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Category: Entrepreneurship
Tags: EntrepreneurshipGrowthInvestmentRealEstateStrategy
Entities: Gold's GymHarbor Freight ToolsJack in the BoxMark GeragosPlanet FitnessSanjieve
00:00
10 years ago, this guy owned zero dollars of real estate. And today, he's got a portfolio of about a billion half dollars.
And he did that with no outside investors, just starting from scratch, one property after another, flipping, flipping, flipping, compounding until he built a billion-dollar portfolio. He's
00:16
also my brother-in-law, and I've known the guy for 10 plus years. I've been asking him to come on the podcast, and he likes to keep a low profile, but finally he agreed to come on and tell his story.
And the story is a little bit crazy. He started off as a broker, ends up making a few million dollars doing deals as a broker, and then gets caught
00:33
holding the bag when one of his clients um I don't want to say screws him over, but leaves him holding the bag, and he ends up $15 million in debt. And instead of declaring bankruptcy, he decides to try to pay it all back, piece by piece by piece, he does.
He pays it all back and he ends up with a billion dollar
00:48
plus real estate portfolio using a very specific strategy. So, in this episode, I asked him how he did it to tell that story and to explain the strategy and his approach to real estate cuz it's a little bit different than anybody else.
So, enjoy this episode with my brother-in-law Sanjie aka the rhino of real estate.
01:09
All right, my brother, we're here. Your story is a roller coaster.
You have crazy highs, complete lows where you lose it all and then rebuild build back up 20 times bigger than the first time. So I want to go into that story.
So today you are
01:26
sitting here, you've got a collection of real estate assets that you've built up over the last 10 years. That's now how big roughly about billion and a half in total.
Billion and a half. So 1.5 billion today.
And that's really in kind of just a decade. So I want to go through the steps of how you got there.
So what
01:41
where did the career start? You know, in the name of the podcast, my first million, right?
How you made your first million? Yeah.
I you know, for me it started I I went to law school, did an MBA. Did you plan to be a lawyer?
You thought I was full on set on being a lawyer. You know, I went to law school, worked for a very famous lawyer, uh Mark Geros out of
01:59
LA. He we were working the Scott Peterson case and it was very intriguing, you know, in criminal law.
When I met my my now wife or my wife, she was very much me against me being a lawyer. For some reason, she was always programmed that, you know, you're going to you're going to you're going to do
02:15
certain things to win cases. So, we had always talked about, you know, I'm going to work for a lawyer for 5 years and then I'm getting into real estate.
Okay. She goes, "Why do you need to why do you need to work for 5 years?
Why don't you just do it?" You know, me thinking, I'm like, "Oh, wow. That's a different thought." Yeah.
I don't have a good answer to that. Yeah.
You know, so, uh, I ended up
02:31
opening a real estate broker's office. uh went back to my hometown where I grew up, town called Modesto and opened up this you know uh uh real estate just broker's license and I had small 100 foot office and a phone and start calling people trying to understand the
02:47
market and really I think my first high came when I sold my first building. Uh I called someone and actually I needed to grow my office and I called this person I said hey what if I lease your office will you let me sell your office building?
He said yes if you lease it I'll let you sell it. So if you become a
03:02
tenant, you could be the broker when you got it. I I I never had a Was that planned or it just happened to be that way?
No, I I don't know if it was planned. It was kind of just like, you know, sometimes you never ask, you never know, right?
And so at that moment, I had asked, it was an older couple and I sold sold the building for them quite fast
03:18
and I made 60 grand and from there I started, you know, doing real estate brokers. I started understanding and I started meeting different tenants in in retail.
you know, I was working for Jack in the Box, AutoZone, BPRCO, different tenants that I would help get them
03:34
spaces for. Now, tell me, because today you're a real estate developer, but that's interesting.
You started as a broker. I think many brokers want to become developers, and it rarely gets to the scale that you got to, right?
What were you like as a broker? Are you just dialing for dollars?
What were you
03:49
doing? I mean, yeah.
Gosh, man. I would I would be knocking on doors.
I'd be calling, you know, I I learned early on that if you don't ask, you don't get, right? And so it was no real like shame in my game.
It was kind of like, you know, it was just like, hey, I'll ask. And so, you know, often times, uh, we'd
04:06
be going to anywhere, whether we go to an Indian party, whether we go anywhere. I was growing up.
I', what do you do? How do you do it?
Oh, you own you're a doctor. Oh, you own this office building.
Would you ever sell it? Right.
No, but I'll lease it. Great.
I'll take on the leasing business. anything to anything at that point to build up my CV
04:23
or resume up of things that I was able to get done, right? And so I fell kind of into a uh a deal with a Jack in the Box operator.
And you know, this person was probably the first person in my life that ever, you know, I would call I thought was a mentor or
04:39
even like a father figure, right? My dad was a little bit different.
And I kind of drank the Kool-Aid. And so I started doing really well because what would happen is I'd have this relationship with these Jack in the Box guys and I'd know where they want to go.
I didn't have the money to
04:54
do it myself cuz I was just starting out. So what I would do is I would basically do development in a box.
I would go and I would find the property, I'd get the tenant and I'd go to another developer and I'd say, "Hey, give me the buy, sale, lease commission. Give me all
05:10
three. I'll manage the process for you." Then as time went on, I started to manage their construction process.
I didn't have the money to do it, but I was doing it. And that went really well for me.
Uh until the Jackbox operator, you know, basically didn't pay their
05:26
payroll taxes, you know, kind of fell in dire straits. And you know, a week before, maybe they' say 3 days before we're supposed to close a big deal and I was going to make my first 10 million, not even my first million just on the commissions from the buy, sell, lease side.
So what happened was
05:42
we started buying property with these guys buying it. So in essence, we would buy it, we'd do all the work, and then they would buy it later on using their lines of credit, right?
And so what happened was this this person that we were developing for was the largest Jack in the Box franchisee in Sacramento. And then what ended up
05:59
happening was they didn't pay their payroll taxes, but you had bought it on spec thinking this guy's he's good for it. He'll take it off me.
Yeah. Yeah.
And I still remember it's funny. I I would sit there at night and you know there's an old rule that you know people said never count your money.
But I man I would be looking at that sheet every night. Yeah, baby.
Let's go.
06:16
You know because you're taking a big risk. And you know at that time I didn't understand the risk but you know at that it was a big risk.
I look back now and I say wow that was you know I think I borrowed like $15 million. How were you able to borrow $15 million at the time?
I mean it was all private lending. You know I I went to
06:33
private lenders. You know, when you when you come out of school, you get a W2 or 1099.
I was 1099. I was a broker.
