This is a special episode for me because I'm inviting you to listen in on a conversation with my good friend and mentor, Louis Stone.

Louis, who I called Dr. Stone, was my last professor in my days at Clemson University, and he also helped me to get started in real estate.

When I was 22 years old, I would bounce ideas and strategies off him. I would ask him endless numbers of questions.

He would go look at properties with me, and ultimately, I got money from him to do deals, both as a part off him. I would ask him endless numbers of questions. He would go look at properties

with me. And ultimately, I got money from him to do deals, both as a partner and as a lender for over

20 years. But more than that, Dr. Stone is a thinker. He was my personal Socrates. That ancient

Greek philosopher used to challenge his students with really tough questions.

So some of my favorite times with Dr. Stone have been walking on the nature trails that we have

here in the Clemson area and just philosophizing for hours. Of course, talking about real estate

and business, but also talking about literature and culture and history and every subject under the

sun. So you're going to hear one of those conversations.

It's going to be focused mainly on real estate and business,

but I hope you benefit from the generous mind of my mentor and friend as much as I do.

Enjoy.

So Dr. Stone, I've told lots of stories about when I first met you, actually, all the way back at Clemson University. And I was, and for people who haven't heard this story, I was, I graduated.

I was a pre-med major. I thought biology was my thing. But I had this little inkling that business and entrepreneurship would be fun. And I took your class, a management class, and my version of the story, I'm going to tell the brief version of my version of story, but I've never heard your version of that story. I think it would be kind of fun. My version of the story is I'm sitting in class, you're just kind of blowing my mind with some of the stuff you're talking about. Not only the topic of the class, but also what you were doing outside of class, you were talking about you're riding around, you're buying properties, you were, it sounded like your lifestyle. I said, I want that. I want to ride around and not have to go sit in that desktop. Absolutely. And then the next story, part of the story was I bugged you a bunch after class saying, how

do you do this? How do you this? And you're like, Chad, why don't you just, let's go have lunch. And that lunch and being able to go talk to you after class was like a fork in the road for me because I didn't go the other way. I said, I want to be like Dr. Stone. But I'm curious to hear your version of the story because I know a lot

of people are intimidated to go talk to a person who's more experienced. How did you think

about it when I was up there just bugging you to come right around with you?

No, I really enjoyed it. I tried to encourage that because it was a big auditorium class.

And you know, there's a very little personal interaction in a room full of 100 people.

And so I was trying to encourage a few people, hey, let's take another, 10 minutes early.

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