On this episode of The Boulos Beat, Joe Italiaander, guest hosting for Greg Boulos sits down with Mike Emmons, a longtime real estate entrepreneur and developer, to discuss his journey from growing up in a small Vermont town to building a successful career in land development. Mike shares how he entered the real estate business in 1981 and helped develop a unique niche focused on acquiring, subdividing, marketing, and selling large rural tracts of land. He reflects on the challenges of the 1988 and 2008 financial downturns, rebuilding his business after each, and successfully adapting his model by acquiring and selling distressed condominium projects following the 2008 crash. Joe and Mike also discuss Mike’s approach to leadership, the importance of hiring and trusting good people, and his transition toward retirement and spending more time with his family and playing golf. Mike also shares the story of the Taylor Emmons Scholarship Fund (temmons.org), founded in memory of his son, which has raised nearly $3 million and awarded 16 four-year scholarships; the new Taylor Emmons School of Business; his purchase of Galloo Island, the largest privately owned freshwater island in the United States, now being placed in conservation; and his favorite deal — a $4.24 million state reimbursement for a hurricane-stricken orange grove.
Episode 79: Featuring Mike Emmons, Owner, Maine Woodland Properties/Emmons Enterprises
On this episode of The Boulos Beat, Joe Italiaander, guest hosting for Greg Boulos sits down with Mike Emmons, a longtime real estate entrepreneur and developer, to discuss his journey from growing up in a small Vermont town to building a successful career in land development. Mike shares how he entered the real estate business in 1981 and helped develop a unique niche focused on acquiring, subdividing, marketing, and selling large rural tracts of land. He reflects on the challenges of the 1988 and 2008 financial downturns, rebuilding his business after each, and successfully adapting his model by acquiring and selling distressed condominium projects following the 2008 crash. Joe and Mike also discuss Mike’s approach to leadership, the importance of hiring and trusting good people, and his transition toward retirement and spending more time with his family and playing golf. Mike also shares the story of the Taylor Emmons Scholarship Fund (temmons.org), founded in memory of his son, which has raised nearly $3 million and awarded 16 four-year scholarships; the new Taylor Emmons School of Business; his purchase of Galloo Island, the largest privately owned freshwater island in the United States, now being placed in conservation; and his favorite deal — a $4.24 million state reimbursement for a hurricane-stricken orange grove.
Joseph Italiaander 0:00
I'd like to welcome our listeners to the Boulos Beat podcast. I'm Joe Italiaander, guest hosting for Greg Boulos. The Boulos Company is Northern New England's largest commercial real estate services firm, with offices in Portland, Maine, as well as Manchester and Portsmouth, New Hampshire. We've been selling and leasing real estate in Maine, in New Hampshire, since 1975. This podcast is designed to provide insight into Maine's leaders, its movers, and shakers. And speaking of movers and shakers, I'd like to welcome Mike Emmons to the Boulos Beat. Mike, thank you for coming out here this morning.
Mike Emmons 0:38
Thanks, Joe. Happy to be here.
Joseph Italiaander 0:40
Great. So, you've had a successful career in business. You've got a lot of hobbies. I think perhaps we can start from the beginning. Where are you from? What was your upbringing like? Parents, brothers, sisters, all that. Okay. How did it work?
Mike Emmons 1:00
I was actually raised in a very small town of 500 people in southern Vermont called Stamford, Vermont. I am my brothers. I have two brothers, two sisters. Very close knit family. You know, grew up pretty, pretty poor. You know, we always had food on the table, but if I ever wanted anything, I had to go get it myself and earn money. And I shoveled a lot of snow, shoveled a lot of cow shit and horse shit. Am I allowed to say that? Oh yeah, shoveled a lot of cow shit and horse shit, and you know, just you know, ended up with a good work work ethic because of the way I was raised and stuff. So, and that that helped me a lot, obviously, in my later years when I actually went to work for in the real estate business.
Joseph Italiaander 1:58
Got it. All right. So you grew up in Stamford, Vermont. Yep. Did you go to school, college?
Mike Emmons 2:04
I did. Well, my claim to fame growing up in Stanford was that I graduated in the top five of my class. There was 11 of us. Two of them. So you're a real scholar. Two of them would be pretty hard to count as students, you know. Yeah. But it was it was a great way to grow up, but couldn't get out of there fast enough. Yeah. Once I got older, so yeah, I went to I went to college. I spent two years at the University of Vermont. I kind of did it backwards. Most people go to a state school first and then move up to the university. I went to the University of Vermont for two years first and then switched to a state school, Casselton State College, because I I really loved baseball and I missed playing baseball so I went there and played basketball and baseball and just really enjoyed it a lot more than the bigger school and I think that's because I was from a smaller town
Joseph Italiaander 2:53
yep yep so you got through college
Mike Emmons 2:55
made it yep
Joseph Italiaander 2:56
you were an athlete
Mike Emmons 2:57
yep
Joseph Italiaander 2:58
after college you're trying to figure out what to do. Where do you go from there?