Banks didn't underwrite it. Right.
The banks looked at it and said, "Oh, you went from this to this. Wow.
How we don't understand. We can't understand it.
We don't understand it." Right? And so,
06:48
you know, as they don't understand it, then all of a sudden, you know, you're like, "Oh, okay. Well, um, where's my options?" And so, we had, you know, we had everything kind of lined up.
And you know, literally 3 days before we're supposed to close, uh, we were we were
07:04
getting ready to close and, you know, this person's not answering their phone. This person would talk to me daily.
They would call me. They were the first person in my life to ever call me son, right?
You know, it was I was I drank the Kool-Aid harder than anybody. And then, you know, this happened where they where they ended up getting in trouble and,
07:20
you know, kabut the deals kind of got soft, right? How many did you have?
It was 10 total. So, you committed to 10.
You borrow almost $15 million. You're ready to make your first 10 million bucks.
You're looking at the sheet every night. Three days before the guy gets popped for
07:37
whatever he was doing outside of what you guys were doing together. Yeah.
And now you owe this money and there's no way out cuz you signed it. You you're under contract basically.
No, we bought the property and we we owed the debt. The money we we spent the money.
It was there. And so, you know, I
07:53
still remember, you know, and this is where the lows start, right? I still remember, you know, going home to my wife and, you know, three days I cry, you know, literally crying.
Grown man just like tears coming out of my w my eyes. And my wife says, you know, look, you always like to work out, Sanjieve, like go to the gym.
Get out of the
08:10
house, go to the gym. And so, normally I used to go to the gym at like 9 10:00 at night.
And there would be two, three guys in there. You work out.
You know, the gym was always an interesting atmosphere because you have no clue who the other guy is, right? He could be, you know, homeless.
He could be a
08:26
billionaire. Nobody asked you, "Hey, what do you do in the gym?" Right?
Hey, bro, let me can I get a spot? Let me help you out.
So, there was a guy I used to work out with at night time and there'd be very few of us in the gym. And so, we would always say, "Hey, how are you?" We'd talk about life, but we had I generally
08:41
had no clue who he was or what he did. And so, uh, this random day we walk in, I walk in the gym at 2:00 and this guy's standing behind the front desk.
I look at him and I say, "What are you doing today? Behind the desk." He said, "Oh,
08:56
come into my office. You got an office, dude?" So, he's a manager.
He owned the place. He owned the place.
He was the owner. And he's actually said, "Hey, I'm trying to sell this place." All right.
So, I've built a few companies that have made a few million dollars a year. And I've built two companies that have made tens of
09:13
millions of dollars a year. And so, I have a little bit of experience launching, building, creating new things.
And I actually don't come up with a lot of original ideas. Instead, what I'm really, really good at.
What my skill set is is researching different
09:28
ideas, different gaps in the market, and reverse engineering companies. And I didn't invent this, by the way.
We had this guy Brad Jacobs. We talked about him on the podcast.
He started like four or five different publicly traded companies worth tens of billions of dollars each. He actually is the one who I learned how to do this from.
And so with the team at HubSpot, we put
09:44
together all of my research tactics, frameworks, techniques on spotting different opportunities in the market, reverse engineering companies, and figuring out exactly where opportunities are versus just coming up with a random silly idea and throwing it against the wall and hoping that it sticks. And so
10:00
if you want to see my framework, you can check it out. The link is below in the YouTube description.
I grew up bodybuilding at a young age and so I was always, you know, very fascinated by the fitness business. I was a trainer when I was in college and you know for me it was like oh my gosh
10:15
you know and I asked him I said does it make money and he says yeah it nets $30,000 a month oh quickly I'm starting to think all right I can do my real estate I can buy this gym I can do all these this is still while you're on the hook for the jack of the boxes I am all the way on the hook this
10:32
and and how long of a period did you have to like kind of resolve this or what what was your plan you're going to start opening up Jack in the box what were you going to do I couldn't open up Jack in the boxes because I went to Jack in the Box corporate and I had recorded a deed restriction on these properties. So basically I recorded something before closing.
Again, you learn later on in
10:49
life, right? Never do that, but you you know and and so I was kind of stuck with this.
It could only be that. It could only be that.
And that was what the it was a random deed restriction that we had created and and I couldn't get it off because the guy was still alive. Yeah.
So I couldn't quit claim it. I couldn't
11:04
do certain things. It was kind of a very unique situation, right?
And so, you know, so I in essence I bought the gyms to pay for my real estate. And then, you know, the first month in, you know, I still remember, wait, so how'd you buy the gym?
So, the guy says, "It's netting 30 grand a
11:19
month." Guy says, "I'm netting 30 grand a month. I need to get out of this." He says, "You know, I I have a big tax bill, so I don't want to get paid up front.
How about you take it on and pay me overtime?" Okay. Oh, okay.
Pay an installment price. All right.
I I went home. I asked my wife.
I says, you know, "Hey, I want to
11:34
buy the gym we work out at." And she laughed, you know. Oh, no way.
And then 30 days later, sure enough, we bought the gym, right? And needless to say, she doesn't laugh at anything I tell her we're going to do.
Now, she's, you know, so we bought the gym and 30 days in, you know, I I go to the bookkeeper and I'm like, "Hey, where's my check?"
11:50
Yeah. Where's the 30 grand?
Where's the money at? Let's go.
And she says, "Actually, you need to write a check for 22,000." I said, "What? $22,000?
How? I was going to make 30.
At least give me 15. you know, let's and so she just she
12:06
showed me how did you not diligence the thing at the time? I didn't understand how to read read a profit a profit and loss.
the difference between cash and acrruel and right all these things that you show and you know he had slimmed it down not to show every manager he showed it you know and not in a bad way he just showed it the
12:22
way that he could have saw it yeah what he saw it wasn't what was actually there so and how old are you at this time roughly I am 28 this is 2008 and there was a period of time so the way my wife tells the story so we're brother you're my brother-in-law where the way my wife tells the story is you start dating her sister
12:38
y and you're this guy that comes out of nowhere You are like this hot shot real estate guy young, right? Like I think you were pretty 25 26.
You were 25 26 and you were making millions of dollars as a broker which is not common. Correct.
Like you must have been a top top performer. Is that fair?
12:54
I I mean I don't know much about that time I was. I mean you know and you're buying her nice gifts and you're living this great life and when the Jack in the Box thing happened at some point I maybe I don't know if you've got to this part of the story.
At some point you're like you have to move back in to your to the parents house. You have to move back into your childhood bedroom.
13:10
Has that already happened or am I jumping the gun? No, that this actually So what happened was, you know, basically, you know, long story short, we're paying for the real estate.
