Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode to meet up. Another great conversation ahead to talk about luxury and today the topic is going to be real-state and yachting. And for that we're going to have our good friend and guest Paul Benson, his angle and vocalist real-state and yachting partner based in Park City, Utah. I'm overseeing some of the most desirable locations in the country.
So we're going to touch base on a little bit about that industry and also how he has managed to expand his business to new levels. What's happening Paul? Good morning. How are you?
Amazing. What a beautiful day, huh? I'm in South Toledo today at the Marina and it couldn't be better. Wow.
That sounds such a majestic morning. So hey, enjoy, enjoy. That's amazing that you're joining us from there. So thank you for being here today.
Wow. Thanks for the invite. I much appreciate it. Enjoy your segments.
No, absolutely. And today is a very special day because we're going to be combining such a beautiful industry of real-state with yachting, which you are the perfect example on how it's important to not just focus on a lot of things, but the lifestyle. You're focusing on carrying the super high-end clientele. You are Angela Volcker's real-state, yachting partner based in Park City, Yuda.
But you're also overseeing some of the most, I guess, desirable locations in the country. So tell us a little bit about it. Absolutely. It did start headquarters, Park City.
And I was still an agent to, I would say, people looking for amazing properties, lifestyle properties, ski homes, ranches, ski condos, a lot of people escaping places like California, Florida, New York, to have the quality of life that brings them closer to their family but creates experience. And I picked up on that when I moved to Park City 2004 and I loved the whole lifestyle component really long before it was like the tagline out there. And that's where I focused. I focused on catering adventures for my clients as they would come to Park City.
And it just grew. I had the opportunity to join England Vokers in 2014 and a lot of the people from my previous brokerages in the Sotheby's world followed. And after six years, almost seven years now, we have 37 offices in the West, Beverly Hills, Newport, San Francisco, Tahoe, Scottsdale, Great spots. And they say, you want to be places you enjoy going.
That's so true. And that's so smart as well because obviously Paul, you've been in this business for how many years already? That's about 17 years now. It's been a long journey and you definitely understand the need of focusing and catering that lifestyle component because there is one thing in common that all that niche market is they all go to the same desirable locations.
They have this similar lifestyle. I'm a boater, I'm a sailor and I had horrible experiences buying boats and I knew Ingle Vokers had yachting in Europe. And I said, you know what? We could do better in America.
We could offer a higher level of service. And what I didn't realize, and I should have been a boat owner, is the amount of contacts in the boating world that a client needs, where the communication of where they're going to move their boat and what toys they want to add and what experience they want and the catering, all the chefs, everything that goes with it. And it really just kind of tied together as one. And it's kind of fun to see you actually.
Now, tell us a little bit about Park City. I love skiing. I grew up in Vermont. So I definitely, it's such a cliche.
You go there to ski, but you stay there for the summer. It's kind of like a 330 days a year of sunshine with no humidity and cool nights and epic bike trails, epic hiking trails, kayaking, great restaurants, great art galleries, 35 minutes to major airport. Pretty lucky. Pretty lucky.
So how have you seen the demand throughout this same year? It's really been a few phases. Phase one, I look back and call it kind of the panic phase where people were trying to escape cities. They wanted to go to places with space.
We agents were talking about space being the new luxury. And then the phase two part of this was, you know, a lot of people are working from home. I want a quality of lifestyle where I can work from home. Then came phase three.
You know, phase three is where people started going back to places like California and New York, but yet they still wanted homes in Park City. And that was really the big test. What a lot of these panic buyers go back to the city. But no, they've been enrolling their kids in schools.
They're making this their main home. Some of it has to do with taxes. Some of it has to do with lifestyle. What's happened is our inventory is just gone.
And the cost of build has gone up. So we don't have enough people building. And you know, these small towns, whether it's Vale, Aspen, Jackson, Park City, Nappa, the inventory problems are not going to go away any time in the next few years. And the ask is because obviously you want to differentiate yourself.
When the demand is so high, there is a lot of people looking into who is the best person to work with. All seems to guy that has a lot of years of experience, but has also managed to position yourself above the competition. You're very strong on social media. You have over 100,000 followers.
You are creating all this amazing content and engagement. So what's your strategy to really stay ahead of the competition? You know, I would say my strategy is rather than stay ahead of the competition, it's to stay ahead of the client's needs. I just look at it like be ahead of what the client really needs and what is going to give them that experience that they remember for a lifetime.
Half that vision ahead of where to position yourself, where do you actually see the real estate industry in the next five years? Ooh, five years. That's a hard one. You know, I think the inventory really, you have a combination of a few things.
You have the pandemic effect, but you also have a stock market effect, which when a stock market gets as high, people can pull money out and live happily ever after. And the safest place to put money is generally in real estate. We're also now competing with Wall Street. You know, we've got hedge funds out there buying up real estate and for various reasons, competing with Wall Street.
And you're doing it at a time where the cost to build a home in most markets is two to three times what it was three or four years ago. My opinion is it's going to be an inflationary jump, meaning there will be a point where people just can't afford to buy something. They don't know where to go. They don't have anything to go to.
