This video features an experienced banker and private equity specialist sharing nuanced insights on how ultra-wealthy families—billionaires—think, operate, and grow their business empires. With real-world stories from decades of working inside major family offices, the speaker explains both the philosophy and tactical details behind billionaires’ approach to scaling companies, investing, and deal-making. He highlights the importance of working on the business at a visionary level rather than getting trapped in the day-to-day minutiae, all while maintaining a strong grip on critical details during execution. The session delves into why relationships, genuine care for people, and impeccable attention to detail form the foundation of sustainable financial success. Attendees learn that building strong teams, loyalty, curiosity, and ongoing learning are just as vital as mastering negotiation, financial acumen, and opportunity sourcing. The video showcases illustrative anecdotes ranging from buying distressed companies and sour real estate deals to creative networking and troubleshooting international investments, all underscoring the irreplaceable value of ethics, transparency, and communication.

What makes this talk particularly compelling is the speaker's ability to break down high-level business wisdom into actionable steps for aspiring entrepreneurs and professionals who wish to work with or learn from the ultra-wealthy. He unpacks the do's and don'ts of pitching to billionaire families, emphasizes succinct and clear communication, and shares lessons learned about loyalty and transparency in deal-making. He also discusses the significance of global awareness, due diligence, and thoroughly understanding contracts and numbers, stressing that overlooking seemingly minor details can cost millions. Practical routines, strategic preparation, and maintaining a growth mindset come through as must-have habits for those aiming for substantial long-term achievements.

Main takeaways from the video:

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Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. distressed turnarounds [dɪˈstrɛst ˌtɜːrnəˈraʊndz] - (noun phrase) - The process of reviving and restructuring companies or assets that are in financial trouble or bankruptcy, aiming to restore them to profitability. - Synonyms: (restructuring, rehabilitation, business rescue)

I was a banker at Chase for seven years in the workout group. My nickname there was the pit bull. So when somebody needed, when they needed to get their loan collected, I, I got it collected for them. I then had my own financial advisory firm doing advisory work in and around bankruptcy and distressed turnarounds.

2. due diligence [duː ˈdɪlɪdʒəns] - (noun phrase) - An investigation or audit of a potential investment, deal, or product to confirm all facts, such as reviewing financial records before entering into an agreement or a transaction. - Synonyms: (investigation, audit, background check)

Whoa, big guy, just let me go over that due diligence. Do I know the cost of every truck? Do I know how it's made? Do I know the channels?

3. indefatigable [ˌɪndɪˈfætɪɡəbl] - (adjective) - Persisting tirelessly; incapable of being fatigued or giving up. - Synonyms: (tireless, unflagging, persistent)

And these guys are indefatigable. One of the four brothers in the family that owns the Mall of America. I've been all over the world for him. It'd be unbelievable.

4. peripatetic [ˌpɛrɪpəˈtɛtɪk] - (adjective) - Traveling from place to place, especially working or based in various places for relatively short periods. - Synonyms: (nomadic, itinerant, wandering)

And talking to people again, they're very peripatetic these billionaires talking to a lot of people. Maybe they don't give out their phone number, that they constantly talk to people, constantly learning from people, trying to find the smartest people they can learn from and, and become better with.

5. deleterious [ˌdɛlɪˈtɪəriəs] - (adjective) - Causing harm or damage. - Synonyms: (harmful, damaging, detrimental)

Sometimes people make it and they get very lost in the wealth and don't want to give too many details, but it can be very deleterious to the children.

6. succinct [səkˈsɪŋkt] - (adjective) - Briefly and clearly expressed; concise. - Synonyms: (concise, terse, brief)

How do you do that? How do you get in? And very important to be succinct and know what you're talking about.

7. triage [ˈtriːɑːʒ] - (noun / verb) - The process of prioritizing actions or tasks based on their urgency or importance. - Synonyms: (prioritize, sort, rank)

triage. Sometimes different things come up. You got to triage Appointments. And in the morning, be prepared.

8. deleterious [ˌdɛlɪˈtɪəriəs] - (adjective) - Causing harm or damage (repeated use, note for learning emphasis). - Synonyms: (injurious, noxious, unfavorable)

Sometimes people make it and they get very lost in the wealth and don't want to give too many details, but it can be very deleterious to the children.

9. voraciously [vəˈreɪʃəsli] - (adverb) - In an extremely eager or hungry manner, especially for learning or knowledge. - Synonyms: (eagerly, ravenously, avidly)

I don't know anything about any of these industries, but I read voraciously and also talk to people that you spend time talking to people.

10. proprietary [prəˈpraɪəˌtɛri] - (adjective) - Relating to ownership; something exclusively owned or controlled. - Synonyms: (exclusive, private, owned)

We actually produced the most energy efficient garbage truck in the industry. We tried CNG and propane and you know, whatever. Every new fangled thing that came out of there that didn't work.

11. usury [ˈjuːʒəri] - (noun) - The practice of lending money at unreasonably high interest rates. - Synonyms: (loan-sharking, exorbitant interest, predatory lending)

And another time you mentioned there was interest due on a company and the company is bankrupt and you're able to acquire that company, find out the interest actually broke usury laws and all of the interest was void and that you actually owed nothing and you picked up the company out of bankruptcy, didn't owe the debt that made it bankrupt, and were able to lift that company up very quickly, all by showing that immediate value by telling stories like that.

