Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Richard Gearhart: What if the next great business opportunity is hiding in a building you pass every day
[00:00:07] Announcer 1: ramping up your business?
[00:00:08] Richard Gearhart: The time is near. You've given it hard, now get it in gear. It's Passage to Profit with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart. I'm Richard Gearhart.
[00:00:19] Elizabeth Gearhart: And I'm Elizabeth Gearhart. And we're your hosts.
[00:00:21] Richard Gearhart: Welcome to Passage to Profit, the road to entrepreneurship. Returning to the show today is Todd Drollett, self made millionaire, commercial real estate developer, broker and founder of Titan Commercial Realty Group and star of the AE TV series the Real Estate Commission. But first, Elizabeth, what's new with you?
[00:00:40] Elizabeth Gearhart: Well, it's officially autumn now, so we went to our local nursery and had them put together some flowers for us to decorate the front of the house with. Autumn flowers. And we're getting all sorts of stuff.
[00:00:52] Richard Gearhart: So nice. Lots of times we'll decorate for the holidays, the winter holidays. The first time that we've decorated for autumn. Right.
[00:00:59] Elizabeth Gearhart: So, yeah, we have company coming next month. So we wanted to look especially decked out.
[00:01:04] Richard Gearhart: We wanted good curb appeal. Right?
[00:01:06] Elizabeth Gearhart: Good curb appeal for our house. Yes.
[00:01:08] Todd Drowlette: Pumpkins for everyone.
[00:01:09] Elizabeth Gearhart: Pumpkins for everyone.
Exactly.
[00:01:12] Richard Gearhart: So on our way into the studio Today on West 56th Street, New York, I saw a closed storefront. I got to wondering if you, Elizabeth, had the opportunity to put a business in that storefront, what would you put there?
[00:01:27] Elizabeth Gearhart: I would put bathrooms.
But you can come in and use this bathroom for a dollar or. And that would probably have some stuff you could buy, but it would mostly be bathrooms.
[00:01:38] Richard Gearhart: That would be the upselling. Like if you wanted toilet paper or comb or something like that. Right.
[00:01:42] Todd Drowlette: Call the business while you wait.
[00:01:46] Elizabeth Gearhart: So that is what. I know they put some portable bathrooms in New York for this season. But you, you know, you have to buy something if you want to use a bathroom.
[00:01:55] Richard Gearhart: I know, it's really a chore. I think that business would be a great success for sure. If I had that opportunity, I would call it the store of things I've forgotten. So I would keep extra sets of keys, reading glasses, sunglasses, shoes. Like last week, I came to iHeart to tape the show and I had two black shoes, but they were from different sets of shoes, Right. So that's pretty funny. Fortunately, nobody noticed, but if I had a store like that, I could keep all the things that I normally forget or lose and just.
I'm sure I could keep it in business for years.
[00:02:30] Todd Drowlette: Good thing you remembered your pants.
[00:02:34] Elizabeth Gearhart: Yeah.
[00:02:36] Todd Drowlette: That is Elizabeth speechless.
[00:02:38] Elizabeth Gearhart: Well, I was gonna say something, but I thought he'd kill me if I Said it on air. So I'm keeping my mouth shut for once.
So yeah. So back to the fall theme. We went and saw our son and his family's adorable children and his nice wife down in Maryland. And we went to this place, to a fall festival at this place. But the one year old spilled water all over his pants and there was nowhere to get another pair of pants. So speaking about things you wish you could buy on the spot, this place is for kids families, so you'd think they would sell like emergency kids clothes, but I guess you're supposed to bring them with you.
[00:03:13] Richard Gearhart: But I guess they rely on the parents for that. But that is a great marketing idea. So I think they should be listening and taking your advice.
Speaking of businesses, is there a business that you love so much that you go to it even though the parking is impossible?
[00:03:29] Elizabeth Gearhart: Yes. Well, you had to remind me. But there is this incredible French bakery in Chatham. Of course, it's right downtown on Main street and there's never anywhere to park and it's called Fleur de Sol.
So I always have to walk a couple blocks. But I'll park and walk a couple blocks. And I was telling Richard, well, if I'm getting pastries, I mean, it's probably
[00:03:49] Todd Drowlette: good to walk the cardio in with the pastries. Why not?
[00:03:53] Richard Gearhart: I mean, really, it's all of New York and New Jersey. You have this problem anyway. But last night I went to see a physical therapist. I had to drive around the bike three times in order to find a parking spot. But he was so good. It was worth it. My shoulder feels so much better today. It was a great experience and you know, even if I had to drive around the block four times, I would go and see him in the future. So today we have Todd Draulet, founder of Titan Commercial Realty Group. He's brought some members of his team and cast along today to share an inside look at the deal strategies and high stake decisions behind commercial real estate. As season two of his A&E TV series, the Real estate commission approaches.
[00:04:36] Elizabeth Gearhart: Right. So the cast he brought with him is Christine Haut and she's the director of asset management at Titan. Also his wife, Camilla Rodriguez Draulet, who is the glue of everything, right?
[00:04:48] Todd Drowlette: She's the one who keeps me on track for sure.
[00:04:50] Richard Gearhart: Every team needs glue, that's for sure.
[00:04:53] Elizabeth Gearhart: Sam Desne, he is part of the cast and he's also a licensed real estate salesperson.
[00:04:58] Todd Drowlette: He's the youngest member of the cast. He just turned 20. So he's a young heartthrob for all the ladies who can't see him on the radio.
[00:05:04] Richard Gearhart: Well, check out our YouTube channel.
[00:05:06] Elizabeth Gearhart: Yeah. Check out the A and E special. Check out the show on ae and you'll see.
And also joining us is Brandon Bellamy, who is a broker, and of course, Todd leading the way. And later on we'll hear from our friend Alicia Morrissey, a great jazz singer. And we've got secrets of the entrepreneurial mind.
[00:05:24] Richard Gearhart: Yeah, absolutely. But before we get to our distinguished guests, it's time for your new business journey. And I'd like to ask each member of our panel, what was the one decision or moment that most changed your career and what did it cost you to make that decision? Todd, welcome again to the show.
[00:05:41] Todd Drowlette: What was the one decision I made? So when I was in college, so I went to Siena, which is now university, but I went to Sienna University in Loudounville, New York. And I was there in a full academic scholarship. So I never wanted to miss class.
And I went to every single class. And my senior year I had an opportunity. I was making fun of me from being from a small town and a guy had died who was from a very small town that this is before GPS and mapping software. It was a town that had a flashing light and that was about it.
And the guy was on the board of trustees, had founded Avis Renticar, and he wanted a Catholic priest to be at this funeral, which was the president of the college. So they called me up and said, hey, the president college needs to go to St. Regis Falls, New York, which if you Google it, it might return zero results. But it exists.
And that's where this funeral was. And I had to make a decision in that moment, geez, do I miss class? But I'm going to get connections and meet the president of the college and be in the car with him for the next 15 hours. So, but I was like, at the time I was on the fence about as an adult, I would in two seconds been like, yeah, what are you crazy? It's a no brainer. But I, when that happened, I was like, it was that critical moment I struggled with. And I'm like, no, I'm doing it.
And then I never looked back from there. He, I started driving for him and then there was a real estate developer that was looking for a driver on the weekends and the president recommended me for that. He was doing commercial real estate, retail development.
And that's how I ended up driving for him for several years. He gave me a first internship and that kind of changed everything.
[00:07:14] Richard Gearhart: Great. What a great story. I mean, that is certainly a way to get exposure and mentoring in so many positive ways. Christine, welcome to the show.
[00:07:25] Christine Haupt: Hi. Thank you.
[00:07:26] Richard Gearhart: And what was one decision that you made that changed the trajectory of your career?
[00:07:30] Christine Haupt: Well, mine's kind of a longer story. So I originally started, I was working at a bank in a little strip center, and a bunch of the customers that would come in, I became friends with and they came in and one of them came in and offered me a job at their real estate company. And it was a big decision to decide if I was going to take it or not because I was starting the job making less money than I had currently been making.
But I decided it was better. It was going to be Monday through Friday, 9 to 5. So I took the job. I started on a Monday making less money than I had previously been making. By Friday, I was making more money than I had previously made. And that job led me to then working with Todd. And then I left that company.
[00:08:18] Todd Drowlette: It was a terrible decision.
[00:08:20] Christine Haupt: I left that company to go with Todd, and then we left the company we both went to then. And he started Titan and I went to Titan with him. And we've been together, I don't know, over 20 years.
[00:08:32] Richard Gearhart: Sounds like some pretty important decisions. I mean, was there any trade offs you felt when you were making that decision?
[00:08:39] Christine Haupt: No, I think it was all ended up being positive trade offs.
