Pod Insights The Impact Theory Podcast Riots, Corruption, and Culture War: How LA Became America’s Most Dangerous City | Rick Caruso About this episode On this episode of Impact Theory, Tom Bilyeu sits down with real estate developer and civic leader Rick Caruso for a powerful conversation about leadership, crisis management, and the future of Los Angeles. As political divisiveness and public safety concerns grip the city, Rick brings his firsthand experience tackling LA’s toughest challenges—from the riots and police reform to wildfire recovery and urban renewal.
Rick shares candid insights on what it takes to drive culture change, hold government accountable, and inspire real action in both the public and private sectors. With stories from rebuilding after devastating fires to navigating City Hall bureaucracy, you’ll hear why Rick believes leadership, vision, and a commitment to competence are the keys to restoring pride and safety in our communities. Whether you’re passionate about civic change or looking for inspiration on effective leadership, this episode delivers a masterclass in getting things done—even when the odds are stacked against you.
SHOWNOTES
00:00 Los Angeles Culture Change Needed
05:24 Pathway to Citizenship Advocacy
08:01 Trump's Methods Critiqued
10:42 "Critique of Radical City Policies"
14:34 Effective Leadership: Inspire and Collaborate
19:33 "Leadership Critique of LA Mayors"
21:23 "Prioritizing Competence Over Ideology"
26:04 Fire Response Strategy Development
27:53 Preparedness Prevents Disaster in LA
31:26 Steadfast's Progress Amid Challenges
34:05 Elon Musk Podcast Speculation
37:05 Leadership Paralysis and Decision-Making
41:16 LA County Crime Policy Dynamics
44:17 "Action Over Words: Progress Focus"
48:11 "National Economic Divide"
49:45 "Subscribe and Be Legendary"
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:27 Tom Bilyeu? The extremes are pulling harder than ever, and real leadership feels nonexistent. But disruption always creates opportunity. And today, I'm joined by a man who ran to fix the second-largest city in America and got a front-row seat to how broken the system really is. Billionaire developer and former mayoral candidate Rick Caruso joins me today to break down what he saw during the LA riots, why political leadership is failing, and what it will actually take to rebuild trust, safety, and the American dream. If you're tired of empty outrage and want an actual, clear path forward, this is the episode for you. I feel like right now we are in one of the most precarious moments in modern
2:10 Tom Bilyeu? history for sure with the political divisiveness that we have. LA is certainly going through a microcosm of what we're experiencing on the national level.
2:18 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:19 Tom Bilyeu? What would you have done if you'd been in charge during the recent LA riots?
2:23 Speaker 01 I think you've got to have a culture change in the city of Los Angeles. So, you know, go back before the riots. You, you have a culture in this city of a lot of elected officials going to jail. A lot of elected officials skirting the law, quite frankly. I think the, the culture in the city is corrupt to some extent. It's certainly not a culture that demands excellence, that demands everybody sitting up a little bit taller and serving the best interests of the public over yourself. And then part of that culture is that we don't tolerate breaking the law in the city of Los Angeles. Right? We support LAPD to be good
3:06 Speaker 01 stewards of the law and not only to respond to a criminal act, but more importantly, a good police force is designed to help prevent criminal activity. You don't just want to respond to it after the fact. But what have we done in this city? We've defunded the police. We've defunded the fire department. You look at the current budget, we're a billion dollars in a deficit. We have declining revenues and there's more cuts to LAPD. We will have probably the lowest police force of any major city per capita by a factor of two, not just by a couple, by a factor of two. So then you get to the riots. We'll look back what
3:50 Speaker 01 happened at COVID. COVID was a time that you couldn't even call it a riot, even though they were destroying property, including mine, you had to call it a protest.
3:59 Tom Bilyeu? Uh huh.
3:59 Speaker 01 Right? So at least we've gotten to the point you can call it a riot now. But it was a riot back then. But what did we do back in COVID? We allowed them to do it. There were stand down orders. Don't incite them. Don't get involved.
4:14 Speaker 01 And at the Grove, they came through, if you remember, and started breaking windows.
4:19 Tom Bilyeu? I could literally watch it burn, the little police station inside the Grove that they lit on fire.
4:23 Speaker 01 Yeah.
4:24 Tom Bilyeu? Could see it.
4:24 Speaker 01 One of my proudest moments was one of my senior executives climbing up and grabbing the American flag on the coal bin and saving it. To me, it was just so beautifully symbolic so that it didn't burn. And what was happening then, and I called Garcetti at the time as mayor, and I just said, what are you doing? Why are you allowing this to happen? You need to put a police line out. You know, you need to guide them in another direction.
4:46 Tom Bilyeu? Hey, don't they? Like, do they have a reason?
4:49 Speaker 01 I think the rea-
4:50 Tom Bilyeu? Bad or not?
4:50 Speaker 01 I think the reason is, Tom, is quite frankly, they're weak. I think they feel that there's some kind of protocol into not aggravating them. When I was the police commissioner, you used to literally have to pull a permit in order to walk the streets, protest, whatever you want to call it, right? There was, there was a set of laws and protocols that were required. We need to go back to being a lawful city, and that's the culture. So what would I have done in the riots? In the very beginning, you don't tolerate property being destroyed. Our mayor spent two days allowing it to happen. And I don't know if you're right, now we have
5:30 Speaker 01 a $20 million bill because of damage to LAPD, of all the damn things. They raided LAPD headquarters.
5:39 Tom Bilyeu? I didn't hear about that.
