Building a More Affordable Future

In this episode of the Real Estate Game Changers show,  welcomes back returning guest Pat Flynn. The conversation delves into Pat's journey over the past year and a half, highlighting his transition from Yellowbird to focusing on home building with his company Flight Builders. Pat discusses the challenges and triumphs faced in real estate investment and home construction, the importance of leadership development, and his unique hiring process. The discussion touches on effectively scaling a business, dealing with market shocks, and the strategies for sustaining growth. Pat also shares his personal insights on maintaining balance and enjoying the journey in the high-pressure world of real estate.

Chapters

• 0:27 Introducing Pat Flynn: A Journey of Transformation
• 3:39 The Turning Point: From Frustration to Clarity
• 5:30 Embracing a New Direction: The Shift to Home Building
• 5:44 Building a Vision: The Strategy Behind Flight
• 11:06 Navigating Challenges and Scaling Up
• 15:17 The Power of Leadership and Team Dynamics
• 32:21 Insights on Hiring and Building a Strong Team
• 38:06 Unveiling the Interview Process: A Deep Dive into Decision Making
• 38:16 Exploring College Experiences and Life Choices
• 39:09 The Art of Problem Solving and Resilience in Candidates
• 39:53 Character Over Qualifications: A Unique Hiring Perspective
• 40:46 The Intricacies of Hiring Salespeople: Strategies and Challenges
• 44:13 Shadow Days and Beyond: Innovative Hiring Practices
• 50:58 Leadership and Growth: Building a Strong Team
• 54:51 The Flight Leadership Development Program: Cultivating Top Leaders
• 1:01:48 Reflections and Advice: Navigating the Real Estate and Building Industry

Transcript

Mike: 0:00

All right, everyone, welcome to the Real Estate Game Changers show. I'm your host, Mike McKay, based in Jacksonville, Florida. And each and every week, we do this show with people who are changing the game of real estate all over the country. And for anyone in the Jacksonville area, who's got some sales experience, maybe you're thinking about getting into real estate. We are looking to hire some salespeople for our team. So if you're good at sales, send me a DM to DM on Instagram and let's talk. This week on the show, we have a returning guest from about a year and a half ago, Pat was on the show, but doing something a lot different now. So Pat Flynn, welcome back to the show.

Pat: 0:37

Hey, happy to be here, Mike. I appreciate all the support you have given me over the years and you're always at M three and we talk We talk at least every couple of weeks. I appreciate your friendship and support and everything we do as well.

Mike: 0:51

Yeah likewise, man, I think our first my first 25 real estate deals in Jacksonville, we're done with you,

Pat: 0:58

I love it.

Mike: 0:59

including a few insane ones that we can leave that story till the end. Things have changed a lot and we were talking offline since the last time you were on the show. So maybe give people a little bit update of what your focus is today versus what it was in September of 22.

Pat: 1:15

Yeah, sure. And I'll just give you a quick, uh, just because I think it, the more I can say this, the more I can repeat this story, the more people that can hear it, uh, the more value I think. It can add to the world, but, um, we were talking beforehand and you were like, I think you said, when was the last time I was on? It was like September of 2022. Right. So September, 2022, we probably talked a lot about a lot about scaling a flipping company, but, um, And I probably talked about yellow bird, that it's sunshine and roses and everything's great. But reality was September, 2022 was not a great time for me. And it wasn't, it's not Whoa, is me I'm depressed or anything. There wasn't anything like that, but Kyle and I did not agree on path forward. And you have an organization of 45 people and if you have 45 people in that office and everyone's rowing a different direction, it's just uncomfortable. And you feel like you're failing them as a leader because you can't give them the path forward. And we were very much in there. You remember the fed bumped rates. A lot in 2022, most of the biggest one being in June when they bumped at 50 bips in September, we were just recovering from that. Me and Kyle were talking a lot and trying to figure out a path forward with yellowbird and ultimately we weren't able to get there. So I found that during that time period. I was like, like I said, it was, we had an organization that was lacking leadership and lacking a good vision forward. So I was working long weeks to try to figure out what that vision was. And everything I came up with me and Kyle just couldn't get on the same page with, and that's nothing against him or, he wasn't necessarily right. I wasn't necessarily right. We just, had different opinions on the future. So I found that the more hours I put in every week to try to figure out the path forward with Yellowbird. The further I got away from the answer and it was so fucking frustrating that I, because I use, I'm usually able to work my way out of any problem, right? It's like I got a problem, I just work harder and solve it. I'm not getting deals. I just call five times as many people you'll get a deal. right? And that's how I've solved problems throughout my life. So this was so confusing to me. It's like, why am I working harder and getting further away from the solution? What ended up happening was, I saw this video on is on Netflix. It's a documentary called studs. With Jonah Hill's therapist, Phil Stutz, and it was really good, and he talks about that specific situation where sometimes Hollywood actors would just make 20 million dollars doing a movie, and the movie would done, be done, and they'd feel completely lost. And they'd get anxious and depressed because they didn't have their next thing. And how he worked through with them is not grinding to find the next thing. It's working on you. So working on your fitness working on your relationships and working on yourself mentally. So what I ended up doing was almost stepping completely away from the office. I took Wednesdays and Fridays off, spent a shitload of time with my family started doing M threes. Which was like no real purpose for M3s, right? I just like working out with people in the morning and pushing hard and doing some mindfulness. And I started writing more and the less I worked, the more the future became clear. And that's when everything started to fall into place. So long answer to your question, but for anyone that's listening, that's going through a time where they're having trouble figuring out that path forward. And I'm only saying this because I've met a lot of people struggling with that next step that next path forward, the answer is not working hard. The word, the answer is looking deeper within. Figuring out what you're passionate about, figuring out what you really want to put your time into, and you don't figure that out by working hard. You figure that out through solitude, through spending time with people you love, through reconnecting with your friends over beers or a glass of whiskey that's how you figure it out. And it's been incredible for us

Mike: 5:30

Yeah, so over that time when you were trying to figure out what to do, How did you come to the conclusion of wanting to get into the home building business?

