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The Rejection Formula That Separates Winners From Everyone Else · The Hannah Hammond Show

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  Practice dying. Like if you're on your deathbed
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  and you look back on your life, like, what things would you be
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  glad you did and what things would you wish that you did
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  different? It really does come all come
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  down to your priorities and what's the most important thing
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  to you and what your your non negotiables are I.
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  Don't need to be big shot real estate guy to like have meaning
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  in life. If you want to have $100 million
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  in revenue or something like, well, why?
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  You know, because like, you're never going to be able to spend
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  all. That like as very young kids, we
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  lose ourselves and we just kind of fit into this dogma of
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  whatever we're told we have to do or whatever.
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  We're rewarded for whatever gets us the girl or the boy or the
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  parent's appreciation. Some of us end up as adults and
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  we just don't even know who the hell we are.
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  Like, that's what you want as an entrepreneur is to see exactly
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  where you're going. But it can be murky.
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  You got to keep trying. Like don't give up.
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  It's crazy because most normal people will get rejected once,
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  maybe twice, maybe three times, and they're like, all right, I
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  can't do it. It's impossible.
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  That's just not reality. You have to do it 40 times and
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  you're going to have to do it 400 more times after that if you
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  want to continue to be successful, not just obtain
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  success, but keep it. Welcome back to the Hannah
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  Hammond show. I'm sitting here today in
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  Michigan with Rob Walters, who is an absolute beast in
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  commercial real estate development and specializes in
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  single tenant net lease retail developments and has done over
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  $500 million in trans and development projects over the
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  course of his career and hundreds of transactions and
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  working with lots of the retailers across the country
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  from Aspen Dental to Monastery Schools, a bunch of different
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  retailers. And he'll get into all that.
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  But we actually met through my business partner Jeffrey at HP
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  Capital, who I know you guys have partnered on some deals in
• 1:38
  the past on and I'm just excited to welcome you on the show
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  today. Thanks for being here.
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  Thank you. Thanks for having me.
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  So what I know we were talking a little bit offline, but what do
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  we need to understand about your earliest days in life to
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  understand how you got into commercial real estate
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  development and then went on to become so massively successful
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  in that space? I mean, I guess I just start
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  with, I think people always wonder, you know, was this
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  something that sort of your family had was given to you or
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  something versus did you figure this out on your own?
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  And for myself, both my parents worked in education at a
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  Community College. So great upbringing, great
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  parents, but you know, they weren't in business, they
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  weren't in real estate. So it was little things.
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  They were frugal. You know, when my friends would
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  have starter jackets, I'd have like the Walmart version.
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  And I never liked that. I always want to figure out
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  like, how can I have the starter, you know, jacket
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  version? So as early as eighth grade, I
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  think I was getting the newspaper and looking at the
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  stock ticker symbols and picking up books.
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  You know, Robert Kiyosaki is a guy that I actually remember
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  reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad, relatively early in life.
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  So I was curious. I wanted to figure out how to
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  make money, how to have more freedom as I grew up.
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  So the path was very, you know, zigzag.
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  It wasn't, it wasn't a straight line, but yeah, I just, I'd
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  looked for people in my life who had lives that I that I
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  emulated. And, you know, there's one
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  particular father. It was, it was a girl actually
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  dated best friend's dad who worked in real estate.
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  And he would always be up at his lake house on Thursday night.
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  And I'd often be there on Friday, Saturday, Sunday.
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  And I wake up Friday morning and see him jet skiing.
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  And then he'd be at his, his desk and making phone calls and
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  stuff. And I'm like, gosh, this is this
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  is the guy that I'd like to meet.
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  So I actually asked him to to meet and tell me about his
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  experience. And he explained that he got
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  into student housing development and you know, he made a great
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  living for himself. So, you know, there's a lot of
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  things that went into it, but that that piqued my interest in
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  real estate. We can get more into this later,
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  but I end up going into the military and I got done with
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  basic training like 10 days before 911 happened.
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  So I ended up getting deployed to Germany for a year with the
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  Army. I spent a lot of time there
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  reading anything I get my hands on that I thought would, you
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  know, give me a leg up to try to make some money not just through
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  a big salary, but other ways of, you know, investing or passive
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  income and whatnot. So I, I, I learned about fixing
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  flipping and, you know, being a real estate agents and all these
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  different things that gave me just a general understanding of
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  different options for how to make money.
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  But that kind of set the table for when I went to school, I got
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  a finance degree. I started trading options.
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  I've got all my classes on Tuesday and Thursday and I lived
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  in a fraternity at the time. So the other three days a week I
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  would just sit and I had to set a second room in the, in the
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  house and I trade options. That went well sometimes when,
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  when poorly others. I really thought I'd get a
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  degree out of college, you know, with an investment bank or a
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  trading company. But the Iraq war was going on.
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  I could be deployed at any time with the military.
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  So I had a really hard time figuring out, you know, who's
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  going to hire me. And then that's sort of when I
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  had my one big lucky break, I think I, I had a fraternity
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  brother whose dad had a house in Key West, FL.
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  And my fraternity brother asked me if I want to go down and
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  visit, and I did. I spent a week down there and
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  his dad was there and he was an accomplished real estate
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  developer. And each day, I'd wake up in the
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  morning, go for a run and read books.
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  And he had an office that sat above the pool where I was out
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  reading. And he saw me every morning.
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  So it was like the second to last day.
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  He just came up to me. And he said, you know, you're
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  the kind of guy that I like to hire.
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  You look like you're hard working.
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  You're, you know, inquisitive. Would you be interested in the
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  interview? And I was like, sure.
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  So I got home. I borrowed my dad's suit.
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  It's way too big. And I went in literally the next
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  day and had the interview with this guy and, and took a job
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  with his real estate development company, which would have been I
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  think 2004, you know, and that really set the stage for kind of
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  what was to come. Yeah.
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  And so it's so funny because as you were saying that I had such
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  a similar journey in growing up, you know, like had no money
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  growing up. Parents, dad worked at a pawn
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  shop, Mom was a night shift grocery bagger.
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  My best friend's dad was a luxury residential developer in
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  high school. And they had like the life that
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  I dreamed of, you know, the opposite of the life that I had
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  back at home. And, and so that was what kind
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  of got me the bug and just started reading every book that
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  I possibly could and learning fix and flip and wholesale and
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  residential commercial and all these different things.
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  And then rich dad, poor dad with Robert Kiyosaki and all that.
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  And so it's, it's funny, we had those, those similar paths.
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  And how old were you when you got offered the job for your
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  friend's dad? I would have been 21, I think
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  because I started, I started College in 17.
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  My mom put me in school at a private Christian School because
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  she thought I needed to get like going early.
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  So when I went down to college, I was still 17 years old.
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  I missed the year of college with the deployment with the
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  Army, but I graduated in three years.
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  So I think I was still 21 when I started that job.
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  It was like September of 24, Yeah.
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  Were you a really good student in school, like an overachiever
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  type your whole life or no? I was always a pretty good
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  student. I mean, I wasn't the
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  valedictorian, but I was definitely in the top tier.
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  I was always in the, you know, classes.
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  Like I took 5 or 6 AP classes my senior year.
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  I think that helped me to graduate in three years, but I
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  always had like a little bit of a contrarian tilt where I didn't
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  want that to be like my identity.
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  Like I didn't want to be a smart kid.
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  So going in Army, I think had a lot to do with that.
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  Like I had friends who were going to some prestigious
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  schools, even though I grew up in a town that didn't
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  necessarily send that many kids to Ivy League's.
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  Like I had a friend who was going to Harvard.
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  And just even from that point of my life, I was like, I don't
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  want to get into the game of just happening to do things the
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  way I'm supposed to. So yes, like I did well in
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  school, I think, you know, I was smart, whatever that means.
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  I think there's so many ways you can be smart but I was always
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  looking for like another route than just the the typical path.
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  Yeah. And is that what drove you?
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  I mean, you kind of mentioned that, but is that the main thing
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  that drove you to get into the Army or what was the reasoning
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  behind that? Because it's such a like
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  contrast with being super smart and studying and reading and all
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  these things. Yeah, no, I, I'd actually
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  skipped AP Bio. So I, that was right after lunch
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  in high school and I went to Taco Bell and there was a Armory
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  nearby and I just walked in and was like, tell me a little bit
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  about, you know, this And these recruiters are very good
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  salespeople. So he kind of got his, you know,
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  hook in me and explained, hey, we can pay for your school and
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  even beyond that, you'll have some money when you're going to
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  school and these different things.
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  And I had one kid who lived like 2 houses down from me who was
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  similar to me, that he was like really good at soccer and he was
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  pretty good at school. And he went into the Marines.
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  I actually thought it was the craziest thing, like what a
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  terrible idea in my head. But I think the fact that he did
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  it, it was like, I'll have this experience and, you know, maybe
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  it'll change me. So there was no real well
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  thought out part of it. I mean, my parents actually were
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  like, please don't do this. I needed them to sign off
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  because I was only 17. And I just I said, I think I'm
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  going to do this. And, you know, finally they came
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  around and signed off. So the Army piece, other than I
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  think I did have some of these financial principles in my head
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  of like, hey, if I don't have to, you know, take out debt or I
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  don't have to have a job when I'm going to school, like
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  that'll help. I think had part of it to do
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  with the military, but the other part was just think my
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  contrarian nature of like, all right, these people are doing
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  this. I'm going to do something
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  totally out of left field and, and go into the Army.
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  So that's what I did. And how did that, how was that
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  experience for you and how did do you think that shaped you for
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  what you then went on to do when you got out?
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  For the most part I hated it. Like I just didn't enjoy it.
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  I don't love being told what to do in general.
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  I tried to learn how to be told, you know, like my wife often,
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  you know, can you take out the garbage?
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  And it's like, OK, yes, I can do that.
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  Like, I don't have to be so prickly on every request of my
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  time. But like, you know, nine weeks
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  of basic training in Fort Leonard Wood, MO, in the middle
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  of January, it toughens you up. You know, like, you'd have to
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  get up every morning at 3:30 and go running even though it's 10°
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  out. And so I think that caused me a
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  little bit to believe in myself more, believe I could do things
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  that maybe I wouldn't have otherwise thought I could do.
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  But in no way was I like excelling or really into it or
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  kind of a, you know, hoorah person.
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  But then it gave me also this time, like I said, when I was
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  deployed in Germany and before that.
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  So you go to basic training and then you do training where you
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  learn your job skills. So mine was going to be a signal
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  system support specialist, which essentially was like a
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  communications radio guy, which had, I had no interest in at
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  all. So most of the time I, I, I went
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  down to Fort Gordon in Augusta, GA for like 20 weeks and I
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  started reading and on the weekends, I remember the first
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  weekend we were able to leave post, everybody went and rented
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  a hotel room for like $40 and got a case of Bud Light and like
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  a bunch of Taco Bell and just got drunk and ate the food in
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  this hotel room. And I did it the first week and
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  I'm just like, this is stupid. Like this isn't fun.
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  So I started staying on base and and running and to stay, I run a
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  lot, but in reading and when I got deployed to Germany, I was
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  out 12 hours a night guarding posts.
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  And I would sit out there and like have German flash cards or
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  I try to read a book like while I was doing this.
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  So, you know, it created a lot of principles in me that I think
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  helped me to have success later in life.
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  And in particular, I'll never forget when I got out of the
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  advanced training in Georgia and I finally had free time.
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  Like I woke up and I realized nobody was going to tell me what
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  to do that day. And I was so thrilled.
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  But like, I didn't want to waste any minute, you know, So I like
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  I was very productive, almost too much.
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  So we're like, I feel like I need to chill out a little bit
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  and enjoy life. But you know, at that age, I
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  think those are the kind of things you need to be doing is
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  like taking things seriously, using your time effectively,
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  like, you know, putting your time towards the goals you have.
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  So I think that's probably the piece of my military experience
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  that was most pertinent to, you know, my success later in life.
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  So you, you got out of out of the military and then after that
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  you, I'm sorry, you actually did you finish your finance degree
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  and then go to the military. And then, well, it's confusing
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  because it was the reserves program.
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  So it wasn't like go for four years straight.
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  Yeah, it was supposed to be in prior to 911.
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  It was essentially the way it been since the Vietnam War.
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  Like you went and you did a weekend of training somewhere
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  and then the your other three weekends you had to be at school
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  or whatever you might do. And then during the summer you'd
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  go for a couple weeks of training.
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  So that's what I was intending to do.
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  And then 9/11 happened. We got deployed.
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  I ended up actually then signing up for officer candidate school,
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  which, you know, the process to become an officer in the Army as
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  opposed to be on the enlisted side.
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  And that was an 18 month program that I had to do on the weekends
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  while I was going to school at the University of Illinois.
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  The reason I bring that up is because during that time my my
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  unit actually got deployed again to Afghanistan, but I wasn't
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  able to go because I was in this program.
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  And you know, I think that would have made me a totally different
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  person than what I went through in Germany, which was quite safe
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  and, you know, not traumatic. The Army was an 8 year
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  commitment from when I was like 17 to 27.
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  But most of the time I was able to continue on with my everyday
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  life. So I finished up school at the
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  University of Illinois in 2004 and started working.
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  And while I was working, I had to go do these weekends away and
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  stuff. And it was a tremendous amount
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  of stress because I constantly thought I was going to be
• 14:00
  deployed on a dime to Iraq or these different places.
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  So, you know, trying to get your career going while like, you
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  know, every time you'd hear of some new being in the news, you
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  were afraid I might, you know, have to disappear for a year was
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  not the easiest way to to get started.
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  Yeah, always it like a open tab in the back of your mind, like,
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  what if I get taken tomorrow? And who knows what's going to
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  happen after that. OK, so then you got offered a
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  job by your buddy's father in Florida at the house in Key
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  West, who sounds like was living a pretty good life.