12. credibility [ˌkrɛdəˈbɪləti] - (noun) - The quality of being trusted and believed in. - Synonyms: (trustworthiness, reliability, integrity)

And if you're there for people, in the long run, people make everything work. And if you're loyal to people, that's how you have success.

42 Billionaire Strategies for Success - Family Office Club - Investor Mastermind

Thank you so much for Richard and his team for inviting me to, to come up and talk today. Just share a little bio with you. I was a banker at Chase for seven years in the workout group. My nickname there was the pit bull. So when somebody needed, when they needed to get their loan collected, I, I got it collected for them. I then had my own financial advisory firm doing advisory work in and around bankruptcy and distressed turnarounds. Bankruptcy and distressed M and a bankruptcy and distressed financings.

And then I got this idea that maybe I could buy companies in bankruptcy, but I didn't really have enough money to do it. So I cold called a bunch of billionaire families and said, hey, I got a great idea. We can make a lot of money doing this. And believe it or not, one of them said, come on down and join us. And that was the Mall of America family. I worked for them for 15 years. I started and ran their direct private equity business. I bought 11 companies to them and a bank. I'm on the board of the bank and chairman of the credit committee for the last 13 years. And then I, of the 11 companies I bought, I was chairman of five of those companies. Each company is in a totally different industry and everything like that. And so I've worked in the world of billionaires. I work for another billionaire family right now, working with the kids and then doing large deals for the, you know, for the founding principal. And I work for another also billionaire family that's more of a deal junkie, doing different deals.

So Richard asked me to share with you, how do billionaires scale their business, invest, how do they do business, how do they operate and how do they, you know, how do they make it work? And I want to share. One key thing is work on your business, not in your business. So you are the visionary to think about how to make it work, how to put all the pieces together. Don't get lost in the weeds. And I remember one of the family members gave me a great example. He and another person, they each bought a hotel at the same time. And the other person was busy, nervous. Maybe people are taking money out of the cash register. Maybe they're stealing from him, maybe this and that. And the other investor said, look, I, I want to be in the hotel business. If I'm going to be watching that cash register, I'm going to be here all day and all night. And he ended up buying four hotels a year later and the other guy was still at the hotel counting his money, making sure he didn't get cheated.

And so you have to have the big picture view. You have to believe in what you're doing. Have a. Have played a long game. And if you play the long game, you'll be able to go through and navigate, you know, a lot of different things that might. That might occur along the way. But this. This hotel analogy, very, very important. The other thing is that all of these people are people. People. You know, they like people. Now, in a deal, they may twist your arm a little bit or a lot bit, but at the end of the day, they're all people that are interested in people. And I just remember a great story that one of them had told me, that during the Depression, there was a suit store and suits for $15. And the guy hadn't sold a suit in months. And a young guy came in, he said, listen, I want to be a suit salesman. He said, listen, you know, you're welcome to do it, but I haven't sold a suit in. In three months. He said, let me try it. And their suits were $15. Guy comes into the store, he says, how much is the suit? He says, $20. The owner's like, I couldn't sell suit for 15. And the guy says. He says they're trying the suit. And the guy goes in, tries on the suit, comes out. He says, I'll take it. Unbelievable. He's hadn't sold a suit in three months, and it takes a suit. Another guy comes in looking for a suit. How much is the suit? $20. He says, we'll try on the suit in the. In the fitting room, tries it on, and I'll take it. And the owner's like, I can't believe it because he sold two suits in one day. I haven't sold a suit in three months. So he asked the kid, he said, tell me, you know, I haven't sold a suit for $15. You're selling suit for $20. Like, what's going on? He said, I stitch a $5 bill into the pocket of the pants, and when they go in to try the suit on, they see the $5 is stuck in the pants, and they think they're getting a deal. So they buy the suit. They. They made five bucks. And so that's how I sell the suits. And it's a great lesson in life. You know, you always have to be focused on not only your own interests, but other people's.

Interest I mentioned yesterday when I spoke in Florida for Richard, is that sometimes you get an email, a group email, and somebody says, I can't make it. You know, family Emergency. And many people, they just write back and say, oh, well, we'll reschedule it. They don't write and say, oh, I hope everything's okay. And if you're the kind of person that stops and says, I think I hope everything's okay, and then find out if you could be of help, that's what that makes success. And I mentioned the other day that I had three different incidents. I'm just going to recite two of them where people appreciated that I had helped them out and put me on their boards. The first one was an African American man. I had met him at a conference and we stayed in touch. Whenever he come to New York, I'd say, you know, when we have lunch, everything like that, and it's no big deal. I didn't think, like, I'm a big hero or anything like that. And now he has. He just formed a company to go public and he asked me to be on his board. He said, I remember every time I came to New York, you had lunch with me. You asked, how am I doing? What could you do to help me? And you'll see this in the billionaire families as well, constantly helping people. You know that you have to be looking out for people because every business is really people. You might have the greatest quant strategy, but you got to raise money from people. You got to have higher people to run your quant strategy, whatever it is. Everything comes down to people and knowing how to treat people right. I just said, this story too is I just got on the advisory board of an AI prop tech company. And what happened was a year ago I had spoken in California at a conference and this young guy was on my panel and there was a person from a brand new proptech venture capital fund there. And I was very impressed with this young guy's company. So when we finished the panel, I said, gee, you know, to the guy from the prop tech fund, I said, you know, you should take a look at this guy's business. I think he's got something really interesting. And he said, you know, snob me out, snubbed him out. And I was like, okay, I guess, you know, maybe I'm wrong. So a year later, I met this young guy with the prop tech company. I didn't even recognize him, actually. He was on my panel. I didn't recognize him. He said, you know, I'll tell you, I never forget something. When we finished that panel and you said to the guy, you should look at his company. And that guy snobbed me out. And you stood by me to recommend it. I'll never forget that. And I want you on my advisory board, even though I didn't actually even remember what he looked like when I saw him. But if you're there for people, in the long run, people make everything work. And if you're loyal to people, that's how you have success.

