How Robotics and Automation Are Transforming Hotel Operations and Commercial Real Estate

Introduction to Guests and Topic Overview

Drew: Welcome back to the Peak Property Performance Podcast. It's me, your host, Drew Hall, along with Bill Douglas hosting as well. Welcome, Bill.

Bill: Hello, everyone. Welcome back. I'm going to read the introductions for these two gentlemen before we welcome them. Today on the Peak Property Performance Podcast, we're joined by Micah Green, founder and CEO of Talos. He's a Thiel Fellow and a Forbes 30 Under 30 entrepreneur reshaping how automation shows up in the built environment. Micah spent the last decade building robotics that gives teams back their time, not replacing people, but amplifying them. His work sits right at the intersection of AI, labor, and operational efficiency, and it points directly to where buildings are heading.

Bill: We're also joined by Joe Taliente. Did I get that right?

Micah Green: Well done.

Bill: There we go. First time I said it like that. Managing partner of TAGE Capital Partners. Joe brings a sharp owner-operator lens to this conversation about NOI valuation and how technology actually performs inside a portfolio and his perspective as a technology investor. So together, we're going to talk about robotics, automation, and the digital infrastructure that allows owners to drive real ROI within their assets. So Micah and Joe, welcome to the show. We're really happy to have you here today.

Micah Green: Thanks for having us, Bill and Drew.

Micah Green: Thank you for having us. And Micah, it's always a pleasure to see you, my friend.

Micah Green: It is. It's great. Yeah.

Automation as a Labor Strategy in Hospitality

Drew: All right. Hey, guys, let's start off with talking about automation as a labor strategy. So in industries, particularly those that are squeezed by labor shortages, how are robotics filling operational gaps today?

Micah Green: I'm going to let the expert answer that.

Micah Green: Okay. I can see if you wanted to jump in first. So yeah, I think starting with the data could be really helpful. So you mentioned labor shortages. There's now a few million open positions just in the U.S. alone, and that covers hospitality and real estate as a whole. When you look at cleaning all the way to the F&B side. So also, you know, F&B, restaurants, things like that. So that's a huge problem. The other side of it is the retention piece as well. So in housekeeping, there's cases where turnover can be up to 140 percent year over year. And that means if you have 10 housekeepers on site, all 10 may leave within the same year and then four of their replacements actually leave within the same year. So that's what people are dealing with.

Micah Green: So I think from my perspective, it's not even a matter of, you know, the type of solution. I mean, of course, there's a lot of different ways to cut that. But operators are desperate and Joe will be able to speak to this better than I can. But in terms of filling those voids and filling those gaps and how you even get the job done and then how do you get that job done sustainably? And that's where robotics have come into play, where you can have some pretty cost effective ways, like our robots, for example, two dollars, two dollars and 40 cents an hour verse in certain markets could be upwards of 30, 35 dollars an hour. But even if you can find and retain the person in the first place, well, yeah, fantastic.

Bill: Yeah. You said F&B is at the same turnover there. And for the listeners, F&B stands for food and beverage. There's a lot of acronyms in this industry. So we're just trying to explain them. Is it is it the same 140 percent in F&B as it is in hospitality?

Micah Green: So I'm more versed on the housekeeping. But Joe, what what have you seen in F&B?

Micah Green: The short answer, Bill, is yes. And but it certainly depends on the, you know, the platform for the F&B. I mean, in a quick serve restaurant, certainly higher intensity, lower wages, more turnover. If you, you know, if you go to a place like a French laundry, chances are the majority of their staff sticks around for a long time. They're very well paid, make their excellent tips. So, you know, it's a different situation.

Bill: Well, I was specifically talking about F&B inside of hospitality, like the food and beverage piece of hotel operations.

Micah Green: Yeah. Yeah. Well, the food and beverage piece in hotel operations is challenging as well, not as challenging as the housekeeping piece. Housekeepers are the thing is about, you know, if you look at the hotel industry, it goes by segments. So you can have everything from a five star Ritz Carlton all the way down to a motel six, which is, you know, a two star limited to one or two star limited service property. The one thing that those the two elements of operation that both of those types of properties have in common is front desk and housekeeping.

