In this episode of The Mailbox Money Show, Bronson Hill sits down with former professional skateboarder, entrepreneur, real estate investor, and current mayor pro tem of Thousand Oaks, California — Mikey Taylor. Recorded right in Mikey’s own office, this conversation goes far beyond skate culture and business.
Bronson and Mikey dive into the evolution of Mikey’s career: from turning street skateboarding into a global platform, to founding and selling the iconic craft brewery St. Archer to MillerCoors, to building a real estate investment company, and ultimately stepping into public service. Mikey opens up about identity, risk, and reinvention — and how facing the end of a dream forced him to build a future with intention.
If you’re interested in entrepreneurship, investing, personal growth, or simply hearing an honest conversation with someone who’s reinvented himself multiple times, this episode is a must-listen.
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Full Transcript:
Bronson Hill: Welcome to the Mailbox Money Show. I’m your host, Bronson Hill. I’m in the studio of my good friend, Mikey Taylor, in Thousand Oaks, California. And he is an amazing guy.
If you haven’t followed him, he’s the former professional skateboarder who’s turned real estate investor and is the pro tem mayor of Thousand Oaks, California. We’re going to talk about stuff related to investing, we’re going to talk about what it means to be someone who has a personal values. How do you live out those values and what you believe, how do you even get involved in policies and politics and what that looks like. It’s going to be a great interview.
We’re looking forward to it. He said I can ask him anything, so I’ll try to ask him what kinds of embarrassing questions and things he wouldn’t normally ask on a show like this. But Mikey, really good to see you. How are you doing today, brother?
Mikey Taylor: I’m doing well. Thanks for making this very easy, doing this in my office.
Bronson Hill: Yeah, Mikey, just come to you. You’re willing to do it.
Mikey Taylor: I love it.
Bronson Hill: And I know I just recorded with you, which was a lot of fun. We had a great chat talking through some different stuff. So people that don’t know your story, you have a huge following, I know you have a lot of people that follow you from the extreme sports that you’ve done as well as skateboarding.
Can you talk about just a little bit of your background and what led you to that and then kind of beyond that. What are some of the transition of what you’re doing now?
Mikey Taylor: Yeah, so I started off as a pro skateboarder. That was my first career, really my first job. And I got to live a pretty fun lifestyle. Traveled the world, the skate culture for anybody who wasn’t a skateboarder is unique and special.
And so I loved that. The challenge was I couldn’t skateboard forever. Kids just get too good, too quick.
And so before you know it, you’re the old guy that can’t compete. And so I started trying to figure out what my life could look like after skateboarding. I didn’t go to college when I was young.
I felt like my only skill was riding a skateboard. And so I didn’t think I could go out and just get a job that could pay me well. I thought the options were either I’m entry level and never going to make money or I’ve got to start something myself.
Bronson Hill: Real quick on the skateboarding side. So I used to be a skateboarder amateur, very amateurish and stuff. Were you more of like a ramp guy?
Were you like a freestyle tricks guy? What kind of skateboarding did you do?
Mikey Taylor: Yeah, I was skating in the streets. So stairs, handrails, tables, everything that you weren’t supposed to skateboard on was what I skateboarded on.
Bronson Hill: So skateboarding is not a crime.
Mikey Taylor: That was like the bumper sticker of my era. That’s right.
Bronson Hill: Yeah. Yeah. OK, so you were doing that.
And let me just ask you a little bit about that. So you did that for years and years. You were in that.
What were some of the pros and cons of being in that? And what did you like most about it? What did you like struggle with?
Mikey Taylor: OK, so the things I liked about being a skateboarder and then pro skateboarder. One, everything is on your terms. So I got to decide when I wanted to skate.
What I wanted to do, how the video was going to portray myself. If I wanted to go on trips, it was a very flexible lifestyle. And then the skateboarding culture is pretty cool, especially growing up in the 90s, skateboarding wasn’t very welcomed back then.
And so if you were a skater, you looked at other skaters as your family. It was probably real similar to, you know, when people get mixed up in gangs and you wonder, like, why is that person involved in a gang when you’re growing up in a neighborhood? And this was not my experience growing up, but just so you understand the comparison. Growing up in a rough neighborhood feels like everything’s, you know, everyone’s out to get to get you.
