SHARRAN SRIVATSAA: From BROKE To $3.4 BILLION DOLLAR SUCCESS STORY! (Must Watch Interview)

hi my name is shir on srivatsa and I went from humble beginnings in the streets of India to growing a business 10x and five years to over 3.4 billion dollars in revenue and I'm one of the passionate few Omar has this amazing magical ability to pull out the best stories the best strategies and the best tactics from my life so that you can use them right now to grow your business and create a blueprint for amazing success I hope you enjoyed this interview hey guys welcome to this episode of the passionate few podcasts today it's your host Omar and today we get to sit down with the very funny and very inspiring CEO and founder of Kingston Lane himself Charan Srivatsa in this interview we hear how Sheeran grew up in the humble streets of India and had to come to this country with not a lot of money off of a tennis scholarship which he schemed with his parents and actually had work out exactly how they plan and once Terron arrived in this country he found himself out of money very quickly and being so broke at times that he had to dig through dumpsters for leftover pizza from other college students including a story he shares in this interview but he got in a fight with a raccoon over Pop Tarts so we get to hear sure on some credible story of going from that rock-bottom situation but then being part of a business that would get acquired in early twenties and later applying some of those business principles to delays which he 10x in only five years to over 3.4 billion dollars in revenue so no further ado I want to encourage you guys to sit back relax enjoy this powerful interview to the very end with none other than the funny and fascinating Ron truants enjoy [Music] so thanks for being on the show today Chiron oh my I think so having me man looking forward to this absolutely we are too and for context a lot of the audience some people might know yeah but for people who don't I'm really excited to have you on the show because you're most well-known most recently for the acquisition that you had and coming into till as you know a real estate company taking it from 300 million in revenue to 10x to a little over three billion dollars in sales yeah so we're gonna talk a little about your story about how you 10x that but also your humble origins of growing up in India I believe Craig you Joey so before we get into the business acumen that you've developed let's go back to your roots you know where did you grow up and what was your childhood like so I was I was born in New Delhi India and my parents were just great just great people they had they were very middle class and after they had me they realized that they probably could not afford have another child and so they gave me everything that they could and the one memory and I know you like these a one memory that stands out as my mom and dad started to run this advertising agency out of our one-bedroom apartment so we're right in the middle of Chennai India Madras India and now they ran they started this advertising company it was a one-bedroom apartment and my earliest memory is this my earliest memory is I was getting ready to go to school and that's probably a Elementary School in the bedroom in our one-bedroom apartment but the rest of the house was the office and so we had a rule that if the door was closed I couldn't leave so I remember missing days of school while my parents would conduct business in the one-bedroom apartment if I couldn't get out of the house I was just there all day in the bedroom so I actually had a little closet where I had water snacks and books and from the time I was in my early childhood I saw my parents grind all day to build a life where I could just I would just sometimes get stuck in the bedroom and could never even go to school and hid the stories more like I saw my parents hustle to do that which was pretty amazing how old were you at that time when you I was young so like call it seven eight years old yeah and were they were they involved in any sort of other jobs or do they have any other entrepreneurial endeavors that you remember at that age so no my father realized he was a professor of English and at a public university and that wasn't paying for anything and my mom was a nutritionist and she couldn't she was not doing much with that and they realized for to really have control spend more time with me as a child that they needed to create something and to be a business owner and my mom quit her job my dad quit his job my dad was the the sales guy like he would wake up and he would go hunt and my mom was the CEO oh if you will and she would make sure the trains ran on time yeah and it was just them for a long time for like the first few years and they built the company from scratch so growing up as a only child did you sort of have the entrepreneurial seed planted then did you have big ambitions then or were you kind of like a kid messing around having fun because I know scholastically you probably weren't the best I know you know yeah I wasn't I wasn't gifted scholastically I I had what they would have diagnosed as either ADHD or dyslexia they it was never formally diagnosed in India but those were I struggled and I ended up doing well with whatever I was good at but I was just messing around I never had a chance to build anything we didn't have the capital to build anything I could do anything entrepreneurial I had I would but it was all just following my dad's lead I I remembered this my dad used to always tell me this he says you can create tomorrow today and like that keeps thing it keeps me always thinking I always wondered what that was and his way of creating tomorrow today was every night after dinner he would sit down and he would write the ten things he was gonna get done tomorrow that was his way of setting up tomorrow every day every day so he said I'm gonna create tomorrow today and he would write his ten things and the next day he would show up and he would execute and he would not come home until those ten things were done he was so obsessive-compulsive about that and that's when that was like one of the biggest lessons I took from my early childhood where I would I still do that today where I prep I create tomorrow today now was that common in culture then or not really I notice nowadays in personal development it is but I can't imagine in India as a kid that there was Tony Robbins motivating I like where did that come from in the culture and how did you how did you pick it up and go ah I like that you know I don't think that I think my dad was doing it because he didn't we didn't have any we didn't have a choice he was a necessity there's a necessity he was we were doing it to live and I think it was his way of staying organized and staying committed to the process and I think I saw all of it Omar only because we worked on the dining table right it was it was already right there and I would wonder what my dad would do my dad would finish him he would sit down and say Shawn we're gonna create tomorrow today he would do that every day and he would write in the same little diary Register Journal thing and he would go check it off every day flip the page write the date and I'll tell you if you and I just started that anybody started that you'd get so much done as opposed being distracted today's world and my earliest memories are all about living in close quarters with my parents and just kind of picking up on small things like that I love that it's very interesting and now talk to me a little about schooling like before high school you know what were you like as a kid and what was your transition in high school because there was a point to where you guys realized that hey India probably wasn't a place where you know you could build a life yeah so talk to me a little about that you know those transitional years before high school and then what high school was like looking at your future yeah so the hard part was and I think it's really hard to talk about the stuff because I haven't shared the stuff often and especially haven't shared the stuff with my family and this is all I have realized that sharing more of this makes me one there's other people out there that are going through this in in the darkness and in the background right so when you are not very good called scholastically your b-minus c-plus student you you not very gifted athletically you I was somewhat socially awkward so the problem was that when I remember times when walking between classrooms like I would take a full circuitous route to get somewhere out to the other class because I would get bullied and I just didn't want to I just didn't want to walk down the hallway because I would just get bullied or I would just get bullied for being the scrawny kid I would get bullied for not being the smart kid I'd get bullied because I couldn't stand up and fight back and I never even shared that my parents because I thought that's what life was and I got bullied a lot in in in an environment where bullying was actually not even prevalent and once you get bullied once people think it's okay to bully that same person so I would do whatever it took to be in different places where I would never put my situation that's tough in a situation to get bullied and that was probably the hardest hardest early memory growing up and because of that I think my dad found out once you got bullied I got bullied and it adds like what's going on you know and then that's when all of this started to happen where I started getting kicked out of musical class my dad's like you got kicked out of singing like how did that happen you got so I was getting I was not getting picked on teams I was getting kicked out of art class cuz I was called a blind I was getting kicked out of music class because I was tone-deaf it's not good elastically my dad's like what is going on I didn't feel something I was gotta be something else yeah and my dad for not having ever left India one day on my I think was my tenth or eleventh birthday my dad and I started were sitting on a park bench and he said to me he goes hey we need to it we need to give you a better future and his favorite words my dad had a lot of cool sayings he said we always want a bigger and better future and he said that's what really kept you going so I was like well dad what is that what is that what does that mean right he said you know I think you would do well outside of India and you have to realize I'm ten all right yeah oh you're 18 now indignant and like my dad's throwing me out of the house right and he says we need to find you a skill where you can stand on your own you can shine on your own and that'll be the way for you to just get out of this infrastructure because the country doesn't support who you are and I kid you not Omar we were sitting in front of two tennis courts and he says can you cut it and I was like what do you mean can I cut it he says could you play tennis because it's an individual sport it's played worldwide and maybe this will get you a college scholarship or it'll just get you out I said I hit a tennis ball until that day so he said what if we took a chance what if we put academics on the back burner art that you're not good at in the back burner music that I'm not good on and we only did this and we see if we can use the skills that they developed the skill set and that's what we did so I woke up every morning played tennis he said your academics are secondary right I went to school school was just had to go to school and then I would come back in the evening I would play tennis so all I did was wake up train go to school come back play tennis I did that over and over and became decent enough wear tennis became the ticket to living India so that's really interesting so it had nothing to do with passion or your particular interest in it it was more like your dad sitting down you guys are at a park bench you see a tennis court he goes you know what this might be your ticket yeah and you go okay sure let's do it so right away are you good at tennis do you develop you know an interest in it whatsoever or no for you it was just like this is a scholarship medium and so you committed whoa it was was it like super mechanical super mechanical and I was decent at it I realized I think I realized that I could I could pull it off but we do anything two hours in the morning of training in three hours of work like you get good at it right I mean I just got I started getting good at it because I also knew that I think my parents have realized that I had burned the boats right I basically said hot stuff anymore yes I'd burned the boats and so that was my ticket I was over-indexing on it and it's hard work it had to work well the interesting part is this we talked about it as a family so my mom knew about it my dad knew about it a couple of our close friends knew about it and when you have everybody aligned on the one goal it starts to it starts to really give you this juice because everyone is in it together with you most of us I think we're all we we set up our goals and we set up our our passions in isolation as a child I needed a lot more than just me you wanting to do it like when I my hole we searched her entire like my parents was their entire schedules to do it everything was built around how can we get your on the skill so he can get out of the situation that he was in so that pressure you'd have to do it because like mom and dad set up everything around it I mean it now this is the only ticket out you're pressured and it goes back to you know the concert that you shared with me earlier you wanna talk about yeah yeah and the what I learned what thirty years later was transformations don't happen in isolation right I mean that's any time I talked I'm mentoring a CEO and they would they say hey I want to double the size of my business I go you want to double you want to 10% increase your business I understand that but you want to transform something it's not a what I need to do anymore it's who I need to become who I need to surround myself it's a whole conversation now and I think my parents and my family became the WHO and that support system is what got me out not anything else wow so you were literally playing tennis every day with the sole mission every single day and if it didn't happen you would have just sort of figured it out then I don't think there was an I don't think there was a choice it was literally like this is gonna happen that's what it was and it happened it happened you ended up getting a scholarship yeah and what happens then okay so so I get a it actually worked too well which is which is really interesting so what happened is I started playing on the pro tennis tour when I was 16 and I never realized this it got me out of India to play pro tennis but once you play