I think office is going to turn around, and if for no other reason, then because no one's building any. You probably couldn't get financing to develop a new office building today if you tried. And the population's not shrinking, and so it just becomes a very simple supply and demand. If you're within three feet of me, we're probably talking about real estate, much to my family's chagrin. But here's the thing. Most people see 7% rates in freeze. I see opportunity. They're waiting for the perfect deal, and well, I've finalized thousands of them, and perfect just doesn't exist. So I talk to operators across every asset class, flippers, multifamily syndicators, note investors, and whatever else is working. No sales pitches allowed. Just real lessons from people actually doing it. I'm Ed Matthews, and this is real estate underground. Greetings and salutations, real estate undergrounders. It is Ed Matthews, again, with the real estate underground. Thank you so much for making us a part of your day. I'm really grateful. And one of the things that I'm always interested in learning about you is the kind of deals you're working on. And it's really interesting. This market has radically changed from when we started this show, gosh, almost five years ago, where we were talking specifically about buy and hold properties and a little bit about flips back in the day. And these days, man, we're talking about self storage and flex industrial and industrial properties and obviously residential and still haven't seen office come back yet. I'm still waiting on that asset class, but notes and whatever else, and keep the comments coming. And obviously, you can send those to ed@clarkst.com as usual, because me and our team, we really want to hear from you so that we know the types of asset classes that you folks are paying attention to so that we can invite experts to the show in order to help illuminate the issues that are surrounding each of those asset classes. And as you've seen over the last six, 12-ish months, we've brought in a lot of smart people around a lot of different asset classes in the real estate industry. And I want to continue to do that. So keep those comments coming, and I'm grateful. With that, I'd like to welcome Stewart Heath of Harvard Grace to our show. Stewart, thank you so much for joining us. It is an honor to have you, and I'm really excited about this conversation. So looking to address old mind, thank you so much for inviting me to be on your show. Absolutely. Absolutely. For those folks who haven't discovered you online or read your book, what is why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and Harvard Grace? Yeah, I'm a good old-fashioned CPA. And I had my own preachers for many years. Just fell in love with real estate really after being told as a young person, as a young business person, that real estate was bad because I came out in the late 1980s with the 1986 Tax Act, and real estate was bad. And when I left-- For me or a doctor? Or-- When I left Price Waterhouse at the time, I started gathering clients to my new practice that were all real estate-related people onto this is bad. I've got to attract other people in the middle of tax season one day realizing these people were making a whole lot of money, and they're not paying any tax. And so I really interested in the real estate, and I've been pursuing it pretty aggressively ever since 2000. And now I don't do any of the consulting work anymore. I just run a private equity real estate firm called Harvard Grace Capital, and the rest of history, as they face. And one of the interesting things about Clark Street here, we have a debt fund. We haven't gotten into the private equity piece of the space of the business yet, but something maybe in the future. One of the things that's always interesting to me is the dynamic around-- You look at joint ventures, you look at syndicators, and then you look at PE guys, and they all come at the same as at similar asset classes, but they all come at it from very different perspectives. And I think a lot of that has to do with risk management, right? And one of the things that I-- When I started to dig into Harvard Grace Capital, and I really came to respect very quickly is, man, you buy into boring stuff, but that boring stuff is just pays and pays over the course of time in terms of IRR as well as cashflow and whatnot. Can you tell me a little bit about your philosophy on that? Sure. You nailed it. Our tagline is actually boring. It's beautiful. We put it on our banners, and I just swept into it one day. I was underwriting deals, and I'm just like, it's just so boring. But there's not a whole lot of boring about 13% cash on cash returns. You also nailed it. I got to this investment thesis from risk management just in full disclosure, so I was go-go in the late 2000s, and I had a lot of property, which I did with a lot of debt, and without a lot of equity. And I was just trying to build a portfolio as big as I could, do it by myself. And then 2008, 2009, and all but for the lack of vote, call it $300,000 of reserves, I'd still have some of those assets. And everybody else. Yeah, it just wasn't a smart move. You tell yourself the banker's okay with it, therefore it must be okay. They get bailouts. So my entire philosophy has really been built around mistakes made, lessons learned through what not to do. You've already mentioned my book. My book's called Don't Do What I Did. And so we started stabilised properties. So we're not doing development. We're not doing heavy value ads. I won't even do floaty rate debt. And so now I really fully embrace my CPA training, and I try to construct each transaction to like it's a bond or a piece of financial paper that comes with real estate, and which brings tax advantages and all kinds of stuff like that. So that's really our MO and the deals that we try to put together. Yeah, and I'll tell you, you say bond like, but for all intents and purposes, that's what real estate is, right? There are a lot of cowboys out there who've made a lot of money on ag fees and all the on the syndication side. But when you look at real estate historically, it mirrors the bond market far more than it does. You know, right? Well, the stabilised stuff does. I mean, when you say real estate, you got to say, what's hard? It's off to the developers who take the risks and hopefully more often than not, they do some home runs, and they deserve to make those big bucks for taking those risks. But that's a completely different business model than the buying hold guys, which is where I am. And where I am as well. Although I do flip houses and I joke, I tell people all the time that I don't do drugs. I don't smoke. I don't drink. I really don't. And so flipping is my cocaine, right? I just, it's my little buzz that I, but it's also, and it's the things I tell, you know, my, the folks that I kind of help along the way, it's empty calories too, right? Because it doesn't compound. You can't build on it. Once you buy a building, fix it, and then sell it, it's gone, right? You have the money, but there's nothing left. It stops paying you. And in fact, it causes a tax. It's not scalable. I think it's been so far as term. Yeah. You require sleep. So you can only do so many. Yeah. Yeah. I tried flipping once and figured out a made of dollar an hour and I didn't do anymore. The first couple, that's true of me as well. I think I was making about well below minimum wage for sure. Yeah. You figure it out over the course of time, but it was more. So for me, flipping is more of it scratches a creative itch than it does. And it's good cash, but it's not good cash flow. And I tend to gravitate towards the asset classes that you do. I have historically been a multifamily guy. I've since whittled that portfolio way down. And now as a limited partner and debt fund operator, I've gotten into multifamily and flipping through the debt fund. But as a limited partner, I'm into things like industrial, flex industrial, self storage, things that historically have performed regardless of, yes, there's ebbs and flows, but regardless of what where the economy's at, because I'm, I just finished reading the big short, which was a good reminder. I try to read it every so often just so I don't get a little cocky. And now I'm actually another guest, put me on the Sorkins latest book, Andrew Ross Sorkins, that is 1929. And I'm about three to four chapter three and a half chapters into it. And I haven't slept since I started reading the book. It's terrifying. If you like sleep, don't read it. If you want to walk into the next 10 years eyes wide open, it's a good read and it's terrifying where we are. But and this is being recorded in early June of 2026, if you're listening to this in the future. So maybe this will be prescient. Hopefully it's wrong. But it's a pretty scary perspective. Let's leave it at that. When you look at the asset classes that you tend to gravitate towards self storage being one of them, what are the spaces that you think are most attractive over the next? Let's take a long view, say 10 years in terms of what you're looking at and where you're looking to put your money and your funds money. Yeah, I'm a bit of a contrarian. You've already referred to office. And first day we ever did was office and being told, you're crazy. Nobody's ever going back to office. And we started out saying, where each of us are located, I'm in the staff. We've all pretended like there was no COVID pandemic since that June of 2020, anyway. And hardly anybody ever really stopped going to the office. An office for the most part has done fun. There has been some weakness in downtown central business districts and class A office. But there's so much more to office. There's medical office, which has never had a that's my absolute favorite. And so say more about that. I think I know why. But yeah, let's start with that. The state of the market is your typical medical user has to put hundreds of thousands of dollars of build out into their space. Therefore, they tend to want to start out with a 10 year lease. And then your average doctor