The Magic of Relationships (even in construction!) with Mark Ellison (Special Edition) SB 1404

Hey there stackers, we are away this week if you're new to the show once every eight weeks. We take a break for the week, make sure that the basements all picked up, mom is happy with us and we get a little bit more shut eye. However, we don't want to leave you with nothing. In fact, we want to leave you with something even better this time. That's why the Fin turn isn't here with the greatest hits episode. Instead, we're going to play an episode from our sister show stacking deeds because this has a lot to do with more than real estate. I spoke with Mark Ellison on this episode and if you've never heard of Mark, you might, however, have seen his work. Mark works on some of the most beautiful houses in Manhattan. In fact, therefore, some of the most beautiful houses anywhere you could argue. New York magazine calls him a maestro when it comes to construction, but what I love about this interview, especially for our stacker family, is that it's not about the work that he does construction. It's about people and relationships and this is so much of what it takes to actually make money. It is who you know. It is who you trust. It is the people that you surround yourself with and Mark Ellison, a guy who pounds nails for a living, proves that on today's episode. This is our stacking deeds real estate podcast from just a few short weeks ago. We hope you enjoy it. Live from Joe's mom's basement, it's the stacking deeds show. I'm Ruth's part-time mechanic and this shows announcer, Neighbor Doug. That's right, Ruth the Realtors' car is parked and the team is gathered for a big announcement in the basement, but also today's a special show because we're talking about the art of creating beautiful real estate. Joining us is the man that New Yorker magazine called the best carpenter in the remodeling business, Mark Ellison. Plus, thinking about buying an Airbnb, pump the brakes because we've got a headline that just might make you go fool. And don't you worry that cute little penny-yours because even though we've left the car for the day, we've still got the triple R coming your way when someone will ring Ruth's rotary with a question. Speaking of ring, I just know you're ready to ring the bell yourself on my property pop quiz. And now, she's a cubs fan from the south side of Chicago. And he's a Detroit tiger fan, living in Texas. Yeah, I can see that. Here's Crystal Hammond and Joe Salcia. Welcome, welcome, welcome, everyone to the show and welcome back to our friend Joe. How are you today? This is lovely, non-specific time of day when somebody might be listening to this. Is that what you're welcoming me to? Yes, or a non-specific day of the week also. How could you be a cubs fan in White Sox territory? I've been to White Sox games and people are rabid about the socks on the south side. They're so angry and they're also angry because the White Sox won a whole pennant and they still can't sell out a game. Cubs fans are awesome. We sell out games. It's a huge difference when you go to both stadiums. It's everybody in the neighborhood hate you though. No, of course. No, you were in Cubs gear in Cubs. Hey, Crystal. No, no, no, no. My bad, my bad. Well, we got a great show today, Crystal, because I actually did a stacking deeds interview. Yay. I know I'm so excited. This guy, New York or magazine, Crystal called the number one remodeler in the world. They called them the number one remodeler in New York, which then you may say, okay, New York is one of the two biggest most prestigious cities in the United States. If you think of New York and LA, it's kind of like the big two. And then you compare New York real estate to real estate around the world. You I guess can then get to best in the world for what the New Yorker said. He's amazing. I'm impressed. I can't wait to hear from him. I can't wait either. But before that, we got a big headline. But even before that, we got a big announcement. Ready? Who's an announcing? I love to look. You're giving me. Yes, I am ready. Yeah. I'm here today because of Mark Ellison and because I did that interview. But I'm also here because whenever you start a podcast, people, you know, figure out that things take time and are a little different than we thought. And Alan has decided to step back in his daily duties. So he's still going to be a part of our lovely stacking deeds family, our show. You'll hear him on a roundtable episodes, but he will not be here every single week. I heard he bought a limo emo farm. He saved so much money on his car insurance. That's it. That's it. That's a punchline. Are those the dumbest commercials ever? By the way, no, I love the Lee. Emo. And he has the kid too. Oh, so cute. That is bad. One of us agrees with you. And it's not me. I don't think so. But anyway, we're super glad you guys. You're here with us. We got a great show today. We're talking not just Mark Ellison, but we're talking about Airbnb. So Crystal, you're ready to hit the go button. Oh, yes. I'm ready. Get your ears ready to learn a lot today. It could be information to change your life forever. Or the something you should know podcast could just be something interesting. My guest is Kim Zachman. She is author of the book. There is no cream and cream soda. I don't think I've ever really known the story of why they're called hot dog. There is so many legends about the name of the hot dog. When the Germans, immigrants came over and they brought all their sausages. They also brought their docks. It really is because they kind of look like docks. Something you should know wherever you listen. Hello, chaps. And now are Stucking Deeds headlines. Julia and Pip pip. Our headline today comes to us from Newsweek. This is written by Julia. Julia. It is Julia. Spell very Italian G. I. U. L. I. A. Julia. Carbonaro. Sorry, Julia. I know Julia is a big fan of the show. So yeah, definitely. Now she is. Julia writes. Fallen air B and B listings revenue sparks housing market crash fears. This has been all over the place in real estate land. Everyone. Julia writes, falling revenues per listing for a B and B, the popular service that lets property owners rent out their spaces to travelers could trigger a housing market crash, quote, on par with the 2008 subprime crisis in some cities, according to one real estate expert, though others questioned the data. We're going to go through this in a second. A lot of this data, Crystal, but what's your take on that headline? What do you think? I feel like it's another thing where people are getting in a fritz over nothing. I wouldn't say nothing, but it just comes down to doing your research. I feel like we had Lauren Keene Amand on the show. She's the air B and B queen. Yeah. She's like five figures zing it a month on air B and B. It just matters how you buy, where you buy. This is just I don't wouldn't call it clickbait, but hey, we clicked on it. We certainly weren't. Well, but there's some data here. Let's walk through the data. This gentleman on Twitter, Nick Gurley, Nick is a CEO of Reventure Consulting and Reventure app. He has 84,000 followers, pretty big for somebody in the real estate arena. He lists in a tweet that will link to in our show notes, air B and B revenue collapse, the top 10 cities, and he walks through these numbers, which are rents from May 2022 and then rents May 2023 in these areas. Number 10 on this list is Breckenridge, Colorado. Was it almost $4,200? Now it's down to $2,600. Denver number nine, $33,74, down to $2,000, just above $2,000. Nashville comes in eighth, $5,75, down to $3,500. Salisbury, Maryland, which you explain to me. I think Crystal's along the coast. It's kind of a resort. Ocean City, right. kind of area. Ocean City, Maryland, $1,490, down to $900. Asheville, North Carolina, $3,360, down to $1,900. San Antonio, fifth, $3,300, down to $1,800. Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, $3,100, down to $1,700. Austin, Texas, and second, similarly down, 46%, $4,600, $2,500. Phoenix, and second, $55,69, down to $2,900. And then the biggest drop at 47% in Airbnb, Reds collected is Seaverville, Tennessee, $6,228, down to $3,266. Crystal, I'd explain to you where Seaverville is. I was going to say I'm not surprised at number one, because I've never heard of that place. Well, a lot of people have, if you're a fan of great Smokey Mountain National Park, just north of there is a tourist town called Gatlinburg, another one called Pigeon Forge. If you think of Ocean City and put it in the middle of the Smokey Mountains, there you go. That's what it is. And Seaverville is just north. It's a residential town, very, very pretty area, though, but very, very touristy. And by the way, looking at this top 10, that's what we're seeing. I mean, assuming this data is correct, these are all touristy areas. Which is weird, because I feel like they're all talking about how people are revenge traveling right now since the pandemic's over, everyone feels all right, it's safe to talk. Even this last week, well, for Fourth of July, weekend, non-specific date, the airports had a record number of screenings. So people are getting out of the house. I guess it's a matter of where are people going? Well, that is number one, number two, because this is a string of tweets. The second tweet that Nick has is about Airbnb inventory versus homes for sale. As you and I know, a lot of the big players like BlackRock getting into the Airbnb game, these monster companies buying thousands of houses at a time and competing against people like you and me and Alan and Lauren, other real estate investors. He's got a chart of 2016 1,442,000 houses for sale. And this is Airbnb Rennel's versus for sale inventory. I don't know what the unit of time is on this, but assuming the unit of time is the same, 1,442,000 houses for sale versus 188,273 Airbnb's on the market. Today, by the way, back in late 2020, that number switched during the pandemic where there were actually more Airbnb's than there were houses for sale. Today, he parks the number at 965,391 Airbnb slash VRBOs and only 554 921 houses for sale. Crystal, it looks like people aren't selling their houses anymore. No, they're running them out. They're Airbnb in them. And really, the main thing that jumps out to me on this chart too is so back in 2016, there's over a million more homes for sale. So people buy them up, buy them up, buy them up. And then now it's flipped. So there's like almost a million Airbnb's and VBROs for rent. And half of that, there's about 500. So that's like a factor of half. So what do you do when you have an Airbnb that you've bought and now the rentals aren't there anymore? Or, you know, what do you do when you're looking to invest? And the only thing out there are Airbnb's. This is a recipe for the bidding wars since there's so few listings for sale. And then these owners need to decide, am I going to sell or am I going to go back to trying to find a regular monthly renter? Or, you know, how can I pivot? I was just the CEO at a credit union conference and we had an economist talk to us for about an hour and a half. He was a very entertaining guy. We're a bow tie. And he jumped up and down, which was not like most economists, most economists, fairly, fairly boring. But this guy was not. But anyway, he thought crystal that we were going into a recession. And he presented a lot of data about why he thought there was a recession. But what was interesting was that he said the reason it's going to be so shallow is because there's so few houses for sale that the housing prices are continued to propel the economy forward. And car prices also doing that. Now, he thought that real estate and houses at some point also have to see their reckoning, have to see bad things happening. But he thought that wasn't happening right now. And it's partly because there's so few houses for sale that that's booing things up. But I think to your point, I think really what this speaks to is this thing that I've heard you and Alan talk about over and over and over that is this drum beat. We should make sure our deeders know which is you make your bed when you buy the property. When you buy the property is 90%. If you make a bad deal on a property and you have to get $3,000 on your Airbnb or you decide to Airbnb, right? And it should be a long-term rental or a medium-term rental. You're running it the wrong way or you overpay and you have to get this big, big, big rent check every month and it just isn't going to happen. That's where you get into trouble. I think you've got to make a very smart buying decision at the front end and that greases the rest of the process, don't you? Definitely. The numbers will tell you if your decision is right or wrong. The numbers will have you in a situation where you're avoiding this desperation because you plan for all the scenarios. You bought it right. The numbers are right. Remember, you're buying at worst-case scenario is plugged into your numbers. So at worst-case scenario, you're still doing fine. Remember what Alan said. Also, it's like you buy a property, worst-case scenario, you're breaking even the next 5-10 years. Good news. When you go to sale, there's different things that's going to happen. You'll have those years of equity built in or is it time to refinance because people thought that the rise in interest rates was going to make a huge change in the market. But I don't think it has. So I feel like the interest rate has filtered out the people who aren't serious, the people who aren't doing the math. You could see here, Nick's graphs, with inventory continuing to go down, fume for your houses. That is counteracting what's going on with interest rates to your point. And by the way, worst-case scenario sounds like something an engineer would do. Sounds exactly like something crystal-haven with you. It's a scenario planning. Exactly. You always need that plan because you don't want to plan when it's a sunny day. Sunny day things are going amazing. And right, you want to plan for those non-sunny days, those non-conventional scenarios. And then that's where the bang for the buck is. That's where you're making your money. I've talked to a lot of investors that prefer these trendy areas like Phoenix, like C. Verville, like Austin, Texas as an example. They prefer those. But if you're going to get into a trendy area, realize that that also might not be trendy forever. And that even if it stays trendy, you're still going to get the back of the tail of the scorpion. I mean, if things look good right now, it's not always going to look good, which is another reason to do that worst-case scenario planning. And I think even more so, if you're in a trendy area because you know where the big boys and girls go from places like Black Rock, these huge institutional firms, they're doing the same research. So you got to know that that's where they're going to be, which is interesting. I remember Lauren saying this on her show, saying that she specifically does not go to those areas for that reason. She'll pick a little bit outside areas. She'll pick maybe a medium-sized city with a college in it, you know, where there's going to be dependable need for rents, but it's not going to be the sexy area like the ones that we saw in this list. And some people want to be off the beaten path when they're on a vacation. They want to be in Disney, but not on top of Disney. So they want to be maybe a half hour and hour outside of Disney. And that's where she is in that area or outside of Tampa. It's like, I'm not in the thick. I'm in the outskirts of the thick. Oh, but come on, Crystal. Don't you want to live there in the top of Cinderella's castle? Don't you want to have the sweet and Cinderella's castle? No, I'm competing with all those children. Where are you going to park? If you want to have a party, where are your friends going to park? But it's great. They could do the horse-drawn carriage down Main Street, your party. Wouldn't that be great? You can afford that. You have a fireworks show every night. It's so funny. Hey, kid, you're not beautiful. I'm beautiful. Back away, Cinderella. This is all mine. I could see a YouTube video, Crystal fighting with Cinderella. No way. Some people, as you mentioned earlier, let's get to this. Some people question the data and said, they're looking at the same data Airbnb actually even answered and said, we're looking at it away. We don't know where you got this data because everything looks fine by us. You know, even if things look fine, Crystal, I'd love your idea of worst-case scenario planning. Pretend like it's not fine. If it is fine, how great is that? If you did worst-case scenario planning and you bought everything based on worst-case scenario, now everything is fine. This guy Nick is cray cray. If he truly is, it's great for you. That's fantastic. That's less pivoting you have to do. That's less worrying you have to do. That's also less work you are doing because, remember, you always do the work upfront. You want to beat the rush. You