Ep. 110: Joshua Volen of CIRE Equity on Mindset, Culture & CRE Success

Joshua Volen (0:00): If you speak from your feelings, no one can invalidate that because they're yours. That's a pretty big epiphany and a very pivotal time in my life. Someone was there at the right time to help me open up that much more to identify feelings that are going on inside me and then be able to express and speak from my feelings.

Dustin Sutton (0:37): All right, here we go. Another episode of Tools, Talents, and Techniques. And this one, for a lot of reasons, is very special. I am very honored to have as a guest, Mr. Josh Boland.

Dustin Sutton (0:48): He's the co founder of Sire Equity. And I've known Josh, I met you maybe ten years ago, twelve years ago ish.

Unknown Speaker (0:56): Something like that, yeah.

Dustin Sutton (0:58): Something like that. But just been a great person to be in touch with and to see what you're doing and what you've been able to do. It's just really impressive. So this is a special moment for me. And I got a lot of questions for you about some things that I've I've wanted to know.

Dustin Sutton (1:15): And as I see you you work and and all the great things that you're doing. So first and foremost, Josh, welcome to the show.

Joshua Volen (1:22): Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. And the feeling is mutual too. It's been such a great journey getting to learn more about you and seeing all the great things you're doing out in the world. So thank you for continuing to inspire others.

Dustin Sutton (1:35): Oh, thank you, man. Thank you. I I do appreciate that. But before we jump in and we'll go through a lot of different things today, could you just briefly tell the audience who you are and what it is that you do? We'll start with right now, and then we'll go through a lot of the journey.

Joshua Volen (1:51): Start in the present and then go to the past. Okay. I'm Joshua Bolt, as you mentioned, first and foremost, I'm a husband of fifteen years this month and twenty years together with my beautiful wife, Valerie. We have two daughters, 13 and 10, two girls that are heavy into gymnastics and heavy into all the things 13 and 10 year old girls are into. And then in regards to my day to day for work or for business, I get to play Monopoly every day.

Joshua Volen (2:23): And in that, we have Sire Equity. We are a commercial real estate owner and operator that's vertically integrated focusing on properties, commercial properties, mainly shopping centers and industrial properties, a little bit of office, Texas West. And our flagship product is a non traded REIT product. So if you're familiar with the alphabet soup of a, B, blah, blah, blah slash REIT, we are sire equity. So C REIT, we're definitely not a marketing company.

Joshua Volen (2:56): We're definitely a real estate company and a purest in that. So we have an evergreen vehicle that buys owns and operates commercial real estate.

Dustin Sutton (3:04): When I introduced you and I said, who you are, the first thing you went to is said like who you are as a person. That tracks exactly what I felt you were going to say as, you know, a husband and the father real estate in general and how it works, but there's so many different people in this industry that are, you know, a type of way, like type A person, they just like wanna go get Where is that switch for you and how do you navigate? I know I'm jumping right into the deep end right now, but you as a person and everything I know of you and how you operate, but you've run such a great business too and you've been Sire has been one of the best places to work several years, I believe. Don't know how many years exactly. How do you draw that up in who you are and how you go about your day to day?

Joshua Volen (3:57): It's a good question. I mean, the simple answer is wherever you go, there you are. And I think with, and especially early on in career and early on in your life, you're trying to find yourself in that you wear a lot of different identities or you have a lot of different identities. It's what we do. Who we are is underneath all of that, but what we do, you know, we are an athlete or we're students.

Joshua Volen (4:23): We are a son. We're a father. We're a leader where we play soccer, whatever it may be. And in real estate or in business, I think it's really easy to get caught up in what we do or in the introduction even, what we do and not so much who we are, but the who we are is always there. And so, for me, the simplest thing is to be, is to be the same in all those situations because it takes too much energy to be something else and not to not be adaptable, but to switch that mask or switch that identity between all those things.

Joshua Volen (5:04): That's exhausting. And I'd rather focus all my energy of being in whatever the situation is. So however I show up, that's how I show up. The same way I show up for my team is pretty much the same way I show up for my kids, the same way I show up for my wife, the same way I show up for my friends. The disconnect sometimes is what I continually work on from my own personal journey is making sure I'm showing up for myself with that much compassion, kindness, patience as I do for others.

Joshua Volen (5:39): So that internal work, I'll pause there because a lot of it, you know, the best places to work is a place where you can be you, where you can shine fully and not have to dim your light and be happy. That's happy people perform better. If I'm happy, I'm modeling this. If you know, the whole, even going to remote first or workforce, all these things, it's, I'm not going to ask people on my team to do something I'm not willing to do myself. One of the biggest things is sacrifice being happy.

Joshua Volen (6:12): I want them to be happy. It just, that's where I think it shows up every single day in my personal, my professional family life.

Dustin Sutton (6:20): When did you have, cause this is very intentional. Like the way you think the way you just express that is something that is you, that's not something you can read in a book. I mean, I'm sure you can read in a book, but how you internalize it and be, and become that and realize that is this something that you've experienced what you got into your career or is this something that maybe your parents or family or mentor kind of shared with you younger? Where did this begin?

Joshua Volen (6:49): Oh man. It's a culmination of all the above from the environment I grew up in through to processing the good, the bad, and the ugly in the environment I grew up in. And so why don't we start there and then we can build. So the type of environment I grew up in is I grew up in a rich dad, poor dad household where my dad grew up extremely poor and survivor type of mentality and was, didn't graduate high school and was a great charismatic salesperson, entrepreneurial mentality, real survivor, street smarts. And he married my mom who on the other side of this, very book smart, went to college, very prim and proper around the books.

Joshua Volen (7:43): Just so the book smarts meet street smarts. And I like to say in that type of household that fire and ice sometimes could clash, which creates all types of different learnings. But I like to say that myself and my sister, we got to pick and choose some of the best from both in that situation and, certain lessons that came up through growing up in that type of environment, an entrepreneurial environment or a rich dad type of mentality, abundance mentality environment, hard work was never really spoken about. It was absolutely modeled. And what I mean by that is a kid, waking up really early to try to catch my dad before he got out the door, on his suit of armor for the day, which is suit and tie to go sell wherever in the Bay Area, LA, wherever he was going to go that day and catching the after the smell of the, you know, the after scent of the aftershave, like just missed that.

Joshua Volen (8:52): Or in the middle of the night, going to the bathroom in middle of the night and seeing the light on in the office and going into the office and seeing that's my mom. She's working. She's still doing the books for the business. She didn't really need to talk about it. It was being modeled.

