WS1954 How This Company is Reducing Construction Costs By 20-30% | Mike Kaeding

Imagine halving your rent or mortgage payment. Join guest host Lance Pederson as he talks to Mike Kaeding, CEO of Norhart, about making this dream a reality. Mike, who transformed a family business into a $200 million empire, unveils his daring plan to revolutionize affordability in the construction industry.

Here are 3 takeaways you won't want to miss:

1. Discover Mike's innovative approach to slashing construction costs by 50%. Learn how his symphony of talent, including in-house plumbing, engineering, and architecture, fosters a culture of problem-solving and continuous improvement.
2. Uncover the secrets to attracting top talent and thriving in a fluctuating market. Mike shares his strategies for building a winning team and navigating the complexities of construction finance.
3. Gain valuable insights on building wealth through real estate syndication. Learn from Mike's experience and equip yourself with the knowledge to succeed in property investment.

Ready to explore innovative solutions for affordable housing? Head to Mike Kaeding's website  to learn more about Norhart's approach and discover how you can get involved. Don't miss this opportunity to turn your dream of affordable housing into reality!

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Transcript

00:00 - Mike Kaeding (Host)
We're reducing costs by 20 to 30 percent. Our dream is to drive it down by 50 percent, because someday that means that your rent, your mortgage payment, could be half. That's that dream, that's that aha. 

00:16 - Speaker 2 (Host)
This is your daily real estate syndication show. I'm your host, whitney Sewell. Thank you for listening to the show. My goal is for you to become a savvy investor by learning from some of the best operators and investors in the business. I'd like to hear from you If you have questions you would like us to ask on the show, or if you have someone you would like me to interview. Please let us know by emailing info at lifebridgecapitalcom. We would love to hear from you. Please leave us a written rating and review. I would be grateful. Do not hesitate to let me know how we can best serve you at Life Bridge Capital. And now for an amazing interview with my friend, lance Peterson. 

00:57 - Lance Pederson (Host)
This is your daily real estate syndication show. I'm your host, lance Peterson, co-founder and CEO of Passive Advantage, where we simplify the process of vetting real estate syndication deals for passive investors with our LP deal analyzer tool. I'm sitting in today for Whitney Sewell, founder of Life Bridge Capital. So our guest today is Mike Kaeding. He's the CEO of Norhart. 

01:17
Norhart is a company that designs, builds and rents apartments in the Minneapolis-St Paul metro area. They are transforming the way that this is done by incorporating technologies and techniques to improve the quality and reduce costs for housing. They're committed to solving America's housing shortage and affordability crisis and in doing so, they hope to improve the way we all live. So in today's episode, we discuss how Norhart is innovating the construction industry to tackle that housing affordability. They reduce construction costs by 20 to 30% and aim to drive it down by as much as 50%. They achieve all this by bringing all aspects of construction from architecture design, all the major trades under one roof. We also discuss the importance of having a clear vision and hiring only the best people. Hope you enjoy. Hey, mike, thanks for joining me today, hey thanks for having me, yeah. 

02:07
Super excited to have you on the show, so we'll dive right into it. You know, I know you guys you're based up in, you're in Minnesota, right In the Twin Cities area. So you guys have been doing some really amazing things on the construction side multifamily deals, really tackling housing affordability and just finding super innovative ways to bring costs down to construct these buildings and get them occupied and all those sorts of things. And so why don't you share a bit about how did you guys end up getting into this and was there a big aha that kind of led to that? I know I mean you've figured out how to trim really big percentages off of the construction costs and the whole process. So maybe just share a bit with us. Like what's the origin story that got you guys into it that you know that kind of had that breakthrough where you know, obviously, where others have struggled, they can't seem to figure it out. 

03:03 - Mike Kaeding (Host)
Yeah, absolutely, you know. For us, as you kind of mentioned, we're reducing costs by 20 to 30 percent and our dream is to drive it down by 50 percent, because someday that means that your rent, your mortgage payment, could be half. That's that dream, that's the aha. But it didn't start out that way. Right, that was an evolution. 