I mentioned also, you have to be in. You have to dream big, but you have to get into the details. Because the details, as I mentioned, you know, you have to dream big, but don't trip over your shoelaces. You know, like, you can be running to go do something, but if your shoelaces are tied, you're going to fall. So you got to. You got to know the details. And I just give you a couple of examples of that. Recently, I've been advising a fund. They put in $5 million about 13 months ago, and the company went bankrupt. And I said, listen, guys, you know, let me help you work with your lawyers to get, you know, try and get your money back. And they said, these were already paying $1,000 an hour for these lawyers. You know, now with you where, you know, our billing is going to be super high. I said, okay, but I'm saying, like, your lawyer, he knows law. He doesn't know business and finance. And I said, no, no, he'll handle it. He's great. And sure enough, he filed awful papers that had nothing to do with the numbers. Like, had some gobbledygook. He didn't understand the difference between accrual and accounting and cash accounting. And they're probably going to lose $5 million. So very important to support, surround yourself with people that know the details that you studied when you first got into the business, but they can execute. Super important to know. It's so many instances we have a case in our bank where we lent money to a guy and of course, you know, we wanted personal guarantee pgs. He didn't want a pg. So we compromised. We said, okay, after a year, the property is stable. The PG will burn up, you know, if you do X, Y, Z. So lo and behold, five years later, says, here's the keys. You know, this thing is as a dog, Take it back. And, you know, I'm off my PG. So I told my guys, Send me those PGs. I want to read them, those personal guarantees and little things. In order to get out of the personal guarantee, he had to show us all the leases and show us that he had achieved the debt service coverage ratio of whatever it was, and he never did it. And guess what? He's on full guarantees and we're going to get all our money back. So details matter. And you could be sitting at a meeting with some of these billionaires. You know, every week we have a board meeting. We discuss all our properties, what's going on. And literally he could tell you the carpet on the third floor, when it was changed and when it's due to be changed. Like, you make money by the details. And Richard was talking about the choke points. But there are many details and things like that where knowing little nuances and being aware, keenly aware of it, and then have people to execute it for you is super important.

Again, I mentioned, you know, work on your business, not in your business, but as you're starting out to build it. The details are very, very important. Many people I know, we don't use lawyers. Too expensive. I hate lawyers. Well, I was involved in trying to buy a company where they had a deal to ship 30 armored escalades to Dubai. And the guy, of course, didn't read the contract. And the contract said, you don't get paid until you finish all 30 escalades. And they're all armored up and they are accepted in Dubai. Well, there's millions of dollars out of his pocket, and he thought, he's going to get paid when he sends over a couple of them. And he went bankrupt. So very important to get into the details. The other thing is, don't, don't be afraid of a. No. Many of these families, sometimes it's embarrassing, they'll say, offer X. I'm like, but that's ridiculous. Just offer X and I offer X. And lo and behold, they say, sometimes the first time I say, no, no, no, we got a lot of people that were going to pay a lot more than you. And then 30 days later, you get a call, oh, well, they went away. It didn't work out. Da, da, da, da, da. Whatever it is, lo and behold, your offer of X is, is the one that's in the money. So don't be afraid to ask, to ask, you know, and say what you think it's worth. Don't, don't be cajoled into paying more, because if you pay more, you're bailing out the boat already before you've even started. And I see many private equity firms do that. You know, they get all excited about it and they pay seven, eight times, and before they know it, I just had this thing over here. I went to park my car here, and the parking guard said, you know, it's really Full. You probably have to park like way, way down there. Now I just mentioned offhand, I said, oh, okay, that's fine, no problem. I'm speaking. He said, oh, you're a speaker. Let me move the cone. Park right over here with the faculty. Now, I mean, I wasn't trying to get it parking space, but if you don't ask, you don't get. And these guys know how to ask. Believe me, I've been in many deals and sometimes you're sitting there like, I can't believe they're saying they're asking. This proposal, this is like ludicrous. But you don't know what the other side is thinking. You don't know what their game is. And you make your offer that you think is sustainable, that's going to work. And I've seen it many times and I see many people who are trying to become billionaires or trying to become big and they think it's never going to work. Well, if you don't try it, it's for sure never going to work. And many people have that mindset, like not even going to ask. Well, if you don't ask, you're not going to get ask the question. Maybe somebody will say yes. I mean, I ask these billionaires, hey, I want to start a business buying companies. I'd never bought a company before in my life. As a matter of fact, the night before I bought my first company, I sit on the 20th floor of our, of our building is 11 o' clock at night. And I said, are you crazy? You've convinced these billionaires that they're going to buy a garbage truck company. You don't even, you don't even know how to drive a truck. You don't even know how to bend metal. I mean, for gosh sakes, I mean, I get two left thumbs. I said, you are crazy. You're going to get sued out of your petunia. And I said, whoa, big guy, just let me go over that due diligence. Do I know the cost of every truck? Do I know how it's made? Do I know the channels? And sure enough, I bought the company. In the first seven months, our EBITDA cash flow was 150% of our equity check. So pretty much after that I didn't have to write any invest memos after that. So that was a good thing. I remember when I bought the bank, I had like 6 inches of papers showing the whole portfolio of analysis, this, that, and they like look at a few pages, they say, okay, we're ready we're putting in 20 million. I said, guys, don't you want to like. I did a lot of analysis on the loan portfolio here to make it work. You did it. We're good with it. And so you have to do the work. The details. The devil is in the details. And so very important to do that.

