Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:07] Speaker B: What's up, everyone? Welcome to the Real Estate Chicago Style podcast. I'm your host, Joe Smazel. I'm a broker, multifamily broker at Interra Realty, sell midsize apartment buildings on the north side of the city.
Also own and operate some small buildings with my wife Kate. Business called Smiles Apartments, also on the north side of the city.
Today on the show, I'm excited to chat with Ben Firestone. Ben is a guy that I really looked up to during my Marcus and Millichap days when I started.
Certainly admired the way that you've launched, grown the firm. Blueprint Healthcare Real Estate Advisors.
Blueprint has been the number one most active brokerage firm in the senior housing space over the last decade and has grown to over 50 team members and $14 billion in transaction volume.
Both big numbers or current numbers.
[00:00:55] Speaker A: Still, I think those are accurate. And first off, I just like to say thank you, Joe. It's an honor to be here on the show. I've taken note of what you guys have done and certainly not only exciting to watch, but also inspirational. So we got a couple of tricks up our sleeve too, and this is awesome to be here. Thank you.
[00:01:13] Speaker B: Podcast coming soon.
[00:01:14] Speaker A: Yeah, well, we got, we got a couple things coming, but good. I do appreciate the kind words and the opportunity to talk to you.
[00:01:19] Speaker B: Yeah, it's gonna be fun, man.
We just grabbed lunch with a couple mutual buddies, also recent podcast guests. And so I didn't give you any hints here on the rapid fire, but let's start with our rapid fire.
[00:01:34] Speaker A: Love it.
[00:01:35] Speaker B: Favorite intersection or corridor in the city, man.
[00:01:37] Speaker A: We just talked about Lincoln Park a little bit.
I like the grit of the Clyborne Halstead North Avenue just interchange, one of those six ways.
[00:01:48] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:01:48] Speaker B: Yeah, the six way intersections have gotten probably half of the responses to that question.
You also have a train right there too. There's a lot of buzz. There's some new development I'm not gonna, I don't knock that just reminds me of Chicago. I, maybe I know this. I think we have a new entry into this answer for you. After your dinner last night, you said favorite Chicago restaurant.
[00:02:07] Speaker A: Oh, man, I, I, I gotta give props to this Asador Bastion. It's awesome.
[00:02:12] Speaker B: He was stoked about it at lunch.
[00:02:14] Speaker A: Great.
[00:02:15] Speaker B: I knew it was coming.
[00:02:16] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:02:16] Speaker B: All right.
You're on a road trip. You stop for snacks and a drink. What are you grabbing?
Gas station.
[00:02:24] Speaker A: The 2005 Ben Firestone on his own dime at Marcus and Millichap running around Bettendorf, Iowa. I would get A. I would get a 16 ounce diet mountain Dew didn't yet develop my taste for coffee and snacks, man. Try to be low carb. Obviously doesn't work. Not like you, but I don't know, maybe try to keep it clean with some pretzels, those thin ones.
[00:02:48] Speaker B: There you go. Dude, the Diet Mountain Dew is a. It's a startling color. It's just so yellow. It's like. It's so freaking yellow, dude. It's, like glowing a little bit. It's wild.
[00:02:59] Speaker A: And I hated coffee and I just needed to. I needed.
[00:03:01] Speaker B: Yeah. One of my boys is like a connoisseur of Diet Mountain Dew, too. So he'll like, like, Code Red. He'll like, no, not that. Not like, did you order the Code Red?
[00:03:09] Speaker C: No.
[00:03:09] Speaker B: He'll opine on the mix. So, like, at the, you know, at one gas station or one fast food place versus the other, like, he'll know, like, if the mix is dialed.
[00:03:17] Speaker A: Wow. The other. The other, like, soda chapter that I. I really like is Diet Dr. Pepper. Oh. And I think one of the few things my wife, Gina, and my father, Fred Sharon common is the taste for diet Dr. Pepper.
[00:03:29] Speaker B: Yeah, it's something.
[00:03:30] Speaker A: Yeah. They bond over that.
[00:03:32] Speaker B: It's something.
[00:03:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:03:33] Speaker B: All right.
Favorite Chicago show, street fest, concert venue, sporting event to attend.
[00:03:40] Speaker A: Man.
[00:03:40] Speaker B: I know you could answer it four different ways there, but what comes to mind is, like, your favorite Chicago happening to. To attend.
[00:03:47] Speaker A: Sure. Oh, man, I love the Bulls. I love the Blackhawks United Center. Brings back fond memories.
I gotta say, as a lifelong Cardinals fan, I still enjoy an afternoon to Wrigley Field.
And now as a Highland park resident or quasi Highland park resident, I love Ravinia outside.
[00:04:04] Speaker B: That's cool.
[00:04:05] Speaker A: I don't even care what the music is.
[00:04:06] Speaker B: It's also just like, family friendly, too. So it's like laid back. You're like half hanging at a park, half going to a show.
[00:04:11] Speaker A: Yeah. And that's what I love about it.
[00:04:12] Speaker B: I agree. I don't think it's, like, slept on because it's very popular, but it's not. It wouldn't be the most common answer to that question, but it's really good.
[00:04:19] Speaker A: Yeah. I'm sure you get a lot of.
[00:04:20] Speaker B: Like, old salt shed, you know, which is tight, too.
Do you have a favorite building style? Particularly kind of like an urban building style, like greystones courtyards? Do you like the glassy high rises? Do you have any? I know your product type in real estate is a little bit more.
[00:04:38] Speaker A: Like.
[00:04:38] Speaker B: Agnostic to predict it, but, you know, there's some differences in kind of building style than what I think about as urban Chicago stuff.
[00:04:44] Speaker A: Yeah, I'd say typical healthcare real estate transaction is not architecturally significant for the most part.
[00:04:50] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:04:52] Speaker A: Honestly, what comes to mind is 333 West Wacker. You and I both started our careers. Love the building. Always have, even before I worked in it.
[00:04:59] Speaker B: Yeah. I don't.
Same, same. And now. And like it also represents something to us now. But it was like in Ferris Bueller, like, you know, it's in the movies. It's a.
[00:05:08] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:05:08] Speaker B: So for those that don't know by address, it's the kind of green tinted curved building where Wacker Drive goes from east to west to north to south or vice versa, depending on which way you're coming from. But very prominent building. Cool views too. We're on the second floor, but like cool views. You're on the river.
[00:05:25] Speaker A: Yeah, it kind of wraps the bend of that building. Kind of wraps around the bend of the river.
[00:05:30] Speaker B: It's also like aged well too. I mean, I know they redid the lobby there recently. I poked my head in inside. But like the building style doesn't seem like tired. Doesn't seem like. It doesn't. It doesn't date to when it was built. It's like it's just maintained a cool fact.
[00:05:43] Speaker A: 1980 construction.
[00:05:45] Speaker B: I couldn't even handicap it based on the style.
[00:05:47] Speaker A: Awesome building. Awesome.
[00:05:48] Speaker B: Look at.
Where's your happy place?
Happy Gilmore.
[00:05:52] Speaker A: You know, I love coming to Chicago. Honestly, now I've relocated my family and my. My life is in Florida.
[00:05:58] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:05:58] Speaker A: In Boca Raton, Florida. Which.
