Episode 119 - A New Class of Community with John and Ashely Marsh
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John and Ashely Marsh have dedicated themselves to the resurrection of place in the historic downtown of Opelika, Alabama. Like many small mill towns around the country, Opelika’s main street had deteriorated to a state of hopelessness and disrepair. One historic house in 1998 began a 20-year journey of redeeming a city. Today, their work of restoring over 150 properties and launching 40 small businesses in those 10 square blocks has become the gold standard for small-town revitalization in the state of Alabama. Opelika’s story, an account of beauty from brokenness, mirrors John and Ashley’s personal story. They share more about a new class of community.
All opinions expressed on this podcast, including the team and guests, are solely their opinions. Host and guests may maintain positions in the companies and securities discussed. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as specific investment advice for any individual or organization.
Episode Transcript
Transcription is done by an AI software. While technology is an incredible tool to automate this process, there will be misspellings and typos that might accompany it. Please keep that in mind as you work through it.
John Coleman: Welcome to the Faith Driven Investor podcast. This is John Coleman back with you today. And I'm here with my partner Luke Roush, who appears to be in some sort of fancy hotel.
Luke Roush: Live from Chattanooga, Tennessee. Kinley hotel downtown across the street from Chattanooga. Choo choo. Big times.
John Coleman: How is the Kinley Hotel? It's like a murder hotel, right, Luke? Isn't it famous for some sort of high profile murder?
Luke Roush: That's unclear, but there is a speakeasy in the lobby, which I've been told by others that it's quite a good place to imbibe.
John Coleman: Fantastic. And what are you in Chattanooga for, Luke today? Just leisure, or you [...] ?
Luke Roush: Yeah, we got a little you know, we like to periodically introduce our investors to our CEOs and we're going to have opportunity to do that with couple of companies tomorrow here in Chattanooga and then also over in Huntsville. So big time.
John Coleman: Well, that's fantastic. And I know we're both really excited about today's podcast because we're privilege to welcome folks that we've known for a while, folks that a lot of people have benefited from their wisdom. John and Ash Marsh are here with us, and it's difficult to really encapsulate who these two are because they're entrepreneurs, they're real estate developers, they're creatives, they're counselors. They generate a lot of witty repartee. And so I feel like this will be an edifying and wide ranging discussion for folks today. So, John and Ash, thanks so much for joining us.
John Marsh: It's great to be here. What a great group of guys you are. And thank you for all the work the FDI is doing in the world. And FDE, you are a light in its penetrating dark corners as you share the powerful things you do. So thank you all for the work you're doing is making a difference.
John Coleman: Well, thank you all for the work you're doing, which we're going to hear a lot more about. You know, just to get us started, some folks will be familiar with you, John and Ash, because you've been on the FDE podcast before, you know, some folks in the community. But just for those of you less familiar. Give us a little bit of your story. Where'd you grow up? How did you come to know one another? Your business partners now, as well as life partners, which we'll dig into. But tell us a little bit about how that came about.
Ashley Marsh: So I am from Opelika. I actually grew up in a little mill village here called Pepperell, and I grew up in what was almost like perfect utopia. We had our own school, we had our own churches, we had a little marketplace. It was just wonderful. I honestly did not realize that I grew up on a side of town that was the other side of the tracks until I had to go to school. Somewhere on the other side of the tracks, I realized that we were poor. And so you didn't know until you found out, right? So anyway, I grew up there and just had a very close family as far as all of my family worked at the mill and my uncles, cousins, grandparents, everything. But on along down the line, I meet John at about the whopping age of 18. They'll head over heels. He was my James Dean, a little bit rugged around the edge. A little bit rebellious, actually. A lot bit rebellious. And he was my ticket out of Opelika. And here we are. We're still in Opelika. So that worked so well. My claim to fame with John is I won him on a bet and that is a true story. I got bet that I could get him away from his girlfriend and I'm pretty competitive, so I like to win and there I go. I won them. So he's all mine now.
John Coleman: And it was that a good investment Ash, has that investment paid off?
Ashley Marsh: Yes, it did have some negative interest in the beginning of it, but absolutely it is 100% the best investment I've ever made besides following God.
John Coleman: That's awesome. In private equity, we call that a j curve. It's that little dip before things get better.
Ashley Marsh: Right , right it's a little dip and then it jumps off. Yeah.
John Coleman: That's awesome. And John, you grew up in the area as well or what was your background?