5:40 Speaker 01 Oh, and they stood down. So I think what we have to do in our city, in any city, is you got to say, we want people to respect the law. We're going to hold people that break the law accountable. We're going to police communities in the best of ways, certainly never take advantage of communities, and make sure our police are absolutely well-trained. But go back to things that Bill Bratton and I brought in years ago. Senior lead officers, a cop walking a beat, knowing business people, knowing neighborhoods, understanding the mood. That's all the prevention side of it, right? And we got crime down to levels not seen since 1950.
6:26 Speaker 01 And in a very respectful way. And this was post Rodney King.
6:30 Tom Bilyeu? Yeah, no, I was here for it.
6:31 Speaker 01 Yeah, scary.
6:33 Tom Bilyeu? I remember, well, I wasn't here for Rodney King, but I was here for the time where you guys were rebuilding right after.
6:37 Speaker 01 Okay.
6:39 Tom Bilyeu? You've talked about culture, you've talked about mood, those feel like the right places to start. If, so you laid out what's broken about the culture, but talk to me about the mood. What is the mood right now? How much of what we saw during the riots was paid agitators and how much is on the ground? People are fed up with something.
6:59 Speaker 01 Yeah. Well, people being fed up with something and wanting to take to the streets in a peaceful way. I completely applaud.
7:06 Tom Bilyeu? Do you feel that mood? Like, where, where are we? Is it, I love all these policies, let's go harder blue, let's be more hands off? Or is it, no, we need law and order? Like, I, I honestly don't have a great read.
7:21 Speaker 01 You're talking about the mood of the elected officials. They're in charge of the mood of the people on the street.
7:24 Tom Bilyeu? Let's get to the people on the street first.
7:27 Speaker 01 I can tell you what I feel. I, I don't, I don't like, and I've been very open about this and public about it. I don't like seeing people that are here, although illegally, that have worked hard and are good and haven't broken the law, being scooped up, separated from their families and shipped off. I don't like that. We have enough people in this country, in this region, that have broken the law, that are illegal. Let's go after them and let's find a pathway for good, hardworking people to become a citizen, to earn that right to be here. I feel very strongly about that. So I.
8:07 Tom Bilyeu? Do you have specifics on that? Like, what's the line in the sand? Five years, 10 years, nine days?
8:11 Speaker 01 I don't know. Let's, let's sit down in a bipartisan way. This is a really great bipartisan thing to do. Because, Tom, one is a matter of fairness. The second is a matter of sheer reality that our economy needs hardworking people. Now more than ever, by the way. When you talk about rebuilding Altadena, rebuilding the Palisade, rebuilding Malibu, you need workers. And a lot of these workers also, and I don't know the number. Worked in Malibu, worked in Palisades, maybe worked and lived in Altadena. They lost everything. They lost their jobs, or maybe they lost their home. And now we got people running around picking them up. I, I just don't like that.
8:55 Speaker 01 And so, let's say if somebody's worked here for five years. And goes to school, learns the history of the country. You know, qualifies to be a citizen, whatever that may be. Doesn't have a criminal record. My God, let that man or woman continue to contribute to our economy. Let's get the bad people out. For sure, get the bad people out. We have gangs running around the city that are really, really bad people. Let's go round them up. You know, for sure, that are selling drugs on the streets. That are create, committing violent crimes. Let's go do that. But, um, so I understand that people want to take the streets. That are angry about that.
9:38 Speaker 01 I also understand, quite frankly. That the way it was done. Was done, I think. In a very cruel way. It didn't have-
9:48 Tom Bilyeu? The rounding up, you mean?
9:49 Speaker 01 Yeah, it didn't have to be. The running in and the. It, it, it just has such a hardness to it.
9:56 Tom Bilyeu? Do you think it's a shock and awe thing, or is this like where they're actually trying to make a statement? Or is this just Trump's personality and he doesn't think about it?
10:03 Speaker 01 I think it's, I think it's Trump's personality. I don't know the man. But, I think there's a lot of different ways that you can accomplish things in life. I know when we were fighting crime at LAPD with Bill. Um, listen, you have to make some tough decisions and you got some bad people out there and you better be really prepared to deal with the bad people. This isn't what they were doing. They weren't going rounding up bad people. They were rounding up people that were working in a car wash. A guy that was selling fruit at the corner. I mean. You, you don't need to bring in the military officers to do that, right? With all the gear and everything. But, that's just my take on it. So I think there's a lot of ways we can accomplish things. So I understand where people were on the street and they were upset.
10:44 Speaker 01 But I also have zero tolerance for any kind of violence on the street and zero tolerance for destroying any property. We have to have really bright lines in the city in order to protect our communities, protect our businesses, protect our families. I don't think it's that complicated, by the way.
11:02 Tom Bilyeu? Do you tinfoil hat up at all? Like, do you think that there were like paid agitators? Like, since COVID?
11:08 Speaker 01 Oh, I think for sure there was.
11:08 Tom Bilyeu? Yeah, okay.
11:09 Speaker 01 For sure there was.
11:11 Tom Bilyeu? Who and why?
11:12 Speaker 01 For sure there was. People get joy, these are odd, weird people, that get joy out of rioting and destroying somebody else's property. I mean, you just, you look at some of the film that was coming out of LA and running into the Nike store, the Adidas store, LAPD, I mean, who are these people? How do you get off on that?
11:36 Tom Bilyeu? I would say, though, that's pretty different than if somebody behind the scenes is paying people to go out and cause trouble.
11:43 Speaker 01 You're right.
11:44 Tom Bilyeu? Do you think that's happening?
11:46 Speaker 01 I believe so. I do believe so.
11:48 Tom Bilyeu? Do you have a sense of what the agenda would be? Like, is it just terror the system down? Or?
11:52 Speaker 01 You've got organizations in this city that have a violent bent to them, and they coexist, and they're in our streets.