So it just freezes things a little bit. I kind of think it's going to be a curve up over the next five years, even with a little bit of a roller coaster in year three, four. Amazing. No, great points.
I'm going to talk about how a lot of people look into what's going to happen in the future, right? I mean, here in Miami, we just hosted the big cryptocurrency conference week and a lot of interesting conversations that relate to real estate, you know, because we'll have looked into this new development called RT in Sourceide, which, you know, it's the one and first development that is accepting cryptocurrency. And it's been really interesting to see how huge transactions, again, we're not talking about thousands, we're talking about millions of dollars being transacked via crypto, what's your thought on it? And I know some of our audience, the other day, were really interested about it.
The NFTs. You know, I started doing cryptocurrency transactions. I think it was around 2018. It was either 17 or 18.
We had a couple of Bitcoin transactions. So we regularly market our properties available as cryptocurrency purchases, as well as we've aligned ourselves with a great title partner that can do the immediate conversions and has it figured out and we can close these deals. That's the easy part. You know, the fun part is watching, you know, my 11 year old son become obsessed with Robinhood, you know, and GameStop.
And here, here I'm having conversations with my son about all of his friends in that age, investing in Robinhood. Wow. And there's a lot of people out there looking for that alternative opportunity. And the easier it becomes to like do these NFTs or do these kind of Robinhood type trading platforms, I think you're going to see more and more people that believe through social media, they can influence that world.
I mean, I always ask this question because it's so interesting and it goes all the way to your heart. Like, what is really luxury to you? I believe it's a sense of purpose. You know, it's a actually love that question because I think so many people have so many different answers and there's no wrong answer.
One of those questions that even though it's around this every day, there's no wrong answer. But for me, I watch those today. They're not necessarily attracted. Let's take some of the newer billionaires.
They're not necessarily going out and buying Prada Gucci Fendi. They might be buying a brand that is only $100 shirt, but the proceeds are going to a charity that they like and they like the way it looks and it's very simple. You know, I see the same thing in the dining world, you know, fine dining with the white table cloths. It's a lot harder to sell, you know, even though there's a lot more wealth out there.
People want that kind of experience where they feel they're giving back to the community. So a sense of giving back, a sense of purpose. I think if you can create an experience that elevates that sense of purpose, you're appealing to the luxury person. It's interesting to hear it from you.
I like it. So I know we've been touching on different areas today, but obviously I want to touch a little bit more personal. Like what is actually making you become such successful individual in this space? We say, I've always, I've always loved the luxury world.
You know, even as a kid, I'm waiting tables. I'd spend all my money on the best restaurants, you know, I, you know, and so I've always been fascinated with amazing homes or yachts or cars. But not just like, hey, look at that. That's cool.
Like I wanted to know like who's the architect? Why they build it that way? What? And who lives there and why?
You know, and so I've always had that fascination for sure. But the sense of purpose probably comes from my desire to support my family, you know, my parents to my to my four kids. And you know, I definitely, as my company's grown, you know, we have 700 people in my company now watching others do better than they've ever done before is probably that turning point for me where I realized, you know, I always had a team in real estate going back even to 2006. I've always had a team.
So I have had that taste of helping others succeed at levels that they never thought they could, but watching it on an even bigger scale and actually watching those people put money into communities and going to the restaurants and just watching that flow where you just know there's families that are happier because of something you're pushing. I enjoy that. So I think that's probably been a big turning point for me that gets me out of bed. So I think it's the combination between finding your passion and being really curious about getting to know as much as possible from that world you're passionate about.
You just said one of my favorite words, curious. You know, the more people I'm around that are constantly curious. I see a correlation between success and curiosity or more importantly, happiness and curiosity. You know, I think it's a word that has a lot of meaning in success.
So it's more important to ask the right questions than to talk. So the world opens up automatically. So now, thank you. That's been great.
I'm not sure if we have missed any points or is there any takeaways that you would like to share with us that we've missed. I would say another great question. I would say one of the things I've been thinking about lately is I think we all remember somewhere around May or June coming to terms last year in 2020 with, oh my gosh, if we just get through this, I will. And there was a sense of I'll be grateful.
I'll be thankful. I'll be appreciative. And the economy's rebounded so intensely and we're all swept up in this moment of this incredible, amazing time, the roaring 20s of our lifetime. I suggest we all remember like to just slow down a minute and realize like, hey, you know, we would just walk through a roller coaster.
Let's appreciate where we are. And that's what I'm trying to do. Amazing. Well, thank you so much for sharing that.
I want to make sure that everybody that is watching this, that we'll watch it later on. Please make sure to follow Paul. He's amazing, very knowledgeable in the space of real estate and yachts, but also very inspirational individual. It was great talking to you Paul.
Thank you again for being here today. And I look forward to seeing you in Park City or if you come visit us in Miami, you know, please. Please, likewise, come on out. I'll host you and take care of you.
Thank you so much. That's amazing. Bye Paul. Bye bye.
And thanks again for everybody tuning in today. We hope you enjoyed it. And remember, embrace it's beautiful success in life. My name is Alvaro and I'll see you next time.