In this engaging podcast, Nick Price delves into their journeys, emphasizing the significance of mindset, life approach, and mentorship.  He shares their experience in entrepreneurship and real estate, showcasing their achievements in pitch competitions and advocating for time freedom and autonomy.

They also explore their mission to foster supportive communities through innovative development strategies, with Nick expressing curiosity about Docked Co-living—a visionary concept in intentional community development.

Listen to the podcast episode here!

Today we are joined by Nick Price who is the president of Dock Living and owner of Price Properties and Investments. Meeting Nick and learning about his journey is motivating and inspiring. And his mindset and approach to life is something that I believe is truly special, something I took notes on myself. 

Now in this episode, we talked about the new Florida concept of CO living, how Nick learned to be an entrepreneur, and Nick’s journey from college to ownership in three separate companies. Now, if you could do us a favour and review our podcasts on your platform that would help us reach more people in the community, and bring more support for the local business owners  Nick himself. Let’s jump into it. 

 

Welcome to the podcast, Nick, how are you doing today?

Good. How are you?

I’m good. Man. I appreciate you being here. I’m excited to kind of just pick your brain selfishly.

Awesome. I’m excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

So we’re just kind of talking about this,  you have, you’re just an entrepreneur with a young entrepreneur with several different businesses already. But Dr. Living’s Price properties or Docked Living is one of them. And then price properties and investments is another one. 

Yep.

And then we have Suncoast Landscaping, which is another small business that I’m partnered with. 

Cool.

So I want to go back to the beginning.  where did this entrepreneurial journey start?

It started at a young age, I think. I’ve always wanted to be a business owner, I’ve always wanted to do my own thing. My grandfather was a successful entrepreneur. And he was an immigrant, a Cuban immigrant. 

Then he worked his way up he got a job at the labour union. And then they found out he could keyboard. And so he went from working on the railroad to in the labour union office. And then he worked his way up. 

He was one of the first elected Hispanics to be a board of directors for the AFL CIO and then went on to be an entrepreneur. And so I kind of always had that buzz in my ear. And then my dad was a, my dad was a defence contractor and government contractor. 

So I kind of got to hear from my dad, Hey, if you go into business, you can get a good job. But if you can be the owner, you can do well. And then I heard that from my grandfather, too. So it’s always been kind of, in the back of my head. 

I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I didn’t know it until I went to USF St. Pete. And then I got into a class called Creativity and Innovation and Entrepreneurship. And it opened my eyes to a different world. Because I never really d school. decently high school, I, wasn’t a great student, but I wasn’t a bad student. 

I was kind of bored, when you’re bored in school, and then went to college, still bored,  complicated compared to something exciting. 

And then I was invited to go to USF St. Pete, by a friend of mine, and join that class. When I took that class, it forever changed my life. Crazy And then I went on to get a degree in entrepreneurship from USF St. Pete.

Okay, so that triggered it from there Oh, this is this is what I want to do. It showed me that there was an opportunity to do so. And through the program. I was doing,  pitch competitions and stuff that. And they showed me what was out there?

So then you graduate, you have your degree in entrepreneurship. What do you what are you doing after that? 

Before graduating, I built a business while I was in school. It was called City Slickers. And it was a mobile eco-friendly, waterless car wash, basically a waterless rinseless carwash. We ended up building an app where you could order a carwash to wherever your car sat in downtown St. Pete, and was the Uber for car washes, in that era when everything was tried to be the Uber or something. 

And that was 2015. And we ended up winning the Tampa Bay Startup Week, which they do pretty much every year. And she’s highlighting entrepreneurship and startups in Tampa Bay. And I ended up winning that pitch competition there. I won. I won the first one in 2012 at the school. Then I went on to pitch in the Southeastern Entrepreneurial Conference at UT, which opened my eyes to just, all the opportunities that the startup will have for me. 

