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Terry Hammons' HomeStretch Success: Helping Real Estate Agents Sell Homes Faster for Top Dollar · The Inspired Stories Podcast

0:04
Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast,
0:08
where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from
0:11
their successes and be inspired by how they've overcome
0:14
adversity. My name is Anthony Kodaspodi and
0:17
today's guest is Terry Hammonds, owner of Homestretch franchises
0:21
in Cleveland, Washington DC and Phoenix.
0:25
They help home owners and real estate professionals get
0:28
properties market ready by handling tasks like clearing out
0:32
old items, painting and repairs. They also handle landscaping and
0:38
move out cleaning, ensuring that each home stands out in a
0:41
competitive market. Terry has a long background in
0:45
corporate finance law, having directed multi billion dollar
0:49
litigation cases and ensuring compliance and high level roles.
0:54
After two decades in the legal sector, he transitioned into the
0:57
real estate market to streamline how homes are prepared for sale.
1:02
His team's commitment to quality has positioned Homestretch as a
1:06
one stop solution for improving property value and expediting
1:10
sales. Now before we get into all that
1:13
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AD back benefits.com. All right, back to our guest
1:55
today, franchise owner of Homestretch in Cleveland, DC and
1:58
Phoenix, Terry Hammonds. Thanks for making the time to
2:01
Share your story today. Awesome, Anthony, my pleasure.
2:05
Glad to be here. So Terry, before we get into
2:08
homestretch, you became general counsel of a publicly traded
2:13
company at the age of 45, which was your career ambition?
2:18
How did that feel? Ironically, it happened to come
2:23
at a time where I I was in the basically the the deepest
2:28
depression of my life at the time.
2:30
I didn't know it, but I suffered from bipolar disorder.
2:34
And so this ambition, career aspiration that I had was
2:41
somewhat of an arbitrary goal that I had set for myself early
2:45
into my legal practice career. And I latched onto it and, you
2:52
know, basically went about achieving that goal just like I
2:56
did everything else up until that point in time, that was all
2:59
I knew. Just put your head down, work
3:02
your ass off and you know, the result will, will, will get
3:06
there. And and that's what I did.
3:08
And so that's how I spent my entire working life, following
3:14
the the path that I had, you know, laid before myself.
3:16
The thing that allowed me to be not only successful in my
3:21
academic life, but also my athletic life and everything
3:25
that had got me to that point. And so unfortunately, I did not
3:30
know that sort of the arbitrariness of it.
3:35
And I never really thought about, you know, setting goals
3:41
for myself of just sort of being and just sort of going on a
3:47
journey, so to speak. And it was my life.
3:50
It was built around doing things and achieving this arbitrary
3:53
title. And so when I finally got it, it
3:57
was actually, it was quite dissatisfying and it was.
4:02
You think once you get to the the quote UN quote finish line
4:05
that you know there's going to be a ticker tape parade and you
4:09
know you will finally feel fulfilled and whole and all that
4:14
good stuff. And then you get there and it
4:17
feels empty. And it and it feels so empty.
4:20
One of my good friends who I practiced with early in my
4:25
career, he, he described it one way analogy.
4:29
He said it's like a, a pie eating contest and when you win,
4:33
they give you more pie. And so, so it was just sort of
4:38
like, oh, this is, this is it, this is.
4:40
And so it, it's sort of, it was the first time I didn't really
4:44
think about it this way, but it was the first time it started
4:46
hitting me that like success is it's just temporary thing.
4:50
And it's not really, I mean, it, it's, it's simply is that's what
4:55
it is. It's, it's a temporary state of
4:58
being. And then so as soon as you get
5:00
it, if you are like I am, you know, or like I was anyway,
5:05
you're always looking for, OK, now what's the next thing?
5:08
I had put this, this goal out there.
5:11
And when I got it, yeah, I had it and it was just so like, Oh
5:15
well, this sucks now I. Just now I got to move the goal.
5:18
Posts I got to move the goal posts again and it it's you
5:21
know, it was one of those situations where probably 15 or
5:25
20 years earlier my brother had been visiting me I was living in
5:29
London at the time and he was visiting me and and I had told
5:33
him about this goal of being the general counsel by the age of
5:36
45, which gets completely arbitrary.
5:38
I don't even know how I came up with that age, but, and he
5:44
didn't tell me at that time, but subsequently he told me that
5:49
when I had mentioned that to him, he thought to himself, I
5:53
wonder what's going to happen to Terry when he gets that because
5:57
he said you always got exactly what you want.
6:01
But it is like when you get that, which is going to be
6:04
you're like life's work. How?
6:06
He was wondering then how that was going to feel to me, and it
6:10
turned out it wasn't so great. Not so great.
6:13
And then in the summer of 2023 you experienced something very
6:17
troubling. Can you tell us about that?
6:19
Yeah. So that was when I subsequently
6:22
learned that I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
6:26
And so unfortunately, the way I found out, and this was
6:32
approximately a year or so after I had retired from practicing
6:36
law, it's I discovered it because I was, I went through a
6:43
very traumatic psychotic break and I was, you know, moments
6:51
away from harming myself. And I had to be subdued.
6:58
Actually, I ended up being subdued by my brother and my
7:01
nephew. My brother is an Iraq war
7:04
veteran who knows like 3 martial arts.
7:07
My nephew was a state heavyweight, state wrestler,
7:12
state wrestling champ, and so it took both of them and like 3
7:17
police officers to subdue me. That's sort of the state that I
7:21
had worked myself up in into. It was a manic state that I had
7:25
worked myself into over that course of that week leading up
7:29
to it. And thankfully they, even though
7:33
they both, including my sister, were in different places.
7:37
I was in Charlotte at the time. My my brother was in Cleveland,
7:42
My sister and nephew were in Atlanta.
7:45
But I the way I unraveled that week, they knew I was in
7:49
distress and they came and ultimately they were they were
7:54
there when when I just completely.
7:56
What were the signs? What?
7:58
How did they know? Just because of the way I was, I
8:01
was the things I was talking about, I was actually, I was
8:04
hallucinating. I was seeing and hearing things
8:08
that didn't exist and, and I was just, I was talking in a way
8:14
that they just couldn't. They knew something was wrong.
8:20
And so, you know, throughout my life, I was apparently, again,
8:24
this diagnosis came at the age of I think I was 50 at the time.
8:31
I learned from my doctors that diagnosed me that most people
8:35
learn that they're bipolar, bipolar 1, which is what I have
8:39
in their early in their late teens or early 20s.
8:42
Oh wow. And so yeah, I was, I'm in the
8:45
like, whatever, 123 percentile who doesn't figure it out until
8:50
later, partly because I was a very high functioning bipolar
8:56
person and the, the manic side of, of bipolar disorder actually
9:05
helped me be as successful as I was.
