Alan Keate is a seasoned leader known for his transformative approach to leadership and business. Alan shares candid stories from his journey, highlighting the resilience and adaptability required to navigate the complexities of business and leadership.

Alan's narrative includes his initial struggles with credibility and how his persistence and genuine heart for helping others transformed his professional relationships and business strategies. He delves into the intricacies of financial management in business, emphasizing the importance of understanding credit and debt to empower business growth and stability.

Key points from the conversation include Alan's insights on the impact of leadership on team dynamics, especially during crises, and how leaders can leverage challenges as opportunities for growth and learning. He also discusses the significance of financial literacy and its direct correlation to successful leadership and business management.

The podcast provides valuable lessons for aspiring leaders and entrepreneurs on resilience, financial acumen, and the humane approach to business.

Want to learn more about Alan Keate's work? Check out their website at https://www.lexantadvisors.com/.

Connect with Alan Keate on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/alankeate/.

Key Points with Timestamps

  • [00:01:50] Alan Keate's passion for creating positive team dynamics and leadership.
  • [00:07:08] Discussion on how to handle credit and financial challenges in business.
  • [00:13:44] The unsuccessful financial literacy program Alan initiated and its implications.
  • [00:21:50] Advice for businesses on managing debt and capital.
  • [00:29:57] Overview of Lexington Advisors and their services in the financial sector.

Transcript

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;30;20
Craig Andrews
I was in a coma for six weeks while the doctors told my wife I was going to die. When I woke up, she told me the most fantastic story. My team kept running the business without me. Freelancers reached out to my team and said, we will do whatever it takes. As long as Craig's in the hospital. I consider that the greatest accomplishment of my career.

00;00;30;23 - 00;00;51;10
Craig Andrews
My name is Craig Andrews and this is the Leaders and Legacies podcast where we talk to leaders creating an impact beyond themselves. At the end of today's interview, I'll tell you how you can be the next leader featured on the show.

00;00;51;20 - 00;01;21;02
Craig Andrews
Today I went welcome. Alan Keate I've known Alan for several years now, and the interesting thing is, when I first met Alan, my wife, I knew just was what his business was. I was like, I'm not sure I want to do business with him. But as I got to know, Alan's part. I was like, this is exactly how I want to do business with.

00;01;21;04 - 00;01;49;29
Craig Andrews
And so this is going to be an interesting episode. You're going to, you're going to here's some things that may surprise you, but I want you to approach it with an open mind because there are needs in this world that need to be met. And, and whatever we do as we look to meet those needs. The heart behind the person meeting those needs is so important.

00;01;50;01 - 00;02;03;23
Craig Andrews
And Alan is one of these people that has a good heart and seeks to bring out the best in everybody that he works with. And that's why I'm excited to have him here. On Leaders and Legacies. Alan, welcome.

00;02;03;26 - 00;02;21;27
Alan Keate
Thanks, Craig. I appreciate that. you're. Well, we were talking just a minute ago. I mean, you can appreciate. Look, heart is great, and I appreciate the compliment. I really do, but your greatest strength is your greatest weakness, right? Like we were just discussing a moment ago.

00;02;22;00 - 00;02;54;14
Craig Andrews
Yeah, well, we'll get in. Yeah, and we'll get into that in a in a minute. But the, So, so I guess kind of as a high level, whatever you've done, you know, wherever you've been, your career, you've worked in the space of providing debt, you know, brokering debt or, you know, giving credit or buying credit. And that seems to be kind of a constant theme throughout, throughout your careers.

00;02;54;22 - 00;02;56;17
Craig Andrews
Would you say it's right?

00;02;56;19 - 00;03;18;19
Alan Keate
Yeah. Actually, yeah. my some of my background comes from, like, public markets. specifically like equity options and things. And there's kind of a debt component to that because it looks at those models, if you will, look at the cost of capital and the cost of money through time. So, yeah, interest rates and things like that.

00;03;18;19 - 00;03;22;27
Alan Keate
Yeah. I actually never thought about Spencer. You just said it.