John Marsh: I grew up in Albany, Georgia, about 2 hours south. People like, say, Albany, and that's when, you know, you can know the difference. The test of them is it, is it a pecan or a pecan? Once you know that, you've got a true [..] on whether they're from Albany but ended up here at 18 years old, you know, had this interesting start. My mom and dad tried to have a kid for 13 years. Couldn't adopted me and 18 months later had my little brother. So my mom put the heavy [...] in on me. She said, I've been looking at Anthony baby carrots for ten years. I'm going to love this guy and he can't do anything wrong. So she still sticks with that. And just they gave me this amazing, you know, time of raising one thing. I reached out to my birth parents, and my father had passed away. Birth father. But I found my birth mother in an interesting way and didn't really get to talk to her much. But I did tell her, Hey, I don't know how that choice worked out for you, but it was amazing for me. And so this amazing story that God would take me from this place of where I couldn't be loved because the situation to put in an environment where I was taken care of. So my parents loved me. I never had a real job and I still have it. And I started a business when I was 14, high end car stereos, and then just kept adapting. And I believe the same gifts I use today were the gifts I use in just God has continued to refine them, to see potential, give hope and see beauty and broken stuff. So it's interesting to see that how it's continuing to play out in different iterations. Our purpose was always running under the bottom, even when we didn't use it in a way that honored the gift God had given us, it was still those same things.
Luke Roush: So how did you guys originally get started in the real estate? What was your draw there?
John Marsh: Well, actually, now we're in the, believe it or not, the business. Before that, we were in the wreck used car business. So we built totals, we bought totaled Toyota, forerunners, Land Cruisers, Tundras and Sequoias and fixed them and sold them. I do all the framework and Ash should do the interiors and we're putting these things together. And it was a lot of darned work we put all our money in. One of them, forerunners or Land Cruisers and take us about a month to do three or four of them and we'd be putting our hands on and praying they'd sell. We'd put all our grocery money and everything else, and the days our faith was at a very high level at that time. And then I'd drive to Atlanta and show it in about 50 people until somebody bought it. So from that context, were in the car business one day about this old junky house we lived in, took us six and a half years, one paycheck at a time, live in about a 600 square foot apartment, four of us to fix it. And when we got done, I said, What do you wanna do it? I won't do another one. She said, What's wrong with you? It was so hard, took so long. So I bought the house across the street and I just started realizing, Hey, I think houses are like cars with plumbing, they're same stuff. And I said, Good thing about a house sit still and the car goes 80 miles an hour. And so that was started. We just found junky things that nobody wanted and we say what we can't pay for. We don't have any money. But would you lease them to. For $100 a month or $200 a month will pay you off in five years. We had no way to do that. But come to find out, there's money in real estate. We didn't have any clue. We just. I thought it was interesting and I normally change and don't know it. Like, I'll be changing careers and I don't know. Ash will normally tell me, baby, do you know you're not in that? Like I was saying, I won't do these houses. She said, you already left the car business. I said, No, I'm not. I got cars to do in the shop. She's like, No, your heart is left. You're in the house business now. I am, huh? So that's kind of how we got going.
John Coleman: That's fantastic. And Ash, was it is immediate for you that you developed a passion for I mean, this is a peculiar type of investing kind of car flipping than moving the house flipping, I guess. When did it click for you or how did you get passionate about that?
Ashley Marsh: I've actually always loved restoration on old houses and historical items and honestly, I think John never really saw a historical homes when we first met. The same way that I saw them, he kind of look past them. But once your eyes get opened to not just the history of it, but the actual value of the craftsman and everyone that worked on it and how it really impacted the culture at the time and the community at the time. It just changes how you look at them. But my grandparents and my dad were all craftsmen, so I was always around people building, whether it's building a room or a garage or spindles on a table or whatever. So I've always just loved it and putting my hands to things.
John Coleman: That's awesome. And at what point did you realize this was going to be a successful model? So you're living in this, you know, 600 square foot apartment. You're rehabbing that and moving on to something else. Obviously, it's grown into something far beyond that. But was there an inflection point where you thought, man, we actually we're not just passionate about this, but this is a good idea. We can make money doing this.
John Marsh: It took a long time, I mean, definitely, real long time. Like, how could people be so slow kind of time? It was, like I said, slowly but slowly it was revealed Ash and I fixed our house. We're in the middle of a hood and they're like, Why are you fixing it so nice? This place is junky. And so we imagined we'd never get the money out of it. We spent on it at the time we took it, but we started fix another house and be honest what got it. So I started doing construction work and I was doing other people's jobs. And so me and Ash start a construction company with like 12 or 1300 dollars. And that's what we started. I just started taking jobs and I didn't know anything about this, mind you, but I'm just taking a moment. And pretty soon we got like ten or 11 construction jobs going. We're giving fix pricing and guaranteed time frames like we did on the cars. And nobody told us we shouldn't do that.
