On today's episode of Gathering the Kings. What happens in a lot of entrepreneurs is we get in our own mind. We rob us of our own success. Right? So recognizing that that's normal feelings but choosing to differently despite our feelings of inadequacy? It's amazing. They'll achieve great results, but, secondly, and here's really the magic.
If you start to behave in a way that shows it to your confidence Chaz you starting to build a take risk trying to do something new, You'll start to feel more worthy of that over time because feeling follows action It's not the other way around. What's up, everybody? I'm Chaz Wolfe. Gathering the king's podcast coming at you with another king on the stage. I got Mike Cating here on the stage. My brother. How are we doing? Doing well. Thanks for having me. Absolutely.
A fellow podcast store and business owner genius. I mean, you're just in this industry that is changing lives for, like, a lot of people, and I just really am excited to tell your story here today. So Tell us what kind of business is you got, Mike? Yeah. At a high level, it's pretty simple. We design, build, and rent, apartments, but really focused on driving down the cost of housing by solving construction. We're already achieving about a 20 to 30 percent reduction.
Someday, we hope to get to a 50% reduction in those costs. Wolfe, But imagine what that means. That means someday your rent could be half where your mortgage payment could be half. And that's our dream. Ultimately, is to solve America's housing affordability crisis. I love it. There's there's millions probably of Americans who who, if they heard that, would be like, wait a wait a second. You can do what? And so you're solving a big problem. And you said, high level, it's a big problem.
And I know that you guys have dialed it down in your in your in your, you know, manutia of the everyday, but we're gonna get to some of those things. I wanna know how does someone, like you, Mike, tackle such a world problem or for sure a US problem. Boy, there's so much that goes into it. You know, if I think the starting point is simply like Where is your heart at? What do you wanna be doing Chaz leader?
And for me, the core of it, is that I wanna make some kind of meaningful positive impact in the world. And my dad died at a relatively young age, and it reminded me how short life really is. Right? We only live about 5000 weeks here on earth, and I often ask myself, how do I want to spend the minutes I have here? So for me, it's about knowing what that problem is, making sure that to my core, that's what I'm aligned with. But then how do you go about solving it? Right?
Chaz same massive issue in itself. It's not easy. In fact, Elon Musk talks about how it's hard to produce a car. But it is 10 to a hundred to a thousand times harder to produce the system that builds those cars. And for us, we are working to build the system that builds housing at sort of from a manufacturing perspective. If you look at other industries and is industries like manufacturing have improved labor productivity by 760 percent over the past 60 years.
Mayer cultures improved it by 1500%. Wow. The world of construction, well, it's done virtually nothing at just 10%. So to simplistic level, we're taking the lessons learned from these other industries and applying to our Oh, Chaz a result, we're starting to see some of the success that those others industries have had. Yeah. I love that.
What do you you said that, you know, in essence since your dad passed, and it's given you a perspective of, you know, not necessarily counting the moments, but making sure each moment counts. Why why are you tied to something like this? If you're living on purpose now is what I'm hearing you say. Why is this target for you? This goal purposeful for you? Why does it fit into you? So maybe to health for you to understand my background a little bit where I came from.
My my my parents originally started this business. And early on, We lost everything when I was growing up. In fact, my dad got kidnapped in Peru. Believe it or not, crazy story there. And as I was growing up, I, you know, I was out there helping the teams and being part of it, all of it, all of it. I was probably pretty worth less. Right? My parents are paying me 50¢ an hour. That was probably more generous than I deserved.
And, eventually, I went off to college and I wanted nothing to do with the family business. But my dad really wanted me to join. And I did I didn't want to join fundamentally because I didn't want people to think it was given to me. You know, what I realized through college is that for me, I just wanted to make some kind of meaningful positive impact in the Wolfe. And I realized what was stopping me from joining this, you know, small family business was my own ego.
And so I had to work to get past that ego, and that's when I decided to join the company. Ultimately, why here, why real estate, why housing affordability became my life mission, was because I wanted to make a meaningful positive impact. And the most impactful way that I saw I could make given the situation of why I was in was real estate. Yeah. Right here. Right. What was in front of you. Yeah. The this is an interesting conversation.
Probably one that maybe you weren't pating, but I'm gonna bring it up because it's a big deal to me. And I think a lot of people that are legacy driven, what I heard you say was that your dad was forging a trail, as many entrepreneurs do, and, and you got to be on the innards of that.