Do you know what that's. That's Spanish for. No. Boca Raton. No.
[00:06:05] Speaker B: My New Year's resolution was to learn Spanish this year. And I'm pretty disciplined guy. Like I stick to things and I. It's June and I have not started to learn Spanish yet.
[00:06:15] Speaker A: So, you know.
[00:06:18] Speaker B: Nice reminder though.
[00:06:20] Speaker A: Boca Raton's home. But I really love coming back to Chicago.
[00:06:22] Speaker B: What's it Spanish for?
[00:06:24] Speaker A: Oh, well, you're supposed to say Boca Mouth Raton. Mouth of the rat. And I say, no, it's the land of the retired Jew.
That's for later on in the show.
But no, I love coming to Chicago. I love Highland Park. I love the north woods of the Midwest.
[00:06:42] Speaker B: Yeah.
Kind of grounding over the summer.
[00:06:44] Speaker A: Love Ann Arbor, Michigan. We'll talk about that later, I'm sure.
[00:06:47] Speaker B: All right. Last rapid fire. Give it. Give us an up and coming Chicago real estate seen person that you feel like deserves some recognition. It can be somebody from your team, but it's got to be Chicago based. Chicago based or that, you know, just from your network.
[00:07:02] Speaker A: I mean, look, I love what you're doing, man. I love, I love the classic multifamily brokerage.
[00:07:09] Speaker B: I appreciate it.
[00:07:10] Speaker A: You're calling new people most of the time.
[00:07:12] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:07:13] Speaker A: You're making friends. You're selling the value of rep and you're selling your value prop on why you.
[00:07:19] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:07:20] Speaker A: And I think that's great.
[00:07:20] Speaker B: I appreciate it. One thing, you know, I'll.
I'll answer it more, you know, general to what I do than specific to me, because I.
One of the cool things about Chicago multifamily is like, my business here is very local. Like, I live on the north side of the city. My kids go to school north city. Our offices here, kind of north side of the loop, but in 90 plus percent of what I sell is on north side of the city. And it gives you this, like, attachment to the city. Like, I grew up in Iowa. We're talking a little bit about it.
But, you know, for the last 15 years, Chicago's been home and then like, further than that by way of my business. Like, I know every street. I never, you know, I know how to get to every building. I know the best coffee shop to go to, the, you know, good restaurant to stop to for lunch. And then, you know, I've sold a couple hundred buildings and, you know, so you drive around and you have these reminders of stuff that you've worked on. It kind of gives you this little bit of, like, pride or whatever for your attachment to the neighborhood. That's one of the coolest things about apartments in the city.
[00:08:23] Speaker A: Well, I think that's right. I mean, you know your market.
[00:08:27] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:08:27] Speaker A: And that's really the. What I think, and I think it's so cool to see where all these different people that were in the bullpen with us circa 2010, and Marcus and Millichip, where they've all developed and grown their careers and everyone. I think the consistent factor is that they all took the Marcus and Millichap credo of specialization.
[00:08:48] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:08:48] Speaker A: They found their market in their niche.
[00:08:50] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:08:50] Speaker A: And that's really what I think we built a blueprint on.
[00:08:53] Speaker B: So I want to, I, I want to talk about all of that. I mean, that's like.
So start by growing up a little bit of like. I mean, you're. You're a natural born entrepreneur. Like, you're, you know, you're a hustler, you're creative, good leader of people.
Did you exhibit those things? Growing up.
Tell us a little bit about school and then how you landed at Marcus and Mill Chap in Chicago.
[00:09:16] Speaker A: Oh, man. What? Again, appreciate the kind words.
Sometimes you just have to figure it out and you know, you wake up every day scared to fail, and then you look back and it's 20 years later and you're like, wow.
[00:09:26] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:09:26] Speaker A: Kind of proud we got going.
[00:09:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:09:28] Speaker A: Yeah. So, yeah, I think, you know, I think deep down inside I might have always been a better coach than a player.
I was the guy that was the, you know, least athletic guy on the football team, but I was the captain of the defense.
[00:09:42] Speaker B: There you go.
[00:09:44] Speaker A: To me, I think there was always like that whole like sports mentality team sports mentality really shaped how I really felt. There was a vision for what we could build when we left Marcus and started started Blueprint. So I think that really shaped the vision.
Great partnerships with people like Jake Gale, co founder Mike Siegel, who's in town today. We mentioned just people that you trust, people that you can build with, people you can be vulnerable with.
[00:10:13] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:10:14] Speaker A: And just building a great team around you. That, that really I think is the winning strategy.
[00:10:17] Speaker B: How did you guys. We'll go kind of out order at the kind of. You know, I, I like when these things are a little bit more fluid to the extent that I can be a good enough host to keep it that way. But you talked a little about the dynamic between your partners. I mean, I, I think that in real estate it's hard. Partnerships are hard in general. I mean, any partnership in your life is, it's hard. In real estate, I think it's especially so because it's something, especially in brokerage, it's very measurable. Like you can kind of track who's doing what, you know, and it's a, it's the beauty of real estate in general is you can get in what you put, get out what you put in. Yeah, but the dynamic then as a partner is like you want some, you want, you want one plus one to equal three or more. But then you also want it to be like fair where you're not carrying too much the workload. So how did you, how do you guys.
What's the dynamic between you, your co founders and partners in the business? And like, do you have a, do you have different specializations that you focus on? Are you guys, you guys are obviously long term friends, like, how does it work?
So after the very rambly way of asking how does the partnership work for you guys?
[00:11:24] Speaker A: I think it's such a compelling topic and There's a lot to unpack. But I say first off, just philosophically speaking, I think the best partnerships, the partnerships that last are those that complement each other and people continue to invest in what they're good at and then yield where someone may be better at that. So, yeah, you know that that's an interesting kind of philosophy from how you take that and implement it into a business.
I always felt like there was an inefficiency in having exclusive partnerships.
Right. If you were the Smazel Firestone Group at Marcus and Millichet, you know, we could have something that didn't necessarily fit with putting the right deal team on the field.
[00:12:13] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:12:14] Speaker A: So at Blueprint, as we grew and expanded, we saw certain people with certain strengths and certain needs niches, both geography wise, because they may have lived in a different part of the country.
[00:12:25] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:12:25] Speaker A: And also product types. So the same buyer pool for institutional class A private pay seniors housing, which we do about a third of our business in that space.
[00:12:35] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:12:35] Speaker A: Is not necessarily the same constituents, market participants, people and philosophy that operate in the skilled nursing niche, which is another roughly third of our business.
So we decided that we would design the business where there was a centralized analytics function. And Ryan Chase we talked about earlier, he's been instrumental in building that. So all the books and records that come in, everyone's leads come in and they go through the centralized analytics.
Call it the A team.
[00:13:09] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:13:11] Speaker A: And they figure out how to underwrite it, what the story is, along with the broker who brought it in, of course. And then we figure out the origination is kind of who sourced it, but who's the best execution team for the deal.
[00:13:25] Speaker B: Interesting.
