Through the Door: The Insider's Perspective on Running a Business

Burning Holes in the Soles of Your Shoes

• Ryan • Episode 1

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MDL Group |  Hayim Mizrachi, CEO, Principal & Broker:

Hayim Mizrachi, CCIM is a proud Las Vegas Native and graduate from UNLV. He has been practicing commercial real estate since graduating university and obtained his CCIM designation early in his career. Hayim is CEO | Principal | Broker of MDL Group where he oversees all brokerage activity including sales and leasing.

Outside of work, Hayim is involved in many aspects of the Las Vegas Jewish community including volunteer work with The Jewish Federation and Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity. He is very proud of his award-winning blog and podcast Takeaways, where he shares his Takeaways from events that he attends and people who have influenced him throughout his life. 

For more information about MDL group or Hayim, visit www.hayim.com

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Welcome to Through the Door, an insider's perspective to running a business. I am lucky enough to be sitting here with Hayam Mizrahi. He is an owner and partner in MDL Group, a premier full-service property management and commercial brokerage company.(...) This company was founded in 1989 and is locally owned and operated here in Las Vegas. I know what you're thinking, he did not start it when he was three, but there is a story there. Not only is he the owner and partner in MDL Group, he is also a husband, father of three, pasta lover, and a blogger and podcaster with his own series called Takeaways. So thank you for being here, Hayam. Thank you, Megan, for having me. This is exciting. Yes, so through the door, an insider's perspective to running a business allows us to interview business owners about their experience being a business owner. Your experience was a little unique in the fact that you found your way to MDL Group after it had been established. So tell us a little bit about your origin story. How did you get into commercial real estate and then ultimately find your place at MDL?

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Absolutely, so born and raised here in Las Vegas, the family business has always been construction. So real estate was always an ancillary part of my upbringing.

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I went to Green Valley High School, went to UNLV, graduated. I worked with my dad for about three years and we had a stucco subcontracting company. And he got into some development in Southern Utah that I was able to shadow and follow him around for.

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I got to a place where I knew I wanted to do commercial real estate as a professional, not like as a dabbler. This is early 2000, so if you remember at the time in Las Vegas, it didn't matter what you were doing, you're also doing real estate. I'd go to Smith's and the guy bagging my groceries was giving me tips on how to flip houses, go get your haircut, person cutting your hair as a real estate investor.

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I got my license for similar reasons, just if we did something as a family, I would get a little bit of commission, but not to be a practitioner.(...) So after a few years, I wanted this to be my full time gig. I ended up partnering with a childhood friend of mine named Jared Katz. So here we are 2007, eager beavers, young baby brokers ready to rule the world. It was booming. It was actually funny enough. It wasn't like the peak, it was peaking. So we had this false sense of hope that we can actually make it in this industry. And then we wrote it straight to the trough. Everyone knows 2008, the global great recession. We were there for it. Um, what was that experience like? Your first, you made this decision. You're moving into commercial real estate, making this your career, you and your best friend are like, we're going to dominate.(...) And then all of a sudden riding that crash all the way down. So the good news is you don't know what you don't know with the, the, the benefit of youth and, um, naivete.(...) So we really didn't know. There were a couple of dark moments where I sat at my desk really thinking like, okay, is this really a viable career or not? Um, my bachelor party in 2009, I rolled the change, took it to coin star. So we'd have pocket money. I mean, it was there, it was some trying times. One thing you said about, you made the decision. We made the decision. What got us through is like, we really didn't leave ourselves an opportunity to do something different. This was it having one of my best friends alongside me, I would say helped because we were there for each other. He bartended for a period. I took some side jobs also for a period. We did what we had to do to get through. And ultimately we came through.

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We had a mentor at the time, a couple of them that said, you know, first of all, if you can make it through these times, you're really going to make it when things turn around. So that was a little encouragement.(...) Uh, we had another one that said right now, what you should be doing as a young agent is burning holes in the soles of your shoes. What does that mean? Like pounding the pavement, like literally go pound the, get out of your office. Cause there's no business there. Go walk door to door in these business parks that you want, uh, those businesses to be your clients. Show up. Let them know who you are and do it so much that you've got holes in the soles of your shoes. You're going to have to buy new shoes. So we took the advice that we got and we applied it and we, we came through the other side, uh, he and I got recruited to like a regional company. And then from there to a global company, this is now 2010.(...) And I had the opportunity at the time to go into quote unquote management. So not just a transactional sales agent, but how do you run this kind of a business? What are the KPIs that you look for? What are exactly.

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Um, so we were there for about three years.

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At the time it was a family owned company. So we introduced that family to the founders of MDL group. Why we didn't have property management at the time. We're just a brokerage sales and leasing and we needed property management. So I opened up the book of list and said, if I had a magic wand, who would I be able to work with? And there was one person that came to the top of the list and that's Carol Kleinong, one of the co-founders of MDL group.

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So that really started that introduction. We, they could do something together. Then the company I was at sold to private equity and private equity does what private equity does, which is cut anything. That's not core. So we got a phone call saying, Hey guys, end of March, we're just going to close the office.

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Cool. Now the shoe was kind of on the other foot. Carol and her co-founding partner, Kurt said to Jared and I, you know, we weren't really interested in that global platform, that national, that big name company. We really wanted you to, we were hoping that you guys, we would end up with you guys as our succession.(...) And so we had some soul searching to do, you know, we were at a global company. Do we really want to go back to a local company? There's that's some, you know,(...) nuances in commercial real estate, but every meeting we had led us back to Kurt and Carol.(...) And in 2013, we joined them as their, as their, as their partners. So tell us a little bit about that story in particular, cause we discussed it briefly, but you had several meetings, I'm sure kind of curating what that partnership would look like. But then ultimately what were some of the big discussions that you guys really had of four people coming together to co-own and run a firm?

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So there's a lot, as you said, a lot of looking back on it now, again, you don't know what you don't know when you're doing it, you're just kind of moving forward, but looking back on it, you know, the first conversation was that one, hey guys, we're interested in you too.(...) Oh, now we have to decide are we interested and what is this that we're interested in? So really understanding what is what Kurt calls the deal and the deal is to be partners in this company. Well, what does it mean to be a partner? It sounds great, but there's operating agreements involved.(...) There's financial commitments to make. There's all sorts of stuff to understand. What are we really being a partner in?

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So we go through that process. So you get a valuation of the company to create a baseline of value.

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Uh, we decided how much we're all going to put in as far as new equity. Kurt is a CPA. So, uh, one of the things that I would say he did generously for us as young partners is create a pathway for us to acquire more and more of the company over time. There are two things that really stuck out that were like lessons in this. One of them,(...) I remember we had like an incubation period of a year, let's say. And so we created a new entity and we all invested our equity into that entity. And the premise was that if this was going to work out, we would then roll the company that we were going to become partners in into that entity. And the reason why that was important is Kurt made a comment, look, if this doesn't work out, I don't want to have to buy back my company from you two. Made a lot of sense.