Then I ended up pitching at the 2015 Tampa Bay Startup Week startup of the year competition. And we want we it was us and then viral sales, which city slickers didn’t go on to become a nine-figure built business viral sales did, but we were still successful and we ended up going to Las Vegas and competing in the tech.co Tampa tech.co startup of the year competition. So I was doing all this stuff while I was in the program. 

Then I graduated. And about graduation, I was just kind of burnt out from the car cleaning business. And it wasn’t, I think Florida wasn’t the market for it, I think, California or Colorado or somewhere that cared more about the water usage has been extraordinarily successful.

 

It rains here all the time. And then I ended up just kind of leaving that venture. And then I went back to Innisbrook, I always worked at Innisbrook throughout college, throughout my business career,  at night as a server bartender. So after I graduated, I went back, worked there for a little bit, and started just kind of asking everybody.

Hey, what did you do to, be successful in business? And it was all, I started my own business, or invest in real estate, or it was I started my own business and invest in real estate And so I started learning everything I could about real estate, because I had already known everything. Not everything, but I had already been learning as much as I could about business.

So that’s where the real estate piece comes in?

That’s where the real estate piece came in. , what a great resource to be able to just pick just these others coming in to eat and you can just have fun with it was 

Guys that sold their title company for $100 million And so you’re, Oh, wow. , there’s I didn’t know what a title company was, at that point in my life. 

Then when I found out that that’s one of the biggest pieces of the real estate transaction, I was, Oh, wow, look at that. There’s a whole nother opportunity out here in a whole nother industry with a million different things that you can make money in. And so that’s what interests me the most about it. What

Did you learn?  When you were doing all those competitions and building your carwash business there?

I learned how to put myself out in front of people, which I think is one of the biggest things that people don’t do, especially when they think they have, I got the next best idea. , it’s  I’m not gonna tell anybody about it, you’re gonna steal my idea. And I’ve heard this I can’t remember who said it. But if someone said it, nobody wants your shitty business idea, and it’s, so true. 

If you’re passionate about your business, you’re gonna make it happen. It’s not someone else is going to hear it and go, Oh, I’m gonna do that. And even if they do it, they’re not going to have the same level of passion that you do.

So I got out there and just, pitched my life away.  It was, instead of always closing pitching.  What do I mean? Just get out there. What, what am I what problem am I solving? What’s my solution? Who am I? 

What’s the team that was the biggest thing I learned was, how to not have fear in telling people what I’m doing.

Is that was that just learned,  through that process? Or do you think you had some of that before starting to sort that out? 

I think I had some of it But I think it was reinforced And then I did, while I was doing all that stuff in school, we’re doing startup weekend events. Were doing start a bus. And starting a bus made me start a bus. 

It’s a 72-hour hackathon, where you get on a bus with 30 strangers, and there are buses from all over the United States and one in Mexico. And for three days, you build teams, everyone gets up, they pitch their idea, then you build teams, and then you go from idea to working product demo and 72 hours, and then you pitch it on stage in front of venture capitalists or your peers and investors. And so we call it the Navy SEAL Bootcamp for entrepreneurs.

That’s really what got me to the point of being able to walk into a room and Pitch Anything, was my experience on Startup Us because the whole time I was pitching, I had great mentors. 

They pushed me super, super hard to redefine how you present your business to someone and, in 30 seconds, 60 seconds, 90 seconds. 

So I think the whole time of my life was just me getting out there and being able to learn how to be a better salesperson, a better pitch person Not having fear talking on stage. , because I mean, when I did Tampa startup, Startup week in 2015, it’s jumping behind the stage. 

So, tried to get the nerves out before they got on there. ? And so it was a lot of fun and a lot of pitching crazy.

That’s, I gotta imagine that’s a great experience to start your career out. Not a lot of people get to do that. I don’t think I’ve talked to any business owner on the podcast that has had that has gone through that process of starting. 

Usually, it’s just, that I have no idea. I’m going to start my business. I’m going to open a brick-and-mortar or an online shop, whatever it is, But to go through that, and, I think to have that itch to be an entrepreneur at such a young age,  in college and all that stuff,  it was massive.

It was 2021. And I got into the program. That’s amazing. 