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  And then walk us through that process.
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  Like what? What was that experience like
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  for you as you were starting to learn?
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  Because then you ultimately went on to start your own development
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  company. So.
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  Yeah, what? You said you were hired as a
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  dirt dog. What is a dirt dog?
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  So a dirt dog to me was just I guess to set the scene for the
• 14:47
  answer. This company did a lot of
• 14:50
  things, but primarily at least what they have to Tuttle their
• 14:54
  growth was doing build to suit development.
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  So what that is, at least when I'm using a terminology, is you
• 14:59
  have a tenant kind of in hand when you're going to look for a
• 15:03
  project who wants to occupy space.
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  So, you know, you could do a build to suit in the industrial
• 15:08
  space for Amazon to put in their, you know, for a
• 15:11
  warehouse. But you could also do it for
• 15:13
  Chipotle for the restaurant, or it could be a Doctor Who wants
• 15:17
  you to build a building for their designs.
• 15:19
  But you know, you're doing your development with a specific
• 15:23
  tenant in mind. So that's what this developer
• 15:26
  had done with Blockbuster Video back in the 90s, like did
• 15:29
  hundreds of them. So at the time that I came on,
• 15:32
  they didn't really have a ton of those types of tenants.
• 15:34
  But they, for example, the the one that they had at the time,
• 15:38
  and it's funny, we're sitting in suburban Detroit.
• 15:40
  It was called Murray's Discount Auto.
• 15:42
  They were actually based here and they ended up getting bought
• 15:44
  out by O'reilly's. But I would drive around
• 15:47
  suburban Chicago where they had given us targets of where they
• 15:50
  want to open. And I would, you know, overtime
• 15:52
  learned what they were looking for.
• 15:54
  And then I would, it's funny how this has evolved with
• 15:56
  technology. But at the time, it would be
• 15:57
  like, I would take a picture of a property and if there wasn't a
• 16:00
  sign on it, I'd go to the recorder's office and look at
• 16:02
  the plat map and get the pin number.
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  And then I'd go to like the treasurer's office and I'd give
• 16:06
  them the pin and they'd tell me here's the tax bill.
• 16:09
  And then I'd research who owned it and I'd try to call them and
• 16:12
  see if I could buy it. Obviously, some properties were,
• 16:16
  you know, on the market and it was just a matter of calling on
• 16:18
  a sign. But that's what I spent the
• 16:19
  first, you know, year and a half doing is just driving around and
• 16:23
  looking at property and then calling to see if you could buy
• 16:25
  it and if so, for how much. And from that point, you know,
• 16:28
  learning how to negotiate a purchase proposal and a purchase
• 16:31
  contract. But what sort of happened at the
• 16:35
  same time as my now partner Mike and I, we sort of teamed up even
• 16:40
  working at this company Insight. That's where we met, just saw
• 16:42
  that we need to find our own tenants to be able to like have
• 16:45
  the process more in our own court.
• 16:47
  Like we didn't want to have to wait for somebody else at the
• 16:49
  company to come along and say, hey, you know, we have this new
• 16:52
  client now you go find the real estate.
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  So we just started a driving around the country on our own
• 16:58
  and while we were doing that, we'd look up like, who are the
• 17:00
  best real estate brokerage companies in this town?
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  And we try to set up a lunch with them.
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  Or if there was a conference going on, we'd go to that
• 17:07
  conference and try to meet people and just network and grow
• 17:09
  our, you know, grow our network that way.
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  As that happened, we began to not just be looking for dirt,
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  but we'd be looking for the tenant that might create that
• 17:18
  relationship. You know, take them to a dinner,
• 17:20
  whatever it might be. The first development project
• 17:23
  ever put together was in my hometown.
• 17:25
  It was a coroner. We thought we could do a drug
• 17:28
  store and you needed this tire store on the corner.
• 17:31
  And I couldn't get a hold of the people.
• 17:32
  Finally, I remember driving out to their, their house and
• 17:35
  knocking on the door late at night and they were like, we're
• 17:36
  never selling the property. So we, we pivoted and I put
• 17:40
  together a site plan that showed 2 little retail buildings and I
• 17:44
  called the guy from Chipotle. This is back when they probably
• 17:46
  had like 80 locations and we had lunch and he's like, I want to
• 17:50
  be there. I'll pay you this much in rent.
• 17:52
  And my eyes are getting all excited.
• 17:54
  Like maybe I have my first development deal.
• 17:56
  And, and that was it. We, we did that deal.
• 17:58
  We put in Potbelly sandwiches and Starbucks.
• 18:00
  And so from that point on, things start to grow where Mike
• 18:04
  and I, like, you know, would ask the Chipotle guy, well, hey, we
• 18:07
  put you there. What about this other town?
• 18:09
  You know, like we help you find you there and we just piece
• 18:11
  things together. I think during the time there
• 18:13
  we, we did about 14 projects. We ended up finding a dental
• 18:18
  group. There were some guys that used
• 18:19
  to work at Aspen Dental, which is a large chain of dentistry
• 18:23
  across the country. And they'd started their own
• 18:25
  company. And this is part of what we did.
• 18:28
  Like we were in Willoughby, OH, suburban Cleveland and we saw
• 18:31
  all Care Dental. And so we just figured out who
• 18:34
  the owner of all Care Dental was.
• 18:35
  And we called and we're like, hey, do you need build a suit
• 18:37
  development services? And six months later that guy
• 18:39
  called us back and we ended up doing a few projects for them.
• 18:43
  And so when we finally did go to leave and start our own company,
• 18:47
  they did their first few projects with us sort of the
• 18:50
  transition. And is that company that you
• 18:54
  started out still around or did that, did they retire?
• 18:57
  No, they're still around. Yep.
• 18:58
  They've, yeah, they're like a competitor of ours.
• 19:01
  They've shifted some of their focus towards like large
• 19:04
  industrial projects. They actually own I think like a
• 19:06
  two or three million square foot building really close to here in
• 19:12
  Ypsilanti. That's least to GM.
• 19:14
  Did they get upset when you left?
• 19:17
  I always think it's fascinating because I've helped two people
• 19:20
  at my because I own a real estate brokerage as well as the
• 19:23
  lending company, but I've helped two people start their own
• 19:25
  brokerages from my company. Like help, you know, support
• 19:28
  them, teach them everything. I did like give them the
• 19:31
  systems, teach them like the ropes and everything.
• 19:33
  And but then I hear all these stories and it's sometimes not
• 19:37
  so smooth like that. Like a lot of a lot of men in
• 19:39
  the industry, they get very mad or make threats.
• 19:41
  I know Simon was talking about he was getting threatened when
• 19:43
  he was going to go move to a different company or things like
• 19:45
  that. So like, what did that look like
• 19:46
  for you? More like Simon, unfortunately
• 19:51
  we had a one year non compete that we'd signed when we
• 19:53
  started, which you know I was 21 years old.
• 19:56
  I had no authority. Whether it would have held up, I
• 19:58
  don't know, but it was a very something we took seriously
• 20:01
  because. As I've learned more over the
• 20:02
  years, you get in a lawsuit, it's going to cost you a lot of
• 20:04
  money whether you didn't did anything wrong or not.
• 20:07
  So we waited a year before we did much of anything.
• 20:10
  But like for one example, during that year period, I went to the
• 20:14
  International Council of Shopping Centers National
• 20:16
  Convention in Las Vegas. And I had helped my at the time
• 20:22
  roommate get a job at this this company.
• 20:24
  And he was there and I had left. And he said that my boss, former
• 20:29
  boss, the guy who owned the company, had asked him for my
• 20:31
  address because he was going to send a cease and desist letter
• 20:33
  because he saw us talking to Panda Express or something.
• 20:36
  You know, at the time it like my heart rate got going.
• 20:39
  And but yeah, unfortunately afterwards we got together, me
• 20:43
  and the owner of that company and it was in person like a very
• 20:48
  positive, you know, I had drinks and stuff.
• 20:51
  But unfortunately he did some things after that in terms of
• 20:55
  kind of like telling his company go after the competitors I'd or
• 20:58
  clients I'd mentioned that we were working on and stuff where.
• 21:02
  So from that point of forward there, you know, there hasn't
• 21:04
  unfortunately been that much of a relationship, but teach their
• 21:08
  own, you know, like he's I guess protecting his business.
• 21:11
  I guess what he thinks he's doing for me personally, we have
• 21:14
  a lot of guys in their 20s working for us now.
• 21:16
  If any of them ever want to go off and do this on their own, I
• 21:19
  would, you know, if they do it in a thoughtful, respectful way,
• 21:24
  I would 100% support them and take it as a, you know, badge of
• 21:27
  pride that hey, look like we were able to help create more
• 21:32
  success rather than there's some limited pie that, you know, if
• 21:35
  somebody takes out of it, I don't get as much pie.
• 21:37
  I just, I don't believe in that way of thinking.
• 21:40
  Yeah, I'm the same way. It's just that that scarcity
• 21:43
  mindset versus the abundance mindset.
• 21:45
  And I think instinctively and culturally, we are trained.
• 21:50
  I mean, I guess everybody has a different family, but people
• 21:52
  like you and me who didn't come from much, we kind of have that
• 21:54
  scarcity mindset ingrained. And so for me, it was a shift to
• 21:57
  that abundance mindset of like, for me to win doesn't mean
• 22:00
  somebody else has to lose, right?
• 22:01
  And it might be sure, I won that deal and they lost that deal,
• 22:05
  but they're not losing the game. It's just that one play.
• 22:08
  And that's how you learn and you grow.
• 22:09
  And there's so much abundance in the world that there's more
• 22:11
  businesses being created all the time.
• 22:13
  Like there. I just think that there's, it's
• 22:15
  so silly for people to hate each other and make these massive,
• 22:18
  you know, ruin really great relationships because they, they
• 22:21
  feel like it's a 0 sum game. Yeah, I just, I don't at the end
• 22:25
  of the day believe that it's in my best interest either.
• 22:28
  I mean, like, obviously I want it to be better for these other
• 22:31
  people, like in an altruistic way.
• 22:32
  But I've thought about it a lot and I think it's better for me
• 22:36
  to have more people out there who are like, wow, thanks for
• 22:39
  what you did. It's, you know, for
• 22:40
  reputationally whatever. Like I mentioned what I just
• 22:43
  mentioned, it'll be heard by whoever's heard.
• 22:46
  I didn't get into details, but still, like that doesn't look
• 22:50
  well on, you know, my old boss like that.
• 22:52
  I'm describing it this way versus if I would have been able
• 22:55
  to describe it some other way, I could probably also mention his
• 22:58
  name and the company and it would be like a a plug for them,
• 23:01
  you know what I mean? But so yeah.
• 23:04
  People. Yeah, but it's also just the way
• 23:07
  that I live my life is I want to be able to do the things that I
• 23:10
  like to do. And, you know, I moved to
• 23:13
  Manhattan. It's expensive.
• 23:15
  I never thought I'd spend as much as I do in a year as I do
• 23:18
  now. But I don't, I don't buy status
• 23:21
  symbols. Like I'm not into like just
• 23:22
  getting stuff to show like how well I've done or to boost my
• 23:26
  ego. It's like if I've got enough
• 23:27
  money to do what I enjoy in a given year, in the next year,
• 23:31
  then that's all I need. So yeah, if an employee of mine
• 23:34
  left and did something that would jeopardize, like, my
• 23:37
  business and my ability to like, you know, live, that might be
• 23:40
  one thing, but I don't think that's going to happen.
• 23:42
  So it's your point. I think you can, you know, grow
• 23:45
  the pie by sharing and helping. So you were getting started in
• 23:49
  the boom in like 2004, 2005, 2006, that kind of era.
• 23:53
  And then you went out and started your own company.
• 23:56
  And then I'm pretty sure pretty shortly after that, like within
• 23:59
  a year, that was where the market crash was starting to
• 24:01
  take place. And then I know you've had you
• 24:05
  had some tenants or Equity Partners that filed bankruptcy.
• 24:07
  So can you walk us through that process?
• 24:09
  I mean, as an early entrepreneur, you're super
• 24:11
  excited. Like you have that.
• 24:12
  I actually just finished a book by a friend of mine, Cameron
• 24:14
  Harold called Double Double. But he says there's four stages
• 24:17
  of entrepreneurship. And the first one is uninformed
• 24:19
  optimism. Or you go out and you're just
• 24:21
  like so excited to take it on and like you're unstoppable.
• 24:24
  You're going to own the world. You got it all.
• 24:26
  And then the next phase is informed pessimism where you're
• 24:29
  like, I can't do this. I'm an over my head, I'm going
• 24:32
  to lose everything. Like how do I move forward from
• 24:34
  here? So I'm and then paired with the
• 24:36
  economic environment that we were in, I'm sure you had some
• 24:39
  pretty severe experiences in those two phases.
• 24:41
  So like, what was it like for you launching the company in a
• 24:44
  peak market that was crazy. And then, you know, going
• 24:48
  through some of those those dark times shortly thereafter.
• 24:53
  It was rough. Those first two stages you
• 24:54
  mentioned fit the situation perfectly because part of the
• 24:59
  reason we left because it's just everything seems so easy.
• 25:01
  Like the idea of getting money for a project at the time in
• 25:05
  2006, you know, I didn't handle that at my previous company.
• 25:09
  There was somebody else who like did the financing and stuff, but
• 25:12
  it just felt so easy. Like you come up with an idea,
• 25:15
  you go out there, you get the money and you build it.
• 25:16
  So that certainly informed my decision to do this in the 1st
• 25:20
  place was like the times we were in.
• 25:23
  But I left in March of 2007, I think April.
• 25:27
  And like I said, we had that one year non compete.
• 25:29
  So our first real like work was being done like April 2008.