[00:13:26] Speaker A: So no two deals. Very rarely are two deals the same exact deal team. So I could bring in a deal that is in Arizona and I'll bring in my partner. Amy Sitzman, who lives out in Orange County's from Arizona, knows that that space really well. And Amy and I would partner on this deal. Same customer could have a different asset to sell that's based in Michigan. It's a portfolio of nursing homes in Michigan. And of course I'm going to call Mike Siegel. So we always think that putting the best team on the field for every deal is that optimal way rather than having the same partnerships go to market together and try to take all the originations and execute with that deal team.
[00:14:08] Speaker B: So I mean my immediate reaction to that is I would think that the customer like the pitch to the customers.
It's awesome in that because you're just like every assignment you're putting the best team on the field for. And we've got this incredible roster of talented brokers based on the deal, based on their relationships, based on their, you know, where they sit, based on the area of the country that they know. We're going to put the best starting five or whatever on. On your assignment.
The other thing that comes to mind is I feel like that would be very challenging at your scale to maintain some level of like, fairness or like, you know, your brokers feeling like, well, you know, I don't know. I'm going to use a name like. Okay, so Joe from the Arizona assignment did a great job and was very additive to that deal, but he's not going to be on the Minnesota assignment for this and this reason. But Joe starts to feel like, you know, I added a lot of value. I got to know that customer. How do you.
So the answer just like, you have cool people and you figure it out.
[00:15:10] Speaker A: No, it's not. I mean, we do have cool people and they do figure it out. But really, again, in learning and crashing the car so many times along the way, what we found.
And really looking back in our days at Marcus and Marcus had so many things that were underappreciated.
[00:15:25] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:15:26] Speaker A: And great systems and things that we just didn't give any credit at the time.
[00:15:29] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:15:30] Speaker A: But like when you're designing this brokerage company, you realize that really to solve that problem, Joe, you've got to figure out how to find the right. The optimal balance of internal competition.
[00:15:43] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:15:43] Speaker A: If you don't have that, you can't drive revenue and internal collaboration.
[00:15:47] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:15:47] Speaker A: So how do you yield? If it's a zero sum game and there's dollars and I want as many dollars as possible. And I know this guy and this guy's my best friend.
[00:15:55] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:15:55] Speaker B: We've got sales contests, you know. You know.
[00:15:57] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:15:58] Speaker A: So we found that there's certain things you can do to balance. And we found that balance to be a little more collaborative at Blueprint than it was at Marcus and Millichev.
[00:16:11] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:16:11] Speaker A: Where you don't really want to leave your buyer list on the printer because someone will take it. And then all of a sudden you're out of a paycheck and it's zero sum. It's yes or no, Joe or Kyle.
[00:16:22] Speaker B: It is wild. You know, like I.
[00:16:24] Speaker A: In.
[00:16:24] Speaker B: In preparation for this. I was thinking back on. So we were at. You were at Marcus millship from like 20 2005, 2006 to 2014.
[00:16:34] Speaker A: Ish.
[00:16:34] Speaker B: Pretty close.
[00:16:35] Speaker A: Very close. 13. I was. We left in 13. And I started in January of 05.
[00:16:40] Speaker B: Okay. So I overlapped with you from 2011 to 2014.
And when I started there, you, your partner, Jake. Partner Mike. Kyle Stengel, Scott Niedergang, Gina Lolio, Steve Rockman, Evan Halkius, Michael Marks, Jason St. John, Nick Kanage, George Gas. Jamie Clow is my mentor. I mean, it's all those people that I just rattled off have been very. They were very successful then, and it's.
[00:17:06] Speaker A: Been hall of Famers since. Hall of Famers on that list.
[00:17:08] Speaker B: It's incredible. But an issue with the way the platform was set up, as I observed, is the market started to perk up and. And in the Chicago apartment space, there was a lot of hiring, and, like, it just felt like there was hiring for the sake of hiring to some degree, and a little bit of, like, cannibalization of, you know, some of the market share because of that. But when you think about, like, the core roster that was there, there was so much good. And, like, I'm so thankful for everybody that I met there and the way that I was, you know, John Prince Bila hired me, and the way that he, like, trained was very formal and, like, really learning the blocking and tackling.
[00:17:45] Speaker A: Well. I knew you were going blocking it.
[00:17:46] Speaker B: And I met so, like, you guys, the guys I just rattled off, and we're like, this example of, like, guys that were young enough to be relatable but had been doing it for long enough to show that this works. And so, like, you're sitting there fucking banging your head against the phone, like, trying to make a buck, but you still. In the offices around, you still see, all right, this is the light at the end of the tunnel.
Do you remember any of the folks, like, from when you started?
[00:18:13] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. I mean, that was.
[00:18:14] Speaker B: Who was. Who was on. Who were the people for you, even if they were only a few years older than you were, similar age. Like, who were the people you kind of, like, looked up to when you started that showed the example of, like, all right, this is going to be worth it.
[00:18:26] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:18:26] Speaker A: I mean, so first off, love that.
That scene, right? I mean, those are great guys. I run into them in Chicago, some Michael Marks the other night. I mean, it's just great seeing people.
[00:18:36] Speaker B: Selling Nike Town and stuff. I mean, like, really, it is.
It's. It's crazy to think about.
[00:18:41] Speaker A: And there were some characters that I think just notable mentions that were omitted from your list. And you may not remember Michael Bennett, but he was.
[00:18:47] Speaker B: He was right before me.
[00:18:48] Speaker A: He was exceptional. The Guy was. Talk about character.
[00:18:51] Speaker B: It was only just, like, the lore of Michael Bennett, you know, it was some outrageous story.
[00:18:55] Speaker A: Oh, my God. You could write a book about that guy. And he's still doing it.
[00:18:58] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
[00:18:59] Speaker A: Love it. But who comes to mind? I mean, Jake Gale, who is my partner to this day, 20 years later, you know, he brought me in, and the story was that I was hired to open up the St. Louis Shopping Center Market.
[00:19:14] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:19:14] Speaker A: That was my job. That was my business plan. And on the.
[00:19:17] Speaker B: He was doing senior housing or.
[00:19:18] Speaker A: No, Jake was doing seniors with Mark Myers.
[00:19:20] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:19:21] Speaker A: And I step into the office.
My boss at the time was living in Columbus, Ohio. Couldn't get him on the phone. Didn't really know what to do. And Jake walks over and he says, hey. Hey, buddy.
I saw your resume. You went to Michigan. I went to Michigan.
Do you like Chipotle burritos?
And I'm thinking, like, remember, I wanted.
[00:19:44] Speaker B: To interrupt you for saying it's wild how much money you guys have made together after that way of meeting each other. Just like a hysterical way to get to know somebody.
[00:19:53] Speaker A: Well, back in the day, when we started blueprint, you know, Ryan Chase always says, people just kind of roll up on the shores of blueprint. But so Jake comes over and he's like, you like. And I remember, like, oh, shit. Like, my grandpa told me, there's no free lunches.
What's going on?
[00:20:07] Speaker B: Do I got to buy my own?
So, yeah, so.
[00:20:10] Speaker A: So Jake comes over and he's like, why do you want to be number 16 on the depth chart in shopping centers? And you could be number two in the office, in senior housing. And they sold me on this growing niche, and I'm like, Dude, this guy's 29. He's got a place in New York. He's got a Porsche. He seems like a pretty relatable dude.
[00:20:28] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:20:29] Speaker A: Like, go.