Joshua Volen (9:06): It was talked about a bit, don't get me wrong. It was absolutely modeled and those behaviors become deeply ingrained. I'll pause there too, because there's other things that clearly my family, mantra, things that are sad in the house that

Dustin Sutton (9:24): resonate Well, the I absolutely want to hear that, but one of the things that you just touched upon, and a lot of my friends and people that I know who grew up in entrepreneurial households, especially, and even for myself, going into those homes with my friends and their parents, mentioned the good and the bad. There are things that my friends will say, I'm never going to be an entrepreneur because I saw what that did to the family. I saw the stress. I saw those things. So you being able to, yeah, and your sister, being able to take the good and process the bad and being like, okay, I want to do this, but I don't want to be like that.

Dustin Sutton (10:02): How can I do that? That that makes that makes a lot of sense. That makes a lot of sense.

Joshua Volen (10:06): Yeah. It's very interesting at the time. At the time too, as as children, there's. It's amazing what kids pick up on and how we internalize things or what decisions we made based on the same situation that maybe I saw that my sister saw, we both went two different paths potentially or interpreted the situation in two different ways. I already see that with my kids and so I do catch myself judging myself as a parent on, are they actually understanding and picking up on what I'm trying to do and it's really not for me to get that external validation from them today or potentially ever.

Joshua Volen (10:46): That's their journey. I'm doing what I'm doing. I'm doing the best I can, but that might not show up for twenty years from now. They can look back and reframe their childhoods, because that's what I've been able to do too. The things I learned in the moment and the survival skills that I'd picked up on and the decisions I made or vows that I made as a child, they served me for a period of time and processing and reviewing and being introspective about these things, especially as becoming a father and seeing my children and seeing how I approach them, I get a look back and go, wow, my parents were 23 and 24 years old when they were newly parents.

Joshua Volen (11:29): They started a business. They were struggling. There's no manual on how to be a parent. They were surviving and they did the best that they could. And so it also puts a frame around my childhood too, to go have so much more compassion for them, having the experience myself today, and then also healing some of the things that maybe were childhood wounds, not by their fault or anything, but just how I interpreted things too, to go having compassion for myself to not have those tools when I was three, five, seven, 10, 12, 13 years old that I do have today in that hindsight and perspective, which allows me again to have more energy and turn off those background apps that continue to run that weren't serving me, which that happens to all of us.

Joshua Volen (12:19): We all have background apps draining battery power that we may or may not know about, but they're there and be able to shut those down to be more present, to be, and to flourish versus being anchored into something that's not helping me and it's survival that I don't need to survive. I'm safe.

Dustin Sutton (12:38): So when did you so the I love this. So when did this when you realize those background apps are running? Because there are times like you mentioned, all we all have them where there's something that you're doing that you realize like, oh, I'm doing that. And then you have to go, Well, why am I doing that? And then you gotta unpack that and you go, Well, where did that come from?

Dustin Sutton (13:00): Where did get is this something Actually, before we go there, well, let's put a pin in that because I think we'll get there. Did you want to go into business before you went to school to college?

Unknown Speaker (13:11): Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

Dustin Sutton (13:13): So but what it wasn't necessarily real estate. Was just like business, right?

Joshua Volen (13:17): I mean, since I was in the earliest business I had was a pencil business in first grade.

Unknown Speaker (13:25): I

Joshua Volen (13:27): to learned do math and count and multiply and divide all with money. Because I grew up in an entrepreneurial household. It was a business. And like I said, there's a lot of abundance mindset things there, but there was also a lot of scarcity tendencies that came with that. When you have two parents that one comes from a middle class family of teachers and engineers and safety and security, the Asian side of my family.

Joshua Volen (13:54): My mom's a hundred percent third generation Japanese. So there's the tiger mom of doing well in school and also just security. It's not about, it's just the family unit and keeping it safe. And then you got the whole other yin to the yang on the other side of risk taking because there's nothing to lose because I had nothing mentality. The street smarts, the sales, this charisma, this risk, all risk, pure risk and pure conservatism clashing.

Joshua Volen (14:25): So you can only imagine the types of fights or discussions that happen in my house around that. But there's a scarcity also of trying to reach for abundance, scarcity to try to reach for material external validation to being worthy. That was also modeled in the house. A lot of times my dad would go, Hey, do you think we're rich? Do you feel poor?

Joshua Volen (14:52): I didn't know what he was asking me really, because I wasn't even thinking about that. But that's how she was just making sure that I wasn't feeling how he was feeling or how he felt as a kid. And that does do some programming to some, it can do some programming to a child. And so those types of things, again, around doing business, I understood money very early. And I also understood the game and the fun of earning money and being able to buy my own things and not having to ask for permission to buy my own things.

Joshua Volen (15:27): So, the first great story of running a business was my mom would give me a nickel for every time I practiced my piano song, whatever my song was of that week to memorize or whatever it was. Every time I practiced it perfectly, I got a nickel. And she'd give me a sticker, I'd put a sticker on there. Well, I would practice so much that I would have the full song memorized, and I'd fill the whole page with stickers, you couldn't even see the music by the time it was done. So she knew how to motivate me.

Joshua Volen (15:57): So get $5 in nickels, or $5 in dimes from the bank, And on whatever day it was, Tuesdays, Wednesdays at my elementary school in the country, like a K through eighth, 20 kids maybe per class school. Very fortunate to grow up in a place like that. They would fill the pencil machine in the office. And I asked to get dropped off early. I took my $5 of dimes and it was 20¢ per pencil.

Joshua Volen (16:24): I just unload the pencil box that they just filled up and I put it all in my Mickey Mouse pencil box. Really cool. Kids go and they get there at recess or whatever, and they go try to go to the pencil machine, but the pencil machine's sold out. And they said, Well, I thought you guys filled it on whatever day it is. And they said, Well, we did.

Joshua Volen (16:45): And Josh Volin bought all the pencils. Remember, this is a K through eighth school. So I've got kids coming up to me at recess from, call it kindergarten or first grade in my class to sixth graders going, Hey, you bought the pencils. I have my blue pencil box. And I go, Yeah, you want to see them?

Unknown Speaker (17:03): And I open it up and they take a look and they go, I want to buy this pencil. They try to give me 20¢. I'm like, No, no, no, no. That pencil's a dollar.

Unknown Speaker (17:12): Like that pencil, that pencil's

Joshua Volen (17:13): a dollar. So, it started young. I can give you an every year type of motivation tied to the validation of hard work and money and entrepreneurship and that and that went all the way through high school into college where I had businesses and which leads to commercial real estate and why I went to commercial real estate. But yeah, it's it's deeply, deeply ingrained.

