Welcome to the pilot episode of Cash Flow Corner Podcast, hosted by Spencer Pascal, Real Estate Investor and CEO of Commerce Park Investor. In this episode, Spencer sits down with his father Roy Pascal, a veteran in the real estate industry with over 40 years of experience and known as the Commercial Real Estate Guru.

The episode offers a unique blend of family dynamics and real estate expertise, as they explore Roy's journey from college entrepreneur to real estate guru, while sharing insights about working together as father and son. Their conversation provides valuable lessons for both aspiring real estate investors and family business partnerships.

In this episode:

• Roy shares entertaining stories from his college entrepreneurship days, running a creative vending machine business that helped pay for his education
• Discover the story behind Roy's first real estate deal - a 5,000 square foot building purchased while still in college, and how he convinced the owner to hold the mortgage
• Learn about the challenges of being "alone" vs. "on your own" as an entrepreneur and why resilience is crucial in the real estate business
• Explore the unique dynamics of a successful family business partnership, with practical advice for both parents and children considering working together
• Roy reveals his strategies for building lasting relationships with sellers and brokers, emphasizing the importance of honesty and transparency in deals
• Get valuable insights for those looking to enter the real estate industry, including tips on education and gaining practical experience
• Understand how the Pascal team has evolved from retail properties to industrial real estate, and their exciting plans for development projects
• Father and son share their approach to maintaining a healthy balance between family relationships and business partnerships

Timestamps:

00:00 - Introduction to Roy Pascal

00:29 - Balancing family and business

02:12 - Roy's college vending machine business

07:34 - The first building Roy bought

10:07 - Biggest challenges in real estate

15:01 - Advice for starting in real estate

20:06 - Lessons learned from growing up

25:59 - Separating family dynamics from business

30:10 - The importance of resilience

35:07 - Building a brand in real estate

39:00 - Techniques for connecting with sellers

Connect with Roy Pascal:

Commerce Park Investors

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Want to learn more about Cash Flow Corner Podcast:

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I have the distinctive pleasure of sitting next to someone who

has not only shaped my life, but has also shaped a legend in the world of

real estate. Roy Pascal, the ultimate real estate guru. We're going to dive deep into the

what it's like to be a father in the business world with his son,

the different complications maybe over the time, the different

learning experiences, growing and doing different things together. So

Yeah, well, thanks for having me here. I think I should start by saying that

while we do have our challenges in the real estate business, this is way more

Yeah, there was one thing I told you when you met Brody. I

Yeah, well, we set up that trust account. The trust account was really to take care

of a nice affordable housing for yourself where you can have

And it says, today's day is Tuesday. That's right.

So what I want to do a little bit, the past couple

of days, we put some videos out. We had a lot of interest from people really

understanding you a little bit, but really wanted to understand the other

side of you. Because I think The thing is, I know one side of

you as, you know, being my dad, and I think, you know, contractors and vendors we

have that we use, they know another side

of you, but nobody really knows maybe why

we use possibly the term guru. And I think it's really

valuable because when I think of guru, I think of somebody that

is, you know, really understands the fundamentals of

something, right? So whether that's being a love guru, whether that's

being an industrial guru, that's being a chef guru. And

so I think maybe a year ago, when we did something with Austin,

we had talked a little bit about some of the things you did in college. And

I think I want to start there. I want to start about the

Okay. We can start there, but if it's okay,

I would tell you that a lot of people ask me, how did you get into this? Since I didn't have

a family, there wasn't a family business or there wasn't a pre paved

path of any sort. And the

honest answer is, I don't know. I'm not sure how this happened, but I do

know that something caught my interest with real estate over time. And

also This was also at a time in

the early to mid 80s where Donald

Trump used to do all of his books, art of the deal, making deal kind

of books. There was also motivational speakers, some around today, some

aren't anymore. Some of those people were real estate oriented. So

it gave me a real good, what would be today's reel

was back then's book or cassette tape

you would listen to in the car. And it just got me interested. And

so that was the spark. And then the rest of it was

just simply business. It was exercising the business muscle. And

I also think that started out, I think the absolute key to who I

am today is actually because I was born on and raised

on a very busy road. And I used the front of our house to

sell things from the time I was 10 years old. Whatever I could get a

hold of, a bike, a lawnmower, an old sign, anything. My

poor parents answered the door sometimes 15 times a day on

a weekend, and I was just selling things. And that turned into cars, and

my dad and I had a passion for cars together, and

we'd sell those out in front. So that sparked a business

thing. To answer your question about college, you're

there, and if you're going to be a business guy, you figure out,

who's my market? Well, the college students are. So I found

a way to buy video games for relatively inexpensive. Keep in mind,

this is 1982. I bought an Asteroids game, the first one I ever

bought. Paid $900 for it. put

it in the back of my van, took it to college, put it in the living room of my fraternity, and

in one and a half days of the first weekend, halfway through

Sunday, the machine was paid for. And I said,

let's go get some more machines. And that turned into

putting them in fraternities and sororities at at

Slippery Rock University. For those of you who don't know Slippery Rock University,

it's the Harvard of Western Pennsylvania. Not really.