And the best part about the USF St. Pete entrepreneurship program was, I had a business idea. And we were doing we were doing it And so every class was usually it’d be, okay, pick a business, and you guys work on trying to figure out how to do this for that business.

It was very much that for me, the forever group I was in was my business And so I spent four years of college, working on my business, working on my business, during the day working on my business during class, working on my business at night, pitching my business to investors pitching my business to people at the at Innisbrook.

So, for four years of my life, I did nothing but that, and I think that primed me to be in the position I am now, where I again, am doing the same thing where it’s all day, every day sunup to sundown, and I’ve already been conditioned to do it. 

I have no one or need to, slow down, it’s not, I’m working to retire. I’m building something that I can do for the rest of my life and be happy doing it. 

I think that’s a difference between working a job and then being an entrepreneur, but even some, I will say that even some entrepreneurs still just have a job because they don’t have a business. Yep. What do you enjoy about being an entrepreneur?

I enjoy the freedom of being an entrepreneur, even though everyone’s. Oh, you work for yourself, it must be nice. You can kind of take off time whenever you want. And it’s good. But then I would be behind. But I have, the freedom and autonomy to work on what I want to work on And so not being told what to do, or how to do it, or when to do it or where to do it. That’s, that’s what I d the most. 

In one of the podcasts that had recently, the guest, Jacob brought up the the idea of time freedom. Oh, and I never really, thought about it or heard it presented in that way. I got into real estate because I wanted freedom of choice to do the things that I wanted to do and live the life that I wanted to live. But his perspective was, that you’re just buying back time,  you want time to do the things that you want to do. 

Whether it’s spending time with family, I only want to work 20 hours a week. So you’re working for that time for you?

Absolutely.

No, I would agree. I think one of my mentors says it very well,  he’s retired at this point and is 42. But he’s been retired since he was, 33. 

Amazing. 

But what he says is I don’t I don’t trade my time for money. And if that could be the point that I get to that would be ideal for me. Because then it’s, you’re not having to work to make money as much as you’re spending the time doing things you want to be doing

I love that. So you got introduced to real estate. Tell me how where you started in real estate and kind of that journey.

So real estate has always been kind of a part of our lives. One of the things we did in our family was we do always, no matter where we were on vacation, we’d go drive the neighbourhoods and look at houses as something fun. They always did after-dinner tickets around and drove us through,  the neighbourhoods and looked at different houses in the neighbourhoods. 

I don’t think they did that just for the joy of it, or there’s something behind it. 

I don’t know if there’s something behind it or not. I think partly just joy in it. My parents built a house in 99 in Northern Virginia. Okay. So I think they’re just, there’s just some fun We did as a family. It was, Oh, wow, look at that house. 

What do I mean?  kind of thing. But then, when I was at the bar talking to people, I just kept asking that question, what did you do to be successful? 

And it was always business in real estate. So really started thinking about real estate. I started learning. My best friend Evan is in real estate development too. And I and him just started kind of going through the grind now,  learning everything we could about commercial real estate value-added real estate, residential flips,  everything in everything that we could think of. And then I told my mom that I was interested in real estate and my mom’s friend had a job opening that was a listing manager. 

So I was, al, I’ll take a take a pay cut to go learn. Because I  as much as I’m, I’m not the biggest fan of structured school I am a big fan of learning. Sure. And so I was, Okay, let me maybe this is an opportunity. 

So I took a pay cut, I was making extraordinary money working at the bar at Innisbrook doing the Valspar championship and all that stuff extraordinary money. And then that job opening came up, I said, I’ll take it I want to learn.

So I went to go work for a Keller Williams team in New Port Richey, Judy Pope’s, it’s on the corner of golf harbours, so I got to spend two years of my life learning everything there is to learn about buyer’s or seller’s,  maintaining properties when nobody’s in them waterfront listings, because her whole neighbourhoods golf harbours, so it’s on a waterfront there. 

So I spent two years working out there learning everything I could learn. And then this opportunity came to work with Mark Conrad docked, and I took it. And so I ended up going from a Keller Williams team. 

