Indiana Farm Boy to South Florida Multimillion Dollar Real Estate Developer: Frank McKinney

SPEAKER_00 0:04

This is the Beyond the Story Podcast, a show that goes way beyond the story. And now, Sebastian F. Frank McKinney, what's up, dude? And guess where we're coming to you from today, Seb? The McKinney Treehouse. How'd you guess? On the ocean, not just any treehouse.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

You know, I at the risk of disconnecting, I would flip my computer around and show you the ocean. Maybe toward the end, I'll do that for your viewers.

SPEAKER_00 0:42

Well, when the but we were just talking before we started recording that uh your next book's coming out soon. And when it does, I will be taking the trip north, a few exits to the lovely city of Delray Beach and experiencing this treehouse uh firsthand. But thanks to technology, we're able to connect here. Uh you and I met, I would say, when did you do the TED Talk? What year was that? 2014, 2015?

SPEAKER_01 1:05

Yeah, something like that.

SPEAKER_00 1:06

Yeah, so I'd say five or six years ago, uh, I had learned about you through my mom, one time for Susie Sims, and uh she's a huge fan of your work and and of you uh as a fellow Hoosier.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

That's why she's a big fan, because she's from Indiana, ain't because of me.

SPEAKER_00 1:23

She's diehard uh uh Indiana fan. I I I'm a Florida boy from we we moved to Florida when I was two, so uh my grandma passed 15 years ago, and I I haven't been back to Indiana. Um, but I do want to go back for the 500 uh one of these years, of which I just saw you got the opportunity to do, I'm sure, once again, huh?

SPEAKER_01 1:43

I've been to a bunch of them. I've been to over 40. I love it. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 1:47

Wasn't it great to see 125,000 human beings in one place?

SPEAKER_01 1:51

It was actually 125,000, you know, zero to sixty in like a half a second, you know, 225 miles an hour, which is the polar opposite of the car that I drive, zero to sixty and never my 1988 Yugo. I was just thinking when I was watching those cars go around the track for the ND500, like if I put my car out there and I went around that track, how long would it take me to do one lap? They'd probably finish 20 in the time it takes me to do one.

SPEAKER_00 2:16

I think the better question is would the Yugo make it around the track?

SPEAKER_01 2:20

Dude, you know I did a 63, 6,288-mile coast-to-coast trip pre-launch, pre-release tour for my new book. I went and traveled the country, 23 cities over a 22-day span from Delray to Death Valley, California, all the way back in that Yugo.

unknown 2:38

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 2:39

I can say I experienced a miracle.

SPEAKER_00 2:42

Yeah, that was always a joke. It was like, well, I mean, uh I'm not, you know, I haven't made it yet, but I'm not driving a Yugo. You know, that always used to be the joke of like, I don't know what we say now with modern days, like, well, I don't have uh, you know, Maserati yet, but I got a I got a civic.

SPEAKER_01 2:59

You know, it's a for those of you that don't know what we're talking about, Google Yugo was supposed to be one of the worst cars ever made. And and I just haven't an affinity for them. I I I have two of them actually, Sebastian. I have the one 115,000 miles that I took all the way coast to coast, and I got a convertible, of which there's only five left in the United States.

SPEAKER_00 3:15

Wow. So let's let's let's we're we're gonna get into the into the Yugo uh story um in just a minute here. I was thinking about you the other day because I'm in the middle of David Goggin's book, Can't Hurt Me. And he talks extensively about doing the hardest race known to man, uh, which is Badwater, correct?

SPEAKER_01 3:38

Correct. Hardest race in the world according to National Geographic.

SPEAKER_00 3:41

Right. And that's and that's something that you've you've conquered, not not just once. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_01 3:46

So it's funny, the David Goggins story, I raced with Goggins a few years. Uh matter of fact, there was a year that he didn't make it that I finished. So I I can say that I've got that one thing. So this race is 135 miles across the Death Valley Desert in July, where daytime temperatures are over 125 degrees, the pavement below my feet over 200 degrees. To put it in perspective, over 4,500 people have summited Mount Everest. Only about five or six hundred have finished Badwater. So you are running nonstop for 135 miles over three mountain raises, over, back down, below sea level to 6,000 feet above, down to sea level, you finish at around 8,000 feet. And uh, yeah, I finished that race a whopping six times, but I've failed five times. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 4:32

I I remember seeing a few of the times. You're like, you know what? This wasn't the year that I finished. And I thought, the very fact that you even started, is there a medal for that? The fact that you even no, no constellation.

