Side by Side with Nido Qubein | Roy Carroll, Founder, President & CEO, The Carroll Companies | Seaso
[piano intro] - Hello, I'm Nido Qubein.
Welcome to Side By Side.
My guest today has invested his life in the world of real estate and more.
From humble beginnings as a home builder in North Carolina, to owning a company that has built homes across America.
He's also deeply committed to causes, like finding a cure for type one diabetes.
We're talking real estate development and serving the healthcare needs of our communities.
And a lot more with Mr. Roy Carroll.
- [Announcer] Funding for Side By Side with Nido Qubein is made possible by, - [Narrator] Here's to those that rise and shine to friendly faces doing more than their part.
And to those who still enjoy the little things.
You make it feel like home.
Ashley HomeStore.
This is home.
- [Narrator] For over 60 years the everyday leaders at the Budd Group have been committed to providing smart, customized facility solutions to our clients, and caring for the communities we serve.
- [Announcer] Coca-Cola Consolidated is honored to make and serve 300 brands and flavors locally.
Thanks to our teammates.
We are Coca-Cola Consolidated, your local bottler.
[upbeat music] ♪ - Roy Carroll, welcome to Side By Side.
People in North Carolina and beyond know your name, know what you've done.
You've come from humble beginnings, and you built a humongous business.
Business building homes, you've started that way.
Now, apartments and many other endeavors, too.
But here's what fascinates me, with all of your business endeavors, you actually race Ferraris.
- [laughs] Yes.
- Roy, why?
- I'm terrible at golf.
[both laughing] So I was looking for a hobby and an outlet to do something, and I've been collecting Ferraris for a number of years and everything.
And I was out track one day, and this team down in Charlotte saw me and they needed a driver.
And so one thing led to another.
- You're literally the driver?
- I'm actually the driver, yes.
That was a lot of coaching.
[laughs] - With all the things going on in your life, you were willing to take that risk?
- Yes, you know, I think it's dangerous on a golf course, too.
I have a lot of friends that have, you know, tore rotator cuffs and everything else on the tennis court or the golf course.
So it's fairly safe and everything.
We have all the protection that just like the NASCAR guys.
- How do you find the time to do that?
- Well, it's, you know, you have to make time for the things that you have passion for.
- [Nido] Yeah.
- So it's a great group of people.
I love to meet new people and it's been a great outlet cause most of the people are racing the series, I'm racing, they're independent business people and each of them have a unique story.
- You know, Roy, I've known you a long time, and I've admired your success and significance path in life.
You started with very humble beginnings.
You and your dad were building some homes, but your dad certainly was not a person of great means, if I may say so.
- [Roy] Right.
- And yet you went on to expand your business, not only in North Carolina, but literally across the country.
I know of investments you have in Bozeman, Montana, and in Texas, and Florida, and beyond.
It takes a lot of courage to do that because inherent in much of what you do is risk.
How do you handle risk?
- Well, you know, I tell our staff that every day my job is to wake up and manage risk to reward.
And, you know, we've always tried to put our own capital into projects and borrow the minimal amount possible.
And we don't have outside investors or equity partners.
I tell people I'm always fearful of losing someone else's money.
So it's our money.
And we just invest in projects that we could afford.
We don't get in front of our skis, so to speak.
- But how do you do that?
And educate us, please.
If you're looking at an opportunity, what are the fundamentals you look at?
- Well, we look at, of course, return on investment.
That's the main thing.
We look at markets that are growing and expanding.
You know, our primary business is multifamily; garden style apartments.
We do some wrap-up apartments, and mid-rise apartments, but we're looking for young populations that have fluid, job creating communities, such as Austin, Texas, Nashville, Tennessee, south Florida, RTP here, Charlotte, those kinds of markets where there are opportunities for young people and also recreational outlets.
You know, today, as we all know, I've got three daughters who are in their twenties and thirties, and they want to live where there are opportunities, but not just work, but also opportunities for recreational outlets.
- Mm hmm.
You said Austin, and Charlotte, and south Florida, and Bozeman, Montana.
- [Roy] Right, right.
- Why Bozeman, Montana?
- Well, we were going out there skiing.
And you know, I decided to get in the car and ride around and see what rents were in the market.
