Creative Approaches to Tackling the Housing Crisis

one of the things that has to happen in order to grow a business and keep the creatives working properly is to understand that you can't do everything and the quicker you understand that you can't do everything the quicker you understand that you have to create a secondary person who sees your vision and UL try to accomplish your [Music] vision Jeff thank you so much for joining me on the let's business podcast welcome thank you thank you for letting me come sure so there's a lot to talk today to you about obviously I've been following a little bit of your journey we got acquainted through a I think one of your team members which is always amazing to see somebody that's that's looking out for the success of their boss leader let's call it on the show we call it leader sounds nice a little too too warming but yes so let's start obviously you've grown and business you know your your core business in the architectural space obviously now you D you're doing much more than that you and real estate and other things we we'll get to give us a little bit the backstory for those who don't know you how you got started in the architectural um space and in general about your company so it's actually a cute story I went to school in Israel for a year and my mother says you're coming back and you're going to school I was like okay and she basically told me to go to architecture school because you're good at it that's how literally I went to architecture school that's how it all started my mother insisting on so I said it was a good strong woman in your life is always important so that's one thing that happened and then from there I said our journey started when I actually graduated college I would say that the industry was in bad situation and I actually was looking for a job very very hard to find a job I actually found the job by an expediter starting out first year within that year I realized that there was a niche within the industry and I just opened up my own firm while I was working for her that was about 15 years ago ever since then we've grown then we moved to my basement and then from there I would say we're a team of three we were business designs we rebranded did a few times since then once since then from business designs to rise architecture I would say we've grown from my basement doing one family houses basement apartments and small work like that to today I think thank God we're working in 16 States and designing about2 billion with real estate throughout the country just on the architecture side beautiful beautiful so I want to go back to a couple things you mentioned obviously going back first to the story with your mother you mentioned the words that you're good at it that's why she convinced you to go to school for architectural what is that and how much did that play out to be be true and the reason why you are successful in that so I will say that it's part of a story so the success that we have first of all I would say this has nothing really to do with me I wake up in the morning and whatever gets thrown at me that day from gone I I hope to the best I could accommodate as best as I possibly can that's exactly what we all do right and and we sometimes forget about that and we try to portray and push our own will in and it's much harder to do that anybody running a business doesn't see that I don't think has their ear to the ground of what's happening because the way business Flows In has nothing to do with my day-to-day operations what we do thank there's a line that I use a lot which is the little we control is maybe the input for sure not the outcome the outcome for sure not 100% so and then the being good at architecture does not mean you're good at running a business and that's really kind of a lot of the architecture firms in the United States are small M pop shops one and two people and the reason for that is because being an AR architect is very glamorous you get to design but the bigger picture is actually running a business running a business is a lot more difficult than actually being an architect because AR s your corner design really nice and I would say I got a little bit of my father in there my father dropped out of high school and he run his own business he ran actually a multi-million dollar manufacturing business and he sold and retired in his 50s I always joke I'm try to beat him by 10 years I I'm not there yet I'm working on it and then my mother is the exact opposite she's now she went in 40s went back to school became a lawyer majored in five Majors so so a little bit of both in me so I got my architecture me which is a little more the education side and then from the side of my father I got a little bit more business background than me so little more business savy and the truth is it's really a combination of both you have to provide a very very good product and the good product is important and understanding the nitty-gritty of that product is not just being good at architecture but being good at understanding the finances of it understanding all the aspects that come into the architecture know so expanding their business understanding why they're expanding their business how to better benefit them through architecture but at the same time it's not just the architecture it's the business aspect of it and you have to focus on the growth of it because or else you just get stuck in I'm an architect with two people in my basement and I'm a designer in the house and I'll call it a day I think this is such a valid point and obviously we we are very similar space and we're in the creative space as a branding and marketing agency at PEX I think I want to dive in a little bit deeper to this what you just said and I think a lot of listeners would appreciate it which is there is a ton of great talent out there that just didn't make it there maybe sitting still in their basement or maybe somewhere else and trying to design work