00:00:00:00 - 00:00:02:06
Unknown
Welcome, everybody, to the Real Growth Podcast.

00:00:02:09 - 00:00:22:05
Unknown
We're here at a really gross newest headquarters at three six, six zero Sarah Place northwest in Rochester. And, this is the kickoff of a new season. We kind of took a little bit of a hiatus there. So, thank you, everybody. For those that, allowed us to take a break. But now we're back, and it's better than ever.

00:00:22:08 - 00:00:44:27
Unknown
And we are actually, joined by a very special guest, a brand new colleague of ours here at Realty Growth. Mr. Micah Nelson. Thanks for coming, Micah. It's awesome to be here. Thanks for having me, Nick. Thanks for letting me join the team and let me be on the podcast. Yeah, this is pretty awesome. So, you know, before I get started, the people probably have said, man, this looks a little bit different than typical.

00:00:44:27 - 00:01:05:11
Unknown
Yeah. I mean, we have nice chairs and a new set up. And, we also have this brand new which is actually really cool. Really awesome. A lot better, in my opinion, a better setup than we had in the past, which is, which is pretty cool. So, brand new building that we're in and a brand new podcast area.

00:01:05:11 - 00:01:32:13
Unknown
So, gosh, brand new colleague. It's kind of the new us, which I'm super pumped about. So, you know, Micah has had a pretty awesome, and unique, I would say, journey, on his way to, I guess, working here and, very entrepreneurial and something that I really can, appreciate. And I know a lot of our viewers and listeners out there, are looking for these kind of stories.

00:01:32:13 - 00:01:54:28
Unknown
And, and so I'm really excited to learn more about Mike and, and how you got to where you are. And, I guess what you think about real estate so far. And so I just thanks for coming on and being willing to do this. Yeah. Thanks for having me. So, so, Micah, tell us just briefly, you know, what is your story like growing up?

00:01:54:28 - 00:02:34:00
Unknown
Things like that. Sure. Briefly. Yeah. So I grew up in Rochester, Minnesota, graduated Century High School. You know, I really love this place. I'll start with that. You know, I saw a lot of folks I grew up with have left town, you know, gone to bigger cities. But I've always liked the size of Rochester, the type of people that are here, the history with the Mayo Clinic, just the community that is Rochester and what we provide for Minnesota, for the nation, really, for the world as kind of a, a leader in the in the health industry.

00:02:34:03 - 00:03:07:16
Unknown
So, from Rochester, and then I, I graduated with my undergraduate degree in mathematical and computational finance from Babson College, which is located just outside of Boston, Massachusetts. I worked primarily in investment management for a while. Also did a little bit of investment banking, South side mergers and acquisitions transactions, to be precise. And then most recently, before coming to Rye, I actually, was more on the corporate finance side.

00:03:07:16 - 00:03:29:18
Unknown
I was VP of finance for an autonomous vehicle company, of all things, which is a whole nother story. We can get into that if, if Nick wants. Yeah. But they're I led the financial planning and analysis or FPA, which is basically the financial forecasting for the company, with a team of people and co-led the, investor relations with our CEO.

00:03:29:18 - 00:03:50:09
Unknown
We were private equity backed company, very interesting set of investors. The group that led our series A was out of and was out of Germany. We had Japanese investors who were on our board, very exciting company like that there. Between all of that, I also on an ice cream shop out in Boulder, Colorado.

00:03:50:10 - 00:04:15:03
Unknown
Oh, yeah. So if anybody ever wants to talk about ice cream, I can. I can do that pretty much all day long. But the reason I came to our guy is when I was, working in investment management. I worked for a couple of registered investment advisors, or Rias, which are effectively wealth management firms. At one of those firms, we we manage money for ultra high net worth individuals.

00:04:15:05 - 00:04:44:12
Unknown
So these people, they have, they typically have a little bit more sophisticated or complicated investment plan than your typical individual. They take really what I would consider an endowment approach to investing, which means they're in a lot of asset classes beyond just your traditional stocks and bonds. So from working through that, working for that Ria, I got exposure to basically any alternative investment, asset class that you could think of.