[00:08:41] Richard Gearhart: All right, Camilla Drollett, nice to have you on the program, too. You're married to this guy over here, right?
[00:08:47] Camila Rodriguez Drowlette: Yes, we've been married for three years now.
[00:08:50] Richard Gearhart: What was this one decision that you made that changed the trajectory of your career?
[00:08:55] Camila Rodriguez Drowlette: I mean, I feel like there's always, you know, a bunch of little decisions that you have to make. But I want to say probably a big one that I really think changed my life was learning English.
So I'm from Bogota, Colombia. I speak Spanish.
And when I was 18, I thought I really want to make money and like, do different things, open new doors.
So I started learning myself English and that led me to have a really good paying job in Bogota. And then I came here and because of my English, I was able to get a nice job here. And that's how I ended up meeting Todd. And one thing led to the other. So, you know, learning new skills as simple, like something as simple as learning English can, I don't know, open. Really the speak those for you?
[00:09:47] Richard Gearhart: Yeah. Your English is great, by the way.
[00:09:50] Todd Drowlette: The other, I guess, was a six month old.
[00:09:53] Elizabeth Gearhart: So you have a six month old now. Congratulations. Elizabeth Well, I was working as a chemist in corporate and I wasn't super happy.
And I had my second child and I decided to quit corporate. That was hard, really hard.
I lost part of my identity, I lost all my friends at work, et cetera, that day to day thing.
But I got to raise my kids my own way. And then when they were grown, I got to decide what to do the rest of my life, which absolutely does not include corporate.
So here I am.
[00:10:31] Richard Gearhart: Well, we're glad you made those decisions and we're glad you're here for me. I would say one of the things that changed the trajectory of our business was actually moving into a building. We used to be working out of our house, and people would come in and they would, like, wander through the kitchen and smell the spaghetti sauce and
[00:10:51] Todd Drowlette: use leftovers so late.
[00:10:53] Richard Gearhart: Yeah. And it was just.
It really got on Elizabeth's nerves and I didn't really like it either. But eventually we decided to move out and we ended up in a commercial building. And it really changed my view of the practice. And it also changed my. I think it changed the how the clients viewed the practice too. It's just created a whole new level of professionality, I guess is the word. And so for us, it was a really big step forward. So actually had felt like I had a real business when.
[00:11:25] Todd Drowlette: When you go to the office.
[00:11:26] Richard Gearhart: When you go to the office.
[00:11:27] Todd Drowlette: Yeah. These guys wanted to kill me because during COVID my, we went to work every day. You know, real estate agents were considered whatever the term was, essential workers or something. So literally every day we went to the office.
[00:11:40] Elizabeth Gearhart: He went to the office every day. I worked from home. I think that saved a lot of our relationship.
[00:11:47] Christine Haupt: See, we're worker bees. You know, we work all the time, you know, we don't stop. And I found myself, when we were working from home, I found myself. We had one week. We were told we couldn't go into the office.
And I found myself wandering the house like, oh, I'm reorganizing the pantry and I'm doing laundry in the middle of the day when I was supposed to be at my computer working. So I found how easy it was to get distracted when you're supposed to be working and I'm, you know, reorganizing the linen closet and stuff.
[00:12:17] Todd Drowlette: Todd ruined the party.
[00:12:20] Richard Gearhart: So what if the biggest mistake in commercial real estate isn't paying too much? It's making a deal that never makes you money. Todd Drollett, founder of Titan Commercial Realty Group, has closed more than 1700 deals worth over $2 billion and built a career around challenging conventional thinking about real estate. Todd, Season two of the A and E show, the real estate commission is almost here. And so what will people see the season that they haven't seen before?
[00:12:45] Todd Drowlette: It starts streaming and airing on March 20th of 2027. So it's kind of around the corner. What will they see that they haven't seen before? They're going to see some. Sam is our newest cast member. Sam is 20, just joined us three months ago.
We're going to do bigger deals. You know, it's always bigger and better. And you'll see more corporate the first season, getting sign offs from, you know, corporations with the copyrights. Not only that, but using people's images. There's a whole thing behind it and it was just a nightmare. And if they don't know the show yet, but once you're successful the first show, it's amazing how much friendlier people are and how much more willing they are to, you know, have there. So I do a lot of corporate work with large franchisees.
So if you're filming but you can't name the company, you can't name whatever. So the first season was a lot of independent owners and companies. This season you'll see more national brands and just bigger transactions, bigger deals.
[00:13:38] Elizabeth Gearhart: That sounds great. So I do have a question for you too. What's the difference for real estate? There are a lot of real estate agents.
What's the difference between a successful real estate agent and someone who has to hang things up after a while?
[00:13:52] Todd Drowlette: A successful agent is somebody who is persistent and just doesn't give up. No matter what.
People watch TV shows, it's always important for us to be a docu series so people actually see what's happening in real time. Every show on TV that deals with real estate are generally reality shows. So a lot of things are conjured up, not real. You're seeing the gloss like good size. You're not seeing the downsides.
So if you take real estate, you take today and you take 18 months from today, 90% of the people won't be in the business. The turnover rate is as bad, the failure rates as high as restaurants. It's terrible. So it's literally just getting in and saying, I don't have a plan B. It's plan A, A1, A2, A3, 17, and just saying, this is my goal and I'm going to keep readjusting and keep readjusting. The people who can do that succeed in this business. The people who can't Sayonara and back to corporate America.
[00:14:47] Elizabeth Gearhart: Well, do you think to follow along those lines? Do you think providing education helps? Because I know that there's one real estate agent in our town who has seminars on how to get your house ready to sell for retirement or whatever.
[00:14:59] Todd Drowlette: So I think it's just marketing, right? So that's lead generation. So if you can educate people, whether it's social media, whether it's in person, I always prefer things in person. But anytime you get the opportunity to educate people, probably not unlike your show, right? If you can work in and explain to people how things work and then they reach out to you, I think it's good if you know what you're talking about. What's scary is the amount of real estate agents that, you know, firms refer to as experts, and they've been doing it two weeks, and they literally are held out to be experts. And then the profession takes a hit because people are like, oh, real estate agents don't know anything. It's like, well, because the turnover rate is 90% of people only get 18 months worth of experience and they're gone.
It's like, no, somebody's been doing it 10 years, 15, 20, 25 years. They know all kinds of things that you need to know. So if you can educate people, that's great. As long as you know what you're talking about. Don't hold yourself out to be an expert if you're not.
[00:15:47] Richard Gearhart: So if you're in the market for a commercial broker or a residential broker, what are the things that you're looking for? How do you interview them to make sure that you get a good fit?
[00:15:57] Todd Drowlette: So if you're looking for a commercial broker, you want to pay attention to what's their area of expertise? What are the things that they specialize in? So, like, I specialize in office, retail investments. You would not want to hire me to do industrial properties because I don't have the connections in the industrial world. Like, everything is very connected in commercial real estate. So you want to make sure the person you're interviewing actually specializes and actually ask them, what's your resume? What are the deals you've done? How long did it take you to do it? If you have somebody that needs a lease, how long? Hire a broker who's used to doing leases, not a broker who only sells things. Residential real estate. You want to know, how long have they been in the business? How many transactions have they done? What's their average time on the market? If they list a home, is it average time, 7 days, 14 days. If their average time's 6 months, you don't want to hire that agent. You also want to ask them typically, how many price reductions do they have to do on average with a listing?
[00:16:53] Elizabeth Gearhart: Because.
[00:16:54] Todd Drowlette: Because a lot of people in the business want listings so bad and there's so much competition, they'll yes you to death just getting you to sign the listing. And then they're like, I'll worry about it in 30 days and I'll go, well, you know, the house isn't selling. If the person's strategy is lower the price, lower the price. And that's the solution to you selling your home. Hire a different agent.
[00:17:11] Richard Gearhart: Right. So you shouldn't be shy. If somebody's not doing the job as a real estate agent, you should feel
[00:17:17] Todd Drowlette: free to hold them accountable.
[00:17:19] Richard Gearhart: Yeah, hold them accountable and find somebody.
[00:17:21] Todd Drowlette: Especially in selling homes. Homes sell quickly or they don't. Like commercial real estate takes a longer time to like generate the deals, leads, committees, whatever. Selling a home or selling. Not if somebody wants to sign a one year listing, it's like, if you can't sell my house in 60 days, you're not the right person. Hire somebody else.
[00:17:38] Richard Gearhart: So what makes for a good real estate investment? If you're an owner, operator or you're acquiring commercial real estate, what are some of the factors that you look at in order to make a good decision about making a real estate investment?