But anyway, so I did that, and then I came up with the brilliant idea of putting soda

machines in the fraternities, but instead I had beer in them. The

things you can't get away with today. But that was my vending route, and

it paid for absolutely everything, including college. And, but

more importantly, it got my brain going and I

couldn't wait to graduate to get going. And I knew I wasn't

going to do any of that. I was just going to get into the real estate business.

Okay. Out of all the vending machines things you did, what

is one funny story you have when you were doing the vending machine stuff

that either happened during it or the process of it that was like pretty funny

There's literally 15, but I'll tell you, this is unrehearsed, but

I can think of two right off the bat. where

I had, first of all, that it became

so successful at our main fraternity that I had to put a dollar

changer in so they could get quarters to play the video machines and for

the soda machine. And so one of the

fraternity brothers wise-ass figured out a way to tape like a string to

a dollar and since this is old technology you could put the dollar in

and you can pull it back out it would give you the four quarters and someone said hey this

guy Bob May used to put a dollar into the machine and

he would pull it back out and I was like oh is that right okay fine Not

much I could do about that. I'm not there all the time. So I called the guy. I said, I

bought these dollar machines. How do I do this? He goes,

ah, there's no real way to do that. But he goes, if you go inside with

a pair of wire cutters and snip the orange wire, that's what

reads that it's a dollar or not. So if you put a $5 bill

in, it won't read it. It'll just think it's a dollar. And so

while he's putting his dollar in, pulling it back out of the string, I clipped the

thing. So some drunk ass goes and puts $10

in, and then they get four quarters. So I made up $9 on

him. And every now and again, I get a 20, and

it'd be like, whoa, I scored. And people were drunk, so

they didn't know, they didn't remember. Not one person ever asked me about that. The

other funny story, which I just think is a hoot to this day, is

I had the machines at other fraternities and sororities and they were like,

we want a cut. And I was like, okay, I guess I'll give you a cut.

That's how the business works. So some places were 25 or a third,

25% a third or whatever. And word

got back to our fraternity that the other fraternities and sororities were

getting a cut. And they said, well, what about us? And

I was like, no, I belong to this fraternity. I'm not giving you guys a cut. And I said, plus,

we have these parties at night, and the kegs run out, and

who's the first guy you come to? Hey, where's the keys? Open up the beer machine, and

everybody can, the beer machine's empty on Sunday. And

I said, so I give you a free beer, but I'm not giving you a cut. But it was funny that

I basically never gave my own fraternity a cut of the profit. So that

Oh, that's good. That's good. No, I, uh, I guess that's a little bit of that's

All right. So then let's go right into sticking

Sure. So I was in college, I

was in my, I think it was the end, no, it was the summer between my

junior and senior year. And the people

who know me know that I have this particular disdain for like

strip clubs and go-go bars. It's just not my thing. I just don't like it.

But my buddies did at the time. So I was like, yeah, I'll go. We went down to Boundbrook, New

Jersey to visit Bob Genuzzi at his strip

club. I was my normal disinterested self. It's

just a weird thing with me. I just don't like those places. I got talking to

Bob at the bar, and he's trying to sell me the strip club. And I'm like,

nah, I have no interest in owning any of this. But he goes, I have this little building

down the street. So I said, let's go. We walked down the street, 5,000 square

foot building on a corner, total clunker. The

building was $105,000. And

I said to him, all right, sounds good. I had no idea what I was doing.

I had read some books and stuff, but I said, I think the numbers seem

to make some sense. And keep

in mind, back then, a

$100,000 building probably netted like 15 grand.

It's literally what we would rent a parking spot for today. So

it's and it was by net so like

what the rent would have been a year was 15 grand a year

Yeah, it was it was probably like a 12 or 14 percent cap rate because

interest rates were much higher back then yeah, but it was

but it was like literally no money at all and

by today's standards And so I said to him, I'm like, okay, that's great.

The guy's looking at me, in college, where are you going to get the money? And I said, I

need you to hold a mortgage. And I said, I have this vending business. I

have some money. I'll give you five grand in cash. You

hold a mortgage for a hundred grand. I'll buy the property. It's off your hands. And

that was the first property I ever bought. When did you sell it? I

held onto it unnecessarily long so

that, because it had like, What

do they call it? Yeah, like a sentimental, emotional value. First

property, bought it while I was in college, blah, blah, blah. And it

was probably in the 10 or

12 years ago, and after a

lot of time, you'd think, oh, wow, would you sell for like $3 million? I

think it was like $400,000. But percentage-wise, if you

divide that up, not a bad investment. Boundbrook's a floodplain.

The place was underwater three times while I owned it. And I finally just said, I'm

out. And I sold it. But I still keep a

Okay. So then let's go into, so now we're 40

years in, 40 years. What

do you think out of all from buying that building to

where you are now, then there's been crazy stuff between doing

all the real estate, the retail, the renovations, now

completely over into industrial now. And that's when I came

in. And so I mostly know more all about

industrial than retail. But out of your 40 years, what

do you think there's one thing that sticks in your brain that's

You know, that's a really, really interesting question because most

of the challenges that I had, I compartmentalize this,

in the beginning the challenges were you just didn't know any better. I

look back, I get night sweats when I think about some of the transactions I did and

things that I got involved with, the mistakes I made, the errors,

the dumb stuff. And I

wish I had a mentor at the time. My

learning curve would have been way shorter. Like, your learning curve was so short in

this business because we could sit just like this and talk about things.