9:08
OK. That got you like hyper focused
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on your work, Go, go, go. I could work sort of my calling
9:14
card, my hallmark throughout my career, even starting from when
9:16
I was a kid, was that I'll work everybody.
9:20
You can't you can't outwork Terry, you know, and I, I think
9:24
I'm above average intelligence. I think I'm above average
9:29
athlete, but there's no way that I would have done the things
9:33
I've done academically, athletically and business wise,
9:38
career wise, you know, without my work ethic.
9:43
And you know, the literally days, especially earlier in my
9:47
legal career, I could, I could work for like 3 days solid
9:53
without sleeping. Literally, Yeah.
9:56
So when you look back now, aside from those manic episodes where
10:05
you're, you know, working for three days at a time, can you
10:08
see what now appear to be warning signs like, oh, like I
10:13
had a big dip there or. Yeah, it's, it's the the manic
10:19
stuff again. The manic stuff didn't, I didn't
10:24
start to as I look back now, it only becomes really apparent to
10:28
me sort of later in my life, probably in my 40s, I started to
10:35
there was this, it was, it was more anxiety with it than when I
10:39
was then when I was younger. And so when I look back at those
10:44
times, it sort of were some of the warning signs.
10:46
And my, my ex-wife, she actually after I was diagnosed, she was
10:50
sort of like, yeah, there were, there were sometimes when you
10:53
would especially whenever I had, I was dealing with like
10:58
challenges, whether it be professional or personal, I
11:01
would get very, very like animated and very intense in my
11:08
need to be like confrontational and, and sort of leaning into
11:13
that, that side of it. When I was younger, it was
11:17
there, I couldn't really see it. And again, when I talked to
11:19
friends about this, they say, Oh yeah, especially some of my
11:24
fraternity brothers who, you know, I would call them at like
11:27
10:00 at night after being up for three days.
11:30
And I'd be at my office and I'd be like, what are you guys doing
11:33
at work? You guys need to go home, be
11:35
with your family. And they're like, what are you
11:36
doing? Like what you're like?
11:39
And so when we would talk, when I talked about them afterwards,
11:42
they would say, yeah, we can. Like you were, you were like
11:45
really doing some. We thought you were like
11:47
Superman, like we couldn't get it.
11:49
So there was some of that on the depressive side.
11:52
I really didn't. It's the, the depressions became
11:58
longer as I got older. And it's, and it's when it I
12:03
experienced it sort of the hardest whenever I went to when
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I got my career aspiration and then I could really see I began
12:11
isolating. I began it just experiencing
12:17
some really dark times, which I just sort of I kept it all to
12:21
myself because that's how, that's just how I've always
12:24
operated. So, so yeah.
12:26
And not a lot. I can see again, I was so high
12:29
functioning. I think people were actually
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afraid to, even if they did see things, it would be hard for
12:36
them to like say hey dude, you need to chill.
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Or because I was always so successful and so it was sort of
12:44
the double edged sword for me. Was there something that
12:48
triggered that psychotic break that you know eventually led to
12:51
your diagnosis? There's not one particular
12:56
event. There was a number of things
12:58
that happened to one of the the things that my doctors believe
13:04
that was sort of a a Seminole event was when I actually
13:07
retired be cut from practicing law sort of the year before.
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Because it was at that point that I lost a lot of my sort of
13:18
life structure and a lot of like where I could normally point
13:24
either my, you know, depression or my, my manic side of it,
13:29
particularly the manic side. Like I could fuel.
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I could use that as fuel for work.
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Whenever I stepped away from practicing law, I lost that
13:40
thing that, you know, again, from the time I was a child,
13:45
there was always something that I was gunning for, you know, and
13:49
it. Was grades, it was athletics and
13:51
it was law school and then the career.
13:54
Yeah, the thing where I could, especially on the manic side,
13:57
where I could put my, that manic energy in, that was constructive
14:03
for me. It became destructive when I
14:05
didn't have something around me to pour it into, you know, And
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so I think that was one of the big things I'd also in that
14:17
leading up to that event as well, I had been going through a
14:21
lot being personally my, my marriage, you know, dissolved.
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And again, in part because of, you know, some of the emotional
14:30
stuff and mental health stuff that I was going through that I
14:32
wasn't aware of. But all of that was as well.
14:37
I lost my grandmother basic a year before it was somebody very
14:43
important in my life. I lost both my grandmothers in
14:45
that same year. But so that was that happened.
14:49
And then to some people who aren't dog people, this will
14:53
sound silly, but just like a month before I lost my dog, who
14:58
was literally my best friend. And and so and so, yeah, there
15:04
was, there were these events that were happening and, and I
15:09
was not good at ever reaching out for help or the way I dealt
15:14
with things my whole life was. Why was it so hard for you to
15:18
raise your hand and say I need some help?
15:22
It was just how I operated. I never, I, you know, this whole
15:27
like I never, I don't recall asking for help for anything
15:32
real. I just, I've always just figured
15:35
stuff out. I never really had a mentor in
15:39
the legal practice. I never like you know, again, I
15:41
would learn from people, but but from observant.
15:43
I'm an introvert naturally and so and that's how I did like my
15:50
even like growing up. My parents talk about how, you
15:55
know, I never asked my parents for hope for help with homework.
16:00
I never got anything but A's from 6th grade through the end
16:05
of high school. I was a validator in my eyes.
16:06
I never my I would come home, do my homework, go hang out with my
16:09
friends or watch T like I didn't, I didn't ask for help,
16:14
you know? Do you think this was compounded
16:16
by the fact that you're a guy? Was it harder as a guy to ask
16:19
for help? Was it harder as an African
16:22
American male to ask for help? I think both.
16:26
I think the way that I was socialized not and again, nobody
16:30
ever, I always felt beyond loved and supported by everyone in my
16:34
family, right. And so and I think a lot of it
16:37
comes from, you know, being a man, being a black man, watching
16:42
my dad, who is the quintessential whatever you want
16:48
to call American Dream, you know, story of pulling himself
16:53
up by his bootstraps. The oldest boy of eight kids
16:56
growing up on welfare with a single mother.
17:00
He was put out of the house when he was 16 because my grandmother
17:03
couldn't feed him anymore. He was the first person in his
17:05
family to go to college. He went to college on a football
17:07
scholarship, started out as a teacher, couldn't feed us.
17:12
So he decide he's going to go into sales and so and just, you
17:17
know, there and I saw how my dad took care of his extended family
17:21
doing what he did. I saw how my dad sacrificed and
17:24
my mom too, to get us, you know, moving us out of, you know, low
17:31
income, you know, housing development area, living beyond
17:36
their means so that we could go to better schools.
17:39
And I don't know that that I think it's just sort of seeing
17:43
that and seeing how my dad did. I never saw my dad cry or
17:47
complain and that he would tell us some things that definitely
17:50
marked me and and sort of framed my the the way I saw the world.
