Stay Tranquilo - Francis Suarez on the Rise of Miami, Messi, Leadership & What’s Next | Stay Tranquilo Podcast

Episode Date: October 6, 2026

Suarez shares his story of growing up in Miami as the son of former Mayor Xavier Suarez, following in his father’s footsteps into public service, and ultimately helping lead Miami through one of the biggest periods of growth and change in the city’s history.The conversation dives into Miami’s rise as a global destination, the challenges that came with that growth, affordable housing, attracting businesses and high-paying jobs, and why Suarez believes there’s a major difference between being a good politician and being a good leader.The guys also talk about the explosion of sports in South Florida, bringing Inter Miami to the city, Lionel Messi’s impact on Miami, the story behind Miami Freedom Park, FIU athletics and philanthropy, AI and technology, and Suarez’s life after leaving office.Plus, Suarez shares his favorite Cuban food, his go-to coffee order, and some of his favorite Miami sports memories.🏝️ Stay TranquiloTopics:• Growing up in Miami and the Suarez family legacy• Leadership vs. politics• Why Miami exploded in popularity• The cost of Miami’s rapid growth• Technology, AI and the future• Bringing Inter Miami to the City of Miami• Lionel Messi’s impact on South Florida• The story behind Miami Freedom Park• FIU athletics and giving back• Miami becoming a global sports destination• Life after serving as Mayor• Francis Suarez’s favorite Miami sports memoriesSubscribe for more conversations with the people shaping Miami, sports, business, culture and beyond. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

A good leader will tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear. A good politician will tell you what you want to hear. And we have a lot of good politicians. Right? We don't have a lot of good leaders. And I took a lot of heat because I refused to tell people always what they wanted to hear. And I told them, man, we got to level up. We're living in a world where you have rapid disruption.

I'm going to do everything in my power to help you level up. And I'm going to create the jobs that you can level up too. Right. But I can't do the work for you. Yeah. Because government can't do that. and shouldn't do it. All right, welcome back to another episode of Stay Tranquilo.

Today we have another Miami 305 legend, Mr. Former Miami Mayor Suarez. Thank you for being here in the building, in the studio. It's great to have you here. It's great to be here, man. It's a beautiful studio close to my house. And I love doing this. This is a lot of fun and have these, like I said, to you off the air,

these sort of open-ended conversations, which you're able to get into a lot more detail on stuff than, you know, you know, some of the stuff before the podcast were, were actually a thing, you know. So it's exciting, man. Thanks a lot. Thanks for having me.

Absolutely. And like you said, we were talking offline, right? At the end of the day, podcast is, is about having a conversation, right? And given a platform to be able to share, one, your story, but ultimately also, you know, have a dialogue, right? That's authentic, real and something that represents who you are, right? Well, I always just say, you know, you don't know someone to you know their story.

I think the one thing you can say invariably, about people is two things. One is we're all different, right? So in politics, you get kind of boxed into one or the one place or another. But the truth is that everybody's different. They're born in a different place, maybe in a different hospital,

a different time with different parents, different culture, etc. You know, and I think that's really important. And then the other thing is that, you know, you have an opportunity here to really get into some of the details of things, which oftentimes is sort of lost in the shuffle. Yeah, no, absolutely.

And I definitely want to be. want to share your story, right? Obviously, being born here in Miami, I believe the only mayor first and only, right? From Miami, which I think is extremely unique to even like think about that being the case. Yeah. But talk to me about, you know, what life was growing up here in Miami. Obviously, you had your dad that was involved as well, coming from Cuba. Yeah, yeah. So it's interesting, right? My parents came from Cuba young. My dad was 12. My mom was seven. In fact, right now, my son is 12. My daughter's eight. So it's exactly like. that age to think what it would be like to take them from, you know, we're talking about schools

off of the year. And I don't even want to move a school for three blocks away, right? Like, imagine having to go to another country, learn another language. And, you know, it really, it shows two things. One, the desperation, they were fleeing and the opportunity at this country presented them. My dad got scholarships throughout high school, university, and then went to an elite law school, and you got a master's in public policy, became the first Cuban mayor. So I, I grew up watching him redefined Miami politics at some level. He beat the first Hispanic mayor,

which was a guy named Maurice Farray, who was Puerto Rican. My dad became the first Cuban mayor in 1985, Harvard educated. So my dad, for me, when I was a kid, was like a god. You know, it was like a larger than life personality. You know, we would go to restaurants.

This is pre-phone, right? And people would ask for his autograph that now it's a selfie. Can I have a selfie with it? Right? But that's what it was like. So I saw that firsthand. The good and the bad, because with politics,

there's an ability to do an amazing good to help people at the microscopic level, at the individual level, to help people macroscopically. We were talking about, you know, the Inter-M Miami Stadium where tens of thousands of people enjoy it, you know, now, a day in and day out,

and that entire property will be enjoyed by tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people. Right? So you have an ability to do it. But there's a cost, a cost of your privacy, a cost to people, unfortunately, because of the general thing in politics inferring like bad motives, or you're this or that, you have people that unfortunately get paid to trash you. And they sound really smart and they sound really good.

But the truth is that they're full of shit. Excuse my language. They're full of it. And so, you know, that's frustrating. You know, when you're in a world where it's hard to communicate truth, where the dynamic of truth-telling and, and, and, communicating is hard, but you, you said it off the year very, very well. Like, you know, we live in a world now. People are trying to build narratives.

They want to build a narrative. They may have a narrative on you. They have a narrative on this podcast, a narrative on me, whatever. And it's sad because it's devoid of the truth. And people are either not being honest about it or worse. They're getting paid to be dishonest about it. Yeah, which is a challenge in itself, right? Because to your point, right, you're trying to do everything right.

You're trying to do it well. Yeah. You know, with good intentions. And you're not perfect. Nobody's perfect. Yeah. You know, but like I always say this, like, you know, you can read a publication.

And if a publication is, is trashing a politician 90% of the time, there's probably something wrong with the publication. Why? Because even the people that, you know, that are air prone, they're not making mistakes 90% of the time, right? They're making mistakes 10% of the time. 20% of the time, right? That's a lot.

Even 20% of mistakes. To whatever 10 decisions you make is a mistake, that's a lot. but it's not reflected, right? It's like 90%. So there's something off there. And we've got to figure it out as a society. I don't know whether the LLMs, you know, the large language models are going to help us or hurt us.

