Latest / Realno sa Dritom Haziraj / #007 – Robert Loncar: Law & Life - Hercegovina Roots & Chicago Hustle

Transcript

#007 – Robert Loncar: Law & Life - Hercegovina Roots & Chicago Hustle · Realno sa Dritom Haziraj

• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, how much of the language do I speak?
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard for me to find the words, but I know the words here and there, and I can understand almost everything that I hear.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was a big win from Bosna.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: I think that uh the the Bosnians are super excited about it.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen some of the videos going around on social media, and they deserve to be.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: It was a huge win.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: I I yeah it's always great when you see like the underdog uh coming up and rising.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: Italy's like a top 10 team on FIFA World Rankings, you know.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: So to see Bolsa come up and win that one, they'll be joining us here in the United States in the World Cup, I think it's gonna be very exciting.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: I found that whether it's talking to a client or talking to in I we we handle a lot of evictions, and uh we find ourselves in court uh talking to the tenants going through eviction, and we're on the other side, we represent the landlords.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I find that when you talk to people like they're human beings and you use regular words instead of the fancy legalese that a lot of lawyers tend to use, I feel like you can better relate to people and you can better get your point across.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: They call us like ethnic ethnic people, right?
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh we're we're we're a little different.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: We we uh we have ties to the old country and we're Americans, yes, but we're also Croatians or Bosnians or Serbs or I'm actually German on my mother's side.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: And it's interesting, my cousin told me once it's kind of like this: when we're in the United States, we feel more like we're Croatian.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: But when we're back in Herzegovina, we're we feel more like we're American, if that makes sense.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: I s tog razloga će neki interview biti na engleskom kao što je slučaj sa današnjom epizodom.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: This episode is brought to you by City Fresh Market in Chicago, a place where you go to buy authentic European and Mediterranean flavors.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: If you are from Balkans, this is where you go when you're craving real food that tastes like home.
• 2:38
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• 2:43
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• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: Crispy golden worok, straight out of the oven, drusic wapi, hot of the grill, and homemade dishes ready to enjoy right away.
• 2:57
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• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: Everything is made fresh daily, from delicious pastries to rich traditional desserts.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's a kind of place you come for one thing and you leave with five or more.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: City Fresh Market, Chicago.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: My guest is Chicago-based real estate attorney who built a local firm focused on landlord-tenant law, evictions, and property transactions.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: He's born and raised in Chicago, but his father, Blago, is from Herzegovina.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: With me and with you today, attorney Robert Lanchar.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: Robert, welcome to Podcast Realma.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for having me, Trita.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: How are you today?
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: So far, so good.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's Friday afternoon.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's late enough in the day that I can enjoy a few uh late afternoon beers.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: Nice.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: This will be actually very, very light and interesting, I would say, conversation.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we run into each other.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: I think we go off on a tangent all the time, and it just uh one thing leads to another.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's always fun.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: Always fun.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, Robert.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I said your father Blago is from Herzegovina.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: You are born and raised here.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh tell us our or his story, because this is, as you know, podcast for the people from former Yugoslavia, Balkans, all over the world.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think our story follows much the same as a lot of people from the Balkans.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: And in my in my my life, I've I've met a lot of Serbians and Bosnians and Croats.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: And when we talk, our our family histories are very similar.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: We left the country for one reason or another.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: My family left in the 60s, and at first, my my uh grandparents went to Germany to work, and my dad actually stayed back in Heditzogovin and raised, was raised by his aunt for uh a good number of years.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: At some point, he went up to Germany, and at this at this stage, he was maybe five or six years old, maybe seven, I'm not sure the exact age.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: And when he was eight, this would have been 1968, the family actually moved to the United States, and uh we've been here ever since.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um my uh grandparents got jobs as janitors, and my dad ended up serving in the United States military, and he ended up going to law school becoming a lawyer.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: I was born in 1984, uh, born and raised here, and uh that's pretty much it.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we we're we're we're here in the United States.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: We still have ties to the old country, we have still have cousins.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I visit ideally once a year.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, last year, unfortunately, we didn't make it to head to Govina, but we try to we try to spend some time in Europe with family, whatever we can.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: Now, first question what means to be immigrant kid, immigrant teenager in Chicago?
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's I I think it's different from growing up.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: They they call us uh they call us like ethnic ethnic people, right?
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh we're we're we're a little different.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: We we uh we have ties to the old country, and we're Americans, yes, but we're also Croatians or Bosnians or Serbs or I'm actually German on my mother's side.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: And it's interesting, my my cousin told me once, it's kind of like this when we're in the United States, we feel more like we're Croatian, but when we're back in Herzegovina, we're we feel more like we're American, if that makes sense.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, actually, it does.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: You said you you go once per year back home, uh in this part uh of from where I'm coming, right?
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: In Herzegovina.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: What do you like?
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: How you see the life there?
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's really beautiful.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: The lifestyle is it's it's more laid back and relaxed.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: I joke sometimes, it's not even a joke because it's serious.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: Over there, I can actually drink a coffee.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: You sit down and you drink your coffee and you smoke your cigarette.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, over here, we're always uh we're drinking our coffee in the car while we're hurrying up to get to work.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, which I mean that that's one of the reasons we come here, so that we can work to make money, to earn a living, right?
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: But it's also nice to go back to the old country and learn relearn what it what it's like to relax.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, how is with Dad?
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: I know he's retired now, and I heard that he likes to eat chevapi in Sarajevo.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: He likes the the Chevapi in Sarajevo, and he likes the uh the lamb in Yablanica.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Robert, uh I asked how it's to be immigrant here, right?
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh did you really, really, instead of emotional part that we all know about, did you really have any issue going through the school?
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you didn't need to assimilate because you are born here, but still, I mean, people and kids around knows that you're coming from father who is blah, right?
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I don't think I couldn't in good faith say that I had any problems growing up.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think people looked at me like I'm different.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: But I did grow up in a community where there were a lot of uh immigrants from the former Yugoslavia, so it wasn't anything strange.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: But I do have a funny story in uh kindergarten.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: My two cousins and I, we went to school together, and I remember we had trouble, we had trouble rememorizing the uh words for the American national anthem of all the kids in the class.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: It was the three Croatian kids who just couldn't remember the words for the life of us.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: And they actually pulled us off to the side to, you know, with the piano to learn how to sing it, you know.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh just a funny story.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: But as far as uh life goes, I don't I I don't think I was presented any challenges as a result of my parents having uh emigrated here from another country.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: That's America, right?
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's America, it's for everybody.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: Now you have an interesting story about getting your name.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, uh, so a lot of our people come here and our names are sometimes difficult for Americans to pronounce, and my father's name is Blago.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: So, like a lot of immigrants, they come up with an American name that starts with the same letter.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: If your name is Mladan or Milanko or Milan, you're gonna go with Mike.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: If your name's Blago or Bojo, you're gonna go with Bob.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: So my dad having the name Blago uh went with Bob.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: And when I was born, he would have liked that I had his name Blogo, or possibly Slavkor Drago, which is what my grandfather went by.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: But my mom from Germany insisted that I had a name that was easier for people to pronounce in the United States.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I they went with Robert, which is Bob, like my dad, right?