One thing I would say is sometimes people get a little full of themselves, and then they start to hurt the people around them. And, you know, they think, oh, I don't need this guy. I don't need that guy. I don't need this lady on it. And big mistake, because I see many, many families lose critical people when they're not respectful and don't appreciate the people around them who do business, who do business for them and take care of their investments. Very important. You know, sometimes you can get caught up on the wealth, right? You know, I'm going first class, I'm going private. I got my yacht. And you forget that you only got there. People help you, and people continue to help you to build your business and keep. Make sure your business is strong. And I see many families, you know, get hurt by forgetting that it's a team. Even though, yes, they're the dreamer and they thought of it and they were the one who created it. But without a team, very hard to. Very hard to succeed. They're also constantly learning, curious, always thinking, you know, new way to do it. Hey, I heard about this idea. Maybe we can apply it to some business that we're doing. Maybe we could add this technology or this software or this person. You know, you get the call at 11:30 at night, and, you know, it's the billionaire calling. Say, oh, just reading about this idea. I just met somebody at dinner. Maybe we could do this in our business. I'm like, okay, it's 11:30. Yep, we'll do it. But, you know, I take calls until midnight, you know, as a result of this. I mean, I take calls until midnight every night, basically, to be available and be ready and don't give up. I worked on a huge mega deal. We spent two years trying to find a way to get in. We try it this way, try it that way, try it the other way. And these guys are indefatigable. One of the four brothers in the family that owns the Mall of America. I've been all over the world for him. It'd be unbelievable. I mean, like, you know, it looks like it's a fail. No, no, no. He's trying another thing. We had another thing.

We're in Cyprus Bidding on oil and gas licenses out there, you know, multi billion dollar deal. And one of our partners reneged on us. So he's right. I said like we're dead. I mean this is going to be our operating partner. And he's like no, no, no running around. We're going to find a different operating partner, we're going to find a different capital source, we're going to do all these things, completely revamp the deal, never give up. And that's, that's one thing you see these families is, is never be, never, don't, don't ever give up.

Richard mentioned also that insights in terms of scaling and you know, I mentioned dreaming big, but it's not, can't be a dream. Also you have to put it down on paper on numbers and look at the numbers and, and do the details because I see many times there are dreamers and you know, a lot of times they call, oh we got this hot deal. I'm like, did you think about that? No, we didn't think about that. Well, it's pretty basic to your old assumption here, you know, make sure you know the details of what it is. And talking to people again, they're very peripatetic these billionaires talking to a lot of people. Maybe they don't give out their phone number, that they constantly talk to people, constantly learning from people, trying to find the smartest people they can learn from and, and become better with.

The other thing question that Richard asked me addressed is working with the ultra wealthy. How do you do that? How do you get in? And very important to be succinct and know what you're talking about. I did an event with the United States Department of Commerce to introduce minority and women owned businesses to family offices. I had seven family offices there and seven minority and women owned firms. And I worked with each of them on their elevator pitch. I said listen, they don't care how long you worked. You know that you worked in a shed for 10 years. What is your business and what is it going to accomplish and what's my return? And I can't tell you how many times I have on LinkedIn and want to say also on Hoover people, I'd love to meet you. Well that's nice, I'd love to meet myself too. But, but you know, what is it about? What's the subject? What do you want to accomplish? You know, you're in real estate. Well that's great. Hotels, multifamily, single family, like what are you doing? And so many times I write back and pardon me for saying this, but I write back in three or five sentences. Please tell me, what are you doing? What's your interest in talking to me? And then I'll decide if I wanted to have a conversation. I don't have a back and forth. I just had a. Literally, the last day I'm in real estate. Okay, great. What kind, what size? What type are you lending? Are you equity debt? Like, just say what you are, three or five seconds. So when you deal with these people, you got to be on the money. You know, this is what I'm interested. We can make a 30% return in, you know, X number of the year and a half a year, whatever it is. This is my plan. This is what's smart, creative about my plan. I'll just give you an example. I met a young guy, he was in the credit repair business, and he came up this idea that if he does credit reporting for multifamily landlords, so every month he pulls the rent roll and he looks who paid on time, who paid late, who didn't pay, and he reports it straight to Experian and Transunion, whatever it is, people start paying their rent. When your credit score drops 620 points for one late payment, you start paying your rent on time. Like, wow, that is an ingenious idea. He said to me one sentence, I'm like, bam, I am in. And so I'm now part of his company. I mean, you get the idea, right? One minute. Who wouldn't want this? It's $1 a month per lease. So you got to know what you're doing, be focused into the point.

