling the income they figured it out and they just downsized and they they started expanding it it was just amazing it wasn't only them think about it every one of these big chains I hope you're down figure out why they were losing money all of a sudden came up with a new plan and came they came out of the shoot re-expanding answer they figured it out think oh Petsmont was always 30,000 square feet you look at a Petsmont now 12,000 square feet I mean look at them all even even the office products guys today they're 25,000 square feet now everybody's buying off products online those guys are going to close a lot of those stores because no one nobody goes to office backs anymore when they ship you the paper to your house so businesses in America and I guess all countries are entrepreneurial when they see the problem coming they try to get ahead of it they try to figure it out they try to solve it and the entrepreneurs

36:36always figure it out because their money's on the line and and their their futures on the line so you know that's why I think it all can shopping says broken malls I'm an expert at fixing broken real estate because real estate is an evolution I take old malls now that no longer get visits because Amazon you know took all their businesses the palmestores don't do any business anymore and I turn them into what I call mixed-choose projects eat sleep work play and I'm turning these malls around and I put in apartments I put in hotels I put an entertainment I put in restaurants I put in businesses and I put in some retail just enough to service all of that me tell can't be the main journey more people don't go to malls for retail now some malls they do you know big regional malls and in ground zero locations like in urban areas or or in resort areas but your average mall out in a small town they're dead but you know what same like I said now I'll end the conversation like I started real estate is location location location and the good news is

37:38all malls were built a good intersection so it's good real estate which means you can fix it you just gotta know what to do with it to fix it and I'm an expert at that but I'm not a well I will tell you this Michelle is also got a real estate license and and is working on stuff so so Michelle do you have any questions it's it's rare to have somebody as it's been in the business for 40 years to have any questions for him oh you're on mute oh you're on mute okay you can hear me now I finally got us to load back up and thank you Kevin for asking me that because there's gotta be so many of me they're like well how you there's opportunities this stand in front of us all the time and a lot of us have these thoughts you know let's create this and let's do this and and then we don't but even being in the real estate world and saying hey you know I'm interested in this and I could see how this benefits people further than just myself you took those opportunities but you were you had a guideline and I think a lot of us do that we have great

38:42ideas we come up with amazing things sometimes I shut off my phone when I'm having certain conversations I don't want my ideas stolen from me um but how did you take this into an opportunity that that you saw was a possibility rather than to say oh no that's too hard it's too complicated there's no way if it was that easy everyone would be doing it and that's something you hear in real estate that's a great question because everybody has ideas and it's almost easy to have a good idea the hard part is executing it and a friend of mine who said entrepreneur told me one day and he was right he said Kevin I gotta tell you something he's a he's a this guy is a lifelong entrepreneur and he said everybody has great ideas he said but most people are working nine to five and they're trying to pay their bills and they never have the time or the money to act on the right this and that's the truth it's very hard you got to burn the candle at both ends it's not easy to do

39:45it's so true it's very risky to be an entrepreneur and for some people it's not even possible but everybody has good ideas it's the execution so there's lots of ways to do it now as a real estate professional who's I'm innocent I make good money and I do have some money I'm not a zillionaire but I do but you know what it took me 30 years to make enough money to have my own money to try to invest in real estate even though I was the smallest guy in the block cash is king and if you don't have the cash you can't execute on your ideas you don't have the cash then not work for a year you don't have the cash to buy the land you don't have the cash to build the property you don't have the cash to do it so you have no choice but to either sit on your idea or offer it to somebody else and if you do you get a very tiny piece if you get anything because cash is king the guy that's risking his cash is the guy that makes the lion share of the profit that's just the way it is it doesn't sound fair but it's true so it took me a very long time to get established