Ashley Marsh: All right. I won't have to interrupt him completely because he's not telling you something. So whenever we first started, he was taking on every job he could find. If it was rebuilding a closet for someone, he was doing it and he was loving it. But what he was loving about it wasn't that he was using his hands, is that in the middle of doing this, he was meeting all of these people and they were having church where he was. So he would be in there doing sheet rock in a closet and they would be in there talking about scripture. And it just kept going to the place to where people really wanted us or our crew to be on their sites because we were really bringing the presence of just the true spirit of God there and there was peace around us. And so word of mouth is what spread that. And the next thing you know, it was like John said in that place that we look up and you got ten full construction jobs and it's like, oh my gosh. And then everyone calling and asking, can you move this house? Can you help restore this? Can you come downtown? It's like you got a really big, really fast. And I believe that's just the true nature of organic, right? That God shows sometimes [...]blesses it.
John Marsh: Well and the thing we didn't know, so I didn't have any crew. So I just got guys from the car business because they seem like they yeah, it is like a car with plumbing. And so we started working on the house. We didn't have any construction people, just car people. And then we started saying we need more workforce. And I realized that if I could go pick up the work release guys, we pick them up at five or 6 a.m. and take them back at five or six and they lay it out on you. I can tell you that they want to go. And so we had a whole crew of work release people and so we're having a Bible study every morning, them guys getting saved by the truckloads. It was just it was crazy stuff and we didn't know what we're doing. Just telling people about this crazy God we found that loves idiots and we're fixing stuff that nobody else would fix. And we thought, man, this is so much fun. I said, I see opportunity. I feel like a mosquito in a nudist colony. I just don't know where to start when there's so much opportunity. And it started making me trip breakers and there was everybody wanted me and I liked it. And then the city came to me and said, Buddy you got to get some license. I got to have license as they're like, Yeah, you can't be doing this much work without a builder's license. So I had to go take study and take the builders test so I could get some license.
Ashley Marsh: And, you know, in that too, John, the amazing thing is being trusted with a little as always, God blesses you with much and the little that we were being entrusted with. I mean, we're talking about thousands of dollars at a time. We weren't doing as big a deal as we're doing right now. Actually when I started our checking account for our construction company, we had $1172 and that was it. That was all we had and we had to be really wise stewards of that. But even with the men that John was going and picking up at work release, he developed such a trust with our judicial system and the judges and everything that they would call and actually ask, Hey, can we place this person with you guys? Because we know that you'll be faithful to teach them and to steward them as a relationship. And so we had a lot of young men come out of that that actually started their own businesses. And it's just been incredible to see that God blessed us in the midst of us really not knowing what we doing and just being willing to be faithful to what we had.
John Marsh: I think of one young man that came recently, has a huge roof, the commercial roofing company. I got him out on work release as a college kid that got a DUI and he was locked up. And then he did something else and got locked up. We got out on work release, learn roofing with us, and now he's running, I mean, a monstrous roofing company. So it's interesting. We just said it isn't just witnessing this witness. I just tell him, go stand beside that Godly guy that's done, got healed. And he just when he goes to bathroom, you sit outside the door. When he goes to lunch, you're sitting with him. You commit two years. You do that. You read your one, your Bible, you pray, and you come to work every day. And I'm telling you, your life will change. And they have.
Luke Roush: So it's not just witnessing, it's with ness. And I think that, you know, it's not just actually fixing broken buildings, but also what you're really getting at is actually how God might use you guys to be participating in fixing broken people, of which we all are broken people. And you've made a comment before, John, around the way you approach real estate and the passion that you have for it is a mixture of making both your economics teacher and your Sunday school teacher proud. Talk through that a little bit. What does that mean? What does that look like?