03:23
To figure that out, to understand where that world is and in fact I grew up in this industry my parents started the family business and growing up I was out there swinging hammers, sweeping floors, picking up nails. In fact, our family lost everything in those early years. My dad was actually kidnapped in Peru separate crazy side story but they started to work it back after all of that. But the one thing I knew when I went after college was that I wanted nothing to do with the family business, and the reason that was is that I didn't want people to think it was given to me, so I really wrestled with my own ego. It was a small business at the time that my dad wanted me to join, but what I realized deep down is that I wanted to make some kind of meaningful, meaningful, positive impact in the world and I started to see that I could take this small business and grow it to something much larger to have that kind of impact Jumped in and my dad and I doubled the size of the company within the first few years of working together. 

04:30
It was amazing working with them and then one day, completely unexpected, my dad passed away the hardest moments of my life and it's still fairly young, fresh out of college. Overnight I took over this business and, looking back at all of that, that moment really solidified for me how short life really is. We only live about 10,000 weeks here on Earth and I often ask myself the question how do I want to spend the minutes I have here on Earth? I could care less about the money we built over a $200 million company. Today I care less about that, like who cares how many $100 bills that can shovel on your grave. What I really care about is what is the lasting impact that we can make, and that impact for me and our business I think we can solve is ultimately solving housing affordability in America, and that's our dream. 

05:37 - Lance Pederson (Host)
Yeah, it's always good when you're building a business. I consult with lots of guys and that's the thing. I'm like you need an North Star, right? I mean you just and you might not, in the early days, know what that is, but pick something, right, Anything, because you got to know where you're going. You're gonna have employees. People need to know, like, where is this thing heading, and that was the lesson I learned in my first business. Was it just in the beginning? I didn't have that. I realized like there just seems to be a bit more chaos than I wanted, until one day you kind of bold enough to go out and say this is what we're gonna do, Like this is where we're headed. And you just see, immediately people get charged up Like well, why didn't you say that it's like? Well, I was afraid to right, Like I didn't want to say something that maybe we couldn't make a reality, but it really does pull people along. So for-. 

06:25 - Mike Kaeding (Host)
It's so interesting, as you mentioned there, that that issue cause we get so in our own minds, right Our fear of sharing those ideas, presenting them to the world, and what will people actually think? And there's another fear too, which is I don't know what my North Star is and the reality is I didn't quite know that either. It takes it's honestly takes years of kind of sharing ideas, getting beat down by the market, people telling you crazy, like tweaking, adjusting, forming, solidifying, and over time that North Star becomes more and more clear and the stronger just as you mentioned the stronger and clearer that is, the stronger and more powerfully you can move to truly solve it. 

07:06 - Lance Pederson (Host)
Yeah, that's right, I mean so when you, yeah, you say I mean that's where I went with my favorite books early in my career was, you know, mastering the Rockefeller Habits by Bern Harnish, and you know, and so he, he points out, and also good to great by Jim Collins. You know, jim Collins had the whole Big Hairy Audacious Goal right, and that's where it's, it's and that's at the heart of it. So that was just noodling on, like what's that Big Hairy Audacious Goal, what's that thing that we can, you know, point at? And it does, and it takes quarter over, quarter over, quarter Right, like you're tweaking it and like no, that's not quite right, that's not quite, that's not quite right. But the beauty is that even if you're right on point, it just at least it's a moving people in the same direction. I think the absence of one means that they could be going any direction right, and especially when they're looking to leaders like myself or you, they're looking to us like where are we going? Like you know, you and your dad like where are we taking this thing? So it just ends up being really critical. 

08:00
To build a lasting, great organization you have to have one, and I mean so for you guys. Then I mean then that solving affordability, you know, affordability, obviously that's big, that's hairy, that's audacious, you know that. Then the laser sites then went straight to. Well, we've got to be able to erect these things for far less than it's costing. Now I mean there's, you know, as anyone who's built anything or whatever can imagine, there's all sorts of inefficiency in the process. So what was like the first thing that you guys went after? It's like, was it material costs? Was it labor costs? Was it process driven? Was it you know what? What was sort of that first thing that you began to lean into, that started to to move the needle? 