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So cool that he was creative enough to do that. The other thing they brought in their attorney, this guy named Ed Lubbers. Ed's been in, in Las Vegas for a very long time. He's a former president of an association that I later became a president of. Ed passed away a few years ago, but Ed,(...) a business attorney. And in our first meeting with Ed, he said, all right, here's how this works. We're there to talk about the operating agreement, by the way. So this is the document that is like the prenup, the governing document of how we're going to play in the sandbox together. And Ed says, here's how this works.

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All partnerships are doomed to failure. What?(...) No, this is going to be great. We love each other. It's wonderful. We're all going to make millions of dollars together. It's going to be, yeah, that's how you think when you're going into a partnership, which is how you should think. And why you should have someone like Ed in your corner to say, okay, not if this blows up, but when this blows up, how do you guys want to engage with each other? When you're so sick of your partner that you can't even look them in the face, let alone talk to them without the hairs on the back of your neck standing up, or when you're in front of a judge or when your attorneys, you've turned your attorneys loose to beat up the other side. How do you guys want to be treated?

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And that was like,(...) that was a different way of looking at things. But it was a fair way of looking at it. Cause at that point you're more objective, I think to really talk about the wishes and the things that all of you guys want as partners, because you guys are all going into something invested at the same time. And then deciding at that point, if, and when things go awry, how do we ultimately want to treat each other so that it isn't this at each other's throats. Let's really crush the other person's knees type of situation, which sometimes happens when partnerships don't have those great conversations, right? Absolutely. It's really two things. You know, on the more positive side of it, when he says all partnerships are doomed to failure, that doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to unwind in a bad way. Any business has a natural arc that in our case at MDL group, the co-founders brought in two partners that will ultimately be their succession. And so there will be an ending point whenever they're ready for that.

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A business could exit. You could grow it to a point where you get acquired by another company and everyone has a windfall. That's an exit.(...) That is a quote unquote, doomed to failure kind of a thing, but in a positive way. And then there's of course, yeah, I mean, if this thing goes, goes really horribly wrong, if we can't have the kinds of conversations that we need to have, not necessarily like mean or behind your back, but direct, transparent,

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care, frontational, not confrontational. So I care about you enough to confront you on this. I like that word. I'm stealing it. It's not mine. I got it from someone else too. So yeah, you can steal what I stole already. You bestowed that upon me. But when we're at our best, which is right now, when we're forming this, if we can't have these kinds of conversations, what do you think it's going to be like when we're not at our best?(...) So Ed's premise was let's talk about this stuff now as if it's the worst case scenario and let's put in this agreement what needs to be there so that everyone feels comfortable.(...) Would you say that that was an extremely vital part to the start of your partnership as like a team?(...) Yeah. I mean, it sets the tone that we are going to speak to each other in a way where it's, it's okay. Like here's some language that we use in our partner meetings.(...) You know, Megan, you just said something about that, but I really need to push back on you.

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That that's a very common thing. Or let me finish before you interrupt. That's a common thing that we say, but it's not a disrespectful thing. I'm not pushing back on you because I think you're an idiot. It's I've got blind spots because I'm a human being. And if you can see them as my partner, I really hope that you show them to me. Well, and I think it curtails the emotion part of it too. Sure. Because when you're in heated discussions like that, I mean, I do it sometimes even in the workplace where I'm really passionate about something and it takes a minute or someone saying something like that to me, don't interrupt. Let me finish for me to realize, wow, Megan, you need to take a step back. Cause one, you have respect for that human. So you need to curtail the way that you're speaking and you really need to listen to what they're saying, because maybe there's a miscommunication or you're not relaying it correctly, or maybe you're not open to hearing and opposing view. Right. So when you are in a partnership, I, the fundamental core of any successful partnership is having those types of conversations over the years that you've been in business, especially with multiple partners, tell me how you feel about the key elements of the success that MDL group has had for the last 11 years since you guys have joined. Is that part of the specialties and the different avenues that you guys kind of all work separately, but together?

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Yeah. Um, yeah, I feel great about the success. Just looking back on the last 11 years, everything in the company, you could say tripled from, uh, revenue to the prop, the amount of properties that we manage to the amount of agents that we have along the way we built ourselves a new building that we're all owners of, it's not been without challenges and disappointments, uh, for sure, but it's all been good. And then just like, so what is, what do you attribute that to?

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Before we got to MDL group, I remember Carol making a comment. It was, it was just after, but before we got there for her, what it was like as the leader of the company with property management, with accounting,(...) with, uh, brokerage and agents wearing all the hats.

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She made a comment. I don't know if it was a year later, a few months later, uh, it was like the Calvary came in for support.(...) And so right out of the gate, uh, me coming there, let her focus on property management and I took brokerage off of her plate. So off of her plate means, you know, when you plan your day and you know, you have to get these three to five things done. And at 10 AM, someone walks in your office with an interruption, but they, it's, it's a necessary interruption.(...) There goes your day, or you didn't get the three things or the five things done. You got maybe one done.

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I was able to take a good portion of those off of her plate and bring new energy and, uh, you know, there's a creative force that you can, that you can bring. And so that let us grow brokerage like it did and her focus on property management and grow it like it did. So that's one example. So that, that separation of duties or that, you know, bringing in the Calvary and kind of sharing responsibilities. Do you think it's important for partners to bring something to the table, like something different to the table? Do you think that helps a business or did it help you guys continue growing? It absolutely helped us. So now let's say now I'm a seasoned business person, right? I've been doing this for a little, a little while now. If I were to open a new business and I would say, all right, I need partners, I would be very critical of myself and very clear, why do I need this partner? There's natural reasons why to bring on a partner. They have equity that you don't have. Okay. Are they just putting in money or do they have a responsibility also in the business?

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If they don't, you need to have that relationship defined accordingly.

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Um, they're strategic partners where I can bring you in and our businesses together, it's one plus one equals five. That's a strategic partner. Mine's going to grow by a multiple. Yours is going to grow by a multiple. We can't do this without each other or do it like this without each other. So, but still you have to define roles, responsibilities, risks, rewards, all of that. So we have four partners at MDL to really bring this, this point to home.