John Marsh: Well, and a lot of that came from the original ad. Jess Corrals helped me a lot with thinking this through, because it it really is a challenge. But what God showed me when we were idiots and broke is that the answers and fishes and loaves you measure, you manage, you multiply. And what happens is you measure, you manage, God multiplies. That's, you know, one of the fruits of the kingdom is the fruits are love, like multiplication. When you see multiplication, when God showed up everywhere. And so what we began to realize is that if we didn't measure things well, how in the world could we manage them and how could God multiple them? So we were just as passionate about investing in the broken lives and making movement, whether it's get them a budget, get them read in one year. Bible a good thing about reading the one year Bible We love you get a bunch of guys reading the one your Bible. You link up when you read the same piece of God's word over and over. Not have guys. Did you see what David did? I was like, God said he loved him. I know he missed the dang thing. Was I bad as him? So we get on the same page and what we began to realize we want to move their lives and help them understand that if they measured and they manage their money according to God's word, it would multiply. But if they did that with their life and their family, it would multiply. And so that's how if we don't feel like if we can only please the economics teacher and not the Sunday school teacher or the Sunday school teacher, not the economics teacher. It's not for us. That's our spot is to do both. And to be honest with you, we don't consider deals any other way.
John Coleman: When you're coming out of look, what's interesting is you're not traditional real estate investors. You dove in headfirst kind of fixing these places up, a totally different model, getting guys off work release, you know, patching together these teams. Not unlike how we brought Luke on the sovereign's team. Actually, a bit unusual in the in the real estate space. You had to have made some mistakes along the way. It couldn't have all been smooth, you know, as you built that, what did you what did you learn from some of the mistakes you made along the way?
John Marsh: I think my heart sinks when you say that. How many mistakes we made our not to do list is beautiful. We had tons of times where we felt like, you know, we called the defecation to hit the ventilation. We just did the dumbest stuff you can think of. But the challenging thing was that we didn't know and didn't have anyone who could help us. So some of the problems we were doing, number one, is we you know, we didn't understand that the mindset to go from being a worker to a leader to an investor, all those are chasms to get over when you're broke and right. I mean, one is I just got to survive. They're like, I put everything on the line when you didn't have nothing. That's like putting up nothing, you know? I mean, you didn't put any down if you don't have anything, but then you start building and stuff starts moving and you, you have a little bit. And what one of our mentors did he told us, he said, John, you see what the guys in the construction business you're working with, their vehicles are a pickup truck for Tempest Beyers, also because he owned a band good tires. So he said, you won't drive the kind of truck they drive and live the way they live. I said, no, Sir. He said do nine jobs for other people and do one for yourself. And so he gave us this mindset of beginning to put some back and do some yourself. What that did is really helped us understand. But as we began and I hope we get to some more the investing part for us as investors, we did in my number one failure in business. I think in the early days it was that we played amateur providential assist sometimes in other people's life and ended up hurting people. Because I had the gift to understand business, we could put money behind them and sometimes we'd put money behind people without experience that didn't have the character to handle it, and we just helped them crash a car at a higher speed. And that's probably one of the biggest things we messed up with our investment dollars. We call it a rent a Dream program. We needed rent and they had a dream and we'd invest in them and just it produced a dang mess.
Luke Roush: So, you know, I'm so glad you brought this up because it's, I think, something that a lot of leaders wrestle with as companies grow. You've got to be able to recruit other people who can do what you've done previously, and you've got to be willing to let them stub their toes. You just got to make sure that they don't, you know, end up with a massive chest wound, but like stubborn toes, skin and knees. That's okay. How do you figure out what the guardrails are as you invest in individuals? What is sort of okay kind of learning by doing and some amount of minor failure in that versus know total high speed wreck. How do you make those judgment calls? Ashley and John.
Ashley Marsh: Yeah, honestly, we've learned that we want to make sure that we spend time with people and understand who they are at the core of how God made them and how they really process information, how they make decisions, how they show up, whether they're under stress or not. And that has been key for us to really work well with our team and work well with our clients that we're bringing on. So if we were looking to like we actually had a young man that came and visited with us not too long ago about opening a catering business. And he's a wonderful young man and we really like him. But just to be honest with him, to say that we don't know you and the capacity of how you handle your money, how do you steward your time? How are you behind the closed doors with your wife? How are you whenever you are with your. And that sounds like you're getting too personal, but those are the things that drive how people really will show up whenever pressures happen. And what we were doing previously, like John said, was we were doing it off of what we thought their capacity was or we were doing it all our belief or our hope for them. And that's a lot of weight for someone else to carry, you know, whenever they think, you know, I believe in you so much. So now you have to run and succeed and they'll give it all they have, but they only have so much of that. And so John and I spent a lot of time doing due diligence where the people that we're working to invest in, whether it's our time or our money resources, because both of those are very obviously very valuable. One of them can be reproduced and one of them cannot. So, you know, to us, our comm is the most valuable thing that we can give to someone. So what do you have to say about that?