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but ironically enough, when we got a governor Blagojevich back in what year was that?
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: In the 2000s, right?
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: Good 20 years ago, all of a sudden uh the name Blogo was appearing on headlines all over the place.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember my dad was collecting the newspapers because they'd have a uh uh headline says Blogo is convicted, and somebody said free blago.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: My dad got the biggest kick out of it.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's it's very impressive, and I like about you how you're looking at everything from the so positive, funny side of the story.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, how are you practicing law like that?
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: I find that it's a good trait to have when you can practice law as a human being.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: And communication is the most important thing, not just in the practice of law, but in life generally, right?
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I found that whether it's talking to a client or talking to in I we we handle a lot of evictions, and uh we find ourselves in court uh talking to the tenants going through eviction, and we're on the other side, we represent the landlords.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I find that when you talk to people like they're human beings and you use regular words instead of the fancy legalese that a lot of lawyers tend to use, I feel like you can better relate to people and you can better get your point across.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the way I look at it.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I think in life in general, though, you gotta focus on the positive.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: If you focus too much on the negative, and God knows there's a lot of it out there, you're never gonna make your way through it.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: Can you explain to people who will listen to this uh away from the United States what evictions means?
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: It means that when people don't pay their rent, that they gotta go.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but sometimes they don't go on their own.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: So we have to go to court to get a judge to sign an order that we take to the sheriff, and then the sheriff will physically remove them.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: And in some parts of the United States, it's a little easier to do for landlords than in others.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: Chicago is one of the parts of the country where it's a little more difficult for landlords to get through this process.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: So at my office, what we do is we get through the process as quickly as possible with an emphasis on as quickly as possible, because there are a lot of hurdles we need to jump through.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of things we need to do.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: We need to follow this through the correct procedural process in order to do it right.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: And even if you do everything right, it will take uh easily several months.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I think I don't, it's not, I don't think it's a unique concept.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: I think in every country, even back home in the Balkans, if you live somewhere, you gotta pay the rent.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and I I don't know, you know, it would be interesting.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: I gotta I like to talk to some of my friends over there one of these days, see what the laws are like in Boston and Herzegovina when people don't, you know, I mean, is it like Texas where you can just remove the door and give people the boot yourself?
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: Or is it like Chicago where you have to go through the process?
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: If I had to guess, I'd say it's probably more like Texas.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: I I I would guess the same.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: Uh being in real estate myself, uh Chicago is specific.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe just uh for people who kind of questioning how that works, to some story, no names, right?
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh lead asks how is that looks like, especially if you have some examples where uh yeah, I understand uh tenants need to be protected, but maybe a little bit overprotected in Chicago.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the law has certainly failed in striking a balance between these competing interests, right?
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: I I don't I would never advocate that the law should ever be solely pro-landlord, right?
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because the law in general is intended to strike a balance between competing interests.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: And when you have tenants and landlords, you're gonna have competing interests, and I feel that the law has failed to really strike a balance.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it's it my definition of an injust law, like a law that is just not fair, is one that would penalize otherwise innocent behavior.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: So when you're dealing with uh these uh security deposit issues in the city of Chicago and even in suburban Cook County right now, landlords are put into a position where they can easily run amok of the law even by making the simplest mistake.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe they didn't hold the money in the right type of account, but they um they weren't stealing it, they didn't put it in their personal account, but it wasn't the right type of account, so they they faced liability, or they didn't give the tenant the correct uh type of receipt.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: They might have given them a receipt, but they forgot to write the uh property address on it, or something like that.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, there's a lot of very technical uh procedures that a landlord in Chicago has to follow.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: And for that reason, I really feel that the law fails to strike a balance.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: That's fair for everybody.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: But that being said, it gives us a lot of work at my office and it keeps us busy and puts food on the table.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think I can make a living uh doing landlord tenant law anywhere else in the country except for maybe California or New York.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: Is that what you wanted to do when you were growing up?
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, actually.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe not necessarily landlord tenant law, but my history.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: So um every ethnic group came to the United States, and some people would call them stereotypes or cliches or something like that, but there is some truth that a lot of the people from the Balkans ended up uh getting jobs as janitors.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: And you hear about other ethnic groups that got jobs in the steel mills, and a lot of that even depends on when they came over here, right?
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: The I think the uh people who came in the 1910s and earlier were more likely to get jobs uh in the steel mills.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh by the time my family came here, most of the people that they knew who also came from the old country uh were working on the buildings, they were working as janitors and picking up garbage.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: And there's at some point, some of them saved up enough money to actually buy an apartment building.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: And now they were not only the janitors, but they actually owned the building on which they were working.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: And there's actually a story, it's it's a true story.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'll leave the names out of it.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: But a Croatian immigrant, he was uh working a building on the south side, and the owner of the building wanted to retire, so he was selling everything.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: And he took his employee, took the janitor, the Croatian janitor, to the bank, where the owner had been doing business for several decades, and he said to the guy at the bank, Listen, I'm selling all my properties, I want this guy to buy it, and I want you to finance it.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: And on paper, this janitor didn't have much, but on the word of the owner, the bank loaned him the money to buy the buildings.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: And but basically, the owner said to the uh bank, if you want your investment protected and you want this building to work and function, this is the guy to do it.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: While I was owning it, this is the guy who made it work.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: So it's the the story goes that that kind of opened the door for a lot of other people in the community to kind of follow a similar course.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: And as such, when my dad uh he went, he served in the US military.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: When he came back to the United States, when he came back after serving, he uh went, he got his bachelor's degree, he went to law school, and I grew up with my dad as the lawyer.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, I was alive.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: I was at his law school graduation, I was maybe four years old.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: And um being a member of that community himself, he ended up taking a lot of the landlord work for the Croatian building owners who got their foot in the door through that story I just told, or some variation of it.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: So when I was growing up, it was kind of a given that I would follow in my father's footsteps, and then I ended up once one thing leads to another, before you know it, I'm in law school, then I finish, and here we are.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_01: How was uh the time when you went through law school?
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe for someone who is thinking right now to do that, especially for the immigrant kids.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I again know that you didn't go through the immigrant steps, but give them some kind of steps to follow if they want to be in five, ten years tourney.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm glad you mentioned the immigrant story because my dad did what he did, right?
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I have a cousin, he's actually my second cousin, because you know us, we got cousins, second cousins, third cousins.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I have a second cousin who is an accountant, and he's actually closer to my dad's age.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: And he told me once that my dad inspired him to go to school to become an accountant because he said before my dad became a lawyer, the only thing he ever knew he would be destined for would be to work on the roofs and the porches.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: But he saw, and my cousin was born here, and his father is the one who came from the old country, and his father actually sponsored my grandfather when he came to the United States.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: So this guy sees his cousin, my dad, uh become a lawyer, and he said, Well, maybe I can do something like that too.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: So he becomes an accountant, right?