pro tennis you can't play college tennis because you can't in the US you can't go from pro to amateur status oh gosh I said that would be like playing in the NFL and then coming back to playing you know whatever right so I realized pretty quickly that oh my gosh I can't play college tennis in the u.s. I may have shot myself in the foot by working so hard then I realized that there's a there's a lot of division three tennis schools in the United States where you can have an on scholarship based approach or you can still play right but it gave me the ticket out of the country so I I got into small school in Iowa and there was my ticket out of the country but this interesting part was this one where my parents like we didn't we didn't have we didn't have the financial resources for me to for them to pay for four years of College rent it's like could you not my parents sold everything that they owned everything down to like got down to clothes they sold everything that they owned and I didn't know that I'm still you know 16 or something like that but they sold everything that they owned and they handed me one check and the one check was for a full year's worth of tuition room board laundry everything it was a one full year's fully expenses paid because a lot of people say they came to the US with you know ten dollars in my pocket I was I was blessed I got a full year's worth and my parents said hey go do this go to the states here's what his years you're one year head start if it doesn't work out come back we'll figure it out but if it does you got to figure out what's wrong with him you run with it and I was I was like this is what I've been waiting for like thank you for this gift and it was I was still 16 I came to the US when I was 16 just about to turn seventeen and with one check in my pocket a hundred dollar bill and two bags of clothes and that's that's that's all that I mean that was this room yeah man what's your first day in the u.s. like the first day is the scary some of the scariest days of my life I haven't I don't think I've shared this story with any family members the first it's hard to even think about I land in Chicago Atlanta Chicago and my I have a friend who's supposed to come pick me up so I'm waiting in the airport I have enough to have a hundred dollar bill on my passport ooh check and two bags that's all I have just because you're speak English I spoke something I spoke English I had a very thick accent at that time but I spoke I spoke English I could understand English just fine so I'm waiting for my friend who's gonna come pick me up and take me to this to college I'm waiting it's an hour goes by two hours go by five hours go by ten hours go by and I'm just waiting we have no cell phones or anything like that someone pages my name in the airport and so I go pick up a courtesy phone and it says hey see your friend so-and-so said that his car broke down he needs you to grab this bus and take it to Moline Illinois I was like where is Moline Illinois what is this bus and I have $100 I really hope to make it there right so I follow instructions I go go to the bus the bus station figure it out get there and I apparently take the wrong bus I think the wrong bus and I take it to La Crosse Wisconsin so it's like the completely completely opposite door I have no idea so I'm going for hours and it's now it's now it's in the notes night so we the bus stops and the last one on the bus we're at the last stop the depot or whatever it is I get out it's it's pitch black everywhere I have no idea where I am I have no way to reach anybody and I'm looking at says La Crosse Wisconsin oh my god supposed to be Moline Illinois yeah so I grab my bags I'm trying to regroup what I'm going to do it just then something crazy happens a guy comes out of nowhere and a hoodie and pulls a knife on me he says and I'm being mugged on my first day the u.s. Wow and it's crazy because I had nothing I had clothes and this guy is this guy pulls a knife on me I can't even see his face and so I tell him I said hey man I have two bags a passport a hundred-dollar bill I don't think anything that I have is gonna be worthwhile to you so he goes there's no way so he starts rummaging through my stuff oh my god and the anxiety is through the roof oh yeah I've never I didn't know there was gonna live or die right yeah and then finally stay show me a hundred dollars and I said so I said this to him I said listen I don't even know where I'm gonna get to this is the only money I have I said could I make you a deal the he says he's like you're trying to negotiate right now I said I want to make you a deal I'm like I'm being mugged so I said listen I have nothing I don't even have anything to sell ya so I said if I give you $100 will he give me 50 back he said what I said I'll trade you my hundred for 50 so he you win you win and I get $50 to go find where I need to go so he looks at me and I give him the hundred and he gives me $50 back no way so I get fifty bucks back from my mugger and I I need it I had no other money yeah so I get the fifty bucks back I called the college they find my ride and then finally I get to school but so the man who sent it so you so you tell him you know he gives you 50 you negotiate this deal with him then what do you say okay thanks walked away walked away so I give him $100 he gave me 50 bucks back I didn't even had a 50 on him to me he dealt out like twenties and tens I can't but he's like he gave me I think he gave me 45 bucks right like I didn't even he gave me a full 50 but yeah he gave me money back he's like you're a weird dude and he walked away yeah so that gives you 45 in change and then you start moving to figure out how the heck to get back to where you meant to go to because you're in a different state now yeah I'm in a different state now I was like okay I got 45 dollars I need to I need to so I call ID the only number I call my lifeline like how do I get here so they I get on the right bus I get I get to school everything's good so I get to school now something interesting happens so I get to school the next day I haven't slept all night I get to get to school the next day no place to stay and I'm just glad that I get to school so I get to school i go to i go to check in because they have this check-in and i'm early before International Student Orientation so I'm like three weeks early so the first thing I do is hey you need to go get your keys for your dorm room so I take my check because I need to be legit I walk over to financial services or hand on my check they're like SH Ron welcome this is gonna be amazing here your keys you're good to go this is gonna be great I said awesome so I take my keys I check in but then I realize there's lady right before I leave she tells me hey by the way this check is good but it's gonna since it's an international check it's going to 10 to 14 days to clear no problem right so go get get ready put my stuff put my two bags in my dorm room then I realize I have like $30 left but that's all the money I have for food for the next 14 days so I said ok I got I'm okay for the next couple of days yeah so I I went and I buy some groceries about some peanut butter I buy all of that stuff just I could stock up right so that lasts me maybe three or four days yeah ten days to ten more days to go so there were a couple of college pizza party so I hid them yeah actually stuff a couple of pieces of pizza into my jacket slice of pizza my Jack because I was like hey it's cheese I can wrap it up I can take it with me I felt weird but ready to eat survival mode um and then on my way back to my dorm room for one of these parties I was still hungry and I saw the pizza party that I was at I saw what these guys did they took these empty remaining pizza boxes and they threw it in the trash into a dumpster I was like oh my gosh like this is amazing well not but it's amazing right they must be fresh pizza in there because I was just at this party right yeah so I waited till it was dark I put my hoodie on and I was really hungry so I jumped in this dumpster and oh ma I will tell you I still remember to this day how hot it was I still remember the smell I still remember I'm sure of whether I was on glass or what it was and this was not a we're not talking about trailer dumpster we're talking a small dumpster so you could you could smell I got the streetlight just streaming right through it yeah so I quickly opened the box of the pizza see if I can grab a few slices I consolidated into one box I jump out I look around and make sure that no one saw me I run to my dorm room I'm like okay I got I got a couple more days in me yeah I felt I felt amazing I felt I felt like it was a gift I didn't care about where I got it from I was just grateful that I had food because I didn't have the courage to call my parents and ask for more money because they had just sold everything that they had or so to get me there so that lasted a couple days and I still had five more days left I was walking by the same dumpster I I'm pretty sure it was it was unintentional but it probably was intentional because I was looking for food and I saw a couple of guys throw two big bags of Subway sandwiches into this dumpster and I was like this is my lucky day I said wait till he gets a little darker put my hoodie on jump into the dumpster I reached for these Subway sandwiches I see this big box of pop-tarts Oh breakfast covered so I grabbed the Subway sandwiches I grabbed his box of pop-tarts and suddenly two yellow balls a fiery yellow balls look at me and I'm like what is that and suddenly something smacks me in the face and I start bleeding there was a raccoon on the dumpster fighting with me for this box of pop-tarts and and this dumpster is not that big and this and I'm bleeding right now I have this box of pop-tarts I have this raccoon I had got these tuba and fight-or-flight totally kicks in and I could you know I I kicked this I kicked the raccoon and I could feel the kick I kicked the raccoon I hear the sound and squeal I grab the food I jump out I run I run as fast as I could yeah I don't even look back you didn't grab the pop-tarts I grab the pop-tarts oh I won that fight I think there's a lot that's the last I get freaked out when I see a raccoon either but I have the pop-tarts I have the Subway sandwiches I sit like on a park bench I sit on a bench and I just eat and I'm bleeding the battle so I'm thinking I'm thinking back to I should probably get a tetanus shot or something yeah rabies I run to health sir I eat first I run to health services and the nurse knew exactly what happened she could smell me and she said hey man it's good hey kid it's gonna be okay she hands me $20 and she hands me a blockbuster movie card and she's like go get yourself some food and watch a movie you have had a rough night as I was walking back that's when I realized if that is if that is the lowest it can get if that's what I need to do to survive it wasn't that bad I could make it I can make it I can make it to live to fight another day and I don't know I'm not saying look at me I'm awesome I'm just saying that's what had to happen and I had never had the courage to tell that to my parent I still have not told my parents about that I think they heard they heard me reference it somewhere but I've not shared that with any of my family and I'm even till today I'm a little I don't say I'm more comfortable sharing with you I feel I feel a deep sense of embarrassment I share with my family because my family puts so much on the line to get me out absolutely that's incredible man so at that stage what do you do you know here you are finally to check clears yeah check clears no more raccoon dumpster-diving and then you sort of figure out your own what's the transition like in college of finding yourself and as you transition to the professional world what was that like because you probably had no clue what you wanted to do I mean you're new to the u.s. you're you know thinking about your career prospects I mean what was in your mind as to what you're gonna do for a living yeah the only thing I cared about that at that time was what how do I raise money for my second year that is the only thing I cared about because your parents paid the first year but then after that it was on you yeah so I'll tell you a very funny story I show up into my dorm room and this was the first year they were actually hardwiring dorms for Internet so this was in like 1999 1997-98 let me lay this out for you there is a box when you enter the dorm room where you plug in your Ethernet cable and the desk is 17 feet away bed closet desk yeah I was like wait a minute how do I get there's no Wi-Fi how do I get from the box to the desk to plug my computer in I need a 17 foot cable so I went and got a 17 foot cable then I thought walking out the rest of the dorm was I'm early the other people had checked in yet everybody's dorm room has this so I told my roommate hey hi I'm sure are nice to meet you I've never had to before I have an idea would you have a car would you drive me to Minneapolis and I want to buy as much Ethernet cable as I can he's like why I'm like cuz we're gonna sell this out of our dorm room for a premium I bought thousands of feet of cable maxed out his credit cards and he became my 50-50 partner cuz I had no money right I don't have any clothes so I stored all the cable in my closet and in the first three weeks first three week we made fifty seven thousand dollars no way we sold cable to the entire twenty five hundred student population in the three buildings how much did you sell each cable for it was it was all 17 feet so whatever it was I came in with the exact term but we made fifty seven thousand dollars in the first three weeks in three weeks in three weeks so you guys were hustling like crazy all right we just we were selling them at you know we were selling 17 foot cables at like seven and seven X markup yeah cuz otherwise they had to go somewhere else to buy it yeah and that paid for the second year of school we split it 50/50 and that paid for the second year and was that your first entrepreneurial endeavor and to realizing ah I could turn an idea into profit yeah that was my first I I got reprimanded for that by the by the you because I'm supposed to say that but everybody was happy and and I know that's that was the so I paid for a second year of school that's incredible so then after that what happens is the lightbulb go off and you go I'm pretty good at this entrepreneurial thing or what's the next phase or the next iteration of ah let me do this in business or was it pay for the third year like what's the next step from you from there as soon as I got the one year in there I that was I think that lit the spark everybody was working $5 15 cent an hour jobs that what minimum wage was at that time