Work Smarter and Harder

Chad Moore sits down with Chris Falk and talks all things Northern Utah, the real definition of what being on a team means, and how a supportive partner makes all of the difference in this industry. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Client that really trusts you and is loyal to you. And maybe they don't own all of their real estate, but maybe they're going to acquire more in different markets, different areas, and they recognize you have no market knowledge in a Nashville, Tennessee, or a Manhattan, or San Diego, or Austin, or Chicago, or Boston, wherever it may be, New Delhi. And but but they want your feedback. They want you in the room when it happens. And so to me, that's that is really enjoyable right now.

SPEAKER_01 0:31

Welcome everybody to the podcast. Today we have another amazing guest. Today we have Chris Falk, who is basically the king of commercial real estate in Utah, but also the king king of Davis County and office brokerage in the state of Utah. So I'm really excited about this one. Um a lot of cool stuff I'm gonna jump into. I've got four pages of notes here, which we probably won't get to. Um, but let's jump right into it. Chris, give us an intro.

SPEAKER_00 1:03

Yeah, I don't know if I can uh follow up to that. That's that's there's a there's a lot there. Uh been in this for probably, let's see, 20 going on 22, 23 years. Wow. Uh the the whole start to finish with NAI and NG Acres, and now here at Mountain West, which has been awesome. Grew up in little old Cache Valley, Logan, Utah, and somehow ended up in the raging metropolis of Davis County.

SPEAKER_01 1:28

But uh You moved to the big city. That's right. I did, I did.

SPEAKER_00 1:31

Still kept it real and stayed in Utah though. Utah all the way.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

So um, you know, here's what I really think is interesting about Chris, and one of the reasons why we've been hunting you down and trying to get you on the pod, is because you've done something in commercial real estate that very few brokers can do. But all of us, when we're rookies, especially, like we were preached to by our mentors, and it's always like figure out something you like, figure out a niche, figure out a category, and master that category and then move on. And I used to have this mentor, or he kind of ran our brokerage, his name was Bill Martin a long time ago, I don't know if you remember Bill.

SPEAKER_02 2:14

I do.

SPEAKER_01 2:15

Um, but he would always say, You could literally like pick a quadrant in Salt Lake City, and that can be your area. Like you master that, you could literally make a career off of just that, and you have figured out a way to master Davis County, and then you scaled from there. And so I'm just talking here, so feel free to interrupt me because I got a lot of things I'm talking, Chen. But over the last 20 years or 22 years or something, your team has done 70% of the transactions in Davis County. How's that even possible?

SPEAKER_00 2:51

Well, in the office world, yes. Uh well, I mean, credit to great mentors, great teams, great partners. I mean, I came into a group that had already kind of say set up the story, set up the baseline and the guideline for doing that. And I think we just added to it, and frankly, I just kind of have kept on with that. I think a lot of it is we or they had started to create a database, which we took and I still implement that to now. So we have a database of essentially every owner, every user, every tenant, every subtenant, every investor that's kind of set foot in the sandbox. And uh generally if they we have uh a new toy in the sandbox, we're reaching out to a group that applies to that said toy. And so if you had 5,000 feet, we could probably tell you in a matter of two minutes you know, the the 30 tenants who have space that's coming up in the next eight months and probably have cell phones for 89% of those groups and could give them a call right now and see if they needed space and talk to Jim or Sherry or Tom and see what they thought about it. Rather than just putting a sign up. So it's been a very proactive I was taught from kind of the beginning to be a very proactive broker rather than just kind of put on a catcher's mitt. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I don't know anything else.

SPEAKER_01 4:09

Do you feel like you have to be proactive in a smaller area like Davis County?

SPEAKER_00 4:14

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, there's uh there's you know, square hole, square peg for most deals.

SPEAKER_01 4:20

Yeah, nobody's nobody's got a catcher's mit up in Davis County. That is correct.

SPEAKER_00 4:23

That is correct. Or if they do, it's it's not it's not worked in very well. Yeah, it's still very stiff. But yeah, I think you absolutely have to be. And you know, frankly, I I kind of started when the bubble kind of burst, and I had some great mentors that said, ah, this will happen, you know, once, what once or twice, you'll experience this. This will happen for a couple of months. And we had some really difficult markets when things were turning upside down. And so luckily I had learned to be proactive and was calling on things. And uh had I just been using the catcher's mit, life would have been very different.