or dentists, they may stay in that one one spot for their entire careers. And these days and the days of corporate ownership, the corporation may just keep that space as long as they get good foot traffic in and out of there. The doctors may come in and go, but they tend to be very sticky tenants. Medical practices tend to not be so cost-conscious and annual office lease with that might be triple net with 3% bumps. They're just, yeah, sure, whatever. I mean, it's just the ability to just really write really strong and lucrative leases in medical office. It's easier to do in the medical space than it is in other spaces where people's costs are a little bit tighter. I'm not insinuating the doctors are bad business people. They're just more margin in that business. And the rent is not anywhere close to one of their highest expenses as it is in so many other businesses. They deal in outcomes. They're not worried about the rents. Their bottom line is part of it. But obviously, that's not what they do. That's not. They're also very unlikely to have their whole business impacted by AI. And they're not going to come see you. So they've got to have a place for you to come see them. Yeah. And it's interesting that medical of the elements of the office class here in the Northeast, so I'm in Connecticut where COVID was real and there are still people to this day that wear masks. And God bless them. I'm no judgment. But the fact is that here in the Northeast, Connecticut, in particular, where I am, office got absolutely decimated. Absolutely destroyed. And yes, they're still coming back. But your point is well taken in that the segment of that space that never stopped thriving was medical office space. Right. And I would say there's a second one, which we also in that just call it suburban office. Some people refer to it as service retail. But it's same kind of concept. They typically are class B properties, but they're places where those tenants meet their customers, just like the medical people. This might be the state form guy or a mortgage company or any kind of smaller outside of the central business district. They are not places where employers collected their employees, which is what class they use, essentially. But any place that that business meets its customers. And that sort of gives you the retail piece of the service retail concept. But we've got three or four of those and they just thrive. And they tend to be very sticky people as well. Yeah. And for the same reasons, right? Exactly. They're high margin businesses. And they're more about customer service than they are about bottom line, because when you serve your customers, you do well. You grow your portfolio. And that takes care of the costs, not somebody in the back office saying, hey, I need to negotiate down by at least by 3%. And in terms of your approach to the market, you tend to come at this from a private equity and fund perspective. Yeah. I do. Yes. Okay. And when you were looking at the space, you could syndicate, you could raise capital to buy directly. But instead, you've gone the fund route. And so what was your thinking about that? They went into that business model? The first several deals that we did, individual syndications, it just getting started. I've never liked the idea of the fund, because I didn't want pressure to go out to deploy capital. Unless I had a good deal, we're not, we're not deal focused. We're not, we're not deal fee dependent. We only want to go out and deals that we like, think are good. The reason that we have chosen to start a fund now is we have happened to have some really good relationships with a couple of independent RIs, which has just been tremendous. They've helped us get our deals on their platforms, a pretty trust company in school, which means anybody who uses that platform could sell one of our. Yes. So I'm going to ask you to define RIA, registered investment advisor. So not a broker dealer, but somebody who is licensed to basically be a financial advisor, but will clear through somebody else. So the regulations in that world are numerous, and I don't pretend to be an expert, but not necessarily a broker dealer. And so those, these two relationships, they have referred us to some of their clients. And because they've had clients that were looking for what Wall Street calls alt, alternative investments, that's one of my soapbox pet peeves. I'm sorry, real estate that around since God made it Wall Street, it's the alternative. They're the new kid on the blog. So anyway, we just made a decision that we want to create a fund because most RIA's don't want to do just single asset deals, if that makes any sense. So we're in it. It's more easier for them to consume rather than... It is diversify risk as opposed to them recommending one single asset, because something can happen to one asset. So a fund will have multiple assets. And now we're in a position where we're raising money in the fund, and we go forth as a fund, but some of our investors will still... Yeah, I want to invest in that one, not that