Latest / The Action Catalyst / The Life In Between, with Roy Dekel (Tech, Military, Entrepreneurship, Business)

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The Life In Between, with Roy Dekel (Tech, Military, Entrepreneurship, Business) · The Action Catalyst

• 0:00
  Dan Moore: This is Dan Moore. And we are very, very excited today to have Roy Dekel with us. Roy
• 0:05
  is the co founder and CEO of SetSchedule, which he'll share some more information about with us.
• 0:10
  But he has an incredible background, having an impact to defend the free world, and now having an
• 0:14
  impact to defend people's right for free choice in real estate, and many other great things that he's
• 0:19
  done in the charitable and nonprofit sphere as well. So Roy, welcome to the action catalyst.
• 0:24
  Roy Dekel: Dan, thank you for having me. So excited to be here.
• 0:26
  Dan Moore: Roy, you've had an amazing background, I know that you served in the equivalent of the
• 0:30
  navy seals in the Israeli Defense Force, which is absolutely incredible. But I wonder if you could
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  share some of what you consider the most important pivots or twists and turns in your career starting
• 0:41
  as a young man that ended up being where you are today and making such a difference in the world?
• 0:45
  Roy Dekel: Well, thank you for the question, then, obviously, I love it, because who doesn't like to
• 0:50
  talk about their history, right? If you want to carve it out more to the corporate evolution, post
• 0:57
  military service, obviously, I can do that. But if you think about the experiences as an
• 1:03
  entrepreneur, obviously, I had the privilege to come in I was born and raised in Israel. So I was
• 1:08
  essentially the mandate was to serve in the military. But I volunteered to serve in special
• 1:14
  operations and become an officer. But ultimately, I had the privilege to carry that experience into
• 1:20
  the civilian personal life and corporate life. And when I did that, I think I got a little bit of
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  kind of like, it's almost like a cheat sheet that was an accelerated mode to maybe avoid mistakes.
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  But ultimately, in the 15 years experience that I had in the corporate world and the charitable
• 1:36
  world and you know, civilian, I went through a lot of pivots that revolve around basically Junior
• 1:42
  mistakes, as I call them, Junior mistakes that a lot of people make along the way, and especially
• 1:49
  entrepreneurs, so many of the periods that could talk about.
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  Dan Moore: One specific question; many of our listeners are returned veterans, what was sort of
• 1:56
  your thought process as you were leaving the IDF? And how did you get into the business world?
• 2:01
  Roy Dekel: When I left the IDF, let's put it this way I was I was still a kid, right. And I knew
• 2:07
  that I served in a great unit, I knew that I was an officer, I knew that I enjoy leading and
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  managing. And I knew that probably somewhere in the DNA, I want to be an entrepreneur, I didn't
• 2:18
  know where and what's gonna be my manifesto or business model, what's going to be my industry.
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  But ultimately, I knew that at the end of the day, I would want to build something that can benefit
• 2:30
  society, right? I mean, the end user in mind. So I went through the evolution from the military and
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  implemented a lot of the training that I've been through a went through in my earlier career.
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  Dan Moore: Okay, so you identified that you had some strengths, you enjoyed leading people, you
• 2:45
  wanted to do something that would contribute positively to society. And that whole
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  entrepreneurial thing was a powerful draw for you. That's great. Now, specifically, I know you're
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  involved in selling a lot of financial services and real estate related products. And now you're
• 3:00
  more of a powerful connector of buyers and sellers and people seeking information on the market. Can
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  you share some of the maybe twists and turns that caused all that to come about?
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  Roy Dekel: Essentially, I'm a big believer that we need to address as a society, we want to address
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  challenges and problems that actually affected communities to the core, basically, and the aspect
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  of real estate was actually I don't wanna call it an accident. But actually, the thought process
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  started with the idea of creating communities of professionals that can connect with their
• 3:32
  prospects more efficiently using technology. Right. And I came from the financial services and
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  a real estate services world investigating in real estate funds or what have you. And I realized that
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  there's a tremendous amount of gap between individuals abilities, okay. I mean, some people
• 3:49
  would refer to it as a core competencies as a businessman or salesman, and their ability to
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  actually connect with prospects or to be competitive enough to have enough prospects to
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  actually build a business and be profitable. You know, essentially, that's how set schedule was
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  born from the evolution of buying hundreds and 1000s of properties, diving into basically the
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  core problem of assisting and helping real estate agent grow their business that's was kind of like
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  the initial evolution of set schedule. But the vision statement was much broader than that. And
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  it's it again, like I said, it revolves around enabling professionals, even if they're
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  solopreneurs, to be more relevant, competitive and successful in connecting with their prospects.