Okay. Cool. But yet you yourself, entrepreneurial in your own, right, wanting to create value, wanting to give an impact to the world, like you said, But for some reason, naturally, we we we go against or we buck maybe just whatever authority it is. It's not it it wasn't your dad. It wasn't your dad's business. It was just that you needed autonomy. Mhmm. And so okay. You lowered the ego.
You you you joined the deal, but but really, what this is, actually, is a play of the next generation carrying the mantle and, and carrying it bigger, making it better. Yeah. And I've talked about this. So I I want your opinion here in a second, but I've talked about this of, like, my own children. My my own children are 9 and under 4 under 9.
And so, like, thinking about doing deals with them or doing deals with my grandkids is, like, obviously down the road a little bit, but I get excited about that right now. And how I envision it is creating something so big or, you know, flexible enough to where they can be them own selves, their own autonomy, inside of our family thing, you know, and it doesn't have to be dad's thing or Chaz's thing, but it's our thing. Talk about that because you're living this right now, literally.
It's an interesting struggle. And I think one thing I think a lot about is this quote that the 1st generation builds it. The 2nd generation maintains it and the 3rd generation destroys it. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And I'm living the same thing too with my own children as they're studying to grow up. Like, what would that possibly look like in the future. Mhmm. I think part of the mechanics that goes on is simply that with each successive generation, their lifestyle is stronger. It's better.
It's, what I'm quote, easier. And so you actually are robbing your kids in some sense the same struggles that you had to go through. But how do you recreate that without being fake in some way? And I Right. I don't have a good answer to that. But for me, I think I think the fact that my dad gave me some space was really helpful. He let me go off to college, do my own thing. I was big into special effects, and there was a few other businesses I was a part of. You know, he let me be in that space.
So I could wrestle with it. I could struggle with it on my own. I think it was really big. And then secondly, when I did join with my dad, he gave me a degree of freedom. Not not not unlimited freedom, but a degree of freedom in my space. Yeah. So there were points that I was clearly making a mistake in his mind, but he let me make that mistake. So I could learn from the scars on my knees instead of the whiplash from my dad.
And I think those two things helped me get comfortable in being a part of what my dad had originally started. Yeah. It's good. It's a great answer. I'm gonna give you one more word picture here or something I thought about because I want your perspective on it. I see that, you know, your dad or in this case, me, 1st generation, you know, blazing a trail, right, and I just I'm I'm here in the Midwest.
So, you know, out into the cornfield or the bean field and we're, you know, we're blazing the trail. Here we go. And at some point, what happens I have found is that most people fit in one of these 2 buckets. Bucket A is they just give them everything, right, give their their kids everything. And and it becomes easy because they didn't have to do anything until that moment where now they have everything, dad's gone or whatever the scenario is.
And it's it's the challenge there for them to now continue their own path it it doesn't work as well because it was given to him. Then you have the opposite where it's like they don't they're not giving anything, like, I'm not giving I'm not giving you knowledge. I'm not giving you money. We're giving it all away. Like, you gotta figure it out yourself. And in my mind, that's like taking them all the way back to the beginning of where I started and saying, alright. Here here's your trail.
Start blazing it right next to the one that I already blazed. And so I was like, well, that doesn't work either. The, obviously, the the the the moment here is how can we do it with them? So that way when there's a handoff, they can just keep going. You know? So to from your perspective, like, what do you think about that? Are you doing that currently? Is that was that what you envision with your kids? Like, talk about this for a second. Yeah. So for my dad, it was sort of that way.
Well, I think partly because he had no you couldn't afford childcare. So where was I? I was on-site him laying bricks and and picking up nails and stuff like that. Yeah. And I think that was good because I got to learn from him. I gotta be a part of it with him, and he never If you never handed things off to me, I ownership and what have you, I had to kinda earn my own, right, and build my own properties, which I think was good.
I think for my own kids, the way I'm thinking about it a little bit is for this organization, We have a clear purpose, which is ultimately to solve housing affordability by driving down construction costs, If having my kids a part of that is the best possible solution to helping solve that long term dream and great. If it's not, then great as well. Right? I'm thinking a little bit more about the purpose and the mission of what we're trying to accomplish before I'm thinking about family.
For our kids, we ended up setting up a life insurance policy. So if I pass away early, the organization can still run and and is really independent of my children and my children are taken care of, fairly well. What I've been trying to do is to meet my kids where they're at. And so one example of this is my my daughter got really interested in YouTube. So she kept pushing me over and over again to create her own YouTube channel And I thought it was just a passing phase.