08:43 - Mike Kaeding (Host)
You know, my dad always had a way of driving down costs in the projects that we did. But his techniques were things like just sweat equity, just getting out there, working late hours, long days, just pouring his heart into making that building a reality. And that certainly worked at sort of that small scale. But as soon as you get any bit larger than just a few people, it becomes very hard to make that a scalable reality. I remember early on one of the first things that hit me in the face was we had a plumbing contractor and this plumbing contractor had worked on a number of buildings with us about the same size building every time. And he came to me and he said Mike, I know it's about the same size building, but unfortunately I am going to triple the cost of our bid. And I looked at him and said dude, I don't have the money, I can't make that happen. So what do we do? 

09:40
I went out and bought a bunch of plumbing books, started exploring what we, what it would look like if we did plumbing, because we found out all the other subcontractors in the market were just as expensive. We couldn't get anyone to do it less expensively, so why not do it ourselves. We ended up hiring a few just totally inexperienced people, as well as partnering with a master plumber that helped teach and train us. Super excited about it, we saw how we could do it for actually less than we were paying originally, got into it and boy it was hard. 

10:13
Right, we were actually worse off that first year doing it ourselves than we would have been doing the more expensive contract, but we learned and then the next project got easier, the next project after that got easier and eventually we became cheaper and less expensive at a higher quality than any of the other subcontractors we were working with. And it started to hit us and said okay, dude, if we can do that with plumbing, we do that with other things as well. And that's sort of what started this train. Of dude, there's so much opportunity here. We can make a big improvement. 

10:51 - Lance Pederson (Host)
Yeah, cause I it's funny you mentioned it Cause one of the things I've been sharing a lot lately with with real estate sponsors is just saying you know, I don't know if you realized it, but when you decided to get into you know running a real estate, you know investment company. You actually started two businesses, right, and it's because you got one that goes and finds and manages real estate and you got another that has to raise equity capital. Those are two very different things, but you've got them both. And I always say it's like it's the equivalent of owning a trucking company, having to own an your own oil refinery, right. Two very different business. 

11:25
You know what? Own a trucking company if you had to refine your own oil for the fuel in your, you know, in your fleet, for your fleet, you know. So I'm like you have to realize that, like in your guys's case, what I hear you saying is like, yeah, you're real estate guys, you build stuff, but you're also now starting a plumbing company and a and a. Like every time you add one of these things, it's ostensibly, yes, it's interrelated, that's vertical integration, but those are. It's like starting a whole new business, right. I mean, that's, that's sort of what it is. And now you're going to a plumbing company who has one client. 

11:58
Yeah. 

11:59 - Mike Kaeding (Host)
We went extremely deep. Yeah, so we brought in all the trades plumbing, electrical, hvac or the general contractor. We're the property manager, we're the owners of the properties. When we're done, we raise capital. But on top of that we started precast concrete manufacturing, wall panel manufacturing. We have sourcing and supply chain. We have people in China and Mexico and elsewhere. We have engineering and architecture under one roof as well. 

12:26
I mean, just think about the architects and engineers. They're not incentivized to create the most efficient projects. What are they trying to do? They're trying to give you code compliant designs at the least amount of hours that they could possibly work. That maximizes their profit but doesn't improve your project. 

12:48
So by bringing the engineers and architects under one roof, our teams now go super deep. They will do dissertation level work on the adjoice that go in the ceiling to maximize what's the right flange with thickness, shape of that choice, to optimize the ease of installation and the reduction of material costs. Our guys on site can regularly pick up the phone and say hey, engineer, the way you designed this wall it was terrible to install. You need to do better in the future. And they'll update our plans so that the next tower of that same project, and certainly the later projects, will have the better design in there. So, really, really fundamentally, though, what you've got to do is you've got to build a team that can solve problems, because there are like 10,000 problems that need to be solved in order to meaningfully improve that efficiency, and you have to put all of that under one roof, that whole system in place, so you can have that learning growth. You need to improve the system over time. 