[00:20:31] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:20:32] Speaker B: So that was it.
[00:20:33] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:20:34] Speaker B: So take a step. Like your audience. You. You speak senior housing. You live senior housing like, you know, everything. But a lot of the audience that I think is going to listen to that does not appreciate the different kind of subcategories within, you know, like, senior housing has.
There's an overarching, like, senior housing, and you guys have different verticals within to cover the different product types. And I also don't think that people will appreciate. But I just kind of, like, by overhearing it in the office and stuff, understood There's a lot more complexities in a senior housing transaction than there is in an apartment deal or, you know, People that have just transacted on their home or whatever and that's their only. So give us like the 101. Like what do you look at as the senior housing subcategories and then like what makes them each their own category.
[00:21:28] Speaker A: Sure. So it's a great topic. And this is kind of like day one at Blueprint. You sit down and just take notes and it's kind of. It's a lot to. To consume, but really the biggest difference between selling an apartment building where you're collecting rents and you're paying the property tax and utilities and a couple other expense line items, we're really selling operating businesses that happen to be properties.
[00:21:52] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:21:53] Speaker A: So there is really a spectrum. It's called the acuity ladder, where you have independent living for seniors or even active adult. That looks and feels a lot like a hospitality property. Yeah, it's more like an apartment building. The. The labor is relatively light.
It's private pay. It's where the active seniors go.
The.
[00:22:17] Speaker B: So easier deal on the spectrum.
[00:22:19] Speaker A: Yeah, because it's a lot more like an apartment. It just has services, it has dining, it has activities, it has staff, probably more than an apartment, but not as much as an assisted living facility. So those deals trade in terms of cap rates a lot closer to apartments.
They operate at a higher operating margin. If you look at your standard apartment deal in the north side of Chicago, you're probably looking at about 50 cents of every dollar that comes in as rent going to the bottom line. That might be.
[00:22:49] Speaker B: Depends on the way we underwrite it.
[00:22:50] Speaker A: But yeah.
[00:22:51] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:22:51] Speaker A: Okay. So independent living in today's market operates in the 30s, 30 cents on the dollar. Because there are more costs even though your rate's higher. Yeah, there's a, there's a. There's more operating costs.
[00:23:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:23:05] Speaker A: So then you go up that acuity ladder to assisted living and even memory care, where it's still private pay. There's a little more health care where you're paying greater rates. The operating margin there is a little lower and the cap rate environment's a little higher.
[00:23:21] Speaker B: But you're. But the clientele in the memory care and is like, are they receiving a lot of services and stuff? Is that where you think they have a nurse coming and then all of a sudden then you get started to get the complexity of like the efficiency of like the nurses and therapists and their billing hours and stuff like that. Does that start to play a role?
[00:23:40] Speaker A: We're jumping ahead kind of to skill. Skill nursing, which is the highest acuity. But assisted Living is you would need some help with daily life.
[00:23:47] Speaker C: Yeah. Okay.
[00:23:48] Speaker A: Toileting, bathing, getting dressed, feeding medication, reminders, that kind of thing. So you've got more staff than you do in independent living. You got a little more rate, mostly private pay now there's some subsidies and some Medicaid waiver. Some states have, have entitlement programs for assisted living. That's kind of in the middle and that's where you're seeing the majority of the dollars and the capital flow into the space on the private pay side and then from there because it's hard.
[00:24:17] Speaker B: Enough to have some barriers to entry, but it's easy enough to get your arms around and, and there's still, there's.
[00:24:22] Speaker A: Still, you know, the new supply is lumpy. You've got a licensure, you know, a governing licensure by state.
There's a lot of staffing elements to the underwriting and then you go all the way to skilled nursing, which is what you think of as a nursing home.
[00:24:38] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:24:39] Speaker A: And the majority of the dollars that flow into that property in that operation are going to be coming from the government, primarily Medicare and Medicaid.
Long term care for Medicaid.
[00:24:50] Speaker B: So you have, you have the government paying and in different areas, I'm assuming that there's different levels of promptness on the payments and you know, different levels of solvency with the government funding and stuff like that.
[00:25:02] Speaker A: Every state has its own Medicaid program.
[00:25:05] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:25:05] Speaker A: And it's a federally matched program, but they have a different reimbursement scheme. And then that product type, the skilled nursing tends to operate at a very thin margin. A lot more like a hospital.
[00:25:17] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:25:17] Speaker A: So they'll operate it at 10 to 15% operating margin. The cap rates of historically been 12, upwards of 13. They've come down a little bit because of how much capital has entered the space. But that's really a government pay separate market where the buyers and the operators are largely distinct from that of what you say. I see seniors housing. Seniors housing kind of refers to the whole umbrella.
[00:25:41] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:25:42] Speaker A: But if you're in the know the market, seniors housing would be assisted living, memory care and independent living and skilled nursing would be its own skill segment.
[00:25:50] Speaker B: Where do you guys look at as a firm is like the, is there, is there one of the spaces that you feel like has the most opportunity or that you're spending the most. I don't see the most focus on, but that you look at as the segment of one of those three buckets that'll probably grow the most over the course of the next five years.
[00:26:08] Speaker A: So. Absolutely. First off, there is a finite amount of skilled nursing. There's about 15,000 skilled nursing facilities that are in operation in the United States today.
It's very rare that builds a new one. And you have to get. There's a, there's a. What's called a con in most states where you can't just build another one because of the demand.
[00:26:28] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:26:29] Speaker A: So that's kind of fixed. There's a ton of capital flowing into that space.
But where you're really looking at supply and demand trends is on that private pay, seniors housing.
So that's the piece that I think will grow the most in line with the baby boomers coming at us fast and furious over the next 10 to 20 years.
[00:26:48] Speaker B: So it's a. You're just talking about the supply and the demand of the actual product. Not so much from an investor standpoint. It's not like your inventory versus the investors that you have to match with it. It's more about the bodies coming into the space and the need to create more housing like that.
[00:27:04] Speaker A: Yeah. So. But that's really the underlying supply and demand factors that dictate investment and, and supply and demand dictates cap rates and the, the investor return, the market for return and risk adjusted return has to do with where we are in occupancy as an industry.
[00:27:23] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:27:23] Speaker A: And how do we fill those units and get stabilized pricing.
[00:27:28] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:27:29] Speaker A: And then how do we figure out where to build and grow supply to meet the demand?
[00:27:33] Speaker B: One thing I've always thought was cool about senior housing is just like as a broker too, the barriers to entry. I mean, nobody, it's not that just anybody could pick it up and do one of these deals. It's not that you go into Columbus, Ohio for an example and you know, a senior housing deal comes up and any broker in Columbus can do the senior housing deal. It's, it's, it really is its own specialty. It really is a specialized execution from a brokerage standpoint. So in addition to blueprints, healthcare or blueprint, focus specifically on the healthcare segment and senior housing. What do you, what else do you look at to sell blueprint as unique? And you could answer it either unique to, you know, pretend you're in a pitch to a client, like what makes you guys different than the other firms that do it? Or when you're recruiting, I've gathered from following, you know, being friendly with you guys, you know, following you on social media, seeing the marketing posts of the parties and everything. You guys are fun place to work. So what makes it unique from that standpoint too?