five dollars and 50 cents and I said I made fifty seven thousand dollars in three weeks there's never a way I'm gonna make that was five dollars and 15 cents so until I got my next idea I did I made pizzas I was a janitor I scrubbed toilets I had to keep working to make some kind of money whatever it whatever it took but I was trying to figure out other ventures that I could do either in the summer or during the school year and so everything needed capital so I always did 5050 partnerships people yeah so you have them sort of fund it and then you run the sales and operations 5050 so I got myself through school all four years of college just by doing 50/50 partnership deals what are some other endeavors you did that were profitable in college maybe like one or two other yeah so instead of so I got a paper route but instead of the paper route aye-aye-aye up sold people on paper and then I ups told people on magazines so instead of just dropping paper I would talk to the person be like hey what if I brought you magazines as well then I up sold the magazines and I was kept up selling so I was driving the paper route anyway yeah then I started to decide then I'd realize that if I got a cheap car I could bring people coffee - so I did a paper magazine and coffee yeah so now my paper routes which was just throwing paper under the windows became much more profitable enterprise yeah so I just kept going that's what then you start tacking things on right so it's the it's the improvement offer like what more can I do for the same amount of works that created a system around it that got pretty good because then we got three or four drivers so I said hey Chiron is gonna come in with the paper Omar's gonna come in with the magazines and you know Jimmy's gonna come in with the coffee so we just had a route going and he had a system going we had a system which actually goes to a theme that I know that and we'll get into it but a theme that you're known for can you talk a little bit about you know obviously we'll get back to your story but can you talk a little about the importance of systems in business and scaling like how important is it to operationalize success as you've seen it yeah I love that phrasing right operationalizing success is everything there are I tell my team this and that my team will get crazy when I say this daily grounds gonna say good process drives good results and anytime if we can say hey we want result X what are the 17 steps that get us result X let's write those steps down it's okay if it takes some time because once we write it down we know that every time Y happens and we do these things X happens you it's the only way to get scale that's the everybody is trying to win on their personality everyone trying to win on their talents the the systems are systems are everything right so I will always say good process drives good results and so we systematized everything and everything that I do and that gives us a lot less anxiety the number one reason people are stress is because they don't have a system the number one reason that we are not stressed for driving from home to work is why because we have a system if I get in the car I put my coffee cup away I pulled my seat belt in I start the car I back out I put on a podcast I drive through the you know the community it is a system right we have totally engrained ourselves into the system so it doesn't stress us out anymore but suddenly now we have to go do something else you're like well I've never done this before so since I think systematizing anything that we do it anywhere like look at everything as a system this is amazing court my coach told me this she said if it's worthwhile doing it twice you should build a system and like that should what should hit people a while doing it twice that should that should build a system around it beautiful and then so you learn early on the power of systems you start making money in college and then after college you graduate what happens next so I I was a computer science and math major and I realized that I was not that stupid after all I just needed better environment to learn and I wrote up this paper on is a pretty technical paper I wrote it up and I went to present it at University of California Berkeley I want to present this at a competition so I present this at a competition I don't win I come off stage presenting this and this one of the judges tells me hey I love your idea on its own it has no merit anything with it yeah but I just funded three other guys for a company that I think if you add your stuff to it they have something pretty cool and I'll make that introduction I was like who are these three guys I don't know anything about this right so these three he had funded three guys to start a company the couple had already started introduced me I came in as a you know one of the early employees shirred then my idea joined the business and then that business grew and we got that business got grew during the dot-com boom and we got acquired and that was my first taste of building something and actually having it bought and Wow and it's really interesting because it speaks to the fact that you weren't you know aiming at doing any kind of big business thing you're just developing your skill sets trying different things in the marketplace testing your skill sets expanding them that's what led you to meet people and connect and then BOOM so on and so forth you couldn't even anticipated that yeah but just because you were taking action you were in flow connected the dots and then BOOM had that acquisition now how old were you at that time that's 21 so 21 you got acquired now how big was the acquisition I mean we don't have to get a number let's get into numbers a let's go to numbers because it brings it to life for people okay if everything was structured the correct way yeah me my family and generations to come would have never had to work so the acquisition when it happened was five hundred and fifty million but what had happened during the time when I got in etc because of contracts because of how investors came in because of dilution because if a lot of things can happen contractually absolutely and my stake got diluted 50 X so if I had $50 of value I got down to one and so I had deep deep dilution in Yemen and I had no idea I was 21 years old yeah you barely even know you got there I didn't even know we all still made money I made some money good but I would have made 50 times more which is insane right 50 times more and that's when I realized that I really need good advisors around me that's when I realized that I really need people to help me and think through things so that the person who picked me off and said hey I'm gonna introduce you to these guys he was he became a mentor and he saw this happen to me and 20 years later he's my partner now Wow so the guy who the guy who funded me then was an advisor to me on how I how I could have made a lot more and today he and I are 50/50 partners Wow that's incredible yeah all because you presented that one day at Berkeley yeah okay so then you have the acquisition at 21 you come into some money more money than you're used to at the time card and you go crazy with the money do you start reinvesting in business I mean you go on vacation I mean what's flowing through your mind 21 years older you have an acquisition like that so I stayed on for a year just to help with the transition and then I realized that I couldn't do the cubicle thing that was just not how I was wired so my that mentor said here you and I can start a little investment fund and I'll show you how to actually deployed this capital right so that it'll work for you and I said hey I wanted some time off so I spent five years I spent five years teaching tennis really I spent five years teaching tennis I was in the Caribbean for a year and Dubai for a year and on Maui for three years Wow so I was in these amazing five-star resorts and talked tennis for five years it was as a as a chance to kind of find myself and take some time off and I loved I went as long as the money lasted me that's URL indeed paid very well so I went as long as the money lasted me that I was like okay I got to do something with my life yeah and live like I'm on vacation totally and then I realized okay if you think about it no one is gonna hire a teaching Pro into a into any kind of job like I have to reinvent myself so I said the easiest way for me to do this was I had to go to business school so I so I went to business school at Vanderbilt I got my MBA Vanderbilt and with a very sole purpose of I went from 50 X 2 1 X I lost that much value there's a deal structuring component in this right if I could learn deal structuring that will never happen to me again that's what I thought absolutely so my job was to go to Wall Street and work for the biggest Wall Street bank so that I would learn this in-house so never make that mistake again yeah I never make that mistake again so I was a so I went to business school got my MBA and I was an investor banker at Goldman Sachs so the Goldman Sachs experience is super interesting because it took me 39:39 individual one-on-one interviews to get the job at Goldman 39:39 individual not not including coffee's dinners phone meeting 39 scheduled individual one-on-one interviews to get the job at Goldman Sachs and is this like you didn't get it and kept reapplying or it was just that was process Wow yeah I know people have gone I the people that I have talked to that were there yeah none of them were surprised if they've seen between 18 and 30 but 39 was uncommon they're like Oh Ron you must have you must have given up a lot of pause they could have decide whether you're gonna have a lot of debate around it yeah I'll give you the funny story one of the partners managing partners asked me and the questions were not easy right he's I will never forget this question he says Scheer on what is the best piece of advice you have ever received and relate that to the performance of the equity markets wait what are you talking about right yeah I haven't even gotten into thinking about the best piece of advice now I have to like correlate it to equity model is that I don't even know anything about yeah but I don't think they wanted to me to have the answer I just think they wanted see how I would handle it to see how your brand would even attempt to attack the issue yeah yeah the other thing was you hear the old school trick which was I sat in and they they actually handed me a phone book right they're like hey if you had to call a bunch of CEOs here's a phone book here's a phone call in the interview and I didn't know what to say so I said hey I have could you give me a script that's all I said the managing partner stands up shakes my hand and says you'll do great in this business because I didn't freak out I just said tell me what to do and I will do it just give me a script I'll call anybody and he told me after that he's interviewed people for 20 years and no one's ever told him that and I said well I don't know what to say if you teach me what to say I'll call anybody you want and I'll get any meeting you want I don't want to just make stuff up on my own I don't just wing it yeah yeah so even even to my son today my son will say hey Dad can I have an ice cream I'd be like sure Neil go go to you know go to the counter and ask for it and if he doesn't know he'll tell me can you give me a script and I say hello ma'am may I please have some ice cream and I say say to me and he'll say it three times he'll go and give them the script and he feels good about it because now he feels empowered that I taught him a skill yeah our friend Jason Capital who you know who you did a great interview with he says if you don't script you don't care mmm I love that that's powerful it's awesome yeah if you don't script you don't care that's powerful I love that now talk to me about after so you know you've gone this like five-year hiatus vacation playing tennis you you know obviously after that getting to Goldman Sachs you're committed to mastering the financial realm of things you start doing well there and then what happens next where does that next transition happen so and what caused it you know what caused you to leave goldman sachs or move move forward yeah it says a great question the original mentor who's my partner now he he called me when I he was my client at Goldman he's done very well he said hey there's this company in California in the real estate business I have a friend who is a founder you and I should invest in him I said I have I don't know anything about real estate I don't anything about this company I said but if you're in I'm in I'm happy to do it so we invest in this little company called Telus properties there's a small company Beverly Hills they started growing they were wanted they're selling high-end luxury real estate in in the California market and at some point while I was still in investment banking the original founders of Telus properties started to have were not aligned right so they reached out to their investors and said hey could you help us could you help us think very confidentially could you help us think through the next stage of how we achieve our growth right so I actually took three weeks off from Investment Banking I came to California from New York and I said I actually wanted to help consult and help the company pro bono just because we were investors right we realized at that time that not everybody were aligned and this company had a lot of potential but it was not being operated in the the best possible there's lot of friction there's also a so my partner and I decided that we would make a play to taking this small this 300 million dollar business because they were selling high-end stuff and if we could really grow - we made a play where we bought out a few of the original partners and took on as being operators of this company because it was like our chance to turn something around that we believed in right and the goal was to take a company that was fledgling and had a lot of potential and actually put some operationalized success into the business something that I'd never done at that scale so it's all new and you had no experience in real estate whatsoever nothing I had no idea and the company at this stage is doing about 300 million in revenue 300 million now a lot of people might hear that and go oh my god 300 million yeah but what they don't understand is that that's real estate and that doesn't necessarily correlate to 300 million in profits correct right so can you talk a little bit about you know what were some of the challenges that the business had at that time yeah so the interesting part is that the business was started in a really interesting time it was started right around the 2008 crisis a good time to be in real