Mike Emmons 3:04
Well, when I there was there was a gentleman by the name of Harry Patton that moved into the town of Stamford where I grew up, and he was starting a land development business. I was probably about 15 years old at the time, and I did all kinds of odd jobs from him for him cleaning lots, painting fences, doing jar-you know, anything that needed to be doing-I did, I did it. So when I got out of high school, he tried to hire me to go to work in real estate, but I really wanted to go, really wanted to go to college. I really felt it was an experience that that I wanted to get, you know, having grown up in a very small town, it was kind of sheltered and kind of, so I just I just knew that I wanted to go to college. Graduated from college, ended up teaching phys ed for one year down in Maryland, and then I moved back to Stanford and went to work in real estate in 1981.
Joseph Italiaander 4:05
Okay, so you're in your early 20s. Yep. You graduated. You moved to Maryland. You moved back to Vermont where you grew up. Yep. And you start working for Harry in the real estate business. That's
Mike Emmons 4:17
correct. And when I say the real estate business, what we did and still do that to this day is very very unique. It's a very niche business, and basically all we do is buy large tracts of land out in the country, subdivide them, put the roads in, put the electricity in, and then sell the lots to individuals. We do not sell to builders because builders don't go where we go. We're out, we're out in the country. I tell people think of where someone would go to build a log cabin. I used to have a saying back in the back in the 80s that our business begins where the pavement ends. It's really. You know, backwoods country stuff off the
Joseph Italiaander 5:03
grid almost.
Mike Emmons 5:04
Off the grid almost sometimes. Yep. So, you know, like I said, it's a very, very unique business, and that's all that we do. We don't do any building. Every now and then, we may put up a lot, you know, a cabin or something like that, just to give people an example of what some could look at. But basically, it's just buying a large piece of dirt, subdividing it, and then selling it in lots to individuals.
Joseph Italiaander 5:29
So you would call yourself a dirt guy.
Mike Emmons 5:31
I am definitely a dirt guy, but also I'm a marketing guy. What we do is we kind of create our own market. In other words, we don't because we're not buying in metropolitan areas or close to metropolitan areas. We're out in the middle of nowhere. We kind of have to create a market and and get people to you know to come out to the country, and you know. So we spend a lot of time, a lot of time, and a lot of money focused on our marketing, and you know, because it is different than your than your normal, you know, here's an open house and come see the house and that type of thing. You have
Joseph Italiaander 6:15
to direct people to. We
Mike Emmons 6:16
we have to get people excited about it. We have to get people to you know be willing to drive out and you know, kind of be out in the middle of nowhere sometimes. You know,
Joseph Italiaander 6:25
sure, sure. So if we can back up for a second,
Mike Emmons 6:28
yep.
Joseph Italiaander 6:29
You go to work for Harry Patton.
Mike Emmons 6:31
Yep.
Joseph Italiaander 6:32
At some point, you make your way to Maine.
Mike Emmons 6:35
Correct.
Joseph Italiaander 6:36
When does that happen?
Mike Emmons 6:37
So I worked for a year in sales out of they had opened an office over on the other side of the state of Vermont in Brattleboro, and I worked there for a year. And then Harry and his then partner got gentleman by the name of Bob Bork decided they wanted to expand the business, and I said that I'd be willing to move and go somewhere and open an office, and you know I was the only one working willing to do it. So we sat down one day, and they said, "Well, if you were going to open an office, where would you go? And I said, "Well, Maine's license plate says Vacation Land, and that's what we basically do: is we sell Vacation Land. I said, "I'd go to Maine. So I packed up my car with what little possessions I had and moved up to actually Norway, Maine, and lived in a hotel for six months and started putting some deals together. And eventually, I realized I couldn't didn't really want to live in Norway, Maine. So I moved down to Portland, Maine, and you know we had a we had a great run in Maine and a lot of good years and you know like everything else in real estate with some really tough years also
Joseph Italiaander 7:49
yeah yeah I don't want to get to that but before that what do you look for in a piece of land because you know you could there's no shortage of options when it comes to to buying large tracts of land in Maine, especially as you go north. Are you looking for an attraction such as a body of water? Are you looking for nearby amenities or trails? What do you what are you looking for when you go originally
Mike Emmons 8:16
when I came up here in the early '80s? What you're really looking what was really looking for was you know kind of you know picking the low hanging fruit, which is basically deals with road frontage. In other words, that you didn't have to build roads; that there was enough existing road frontage on the project that you could break the property up without having to build roads, because that used to exist back in the 80s. It doesn't exist now, or if it does, it's they're they're few and far between. So that was really what we originally, you know, looked for as to be able to subdivide off of existing roads and things like that. So, and then as time progressed and it got harder and harder to find road frontage deals. We started to get into building roads, and usually, you know, back in the '90s and you know early 2000s, you would have to basically be either be on lake frontage, ocean frontage, or whatever, because in order to spend the money to build a road, you had to sell the lots for more.
