This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human. Uh What if your Bible could do more than just be read? Experience the innovative, awe-inspiring Filament Bible app. When you pair your Filament-enabled Bible with the free Filament app, you'll unlock thousands of study notes, hundreds of videos, interactive maps, devotionals, audio Bibles, and more, all designed to deepen your understanding of and enrich your time in God's Word.
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Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available at public dot com slash disclosures. Life gets messy. Spills, stains, head accidents, and kid chaos.
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Yeah. Uh Mm. And we continue with our American stories and up next, the story of Malin Burnham, a business leader in San Diego who's made a massive impact on his city, as so many business leaders do. And by the way, I spent quite a bit of time with Malin and it was a real pleasure, a gift. Actually, for me.
And he talked a lot about pivot points in his life, and there were several.
So when you hear the word pivots, Think about your own life. And those moments where it turned one way or the other. Here's our own Matthew Montgomery with the story of a man. who truly put his community. before himself.
Mm-hmm. Malin Burnham is a philanthropist, a sailor, and known as Mr. San Diego. Which makes perfect sense. He's lived there his whole life.
A lot of people say, well, why wouldn't you want to move around and see more country? I said, because I've got the best place in the world to live. My first pivot that I can imagine or think about was age 17. in August of 1945. My dad was, his sport was golf.
And he played business golf. That is, on Wednesday afternoon and Saturday mornings, he'd take a client out and play golf. My mother, her recreation was beach. swimming suntan and those type of things.
So she took my brother and I to these little private beaches not private, but public beaches, but you had to go between two houses to find them in in this area of Point Loma. Uh we'd go several times uh a a week, I guess, my brother and I. And we would see these little junior sailboats, sixteen foot sailboats called a Starlette. and they were all from the Samuel Yacht Club. These little junior boats that they practiced and raced in would sail back and forth in front of Laura Beach every once in a while.
I wanted them to say, hey kids, you want to go for a ride? And we'd swim out and climb on these little boats. After a couple of summers of doing that, my mother talked my dad into joining the San Diego Yacht Club. And they didn't know one end of a boat from another, but that's how I got started in the sport of sailboat racing.
So, fast forward, to 1945. I just graduated from Ponyma High School. As soon as our graduation in June, most of my buddies signed up for the Navy and I was prepared to do that after the summer. Why Navy? Because we were a Navy town and that's what we knew and people and so on and so forth.
But as Mainland mentioned earlier, he was only 17.
So while his older friends could join the Navy, he couldn't.
So Malin's parents helped him and his sailboat crew do something else. My folks sponsored my crew to send us on the train to Stamford, Connecticut. There Yakla was hosting the international competition for the championship of the Star Class, International World Championship. which was now a 22-foot boat that I had acquired or my folks acquired for me. Anyway, we ended up winning Net Regatta.
and we came back home on the train. and about halfway between New York City and Los Angeles on the train, it stopped. in the middle of nowhere. We didn't know why. It turned out that it was VJ Day.
and everybody was celebrating. The war's over.
So when we get to Los Angeles, get off the train, my mother and father came up to pick us up in the car. And the first thing they said, well, congratulations, son. And the next thing my dad said, son, you're going to Stanford. And I said, no, Dad, I'm going in the Navy with all my buddies, you know that. And he said, no, the war is over, you know that.
and the draft is going to stop sooner or later. And he says, I've already got you enrolled. And that was my number one pivot that I did. I decided that I would go into industrial engineering. Because even though my dad said, son, you know, you're in a great position, you could end up being the CEO of General Motors or Wessinghow someday.
And the more I thought about that, I don't think I want to do that. And so anyway, I took industrial engineering. And that was the best thing I've ever done, as far as education is concerned.
So I graduated. with a Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial Engineering and a week later I was employed by my father. In John Burnham and Company. The name of the company was after my grandfather, who had passed away before I was born. I never knew him.
At that time, I was the 11th employee. and about half of the business was in real estate brokerage.
So I decided, and my dad decided probably, that How to start out in the mortgage business and learn a little bit about not only about real estate, but how to praise a property. And engineering, if you think about it, has to do with structures.
Well Real estate has to do with structures. I got so that I could if I had a potential A buyer, client that wanted to spend a million dollars buying an apartment house. In a moment or two, I could figure out the size of what that apartment house ought to be. you know, for a million dollars. Or as the numbers grew, five million or ten million or that.
So I could walk down the street here and look at the building and say, well, gee, that one would work for Oscar, but that one over there wouldn't.
So that's how I got started. And along the way, he would learn many lessons from his father. What I learned from my dad was discipline.
Son, we've got office hours, we've got business hours, we expect you to be here, we expect you to do this, we expect you to do that.
So there was a, I was disciplined, or taught discipline as to what business was all about. My dad also taught me the makeup of the company was that we were all working together. We didn't allow any one person to dominate a client. by themselves exclusively. We wanted people to work together as partnerships and that type of thing.