SPEAKER_01 4:43

Man, I don't care if I made 134 miles, uh, you either finish or you don't. I I feel no, you know, people say, Oh, you leave, you know, one year you made 92 miles, I used to feel good about that. I didn't, I didn't, I I could have made 92 feet. It didn't matter, I didn't make it. Right. Uh, but I will tell you that that that the four the five times I didn't make it, really three, almost four of them had to do with the mind. You know, you get the mind right, the miles will follow, get the mind right, the money will follow. And when my mind was dialed in, is when I saw the finish line those seven times. The few times I didn't, I had one heart issue that I had to pull out after like 27 miles. That wasn't anything to do with my mind. But the other ones, man, I just I couldn't keep it together for my average finish time, Sebastian, is uh 44 hours. So you're talking about sleep deprivation and hallucinations and blisters and vomiting. I mean, it is a brutal test of the human will and spirit, which you know, I've passed seven times. So we'll focus on that, not the failure.

SPEAKER_00 5:35

Yeah, 100%. Are you gonna do it again?

SPEAKER_01 5:37

I learned in life never say never to anything, anything other than things that are illegal. So I I will, you know, at my stage, actually, my birthday's coming up. I don't know when this is gonna air. My birthday's coming up. I'm not running Badwater this year, but I'm going out to the Badwater course, and I'm gonna be turning 58, I'm gonna go run 58 miles on the course just for just for my birthday present.

SPEAKER_00 5:58

Just 58 miles just for my birthday present. So if you need some motivation as you're listening to this and you're not motivated, you may want to check your polls. So I want to back up to the beginning of the story. My show's all about featuring people's stories and going back to where it all began. So, as an Indiana boy, where did it all start? Where did the desire and the motivation start to actually say, you know what, I want to live a life worth living, and I also want to have a successful career. Where did it all begin?

SPEAKER_01 6:28

Well, I mean, where it all began, so that's kind of a loaded question. We don't have 20 minutes to answer, but but I'm just a cornfed country boy from Indiana. You know, I was raised on a farm, I'm the oldest of six. I went to four high schools in four years. I graduated with a 1.8 GPA. I spent seven stints in juvenile detention. So, you know, my my yearbook read it, I don't think anybody who signed my yearbook because they didn't think I'd be around to read it. And and so I hopped on a plane with a one-way plane ticket when I was 18 and landed in Florida, landed in Palm Beach actually, and I was around affluence from day one. I mean, Palm from Indiana Cordven Country Boy to Palm Beach is culture shock. And I I back in the day there was a show on TV called Lifestyles of Rich and Famous, which was just something that just intoxicated me. I just Robin Leach. Robin Leach with that cool English accent. For you young people, it would be more like MTV Cribs where you kind of look inside the lifestyle of rich and famous. And man, I wanted it, Sebastian, but how? You know, no education, no, no formal education, no college, no network, no friends, no money. Uh, I became went from a uh maintenance worker on the golf course to a tennis pro. And I I actually was a teaching tennis pro for a few years, and I was again around affluence as a maintenance worker. I'm around people that are playing golf all day, and as a tennis pro, I'm around people that can pay me 50 bucks an hour as a 21-year-old. And I asked the question both on the golf course as a maintenance worker and then on the tennis court as a tennis pro, how did you get here? So a golfer passes by and I ask him, How is it you're able to play golf all day? Or a tennis uh student takes a lesson from me at the end of the lesson. I've asked the question, How'd you get here? And the answer I got was real estate. I got this real estate anecdotal story at the end of their nine to five after paying bills and you know, their discretionary income left over, they invest in real estate. And so that's what I did. And in the late 80s, I bought my first crack house, you know, bought it, flipped it, made seven grand. And flip wasn't even a thing back then. That was something a gymnast did, it's not something a real estate person did. And uh, and sure enough, I did I did hundreds of transactions worth less than a hundred grand. Matter of fact, most people don't know for the first five years of my career, I didn't do a transaction worth more than a hundred thousand dollars. I did hundreds of them, not one worth more than a hundred grand. At the end of five years, I jumped up to a $2.2 million oceanfront spec home here in Delray Beach, which is where I probably met your mom. And uh and since that point, Sebastian, we've done 44 oceanfront homes renovations, build new transactions with an average selling price of around 14 and a half million.