Micah Green: OK. And somebody would say, well, maintenance to Joe like, OK, maintenance. So front desk housekeeping and maintenance. But the most critical element is the housekeeping because they are producing the inventory. They're creating inventory to get sold every night. And those those people who are housekeepers, they are literally worth their weight in gold because if they do a wonderful job and they show up every every day and they perform, you know, you have the you have the ability to to operate a really great hotel. If they don't, you're struggling the whole time. And it's and it's it's hard work, thankless work. And it's not doesn't pay very well. And that is why you have 140 percent turnover.

Micah Green: Exactly. That's the 140 percent.

Bill: OK. Sorry for the interjection, but thank you for the clarity.

Micah Green: Thank you for interjecting.

Micah Green: Well, can I interject? Yeah, I think the conversation.

Micah Green: Absolutely. I think the other factor is that when you look at the industry right now, especially the hospitality hotel side, ADR, so the average daily rates has been steady or going down in many cases, depending on the market. And like Joe said, depending on the scale of hotel, too. So you're now in this position where wages have gone up, whether it's to attract more talent or because of market conditions or, you know, loss and regulatory. But then revenue is staying steady or even going down. And a lot of properties are forecasting next year to be even worse, unfortunately. So in those situations, going back to your question or point you, I think, how do you create a sustainable, profitable operation where everybody can win and you can deliver that product of a clean room? And that's where people have become much more creative and are somewhat forced to now adopt new technologies, whether it's, you know, AI tools, software apps and robotics to be able to help kind of bridge that gap.

Robotics Applications in Commercial Real Estate

Bill: Yeah, that's good. Well, so are there specific robotic applications that translate from hospitality into those commercial real estate spaces, office, multifamily, industrial? I mean, some might be more obvious than others.

Micah Green: Yeah, for sure. So so cleaning for sure transcends, you know, hospitality. And it's different, right, because it's a key part of every single room. But then when you look at an office space, for example, it's a key part of the operation to keep that office space functional as well. All the way to multifamily, senior living, airports, even. So I'm just kind of rattling off some of the verticals that we've deployed into in terms of other applications. You just think about these different tasks. So there's bathroom cleaning is another kind of use case. We're focused on more of the floor cleaning and vacuuming space, but there's bathroom cleaning, there's delivery. So moving things from point A to point B, whether that's people or objects or, you know, food or things like that is another one. And then there is security is another one that we've seen as well.

Bill: Interesting. Yeah. Give me some information there about security. Like what types of you talk about physical security?

Micah Green: Yeah. So it's essentially you have the mobile robot that's able to kind of provide surveillance in a mobile way. So the interesting thing, the model there is you actually still have a human in the loop. But rather than having one person or a few people dedicated to one specific building, you could actually have the robots driving around and collecting this data, which I think is a big point, all the data that these robots can collect. And we'll come back to that. But you can have somebody sitting in an office who is responsible for 20 buildings because the robot will detect anomalies as it relates to, you know, people that shouldn't be there or bags or things like that. So it's really cool how you can then you still have somebody, you still have a human. Right. But you're making them more efficient.

Bill: I've seen a lot of those come out in the market in the past year and a half. You see trade shows and things and they're not taking the form of robots on wheels. They actually look like dogs so they can step over things and go up and down. Yes. I mean, they're four legged creatures that have the gyroscope in them and all they're doing is collecting data. They're not trying to mimic a dog for the purpose of looking like a dog, but they needed to get over things that wheels couldn't, especially robotic wheels. And it was fascinating to me. They are walking data collectors.

Micah Green: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. We could use some automation. Yesterday we were picking up some butter braids for a school fundraiser for one of my kiddos and the complete wrong inventory was handed off to him. So instead of like three things that he had sold, it was like 30 things that they had handed him. He's just chugging along with all these boxes. And so we ended up having to go back and do a lot of returns and stuff. And so, as you can imagine, someone else had come to pick up their mass quantity that they had done a great job of selling. So it's like, man, should we could have used some automation out here on the lawn today?