00:04:44:15 - 00:05:09:12
Unknown
That included things like, traditional private equity. It included art. And it also included private equity, real estate. So I was able to analyze a lot of private equity real estate funds at that class. I'm sorry at that. All Ria, we would place a lot of our clients as LPs or limited partners within those funds.

00:05:09:15 - 00:05:30:12
Unknown
And to me, that was the most interesting asset class that we invested in. The reason is that there was so much nuance to each piece of real estate, right? Each each piece of real estate, each property is one of one completely unique. Even if you build the same two identical buildings next to each other, there's still a difference in location.

00:05:30:12 - 00:05:59:06
Unknown
And those two buildings are still unique, and that needs to be taken into consideration from an investment standpoint. But simultaneous to that, where real estate differs from a lot of asset classes is that you have these cash flows that exist and you're able to analyze those cash flows. And in my opinion, with a higher degree of confidence than a lot of other asset classes, you can determine the value of those properties.

00:05:59:09 - 00:06:22:02
Unknown
This I would say is in contrast to something like a growth company or an autonomous vehicle company or something like Nvidia, right? I cannot tell you. Nobody can tell you what the value of Nvidia should be because it's all based on future growth and, you know, massive projections for that, where real estate is based off of the near term cash flows that that property is capable of generating.

00:06:22:04 - 00:06:49:09
Unknown
And I appreciate it being able to analyze, those cash flows. So I left the autonomous vehicle company to get my MBA in commercial real estate Investing and development, at the University of Wisconsin. Technically, it'd be an MBA in real estate and urban land economics. Go, Badgers. Thanks. Yeah. Great program. I kind of talked with Nick all throughout that program.

00:06:49:09 - 00:07:15:13
Unknown
And at the end of the day, I believe in Rochester as a real estate market. And it made sense to, to join Nick's company. Yeah. Well, I mean, we're definitely very fortunate. I can say first and foremost, but also extremely happy to have Mike. On our team. It just kind of adds a whole nother dynamic, to what we're able to offer to our clients.

00:07:15:15 - 00:07:47:01
Unknown
And those that are actually looking into getting into real estate. So let's I kind of want to wind it back a little bit because I, I when, when I first met Mike, we, we, we talked a lot and it was probably over a year and a half, relationship that we formulated, I would say prior to actually Mike coming to work, but, one thing that I always really fascinated me was the fact that Mike, owned, an ice cream shop, and, I love ice cream.

00:07:47:04 - 00:08:06:03
Unknown
I really love flap doodles. I still have a, cookie monster cake in my freezer that my wife and I are continuing to eat, because that thing probably weighs 10 pounds. And, you know, we can't possibly eat it all at once. Although I would like to. That is like the ultimate dessert there, though, Nicky. Cookies, cake and ice cream.

00:08:06:04 - 00:08:17:15
Unknown
And it does. I mean, it really doesn't get much better than the monster cake. And then and then that cookie crumbled on top, you know, like Oreos and, and cookie dough, I mean, yeah, give me a break. And not only that, but it's blue

00:08:17:17 - 00:08:19:13
Unknown
ice cream. Why ice cream?

00:08:19:13 - 00:08:28:28
Unknown
And what made you think, oh, man, I'm going to move out to Boulder, Colorado and open this ice cream shop, even though I've never really done this before.

00:08:29:00 - 00:08:36:23
Unknown
when I, when I, when I grew up, as kids, you know, I had three siblings, and, in my house, we all just.

00:08:36:23 - 00:08:52:21
Unknown
I don't know what it was, but we were we were also fascinated with ice cream. We loved ice cream in my house. We never had dessert, and we just had ice cream. Just have ice. And it was every night. And I mean, it was like you did not go to bed as a kid before you ate your ice cream for the night.