I didn't want anything to do with it. Like, this just sounds like extra work. She was very persistent. And eventually said, okay. Fine. We'll record an episode. So we recorded some videos and we just started going with Chaz, and it started growing. Actually, one of our most latest videos, we actually filled up a dump truck full of candy, drove around the neighborhood, giving out candy to kids who wanted it, and then donated the rest of the local food shelf. And that video did quite well.
But what's been interesting is that she's sort of blazing her own path She's struggling through the challenges of creating her own content on this channel, but I'm helping her through Chaz. And that's been a really kind of fun way for her to learn the world of business. That's maybe different than the way I grew up with them.
Yeah. Yeah. I can't imagine that every last detail of that video was constructed by her, but I'm sure a good a good portion of the energy behind it was And so it's a good collaboration there of mind and and energy or spirit. You know? Okay. Let's go let's let's transition. I took you away sorry. I took you away to the family side. It's not normal till later in the show, but, you know, you you just laid it right on the planet wrong. Okay. So let's go business. And you you came back.
You started working with your with your pop and and he's giving you a little bit of space. You've kinda set the stage here. What was something that was going on in those early years for you where this was like a good decision that you made? Something that, you know, inevitably could be replicated by the listeners here today. So early on in those years, the I think one important thing for me is to figure out what my true passions were.
I think the 1st year or so, the kinds of work that I was doing with and for my dad wasn't things that were perfectly aligned to who I was. Sure. And so I think we identified as a team where I could best serve the organization and remove myself into that kind of role. And really maybe the corollary, the thing that I've really learned Chaz listeners can take away is that it's not enough to ask employees just to do something, or it's not even enough to have their buy in to go do it.
What you have to learn is to identify what their core genius is. And then you have to move them into the role that matches that genius. And it can be nuanced. Right? It It may not be a major shift. It might just be a little bit of a tweak, but aligning that really to a very high degree you get so much more meaningful output from people if you've lined who they are to that role at hand. Yeah. It's so good and a very perfect setup stage here for for some dive in.
And so there's there's ingredients, or there's a formula to this, you know, on our side, we use the culture index for personality, assessments, and logic and stuff like that. And then I'm actually a a certified working genius facilitator. And so I'm curious. Is that where you're headed with this? Or is this something that you're just using a a a word of genius? It it comes from a book that I read called multipliers. So that's where I'm referencing the sense of genius.
It's not necessarily an intellectual genius. It's just identifying what what you are most passionate about and have sort of this innate ability to do well. And there's some interesting things I think to execute well on. 1 is simply identifying what that is in people and then naming it for them. Right? Because they may not even see it in themselves. Yeah. Now when you name it for them, they get better confidence in it. The rest of the team starts to feel it and see that as well.
It's just to build up the group in sort of a positive way. And so kind of taking a step back wider. One thing that is really important to us is to build up the right culture and the right people and the right infrastructure to really serve our staff. And then if you get that right, a lot else can fall in place. If you get that wrong, it doesn't matter how good the rest of your systems and processes are. You're gonna fail as an organization.
So for me, wider perspective, the people are the most important thing about what we do. Yeah. Yeah. I had another challenge last week on a podcast say that he when he switched his mindset to rather than taking care of the customer, he took care of his people, and they took care of the customer. And I think we've all heard that to some, you know, variance. But it's true. You don't know it's true. You don't feel that it's true until you start putting it into action.
You're like, oh, why didn't I do this sooner? But going back to your statement of kinda moving people around and maybe small tweaks, maybe large understanding, naming it, all of that was just really, really good. I hope the listeners take a notes here. What do you what have you experienced when the clarity of that person? Like you said, maybe they've known. Maybe they don't know. But now that it's named or that it's it's public or obvious, them feeling heard.
Give us an angle here of what that plays into them now being the best version of themselves on the team. Certainly, they have a sense of feeling heard and feeling cared for. Like, you actually see them. You understand what their situation is in. And they since they're doing more of what they love and what they're aligned to do, they have a greater sense of joy in the organization as well.
When you get a disalignment there, what happens is they start to feel frustration that lead to resentment if you don't have a way, like, one on ones to sort of relieve some of that. Yeah. Another important thing to note is that When you just have people's hands, like, you're just telling them to do x, y, and z, you get a certain level of output from them.
But when you have their heart, because they're in well alignment with that organization, what you're trying to accomplish, you get so much more out of One of the things we talk a lot about is to hire the very best people. And we do that in this organization. We hire people. We fly them in from those states. Chaz work during the week. We fly them home on the weekend. We have people like one of our employees in 2007, Steve Jobs announces the iPhone.
