19: Kymber & Bo Menkiti
Chris Suarez: [00:00:00] [00:00:00]Welcome back to the experience growth podcast, focused on the six pillars of living and experiential life. Our career related our personal growth, our health, our wealth, and our spirituality. A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to speak to some of real estates, most successful business owners about each one of these pillars.
They were hand selected to talk about a pillar that they demonstrate so well in their business and in their personal life. And today I want to share with you my conversation with both Bo and Kimber men, kitty on wealth.
Bo and Kimber as collaborators and as friends want to talk about this conversation of wealth clearly big business.
Not always, but can lead to wealth. But maybe let's jump in and maybe I can ask you, how would you guys find what wealth is like as a couple. I know you talk about it. What is wealth to you guys?
Bo Menkiti: [00:01:07] Thanks, Chris. It's so exciting to be here with you guys. And I apologize.
I am putting my dad duties first, so I am coming to you from the hockey rink. But I think, we've always, there was something that really hit me in a conversation. We were having, and I think it was one of Gary sessions maybe, 10 years ago.
And and we're having this conversation about the definition of wealth and somebody scrawled something on the board and said the definition of wealth, we were having all this debate about how do you think about money and how do you define, is it net worth? Is this? And Gary just wrote on the board.
He said Here's mine. It's the have enough resources coming in without having to work, to pursue your purpose in life. So to have enough resources coming in with, out, having to work, to pursue or fulfill your purpose in life. And it got me thinking that the word I went to immediately was purpose that there was no way to be wealthy.
Intel one had defined one's purpose in life. And so I think for us, it's been, how can you create the resources? Whether those resources are monetary resources human resources, intellectual resources to pursue. That, which you're most passionate about that, that you feel you've been called to do here and do that without having to be confined by work that could take you away from that.
So to have enough resources coming in without having to work, to pursue your purpose in life, press Bo. I think there's a great follow-up question from our audience. How has that definition changed for you from where you were 25 years ago to where you are
Chris Suarez: [00:02:51] today?
Bo Menkiti: [00:02:52] Wow. That's a great question. Yeah, that's true.
So, in thinking about this, one of the things that, that, I was thinking about and Kimbra, and I were talking about Kimbra and I met at a nonprofit called college summit. And we were talking about like, what's our personal mission. How do we think about our personal mission? And there was this tagline from that organization that kept coming back up in our conversation.
And that tagline was to let talent shine that ultimately that one of our passions in life is to let talent shine. And that talent shows up in many different places. Sometimes it's, our mission is to transform lives, careers and communities through real estate. Sometimes it's a person. Sometimes it's the capacity and the human being at college summit, it was the capacity of high school, underprivileged high school seat juniors who had the potential to do something.
And we were trying to help them see that sometimes about a community, sometimes about a physical building, but this idea that there's this sort of latent capacity, this latent talent out there in the world and that we can unlock that is something that we've already been PA always been very passionate about.
To answer the question about how has it changed? I think the thing that's changed is that the first chapter in that journey for us was very much about trying to, we were trying to unleash our talent. We were trying to show that our talent could shine. We were trying to be a representation of that talent.
And I think the first part of that journey was very personal. There was more internal and in some ways was much more self-centered right. It was how can I become. Better, how can I unlock the skills I have? What could I do to make a difference? And then I think the evolution of that has been that the realization of how small and inconsequential our individual shining of our talent is, and the way in which that could become more collective.
So how do you take this idea of letting talent shine? And once you've taken that first step of letting your talent shine, , how you give permission to others to do the same, right? How do you create the environment in which others can let their talent? I think that's been a big part of the evolution of Archer
Chris Suarez: [00:04:57] Kimber, as you take that definition [00:05:00] as a couple, and you look at decisions that you've said yes to, or no to
how does that weigh into your decision making around where you're going to put your time, energy and effort on that path to building wealth based on the fact that that wealth has to be tied to that purpose?
Kymber Menkiti: [00:05:17] Yeah. That's been a struggle for us, right? Cause I think part of what you have to say sometimes.