SPEAKER_00 9:00

Unbelievable. So your most recent project, which you labeled my final project, my retirement project, if you I don't know if a guy like you is ever going to retire, Frank. But as far as building oceanfront just month monster monstrosities of dwellings, literally uh on the beach there. Let's talk a little bit about that because it was quite, there's always buzz around your projects when you release them. There was some extra buzz around this because you said, hey, uh, I'm I'm I'm signing off uh from building these bad boys on the beach. Um let's talk, let's talk a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_01 9:37

Well, you know, again, 40, 40, 44 doesn't sound well, 44 sounds like a lot of projects, but if you span it out over 28 years, it's a house and a half a year. It's a lot of risk. Like I do not have partners, Sebastian. It's me, the bank, the IRS, and my wife. Those are my partners. And so all the risks that we've taken all those years, not knowing if I'm gonna be eaten that, you know, the Ritz Carlton or if I'm gonna be eaten out of a dumpster if I'm wrong with the, you know, with the calls I made on real estate. I figured after all those times, it was time to take some chips off the table and to go out in style. I built a $15 million house. We sold it at the height of COVID, sold it very quickly. And and now I'm writing my seventh book. I've written six other books. I got a seventh book coming out this summer. I'm running our Caring House Project Foundation over in Haiti. We've been over there for 20 some years. You know, and I actually bought some property in North Carolina that I might like I found a place that reminds me of Del Rey 30 years ago. And it's very tempting to put that place on the map. So I'm not ruling out, you know, some kind of comeback at some point. But right now I'm pretty happy with what's going on.

SPEAKER_00 10:37

Yeah, we ran into each other uh a few weeks back at the the all-new Del Rey Beach Market that uh didn't open that morning because of fire alarms, but uh is is wide open now. And we had a short conversation about that. Is that Del Rey is, I mean, alive and well and and and popping uh the these days and has has become just a true South Florida destination place. And you said I would I'm I'm passionate about what I love what Del Rey has become, but I also loved what it was when I first got here and had the opportunity to be able to do that. And I'd love opportunities again. You had discussed what's happening or the potential of what could happen uh in in North Carolina. So is it you evaluating the the market trend of of how the how the city has developed and saying, hey, this may be a good place to do it? Or was your thought process, I'm in Palm Beach, there's more money than NASA here. Let's go down the pike a little bit where it's not that far from where I'm currently at and and and explore what the potential is. How did you decide, hey, you know what, Delray Beach is is is going to be the next upcome up-and-coming city over the next 20 plus years?

SPEAKER_01 11:46

So well Delray, that that that's a great question. Nobody's ever asked me that. So so back in when I got started in Delray, Boca Ratone was the destination. Palm Beach was the destination. Delray Beach was the stepchild that got beat with a newspaper. It was it had it was not respected. You could you can throw a bowling ball down Atlantic Avenue at 5 p.m. on a Friday and not hit a soul. And I I'm attracted to things like that. Like I want to go where I can make a market. Delray Beach had everything, actually had more than what Boca Raton had, because it has it had direct oceanfront single family homes. Boca Raton doesn't have a single act, it has one direct oceanfront single family home. So I I felt like you know, in Delray, and that what was happening in Delray with the old school square at the time, the leadership had changed. We had a great mayor, Tom Lynch was a fantastic mayor at the time. So I I was on board with basically, it was like the Wild West, you know, settling a gold mine, staking your your your claim to gold before anybody got there to stake their claim. And and so that to me, it's run its course. As a speculator, a guy who, you know, builds on speculation, I don't have a buyer in mind other than a profile of a buyer when I build. And so I make the money, I make my money on the day I buy the property, not the day I sell it. So I better be able to buy it right so I can build on it and sell it for a profit. That's nearly impossible unless I'm gonna work on a margin that's so compressed, given the risk I would take, it's not wise. And so, you know, not only did we did do that, Sebastian Delray, we then went to Manalapan for a decade. Manalapan just south of Palm Beach, nobody wanted to touch Manalipan because it wasn't Palm Beach. Now Manalipan properties are over $125,000 a front foot just for the sand, just for the dirt. And we did the same thing in Ocean Ridge, did a little bit in Gulf Stream. So we've kind of done what we can do to put some of these places on the map in terms of uh real estate prices, high-end real estate prices. And if I want to do it again, which I'm not saying I do, but if I were to do it, it wouldn't probably be in South Florida.