40:52to where I could kind of risk some of my own money and be in control of my own ideas and make it work but I've made a very good living making money for other people so there's nothing wrong with that there really isn't and I've learned a lot and you know what other guys have made lots of mistakes and I've learned from their mistakes and put it in the brain so it's just it's very I'm a very big risk taker people have said to me I said you know I'm not like I'm gonna be on I can go on and on I I'm gonna be on another show I think it's next week and the minute the format of the show is my biggest mistake and I spoke to the guy earlier that I had to do a pre-show interview I guess to make sure you're not a knucklehead I guess but and he said yeah the show's my biggest mistake he goes so you know what show biggest mistakes you're gonna talk about I said are you kidding have you read my book it's it's chock full of my mistakes I said that's what the whole that's what life's about life's about making mistakes and getting back up learning from

41:54them and charging forward again and he said okay so which one are you gonna use I saw I'm gonna use the oil tanker mistake and he goes what do you mean I said I put an oil tanker in the carabane he goes what if you look at the front of my book it says Kevin Hyves book of me the life and times of Kevin Hyves the New York Forest Gump and it's me sitting on that forest gump chair sitting next to an oil tanker because that's the biggest mistake I've ever made and my tagline and it's on the bottom of the book and it's very hard to see it says farce on a shrimp shrimp boat but I owned an oil tanker and all my stories are true that really is the elevator pitch so I lost I don't want to tell you how much money I lost my poor wife on the oil tanker but me and a bunch of friends bought an oil tanker because one guy had this business plan now this is what I actually had some money um but now what now that I wasn't smart I was always an entrepreneur I was always a risk-taker so if you're gonna be an entrepreneur and you want to start your own business you're

42:56gonna have to understand that you got to be a risk-taker now sometimes it's better to share your idea with other people and make sure you get an agreement and writing and let them have the line share of the upside but let them risk their money instead of yours nothing wrong with that I'll take you get 80 percent but you spend your million dollars on my idea if you like it you know nothing you get nothing for nothing it's the guy that risks his money that makes the line share to mind is nothing wrong with that and after you get 20 percent of this and 20 percent of that you eventually have enough money will say you know I'm gonna do this one on my own I don't want to share it with anybody but you got to be a risk-taker it's not easy and for people who aren't risk-takers get a good nine to five get yourself a union or get yourself a good 401K and you know publicly it says steady plotting and in 40 years you'll have a wonderful retirement for some reason I couldn't do that I'm not in your soul go ahead Michelle yeah Mr. Hypes I'm gonna I just we got a frame which Kevin I'm talking to but I'm gonna let Kevin take us

44:01to the spray because everything you're talking about and what's going through my mind is how much of the learning we talk about through all of our shows which has to do with identity oh go go ahead Michelle well we'll all add it in later go ahead okay well we'll end a little bit early but we tie all of this in our successes our failures our opportunities our ideas into our identity yes please tell me how the hell you manage those within that without losing track of it we're thinking you know because pride kicks in I mean and the most loving way you're a man so they kind of happens a little bit more and then with women judgment right so you you're you're talking about creating a business and your identity being the baseline of what's going to help people all around and it's more than just you so I'll just let you kind of okay that is a wonderful question and that's a perfect question to not not that we're gonna end on that but it really

45:05is a wonderful question because that's really what my life story is all about my in my book if you read the preface what I say is life's about the journey it's not about arriving it's not about making millions it's not about getting to the top of the mountain it's about the struggle to get there that's where you learn everything that's where you develop your character that's where you that's where you really do enjoy the game so to speak of life listen there's a lot of very very wealthy people who've made zillions and they got to the top of that mountain and you know what they do now they're about 75 years old they they take cruises they're miserable and they complain about the food all day and they spend all the time worrying about losing their money it's not even ever going to be me I don't care about money my poor life but I don't care about my I really don't I leave it up the God I'm a hard working guy and I'm an honest guy and God blesses me as well as I've got that going for me I'll always feed my family but let me tell you how I got to this place

