Latest / The Weekly Run / Building a $500M Business Telling Orlando’s Story with Ken Pozek | Bagels with a Bestie Ep. 2
Transcript
- Jeff Perera: Welcome to Bagels of the Bestie. This is a new segment that is gonna come out probably like once a week or so where we sit down with one of my besties, share a bagel and a coffee, and just Chit-chat. You know, casual conversation about why they love the bagel run so much, what they do in the community, and just get to know them. And maybe share a little bit of insights into me. I hope you really like it. Let me know what you think. to Bagel with a Bestie. Thanks, man. Hey, I'm glad you came out. Which is so fun. So tell us who you are. I am a real estate agent and also a content creator here in Orlando. We build community similar to the way that you build community, just in a different way. Yeah. I met you In our in our first shop in Ocoee Yeah. You were a guest coming in. Like right after you opened. Yes. Yeah. Like Saturday mornings, you would come in and I was like, I think I know that guy. Because I had seen you talking about real estate on Instagram or TikTok or somewhere. And I just I think I leaned over the counter and I was just like, hey, like, do you want to grab a coffee one day? We were both building, starting starting kind of like from the beginning. It was all right, so do you do you Yeah, I like, say do you break or do you put it on? Which how do you like to do it? So, okay, this is a huge controversy in the bagel world too. Because there are people who will rip it and dip it. That's me. Which great. I think that there are people who would be like, it's not chips and queso, what you doing? Like Are you one of those people that would say that? No. Okay. It just depends. I'm I go I I do both ways, like I guess. So today I was gonna spread a little bit on there and make like a little sandwich. Yeah, right. But like you can Go for however you want. Alright, cool, cool, cool. I mean, when in Rome, right? What are you eating today? I've got Asiago Everything. This is my go-to, and chive an onion cream cheese. Okay. I went with a pumpkin bagel. This is is this special just for today or all So pumpkin season has officially started, so it's gonna run to like the end of October. Yeah. Maybe like the first couple days of November, I can't remember the actual date. Yeah. But it's it's the season, so we're deep in it, yeah. What was your first experience with bagels? Just in general, bagels in general. In general? So I used to I used to be at the air at the airport, I was a skycap, like in high school. Like so people would come off, I'd help with wheelchairs and luggage and all that kind of stuff. So I would have to tag in at like six o'clock in the morning. I'd run to Einstein Brothers bagels and I'd got the same bagel every morning. It was like honey, honey bagel, honey cream cheese. I don't know why. I love that. And like I'd down that before the first flight landed. That's incredible. Every day for like years. That's incredible. yeah, wait, but that's I the bagel story is great, but like you were a sky cap when you were like 16. Yeah, like that is a crazy first job. Dude, I loved it. Like I tell people now that if I could go back and make like really, really good money, I would still be doing that job. I loved it so much. I got to meet people from all over the world because we'd do international flights and they'd be flying through Detroit where I grew up. Yeah. And it was the coolest experience of like getting to know people because you had like 15 minutes with them to try to get the biggest tip you could. So like, dude, I loved it. What did that teach you? Like what do you think that taught you? Like because I I think about my like early years. Yeah. And my first jobs were with my dad. Sure. And so like I learned about like getting up early and working hard and like all these things, but like, what did that teach you as a 15-year-old, 16-year-old kid? I just think that, you know, sales early on what is all about people. And so it's just like everybody has a story. Everybody has their own thing that they're after. And so for me, it was like, how do I get to know you as quick as possible? Get to find out what you like the most as quick as possible. And then it was over. It was like so transactional, right? and so it I had to make it a lot less about me and about them. And I still do the same thing today in business. That's awesome. Yeah. So talk about your business a little bit. You run, you said it in the intro that you do real estate, you do content creation. Yep. But you are sort of like I mean we're in a mayoral election right now in Orlando. Yeah, yeah. You're like, if Foursquare was still a thing, you're the mayor. I appreciate it. You are the mayor. Like, I mean, you are you seem to be in every story, you seem to be a part of everything happening in Central Florida. How did that happen? I mean, so the idea was like we wanted to create a media company that happened to sell real estate. I think you know, you and Danielle buy a house and you don't buy another one probably for another seven to ten years. So how do I stay relevant in your life for that entire time? And so we started, hey, if we could tell the story of Orlando better. That we would sell more real estate. I th that was my idea. Like if I could say, I just want to tell every story going on and my real estate company was the sponsor, that we would do well. And so this year we'll sell just under a half a billion dollars in Rel residential real estate. And all of that comes from the content that we create. That's incredible. Yeah, and that's the Orlando Reel. That's yeah, so Orlando Reel is the media company and Pozek Group is the brokerage. Yeah. The Orlando Reel is a great resource, I think. I mean I I watch it. We're trying we're trying to watch it. Try to keep people informed. I watch it. It's so interesting because I think people think of Central Florida and they think of like Disney World. Yeah. And I know Walt was a pretty big influence in your life. Yeah. is that why you h why you're here, why you live here? Originally it was like my wife and I said we want to retire in Florida and then it became like, Well, we bring the kids to Disney all the time. What if we just move to Orlando and see how it went? So that was ten years ago now. And we had our third kid here and we built businesses here and I think it's it's cool. The storytelling piece of what Disney does and like the community that they've been able to build in that, I think is fascinating. And