Pat: 5:42

here. So great question. And, um, Yeah. I talked about lack of vision earlier. Now with flight, um, we actually, we have a three year crafted vision vivid vision, a 12 page document that documents exactly where we will be October, 2026. And I have a whole page in that document dedicated to why build houses. Why did we shift from yellow bird? Which was yellow bird was, is a great company, real estate investment business. We flipped houses, we had a rental portfolio. We build new construction. We lent money. We did, everything in the real estate investment space. And it was a great team and a great group of people in a great run. So why shift from being a real estate investor to a home builder? I looked at every option right during my work time period. I was looking at, I've talked to you about several of my ideas, Mike. I was looking at business brokerage ships, like brokering businesses here in Florida. I was looking at some like personal coaching stuff. We looked at bail bonds. I thought bail bonds was like a cool scalable kind of cash business. I did. I spent like 10 days hard researching the bail bond business. Um, and I went down that path with, uh, yeah, I know Jax is a great market for it. You look around and you see all like the shitty bail bonds buildings. I'm like, I can do this better. I know I can. But ultimately ended up I've spent, I graduated college in 2009. And bought my first piece of land in 2010. I've been very deep in real estate and loved real estate. Since in my entire working career I've been doing this, and since I've been in Jacksonville since 2013, I've made a lot of connections with real estate people. I love the meetups and I, even national conferences like IMN, I have a lot of connections in that space, and I enjoy it. What I didn't enjoy was the volatility of being an investor. I wanted something that was more stable. I knew that what I, so I, so there's step one. I knew I wanted to stay in real estate by some capacity because it's stupid to all this effort and you're good at it and you're why would you give all that up? All those connections and all the networking you've done just to go in a bell box or something like that. So I wanted to stay in real estate. So how are we going to do that? And not really be an investor anymore because. I wanted to build something that was way more scalable and building yellowbird scalable was not necessarily smart because Flipping houses is great, but it's not always necessarily the best thing to do flip houses That's why open door is doomed for failure, right because it's not always a great market to flip houses Sometimes you shouldn't be doing anything And Kyle was completely right with that. Like sometimes it's best to just stay on the sidelines and wait some stuff out or maybe lend more money and do less deals. So that's what I didn't like about that space. I wanted something that I could continue to scale forever and adjust and tweak things as they go. So building a house is a very scalable process. It's the same widget over and over again. So staying in real estate, home building is a. Is a business of process, right? Where you do the same thing over and over again, and it's systems operational. And then the last piece of it was I looked at what are our biggest problems as a country in America? And I think affordable housing is a massive one. You just look at the numbers. That's why pad split is doing so well because it is just getting. Wages are not keeping up with the cost of housing look at what happened with rents. Look what happened with the price of houses I think I think as not even an opinion as a country. We are massively under built for residential housing So I team those three things together, right? We're staying in real estate solving a problem that america really has Especially in Jacksonville. And doing a business where I can scale it and it's could scale as a national at a national level, which is something I really want because my passion is. Developing leaders. We took our team, the leadership team at yellow bird that was already ingrained in traction and the way we operated, and that's what I say, like with flight, I started on third base because I had all these leaders that already knew the system with traction. We moved it over my theory of business in general is if you have fantastic leaders. And you have a good system to operate and solve problems. It doesn't matter what business you're in. It doesn't matter if it's bail bonds, we buy houses, building houses, tech. It doesn't matter what it is. If you have great leadership you can do anything. And with flight, we're proving that right now. So that's another long answer, but I also looked at the team I had to and. I love running sales teams. I did enjoy that at yellow bird, but my core team of leaders was not salespeople. It was just operationally fantastic people. So I had confidence that we could go in, learn how to build a house, solve those problems in a system of traction and continue to solve problems in perpetuity, because that's what home building is. It's solving problems over and over again and continuing to hone what you're doing. Yeah. So that's why we went into home building.

Mike: 10:57

And for the people who like, don't know, like how you've set up flight, like you're not like a track builder, right? So you're not speculating on these tracks of land, right? Because that is fluctuated by the market. Maybe talk about what you're doing differently than like a DR Horton or one of those.

Pat: 11:12

Yeah. So the goal one day is to be at a DR Horton level, but what we have to do now is because we're constrained. As a new home builder in every way possible, right? We're learning how to do it. We're constrained by cash. We have pressure from the market and our competition pushing us down as well. So there's a lot of headwinds against us. So my thought was the best way to get into this space was doing what I know how to do. So I'm not going to say I'm a great developer. I know some basics about it, but what I can do really well. is buy houses, right? And if you're buying a already developed infill lot I think that it's the same as buying a flip house. You don't, you're not taking a lot of risk. It's just run the numbers as if, it's the same as running a numbers on a house you're flipping or brand new infill lot. So that was my thought on getting into it. Plus I wanted something a little more blue ocean. Then we buy houses and the competition for buying these infill lots Just isn't as aggressive as it is for a house, right? There's still people buying lots sure but way less there's way less people out there Hustling for lots than there are hustling for houses. So I want to get something that was a little more of a moat and honestly, this is a painful way to do it because infill building is hard track buildings much easier just to do the same house over and over again in a row infill building has its challenges, but just capital wise the fact that it's a little blue ocean and there's not people like Dr Horton doing it that allows me to compete. Because I'm not, how am I going to compete with DreamFinders on a, buying from a developer, like they're going to blow me out of the water, but I can compete with them is doing direct to seller tracks to land direct to seller infill lots, wholesale lot, infill lots from wholesalers, JVing with people like you, Mike. So like I'm using my skillset with Yellowbird to now just try to add value to all those guys that did deals with back in the day. So that's why we're doing it. We're doing it. It's. It's a necessity in order to get to scale quickly.

Mike: 13:22

Yeah, what are some of the unique challenges you face when doing infill building versus track building?

Pat: 13:31

So track building, you just, everything's wide open, right? You don't have shit in your way. Everything's planned from the beginning infield building. There is an issue every time you have. You have a power pole in your yard. The grading isn't right and you don't have enough dirt. You're you're flowing into the water's going to flow into the neighbor's yard. Maybe you start to dig and build your pad and the neighbor's septic tank is in your yard. Or maybe their plumbing goes through your yard. Or maybe they have a fence. That goes in the back of your yard or even they've built an addition that's on your lot Like it is it runs the gambit and that's and that's what do you do? Who's right? So we what we do is we're we try not to be righteous Right as we'll go to the neighbor and be like a lot of times we'll pay for it But be like hey, this is our lot. Do you mind if we take your fence down? And like we'll build it, we'll pay for it and build it back afterwards. And we're, we're working with neighbors on that stuff, but it's nonstop, Mike it's trees, power poles issues with the curb and doing sidewalks. It is and nevermind even utilities in the city of Jacksonville, like whether you need a, whether you need a well, or you're hooking up to the current. water system. JEA has trouble even knowing sometimes. Sometimes JEA tell you, yeah, there's a tap there. And then you find out later there's not a tap there and you have to drill a well. It's just all of that stuff that I just mentioned is completely handled if you're a track building, right? Like everyone knows ahead of time exactly what it's going to look like. Hey, sewers running through the street, everyone connect to it. Like non issue. With us it's an issue every fucking house

Mike: 15:17

And then you guys have ramped up like really fast. I've just seen from the outside and obviously we talk and I, I talked to some of the other people who work on your team and I know part of that is you say you started on third base with, bringing some of your leaders over from yellow bird, but what else do you think has allowed you guys to ramp up? I don't actually remember the number of builds you're at right now, but I think it's like a lot in the short period of time.