SPEAKER_00 13:48

That makes sense. I mean, South Florida is it's well, even now with 2020 happening and the mass exodus of California and New York and the Northeast coming down here. I heard someone say the other day that South Florida is the New Hamptons, which is mildly terrifying, but also optimistic at the same time as far as where our growth is at. But are do you think maybe we're headed for a little bit of an overcrowding situation in South Florida?

SPEAKER_01 14:13

We're definitely headed for an over-overcrowding situation. I don't think that means that the real estate prices are kind of correct, though. What will happen, so so we've been we've been appreciating over the last three years at about 14% year over year. That's 9% over the average. Like we average 3% to 4%. So that's unsustainable. What will happen is I don't think we'll correct. I think we'll plateau, I'll think we'll level out for a while, but you know what the media will do with that. Once it starts going up, they will classify that and spin that into a crash, into a correction when all we're doing is plateauing. That could have some self-fulfilling prophecy to it. If the media continues to hound on the fact that we plateaued, there's a crash here, it's not appreciating. You might see a bunch of sellers or homeowners start to put their properties on the market. Right now there's no inventory. That's why prices are going up and interest rates are so low. That could shift when it when when the buyer realizes the emperor isn't wearing any clothes. I i people, like you said, I uh coming from California, New York, our real estate's still a buy.

SPEAKER_00 15:14

Oh, bargain.

SPEAKER_01 15:15

I-95 is turning into the 405.

SPEAKER_00 15:17

Oh, that's painful. I was in LA for 10 years, and that uh I don't miss that traffic by by any stretch of the imagination. I'm glad you brought that up because it's a common conversation people are having. My goodness, you uh what I what I'm having trouble understanding is that people are running to the closing table to buy a house at the height of the market, willing to pay 50 to 90 grand over ask price to just buy, knowing that real estate has been and always will be cyclable. Now, it's not always as dramatic as it's been in past years, especially back in 2008 here, but there has to be some sort of correction, just like you got Dun staying here. So the people that are running out to buy a house just because it's it's I gotta get in because it's gonna be a in a of the four, I think the thought process for those people are the affordability factor is is gonna diminish if I don't at least get in now, even paying over. But what happens when things correct a little bit?

SPEAKER_01 16:16

Yeah, so are we audio or video too?

SPEAKER_00 16:18

We're both audio and video.

SPEAKER_01 16:20

Okay, so I wrote a book called Burst This, Frank McKinney's bubble proof real estate strategies. It's really everything I know in real estate. And what I did, Sebastian, is I went back and I studied six different real estate cycles that dated back to the to the early 1970s, you know, back when the we had the oil embargo and there was all these things that caused real estate cycles. And I in studying those, they tend to run for six to eight years. You know, so if you go back from the last crash that we had, let's say we came out of that in 2011 or 12, and we've been appreciating for nine years. Like to me, we're at the back end. There isn't any of these cycles that I studied that went longer than nine years. Some of them went eight years, none of them went longer than nine. That little things that have me somewhat concerned, what you just said about people, I don't mind people overpaying, you know, in a hot market because it happens. Like my sister sold her house in California, oddly enough, for 600 grand over what she was asking. It was an insane bidding war that she had for her house. But here's here's the things that kind of bother me. So it's one thing to say, I I want to live in Florida. If we're ever going to shut down again, I don't want to be in New York. I definitely hate California because it's just a complete disaster. When you're buying a house and you are waiving your inspection fees, I'm sorry, you're waiving your right to inspect. You're you're waiving your contingencies, you're waiving your financing, you're buying these houses with a realtor walking up and down with an iPhone, like taking a video of the house, sending it sight unseen, which I've done before, but no inspections. This is this is this isn't an investment. These people are putting their head on the pillow there. And I've known people that do that, they they move in and they've got mold behind the walls. And like so, when you're when that when when it gets to that frenzied point that it is now, just putting all common sense to the side, I'm not going to inspect, I don't care if it doesn't appraise, I'm gonna pay cash for the difference. That tells me we're kind of close to a top.

unknown 18:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:18

I'd like to think so too. Now, when you think of markets like South Florida, it's drastically different than you know the back hills of of you know a state that's less than popular to less popular to be able to live in. It seems that the the values are able to hold themselves, but regardless, there's gonna be a correction, which it always does because it's a cycle. Do you agree?