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: And as far as the steps, so the first thing that anyone needs to realize is that they can do it.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's possible for anybody to do it.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's a perception among some people that in order to follow that path, you have to have maybe grown up with a silver spoon or something like that.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: But anyone can do it, it's possible for anybody.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: But if so it is a long journey, and somebody who wants to do it really needs to want to do it.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: There's this statistic that's very popular with first-three law students, and they say if you have somebody sitting to your left and your right, take a look around.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: One of them won't be here at the end of the semester, and if they're both here, you're the one who won't be here.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because there's about a third a one-third percent dropout rate or flunk-out rate among law students, and I've experienced it, I've seen people who didn't show up that second semester.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: And when I really thought about it, who were the people who didn't make it through?
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I I I really thought about it.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: And there's there's two two two groups.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: One is the people who didn't want to be there in the first place, they were there because their dad said that they have to go to law school because to follow in dad's footsteps, or they were there because uh they felt they needed to, right?
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: There was some pressure, but they were there for any reason other than I want to do this.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't want to do it, you're not gonna have the stamina to go through this process because it is rigorous.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: But if you want to do it, you can, and that goes for anybody.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: The second group of people who didn't make it through were the ones who didn't realize that law school is different.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if for most law students, they maybe got through college a little more easily than others.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe they were able to retain more information without having to study as much.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe they think that uh going to law school is gonna be the same thing.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: I won't have to read my materials, um, I'll just listen to what the professor says.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: But it is different, and it is a much more vigorous process than the undergrad.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: And the sooner you realize that you're not gonna be able to get through doing the same thing you did in college, the better off you are, and the more likely you are to make it all the way through.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: So it is a process.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: Anyone out there thinking about going through the process, it is possible, even for older people, and by older I mean like in their 30s, which is still younger for me.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: But a lot of times I think we realize we feel like when we're in our 30s, it's too late to go back to school or something like that.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and I was talking to somebody once who I felt had Had the uh characteristics that would make this person a really good lawyer one day if this person just went to law school.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: And this person already had a bachelor's degree, you know?
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: And the response I got, and this was this was from a 30-year-old, was maybe if I was still younger, but right now I feel that I'm too old, and that's not the case.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, there were plenty of people in their 30s going to law school, but I think all of us kind of feel like at some point we're beyond a uh a point of lives where anything is possible, but anything is possible, no matter what age you are.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: I agree with you, especially especially here.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: How long it took you from the let's say finishing high school to a moment when you could practice the law?
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: I finished high school in 2002 and I finished college in 2006, so that's your standard four-year program for both high school and college.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: And then uh law school is an additional three years, and I took a year off after college, so I didn't finish uh law school until 2010.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but had I uh gone straight to law school, I would have finished in 21, uh 2009, which gets back to the point.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: If you're gonna do it, you really need to want to do it, which is one of the reasons I decided to take a year off after college because I wanted to use that year just to reflect on myself and think, is this what I really wanted to do?
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: Because up until then, it really was well, my dad does this, so maybe I should do this too.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: And it was just ingrained in me that this is my destiny, you know.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: So before actually pulling the trigger on that decision, I wanted to sit down and ask myself, is this really what I want to do?
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I and I decided that yes, it is.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: And here we are 16 years later, and I'm still at it.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh present us your your company today.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: You have a small firm, uh, two offices, right?
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's a small firm.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's uh it's myself and an associate attorney, and we're currently looking for a second associate attorney.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: We have two pair legals, one of whom is my wife.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I question whether she's the boss or I am.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: It depends on who you ask.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: We all know it's her, right?
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: But uh uh we have a law clerk and a receptionist, and uh we work out of the loop.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: We're across the street from City Hall at 134 North of South Street, and then we have an office in the neighborhood on the far southeast side, which is actually where I grew up and still live.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: And needless to say, that's the office I prefer to work out of because I can walk there from my house and go home for lunch.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: God, that's so rare in in Chicago.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh yeah, it is rare, but it's it's a blessing.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and uh what you're planning to do in the next five, 10 years?
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: Keep working, travel more.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh five years from now will be what 2031.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: My youngest child is 12, and five years she'll be 17.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: I think my wife and I will have a little more freedom to maybe go visit family in Europe more regularly.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and always working.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's you know, it's an amazing world we live in now where I can spend several weeks in Europe and not miss a beat back home because I have full access to everything on the cloud.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: I can even attend Zoom court from over there.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, it we have the that flexibility these days to be able to do anything we want.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: We to be to do what we need to do from anywhere in the world.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: So, in the next five, 10 years, I'd like to see more of that.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh go go out there a little bit, have a little more flexibility as the kids get older and we're no longer tied down to their school schedules.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: As far as work, uh my my goal is to just continue to grow the firm and it gives us something to do, it makes life interesting.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_01: I heard that you like the most when you bring your laptop to Europe, that doesn't matter it's Germany or Croatia or Bosnia and Herzegovina.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: I work from there.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's uh work it's so I you know I told this uh in 2019 I took the family to Europe and uh we we spent two weeks in Germany, and that was actually the first time I went over there since my first year of law school.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I well, I was able to get away.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: This was before COVID and before Zoom, but I was pretty well connected uh through the internet to most of the stuff that we were doing.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I was talking to one of my colleagues, it was another attorney at the Daily Center, and I I was I explained to her I was able to make it happen because I pretty much brought my work with me, right?
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not really vacation as much as it is just being able to work from somewhere else.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: And the response I got from this colleague was, Well, why would you what's the point of being in Germany if you just have to work from there?
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Well, after I'm done working, I go have coffee with my grandma and I see the castle for a little bit.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: And it's uh it's it's different, it is worth going, even if you have to bring your work with you.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: But being able to work, well, what keeps people uh uh from being able to kind of go out there and see these some of these things is that work does tie us down.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're able to work from different places, it's really a blessing.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: What do you like about Germany?
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: I, you know, Germany actually I feel like it's a second home for me.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I growing up, I actually spent more time in Germany than in Herzegovina.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I really feel like it's a it's a second home.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of things I like about it.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the people are great, the food is great.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: The cost of living actually is lower, but there's a part of that that's because we're going there with our American dollars.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: Even though the euro is strong, the euro is stronger as a uh, you know, on the international stage, when you're looking at what people take home from work and what they spend on the grocery stores, our our standard of living here actually is higher here in the United States.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: So we feel like when we go to the uh the grocery store over there, the locals always complain about how expensive things are, but we're comparing it with how much stuff costs in Chicago, and for us it's like a bargain.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel that the quality of the food is better.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, my wife would buy a whole chicken at uh their their grocery market's called the Reve.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: And uh the whole chicken, it's smaller than our chickens that we buy in the United States, but it's it's much more delicious.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I've never looked into it, but I suspect that maybe they don't put as many steroids in growth hormones or whatever it is they do with the chickens here over there.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, as far as what do I like about it over there?
