Revolutionizing Real Estate Development

Mike Kaeding is the CEO of Norhart, a residential real estate builder and developer. He is working to solve America's housing shortage by transforming the way apartments are built and managed. Mike Explains why hiring the best people is the most important lesson he has ever learned in life. He shares his tips for building a successful company, including having the right mindset, accepting negative feedback, and being willing to work through tough times. He also shares his key principles for consistent results, including hiring amazing people, supporting them, and getting the heck out of their way.

Talking Points:

{02:30} How does a good culture look in real estate?

{04:15} How to find the right people.

{09:30} Working to change the world of real estate. 

{11:05} Taking over the family business.

{25:20} How to push through the mud.

{29:10} Changing the real estate landscape so more people can participate.

{36:44} Key principles for consistent results

Resources and Links:

• Website: https://www.norhart.com 
• Social: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikekaeding 

Connect with Tom Finn

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Hey there, thanks for tuning in to the Talent Empowerment podcast. We're here to help you discover your true purpose, step up your game at work and live the happiest life possible. We unpack the tools and tactics of successful humans to guide you toward your own purpose. Find happiness and empower your career. I am your purpose-driven host Tom Finn and, on the show, today we have Mike Kaeding.

Mike, I am thrilled to have you on the show. Welcome.

Thanks for having me. I'm super excited to be here.

Well, let me just take a moment to introduce you to Mike. He is a real estate residential real estate builder and developer and the wizard behind the curtain at Norhart.

Norhart's is a company that's all about designing, building, and renting out apartments while on a journey to disrupt the entire industry. His mission is to solve America's housing shortage once and for all, he's going to do that by transforming the way apartments are built and managed. Not only creating awesome places to live but also improving everyone's quality of life. 

Mike and his team are changing the game by creating a unique and attractive culture in the construction industry and hiring the best talent out there. They've solved chronic inefficiencies and even took some tips from the manufacturing industry to make their projects higher quality and lower cost. I can’t wait to get into all things real estate in this discussion today, but I want to start with this idea of culture and what a good culture looks like in real estate.

That's a great question. I mean, there's so much to that, but then at the end of the day, there are a few key pieces, and one is understanding the vision. You know, for us that have a very high level we're working to solve housing affordability and getting people aligned and connected with that deeper purpose. And what we're trying to accomplish is a key element. 

Another key piece of it, as you mentioned in the intro, is hiring the very best people. So, you know, that's the most important lesson I've ever learned in life is to bring on the very, very best. And when I say the best, I mean truly, honestly, world-class. 

One of our employees…  In 2007, Steve Jobs announced the iPhone Steve Jobs walked off stage and our employee literally followed after Steve Jobs on that same stage and presented it to that same audience. We have other staff members that we literally fly in from other countries or other states in this into our state to do the work that they're doing. It's just incredible when you get that caliber and quality of people. It is fun coming to work. We solve problems together. We feel like we're changing the world in some meaningful way and that's a flavor of what the culture feels like.

Yeah, that's really hard to pull off, easy to say, and easy to talk about. I want the best. I'm looking for the most talented people in the universe. How do you actually find those people? Because I feel like if I'm looking for a job or if I’m thinking about you and I really want to work in real estate and I would love to come work for your company. What is the best way to really present myself in the right light?

OK. So, a couple of things. First, how do we find the best people? You know, I think first, it starts with your mindset. I think a lot of owners and managers of companies think I can't afford the best people because, yes, top people are expensive. In fact, they're the most expensive. You have to pay them Top of the market. But that's the wrong way to look at it. And what most people forget or don't understand. Is that the best people outperform the average by two to five to 10 times as much? I have literally seen it over and over again. 

And so, when you look at it as a cost per unit produced, or what they're actually creating, they're actually the most inexpensive, so you might think you can't afford to hire them, but I would venture to say you can't afford, not to. 

Then once you've got that mindset right, you need to rethink your hiring strategies. If you're just posting up on Indeed, or some job posting. You're not going to get the best people. There's just no way. Found it. We ran into that same problem. We had that same experience and so we looked hard at ourselves. And so, what do we need to change to really up our game? What about a 250-person company? At the moment we have hired 14 recruiters, 14 on staff, which is incredibly high for us as a company. 

And then what they do is they actually build out a map of all the different other companies out there in our area that have people that have the skills that we're looking for and it turns out it's not that large of a pool and then we start identifying who in those companies are truly the best and how do we build a relationship with those people before we even need the job or before they even have to come work here. So that's a little bit on the recruiting side.

