Ep38: Remembering Together | A Memorial Episode for Our Co-Host Earl Cline

[00:00:00] Ben Waller
You see somebody's potential and they might be missing some piece, but if you were able to lead them in the right direction, it'll help your company and it'll also help them in their life, be a better person, a better employee, et cetera. And that's something that Earl was good at. 

[00:00:13] Podcast Intro
You are working professional but struggling to balance the workload of your career, family obligations, and preparing for your financial future. If so, this podcast is for you. You've spent years learning your craft, and now it's time to focus on your financial future. This podcast will teach you what you need to retire wealthy and happy. Let's dive in. 

[00:00:35] Ben Waller
Hunter Thompson once said life should not be a journey to the intention of arriving safely. In a pretty well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out and loudly proclaiming, wow, what a ride today's episode will be different from our other episodes. The purpose of this episode is to honor and pay tribute to our friend, business partner and co-host Earl Cline. Earl Cline unexpectedly passed away recently doing something that he loved. In today's episode, we're going to share the story of what happened, some great memories that we have of him, and also a few things that we've learned from Earl. Today, I'm honored to have my co host Roger Jacobson with me to help honor Earl. Roger, thanks for being here today and for being willing to share your thoughts with us. 

[00:01:27] Roger Jacobsen
This is going to be a tough one. Earl was a great mentor, friend. Father, brother, motorcycle buddy of ours. And so we're going to do our best to keep this fun and upbeat to share the good light and the happiness and kind of tell people what happened and just pay a tribute to our good friend and buddy.

[00:01:48] Ben Waller
Thanks, Roger. So why don't we start out with the story of what happened? And like you said, we want to keep this a positive tone and really remember the great things about Earl. But will you tell us where Earl was and why he was there when he passed away? 

[00:02:02] Roger Jacobsen
Sure. So we've done several motorcycle rides over the time that have been business associated. We've gone down and checked out our apartments in Albuquerque road motorcycles. There had a little fun offshoot. We've seen different places like Forrest Gump lookout in the road trip to our business meetings, Earl had several bucket list rides that he wanted to do. He was a big-time motorcycle guy. And this one was riding up to Yellowstone and the Beartooth highway. So we were just going for a fun ride. We had me, Bonnie, Earl had his son, and then we had a third motorcycle with Steve Garrett. We were doing a ride that was an incredibly beautiful ride. It was a bucket list ride that Earl had wanted to do.

[00:02:49]
And we tried to get a bunch of people with us to go ride up to Yellowstone and then the Beartooth highway. We ended up with three. Thursday night, the July 6th, we went from Salt Lake City to Idaho Falls, went to the falls there and stayed the night. On Friday, we went and did some Yellowstone rides, went through, saw some bison and stuff like that. And then Saturday, we did the Beartooth Highway. The Beartooth Highway is a scenic byway that is not the fastest way to go. It's closed until mid May and then it closes again in October. And it's beautiful switchbacks up a steep mountain and an incredible ride. We had finished the highway. We had done the whole entire thing. We had come within a mile of Cook City. We'd stopped and seen the tooth that is the Beartooth in the pictures. Took pictures, gave high fives, and then within a mile of Cook City, there was an accident and Earl passed away. 

[00:03:49] Ben Waller
Uh, if you don't know this, Earl Cline suffered from COVID almost two years ago, and he almost passed away from his COVID experience, and We would talk to him almost every day while he was recovering and he kept saying to us, I can't wait to get out of here so I can get back on my motorcycle because he loved motorcycling. It was his passion. His love. I mean, I always joked with him that I wasn't sure if he liked real estate or motorcycles more. And I would say motorcycles probably won out most of the time, but we were glad that he was able to make it through covid and have a couple more years to spend with his family. And we're all sad that he passed away unexpectedly. It's devastating. And again, we're trying to be positive on today's episode because Earl Cline had a lot of great things that we want to remember him for. And he truly will be missed. So in honor of that, let's talk about some great memories that we have of a role so that we can focus on the positive and the impact that he had on all of our lives. So Roger, you and I were joking a little bit earlier about the jukebox story. Can you tell our audience about the jukebox story with Earl? 

[00:04:52] Roger Jacobsen
Yeah. So Earl was a coach for many people. He did coaching for commercial real estate and real estate in general for Robert Kiyosaki, Nick Vertucci, couple others. And he would have students that would ask him the same question. And as he'd go into these questions. It would be like the same answer to the same question, sometimes daily, weekly, all that. And so he'd say, Oh, well, this is like the jukebox repeating song number 18, hit button number 18. And yeah, the way I check out a MSA is by going through embedding their job growth and house growth and relating and, you know, so on and so forth, like this question is the top 20 and number five, I'm going to hit the jukebox number and he'd just go into his rattle out the same story. And that's how he dealt with it. It was pretty funny. Why don't you tell us about his VW bus analogy?