Unknown Speaker (17:38): Well give me one from high school, if you can, if it's PG. Exactly PG, PG,

Joshua Volen (17:44): pretty straight edge in high school. My senior project, you have a senior project your senior year, and I was a three sport athlete all the way through my junior year. Senior year I stayed with my main sport, which was soccer. I really wanted to have somewhat of a break in semblance of last semester in high school, and so I wanted to work. Instead of working on the field or doing something, I wanted to work and earn money, and it was interesting.

Unknown Speaker (18:15): So, my senior project, I started a business, I was an independent contractor. My dad said, If you're gonna get a job, go get a real job. And I was like, What does that mean? He goes, Go put on a suit and tie and go interview. He'd already taught me the hard work of laboring in the field and things like that.

Joshua Volen (18:31): He made sure on the weekends I was spending my time in those places. I'd worked in the family business or businesses my entire life, but he's like, Go out and really go interview, put yourself out there, see what you can do. Don't limit yourself. So I go out there and I'm looking at these jobs, I'm looking at sales jobs obviously, and of course, I get in this one room and they're talking and I'm like, this feels a little off. And by the end of it, they get knives out.

Joshua Volen (18:57): I'm like, what is this? It's a cutco. They're talking about passive income, they're talking about structure of an MLM, all these things, and I'm like, well all that made sense until you said I'm gonna have to take these natives, go to people's houses and cut my finger off to try to sell something. That's not probably for me, but what I did is I did take that to some other business that was a water filtration company. And we grew up in the country where people are all well systems and things like that.

Joshua Volen (19:21): And so, I ended up making about $25,000 selling water filtration systems my second semester senior year, and that was my project. It was an entrepreneurial project about building a business from nothing, having a product, selling a product, marketing a product, servicing a product. And that was my senior year project.

Unknown Speaker (19:41): And so I don't know if it was a competition, but I take it you won either way.

Unknown Speaker (19:45): People had all types of senior projects. I mean, some of them were definitely interesting. Mine was focused on what I wanted to be focused on was running a business. And just carried that on to college.

Dustin Sutton (19:58): And so, I don't want to skip over college, but I really want to get into the commercial real estate because you started out commercial real estate as a broker. Yep. Was your first Were you aware of commercial real estate before that? Did you learn anything in college there? Or was it just like, Oh, well, it seems like something good to do?

Dustin Sutton (20:19): What was your first introduction to commercial real estate?

Joshua Volen (20:21): Yeah, you can look up probably other conversations I've had like this, and I tell the story of me sitting on the beach in Brazil and my epiphany around it. But what it really was is I was sitting on the beach in Brazil studying abroad, and I had one semester left at Berkeley before I graduated. And I was like, how, this is literally my thought, how do I sit on the beach and earn passive cash flow? That was my thought. How do I earn money and sit on the beach and enjoy it?

Joshua Volen (20:55): What kind of lifestyle business could I create that allows me this type of freedom to earn and enjoy? Reading a lot of different books at that time, one of them that stood out to me, there's the Rich Dad Poor Dad with Guy's book within five minutes. I'm like, oh, I understand this one. I don't need to read anymore. Get it.

Joshua Volen (21:15): But it's Thinking to Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, where he talks about interviewing the wealthiest families and how they had built their businesses and what they had done. It was other people's time, other people's efforts, other people's money. The scalability factor of building through others. And then researching companies that did it, and there's a lot of different industries that build cash flow type businesses, but everything kept pointing back for me to real estate. They make a bunch of money, they're financing real estate, they make a bunch of money, they're insuring real estate, they make a bunch of money, they sell their company and they go and buy real estate.

Joshua Volen (21:50): And real estate is something also what I was trying not to do, I was trying to find is how to not trade my time for treasures one for one. I wanted to be able to scale it. There's a lot of opportunity. There's nothing wrong with technical jobs and professional jobs, but like an attorney as an example. If you're an attorney, the hour you work is an hour you get paid.

Joshua Volen (22:11): And I grew up doing a lot of that work in my family's business, working hours, getting paid by the hour. But I'd always ask, How much would you pay me by the project? If I get this done faster, if I'm able to do more, what is the cost? How much to wash the cars? Don't pay me by the hour.

Joshua Volen (22:29): Always thinking that way, like how can I leverage this? I was a tutor in high school. I would have three or four kids come at the same time and charge each of them, and I would tutor them all on the subject versus one. So about scalability. And so it was not training my time for treasures one for one and building a business that can herbalize slept, and that was real estate.

Joshua Volen (22:47): And so coming back to college, got my real estate license, moved to San Diego and thirty days sleep on my buddy's couch in Mira Mesa, professional interview in the day, suit tie, 53 interviews, 13 firms in those thirty days, professional Tiger Woods and beer drinker at night, sitting on my buddy's couch, and I ended up going into brokers. Even sitting there interview at the brokerage house, I'll never forget, I was sitting in front of the managing director at the front I ended up working for, and he was just like, Why are you interviewing here? You went to Berkeley. Why are you sitting here? What do you I go, well, I want to learn and earn.

Joshua Volen (23:26): I want to be a principal. I want to learn how to find deals. I want to go and sell, build some money up so I can go buy deals. I understand what a good deal looks like. And I'm gonna become a principal, and then I'm gonna pass the cash flow and sit on the beach.

Unknown Speaker (23:39): And this guy was like, Who are you? You're 21 years old. Why are you sitting in my office right now? Get

Unknown Speaker (23:45): out

Joshua Volen (23:45): of here. And so, I ended up going to brokerage, and exactly that, right? Learning and earning and learning from people that had success and learning from people that had struggles, learning from the brokers around me, that curiosity, that desire to learn and also very quickly understanding that my whole job was to add value and control what I can control. I didn't have twenty years in the business. I'm competing against guys that were doing the business twenty, thirty years.

Unknown Speaker (24:14): What I did have was energy. I had time. And I had to build my knowledge and I had to build those relationships. I had to earn them. I had to earn that trust.

Joshua Volen (24:24): And I had a huge responsibility as a fiduciary. I really believed in fiduciary that this is people's nest egg. This is what they're living off of, taking that extremely seriously. If this was my mom and my dad or my family, how would I treat this? And so that was my mindset going in, learning from the people I was helping.

Joshua Volen (24:44): And first year rookie of the year, third year senior broker, fifth year top 30 agent out of 1,500 agents at a company and a poster kid of, Hey, if he can make this much money, then you should be able to do it. So that was my experience. And working with brokers, 153 transactions, a little over 1,000,000,000 sold in five and a half years. And in a market from 2,004 to 2009, that was pretty frothy. That was very good that you could have sold pretty much anything.

Joshua Volen (25:16): Everything was selling, but people were hoarding too. They were just scarcity mindset. They were making sure they're getting both sides of deals. For me, I was learning for every single deal. How do I involve more people?