• 25:36
  During that year I'd driven all across the country and looked at
• 25:39
  real estate. I mean, that was one thing that
• 25:40
  I think led to our success is we would get in the car and do 3000
• 25:43
  miles in four days like we just are.
• 25:46
  You sure you didn't run? I wasn't as good of a runner
• 25:49
  then. I'm sure I did plenty of running
• 25:52
  but yeah not not 3000 dollars. 3000 miles is about the annual
• 25:55
  mileage I do, but not in a week. I know, for those of you who
• 25:58
  don't know because I didn't mention it, but he's ran 25
• 26:02
  marathons and four New York marathons and had a personal
• 26:06
  best last year of two hours and 46 minutes and 17 seconds.
• 26:11
  I have a photographic memory, too, but yeah, that's crazy.
• 26:15
  I run like you know 2 get my food from the DoorDash driver
• 26:20
  and I'm winded so. No, it's it's a bit of a
• 26:23
  neurosis, which I think, you know, can benefit me and a lot
• 26:26
  of like I'm sure you had a lot of people on and sometimes
• 26:30
  people who have success in different areas can be like
• 26:34
  hyper focused on things and running is one of those things
• 26:36
  for me sometimes. Yeah, a lot of times.
• 26:40
  But no, like so I I just I'll never forget it.
• 26:44
  We had our, we had a couple projects sort of then like
• 26:48
  sites, pieces of real estate in Tennessee that we thought would
• 26:52
  be our first development projects.
• 26:54
  And once the non compete was out, we we put offers on them
• 26:57
  and we went out to get financing.
• 26:59
  And at that time everything still felt kind of fine in
• 27:03
  hindsight, like the early 2008 things were falling apart.
• 27:06
  But at the time it felt fine. So we had a term sheet from I
• 27:09
  think it was BB and T and then I get a call like, you know, six
• 27:13
  weeks in underwriting, like we can't do this deal.
• 27:15
  And I was like, OK, we went to another regional bank.
• 27:17
  Oh, yeah, we're good to go. They did the appraisal came back
• 27:19
  and then it was like a couple weeks out from closing and they
• 27:23
  pulled back on the deal. And this is when I think you
• 27:25
  start hearing, you know, Lehman Brothers collapsing.
• 27:27
  And these are all things at the time I didn't, you know, I
• 27:29
  wasn't smart enough or in the know to know what was going on
• 27:32
  around me. But like, you could feel this
• 27:35
  isn't going in the right direction.
• 27:36
  And so we got serious and we drove down to Tennessee and we,
• 27:40
  we set up meetings with I think like 40 banks and we just drove
• 27:44
  from like Kingsport over on the east side, like Memphis and like
• 27:48
  any, you know, Knoxville, Chattanooga, every, we just met
• 27:51
  with banks and we were striking out left and right.
• 27:54
  And I'm like, Oh my God, this might not work, you know, like
• 27:58
  this whole thing. And we ended up going to Clayton
• 28:02
  Bank and trust in Knoxville for the last one.
• 28:05
  And there's like a loan officer, he's probably in his 20s.
• 28:08
  And then 5 minutes later this old guy comes in and he's got
• 28:11
  two books in his hand, thick books.
• 28:13
  And he signs him hands. And he's like, I'm Jim Clayton,
• 28:16
  you know, founder, CEO of Clayton Bank.
• 28:18
  And I was like, oh, all right. He's like, tell me what you're,
• 28:21
  you know what you got going on? We told him he's like, you guys
• 28:23
  seem like good guys. Yeah, we'll lend you the money.
• 28:25
  And we're like, OK, so I went home, write his book.
• 28:28
  And guy's a billionaire. He sold his.
• 28:32
  He grew up in West Tennessee as a sharecroppers son.
• 28:35
  And started some car dealerships and then manufactured housing
• 28:39
  business. He sold it to Warren Buffett,
• 28:41
  Berkshire Hathaway for like a billion plus.
• 28:43
  And then he started this bank and every dollar he, he got from
• 28:48
  the bank, he donated back to the community.
• 28:52
  So I'll never forget because it was the day I was supposed to
• 28:54
  leave for my honeymoon. I get A and, and the sellers on
• 28:58
  the properties, there's three of them that we were working on.
• 29:01
  We're all getting fed up. They were like, you know, we've
• 29:03
  gotten extensions and they're like, this is it.
• 29:05
  We're not giving any more time. And the call, I'm in Oklahoma
• 29:09
  City and the call is like, I'm about to fly home to then fly to
• 29:12
  my honeymoon. And it's like, oh, Rob, we effed
• 29:16
  up, man. I, I don't think I can do your
• 29:18
  deal anymore. And you know, like I, I just, I
• 29:21
  couldn't believe it. So my partner Mike got Jim
• 29:24
  Clayton's business card out and he had his phone number on.
• 29:26
  He called him and Jim picks up, he's in his cell phone.
• 29:29
  He was in Las Vegas at some convention and he's like, wait,
• 29:33
  what? No, no, no, I'll take care of
• 29:35
  this. And then 5 minutes later I get a
• 29:37
  call back from my loan officer, like, OK, we're good to go.
• 29:39
  And we closed those loans and sold them.
• 29:42
  So, you know, there was definitely a lesson in like,
• 29:44
  perseverance and not assuming that things were just going to
• 29:47
  go well there. But yeah, then beyond that, like
• 29:51
  the tenant that we built for those first three projects for
• 29:53
  ended up going bankrupt. You know, luckily, I hate it
• 29:57
  when this happens because somebody else is sort of left
• 29:59
  holding the bag. But we've sold the three
• 30:01
  properties, so it didn't like take us down completely there.
• 30:04
  And when I go look at those three properties now, they're
• 30:06
  well leased to other tenants. So I'm hoping I know for a fact
• 30:10
  one of the people that we sold the property to, even though
• 30:12
  they had the tenant closed and gone bankrupt, ended up being
• 30:15
  our equity partner on one of our first projects after that as we
• 30:18
  were trying to figure out because yes, at that time period
• 30:21
  also the equity partner that was going to do right, the equity
• 30:25
  checks for our projects went bankrupt.
• 30:26
  So we, we literally then in 2009 we're back to like complete
• 30:29
  Ground Zero with no tenant, no money, had no idea really what
• 30:34
  we were doing. But we kept, you know, we put
• 30:37
  our head down and it was like, hey, what's our other choice?
• 30:40
  Like go back to work for somebody.
• 30:42
  So we pieced together a project with Aspen Dental with some of
• 30:46
  the work we've done for this other dental group.
• 30:48
  We had a property in Cheektowaga, NY, which is
• 30:51
  suburban Buffalo that we had leased the Chipotle and Aspen
• 30:54
  Dental. Despite the fact that we had 210
• 30:56
  year leases, it was like 11% yield on cost on the project,
• 31:00
  which, you know, today is like impossible to get on a retail
• 31:02
  project. We could not get a bank to lend
• 31:04
  us money on it. So it was tough.
• 31:07
  But we again, it was one of these like, all right, how do we
• 31:10
  find money? And I was sitting at a CCIM
• 31:12
  luncheon and there was a broker who like sells investment sales
• 31:17
  properties. And he was like, hey, can I sell
• 31:19
  any of your projects? And we were like, hey, we don't
• 31:21
  really have anything to sell, but we needed help raising
• 31:24
  money. He was, you know, probably 20
• 31:26
  years older than us. And he set us up with five
• 31:29
  individuals who may have had interest in investing in real
• 31:31
  estate. And the first four, like,
• 31:33
  laughed us out of the room. And the last one didn't show up,
• 31:37
  but we called him and he invited us over to his house.
• 31:39
  And we go over and his dogs are like accosting us while we're
• 31:42
  trying to explain him to him what we're doing.
• 31:44
  And he's like, all right, tomorrow, why don't you come
• 31:45
  back with and I'll bring my high school friend and we'll, we'll,
• 31:48
  we'll have the lunch we're supposed to have.
• 31:50
  And we had that lunch and they wrote a check on that project in
• 31:53
  Cheektowaga, NY. And then they ended up doing
• 31:56
  like 4045 projects with us. We're still doing some stuff
• 31:59
  with them today. So sometimes when you don't have
• 32:02
  the path, like that's what you want as an entrepreneur, is to
• 32:05
  see exactly where you're going. But it can be murky.
• 32:07
  And you got to keep, you know, trying like, don't give up.
• 32:12
  Yeah. I mean, that's a testament to
• 32:13
  your resilience is like 440 banks.
• 32:17
  You know, you went to 40 banks. You must have not had Jeffrey at
• 32:20
  that time. No, but yeah, it's, it's crazy
• 32:25
  because most normal people will get rejected once, maybe twice,
• 32:29
  maybe three times. And they're like, all right, I
• 32:32
  can't do it. It's impossible, Right.
• 32:33
  And so it's just, that's just not reality.
• 32:37
  You have to do it 40 times and you're going to have to do it
• 32:39
  400 more times after that if you want to continue to be
• 32:42
  successful, not just obtain the success, but keep it.
• 32:44
  So that's really cool. Yeah.
• 32:46
  And I think I was talking to Simon about this too, is like
• 32:48
  the one trade I see in every super successful person and not
• 32:53
  just financial success, but health.
• 32:55
  Like you, you have an amazing marriage, you have amazing kids,
• 32:57
  you have a great relationship with your family.
• 32:58
  Like you run 3000 miles a year, which I want to talk to you
• 33:02
  about because I don't know how I still haven't found that balance
• 33:04
  of like, you know, making time for some other things in life
• 33:07
  outside of business. And then you have this
• 33:09
  incredible development company and an amazing reputation and
• 33:12
  all these things. And that's really hard to do and
• 33:15
  it takes insane dedication. And that one trait that I
• 33:18
  recognize in the people that are able to accomplish success in
• 33:23
  all the areas of their life and be a very well-rounded and and
• 33:27
  successful person and every right is that they are just
• 33:31
  insanely driven and determined and resilient.
• 33:34
  And that's really all that it comes down to is like, they just
• 33:36
  don't quit. Yeah, no.
• 33:39
  And it's, I do think there's an aspect to it when you have to
• 33:43
  know when something's not going to work.
• 33:46
  And I think like if I would have, if Clayton Bank would have
• 33:49
  been my 40th, no, that might have been it because like we had
• 33:53
  pulled up all the banks, you know, and maybe there would have
• 33:55
  been other opportunities or whatever.
• 33:56
  But there is some level where you have to realize like, all
• 33:59
  right, this isn't my day. But you until you know that
• 34:02
  that's the point you've assessed, like here are all the
• 34:04
  options. Here's all the things I can do.
• 34:07
  And it's funny, if we talk about running, like I have a very
• 34:09
  similar history with my running and getting from like a dark
• 34:14
  time to a successful time and kind of assessing like, what can
• 34:17
  I do to make this work? Can.
• 34:18
  You share that? Well, yeah, I just, I wanted to
• 34:21
  run. I love running.
• 34:23
  I probably loved running even more back then because we were
• 34:25
  always traveling. It's not fun to get up in a
• 34:28
  hotel room every morning and just get in a car and like, not
• 34:32
  see the cool city you might be in.
• 34:34
  It might be a city that nobody thinks is interesting, like, you
• 34:37
  know, Waterloo, IA or something, and you're going to Fairfield
• 34:41
  Inn by the mall. But like, if you wake up and
• 34:43
  you, you go find our little trail along the river or go
• 34:45
  through their downtown like it's, it's cool.
• 34:48
  You kind of know that place. And so I was doing that across
• 34:51
  the country, but I continue it was getting hurt like it was
• 34:53
  just one thing after another and not like catastrophic stuff like
• 34:56
  tornacial, just tendonitis, stress fracture, stuff like
• 34:59
  that. And so I mean, I had, you know,
• 35:01
  thousands of dollars worth of contraptions I bought to, you
• 35:05
  know, massage and stretch and all these books and changing my
• 35:08
  form and all these different things.
• 35:10
  And it just I kept like, I wanted to run more because I
• 35:13
  knew to be the runner I want to be like I had to be able to do
• 35:16
  it kind of more. And I and then I just wanted to
• 35:19
  do it when I was on all these trips and I couldn't.
• 35:21
  And it was frustrating until I found finally a running coach
• 35:26
  and he videotaped me running for a minute.
• 35:29
  And he's like, your left arm is doing something different than
• 35:32
  your right arm. That's what your problems are
• 35:35
  here. So now I'm running around the
• 35:36
  track. He's yelling, move your left
• 35:37
  arm, move your left arm. And I start moving my left arm
• 35:39
  and like the pain starts going away in my right knee.
• 35:41
  I mean, it sounds like magic, but it was true.
• 35:44
  I was like, wow, maybe I finally found, you know, my thing.
• 35:48
  Like a running coach was kind of on the end of my list of like
• 35:52
  options for all this stuff. And so from that point on, I
• 35:55
  really didn't have as many injuries.
• 35:58
  And then he told me about this function, and I'm not going to
• 36:01
  try not to be too technical on it, but there's a ground contact
• 36:04
  time balance feature on the advanced garments that tells you
• 36:08
  the amount of time your left foot and your right foot spent
• 36:10
  on the ground as a percentage of each other.
• 36:12
  So like, if you're 5050, it's like perfect, but it also means
• 36:17
  you're probably landing right under your center of like mass.
• 36:20
  And if you start getting to like 5152, it probably means one of
• 36:24
  your feet is landing out front of the other, maybe crossing
• 36:26
  over the other. So when I learned that and I got
• 36:28
  it, I watched that the entire time I run, not like
• 36:31
  incessantly, but I keep looking down and making sure the whole
• 36:33
  time I'm running, I'm at like 5050.
• 36:36
  That's probably 1012 years ago. And since then, like I've been
• 36:38
  able to pretty much run as much as I want because it, it, it was
• 36:42
  the data that gave me the feedback on the things like,
• 36:45
  Hey, your left arm is doing something different.