SPEAKER_01 18:40

Yeah, I do, and I and I that's why I'm kind of enamored with these little towns that I'm looking at in North Carolina that we have bought a piece of property and that I am designing a house in that's gonna be a white elephant in the in the town that I'm building it in. But my question to the mirror, really, because when you make a market, you're not talking to anybody but really the mirror yourself and believing is how long will that white elephant be white? You know, I don't know. I think if you're making a market, so this will be a you know multi-million dollar house in a community that doesn't have a house selling for more than, and I say community, a city, a town that doesn't have a house selling for more than like 500 grand, 700 grand at the max, and here I'm building a $2 million house up there. You know, how long will it take the market to catch up to it? As I said, I'm looking for infrastructure, I'm looking for quality of life, I'm looking for undervalued infrastructure, undervalued quality of life, something where I I'm just I don't have the 10 million or 5 million, not me, but a buyer to pay South Florida prices, I wouldn't mind having the slower lifestyle that maybe Frank found for me in in Canton or Waynesville or Brevard, North Carolina, that I'm very very interested in. That that to me says that there's legs there. Like there there will be less of a correction when the correction comes there versus a place like this that is just fully valued. And I'm not I'm not professing, I'm not a skies falling kind of person. What I what you heard me say is we will level out. Yeah, what the media does with that and how we perceive that is another story.

SPEAKER_00 20:15

I agree. I absolutely agree. And I've just sat back and decided what, you know, I'm I'm a I'm an entrepreneur, I'm an entrepreneur, so I never really know. And I'm also a 42-year-old empty nester, so I don't never know where I'm actually gonna plant roots uh moving forward on here. Uh in Miami, I don't know that that's there. So I've just been sitting back watching where it's gonna go and making a decision on what that looks like uh on actually uh buying something on here. But it's fun to learn and better understand what your world exists of and where it actually starts. It started with really small transactions that became you know consistent transactions that were almost like it's almost like a like a chess game. You continue to make those small, less than 100k moves that eventually converted into a big move that brought you, well, to to to the ocean.

SPEAKER_01 21:02

I mean, really what I what I expressed in my new book, Aspire, is you want to be an artist at whatever you do in life. And I became a real estate artist. It wasn't my words, actually, Wall Street Journal called me a real estate artist like two decades ago. And and really taking that approach to a hundred thousand dollar crackhouse is something that I did, Sebastian. And I just chose to to to to after five years of becoming an expert at the craft of real estate to take that to another level. And and and I did it didn't take a college education, you know, which I didn't have to understand. There's two segments of the market real estate marketplace that are relatively recession proof the ultra high-end, the ultra wealthy, and the first time home buyer. Those classes have been around since the Roman era, and they will always be there. So am I saying that that because of the supply and demand at the high end level on the ocean front, let's say, that's gonna be safe. That'll be fine. And and it's the area from you know, maybe five million down to five hundred thousand. That I'm concerned with, which is what most of the properties in South Florida sell for, not five million, but you know, the average selling price around seven, eight hundred thousand. That's the part that gets hammered when the economy slows down or inflation starts going up and the cost of lumber's doubled and you know the cost of uh labor's doubled. So I want to look for places that have been insulative to me over my career. And oddly enough, it was that first-time home buyer. I was there for five years. I didn't do anything in between. Not that I knew that at the time, Sebastian. I mean, I didn't jump from 100,000 to 2.2 million because I knew there would be trouble in between. I just felt confident after spending five years of becoming an expert at the craft of real estate that I could do it at the $2 million level. And that was in 92. You know, that's almost 30 years ago. That was a big number back in 92. In Del Rey, nonetheless. I mean, that was a huge number for a spec house. Now we've got spec houses selling in Palm Beach County for over 100 million.

SPEAKER_00 22:55

Those houses are, and especially in your neighborhood right there, it's just absolutely mind-blowing. In fact, I drove up North Atlantic uh when I was there when I ran into you a couple weeks back, and I didn't even realize there was a golf course on the ocean. I called my mom and said, What in the world is this amazing? She goes, I don't have any details about that. My husband knows all about it. But I had not driven north. I had driven south a lot because uh my best friend's grandparents used to live at 7-Eleven uh Ocean Drive, uh South, South Atlantic, um, way back when, um, 20 years ago. And so I had the opportunity to to at least be, you know, know what was on that strip of road, but I'd never gone north of it. I mean, there's just it it's mind-blowing these things. You look at it like someone actually lives there, and you're you're in one of them.