Joshua Volen (25:26): How do I scale this? How do I learn? It was all about learning.

Dustin Sutton (25:29): What were some of the biggest, because you obviously had almost immediate success and you attribute that to your energy and your mindset to doing that. Were there any things that you learned that were difficult that you were like, Oh, I don't know. What are some of the biggest lessons that you had in that time?

Joshua Volen (25:51): I think one that was definitely driven home was vulnerability in the sense that you just don't know what you don't know, and it's okay to say that. Don't be the know it all, don't fake it. They always talk about fake it till you make it, and that's the way you dress and do different things, but when it comes to knowledge and it comes to becoming an expert in something, that's also not a generalist, but an expert in something, it takes time. There is no shortcut to that. And I'll never forget faking some data or something in my head.

Joshua Volen (26:26): I was nervous. It was very early. It was like in the first six months. And the guy goes, I don't think you're right. And I pause right there and go, You're right.

Joshua Volen (26:35): I'm not. I need to do research on this and get back to you. I did not like the feeling of all that. I was like, I'm not doing that. It's just be honest.

Joshua Volen (26:44): I don't know what I don't know, but I'm gonna find out and I'll get back to you. And that served me extremely well and I think that serves people well. It's just the honesty. People know if you're full of it, and so, especially people that have been around, that's a test too. It's like, can I trust this person?

Unknown Speaker (26:58): You're building trust, you're building a relationship, and you need to add value. Even the cold calling people, calling people, they get cold calls all day long and it's like saying, Yes, this is a cold call and I want to make it valuable for you. How can I add value? My question is, How do I build the relationship with you? How do I add value?

Joshua Volen (27:19): This is how I'm different. And so, there's the tough lesson around vulnerability. And then also the different personalities that you deal with. There's loyalty in true relationships, and there's a lack of loyalty. Just seeing the different ways people conduct themselves in business and when money's on the line, learning about that, which is such a cheap lesson in that short term than for my long term game of being in the business.

Joshua Volen (27:51): But seeing that and staying the course and being long term focused. You can build a reputation over twenty years and burn it in one transaction, one deal, And how sometimes people are so shortsighted in that and they will do that. And

Dustin Sutton (28:09): so when you're in this situation, well, it's not a situation, when you're doing this and you're through the lens of like, I want to become a principal. There certain things that you were using as a, I don't know, a gauge on when you would be ready? Because if you're like, okay, I want to be here and I'm doing this to learn. But as you, I mean, we're kind of talking about it, it's like, you never know everything. But you're like, when did you realize that you were like, this is the time that I'm gonna take that leap?

Joshua Volen (28:42): Definitely, was buying deals along the way. Buying a house, flipping a house, which led to one of my worst deals ever, which was the best lessons. I would go there too. Buying deals, selling deals, along the way for myself, on the side. And then it was the third deal in a row in 2009 that I had sold.

Joshua Volen (29:04): And it was for two really large family offices, basically institutions, but they were family offices. That was kind of my bread and butter clientele, high net worth and ultra high net worth individuals. And I was standing on the roof with this principal out of Florida, he's a billionaire, and he's in his three piece suit on the roof with me, climbs up the ladder, everything, he's standing next to me on the roof, and I go, Well, if I was buying this, this is what I would do. And he goes, Josh, you said that twice today. He goes, If you're meant to buy this, why aren't you buying it then?

Unknown Speaker (29:40): I was like, Well, that's kind of messed up in my head. I was like, That's kind of a messed up response. But I'm like, No, you're right. You're right. Go back to the office, get that deal closed.

Joshua Volen (29:50): But as I get back to the office, it's like November or October, October, November. I walk back into managing director, that same person I sat across when I was 21 years old, he looks at me and goes, I didn't say anything. He just looked at me in the eye and goes, When are you leaving? I said, Six months. And in brokers, knows that in brokers or sales, most of time it's a midnight move.

Joshua Volen (30:13): You never tell your boss or anyone else, I'm leaving, you just leave. The next day you're gone, all your stuff's out of your office, you've taken some letterhead and some paper because you're gonna need it for your printer because you're about to be broke, you're start a distract. And I told him six months. And the truth was is because he knew my goal was to be on the principal side of the business. And he saw it, he saw it in me.

Joshua Volen (30:38): I was like, I've been saying this, I need to do it. If I don't do this now, when am I gonna do this then? And so that was it. And in March 2010, I launched Equity.

Dustin Sutton (30:49): When you did that, so in 2010, you launched Sire Equity. What was the first thing that you were set out to do? Was it, I just need to buy a building or did you already have it mapped out from everything that you had been previously doing? Or were you just like, okay, let's find a building, or do you have capital behind you? How'd that work?

Joshua Volen (31:11): I wish I was that planned out. I'm very intentional. I have big goals. I'm big about visioning and goal setting. I did have goals, visioning, a budget, all these things.

Joshua Volen (31:21): So when I launched in March 2010, I did launch two companies. I launched Sire Partners, which was my brokerage firm, and Sire Equity, which was my operating business, the ownership side of the business. And the reason why I had kept both and I kept the brokerage was I saw a lot of my brokerage peers leave brokerage and go to the principal side of the business. And they did cut off an income stream. And once they cut off that income stream, I also saw what they were doing on deals, and the deals that they were doing, sometimes they were forcing a deal that shouldn't be forced so they could get some fees or something else.

Joshua Volen (32:04): And that is the last thing I want us to do. To be a great investor is to have the discipline, to have the patience, have the wherewithal to not do those bad deals. And so keeping the brokerage was probably one of the smartest things I did to not turn down that revenue stream. I didn't take a bunch of my team with me, was just me leaving with two of my assistants, that was it. Walking out, left my team behind to stay with the firm.

Joshua Volen (32:28): And first year I spent 50% of my time working on the brokerage, 50% on the equity side of the business. But this is my thought process. I said, Look, if I can take half my time and find one good deal forget it, if I took all my time and just found one good deal in a year, I'll make as much as I make in brokerage for the whole year. Am I willing I bet on myself every day as a broker, bet on myself every day in life, I'm betting on myself that I'm gonna be able to find one good deal. And I've done it over and over, 153 times for my clients, different circumstances, but I've done this enough where I should be able to find one good deal.

Joshua Volen (33:08): So, I kept the brokerage going 50% of the time, spent their 50% searching for deals, did two or three deals my first year on that side. The next year, eightytwenty on the equity side. Third year, ninety nineone where my time was spent. No, bumping around the night. Thinking about 2010, There's no debt, things are broken, but houses that we flipped in Sausalito and Marin using IKEA products to doing hard money loans because there's no debt, to doing pref equity, to I did a lot more than three deals actually on my first year.