• 36:47
  Because otherwise I could only really tell when that coach was
• 36:51
  there telling me. And now I have this like thing
• 36:53
  on my arm that allows me to. So that was kind of like my
• 36:57
  Clayton Bank of running, you know?
• 37:00
  Yeah, 'cause most people probably would have been like, I
• 37:02
  can't run, I give Andrew. I'm.
• 37:04
  Not meant for it. Yeah, exactly.
• 37:06
  Which is probably something I would have said as an easy
• 37:08
  excuse out, but that's cool. And you've, I mean, I could see
• 37:12
  you light up just talking about running.
• 37:14
  So it's clearly something that you're super passionate about
• 37:16
  and you found that passion in the arm.
• 37:19
  That's where I started. Yeah, I mean, because it was
• 37:22
  just, it was maybe I'm remembering it wrong because
• 37:25
  it's somewhat long time ago now. But I remember it as being like
• 37:27
  one weekend, like hungover in a dark hotel room in a terrible
• 37:31
  southern town. And the next weekend I'm like,
• 37:34
  it's sunny and I'm like feeling good and I'm like running And
• 37:38
  then went back to the, you know, the my barracks and got a nice
• 37:41
  healthy meal. And like the, the contrast and
• 37:45
  how I felt between the two was significant.
• 37:48
  And I'd like, I'd ran a little bit before that in baseball, I
• 37:51
  was always one of the third slowest people getting to first
• 37:54
  base. It's funny, I had my 25 year
• 37:57
  high school reunion two weeks ago and these two other guys who
• 37:59
  were the slowest were there and they said, I always thought you
• 38:03
  might be a distance runner because like, when we had to run
• 38:06
  3 miles, you were always the first person done.
• 38:08
  Like, it's just the problems of the speed.
• 38:09
  Running to first base was the same speed that you ran for
• 38:12
  three miles, which is probably the same speed you run now for
• 38:14
  like 26 miles. And there's a lot of truth in
• 38:16
  that. So I would go running a little
• 38:19
  bit in high school, different things.
• 38:20
  But it was really, yeah, in the Army where I did like 6 miles, I
• 38:23
  felt like, OK, like, you know, that was fun.
• 38:25
  And then I think it was my junior year in college, I had
• 38:32
  gone like a nine month period without drinking.
• 38:34
  I had this agreement with my brother about it.
• 38:37
  And I'm living in a fraternity at the University of Illinois.
• 38:40
  So not drinking was a very weird thing to be doing.
• 38:43
  But a girl that I knew and 13 of her sorority sisters were
• 38:47
  running the Chicago Marathon this 2003.
• 38:49
  And so I signed up and I did my first marathon 2003, caught the
• 38:55
  bug and, you know, continued running on and off since that
• 38:59
  time. But like I said, injuries were a
• 39:01
  lot of the problem. Like I did that one marathon.
• 39:03
  I didn't for a while. Then I finally did another
• 39:05
  marathon. I did my third one in Nairobi,
• 39:08
  Kenya. We went raised a bunch of money
• 39:12
  for like these water projects and we got to go meet the kids
• 39:14
  and different things. And then, yeah, the last 12
• 39:17
  years, I've just every spring and fall, my, my, my big goal is
• 39:20
  always to run the Boston Marathon.
• 39:21
  And it felt very out of reach. I got in a couple times.
• 39:25
  But then they seed you. And if there's too many runners
• 39:27
  who are faster than you can get out here on the outside, that
• 39:30
  happened to be with 9 seconds and then, like, 11 seconds.
• 39:33
  But I took my time from, like, yeah, 342 to finally 247 and
• 39:37
  last year, 246, which has allowed me to run the Boston
• 39:39
  Marathon the last four years. And, you know, my point being,
• 39:42
  the lighting up, it's fun to accomplish goals.
• 39:45
  It's fun to, like, have things that you couldn't do that now
• 39:48
  you can do and look back. I mean, you start to take them
• 39:50
  for granted, but when you have an opportunity like this to kind
• 39:52
  of think about it, it's like, wow, that is really cool.
• 39:55
  Like I remember thinking to myself, man, when my dad sees me
• 39:59
  finally qualify for the Boston Marathon, like I'll cry because
• 40:03
  I'll be so emotional. And then I have a video that he
• 40:05
  took of me like crossing the finish line in Minneapolis the
• 40:08
  first time I ran under 3 hours. And he you can hear in his voice
• 40:12
  like he's choking up and stuff, you know?
• 40:13
  So it's like, I don't know, I think that's what life's all
• 40:15
  about, so. Yeah, that's so cool.
• 40:19
  How do you balance everything? You know what, what are your
• 40:24
  habits are like? How have you managed to balance
• 40:25
  that? Because I know personally in my
• 40:26
  life, I've always been a little bit out of whack.
• 40:29
  Definitely leaning heavily on the academics, business real
• 40:33
  estate. Like, you know, how that as
• 40:34
  that's progressed as I've aged and then my relationships and my
• 40:39
  health have suffered more. I mean, I've kept it up
• 40:43
  decently, but you know, I, I'm single, don't have a very strong
• 40:47
  relationship and I don't work out as I mean, I go to the gym
• 40:50
  when I'm at home, but I travel all the time and then I lose my
• 40:53
  routine or I go out to eat all the time.
• 40:54
  So like, how have you balanced your crazy drive in real estate
• 40:59
  development and then also running and being an athlete and
• 41:03
  then having an amazing relationship with your family
• 41:05
  and your kids as well? Because I, I feel like I don't
• 41:07
  know how to find enough time in the day and even with a team,
• 41:11
  you know, So like, walk me through how you've managed to be
• 41:14
  successful at that, whether it's how you built your team or your
• 41:16
  daily habits or your, your non negotiables or what that looks
• 41:20
  like in your life. It's just funny you asked that
• 41:22
  because literally this week I I keep like an insta story most
• 41:27
  days with something and and I get into a lot of different
• 41:29
  things. So I got a question from like, I
• 41:31
  think it was a a mom of kids previous school is like, I don't
• 41:36
  understand how you have time for all this.
• 41:39
  And so I thought about it a little bit.
• 41:40
  So it gives me a little bit of a head start on your question.
• 41:43
  But I mean, part of it is like I put in more of the hours, like
• 41:47
  in my 20s, like I didn't go out partying as much and stuff like
• 41:51
  when I was in my 20s as maybe some other peers and I took, you
• 41:55
  know, risks like starting a company when you're 24.
• 41:58
  It just gives you that time to like learn and the time value of
• 42:02
  money and all these different things that my point being now,
• 42:06
  like I do live a pretty balanced life, but I think if I would
• 42:09
  have not put in maybe some of the front loading in my earlier
• 42:12
  years, you know, maybe I wouldn't be having this
• 42:15
  opportunity now. I think another one is, and I
• 42:20
  don't know, I wonder if I wouldn't have been diagnosed
• 42:22
  with like ADD now learning more about it or ADHD.
• 42:26
  If I get into something, I get really into it, but like trying
• 42:28
  to get me into something that like I, my brain hasn't said
• 42:31
  it's into, it's like impossible. So I don't get sidetracked with
• 42:36
  a lot of things. Like I don't watch TV much.
• 42:39
  I don't, I don't like to go out with like the guys on the block
• 42:44
  to sit on the stoop and just chat.
• 42:46
  I don't, there's a lot of things that I think, you know, most
• 42:49
  people do in a given day that I, I don't, I just don't do.
• 42:53
  So saying no to things I think helps.
• 42:56
  And then like as I've gotten older and with business is and I
• 43:00
  think this is just key and it especially for any
• 43:03
  entrepreneurs, like figuring out how to go from being the company
• 43:08
  yourself to the company being like all the different people.
• 43:12
  And I realize I can't do all these things that I used to do.
• 43:16
  So, you know, when we finally brought on like a bookkeeper and
• 43:19
  I stopped literally writing, you know, the checks like in doing
• 43:22
  QuickBooks. And then when we brought on
• 43:25
  young guys to make the property, the calls to the property owners
• 43:28
  that I used to do, I like no longer will do that anymore, you
• 43:31
  know, And I don't do anything on the construction side of our
• 43:35
  business really, because it's not what I'm good at.
• 43:37
  So I try to focus my time on what I'm good at in work and
• 43:43
  then like, what do I value outside of work and how much do
• 43:47
  I value it? Because you show what you value
• 43:49
  by what you put your time into. I'm thankful like my wife, since
• 43:53
  we had our first kid, she worked for us for like a year until she
• 43:56
  got pregnant, but she hasn't worked.
• 43:59
  So she's had more time to, you know, kind of take care of a lot
• 44:02
  of things in the house that maybe I would have to if we both
• 44:04
  worked that kind of thing with running.
• 44:08
  Like it's just my top priority in a day.
• 44:10
  Like, you know, if you would ask me to do this and I looked at my
• 44:14
  schedule and it was like, there's not time to run.
• 44:16
  I'd be like, I don't have time to do it where I think most
• 44:18
  people are like, it's the first. Like working out is the first
• 44:21
  thing to kind of go, you know, And then like with the family,
• 44:24
  it's just trying to make those times count.
• 44:27
  Like my older daughter and I like to go to concerts.
• 44:31
  So we have like kind of big, you know, memory things.
• 44:34
  My younger one has started to get into running.
• 44:36
  So she did a 10K recently that I did with her.
• 44:38
  And like, you know, it's just kind of like those big memorable
• 44:41
  moments instead of maybe just like a lot of time sitting on
• 44:44
  the couch watching TV with them or whatever.
• 44:48
  But yeah, I think like in short, it's, I think for me, I had to
• 44:53
  decide what I value, figuring out how to get time in my life
• 44:57
  for it and then saying no to things that would take up that
• 45:00
  time otherwise. And you know, I moved to New
• 45:03
  York four years ago on a whim and that's helped a lot.
• 45:07
  Cuz it like it all the things that I might have had, you know,
• 45:10
  little meetings, I'd have it for this group or that like it all
• 45:13
  went away and I could rebuild from scratch like what I wanted
• 45:16
  to do. And I have very few things like
• 45:18
  better weekly occurrences that I'm committed to and stuff cuz I
• 45:21
  don't like them that much. Like then there you can't have
• 45:24
  the spontaneity to do other things.
• 45:27
  So. Yeah, it's, it's, it really does
• 45:30
  come all come down to your priorities and what's the most
• 45:33
  important thing to you and what your, your non negotiables are.
• 45:35
  Like you said, like for me, work is my #1 priority.
• 45:39
  And so everything kind of comes as a second or third or 4th or
• 45:42
  5th to to business. And so I need to have a self
• 45:44
  reflection on is do I want that to always be my #1 Porter?
• 45:48
  But I'm also at a different phase in my life.
• 45:50
  Like, you know, I believe you can have it all, but not all at
• 45:52
  once. And just like you said, you
• 45:54
  really put in the work when you were getting started earlier on.
• 45:57
  And then now you've built a huge foundation and you have
• 46:00
  something a great team and you can settle into more of a
• 46:04
  balance in your life. And that's, that's really cool.
• 46:07
  And I love that you said that you love to dance and you go
• 46:10
  dancing out and house music is my favorite music too.
• 46:14
  And I had a Garen, my friend Karen Jones on the podcast.
• 46:17
  And he's just a beautiful human, but spent like spent a lot of
• 46:20
  time in prison and had a lot of challenges growing up.
• 46:24
  And he teaches people because so many people, he works a lot of
• 46:28
  entrepreneurs that are very successful financially, but
• 46:30
  they're very unfulfilled and kind of miserable inside a lot
• 46:33
  of them. And, and he teaches people to go
• 46:37
  back to the things that let them up as a kid.
• 46:41
  And so he like, asked me on the shows, like, what lit you up as
• 46:44
  a child and go back to do that? And he shared an example of one
• 46:47
  of his clients who was worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
• 46:50
  And she's like, I'm just, you know, on paper, I have it all,
• 46:52
  but I just feel miserable inside.
• 46:55
  And, and he's like, well, what did you enjoy as a kid?
• 46:57
  And she's like, I love dancing. And she just lit up saying it
• 46:59
  like, I love to dance. And and so she started
• 47:02
  prioritizing dancing over anything else in business or
• 47:05
  scaling or anything like that. And just that thing like playing
• 47:09
  and going back to that childhood instinct of just fun was able to
• 47:14
  kind of turn her life around. So I think it's really cool that
• 47:16
  you shared that you like to dance and you'll stay up all
• 47:19
  night dancing in Brooklyn. So can you talk a little bit
• 47:21
  about how you figured that out or started doing that?
• 47:24
  Yeah, I think there's so many angles to it, but I mean, I
• 47:30
  think the starting point being like, I used to have season
• 47:33
  tickets to, you know, the Chicago Bulls and the Chicago
• 47:36
  Bears and I spent a ton of time doing this stuff.
• 47:38
  Sometimes it would be like, you know, client facing stuff,
• 47:41
  whatever. But you know, and then I'd
• 47:43
  listen to the talk radio on the way to the to work and like it
• 47:46
  just I but I knew everything and I could have these conversations
• 47:49
  with people about, you know, sports and it's just part of my
• 47:51
  life. And I think when COVID hit and
• 47:53
  you know, a little bit leading up to that, it was just started
• 47:56
  question it like because you know, 8 out of 1010 times you go
• 47:59
  to a game and it's like it's kind of boring, like your team
• 48:01
  gets blown out or they blow the other team out.
• 48:03
  It's like 1 in 10 times. There's this amazing ending
• 48:05
  where and I think what drives people to sports is like it's a
• 48:09
  collective feeling of these people are on my team, you know,
• 48:12
  like, and we all did something together, even though you didn't
• 48:15
  have anything to do with it, right?
• 48:16
  But like, that's what people are seeking out.
• 48:18
  I think in that in that environment.
