Ken Burrows Podcast Transcript
Ken Burrows joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, home of the Digital Executive podcast.
Welcome to the Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Ken Burrows. Ken Burrows is the founder and CEO of KINLUX, which is redefining luxury Group travel by merging crypto with real world assets by tokenizing real estate. A serial entrepreneur, Burrows is also the CEO of Mortgages for America and a partner for team whiskey liquors.
Over the last three decades, Burrows’ entrepreneurial ventures have taken him across various businesses and industries, including advertising, business, brokerage, e-cigarettes, his whiskey company, mortgages, and vacation rentals. He has also been a licensed mortgage banker for over 30 years. Additionally, Burroughs is the director of a 501-C3 nonprofit named Save united.org, whose objective is to help grow small businesses for the overall health of America and abroad.
Well, good afternoon, Ken. Welcome to the show.
Ken Burrows: Thank you for having me.
Brian Thomas: Absolutely, my friend. I appreciate it. You’re hailing out of the great state of Nevada there in Lake Tahoe. Beautiful place. Love going there. And I’m just in measly old Kansas City, but we love it here. We love our barbecue and our tornadoes.
So Ken, I’m gonna jump right into your first question. You’ve built businesses across so many industries, from advertising e-cigarettes to whiskey and mortgages. What underlying principles have stayed consistent across all your ventures?
Ken Burrows: I think the underlying, you know, circumstance behind every business I start is I guess my drive to succeed.
Uh, even at a young age, you know, even when I was 16, 17, I was wanting to open a subway, but my mother wouldn’t let me. So I’ve always been very entrepreneurial and it’s fun for me. It’s, I’m also, uh, I used to be minored in art. So I look at this as my paintbrush. It’s fun for me as an art piece almost to put things together and build different businesses.
You know, I also run a nonprofit called Save united.org that I come in and help people do that at no charge. So, like I said, the whole thing is just more of a, an art piece for me, and the drive to succeed, you know, for every business that I run.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. I appreciate that. I love the story entrepreneurial as a, at a young age, which I think is phenomenal.
Sometimes our parents think they know more better than what we know, and a lot of times they do. But it would’ve been interesting to see if you had opened up a, a franchise at, uh, maybe age 18, that’d been pretty cool. Again, love the story. Love what you’re doing, building you believe in that art piece as you mentioned.
That way you can help the community, help the world. And I love your nonprofit as well because you give back. Ken, KINLUX is redefining luxury group travel by emerging crypto and real world assets, which is becoming very popular. Can you walk us through how tokenizing real estate creates new opportunities for travelers and investors?
Ken Burrows: We definitely believe this is the wave of the future. Even with governments coming in and looking at Bitcoin and different reserves on the crypto market, we’ve been watching the market quite extensively the last 15 years. I’ve been in the mortgage business about 30 years in real estate. So the new concept and the new wave is actually merging that digital crypto world with the real world assets.
And we feel it’s a strong point because a lot of crypto, you got mean coins and things like that. There’s really nothing attached to it. I mean, it could drop to nothing. And you know, with a snap of your fingers. With this program system, it’s gonna be set up on a blockchain. It will be attached to, you know, the real estate that we own, which makes it a bunch more secure investment for different investors.
A major reason. You know, we’ve been in the real estate market for quite a long time, but the major reason we were wanting to merge the crypto as well is get the crypto investors into real world assets. ’cause a lot of them aren’t, you know, we got a lot of whales out there with a lot of crypto, but they really don’t have many properties.
So. It’s a good way for them to get into the actual property market and actually help build up the economy and adding jobs and things like that. So that’s really where we feel bringing the two together and also bringing real world asset property owners into the crypto world. ’cause that is the wave of the future.