either should it be architectural should it be interior design should it be graphic design whatever it is and they just cannot get ahead of themselves because of what you just mentioned is understanding that the craft is one part of it but what really will you know get you far is the business side of things is this something you realize from earlier like right away or is this something that a lot of creatives realize this a little bit too late or a little bit later in the game so to speak they're on for the creative process and maybe the first few clients or the first year or two in their business they're all about the creative process people say oh wow you're doing amazing work creative work and so on and so forth only at one point saying wait a minute I'm just doing it doing it doing it where's the business side of things I'm not seeing coming home with anything at the end of the week which one was it for you so I when I started out I was I was an architect you know I was dreams of Designing the next skysc I said B we've got to 18 stories already so it's not bad we're not we're not at the toall as we'd like to be which I said our goal is to hit 100 stories at one point but we'll get through it there I would say we started we started in the creative side and we really focus in the creative side and and I realized I would say within that first two years that everybody making money on the project was everybody but the professionals and so it actually approached me at the time I didn't take up his offer but actually very me's offer he's a very very business he says you're a very good architect you're very good at designing maybe I run the business for you you run the architecture we'll create a business together with this business and being cocky as it was at the time you know I said yeah I'll figure it out like I I would say it took me two more years in the industry to really kind of realize that he was running that in essence the business is more important than the architecture actually I wouldn't say it that way because that's a little bit incorrect so the business equally important equally important but to grow a business is more important to focus on the business side than the architecture side because there's so many other pieces of the puzzle that need to fit into place now if you're providing a bad product you can't sell it you still have to have a good product and that's really the good architecture comes into play but if you don't understand what's happening in the back end with businesses and how to grow those components of It ultimately you're going to be a three person shoing your basement forever and maybe you'll make money maybe you won't Whatever that would be at that point so again I just wanna I don't want to run over this conversation I want to dive deeper because I think this is a very important point and our listeners could take out a lot of good feedback from this and this is something we seen a lot of creators wrestle because let's say in the creative space the second you start looking at the business side of things more than the creative side of things all of a sudden you creative drops because now you start delegating the creative process to others and you might be the chief creative officer in in your company and I've seen it in our company I remember very early on I started doing graphic design like I'm talking about you know by the time we're recording this we we celebrated our 23rd anniversity a couple of weeks ago yeah congratulations thanks and I remember beginning I was doing Creative Design today I don't even have Photoshop illustrator on my computer little fun fact my son asked me on something he needed something for Yeshiva he wanted I should create something for him I said I promise you I can't I don't have the tools the farest I go is canva I was trying to play around with canva to design something for him came Monday morning asked one of my team members please do it for my son I need I need a 15 minutes so just comes to show because you can be great at both it's it's just at one point one has to take over but the challenge that creative people have at because if the creative process is what they enjoy usually they don't enjoy the business side of things because that's boring and sometimes somebody loves the the business side of things and it doesn't like how do you bridge the gap and be still seeing what's out there having the motivation on the creativity side of your firm and at the same time focusing on the business side of things you ever heard of this concept of duplicates I wish they exist maybe not with AI I have have a cloning machine in my Bas and I haven't feel me running around one guy does a CR side so so the answer is that there's something called duplicates which again it's a concept in business it's a concept in a lot of businesses and one of the things that has to happen in order to grow a business and keep the creatives working properly is to understand that you can't do everything and the quicker you understand you can't do everything the quicker you understand that you have to create a secondary person person who sees your vision and ultim Tred to accomplish a vision I would say that our staff bar I have thank God I have people that are with us since the beginning I have someone who been with me for over 15 years his wife works with me now I have people that I made a joke that they work with me and I said you know I knew you before your husband and now you have two kids you know and the truth is that they've been with me so long they know exactly I want they can see a job they can tell me I'll only send it to you once I know that you're going to be okay with it because they know what my creative process that that Rew some of your time to go focus on the business side of it because your designs are ultimately coming out it's not really where you're letting go with the design think letting go is the wrong word it's creating the ability for people to