SPEAKER_01 23:40

Yeah, we've lived in the house that I'm coming to you from, we've lived in this house for 24 years. It's on it's across the street from the ocean, but there's nothing, there's nothing over there. There's no building that blocks us. It's the last historic house on the beach. My house was built in 1935. Wow. You know, so we it's it's like an annuity. You know, when the time comes, I'm I'm ready to not yet, but when the time does come, I'm ready to move on to North Carolina or somewhere else.

SPEAKER_00 24:02

Where where um what's the difference? I was that was the one question I had for myself was if I had the opportunity to do oceanfront, but the house that I really wanted was across the street, would that be a deal breaker? And what kind of money differentiates are we talking about here?

SPEAKER_01 24:16

Like No, it's not a deal breaker. As long as there's it's it's unobstructed ocean view, that there's no, you know, like ours, we're at the end of the public beach where nobody even parks over here. Like there's no parking here. So there's it's it's almost like a private beach. Uh so I I mean the direct ocean front on just land only. Let's say my house was scraped and there was just land here versus land over there, you're looking at about a 30 to 35% discount being across the street. Wow. Uh yeah, it's it's significant. And same with the house. So, you know, the house, this if this house was on the direct ocean, it might be 15 million. You know, my my house, when we're done with this little renovation, we'll be closer to 10 or 11 million.

SPEAKER_00 24:54

Have you had to evacuate ever when a big storm came in because you're so close to the beach?

SPEAKER_01 24:58

Here, here's my thing with that. My house is 86 years old. It has been through God knows how many hurricanes. I I've begged my my bank, you know, to not like, why do I even need insurance on this thing? Because the house is assessed at next to nothing. It's the land that's very valuable. I have never, my wife evacuated. I remember one year I was out jumping on the trampoline during the hurricane, and I got off it and I turned around and the and the trampoline blew into my next chart. It doesn't concern me in the least. And that's that's probably stupid, but I I think my house has been here, been through all those things. We have hurricane shutters. I don't have impact windows, and uh, you know, it it's been here. I I would be just fine if my house blew down because the land is what's valuable.

SPEAKER_00 25:46

Sure, absolutely. You're like, great, well, I I thought I was done in Del Rey Beach, but uh, but but here we go again. Right, right. Absolutely. So when's the next book come out? This is your seventh book, you said, right?

SPEAKER_01 25:56

So yeah, this is um pull it out.

SPEAKER_00 26:02

Author copy laying around there.

SPEAKER_01 26:03

Yeah, I do. Well, it yeah, I do. Hold on a sec. I have my my my computer propped up on it.

SPEAKER_00 26:09

That's it makes a great computer proper upper.

SPEAKER_01 26:12

Um, yeah, it's called Aspire. How to create your own reality and alter your DNA. Isn't that a killer book cover like a months and months and months with my graphic artist to get that cover right? So the the premise is pretty simple. You know, Aspire, how to create your own reality and alter your DNA, ultra your DNA, is born from the belief or the fact now, as I can do a post-mortem on my life, that motivation washes off and goes down the drain with the soap at night. As a species, we were not meant to stay motivated. That's why there's a multi-billion dollar industry out there on motivation, because we don't stay motivated. I can't stay motivated, you can't stay motivated. So if we did a poor job with your listeners and viewers and we motivated them, we failed because they'll forget everything they heard today. Inspiration lasts about as long as a bad sunburn. So you can read an inspirational book or watch an inspirational movie, but eventually, like a sunburn, it dissipates. I've found that aspiration for me, these sacred endeavors, that they're they're almost like the Fabrige egg that you you you put in these special like pursuit boxes, and you you there's nothing that's gonna get in the way of your life's aspirations. So I aspired to be only five things or so in my life, a best-selling author, even though I never went to school. So I've got six books, seven books, and six genres, six different genres I've written. I aspire to be a real estate artist. I I can't sing, I can't play an instrument, I can't sculpt, I can't paint, but I wanted to be an artist, and I got to be a three-dimensional artist by providing these beautiful houses on the ocean. I wanted to run a charity in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. I aspired to do that, and our Caring House Project Foundation has built 29 self-sustaining villages in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, that being Haiti. We provide shelter and a self-sustaining existence over 13,000 children, Sebastian, in Haiti. Amazing. I aspire to run the toughest foot race in the world. You know, check that one off. So the book teaches you how to not allow outside influences to create reality for you, which is happening at a huge scale nowadays, and in turn how to alter your DNA. If you if you happen to watch the movie, I'm not a big movie guy, but I've watched this one, um Rocket Man, which was the story of Elton John's.