don't want to be the last person hopping on a trend because I have bad news for you, my friend. They say the trend is your friend until it isn't. You always want to beat the rush there. Maybe. I don't like beat the rush out. I really like long-term hold myself. I mean, beat the rush getting in. No, I agree. I was going to the next step, which was beat the rush in, beat the rush out. You're 70 years old, so you leave the concert before the encore, so you can get out the parking lot. I'll do that now. I do that now. Because Grandma's got to get home and get her beat asleep. Is that why? Yes. One economist, by the way, did agree in this piece that he thought Airbnb listings. While he disagreed with Nick and these statistics, he did agree that he thought the Airbnb listings because there are so many of them that you should expect revenue decline if you're in that market. So we'll link to these on our show notes page at stackingdeeds.net. You can sign up for the show notes. Crystal and what? They come to your... They are hand-delivered cyber-really cyber-bought e each week every Tuesday. We have this team of ferrets that we put into the network and they hand-deliver things to your email. They go through the net. It's amazing. It's the e-move farm that we outsourced from Alan's e-move farm. Our guest coming up next is Mark Ellison. I was so happy to be able to interview Mark because the New Yorker wrote a piece back in 2020 called the Art of Building the Impossible. And as soon as the word got out about Mark, not only did the wealthiest people in New York knew who Mark Ellison was, all of a sudden the entire world knew who Mark Ellison was. He wrote a book which is not really about real estate. It is about his life and times and the people he's worked with, the jobs he's done. It's a very quirky, interesting take on working in this industry that all of us deaters like so much real estate. So that's coming up next. But Doug, I think you've got some trivia for us, right? Hey there deaters, I'm Ruth's Fetched Boy, Napert Doug. And I'm super excited we've got Mark Ellison coming up next to talk about beautiful remodels. In fact, since the team is in Joe's mom's basement today, I thought it's a great time to consult with a pro like Mark on an overhaul of Ruth's Lincoln. Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to whine about the lack of space in the trunk or the fact that I usually am talking to you from the fetal position back there. No, that's not my way. But I do think that with a little bit of fresh upholstery and maybe some new curtains for the back, we can make sure Ruth's carpeting matches the drapes. Speaking of making things beautiful, one city in Italy began a major project downtown, way back in 1334, you know, three years before Joe was born. Geoto Dibondone, probably how you say that, a famous artist built a company or bell tower that's part of the seven buildings that make up the city's cathedral on the Piazza del Domo. It's 84.7 meters tall and has seven bells and is considered one of the most beautiful bell towers in Italy and slightly more beautiful than anything built in Texark, annually. Although we did just add a new panda express that's pretty chic building. I mean, have you seen that thing? So here's my question, what expensive real estate city is home to Geoto's company? I'll be back right after I ask Ruth what color she'd like her dreams to be. Hey there, Deeders on Ferrari lover and pasta connoisseur, Ruth's fetching boy neighbor Doug. Hey safety tip, don't ask Ruth about the color of her drapes. Not sure why, but apparently that question sets her off. Sometimes I just don't know what to say. Anywho, today's question is about a beautiful building, the company lay. Sounds Italian. That just so happens to be part of an equally beautiful cathedral complex in an area called the Piazza del Domo in one Italian city. My question, which city? In a city where real estate cost 3,000 to 5,000 euros per square meter or by my rough calculation, $300 to $500 a square foot, it's Florence, Italy, which is weird because Ruth said she kicked me all the way to Florence, Italy for asking me about her upholstery and no idea what you're mad about Ruth. I just think you could have a better car. I'll try to play Kate Ruth while you listen to Joe and artisan extraordinaire, Mark Ellison. And joining us on the show, I'm super happy he's here. Mark Ellison, how are you, man? Things are great. It's a pleasure to be here with you. Well, it is funny talking to you because a lot of the time we're talking to people who are professional house flippers, professional rehabbers, which of course is part of what you do, but you don't work on that end of the business anymore. You're working with people who are creating these houses that are all one of a kind different. These are really people's masterpieces I feel like, Mark. Well, I mean, no house I've worked on in the last 35 years was built with the intention of worrying about the market value or could they flip this house or should I make the countertop space so I can resell it? Those kind of considerations do not enter into what I do. They're not doing the subway tiling for resale value. No, they're doing the hand painted tiles from creed that come over, you know, and then we're in a hurry to get them so they get flown over on an airplane because the person has to move in in two months and that's what we do. There's several intentions for the primary intention to what we do is to make people feel that they live in a home that is as important as they are and that it reflects their sometimes outsized characters. I want to talk about getting into this though because as you know, having kids of your own, that people out of high school, they often feel this pressure that they have to get it right. They got to get their career right immediately out of the shoe and yet I don't read about many carpenters. I don't read about people doing what you do on the level you do it who begin with a banjo. Can you talk about your early life with the banjo? Yeah, I mean, both of my parents are academics. Both of my parents have so many letters after their names, you know, PhD, MD. My father has a bachelor's of divinity, a bachelor's of science. I mean, I lost track a long time ago. There's so many letters after their names. I don't even pay attention anymore. And I found conventional education very difficult. I had a hard time in school. I didn't enjoy it. To me, classrooms were confinement. And so I first dropped out of school when I was 16 and much to my parents' concentration. And they sent me on a journey of tough love which involved getting work and paying my own way on things. And it was a nice try, but I've always loved working. I've loved everything I've ever done for a job. I love scooping ice cream. I like sweeping floors. I like washing dishes at Howard Johnson's. I've always found the dynamic of work to be fascinating. And I like to move and I like to do things and I like to feel a sense of accomplishment with what I do. And I've always felt that way. And so every job was great. And that has just carried with me. There's a very silly story in the book about I barely played the banjo at that stage, but it turns out some local theater group needed a banjo player for a promotional job at Bond with Teller. And the guy who lived next door to me knew I owned a banjo. And I had all of three songs to my repertoire. And so they dressed me up in a costume, sent me to Bond with Teller. And I proceeded to play the banjo for an hour and a half. That was actually one of the jobs I did like because it was so I liked it because I was paid $250 for an hour and a half's work in 1983, which was epic. But the whole idea of performing to me has always been a little bit like a lot of people. I'm not all that comfortable on stage. And I don't quite get why people love performing. But I was for a very short time a professional banjo player for an hour and a half once in 1983. And that was before you were a professional ice cream server, cake decorator, binary worker, animal food delivery driver. I thought that was a good one, Mark. Yeah, that got a little dodgy because what happened was I have to be very covered with names and locations. But one of the people involved in the business had a rather lucrative cocaine distribution business going on, which they piggybacked onto the animal food delivery. So there were times when we were not just delivering animal food, we were actually delivering cocaine to people. This is New York in the 