Pat: 15:41

I think the main reason is being very purposeful with what you were doing I had a decision make when to make when we get when we got started and it was either to keep my leadership team at yellow bird and start slow and buy lots and have a goal to build. I think my original goal is going to build 2530 houses in 2024. And that's what I was going to do. And I was going to slowly build it up from there. I got approached by a local group. As I was just, I told the whole world that I was going down this home building route and I called everyone and told them and I got approached by a local group, their friends of mine JWB Alex is a good friend. Adam is a good friend. And they they wanted to build some of their own houses. They asked if maybe flight could build some of their stuff too. So I had a decision to make. Of if we're building cost plus for JWB and myself we need to ramp up quick for this to make some sort of sense. Honestly I had to sit on that decision for a couple of days because it's I don't want to go too fast and, screw up and take a lot more risk when there's not, there's no pressure on if it's me, Ben, Sarah, Mercedes and Cooper in that office. So there's, there's no overhead pressure. There's no. We can just go at our own pace where if I'm going fast and I'm hiring great people and we're not using QuickBooks and we're getting great softwares and we're really ramping up for the future, I have to build a lot of houses to pay for that overhead. So it was a purposeful decision. I ended up going the faster route and the ultimate decision for that was because of my people. I didn't want to slow down Sarah, Ben, the leadership we had in the office, just because. I was scared to go fast. So there's a lot of challenges with ramping up a home builder that fast, right? We're fighting where if I just went the slow route we're, me and Ben are slowly learning how to build houses together, taking our time and it's easy and there's no pressure, right? And we add problems aren't a big deal where the route we ended up going, we're fighting a lot of fronts. At one time, right? Matt is fighting the infrastructure and accounting front of we just had our first million dollar revenue month. That's a lot of money moving back and forth, right? You're not going to do that in QuickBooks, right? So we had to learn a new accounting software. That's a new front. We had to, we have the the permitting front, which permitting wouldn't have been an issue if we went slow, cause we could have taken our time. But now I need permits to flow cause I need these houses to start and I need cash to start flowing. We're fighting the production front, learning how to build houses and learning how to build houses at scale. That wouldn't have been a big issue before, right? Now we're fighting the capital front, too, because we have great people. We have this, we have, pretty significant overhead now because you need, Smart, talented people to run an operation like this. So we put ourselves in a situation where we're fighting all these battles at one time, but it was all planned for. And this decision wasn't by right. And I never looked back and go man, I wish it went slower. My life would be so much less stressful. I don't look back and feel anything towards that because. I know I took the time with this decision and I made a decision authentic to me and that was in the best interest of everyone in the office. So the answer to your question Mike is extremely purposefully Right. We didn't set up our software as an infrastructure in team to do 24 houses a year. We set them up to do hundreds of houses a year. And yes, there's more risk doing it that way. But that was the plan from the beginning. That's how it's done. I think, there's a great book called the magic of thinking big. And it talks about, it talks about the fact that if you dream bigger and go faster than everyone else, there's actually less competition because most people are doing realistic things. And I found that to be the case with this. It's difficult, but it's been such a great journey and just such great bonding with the team through all these challenges.

Mike: 19:46

Yeah. And I think it's interesting too, like I've found that it's like you either pick one or the other. Either you're gonna just go out there and have a really small team and just do whatever, or you're gonna grow it really big. I think for a while in my own business, like I got caught in the messy middle. They're trying to do something in between. And that is the worst place to be at your expenses are high, but you're not getting the benefit. You don't have enough people to not work a lot, not work on every, not work on every part of the business. This is actually the worst middle is the worst place. Yeah.

Pat: 20:21

like the big route the messy middle is like necessary for a little bit, but it makes it more, more palpable when you know where you're going, and it's clear it's when that vision's not clear that things begin to go bad. And that's what was happening with yellow bird, right? Like we had a lot of people, a lot of infrastructure, a big monthly nut with no vision, right. This is at the end. So your vision is what allows you to get through that mucky middle time period. And yeah, if you're in the middle and you're like wavering on whether you want to do it or not that's, that's brutal too. And I want to say also like small team versus big team versus medium team. There is not a right or wrong way to do this at all. The answer there is to look inside and see who you are. Are you someone that enjoys leading people, talking to people, spending time with people? That's what leadership is. Leadership is pouring into somebody and giving a shit about them. If you see that person as just a cog in your machine, that's okay. That's okay. But you can't fake that you care about them. And as long as it's a business sort of relationship. And everyone's on the same page, that's cool. But it would be very difficult for you to to have people with you that will run through a brick wall for you. If that's who you are. Let's say not right or wrong at all. There are super wealthy, successful people that have done it both ways. So that would be my only advice is just be who you are when you do that. If you truly can't pour into people and have trouble caring, like there are other ways. There are tons of great ways to make money. I'm sure there's other skills out there. I think that's really important. Authenticity is hard to fake.

Mike: 22:16

What made you decide when you when you were in the flipping business to grow yellowbirds so big? I don't think I ever asked you that question.

Pat: 22:23

I just, I loved it, Mike. I loved scale. I loved the idea of, I use disk. Do you use disk or you use, or no, I use culture disk.

Mike: 22:33

Same idea. Predictive index same

Pat: 22:35

Yeah, it's the same thing. So I love doing personality profiles. I get a such a satisfaction about of watching someone with the right profile, get put in the right seat and sit there and thrive. I get so much satisfaction out of building a team, out of growing a culture, out of helping people set goals and grow. And Watching, watching a team put numbers up on the board and watching those numbers increase every single week, because you're doing the right things to make those numbers increase and everyone's held accountable and there's great camaraderie. I get a lot of satisfaction out of that. So with yellow bird, I was in some mastermind groups and looked across the country and I saw that the. The highest volume real estate, single family home buyers, privately owned, not hedge funds in the country. We're doing around 400, 450 houses a year. So immediately that's where I want it to be. I want it to be the top. And and it showed me that it was possible, right? We were probably doing 200 or so at the time and it showed me 400 was possible and networked with these guys and girls and figured out the way they ran their shows and the way they took leads, the way they did marketing, the KPIs they tracked, and I got a lot of enjoyment out of implementing that and growing the operation. That's, that's what I'm passionate about and watching it. Go from, talking to people in 2020 and telling me that 30 deals a month was impossible. And then watching our team of 15 fantastic salespeople accomplish that month over month was so incredibly satisfying. Watching those salespeople make the money they did was so incredibly satisfying. And I get a lot of joy out of that.

Mike: 24:29

Yeah, that's super interesting. It's like sometimes running into people who actually do it breaks your belief. And I don't know if I ever told you this, but I was talking to someone else. It was actually on the podcast. I think the first time you and I met in Jacksonville, I thought the people who flipped a lot of houses did five a month. And the first time I sat down with you, I was like, so how many like houses do you do or whatever? And I forget the number at the time, but it was a lot. And I was like, Oh shit. I didn't even know that was possible.

Pat: 24:57

It stretches your mind.