I got licensed. And then I went, I stayed. I switched from Keller Williams to Don Wade. And then I went to docked to start helping build the development arm of docked. And

How did the guy at the dock connect with him? 

So I was introduced to him through my best friend Evan, who was doing flips with him in St. Petersburg in Chicago. Okay. And so he had been Mark and had been mentoring Evan for quite some time. So I had heard his name quite a few times before. And then Evan was, hey, this opportunity came up, do you want to come to learn about it? 

So I went and talked to them. And it sounded like something that would be good for me. more freedom, more autonomy And then it was co-living. So it was, something that I hadn’t heard about before. And I was interested in it. 

And it was a startup that was slowly growing. So I was, let me take the risk and join this team and see what happens.

 

I think what’s what’s valuable about, your path is it’s always been I want to learn to be better what can I do to better myself for the future? Not how do I make a much a bunch of money now?

It certainly has been more so, let me learn how to get to that point. I’m willing to sacrifice it now. I know, I probably could have done a million different things to make a lot more money, at a younger age. But I wanted to put myself in those positions to learn so that I don’t have to go through all the hardships and failures and stuff at a later time in my life.

But I can learn it all now. So that I’m prepared to be able to take on those larger amounts of money and do the bigger deals and do the bigger developments.

Where do you think you learned that trait from or, or tenacity? Or just the fact of, I want to, I want to sacrifice now for my future. 

My parents? Because that’s what they did for us? So my dad, my dad wanted to be an entrepreneur and ended up not being an entrepreneur. 

I ended up working in defence contracting, and government contracting, for years to make sure that, my mom and my brother got to do whatever we wanted to do.  

So that level of sacrifice was made by them. My mom sacrificed my mom was working a job making extraordinary money in corporate America with my dad. 

She sacrificed her whole career to make sure that my brother and I had someone there with us at all times, taking care of us. So, the two of them made extraordinary sacrifices for me to be in the position that I am now. And that’s that’s entirely where it was bred from, watching them do it for us.

That’s crazy. That’s, that’s awesome. Let’s talk about Dock living. And what that is because when we talked before, I’d never heard of this concept. And I’m, why haven’t read it? 

So Dock Living, a co-living company out of St. Petersburg, we have about 100 We call them their rooms but 100 members,? And we do share housing. So your typical single-family house usually has four or five bedrooms, and that’s it. In docked homes.

They’re larger single-family houses that we’ve either bought, built or renovated. Okay. And they could have anywhere from six to eight, or nine people in the house. And it’s it’s a single-family house with one kitchen and one common area, but everyone has their own bedroom and bathroom. So it gives you the feel of kind of an apartment complex, but it’s a single-family home with roommates.

How many buildings do you guys have now?

We’re closing on our 11th acquisition on Monday. Okay. And then we have about another 140 rooms in the pipeline. Okay. And we’re expanding historically, everything has been in St. Petersburg, but now we’re scaling out from St. Pete to have one property in Seminole. 

We’re closing on one property in Lakeland, and trying to buy three or four more in Lakeland. And then we’re looking at we’re actively negotiating in Tampa, Gainesville, and I’m looking at a huge portfolio in Jacksonville. 

So pretty much I think the entire state of Florida needs additional forms to solve,  the affordable housing crisis is real?

And there’s not a clear solution, but there are multiple solutions. And CO living could be one of them. Sure.

Because otherwise, it’s large apartment buildings or multi-large multifamily buildings.

This is roommates. So this is a professionalized version of roommates. I always explain. if you were in college, say you and five, or your buddies found a house that you wanted to rent there, and everybody picked a room. T

hat’s what we do at Dock. It’s just professionally managed. We’re a professional, almost a matchmaker for roommates say tell us, what they’re interested in, who they are, and what they are, and then we do our best to match them with other-minded individuals in our community in one of the different houses.

As in and are you signing a lease?