He walks off stage and our employee walks on that same stage following Steve Jobs. And oftentimes at this stage, people are like, dude, might that sounds expensive. And the reality is it is. On a cost per person basis, you have to pay them top of market. But the reality is the best people unlock doors. They make things happen for you that you didn't know could happen. In fact, they produce at a level that's 2 to 5 to 10 times more than the average people do.
So instead of looking at a cost per person basis looking at a cost per unit produced. And from that perspective, they are actually at least expensive people. So for those of you who feel like you can't hire the best and put them in the right sort of genius positions in your company, My response is you can't afford not to. Yeah. It's good. What was your first experience with this? I mean, was it one person that you hired? Was it intentional hire?
Was it something that you stumbled into where you're like, wow. This is real, we should do this again and again and again. How what was that first experience like? Yeah. So early on, I had the perspective of I could save money by paying people less. And so we would actually look to hire the cheapest people we could find. And in fact, at one point, we had a temp labor service feed us employees, I'm telling you that is not the route to go.
Don't go there, and that's it was not gonna And at one point, you know, a mentor of mine came by and looked at what we were doing and said, Mike, you've got this all wrong. Like, all of these things that you're struggling with, the fact that your teams aren't working well together, the fact that people are unhappy. There's containment is Chaz there's a lot of frustration.
Yeah. You could try to band aid over it with certain meetings and personality tests and things like that, but you're feeling at your most fundamental thing, which is to hire the right people. So wait. What? And so through through step feedback, through some books that we were reading, we realized that we needed to change our perspective completely. And so it was almost overnight that we did a 180 turn, and we ended up laying off, like, 80% of our staff and rehiring on. The entire new team.
Yeah. And that that point this is the most important lesson I've ever learned. That point in our career We went from growing at about 10% per year. After making that change, we have been doubling in size for many of the years after Chaz. So radical change improvement. Yeah. What was the first thing that you did? Obviously, after you let the other folks go, in the process of hiring those best people.
Was there a little bit of a formula of what you were looking for, interview style, anything like that that would help the interview or the listener be drawn to some of those best people that they could go interview and hire themselves. Yeah. So there's a lot. The first is know what your values are as an organization. Make sure they're simple. Make sure everyone understands it. Make sure you truly believe them.
I think a lot of this, it's so critical to get yourself as a leader Wolfe aligned what you say your organization is about. In fact, it's better to have values that seem rough on the surface even if they as long as they're aligned with who you are, then they have some flowery values that don't line up with who you are. So I think that's step 1. Once you have that in place, Our number one most important interview that we go through is the values interview.
And so we actually have sort of a small booklet of questions that people ask the same questions every time that are lined up with those values to dev define who would be a good values fit and not. Eliminates a lot of candidates right there, especially in the world of construction. Yeah. Then we have skills based interviews. So there will be skills questions given what their skill set is. We do behavioral based interview questions as well.
Even after all of that, We're incredibly thoughtful about who we hire. Even after Chaz, after that, I still think we're only about 50% accurate in the hiring process. So what we do then is we do a trial period for many of the employees, not all the positions, but many of them. Where they come out, they get it hired, they get it paid, but they're out for 2 weeks. At the end of those 2 weeks, your coworkers will come together and make the decision if they actually want you on the team.
Now it doesn't work if you don't have great to begin with. You gotta build up the right infrastructure. But if you have great team members, they don't want to put up with b players. They only want a players. And so they will nix a lot of people we bring out just based upon that. And our our acceptance rate right now in our company is something like point 4 percent. It's incredibly low. Harvard in comparison's 4%. I think our industry average is, like, 50%.
Yeah. But it's so critical to get it right. And the last component, though, how can it even be that selective is it's really hard to find people in construction as is many other jobs right now. We Wolfe faced with exactly the same problem. And what we decided to do was to hire on teen recruiters. So at the time we did this, we're about a 100% company. We hired 4 teen recruiters, which is crazy. Yeah. And the key there is the recruiters start looking for people that aren't looking for jobs.
If you think the best people are applying for your job on Indeed, you are wrong. It's just not the case. Don't post and pray. That doesn't work. Instead, we actually started working out and building on a map. Like, where all the top talent was within our areas, And we started building relationships over time. So as those jobs open up, we can bring people in. And so it's just thinking about the problem in different way than sort of the conventional way that people are are doing it today.
I love that mindset. Just thinking ahead, creating a new map. Going after it as opposed to, like you said, posting and praying. There's a there's a lot that can be found just from that one sentence. So thank you for that.