one. So we let them come along and invest beside the fund. And so now we've got all of the above approach. So I'm just curious, how does that work? If you have a particular medical office complex that you're looking to invest in, and so does your fund... Actually, let me preface it with a question. Does your fund invest in a set of asset classes, or are they typically focused on one particular class and then multiple properties within that class? How is it organized? We call our asset class preface opportunistic. We focus on a geography, not an asset class. And so today we've done office, medical office, storage, and some retail, all up and down the I-65 corridor from National de Birmingham. Okay. So that's the same investment thesis we're pursuing in the fund. So if I come to you and say, "Okay, I love the medical office. I'm a little bit bullish on the... or bearish on the retail piece. Can I just invest in the medical office complex?" The answer is yes. And that's the special side. It can come along and invest with the fund. And it's all pro-rata. You just have to accept the same terms that the fund is getting. We do that with any of our existing or any new investor who wants to do that. Wow. Having operated just a debt fund, which is way simpler. Boy, that's a lot of operations. God bless you. It is. That's a lot of care and feeding. Thank God for software. Yeah, NAI, to a certain extent, and probably a whole lot of support staff. Yeah. We have a good team. We've been building that for four years. I'm very pleased with my team. Yeah. And so we were starting to get into kind of the next... I was asking you about your crystal ball in the next 10 year. What do you like? What are you focused on as you're building and thinking about the next decade? Yeah. I love this question. For me, all real estate to locals. As I speak about it, I'm speaking about these markets that we're active in and some that we're looking at getting active in. I think office is going to turn around. And if for no other reason then because no, it's building any. You probably couldn't get financing to develop a new office building today if you tried. And the population's not shrinking. And so it just becomes a very simple supply and demand. We've already seen this happen with retail. Because we had a blip, a pause, if you would, for two or three years of no retail development because of COVID. Because if you remember, retail and office were declared dead during COVID-19. Yeah. And Amazon had finished off with the ones that didn't die, right? That's right. Because nobody was going to do anything, sit at home and let Amazon bring us everything. And we would work from home. Retail space is almost doubled in price per square foot in the last three years. And that's universal. That's true here. It is because nobody built any for three years. So it's that's changing around here. People are starting to develop. But I don't think it's going to we're not going to get a glut like we get with multifamily multifamily goes through these cycles of shortage and surplus every five years. It seems retail and office, they follow housing. They tend to not follow the same cycles. I really think the longer end of this of this, office is coming back just from a supply and demand. It doesn't mean I'm going to run out and go buy a bunch of class A stuff. But I think that owning where there's no new development going on. And it seems as though a lot of the governments were the population migrations are going, which is pretty much in the southeast and Texas away from me. And they're struggling to keep up with infrastructure and sewer and stuff like that. I mean, sometimes we look out, right? And so I'll claim accidental brilliant. One of the first deals we ever did, the little town in Tennessee that has a sewer moratorium right now. And it's been in place for two years. And we bought this office building before then. And it was just a nice little boring building. But it's gotten exciting the last two years. It stays 100% full. The last two vacancies I've had have been filled within a week. Because there's nothing available and nobody can build anything because of the sewer moratorium. So sometimes you just get dumb luck. And that's pretty, everybody's rates. Or so they either got to pay more to stay where they are, or they go further out where there's less desirable property. And that's just simple economics. So I see people, I see office development, people getting interested in it and starting to come in a few years, but it's still going to be very slow because these governments can't get another wrong way. For sure. Yeah, but it's interesting. Yeah, retail has come back in a major other than malls. The we're tearing those down or converting them to storage, right? Or things. Yeah. The fact is that retail, especially at the local level, is thriving. Yes. Absolutely thriving here. And yeah, I was. Retail has become almost has gone in the last 10 years from 25% food restaurants to now almost 60%. And that's driving new retail development, which actually causes