Ever Onward Podcast

Scaling Businesses, Building Wealth & Leveraging Social Media with Braiden Shaw | Ever Onward - Ep. 60

• Ahlquist. • Season 1 • Episode 60

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Braiden Shaw is a business leader, investor, and entrepreneur focused on helping others build long-term wealth. As the founder of Fulcrum Home Loans, he helps clients optimize lending strategies, and through his Amplifi program, he provides a roadmap for financial literacy, investing, and wealth-building. As the leader of Growth Circle, he connects entrepreneurs with private market investment opportunities, helping them scale through strategic partnerships and smart capital allocation.

In this episode, we break down:

✅ Scaling businesses through strategic partnerships

✅ Private market investing and long-term wealth strategies

✅ The role of financial literacy in entrepreneurial success

✅ How social media branding fuels business growth

Additionally, we explore how companies like StatPads are leveraging AI, automation, and CRM tools like Salesforce to stay ahead in a fast-changing business environment. Plus, we analyze current housing market trends, supply and demand challenges, and the economic impact of new construction projects.

Braiden, a former BYU basketball player, brings a competitive mindset to business, using the same discipline and strategy that defined his career on the court to build scalable companies and mentor others in financial growth. Whether you’re an entrepreneur, investor, or business leader, this episode is packed with actionable insights to help you grow, adapt, and succeed.

For our Ahlquist Update, we also dive into commercial development challenges in Boise with Mark Cleverley and Kekoa Nawahine, who navigated city code changes to expand Quality Electric’s headquarters. Their experience showcases the power of negotiation, adaptability, and working with city officials—key lessons for any business leader facing regulatory hurdles.

Follow Ahlquist on Social Media:

LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/company/ahlquist/⁠⁠⁠

Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/ahlquistdev/

TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.tiktok.com/@ahlquistdev

X (Twitter): ⁠⁠⁠https://x.com/ahlquistdev

Meta (Facebook): ⁠⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/ahlquistdev/

Youtube: https://youtube.com/@ahlquistdev?si=ejOXPKRqQjtsdVFE


Speaker 1:

Today on the Ever Onward podcast, we have a great guest. I've been trying to get him on for a while. Braden Shaw of Eagle, idaho, is an unbelievable leader. His company, fulcrum Home Loans, of which he's the CEO and founder, has exploded. When you hear of his growth in just four years, it's amazing. He played basketball at BYU, again from right here in Eagle, and now has multiple social media channels companies and it's anchored by Fulcrum Home Loans. It's going to be an incredible interview. I hope you enjoy it, mr Braden Shaw. Prior to Braden today, we're going to hear from Kakoa Nawahini and Mark Cleverley for our AllQuist update.

Speaker 2:

Good morning everyone. We're here for an Allquist update. I'm Mark Cleverley, Chief Leasing Officer with Allquist, here with Keikoa.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, Keikoa and Alhine also on the leasing team.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so we want to take a minute, and I know we've talked about build-to-suit stuff in the past, but we want to take a minute and talk about one in particular. That was kind of pretty difficult, mainly because obviously it's in a new area of Boise that hasn't been developed for a long time, and then the code changes with the city of Boise, which made it a little bit difficult, but we had some good, positive news. It was Quality Electric that's going out to Pleasant Valley, a site that we've been working on for a number of years, and so I wanted to have you come in and talk about just kind of the process and what happened with Quality Electric. It was touch and go there for a minute, but we had some good news last week.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, no, it's been a great project to kind of see up until this point, and working with those guys has been awesome. I think in the world of development there's always obstacles and hiccups that you're going to face Always ups and downs right.

Speaker 3:

So the co-change with the city of Boise being a main one in this that made it difficult to work around some things and some obstacles that we had to overcome. But that's where I think we provide our value as a development company of seeing a lot of these things through everything that we do, a lot of these issues and having relationships with the city and understanding what needs to be done to be able to ultimately get them in their new headquarters right. And so kind of starting from the beginning. You know, after we've selected the site out at Pleasant Valley, we were able to get them with our internal architect, brad Smith, and our construction team, corey Hall, and really work through the details and the nuances of what they wanted their new headquarters to look like out at our site. And so, after we got all that space planning done their 50,000 square foot corporate headquarters and some different things with shop and yard we run into this the the wall of the new city code and so change um among a lot of things.

Speaker 3:

The biggest issue that we had faced out there is you can't have parking in front of the building facade and a road and industrial layouts. That's just not very feasible, because you keep the parking up front, you keep all of the docking and all of the yard and everything in the back, for many reasons one, for feasibility and for safety and all those things right and so with the new city code, you can't have that parking between the building and the road. And so we're trying to figure out, okay, how can we change this layout to make it work and go into all these different things? And the reality was the road. And so we're trying to figure out, okay, how can we change this layout to make it work, and going through all these different things, and the reality was it didn't. It just didn't work.

Speaker 2:

There wasn't another feasible way to have that because, quality, they were wanting them to push their parking all the way to the back of the site, yeah, behind the shop, even the shop space, yeah, which I mean walking through a yard with heavy machinery and equipment. It was a safety thing, right, really for us, yeah.

Speaker 3:

And then you're just walking around a whole building just to get inside.