Yeah. What would what would you say in I mean, you've given us actually a couple of different decisions that, you know, maybe weren't the best, but when you're thinking back on the rolodex of things, What's the 1 hour in your history that you're just like, oh, let me tell you a story about that. Just really bad scenario. What was that? Oh, I've got many of those. Maybe one of the more interesting ones was after my dad passed away, which was sudden.
And overnight, it became the CEO, and I didn't take the title for, like, 5 years because I didn't think I had earned it. But we had to go in front of a city council to get approval on the next project. And I didn't understand the value of relay shops. And so what I did is the city council was pushing us to pay certain fees that I could show in the state law they shouldn't be charging. And, basically, I wanted them to give us approval so I could keep building, and then I wanna take them to court.
Battling it over over those fees. And the law actually explicitly said that was well within my right to do. But just because I'm legally in the right doesn't mean that the city agrees with the or even frankly Chaz it was morally. Right? And taken that stance. And so I remember going to a city council meeting, and it was one of the worst, like, business moments of my life. Where I go up there and one of the city council members is like, dude, we're gonna we're gonna approve this project.
It's great. And then the city staff said, hold on a moment. Do you know that he is gonna be filing lawsuit and all that stuff? And suddenly, the city council totally turned on, man. And they did not like me, and they didn't like me pretty much ever again. And what happened out of that then is I kinda sheepishly backed down to that meeting. I have felt horrible, and they made me sign something saying that I went to or what have you. And I the few months later, they gave me a permission.
And then when I was out building the building, they didn't trust me whatsoever. So they would look at every nook and cranny. Everything that I was doing, they thought I was some sort of scumb big developer guy. And, frankly, I was a Pipsque kid. I didn't know what I was doing completely. In fact, they shut me down twice.
And the second time they shut me down, they pulled me back into their office and it was a stern awful lecture where at the end of it, they said, we don't think you have what a take you need to hire someone who can manage you, basically. And if you want a, fall from grace, if you want a you go check Chaz is one way to do it. I felt like I was worthless. And we ended up having to hire someone in 3 days, which is not the way to do it.
We ended up finding someone who met the credentials of the city, but that's a separate story. They ended up not being great. So behind the scenes, I'm doing all this work trying to put everything in I can do to make this project successful. Finally have sort of a front guy that's able to keep the city at bay. And then I remember about a month or so before we were supposed to open, there is a water main that is thousands of feet long buried 15 feet in the ground.
And we do the pressure test, and it shows that there is a pinhole leak somewhere in that water main. We have no idea where. And I'm out there, and my the excavator is is desperately wanting to leave the site. So I am out there in my next close. Like, begging him to stay. I'm from dusk till dawn every single day in the mud looking for this leak, and it was Awful. I remember my brother's birthday came by.
And when night I came home, it was, like, 10 o'clock at night, and my brother said, is there any chance that we can just Do a quick 10 minute celebration. Like, sing, happy birthday, open gifts. And I I just looked at him and said, I don't even have that in me. It just went right to bed. It was awful. And I remember just a few days before we were supposed to open. The city staff came out and looked at the site and said there's no way There's no way you're not opening this building.
Like, I got 100 families. They're supposed to move in. Like, what am I supposed to do? I said, you're not nope. You're not doing it. It's not good enough. We worked round the clock, and I remember the very last day. But a half a dozen city inspectors came out for a half a day inspection. They looked at every nook and cranny. In the very end, the head building official pulled me aside in the basement, just him and me, And he said, Mike, I know we are hard on you.
But looking at the quality of work that you've done here, this is honestly the best project we've opened in the city. Wow. So finally, right, years of feeling like I'm not good enough. Years of feeling like I can't do this and In some ways I couldn't, I wasn't good enough. But finally, for the first moment, feeling like wow. Maybe we can do this. Hey, Kings and Queens. Jazz Wolf. I wanna talk to you about something that's super important to me. We put a lot of time and effort.
We, meaning myself and my team, into this podcast into the content that goes out every single day. And if you have been getting any sort of value or insight from this, we want it to be able to reach other business owners too. So we would love if you would like, comment, share, leave a review, post, share again, all of the things. On social media, on all the different platforms, or even on the podcast mediums of Apple and Spotify.
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Do you feel obviously, just pressing into your story here a little bit with your dad, but do you feel like in that moment that he was maybe, like, your dad for a second there, like, the Wolfe done, son, kinda pat on the back. Is that is that was that the feeling that you got of, like, oh my gosh. Finally, I got some approval? Yeah. Absolutely. Because I think there's a a young person. I mean, even all of us throughout age, you know, we feel like we're not good enough.