design with your vision at the same time that's one of the things that we did multiple times I think we did it you in the New York office the Lakewood office we put someone in place they're also very much in that position and it's allowed us to expand drastic because of it got it and I think this is a very important point is understanding that you know everything in life is a balancing act and understanding that part and you touched something we spoke about keeping your employees and keeping them happy for so many years I want to speak a little bit about that topic especially in the creative space because it's a fact and it's something that I don't mind sharing is when you grow a creative agency is that the talent is a huge part of who you are and the type of work you output and you depend on them and they depend on you and sometimes you could have phenomenal creative that had their own firms and they decided you know what I'm good at what I do let me make sure that my paycheck and my compensation is is where I need to be and let me just just create what are some some of the things you have implemented in your structure to keep your employees motivated to keep it that family style that you just spoke about so in the creative industry one of the things very very important that we find is that you have to give them the way to think because they want to feel like they're still being creative a lot of creators don't want to be stuck on the business side they don't want we have somebody who wants our well L let me just structure lak office I heard part I voted a partner who runs who runs the Lakewood office but on top of that we have S on the nther nethan that's also liis architect and she mentioned to us as well that she would love to open up her own business the reason she doesn't open up business she doesn't want the business headaches and the truth is that she's a great designer and she literally runs but she's already stepping into position of being the actual lead architect of the project because as that division grew we already have 16 employees there we need to have someone just become another more Visionary total Visionary business side of and pull that person out as that's happening we've noticed is that she's stepping into that position even though she doesn't want to into the business side of it but at the same time she's right is that the growth component in order to allow them to grow internally and grow with the company is the most important part to them because they want to feel like I think the creative is like the soul that I want to change the world you have to feel like they still changing the world you know yeah very important because it's what gives them the drive to gra and what gives us the drive to great both business WI also but the drive to create has to still be flourishing and has to be encouraged because you can staple it with saying You must design the way I want you to I find you lose a lot of people very quickly got it and speaking on the topic of company culture and speaking about your employees I have two questions follow questions one is in terms of you mentioned before about giving them the creative space we have seen it and obviously I've heard it from so many other agencies it's also the autonomy of owning the project and owning putting in their everything they got from creative side in the project which sometimes is a conflict on the business side of things because you have estimated a certain amount of hours you've estimated a certain timeline for a project and now the creatives are just going out of scope going out of original timeline just to be able to bring in the creativity into the process have you found any type of ideas that you've implemented in your company to conquer what I just mentioned that's a tough issue and we still grapples it every day we have created certain elements to hopefully curil as best as we possibly can but at the end of the day it's an issue what we do is we do actually mitigated by creating the circumstance instead of us creating the mount time for the project well actually go this is your project how long do you think it's going to take here's your timeline make your own timeline keep track of your timeline and if you don't hold to your timeline that you gave us we're going to hold you accountable to the timeline that you gave us so they'll actually work extra hours to accommodate it because like wait a second let me play with it no no I don't have time I got to do that because I told him get in three hours have have in three hours now they may they still go over their time they'll go to three and a half hours to four hours but you don't end up with like seven eight hours on a three-h hour window because they realize that they the ones who gave you the time they promise you they'll get that time I fin when they give you them the time they hold themselves accountable to it which in turn also helps with culture because they're growing internally by creating their own mindsets like it's so very hard for some like me because I can design a house while I'm sleeping I don't mean that's I but I know it's so backwards I have jokes I po the some my clientele they asked me a question about their house that designed five years ago I like gave you the bathroom of the upstairs it's off by six Ines between the she goes you say you haven't T my house for five years just he say I the ghost to be walking between your houses once I designed your house I know done you know I designed building a no like the back of our hands it's very hard for me to push the same ideals on my staff because I can do it so fast but at the same time if they give me their timeline and they say they can do it they want to hold themselves accountable we find that works immensely to keep us very close to our Tim tables beautiful and the second question I want to ask you is is there anything you've seen working from a compensation perspective of what you do with your teams in order