estate so if you think about it the number one problem was their markets were just not moving that was number one number two is that when you're running a real estate based operation margins can vary so you have to be very you have to have deep deep systems to unlock a lot of value and it was not being run optimally and so the so what what I was telling the investor group was about it say hey we can come in and run a really tight business and drop a lot of profitability that this business can see and the funny part is the the board said well what does it what needs to happen for this to be exciting for everybody right and I said well if we hit 3.4 billion in sales all of us will make a lot of money and everyone starts laughing I said no no you don't understand if we had 3.4 billion in sales everyone will make a lot of money and they said of course Chiron we know that and I said well not only that real seed goes in seven-year cycles assume we need 2 years to do a deal a transition something like that so you have 5 years so we're at 300 million we need to get at 3.4 billion and we have 5 years so we have to 10x in five years and they start laughing at me and I said listen this is totally possible but I we all need to be in and on this together yeah and that's how the 10x and five-year plan came about it was not it was not a grandiose plan it was what is the number that will make all of us a lot of money how long do we have can we just jam it and so I left I left my investment banking gig committed to completely coming out not taking any salary or compensation Wow and believing so much that we can grow this big pie and we put a 10 year five year or 10x plan together how much of you at the time was kind of even doubting your own like Isis realistic is it possible or are you just kind of running with the delusion and hoping that somehow you would be convinced of it I mean where was your sense of actual belief that it could happen it's one thing to set a goal it's another thing to believe it's possible so did you really think that three billion and five was possible or were you even kind of doubtful of it I'd be lying to say if I was not doubtful I was I was really scared I'd never done anything that big numbers perspective before but I believed in something which was the there there's there's three pieces I realized is there's three pieces to operating a business and I when I saw a lot of these businesses at Goldman Sachs I kind of was like why are these businesses doing well in Investment Banking so I came up with this model and I'll share this with you and I think everybody can benefit from this model yeah if you're entrepreneurs listening to this make sure to take some notes and pay attention if you want to grow a business exponentially there are three things that are very very bored number one is a singularity of focus the singularity of focus was we're gonna do 10x and five years to get that 3.4 billion dollar number that was that was etched into everybody in the business and the funny part was like I would have team members saying hey Chiron why are you going down to San Diego does it get us to our 10x goal they would ask me things like that which is so it gave you a filter for making good decisions right so it's number one a singularity of focus cuz a lot of times when you ask a CEO of a company they're like oh I wanted to do this I want to get into this business they're very distracted right we were so deeply focused that everything else didn't matter we were only focused on getting that number that's number one the second one is one of my favorites I call it the cadence of accountability this is a brick by brick business suddenly something is not happening but the brick by brick means you got to track the big my brick right and so we realized that if we did seven point six million dollars a day with the current growth rate right we would hit the three point five billion dollar mark in five years so there was this magic number of like well how do you get seven point six billion dollars and that's when we really started to say well that means we need to make X number of calls X number of meetings it was all about the cadence so what you're saying is you essentially reverse engineered it he said the goal is 3.4 billion yep so to do that we need to sell seven point six million a day yep and you know for people here that I might go oh my god seven point six million what you're really talking about you're talking about high-end luxury real estate correct so we're talking about you know for someone else out there in your business that could be $7.00 $700 $70 right just depends on the price poner the nature of your business I just want to give the audience context for that so you guys realize okay we verse engineer when yourself some point six million dollars around there a day you break down the numbers how many calls is that how many agents is that what markets is that exactly and then you guys devise a plan and is it start working right away do you guys start seeing momentum or a lot of hiccups I mean what was it like you know year one they were hiccups but as soon as we all it took us close to six to twelve months to build a plan the plan tick a while to build it really did because you can say yeah I want to do seven point six million anybody I don't have the answers today right it's all experiments it's all testing and so we were like hey do we do online lead generation do we acquire more agents do we do we become do we go talk to investors and we can get more properties to sell how do we actually increase our margins like there was a lot of things throwing things at the wall but it took us a close to a whole year to build a plan and I'll tell you what what actually made the switch nine months in Omar I was afraid Oh scared I had a noose I'm my first son under what my first kid on the way my wife was still traveling and working I was not making any salary if you will I was investing I was writing checks to support the business so were the other partners right and we still hadn't figured out the formula and I was driving crying I praying for some kind of like device or something right and again making deals with something and I was not asking for give me a gift give me a break I was asking forgive me clarity says I can go work I just didn't know what to do I was totally trying to figure this out my dad calls hey man how you doing you know dad has no idea what's going on right so I'm telling dad here you sound down excited I'm like dad I'm really stuck and my dad said hey I wanted to tell you that there's this cool conference going on in San Francisco my friend told me that you would really like it you should go to that maybe it'll be a couple days worth of a break for you so I was like well maybe maybe it will when I go to this conference I'm sitting there I'm so disappointed depressed dejected I'm sitting in the back taking notes they're probably a hundred people in the room it was all about entrepreneurship speakers were good and then right before lunch this lady goes up to speak she starts talking and I'm I'm listening taking notes whatever she says is totally resonating I'm like oh this is cool I'm taking notes and as she's talking she's very much like you like she can bring the right stuff out right she starts I have a question right but she naturally just answers it from from being onstage right I have another question and I have not raised my hand or anything but she's answering my questions staying with me on though so I my way back I called my dad I'm like dad you won't believe it I met this lady on stage she was amazing I mean if I could have her in my business she would help me do our 10x in five years my dad tells me ask her I was like dad I don't have the money for this he goes listen pick a number that is actually going to hurt but that you can still afford so let's go with easy numbers ten thousand dollars still gonna hurt you but you can afford it he says write her an email and my dad was a professor of English he's like I'll give you the script right so I write her an email and I say hey so-and-so I met you at this conference you blew my mind I would like to offer you $10,000 as a symbol of my seriousness and all I ask in return is that you prioritize my communication I don't need any one-on-one time so she replies right away and she's like is this a joke I said no I'm struggling with my business from time to time I might have some questions if you can guide me that'd be great she says write it up and send me a contract so I write I print out my email I sign it and I send it to her so that was my first coach Wow I hired her to help me grow Telus Tenex and I and she said the day you grow 10x and the day you sell your business I'm out four years the next four years she helped she helped with the pieces she helped with the puzzle pieces she helped just help me with my thinking she didn't talk to my partner she only talked to me cuz I hired her right and she helped hit head we how she helped get the 10x growth F tell us the day we sold that the day is our contract ended Wow literally so it literally worked out exactly as planned exactly as plan and same thing with the tennis thing which is so interesting so let me ask you this do you find that by setting up the system's reverse engineering the goal that that's when clarity shows up or what is it that makes the magic work I mean obviously there's a tremendous amount of work that even and one-hour interview can't condense I'm sure there was many late nights you know discussions with your wife arguments inter debates and securities is worth it you know teams and partner you know I'm sure that there was tons of that but what do you find in retrospect was really the catalyst for the momentum like if you could boil it down to a few things is it really what you're talking about when you say singularity focus I mean was it really the the you know the the accountability from the social group I mean what was it if you could boil it down that really was most importantly pivotal and allowing that to happen cool awesome question if you don't have the singularity focus it means you don't have the clarity just don't have the clarity nobody can help you mm-hmm you can't hit a bull's-eye you can't see yeah and and I also would not have known so if I'm walking into you and saying Omar help me build the greatest you know you know help me rebuild the passion for you show and I and I did was not able to if I said oh I want to build an interview sure you'd be like well I have 5,000 questions for you Chiron so there's no clarity right when I said we need to go from 300 million to 3.4 billion for these 10 reasons in five years you can ask for help there's structure there yeah the clarity allows you to ask for help in a very thoughtful way that way when you're talking to a mentor you have a platform to ask for help context you have context to ask for help it's not general Oh tell me otherwise you have these you have mentees asking mentors the most random questions Oh what book do you think I should read like that's fine give you a book but it is no connectivity into what I want no contacts yeah it doesn't take you to any kind of result or any kind of specific result or measurable one right let me ask you this what was easier than you expected about the 10x growth it was easy I never thought this the steeper the growth the easier was and I'll show you what I mean the first few years was such a grind I had to be CEO CTO CIO pres I to be all those roles but as we started growing it was easier to say ok I'm we have a clear vision I'm gonna bring on a person to do this role and they're gonna take away this from me the last two years of growth was very joyful really very joy was momentum yeah he has a momentum build on and I knew everything I knew how the pieces work I knew that if I made 18 calls out pop 30 million on the other end I knew everything became formulaic and when success gets formulaic it's super joyful so you look at me just enjoy the process and other results will take care of totally and and but till you get to that point how it's hard it's really hard and I think that was the hardest part was the first few years was just a grind and then when we got we got momentum it became really it became easier now and your guys is a growth to you know 10x the business how many employees are we talking at this stage so total people when we sold the business at the end of year we had close to 800 800 now are these mostly agents real estate agents right what was the nature of the business for people who you know serve yeah might hear about two let's Bonanno orders can you explain to them just the nature of the business totally so we had about we had six hundred and roughly six hundred agents who would work with consumers and help them in buying and selling homes then they would get paid a commission for that we had 22 offices up and down the California coast so we were working in very high on price points and the other kind of 200 people were support staff marketing technology sales transaction support etc the service the six hundred percent sales force right ok so then from there the acquisition happens is it a you know stressful process I mean because acquisitions can take a while yeah talk to me about that that we were there any moments where the deal almost didn't happen it did happen I mean it walk me through what you guys you know the pins and needles and the audits and stuff like that yeah about that yeah great question so so what we did big they'll give you the so if anybody is in a point that's listening right now was thinking about selling their business at that point everyone thinks that hey you know what one one magical morning I'm gonna wake up and I'm gonna start I'm gonna sell my business like that is he it's a process right so I'll tell you what we did based on my muscle banking experience a number one thing I took away from Goldman was you go to market every year so we actually took our business to market to sell our business softly every year that gave us a sense of what our business was worth we ran the process every year like we were gonna sell the business every year so we cleaned up our book we figured out the metrics we tweaked our things that you figured out the questions you figure out what your wants what the with the company that would acquire you is looking for exactly my question was the pressure etc and then based on that we that was our whatever they said became our business plan for the next year no we need to make sure we do that in case we're asked for the acquisition exactly so it's really interesting so you guys began with the the end in mind now I know you talked about the fact that the exit strategy isn't the answer but the options are the answer right can you talk a little bit how that plays into what you