Joseph Italiaander 9:26
Yeah,
Mike Emmons 9:26
and so we did a lot of stuff on lakes, a lot of stuff on rivers, a lot of stuff on the ocean, and you know a few mountain deals and stuff. But those were, you know, those were a little tougher because you couldn't get the. You know you still got to still cost the same to build the road, but you got to sell the lots for enough to you know cover your you know make make the numbers work.
Joseph Italiaander 9:51
Sure, sure. So at this point you're in Portland, you have an office in Portland. This is late 80. Early 90s. This
Mike Emmons 10:01
is this is mid 80s actually.
Joseph Italiaander 10:04
Okay, and then in
Mike Emmons 10:05
1986, we took the company public, and it was very successful for a year and a half until the recession of 88 hit, and we we got hit pretty hard. Jesus, yeah, yeah. One of the things about a lot of people don't realize it, but when you go public, they you have what's called lettered stock, which means you can't sell it for a certain period of time because they don't want someone to go public,
Joseph Italiaander 10:40
dump the shares.
Mike Emmons 10:41
Everybody dump their shares, sell out, and then you got nobody running the company and stuff. So they do that to keep the key people in place. So, so you were handcuffed.
Mike Emmons 10:52
What's that?
Joseph Italiaander 10:53
You were handcuffed. I was
Mike Emmons 10:54
handcuffed as far as I couldn't sell my stock when the crash happened. So I went from being very poor to start with to building some very nice wealth and then losing absolutely all of it. So, but it really didn't bother me that much. It was never really, and to this day, it's never really money that is the main motivation for me. I mean, I grew up poor, so it didn't it didn't bother me. I think what bothered me was just that you know there was a lot of people that worked for me that depended on me and depended on what we were doing, and they're just they're just really our business just model just did not work during the downturn.
Joseph Italiaander 11:36
Yep. So this is getting into the 90s.
Mike Emmons 11:39
So this is 8888. was the crash, and then you know things were very very, you know, even though the company stayed a public company, that this the stock basically went from $20 a share to you know 50 cents a share, and you know so I I basically lost everything, but I didn't lose the knowledge that I had gained over the last six or eight years. And so, in the early '90s, we kind of all got all the all of us that were together when we started the company. Harry and his son Mike and I we got back together and started started the business all over again as a private business.
Joseph Italiaander 12:27
Okay, and so at this at this time you're still you're still in Portland.
Mike Emmons 12:31
Yep,
Joseph Italiaander 12:32
you're getting yourself back up off the mat. I assume your partners also got hit pretty hard,
Mike Emmons 12:38
just as hard as I did. Yes.
Joseph Italiaander 12:39
Yep. So the three of you are are ready for a comeback, a comeback story, and I imagine the next few years, you know, you built things up and and got them back to a to a better place.
Mike Emmons 12:52
Yeah, we we basically started from scratch again, and you know, built the company back up with no intention of ever going public again. It was a you know the the reason we went public in the first place was that back in the 80s, banks did not you know it was really strange to me. Banks they'd lend money for cars, they'd lend money for boats, they'd lend money for you know mobile homes. They but they did not lend money money for land, so in order to be able to raise money, that's the reason we went public is so that we could grow the business and have some cash to do it with. Banks, for some reason, just back then they did not finance land. They did it just wasn't something they were interested in or familiar with. So this time we we got some investors and and that's you know we rebuilt the company to become a very very successful company and then in the early 2000s I moved down to Florida in the winter time and started doing some business down there, and that really became my main place for doing business. You know, Maine is a very, very difficult place to do business. It's you know, it's anti-growth, anti-change, anti-development, and it you know, it just there's other places out there that I found, you know, in the Carolinas and and Texas and Florida and stuff, where it's just they don't have that attitude, and it's a little bit easier to, you know, get subdivisions approved and basically run your business and do your business.
Joseph Italiaander 14:38
Yep. Yep, that makes that makes total sense. Yep. So this is early 2000s. 2008 comes along. Things get ugly for a lot of people.
Mike Emmons 14:50
Yep.