It's when Bo talks about the individual, like the personal journey and then the evolution to the broader, like when you start to look at what is it that you would need, like today, Beau and I could stop, like we're done. Like we could stop and live really well comfortable life for us and our family.
And yet that actually isn't for us, like enough, because we have gone on this journey and I think this commitment right. To do this as a collective to do this, right when we drive and we push and we look at those next opportunities today, it's because we do see that's creating that next opportunity for the people in our world to be able to also get all of what they want for their families, for their communities. And I think that's been one of the big pieces for us as we think about it is. And that's been a big question, right? Like in our businesses, but when I don't own any of our businesses, By ourselves, right? We are, we have partners in every single business that we're in. And I think that's what that's about too, is like, how are we creating the opportunity for the people in our world to either see the path right.
That they can walk on their own or be able to be with us in that walk and also be drivers in that. The thing I'm most proud of when I look at our across lots of things, but one of the things I'm most proud of in our business and particularly in our marketplace is that this people have taken advantage.
We don't build wealth in the residential sales business, right? Like it's a lifestyle business. It funds a life. It's great. We build wealth by investing in the people and the businesses and the assets of our industry. That's where the wealth is actually built. And so when I look up and I look at, Bo just, we just did the stats recently, like over a hundred millionaires in our company over a hundred millionaires.
And that's not because they run. Yeah, they run really successful real estate businesses, some of them. But it's because they've followed a path of investing. They followed a path, the building people. And that's when I think about like wealth building to me that I'm like, that's it like, that's, what's going to change the trajectory of our communities is being able to transfer translate, our businesses into opportunities to go well,
Chris Suarez: [00:07:15] Yeah, I want to reiterate something. And just because I think that the way you guys think is outside of how a real estate agent thinks where a lot of our community and conversation is with agents. And let's get outside of real estate and just think sales.
Sales is a cashflow business sales. Like you refer to it as a lifestyle business cashflow can create incredible lives. But it's different than wealth. , what are the. The first times I flew out to your neck of the woods and spend some time with you guys.
What I was impressed about is that brought someone in to speak to a small group that was a mentor on wealth building. So where do you guys go? As someone that, that, that may be someone that's listening is they're new to the wealth building game, or they say, I have a great cash flow. I have a great lifestyle, but I really do need to build well.
Where do they go , to learn about, well, what did you guys do? How important is mentorship been there?
Bo Menkiti: [00:08:09] Yeah. I think that we didn't, I think there were a couple of things that really influenced our journey. One was folks to look up to folks to model after folks to learn from who were ahead of us.
I think that's been one of the huge benefits quite frankly, of Keller Williams to us has been the learning from. You know, folks like Gary, but also from other people like yourself, Chris, Ben, and folks in the network who are going along that journey, who in some areas might be a step ahead of you in some areas might be a step behind, but you can share the thinking.
I think the other one for us was reading. It was studying models and systems and reading books about other people. And then finally it was the experience and something, we talked to folks and I really wrestle with this in our organization because. The more people think of a person or an organization as being about wealth building.
They oftentimes approach that organization or the individual as well, I need to get wealthy, what's the organization going to do for me? And the reality is that the thing we have to provide is a thought process. It's actually a way of looking at the world. It's not actually I'm going to join up with you and all of a sudden I'm going to get wealthy.
It's that? Hey, what could I learn? What could I learn about this? How could I experience something differently than I've experienced it before? And I think the reality is that as people, we experienced money and we experienced assets in a certain way. And if we can start to evolve the way that we experience those things.
They can have a very different result for us. And so I think ultimately for us the wealth building journey and learning has been influenced by a number of key people. And I could point to probably four or five people along the way influence that journey tremendously. But it's also been about experiencing that and being in it like there's no replacement for I've said to some of the people on our team, don't placement for [00:10:00] owning your own investment property and figuring out what that's like.
And thinking about the ups and downs of that, and this gradually then suddenly that, and the disappointment of having that let you down. And cause the thinking about that, the thinking about assets is different than the thinking about how much GCI that make today or how much income did I make today?
And, just one little piece that we kind of fell into this, the quick background is I was working in this national non-profit where I'd met Kimber. I thought I was in my twenties. I thought I was, I thought it was using my business skill sets to change the world. If I was doing a great job, I was probably a little cocky on myself and had been flying around the country.