I didn't have that. So I had to go do it, make a mistake. try

something different, that was still wrong, make a mistake. It was

a waste of time that I think was the most frustrating thing for me, but

I didn't know it at the time. I thought I was doing great inching along.

And then the other half

of that question is, it's yourself. This real estate

business, especially if you're going to be a broker or a principal, it's

a very much a an alone business,

like you're only as good as whatever you're doing. Sure, you can

have a team, you can work with another guy, you can have

partners and stuff, but if you're going to learn this business

and learn it right, you have to do it yourself. You have to wash, rinse,

repeat, and stay inside your box, wherever that

box is. Hopefully it's outside of the big box. and

you have to continue to learn, motivate yourself and challenge

yourself so you can grow. There is absolutely no

paved road that tells you exactly how to do it. And

especially back then, don't forget, I got in the business, there was no computers, there

was no cell phones, there was maybe the beeper was invented or

But- Yeah, I remember the ones in the car, in your car, it was like in

that center thing. But I think like there's one thing I wanna pick out of

And I think what a lot of people struggle with

being on basically being an entrepreneur. Right. Because that's all this is, whether

you're a broker, you're doing an entrepreneur. Right. Is that feeling

alone a little bit like right. You're doing it all yourself. And it's one thing that

I was talking to somebody about the other day where he was telling me, it's like, I just

want my employees to understand what I feel. And

I sit down and say, I'm never gonna understand what you feel because the equity and the time

and the energy you've put into starting something, right? Whether it was your

first brokerage company, your first company, your first roofing company, you

have that feeling, you have that pain, you have that investment. They didn't do anything, right?

If you fold your company, they Can go find another job, but you

can't you live with that the rest of your life? So there's that sense of being alone where

it's just like you want Your employees to understand what you feel

like so you don't feel alone and that's just not gonna happen So you have

to understand I think you know when we started building a team here

It was nobody's alone here everyone everyone understands what's going on

now You don't feel like I'm doing everything by myself because as

we started creating this team it started feeling like okay Someone's gonna do this.

Someone's gonna help me with this someone's I'm not doing everything alone, but it

really is Like a lone survivor thing in the beginning. You're really

Yeah. Yeah, it really is. But, but I use the word alone, but,

um, that, and, and everything you said is accurate, but the better word is

on your own. Yeah. And so, uh, you

can read all the books you want. You can have talked to all the people you want, but you have

to go and do it. It's like a lot of things in life. You just have to

go and do it. And it's helpful to have someone stand there and

say, do this, do that, do this, and point you in the right direction. But

at some point, you have to go do it. You have to be an energizer bunny.

And if you have someone point you in the correct direction, you'll

learn incurably shorter. And going from the

part about if you yourself are motivated enough

to be able to work by yourself, then you are your own Energizer bunny

and you'll be able to like go and go and go. But you're

gonna hit walls, you're gonna hit potholes, you may fall off a cliff a couple of

times, it's okay. The key to it is resiliency. It's

the best compliment I ever got was Man, you are resilient, you

know, you get knocked down, you stand up, you fail miserably, and

Yeah. And because you ran right into my next question was like, the

biggest piece of advice, I would say you could split it to

if, if somebody came at you and said, I

want to start real estate. How do I start? But OK, I've

started, right? I'm either a broker and I'm trying, I'm trying or

I'm trying. I bought my first property. Like, how do I get to the next level?

And part of it, I think, is a really good thing you

said, which is like resilience right

there, which is Not everything's going to be perfect. Not everything's going to be

like you see on the internet. There's going to be really tough days. And

even we do things, there's really tough days. You're working through a bunch of deals right now

and they're throwing curve balls left and right. And so

my, the, the, uh, next question in this real

estate, and then we're gonna move on to some fun things is, um, what's

one piece of advice you think, um, a

younger generation and an older generation, um, could

use starting into the real estate industry, whether it's investment or brokerage or

Yeah. Yeah. I think, uh, to me,

it seems a lot easier today because you can go on your phone and

if you start watching real estate related things, you're just going to get a

whole bunch. And there's, there's a lot of people with different ideas, whatever

you have to weed through it. But, um, you have to, uh, you have

to educate yourself on what you're doing and, I

find that when you say doing real

estate, sometimes people are paranoid and don't even want to

get into the brokerage business to rent apartments or sell homes. Maybe

it's not for them. But if you say, I'm going to wake up in the

morning, and I'm going to kill it, and I'm going to be a millionaire. And

then I'm going to be a centimillionaire, and I'm going to do it. You need

to be a special kind of motivated. The thing that I

would tell younger people when they get into the business, you have to go talk to some