Joshua Volen (33:48): But then buying industrial, iOS before it was called iOS, it was just yard back then. And buying the first retail deal.

Dustin Sutton (34:02): It's funny when you're talking about some of these things that you're doing, I love how you're being candid about it and the struggles, but you're saying it so eloquently that it's it's smooth, but I know it's rough. You mentioned before about the things that show up when, you know, your childhood or the programming and all those things. During this transition and starting something, did you start to see these things at that point that were showing up that maybe have been from childhood or dealing with Absolutely. The

Joshua Volen (34:41): So at the same time on that beach in Brazil, very introspective in high school. My parents did get divorced, going back to kind of give you the progression of the introspection. I grew up in a house where I was absolutely loved and supported, which is I was in the top 1% right there. Didn't have to worry about food, didn't have to worry about shelter. I'm already on massless hierarchy of needs.

Joshua Volen (35:02): I'm already in the top tier. So, that carries on through high school, my parents get divorced, no one saw that one coming. Going to therapy as a family, going to therapy at 13 years old, I'll never forget the name of the counselor. Says to me, he goes, Josh, you're a really precocious kid. You're an intelligent young man.

Joshua Volen (35:27): You're very articulate. He goes, But let me tell you something that can help you a little bit more. If you speak from your feelings, no one can invalidate that because they're yours. That's a pretty big epiphany and a very pivotal time in my life. Someone was there at the right time to help me open up that much more to identify feelings that are going on inside me and then be able to express and speak from my feelings.

Joshua Volen (35:55): A lot of people can turn off this and they turn this on and they block this, that's the disconnect you see all day long. You can't feel what they're saying because they're speaking from here. It's like singing from your nose, says singing from where you're supposed to be singing from, right? And there's a time and place. But the flowing from here was really important because they're my feelings.

Joshua Volen (36:16): No one can validate those. And that showed up and continues to develop those skills throughout my childhood. The introspective piece of looking more inside, going internal, what's going on here, what's coming up in me, and then being able to articulate that. So that's why I don't need to prepare for calls, whatever I'm feeling I'm saying. It's not wrong because it's mine.

Joshua Volen (36:40): It's me. It's me being, it's while doing. That went on through college. I was reading Siddhartha and things like that on the beach in Brazil too, besides thinking Croat Rich, and working on me. And that continued through the rocket fuel of scarcity and abundance mindset.

Joshua Volen (37:01): So Mindset by Carolyn Dweck is a book I recommend for everyone, because she articulates it extremely well. So, those type of things, I'll pause, but

Dustin Sutton (37:14): Well, where it goes with would hear it, but one of the things that I think is so important to highlight there is because somebody may hear that and just say what you feel. But you know, that's, it's not necessarily just telling somebody to be reactive. I mean, that that's, that's not necessarily the case, but when you explore that who you are and what it is that you feel and why you feel that way, you can process it and then it's easier to, it's easier to sound like you mean what you say when you say what you mean. And, but you gotta figure that out first because sometimes when people just react, you know, instead of taking the time to over the years process those things so then you can respond. Yeah.

Dustin Sutton (38:01): No, I think that's I think that's key as well.

Joshua Volen (38:03): I think really that reaction is something's been triggered in you that you haven't resolved yet. You haven't explored. That's the reaction. The response is thinking, Why did that come up in me to make me want to feel like I need to react? What is that?

Joshua Volen (38:22): And then going inward and connecting the head and heart back together, because something disconnected to do that. The head wasn't able to process, so the head processed faster than the emotion processed. That's also something that happens a lot. And so the head goes into fight and flight mode or fear mode, and the heart's not in danger, you're not in danger, it's just something from your past or something that's going on makes you feel like you're under attack when that may not be true. And most of the time it's not.

Joshua Volen (38:55): And that's how we're wired lizard brain wise is some dinosaurs are going to come and eat us, but there's no dinosaurs around today to do that. So we get naturally wired to be hijacked and it's just being able to recognize when that's happening and that's a practice. It's an awareness that when it's happening and to know I'm safe. That voice that's saying you're not safe and the voice that's saying you are safe, it's which one is telling me the truth. And most of the time it's the one that's saying you are safe.

Joshua Volen (39:25): You can ignore this guy. He's not helping you.

Dustin Sutton (39:28): And so that does answer the question of how'd you deal with it or how'd you respond or how'd you react to all these things. So you had already been working on this of that for since you were 13 years old. Okay. Wasn't aware of that. But something I also want to note about that and something I talk about quite when I talk about meditation to people and what it is and some people, know, like, oh, what is that thing?

Dustin Sutton (39:52): And when when it first started to click for me, I I think the best way to put it was once I started to stop getting mad, once I stopped being mad at myself for my mind wandering and just recognized it and realized it, it was like, oh, it's just what it does. Like, that's how it happens. And you kind of separate from that. And then you're able to, you know, so this now when those flags go up, or I feel a certain way, my, I just don't feel, I know that I'm not my best self. I'm not my optimal self.

Dustin Sutton (40:28): And then it gives me a moment to pause and think and process before I respond. So like everything that you're saying just absolutely tracks with that.

Unknown Speaker (40:38): The client for that is my mom would sit for hours and meditate

Unknown Speaker (40:42): Really?

Joshua Volen (40:43): As a child, so I saw that, I grew up in that environment. There's a meditation room, I would sit next to my mom, I'd go teach me how to meditate, or she'd have me sit next to her and she goes clear your mind. I'm like, I can't clear my mind, there's all these things going through. She goes, I don't mean to actually clear your mind. As a thought comes in, let it come in and let it go.

Joshua Volen (41:02): Don't try to grab it, and if you do grab it, just learn how to let it go quicker. And that is a practice of meditation. Let the thoughts come and go, and if you do grab it, just let it go quicker and learning how to do that. That's the same pinch, the same trigger, the same awareness in the day to day of something's coming in, I grab it, is that for me to grab? No, I don't need to grab that.

Unknown Speaker (41:27): I don't need to grab onto that. What Dustin said has nothing to do with me. I'm speaking publicly in your audience and someone's making you frown. Who knows what's going on in their life? It has nothing to do with me, potentially.

Joshua Volen (41:40): And if it does, why do I need to care about that? That's not for me. My intent is not to impact them in that way. And so, yeah, that ties back to the meditation. Is something, again, luckily and gratefully I had growing up that has continued on.

Joshua Volen (42:01): But I want to talk about the fear, the push pull of what happens through business and through life. Being a perfectionist tendency person and a maximizer person, meaning that, like I said, we talk about better practices at our company, not best practices. That's an abundance mindset. It also can be very exhausting working on better practices all the time. Being in a fast paced growing company, people say I want to be in a rocket ship of a company.