Speaker 3:

And so it didn't make sense, and so the process that we had to go through with the city was really to file for an appeal to overcome that specific section in the code, and through a few-month-long process we were finally able to, as as of a couple weeks ago, get that appeal approved through the city council.

Speaker 3:

It passed and really what came out of that was that there that needs to be a change because within industrial sites it's. It just doesn't make sense, yeah, to not have that. So luckily we're able to have a big win there. We're able to keep rolling. We have had their drawings and everything done for a while now so we can submit for permit, we can start construction, we can get them in and their new corporate headquarters and everything that they're doing. Their work within the Valley is huge, so we're excited, and they're excited to be able to get into this new space to bring back this culture and or, I guess, not bring back, but revive culture within their company with the steps that they're taking and the help that they're doing with Micron and Meta and different projects that they have. So they're excited to be able to have a central place where they can start fresh and all be together, all be together, yeah.

Speaker 2:

The great thing, too, is going back to the city of Boise. I think they implemented this new code, but at least they're understanding, from a developer's perspective and from a company's perspective, that some of those things need to change. Yeah, and they're willing to make those changes, which is good, I think. For us, the city's been great to work with.

Speaker 2:

They understand the process. They understand. Hey, yeah, let's change that part of the code because, you're right, it doesn't make sense and we, you know, we just need to look at it and change it. So it's been good that the city of Boise has been willing to make those changes.

Speaker 3:

Right, yeah, they've been great to work with, and I think that's one of the comments that's been made too is it's just one of the unintended consequences that came up to the code? When you're rolling out a new code, it's hard to to get it all right at the beginning, right, yeah? Every single scenario and how that comes into play, and so they've been great to work with and and moving forward, we're excited for this project to come out of the ground.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, okay, awesome, good job, dude. Thanks, love it.

Speaker 1:

Braden Shaw welcome, thank you. Thank you for having me. Everyone's been telling me forever you've got to get Braden Shaw on. You've got to get Braden Shaw on. So thanks for making time for us. Yeah, I'm excited this will be fun. I've looked at some of your stuff. You've got a lot going on.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, it's been a crazy. Last year I jumped on social media not expecting much and it kind of up and my life has gotten crazy as a result. So it's been a lot of fun.

Speaker 1:

How does that just happen? Talk through that.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, so I started a business here locally called Fulcrum Home Loans, so we're headquartered in Eagle, grew that for years.

Speaker 1:

Are you from here? Yeah, I'm going to make you stop and just tell us a little bit about yourself first.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, so I grew up here in Eagle, played ball growing up and eventually went and played basketball at a school out of Utah called BYU. So I played ball at BYU, was there for about four years, graduated in finance.

Speaker 1:

I'm sorry, I saw that on your resume. Was there for about four years, graduated in finance. I'm sorry, I saw that on your resume.

Speaker 4:

I wasn't going to bring it up. You brought it up.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, no, there's this huge BYU Utah thing with me.

Speaker 4:

Utah guy, oh, yeah, oh dang, look at us go.

Speaker 1:

I grew up Utah guy and then I went to school there, undergraduate in medical school, and it just got worse. And then I had my kids and I grew them all up as Utes.

Speaker 4:

Well, you beat us in overtime. A couple nights ago I saw that game you took the victory this year, that's for sure.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, but it hasn't been good. Football hasn't been good. Yeah, I'll tell you a quick BYU story, though this is a true story. I don't think I've had like. So you played there for four years, right, yeah, yeah, so I had my oldest son. My kids were like. Part of their DNA in life is just, they don't like BYU and they love Utah. It's just part of what it is. I'm sure your kids are Goes with it. Yep, 100% Goes with it. And so my son, when he was like a junior, when you're applying to school, right, I get home one night late from an ER shift and I walk in the house and he's sitting up waiting for me, which was very unusual and I said what's going on?

Speaker 1:

I mean he's like Dad, I need to talk to you. And I'm literally thinking to myself okay, what is the worst thing it could be? I thought I don't think you got anyone pregnant. I didn't see the car wreck down the way in. I mean I'm thinking of all the bad things, right, that it could be, because he's never serious. And I sit down and he says, hey, I don't know how to bring this up to you. I've been nervous to talk to you about this and at this point I'm like, well, maybe there is something, maybe he's going to tell, tell me, I don't know. Yeah and um, he, uh. He says, uh, he says dad, I think I want to go to byu the ultimate betrayal and without like what, that's my best, what's one of my proudest dad moments ever, without skipping a beat because I was put on the spot, right. So sometimes you don't perform like you should.

Speaker 1:

At that moment and I did I stared him in the eyes and I said, son, I was thinking all of the horrible things this could have been right now. I was thinking about did you get someone pregnant? Yeah, do you have a drug problem? You know, I was thinking about even stuff about. You know, are you still like girls, like? I mean, I'm thinking all these things. Why, on God's green earth, couldn't it have been one of those?

Speaker 4:

things that's hilarious. Oh man, Did he end?

Speaker 1:

up going to BYU? Yeah, you asked, so I'll tell you the story. So he ended up going to BYU for a year and it made him a better Ute. He transferred to the U. There you go, graduated from their business scholars program no.

Speaker 4:

BYU's great. Yeah, they're great schools. It's a great rivalry it is. It's a fun rivalry.

Speaker 1:

It is deep.