[00:28:37] Speaker A: Yeah, so we definitely have a. A culture that I'd like to consider attractive both in terms of people coming on. And we work very hard to manage and, and build our culture.
But we also, like I said earlier, we. We like to take our work seriously, but not ourselves too seriously.
[00:28:54] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:28:55] Speaker A: So the clients, that translates to the clients.
I think if you're looking at a rubric and a pitch or what makes us unique, I think that centralized analytics and the market coverage, the broad market coverage and what we say is unrivaled analytics, that combination is very unique. No one else has that combination. There's certainly people that can think about the investment side of the business on a sophisticated level that we do.
There's certain firms that have a lot of people running around doing deals.
[00:29:24] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:29:25] Speaker A: But no one has that unique combination of both. And how do we organize that with data behind it?
So why is there a high barrier to entry in senior housing? Well, you got to understand how to price the assets, and you got to understand who buys it and who finances it. So those three ingredients, coupled with our broad market coverage and those analytics that are centralized really, really makes us unique in the marketplace.
[00:29:49] Speaker B: What are, like, specific things? You know, I also, we talked a little bit about this idea of the podcast and why it's important to put content out and why it's important to kind of be marketing.
I don't know, a little bit more thoughtful in your marketing. You know, when we started doing, when we started the brokerage business, we'd send out like a just closed flyer or just listed flyer. I don't think I had LinkedIn yet. Certainly nobody was doing anything on social media. It was all very much like calls, you know, even emails to a lesser extent. Like, I, if I look at the emails per day now versus back then, it's why, you know, it's just changed. And so what do you look at as some old school for yourself and for your firm? Like some old school business practices, whether business generating or like team building, whatever. And then what are things that you've had to be, you know, the dad Ben, we were talking about, we feel old. Like what, you know, you, you know, some of the. Some of the newer folks or the more hip folks had to, like, kind of talk you into.
[00:30:57] Speaker A: Yeah. So, I mean, first off, credit to Marcus and Millichet for just the blocking and tackling.
But when we started Blueprint, we wanted to figure out how to reach people and grab their attention. Right. And this is a Whole different chapter where we thought, you know, getting the clients and the deals would be the challenging part. The challenging part was far from that. It was more about managing the business and keeping everyone motivated and aligned. But so. So one of the things.
[00:31:25] Speaker B: And yeah, you took for granted that you were already pretty good at business development.
[00:31:28] Speaker A: Yeah. So the clients rallied around our entrepreneurial spirits. That. That was actually surprisingly the easy part, but interesting. I don't know if you know this, but my sister and my father are both comedians.
[00:31:40] Speaker B: Oh, I didn't know.
[00:31:41] Speaker A: And they started a show together in New York City called the Punderdome. Okay. And it's a live game show where people would compete. It's kind of like a rap battle meets poetry slam. But who can come up with the best pun?
[00:31:57] Speaker B: That's awesome.
[00:31:58] Speaker A: It would be a great rapid fire.
[00:31:59] Speaker B: That's awesome.
[00:32:00] Speaker A: Okay. Chicago.
[00:32:01] Speaker B: I'm not get creative enough.
[00:32:03] Speaker A: So when we were thinking about our marketing strategy, like, rather than just say, hey, we closed a 44 unit assisted living facility in Chicago, we said, hey, how can we get people excited to read this? So we came up with this marketing campaign called the Done Deal Marketing campaign.
Hey, Done Deal. And we would say, like, one that comes to mind was Vegas, baby. Because we saw it. And people would be like, oh, I want to read about that.
Yeah, yeah. Or something that people would, like, identify with, like, one. Another one is one of my favorites. Actually won an award. We did last year. Kentucky Fried Sniffin was a portfolio of Skinners. So everyone wanted to, like, read about it. And like, this stuff's boring. It's price per unit and cap rate and numbers and figures. So how do we make it interesting? How do we go out to our broad database, send this out, and how do we get people to actually read about it and think about not only like, how can I sell my building for 10 million bucks, or I want to name that Done Deal. I want to hire Blueprint so I can get out there and be clever. And it worked. Crazy, crazy effective.
[00:33:05] Speaker B: Well, I think also. And I consumed all those. You know, I read them all, liked them all on social media. Not just because I'm buddies with you guys, but because, like, it. It was creative. It's like, it was a long enough thing to read. Not too long that you're annoyed, you know, but also, like, that campaign lives on.
[00:33:22] Speaker A: It lives on.
[00:33:23] Speaker B: Keep them going.
[00:33:24] Speaker A: 800 real estate.
[00:33:25] Speaker B: Sometimes people get, like, defensive about 835 deals.
[00:33:31] Speaker A: So it's a lot of puns. We're running the bottom of the tank here.
[00:33:35] Speaker B: Good Thing. It runs in the family, dude.
[00:33:37] Speaker A: Yeah, we kind of crowdsource it sometimes. We get the clients. Clients involved and. But yeah, there's been a lot of those and we're proud of them with.
[00:33:42] Speaker B: All, like, you know, so 50 plus team members, number one firm in the space for over a decade. Like $14 billion worth of deals. 800 and some deals. Like, what are. Do you have measurable goals for the next level of the business on any period of time? A year, five years, three, you know, 10 years? Like, I guess the question is a lot of people would look at you and say they're at the top of what they're doing. They're doing a great job with it. They're having fun. He works with people he's friends with.
But I know with how ambitious you are that it's. You're not satisfied. I don't say satisfied, but you're not comfortable in the success to the point where you're just like, not innovating, not pushing it. So what's next? What do you have on the radar?
[00:34:27] Speaker A: It's a fun question. And, you know, I think, you know, what drives motivation, ambition, all that stuff. You're really somewhere in between greed and fear. Yeah, sometimes both. But, like, I wake up every morning scared.
[00:34:42] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:34:43] Speaker A: Like, you know, what happens? How do we evolve? You know, this AI advent. I'm like, oh, like, how do we get our head around that? We're racing the computer to Terminator 2. Like, what's going on? So, you know, how do we invest in our data? How do we think about AI from marketing to underwriting to just general running a business. That's an interesting content, conversation and initiative we're working actively on.
We also do different product types. Now. We're not.
[00:35:10] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:35:10] Speaker A: Major food group cre. We're not apartments. We're not multifamily.
We're not shopping centers in St. Louis. Never have been one day.
[00:35:17] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:35:19] Speaker A: But we do medical outpatient mob business.
[00:35:22] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:35:23] Speaker A: And that's been a success for us. It's been a lot of fun. It complements. There's some. Some buyers, investors, lenders that cross over in that space. So that's been a great bolt on. And then something we're really exc about is behavioral health.
So we're taking old buildings that are functionally obsolete as assisted living or skilled nursing facilities, and we're going out and we're putting some kind of behavioral use. And another Marcus Millichap alumni you may remember, Andrew Sofretto.
[00:35:49] Speaker C: Sure.
[00:35:50] Speaker A: We were talking to him a couple years ago and we said, look, fun.
[00:35:53] Speaker B: Guy, smart guy, he's great, he's great.
[00:35:55] Speaker A: He's a leader of men. And we said, let's build a practice, let's bring you in, let's come up with a business plan. Let's specialize in something that no one else is doing.