Joseph Italiaander 14:51
Did you did you weather the storm? Did you get through
Mike Emmons 14:54
it? Well, as I like to, as I always tell people, I thought I lost everything the first time, and I only lost half of everything. The second, so so I was improving. So, but yeah, 2000. You know, as anybody that was around during the during the the heyday from 2000, I'm going to say 2001 through 2007. Business was absolutely fantastic, and we made a lot of money. We did a lot of deals. We expanded into you know some different states, and you know had a pretty pretty big company going at that point. Probably about 250 people working, and you know my job was not only to take care of Florida, but to oversee all the marketing and you know basically the, you know the the company itself. Everybody, you know. So, so it was a great time with a lot of successes, and and then 2008 hits, and it's just really like 1988 all over again. For us, it was really no different. It went from, you know, really good business to basically no business whatsoever. Our business is a little different in that it's discretionary income. It's not you know, five acres out in the woods in Tennessee is not something everybody has to have. It's something they want to have, but it's not something they have to have. So,
Joseph Italiaander 16:20
yeah,
Mike Emmons 16:20
you know when when you get a when you get a crash and you know a crunch in money and stuff like that, the you know the discretionary items are the first things to go. You know, so so we crashed again in 2008, and this time we we did something fairly smart. I'd like to say that I was responsible for it, but I wasn't. But my good friend and partner, Mike Patton, came up with the idea. But basically, what we did is we took all of our salespeople and we went to banks and we started buying. There was unfinished condo projects all over the country. Some of them were 100% completed. Some of them were 80% completed. But the banks, everybody defaulted, and the banks got these back. And the banks did not want to have them on their balance sheet. They wanted them gone. You know, you had to pay cash. So what we started doing is buying condo projects, plugging in our marketing that we were so good at from the land business, plugging in all of our salespeople and teaching them to sell condos instead of instead of dirt. And we had a very successful run. We over a four-year period, we probably bought and sold. I think it was just short of three, 3000 condos.
Joseph Italiaander 17:47
Oh my goodness! A
Mike Emmons 17:48
lot of them in Florida. Some of you know, and basically all over the country.
Joseph Italiaander 17:54
So that sounds like it was a successful. So it was very
Mike Emmons 17:57
successful, and I basically, you know, we we made some good money at it. We kept our good salespeople busy. We kept everybody engaged, and so it was really a it was it was really a pretty amazing term. We we really turned it into a very good business.
Joseph Italiaander 18:15
Yeah, and this is post 2008.
Mike Emmons 18:17
Post 2008, I'd say from 2008 to about 2012 or so,
Joseph Italiaander 18:23
okay,
Mike Emmons 18:23
we did the maybe 13. We did the condo business, and then we started. You know, we still had our land business. We had a bunch of deals that, you know, that we still had from 2008 and stuff. And we started, you know, working on those again. The condo business kind of dried up, but I mean, it was it was amazing. I mean, we were buying stuff 1020, cents on $1 from the banks. They wanted it out the door, and we'd turn it around and sell it for you know 40 50% of what you know they used to sell for, and it was a it was a great little business. But you know, it it it ran its course. We ran out of deals, and then we just started. You know, things had started to turn a little bit by 2014. So we slowly, you know, started up the land business again.
Joseph Italiaander 19:15
Got it. Okay, so we're getting closer to present day.
Mike Emmons 19:19
Yep.
Joseph Italiaander 19:20
What does what does life look like for you today? What do you what are you spending your time doing? Are you semi-retired? I've gotten to know you pretty well over the last couple years. I know you play a lot of golf. You have a lot of fun. You got a lot of friends. What's the work-life balance look like
Mike Emmons 19:41
today. I've been very fortunate. I am. I I've had a lot of good friends through life. I think it's probably because number one, I'm pretty loyal. Once I become friends with someone and get to know someone well, my life. Today is is pretty darn good. I you know I got five grandchildren. In fact, I spent all all all day yesterday and all night with them last night.
Joseph Italiaander 20:11
No man. So I'm
Mike Emmons 20:12
a little tired. Oh yeah. But I call it the shit show. You know, it's just it'll keep you moving, but it's it's when you get older, man. It's hard keeping up with those kids. It's it's unbelievable. The kids have so much energy. You kind of forget,
Joseph Italiaander 20:29
yeah,
Mike Emmons 20:29
what it's like, you know. Yep. I play a lot of golf. I have a ton of friends. I have a bunch of friends in Florida. I've got a bunch of friends up here in Maine. So I always have people, you know, that I that I enjoy. To me, golf is about who you play golf with. You know, I still do a few deals up here in Maine on the side, just for just to kind of keep my you know my toe in it and stuff. I basically left my partner back in I'm gonna say I think it was about 2019. As we got older, we really didn't see eye to eye on a lot of stuff, and I didn't, I didn't, I didn't want to continue working that way. So I left, and then my son, who worked for us for four or five years down in Texas, and another gentleman by the name of Gino Talianto, who had worked for me for about I think you know Gino. I know Gino. Yep. Yeah. Had worked for me for about 20 years or so. I like to say had worked with me, not for me. Yeah. You know, I think that's one of the keys to my success. Was you know I always treated people as equals, you know. Obviously, somebody had to be the boss, and somebody had to make the decisions. But you know, I I think you know, treating people with respect that work with you, listening to them, you know, I think goes a long ways to creating successful businesses and successful relationships. So my son and Geno started a business six years ago, doing exactly what I've done my whole life. I invested some money with them. Got some friends of mine down in Florida to invest money with them, and they got off to a you know a running start because they had capital, which was key, and they've run a very successful business for six years, and you know we've all gotten great returns on our investment with them, and it's a you know it's a good story.