[00:17:51] Todd Drowlette: So you make money when you buy, not when you sell in real estate. Right. Never buy something that you wouldn't want to buy yourself. So sometimes people buy something just because it's a good deal. It's like, well, if you're buying something because it's a good deal, that means you have to sell it for less. So it's a good deal to somebody else.
So you want to buy real estate that fundamentally is solid and where you could look at it and go, if the world stops, will people still come here? So if I'm buying an office building, I want the nicest office building for the cheapest price. And that's like anybody, everybody wants value.
So if you are in the retail business, you want to look at traffic counts and demographics and do you serve inner cities? Do you serve affluent suburbs? And you want to look for the demographics of who your customer is and then you want to say, is the building attractive? Is there parking? All the things if you're a customer and the reasons you won't go to a business, don't locate there just because it's a good deal. That's the biggest mistake I see people make is they buy things because it was a good price, and good prices can blow up in your face.
[00:18:51] Richard Gearhart: And actually, a good price kind of reflects the lack of market value of the property.
[00:18:56] Todd Drowlette: Yeah. The saying that's been around for hundreds of years, you get what you pay for. That's a saying for a reason. And it's lasted forever because you get what you pay for.
[00:19:04] Elizabeth Gearhart: Well, we were, I think, kind of educated, lucky when we bought the law firm building. Right. We had a good real estate agent who'd been doing it for 20 years.
[00:19:12] Richard Gearhart: Right, right. We ended up lowballing the owner, and he ended up taking it. So it turned out to be a good deal. And then we got a good deal with the bank, too.
[00:19:20] Todd Drowlette: So you followed the right rules. You. You. You bought, right? You made money when you bought it.
[00:19:24] Richard Gearhart: Yeah, but, I mean, the market hasn't been all that great over the years, but I think it's appreciated enough. And I just like, I. I like owning a property. I think that, you know, I don't have to deal with a landlord. Of course, all the maintenance and everything is on our ticket.
[00:19:40] Todd Drowlette: But you're picking up depreciation, you're picking up the fact you own it. There's a million benefits to own it.
[00:19:44] Richard Gearhart: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:19:45] Elizabeth Gearhart: Yeah. So, Todd, I have another question for you. We want to know how you did this.
This is not even real estate. Okay. You are about to launch a podcast. What's the name of that podcast?
[00:19:59] Todd Drowlette: Better Talk to Todd. Presented by the Real Estate Commission.
[00:20:03] Elizabeth Gearhart: You just interviewed one of the biggest comedians and podcasters on the planet, Adam Carolla of the Adam Carolla Show. How did you do that?
[00:20:12] Todd Drowlette: Luck. Part of going into podcasting, it's like, you know, we have the TV show on A and E. We're in multiple businesses. I learned with time, you know, you need a bunch of different touch points to people. So it's like they gotta see you, then they gotta see you again. Then they have to see you somewhere else. They have to see you again.
Adam Carolla does a lot of blogs, you know, and he's a lot of times talking about LA and things going on. He was a contractor before he was a comedian, so he's super into construction, he's into old cars.
And as he's touring around cities, you know, all over the country, he does vlogs. So his manager, Mike August, had asked me if I could tour Adam around in Albany and talk about. So the Governor Hochul just did this $400 million budget to kind of bring back downtown. And so we were doing the vlog, and I'm like, well, if I do the vlog and tour you around, I need you to do my podcast. So one of our first guests is Adam Carolla, one of the biggest podcasters on the planet. So sometimes in life, you just luck out.
[00:21:11] Elizabeth Gearhart: I'm glad to hear that you're doing a podcast. We love podcasting, obviously.
[00:21:15] Todd Drowlette: Let me tell you a funny story about that, actually. We filmed with him, and he's actually going to be on the second season of our A and E show also.
So we filmed with him, and they leave, and then a couple of days later, he goes back to l. A and he's on the show. And Justin, who's one of our producers, was like, hey, Adam crolla was talking about you on his podcast, and he was talking about his manager Mike, and he was like, there. He must have said Todd, like, 97 times in, like, six minutes. Because his manager, you know, they left and they went to this thing in Florida, and the manager's like, oh, that guy Todd. And he's like, todd, commercial real estate Todd. He's like, that guy owns an auto mall in Florida. He's like, no, no, it's a different Todd. The guy's named Todd. He's like, that guy's name's Dan. And he's like, no, no, the guy's name's Todd. And he's talking about how obstinate his manager will get when he decides something he's doing it. So they're going back and forth for minutes. He's like, the guy's name is Dan. He's like, let me scroll through my phone.
[00:22:10] Samuel Desany: Dan.
[00:22:10] Todd Drowlette: The guy's name is Dan. So the funny thing about it was Dan, Todd. Dan, Todd. I'm like, spoiler alert. The guy's name was Brad.
So his manager had told him the wrong name, literally from the moment he got there. And Brad is so rich and so successful in Florida, he didn't care that Adam Carolla was calling him the wrong name all weekend.
[00:22:30] Richard Gearhart: So makes a story for him.
[00:22:31] Elizabeth Gearhart: I would die of embarrassment.
[00:22:33] Richard Gearhart: We have to take a commercial break. We'll be right back with more of Todd Drollett and Passage profit after this.
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[00:24:38] Announcer 1: Now back to passage to profit once again.
[00:24:41] Richard Gearhart: Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart, special guest today, Todd Droulette. Todd, you've done 1700 deals. What have you learned?
[00:24:49] Todd Drowlette: I've learned during radio, I have to actually talk and not just shake my head when you ask me questions.
I've learned a lot. You learn a lot over 1700 deals. No matter how much of an expert, no matter how much you do deals will find a way of humbling you and finding a new problem that you thought you've seen. Every problem under the sun and you can be a magnet for continuing problems and finding new problems and no two deals are alike. It's like if 1700 deals, there's themes. So I can cut off a lot of problems before they happen because I'm like, I can see where this is headed.
Once in a blue moon, I still get, you know, just sideswiped by something that I'm like, okay, you know, welcome to life.
[00:25:29] Richard Gearhart: Right, Exactly.
[00:25:30] Todd Drowlette: Like that thing you just didn't expect to happen to happen. But 1700 deals, I. 99% of things I can kind of take and just go, okay, I'm seeing where this is going. Sometimes when I have younger guys with me in a meeting, if they're saying something, I'll be kicking them under the table, you know, because they're, like, saying things that I'm like, nope. They like, I'm leaving this away.
[00:25:49] Richard Gearhart: Yeah, yeah.
[00:25:50] Todd Drowlette: Don't interject or don't suggest that. That's a terrible idea.
[00:25:53] Richard Gearhart: I think part of the experience is just working with a lot of different people and a lot of different personalities. And I think as you get to understand the personality, same thing in the legal business, right. After a while, you start to kind of get the inventor mindset versus the entrepreneur mindset versus the corporate mindset. And so you learn how to communicate better, having talked with more people and walked through more fact patterns. So.
[00:26:18] Todd Drowlette: And you. You can take a group of intelligent people that are all intelligent, but people who work for corporate America think differently. People that work as entrepreneurs think differently.
So you just need to understand who it is that you're talking to and assess it, because in real time, my brain is constantly assessing, like, what do I need to say? Where's this going? You know, what are they. They're saying they want this, but what
[00:26:40] Richard Gearhart: do they really want? Yeah, yeah. Lots of times they don't really even
[00:26:43] Todd Drowlette: know more often than that. Henry Ford, I think, was famous for saying, if I asked people what kind of car they'd want, they would have said, a faster horse.
[00:26:51] Richard Gearhart: Yeah.
[00:26:52] Todd Drowlette: So a lot of times people don't know what it is that they need.
[00:26:54] Richard Gearhart: If you couldn't have been a real estate guy, what would you have done instead?
[00:26:58] Todd Drowlette: I, for a very long time, was planning on being an attorney.
[00:27:01] Richard Gearhart: Oh, really?
[00:27:02] Todd Drowlette: Yeah. And thank God I did not.
[00:27:04] Richard Gearhart: Well, you would have been a good attorney, though.
[00:27:06] Todd Drowlette: I would have been a good attorney, but I can tell you, like, I think it would have been a good attorney because I'm good at arguing. And if somebody has one tiny little thing that's wrong, I can point it out and focus on it.
But as I've gotten older and mild out, like I was a kid growing up, I would get hundreds. And if I got a 99, I would argue with the teacher and explain to them why their question was actually not right to the point where I had a global studies teacher in high school when I raised my Hand in the middle of a test, he'd be like, oh, Mr. Drollett, tell everybody what question they're all getting credit for. Because he just didn't want to argue with me. He just, I can read something, and if I read it one time, I can remember it exactly to the detail.