But I think it's going to be one of the challenges of our lifetime. There's obviously the AI challenge. There's a challenge of what I call kinetic warfare, which is like what we see in Ukraine and in Iran right now. People dropping bombs in Yemen. And then there's what I call non-kinetic warfare it's not my term, but it's a term that's out there, which is the war of information

and the manipulation of information, which is a very, very insidious and serious war because it's the only way that you can fight against a superior, like stronger adversary and potentially win. Right. Yeah. And I mean, I think on that point too, right, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like some version of that

has always existed at some capacity. I think it's the magnitude of it because of, you know, the digital era that that we live in. You're definitely not wrong. I think, you know, look, intelligence agencies for, you know, for probably centuries have been trying to manipulate information. You've had communist regimes, you know, the Nazis in Germany that took control of the media and obviously wanted to perpetuate their, you know, ideological framework or whatever. But you're right.

Now it's like hypercharged. Yeah. because there's so much more sophisticated tools, right? There's, you know, you have a lot more data points on an individual. So you're not like blanket trying to like convince them. I could have 100,000 data points on you. 100,000 different. When I talk about everyone being different, we're different, right?

There's almost everything, right? You have a tattoo, I don't. Right? You have it on your left hand. I don't have one. That's just one. Yeah. Data point, right?

Like, it could be a bunch of that point. You're wearing a certain watch. I'm wearing a different one. Right? You're wearing a woup I'm not. Right? Like, there's three data points right there. Just like that.

So, again, you can create a profile of someone, and then you can be more accurate. And they do this, by the way, already in the corporate level. They call it digital twin. They'll create a digital twin based on data points that they have on you. They'll get an AI to feed that digital twin marketing. And if the digital twin buys it, then they'll feed it to you in the real world, and then you buy it.

Sheesh. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's incredible what they're doing now. Yeah. Yeah. At the end of the day, I try to play where I could see both sides, right? Yeah. especially like being someone that's entrepreneurial and in business, right?

You look at humanity and what's the best thing for humanity, but how do you evolve as humanity, right? And tech obviously is one of those things. There is going to create efficiencies, right? And there's always going to be the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. I remember like growing up, right, the internet era, right? And everyone thought that thing was going to be the biggest bust ever. Yeah, yeah.

I remember like, you know, I couldn't be on the phone at the same time as like my dad being on the computer. You know, things like that. Dial-up. Yeah. And at that time, you're like, what are we getting ourselves into? Fast forward, you know, 25 years. And all of a sudden, you're like, okay, I understand why this exists and think about a world without this, right?

Exactly. But there's always a balance to everything. And I think ultimately as humans, how do we find that balance in everything that we do, right? From developing as humanity, but also our everyday life as well. So I would say there's two truisms there. One is, like I said before, One thing I can know about everybody is that everybody's different, right? Not that there's binary, the Republicans or Democrats.

The other thing that I know about everybody, I would say almost everybody, with very few exceptions, as everyone has one of these things, right? A smartphone. And it doesn't necessarily have to be, whatever, an Apple. Right. But everyone has a phone, which indicates, the second truism indicates to me something really fundamental, which is in human nature, we can complain about technology,

but we're never going backwards. Right. Right. Like, it's not like we're all going to wake up tomorrow and go, you know what? I don't really need this thing anymore. You know what I mean? I don't need to call people.

I don't need to text people. I don't need to look at information. I don't need to use al-A-LAMs. Right. That's it. It's useless now. It's just not happening. It's actually, if you look at the history of innovation,

there is no going back. So what that means, I think, A, is you have to, at some level, embrace it. That doesn't mean that you can't be conscientious about it. For example, my wife, I have a 12-year-old son. My wife is very zealous and I support her most of the time on, you know, what she lets our son, you know, watch and do and the intensity of it, right? And I think to your point, there is a balance, right?

You don't want, I don't want him to do it so little that he's kind of outside of the exposure. I don't want to do it so much that it starts affecting his personality. Like, she would tell me, like, hey, like he's acting up because he's not getting this out of the other. So she has very good intuition when it comes to that. For sure. I think woman overall when it comes to things like that. I didn't want to make it about one of them, but I think you're right. A mom, especially.

Like a mom, you know, they have this sixth sense about many things. Yeah, 100%. And certainly one of them is how they take care of the kids. And she's amazing about it. Absolutely. Well, you know, obviously your life, right, you know, growing up in Miami, being part of the community and being very active in the community. And then, you know, fast forward to, you know, the last couple years

where you got to serve as the mayor of Miami. and when you talk Miami, right, Miami has changed a lot. Obviously, you know this very well. Hopefully a part of that change. Yes, and you were a huge part of that change. And I think a lot of people are, I guess, it's like a mixed bag as to what their perception of Miami is. I'm glad you're bringing this topic up. Because you hear about it, right?

I mean, I talk, my friends talk about it, you know, family talks about it. And the people just here in Miami talk about it. But I'm curious just to get your thoughts. Like what were you seeing maybe prior? Obviously, COVID, I feel played a huge draw on that too. I'm super grateful for this question because I think to the extent that people may have criticized my morality at some level. And I'm not saying that their criticism is illegitimate. Like you can't sit around as a politician and say nobody that criticizes is legitimate.

That's kind of ridiculous, right? Is that we're so successful that that success in a way created hardships at some level. right? And so let's, let's articulate that as the problem. Ken Griffin, who I was with last night, and I'll tell you about what happened. I know this is not contextual in time. So for those who are watching, it may not be yesterday in when it's posted. I was with him last night. He says, he often says, we have the problems of prosperity.

Right? First of all, it's better to have the problems of prosperity than to have the problems of despair. I can tell you that right now. So let's start from that general proposition. I have a good friend who's a mayor of his. a Midwestern city. And, you know, we have issues sometimes with affordable housing. And he calls me and says, I wish I had issues with affordable housing. Nobody wants to live in my city.

Right. So, so, so you understand what I'm saying? Yes, 100%. So, so when you bring up this issue, which is an issue I'm very sensitive about, because I think as a public official, you want to serve the public. And so you're sensitive when people criticize. You say, man, am I doing something wrong? Am I not living up to the expectation or what?

whatever. And I think, I think my, my tenure, if I can just answer, it's going to take me a little bit to answer because it's really like important. It's a really important question. First of all, you have to understand I was born in Miami. So I was born in race here. So everything I did was through that filter, right? So what does that mean? Right? For me, I went to high school here. I went to junior high school here. I went to preschool here. I went to college here. I went to law school somewhere else in Gainesville, but I came back right after. So I've lived in the city almost my entire life, in the city proper, city of Miami. Some people live in Kendall.

