Real Estate Attorney Explains Why He Invests in Downtown St. Louis Despite the Risk

Jarrad Holst [00:00:00] Building my real estate business and having set setbacks that I had, you know, my first couple projects with that. And then having, you know, my son, my youngest son diagnosed with autism, I'm, I'm used to being, to having things thrown at me. And so that's why they don't phase me as much as it would other people. This is Michael Ring. I'm a cattle and crop farmer from Northern Illinois, and you're listening to the Vance Grow Podcast.

Vance Crowe [00:00:26] Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here. Today we

Jarrad Holst [00:00:30] Sit down

Vance Crowe [00:00:31] With real estate Investor and attorney Jared Holt. Jared is an exceptional human being. He has the capacity to remember quotes and little tidbits of information that most people would walk past, but he can bring up on a dime. But even more than the business deals and his exceptional memory, Jared is a great connector of people. In fact, Jared introduced me to my business partner Ben Anderson. And I know that many people in the city of St. Louis have had their lives completely changed by the introductions that Jared has done. This only happens because he has such a creative and different mind than most people. And I think when you're listening to this conversation, you're gonna hear him have perspectives that are really different and insightful. Before we get to the interview, let me tell you a little bit about Legacy Interviews and how they've evolved over time. We sit in this studio here and record your loved one, telling life stories, everything ranging from their childhood to their career, their marriage, parenting, and the legacy that they wanna leave behind. We've been giving these as videos and people love watching them with their loved ones and being able to share those stories, but now we've added the capacity to have those interviews turned into a transcript and bound in a leather bound book. This is a true treasure and it really has created a new way to think about Legacy Interviews. So if you're interested in having me sit down with your loved one, go to Legacy Interviews dot com to find out more. Alright, without further ado, let's head to the interview with Jared Holt.

Vance Crowe [00:02:01] Jared Holst, welcome to the podcast. Thank

Jarrad Holst [00:02:04] You.

Vance Crowe [00:02:05] So, just yesterday, there were bullets that were flying into the St. Louis Courthouse, and I see all the time you being the biggest supporter of St. Louis. So when I was thinking, Hey, I'm gonna have Jared Holton, I'm gonna ask him, make the best case you can for a city that even its own courthouse is having bullets fly through from drive-bys and things.

Jarrad Holst [00:02:30] Well, how should I start? The city is in the place that it's in because we've had decades and decades of people moving out of the city and into the county. And so as a result of that, you've had all this amazing infrastructure that was built up through the 17 hundreds, 18 hundreds, and early 19 hundreds. And all that investment to hold that infrastructure up has gone away. So as a result of that, you had this void. So from 1950 to 2000, our population in the city of St. Louis went from a little over 700,000 to around 300,000. Now it's a over 65% drop. It's absolutely crazy when you have that kind of drop and you have that kind of di divestment of both people and investment dollars in the city. You see a lot of things go to ruin. And I think when, when you look at that problem of our, our infrastructure being rebuilt, and when you look at the crime that's going on in the city with reference to, you know, these bullets, straight bullets, there wasn't, I, I read the story. There wasn't really any target. It wasn't targeted towards, towards the courts, but there's a lot of things that we need to do to clean up the city. And a large part of it is mistakes that other people made a long time ago with the racism and the segregation, and keep keeping minorities secluded from economic opportunities, education opportunities.

Jarrad Holst [00:04:11] And that's why you still have the major problems that you have today in the city. And that's not going to stop until we continue to have people stay in the city, not leave the city through white flight, as they call it. And, you know, you have, you have to have continued investment in the city, and you have to have continued investment in education for, for it to turn around. It's just not, let's just hire more cops or, you know, get more people walking the beat or whatever you wanna call it. You know, the community has to come together through education, through investment to really turn it around. And that, that takes getting the county involved. We can't have this Berlin wall between us, which is, we've had it, you know, since 18, the late 1870s when the county split off from the city. That's not gonna change until the two to come together. And if they do, I think you're gonna see incredible synergies between the city and the county. I mean, without the city, the county has no culture whatsoever. You know, they don't have sports, you don't have the art museum, you don't have the symphony, the opera, the muni, our parks, you know, our botanical garden, you know, all the architecture that we have in the city. You have no culture whatsoever. I mean, it's just a strip mall out in the county. The city is what brings us together. The city is how we are identified on a national and international stage. You know, when you travel over to Paris or to Rome, you don't say, oh, I'm from Chesterfield, I'm from front neck. No, you say that you're from St. Louis. Oh, you know, oh, the city with the arch.

Jarrad Holst [00:05:43] Yes, the city with the arch, the cardinals, the blues, you know, the music, you know, that's who we are, you know, as a community and for our community to turn around, we have to come together or else it's never gonna happen.

Vance Crowe [00:05:55] You know, it's interesting for you in particular, there are a lot of people that can sit there and be like, oh, I have these beliefs, but you are an investor into properties, and you are literally putting your money where your mouth is. Like you are buying properties up in areas that you gotta have some sort of belief that things are either gonna stay as good as they are or likely get better. And so, like, you really do believe what you're saying.

Jarrad Holst [00:06:19] Well, yeah, I mean, mark Twain once said, and I'm gonna paraphrase him, you know, he was born in a very small town in northern Missouri called Florida, Missouri. And then he went over to Hannibal to grow up, and he, and I'm gonna paraphrase him, but he said, the most ignorant, bigoted, racist person they'll ever meet is an old man from a small town that never left. And that was my existence, essentially growing up in the county, is that the only times that I was exposed to the city was in a very, you know, closeted, sheltered, you know, with the blinders on view of how things really went on. You know, I, I would come down here and use the city as a one night stand for cardinal games and blues games, and maybe going to the art museum, you know, the botanical gardens. But I never got to experience any of the neighborhoods, the culture, other culture aspects of it, the people. And it wasn't until I started to live in this city that, you know, I took those blinders off and I said, why don't people know about this? You know, why pe, why can't people see the beauty in the city? And why don't we find a way to solve it? You know, I, I kind of look at, you know, and this is one of the reasons why I love investing in the city, and I also invest in the county. My ancestors came over from primarily Sweden and Germany, 17 hundreds and mid 18 hundreds. And they came over as farmers eventually immigrated to the Midwest. And they, and they started off in what I would regard as one of the hardest professions that's out there.

Jarrad Holst [00:07:54] And then for a hundred some odd years, they helped build up the infrastructure around in the Midwest and all these roads, a chunk of these buildings, this infrastructure, all of this was paid for with them by what they did and the other immigrants that came in around them. And so to tuck and run and go out to the county, you know, in my mind, you're kind of pissing on their legacy because they're saying, I built all this stuff for you. You know, I had these crappy jobs, you know, I died in these crappy wars, or because of these diseases, you know, I immigrated over here on this kind of boat, or this train or car, whatever you wanna call it for you, you know, what are you doing to, you know, help my legacy live on, on what I put forth to you? And so that's kind of how I look at these buildings is that, you know, when I, when I came into the city and I saw these beautiful a hundred, 150 year old buildings, you know, they could have built things cheaply back then. They chose not to, you know, they chose to build things with oak and with stone and with brick, you know, for a reason, because they wanted them to last. They took pride in that. And so I kind of look at what I'm doing in the city is carrying on their legacy as a steward of these buildings to make sure that they last for another a hundred years.

Vance Crowe [00:09:13] One of my favorite things to look into is Santa Fe Institute, and they do all this stuff on emergent properties. So like, what happens if you push a bunch of people together? And they did a bunch of work a few years ago on cities themselves, and one of the rules that they came up with is for every doubling of the population you have in a city, the, a whole bunch of things go up by 15%. Your wealth goes up by 15%. The number of patents goes up by 15%, the speed with which people walk goes up by 15%. And so there's all these like, funny things that happen through network effects, but like, as I see a city in decay, I wonder like, what would you have to do to slow that down, stop it and reverse it? Because the benefits of people moving into a city come only when many, many, many other people move in. I mean, the doubling of a population is not an easy thing to do.

Jarrad Holst [00:10:08] I don't know if I would necessarily say that. I mean, well, number one, I mean, I, I don't believe that, I believe the city was in decay. I believe that we're coming out of it. When you look at the last 20 years, we've had billions of dollars of investment in the city. I mean, we have more cranes in the skyline in the city than we do in the county. And it's not even close. I mean, you can drive down highway 40 and 44 right now, and you'll count eight to nine cranes. You know, I can look in the county right now, and you might count three. So, I mean, every time you see one of those cranes, you're seeing a significant investment go up. And what people don't understand about those kind of dollars going in is that a lot of these dollars are coming in from the coast investors and banks aren't in the business of losing money. You know, they're in, they're in the business of making money, you know, not only for their themselves, but you know, for their other partners. And when they project out where the city is going, it's a lot farther along than what the local people here are looking at. And in terms of incentives to get the people to come here, you know, I mean, that's the Midwest in a nutshell, is that this was, you know, a barren place, you know, that, you know, was mainly, you know, farmland and, you know, open fields that the Native Americans occupied, you know, before the sellers got here. And so they had to incentivize people to come to this area. And so when you had the Louisiana purchase, I believe it was in 1804, give or take, you know, we bought hundreds of thousands of, you know, acres off the French, they had to figure out a way to map it through Lewison and Clark, and then get people to come here.