18:01
And I tell him, well, he doesn't remember some of the things he
18:03
said to me, but as a kid and I would I was that way.
18:06
He would tell me things and I would latch on to them and I'll.
18:11
What's one of those things you remember?
18:13
The most the there were two things that were I guess most
18:18
made the most impact. The first one was, well, I think
18:23
I was like 10 years old, 10 or 11.
18:25
Whenever Top Gun came out. I told my dad after we watched a
18:29
movie, I, I basically wanted to be Maverick.
18:32
And so I didn't realize that. Yeah, Anyway, I told, and so I
18:37
asked my dad, we're leaving the movie theater.
18:38
I'm like, dad, how do I, how do I get to be a Navy aviator?
18:41
How do I get to fly jets? I want to fly jets.
18:44
My dad says he had no idea. So he's, you go to the Naval
18:50
Academy. Oh, I said, oh, OK, great.
18:53
How do I go to the Naval Cat? He said get all as the and so I
19:00
got all A's for literally from that point, never got anything,
19:03
never considered getting anything other than an A from
19:06
that point forward and ultimately got my appointment to
19:09
the Naval Academy decided not to go but anyway, but that he just
19:13
like he would say these things and it was very for me, it was
19:15
like he said it it this is and so I go and do it.
19:19
The other thing was when we first moved from basically an
19:25
all black part of town to predominantly white, all white
19:30
air, we were one of the first families to black families to
19:32
move to this, where I eventually went to high school.
19:37
Again, it was a public school, but it's still one of the best
19:40
one or two public high schools in Pittsburgh, right in the
19:43
state of Pennsylvania. And my parents specifically
19:46
moved there for the purpose of making sure that we were able to
19:49
go to the best possible schools, give us the best opportunity.
19:51
Well, the first time my dad took me to like in our household,
19:57
like you couldn't play sports unless you had grades like that
20:01
was first and foremost, but it was sort of there are some
20:05
conversations my parents had with us that, you know, all
20:09
black parents have with. I don't say all, A lot of black
20:12
parents have one, especially when you're you're moving your
20:15
family into. A new all white area.
20:18
There were things that happened as our house was being
20:22
constructed that my parents didn't tell us about until we
20:25
were much older. Things.
20:28
They're beyond the pale. And my sister and brother and I,
20:33
we were in fights constantly because people would say things.
20:38
But one of the things that my dad told me this is probably the
20:46
most impactful thing that he ever said to me in my entire
20:48
life, sort of framed my life is when he was signing me up for I
20:53
think it was, it was either football or baseball.
20:55
I can't remember which one. But he told me, Jeez, I like,
21:00
I'm almost getting choked up when I like when I think about
21:03
this now. But he told me that no, what, no
21:09
matter what I did, he's like, you can't just, you can't just
21:15
be good, He said.
21:27
He said you have to be great. He said you have to be great or
21:39
they won't let you play. And, and he, he said, he said,
21:52
because if, if you're just as good as the other guy, the other
21:56
guy's going to blame it. All right, Geez, there was a
22:06
different yardstick for you. Oh.
22:09
Yeah, because you're black. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
22:12
And and you know, yes. And so my whatever it was 8 or 9
22:20
year old, mine took that and it became like, that's life.
22:26
It wasn't just like literally. And my my dad wasn't saying it.
22:30
I mean, he was saying it out of, you know, love, obviously.
22:34
And and there would be examples of when that would it, where it
22:39
would actually play out, you know, where even if I was there
22:44
would there would be a reason for me not to, you know, get and
22:47
there were and there were examples.
22:49
My dad would sit as there would be times when in, you know, life
22:54
where my dad in his, in his professional life where he
22:59
would, you know, hit the proverbial glass ceiling.
23:04
You know, he was in sales for first with Xerox and digital and
23:08
some Microsystems, and then he finished his career at FedEx.
23:12
But he you know, there would be times he would come home and
23:15
tell us how. How?
23:26
I'm sorry. Jeez.
23:31
You know, he'd work. They'd give him the worst
23:37
territory and he'd work his butt off.
23:43
He'd build it up. He'd make President's claw and
23:47
the next year they'd hand that off to somebody else and let
23:53
them enjoy the spoils of what he had built.
23:55
And you know, and and there was only so far that he would be
23:58
able to advance. And so and so those it was sort
24:05
of reinforcing a lot of the stuff, some of those things that
24:10
he would say to us. And again, I could I I've told
24:12
this story to my dad about the can't be good.
24:15
You have to be great thing. You know, he doesn't remember
24:18
saying that. He also didn't say it to my
24:21
younger brother or older sister. So that's what I found out.
24:26
And so but again, it's for in my mind, just the way and I'm not
24:31
sure that they would have reacted in the same way or would
24:33
have the same impact on them. It's, you know, some of it is
24:36
just. Who I As parents, sometimes you
24:39
recognize that you have to parent each kid a little bit
24:41
differently. Yeah, absolutely.
24:43
What a powerful and painful message to be receiving and
24:47
having reinforced as you're a kid now, Terry, I want to make
24:51
sure that we leave enough time to talk about home stretch.
24:54
But before we get there, you had another health scare.
24:57
Oh. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it happened
24:59
there. Oh, yeah.
25:00
So just this past summer, I actually had to have an
25:05
emergency surgery. It took about almost 7 hours to
25:09
remove some blood clots, some blockages in my stomach veins.
25:16
I have a pretty probably extremely high pain threshold.
25:20
So I had been dealing with a lot of pain in my abdomen region for
25:24
a while when I can't even remember it a while, a long many
25:27
months. I exercise every day, usually
25:31
very vigorously. So, you know, it's just sort of
25:34
part of it. I've dealt with, you know,
25:36
playing college football, being 5 foot nothing, 100, nothing
25:39
sort of pain is sort of like, yeah, it's part of it.
25:41
And so I there is this came a point this this past summer
25:47
where I was, you know, I was taking a lot of stomach meds and
25:50
all kinds of stuff. And in one day, thankfully, my
25:55
sister lives just a few doors down from me.
25:58
I had to literally call her and have her take me to the
26:02
emergency room because like the stomach, abdomen pain was just
26:06
so severe. So when I got to the hospital,
26:09
they did a bunch of testing on me and found out that I had
26:12
these blockages, these blood clots.
26:16
And so ultimately it was, you know, they still haven't
26:21
pinpointed exactly part of the reason that these I had do have
26:25
some family history of blood clotting, but having them in the
26:27
stomach is in stomach veins is is not normal.
26:32
Part of it they think was accelerated by I take lithium
26:35
because I have bipolar disorder, I take lithium, which makes sure
26:39
that the electrical your brain runs on electrical pulses,
26:42
whatever. So that makes it those all
26:45
things, all those things work properly.