But you also asked, what do people do to present themselves in the best light when we measure possible candidates, we look at a few different things. 

One is their skill set. It's actually the least important, but it's a key element. Then there are the values to align with our organization. Are you a genuine human, which is one of our values? We achieve great things. We have our set of values, but then there's another part that I think really sums it up well. And that is, are you on the path to be the best in the world at what you're doing? We don't expect you are the best in the world today. But are you on that journey? Do you have the drive and energy to really achieve amazing things? And if the answer to that is honestly yes, you can convey that wealth of the interviews and interactions we have. But you're going to be far above and beyond the vast majority of applicants.

Yeah, I've always subscribed to the saying I would rather reign in a stallion than kick a donkey in the A**. And that is really just the measure of what you said in your third bullet point, which is actually your first bullet point, which is you've got to be best in class and you've got to show that you have the drive, the internal drive and fortitude to push through the obstacles and really elevate the organization. And if you can do that first and then your values align and oh yeah, by the way, you've done some things in real estate, or you have some skill sets or whatever it might be then. You'd be a fit. Does that feel right to you?

Oh, absolutely. And you know, a lot of people get concerned and they come to me and say, hey, Mike, I don't have all the skill sets, and the honest answer is I don't either.

Right.

There's been so many points in my journey, I've jumped into things that are way beyond my capabilities and skill set, and I've failed miserably, but that's OK. You know, a lot of people start feeling like, oh, shoot, I shouldn't try something unless I'm going to be great at it. But that's the wrong perspective to have. As kids, we're very terrible at everything. We can't walk, we can't talk. We can't do basic arithmetic. When we get older, are we nervous about it? 

That's not about where you're today. It's about the journey you're choosing to go on. Are you wanting to go down a journey that is going to change the world so that you're going to be the best in the world at your little niche? If that's you, then this is like, dude, come on, let's work together and change the world.

Yeah, I love that. And if you take that approach as an employee every discussion you go into. You're going to naturally up your game if you just start thinking that way, behaving that way, talking to people in that manner that I'm going to be the best in class in accounting, in finance, in sales, in construction and development, whatever it is, it doesn't matter. Pick the industry, pick the topic, pick the section of the business, and just strive to be the best version of yourself and the best in the world in that space. That's a great way to look at life, Mike. I love the way you sort of laid that out.

Yeah, I will do more.

So, let's pivot to your business because you're a real estate guy. Your game is building. Communities tell us a little bit about the business, sort of the layers that you all focus on, so that we can get our head around and visualize exactly what you do. Every day.

So, at the basic level, we design and build and rent apartments, but we're trying to transform the way this is done by solving the cost of construction. In fact, if you look at other industries like manufacturing, for example, they've improved labor productivity over the past 60 years by 760%. Air culture improved by 1500%. But the world of construction has done virtually nothing. It's been 10% or just basically flat. 

And so really in a simple sense, we're applying the technologies and the techniques and the ways and methods of these other industries into the world of construction, and we're already achieving about a 20 to 30% reduction in cost. We believe we can achieve a 50% reduction in costs. But imagine what that means someday. I mean, someday your rent would be half your mortgage payment, could be half. And so that's a high level of what we're doing.

Yeah, very nice. So, what areas of the country do you tend to work in?

So, we're primarily in Minnesota, although we have manufacturing facilities now, in Minnesota and Wisconsin that feed our construction pipeline. We're also expanding now into taxes for our properties and we're expanding manufacturing capacity into Mexico and about 15% of our staff are actually international.

Well, yeah. So that's awesome. If I'm a real estate person, I'm thinking how do I build, how do I buy? How do I buy land? How do I build on it? How do I create the same model that Mike has created? Where does somebody start?

Yeah, it depends on where you're at. So, if you're brand new, a really simple way to start is to save up enough money to buy a second house to rent out. And I promise you, it's going to be painful. It's going to be hard. There are going to be days you get the call you know not to say that. Well, this has totally happened to me… Christmas morning, you're racing out there with some water leaks and some issues going on. And it's rough.

But I really enjoyed that stage of my life and why I recommend it to others is because you learn so much. You start understanding maintenance, property management, evictions, and how to work with people and also that helps build the financial base you need to grow it and then you can grow into 4 units, 8 units larger. 