We do membership contracts, so people will sign a 12-month membership contract, and in that membership contract, everything’s included. So it’s, access to the house, it’s, we have professional maid service, we have Colombian coffee in every house. We do all utilities including high-speed internet, we do events. So that’s all included in their membership. So Docks is a social club, where people have access to the amenities, which are the houses. 

Very cool. What have you learned since joining Docked,  what’s been been some business tips or strategies that you’ve learned?

Oh, man, I’ve learned so much. I’ve learned that for me personally, I think one of the biggest things for me has been learning about how to create a business where you could be vertically integrated, and keep everything in-house. 

Because one of the things I noticed while working at Docked was,  we were dealing with contract third-party contractors, and for a lot of the time, we kept getting screwed over,  what do I mean?  people stealing Gozzo. doubts? , all the build-out. So all the construction they’re.  

So we would deal with, there are good contractors out there. But there’s a saying, in construction, it’s, there are three things you can either be good, cheap, or on time, And you can call three. And so, a lot of the good ones are super booked up. 

They’re super expensive. But in the process, we kept kind of getting, and I don’t know if it was just what it was. But we kept kind of just getting the short end of the stick on deals we had to deposit stolen, which is crazy and turned into a whole nother thing.  where we pay for a deposit on a GC contract. No one ever shows up. 

And then we’ve had people just do shoddy work and different things. So one of the things we did to solve that was Mark had experienced doing flips for  12 years, 15 years or so. And then you can in the state of Florida, if you have a four-year degree and you have one year experience, you can get your contracting license. 

You have 15 years of experience and a four-year degree so he got his license. So now we’re fully vertically integrated. So we have our building, contracting, license, HVAC, plumbing, electrical and roofing. So we pull all permits in-house we do all construction in-house.

I think one of the things that I’ve noticed is my mission now has been to create a fully vertically great vertically integrated business. where you have ancillary businesses that as your investment strategy grows, all the ancillary businesses grow with it, and they can do their own business. 

Then you reduce the cost that you have to pay for your investment strategy by doing everything in-house. So in-house maintenance in-house cleaning, in-house construction in-house design and architecture,  everything is done in-house,

Is there a certain level that you have to get to to get everything in-house? Or is it just taking the risk?

I think you do have to have some level of experience to, get to that point of qualifying for things the construction license, is not an easy thing to get, not an easy test to pass. 

Same as, my broker license.  that wasn’t easy. And so I would say it yet, it takes some experience. But I do think that people could design, they could they could build their business that by design 

So, if they wanted to say, I’m going to do XYZ, they could design it that way.

So Price Property Investments. When did that start? 

That started last year. So that was March 2023. We opened up price properties and investments, okay, which we do buy sell rentals and property management. Okay.

If you’re not doing enough already,

Let’s do another one. I want to buy a property management company to kind of roll it up and the whole thing. Okay. So that’s another eventual goal. But, that was, that was a goal for me for a long time. I’ve always wanted to have my name on a building.

So where does that come from? I don’t know I don’t know where that comes from. But I always have wanted to I don’t know, see the price up. 

I feel  I have a good name for real estate and investing in general just being the last name price So I’ve always wanted to kind of just shoot on a building. And, you have, the different brands  Keller Williams is Gary Keller and the other guy, . And so I’ve always kind of wanted to have my brand that.

So I, through doing doc deals, found a broker mentor, and she was, Hey, you should get in your own business. Because of what you’re doing now, if you had the brokerage level you could do so much more. Sure. So that’s, that’s kind of why I got into that aspect of it. 

So far, so good. I have one agent I brought on, she’s helping primarily with docks now. And we’re doing some, regular real estate transactions, but our primary focus now is to build the dock brand and do larger and larger developments.

Okay. That’s very cool. Beyond that what’s what’s on the horizon? What do you have?

I’m trying to get to a point where I can start developing micro units. So from this whole experience in looking at what doc has created,  shrinking down the footprint, because effectively adopt we deliver rent at half the market price.