SPEAKER_01 4:58

What role do you think mentors played in your early success and success now?

SPEAKER_00 5:04

Huge part. Yeah. I I don't think um the role of a mentor, a good mentor, and in my mind, a mentor is someone who not only understands the profession, but also can relate to you and befriend you and you know, pick you up when you fall on your face, uh, kick you in the butt when you need it.

SPEAKER_02 5:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:22

And had I not had that, I don't think I would have. I'm a I'm a social guy.

SPEAKER_02 5:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:26

You know, I enjoyed coming into an office that was fun and energetic, but also there was a group there, not only the partners I was with and the group that I was placed with initially, but everybody in that office worked really hard. And there's the there's the smarter, not harder, but I think there's the smarter and harder approach.

SPEAKER_01 5:42

I've actually said that so many times. Really? Usually it pisses people off when I say that.

SPEAKER_00 5:46

I'm I'm a big believer in that. And um, you know, I I had great guys, not only the partners that I initially started with, but everybody in the office was very close, always willing to kind of lend a helping hand or some insight or you know, extend to contact, whatever it may be.

SPEAKER_01 6:01

You said good mentors, which obviously is great, but have you ever had like a bad mentor? And did you learn a lot from a bad mentor also? Or just like a bad example, maybe not necessarily mentor, but yeah, not uh I don't think not in brokerage that I've worked closely with.

SPEAKER_00 6:18

I had some coaches that probably were mentors that uh I I probably haven't implemented the same coaching style or skills when I've been involved with uh some youth coaching, but I find it funny.

SPEAKER_01 6:28

I mean, I've had l tons of great mentors. And I mean, generally speaking, I I haven't had a bad mentor, but I've learned a lot from mentors who made bad decisions. That's a better way of saying it.

SPEAKER_00 6:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:40

And I almost feel like I've made I've learned more from those bad decisions than anything because you can almost see them make the mistake and you don't you get a cheap lesson, right?

SPEAKER_00 6:51

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 6:52

So it definitely happens. Talk about culture a little bit because you came from that Davis County office back in the day, which was a NAI office, I think.

SPEAKER_00 7:02

Correct. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:03

And you guys had a great culture, and you kind of had a micro culture inside of a larger company. But I always remember thinking back in the day, because I've known you for 22, your whole career, basically, and I always remember thinking, these guys got a great culture up here. And there's a ton of names that came from that office that are still in the business today, whether they're in Davis County or they are in Salt Lake or whatever, you're a culture guy.

SPEAKER_00 7:26

Yeah. Yeah. My very first week there, I was invited into the office meeting, not like a submarket office or vertical office, like everybody in the office comes together. And everybody talked about new projects they were working on, um, some help they needed. And even if it wasn't maybe the area or your specialty, hey, could I lend a hand? Could we figure something out? And I thought that was awesome. Rarely do you see that ever. And sometimes in in many companies, you still don't see that even within a particular vertical, right? Brokers helping one another. But to kind of give you an idea of the culture there. So I'm two days into this, right? I'm sweating bullets, not wanting to make any mistakes, making sure I'm buttoned up, looking as professional as I can be as a 21, 22-year-old can. And we're gathering around, and and Brandon Wood was kind of hitting the office there and introduced me, and then he said, Okay, and Chris will give our opening prayer. That was just kind of the culture, you know, and everybody was in on it. No, they hadn't planned this or anything. Everybody was in on it. And so I kind of, you know, started to stand up and everybody starts laughing and pointing, and and uh, you know, they were all denominations or people in there wasn't necessarily you know religiously geared, but it was that was just kind of the group. It was very, very fun, very jovial, but very successful as well.