26:47
So they think that accelerated some of it.
26:49
And then the other piece of it is they believe some of it was
26:52
like induced by stress. And that's where I buried a lot
26:56
of my stress. So, so it was those two and they
27:00
had noticed that based on the way some of the veins were
27:05
bending, that they had been there for a prolonged period of
27:10
time. And so, so again, they'll,
27:12
they'll probably never know exactly what sort of caused the
27:16
initial bleeding, but but that's what happened.
27:20
So yes. And it was the surgery again, is
27:23
6 1/2 hours of surgery, very delicate.
27:27
And, you know, if it would have been done 15 years ago, my
27:33
likelihood of survival would have been very different because
27:36
the procedure that the way they did it is, it's a miracle of
27:42
modern medicine. Is all I'll say.
27:44
So just in the last couple of years, you've stared down the
27:48
barrel of death twice. You could say that, you say.
27:53
That how does that impact the way that you look at life and
27:57
Business Today? I, I think it's made me a lot
28:08
more, I'll say short sighted, which is probably which is what
28:15
I needed. I again, probably since I was
28:20
very young and even more so as I, you know, when I began my
28:26
work life after law school and you know, I had a family, I
28:30
became more and more sort of focused on longer, like being
28:38
able to do things and see and control what happened, you know,
28:44
going forward. And a lot of time spent
28:49
regretting maybe things that I hadn't done perfectly or the way
28:54
that I would have wanted them to go.
28:55
So I was, I guess the, the short way of putting it is I've become
29:00
much more present in, in what I do and tried it as much as I can
29:06
deal with things, you know, sort of day-to-day and they're going
29:09
to be ups and downs and I can't, I've, I've tried to give up as
29:14
much as I can, trying to not only control other people by
29:20
hook or by either convincing them or, or whatever it is.
29:25
And more so just focused on being in the moment, being
29:29
present, dealing with what comes my way, having as few
29:33
expectations about other people and what they're going to do and
29:36
how they're going to do it. And, and yeah, just trying to,
29:40
trying to get into the moment and enjoying whatever it is.
29:44
The hell is on my plate right now, you know?
29:47
Are you better at asking for help now, or is this still Terry
29:51
Hammond's doing it mostly on his own?
29:55
I think I'm a lot better at asking for help.
29:57
One one of the things that I am, I think it's helped me do sort
30:03
of having these both the, you know, being diagnosed with
30:07
bipolar disorder as well as having these physical.
30:11
The my latest health issue is that I am, I'm very transparent.
30:20
I don't care to be the best at everything or anything really.
30:26
How did you let that go? That's not easy to do.
30:30
Oh yeah, just be well, I think because one I want to, I want to
30:36
share my experiences. So that's why it's easy.
30:41
I remember the first time we talked to you were you were
30:43
mentioning just how like vulnerable you thought it, it
30:46
didn't occur to me that that's what that was, because now I and
30:49
I get 10 years ago, I wouldn't talk about anything that, you
30:54
know, in my life that was going on that was like A and quote UN
31:00
quote negative thing. Like now I'm, I'm happy to talk
31:04
about my bipolar, you know, I'm happy to talk about my, you
31:08
know, my blood clots and how that came about and even things
31:13
like, you know, fact that I'm, you know, divorced and you know,
31:17
my, my marriage fell apart again, you know, so, but that's
31:20
just life. That's part of my journey.
31:23
And I, so I think I am like, yeah, I don't, I'm not as
31:29
concerned, very little concerned about what other people think
31:35
because again, I'm trying to be present and, and my journey is
31:38
my journey. Everybody has, you know, again,
31:41
everybody's story isn't my story, but everybody's got
31:44
something. I don't care who you are.
31:46
Like what? It doesn't matter what you have.
31:49
You've got something so. And it sounds like this sort of
31:52
dissolving of your armor has been really helpful for you.
31:56
And in that process, I believe 100% that you've been able to
32:02
help other people with their stuff when they can see a
32:07
strong, you know, type a driven personality, drop their, their
32:15
cloak of armor and say, hey, here's me, here's my underbelly,
32:19
here's all the stuff I'm dealing with.
32:21
They're like, OK, I can talk about my stuff too.
32:25
Have you seen that? Have you noticed that in in just
32:27
your personal interactions? Yeah.
32:29
I mean, I don't, I definitely and I've had the opportunity to
32:35
speak, do some as public speaking, I guess, and some
32:40
other opportunities to just to share stuff and and even with my
32:44
friends and family. My it's funny because my family
32:48
is less maybe understandably, like they don't talk about sort
32:55
of my issues, issues. I thought as much as as freely
33:00
as I do right. And but me, I, I just honestly,
33:04
I just don't care if you like, you get like people have all, a
33:07
lot of times people I'll say, Oh, yeah, I'll tell people that
33:10
I'm bipolar or whatever. It'll be like, you know, like
33:12
clutch their pearls or whatever. You know, I'm just sort of like,
33:14
yeah, dude, yeah. So is Kanye West.
33:16
I just take my medicine, you know, is, you know, you know,
33:20
is, you know, but everybody's got something, you know.
33:23
Well, thanks for, I hope, I hope it does help.
33:26
People actually do want to at some point in time here very
33:31
soon, I want to like intentionally develop some type
33:37
of like public speaking presentation for focused on men,
33:45
black men as well in particular. I do think we struggle with
33:49
reaching out for help and especially around mental health
33:53
stuff and even just having a therapist and all these things
33:56
that everybody should be doing. I'm so I want to talk about that
34:00
and encourage people to do that. And I think by sharing my story,
34:03
I think I can hopefully help more people to do that, to open
34:07
up about it, because it's just, you know, everybody's got a
34:11
little bit of something going on that they can use some help
34:13
with. Well, and I appreciate you
34:15
sharing some of your stuff because that's going to help
34:17
other people address theirs. OK, Now I want to get to how did
34:22
the opportunity with Homestretch come about?
34:26
Yeah, so. So Homestretch had been, it
34:30
started out as a two man operation.
34:33
The two founders of the company there, Derek Shuman and and Nick
34:37
Lobert, they're based out of Cincinnati.
34:39
They these guys came up with this great idea to focus on.
34:46
There's a bit of a niche in the real estate real estate market.
34:51
It's sort of home preparation market where there's this
34:54
there's this area where the jobs are too small for like big
35:00
contractors, but a little too big for just like a handyman.
35:04
And so they sort of home stretches was really designed to
35:09
focus on helping real estate agents resolve a lot of their
35:12
pain points that they experienced in trying to get the
35:15
services that they need in order to get houses per, you know,
35:19
ready for listing quickly, for high value and for high quality
35:25
work. And so it's, I think it's genius
35:29
we came across it, these guys, Derek and Nick, they started the
35:32
company in Cincinnati in 2019. They didn't start sort of
35:37
franchising branching out until 2023, end of 2023.