just said yes sir when you awesome right the the everyone thinks I want to sell my business the goal is not to sell your business the goal is to figure out what you really want the goal is options when you have options a lot of things happen we saw it wouldn't it be amazing if to say hey if I had to run tell us I'd love to run it but a few things need to happen you need to run on autopilot it needs to throw off this much cash ready to have that's option number one option is simplified systems in place yeah right option number two would be hey what if what if somebody was you know recapped us as investors give us all our money back and then we got to grow maybe that we called it the private equity options maybe that's one maybe there's a third option which is a complete acquisition maybe there's a fourth option which we talked about which was a franchise model where we take our model and do it around around the country right but to do all of those you have to set yourself up to do all of them sure yeah the decisions need to be made in accordance with that yeah and that way you're also not held hostage by one acquire or one option mmm that's so that way if Douglas Elliman came in who acquired us then you know one of the largest companies in in the country then and they said oh we we're not paying you this price I could be like no problem see yeah yeah we're good we're good so when the options make us a lot more attractive and for an acquirer the options make it even more attractive because now they acquire that they are yes ah so they want to buy that though that sense of option is correct that's where that that's where the money is for them now they're not just buying a static business they're buying the options I love that and that plays into another thing you said as you can see I've done my homework I appreciate it but you talked about you know two key elements when selling a business and you can you know you can feel free to add if you feel like there's more but you talked about how the fact that most people think that you want to build you know a company to exercise but there's other you know intangible very intangible variables at play things like I know you said one is that you have to almost not need it not need an acquisition so can you talk about what people who want to build a business for acquisition should aim to look for and build supplementary from you know what what might not initially meet the I yeah so very easy I would I would talk about there's this concept called the conditions for success so don't think about the goal so I'll give you something very easy let's take a Health example if if I want to lose if I want to lose twenty pounds the goal is I want to lose twenty pounds now everyone starts to work on that goal but that we don't care but we shouldn't care about that goal what we should care about is hey a year from now on Marv if I have to if I have lost twenty pounds what is true in my life okay I have a really good sleep and wake up routine okay that's one condition I I've taken away all junk food from my from my home great I have a trainer that I meet three times a week and I i run ten miles a week that is in place if your future pace yourself those are the conditions for success so now instead of thinking about losing 20 pounds all I'm thinking about is I got to get my I got to get my morning and night routine set up I got to get a trainer like because if those are in place I know my goal will happen so you take away the pressure from the goal and you just build the conditions so for us it was always let's have insane cash flow let's have a big business let's have a lot of options so all those conditions that's where when if you're if you have a digital marketer running an online business do you have your affiliates do you have multiple product lines do you have something you have a membership site do you have a mastermind group how can you what are the conditions that are available that will give you something significantly more so what I work with CEOs of companies right now I have up about 10 CEOs that I mentor I'm always talking to them not about their goals but what conditions they need to put in place yeah what systems are creating results as a byproduct exactly right that way you don't worry about a byproduct for example Arnold Schwarzenegger isn't worried about getting a six-pack he's just worried about eating XYZ every day waking up at this time working out twice a day the results take care of themselves over sustained period of time those compound yeah and the conditions are very controllable and if you don't get the the goal you know that you made he just missed on the conditions that's okay you just fixed the conditions and you'll get your goal yeah you just pivot the systems exactly beautiful and you learn that massively ed Celeste let me ask you this tell us so let me ask you this what was the biggest challenge if you could pinpoint what was the single biggest thing that you had to wrestle for the longest time was it that first year initially finding the plan you know was it maybe the partnership was it managing the team I mean well if you could pinpoint what was the you know the thing that you had to wrestle with the most with to less and what did you learn from it the number one thing which I never thought that's what it would be was culture and I'll tell you why when you can when you have a really good vision you just have to enroll people around her to support you to getting there and it's not your vision anymore now it's the cultures vision culture which is ethereal thing that people are like oh we have a great culture walk into my office high-five people we've got Miramax we got free snacks and football tables culture like that's what people could culture as culture is to me is a sense of belonging and there's only one way you create belonging you create belonging through cadence through regular regularity everyone thinks that one day you wake up and you've Amar's created this big business with culture why it's not that you create you showed up every day you send out that voicemail to your employees every day you did the tweet to your employees every day you had the culture meetings every day you had the potlucks every Friday the cadence of what you did is where everything is when we had culture and I think that's what the whole up curve was everybody believed in the vision more than we had to so it kind of took on a life of its own yeah and so the culture ended up doing the bulk of the heavy lifting and you didn't to be in it and try to sort of you know tweaking everybody's mentality along the way anyone stuff breaks and you have good culture you're forgiving a lot more there's leeway there's a lot of leeway there like oshrin didn't mean that like if I write a nasty email and they were like oh he must have he must have had a bad day like let him go but if you didn't have culture and you write that email to Chiron is exactly right gosh exactly right so you get a it's it's there's a lot of forgiveness when you have good culture what would be your top three tips to entrepreneurs out there watching this that are maybe starting their own business or scaling whether it's at the you know six seven eight nine figure level and beyond what would be your top three tips for somebody who knows nothing about culture on how to like tactically start building one your might recommend them writing down values you recommending you recommend them getting in a meeting with their team I mean what is your step one two and three recommendation on how to really build an effective and powerful culture in business yeah awesome so that the first thing I would say is it's very hard to define a culture before it happens mmm interesting yeah you can define what you wanted to be hey we want to be collaborative that's cool but over three years you'll realize that that collaborative mistook a whole spirit of its own right no idea as conditions and earmarks in there exactly so what I would say is culture is built by the cadence of communication and touches so if you're a leader what you should be doing is every Monday what up every Wednesday every Monday an email comes out or a slack message comes out or whatever that says hey this is what we did this weekend and this is why I'm grateful for the team and have a great week ahead if you write that every single Monday some Monday's may be great what you write so my name's me not but the team is like whoa they start to get bought into who you are and what you're doing my CEO right now I do I do that my CEO at the end of the week every week he writes his top ten for the week so he he just says ten great things happen this weekend he'll write those out just those two things bring the team together because everything else is business meetings we do we do a 30-minute culture call every every every week and we rotate that so if the one thing we started doing was for every week we had one person share one thing that they loved a book a story a PDF a concept a Wikipedia page whatever and everybody had to read that before they came in and it doesn't have to be business-related and everybody on the Xoom call we were all on video had to share their takeaway and now I knew Omar more and Omar knew everybody else what they thought of that topic outside of just the business outside of the business so we did that so that all our employees to get through that no pressure nothing right and a couple people some people said hey this is really personal to me I'm just gonna pass great pass but things like that we have full attendance on our All Hands calls and people what they do is for these All Hands they're like our goals are these these are they make it an administrative meeting right when you take the All Hands and make it a culture meeting you get a whole new person in there but I would say culture today is built in the cloud I would think about culture in the cloud a lot of us your first interaction with your team is you're three text messages that you get your first interaction with your team is the email that goes out your first interaction with the team is when they log into a system we do a lot of culture in the cloud but we've not built culture in the cloud so if we don't define hey here my slack messages have come out like it's very mechanical here the emails that come out where I am are hey hey guys I just want you to know Sharon are gonna do an interview he's gonna be doing and if the team knows and shares that now they know more about what you're doing and it's in tied to the bigger vision mechanical things can really start to build this bond with the company and how did that sound come something really magical that's beautiful and you start attracting the right people as well yeah now let me ask you about this whatever you found to be the most effective you know obviously with high-end real estate you know you want to make sure you're bringing in the right people and be very particular about that but across industry it's important to have good people in your business what has Sharon learned about what it takes to acquire attract quality team players in your business for entrepreneurs watching that want to grow their team and want to make sure to quality control it you know what would be your best advice in that regard yeah really great so two things number one it would be great if you just wrote down and I would say no more than ten because it's too many the ten things that you love about your company it's like I'll give you one we have very specifically taken a a shot at building a remote culture all our employees worldwide our remote we do everything on video so our tent says you know we have a thriving remote culture we are very transparent meaning if I have to go to the doctor I say have to go to the doctor I don't say I'm off this afternoon transparency is really big you know we say hey we bring up all our issues first we're kind first whatever it is if you write it up it would be awesome if someone connected with what you wrote that would be the first thing because as soon as you get the culture fit right away the second thing is I don't believe in interviews anymore just pay them for a day to come work with you and then see it see their work flow just yet I hand them a laptop and say you have a project use the web talk to your friends you to figure it out because put them in a situation where they would work as opposed to saying will answer me how you would do a marketing campaign I don't like you've never you giving me time to think and different people work differently right so we always say hey here's who we are as a company and come work with us and we'll pay you for it take a day projects whatever and collaborate with the team will give you access to everything because that's the only way you learn and man if we've noticed so fast that's someone that does it work who doesn't yeah versus interviews and trial and error and trying to systematize it any other way yeah you just figure it out on the fly yeah when they're in the workout and people always say this whole you know hire slow fire fast right whatever like that's ridiculous why don't you hire slow that makes no sense hire with good process fire with good process I'd it's not you know if when you say fire fast well let's say you have a key controller or a CFO in your organization yeah just because what are you gonna fire them fast you can't like your company will fall apart you say hey if key positions means we need to make sure they have a backup we need the backup needs to be trained hey I need to have a backup they need to be trained they need to do this awesome that's a process the hires that you can't like the whole hire slow fire fast is ridiculous because if you start firing fast like we're gonna end up with no people yeah it's only a matter of time yeah yeah especially yeah now what about in terms of leeway with employees do you have any rules where like you know X amount of mess-ups or you know what are your rules of thumb so to speak on retaining talent versus when it's time to let go obviously it's a harsh decision yeah but when you're trying to grow a company ten Xers very little room to keep people on board that shouldn't be on board totally so I tell you the first thing a great question the when it gets bigger you have to you have to give them a framework to make decisions and so we had this thing that said as long as you have a rationale go ahead and do it I love that and the rationale is super simple so I'm sure on I worked for Omar client got messy I'd realized that I needed to pay $300 to fix this facebook ad and send them you know some edible arrangements and that cost me 500 to do hey Omar asked me why I did this could I come up with a rationale that makes sense hey Omar these guys have paid us fifty thousand dollars this year I spent five