I have to go become the general manager of the store and we didn't have enough money to pay everybody. So my wife ends up becoming the Zumba
13:26
instructor. And you know, and and so she's teaching like, you know, she must have been teaching 30, 40 classes a week, maybe more.
And she was great at it, but you know, we're just at the gym all day long. in order to pay for our stuff, you know, we went from a Range Rover to a Ford
13:42
Fusion, right? And we we we got out of our house to pay for pay again.
We're paying the bills. We were always like, "Let's pay, right?" And so, we then ended up at my my childhood high school room, and I still remember this the first night.
And my wife was a little bit upset. You know,
13:58
we went from this standard down to this, you know, naturally, you know, it was it was a it was a very big culture shock, right? And what I didn't tell you was that in order for us to buy the gyms, and not a lot of people know, I had to come up with a little down.
My wife ponded her wedding ring
14:14
for us to buy the gyms. So, she's a ride or die.
You talk about a ride or die. Like that girl has been with me through it all.
And so, by the way, are these because I know her, but I don't know her back then. Her idea, your idea.
You're like, "Hey,
14:30
you know, if only there was a way we could come up with this." How did that conversation go? I got to know.
It was definitely not her idea, but you know, she got on board with it fairly fast and she understood that if we fail, we fail together, and if we if
14:46
we feast, we feast together, right? And so, you know, at that point, we were a feast or famine, right?
We're either going to be able to try to figure out how to eat or we're starving. And, you know, and and in life, you know, it was a it was a big up and a big down because, you know, you're 27, we're driving a brand new Range Rover, we're living in an $800,000 house.
This is
15:03
amazing. You know, she's got a nice fancy and everything on the outside look great.
On the inside, we we owe all these people money, right? Who who do you go to, by the way, when this stuff's going down?
Do you Because you didn't You're not a big mentor network guy. Like, you you've always been a lone wolf as long as I've
15:18
known you. Really?
When shit's hitting the fan, obviously you're telling your wife, but how did you try to get out of the pickle? Cuz that's an unbelievable amount of money to owe.
You owed $15 million. I mean, and and you know, honestly, I was crying in the fetal position at home.
My wife just literally said, "Get out of here.
15:34
Get up." I have this story I tell my kids, the light bulb story, right? Uh, and what it is is I'll plug in a light bulb for my kids, a lamp, and I'll just turn the bulb a hair, and the bulb turns off.
And
15:49
I ask my kids, I said, "What what does this mean to you?" And my kids look at me, they're young. Oh, I don't know what this mean.
Means that success is just this much far away. The difference between a successful light and a broken light is a hair.
And so I always had
16:04
that kind of mentality that, you know, I'm almost there. I might have not always been there, but my mentality, oh baby, I was let's go.
I mean, you know, that was And so we we lay down at night and we turn the light off when we're the first night back and we look up. And
16:20
in my age group, I'm a little older than you, we used to do these stars and like stickers on the glow-in-the-dark. you turn off and the the whole world appears and we turn off the light and we hadn't stayed in this room for, you know, forever.
We just we had our own place
16:35
and we both just start laughing out loud and I told her, you know, I said, "Give me nine months. Give me nine months.
I'll figure it out." And, you know, uh, the switch kind of clicked for me. Then you made a promise.
I made a promise. I got to stick to it.
16:52
You know, it's almost like when people take a a weight loss challenge, right? Right.
I've got a reason to do it. This is my timeline.
Let's do it. But you have no plan yet or you have a plan or not?
Well, I you know I I said I'm gonna grow the gyms. Right.
I I had I we started to
17:08
turn it around the first one and then we're like let's open up a second one. And you know we we ended up being able to uh build a second store.
It took us a long time. It took us a little bit.
It took us about a year and you know we we
17:23
just started working harder and and honestly like I just you know I would go to the gym if we needed to pay a bill I would go to the gym and sell memberships myself. I'd some nights work till midnight till we close.
You know we were 24-hour in the first store and so I would just if I needed if I needed to get it we had to go get it. And we we
17:41
lived very very um you know uh within our means. you know, we would I still remember we would share food for probably about 5 years.
We wouldn't go anywhere and eat, you know, two meals, right? There would be one meal she would
17:56
eat. Whatever's left, I would eat.
And, you know, and vice versa. Some nights, you know, don't get me wrong, there was times when, you know, I ate first, but most of the time it was sharing and trying to get there.
And so, as we started to build the gyms up, that's
18:11
when we started getting back to like, okay, we're paying everybody Good things are happening. Let's go.
Could you have not just declared bankruptcy with the Jack in the Box situations to at least get to zero again? I could have and that may have been the smarter path.
You know, I went
18:27
to law school, so you know, my law school professor was always like, you know, bankruptcy is immoral. No, it's not, right?
You know, but but you know, these thoughts are put in your head in life that you know, you don't know where it came from. By the way, spoiler here is you end up creating, I think at one point, the largest gym chain in
18:43
California, right? in Northern California.
We were one of the largest. We were definitely the largest private operator.
We didn't have partners. So, we ended up getting to 82 stores.
Uh, and we were growing the business. And we had done some really smart moves along the way.
I would option properties,
18:58
which we can talk about, and like do certain things in our leases that we just started learning. And we built a great culture.
We had almost 2,000 employees and it was a fun run. So, so the brick by brick is the first one.
The guy basically says, "Pay me as you go. Give me a little down payment.
You pawn the
19:14
wedding ring. You get the down payment.
Yep. You turn that gym.
You thought it was profitable. Turns out it really wasn't.
C the cash flow really wasn't there. You start to squeeze it by working your ass off.
Great. A year later, you get the second store.
Give me a sense because I've never owned a gym. A gym like this
19:32
um you know what are they what are they net like? If I go to a if I see a gym around the corner, I think these were Gold's gyms at the time.
Yeah. We went to Five with Golds and then and then you created your own content.
created our own concept and then so it could be a typical like a gold's gym. Uh what do these things make
19:49
revenue profit roughly? I mean it depends on the gold's gym.
If you're in Gold's Gym LA which was kind of like the Mecca they're making 8 to 10 million a store you know and and the gym is revenue or gross revenue. I mean gym is a fixed cost business once you've paid your employees and your rent your lights
20:05
it doesn't really go up right I mean what may vary is if you do personal training it may vary on certain services but generally it's a fixed cost business so you want to get to a certain number of members and then after that everything is profit and so it's a higher margin business you know most
20:21
people you know Jim at one point were 40% profit margin now I'd probably say they're closer to 20 25 because labor has increased and membership prices haven't increased as much as maybe they could or should, but there's also a
20:36
lot of competition, right? There's only so much pie in every corner or every other corner there's gyms being opened up.