And then if you ever wanted to move into the construction world and start doing this work yourself again, start small. Some of the small little houses and try it out, feel it out. Hire a few subcontractors, feel the pain of it all. And then be brave. 

You know, I think that's one of the big benefits that we've. You know the piece of my story is that this was originally a family business that my parents started was very small. And I ended up joining it. And within just A couple of years, my dad passed away. And it was one of the hardest moments of my life, and looking back, I really didn't know much about this industry. I didn't know what I was doing. I was very inexperienced and the following year I had many scars all over to prove that it was really a challenging environment. 

But looking back, I think there was some magic in that. I didn't know the way things were supposed to be. I didn't know how hard it would be to try something new to bring plumbing in-house, and electrical in-house, instead, we just started to change things. Because there was nobody telling us, no, and this enabled us down a path of changing this industry. And so that's another key recommendation. Going to have it. Just be brave, step up, and take on those challenges and you'll get through it. It'll be hard, but you'll get through it. You'll be better for it.

You know guys like you and I, with microphones tend to say those things pretty consistently, right, successful people tend to say, be brave, challenge the status quo, and you'll get through it, right? We have to put ourselves in the shoes of those that haven't done this before. Scary, right? Like, it's really scary. When you think about this, oh my gosh, I'm going to bring plumbing in. Do you know how much risk and liability I have now? What if I have a bad plumber? What if I don't hire the best person? What if the plumbing ruins the drywall and the unit below, right? These are massive risks in terms of building and construction, right? And that's just one thing you said. 

Let's use plumbing as an example. How do you actually bring that in-house and really feel confident that you can execute well?

I'll give a few different perspectives on this question.

I think the 1^st is to have the right mindset. I think success in having the right mindset is hand in hand. And if you get too bottled down in fear, then you'll struggle to really change the world in some meaningful way. And for me, one of the things that really impacted my life was my dad's passing. Reminded me of how short life really is. 

You know, we all have about 5,000 weeks here on Earth and I ask myself every morning, how do I want to spend the minutes that I have when you start having that perspective, my biggest fear isn't water leaks in the plumbing, they do come, I promise you. My biggest fear is wasting the life that I have and getting to the end of my life and realizing I didn't try as hard as I wanted to. And once you start to change that shift in mindset, it becomes easier to take the short-term risk because you know the long-term risk is much, much bigger.

But the tangible part of it with the plumbing. You know for. US1 of the big things that happened is that the plumbers, when we first brought this in House, the company I was working with. Tripled their bid on us. So, there was a part of this we were forced to change a little bit, and sometimes that force that's the mother of innovation, right? 

But the other thing to note is just to be comfortable with the idea that it will get worse. Before it gets better, this is something I have to coach my team on a regular basis. They look at the first few months or even the first year of trying something new, and they're like, well, this, this is terrible. This is so painful, so hard. I got so many bruises. We shouldn't have done this. And I said no. You have to remember we're just in the doldrums. Give it another month, give it another year, and things around. You know, we're exploring right now as well, with new content creation, we're doing some. Fun stuff with that. 

It's really interesting as we're posting new videos and stuff on YouTube. Some of the videos actually get a fair number of thumbs down. And it's really easy to look at that and say, OK, that is terrible. I'm a terrible person. I put out a video with 50% negative reviews. That's not any good. That's again the wrong perspective. 

Two points on negative reviews help you teach you what will make better content and actually in the world of YouTube land, I think negative reviews are not actually a bad thing. It shows that people are engaging with the content, and they found what you had interesting enough. Now they just disagree with them.

Yeah, it's a great point. So, think about it this way. Mike is saying that a lot of us start out in obscurity, meaning that outside of our neighborhood community, job function, circle of friends, or whatever it might be, we're not super well known. We do our job, maybe we do it really well, maybe we're exceptional, but we're just not well known.

The next stage that Mike is very clearly talking about is the stage of resistance. So, what ends up happening is you go through resistance and mikes, it is outlined perfectly. You're going to get thumbs down on your video. You're going to get people commenting, you're going to get people engaging, but it may not be exactly the way you thought it was going to go, but if you're in resistance and you're starting to get traction. The next step is the beautiful one. 

Now you go into acceptance and once you go into acceptance or obscurity, resistance, acceptance, once you get into that acceptance phase, what ends up happening is you start to be seen and heard by more people. Those views go from thumbs down to thumbs up, right all of a sudden, your voice and your message are carrying people. 