00:08:52:22 - 00:09:14:10
Unknown
God, I love that. So I just personally always liked ice cream. At some point, I really got into the science of making ice cream, and it was a pretty serious hobby of mine for about three years, where basically every weekend I would make a different flavor of ice cream. And I really got into the science of the whole thing.

00:09:14:12 - 00:09:32:05
Unknown
I, I've never done this personally, but I liken it to people who brew beer where there's all these little tweaks you can make to your recipe that will change the mouthfeel of your of the ice cream. It'll change, how hard the ice cream is when it freezes, how sweet the ice cream tastes. What's the perception of sweetness?

00:09:32:05 - 00:09:53:05
Unknown
Right. So it was just kind of a, I guess you would call it a passion. Mine making ice cream. But then the other thing I really liked about ice cream as a business, well, a few things for folks who understand the food industry. It's a very difficult business. Margins are very small. There's a lot of issues with, with, inventory.

00:09:53:08 - 00:10:14:06
Unknown
Ice cream overcomes some of that. It's more scalable. Your inventory is frozen, so you don't have to worry about that as much. So from a business perspective, I thought it made sense. But I also like that the customers are always happy. Ice cream just makes people happy. It's very rare you see a sad person in an ice cream shop.

00:10:14:08 - 00:10:44:16
Unknown
So why why Boulder, Colorado? You know, that was more just happenstance. Yeah. I've always liked mountains. So that was attractive to me. But, there's actually a gentleman who was selling an ice cream shop in Boulder, Colorado. He owned a, he had kind of a long history in Boulder as a restaurant here. He owned a a, a basically a, a restaurant and microbrewery next door to the ice cream shop.

00:10:44:16 - 00:11:03:03
Unknown
He had ran that for about ten years, quite successfully. He opened the ice cream shop, ran that for about two years, and he was just a little bit below break even on that ice cream shop. So I went out and visited him, and I could tell all of his focus was on his restaurant and his brewery, and not on the ice cream shop.

00:11:03:03 - 00:11:24:00
Unknown
His concept was everybody would eat at the brewery and go to that, and then go over to the ice cream shop for dessert, but I could tell his focus was just not at the ice cream shop, but he had set it up extremely well. He had a good brand. He had a lot of good equipment in there. In my opinion, enough equipment to run a small wholesale business.

00:11:24:03 - 00:11:47:08
Unknown
He was also the only ice cream shop in all of Butler and all of Colorado that was making ice cream completely from scratch. So, what a lot of people might not recognize about shops that claim to have homemade ice cream is many of those shops. What they're doing is they're buying a base, an ice cream base, which is your milk, your eggs, your cream, sugar, all mixed together, all pre pasteurized.

00:11:47:11 - 00:12:09:08
Unknown
They're dumping it into a churn. And then all they're really doing is just adding the ingredients. Yeah. Freezing that, adding some mixins, maybe some flavors. Now where at my shop we would make the ice cream completely from scratch. We bought cream from a local dairy. We were their largest buyer of cream. We would pasteurize the cream and the egg yolks ourselves in the shop.

00:12:09:08 - 00:12:32:10
Unknown
We would add the sugar ourselves. And what this really allowed us to do is you could create much stronger, more vivid flavor profiles. So, for example, we had a burnt honey ice cream. Interesting. If you want your ice cream to taste like honey, but your base is already sweetened with sugar, well, then you can't sweeten that with honey anymore.

00:12:32:12 - 00:13:00:00
Unknown
So we would sweeten the base with honey. Or maybe we would sweeten a different base with maple sirup. Our best selling ice cream. We sold more of this than vanilla ice cream. Was coffee. There we would sweeten that with sweetened condensed milk. So we just had we had so much more control over, our flavor profiles and over the consistency and the quality of the product by creating our own base, that, you know, I really wanted to do that.

00:13:00:03 - 00:13:18:21
Unknown
So those are a few reasons why I took on that shop in, in in Colorado. Wow. I that's crazy. I guess I didn't realize that. I, you know, we always say we learn something new every day and wow, that's that's that's fascinating. So I gotta ask you. So you said that the top one of your top flavors was coffee.