So I was very rarely wrong. But I also found that's very irritating for people. And as I got older, my dad used to be like, todd, you can be right or you can be paid, but you can't be both. And I decided to be paid.
[00:27:55] Elizabeth Gearhart: Yeah, well, that is so true. Yeah, I go crazy with stuff like that. So I love your show, the real estate commission. We watched it after we met you, and we're like, wow, this is really good. You know, we. We weren't really sure what to expect because there are a lot of real estate shows. Yours is different than the other real estate shows. What excites you the most about it?
[00:28:16] Todd Drowlette: I think it's the opportunity. So we film in the capital region. So when I was pitching, you know, networks and trying to get someone to pick up the show, we ended up at A and E. A and E is known for doing docu series. You know, it's real documented stuff. I didn't. It was important for me to be authentic and to not like, I'm, like, I'm not going to do some of these ridiculous things you see on TV of people, you know, just acting the way I wouldn't act, whatever. The fact that we have the opportunity to film in the capital region and the fact that a lot of people across the world think that New York is the capital of New York, but it's actually Albany. So the fact that we have an opportunity to put businesses on Albany on the map and give them a national platform in the fact that I run a business, I own a TV production company, so I try to give as many opportunities to other people to get the opportunity to be on TV and promote their brands. That's probably the thing I'm most excited about, is if you do something over and over again, it kind of becomes old hat. I'm sure you guys been doing this show. We have, what, half a million listeners? You've been doing this for eight years. I'm sure you guys go, oh, God, we gotta go film the show. But when I have somebody that are excited about being on the show or taping, it gives me a renewed excitement for the show. I imagine it's somewhere for you. How do you guys find it to be?
[00:29:28] Elizabeth Gearhart: Sometimes it's a Struggle to get into New York. And we're like, but once we're here with the people.
[00:29:34] Todd Drowlette: Yeah.
[00:29:34] Richard Gearhart: I just find that being in the studio is. Is great. Usually I have a pretty good time, and it tends to be the highlight of my week. And we get to meet so many interesting people, so many different points of view, different businesses, people in different stages of their careers.
[00:29:49] Elizabeth Gearhart: And hear about innovation.
[00:29:51] Richard Gearhart: Yeah, and hear about innovation.
[00:29:52] Elizabeth Gearhart: Innovation that we hear about on this show. We'll hear about things before other people do me. We started hearing about AI before most people even knew what it was. We had this guy come on.
[00:30:01] Todd Drowlette: We're like, what? You heard about AI before the Alphabet existed?
[00:30:05] Elizabeth Gearhart: Yeah, exactly.
[00:30:06] Richard Gearhart: We had one guy who said, oh, yeah, I know AI. His name is Artie Inga.
[00:30:12] Elizabeth Gearhart: So how did you get on ae? I mean, I think a lot of people would kill to be on tv.
[00:30:17] Todd Drowlette: Anybody who works with me knows that I'm nuts and I just get ideas, but I'm crazy enough to figure out how to make that crazy idea happen.
When they announced Covid and said, we're shutting everything down, we didn't know where we're going to be. Closed for two days or two years ago. We should market something. And I'm like, we should do a podcast. And then I was like, we should do a TV show.
And I said to Brandon, I go. I go, didn't you go to. Brandon went to SUNY Albany up in Albany. I go, didn't you go to somebody who's in tv? We got to know somebody. So he had a friend that had worked at Viacom and the whole world shut down. So we reached out to him and said, hey, we want to shoot a TV show. No, nothing. Like, life is all about timing. No other point in time. If we had done that, would anyone give us one second to even consider the ridiculous idea?
And we were filming in the middle of COVID when you weren't allowed to. Supposed to be filming.
The county executive was like, on the news calling us, like, a super spreader event. Like, it was like every bad press we could get, we got.
[00:31:15] Richard Gearhart: I was going to say, but bad press is better than no press, maybe.
[00:31:18] Todd Drowlette: Exactly. And doing something is better than doing nothing. So we were filming a show, and so we filmed the show, put it on Facebook, watch. And we got like, 1.2 million views per episode.
And then we took that success and then went network shopping and pitch people, and pitch people, and pitch people and pitch people.
And it was important to me to produce the show, even though I only had that limited experience of producing the show. And we made a deal with A and E and it was crazy, but it's just persistent. You get told no. You know, even in regular deals, I get told no all the time. You just can't take it to heart. And if you believe in something, you have to just keep doing it until you get the yes. Or create your own production company.
Prove it. You know, go out, do it, prove it. Because everybody wants the easy yes. So you give people an easy yes. It's a way. So if somebody wants to be on tv, go make your own show and start promoting it and then pitch it once it's people want to get on the bus that's already left the station. As crazy as that sounds, nobody wants to watch you build the bus. Knows that bus even going to have an engine that's working people like grabbing onto success. So you got to say, hey, I'm already successful and I don't need you. And then you get a better deal when you don't need people. Once you've already done it, you get a lot better deal than if they're going to, quote, make you, so to speak.
[00:32:31] Richard Gearhart: That is a great insight. We're with Todd Drollett and he is just been an amazing guest. Todd, how can people contact you?
[00:32:39] Todd Drowlette: They can go to the realestatecommission.com if they're interested in the show or titan commercial realty group.com and my Instagram handles are better. TalkToToD and you can Google me. Fun fact, 360 million people in the United States. I'm the only Todd Drollette in the entire country. So good or bad, it's me.
[00:32:57] Elizabeth Gearhart: Wow, that's awesome.
[00:32:58] Richard Gearhart: Yeah.
[00:32:59] Elizabeth Gearhart: Now it is time for real AI Use cases Business Owner's roundtable. So I'm going to ask everybody to give me one example of how they're using AI in their business. And there's a lot to talk about these days with AI so I'm going to start with Todd Drollett. What is one way you're using AI?
[00:33:16] Todd Drowlette: I hired Sam and Sam is running the AI for us.
[00:33:20] Elizabeth Gearhart: And that's what a lot of companies do using AI.
[00:33:23] Todd Drowlette: Sam wrote basically a program that would go out, search the Internet, pull a bunch of marketing brochures, run demographic reports all in real time in a matter of like three and a half hours. It did what used to take us three weeks of three people full time doing.
[00:33:37] Elizabeth Gearhart: Excellent. So let's go to Brandon Bellamy. So what is one way that you've used AI recently or your favorite way
[00:33:45] Brandon Bellamy: I like to use AI to identify opportunities. I use it more of a lens than, you know, a crutch. Right. So if I'm looking for, you know, a building, if I'm selling a book right now, I'm selling a building in Syracuse, Right. For easy math, let's say that building is 19,000 square feet. I would use AI, kind of make a project, kind of a sub chat, something like that. And I'd upload the local assessment report so I have all the tax maps for the whole city of Syracuse and I'll compare the that building or I'll run that report and find buildings that mimic the building that I have and contact those owners to see if they're interested in another 19,000 square foot building.
[00:34:22] Elizabeth Gearhart: That's really smart. Samuel Desany, what's your favorite way to use AI?
[00:34:26] Samuel Desany: My favorite way is probably just to code some of the sites that we're working on, the front and back end of the sites so the coder doesn't have to do the back end and the front end and understand these half put together. Thoughts.
[00:34:41] Elizabeth Gearhart: Excellent. We're going to have a little bit more discussion, but Richard Gearhart, what is one way you're using AI?
[00:34:46] Richard Gearhart: One way. Just this last week I put our financials into copilot and I got a valuation for our business.
[00:34:55] Elizabeth Gearhart: Well, I would use a second LLM and ask it, but I know you don't want to put anything through a non enterprise version of.
[00:35:01] Richard Gearhart: In the past you would have paid somebody what, $15,000 to do an evaluation and would have taken two months and they would have interviewed everybody in the firm and you know, done all sorts of stuff and if you're just looking for a back of the envelope type of number, it works pretty well.
[00:35:16] Elizabeth Gearhart: Yeah, well for me. So I decided I have a business coach and she's pushing me on this, but it's really my decision.
I want to take all the content from this podcast. So Real AI Use Cases is another podcast, Inside Passage to Profit. So we put a little bit of the content in Passage to Profit, but we record a lot more and we put all the content into another podcast called Real AI Use Cases. And I want to take all the content from that and have AI help me write a book.
And Richard will be a co author of course, because he's here gathering the content too.
[00:35:52] Todd Drowlette: I'd like to write the forward, even though I know very little about that.
[00:35:56] Elizabeth Gearhart: Yeah, no, I told you.
[00:35:58] Richard Gearhart: Are you going to use AI to do it?