Speaker 4:

It's a big-time rivalry yeah, 100-plus years that it's been going on. But there's incredible people. I was actually just talking to someone yesterday. They're like why does Utah have so many startups? I was like, well, when you throw 150,000 college students within an hour of each other from Utah State, University of Utah, BYU, UVU, it's just this melting pot.

Speaker 1:

That's perfect. That environment down there is just and there's something, and there just is. There's something super entrepreneurial about the way they do their programs, about the way they graduate kids, about the way they look at life and business. It's a pretty unique environment down there for a lot of things, and I think great leadership and a lot of things. And I think, um, great leadership, um, and you get great things.

Speaker 4:

So no, it's fun.

Speaker 1:

Anyway, I interrupted you with a BYU story, but we got past it. There we go. We're five minutes in and we got past the awkwardness. So, yeah, uh, who did you?

Speaker 4:

play for down there. So I was with Rose. So, so Rose retired after my senior year. Okay, he was a great coach, wasn't he? Yeah, great. He had a long tenure there for I don't know, 20-plus years probably, and did really really well, yeah, but graduated in finance. I was going to go do Wall Street, that side of finance, really wanted to get into consulting, but had a wife and a kid and decided I didn't want to pull the 80, 90 hour a week.

Speaker 4:

So I moved back to Idaho and ended up starting Fulcrum Home Loans.

Speaker 1:

So what year did you?

Speaker 4:

start 2020.

Speaker 1:

That's great. So so five years ago, just hit our five year here, like this month, and you're an Eagle and tell, tell us about. I mean, tell us about that. You can't just you start a home loan business. I mean tell us about that. You can't just you start a home loan business, I mean tell us about what, uh, why and how and what was your passion there?

Speaker 4:

So I kind of stumbled into. I don't think anyone grows up wanting to do mortgages. It's pretty boring. Profession Um, love real estate and my brother was a real estate agent and once I decided not to do wall street my senior year or go investment banking I was like I don't know what I'm going to do. So he's like just get your license, I can throw you a couple deals as you're figuring out life. I was like, okay, so I did it, closed a deal and the money's pretty good in lending. I was like, wow, that was not that much work and I made decent money. And so ended up starting a company just kind of on a whim. Had no intentions of growing it to the size it grew to. We've got about 140 employees and now nationwide branches from North Carolina, florida, to California, washington, and there was all in five years.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, I mean, I couldn't have chosen a better time. So many business owners like there's an element of luck there. 2020 rates drop two months later down to 3%. I didn't have a book of business, but you didn't need one then because everyone you talked to needed a refinance or a purchase, and so there was a large element of luck.

Speaker 1:

Did you take on?

Speaker 4:

investors? No, we bootstrapped the whole thing you did yeah.

Speaker 4:

So it was about two years of I think we got to about 10 people in two years. So the first two years we were just I was producing and just churning as much as I could, closing as much business as I could. And then about the two-year mark we had a war chest and everyone else in the industry rates started to tick up and so everyone else in the industry started to hunker down. They're like, hey, we got to preserve, preserve. And that's where we went on a spree and we were like, okay, we're gonna, we're gonna go the other direction, we're gonna grow through this, and so we recruited, we brought on branches, we brought on people did you buy?

Speaker 4:

did you, did you acquire so in the mortgage industry? It's not, it's more recruiting than acquiring. Okay, so you, you, we would talk to like branch managers that would have five or 10 people underneath them that were working for another institution. Okay, and then you, people follow people, you get them People follow people, yep.

Speaker 4:

So you better rates, better terms. We have a unique product offering that resonates with a lot of people, and so you bring the branch manager and a lot of them come over and you just do that over and over and over. And so really in the last two years has been the majority of that growth, wow. So yeah, it's been crazy. And then about a year ago I started social media just on a whim. I don't like social media. I posted maybe one time in the two years before that, but I saw this.

Speaker 1:

Well, I've seen some of your stuff. You clearly get it, though. Yeah, I approach it with a business lens. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4:

But you get it. Yeah, but what it was and it's as a business owner, it's.

Speaker 1:

I'm stopping you, man.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, no dig in, this is not going to be easy man.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, dig in. That's not going to do this. You clearly don't like it, but you understand the tool yeah. And you understand kind of the way millennials and others look at this thing, more so than others. You're like, okay, I'm going to do this thing.

Speaker 4:

I feel like there's been a shift in business where you used to build a business and then you build a marketing plan around it. Yeah, and in the last probably five to ten years there's been a shift where a lot of businesses have a marketing plan and you build a business around it. And so you look at sometimes it's movie stars like the Jenners or Ryan Reynolds popping up billion dollar companies overnight because of their influence. Then you have people like Mr Beast he's a YouTube sensation. Same thing he got influence and now he has 15 different companies that he's spun off around that. And so I love business and so I was like you know what, If I can get influence, I can do whatever I want. And so that was kind of the thought process was let's approach this from a business standpoint.

Speaker 4:

Did you have coaching when you did this, or was this just like it was all just A-B testing and trying to figure it out? Did you self-produce it? Yeah, so everything was self-produced. It was originally just shot on my iPhone. And the nice thing about social media is they give you a lot of data and so I just run a business for years and years and everything's KPIs and data-oriented, and so you can A-B test really quickly. So you put a video out, it shows you this, you put another one, it shows you this, and then you just are constantly fine tuning it until eventually it starts to gain traction. So it was all kind of self-taught and just kind of ran with it. Wow.