Bill: Yeah. Yeah. But that was a 100 percent human process there at the high school. All right. Well, so fighting the urge for sure so far, because you've thrown out data twice, Micah, right? I know we're coming to that, but real quickly before you, I mean, it's, you know, the same as owning your data gives you leverage that we talk about all the time. You've got that leverage when you own your data in the same way. Automating those repetitive tasks is strategically frees up the human capital for other work, like you said. So last question in this category, as automation becomes part of the workforce, how should owners think differently about the labor?

Micah Green: Yeah, I think it's a really good question and definitely curious, Joe, for your take on this, too. I think we can change the model completely in terms of how people operate. So in office cleaning, for example, there's a concept called team clean, where you have somebody who's dedicated to bathrooms, somebody who's dedicated to vacuuming, somebody who's dedicated to, you know, maybe windows or surfaces or things like that. In hotels, you've traditionally had like room attendants who are who do everything. Well, we've seen in certain properties, I mean, you still have that. And we're primarily focused in public space right now has been kind of the bread and butter, no pun intended, but with that in mind, you know, you really can start to have somebody who potentially is dedicated to deploying the robots and now works alongside.

Micah Green: People who are doing the bathrooms or who are making the beds. We've seen in our case, there's a house person who's more public space cleaning focused. They can actually strip beds faster and deliver linens faster and even potentially take the trash out of these guest rooms in the hotels. And you're changing their role slightly because they're also now robot operators. They drop the robot, let it loose while they're doing these other things. And now the room attendant can become 10 to 20% more efficient because they have a little bit extra support. So it's a shift in that model of how are things getting cleaned in the first place? And then really going back, I think, in terms of, I think maybe Bill, you mentioned the whole not replacing, but really supplementing or supporting. You still have humans in the loop and that's actually how we've designed our robots. You still need somebody to make the beds and do other things. So that's key. It's just how can you reallocate their time better, and how can they do a deeper clean or do things sooner than they would have otherwise, or ultimately create those efficiencies where maybe there's less overtime and things like that. So I'd say, because I'm probably not answering your question perfectly, but it depends on the model, whether it's that reallocation of labor or they're now starting to do more tasks or things sooner, or you're starting to reduce overtime and labor hours.

Bill: And Joe, curious from your standpoint, what you see as the opportunities there?

Micah Green: The opportunities as it has to do with robotics and hotel operations specifically is, certainly the application that you're designing, you're building and continue to have built at Talos, Micah. So I can give you guys a little bit of background of, between my relationship with Micah. He was a student at Cornell and I was an entrepreneur in residence at Cornell and I was up there guest lecturing. And so they were having a pizza party to get to know the students. And I asked Micah, Micah, what were you, a freshman at the time or a sophomore at the time?

Micah Green: Yeah, freshman. Very early on in, and so I'm asking all the students, what are you planning on doing when you get out of Cornell? And Micah said, I want to build a company. I want to launch a company that builds robots to clean hotel rooms. And I gave him my card and I said, if you ever do that, you're going to become, successfully do that, you're going to become a very wealthy man. And I know because I operated hotels and housekeepers are the biggest challenge there is. If you decide to do that, here's my card, give me a call. And when you're ready to launch, I'll help you raise money and so forth. So six months later, he called me and goes, Joe, we're ready to go.

Drew: Six months, wow.