The other thing is loyalty. If you come to family office and you say, oh, I've got a deal. And we start doing diligence, and then you find out, oh, you've got your finger in the pie. Oh, you got a 10% commission. It's like, why don't you tell me that up front? Don't come to me and try and sell me something when you're getting paid in the back end, on the back pocket. So very important, if you are getting paid, be straight up about it. Say, hey, I'm a broker. I'm getting commission on this. So I just had it last night with a family where I've known a company for five years. They're in a little bit of trouble. They need a special loan. I said to the guy, listen, he said, why don't you do the due diligence to me? I said, listen, I don't want to be in an awkward position. I've known the guy five years, you know, I don't want to be in an awkward position. You do the due diligence, I'll help you with it. But at the end of the day, I don't want to be in the middle of something. And so it's very, very important, very important to have loyalty and also relationships.

And I want to talk about relationships a minute whenever I reach out because I do a lot of networking too. I was trying to add value. So here's an article about something that might be of interest for your company. Here's a statistic that maybe hadn't seen. Here's something that you know that might be helpful to you. I do a lot of medical consulting. I help people in medical matters. I mean, I'm not a doctor, I play one on tv, but I do a lot of medical research in the medical journals. And you know, people are grateful and they see that you care about them and that's how relationships are built. All about caring and, you know, and, and taking care of, you know, to be helpful.

Just a few ideas about routines. Richard asked about Richard and routines. Communications again. Communications. Short and sweet. This is my name. This is what I'm all about. Debt, equity. This is the return, this is the yield. This the timeframe, whatever, blah, blah, blah, this. I think it could be interesting for you and of course try and make it relevant. So I'll just give an example. Many people come and say, oh, I got a real estate deal now. I'm working for two billionaire real estate families. Do they want to invest $5 million in some apartment building in Kansas City? I don't think so. Right. So don't, don't ask me about stuff that makes like with all due respect, no sense. You want to tell me about a prop tech company? You could save me money on the air conditioning building in my hundred buildings that I want to hear about. You want to tell me how I can, you know, manage my buildings remotely and you know, blah, blah, blah, and do this other stuff that I want to hear about. But don't ask me about a, you know, five or $10 million investment, you know, in, in some company that is in real estate where our name is on our front door, you know, I'm not going to put five or ten million dollars in somebody's apartment building in Kansas City with, to Kansas City. So preparation, very important. Every night, have a plan for what you're going to do the next day. triage. Sometimes different things come up. You got to triage Appointments. And in the morning, be prepared. Think about what am I doing, what I hope to accomplish today. Very important. Because if you don't have a goal, as they say, if you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there. And so you have to know where you're going. What do I hope to accomplish at the end of this day? I want to call five people. I want to make three contacts. I want to do X, Y, and Z. And so super important to do that. And again, stay focused. And details. Details matter on the communications, crisp to the point. And what am I trying to tell you about? Those are some of the things that, again, very important. You don't need to be the smartest person in the room. You need to be a great orchestra conductor to bring everybody together. But again, that's not only their loyalty to you, but your loyalty to them. And complimenting and being. Being positive with people is super important. The other thing I would say is just values. Sometimes people make it and they get very lost in the wealth and don't want to give too many details, but it can be very deleterious to the children. You know, when the parents or. I mean, I have a situation where I'm in the middle of a deal and I'm working with the son and, like, he's in Paris. I'm like, you didn't tell me you're going to Paris. We're in the middle of trying to get something done. Or he's at a spa for ten days. Okay, well, geez, how am I going to get something done when you're in the spa for 10 days? You know. Okay, so, you know, making sure that you build. Build the work ethic is very, very important. I just take any questions, if anybody has any questions or comments on anything.

And so. Oh, yeah. Oh, okay. And that is. And that is it. But I would say be fearless. Be fearless. You know, you can. You can get to a lot of people be fearless, but to the point. What are you writing about? What are you calling about? And you can. You can accomplish what you want to do.

Great. Thank you, Ira. What. We can sit down here and we'll do some great. So we're going to do a little bit of Q A now, but feel free just to raise your hand. And we can take questions from the audience as well. So obviously, paying attention to details is super important. One of my favorite quotes is from Bruce Lee. He says that calm is a superpower. And yesterday it came up a few times in your talk that, you know, Kindness is a superpower. But as I mentioned, Warren Buffett says at his annual shareholder meeting that he noticed over time some people are just really hard to do business with and disagreeable and not pleasant to work with. And he on purpose has tried to change some little quirks about his personality to be a little bit more pleasant and easy to do business with. And I've known Ira for probably better part of a decade now. He's been speaking at my events for a long time. And he's very easy to work with. And so one of my questions to you is how much of that has been, you know, were you just born, you know, kind of friendly, you know, outgoing, how you are now, or is that something you've worked on over time to be better at doing business? I think it's something that, that I've worked on. Sometimes you meet people and they have a certain grace, a certain, a certain dignity and you say, gosh, you know, I could use that a little bit better. Maybe no more interruptions or slow down the pace of interruptions or, you know, a little more thoughtful about other people. So I would say I'm a work in progress. So if anyone has any improvements, let me know.