00:13:18:21 - 00:13:36:16
Unknown
But what what is your. I just have to ask you, what was your favorite or what is your favorite kind of ice cream? Oh, my. I mean, my favorite ice cream. That that's easy. It's maybe a little boring, but anything with peanut butter I love. And I mean, this gets to making your own base, right? You add peanut butter, the base, it changes so many things.

00:13:36:16 - 00:13:57:05
Unknown
You might have to use less fat content because there's fat in your peanut butter. Right. So you need to change around ingredients in that base. But yeah, anything where you get a really nice strong peanut butter flavor, I like that. That's awesome. And it sounds like if I were ever in the ice cream business, I would just buy the pre-made stuff like you said, and just dump whatever ingredients I want.

00:13:57:07 - 00:14:12:25
Unknown
That's easier and easier. Yeah, it doesn't make it better though, but what was wait, wait a second, what was the name of the what was the name of the ice cream shop? Well, the name is ironic. The name was heifer and the hen. For anybody who knows what a heifer is, that's actually a cow that has not given any milk yet.

00:14:12:25 - 00:14:29:15
Unknown
But those are your two primary ingredients for ice cream are milk and eggs, or cream and eggs, however you want to think about it. So we had heifer in the hat. That's awesome. And was that a name that was already created or is that one that you you you made that that came over with the shop with the as part of his branding?

00:14:29:17 - 00:14:57:06
Unknown
He did a phenomenal job. One story I always like to tell about the shop is in our shop. We had this, it was a concrete countertop, and we had three swings that were used as seating on that concrete countertop. And, I mean, these were real legitimate swings, chained to the ceiling. And little kids having a sugar high from the ice cream would come in, and they would really swing on the swings in front of that concrete countertop.

00:14:57:08 - 00:15:13:11
Unknown
I mean, I'm sure it was a liability. I won't tell you whether or not I told the insurance company about those swings, but they were fun. But nothing happened, right? Nothing ever happened. We we're good. It doesn't matter that they didn't even get close. Yeah, exactly. Just a lot of kids with big smiles on their face.

00:15:13:11 - 00:15:30:00
Unknown
Yes. That is awesome. Yeah, I think that's really interesting. When you said, you know, it's one of the only businesses probably. And you're probably correct on this that everybody's happy. I'm guessing the only time that you'd ever saw someone unhappy is if, they finished their ice cream, and mom and dad said, okay, it's time to go home, okay?

00:15:30:04 - 00:15:48:05
Unknown
Or, I mean, this is a story, I think, pertinent to ice cream. I'm sorry, pertinent to Rochester. Sometimes you have customers come in sad, right? Like maybe a little kid just came from the hospital visit, got a shot or whatever. But they come in, they get, whether it's a kid or an adult, they come in and they get a scoop of ice cream, and then they're happy.

00:15:48:06 - 00:16:11:17
Unknown
Gosh. So ice cream, that is the future of medicine, I think. Right. Possibly. Okay. All right. So then okay, so you start, you do this ice cream shop and just kind of continue on with that. What happened then. Right. So you have this ice cream shop. How long have you been running it and what happened. Well like I can tell you what happened.

00:16:11:17 - 00:16:34:06
Unknown
Yeah that's simple Covid. Covid calls it Covid killed heifer in the hen. I'm sorry. I mean, it's the truth. No, honestly, though, I mean, we were doing really great. I think if it was not for Covid, in all sincerity, I believe I would still be in Boulder, Colorado selling ice cream. We had at that point we had established 13 local partnerships.

00:16:34:06 - 00:16:58:15
Unknown
Wow. Our ingredients. So we were I mean, aside from stuff that could not be locally sourced like sugar, for example, we were getting probably 90 or 95% of the contents of the ice cream locally. We were in discussion with, the dairy, which was a fairly large local business, about opening up a second store in Longmont, Colorado, which is nearby Boulder.