Usually if you’re coming up in a broken household, you find a group of guys that bring you in and all of a sudden you feel like you’re a part of something. People care about you. It’s like that family feel.
Part of that felt very similar to skateboarding, where we weren’t cool. I didn’t have friends in high school. I was viewed as an outcast.
You were automatically viewed as a troublemaker. So when you saw other skaters, there was this, I know what you’re feeling and I got you. And so there was like this like bond that we had that was really cool.
As skateboarding started becoming more mainstream, that started to change. But I loved that side of it. The the the ability to feel accomplished frequently was pretty rad.
So I want to film this trick. I’m going to work at it for a month. I’m going to go land it.
And then the feeling of I did it, you can feel that on a monthly basis. There were times where I felt that on a daily basis. So you come home feeling like you did a good job.
Yeah, that’s a cool feeling.
Bronson Hill: Like an achiever. Like I checked something. I did something that’s never been done or I checked it off.
My list is I can do that thing that seems.
Mikey Taylor: 100 percent. And then when you add fear into the equation, right? If you wanted to do something that you were scared to do and you pushed yourself past it and then the adrenaline rush you get when you do it, that’s a that’s an addictive feeling. It feels amazing.
And so I like that I got to feel that often. I would say the cons are one, you don’t know how long your career is going to last. And so the security in your future was very small, right?
You would sign two to three year contracts and then you’d always wonder, is that the end? So there was a lot of unknowns. There was the idea that your whole friend group is here and you could be taken out of it like that.
There was the risk of getting hurt and then not being able to skate for a while. The idea of not being relevant is scary. I mean, like anything, there are definitely cons getting tickets and kicked out of stuff and having to go to court.
That was a con.
Bronson Hill: Yeah. that’s interesting. And so so you did that for a while.
Obviously, you did very well on that. And for quite a number of years and created quite a reputation there. So so what made you want to shift?
Like you said, obviously, you started getting older and so you started looking for options. How did you discover? I think St. Archer was the next thing. How did you discover that and talk about that a bit?
Mikey Taylor: Yeah, so there was a combination of things that perfectly culminated into. I need to start a business. The first one was what I was mentioning in the beginning that I felt like my only path to making money would be starting a company because I grew up in the era era that if you did not go to college, you weren’t ever going to be anything.
So I felt like I always had to start something if I wanted to live a life that, you know, I hope to live. And then, too, when I asked my wife’s at that time, girlfriend’s dad for permission to ask her to marry me. I thought he was going to look at me and go, yeah, I would love that.
You’re such a good guy. We’ve known you forever. And he drilled the crap out of me.
He he treated that lunch like an investor treats the due diligence of an investment.
Bronson Hill: It was due diligence, right?
Mikey Taylor: Oh, my God.
Bronson Hill: I’m going to take care of my daughter.
Mikey Taylor: Exactly. So that’s what he said. The first thing that rattled me was how are you going to support my daughter when skateboarding ads?
And I had this fluffy answer that I didn’t really spend much time thinking about, which was, oh, I’ll just start a company. And then his next question was, what company? I don’t know.
And then he asked, how do you even know you’ll be good at starting a company? What skill sets do you have? And by the end of it..
Bronson Hill: How old were you when this was happening?
Mikey Taylor: Twenty seven. So I left before he said yes.
What’s going on through my head was he’s going to say no, right.
He eventually said yes. And he didn’t do it like, you know, he he finished by going, I want what’s best for you guys. And so these are things that I want you to figure out.
But of course, you can marry my daughter. So it was a it ended up being positive. But I left that going.
I need to figure out what the heck to do. And so thank God I was given a very obsessive mind and personality. So I went straight into what’s next.
And so I was trying to figure out what type of company I could start. And I got connected with a friend and we were naturally talking about business, most likely because I felt this urge to have to start a business that any person I got in front of it was. So what are you doing with business?
What opportunities do you see? And when I asked that to this guy, Josh, he said, we should do a company. We should do something that’s never been done in our world.
And we landed on a craft brewery. And so I know business experience.
He didn’t either. We had no idea how to brew beer. We knew nothing.
But I loved the idea that a beer company had never been done in the action sports world. And so that was us basically figuring out how to start a company.
Bronson Hill: Yeah. And so you started it. I’m sure there’s a lot of stories there, how that went.