problems because restaurants need more parking and all that kind of stuff. But yeah, but I also think that culturally that makes sense, right? Because if you talk, I'm a gen, I'm a Gen X, right? I was born in 69 and my kids are Gen Z, maybe borderline millennials. And those kids that if anything, I paid close attention to what they do. And they're a lot of what they don't care about stuff, right? They care about experiences. Yes. And so that expert stuff, they order online. Yes. But they care about vacations. They care about really cool restaurants. They care about spending time. And it's an interesting cultural dynamic that I think manifests itself in why one of the reasons a real estate is actually doing very well is because one of the things that COVID taught our kids is who were all locked away for a couple of years, especially here in the Northeast, is they're going to go out and experience life, right? And have fun and see people. And one of the key places to do that are in real estate spaces, retail spaces, excuse me, that that are housing restaurants, all of the restaurants are popping up everywhere here. Yes. You're very prescient in what you're saying. Time for our new segment questions from the underground. One real problem, answers straight, no filler, and no theory. An investor called me last week. He owns 19 units, two states away from where he lives. And the property manager reports 95% occupancy every single month. But his distribution has gotten smaller four quarters in a row. He can't tell whether he's got a bad manager or a bad building and he's 300 miles away from the answer. Here's his real problem. He's managing the building on occupancy and occupancy is a vanity metric at best. 95% occupancy tells you the units are full. But it doesn't tell you a single thing about the that the units are making you money in any way. You can run a full building straight into the ground. Stop managing the building. Start managing the units. Profit per unit is the number and he's never looked at it once. So here's what I told him to do. And it's one meeting with his property manager. Take the trailing 12 months and build a line for every single one of those units. What revenue each one brought in and then do the same with expenses. Push every expense down to the unit it belongs to fixed and variable. All of it. Water on a per unit basis, electricity on a per unit basis, common area electric split across the units, taxes, insurance, the management fee, maintenance work, the turns, repairs, every cost lands on a per unit basis. When you're done, you don't have a building anymore. You have 19 little businesses and some of them are probably losing money. Now read it because that page tells you which of the three problems you actually have. One unit is an outlier. Its water bill is three times what the others are or its electric is high. That's not the manager. That's infrastructure. That's a running toilet, a leak in the wall, a heater that never shuts off. It's a building problem. It's easily fixed and it's super cheap relative to what it's costing it. All 19 drift down together. Repairs are climbing on every unit. Turns cost more every time. Days vacant stretching out a day here or a day there. Nothing wrong with the building. That's your manager. One quarter, one line and it doesn't repeat. An insurance renewal, a tax reassessment, a brutal January. That's temporary. You don't fire anybody because you had a cold winter. Ask for the rent rule and the full transaction register trailing 12 months. Every single line. Break it down to a per unit profit and loss and then get on the phone with your manager and walk through it unit by unit. Also, pay attention to how fast that file comes back because that's a test too. It should be a report. They can print off their management software pretty easily. It's a 30 second job. I owned and operated 196 units. I never once found a problem in the monthly summary. A summary is the positive story your management spends about his or her own work. The ledger is where the truth is. That's it for this week's questions from the underground. If you have a question, send it directly to me at ed@clarkstreet.com, clarkst.com, and I'll make sure that we answer it in one of the upcoming episodes. So, in terms of the business and the types of deals that you're doing today, are you, is the fun more focused on medical retail? Are you seeing an even balance? I can only speak to what I have in my pipeline right now, which I get only hope to close half of those. That was ambitious. All right. So, heavily weighted on the medical side. And that's just because that's Stewart's favorite. Just because of the long-term nature of it. I do like the retail because of the scarcity nature of it. And if you can get it at a good price, there's still a couple of other smaller, suburban office, multi-tenant deals that we are looking at. But it's probably 40% medical, 40% retail. Real focus on retail and then as much medical as we can get. Excellent. Excellent. Yeah. You're one of, actually, several guests