[00:35:59] Elizabeth Gearhart: I mean, I told you I'm going to Quote, spoiler alert. Yeah, you can. Of course you can. But I asked AI because you got to understand, to post the podcast. I get the transcript and I put it through ChatGPT and I'm going to automate this process. I'm working on doing an agent for this, and I say, okay, chatgpt, generate the description for Kastos, which is where we upload our podcast and distributes it everywhere and make it SEO and AEO, you know, optimize it for SEO, search engine optimization and answer engine optimization.
Give me FAQs, give me headers, et cetera. I'm sure that Sam knows everything I'm talking about.
[00:36:41] Todd Drowlette: You just made me think of Old MacDonald for a second. I thought you were saying E, I, E, I, O.
I was like, well, okay, I'm lost.
[00:36:47] Richard Gearhart: I can't keep all those acronyms straight.
[00:36:50] Elizabeth Gearhart: So anyway, so my point being that I've been doing it in chat. Chat has all the transcripts already.
The first step is first contact everybody, make sure they're okay with being in this book. But secondly, I think I might actually put them in Gemini and say, okay, give me a book and just kind of see what it comes up with. It's still going to take a lot of human intervention and a lot of work.
[00:37:12] Richard Gearhart: You're just saying that because you want the copyright.
[00:37:14] Elizabeth Gearhart: But yes, I do want, but. So to get to the point, okay, Yeah. I asked ChatGPT, what should I call this book? And it said, well, you should call it Real AI Use Cases. So it matches the podcast. Everybody knows they're the same thing.
[00:37:28] Christine Haupt: And.
[00:37:28] Elizabeth Gearhart: And then it gave me. But you need to have a tagline. Gave me this big old long tagline.
And so Richard and I were talking about it, and Richard actually came up with what I thought was a very good tagline for it. So this is what it's going to be. It's going to be real AI use cases.
50 ways you can use artificial intelligence to improve your business.
[00:37:47] Todd Drowlette: People love numbers.
[00:37:48] Richard Gearhart: Yeah, they do.
[00:37:49] Elizabeth Gearhart: Yeah. And that was Richard's idea.
[00:37:51] Richard Gearhart: So, spoiler alert, we might include 51 ways, a little extra value.
[00:37:59] Elizabeth Gearhart: And we're going to put 20, 26 edition, because we want to try to do this every year. I kind of feel like it's a documentary of how businesses have evolved using AI through the year. Right.
[00:38:10] Todd Drowlette: I thought Richard's subtitle was going to be. That's what she said
[00:38:15] Christine Haupt: it should be.
[00:38:16] Richard Gearhart: Yes, dear.
[00:38:17] Elizabeth Gearhart: Well, with that, thank you very much, everybody. This has been Real AI Use Cases Business Owners Roundtable. If you're listening to this on the radio. We had a really much longer discussion than you're going to hear, but you can find it on our AI Use Cases podcast. But coming up, we have more interviews with Todd's team and we also have secrets of the entrepreneurial mind. We'll be right back.
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[00:40:40] Announcer 1: Passage to profit continues with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.
[00:40:44] Richard Gearhart: Quick shout out to our friends at KROE 9:30am and 103.9 FM in Rapid City, South Dakota. Thanks for listening. And if you're new here, Passage to Profit is a top ranked entrepreneurship, podcast and radio show heard on 41 stations. It's a place where founders share what really works. Now it's time for intellectual property news. The US Patent and Trademark Office announced today that it has appointed a Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer.
His name is Jonathan Spencer, and he'll help the agency use AI in its own work and address AI's growing role in innovation. That's timely for our conversation. Today. Our clients are developing businesses that use AI, and I hear the same question from entrepreneurs all the time. If AI helped me build it, can I still get a patent? The answer is potentially yes.
Using AI doesn't automatically disqualify an invention, but it also doesn't mean that putting AI into a product makes that product patentable. The Patent Office says the usual inventorship rules still apply. AI can be a tool, but the inventor's name on a US Patent application must be a person.
So the useful question is, what did the people come up with? Let's say we you're developing software for property managers. You ask an AI tool to help you write the code and the finished product saves hours of work.
That sounds like a promising business. To evaluate it as a possible invention, though, I'd want to dig deeper. What problem does the software solve? How does it solve it? What did your team figure out that wasn't already there?
Todd asked a question that he likes to ask.
Is that making you any money as a patent attorney? I'd add another what have you built that your competitors would love to copy? And while founders are focused on the technology, there's another piece of intellectual property they can overlook. The name. Before you invest in a website, advertising and a launch, find out whether you can use the brand for what you're selling.
Changing a name after customers know it is a lot more painful than checking it early.
So if you're rebuilding with AI, keep track of the decisions and solutions your people developed. Be specific about what makes the product different, and check your brand before you build a business around it. AI can help you move faster.
Knowing what you've created and what you can protect helps you get to decide where to go next. That's it for IP News this week. And if you have an idea or invention you want to protect, the team at Gerhart Law helps entrepreneurs turn ideas into protected assets. You can visit learn more about Patents.com or learn more about Trademarks.com for a free consultation and practical guides to get you started later. The secrets of the Entrepreneurial what successful founders think about that most people never
[00:43:54] Elizabeth Gearhart: see and now it's time for our entrepreneurial segments. We're doing it a little different. We've split Todd's team up into two groups. The first group, Christine Haupt, director of asset management at Titan, along with Camilla Rodriguez Drollett, who's a licensed real estate salesperson and also works for Titan as the glue. And we're going to be asking them questions. I know that, Christine, you had brought up something that I told you to hold onto and save.
[00:44:23] Christine Haupt: Yes.
[00:44:24] Elizabeth Gearhart: So let's go there first.
[00:44:25] Christine Haupt: So I. You had asked Todd about his 1700 deals and how he became so successful. I've been with Todd since the beginning of his career. We've been together longer than most married couples are together. And one of the things that stood out from the beginning of his career is it didn't matter how big or small the deal was. There were people who came into the business and everybody comes into the business and they think they're the next big broker. They're going to be the most successful person to do it. But they don't want to put the work in, you know, they, they only wanted the deals that were going to bring them in. The hundred or thousand dollar commissions. Todd took all the little deals. There were little tiny office spaces that were being rented for $500 a month. Commissions were very small. They weren't anything. And Todd didn't care. He did them all because the money in his pocket was better than the money in somebody else's pocket pocket. And those are the things that lead to be successful. You have to put the time in those deals, gave them more knowledge of the buildings, of the properties of the area.
And some of those tenants that he put into those small, rinky dink little office spaces have come back when they expanded, when they needed bigger spaces, when they wanted to buy buildings. And some of them are still clients to this day. You have to build your clientele and you have to start sometimes with the small people. The small people end up being big people.
[00:45:48] Richard Gearhart: So, Richard, I can only say that I did exactly the same thing. When Elizabeth and I first started Gerhart Law, we underpriced ourselves to the hilt and we took any client, no matter what, just because I needed experience working with clients in a private practice setting. So I worked on the corporate side before, worked for big companies. But doing that, I learned a lot. I have other friends who are attorneys who said, nope, I'm not going to do that. I'm only going to take marquee clients and I'm going to charge premium rates because that's what I'm worth. And they're out of business. I think really you gain a lot by taking that approach. And I think it's important for entrepreneurs listening to appreciate that that's one way to move forward.
[00:46:31] Elizabeth Gearhart: Well, I have to say we were able to do that because Richard worked out of the house.
He cobbled together his server from computer parts we had around the house.
We didn't buy anything. I remember I tried to convince them to buy a desk. It took years to get them to buy a desk.
But to keep costs down, then we could take the lower paying clients and gradually build the practice.
[00:46:54] Christine Haupt: Yeah, we were working for another company. We were together at the other company and they built a strip center in Montrose Pennsy people wouldn't even know where Montrose PA is.
[00:47:06] Todd Drowlette: They had people have been to Montrose
[00:47:07] Christine Haupt: Bn and I mean, I don't even remember how many square feet it was there, but it was, it wasn't anything big. And at the time there was probably eight other salespeople within the company.
Well, nobody else wanted to go and rent that space out. Well, why not? Because money is money, right? Everybody wants to make money. He did. He took the ride, he took the chance. He went and he rented out. Well then the owner of the company was just so thankful and so appreciative of, wow. He went and he did that. And he was, he loved him like he was his guy because he went and did that. Money's money. Everybody's got to make money. We joke all the time. He's the cheapest person you'll ever meet.
[00:47:46] Richard Gearhart: But if you're a business owner and you're responsible for paying expenses, meeting, payroll, eventually you have to think like in terms of minimizing cost because that's a pressure that other people in the business don't often feel.
[00:48:02] Elizabeth Gearhart: Absolutely.
[00:48:03] Richard Gearhart: And so you're the one who's responsible for making sure that everybody else gets paid. So you don't want to spend money on stuff that is going to make that harder.
