Feel Behind at 25? Stay in the Game - Episode 48

From a conversation in a random parking lot that would change the trajectory of an entire family to renting out apartments in Manhattan at the age of 16 to turning those abilities and that journey into a super successful real estate funding career. You need to talk with Adam Sassounes this week on Jewish grit. >> [music] >> Welcome to Jewish grit from beautiful sunny Surfside, Florida and we got on a plane with all our equipment just for this moment to meet Adam Sassounes. Welcome to Jewish grit. >> Thank you. Thank you for having me. >> Adam is the co-ceo, co-founder of Dwight Capital. Adam, tell us what is Dwight Capital? >> We are a real estate finance firm. We basically finance multi-family and there's some some other uh >> Tell us a little bit about your journey. You tell me you grew up in a Persian Jewish family, first generation. Yep, like me. And then what town were you in? Where were you in this world? >> I grew up in a town called Alpine, New Jersey. >> I know that. >> Which is >> beautiful. >> Yeah, very nice town. Uh no real Jewish community there. A lot of Jews, but um no real >> religious Jewish community. >> No real no religious Jewish community, correct? >> You went to Yeshiva? >> And luckily my parents put me in in a Jewish school in a Jewish school uh which almost happened by accident. My parents used to be in the uh schmatta business. They had some men's uh clothing stores. My mom was scouting out schools, private schools for me. >> Secular private schools, right? >> Yeah, secular private schools, yeah. Uh she went to a very prestigious uh private school in Englewood, New Jersey called Elizabeth Morrow and she met uh uh someone in the school there that she knew. She She was working as an admin in the school. I don't know exactly what her function was. And she basically told my mom like, "Listen, when you're done, let's go to the parking lot. Let's go talk outside." Basically, what transpired during that conversation was that she should not be sending her kid here. And it's not like the kids that go through that system, they don't end up on the right day or they're not on the right path, right? They're uh They tend to get into drugs, this, that. It's not just not the right place. She said, "Hey, why don't you go check out? There's a Jewish school 2 minutes away from here called Moriah." And she went unannounced to the school without a tour, set up, and uh the principal at the time walked her through the whole school. She saw what was going on there. All the kids were in kippot, smiling. She's like, "This is where I want to send my kid." >> Wow. >> So, from that, uh the family became more and more religious. I happened to have met my wife in high school who came from a religious family in Monsey. So, that also helped accelerate it further. To point now where the entire family is has been shomer Shabbos for a long time now. Over 15 years, something like that. >> I I'm stopping you for 1 second. I I don't even realize I don't even know if you realize what you just said. There was one woman in a totally secular private school who decided to have one conversation with another woman out in the parking lot, and she changed the direction and trajectory of an entire family generationally. >> at Alumah. She didn't even work at Alumah. >> And she didn't WORK AT [laughter] ALUMAH. BUT I THINK THAT'S SUPER POWERFUL. Every single one of us has tremendous power. You never know. You have a simple conversation. You can literally I always say this. You have two trains leaving at the same time from the train station, and one is angled 1 mm to the right. At the end, they're in you know, they're in two totally different destinations. A nice word, a little bit of guidance could take a person on a totally different journey. >> I can't think, but I know of countless examples of uh myself when I've given advice to people, and I've even forgotten about the conversation, and they remind me about it months later or years later and saying, "Hey, like, do you remember that conversation we had? Well, I did XYZ because of that and thank you for that." And I had zero recollection of actual conversation happening. It actually just happened yesterday. I I went to my buddy's engagement party and at the party he brings me aside and he says, "By the way, that conversation we had in the elevator right in the office, where you said like, it's time to get married, like, figure it out. >> [laughter] >> Like, get it done." Uh this was 5 months ago. He said, "After that, he got super motivated and like the third girl that he ended up going out with after that point, he ended up getting engaged to and hopefully God willing will be getting married to and >> Beautiful. Okay, so you you go to high school. Did you go to Israel at all or you stayed local? >> I did not go to Israel. I I did want to go to Israel. My dad was not a fan of the idea at the time and also at the time was a lot of action going on there unlike today, different type of action than today. So, it didn't end up happening. I went