SPEAKER_01 8:40

Yeah. I think culture is one of the most important parts of running any company, but in particular a brokerage, because you know, we're sales oriented, we're collaborative, and so having that great culture as the foundation of a company, I've always believed really makes the company that much more successful. When you have a company that has bad culture or neutral culture or whatever, you just end up with silos. You end up with a bunch of people who run teams or who are lone wolves and they don't interact with anybody else. So it's almost like 20 companies or 50 companies inside of a bigger company.

SPEAKER_00 9:17

Totally agree. I think we could both name and well, kind of outline a number of different cycles we've seen with culture where we've seen great cultures dissolve a little bit and uh then be firmed up again through transactions or mergers or new talent and up and down and up and down. And so that was obviously one of the main reasons that brought me here.

SPEAKER_01 9:36

You're a team guy, you've always been in a team, and now you've built your own team basically from the ground up. Um what motivates a guy to be a team guy? Because I don't know what the percentage is, but probably half of brokers are lone wolves, half of sales guys are lone wolves, maybe even more than that. But some people like building team. I'm I'm a team guy. I've operated a team for 26 years, and I love the team aspect. Some people do, some people don't. But what motivates you to operate a team? Why do you like it?

SPEAKER_00 10:12

Was part of a team and then wasn't when my initial team kind of dissolved and did my own thing and uh was trying to decide if I could sink or swim or float or tread water or what that was. And uh that was for a couple years and then started to build again. But very much a team person, I think there's a number of aspects that I think are important to me. One is I love to bounce ideas or go into something together and team up on a project. Um, I think, you know, two brains, one plus one can equal three. And that's what a good, I think, good team, good partners go towards. But I also think it's um it's helpful to come to an office where there's activity and people. And, you know, you can talk about the high school game last weekend or some drama at whatever that's going on, you know. There will be drama. Yeah, and and just just the the normal everyday stuff that is a little bit of uh maybe a sidebar to brokerage, but also makes it fun and exciting to be in the office.

SPEAKER_02 11:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:12

And then there's also a part of me where I'm probably a little bit of uh overtly anal in my brokerage approach. And I had a hard time I learned disconnecting the first few years and really spending time away from the office when I was on vacation with family or something else. And I said, that doesn't work for me. That's not why I got into brokerage. It was almost the opposite, right? I wanted to be able to have time away where I could really focus on family and be the dad I wanted to be and be the husband I wanted to be.

SPEAKER_01 11:39

And I think you feel like there was a time where you you'd leave and you were just you're getting phone calls, you're getting emails, you can and you can't relax.

SPEAKER_00 11:48

My my wife was a coach and she's a coach of a national championship dance team at Weaver State, and I'm on a trip with her, and I don't get to see some of the dances because I'm taking a phone call about a transaction that probably was not that important. But I was so nervous my initial years to not take a call or to have somebody else answer it, or just no one could do it as as well as I could. Yeah, which obviously I've learned is is not the case, right? And so I think it's important to have I I learned I I need team members to alleviate some of that, to let you get away, to jump in for you, you know, when you can't be in two places at once, and vice versa. Yeah. Right to help out your partner as well and and be that same kind of tilt up for them.

SPEAKER_01 12:28

I remember um Mike Falk, who's your uncle and was a mentor of mine. And I I learned so many incredible things from Mike. He was actually just an incredible broker and incredible at operating a brokerage. And uh I was with him somewhere, and my phone was blowing up. We were at like some retreat or something. He always had these retreats that he loved. He probably went through a bunch of them. And my phone was blowing up, and I was like, I gotta step away and take this. And he's like, What is it? I'm like, ah, it's this transaction. And he's like, Man, you gotta run your team more efficiently. And I was like, okay. And then he grabbed me after and like really taught me a bunch of stuff about how to operate a team more efficiently so that people can, you know, help you in different ways. Um but yeah, I mean, from my perspective, I'm just the same as you. I think having a team really gives you a wider footprint, one plus one equals three, and you know, five plus five equals twenty or or whatever. And then everyone can kind of focus on a different category. You have some people that hunt and kill. You have some people that just kind of want to, you know, process the meat, so to speak. But for me, I I I love coming into the office. I love seeing my team, I love talking to everybody. I've known everybody for 20 plus years, and you it really becomes a family.