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  Dan Moore: I see. So a person that may have a one man band or a one woman band can actually connect
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  at a really professional high level with people and create the right impression. So they don't
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  think well, this is just a one off instead, it's a really professional connection point.
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  Roy Dekel: Yes. You know, that, as my grandma used to say, not all fingers are the same length,
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  right? Not everything created equal kind of thing. And you know, that there's sometimes unfair
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  advantage to some groups, whether it's budget, whether it's geolocation and the real estate was
• 4:59
  obvious. be a catalyst for us, like I said. So ultimately, we realized that the solopreneurs
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  rather than the small businesses, not even an SMB, but a small businesses, and especially real
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  estate, which you're talking about, you know, 2 million businesses, I mean, license holders and
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  specific real estate, are constantly struggling with the idea of having a constant drive constant
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  push constant ability to either perform budget and economical way to scale that business, right. So
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  that that's kind of like where set schedule was born from the idea of controlling the scheduled
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  better, hence the set schedule and doing it in an economical way that enables you to call your
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  business and be competitive.
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  Dan Moore: That makes total sense, because for people that are maybe not aware of the real estate
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  market, this is not a salary based business. This is a business where income entirely depends upon
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  production. And so if people can use their time better, they can have better production, and
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  therefore build a business that is sustainable, so that they can grow too.
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  Roy Dekel: And it can apply to so many different industries. If you look at the charitable
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  organization that constantly needs, new donors, right donations, and capital, it conceptually
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  through to set schedule applications and everything that we have in a roadmap in the coming
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  months and years, we're going to enable this very efficient connection between even a foundation and
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  then the donor, there may be a CEO of a company X, and they're on the platform, that I mean, again,
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  we we've fully we obsess over creating efficiencies and enabling the smaller business to
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  be efficient and successful on a constant basis.
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  Dan Moore: Right. Now, you mentioned charitable work, I know that your great passion is children's
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  education. And I understand that a lot of that roots from your own childhood experiences can can
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  you share a bit how you became so involved with that, and why that's such an important conviction
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  you have?
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  Roy Dekel: Absolutely, that's an awesome question, then thank you. I mean, it's hard to explain. But
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  I'll say, in a funny way, I've served in the military, I've seen a couple of different wars in
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  Israel in the Middle East. And then I came here and basically dove into the entrepreneurial
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  lifestyle without looking back. But every time I see a sick child, or every time I see a child that
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  is at a disadvantage, whether it's economically whether it's you know, from from social
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  environment, then you know, obviously an orphan child, it just breaks my heart, it's kind of like
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  in the family, we'll call it my kryptonite. So I realized that young age, that's something I care
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  deeply about, and it's just in my DNA, my childhood was was great, I was fortunate enough to
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  have a great childhood in good area, but not, you know, didn't come from money, but I just feel that
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  kids have this obviously inherent disadvantage of, you know, their ability to actually, you know,
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  solve their problems. And it was, it developed to be my my kryptonite, so I made it a mission to
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  really be constantly involved in everything that revolves around children, children education, and,
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  and medical needs.
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  Dan Moore: Children are the future. I know, that's just an old slogan, but it is absolutely true. And
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  given them a chance to maybe have some equity in their start, is what you're striving for.
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  Roy Dekel: You definitely can predict the future of where your country where our country is going
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  to be 1020 years from now, I mean, if you just really spend the time and, and listening,
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  reviewing and understanding what we're doing to our next generation, I know this is not rocket
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  science, pretty elementary, right. But that's a crystal ball that you can predict if you pay
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  attention to the kids of today's generation.
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  Dan Moore: And there's a lot of them. These are sort of the the grandchildren of my generation,
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  which was the baby boomers. And so you have these waves of population growth, and this is a third
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  wave after that one. So lots of kids, and many of them are not growing up in the best situations at
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  all. Roi, our 100 listeners sometimes hit brick walls that just stopped. I'm sure you've had a few
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  of those over the years, any lessons you could share about how to react first of all mentally and
• 8:47
  emotionally. And then practically, when we hit one of those unexpected brick walls?