And I was impressed with the amount of apartments that were in the market compared to the number of people, influx of people, young people moving into that market.
And it's a, what they call a zoom town.
We all heard of boom towns, zoom towns is post COVID, where people, especially like engineers, architecture, and people like that can live, work wherever they want to.
And so why not live in a Bozeman of the world, where you can work during the day, put a pair of skis on, go ski in an afternoon.
- Very interesting.
Very interesting that you have been able to anticipate opportunity.
Would you agree with that statement, that you are not necessarily a follower, you're a leader.
You see an opportunity, an example would be, you built all of these, I'm not sure what you would call them, but storage.
I call them storage buildings.
What do you call them?
- Well, it's self storage.
- Yes, self storage.
- And you see, see them all over the country.
But what we did is we studied the self storage industry.
We thought it'd be a good sister company to our multifamily business.
And you know, there's a lot of good builders out there, developers of self storage product, and a lot of national companies are competing against.
So what we didn't want to do, is we didn't want to be a commodity.
You never want to be a commodity in life regardless of what you're doing.
And so, we decided we wanted to be the upper scale, upper end brand.
So we worked on this concept for about three and a half years.
And a lot of whiteboard ideas and names, and stuff and we came up with Be Safe Storage.
And one of the things that we do to help set us apart is our architecture.
You know, we invest about a million dollars extra in the architecture facade versus what most of our competitors do.
We have the wine storage, it's kind of a loss leader a little bit.
But that helps brand us as upper tier.
And so it's been a really good brand for us.
We have 41 stores across the Southeast, and Montana currently.
And we're looking to really put more capital in that business and expand it.
- You build those in places that are close to apartment holdings, or it doesn't matter.
- It doesn't really matter, but it, you know, if we're already traveling to Nashvilles of the world and Austins, and Dallas, and south Florida, we might as well, you know, for multifamily, we might as well have some self storage here too for our team to travel.
- How does Roy Carroll come up with an idea?
- I look around and I study things.
And typically it's not a unique idea.
It's an idea that someone else may have already come up with, but, you know, we put a variation on it, or we put a number of ideas together and try to make something that's unique and different.
- What does your day look like, Roy?
Do you get up early in the morning, and do you think in the morning and write ideas down, at what point do you stop at night?
Just because as long as I've known you, you are a healthy person, and a health conscious person.
You exercise, you take care of yourself.
And yet from the outside looking in, you have a highly engaged career, very intense business involvement.
And usually those most people don't balance those perfectly.
When you take time off, you take your family here and yonder.
So give us an idea of what your day looks like.
- Well, first of all, I'm married to a very good woman, as you know.
- [Nido] Yes.
- And she's a big part of the team.
So she manages, you know, all the household stuff and has for years and years.
And she's always been very supportive of my career, and our business that we've grown together.
But, you know, I'm pretty much work, if I'm awake, I'm working.
I may be skiing, I may be riding a bike, but I'm thinking about business.
And, you know, one of the things that I've had to deal with for years is ADD.
Which can be, you know, it can be tough to deal with, especially in early years when I was in school, trying to deal with it.
But it's, I've learned how to harness it.
And so, now I can be doing a couple things at one time, maybe not great, but I have people around me that can make sure that things are executed well.
But yeah, so I'm constantly making lists, coming up with ideas.
If I see something, I'll take a photo, I'll jot down notes, and constantly look for the next venture.
- So, you had ADD as a child?
- [Roy] Yes, sir.
- What was the turning point, at what point did you take this ADD, disadvantage shall we call it, and turn it into a benefit?
- Well, I think it was high school, college.
When I went to school, my father's a meat cutter grocery store guy, as you know, and you know, it wasn't from means as you stated.
And when I went to college, it was expensive.
And so I decided I needed to really buckle down and try to stay.
And I was just having a real hard time.
And when I was in elementary school, you know, the school tests and everything said, we don't think, we think he's halfway intelligent.
And they called my mom in, and said he needs more structure.
And my mom on the statement, she said, I'm spanking him so much now my arm is tired all the time.
[both laugh] So anyways, you know, they really didn't diagnose ADD.
- Yes, yes.
- 40 years ago, 50 years ago.
And I'm also really cautious about talking about non-medication of ADD because it's a spectrum.