And to have a moment in life where somebody looks at you and says, no. You are good enough. And whether it's a city inspector or if it's my in some sense, it it could have been my dad. Like, it's that same feeling of k. We did this. We are good enough.
Yeah. Yeah. I think that there's there's you know, multi facets to every entrepreneur where on 1 hour, maybe not even the whole day, but there's a there's a portion of today where I felt on top of the world maybe a little bit arrogant, super confident. I was made for this, you know, and then a couple minutes later, maybe a couple days later, It's that moment of like, wow. Nothing can go right. I I'm not made for this. I'm I don't have it, you know, all those things.
And so What do you what do you think? One last question here on on that angle, but what do you think your dad would say about that project if he was there? I think he would be really proud. You know, what's interesting with my dad, he didn't wasn't like a man of a ton of words. But I remember one day, you know, not long before he passed away Chaz we both sat down after kind of some tough city council meetings. And we just sat and had Dairy Queen. Each one of us had a bit of ice cream.
He never said he didn't say much in that exchange with Dairy Queen. I don't think he would have said much after Odell, but he didn't have to. You could see it just in the his body language, the fact we sat down together. It's this sense of, dude, Mike, I'm proud of you. And you've done something incredible. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting how that it's a frequency. It it doesn't have to always be words.
You know, and that's what that's what you're describing is that in that moment, the frequency that you were picking up, you know, for lack of better terms, and the radio station that he was putting out was was one of all the things you just described. So that's really powerful.
What would you say for the entrepreneur listening right now who, you know, maybe maybe they didn't have a dad growing up like me, or maybe their their pop is around and just might as well not even be there, or maybe he's in and out of prison. Maybe he just can't hasn't ever, you know, fill in a blank. What does that entrepreneur need in order to be able to get the Dairy Queen moment?
You know, we talked to earlier on a podcast host, and I get to meet just the most incredible people, people that have literally built $1,000,000,000 companies or multi billionaires or done things like Batman, like, that the world knows about. And the more I have conversations with these people, the the thing I think fundamentally that separates everyone is your mindset.
It seems overly simplistic, but having a degree of confidence in what you're able to do, understanding that we're all going through failure constantly is important. So for the person who doesn't have that dad moment, someone else speaking into your life, The only important thing to remember is that we are all terrible at when we start. Right? That's human nature. When we're born, we can't walk. We can't talk we can't add. Like, that's just normal.
But something happens in our life as we get older, and even a little bit of those children, how we start to think that In order to be good enough, we gotta be good at what we're doing. People have to look fondly on us. And I think it's important for us to try to separate that in her mind and just be okay in failure. I think there's this really interesting study that was done that compared 2 groups. 1 they're both making clay pots to the best of their ability.
The first group was told to make a single clay pot. Just as good as it possibly could be. And the second group was told to make as many clay pots as they possibly could. Well, it turns out that the first group did a pretty decent play pot. It was certainly better than the first ones of the second group, but what Is interesting Chaz the 2nd group, by the end, were making pots that were far, far superior. And I see what happens in a lot of entrepreneurs Chaz we get in our own mind.
We rob us of our own success. Right? So recognizing that that's normal feelings, but choosing to act differently despite our feelings of inadequacy, It's amazing. They'll achieve great results, but, secondly, and here's really the magic.
If you start to behave in a way, that shows the degree of confidence that you starting to build a take risk, trying to do something new, you'll start to feel more worthy of that over time because feeling follows action It's not the Queen moment whether you have one, whether you had one, whether you'll never have one. Recognizing the feeling is one thing. Of whether you'd yearned to have that or whether you got it from your dad.
Regardless of it is that you are going to have multiple failures and successes along the way. As long as you keep acting, and it's up to us to put ourselves in a position, not only action wise, but then after the action in a mindset or sorry, in a in a feeling of, you know, confidence. To your very first point, though, it starts with the mindset that you just gave to us, which is it's your choice, buddy. Dad or no dad, it's up to you, bud.
And that then leads us into action, which then, you know, like you said, makes makes everything work. How does one differentiate striving versus thriving. Because in this environment where it's like, you know, whether you had or didn't have, just go do I'm all about it. Look, I'm a absolute doer. And if you look back at my history, that is exactly what I've done.
But somewhere along the way, it has to turn from striving to thriving or achievement based to purpose based, how would you suggest that for them? I think the most important thing is know what you want in a life. Right? So know your purpose. For me, I know what that is, and then I can back out where I wanna be and what I wanna achieve.