13:54 - Lance Pederson (Host)
You guys found a way when you're hiring given that, with what we're discussing, it requires a lot of human talent there and sourcing that talent how do you guys go about hiring? Do you use sort of surveys or things to kind of find that problem-solver gene, so to speak, or how have you handled that? 

14:18 - Mike Kaeding (Host)
Yeah, it's extremely hard to hire people in this field. Over the last few years, we struggled with it originally Again, it's just another one of those problems we have to solve. How do we solve it? We looked at this and said well, couple of things. First, we need to change our mindset. We had the mindset of let's hire average people, average salary. That sounds good, or maybe we'll try to reduce salaries and save some money. It does not work. That is the wrong approach. 

14:47
Instead, what we have found is that you need to hire the very best people. When I say the best, I mean the truly mean the best. We will fly people in from other states to come work during the week and fly them home on the weekend. We have staff members. In one case, we have a staff member that in 2007, steve Jobs announces the brand new iPhone, steve Jobs walks off stage and our team member walks on that same stage following Steve Jobs' announcement. It's that kind of caliber of people. But when you bring people like that together, they change things. They unlock doors for you that you didn't know could be unlocked. They solve these problems in ways that are just mind blowing. 

15:30
But most people think is there a frame? You say to me, mike, that sounds expensive and it is when you look at it on a cost per person basis. But what most leaders fail to understand is that the best people outperform the average by two to five to even 10 times as much. So instead, if you're looking at an a cost per unit produced, the best people are actually your least expensive. But back to your question. 

16:00
Once we knew that we had to hire those best people, how do you actually find them? What we ended up doing is we ended up hiring an entire recruiting team about a dozen or so recruiters in-house. Then we started. We got software and systems in place where we started identifying all the people in our market with the skillsets we're looking for and there's maybe a couple hundred thousand and then we started building relationships with those people in advance so, as we had roles open up, we could pull from that talent pool to pull the very best people from our market in. We went, maybe six, seven years ago, of accepting most every person who applied for a job within our company maybe 50% acceptance rate. Today we accept 0.4%. Finding and bringing in the best people is no longer to follow for our company because we worked to solve it. 

16:57 - Lance Pederson (Host)
Yeah, yeah, exactly yeah, it is. It's just true. I mean, I suppose too, when they come in and they get to solve the hard problems, they're attracted to that and they know that they've got colleagues that are, you know, the other eight players. I mean, this is top grading 101. Basically, it's just knowing that they're going to be surrounded by other top level talent. It just perpetuates itself. They just know there's no, you know they're not going to have to carry the whole weight on themselves. They know they're going to have equally intelligent person you know competent person, on the other side that they're working with. That's fulfillment, right, Like that's how you love to show up to work every day. 

17:35 - Mike Kaeding (Host)
Absolutely. You know, I've seen, I've been through enough life now that I've seen what truly amazing teams look like. And there's a difference in most people never really get to experience a team of every person being just freaking incredible on that group. Once you experience that, once you really understand what that looks like, you never want anything less than that kind of level. It's so much fun to have that kind of group. 

18:05 - Lance Pederson (Host)
Yeah, no, it's great, no, I love it. So for you guys, then, I mean do you have, do you only work in Minnesota? Is that where you do? All of your projects are in Minnesota, or is that part of the solve? Housing affordability is to eventually go to other markets, or what are the barriers that would cause you from not being able to go into other markets? 

18:26 - Mike Kaeding (Host)
Yeah, right now we're primarily in Minnesota. Some of our manufacturing capabilities are Wisconsin. We are looking to expand into Texas next. For us, though, the key thing we're looking at is the production engine, the manufacturing system, the infrastructure to build buildings at lower cost points. That infrastructure is what we're most focused on, so we want to saturate a market, become the largest developer in that market, before moving on to additional markets, because, again, we're building the system is really the focus. 

19:04 - Lance Pederson (Host)
Yeah, it'd make sense. What I hear is you've got this capacity. You need to go as deep as you can until you hit rock bottom. You're at bedrock like, hey, there's nothing else, this market can't sustain us building anything else. Then think about expanding. So, with that said, right now, with the debt markets the way they are, has it made it? What's the biggest challenge today for you and the team to accomplish your goal? I mean knowing that there's still supply and demand imbalance, there's still an affordability issues. What's holding you back, like what's the biggest constraint in the business? 