John Marsh: Well, two or three things. One thing I'd say is people don't see the world as it is. They see it as they are. And so we get like give you an example. We build restaurants now sometimes in service of growing downtown's hospitality businesses. And we'd have a fine dining chef come to us to say, and this happened to us, cost us a bunch of money. So it was a good one. He came to us, said, I'd like to just open a simple hotdog place. Well, next thing you know, we got $12 hot dogs because he's gourmet in. I'm up. No matter what somebody tells you, they're going to be who they are, not what they want. And so if you got a fine dining guide, don't think you're going to get them a hot dog because that thing will go gourmet. He'll be toast on both sides of the bun and putting all kind of special sauce on it. And so we realized we got to ask ourselves, who are they and their identity, because identity drives behavior. The second thing with that is doing this personality test, you want to ask yourself, are they a future voice or a present voice? Do they stand in the present and go, okay, tell me what is or do they stand in the future and go Tell me what could be? Because the stand in the future kind of people say and tell me what could be like me. We're highly excitable and sometimes I think we're guilty of being high energy. Low IQ was a powerful combination. I mean, you give some stuff started, but like Ash one time she gave me a representation because she would be running all the money and back in before she took over all the companies a number of years ago, which made me feel a little bad because she's done such a good job and made me look like I was less intelligent than I even think I was. But so anyway, we're standing at the dryer and she says, Hey baby. And I'm talking. Waved my hands. Oh, baby, did what I won't do. I won't do this. She'd hand me a box, had me something else had me. This reason my arms are slam full. And I said, What do you want me to do with all this stuff? She says, That's what you do to me. And so I would just keep piling stuff on, starting stuff, getting excitable. About the time, something new, the honeymoon went out of it. I jump out and hand it over to her. Now this thing, I've got it going. And somebody needs to make this like a trade journal down. And so we run now off a EOS type of system that we've adapted for our marriage. And for our business, which we call visionary integrator, the same way they do, we believe we need a Wall and a Roy Disney and everything we're building. And if we're going to invest in and we've got to have somebody who's going to make the trains run on time and somebody who's going to get excited and stir stuff up.
John Coleman: Well, talk to me. So one of the things you all touched on that I love so much is you've talked so much about the importance of the individual person that you're investing in. And I think Luke and I see this across asset classes right now. You think entrepreneurs or owner operators or others, the person is what you're evaluating almost first before you look at anything else. But there is a lot of complexity to the type of real estate investing that you all are doing, particularly as you've approach to rejuvenating whole towns like Opelika. You've really taken a lot of ownership. Talk to us about the mission of the real estate investing that you have now and things like community revitalization and how that intersects with good business principles for the types of investments that you choose.
John Marsh: Well, one thing we say is we call the work we do now, we've coined it irreplaceable real estate. The reason we say is irreplaceable is it's been built by people who don't live anymore with materials we don't have anymore and methods we don't do anymore with entitlements we can't get approved anymore. So that makes it special. And then when you layer Ash's gift of hospitality, which is her gift, and that definition is I thought of you before you got here. She said, that's what God did to her and does to us. We layered that and great programing over it. We get something that's quite incredible. And so our main focus now is helping. Now ten cities steward large amount of real estate where over 1,000,000,007 in depth in the portfolio size that we're in. We're helping them steward to make economic, social and spiritual capital. And we want it to make all three. I mean, that's the story of the Good Samaritan is economic, social and spiritual capital. But people think the money is the problem and we believe the money for us has never been the problem. Money follows vision. Vision doesn't follow money. You don't get money. And then the vision come clear. You get a good vision, a clear plan. And so first thing we do is have models, okay? We model everything. Our business approach should look any private equity, any other real estate investor ought to appreciate and see sophisticated real estate development approach to it. Now we do it in a multidisciplinary way. We look from the very top and from the very bottom. We look from the investors point all the way through the deals, through construction, development, all these things. But we also go to the operators point. And so some of the questions we say is not just how much can we make in rent or our return, but how much should we make, and then how can we align above that? So if we're starting a restaurant, we'll say, let's give them the best ramp we can. We'll go in, maybe invest in the business, in the leader, and then we'll also have the real estate and we'll give them the best rate we can to get a break even. But then we ratchet up more percentage based rents as they succeed. Because they're succeeding, we want to. And remember, in the restaurant business, the first millions got a little bit of money in. Second got more, thirds got more. It's exponential because the hard costs don't go up so much. And so it's bringing sophisticated filters and alignment to that whole value chain. That's the way we believe from every bit like some cities, our largest city, Winter Haven, Florida, they bought up a good bit of 80 blocks of downtown. It's close to a $200 million portfolio and 100 million of that, or close, was raised from 60 locals. So it's a community development fund with some very unique characteristics of getting liquidity when they need it of ownership and care in a city you're in of a distribution model that makes sense. I mean, these are the powerful alignment tools of placemaking that we think allow us to forge and pioneer what we're calling a new asset class of real estate, which is irreplaceable real estate, historic downtowns, lovingly restored and curated in a sophisticated way.