00:16:58:18 - 00:17:19:21
Unknown
I was in discussion with some, local grocers about, wholesaling some of the ice cream we had we had I mean, we had doubled the, revenue on a monthly basis year over year. So just really exciting things. But this was actually my first year of owning the ice cream shop. Wow. It's unreal. Unbelievable. Yeah.

00:17:19:21 - 00:17:42:02
Unknown
As an ice cream shop, you need to make, I would say as an ice cream shop in Colorado, about 70% of your revenue. May, June, July, August and April 2020 comes along. And, you know, I'm staring down that risk of, yeah, nobody knows. And I mean, nothing against Boulder, but they had a pretty extreme reaction to Covid. I would say.

00:17:42:04 - 00:18:12:19
Unknown
Where I mean, literally overnight my revenue went from something that was quite substantial to zero to nothing for days. Yeah. I think about half of the restaurants in Boulder went out of business because of Covid. I was very fortunate that I had already had, just for different reasons. I had had some very preliminary discussions with that autonomous vehicle company that I went to work for.

00:18:12:21 - 00:18:31:15
Unknown
So having that opportunity kind of partially available already and not knowing what would happen with Covid, not knowing how long that would last. I mean, I don't know about unique, but I honestly thought Covid was going to be like a two week ordeal in that, yeah, we could all be back. Yeah. You know, then it was a month at that point.

00:18:31:15 - 00:18:51:09
Unknown
I made the decision. All right, we'll take this other opportunity. And frankly, I'm glad I did because Covid dragged out for years. Yeah for sure. Right. No. Hey that's gosh kudos to you for for making that decision. So I guess before we move on to that next that next phase in life. What what what was your biggest takeaway, Mike?

00:18:51:11 - 00:19:12:17
Unknown
From owning your own business? And, I mean, because ice cream is a pure passion of yours, which. That's great. What? What's the key takeaway from you? From those, you know, whatever that was a year or two years that you're doing that. That's a that's a good question. I mean, there were a lot of key takeaways.

00:19:12:17 - 00:19:34:28
Unknown
I without a doubt, running a small business was the most formative experience in my life. Right. Like, sure, I have a degree in mathematical and computational finance, an MBA in real estate. But I learned more from running that ice cream shop than from both those degrees combined.

00:19:35:00 - 00:20:00:21
Unknown
Just one learning about how hard it is to run a small business. Everything that you need to manage on your own or with your team. Right. And as the owner, as the owner operator, you're ultimately responsible for motivating the team, organizing the team. Also that relationships, business relationships really, really matter matter both to the people you're transacting with, right?

00:20:00:21 - 00:20:29:16
Unknown
So, you know, we want it to treat our partners fair. We want it to have partners that treat us fair. But they also mattered to our customers, too, like people who care about a community. They like to see that you're partnered with local suppliers. So the importance of relationships in business, and then just, I would say those were my two key takeaways, the difficulties of running a business and the importance of relationships for running that business.

00:20:29:16 - 00:20:48:05
Unknown
Yeah. And I know a lot of people that listen to this are a lot of them are in that small business category of people or people that are looking to start a business and, I, I would concur with that. And, it is hard and, but it also can be a very rewarding thing. And you do learn so much.

00:20:48:08 - 00:21:13:13
Unknown
Just by doing, I oftentimes look at my own life and look, I, I had a wonderful experience in, at Saint Olaf and all of those things, but I think I learned more by doing than from actually what my you know, what I got from my degree. And I think that's so true. And I think, you know, business, whatever business it is you do, you learn a lot.

00:21:13:13 - 00:21:39:18
Unknown
And, there's there's obviously struggles involved, but, you know, you continue to work hard and things will pay off. Now, obviously, no one can predict a international pandemic. Right. And what the potential effects could be or how long it could take, you know, to get through that. But, for you to have that foresight or just have that gut feeling that, gosh, you know, maybe this is the right move for me is to just go.