And so, you know, I was able to harness that and get by without medication, but there may be another young person that needs medication.
So I'm always real guarded about talking too much about that.
But in college, I realized I needed to really figure out how to study, how to learn, comprehend things, and focus.
And so that's helped me.
And that's one thing about auto racing.
I can't be sitting there texting, thinking about five other things.
I'm thinking about how to get through that next turn without crashing my car.
- [laughs] Yes, absolutely, yes.
So from my observational perspective, a lot of what you do has risk inherent in it.
- [Roy] Mm hmm.
- Quite often, you can run the business perfectly, but there are external risks.
There is the great recession of '08-'09, most disruptive economic times of the last 90 years of America's history.
There is a pandemic that comes along that maybe keeps people from doing this or that.
The external risks that enter into the businesses that you're in, you must have a formula that you follow beyond just I measure risk and reward.
I measure return investment.
What are the risk questions that you ask yourself?
For example, you ask yourself questions like, what is the worst thing that can happen in this particular endeavor, and how might I deal with it?
And I've, I can't deal with it, I'll walk.
What is your technique for managing risk?
- Well, it's exactly that.
From day one, you know, when my father and I started the business, we put money back in the business.
And money is kind of our insurance.
Capital is our insurance policy.
And so that allows us to get through the next recession.
And it's not, if there's a next recession, it's when there's a next recession.
So, you know, just from day one when we started- - You're not predicting anything, you're just - We're not predicting.
We know.
- Suggesting that historically this happens.
- Exactly.
We know historically, that the economy goes through various cycles and we need to have capital on the sidelines to weather those storms.
And we do ask ourselves that exact question, can we weather the next storm?
And a lot of developers, I tell people, developers are the most optimistic people you'll ever meet.
You know, if it's good, it's gonna get better.
You know?
[laughs] So, yeah.
So that's how we've managed the storms.
As you know, we don't do more than we can afford in worst case scenarios.
- What was the biggest mistake you've made then, and what did you learn from it?
- I think one of the worst mistakes I've made probably is not mentoring to enough young people and stuff in our organization to grow them.
And so to last- - Coaching your own teammates?
- Coaching our own people.
And we've had some really good people years ago, that I wish I had spent more time with, but I was out trying to figure out the next deal.
So today we really have an internal program to try to mentor to.
We've brought a lot of really smart, hardworking, young people on board.
And we've got a great workforce, which allows me to do some of those things we were talking about, and not work so hard managing the day to day.
I want to be the ideas guy.
That's what I really enjoy doing, getting out of bed in the morning, figuring out what's our next endeavor.
But you know, we're a fairly large organization now, there's a lot of day to day things that need to be taken care of, and I've got people now that can handle that.
- What's the biggest business mistake you made?
Did you lose money in a deal in a significant way and how did you recover from that?
- Well, there's been opportunities that we didn't pursue, that I can point to.
- That's lost opportunity.
- Lost opportunity, but as far as losing money, we've been really fortunate over the years that we've, you know, with the ability to wait out a deal, maybe the deal is not, it doesn't pan out the first year or two.
An example is we did a large condo project in '06, started '06 and the recession hit in '07.
And my father was still alive.
He passed away in '08, and he asked me, he said, son, that's a bit, this is a big condo tower.
He said, can you afford the worst case scenario, which we talked about.
And I said, yes, we can.
And we had people lined up, fighting over the condos basically.
And the economy turned, it was nothing that we did, you know, we had the right location, we had the right people, right plans.
Just lousy timing.
In my business, you can have all those ingredients and just the wrong timing.
We had the capital, weathered the storm and, you know, it took us a number of years.
We didn't give it back to the bank, we could've.
But we said, we're gonna do the right thing.
We paid off the loan completely on the building.
And, you know, we didn't make any money on it, but we did the right thing.
- And now you're in the hotel business?
- [Roy] Right.
- Why?
- One of my daughters has a passion.
She has a master's degree in hotel hospitality.
She has a passion for it.
It's a tough business today.
You know, we're having a hard time finding workers.
We're taking rooms offline because we can't turn them and get them into the shape they need to be in, but we have four other hotel projects we're working on now.
And I think that industry will come back.
It won't come back the way it was pre-COVID.
But I definitely think there's opportunities with hotels in right locations.