So, what did you figure out? What did you do differently that let you build this 82 store chain?
Well, we started out as gold gym operators and
20:52
you know, we realized that Gold's gym was a bodybuilder model. You know, there was people that would come in the gym, they work out for three hours a day, heavy protein, you know, people are farting, sitting there for, you know, that might be the worst type of customer to have.
Yeah. They abuse your weights and then,
21:07
you know, they they but they use it, right? And then you look, you know, you start to look at this model called Planet Fitness where they're signing up 15,000 people at a low price.
And when we were in the gym business, they were just coming up. And so we went and saw one and said, "Man, this is actually
21:22
interesting." They were serving pizza and bagels, things that we just never even like understood like why. Now we understand it's because people will come and eat pizza twice a month or every week and they'll get their $9.99 worth, right?
So they were they were they were
21:38
smarter than most. They were already ahead of the game.
And uh we then started seeing other brands like we said, "Oh well, Golds has some good stuff." And so we started combining the models to create our own model. And we created basically a large box high volume lowric model with classes and
21:53
group training and we basically combined gold's gym and orange theory and a planet fitness allin-one and in that process we started doing really well. Did you figure out any great insights along the way?
Like you know my first business was a restaurant business and restaurant business location really
22:09
really matters. One thing we figured out very quickly was Chipotle spends, I don't know, $40 million a year figuring out the best locations to be.
You could just go go to go try to get next to every Chipotle is actually just like now
22:24
you spend zero, but you get the benefit of all of their location scouting, right? We figured out that you could look at the receipts and if you understood how to read the code, you would know how many customers this Chipotle gets versus this one.
So, I could even compare within that which location is better than the other. Right?
like we started getting a little
22:41
smarter about how to play the game better. Were there any moments like that for you in the gym business that you you started to figure out maybe how to pick up members faster or you know how to take the average value of a customer from $10 a month to upsell them in some interesting way.
Did any any good
22:56
business insights from that? You know what we did was we created a really unique referral mechanism.
And so what we did was we we realized people love things for free, right? I mean, a lot of the people I've heard talk on your podcast, it's like, give them a deal that they can't ever say no to, right?
And I I I think that's always a great
23:12
business tool to keep in the back of your mind and you're starting anything or doing anything. So, you know, we created this uh me and John, who's my who's my COO, and and like family to me.
He's been with me a long time. And we sat in a room and we're talking back and forth, what what would make a member
23:29
want to refer someone? And John said, you know, jokingly, give it to him for free.
You know, I said, 'Yes, that's what we're going to do. And so we're like, how do we do that?
And so we're like, all right, well, Sean's paying, you know, let's say this, for every
23:44
person Shawn refers that joins, he could get a dollar off his dues. And so in that process, Shawn is $30 a month or $20 a month, Sean has to refer 20 $20 a month for that $20.
And we found that our members, like when we did our sales
24:00
page, we said, "Hey, Sean, you know, our membership is $39.99, but you can get it for free. Would you like to know how you get it for free?" People be like, "Yeah, great.
Just refer your friends, your family, your co-workers, anybody you want. Here's the pass.
We're going to write your name on it. Sean, how many passes you want?" Sean says, "I want I
24:17
want 40 cuz I'm paying $40, right?" Great. And now when they sign up, they come in and give us Shawn's pass.
We would we would connect it to their membership. Sean's dues would now go down by a dollar.
It was amazing what we saw where people were so motivated even for a dollar that worked. And it
24:33
was amazing for people for even for like, you know, because you'd have people that would go down from 40 to zero and all of a sudden two people would quit. So their membership's now two bucks.
Who's the two people? You know, and you're like, well, okay, start shaking people down.
They start calling people and be like,
24:48
how did you how did you get out of the gym? I mean, I watched it happen myself.
So we created this referral concept that was really good and you know that kind of escalated us and then we started to realize look we got to as we grew the gyms right we we learned what we did
25:05
right and we learned what we did wrong for example like you know we would build pools in some of our gyms well there's nothing wrong with having a pool but the reality is you're going to have two to three maybe four people in it at a time it's going to take 10,000 ft right 6,000 to 10,000 ft that's a lot of footage for
25:21
four people, right? And so we started just realizing what our model was as we went forward and then we just decided, okay, we're going to give a great value at a great price and then we're going to incentivize you to refer people, right?
And it worked. So, how long did it take
25:37
you to get out of the holes? So, the initial mistake was big.
Fast forward to 2011. Okay, I'm now have uh 12 gyms and I'm with Gold's Gym.
12 Gold's Gym 2011. I had bought some property and uh one
25:54
property I had I paid $4 million. Okay.
I owed $750. I'd been paying them every month at 13% for 3 years.
And so I go to this lender. I actually went to high school with this guy's granddaughter and they were good old boys from where I
26:10
grew up, you know, and I went to them and I said, "Hey, look, if I give you $50,000," and for me, $50,000 at that time was all I had, right? Will you rewrite my note and give me another year and change my interest rate because I'm now starting to climb up on
26:26
the cash, right? And and my my sales, I have 12 gyms.
They're all doing well. And so the guy says, "Sure, Chopra.
Bring us a $50,000 cashier's check tomorrow." I said, "Okay, let me have my lawyer draft up a document. You don't trust us, Chopra.
You need a lawyer?"
26:45
Yeah. Again, no mentor, no coach, go get the 50,000 cashiers check, bring it in, put it on their desk.
Two weeks later, I get a foreclosure notice. Now, call them.
What's going on? I say, "Oh, well, we think this propertyy's worth $4 million,
27:02
so we're going to take it from you." Whoa. So, in the initial time, I start calling around and and I go to Gold's Gym.
The next week, I go and the guy has now passed away, but he's the president of Gold's Gym at the time. And I go in and there's this big Golds convention
27:19
every year, whether it was Vegas, LA, San Diego. It was at the time it was in Vegas.
I still remember I went and met with them and I said, "Hey, look. I've opened up 12 stores in three years.
You know, I'd like to open up 50." And he laughed. I'm my favorite.
You can't open up 50.
27:36
We can't even open up 50. He said, "But look, I'll do you a favor." Says, "You can have open up a gym for every time you have $1 million in the bank.
So, you want to open up 50? Show me 50 million." remember 50,000 for me was
27:53
so I had this franchise agreement and so I called this lawyer really trying to save the property right I called but somebody I knew from law school and said hey man I got this property you know can I sue the lender what can I do and we're not really in the lawsuit type of thing at that at that point and so
28:11
file bankruptcy I said no it's moral I can't do it and then we started looking at the benefits at the time we were paying everybody body and uh you know, long story short, we ended up filing chapter 11. We were able to rebrand.