00:21:39:20 - 00:22:00:08
Unknown
That's pretty incredible. Because, as you pointed out, some people weren't as lucky, right? I don't know if I'd call it foresight. It's just a decision I had. Well, I had no more information than anybody else. Yeah. That's true. Well, I'll call you the Oracle. Maybe. Okay. I'll on that. Okay. Perfect. All right, so ice cream, we're moving on.

00:22:00:11 - 00:22:27:01
Unknown
Next we have the autonomous vehicle, which is kind of like, that's kind of a hot topic right now. Still to with everything going on. What what was that like? And now you go from working for yourself, right? Owning your own business to now working for somebody else? Sure. Yeah. I mean, it was great. I honestly, I enjoyed every moment I spent at that company.

00:22:27:04 - 00:22:58:11
Unknown
Our company, what we did, we were not the developers of autonomous vehicles, but we sold safety engineering software and safety engineering services to the developers of autonomous vehicles. So for anybody who follows the autonomous vehicle industry, or if you don't, our customers or the folks who are actually developing the software that operates these vehicles autonomously, and we're not talking a Tesla full self-driving, which I don't think they're allowed to call it that anymore.

00:22:58:18 - 00:23:21:22
Unknown
We're talking vehicles that are meant to operate with nobody in the car. So no driver behind the wheel, nobody in the vehicle. Right. So our customers were, you know, and this is these are just examples of who our customers could have been. You know, it'd be folks like Waymo, Aurora cruise, Waymo is Google's self-driving car project.

00:23:21:25 - 00:23:43:21
Unknown
Zoox was Amazon's self-driving car project. And then also we we did a lot of work for the government. As folks might imagine, there's a lot of military applications for autonomous vehicles that don't, you know, maybe the risk tolerance is a little bit higher for those applications than it is for commercial vehicles that are going to be driven on our streets.

00:23:43:24 - 00:24:06:23
Unknown
But we would really help our customers think about how do you deploy your autonomous vehicles in a safe manner, right. How can you do that? Which is honestly the number one issue facing that industry right now, and I think it will be for quite some time. But it's definitely, especially if we see the leaps and bounds that AI is taking right now.

00:24:06:26 - 00:24:45:20
Unknown
I do believe that safety barrier is surmountable over time. It's just people. Companies need to take a prudent approach to safety and to deploying their vehicles. And I think how we'll see autonomous vehicles be commercialized over time is, through what, basically through for the expanding use applications within the autonomous vehicle field, there's something we call, operational design domain, and that is the entire environment that your vehicle is meant to operate in.

00:24:45:23 - 00:25:15:27
Unknown
Now, that environment that includes the the type of roads, the traffic conditions, the weather conditions, the tire pressures, everything. Is it dark out? Is it light? So I do believe that there are applications or odds that autonomous vehicles can safely be operated in today. If we think of point to point trucking, right, particularly on a more desolate straight interstate, maybe, you know, in the southwest United States.

00:25:15:29 - 00:25:49:01
Unknown
If you think of point to point trucking for a semi truck, I've actually ridden in an autonomous semi truck, 18 Wheeler, oh, fully autonomous semi truck, nobody behind the wheel on I-5 in California. Oh my gosh. We got on the interstate. We got off the interstate. And because this was a vehicle that was set up for demos, there were a lot of, you know, visuals screens in the vehicle where the passengers could see everything that the autonomous vehicle sensors are seeing.

00:25:49:04 - 00:26:18:27
Unknown
And I could tell you, knowing everything that that autonomous system could see compared to what a human trucker could see, I believe without a doubt that autonomous trucks can be safer and probably safer than human driven trucks. But for other applications like driving a taxi through a downtown area, an urban environment, there's so many more variables there where I don't think we're we can safely achieve that use case yet.

00:26:18:29 - 00:26:50:28
Unknown
But if we can slowly expand the applications that autonomous vehicles are being used for, and while we're doing that, we can, you know, basically we can accumulate testing miles. We can continue to consider, what risks need to be mitigated for the autonomous vehicles. And I do believe that over time, we can slowly expand those odds or the environments that the vehicles can operate in.