hundred dollars to solve this relationship and now they love us I'm assuming that's okay with you that person thought I talked to that rationale if I shared that with you you'd be like dude great job right yeah exactly yeah as opposed to a lot of times it's like why better check with Chiron because it's over a five hundred dollar charge and you know people start I wanna make decisions stop bothering Omar or yeah that way you empower people to as long as they have rationale they can make decisions and then at the same time they're not worried about you know doing what Chiron wants what Omar wants are more focused on doing what's right 100 percent and the best part is this if let's say their rationale was off for some reason yeah you never have to reprimand them for the actions you can just coach them on rationale so then you can just coast them to be up their games and now you just coach them to become better people and their thank you for it now that gets amazing so now you take away the pain of saying 'shauni did a bad job with that you're just saying hey the rationale that I would have you used was this what do you think about that and and interestingly you probably have encountered that a lot of times even if you wouldn't have handled it that way you're like oh that's a better rush now than I have your own sense of rationality but because a lot of times they the the team members have more context you may be disconnected from right opportunity so now you've got to get read in on the opportunity by the time you get read in on the problem you would have come up with this probably the same thing so they let them just make the decision right yeah yeah there's no way to scale without that you know at some point and tell you yeah and you also want they also want stick around with you then they'll say oh I Charan just micromanage is everything exactly yeah and that gets and you don't want to you want to stay like you you are you need we need to do whatever it takes to put you in your zone a genius all the time meeting great people coaching great people mentoring gay people building great businesses that's your job right outside of that you're like my team has this thing that they say Nijo knows nih oh noes in hands-off srong you can smell anything but you can't touch nose in hands-off meaning they build a system the team owns the system they know it works I mean think something's wrong but I can look I can feel I can but I can't tell them anything yeah so now they get their empowerment around Nijo yeah yeah and essentially you can't build a business without having some element of that because if you're in it all the time you're capped you only have 24 hours a day and if you're working in the business there's no way to actually scale and work on the business totally very powerful do it now let me ask you some personal questions yeah this is a fun part here so what has been the biggest challenge for you entrepreneurial e you know over the course of last couple decades in entrepreneurship what has been the you know the biggest I guess challenge for you maybe maybe could be organization maybe you could be I know it's certainly not waking up because you have 5 a.m. calls yep every single day with your 5 a.m. Club yeah but you guys can check out in the description below you guys can sign up and join Chiron it's 5 a.m. calls but you know what for you has been the biggest wrestle entrepreneurially and and how are you sort of working on it now and the reason I ask that is because there's entrepreneurs out there now they might see you and be like all you built this you know huge business acquisition and they might not realize that you have you know your own insecurities you have your own challenges so what are some things that you're currently dealing with and how are you working to get better at them um great question I every time I come up with an idea I get I get really afraid and I get very conscious and fearful of whether it would actually work and there's a lot of second-guessing have this idea oh my gosh I'm gonna get the team I need to go I'm gonna go sell this idea to the team they're gonna believe me because I'm gonna I'm a good salesman I'll sell it internally but it's gonna fall flat on his face what if it falls below and so a lot of my bosses all the team but I saw the market on right and what that's a really tough thing by the way if you can tell your team and the market doesn't respond well the team started lose confidence in you team is like okay Sean camp with the idea I bought it I built it the market didn't respond hey Sean's taking me for a ride because his ideas are not market congruent so I always think about is this gonna work there's a lot of fear a lot of hesitation and is this gonna work and I this may sound fan this is not fancy at all I do the good old legal pad one line down the middle test sometimes you got to keep it really simple why do I believe this will work why do I believe this one and I just start writing I believe this will work because it's off this pain I believe this work because we can make a lot of money but I believe this may struggle because I'm not sure about Australia I'm not sure whether this is gonna scale I'm not sure I have I'm gonna I need to find three new people to run this I don't know if we have the capital right now so I write all the reasons now what I've done is I take those reasons to my executive team I'm like hey here's my start what do you guys think and or some version of that right but my raw material work now is I just sit down and I tried I like to do it in the mornings I'll go grab a cup of coffee at Starbucks and I'll just sit there and I'll just write why is this gonna work wise it's not gonna work you get to be really honest with yourself you get to be really and so now you're not judging you're just reporting and you're also - and correct me if you think I'm wrong but you're also being able to more accurately filter what's inside a lot of times you might have you know stuff in your head fogging you up but when you get it on paper you see it for what it is you don't see it for the you know the emotional weight that that thing might be you might be like oh that's not as bad as it felt in my head or that's way worse or you know would you agree to that fear has no place on paper it's so good right and like it's once you get out of your head it can't fight you all the fear and the daisy-chain happens in here and it's the smallest of tricks but when you write write the fear down saying hey I'm afraid of these three things to happen in this initiative fear has no place on paper yeah and now your team can actually support you with it yeah because it's it's an emotion you can't write the fear thing you just write down the actual tactical thing that you think you're afraid of but not the actual fear itself very powerful then you can begin to work on that without the burden or the filter of the fear very powerful let me ask you this earlier in the interview you mentioned there are three things to focus on to run an effective business and I think at number two we sort of went on to great tangent but can we just recap for people watching and maybe taking notes entrepreneurs out there you said number one was clarity of focus regularity of focus singularity focus number two the cadence of accountability cadence of accountability and looking a really good process drives good results okay just those three if you can take that to anything right singularity focus I want to lose twenty pounds by June fifteenth cadence of accountability I'm gonna text a picture of every single meal to Omar good processed drives good results awesome I'm gonna wake up a next time go to better why time and only it's out at lunch that's it right you can you can apply it to anything it's a framework you can really apply it to anything but if you don't have all three pieces one something will break and having those pieces actually allows people to really help you mm-hmm so what are some of the systems you guys put into place at your new company which is Kingston lane yeah which we'll get into so can you share a little bit about you know what the company is why it's been having such an awesome response why so many people are getting involved with it and what are the systems you have in place to ensure results for everybody involved yes so the what what I realized in the in the real estate business was that any entrepreneurial business an entrepreneur says they have these dreams and desires and these dreams and desires are floating around their head saying I want to make a million dollars or build a ten million dollar company or whatever and so generally they do work with a mentor or coach or themselves and they take these dreams and desires and you build goals and plans like okay I got this ethereal thing but now I'm gonna create a plan around it but then to get from plan to results that's all execution that's where there's an insane amount of friction people are like well how do I do this what do I do next what system do I use what what funnel software do I use except they get stuck here so I thought wouldn't be amazing where we took people from goals and plans results so everything that we do is to deliver a result so if an eight if if one of our clients want to do Facebook marketing they click three buttons and it gets done we want to figure out how we can push button everything I want to push button lead don't want to push button sales I want to push button marketing I want to push button execution so we are we're a push button execution platform so that ro state entrepreneur's can do what they do and we do all the execution so in terms of actual real estate experience I think what's interesting to know although you've built these great systems as you yourself have never been in real estate didn't know much about it what is it about this industry that makes you want to serve them and made you want to you know find this problem to solve in the industry it's a great question so I have not I don't know anything about I didn't know anything about this business now I have deep understanding I'm not I'm not licensed to sell or buy or Rosa I'm and roasted investor that's as close to real estate I've gotten what I've noticed is that real estate in the anywhere in the world is a cottage industry and what I mean by that is it is so fragmented because there are so many market forces at play to buy a piece or sell to buy or sell a piece of real estate there's at least 2530 people involved you have an agent you have a brokerage involved you need a title company you know mortgage company you need you know scoffs escrow sorry there's so many pieces to the puzzle it actually doesn't deliver a great experience for the client so wouldn't it be amazing if even each of those people if they just did their jobs correctly everything would work well and so the average real estate agent right now has to do sales has to do marketing has to do follow-up has to do contracts has to do operations we know that we would never hire a person in our business that has to do sales marketing operations contracts legal and staged a house like we know we would never do that right but we still hire an agent to do that that's insane right and and and the average age is completely delusion that they're actually can do all of those that's and I think that's a problem the good agents are the ones that realize okay I'm Omar I'm really good at visualizing who the right buyer for this home is I'm gonna put that strategy in place and that's my gift and my team's gonna run the rest cool that's when good agents do the things so I realize that as a almost as a rule I noticed that most people that want to get into the real estate business love the uncapped income potential and love the unstructured time potential which is okay I get it all right but I don't make a whole bunch of money and have a bunch of free time correct which is okay however the only reason that gets friction doubt is that they start to do things that they're not good at all right and so my my vision was can we can we get our clients doing only what they're good at and us do everything else us hired either have teams systems processes people to do everything else so that it makes this person more joyful and more profitable so I always say hey we have four three or four things we're doing we're either increasing revenues for the agent we're decreasing costs or increasing joy or we're reducing stress very simple increase you have a new decrease costs great increase joy reduce stress if you can do all four game-changer if you do even one of the four it's still a winner but we but very clear and what we're doing but for the average person you can increase joy and reduce stress they'll pay handsomely for it very powerful now you guys are international or Internet is we're international we realized that while real estate is done differently around the world the marketing all the pieces of the puzzle of running the business was very similar so we actually launched multiple countries on day one or very early early in the gate so we have word ten plus countries right now in all the major markets Australia New Zealand Canada and the US are our four big markets but even though real estate is done differently everywhere else we do the layer that they need us for is pretty consistent that's profound now what are some of the challenges that you found initially when building the business and how did you get over that you talked a little bit about Tellez and how you got over some of those challenges but with Kingston land I know you guys are still early on and growing you know tweaking things but what are things that you found were sort of you know pickups bumps in the road and boom how did you get over them and I asked that for entrepreneurs that maybe just started their own thing recently and they want to get over their little bumps in the road so what are some bumps in the road recently with Kingston Lena you've encountered it how did you guys get over that hump it's a great question a lot a lot of dreams go to die in in this venture back to graveyard and what I mean by that is they say oh I have this idea I'm gonna put this deck together and someone funds me I'll go build it I think we live in a world right totally I don't see theirs I see presentation decks so often where they're like oh I want to raise money to build this product and I go we'll sell something let's go sell something and we've done and I wanted to subscribe to that where we said yes we can we have we have a small base of investors we've got we've been fortunate but we've subscribed to income before impact and it's messy for a lot of people I want to change the world like the world doesn't need changing the world needs more entrepreneurs so that they can create more job the world doesn't