[00:48:11] Christine Haupt: I don't spend his money. I treat his money as if it's my money. I don't just willy nilly spend his money. You have to have people in your corner that aren't just like, oh, we'll just buy it, we'll just buy it, just spend it.
[00:48:23] Elizabeth Gearhart: That's a tough one.
[00:48:24] Christine Haupt: We don't just do that. We're not just buying that.
[00:48:26] Elizabeth Gearhart: So I want to shift a little and I want to ask Camilla.
[00:48:29] Christine Haupt: Okay.
[00:48:30] Elizabeth Gearhart: We've heard a little bit about Todd's personality.
[00:48:32] Camila Rodriguez Drowlette: He's that cheap at home, too.
[00:48:34] Todd Drowlette: Yeah.
[00:48:34] Elizabeth Gearhart: How long have you guys been married now?
[00:48:37] Camila Rodriguez Drowlette: Almost three years, and we have dated for almost four.
[00:48:40] Elizabeth Gearhart: And you have a beautiful baby.
[00:48:42] Camila Rodriguez Drowlette: Yes.
[00:48:43] Elizabeth Gearhart: So when did you start in the business with Todd? Did you start right after you started dating or after you got married?
[00:48:48] Camila Rodriguez Drowlette: I think it was after we got married, right. I don't really remember. I want to say probably two years that I have been working with him.
And to be honest, I never understood what he did for a living. Like, he tried explaining the whole thing to me, like, 10 times. And until I came to the office and actually started working with him and with everybody, I didn't understand how it worked. I was always like, okay, but I never understood.
[00:49:15] Elizabeth Gearhart: So has Christine mentored you a lot?
[00:49:18] Camila Rodriguez Drowlette: Yeah, I think all of them, actually. I feel like we're, I don't know, like a. Like a big team. We all learn from each other. Of course, I'm always with Todd. Like, we spend 95, 99% of our time together, but also in the office, I feel like we all learn from each other. And of course, Chris, she has been in the same business, like, doing different things, but on the business for 25 years. So she also knows a lot of things. Like, usually Todd is really busy, so whenever you can get a hold of Todd, you go ask Chris if she knows somebody or if she knows what we're supposed to do in these cases or what she thinks Todd would do in this scenario.
[00:49:58] Elizabeth Gearhart: And.
[00:49:58] Todd Drowlette: And Todd's so busy because he's probably
[00:50:00] Elizabeth Gearhart: asking Chris something, so it must be kind of tough. I mean, Richard and I work together and we're married. And I guess you're the same way off doing different things. Like, there are some days Richard and I will not talk to each other all day long because he's in meetings all day long, I'm in meetings all day long. So how is it working with your husband?
[00:50:18] Camila Rodriguez Drowlette: I love it. I always wanted to have a partner that we could do, like, a lot of things together.
So I love it. I think he loves it, too.
[00:50:28] Todd Drowlette: She has her space because her office is completely on the other side of the building.
[00:50:32] Elizabeth Gearhart: Yeah, one thing that's a danger, I think, and probably if you spend any time with them too, Christine, even outside of work, you always end up talking about work because that's all that we do.
[00:50:43] Todd Drowlette: Camille complains about that all the time. Because I will literally wake up at 3am and I'll be like, I just got an idea. He's like, it's three o' clock in the morning. My God. And I'm like, okay, I'll tell Chris or Brandon or Sam or Chris.
[00:50:54] Christine Haupt: A little funny story is my son stopped into the office one day and he looked at Todd and he went, are you crazy? He goes, it's not bad enough you have my mother here, but you have your wife working here too. He goes, what is wrong with you?
[00:51:08] Elizabeth Gearhart: Not only that, but he doesn't let you guys spend any money.
[00:51:12] Christine Haupt: But it's okay. I mean, we get what we need. The copier was the big thing. I'm not even exaggerating. The copier was a huge thing.
[00:51:19] Richard Gearhart: Congratulations.
[00:51:20] Christine Haupt: Every time I use a copy or I print to it, or you just, you just hit one button now and then you scan it and it scans right to your email. I'm. I'll say to him, he'll be like, I need to scan something and we'll do it. And I'll be like, isn't that awesome? And he'll be like, no, it's not. And I'm like, I love it.
[00:51:35] Todd Drowlette: That's exactly what I said.
[00:51:37] Christine Haupt: That's exactly what he says. I'm like, I love it.
[00:51:39] Todd Drowlette: The thing people don't realize for entrepreneurs, I just did an interview with the Daily sun like two, three weeks ago, and I gave them six tips because 57% of people live paycheck to paycheck. And what people don't realize is whether you're talking about success or money, it's the tiny little things, the tiny little transactions of your day. Whether you're spending time, money, effort, it's those little, tiny little things incrementally that are a lot of money. People are like, oh, that's just $5 for a coffee today. Well, if you're spending $5 for a coffee five days a week, 52 days, that's a vacation. So there's like all these ways that people just don't think about. It's like your whole life is passing you by with the inconsequential. That is what makes up your entire life. So entrepreneurs, if you're running a business, you can't guarantee how much revenue you're going to make, but you can guarantee how much money you spend. So it's like you have to pay attention to what you're spending. And that's why most people live paycheck to paycheck, because they're not thinking about those little micro transactions throughout the day and what you're spending. I'm just going to spend five minutes doing scrolling on my phone. Well, five minutes turns into 20 minutes. It turns into whatever. You have to pay attention to the little things because the little things are the big things.
[00:52:47] Elizabeth Gearhart: That's very wise.
[00:52:48] Richard Gearhart: Yeah. Well, one of the things about being an attorney is we do bill our time. And so you become very aware of how you're billing your time because you're recording everything that you do.
[00:52:59] Todd Drowlette: So you spend half your hour recording. How much time are you billing?
[00:53:02] Richard Gearhart: Well, it does take a little extra time to do that, but it's required because that's how you generate client invoices. But then you do become aware, and what you say is absolutely true. I think building good habits and organizing your week as much as you can allow you to maximize your time. And that's the way it works for me. Not everybody operates that way, but to be an entrepreneur, you need to be a self starter. You need to be somebody who sees a goal and then figures out how to get there and doesn't give up.
[00:53:31] Elizabeth Gearhart: Yes. I want to go back to Christine for a minute. What's one of the best stories you can tell or the biggest challenges you guys have had to overcome in all these years?
[00:53:40] Christine Haupt: He was a partner in another firm. It didn't work out, and he left and he started Titan. And I had stayed back at the other company, and it wasn't going well and it wasn't comfortable, and I had to wait for him to be like, hey, let's go.
[00:53:57] Todd Drowlette: So I basically said, I'll come get you, but I need to get, you know, I need to get set up and get whatever, because it's just like one day I'd had enough. I go, I'm out. And that was just the moment that I left. And she's like, when are you coming to get me? When are you coming to get me?
[00:54:09] Christine Haupt: To get his ducks in a row. So I had to sit there and wait.
[00:54:13] Todd Drowlette: And, yeah, that was a wild time.
[00:54:14] Christine Haupt: Yeah, it was definitely a wild time. We were going through some things, and that was the hardest part. That was very challenging.
[00:54:22] Elizabeth Gearhart: Yeah.
[00:54:22] Richard Gearhart: So, Christine, what does a director of assets do?
[00:54:25] Christine Haupt: So I'm. Director of assets is just a fancy name to be a property manager. So I deal with all of the tenants, calling for any complaints, you know, dealing with snow plowing, paving, parking lots, any issues, billing the tenants, making sure they pay their rent.
[00:54:42] Richard Gearhart: In your role as property manager or asset manager, what are some of your biggest challenges?
[00:54:49] Elizabeth Gearhart: Everything.
[00:54:49] Christine Haupt: No, it's very hard to keep the tenants all happy. We've got a building in downtown Albany that we've been working with the new owner to remodel and upgrade. And the tenants in the building, some of them have been there a long time, keeping them happy of, you know, this is what we're doing. This is how we're trying to fix things. You know, they want things done now. Like, well, you said you were going to do it. Why is it not? Why isn't it done yet?
[00:55:16] Elizabeth Gearhart: Wait a minute. Did you make a show out of that one?
[00:55:18] Christine Haupt: We did. That was one of the episodes. And we're still.
[00:55:21] Elizabeth Gearhart: Don't leave because they won't invest if you leave.
[00:55:24] Christine Haupt: Yeah. And we're still working on that property, so. And, you know, trying to manage everything and keeping all the tenants happy. They all obviously have opinions on what they want done, how they want it done, and the time frame they want it done. And it's. It's a challenge every day. You know, we had an issue with the elevator at that building. We couldn't get the parts. They were. It was six weeks out for the parts to come in to fix the elevator. The tenants were obviously very angry, and justifiably, we're. No, we don't say that. They didn't have a reason to be angry, but they're yelling at us.