to be able to really give them piece of the puzzle so to speak a piece of the pie in order to incentivize them for success of projects you have two different levels of incentivization so we'll have a what we call office operator office operator can get a piece of the overall puzzle and the actual ownership of the company but at the same time we have people that are office managers that can get a profit share conversation so the bigger they grow the more they do we'll get for profit share and it's actually one of we didn't discuss before but I actually run five other companies besides R architecture and one of them is called Jack perm services so we put somebody in charge there and what we did was we basically if you grow the company and create profits here and it actually grew the company enormously I think it's we've grown in in under 10 years into a a I think it's n to1 million Revenue a year and that the way that was done is because the profit she was so crucial to him he would watch the money and okay I got to more money this I got to money another for him every money he collect was a check in his pocket we UL give him a piece of the puzzle because he really did very well he the company very nice so give him a piece of the puzzle at the same time we even kept the profit sh on top of the piece of the puzzle he own because we felt that that was help grow the company drastically got it so what I'm hearing is that if you're expanding yourself to you know different Ventures and different different initiatives if you put in people you're making sure that incentivized to run it and run it profitable I wonder expand it out us not just Prof I think it's very important for them to the same way the the mentality that they want to feel like they just the designer what design World someone who's running a business which is more of a business position at the head they want to feel that they're they're having long-term growth so it's not just about giving them a piece of puzzle it's about making them feel that they're part of the whole entity to help for the growth it's very important that they're focus on that because it's not about the money only it's about understanding that it's there it's the more they own that project the more they will make it gross the same thing goes to a business you're being a secondary person they need to feel like they own that piece of puzzle like every one of the businesses that I've opened I brought in full partners and I said you own 50% of the business I'll fund big chunk of the project but you know that the bigger it grows the more money you make grow the business and you'll find that a lot more time that they want to grow the business because it becomes theirs it's their business not my business becomes their business again they're sharing profits with me and I always I always create a a window where they could over like our Lakewood office when we opened it up we gave them the first I gave them first a 5050 with a certain component without we give them a salary and the salary is going to be built back to us back to me so it was going to be only 5050 this year as he pays back the salary I realized that at the end of the at the end of the first years who's working so hard I actually uped we gave him his salary plus the 5050 share so he's getting both and the reason for that is it's very important that they see future growth also and they see that they will take a future growth EX exactly recently like I say in the last 10 years we've seen that that shift a lot where people are not just just looking for j o as we call it just a job they're looking to make a difference they're looking to see the growth plan and I I always tell our team members when we interview them you know before they start a job that whenever they ask me like a growth question I always say thank you for that question why because if we're responsible to help companies grow if you're not thinking about your own growth how do you expect to to think about companies that you're working for like one my part I talk about is one I thing that we pride ourselves that we can give people jobs that help them live not just jobs that they sit you come 9 to5 real life changing jobs and that's really the main goal of ours our business one of the things that one of the main goals of our businesses specifically in the lakid market is that we very much focus on that we can help people who need jobs that can help their for their families that we can actually provide that and we're not talking about small salaries our goal is to really provide real living wages for staff and help them grow internally which is why we have staffs over 15 years beautiful staff is I think we've lost maybe three employees over the course our entire operation wow amazing I know we're not going to have time to speak about all the ventures but there's one specific Venture that I want to dive in a little bit which I know that you're involved in building a new community in Florida a small project small project so let's get give us a little bit of the details and also how you came about this idea so the idea actually happened on a an naing conversation well someone said you know I have this idea about building a community and he goes to a partner of mine who I did a lot of work with in New York he says you know I'm only doing a Jeff Jeff's involved so he calls me up he says I have this project it's in Florida I was like were you crazy we're building the city you nuts we this is not normal go nowhere so you says no my God I said okay no problem get us let's do it that's literally how the conversation started u then in turn ended up being that enre dumped on my shoulders was was initially the plan the plan was that all three of us were going to do different pieces of the puzzle and then for some whatever reason is the project I dumped on my shoulders I basically ran point on the entire project and that's point4 and to me construction's easy because to build