80s. I was a very young man. I don't claim to have made the sensible decisions throughout my life. And I was also not a very careful driver and I would always get stopped by the police. And after about the third traffic stop when I knew perfectly well was in the glove compartment, I was like, I can't do this anymore. I mean, I can't deliver cocaine for a living. And so I stopped. You didn't intend ever. You write this in your book. You never intended to become a carpenter. I mean, as a child, I didn't really know the job existed. I mean, a carpenter never entered my home when I was a child. If anybody needed fixing, that was dad's job. He had a workshop in his basement. And my entire childhood when something needed fixing, either the person that broke it was forced to learn to fix it, which was usually me. If I smashed a window playing basketball, my dad taught me how to fix a window. If I once kicked open the lock on the back door, and I had to repair the lock on the back door. And so I didn't intend to become a carpenter largely because I kind of didn't know that people did that. Freshly out of high school, I was given a job in Central Square in Boston. I tell about this in the book. And essentially these were parents of high school friend of mine. And they were looking for the cheapest way possible to fix up a townhouse. So they hired a couple kids fresh out of high school. And then they hired a real carpenter, a man named Sam Clark, who would come in every week and school us in the techniques that we needed and the things we had to do in that coming week. And then come back next week and make us fix everything we messed up and then move on to the next step and move on to the next step. I lived in the job site while the work was going. I mean, it was one working toilet kind of maybe sometimes. And I just adored the work. I thought it was great. It was so much fun to make things and build things all day and put up walls. And we did the most rudimentary style of carpentry. There was nothing fancy about it back then. But we got walls up and we got a kitchen in and we got doors hung and we managed to build something that looked a little like a house. And it was wonderful. There's a lot of people listening to this also who think not only do they think as kids that they have to get their career right away. And clearly you're proof that this meandering path can lead to wonderful places that you didn't expect, all of which factor into great things for your life later. But the second is, you know, over and over and over when I was doing my research for this interview, Mark, the word that comes up associated with your name over and over and over is talent in how talented you are at this. And in chapter two, you really take the term talent to task and you go after two ideas that I'd like you to comment on. The first one you say is talent is the most significant determining factor in predicting achievement. And second, if one is not immediately good at something, it's not worth doing. Can you talk to the idea of talent when it comes to your job? The second one, if somebody doesn't immediately display prowess at something, you know, I mean, you take up the banjo and people feel like if they can't suddenly go out and play like Earl Scrugg's after five or six banjo lessons that something's wrong with them. Earl Scrugg's took up the banjo at three and played on the porches with his uncles, you know, for 10 years before going and playing dances and playing parties. And it's a very strange and silly idea in our culture. I think it's largely because we see very young people become very successful in sort of internet kind of culture and, you know, pop culture, particularly pop music and pop music and, you know, movies and things in particular. You see very young people become very successful, very rich, very famous early on. And everybody goes, oh, that's how it happens. And then they'll go out and try and sing a song. And their second grade teacher will say, yeah, that wasn't really very good. And then that's it. And then they never sing again. People call me talented all the time. And it kind of hurts me because I have been working at the things I'm working at. I work daily at several things. I work daily at music. I work daily at my job, which is building things and, you know, my craft. I work daily to a couple of other things. I'd still practice Tai Chi and things like that. And Tai Chi took me about 15 years before anything, anybody said, made sense in any way, shape or form. And actually, I was told that by my first teacher. He said, you understand what I'm saying for about 15 years. For 15 years. Yeah. It was pretty accurate. It was only after about 15 years. I was like, oh, all this stuff kind of makes sense. But it took 15 years. And it's the same with music. I mean, I've practiced music now since I was four. I'm 61. So that's 57 years. And I'm making a record album now because it took me 57 years to be good enough to feel like, oh, I'm now qualified to make a record. That's 57 years of practice. I mean, that's so far beyond the 10,000 hours that I mean, I consider myself kind of a slow learner at things. I'm a slow reader. I'm just very, very determined. And I don't mind practicing something every day that I'm not necessarily that good at. And I would say I finally became what I would consider it took me 15 years at least to be probably 20 to become what I called a decent carpenter. Took about 20 years where I, you know, if anything you asked me to build in a house, I got it. I can build it. But that took about 20 years. Playing guitar took about 40 because it's harder. I mean, I can only speak for myself, but people go on and on about like, you're exceptionally talented at this and exceptionally talented in this. And really my answer to that is, you know, there are genetic abilities that some people have that are beyond what other people have. There are people that just have more graceful bodies and they make better dancers very often. But there are some very oddly shaped dancers who dance magnificently. It's just that we're not used to seeing them because they always pick the ones that have the bodies that look like the dancers. Like I always think it like Larry Bird who must have been teased magnificently through his entire grade school because he was one of the most awkward looking people on the face of the earth. And yet he practiced and practiced and practiced. And you would do a thousand foul shots every day, even deep into his career. And you go like, that's why he was on the court because he worked and he practiced and he practiced and he practiced. And he got to the point where he was a magnificent basketball player. He wasn't nearly as pretty as some of the men that played around him. And he didn't play as beautifully and as gracefully as they did. But he played with a determination and a drive that allowed him to stand on the same court as the people of his generation. And to me, I don't care if somebody's talents are not. I really don't care. I mean, if you're a terrible singer and Chris Christoffer's like a terrible singer, his voice is terrible. I'm sorry, Chris. You're one of the most magnificent songwriters in the history of American music. His voice is terrible. There goes the biggest fan of the show, Mark. I don't know if I know this show is sponsored by Chris Christoffer's and now you just made our sponsor upset. I also called him one of the most magnificent songwriters in the history of American music. And there he stood on the stage with Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Whale and Jennings and Chris Christoffer's and then you go like, but he did earn his place there. He absolutely earned his place there. And it wasn't through a neat talent. It was through drive and work and determination and practice and constant effort that earned him that place. So sure, some people have a leg up, genetically here and there and different things. But it doesn't matter. I mean, to me, all that matters about music is what I get out of it. Do I enjoy doing it? Do I have camaraderie with the people I play with? Do I enjoy their company? Do we respond to each other emotionally while we're playing? I feel the same way on a job site. I mean, one of the most important things to me on a job site is not how talented are each of these individuals, but like, is there a camaraderie to it? Are we all working towards the same goal? Is everybody here to do the same thing? And that has an energy that if I had 15 superstars, we probably wouldn't have