Jarrad Holst [00:11:47] And so they did that by giving away free land, by building railroads, by, you know, putting in all this other infrastructure to make sure that you could get immigrants to come here and build it out. But you have to build the foundations first before you're gonna get the population to come in. You know, it's kind of like the gateway arch, you know, gateway arch. You have millions of tourists that see it every year. We had to build it first in order to get the people to come. People aren't just gonna come first and look at a river and go, all right, this is nice. You know, you had to build this huge, you know, steel wicket.

Vance Crowe [00:12:18] Yeah. And that, that, that was an audacious thing, right? It wasn't just like, let's build something small. They, you know, when you go look at all the other proposals that they had for the, the other, you know, when they were saying, Hey, we wanna celebrate St. Louis, let's put a national monument in here. You see all the proposals? They were so lame. And the one that they put in was so audacious that like, people didn't even know, do we actually have the engineering skills to build this? So I take your point, like you have to believe and have a vision way ahead of time.

Jarrad Holst [00:12:48] Oh, yeah. And, and this has been going on for a while. I mean, when you look at, you know, Flagler, you know, who is one of the partners of Rockefeller who've built a railroad through South Florida, you know, and built what is modern day Miami and Palm Beach and all these other places, you know, you look at what Walt Disney did, going to essentially a swamp land in the middle of, you know, Orlando and buying up all the land and then building Walt Disney World, which, you know, turn Orlando into a small country town, into a town of millions of people. So yeah, I, I do believe in the adage from, you know, field of dreams, if you build it, they will come. They will. I mean, that's the way that America has worked since the beginning of time, you know, our founding is that we, we built this idea of freedom and, you know, the ability to, you know, to think on your feet and be able to aspire to become whatever you wanna become. And immigrants have followed that dream here, you know, and we've built a population to 330 million people in a very, very short period of time.

Vance Crowe [00:13:46] But there is something interesting. So I've known you probably for about a decade, and your ability to tolerate risk is like very different, I think, than most people. Like when I am around you, you look around and see potential everywhere you see opportunity, you see like the, the ways that things could be different. Do you think that there is a, a risk in having, I, I don't know if it's a risk tolerance or I don't know, like, do you ever feel like your ideas about this could be wrong and that this could fail?

Jarrad Holst [00:14:18] Oh, I don't think that failure, failure, excuse me, I don't think failure is an option. And, and there, to me, there's, there's no such thing as failure. You have setbacks. America's full of setbacks, you know, I mean, I'll give you a perfect example of this. I went to go visit my German relatives, and I remember meeting with one of my wife's uncles, and I, one of my favorite questions to ask foreigners is, what's the difference between doing business in your country and doing business in our country? And he said, let me see your wallet. So I take out my wallet, and he sets his, the credit cards on this side, and then he sets the cash that I have in my wallet over here. And he goes, this is the United States pointing to the credit cards. This is Germany pointing to the cash. And he goes, we're very risk adverse. We don't believe in taking on a lot of debt. Americans, on the other hand, will take all the risk under the sun, sometimes will lose their butts. But you guys come up with a lot of things. And I look at what America has been able to accomplish since our founding. And I mean, hell, you could argue in the 20th century, almost every major technological innovation was invented by someone that was born here that was naturalized here. So there's, there's nothing we can do. And in my opinion, there's, there's no such thing as failure. I mean, that, that doesn't, when, you know, they, they say that Americans have what's called an explore gene that's in them that other cultures don't have. And that's the ability to go to a land like the Midwest that has nothing around it, and then build these metropolis, build these cities around it when nothing else existed in a very short period of time.

Jarrad Holst [00:15:59] There's, in my mind, there's no such thing as as failure, you know? And so my optimism comes for that. My optimism comes from the fact that you, you can't focus on yesterday. If you draw on yesterday, it'll eat you alive. Your focus needs to be on today and tomorrow, you know, and try to make the best for it. And, you know, I'm also a firm believer of, you know, leaving a legacy behind you. You know, trying to always make things better. You know, I, I don't want my my kids to look back on what I've done and said, oh, you know, things got rough for daddy in the city, and he had to cut and run out to the county because it was safer for 'em. No, I want to actually not have to have my kids deal with that question and say, look, if this is a problem that they could face, why don't I answer it right now? You know? I mean, it's kind of like during the civil rights movement, you know, and being a white person and going, oh, well, let's continue to have black people drink from these water fountains over here, or be segregated in these schools. Eventually you have to have someone that says, enough is enough. I'm tired of this. I'm gonna try to make it make, you know, make a difference. You have to be, I guess, an outlier in some respects to be able to think that way. But our country was founded on that optimism. And I, I firmly believe that. And that's why I don't really look at it as taking risk. You know, I, I, I think through it a lot more than other people do. I mean, I'm not looking at things in, you know, one year or two year increments. I'm looking five to 10 years down the road. I mean, I, I think a problem that people have is, you know, they look at life as checkers and not chess, and they don't understand that it's a lot more complicated.

Jarrad Holst [00:17:38] There's a lot more moves on the table, you know, a lot more different patterns to pick up on. You know, you can't just simplify it. It doesn't work that way.

Vance Crowe [00:17:47] How'd you learn to see things as chess and nut checkers?

Jarrad Holst [00:17:53] You know, in many respects, that's kind of a farmer mentality. And so, you know, my, my father grew up on a farm over in Collinsville. My aunt and uncle are farmers in small town in northern Illinois called Barry Illinois. And I, I grew up going to my uncle's farm all the time, you know, being around livestock, being around the heavy machinery, and seeing their line of thinking, they, you know, my, my uncle lost thousands of pigs one season to disease, but I never saw him fret over it. You know, he lost, you know, acres and acres of crops to drought, but you don't fret over it because there's certain things you could control. There's certain things you can't control. And so I, I think that goes to the long-term thinking is that, you know, that land has always provided for my uncle's family and is, is never, you know, e every now and then, you'll have hiccups, you know, here and there. But the key thing is you stick with it. You don't just give up when something becomes a little difficult. Because once again, look at the farmers that came before my uncle and that toughed it out and had to deal with, you know, the dust bowl and all the, and the depression and all these other things that came before them. So I think to deal with those things is minuscule. And I think if you once again, focus on things long term, then any kind of risk that you're looking at up front is kind of minuscule.

Vance Crowe [00:19:18] One time we were at a dinner party, and I remember turning to you, and I had just been reading I think David Goggin's book, and he, in that book, talks a lot about the voice of resistance, or maybe it's Stephen Prescott, you know, this, this voice that at least I have in my mind that's like, you, it's time to go work out. And the voice is like, you don't have to go on back to bed. And I turned to you and I was like, Jared, you know, do you have a name for this voice? And you're like, I don't, I don't have this voice. Do you, do you still think that?

Jarrad Holst [00:19:46] A hundred percent. So I was reading about this the other day, Marcus Aurelius, he was called the, the philosopher emperor in Rome. And he wrote these meditations, and he wrote these meditations, not for the general public. He wrote them for himself. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:20:02] They were supposed to be burned. Yeah.

Jarrad Holst [00:20:03] And one of them that he writes about is waking up and getting the day started. And what, you know, and I'm paraphrasing this, but he is saying, look, I I'm a human being. I'm supposed to do what humans are supposed to do. I have this gift, I have to go out there and do this. And he goes, look at nature around you. Is the ant sleeping in? Is the bird sleeping in? Is the deer sleeping in? No, all of nature is working. Why aren't you working along with it? And so, I, I look at it the same way, you know, I, I look at the fact that, you know, we have, like I said earlier, 330 some odd million people in this country. We have eight little over 8 billion people in the world, you know? So that equates to less than 10% chance of you being born in the United States. And then you equate all these other factors to it in terms of where you're born, what lifestyle you grew up with, what kind of education that you have, what kind of health you have, all these other things. And so you start to narrow down those percentages even more. And when you start to look at, at the end of the day, you're really, really damn lucky to be where you're at. And why you wouldn't attack every single day is if it was your last, you know, I mean, it's, Jeff Bezos once said, you know, the way that he approaches a lot of problems is to look back at them as if he was 80 years old. And then he says, all right, how did my 80-year-old self approach that? You know? And it makes life so much easier when you think that way, you know, because you're, I mean, I, I'll give you an example of this. I, I went to the doctor this past week for a physical, I remember walking into the office and, you know, seeing some people in there that, you know, were outta shape and looked like they had not taken care of their bodies.