straight to NYU. >> What did you go for? What type of degree? >> I had I was an econ major. >> Nice. And what was your first job in your life? >> Was renting apartments in Manhattan. >> How old were you? >> uh this was in high school. So, I think I must have been around 15, 16 years old. >> So, you were renting out apartments at 15 and 16? >> Yeah, during the summers, yeah. >> Now, did you have a job also while you were in college? Was you holding something down then? >> I I kept renting apartments I think through the freshman year in college. Uh I did I attempted to do some retail leasing and then I started doing commercial sales. This was my senior year in college, uh which keep in mind was 2008. >> Mhm. >> So, >> Who was buying anything? And who was selling? Oh, selling maybe. >> Right. So, didn't really make any money but did learn a lot. Uh so, it was the last 6 months of college and the first 6 months out of college. So, it was about a year. >> Can I take Could you take us back to when you're 15 or 16? How does the idea, the notion to rent out start doing apartment rentals come into a 15-year-old's head? >> You know, my family's in real estate and it was just almost like a natural thing. It's like, "Okay, you're going to be renting apartments now for the summer cuz this is a job that makes sense for you to do and go out there, hustle, and figure it out." >> Okay, so you graduate college. Did you get married when you were really young cuz you said you met your >> I got married at 20, yeah. >> 20? And then what's your first like you know, 9:00 to 5:00 or whatever hustle, major hustle. >> I was still doing this or attempting to do the commercial sales thing 6 months out of college and then through my wife's family I was able to get a job at Greystone. It's another real estate finance firm if you're not familiar. >> I am. >> And I was there from 2009 through towards the end of 2013, so >> And when did you like launch your you know, your own your own gig and your own company? >> That was in January of 2014. When I was the month before I turned 26. >> Now what How do you go from a transition of knowing you're going to get a paycheck every single month to having to figure it out? >> So first of all, it was it was it was both me and my brother. It wasn't just me. It wasn't So we we did it together, which is which helps, right? If you have a if you have a strong partner, right? Especially if it's a sibling, right? Makes it that much easier. It And by the way, it's not easy, but it makes it easier. It we we were in a situation where after doing what we're doing for several years, we we we knew what the secret sauce was, what the winning formula was. It was just a matter of execution. >> Can you Can you share the secret sauce or is it secret? >> Uh the the key ingredient is is hard work. >> Okay. >> Hard work and hustling and putting in the hours. And and work ethic, right? That's the key ingredient for anything, for any success. I've seen smart kids growing up through elementary school, middle school, high school, and even college that use their brains as almost a crutch and didn't develop that work ethic, the grit. Other average people like me, right, that actually had to supplement and yeah, and work super super hard, develop the work ethic. And for sure, there's no question, there's no doubt in my mind that in any business, in anything you want to do in life, that is the number one ingredient you need to have. >> Can you take us into a moment a little bit of a valley? So, you hopefully have successes cumulatively. Is there a moment you could think of in your career either personally or professionally where you really hit a bad spot and you had to really climb out? You had to use a lot of Jewish grit, if you want to call it that, to get out. >> 2008 doesn't count. >> times. You have to say Well, not only not only 2008, but the first 18-24 months when I was at Greystone, I really wasn't making that much money. So, almost for almost my initial 3-year work career, I made almost no money, right? So, um until I started to figure things out. >> How did that feel? >> It actually felt terrible. But, everybody year two, year three, I started to figure things out and then after that, things started to >> you were looking at yourself in the morning each in the in the mirror each morning, like, how did you get yourself to I got to go to another day at the office when I'm not making any money? >> Day in, day out, day in, day out, work ethic. Yeah. Yeah. I eventually climbed myself out of that hole. >> Did Did you have a big break at any point? Like, you did your first really large deal and you're like, "Okay, I can do this." >> No, it's it's were smaller deals that we started cranking the smaller deals out. Eventually became bigger deals, more frequent. And uh like I said, it's gained momentum and carried that through. >> What What do you guys do when like there's a down market? >> When When rates spiked in Q2 of 2022, >> Right. >> through you could say the first half of 2025, almost a 3-year period, um yeah, it was on the multi on