[00:05:48] Ben Waller
Yeah, so this is one of his jukebox stories that Roger and I have probably heard a hundred times like Roger was saying he was a coach and one of the reasons people would come to him for coaching is to help them become financially free and to use real estate to do that. So people would come to him and say, I want to be financially free and Earl would ask them, what's your plan? When do you want to be financially free? Most of them would say, well, I'd like to be financially free in the next couple of months or as soon as possible. And as Earl would start flushing out their situation and asking them questions, he would learn that these people had a lot of debt. They had a ton of monthly expenses, they had large houses, maybe some toys, RVs, et cetera. And he would tell them that, well, I can help you achieve your goal of financial freedom in the next couple months if you're willing to do everything that I tell you. And they would say, yeah, I'll do absolutely anything.

[00:06:36]
You just tell me, I'll get it done. And he would tell them, well, I need you to sell your house, I need you to sell all your toys, and you're going to buy a VW bus, an old VW bus, and you're going to park it on the beach. You're going to live in this VW bus, and during the day, you're going to go and you're going to fish. You're going to get fish and half the fish you'll keep you'll eat those and the other half you'll sell and you'll live off of the earnings from the fish that you sell. And if you're willing to do that, if you're willing to sell everything and have this really simple lifestyle, you can be financially free in just a couple months.

[00:07:07]
And obviously, most people would say, well, I'm never going to do that because I like my lifestyle. The point of the story. Gaining financial freedom is different for every person. And if you're willing to live a very simple lifestyle, gaining financial freedom is not that complicated. If you want to live a luxurious, lavish lifestyle, then you have to create a lot more passive income for yourself so that you can live that lifestyle. And we just love that VW bus story because he sort of joked about doing that at some point in the future with a motorcycle, obviously. He would be on a motorcycle, but yeah, that's one of our favorite stories that he would tell on a very constant basis. 

[00:07:45] Roger Jacobsen
I think that's pretty funny because he's been telling that for so long that the VW buses went from like a couple of grand to now, if you look at them, they have these specials that are restored and these things are a hundred, 150, 000. Like they're one of the most expensive exclusive vehicles that are is. And he's been telling that story for like 20 years. And the appreciation on those buses has been just huge. 

[00:08:09] Ben Waller
Well, that's what happens when you stick around for a long time. Right. One of my favorite stories about Earl, and I was mentioning this earlier, whether he liked real estate or motorcycle rides more frequently, or whether he liked motorcycles or real estate better, he would say that he would wake up in the morning. And he would flip a coin to decide if he was going to work or if he was going to go for a motorcycle ride. And I feel like more often than not, I would call him and he'd be like, well, I just got back from motorcycle ride. So I feel like he had a weighted coin, if you know what I'm saying, because seemed like he was on his motorcycle much more than he was working.

[00:08:40] Roger Jacobsen
When I presented at UV Ria and Utah Ria, I don't think I was quite ready at Salt Lake Ria, which I did a presentation, but I went up to each time when I had to basically redo his eulogy. I'd say he'd say that. He'd flip a coin every morning and heads, he'd go for a motorcycle ride, tails. He'd go into his office and do real estate. And by the time I had polished my speech up enough, I'd say, just choose heads. When you're looking at your morning, don't bother with flipping the coin. Choose heads, choose heads, choose heads. And I ended with that. And it was, you know, pretty funny and good life guiding goals. 

[00:09:18] Ben Waller
So thank you for sharing that, Roger. Another fun story I wanted to share about Earl is if our listeners don't know this, Roger Earl and I run a real estate investing company where we use syndication to help people invest in real estate and syndication is a very legally structured way to raise capital and if you do it right, it can be great for everybody involved. If you do it wrong, there's a lot of legal problems you can create for yourself. So one of the things Earl always said to me was we have to do this correctly because I'm too old to end up in jail and I don't look good in orange. So we always made sure to do our best to follow all the legal requirements and do things correctly because none of us want to end up in jail. And I agree. I don't think he would look at an orange.

[00:09:59] Roger Jacobsen
So, and it was funny because we just don't want to go to jail. We just want to do it right. But that's how he told the story. 

[00:10:06] Ben Waller
Roger, do you want to tell us the bucket story?

[00:10:08] Roger Jacobsen
Yeah, I think this is one of the best analogies that Earl will give and when you're getting into apartments and looking at whether a deal is a deal, you've got to understand the cap rate to interest rate ratio. So if you buy an apartment building at a seven cap and you get a 7% interest rate, the two buckets are even. So if you go and buy a cap rate that's five and an interest rate that's nine, the bucket empties out quickly, you run out of money. And it's one of the quickest, best analogies to analyze a deal when you're looking at it. And it was one of his go to stories. Thank you for sharing that. 