You learned how to do so. You eventually sold to Miller Coors, which is huge. Like that come out of nowhere.
Or was that something that just like was that three or four or five years later?
Mikey Taylor: So yes and no. So we had this idea and the idea we had when we started the brewery was if you looked at all other craft breweries out there, everything looked the same. And what the normal progression was is somebody was interested in beer and they went, oh, I want to try brewing beer.
And they got a whole home brewing system. They started brewing beer for their friends and their friends. If they liked it, we go, dude, this is actually pretty good.
Bronson Hill: Yeah.
Mikey Taylor: And then, you know, the the demand would spread and then they’d get a bigger system and maybe they’d get a storage unit and start brewing out of there. And then it became a brewery and then they grew. That was almost every single brewery in existence followed that flow.
We looked at it and went, OK, no one understands brand. No one understands how to sell a product that has nothing to do with the beer. How do you know we came from an industry with skateboarding where there was only two wood manufacturers, which meant every single skateboard was basically the same.
But every kid thought that the 30 brands that they had options to buy were unique. That was all marketing and that was all brand. And so we went in and had the idea that we could create a company that portrayed the California lifestyle through our lens, which was not early California Cowboys.
It was not conventional sports. It was surf, skate, snow, music, art culture. That was our lens of the state.
And so all of our marketing was all about that. The product was beer. And so if people resonated with our view of California, if they were one of us, when they drank our beer, what they experienced was a confirmation that they view our state the same way.
They live the same lifestyle as us. We were spot on on the idea and it was the perfect timing to launch it because it was at a time where social media was really starting to tap into founder led companies. And the demand for a company just went through the roof.
So we launched. And from the point of us launching to exit, we can never match demand. We were scrambling to try to create more beer to sell because we just were so far from it.
Bronson Hill: Wow.
Mikey Taylor: And then we got approached by a group that said, I think there’s interest in some of these groups that we represent to buy your company. And so we said, OK, well, what does that mean?
Bronson Hill: Yeah.
Mikey Taylor: And then they brought options. And then we we were talking to four of the largest beer manufacturers in the world, and then we ended up deciding to sell in the course.
Bronson Hill: So it’s amazing from that story. It’s like having the idea to like, oh, here’s something that’s missing from the marketplace. It is amazing how many things are like obvious looking back.
It’s like, oh, yeah, of course that work. Of course, this thing work because there was nobody else doing it. But a lot of us, we just don’t see that we have we see opportunities in places other people don’t.
And I think that’s something that, people that are good at business are looking for us. You don’t want to be the same like you were a beer. There’s millions of others.
Hundreds of other beers. But you guys had a unique way of going about it. And you really and you had a presence and you were saying, hey, let’s do this in this lifestyle.
And it really spoke to people. I wanted to shift gears for a minute because I know we just have a short time in this interview. I want to talk about multifamily in a little bit, but I also want to talk about something that was really touching to me recently.
Charlie Kirk passed away and I was really touched by his life and his death and just the fact that someone can share what they believe. And then, people can be so offended and hurt and buy that. And I know you actually got to meet him or had a bit of a knowledge of him.
But I guess what are some takeaways from just his life and maybe just even some reflections. And you do a lot of reflecting after this. Can you just talk about some of the reflections you had about kind of the life that you want to live based on kind of some of those events that happened?
Mikey Taylor: Yeah, I would say the one for me, the big one, was when you have a following or you’re putting content out there. It’s very easy for the content to not totally match real life. Or you can easily end up in a scenario where your real life is one way and social media is maybe just a glimpse of it. And for me, that was absolutely true.
You know, there were people that I would be hanging out with in real life and I would say things that I wouldn’t say on social media. It wasn’t like a true, this is me. And I understand why I attempted to do it.
I think what the big takeaway for me is something that he said that I actually found after he had passed. Which was, if you’re online, have online, match your real life 100%. Bring the two to one.
And that was, I was scared of that. And I think for me, I got put into a, it wasn’t a put into a position. I ended up finding that I was trying to control every outcome.
And everything I would say, I would be mindful or trying to calculate from a future standpoint. If I say this, what does this mean in the future? And if I say this today, what door opens and what door closes?
And I found that I don’t wanna live life that way. I think life is supposed to be a journey. I think it’s supposed to be exciting.