so I definitely draw a lot from what Walt and the company does. Me and the kids have been like Huge fans of a content creator on YouTube, Kevin Purger, who does Defunct Land. I don't know if you're familiar with him or not, but he's done a ton of stuff about defunct theme park rides and all sorts of nonsense stories. He tells a lot of like behind-the-scenes stuff about Walt Disney World. Yeah. And one of my very favorite episodes, and I think I've I looked back at this recently with the kids, and he's telling the story of how Walt did the deal to get on like ABC. And tell the story of Disneyland before the movie would come on or whatever. Like some it was some nonsense on like broadcast TV. There were three channels, right? ABC, NBC CBS. And that made me think I was like, my gosh, he was like the first YouTuber. No, he totally was. He was the first YouTuber. Yeah, yeah. I mean, he's like the consummate pitch man, right? And like tell it's like storytelling in the highest level degree. And then I think the way that the company works is also fascinating. Like the merch, and then it's like the shows that go into the movies that go into the lands. Like, I mean. They're into everything, right? And they try to integrate themselves in all these different ways. And like we're trying to take our, you know, chops from what they've done and build it into our own business. It's it's very cool. Bobby Kim is the creative director there now. I don't know if you knew that. No. He was the guy who founded the Streetwear brand the hundreds. Okay. And he he's come in and he's done a lot of cool like pop culture collaborations recently. yeah, yeah. We're a huge F1 family in our household Sunday mornings we're watching races and we just did like an F1 collab with Disney. He did he did his own collaboration with like this retro Bobby Kim Disney collection that was like nostalgic, our era of like Disney. Nostalgia is have you seen like HD TV lately? So they're bringing back 90s style shows and like kind of go it's such a smart thing, because like who has disposable income right now? It is people that feel that nostalgia for the 80s and 90s. Dis Disney's leaning into it, all these other places. It's it's smart. It's hard to get like I I I asked you about your early bagel experience because like I'm trying to find that. Right. It's like I need to capture that same experience. I think food has a way of bringing you places. Easily, yeah. I mean where you when you sit down and have a meal, for one, it's great for conversation, it's great for a lot of things, but yeah, you typically remember like where was the first time I had a bagel? Or was the first time I my my favorite pizza place growing up, right? All that kind of stuff. I think about I think about food and the connection it has to the feelings in those moments, right? Like You remember eating that bagel at the airport and like it connected you to international travel and meeting new people. Yeah. What's like a memory of food that you have, maybe it doesn't have to be bagel related, that like you come back to and think about a lot? Now it becomes to, I mean, I will tell you, this is like shameless plug for you, but like every Saturday morning for three years now, my kids and I we wake up before my wife and we drive to Jeff's bagel run. My my son drives now and so like he's driving us there back and forth. And we play car games, like it's no phones, like we got all these little games that we've created. and so on the way there and back, like it's just an hour with my kids to not have to do anything else other than just, you know, build build a relationship with them. I think that's a big one. But breakfasts for us have always been like a thing, like not so much dinner, it's like sitting down, how's your day? We play a game called High Low. So what's like your high from the day, your low from the day, and like try to again feel that sort of sense of relationship that I think is still lost where you have screens everywhere. so that's what food does for us. I love that. Yeah. And I mean it honestly when you're eating a bagel, it forces you to put something your hands down. You can't hold the phone. You're holding the food. It makes a big difference. That's incredible. Where do you see the Pozek group? Where do you see the Orlando reel? Where do you see like and then maybe even in a broader sense, where do you see Orlando going in the next couple of years? I mean we before we started recording, we talked a little bit about like the economic conditions. It's they have been they flow, so you can't really You just gotta ride the waves, right? Yeah. But where's where are you headed? Where's Orlando headed? What's your vision? I mean, so for us on the on the real estate and media side, it's like how do we build and and and bridge community in Orlando? I think we so I I I pioneer pioneered and paid for this study last year about like why people we interviewed a thousand people. I hired a company, this is their full-time job. Did I tell you about this? No. This is all new. I love We interviewed a thousand people that either lived in Orlando or used to live in Orlando. And we asked them very simply, If you lived here and left, or you live here and you wanted to leave, why would that be? And the number one thing that people said was that they found it hard to find community here. Meaning like they it was it wasn't the weather, it wasn't the humidity, it wasn't the price of things, it wasn't tourists, it was like literally like I moved here thinking it would be one way and it ended up becoming something else. And so we feel like if we could build that gap of like community through events and like making people feel connected one way or the other. Whether that's Run Club or our show or some different things like that, that we could actually help build something really special in Orlando. And on on that we'll hopefully sell a billion in real estate and like you know, become like the number one source for media in Orlando. So there's a lot of like economic reasons we want to do it, but I think it would be cool to like have a thumb thread on where Orlando's going. I love that. That'd be incredible. Yeah. Yeah. I mean it's it's in our ethos, right? Like bake fresh, bring joy, build community. Yeah. So I'm glad that we started here in Orlando and we're gonna be a part of your community building, which is incredible. I'm excited, yeah. And I'm gonna let you eat. You'll see it, man. Thanks for coming out today, man. Thanks for I appreciate it. Congrats.