because they'd all end up hating each other and trying to compete with each other. And they'd be like, oh, I'm the superstar. Why are you talking to him? You know what I mean? There's something to be said for, you know, it's like the bad news bears, the underdogs. You're like, the 1980 US hockey team where you go like, they shouldn't have beaten those Russians. That was impossible. It wasn't possible that those guys beat the Russians. And yet they did. I felt like that same thing when you were telling the story in the book and we'll let people read this story. But it's, you're on this job. You're working for the son of a guy who's in real estate or in construction, it names Luigi. And you are working all night long on this project for Luigi. It's not just you. The whole crew is really pitching in. No, we all worked all night. Yeah. Yeah. You said you really like working for these people because they were demanding, but they knew what they wanted. And you knew it was a project of love. And man, the care that went into that house, you could just feel in this story, Mark, everybody pulling together on the job site to make this vision a reality, especially you down in the garage or wherever trying to beat some sense into some brass to make a railing. Yeah. I was young then, wasn't that young? It was maybe over 20 years ago. That was the first time I'd ever really worked brass. I mean, essentially what happened was there was a railing that had to be done the next day. The very next day furniture was coming. This design outfit had a team of about 50 people who would come and dress the apartment they hung drapes. They brought napkin rings. They put in dish soap. They took the house and they put socks in the drawers. There were about 50 people who came and turned it from our completed project to these people's home. It was remarkable. I've only seen that once in my career. It was done so well, but they were coming the very next day. And I hadn't finished the railing. I had ordered all the parts to the railing, but I messed up. I didn't realize that I'd left out one little curved piece to make it transition from the bottom piece to the part that goes up to stairs. And I had, well at that point, it was two in the afternoon, and the people were coming the next day. And I actually had a welder coming the next day who was going to weld all the pieces of the railing together. I had to have that piece of railing. And the tenor of the entire project as a group was we are getting this place done. We are going to make this a success. I had to run down the canal street to a surplus metal's place and I found a piece of brass that would work. And then I ran to the hardware store just before it closed and I bought every tool in the place that it seemed like I might need. I mean, raps and all kinds of things. And then I had to figure out how to make this curved piece of brass railing. And I'd never tried to bend a three quarter inch thick piece by like two and a quarter piece of brass before. It's very hard to bend. It's really, really hard to bend. And I didn't have any special the equipment. And so what I did was I went down to the basement parking garage and I clamped one end of the brass to a dumpster down there because that was the most solid thing that had something I could clamp to. And I beat it with a wrecking bar, you know, a 36 inch iron wrecking bar. I literally beat that thing and I beat myself into a frenzy and a sweat for like an hour. Yeah, you said it's after midnight, by the way. And the neighbors, you're probably keeping the neighbors up. I was keeping the entire building up, but I was so focused that it never even occurred to me. And then Luigi came down. He walks up, he approaches me in the garage and he's like, Mark, what are you doing? And I was like, Luigi, this has to be done for tomorrow. I have the welder coming to finish the railing. And he saw, I was like, something I'm drenched in sweat, I'm covered in dust and dirt. And he walked up while I was beating the thing. And he was just a very practical, he knew he wanted the place done. That was his goal also. And he was part of the company that built the entire building. So they owned the building. He just kind of goes, okay, I'll take care of it. And then he just fielded complaints about the crazy noise from the parking garage for the rest of the evening. And I got the damn thing done. You know, to me, it was such a enormous accomplishment. It was like, there's something about it like no matter what, no matter what we're getting this done. Reading pizza and egg sandwiches all night, we're all staying up. And then the next morning, when the welders showed up at nine in the morning, I had the little piece in my hand. And he is one of the most talented metalsmiths in all of them, America, which means all of the world. And I showed him a little piece. And I said, I made this last night. And he's an Irishman from South Boston. And he just looks like he was like, nice. And I was like, it's like a standing ovation from him. Yeah, I'm like, no, that was like the Pope coming down and going like, you know, I mean, it was like Santa as far as I was concerned, probably better. Well, I think that's interesting because you know, a lot of people, when they run into problems, and that as you have said over and over in the book, whenever there's something you're working on, there's always going to be problems. You seem to relish the chance to work on things that are especially going to be a problem. And I feel like just that attitude of attacking it really turns this thing that a lot of people could find to be a chore into something that's beautiful and a challenge and something that's just rounding out our life. I do have a question though about this, about, you know, sticking with this theme of talent. And I'm sure everybody can hear the joy that you're expressing is you're beating the hell out of the brass and try to make it move, Mark. But they say follow your passion. And lately, a lot of people say, follow your passion is BS. Well, people are already rich. They follow your passion, right? I got to pay the bills. Then there's an idea that a lot of people have talked about lately about, you know, follow your curiosity. If you're curious about it, and it makes a money, well, then follow that versus paying the bills. Well, where do you come down on that argument for young people? Follow your passion, follow your curiosity or pay the bills and find the banjo as a hobby? I mean, I was thinking about this recently, because I was just in a London. And I have never liked doing office work. I never liked working in an office. And I've never liked that kind of environment or that kind of atmosphere. And the publicist I was working with in Ireland, your name is Marie Louise Patton. And I mean, not in Ireland in England. She was so terrific at her job. She's 28 years old. And some people would go like, she's a publicist. It's kind of a sell out job. You know, there's so many jobs that people think it's not artistic. It's not my passion. This woman, she passionately sells books. She adores books. And she creates these really lovely relationships with people around her. I mean, I was like instantly in love with her. And sure, she's not an artist. She's not a musician. She's not an actress, but she's gone and created one little lovely relationship after another. And that's her career. And I do make a distinction between career and passion. I mean, I do. I mean, I've spent my entire career building other people's visions. I don't build my own visions. I always say I don't have a dog in the aesthetic race. You know, I tell the one story in the book about that one horrible, horrible house that was done all Macintosh Puddy. Every color in the place was Macintosh Puddy. And the place was heart-killing. It was an awful place to even stand every day. And that man for whom we built the house came up to us at the end of the project and said, you are artists. I admire your work. I think what you do is beautiful. And we were all like, okay, pal, you know, it's your house. It was hideous. It was the most hideous place I've ever built. I couldn't stand to spend five minutes in the place, but it doesn't matter. I mean, this is my work. This is my work for money. And what I do for money, you know, I've had three children. They've all gone through college. I've been married, divorced. I've had, you know, as many financial responsibilities as anybody does. And I've always been aware that the bills have to be paid. Even when I was doing