Roy Dekel, CEO and Co-Founder of SetSchedule, recounts how his time as an officer in the Israeli secret services translated to the business world and what this former warrior considers to be his kryptonite, explains his mission to put solopreneurs on a level playing field with the big boys, and tackles topics like joy vs amusement, decision fatigue, the existential wisdom of Shakespeare, and why the biggest successes often only come after the biggest failures.

This is Dan Moore. And we are very, very excited today to have Roy Dekel with us. Roy

is the co founder and CEO of SetSchedule, which he'll share some more information about with us.

But he has an incredible background, having an impact to defend the free world, and now having an

impact to defend people's right for free choice in real estate, and many other great things that he's

done in the charitable and nonprofit sphere as well. So Roy, welcome to the action catalyst.

Dan, thank you for having me. So excited to be here.

Roy, you've had an amazing background, I know that you served in the equivalent of the

navy seals in the Israeli Defense Force, which is absolutely incredible. But I wonder if you could

share some of what you consider the most important pivots or twists and turns in your career starting

as a young man that ended up being where you are today and making such a difference in the world?

Well, thank you for the question, then, obviously, I love it, because who doesn't like to

talk about their history, right? If you want to carve it out more to the corporate evolution, post

military service, obviously, I can do that. But if you think about the experiences as an

entrepreneur, obviously, I had the privilege to come in I was born and raised in Israel. So I was

essentially the mandate was to serve in the military. But I volunteered to serve in special

operations and become an officer. But ultimately, I had the privilege to carry that experience into

the civilian personal life and corporate life. And when I did that, I think I got a little bit of

kind of like, it's almost like a cheat sheet that was an accelerated mode to maybe avoid mistakes.

But ultimately, in the 15 years experience that I had in the corporate world and the charitable

world and you know, civilian, I went through a lot of pivots that revolve around basically Junior

mistakes, as I call them, Junior mistakes that a lot of people make along the way, and especially

entrepreneurs, so many of the periods that could talk about.

One specific question; many of our listeners are returned veterans, what was sort of

your thought process as you were leaving the IDF? And how did you get into the business world?

When I left the IDF, let's put it this way I was I was still a kid, right. And I knew

that I served in a great unit, I knew that I was an officer, I knew that I enjoy leading and

managing. And I knew that probably somewhere in the DNA, I want to be an entrepreneur, I didn't

know where and what's gonna be my manifesto or business model, what's going to be my industry.

But ultimately, I knew that at the end of the day, I would want to build something that can benefit

society, right? I mean, the end user in mind. So I went through the evolution from the military and

implemented a lot of the training that I've been through a went through in my earlier career.

Okay, so you identified that you had some strengths, you enjoyed leading people, you

wanted to do something that would contribute positively to society. And that whole

entrepreneurial thing was a powerful draw for you. That's great. Now, specifically, I know you're

involved in selling a lot of financial services and real estate related products. And now you're

more of a powerful connector of buyers and sellers and people seeking information on the market. Can

you share some of the maybe twists and turns that caused all that to come about?

Essentially, I'm a big believer that we need to address as a society, we want to address

challenges and problems that actually affected communities to the core, basically, and the aspect

of real estate was actually I don't wanna call it an accident. But actually, the thought process

started with the idea of creating communities of professionals that can connect with their

prospects more efficiently using technology. Right. And I came from the financial services and

a real estate services world investigating in real estate funds or what have you. And I realized that

there's a tremendous amount of gap between individuals abilities, okay. I mean, some people

would refer to it as a core competencies as a businessman or salesman, and their ability to

actually connect with prospects or to be competitive enough to have enough prospects to

actually build a business and be profitable. You know, essentially, that's how set schedule was

born from the evolution of buying hundreds and 1000s of properties, diving into basically the

core problem of assisting and helping real estate agent grow their business that's was kind of like

the initial evolution of set schedule. But the vision statement was much broader than that. And

it's it again, like I said, it revolves around enabling professionals, even if they're

solopreneurs, to be more relevant, competitive and successful in connecting with their prospects.

I see. So a person that may have a one man band or a one woman band can actually connect

at a really professional high level with people and create the right impression. So they don't

think well, this is just a one off instead, it's a really professional connection point.