people. Go find out what does the real estate business mean? Do you want to

be a broker? Do you want to be a principal? Do you want to be a developer or

whatever? And I find it really ironic that a

lot of people that come see me never act on it. So, to

me, there's a one or two percent of anybody who's ever asked

me about this business, and I encourage them, talk to

me, go talk to some other people. And I've literally had

people say to me, well, I'd love to do this, but I

just don't know how to get started. And I'm like, don't you and

your wife own a home? Like, you already started. Right? And

they go, oh yeah, that's right. And they still never do

whatever it takes to just take that first step and be motivated. But

if you can educate yourself and be motivated and just

kind of blindly plow ahead, it doesn't matter what age you are, you

can do this. And the education comes quickly

and it comes pretty fast in volume as

well over a very short period of time if

you're really focused on it. It's the kind of business, it's

very difficult to do part time. Your best bet is to jump in,

immerse yourself, learn everything you can, and you have no choice

All right, so I want to go into a couple things real quick. We're

going to go back on some, I want to talk about in

the next couple of seconds about economy and

real estate a little bit, because I think it's an interesting time

right now. And I think, like you

said before, you spend a good time of your education learning about what's coming

next or hope everyone knows what's coming next. But in the

meantime, what do you think is the biggest lesson

growing up you wish you could have taught me? that you

did it, but you know, things could transition out. But

I really don't know what... Boy, it's such

an interesting question because you

are very different than your brother and sister, just like they're very different than you.

And I have had several people ask me,

did you know that Spencer was going to get into the business when he was

younger? And I said, I wasn't sure he was going to get into the business,

but I knew he would be in business. He would do something for himself. It's just

the personality. And it doesn't mean that your

brother and sister can't do that, it's just that personality didn't come through.

And then you

were just different like me. You know, we were similar students. You

know, school was not that interesting. It's like you sat in the classroom and

everything out the window was way more interesting than what was on

the chalkboard, right? And so those are,

the C-student thing is a real thing, you know? Yeah,

okay, if I was an A-plus student, maybe I'd be an engineer, maybe

I'd be more successful, but I didn't want to go to school.

Actually, I did. I wanted to see my friends, but I didn't want to

do school. But ultimately, I grew

up a little bit in college, and I realized that I should learn, I

should pay more attention, my business classes were interesting, and then

that's when I took on school. And the same thing happened to you. You

went along, and so I backed off. I mean, sure, would

you like your... Most parents want their kids, oh, I'm so

proud of my son. He's done this, and he's a fantastic

athlete. He's an A-plus student. He's going to an Ivy League school. Didn't

do any of that. That was never gonna happen. And that's okay because we

all end up where we're supposed to be somehow in the universe. And

so, not to say that when

I was in the principal's office with you every single week that I didn't wish I

wasn't in the principal's office every week, but I also remember my parents were

in the principal's office every week. So that was my job. And

so the answer is, I don't really think I would have done anything different than

happened. And I look at it now and go, looks

It did, yeah. All right, cool. I

have no comment on that because I

Well, I was going to say, I wish I had taught you that you should focus

more on real estate than social media, but there was no social media, so I didn't know

not to teach you that. I'm just kidding. This is wonderful. I'm glad you're expressing

Yeah, this is this is fun. But you know, real

estates, that's not a nine to five job. That's

your whole life. That's the beauty of it. If I always thought of us like, anytime

anyone gets to even tell the guys, I'm like waiting to your first nightmare. When

you get your first nightmare, you need to be scared that you're not doing something right.

You know, like, Oh, man, am I getting this? You know, I've had I always

think of one building that gave me nightmares. And I couldn't wait to get rid of

Yeah, well, don't forget that those nightmares are simply masked

with lessons that you still need to have because

you're not confident in whatever that topic is. Like, there's

very little that scares me or that I, I mean, I don't worry about

anything anymore. Because if I'm worried about it, I

get away from it. I shouldn't be doing it if I'm actually truly worried. If

I'm just saying, I don't know how this is going to work out, who cares? It's going to work

out however it works out. And luckily, the nice thing about doing

this for your whole life is that you have, you're in a spot where

you can say, I've experienced almost all

the things there are to experience, and I have a sense for when things are going to work out,

and I just blindly move forward, whether it be with my time, my energy,

you know, money, whatever it is. And when you don't feel

Yeah, that old gut feeling people say, man, you know, it is

100% true. And if you don't watch your feelings and

pay attention to them and work with them, not against them, If

you do that, you'll get further. And if you don't, you'll

Yeah, that's pretty accurate. It's

pretty interesting on a couple of those things. And so going

into that flow a little bit, you and I have been working together almost eight

Yeah. Wow, great. And one

of the biggest things, I think there's two people in my head, and I won't call

them out or anything. that we both know and

they asked this question once and it's always stuck with me. I've left it

in my phone because I was like, someday I want to be able to share

this to a bunch of people. And the question was, how do

you separate family dynamics from business when

you're working together? So it's funny

that that was question was asked me because we do it

very differently. But it was also on

my side to answer the question a little bit was, I kind of use

the same thing as like, let's say you and your wife work together, right?