[00:10:41] Ben Waller
That's a good thought process when you're looking at real estate deals. Roger, do you want to tell us about your trip to Sedona and the Grand Canyon?

[00:10:48] Roger Jacobsen
Absolutely. We went on a motorcycle ride and we're down in Sedona and later we went to the Grand Canyon and Earl would always catch these great little anomalies that we'd see. We visited a different time, the world's largest pistachio. And so I got a picture of the world's largest nut next to the world's largest pistachio. When we went to Sedona, we had to go to McDonald's, like, The McDonald's was one of the top hits, like, why explain this? Well, it's the only McDonald's with the topaz green arches and so McDonald's when they develop the building and everything else, they got through the city council or whatever meetings by changing their arches from the yellow arches to the green ones.

[00:11:37]
And so we got a picture of those. And then later on, we hit the Harley and there was two Harleys there and Earl would always go and get a poker chip. Chris would always go and get a shirt. We had to go to the Harley dealerships and whatever GPS anomalies are going on there, you just can't find the place. We eventually found the place after circling the town multiple times and the place was closed. So Earl couldn't get his poker chip. So he came back home to Utah and ordered it online because he deserved it, even though he couldn't buy it. And so that was pretty funny. 

[00:12:13] Ben Waller
Those are good stories to remember all your trips with him and sounds like a tradition he had, right?

[00:12:17] Roger Jacobsen
Yeah, he had, I want to say it was around a dozen Harley dealership poker chips that he had collected and he was on his way to many more. We definitely are gonna do a tribute ride at some point, and maybe I'll go do the tail of the dragon in Tennessee and hit the Harley dealership and ship him a poker chip from Tennessee.

[00:12:38] Ben Waller
Since these poker chips were so important to Earl for his funeral, his children made poker chips with his picture on it as a memorial so that we could remember him by thought. It was wonderful. 

[00:12:48] Roger Jacobsen
Definitely a cool tribute. Josh was behind that. Thank you, Josh. 

[00:12:51] Ben Waller
Just changing gears just a little bit. Roger and I want to spend just a few minutes talking about what we've learned from Earl and, uh, the impact that he's had on our lives. He was an amazing mentor and friend and we're gonna miss him. So, I just want to start out by talking about a couple things that I learned from him. If you didn't know Earl, he was very much into the numbers. He had a finance degree from the university of Utah, and he was really good at analyzing deals. He also really understood the operation numbers when we're talking about real estate. And he really also understood dealing with construction bids from contractors. So all aspects of the numbers, he was really good at analyzing and keeping track of those, which is extremely important. If you're going to do real estate investing to know your numbers. Because it makes a huge difference in the returns. You're able to produce for the project. One specific story that Roger and I heard many times was about an experience Earl had early in his career. Earl at this time in his career was a property manager and he had many properties that he was dealing with.

[00:13:51]
And every month his company and him would produce these financial reports that the properties were creating and he had an owner and we're going to leave the name out for namesake. But this specific owner would call him as soon as he got the financial report, and he would ask Earl a ton of questions. And when Earl first started working for this guy, he didn't have the answers to the questions because nobody had been asking him those questions. But over time, Earl grew to expect this call from the owner every month. And eventually Earl learned that this guy was going to call and he made sure to have all of the questions answered or prepared to answer before the guy called him. And after Earl started to learn to have these questions answered, the owner would start to ask new questions that would teach Earl the things that need to be done to make sure that this guy's properties were running correctly. And that's a good lesson for real estate investors on all sides, whether you're operating a deal Or whether you're an investor in a deal, specifically, if you're the only owner in that project, you need to stay on top of your team to make sure that they're doing what you expect of them.

[00:14:49]
And from an operation standpoint, you need to make sure that you're asking the correct questions and staying on top of the things you need to be so that the projects run smoothly and you're able to provide a great return for yourself and for your investors. So I love that story that he shared because it taught me a lot about what I need to be focusing on so that I can make sure our operations run smoothly.

[00:15:08] Roger Jacobsen
And to add to that, that was like jukebox song number 16 or whatever, and that is that property managers are made not born. And this is one of my big takeaways is you can deal with any property manager, but you don't take their rules and their contracts and just sign them willy nilly. You go through them line item. Talk about what their percentages vacancy re listings are, what their contractors situation is. Do they charge those more? And then you take that property manager and you hone them rather than just taking them for what they are at face value and just moving on. And that's a big thing that I. Share with a lot of people now, because that's like a leader trait, right?