Yes. You know, that, as my grandma used to say, not all fingers are the same length,

right? Not everything created equal kind of thing. And you know, that there's sometimes unfair

advantage to some groups, whether it's budget, whether it's geolocation and the real estate was

obvious. be a catalyst for us, like I said. So ultimately, we realized that the solopreneurs

rather than the small businesses, not even an SMB, but a small businesses, and especially real

estate, which you're talking about, you know, 2 million businesses, I mean, license holders and

specific real estate, are constantly struggling with the idea of having a constant drive constant

push constant ability to either perform budget and economical way to scale that business, right. So

that that's kind of like where set schedule was born from the idea of controlling the scheduled

better, hence the set schedule and doing it in an economical way that enables you to call your

business and be competitive.

That makes total sense, because for people that are maybe not aware of the real estate

market, this is not a salary based business. This is a business where income entirely depends upon

production. And so if people can use their time better, they can have better production, and

therefore build a business that is sustainable, so that they can grow too.

And it can apply to so many different industries. If you look at the charitable

organization that constantly needs, new donors, right donations, and capital, it conceptually

through to set schedule applications and everything that we have in a roadmap in the coming

months and years, we're going to enable this very efficient connection between even a foundation and

then the donor, there may be a CEO of a company X, and they're on the platform, that I mean, again,

we we've fully we obsess over creating efficiencies and enabling the smaller business to

be efficient and successful on a constant basis.

Right. Now, you mentioned charitable work, I know that your great passion is children's

education. And I understand that a lot of that roots from your own childhood experiences can can

you share a bit how you became so involved with that, and why that's such an important conviction

you have?

Absolutely, that's an awesome question, then thank you. I mean, it's hard to explain. But

I'll say, in a funny way, I've served in the military, I've seen a couple of different wars in

Israel in the Middle East. And then I came here and basically dove into the entrepreneurial

lifestyle without looking back. But every time I see a sick child, or every time I see a child that

is at a disadvantage, whether it's economically whether it's you know, from from social

environment, then you know, obviously an orphan child, it just breaks my heart, it's kind of like

in the family, we'll call it my kryptonite. So I realized that young age, that's something I care

deeply about, and it's just in my DNA, my childhood was was great, I was fortunate enough to

have a great childhood in good area, but not, you know, didn't come from money, but I just feel that

kids have this obviously inherent disadvantage of, you know, their ability to actually, you know,

solve their problems. And it was, it developed to be my my kryptonite, so I made it a mission to

really be constantly involved in everything that revolves around children, children education, and,

and medical needs.

Children are the future. I know, that's just an old slogan, but it is absolutely true. And

given them a chance to maybe have some equity in their start, is what you're striving for.

You definitely can predict the future of where your country where our country is going

to be 1020 years from now, I mean, if you just really spend the time and, and listening,

reviewing and understanding what we're doing to our next generation, I know this is not rocket

science, pretty elementary, right. But that's a crystal ball that you can predict if you pay

attention to the kids of today's generation.

And there's a lot of them. These are sort of the the grandchildren of my generation,

which was the baby boomers. And so you have these waves of population growth, and this is a third

wave after that one. So lots of kids, and many of them are not growing up in the best situations at

all. Roi, our 100 listeners sometimes hit brick walls that just stopped. I'm sure you've had a few

of those over the years, any lessons you could share about how to react first of all mentally and

emotionally. And then practically, when we hit one of those unexpected brick walls?

Absolutely. That's actually one of my one of my favorite Gen Con like mentorship

questions. So thank you for this question, then the answer can be for producing a movie right that

would go into like a flashback rewind story and going back to my BUDS training, right my

equivalent of basic underwater divorce training, which is basically the sales training I got into

the training knowing that I just wanted to pass a training I did I don't want to quit that I want to

I want to win it I want to be it I want to I want to be part of this unit and you have what's called

Hell Week in BUDS training, which is really Hell Week. Now when I served it was before way before

Facebook and Twitter and YouTube so I didn't get the privilege of actually watching this thing

before it was in that unit. I actually realized that we have that there is such thing as called

Hell Week, during hell week when I asked myself why the hell why are we not sleeping? Why we are

constantly running around diving, swimming, kickboxing, practicing weaponry, and just it was I

mean, it was a nightmare. I mean, it's there's no two ways about it, right? And that's where I will

Say 40% of the unit quits or the cadets quit. Okay. I mean, you started training with about 181

of these men end up with about 80 Entering Hell Week and probably the end of hell week, you end up

with about 40 or 30 individuals, and I was one of them. And I thought to myself for years, how and

why and then what was what was really the the, the, the out and the element that carried me

through that, then the answer, by the way, is what I use and obsess over regularly to to stay, right.

I mean, whether it's charitable project, or whether it's corporate project, and to me was

pretty simple. I'll never forget that during Hell Week, all I needed to do is to think about two

things. Number one is I close my eyes. And I thought about the fact that I want it to be

Friday, and it will be Friday at some point. Okay, so So what's the worst that can happen? Right?