46:08it's because what I and it's it's a spiritual thing when I first became a Christian I used to be a before I became a Christian I used to be afraid to do things most people got themselves from being successful because they're afraid of things and you know why you mentioned it's pride they're afraid to fail they don't want to try it because they're afraid they're going to fall in their face they're going to fail and they're going to be embarrassed and their friends are going to laugh at them you're how many people on this planet have have admitted themselves and their success by not trying things because they're afraid to fail most of us is done that I read this passage in the book of James chapter four verse six I think it is and it says that God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble and that hit me one day when I read that scripture I said that's amazing I said how you can't be humiliated if you're humble I said if I'm humble I can't be humiliated I can only be humiliated if I'm prideful breath so when I figured that out I said and then

47:09I said I shouldn't be afraid to do anything first of all if I'm humble it doesn't matter if I fail it's a learning lesson but the better thing of that is that I'm going to heaven I don't got to fear anything so here's what I came up with that day and this is a long time ago and I said I'm going to try everything that I'm afraid of I'm going to do everything I'm afraid of I'm going to do it first and I'm going to keep doing it till I conquer the fear of course I shouldn't be afraid of anything I'm going to heaven that's what I started doing and I got to tell you it's been the most adventurous rewarding life now I'm not I'm not I'm not multi-millionaire I'm probably worth a couple of million bucks but it's not about the money it's about the adventure it's about the journey it's about helping others grow and be the best that they can be and I do a lot of service I preach on Sundays at a retirement senate to old folks people and guess what I use my skills as a beetle mania guy I actually play beetle songs that is old ladies and they're like 80 years old and you know what home of carnival is 83 when I'm talking to these memory pictures that I'm singing she loves you yeah yeah they think they're a shea

48:12stadium I got to tell you you can't buy that with money it's so encouraging not about the money it's about helping other people so by the way kevin I you make me giggle because per shell are you there yes I'm here can you hear me we can hear you horrible but no you sound right fighting for every chance to be here no you're here and that's great but kevin just said that he he goes to the old folks home and he said these women are 80 Kevin I know that you probably don't know this but you're only 10 years younger than they are I call that to the owners I do the nurses I say this should give me a free room I'll be here for 10 years it's my free room yeah but you know what yeah but but if I may say both of you get to prove that age is just a number it's just a it's just the psychological acceptance of who you can be and why you are what

49:14you do and all those things but that doesn't have to stop we can carry that on and we can use what we've learned into our wisdom to pass along and to be the example of so I really don't see it as a negative but if I go to a no folks home kevin I'll share you my input yes I get as much room or out of it than they do and that's that's the whole point people think wow you're good god to do that no no no I'm I benefit from it I mean they do too yeah but it's uh and again that's for me it's a biblical thing you know some of the most powerful scriptures that Jesus spoke about was about like this he said the two most important commandments to love God with all your hot mind and soul and love your neighbor as yourself second most important commandment and see what what Jesus says about and the Bible says about helping widows and orphans these are the most important things that the Bible talks about so it's it's it's easy for me to see that that's what I ought to be doing oh exactly and and that's that is what you should be doing because that is

50:18and Priscilla's back she's bouncing back and forth from this place to that place because she's trying desperately to get in here because she wants to talk to Kevin not me the other Kevin and isn't that right for show yeah I'd fight against that to say a little bit of both because you guys are providing so much learning and thank you for acknowledging that I mean things don't happen in the sense of what we think they are or we realize I'm gonna switch it up at the end of this Friday just to put some thought in some people's head and I'd love your input Mr. Hypes is you can't control it all right but you can control yourself and how you absorb the circumstances and you get to choose whether you keep fighting or not and I think that's kind of valid right you know that's such a great point because in every situation you have a choice I'm gonna say they didn't treat me right I can't believe it I'm mad I'm offended or you can say you know I made a mistake and I learned something from it I learned from it next time or next time