• 48:21
  But in sports, like, despite the fact that it's only some of the
• 48:25
  times, you know, you're going to get the outcome you want,
• 48:27
  there's also always like the the the enemy, the opposition, like
• 48:31
  the other team. And so, you know, I find myself
• 48:34
  leaving a game and like hating people from Wisconsin because
• 48:37
  the Packers won. And it's like, this is to me,
• 48:39
  this just feels like very like unevolved as a human being
• 48:42
  because like, they live on the other, you know, they'd like
• 48:44
  this other. They're rooting for these grown
• 48:46
  men. You know, it just didn't make
• 48:48
  that much sense. And so I, you know, had a couple
• 48:55
  like experience with electronic music.
• 48:56
  I went to one ICSC was like a beach party thing and I had a
• 49:01
  lot of fun. And then that led me to go to
• 49:03
  like a festival in Chicago just for a night.
• 49:07
  But it was really like, and then when I moved to New York after
• 49:10
  COVID, I told myself like, I want to see more live music.
• 49:12
  That's something I I was into when I was a kid and that, you
• 49:14
  know, when I was a kid and I just totally didn't make time
• 49:17
  for music at all. But then my brother, he's six
• 49:21
  years younger than me and he lives in the Chicagoland area
• 49:24
  and I'd moved in New York and I think he was really disappointed
• 49:26
  about the fact that I had this distance that felt like, you
• 49:29
  know, it was never going to be changed.
• 49:31
  And I said, man, it's New York like you're and he's a musician,
• 49:34
  like he's really good at the guitar, singing, drums, all that
• 49:37
  stuff. And so I was like, come to New
• 49:40
  York. I'll pay for us to go see
• 49:42
  whatever like a concert, like anytime.
• 49:45
  And he's like, I love that. So I googled like concerts comma
• 49:48
  NYC and it was like fish at the Madison Square Garden.
• 49:52
  And I was like, I kind of remember the band fish from when
• 49:55
  I was in high school. I was like, what about this to
• 49:56
  my brother? And he was like, that would be
• 49:58
  amazing. So we went and it's a long
• 50:01
  story, but it it's a culture that is very open to like
• 50:04
  whatever you bring into it is going to be like accepted and
• 50:07
  and, and the more you're yourself, the more you're kind
• 50:10
  of accepted, you know, and I think even that first show, I
• 50:14
  felt that a little bit. I've now seen them 48 times in
• 50:18
  the last two and. 1/2 years. So, yeah, I think my wife would
• 50:23
  be like, you know, you're saying priorities and time spent, like,
• 50:26
  maybe this is your top priority in life.
• 50:27
  But but like, I learned then to move my body in ways that felt
• 50:34
  really good and I didn't care anymore.
• 50:35
  You know, like, I think growing up I wanted to be cool.
• 50:38
  Like, I really want to be cool. I think about that a lot now.
• 50:41
  And I never thought I was. And dancing was something I
• 50:44
  think I always wanted to do. But like, I was afraid that I
• 50:46
  didn't look cool doing it. And so now I finally had this,
• 50:48
  like, community that I think allowed me to to feel like maybe
• 50:52
  not that I was cool, but that it was like, OK.
• 50:55
  And so from there, yeah, I actually met a guy at the
• 50:59
  Sphere, the the venue in Vegas. I was seeing fish on the floor
• 51:03
  where it's General mission and start talking to the guy behind
• 51:06
  me. And he's a DJ and he owns a
• 51:07
  really prominent nightclub in Ridgewood, which is on the
• 51:11
  Brooklyn, Queens border. And so I went and saw him DJ one
• 51:15
  time and then I've been to his club a bunch of times and now
• 51:17
  it's just grown. I started taking a house dance
• 51:19
  class on Fridays in the East Village from like 11:30 to 1:00.
• 51:25
  And I'm by far the worst every time.
• 51:27
  But but then like, it's so the difference, I think when you get
• 51:31
  into especially like house music, you know, plural peace,
• 51:34
  love of unity, respect, like it it's kind of the opposite of
• 51:36
  like sports where like you're not, there's no enemy.
• 51:38
  There's no like anybody who's there, as long as they're like
• 51:41
  being respectful is, you know, like you're the energy is to
• 51:47
  build those people up and stuff. Yeah, it's like a it's like an
• 51:50
  energy of love. Yes, no, it feels good and it
• 51:52
  feels good to move my body. I've taken like I took 75,000
• 51:55
  steps one night when I was out dancing.
• 51:57
  So I just like keep moving, keep going.
• 51:59
  And now it's like become like really like a study in humanity
• 52:02
  too. Because like while I'm there,
• 52:04
  you can see other people who don't look as comfortable.
• 52:05
  Maybe it's their first time, maybe they're, you know,
• 52:08
  overweight. They don't like they, you can
• 52:09
  tell they don't like what they're wearing or whatever.
• 52:12
  And I'll just go up and make like little comments like, Hey,
• 52:14
  I like your moves. Hey, you got great energy or
• 52:17
  whatever. You see people's faces like kind
• 52:18
  of like brighten up and it's amazing how you can make
• 52:22
  somebody's day, you know, that way.
• 52:25
  And I'm, I'm able to do that. Like when I'm out dancing.
• 52:28
  Like a very quick side note on that, just because I think it's
• 52:31
  it's very important in how I live my life is one of these a
• 52:36
  woman that I met at the women's shelter that was referring to
• 52:38
  earlier. We started going out for drinks.
• 52:42
  It's like once a month. And one of the times, you know,
• 52:44
  she told me that of all these terrible things that happened to
• 52:46
  her family, that she was like the only one left, like she
• 52:49
  didn't have any family. And she said to me one time
• 52:52
  that, you know, when I wake up, sometimes I really don't want to
• 52:55
  wake up. Like I don't want to go to
• 52:56
  dialysis. I just want to die.
• 52:57
  But I remember that you would know that I'm like that I'm
• 53:02
  alive that there's like one person out there, like thinking
• 53:05
  about me. And I mean, how powerful is
• 53:07
  that? Like right, Like there's
• 53:09
  somebody out there that like, because you're have them anyhow,
• 53:11
  she's not the touch. She's never the top priority of
• 53:13
  my life. She didn't get a ton of my time,
• 53:14
  just a little bit of time. And like she was saying that
• 53:16
  made her want to wake up in the morning.
• 53:17
  So I just think about that when I'm out dancing to like there
• 53:20
  might be somebody in here who feels, you know, same way, like
• 53:23
  or whatever. And then you have like an
• 53:24
  interaction and you're just kind of kind and and nobody cares how
• 53:27
  much money you have in that scenario.
• 53:28
  And we cares any of that stuff. It doesn't matter which I hate
• 53:31
  that stuff. You got to come in like this is
• 53:33
  who I am 1st and now I'm important, you know, rather than
• 53:36
  like you just show up as who you are.
• 53:38
  If you'll figure these things out about you later on, like, so
• 53:40
  be it. So yeah, that's, there's a lot
• 53:43
  to talk about on that, but I'm really enjoying it.
• 53:46
  Yeah. That's cool.
• 53:47
  Yeah, I think and you know, now the self actualization and I
• 53:53
  don't know, exploring more authenticity and who you are.
• 53:58
  And obviously now it's just the authenticity thing is becoming a
• 54:04
  more important piece of society. And I think historically society
• 54:10
  was just a very traumatic in nature, just the way we were,
• 54:14
  right? I mean, at least speaking for
• 54:15
  the United States or whatever, our culture, just the way you're
• 54:18
  raised, like fit in this box, do this, obey this, follow these
• 54:22
  rules, don't do this, don't be this, don't be that.
• 54:25
  And then I think we just lose ourselves, like as very young
• 54:30
  kids, we lose ourselves and we just kind of fit into this dogma
• 54:33
  of whatever we're told we have to do or whatever we're rewarded
• 54:36
  for whatever gets us the girl or the boy or the parents
• 54:39
  appreciation or, you know, favoritism or whatever these
• 54:42
  things are, right? And then some of us end up as
• 54:44
  adults and we just don't even know who the hell we are.
• 54:47
  And we like feel this emptiness inside, even though we've done
• 54:51
  all the things that everybody congratulated us for or pushed
• 54:55
  us to do or rewarded us for growing up.
• 54:57
  And then we have to kind of go back to those things in life.
• 55:00
  Like who are we really to our core?
• 55:02
  Like what really lights us up? What really is our passion?
• 55:05
  What really is our purpose, our mission, our, our focus for our
• 55:09
  life and like the people that we serve and, and the mission that
• 55:12
  we're on. And so that that's been a lot of
• 55:13
  the journey that I've been on the past few years is uncovering
• 55:16
  that after realizing, OK, I love business, it's a huge passion of
• 55:20
  mine, but my intention for doing it was wrong.
• 55:23
  It was very fear driven, like, you know, scarcity based fear
• 55:26
  driven, trying to prove my worth, trying to take like
• 55:29
  afraid that I wasn't going to be able to take care of myself or
• 55:32
  things like that. And when I was able to shift it
• 55:34
  to being driven like from a place of love and from a place
• 55:37
  of passion and service and connection and just wanting to
• 55:42
  create because I love the life that I've been given.
• 55:44
  And because I love the body I've been given and the mind I've
• 55:46
  been given and, and the people that I get the opportunity to,
• 55:49
  to work with and serve. It shifted everything in the
• 55:53
  outcomes in my business. And I think that was like a
• 55:56
  bigger, a bigger sales training for me than any sales training,
• 56:01
  you know, and, and I think it's something that a lot of
• 56:03
  entrepreneurs miss because they often time we're not taught
• 56:06
  that, like we're not taught to go out and have fun and dance
• 56:09
  and play and do the things you're passionate about and like
• 56:11
  be your authentic self. We're just taught to go make
• 56:13
  money, go do business, go be the best, like go be, be this brute
• 56:17
  force driver. And I think that only, I think a
• 56:20
  lot of people miss out on a lot in life because they stick to
• 56:23
  that story. That isn't necessarily the
• 56:26
  highest serving, although it can show up as it as high serving
• 56:29
  because externally you look successful.
• 56:32
  Yeah, no. And it's it's identity stuff,
• 56:35
  right? Like you do you start to have
• 56:37
  success in business like your identity became or speaking for
• 56:40
  you. So I apologize, but you know,
• 56:42
  often becomes well, she's this, you know, awesome business lady.
• 56:47
  But then like what if yeah, what if that's not serving you?
• 56:51
  Like what if you're spending too much time on it or like what is
• 56:53
  your end goal? Like what do you want?
• 56:55
  Like if you want to have $100 million in revenue or something
• 56:59
  like, well, why? You know, because like you're
• 57:01
  never going to be able to spend all that.
• 57:02
  So is it? And it could be a good thing.
• 57:04
  It could be because like, I want all these, you know, people are
• 57:07
  going to work for me to have this opportunity and da, da, da,
• 57:10
  da. But if it's just because like
• 57:12
  that's the next thing to get in, like that's going to make me
• 57:15
  feel like now I'm, you know, my identity is secure again,
• 57:18
  because you keep moving up these like wrongs in life too.
• 57:22
  And you're going to be compared to whoever's kind of like near
• 57:25
  you on whether I'm running, whether I'm like in business, I
• 57:29
  used to be maybe good with kids right out of College in real
• 57:33
  estate. But then like once you're an
• 57:34
  entrepreneur, it's like you're compared to these other.
• 57:36
  And so like if you keep comparing yourself to the people
• 57:38
  around you, you're always going to feel like you need to keep
• 57:41
  going. There's nothing wrong with
• 57:42
  keeping going. But why, you know, like I've
• 57:45
  thought about this, like there's actually something I from
• 57:48
  somebody else that used to do a little bit like practice dying.
• 57:51
  Like if you're on your deathbed and you look back on your life,
• 57:54
  like what things would you be glad you did and what things
• 57:59
  would you wish that you did differently?
• 58:00
  You know, and like, that's a really sobering thing to think
• 58:03
  about because and different things that belief systems you
• 58:07
  have will impact that too. Like I used to be more kind of
• 58:10
  orthodox religion. So that had a like a stronger
• 58:14
  push towards like what I would do now, a little bit less so, so
• 58:17
  it's a little bit more of my own opinion.
• 58:19
  So like dancing might not have fit into my old mindset, but in
• 58:21
  my mindset today is like, it's some of the best feelings I have
• 58:25
  in this short life I have. So like, I do want to lean into
• 58:28
  that, you know, even if maybe it is frivolous or whatever.
• 58:31
  So I just think there are things that unfortunately a lot of
• 58:33
  people don't think about it all. Like you just wake up and you go
• 58:36
  through your day and keep doing that until you die.
• 58:40
  But you know, there's a lot of like opportunities to stop and
• 58:43
  and re examine that. And I think that can lead to a
• 58:45
  lot of personal growth. And I think it's for me at the
• 58:49
  moment, I hope helping business because like I said, I have a
• 58:55
  lot of young people now working for me.
• 58:58
  I try to spend a lot of time with them.
• 58:59
  That's like where I feel like my time is best served as either
• 59:02
  kind of out facing clients or with our people and like setting
• 59:06
  that culture. And I tell them all the time,
• 59:08
  I'm like, do something, do something interesting, do
• 59:10
  something that stands out. Say yes to things.
• 59:13
  Like say yes to things would be one of my biggest pieces of
• 59:17
  advice right now is because like, if you don't say yes,
• 59:19
  you're not going to have experiences and they might go
• 59:21
  wrong, but you'll learn from it. If you don't do it at all, then
• 59:25
  like you're not growing, you're not changing.
• 59:27
  And unfortunately, we live in a world where like everything
• 59:29
  wants you to, to keep narrowing in like who you are and what you
• 59:33
  believe and everything into like the same instead of like
• 59:35
  continue to open it up to more and more, you know, pieces of
• 59:39
  information that can like inform how you think, how you behave.