Some people live in South Miami. I actually lived in the city proper almost my entire life. And my dad was the mayor, so I was very connected to what the city was, the essence of the city. And one of the things that bothered me growing up was that a lot of my friends went to went to went to great schools, great high schools. You know, we know who they all are. I'm not going to start naming them because that'll take time. And including the one you went to.

And then they went to these elite cars. colleges and then didn't come back, right? If they wanted to study finance, they would go to, you know, to a school, MIT or whatever, and then in Boston, and then they would go to New York and go to work at Morgan Stanley or J.P. Morgan or whatever. If they wanted to be in politics, they would go to Washington, D.C. If they wanted to be in tech, they would go to Silicon Valley. If they wanted to be in biotech, they would go to Boston. So those were the ecosystems that were, by and large, creating jobs that were changing the world in those industries, which are the most powerful industries in the world.

And that kind of bothered me. You know, as a Miami, and I was like, I kind of had a chip on my shoulder about that. Like, man, this is a complex. Like they would say, a Cuban who say, a complex. You know, like, why are we losing our best and brightest? So I, part of my emphasis

was trying to create high-paying jobs in the city, right? And we had the lowest unemployment in America. And we had the highest median wage growth in America when I was the mayor, right? So we accomplished the goal. But what happens? When you, when you build a city, that is so attractive, right?

There's only a finite amount of land. We have the Everglades on one side. We have, you know, we have the Atlantic. The other side, right? And the keys on the bottom. So we are innately constrained. So we can't, although I would say in Miami, in the city, we can grow a lot bigger because we have the ability

to grow vertical, right? But the supply and demand stuff doesn't just happen overnight. You know, the building takes two, three years, right? And in the U.S., unlike in other countries, we let demand push supply. Right. We wait until there's enough demand and then you build a building,

everybody goes in, then you build another building, right, like when there's more demand. Right. So it's not always like, oh, we're going to build an anticipation of demand because we know there's going to be this demand.

Yeah. Exactly. So it happens sometimes. But the point I'm trying to make is that when you, when you build, we try to build this city on three principles.

We're going to keep taxes low. I lower taxes to the lowest level ever. We're going to, and we grew tremendously. we're going to keep people safe, right? So we reduce homicide, which is our most dramatic crime figure, right? From a high in the 1980s of 220

in the cocaine cowboy years to almost the lowest rate ever, right? So the lowest rate we ever had was in the 1950s. We had 27, I'm sorry, 24. Last year we had 27. Wow. And we're much, much different place of course. Than we were in the 1950s.

So to achieve that number on a per capita basis is significantly better, but we almost got to the aggregate low. So keep people safe. And the third thing was, we wanted to lean into innovation. Again, that goes to that sort of complexo that I had, right? Like, we want to create high-paying jobs. We want the best and the brightest to stay in our community

to hire other people to create companies and do things that change the world. And that's going to create prosperity in our community. And it did. The negative byproduct of that success is that you have what feels at times like unlimited demand chasing unlimited supply. And what happens when you have, have demand chasing supply, prices go up. Yeah.

Inevitably. 100%. Now, you mix that with, again, not to make this Republican Democrat, but Biden inflation, right, during Biden's term where you had mean inflation across the country at 20, 30% on rents, right? You hypercharge that with what I call our hyper demand. Now you're talking about 30, 40% increases in rent. And people are like, man, I can't afford this. Of course, yeah.

Right? And so that's where that phenomenon comes from. And people then turn and blame the guy. Of course. Who's trying to... They got to point the finger at somebody. They got to point the finger at somebody. So my response is severalfold.

Number one, we build more affordable housing than any administration in history. Okay, I just didn't talk about it all the time. Right? I wasn't, you know, I see politicians today, and it bothers me to no end. People that talk about things that are the issues, everybody knows what the issues are income inequality,

affordable housing, right? These are the issues that people want to hear about because they want a solution. But no one's honest with them about. Number one, no one's honest about the scale of what government can actually do. And no one ever has a conversation about whether it's appropriate for government to even be doing it in the first place. You know what I'm saying?

Nobody even talked about it. All the opportunities, they get up there and they go, oh, we're going to solve affordable housing. Oh, we're going to solve income inequality. We're going to do this. We're going to create a grocery store that is government-owned. And by the way, never mind the fact that you're killing a bunch of jobs when you do that, you're killing small business owners that own grocery stores that are on razor-thin margins

because you're subsidizing at 30% under market. Like, people just don't, and then you become a communist place. And what happens in a communist place? You have equality. Equal misery, equal suffering, equal poverty, right? Like, yes, you have equality. You absolutely do. But it's equal garbage.

Right. You know what I mean? I mean, we've seen it. Obviously, firsthand happen, you know, right in our backyard. 100%. It's not just in our backyard. You've seen it in the USSR. We've seen it in China.

We've seen it in, you know, the per capita income in China is a fraction of what it is in the United States. You know, we've seen it in Nicaragua. We've seen it in Venezuela. I mean, we... It's really used to be one of the wealthiest countries in the hemisphere. Yeah.

And it became 90% of the people were living below the poverty line. Yep. That's something right there. So that's the thing. It's like, again, politicians lie to people a lot. Why?

Because they give people the impression that they can solve a problem with a magic wand. Yes. And the good ones that are, I guess, good at politician, not good at, in my opinion,

being a leader. I think there's a different between a politician, a good leader. A good leader will tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear. A good politician will tell you what you want to hear.

And we have a lot of good politicians. Right? We don't have a lot of good leaders. And I took a lot of heat because I refused to tell people always what they wanted to hear. And I told them, man, we got to level up. Yeah. We're living in a world where you have rapid disruption. I'm going to do everything in my power to help you level up.

And I'm going to create the jobs that you can level up too. Right. But I can't do the work for you. Yeah. Because government can't do that and shouldn't do that. Exactly. Exactly. But I appreciate the question.

Because as you can see, I'm very passionate about that. Exactly, which was going to leave me to my next question. Like, what motivates you in all of this, right? Because like you just said, I can tell you're very passionate about it. Like, it's something that, that one, I believe you have the right to defend yourself in that situation. And like you mentioned, right? Prosperity. I don't feel like I'm defending myself.