We paid everybody h 100 cents on the dollar
28:28
that was secured and we started growing the gyms after that. And in the process, we we we reorganized our life.
We paid all the the all the people, all the 15 million we owed, we paid with interest. But that also built me on the next round
28:44
that we'll talk about, right? I I I was I was very like some of those lenders are still great friends to today where I can pick up the phone and call and say, "Hey, we're from the Bay Area, right?
Like so I call them and say, "Hey, can I get a loan?" I just called one. Uh and they said, "Yeah, we'll do it for you in a heartbeat.
You
29:00
don't need anything?" "No, we know you stood behind." And so, you know, so we started building the gyms and we started building more gyms and then really we had no real estate at this point. We had sold our house, we had sold our cars, we just had gyms.
We were just a gym operator. And I think by 2015
29:19
we had gotten up to about 33 stores and uh uh decided to tell my wife like I want to get back into real estate and but I didn't have the I didn't have the seed capital. Real estate was always capital intensive.
And so I looked through my portfolio and sure enough I remembered I
29:35
optioned that second gym in Oakdale. So I basically used that option to buy the center and then I sold it to someone else based on my new lease.
Sorry. So explain how this works.
So what if I've never done real estate? I
29:51
understand how this option buy. What what do you mean?
So what you what in our lease we put this option let's say you're Mr. Seller and we say Mr.
Seller we have the right to buy this at we rent it for now. Correct.
But we have the right to buy at a defined price. Correct.
Okay. At at this defined time.
Okay. And in order for us to do that, we
30:08
just have to tell you we're buying it and we have 60 days, 90 days to close, right? So, we knew there was a buyer who wanted to buy gyms and do other stuff in the market.
Broker approached us and said, "Hey, would you sell this?" They didn't know I didn't own it, right? But they said, "Would you sell
30:24
it?" And I said, "Actually, you know," and so we had optioned that like I think it was like 3 or 4 million bucks. We sold it at 7 million.
And so you knew risk-f free in a way because you have the option to buy at a defined price. You already know there's a buyer lined up.
So you're not speculating as much as
30:39
long as you believe that they would close that they would actually buy the thing. Yeah.
And there's no such thing as risk-f free because if that buyer blows out, I didn't have the money to buy the thing anyway. So you know, so but you did like a double escrow basically.
In essence, we did a double escrow and we made, you know, several million dollars and like wow. And so now that
30:55
I've invested with you, you do this a bunch. And it is like the the two sweetest words in the English language are double estate, which basically is like we agree to buy a thing, but before we even have to take the money out of our pocket, we sell it.
So the same day they ask us for the money, we just take the money from this guy, we give them
31:11
their their share, we pocket the profits. Yeah.
You bought the thing and sold the thing on the same day without ever having to take the money out of your pocket. Beautiful.
And you've done you do this all the time now. It's great.
I get, you know, we I'll do a deal with you and you're like, by the time we get to buy this, we're already going to have sold
31:27
10 million, $7 million worth of the equity, you know, because we already have buyers lined up. Yeah.
Um, and so you did this for the So that's how you did your first deal. That's how I got my first seed money to buy real estate.
And then I just started buying and flipping for, you know, uh, for years. And you were doing it the same way.
Gym
31:43
options or No, that was just like that. Did a few gym options, then I did a few gym sales.
Then I got enough money to go buy a property and build a gym. And then I ended up hooking up with this company called Harbor Freight Tools.
And so as I started getting into 1516, we started getting the higher number of gyms. We're
31:58
like 65 70. We bought this building in San Francisco.
Uh yeah, I remember on Market Street. Market Street.
Yeah. 1 2 3 4 Market Street.
I think you actually came there once. Yeah.
The vanity uh the address. I remember thinking you got 1 2 3 4 Market.
I was Yeah, I know. And and there was, you know, every day we go out and pick
32:15
up the needles that were outside. It was it was crazy.
But, you know, like at that time we had a store there and and a nonprofit, a mosque, you know, approached us and said, "We'd like to put our church here." And we negotiated a deal and we said, "Well, we wouldn't make that money in probably like 10
32:31
years, 15 years of running the gym." So, we sold it. And then, you know, like we're like, "Oh, wow.
Made some money here." And as I was building my next store, uh, somebody from Harbor Freight Tools randomly called me and said, "We'd like to we'd like to lease that box." So, I go home and tell my wife, "What do you
32:47
think? You know, I want to build this gym.
I'm used to building all these gyms." She says, "Well, why don't you just do it, right?" And so, we did it. And we ended up building a very big relationship there.
I'm a big relationship guy. Uh, a lot of the tenants we work with, we've worked with
33:02
for years. Um, and we ended up doing over a hundred for those guys as time went on.
But, uh, but yeah, it just kind of kind of evolved as time went on. And then we got to 17 and you know my dad was not really the I
33:19
won't say bad things but he wasn't a loving type a little bit abusive a lot abusive at times but you know he was just a different character. So you know my thing was whenever I have kids you know we can't change the past but we can sure as hell change the future right yesterday's gone but tomorrow has not
33:36
been written yet. And so I kind of always had that philosophy but I wanted to be a great dad.
But during this time from 2008 to 200 probably 16. I work seven days a week probably 80 to 100 hours every week.
I mean I would get up
33:52
at 5:30 and be in the gyms and then I'd come home by midnight. I'd come home every night just want to see my wife and kids.
And I'm thinking I'm doing a good job because I'm busting my butt but I'm still, you know, um I'm still trying. But my table was wobbly.
34:07
You know, we talked about this. You know, give the table metaphor.
So, I always have this belief that there's three your life is like there's three legs to a table, right? Your your your family, your job, and your faith.
And your faith doesn't have to be God. It could be your faith in fitness.
It could
34:22
be your faith in the way you eat. It could be the faith the way you treat people.
A code, a code you live by. It's whatever you believe your faith is in for you to feel like you are foundationally sound.
Well, if any one of those legs, you know, let's say my job is strong, but my family life is
34:38
weak. What happens to the table?
It wobbles. My faith may be weak and my job may be strong.
My table wobbles. And so for me, I was, you know, I was working a lot.
I was making money. There was a
34:54
great relationship with my wife. But one day, I'm driving home from this from Santa Maria.
I had a gym in Santa Maria. It was probably on the coast.
It was probably gosh, I'd say 400 miles from my house. Three, four.
And I would drive in the morning and I would come back the same night. I'd go train.
I'd go meet
35:09
the managers. I'd walk my store.
