Ral West
speaker
205 appearances
4 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard May 2025
Ral West’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
And later on, when the time came to sell the business, that opportunity arose because we knew that Alaska Airlines was planning to enter the Hawaii market. And we knew that their pockets were deeper than ours. And it just made sense for them to buy our company rather than for us to duke it out in the marketplace. And we'd both lose a lot of money.
So we convinced them that buying our business was a lot cheaper than winning the market from us. So the pivot that came next was again a spinoff because my family's business that I had not been involved in personally for several years was involved in small cruise ships in Alaska.
And we had a different idea as to how to present cruises to people visiting Alaska instead of just going from port to port. We felt that they would have a better experience of Alaska by leaving from a port and going out into the wilderness, getting onto a skiff and playing with the whales, going kayaking, going ashore and taking hikes in the forest or even walking on a glacier.
And these things were things that we were enjoying on our own boat in Alaska, because by that time, my husband's a boataholic, so we had to have boats up here. And so we found a couple of cruise ships that were bank owned. They had been owned by a company that went bankrupt. And so the bank held them and they were sitting at a dock rotting. So again, it was an opportunity.
And we seized that opportunity and bought those ships out of rather low price point and fixed them up and bought them.
found somebody to operate them for us and then later there was another company that went bankrupt and we bought some more cruise ships so we ended up having five small cruise ships under 100 passengers each that were operating in alaska and providing the kind of adventure that wilderness experience that we felt that people would really enjoy in alaska so that lasted for about 10 years and we were selling the vessels one by one to the company that operated them
But COVID happened then. We had one ship left and it got tied up to a dock because no cruise ships were operating anywhere in the world. So that was a pretty obvious sign to us that it was time to pivot away from cruise ships. So we sold that last ship.
and then we spent a fair amount of time studying the landscape of world economy where were the opportunities where was the world going next what would be the outcome after covid we would listen to podcasts and we would read we would attend workshops that's when we decided that the future seemed to be in going in the direction of real estate and particularly multi-family real estate
Because buying an individual home was becoming more and more cost prohibitive, which meant that people were going to be renting. So we decided that that would be a good place to put our money. And we started investing as a general partner, limited partner in various syndications. where we were involved in purchasing complexes that had 100 or more apartment units in a complex.
And we now own over, or we're part owners anyway, in over 6,000 of these apartment units in five states across the U.S. So it's a combination of seizing opportunities, but also just keeping your eyes on what's going on around you. The world is changing all the time. And if you're not Staying aware and keep your eyes open to what's going on around you, you can miss some of these opportunities.
So that's the main key.
I think that I definitely am a risk taker. And that comes from my family culture as well and coming from the entrepreneurial background that I have. But I do take calculated risks and I do the homework and I run the numbers and I do some research and investigate the market. And I've learned along the way because sometimes I didn't do my research and my homework. as well as I should have.
And that was a big learning experience that was painful. So I don't want to do that again.
And then now in this particular, my newest business, it's more of, as you said, making a contribution and giving back and sharing my years of experience and knowledge with entrepreneurs so that I can offer them the guidance and the wisdom and help them cut out a lot of the pain and learning experiences that I had. make it easier for them.
I think that early in my career, actually, when I was working for my father, I experienced more of the glass ceiling and the prejudice against women. And once I went out on my own and said, yeah, thanks, Dad, I'm going to do this myself. Then I was able to break away from that because he was a bit chauvinistic. He came from another generation. And so I said, not going there.
I'm not dealing with that. I didn't really experience too much in the way of discrimination or any obstacles because I was a woman. I think I... Maybe I just had a lot of confidence and I just didn't let it stop me. I was just bearing to go and I just knew that I could do a better job than most anybody else let me at it.
So I'd say that for women, all women, whatever age, you have to believe in yourself and you have to have the confidence that you know what you know and you can do the job.
i think that women when i was between 35 and 55 i was juggling young children and a business and volunteer activities and i was exhausted and overwhelmed and i was stretched so thin sleep was a luxury and i the relationship with my husband suffered and My health suffered and I just couldn't do it all.
So I think that I can relate to women who are in that period of their lives where they're trying to juggle so many things. And what I learned the hard way was how to create the systems and the processes and build a team around me, use leverage and get out of that, that stress and overwhelm by a
building a real system and structure around me so that I could operate the business, whether I was there or not. And I developed metrics and data based management, and it all allowed me to have more freedom to do what I wanted to do. So by the time I was about the end of that time period, by the time I was 55 and the kids were, you know, grown,
Showing 61–80 of 205 · page 4 of 11
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