Jarrad Holst [00:21:44] It's an incredible reminder to me of just saying, go get it. What these people are, they're not telling it to you, you know, overtly, but maybe subliminally, they'll tell, they're telling you, get off your ass. Go out there, go get it. Leave nothing behind. And you know, on my, my grandma on my dad's side who lived to the age of 90, she had a, a great line that she told me one time. I remember looking at her schedule, and this was an incredible woman. I, I was very, very inspired by her. She, you know, was one of the first graduates of SIU Carbondale, I believe, you know, and this was back in the 1930s, was raised champion cattle, but then had all these horrific incidents happen to her. You know, her first husband, bill Whitty, died on St. Patrick's Day in 1945 as a result of mortar fire on a beach, you know, fighting in the Pacific. And so she was a widow with two kids. And then prior to meeting my grandfather, who also served in the Pacific, you know, she was getting help around the house with her father, and there was a farming accident right in front of her where her father was killed. And she just had an incredible strength to her that I was deeply inspired by. And I remember looking at her schedule one day, and this is the lady that, you know, had a, a driveway going up to her house that she would shovel, you know, the snow off of it up until her mid eighties, you know, she had a, like, her lawn was several acres, and she would mow it, you know, even the hot sun, she would still mow it.

Jarrad Holst [00:23:18] And yeah, I, her schedule was crazy. She had all this stuff that she was doing all the time, and she said, I wanna make sure that when I die, my body is worn out, that I've, I've left it all there, you know? And so that's my mentality is that every day I work it to its fullest extent, because I wanna make sure that when that time does come, that I can walk away knowing that I left it all out there, that it's a worn out, I can't use it anymore. And I think that's the way to do it.

Vance Crowe [00:23:43] To me, I think the hardest moments in my life happen in any given day or any given week, are when I don't know what to do next, is when I'm like sitting there being like, all right, what should I prioritize? Or what is the direction I go in? Do you have this? How do, how do you manage figuring out what you're gonna do next?

Jarrad Holst [00:24:06] I I always have that in my mind. You know, life is a algorithm in many respects. It's a recipe. And so if there are things that you wanna accomplish, and the way that things make sense to me is I make analogies for 'em, and I compare it to something simpler. So the first time I had, I was reading about algorithms, I had no idea what they meant. But then when somebody expl said an analogy that they were related to, like baking a cake and how you have to follow all these things succinctly, and then if you deviate from many of them, then you can't have a cake at the end of it. And so I look at that in terms of anything that I want to do in my life. There's a certain recipe that you have to follow, and there's, and there, everything is going on at different stages, you know, so if you want to get into, you know, a at a certain weight or certain shape or whatever, okay, well, you're not gonna be able to do that in one day. You know, that's gonna be over a series of days and weeks and months and possible years. But you know that every single day as you're working on that recipe, you're getting closer to a completion on it. And when I'm working on my buildings, it's very similar to that. The algorithm of building is literally the same thing every single time. And I'll run it through it really, really fast. You do demo, you do framing, you do plumbing, you then do HVAC, then electric, you then have a framing, or you do fire blocking and foam, then you have installation, then you do drywall after your screw inspection, then you do mudding and taping, then you do painting, then you do your finish work, and then you set all your fixtures and you're done.

Jarrad Holst [00:25:46] I mean, it's, it's the same thing every time. You don't deviate from it. So I'm surrounded by a lot of things in my life that have very, very similar patterns, very, very similar algorithms to 'em, where all I do is I recognize it, and then I know exactly when to plug in at different times and just to keep that going. And I, I love the variation too, because it's never the same thing. I can always jump onto this recipe or jump onto that one or this one, and it, it's always something new for me. So I, I never get bored by it.

Vance Crowe [00:26:14] Yeah. And you have some level of creativity that comes out in, in many other ways. Fashion is a big one for you.

Jarrad Holst [00:26:21] I love fashion.

Vance Crowe [00:26:22] Tell me about that.

Jarrad Holst [00:26:25] I'm very big on you should. There's a really interesting thing in Japanese culture, and I don't recall the name of it, but from the janitor all the way to the C-level executive that's running a multi-billion dollar company, the focus in their culture is to be the best at whatever they do. And they show respect to one another. Be, you know, with that, you know, so the guy that's, you know, collecting your garbage, you'll, you'll have a c-level executive bow to that garbage man because of the respect that he has for that garbage man, and how hard he's working to make sure that his job is absolute perfection, that he's doing it to its fullest extent, you know? And so I approach that the same way with everything that I'm passionate about, whether it's fashion, real estate, history, law, networking, you know, food, traveling, you name it. And fashion in particular, you know, for me is, is very important because it's your self portrait to the world. You know, people will make a thousand different assumptions about you before you even say a word. And a large chunk of that is how you carry yourself. And Bob Costas is a great line about Michael Jordan. He said, Michael Jordan can walk into a room of people, and they've, they've never seen a basketball game before. And he said, as soon as he walks in, they know that he is somebody because he has presence. You know, and I, I've met some pretty famous people before, and the one distinctive factor that they all have is they have incredible presence when they walk into the room.

Jarrad Holst [00:28:03] And part of that is based on fashion. And I, and I love that. I love being able to wear different colors and different styles and cuts of clothing. And, you know, that part makes it fun. You know, I, I get super excited every morning when I get to walk into my closet and I'm like, all right, what's my portrait gonna be today? This is fun. You know, what occasion can I dress up for?

Vance Crowe [00:28:24] That is so interesting, because I am almost the exact opposite. In fact, I get frustrated that my closet isn't all the entirely exact same thing. And I, and it's just a factor of whether or not I've invested into it. But like, I went years where I wore literally the exact same thing every day. And that brought me so much pleasure.

Jarrad Holst [00:28:45] You know, it, the hardest thing, in my opinion, to ever get in this life is an unsolicited compliment from someone that doesn't know you. Because think of the courage that it took for that person to say that, and then that person that says it, then think of all the people that are thinking it, but actually don't say it. You know? It's kind of like when you're in a room and you're trying to, like, you're asking people to stand, you know, it's a moment where people are standing up and gonna gonna have a standing ovation, okay? It always works the same way. You'll have your initial outliers first start, okay, then it's a couple more, and then it's like a domino effect. And it starts getting bigger and bigger and bigger until all of a sudden everybody's standing up fashion's the same exact way. You know, we are attracted in this life to things that are beautiful because they need no explanation. You know, in a couple weeks I'm going to the Grand Canyon. It needs no explanation. You look at the arch, you look at the arch in St. Louis, it needs no explanation. It's, it's beautiful. It's amazing. We're attracted to that. What's the most famous painting in the world? The Mona Lisa, why? It's beautiful. We're attracted to beauty. Beauty is something that needs no explanation. You know, Oscar Wild once said that, you know, and it's something that is the most valuable thing because beauty is also time. You know, you could take a 20-year-old today and have him go meet with Warren Buffett and say, Hey, I'll trade places with you.

Jarrad Holst [00:30:17] And Warren Buffett would take it in two seconds. You know, you look at what billionaires are trying to do right now, and a lot of them are all trying to turn back the clock in every single way they can. 'cause they want more time. And fashion is part of time. Fashion makes you feel younger. Fashion makes you feel more confident. You know, when you, we look at these people that are very famous in society, a lot of 'em have really, really good fashion sense. You'll notice that their haircut never stays the same. It always is different. You know, their style is always changing. You know, we're attracted to people that are constantly evolving, you know, like a Picasso, you know, in terms of how he started in this period, and now he went to this period. We love that. You know, when you have something that's constant, I dunno, in my opinion, it, it, it's static. You know, you look at someone like Steve Jobs, for example, and he prided himself on wearing the, his trademark black turtleneck every day. But then you look at his actions, and they're the exact opposite, because his products were fashionable, were beautiful. He was so big on the consumer experience, but he also wanted to make them look amazing. That's fashion. You know, and I'll, I'll give you an example of, of the power of fashion and what it can do. My wife and I were at an event that the zoo was putting on this summer, and I was wearing a red linen jacket and like a, a blue dress shirt. And I, I believe I had blue shorts on, and these really cool, like blue loafers, and we grab, grab some, some hors d'oeuvres.

Jarrad Holst [00:31:56] And then we we're looking around for tables, and we find this high top table with this couple at it. And we're with space, and we're like, Hey, do you mind if we come and, and stand next to you? And we're sitting there and we're chatting with these people, thanking them for letting us stand right there. And this woman and the man said to us, they go, we were wondering who you were. We noticed you as soon as you walked into the room. We love this outfit. We just knew you were somebody. And I mean, that's just, you don't hear that. You don't get that. And when you can start off conversations that way where your body is a conversation starter, immediately, it, it's just such a great way to make people feel comfortable for them to break the ice and for them to break the monotony of what they see on a daily basis.