I wanted to see and touch and feel. And uh anyways, uh my se my second son, Chase, uh your nephew, calls me.
He's crying hysterically. Put your mom on the phone.
My wife gets on the phone. Honey, what's
35:26
he saying? And she's crying.
Says, you know, he really misses you and he wants you to come visit. He doesn't think you live at home.
And I'm going home every night on purpose, right? Like I'm driving 400
35:41
miles. I'm like, I'm going to be there.
I think I'm being a good dad, you know? I'm kissing them every night.
I'm I'm watching them. I, you know, and and so the whole day, it didn't sit right with me.
And that's when I decided for myself, I said, I've built this great business,
35:58
but I can't do this long term. Because for me to do it right or the way I wanted to do it, I was unable to do it and be a good father.
And so that kind of changed my path of where I started focusing more on real estate. Right.
And the type of real estate you do
36:14
because real estate's a big word, broad word. It could mean anything.
You do shopping centers mostly. You've done other stuff too, but now you do retail shopping centers.
Yeah. And as a tech guy in Silicon Valley, that always felt super random like like retail shopping centers like Okay.
Oh,
36:30
you're you're like an archaeologist. You do dinosaur things.
Like, I get it. Yeah.
Like, yeah. What are you talking about, dude?
Like, but it's this incredible. And now I invest now I invest a ton of money with you because I'm like blown away by this.
But so, so just explain kind of like even just the space you the sandbox you play in, why you
36:46
play in that sandbox. Uh and like you know, what's your model?
What do you do? You know 2010 all the news was retail's dying you know but what it really did was it insulated retail because what happened after 2010 people started building way more multifamily storage
37:01
industrial but they didn't build retail shopping centers now they built these pads a lot more postco cuz what happened in co right you were closed unless you had a drive-thru right and so those businesses that had a drive-thru they crushed it and as time
37:18
went on you know there's been a lot retailers that have left. It's no doubt.
But retail has sustained and it's kind of become a supply and demand thing where it's like, you know, and what we are is we're a value ad retailer. So developer.
So basically what we do is we find things that we feel we can add value to. Whether it's new tenants,
37:34
whether it's breaking it up and selling it in pieces, whether it's construction, we always have a game plan to go in and do something, you know, and I often get asked, why didn't the other guy do it, right? Why didn't the guy before you do it?
I don't know. You know, sometimes it's just there and sometimes people
37:50
have just been in a project too long. And I give you times I have times there's been times I've been in a project for five, six years and I'm like, I just want to be done.
Right. Right.
And then there's been projects I've been in for five minutes and I'm like, let's go. It just happens in that in this business.
And so, um, you know, we build
38:06
a lot of good relationships with a lot of tenants. And you know the good part is is that we can email these tenants or their brokers within you know we buy we're looking at a center we can we can find out generally who wants to be give a sense of um what good looks like in
38:21
real estate. What have you been able to do in your track record?
You know, I I typically what I we see is we see people trying to compare or, you know, match the S&P or kind of be standard, you know, 7 8% a year. They get some depreciation, you know, and they're
38:37
happy. They're diversified.
They're diversified. They, you know, they can do certain things and and we're more we target for our folks now mid20s to low30s IR annually.
And in order for us to get there, we actually have to go do something. You went from having zero
38:53
zero real estate assets to over a billion dollars in real estate assets in 10 years. How do you do that?
Don't we all want to know? I I mean, I think you have to find someone who's already kind of figured out that game and kind of run with them.
I would say I'd also say that
39:09
like it's it's compounding. You know, it's you buy one deal and you sell it, you made some money.
Now, it's when you do it again and again and again and again and again. And so in our business, I was able to compound it by doing it again and again and again and again and
39:24
again for many years. And so I would tell anybody who's young like you know you're going to start with something right and then you you got to figure out how to make that make money and move on to the next because if you stick to just one there's a lot of people out there
39:40
they have one building they enjoy it but they didn't compound it to really get to where they could have gone. You you had also told me um one of the deals we did, you know, I'm learning about this as you go.
And you were like, "Oh, we're buying this center." And you were like, "There's a so and so grocery store and
39:55
one of the reasons we're getting this price is that that grocery store, they only have like a year left on their lease, but they have an option to extend it like 12 or 15 years, but they, you know, they're not picking it up because they don't have to yet. They have one or two years left right now." And I was like, "Okay, so what's the plan?" He
40:10
like, "I'm going to get them to extend it." And I was like, "But why? Why would they do that?
How do you know? And it was a combination of intelligence.
You were like, well, I know it's a high performing store. I know they should want to extend it, but they want they don't have to do it proactively, but I do know the the person who's like runs their real estate.
She used to run real
40:27
estate for this other company. And actually, one time she left me holding the bag.
She pulled out of a deal last minute and I ate the loss. And I didn't I didn't hold it against her.
I didn't, you know, I treated her well. Even though we took a big financial loss on that, I believe she's going to treat us
40:43
well here. And then sure enough, like you know, we buy this thing and suddenly we got a 15-year lease extension and that property's value, you know, skyrockets from that.
So sometimes it's also about taking a loss. Well, not just when somebody wins.
Yeah. It's, you know, it's easy to high-five when things are going great, but how do you how you
41:00
act when things don't go your way defines the character and defines the relationship, right? 100%.
I mean, you know, how you act on a loss is almost more important than how you act on a win. Right.
Well, your kids play sports. Do you teach them this?
And you know, when it comes to their baseball, their pitching, their you know what what
41:15
they're doing, you try. I mean, they're young, they got a lot of emotions.
So, it's it's it's kind of a fine balance cuz you don't want them to want to lose, right? But you want them to understand how to lose because in life, in order for most entrepreneurs out there, most guys have had some sort of failure in their life
41:32
and then boom, it clicks, right? And they use that as like a catalyst to just skyrocket, right?
Not every business person is super successful right out the gate. And most guys who have made it really far have have had to grind their way through, right?
41:47
And so, you know, I I'm for my kids, that's that's what I want. I want to see them I had to do baseball.
Baseball is a sport of failure, right? You hit three out of 10, you're in the MLB, you're you're a Hall of Famer, right?
That's 30% of the time you're touching the ball or hitting the ball. So, I like
42:04
the sport because it's mentally and I also believe like, you know, sports are a great way for kids to learn to compete, you know, and and have healthy competition. But at the same time, you have a lot of people teaching their kids that I've seen.
They think they're competing with other kids. I try to teach my kids that you're competing, and
42:20
I would tell any adult this not to look at everyone else, right? Because I can only do what Sanjief can do.
I'm competing with me. Yeah.
There's a there's a guy who came on this podcast. He had this great phrase.