I feel like I'm just explaining myself. Right, right, yeah. Like my view is, again, we talk about the bastardization of the truth or the narratives. And to your point, you did say that. Look, when something goes wrong. even if it's an unintended consequence, people want to blame somebody, right? It's hard.

Sometimes it's hard to say, like, I got to work a little harder. I got to do a little more. I got to, like, you know what I mean? I got to, you know, I got to find a ways to better myself to compete in the modern day world. It's easier to say, no, no, no,

government needs to solve this problem for me and they need to make it right. Yes, you know what I mean? 100%. But, yeah, where would you say that motivation comes from? Like, what gets you up saying, like, I want to solve these problems, I want to do it well,

I want to do it right. And to your point, I want to be elite. or not necessarily a politician. I think it comes from a variety of different places. One is obviously having seen my dad do it, someone that I admire, and being in so many different situations,

years after his service, like now I'm out of office, right? I've been almost a year out of office. It doesn't seem like it, but it is almost a year, December 17th last year. And you get people that come up to you all the time

and say, man, you wrote me my first letter of recommendation, man, you helped me get my first job, man. You built this stadium, you know, and I went to the other, and it was incredible. I had this experience with my children. And I saw a messy kick, you know, hit four goals in a game. You know what I mean?

Like you're changing outcomes. You're making a real impact. And I think that, it depends on what drives you in life. That drives me. To me, that's more impactful than any economic success. And I've been very blessed to have a lot of economic success. But to me, that's even more impactful. And that motivates me.

You know, when you talk about motivation, you talk about energy, you talk about inspiration. And then I think you want to, I think everybody wants to live a life of purpose and meaning. And so you do think about what does my life mean in the context of this world. And how can I leave, you know, in the limited time that I have? I call it ROT return on time. How can I get the most ROT? Not just for myself and my family, but for the community at large.

Yeah. And the next generation that comes up for you. 100%. Yeah. I love that. You talk about inner Miami, right? And one of the main things that I really wanted to talk to you about today was kind of like this boom in Miami. Not forget real estate, forget business, but how we've become a hub of entertainment.

Yeah. Right. World Cup last year or was that, I don't know, I've lost track of time, but it was technically this year, right? So this year. And this year, then we host a national championship here. Just major events throughout, you know, throughout the course of the year. What has played a factor into that? I think a lot of what you mentioned before obviously has.

played a role, but it's like, it feels like Miami's on the map in a way that it's never been before and people are able now to appreciate it for what it is. And sports also being a big driver of that as a whole. Yeah, there's no doubt. I think we leaned in hard to our strength. One of our strength is hospitality, right? We had the most Super Bowls in history. We've hosted the most Super Bowls in history. So we know how to put on big events. Yeah. And we have ultra every year for 25 years. It's a massive 150,000 people from, I think it's like 80 different countries. that come to Miami every single year for a quarter century, right? It's a long time.

Yeah. And so we're good at it. So we brought, in my time, I helped bring Formula One. I helped bring the World Cup. I help bring the Inter-M Miami team, right, to the, back to the city. Right. So I'm something very proud of my dad when he was mayor brought the, you know, brought the heat, the Panthers and the Marlins.

So between the two Suarez, I love it. generational, you know, here's four mayors before me. We brought pretty much all the sports teams to my house. Yeah. Right? And so in our tenure. So it's because we believe that we live in an experiential world. And when you think about AI, which is disrupting intelligence,

I actually feel bad for a guy like my dad who's probably a genius on the genius scale. I mean, he's written 12 books. Again, he's, you know, do a graduate degree from Harvard. all on scholarship, presidential scholarship, graduate of summa cum laude and mechanical engineering and undergrad. So he's a brilliant guy. But he was Chad GBT before Chad GPT.

He was the guy that I could actually like, hey, dad, what do you think about this? Like some esoteric topic or some historical fact. Right. I mean, he wrote books on, he's written books on anthropology, religion, political philosophy, religious philosophy. I mean, like, all kinds of stuff.

So he was Chad GPT before ChbD. So I feel bad for my, bro, you're kind of like, you're out of gas now. Yeah. He was the encyclopedia before it even existed. No, it's incredible. But I know you were very involved in giving to FIU this year as well. I'm a Panther myself.

Let's go, baby. And I've been going to FIU football home games since I can remember. I'm talking five, six, seven years old. I actually grew up being a big Panther fan. And I think with this world of NIL and everything that's happened, you've seen what the hurricanes obviously have been able to turn around that program with Cristobal and everybody. involved there. But I want to speak specifically on FIU, right? State school, young football

program, young sports program overall, right? But what they've been able to do, obviously, academically has been huge, but sports-wise, right? It's how do you turn the corner in a very competitive space when it comes to dollars now specifically? And I know you were a part of being like, hey, one, we have to get fundraising and two, I'm going to do my part and give to both the baseball, football, and basketball program. So a couple things. One, I would say that I give a lot of credit to Jeanette Nunez, who's the new president. She's young. She's dynamic. She's ambitious. And I say those all in the most complimentary way.

Also an FIU alum. And what I've always told and challenged, by the way, there was a big announcement yesterday, which would not be yesterday when you see this, of Ken Griffin donating $3 billion to basically a Carnegie Mellon to bring a Carnegie Mellon University of Miami school, elite school to Miami. That's something that I work

on with him for three years and it's a huge victory for our community, one that I was very much a part of. And I called it the Giff, the Griffin Institute of Finance and Technology. I love that. And but going back to FIU, I always challenged all the university presidents with one question. What do you want to be? What do you want to be? And I think it's clear that President Nunez is answering that question is we want to be the very best that we can be. And it's reflected in the coaches that she's hired and it's reflective in, you know, the emphasis that she's put on sports personally. Because when I went and did a recruiting visit,

which was super cool, by the way, by the way, I, listen, I challenge everybody and I hope whoever's watching can, I understand it's hard to donate and it's, you know, you have to give up money that you, I guess access money or whatever. But, and I'm going to talk a little bit about that. But I really, they did a really cool thing. And they put me through like a recruiting visit, pictures, the whole thing as if I was a recruit.

And they have never done anything like. that, you know, so they're really going out and reaching out. And I, I had not gone in there with the intention of donating. I didn't. I went in there with the intention of enjoying it. I had met the coach, the basketball coach, a couple of months before, totally dynamic guy, young guy, Miami guy, I'm pretty sure. It's Columbus guy, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Him, I believe the baseball guy, too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Pedro. So, uh, and Canton's is the, uh, Mike, is the basketball coach. Yes. So great guys.