Vance Crowe [00:32:44] You know, I had an interesting character on the podcast a few months ago. His name's Michael Vassar. And one of the things he brought up was about the concept of the aristocracy. And in the, in one of the, the telltale signs of the aristocracy is that they wear beautiful clothes, right? If you're paying attention to the beautiful things that they're wearing, and, and kind of the, the awe and glitz of it all, you're kind of captured by them. Do you believe there's an aristocracy here in the United States

Jarrad Holst [00:33:15] Aristocracy in terms of classes?

Vance Crowe [00:33:18] Yeah, probably class, class distinction.

Jarrad Holst [00:33:23] I think you have it, but I also think you don't, you know, I, because you look at the people that make a mark, and they're the ones that thumb their noses at it. Like, you know, a great example would be like, you know, Jean-Michel Basquiat. So, I mean, he's regarded as probably the most famous black painter of all time. You know, his paintings sell for tens and tens of millions of dollars. And, you know, his paintings and like how he first started off, you know, being a graffiti artist, you know, and tagging all this different stuff all over New York City, you know, and, you know, his tagline was Same o which is, you know, same old shit. And he was thumbing his nose at the establishment. And people like, were drawn to that even more. You know, you look at Elvis, you know, Elvis grew up poor, you know, in Mississippi, and you look at how he danced in the music that he sang, he was thumbing his nose to the establishment. He didn't need to belong to that. And so I, I don't know if I, I necessarily, you know, agree that we have this kind of aristocracy per se, because I think we have more envy, though, for people that are different. You know, you'll always have, you know, people that feel in their mind that, you know, they're ho and they're, they're better than other people, but at the end of the day, they, they just want to have respect. They just want to have people pay attention to them. And the funny part is, the people that really make a dent, the people that really get paid attention to are the exact opposite. They're, they're people that wear bright ass shoes and, you know, bright clothing and paint beautiful paintings and, you know, make amazing music.

Jarrad Holst [00:35:01] And you look at their upbringing and almost none of them follow that, those aristocracy characteristics.

Vance Crowe [00:35:07] But what about the, like, kind of the class distinction as far as like going to the elite schools and being the decision makers and getting into the right rooms? Like, that's kind of what I think about the aristocracy. But I have to admit, like, I have a caricature version of it in my mind, because I grew up in small town, central Illinois. It's like not, it's not something I'm accustomed to. Oh,

Jarrad Holst [00:35:27] I, it for me, like what school you go to, it doesn't matter. You know? I think the key is can you learn how to play the game? If you learn how to play the game, it doesn't matter where you go to school. You know? I mean, there's a reason why they say that our country's run by sea students. You know, there's a reason why when you look at the Forbes 400, by massive chunk of them, it's not generational money. It's first generation money. You know, you look at how they grew up. I mean, they, it's a great book. The Millionaire Next Door, I think they said in there like, 70 or 80% of the millionaires in there're paid their own way to go to college. They, you're, when you come out of college and you're paying it for, you're, you're paying your own way or you're starting a company and you're doing it yourself. You don't have mommy and daddy's help. You have grit. You can take on anybody. It doesn't matter how much money they came from, you know, and that's the, you know, that's my background in many respects, is it, I I could give two shits how much money you have. You're not gonna outwork me. You're not gonna outthink me. You know, I will do everything I can to beat you if I'm in competition with you. I mean, that's just, that's my mentality about how I approach things, you know, and being, and I, I've seen this firsthand with, you know, second and third generation money, you know, it, it's the, the adage that they're always told, don't lose the corpus. You know, don't lose, you know, the principle. And they're so afraid to lose that they're so afraid to take risk.

Jarrad Holst [00:37:01] And when you look at the people that make a dent in our society, they're people that take risks. And when you, you know, Warren Buffett has a great line in his biography, it's called Snowball. And he said there's no difference between somebody getting a welfare check and somebody getting a trust fund check. You know, one's going through to a welfare officer, the other one's going to a trust fund officer. But at the end of the day, there's no contribution to society. 'cause that money has already been made either through taxes or something that, you know, prior generations made. There's no difference. And so I, yeah, I mean, I guess people can say that there's an aristocracy because of, you know, the clothes that they wear or the cars that they drive or whatever they wanna believe in their head. But I will put first generation hustlers up against them any day of the week, and they will beat them hands down. There's no question about it.

Vance Crowe [00:37:56] So where did you come from?

Jarrad Holst [00:37:59] Well, I mean, born and raised in St. Louis. You know, I grew up in the county and de p right across from De Pier Park. You know, my parents divorced at a young age, so, you know, that taught me a lot in terms of, you know, my, my, my father was here in St. Louis, and my mother had moved away to California, you know, with my stepdad. And, you know, she would come back in town every month to see me. But, you know, there, I really didn't have that kind of dual parent dynamic that, you know, a lot of people, you know, normally have. And, you know, my, my childhood was, you know, was not easy. It was very difficult. And it's something that I wouldn't wish on anybody. And how was it difficult? I, I'll put it this way, this is kind of how I like to cr it. If you went through what I went through, say, 99% of the people would be either dead or in prison, or addicted to drugs. Wow. One of those things. You, you normally don't make it out of that, you know, with it really screwing with your head, you know. But a, a good kind of analogy that I can give you, or not analogy, but parable. Let's say that you have an alcoholic father and they have two sons. The strange thing is that you'll have one son become an alcoholic, and the other one abstain from it for the rest of their life.

Jarrad Holst [00:39:33] And that's literally how it works. You'll have an extreme situation that people are growing up in, and then you'll have the siblings and you'll think, and, and actually not even extreme situation, I mean, this is even in wealth situations, I've seen this where you've got wealthy parents that provide everything to their kids under the sun. And then it's like, where do the chips fall? And you would think, I've provided them with all these benefits. I've provided them with a safety net, I've provided them with these jobs, everything. And you would think, oh, they're gonna take off. They're gonna kill it. They're gonna have all this motivation to go get the world. And you'd be amazed at how many of them don't do it. They just don't have the motivation. They get into drugs, they get into alcohol, they get go down these, you know, other paths. And then you have that one son or that one daughter that grows up in that, that takes off, you know? And does even better than what her parents did. And so I, you know, I think that my situation was very similar to that. You know, it was a situation of extremes, and you had two paths of which you could take. You could either take this path or you could take that path. There was no middle ground. There was no way that you could keep it safe, you know? And so to go back to your earlier question, why am I not afraid of risk? Marcus Aurelius has a great line. He says, deciles at us all, all a man can do is smile back. What am I afraid of? What are you gonna do to me? That hasn't already been done to me. I mean, you're, you're not, I mean, it just, it's, that's why I don't get phased by much. I really don't.

Jarrad Holst [00:41:03] I mean, it's really, really hard. I mean, I, my, my wife Nicole talks with me about it sometimes, and she'll, you know, tell me these things that are happening at work or with family or, or whatever, or, you know, I see it happen in other people and you know, it, it might look like that I lack empathy or I don't care about it. And it's actually the exact opposite. I care deeply about it, but I compartmentalize it. And I say, that's pretty difficult what you're going through right there. But it doesn't compare, you know? And because of that, you'll be able to get through this because of that, you'll be fine. 'cause of that there's hope, there's optimism, you know, there's no risk. You know, there's something different. So, you know, growing up, you know, that Sigman Freud always talks about the importance of, you know, being able to understand a person, you know, by understanding their childhood. You know? And I, I think in many respects, that's me as well. You know? And that, because I grew up that way, that gave me incredible determination, you know, to, and I was diagnosed with a DHD at a very young age, and that was very difficult to harness that power, so to speak. But, you know, once I figured that out and once,

Vance Crowe [00:42:15] Did they medicate you?

Jarrad Holst [00:42:16] No, and I refused. I refused it. You know, I, I don't know. I, and I'm glad I, I'm glad they never did. You know, I, I think that that would've changed who I was and how I thought. And I, I've met, I have some friends of mine who, you know, have, have been on a DHD medication and it changes them. They're, they're not the same person. And you can't have that free thinking mind that you get to have. I mean, it, when I look at A DHD, I literally look at it as like one of the greatest blessings I could ever have, because it gives me a tremendous amount of energy, a tremendous amount of hyper focus on things that I'm very interested in. I mean, I can memorize things like Rain Man, if I'm really interested in it, and then I can regurgitate it to you like that. My wife like gets on me about this all the time. She's like, don't ever take dear, do a trivia contest. 'cause he is gonna blow you all away, you know? But, and there, there are things that I'm interested in. If I like it, then I pick up on it.