- I read somewhere where you're doing a big project in Wilmington, North Carolina.
- [Roy] Right.
- Are you willing to talk about it?
- Yeah, it's kind of a resort convention hotel.
It's a big Westin, it's a $250 million hotel, multifamily, retail endeavor.
And we've been studying it, working on it.
And we hope to break ground sometime in the next 90 days actually.
- And it would take a couple of years?
- Take a couple of years to build that out, yes sir.
- Roy, as you, as you engage on your team, younger people, what are the three qualities you look for in a new employee?
- Well, we call it the Carroll company's three legged stool.
The first one is honesty and integrity.
You know, I like to be around people that I can trust.
And it's a two-way street.
You know, trust starts at the top.
I can't be saying, we're gonna do this guy wrong in this deal and tell them, guys you need to do what's right.
So they watch me and we try to bring on people that have a large degree of honesty and integrity.
The next is God given intelligence.
I can't make you smarter than what you are.
I've tried to make people smarter, but I, you know, I'm not smart enough to make people smarter.
And the third thing is just motivation.
You know, we look for people that want to be there in the morning.
- Have initiative.
- They want to be with our organization, and want to be a part of a team.
You notice I didn't say anything about skillset because we're not building rocket engines.
You know, we're putting sticks and bricks together.
So we can teach you the skillset.
If you've got those three traits, you know, you're probably gonna do well at the Carroll companies.
- Mm hmm.
And turnover?
- Turnover?
You know, one of our issues is we are, you know, the good thing is we've expanded geographically.
The other thing is, some of these regional offices that we have that are kind of remote from the mothership, it's hard to kind of convey the passion, the drive, the synergy that we have from the main office.
- [Nido] The culture itself.
- Right, at the Carroll company.
So, you know, with COVID, that's been really difficult.
We've been doing some video messages that we send out, but still that's not warm like myself sitting down, or a senior management team sitting down with a group of young people in an Austin office or something like that.
So now that, you know, vaccinations rolling out and everything else, we're trying to do more travel.
And hopefully we can do a better job with that.
- Where do you find you get your courage?
It takes a lot of courage to do what you're doing.
Takes a lot of faith, a lot of courage, lot of faithful courage.
Where does that emanate from?
- Well, as you know, my faith is important to me.
And then, like I said previously, I've got a good supporting wife and family.
And, you know, I know that the end of the day, if I don't have a dollar to my name, I'm still gonna have that loving family.
And my wife may not be too happy with me, but [laughs] she's still gonna be there.
And just the reliance on my faith, I think has been a big part of who I am.
- And you have been very active in JDRF, the juvenile diabetes.
What got you interested in that?
- Well, unfortunately, again, we were out skiing, out west and my oldest daughter was 12 at the time, and she acted like she had the flu kinda, you know.
And so we took her to a doctor and did blood tests, and come to find out she had type one diabetes.
Well, I didn't know that much about type one diabetes.
So I get online, you know, I'm a father builder.
I can fix this, right?
So I'm online and there is no cure for diabetes today.
And so I reached out to JDRF, the organization at, one of the organization helps support, find a cure for diabetes.
And made a donation right there in the hotel room.
And she was in intensive care for three days out west.
And so they contacted me, and we've been involved ever since.
We've done some things to raise money, such as we build a house annually and donate the proceeds to JDRF.
We've been very, very involved in the walks and the galas and such.
And so we're trying to do what we can, and there's been a lot of great strides.
But you know, it's still a disease today that she has to deal with daily.
- Mm hmm.
As you look towards the future, what is it you're thinking about?
Just more of the same, or is there something big on that whiteboard that you are dreaming about cooking and analyzing?
- Well, from a business perspective, you know, again, continue to manage and mentor to my senior management team, continue to remove myself from day-to-day operations, and be more, my ultimate goal is to lay myself off.
And I'm more of the ideas guy over here on the side.
And the senior management team is running the day-to-day operations.
From a personal perspective, I'd like to, you know, I've got this kind of dream of doing something, you know, we're in boating a bit and maybe doing something with boats and some kind of relief, missions relief, or something like that, where areas that are devastated by natural disasters.
- Mm hmm.
Roy, you have been exceptionally successful in many, many ways, and you're doing good work.
And we all thank you for that.