11:59 Tom Bilyeu? We're talking cartels? What do we?
12:02 Speaker 01 You're talking more political organizations that just want to create anarchy, that, that want to completely mess with the system and terrorize people. Absolutely.
12:14 Tom Bilyeu? Not to put you on the spot, but are there names? Like, what kind of organizations? Are there specific organizations? Or you can just sort of feel them at the edges or something picking at?
12:22 Speaker 01 No, there's specific organizations, but I don't want to name names. But LAPD knows who they are. Most people who are involved know who they are. There was a number of those organizations that really tried to make my life miserable during the campaign.
12:38 Tom Bilyeu? Because you're a law and order focused kind of person or something else?
12:44 Speaker 01 Because, yeah, that and probably an easy target. I don't fit their mold. You know, these are people also that go to the real extreme. They want no cops. They want the prisons opened up. You know, there's some people out there that really do believe in things that would be terrible for the city. And we saw it play out. If you remember, we saw it play out in city council chambers.
13:11 Speaker 01 When that whole tape was released, if you remember that, with Gil Sadio and everybody, and the tape came out and there was groups of people that kept interfering and interrupting with council meetings. And it got, it got pretty heated, it got some punches thrown. There was organized groups of people that were doing that on a daily basis. And here's the thing that should have happened. This goes back to culture. Shut the chamber doors and don't let them in.
13:42 Speaker 01 They don't have a right to be there. No, they don't. But we need to, we need to change to your point.
13:51 Speaker 01 Like when you have wins, you need to change that trajectory. And you actually don't have to change it very much because just like in sailing, distance will make a lot of changes for you.
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16:29 Tom Bilyeu? Yeah, but that distance is measured in time. So, uh, man, you're way more comfortable with that than I am. So I have the good or bad fortune. I moved here in 94. So this is right as, yeah, you guys were starting to get it all together. And I watched Hollywood go from, if you went to Hollywood and Vine, you were there to pick up a prostitute. I mean, it was crazy in broad daylight. I was like, as a kid from Tacoma, I was like, what is happening? And then I watched it get turned around and like really become this beautiful, incredible place. And I've watched it decline again.
16:59 Speaker 01 Yep.
16:59 Tom Bilyeu? And so culture has consequences, but culture also moves so slowly.
17:05 Speaker 01 It's all leadership, Tom. It is all leadership and you can move culture very quickly. And I've done it a number of times with the right people with you doing it. We moved LAPD really very quickly.
17:21 Speaker 01 You know, when I became chair of University of Southern California, which I didn't, I wasn't seeking that job. It was a crisis at USC was probably.
17:29 Tom Bilyeu? What year was this?
17:31 Speaker 01 This was probably five, six years ago now.
17:33 Tom Bilyeu? Okay, that's where I went.
17:34 Speaker 01 Okay. So this is the Dr. Tyndall crisis. You know, thousands of students, female students were taken advantage of. The cover up. Oh, yeah. I mean, it was terrible. I was on the board. Um, cover up on it. It was a management implosion. They came to me and said, would you be the chair and lead us out of this? And actually, as a side note, my daughter was just starting school that year. And I said, I, I'm gonna go home and talk to my daughter because I don't think anybody wants to have their dad as the chair of the university they're going at in the middle of a crisis. But God bless my daughter. She said, Pop, let's do it and we'll be on campus together.
18:19 Speaker 01 You know, and it was great. But that was a massive culture change. I had to remove the president of the university. I wouldn't let him come back on the campus.
18:28 Tom Bilyeu? Whoa.
18:28 Speaker 01 I had to change the governance of the board. I had to size down the board. Um, change the rules of engagement and what got approved by us. The whole structure. I would say it took about a year. Lot of infighting uh to get it done. But we came through it um brilliantly, thanks to a lot of really talented people working alongside of me.
18:50 Tom Bilyeu? So basically, you're saying um culture is downstream of your leadership. Change your leadership, you're gonna have a different culture very rapidly.
18:58 Speaker 01 You just gotta make sure you're bringing everybody with you.
19:00 Tom Bilyeu? What does that mean?
19:02 Speaker 01 That means, you know, sort of the cheesy line that I always use, that if you're a leader and nobody's following you, you're just somebody going for a walk. It means that good leaders know that you're walking with people, you're explaining to them where you're going, why you're gonna go there, how important they're gonna be a part of this culture change, what the rewards are gonna be, the payoff is gonna be. Meaning, we're gonna change people's lives. We're gonna keep them safer. We're gonna reopen these parks and kids are gonna have a better quality of life. Whatever that goal is. Good leaders always know to bring people with you and, and inspire them and bring people
19:42 Speaker 01 around you frankly that are smarter and as passionate, if not more passionate than you and draft off of them.
19:50 Tom Bilyeu? I teach entrepreneurship and one of the things that I try to get people to understand is listen, you'll look at a Steve Jobs, you'll look at an Elon Musk and there'll be plenty of people that will criticize them because they didn't actually do the coding or Elon isn't actually the one building the rocket engine. And it's like, but hold on, the hardest thing to do as an entrepreneur is get the right team, point them in a direction and get them all moving at pace.
20:14 Speaker 01 That's right.
20:15 Tom Bilyeu? And so this is exactly what these guys that we look at and revere based on their accomplishments was they're able to attract and orient talent. What is it that allows you to do that?
20:27 Speaker 01 Well, I think part of it is DNA, you know, it's how you're wired. I always use Walt Disney as a great example. I'm a big fan of Walt Disney. And I tell people Walt Disney as a profession, he was a cartoonist and he was a really good cartoonist. But if he would have just remained a cartoonist, none of us would have ever known who Walt Disney is. And then he started the Walt Disney Company and he became a businessman. And the combination of the cartoonist and the businessman, he made some interesting films, but again, nobody would have ever remembered him really, or certainly wouldn't be as relevant today as, as he was many years ago.