• 59:44
  So I want more like I want to go to Brooklyn nightclub because
• 59:46
  there's people who are nothing like me, you know, different
• 59:50
  sexes, genders, like interests, income levels, all that stuff in
• 59:54
  one place. And like I realize like I don't
• 59:57
  need to be big shot real estate guy to like have meaning in
• 1:00:00
  life. Yeah, it's cool.
• 1:00:01
  I one of my first coaches I ever hired was an energetic
• 1:00:04
  intelligence coach, which I thought he was a business coach,
• 1:00:07
  which he is a business coach, but he teaches energetic
• 1:00:09
  intelligence, which was the catalyst that really kind of
• 1:00:13
  transformed that portion of my life and understand that my
• 1:00:16
  intentions were all wrong. And what you were just saying
• 1:00:19
  there is like, does it make you expansive and expand you?
• 1:00:22
  And so I think there's things in your life that everything in
• 1:00:27
  your life either makes you feel expansive or it makes you feel
• 1:00:29
  contracted. People, things, activities,
• 1:00:32
  businesses, specific tasks at your business.
• 1:00:36
  And he taught me to just start to have first the awareness of
• 1:00:40
  what made me feel expansive, what made me feel the Green Zone
• 1:00:43
  energy like flow state energy, passion, love, service, joy,
• 1:00:48
  time goes fast, all those types of things.
• 1:00:49
  And then what makes you feel contracted where you're stressed
• 1:00:51
  or overwhelmed or bored or frustrated or angry and, and
• 1:00:55
  anything in the spectrum there. And the more I started to lean
• 1:00:59
  into the things that made me feel expansive, whatever it was
• 1:01:02
  in my life, and lean away from the things that made me feel
• 1:01:05
  contracted, the more my life started to continue to expand
• 1:01:09
  with ease. And it became more effortless
• 1:01:12
  instead of feeling like I had to force every outcome that I
• 1:01:16
  wanted in my life and like battle everything.
• 1:01:18
  And I had the mindset that everything is hard.
• 1:01:21
  Like everything good is hard. I think we all culturally, we
• 1:01:24
  believe that like no pain, no gain.
• 1:01:26
  And yes, things are hard. Like just like working out of
• 1:01:29
  muscle at the gym. It's painful, but it feels good
• 1:01:32
  at the same time. And it's something that you are
• 1:01:35
  proud of and it in, I wouldn't really call that like pain and
• 1:01:40
  suffering. I mean, it's painful, but it's
• 1:01:41
  not suffering. And so that's the paradigm shift
• 1:01:44
  I've been trying to get through is how much can I create in my
• 1:01:50
  life while staying in the Green Zone and staying expansive and
• 1:01:54
  continuing to be in the state of flow and not having to believe
• 1:01:58
  that I have to suffer through it.
• 1:02:00
  Yeah, no, it's I think a lot of times it's like in like there's
• 1:02:05
  something that's true, like, you know, hard work, no pain, no
• 1:02:07
  gain or whatever. What doesn't kill me can only
• 1:02:09
  make me stronger. That have truth to them, but not
• 1:02:13
  like all the time or you need them mixed with something else.
• 1:02:15
  And so like I take that, you know, but then I read like, you
• 1:02:18
  know, Tim Ferriss's 40 hour work week or whatever and.
• 1:02:21
  It's like 4-4, Yeah. Sorry, 4040 only 40?
• 1:02:24
  Yeah. No.
• 1:02:25
  And I was like, I enjoyed the book.
• 1:02:29
  I thought for me like this isn't this isn't me, like I don't want
• 1:02:32
  to just be on the beach every day.
• 1:02:33
  Like I enjoy work and you know, like putting in more hours and
• 1:02:39
  stuff, but there's inklings of truth, you know, to be to grasp
• 1:02:43
  from that and like mix in with this army like hardcore thing
• 1:02:46
  and and so each person's got to pick and choose their own.
• 1:02:49
  I like one of the most life changing things for me over the
• 1:02:53
  last four years is like moving to New York.
• 1:02:55
  I, I ride a bike everywhere. They have the city bikes, DV
• 1:02:59
  lift bikes where you like pick one up one place and then you
• 1:03:02
  drop it off somewhere else. You don't have to like lock it
• 1:03:04
  or whatever. And everywhere I go, I ride a
• 1:03:06
  bike and usually go out to the Hudson River and I ride up and
• 1:03:08
  down and it's so expansive versus like sitting in traffic
• 1:03:12
  driving home from work or like I walk my kids to dance class.
• 1:03:15
  It's like 8 blocks away versus like getting in a car and like
• 1:03:18
  getting in traffic and getting irritated and all these
• 1:03:20
  different things. It's a small thing, but it's
• 1:03:22
  been like huge. Even when we talked about doing
• 1:03:24
  this today and I know I originally was like, it's three
• 1:03:26
  hours away, like let's find another time.
• 1:03:29
  I thought about it. I'm like, well, I'm not going to
• 1:03:31
  have any traffic from where I am to where you are.
• 1:03:33
  And I have my car that has like auto drive so I can do so.
• 1:03:35
  It's like a more expansive thing.
• 1:03:37
  But if I would have to drive like 3 hours in like gridiron
• 1:03:39
  traffic to do this, I probably would have said no, you know?
• 1:03:42
  I love that. So shifting gears into some more
• 1:03:45
  of the technical and development stuff, I would love to hear like
• 1:03:49
  go into a little bit about, you know, how you have a competitive
• 1:03:53
  edge, like kind of why would people work with you over other
• 1:03:56
  developers out there and how you've managed to build your
• 1:03:59
  team, which I believe you have 15 people on your team.
• 1:04:02
  So you guys are AI would say a lean team organizationally, but
• 1:04:07
  that's still a good chunk of people for the amount of volume
• 1:04:09
  that you're doing. I mean they must be a very
• 1:04:11
  highly efficient team and a very good team of a players.
• 1:04:14
  So yeah, I guess first on to the the client perspective.
• 1:04:18
  Like what sets Quattro Development because you're Co
• 1:04:21
  founder and principal Quattro Development.
• 1:04:22
  I can't even remember if I said that in the beginning.
• 1:04:24
  I hope I did. But what sets Quattro
• 1:04:26
  Development apart from other developers and what has led to
• 1:04:30
  your growth in obtaining these tenant clients?
• 1:04:36
  Yeah, it's funny answering the question and realizing like we
• 1:04:39
  haven't talked that much about real estate, but part of my
• 1:04:41
  answer is like a lot of the stuff we talked about is the
• 1:04:44
  answer to these questions. But I guess for one, our niche
• 1:04:49
  is I think a tremendous niche. So, you know, unlike most
• 1:04:53
  developers who I think maybe have a vision of something that
• 1:04:56
  might work out or they have trends and supply and demand
• 1:04:59
  data, and it's like, I'm going to build this and I think I'm
• 1:05:01
  going to get this rent and I'm going to, you know, whatever.
• 1:05:04
  Like it's kind of all based on hopes.
• 1:05:07
  We typically are like signing a lease with our tenants before we
• 1:05:10
  close on the acquisition of if it's a piece of dirt that we're
• 1:05:13
  going to build on. So we know what the rent is and
• 1:05:17
  it's usually a function of what our costs are.
• 1:05:19
  And so we often times we even tell a tenant, hey, we'll do
• 1:05:23
  these developments, your rent is going to be an open book thing.
• 1:05:27
  Like here's our cost and we need to make a certain amount of
• 1:05:29
  money. So like you know, and often
• 1:05:33
  times the type of properties we sell are are are sold based on a
• 1:05:36
  cap rate the the return that investors going to get for
• 1:05:39
  buying it. So the Chipotle is paying
• 1:05:41
  $100,000 a year in rent and somebody gets A5 cap 100,005
• 1:05:45
  point O 5, it's $2,000,000 value or whatever.
• 1:05:49
  So we'd say what we need like a 7% return on our cost because
• 1:05:52
  we're going to sell it to somebody at 5% and the spread is
• 1:05:56
  what we make our money off of. So for one thing, like we don't
• 1:06:01
  have a leasing risk. Like what if we build this and
• 1:06:03
  nobody comes and now we're paying our debt service and
• 1:06:06
  nobody ever comes. And when we finally put them in
• 1:06:08
  there, it's like for less, you know, rent than we thought we
• 1:06:10
  were going to get. So it allows for decision making
• 1:06:13
  so much easier. It's like it works or it
• 1:06:14
  doesn't. And it's very transparent for
• 1:06:16
  the tenants. Like we don't always do it that
• 1:06:18
  way. Sometimes just don't want to do
• 1:06:20
  it that way. They just want to know what the
• 1:06:21
  rent is going to be. And we do the same math.
• 1:06:23
  It's just we don't show it to them.
• 1:06:24
  Other ones, it's literally like here it is.
• 1:06:26
  So if they say like, hey, that rent doesn't work, it doesn't
• 1:06:29
  work. And it's not like, oh, we'll
• 1:06:31
  sharpen our pencils or you know, I mean, we will to an extent at
• 1:06:33
  times. But for most parts, like this is
• 1:06:35
  what we've agreed to do, which I think tenants appreciate because
• 1:06:40
  so often in real estate, it's the landlord and the tenant are
• 1:06:43
  like opposing sides to a problem and what one wins, the other
• 1:06:47
  loses, right? But I don't think it has to be
• 1:06:49
  that way. Like I think a tenant and the
• 1:06:51
  landlord and what we do is truly like a partnership, like you
• 1:06:55
  can't succeed in growing if we don't do what we're supposed to
• 1:06:58
  do and we can't succeed if we don't have you.
• 1:07:00
  So like, let's find it's cheesy, but like a win win.
• 1:07:04
  And so I think just our model has helped us to not get out
• 1:07:08
  over our skis and do things that, you know, we thought were
• 1:07:10
  going to work out that didn't. But it's also like created this
• 1:07:15
  ecosystem where I think tenants feel very comfortable and
• 1:07:18
  trustworthy. And I think that's another part
• 1:07:21
  of the successes, you know, reputation.
• 1:07:23
  But what is reputation from? I mean, it can be like I when I
• 1:07:27
  go to ICS CS because I do like the insta story, different
• 1:07:29
  things, be like Rob the runner, the dancer, all these different
• 1:07:32
  things. You know, like that could be the
• 1:07:34
  but I think it's primarily based on like trust and integrity.
• 1:07:37
  And I can't think of anybody we work with that has a story they
• 1:07:41
  could say about me or us that was like, you know, that was a
• 1:07:46
  unethical transaction or they weren't being honest.
• 1:07:48
  So yeah, just being truthful, telling when there's a problem,
• 1:07:53
  telling somebody about the problem, you know, taking
• 1:07:56
  they're mad about it, they can be mad about it and then you
• 1:07:58
  move on. You don't have to like start a
• 1:08:00
  war fight over it. It's just kind of like things
• 1:08:02
  are what they are and we're going to do what we can to to
• 1:08:05
  fix them when there's problems. But that that goes a long way.
• 1:08:09
  Like when you're trying to then again, not just build like 1
• 1:08:12
  building for one tenant, move on to the next one.
• 1:08:14
  Like the goal is like when we did the 50 Montessori schools,
• 1:08:16
  like, you know, you got to have trust and and you can't break
• 1:08:20
  that trust. Once you break it, you're done.
• 1:08:21
  And then you have to have your employees do the same thing.
• 1:08:24
  So you know, the couple we very, I think we've maybe like over
• 1:08:27
  like two people in our 1617 year history and they were the one
• 1:08:33
  that's primarily just like a not that he didn't have integrity.
• 1:08:37
  It wasn't that at all. But just like that culture of
• 1:08:40
  how we deal with people, like hearing somebody yell at
• 1:08:42
  somebody on the phone, Like we don't, it's not what we do.
• 1:08:44
  We don't yell at people on the phone.
• 1:08:45
  Like I get it. If you're mad, then like we all
• 1:08:48
  go punch a punching bag or whatever, you know, because once
• 1:08:50
  you start doing that, like it just changes the whole culture
• 1:08:53
  of what the company is. But if everybody's doing things
• 1:08:54
  the same way, it, it goes a long way for building trust with the
• 1:08:59
  clients. And I think that's what we've
• 1:09:00
  done. And I think now more and more as
• 1:09:01
  we've grown our people and our people are representation of us
• 1:09:05
  out in the marketplace. They're not copying me, but
• 1:09:08
  they're acting in a way like from a values and culture
• 1:09:11
  standpoint that are similar. And so then it expands and now
• 1:09:14
  more and more people like are incoming like, hey, I'm a broker
• 1:09:18
  and I'm working with this tenant that needs a developer.
• 1:09:20
  Like let's think of Quattro development, you know, or like
• 1:09:23
  whatever it is. So now we start to not just have
• 1:09:25
  to like me being out there getting the business, it's other
• 1:09:28
  people coming with to us or the younger guys we're working with,
• 1:09:30
  like making phone calls on our behalf and maybe that tenant,
• 1:09:34
  you know, calls around, like, what do you know about these
• 1:09:36
  people? And it's all positive.
• 1:09:37
  Like we just had a meeting with Sprouts, the grocery store, and
• 1:09:40
  I drove in from Michigan to suburban Chicago for it and it
• 1:09:44
  was great. It was exactly what you want.
• 1:09:46
  The the heads of real estate for Sprouts are there, their brokers
• 1:09:49
  are there and they're asking me a bunch of questions about like,
• 1:09:51
  can we really perform? Who are we?
• 1:09:53
  And the brokers all said they have a great reputation.
• 1:09:56
  I'm like, it's probably the number one key to success, I
• 1:09:59
  think in what we do is if you can't get that from most people,
• 1:10:03
  then it's going to be hard to grow your business.