Joseph Italiaander 22:39
Yeah.
Mike Emmons 22:39
Now, is there another downturn coming with that they're going to have to go through what I went through twice? Who knows? You know, if I could if I could predict that, I probably wouldn't be sitting here with you out on my yacht and
Joseph Italiaander 22:55
that's right
Mike Emmons 22:55
in the Caribbean somewhere. Yeah, yeah. So,
Joseph Italiaander 22:59
okay, so you still have you still have your toes in it a little bit.
Mike Emmons 23:03
Yeah, I got a couple small deals I'm doing in Maine, and you know I help them out a little bit. But basically, they've done the business themselves, and they've been they've they've done a very good job of it.
Joseph Italiaander 23:12
Yeah. So what do you think the next five to 10 years look like? The next the next chapter is there for me. Yes.
Mike Emmons 23:19
The next chapter for me is retirement, spending time with my grandkids, playing golf, doing all the things I enjoy doing, and you know, just you know, hopefully staying healthy. I'm 70 years old right now, and I feel great, and you know, I'm able to really enjoy my life. I'm very fortunate that I've made enough money that I don't have to worry about money, and you know I've got some personal things that I'm working on, and you know those will be my primary focus going forward.
Joseph Italiaander 23:58
So I think that's a good segue for those that don't know you, our audience that don't know you, you are a big presence. How tall are you? Six six foot 6363. You're loud. You've got an unmistakable voice. You've got an unmatched. I would say you have an unmatched wit. You know, you've got a witty response for almost any situation. You know, you're you're physically you're an intimidating guy, but as I've gotten to know you over the last couple years, mostly through golf, you know, and the stories that you've told me, you really you are you got a you've got a big heart. You're incredibly generous, you know, and you you treat people with with respect. You know how does that? So, and I wanted to talk about the the Taylor Emmons Scholarship Fund. You went through something that no no parent should ever have to go through. You lost your son. Can you talk? Talk a little bit about the foundation, what you're doing with it today, who it's helped, and what that might look like over the next couple years. Sure,
Mike Emmons 25:08
be happy to talk about it. So, in on december 5, 2010, my 19 year old son Taylor was killed when he was hit by a car walking home from a fraternity party at the University of Miami, where he was a sophomore in school. Needless to say, that was a very devastating, difficult time. Still is difficult to this day, but it's something that you know. My wife and I decided that you know we sat down and said we can't let this ruin our lives and make it even worse of a tragedy than it is. Fortunately, we had two other children, so that gave us you know the strength to get up every day and move forward, and you know, do what we needed to do to continue our lives. When Taylor passed away, we, you know, we decided that you know we didn't want a house full of flowers, so we asked for donations, thinking maybe we'd start a, you know, scholarship or something in his name. He went to a private school called the Outdoor Academy in Sarasota, Florida. Loved it there. Really, really blossomed there, and really, you know, turned into a really good young man. But so anyway, we asked for donations instead of flowers, and we ended up getting $165,000 worth of donations, which absolutely blew us away. And we're like, okay, so now what do we do? And so what we decided was that we were going to start raising money to do a scholarship in his name, and our goal was to have a student in every in high school at every grade, freshman, sophomore, junior, senior, every year, so that there would be four scholarship students at all times. And we've been successful to doing that. We raised almost $3 million. The community that we live in down in Florida was extremely generous, extremely supportive. We'd do a golf golf slash poker tournament, and we'd have over 400 people show up for it. And you know, it was a it was a huge success. We kept Taylor's legacy alive. We raised money. People had fun doing it. You know, so
Joseph Italiaander 27:46
you helped, and you helped a lot of people,
Mike Emmons 27:47
and we helped a lot of people. So right now, we have given out 16 scholarships. The scholarships are basically it's $120,000 scholarship because it costs $30,000 a year to go to the school. So
Joseph Italiaander 28:01
this is a four-year scholarship. A
Mike Emmons 28:02
four-year scholarship, yeah. It was kind of funny. We had one of our scholarship students that had just, you know, moved to the United States a couple years ago. We we had them in and we awarded them the scholarship, and then the the headmaster told us afterwards, after we left, they said, "Well, this is really exciting. We're so, but what do we do about the next three years? They didn't understand that it was actually a four-year scholarship. You know, so they were, needless to say, we're ecstatic. But we've had some great kids. I like to say that we're, you know, we're 16 for 16. We really have had, you know, really a lot of success. We've had a lot of help from the school. You know, we make the final decision on who the scholarship student is going to be, but the school narrows it down to three or 234, whatever you know number it is that they feel would be thing. The number one criteria for the scholarship is financial need. It has to be a student that would never be able to attend the school without the scholarship, and you know it's difficult because we've got some kids that you know come in that are basically overwhelmed. You know they're they've never never gone to a school like this. As ODA is very well known for its academics. It does have good sports, but it's not really the the main focus of the school. The main focus is academics, and so. But all of them have graduated. All of them have been successful, and we're you know we're really we're really proud of the kids, and we're really proud that of the community that supported us the way they did. Needless to say, it was a very, very difficult thing to go through.