need changing III don't want to impact you know three million lives and create foundation like that's not me my job is to build a lot of businesses so we realized that everything that we're doing we're doing from a cash flow perspective so we don't ask can we go build something and will someone someone pay for it that's not the question we answered like can I get paid to build something that's when it starts to get exciting like who's gonna pay me to build something which means that they love my pitch so much that they are gonna pay me to build it but they're willing to back it yeah exactly and so mine we took the financing financing and capital raising become zero if I had the money I would build it I would flip it for most people saying what can I sell today that will actually give me an entree into building something and that's where like a lot of our the CEOs that I mentor when they want to launch new divisions I'm like hey listen you want to have a CEO in Atlanta who wants a launch a cleaning company and I said well let's get contracts first and then we'll clean he's like oh how does that work I said well Wilson Wilson will sell six months worth of contracts at a 50% discount that way you don't even displays any contracts right now and then we'll go build the crew all right he's like who's gonna buy that I'm like we just need ten it'll prove our concept suddenly you do that and you get ten contracts now you have a live business yeah and it starts to get exciting so if you can switch the mode of saying I need money you had nothing we're gonna built this from the ground up right you just had a vision and you're like I'm gonna make it work let - in today's world you can get a clickfunnels account for $89 like we got a we have the ability to do so much yeah right and so the biggest hiccup for us was could be we need a lot of capital and I said well can we pre sell a bunch of stuff so we started pre-selling free accounts pre selling things and that got us the user base and then we started doing more push build yeah which built the cash flow to then build more systems than proof-of-concept in advance you don't waste time building only to find out that you spent all this money and nobody even wants it exactly right now that makes total sense now let me ask you on a personal level what are some day-to-day disciplines that have helped you in your business and your leadership skill sets I mean aside from waking up at 5:00 a.m. every single day I mean do you literally do those calls every single day at 5:00 a.m. yes so three years ago I got I got sick my doctor said to me he's like hey if you just take your day and shift it up you may do better I just I just think so I said okay I was a night owl I don't know if you are a lot of people are night owls and they needed some accountability so I told three friends hey can you guys all dial in to this conference line at 5:00 a.m. for just a week it'll give me the accountability to wake up cadence of accountability right right so I said so they did and they're like Sean what are you gonna say I said you know what three to five minutes I'll come up with an inspirational message so three people got on the call for a week and then they asked me they're like hey can we invite other people to the call so that three and I said I don't care it's just a conference call number go nuts yeah I was still delivering a three to five minute message and three invited people it became 30 the 30 invited people it became 300 the 300 Pete invited people it became 3,000 so we're close to 3,000 people on the call right now five minutes at 5:00 a.m. Pacific time seven days a week seven seven days a week no matter what including holidays including new year including Christmas including every every single day of the week so do you sleep early I mean what's your what's your routine or does it not matter what time you sleep is just no matter what you get up at 5:00 anyway no matter what I wake up a wake or at 4:45 regardless I have a couple of folks who are co-host on the call now that if I'm traveling or if I'm in Australia or whatever I have a couple of folks it'll jumping into the call for for us but I do 90% of the calls 95% of the calls but just got in the routine 4:45 I wake up do a little morning ritual do the call and that allows me to go get my day started now I have two questions do you think that you would have been able to be consistent at it had other people not been on the line there is no way I woke it up there even today I wake up sometimes and I'm like oh my god I mean yeah man 800 calls or something like that all the court like I have all of them even today I'm like why did I wake up in why did I sign up for this I I just wish that I could just text Omar right now and he would do the call for me yeah I uh I still today have excuses and I've been doing this and I have thousands of people waiting for me on the call and I still have excuses that I have in my head yeah without without their public accountability there is no way I would wake up now my second question is do you think you would have been able to build your business as big as you have or done as well as you have had you not been constantly trying to add those disciplines like for example we just interviewed somebody not too long ago who said that there's no way had he not woken up earlier that he would have built the business as big as he had because it's those extra two three hours in the morning uninterrupted that you can get a lot done your minds clear you're not in the middle of the day or foggy or hungry or tired or whatever how important do you feel like that that those early a.m. hours have been to the productivity of your business probably probably the number one thing really the number one thing if I if I could say the number one thing that changed my life was the five a.m. Club really completely because now I know that I can spend time with my kids at night and I know I have a few hours of golden hours and magic hours in the morning that I can crank through stuff some some days I work out some buddies I read some days I'll just write my lists some days I create content but I always know I have good a good chunk of time to think that no one is bothering me there's no emails there's no social media I don't talk to touch my phone for a couple hours because no one's expecting me to respond to that different private yeah and I get a little head start I get a little head start so that when the rest of my family wakes up I've gotten I'm already in momentum I've gotten my stuff out of the way so now I'm not trying to get my stuff done while I'm getting my family stuff done and that's been super super helpful I I don't know any other practice if we took that out of my day I would be a worse entrepreneur I love that now two more questions on you know a personal level I want to ask if you could look back to the youngster on who was trying to figure it out and you know was looking for answers you know obviously before he had these you know encounters where he got mobbed you came to this country and you're like ah what am I gonna do knowing what you know now what would be your best advice to that young Charan who was looking for answers and trying to find guidance you know for the youngster on that might be watching this from anywhere in the world or you know guy or gal watching this from anywhere in the world would be your best advice having being somebody who literally started from nothing worked his way from tennis to get to the u.s. literally earned his keep selling wires to pay for tuition you know so on and so forth to you know so you know a business that was doing in the billions in revenue what would be your best 60 seconds piece of wisdom to somebody out there looking for answers the fastest way to get between where you are and where you want to go the fastest is to hire a coach the fastest there is no faster way to get from where you are to where you want to go other than hiring a coach coach that and I say when you see when you pay somebody for their skill set to guide you through the process there's the symbol of seriousness that allows them to support you through the process I always say this the shortest distance a mentor can show you a mentor has been there and a mentor can show you the shortest path but a coach can show you the fastest path that's a difference between Google Maps and ways right you know we always know the shortest path the mentors been there they can say hey don't do these three things do this but you have no idea if there's traffic on that road at that time they can always give you the shortest path because they they have perspective mentors do but coaches know what's working right now and if if someone wanted to grow their double the size of their business I could probably be I could probably help them much faster than they could do it on their own just because I've seen it and I will tell you that if I had hired my first coach it by far all I had to do was hire my first coach ten years earlier and the trajectory of my company would have been completely different all my life would have been completely different so why do you think there's such a stigma with coaching in the personal development industry as oh taboo or they're just trying to you know get rich on selling you ideas and what do you think that stigma exists and what do you think it came from I think the hard part is that for two reasons one since this is proliferation of coaches people think that it's a fad but the second is I actually believe that most people out there who have tried it have not had a good result and I think that's what's happened I've talked to a lot of people said I have tried coaching it's not for me I go you've never worked with Omar like I've never worked with a really good coach in in who can like I will tell you every time I get my coach lives in Australia every time I get on a call with her she completely transforms me right every time right that's insane yeah and what people also and I just want to add to this what people don't realize is that a lot of times you might spend an hour on a call and get one idea one sentence and they go ah that's it and you make one pivot and it works yeah and so it's not a complicated idea it's just a simple idea that you're willing to act on that somebody outside of your frame can give you and boom you go acti changes everything it's worth every penny of that investment multiple x-y a very profound point and out even though even the I have one an entrepreneur that I work with right now he's a millennial runs a hundred million dollar company just a really really sharp guy the deal I had with him he does not want to talk to me doesn't want to target no he paid me a lot of money does not want to talk and he's like Chiron when I need you I need you now and so we actually came up with him we have the 15-minute rule the 15-minute rule is if he's working on a project and he's stuck for more than 15 minutes he stops and text me that's the entire rule so I might go three weeks without hearing from you at all then I'd hear from him every day for the next four days but I've never it's been three years I've never spoken to him I'll catch up with him once in a while but he'll never call me no scheduled calls no scheduled meetings but we have this 15-minute rule and it's amazing because what he wants is he's like if I'm stuck I'm gonna work on something if I can't get it I need help I get support and then I get movement and momentum and we've broken in through so many barriers we've tripled his business in the last three years and given him more time because all because he realized that he gets very very into his head past when he's starting to work on a problem so we just short-circuited that a good coach a good mentor can do that for you and you don't have to follow that all you it's a call every Wednesday and it's at 3:00 p.m. and I'm gonna follow these four things and you need to report like there's none of that yeah my job is to provide results exactly I don't provide well you have fire me and go for it to do that it's like people say you know surgery when you have surgery you know if eat whether you spend twenty thousand or two thousand for surgery do you care if it takes twenty minutes or two hours or two days or do you just want the you know the thing removed you don't care how long the surgery takes you just want the results okay so it speaks exactly what you're saying the coaching has I've also had coaches that were not good and I I clip them right away not feeling it I'm sorry this is not I'm done and we also sometimes feel an obligation that we serve out of contract or whatever I'm done stop but I don't think great I don't think the entrepreneurs out there who deserve great guidance and who are open to it I think I don't think they've had a chance to be with somebody who can really help them so really so I think that's interesting cuz a lot of people would look and say really Shawn after everything you've learned you'd say coaching is your best advice not systems not about being a congruent person I mean obviously these are all factors at play but you would really say boil it down and say hey it's better to get wisdom from somebody who's done it condense the time shrink it bridge the gap and get there faster sooner smarter by far I would the only thing I would do differently is I would go back ten I would go ten years before I hired my first coach and spend all the money I had to hire another coach and then maybe grab the right train and go yeah okay beautiful so I'm gonna spit ball some questions here business-wise and we'll wrap up yeah and this is for the entrepreneurs out there so pay attention to this one so when it comes to and I know I touched on this earlier but when it comes to wanting to build a company for acquisition you know you know rob dyrdek I used to work with him at the see Factory and Rob is a you know big advocate of beginning with the end in mind right if you're starting a company with an exit strategy to be acquired you're gonna make very different decisions and if you're just you know building it for the sake of building and I think a lot of entrepreneurs they'll build a company running on the enthusiasm of starting a company maybe taking it to you know seven or eight figures never really deciding in advance you know where do we want to take this where do we want to steer the ship and in the process they don't know how to make decisions or they're making decisions based on you know swaying interest or enthusiasm or whatever I want to ask you what are some things when looking to sell a company that are important to keep in mind when making decisions I listen to one of your other shows with with bedros a mutual friend of ours were part of his you know mastermind groups and betters asked you and you had told him that you