21:10 Speaker 01 But what he really was, was this visionary that had the ability to see around a corner. And to take his talents and marry it with his vision and then get people excited about it. And that's a really unique thing to do, right? And, and bring, you know, constantly absorbing talent to take you to the next level. Nobody can do it alone. I would imagine that Elon has some of the most brilliant people in the world around him that he's inspiring every day, but all Elon has to do is be the visionary that sees around the corner and realizes I've got to populate this idea with really talented, passionate people.
21:55 Speaker 01 Steve Jobs, I always think about, I met him when we were doing one of the first Apple stores at the Grove. He built and took down his space three times.
22:05 Tom Bilyeu? Whoa.
22:06 Speaker 01 Wasn't happy with it. And I finally said to him, Steve, we gotta get open. You know, I can't have you keep tearing down. But he was such a perfectionist. He had his vision so tight. It was wild, right? But when you think about Steve Jobs, one of the most brilliant guys ever, he never really invented anything new. He reinvented something and made it to the point that you couldn't live without it. I mean, it was just genius, right? We had cell phones, but it didn't compare to the iPhone. And so we had cars, but it doesn't compare to a Tesla. We have rocket ships, but it doesn't compare to SpaceX.
22:46 Tom Bilyeu? Yeah.
22:47 Speaker 01 So I don't know. I just, I, I really admire people that have these exceptional brilliance, but really tied to vision and then the courage to just completely be over your skis.
23:00 Tom Bilyeu? I fully understand that it's one thing to want to get things done and it's a completely other thing to actually get them done.
23:07 Speaker 01 Right.
23:08 Tom Bilyeu? And I find that politicians tend to fall into the camp of, I'm trying to get elected. I'm not necessarily optimized as a, an actor in the world to get things done. I'm optimized to get elected.
23:20 Speaker 01 Right. I think that's very true. It's usually the top priority. I really enjoyed serving the public because I, as you know, I served under three mayors in this city and I really saw different leadership styles. Um, I served under Tom Bradley, Dick Riordan and Jim Hahn. All very tough assignments, which I enjoy. And I was very convinced when I ran a couple of years ago, that the problems could be solved and that I, along with the team of people I would pull together, we could solve them. And I still believe that way because it's based on, and this is where I think things start to fall apart. It's based on frankly, a track record and a history of getting things done
24:03 Speaker 01 and having tough assignments and you learn from each time that you do it, right? So I was grateful that I had an opportunity to bring that to the table to help the city out. When you take a look at our current mayor and the mayor before that, by the way, there was no history of accomplishment of getting things done. They were legislative accomplishments, maybe at best, and not really great ones, by the way. But there was no history of running an organization and making tough decisions and understanding management and understanding staffing and governance and all the things a CEO has to deal with, right? Setting the course, as you're talking about, and then making sure you're bringing people along with you.
24:46 Speaker 01 And so it was predictable that she was going to fail because there's a lack of competence, but more importantly, or equally important, there's a lack of experience that would give you any indication that she could have pulled off managing a very, very complex organization like the city of Los Angeles.
25:04 Tom Bilyeu? Companies are good at that. They're good at finding those leaders or oftentimes the leader just creates the company. But when you have to deal with politicians, I, to put my jaded hat on for a second, I worry that the reality is politics is downstream of culture and that what you're describing will work inside of a company, but the odds of you being able to do it at the political level when people have to get reelected. Right now, there's just so much political division and I, I'm not sure how we get the voting public on board with voting for competence. Do you have a take? Like, how do we get the public to make that their criteria?
25:47 Speaker 01 Tom, it's a great question. I,
25:51 Speaker 01 I'm hopeful that the fire woke people up
25:58 Speaker 01 to the point that they said, you know what? Ideology is now not the most important priority.
26:05 Speaker 01 The most important priority is competence because we just saw what happens when you have lack of competence. You have 700,000 acres burn and hundreds of thousands of people being impacted because they didn't do their job or couldn't do their job, quite frankly. So I, I hope there's a wake up call to that.
26:28 Speaker 01 And I think if we can get somebody in the office, in a office, whether it's me or somebody else, and quite frankly, I'd love to have the opportunity to do it. They can prove that you can be compassionate and passionate. You can create safety nets for people because you care about the quality of life. But you can also change the direction of a city in a way that people feel proud to live here, safe to live here, excited to build a business here, excited to raise a family here, wanting to be here, not moving away, wanting to come here. Let's get back to the state and the city should be leading the nation. We shouldn't be like tucking our head in our hands
27:13 Speaker 01 because we're sort of embarrassed of the last thing that we just did.
27:17 Tom Bilyeu? Literally, that's how I feel now.
27:18 Speaker 01 Right.
27:19 Tom Bilyeu? I keep asking myself why I have not left.
27:21 Speaker 01 Yeah.
27:22 Tom Bilyeu? Uh.
27:23 Speaker 01 And why?
27:23 Tom Bilyeu? Just the real answer is my wife has friends here.
27:27 Speaker 01 Yeah.
27:27 Tom Bilyeu? Like if it weren't for that on left to my own devices, man, like when I look at the size of the problem, it's so daunting because there's a really famous Thomas Sowell quote, and I believe that this sums up where we are in California for sure, and there's so much of this across the country. That this is a paraphrase, but it's very, very close. The last 30 years are marked by exchanging what works for what sounds good. And I think that people, they're voting for policies that sound good, but I'm like, look at what's happening. It isn't working.
28:01 Speaker 01 Right.