00;03;23;00 - 00;03;40;28
Craig Andrews
Well and and you know, for those listening, I think the thing that when listened to is, you know, if if you're in business at some point you're probably gonna need some type of, you know, debt as a vehicle. And so we're going to get into the, you know, we're going to get into what Alan's doing right now, a little bit later.

00;03;41;00 - 00;04;05;28
Craig Andrews
But, you know, for me, part of my own story goes back, more than 20 years. And, one of my best friends is a guy named, Albrecht Madson. And he's a very talented engineer that moved to the United States. And for those that haven't experienced this, there's a unique challenge. When you move to the United States.

00;04;06;00 - 00;04;22;02
Craig Andrews
It doesn't matter what you did in Denmark, where he was from, your credit rating is blank. In the U.S. and here he is. He's a well paid, talented engineer who can't get a car loan.

00;04;22;05 - 00;04;27;06
Alan Keate
Yeah, the the the 18 year old can get one a lot easier than he could.

00;04;27;08 - 00;04;30;18
Craig Andrews
What? Why is that?

00;04;30;20 - 00;05;01;14
Alan Keate
I mean, unfortunately, people just look at, recent history in the US and they're looking at, you know, what has been their propensity to pay in the past. And when you have a they call him a no file or a thin file, for somebody who's kind of a ghost in the system, and they get a lot less credit than an 18 year old incoming freshman who just got 30 credit card.

00;05;01;20 - 00;05;27;21
Alan Keate
First thing is box, right? and that kid is going to get a credit card well, before, because he's had a social, his parents have, you know, filed that they have access to it. And that shows up differently in credit files than someone who has an immigrant or some other type of social. And they can kind of tell the difference when those were issued.

00;05;27;23 - 00;05;50;12
Alan Keate
so, you know, the first few numbers of mine say that mine was issued, a long time ago, almost 50 years ago. So there's is going to say that it was just issued. So that becomes the problem with that particular social and therefore access to credit that you and I use every day. They just don't have. Yeah.

00;05;50;15 - 00;06;16;19
Craig Andrews
Well, and what ended up happening to them was a, a colleague, I think at one point a conservative friend, sold him a heap of junk. It was a Ford Contour that was such a dog that when he when he moved back to Denmark, he just abandoned it in the company parking lot. And I'm not sure what ever happened to that car, but it was so worthless.

00;06;16;22 - 00;06;34;22
Craig Andrews
he just left it. He just abandoned it and moved back to Denmark. But it that was that was part of the challenge. And and that was a part of the world that you lived in is, you helped you help people with bad credit or no credit get cars.

00;06;34;25 - 00;07;08;25
Alan Keate
Yeah. Yeah, we did, we did it in a number of different iterations, whether it was the actual physical dealerships that created the notes or moved on to. Well, I have that's one way to do it, is be the dealer and originate them. Another is, be an indirect finance company. So at the point of sale, someone goes to a dealership, you're the finance company that they pick to to kind of take the loan or most recently we did bulk purchasing of, of notes in the space.

00;07;08;25 - 00;07;26;03
Alan Keate
So kind of the secondary market, when people finance cars, it takes a lot of capital. They run out of capital. They want to continue to finance cars. What do they do? They offload those to another lender. And in that case, that's that's who we were in the latest iteration.

00;07;26;03 - 00;07;31;04
Craig Andrews
So and what buy here pay here.

00;07;31;06 - 00;07;56;12
Alan Keate
Yeah buy here pay here. that kind of encompasses a lot of things. But yeah definitely dealing with you know everyone would like to think that buy here pay here only deals with, you know, subprime consumers. But the reality you just described your buddy who if he would have financed the car from Denmark, he would have been classified as subprime.

00;07;56;15 - 00;08;10;19
Alan Keate
But the reality is he was absolutely lutely prime, right? Yeah. So just because you've been classified that way doesn't necessarily mean that that's what you are as a consumer. From a lending perspective.