Joseph Italiaander 29:49
I can't imagine.
Mike Emmons 29:50
Yeah,
Joseph Italiaander 29:51
but you've helped a lot of people. You've been working on a business school, possibly.
Mike Emmons 29:57
Yeah, not possibly, definitely, definitely.
Joseph Italiaander 30:00
Okay, so there's a business goal component. So
Mike Emmons 30:01
Taylor went to Miami as a business major, and he had no idea what it meant. I mean, I had my own business. A lot of the guys that I that I golfed with and were friends with in Florida either had their own business or were CEOs or CFOs and stuff. So he figured he wanted to get into business, but he had no idea what it meant, and it's always amazed me. And especially at a school, the quality of the ODA that they don't teach business classes to kids. It's just it's mind-boggling to me. You know, there isn't anybody going through life that you know doesn't have to at some point probably do a job interview or a resume or balance it. You know, I guess they don't balance checkbooks anymore, but you still got to keep track of your money. Yeah, you know, that doesn't deal with the stock market at some point in their life. You know, and why we're not teaching these kids all this stuff. You know, even just how to shake someone's hand and look someone in the eye, you know, and you know, be a businessman, you know, and be a you know aware of what's you know what's going on around you business wise. It it just blew me away that they didn't offer any any classes. Never mind, you know, just basic business one on one. Amen.
Joseph Italiaander 31:19
Yeah,
Mike Emmons 31:20
I sure wish that I had learned some of that stuff when I was in high school, you know, or even in college, you know. Yeah, but but I think the sooner we can start teaching kids this stuff, the better. You know, it's a it's a you know it's a business world out there, you know, and I think that you know we really, really, really need to be, you know, teaching these kids at a younger age, even younger than high school.
Joseph Italiaander 31:53
Absolutely. Yeah.
Mike Emmons 31:55
So anyway, we, my wife and I, made a very generous donation to the school to start the Taylor Emmons School of Business, a couple years ago they hired the first business teacher. Kids are fighting to get into the classes. We've hired another teacher this year. We're designing the building as we speak and going through the money raising phase. So I have no doubt in my mind that within two or three years, that the Taylor Emmons School of Business will be a huge part of ODA. My goal also is not to make it just for ODA, but for the community. Would love to see business classes being taught at night to adults that need it, or you know, hell, we all need business classes. You know, I mean, I could take some business classes. Yeah, no
Joseph Italiaander 32:45
kidding.
Mike Emmons 32:45
You know,
Joseph Italiaander 32:46
I could certainly use it too.
Mike Emmons 32:48
Yeah, so it's you know, we're really excited about it. We think that it's going to be a you know a game changer for the school. We've already gotten a whole lot of feedback from other places saying you know about how this is this is really going to change things for kids, and like I said, the kids are kids are fighting to get into this into the business classes. You know, there's a real need for it. There's a desire for it, and I have no doubt it's going to be a huge success.
Joseph Italiaander 33:16
Yeah, and I I look forward to hearing more about it over the next couple years.
Mike Emmons 33:20
Yeah, we're we're really excited about it. That's awesome. We're making progress.
Joseph Italiaander 33:24
That's awesome. Well, thanks for sharing that story and and about all of the good that you're doing in the community. I so you bought an you bought an island.
Mike Emmons 33:39
I did buy an island.
Joseph Italiaander 33:43
Tell tell us about the island. How did this how did this happen? What what is this place?