know two things are important with an acquisition you said number one and I'm curious to hear your thoughts on it you said number one is that you have to actually seem like you don't need to get acquired right right can you talk a little about that and the other point just so people have context and their minds are opened to see that you know building a big companies not just about how big can I build it so if somebody wants to buy it there are other factors at play and being somebody who's been there can you just give us all the wisdom I know it's a loaded question no no I was talking about I think it's like I wish I'd known all this going through the multiple exits right the first one is it's every acquisition is a negotiation right somebody wants to buy you because they want to buy speed generally it is they want to buy speed or they want they want to buy speed of getting to market they want to buy speed of getting market share they want to buy speed generally it is a buying speed there's a shortcut it's a short guy yeah by you is easier than building it exactly to buy versus build analysis that's always right by random and so would what I should be thinking as a you know if somebody wasn't gonna acquire my company are they holding me over the barrel and I have no ability to negotiate if that is my only option that's just very so most most people and they're selling if they're getting top dollar is because they have way too many options meaning they're just putting on so much cash they have a good lifestyle they have other options there a lot of options there for the option that they're getting for the Roach's is one of the options so when you have multiple options it puts you in a very strong negotiating position and we tell them hey you can buy us and the acquirer can never tell you hey Sean what else are you gonna do I'll be like well let me tell you what I was thinking I can do this this this this or this and you're not one of the most attractive options yeah so having options is really really important and that that gives you a sense of stability and yeah the second thing is the I think there's a lot of humanity that comes into the acquisition and what I mean by that is it's not about hey I need to look amazing and I need to have a great acquisition it needs to get bought it's like if somebody buys my company how is it going to benefit them because at the end of the day your company should benefit them and the more they seem like the more reasons they can come up with that it benefits them it gets exciting I'll tell you the simplest of things when we took tell us everything at every soft shopped at every year we realize that accounting systems we're like okay all these other companies are on the same accounting system we should just switch to that too because when we do that's not running it's a natural integration point smallest of things so I told our CEO hey we have a year to switch out so when you start doing small things like I switch out our crm switch out our accounting system switch out our economics and our payment plans for our salespeople then one of the reasons why we could not get bought was because our economic structure for our salespeople and the other buyer was completely different incompatible everything else worked so I was like oh we have a year to switch our payment plans let's switch that so when you start to take away all pieces of friction now you become a super8 very easily compatible and people and the operation side will want to do the deal mmm yeah because believe it or not I mean you could have the same numbers but literally because of for example you guys use a different payment method or maybe your sales comp plan is a different structure that's the reason they're like ha but if but if they ask about and you're like oh we use the same one like oak we have the same sales thing and it's like check check check you're almost halfway there by just taking little pivots just by putting in the attention upfront so there's two things when buyers look for stuff right they want to buy speed and they they want to unlock synergies and synergies are best basically saying you have a CFO I have a CFO we don't need two CFOs I save a salary that's a synergy right as soon as you can start show this is showing them synergies hey there's no pain in integration you we don't need these three people like if you can start showing synergies they're like wait a minute we get to buy them Forex price but our synergies totally outweigh the benefit around that we can run this operation essentially it's like we can take this formula throw it into our existing machine and have the same results this is insane right and so I hope we always think about how can this buy them speed how could this give them synergies and if you can romance to those then they start to feel good then it then they feel like they made a good acquisition even if it starts to break they will keep coming back to the table and you got an amazing question how many times is the Douglas Elliman deal break or was not on the table anymore maybe a hundred really maybe a hundred times so how long did it take to close a year deal yeah and it was we were in we were out we were in we were and no no fault of anybody's we were it was timing it was a market the hardest part for us was when you're going through a sale process when someone's trying to acquire you now you have divided focus you got to run this and then you say well if Omar buys our company then he may not do these two things but if he doesn't buy it we should do these two anyway well let's just wait and see now you're missing growth opportunity or play it safe or do we go aggressive or do we become even more attractive how do we not lose the momentum yeah we got to make sure that the numbers are on par when they first reviewed it as well you know there is a later yeah so for an acquire or when they're looking at so if you're buying my company the tell-tale sign that I don't have it dialed in is that from the day you start talking to me till the day you get serious I've grown if I have not grown you're not gonna see growth means I'm distracted and since I'm distracted my company's struggling so when we look at acquisitions we always say okay we start talking to them on January in March have they grown yes miss the company has is growing organically and there will be ashame so what we did when we were working this deal we had three partners four partners right including our CEO and we split up the team a couple of us continued the growth all of us worked a deal so we just stayed in our lanes and so the growth was still happening what in case something else happens and the deal was still being worked and so then when it got serious we were like okay we're gonna pause on a few things but otherwise if one person was playing point on both you have very divided intentions and it starts it starts to like mess you up yeah and then it seeps into the culture and everything else and your decision-making let me ask you this was that acquisition the biggest of your life so far so when the money goes through and it's all done is it a celebration is a joyous I mean what's it like or is it just another day at the office and so I don't know the first acquisition you went on vacation for five years to teach tennis yeah so what happens in this acquisition the biggest one of your life the money lands in your bank account what's the first couple things you know I think my wife made me go get like take out that day she was just like I you know I'll tell you the funny thing that happened it was not the money but to build a company we had CERN we had signed personal guarantees on 22 class a lease spaces in up and down the California coast if anything had gone sour would that it would have it would it would a crushed the partners that that liability was taken away and I was not robbed of that was more powerful than anything else which is crazy but it cuz now it gave me my give me my my war chest back to go and I can go hypothecated somewhere else because I'm personally somewhere else you go risk other stuff yeah but we are not we're very fortunate we have everything that we need right and I'm great grateful for my we didn't we didn't buy go buy a new house or a Ferrari or anything I still I still have what I have and I was just thinking hey how can i how can i redeploy this and unlock value how can I build a more powerful business next and can have more income and more impact and that's what I've been thinking about so the the funny part is that nothing much happened but I'll do tell you a really fun story my CEO and I this is probably this is this is funny so this is my CEO and I went and our wives went on a celebratory dinner after there after after the end my CEO I said hey how are we gonna celebrate and I'm not a big I don't I don't part can like significant festivities or anything they've brought the cocktail menu and I kid you not we went one by water magic marker we drank almost every drink on that menu just from a celebratory perspective which is weird I've never done that before but we're doing and to the point where we couldn't even get to the menu we got kicked out of the sofa but it's a lot of gratefulness and we we gave a lot of money to charity because that was part of the deal that I had but it didn't change our life significantly and I took 30 30 45 days off before I started my new company really that's it that's it uh-huh so before we wrap up here we play a game called first things first and the way the game works is I'm gonna rifle off a word or phrase I'm gonna rifle off ten and then you just tell me the first word or phrase that comes to mind in relation to it that makes sense yeah but before we ask that before we play that game at the end I want to ask you where does your motivation come because it seems to me that your motivation was never to make you know a bunch of money I mean I'm sure that was a part of it but what's been the bigger pull what is it that gets you through those hard times because I'm sure there was many other times I'm sure they're you know as an entrepreneur I know just as well as you do that there will always be our times at every you know income level but what is it that pushes you what is it the mental dialogue in your mind that keeps you going which Sirhan's compelling reason what's your why is that your wife is it your kids as your family is it what your parents have done for you mean what is it that keeps you so hot that you know it's just so much more powerful than just the motivation of money what keeps Sharon's motivation so hot after all these years I never knew that until recently but over the years so many people have put their lives at risk their lives at stake my parents have put their lives at risk mentors have made introductions and created transformations for me that they need not have and as we were chatting before there's probably more more people have helped me when they did not have to to create the life that I have today and I would be even if I paid it forward the rest of my life I would never be able to you know even the score and and I realize that the only way that I can do that is to is to is to go and create a ton of income and I and I and I say the income because it's important we should all be totally okay talking about money money is not the be-all end-all but it it's OP it gives you options I love it when people give me money goes because it helps me help them get their income and impact are really good but I feel it not just an opportunity but if I could deep sense of responsibility to all those people that have helped me I feel like I'm letting them down if I don't show up at 5 a.m. every morning if I don't do better for my family if I don't you know stay integrity and integrity with my with my goals and aspirations if I don't give back more if I don't if I don't go mentor more people I feel like I'm letting all those people sacrifices down and that's too much of a burden for me to bear and so I'm gonna wake up and keep crushing it every single day because that is my responsibility to keep giving back I'm crushing it you have my man I love it so before I wrap up here you ready for the game let's do it all right cool so again my rife off 10 you tell me the first word or phrase that comes to mind in relation to that word or phrase the only rule is that you can't repeat yourself twice okay ready yeah all right number one your past scary your parents loving money tool obstacles part of the course limited beliefs need to get buried what most entrepreneurs do wrong try to go at it alone the best decision he ever made that's my wife you marry her hmm she's gonna love that once passion energy fulfillment and and let me elaborate what brings you the most sense of fulfillment and meaning in life smile on someone's face and last one you ready sure ons legacy on this planet a blueprint for entrepreneurs to crush it oh man thanks so much for being on the show today Sharon and thank you guys for tuning in to this episode it was awesome sure Sharon's story and I hope it inspires you guys to take your life and your business to the next level as always thank you guys for tuning in and if you want to follow Chiron and check out more of his social links as well as his 5 a.m. Club in Kingston lane you can check that out in the description below until next time thank you for being one of the passionate if you guys enjoyed that video be sure to hit that subscribe button right now because every week even is a very best in personal development content interviews and insights help inspire you take your life in your dreams and make them a reality and also if you don't know how to look between guests same way I have you can check the link below for my top 3 secrets so if you have a podcast or a show or whatever is you want to collaborate with them you can click that link below I'll give you those top three secrets to help you get in touch with anybody and also don't forget the passionate view is available on media platforms as well so you can subscribe to the podcast and until next time thank you for being one of the passionate to you [Music] [Music] you

Channel: OMAR ELATTAR & THE PASSIONATE FEW

Views: 532,141

Rating: 4.9071493 out of 5

Keywords: Sharan Srivatsaa, Sharan Srivatsaa Interview, Sharran Srivatsa, Sharran, sharran srivatsaa real estate, sharran srivatsaa omar, sharran srivatsaa, $3.4 Billion, sharran srivatsaa lifestyle, kingston lane, sharran srivatsaa listing presentation, The Passionate Few Interview, Omar Elattar Interview, The Passionate Few, Omar Elattar, Digital Marketing, Click Funnels, Teles, Real Estate Mogul, teles properties, real estate, business, genius network, success story, Douglas Elliman

Id: ohZ8pRxAXZ8

Length: 112min 17sec (6737 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 14 2019