00;08;10;21 - 00;08;28;26
Craig Andrews
Well, and and that's the thing I was mentioning at the introduction is when I first saw that, I was like, you know, I had some misunderstandings about the buy here, pay here space. I was like, I don't know if I wouldn't want to be associated with that. But as I got to know you and as I got to learn your heart,

00;08;28;29 - 00;08;29;17
Alan Keate
I.

00;08;29;19 - 00;08;52;04
Craig Andrews
You know, one of the things that really hit me was there's a real need. There is a need out there. And and that made me think back to my body of work. but it's not just, you know, high paid engineers. There's a lot of people. One of the stats that you shared with me and this, of course, is changed since interest rates went up.

00;08;52;06 - 00;08;57;10
Craig Andrews
but this was what for? You know, this was 20, 20 ish.

00;08;57;13 - 00;08;59;01
Alan Keate
Yeah. 4 or 5 years ago.

00;08;59;03 - 00;09;21;08
Craig Andrews
Yeah. And we were having lunch and you just pointed out to the street, we were sitting out on the, patio of, that salad place that you like to go to, and you just pointed at the street and you said four out of every or one out of every five cars that you see out there has a double digit node on it.

00;09;21;11 - 00;09;23;26
Alan Keate
Yeah.

00;09;23;28 - 00;09;28;03
Craig Andrews
And that was back when interest rates were basically nothing.

00;09;28;06 - 00;09;33;02
Alan Keate
Yeah. now even the prime guys are almost paying double digits, right.

00;09;33;04 - 00;09;38;16
Craig Andrews
Yeah. And that surprised me. Why why is that?

00;09;38;18 - 00;10;25;28
Alan Keate
Why do people move? well, I mean, really, our borrowers fall into really two general categories. borrowers in subprime generally, they really fall into two categories. One would be situational. And I'll give you an example of that here in just a minute. And the other is going to be generational. So situational. Take my story, out of out of college and out of basically early in my working career, I started, a life settlement and my articles company, again, lending, against really life insurance, you know, unwanted life insurance policies.

00;10;26;01 - 00;11;01;11
Alan Keate
Five articles is a little bit different than, than a life settlement, but nonetheless, you're lending against insurance and I found myself basically at the end of the first startup experience, entrepreneur travels. I found myself divorced, lost a business, and basically didn't have any money. lost everything. I think at one point I was sleeping on my brother's couch, and I needed a car to get to work.

00;11;01;14 - 00;11;23;25
Alan Keate
And, you know, I made some phone calls and realized my credit score was not what it needed to be to do that. And so I actually had to buy a car from. I mean, I was lucky enough that my parents kind of helped me with, with a car, but my only real options were buy her, pay her. So I would have to put it down and pay those double digit interest rates.

00;11;23;25 - 00;11;45;29
Alan Keate
Now, obviously the situation is different now. you know, but but in order to get to that point, I rode the bus and, you know, in the train and I did all the public transportation things to get to a job so that I could buy a car. And that would be a situation. Right? Unfortunate circumstances. Bad things happen to good people all the time.

00;11;46;02 - 00;12;18;11
Alan Keate
And sometimes we move up and down the credit spectrum. So that's situational. That's why it is. Situations happen. Medical unemployment, maybe an unexpected expense of significant size. And that can mean different things to different people. And then there's just the generational, it's just habit, right? It's what my uncle and my cousin and my brother all do. And that's just where we buy our cars and how we do it.

00;12;18;14 - 00;12;32;23
Alan Keate
Yeah, that's really why that market segment is so big. I mean, think about all the macroeconomic pressure right now on the consumer, and you're going to see a lot of people moving down the credit spectrum before they move back up.

00;12;32;25 - 00;12;59;08
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Well, and one of the things that really impressed me about it was you had actually started you'd launched a program to try to get people from paying double digits, which now is kind of standard. But back then it wasn't. But to get people from paying double digits on their car, car loan, to use that to rebuild their credit and and then be able to get, you know, better rates.

00;12;59;08 - 00;13;01;23
Craig Andrews
And how did that work out?