• 1:10:05
  You know, yeah and I love the single tenant net lease space
• 1:10:07
  because you it's such in my opinion, I'm not a developer,
• 1:10:11
  but it's such low risk because you already have a tenant
• 1:10:13
  secured. The banks will finance it at a
• 1:10:16
  very, very high LTVI mean we have lenders up to 100% loan to
• 1:10:20
  cost on single tenant net lease buildings when the tenant
• 1:10:22
  secured and then yeah, I mean they're your corporate
• 1:10:26
  guaranteed. So regardless of the what
• 1:10:28
  happens in the market, you're most likely going to be fine
• 1:10:31
  because these are massive. Like McDonald's is backed by,
• 1:10:34
  you know, chubby Americans in any market.
• 1:10:36
  It's not going anywhere and staying with a lot of these
• 1:10:38
  other big brands, Chipotle and Chick-fil-A and all those.
• 1:10:41
  But yeah, I think that's super cool.
• 1:10:43
  And so in the, I think I read somewhere that you guys
• 1:10:46
  structure your fees differently in the development process or I
• 1:10:49
  guess how do you like, what does it look like from the developer
• 1:10:53
  role? Like what equity do you bring to
• 1:10:56
  the table because you're locking up the property?
• 1:10:57
  But are you, are you bringing in Equity Partners to actually do
• 1:11:01
  the construction and the development or like how do you
• 1:11:03
  structure that with your your projects?
• 1:11:06
  Yeah. So I mean on the fee side of
• 1:11:09
  things like historically we have not put like fee income to us in
• 1:11:13
  our budgets. So where that comes into play is
• 1:11:16
  if you know, let's say another developer is also offering to do
• 1:11:18
  the development open book, but they're saying I'll do it for an
• 1:11:21
  8% return on cost, but they also have 5% developer fee and a 1%
• 1:11:26
  acquisition fee and 1% disposition fee that are all
• 1:11:28
  going to them. I mean that's great for them,
• 1:11:30
  but that means the rent is going to be significantly higher than
• 1:11:32
  if I say 8%, I don't have those fees in my budget.
• 1:11:36
  As we grow, I think we've are seeing we need to have some cash
• 1:11:40
  flow like that, you know, coming in.
• 1:11:41
  But again, being transparent with it, having it be a very
• 1:11:44
  reasonable amounts, not hiding it, but a lot of developers make
• 1:11:49
  their money off of fee income as their primary like source of
• 1:11:53
  income. So if the project makes it or
• 1:11:54
  doesn't, they're making their money.
• 1:11:57
  You know, I'm going to do $100 million project and I'm going to
• 1:11:59
  get my 3% developer fee and then an asset management fee.
• 1:12:01
  But if you know, my equity partner loses all their money,
• 1:12:04
  like it might not impact me at all.
• 1:12:06
  Or if I have a equity Co invest, it's like a small like maybe my
• 1:12:09
  fees are more than I end up losing.
• 1:12:11
  We make our money primarily on the profitability of the
• 1:12:13
  project. So like the back end promote if
• 1:12:16
  we're, and to answer your question more directly, you
• 1:12:19
  know, we've done some projects with our own equity.
• 1:12:21
  The majority have been with outside equity, whether it's the
• 1:12:25
  guys I mentioned earlier who did like 45 high net worth
• 1:12:28
  individuals. Most recently we did a friends
• 1:12:31
  and family fund, which was I think the update went out today.
• 1:12:35
  I've been working on it for like 4 months.
• 1:12:39
  But that was interesting. I mean, I went down to as small
• 1:12:41
  as like a $25,000 check so that like my cousins could invest
• 1:12:44
  and, you know, because we're making returns that are just
• 1:12:47
  much better than you can get in like the stock market.
• 1:12:49
  And I feel bad that I can make it for some high net worth
• 1:12:53
  people that I just met. But you know, my parents or
• 1:12:55
  somebody, you know, different people we work with don't get
• 1:12:59
  it. So that was the point of that.
• 1:13:00
  And I think it's been well, like it's been well received.
• 1:13:02
  We've used most of the money. We haven't returned it all yet.
• 1:13:06
  Is that a close ended fund? Yeah.
• 1:13:08
  So we, we raised like 14,000,000 we called it in and 25%
• 1:13:12
  increments. We started paying like a pref on
• 1:13:14
  it from when the money came in. And then as the property sell,
• 1:13:17
  we're returning the capital and profit on each project, so.
• 1:13:22
  What do you put, what's your structure?
• 1:13:24
  Is it like an 8 pref plus a split or some sort of yeah it
• 1:13:27
  was a split or just straight equity?
• 1:13:29
  It was a nine pref and then a 5050 back end split of the
• 1:13:32
  profit. So and when I say that, it's
• 1:13:34
  interesting because on bigger projects, you know, a developer
• 1:13:37
  might only be getting like a 20% back end split.
• 1:13:39
  And sometimes I run into that when I'm talking about like all
• 1:13:41
  this company was doing 802080 to the investors.
• 1:13:44
  But I'm like, yeah, but their project was like, you know,
• 1:13:47
  buying 100 acres and building a spec industrial building that
• 1:13:50
  they don't know, you know, like I'm coming to you and saying
• 1:13:52
  like this is very like tied up of what, you know, you're
• 1:13:57
  getting like so often times, you know, historically, I think our
• 1:14:01
  IRRS to that individual I mentioned earlier is like 4050.
• 1:14:05
  Sixty percent. Really.
• 1:14:07
  Yeah. So so if I'm giving them 50, I'm
• 1:14:09
  getting 50, but they're still getting that.
• 1:14:12
  That's a lot better than if I'm giving them 80, but they're only
• 1:14:14
  getting a 20% IRR. So are you still?
• 1:14:16
  Getting the high of our in this market.
• 1:14:18
  Yeah. So the fund and to touch on like
• 1:14:20
  you know you mentioned the single tenant and at least how a
• 1:14:24
  lot of these like a lot can't go wrong.
• 1:14:27
  I'll invest with you. You're getting 50.
• 1:14:30
  Percent IRR. That's insane.
• 1:14:31
  Yeah. Hey, you know, but the the three
• 1:14:34
  things that can really go wrong are cap rate changes, which is a
• 1:14:39
  macroeconomic thing you really can't control.
• 1:14:42
  So over the last, you know, we've raised the fund, I think
• 1:14:45
  like I went out to raise the friends and family fund the week
• 1:14:48
  that like Signature Bank failed and everything.
• 1:14:50
  So from there like rates, you know, it was right around them
• 1:14:53
  when the rates went up. So cap rates have gone up and
• 1:14:55
  you can't really control that. Ideally, if your projects only
• 1:14:58
  taking like a year, how much are they really going to run?
• 1:15:00
  And if you're getting 200 basis points spread, there's no way
• 1:15:02
  that cap rate should run 200 basis points where you're
• 1:15:05
  underwater. Just on that.
• 1:15:07
  Then there's a construction risk.
• 1:15:08
  I mean some of these projects when they're open book will have
• 1:15:11
  like a up to 5% overage. They'll pay rent on or
• 1:15:14
  something. But if you're over that, then
• 1:15:16
  it's like on you. So you know, we had a oil change
• 1:15:19
  facility where we did a phase two and it didn't show anything.
• 1:15:22
  And then we found like a leaky tank and it cost us 200 grand
• 1:15:25
  and like that was all the profit on that project.
• 1:15:27
  So there's still risk there and then tenant risk.
• 1:15:31
  So if we're doing a Chipotle deal, we're going to require a
• 1:15:36
  lesser return on cost to us. Then if we're doing like we just
• 1:15:39
  signed up a primary care, value based primary care provider, a
• 1:15:46
  client that has like 11 locations.
• 1:15:49
  And so we're going to need a higher, you know, rate of return
• 1:15:51
  because I'm taking more risk than if I'm doing Chipotle.
• 1:15:56
  So with the Montessori school is a great example.
• 1:15:57
  We did the 50 of them and they were a credit risk.
• 1:16:02
  Like they weren't making money. They had a great model, but
• 1:16:06
  they've recently closed a bunch of their schools and that was
• 1:16:09
  part of the risk. But we were doing those for like
• 1:16:10
  a 9% return on cost when maybe we were doing Chipotle for, you
• 1:16:14
  know, 7 1/2 or 8, something like that.
• 1:16:16
  But so those three areas we can still lose money.
• 1:16:19
  So with the fund, we kind of had all of them go against us with
• 1:16:22
  all the cost overruns, not just because of like post COVID,
• 1:16:26
  it's, you know, everything's been so much more expensive.
• 1:16:28
  Interest rates went up significantly.
• 1:16:31
  And then we had one tenant issue in the fund, but I think we'll
• 1:16:34
  still be north of like a 20% IRR on it.
• 1:16:36
  Which is still really good. Yeah, that's cool.
• 1:16:39
  What do you think? What's your idea of the outlook
• 1:16:41
  of the real estate? I mean, I guess the overall
• 1:16:44
  economy, but specifically the commercial real estate market in
• 1:16:48
  the near and like I guess short term and then longer term, like
• 1:16:51
  maybe over the next 10 years. Yeah, I mean, I'm not an
• 1:16:55
  economist, but I think about it a lot.
• 1:16:58
  I think that there's so much money.
• 1:16:59
  Like the people who have money are just getting more and more
• 1:17:02
  money. Like there's a.
• 1:17:03
  Big gap. Yeah, and I you're right.
• 1:17:04
  And I think that's why the stock market keeps going up.
• 1:17:06
  People like, you know, it's a profit to this and that yes,
• 1:17:08
  partially, but it's a supply and demand thing.
• 1:17:09
  You have a lot of money supply of money like it's demanding a
• 1:17:13
  limited amount of stocks and you know you're you've seen it with
• 1:17:16
  housing too. I know like with rates being
• 1:17:18
  higher, like it's 'cause that slow down a little bit, but I
• 1:17:21
  think that picks back up because there's just too much money
• 1:17:23
  chasing assets. So on that side of it, I feel
• 1:17:27
  kind of bullish. I think rates, you know, while
• 1:17:31
  they might not go down tremendously, I don't see them
• 1:17:33
  going up. Just again, like there's a lot
• 1:17:38
  of money that wants to buy bonds, you know, like 10 year
• 1:17:39
  treasuries, like maybe they're not buying now, but like over
• 1:17:42
  time. I think the problem is more like
• 1:17:44
  for the people who don't have assets, everything else is still
• 1:17:47
  going up, you know, to like food and stuff like that.
• 1:17:50
  So if you're a client of ours, I could see the picture being more
• 1:17:54
  like challenging if you're selling $12.00 lunches, you
• 1:17:58
  know, like, are there going to be people that are going to stop
• 1:18:01
  being able to afford that? And could that cause pressure on
• 1:18:04
  like, you know, the companies? That's where I'm like more
• 1:18:06
  concerned. I feel pretty good about like
• 1:18:09
  the real estate market. We just went through the worst
• 1:18:12
  that I've seen since back in 2008 or 9 for people who aren't
• 1:18:15
  in real estate, doesn't really feel like it because the economy
• 1:18:17
  has been fine. But you know, a lot like I
• 1:18:21
  remember moving to New York and then reading all these articles
• 1:18:23
  about all these billionaire families that just lost this
• 1:18:26
  building, this building, this building.
• 1:18:27
  I'm thinking myself like, this is one of those periods where
• 1:18:29
  somebody's going to snap these up and then like you're going to
• 1:18:32
  look back 10 years from now and be like, wow, you just.
• 1:18:34
  But we're coming out of that. So I would imagine we have like
• 1:18:36
  a, a real estate cycle on the mend ahead of us rather than
• 1:18:40
  like hopefully another downturn even if the like macro economy
• 1:18:45
  struggles which I could see. Yeah, cuz the, I mean, the past
• 1:18:48
  few years about now in commercial real estate have been
• 1:18:51
  pretty tough. Yeah.
• 1:18:53
  And I think, I think hopefully we've hit bottom, but I mean
• 1:18:57
  there's still quite a bit of commercial debt maturing this
• 1:18:59
  year. I think it was like 1.2 trillion
• 1:19:02
  was for 2025 and estimated 25% of that was distressed debt or
• 1:19:07
  you know, either had to be modified, extended again or
• 1:19:10
  defaulted sold. So but with that comes
• 1:19:13
  opportunity because prices were insane and everything was so
• 1:19:16
  expensive, there had to be some give for us to be able to no.
• 1:19:20
  And I think people expected things to come down a lot more
• 1:19:23
  other than office. You know, like that was one
• 1:19:25
  place where you really saw stuff that seemed like it was an
• 1:19:27
  absolute steal from like the cost to replace it versus what
• 1:19:30
  you're paying. And I mean, I think you're
• 1:19:31
  saying now, like I just read New York had the like the highest
• 1:19:35
  foot traffic in their offices. Like it's, it's greater than in
• 1:19:38
  2019. So for all the, you know, drama
• 1:19:42
  about people never coming back to the office like in New York
• 1:19:44
  City is more today than it was pre pandemic, which is crazy
• 1:19:48
  given the valuation changes that you've seen.
• 1:19:50
  Like I don't know if something seems like it doesn't make sense
• 1:19:53
  I think. I think maybe like Class A
• 1:19:56
  office, like people want new all the new amenities that are
• 1:20:00
  common now. I don't know.
• 1:20:01
  I think the. Going to work in a dungy office
• 1:20:05
  that feels like a hospital with, you know, those horrible lights
• 1:20:08
  and panels. And I don't know, I think people
• 1:20:11
  just want more like a little bit brighter and nicer and better
• 1:20:15
  energy offices with more amenities.
• 1:20:17
  But anyway, what what about your team?
• 1:20:20
  How have you been able to build your team?