And you've been very involved in economic development in certainly in North Carolina, and certainly in the region in which you reside, the triad region.
You're are a young man by, you know by, age wise, you've got a lot of years ahead of you.
But how is it that you want to be remembered by your children first, and by society at large?
- Well, I want my children to remember me as a man that was an honest man and was involved in his community to make us community a better place, and took care of his fellow mankind, to the best of his ability.
You know, if I'm remembered like that, I'll be pleased.
By the community, you know, I want to make my community a better place.
And my community is, you know, the whole country.
So, you know, job creation, trying to figure out one of the things I'm passionate about also, is affordable housing.
And, you know, that's a real struggle right now across the country.
And so that's something I'd like to figure out.
And some of our folks in our teams trying to work through that question, and we're meeting a lot with the representatives of both on the federal level, state level, and local levels on affordable housing issues.
- What scares you the most?
- From a business perspective, supply chain issues, labor issues, and you know, every situation that occurs has has a counter.
And one of the things right now is, you know, we're talking about labor, you know, in the context of today, labor shortages and such.
And all my friends that own businesses, manufacturing, different types of businesses are looking at automation.
So what happens in five, 10 years from now?
Are there gonna be jobs available?
If everybody's investing in automation because they can't get employees today.
- Automation or outsourcing.
- That's right, outsourcing.
Artificial intelligence, a big part of that too.
And so the concern is, are there gonna be jobs in five to 10 years when that really starts to take hold even more so than what we've seen it?
I think that's on a very big upward trajectory.
So a short-term, it's supply chain issues that everybody's facing today.
We have a supply chain issue of the week.
I mean, [laughs] it's something that we're short on.
One of the ingredients that it takes to make a hotel or make an apartment community or housing development.
So we're just dealing with that real time.
- Yeah.
And you engage a lot of young people in your business, college educated young people as you grow.
What is it that you think colleges ought to be doing more, to prepare graduates for this competitive, ever-expanding global marketplace in which we all reside?
- Yeah.
Well, one of the things I've been really pleased to see in the last, I guess, 10 years or so, it's more and more colleges put emphasis on internships.
And we typical have a half a dozen or so interns in our main office.
And I think that that is so valuable to these young people, because one, they're investing a lot of money to learn a skill for a particular, a lot of times it's a very focused particular position they think they want.
And I've seen interns come in before, and spend a little bit time say, Hey, I really don't want to do that.
I'd rather do something over here.
So before you invest too much money, I think internships.
And so I really like the direction that most colleges, universities going today requiring internships, mentorships and stuff like that.
And I'm very supportive of that.
- Yeah, I mean, I think the main thing about college graduates, they have to have an understanding of life skills, right?
You know, you don't want to hire somebody and then spend two years trying to train them and educate them and to do their job well.
But rather that they have some acknowledgement, understanding of the business world, and what they must do to be successful.
So how many apartments in all that you've built over the years?
- Well, we've got about 14,000 on the ground today.
We've got another 4,000 in the pipeline.
- And four or five hotel projects that you've got going on.
And 60, 70 of these self storage units.
- Right, right.
Mm hmm.
- And as you look for the tomorrows of Roy Carroll, your biggest wish is what?
- My biggest wish as we continue to grow, we don't want to be necessarily the largest say, we want to be a good company, a solid company.
That again, we're growing our people internally.
- Well, you're certainly doing a great job.
You're the American dream personified, boy.
You know, you came from very meager beginnings and you built a very substantial business.
And now you're using your resources and your connections to make our world a better place.
We thank you for that.
And I especially thank you for being Side By Side with me here on this program today.
- Thank you.
[upbeat music] ♪ - [Narrator] Funding for Side By Side with Nido Qubein is made possible by, - [Announcer] Here's to those that rise and shine.
To friendly faces doing more than their part.
And to those who still enjoy the little things.
You make it feel like home.
Ashley HomeStore.
This is home.
- [Narrator] For over 60 years the everyday leaders at the Budd Group have been committed to providing smart, customized facility solutions to our clients, and caring for the communities we serve.
- [Narrator] Coca-Cola Consolidated is honored to make and serve 300 brands and flavors, locally.
Thanks to our teammates.
We are Coca-Cola Consolidated, your local bottler.
[upbeat music]
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