Speaker 1:

You know it's similar, though I think of some of my good friends that have done it. Um, and that's kind of what they'll say too, is you? The one thing about it is? It immediately tells you, yeah, like this is working or that's not working, and then, once you kind of file and figure out what's going on, that's great. So, so that was a year ago. How was it affected?

Speaker 1:

well, go back, I'm not getting letting you off the hook yet so so I understand there were some really good years, but the mortgage industry over the last 18 months, two years, has not been yes, right, so Right. So you had this hyper growth area where conditions were bright, and then it's kind of not. And then you have the social media. How did you navigate just kind of the interest rate changes? And I mean you said you went into growth mode but not everyone else did, like most people paralyzed when it happened.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, we run a very lean business model as far as mortgages go. Um, so in the mortgage industry there's a. It's very vertical, there's a lot of people. If one person gets a mortgage, there's seven or eight people that are getting a cut on that all the way up. In most businesses, um, we have two to three, and so we were very lean because we were so new, we hadn't gotten the levels of management that most companies had, and so when rates went up, we were able to absorb that margin compression so much easier than everyone else and still maintain profitability, and so we've been profitable every single year, which I mean go look at publicly traded companies.

Speaker 4:

That's very rare in the mortgage industry right now. And, once again, perfect storm of being so new that I didn't have time to build out the management structure that I probably should have.

Speaker 4:

You would have been more top heavy, but I would have been so top heavy and been right there with them, and so it kept us nimble. And now it's kind of turned into our identity a little bit, where when we're recruiting, that's like our pitch is don't have 15 people above you that are making money off you. Instead, you have one layer above you me, I own it and I'll work with you. I'll help you. We deploy tech, everything to kind of make this efficient, but don't make it personnel heavy.

Speaker 1:

I'm going to keep interrupting you to talk about how tech has changed your business. And again, were you good at that Did. How did you figure it out? Because, and what? What part does it play in your, in your mortgage business?

Speaker 4:

Yeah, tech. Tech is so fun right now. We're all trying to figure it out. Um, I'm younger and so I feel like I do have a leg up just because I grew up in this era. I use AI, chat, gbt, all these tech pieces hundreds of times a day, and so it's a very normal part of our process. We encourage our employees to they utilize it. My social media team it produces 90% of my is is run through ai at one point, um, and so we use it a lot. Tech's very expensive, though, and so it's. It's trying to find that balance of do you build proprietary, do you bootstrap on the back end, and so I I don't feel like I'm a master or figure that out, but we embrace new technologies and understand that every industry is going to change. The next five years is going to be wild. It's going to be wild In a lot of industries, and so we're trying to stay on top of it.

Speaker 1:

Well, it's all you know. You think back one of the first companies I did in 2001,. I sold it in 17, but it was. It was called StatPads and we basically used technology. Before it was a thing to be a nationwide provider of medical oversight for automated external defibrillator machines Kind of a weird niche, yeah.

Speaker 1:

But I look at how tech and data systems, just like customer and support systems, changed over time and we had to own them early, and then, literally you would get done and they'd be obsolete and you had to redo them. And then when we went to Salesforce as our back end, that was a game changer Because all of a sudden you could pretty nimbly step something up. You didn't own it right, yep, I mean, they owned the back end, you paid them a lot of money, but you also didn't have the burden of having to redo these big systems forever. And then along comes AI, right. So the speed at which all of this foundational technology that drives business is going to change rapidly, and I don't even think I listen to really smart guys a lot and talk about this, but I don't think I understand even a fraction of what we're up against. Not up against, it's an opportunity, and those that figure out how to use it are going to win.

Speaker 4:

So it's not like up against in a negative way, it's like if you don't figure this out and figure out how to integrate it and take advantage of it. Someone else is going to and they're going to pass you by. I think that's a really smart point. I feel like a lot of the older businesses, more established businesses probably a better way to say that has built all their own tech, because that's what you had to do. Salesforce was the first one that allowed you to allow a tech company to be a tech company and you build on top of it. It's almost like modular tech yes, it's modular tech and that is becoming more and more available where if I want a crm, I don't build it, I don't do anything, you never even think about that you just go, take it and plug it into your ecosystem and, by the way, it's so much better than the one you would build anyway, and

Speaker 1:

yeah, you're going to pay a little bit for it, but if you compare the cost of building your own that, then literally we would become obsolete a year and a half after we just finished the last build. And then the next guy would come in and say, well, I'm going to do it differently and they do it different. So the speed of business changed there. But because I've been out of that for a bit and I don't understand, do you have a good feel for how AI, combined with that, is going to change things?

Speaker 4:

Yes and no for how AI combined with that is going to change things. Yes and no. I mean, I'm not a tech guy, but I'm watching people around me do it. So, like, my social media side is a lot of financial literacy, and so I help people get out of debt, build survival funds, invest their first dollar. What are private markets? How do you get into it? So we're releasing a budgeting app. So I knew I wanted to do this. This. This guy came to me with no background in coding like zero background. He's a government contract employer. He said mint shut down. I decided I like mint, so I recoded a website. Here it is and he handed me a fully functional app I integrated my bank to. I did everything. Like how'd you do this? He's like AI like so long as you know how to prompt it, it can code for you. So this guy with no background built the entire that's three months.