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  Roy Dekel: Absolutely. That's actually one of my one of my favorite Gen Con like mentorship
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  questions. So thank you for this question, then the answer can be for producing a movie right that
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  would go into like a flashback rewind story and going back to my BUDS training, right my
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  equivalent of basic underwater divorce training, which is basically the sales training I got into
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  the training knowing that I just wanted to pass a training I did I don't want to quit that I want to
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  I want to win it I want to be it I want to I want to be part of this unit and you have what's called
• 9:25
  Hell Week in BUDS training, which is really Hell Week. Now when I served it was before way before
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  Facebook and Twitter and YouTube so I didn't get the privilege of actually watching this thing
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  before it was in that unit. I actually realized that we have that there is such thing as called
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  Hell Week, during hell week when I asked myself why the hell why are we not sleeping? Why we are
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  constantly running around diving, swimming, kickboxing, practicing weaponry, and just it was I
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  mean, it was a nightmare. I mean, it's there's no two ways about it, right? And that's where I will
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  Say 40% of the unit quits or the cadets quit. Okay. I mean, you started training with about 181
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  of these men end up with about 80 Entering Hell Week and probably the end of hell week, you end up
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  with about 40 or 30 individuals, and I was one of them. And I thought to myself for years, how and
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  why and then what was what was really the the, the, the out and the element that carried me
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  through that, then the answer, by the way, is what I use and obsess over regularly to to stay, right.
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  I mean, whether it's charitable project, or whether it's corporate project, and to me was
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  pretty simple. I'll never forget that during Hell Week, all I needed to do is to think about two
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  things. Number one is I close my eyes. And I thought about the fact that I want it to be
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  Friday, and it will be Friday at some point. Okay, so So what's the worst that can happen? Right?
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  It's going to be Friday, I'll be thrown all these challenges. I'll sleep about the equivalent of six
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  hour the entire week. So call it about half an hour or an hour per day, but I'll be okay. I mean,
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  nobody's going to kill me, right? I mean, training. So that was the first thing. The second
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  thing is I remember what my dad told me, and it's gonna it's kind of funny. But I remember when it
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  was broken during boot camp training actually was given Hell Week. And I remember that I actually
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  called crying to what parents, and my dad told me that that was actually like I said, before Hill,
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  he said, Roy, no one on this planet is able to stop time. So if this is your mission, just let
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  time work itself out and keep going with the mission. Right? So I remember that line, which is,
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  again, pretty elementary. And I remember and I exercised the idea of I made the commitment to do
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  something, nothing comes without challenges. I mean, if it was easy, everybody would have done
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  that. And all you need to do is to close your eyes and say it will be Friday. But if I do it right,
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  and I stick around, it will be Friday with my achievement of success. And that's how I exercise
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  my my decision making process and management style today.
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  Dan Moore: I think it's awesome. You also got somebody else involved you called your dad. And
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  I'm sure that that emotional push of somebody that you respect and looked up to was right in front of
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  you all the time as you were working toward Friday.
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  Roy Dekel: Absolutely. I'm a big believer in learning to adapt, listening to advice, listening
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  to constructive criticism that comes from a good place, and really sick for mentors. It's okay to
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  have mentors. It's not a sign of weakness, it's absolutely important.
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  Dan Moore: I spoke with another gentleman who spent about 27 years as a Navy SEAL in this
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  country. And he also spoke about how many people rang the bell during buds and left the training.
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  And he said the one thing they all seem to have in common that made it was it was not all about them.
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  It's about someone else that was important to them. And I think that's a good lesson as well
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  realize that people in our lives mean something. And it's not just about us.
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  Roy Dekel: Absolutely 100% We actually have in the company would be called management development
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  program. And we actually had this conversation about the difference between dopamine and actually
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  the power of the congregation or the power of the network, it is much more powerful, where you see a
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  child smiling, and being grateful that something you've done for them, as opposed to you going to
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  Facebook and getting 10 likes, which drives your dopamine creation, right? So when you're doing
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  something for better goods, or for some external goal, it's much stronger than then if you did it
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  just for vanity purposes or for your internal selfish wants and needs.