SPEAKER_00 13:46

Yeah, it really does. And it's exciting to get up and uh even go in and hear about other people's wins. Yeah. Right. And that's just that's kind of part of it. You're part of a team, and uh, you all contribute in your own way, and some weeks you're the high scorer, and some weeks you're the guy that's turning everybody on from the bench, and that's what makes it fun and interesting.

SPEAKER_01 14:05

So here's one thing, I I guess everyone already knows this now, but I think this is one thing that I want to really get across is you dominate Davis County. You're doing 70% of the office transactions and a ton of transactions. You have this incredible database of Davis County. You were also the CCIM office broker of the year for the state of Utah a year or two ago. Which means you did more transa office transactions than any other broker in the state of Utah. So you've clearly blown way past Davis County, and now you're dominating just office everywhere. Why weren't you just satisfied with Davis County?

SPEAKER_00 14:49

Well, let's not leave out Weaver. We don't want to leave out those Ogden folks, right? Davis and Weaver. That's it. Yeah, we can't do that. A lot of great Ogden folks. I think there's been a just kind of a process, right? And a and a maturity that I've learned. Uh, I don't know if I'm an old guy. We'll call myself an old guy if I can do that. Yeah, old enough. There we go. Uh where I think the more time I spend in brokerage, the more I really enjoy the trusted consultant or confidant portion of it, where you find a client that really trusts you and is loyal to you. And maybe they don't own all of their real estate, but maybe they're going to acquire more in different markets, different areas, and they recognize you have no market knowledge in a Nashville, Tennessee, or a Manhattan or San Diego or Austin or Chicago or Boston or wherever it may be, New Delhi. And but but they want your feedback. They want you in the room when it happens. And so to me, that's that is really enjoyable right now. And I get a lot of uh I don't know, just I I I feel that's exciting to me in this juncture of my profession. And so it's kind of it's kind of morphed a little bit, right?

SPEAKER_01 16:00

It's more than just money. I mean, it has to be more than money for a lot of people that are at your level of production and success. And one thing that I think that's a really great example that kind of ties together what you've accomplished is you 15 years ago or so started working with a client called Pluralsite, which had like one employee or whatever in in Davis County. Was it in Farmington? Forget where they were.

SPEAKER_00 16:26

The raging metropolis of Leighton, Utah.

SPEAKER_01 16:28

Leighton, Utah. And then so you've you're dominating Davis County, you represent this tiny little startup called Pluralsite. Flash forward however many years later, you're doing $200 million lease transactions for them. Not just in Davis County, in Utah, all around the world.

SPEAKER_00 16:49

Yeah. Four countries, 20 plus markets in the U.S. Yeah, it was it was a lot of fun. Um and they are a great example of of that type of group that, you know, uh started on a very small transaction with them and kind of grew locally in Davis County, and then they expanded in Utah, and then all of a sudden they said we're gonna go acquire a bunch of companies. They got, you know, multiple rounds of funding, and so they luckily stayed with me, right? We we had to they interviewed a few brokers and had to kind of put some proof in the pudding, but luckily they were they were very loyal to me, which I'm forever grateful for, and was able to go help them in a number of different markets in kind of the manner that I just suggested, right? I didn't I didn't know anything about Manhattan or Boston or Austin or Chicago or Orlando or you know, um Sydney, Australia, but you you find somebody there that does, and then they give you the information, and the plural site team would say, Hey, translate it into plural site speak. And that was fun. That was that was really exciting, you know, to to see their growth, to be a part of that culture, to understand their culture and understand why that was important to them and how that translated into real estate, where it wasn't just about the numbers. Yeah, there was a lot more to it than just the numbers, that was exciting.

SPEAKER_01 18:07

That really is the trusted consultant phrase that you use. I heard you use that before. And I think that that makes sense, especially for your business plan and what you do and your clients. Like you really are a trusted consultant for them. But how do you how do you feel when you're doing a $200 million lease transaction? I mean, are you able to go home and go to sleep at night?