35:44
It was at this point in time where I had been, I had been
35:48
sort of fully leaning into the real estate side of things.
35:53
I had stepped away from practicing law.
35:54
So and I had, I don't know if I mentioned this before, but I had
35:58
probably since 2009 I bought my first property and that was sort
36:02
of, that was, I was something I was doing on the side while I
36:05
was practicing law. I sort of backwards in a sort of
36:10
unintentional way. When I moved to London, I sold
36:13
my house in Pennsylvania and then I bought a condo in Miami
36:18
because my wife at my wife and I at the time we thought, oh,
36:22
we'll fly back and forth to Miami because we like to hang
36:25
out in Miami and we'll be great. We'll have this condo there.
36:28
Well, we ended up having our daughter in London, so we never
36:30
came back to Miami. So, but anyway, it was my first
36:36
property and I sold it five years after that because you
36:40
recall back in 2008 market crashes.
36:42
We buy this cheap condo in Miami and five years later we sold it
36:47
for twice. So following on that, I was all
36:51
along, I was buy out, buy properties here and there.
36:55
I leaned into that once in 2022. I guess it wasn't yeah, when I
37:02
walked away from practicing law. And at that time I had a
37:05
portfolio of six or seven properties in a few different
37:09
states. And as my brother and I, who was
37:12
partnering with me then, he, he came on board as my basically my
37:16
property manager for my various properties.
37:19
And we were have, we were sort of struggling with turning over
37:24
or doing make readies on our units or our duplexes and
37:28
triplexes that we had to sort of get the the units ready for our
37:32
next tenants. And if we wanted to do flips of
37:35
properties, you know, it was just take it.
37:38
It was hard to get consistently reliable contractors to do work
37:42
you. Got to come in and fix stuff.
37:43
You got to clean it up. Get ready.
37:45
For the next tenant, just the basic stuff, nothing to but you
37:48
know, again, especially if you got a unit that you got to turn
37:51
over and get somebody in every day that goes by that that that
37:55
unit is vacant, you're losing money.
37:57
You're not you're literally losing money.
37:59
And so if you can't have, if you don't have somebody who's going
38:02
to be consistent and they're going to be fast about it even
38:06
whenever you're flipping a house, that's a problem.
38:10
Well, at this same time, I'm getting various, this is in
38:15
2023. I'm getting emails every once in
38:17
a while from folks who are, they're these sort of like
38:22
franchise consultants. They're reaching out and they're
38:25
reaching out to me say, hey, would this, you know, place on
38:28
your background looks like you might be a fit for going this
38:31
ABCXYZ. So I started to listen because I
38:35
really didn't have anything else to do, didn't have any other
38:37
ideas. And I started working with a a
38:42
couple different guys and they've started presenting me
38:45
specific and then like Homestretch appeared like.
38:49
There's something about this one that stuck out to you.
38:51
What was it? It was, yeah, everything was
38:53
lining up because the opportunity, it was sort of fit
38:58
this pain point that we were experiencing on the real estate
39:01
investment side. And everything that he talked
39:04
about was sort of like, oh wow, like shit, we could use that.
39:09
Like so. And then we were thinking, we're
39:10
like, wow, this has to work. This, this is something that's
39:13
going to work. And it was.
39:15
And so I was the number 7. And there's now I think it's
39:19
close to 100 of these locations around the country.
39:23
Our Cleveland operation was the number seven franchise.
39:26
And if you know anything about franchising, so if you're going
39:30
to buy into a franchise, they have this thing, it's called an
39:32
FDD fair disclosure document. And so that the franchisor has
39:38
to basically present all this financial information to show
39:41
you, you know, sort of what you're getting into.
39:43
Well, at the time that we were signing up to do this, there was
39:48
really no financial information. It was, you know, it was the
39:51
financial information that the founders had for their business
39:54
which had been ongoing already for four or five years.
39:57
So you know, that wasn't one of going to be where we were
40:00
starting out and so. So it was a bit of a flyer, but
40:05
we had such faith when we went to do the they call it a
40:09
discovery day. You know, we were just, we were
40:14
convinced by it was the energy, the passion, the IT was Nick and
40:21
Derek, you know, and those guys just sort of they ultimately
40:27
made me believe because believe me, it was a it was a struggle
40:30
to write that check, you know, for the franchise fee and
40:34
without really, you know, having any real, you know, firm
40:39
financial data, just say, hey, if you do, you know, do
40:42
something like this, this is what you're going to end up with
40:44
it. There really wasn't that.
40:47
And so but we knew like the business, it all made sense.
40:50
We knew our experience that it was.
40:52
Yeah, so they explained the business model in a bit more
40:55
detail. I'm, I'm selling a house.
40:59
I want it to go for, you know, top dollar.
41:01
I want it to look good. I don't know.
41:03
But the walls are dinged up, the paint, my kids fingerprints are
41:07
on it, and my furniture's all ratty.
41:10
And, you know, so you guys come in and you do what?
41:13
Yeah. So, so there's a number of
41:16
things that are different. So what we do at home stretch is
41:19
there. There's nothing new about sort
41:21
of what we actually do. We like you say, we do clear
41:24
outs, we paint, we floor, you know, landscaping, handyman and
41:29
cleaning. That's basically what we did.
41:30
All of that stuff. There are millions of people,
41:32
contractors who do all of those things all the time.
41:35
The thing about the homestretch business model that makes it so
41:38
different and makes it unique even in the office presentation
41:43
we did today for they're like, there's nothing like this.
41:45
Nobody does all these things and it's how we do it, right?
41:49
So the basic thing that we do and oh, the other, the part of
41:53
that is that we market not to the individual home owner.
41:57
We market to the real estate agents because it's whenever
42:01
somebody's going to sell their home, they're typically looking
42:04
at the real estate agent to do, to tell them what's they need to
42:08
do to do this. And so in real estate agents,
42:12
while they can do it, they don't want to do it.
42:15
Why? Because they don't get paid to
42:17
do that and it just sucks up their time.
42:20
Real estate agents want to sell houses.
42:21
And so we, our business model is based on marketing to the real
42:26
estate agents who if we build a relationship with them, then
42:30
they'll not only bring us that listing that they have today,
42:34
but when they next get a listing, they need some work and
42:36
then the next one and then the next one and then the next one.
42:39
Whereas if you're marketing to a homeowner, it's a one and done
42:43
D. One and done and I may not even
42:45
understand that I need your service.
42:46
Maybe I don't recognize that I Oh, this is my house.
42:49
It's beautiful. I've lived here for a long time.
42:51
I think it's most. People don't.
42:52
We go into houses all the time. People have red, pink or blue
42:56
kitchens and they'll be like, oh, it's beautiful.