00;13;01;25 - 00;13;44;03
Alan Keate
Yeah, that was my thesis. my thesis was that, we could we could make maybe is the way I approached it, we could make a better consumer in our space. So, that was my original theory. My original theory was what we should do is tie, economic incentives to consumer behavior in our portfolio. And so what we did is, as we accumulated loans and brought loans in, we did, a link and a campaign back to a consumer finance literacy program.

00;13;44;05 - 00;14;14;19
Alan Keate
And we said, if we can educate people on how expensive this is to be here in this credit spectrum, that the behavior would change, as their as the level of education that they had about the, about interest and rates and yields and things like that as their education level and as, as they became more educated, they would be able to move across spectrums and they would be able to move up.

00;14;14;19 - 00;14;35;17
Alan Keate
That would do two things for us as a company. and we would do one thing for them. And what we would do for them is knock down their interest rate. you know, they needed to pay on time for a period of time. They needed to complete the financial, literacy program that would kind of educate them about this.

00;14;35;19 - 00;14;58;17
Alan Keate
And then we would incentivize them by dropping their interest rate. The other thing that they had to do was actually take care of their car. Right. they needed to change the oil and do do the things that you're supposed to do to make sure that your assets survived the the life of the loan. what we found is that that was wildly unsuccessful.

00;14;58;20 - 00;15;23;18
Alan Keate
no one really logged in or took the time to complete the literacy program to move up the credit spectrum. Why? I have theories, but but I don't have any concrete. In fact, out of millions and millions of dollars worth of loans, I only ever had one person do it.

00;15;23;20 - 00;15;26;28
Craig Andrews
Wow, that's so sad.

00;15;27;01 - 00;16;05;20
Alan Keate
It it is sad. And and I wish I could go back and figure out the why. maybe they didn't understand it. We didn't communicate the the incentives. You know, what we tried to say is, you know, for every point, off your rate, it's pretty significant and healthy savings. I mean, even those of us in, in a prime sector now, I mean, we feel the pinch on cars and, and, and consumer loans being priced from 3% up to now a half.

00;16;05;22 - 00;16;40;10
Alan Keate
I mean, that's significant difference. you know, that's probably on a $10,000 car. That's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dollars a year. And and those 100, 100 hundreds of dollars can pay insurance can pay kids expenses, kids medical expenses, help with school fees or whatever. But nobody ever took us up on it. And that was that was disappointing to me because literally that was the main thesis of of my finance company, indirect finance company.

00;16;40;13 - 00;17;09;19
Craig Andrews
Yeah. You know, it's funny when when you're sitting there talking about that and you're just, you know, like the frustration of, you know, trying to inspire better behavior, hoping for better behavior and then just not getting it, you know, I don't know why. You know, what popped in my head was the mortgage crisis of 2008. And the banks, the bankers that engaged in bad behavior.

00;17;09;21 - 00;17;11;16
Alan Keate
Yeah.

00;17;11;18 - 00;17;14;22
Craig Andrews
And they haven't changed their behavior.

00;17;14;24 - 00;17;19;00
Alan Keate
Now they've repackaged CDOs as something else. Now.

00;17;19;03 - 00;17;43;23
Craig Andrews
Yeah. I mean, and so, you know, in some ways it's easy to say, well, this to to look at this behavior and say it's something of a, you know, particular class of people. But we see elements of that across the spectrum that, it was just grossly irresponsible behavior. It nearly took down the world economy. It it cost Americans.

00;17;43;25 - 00;17;57;14
Craig Andrews
You know, I don't even know how to quantify, I could say trillions, but I think that's a I think it's an insane amount of money that we're still paying the price for and will continue to. Yeah, but it didn't change the behavior.

00;17;57;16 - 00;18;30;03
Alan Keate
No. I mean, I thought and and you know, looking at cars like there's, there's, there was with our program like there were only two outcomes. And this is kind of goes back to that thesis. It was pay your note on time and move up the credit spectrum, and we'll help you refinance your vehicle with someone else at a lower rate and or lower your rate in house and just kind of keep that down, because risk is, you know, return is a function of risk.