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Uh, initially Carol was a CEO and ran property management and had oversight of accounting. I was president and ran brokerage.(...) Jared is a transactional broker. He's one of the best industrial brokers in our market. No operational responsibilities besides coming to the partner meeting once a week. And Kurt doesn't have even that he's, he, what is broker of record. So has some obligations for signing and supervising, uh, comes to the partner meetings once a week, but doesn't have a quote unquote job in the company. All of that has to be defined and to be clear. Now, if he wants it, if Kurt says, guys, I need a job. Okay. Where and how, and if, if the company is going to give the resources of compensation package, what are they getting in return? You can do that as an owner of the company. You can just create a job, but to be true to the company, do you really need that? Now he hasn't said that by the way, because he's doing just fine as a CPA. And who wants to go back to doing more work, you know, especially cause you, like you mentioned, you guys were the succession plan for them. Right. So I like that concept of not every partner is necessarily created equal, even though everything is maybe equal when you view ownership, but compensation packages and your contribution or how much responsibility you take on for the company will also impact your own personal compensation to that. That's also something that I'm sure is important to discuss with a partner. Absolutely. Make sure that that's clear. So let's switch gears to now MDL is a bigger company. It's, I mean, you talked about some of the stats and I'd like to hear some of them again, as far as where you started when you guys came on board in 2013 to where you are today. So tell me about some of the things that you work through as a scaling growing company versus maybe the things that you started working on when you first came in and how that transition kind of happens with that growth. So it'd be interesting. Let's go all the way back to 1989 when Curt and Carol started this company. They were at a previous company called development by five or Kurt was one of the principles was a development company, commercial real estate development, five owners,(...) Kurt was one of the five. That's the name DB five.

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Carol was their office manager, property manager, all that. That was say early mid eighties and the market was running the cycle towards the late eighties. They had had enough of development and they were all ready to go back to their primary businesses. And Kurt said to Carol, there's enough here for us to start a management company if you're interested. So they started MDL group as partners. They hire the first person, the second person and so on. You'll fast forward when we got there.

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It's 24 years later. So they had already built this company for 24 years. They've already survived many market cycles, including the global great recession. And now here we come. My outside perspective of the company is this is a market leading property management company. It was already there.

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The first call it 90 days of us being there. The things that I was working on, it's as if it was, I call it like a 24 year old startup.

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We were rebranding the company. So we went through this process of changing the logo, creating new letterhead,(...) new business card templates. We all go to the printer and look at cardstock and this is not the right color green. This is not the right color green. Those kinds of things.(...) The email signature that every employee has that you might take for granted from being in a big company. We didn't have that. So what is the email signature need to say to accurately describe ourselves to the outside world? That's a little bit of marketing. If you don't know as a smaller company back then we didn't have that. But the amount of emails that the 24 people at the company at the time were sending out was an enormous amount. And every one of those to me is an impression we could be making with clients, vendors,(...) future clients, all that.

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So those were some of the little things. Another like getting everyone to use the at MDL group email address.

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Not everybody was.(...) So at this point I kind of take that for granted. Approaching it more as a unified company. We are a legit company. We need to establish ourselves. We need to show that we're not just a property management firm at this point that we actually offer more services. Like imagine an executive like you sending an email from an AOL email address.

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A business email on behalf of Nevada State Bank. Yeah, that would be spam or someone be calling about fraud for sure. Somebody would be calling you from inside your company saying you cannot send an email like this. It has to go through our server. Wherever sued we have to be able to recall it. There's all these little things that now is a bigger company that you're,(...) you don't take for granted. But at that point we had a couple of AOL email address users. So getting everyone to adopt this. Not everyone was excited about even those little changes. There were some good awesome fun changes, but even some like people resisted. They weren't excited about them. Like we were excited about them.

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Maybe four, five years ago was actually just before COVID. So end of 2019 we started this process called EOS, entrepreneurial operating system.

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Several books out there about it. One's called traction.

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I think one is called EOS tools or something like that. It's for companies like us that want to take the next step and to start positioning ourselves for some scale.

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And so we did it for about a year with a facilitator, outside facilitator with just the four partners and it takes you through. Is it consultative? Like a course. You can buy the book and self administer this in your company. There are EOS facilitators. You can go on Google EOS,(...) find the, not the fitness one, find the one that's like the business. It's open 24 hours. Yeah, exactly.

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There are facilitators or several here. We've, we found one through this process. Interviewed a couple, ended up with one that fit us culturally personality-wise. Also someone that's able to look at our senior partner Kurt and say, let me push back on you, Kurt. So really good facilitator.

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But it takes you through a series of questions. What's your 10 year vision?

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You know, four partners, you would think you ask any one of us. We all say the same thing, not so. So the exercise of taking us through and workshopping, what is our 10 year vision so that we're all aligned around a vision?

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Something like that. Now looking back on it, it's like, duh. Well, it's the misconception of, I work so closely with these people. I see them at minimum once a week at my partner meeting.(...) They clearly know what we're, where we're going and what we're all working for. So sometimes you lose sight of that, right? You don't think about. If you don't actually sit down and have the conversation and say, what is our 10 year vision and workshop it and push back on each other and say, what do you mean by that?(...) You don't have a unified vision. That's one thing we learned in retrospect.(...) The other thing I've observed over the years, now that I'm a seasoned, you know, business person, Megan, I'm saying that facetiously. You are. You've gone through the gauntlet. Not yet. I feel like I have more gauntlet to go through. You've had two downturns. Yeah. Pandemic and global recession. There you go. I got a braid in my beard now. Exactly. I'm ready. You're aged perfectly. Perfectly. We all see the world from different lenses. We all have our own biases. Simply put, like I'm I have a degree in marketing. I see the world through a marketing and sales lens.

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Carol will never let anybody down. She sees the world through an operational excellence lens. Not that she doesn't understand sales and marketing and I don't understand operations, but that's my filter. That's the first filter I go through. We also process information differently and at different speeds. So it wasn't uncommon that we would leave a partner meeting.

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And I'm going to keep picking on Kurt because it's so fun, right? Kurt would call Carol all fired up about this one thing that we talked about. Whatever it was that to him, like went to priority number one. What are we doing about this? And Carol's like, she's sharing this with me. And like, it's number 16 on my list as far as priority. But Kurt grabbed that through his own biases, through his own worldview. As he's driving probably back to his office, he's already processing the issue and now he's ready to talk about it. And it's number 16 on my list and it could feel like where is this coming from?(...) So what EOS does is it really puts you all on the same page, so to speak.

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Ten year vision. What are your core values? What's your marketing plan and strategy? When you have a ten year vision, you break it down to a three year picture and then that starts to create your one year plan. So at the end of each year, we have two days of EOS annual sessions to go through and revise now, because we've been doing this for four years. What is our one year plan for next year? And then you break your one year plan down to quarters. What do we need to accomplish as a leadership team this next quarter? And then who owns this rock? All this language that comes out of EOS, that one of the things it does is it does create a common language within your company.

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The common language piece is, I think one of the most vital things, because you talk about how it was number 16 on your list, but it was number one on his. And that's one thing that I think people can't do enough of is communicate and make sure that they don't assume.(...) I think assumption is kind of the killer of efficiency because a lot of people will walk away from things, make their own assumptions, work on something, then come back and realize, wow, where was I? Because everyone else was on a different page. So EOS outside of EOS, what are some of the other things that you and the partners and your company has kind of been doing to like speak the same language to create that level of consistency? How do you drill that down from the partnership level to your employees?

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One of the things we do, so when Jared and I got to MDL group and we have these two new partners, Kurt and Carol, and they schedule start to change, right? Commitments start to change the way I used to do things might not be the way I do. I do them now. One of the things they said is we meet weekly.