And I think there’s always unknowns. I just think it’s comfortable for us to feel like we are in control. But I don’t think that’s actually right.
And so, probably for the last month, I’ve been really trying to be comfortable with who I am, putting it out there, and being okay if people don’t like it. I think for me, coming from the skate industry and moving from skateboarding into what I do now, investing for a living, there’s a lot of backlash that came with that. And what’s fascinating is I was okay with it.
I didn’t like it, but getting backlash from the community that I love never stopped me from doing it. But I found that on the political side, that was the part where I started getting too protective, where, okay, if I say this, I have groups that are actively out to get me and they’ll use this to create something about me so that people don’t like me or don’t vote for me. I think that was actually what felt like I was being trapped.
And so, I just had to get comfortable that, or maybe the better way to say this, I had a choice to make. The choice was either gonna be feel trapped and maybe have a higher chance getting reelected or be free, and maybe that means I get elected, maybe it doesn’t. And I’ve landed on free.
I don’t wanna live my life in a box and feel scared to do things.
Bronson Hill: I think, yeah, one thing it kinda reminded me too is that we have a place kinda more than ever before where people can just start, anybody can say anything online. And it’s like, people are not always nice online. They kinda can say things that they normally wouldn’t say, or there’s a lot of cheap seats that people can just throw stones.
And it’s really sad. I mean, you really see the way some people respond. But I think when it comes down, like I hear what you’re saying, is just living an authentic life.
And the people that I admire, it’s like, yeah, I wanna be someone who is the same, who’s on camera and who’s the same around my friends, around my family, or in a situation that things are difficult. And of course, we’re all human. I got upset with my dog the other day last night because she was whining.
And I was like, I probably didn’t respond to that the most positive way, but at least I can talk about it. But I think, so I just think it’s so good though to like, I think what Charlie Kirk’s death kinda reminded me of is just really, what really matters? And am I willing to stand up and talk about what is important to me and whether you call it politics or it’s just values or it’s faith or other things like that, am I actually being courageous?
And there’s a book called Wild at Heart and it’s a Wild at Heart book. He had this idea of like, what does it mean to be a man, like a principled man? And it’s the idea, you are who you are.
You let the weight of who you are fall. And then whatever the pieces are, they just kind of, versus being a passive or more of a responder type. It’s like, hey, this is who I am and let the world deal with it.
Mikey Taylor: Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, that’s exactly right. Scary, but yeah, that was a, I think for, you know, like there’s the political side, the thing that’s scary in this, but it was the thing I had to not just come to terms with, but really be okay with, is that I have beliefs that drive my entire life, right?
And it has become such a controversial topic, even talking about something like God or being created. And, you know, I had to get to a point where I just had to make a decision. Like who, if I live my whole life based on the idea that I was created and I’m here to be an example and glorify, you know, the creator who made me, why am I scared to say that?
And if I’m scared to say that, does that mean that I actually don’t really believe in it? That was something that I saw actually, I was watching something on Jordan Peterson, like maybe a year and a half ago. And for Jordan Peterson, you know, he talks more and more about God, but for a long time, everybody would always ask him, do you believe in God?
I watched this video of somebody press him on that, like, do you believe in God? And he starts crying and he starts going down this whole thing that he is so concerned that he doesn’t truly believe because if you believe your whole entire life, everything you have should be a representation of that. That’s a hard one even for me to answer.
Okay, like if I do believe this wholeheartedly, why am I holding back? And if I’m holding back, is that a reflection that maybe I don’t? And so all that to say, to really like bring it full circle.
For me, when everything happened with Charlie, I felt like I was at a point where I had started answering these questions. And I’m very thankful that it happened because really for me, it was, yes, I do believe in this stuff and I’m not gonna hold back any longer.
Bronson Hill: Yeah, yeah, it’s interesting. I think for me as well, I just, I had some of the same questions of like, well, am I really living consistent with my values, with my faith? And I would say, well, yeah, I know what I believe, but I’m just, I’m not, I wasn’t as courageous, obviously somebody and I was, there’s a way, I didn’t know Charlie, but you know, he had a way that was a little more confrontational, he’d come at it and he was a good debater and things like, but you know, there were things, I’m sure he wasn’t, you know, perfect or nobody’s perfect, but I think just somebody who’s willing to let, like to be a person, you know, to let my life matter.