28:02 Tom Bilyeu? So why do we keep voting for the same thing? And
28:07 Speaker 01 Right.
28:07 Tom Bilyeu? Uh, it's just like the, the odds of that changing strike me as so low. And in fact, I'm, I'm going to ask you a very pointed question.
28:15 Speaker 01 I'm more hopeful.
28:16 Tom Bilyeu? I know.
28:16 Speaker 01 Maybe I'm.
28:17 Tom Bilyeu? You, you have heard the phrase many times.
28:19 Speaker 01 Optimism, yeah.
28:20 Tom Bilyeu? Hope is not a strategy.
28:21 Speaker 01 It's not a strategy.
28:22 Tom Bilyeu? I want a strategy.
28:24 Speaker 01 Yeah.
28:25 Tom Bilyeu? So you waved people off the Karen Bass recall.
28:29 Speaker 01 Yeah.
28:29 Tom Bilyeu? Why at the like peak anger?
28:33 Speaker 01 Yep.
28:35 Speaker 01 Um, why is because it would have been a terrible strain on the city. It would have cost the city $30 million that we don't have. And more importantly, the recall vote would have been only months before the June primary. People are going to get a chance to fire her or rehire her in June. And so to have a special recall vote, let's say April, May, March, and then you go into a primary, it was so tight, it's not going to accomplish anything. And the other thing, quite frankly, is very difficult to get 800,000 signatures. That's what you need for a recall and you need somebody to fund it.
29:20 Speaker 01 And I think the funding on that was estimated to be about $10 million. So who's going to do it? And then if it didn't get the signatures, then you're handing her a victory. And then she gets to say, see, people don't want me recalled. They couldn't even get enough people to sign a petition.
29:41 Tom Bilyeu? Yeah, fair.
29:42 Speaker 01 And then you have her walking into the primary as a victor. I just, it wasn't thought through and I was talking to the people that were pushing the recall. And I get the visceral reaction and the need to do that. And had there been three years left on her term or two years left on her term, that's what you want to do, go do it. But it was actually, in my opinion, going to have the opposite effect. And I know people were very upset with me, but I firmly believe it was the right thing to do for the city.
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31:23 Tom Bilyeu? And we're back.
31:26 Tom Bilyeu? Miraculously, your properties survived the fire. Walk me through how you ended up with the plans from how you built the buildings to all the things you did to make sure your property stood through it.
31:39 Speaker 01 Sure. Well, we, we learned when we built the hotel that I have the resort up in Montecito in Santa Barbara. So we were building the hotel, the resort was about six months ahead of starting construction on the Palisades. But there was the Thomas fire and we were just structurally in wood was going up. And as that Thomas fire was raging up in Santa Barbara, I called the head of our security who does special operations for us. And I said, Bannon, you got to come up with a plan to save the property because the fire department rightfully so is going to be protecting homes before commercial spaces.
32:18 Speaker 01 And so he's the one that developed the plan that brought in private firefighters, water tanks, trucks and the retardant. So we learned a lot from that. When we were designing Palisades, we knew we were designing in a area with high fire risk. I mean,
32:36 Speaker 01 The amount of fires that happened around Malibu and that whole area over the last 50 years, right? It's not rocket science. And so we designed the Palisades with no combustible materials. We designed the Palisades with no open vents. So that embers couldn't get to the inside of a building because most of the homes that burnt in the Palisades and Altadena burnt from inside in, inside out.
33:01 Tom Bilyeu? Did you just hire experts that tell you that kind of stuff like that? When I heard that one, I was like, what?
33:05 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, no, we hire experts, you know? How do you design something to give you the highest likelihood of it not burning down? So, you know, things that like buildings that look like wood shingle buildings were actually concrete that were poured to look like wood. And so one is it was built right. And the second is when these warnings were coming out. You got a warning, right?
33:28 Tom Bilyeu? Yeah.
33:29 Speaker 01 I think the only person LA that didn't get a warning was Mayor Bass. As these warnings were coming out. Two days before. Um, Banyan takes the manual off the shelf. And goes into the plan. If there's a major fire. And two days before we had the private firefighters there, the water trucks there and the retardant there. And um, we were ready and listen. I've said this a million times, it's so true. What is predictable is preventable. And we we wanted to be prepared and we were, and not only did we save all of our structures, we saved all of our neighbors and everything across the street. And we were loaning equipment to the fire department.
34:13 Speaker 01 I mean, the way this city has been managed is insane that they were so underfunded. And that you can run out of water. So that night, because we had to evacuate also, so my wife and I and our four kids, we all evacuated, we live in Brentwood, we left too. My daughter lost her house, my son lost his house. But the night we got the call on January 7th of my daughter losing her house. From Banyan, who was embedded in the command post. I couldn't believe the words. He said, Rick, your daughter's house is burning because the fire department ran out of water, they're standing there with their hoses and they're dry.
34:54 Speaker 01 I said, Banya, it's an impossibility. This is the second largest city in the nation. I ran L A D W P. It doesn't run out of water. But what did we find out? They had an empty reservoir. Months and months before this.
35:09 Tom Bilyeu? This still makes me mad.
35:10 Speaker 01 What even should make you madder? The head of D W P has never been fired. Never been held accountable. It's crazy.
35:19 Tom Bilyeu? Crazy.
35:19 Speaker 01 The fire department was never pre-deployed. They could have put out. I will debate with anybody that that fire could have never happened. They usually pre-deploy. If they had pre-deployed, they would have put out that spot fire. And it wouldn't have happened.