work that I didn't love the work, there's always something about it. I mean, I've always taken jobs that were challenging to me somehow. Even when I worked in the office in a construction company for a while, you know, I really wanted to learn the back office end of building. And I kind of hated it, but there were still parts of it that were really interesting. How does one work in an office and have really seamless and productive relationships with other people? How do you get other people? It's one thing to get myself to do things that nobody else will do. How do I get other people to do the thing they don't want to do in order to get a project done? Some people need to be screened at. Some people need to be coddled. Some people need to be encouraged and controlled. You know, there can be an art to almost anything. There's an art to sweeping a floor properly. There's an art to doing the dishes and feeding the kitchen so that everything's in order in your home looks lovely. I mean, I feel like I was just reading it's funny. It's the second time I've had this conversation in the last few days, Mark. There's another book called The War of Art by Stephen Pressfield. And he talks about how pros go do the thing and they find the beauty and the thing. And amateurs worry about how good it's going to be and never do anything. Right. I mean, that is a wonderful way to say it. I mean, I imagine there are some things that there are not beauty. I mean, there have certainly been things that have occurred in the world that it would be very, very difficult to find the beauty. I mean, there is terror and horror in the world and barbarism. Sure. But I got to say to your point, Mark, with the publicist, as a guy who gets pitched 70 times a week, we have two people on the show of the 70 pitches that we get. Right. When I find a great publicist, there is beauty and there is art in that. Oh, wonderful. And the people who don't, you can tell. There are publicists. I'm sure that you know when this person brings me something, it's probably going to be good. I might not use everybody they bring, but like there are some people that I'm sure, you know, five out of 10 people, most people bat like 10 percent and they're batting 50. I mean, I'm sure you use half the people they send you because they know you and they actually care obviously and probably care about their relationship with you and they don't want to sour it. They want to do something that works. So they want to bring you people that are appropriate to your show and they study your show and they know your style. That's the beauty of being a publicist and there's a beauty to being a lawyer. There's a beauty to being a janitor. One of my favorite people I ever worked with was a laborer, Benny Mazick, who, you know, he was a laborer. He never wanted to be a carpenter. He never wanted to be one of the up and up, you know, professions. He wanted to be the laborer and he had the most buttoned up job site I have ever been on. You could ask him for any of it. You could say I need a washer for a quarter 20 screw, but I want it to be a stainless steel and he'd be like, give me a second. Then he'd go back and he'd come back and hand it to you. He knew where it was. He knew where and he took such great pride in that his sites were buttoned up and he would tell you that and he would yell at the carpenters when they wouldn't use the garbage cans. He put right next to the chop saw. He said, what are you doing throwing stuff on the floor? Don't you have any self respect? There's a garbage can right there. You could feel the love. Yeah. You could feel the love. Yeah. Yeah. And it was probably one. I do have one more theme that I want to get to, which you're actually alluding to. And we're talking around a little bit, which is all the way through your book. It isn't so much about these projects. And this is a show, by the way, about real estate on stacking deeds, even larger about stacking bedrooms, about money. And yet all of these things come down to relationships and working with people. And what's funny, by the way, on that relationship and how good your publicist is, Mark, we reached out to you. Your people didn't pitch me and your publicist is like, why you want to talk to him about this? I'm like, because we need to talk more about the beauty. We need to talk more about the wonderful world of getting into and finding your way, which I think you express so, so well here. But on that note, you tell a story very early in the book about your first quote name brand or name architect that you work with. Yeah. And so you go into this house. It's a minimalist house. And you talk about that those are very hard to do. But you're working with kind of one of her underlings and she comes into the house from time to time. And she's just kind of swinging her arms everywhere and and motioning. Can you tell us a little bit about you call her Maya in the book, which I think is in a real name, but tell us a little bit about Maya. Well, she's an artist. She's an architect and an artist. I'd actually never encountered anyone like her before. She's a bit unlike other people in the industry, far as I can tell she didn't carry a pencil. I mean, she is a visionary architect and artist and she had a vision for this place and her way of communicating it was almost dance like. I mean, luckily, she also had a team of architects who worked with her who turned her things into actual drawings that we could more or less follow. But she would come through and look at everything and go, I want the lights here to be a constellation and I want them to be here. And she was small and she's built like a dancer and she would just go this and this and then she go and the outlet on this wall needs to go here. And she would point at the spot where materials should come together. The stone floor should come here. The wall should come here. The plaster should come here. I mean, she was lovely because one of the things I tell in the story is that construction dudes like myself aren't always that nice. And most people they were admitted to themselves would realize that they're not that nice. You guys would make fun of her behind her back. Yeah, the minute she disappeared, we'd be like, woo, you know, because that's what people like to do. And mean this can be fun as long as it's not found out and you don't get in trouble for it. And everybody knows that. Everybody knows they love to go home and great to their significant other about the idiots back at the office. Everybody does this all the time. I just thought, well, why not admit that that's actually what we did. This story, though, has a wild ending. It's five years later. Yeah, you're working with some people who are total pains in your ass. They are complaining about you non-stop. Tell us about this job. Luckily, I was always kind to her face. And I actually have a real, I mean, everybody's full of mixed motivations. So I actually did like an admirer in my way and make fun of her behind her back also in my way. Five years later, I was doing a project where towards the end, the owners really became difficult. And somehow they accused my staff of stealing a handmade Danish silverware set, which nobody on my staff would even know what that was. I mean, and they just went around. Everything was awful. Everything was substandard. How could I was fully screened at and told that I had no standards that I didn't know anything about how people should be treated or how people should live. And we had built it. It was a beautiful apartment. They were wildly unhappy. And I'm not sure that frankly much of it had to do with us. I think that was just kind of their take on many things in life. And we bore the brunt of it. One day, just as I was about to leave, a friend of the owner was coming to visit and my staff was to get out so that they could be left alone. So I sent my staff home. I was packing up, putting on my coat, gathering my tools, getting ready to leave. And the most places I've never even been in the passenger all of it. We always go the back way. The passenger later opened up and the owner went to greet the woman who was there. And it was Maya. And Maya saw me there packing my things. And because she's a delightful person, she ran over. She completely ignored the owner of the house. She ran right by her. And she ran over. She was, I hadn't seen her in five years. And she was like, oh my god, Mark, I can't believe you're here. And her project had been a rather epic success. And we certainly had parted on very good