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: I it's it's tough to say.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: I do feel Germany's a little more fast-paced than the Balkans as far as uh the get up and go mentality, but it's much much more relaxed in the United States.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um I do believe so.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: Go ahead.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: I think every country in the world is gonna have things that are very nice about it and things that are not so great.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that goes to say with uh any of the former uh Yugoslav republics, Germany, the even the United States.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: There's things we love about it, there's things we don't like about it, you know?
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: I I sense what you don't like about Balkans, but I will ask you, what do you like about Herzegovina?
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: The lifestyle is beautiful, the mountains.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: I've never seen mountains like that anywhere else.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's it's it's almost like a there they're they're they're this arid like dryness about them, they're not quite desert, but it's not lush and green either.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's this like rugged, like rockiness, you know.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um rockiness and stones, all stones.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, also on the Dalmatian coast, the way these mountains come right up out of the water.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're in the Adriatic, you look at it, and I've I've seen the Italian coast on the other side, and I felt like it was just like flat farmland, at least up by Ancona.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you go maybe further south, there's more mountains or something.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: But the the landscape is just beautiful.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, the lifestyle is great, and it's remarkably safe.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, children can do anything they want.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: And my experience is limited.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: My family's from Chiro Kibrig.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: And small children can walk around at all hours of the night, and I would never worry about them.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_00: There's this coffee that I'm thinking of, and there's a playground, maybe I don't know, a few hundred feet away.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: When the kids go to the playground, we can't see them.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: But the adults are hanging out at the coffee, and we're drinking our beers and our coffees, and you know, whatever one's preferences, and we have no idea where the children are.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: We know they're somewhere in the playground, but we're able to sit there at peace knowing that they're okay.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: The odds of something happening to them over there is almost zero.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: I would that that's that's a really great thing to say about a country.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I think when you talk to friends in the United States who aren't as familiar with maybe you never even left the United States, they can't fathom the idea that one would be okay not knowing where their small children are, but you know they're okay.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yep, exactly.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: And what do you like or you don't like about the United States?
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: Be careful what you're saying.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_01: Just joking.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: No, I I think our life, our life overall in the United States is better.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: I uh I talked to a friend of mine, and I uh a friend of mine uh whose parents were also from Croatia said that his goal is to move back to Croatia because he likes the lifestyle over there.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: Uh people are more laid back, all the things that we're talking about today, right?
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I did respond to him that ultimately our life is better here in the United States, and that's why our families came here in the first place.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if our family uh it seems better when we go over there because we get to go there with our American dollars, and it's we go there and we have fun.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: But if our parents, if our parents and grandparents didn't come to the United States, I said we'd be over there pouring coffee for tourists, most of us.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: I that's what we'd be doing.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: So the life life overall is better over here.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but a couple things that you hear about here just are unheard of over there.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh carjacking, for example.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_00: I know three people uh who were carjacked.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: One of them, unfortunately, actually died.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: These are people I know personally, and I I don't think anyone I know in Europe knows anyone who was carjacked.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: And over here is something we hear about in the news, and we even know people who might a first second or if not directly, maybe to a second or third degree, we know people to whom this has happened.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: So that's one of the things I maybe am not a big fan of in the United States, but at the same time, I myself have never been a victim of a violent crime.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: We just know people, you know what I mean?
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: But like I said, every country in the world has things that are really great about it, and there are things that maybe aren't so great, but uh that's why it's good to travel.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: So we see other cultures and we learn learn more things.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: Travel is probably the the uh best educational experience anybody could ever have.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_01: I agree.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_01: When is your next trip and where?
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: We generally get away a little bit, uh July into August.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: So we didn't book yet.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: My wife actually looked up the airfare recently with all the stuff going on in the Middle East at the moment.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: The airfare it would have it was ridiculous.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: So I said just wait till things die down, those prices will come down, you know, crossing my fingers and knocking on wood.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but the goal is to go to Germany uh sometime very late June or maybe early July, and we'll stay there till about middle of August so that the kids can go back to school.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then while we're in Germany, because my grandmother in Germany is still alive and she's doing very well and she's healthy, uh, but she also she's also up there in age, so we want to spend as much time with her as possible.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: So, from Germany, though, we do like to spend about 10 to 14 days uh in Herzegovina, and uh we go down there for a little bit and then we try to maybe make a little side trip because once you're in Europe, you have an opportunity to see so many things that sound exotic to the average American, like Italy, for example.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, my wife is doing a lot of work with her ancestry and doing a lot of research, and she found out, and we already knew this part actually, her family comes from a town called Arpino in Italy, and we looked it up.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's about looks like it's about an hour's drive from Rome.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I watched some videos on it, and it looks like the village in Herzegovia that my parent family's from, it's in Italy.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: So we'd like to maybe take a take a look at Arpino and see what it looks like.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: Just to see it, you know, say we've been there.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_01: What do you know to say on Bosnian, Serbo, Croatian, whatever language is for you?
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, how much of the language do I speak?
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: Razum Puno Ma priča mao.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard for me to find the words, but I know the words here and there, and I can understand almost everything that I hear until they start talking about world events and stuff like that.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: But when I'm at Christmas with uh my family and we're sitting around the table, most of them are speaking Croatian with each other, uh, and I can understand almost everything.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: But if I'm trying to formulate my own sentences, it's a little bit of a challenge.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_01: Robert, uh, I heard you are also a soccer fan.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: I like watching the World Cup and I like watching the Euro Cup.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_00: And uh congratulations to Bosna uh against Italy.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: Was it last week or the week before?
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_00: I was watching that game, and um if at first I was watching and I was working, and I let it run in the background.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: I just wanted to see, and at the end of the first half, Italy was up 1-0.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_00: I think most people around the world would have were expecting Italy to win if you looked at the odds, right?
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm there working and it's running in the background, and it was I think the 78th minute when I hear the uh the commotion from the announcers, and I look up and Bosna scored at the 78th minute.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Wow, this game's gonna be interesting.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I tried to keep working, and then for the last last 12 minutes of the regular time, Bosna almost went up 2-1.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_00: And at some point, I had to close my laptop and uh grabbed a beer from my fridge, and I couldn't take my eyes off the game.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I think it was a big win from Bosna.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_00: I think that uh the the Bosnians are super excited about it.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen some of the videos going around on social media, and they deserve to be.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_00: It was a huge win.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_00: I I yeah, it's always great when you see like the underdog uh coming up and rising.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_00: Italy's like a top 10 team on FIFA World Rankings, you know.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_00: So to see Bolsa come up and win that one, they'll be joining us here in the United States in the World Cup.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's gonna be very exciting.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I even saw some of the memes where they showed the Croatian fans and the Bosnian fans uh in the parking lot, tailgating cooking up Chevape.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_01: Pizza, pizza without lost over pita or pie.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_00: Sirnica Burek.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Robert, uh I heard also related to the soccer, because you work with the people from you have different nationalities from different countries in your office.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, when Croatia is playing is some kind of specific cheering, cheering process right there in Lanchard La.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well, funny story, one of our uh our paralegals, her his uh her son is uh a Messi fan, Lyola Messi with Argentina, and in the last World Cup, Croatia played Argentina, and I remember the game was coming up, and I I I told the office, I said guys, just let you know, you know, uh the Croatia game's coming up, and I just want to make it very clear we're all rooting for Croatia.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_00: And she said, Well, I can't control my son, he's going for Argentina.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Well, that's fine, but it's it's old jokes, you know what I mean?