I bought this house in DC. And we were opening all these offices around the country. We were changing college access in America, and there was a woman named Mrs. Becks who was 70 years old and lived next to me in a house right next to mine is a little row house in DC. And it was me Mrs. Baxton and all the houses on our block were vacant until you got to a Metro station.
And I just think it was just really weird. Why was there nobody else in my neighborhood? Why are all these houses vacant? And I used to help Mrs. Back. She didn't have any children's, I'd help her with groceries and, trash. And I came back from one of these trips around the country, thinking I was doing all this great work and Mrs.
Beck's was, had died and she was in her house and she, I found her because she, nobody checked on her. And I was, she'd been in her whole house, passed away for a couple of weeks and it hit me that I thought I was changing the world. But I wasn't present for this person right here on the other side of my little row house wall.
And so there's this sort of evolution of thinking about how can I make a difference where I am like the place where I am in the physical place, where I sit today? How can I think about that? And so for us, when we started in real estate, there was this idea that. Real estate was this powerful way to make money.
I got a real estate license thinking it was about teaching me how to fix up vacant homes. I didn't know that wasn't what real estate was about, but we learned really quickly that you could make income from that. And so we had this passion for how could you change these assets in the community? And so early on, we developed this dual pillars of our business, which was real estate sales and brokerage is a great cashflow business and own real estate.
Is a great asset business. And so in some ways it happened because of a desire to make a difference in the neighborhood we were in and that's carried forward into our neighbor investment model, but there was an underlying economic reality behind that, that we sort of happened upon. And if you think about the history of our experience, it really is grounded in that you can have a cashflow business coupled with an asset business and that those two things.
Have the power to reinforce each other and really support the direction mission, which moving.
Kymber Menkiti: [00:12:44] It created probably this powerful connectivity, which I think is one of the takeaways for folks. Because it was a business, so that their income, that was being created in the sales business, we actually weren't pulling it out.
We were leaving it in the business to then invest in the assets, invest in the people, to be able to hire a team that could take us to the next level from the day from the beginning. So when we paid ourselves a salary, and then the business performed and it wasn't like, Oh, great, go buy another car, go buy a second house, go, just take a really fancy vacation.
Because we had a good month in the business. All of it stayed in. And then that allowed us right from the beginning to be able to reinvest and reinvest and reinvest sometimes overly and, but you look up today in the gradually then suddenly and there's legitimate business assets there today.
Chris Suarez: [00:13:32] What everyone needs to realize then is this, you didn't separate the two. See what happens is we were running our sales business and man, this is super it's successful and there's money into the account. And then it's out of the account.
And then we wake up one day and think gosh, maybe I should invest in some real estate. And so we buy a rental, we bought a duplex and then three years go by and well that worked out. Maybe I'll buy a duplex. But what you said is I'm going to have a cost to a business as an asset business. If we're looking at a mental model to build wealth from if we can look at you two and say, Hey, what mental model did you go through?
You said, Hey, I'm going to connect my cashflow business to an asset business. Yeah. I'm going to do a job. I have a job in this cashflow business, but . All the assets, that money that, that is left over, I am going to use it to build this asset based business and set right. Gradually, and then suddenly you look up and you've created truly an empire.
Now I want to come back to something you said Bo because it, it was kind of a passing. But you said that one of, one of your missions, right? Or that you pull from that original non-profit was to let talent shine, but you said talent can be in people, but it also could be in the building.
And I don't know that anybody has done this that I know personally, as well as both of you, that you see the opportunity and the talent in a location or a building or a lot. Or a community and you've poured into that and it's created massive benefit, maybe could you just talk briefly about a couple of the [00:15:00] projects that you've been able to take your purpose around around letting talents, shine and how that has factored into your true North, which has been real estate.
Bo Menkiti: [00:15:10] Yeah, I'll give a quick two places where that's showing up right now. Over the years, we realized that maybe we were on to something and we built something. We call a neighborhood investment model and the idea behind it is that great cities are made up of great neighborhoods and that great neighborhoods have mixed income housing.