Mike: 24:58

You're like, I'm like, okay. Someone did it. So then I can do it. That's the first thing that comes to mind. So it's interesting how that passes down. Maybe you had that experience five years before with someone that you ran into and pass it

Pat: 25:12

did. I didn't think, I didn't necessarily think doing when I started, when I started marketing and I was like writing letters and signing them in 2013 in Jacksonville and I'd get like five calls a five calls a week or something like that. I just, yeah, doing 30 deals a month. It's unfathomable, right? Until you meet someone that's doing it. And this was a great group. They're called Homestead Road. They're in Minnesota. I still talk to Andre. He's a great guy. And there's another guy Frank Cava, who does a lot of volume two in the Maryland area. Good dudes.

Mike: 25:50

Have they sustained that through the market changes

Pat: 25:54

I

Mike: 25:55

Okay.

Pat: 25:57

mean, they've adjusted and tweaked and had a new path forward, but they just have, those guys have just different goals than me. They're different type of people and they've adjusted in different ways, right? Which has been interesting, right? Cause. 2022 sent shockwaves, the music stopped in 2022, as and it sent shockwaves through the industry and watching the way that other people, that people have reacted has been very interesting to me for people I really respect in Jacksonville to people all around the country. It's interesting, right? You change, you figure out who you are. You saw here in Jacksonville, a lot of partnerships break up. A lot of people get out. Some people get in, like you see so much. It's really interesting.

Mike: 26:43

What were some interesting reactions that you saw around that time, some changes that people made or interesting paths that people chose to take?

Pat: 26:53

It's really, I look back and I just, I'm just thinking locally. You just never know what someone's going to do during a time like that. There's some people that. Double down, right? And they go all in and they're pot committed and they go for it. And to be honest, those people did fine. The people that double down, right? You remember we stopped marketing Mike and you ramped up a little bit and you were fucking crushing it for a while when we were out and you were in there. And then you have people that. That it depends on what situation you are in life, right? Some people have made their money and they decided they're out. There's too much uncertainty. There's too much chaos. I'm just out and Be an output strain on partnerships So if I if there was going to be a common theme that I saw It was in the partnerships that i've seen around the country one partner's gung ho And wants to solve the problem and fix it and figure out a new way to market, or maybe they're doing innovations or different types of deals, or they're converting to more of a Mark Spain strategy, selling to open door. And the other partner wants to sit on the sidelines. I saw a lot of that. And neither of those opinions are wrong, right? But you can't run an organization with one guy like that. That wants something different. So I don't know if there's anything I got from it, Mike, it would be my lesson learned is be very careful and be very aware of who you become in difficult times. I think that is a true testament to your character. And when times are hard, when you're losing money, when things fucking suck, you want to be proud of the person. You want to look back 12 months. You a year from then back to the person you were at that time period and you want to be proud of that person You don't want to be like i'm a little bitch who hid under a rock and I don't mean hide under a rock choosing to get out of real estate or anything like that. I mean Answering the phone when investors call you when things aren't good. I mean Going out and having the tough conversations with your team not being snappy or an asshole when you're with, to your team, when you're losing money or when they screw up not being an asshole to your kids or your wife when, because you're under stress at work because things are going bad. So that's what I learned is I think people show their true character under pressure like that. And I will always strive to be proud of the person that I come under pressure and be the calmest. under pressure rather than tweaking out and doing something making stupid emotional decision.

Mike: 29:34

no, I remember that time actually, cause I did double down and there was a point, there was a point where it hadn't worked yet. And I specifically remember a call a lot of remote people on my team with my team. And I said, guys, I just want to be honest, straight up with everyone here. I've got five weeks of capital left. And if we don't get deals in five weeks I don't have the money to keep paying everyone. And you would be shocked that when you're just straight up with people, how everyone just steps up, right? If you've treated them well, I guess the answer is that you have to have treated them well all along, right?

Pat: 30:22

to care, right?

Mike: 30:23

if you cared about them all along and treated them well, people will step up for you. And That was, I think, around the time that you had mentioned to me that you had everyone in the office doing this power hour thing, and I had everyone on the phones doing this power hour thing. It didn't matter if you were, like, doing admin work or anything. It was like, you just get on the phone, start calling and posting the Slack channel when Mike's going to call in and run over to the house. That was what we did for five weeks and we pulled out of it. But It was close. I remember the balance was like, I was like, I had this 20, it's like 22, 000 left in the bank account of my burns, 15, 000 a month. And there's no deals on the board right now.

Pat: 31:03

That's an

Mike: 31:04

we got to get a deal. And there's a turnaround time as we all know. On a deal. So it's we got to get a deal like now we want to be around in five weeks.

Pat: 31:12

I love that

Mike: 31:13

about that time until you brought that up. Wow.

Pat: 31:17

Dude. Power Hour was like one of my favorite things we did that came to me. I'm like, not that it's super original or anything, but it like, we, Cause we were struggling too. You saw that. Like we were making money on the houses we were buying, but the hedge fund train was gone and we needed some deal flow and we weren't, we wanted to cut our marketing spend because it wasn't working as good. That power hour just created it has a lot of different effects, right? It creates camaraderie and you guys are banding together for one goal and mission, and we had from our power hour, like a shitload of stuff came from it, all sorts of stuff. I get on there and I did the power hour too. And I was setting an appointment. Like a machine on there and it's fun, like friendly competition of like, how many appointments did you set? And we like broke it up into little teams. And I loved that. I love that time period.

Mike: 32:06

Yeah. No, it was a good, it was a good strategy for sure. Plus if you make a thousand calls in an hour, cause you have 10 or 12 people on the phone, like people just call you back, right? And it rings throughout the day. It's it's interesting. Let's talk about let's talk about hiring. Cause how many people are you up to on your team at flight now?

Pat: 32:28

26.

Mike: 32:30

And that's been over the, and you started with what? Five, six people in

Pat: 32:34

Yeah. We started with and I'm counting the team as the real estate team route like flight and flight group and flight groups that like for right now, obviously Mercedes and Jana came over with me. So let's say we started with eight.

Mike: 32:47

Okay, and then, you've hired, like, all, all different types of positions from superintendents to,

Pat: 32:54

First quarter this year. We hired seven people.

Mike: 32:57

Yeah. How do you make sure that you're finding the best people, put them in the right seat so you can watch them succeed?

Pat: 33:06

Yep. Great question That's just something I hear all the time is goddamn Gen z ers. No one wants to work. Everyone's lazy, you hear that over and over again You hear that almost as much as you hear There aren't any deals out there and sellers want too much for that. It's the same thing to me. Those are the two

Mike: 33:25

the same people who say it, actually.