So we just feel it’s a, you know, just merging everything together is going to be the way of the future. Like I keep saying, it’s just gonna help the economy and the world in general.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. I appreciate that. And we’ve, gosh, I don’t know how many guests I’ve recently had on here, Ken, we’ve talked a lot about tokenizing real world assets, but you bringing your real estate background mortgages to this space where we can tokenize real world assets, bring it into that digital economy, it’s really another way for people to provide a secure investment opportunity.
So I appreciate what you’re doing there. Fully support it. That’s what we love here on this particular platform. Ken, how did your experience as a licensed mortgage banker for over 30 years influence your decision to explore blockchain and real estate tokenization?
Ken Burrows: Well being in the mortgage side, and of course I’ve seen all types of financing.
I mean, we’ve done a lot of residential, commercial apartment complexes. I’ve done large projects throughout the world even. So it’s really given me that insight on what makes money, what doesn’t. You know, ’cause I’m looking at all the profit and losses, you know, when I do a mortgage, I, I know that person or that company inside and out.
So that’s where really, where I’ve learned a lot on what to do and what not to do. Uh, we started getting into the vacation rental market back in 2016. I. In the Lake Tahoe area and we found, you know, a really good niche with that. And another thing that’s also we’ve learned is the residential side of it is starting to fizzle out because there’s so many jurisdictions and municipalities starting to regulate these residential neighborhoods.
So that’s where, you know, if I’ve had clients all over the nation that are struggling with that. So that’s another concept I’m bringing even to the table with them is, and myself of course, is coming into the commercial market labeled as at a motel, and that’s fitting a niche because that’s what people wanna do.
They wanna rent these homes with their family’s family, their kids’, kids, their cousin’s kids. They don’t wanna rent five, six hotel rooms all in one strip. So it gives them that entertainment aspect of renting, but bringing that also into the crypto world is where I’ve made some okay money at different cryptos, uh, XRP, Dogecoin and things like that.
So that’s where the concept of trying to merge the two together is going to be beneficial all the way around for the concept in the business.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. You do have a lot of experience in this realm. You talked about having both investing in large national and international, uh, commercial real estate opportunities over the years, which obviously you learned a lot through that and that knowledge, obviously you’re crossing over into the digital asset realm and you talked a little bit about how residential’s a little bit more difficult, but you’re dabbling in there as well.
And I think that’s important to share some of the challenges that people are seeing, different laws in different places, jurisdiction. So I appreciate the insights. And Ken, the last question of the day. In an industry often slow to adopt new technology, how are you helping traditional luxury travel clients understand and embrace crypto based investments and ownership models?
Ken Burrows: I think, you know, bringing in the, the crypto with rentals, there aren’t quite a few people out there that do dabble in the crypto market and they’ll be able to rent homes, even purchase properties in the near future all through their crypto. We even set it up now, we’ve got 20 different cryptos you can invest, you know, with in.
So that’s where we feel it’s bridging the two ideas together with the real world assets in the crypto where, you know, let’s say someone has $300,000 in crypto right now. They have a little trouble spending it. Well here. If you wanna go rent a KINLUX property in Lake Tahoe or elsewhere in the world, you’re gonna be able to do that.
And if you’re an investor, if KINLUX, we’re actually giving major discounts for being part of the club. That’s gonna be our main website. Once we get more properties here, it’s KINLUX.club. So that’s really where I think the concept is gonna help, again, merge the two worlds together and help people understand like the crypto people, understand the real world assets and properties and the railroad property.
Investors understand crypto and help the whole economy grow in every aspect.
Brian Thomas: Thank you so much. I appreciate that. Love what you’re doing there, but also with kin Lux, and I know that the more that we spread the word, some of the things that we’re doing with real world assets, you’re of course exploring the tokenization of rentals right now to merge the best of both worlds.
But the more we can get the word out, the faster this digital economy and digital assets will be adopted quicker. So I appreciate that, Ken. It was such a pleasure having you on today, and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
Ken Burrows: Great. Thank you for having me on.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Ken Burrows Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s Podcast Page.