Sure, sure. Also, personal question on, you know, being in the northeast, working in the family office sector, how often are you suit and tie when you meet with clients? Obviously when you speak at an event, sometimes you wear a suit and tie. But just how formal are you when working with your clients? So with the clients, I don't necessarily have to wear a tie, but we buy companies all over the country, so we could be in nowheresville, nowhere. And I still do wear a suit and tie because. And usually a lot of times I'm with the next gen, so I did a lot of work at the next gen. So believe me, they're not wearing a suit and tie. Somebody's got to. So I'm going to be the adult in the room. But at dumb, we're not renting a Ferrari. We're going to show up in a nice Chevy to the go to the company because, and we're gonna, as I mentioned to Richard yesterday, we're gonna have a deluxe meal of Applebee's and we're gonna enjoy it. So that's great.

Can you talk about, I think you once sourced like a deal from the classified section of a newspaper. Can you talk about that and any other creative ways that you source deals over time? Sure. So I specialize in buying companies and distress rescuing companies. So I get a list every day of every Bankruptcy in America. And I looked to try and help companies, but I did. Our bank was actually, there was an ad in the Wall Street Journal, bank for sale. And it was the craziest thing. I called the guy said, you know, I'm very interested in the bank. And, and he said, why, why are you calling me? Why do you want to buy a bank? I'm like, I want to buy a bank. Like what, what's it doing anyway? But whatever. So it happens the family owns the largest privately owned bank in Canada. It's one of the largest fintech banks in America. We bought a little small bank in Queens, New York from a baker and a candlestick maker. You know, in those days you could just start a bank like you know, anytime and they were in deep trouble. We bought it and we've turned it into one of the largest fintech banks in America. Over a billion in assets. So you know, I talk to a lot of people, I do deals. I mentioned yesterday in Fort Lauderdale, I said I have a 10 number secret for getting deals. And of course somebody asked what? And I said, oh, it's nine phone number. But you know, talking to people and hearing and you know, I just want to stress when I'm talking about caring about people, I don't mean for utilitarian purposes, like I'm not going to be nice to you. So I can say, oh, you know, how do I can, you know, get something. We should love every human being and care about every human being. And I mentioned when I spoke, I did this event with the United States Department of Commerce, the MBDA Minority Business Development Agency to introduce minority women owned businesses to family offices to try and help build bridges. And we had an incredible event and you have to genuinely care about people and all the good stuff will come from that. You don't need to look for it.

Sure. I think the idea of buying troubled companies and being able to, you know, turn it in, you know, lemons into lemonade. And that I had done. I had already done billions of dollars of advisory work, but I had never actually done it before as a principal. So I think that got them kind of interested, you know, hey, wow, we can buy stuff cheap. And like. And every company I bought actually, believe it or not, was an industry leading company. And it's incredible. Like our garbage truck company, we're the number one automated side loader company in America and the biggest guys in the industry were private labeling our product. But they had fallen, whatever. And a lot of these businesses get in trouble for doing bad boy stuff. They tried to cheat their workers. And I see a lot of businesses fail and you try and cheat. Believe me, there's karma and a lot more than that. So be good.

I mean, I think you need somebody who has a global view, right. Because you mentioned a lot of disparate types of assets and not all of them are necessarily cash flowing in the near term. Sounds like a lot of them aren't. So you need to evaluate what are the goals of your portfolio. Right. If you're financing cash flow, holding land probably isn't going to work if you're really after long term appreciation, but your cash flow is taken care of, let's say from an operating business, that's something. But then also looking globally just to understand globally what's going on. I mean, and just to give you one example, there's $1 trillion of mortgages coming due before December of this year. Most of those loans were at 300 basis points. 300, 350 basis points. No bank can finance a loan at that basis. Well, all that is going to collide in the next six months and you're going to have a lot of bank failures and a lot of things. So as you're thinking strategically about where you want to be, number one, if you have any real estate loans, make sure you extend those maturities as soon as possible. There's a meme in the industry called survive to 25. It's not going to be long enough. You got to extend out at least four or five years because it's going to be devastating. Because if the building next door to mine sold for 30 cents on the dollar, guess what? Next time I need to come up for get my loan approved because the building next door sold for 30 cents on the dollar. And there could be a death spiral in real estate and banking. So just very important to have a global perspective or have people who can sort of be on an investment committee or advisory committee to sort of give you that global view of what's going to happen.

It came down to a detail, actually. I bought a street sweeper manufacturing company. We had the number one most patented street sweeper in North America. And this was the little piece that caught me. The diligence was great, great product. But the vendors who supplied the unique products to make the street sweeper, they had gotten mad. I bought, we bought it from a $600 million public company and the vendors were mad because those vendors were told, we're going to sell 1,000 sweepers a year. So you make the dies and the tooling for free. Because we're going to buy, you know, thousands of items from you. When that didn't happen, the suppliers got mad. And when I came in and said I'm going to sell a thousand units a year, they said oh no, no, no, we've played that game before. You need to pay us for the dies and all the manufacturing, you need to pay us up front for that. Well that set me back and it hurt quite a bit. So you need to do the full due diligence, everything. Who, the suppliers, what's the terms, what were your customers? I mean the whole thing, very important, you know, to look across the entire chain.