00:26:51:00 - 00:27:15:03
Unknown
And I do believe in a future where there are more autonomous vehicles than human driven vehicles. I just don't know how long it takes us to get there. Particularly for some of the more complicated, applications. You heard it from the Oracle. There are going to be more autonomous vehicles someday. Someday could be ten, 15, 50, 100 years.

00:27:15:03 - 00:27:36:11
Unknown
I don't know, I do believe that is the future, though. You heard it here first on the Real Growth podcast. So, yeah, I mean, I loved working for that company. It's a fascinating industry, but I mean, maybe to bring it back to real estate again, that's a growth industry, you know, how do you share what it's worth? How do you make investment decisions.

00:27:36:13 - 00:27:57:16
Unknown
Right. And it can be done. Obviously, a lot of very, very smart people are investing in that industry. The industry is making progress. But to me, real estate, it's an investment that you can think of, or at least I can think of. I think many people in the industry can think of in, in different ways than, than those, growth industries.

00:27:57:18 - 00:28:02:05
Unknown
Yeah. So I guess that's a great segue into where we are at today

00:28:02:07 - 00:28:04:17
Unknown
then Michael, what made you think?

00:28:04:19 - 00:28:27:16
Unknown
And I know you, you work with some private equity firms and like that, but then it was time to to do something else. And real estate was that thing. So, I know you had mentioned earlier on, you know, real estate was an interesting asset class that you were always looking at and things like that. And, you're a numbers guy, obviously with your, with your, background in, in your undergrad.

00:28:27:18 - 00:28:48:00
Unknown
So how did you come to the realization that Madison was the place? Because I'm sure there's other places as well. Right. But why Madison? And like, what was that experience like? Because your experience doing real estate's so far is a lot different than I think a majority of people that are in the business, especially from a sales side of things.

00:28:48:02 - 00:29:08:22
Unknown
So yeah, it's just kind of talk about that for a little bit. Yeah, yeah. All good questions. I mean, I can start with why Madison. Yeah, there's a few reasons for that. One. I wanted to stay in the Midwest. Yeah. I think just because it is such a small market, I didn't necessarily see myself coming back to Rochester.

00:29:08:24 - 00:29:29:26
Unknown
That was kind of like the, you know, the dream. If I could do that, just because I do like this place. And I think Rochester, from a real estate perspective, we have this rare combination of growth and stability that you just don't see in other markets, and that that growth and stability has persisted long term in Rochester, which I really appreciate.

00:29:29:28 - 00:29:49:17
Unknown
But I for sure wanted to stay in the Midwest. And I didn't even know it at the time that I started looking at real estate schools. But University of Wisconsin is one of, if not the top, actually, for undergrad, we were ranked the number just last year, ranked the number one, real estate program in the country.

00:29:49:19 - 00:30:33:08
Unknown
MBA we're we're always in the top five, right in there with, you know, Wharton, Harvard, those schools, NYU is typically up there, but the UW or University of Wisconsin Madison real estate program is extremely strong. The alumni network there is incredible, I would you know, I've had it been told to me and I tend to I kind of believe this is true, that there is not a single large real estate transaction or development project that happens in the United States that does not, in some capacity, involve a University of Wisconsin real estate alumni.

00:30:33:11 - 00:30:59:29
Unknown
Our undergraduate program has over 800 students in it. Now, the MBA was quite a bit smaller. My class had nine students. We have a master's program, one year master's program that has about 70 students. And when I applied, I could see how much the alumni support each other. How beneficial that is not just for their careers, but for what they're able to accomplish for the communities that they develop real estate in.

00:31:00:02 - 00:31:19:07
Unknown
And I wanted to be a part of that. Yeah. And that was really cool. And I can tell you, I've, I've already personally felt that realty growth has felt that, just within the two I think it's been two months since, Mike has been here, just the meetings in itself. Like, literally Mike, his first week on the job, we literally went to Las Vegas for ICC.