And so I just felt so inspired. And I think I want to come to this point because this is essentially the answer to your question, which is this. FIU was a commuter school. Right? So it didn't, it was harder to create that sort of like college experience

that you would experience if you left or even maybe if you went to UM. Of course. Right? Because, you know, you got the football team that was winning national championships. It was part of like the fabric of the city. And then you have a school that's,

that maybe is a little bit smaller. and more intimate. FAA was massive. It's a commuter school. But I really think that, you know, what we're seeing with the new Miamians is a massive amount of philanthropy. Ken Griffin just gave the largest gift

in the history of collegiate institutions. Wow. In the history of a country. Wow. That gift was the largest ever. Period. Full stop. So we're...

And he picked Miami on top of it. Well, yeah. He's from... He's now in Miami. Of course. So... But at the end of the day, there was a rationale

strategically, as to making that decision too. Yeah. And by the way, it's even more complicated because he had to give the Pittsburgh campus, Carnegie Mellon's a Pittsburgh University. It had to give them a billion dollars just to get in the game to be able to give the $2 billion for Miami.

So I had to give a billion to the Pittsburgh campus just to be able to give the $2 billion. Wow. So think about that. Yeah. And my point is that it's our generation, and I'm looking outside of the camera because there's a couple guys outside here. We now, I believe, have a,

I don't even want to call it a moral obligation, but I would call it a moral obligation to start giving back. It's, I think, part of our culture, our parents and grandparents, because they were exiled, many of them, from their country of birth, there was this idea that you had to hold on to everything

because it could be taken from you at any minute, from government, by government, right? And so I think we as a, you know, many Miami-born and American-born people, we need to start outgrowing that and realize like, hey, we have an obligation to give back. At whatever level you can, I was able to do something.

I wish I could do more. Maybe one day I will be able to do more. But do what you can do, but don't do nothing. And don't rationalize. Because I did that for many years, by the way. For many years, I was like, bro, I don't have the money to, extra money to be donating it to my university. No, the answer is you do.

You don't have to do a lot. Maybe you could do $20 a month, right? Like, what you donate at church or whatever you're doing in a church. And, you know, like, do something. Get the ball rolling. And then as you hopefully succeed more in life and you accumulate more resources,

you can do more. Absolutely. Yeah. So I challenge people to do that, please. The way I look at it too, especially for a fight. It's the place that provided you with a degree. Yes.

That now allows you to have a job and make money. Absolutely. And, you know, build a career and all that. And I think people lose sight as to what that has, like what that has provided for your, for your for your for your for your likelihood right and your family and everything that's to come and because i think that's where your community's built right and that's i used leaned on that pretty well too to your point yeah there's never been a time in in in the university history

where resources are such a big part of the success for particularly on athletics right obviously for the reasons that you mentioned right nil has changed the landscape if you don't have resources you're not going to be competitive no absolutely one last question for you and then we'll get into a quick rapid fire, but what's next for you? I know you're very active with Fox on TV, but what's next for you? So I do a lot of things right now in the private sector. I was able to work as mayor,

and so, you know, press didn't always love that. But, you know, it's a press that, in my opinion, you know, it's interesting. In this election cycle, look at who their endorsements are. every single person, they've endorsed, I think, exclusively all Democrats, with the exception of one person, which was a congressman who they didn't endorse anybody. And so when you have an institution that is only endorsing people from one party, and you happen to be from another party, right, you start to wonder, like, what is, what's going on here?

Yeah. You know, I had a reporter that attacked me viciously for a year, and I'm like, why is this happening? I don't understand this. It turns out she was a writer for socialist.org. Like legitimately, like, by the way, like, not like, this wasn't like some sort of investigation. This was a Google search of the person's name. Oh, wow. And it turns out.

And I was shocked to know that our local newspaper had hired a person who had worked in a socialist publication. Right. Like, like, don't you realize that, first of all, it's antithetical to this community's values, number one. Right. So of any community, maybe do it in Seattle. Don't do it here. Don't do it here. Number two, it's like, did you do your due diligence?

Did you even know? And number three, when this person, I shouldn't say, girl, when this reporter is beating up on somebody on things that are over and over. I mean, like, to the point where, like, we did it like just a numerical analysis. The year before they wrote 12 articles about me. In 10 months, she wrote 70. It was like 70, 7.0. Yeah, it's an attack.

It's a massive order of magnitude, focus differential. Right? And it's like, maybe something's going on here. Like, maybe you should kind of like do some due diligence. Right. We did some basic due diligence. We found out this person. So the person was a radical.

Obviously, by the way, again, it's not that I'm accusing the person of being a radical. It's just two and two is four, right? Like if you're writing for a socialist newspaper, you have come out and said, hey, this is what I believe in. And you can read the articles. The articles are all there online, what she believes in and what her spin on life. And that's fine. But come on and say it.

Right. Be straight up. Like, look, I'm a socialist. I'm going to take the socialist perspective when I write about this guy, who is the antithesis of socialism, right? So anyways, I work out a big law firm. I'm the president of a big asset management firm. I'm very proud of the work that we do and the companies that we invest in. I do some consulting for companies. I advise some companies. I sit on the board of some companies and I do the Fox News stuff. And I'm doing a big event in December called Headliners, which will be the

day after the G20, which we help bring here, which is a, you know, the most important global conference in the world. And it's going to be great. I'm partnering up with Brett Baer, who's one of my colleagues on Fox and we're going to be we have already announced uh secretary besent the secretary of treasury we've already announced uh ken griffin uh we've announced roger godell i believe we've we've announced them um and we have some other cool guests that we're going to be announcing uh in the coming weeks but it's going to be a really cool event that's incredible yeah i mean like you mentioned earlier right kind of that that legacy and uh what was it r o t yeah return on time return on time yeah that's important yeah 100% isn't the best example that i used to articulate this

And, you know, I came to the, I developed this theory like over being around very exceptional people and also, you know, running a city. If you think about someone who's extremely wealthy, let's take one of the top five wealthiest people in the world. Let's say they're worth $200 billion. Right? I'm not going to use a name, but you can put a name. Right.