42:57
And they're like, no, nobody's going to buy that.
43:00
So you develop a relationship with the realtor because you
43:03
know that's an ongoing thing and they recognize the value in it.
43:07
And like you said, they don't want to put the effort into it
43:09
because they're not getting paid any extra.
43:11
They're busy with everything else.
43:13
Absolutely. And so that's the, that's the
43:15
key. The cornerstone I think to the,
43:17
to the business model is that we're, it's designed, yes, we're
43:23
ultimately helping the homeowner sell their home for the highest
43:26
dollar. But what we're really doing is
43:30
all of the project management that goes on that the Realtor is
43:33
going to be stuck with. It's basically resolving the
43:36
pain points that the Realtor has whenever they're trying to sell
43:41
a home. And the other issue that the
43:43
Realtors have is that when they recommend somebody, and this is
43:47
the real, the real challenge for the real estate agent is that
43:50
when they recommend somebody and then that somebody screws up
43:55
the, the client's mad at that, the client's mad at that.
43:58
And so our business model we have at A at a base level, we
44:02
have 3 service level agreements that we have with each of our
44:05
clients and that is 1, you give us a call and we'll be out there
44:09
within 24 hours to do the consultation, right.
44:13
Yeah. See you look at your face there.
44:14
You're like. Who does that?
44:15
That's fast. Does that, Yeah, Named, you
44:18
know, Joe the painter. He's not climbing down off of
44:20
the ladder to come do a consultation on job he may or
44:23
may not get anytime soon. He'll be a couple weeks.
44:26
He'll come out. We got out there because we have
44:28
people dedicated to doing that. We're out there same day
44:32
something you call us up when we do cold calls agents, we're
44:34
like, hey, what, what projects do you have going on that we can
44:37
help you out with? And they're like, oh, well, I've
44:38
got one or what time can we meet you?
44:41
We'll do the concert this afternoon.
44:42
Can you meet us there? Right.
44:44
So nobody does that. That's the first thing.
44:45
Second one is 24 hours after we do the consultation, we'll send
44:50
you a quote again. Fast turn.
44:53
Around and it. Is the most.
44:54
Professional. You know, we use all the
44:57
technology, all the things, right?
44:59
So we're we're gonna get you a cope within 24 hours.
45:01
And then the third service level agreement we have is we're gonna
45:05
start the job within three to five business days after you
45:07
sign the contract. OK, again, agents, what we talk
45:11
about with agents all the time with time kills deals, that's
45:14
what any agent is going to tell you.
45:15
So longer you waiting and they need to plan out things too.
45:18
The agent needs to figure out, OK, when am I going to schedule
45:22
listing photos? When am I going to schedule
45:24
this? When am I right?
45:25
They can't do the, if if you're trying to manage a project of
45:28
any size or scope and you got to manage 3 or 4 different
45:32
contractors and try to just getting them to come out and do
45:36
the give you an estimate you, you're not planning, you know,
45:41
to do listing photos, get the, it'll three, it'll be 3 or 4
45:44
months before you can do that. Most of our jobs, even if we got
45:47
to do four or five of the services, most of our jobs from
45:51
the time we start, I mean for, even from the time that you give
45:56
us a call, assuming things go well and we get things signed up
46:00
in an expeditious manner, we're going to be done in two to three
46:03
weeks tops. Wow, that's fast.
46:06
Is the Is there any? Data, Terry, that exists that
46:09
shows somebody who uses your service is going to sell their
46:14
house faster. Or for more.
46:16
Money. Is there any way to extrapolate
46:18
that? Well, it's one of my slides in
46:21
my. Presentation and it's it it
46:23
doesn't it's not necessarily our data or for our specific
46:27
projects, but there's tons of data out there and ages real
46:30
estate agents have access to it as well.
46:32
But on that shows that as you invest in your home, there's
46:40
going to be an increase in the value, right.
46:42
And so now some people don't necessarily in make an
46:45
investment in the things that are going to create the most
46:48
value. And that's the things that we
46:50
focus on, those cosmetic things where you don't have to
46:52
necessarily break the bank, but you can do an 8 to 10 to $15,000
46:57
project and then get a return of, you know, 50, sixty $70,000.
47:02
I mean, I have examples in my office presentation today where
47:05
we did a $20,000 project. We did all of the services.
47:10
It took us just two weeks to do that project.
47:14
And the family ended up selling the home.
47:16
They listed it for $100,000 over what they were planning to list
47:22
it for when they were going to sell the home as is.
47:25
And they got their, they got their asking price within two
47:29
days of listing. Wow.
47:31
And so yes, there's, there's tons of data out there.
47:34
Actually, I wish I could, I wish I had it memorized with, but
47:37
there's three data points on exactly that thing.
47:40
Is there a price? Range of home in which your
47:45
services tend to make the most sense.
47:48
You know, maybe somebody who's got, you know, different part of
47:51
town or a smaller home selling for $100,000.
47:55
Maybe it's hard to get the return on your service, I don't.
48:00
Necessarily know that there is a range now we've done from the I
48:08
mean we've done $100,000 condos all the way up to like you know
48:12
one and a half million dollar projects.
48:15
That's a good range. It's more.
48:17
It's more a matter. Of identifying the fixes that
48:24
are necessary to increase value. Now there everybody know, I
48:28
think everybody knows what most people know that it's the
48:31
greatest, the biggest bang for your buck is going to be in
48:34
kitchens and bathrooms, right? And in any amount, usually the
48:40
thing that's going to create the most value for someone when
48:44
they're trying to sell their home, it's going to be all about
48:47
just neutralizing your home. Like you were talking earlier
48:50
about, oh, you know, everybody thinks that, oh Mama, this is
48:53
beautiful. Who wouldn't love, you know,
48:54
blue or red walls? And they're like, you know, and
48:58
so when we go in there, we make everything as easy as possible
49:01
for the clients because we put together color palettes and
49:04
they're all just sort of neutral colors.
49:06
We got paint, flooring, all the stuff that your basic stuff that
49:09
you're going to need. And agents love it too, because
49:11
agents, we speak the same language as the agents.
49:15
The agents know that all I mean I can, I can spend 2000 dollars,
49:20
you know, painting the cabinets and the the walls, doing some
49:24
new tile, some LVP in the kitchen and and guess what I'm
49:28
going to get basically 15 to $20,000 of value for doing that
49:33
little bit of work. Is that what you would think is
49:36
maybe the? The lowest hanging fruit, like
49:40
the biggest ROI lever that you can pull ABS absolutely.
49:44
So it's it's definitely. It starts up kitchens and
49:46
bathrooms and then it's just painting and flooring.
49:50
Like you do that stuff, you make it nice and neutral so people
49:53
can walk into the home and visualize what it's going to
49:57
look like. If you've got like again, if
49:58
you've got these I'm called crazy colors, but you got these
50:02
different non neutral colors in there.