Vance Crowe [00:43:11] Yeah. The more that I've learned about A DHD, like Carl Jung talks about how you can't force yourself to be curious about something. You either are or you aren't. And it seems like a DHD allows you to, if you can harness it to turn that way up and the things you're curious about, just really buckle down and, and go towards. But it also, you don't have the, the affectation that a lot of like maybe Normies have when they're like, oh, I started this book, I better finish it. Right? Like,

Jarrad Holst [00:43:37] Yeah, you, you, you just kind of, you know, gravitate, you know, towards what you're interested in. But, you know, going back to, you know, your, your initial question of, you know, how I grew up. So I, I did something which I think every St. Louis than should, St. Louis then should do, which is I left St. Louis. And that goes back to, you know, what I was talking about with Mark Twain, you know, being, you know, the most bigoted, racist, you know, person he's ever met as an old man from a small town that never left. I think to gain a better understanding of how great the city is, is you have to leave it and you have to explore the rest of the country. And I lived on the east coast. I worked at a couple of different law firms in dc, went to undergrad at Virginia Tech. Prior to that, I went to University, university, excuse me, university of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, you know, before transferring to Virginia Tech, and then went to law school in the south, and then spent a couple summers working at a law firm in Pittsburgh. So, I mean, I had a wonderful opportunity to explore the south, explore the East Coast, and see that there were different cultures out there. There are different ways that people work, different ways that they act, you know, and I took that and I brought that back to St. Louis with incredible optimism with what we have here in comparison to what the things that I saw there, you know, and a lot more drive, you know, to, to make shit happen. So

Vance Crowe [00:45:03] We haven't even talked about the fact that you're an attorney. So what do you know about the law that most people don't, don't know?

Jarrad Holst [00:45:12] I think the, the most interesting thing about a law is a joke that Jerry Seinfeld once said, which he said, and I'm paraphrasing it here, but he said, we all play in the, this game called life, but only the lawyers know the rules. And being a lawyer is something that always fascinated me since I was a little kid. And I remember a friend of mine in law school said something to me, and he said, think about how many kids said when they were little, you know, I wanna be a lawyer, I wanna be a doctor, I wanna be a basketball player, baseball player. And then think of the percentage of 'em that actually accomplished it. And I was one of those kids when I was little. I always wanted to be a lawyer. And one of the things that I love about the law is that you can take on it, it's a David versus Goliath thing, and you can actually take on the government, you can take on, you know, huge multi-billion dollar international corporations. And every now and then, you can beat 'em every now and then, you know, you can change things. And when you look at how you can, the other thing I love about the law is that we have, I think, a great inability in this country to accept responsibility. And the courts are the final arbitrary of that, where if you have an issue between two parties, you bring it to that judge, to that jury, and a decision is made, and that's it. And either you follow it or you're in contempt and you're tossed in jail, you know? And I love that finality. There's very, very few things in this life that have finality, you know, other than taxes, death, and a court order, I would say.

Jarrad Holst [00:46:50] But that's one of the things that I, I've always loved the law, and it, it shapes who we are today, you know, as a country. And it's something that, you know, I, I love doing. I love being able to, you know, have people approach me with problems and being able to solve them. And, you know, I, I'm always amazed, you know, when people approach me to, you know, and I'm a real estate lawyer, but, you know, I'll, I'll review transactions for people and I'll see how they're getting screwed over in a deal. And I'll say, you know, x, y, and Z is happening, you know, this is it from a business standpoint, you know, with my real estate development background, this is how this could affect you from, you know, a legal standpoint. You know, here are your options. You decide, you know, and I, I love being able to share those perspectives, you know, with people, you know, that come to me with their real estate.

Vance Crowe [00:47:40] I mean, in full disclosure, you helped me out. You know, we retained you as an attorney, helped me in a, in a spot that I didn't know what to do, and helped on many different levels. Not just like financial and real estate, but like, Hey, this is how you should think about the relationship. Things that are gonna come from this, very, very helpful to me. Change, change the trajectory of my business, likely my life. So when you practice law, you're not doing investments, how do you balance, or you're not doing your real estate, right? But like, how do you balance these two things? You're a partner in a firm, right?

Jarrad Holst [00:48:12] I, I have a very unique position as a lawyer that I think a lot of lawyers would be very envious of. You know, I, you know, I, I think people look at successes if it's linear and it's not, you know, I, I, I love, there's a, a meme that's out there where it says, you know, the, the real path of success, and it's all these like scribbly lines. And I look at professions that way. I don't, I don't like to play by the same roles as other people. You know, I believe that there's always room to look at things differently, to look at things more efficiently. And that's how I approached the legal business is when I first got into it, I was doing whatever associate was doing, which was billing 1800 to 2200 hours a year. You know, I did depositions, I did trials, I appeared on motions, did transactional work, all this kind of stuff. And I looked at this and I go, is that my life? You know, is that my life sitting in an office all day? Is that what I was meant to do as a human? Just sit, you know, and maybe think through a problem, and every now and then, get up to go to the bathroom or go get some water, maybe go out to lunch. But is that my existence is sitting in this cage all day, and I just said, I gotta do there. There's gotta be another way to do this, but there's gotta be a way to make money at it. And so I started looking at what other Rainmaker attorneys were doing, and I noticed that they weren't in the office a lot. And I said, okay, I need to do that.

Jarrad Holst [00:49:47] I need to start building relationships. And if I build the relationships and I can get those clients, then I don't have to be here as much anymore. You know, that prevents it, you know, and you know, that that's kind of how a lot of decision making goes for me in my life. You know, I, I, I grew up kind of poor and, you know, as a result of it, that's your motivation. You're like, I don't want to do that again. So what do I have to do to make sure I don't have to do that again? And that was me sitting in an office all the time. And so I focused on networking and building these relationships and helping out other people first, which kind of goes against our initial human instincts. And through helping others, I was able to gain their trust, able to gain their business, and able to advise them in ways that they hadn't been advised before. You know, from a cost standpoint, from a legal standpoint, to help them save money. And so I was able to build a book of business and parlay that book of business to a point where I approach the current firm that I'm at today, you know, nine some odd years ago. And I said, look, here's the deal. I'm gonna have no bill law requirements. I can come and go whenever I want. I wanna get a salary, and I wanna get a percentage of any business that comes in. And I said, that's the deal. And I said, if I get it, great. If I don't, I'm going back to my real estate business. I'm doing that. And so I don't have to spend as much time on, you know, my, my legal business per se, because I've, I've built up a book.

Jarrad Holst [00:51:22] I continue to build a book, but I focus more on relationship building there and managing those relationships than I do necessarily sitting in an office and going on conference calls or drafting documents or appearing in court or anything like that. And it's not to say that, you know, those aren't great things. And you know, I have a tremendous amount of respect for, you know, my colleagues that do that and other lawyers in this profession that do that. For someone with a DHD like me, it just, it doesn't work. It, I, I'm too fidgety. I I have to get out and do other things.

Vance Crowe [00:51:55] Yeah. And there's something truly remarkable about the way you bring people together. I mean, like my business partner Ben Anderson is, we are only business partners because you brought him around some events and we became friends. Talk about like how you think about networking and bringing people together. 'cause you, you have a particular skill at it.

Jarrad Holst [00:52:18] I'm a firm believer in, you know, givers gain. And it's really interesting. I, I started learning about hieroglyphic hieroglyphics and like mummies and Egyptian times and stuff like that when I was really little. And I remember going to the art museum and, and reading about all this stuff. And one of the things that I found very fascinating is that when you die in the Egyptian culture, at least back then, you would take a boat across this river and I believe you'd pay some kind of toll and then you'd be judged. And on, on the scale there would be a feather and there would be your heart. And if the heart waved more than the feather, then you wouldn't go on to heaven. You'd go to hell. You know, your soul wasn't pure. And I believe that the afterlife and every single religion is based on sacrifice. You know, you look at the Christianity, Christianity, religion, you know, for God so loved the world that he gave his only son sacrifice. It's the greatest sacrifice, you know, but that's the point. That's what it's trying to show you, is the number one instinct of every organism, whether it's single celled or it's like a human that has billions of cells, is to look out for themselves survival. You know, reproduction's number two. Survival's number one. But people are always looking out for themselves in every aspect of their lives. Just me, me, me, me, me, me and every now and then, you know, we'll have, you know, some kids come in there and a wife and stuff like that, but it's still my family, nobody else, my kids, my wife, me, you know, they don't look to help other people.