It's going to be Friday, I'll be thrown all these challenges. I'll sleep about the equivalent of six

hour the entire week. So call it about half an hour or an hour per day, but I'll be okay. I mean,

nobody's going to kill me, right? I mean, training. So that was the first thing. The second

thing is I remember what my dad told me, and it's gonna it's kind of funny. But I remember when it

was broken during boot camp training actually was given Hell Week. And I remember that I actually

called crying to what parents, and my dad told me that that was actually like I said, before Hill,

he said, Roy, no one on this planet is able to stop time. So if this is your mission, just let

time work itself out and keep going with the mission. Right? So I remember that line, which is,

again, pretty elementary. And I remember and I exercised the idea of I made the commitment to do

something, nothing comes without challenges. I mean, if it was easy, everybody would have done

that. And all you need to do is to close your eyes and say it will be Friday. But if I do it right,

and I stick around, it will be Friday with my achievement of success. And that's how I exercise

my my decision making process and management style today.

I think it's awesome. You also got somebody else involved you called your dad. And

I'm sure that that emotional push of somebody that you respect and looked up to was right in front of

you all the time as you were working toward Friday.

Absolutely. I'm a big believer in learning to adapt, listening to advice, listening

to constructive criticism that comes from a good place, and really sick for mentors. It's okay to

have mentors. It's not a sign of weakness, it's absolutely important.

I spoke with another gentleman who spent about 27 years as a Navy SEAL in this

country. And he also spoke about how many people rang the bell during buds and left the training.

And he said the one thing they all seem to have in common that made it was it was not all about them.

It's about someone else that was important to them. And I think that's a good lesson as well

realize that people in our lives mean something. And it's not just about us.

Absolutely 100% We actually have in the company would be called management development

program. And we actually had this conversation about the difference between dopamine and actually

the power of the congregation or the power of the network, it is much more powerful, where you see a

child smiling, and being grateful that something you've done for them, as opposed to you going to

Facebook and getting 10 likes, which drives your dopamine creation, right? So when you're doing

something for better goods, or for some external goal, it's much stronger than then if you did it

just for vanity purposes or for your internal selfish wants and needs.

That makes sense. I sometimes think about the difference between joy, which is what

you just described, an amusement and amusement are things that we do without fault without thought

and they just random but true joy always involves other people and some connection of our abilities

applied to the problems of the world. That's when true joy occurs.

I like that.

Well, let's let's share some other thoughts. What what do you do to keep from getting

complacent? You've been highly successful in business, probably you could sit back, put your

feet up on the desk and tell people how great you are. But you don't you are continuing to grow.

You're developing and nurturing people, you're coaching others. What do you do to keep from

getting what we call satisfied itis?

That's a great question. And again, it ties to everything that I've done everything that

pretty much any under any successful entrepreneur and executive visit executive does. I would break

it down to two parts. The first part was what we just talked about, right? So I've been analyzing

the wine. I'm figuring out why am I doing it? What's my what's my passion? What's my vision? Why

am I doing this? Again, I mean, for me, for example, every time I come in the office, I don't

think about the fact that I'm coming to the office because I'm the CEO and this is an exciting

environment and I get such a great vanity of validation of my title and my brand. I come in the

office because I think oh, I actually have 200 team members and keep growing at a very fast pace

in in I'm responsive for their families, and I'm responsible to their families are responsible for

their livelihood and their career. And I want to make sure that 20 years from now, the most amount

of people, when a company can can exit set schedule and say, Oh, this was the pinnacle of my

career that made me who I am and enabled me to be independently wealthy, healthy and provide for my

kids. So it's a long way of saying, you know, it's basically the the the combination of everything we

talked about the joy and what drives me forward. And that's more selfish, selfishly speaking, the

competitive analysis, right? driving forward is I'm a big believer in always look at the ones that

are bigger than you and are doing better than you, even if it's me superficial, right, because I'm

not trying to get to their personal life. But if I'm looking at a Jeff Bezos, or I'm looking at a

Mark Zuckerberg, that is young to me, I'm looking at him and saying, Okay, I want to keep driving,

because he's driving, and I'm far behind him still, right. And that's just the reality of

things. So I use them as a compass to identify my constant pool and goals. You know, they're saying,

if, if you want to break a Guinness World Record, if you want to be the fastest runner in the

Olympics, you need to have someone running right next to you. So so it to me, that's the second

component is creating this comp, competitive compass, that enables me to say I want to keep

pushing forward.