Business days at the office and you go home, it's family time, right? And I think I

taken that into this like, When we're here, it's all business. When

we leave, we really don't talk about business that much. When we're hanging out with

your fiance or my fiance, or we go on a

trip with the fam, we never talk about

Yeah, well, I think it

depends on where you are. You know, when I was younger, I talked about it all

the time. I can remember being reprimanded, like,

do we have to talk about business at the dining room table or at Thanksgiving or

whatever. And as you get further along,

and you get super confident with all the things you're

doing, and you get really busy, it's enough. I

think about my day yesterday, right? I'm always up early, but

I was out the door, and by the time I got home from

doing things yesterday, it was a 12-hour day. I've had tons

of 16-hour days, but I'm a little older. 12-hour days are

a little bit of a grind. But you know what? When I get home, I don't need

to talk about it. I don't need to call you and ask you a question. I'm tired,

right? So that's the best thing. Go work hard, get it done, and

know that you have to have some separations. I need some separation in

my life. We should be able to go out and go out to dinner,

or go to a football game, or go to a hockey game, or a concert, and we

just enjoy our time and our company together, and

it doesn't have to be all about this. And that's

Yeah, because what I've really noticed the difference in that dynamic

of business and work is, one, when things are

running smoothly as a whole in the company, right, like things have

a spot, things are not all gibberish

and things are going all over, and this tenant's having a problem, this building's having a problem, and

what's going on with this, when things are so discombobulated, See

it spreads out like we could be at a Jets game Bay. Hey, do we hear anything update

on that? Do you have anything on this right? things are so organized and clean now

that you can actually leave and not be like you have to take this entire mess with you

every Spot we go. It's like hey, did you hear the bit like we could literally go

to a Formula one way race on a weekday like

when we went to Vegas with max and Business, I

Yeah, no, the phone's off too. It's like, you know, that's our time. If

we're putting an effort into doing something else, it's going to make us better

and it's going to make us more efficient and it's going to make us cleaner and crisper by

not doing that and not involving every waking

Yeah, I agree. So then

rolling into that, what do you think, for some people who do work with

their kids, what is one piece of advice as a father, whether

they work with the father working with their daughter or son, you

Sure, sure. I would start out with that my answer

is going to be different than maybe some people because I'm a

little psychotically over the

top on efficiency. I don't like wasting time. And

if I do, it'll be wasted time because it is the downtime and

you can sit around and do nothing. So to

that vein, I know a lot of families where

not necessarily just in a real estate business where a son or daughter came into a family

business and then they had to leave and While

that sounds really inefficient to me. It sounds really unfun. Yeah, and

and if you recall when you got into this business I told you,

you know, come up here while you were still in school. Take the

business for a test drive. See if you like it. And you have to at least like

the flavor of Kool-Aid. You don't have to drink it yet, but you have to at least like it.

Obviously, at this point, you drank the Kool-Aid. You're in it. You love it.

What I expected. So I never have to worry about the point I was

making, which is firing your kid or having your

kid leave and just go like, yeah, I didn't like this business and

now maybe I don't even like you because you put me through what you put me through.

That sounds brutal at every level. So

we are sidebar

100% blessed and really lucky to be

able to work together and be able to not have basically

any problems whatsoever, and the only problems that we do have end

up being opportunities insofar as learning. You know, I've

told you, I've learned from you because of your style. Your style is

the 2020s. My style is the 80s, 90s,

and 2000s or whatever. And it works for me, so

And we can tell the way you type that you still have that. I

only have two fingers. So

that advice on that side is really important. I think also on

a son's side, there's two really major points for

kids you do work with, whether it's your mom or your dad. is to

one, just listen, understand that

you're going to have a lot of opinions, a lot of things. And I spent my first two years

really just listening. You know, I didn't really come up

with any ideas. I didn't really do anything. We lived together for almost a year and

it was, you know, 7 a.m. gym, then spent the whole

day till 11 at night. in the living room, doing

nothing but real estate. But then on top

of that, it was like, okay, how do I do this? How can I absorb as much information I

can in a limited amount of time? And I think that's, frankly, whether you're in the

construction business, the landscaping, the investment side, the mortgage side, that

if your parent is running a successful company, at

no point should you find a way to argue with them. Right? Like

there's times when you can challenge things. And I think that's two big things is kids

want to argue with them, but maybe sometimes you want to challenge something and it comes off

like very like, I want to do this. Why don't you listen to me? But

at the end of the day, if your parents developed a very successful company, your

job is to manage it and continues to run it, run it. Once

it's managing and running in a really nice form, you could then, and

you understand what you're doing, you could take it to the next level. You could scale it to the next thing. But

I think in this day and age, people want instant gratification. So it needs to happen immediately.