[00:15:49] Ben Waller
Like you see somebody's potential and they might be missing some piece, but if you were able to lead them in the right direction, it'll help your company. And it also helped them in their life. Be a better person, a better employee, et cetera. And that's something that Earl was good at. I want to talk a little briefly about my first experience with Earl and why I was really interested in working with him. When I first met Earl, he was speaking at a real estate conference and I was listening to him. And I was like, this guy has a ton of experience and he knows what he's talking about. I've been in real estate a long time. And there's some people who are really good at talking. And there's some people who have a lot of experience and it's important to know the difference because the people that are good at talking, but don't have the experience can get themselves in a lot of trouble. So, when I saw Earl speaking, and it was obvious that he knew what he was talking about, I said, I need to work with this guy because he's been through a lot. He had been through several. Market cycles and just the amount of experience he had working in different elements of real estate. That is extremely beneficial to the projects that you work on.

[00:16:53]
So this is kind of a thought or a lesson for people that are listening. If you're going to be either an investor or if you're going to choose to work with somebody, Making sure that they have the amount of experience they say they do, or that is really needed for the project to be successful is extremely important because when the market's good, a lot of people look like they're good at real estate, but when the market turns and things get challenging, that's when you really see who the people that know what they're talking about still stay afloat. And it's part of your job as an investor or as a partner to do your due diligence and make sure the people you're working with know what they're actually talking about.

[00:17:28] Roger Jacobsen
Absolutely. And this market is going to flush out a lot of those. 

[00:17:33] Ben Waller
Yeah. The interest rates are high. Who knows how that'll play out, right? All right. We're going to jump into the final four. These are four questions we ask everybody that comes on our show. And today we're going to do it differently. We're going to have Roger answer questions in place of Earl, because like we said, we're trying to honor him and we think he's a great person. So Roger, the first question is, what do you think is Earl's favorite business book? 

[00:17:54] Roger Jacobsen
I would have to guess that it was Robert Kiyosaki's Rich Dad, Poor Dad. It got mentioned so many times on our podcast. Earl had been a coach for Robert Kiyosaki at some point. And definitely had a lot of strong themes that Earl lived by.

[00:18:10] Ben Waller
Roger, what would you say brought Earl happiness? 

[00:18:12] Roger Jacobsen
His kids, family, grandkids were huge. We'll go back to, I think it was episode 3, 4, or 5, where Earl disinherited his kids just to straight to the chase to get to grandkids. So that was always a big thing. And then the big things, obviously motorcycles, Earl's wildest dreams were to have this motorcycle with a little trailer behind it. And he went into the motions and would talk about it and you park your motorcycle on a dirt trail and some national park boondocking go back to the trailer and had a little latch on it. And he'd make the motion and talk about it and go. And then the bed was folded out and he had a tent trailer and you could sleep wherever you were. And that was one of his big things. He wanted to own a Ranger Raptor and a motorcycle with a tent trailer on it. I want to throw this in here, Roger.

[00:19:03] Ben Waller
I don't remember what episode it was on, but. I made Earl give us a decision. I said, Earl, if you had to choose, would you take your family or your motorcycles? And even though he loved motorcycles, he did choose his family. So his family was the most important thing that brought him happiness. And I think that's important for us all to reflect on. Absolutely. Roger, tell us what you think Earl's future retirement would look like.

[00:19:25] Roger Jacobsen
I think Earl was probably within about five years of full retirement. He had a significant amount of net worth from our apartments that was building up. I think that he would have everything be the same. He'd have his home there in Taylorsville, Utah, loving wife, Janet, kids coming in now, grandkids coming in now. But he'd probably have a weekend getaway almost every single weekend, rain, shine, or snow, because as long as he had his battery heated gear, it was like game on all us fairweather motorcyclists would be like, Oh, it's 45 degrees. And he'd be like riding in 30 degree in the snow, but it would have been national parks, the motorcycle tent trailer, getting out, go to some next ride that he could talk about meeting the people there and talking to them and then coming back and sharing his stories during the week and every weekend hitting it again.

[00:20:23] Ben Waller
Absolutely. Roger, what do you think Earl would say is the best way to give back? 

[00:20:28] Roger Jacobsen
It would be the same thing that a lot of our interviewees have said, and it's just when he's able to go and talk about the things that people need to do, their step up, how they can get started. Giving that information to those people was the best way for him to give back. 

[00:20:44] Ben Waller
And he was great at doing that. So thank you for sharing. For our listeners, Earl was a great friend and mentor. We're grateful for the things he taught us and he will truly be missed. We want to thank everybody for joining us on the Retire Wealthy and Happy podcast, and we hope to see you next time.

[00:21:00] Roger Jacobsen
Until then, keep riding in heaven with the rubber side down the painted side up. See you next time. 

[00:21:06] Podcast Outro
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