So I learned that from day one. Interesting, my brother was older, but he was in the military, so I got into the business a year before he did. His attitude grew up to be he wanted to be responsible entirely for his client. He didn't want somebody else to be part of it. And that was okay, but it wasn't.
the feel of my father and it wasn't the way I was feeling.
So ultimately my father and the company bought my brother out and we helped him set up his own insurance agency.
So I've always been a team player. In sailing, we got 11 people on the crew. If I'm a skipper, the guy on the bow. is just as important as a guy that's steering the boat because if he screws up, You lose a race. Anybody on the team screw.
So I've always been oriented to that type of thing, and I don't want to be in a rut. I don't want to just. Say, my way is the best way. And soon, this team player would be in charge of his father's company, at a unique time in business history that would present interesting challenges to Malin. challenges he would tackle in a way that would change his life.
While my dad didn't say early on when I got in the business that he was going to retire at any particular age, once he had confidence in my steerage of the company, After the first probably six or eight years that we were together, he did. It was a surprise and it was a pleasant surprise because, yeah, I anticipated I'd take over the business sometime. And I had enough confidence, I guess, and enough experience. after a few years that When he announced, I was happy for him and he was happy for me. And this was in the early 1960s.
When large real estate brokerage firms like Cobold Banker and Cushman Wakefield, were coming out of their headquarters and putting offices, satellite offices, in different places of the United States, including San Diego. And when after one or two of those came, not just but in real estate, but also in the insurance industry, which we were in.
So in two of my three specialties in John Burnham and Company, I got a little concerned. Because our family attitude, and it was my grandfather's and my father's attitude, that we didn't need to be the biggest, we wanted to be the best.
So that meant that we were very satisfied being a regional company. But I said to myself in the mid-60s, you know, I'm seeing these big companies put in satellite offices. How am I going to survive?
So, what I did, and I don't know how it happened, but I decided to go talk to some of my peers. And I went to probably five or six of them in one at a time, independently, and I said, look, what do I have to do to survive against these big boys coming in here and dropping an office in and bringing a seasoned manager in? And they said, Mailin. get to know the community better. Than the person they send in to run their office.
That's what I started doing. More of Malan Burnham's life story. Here on our American story. Awkward time to ask this, but hey, did you download the trail map? Yeah, no, I don't need to.
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Experience the innovative, awe-inspiring Filament Bible app. When you pair your Filament-enabled Bible with the free Filament app, you'll unlock thousands of study notes, hundreds of videos, interactive maps, devotionals, audio Bibles, and more, all designed to deepen your understanding of and enrich your time in God's Word. Discover more ways to interact with God's Word. Learn more at filamentbibles.com. Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously.
On Public, you can build a multi-asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto, and now generated assets, which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high-free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one-of-a-kind index, and lets you backtest it against the SP 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks.
Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com/slash podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com/slash podcast. Pay for by Public Investing. Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc.
member FINRA and SIPC. Advisory Services by Public Advisors LLC, SEC Registered Advisor. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available at Public dot com slash disclosures.
And we return to our American stories, and with Malin Burnham, and in a way, a story of his own town, San Diego, because he could have traveled and moved a lot, but he thought, why not just concentrate on this little patch of earth? and grow my business as the city itself grows. When we last left off, Malin had taken over his father's real estate business during a perilous time in his industry. Ultimately, Malin would keep his father's business and decided that he wanted to follow in his dad's footsteps. and retire early as well.
Let's continue. with Malin's story. Retirement is not in my vocabulary. Let's start there.
Well, at age fifty, Four. I wrote a letter To my five managers in my business, and I told them that it was my plan that within five years I wanted to retire from business. And I just arbitrarily picked those numbers at age 59 and five years from the time I wrote them this letter. And I said I would then like to sell this business to you people. I didn't put a promise, I didn't put a price.
I didn't put an exact date. but sometime within five years. The end of five years was in December. One I was in the middle of the Americas Cup. in Perth, Australia, and sold the business to these five japs.
And there was really, back then especially, there were not many people. that were full time at my age in the non-profit world. It just wasn't being done.
So I said why not? Mainlin would turn entirely to community-oriented projects to make his city even greater. And it wasn't long before a massive project came his way. Courtesy of Alan UK. a local San Diego businessman and politician.
I was sitting in my downtown office one day when I got a telephone call. from Bob Lichter. I had already sold the business. Bob was one of the buyers. I pick up the phone.
Bob's, he said, man, I got this crazy guy. And he said it right in front of him. But he got this crazy idea. of bringing the USS Midway aircraft carrier to San Diego and making a museum out of it. And Bob says, you know, I don't know anything about the Navy or about the water or about boats or ships.
Would you mind talking to it?
So I said, sure. And I helped him put a group together.
So that's how It got started. Um It was up in Bremerton, Washington, in the Navy yard and the trash yard, so to speak, because it was out of commission. It's still a Navy ship. Yeah. It took eleven years of this team To get the Letter of use, Navy is kind of crazy.
The reason that they won't give it to us or anybody else is they may want to put it back in service.