Mike Emmons 33:50
So it's kind of a crazy story, but anyway, the island is called Galu Island. G A L L O O. It is situated in Lake Ontario, the the to make a long story short, we basically bought the island back in the just just about when we went just before we went public back in the mid '80s under Patton Corporation. We had already done one, developed one smaller island in the in the 1000 Islands in the St. Lawrence Seaway, and then we found this island and bought it. And my good friend Mike and I, who are both pretty avid deer hunters, went out there to try to figure out how we were going to subdivide it and what we're going to do. And all of a sudden, we found out there was a whole bunch of white-tailed deer on the on the island. Not too shabby. And we said we can't sell this. We need to we need to make our hunting preserve. Make a long story. Short. The crash happens in '88. We lose everything. The island, everything's gone. So Mike has been following it for years and years and years. The last seven or eight years, we bought it back about five years ago. The six or seven years before that, there was a couple groups trying to do a very large wind farm out there. Which, if you've ever sat out on an island, it kind of makes sense to have a wind farm. But
Joseph Italiaander 35:31
yeah,
Mike Emmons 35:31
but the locals fought it. The environmentalists fought it. It's it's such a unique place. It would have been it would have been a tragedy if it became a
Joseph Italiaander 35:42
sure yeah
Mike Emmons 35:42
became a wind farm, and ultimately the reason it got turned down was because there's a couple of eagles on the island, and that would have
Joseph Italiaander 35:51
put them in danger. Would
Mike Emmons 35:52
have put them in danger, and so that you know that was kind of one of the deciding factors. So anyway, there was two two brothers that owned it at that point, and they had collected a bunch of money from the people, you know, trying to do the wind farm, giving them, you know, more and more time. But anyway, one of the brothers died, and the other brother decided to sell, and so the three of us stepped in, and we bought the island, and we now have owned it for about five years. We did bring out some some new genetics to the island. We we bought some some nice big bucks and some does out there because the deer had been out there. The deer had been interbreeding for so long that the genetics were starting to show that the deer weren't as big as they were back in the '80s and stuff. So we bought out some new genetics, and it's just it's I don't it's just hard to explain. But you go out there and everything just goes away, you know, and you just kind of relax, and it's it's just an awesome awesome place. It's a 2000 acre island. It's the largest privately owned freshwater island in the United States.
Joseph Italiaander 37:10
Oh my goodness!
Mike Emmons 37:11
And we have been working for the last two years with the 1000 Island Land Trust to put a put. put it in conservation so that it will never be developed, and that is we're we're at the home stretch of that and just about done, you know, having that signed off and getting some money from them to do that. So it's just I call it you know our caretaker out there just put a sign up by the door that said, "This is my happy place. Don't screw it up. And that's a perfect, you know, it's a perfect sign because it's it's that's where I go and that's where you know my daughter loves to go out there with me and you know a lot of my friends from Maine that love to hunt. We go out there and just you know we just have a great time and just relax and enjoy life. Well,
Joseph Italiaander 38:07
I'll await my invitation to Galu Island.
Mike Emmons 38:10
You're you're in a long line, John. Oh jeez,
Joseph Italiaander 38:13
oh jeez. Okay, circling back, favorite business deal, best business deal, either one. And does anything come to mind? It could be, it could be, it can be a wild story. It could be a deal that you lost a shit ton of money on. I'm gonna, but a good story, a good deal story for our audience. Tell you
Mike Emmons 38:34
a wild story because everybody I tell this story to gets a kick out of it. My partner and I bought this 1700 acre orange grove slash pasture land in Florida, just north of Sarasota. I 95 actually went through the middle of it. It was it was really a more of a residential area than we usually do, but it was such a nice piece of land that we we kind of went out of our comfort zone a little bit in in buying this thing, and about 500 acres of the land was in Orange Grove. I'm trying to remember what year it was. I think it was early, early 2000, 2001, maybe. Anyway, a large hurricane came through the middle of Florida, and when it did, it spread what they called canker into a lot of the orange groves, which basically killed the trees and you know whatever. So. So here I am. I got 500 acres of orange groves. I'm trying to decide: do I want to, you know, take them down and, you know, because we're gonna we're gonna sell five acre building lots here, and you know, do people really want to deal with a pile of oranges? And then I got to thinking, well, maybe what I'll do is just, you know, do a couple of example lots and just cut a driveway in and clear an acre in the middle of the five acres of orange and stuff like that. So I'm going through this debate on how to deal with this when this tornado hurricane goes through the middle of Florida and spreads canker. Well, I'm out on the property one day, and all of a sudden, three or four vans pull up, and all these old people get out of the vans and they start, you know, walking around. So I go up and I talk to the guy, and he said, "Well, we're we're with the state, and we're checking state agricultural department, and we're checking to see if the orange canker has has gotten into your grove. Which, if it has, you know, you've got to eliminate not only the trees, but the roots and everything else. Well, one of the guys that worked for me said, you know, there's a program that the that the state is doing that basically, you know, reimbursing people for their loss of their orange income. Now, keep in mind, I had no intention of getting any orange income. I was trying to figure out what to do with the trees, so I guess they had put $100 million into this pot, and as it turns out, the 100 million got eaten up pretty quick, and I never expected anything to come of it, anyway. And then this guy that worked for me says, "Well, they just put in another 150 million. He goes, "I'm gonna keep after him. Well, to make a long story short, I'm driving down the highway one day, and my bookkeeper calls, and he said, "What are you doing? He said, "I said I'm just driving from here. He goes, "Well, you might want to pull over the side of the road. Why is that? He says, "Well, he says we just got a check from the state of agriculture department, and it's kind of big. And I said, "Well, let me pull over. So I pulled over and I said, "Okay, Tim. I said, "How much is the check? He said, "$4,240,000. I couldn't believe it. Absolutely couldn't believe it. And not only that, but they came out, took down. It didn't cost me one penny. They took down every single orange tree, because once the blight hits the trees, you have to not only get rid of the tree, but you have to get rid of the roots, so the tree never grows again. So they dissed everything; they took the trees down, dissed everything, and I had a beautiful pasture.