They have thriving commercial Carter's with. Small businesses and job creation, and then they have some sort of vibrant culture. And so what we've done is been in two neighborhoods right now, we're doing this at scale in Anacostia, in Washington, DC and in the theater district in Worcester. And in both those neighborhoods, two very different places, one in Massachusetts, one in Washington, DC very different communities.
But in both of those communities, there's a rich history. There's a great architectural assets. There are emerging small businesses and creative and cultural assets. And so part of the idea is that in real estate and in cities, there are certain neighborhoods or certain people or certain things that exist on the other side of some perception line in Washington, DC.
It's about the river. You don't go East of the river, East of the river has a connotation to it. So we are doing two big projects right at the foot of the bridge that comes across the river. So when you come across the river, you run into the MLK gateway project. And what we're doing there is we brought a cybersecurity firm.
The technology company from downtown agreed to move from Connecticut and K, which is the center of our downtown. So good hope road in MLK, which is the center of Anacostia. It was the largest private employer to move East of the Anacostia river in 50 years. And so part of it was bringing the economics and the physical buildings and bringing them back to life.
But part of it was also the way people think about who they are and what they are. And in Anacostia, it was how can I think about ourselves? This is a community in BC that sued the Washington post. Because the Washington post would always say that every murder that happened in East of the river happened in Anacostia.
So this idea of identity of how does somebody see themselves, or how does a place see themselves is oftentimes a limiting factor for realizing one's capacity, talent, or assets. And so much of the work we've done in Anacostia is about how do you look at Anacostia differently? How do you tell different stories?
And you get resistance even from the community. How do you not tell the story about who just got shot and how do you tell the story about the amazing small business that was just created or the person that's creating this amazing.
Kymber Menkiti: [00:17:49] Part of like, why that's so powerful in residential is when you think about the hype for local models and you think about the real estate agent is at the front of being able to be the storyteller of a community and have a location and to talk about the businesses and to talk about the uniqueness of being there.
That was our world, right? Like our first farm is where we started our geographic farm. We lived there, we built our business there. We invested there. Super super deep in this one community and then emerged a model that we, as both saying right now, we're we were playing that model out in two different locations.
We've got Marie, Claire and Barton who were folks on our team, like who live at like, they are in these neighborhoods, they're in these communities, they know the neighbors, they know the businesses. And I think that's the power. That also means that, when there's a good opportunity, Residential or commercial because you're a boots on your, on the ground.
And so there's no question about, is this a valid opportunity or is this the right model? You know it, and I think that's part of what has these opportunities all came from that like initial hyper-local agent business.
Chris Suarez: [00:18:49] I wanted our audience to hear that. I truly believe that every single city and community in our country needs that approach because it isn't just an economic approach.
It's just not a residential or commercial approach. It is truly the community fabric approach. Beginning to bring those together creates wealth for everybody in the community, not just the McKinney group. But every city needs a and then kitty group, truly, I'm a firm believer that, that the way that you think about wealth is actually a model for us as well.
So you're reframing the way a community thinks. And a city thinks and a village things. But for us, we might just need to take a step back and say, gosh, I need to reframe how I think about my business cashflow and asset. I need to rethink about what, how I feel, what wealth is like, what is wealth to me?
Am I truly building it? That meant control model has built an empire, but it can turn an agent into a business owner as well.
Bo Menkiti: [00:19:45] I think so many times Chris people. What people come and ask the question of what did you do? They come looking for a tactic or a how, and they get really frustrated when [00:20:00] I started talking to them about these perspectives.
But I firmly believe that the creation, it happens first in your mind. And then it happens in reality. And it's not possible to have a certain mindset about things. And then go do something that's not, it gets a different result. So how do we embrace a journey of thinking about how we have experienced money in the past, how we've thought about it what it triggers for us and how we can bring that into alignment with where we're trying to go and what is powerfully draws us forward in a way that can combine some of those principles together.
Chris Suarez: [00:20:38] Yeah. What you said earlier that a company isn't there to create a, you've created a hundred millionaires. I mean, that's phenomenal, but the company, hasn't how you've taught other people to think or how you've opened up their mental models that they think about money or how they use money.