People are listening and they're acknowledging your behavior and your tactics. And all of that, as you said, beauty comes from this idea of having the right purpose, the right mindset and bringing that to work every day.

And I love how you summarize that it's so clear, but that's exactly the truth of it. And so many of us get stuck in that resistance but just know there is another stage if you can press forward.

You know, it's so funny. When I was in the obscurity stage for me, it was sort of blissful ignorance. And I just felt like, well, gosh, you know, nobody knows me, but isn't this so great? Right. And when you start pushing the envelope, you do get that resistance and then you go to acceptance. 

And I think it doesn't matter if you're in real estate or culture building or, you know, you want to. Well, you know your Etsy store, right? It's all good. Whatever you want to do, you just have to start with the understanding that it's a process just like building apartments is a process. You have to go through some planning. You have to go through working with other people. You have to really understand the landscape, stub your toe a few times, and then continue to push through right and that's how. This all really works. 

So, let's go back in time because I'm digging into this a little bit. Let's go back in time when you take over the family business, your father's past. Tell me about that day, that first day and how you felt, and really what was going through your mind.

Yeah. I remember we got a call from the bank and the bank said, the checks to your employees are going to bounce unless you do something.  That never happens. We've never, we've literally never missed a payment to any employee ever. What's going on? My dad was handling the bank accounts at the time we found out he put the wrong money in the wrong account. 

And so, we called him up. He comes back to the office to sign a check to move the money. Then when he sits down to write the check, he is unable to do it. And it wasn't him. What was going on? I filled out the check and signed it and we got the money moved. And by the next morning, I didn't really understand what was happening that night, but the next morning became really clear that he was having a stroke that was caused by brain cancer that we didn't know about.

And so, he did end up living for another six months, but he was just not. He wasn't a person. It was. He just wasn't him anymore. And so literally that next day I was in charge, and it was terrifying. And I remember when the project we were working on at the time was working toward this apartment building and the city had very little confidence in me and frankly, I had little confidence in me too. They shut us down twice, which is crazy. And the second time they shut us down, they said. Mike, you need to hire a professional manager. That's a hard conversation when they take you into your offices and tell you that, and they and I had to find someone in just a couple of days. Otherwise, all of our crew would be off work. That's the worst way to hire someone, by the way. 

We need to find someone who is more than just filling in the role and we did the work behind the scenes, but I remember just a few weeks before we were supposed to open, we had a water leak. And I mean, I was, it was just a terrible environment. It was a tiny pinhole leak and a 1000-foot-long pipe buried 15 feet in the ground. And I'm out there in my nice clothes, in the mud, shoveling, scooping, trying to find this little pinhole leak. We eventually found it just a few days before we were supposed to open. City officials came to us and said, Mike, there's no way you open this building when you need to. And here I have all these residents going to be moving in. 

We worked through the night, and I remember the final day. We had about half a dozen building officials for 1/2 a Day inspection. They looked at every nook and cranny of that building. And at the end of that, in the basement, the head building official pulled aside and said, Mike... I know we were hard on you. We're looking at this now. This is the best project that we've ever opened in this City. Good work. I was like I'm late validation like I can do it! 

But it was a year or longer or just painful. Like, am I good enough? Can I actually do this, questioning myself, the world, questioning me before I got past that hurdle?

So, let's double. Click on this for a second because I've been there. Many of us have been there. But I want to hear from you. So, during that year. How did you get through the year?

Yeah, it was a lot of sleepless nights. I remember one day coming home and it was my brother's birthday. And he just wanted to celebrate. Just sing happy birthday and have a slice of cake. And I was so beaten down about what was going on. I was just a zombie. It was like I bought a set. I can do this right now. I just got to go to bed, that's the reality of the world that I was in.

And I think. I think what got me through it was just the realization that I knew this was just a phase. It may have been a yearlong phase, but it was just a phase, and if I just capped taking that next step, the next baby step, the next movement forward eventually I would make it out the other side. And so that's what I focused on day by day, what's the step I need to take today to get a little bit closer.

When you hear from successful entrepreneurs, you always hear this saying. Think that the entrepreneur's success is the next day, right? And you just have to keep pushing and keep going. And it's those that have the intestinal fortitude, the right to keep grinding, to get across that proverbial chasm. And really start to generate the fruits of your labor. Is that how you felt? Did you feel like you were just pushing through and, you know, slogging through the mud?