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  Dan Moore: That makes sense. I sometimes think about the difference between joy, which is what
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  you just described, an amusement and amusement are things that we do without fault without thought
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  and they just random but true joy always involves other people and some connection of our abilities
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  applied to the problems of the world. That's when true joy occurs.
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  Roy Dekel: I like that.
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  Dan Moore: Well, let's let's share some other thoughts. What what do you do to keep from getting
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  complacent? You've been highly successful in business, probably you could sit back, put your
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  feet up on the desk and tell people how great you are. But you don't you are continuing to grow.
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  You're developing and nurturing people, you're coaching others. What do you do to keep from
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  getting what we call satisfied itis?
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  Roy Dekel: That's a great question. And again, it ties to everything that I've done everything that
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  pretty much any under any successful entrepreneur and executive visit executive does. I would break
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  it down to two parts. The first part was what we just talked about, right? So I've been analyzing
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  the wine. I'm figuring out why am I doing it? What's my what's my passion? What's my vision? Why
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  am I doing this? Again, I mean, for me, for example, every time I come in the office, I don't
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  think about the fact that I'm coming to the office because I'm the CEO and this is an exciting
• 14:42
  environment and I get such a great vanity of validation of my title and my brand. I come in the
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  office because I think oh, I actually have 200 team members and keep growing at a very fast pace
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  in in I'm responsive for their families, and I'm responsible to their families are responsible for
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  their livelihood and their career. And I want to make sure that 20 years from now, the most amount
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  of people, when a company can can exit set schedule and say, Oh, this was the pinnacle of my
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  career that made me who I am and enabled me to be independently wealthy, healthy and provide for my
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  kids. So it's a long way of saying, you know, it's basically the the the combination of everything we
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  talked about the joy and what drives me forward. And that's more selfish, selfishly speaking, the
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  competitive analysis, right? driving forward is I'm a big believer in always look at the ones that
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  are bigger than you and are doing better than you, even if it's me superficial, right, because I'm
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  not trying to get to their personal life. But if I'm looking at a Jeff Bezos, or I'm looking at a
• 15:46
  Mark Zuckerberg, that is young to me, I'm looking at him and saying, Okay, I want to keep driving,
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  because he's driving, and I'm far behind him still, right. And that's just the reality of
• 15:56
  things. So I use them as a compass to identify my constant pool and goals. You know, they're saying,
• 16:03
  if, if you want to break a Guinness World Record, if you want to be the fastest runner in the
• 16:08
  Olympics, you need to have someone running right next to you. So so it to me, that's the second
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  component is creating this comp, competitive compass, that enables me to say I want to keep
• 16:19
  pushing forward.
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  Dan Moore: That's great. So you have an internal focus, but you also have an external radar. Yep. I
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  love it. Now, in terms of, again, personal self management, we might call Do you have a morning
• 16:30
  routine? Something that is a habit for you to start your day?
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  Roy Dekel: The answer is absolutely is the way I operate is pretty predictable. It's the most
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  predictable way that you can think of. And if you read articles, you will see that it talks about
• 16:42
  how Steve Jobs always wore a black turtleneck shirt, and it didn't have this decision fatigue
• 16:47
  over what shirt to wear to work. And I kind of like do the same thing, not because I read that
• 16:52
  was years ago, it's maybe the military pragmatic approach. When I wake up in the morning, I know
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  that I will always shower, I know that I have my T shirts, my jeans and my Lacoste shoes, and know
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  that I wake up between 630 to 645. And by seven, I have to be out, I know that when I get to the
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  office, I have my first cup of coffee, and et cetera, et cetera. But the point is, and alongside
• 17:14
  that Elsa, know that everything that I need is position in the place that I always leave it like,
• 17:20
  for example, I don't lose my phone, I don't lose my phone, because my phone can only be in one spot
• 17:26
  in the house. And I'm going to love this the cart keys because they're going to be in one spot in my
• 17:30
  bag in the house pretty predictable. So when you create this predictability, you don't burn your
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  brain sales over a decision fatigue, or over a decision that are not necessarily driving your
• 17:44
  core goal. Right. So you leave bandwidth in our CPU in our in our brain, you leave them with
• 17:50
  important decisions that you want to make throughout the course of the day.