SPEAKER_00 28:22

Outstanding.

SPEAKER_01 28:23

Okay, so you watched it, and for those of you who didn't even if you're not an Elton John fan, you'll like it, by the way. You'll love it. And so so his managers talking to him when he's Reginald Dwight, that was his name. His managers turned to him and said, You have to kill the person you were born to be to become the person you want to be. One more time. You must kill the person you were born to be to become the person you want to be. And that played, that's the first line I actually put into my book because to create your own reality, that is something that I I did. I was born to be a banker. My grandfather was a banker, my father was a banker, I was supposed to be a third generation banker, I was left brain dominant, I had no right brain creativity. I didn't want anything to do with that. I killed that person when I left Indiana to become the person I wanted to be. And this book, in the five sections associated with the book, teach you how to use aspiration, not motivation or inspiration, but aspiration to create that own reality for yourself. And in turn, which I did, there's there's science behind this, alter my DNA and turn myself into what I wanted to become.

SPEAKER_00 29:34

I love that. The first thing I think of when I think of Spire is the car that I drove in high school, a Ford Aspire, that has nothing to do with aspiration by any stretch of the imagination. But good old Zig Ziglar says that uh motivation doesn't last. Well, neither does showering. That's why we recommend it daily. But I think the the the good the combination of inspiration, motivation, but really that core focus of aspiration uh makes perfect sense. It does because none of the other things are sustainable except which that which we choose to create. Now, two things. Number one, in the movie, when he told him that was an absolutely pivotal shift for the entire storyline because it was kind of like, okay, cool, when's Elton John gonna pop out and pop out and become, well, Elton John, it's almost it almost happened instantaneously because he thought, wait a second, I can I can put my funky outfits on, I can become who I actually truly am, and I'm gonna go out there and crush it by doing so. It was amazing to see that that the whole storyline immediately shifted from that point.

SPEAKER_01 30:36

So, what he did, if you if you go back to what you just said, he he he put on his outfits and all this stuff. He he didn't he didn't become who he was, he became who he wanted to be. Right, there's a big difference. Sure. And so he wanted to be, he he didn't just choose some you know normal name. Elton Hercules John. His middle name is freaking Hercules. Most people don't know that. He said, if I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna go over the top. And so I I when I I mean that wasn't the you know the inspiration for the book, but I realized that that all these years of beating myself up over not being able to stay motivated, but yet having these aspirations that were sacred. So let's say you you aspire to be the best MC out there for events. You aspire to have the most popular podcast, you're not motivated every day to do that, nor are you inspired every day to do that. You might hit the snooze button someday, you might turn it off one day and say, I'm not gonna do this, I'm gonna go visit my mom in Del Rey. But you don't lose the aspiration to be the best MC in the world or them have the most popular podcast. When I when I train for that race in the desert, Sebastian, I'm I'm not motivated to get up and run 30 miles at 3 a.m. starting at 3 a.m. before I go to work. But I have that aspiration to finish the toughest foot race in the world always in the forefront of my mind, and that's what pushes me. So the book helps you identify what you know, a simple question asked in the first chapter what legacy do you aspire to leave behind? What legacy do you aspire to leave behind? And that's something not something you answer in a second, you think about it. But the question before that that helps prompt that second answer is okay, who do you aspire to emulate? Who is it that you look up to that you want to put your footprints in theirs if you're walking down the beach to sample some of, not copy, sample some of their DNA. And when I was growing up, you talked about my grand unveilings. I aspired to be Willy Wonka. I wanted to be that man. And so when you look at our, I wanted to be evil can evil. I've jumped a motorcycle over one of my houses. I aspire to be Robin Hood, and I get to be a modern-day Robin Hood with what I do in Haiti for the poorest of the poor. Sure. So when you when you answer that question, who do you aspire to emulate? It doesn't even have to be a real person. They can be fictional characters. Pull out parts of their DNA. I absorb them into mine. And I again I'm I'm Frank McKinney, I'm not Willie Wonk or Evil Canival or Robin Hood, but there's pieces that now it helped me answer the second part of the question, Sebastian, which is what legacy do I aspire to leave behind?