Micah Green: And he recruited a team of three hotel school students, three Cornell engineers, and two NASA robotics scientists. And they opened a little skunk works in downtown Ithaca and started working on a prototype. And now they're in Austin and they're doing brilliantly now. But the thing is, the point of it being is that my pain, I was sharing with him the pain that I had experienced having built and operated hotels. And that is not having enough housekeepers is always a challenge. And I don't care if you have a big downtown New York City unionized hotel, they're making $30 an hour in full benefits and so forth. Even they have difficulty having people show up and so forth. Maybe not as much as a non-union hotel or something to that effect, but still difficult because it's hard work. It's predominantly women. They get arthritis in their back and their hips. It's repetitive. It's mind-numbingly repetitive. You pull the sheets, you pull the trash, you make the bed, you vacuum, you tidy onto the next one. It's mind-numbingly repetitive and it's very, very important. And so when you have somebody like Micah and his team that can create a solution that can aid those people, enhance the people who do it by taking some of the repetitive stuff out of it, making the tendency to be injured or making them more efficient or making them able to do more rooms or do fewer rooms and do them faster. However, they can be enhanced by the technology is always a beneficial thing for sure.

Digital Infrastructure for Robotics Deployment

Bill: Well, let's shift to talk about the turning physical workflows into digital workflows. So either one of you gentlemen, what foundational digital infrastructure is required to deploy your robotics at scale? Within this facility, when you show up, what do you need to make your robots work inside of that hotel or office building?

Micah Green: So I think in many cases, the industry standard is a lot of integrations potentially with different systems, with elevators, for example, which bridges between physical and digital, different software platforms that these operators are using. But to kind of cut to the chase for us, we want it to be seamless where you don't need to change any infrastructure at all. So really the answer is nothing. I say that with kind of a caveat where we do connect to Wi-Fi so that the robots can collect data and can transmit that data pretty consistently to both the customers and to us. And then we can send software updates to the robots just like your phone would get, every month or week or whatever it might be. So really for us, it's Wi-Fi, which isn't even required to operate the units. And then we are investigating ways to integrate with some of these tools, like in hospitality, there's hot sauce and things like that where you can track kind of the labor and tickets and stuff like that. But I think the challenge for roboticists is how do you do it in a way that doesn't require infrastructure changes, because that can be very costly and take a lot of time and be a headache. So we're big proponents of the property should own its digital infrastructure, and that may or may not include Wi-Fi for all areas, but it should at least be, in common areas.

Drew: So how would a project like yours be challenged or, God forbid, fail if the building does have fragmented networks or poor data architecture? Like how would you do it if it couldn't connect to anything? I'm not advocating somebody go spend all the money, $1.50 a foot to put in Wi-Fi or DAS in a building. How would they be able to do this in a retrofit application, class B plus, class A minus property that may or may not have Wi-Fi throughout the floor?

Micah Green: Yeah, we face that. And we also face like security issues where certain properties are like, you are not connecting to our Wi-Fi. Like, yeah, just set up a hidden SSID network and here's all our architecture and it's fine. You and Drew, you got about that because that's what we do for all our clients all the time. We piggyback on MarkWalks and robots and all that, and the tech don't even see it. It just works.

Bill: Okay. But let's talk about the instance where it doesn't. What would you do then?

Micah Green: So what we did is we added cellular connectivity to our robots. So every robot has 5G capabilities. Now, the downside to that is the downloads, the software updates are so big that it's really slow or hard to transmit those just through cellular. Those are small chip sites, right? And we want to limit, right? There's a pretty scalable cost that comes with that. So that's what we've seen. And then just creating really good documentation to convince people otherwise, but also the robots don't require Wi-Fi to operate.

Drew: Okay. Well, from a practical perspective, what steps should a commercial real estate owner take to prepare their asset for mobile autonomy of robots and other? Like, what would you recommend if somebody was willing to look forward and be proactive about what they will need?

Micah Green: Yeah. I think the biggest thing really is the Wi-Fi, honestly. So just having, what we typically do is we'll ask the properties to whitelist the Mac addresses of our robots, or if the software thing, they may create a hidden SSID network and then we can kind of set that up manually. But that's really the big thing from our perspective, at least. The other side, some, again, some robots, like just speaking more holistically, do require elevator integrations. I think there needs to be some sort of fight for more freeness in terms of access to elevators, because it can cost up to 50 grand a property just to integrate with the elevators.

Bill: I mean, you have the oligarchy of the elevator companies. Are they charging that for APIs or separate integrations or who's getting that money? The elevator vendor is charging the actual property owner? Is that?