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_00: No, nobody's serious about it.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_00: And uh our receptionist actually is from Italy, and uh we joke with her too sometimes when Croatia played Italy in the last Euro Cup.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, Italy actually knocked out Croatia because they tied 1-1.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, we had it's it's a lot of fun, you know, a lot of jokes.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, our former associate was from Colombia, and uh Croatia just actually just played Colombia uh in a friendly a couple of weeks ago.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: I can't remember March 26th, was it?
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um it was a Thursday, I remember that.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_00: And uh maybe we had some fun going back and forth on the text, but of course, Croatia did win 2-1, just for the record.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_01: I will not edit this part.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_01: This episode is brought to you by City Fresh Market in Chicago, where you can find European Mediterranean authentic food.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_01: If you are from the Balkans, this is where you go when you're craving real food that tastes like home.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_01: And if you are not, you just discovered your new favorite spot.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Chicago is your city where you are born, where you are working.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_01: Did you ever think about moving inside the United States, going somewhere else?
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: No, I mean, I think there was a time in my life when I was fascinated with the Southwest.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_00: I thought Arizona is beautiful.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_00: I still think Arizona is beautiful, but I think that it's safe to say my life is here in Chicago.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's not a bad place, it's not perfect.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_00: The wet wet winters are a little colder than we would like.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_00: As a matter of fact, some years ago, my cousins and uh my family we decided to spend Easter in Florida, and we uh we rented a house that was big enough where each family had their own bedroom, and uh it was a fun time, you know.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_00: And it was April, and just like now, it was still cold in Chicago, but the weather in Florida was just absolutely beautiful.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember my cousin saying to us that man, our grandfather came to the United States and he had the whole country in front of him.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_00: Why he would pick Chicago, I have no idea, but here we are.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_00: But overall, it's not a bad place.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think there's still opportunity for work uh and business here in Chicago.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_00: I I think I'd move back to Europe before I move somewhere else in the United States, to be honest.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_01: Is that something that you may be thinking about?
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's something I'd be open to, maybe not moving, because my children uh they would they'd be uprooted.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: Right now they're in school, my kids are 16, 14, and 12.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: So we got a sophomore in high school, an eighth grader who's about to go into high school, and we got a sixth grader.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I think moving to a different country, moving even to a different part of the United States with them at this stage in their life, I think would be uh bad for them.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um but absent that, I don't know if I could if I would want to live in Europe, but I would want to maybe visit more frequently.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_00: My grandparents, for example, uh they came here in 1968, and as they were kind of heading into retirement in the 90s, and then uh my uncle or my dad kind of took over, you know, running the family, if you want to call it that.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_00: Their lifestyle was that every year they would come to the United States after, wait, how did this work?
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_00: They would come to the United States just before Thanksgiving, and they would be here for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, and then sometime after Easter, in like April or so, they would go back to Herzogovina.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then sometime in June, when all the kids got out of school, a lot of the kids would go visit them and spend the summers there.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_00: We would come back here to go back to school, and then it all starts over again.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_00: My grandparents would come back around October, November, just before Thanksgiving.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, they lived half their lives in the United States and half their lives in Croatia or Herezigovina, I kind of went back and forth, you know.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_00: I could see myself doing something like that in the future, maybe, but as far as actually just living there full-time, I don't know if it would be a good fit for me.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_00: Plus, the tax rate, the income tax rate in the United States is much lower.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if I could survive paying German taxes.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, in general, your wife and your kids, how they like that?
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_00: They like it a lot, and I I find it it's it's interesting how um my kids, the first time over there for my kids was in 2019, and that was actually just Germany.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_00: That was uh for two weeks, and at that time my kids were nine, seven, and five.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_00: And we made a commitment to go back every year, but then we couldn't for a couple of years because of COVID, so we had to uh skip uh 2020 and 21.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_00: But since 22, 22, 23, 24, 25, we've been going every year, and I found that my youngest daughter was five the first time she went, she loves it.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_00: She even says she could live over there.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, she also understands the language better, uh, mostly German.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's where we spend most of the time over there.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the oldest one, though, she's 16 now and she wants to be here with her friends and all that stuff.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_00: She's not as interested in being over there.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_00: And then the boy he can find his computer games anywhere in the world he happens to be.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_00: But uh the kids they do like it, and they love seeing their uh grandparents or great-grandparents actually over there, and uh it's it's it's it's nice, it's good to it's good to expose them to the culture.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_01: Your dad is living now, right?
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_01: That retired life, and he's more often there.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, he's next going over, I think, on April 20th, and he'll be there from about April 20th to May 15th.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_00: And my dad, he really has a lot of fun with it.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_00: He likes to uh he stays in Herzegovina for a little bit, and then he always uh spends a couple nights in Sarajevo, and lately he's been trying uh checking out Belgrade, and uh he said Belgrade's actually a lot of fun too, and then he likes to go to Germany for a few days to uh hang out with uh my grandmy grandma, who's actually his ex-mother-in-law, but he's they still get along really good, and uh he likes to hang it out to hang out there and have coffee with her, and then he likes to revisit all these places that he used to go to when he was in the army and all that.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_00: But he's he's uh slowing down a little bit on work, and I told him I can cover anything you need to over here, go over there, enjoy yourself, and I'm glad he's finally uh listening to me on that, and he is going over there more often.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_01: No, but you you mentioned you can cover.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, when you said cover, explain us how that covering, not for that in general, how working in your love firm looks like firm looks like, meaning how clients find clients finding you, who you mostly work with through the process of all what you offer in like your services.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_00: We represent so we we we a big chunk of our clients are landlords throughout the Chicagoland area.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_00: They usually find us through brokers that they've worked with in the past.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, another thing that I do regularly is I will uh give presentations to landlord groups.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh different organizations are out there, and they they always appreciate it when a lawyer is able to spend a couple hours talking to them about the landlord tenant laws in Chicago, what does the eviction process look like?
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_00: And that's that's pretty much what we uh that's ours, that's pretty much our source of referrals for the uh landlord tenant work we do.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then we represent buyers and sellers in the real estate transaction.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of that comes from referrals for the brokers.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_00: Most buyers and sellers don't really know a whole lot of lawyers, but they know the broker they're working with, and usually they trust that broker.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, if there's a recommendation made by the broker, uh a lot of times people will go with that.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_00: So that's where a lot of the closings come from.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_00: As far as a day in our office, we're in court just about every day.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we'll usually spend our mornings in court and then our afternoons uh kind of preparing for the next day at court and knocking out if we have to draft a uh a pleading of some sort or file some kind of motion.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and stuff we do for my dad is basically we'll cover court for him.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_00: He still likes to hold on to communicating with his clients and filing stuff.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, he he said he'll never fully retire.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a saying among the lawyers is that we don't retire because we're afraid that if we do, we'll die.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_00: So we keep working to the very end.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_01: How much do you enjoy?