Pat: 33:27

same people that say like, how great do you are that you think like fantastic people are going to come out of the word work and say, let me please work for you. That's just not, that's not reality. So I look at hiring. Like the same way I do is like we buy houses and deal finding but a fantastic person a Sarah a Ben a Matt a Miguel and any leadership on my team a Dylan one of them is worth infinitely more than a house so So why are we half assing the effort that we're doing to find these great people? So I look at it as a numbers game, just like houses. I want to talk, I want to weed through as many people as humanly possible. So we start our process with solely lead gen. I just want numbers, just like we do when we buy houses. You just want leads, stuff in the system. So we use Indeed. Indeed, ZipRecruiter, Craigslist, whatever, to get as many leads as we can and we track it, right? If you, we've had, we have thousands and thousands of people apply. But some of those people apply just because they're on unemployment and they need to apply on jobs and they don't really want a job, right? You need a fast way to weed through those people. Because you don't want to be reading through someone's resume that just clicked on your ad to apply, but just because they need that application for their unemployment check that week, you want to make sure you're dealing with people that actually, care. So you need to go through thousands and thousands of people efficiently. We do so with a software called spark hire and you use predictive index. We use culture index. Same thing. So every single, all of those thousands of people that applied, get a nice personalized message from a VA that says, Hey, we pulled your specific application because of your resume. The next step before the interview is you do this one way video interview spark hire and fill out a CI survey. The whole thing takes less than 10 minutes. And then we'll reach out for an interview So if this person is not willing to take 10 minutes to do the next step, guess what? We don't want them anyway, but that weeds out a shitload And then the next step is you're watching them in a one way video interview And you have their spark hire or their culture index up right next to it on your other screen You can hammer through people fast, right? Cause a lot of times, in 10 minutes or 10 seconds, like that's a no, no way. A lot of times you can weed people out just cause of their culture index. If it's a low detail salesperson and I want them for a high detail superintendent job sorry, it's just not going to be a fit. You will never ever be happy doing this job. You should be elsewhere. So that allows us to weed through people very quickly. And then if someone is passes all that and we want to talk to them in person we interview a lot of people, we track on our EOS. How many people apply, how many spark hires we received, how many interviews we held, and how many offers we job offers we submit or give to people. So we know our exact ratios. I know how much money I need to spend to find a great super, right? And then the coolest part about this is a couple times a year. You will get that killer that will stay with you forever, but you will very rarely find that person if you're not always a hundred percent of the time actively looking for them,

Mike: 36:55

Yeah. What is that? In person interview look like? Like, how are you trying to figure out? Maybe it's different for different roles, but how are you trying to figure out that, this is someone that you want on your team and this is someone like they're telling me the truth about their past qualifications.

Pat: 37:11

You're right. It depends on the role. And I would be lying to you if I've said I've had a lot of success hiring higher level positions like a CFO or leadership type roles. I've had actually very, Little success doing that. Actually zero success doing that. That's why I, but I think we're really good at hiring people with a little bit of experience, not a ton of experience and training them to, to be leaders. And that's my method. Just because. Even Don Wenner, who I respect a lot and is very good at hiring, even he says he's barely 50 50 on leadership hires. But I think I'm about 85 percent on just regular hires from doing it in our process. So how do you. How, what is the best way to interview? We use a method called top grading. Anything, anyone can tell you anything in that interview, right? What I like to dig into is I walk through their whole past and I want to know why they made decisions that they made. I want to know how their brain works. Okay. So you graduated high school in Orlando. What made you choose to go to university of Florida in Gainesville? Why didn't you go out of state? Why didn't you go to California? Why'd you go to college in the first place? Who was the biggest influential person at your college? What is there a teacher or mentor that you really like connected with? What do you think that person was? What was that person's strengths? What leadership qualities of that people were you drawn to? What was that person weak on? So I do that over and over again for their whole past. I want to know what sort of projects they did at college that they were really proud of. I want to know why they made the decision to not finish college and leave. And that's not necessarily a negative, right? I just want to know why you didn't go to college at all. Why didn't you go to college? Give me a reason. Oh, maybe your mom was sick, something money. I don't know. Give me a reason. And let me decide if that reason is a stupid reason or a good reason. I just want to know how people solve problems, how they look at challenges. So anyone can bullshit that you, but they can't really bullshit you on the decisions of their life and why they made them. So I think that's a great way to get in someone's head. How resilient are they? How gritty are they? How do they react for an adversity? In the past, what did they do? Did they quit? Do they blame every single bad job and bad thing that happened on other people? Is it always someone else's fault when the thing doesn't work out or do they take accountability? Are they talking shit on people? Or are they taking extreme ownership themselves? So those are the things that I look for. People think I give a shit about qualifications. I don't even look, I don't even look at resumes and I know it matters. for skill set positions, especially superintendent. So I do a technical side. If I'm going to bring in someone and pay him at a level where they should know construction, I have Miguel in there deciding if he thinks they know construction or not. But I'm there for the character piece. And that's how, and I think that's the most important because anything can be taught, right? You can learn how to build a house, but you're not gonna necessarily change someone's character and who they are as a person you can I do believe that people can change but i'm not willing to go down that road with you

Mike: 40:34

that might take a little more effort than you needed a fast moving

Pat: 40:37

That is necessary like you can change On someone else's dime and then come back.

Mike: 40:44

exactly. What about cause I'm hiring salespeople right now and you've hired a bunch of salespeople.

Pat: 40:50

I love hiring salespeople. That's my favorite. That is my favorite thing to do

Mike: 40:56

you what's your process for hiring a salesperson or interviewing a salesperson?

Pat: 41:01

i'm much harder on them. I like making them squirm. I like putting them under pressure I like telling them that it's not going well And and give me a reason why you think it's going well. Why do you really want to be here? That's what you want for salespeople. And it depends on who you're trying to hire, Mike, and how your business is set up. If you were set up to where you need a Mercedes, you need a Cooper, you need a Jana, you need someone that's going to negotiate and close a deal and has the ability to rip your face off. If that's who you need that high a person that's good under pressure. My, my wife, for example, Jane, fantastic at sales, but retail sales, right? Like she'll go to your backyard and sell the shit out of a pool and you will buy that pool from Jane, right? You go to a retail store and she will sell you some shit like that. You definitely don't need it. She will convince you that you need to buy it, but she's not that high a rip your face off type person. So I think she's. She would be phenomenal if you were setting up your business to where you're making all the offers, Mike, and Jane is going to the house, presenting that offer to the seller and telling him why he needs to take that offer. Someone like a Mercedes or a Cooper is going to go. Very little direction and they're going to hammer that person down and make them feel uncomfortable and, get a contract signed. So neither way is wrong. Actually, that business homestead road that I told you about, they operated with salespeople like similar to a profile like Jane, where these people are just super likable, super friendly and just presenting offers and good at retail sales. Where your hungry Hi A is going to grind on the phones and go out there and chop heads off, right? So once again, both good and you interview them both differently too. So I've only interviewed the Hi A type people and that's my method I like to get to know them. I like to see if they can Take jokes, how they are, so how their social ability is. Can they read a room? Can they read me? And I like to make them uncomfortable. And I like to see how they react and squirm to awkward situations when I straight up say Gotta be honest with you. This isn't going well. i'm not feeling it. Can you do you still do you think you still really want to be here? Tell me why how do you react to that? Right and the best people will shock you With what they say But they can handle a lot, right? They're resilient. They can handle rejection like that. So let's see if they can really handle it. Those are my favorite type of people to interview. Daredevil profiles, trailblazer profiles high energy persuaders. Um, cause they're selling you, they're naturally salespeople. So they're selling you the whole time. Which I love. But it's the same thing. I'm going through their past. I want to know why they made decisions. I'm probably just putting a little more pressure on.