And I think that’s the thing. There was a guy that, so the week Charlie died, there was another guy I follow who’s I do these extreme races and I run and run up mountains. This guy literally runs up mountains and he would hang glide down and he had a little backpack speed wing and he would hang glide down.
And he’s 27 years old and he had fallen for a while. I didn’t know him personally, but he died on the way down. So this was like a day after you after Charlie.
And I just thought, you know, there’s people die for all kinds of reasons. Like people are dying from cancer. They’re dying from just natural causes.
Not physically, but they’re dying inside because they don’t have the, they’re not, they’re actually like alive inside. They’re not, you know, there’s so much depression other than things that we talked about before. And so it’s like, I wanna be someone who has that life that I am saying the things that matter to me.
And I am, and I think in our culture today, one of the problems in our culture is that we have the extremes that are shouting the loudest and that people in the middle just don’t speak anything because we’re afraid to kind of speak up. As well as like, I need to be someone who’s willing to speak up. And it kind of, it really convicted me of like, yeah, I don’t wanna live this safe life.
I wanna be someone who’s willing to do it. So I guess for you, I’m curious with politics and just the future, Mikey Taylor, you know, in five, 10 years, like what does that look like for you? Do you see, is it more investment side?
Is it gonna be like Mikey Taylor for president in 2032? Like what is it, or 2028?
Mikey Taylor: Yeah, I don’t know. It’s interesting because if you would have asked me three months ago, I probably would have had a pretty clear shot, but now, I don’t know. I’m not sure.
I think I’m attempting to get better at not having a perfect plan and just kind of starting the day with, what am I supposed to do today? Like what is the highest use of my time? And I don’t think it’s always in the business.
Right, if I have somebody comes in and they’re talking about something that happens and they’re having a hard time, that is a distraction from my business. But if I actually can help them go through it, was that actually the best use of my time? And I think it is.
And so on the politics side, I don’t know. We’ll see. I’ve always gone through it as I never had a desire to get involved in politics.
I saw a need locally and said, okay, I’m willing to do this. And if more is created out of that, I’m willing to walk through it. But it’s not a desire of mine.
And so we’ll see what happens there. From a business standpoint, I like business. I want Commune to get to the point that I had in my head when we started it, the end goal of Commune.
And it’s not there yet. And so I’ll spend a lot of time building that. I’d love to start working on other businesses and build kind of multiple visions out simultaneously.
But today I am focusing on funding deals that we have in our pipeline. That is the focus of today.
Bronson Hill: Yeah, we were talking about that earlier, that right now in 2025, the latter part, we’re seeing some of the best deals we’ve seen in multifamily or development deals. You’re a developer here in California, which there’s a lot of people I know that are developers in California, but you’re doing it. But you’re seeing some of the best deals from a numbers perspective that you’ve seen.
Why do you think it’s so hard for people to get behind deals right now, even though they’re great deals?
Mikey Taylor: So yeah, just for context, the deals that we’re looking at today, I think are the best deals we’ve had in a decade. The deal profile is awesome right now. And I think this is the strongest case to be investing in what we are since I started this company.
Why people are having a hard time. I think number one, it’s what Warren Buffett has always said, right? Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy only when others are fearful.
But no one ever articulates how difficult it is to operate in that circumstance. When you’re scared, it’s hard to act. So I think that’s at play.
For multifamily, we saw a lot of dollars going into the Midwest and the Sundelt States and online, the crowdfunding mechanism to use social to syndicate on value add deals started to become pretty large. And multifamily, I think, was kind of the darling of that during that era. And a lot of those deals are being challenged right now.
It’s not entirely because the operator didn’t know what they were doing. It’s that we had a massive, we had a unique circumstance in 22 where when the Fed drove rates up the way they did, cap rates followed. And then you had a moment where people were building.
So there was saturation that happened and the debt market has made it very challenging. You have investors that just went through a very painful experience. So, imagine you’ve been dating this girl for four years who you absolutely adored and she breaks up with you.
And then a week later, the girl of your dreams pops up and you have a question to make. Do you now pursue the girl of your dreams and get through the pain point that you’re feeling or are you in so much pain for what just happened that you’re not even able to recognize the girl of your dreams? That’s what I think is happening in multi-camera.
Bronson Hill: This is a therapy session. I see there’s investors all around and they’re saying, I’ve just had my girlfriend break up.