Joshua Volen (42:36): That can be exhausting because things change so often. So being able to adapt and be in that type of environment and finding comfort in the discomfort of growth is what I would say, or being settled in yourself enough to know that you will figure it out or we will figure it out, to thrive in those type of environments. But with that maximizer mentality and that persistent pursuit of potential, which is part of our vision as a company, and the way we approach things, what is the rocket fuel in it? And it really does matter. And what I mean by that is, I talk about fear of failure.

Joshua Volen (43:13): We talk about people all the time. There's the fear of failure, the what's it called the full CEO, whatever it may be. People don't realize how much I don't know type of fear, to be seen even. And that fear can be rocket fuel. It can get you to do stuff, it can get you to move.

Unknown Speaker (43:40): It's energy. No

Joshua Volen (43:44): judgment what kind of energy, it's energy. And the way I talk about fear and that type of energy is that is rocket fuel for a rocket ship and gets you out into space. And those jet engines are powerful. Once you get out into space, you can't use your jet engine rocket fuel that way because it'll blast you off in the middle of nowhere. That fear is a push.

Joshua Volen (44:08): The nuance of moving from fear of a push is having something else on the other side, an anchor on the other side, which is a pull. What's locking you in, what's pulling you? And the two things I look at is that fear on one side and love on the other. Love is the anchor on the other side, and that's a pull. And so, it's a very interesting thing to look at and going, I wanna be pulled towards something versus pushed towards something.

Joshua Volen (44:41): And the same thing with people. Why do you give them a vision? Why do we talk about our why? Why do we create those types of awarenesses? Because I don't want them in a fear mentality, which is a scarcity mentality, which is shut down.

Joshua Volen (44:53): I need them to be in abundance and thinking and pushing us beyond self limiting, self sabotaging belief systems so we can get to way beyond where we even thought we could go as a team, as a company, as a family, and as myself. That is the work I do on myself.

Dustin Sutton (45:12): How do you implement this with your company? It's obviously successful, and again, it's better, so it's never going to be perfect. There's always things that come up and then you have to pause and say, do we deal with this? But when you say that you talk about this with your team, are there certain things that you do as leadership, as an institution that you've put things in place, whether it be certain meetings or what you do? I mean, I don't know.

Dustin Sutton (45:43): There anything that you, you're obviously intentionally do this. I'd love to hear how.

Joshua Volen (45:50): Talk about thriving, not surviving a lot. And we talk about people because we are a people business. We have automation, we have technology, we have all these things, but we are a people relationship business. And so again, it's the same way that I talk about with my kids or anything else. It's as a leader, as a mentor within the company, I have to live it and I have to model it.

Joshua Volen (46:18): We all have to live it and model it. So it starts with our core values and our culture, 1000%. And this is a guy that at first couple employees I had and they're like, Hey, we don't have any coffee. I'm like, Who drinks coffee? I don't drink coffee.

Joshua Volen (46:33): That's 27 year old Josh. And culture, what are you talking about? You won some award for best business to work at. Is that Google's ping pong tables and massages? We're here in real estate, we make money.

Joshua Volen (46:47): Wow, what a very finite, very scarce mentality to have, and what a turning off the emotion piece, which is again, really important too. So how does that evolve is the cultures. There's implicit core values. I used go in people's offices and I looked on the wall, I'm like, oh, core values. Cool.

Joshua Volen (47:10): Tra, integrity, hard work. I'm going, That's a given. No offense to anyone that has those core values. They're great. And you have core values that are different than that because those are permission to play values.

Joshua Volen (47:26): Those are implicit. Explicitly, there's certain values that are just permission to play. What makes us different? It's the and piece, the better. What makes sire sire?

Joshua Volen (47:37): What makes Dustin Dust and Josh Josh? And really being explicit about those because A, they were being modeled by one of them. We needed to make sure, learning this whole time, that our words match our actions because that's the most powerful. Same thing with our kids. What we do versus what we say, and hopefully they're aligned.

Unknown Speaker (47:58): What we say and what we do match because they're learning from what we do more than what we say.

Dustin Sutton (48:02): Oh, 100%. I'm so glad you said that because sometimes, not yeah, I don't want be specific, but sometimes when you see that, it's like if you're not measuring your actions against those, sometimes it could be, let's say you have three or five or whatever, and it's like, did what you just do match up with any of those? Like, was there any real like, because it no. And if that's if that's the case, then they're just words on a wall. You know?

Joshua Volen (48:30): It's how we live them out. So it's foundational for us as a company. We hire, we fire, we make decisions through them. It's the lens we use for right people, right seats. The right people is the first thing we are always measuring for.

Joshua Volen (48:42): Are they a cultural fit? And right people means that with our core values as our questions, by the way, have questions around our core values in interviews. We have a pretty extensive interview process. Anyone that's interviewed with us knows and can appreciate this. It's important because we have a no a hole rule.

Joshua Volen (49:00): We want to work with good people that we spend a lot of time together. We spend more time together, even if we're a remote first company, than sometimes people are spending with their families or other people, their close friends interacting throughout the day. So they better be great people and people that have solid core values, not just the permission to play, but the differentiators that make Sire amazing and a great place to want to work with and people you want to be around. So yeah, all decisions filter through that. So foundationally, is where we start.

Joshua Volen (49:34): And context. Man, it's amazing. You give a gap and I could stop talking, and all of a sudden in your head you're going to make up some story of what's going on with me, which may or may not be true. And that happens all the time. When we as leaders don't consistently, or people, friends, all types of things, the fear part of our brains typically turn on and think of the worst thing that could be going on and that is going on and to us, even it has nothing to do with us.

Joshua Volen (50:05): Happens to us as kids, happens to us as adults, happens at work, like, Hey, they didn't mention bonuses on the call today. I know it's coming up. Do we not have bonuses this year? Just going to the darkest place, Hey, they said we missed targets. Does that mean they're going to lay people off?

Joshua Volen (50:23): I mean, woah, where did that come from? That's self reflection too. But awareness is my job and our job as communication is our job as team members and as leaders to over communicate all the time, so that the space or that gap is not being filled up with untrue stories, the fear based story. So seeking to understand is really important in that communication. So the rhythms that we have, we run on EOS and also the backbone of MAP.

Joshua Volen (50:58): So two different programs. We started the company with MAP, had one employee, started MAP, Management Action Planning, been around for forty, fifty years. Phenomenal accountability. Taking the management out of management is how they sold me on it, they nailed it because I was like, I don't want to have to manage. I want to be able to grow.