Mike: 44:07

Yeah. Are you doing anything after that interview for salespeople, for example?

Pat: 44:13

Yeah. If I really liked the person, they're going to come in for a shadow day. They're going to come in for a shadow day or what I used to do too, is we used to have deal machine up and running. I say before the next time, for the next step, put in a hundred deal machines and make, put 20 leads in my system. Something like that. I used to do that as people used to reach out on on Instagram a lot or Facebook and be like, Hey will you mentor me? Or can I pick your brain about real estate sort of thing? And I said, sure. Put a hundred. Here's my link for deal machine. Put a hundred leads in here. Read this book. It was a Darren Hardy said Darren Hardy book compound of read the compound effect and put 20 leads in my system and tell me when you're done and I'll get coffee with you. Know how many people did that?

Mike: 44:57

Anyone was there one,

Pat: 44:59

No, zero

Mike: 45:00

zero, I have one idea that's it's even a way, way easier than that. People will message me and they all have a bunch of questions that can I get on a call with you? I'm like, sure. This week's just crazy. Just hit me up next week. No one hits me. No one hits me up next week. I'm like, come on. You don't care enough to send another message next week. It's crazy. Like I was going to spend like an hour on the phone with you. Like, it's just interesting. There's been a couple of people who have, but they're, they're willing to do it or whatever. yeah.

Pat: 45:39

somebody out, but you have to, cause I'm reaching out to people at high levels too. And I get ignored and told no. All the time. Which is cool. Like I know people are busy, but as you're reaching out to people, try to add some sort of value. Don't just think Hey, let me buy you lunch. and Pick your brain on is real estate a good path for me? Sort of thing. That's just if you did, if you took every single one of those, Mike, you'd have one every single day and it was, it would just be a complete mess. Like waste of your time. That's what I would say is like I love talking to people where they're like, hey, I got this deal. Will you look at it for me? Like you bet your fucking ass. I'll look at a deal with you. Absolutely and what I told someone the other day is listen the more stuff you send me the more deals we do The more we communicate and the more you're in my office and the more you're around coop And the more you're around Mercedes, and my team, and guess what? You're around enough, you may get ingrained into the whole goddamn thing. That's how you do it, in my opinion. Add value. It

Mike: 46:43

yeah. Yeah, no, I think it's true. It's I'm, yeah, I'm always happy to sit down and. Talk with people, but the worst thing is I've sat down and talk with people and they don't do anything. It's if you give them a simple thing just hit me up next week or do this and it's okay maybe they'll do something with the info. That I give them right. And then that's cool to see when people actually do something with the information. What other challenges as you have with different types of positions? Oh, I should have one more question. Actually, what's a shadow day?

Pat: 47:13

Oh, Shadow Day is just, uh, four hours, and I wanna see how they Are interacting with people in the office. And it's important to me that I have buy in from everyone in the office. So if we're hiring a superintendent, their shadow day is going to be driving around houses with the other superintendents and at the end of the day, I'll say, Hey, Miguel, was that guy a fucking weirdo or did you like him? That's that sort of buy in is good because if I hire a superintendent and the whole team, that's team, that's working really well together. It's Oh my God, like Pat hired this freaking guy. If that's their attitude, not good. I don't care how good the guy is. I need buy in. So that's the main purpose of shadow day is let's see them in the environment around the office to make sure it's a fit for them. Make sure I get buy in with everybody here as well. Yes.

Mike: 48:00

So they're just tagging along and not just hanging out. They're not really like doing anything. It's just to see if they're culturally get along and then people think they can actually do the job.

Pat: 48:08

Straight hanging out.

Mike: 48:12

Gotcha. What other stuff do you do in hiring for other positions that aren't sales?

Pat: 48:17

Um, nothing specific. I think Spark Hire is a great software. It is lead gen and talking to as many people as humanly possible and following a process each time and tracking your numbers. I know, I don't care. Remember the number off the top of my head, but say it's, I need 700 applicants. In order to hire one superintendent, those numbers stay pretty consistent. I think that number will go down actually, because there's not, the labor market hasn't been as strong, but knowing how much money it costs me to get 700 leads to hire supers important, right? Tracking numbers, if you're a people organization that requires leadership and growth. You should know how much it costs you in marketing to hire a person. It's an important KPI. So we track that,

Mike: 49:03

You do, are you doing any outbound recruiting

Pat: 49:05

like with hiring recruiters.

Mike: 49:08

either hiring recruiters or just reaching out to people, like not

Pat: 49:11

Yes.

Mike: 49:12

people who apply, but reaching

Pat: 49:13

Yeah, I do. I do some LinkedIn. I have no issue like poaching from the big guys. Like I'll poach from dream finders. I'll poach from Dr. Horton from one R from David weekly. Like I, I will poach from those guys all day. Yeah, sometimes I get on there. Yeah. Fire off some messages. That's

Mike: 49:31

is it just you or you've got someone like

Pat: 49:34

not systemized. It's just me.

Mike: 49:36

It's not systematized. Okay. Yeah.

Pat: 49:37

We may systemize it one day, but for now it's just me. At yellow bird, our HR person used to do it and she did a great job. And we hired like a controller that way. That was pretty, pretty successful. Came from a local company. It was very good.

Mike: 49:54

Cool. I asked because I've got someone starting doing that and. Two weeks,

Pat: 50:00

no, I think I think you. It's tough to poach from like I would never poach like my peers. Cause that's just shady and gives you a bad name, but poaching big competitors, like not only are you making them weaker, you're making yourself stronger I don't know. And you're giving that person a better life and you're like, they're leaving, if they're super happy there, they're not going to leave. So you maybe you're offering them more money or more opportunity like I don't see any negatives there Yeah.

Mike: 50:33

we're mostly poaching people from other industries who are in sales

Pat: 50:37

yeah, that's definitely cool. Like car sales is great.

Mike: 50:40

Yep. Yeah. I just hired a car sales guy started Monday and I'm interviewing two more car sales guys next week.

Pat: 50:46

that

Mike: 50:46

yep. Yeah. I was shocked when I talked to a lot of them. I'm like, wow. I never knew how much those guys talk on the phone. It's the same thing. It's a hundred calls a day.

Pat: 50:55

Yeah.

Mike: 50:56

I'm talking to people, what let's talk more about a little bit more about leadership in our last few minutes here, because I think that's, I heard your podcast with Wally, which I thought was amazing. People should listen to that, but just maybe share more about kind of your theory on leadership as you're growing an organization.