Micah Green: Yeah. That's absurd because it's their data.

Drew: Yeah. No, it's the elevator company. Well, we also see that in property management software. We see that in the big property management. I mean, market-facing, lease management type, tenant management platforms, they're charging an inordinate amount, but the market pressure is bringing some of that number down. I don't know that it's to zero yet on that side, but we're not an advocate of that at all. It's the client's data and it's the client's system. They should have access to it.

Micah Green: Right. Totally agree. And on the property management side, I think that's really interesting. There's different software tools. I think that would be another question for owners, operators, is what tools would you want to connect the data to from, let's say, the robots as an example. We have an open API that we can set up for customers that have other tools where they want the robot data to go into. So just sharing information on the APIs from those tools and what their requirements would be from a data perspective.

Bill: There we go. Talking about the data again. Imagine that.

Financial Impacts: ROI and Valuation

Drew: Right. Yeah, exactly. Well, and we're starting to get into now the dollars and cents of it, the real ROI, the impacts on NOI, CapEx, even valuation. And so, I mean, we talk about this as well in the overall property performance ecosystem. When buildings operate with precision, the predictability goes up, as we've talked about, and the value goes up as well. So talk us through some of the measurable financial impacts that robotics is delivering in these spaces so far.

Drew: And those points, because I think, at least from my standpoint, I focus more on the OpEx savings or the raw savings, but there's a whole domino effect that comes from that. So I think from what we've seen, there could be an impact as it relates to the operating expenses you could save. Some properties could save 20K up to, let's say 200K or even more depending on its scales, kind of in conjunction with how many robots and the size of the property and things like that.

Bill: And then with the cap rate of, I don't know what number you'd want to use, but we were to say maybe 5% or 8%, you can start to scale that up and do the math pretty quickly. And now we're starting to articulate that even in ROI figures. So bottom line is like the average we see is two to 4X ROI. Basically like you are saving two to 4X of the cost of the robots in terms of raw dollar savings, like on the P&L. And then, you know, could multiply that out by 10 to 20X.

Drew: But yeah, what cap rate do you think is appropriate? I guess it depends on the market and property class.

Micah Green: I think your five to eight window is pretty accurate, like depending on the asset, where it is and the type and the class, yeah. I think if it was a multifamily, maybe a six cap would work great. And if you're in a hospitality, maybe a seven, seven and a half cap perhaps. Either way, if you're getting two to 4X the cost of the robot, you're doing great, you know.

Bill: Yeah, because that income turns into the 15 to 20 times asset value. Aim asset value increase. I mean, your dollar turns into $20 or down to $50 in asset value, yeah.

Drew: Okay. Well, you know, if you ever put anything into CapEx and you get a 20% return or you say, okay, we're going to get a payback on this in five years, you'll be somewhat enthused. You're like, okay, good. This is, I'll get my money back. All right, now you're investing in this technology and you're getting 2X to 4X back. It's like, why wouldn't you do this? That yield is tremendous.

Micah Green: Yeah, that's a very high yield. It's like, Joe, thanks for the sales plug, but you're not paying that in.

Drew: No, Joe, Drew has seen this too. We have done proposals where the client will come back and say that I don't believe the yield is too high. Yes. So they'll actually tell you to raise the price because they can't justify this. Like, but the price is fine. Just, it's a higher yield than your new countertop or your new carpet or your new facade. Much higher yield. Digital infrastructure has a much higher yield and robots are part of that digital infrastructure.

Micah Green: That's exactly right. And I don't want to speak for Micah, but I'm going to say, if you look at, if you look how technology works, the more ubiquitous it becomes, the price tends to drop. It gets more affordable. And so that 2X to 4X could be even greater going down the road. I mean, it's amazing.

Bill: Well, if we look at, go ahead.