I would say, actually I would say no, probably to my detriment. I'm mostly self taught but I read a ton and I'll just, I mentioned this the other day is I was, when I got my mba, I joined the Chase Manhattan bank and the real estate group and at the time the entire portfolio was in workout. The bank had been devastated in the real estate business and they were basically shutting down the whole department. And so people, you know, were sort of knew that they were going to be fired or laid off. And so people take two hour lunches, you know, leave at 4:00 and you know, that was sort of just the mood in the department. And I just started to get into that like what difference does it make are going to get fired, blah blah blah. And I said wait a minute, I have a brand new mba. They just hired me, they put me through their Chase credit training program like the best training on Wall Street. They're going to fire me but if I act like a jerk, they are going to fire me. And I decided this desk, this is the IRA J store. And if you come into my store, I'm going to know every appraisal, I'm going to know every loan agreement, I'm going to know the defaults, I'm going to know everything about every loan that I'm responsible for managing. And I ended up doing more deals than anybody in the department that year because I changed my mindset is I'm going to read that 150 page credit, you know, credit agreement where most bankers, oh, the lawyer will, he'll tell me what it is, it's like no, no, no, I need to know it because lawyers make mistakes and you need to be on top of your game. And so that was a very important lesson for me is you should have mentors, everybody should. But you also, you got to know your own game too.

So I do the general advisory across the Entire portfolio, to be clear. So, you know, fund investments and you know, moving around all the chess pieces. But in terms of that business, I'm looking for great companies that have a great product or service, suggest they maybe had a litigation or had a, had a stumble where I could pick it up and grow it. But it takes a lot of work. I mean, I bought 11 different companies, 11 different industries. I don't know anything about any of these industries, but I read voraciously and also talk to people that you spend time talking to people. And I don't mean the guys with the ties is you got to talk down a level on the factory floor, the people are sweating and you say, oh, you know what's going on here? Believe me, they know what's going on. They'll tell you, oh yeah, this boss, you know, he's a liar. He's cheating the customers. You know, we're supposed to do two layers of pen paint and we're just doing one layer of paint. And everything comes full circle, you know, and so they'll tell you what's going on and then you, number one, are better positioned to know what you're buying and to negotiate a better deal. But you'll know what's going on and talk to a lot of people, you know, both inside the company and outside the company to understand what it is. But I bought the garbage truck company. About two military parts businesses were sole source and over 3,000 parts. The United States military, like nobody in the world could sell, sell my parts. I bought a generator company in bankruptcy. There were only, and it was a small company, three and a half million dollar company and they didn't have health insurance for the workers. As I mentioned yesterday, I said, listen, I'm not buying a company without health insurance for the workers. Now it was 21 workers. I didn't have to buy health insurance. I said, I'm not doing it. I got health insurance. I cut my profit 25% in the first year. But when I walk on that factory floor, everybody says, thank you for respecting me. Thank you for respecting my family. And when I needed them to work a little overtime or to work a little better or say, hey, we could do this better or smarter. They're telling me because they're grateful for how we treat our people. And so, but you got to talk to people. I actually did the first fully electric garbage truck. I did it together with byd and this is another example. What I said is, don't be afraid to say no or to get a no. BYD announced that they had a deal with another garbage truck manufacturer. Now I knew these guys didn't really care about electric. They were just, you know, just some marketeering thing. We actually produced the most energy efficient garbage truck in the industry. We tried CNG and propane and you know, whatever. Every new fangled thing that came out of there that didn't work. The company was in Iowa, but we sold all over the country. It was, the company was called Wayne Engineering. So I reached out to the CEO of BYD America again, I don't know from Adam and I said, listen, you know, we have the best, best, most energy efficient garbage trucks in North America. Like to come see you. I flew out to la, I met with her and she said, oh, you know, it's going to take us months. We have to study the duty cycles and how much energy everything takes. I said, miss, we already know exactly how much energy every single function on the garbage truck takes. And you know, exactly. She said, unbelievable. Nobody else knows that. I got a five year exclusive deal with BYD and knocked out the other guys for, for the garbage truck. I'm very tight with the new owners but, but we sold it. But again, you know, I could just say bypass where they're going to take my call. $17 billion company. My garbage truck company was $25 million company in Iowa. Right, Iowa, run by, you know, who's going to take that call. But you don't ask, you don't get.

I mean real estate I think is going to be a layup. There's going to be a ton of. Already the number of real estate foreclosures in UCC sales is way more, you know, than it was in like the last two or three years. There's going to be, people are buying multifamily. The treasury bond of real estate for 2 and 3 caps. Well, interest is 6, 7%, you're 4 or 500 basis points underwater. You're going to be able to buy a lot of things. Very, very sweet. I mean if you look at some of the sales that are going on, 30, 40, 20 cents on the dollar of what it was. So I would buy a lot of real estate that's coming up. Wait, be careful, make sure you do your due diligence, you know, and there's going to be a lot of opportunity.