Oh, absolutely. It was just day by day of problems, of issues, of questioning myself. And just trying to solve the problems that were in front of me, trying to tackle them as fast as I could. Yeah, it was hard. It was really, really hard, but. It's through those tough moments that you'll learn the most, and so I'm a much stronger person today because of that experience. I wouldn't trade it for anything, and I think everyone needs to go through their own version of that to be more successful in the long term. The important thing to remember is this is just... It's your school, it's your education. It's what you need to do in order to be an amazing success that you want to be someday.

So beautifully said. 

So now that I'm thinking about real estate and I'm thinking about people getting into it, this is a big space. There are a lot of people that talk about real estate and investing and building as a way to create wealth and quite frankly, generational wealth for your family. 

Certainly, here in the United States, it's a playbook that many have executed pretty well, and you can do it on a sort of a low scale as you mentioned in the opening, you can buy one place and rent it out, right or you can do it on a larger scale, you have 250 employees like you're doing. And building communities and culture within a city, which is a different level. 

So, what are the training or tools or tactics like where people can really go and get some support to figure this out?

You know. I think the big thing is kind of what I mentioned before is it's taking that first step with smaller houses growing to larger buildings. I'm not super familiar with the whole realm of training and opportunity, but I'm sure if you search real estate investing you can see a ton of resources for that. 

I think the interesting insight that I can probably provide is that a lot of people think about real estate in this, like wealth building, generational wealth kind of thing, and that is certainly true today. But I also think it's a little bit of what's kind of broken with the economy because the cost of living, the cost of renting, the cost of homes is growing faster than our income. And that's what's fueling some of this wealth that real estate people are experiencing. 

But if you look at other countries, like Japan for example. Their demographics are kind of the future of where America's heading and real estate there depreciates over time as cars depreciate over time. Here in America, it doesn't really work like that. It tends to appreciate with time. I think we can solve the cost of construction. You can really improve how we deliver units at a high enough volume for the economy. I think real estate won't be the gold mine that it always has been. 

And I think that's a good thing because that makes it more readily available for every human being out there. I mean, if the iPhone were to be produced the way computers were, you know, 50 years ago, the iPhone would be $10,000. And yes, Apple would be wealthier for it, probably, but that doesn't mean it's better for all of us as humans. And so that's my goal is to actually shift that for our economy and make real estate work for more individuals rather than just those wanting to earn income off of it.

So that's a great point. How do you do that, Mike? How do you actually bring the cost of real estate down the cost of land down, just the cost of ownership, because there's a whole generation of folks out there that are having a really hard time buying their first home, finding enough for the down payment, you know, getting into the right mortgage that they can afford a 30-year payment on a particular piece of property? How do we actually do that?

So, I think the key is driving down the cost of construction and so that's what we're working on. But once you've done that, that doesn't still solve the rents or the cost of homes for individual people. In fact, when people look at our company, they say well Mike, you talk about driving down the rent, but your rents are the same price as everybody else in the market. And that's true and it's intentional. 

See if we were to lower rents today. That means about a couple of 1000 people would have 20 to 30% rent. We could do that. That doesn't solve it for America. What are we doing instead? We're taking those profits and putting them into the system that builds housing. 

You know, Elon Musk talks about how hard it is to produce a car, but it is 10 to 100 to 1000 times harder to produce the system that builds the car, and that's what we're working on. Imagine a car factory, but for buildings and for houses, right? 

Our engineers are not just thinking about the next building design, which is what most companies do. Do we think about the system? That builds those buildings. Now, over the next 10 years, we're hoping to reach 60,000 units per year. With 192,000 units under construction. But at that stage we're starting to produce enough units to the market that's having an impact on supply and demand with more units produced, that means prices come down, but not just for our own residents, it's for everyone nationwide and that's our strategy.

Yeah, It's a great strategy, right? If you oversupply a particular market niche, you can bring the pricing down in, in the short term for sure, as long as that supply continues to be readily available over a period of time, right? So how do you build this up and make it sustainable? Because the vision makes all the sense in the world, but the sustainability component of this strategy is actually harder to execute than the vision.

And so, the key thing that makes all this work is solving construction costs. Right, we're already 20 to 30% less. Our goal is to be 50% less, but at that kind of stage, we can keep producing units as prices decline still at volume because again, we've got such a strong profit margin we're building in there because of the drop in those costs. 