35:35 Tom Bilyeu? What did you think when people were like voters, average people in the public were saying? No, it makes sense that this was empty and I totally understand. Like, who could have predicted? Like, the number of people I saw defending incompetence was, that's the part that that when I look at that, I'm just like, I don't, I don't know what to do. Like, if people are going to defend it rather than say, this is not the outcome we wanted, therefore, we should have done something differently. Uh, I don't know what to do.
36:04 Speaker 01 Yeah, listen, I think that what I saw, you know, there was also a bunch of people online that were criticizing me for saving the village, right?
36:13 Tom Bilyeu? That's nuts.
36:14 Speaker 01 It's nuts, of course, it's nuts. But that conversation started to change over time. And then people realizing, you know what? Thank God he did. Cause now there's a place that's going to be the center of town that can help that town get reborn. And it did show everybody, you actually can't protect these structures. If you do your job right. Fire department, you know, the city, everybody just failed miserably.
36:42 Tom Bilyeu? So you start steadfast L A with the idea of, I assume combating what you knew was going to be a lot of red tape and everything grinding to a halt. Uh, how's it going?
36:54 Speaker 01 It's going actually pretty well.
36:56 Tom Bilyeu? It's an op ed that you wrote recently that would lead one to believe that you might be encountering some.
37:02 Speaker 01 I said, pretty well. Well, listen, we're encountering, you know, pushback and we're encountering incompetence and we're encountering, for the most part, inability to make a decision, which is just crazy. But we're also making progress. And you know, we, we have our deal with Samara Homes. We're going to be bringing in these small homes for people who are very low income to get them back on their property and get them back in the community. We're excited about that. We developed along with Amazon and Alcatraz, the plan check process through AI that allows somebody's home to be plan checked in a matter of hours versus months.
37:41 Tom Bilyeu? Whoa.
37:42 Speaker 01 Awesome. So you know, steadfast, what steadfast is is a nonprofit that I'm funding. We've got a full-time staff. Its goal is to bring people back to their home and a community as safely and quickly as possible. Altadena, Palisades and Malibu. And I asked a team of people, best and the brightest in the industries, the Parsons folks in terms of engineering, Ezra folks in terms of information technology, architects, lawyers, we've got about a dozen people, take a problem, unbundle it, fix it, hand it off to the government agency. The problems are too big for the government alone to fix them, even if you had a competent government, which we
38:27 Speaker 01 don't. So what we're doing is we're handing them the solutions. How do you underground the power lines? Don't tell me it can't be done because it can be done. We gave them a plan and they adopted it. That's a really big deal to get these power lines underground in Altadena and the Palisades and Malibu. So we're making a lot of progress. There's a lot of progress we need to do more of. You know, we announced rebuilding the park up in the Palisades, had a meeting this morning about that. We've got some great ideas in Altadena to help revive their downtown and support the merchants there to get them back on their feet, which we need to do, get people working again and being able to be prosperous again. So I'm spending probably 90% of my time on steadfast matters.
39:12 Tom Bilyeu? Wow. I'm assuming you wrote the article to get attention for all of the sort of lunacy of the problems that you're running into. But so you just talked about the AI that will do plan checks, which is incredible and exactly the kind of thing that I'd want to see AI used for. However, they haven't implemented it.
39:29 Speaker 01 No.
39:30 Tom Bilyeu? So, and your op ed says, I don't even know when they're going to implement this. So this is the kind of stuff that honestly, I've thought to myself like 10 times since we've been talking. Uh, would he ever start his own podcast? I like to believe that if people hear over and over and over, the things that could be happening, followed by the things that are the roadblocks to this. And this is something Elon Musk is really good at because he owns one of the largest media distribution platforms on planet earth. But like when they forced him to kidnap a seal, put headphones on it to see how it would react to the sound of rockets. Just like suddenly people are like, wait a second, what is happening?
40:07 Speaker 01 Right.
40:07 Tom Bilyeu? So there's a, I think, a huge benefit to people becoming aware in a real time basis. Like real time, the unrelenting nature of like, we are trying to do this. This is a roadblock we're running into. Now we've tried to do this, roadblock we're running into. Hey, here's a counter. We called Karen Bass and said this, and this is how many days that she has not called us back. I really feel like, to your point, that this, if you're going to get people to finally wake up, because already we're far, and this is only like four or five months since the fires. But we're already far enough that people don't have that visceral anger anymore. I don't think.
40:49 Tom Bilyeu? And I think that getting them to vote in their best interest for somebody that can actually get this stuff done. They, they just have to see day after day after day, like, here's what we're trying to do. You would agree, this is in your best interest. Here's the response, like, and then here's the solution. You've said, don't bring me a problem unless you have the solution.
41:08 Speaker 01 Right.
41:10 Tom Bilyeu? I don't know. How's it sound? You gonna start a podcast?
41:12 Speaker 01 I don't know if I would be a good.
41:14 Tom Bilyeu? Who do I pitch this to? We've got people here.
41:16 Speaker 01 Maybe I'll just be on yours more often if I could. Listen, I, I agree with that. And, and what we've done, quite frankly, and made, I'm sure we could do a better job. I could do a better job at it. Is I've told the team, we will walk with the elected official, around the elected official, or through the elected official.
41:35 Tom Bilyeu? Now you're just flirting. Like, yes, please.
41:38 Speaker 01 But I will tell you that everything we've been able to accomplish has been accomplished in spite of the elected official. We have had to literally go around them.
41:51 Speaker 01 And sometimes get ahead of them, so they had to adopt it. Karen Bass was very, very resistant on the AI. We built it, raised $2 million around it, so there was no cost to the city and handed it off. And if she doesn't implement it quickly, I will be vocal about it. I'm trying to give her a chance to do the right thing. The park, she was very resistant to it until the very, literally until the press conference. And now she's come around to be supportive of it. Okay, great, I'll take that. I don't care who gets the win, we just want the wins. And so I'm focused on it.