19:46 - Mike Kaeding (Host)
Normally, the biggest constraint is actually the rate at which we can hire the right people for the roles in building on that production engine. That is most of the time what it is for us, but with the rising capital markets we've seen a new problem that we've been working with, and that is when our costs are 20% to 30% less than other developers. In the prior market, banks would typically lend at about 75% of a project, meaning that the bank would give us pretty much all, if not more than all, of the financing we need to do projects. Now I know you're in the space, there's HVCRE rules and other things you have to work through with the banks, but that's fundamentally how it works, and so we've been able to build that $200 million company off of totally our own money, because we haven't had to bring much money to the table. 

20:37
Now it changed. When interest rates went up, bank loan proceeds went down down to 55% or 65% of value. This created a gap for us from that 55% to the 75% of the capital stock, and so we've had to find ways to bridge that gap. One of the ways that we did it was opening up Noorhart Invest, which is a retail product offering investors up to 10% interest for money that they can lock in between six months and five years. And then we've also started going and raising capital more traditional routes as well, and that's been really interesting. We're starting to work on a variety of different capital funds and things of that nature. It's exciting because it's a skill set I've never really had to build before, but now that we're building it within our company it's going to make capital not ever a constraint I don't think for us in the long term future. 

21:34 - Lance Pederson (Host)
Yeah, definitely. I mean, yeah, what you guys are so innovative and what you do, and once you get those relationships rolling, it seems like that constraint can go away. Do you guys find, I mean, what would you? The buildings that you are building? What's the average? I mean, how many units, how many are these high end class A? I mean, given the affordability thing, how do you guys view that? Or is it? 

22:01 - Mike Kaeding (Host)
We typically focus on larger buildings Three to 400 units is our favorite sweet spot. Our latest project is definitely class A I'm a bit biased here, but I would say it's in the top 10 properties or multi-family properties in the state of Minnesota. It's seven stories penthouse, sweets, restaurant, coffee shop, coworking space, tens of thousands of square feet of amenity space, brand new transit line stopping right at the front door like on-floor parking. It's pretty incredible, but I would say more often than not our sweet spot is the five stories of stick wood frame construction over one story, a precast concrete sort of that standard apartment building that you typically see. 

22:48 - Lance Pederson (Host)
And I mean in terms of just your outlook on the state of Minnesota in general. I mean, are there certain areas in the Twin Cities or up and coming suburbs or places that you I mean because you've got to go out and I mean as developers right, you got to go source the land? I mean these projects from the moment, like it could take, from the time someone can live in the place. You got to go back what five years, like five years, to make it a reality, or so I mean, are you looking at the path of progress and I mean I'm pretty familiar with the Twin Cities. That used to be the big city, you know, maybe from mine in North Dakota, but you know, so I know it keeps growing and growing and growing out there. But how do you guys deal with that, like site selection and, you know, finding where you, you know, may want to build? 

23:30 - Mike Kaeding (Host)
Yes, we have a team in place. That that's all I do is look at sites, have conversations with cities, move products through the entitlement process. For us, our key focus is in driving down the cost of construction, so we're really thinking about that production engine more than anything else. So one of the key constraints for us is that we're within driving distance of our team, which limits us just to the Twin Cities right now. We're not out in, you know, further away, cities like Rochester or Duluth or cities like that, but then within the Twin Cities we're looking for places that have great commercial zoning, like lots of great amenity, space nearby, good visibility. 

24:13
We like things that are unique about the site, like the new transit line going in front of our, literally stopping at the front door of our newest project. Those are the sorts of things we look at. What's really interesting, though, in today's market is that, because of the rise of interest rates, deals are just not penciling out the way they have before. I'm talking to developers every single day. Right now, they're just sitting on the sidelines because nothing seems to make sense. If you look at the data in the Twin Cities, and actually nationwide as well, new apartment starts, so starting new construction has dropped by something like 70 or 80% in the past year, just fallen off the cliff, and so it's really interesting to see how this whole market will end up shaking out, or if it'll just be stuck for years. 