He goes, he's an investor and he talks about investing in founders. What do you look for, man?
Uh what's the what
42:36
are some of the key things? And he goes, I want to know if they're pre-fall or postfall.
He says, "All great men have a fall. I love it if they're already postfall cuz I know that they know what it takes to come back up.
I know that they're going to have a certain level of maturity and humility because they're
42:52
postfall, right? And prefall, you always have to be wary because somebody who's only ever seen the ups.
You don't know how they'll handle the downs. You don't know if they'll even anticipate that there can be downs.
They might get so full of themselves that they don't actually see that that's a possibility and they don't guard for it and, you
43:09
know, watch for the wall and make the turn as you need to do when you're when you're riding the race. So, I've always remembered that.
And and guys that red line or push the limits, they're going to have some falls. Yeah.
Until you get to the edge, it's kind of like one of those things. So, you know, some of those people who have never had
43:24
a fall, maybe they're playing it, we're not they're playing the game as hard as they maybe could be, right? What are some other like core, I don't know, philosophies that you have?
Yeah. I mean, I think core philosophy I always think of this.
What would I advise my son to do?
43:39
What's an example where maybe if you had just been thinking from your own perspective, you could kind of talk yourself into something, but when you think about it, like what would I advise my son to do? The answer is much more clear.
Do you can you think of an example? Yeah.
I mean, like when when when like when a tenant burns you or when people burn you and you say, "Man, I want to
43:56
call that person and tell them I'm not going to do any more business with you." You know, we're going to use this the the stick, right? And what do you gain with that, right?
What what would my son What would my son Shaden gain from that? Okay, the other person knows you don't like them.
44:11
They're not going to bring you any deals. They're not going to do anything.
Or you could say, "Hey, you know what? This one didn't work out.
Let's find another one to win together on." Right? There's it's a long game.
It's not a short game. Life is a long game, you know?
That's that's it's like things go full circle, right? People say, "What
44:27
does going full circle means?" It means as you're going on longer and longer, different opportunities come up. It comes all the way around.
And and so for that it would be an example where I would probably tell him like hey look you know don't kill the relationship
44:43
build the relationship find another way to win with that person and don't hold on to the you know that's the problem is most people hold on to memories that are you know uh the right word I would say the memories that affected them in a negative way and so they carry these
45:00
negative ways instead you can forgive You don't have to forget. Right.
Right. I mean, and so it's so there there's been times in my life that I've even had to use this for my own like I I tell people a lot of times like you know
45:15
I will sometimes have to make a decision and I will think as if my sons or my daughters are the ones having to make that decision and I ask what would I tell them and most times it takes me five seconds and this is something that I had a conundrum about in my head
45:31
for weeks. You know, often times I talk to you and we're outside and you say things so common sensely, you know, like why have I been thinking about this for two weeks?
Sean got this to me in like 30 seconds, right? What have you seen um just in Cuz you're in retail.
Like what
45:46
have you seen as the trend? What's going on?
Like what what's changing maybe? What's dying?
What's exploding? Yeah.
What can you teach us? Because you see a different part of the world than than we do.
And you see more of the leading indicators. You know who's expanding.
You know who's contracting, right? you know which which locations are thriving
46:03
or which ones are struggling. Um what have you seen I guess what's what's going on?
So for retail specifically there's been a lot of new things called experiential retail. It's come out you know and and fitness centers were been there for a long time but now there's pickle ball trampoline parks.
You know retail is
46:19
important for any centers to drive traffic. So retail used to be like like you know where that now it's let's say pickle ball or a trampoline park.
It would have just been go buy clothes at the store. Right.
the is basically like that's the shift that's happening is like people buying you know maybe more
46:35
of that stuff is being bought online but you can't buy the experience online. Yeah.
And and and there's there's places that are thriving like Ross Dress for Less or Burlington Code or TJ Maxx. My wife loves HomeGoods or TJ Maxx.
Your wife loves it. It's like a treasure hunt, right?
And they're they're sourcing
46:50
things that people can go and they're looking for that treasure. Look at all the junk we bought.
But the deal we got the deal was amazing. So the experience for that so that that also becomes experiential but it also becomes where it it's it's not stuff you could easily find online right and so uh
47:06
online has definitely had some form of effect where you've had some brands that are going away for example as of recent big lots went away Jo-Ann's went away you know right is in bankruptcy and you say when's the last time I went to a big lots when's the last time I went to a Jo-Ann's they never adapted into today's
47:25
market to be able to do both because really all all retailers should have their retail also being their distribution, right? And so an e-commerce person needs distribution.
So now if you can do both and that's where the smarter retailers have gotten
47:41
where they'll ship out of stores. Yeah.
They'll do certain things to create where now they have a they don't have to do a 150,000 foot distribution because they got a Best Buy in this part of Wisconsin. that part can ship everywhere.
And I think retail's also changed in the fact that you've got
47:57
more, you know, uh, offices uses now going to retail. You know, you have lawyers and shopping centers, you have insurance people, you have doctors, they're going where the foot traffic is.
Right. Right.
And so, and then food has become a big component, right? And the
48:12
experience of food is what you know, and you can Door Dash anything you want, but even you know, the ghost kitchen concept has been tested. Door Dash did ghost kitchens.
They close majority of them. The reason is because people like the experience.
They want to pick what they want. And yeah, you can order it from
48:28
your house. You can go there, your forte, but you can get it.
The kitchen has value. And so, I think it's the the fundamental is that the loca and and and when when we see things, we also see where the retail is
48:44
over 90% lease right now, a very high occupancy. Um, and there's certain parts of retail that are no longer viable.
You know, you you think about the old town, like where I grew up, there was a small town and there was a J C Penney on one side, right? And then Lowe's, TJ Maxx,
49:02
HomeGoods, all went to the other side of the freeway. Everybody went on the other side.
Target, everybody's there. Well, that other side of the retail, it's hurting because it's not in the right location.
So location is also another key thing that I didn't really understand when people would tell me
49:18
when I was younger, location, location, location. Now, yeah, location, location, location.
And and you know, I think in any real estate, it's important to understand like when you're trying to make money in in real estate or I would say any business, you really make money on the buy. If you're thinking you're
49:35
going to make money on the sale immediately, you're speculating. But if you bought something, right?
I buy a I could buy a car and I know the car is worth 30,000 and I buy it for 28, 29, whatever that is. I did all right.
49:52
I made money on the buy. Whereas people buy things on speculation and when that speculation doesn't come to fruition, that's when we get hurt.
Yeah. Exactly.
And you you've also uh like you you've done a bunch of all
50:07
these like electric car charging stations and stuff like that. Like new new retail uses that are, you know, coming up as well, right?