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_01: What is enjoyment in that?
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_01: What is pretty much bureaucratic, la uh not for me, without offense to the other people.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_01: What making you enjoy in what you do?
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_00: You know, at the end of the day, what I tell people when I talk to kids at the career day, or when I talk to people about being a lawyer, I get a feel for what people think it is that a lawyer really does, right?
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_00: And we always get a show of hands, and one person's gonna say that the lawyer is gonna keep you out of jail, next guy is gonna say that the lawyer is going to, I don't know, whatever it is people perceive lawyers to do, right?
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh they they they they represent businesses and prepare contracts and stuff like that.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I tell them that you're all right, but there's one thing that all lawyers do, whether they're keeping people out of jail or whether they're drafting contracts, all lawyers use our skills to help our clients achieve a goal.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_00: That is ultimately what we do, and that's what I enjoy.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_00: I am very happy when we're able to achieve a client's goal and to produce a favorable result.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_00: And that is my favorite part.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, it's we're helping people, and we're doing it for a living.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we're not doing it for free, but we do enjoy doing it.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's uh yeah, beats working for a living, as they say.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's a lawyer joke.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_01: What's what's specific about real estate?
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's just fun to work on.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_00: We you know, it sounds a little morbid, but even the evictions are fun to practice.
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't mean to like belittle it because nobody likes being evicted, nobody wants to be in eviction court, even the landlords don't want to be there, right?
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_00: But from a particular practitioner standpoint, the the law and the procedure around the evictions almost it's got this little dance and its rhythm to it, and it's it's it's just it's it's it's enjoyable kind of just working through the system.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I don't mean to say it's enjoyable evicting people, it's never you know, never enjoyable, but uh as far as the line of work, it's it it is interesting.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_01: Is there some story that you can share with us that you're remembering like an interesting man?
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um I sometimes I joke and I say that I don't have to save for retirement because what I'm gonna do is write a book and just uh with all these little stories.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um gosh, I it's tough for me to think of one when I get put when I'm put on the spot.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um we got I'm sorry, I can't think of anything right now.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_00: There's plenty, I assure you.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_00: If my wife was here, she'd be like, oh, remember that one time, and I'm like, oh yeah, yeah, that's right, that one time.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_01: Something that really maybe impact you, something that even was fun uh going through that harsh process, maybe something that you was emotional about.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I don't know.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh and we've seen it all.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_00: We've seen uh one of the most expensive evictions we uh pursued was actually evicting a squatter, and that was an interesting one.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, here's the story my guy.
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_00: So when a client tells me I'm evicting a squatter, I'm always very careful because when you talk to people, when you talk to landlords, sometimes they think someone's a squatter just because they're not paying their rent.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's not what makes a squatter.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_00: A squatter is somebody who actually broke in, right?
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_00: So one would think that evicting the squatter is easier because they they they, in theory, don't have any uh tenant rights.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_00: But this guy comes to me saying, I have a squatter here, we need to evict him.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_00: And the first thing I ask is, Well, is he really a squatter?
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_00: And the fact pattern was as follows.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_00: This guy would buy properties post-foreclosure, and his strategy was to buy them in bulk, and then he'll maybe have four or five properties, and it's nothing huge, but maybe a couple, two flats, single-family home, whatever it is, he's buying packages, right?
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_00: And while he has these five uh properties being held, he'll maybe do some work on this one and sell it, then he'll move on to another one and maybe uh rent it out after the work is complete, right?
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it so happens that while he was working on one of the properties, another property ended up being occupied by a squatter.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_00: And he's he showed me pictures, it was empty when he took it over.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_00: He boarded up the windows, and this guy just basically starts living there.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, he said at first he kind of just ignored him because at some point when I'm ready to work on this property, I'll prioritize it and get this guy out, right?
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_00: So we kind of just let it be for a while.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_00: So when the time comes, he initiates the eviction with our office, and based on this guy being a squatter, we we instruct him to serve a demand for immediate possession, which basically means you have no right to be there.
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_00: Here's your notice.
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna go file this tomorrow.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like with the landlord tenant non-payment rent, five-day notice, or 120-day notice, a demand for immediate possession.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_00: The problem with that is that squatters rarely come to court acknowledging their squatters, they usually claim to be a tenant.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_00: So in this case, they got free legal aid who ended up filing a jury demand, and they filed a number of responsive pleadings claiming that he was a tenant of the former owner, and that under the terms of the tenancy, he was going to protect the property because it was in a bad neighborhood, apparently, and then he'd be allowed to stay there.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_00: It was all made up, but he made those allegations in court, which caused us to have to do certain things to counter those allegations, and it was just amazing how a squatter can cause such a ruckus and become such an expensive problem for the property owner.
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um I remember even the judge on that one said, I think it's quite clear he's a squatter.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry, I shouldn't make that determination.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_00: It was uh one of those had to have been there type things, I guess.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_01: Understand.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I heard in real estate you can make money.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_01: Is that true?
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, you can make money in anything.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_00: I know some plumbers for a rich.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_00: I know some and uh yeah, one of these things I tell people, especially when they're talking about becoming a lawyer, is don't do it for the money.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_00: If you do it for the money, you're you're in it for the wrong reasons.
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_00: As a matter of fact, some lawyers actually don't make a lot of money, and then some make a ton of money, but you can say that about any profession.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_00: You could say that about uh plumbers.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_00: I you can be a plumber and be very successful at it and make more money than some of the lawyers I know.
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the same goes for real estate.
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_00: I think the biggest mistake people make on real estate.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_00: One word I don't like, and I cringe when I hear this word, and I'm sure you've heard it, but they went, and you always hear it in an infomercial when somebody's trying to sell us something, they use the word passive income.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_00: And my view is that there's no such thing as passive income.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_00: If you're making money in real estate, you're hustling, and you got a strong inner hustle.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's I I've never had a client who said, Well, I own these properties, I don't have to do anything but collect rent all day.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_00: It it is there's a lot of stuff that goes with the territory.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_00: So among my clients, I've seen some who are incredibly successful, and I've also seen some who at times appear to be finding it difficult to stay afloat.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_00: So, real estate's like anything else, you can be incredibly successful at it, and you can find it to be quite a challenge.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_00: It depends on the person, and the most important thing is that inner hustle, you have to get your hustle on.
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't got a hustle, you gotta get a job.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_00: You're not gonna do it in real estate.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_00: Nine to five, nine to five, and it for some people that works better.
• 55:44
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, it's it's just from one person to the next, everybody's different.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, I one client asked me if I own any investment real estate myself.
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_00: Do I am I a landlord?
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_00: I said no.
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_00: And the client said, Well, with all the stuff you know about the law and how things work with the eviction court, you would think you would maybe pick up some two flats.
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, I spent so much of my days dealing with your problems, Mr.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_00: Client, that the last thing I want is for them to one day become my problems.