SPEAKER_00 18:32

Ill equipped, yeah. Um, you know, there were a lot of very smart people involved with that, uh, way smarter than I was, right? On the developer side of things, you had Gardner, yeah, uh, PluralSight hired some consultants to help them with a few different things. The state was involved. So there were a number of different things. That was a multi-state search, and so there were lots of people and lots of different communities that were smart, and I think as they shared things with us, we kind of took bits and pieces of that and created a mosaic that was really a plural site picture. Um, but you know, at the end of the day, you you you kind of leave sometimes feeling like I learned a lot more than I knew going in, and there's probably a little fake it till you make it, like there is in every brokerage type of deal.

SPEAKER_01 19:13

Impos uh uh imposter syndrome going on there, probably.

SPEAKER_00 19:16

But you know, the thing that was really fun about them, which isn't always the case with all tenants, is that they they were most concerned about maintaining, growing, and projecting their culture. And it wasn't just about the deal, right? Or the the monetary value of it, or you know, we need to carve off X or we need more on concessions or this or that. It was how do we encapsulate and really create and plan for what we want this to be so our culture can continue to grow?

SPEAKER_01 19:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:43

And you don't you don't see that a lot. A lot of a lot of real estate deals are transactional.

SPEAKER_01 19:46

Totally, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:47

Totally the opposite.

SPEAKER_01 19:48

Huh.

SPEAKER_00 19:48

That's and that's yeah, you you don't I don't think you experience that a lot. So very, very lucky to be a part of that and just kind of witness some of it, help in other parts.

SPEAKER_01 19:59

Do you feel like you're a disciplined guy?

SPEAKER_00 20:02

I do. Yeah, I I think so. That was a rhetorical question. Sorry, I heard my voice, my my wife's voice chirping at me on on some certain things because she doesn't understand why I will do some things and not do others. But yeah, I think I think I'm a super disciplined guy.

SPEAKER_01 20:16

As I've as I've I mean, we all know super successful salespeople or whatever people in life, and as I've had the opportunity to, you know, interview a number of super successful people, I feel like almost universally they're very disciplined people. Some are athletes, some are collegiate athletes, some are have OCD, and they just you know, but it it's really an interesting tie that uh seems like that trait is just kind of interwoven in super successful people.

unknown 20:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:49

I don't think it's a I mean, I'm not trying to say I'm braggadocious and saying, yeah, I'm disciplined. I think really it's a result of just I'm a I'm a creature of habit.

SPEAKER_01 20:57

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 20:58

And yeah, I think you experience success in certain uh arenas and by doing certain things, and so you say, I'm going to replicate that or get better at replicating the same thing. And I think that just turns into discipline, right? It's it's doing the same thing better in different ways or making that work for different clients.

SPEAKER_01 21:18

Aaron Powell What does that look like in your work day? Like is it just a timing thing? Or do you have specific parts of the day where you do specific things?

SPEAKER_00 21:26

Yeah. Um so yes to all of those questions. Uh I think you kind of learn the best time to contact people, right? I've learned from me, for instance, if I want to get to a decision maker who I don't know, I'm gonna try to catch them before 8 a.m. or after 5 p.m. So I might have to spend a little time before or after. And so in my world, I've just said, okay, well, how does that work, right? If I want to be home for my kids when they're getting off to junior high or elementary school, I'm gonna get up a little earlier and make some calls from 6 to 8 a.m. or whatever it is, or if I need to drive. A market, so I'm you know a little more up to speed when I go into a thing that might be earlier, it might be staying later if I need to go meet with some doctors because they get done at 7. We're grabbing dinner or something else with a group of doctors at 7 30. So I think you figure that out. I've also learned like Chris needs to blow off some steam during the day at some point, and so uh whether that was running or exercising or whatever it may be, it's kind of changed. And I think you know, part of really the the the consistency is change and kind of changing some things to see if they work or don't work. And so I think it's important to go and disconnect a little bit, whether that's a walk in the park, uh drink from swig or whatever your point is.

SPEAKER_01 22:42

Disconnect from the craziness for a second. Yeah, yeah. I think the discipline thing is is really interesting. I've also noticed that the the super successful people are like whatever they do, they just go crazy at. Like you'll see a guy who starts working out and then he works out every day for like five years, or he starts playing pickleball, and that's all he does every day, or like whatever it is, you know. So I think that mentality really carries through, obviously in business, but into personal life as well, even family.