something very easy you know the points are puzzle but to build a community is much more complicated you have to talk about community building is a whole different entity I need to make sure that the people coming together are supposed to be together and no one's going to be hurt together and I also have to be careful about the legal side because you have to sell I have to go to the public so I have to every piece of the puzzle has to be pinpointed work together have a meeting everything could go wrong in a split second everything go right in a split second and there's no you know the hand of God you can see the hand of God pointing like no you're not going to do this you're going to do this like because I spent hours on this and like that doesn't work but the next thing works you know like everything just happens the way it's supposed to happen regardless of my planning I can tell you that much and that's how it happened and the truth is it's really when you say changing the world this is our plan is to change the world be we're most people see see it as a 1300 unit development with 800,000 feet of commercial space and two synagog and schools which is a small which is a community small small it's only 530 Acres the real truth is that's really only phase one our goals been buildt between 10,000 and 15,000 units there and really build a city there that's our real goal wow so tell us more about where is it up to like what's this current status the current status right now is that we've moved about a million cubic yards of dirt we've done all the grading of a side for the first days we've already started putting in storm drainage on the ground already so our piping's going on the ground our structures are going on the ground after those are in that's where Storm that's where water and sewer starts going in and then we go vertical at the same time so I would say hopefully the next couple months we're you're going to start seeing housing popping up all over the place there beautiful and if I could ask you a personal question on this like what's driving you I know that money is not the driving factor for the stuff that you do so what's driving you for such a unique big aous project the answer is that really money is really not the priority here and the truth is that I get complaints I get compl the synagogue in the morning I get complaints all places that the truth is that we have a major problem on our housing problem house I'm not talking about overall the United States United States has a 20% shortage on housing and it's going to get a lot worse when the migrants that came into the country start looking for housing it's going to get up 10 times worse now in the Jewish Community we have a bigger problem the bigger problem in the Jewish Community is that we need need to be near a synagogue we need to be near a school we need certain things in walking distance and our places of saturated look at willburg Brooklyn right is a good example you have people moving in because people want hous them besides the Jews the the Jewish Community has to be with in a five black radius it's shooting prices to the roof you have schools graduating close to 1500 boys a year and the Jewish Community like them get married with the first two years after school where they going yeah Bar Park just put out a paper in the in the last I think three days ago that that they finally realized they have a housing crisis there's not enough unit for the people in need houses there there's no place to go we have to create new communities we have no choice and the facts are is that if we don't think outside the box to create these new communities think of Lyon alone which is Lyndon which is L New Jersey they started L New Jersey they have over 500 families on the ground and expanding on a daily basis of close to 20 30 families because there nowhere else to go and the problem is that they have to see go further out and they have start new synagogues because the rules there's just no room so the problem is that even if we do go into these communities the cost is so absorbent into the houses look at houses in the Mony area you talking a million dollars for a three-bedroom house that needs to be ripped apart so to say it it's not sustainable so what we're trying to do is actually create a suain sustainable solution imagine buying a fly bedroom house for about $600,000 get yourself a nice piece of land with it live like a MCH you have a real school they are functioning you have cost of living there 30% less than New York and New Jersey area and if we can figure out a way to create a new community which is what we're trying to accomplish here we can at least take a drop in the bucket solve the problem doesn't m f problem be entirely but if we can do a slight fix or a slight modification to the problem and slowly that will go you saying you have to say you start with this small small little plant the seed and now hopefully grows into a forest where we can build thousands of houses and keep the price down one of other thing I was told my partners is that two things I told my partners some of them they didn't like so much but some of them they do like so much I told him though one the things I said is I don't want to raise the prices for the next 10 years and what I don't mean by raise prices that our profit margin that we set today I want the same profit margin for the next 10 years even though you're not going to make as much money as it is because you can raise the prices the goal is not just money here we got to keep our profit margin the same across the board the second thing I told that anything that you make money is a 10% I want to go to towards Co which is I wanted to go back into the charity into the community to help the community because the goal is to build the city and help the Jewish community solve a very very big problem that they're having and that's a housing crisis that's a lot worse than the housing crisis in the United States it's