SPEAKER_00 33:14

Well, it's all a part, it's it's all it's also aspiring to be something is also making a conscious decision to become who you need to be in order to fulfill that aspiration of what you got. I'm quickly reminded uh of the story of Michelangelo and the statue of David. I'm I'm sure you may have heard it before. But if not, it was that he he he got done with this unbelievable sculpture of David, and and people were mesmerized. And they would ask him, Michelangelo, how did you create something so unbelievably beautiful that became the statue of David? He said, I I didn't create anything. I simply chipped away at everything that wasn't David, and David appeared. And I think that's really a great illustration of how life is, is that if we are one of the people.

SPEAKER_01 34:04

How we build our character. That's how you build who you are. You chip away. Matter of fact, I'm editing that section of the book right now, which is which talks about how to redirect self-destructive, self-destructive tendencies into something constructive. I I had a very self-destructive past, being in juvenile all those times and being arrested. I even when I was 18, I was arrested as a habitual traffic offender. I had so many traffic tickets, I just never paid them. I had, according to my therapist, I have had, not had, I still have an addiction to excitement. That excitement can come in two forms: destructive, driving fast, fleeing and tempting to elude, stealing cars, you know, you name it, I did it. Or thank God I found a constructive outlet to build houses on the ocean without a buyer in mind, not knowing if I'm gonna eat, you know, like I said, the writs are out of a dumpster, yeah, is extremely exciting for me. It fills a need, and I found a way to make a living at it. So, as Freud says, and other noted psychiatrists say, after the age of three, up to about the age of 12, we don't change who we are. We do not change. You are who you were when you were 12. Yeah, what what you can all all you can do, and most of that's good, like the good core of Sebastian, a good core of Frank, is a fantastic thing. All you can do is redirect tendencies or behavior. That's all you can do. That you don't change. Changing is too like I I give talks at your commencement speeches at uh treatment centers. I've never been in a treatment center, but I have an addictive personality. I could have easily landed in the treatment center. I tell the folks, I said, don't change. What you have in your synapses there that has landed you in here is something very special. I I think more people should quit seeing that as a negative. It's negative because of the outlet they choose for it. Just redirect that into something constructive or positive. Don't change who you are. What got you into this place, watch you set the world on fire. That's what I did. I mean, I could have been a drug addict or probably dead by now, but I found a constructive outlet for a destructive tendency.

SPEAKER_00 36:04

I love it. When's the book dropping?

SPEAKER_01 36:07

I don't know. I don't want to say yet. I don't know, honestly, or if I say it'll be wrong, but it's gonna be this summer. I can say that.

SPEAKER_00 36:13

Excellent. I look forward to that, to that dropping. Frank McKinney, so great to connect with you. Always great to see you. I finally sat down, got you on the podcast. We've been talking about it uh for several years now. So grateful to have run into you in beautiful downtown uh Delray Beach. And as as as I mentioned before, my mother was just absolutely over the moon uh that we had the chance to sit down here. So I look forward to the book coming out. I'm gonna get you back on the show because I want to come check this uh tree house on the ocean.

SPEAKER_01 36:39

We're gonna go live from here when the book comes out. We might even get your mom up here.

SPEAKER_00 36:43

We get that will make that will make her year. Friends, if you're listening to this episode right now and you're like, I want a copy of this book, you need to make sure you're connected with Frank. You can get all of his links to stay connected with him and his website available in the show notes. That's the description of this episode that you are watching. Well, Frank, you are quite the aspiration, inspiration, and motivation. Your story is is something uh to to to not only model but admire uh and make your own. Take pieces of it and make your own and get out there and aspire to be the best version of yourself that's out there. I encourage you to keep doing what you're doing. You're heart, you're very heart-centered. I do know that about a lot of your work. Your faith plays out in your work, and I think those are two incredibly, incredibly important components to any bit of success in life in general. So keep doing what you're doing, Frank, and I look forward to hanging out in your treehouse and reading through your uh your your newest book.

SPEAKER_01 37:38

All right, buddy.

SPEAKER_00 37:39

Take care. Thanks, Frank. Okay, friends, until next time. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode of the Beyond the Story Podcast. Be sure to appreciate it. If you haven't done so already, make sure you're subscribed to the show. This way you'll get updates as new episodes become available. If you feel so inclined, please leave us a review. Be sure to appreciate it. Signing off from the podcast, launchlab.com studios. I'll talk to you next time.