And I think I wanted that in the beginning and I just said in my head,

I go, it's not going to happen. You just got to get out of your head right now. So

I spent a lot of time going to meetings, being quiet, absorbing it,

learning it, asking questions, doing the same same thing. And I figured

out that my learning curve and my instant gratification came

a lot quicker when I stopped thinking about that stuff, stopped thinking

about. I want the money now. I want I want

to have this now. I want to build this. When you stop thinking about it, you just settle down,

you just learn and learn. And the

biggest thing is it's OK not to be right. And

now it's hard because I want it. I want to be like, oh, look, I found

this property for you. Did I know I was going to find that first? You know, I haven't had

No. And so instead, I think a lot of people just

need to understand that you just need to stop, listen, and

just know that the next five or ten years

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Hey, don't forget, I had to do the same thing. I

had to stop, you know, shut your mouth and listen to

some suggestions, right? And a couple of

the examples that I realize is

that there are different ways to do things today. I think I

was kind of saying that there was, you know, I

find people that say, let's get rich quick scheme, and it's

not, it's just not that way. So over all this time,

I learn how to do things my way, but you come

in and once I give you the foundation of the

industry and what we're doing here, it's okay for you to go.

You're out continuing to educate yourself, you're

looking at certain publications or

you're seeing things online or talking to other people, and you're learning

different techniques. And what has been just as

magical as you coming to work with me and having

my son not only be,

you know, in the friend zone, but now working together, which

is the best you could ever expect, It's that I

am now learning some of the things that you've learned, and maintaining

the open mind to the fact that there is new ways to do

things. And the fact that we have an electronic filing

cabinet where I can access everything at one point, if

No, but you know, it is it's streamlining, but but that was that's

what made this easier. Right. It was like there was a foundation here. And when I was after

I really drank that Kool-Aid, I was like, OK, if I'm going to do this, I need to build a brand.

I need to have something. And I want people to know, you know,

they know Roy Pass, but I want them to know the name. Right. I don't need them

to know me right now. So taking the time to spend

these years of creating a brand, creating all this stuff, and I look at it now, like,

I walked into this office, basically being done, and I was

like, I would have never known how to do this. I would have never known. I

never even knew what a base coat was. You know, I never knew what, you know,

a lentil was. I never even know, you know, saddles and

freight. Like, I didn't know that. And just building this

alone, I learned so much on the construction side. This is a full teardown,

full demo. And I actually sat here with the contractor, Charlie, today,

and it was actually an eight-month build. And I was thinking, oh, it's a year long. But

it didn't take that long, because I looked back when we started. And it took eight months

to completely unfold something that

was awful and disgusting. And there was such a good learning

curve to that as well. Being here every day and figuring out that I don't want to be on

job site every single day was brutal. But,

um, so I think there's a lot to learn on the family side. I

think there's a lot of, um, you know, at the end of

the day, it's easy to get mad at your parent to be like, well, I don't, you

know, I think I have a better idea and all that. And there's been times where I've literally

been like, I'm going to figure this out. I know what to do. And there's a property I

could think of that I've just been, I had so many issues with, but I knew I was like, I'm going

to try to figure this out. And then I just

would stop myself and go like, why am I sitting here? Beat myself up. Let

me go to my mentor. Right. So I'd walk in, I'd be like, what do I do here? And he'd be like, oh, do

this, this and that. And I'm like, this ain't going to fucking work. There's no

way this is going to work. Walk out, works immediately. Right. And

it's just like, you know, we were doing some leasing at a property in

Pennsylvania. and I had some complications, you're like, oh, just do this X,

Y, and Z. Went down to Pennsylvania, and it worked. Sometimes

you don't need to sit there, bang your head over the situation when it's like, let's put

We have the advantage. We can work smart together. Because once

you have that relationship, this question involves the

elephant in the room of what happens when you do work with

your father or your son, whoever has the problem, and

you're like, damn, this isn't working. My dad

just doesn't get it anymore. He's super outdated. Or I'm saying, you know, my

kid didn't learn a thing in college. He's never going to make it. There's a lot of

those kinds of things that happen. And we're super blessed

to have handled this the correct way. We started out, we spent

all of our time together. Absolutely, I would recommend that. You

have to teach your child what

it is that you do and make sure that they want to do that first. Because

if they don't want to do it, you're wasting your time, like I said before. Once

they do, hold on and

educate them, but you have to let go as you move through the process.

And honestly, what you were just talking about before with this office, I

think you understand that I very rarely came into

this space for a reason. First of all, I'm trying to

teach myself to be less involved and

to have less opinions. I'm always yapping about this, that,

or the other thing, and I'm trying to slow down and not be

annoying like that. But also, this was a real estate renovation

of an office, but it's also is expressed, I

was gonna say it's expressional, like you're able to, express

what it is you know. You're expressing an artistic talent of

sorts. That I didn't know I had. But you didn't know you had because it

didn't get awoken, right? Or it wasn't awakened. And how much a

pain in the ass offices. There's all that. Could you

imagine if you had to do this for every tenant

who moved in? really expensive, and that's why office buildings

are a crappy investment, but at the end of the day,

you exercised a bunch of muscles. Like, you exercised that little tiny

muscle in your delt or something that no one could ever exercise, because

no one lets their kid, who's under 30 years old, run a

high-end office renovation project. But you had to do that,

and when you had questions, you came and asked me, and when

I had comments, most of the time I didn't say anything, because it didn't matter. Like, why