Speaker 4:

That's the stuff I'm talking about, braden, and so that stuff's going on right now 100%, and there's these big companies that aren't embracing it, and I think there's a massive opportunity for the small and nimble companies right now to to get those people into ecosystem and encourage them. Encourage them to help you build, because there's a wave coming right now and I don't know where it's going to go, but I'm watching people do it. I'm like that was genius. More people need to do that kind of stuff. That's awesome.

Speaker 1:

I can't remember where we were. You were talking. I keep interrupting you, but but you got. You got it. You got things up and running. What percentage of what you do now in your week is social media side of things and how is that growing versus back to your mortgage company and what are the other verticals that you're going to start going into?

Speaker 4:

Yeah. So social media I've hired out a team I probably film. I probably do three or four hours a week of social media content creation, creation. They do everything else. They post, they comment, they dm. So it's a couple hours a week for me, um, but from social media do they plan it? Yeah?

Speaker 1:

okay, so you, you have like you have a, it's authentic, so you have something you're you care. But they help with the production, the preparation. You have a pre-production meeting, you film it they process it 100%.

Speaker 4:

So I have like my pillars, if you would. Yeah, it's like. Here's my six pillars that I like talking about that I think are inside of financial literacy. Find me 30 pieces of content in here, write them up, script them. Then, 30 minutes before we go in the film room we sit down, don, and then 30 minutes before we go in the film room we sit down.

Speaker 4:

Don't like this, don't like this so super efficient for you. Yep, and I just walk in and film and I don't script it, I don't do anything, I literally just there's the topic, put it down and I just talk. Braden, you're smart. Yeah, I surround myself with smart people. Oh, you're smart. You have someone write you scripts and it makes your job a whole lot easier.

Speaker 1:

It's probably looking at some of the stuff you're doing. It's got to be rewarding too. I mean so fun. I mean because you're making a difference. I mean the irony of life is sometimes if you can find a passion like you didn't know what you were going to do, but you knew you were going to be successful at what you did and then you were passionate about people and helping people, yeah, and then you combine that into business Pretty good way to live life.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, yeah, it's fun with this ecosystem that I've built to. Every single day, someone will write me and be like hey, I was about to declare bankruptcy, I'm back on my feet, we're moving forward, thank you. Those moments really are fun to watch someone's life change just by implementing tiny little pieces, little nuggets you throw out there. It's rewarding for sure that's cool.

Speaker 1:

Any of those people become your employees over the time.

Speaker 4:

Yes and no. I mean most of my social media team found me, followed me, liked it and then came over and said I just want to be in your ecosystem, which is really cool to watch. Young, hungry people take lower pay just to get around the ecosystem they want to be in. There's a whole thing there. But yeah, everyone that works for me is local. I don't do remote employees, which shrinks the pool a little bit.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, but talk a little bit about that. I've got a lot of things to go into with you, but you clearly are a leader. I mean, you look at what you've done in a very short time and it's pretty jaw-dropping here, man. So tell me about leadership, leading people. You just said something. I think that's pretty key. You don't want remote, you want people that you interact with. What are some of your foundational leadership principles? That?

Speaker 4:

have allowed you to be successful. Yeah, leadership is where I probably I think every leader feels the weakest at. That's something you can constantly get better at, but I I learned pretty early. That is so long as you're empowering their desired future, as long as you know who they are, where they want to go and that aligns with where you can take them, that synergy creates a very powerful workforce, and so it's an exercise.

Speaker 1:

Dude, that was powerful.

Speaker 4:

It's an exercise we go through with every single employee. Like I sit down with them on day one and I say give me the four places you want to be with money, career, and then it's usually health and relationships, and so long as I can get them there, then we, they, we work together. So long as I can't, like it's a mutual parting of ways, because I feel like so many people show up to a job just to punch a ticket, but you'll never get the best of them unless they believe that you're the vehicle to get them where they want to be. And so that's another reason why to your point, your original question why are they in person? I I am unable to lead virtually and accomplish that in a good way, and so we have everyone in house.

Speaker 1:

For that reason, yeah speak to a little bit of the collaboration that happens in person and kind of just the way to maintain a culture versus not.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, I've tried remote on and off, it's just harder. It's hard because you read articles. I'm sure you have how remote's coming. It's better. They're 70% more efficient. All this stuff that has not been my experience in leading. Collaboration is 10X when they're next to you, and so daily huddles every single morning for 10 or 15 minutes get everyone on the same page. Weekly L10 meetings are meetings geared around the 12 week sprints. We usually do 12 week sprints in most of my businesses. That in-person quick, short collaboration divvy up tasks, go and accomplish, then return and report is a much more efficient way of working. And that's not for everyone, like there's a lot of remote employees out there, and also, I think, is very industry specific, absolutely.

Speaker 1:

There's probably things that you can measure and you know if you're like an evening person or you're whatever you go, get your work done. You're super efficient at it. But that's not what you're talking about. What you're talking about is building a team thriving off each other, being part of something bigger than yourself. You making other people better by your interactions. I just I think it will continue what we've seen and I think I think you know the pendulum swings too far each way when these changes happen.