50:04
It's just hard for people to imagine it.
50:07
And what the other thing that happens is, and this is what
50:10
agents are are mostly when agents come into a home, they're
50:14
looking at it and they're telling their their clients
50:16
like, look, yeah, it's it might be nice for you and it might
50:19
even be like a fresh coat of green paint in your in your
50:23
living room and not be beautifully done, right.
50:26
The problem is that the person buying it, they're going to
50:30
start deducting what they're going to pay you for the house
50:34
because they're going to paint it.
50:37
They don't care that you've just painted it.
50:39
Whatever color you paint, they're going to paint.
50:41
If they come in and they see white or you know, some light
50:45
Gray, light blue, something like that, that never enters their
50:48
mind that, oh, I got to paint this room.
50:51
Oh, I got to redo this carpet. Oh, I got it.
50:54
You know, you see what I'm saying?
50:55
So it's at the end of the day when somebody's looking at it,
50:59
or at least the way the agents a lot of times they're thinking
51:01
about it is they're, they're counseling their client.
51:04
It's like, yeah, that's fine. Yeah, it's it's great.
51:06
It looks great. The problem is you're going to
51:09
ask for this and people are going to be looking at your
51:12
asking price and all these things, these cosmetic things
51:16
that you have going on that aren't really neutral, they're
51:19
going to start deducting from that.
51:21
So you're really, you're losing money.
51:23
And so just by putting in a adding a little bit of money to
51:27
paint all of the rooms or to put some new carpet down, you're,
51:32
you're increasing the likelihood that you're going to get over
51:36
your asking price. What's the craziest thing that
51:38
you've seen going? Into a house that you guys had
51:40
to fix. Oh my gosh, I remember the very
51:46
first consultation my brother and I did in Cleveland, and it's
51:52
a story that will go down in infamy.
51:54
Infamy. We should.
51:55
We should, I don't have enough time to tell you about this, but
51:58
we go to this house and I think the house, I can't remember what
52:02
it was being listed for. It might have been 100,000 or
52:05
so. So it is in a pretty tough part
52:08
of East Cleveland. If anybody knows anything,
52:10
Buckley is pretty tough part of town.
52:12
We literally saw as we're around the corner, we're we're next to
52:17
a dollar, we're driving to the to the house.
52:20
There's a Dollar General store on the corner there and we're at
52:22
the stoplight and we're literally watching the Dollar
52:25
General get robbed. We're seeing guys run out.
52:28
So and we're like, we're like, what?
52:30
And I'm thinking to myself, what have I done to my life?
52:32
What am I am questioning every life decision I've ever made?
52:36
I'm like, what are we doing anyway?
52:37
We get to the house and it's from the from the outside.
52:41
It's not, I mean, again, it's tough part of town.
52:43
It's not that, you know, not that great, but anyway, no big
52:45
deal. We got like, I literally did not
52:48
know that people lived like these people lived like the the
52:53
amount of it was just, I mean, I was, I was being harsh.
52:58
We're talking about like garbage, like filth.
53:01
Like like every there was just. I mean, all of the, the
53:04
silverware in the kitchen was out on the counter and
53:08
everything was in disarray. There were, I mean, mattresses
53:11
on the floor in the, in the bedroom.
53:13
I mean, it was quite like, and I'm literally, and we at this
53:17
point, this is our very first consultation.
53:19
We didn't have those little booties that we now had that,
53:22
you know, I mean, I walk into the house.
53:24
You wanted those more to protect you from the.
53:26
House rather than the other way around.
53:28
I wanted a whole hazmat suit. Whenever we went into this house
53:32
and it was, it was just, I mean, this is the thing like we see,
53:35
we've seen hoarder situations like again, I can't, I can't
53:39
figure out how people actually live in these now, By the way, I
53:45
love a hoarder situation from a business standpoint because now
53:48
I don't do any of the work. That's primarily primary reason
53:53
I have guys that do do the work for me, but it's it, it, those
53:58
are probably our most profitable projects.
54:02
There's very few people want to do it, can do it effectively,
54:05
but we know how to do it very well.
54:08
But hoarder situations, we've seen all kinds.
54:09
We, we had a couple homes. We had one home in particular
54:12
where the IT was an investor home.
54:15
They hadn't had a tenant for probably 6-7 months.
54:19
A raccoon had gotten into the house.
54:22
Oh, oh, yeah. Oh.
54:23
Just imagine. I mean, it was, it was horrific.
54:28
My sister used to have a business on the side where she.
54:30
Would help people organize their, their homes, their
54:34
closets. And she ran into some folks that
54:36
were, you know, full on hoarders and you know, she made a good
54:40
point. She's like, you know, it often
54:43
times there's a, there's a mental health issue going on
54:46
there that they are so depressed, they're so
54:49
overwhelmed that they, they don't even know where to start.
54:52
Like absolutely they they can't even look.
54:56
At it. Or they do.
54:57
They look past it. Yeah, they don't.
54:59
They don't see it and they feel. Like it's like, and a lot of
55:02
they've become attached to it. You know, again, it's not it's
55:05
not rational, but but yeah, so your.
55:10
Growth is dependent upon making more relationships with more
55:15
real estate agents, more Realtors, effectively.
55:18
Yeah. Yeah.
55:19
And how? Are you doing that?
55:20
What? What is your?
55:21
Mechanism for connecting with them I heard.
55:23
I think I heard you mentioned cold calling.
55:25
Yeah, I mean that's how that's at the.
55:27
Part of it, cold calling and then from the cold calls, the
55:32
goal is to not only call the agents themselves, but to call
55:35
office managers. That's the most effective way
55:39
because if you can get an office manager to invite you into their
55:43
office to do an office presentation, then you can
55:47
really, you have the time and the ability to really help the
55:52
agents to help it Click for them.
55:55
There is not a there is not an agent with, you know, even a
55:59
decent agent who understands their business, has any
56:02
understanding of their business that won't absolutely fall in
56:06
love with what we present to them.
56:08
It's a pretty easy sell for you. Oh, it's an easy sell if.
56:11
You give us this if you if. You can listen to us for and
56:14
again our pitch and if if you listen to the If an agent
56:16
listens to us when we do a cold call, if they listen to the 1st
56:20
20 seconds, they will they will be interested.
56:25
What's that first 20 seconds sound like?
56:29
Hello. Hello Bob, how are you?
56:33
Hey, this is Terry from Homestretch.
56:35
I just wanted to reach out to you, let you know about this
56:38
great service that we're offering.
56:40
We help real estate professionals like yourself get
56:42
your homes ready to ready to list.
56:44
We do clear outs. We do painting, flooring,
56:46
handyman landscaping and clean outs and home cleaning.