poke poke things in the ribs when

it's going good anyway. So that back

and forth that we have is the reason for the success. What

you do and how motivated you are is part

of it as well, of course, and me wanting to take time and

educate you and all that, it's invaluable. And

I think the really important part is that the

people in our organization, directly in our organization, and the

people that we deal with outside of the organization see that. And

it wasn't always so easy in the beginning, because people would be like, oh, it's

the owner's kid with this and that. And I said,

just stay in your lane. Just keep going. Eventually, before you know

it, you'll sound exactly like you know what you're

doing, which you do now, and enjoy being

young. Like a lot of times when I was young, when I was 22 in this business,

I couldn't wait to be 40 because I was just like tired of people hawking me

for being young. And I said, I'll just keep doing

It's none of my business. It's fun. And like you said before, I

think if you don't love what you're doing, you have to absolutely love this. Because

it's only going to get worse. And if it doesn't get worse, it's

just going to be, well, I'm not going to progress to the next step. Because there's learning

curve being so short. And it doesn't matter what trade you're in. It doesn't matter

if you're an electrician, your dad's an electrician. Well, dad, I want to become a

really big company and and make this nation or make this, you

know, whatever you want to do with that. Right. If you don't love that, then you're going

to go through the movements every day and be like, oh, I'm just going through. I'm happy where I

am. I don't want to get anything else. Right. And I think we talked in the beginning and

you're like, hey, look, I'm going to give you two options here. The

first thing is you got to love it. And if you absolutely love it, here's your two options. One,

manage everything we have, learn the business best you can, learn everything

you can about it. And you can manage this trust for

your brother and sister and just really well. Or you

could do that and take the company to the next level. Buy more stuff, learn

how to buy stuff, learn how to buy bigger and do better things. And I was like,

yeah, I'm not going to invest my entire life, move all the way back to New Jersey to

just manage something for my brother and sister. Right. And

yourself. But yeah, and myself, yeah, do all this work just to be

like, OK, you know, I didn't want to. I was like, I know we could do more. Like, I

can't wait to do development stuff and someday have a development company where just

where it's strictly just building and we build on that side. And then you have the investment side

and the funding side. And and so

that's I'm just going to continue looking at that and just how can you add more and

Yeah, you have the basis and the equipment inside of you now

to do that. And you obviously have the love and support from

the family and from everybody in this company. So you

have an obligation to yourself to do the best you can. And

honestly, what I've enjoyed the most, probably

the most, other than just knowing exactly what you're doing. And it's almost

impossible to make a mistake at this point. I really enjoy that, but

I've, I've enjoyed, um, helping other people into the industry. You

can see some of that inside of our own company. You can see some of that outside of

our company. And, and once you help people into the industry, um,

there's, uh, uh, it's helping people in general is just a really important

part of life's little karma formula that you, that

the more you. do to help

yourself and help others, the more that comes to you, the more obligation

is given to you, and so now you have to go out and be more successful so

you can do more charity, and so you can help other people. And

I like that loop a lot. I think it's awesome, and it's not

where I was when I was 20, 30,

No, I can't wait to be there. Yeah. And

so the next thing I think a lot, it goes down to like, I

would say, sales calls a little bit. But people

always ask, and I think it's always more of a question, how do I buy my first deal? And

I don't like that question too much, because there's just so many different things, right? But

I want you to kind of describe how

you do so well at smooching these,

these sellers. And, and when I say that is we

buy a lot of properties from either families, um,

older people. And a lot of time these people are deterred,

you know, they don't want to deal with a broker. They don't want, you know, either they've been

screwed over so many in the past. And for some reason, the amount of

deals we bought last year under, under, well under

the per square foot number that anything was selling. And some

of the techniques, I want to talk about most of your techniques of talking

to these people, making them feel comfortable, how you've approached these

deals in a way where, you know, we've approached some

deals and you made them feel like, hey, look, you just came

up out of nowhere, thought we were closing next week, but you still managed to make

them feel comfortable and finish that deal and still have a relationship with

Sure. Sure, so there's no particular

magic sauce. Over the time that I've been doing this, I've

found that the

best way to find properties in an old school way was you go

out and you knock on doors yourself and you keep doing it until you

find properties. That's obviously not practical as you get a little bit

older and also when you're super busy. But

I love the brokerage community. I repeat myself. over

and over, every day, incessively, about, you

know, what kind of properties are we looking for? Where

are we looking for them? What are the criteria that we

have? You have to be disciplined because

in this business, especially the bigger the

properties that you get involved with, you can

find more deals than you have dollars for when

you're a family company and you're self-funded. So then there's a little piece

of it is like, well, who do I think might be the

correct amalgamation for a deal? Maybe you split a deal. When they

get a little bigger, you have some partners. I spent my

whole career owning either with my retail properties

and my partner in retail. We were 50-50, and then with

the industrial stuff, I owned 100% of everything, but it was, you know,

smaller properties, not as large a portfolio, so

you can grow a lot faster if you're a little more open-minded. But finding

those properties is making sure, again, you have to have

that box that is what you invest in, and

you stay inside that box, and you wash, rinse, repeat.