SPEAKER_00 23:15

It's like it could be a great thing or a bad thing. Yeah, well, I think it's a good thing. But like I'm just saying, we've we've probably seen a lot of clients who uh get really into gambling or other things. Sure, yeah, it could be bad.

SPEAKER_01 23:25

Yeah, it could be bad. But for the most part, it's a good thing. So, what this is a question I've been asking a lot of people recently, and it I makes I'm interested in it. What motivates you to keep doing what you're doing? You've been doing this for 22 years, made a bunch of money, you're at the top of your career, you don't need to do this anymore, you don't need to work. You could literally just pack it up and hang out with your family for the next for the rest of your life. Yeah. So when you wake up in the morning, why do you think I want to do this again on Tuesday?

SPEAKER_00 23:58

That's a great question, Chad. I uh probably depends the day you ask. The answer might vary.

SPEAKER_01 24:03

Today might be the day you quits.

SPEAKER_00 24:05

Some some days uh I'm nervous the world is going to collapse and I won't have any money and uh I I need to keep going to to go. Um sometimes You still feel that way every once in a while. Oh yeah. Sometimes I'm dealing with a uh farmer that's still active, and you help him and his family sell his land, and four months later he passes away because he stopped farming and getting out on the tractor every day. Um but I think more than anything, that sounds really negative. I'm kind of starting with all the bad stuff, right? No, but I on a positive note, like I I really enjoy what I do. It's fun for me to come to the office. I really enjoy meeting new people and meeting professionals and learning from them. And as you've kind of mentioned, what makes them tick, what makes them successful. Man, there's so many awesome clients, and even people that don't become clients, but you still interact with or you're a part of something with, and you learn from them or get to know them. Uh, I really enjoy, as I mentioned to you, I think maybe off-camera here, I kind of thought I wanted to teach and coach before I started all of this. Got to my student teaching before I ended up jumping into brokerage and didn't end up doing that. But I love kind of the consulting or the teaching part of it. Even sometimes you go meet with someone on a thousand square foot deal and they've never leased a space before, and explaining to them how a lease works and some pitfalls you may want to watch out for and some things to think about when you grow. And, you know, this could be a million-dollar business for you in five years. And have you thought about that and have you set these things up? And that's that's fun. I enjoy that. And so I think there's a lot of things that are still exciting. And my guess would be that when it stops being exciting, then it's probably time to jump to something new, but I haven't experienced that yet.

SPEAKER_01 25:41

I'm not sure you're gonna experience that.

SPEAKER_00 25:43

That's a good thing, hopefully.

SPEAKER_01 25:44

What do you like to do outside of outside of work?

SPEAKER_00 25:46

I'm chasing kids and my extremely attractive wife most of the time. Uh, but I would say Michelle's a great, great woman. She is. I think that's a good one.

SPEAKER_01 25:54

Why she's with you, I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 25:55

But hey, I uh I'm always reaching higher than what my level is, so that's that's in all things. Uh most of the most of around excuse me, most of it kind of evolves around my kids. Uh, but a lot of it's sports. I love sports. I love watching competition of all sorts. So jazz games, big Broncos fan, uh watching the local high school stuff. My kids participate in sports and they're active in that, so I love going to that stuff, or even things that their friends are in that maybe they're not in. You know, the kids they're playing. That's it's fun to me. I enjoy doing that type of stuff.

SPEAKER_01 26:28

Talk to us about uh team Mason Foundation. I think this is really cool and interesting.