Mikey Taylor: Yeah, and so I think it’s people are hurting and they’re scared and they can’t even, they’re not in a position to even look at something new. That’s a challenge.
Bronson Hill: Yeah, it is, it is. It’s so interesting. We had a great conversation on your podcast just earlier about what does it look like I guess in the future in California, obviously housing is, we have tons of shortage here.
There’s a lot of places that are difficult. We think of New York or Florida, other areas where it’s harder maybe to build or there’s different regulations, maybe not as much Florida, but the others. What’s the answer?
Like what’s the answer to create more housing or to kind of help with housing prices? Is it just to get rid of the controls, like rent control and make it easier to build or is that, what does that do?
Mikey Taylor: Yeah, I am a deregulation type of person. So if you think that housing needs to be added, I think you need to find a natural incentive to drive people to build more houses. I believe that incentive creates action.
And so you have to look at what the barriers are that stop investors from coming into our state. Big one is CEQA and CEQA adding so much time onto the entitlement phase. CEQA is what?
CEQA is a, it’s the, oh, what is it, the California Environmental Quality Act?
Bronson Hill: Quality Act, okay.
Mikey Taylor: It basically was created to make sure that the beauty of California is preserved, right? And you’re not building apartments on areas that will impact the state. And I think the intention was good.
What’s happened because of CEQA though is the six months that it should take you to get a project entitled now takes two plus years. Yeah, that’s terrible. And then even in that, there’s added fees and added costs.
So now you have a longer timeline and more fees. And then when you build the apartment, you have rent controls and you have taxes on the back end and they’ve just made it so it’s so expensive to create. And so if you want people to build and if you think, which I do, the solution to the housing crisis is adding supply, you got to cut all that back.
You got to make it cheaper and you got to allow it to go faster.
Bronson Hill: Yeah, it’s, you know, we’ve talked about this. I’m starting to do some development in Altadena. We’re building modular homes and there is some will to really expedite but it’s taken literally this huge act of, you know, tens of thousands of homes burning for people to say, okay, let’s actually do this.
Why do you think it’s like, actually I have a question about California because I feel like in California this exists where there’s kind of this apathy about California, even people, what I talked to from other states, it’s kind of like, oh, well, that’s California. Or that’s like, we’re like, it said people vote with their feet. So they’ll end up moving because they don’t want to deal with the schools or the politics or other things or stuff in California.
Do you think that there’s a point where that changes where people in California are saying like, well, actually we can change this and as we should actually stand up and do something or do you think there’s just this bottom of the status quo that it’s just gonna be that way, kind of the way it is right now forever?
Mikey Taylor: That’s a good question. I think the idea that people vote with their feet, I think it’s true, but they won’t do it until the pain point is so bad that they’re just pissed. And California, I think the big one was the lockdown.
Bronson Hill: Yeah, that’s tough for a lot of people.
Mikey Taylor: Considering that California wouldn’t have done a lockdown the way they did, I don’t think we would have seen the migration we saw. But because our state basically held everybody hostage for years, that was enough for people to go, I’m done.
Bronson Hill: Yeah, that was actually, I think the point for me that like I didn’t really feel like I was political or whatever, but the way that went down, it was so intolerable if you, especially living in LA County, it was like, you guys are in LA County here, right? We’re Ventura County, thank God. It was so like, I mean, Newsom shut down the outdoor dining again in January of 2021 when I’d go to Houston for a conference, there’s 700 people with no masks.
And it was like, COVID was over. Like we’re done, we’re moved out. And like, we’re still like in the middle of it.
It was crazy.
Mikey Taylor: Yeah, so that one I think was one of those examples that would actually get people to move. Now, fast forward to right now, I actually think the major factor that are driving people out of California right now is just cost. I think it’s, yes, people are frustrated with politics, 100% in California, but I think people just can’t pull it anymore.
And that’s what you’re seeing, which has a direct tie to policy. But look, if we’re looking at how politics should be done, like the healthy way, and I know Democrats aren’t gonna like this, I know Republicans aren’t gonna like this, but if you look at both parties, there’s two different views on solving the problem. And so when you actually have a balance between them, you end up with a response that’s somewhat in the neutral.