Jarrad Holst [00:54:02] And when you look at what it is to have a legacy, it's helping others. You know, it's helping people that you're not expected to help. You're expected to take care of your family. You know, much like you're expected to, you know, to pay taxes, to follow the laws, you're expected to do that. You're not expected to help other people. So you're going against your self-interest, your natural interest, your, you know, you know, your natural instincts. And so I'm very big on helping others to help further that, to help, you know, make their lives better, to help open doors for them, to help make it easier for them. Because I had people look out for me as well. I mean, that's how I made it in my career, both as a lawyer and as a real estate developer, is I reached out to people. They opened doors for me. You know, either through mentorship or through investor dollars or through deals or, or whatever. If I didn't have people giving back to me as well, then there's no way that I could do the same way, do the, you know, reciprocate. And so that, that's one of the things that, you know, I'm very adamant on, is that if I see people that I believe in, you know, and I remember the first time I met you, and I remember the first time that I met Benjamin, and you know, I said to myself, I really believe in, you know, Vance, I really believe in Benjamin. I really believe in what they're trying to do, and I want to do whatever I can to help them. And there's no ulterior motive there. There's simply, how can I help this individual?

Jarrad Holst [00:55:34] What are some things that I'm coming into contact in my life that I've been blessed with, you know, networking or this or that, where I can make this introduction and it can make it just that much easier for them to get through their day. You know? I mean, it's, I know you've talked about this on a podcast before, but, you know, it's kind of like just being nice to somebody else, you know, holding the door open for a woman, you know, or helping somebody, you know, grab something off the top shelf like I've done a thousand times at grocery stores, giving that little ounce of I care about you. You know, that's, that's selfless, you know, that like a compliment. You then it then pays forward exponentially on every other person that touches. And that that legacy then just continues to grow and grow and grow and grow. And so that's why networking continues to be extremely important for me. And I, I mean, I'm out to a breakfast, lunch, dinner, charity event at least two to three times a week at least. And I still do that. And I love to do that. And I love meeting new people, especially younger people, you know, it provides me with so much energy. And so I'm, I'm very happy to together.

Vance Crowe [00:56:41] Yeah. You give me, you remind me of my mentor, Pete. He's 101 years old. It's probably the best podcast I'll ever do is my, my interview with Pete. But he definitely found a way, not only to help people, but to help young people. And what that did was created even when he's a hundred years old, that there's all these young people coming through his door. And it had, I mean like at first it was, 'cause hey, there's this guy, he gives me martinis and we have fun conversations. But then all of a sudden you realize like, whoa, there is so much information and wealth here of, of how to think through problems, how to get past situations that I've never seen before. But to him, he's seen it a hundred times. And his ability to articulate it and let you do your own thing, what it really gave him, and he's the first one to tell you is, is that that was the fountain of youth. That is what kept him young and going long beyond, you know, the person that didn't do that and is sitting at a retirement home by themself for months on end.

Jarrad Holst [00:57:38] I, I think that when you go off to, you know, the afterlife, that that's something you believe in. I believe one of the, I believe that the way that you get in is through sacrifice. And I believe that your life is played back for you. And not only that, but also forward. And, you know, that person upstairs shows you all the different people that you impacted. And you might think that it was something really small. You might think, oh, that was just one lunch, that was just one dinner. That was just one phone call or one email or whatever. But you have no idea what spark it lit in them. And then all these things fostered as a result of it. All these good things fostered as a result of it. And so I I, I will never stop doing that. I love to do it, you know, and I, I kid you not, I have three to five people reach out to me every single month through emails, social media, text, phone calls, whatever, you know, asking me about networking or, you know, a real estate development or whatever. And I always meet with them. I, I will always take whatever time they need, I'll always answer all of their questions. I'm an open book for them anytime. And I still have guys reach back out to me and they'll text me and they'll say, Hey, I got my first deal and I'm doing this. Or, Hey, can you take a look at this property with me? Or whatever. I'm more than happy to do it. I will always set aside time to do that because I have people do the same thing for me. You know? And that's, that's how humanity carries forward. That's how innovation carries forward, is that we have to continue to do that.

Vance Crowe [00:59:04] Speaking of all these events, you know, you, you invite me to all kinds of things and I probably only go to 1% of them. And it's because it is actually really effort for me to go do something. Like, like going on a trip is like that. That's not something, that's it, it doesn't do it for me. You're going out, out to dinner. It's very, very difficult to get me to go out to dinner. But you describe it as not being hard for you as something you really enjoy doing. Tell me about that.

Jarrad Holst [00:59:34] I mean, that's, that's life. That's life out there. You know, you, you have to go out and you have to experience it and think of how, how less fulfilling your life would be if you didn't take those trips and experience those things, or you didn't go to that certain restaurant and try that certain type of food or wine, or have that opportunity to interact with those people. You have no idea how your life can turn on a dime based on an experience that's about to happen. And so I look at every one of those moments as an experience that could change my life or that could change somebody else's life. And maybe I'm supposed to be there in that right moment to be a part of it. And I, I love to do it. I absolutely love to do it. I embrace it every time. I mean, like, I have a company dinner later on tonight, and I, I get stoked about it every single time I do one of these, you know, at the end of December, every year we're on now our seventh annual guys dinner that we do, and I get together 20 to actually, it's like 18 to 22 guys. And I stick 'em all in a, in a private room at 8 0 1 chop house. And I bring my boombox and we play music and we have all this wine on the table. And the amazing thing about it is, I guarantee you that 99% of the time when people have a meal like that, they all sit down immediately for the first hour, hour and a half. Nobody sits down, everybody walks around the room and they talk with one another. And all the people that I invite, I make sure that they're friendly, they're outgoing.

Jarrad Holst [01:01:04] You know, I have a strict no asshole policy. You know, if work gets back to me that somebody who's being a jerk to somebody else, they're not invited back again. And so I am, I'm very big on getting people out of their shell and experiencing new things. And you'll find that by doing that you will push your life in a whole different direction that you never knew could, could be out there, you know? And I think people have these inhibitions that, oh, well, fear of rejection or fear of what do I dress up? You know, and or, you know, fear of, oh, I don't know anybody, you know, and they, I think it was Harvard. Yeah, Harvard did this study. It's actually still the, the longest ongoing study in the United States. It's been going on for over 75 years. And they followed over 700 guys from the city of Boston, from all these different socioeconomic backgrounds. And they were trying to figure out what are the keys to happiness? And they figured 'em out. It's two things. It's networking, social relationships, and not sweating the small stuff. And those two go hand in hand, not sweating the small stuff, Hey, I get to go to an event tonight, so what? Wear whatever you want. You may not know anybody. Yeah. But you might meet, meet somebody that would change, you know, change your life, you know, relationships, you know, I, I, I saw,

Vance Crowe [01:02:23] I do think we are just oriented slightly differently because I, you know, I traveled for the first, I don't know, 15 years of my adult life, like all over the world. I get invited to go give talks, I get to go out. Like, but when I am home, I don't wanna be anywhere else. And it, and like it actually became, when I was young, that was not that way. And I embraced the wanting to be home in just a very different way. I, I, I see it's very refreshing for me to hear your point of view on like, Hey, these are the types of meetings that can change your life. Hell, that, that's how I met Ben and I, I asked Ben, Hey, can I hire you to drive me somewhere? And you know, fast forward a few years later, we're running a business together and my whole life is different. So I get that, but I am just not oriented that way. But I, I think I used to be, and now I would, now I see, like, it took me a long, long time to get my children and now I want to be with them. And like, or, or I spent a lot of time not reading when, because I was out and I was meeting people and just sucking in as many things as I could. And now the thing I want to be doing is pushing my book club further forward, just, you know, four pages at a time or something.

Jarrad Holst [01:03:35] Oh no, I, I'm, I'm a firm believer that, you know, to each his own, and it's not for everybody, but you know, when I say going out, it's just not me. You know? I mean, I, I'm constantly taking the kids outta the house to go to this place, to go to that place to go on trips, to know. I mean, that's when my wife asked me what I want for my birthday. And Christmas obviously happened in December. The only thing I want her to do is say yes to going on trips. That's literally it. That's all I want.

Vance Crowe [01:04:01] That's pretty good. You

Jarrad Holst [01:04:02] Know, and I, and I love taking her along with me. I love taking the kids along with me. I love doing those things to, you know, broaden their minds. And even if it's something where we're just sitting around the house and looking at the sea or looking at the mountains, I still get the biggest threat out of that, of just being there with them. So yeah, I can totally understand, you know, being at peace with oneself and, you know, the comfort of being around, you know, one's home or one's family or, you know, all those things. But humans all need human interaction. They have to, you know, and every study under the sun has shown that people that have pets versus not have pets live longer, people that are with another person versus, you know, living alone. The people that are with somebody else live longer. You know, we thrive off of human interaction with one another. And the more connections that we have with one another, you know, the happier that we are. And that's what this study was trying to show was, it's, it is that human interaction. It is that, you know, the other part of the study showed, you know, not sweating the, you know, not sweating the small stuff. You know, don't let petty differences get you upset, you know, and I think people are afraid of that sometimes with, you know, getting into, you know, relationships with people is that they're afraid of, you know, what if this relationship doesn't work out? Or what if, you know, we come to loggerheads over this particular political issue or this particular business issue, or that, or whatever. You know, if it happens, it happens. You know, relationships run their course, that's fine. Put your line in the water and go, go try to catch another fish.