What is a difference between 200 billion and 201 billion? What's a difference? How does it impact their life? Does it change anything about what they're able to do or capable of the answer is no. $2001 and $200 is identical, right? Like you can buy anything you want, you can go anywhere you want,

you don't have to work anymore, right? Like there is nothing that the extra marginal billion dollars does for your life, which is crazy to think about. It is. For normal people, you think, man, a billion dollars would absolutely radically change my life, right? But there are people that live in our world

that it does nothing for them, right? And so there's two things that I would say, Number one is that person, wherever it is, male or female, has something in common with all of us. And that's that their life is finite. And so their finite asset is not, their infinite asset could be money, but their finite asset is time.

The second thing I would say is for those who would turn around and say, well, nobody should be worth $200 billion. There are people that are worth $200 billion that have created $800 billion of value for other people by having a trillion dollar company, right? and there are people that are worth a trillion dollars on paper who have built some of the most incredible devices, cars that drive themselves, satellites

that allow you to be connected at any part of the world. You know what I mean? Like things that are changing, you know, rockets like land and backwards. You know what I mean? Right? Like stuff that's like science fiction years ago, right? The opportunity to go to different planets and do that. So, you know, I'm not saying capitalism is perfect. But like Winston Churchill once said, democracy is the worst form of government,

except for all the others. Right? Like, there isn't a better system because it creates incentives to be productive. And when you take those incentives away by saying, no, we're going to make everybody equal. We're going to solve all these problems by making everybody equal. You're taking away the incentive for productivity. What happens?

All productivity goes down. Which is what we see in these countries. I think you're taking away incentive, one, but you're two, you're taking away the power that humans actually have, right? You listed all those things, all these incredible things. Every time I see a plane fly in the sky, I'm like, Damn, we did that. That only is that not happening in a communist country.

It's actually the opposite. They're a, you know, a, I would say that there are a time capsule of the 1960s like Cuba. Yeah. But my dad was telling me yesterday, he's like, actually a time capsule is generous. Because you put things in a time capsule that kind of are preserved. This is like a decayed time. A time capsule that's decayed. You know, like it stayed a moment in time, but it decayed for 60 years.

That's a good way. So it's actually worse. Yeah. And you have, you know, in our country, you can go to a grocery store and you can get anything that you want essentially for a reasonable price. Obviously, when inflation, it's a little higher, but it's reasonable in nature. And, you know, and there's a lot of selection, right, from things that are expensive to things that are very inexpensive. That doesn't happen in communist countries. You just can get things. No, absolutely not.

So. Absolutely not. I mean, I could go on for another hour. Brother, I'm with you as long as you want. I'm having fun. No, and I was selling you off air, like, I want to do this. this more. I spent last, you know, we're almost a year that I'm out of office. It doesn't feel like I'm that much different. But I've been focusing a lot of my business. And also like, I'm not the

kind of guy that I want to always be out there and make it like for the people who are current public officials, I don't want to make their life any more difficult by being the guy that's out there, like questioning or whatever. And they're like, oh, I kind of am old school in that sense. Like I, you know, I did my thing for 16 consecutive years. I was, you know, I was in the limelight. And I tried do the very best job that I could. I gave my heart and my soul 100% to the job. And now other people are doing it. So I want them to have an opportunity.

Hopefully I'm always going to be cheering for Miami. Whether we agree philosophically on something or not, I still want the city to win. And I try not to get too much in the way. But I do. I enjoy this because it's an opportunity to talk about really serious things and not so serious things. Have fun.

You get to continue to interact. I'm not just doing it in Fox News on national news. I'm doing it also with guys that are from the community and that have followings from people from the community. And that's important, you know. Oh, absolutely. And I think that's a big part of just driving the initiatives that you want to push is leveraging the aspect of collaboration.

And, you know, writing the wrongs of these narrative builders. You know, I really believe that it's one of the sad things about modern day politics is these narrative builders. And they can be bloggers, but they can also be in the press that won't emit their biases. or they don't even want to see their biases. And then there's a third component that I try to actually tell some of these people sometimes but they don't listen,

which is if you create a situation where it's so difficult to serve because people are constantly being criticized and being torn down, nobody who's good is going to want to serve. You're only going to get the bottom of the barrel and then it becomes self-perpetuating, right? Where only people who are desperate or who have nothing to get, you know, nothing to lose,

run for office, And then we get bad quality people. And then it becomes, then it really does become a self-perpetuating cycle because you don't have, if you don't have good quality people, you know what I mean? I'm not saying I'm perfect, but I went to a good school, I'll graduate from a good law school. I'm a professional. I do well in the private sector. You know what I mean?

And I decided to do this, right? And, and that's, unfortunately, that's rare. Right? It's rare. And we want more people that that are winning and successful to want to sacrifice. a bit and take a little bit of their time and their energy to serve the public. Absolutely. Absolutely. And it's reaping its benefits and we get to you.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Thank you. Appreciate that. But quick rabbit fire. I got to ask a favorite Cuban dish. It's evolved over time. I think I would go with a Ropa Vieja or no, Baca Frita because I like it. The Rupa Via is a little bit, it's like, saucy.

That Vacrita is like drier. Yeah. I go to Baca Frita and then I think I would go with a little bit of white rice, with friolet negro and maduro. That would be my go-to dish right there. Or pan comite. Colada or cortedito? Colada, 100%.

I'm an anti- This is kind of cuts against the collada. I'm an anti-sugar guy. Okay. No sugar. Like almost no sugar. I only have sugar when it's strategically meant to make me healthier.

There are moments, post-workout. Of course. I'll have like honey, which is like a complex sugar as opposed to like just like sugar like raw like sugar. Like it as a mid between lunch and dinner meal sometimes with Greek yogurt.

Okay. I'll put in the honey and I'll mix it in and it's like a ice cream. But yeah, so definitely colada, definitely no sugar. Definitely not portadito because the milk has has sugar. Exactly. I've been now more on the no sugar with my. Do it, it is. It's a huge game for the sake of health.

If you cut sugar out of your life, first of all, it's super healthy, then you'll lose five to ten pounds. Yeah, like that. And sodas in particular. I haven't drank a soda. And I haven't drank a Coke. No offense to Coca-Cola. But I haven't drank a soda and Sprite or anything.

Oh, I don't even know, 20 years. Yeah. Maybe more. I don't even know. I can't remember the last time I drank. And if I drink it now, it's like, oh, it's like repugnant because it's, 100%. I'm not used to it.