[00:55:55] Todd Drowlette: You also have problems that you can't tell people the real problem. But it's like if you have one office, right, and they're a tenant, and you have a woman going through menopause, you have a guy who's 400 pounds, you have somebody who weighs 110 pounds, and they're all. One's complaining they're freezing. One's complaining they're hot.
[00:56:09] Christine Haupt: Yeah.
[00:56:09] Todd Drowlette: And it's like, okay, it's like, I don't have a conversation with you that, okay, well, you're sweating sitting there.
[00:56:14] Brandon Bellamy: You are.
[00:56:15] Todd Drowlette: You know what I mean? So there's like. There's no diplomatic way to be like. And they're like, why I'm hot and I'm cold. And it's like, well, we can't make you all happy. So we can either turn it up or we can turn it down. But there's two zones, and you got move across.
There's just problems that don't have good solutions.
[00:56:29] Elizabeth Gearhart: Yeah, there's.
[00:56:30] Christine Haupt: There's no solution to it. And when I say it's daily, the calls are daily. It's full time.
[00:56:36] Todd Drowlette: And if you do so well managing the building, people naturally will create new problems.
[00:56:40] Elizabeth Gearhart: Right.
[00:56:40] Todd Drowlette: They'll complain about things in a million years they would never complain about because they don't have anything else to complain.
[00:56:44] Christine Haupt: They're fighting over parking spaces Somebody's in my parking space.
[00:56:49] Todd Drowlette: It's like kindergarten.
[00:56:50] Christine Haupt: It is.
[00:56:51] Richard Gearhart: It sounds like a thankless job.
[00:56:53] Christine Haupt: It is. It is.
[00:56:54] Elizabeth Gearhart: If you have a really good tenant who doesn't complain and maybe just fixes things that they can fix that go wrong, is it better to risk losing them by raising the rent so you get more money, or is it best to keep the rent kind of low for them so you have a super good tenant who always pays on time and doesn't complain and fixes the things
[00:57:14] Christine Haupt: we've actually kept Some tenants rents at what they're currently paying.
[00:57:18] Todd Drowlette: I would answer that. You didn't give me enough information because I need to know relative to the market you just have to keep. So for someone to not move, there's an expense to move and you want to treat people fairly. But like, and I'm making this up, if your rent was $5,000 a month that you're charging and market is 10,000, well, it's still reasonable to raise them because you can go look at these comps. If you move here, here or anywhere else, I can raise your rent. And I'm still being fair to you because market is 10, so I'm going to charge you 7. But if market is. Is what it is, then so many landlords think they're entitled to their tenants and they just raise the rent every year. Regardless. You have to constantly be situationally aware and know what is the market in this moment. So you. You would need to know what are their other options? What would that charge determine? Whether I would raise the rent or not.
[00:58:04] Elizabeth Gearhart: Okay. Well, thank you.
So, Christine, Camilla, this has been wonderful. Thank you.
[00:58:10] Richard Gearhart: Passage to Profit with Richard and Elizabeth Gerhardt.
[00:58:12] Elizabeth Gearhart: We're going to move on now to the other two members of the team who are here. Brandon Bellamy and Sam Desdney. Now, Brandon, you're a licensed real estate broker at Titan. So I'm going to ask you the difference between a broker and a real estate agent for number one. And, Sam, you're a licensed real estate person and also the AI Software guy.
So let's start, Brandon, with my question. What's the difference between a broker and a real estate salesperson?
[00:58:38] Brandon Bellamy: Just the experience. As a licensed real estate salesperson, you have to kind of keep that title for two years and do a certain amount of deals before you qualify to be a broker. As a broker under New York State, I can open up my own brokerage and things like that. As a licensed real estate salesperson, you couldn't do that.
[00:58:53] Elizabeth Gearhart: Okay, and how long have you been
[00:58:55] Brandon Bellamy: with the company I've been with Titan since Titan started. What's that, eight years?
[00:58:59] Elizabeth Gearhart: Okay, great. Okay. So, Sam, what convinced you to go work at a real estate company?
[00:59:07] Samuel Desany: I'd like to say that I have a passion for real estate. There are people in my family who are in real estate or real estate adjacent, and I've always just had sort of a eye opening experience to these larger buildings. Like, I have a few friends from high school who are in residential real estate, but the commercial sector I felt like nobody was talking about.
So I actually met with my advisor at school and he told me that the screening of season one of the Real Estate Commission was going to be on campus that night. So I decided to tell all my friends, you know, not going to be able to see you guys tonight. And I went to the screening and I was talking with these guys here about everything that they do and was trying to just make as many connections and just learn as much as I could.
And later on that night, I sent a LinkedIn invite to Todd and he responded with his email and reached out to him. And for about, I'd say five months, we were talking back and forth. I came into their office, shadowed Todd a few times, and after that Todd sent me an email saying, if you want to work here, the job is yours. Just get your real estate license.
So I did that. I got my real estate license during my spring semester of school and started two days after finals were over. And by my third day of working at Titan, Todd came in with his first of many ideas and came to me and said, you're young, you probably know how to use AI, right?
So that kind of started where I am right now, which is working and learning adjacent, kind of on a 50, 50 split of learning as much as I work.
[01:00:56] Elizabeth Gearhart: Excellent. Well, Brandon, you're also really good at using AI. Is that something, Todd, that you're looking for? When you look at people as people that are able to find really creative ways to use AI, I like people
[01:01:08] Todd Drowlette: who are smart and are personable. Like the AI thing is like a bonus, but it's not a, it's not a requirement. And I kind of have my gurus already. So anyone new who joined, if they, if they know it, great. If they don't, you know, I'm certainly not an expert on it by any stretch of the imagination. So you kind of need everybody.
[01:01:26] Brandon Bellamy: Brandon, I kind of wanted to like, kind of say something right with and kind of bring everything full circle. We're talking about the entrepreneurial mind. We're talking about you know, AI, we're talking about how Todd does things and how he's cheap sometimes. And I kind of gotta, kind of gotta get my guys back real quick. Because when I started real estate, I mean, I started real estate before I came back with Todd. So I've only done real estate for about 20 years. Well, there wasn't any artificial intelligence. There wasn't even that much technology. The crexis, the loop nets to anything else that exists today didn't exist when I first started real estate. So I think that if you took all of those things away from me, if I didn't have AI, all I really need is a phone and a list of contacts to put some real estate deals together. And so I don't think it should be a requirement to, you know, be fluent in AI to start commercial real estate. I think that people who go about that way are very, again, they're using as a crutch. They're at a disadvantage because you don't know anything about the fundamentals. I didn't need that printer, though, so.
[01:02:21] Richard Gearhart: So you've been at this a long time and. Yes. You know, my mom sold real estate, right.
[01:02:26] Brandon Bellamy: And she had a 9x and a good personality.
[01:02:29] Richard Gearhart: And she had a good personality.
I'm looking at Elizabeth as I say
[01:02:34] Todd Drowlette: that her cringe how she hated me.
[01:02:38] Richard Gearhart: But it is kind of a cutthroat business sometimes, right?
[01:02:41] Brandon Bellamy: Yeah, yeah, A lot of ups and downs.
[01:02:43] Richard Gearhart: How do you survive for umpteen years in a business?
[01:02:47] Brandon Bellamy: Like, how do I survive? I could be honest with you guys.
[01:02:49] Todd Drowlette: She cries a lot.
[01:02:50] Brandon Bellamy: Oh, my gosh. I joined a run club last week. So, like, I'm doing 5Ks twice a week. I work out. Sometimes I have like my own stall in the bathroom where I cry a little bit. You know, Todd has a poker face. I don't know how he does it. Our are right next door to each other. I'll come in there and shed some tears and get right back to it. But I do think that, you know, you have to have, like, real tough skin to make it in real estate. It's cool to have one good year, but you got to do it again. If I'm depending on, you know, this deal to go through for, you know, real life changes, buying homes, you know, taking care of my, my, my family, you know, kind of setting that solid foundation on a career that isn't really that solid at any point in time, of course, you get personally invested. I get personally invested. I act like I'm not, but I'm hurt. My feelings Sometimes when these deals don't go through.
[01:03:35] Richard Gearhart: Right, right.
Do you ever feel like the deal went south because of something you did?
[01:03:41] Brandon Bellamy: Even if it did, I can't hold on to that. That goes back into that, getting over it. You know, Todd will give me 10, 20 minutes and when he's too busy, I go to my stall and I'll take my five minutes and I get back to it.
[01:03:50] Richard Gearhart: Yeah.