Vance Crowe [01:05:35] Yeah. And one of the best things about conflict is like, that's actually where you find new ground, right? Like if you're, if you're not in conflict, it's not like you can't have friendships without conflict, but it really is like those times when you and your business partner hit a conflict that you like discover something new. Oh, I didn't know we could think of it this way, or, or what, whatever that is. I think many people are afraid of conflict in ways that if they were more open to it, they would ex they would expand themselves.

Jarrad Holst [01:06:08] I agree with that a hundred percent. You know, I, I think that relationships are tested, not when times are good, but when times are bad, you know, or when you have setbacks, you know, that's when you really see someone's real reaction. You know, I remember I, I had a building that we had just finished up on in Tower Grove. I was super excited about it, and I was working on it with my partner Bob, and the day after I showed it, and this was right around this time in December, I get a call at six in the morning from one of my contractors, and he is like, your building's on fire. And I was like, oh, no. You know, I wasn't, it's, this is literally like my reaction. I was like, oh, man, you know, I really didn't get that like, upset. I was like, is everybody okay? You know, that was the first thing on my mind. And I said, you know, we have insurance, we'll be fine. And then I go down there and I look at the damage, and we had essentially six units that were gutted, you know, that I just finished. And, you know, the other five units that I had in the building were also ruined through smoke damage and water damage and other things like that. And I was like, you know what? We'll rebuild, we'll get through this. And then I go back to my office and I had this like little panic moment where I was like, all right, I remember I switched insurance

Vance Crowe [01:07:19] Companies. Oh, no. And,

Jarrad Holst [01:07:22] But this building wasn't one of them, was it? And I was like, panicking because I was like, all right, where's the insurance policy? Where, where's the, you know, broker for this and this and that? And I found it, and everything was okay. But I remember the call that I had with my partner Bob, and he was so cool about it. I loved this. And he goes, Jared, he goes, even if it turned out that we didn't have insurance on this, he goes, we'd work out, we'd work this, work through this together. You know, I would put in half, you would put in half, you know, we'd rebuild it. We'd be fine. You know, people make mistakes, you know, and that told me everything that I needed to know about that relationship that I have with him, you know? And he's, he's one of my most valued partners, one of my most trusted friends. And I, I love people like that. You know, you see someone's true character when something happens. And you can either sit down and you can talk it through, and you can work with, work through it, or you can be, you know, one, one of the parties can be afraid to address that conflict or that mistake because of fear of rejection or, you know, looking bad or whatever. Okay. And, and nothing's ever accomplished. And you, you lose that partnership, you lose that friendship, you know, because of it. And you know, in my mind, you know, I, I don't, I, I was watching this great line the other day in the show, Yellowstone, and I forgot the guy's character, but he's the real tough cowboy in there. My wife loves him. And he said, don't think about yesterday. You can't change it.

Jarrad Holst [01:08:53] Don't dwell on it. He goes, focus on today, focus on tomorrow. That's it. He goes, but I've seen more people's lives ruined by dwelling on yesterday. And you can't, what's done, been done? What, what's been done has been done, you know, you can't unring a bell. You know, the key thing is let's move forward and how do we move forward?

Vance Crowe [01:09:10] Yeah. I've, I've been around, I don't remember exactly where I heard it, but essentially like, the thing that keeps people that from being happy is the inability to to, to grieve and be able to get past things where they think they've been wronged. And like, that's, that's an interesting challenge that people face sometimes. Like,

Jarrad Holst [01:09:31] I mean, the, one of my favorite scenes from a movie is in Fight club, and Brad Pitt's driving this car and he's going really fast, and it's at nighttime, and he's starting to, and it's raining out kinda like today. And he's starting to cross over the center line, and he's going really fast. And this oncoming traffic and Ed Norton's in the backseat, and he's freaking out, and he's like, we're gonna die and da dah, dah, dah. And Brad Pick keeps reminding him. He says, you need to learn to let go. There's certain things in this life you can't control. You need to learn to let go. And he's like, when you learn to let go, then you're free. And that's, that's how my mind works. I mean, I truly have a free spirit in all sense, in all those senses, because I've learned to let go of stuff. I really don't let things get to me for a long period of time. I move on, you know, I put that in the background and I just go towards that and I move on. And you have to be able to do that, or else it'll eat you alive.

Vance Crowe [01:10:27] Have you ever been heartbroken?

Jarrad Holst [01:10:34] I don't necessarily think like heartbroken. I mean, I guess somebody would look at it that way. I mean, I, I was, I was engaged way too young, and I was about a, I moved to, moved to Pennsylvania, you know, for, for this lady. And I was studying for the Pennsylvania bar exam. I was, I think three, four weeks away from taking the bar exam. And she called me up over the phone and called it off. And we were like a, a month and a half away from getting married. And you know, on one hand you could say that like, oh man, that was crazy and that was really bad, and da da da. But I love this moment. And it was, I, I still remember this, like, I had this ama like path that I could take where I could go back to Florida and Tallahassee where I had a job there. I had colleagues down there that absolutely loved, I loved the law firm that I was working at. I loved the climate down there. It was, it's an amazing place. Or I had my brother and he was like, come back to St. Louis, I've got a house here. You know, you'll have a place to stay. I'll get you back on your feet. And I just, I loved his confidence, you know, and I'm eternally grateful for him doing that. And I came back here, and for me, that moment was one of the greatest moments of my life, because it was a heart attack moment, you know? And I, I call it a heart attack moment because people have these moments where, you know, they have a heart attack or some kind of health event or any kind of life scare, and it changes them completely going forward as a result of that moment.

Jarrad Holst [01:12:14] They now have like a, a second life, so to speak. And that's what it gave to me. I came back here and my brother taught me to let go, to not hold onto things, to go out, have fun, be more outgoing, you know, he exposed me to all these different things, and it totally opened up my world, you

Vance Crowe [01:12:34] Know, I never really thought about it, but the, I'm trying to think of the heart attack moments that I've had, and one that sticks out in my mind was when I was talking with a doctor, and he was like, Hey, looking at these numbers here, you may not have children. And that was like the first time it had ever been presented to me as like, I'd always thought like, ah, you want to try and avoid having kids? You know? And then you're like, okay, I want to have 'em. Okay, why isn't this working? Hey, we probably ought to check this out. And it did not really cross my mind up until that point. Like, maybe you can't. And that was one of those moments where like, everything got readjusted, right? Because then, then you're starting like, well, what is the point of life? Like, what is the point of being here? Do I want to have kids? Well, now that I can't, do I want this? And the path that, that took me on so radically changed my life that I don't know that I could go back. In fact, probably that's the point when I wanted to be at home a lot more than I wanted to be out, because there was something that clicked in my mind that the family was what I wanted more than all these other things I had done.

Jarrad Holst [01:13:36] Sometimes life tells you that,

Vance Crowe [01:13:37] Yeah, but

Jarrad Holst [01:13:38] You know, there, there's certain things that, that you can control. And there's certain things that you can control, you know? I mean, I remember when my youngest son, Hugo, was three and a half, and we learned that he was diagnosed with autism. And, you know, for the first, I may have been upset about it, not upset about it, just I, I guess hit with it, I guess would be the best way to put it, you know, for like 15 minutes. That was it. And then after that, I was like, you, you, we move forward, you know? He is who he is. And you know, I, if God came to me today and said, you know, I could make him not autistic tomorrow, would you want me to do it? And I would say, no, you know, I love him for who he is, you know? And so having those ex that exposure to all those different things in my life in terms of how I grew up, or that heart attack moment, you know, with, you know, having the, the marriage thing go away, you know, a month before it was to happen. And, you know, building my real estate business and having the se setbacks that I had, you know, my first couple projects with that. And then having, you know, my son, my youngest son diagnosed with autism, I'm, I'm used to being, to having things thrown at me. And so that's why they don't phase me as much as it would other people. That's why I kind of see right through 'em, and I see, all right, what are the chest moves? Wait on the road here, don't focus on checkers here. It, it's, it doesn't matter. Let go of that.

Jarrad Holst [01:15:08] You can't control that.

Vance Crowe [01:15:10] Yeah. It is funny when, so I do these Legacy Interviews, and very, very seldom does anybody sit there and tell you about the great moment. Even if they sold their company for hundreds of millions of dollars, they'll sit there or they're, you know, whatever they had, they'll sit there and be like, oh yeah, we did that. But the thing they want to tell you about are all the times when things went wrong. Like, because those are actually the moments that, that are like the most formative. It's just that when you're experiencing them, you know, you're at least, you know, my internal perspective is like, how do I get the over this? Oh, no, it's very easy to catastrophize and to stretch out like this problem, you know, expanding out into the future and, and not really recognizing how much can change even, even in a, in a week, in a year, in a, in a decade.