the multi-family side, it was very, very tough. It was very, very challenging uh for us. >> But you also have diversification, right? You're also funding other things. >> Correct. So, one of the one of the first things that uh we did when we started our business was we we said, "All right, we need to get this HUD lending platform off the ground." which was a specialized type of lending that we do. And then as soon as that started started to gain momentum, I said, "We need to diversify." And why did I say that? Because at the time at towards the end of 2020 was the first taper tantrum. That's when rates also spiked from the 10-year went from 1.4 to about 3% in a period of 4 months. Which killed about half our pipeline and um this set us back a lot. We said, "Okay, once we get this thing off the ground, we need to diversify because we can't be a one-trick pony cuz if rates spike we can't you know, we let's we we can't uh afford to potentially be knocked out, right?" And thank God we're in a position that rates didn't spike for almost talking about 22 from 2014, 8 years later. Which gave us enough time to really build out the business properly, diversify, add a number of verticals. Which actually helped offset the uh drop in origination income that we that we saw during that 3-year period. >> How does your your belief in God, uh your observance, your connection to Judaism, how does that, you know, work in tandem with with the with what you do every day professionally? >> Without the Emunah U'Bitachon, which is >> Faith, the confidence in God. >> Right. Um like I don't see how I would have been able to get it done. I just I know that Hashem is on my side, right? And it's just a matter of, you know, figuring out and navigating what we need to get done in order to achieve it. And then sometimes also when we hit a certain challenge, it's almost like maybe we should maybe maybe he's doing us a favor and that's not a direction we should be going down a path that we should be going down. >> Do Do you incorporate Torah learning into your day-to-day? >> I'm I'm very big into Torah learning. Um I'm a big proponent of it. I personally have take I don't want to I don't want to say that I learn a ton, but I've I've increased my my Torah study uh considerably over the past 2 3 years you know relative to what I was doing prior to that. >> What Why? What happened? >> I don't know I wouldn't necessarily say it was a specific event or or trig- something that uh specifically triggered that. I just I I noticed that it it was definitely helpful in my life. I wouldn't necessarily I'm saying it was very over- overall very helpful in my life. I wouldn't necessarily say it helped my business life per se. >> Sure. >> Uh maybe it did as a byproduct, but just overall just way more level Listen, in life right? You want to go down the right path. And from time to time people sometimes get diverted from that path make a little too far to the left, a little too far too far to the right. I'm not talking about politics right left. I'm just talking about the the path. >> Right. >> The path. And Torah study for sure helps you stay in that lane way better than anything else you could do. Any other mitzvah you could think of? Stuck out what you know what we're big on. >> kindness, to go >> those things are all important, but I'm saying in the game of life when you want to stay in the right path, there's nothing that's going to help you stay in that path uh easier than uh to uh more effectively than Torah learning. >> What brings you happiness in life? >> Okay, so happiness in life is I would say it's just uh family, being with family, being with my kids. Um that's another lesson by the way that I learned later in life. In my early work life I was working like a dog and I was one of those weekend dads that basically just saw their kids on Shabbat and like Sunday and half of that time I was you know, Um so I made a real effort to be more present in the house with the kids over the past several years, 5 plus years now. And uh that definitely made a big difference. That's for sure number one on the list. If you're talking about from a business perspective, it's what I call mind expansion. >> Right? >> I don't know what that means. >> Mind expansion is when when you have an epiphany moment in your head where you can now believe that you can be in reach a certain status. >> So mind expansion? >> Yeah. >> Oh, when you expand your >> I can I know I can make I can make X amount of money. I know I can start this other business. I know uh I can do XYZ and now you start formulating that plan in your head of how you're going to get there. So it's that it's almost that epiphany moment that excites me. It's like, "Oh, we're going to go we're going to go we're going to start doing this now." >> What's your favorite thing in the whole world about being Jewish? >> You're part of an exclusive club. >> What What are the rights to that club? What are the benefits of that club? >> It's unclear. From a business perspective, it's been extremely helpful. It's been extremely helpful