Micah Green: Sorry, I was just going to say, so that's like the labor savings, but then we keep teasing data. I know we talked about it at a high level, but just to go there, there's so much opportunity in terms of value for data too. Our first property that we ever deployed at was a Marriott property in Houston. And their biggest complaint from guests was the Wi-Fi signal strength. They said, guests complain about it all the time. Can you help us identify where there's bad Wi-Fi so we can deal with it proactively? So we were like, yeah, we already have that data. That was the, just kind of the tip of the iceberg in terms of, okay, wow, this is not just a cleaning robot. This is a sensor on wheels, right? And it's the data, you use that analogy with like the dogs, it's mobile data collection. So there's so much we can do both operationally and on the environmental side.

Drew: How much is that worth, right? To be able to prevent guests from complaining and to be able to get ahead of that and not have, I mean, that property is that they lost 150K a year in lost revenue because they gave free discounts and free food and drinks and things like that to guests that complained specifically about Wi-Fi. So like, okay, now I can point as maybe 150K or let's say we cut that down in half. So, and then we started to hear more and more there's odor complaints because it was in Houston and potential mold and things like that. So we've added sensors to be able to detect things like that. So I think there's a lot more value in terms of ROI and going back to that question beyond the actual physical labor side that these tools and robots can provide for operators.

Bill: Yeah, that's great. Measure the data, own the data, interpret the data, leverage the data. Yeah, that's great. I mean, I can speak as an operator. I wasn't even aware of these new features, but Micah, those are amazing. I mean, honestly, from an operator's perspective, that's a huge, huge headache relief. And we like to talk all the time here on the show about how digital, maybe AI, maybe not, but just digital and technology are changing the future.

Leadership and Culture in Tech Adoption

Drew: So let's shift and talk about the future operator. Like what is the biggest leadership and culture gap you see when clients adopt automation? How do early adopters, medium adopters, do you see somebody in their portfolio liking it and some not? How do you deal with change management for clients?

Micah Green: I think that is maybe the biggest question in terms of all of what we're talking about with automation is the people side of it, right? The adoption, the change management. So I use a simple example question that I think differentiates between who will be successful and who won't in terms of adoption. I think you have people who ask, how do we make this work? Those are the ones that realize that it's a dual effort. It's we are robot providers. We provide support and SOPs.

Bill: Also, can you guys hear me okay? Sorry, am I laggy?

Drew: No, it's great. Yeah, you sound great.

Micah Green: Okay, so asking the question of, how do we make this work? It becomes a partnership. It becomes, what do we have to do? What do you have to do? This is a joint effort. And at the end of the day, we're providing the robots and the support and the SOPs and the data. But at the same time, we don't control the operations. The general manager does or the property manager or community manager for multifamily or whoever it might be. So really, it's a partnership in that. If somebody is asking the question of, will this work? That's a red flag or a yellow flag to me because now it's focusing just on the product, which of course, that's really important. This kind of assumes the product works and is reliable. And that's a question that people need to answer. But assuming that it does work and that the robot or the product is functional, how do you operationalize it? And that takes time. That really takes a lot of time. And we did some like month-to-month contracts too with customers to get the foot in the door. This is a new product or a whole new category, right? How do we make the lowest point of friction for people to adopt? But what we found is that a lot of customers in that case would run the robots once or twice, literally, and say, oh, this doesn't work. And it's like, okay, well, how many times did you run it? Who ran it? What doesn't work about it? So it's not just the product, it's the operational side of it.

Drew: So in terms of culture, I think asking those questions and kind of having that mindset and realizing that it's not gonna be perfect from day one. It does take time, both on our side of the product, even for new properties, even though we're deployed now in almost 300 properties, we still learn new things. We still have to iterate, but also the properties themselves, they need to iterate and work on things too. So that's why typically you won't see success until day 60 to 90, because it takes that kind of joint iteration cycle. So I think just having that mindset of like knowing that and leaning into that and agreeing with that and being engaged and working with us and communicating with us, that will be successful. And otherwise it's probably not gonna work, even if it's a perfect property for the product.