Jarrad Holst [01:15:57] So I write an amazing book, and I, I think in my opinion, it's probably the best book that an entrepreneur has ever done. And it's called Chew Dog, and it's by Phil Knight. And Phil Knight was one of the co-founders of Nike. And the amazing thing about this book, what I love is how it ends. It ends when Nike goes public. Everybody knows Nike after that, you know, just do it. Michael, Jordan, tiger Woods, all that stuff. They know Nike then, but you don't know what's behind the curtain. You know, Jeff Bezos once said that, I'm a 10 year overnight success. Everyone sees you in front of the curtain. They don't see how the sausage is made behind it, you know? And so that's why, you know, successful people or just individuals in general wanna share that because the public knows this. The public knows the front, the public knows. You know, Chris Rock once said that when you go and meet somebody, you're meeting their agent. You're not meeting the real person. That's, that's a lot of people, you know, you're meeting their title, I'm CEO of this, I'm the president of this, I'm the owner of this. You're meeting their title, you're meeting their representative. But who is the real person? That's what made that, that's what made that person become that percentage is because of that. And,

Vance Crowe [01:17:18] And when you think about the stories that are gonna help your kids or your grandkids the most, they're always the one where it's like, oh, and this is when I realized I had an alcohol problem and I had to deal with it, and it wasn't gonna be easy. Or I did this, you know, this thing that I, that I look back on and I wish it wasn't me. And, but that's therein lies where all the really valuable information is for how to navigate through problems in the future. It's not the successes, it's the failures

Jarrad Holst [01:17:46] From anyone that has passed on in my life or is currently in my life. The things that I've always remembered from them have always been the lessons that they taught me, the stories that they taught me that had lessons intertwined in them. And those are things that I repeat constantly and I think about constantly. And lessons aren't ha, you know, most lessons aren't happy moments. You know, they're teaching moments, you know? And so I, I think those are very, very important to share, you know, with your kids. You know, I'm constantly telling my kids, you know, that, you know, don't take success for granted. And it takes a while to put these buildings together, and Daddy works really hard and this is what we have to do. And not only just showing them it, or not only saying it to them, but also showing em it, you know, and that's one of the fun things about, you know, my profession as a developer is that I'm not in a, a necessarily a, you know, I'm in a physical business per se, where I can go to them and I can say, this is my building. This is what I did today. You know? And then 20 years from now, they can go by it and go, that was my father's building, you know, this is what he did today. And I, I love that. And any kind of lessons that they can glean from that, I like that too.

Vance Crowe [01:18:55] So you mentioned at the beginning about how a lot of times the people that are successful went through really hard life. You have the ability to offer your sons very easy life, which is probably kind of the natural thing. I want them to have good schools, and I want them to be able to be in all these sporting events or whatever it is that you're doing for your kids. How do you balance that against the need, particularly I think for boys to need pressure and to need to have trouble around them in order to make 'em strong.

Jarrad Holst [01:19:26] I think that comes from instilling a work ethic in them at a very, very young age, and teaching them not to take things for granted, exposing them to different things. So one of the things that I love about living in the city, a common question that I get from people that do not live in the city, and it's, it's a question where somebody is sliding you, you know, when they ask it, you know, and they'll say, you know, what are the schools like? Or what's the crime like? And, you know, sometimes my wife is by me, sometimes she's not. And I'm kind of thinking, you know, me, I, I have a doctorate. Like, do you know what percentage of people in this country have that? Like a successful business person? Don't you think that I can live wherever I wanna live? I think the other question should be, why do I choose to live here when I have all the means to live wherever I want? That should be the question. And that que the answer to that question is, I want to expose my kids to what life is really like. I do not wanna shelter them behind some white picket fence where it's all the people of one race, you know, going to this pristine school where everything's perfect. That's not reality. I want to show them reality. And when I can drive my son around the city and all make comments, and I'll be like, Hey, look at that broken down building. You know, that, that's his terminology on how he uses it. I want him to see that, that that's authenticity. I want him to be in a school where it's 50% black and white. I want him to see that.

Jarrad Holst [01:20:59] And I think by exposing him to more authentic experiences that will help shape him to become someone that is more empathetic to people coming from different situations, but also understanding that you have to work really hard to come out of those broken homes, per se, and to be able to, you know, live in, you know, these beautiful homes. You have to do a lot to make that happen. And you, you do not get that viewpoint in a shelter lifestyle. You don't get it. And do I understand it? I a hundred percent get it. I do, you know, I, I joke sometimes that, you know, when we're out on our porch, you know, in Lafayette Square, that, you know, I can hear firecrackers going off, you know, in the summertime, those aren't firecrackers, those are gunshots, you know? But my kids see that every day. I'm going out there and I'm trying to make something better. I'm trying to improve it every day. That's what they see daddy doing. That's it. That's what they see mommy doing. And by us staying there, and by us exposing them to that environment, they see that we're authentic. They see that we are truly what we believe. You know, that what Daddy says when he says, you know, to parents and to young people moving to St. Louis, Hey, come live in my buildings in the city. You know, why hightail it off to the county in my safe little house? No. I can say, look, I live right down the street from your apartments. I know I used to live in that neighborhood. I know exactly what it's like to have my car broken into, I know exactly what it's like to have my house broken into.

Jarrad Holst [01:22:30] I know all these things that you're going to, I can empathize with you on that, but we're gonna make it better. We're gonna improve it, you know? And so those authentic moments are, are what I want to show them and how I want to teach them.

Vance Crowe [01:22:43] Well, speaking of teaching, you have a lot of people that are mentored by you. They, they seem to, I mean, it's very clear why, right? People get to talk with you. You give them very real experience. Tell me about who mentored you, who is a good person in your life?

Jarrad Holst [01:23:03] I had a few of 'em. You know, one of the things I did when I, when I first started developing is I, I reached out to the top players in the real estate industry here in St. Louis. And I'm incredibly thankful that they took me under their wing and they took me around to show me their projects and answer my questions. And, you know, those people are, you know, Amer Gill and, you know, restoration St. Louis and Phil Halls of Green Street, and the, the one that spent the most time with me, this gentleman named John Porta. And arguably he's developed, you know, more apartments, you know, coming outta St. Louis than anybody else. And it's not even close. And I love the fact that he's incredibly humble, he's very honest, he's very direct, but also soft spoken, just a wealth of experience. And he always took the time to teach me and answer my questions whenever I needed them. And, and still to this day, I mean, you know, I can text him at almost any time or email him, and he gets back to me really, really quickly. And, you know, I think that that's, I think what, what John sees in me, you know, is very similar to what I see when I talk with younger folks as well, is that you want to pass along those lessons. You, you can't take that with you to the grave, you know, it doesn't go on to the afterlife, you know, you have to pass it along while you're still here, you know? And, you know, those mentors for me have taught me enough to then pass it along to the younger generations so we can continue, you know, our redevelopment of the city and make it better.

Vance Crowe [01:24:44] So Jared, you've been putting stuff out on YouTube. If people wanted to read more or see more of your stuff, where, where would they go? You're prolific LinkedIn person. You're the only reason I ever go to LinkedIn.

Jarrad Holst [01:24:55] I post a lot more on LinkedIn. My colleagues that work with me, you know, Michelle and, and many others, you know, help put it together. They do an amazing job. You know, I, I wish I, I posted as much, you know, through social media on those platforms, you know, versus LinkedIn. But, so when I was little, I couldn't pronounce my name correctly, you know, Jared. And so I called myself Ja. And so when I was looking for, you know, moniker to come up with, and I said, you know what? It's short. You know, the domain name is still out there, you know, let's call it Ja. So Jay's a really cool platform. You know, Michelle and some other folks go around to my buildings and we talk about what we do in real estate development. I talk about general real estate, you know, subjects that are affecting our everyday lives. And it's, it's a fun way also to give back, to teach people visually about this business. And, you know, I've, I've been a little slow on it, you know, over the last year, but I, I plan on ramping it up a little more, you know, in the coming years. And I, I really want to get it going.

Vance Crowe [01:26:01] Well, I hope you do, man. I, I say this from the bottom of my heart. It's weird to have a mentor that's your age, but you have definitely mentored me. You've been incredibly helpful. You've changed the trajectory, not only of my business life, but you've given my wife great advice and, and so I'm so glad to have you here in St. Louis. And while I don't see your same vision, I, I find myself being way more open to it because of the, the fact that you put your money where the mouth is. And I'm, I'm really interested in, in yeah, cheering you on, man.

Jarrad Holst [01:26:34] Thank you for having me on the podcast. I really appreciate it, and I appreciate your friendship. Ah.