Episode
Mike Cobb: What Raising Kids Overseas Does to How They See the World
- Podcast
- Burning The Ships
- Published
- Jun 7, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 2602
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://rss.com/podcasts/608bcapital/2880558
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Summary
Mike Cobb didn't find his path — he built it from scratch in a country most people couldn't locate on a map. In the mid-90s, a trip to Belize with a lawyer buddy turned into a mortgage company, which turned into a bank, which turned into a 2,500-acre development on the Pacific coast of Nicaragua, which turned into a teak timber operation planted in 1999 that's only now coming to harvest. Three businesses, three countries, and thirty-plus years of building things designed to outlive him. This episode isn't about the deals or the developments. It's about the mindset behind someone who has spent his entire adult life saying yes when most people would have walked away, and who now spends his time building leaders the same way he planted teak trees — knowing full well he may never sit in the shade. Key Talking Points of the Episode [00:37] How Mike and Jason first connected at a Dealmaker event in Richmond through Jim Ingersoll [02:49] The mid-90s trip to Belize that accidentally launched a mortgage company [03:51] Finding the gap: no mortgage money existed for North Americans buying in Belize [04:36] Growing the mortgage company into a full bank — a process that took from 1998 to 2003 [08:00] Five years of asking to buy into the business — and finally deciding to burn the ships when the answer kept being no [10:47] The risk calculation at 34: newly married, no kids, and willing to restart if it failed [22:59] Moving to Nicaragua in 2002 with a two-year-old — and staying 14 years [25:58] Raising third culture kids: the book, the fishbowl analogy, and what it means to grow up between two worlds [29:30] Moving back to West Virginia in 2016 after the oldest daughter received a ballet scholarship to the Joffrey program in New York [30:27] Building 100-year businesses and what t…