Electric cars. We do uh recycle stuff.
We're doing uh fireworks everywhere. Anything that we can bring traffic in, you know, and we
50:23
we want you to bring your, you know, your Tesla to the shopping center because you plug in and you're going to go eat 20 minutes. You got you got time to go do something, right?
And so you know but the number of retailers has reduced over the years because a lot of
50:39
those concepts were either you know the kind of tough part for retailers there's been a lot of private equity that buys them they put heavy debt and then when any change in the market happens or they don't adapt to anything can't survive can't survive right and and that's what happened to like Joann's or you know even you know
50:57
big lots big lots had $2 billion in debt and but they also never adapted. One of the things I always wanted to do was you do you when you owned the gyms, you would do these like sales trainings.
You do these like motivational talks. You do a lot of these things that you you know maybe you I don't know if you like doing
51:13
them, but like at some point you probably were happy to to be done doing it for a little bit, but what would have been the highlights? What were the what were your best what were your best bits?
I would often talk about Kobe Bryant, right? I always love you know Kobe Bryant's analogies where he would say ah you know I look at it like this.
I work
51:29
two hours extra a day every day. Now you got to take that times five days, it's 10 hours, you know, a week.
Take that times four weeks a month, there's 40 hours. Take it times 12, it's 480 hours.
Over my 15-year career, I've almost done 8,000 more hours or 10,000 more hours
51:46
than anyone else. You stack days.
So, a lot of my motivation was how do you stack days? The other thing that I was always very important on in training was when you're there, be there.
What does that mean? Right?
Well, when you're
52:02
at work, be at work. When you're at home, be home.
Don't be at work thinking about home and at home thinking about work. And people don't get that often because you only get so much time.
So, when I when my game face is on, let's go. And when I'm with my kids, let's go.
52:20
when I'm on my own that's what I get to do let's go right for myself but a lot of people don't understand that like when I talk about the commodity of time right it's limited and now so if you're here thinking about here you're here thinking about here and you're doing all this stuff like so
52:36
that's something I think that every entrepreneur young person should focus on themselves right and then I also would teach them to have a game plan make a list some people say I don't need a list when you write it down majority ity of people are
52:51
visual learners. And for me, I'm a visual guy.
If I write it down, I'll remember it. You tell me that there's a good chance I forget it, right?
So, what's the way you remember? What's the way that you're going to remember what you're doing?
Because you got to write down your goals and kind of get to the next step of val of taking that time
53:08
and really Were you big on that? Like kind of writing down a vision or writing down whether it's affirmations or a vision or a goal like were you a big kind of like self motivator in that way?
Did you did you have any habits that served you well? I never really wrote down
53:24
affirmations or any of that stuff, but I would always ask myself why why am I doing this? What is my goal here?
And for sometimes it was my goal was to make money cuz I got to pay bills. You know, I'd be at the gym at 10:30 at night calling someone randomly saying, "Hey,
53:39
if you come in with your entire family tonight by 11:00 and spend $2,000, we'll give you an extra year for free." Whatever it was, right? because I needed the $2,000.
So, at that time it was money motivated. Other times it was because I wanted to actually like for my
53:55
employees or even my kids. I really want to see them succeed and I wanted them to learn a way.
I mean there was employees that we had come in and never had made more than $8, $10 an hour at that time and they started making 150 200 grand a year. And it wasn't just sales.
It was
54:11
also treating people right. It was also understanding you know what what motivates people.
And you know when I I always tell a story like sometimes I would tell when I was young my dad used to always do a thing that was pretty you know when I say abusive what does that mean? My dad would take me you know he had a few drinks he was Indian guy he'd
54:27
come he'd be sitting at the table doodling till I was probably like 12 or 13 he would come and grab you by the neck and he'd take you to the restroom and he put your head near the toilet. He say see that that's what you are and I you know and I always tell people you know that that could have affected me in
54:42
two ways. It could have completely demotivated me or I could have used it as I never want to be that.
And so everybody's experience is different from the others. That's why I always tell people you're not competing with someone else.
Yeah. I like your um
55:00
kind of the be be there wherever you are. Be here now.
uh is so I think even more underrated now because in a world of distraction on tap. I'm bored.
I can solve it right away. I'm half here.
I'm
55:17
tired. I can solve it right away.
I'm annoyed. I can do I can I have this pacifier in my hand.
Like I I have a little baby. I have a one-year-old.
So it's like I have a paci right here. at any time I could just suck on this and I'm going to have I'm going to have my problems soothed for a moment.
And so
55:35
being able to just be wherever you are but be there fully and like there's a um my sister had this situation where she was in business school uh in Indiana. She went to Indiana University for for business school.
So they were in Bloomington, Indiana. Now Bloomington,
55:51
Indiana is not the nicest place. Didn't want to be there.
And the next semester they were going to go to Italy. So they had this like next semester we're in Italy, but while they're in Bloomington they didn't bother going out making friends.
They didn't bother like checking out the area. They didn't, you know, they were just kind of going through the motions.
And the reason why
56:07
was they thought, "Oh, Bloomington's lame. Italy is going to be amazing, though.
Can't wait. Do you know how we're going to be when we're there?
We're going to be Oh, I'm going to be speaking Italian. I'm going to be gelato and cafes and I'm going to be so it's going to be so amazing." And I was like, "That's great.
You're not there yet.
56:23
while you're in Bloomington, you wish you were in Italy. Guess what?
When you're in Italy, you're probably going to wish you were back in the States, you know, because you're gonna miss certain other things. Be if you're in Bloomington, be in Bloomington.
Make this your Italy, right? You can choose to to have that Italian exp.
You can have whatever experience you want in the
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place you're at. And I've now seen over time, this has become a superpower where, like you said, like, you know, you're at work, you're thinking about home, you're at home, you're thinking about work, you're with your kids, but you're half thinking about work.
you know, the half in half out, the dim light versus being able to go off and
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then shine bright when it's time to shine bright. But if you're always flickering at this sort of dim level on all things, you're just going to feel unsatisfied in all aspects of your life, right?
And so I think that's a great simple reminder that's in everybody's control. Doesn't take any talent to
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really do that. No.
Yeah. It just takes a little bit of awareness.
And so that's the one I'm going to take with me the most out of this whole thing. I think we hit everything.
I think we had the highs, the lows, and the build back up. Uh, dude, I appreciate you doing this.
I know you're not uh you're not a big kind of get out there and and and and go toot
57:27
your own horn, but I appreciate you doing this. It's great to be here and uh and I appreciate it.
All right, that's a wrap. [Music]