25:05 - Lance Pederson (Host)
I suppose that's what's nice, too, about what you guys have gone after is the fact that I didn't correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like, given your model, your ability to start and put a shovel in the ground is more likely to be able to take place 365 days a year, no matter the markets up or down. 

25:24 - Mike Kaeding (Host)
Exactly. 

25:25 - Lance Pederson (Host)
Where most other developers. They have to pick when those windows open and construction makes sense because their costs are higher. Is that accurate? 

25:34 - Mike Kaeding (Host)
Exactly right. That gives us a lot more stability. When markets are down and other people are stopping construction, we're still able to move forward. We're having to pivot right. We're having to raise capital where we didn't have to raise capital before, but our project fundamentals still make sense even in this kind of market, because our costs are low enough. 

25:55 - Lance Pederson (Host)
Do you think some of the stuff you guys have put together does it translate over into building other types of stuff other than multifamily, or is that where you guys are like yeah? 

26:05 - Mike Kaeding (Host)
Absolutely. We're not going to build other kinds of construction right now just because it's hard enough solving one type of construction. These ideas that we're employing are not new. In fact, if you look at other industries like manufacturing, over the past 60 years, industries like manufacturing have improved labor productivity by 760%. Construction during this time period has done nothing. 

26:35
When we originally got started, we said why not stop looking at the construction industry? We don't know what we're doing. Let's go look at other industries and have conversations with them. We ended up speaking at a conference and there was an executive there from Toyota that connected with me and said dude, we're interested in working with you. Toyota invented the world of lean manufacturing. They radically improved and reduced the cost of manufacturing products. There's companies all over the world that look up to them and follow their model. It's a great. Let's partner with Toyota. Another executive is fly out here on a regular basis and we learn from them. We're employing technologies and techniques that they've used in manufacturing by applying it to the world of construction. Those can apply to anyone, not just ourselves. 

27:23 - Lance Pederson (Host)
Yeah, that's every business. That was when I got started as an entrepreneur, really got big into Toyota production system, lean manufacturing. It's a mindset. As much as anything, it's a culture. It's about culture. It's about how people look at their work and that's where it's eliminate waste, because waste is what it says. It's waste. Who wants waste? No one wants waste, right, but it's hard to do. People aren't necessarily hardwired to think that way. It's a cultural thing, because everyone talks about all these tools or the things that Toyota do, but if the culture isn't there, it won't take, it won't hold. Everyone has to come up with a mindset, which is challenging and it requires lots of leadership. For you guys, was that hard or did you have to, as you guys are catching on to this stuff like, hey, we want to be revolutionaries here. Did you find that? That you had people that just the more deeper and deeper you got into it, they just kind of free up their future. You just don't have the mindset. We've got to bring in people that think differently. 

28:36 - Mike Kaeding (Host)
Absolutely. It is super hard, honestly, super, super hard. Elon Musk talks about how it's hard to produce a car, but it is 10 to 100 to 1,000 times harder to build a system that builds out a car. I could not agree more. 

28:55
One of the challenges we had to build up the right culture. There's a lot that goes into that, but you're right. Even with that, there was a point which we laid off 70% of our staff. It's crazy because they were not the right fit. 

29:11
In fact, in the world of construction, you have a lot of people that think, dude, my granddad did it this way, my dad did it this way and, by golly, I'm doing it this way as well. There's a lot of thinking and this is the only way this kind of work is ever going to be done. When we hire people, we look for both having the right cultural fit and the right skill set. In the construction industry, it's really hard to find the match that covers both of them, because the people with the right skill set in this industry don't have the right mindset to change it. We find a few amazing people that have that skill set, but we also work with a lot of people that are not even from construction that we bring in here, that have the right mindset to change the game, that can then also learn the skills of construction. 

30:05 - Lance Pederson (Host)
How do you view the whole notion of you know kind of what appears to be in you I was no better than I do it just kind of the death of trade school or you know the fact that it just you know you got to go to four year university? I mean, we just don't like the trades. It just seems like we're not creating enough people who want to get into the trades. Is that, is that fair? 