terms. The one that I had done five years previously. And so she ran over. She threw her arms around my neck. And she's like, what have you done? You're doing this place. Let me, and she's like, show me around. I want to see it. And she was like, wow, I'm dancing. I'm very animated. And she turned to the client. And she said, you are so lucky to have him. And I think she probably just braided me five minutes earlier. And Maya had me take her through the entire apartment and show her detail after detail after detail and all the things we've done. And it was a beautifully done apartment. It was a very, very well done apartment with some pretty ambitious details. And then she came back and she just said to the owner, your place is gorgeous. You're so lucky. The nobody does apartments like Mark. And from that moment on, we never heard a cross word out of either of those clients, not a cross word ever again. From that moment on, we had the official blessing. They loved the apartment. For anybody who thinks it's just about real estate. It's not about relationships. That story is all you need to hear. It's all about relationships. It's all, and I to this day, I mean, we did say mean things about her behind her back. And we did make a fun of her. And it's really much to my shame to this day that I mean, she saved my bacon on that thing. Yeah, you write about how just lucky you were to have her as a friend and she never heard you. And it's a wonderful, just a wonderful story. The book is called Building a Carpenter's Notes on Life and the Art of Good Work. Those stories we told today are just from the first couple chapters. I told Mark before we hit record. It was just a wonderful read about humanity, about lessons learned, about never losing your boss's car keys by just flipping around. So she says you've stolen the car and you need them to get it back to him. Well, people read that with later, but the books available everywhere, Mark, I assume. Yeah, everywhere. Sold out in London, though. I must say, when we were in London, it was sold out every bookstore there. So that is fabulous and well-deserved. Well, thanks for helping our dealers kind of get the bigger picture here about the beauty of what we do in the world of real estate. Thank you so much. It's been such a pleasure. Thank you so much. Big thanks to Mark Ellison for joining us. That was an amazing interview. I never expected that we'd be hearing. He dropped out at 16. We heard a reference to cocaine, but the biggest takeaway was it is it's all about relationships. I also loved what he said about the talent and it does take time to really curate your gifts and your talents. It doesn't happen overnight. How long did he say he was like, he's in his 60s. He first started at 16, got introduced, and then now he's like, the Taj Mahal. He told me that he's doing his first record playing music and at his age. And the fact that so many people give up so quickly on whatever the thing is, thinking they don't have talent in that area. And the fact now he did say that he's always been good with his hands and he preferred like the hard, grubby work and love getting in it. That part, I think, might be something that he particularly loves and had a gift for, but in terms of being able to make these beautiful staircases, beautiful things, that does it takes a long time. It takes a long time. It takes bravery and it takes heart because we are told that 9 to 5 has the way to go and that doesn't work for everybody. And even when he was in his 9 to 5, he still found ways to learn from it and grow from it. Because when he's saying when he dropped out, he's like, I wasn't interested in school. I followed my passion. I followed the path of what made sense to me. And that takes bravery. I'm so happy that he did that. Dropouts have a bad name. I flunked out of college twice. So I know what it means to not give it up and follow the path of things that make sense to you. Don't care about what other people think. You need to do what makes sense for you. And he had a family where both of his parents were college professors. Yeah. All the letters. They had all the letters on their names. He is so funny. He and I, by the way, after we recorded this interview, we talked for another half hour like that guy could talk. He joked about how another guy on job said, I don't know how you get anything done, especially his beautiful stuff, Mark, because you talk all the time. Very quirky fun guy. But you know, there's a couple of things. There's a couple of reasons I think this is so important for our show, because this is not the type of interview that we have normally done over our first several episodes. Number one, Crystal. I think it's important for us to remember that we are creating beauty. Like my son who owns 14 rental properties. They're almost all in Detroit. You know what he's most excited about? And while other people tell him they love about him, he's taking these old beautiful houses and he was making them beautiful again. And he's part of the resurgence of the city that he cares. Now he lives in Seattle now. We live in Texas, but at our heart, we're still Detroit fans. I love Detroit. And so for him to be a part of that by doing a little extra in the houses that he does, he's going to be running them out. But he's still putting in, I saw this bathtub he put in this one house. It just fit. It was this antique looking gorgeous bathtub. And of course, it's something like that that makes it rent more quickly because it's this cool design feature. But on the other side, it's just also pays homage to what this city was and can be again, which I thought was so so badass. And Mark, Mark is a big piece of that. And then the second thing I think we need to remember is that even though we're focused on the hammers and nails, I think you hammered it on the head with your first takeaway, which was this is about relationship. You got to get along with everybody. I mean, you got to get along with the people selling your property. You got to get along with property managers. You got to get along with tenants. You got to get along. Now you don't got to be in a pushover. No, yeah, it's just get along. Be the person. Have that personality that people actually genuinely want to help and be around and you know, see succeed. And then you're pulling in my heartstrings talking about your son investing in Detroit because that's what I'm doing in Chicago. You know, that's my home. That's my block. And the block that I grew up on is the forgotten area. It's a forgotten neighborhood. So I guess I'm the developer that's going to come along and change it. And you know, show people, hey, this is where your dollars belong. Let's recirculate our dollars in this community. You know, Mark, you can tell, I mean, with the hilarious story about those people and his friend who is the architect, right? And about how she completely changed their view of him. But imagine if he hadn't gotten along with that woman, if he hadn't gotten along with that architect, that whole thing would have ended differently if you were busy as to work with. Yeah. So it's one thing to be great, which he is. Like it's a two-fer. I think you got to be, you got to be great at what you do. And you had to be easy to work with. And then all the deals appear. People want to do deals with you. Word of mouth. Yep. Because we're fantastic. You got the phone ringing? Oh, what do you guys do in the phone rings here? We're recording. Right. I know. We just answered. Oh, right. Because we're in the basement. Oh, this is the segment. Yes. This is Triple R. It's time for Triple R. Yes. And look at this. The color ID tells us it's Sean calling in. Sean, who I think is a stalker, because I think Sean's called him before. Yeah. Hey, Crystal and Alan, it's Sean from Pennsylvania again. This time I have a question about build to rent. I'm curious to know what both of your thoughts are on that approach, specifically building a single family or a duplex for the sole purposes of renting out that property. I know it's a bit riskier. It takes a little bit more of an upfront investment. So I'd love to know if you think that this is viable, if it's just market or geographically dependent or anything else, but thanks. Thanks for the question. And I'm sad that Alan isn't here to help answer your question. But I definitely have a take on this. Crystal, what do you think? Well, thanks again for calling Sean. And I'm a huge fan of this. I'm doing this now. I'm building instead of a single family, which is what