This space looks a lot like skilled nursing did 20 years ago. When I started my career, there was really very little consolidation. It was very fragmented industry and the cap rates are trading at wild numbers. So it's an attractive investment for those new movers and those cowboys out there.
And how do we develop that market? So that's been awesome. And then the other thing that's probably even bigger initiative where we've historically had a lot of success matching buyer and seller as investment sale brokers, how do we think about matching those buyers as borrowers with lenders?
So how do we vertically integrate a capital markets practice? And we're doing some really exciting things that go beyond just the matching function that some of our competitors were doing on the deals that we had already underwritten, evaluated in the process of selling. And these guys are going out there and getting fees just because they know how to finance it and have some of the resources to get that deal done. So that's really exciting for us and that's really where we're heading. In order to grow the platform is to go really deep on the financing side of the business.
[00:37:13] Speaker B: Interesting. I like that. A combination of like bolting on some kind of complementary business lines or in terms of like product type and then marrying the debt side with the deal making the brokerage side of it seems like, you know, I think in institutional brokerage in the major food groups it's pretty common to have like the debt side as well as you know, you go in with kind of both and you say here we can do it all and you can solve for it when you're marketing the deal, you know.
[00:37:40] Speaker A: But like complimentary lines of business but then vertically integrate and that capital markets function is just, it represents a wild opportunity for us to double the size of our company, to double our revenues, to, to get a bigger valuation. The enterprise value grows because we're doing things that are not necessarily just fee driven.
So really exciting for us.
[00:38:04] Speaker B: Yeah, and you're true, you're showing to your, your clients that your true resource, your true kind of like advisors. It's not your tr. I'm not saying that you were, but it's not like you're trying to push one solution. Whereas if you have, you know, Say, maybe it makes sense to refinance or recapitalize the deal. We can offer that solution. What? You know, it's your roadmap. Tell us where you want to go.
[00:38:25] Speaker A: Absolutely. Absolutely.
[00:38:26] Speaker B: I want it not so much from, like, how you apply it necessarily to running your business, but for your own. You know, you talked about kind of, like, waking up with the fear, and I. It's like. It's a relatable thing. You know, it's. I think that it's a.
There's some commonality in people that are ambitious and have that kind of, like, angst that none of it's given. You know, and I feel it, too. You know, you. You can accomplish a lot. You can have a lot of people saying nice things about you, but, like, in your head, you wake up and you're still thinking about the three deals that are, like, are not going the way that you thought you would and how that, you know, how do you, like, harness the fear and that, like, angst without fucking going crazy.
How do you use it as opposed to being, like, a slave to it, you know?
[00:39:13] Speaker A: Geez, if. If I knew the answer to that, brother.
[00:39:16] Speaker B: That's why I'm asking. I mean, you could. Well, no. All right, so you seem to have a lot of fun, too, in your life, right? I mean, like, your kid. Like, I see your involved dad. Like, you throw a lot of parties. You know, you have a lot of friends. So is that part of it? Yeah, you just kind of balance the different buckets of spending time with people you like to spend time with. And then when you're, you know, when you're at work, you just do your best to stay driven.
[00:39:39] Speaker A: Yeah. You gotta maximize every hour and every day and every event and, you know, you gotta be present. And that's something I've learned over the last 10 or 12 years, that if you're not present, you're gonna lose the authenticity of the relationships you have. So that's something you work on every day. I remember my dad told me one time, like, nobody wakes up in the morning and thinks, what can I do for Joe Smozzle.
[00:40:02] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:40:03] Speaker A: Maybe your wife. If you're lucky enough to have a good relationship with your wife. Maybe she does, maybe your mom does. But you've got to figure out how you can manage all of your resources and your input and maximize your output.
[00:40:18] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:40:19] Speaker A: And you got to do a lot of strategic thinking on that.
I don't know. How do I stay sane? I took up tennis in the pandemic.
[00:40:27] Speaker B: That was fun.
[00:40:28] Speaker A: Believe it or not, that's like a.
I didn't really have many hobbies when we're starting our firm. It was like, be there as much as I can for the family, but make sure this thing succeeds. So tennis has been fun for me. It kind of. You can zone out a little bit, and oddly, it kind of reminds me of playing football. You kind of, like, read where the ball is going. You.
[00:40:47] Speaker B: It's like the soft old man version of playing football. But, yeah, still, like, you're competitive, you're doing something with your friends.
[00:40:53] Speaker A: It's fun. But, yeah, I mean, trying to stay physically fit. I'm not. I'm not at east bank pushing up 350 like you are, but, you know.
[00:41:04] Speaker B: Well, you know, it's a. It's a funny thing.
[00:41:06] Speaker A: Midtown. Midtown.
[00:41:07] Speaker B: There's just, like, a balance of being excited that you still have that fire in your belly.
[00:41:13] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:41:14] Speaker B: But also, like, got to kind of enjoy the ride, too, because if that gets away from you, it gets to be like a slippery slope where you're like. Yeah, you just feel like you're on a hamster wheel, you know? So I've tried to figure out how to kind of, like, part of doing this, honestly, is like, I have fun when I do these, and it's, like, fun. It's. It's like, not just the act. These are fun to shoot, but, like, talking to people about. It's like, just.
They see me doing something different than just transacting. And so I've recognized that the more, like, fun I can incorporate into my day while still making it productive is helpful for my headspace, I guess, you know, and, like, talk to a bunch of people that I like. But having a, you know, doing it a different way, it's good.
[00:41:58] Speaker A: So one of. One of the challenges I find in leadership is you still want to stay proactive. And if you decided to work on the business, not in the business originating deals, which pays the bills, but on the business, and you're just reactive, solving problems all day.
[00:42:16] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:42:18] Speaker A: Like, you're never gonna grow. You're never gonna. And the way our model works is I gotta bring in business to make a living.
[00:42:25] Speaker B: So you still do a lot of business development, Right. I mean, a lot of the clients.
[00:42:28] Speaker A: Call Ben, and frankly, that's what I'm better at. And, you know, paying the bills and, you know, cutting expenses and managing software. And, you know, fortunately, we've got a good team around me. But you gotta really manage your time so that you can stay proactive. Otherwise, you could Just be reactive all day and be on that hamster wheel. So I. That's something I think about all the time. And as soon as I fall into that trap, I say, whoa, I gotta figure out what tomorrow's gonna be, and I gotta go out there and get on a plane and go to Columbus.
[00:42:58] Speaker B: Ohio, you know, have. I would imagine, you know, having good partners, good team members helps in that because, like, you could be.
You could be in. You could have a week or a day or a month or whatever where you just have a lot going on and, like, in on that. The deal management or business development side, you'd be so busy with that that you don't have the headspace, the bandwidth to think about working on the business.
But then, you know, there's some yin and yang to that too, where maybe Jake or Mike or Ryan or one of the guys, maybe they're, you know, kind of swung the other way and they're thinking about something. You know, it just kind of helps track, on average, where there's some balance to that stuff.
[00:43:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:43:40] Speaker B: When you're doing it more alone, sometimes you. You're just like. You blink and you're like. The last, like, six months went by, and I didn't think about anything to do better or different. I just did. I was just, like, deal focused.