42:33 Speaker 01 I don't want to be completely argumentative every day with everybody.
42:37 Tom Bilyeu? Because it's not your personality, or you think it's not effective?
42:40 Speaker 01 Because I think it's not the right time yet. I'm, I, I want to get some successes. And I frankly want to see elected officials feel that success. And hopefully they want to build off of it, rather than be paralyzed by the scope of the problem. And that's what we have now. We have paralysis on decision making, because we've got leaders, including the mayor, that have never had to make a big decision. So she doesn't know how to do it. She doesn't know how to rely, she doesn't know how to hire the right people or rely on the right people to help make a decision. And she's not wired to take risk. When you've been in Congress for 10 years,
43:22 Speaker 01 and the only bill that you've passed is to name, rename a library, that tells you everything you need to know. So hopefully, now that she's seen that there can be more movement, we'll get more movement. But I do worry about, it's frankly not her priority. And I do worry about that. And it needs to be a priority. But she's got a whole bunch of problems going on, because the way that they've managed the city, it's all coming back to haunt them. They got major budget problems, they don't know how to solve. They've got the problem in the streets in downtown. They did a terrible job managing. And she's got to go rebuild a city, frankly, it's 300,000 acres.
44:07 Speaker 01 She's not qualified to do that. But she still hasn't hired the quote unquote czar. Right? So. It's just paralysis and at some point in time, we'll be much more vocal about it. And we're getting close to that point in time.
44:23 Tom Bilyeu? What about safety for LA to be the place like, and this used to be the place as a guy running a podcast. So first of all, I came here for Hollywood and Hollywood is now evaporated.
44:32 Speaker 01 Yeah.
44:33 Tom Bilyeu? Then I became a podcaster 10 years ago. This used to be the place I could guarantee people are going to come through LA. Now that's Austin. So it's another thing that's going away. And when you talk to the people that leave, it's taxes and safety. I mean, that's just like the thing. This again, this feels cultural to me. This feels like people that like, they want to be compassionate or something. There's I think a bill put forward that says if somebody breaks into your house, you're supposed to flee. I don't know if it's passed or not, but that, that is absurd. If you break into my house, I'm shooting you in the face. You were going to be graveyard dead like that. Or like, what's the alternative? Like, that's so insane. I cannot even be a part of that. You were a big part of the movement.
45:16 Tom Bilyeu? You talked about this earlier where you replaced the police chief commissioner. And then started turning that around. How do we make LA safe again?
45:26 Speaker 01 You make it a priority, which it's not a priority now. And you make it a priority. It's got to start with the budget and you got to hire more officers. And you got to fill up the academy. And so right now, like I said earlier, we are going to have about, I think 2.5 officers per capita. And we've got, that's two times less than the next city. So Washington, New York, I think even San Francisco has double the amount of officers. We are at an all time low. I mean, when I was the police commissioner and Brad was the chief, I think we had over 9,000 officers. We're probably now at 7,000 officers. We literally cannot.
46:09 Speaker 01 Protect the streets.
46:10 Tom Bilyeu? What about prosecutions though? Are people, even if we pick them up, if they just get re-released? The bail issues that we have, like, how far does the reform go?
46:20 Speaker 01 So that's, that's a good example. So we changed leadership. We got rid of the district attorney. We brought in a great district attorney.
46:28 Tom Bilyeu? Who's the DA now?
46:28 Speaker 01 Nathan Hockman. He's, he's doing a great job. He's holding people accountable. And, and we're seeing some real change. Now, here, here's the issue with that. In order to make a city safer, you have to have a very close partnership between a police force and the district attorney. They go hand in hand. LA County has 88, I don't want to get too far in the weeds, but LA County has 88 cities, one of which is LA City. If LA City, if the leadership, if Karen Bass is not of the same culture, policies, as the district attorney's office, it doesn't work as well as it should.
47:09 Speaker 01 You go to other cities like Beverly Hills, that is being very tight on crime right now, Culver City, Glendale, the cities around us that are doing very well, by the way.
47:22 Speaker 01 We've got to make sure that the policies that are in LA, that LAPD has to live with are always very respectful of human rights, but hold people accountable and punish people if they, if they commit a crime, pure and simple. But Nathan has done a great job as a district attorney. So there is a big change. We changed the bail law that overwhelmingly got approved in the state in spite of Gavin Newsom coming out against it. So that's good. So change can happen, Tom. It's got to give you a little bit of hope.
47:50 Tom Bilyeu? Fingers crossed. Yeah, no, that's fantastic. One thing though, that concerns me, and I know you're a Democrat, but do you at all worry that the current Democratic Party functions like a cartel? Where no matter what, their guy is going to be out front and in charge?
48:06 Speaker 01 Yeah, listen, I think the Democratic Party right now is dysfunctional. And it's got to get cleaned up. I mean, one of the things that excites me is that I can be helpful on giving it a purpose, giving it a mission, having some real priorities that line up with what people want. It's not functional at all, and I don't even know who the leader of the party is. I don't think anybody does. Right? And so are they a closed loop? Do they not want outsiders inside the tent? Yeah, right? We gotta bust that up and change that and encourage young, smart people to think out of the box to run for office.
48:44 Tom Bilyeu? How do you think California became a one-party state?
48:48 Speaker 01 I don't know. That's a good question. I'm not a, I'm not a good enough history major to, I don't know. But California runs, you know, sort of middle of the road in a, in a, in a big way. More moderate. You've got, you've got your Republican base, you've got your far-left base. But the majority are in the middle. Majority are moderate Democrats and independents. And if they mobilize and get out and vote, if they have a candidate that they can mobilize around that inspires them,
49:25 Speaker 01 you could change the direction of the state for sure.