that we found out in the show that have really made me fall, I wouldn't say in love with, but I would fall in the like with medical office space. I don't own any shares or partner. I'm not a limited partner in any deals where medical office, but it's definitely one of the spaces that I'm looking at. For certain. Okay. So, let's get into the final five. I'm always interested in. One of the things that I learned in my past career when I was a corporate guy is I worked for some incredibly talented people and incredibly successful people. And obviously, you've built one heck of a business. Congratulations on that. And one of the traits that I've noticed in folks like you and the people that I've worked with and is that financially, their houses are in order, right? They didn't have to work, but they choose to work. And they, I view that as purpose, right? There's a higher order that they're operating to because for whatever reason. And so, I'm curious about your purpose. What gets you out of bed on Monday mornings? Already alluded to it. I have a purpose to provide cash flowing investments. For myself, as well as others. And because that's where I've found what makes the most sense. And I'm not saying, I just think if I can preach for a little bit, I don't think portfolio construction is really taught as much as it should be anywhere. And I just think, I learned the hard way. You got to have a foundation, a platform of cash flow stabilized stuff before you go out and do SpaceX. And you've already referenced today, if the day SpaceX went public and or before you go do a development deal, that shouldn't be 90% of your investment portfolio. The big home run risks because they don't work out so many times. But once you do cash flowing investments, and I'm not saying it's going to be cash flowing real estate, you can build a portfolio out of dividend paying stocks, or any kind of thing that's stable and throws off cash flow. And whether you need the cash flow or not, the fact that it throws off the cash flow is what makes it stable. And that's the point. All of that gives you the right to go do some of the less boring stuff, like IPOs and development deals or art or whatever it is you want to do. That is my purpose. And that purpose is that's what I'm trying to build for my family, for my kids. That's when I'm wanting to pass off to the next generation and hopefully teach them to not all almost as parents, we want to help our kids avoid the mistakes that we may avoid reading the wrote it down in the book. Yeah, it's it's I always talk about it in terms of I was a baseball player, but softball as well is that it hit singles and doubles, right? Yeah. Because every once in a while you pop one and that is that's fine. That's a good life, right? And if you want to start swinging for the fences when you have cash flow and a whole bunch of cushion, go for it. Go invest in SpaceX and go buy 50 some odd acres of land and try and figure out how to build houses on it. I wish that's an adventure. Good luck. But don't let that be the first thing you do. In the baseball, if you're up five runs and you want to go for the fence, you want to steal a third? Go for it. Absolutely. 100%. So obviously you mentioned that nobody teaches portfolio construction and that is 100% true. It's something that I had to learn along the way. And fortunately, I had mentors who more or less taught me how to do it because I certainly didn't learn on my own. And so I'm curious about the mentors that you've had along the way and what's the best advice you ever got and who gave it to you? Man, I used to serve on a school board with years ago back when I was a practicing CPA. I was sitting around whining and I had a really good CPA practice and I was making good money and I was just, I'm making all this money, but I'm not building anything. I'm not building any asset value or anything like that. He just looked at me and you got to get into the game. That's what what are you talking about? You got to start taking some risk. And funny, after we were just talking about doing boring assets, we're still taking risks by building you got to go do something. You got to get into the game. So that's probably the best single piece of advice made by Box Hawkins, who's actually real estate developer in Nashville. But it just changed my whole way of thinking. And he's the one that originally turned me on to Hiyesaki's book, Rich Dad Poor Dad, that everybody in our buildings knows well and it's the worst written book in the world that has a whole lot of great takeaways from it. If you like string of consciousness, it's great. But it say which and so I was former English major, right? So that's snob when it comes to writing, and you're right, it's terrible writing. But it's, it's pony curls. It's fundamentally changed the way I look at investing. It is a seminal book in what I do. And I've never had the pleasure of meeting him, but I have seen him speak a couple times and he's far better spoken than he is written. But the book is is an important book in the life of a