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What? Every week, every Wednesday morning, we have a partner meeting. Go ahead and add those to your calendar.

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What do you need to meet with? Like we were like, what do you need to meet weekly for? That's overkill. No, no, every week.

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All right. So like half hour or hour.

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Two hours, two hours,(...) every week, two hours. Come to find out fast forward. One of the key ingredients for EOS and creating a common language is your meeting cadence and it's called a weekly pulse. And so they were doing it right. You meet weekly.

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You have a set agenda. You go through all the stuff you need to go through. There's a place to prioritize. There's a place to capture.(...) You know, if Kurt thinks this is issue number one and I think it's number 16, there's a way to organize all the issues we all think about, we all see, and then together prioritize what are we going to, what are we going to work on? Cause you can't work on everything. So that's one thing. The other thing, you know, when you're meeting regularly and you create a

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trust, transparency,(...) things just naturally will surface. I remember the first time I brought up sales and I'm one of our partner meeting(...) and two out of the, actually three out of the four people, I'm the one.

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They all thought I was talking about selling buildings because that's what we do and I wasn't, I was talking about as a company,(...) like if we were in shark tank and they say, what are your sales? We wouldn't talk about the buildings that we're selling.(...) We'd talk about the revenue on our P and L.

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And so I was saying, we need to talk about our sales process. They immediately thought selling buildings. I'm talking about who are our clients.

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How do they become our clients? Like what agreement do they need to sign with us?

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And what's our process for getting more clients and really driving top line revenue? That was another example. But when they asked like selling buildings, I said, no, that's not what I'm saying.(...) This is what I'm saying. But we had a time and a space to work through that. Well, and then by creating that common voice with leadership, you've then(...) been able to kind of delegate that out to your employees. Have you seen a positive impact with you guys having these weekly pulse check meetings and then the way that you guys are all communicating very similarly to your employees and how do you think that's helped your team? So when you get to a company that's 55 or so people and you've got four different divisions,(...) you have to become a little more deliberate about that. So about five, six years ago, we added what we call all hands meetings.(...) So what's that? Well, three times a year, we all go into our break room. Everyone can fit in there. And that's one of the meetings that we use for overarching communication. You know, where are we at? Where are we going? How far do we need to go to get there? Those are the general themes. We do them like end of January, beginning of February,(...) sometime around May, and then sometime around September, October.

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The other thing we started doing with even more structure are department meetings.(...) So the accounting department meets once a month, the property managers meet once a month. What we call the AA's meet once a month. The broker support team meet, meets once a month. The brokers meet once a month. And it sounds like, oh my God, these are so many meetings and so many meetings. But when I say with structure and deliberate, so there's an agenda for every meeting, otherwise there's no meeting.(...) There's a start time and an end time. End time is most important. We really try to ensure that meetings don't drag and drag and drag so that anyone attending the meetings and participating in the meetings, they're not sitting there like with a cognitive load, like when is this thing going to end? What are we even talking about? There's a purpose for it. And a lot of the purpose is to keep driving communication. Are we perfect? No.(...) Right. You can always communicate better and more, but I feel like we're doing a lot of things right. So those meetings, I find that interesting because I do think meetings are great when they have a purpose and an agenda and structure, but they can sometimes not have that and just be a waste of time. How do you feel about your meetings? Are they all in person or is there a virtual aspect where people can be on like teams or zoom or something along those lines? Do you think that it's as beneficial having that remote kind of capability?

(...)

Our meetings are in-person meetings. We have adapted like every other company and offer the virtual attendance for those that aren't there, but the premise is that we are, it's an in-person meeting and attendance is like 80, 90%. If someone can't be there, it's an agent that has a showing that it's like, I have to choose, am I in this meeting or am I in production?(...) Go to production and they usually they're in their car participating in the meeting until the last minute and then they go in and do their tour. But they also know another thing that we're good at is like pre-scheduling your commitments. So at the beginning of the year, all of the broker meetings are populated on everybody's calendar. So it's not like they didn't know about it. We don't wait until the week before to put it on your calendar. You already know that this is when it's going to happen. You know that it's only for an hour. So it's the first Tuesday of every month, 9 30 to 10 30 is our broker meeting. You know about it. So if you can schedule around it, you should because it's in person.

(...)

I think, and I hope that this trend continues as far as what I'm seeing in the business community.

(...)

Virtual was necessary during a pandemic.

(...)

There's a lot of benefits. I think that there's an element that's going to stay, but I predict that the pendulum is going to swing back into in-person everything that might be controversial to say companies will provide flexibility when necessary, but they're going to, I think going to keep, they already started pushing. They're going to keep pushing for in-person. Let's talk a little bit about that because that was one thing that you and I had discussed, you know, at lunch, where a lot of companies were doing collaborative spaces before COVID and then COVID kind of happened. Everyone abandoned brick and mortar essentially, and went virtual. And then it's been this weird purgatory, if you will, of, okay, I've given my employees this benefit and now I'm trying to figure out how to move it back into the workplace because maybe there's still some people that view it as taking something away that was given to them.(...) Um, how do you view that? Do you offer remote and virtual working for some of the positions at your company? Do you feel that it stifles your ability to find talent by not allowing remote working?

(...)

I feel a couple of things. So first and foremost, you know, I listened to a lot of podcasts,(...) made me create one.(...) Uh, the, some of the podcasts I listened to, they talk about this concept of first principles and they would say with thinking and first principles, meaning go back to like what really makes sense. So there's two things that come to mind when I think about this whole movement of remote work.

(...)

One is when I was a new employee in the workforce, I was reading this magazine called Maxim magazine, and there was a whole article about networking and the benefits of networking for employees or the people in the workforce that do engage in networking activities, you know, going to industry events, going to happy hours with other colleagues,(...) they, there, there was like all the stats, you know, their income was this percentage much more than those who don't and that that that. Okay. That makes sense. Why? If I take the time to go to the happy hour and I'm talking to people, you know, my colleagues, but like people in other companies, I'm just going to hear about more opportunities that I'm going to be able to take advantage of.(...) I'm going to know more people that are able to put me into other opportunities. That makes perfect sense. Right.

(...)

So when a young person comes and says, I want to, I want to work remotely or I want two days in the office, three days out of the office,(...) to me, it's stupid. It's short sighted. They're missing the whole point of just networking within your own company.

(...)

Who is in a position to give you a promotion?(...) Probably someone within your company. Who is in a position to give you a raise if you're doing a good job? Probably somebody within your own company.

(...)

If they don't see you, yeah, if they don't see you, I don't care what you say, but I can do my job to the, if they don't physically see you, if they don't feel your energy,(...) you're just, you're going to get overlooked. So congratulations. You've got a very convenient life. If, but let me just speak. If that's your value, if you value that and you're, you're okay with being overlooked for promotions and you're okay, maybe not getting a raise, then cool. Just, but just know that that is what is going to happen. And that that's what is happening. That's one thing. The other like first principles thing. So I'm in commercial real estate. I specialize in office space before the pandemic, all the rage was designing your office space for collaboration for, uh, even Tony Shea try to create this in our, in our downtown collisions. Um,(...) blank canvas for office, the Apple headquarters, no budget. It was designed to maximize employee collisions. Why? Cause when we're engaging and we have collaborations and we're talking,(...) everything's better.