49:28 Tom Bilyeu? Do you know Schwarzenegger at all?
49:29 Speaker 01 I do.
49:30 Tom Bilyeu? One thing I found interesting, and I have quoted him a gazillion times, is that it took him a while, but he finally realized that much of politics is Kabuki theater and that it's.
49:42 Speaker 01 What is Kabuki theater?
49:43 Tom Bilyeu? Basically, people are pretending. They put on a face. They do a.
49:47 Speaker 01 Oh, I get that.
49:48 Tom Bilyeu? A song and dance. And he was like, you know, at the end of the day.
49:51 Speaker 01 There's nothing really there there.
49:52 Tom Bilyeu? Yeah, like he was just trying to get things done and people wanted to say a lot of words. They wanted to hold a lot of press conferences, but to your point about decision-making, they didn't seem to want to actually move the ball forward. Now, in a business, it, the market is so ruthless, it just does not care about you. And so you're like, well, if I'm going to make payroll, I've got to solve this problem. One of the things, and I assume you know little about my background, but one of the things I've become obsessed with is tracking everything back to the economic cause. Like, what, what is the foundation of our economic system that has led us to this? Because I just, the thing that made me a successful entrepreneur is tracking cause and effect. So it was like, I don't care how I feel. My, I've learned in life that my feelings will lead me astray because they're not married to the place that I'm trying to end up.
50:38 Tom Bilyeu? And if I can state where I'm trying to get, then I can just follow cause and effect to get there.
50:42 Speaker 01 Okay.
50:42 Tom Bilyeu? When I look at the economic drivers that are pushing us where we're headed now, basically, I see a lot of the dysfunction. Really being born out of the, what ends up happening is you get a massive divide of inequality between the haves and have nots that people think is happening at the level of politics, but is actually happening at the level of money. Have you thought at all about like the growing political divide and how we get people back to the middle?
51:13 Speaker 01 Mm hmm. I, I have. One is based on a lot of work that we've done. We think the majority is in the middle. And so that's a good start. What would people I believe want, whether it's in the city or the state? They want it to be safe. They want the cost of living to come down. They want to be able to afford a home. They want to be able to grow their business, raise their family and safety. They don't want to pay three times more for gasoline than everybody else in the country pays for. They don't want to be overregulated, right? If we can do a bunch of simple things, in my opinion, I think you unleash the state. I mean, the fact that we're the fourth largest economy in the world, given all the overregulation
51:58 Speaker 01 and given all the incompetency that we have at the state level, just shows you how powerful the economic driver is here. But then in spite of that, what are we doing? We're pushing out the entertainment industry. You know, it's 30% more expensive. I was talking to a studio head the other day, Monday night was what? 30% more expensive to film in LA than to film in Atlanta. Why? LA, get off your rear end and change the structure. The state of California changed the structure. New Jersey is eating our lunch. Georgia is eating our lunch. London has massive tax credits for the entertainment industry.
52:41 Speaker 01 None of this stuff is that complicated. It takes backbone and will, and it takes something else that's really important. I think the most important, making decisions where you're not worried about getting reelected.
52:52 Tom Bilyeu? Yeah.
52:53 Speaker 01 And I, I think that's the most empowering thing in the world. Say, I'm going to go do this because it's right. And if you don't want me to be your governor or your mayor anymore, great, that's fine. You go to the ballot box and you can fire me. But I'm gonna do what I think is right.
53:08 Tom Bilyeu? Yeah, man, do I hope you get that chance. I think we somehow culturally have to get people married and obsessed with outcomes. To get them to think entrepreneurial and say, oh, we want to do this thing and there are going to be metrics along the way. This is why I really hope as a part of Steadfast LA that you do some variant of what I was talking about where it's just a, if you're not going to do a podcast, a ticker tape of we called, this is what happened. This is how long we've been waiting. Like, let the rest of us then in the media go grab that feed and start blasting this stuff out on X and being like, this is crazy. We're gonna be in June before you know it. I think there's a national divide. You and I do not see that the same.
53:50 Tom Bilyeu? I don't think people are in the middle. I think there's economic drivers that are shoving people as far apart as fast as humanly possible. And because nobody is looking at the economics of this, even to your point about we pushed the entertainment industry out. Once you understand how the like, how the flow of money works, that becomes self evident. Because what ends up happening is people can, people think the miracle is redistribution. And instead of realizing that what entrepreneurship is, whether you're running a studio or doing what you do, is you have done this incredibly difficult thing where you've created a system where you put inputs into it. And the thing that comes out the other end is worth more than the inputs.
54:33 Tom Bilyeu? That is so hard to do. And a government's exact opposite. It just gets to take tax, take tax, take tax.
54:38 Speaker 01 True.
54:39 Tom Bilyeu? And somehow in California, they got it in their heads that people will pay literally any price for the weather. And because money is free for the government, they just take, take, take, take, take. And don't realize, oh, I'm killing the very thing that generates my revenue. It's insane. I know I gotta get you out of here.
54:54 Speaker 01 No, but you're very, you're spot on. So thank you for that.
54:57 Tom Bilyeu? Thank you for your time. I hope you do this. Where do you want people to engage with you?
55:01 Speaker 01 SteadfastLA.com would be great and send us ideas and information and also problems where we can help in these communities and. I'm really intent to make steadfast a really powerful force in this region for a long time.
55:17 Tom Bilyeu? Keep going. It's amazing.
55:18 Speaker 01 Thank you, Tom. Thanks for having me.
55:19 Tom Bilyeu? Thank you. Can't wait.
55:20 Speaker 01 Appreciate it.
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