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_00: Now, that being said, though, um, my clients have pointed out to me that by the time something makes it onto my desk, um, I'm seeing the worst of the worst.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_00: That most of the time it's not like that.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_00: Most of the properties are just fine, most of their tenants are paying their rent, uh, most of their boilers are not going out at three in the morning.
• 56:31
  SPEAKER_00: But you hear these stories, and it kind of just makes you it's it's certainly not an easy way to make money, that's for sure.
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_00: But then again, even money's never easy to make.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_00: And uh money making money is one of the hardest things out there to do.
• 56:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like there's too many people out there, it's always the salespeople with their infomercial, like, watch our uh infomercial and we'll make you rich quick.
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_00: But there's nothing that there's there's no such thing.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_01: There's no no legal way to get rich quick.
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, even the illegal ways to get rich are they they have challenges.
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_01: Understand.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, did you ever have a thought if you didn't go through the tourney path?
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_01: What else you would do or would like to do?
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_00: Probably uh real estate brokerage.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm a licensed real estate broker as well, and I haven't been very active.
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I am licensed in Illinois and Indiana for both law and real estate, and I'm a managing broker.
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I started I started Long Car Real Estate uh years ago, same around the same time I started the firm.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_00: And it helped me put some food on the table and feed my family when I first started the law practice because we don't start a business and start making money right away.
• 57:44
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, some of us never start making money, but one day my goal will be to maybe make a few dollars.
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_00: But it we always started out losing money.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_00: And during that period, I found that the real estate broker's license actually helped me uh pay the bills uh while the law practice was getting up and running.
• 58:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I had a few friends who were in the market for houses or condos or whatever it is, they were buying those friends from college, and uh you know, I showed them around and I earned a commission.
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_00: Now it's a little more difficult.
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_00: The buyers' brokers, I think, sometimes have to struggle a little bit to squeeze a commission out of the seller.
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but but I see from my perspective on the attorney side, most of the contracts do have some kind of commission splitting.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I do see uh success in getting payment from the buyers, which when that new rule was put in place, I didn't think anybody would ever come up with that uh cash to pay a commission at closing, but I see it happening and they're doing it.
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_00: But if I if the law thing didn't work out, though, I could see in all in an alternative universe, somewhere out there, there's a version of me that went into real estate.
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_01: So uh maybe when you retire, if you retire, because you said the tourists never retire.
• 58:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh in a little bit uh before we finish this conversation about building the business, right?
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_01: You mentioned it wasn't successful overnight, it's not easy.
• 59:05
  SPEAKER_01: How in Chicago that looked for you?
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_00: You know, so I I started this practice a little prematurely, and most lawyers, when they start their own practice, will probably uh spend about five, five or more years working for somebody to get the experience.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I started my practice uh with within about a year and a half, within a year of becoming a lawyer.
• 59:30
  SPEAKER_00: And you started out, you just print out business cards.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_00: I found an office that I rented for$500 a month.
• 59:38
  SPEAKER_00: It was a small office in Hyde Park.
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember I quit my job, and I remember on September 1st, 2011, waking up with nowhere to go, except my office that I just rented.
• 59:51
  SPEAKER_00: So I went there and I just found something to do, you know.
• 59:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I it was probably several years before I felt like we could even pay our bills from that.
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_00: And the the question comes up sometimes is how do you get there?
• 1:00:07
  SPEAKER_00: And the best thing I can tell anybody who's starting a business, whether it's in the legal profession, in real estate, or in anything else you can think of, is that fake it till you make it is probably the best advice you're gonna get.
• 1:00:22
  SPEAKER_00: But you gotta remember you can only fake it until you make it, till you actually make it.
• 1:00:26
  SPEAKER_00: So fake it till you make it is good, but you do got to make it at some point.
• 1:00:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember looking people in the eye with confidence saying, I'm a lawyer and I can handle that, even if it was something I've never done before.
• 1:00:40
  SPEAKER_00: My first real estate transaction came across my desk.
• 1:00:43
  SPEAKER_00: Hey Bob, do you do real estate transactions?
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, there's no, well, I don't know, I can try this, just yes.
• 1:00:51
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a multi-board 4.0, we're on the 8.0 right now.
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_00: This was back in 4.0, and basically I just thought of it as a contractual transaction.
• 1:01:07
  SPEAKER_00: I have uh what they were like 13-page contracts.
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_00: I just read it, and there were a bunch of deadlines in there, and I just reasoned with myself that each one of these deadlines means that I have to do something by then, and all I gotta do is figure out what it is I have to do.
• 1:01:23
  SPEAKER_00: And back then, when you had this one real estate transaction, um, it was even easy to find the time to like learn how to do it.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_00: So the reason I got started talking about that in the first place is fake it till you make it is the best advice any entrepreneur can take.
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_01: You can then probably understand me dealing with the contract to understand for people who are not in real estate 4.0 or 8.0 is the number of the contract that is used in real estate transaction, 13 pages.
• 1:01:55
  SPEAKER_01: Even the real estate agents just need to fill the blanks.
• 1:02:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh me with broken English reading every paragraph took probably a lot, a lot of effort to even today never understand all the wording, to be honest.
• 1:02:13
  SPEAKER_00: But after doing enough of them, you understand the gist of the transaction.
• 1:02:18
  SPEAKER_00: And more of it, I think, is learned in practice than by reading the contract.
• 1:02:22
  SPEAKER_00: As a matter of fact, the words of the contract are only relevant, and this isn't like legal advice, it's just the way I look at these things, right?
• 1:02:30
  SPEAKER_00: The the specific words of the contract are only relevant if the people start fighting about something later, if it winds up in court.
• 1:02:38
  SPEAKER_00: When in practice, from the day the contract is signed, from the day that that offer is accepted, up until the date of closing, there's two very important ingredients.
• 1:02:50
  SPEAKER_00: And as long as these ingredients are still there, this deal will be just fine.
• 1:02:55
  SPEAKER_00: If the seller still wants to sell and the buyer still wants to buy, when one of those things change, is when people we start running into problems.
• 1:03:03
  SPEAKER_00: So at the end of the day, whatever the words, whatever words are contained in the contract, you basically have somebody with real estate and you got somebody with money, whether it's their own money or it's coming in from a lender or what, the goal is to get them at a table where they exchange cash for title.
• 1:03:21
  SPEAKER_00: And that's each side just has to do certain things to get there.
• 1:03:24
  SPEAKER_00: And our job as the professionals, whether it's the brokers or the lawyers, is to guide them through that process and how to get there.
• 1:03:30
  SPEAKER_00: We follow up with the on the buyer side, we follow up with the loan officer.
• 1:03:33
  SPEAKER_00: If we smell smoke, we want to make sure we find out where it's coming from and put out any fire before it gets too big, right?
• 1:03:39
  SPEAKER_00: On the seller side, we want to make sure we order title timely, we make sure that if there are any issues.