Speaker 1:

right and post COVID, it was everything shutting down and no one's ever gonna go back to work again, and we're certainly not seeing it with all of our companies and tenants that we interact with. It's been the opposite for most of them. There's a few of them Again. If they can employ people and they're more, they have easy metrics to follow on someone that can do it on their own time. It's, you know, it's the programmers that can. Hey, here's your task you do this week and however long it takes you, that's what I'm paying for. But anybody that has anything to do that requires collaboration and creating culture and driving what you just said, those huddles and all that, that's big. Where did you learn all that? I mean I'm sitting here listening to you. It's pretty fascinating to hear you talk because I mean you're doing so many things right. Was this all intuitive? Who are your mentors?

Speaker 4:

Yeah, I have a lot of phenomenal. I mean I love to read, I love to listen to podcasts. There's a lot that comes from that. I am always coached. I think everyone should be coached at every single level. So I employ coaches level. So I employ coaches.

Speaker 4:

But I was very blessed to grow up in the community that I grew up in and my dad was a business owner. I watched him. A lot of people in my community are business owners that I still interact with. I still go to lunch with a lot of them. I've watched uncles and cousins take companies public and how they led, and so everything I did was self-funded and like self-run, like I wasn't handed a business.

Speaker 4:

But at the same time, I'm not going to sit here and say that how you grew up and what you watch does not play a massive role in your development in a lot of that stuff. And so my dad always said counsel or consequence are the two ways you learn. I would much rather counsel than consequence every single time. So, just trying to rely on the people around you asking questions hey, struggling with this, struggling with this, what would you do? But, yeah, just trying to pull on as many people as you can. There's a lot of people that have gone through it, so there's no reason for you to struggle through it as well. That's powerful. We have a lot of people that have gone through it, so there's no reason for you to struggle through it as well.

Speaker 1:

That's powerful. We have a lot of athletes. I think it's cheating a little bit here, at our company, I mean we do.

Speaker 1:

We just have a lot of people that played sports and I've also watched. Well, I don't think it has to be just sports. For example, I've watched people like my son who was very into jazz music and music and what happens, where you learn how to be a team in an ensemble. So I don't think it's just sports, but I think people that are exposed to things where you do learn from a teacher and you are required discipline and the work ethic and the things that happen on a team and you get your butt chewed when you need to get your butt chewed and you learn how to take that. I mean talk about clearly sports big deal for you. How much has that played into kind of shaping? Who?

Speaker 4:

you are Massive in a lot of different aspects. You nailed it Like I would have actually said music and sports. You can get it a lot of other places. I don't want to act like you have to do one of those two to be successful, but they teach you core principles, um of how to operate in a team, how to receive feedback, how to constantly improve, strive for that constant improvement. Um have key metrics winning and losing.

Speaker 4:

I think it plays a large role in a lot of that, and I have I mean I probably have 15, 20 college athletes in my mortgage company for that exact purpose. I think we just gravitate, we speak each other's language. It's easy to coach them for that purpose, but then on the flip side, too, byu is a large school, and so I didn't know what I wanted to do. But when you're flying around on private jets with billionaires to games and I'm looking at their lifestyle and I'm talking to them and it's it exposed me to a network and mentors that I would have never been exposed to, and it has guided me a lot as well. So there's been a lot of avenues that I feel like it's directly impacted me.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I mean it's, it's, it's. There's the very personal what did I learn from the process? And then there's all of these wonderful people you were exposed to. It's, it's, it's a little bit of everything. I really appreciate you bringing up kind of your heritage, and sounds like you have a family that also taught you a lot about how to live and how to run a business.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, yeah, my parents are incredible. They're actually over in New Zealand right now on a church service mission. It's been weird having them gone. But yeah, my dad probably ran 15, 20 different companies on and off. He'd almost buy, flip and sell companies and so he has a large wealth of knowledge that I relied on a lot my first couple years. I'd sit down with him regularly.

Speaker 1:

Where are you in the sibling? How many siblings do you have?

Speaker 4:

So there's five of us. I have two older sisters, one older brother and then a younger brother, so I'm number four.

Speaker 1:

Are any of them business focused? Yeah, all of us. Basically Just part of the.

Speaker 4:

DNA. Yeah, my brother owns a real estate brokerage here locally. My other brother owns a property management company, manages about 100 different properties, so the three boys are all in real estate.

Speaker 1:

And then my sister's married, very entrepreneurial-minded people as well, makes for fun family holidays.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, my parents love it and hate it. They're like stop talking. Business, no competition. Yeah, there's always athletic entrepreneurial. There's a lot of friendly competition going on for sure.

Speaker 1:

It's really good Tell us about your family.

Speaker 4:

You have kids, yeah, so I actually had a kid like three days ago. So I've got a six-year-old boy, a two-year-old boy and then we just had a girl on Saturday.

Speaker 1:

Six, two and a girl. That's awesome. I have grandkids that are five, three and four months.

Speaker 4:

Boy, boy girl.

Speaker 1:

Right there. You're almost the exact same age Right there, local yeah, really close and it's. It's what life's all about right there. That's fun. So I'm sure your parents are very happy that you're close by.

Speaker 4:

Yeah yeah. All my siblings are in New Zealand. I know, but all my siblings now move back to the Boise area. It's fun. It's fun to be back.

Speaker 1:

What do you uh I mean you're, you're in the trenches, uh on housing and mortgages and what's going on in the nation. I can't wait to get your take on a few of these things. So just talk about housing in the Treasure Valley. Keep it local here. A lot of our folks that listen to this are Idaho or Treasure Valley based. What do you see happening in the coming years?