Now the hardest thing to do in the world is solving. Maybe not the hardest in the world, but certainly, the hardest thing in my world is to solve construction costs. So, what are we doing there? You know, one of the key things is. This industry is very segmented. You have different companies doing their own building, the different companies doing the developing, the coordinating construction. Different companies actually do the work, right? 

The plumber is a different company from an electrician. Now if construction were to produce cars, you have a different company that on the windshield. Different companies and so on the door and different companies and so on the wheel. And then the wheel company would call you up and say, OK, sorry I got delayed with another project. I won't be out there for two weeks. Now, your line would be shut down and then when the wheel company came out, they would be irate because they could only work on one car at a time. Similar fashion looks at us and says you guys are crazy for doing this. That's the way it's always been done, right? We're trying to change that. 

Now, once we have it in-house we can do some fun things. For example, the assembly line. You know the assembly line revolutionized manufacturing. Why not apply? It is for construction. Well, that's a bit naive, right? You can't take a building and drive it down a line. But what you can do is take the people and move them through the building. 

So right now, every five hours, every team shifts the building. And if you look at the end of our line every five hours a brand-new apartment unit is completed. And that one technique takes a process for building a building that might be 15 months and drives it down to nine months. But there are literally, I mean I say there's 10,000 little problems like this that we work to solve and that's how you solve this industry.

Wow, that makes all the sense in the world. Let's go down this road just for a second to make sure we all understand it. So, construction costs are the most important component of this game plan. That's what I've heard. I think three or four times now, the construction cost is the linchpin to a successful vision meeting execution. 

OK. So, once we figure out the construction costs, where that really lies, teams of people have to go in five-hour Increments throughout a building. Let's just assume in our example we've got. Can I say 100 units, we have 100 units we're building because that's easy math. 

So, we've got 100 units. We're building this beautiful complex. And we build the 1^st part of 1. And then we go on to Units 2 and three and four and the teams start to cycle through physically as they move. Is that right?

So, your first trade, like carpenters come in and they frame up the unit. I'm simplifying a little bit here, but then they move to the next unit, which is typically above, and the plumbers come in after them and they plumb the unit 5 hours later the plumbers go up, plumbers go up, electricians fall behind right, and you have this whole chain that circles through the building. That just compresses the space that we do work, which then speeds up the time.

OH yeah that that makes all the sense in the world, the alternative view or maybe the traditional way of doing it. Mike, can you explain the traditional way as an example?

Yeah, a great example is drywallers. Before we put all this in place, we'd have a separate drywall company that would tell us they want an entire floor cleared out. Everything is out of our way when we get in there, we're just going to do our work and we're going to get out of there and then they can. They couldn't schedule a certain time, so it's very haphazard. 

And so, what would happen is we'd have an entire floor area of work. That nothing was being done for half of the time, because the drywaller is just one and it's super easy for them, right? Each one of these individual trades is thinking about how I make life easy for me. How do I improve my own costs and make things easy? But that hurts the overall system of building buildings.

I love what you're doing in this space. I think it's brilliant. I think it's hard to execute in this way. For those of you listening to Mike thinking, well, that's easy. No, it's not. This is hard to execute. The vision is, is really what I'm impressed with is trying to change the industry because I think that marks a great leader, somebody who's really trying to compete with purpose and change the industry. 

So, for that I'm, I'm very grateful. I love the way you do this.

Love it.

So, let's leave you with one final question, and then we'll wrap as a leader in business, what are your key principles for consistent results?

The most important thing you mentioned in the beginning is hiring amazing people. Honestly, everything else to me pales in comparison. If you hire the very, very, very best they can bridge the issues that you have, they change the game. It makes it so much fun coming to work. They're pushing me to be better, and it took me many years to understand finally and deeply. But what's incredible? We were growing prior to that by 10 or 15% per year after we made that change, which was a radical transformation for us. We were doubling in size more or less every year. So, hands down, that's the most important thing to me.

Hire great people. Have them do great work, support them, and get the heck out of Their way. Yeah, that's that. That is the formula for a successful company. Mike, I'm so grateful to have you on the show today. Thanks for joining us on the Talent Empowerment podcast.

Yeah. Thanks for having me.

And thank you for tuning in to the Talent Empowerment podcast. We hope you've discovered it. Your true calling found your dream career and living your best life. Get ready to dive back into all things career and happiness on the next episode. We'll see you then.