I've done business all over the world and I would say there's nothing as great as the US of A. We have a rule of law. You know the game, you know the people. I've done things internationally, but I really prefer America. We live in the greatest country in the world and there's so much opportunity here to do things, you know, I mean there's, there's so much to do and there's just a lot of risk, you know. We had a pulp de inking plant in France, $300 million investment. The bank, when I was at chase, we lent $300 million and there was like another few hundred million invested in it. And they had a new strategy how they're going to take paper pulp and recycle it. And there was a contract to build the plant and everything like that. And the contract said if when they turned on the plant it didn't work for seven days straight, full refund. Well, guess what? They didn't realize that when you recycle envelopes, you know, they have the little cellophane window. It gummed up the whole thing and the whole thing did not work in full. Was fizzing out of it and going into the river. Big mess. And it was under six different rules of law. So the credit agreement is under UK law. It was in France, so we're stuck with French law. The UPC contract was under German law. The owners were in the Netherlands. I mean, you know, heaven help us. I mean, the legal bills were through the roof. So I like the good old U.S. of A.

Great. Yeah. I think one thing that's obvious from hearing you yesterday and today is that you're more thorough, more paying attention to the details. Legal contracts, very thorough due diligence. Obviously it's a big strength of yours. I would imagine some of the ultra wealthy families, they're running and gunning and super busy and maybe growing their operating business and then they see the strength in you of really looking at the details and say, oh, I need to have his hand on this because I know he's going to be super thorough. That's pretty obvious after listening to you. So I think if I remember one event a while ago, you said you have a little bit of like an auditing or accounting background. Is that where that detail orientation comes from or were you just born like super analytical thorough or. No. I have a psychology degree undergraduate and I remember when I went to Chase they gave me accounting books this thick and in the small print it says if you fail the accounting test, they fire you. I'm like, holy smokes, I don't know anything about t accounting or whatever, but I studied my brains out on that and you know, and learned it and came to appreciate it, you know, that the accounting is very, very Important, you know, you have to know accounting. So I sort of saw so many times there were little mistakes and it could cost you hundreds of millions of dollars for a mistake.

So we had a company that had a very leading software and they were doing a thing called capitalizing software expense. So basically money that they spent to build a software that they were then going to sell. So you're allowed to capitalize it, meaning you take it off your P and L off your income statement and you put it on the balance sheet. Well, if I'm looking at that company's P and L to see if they could pay me back my loan, you know, and I don't realize that millions of dollars are being spent. So you have to look at free cash flow, not ebitda, not, not net income. But if you don't know that, you're going to get killed. Now, just one other story on details. So this company had cheated the bank out of millions, tens of millions of dollars. And I got the. I was a lucky relationship manager that had to deal with them. I defaulted them on a foreign currency translation adjustment on their, on their tangible net worth statement. And they went crazy. It's a public company that to report eight. Oh man, they went nuts. But again, that detail, even their accountants didn't know what a foreign currency translation adjustment was. And boom. So basically.

Great. Yeah. Well, you know, we're, we're almost out of time here. What else should I have asked you? That would have been a really good question or what else do you want to share with the room? I'll tell you this. You have to love what you're doing. And you know, if you love what you do, you never work a day in your life, as Mark Twain said. And I always tell people, by that measure, I'm the laziest guy in the room. So all I do is, you know, look for trouble, look for situations where I could get in and help. I mean, I'm advising a lot of families on situations where they put in money and you know, sort of leap first and then, you know, look afterwards. And very important not to do that. So find an area where you love doing whatever it is that you do or learn how to love it. I mean, believe me, I don't love accounting, but I learned like, it's so critical that I'm able to spend time doing it, even though not my favorite thing. I'm a people person. But, you know, you got it right. I think also the, if you can show value to a client or a family immediately in a sentence, or two, they can just sense the value as an entrepreneur and it changes everything right away. And I remember one time you said you were doing due diligence on a company and they claimed to have like 90 customer service people on their expense sheet and they were faking the expenses because you went and you counted and there was like 20 seats. And even if people were working 24, seven, there's no way to have like 90 people sitting there. And another time you mentioned there was interest due on a company and the company is bankrupt and you're able to acquire that company, find out the interest actually broke usury laws and all of the interest was void and that you actually owed nothing and you picked up the company out of bankruptcy, didn't owe the debt that made it bankrupt, and were able to lift that company up very quickly, all by showing that immediate value by telling stories like that. 100%. 100%. You have to do the homework. And one of the cases, this garbage truck company I bought, so the largest unsecured claim was there is like a $500,000 claim. And two law firms both said, we are, you know, we are the largest unsecured claim. I did a little research. It turned out the claim was secured. So I tried to buy the claim for pennies on the dollar, and I was going to flip it as a secured claim and then I could bid with it on the company. So you got to do your homework and, you know, it's fun to investigate. You have to be curious, you know, and think about things. Ask the second question, and people say, oh, yeah, it's just like that. Well, just like that. But how does that work and how does that work? And that's where you find a lot of times the value is in the second or third question.

Great. Awesome. Yeah. Well, at our investor summit, so we have 120 speakers on stage over three days. And, you know, it's like a fire hose of information. So when I talk about the super ultra wealthy, successful, being voracious learners. So one way to be a voracious learner is to come and listen to people from. I think probably we all got at least one insight or five insights of things that we could be either more detailed on or more thorough on and more concise on. So I hope you enjoyed that. We're going to break for lunch now, which is right in the back of the room. As a reminder, the bathrooms are out to the right there. We've got coffee and drinks there as well. And then we'll probably start back up in about 45 minutes. Just make sure we can get through all the content in time today. But appreciate everyone's attention. Let's give a big round of applause. Thank you.

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