(...)

The connection is better between us as employees, the synergy, the burst of ideas, it's just better.

(...)

So take two companies and like, okay, this one is an in office culture. It's highly collaborative. Everything is designed for that. And the people who work here believe in that and just say, all right, I will give up the convenience of work from home.(...) And this company that is, oh, we were two days in, three days out, uh, we're connected through teams or Slack or whatever. Yes, you're going to get your work done, but you're going to miss all that other stuff.(...) Which one do you think is going to perform better over time?

(...)

I could guess. I could guess too. I have a bias, but no, I would agree with that. I think that that is one of the difficult things of today's work life environment is convincing. You have to convince people sometimes to see the value in actually being here. And, but those people need to want it. So in this to a point, because you talked about, we've been through some recessions.

(...)

You can argue we're in a recession right now.

(...)

Uh, the labor numbers, the labor, the stats from the labor of Bureau of Labor, they just adjusted them that we aren't creating as many jobs as we thought we were, we're in one of these downturns. Who do you think is going to get let go first?

(...)

It's not Sally who's been in the office five days a week is the first one in, last one out, she's good.

(...)

In fact, they're going to take, you know, John and Miriam's job and they're going to the names you just see on a paper or the names you just get on a virtual. And congratulations. Now you can work from home five days a week.

(...)

Cause you don't have a job. Yeah. I think that that's one of the tough parts of finding a balance as a company, but that leads me into hiring. So you are a relationship building business, just like banking is a relationship building business. So all the more reason why I think certain industries also emphasize the importance of employee collisions and collaboration and being in the office and burning those holes in your shoes, because you have to go out there and build relationships and network.

(...)

You mentioned that you got better at hiring. Last time we spoke, tell me a little bit about that. What did you learn about hiring over the years? How have you been able to fine tune that now being a seasoned, you know, business owner to find the right people that fit within your culture? Uh, it was just a, it's another thing of when you're evolving from a smaller company to a larger company, you need more people, you have to be, get better at hiring. Uh, we were not, you know, despite my very eloquent and passionate talk around in office versus not anyone hearing that might think that I'm heartless and I'm not balanced and all that. No, we're quite balanced. I believe like compared to my colleagues, my family, you mentioned, I've got a ton of hobbies and I work hard, but it's not, I don't only work and not that is, those are values from the partners from the top down.(...) So we noticed that it was whole, this whole, a great resignation thing. We were not immune to it. We were also, uh, experiencing that our industry, commercial real estate, the people who work within our industry, they have to get licensed. So it's not just, you can't just hire someone from here to there. You have to have someone that wants to go through a licensing process. And then when we hire a brand new agent or a brand new property manager that just got licensed has no experience. It's three years before they probably have a sense of what they're doing. They're like drinking from the fire hose because there's so much nuance. They're remarkable people, both sales agents and property, commercial property managers to learn like a commercial property manager. For example, they have to know something about financing, creating budgets, vendor relations, negotiations,(...) uh,(...) building mechanicals and all those kinds of things, building systems, um, managing people, different types of clients, client personalities,(...) uh, legal when it comes to leases and other kind of documents.(...) So it's not just anyone off the street we can get. One of the things we did was I would say maybe decentralized our hiring process where before Carol would call some people in the industry, say, I have an opening. She'd get some names. She'd make some calls. We'd hire someone.

(...)

That's now one of the things that we do when we have an opening. We've added another five things that we've never done before that we're also doing now, uh, temp agencies, recruitment companies,(...) we've got better at posting and where we post, we have an internal bounty for our people if they know somebody and that, that goes back to culture. Our best people come from our people,(...) people who enjoy our culture, like our values, uh, enjoy coming to work. They're engaged. They know one or two friends that they would be great here.

(...)

Let's, we do all that now. Yeah. Let's talk more about, and cause obviously you've doubled in size with employees, and this is one of the biggest challenges for most business owners, I think right now, or actually over the last several years is hiring employee retention, all of that good stuff.

(...)

Tell me a little bit about the decisions that you've made as a company as you've grown, where you've decided, okay, it's now warrants that we fill this role with a person that role might've not existed. You might not have the person in your company today developing the type of title, the job description, those growing pains of you're no longer a small company. You have to act like a big company because you're competing with the big boys in the job hiring realm, right? With job description. Can you tell us a little bit more about how you guys have handled that piece? Yeah, it started with our current, uh, calm seats.

(...)

We know the positions that we have.(...) And one of the things we got better at is instead of, Oh, we've got an opening for this, someone needs to create the job post. We created all the job posts. So we have all the job posts for every seat in our company. And we know this is what you do in this seat.

(...)

Uh, in 2020,(...) starting in 2019, we wanted to hire a marketing manager. We didn't have one of those and never had on those in our company. I was the de facto marketing manager. I was doing things that, um,(...) someone like that would do. What kind of posts are we doing on social media? You know, direct email, direct mail.

(...)

And there was enough now for someone to take on and grow from there. Someone who actually knows what they're doing.

(...)

And that was interesting. So we had, we had some help from, let's say a colleague outside of the company that was, uh, vice president level or hire marketing person. They did an assessment. They talked to various people in the company. Uh, they looked at what are the tasks that we have? What do we want? And they, this is something that I learned.

(...)

Different positions have different rungs. And so if you're looking for someone in marketing,(...) they can be a marketing coordinator, it could be a marketing manager, it could be a marketing supervisor, it could be a marketing director, it could be a vice president of marketing. It could be a director of art.(...) Those are a lot of levels. Well, so you can actually, and I was educated on this, you can Google like rungs of marketing, rungs of accounting, rungs of operation and learn these things and like, what's the difference between a marketing coordinator and a director of marketing?

(...)

I don't know. Ma I want a director of marketing because it sounds better. And I feel better if I have a director of marketing versus a marketing coordinator. Like as a business owner, I feel like, you know, my egos tapped in. Let me talk to my director of marketing. Yeah, exactly. Let me bring in my director of marketing.

(...)

Do we need a director of marketing? And more than anything, I'd like a director of marketing, but can we afford to pay a director of marketing?

(...)