Yeah. And then last question, favorite Miami sports memory? Favorite Miami sports? I'm going to tell you a favorite Miami sports memory. memory of every team. So I don't know like, you know. So my favorite Miami Dolphins sports memory was I remember very vividly the 1985 Dolphins versus Chicago Bears game when Chicago was undefeated.

They came to the Orange Bowl and we were defending our undefeated legacy. And Reno beat the Chicago Bears in that game. That was my favorite of Miami Dolphins football memory. Favorite Miami Heat memory, I would say, was probably giving the keys to the city to Dwayne Wade, both when he retired, but also he's become a friend, but also when the big three came together and they had that big event, that was such a crazy event.

It was. It was like, I wasn't even mayor. I was a commissioner. And it was like so fantastical. Watching that run, those four years, regardless of whether they only won two of the four championships, that to me was like the best time, you know, even at some level. I mean, it was fun when Shaq and Dwayne won in 06 with that team and Riley and the little cards and the Riley magic type stuff.

But I've become friends also with Eric Espostra. So it's been fun to see his development from the, you know, it's such a great American in Miami story. Like from the video room all the way to becoming the coach. And they have a great culture when it comes to that. Obviously, the Panthers winning back-to-back championships, incredible. The Marlins, you know, both are championships. were exciting. And, you know, I really hope that,

and I have people that are friends in the organization in the Marlins organization that are great people, a guy like Alfie Mesa, was just a spectacular human being. But, you know, the team has struggled at times. And, you know, you're wearing the Florida Martin's hat now. So, like, you know, I really hope, Miami you would think is always a baseball town.

You see it with a baseball classic. Right, right. With the world baseball classic? Right, right. Like that, you know, so we got to find the right. mix, whatever it is, to get that. Because I think all the other teams have had pretty sustained success and the marlins for whatever, they've won two championships,

but then, you know, we saw what happened afterwards and stuff. It's a tough battle there, obviously, and I think Miami as a sports town is unique in itself, right? So much things to do here. Do people want to go to a game if the team's not winning? And the people say winning cures all. The answer is no. But, yes.

The answer is no. Miami, if you're not winning, they're not at a lot of the game. Period, full stop. Right, right? Let's be frank. Let's be fair and frank. Number two, again, we can talk about all this stuff forever. I'm sure your podcast is limited in time.

Oh, good. We, I worked really hard, and there's a lot of reasons why it didn't happen, but I worked really hard with the team to try to come up with a development plan around the stadium. Because what the stadium really needs is it needs critical mass. Yep. Like if you had, you know, critical mass of people, if you had a restaurant and entertainment, which is what they're building, by the way, and the Inter-M Miami site.

Yes. Which is why we did it because it's a 140-acre site. Yeah. So that was my deal. I didn't do obviously the baseball deal, thankfully, right? Because then you could really criticize me on that. Yes. Right.

I mean, that's not getting criticized to this day. And by the way, part of the reason why we got such a good deal on the Inter-Miamy stadium, and I can tell you about it in two minutes, is because we were doing it in the shadow of the Martin's Day. Right? So we had to do a good deal. Yeah. Right.

Even the owners to their credit were like, guys, we cannot do something that's even remotely considered a bad deal. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And, you know, again, I had a blogger recently go on a podcast saying that it was a giveaway. This was his words, a giveaway, literally. And I laugh at that.

It's laughable because every single, and you can do the Chad GPT yourself, guys, please do it. Ask Chad GPT how much the Tennessee Titans have gotten, the Washington commanders, the Buffalo Bills, the Chicago Bears, and the Las Vegas Raiders, just those five teams. Okay. And then ask Chad GPT, how many of the. The MLS stadiums have been publicly financed or publicly subsidized, right? And you'll see the answer to that. Right.

It's an easy query, right? We gave $0 of subsidy. Zero. They rented the land from us, not a building. We didn't build the building and have to spend $300 million and then lease the building. We leased them contaminated land. I remember. That they had to decontaminate at their own cost.

Yeah, yeah. Okay. What was it that was there that was under the ground? It was like... Arsenic. Yeah. Right? Because it was a former landfill.

Yeah. So it's a golf course, but under the golf course is basically toxic stuff, which, by the way, is a whole other issue about you're playing golf on a toxic waste. I used to play Melrose all the time, and I'm like, whatever. I might have taken a couple of years off there. And by the way, and by the way, like, to me, it wasn't like I'm anti-golf. On the contrary, I wish I could have more golf courses in Miami. Right.

The issue is highest and best use. So my viewpoint was we got to give the owners of the property, the citizens of Miami, an option. Do you want it to stay as a golf course? We're very few people in the aggregate. will use it and we will now generate a lot of revenue because we didn't. Or do you want it to be a complex, which is a mini city, a neighborhood, right? Where tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people over time, we'll visit it.

And we're going to generate a billion dollars in revenue. Right. So we went from zero subsidy. They had to decontaminate the land. We're getting fair market value rent on the land, right, a land lease. And when you say, well, how do you know, mayor, that is fair market value right? simple, not because I say it, but because Deloitte and Touche,

which is a internationally recognized firm, did an appraisal. Hulahan Loki, another internationally recognized firm, did an appraisal. And then we got a third company to do a peer review of the two appraisals, right? So this is not me,

this is not a blogger's opinion, right? This is not, this is what you hire these companies for. And then we got more because what happens is politics happens. So they spit out two numbers, and we got more. more than the two numbers.

So not only was it not a giveaway in any sense because we didn't give away the land, which we could have and said, okay, we're not going to give you any money, but we'll give you the land. Yeah. Right? Which is part of what they did in the Martin's deal.

They gave the land and they gave in the city gave $90 million for the parking garages. The county did another $250 million, right? So $350 million plus land given, right? We gave zero. You have to pay for the decontamination. You have to give us $20 million. to improve the park.

You have to give us $5 million for a Baywalk because one of the commissioners who support we needed represented an area that needed $5 million for Baywalk, right? You have to pay living wages to the employees, okay? And then zero subsidy.

So you've got to pay for every dollar of the development, of the construction of the stadium. Yeah. And we're going to make a billion dollars in money. Find me another sports deal in America. Please, if there is one,

I would like to know, where the city is going to make in excess of a billion dollars in revenue from a sports deal. The answer is there is none. So I think it's laughable. When people get up there and they sound so convincing

and they sound smart and they sound so believable, oh my God, and because it, to your point about narrative, it leans into an already existing narrative that politicians are corrupt, that politicians are incompetent and that all they do is giveaway land.