30:27 - Mike Kaeding (Host)
Absolutely, and that's probably why consortium costs have risen so much is. There's just a lack of labor supply to do the work. You know a lot of people don't want to get their hands dirty out there in the mud and moving stuff around. It's hard work and, yeah, the trades tend to attract, you know, the best and the brightest people go into technology or AI, all these exciting like cutting edge things. They don't think to go into trade school to radically transform construction. 

31:01
But the interesting thing is our housing is there are a lot of people like 30% of your budget and so, yeah, if you improve technology, your iPhone's gonna be a little nicer. That's great. We have a little smarter assistant. But if we get people into trades and kind of a meaningful impact on this, imagine somebody if you could drive down the cost by 90%, like how much of an impact that would have an individual people's lives. If you look at apparel, it used to be that clothing was a large part of your expense, your budget, every month as just a human. But a couple of hundred years ago they radically improved that and now clothing for most of us is a de minimis expense. Like I want people to be excited to go into trades, to change this industry, to make it housing a de minimis expense, like other things. 

31:54 - Lance Pederson (Host)
Yeah, so do you guys reach out to the local trade schools and source from there and speak at the schools and have you taken it that far, or is that yeah? 

32:03 - Mike Kaeding (Host)
yeah, we've done whole days where we bring in like half a dozen team members that like build a whole booth and go to schools and stuff and encourage people to come to our company. We do less of that now. What we find is it's better just to proactively find the best people in the market rather than like source from that early on, cause a lot of those people are still in junior high school, that years before they actually could become an employee. And even so, right out of high school, right out of trade school, you still may not be the top of the market kind of person that we're looking to join our company. Yeah, no, it makes sense. 

32:46 - Lance Pederson (Host)
Yeah, it just it's and I hope that starts to shift. It seems like it may be shifting a bit. Where kids are, the stigma is sort of eroding. I guess would be probably a better way to put it, like, hey, you know, it's for you, for your university isn't for everybody right, and that's okay, cause I believe that and that's why I tell my kids and I got five of them and that's why I tell them, like I won't force you, I mean, go to school or go to a four year university, like I want you to. You know, think about what brings you joy and what you want to do, and there's multiple paths to get there. 

33:24 - Mike Kaeding (Host)
And you have to look at it. You can oftentimes make more money in the trades than you can with a four year degree, like there's a lot of our team members. Even if fairly low positions are 100,000 a year plus positions right and people will get in the $200,000 a year Like this is a lucrative field where you can make more money than many four year degrees. 

33:48 - Lance Pederson (Host)
Yeah, for sure, for sure, Cool. Well, this has been a great conversation. So where can people learn more about you and your company and connect with you guys? 

33:56 - Mike Kaeding (Host)
Yeah, the best place is to visit our website, that's norheartcom, that's N-O-R-H-A-R-Tcom. A couple of interesting things. One thing I mentioned, which is a no-heart invest which you can earn 10% interest on your money, and the second thing is our podcast and show called Zero D-InnerCorn, where we follow the journey of people who are making a billion dollar impact. One of my favorite guests was Michael Uzlan. He's the originator and the executive producer of Batman. In fact, he was able to eke out the movie rights with a few investors as a fairly young kid out of college and it took him 10 years 10 years. So people saying no, slamming the door in his face, saying that a dark and serious superhero movie nobody wants to see that. He made it through that and eventually made the Batman movie a reality. He's really the founder of superhero movies the way we see them today. Amazing story. We have amazing guests. Check it out if you have time. 

35:04 - Lance Pederson (Host)
Awesome. Thanks so much, mike, take care. 

35:06 - Mike Kaeding (Host)
Thank you. 

35:10 - Speaker 2 (Host)
Thank you for being with us again today. I hope that you have learned a lot from the show. Don't forget to like and subscribe. I hope you're telling your friends about the real estate syndication show and how they can also build wealth in real estate. You can also go to LifeBridgeCapitalcom and start investing today.