[01:03:51] Elizabeth Gearhart: So do you work 24 7?
[01:03:54] Brandon Bellamy: No, I work a lot when I'm working, but like, I've learned the hard way that you have to. You got to cut it off sometimes.
[01:04:01] Christine Haupt: Do you.
[01:04:02] Elizabeth Gearhart: But do you do showings at night?
[01:04:04] Brandon Bellamy: And I have this weird thing where I don't want to show property on the weekends because I haven't had a deal happen after you show property on the weekends.
[01:04:10] Todd Drowlette: But commercial is very different than residential. Like if you're not, if you're running a business or you're. If it's not important enough for you to see it during the work week, you're not really serious about buying that thing or moving or, or whatever, be like, oh, I want to see it on Sunday at 4pm why? Because you have nothing else to do. It's very different than people buying and selling houses.
[01:04:30] Elizabeth Gearhart: That's the drink because. So we have this podcast studio and it's not the same thing, but I'm finding, like, I don't want to do evenings and weekends. And I think you're right. If you're not a serious business person that can do things for your business during the regular work week, then you're not serious.
[01:04:47] Richard Gearhart: Secondary. As a secondary pursuit.
[01:04:50] Todd Drowlette: Not to quote Dirty Dancing, but nobody puts Baby in a corner. It's like if you don't want to come during these times and be here, then it's not serious enough and I'm not working with you.
[01:04:58] Elizabeth Gearhart: So how do you. Do you guys get your clients?
[01:05:01] Todd Drowlette: How do you find them, your TV shows?
[01:05:05] Brandon Bellamy: One way. Yeah. Basically one good deal turns into two good deals. Two good deals turns into four good deals.
[01:05:11] Elizabeth Gearhart: So you think it's client referrals or.
[01:05:14] Camila Rodriguez Drowlette: Yeah.
[01:05:15] Brandon Bellamy: And constantly grinding, finding new people.
[01:05:17] Richard Gearhart: So how do you do that?
[01:05:18] Brandon Bellamy: They don't make nine X's anymore. But you know, if I have a. Let's say I have a retail space on a street that doesn't have a Laundromat. I'm going to Google Laundromat operators in the area and I'm going to reach out to them directly. I think that, you know, sometimes again, we rely on that, you know, AI and Artificial intelligence when we are intelligent as hell ourselves, our brains.
[01:05:40] Richard Gearhart: So how do you see your future evolving as a real estate professional?
[01:05:44] Brandon Bellamy: I don't want to say, I don't know. Whatever is ahead of me is going to have is going to be very commercial real estate adjacent. I am inspired. Follow a Todd around. I swear like he discounts how these things come about. Like one day it's like TV crews walk into the office, another day it's kind of like, you know, we're taking over the Internet. So I'm motivated by those things. But as of right now, I don't, I don't know the next big thing for me. But I do know that I'm going to be at that office every day about 8:45.
[01:06:12] Richard Gearhart: And Sam, what about you? I mean you, what are your aspirations for the future?
[01:06:16] Samuel Desany: Yeah, I, I have, you know, one month goals, three month, six month year, all the way up to the next 30 years, all, you know, in a Google Doc form, you know, on my computer. But I really think that with a bunch of the things that we're doing now with real estate and different software systems that Todd and I are working on, I think that they can do very well.
And my goals are just for the immediate future just to keep learning and just to keep working. Because right now, and people say you never work a day in your life if you love what you do. And I think that that's so true. I go to bed every night and I, I brainstorm things on my phone and on my laptop and it's like it's hard to go to bed because my brain is always moving. I'm always thinking about stuff that I could be doing and whether I'm in the office or I'm in my dorm room at school, I feel like I'm always thinking about stuff that I could be doing with Titan or stuff that I could be doing with Todd.
[01:07:17] Richard Gearhart: That's great. I mean we had a discussion before the show about different businesses that you were interested in. Software projects, new businesses. So it seems like Titan is looking to expand in ways that touch on real estate but are really different businesses. Right. So it seems like there's a lot of opportunity there.
[01:07:37] Elizabeth Gearhart: So Todd, would you ever consider, I know you love Albany. Would you ever consider maybe sending one of these guys to another city to start a second branch of your business?
[01:07:47] Todd Drowlette: Possibly. It's funny you say that because doing residential spinoff show called the Real Estate Commission New York and it's a docu series, but following around that and part of that is Actually, we have a residential brokerage we're launching called the Real Estate Commission. And the idea would be that we will open up in multiple cities and maybe there can be spinoff shows of the Real Estate Commission, Kansas City, the Real Estate Commission, San Diego, the Real Estate Commission, wherever. So, yes, is that a possibility? And one of these guys features sooner than later. Yes.
[01:08:18] Elizabeth Gearhart: Oh, I love that.
[01:08:19] Samuel Desany: I'd love to go to San Diego.
[01:08:21] Elizabeth Gearhart: I was going to say, do they get.
[01:08:22] Richard Gearhart: Sounds like an excuse to travel to me.
[01:08:24] Todd Drowlette: Sorry. The first one is the Real Estate Commission, Anchorage.
[01:08:28] Brandon Bellamy: I got dibs on the Tampa location.
[01:08:32] Elizabeth Gearhart: Well, with that, thank you very much, we're going to go to a break, but don't leave because next is Secrets of the Entrepreneurial Mind. We'll be right back.
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[01:09:38] Richard Gearhart: It's passage to Profit. Alicia Morrissey is our programming director at Passage to Profit, and she's also a fantastic jazz vocalist. You can scroll to the bottom of the passage to profitshow.com website and check out her album.
[01:09:54] Elizabeth Gearhart: And now it is time for Secrets of the Entrepreneurial Mind. So, Todd Drailette with the Real Estate Commission, what is a secret you can share with our listeners matters?
[01:10:04] Todd Drowlette: My quick secret would be don't say something behind someone's back that you wouldn't say to their face. So if you're gonna say it to their face, say it to their face. Let them hear it directly from you, not from someone else.
[01:10:15] Elizabeth Gearhart: I love that one because it always circles back around, right?
[01:10:18] Todd Drowlette: It always circles back around. And I want to be like, I'm the One who told you that? That's really how I feel. Like, if I don't like you, I don't like you. If I like you, I like you. But let them hear it from you, not from someone else.
[01:10:29] Elizabeth Gearhart: Excellent.
[01:10:30] Christine Haupt: Okay.
[01:10:30] Elizabeth Gearhart: Christine Haupt. What is a secret you can share with our listeners?
[01:10:34] Christine Haupt: Mine would be, if you don't know what you're doing, don't be afraid to ask. I like that not everybody knows everything and it's okay to ask for help.
[01:10:42] Elizabeth Gearhart: I love that. Brandon Bellamy.
[01:10:44] Brandon Bellamy: Perseverance, resilience. Get knocked down nine times, get up ten.
[01:10:49] Elizabeth Gearhart: Love that.
Sam Desney.
[01:10:51] Samuel Desany: I'd say just keep working until you've reached your goals because life's too short to try to compromise on things that you think are goals rather than something that could happen a lot sooner than you think.
[01:11:04] Elizabeth Gearhart: Excellent. Camilla Drylett.
[01:11:06] Camila Rodriguez Drowlette: Probably just surround yourself with people that you really enjoy your life with.
[01:11:11] Elizabeth Gearhart: I love that one. I love that one. Richard Gearhart.
[01:11:15] Richard Gearhart: Those are all amazing secrets. In keeping with the theme of the show, I'm going to say where you work matters. So the environment that you're in, the physical way the rooms are put together, whose office is next to whose, what building you're in, all of those have a big effect on a business. And it's funny how entrepreneurs talk about things like finance and marketing and sales and product development, but they often don't talk about the physical space that their team is working in. And so one of the great things about our discussion today is that it sort of highlights the importance of having a good work environment and finding the right space for your business.
[01:11:57] Elizabeth Gearhart: Excellent. And mine is going to be when you see an opportunity, grab it. And I don't have to tell the people sitting here that, but I feel like, you know, we had Todd on the show a few months ago, and at the end of the show, Todd was like, you know, we could do an A and E show in here. What do you guys think about that?
And we didn't even hesitate. We're like, yeah, let's go for it, Todd. That would be really fun.
And same thing with the I heart opportunity over eight years ago. That wasn't as immediate. A yes, let me tell you. We had to really think about that because it costs money. But we decided to take that opportunity, too, and it's really worked out for us. They don't always, but I think you don't know if they will unless you try.
[01:12:38] Richard Gearhart: That's great. That's it for today's Passage to Profit show. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to the podcast and leave a quick review.
Also, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and X, and subscribe to our YouTube channel for bonus content. Tune in next week for another episode of Passage to Prophet.