[00:43:55] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, you know, as my career has evolved, I really enjoy. And I think it's more intellectually stimulating to think about, like, rather than putting a deal team together on a deal.
[00:44:06] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:44:07] Speaker A: Like, how do I put the right people in the right place to succeed for the whole organization.
[00:44:14] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:44:15] Speaker A: So it's been really fun to see people like Ryan Chase grow into leaders and have 15 people work under him, and then I can just trust him to do his thing. I got Steve Tomes is running the sales team, and he's making sure to air traffic control the intake and the client matrix and make sure to focus on that balance of internal competition and internal collaboration.
Eileen Gehring, who runs marketing for us, she's a creative. She's a Division 1 college athlete. How do we put her in a place so that she can continue to keep us fresh? Brad Edgeberg. It's Guy Workaholic. This guy's the fastest response time I've ever seen. And he pays all the bills. And I know that we have that mentality. He's all over it.
Sam Schumer, you may know him. He's an incredible ad to our management team leadership. Team lawyer, too.
[00:45:06] Speaker B: Right.
[00:45:06] Speaker A: Brought him in. This guy just solves problems. He's Practical.
[00:45:10] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:45:10] Speaker A: He's incredibly talented, and I get along with him, and he knows how to vibe on the same frequency. That's what we talk a lot about. So that's been great. And then it allows people like Mike Siegel or Jake or 15 other people to just put their head down and go out and execute deals.
[00:45:26] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:45:28] Speaker B: Is there. Was there a particular point whether it was a milestone in your business or even, like, you know, you were at a party and you. That you guys were hosting, you took a breath and looked around that you really remember as feel like you really, like, did something. You were proud. Like, I'm sure you're proud of it. You should be. I'm sure you are proud of it all in general.
But, like, did you ever have, like, this.
A moment of realization of it, like, kind of coming together how you thought it would or better than you thought it would?
[00:46:03] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:46:03] Speaker B: Any billions of dollars closed or people, you know, people hired or what represented that moment of, like, God, we did some cool here.
[00:46:12] Speaker A: Another. Yet another shout out to Marcus Millichev. They had this sales contest called naa.
[00:46:18] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:46:18] Speaker A: And if you sold enough and got enough commissions in the door, you got to go to Hawaii. And it was like, I did it. I made it right. That was kind of a code of honor, badge of honor in the Marcus Milch bullpen. So when Jake and I were designing, how do we get our team motivated and aligned? We start this program called baller. And actually, Gina Firestone, my wife, who has done a lot for me in so many ways, but she came up with the acronym BALLER Blueprint Annual Leadership Retreat Telling. And we've done it every year. Yeah, we skipped. We skipped a. A year during co. A year or two. But this year will be baller 10.
And, you know, baller 10 with the X. So we brand nailed it with that.
So she's pretty clever. But Baller, like, the first Baller, look back, and there's all these people around this table at a restaurant in Mexico, and I'm like, whoa, we've really fed the family, and that's really cool. So every year I look back and have a couple moments of clarity during that trip. It's usually somewhere tropical during January or February. Kind of the same formula that NAA was. How do we recognize not only individual efforts, but how we all did this and how we all got here? So that's really cool. And then the other thing that just. I'm.
As I've gotten older, I really recognize. Look yourself in the mirror and realize you're not so great at certain things.
And then you're pretty good at certain things.
I like throwing a party. I like throwing a party.
I'm pretty humble guy. But as it relates to what I think, I'm pretty good at having a good time. So we had this huge party, man, almost two years ago. And it was our 10 year anniversary. It was 2013 to 2023. And we, we aligned it with a conference that pretty much every one of our clients was in attendance here in Chicago is at the House of Blues. And we had modest Yahoo who speaks the language to a lot of our clientele, particularly on the skilled nursing side, open up. And he actually played our launch party 10 years prior, but he reprised. He opened up for Wyclef John, who was a friend of another friend of mine. And, and it was just a badass party. We had the confetti drop and it was just really co. We had about 800 people at the park. Oh yeah, it was wild.
[00:48:42] Speaker B: That's a party.
[00:48:42] Speaker A: It was wild. All, you know, friends and family and clientele. And it was just kind of a. Looking back and say, we kind of figured this out. It was pretty cool.
[00:48:50] Speaker B: It is pretty cool. I think, doing stuff like that, you know, talk a little bit. What are we at on time? Just so I can plan.
Okay, cool. Wrap up after this.
When you look at your team across the country, how it's clear that you have a culture, a fun place to work, you know, you don't take yourself, you take the business seriously, but not, you know, nobody takes themselves too seriously.
How do you do that when everybody's spread out?
[00:49:19] Speaker A: Man, that's, that's, that's a great question.
[00:49:22] Speaker B: I mean, because it's hard to do even when everybody's here.
[00:49:24] Speaker A: Absolutely. And everyone's like, life gets in the way.
[00:49:26] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:49:27] Speaker A: You know, we've got a responsible PTO policy. People go and go on vacation, they got to get their work done. But yeah, I think a couple of things we do to kind of tie the room together, if you will. So one is we meet as a team, entire firm, every Monday.
Every Monday. We've, we've grown too big to go over the pipeline like we used to. We do announcements, we put out a newsletter. It says, here's the schedule for the week. Here are the big events on the horizon.
Here are the themes of what we're looking at.
[00:49:55] Speaker B: What are, what's the thing? What's a.
Give us a recent, like topic of conversation for one of those meetings or an action item or a goal, you know, what's an example of a Monday morning topic that, you know, now we can look at it in hindsight. So that was a. That was a good one.
[00:50:10] Speaker A: You know, so, you know, the, the fodder really starts with these done deals. So every time someone closes a deal, rather than the old Marcus Millichev, you know, pitching your deal, why buy.
[00:50:21] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:50:22] Speaker A: Pizza and deals.
[00:50:22] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:50:23] Speaker A: You know, tried that one.
This one is how do we take a success story?
Close a deal, the guy or gal who led the deal, and let's tell the story.
Maybe a couple challenges, maybe some things you did so that the rest of the team can learn from that experience. So that always gets the juices flowing.
[00:50:44] Speaker B: Somebody's proud, they tell about a success, and then everybody else, especially younger people. It's very motivating to hear.
It's not about the metrics, it's about the story. You know, how to come together. What was the hardest part about it? Why did the seller do it? Why the buyer do it? You know, there's always a time that you're not sure whether it's going to happen or not. There's this point in the, you know, if it's like a movie, there's this, like, inflection where, like, what's going to happen? Is the bad guy going to win is, you know, and it's a cool like. But people, you know, sometimes, myself included, we get hung up on just getting the, you know, getting the basics out about the deal. Don't. You don't tell the story. And that's what people care to hear.
[00:51:24] Speaker A: Yeah. The numbers don't matter.
[00:51:26] Speaker B: No, no, it's not interesting.
[00:51:28] Speaker A: Yeah. A couple other things we do, Joe, we have a shout out campaign.
You know, Smell invited me on his podcast and we had a lot of fun. We had lunch before and like, he didn't have to do that, but that was cool. And I want to recognize that. I want to recognize that someone internally at Blueprint did something that went beyond the scope of the job description.
[00:51:49] Speaker B: That's cool.