No, we're not ready for that yet. That's what we decided. So we started here and then we sort of grew from there. But that's also important from the perspective of when you run a business, you're not only trying to find commercial agents and commercial property management, you know, agents, things like that. You're looking for people that have that specialty, that area of expertise that is, you know, a cog in the wheel. It helps smooth out certain operational aspects of the business. So marketing, they don't have to be a commercial real estate guru necessarily to work for your firm. But it is important for you to have the correct job description because if you want a director of marketing, but you put marketing manager, that director of marketing that's out there, maybe looking for another role, isn't necessarily going to, you know, reach out and send their resume because you don't have the right usage of title and you might have the job description, but the title isn't right. Right. So that's an interesting nuance as you grow that you have to start thinking about legitimizing things. It's not so wild, wild West anymore as a small business and just calling up friends and family on who you know. It's about really posting and looking like a consistent, large company. It's the difference of we need a marketing person.(...) That's what we were saying. We need a marketing person. What, what is a mark? What is that? What is a marketing person? You know, someone that does the marketing, but what are they doing? And what are you compensating them? And you can search on all the sites, you know, indeed LinkedIn, there is no title called marketing person, but that's how we as business owners talk about that role. That one's a fun one to pick on because many business owners are not marketing people, but they need a marketing person. They need someone to, you know, just do the marketing. Yeah. But getting it right, you know, I need a director or I need a manager or I need a coordinator is critical in finding the right people if we were ready then for a marketing director,(...) someone who is a fantastic marketing manager, that is at another company ready to take their next step might be looking for that role.

(...)

Yeah. Might be wanting to move up and just knowing like getting better when we said getting better at hiring, understanding behind the curtain, who's applying for these jobs, what are they thinking about putting yourself in their shoes? What does this need to say to get the person that we're looking for to click on it and go through our hiring process?(...) That's, that's what it means by getting better. Let's talk about now employees with titles, because that was something that we discussed and that was kind of an epiphany for me too, is that oftentimes when you work in a small company,(...) it's kind of that last bullet point, all other duties as assigned, right? In the job description, it's just anything and everything under the sun. But a lot of times employees need to be empowered by knowing what their job duties and responsibilities and that their title warrants them doing that. You went through that change as a company too. Can you talk a little bit about how you realized, okay, I need to start giving people these titles so that they are empowered and know that you've asked me three times. The answer has always been yes. Now you have the magic wand to do it. There's so much in this.

(...)

You know, Dale Carnegie says, give someone a title of which to aspire to.

(...)

I'm the kind of person that titles don't matter.

(...)

Just, you could do whatever you want. What title do you want today? We'll give you that title. Just the job is the job and I'm I've always been the kind of person more, I lean more entrepreneurial. You know, it's never the job description. It's never nine to five. There's always more.(...) So putting myself in someone's shoes that isn't that is a little challenging, but titles do matter at the end of the day because it creates clarity. It also creates when someone says to you, I want upward mobility.

(...)

And okay, let's go back to these rungs that I was educated on. You are here.

(...)

Your next step in our company could be here.(...) Upward mobility also means different things to different people.

(...)

So understanding for them, what does it mean for you? And then go a little deeper if they're willing. Why is it important?

(...)

Sometimes it's just the title.(...) Sometimes it's not the title, but it's the perception of additional responsibility that comes with the title.(...) Oftentimes it's additional compensation.

(...)

And so for a business owner to have clarity for the company in all the seats,

(...)

this, these are the titles. These are the roles and responsibilities. This is where upward mobility can happen in title, responsibility and compensation. And this is where you can get and outgrow the company, which is all healthy, by the way, and we've had some of that too.

(...)

Where you want to go,(...) you should go.

(...)

We can't go there with you. Why? Cause we're not going to create something that doesn't exist here, but for the time that you were here, hopefully you were engaged, you grew,(...) you're better off than you were, you were compensated fairly and you're ready now to take the next step.

(...)

All of that is in your question of what's in a title. But I agree. Titles create clarity. That was something that you said that really resonated with me as not only someone that works for, you know, a big company that has lots of titles, but even with my husband's small businesses where they need those titles, they need that clarity. And that's what helps them get through the day and understand what is within their autonomy to do versus the things that they need to constantly ping you on because they need you to buy in on the decision.(...) Do you think that that has helped you with retention over time with your employees, like them having rungs or have you had some better longevity? Have you measured that in any way?(...) Yeah, I could, I could answer that both ways. Say yes and say no. I think we have people that have been with our company five years, 10 years. They found their place 15 years.

(...)

They found their place and that's cool. That's not true for everybody though. Uh,(...) people, many people want more, want different sometimes. It's not necessarily the title. It's just, I'm just ready for something else.

(...)

So all of that is true. And we experience that. Yeah. How about start starting the process of doing your own ground up construction building, because that's one thing that most companies around the same age, they kind of go through that growing pain of, okay, now I need to decide to lease forever, or I have to identify the opportunity to buy, and then you guys made the decision of doing ground up construction. Granted you have the background and the expertise in that. So I'm sure it was a little smoother than maybe someone that doesn't have that background, but can you share a little bit about how that decision came into being and then some of the lessons learned, if you will? Yeah, I wish it was smoother. Um, let's, let's first talk about the decision to own versus lease as a, as a business, we do a lot of this work with clients. This is one of the niches that we specialize in when a, when a business owner wants to also become a building owner, there are reasons why you do that. There's also reasons why you would not do that. If you are growing dynamically and your head, your head count is going to change. You believe that your, your projections are, I'm going to go from five people to 10 to 20 to 50, you probably shouldn't own.

(...)

You should lease until you reach a stabilized head count.

(...)

Unless you're, you know, you're really confident and you've got the funding and you're going to own multiple, but you don't want to be in a, in a long-term mortgage if you know that you're going to grow, that's one thing.

(...)

Um,(...) owning a building means you have to have a down payment. So depending on how much money you're going to spend on your building, let's say, you know, it's $2 million. There's a fantastic SBA program called a 504, which is 10% down. So you need at least $200,000 that you're able to put into a building, not to mention if you need to do some tenant improvements so that it fits your needs, which you likely will, but you can finance those by the way, as you know. Yeah, I know. I'm not even asking for this commercial and I love it.

(...)

Um, and then, so why would you do that? So your business gets stability. You have your building, you can charge yourself a certain rent. So if market goes down, your rents aren't going to go up, which creates undue stress on you, uh, you're building equity for yourself. We have a client that we helped buy a building.

(...)

2011 or 2012.

(...)

So that's over 10 years ago, let's say low point in the market, low point in the market, challenging tenants as a funeral home. Nobody wanted to lease to a funeral home because nobody wants to be next to a funeral home. So they specialize nature of that business to operating out of that location if you don't own it. Right. So just them buying a building and being the masters of their own domain kind of a thing, but they bought a building. They ended up selling their business like most business owners do at the end of their cycle and they still own the building and other landlords and that's residual income for their retirement.(...) I don't know what they sold their business for, but I know what their building is worth now and it's pretty good. They did very well on that investment with their 10% down. So those are reasons why you would do that. So we're no different. We know this, uh, MDL group owned its building. They built their building before we got there. And now we w we had the second floor. Kurt CPA firm was on the first floor. Oh, I didn't know you guys on that building. They did. So Kurt and Carol and another partner, they built that building. So it was already inherent within the company, Jared and I, we are limited partners in real estate, so we know how to do this.