Luke Roush: So one of the things I've heard you speak about before is this idea of starting lines, finish lines and deadlines. How do you kind of overlay those constructs in with this idea of irreplaceable real estate?
John Marsh: So, Ash, I'll let you maybe you want to tell a little bit about like how we work with these projects from hospitality and other things, how we layer that in to doing deals like say, for example, we did pass social or something like that. How did you in time that team of hospitality focus on that?
Ashley Marsh: So what I believe we do really well is we help people remember their story and they end to understand that what they're selling is the experience, not the business. It's really easy, I believe, for creatives to think that they just have a great idea and they have a plan with that idea, but they don't really understand the execution of it. And it's a daily execution of beauty, of experience, of knowledge and execution. And so our team comes in and actually make sure that they understand their story, understand who they are, and. That story and understand how to actually bring the client or the customer into their role in the story. You know, that's one of the things we do. The other things I think that we do really well, and that is making sure that we hold the proper attention on the vision and don't let them get astray on it. Because as we all know, because we are entrepreneurs, it's really easy, especially if you're married to an excitable entrepreneur. It's very easy to get distracted with shiny things and new things and, you know, new opportunities or new ideas. And we'll pivot and change and pivot change. That's very expensive and it takes a lot of time and it gets you off all those deadlines. So, you know, making sure that you have people on your team that are working with you, like John said, that you got to have that visionary that's out there doing those things and helping you hold that vision, that helping you also dream big. And then to have the other person or people that are there to keep things in order and check in on the timeline and making sure that the construction happened the way it needs to happen and so forth. So that's how we I think we work well with making sure we have those timelines and deadlines and making sure we meet those and honoring the vision.
John Marsh: We say we're like general contractors for vision, but what we do is we created we took a scrum method from software development, the Agile process, and we adapted it for project and city and community development. And so we run two weeks sprints with teams, we have a backlog, we have an upcoming sprint, we have a current sprint, we have a refined sprint, we have a done sprint, and we run two week intervals with that with the week in between, being an agile meeting between one of our team leaders and their team leader. And so it's holding the tension on the 20% of the things that if they don't, our special attention will never get done. And what we do is we draw lines in the sand because everybody works better. If you got a deadline, we have to get to something. So we'll set a launch for a restaurant, we'll set a log for hotel. We tell them to listen. Now you can wait until the end and work 24 hours a day. People going to sit and in wet paint. But we're open and we don't care. We are where we ahead. We're going to do it. And we've always worked good. We don't do projects without a deadline because one thing about making a plan and making a deadline is not just what it does, it's what it does to you. It makes something of you to set a deadline. And so we do that with them and we make sure we line up the economics to it to where they get it incentivized, excited about it. Everybody on the project should be excited about hitting that deadline. And we don't we don't miss deadlines. It's just not what we do. We tell them, come hell or high water, we're going in 24 hours. If we get close, we ain't going to make it. So we get real, but we don't fix pricing, guaranteed time frames, construction for all these years. And if you didn't do well, you wouldn't been in business very long.
Luke Roush: So that's I think that's powerful. You know, it speaks a little bit to the whole salt and light thing. If all you are is light, but there's no salt and then, yeah, every project ends up slipping past. So you got to be able to have both. And from my observer's perch, seems like you guys dance on that line. Really, really. Well, one of the things I want to come back to is this idea of irreplaceable real estate. And, you know, just as investors kind of marketers, we always think about kind of market size. I'd love to hear y'all riff just for a couple of minutes on the market size for small towns in America that need to have life breathed back into them and both TLC, but also some accountability and redevelopment. Maybe just speak to how big is that opportunity? It certainly is bigger than the two of you can do that maybe for our listeners or other people who are out there in the real estate arena that might be thinking about trying to infuse more meaning in what they do day to day, maybe just share a little bit of how big are we talking about?