And we’ve done that by shrinking down the amount of size that somebody would kind of live in so they share the amenities. And then they have a smaller living space and veteran bathroom. So I’m interested in trying to find ways that we can develop, almost micro units.  if you were to look at a hotel-motel,? 

One of those is just kind of rundown. Can we come in there? Can we purchase it? Can we renovate it, make it boo Tiki and nice and make that an affordable solution to the housing to Okay, so I’m looking at that want to get into more property management stuff. But primarily, it’s, I’m all in on doc, man. I went on a collision podcast the other day, and the guy’s.

What can you tell us more about CO living? I’m, Dude, I eat and sleep during dreams of our CO living. Yes. That’s all we think about at this point. And I see that being, it’s huge in in Europe, it’s huge. In Asia. It’s, it’s not new to the world, but it’s newer to the United States. Sure. And specifically, Florida, because, in the United States two-thirds of all real estate is single-family homes And the nuclear family doesn’t exist anymore. 

So what do we do with all these houses where you have one person living in a 2800 square foot house? And so, it brings up a bunch of other things mental health and isolation. And there are so many things that come from building community. And that’s really what we focus on building communities rather than properties.

so that’s something that I’m just trying to do, I’m trying to get to a point where we can continue to learn about the community and what we could do to be better in our community side of things. And so my mission now is really to grow, docked and do more developments. And I watch things go from, vacant land to a building.  And so that’s, that’s been my focus. 

I think what you mentioned about community, I was listening to a podcast about, family dynamics, and how that’s changed over the last few years. 

Several years we used to grow up and, your entire family would live on the same homestead or the same in the same house. 

So you would have as if, as a new parent, whatever, you would have the experience and the knowledge,  there, on in on your property, to be a how to how to provide help on, raising the families and kids and that sort of stuff. And we don’t have that anymore. It’s, separate, so do I even see docked? Could we even be, we have a family living in exactly a larger family living in that space?

One of the things you asked me about how,  where that drive comes from,  with my parents,? And that’s because I had a support system. , a lot of people don’t have support systems. And so in the community style living, that’s one of the most impactful things I’ve seen as you create support systems for people who might not have it. 

They build friendships they build we haven’t had anybody fall in love yet that I know of. But if anybody did, let me know. But we create these, almost friend groups that they go on to do business together and do different stuff together. And that creates a support system that someone might not have. So to me, that’s a big win. 

Because,  you said in our family dynamic that doesn’t exist anymore, really, especially in because America’s, you turn 18 Get out of my house, you’re 18. And you can take care of yourself now. And what I’ve noticed from other cultures.

Latin American cultures, because I have a business partner, that’s from Colombia, and, people will stay at home at Columbia till they’re 3035 years old, and the grandma lives with them, all their family, all the brothers and sisters live with them until they’re ready to get married, or Indian culture is very similar to that where everyone stays together. 

If you look at Dr. Karen Patel’s big house that he’s building, he’s trying to get everybody in there,  so that they can have that family dynamic and that community dynamic. And I feel that we’ve lost that in America. So that’s, that’s one thing that we’re trying to help address differently.

Do you think we can ever get back to that? 

Where we have, I think it’s just, the American dream has always been, to grind hard work hard, money, stuff, get out, don’t be reliant on your family, because you can do it on your own. So maybe one day we can get back to that, I think that if you can solve it on a smaller scale, then you can solve it on a bigger scale.

So if we can work on, even Palm Harbor, Palm Harbor is a tight-knit community. And, I think if, you can solve community levels maybe you start, you start in a house. 

Sure. 

You go from a house to you go to a town or a city, and then you go to a county and you go to a state maybe there’s some way to, recreate that community, but I think a lot of it’s going to need to be more intentional developments. So one of the larger development ideas that we’re trying to figure out how to do is create a pocket neighbourhood. So a pocket neighbourhood could have, two co-living houses, it could have a multifamily building could have a couple of single families, and then it could have an urban agricultural farm 

Then you you build a community around the neighbourhood, instead of it just being a development, because the development neighbourhood is very different than, developing an intentional community in a neighbourhood. 

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