One of the guests I had on with our podcast, we can multi $1,000,000,000 guy, His focus, at least in the later stages of his life, was to have a solid repeating income and live a comfortable life so they could focus on connecting with this family and supporting the people around them. If that's your dream, yeah, there's a period of life that you've gotta just grind it out because you've gotta get to a certain stage that you can certainly invest in that capital.
To make that a reality for yourself. So there's a transition from, quote, unquote, striving versus thriving. But other people and the executive is for Batman is a good example of this. He doesn't have to work another day in his life. Right? He owns the movie rights to Batman, and they and he's done the legal movie, national treasure, and many others. Wow. But for him, his purpose isn't to sit on a beach and just relax all day.
His purpose is to put out movies that move the industry forward in cinema. And so, actually, when he was interviewing with us, he was filming the Joker movie. Right? Like and the hours and energy is putting in to do this, but it's like it's like a musical they're working on. It's just crazy different when he's trying. He's wanting to push that industry. So for him, his purpose, his his happiness in life is about changing and moving that industry forward.
So in some perspective, maybe you would look at him and say, oh, he's still just striving. But in his mind, because he knows what his purpose is, he's actually thriving. So really knowing their purpose is most important. If your purpose is to have a big bank account, I promise you Wolfe never fee feel Wolfe. And at one of my guests, a multi $1,000,000,000 guy, he had an exit on one of his projects, you sold it for 1,000,000,000 of dollars.
And he said the moment that cash hit my bank account, I felt nothing. Think about that. So if you think that just striving all day long, just earning a bank bank account is gonna be success. It isn't. Make sure you know what your purpose is besides money. Yeah. It's huge. I think one of the things you said there that sticks out is the person who was thinking the cinema, a guess of yours, was thriving, but really in his mind, he was thriving.
It just speaks to the people that are around us and whether they're in alignment with our purpose or not, and whether we're hearing, you know, just the negative around it because there's been plenty of people even in my own life that have asked me that same question. It usually comes out in the form of wins enough enough. And it's like, well, wait a second. Wait a second. First off, it's never gonna be enough because that's not my design. Right?
But I'm but I'm I'm not achieving the next thing so that I can check the box or so that I can make the next dollar. I can have the next trophy. It's much bigger than that now. But I had to determine that for myself, like, what Mike's telling you guys. And so what would you say that that the executive producer, Batman? I mean, how did he know or or how how have you been able to see in your history?
Like, when it's when it switches over from just wanna make another dollar or make another 1,000,000 or make another 1,000,000,000 to the no. No. No. I get to do another deal because I love deals or whatever the purpose is. Yeah. So for the Michael Usland, the executive producer of Batman, I think for him, it was I think he's found his genius. Even though he works, I mean, it's 80 plus hours a week. It's insanity.
Chaz found his life calling, and it's in the work of moving the industry Chaz he loves it, and that's great. More power to him. For me, For me sitting on a beach actually sounds depressing. Right? I I have to have a degree of challenge in my life for me to feel fulfilled in what I'm doing. I gotta have a reason to wake up every day. Yeah. And so for me, it's seeing a path solving housing affordability and taking the steps to India to make that happen is is very, very fulfilling.
You know, we go through huge challenges on a regular basis. And people look at me and say, how do you deal with the stress of all that? Like, don't you just wish you Chaz relax a little bit? And, certainly, I could. We've earned enough money. I could sit back and relax. But that's not I don't know. I for me, I don't feel tremendous amount stress and the problems. In fact, the problems bring me joy because it gives me something interesting to solve.
Yeah. Yeah. The the sit back and relax is someone else projecting what they see as joy Yeah. Onto you. And you don't see joy in necessarily sitting down, you see joy in solving problems, which Yeah. Is entrepreneur shit, man. I mean, I mean, there's every sentence. Right? And so that the listener right now might be thinking, oh, yeah. Yes. Yes. Now what that doesn't mean is that you're constantly chasing your tail causing problems to go then solve. No. Not at all.
Because that's I would say 90%, maybe 80, but a large percent of entrepreneurs are out doing that. They're creating their own problems. And I and look, we've both been there. Create our own problems. And then we solve them, and we think that we're we're, you know, heroes. And it does keep us it keeps us busy, and which which which is what we're drawn to. We're drawn to to the busyness of it.
But there's a big difference when you got a huge goal, like Mike, of, forting or house of housing affordability. And, you get to work on the the inner parts of that. What what are some of just give us a couple of 2 or 3 things that, like, you know, specifics inside of what you're working on right now, to drive down costs. Give give us really practical stuff here. Yeah. So in the world of construction, it's a very segmented industry.