Pat: 51:18

so If you are going to successfully grow a people heavy Organization in my opinion. So people have a meaning, like exactly what I'm doing, right? Like you need physical people in the field away from the office. So away from me, like I don't see the supers much, like they're out in the field building houses, like as they should be, and if you get to a point where you're doing hundreds of houses and you got 30 supers out in the field and you don't have strong leadership not only me, but strong leadership within the organization. Those supers being leaders, the senior supers being leaders, you will fall apart and not necessarily fall apart. You will cap you'll cap and things will get so chaotic that you won't be able to make forward progress anymore'cause you're just busy dealing with problems. You're gonna lose accountability. Things are gonna get sloppy. Of last year, I. I knew that this would be a problem for us. So I went down the road of we need a great leadership development program. Plus it's something I'm passionate about because I truly care about the leaders in our organization. A lot of my satisfaction comes from watching them grow. So what Wally would say is a level five leader. is someone that has put themselves at a level to where they do not need to do anything anymore because the leaders under them are so strong and powerful and have stepped up and taken complete control. So what does it look like? If you are building an organization and consistently training level five type leaders that are operating that way, the sky's the limit and how you can grow. And at the same time, as you grow, you're giving these leaders more opportunity to make more money, take on more responsibility. I'm not naive to the fact that people won't leave me for bigger opportunities one day. I welcome that if someone is trained at flight and becomes a fantastic leader and gets hired at some other organization at three times the salary to run the show, like I'm very proud of that. And that's actually what flywheel is we want to be. A a leadership incubator. Because why can we do that? We can do that because I'm passionate about it. We're always passionate about it. And we put a lot of time and energy into it. And I think the world needs it. I think as I said before, it doesn't matter if you have great leaders in your organization, it doesn't matter what business you're in. Honestly it, I don't think a lot of things are going, I think if you grow and develop leaders within your organization, that is going to solve a lot of problems for you that you wouldn't see otherwise. And that's our superpower. That's what you talk about the hedgehog concept with Jim Collins. That is something I don't think we can be the best in the world at building houses. But I think we can be the best in the world at developing great leaders. So we're very focused on that. That yellow bird when we only had nine people. And the first real leadership thing we did was me running book club, like book club once a month. That is leadership development, especially if you're teaching, if you're doing books on sales or leadership or whatever. I think that is the best way to implement it. What me and Wally have done is we've already had the book club running. What Wally did is take a schedule that I asked him to do. And I'll just walk you through what we do. I have the flight leadership development program. So that's just the executive leadership team. So there's six of us, we meet every other week. To have a very focused hour and 15 minutes solely leadership meeting. We talk about maybe a book or a podcast or a YouTube video. We talk about real life situations happening at flight. We mentioned people's names, issues we're having with certain people. Hey, maybe this person is like high fives for certain people that are stepping up. We're talking about real leadership, flight problems, and we're also talking about some conceptual stuff on the off weeks. That same group meets for a no schedule coffee time. So I used to work on ships 10 o'clock is the sacred coffee time. If you work through coffee time, you're an asshole. So I implemented just coffee time. So we go over to Starbucks and we just bullshit, no real schedule. It's good bonding for the leaders on the team. So we have a touch every single week. So that is like the executive leadership team.

Mike: 55:52

And the coffee. The coffee is only for the leadership team or anyone

Pat: 55:56

Yes.

Mike: 55:56

to show up from the company. Okay.

Pat: 55:58

No, not everyone is welcome at that. For everyone in the company, there's a month, once a month called take flight leadership launch. And that's where people are self selecting. So you know who's coming next because it's the people that attend that and the people that attend book club. So once a month, Wally will run it. It's early in the morning, goes for an hour and 15 minutes, completely optional, but anyone can show up. And we don't go as deep into stuff like, because you want to meet people where they are. So sometimes even book club is very intense. Like reading a book's a lot for someone that's never read a book. So our first one we did was on Admiral McRaven speech about make your bed, right? So everyone watched this 15 minute YouTube video about from, this Navy SEAL Admiral, make your bed. And we're going to talk about that. And we're talking about how it relates to flight and it's very loose and open and people enjoy it. And your executive leadership team. Should not talk as much right because you want the people that are showing up to talk more and Wally does a great job Facilitating the conversation. So that is our setup. That's once a month and we have book club twice a month but I think a good way to do it is to start small do it once a month and invite everyone maybe and Just do like a YouTube video Or something like a leadership YouTube video or something like that. And maybe you start with a coffee time with just your executive leadership team, get coffee with them once every two weeks and just start the bonding and see where it goes.

Mike: 57:28

Yeah. What's your format for the book club? Are people reading it? Like how much are they reading in that month time and then what's discussed?

Pat: 57:35

It's every two weeks. And it's a, we usually split a book into threes. So it is not heavy reading like you're reading a third of a book every two weeks. It's not heavy and it rotates who runs it So I have some questions. I like to get asked every time and then You know, the person has the freedom to do whatever they want at the same time with it, too So the important thing is you have someone else running it every time that's another leadership thing is someone taking control and commanding a room

Mike: 58:05

Running each book or running each session.

Pat: 58:08

Each session. So each, like a book will be split into three book clubs and someone different will do each one and that'll rotate through.

Mike: 58:19

What are the questions or maybe just one or two of them that you'd like to get answered every time?

Pat: 58:24

The main thing is what in, in, at the very end, it's what can, what have we, what are our key takeaways that we got from this, that we can implement at flight and what are some key takeaways you got from this meeting that you were going to implement? In your personal life and how are you going to do and what are you committing to? And then just some basic stuff like, did you like it? What was the key takeaway?

Mike: 58:50

Got it. Cool, man. We're getting close to the end here. And I know, the two questions I asked them last time, but your answers might've changed. Actually let's change the first one a little bit. Instead of me asking the usual, what's the craziest or most uncomfortable situation in a real estate deal, let's change it into a home building project. Or you can say real estate deal if you don't have one that comes to mind, but you've told me a few funny ones offline.

Pat: 59:14

Yeah. I'll give you I'll just give you a, an easy one. I'll keep it on emotional and I won't tell the sad one because I have a sad one that just sucks, but I wouldn't need to bring the situation down. So this is a it's a funny one. It makes fun of Jacksonville a little bit. Getting these homes turned over like we're doing a lot of cost plus building So getting these this happened just last week getting these homes turned over to JWB is a huge deal for us, right? or the client whatever client we're building for six or seven people right now getting them turned over and the Client very happy with the build is a huge deal for us We get our last draw which ends up being all the profit in the deal on the last one So it's a big deal to get these closed. So we had a duplex You closing last Friday. And so a week ago today, and it's two units, right? So you're getting, we getting paid off two units. They're all close getting ready to close. Looks great. JWB wouldn't accept it. Because on last Friday, because there were some issues with the paint. And the paint color and they were rightfully. So they shouldn't have accepted it. We had it, we had a couple of issues inside paint touch ups that needed to happen, so they didn't accept it. And all it needed was a little bit of fucking paint. So over the weekend, we were planning on closing it Monday, Miguel went that afternoon, fixed whatever needed to be done with the paint. It's going to close on Monday. So over the weekend someone threw a massive piece of concrete through the window, smashed the window, smashed all the floor. So the window didn't, it fucked up some of the paint and some other things in the house. So just letting it sit two extra days cost us another week. The importance of attention to detail and getting stuff closed when it's supposed to close because one little piece of paint can cost you a week. That sucks.