SPEAKER_00 26:33

Yeah. My oldest son, uh, when he was about a year old, contracted leukemia, AML specifically, and uh we were kind of told it was a death sentence. We spent about a year, 11 and a half months at primary children's. He went through seven rounds of chemo, was supposed to go to a bone marrow transplant, but went into remission after a seventh round. We met a lot of people who uh unfortunately a lot of them did not make it through, were not as lucky as us. At the time, primary serviced like four states, even as far as Alaska. And there were a lot of kids that did not have family with them. They're going through chemo as a four-year-old and they don't have any family. And I I'm a bit our son's in remission, has been for 20 years now. He turns 20 this month. Wow. And I'm a big believer that a part of that is because he always had someone with him. And we just saw that the the kids at primary children's were so well taken care of on holidays and anything they needed from clothes to help to all sorts of things, funding, et cetera. But a lot of the families and even their siblings did not have that. And so we kind of said, hey, um, we we want to give back if we can. And so my wife and I started a 501c3 um and and basically reached out to clients and brokers and everybody else and said, Hey, this is what we're doing. And there's a lot of people that still donate every year. And in turn, Team Mason goes out and helps not only kids with cancer, but families, right? We do a lot of stuff where we're taking Christmas gifts to the parents that are staying at the hospitals and giving moms hair care product, iPads, uh, heated blankets, foam rollers to lay on. Stuff that we learned is you're sleeping over in a hotel room you need or in a hospital room you need. Also helping with a lot of stuff like um sometimes kids won't get picked for I forget what that's called, make a wish foundation.

SPEAKER_01 28:21

Make a wish, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:22

So we've done a number of those trips, right? Where we'll reach out to some clients. I have a client that owned a travel agency, and he's been very generous and has donated travel sometimes. And so we do a lot of stuff like that where we're just trying to help families that maybe need a little bit of assistance. And I wish I had more time to do that, quite honestly. It's super fulfilling, and it's uh a lot of these families are just in rough circumstances, and so anything you can do having lived it is a big help and a big lift, but often you don't want to ask for basic things, and uh I just wish we could do more of it.

SPEAKER_01 28:55

And Michelle's heavily involved in that too, right? Yeah, and that's that's great. How does that this is probably the wrong way to ask this question, I should ask it in reverse. How does How does that help you be a better broker and a better person just in general? What what perspective does that give you on everything else that's so trivial?

SPEAKER_00 29:16

Yeah. That's a great question. I mean, at the end of the day, I think you you come away from meeting some of those families and you realize that really what we're doing on a daily basis on work from a work from a professional standpoint is not that important, maybe. I don't mean to be uh rude in saying that, but I mean when you're battling to save your child's life um or watching them go through a round of chemo where they're just super ill or you know, just just fighting for things tooth and nail every day, that's it puts things in perspective really quickly.

SPEAKER_01 29:49

How did you how are you able you said 11 years? Is that what you said?

SPEAKER_00 29:52

Eleven months. Eleven months. Yeah, we spent a year.

SPEAKER_01 29:55

How are you able to even function during that period of time?

SPEAKER_00 29:59

Uh I did not function very well. This it maybe goes back to the partnership point. I had two amazing partners, um, Bill Nikoloff and Brandon Wood, and Nick Wood, guys, our CEO, was was on our team as kind of our team manager, and they just basically said, Hey, go do what you need to do. And can't even tell you how grateful I am and how much that resonated with me to just when I needed to be away, I was away, you know, and uh there was always a spot for me. It was they were nothing but supportive and loving and kind and generous and friendly, and um I don't know that I could have done that in any other profession. Yeah, maybe. I mean, I've seen some other companies that have really um you know, boosted some of their employees up when they battle that type of stuff, but I I was a mess. I was a total mess.

SPEAKER_01 30:46

Yeah, I would I would I mean I've had a few scares here and there, nothing nothing like that. And I just completely melt down. I can't focus on work, I can't think about anything else except for like singularly that issue and getting that resolved. Yeah, that's incredible.

SPEAKER_00 31:02

Yeah, it was it was wild. For for 30 days he was in an induced coma and we were in the ICU uh at primaries, and so I mean we were just kind of sitting there listening to the beeps of the machines for thirty days. It was it was intense. It was very uh it was a very life-changing experience to go through as a 20-year-old, you know, um, with your first child.

SPEAKER_01 31:28

Did you guys get married young?

SPEAKER_00 31:30

Twenty, I was almost twenty-four. Twenty-four. My wife's twenty-three, yeah. So by Utah standards, no. But probably for the rest of the world.

SPEAKER_01 31:38

How did uh how did getting married young, because that is young in national standards, how did that help you become a better one?