(...)

We know how to do it for clients, but we also are participants.

(...)

And when we were outgrowing the second floor, it was time to relocate. We knew we wanted to be in the Southwest because that was the path of progress. This is probably 2016 to give you some timelines.

(...)

Um, we didn't want to lease, but we looked at leasing. Uh, we wanted to own, we looked at one building really that fit our size requirements. It was over off rainbow between sunset and Russell.(...) And what we discovered at that time kind of surprised us. Lease rates were already as much as mortgages.(...) So there's this thing called a biverse lease analysis that pointed us to owning, which we were predisposed to anyway,(...) the building that we saw in rainbow, by the time we bought it and then retrofitted the interior, it was already just at replacement cost,(...) meaning we can buy land and build it. Same amount. Right. For the same amount. And then add to the fact that we know how to do this. Like Kurt was a developer.

(...)

They've developed, you know, even after DB five, they develop properties here.

(...)

Jared and I were exposed to development as brokers and limited partners in developments. So we were comfortable taking those steps. So first step is find some land, which we did. We had a fantastic brokers name was Jared Katz found us a nice parcel. Yeah.

(...)

Where we are now, which is also Jones between sunset and Russell.

(...)

And then you got to get a contractor and get some, an architect and get a plan and all that stuff. Uh, and we did.

(...)

So we moved in, it was delayed. There was a lot of lessons learned in that one thing is, you know, the construction process is not something to be taken lightly. A lot of, a lot of business owners are entrepreneurial by nature and they know how to make things happen. And they're risk takers.

(...)

If a client asks me, you know, I want to build a building, we're going to have a lot of serious conversations.

(...)

I mean, ultimately they can do whatever they want. My job is to give them all the information they need to make the best decision possible.

(...)

There's a lot that can happen from when you buy a piece of dirt and when you get your certificate of occupancy. And we learned a lot of those lessons, even though this is what we quote unquote, do for a living. And so for a business owner that, you know, your core business is whatever funeral home, printing company, whatever architect, uh, counseling for you to go through that journey, just know your it's commit three years of your life to it.(...) And expect things to go wrong. It's not if it's when do you have the bandwidth to both run your business and be a project manager? I think that's the toughest part with a project like that is that even the most versed and experienced people that are in that world still recognize and realize that this is another full time job on top of my already full time job, which that job is very important because that's the revenue and the income it's going to pay for this building. So you can't ignore that, but you have to be very engaged if you take on a project like that, even if you have a GC, right? You have to make sure that you are fully engaged and that you are moving this process along to meet your timeline.(...) Otherwise it can really get away from you. We renovated our house. I'm smiling because we renovated our house.

(...)

Um, let me take a step back when my wife and I bought our first house. It was a foreclosure. I was the project manager. So I, the tile go down and pick out your granite and, and then you get the phone call in the middle of the day and you've got to go down there and fix whatever issue it is.

(...)

So now we got a new house. It's time to renovate. My wife's like, okay, I get it.(...) She doesn't particularly enjoy doing that kind of thing. Some people do. I don't particularly enjoy that. So we got a designer that also helps you run the general contractor. So we have both. It's like a project manager and a general contractor. And I'm telling her someone has to run them. No, no, no, it's going to be great.

(...)

Someone has to run them. Now your impact might be less, but someone still has to stay on top of them.

(...)

And there were a few things that we had to fix after the fact because they kind of ran loose, let's say.(...) Yeah, that happened. Overall, it was great, like 85% great. But then there's that 15% that you still have to account for. It's not going to run itself. What would be one thing of advice that you would give when selecting a contractor for a ground up construction build? Your building is beautiful, but I know that it is no time is lost in you making sure that it was exactly what you guys wanted and that it kind of configured to your liking as a company.(...) But as people are looking at partners to really get into business with on a ground up construction build, if you had that experience again, what would be something that you would tell someone? So we do this work a lot with clients.

(...)

There's one in particular that they wanted to build a building that really just didn't exist in the market. It was very specialized. We ended up connecting them with a developer and the developer has a service called build to suit.

(...)

And there's different ways to approach it where the developer can buy the land, get the construction loan, build the building, and then hand you the keys when they're done, you at the client then goes to Nevada State Bank and gets a loan to take the developer out of it.

(...)

You can buy the land as the as the owner of the project.(...) You can go get the construction loan from Nevada State Bank and you can still have the developer build it for you. So there's a lot of ways to skin that cat.

(...)

If you don't want to go with a full blown developer, you can hire. There's a couple of companies in town that are there are owners rep, owners reps or project managers that they will take you through that process. They will put out the RFP to the contractors. They will put out the RFP to the architects. They will help you select them.

(...)

I would recommend if someone's going to do this to do either one of those two things.(...) We were our own project manager and owners rep despite having a general contractor who is a known quantity. They're not you know we didn't just pick you know Joe with a pickup truck.

(...)

Very well reputable commercial contractor that we've had experiences with.

(...)

We hired the architect.

(...)

There was a point where it's like OK who's holding the bag right now is it the contractor. It's the architect. Actually you know what happened was with the landscape company who hired the landscaper because something went wrong.

(...)

Well we hired the landscaper as the as the owner of the project. It wasn't the general contractor that hired them. And this is just a little point of oversight where when something goes wrong where does the liability go.

(...)

You know on my podcast I have a lot of developers that that's their profession. One of them is Jeff Lapour. He's been developing in this market in Phoenix and Colorado for decades.(...) He says a developer's job is to assess risk.(...) That's their job. Here's a project. My job is to assess risk. So they're going to go well I'm going to lose my pants. If a business owner is about to develop a property that's what they need to understand.

(...)

Assess your risk.(...) And I mean those types of things would be money well spent if they actually hired some of those folks. If you don't possess the expertise whatever you pay them as their fee I promise you you're going to save and not just heartburn not just an opportunity cost with time away from your company but also in hard costs of oopses that they're going to help you avoid that you won't know to avoid even us like I remember now the landscape or again it was probably an eighty thousand dollar oops.

(...)

Ouch. Yep. That's expensive. That's a whole salary for someone or two.

(...)

So tell me I mean your buildings your building is beautiful by the way. So you guys did a great job. All that hard work. Despite all the challenges it was still the right decision a wonderful decision. It's a great investment. It's fantastic for employees from an accessibility standpoint and aesthetic standpoint. And I noticed the building across from you looks very similar. Did they look at yours and say wow I like this or was there like a requirement to match it in some way. So we're brilliant developers Megan. We put a parcel in between the two point two acres that we bought knowing we didn't need that. We sold that as a pad meaning it was ready to be developed on with permitted plans. So our architect created the plans for that. Now is by design. We didn't want a building that looked different. We wanted that aesthetic to continue within our little park. So we sold it to a dentist. I'm pretty sure you guys finance that form. Wow that's awesome. Yeah he lives in the neighborhood right next to us. So he's very excited to be right right by his house.(...) And so what that did is with the excess land we got a little bit of our initial investment back when we saw that pad. And he's a great neighbor of the just the overall package and value of this is ready to go because permits.