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, the the word the the biggest thing one pet peeve I have on real estate closings, and maybe have a shared experience, is I feel that once you sign that contract, both the buyer and the seller are taking on certain risks, right?
• 1:03:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like with anything else, there's a risk that something bad will happen.
• 1:04:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I tell people that right now you got to get the several balls rolling in several different directions at the same time in order to make this happen on time.
• 1:04:13
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the biggest causes for delay is I see on the buyer side, well, I don't want to apply for the loan until after we're done with attorney review and inspection, or I don't want to pay for the appraisal until we know that some inspector.
• 1:04:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I totally get wanting to make sure as many bases are covered as possible and save a few hundred dollars.
• 1:04:32
  SPEAKER_00: But in order to make the transaction flow smoothly, you kind of got to get all these balls rolling at the same time.
• 1:04:38
  SPEAKER_00: On the seller side, I see people sometimes holding off on ordering title until certain milestones are passed, which is you could probably get away with most of the time.
• 1:04:50
  SPEAKER_00: But what if you order title and it comes back and it's so messy and there's so many things you got to fix that you're gonna need that full 30 to 45 days until closing to fix them, and it's not gonna work if you get it a week before you're supposed to close.
• 1:05:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 1:05:04
  SPEAKER_01: What was the maybe hardest for you to do in real estate transaction, not uh not it land or landlord uh tenant law?
• 1:05:12
  SPEAKER_00: The hardest thing in the real estate transaction, sometimes it's like trying to most of them are pretty easy, but sometimes when you when you have a client who has unreasonable expectations, for example, that's one of the most difficult things to realize.
• 1:05:32
  SPEAKER_00: But I think you get that in the landlord tenant law too, because I think sometimes some of our landlords have unreasonable expectations.
• 1:05:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but you know, that inspection report comes out and the client will say, you know, we're on the buyer's side.
• 1:05:42
  SPEAKER_00: And the client says, Well, what now?
• 1:05:46
  SPEAKER_00: And said, I don't know, I'm just a lawyer.
• 1:05:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like you tell me what you want to do.
• 1:05:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well, are these big issues?
• 1:05:51
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 1:05:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not an inspector.
• 1:05:53
  SPEAKER_00: Are they big issues to you?
• 1:05:54
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:05:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, what looks like a big issue to someone else, some one person might not be a big issue to someone else.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe yeah, some issues came up, but it was already taken into consideration the price, uh uh the the purchase price.
• 1:06:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh when we get somebody who wants to send out an inspection letter, and I say, Well, what do you want to raise as an issue?
• 1:06:15
  SPEAKER_00: And they say, Oh, everything.
• 1:06:16
  SPEAKER_00: What do you mean?
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, look at the inspection report, all that red.
• 1:06:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, man, all of it?
• 1:06:20
  SPEAKER_00: And one time I sent out a letter like that, and the seller's attorney called and asked if our client wants to follow through with this.
• 1:06:26
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:06:27
  SPEAKER_00: Just talk to talk to your client about the inspection issues and uh sent us a response.
• 1:06:31
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, Well, this is the kind of letter I sent when I want to kill a deal.
• 1:06:34
  SPEAKER_00: Does your client want to kill the deal?
• 1:06:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and the client didn't.
• 1:06:37
  SPEAKER_00: The client really just wanted to ask for everything and see what they what they get.
• 1:06:40
  SPEAKER_00: But uh that that's those are the more difficult ones to work with.
• 1:06:44
  SPEAKER_01: Robert, let's finish this very interesting conversation.
• 1:06:48
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for this in the same uh tone we started.
• 1:06:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, talk to the people from the Balkans who will listen this.
• 1:06:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I believe that we are listened already all over the world.
• 1:07:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we are very happy that we have listeners in Australia, uh, we have listeners in Europe, for sure, in my home country, Bosnia, and here around in the United States.
• 1:07:14
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, live life, be happy, and we really are all over the world.
• 1:07:19
  SPEAKER_00: And my dad would say that we left Herzegovina, but we have cousins in Australia, Germany, France, Canada, United States.
• 1:07:31
  SPEAKER_00: And my dad said it's a nice little benefit that we can visit anywhere in the world and have a place to stay.
• 1:07:36
  SPEAKER_00: And uh it's it's nice having the connection with people, uh, because we are the diaspora, it's it's really worldwide, you know.
• 1:07:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I have a funny story, uh, that's so funny, but uh it was in 2003, and I was in Germany uh in the area around Munich, and I was there with uh she's my wife now, but at the time she was my girlfriend, Natalie, and we were looking for a place to eat, and I saw a restaurant called Restaurant Adria, and uh, you know, on the Croatian side, we like to name everything after the Adriatic Sea, you know.
• 1:08:12
  SPEAKER_00: So if you see a restaurant called Adria, it's probably a Croatian place.
• 1:08:16
  SPEAKER_00: So I went up to the restaurant, I look at the menu, and sure enough, you see Chevape and Rajnitsi, and all the good stuff on the menu.
• 1:08:24
  SPEAKER_00: So you you see, you see, it's it's you know, it's our people.
• 1:08:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I uh tell the uh person there that you know it's just two of us we'd like to eat.
• 1:08:34
  SPEAKER_00: And she told me that I'm sorry we're closed right now because in Germany they do that thing where restaurants close uh in the mid-afternoon between lunch and dinner, and then they open up again later.
• 1:08:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I told her, Oh, that's unfortunate.
• 1:08:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we'll just have a couple of beers then.
• 1:08:49
  SPEAKER_00: I said, I really wanted to eat here.
• 1:08:51
  SPEAKER_00: I saw that you had Chevapi and Rajnitsi on the on the on the menu, and I explained to her that my father's Croatian, and I uh every time I see this food on a menu, I just have to eat there.
• 1:09:02
  SPEAKER_00: And she asked me, Where does where does your father come from?
• 1:09:05
  SPEAKER_00: I says, From Shirokibri.
• 1:09:07
  SPEAKER_00: And she said that she and her husband are from Ljuboshki, which is maybe maybe a 15, 20 minute drive.
• 1:09:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's not very far, you know, maybe 30.
• 1:09:14
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 1:09:15
  SPEAKER_00: And when she found out that we're practically neighbors in the old country, she said, have a seat.
• 1:09:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna have my husband start up the grill right now.
• 1:09:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'll bring you the menus.
• 1:09:24
  SPEAKER_00: And she basically opened up the we were strangers, never knew we met this woman in the life in our life in my life, but she opened up her restaurant for us on that day just because we were neighbors in the old country.
• 1:09:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's the kind of communities we're a part of, whether we're in Bosnia, Croatia, or Serbia, or any of the countries that our families emigrated to.
• 1:09:43
  SPEAKER_01: That's our hospitality.
• 1:09:45
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much, Robert, for your time, and I wish you success in everything you do.
• 1:09:50
  SPEAKER_00: Sratan put.
• 1:09:53
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, videos.
• 1:09:55
  SPEAKER_01: Virimose.
• 1:10:05
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• 1:10:09
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• 1:10:20
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• 1:10:30
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• 1:10:34
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