51:22I'll be more careful or maybe I was blessed in this situation and I'm not gonna realize it and to later I have a policy in my life I have a lot of policy I make them up but one of my favorite policies is being offended is a choice you can't offend me with whatever you say unless I choose to be offended I can choose not to be offended and let it roll right off my back most people don't think that would they think wait a minute you offended me you have to apologize or I'm gonna be miserable to you doing I'm never gonna like you again no you have a choice you can say like I said jerk but I'm gonna choose to not be offended and then my life goes on in a positive way and they're miserable it's a choice Kevin one of the thing one of my rules is it's none of my business what you think of me and that rolls right into what I was gonna ask you Mr. Hypes is because we get to also choose where we're wrong and we get to take acknowledgement of that and we get to fix that we don't have to blame ourselves and we can say hey I have acknowledgement of that and I can be better as well absolutely blame goes nowhere listen you want others to know when they've

52:27heard you of course because you want them to learn from their experience too because not about blame it's about communication it's about you know putting yourself in their shoes and what what I have said when that person said that to me it's always about putting yourself in the other person's shoes and not listen people aren't generally evil I mean there are also people out there but most people don't don't set out to hurt the guy next to him but we do that sometimes sometimes we don't realize it sometimes we weren't we didn't know and sometimes we didn't we made a mistake we have to apologize but most people are pretty good people with good hearts I mean I don't I don't abide by this you know these people are evil and negative listen there are people in the world that are like that but you can usually tell the bad ones from the ones that are just either misguided or just they don't like you or they just want to agree with you know it's it's not an evil thing exactly and brichelle you're still here right oh crime and he's saying this is like a stick

53:28isn't it this is this this is like okay getting her to stick in the show is our major thing to be frustrated and to forgive things I don't know is what we've talked about all day and I tell you that's what I'm struggling with right now and brichelle would you like to take us out of the show yes I would have nothing more of an honor thank you for one Kevin Hypes for being here spending this time with us sharing your knowledge sharing the person that you are and letting us know that we get to choose that thank you me and mr. Mcdonald my little best friend we talk about these things all day and every day and I would love to give the opportunity view in the last moment that we have to share all the ways to contact you get in touch with the book you're doing find your books and any message you'd like to leave us for with this beautiful week absolutely and it out of this I'm never to lose for words that's not always smart but because I always just whenever comes to my head it comes out of my mouth but I enjoy life my pitch in life is life is

54:29about the journey and it really is and I do adhere to biblical standards I think there was a good things common sense things for me I don't impose them on other people they work for me but I would like people to read the book book of me the life and times of Kevin Hypes the New York Forest come because there's a lot of real life adventures in here and you can get it on amazon just put in book of me Kevin Hypes it'll come right up you can get it in a what does it call ebook for like 699 or you can or you can buy the hard cover which is very expensive because the pictures are in color but it's a collector's item so you should have it or go to my web page which is which is planted Hypes and you know you'll have a web page you can order it there or go to planted Hypes on YouTube and watch the videos and I you know I'm a positive guy I enjoy bringing joy to other people I've lived a lot of crazy things and I've made a lot of mistakes and you can probably learn from people can learn what not to do or what to do and give it a shot so well you're Kevin so

55:35you don't get to run from that I learn and and again thank you so much for your time thank you for having me I really appreciate it we love and support everything that you're doing and I'm going to extend the the invitation further than mr. McDonald and please come back share more of your insights yeah we're just we're so thankful for you and everything you're doing stay in contact but love to come back there's 66 stories in the book we only touch how I want to do them that's exactly right Kevin Hypes has been our guest and by the way that's Hypes with an I and go to his website Kevin Hypes and and and his has YouTube and just type Kevin Hypes and he shows up everywhere so I want to thank you for being here young man and thank you for being part of positive talk with Kevin McDonald where stories inspire and voices remind us of what truly matters may today's conversation give you hope courage and a reason to keep moving forward and

56:37just remember till next time be kind to one another because each other's all we've got