(...)

They're fun.

(...)

I love that process. The permitting process is really fun.(...) Yeah there's a good nine to 12 months of just getting raw dirt to permit to permit.

(...)

And there's value that we sold when we sold that.

(...)

So in your business it's very relationship driven.(...) How do you view networking like you've been in this role for a very long time. You've been in commercial real estate for well over two decades.

(...)

Tell me about how you view networking as a business owner but also as somebody that does it for a living. So if you're in sales networking should be one of your activities.

(...)

When you boil it down how you generate sales it's there's a finite amount of approaches.

(...)

You can cold call which nobody that I've ever met really loves. There's a few outliers but you don't really love it but that is available to you. There's what we did early in our career which is canvassing burning holes in the soles of our shoes going door to door meeting people.

(...)

There's networking.

(...)

There's there's ways to do it better. You know now than what I used to do it before. There's direct mail that you can do. There's there's digital both passive and direct. So when you boil it down there's only a few.(...) Networking is one of the most powerful ways. So as a professional learning that as a skill refining it as a skill is critical to your.

(...)

Ability to provide for your family.

(...)

But not only that I think that marketing and networking no matter what business you have even if it's a restaurant.

(...)

People think if you're in a particular location then you're just automatically going to get business. But no matter what if you are a business owner you should always be telling people about your company and networking with others and sharing what you do and making sure that you. Tell your story. So this leads me to one of my last questions I found it very interesting when I was doing pre-work with you. That you have your own website so you have your own personal website which kind of encapsulates everything that is high. Both personally and professionally and then also these amazing cool hobbies that you have that you're continuing to cultivate and work on. Tell me about the importance or what that means to you as far as having that personal branding aspect that really encapsulates you and your business.

(...)

Do you want the long answer or the short answer. I want the best answer.

(...)

No pressure no pressure.

(...)

So sticking with this framework of when you boil it down in marketing there's certain things that are available as activities that you can do.

(...)

One of them social media really brought to the forefront which is what's called you know personal branding or your personal brand.

(...)

Again every professional should be doing this the restaurant owner should be doing it. Yes the restaurant should be marketing itself but as the owner you should be telling your story as to why you own this restaurant.

(...)

You should be telling the story about your customers and what they mean to you. You should be telling the stories about your recipes.

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And you do that through it's not just social media that's one of the avenues public speaking is another one so coming on a podcast like this.

(...)

Finding opportunities to speak to your potential clients is another one so not requires you to develop your public speaking abilities.

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Which is I guess a big fear for a lot of people but that's your job as the leader of your organization in my opinion.

(...)

So you do the social media you do the writing you do the podcasting if that's you know part of who you are which it was part of who I am. And these are housed in various different places so Facebook.(...) Instagram LinkedIn that's the social media when you have a podcast like where does it live it can live on Apple Spotify but you have to put it somewhere where people could find it.

(...)

So I talked to a few people and I go you need to have your own personal website what does that mean it means your name dot com hi I'm Mizrahi dot com so I bought that.

(...)

Then I looked I was curious is hayim.com com available I spell my nameH A Y I M you can also spell itH A I M orC H A I M which is actually the traditional spelling.

(...)

But H A Y I M was available.

(...)

And I'm like oh my God I can buy this but it's not like you go on GoDaddy and it's you know 9.99 for three years it's what's called a premium site which I don't know how they value these things but it was a lot of money.(...) And I'm like vacillating over this thing like do I get it do I not get it.

(...)

How do I get it I did share with you also kind of taking a step aside but I'll come back to this. I have a friend in the Jewish community who is an attorney who once gave me advice about a big ticket item in our company and he said don't think about it as you know it's a $15,000 expense think about it as it's $15,000 over 10 years because that's really what it was.(...) And it made it more probable and it was the right decision to do it something we needed to do but it was a way to mentally get over oh my God this is a big investment. So thinking about my own personal site my first name the way that I spell it which is a story there too that goes back to my mom being Israeli.

(...)

The way she told it to me is how she you know they gave her the form for my birth certificate and she has to decide how am I going to spell this name which traditionally it'sC H A I M but she didn't want people calling me chime.

(...)

And Haim didn't sound right to her when she sounded it outH A I M it sounded when she sounded out high him H A Y IM sohayim.com was available I bought hayim.com and then it's like golden populated which is a whole nother activity like sit down and think about who am I how do I express that to the outward facing world people who know me people who don't know me.

(...)

What are the stories I'm going to share on here what are the stories that I'm not going to share on here.

(...)

What lives on here. So it's been a fun exercise. I also shared with you the other part which is I do all these things that you're supposed to do quote unquote something like that. And I'm going to share with you the other part of the story.

(...)

So it's been a fun exercise. I also shared with you the other part which is I do all these things that you're supposed to do quote unquote supposed to do. I've got a personal side I have a podcast from time to time I write a blog. I am active posting on social media and I still have these thoughts about imposter syndrome and resistance and who the hell do I think I am putting this stuff out there and why would anybody care.

(...)

How much should I be spending on this.

(...)

All of that exists within what you see.

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But it matters to your point. I think social media or the story behind a person and a company matters more than it ever has and these platforms have given us the opportunity to really share those stories and connect with people. That's one thing that I love about the new way of doing business. Yes, it's noisy and there's a lot of it out there. And so it is really hard when you're putting something out into the universe. You might think that nothing is coming back to you. What it why am I doing this? This is pointless. But in reality you're building this consistency and this time capsule of great information to where when people stumble upon it they connect with you without even meeting you. That's a pretty cool thing. You get to build rapport and connect with people through something that lives online and they get to see a little bit of your funny personality and your wit and the way that you write things. And that's the piece that I think is so intriguing not just from a professional business perspective, but although I do believe that that helps also from a family perspective. This is something that will live there and be also for family that they can have. It's a preservation of your life, which is really cool. Have you ever seen the last lecture? No, so who's in it? It's not a movie actually. It's a go on YouTube type in the last lecture.(...) It's this professor that gave his quote unquote last lecture. Usually I forgot what University it's at, but they do the last lecture. They film it when someone's retiring. Well, this guy terminal cancer.(...) Oh my God. And he went and he told his story to an auditorium and at the end of it, he talked about like there's a hook. You should do things with a hook or there's always a hook and he like kind of said the hook for my last lecture is that my kids get to see this and hear about my life story.

(...)

I love that you got this is something that like if you need not if you need it's like Rudy, you know, the movie Rudy, where it's just like an amazing story that you just feel good about this last lecture thing. It's an amazing story that you're just going to feel good about. Yeah. Okay. Well, I'm going to watch it tonight, but that concludes our episode for through the door and insiders perspective to running a business. Thank you so much. Hi am for joining us today. And if you want more information on MDL group or hi am you'll be able to click on the links at the end of this episode. Thank you.