Joseph Italiaander 42:54
And then you could sell. You could sell some some lots,
Mike Emmons 42:58
and I could sell some lots. That's It's awesome, but I mean, I I just I mean it was it was amazing to me, and I just you know I never I never expected to see a penny from it and stuff, so people always get a kick out of that story. That's a great story when I tell that story because it just number one it shows a little bit how our government works and shows you a little bit about you know how having a little luck on your side sometimes isn't a bad thing.
Joseph Italiaander 43:25
Not bad at all. Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good.
Mike Emmons 43:28
Yes,
Joseph Italiaander 43:29
Mike Emmons. We
Mike Emmons 43:30
say that a lot in golf, don't we, Joe?
Joseph Italiaander 43:32
Sure, sure do. I rely a lot on the luck ass. There you
Mike Emmons 43:35
go. Me too,
Joseph Italiaander 43:38
Mike Emmons, a dirt guy. Thank you for joining us.
Mike Emmons 43:44
It was my pleasure. Happy to be here, and I was going to add one thing. I was going to add one thing. Basically, when I went and talked at one of the business classes. People asked me what the key to my success was, and my answer to that is always the same. And that is that I learned some somewhere along the way. I learned very early in life, in business, not in life, in business, that the single most important job I have is the people I hire. That without good people, without people that you can trust, people that are work harder than you, that are smarter than you, that are, it's hard to be successful. And it's the people that are really, really the key to a business-it's not you know somebody's got to make the decision, somebody's got to run the business, somebody's got to raise the money. All that stuff is very important, but without all the you know good people to execute your plan, you got nothing. So that's my advice to people: is never be afraid to hire good people. People, people that are smarter than you, people that are more aggressive than you-it's to me, it's really been the key.
Joseph Italiaander 45:08
Yeah, and I, you know, on that note, you know, I was at a retail conference a couple years ago, and Kevin Hancock, with Hancock, Columbia, Kevin, was the keynote speaker.
Mike Emmons 45:19
Yep,
Joseph Italiaander 45:20
and you know he went over the you know how there's all these brands and companies out there you know who say that the customer comes first, but he has a unique you know slogan which is that the employees come first. You know if you if you take good care of the people around you, your employees, your colleagues, the customers, or end up being better off for
Mike Emmons 45:46
it. He's exactly right. That's that's what at least that's what I've learned and experienced in business.
Joseph Italiaander 45:51
Yep. Well, it sounds like you've had a great career and a great life. Looking forward to the next chapter
Mike Emmons 46:00
and your trip to the island. My
Joseph Italiaander 46:01
trip to the island, a lot of golf. We'll get down to Saleta. Maybe, maybe concession.
Mike Emmons 46:10
No, you don't want to play there too. Maybe Gator
Joseph Italiaander 46:12
Creek.
Mike Emmons 46:12
Gator Creek, yes.
Joseph Italiaander 46:13
Okay. Well, I've got a laundry list. We can go. We can go over it afterwards. All right,
Mike Emmons 46:18
sounds good.
Joseph Italiaander 46:19
But thanks for joining us, Mike Emmons. Thank you for being our guest today on the Boulos Beat, a Boulos Company podcast. I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with us. And if you'd like to learn more about the Boulos Company, please be sure to visit us at Boulos.com. You can also find us at the Boulos Company on Facebook and LinkedIn, and at the Boulos Co on Instagram.
Host Bio
Joseph (Joe) Italiaander has worked in commercial real estate since 2015, when he started his career in brokerage in New York City. While in New York, Joe worked for ABS Partners Real Estate, a vertically integrated real estate company where he focused on retail leasing for a variety of landlord clients throughout the city. In 2019, Joe moved to Maine, and in 2020 he joined The Boulos Company. At Boulos, Joe focuses on a variety of different asset classes – including retail, office and industrial sales & leasing. Additionally, he has a targeted focus on tenant & buyer representation for assignments throughout the state of Maine.
Joe is originally from Atlanta, GA, and spent his childhood summers at sleepaway camp in Bridgton, ME. Joe currently resides in the East End of Portland. In his free time, he enjoys playing golf, tennis, and the occasional bluebird ski day. Joe is an alumnus of The University of Alabama and is a die-hard Crimson Tide football fan (Roll Tide).
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