Bill: Well, 60 to 90 days for success with the robot is great. The data piece is gonna take even longer than that. You have to have enough of a track record to be able to draw correlations from your own data. So the 90 days is specific to the robotic application. The data it's collecting is gonna be valuable six to nine months later at the minimum.

Micah Green: I'm a huge fan of EO, the Entrepreneurs' Organization, but I aged out before I could qualify for YPO. I know you're a YPO guy. So from your YPO network experience and your Thiel Fellowship, like we'd like to talk about sharing leadership wins here on the show, because a lot of people are running portfolios with diverse teams all over geography and age and income and all kinds of different brackets. So can you share some wins about leading teams into the future and about dealing with change inside your own organization?

Drew: On the YPO note, it's all this guy's fault who got me involved and tapped me into the network. And it's awesome. Like I said, I tapped out on age before I qualified to have the business in there. And I have some friends from EO who came to the YPO who are actually in my forum now from EO. So I know that's a great organization. My EO forum changed me as a man, a father, a businessman, a friend. It was very impactful in my life.

Micah Green: A hundred percent. Yeah, I can definitely say the same. So it's been amazing. So thank you, Joe, for the nudge.

Drew: You're welcome.

Micah Green: For kind of nominating me in that back in the day, like five years ago, I think. So to answer your question, Bill, I think it's a good question. I think there's a lot of things I've learned over the years. A lot I've done well, a lot of mistakes I've made. I think in terms of leading the team into the future, you know, we are very lean, honestly, as a company. We have about a thousand robots deployed around the world and we are probably the smallest robotics company in terms of like people to robot ratio.

Bill: That's a compliment to the leader right there. I mean, yeah, it doesn't have to be linear. We get that challenge all the time, Micah. I understand.

Micah Green: Yeah, yeah. And I think, you know, I agree. I think the numbers don't necessarily need to be, you know, you don't need teams of hundreds necessarily to achieve really amazing.

Micah Green: I think the passion that the team has, I think something I've learned along the way is making sure that this is everyone's dream job, or at least they are on the path towards their dream job and this is the stepping stone towards that. Having that internal buy-in, one of our core values is act like an owner. And I see that every day. And we've gone through hiring and firing and talking to people about that, of making sure that our team acts like an owner, owns their day, owns their responsibilities, and has a big impact. And I think with that comes a lot of responsibility, which is great too. And a lot of people that want to grow and that want to learn in their careers. And we're also kind of a younger team, right? And have a whole spectrum of kind of different ages and whatnot, but generally young and learning a lot. So I don't know if there's like one specific example, but I'm just so grateful for the team of how resilient they've been, how focused they've been, and how mighty we can be even when being small and how we use that to our advantage. How we use the fact that we work with our customers as partners, not as vendors. We work with people to prove success and to prove value and to iterate on software for them and to be there on site at 1 a.m. if that's what's needed for that customer and owning the success of the entire company. And I think through a lot of trial and error and through developing like strong core values and living by those, and then of course being a role model or trying to be a role model myself in those, it's been pretty clear of who fits that and who self-selects out.

Drew: We share that core value here. I mean, even jokingly take it further and say no renters. Yeah. If you're just showing up to take a paycheck, you're probably not going to like our culture. We're big on accountability and always finding a better way to do something, whatever that something is. So that was great.

Bill: Yeah, it really does sound like a great culture. Go ahead, Drew. I'm sorry.

Drew: No, no. I was going to say that's exactly what I was thinking was it really does sound like a great culture. So would you have any advice to share in that regard?