it's amazing what you're doing and you know um if you speak now we know there's mental health issues in within the community around the world but actually within the community as well and other issues and a lot of it if you speak to therapists you speak to different people from you know um activist so to speak they'll tell you A lot of it is the housing crisis because people are living in small apartments with with a lot of kids and it's just they don't have their peace of mind and ultimately that's creating a negative effect even on kids they don't know where to play they L Farm in Lakewood today a basement Department which used to be $1,200 a month today is $2,300 a month wow basement apartment and there's nothing available it's become a disaster it's a big problem when do you think the first few families are moving in we're hoping the next clear again every day that we're not vertical construction doesn't can't say we'll hit it or don't hit it because I don't know the facts on the ground as every day changes our real goal is to push 150 families at the beginning next school year I know it's starting it's getting very close we should have been vertical already we're hoping to go vertical very soon so we can do actually accommodate that beautiful I want to ask you one more question because we mentioned a couple of times Partners in this conversation for for this project and other projects I know you mentioned that you have different businesses with different partners I I as well have a lot of different ventur and different partners what do you look when you partner with some someone what are you looking in a partner it's a good question have to think of give me a second to think about a good answer that's sure it depends what the partner is for in real estate Ventures I prefer partner that's a little bit not involved because I want them to see the vision and help us grow that vision is not necessarily so much good because sometimes everybody has their own Vision in business I think the partner that I bring in is very important that they have the vision of the growth of the business we're trying to accomplish like we've want a partner in Lake where it's going to example I sat with him I think we negotiated for almost five months before we actually pull the trigger on it and the reason is because we want to make sure that we both understood the tra trajectory we're trying to accomplish within the business and that was a priority to pull us off it's really crucial and I learned this the hard way I'll tell you that I learned this the hard way it's really crucial if you're bring in a partner that you really hammer out in details before and put it in writing even if you're the best friends in the world to make sure that you both understand what your plan is a good example is this project my partners were supposed to be very much involved in the day-to-day operation and they're very much not right a good example I learned the hard way that you have to write things down in paper because as much as you can agree on a table it could happen that it's not going to happen and then if that's the case how do you deal with those situations so like when I dealt with partner lb we actually spent I think we must spent $10,000 writing a contract on every scenario that possible could happen and what the outcome would be so there's no questions and then everybody can have like a state of mind where you're calm because you're not worried about that guy might s you or this guy might none of that's going to be the case because ultimately everything's on the paper everything's clear even if you negotiated before to make sure it's clear and the vision is the key component they don't have the same vision as you have you can have a part from day to tomorrow and the all the paper in the world can be written down end of the day you end up forming part anybody regardless yeah it's a great point and and I I'm strong believer that sometimes you Embrace diversity by bringing in a partner that maybe has certain qualifications that you don't have and I think um for certain people that works very well but you know there's a notion out out there that when things don't go well that's when you start fighting with a partner or ripping yourself apart sometimes it's just the opposite when if things are going very well and one partner wakes up and saying wait a minute I'm doing all the work where's my partner so it's it's exactly what you just said like if you could have a clear written agreement as far as what the responsibilities are and I've sat with meetings with potential Partners before they started like just even talking it out and I will be very blunt and I say what exactly do you want from the partner that you're not planning to do yourself and they can answer that question sometimes it's just money you know the person just doesn't have the funding sometimes it's they want to work together and I'll be sometimes very harsh on it and say you know what I didn't come to you to try to you know to convince me that I don't need a partner I said I'm not convincing you don't need a partner I want you should be so convinced that you need a partner that is very clear what you're going to be writing down I've heard a lot of times that Partners could be the bane of your existence sometimes and I realiz that a good partner is the exact opposite the example I use is my my lakid partner and I do not see r with time that doesn't mean we don't see and things he's extremely extremely Technical and I'm much more I would say esoteric saying it so I'll come in like this glarey design concept and we're going to put the glass in the column like but but how are you going to build it I'm like I don't know figure it out how you g build it tell me how you build it will sit hammer on me to make sure I can and and the truth is he's very technical and it's very good because I need some very technical in the business and we need some very esoteric in the business because