because for the most part everyone helps out each other out. Like I said, you're talking in you're talking in shul, you're talking about guys in the neighborhood, kiddush, whatever, and things definitely come out of it. There's no question. If you're just talking about overall, I mean like we have emet, we have the truth. We're the we're part of that winning club. We've we we're where it's at and there's there's no doubt in my mind that it's the it's the best club to be in. >> Looking back on the last two decades of your career, it's probably more than two decades if you're hustling at like 10. But um what's your biggest regret? >> When when my brother and I started the business, right? We again, we were both very young. At after that initial 6-month period, things really started to take off. And you could say there were certain characteristics that um that I had that still needed to be uh >> ironed out. And ironed out. >> And eventually you know, we figured that out. I don't want to say I figured everything out, but for the most part uh the major issues. Um and I wish I had learned I wish I had the opportunity to almost like have that experience uh prior to starting the company. Um but it is what it is. It is what it is. We you know, we jumped into it and um >> It's part of your journey. >> Yeah, exactly. >> When you hire or when you look for partners, what's the most important quality to you? >> Competence. >> But you don't know that right away, you know? They're sitting in front of you or You can tell? >> I I don't want to say I can tell, but I we've got we've gotten much better at at interviews and vetting people. Uh but for sure competence, like I said earlier, work ethic. >> Mhm. >> Uh and uh just just from a personality perspective, just driving well with the the the people and the culture within the company. >> You know, most of the people who watch and listen to this podcast are just starting. They may be involved in their first real relationship. They have their first real job. They're contemplating their first investment. As somebody who's been there and done that, could you give them one or two pieces of advice of how they can be a little bit more successful, give themselves an edge? >> Jump in. Jump in and don't try to overthink, don't try to overcalculate, don't try to get every single detail up front. If you have enough of a game plan, jump in, do it, and you'll figure out the details along the way. You'll make some mistakes, but >> And what happens if you jump in and it doesn't work? >> Because you need to rethink your situation. What What put you in that What led that to happen? What put you in that position? Was it because you didn't have the proper game plan in place? Were you missing big pieces of the puzzle. You know, you have to have conviction, right? If you know you have, like I said earlier, the secret sauce or the winning formula, go for it. And if it doesn't work out for whatever reason, then maybe you didn't have it and you just need to rethink your situation internally and you'll figure things out before you potentially get it done do it again. And I would I would tell you in most cases it works out. >> You're going to be okay. Don't be scared. >> Yeah, just go for it. Go for it. And go for it at a young age, too. I'm not saying do it when you're 20 26. But don't wait till you're 40 50. You can you can you can don't say you're going to wait till I'm 40 or XYZ. If you know you have it, go for it. Go do it. >> And and what would you tell this >> [snorts] >> young fellow, this young lady, or this young couple that's trying to figure out where to land observance-wise, religiously, spiritually? What's a piece of advice that you'd give to them? >> You're going to live a much better life when you have a sham in your life when you when you when you have the when you have the Torah uh when your kids are are growing up in a Jewish school in a Jewish environment, there's no question. I've seen it. There's there's no debate. There's no Oh, but in under this circumstance. No. When you have a sham, the Torah, and your kids in a Jewish school, you're going to be way way way way better off and it's not even close. And my suggestion would be to not go for it necessarily in a big way up front, but grow grow steadily. Now, I won't say slowly, but grow steadily so that you build a proper foundation before you start going vertical um you know, floor by floor. >> Beautiful. This has been super insightful. Really interesting to hear a little bit about your journey, and I wish you loads of success uh going forward. And thank you so much for your time and for your wisdom. >> Appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Appreciate it. >> Thank you for listening to Jewish Grit, an Olami Mentorship podcast. At Olami Mentorship, we believe that everyone needs a mentor. What better way is there to tap into your personal and professional potential than with a Jewish mentor at your side? Learn more at olami.org/mentorship. Don't forget to keep listening on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.