John Marsh: And that's a good question. I mean, I just know it's it's so big that it breaks my guessing machine like when I think as far out as I could take, I go, oh my gosh, it's bigger. I tell Ash, I feel like as a baby, even a blind dog, go find the bone. We have landed on something that is amazing. I get so darn excited about it. And it's because, I mean, we're already stewarding the type of portfolios we talked about and we're just getting started. So, I mean, it's billions and billions and billions of dollars and the greenest houses that exist are ones that already exist, not ones we'll build. And the most attainable houses that exist are the ones we don't have to build. They exist. And the most amazing materials that were trees that from the time that Adam was here till we cut them exist, hidden up in these historic structures. I mean, think about today, they want to make and say that a sheet rock box would drive it on. It is worth the same thing as my 100 year old building with a two foot thick masonry wall. That's beautiful. I mean, that's dumb. That's some banker said that the dadgum amortization term determines value. Well, that's only if you're looking out 20 years. We're looking 50 or a hundred. We're asking ourselves, what can we do for the good of our city that would last 50 years and no one be able to undo it? So I'm dreaming. I was talking to a guy recently, two guys I've had called me in the last six months that said, John, we'd like to deploy a half a billion dollars in the things that you're doing this type of work from families that were out of the country, one in Hong Kong, another one Brazil. And then we will deploy it for 50 years. And so I believe that what we're talking about, the cost of redeployment of capital and the velocity of capital is so powerful if you can do it over generations and understanding that, gosh, what we have is irreplaceable, they're not building another downtown Opelika or any other small town. And you just think how many small towns we drive through that sit there with embedded value that people don't know how to do anything with. And you know, if you ask them, they say, Can we do something with it? It's impossible. And so our job is to take people from impossible to possible, but probable. We've proven this model can be done in towns as small as 3000. So, yes, it's everywhere. I mean, everywhere we go, I'm tripping breakers are told, Ash we gotta buy this place. Like you say, that everywhere we go. I just think it's amazing. So our goal now we started doing this, didn't know what to charge, but we had godly people. We did it for fees, then we started doing it fees and we did some equity. So we're they're partners. The third iteration of this is fees, equity, and we bring capital. That's what we're doing now a lot of times. And so I think the fourth iteration will be imagine if there was a sophisticated design instrument, a fund that could bring shared services to this type of work, could restore cities, and could give people like Ash and I and others a way to have liquidity at some point for generations to put it in there, a stewardship vehicle that could look out 50, 75 and a hundred years like we do for our portfolio. We're over 275 properties we've done in our city. We still own over 200 and we've never taken outside capital. We put our butts on the line personally, guaranteed it all the way through. And so imagine what we could do with a little bit of a little bit of additional horsepower.
John Coleman: Amen, man, I'm like ready to open my wallet and move to Opelika after that.
Ashley Marsh: You should it is the center of the universe. So, I mean, you'd be in a great place.
John Coleman: That's right. That's right. Well, we're going to pivot to a very fun topic, I think, Luke, we almost have to employ a lightning round here. It would be a violation of our fiduciary duty not to. But just very briefly, before we do that, talk about Faith again. Ash talked about it at the beginning. Obviously, you're casting a vision for community here, but on a day to day basis, how does faith influence your investment strategy? To tie that together for us.
John Marsh: Two things. I'll say actually and give it to you. One is unity and others peace. If Ash and I are not in unity, we don't move because the place of unity is the place of command and blessings. We want unity between each other, unity with the spirit we get on our knees and ask God. And then with also we want the multitude of godly counselors. There's wisdom. But then that second thing is peace. We believe the place of peace is a place of power. And so we look for people of peace and places of peace, and we want to operate in projects that have peace around them. And so if those two aren't there, we don't go forward.
Ashley Marsh: So I totally agree with John, but also the fact of Paul's being sensitive to when the spirit says, hey, pay attention and pause for a minute. We actually had one of our mentors give us a question yesterday that he just like I just I would like to throw this question to you for you to consider. For you and Ash to talk about and consider. And whenever John brought it to me, instead of, you know, blowing up and thinking, but we've already decided we know God is going to bless him. We already [...]. It's like you have to pause a minute and say, Hey, wait a minute. You know, this is an opportunity for us to again hear really the direction God wants us to go and to remember that he is the one that directs our path, you know? And so it's like allow that allow that movement to happen and to be adjusted. And that sensitivity brings the greatest peace into our home, I believe, and into our businesses and everything, because we will absolutely slam on the brakes if God tells us to stop right in the middle of the road and don't care if we get creamed. It's just like it is what it is and all of the other things of unity. John and I had such a broken marriage and so many broken parts in our business very early on that when we found the unity and the peace that God gave us, we refused to move from it. And so staying unified and trusting God, honoring one another, honoring the gifts of each other that keeps us in that place of unity. We can be effective there.