we else he can't grow the business exactly works very very well where we kind of balance off each other that that concept is very important I think I think if you have a good partner the growth of the business is astronomically much easier to grow even if you may not see the front but if you guys see differently and see understand that you see differently do a lot more for each other quickly exactly and I think that's what I referred um before when I said Embrace diversity is exactly sometimes the worst recipe for a disaster with two partners is where they exactly the same type you want to have somebody that will question you so if you are a fast runner you will have somebody that's going to slow you down but the key what I've seen with partners that I've been involved and even people that I've seen successfully having partners is you don't have to agree but you have to agree to disagree and have to respect other the other partn opinion yeah when there is mutual respect then even if you disagree on something you'll come to an agreement to how to approach that challenge growth whatever it is so I appreciate you bringing this up no yes it's it's a great point I mean it's had am to success or or or fail so exactly where could people find out more about you or follow any to hear more about the ventures you involved question a lot of this quiet on the other side each one has one of the things I do my companies I actually have all them as strategic entities they don't actually not R One Wing because a lot of times they open up other companies we actually create each of our companies to be self-sufficient so for instance like we have an exod dining business but our exing business is not part of Rise architecture so they can do work for other Architects so all theing architecture so every single one of our entities are kind of the independent entities but our main business which our AR architecture business which I think bu off of is R architecture which they can check on AR ar.com we're on we're on LinkedIn we tried to make a little bit more prolific aspects of it but we'll get we're getting there one day at a time beautiful let's close with a four rapid fire questions are you ready okay number one a book that changed your life a book that changed my life that's a good question a book that changed my life actually will tell you the book that changed my life is is the goru in English is we see it right in behind you yeah right behind me the truth is I I would say when my wife insisted start sitting and and studying in the morning which I didn't do for a while and I study what I would say like very very heavy and that it changed the way I think there's no question change my life beautiful number two a piece of advice you got that you'll never forget piece of advice I got yeah piece of I got that I never forget is a lot of people run to real estate and run to what we call residual income Essence right away to generate things the first thing that's more important to generate is is a business that brings an income that you col off of don't run quickly a lot of real estate people are hurting very much now they have no other secondary income and they're very bad situation the biggest key and I think it I think that actually in that book it talks about you're supposed to split your money into three ways a third into business a third in cash a third in real estate the reason is because real estate could go bad could go good cash will always protect you for that fluctuation and the third that's in business is generating Revenue to you every single time so it's very important to keep your balance understand that you need Revenue based aspects you need cash flow at the same time you can then invest in other assets which is a crucial part of it beautiful number three anything you wish could go back and do differently I wish I would know what I know today 15 years ago you know do things a little bit differently you know always always you thought what would you tell your younger self I tell my younger self don't worry so much about the architecture get into the business on and last and final question what's still in your bucket list to achieve my bucket list to achieve is to hopefully there's a company called under heard Morgan and Morgan yeah yes so I I have to know the CEO of it I would love to figure out how he accomplished by Thomas 35 to be the CEO of Morgan Morgan yeah massive company right so he he actually I actually used to driving to school every morning he's younger than me I think he's 35 years old he made his first I think his first 100 million by the time he was 22 yeah oh wow yeah I think recently spoke to one of their team members that have like 6,000 employees around the world 9,000 9,000 oh wow yeah so the answer I would love to have an office in every state where we where we designning and the truth is to sound very superficial and sound like I'm on some type of stage and saying things on behalf of like getting the American flag or something right but the truth is I really want to do things that will change the world I I realized long time ago that just doing work doesn't give me a stve but doing something that makes a difference in the world and I don't mean just oh a nice project or big building so so can see I mean really like this project o Shelby which we're doing is I wake up if morning living it because to me I'm making such a difference and I I think that we sometimes think about business we say oh we're just going to make money if we can figure out a way to make a difference and at the same time we make money we make living on it and that is to me is is my dve my drave that keeps me going every day amazing Jeff thank you so much for joining us I know your time is valuable that is why in the name of our listeners will forever be grateful for sharing some of your time with us today it's been a blast thank you may I really appreciate it and I appreciate allowing me to speak absolutely [Music] he