00;18;30;03 - 00;18;54;05
Alan Keate
And so if someone proves to me that they can pay something, they're not as big a risk as, say, someone. And with the newly originated no. But what you also find in the in doing this indirect finance is that on the one hand, we offered a reward and the reward was, you know, financial incentives, less less cash outlay, better rate.

00;18;54;08 - 00;19;22;03
Alan Keate
The other side is don't pay your note and your car gets repossessed. Well, only one person made it through to the end and got their rates lowered. Yet I repossessed a lot of cars. So are people more motivated? Oh, by the way. And I had people that had redeemed that redeemed the repossession. Right. So depends on the state you're in.

00;19;22;06 - 00;19;41;11
Alan Keate
But a lot of times if your car is repossessed, the lender has the ability to either call the note or, you know, can be made whole if you make all the back payments. Or they can even offer you a settlement right. you owe me 1500. If you pay me a thousand, we'll reset your loan and we'll start again.

00;19;41;13 - 00;20;04;06
Alan Keate
Because nobody I mean, there's like, a misconception that everyone thinks that, you know, if you report card, you make money. That's not true. I mean, our average loss was probably around 7000 if you had to repossess a car. So that's a fallacy. that's that's not an that's not even the truth.

00;20;04;08 - 00;20;10;28
Craig Andrews
Well, because a repossessed car is kind of like a repossessed house. They've ripped out the microwave. They've. You know, the place is a wreck.

00;20;11;00 - 00;20;51;23
Alan Keate
Right? Right. The car is a mess. I mean, it's full of McDonald's or, you know, whatever. Yeah. McDonald's that hasn't yet got thrown over the seat. And now, you know, four years later and it's still there. So petrified French fries are a real thing. but yeah, that that that that is, that's a rough. That's rough. Because then you, you start talking about the is the consumer more motivated by opportunity, and, and the chance to make their life better or on the other hand, getting repossessed.

00;20;51;26 - 00;21;18;04
Alan Keate
They must be more motivated by fear. Right. So the fear of loss over here is more of an incentive. And more borrowers found themselves on that end of the spectrum than actually trying to help themselves and be proactive in trying to reduce their overhead. Yeah, it's been fears, a real thing.

00;21;18;06 - 00;21;50;23
Craig Andrews
Well, let's, let's kind of switch gears and let's talk about businesses because I would I would suspect that there's some of that behavior where businesses take out loans. They get to a point where they just go bankrupt. They're like, okay, I'm I'm screwed. I can't make this go and and restart what's, you know, because right now you're, you know, you're you're now with, Lexington Advisors and you're, you're helping people with their capital needs.

00;21;50;26 - 00;21;58;29
Craig Andrews
What advice would you give to businesses as they approach debt, as they think about debt?

00;21;59;02 - 00;22;24;27
Alan Keate
Yeah, I would be very cognizant of, of of the of the cost of the capital. You're taking on. and I think one of the biggest problems that we saw or I've seen in auto spaces is two things. One, they took on as much debt as they could, because it was cheap. Right.

00;22;25;00 - 00;22;52;28
Alan Keate
I think the real response to that question needs to be, please only take on as much debt as you should. You know, just because you can doesn't mean that you should. and so that's what I've really seen with, you know, why I jumped into this? I mean, my biggest challenge as a business owner, and as a founder or, as, you know, turnaround CEO.

00;22;52;28 - 00;23;23;10
Alan Keate
I've done that. really, for me is. Is where do I get this debt and how does it affect my cap stack and how does it affect my cash flow. And that's really what led me to this, is because I became real frustrated. There aren't a lot of great sources, you know, even Google, for all its infinite ability, you know, it's not going to help you put together.

00;23;23;12 - 00;23;49;13
Alan Keate
Hey, fun Day is better than company B or Bank B is better than company A like. And so that's what I want to do is help educate them. And especially when they take on debt, advise them and say look what? How much do you need? I know you want all of it. You know, you you want to build a 100, $200 million company.