John Coleman: That's awesome, y'all. So we are going to conclude before asking you for a good scripture reference at the end with a short lightning round. The rules are Luke and I will pose a question and then we'd love to get 15 seconds responses from y'all. So short and sweet. I'll kick us off and then pitch it over to Luke. Best and worst investment you've made.
John Marsh: Best investments buying up a downtown when nobody wanted it. The worst investment we made, we allowed somebody to sell a restaurant to a new operator and learn to find out that the guy who can fly a 747 can't necessarily build one. That cost us a couple million bucks.
Luke Roush: I got one for Ash and then my turn around and John get an opportunity as well. Ash, what's your favorite saying that John uses and you can't use the mosquito in a [...] Because that's my favorite. That one's off limits. But anything else is fair game.
Ashley Marsh: Oh, my gosh. Okay, so we actually have a thing called John isms and it's an actual language. And I don't know if you ever used to watch VeggieTales, but I used to tell him all the time, you know, you can't correct the language of the king is what the little cucumber said. Anyhow, I would say dumb as a sack of hammers is one that's a really good one. Doesn't translate well in other countries, by the way. They don't know what to do with that. What do you say? Let's see another way. Because he uses my speech in the nudist colony a lot. I'll have to go back on the second one. Dumb. Yeah.
John Marsh: I'm saving that.
John Coleman: One. I'm saving that one.
John Marsh: One of mine is the goal is to disappoint you at a rate you'll stand. And we're on a journey that looks like a detour.
Ashley Marsh: Oh, I've got a word. He uses two words that he uses that are so interesting to me. He says a goalds with a D and insteaed of goals, and he says "miracle" instead of miracle. I don't know if that's a Southern twang ism or a that's just his words.
John Marsh: Well, in the goal of our companies is front row seats to miracles.
John Coleman: That's awesome.
John Marsh: You know, we say, God, we want front row seats to miracles. 50 yard line seats, God, they got to be our miracles. But we want to close. We want to see that. And I guess the other thing is that, you know, as you think about this, I say marriage is complicated. It's more complicated than your transmission. And I used to think it was just about sex and supper, but there's a lot more to it. Oh.
John Coleman: I feel like The Lightning Round actually just led itself to a conclusion there. Luke, we got a lot of good aphorisms and we love to conclude this podcast just by asking each of you, if you don't mind, for a piece of scripture that's really influencing you right now that you're learning from just to take us home. So John and Ash, anything that you're reading in the Bible right now, it's really changing the way that you see things so that you'd like to share.
John Marsh: I can start, I guess, well, it's this Galatians 2:20. You know, the idea that we are crucified with Christ and not I live, but Christ lives in me on further study that word is co crucified. Not only are we co crucified, we're co resurrected. And so something happened a very long time ago, this very significant today that we've been co resurrected. We don't get eternal life once we know when we have it. I'm riding in the dark suit, but all the power that raised Christ from the dead inside this crazy person and that just blows my socks off. You know, the fact that God loves idiots and he's got a plan, and if I've got hope for my future, I got power in my present.
John Coleman: Wow that's powerful. What? Speaking to you Ash?
Ashley Marsh: Well my scripture that I always hold on to and I come back to is Jeremiah 29:11, which is I know the plans I have for you, but the actually what I love is in Jeremiah 13 reads on his life plans to prosper you not harm you. And he goes into saying The very place that I've caused you to be driven and held captive is the place I'll deliver you from and. There was a time in mine and John's life where we tried to escape Opelika. I mean, hard. We tried so hard to get out of here. I mean, we felt like this is not where we were supposed to be after we reconciled our marriage, after we crashed businesses, all the things that were happening. And God brought us back here to use us as a seed and to be used so beautifully. And so that is my scripture. And it I keep it in my mind and my prayers every day is that he's the one that knows the plans and he's the one that caused us to be here. And it's such a blessing to be here.
John Coleman: Wow. That's powerful, y'all. Well, I'll tell you, doing a podcast with y'all is like being a mosquito in a nudist colony. That was a lot of fun. I think we could talk to y'all forever. And I know we're really grateful both for the work y'all are doing out there with these irreplaceable communities, the way in which you're lifting up individuals within those communities, and also just for sharing that wisdom with us and with the community here. So thanks so much. It was great to have you on.
Ashley Marsh: Thank you.
Luke Roush: Appreciate all you.
John Marsh: Thank you guys.