whole lot of entrepreneurs in this world. I'm also curious about, and I say this every show, I think you learn a lot more from your mistakes than you do from your successes, right? And so you're straight and steady to extend the baseball metaphor. You learn more from your strikeouts than you do from your home runs. And so I'm curious about a decision that you made along the way. You wrote a book about it. So this is probably a pretty easy question for you. The I'm curious about the decisions you've made along the way. And you look back on and think, man, I'd love to have knowing what I know today. I'd love to have that decision back. What was it? And how did you manage through it? Oh, there are so many mistakes. Mine's almost my leg. So it'd probably longer. Yeah, I would say the biggest thing that I have learned is that you don't know what you do. I described my early investing days, given stuff back to the banks, and I didn't have reserves. So I have resolved that every deal that we put together, we go ahead and put at least 12 months of mortgage payments reserves just on the side. It deflates our returns because it's assets that have not been put to work, but it sits there because you don't know what you don't know. And you can take that too far. But one of the things that I learned was I only do multi-tenant deals. That's because I've had and I've seen single-tenant deals. Oh, well, we're just not going to pay. We're going to move out. We're not going to pay anymore. You got 10 more years on the lease. Yeah, we're not going to do that. And what do you left with? Perhaps a building that has no other function and a lawsuit, which takes years. So years, years. Yeah. And but the biggest thing was the building of the reserves. I'm sorry, I chased a rabbit trail about the multi-tenant stuff because you could over calculate your reserves too much because what's the likelihood that you're going to lose all 14 tenants in a building? Not very. But you can you get better at it as you go on. So we've just settled on at least 12 months, assuming the property income goes to zero. All you've done is bought yourself some time and there's been a time or two where we've relied on those reserves and able to turn it around and write the property because we didn't know that was going to happen going into it. But we prepared for what we didn't know. The building of the reserves is the number one. I think that's I think that's quietly brilliant because COVID taught us that, right? I used to carry three months reserves, all operating expenses three months to the side. When COVID happened, we moved that to six. And fortunately, we haven't needed to to go through all of that. But 12 months, man, I would have slept way better than I did. If I had 12 months in the bank, I'll tell you. Yeah. And because they were a handful of more than a handful of nights where I was trying to figure out who how are we going to get through the next week, let alone next month, three months, six months, 12 months, right? And it sits there and when things are going good, you certainly have the internal discussions as well. I could return some of that capital back to the infant and you just have to, yeah, I'm more sting me or to fight yourself and stay disciplined. And let's take that to the nth degree in there. This is going to go on forever and it's always going to grow. And I can't tell you how many investors I've met along the way that thought rent growth here in the Northeast was always going to continue at four, five, six, seven percent. Yeah, I'll do forever in perpetuity. No, it doesn't work that way. It doesn't work. I remember the performance that I saw in the spring of 2020 were for Nashville and they were selling it out of three cap. And you know, because growth was going to go on 12% for the next five years. Nope, or smoking dope, not the way the world works. So I'm curious, I see that you're a reader with all the books that are sitting behind you. And actually I've read the ones I can see, I've read a whole bunch of them. But I'm curious what's on your, what's on your nightstand these days? What are you right? What are you reading? Who are you paying attention to? I am rereading because I have to keep reminding myself who not how that winds up and I think it's about delegation and very much like rich, dead poor, dead. I'm an entrepreneur and I have to be an expert at everything don't I? No, no, I don't. I need to be an expert at finding the right person who knows how to do that thing. And it is in the more successful again, the more deals we have, the more insignificant I become and the more significant it is for me to have other people on the team that are more important than me. I'm rereading that. I think that's for the third time now. That's a very healthy approach. Because I tell people, I tell my team all the time, if I walk in a room and are in one of our conference rooms and I'm the smartest person in the room, we're in a lot of trouble. We are in a lot of trouble. And the other one I read is on a regular basis, a couple of them. So