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  Dan Moore: So you rely on the force of habit and the power of routine to keep emotional energy and
• 17:59
  reserve for the most important things. Absolutely. Yeah, there's an old saying, Why is it when you
• 18:04
  lose something, you always find it in the final place you look. But if you can just remember car
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  keys go here, phone goes here. Plus, I think you also have an emotional drive to get the day
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  started. Because again, you got 200 people depending on you and you have many families that
• 18:22
  are depending upon you. It's pretty hard to roll over and hit the snooze alarm when you realize
• 18:26
  people are expecting me to do my best.
• 18:29
  Roy Dekel: And I make a point to keep the clock far from me. So I can not hit the snooze alarm.
• 18:33
  That's another strategy. Don't Don't, don't leave it within reach, because you've got to turn it
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  off.
• 18:38
  Dan Moore: Yes, sir. I guess my last set of questions for you wrote would be to help encourage
• 18:44
  people that really need encouragement. Some of our listeners are are kind of out of ACEs right now.
• 18:49
  How would you advise people to keep into motion and get things going again?
• 18:53
  Roy Dekel: That's a great question. Obviously, in light of the pandemic, and I'll start with a
• 18:56
  perspective, it's going to sound a little bit cheesy, but I think it's important that we slow
• 19:00
  down. And we think about it. The start of life, and the end of life. And I heard it recently, the
• 19:07
  start of life and the end of life are kumbhak the only definitive real things that you cannot change
• 19:13
  everything in between is a 6% it's it's a stage, right? It comes and goes it's what's the worst
• 19:22
  that can happen. Just Just think about it, right? I mean, this is not the start and end of life.
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  This is in between this is the quality of life that you can build. And you can work around and
• 19:33
  what's the worst that can happen? So if and I'm going to go extreme right hypothetical, not
• 19:38
  hypothetical theoretical that extreme. There's no money you didn't get an SBA loan, no funding for
• 19:43
  your business and you have to shut down your your restaurant, for example. I mean, this suffered
• 19:49
  tremendously, right that would give to shut down the restaurant. Well, then that's that's it,
• 19:53
  right? So the restaurant is shut down. Now, the next thing that you need to think about
• 19:57
  immediately is what is your next act? shim, and how you creating a new critical path to a
• 20:03
  solution. And the solution is out there. The solution is out there because you can start in
• 20:08
  your restaurant, you can partner with a new great friend that you've known for years. That's what
• 20:12
  happened to me. That's what happened to me, I went through one of the toughest experience in my life.
• 20:17
  And I ran into my friend, and we started set schedule together. So you may go now, after one
• 20:26
  business crashed, you go, you go to a new business, and that business would be even better.
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  And I've seen this so many times. So many times entrepreneur were actually more successful after
• 20:36
  their biggest failures. So it's at the end of the day money. And I know, money's important. And I
• 20:42
  know that you can take this advice in multiple different ways and say, Oh, Roy doesn't, you know,
• 20:47
  as this is doing, okay, right. That's not true. I mean, we all have our challenges. And we all came
• 20:52
  from failures, if we have a success with probably had multiple failures before successful story. But
• 20:58
  ultimately, you can pivot, and you can change industries. And you can even go in for now or
• 21:04
  temporarily work for companies. I mean, the job, the employment world now, I mean, there's, I
• 21:11
  think, for every applicant there 20 different positions open now so you can find a job, and
• 21:16
  everything is going to be okay.
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  Dan Moore: I love the combination of practical action and internal attitude that everything's
• 21:23
  going to be okay. There will be a Friday. We can get there. But I can't get there by sitting around
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  hitting the snooze alarm. I've got to get into motion and keep things moving. That is sound
• 21:32
  advice, Roy.
• 21:33
  Roy Dekel: That was a great instant edit of all of my lines. I liked that.
• 21:39
  Dan Moore: Well, it's terrific. Well, I want to thank you so much, but not just for you shared
• 21:42
  today. But the way you're living your life because it's an example to everybody around you. And we
• 21:47
  never know when that example affects somebody and then their example affects someone else, but it's
• 21:51
  always important. So thank you so much for being with us today.
• 21:54
  Roy Dekel: I appreciate it. Thank you Dan.