Joshua Volen (51:16): How do we scale? How do we grow? And that was the system. EOS has been the evolution for us. We saw MAP as a backbone, but EOS as a language and as a rhythm has been a very good system for us to implement.

Joshua Volen (51:31): And what we've done is we've blended in and made it the Sire way. So we have our L 10 meetings, our level 10 meetings. We have a Monday kickoff call with all hands on. It's a lot of money per hour on that call, a lot of resources, but it's communication. It's critical.

Joshua Volen (51:47): It's recorded. It has the main facts of what happens. We start with our culture. One went well. What can we learn from?

Joshua Volen (51:54): Our intentional evolution and our quality performance. The Jar of Awesome. Shout outs to people on the team. Thank you so much. I want to recognize you.

Unknown Speaker (52:03): It feels great to be recognized. I want to recognize you Dustin. Thank you so much for doing X, Y, and Z this last week. It made my life easier. I know you went out of your way to do that.

Unknown Speaker (52:12): I appreciate you. Man, that's a good connection.

Unknown Speaker (52:15): Goes so far.

Joshua Volen (52:16): And then, going through the notes. And then on our L10s, we start off with our icebreaker is give us your colors and a personal high and a business high. Professional for this last week. Well, the color is this. It's like a net promoter score.

Joshua Volen (52:34): So we go from red, RELO, yellow, RELO green. Someone that's pretty optimistic a lot of the time, most of the time, I'm 89% to 90% of the time green. Green. It's rainy outside. I'm green, man.

Joshua Volen (52:51): I've got a roof over my gratitude. But if I go in someday and I say yellow, and you've heard green from me for twenty weeks straight, and all of sudden you hear yellow and you go, Josh, what's going on? Are you okay? Maybe it might not be right then, but it's just being aware, what's going on? What's the context around it?

Joshua Volen (53:10): So, Hey Dustin, I'm green, I'm grateful. Personal high is, just got to see some family this weekend, and professional high is, I'm playing around with AI and building the Josh OS. I'm really excited about that. Cool. Hey, I'm yellow.

Joshua Volen (53:27): This is the disconnect. I'm yellow, personally, everything's good, and business wise, I'm fine. I'm going to check-in with that person. Something's going on, and it's not to pry, it's to go, Hey, it's okay to not be okay. If you need time, take the time.

Joshua Volen (53:43): Here to support you.

Dustin Sutton (53:45): This is the communication and the ability to build that trust because if you're not, people are just gonna be, Yeah, I'm green. And not say anything, but because you are intentional and you mean it and those things and why then they're not going to fill that gap with the negative things. Like, I'm not going to say this because I'm going to, I'm going get in trouble or they're not going to like it. You're like, if you, especially if you believe in the people that you work with and they can say whatever it is and you're like, okay, because we're on the same team. We want the same thing.

Dustin Sutton (54:20): We want the company to do well. We want our clients to do well. We want our teammates to do well. And so that honesty starts to come out when you build a culture like that.

Joshua Volen (54:29): Psychological safety is what that is. And we need people to be psychologically safe and that trust to be there, which is also modeled. All of us are doing the same thing. If I'll lead it, and I'll say, I'm the first one to raise my hand vulnerably, never built a company of this size and this scale before. I don't know what all the next moves are gonna be, but I believe we will figure it out as a team.

Joshua Volen (54:52): That's just the truth. I'm not gonna make up like, hey, this is how we're gonna do The only thing guaranteed is just going to change, and we're going to need to figure it out, we're going need to adapt as a team. It's the same thing that psychological safety is so people raise their hand when they see something off track or off culture, so we can get back on track and be better and intentionally evolve. The first ninety days I always tell any new employee, I said, You've been programmed from other companies to not speak up. I will be upset if you don't speak up here.

Joshua Volen (55:28): And if anyone tells you that this is the way we do it because this is the way we do it, I said, That is counter culture. That is not true. There is a better way and we want to hear your opinion. Please observe and please come back with your observations because we've been doing it and we're in the weeds of it, so you're gonna have to help us zoom out and see how we can be more effective, more efficient, and better as a team. So please speak up.

Unknown Speaker (55:54): It starts from the beginning.

Dustin Sutton (55:56): And going back to the vulnerability, I'd say yes, do that, but also let's not tie your identity to that idea because then your situation, sometimes people are like, oh, they shot my idea. Like, no, no, that's what we want you to do. And as a team, we'll make it even better. Nobody necessarily needs to I mean, yes, you should be proud of the things that you introduce and get there. But a team, everybody gets to thrive with that.

Joshua Volen (56:25): You nailed it. The follow-up is, hopefully you're going present a bunch of things and some of them are going to land and some of them aren't because maybe we've tried them and if there's any question that we'll explain it. Might put a pin in it, it might not be able to do it right now because of some other things. But we're not going to run that over either, we talk through it. And it's really important, again, being recognized, being seen, being validated in that regard, being valued.

Joshua Volen (56:56): We all want that. It doesn't matter how high you climb up the ladder, everyone wants that. It's deeply ingrained. And so if you want to contribute or attribute success to anything, which is all self defined.

Unknown Speaker (57:11): I was going say success. All right, here we go. I want to hear what it is.

Joshua Volen (57:17): It's being able to show up every day as yourself, feeling very comfortable and free and know that you're supported. It's that love and support that I got as a kid that you want to be in the top 1%, you provide that safety and you provide that safety for people to show up as who they are, to not feel the energy drain of having to tamper it down and all those other things. Now that is aspirational because everyone's on a different part of their journey. It's all the same journey, but on the different parts of that journey, their comfort with those things. However, continue to try to create that environment and nurture it as well as model that for others.

Joshua Volen (58:00): Because I know I'm working on that. And as a leader, my mentorship is really more around those types of things to unlock the potential in people that they're self sabotaging or self limiting because of fears or something else, mainly fears of being seen. That's our job as leaders in the company. And it's amazing how it shows up either with us at our company, whether they're thriving or if they're surviving at our company, how we set them free and become Sire alumni so they can thrive somewhere else that is a better environment for them, which is all part of the journey. We're all connected still at the end of the day.

Dustin Sutton (58:39): Yeah. Well, do you have a couple more minutes? I have a couple more questions for you. All right. And one, you've built an amazing team.

Dustin Sutton (58:46): The people that I know on your team and some of them I know from previous places of employment. And when I see them go to your team, I'm like, Oh wow. Yeah, he got another good one. He got he's built building the squad. Your sister Alexis, shout out to Alexis.

Unknown Speaker (59:06): She's crushing.

Dustin Sutton (59:07): She's she's everything I see her doing. And, you know, I don't talk to her that often, but I, know, I'm watching, I try to follow. What is that dynamic like? Because she's a go getter, you grew up in the same household. Yeah.