there's the Emith Gerber's book. I read the real estate version as well as the the original. And then buy back your time, Dan Martell, which I think is an excellent book, all kind of dancing around the same topic. But I think Dan Sullivan's book is the one that drives it home the most efficient effectively, to be honest. Yeah, that's a great book. And I actually read that. I haven't read that in a couple of years. I should probably go back to that because I'm sure I've forgotten some of the tenets. And that's interesting about rereading books. And I want to say this to the audience as well as Newstort, you start to do things. You start to implement the the elements of the book that resonate within your own life in your own business. And then you do it. And then, but I can't tell you how many times we've been in a meeting, we go through our annual. So there's the quarterly, what's stressing it out kind of meetings, which is what are the things that we can delegate, what are the things we can automate? What are the things that we should stop doing? Because it's not effective, all that right. And but the other component to that and who not how is really, it really shines a light on this is that there are things that you used to do that you don't do anymore. And I don't remember why we stopped doing it. We just stopped doing it. And then you read that book and you're like, we should really get back to that because I was really effective. And then you reimplement it. And it's it's a really healthy exercise for a leader, whether you're a solopreneur or you run a firm like like stewards, that you should always be reminding yourself the opportunities that these types of delegation automation, building systems, types of books, what they teach you, because it's I guarantee you the things you learned five years ago, you're only still applying a very small portion of them in your lives and you're in your business. Before careful and deliberate, we just get ruled by the tyranny of the urgent. Yeah. I don't know who told me that term before, but it's we just do what has to be done that moment. And I'm very guilty of that for sure. I think most entrepreneurs are in, I think there's another personality trait most of us have. We love to be the hero. Yeah. We love the crisis because we can come in and solve it and save it. I keep my cape right over there on the hat rack over there. And the thing is our team will let us do it. And that's not that doesn't really help us. No, it makes us feel good for the moment, but it doesn't get the job done long term. No, it doesn't. We get to go home and like, I really saved the company again. And you're never going to guess what I did today, right? Start over your burgers and whatever. So, so Stewart, how do you define success in your life? Um, having had basically haven't been broke before. There's a first level of success of having enough to meet all of my obligations. And they always come back to my wife and kids and doing stuff for them. Yeah. I don't have a boat. I don't do I don't fly a plane. I don't do much of anything like you with flipping houses. Real estate is my in caffeine is my derivative choice. But and but just being able to enjoy life and spend and spend quality time with those that I love and those that I'm doing all this for. That is my definition of success. I'm not interested in trying to become Elon Musk or Michael Dell or a truly new building or anything like that. I just, yeah, just trying to have a nice life. Yeah. Amen to that. Stewart, when you're not talking about speaking him, nice life, when you're not talking about real estate or working, what do you like to do for fun? When I ever get a chance, I do like to go boating. I don't have one. So I'm always renting one or begging somebody to take me a little bit of fishing, although I like catching a lot more than I do fishing. I don't do a lot of catching. Yeah. But anything on the coast, you know, we try to spend as much time down on the Gulf Coast as possible. And hence, Birmingham, is that why you like that head in that way? Yeah. Do South Orange Beach and make them go short of that area. Excellent. So Stewart, if folks want to learn more about you or get your book or learn more about Harvard Grace, what's the best way to do that? The easiest way to do that is to go to harvardgrace.com. You can find a link to get the book. It is free. Just give us your email address. Your ad is keeping address. We'll ship it to you for free. It'll cost you your email address and join our mailing list, which you can immediately unsubscribe from if you so choose. We got some good resources there for anybody that's looking at doing passive investing. You can find my calendar late there too. If you'd like to book through time with me and because I'll talk with anybody about real estate anytime, forward to hearing from anybody in the audience that would like to chat. Wonderful. Stewart, thank you so much for joining us today. It's a pleasure to speak with you. And I wish you continued success. Thank you. It's been a pleasure.