So there was a lot of planning, but we have lifetime until they want to get it back. All this 11-year time We had opposition, public opposition from what is known as the California Coastal Commission. California Coastal Commission is probably 50 years in existence. And they have jurisdiction. over what happens within a thousand feet.
of the coastline. Of the Pacific Ocean and waterways that come out. The Coastal Commission, their problem was that the Midway was going to block the view. The Coastal Commission want people to have access to the water and the beaches and the coastline. But they said if we park it here, it's going to block the view.
Well, they're nuts because Can we move 50 feet or 100 feet and get the view back?
Well sure you can. Yeah. And the team would have to present in front of the Commission to get final approval for the USS Midway project.
So halfway through our presentation, somebody got up to the mic. and said, the midway, we got this backwards. The midway is not going to block the view. The midway will be the view. And the whole audience erupted in cheers.
Finally, we got a hundred percent approval. and hope in the midway. Yeah. In 2004, 12 years after the project initially started. the museum would open and beat nearly all the expectations people had for it.
Two years before we got the ship, I picked up the phone one day and I got a call. From One of the writers for the art newspaper, Union Tribune, I pick up the phone and he says, Hey, ma'am, this is so-and-so. He said, I want to talk to you about the midway. I said, oh, okay. And he says, you know, I cover all the museums in San Diego for all these years.
Mr. Burnham, if you are fortunate enough to get the midway here, It's going to be the biggest mistake of your life. And I said, well, why do you say that? And he says, well, You know, I cover all the museums and so, and he said, so I know all of the attendance figures. I said okay.
And he says, you're proposing... That in the first year, you're going to get 400,000 paid attendees. And he howls, he says, You're crazy. You're never going to get that. After he howled about to 400,000, I said, well, hold on.
Excuse me. Publicly we s that we had mentioned our business plan. 400,000 is what we counted on. I said, before we got to that point, our consultants came back and said they thought we'd do 600,000.
Well, this guy gave another howl on the phone, you know, oh, you guys are out of your mind. The first year We did 800,000 and it's grown every year since then. We are the fifth largest paid attendee museum in the country. This is an icon for San Diego. The USS Midway is also part of Malin's legacy and the town he's lived his entire life in and loves so much.
Legacy is more than a career. If you think about your career, I want to be the best ex. then in my opinion, you're too limited. I'm a multitasker. Interested person, not necessarily one that's an expert in all these things, but I never wanted to be a single type.
interest in person. When I think about career, I'm thinking about more than specialty. I'm thinking about the nonprofit world and what San Diego is all about, community before sell. By the way, I read a lot of books, but I don't read novels. I don't read personalities.
I try to read about the future. Everything I do, I try to think about the future. And anyway, I wrote this book. It was entitled The why The what? and the how.
And they explain those questions in sequence.
So I've adopted that.
So When I think about doing something, I use those three. Questions? Why Why do I want to get involved? And if I can't figure that out. then don't do, don't spend any more time.
Well, mostly when I answer that question is because I want to help make San Diego a better place to live, work, and play.
Okay, then go to the second question. The what? What are you going to do to help do that? How are you gonna do that? What are you going to propose?
And if I can't answer that question, I tear it up and go do something else. And then you finally get down, okay, how? Are you gonna do the what? And you know, I think Because I'm a joiner, because I'm a team player, I try to think not of me, but I try to think of the team.
Okay. When I look back on the mighty skyline of my hometown, I can still see. Beneath the skyscrapers, the great ships and the stadium. The San Diego that was, that is, And that will be. I am humbled by the sight By the fact that I was given the chance We part.
of that history. for longer. than I could ever have imagined. Then I'm still Part of the story. and think what a lucky guy I am.
Yeah. And great job by Monty Montgomery on the production. And what a lucky guy I was to spend some real time with Malon Burnham. Malam Burnham's story, in a way, a story of the city he loves. San Diego, here on Our American Stories.
This is Julian Edelman from Games with Names. I want to take a second to talk about something that's personal to me. I've had the privilege of working closely with Robert Kraft for a long time. And one thing I've always respected is how seriously he takes up standing up to hate. As a Jewish athlete my identity is something I am proud of.
But I also know what it feels like to be singled out for it. That's why this new commercial for the Blue Square Alliance Against Hate that aired during the big game really hit home. It's about showing up for someone when they're targeted, even if you don't have the perfect words. And sometimes standing next to someone is enough. And you can show support by sharing the blue square.
What if your Bible could do more than just be read? Experience the innovative, awe-inspiring Filament Bible app. When you pair your Filament-enabled Bible with the free Filament app, you'll unlock thousands of study notes, hundreds of videos, interactive maps, devotionals, audio Bibles, and more, all designed to deepen your understanding of and enrich your time in God's Word. Discover more ways to interact with God's Word. Learn more at filamentbibles.com.
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So visit us at cvs.com or just come by our store. We can't wait to meet you. Store hours vary by location. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.
Mm-hmm.