And the repeat part is everybody you talk to, you tell them what you're

looking for and the different factors of what it is. And

after time, you get hundreds of submissions

a week that all are deleted. But there's always

a little nug in there. And then even the little nugs that you find, sometimes they

don't work out. Someone beat you out of the deal, whatever. But I've

found that there's An absolute key to

buying real estate is you have to be either very first

or very last. And very, very often in

the middle is where either nothing happens or you make

a bad deal or whatever. So up front means off

market. You're buying a property off market. You don't have competition. You're not going

to, more than likely, you're not going to overpay. You're certainly not going to compete to

overpay. And then last is when I'm always shocked.

I'd never throw a file away. I'd never delete a file. How many times have

I rooted through a drawer or rooted through some old emails and said, oh yeah,

I love that property. It's two and a half years later and

finally the seller sobered up and now you can make a

deal or something else changed, you can make a deal. So,

and you can only do that if you've been doing this a long time, because things

circle back. And I think another

huge factor is just being 100% honest and transparent with everybody.

treat everybody how you want to be treated, and pay

the people who are supposed to get paid, and a lot of

those little things where a lot of people go, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, but then as

soon as they're challenged on something and they don't think you

should pay a commission, or that's a little too much money, the number of times

I've paid things where I thought there was too much money just because it was the credible thing

to do, and just so that I didn't have people walking

around talking about someone who shortchanges the

brokers or retraded a seller or whatever it might be. Sometimes

those things have to happen with sellers, but at the end of the day, honesty

really is, in any business, but in this small

Okay. Okay. I like that. I like that.

It's, you know, it's, uh, um, I think what I've learned

a lot from that deal too, is that a lot of people will try to play

big guy. Oh, I'm this big guy. I have all the, don't matter. I have all

that because I've, I've, been trustworthy, I've respected

between the brokerage and the seller and transparency is

I've used that all of them. And I like when I started to beg, hey, look,

I'm the guy that I'm going to let you know when I'm doing my survey. I'm

going to let you know I'm doing my environmental stuff. You're going to know every step through the

process. I think letting them know, here's the steps I'm going to do through process.

You're going to be 100% involved, the broker and the seller. Like,

you know, I don't want the broker to know everything. I want the seller to know exactly what I'm doing. I want to get

Communicating, right? Yeah. It's the key. And you know what? I

think there's another compliment that I've received a couple of times. Excuse

me. And that is when someone says like, you

know, they'll bring me a property and I'll say, oh, that's awesome. Great. Let's do

it. I think the price is fair. Let's buy it. Like, you don't even want to see

it. No, it's fine. We'll get it. We'll see it at some point. And

the pace at which you

can make a decision and then stick with that decision and

that the seller and the broker can count on

you to close. That is something you have to do over

and over and over again. And we've done hundreds and hundreds of

transactions. And I'm not saying it

was always like that in the beginning, but what I've learned, that is the key,

I love it. I love it. Now, last question. What

is the future for you going forward? What does

it look like now from your 20 year old self every

day going? I know you were talking about, you know, I could do the 18 hours.

That's, you know, that's done. What

is the future now going forward? You think in your real estate career?

No, you know, I I can honestly tell you for

40 plus years later and because of this relationship that

we have and and for a lot of reasons I

have never felt better about this business. I've never felt

more motivated I've never felt more sure of myself and

and and that's that's really important to have confidence to

know exactly what you're doing because the mistakes take

10 times longer to unwind than just

being disciplined and saying no. And so

the future is exactly what you see. And I,

catching up on an incorrect path from

my future, excuse me, from my past, and

I, for some reason in the past, I

didn't embrace development, land development, the way I

should have. And I was actually thinking about this the other night, and I

literally got to sweats on the couch thinking about a couple of development deals I

tried to do in my 20s with these weirdo office

buildings and a residential multifamily

expansion of a property I already owned. And it was ill-fed,

it was ridiculous. I literally had the planning board saying to

me, like, why did you even make this application? I didn't know what

was happening. So I got turned off to development. I

chiefly got turned off to development because when there was an ugly duckling in

town, I got used to the town saying, Oh, wow, you're

going to fix up that building. Great. What, what color red carpet would you like? And

they would kind of kiss your ass. And in the development process,

it was always like, Nope, no, no, no, no. Another, another developer trying

to ruin our town or whatever. And, and, uh, keep in mind, I'm

talking about how it was in the eighties and nineties, maybe early two thousands. And

not that land development's any easier today, it's probably more difficult, but I

am way better equipped. I've now done some development, doing

a bunch more, and I see that as

the future. And part of it is that

there's only so many buildings that are out of repair that get fixed up.

And so there's not as much. It's pretty picked over on the

upside properties, but we still find them. And

we actually have four of them under contract as we speak. But

there's even more land that we're going through the development process on,

and I'm really excited about that. Uh, and I, uh,

I, I don't know why, maybe it's just because it's one

of the things I haven't conquered and we're going

to conquer it together. Uh, you and I and our company, and

it's going to be really, really fun. It's going to be super challenging. Um,

and, uh, we're going to align ourselves with people, uh, that to

make sure we can do some, some really big ass stuff without

Perfect. Well, that's the first rap on

the podcast. Roy Paschal, the ultimate guru