Dustin Sutton (59:23): So do you ever take time to to think about when you said that you could hear something one way and she would hear something a different way? How does that show up in work now?

Unknown Speaker (59:37): That's not a couple minutes, Dustin. You're talking about

Unknown Speaker (59:40): That's a part two. I'm living

Joshua Volen (59:42): in the business, and you should absolutely have Alexis on, and she can give her perspective. I would say in the earlier days, she can give kind of the story. My story with Alexis is this, is an absolute amazing human being and we are very much more similar than different and I would say she is And the things that we're indifferent on, I'm in awe of her. Think it's When she started working with us, she didn't know what she was gonna do, and she asked me, she goes, I offered the job to her. She goes, well, what am gonna do?

Joshua Volen (1:00:21): I said, I don't know. I said, but I know who you are and how you work. And you're an all American USA women's rugby player, national champion, like all these things. You're the most gritty, resilient person I know, and I trust you implicitly. Trust me that we'll figure this out together.

Joshua Volen (1:00:41): And so she's the first hire that my business partner and I hire. She's the first hire. And she came in and she started learning about the business and doing different things in the business. Sure enough, all those competencies and core values and traits spilled over and came true. It showed up.

Joshua Volen (1:00:59): She could learn the technical, the competencies were there. Now I can tell you what also happened. We're sitting in meetings, we're in our MAT meetings at the time and accountability meetings, and this is my sister and I'm her older brother. And so we're in the meeting and I say something and for external validation, I look at her face and she makes a face. This is a face that maybe has something to with it, maybe doesn't, but it's a face I've seen at some point growing up in my life because we have X twenty, thirty years of history together, and in my mind, I am triggered immediately.

Joshua Volen (1:01:41): She's disagreeing with me. She's supposed to have my back. Why is she rolling her eyes right now? What is going on? Or, She's challenging me in the meeting.

Unknown Speaker (1:01:52): All of a sudden, we're in sibling mode and we're barking at each other in a meeting in front of everyone else. It's like mom and dad are fighting in front of all the other people, and it's like, what is going on? I'm the owner of the company. I could fire you right now. Holy crap.

Joshua Volen (1:02:09): The family dynamic, working through those, call it childhood traumas, those type of relationships, we needed some ground rules very quickly. Took us time, but figuring out, A, she did not report to me. She started reporting to my business partner, partner, which made more sense, operational side of the business. B, her and I created ground rules, brother and sister first. Rule number one, which is the trust, the respect, the love, the foundation of this.

Joshua Volen (1:02:37): All this could go away tomorrow. At the end of the day, we are always brother and sister. We always love each other. We're always family. We're there for each other.

Joshua Volen (1:02:45): That was really important. That communication, Hey, this came up in me, I'm sorry that I barred at you and I reacted this way, I was just triggered, you caught me off guard. And learning about each other's style, I thought I knew her, she thought she knew me, We've evolved. And so who she was is not who she is or who she's gonna be. Who I was is not who I am and who I'm gonna be.

Joshua Volen (1:03:09): Keeping that communication, it's a relationship. It's a long seated relationship that has trauma attached to it from childhood and different things along the way that needed to be unpacked or was the opportunity to be unpacked. And so I would say that relationship has flourished in the sense of our overall relationship. What has suffered is the times for our own families at a family event, and I talk about work or she talk about work, the turning it off, that happens. You can interview my wife next, less and less from left from left because I know that could trigger for her, I know it's a trigger, and because of that, I'm more aware of that now, she spoke up.

Joshua Volen (1:03:53): It's a trigger for, I'm sure, my sister-in-law too, and all the other people. So we keep the ground rules, we're brother and sister. This is not the time, we have more time at work, We'll deal with it then. And the second is just when we weren't at our best selves and our highest energy with all the background apps running, because we saw each other all the time at work, even if we weren't interacting, that does not substitute the relationship. And so I feel like there was a period of time that our relationship did suffer because of that.

Joshua Volen (1:04:25): I'm sure other families that have family in the business, things like that, or even close friends can understand and relate and resonate with that. And there was a period of time where I think, I know it did suffer and there was an avoidance even like, Hey, I don't have energy for this weekend to hang out. I'm not even gonna reach out. Which is sad because that's people we care about in our families. And so, you'd have to ask her, but in my world, I feel like we've gotten so much better with that.

Joshua Volen (1:04:52): I'm very grateful for that.

Dustin Sutton (1:04:55): Well, even recognizing that when you need space and the reasons why you need space. I mean, that's important too. But one of the one of the beautiful things that you just said there, when you look at it through this lens, if it weren't for that blow up or that thing that happened at the meeting, you wouldn't have taken the time necessarily to figure out how you could best up. Otherwise, it's just simmering or that trigger would always be there and you wouldn't know how to resolve it the right way. So that's life, man.

Dustin Sutton (1:05:28): I mean, sometimes these things that are like, Oh man, that was ugly. But then you're like, Wow, but we're better because of it. We're way better because of it.

Unknown Speaker (1:05:37): A lot of gratitude for the opportunity. Everything is an opportunity. Life is happening for us, not to Not to us.

Dustin Sutton (1:05:44): That's right. That's right. Well, Josh, listen, thank you so much. Before we settle, I just want to thank you for not just this and something I wanted to make sure I say, you're the genuine article, man. I've called you when things weren't great in my life and you're the first, you answer the call every time and you're a great business person, great man, and I'm rooting for you every step of the way.

Dustin Sutton (1:06:10): So any parting words that you wanna give the audience? I'm gonna include your company and everything else in the show notes, but is there anything you wanna sign off with?

Joshua Volen (1:06:20): Well, this has been more of the introspective, more focus on the being. So, I would just say to everyone, you're on the right path. You're on the right journey, you're exactly where you need to be, and you have all the tools to be successful however you define it. You are worthy, you are light, you are love. Not to be all mushy, but it boils down to that.

Joshua Volen (1:06:43): When the game is over again, it all goes back in the box. So let's have some fun and play with the people that you like playing with that play the game fairly and well, and that match your culture and values. And again, this.

Dustin Sutton (1:06:55): Yeah. Well, you know what? And there's funny, there's no real framework for this podcast. It's just conversations about the journey with good people that I respect. And so apologies to anybody who was listening and wanted to hear about cap rates and the impact of interest rates on that.

Unknown Speaker (1:07:11): Not at

Unknown Speaker (1:07:12): all, nothing time. No problem.

Unknown Speaker (1:07:14): Yeah. Okay. All right. Josh Roland, thank you so much.

Unknown Speaker (1:07:17): Take care.