00;23;49;15 - 00;23;56;21
Alan Keate
That's great. But how much should you have based on your underlying assets?

00;23;56;23 - 00;24;09;23
Craig Andrews
You know what? What are some common mistakes that you see people falling into? I mean, obviously taking on more debt than they need. What are some other things?

00;24;09;25 - 00;24;39;04
Alan Keate
Particularly in business, I would say the other big mistake that I see, and I've made it myself. So no, you know, the I am not immune, I am not immune. I have made my own mistakes and and things, A lot of times I think that they're not paying attention to the the piano. They're not paying attention to the balance sheet.

00;24;39;06 - 00;25;07;14
Alan Keate
they're not understanding how what levers they have to pull with their own business. I think they spend a lot of time working in the business, like in it. You know, I'm going to go collect on this account, or I'm going to go work with my managers and hitting their KPIs or whatever the case may be, instead of maybe taking a step back and saying, you know, I'm going to work on my business.

00;25;07;14 - 00;25;38;16
Alan Keate
So let me look at it from a 10,000ft view so I can see all the trees and now understand how all these pieces, they I don't think they do that very well. I think a lot of times they listen to their peers, that may or may not, I mean, it's, it's the car business indirectly. And, you know, the the fish get bigger every time they catch them, right?

00;25;38;16 - 00;26;10;07
Alan Keate
They're car guys. So the fish went from 12in to 36in. and and I don't think that that always gives them their, their best advice. But, you know, when I'm, they're trying to say, listen, your advance rate on your warehouse facility needs to be 55. And they say, well, but Bob got 80 or maybe. But what you didn't understand is, you know, he cleaned every piece of property from here to, you know, San Antonio.

00;26;10;09 - 00;26;30;28
Alan Keate
So you just don't know. It's not always apples to oranges. The stories change. I would say do your due diligence. Pay attention to your balance sheet. lenders care about balance sheets. You care about the income statement. Lenders are going to care about the balance sheet. And so make sure you understand balance sheet.

00;26;31;00 - 00;27;07;00
Craig Andrews
Yeah. And you know, certainly for me and I imagine for a lot of, business owners, there's, a lot of that that's just like it's not interesting. It's kind of gobbledygook. yeah, I know it's important, but I don't care what would you recommend to people? And for somebody that's like that because most, you know, a lot of business owners, they, you know, in the, the, you know, the mid-sized businesses, they got into what they're doing because they were passionate about what they did, and they were able to grow their business because they were passionate.

00;27;07;02 - 00;27;11;25
Craig Andrews
They're, you know, probably not a CFO by nature.

00;27;11;27 - 00;27;13;22
Alan Keate
Right.

00;27;13;25 - 00;27;38;25
Craig Andrews
What would you, what would you advise to them so they could figure out what could they do as sort of like, you know, I went to Camp Gladiator this morning to work on my physical body, to get physically healthier and stronger. What would you recommend they do? They they could, be financially stronger to approach somebody like you, when they need capital.

00;27;38;27 - 00;28;08;17
Alan Keate
Yeah, I, I think first is, you know, understand the basic premise of, of, income statements, balance sheets and cash flow statements. you know, I think years and years ago, they had those, you know, financial statements for dummies. I mean, and I know that sounds bad, but, it's still a reference book that I have, in case I look at something and I'm like, don't get that.

00;28;08;19 - 00;28;43;16
Alan Keate
So trying to understand some of the, the relationships, I would also get an accountant that you trust. Yeah. I've, I've seen a lot of business owners get smacked pretty hard by, accountants that maybe aren't as ethical as they they need to be. And then thirdly would be join a peer group, right? Whether it's business, general, peer group, where you have a diversified base of members in the group that have different businesses and different types of businesses.

00;28;43;16 - 00;29;09;18
Alan Keate
That's one. And I think that gives you pretty good perspective on business generally. And then maybe even something like a dealership group or something, and there's a bunch of them out there and join a group and start to be challenged. I mean, I think part of the issue is when you're sitting at the top and you're the top of a finance company or the food chain, if you will.