And so you have a different company that might be electrician, a different company that might be your plumber, your owner, your property manager, your developer, your supply chain all different. If a construction company were to produce cars, you have a different company that's on the windshield, a different company that's on the door to different companies on the wheel. Now, of course, the wheel company, they would call you up and say, hey. I'm so sorry. I'm delayed another product.
I can't get out there for 10, you know, for 2 weeks. You'd be shut down. Yeah. See, the world of manufacturing looks at us and says we're crazy. Yeah. But for construction, that's the way things have always been done. So one of the first things we did was bring all the work under one roof. So we have literally everything all the way down to supply Chaz, engineering, manufacturing, precast concrete production all under one roof.
When we did that, that unlocked different avenues for us, one example simple idea for manufacturing is the assembly line, right, and revolutionize manufacturing. I've never heard of this before. Yeah. I know. It's crazy. But you look at construction and say, well, I can't take a building and drive it down online. No. But what you can do is you can take the person and move them through the building. So every 5 hours, all of our teams shift by one unit through the building.
And so if you look at the end of our building, every 5 hours, we have a brand new apartment unit completed. And so that one technique takes a project that might take 15 months and drives it down to 9. But there are literally 10 1000 little things like Chaz. And when you put them all together, they start having a meaningful impact.
Yeah. Interesting. Hope Chaz listener is hearing your genius, not, again, just the intellectual piece, but, yes, that too, but just your ability to see these two industries and how they are merging together, manufacturing and construction, I think that you're bringing a lot of great things here to the to the, at least for the construction guys listening, if your mind's not blown, then you're not you you didn't listen, you should go back and replay.
I've got I've got one last question here for you, Mike. And double or kinda go a high level again or maybe deep into the heart. Who knows? I want you to to reach back into time. And I want you to whisper in the younger Mike's ear. What are you telling? I think one thing is that you are good enough. You can do this. Right, having a degree of confidence that it's gonna be painful. It's hard. There's so many days. There's way more days of failure than there are days of success.
But it's a matter of putting your foot one foot in front of the other. And then, of course, that Wolfe go into all the business lessons. But I think fundamentally at the heart of it, That's what I would communicate. Yeah. The transference of courage. So that's what that is. And so I just appreciate that vulnerability as well. How can the listener connect with you? They're an entrepreneur.
They're just trying to, you know, glean from the things that you've learned and or there's a way for them to connect with you and do business with you. Somehow. How can they find you? Yeah. So the the easiest way to get a hold of us is to visit our website in norheart.com. That's northart.com. Two fun interesting things there. One is our shows in particular 0 to unicorn that we referenced a couple of times here today. And then secondly is our investment platform.
We're offering higher rates of return for people willing to invest their money between 6 24 months. And that's been growing like Game Busters. That's been fun to see it come together as Wolfe, but it that's how you can hear about us. That's incredible. I love the show, the name, 0 to unicorn, hope to tune in and give you some support there as well. And and for any anybody looking for high rates of return, that's a that's a that's a great phrase there.
But for somebody who's doing incredible things in an industry that probably have just not ever been done before, but, yeah, pretty fun place to to check out. So We'll put all that in the show notes as well. Mike, you are an incredible human. And it sounds like an amazing dad and an amazing business owner caring for people, not only just the people that are in your sphere, your kingdom, as we say, but for those that are being impacted by your properties all across the country.
So thank you for your time. I wish you nothing but blessing. And, again, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. Thank you for listening to gathering the Kings today. I hope that you were able to pull out a few nuggets to go apply into your business right away. More importantly, though, I hope that you're realizing that it takes more to be successful than just being by yourself doing it all on your own, carrying the weight all by yourself.
What I have realized, not only in my own journey from multiple businesses and multiple different industries, and now interviewing over 2 or 300 other very successful 7, 8, and 9 figure business owners is that it's tough to do it alone. And so gathering the Kings exists to bring together successful entrepreneurs. In fact, we are putting together 1000 Keynes specifically who are grateful, but not done.
We're intentionally assembling kings who fight tooth and nail for their business family and communities, and here's what we believe Chaz in the pursuit of excellence in those areas, that it ignites within us the responsibility to govern power and forge a lasting legacy. So if that relates and and resonates with you and you know that you need people around you, sharp qualified other very successful business owners. I want you to go to gatheringthekings.com.
I want you to take a look at what we're doing and see if it makes sense for you to be part of our pursuit to 1000 kings. Talk soon.