So it must be true, right? Like those things are true, so that must be true. And it's not. It's just literally not true. Like there's no factual basis for making a statement that it's a giveaway. On the contrary, you could say, I think, credibly, that it is the best negotiated sports deal in the history of sports deal. Because there is no sports deal like it. There's no sports deal where you make money. Every sports deal you pay money. So it's like you're making money. Just if I was making a dollar,

you could argue it was the best sports deal. If I'm making a billion dollars, I mean, come on, guys. And you're going to tell me what I should have made a billion two or I should have made. Exactly. Now they're just trying to find something. Come on. Yeah. Give me a break. You know what I'm saying? I mean, I think that's the recipe. though when it comes to building sports of course is you got to have surrounding, right? I mean, you look at what the Braves did in Atlanta. I don't know the nature of the deal on how it all went

logistically, but at least, you know, from a fan perspective, you got a downtown around, you got restaurants around, you got bars around, you got the experiential aspect around. And I think that was one thing that Marlins Park did a bad job that ultimately hurts them in the long run. And I know they're trying to fix that per se. But I do think that that's the recipe. If you look at any new park, it's like you got to have

entertainment surrounding it. Agreed. I'm just querying now how much public money did the Atlanta Braves get in their social? But the point is well taken, which is we worked pretty hard. There's a lot of reasons why it didn't happen. So we can get into another time.

I'm trying to help them redevelop the surrounding area, neighborhood, to create critical mass. Because baseball is one of the sports that's most democratic in terms of 80 games. So in home games. At the home, yeah. So, you know, theoretically, if people could walk to a game, exactly.

That would be the best case in error, right? And then they can go have dinner, they can have drinks, whatever. Like in New York, Chicago, these major, major cities. You're getting on the subway. You have public transportation. I pay for the highest thing on this. So 300 million public construction subsidy for Truis Park. Wow.

So I got a $300 million subsidy, right? And then which opened in Cobb County into approximately 45% of the original $672 million budget. they got a $300 million subsidy. We gave zero. Yeah. We got a billion dollars. So it's like, dude, you're a blogger going out there saying we got, we gave it away. Yeah.

Yeah. Like, based on what? And by the way, I argued with a guy in private. I'm like, dude, I'm like, what are you basing that on? Do you have like, do you have a degree in appraisals that I missed somehow, like in film school? Like you didn't, you picked up a second bachelor's or something. And now, and by the way, you then did it for 30 years and you not. know how to appraise commercial property that's contaminated land.

Like, that's awesome. Yeah. It's really great that you have this expertise and that you know more than Deloitte & Tush. Yeah, exactly. Hulahan Loki. And it's like, this is not complicated stuff, guys. This is not that complicated. But it's made to look that way because it, again, it feeds the narratives.

Yeah. Now, I'm excited to see that property, you know, fully developed. It's going to take time. But the fact that the stadium was able to open and provide an opportunity. You know, I'm going to say something. And they're going to say, well, I'm a show for these. guys, right? Like the Moss family and David Beckham. You know, David Beckham, first of us, stuck with the city when there were many attempts to get a deal, deal done that didn't

happen until I got involved, right? And then the Moss family, not only did they, were they very conscientious of not doing a deal that was perceived as a giveaway, precisely what this guy's accusing them of. By the way, it was a voted for by 65% of Miamians, which didn't happen in the Martin Stadium. Actually, we took it to a vote and 65% of Miamians, which is their property, He said, we want this not golf, right? Which is okay, right? Reasonable people can differ. People love golf.

I actually kind of like golf. I'm not great at it, but I like it. And I wish I have a golf course and the stadium. I wish I could have both. But unfortunately, you can't do that. And what I would say about the masses is, you know, we, the lawyers, and I got to have to get involved to deconflict this, but the lawyers took 18 months, for two years, I'm sorry,

to negotiate a provision that gave the team 18 months. to rezone the property, and they rezoned it in four months. And so the whole point is they had every incentive to move fast, to get it done. And then they went out and got messy. So it's like, I remember when George told me, you know, I'll never forget it. When George told me, we're getting messy, I'm like, George, you're not going to get messy. The Saudis are offering them $250 million a year. It's not going to happen.

Yeah. And he found a way, creative, man. Creatively, right? And the MLS helped him to structure a deal that made it, made it palatable for Messi. Messi obviously wanted to be here, quality of life. This is why creating an ecosystem is important. How many, again, you say, oh, you got one rich guy, a rich soccer player to come to Miami. Yeah, but dude, think about it.

The pride now that we have in our city, that's the most sold jerse in the world. He plays for our team, right? He can play anywhere. And he's making memories for us. I remember the first game that he checked into kicks that free kick, scores ago. My son jumps into my arms and I'm going, wait a second, this is what's really happening. I'm making a memory with my kid over a team that didn't even exist

with the best player in the history of potentially sports. No, it's incredible. It's crazy. If you look at it from like just straight business lines, the fact that you're talking about a team that to your point was non-existent, all of a sudden you have messy and you have your own stadium,

and you're like, holy shit. Probably one of the best sports business deals ever. Ever. And I would say they took the team when one of the shareholders sold out, which was a friend of mine too, he sold out at a valuation of 500 million. Today, after Messi, the value of the team is a 1.5 billion.

So it tripled in value. Right? So it's like, to your point. To your point, it is probably one of the best. Oh, and it's only going to climb. I mean, obviously, you know, it's a life after Messi. He's going to be an owner now. So that'll be interesting too.

He stayed in. Relationships. Which is important, right? Like I'm sure in getting players, recruiting players, getting coaches and all that stuff, it'll be his imprint will be on that. Just like Beckham's. 100%. No, they've done.

done a great job and we're going to need a part two of this. Yeah, yeah. Listen, I'm totally in. I'm having fun. I think there's a lot to talk about. Absolutely. And, you know, I told Ben, who is a, you know, Columbus guy and, you know, my right hand, I told him, I want to start doing more of this because, like, I said, like, I spent, you know,

a good nine months focusing on my business, staying below the radar because, again, I don't want to. And now I want to do more. I mean, I want to just talk and, you know. Yeah. You got a great story. Yeah. And obviously a lot of wisdom, which I think is always is very great. For a young guy, relatively young guy, that's cool, right?

Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, again, thank you so much for being here. Thank you guys for tuning in. And as always, stay tranquil. Stay tranquil.