Just simple changes in putting yourself on a salary, allows you to detach from experiential. You risking money in a residential or commercial investment when you're not tied to be dollar, but you're tied to the experience that you're having with that dollar because you. Because you have something to eat and because your kids are closed and because there's a roof over your head, your job takes care of that.
And then you've allowed money to work for you. And listen you've been open and said, Hey, some of those have worked out great. I we've had some bad investments too. Yeah. Last question for you. And then I'll let you go. And I appreciate your hanging in there. Cause my time management, sucks today.
So I apologize. The last question is as a couple. How do you as a couple, get on the same path of wealth creation and wealth building and expenditures , when you look at statistics, it's the one of the largest reasons are number one reasons why people get divorced and in why people argue in fight.
So how do you get on the same page with a partner or spouse with money and wealth?
Bo Menkiti: [00:21:53] You stumble a lot. Chris, you stumble a lot. You learn. Yes,
Kymber Menkiti: [00:21:57] I do think though, I'll start and I'll let you close this out. Like the, what we said about the salary really made a difference. But when I met in a nonprofit world, we had nonprofit salaries.
We took, those were our salaries for the first six, seven years of the business, and then it, it, it was a different like sometimes like we do the tax return and then you really see the income. And we became somewhat detached, as you were saying, From how we were going to run our household and then how the business was going to operate.
So we weren't looking and saying, Oh my goodness, the business made this much money. Let's go do something with it as a couple. We were saying, no, the business became its own entity, separate from how the main household runs and first so then you have to have different expectations around your budget and the money.
And I think that's a place where I think many agents. Get sideways. Cause then it's like the big, we just had to been closing. Let's go celebrate. Versus no, here's the business. And then you're going to behave differently. And your spouse or partner, whether they're in the business or not with you, you have different conversations about the business.
Or do you want to
Bo Menkiti: [00:22:56] close this out? That was a key thing. The pure flow, like the flow of dollars is really important, right? So, taking money and having it not come into, I think we have a joint bank account and that we are actually really bad at managing money in our joints. Bank account, right? They, we are really good at managing the money that does not come into our joint family bank account.
And we are just like everybody else. We all spend everything that's in there and we'll struggle with it. But what we made was a decision early on that we were going to ensure that a good chunk of the money never came into that space. It stayed over here. So that's like Kimber is making a great point.
The other ones we had to bring each other along. I think we're both coming from different places. And so our orientations, our mental mind maps very different than our risks. Kimbra is much Kimber's idea was like, I had to agree that we would leave a certain amount of cash in the bank.
Because that was really important to Kimber. And I thought it was the worst thing in the world. Like this money is wasting away in a bank. Why would we ever put money in the bank? Like crazy. And Kimber was like, I'm not going to feel safe until there's this much money in the bank. And so we had to, we came up with some things like that that were important.
The other to me was I had experienced the actual compounding of money. And seeing stuff build up. So we did some things or we did that even just with like our vacations, where we allowed certain things to compound so that we were both coming along in that experience of, this is how this can work gradually then suddenly.
And I think you just got to check in on it. I think we get off track all the time and, we get in arguments and going back and forth about stuff. And and I think now, also have other challenges, like Kimber has been big on me and Whoa, How are you going to use this?
What's the point of the resource? Are you effectively using the resource to live the life you want to live or are you doing it the way you want to do it? So I think it's ongoing conversations my point, and I think, but it's really important that the same way we acknowledge the people that we surround ourselves with the importance of our partners and coming along in that journey.
Is probably the most important in the entire world. And I wouldn't underestimate the power of the [00:25:00] encouragement and the mindset of the individual. Who's closest to. You
Chris Suarez: [00:25:03] love that guys. Thank you so much. Thank you both for sharing. I think it's powerful to have you together to look at that mindset to look at honestly the time that it took as well to build what you've built.
But I keep on coming back to the fact that. Wealth. You can't define wealth until you define your purpose. And that purpose has been clear from the originally the organization that you guys met at to today. That purpose has not changed and I love that conversation.
So thank you so much for your time and pouring into our people as well.