my lots are zoned for. I'm going through the trouble and going through the extra steps to get my land re-zoned so that I can build four plexes. I would say if you're thinking of a duplex, why not do two for the price of one? The marginal cost of going from a single family to the duplex is not as big as you think it is, but again, run those numbers, get those estimates because we were actually trying to go for six plexes, but that was just two dents for the space. But the marginal cost of adding the extra unit really wasn't that significant. So it's like, let's just maximize the space. But you're right. You've got the construction teams already out there. There's just a cost to getting them out there. The cost beyond that is much more incremental. You don't get this boom, huge cost again. So the cost of pouring a foundation of or a slab, whatever it might be. Yeah. And the building costs because you got shared walls, you also have have less there. Yeah. Single roof utilities that run throughout. Yeah. One to two. That's good. I do think though, Crystal, this is regional dependent because the cost of that land is going to either be your friend or your enemy. And the bad news is, Sean, I think if you get too far out in what my mom calls the boonies, you too far out of the boonies, you're not going to get any renters, right? So there's some danger there. But if you're too close to a hot area like where Mark's building in New York City, that's going to be ridiculously expensive. It's going to be incredible. Right. It is the land. The land is the biggest difference because construction costs are pretty, I wouldn't call them fixed, but the land is the thing that has the biggest variable in price. It's usually the land because you can do pretty great estimates of the cost of building. But the land is normally the biggest variable here. And this is where I think you can hop on trends. You know, we talked about the danger in trends around touristy areas earlier in our headline. I think the trend here, Crystal, with a lot of people moving back to the middle of the country, middle of country starting to get hot again. Now that people can live wherever they want for most of their jobs, you can get a fairly inexpensive property in a decent size city and see some good results. I live in a city of just under 70,000 people. For people who live there their whole life when I call it a little town, they look at me cross. I'd like, what are you talking about? I lived in Detroit. This is tiny. Again, they're like, you're nuts. This is the biggest town anywhere within an hour. So we've got banks and hospitals and all this stuff. I'm seeing construction all over this town, though, Crystal right now. And I know it's people doing exactly what Sean's talking about. Building places for people to rent. Super, super place, I think, a city of this size where we have kind of a captive population. If you're going to be living in this area, you're probably going to live in Texarkana. It's doing that type of research. Like who the hell would think move to Texarkana, USA outside of Joe's, I'll see how like who would do that? Not that many people. But I think when you started in middle America, you probably have much lower land cost construction teams that are probably going to charge you less. Now the cost of goods, though, Crystal stills the cost of goods, that I think is going to translate wherever you're at. I mean, lumber's lumber fixed. And that's not cheap. I don't know. Every time you say Texarkana, I think up to Durkin, like, Crystal's like, why? I get hungry. I get so hungry. I don't know about that. Most people think they're moving cannonball run where they were going to get the course light. That's the big deal. But that's a certain, you know, takes a certain red neck to have that that thought process. But yeah, I think if you're talking about Pennsylvania too, Sean, that almost goes along the lines of Chicago and Detroit. There are some forgotten areas of investment in that area. So that's also a chance for you to show like, hey, this area needs love too. And I haven't forgotten about the area. And I want to start a trend too, or be an on trend or starting with trend, because even for Detroit and Chicago, when people see, hey, there's some investment going on, you know, they're ears perk up and others try to get involved. So to simply answer your question, yes, very dependent on the area and also interest rate dependent, you know, how you finance that property too. We should talk about that for a second, Crystal is going to make a difference. So if you can pull out cash from your primary property in the way of a home equity loan, home equity loaner line of credit, why get you much better financing? Now, I'm not sure how much money you'll be able to do that with in your situation, but taking out that loan when you go into the bank and you tell them that this is specifically for investment property, the interest rate checks up. And with interest rates already high compared to the last 10 years, that might be a tough pill to swallow. And your down payment also makes a difference too, but that's a good start. The bank, I'm starting with the bank and building a relationship with different banks. I've built relationships now with like three different banks in that, that lend in that area in Chicago. So hopefully it's a great way kind of process, but is the relationship building? And it's the look, how feasible is this project? You know, what do I need on my end? And they are very helpful. That's a great helpful, but it's still been a hurry up. I just did a keynote speech for a group called Farm Credit. And these people work with farmers to help them either buy the neighbor's land when they decide not to farm anymore or expand the land, whatever it might be. And they said that same thing, Crystal. They said, we may or may not be able to help you, but we have all this data. And when we think you may be a customer, we can help you with, well, that's the price per square foot. They have a ton of data about the neighboring community and banks may too. So maybe I was wrong when I told you that your banker doesn't care about the cupcakes. I kept telling Crystal, like the cupcakes don't matter, Crystal. She's like, nope. Give them the baker cupcakes. That's my, I mean, happy true story. Maybe. All right. I think that does it. If people want to call Bruce Rotary, how do they get to us, Crystal? Yeah. So you make sure you head over to stackingdeads.net slash voicemail. Leave us a message. And we will answer your question just like we did Sean's today. Well, what an awesome show today. I believe that's a wrap. Yeah. We just started. We can't go. We can't go. You ain't got to get home, but you had to get out of here. A closing time on the podcast. Wouldn't that be cool if we could play that at the end of the show? We can't get the rights that you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. Oh, no, sadly. Yes, if somebody wants to donate the rights that song to us, we would appreciate it. Hey, coming up next week, another great stacking deed show. Of course, with Alan Gone, you can expect some more news from us. But next week, Crystal, people should expect you and I again. Yes. All right. She is Crystal Hammond, aka Condo Crystal. And that's what I should show. Joe, so I'll see how average your money. We'll see you next time back here at stackingdeads. Doug, what should we have learned today? So what should we have learned today? First, take some advice for Mark Allison. Real estate is about people and relationships and making run-down areas beautiful. You're in a great business if you're in real estate. Remember that next time you feel a little bit down. Second, from our headlines, thinking about Airbnb, market analysis is your best friend. If you get into a hot market, there will be down times. Stress test your properties for the win. But the big lesson. So my pet, I just found out that comparing carpet and drapes might possibly kind of sort of have a second meaning. And I meant the first one. You know, that is if you thought the inappropriate one was the second one. But if you thought the inappropriate one was the second one, then I truly, totally, absolutely meant the first one. Thanks to Mark Allison for joining us today. You can find out more about his book, Building a Carpenter's Notes on Life and the Art of Good Work wherever books are sold. We'll also include links in our show notes at stackingdeads.net. See you next week back here where we're helping you stackingdeads.