00:31:19:07 - 00:31:40:29
Unknown
I don't know, we talked about that, I don't know, a month ago or whatever. And the people that he connected with, I'll be honest, I don't think that I would have been able to get probably some of these meetings because I don't have any connection. And it was very evident that this is this place is something special. And and I can tell you what he's saying about how far this reaches.

00:31:41:03 - 00:32:03:21
Unknown
You can definitely feel it because I, I, I it's like everybody you talk to is like, oh man, UW Madison real estate program and it you're right. It's like infiltrated all the major, development companies and things like that. So, that there is a huge reach there. So, kudos to you again. Oracle. Oh, boy.

00:32:03:23 - 00:32:26:01
Unknown
I, I got a hefty nickname to live up to now. So. Yeah. So, you know, you enjoy. Obviously, Madison's a great town. You enjoyed your time there, and, and now we're kind of like, get to where we are at today. Moving back to your hometown. Yeah. And, working along with, I hope, some pretty cool people.

00:32:26:01 - 00:32:46:05
Unknown
I mean, I, I like to think that our office is pretty cool and, going places. And I guess how how has everything been going? I would say for the first 1 or 2 months, it's basically been, I mean, so far it's been awesome. Yeah. I'll say that first. Nick is a great guy to work with.

00:32:46:05 - 00:33:15:11
Unknown
I think I knew that going in from having so many conversations with him prior to this. But the rest of the team is awesome, too. Like, almost everybody here is local to Rochester. They all like and want to be invested in the community, and they're all just really great people to work with. And yeah, and Nick asked the question earlier, you know, how is what I did at UW or what I studied there, maybe a little bit different than a lot of what a lot of folks are doing in the real estate industry.

00:33:15:13 - 00:33:40:02
Unknown
I focused on real estate development and investment. So not just transactions, but how do you make real estate projects happen? Right. At either a small scale or large scale. And that's really what I'm here to help, to help Nick and to help our guy with is to build out a development business and through that, through looking at different potential development projects within Rochester.

00:33:40:02 - 00:34:02:10
Unknown
We're just meeting a lot of really cool people and having a lot of great conversations. You know, with local business people, with, landowners, property owners, business owners, the city, and just really thinking about what can we what does Rochester need, what can we do to make Rochester a better place? And I think that's awesome and really fun.

00:34:02:13 - 00:34:34:08
Unknown
We're just getting started, and I can't wait to see what we do over the coming. Hopefully, hopefully many years. Yeah. No. And I, I wholeheartedly agree with that. And and I guess you know, I know I mentioned this earlier, but it's, it's a real honor and a pleasure to have. I would say someone and I sincerely mean this of your caliber to move back to Rochester, who wanted to move back to Rochester because you, you you feel so, close.

00:34:34:08 - 00:34:58:14
Unknown
And this is home, and you want to make this place a better place. And, all I can say is everybody here at Realty Growth, we're so fortunate to have you working alongside us and and, building something bigger and better and making this community which has given us all so much. Right, just and it back to the community and hopefully making this place a much better place for, for many, many, many, many, many years.

00:34:58:17 - 00:35:16:04
Unknown
So, you know, I, I appreciate the time and I appreciate you coming on here. And I think what we're going to do is, is we're going to have a follow up with Micah and his, like, first, you know, it's called the first 100 days of Micah's life at Realty Growth. Oh, boy. And maybe we can even, like, shed some light on some of the things that we're working on.

00:35:16:04 - 00:35:20:16
Unknown
I think that might be really fun because we are working on stuff. We're working on stuff, we're working

00:35:20:16 - 00:35:34:27
Unknown
other thought, you know, I want to make Rochester better, but that's because Rochester is already awesome. And I think it can be more awesome. And I couldn't be more excited to be here, to be working with Nick and to be working with the rest of the team. I guess I'll leave it at that.

00:35:35:00 - 00:35:49:23
Unknown
Perfect. Well, thank you everybody. Thank you Micah, thank you for all of you out there listening to us. Once again. We're back in action with the Real Growth Podcast. And, we look forward to many, many more future podcasts. Thanks, everybody. Thank you.