[00:51:49] Speaker A: So that's cool. We have a summer summit once a year. Everyone at the firm is expected to be here in person in Chicago. We have a lot of fun, little content, little learning experience, what's going on with the firm globally. And like, let's get together and then we have an awards ceremony that. This is something I got from summer camp, where there is different, either objective or subjective awards voted on by your peers. How do I recognize someone for the body of work they put out that year? And it keeps people coming back just Like, I kept going back to camp, so it was a lot of fun to put that together. It's evolved. It's fun every year. It's great to see people, you know, with the hardware. We have trophies. It's a little campy, but it's a lot of fun.
Yeah.
[00:52:32] Speaker B: You know, good for you for having some fun with it, though, because I think a lot of people would say, like. Or a lot of people do say they'd be a little too stuffy for that. Little resistant to, like, making.
But we're adults. We're professionals. But it's also fun to have fun.
[00:52:50] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Can't take yourself too seriously, man.
[00:52:54] Speaker B: All right, man. We're gonna wrap with two questions.
Could talk to you for a lot longer. And I, you know, I really. I appreciate how I thought it might go like this, but I appreciate how thoughtful you are about your business and the way that you approach the business and the way that you have your team.
Like, nothing that you're doing is by accident. You know, you and your partners. I know that you. There's other people involved in it, but it's cool to talk to somebody. It's motivating. Also, talk to somebody who is so thoughtful about business practices, what you want people to feel about your brand, how you want people to feel that work there. It's. It's cool. And you shouldn't take that. You should be really proud of that.
[00:53:36] Speaker A: It's cool to hear.
[00:53:36] Speaker B: Appreciate you sharing it, too.
All right, enough gassing you up. Last two questions.
A piece of advice that you'd give to someone. A lot of people I've observed listening to the podcasts are maybe getting started in real estate or in the kind of the earlier years of.
Of their real estate career. What's a piece of advice you'd give somebody to get started, get a little traction, and. Or propel their business to the next level?
[00:54:03] Speaker A: Man.
A couple things come to mind. One is take every meeting.
Everyone is willing to talk to you. Be a good listener. Yeah, I found that sometimes over the last 20 years, I've become a bad listener. And I'm my best when I slow down and I try to be a good listener.
Not as easy to do when you get busy and get all sorts of different obligations at home and in the business, but be a good listener. Take every meeting. Yeah, I know some people are like, oh, I don't want to meet with that guy. I would take every meeting.
[00:54:35] Speaker B: Especially when you're starting.
[00:54:36] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:54:37] Speaker B: Jamie, my. My mentor when I started is really good about That I, you know, I went to a couple meetings, it brought him along that were. Because I didn't know what I was doing. And. And they were clearly just like a waste of time. And I was like, man, I'm sorry. He's like, dude, anybody that owns a building in your market or that wants to buy a building in your market, doesn't matter how the meeting goes. It's worthwhile to do it. And it's just also, it's like reps. I mean, just like, then you. Then you get. Then you're there. And even if a meeting goes nowhere, you have the practice of the meeting.
[00:55:07] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, totally. It's silly not to. Some guys are snipers and they want to practice that probability brokerage, which has merits. But, like, I think you take every meeting and like, like you said, they say in Michigan football, it builds callus. Right?
[00:55:22] Speaker B: That's what they say at the Michigan.
[00:55:23] Speaker A: It's a hardball term, but it builds callous. Go. Go get those reps, dude.
[00:55:27] Speaker B: I agree. Also use the word.
You know, when you get busy, it's harder to be a good listener. It's harder to take every meeting. A client friend of mine is a guy named Ron Abrams. He owns a lot of apartment buildings in north side of the city. Is like, just a. Awesome guy to work with, too. He's fun.
And I was talking to him recently, and, you know, he's like, how you doing? And I said something like, I'm busy, you know, and. And I always say that I'm busy because I feel busy. And this is like, people want to work with busy people three weeks ago. And. And I am busy. I have a busy life, and I'm busy at work. And I. And I like that. It keeps me.
I don't know, I just do better when I'm feeling busy.
But he said, hey, I want to tell you, as he said, this is a friend, not a douchebag. He's like, you know, I read an article recently about how many people answer the question of like, what are you up to? Or how you doing? By saying you're busy. And he's like, try answering it a different way to just. Even if you're kind of describing the same thing, because people get sick of hearing everybody say how busy they are.
[00:56:24] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:56:25] Speaker B: So in the last three weeks, I've tried to answer that. I've tried not to say that I'm busy in the answer, and it's been a good exercise because I'm like, It makes me think about.
I serve some like, active and available. Like, I don't want to be too busy not to listen to somebody or, you know, like, I ran into a buddy we're going to have on the podcast soon at the gym yesterday, and usually I'm like, I just gotta get back. I gotta get. You know, And I'm like, yeah, I shouldn't be too busy not to be able to talk to somebody for 15 minutes, but it's hard. It's hard to kind of, like, change your mindset that way.
[00:57:02] Speaker A: That's good stuff.
[00:57:04] Speaker B: Last one.
[00:57:04] Speaker A: I'm gonna try that one.
[00:57:05] Speaker B: Try to not say you're busy. Just see how it goes.
I know you split time between Chicagoland in Boca, but headquarters your business are here.
It was a. It's a place that has a important part of your life. Why do you love Chicago?
[00:57:22] Speaker A: I love. I feel at home in Chicago.
I like the energy.
[00:57:26] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:57:27] Speaker A: I certainly don't miss the winter, but I gotta get here once a month or so, or else I kind of feel like I'm not providing and contributing and investing in the business that it commands. So I'm here all summer. I love coming here, even if it's a quick trip. I love seeing people like you come and see in the office.
It kind of brings me back to life. If I'm sitting there on my island.
[00:57:52] Speaker B: Out there, it's got a buzz to it, right?
[00:57:54] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah. It's great.
[00:57:55] Speaker B: You also. You have a good team here. The people in Chicago work hard, you know, city that works. I feel like we've got that.
I feel that buzz of, like, that hustle even a little bit with some of the younger folks lately. I feel like there's a little. You know, for a little bit, I felt like there was kind of like, some entitlement and, like, a little bit.
Felt like the hustle was gone a little from the. From the younger crowd.
[00:58:18] Speaker A: And it's like a lot of.
[00:58:19] Speaker B: Yeah, but I. But it was Covid. You're right.
[00:58:21] Speaker C: And.
[00:58:22] Speaker B: And it's like it's buoyed back a little bit. It feels like the younger folks are. Have got some hustle. They like to be in the office again.
[00:58:29] Speaker A: Summertime, I do. People fired up, walk outside. The weather's good.
[00:58:34] Speaker B: Sitting outside for lunch. It's like, man, the city's awesome.
[00:58:37] Speaker A: Yeah. And in Florida, dude, Florida is like. It's great for so many reasons, but you just don't have that. People are. People are not working at this pace.
[00:58:45] Speaker B: You got to figure it out. You got a little exposure to both.
[00:58:47] Speaker A: Yeah. I like being there.
[00:58:48] Speaker B: But thanks for doing this, man. Appreciate you. Appreciate you making the time.
Thanks, Joe.
[00:58:55] Speaker A: Thank you, man. It's a lot of fun.
[00:58:57] Speaker B: All right.