Mike: 1:01:00

That sucks. Yeah. Okay.

Pat: 1:01:03

I walked into the house too, like we, me and Miguel walk houses on Sunday and I walked into it and I was like, and then you have to clear the house too, make sure no one's in it.

Mike: 1:01:16

Yeah, I was gonna say, at least there wasn't someone sleeping there or doing something else, which

Pat: 1:01:21

Yeah they would have got run off pretty quick. It's pretty angry about the window.

Mike: 1:01:27

got it. The second question was that fair?

Pat: 1:01:30

That's a weekly thing, unfortunately, in this business and where we're building, even if you are track building in good areas, like theft and vandalism is just. Honestly it's part of reality now. Part of what we do in our leadership space is kids, and who's ever doing this vandalism stuff. I just feel like leadership would solve a lot of those problems.

Mike: 1:01:48

Sure. Yeah. So the second question I have is if you could go back in time, give yourself one piece of advice when you were looking for your first real estate deal, what you know now, what would you tell yourself?

Pat: 1:02:04

I just wrote about this in my Friday thoughts and I was going to give you a different answer. And then this popped into my head as you just said that I would tell myself, relax, it's all going to be okay. It's all going to turn out exactly how it's supposed to turn out. Enjoy this journey. Enjoy this grind that you're doing right now because you won't be able to do it forever. And you'll look back on it and smile. So don't live in stress as you do it. Enjoy the conversations you have with people. Enjoy the food you eat at lunchtime. Enjoy these little breaks. Enjoy your coffee in the morning. Sip it with purpose. It's you don't need to always rush right to work. It is all going to be okay It's going to work out exactly how it should and like I told you Mike I write a lot of my friday emails and do my podcast because it's stuff I need to hear even now In the day, right? Like with flight there's I don't, obviously I have unwavering faith of our success, but it doesn't mean that this path is not stressful as much stuff is going on and cash flying everywhere. And that's how I stay at peace is knowing that I'm doing everything I can to make everyone there successful. And I put myself in that mindset too, of okay, it's six months from now. What am I going to wish I did now? What is the six months from now version of me going to wish I did right now? And I reflect on that every Friday. And as long as I'm doing exercises like that and giving it everything I have enjoy the journey and enjoy the people you're around every day. And don't be a stressed out asshole. Don't be an asshole to your wife or your kids just because you're stressed out at work. This is all part of it. And guess what? When you get to where you're going, there's going to be more pain and uncertainty there too. It's not this blissful spot where you're just in nirvana for the rest of life, right? Life is work. Life is uncertainty, right? So it's going to be like that forever. So get used to it and enjoy it along the way. Cause I was a psycho back then. I was a freaking psycho calls and leads and marketing. Guys. High stress and I'm not anymore.

Mike: 1:04:28

Yeah. That's a great piece of advice. I like that question a lot. What six months from now, whatever, what was it? What I regret not doing today or what I wish I was doing today.

Pat: 1:04:40

Yeah. What do I wish, cause it, flight's a startup, right? So honestly I reflect with flight being a startup and I put myself in a situation where, okay, flight failed, flight was a disaster. What do I wish? I had done right now. Sitting there and flight has failed. What do I wish I had done right now at this moment in time as we're still rolling that could have saved us? And that perspective shift has changed the way like I've adjusted things because of that, but now I can comfortably sit every Friday and think about that and feel that right now I am doing everything I need to do, right? I'll give you an example of something I changed. If we got time, I know we're really rolling on here. The hell to build a house, right? So I was going to, me and Ben were gonna be out in the field like learning with the guys out there doing stuff, learning how to do framing, how to inspections, learning how the whole process worked. Okay. That's great. Yeah, Pat, you can be a hero and you can go out there and grime with the guys and do that. Is that really the best thing for Sarah? Is that the best thing for Miguel? Is that the best thing for your team? Just so you can feel good about yourself that you're going out there and working. Are you really doing the best thing for flight or are you setting flight back, right? Are things getting missed about, are things with accounting projections and infrastructure and capital and pipeline and deal flow getting missed because you think you need to go out there and, grind and figure out how to build a house? Like for your own ego is that what it is? It's your own ego. And it was, it's my goddamn ego. And I needed to refocus on the things that mattered for the team, which at that time was, it was capital. It was making sure that the pipeline was full. It was dealing with JWB and the leadership over there. It was making sure we were tight on infrastructure and our software choices and making sure all that stuff was moving ahead and rocks were in place. That was a big revelation from one of those kind of meditations I did. So try to get out of your ego and do the things that really matter for the team that are going to make that bring your unique skill to the team. So

Mike: 1:07:04

Yeah.

Pat: 1:07:04

revelation.

Mike: 1:07:07

Yeah, I like that a lot too, because when you think and you place yourself in that future spot, you have clarity in the present because in the present you might be like, Oh my God, I have a thousand things to do today. But if you put yourself in that spot, you're like, am I really going to be pissed at myself that I didn't answer these 25 emails that are sending in my email or that I didn't call this one person back who I could call next week because they don't care. It's interesting to put it in perspective that way.

Pat: 1:07:31

For sure.

Mike: 1:07:34

People want to reach out to you after the show I know you're hiring for a bunch of positions, so maybe they're interested in that, or maybe they want you to build them a house or anything else. How can people go about getting in touch with you?

Pat: 1:07:45

Yeah. Definitely. Always looking for talent. Even if you have no skill set whatsoever and you like some of the leadership stuff I said, definitely reach out. Instagram is a good way. It's you can hit up at the Flight Builders Instagram, you can hit me up, it's patflintstf. You can go to the careers website, you can email info at flightbuilders. com. There's a ton of ways, there's a million ways to reach out to us. If you are looking to get a house built and you have lots in Jacksonville, same way we respond to all of it. So if you're looking to sell lots we're a buyer. If you're looking to sell a development or something like that, we can make offers on that stuff now. So. Yeah, really anything. And there's a ton of ways to read tons of ways to reach out. I don't mind giving my cell phone number either, but it's, that's not the most efficient way to do it. If reaching out to Cooper or Mercedes with these slot deals is the best way and they're everywhere. can't find them, you're not trying hard enough.

Mike: 1:08:37

Not trying to tell a lot.

Pat: 1:08:40

Yeah.

Mike: 1:08:42

Cool, man. This was awesome. Thanks for being on.

Pat: 1:08:45

Yeah, man. Thanks, Mike. I always enjoy this.