That's great. So you have an internal focus, but you also have an external radar. Yep. I

love it. Now, in terms of, again, personal self management, we might call Do you have a morning

routine? Something that is a habit for you to start your day?

The answer is absolutely is the way I operate is pretty predictable. It's the most

predictable way that you can think of. And if you read articles, you will see that it talks about

how Steve Jobs always wore a black turtleneck shirt, and it didn't have this decision fatigue

over what shirt to wear to work. And I kind of like do the same thing, not because I read that

was years ago, it's maybe the military pragmatic approach. When I wake up in the morning, I know

that I will always shower, I know that I have my T shirts, my jeans and my Lacoste shoes, and know

that I wake up between 630 to 645. And by seven, I have to be out, I know that when I get to the

office, I have my first cup of coffee, and et cetera, et cetera. But the point is, and alongside

that Elsa, know that everything that I need is position in the place that I always leave it like,

for example, I don't lose my phone, I don't lose my phone, because my phone can only be in one spot

in the house. And I'm going to love this the cart keys because they're going to be in one spot in my

bag in the house pretty predictable. So when you create this predictability, you don't burn your

brain sales over a decision fatigue, or over a decision that are not necessarily driving your

core goal. Right. So you leave bandwidth in our CPU in our in our brain, you leave them with

important decisions that you want to make throughout the course of the day.

So you rely on the force of habit and the power of routine to keep emotional energy and

reserve for the most important things. Absolutely. Yeah, there's an old saying, Why is it when you

lose something, you always find it in the final place you look. But if you can just remember car

keys go here, phone goes here. Plus, I think you also have an emotional drive to get the day

started. Because again, you got 200 people depending on you and you have many families that

are depending upon you. It's pretty hard to roll over and hit the snooze alarm when you realize

people are expecting me to do my best.

And I make a point to keep the clock far from me. So I can not hit the snooze alarm.

That's another strategy. Don't Don't, don't leave it within reach, because you've got to turn it

off.

Yes, sir. I guess my last set of questions for you wrote would be to help encourage

people that really need encouragement. Some of our listeners are are kind of out of ACEs right now.

How would you advise people to keep into motion and get things going again?

That's a great question. Obviously, in light of the pandemic, and I'll start with a

perspective, it's going to sound a little bit cheesy, but I think it's important that we slow

down. And we think about it. The start of life, and the end of life. And I heard it recently, the

start of life and the end of life are kumbhak the only definitive real things that you cannot change

everything in between is a 6% it's it's a stage, right? It comes and goes it's what's the worst

that can happen. Just Just think about it, right? I mean, this is not the start and end of life.

This is in between this is the quality of life that you can build. And you can work around and

what's the worst that can happen? So if and I'm going to go extreme right hypothetical, not

hypothetical theoretical that extreme. There's no money you didn't get an SBA loan, no funding for

your business and you have to shut down your your restaurant, for example. I mean, this suffered

tremendously, right that would give to shut down the restaurant. Well, then that's that's it,

right? So the restaurant is shut down. Now, the next thing that you need to think about

immediately is what is your next act? shim, and how you creating a new critical path to a

solution. And the solution is out there. The solution is out there because you can start in

your restaurant, you can partner with a new great friend that you've known for years. That's what

happened to me. That's what happened to me, I went through one of the toughest experience in my life.

And I ran into my friend, and we started set schedule together. So you may go now, after one

business crashed, you go, you go to a new business, and that business would be even better.

And I've seen this so many times. So many times entrepreneur were actually more successful after

their biggest failures. So it's at the end of the day money. And I know, money's important. And I

know that you can take this advice in multiple different ways and say, Oh, Roy doesn't, you know,

as this is doing, okay, right. That's not true. I mean, we all have our challenges. And we all came

from failures, if we have a success with probably had multiple failures before successful story. But

ultimately, you can pivot, and you can change industries. And you can even go in for now or

temporarily work for companies. I mean, the job, the employment world now, I mean, there's, I

think, for every applicant there 20 different positions open now so you can find a job, and

everything is going to be okay.

I love the combination of practical action and internal attitude that everything's

going to be okay. There will be a Friday. We can get there. But I can't get there by sitting around

hitting the snooze alarm. I've got to get into motion and keep things moving. That is sound

advice, Roy.

That was a great instant edit of all of my lines. I liked that.

Well, it's terrific. Well, I want to thank you so much, but not just for you shared

today. But the way you're living your life because it's an example to everybody around you. And we

never know when that example affects somebody and then their example affects someone else, but it's

always important. So thank you so much for being with us today.