00;29;09;20 - 00;29;37;18
Alan Keate
You may run out of peers and friends that you grew up with, with college or high school or business that you may have outgrown them. And so their advice is maybe no longer relevant. And those groups can be a good place where you can be challenged on what your thesis is, is, you know, when you offer investor education to or financial literacy to consumers, is it going to change their behavior?

00;29;37;21 - 00;29;51;15
Alan Keate
Maybe if I have been in a group back then, they would have challenged me and been like, hey, it's not going to work. We've done this. You should probably save your millions of dollars. Now, we didn't lose money, but it certainly didn't work as well as I thought. Yeah.

00;29;51;17 - 00;29;57;24
Craig Andrews
So so real quick now you're with Lex and Advisors and what do they do?

00;29;57;27 - 00;30;20;19
Alan Keate
we help people with their capital needs, both from a debt perspective and on the debt that really falls into two categories. One is senior debt. The other would be junior or mezzanine or bridge debt. and then equity. we can raise equity for, for, for groups. And we have a box we'd like to look at. Right.

00;30;20;19 - 00;30;52;04
Alan Keate
I, I think that anybody that has, you know, of a certain size, we really can't help them. They're going to have to use like their local banks and resources. But once it gets bigger than that, we come in and we can help syndicate those loans if we need to syndicate them. Or we can, find funds or little alternative, alternative, areas that that really are looking for exposure to this asset class in the auto space.

00;30;52;07 - 00;30;56;25
Craig Andrews
And so you said once they reach a certain level, what what level? Yeah, you.

00;30;56;25 - 00;31;21;16
Alan Keate
Probably need to have a portfolio north of 5 million. probably ten. And and you think that that's hard. and it is hard to get there. And I appreciate the blood, sweat and tears that it takes to get there, but I will also say that, you know, when you're financing cars at 20, 25 grand a pop, it it it doesn't take long to get there either.

00;31;21;18 - 00;31;22;21
Alan Keate
cool.

00;31;22;23 - 00;31;31;04
Craig Andrews
Well, how would somebody, how would somebody reach you? Let's say they're at that 5 or 10 million or higher. How do they find you? how do they connect?

00;31;31;07 - 00;31;54;05
Alan Keate
Yeah. feel free to find me on LinkedIn. or just a Keith. A k e a t at Lexington advisors.com. They could email me. I'm I'm fairly responsive. I'm not a, I'm not Pavlov's dog yet, but, you know, ring the bell. But it's pretty close. So, my wife doesn't like it, that's for sure.

00;31;54;07 - 00;32;19;22
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Well, excellent. Well, Alan, thanks for sharing this. And, again, I just want to thank you for, being in my life because as the heart that, you know, your heart that drives what you do has been such an encouragement to me. And, and I appreciate you sharing that with folks on leaders and legacies today. Yeah.

00;32;19;26 - 00;32;41;27
Alan Keate
No, no. You're welcome. Thank you for inviting me, letting me do this. you know, I like to help people. I mean, by nature, I'm a people pleaser. and I get a lot of enjoyment out of watching others have success. I think there's enough bad things in this world we should cheer each other on. So. Yeah. Yeah.

00;32;42;00 - 00;32;43;29
Craig Andrews
All right, well, thank you.

00;32;44;02 - 00;32;46;20
Alan Keate
All right. Thanks, Greg.

00;32;46;20 - 00;33;15;18
Craig Andrews
This is Craig Andrews. I want to thank you for listening to the Leaders and Legacies podcast. We're looking for leaders to share how they're making the impact beyond themselves. If that's you, please go to Alize for me.com/guest and sign up there. If you got something out of this interview, we would love you to share this episode on social media.

00;33;15;20 - 00;33;39;00
Craig Andrews
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00;33;39;02 - 00;35;49;16
Craig Andrews
Please go ahead and subscribe your thumbs up! Ratings and reviews go a long way to help promote the show. It means a lot to me. It means a lot to my team. If you want to know more, please go to Alize for me.com. or follow me on LinkedIn. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.