SPEAKER_00 31:47

You know, I I think, and I'll stand by this till the day I die. I think to be a great broker, you have to have an absolutely supportive, accommodating spouse, partner, whatever it is. Uh not once, not once has my wife ever suggested I needed to be home earlier than I was, or complained about me taking a call while we're at Disneyland or any other place like that.

SPEAKER_01 32:13

It sounds like a specific experience. Never anything. Well, yeah, that's what I said.

SPEAKER_00 32:15

I I had an issue the first few years and she was nothing but supportive. And it's always been supportive. And I think I've done a really good job at just, you know, kind of turning the tables and understanding how to be better at what I do, as as most people do in their their their general tenure of a profession. But I I don't think you can be a good broker. Well, I mean, if you're not married, this probably doesn't apply. But if it does, I still think you you need that support. But I I don't think you can be a great broker without a very supportive partner.

SPEAKER_01 32:42

Yeah, no, I think that's right. I think I mean there's plenty of people that don't have supportive spouses or they're you know not super supportive and they are fine, but having that supportive spouse on the other side really allows you on this side to get out there and just crush it and not think about it, you know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:01

And there's a lot of losses in brokerage. Yeah. There's a lot of things.

SPEAKER_01 33:05

Way more losses than there are wins.

SPEAKER_00 33:06

Absolutely. I like what and uh I, you know, I I kind of thought I was a winner. And then you start losing a lot, and that's sometimes that's hard to hard to grasp. But when you go home and someone loves you and things are happy and still exciting and fun, that's I think that's a big recharge, and at least for me. Yeah, you know, for Chris, that's been a really big thing.

SPEAKER_01 33:25

Actually, it turns out we're all pretty big losers relative to the all the transactions that we've lost versus won.

SPEAKER_00 33:31

This is true.

SPEAKER_01 33:33

We're literally just huge losers. Where do you see yourself in uh I actually this is funny? This is uh what your uncle always says, Mike Falk. Where do you see yourself in five years?

SPEAKER_00 33:46

Yeah, it's a great question. I am not sure I know the answer to that. My youngest is uh just turned 15. So he'll kind of be out of the house by then, I think. And so I'm I'm not exactly sure. That'll be a new chapter in the Falk household, one I've not yet lived. So I'm I'm not exactly sure. You know, I would love to say that again, going back to my wife, she's been super supportive. My wife danced professionally, she's been a college dance coach and other things, had opportunities. I would love to, you know, if those opportunities still continue for her, figure out a way to maybe kind of let her do her thing. Because there have been opportunities where we would have had to leave where we're at and it would have affected work, and she just very kindly and nonchalantly turned those away and might be might be her time.

SPEAKER_01 34:34

That's cool. Yeah. Well, I can tell you one thing. In five years, I can guarantee you'll still be dominating Davis County, you'll still be dominating office, you'll still be doing whatever you want to do at the top of your game in the state of Utah, and I guess globally too.

SPEAKER_00 34:49

It sounds like kind of you to say that'd be that'd be great. I'd be okay with that.

SPEAKER_01 34:52

So uh anything else you want to cover?

SPEAKER_00 34:55

No.

SPEAKER_01 34:56

I'm gonna I'm gonna go with uh my most valuable takeaway.

SPEAKER_00 35:00

Okay, give it to me.

SPEAKER_01 35:01

I know you like that. I think uh, you know, one of the great things about you that I've always admired is you are a very dedicated person and you're very formulaic, which I can appreciate. And uh you've just dominated a very specific area and you've scaled that to dominate in a global way, which I think is really inspiring for a lot of people who are getting started in the business or who have been in the business for five years, trying to figure out how do I get to the next level? And the answer is you get to the next level by dominating a small space and then a and then a medium space and then a huge space. But you can't go after the biggest prize at the very beginning. You have to put in the work, and the work sucks, and it takes a long time. In this case, it's taken you 22 years. And I love the fact that you said you're a trusted consultant, trusted advisor, which is totally what you are to all of your clients. And I'm gonna finish with my favorite phrase that you said work harder and smarter. And that really sums up Crystal. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 36:15

You bet, thank you. Kind words. You bet. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me.