Speaker 4:

Yeah, I don't think interest rates are going to come down as soon as everyone thought they would.

Speaker 1:

It's almost impossible, right? Yeah, there's the optimism that Trump brought, which now you've got to hedge against inflation. They can't go up, they can't go down.

Speaker 4:

Exactly, and that's kind of like it's not a political statement. Trump is a growth-minded president. He's going to cut taxes, cut regulation and push business. All of those are inflationary. Even the tariffs he's proposing is inflationary. Now, whether you agree, don't agree, we won't get into that, but everything he's doing is an inflationary concept and that's the key thing. That will bring down interest rates, and so I actually think we'll see elevated interest rates for a while. I think the reset in people's minds has begun to happen. Everyone was 100 year experience, like we just got to get that out of our mind. Five, six, seven percent is very normal. It's what's been around for the last 30 years and I think that's starting to happen. What's interesting here locally is how much new construction drives the housing markets. It's very little resale, very heavy new construction and there's some really big projects that are just starting. That, I think, will push us along pretty quickly.

Speaker 1:

I don't know. I should know this, but we have a supply issue, right? Yeah, I mean that's what it is, but how short do you think we are in the different segments of the market Starter homes, townhomes, multifamily Do you have any of those statistics?

Speaker 4:

Yeah, so nationally've known them. I don't know them locally as well. We have a massive shortage in my if I was to like break it into segments, the starter homes, which I'm going to call 300,000 to 600,000, there's a large shortage in. There's a huge demographic that has been pre-approved, that wants to purchase but just can't at these interest rates, and so we either need prices to come down, which is not going to happen in my opinion, or interest rates to come down. Even if we can just get to the high fives, low sixes, I think we'd see thousands enter the buying market for that range. And there's a legitimate supply issue.

Speaker 4:

Now the next tranche of 700,000 to 1.5, which is the people that are kind of leveling up, trying to find that forever home kind of moving. That's kind of the dead market right now in my opinion. Like if I was a home builder, that's probably where I wouldn't build as much just because interest rates are killing that group. They usually W-2 employed workers. They're living on a budget and adding three $400,000 into your mortgage adds 3000 bucks a month.

Speaker 1:

They just can't do it and it feeds back in, I know you said, where it's kind of a new home buyer's market, but the home they would leave would be the home. So that's kind of where the stagnation is right. Exactly, even in the Treasure Valley we don't have the trade-up. We don't have trade-ups. Yeah, so what gives then? Here for us, supply has got to increase.

Speaker 4:

It's just got to be supply, right? Yeah, I mean, I'm not a home builder, so some home builder is going to listen to this and say he's an 18 to 24 month lag, basically when projects are really starting to people starting to move in. And 18 to 24 months ago is when interest rates started to run, we didn't know what was happening and so home builders pulled back a little bit, and I think that's the last six months we've gone through is the supply hasn't been hitting the market because home builders waited to see what was happening 18 to 24 months before they saw it was good. And that's why I'm saying there's a lot of projects coming. Is I think the next 12 months we'll actually get a decent supply.

Speaker 1:

I think you're spot on um, which should help, and and there are a lot of big, I mean sticking here to the valley. There's a lot of big things happening here um that that should bring, uh, quite a bit of supply on.

Speaker 4:

I mean mean I live in Eagle. The one up north in Eagle, in the foothills, is massive, massive. Yeah, I think it's like 6,000 homes in Phase 1 or something like that. It's huge, a lot of sprawl. Yep, especially that one that one's going to combine Highway 55, highway what is that? Emma Highway, horseshoe Bend Highway it's basically Avamore to. Yeah, it's going to be massive.

Speaker 1:

Yeah and um, yeah, I think you're going to see the way you know, with Highway 16 going in, with that project going in, specifically, with all the expansion going on in CUNA, middleton Star, I mean everywhere. It's just, you know, we're seeing it happen right before our eyes and and you love this place, I mean it the people moving here. That's not going to stop either.

Speaker 4:

I think there needs to be so I was in utah for years, still have a lot of business contacts. I'm there all the time. In utah, the way they fought it is mass town homesomes. Yeah, um, like the townhome projects inside of utah is unreal and no one wants it in their city here, like, you'll see a lot of government officials that get shot down all the time. But we have got to embrace it if we want the millennial generation to be homeowners and move back here because they just cannot afford a five hundred thousand dollar starter home. It's just not gonna happen.

Speaker 1:

Well, and here and here's what I say to anyone that will listen to me, but people don't. But it's not like I think government regulation of getting the way out of this is the worst possible thing that could happen right now for our people and unfortunately, I think there is a desire to control that and then go get government subsidized housing to try to solve this. That is the worst possible thing that anyone could do right now and we may do it. I mean it may happen because of nimbyism, because of really good people who want to do the right thing, so they overregulate the heck out of stuff, the right thing, so they over regulate the heck out of stuff. And what ought to be happening is we ought to have more multi-family, more town homes, more, you know, starter homes, what you just said, more of that.

Speaker 4:

I mean we need all of it and we could get the price point probably down to 250 to 350 if we started building town homes at mass, which would and it's what they've done.