• 1:20:21
  You got 15 people on your team and I know that's challenging to
• 1:20:26
  not only do what you're doing, but then also lead A-Team and
• 1:20:29
  recruit people, retain people. So what has worked well for you
• 1:20:31
  and building your team and culture and just your operating
• 1:20:33
  system for your business? Yeah, well, and I mean to throw
• 1:20:36
  on top of it, like I lived in Chicago for 1617 years up until
• 1:20:42
  2020. I got this crazy idea to build a
• 1:20:47
  house in Panama and move my family down there to get away
• 1:20:50
  from the Chicago winners. So I was like 3 or 4 months away
• 1:20:54
  from like the whole national work from wherever you want
• 1:20:56
  scene. But I got stuck in Panama with
• 1:20:58
  COVID hit and that's a whole other long story.
• 1:21:01
  But when I came back, I moved out to California for six months
• 1:21:05
  and then I and then I moved to New York and I've been in New
• 1:21:08
  York for four years. And my point of saying all this
• 1:21:11
  is that everybody else pretty much is in the Chicago land
• 1:21:14
  area. So I'm not only like growing the
• 1:21:16
  team, but I'm growing it without being physically present with
• 1:21:18
  them most of the time. The guys who work for us, the
• 1:21:21
  people who work for us, I think see something special about us
• 1:21:27
  and the company versus other companies and they're really
• 1:21:32
  excited. We give a lot of big leash, a
• 1:21:35
  lot of autonomy to figure things out.
• 1:21:37
  It's not for somebody who's like wants to be told exactly what to
• 1:21:40
  do every day. Although even like within our
• 1:21:42
  company, we found, hey, there's some people maybe on the front
• 1:21:44
  end where you really got to just figure out like how to what my
• 1:21:47
  day looks like, like what properties I'm going to call,
• 1:21:49
  what I'm like, how I'm going to cannabis or cold call.
• 1:21:53
  People aren't as good at that can move into like maybe the due
• 1:21:55
  diligence and entitlement side. That's a little bit more like,
• 1:21:58
  all right, this is what it takes, like put together
• 1:22:00
  schedule and do this and that. So like identifying people's
• 1:22:03
  strengths and getting them in the right seat, treating them
• 1:22:05
  well, like everybody gets some percentage of ownership in every
• 1:22:09
  project we do, even if it's very small.
• 1:22:11
  So being motivated by pay, that is because the company is making
• 1:22:16
  money, not just like here's 2% every year or whatever.
• 1:22:20
  And like at the same time, like we usually kind of freeze like
• 1:22:23
  income, like like salaries at a point where it's like, hey, if
• 1:22:26
  you want to do really well, the company's got to do really well.
• 1:22:29
  And so we've never, like I said, we've only let go of two people.
• 1:22:32
  I think it's been stable. We've never had somebody leave
• 1:22:34
  our company, so that tenure helps a lot.
• 1:22:38
  Like if you have somebody come for a year or two, you're mostly
• 1:22:41
  just giving, you know, like, you really got to get to like that
• 1:22:44
  year or two before they start like giving back.
• 1:22:46
  So one of my young guys just moved to New York, very excited
• 1:22:49
  about it. He's 26, I think, and fresh in
• 1:22:54
  New York City, so it's fun to have him nearby.
• 1:22:57
  But like allowing things like that, you know, I was like,
• 1:22:59
  whatever you want to do. We got another guy just moved to
• 1:23:00
  Philly. Like good for him and then do
• 1:23:03
  you. Guys work.
• 1:23:04
  Oh, go ahead. No, no, please.
• 1:23:05
  I would say do you work remotely or do you does everyone go to an
• 1:23:07
  office? I know you're.
• 1:23:09
  Remote, yeah, most of them will go to the office at least a few
• 1:23:12
  days a week. Obviously not the guy in Philly
• 1:23:15
  because he's on his own and now us in New York, but even in New
• 1:23:17
  York, like we're getting together on Wednesdays at I'm a
• 1:23:20
  member of this like club thing called the Ned club.
• 1:23:22
  So we can go there and work like have a space to work.
• 1:23:26
  But yeah, most of them go there every Monday.
• 1:23:27
  We have a construction call with everybody, Zoom call when I come
• 1:23:31
  back in town, like I was in the office 2 weeks ago, we went out,
• 1:23:34
  you know, and got beers and just talked and tried to like make
• 1:23:37
  sure there's kind of kind of camaraderie.
• 1:23:39
  I think everybody generally gets along.
• 1:23:42
  So yeah, I think it's just important that's it.
• 1:23:45
  Like let them figure it out, provide assistance as needed.
• 1:23:50
  Be humble. You know, I never make it where
• 1:23:53
  like I used to remember going to the owner of the company, like
• 1:23:56
  you had to kind of figure out it was he in a good mood today or
• 1:23:58
  not? If I was going to ask for
• 1:23:59
  something. It's like, you know, don't be
• 1:24:01
  like that. Just pick up the phone and call
• 1:24:02
  him. If you want to talk to me.
• 1:24:03
  You want to talk about something like very approachable.
• 1:24:07
  So yeah. And then just like we have
• 1:24:09
  people who have really good attention to detail.
• 1:24:11
  It's not always me, but like our head of construction as a civil
• 1:24:13
  engineer, very detail oriented. You know, I asked him to like,
• 1:24:16
  pull up an e-mail from six years ago.
• 1:24:18
  He's got it like in a certain, you know, folder, like
• 1:24:20
  subfolder, subfolder. And like, it's amazing.
• 1:24:25
  I don't know if that answers the question, but those things come
• 1:24:27
  to mind. No, that's awesome.
• 1:24:28
  And we're going to wrap up here. We've 9 more minutes left.
• 1:24:33
  But you mentioned earlier and then I also read about you, you
• 1:24:37
  are you met your wife volunteering at a homeless
• 1:24:41
  shelter back in your 20s and then now I believe you're a part
• 1:24:46
  of a first chance is that. First chance is is dated, but I
• 1:24:52
  can talk about that. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:24:54
  So I just, I love because part of my mission is to, you know,
• 1:25:01
  don't donate a percentage of profits of the company to help
• 1:25:04
  teach entrepreneurship, emotional intelligence, give
• 1:25:07
  mentors to younger kids that are, you know, don't have the
• 1:25:11
  resources or the education to necessarily learn about a lot of
• 1:25:15
  the things I think are most important in life.
• 1:25:17
  And yeah, so I love that you are big into philanthropy and giving
• 1:25:21
  back. And you sounds like you you've
• 1:25:23
  been that way for a very long time.
• 1:25:24
  So we'd love to just kind of hear that story.
• 1:25:27
  Yeah. So just starting like with First
• 1:25:30
  Chance, it was coming out of and it ties into the Jim Clayton
• 1:25:35
  story from earlier because as I mentioned, he was a
• 1:25:39
  not-for-profit bank. When we finally got our three
• 1:25:41
  loans done with him, I sent him a letter asking him to give
• 1:25:44
  money to First Chance and he donated $15,000, which was
• 1:25:46
  probably about what our loan fees were.
• 1:25:48
  So it was like a pretty cool transaction.
• 1:25:50
  But yeah, the idea was just, and this is something I continue to
• 1:25:54
  work on recently with another program that got kind of taken
• 1:25:58
  into another one. But, you know, commercial real
• 1:26:00
  estate, like is you really have to know somebody to get into it.
• 1:26:04
  Doesn't mean you have known forever, but like you need some
• 1:26:06
  sort of introduction. And so when I moved to Chicago,
• 1:26:09
  I just felt like I needed to. And part of it was like
• 1:26:13
  religious things that like I took serious about like the
• 1:26:16
  Bible, like Sermon on the Mount, helping people and stuff.
• 1:26:20
  But I just saw a ton of poverty, like driving to my office, Like
• 1:26:23
  I go through a neighborhood that was one of the more like, you
• 1:26:25
  know, violent kind of poverty stricken neighborhoods every
• 1:26:29
  day. And so like, I remember early
• 1:26:31
  on, I just Saturday morning, I bought a bunch of coffee and
• 1:26:33
  Donuts and literally just like found people on the street and
• 1:26:36
  gave them to them. And well, it's two parts.
• 1:26:38
  First chance. What we did was we raised money
• 1:26:40
  to take kids from, you know, I don't like any of the words to
• 1:26:44
  describe usually like underprivileged or whatever.
• 1:26:46
  I'll use the word underprivileged for the time
• 1:26:48
  being, Kids who didn't have parents, a lot of money, a lot
• 1:26:51
  of support and send them on either study or volunteer abroad
• 1:26:54
  programs. So like, part of what I did,
• 1:26:58
  there was a YMCA World Camp that was in Prague, and we took three
• 1:27:03
  kids there. It was actually my first week of
• 1:27:05
  my honeymoon. So my wife and I, we're like,
• 1:27:07
  volunteering at this camp during our honeymoon.
• 1:27:10
  But these three kids who never left Chicago got to go to
• 1:27:12
  another country and experience something different.
• 1:27:14
  And then with the world camp part, they got to meet kids from
• 1:27:16
  all over the world. More recently, we were working
• 1:27:20
  with just the idea of like, how do you get some kids who might
• 1:27:23
  have grown up on the West Side or South Side of Chicago or, you
• 1:27:25
  know, every neighborhood, every city has these neighbors that
• 1:27:28
  just don't have the connectivity to the downtown skyscrapers and
• 1:27:32
  like knowing these people in their white collar jobs.
• 1:27:34
  So how do we expose kids in high school in a poor neighborhood to
• 1:27:40
  commercial real estate? And then how like, how could we
• 1:27:42
  maybe get them into a college that recognizes they might have
• 1:27:45
  some shortcomings coming into college, but like, helping and
• 1:27:49
  giving them maybe a mentor who's in real estate so they know
• 1:27:51
  about it Because like, I guarantee 90% of the population
• 1:27:55
  about more doesn't know what commercial real estate really
• 1:27:59
  is. Like, they don't think when
• 1:28:00
  they're driving down the road or going to McDonald's that, oh,
• 1:28:02
  there was somebody put this thing together.
• 1:28:04
  Like somebody built it, somebody bought the land, somebody
• 1:28:07
  designed it, somebody got it permitted, somebody the city
• 1:28:09
  where, you know, there's all these things that are involved.
• 1:28:12
  So just trying to raise awareness around that.
• 1:28:16
  But then, yeah, like I started helping at this women's shelter
• 1:28:19
  and then I became kind of the lead and I get a group of like
• 1:28:23
  10 to 30 people to just, it was one Monday month and we go into
• 1:28:28
  this neighborhood and and serve a meal, which was whatever.
• 1:28:30
  But what I got more out of is I go and eat with the women and
• 1:28:34
  hear their stories. And it really changes what you
• 1:28:37
  think about like homelessness and a lot of these problems
• 1:28:39
  because I think, you know, it's very easy to, especially if
• 1:28:41
  you're fed a certain mindset about it.
• 1:28:43
  It's like somehow these people's fault and you hear story after
• 1:28:47
  story, especially with women in these situations, Like it's
• 1:28:49
  usually not their fault. You know, they give her beaten
• 1:28:51
  or just crazy things like woman was abducted, put in a trunk and
• 1:28:56
  like, you know, left to die and then somehow like got to this
• 1:28:59
  shelter. So.
• 1:29:00
  And then I made friendships with some of these ladies, like 1.
• 1:29:04
  I just visited 2 weeks ago. This other one I was telling you
• 1:29:08
  about. She passed away.
• 1:29:09
  You want to solve all the world's problems.
• 1:29:11
  And then it becomes overwhelming because like, how do you really
• 1:29:13
  move the needle forward? How much money do I need?
• 1:29:15
  How much time do I need? But like, you can do little
• 1:29:17
  things, you know, one person at a time.
• 1:29:20
  I started mentoring at a YYMCA that had like a big boys Big
• 1:29:25
  Brother, big sister program because I was going out drinking
• 1:29:29
  like too many nights a week. And so I just like I need to put
• 1:29:31
  something else in my schedule that I can just point to like I
• 1:29:33
  can't go. So I started doing that mentored
• 1:29:35
  a kid from where he's like 8 to now.
• 1:29:37
  He's probably like in his late 20s in the Navy.
• 1:29:39
  There's another kid that I just was getting together with in
• 1:29:42
  Chicago the other week. So it just part of it's for my
• 1:29:45
  own inner growth of like not only being surrounded by people
• 1:29:49
  who think and are experiencing the same thing as me to give a
• 1:29:52
  different perspective. And then part of us obviously
• 1:29:54
  like wanting to hopefully help make other people's lives
• 1:29:57
  better. We had a, we actually had a
• 1:30:00
  Quattro impact set up and it was like every time we sold a
• 1:30:02
  project, we're putting 10% of the profits into the impact.
• 1:30:04
  And then impact was investing alongside our Quattro projects
• 1:30:08
  and the profits from that we were giving away.
• 1:30:10
  And it's really cool. Yeah.
• 1:30:11
  I love. I want to get that going again.
• 1:30:13
  It's just like when cash flow gets tight, it can be easy to
• 1:30:15
  like, you know, now is not the time for that.
• 1:30:17
  But yeah, I just, I'm a big believer in, like, so much of
• 1:30:21
  what ends up happening in your life is in your control and so
• 1:30:23
  much isn't. And there's a lot of people who
• 1:30:26
  could have done everything right.
• 1:30:27
  And unfortunately, it didn't work out for him anyway.
• 1:30:29
  So I think having like the heart towards helping people rather
• 1:30:34
  than trying to keep it all for yourself just leads to a more
• 1:30:38
  happy life. So.
• 1:30:41
  Me too. That's what it's all about.
• 1:30:42
  It's just living the best life we can and helping other people
• 1:30:46
  do the same. And yeah, but well, thank you so
• 1:30:49
  much. It's been great to get to know
• 1:30:50
  you and I'm excited for to get to know you more and and yeah,
• 1:30:54
  see where the rest of your journey leads.
• 1:30:56
  Thank you. It's been fun.
• 1:30:57
  Thank you.