56:52
Why don't you tell me what you do to get your houses ready to,
56:56
to listen? And so it's, it's just that I
57:00
mean, there's, if you listen it like, and it's now again, some
57:03
of them are, they're just too busy.
57:06
Some of some of them hate. Now you get, we get hung up on
57:09
occasionally because they just don't want to hear Coco.
57:13
But if they get, if they take half a set to like, think about
57:17
that question and answer it, that question is going to lead
57:21
to, I've got a whole list of other questions that are going
57:24
to come after that. Because what that agent is going
57:28
to begin to talk about when I asked them, what do you do to
57:31
get your houses ready to list? They're going to start talking
57:34
about their pain points and they're going to say, oh,
57:37
they're going to say they're, they may even say, you know,
57:39
I've got a guy. And I was like, oh, you're got a
57:42
guy. So what does he when, whenever
57:43
you call, when your clients call him, how quickly does he get out
57:46
there to give him a quote? How quickly, oh really can he
57:50
offer you financing options? Oh really?
57:53
Oh does your client we have pay at close options where your
57:56
client doesn't have to pay anything?
57:57
Oh holy cow, that's brilliant. Because I mean, some of these
58:00
projects you're talking about, they're thousands of dollars and
58:03
the seller is not going to be cash rich for a lot of them and
58:07
until they move that home. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
58:10
And so you guys sort of carry the note on that.
58:14
Absolutely. We've got, we've got.
58:16
We've got four different financing options now.
58:19
We're about to have a fifth one, but we work with now our, our
58:23
premier finance was, it's really, we call it pay it close
58:26
financing, but we have a strategic partnership with
58:29
notable who does basically pay it close financing for
58:34
professionals, home professionals, home service
58:37
professionals like us. We have our own home Stretch has
58:40
our own partnership with them, though our project, our our
58:44
partnership gives up to $50,000 of funds to do projects.
58:50
And the cool thing about notable is that they are able to use
58:55
that 50,000 to do anything that's related to the sale of
58:59
the home. So let's say our project is
59:02
20,000, but they need to get their HVAC repaired or they have
59:07
moving cost or they have you name it, if it's related to the
59:11
home, they can draw down from that 50,000 and they don't pay
59:15
anything out of pocket, it's all paid out of their closing
59:18
process. So yeah, that's, and this is
59:23
again, this is probably this is the third or fourth thing about
59:26
us that makes us completely different than any of yours.
59:30
Just sort of, you know, run-of-the-mill a contract,
59:34
general contract, Yeah. And we by the way, we don't even
59:36
refer to ourselves. We're not contractors.
59:38
We are the go to company for all of your homes.
59:41
You're like our full solution provider.
59:43
Yeah. That's it.
59:44
So I imagine that. You will answer.
59:46
This question a bit differently today than you would have just a
59:49
few years ago, but what's your superpower, Terry?
1:00:00
Wow, I haven't thought about that a while.
1:00:04
Yes, it definitely is different now.
1:00:08
I would say wow, I would say it is.
1:00:17
I'm able to see the, the, the bigger, the, the big picture.
1:00:21
I've always been somewhat of a global strategic thinker,
1:00:28
notwithstanding fact that I'm a lawyer by training.
1:00:32
I'm not the most like detail oriented guy.
1:00:38
I probably should be, but that's not my that's not my real
1:00:41
strength. My real strength is like seeing
1:00:43
how the pieces fit together, seeing how the the the the parts
1:00:49
work. I was even when I was practicing
1:00:53
as I began to in my career, I was noted for being a, a
1:00:59
strategic thinker, but also a team builder.
1:01:02
So because a lot of the, the, the, I mean literally my first
1:01:07
job as AGCI built the law department.
1:01:10
It was a company that been publicly traded for 25 years.
1:01:12
They had no in house legal capacity.
1:01:15
So I became, I like built the law department.
1:01:18
But before that, my job as a deputy general counsel was
1:01:21
building out a global team of lawyers to support our our
1:01:25
growth around the around the globe.
1:01:26
But, but it's being able to see the big picture.
1:01:30
A lot of that, I think comes from practicing law, working on,
1:01:34
you know, multi billion dollar transactions and basically
1:01:37
quarterbacking these big deals, which is basically which is what
1:01:41
I did. So I, I can, I think that's my
1:01:44
super strength or my yeah, my superpower and that I see the
1:01:49
big picture. I'm never going to be the master
1:01:53
of all of the the things that but I know how to pull people
1:01:57
in, see, you know, and get the folks in the right place and see
1:02:02
the bigger vision as things are as they're coming together.
1:02:05
Terry, I've just got one more question.
1:02:07
For you today. But before I ask it, I want to
1:02:09
do three things. First of all, if you want to get
1:02:11
in touch with Terry, you have two options.
1:02:15
He's given us his cell phone number, 2163677609.
1:02:19
We'll put it in the show notes, but again, it's 216 3677609.
1:02:25
Also, his e-mail address is terry.hammonds@home-stretch.com
1:02:31
and Hammonds is spelled HAMMONS, so
1:02:35
terry.hammonds@home-stretch.com. And again, we'll put that in the
1:02:39
show notes. Also, as a reminder, if you want
1:02:41
to get your employees access to benefits that won't hurt them
1:02:44
financially and Terry's a financial upside for the
1:02:46
company, reach out to me at adbackbenefits.com.
1:02:50
Finally, if you want to take just a moment to leave us a
1:02:52
comment or review on your favorite podcast app, we will be
1:02:56
forever grateful. So last question for you, Terry,
1:02:58
you and I reconnect one year from today and you are
1:03:01
celebrating something big. What do you hope to be
1:03:04
celebrating one year from now? That we are on pace for doing
1:03:16
$1,000,000 of business in Cleveland.
1:03:19
Just in Cleveland, yeah. Just Oh yeah, just in Cleveland.
1:03:23
So yeah, Phoenix and DC, we're still you know, we're those are
1:03:29
newer opportunities. The, the market opportunity in
1:03:33
Phoenix and Cleveland is probably 3 or 4, excuse me, in
1:03:37
Phoenix and DC is significantly bigger than what it is in
1:03:40
Cleveland. So, but we'll and we'll
1:03:41
eventually get there in those places, but Cleveland, we we
1:03:46
need to be tracking for that, for that $1,000,000 mark this
1:03:50
time next year. Nice.
1:03:52
Well, Terry Hammonds. From Homestretch, I want to be
1:03:54
the first to thank you for sharing both your time and your
1:03:57
story with us today. I really appreciate it.
1:04:00
Oh my pleasure, Anthony. This has been awesome.
1:04:02
I. Really appreciate you and this
1:04:04
opportunity. Had a lot of fun folks.
1:04:06
That's a wrap on another episode of the.
1:04:08
Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us
1:04:10
today.