Speaker 1:

To your point. I think, uh, we, we've always I, I always say this and it's probably people get sick of it, but if you go to Salt Lake 10 to 15 years ago, on almost any metric we're facing whether it's transportation or on the housing side or infrastructure, whatever issue we're facing and whatever numbers we're facing if you go down there and say how was this solved by a free market economy that's very much like ours, right, it's a red state, low regulation, good leadership. You know they had Spencer in there doing a great job and you look at the way they've done it and say, well, what did they do and how did it work. You look at some of those communities which are massive townhome communities, and they work, they're nice, they're. I mean, it's not, and so I don't know.

Speaker 1:

I think when you get up here, I think it is people worrying what we got. You look at the city of Meridian like it's been tough to get multifamily through the city. We've had enough of it. You know, ironically, a bunch of people that have moved here from California are saying we don't want any more apartments, right, and then you got the people saying, hey, we don't want our farmland to go away. We don't want any more apartments, we don't want any more growth. Well, unfortunately it's going to happen somewhere, and if we don't, I mean I think we either run our cities or the cities run the leadership right, and the way that they do that is by embracing some of this. Those are great, great thoughts.

Speaker 4:

What's next?

Speaker 1:

for you, by the way, it's like 1043. This is going way too fast. I'm looking at your website. Let's go how to like. First of all, I wanted to get into this. So Fulcrum Home Loans really easy for people to go to if they don't know about you, if they're looking for something, talk about how to just get more information on you, especially if someone's looking for a loan.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, so social media is really easy to find me website. We're a mortgage broker and that's one of the reasons we grew so fast is we were one of the first ones to enter the Idaho market, to really embrace that, and what that means is we're not tied to any one institution, so when you come to us for a mortgage, I don't have to send it to Loan Depot or to Quicken or to Fairway or to wherever. I'm an independent shop and it's harder to run that business, but it's a lot better for the consumer because I get it every single day. I get to shop 100 different institutions and say who has the best rates today? Ok, because it changes day to day, and so that's kind of what we do is we shop for people and by doing that it ends up being a lot cheaper.

Speaker 4:

Like government, hmda came out with the data it's $10,200 cheaper to go through a mortgage broker than a normal mortgage bank in the first year, and so it saves them tons of money and that's why we've seen the fast growth. That we've seen is because that word has spread that you can get a half percent lower over at Fulcrum than you can down the street at Fairway, and so it creates a shareability, and so I just encourage everyone, no matter where you're listening, if we're not in your state, just go to a mortgage broker, because you will most likely get a much lower interest rate yeah, and at a time when that's the pinch point, it makes even more sense, okay, and then social channels yeah.

Speaker 4:

Brayden Fulcrum is my handle on every single channel. Instagram is probably my biggest, that I'm the most consistent on, but we're on TikTok, twitter, youtube, everywhere.

Speaker 1:

Are you making money off this now?

Speaker 4:

I refuse to sell out. So I don't do any sponsored posts. I don't do, you don't. But I stand up businesses, so everything in the financial sector that my followers need. I like to stand up. So I own private equity companies, I own real estate syndication companies, I own mortgage companies, I own the apps, the education. So I stand up every single business inside of the financial literacy sector and that's how I monetize it.

Speaker 1:

One of these days, when you're bored, look up Glenn Stearns.

Speaker 4:

I know him well. He runs Kind Lending now.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, he's a really dear friend of mine.

Speaker 4:

Really yeah A really really really good friend.

Speaker 1:

But when you spend a lot of time with him and you hear his story he's got an incredible story, by the way, of how he started basically homeless teen and he tells a story where he's homeless, had an early teen pregnancy, kind of destitute and he's and he was sitting outside of a big house and he said he called the person over in the yard and said hey, I hope you don't mind me asking, but what do you do here? What did you do to get this? You know what? What did you? What did you do? And it's a funny story because he sits and tells his whole story to this person and then the guy's like, hey, I'm the gardener, that's too funny.

Speaker 1:

But the guy that does this does real estate, yeah, and Glenn's like, oh, I'm going to. So he anyway, he builds his kingdom, right, and but but what? I? I'm getting to the long point here, but he talks about one point where he was sitting there going I am going to own every vertical in everything I do, and that's just what he did. And he actually kind of whiteboarded out what is every dollar we touch, all the way through, from when we greet a customer, all the way through, and we're going to do it better than anyone, we're going to provide the service, and that's what he did. Anyway, great, great guy, stern's lending huge exit, huge success.

Speaker 4:

Just rolled out Kind Lending, yeah. Yeah, I followed him for a while. That's cool to get him.

Speaker 1:

He's a wonderful kid Guy. I was thinking about his kid, skyler but he's a great guy.

Speaker 4:

So there's 1.2 million followers.

Speaker 1:

Is that all man I know? Chump change. I got to get that number up. Oh, this world we live in. Isn't it great to be in America?

Speaker 4:

Yeah, it's so fun, there's so much opportunity, that I mean something like this Like just spend a little bit of time, be consistent, educate yourself.

Speaker 1:

And there is so much opportunity out there for the everyday person. Man, we could do this forever. There's a lot to learn from a guy like you. Um, I think I'm coming. Am I coming on your podcast? Yeah, I think we're flipping, I don't. This is the first time I've, like, had the. I don't get asked to go on things. Yeah, no.

Speaker 4:

I just ask people. I'm excited to flip the script and learn from.