Right, maybe depending on majority, it’s center right or center left, but you don’t get the extremes when you have a healthy balance. Our state does not have that, right? We have a super majority that is controlled by the Democrats.
And so that’s why I think you see policy that goes further over on the left as opposed to bringing it more into the middle. And so what is that gonna look like for our state? Well, I think you’ll have more moderate Democrats and more Democrats further left so that you see that natural blend, but that blend is gonna be middle left as opposed to central or ever central right.
So what happens to get our state there? You’d have to see a massive swing. And I’m not sure you do.
I don’t know if you do in the next 10 plus years.
Bronson Hill: Yeah, it’s interesting to see it. We obviously we don’t know, but it is interesting. Obviously, a lot of people that are famous or celebrities have California and they end up leaving because of taxes and other things.
And it’s just like, it’s an interesting, you were asking me earlier, which, where would you rank California as far as states, the order of states? And I was like, probably bottom five. I was like, just not impressed.
And so obviously we can travel. We have a lot of, there’s a lot of freedoms we have, but I think it’s good. Let’s talk for a minute.
I know we got a few more minutes and we got a wrap, but let’s talk a little bit about what you’re seeing right now in multifamily in your space. So you said great deals. What’s the biggest challenge for you, when it comes to getting deals done?
Is it capital is the big thing or is it like what would it gets to be number two or three? Is it, that’s just kind of number one, two and three.
Mikey Taylor: Okay, so right now we are seeing a lot of deals. The return profile that we’re seeing on deals looks really good. The debt market actually isn’t that big of a hurdle for us right now.
The biggest challenge for us is equity. Raising money is harder today than I think it’s been since I started raising money in 2011.
Bronson Hill: I’d say, you know, I’ve talked to people it’s probably 10 times as hard. Yes. And for multifamily specifically.
Yes. And there’s reasons for that.
Mikey Taylor: Yep, that’s right. So I think this is a strong case for multifamily in our state. State is significantly under supply.
We need millions of units here to get this thing to equilibrium. The amount of debt that we’re putting on our properties is pretty low in comparison to what you were saying three years ago. We’re putting 35 to 40% equity checks down.
But that equity part is the hard part. It is so hard to raise the equity right now that we’re just watching deals go. Can’t do it, can’t do it.
So what I think is gonna happen, and this is what I’m desperately trying not to experience. When interest rates go down, you’re gonna see cap rates follow, which means multifamily is gonna get more expensive. When interest rates start coming down, you’re gonna see institutional capital start flowing back in, which means competition.
And so I wanna come out of this window going, oh, we got some great deals. Now we have the opportunity to ride a return through forced appreciation of development and cap rate compression when rates come down. We’re gonna go back into the grind of searching for good deals when both of those functions come back online.
Bronson Hill: So this is like the biggest challenge I see for a lot of people is that the best time to invest is the time where sentiment is at the lowest. And it’s unfortunate. It’s that whole being fearful when others are greeting, being greeting, when others are fearful.
Everybody says, hey, I wanna be a contrarian, but it’s hard in the moment, especially if you’ve had an experience where we’ve had challenges in multifamily deals specifically, and like a lot of people have. So it’s like, how do you get excited about doing that again? Or how do you tell your spouse, hey, I’m gonna do this again, but now it’s a great time.
But that’s how money is really made. Doing things at the time that makes sense. Every business is cyclical, and it can be very challenging at times. Mikey, I just so appreciate your, who you are, your presence, the way you show up.
I know you have a huge audience that you’re valuing as well. How can people connect with you, reach out here about what you’re doing? And I’m excited for your book that’s coming out at some point I’m speaking that out I think in the next couple of years, right?
Mikey Taylor: Yeah, I’m gonna have to get that thing somewhere in line. So regardless of the platform, just Mikey Taylor, and you’ll find me, I’m the most active on Instagram. So if you leave me a message on all the other platforms, just give me a moment.
It might be a little bit of a delay, but I’m on all the platforms. So you can find me on whatever one is your favorite.
Bronson Hill: Awesome, man. I really appreciate it. Thanks, it’s great to be in your studio, great to spend some time with you.
Hopefully we’ll have you at one of our well-formed events coming up where we have our high net worth investors and we’d love to have you at one of those. Yeah, let me know. I would love to join that.
Yeah, awesome. Thanks, brother. Thanks.
So tune in next time for more Mailbox Money.
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