Micah Green: I think the thing that I have, first of all, everything that Micah said, I absolutely agreed to and I think through my own experience running my own company and then advising a lot of entrepreneurs like Micah and other entrepreneurs and I've sat on boards of other companies and I'm a student of business. So one of the things I've learned is that culture is everything. I mean, it is the whole ball of wax. If you don't have a really solid cultural foundation, you will not build a great business. You just won't. You'll struggle and you'll never get anywhere. And the thing is with culture, it's important in any company, but in a family company, it's even more important because then it brings in the culture of the family that is the owner of the business. And so one of the things that I always do is when I tell people, I go, think of it like a house. So here's the culture of the business and you build the strategy on top of the culture of the business and that's how you grow a great business. Well, if you have a family business, here's the culture and here's the family's culture that owns the business underneath there. So if you have a family that is like screwed up or they have issues, they're fighting, that business is going to crumble. And I work at companies like the Antinori family, the great wine family in Italy, 26 generations, 600 years they've been in business. They sold wine to Christopher Columbus. They're still in business. And you go, how did those people do that? Well, they focus on two things, culture and the product that they're producing and then everything that has to go with that. And so it's huge. It's a whole thing.

Personal Insights and Closing Thoughts

Bill: Yeah. Wow. Well, guys, thanks very much. This has been excellent. As you may know, maybe you don't know, at the end of every session that we have, every podcast interview that we do, we have what we call the extra floor in the spirit of commercial real estate. We call it the extra floor. So it's just a series of five quick questions, short answer, as short as you want it to be, gut level responses. So here we go. Number one, what's a book or a podcast that has shaped how you think? And this is to each of you.

Micah Green: I'll go first. Right now, I'm binging David Senra's Founders Podcast. I think that's probably one of the best things you can listen to. And if you're not familiar with it, he's a fellow, he studies all the great biographies of all the great entrepreneurs, and then he does a one-hour podcast talking about the finer points of it, and he does an excellent job.

Drew: Cool. What comes to mind, there's a book called Be Here Now, which is a really interesting story about this guy who basically becomes a guru and helps with the counterculture movement in the 60s. I won't get into all the details, but it's about presence and being present in the moment. And that's all there is, is right now, this very moment. I think personally and professionally, it's been one of the most informative books for me.

Bill: That's awesome. Now I have two new things to listen to. I'm a big audible guy. So what's the best piece of career or life advice that you've ever received?

Micah Green: I've received and have given, it's the same piece of advice. It is marry well. That is the one decision you're going to make in your life that will absolutely determine most of your happiness and most of your misery. I'm very fortunate that I married an amazing lady. I've been married to my wife, Romy, for 36 years. My joke is that she won't make me a franchise player, but she keeps renewing my one-year contract. And you want to talk about foundations? She's built it. I mean, the foundation for our family and for everything in my life that's really wonderful, she's directly responsible for it.

Drew: Very nice. Love that. Wow. How can I go after that? Mic drop moment right there. Actually, it's funny. The word that came to mind was love. And I think love in general, but do what you love. And that's spending time with the people you love. And that's something I've learned too over the years, just the importance of family first. And that is so important. But also, life is short, right? We have limited time, at least for now. So it's how we spend our time is so important. And at least for me, a personal goal or my very big goal for me personally is I want to empower people to do what they love at Talos, through robotics, family members, cousins, and really support that.

Bill: What's a small daily habit or ritual that makes a big difference for you?

Micah Green: I think for me, lately, it has been reading, just reading biographies. So I listen to Founders Podcast, but I read books that I really like, even if it's just for five minutes or 10 minutes, whatever it is. And right now, two books I can recommend. I just finished reading this great book written by this gentleman named Colin C. Campbell. He's a serial entrepreneur. He wrote this book called, I'm looking at it right now, Start, Scale, Exit, Repeat. And it's how to be a serial entrepreneur. It's excellent. And I finished that a couple months back. And right now, I'm plowing through Grind It Out by Ray Kroc. It's a story about how he built McDonald's. And the movie The Founders is based on. And it's a great book, the story itself, but certainly the way he writes. He certainly has a flair in the way he speaks. So the ritual of reading has been something I've been enjoying lately.

Drew: I'm going to be texting you, Joe, for some of these additional recommendations here. Daily ritual, I meditate, I journal, things like that. But the thing that stood out to me was every night before we go to bed, me and my wife will ask each other, what was your favorite part of today? And without fail, we make sure, and if I'm traveling or whatever, we will call each other and make sure. And I think it's so powerful because first of all, it connects us and it makes us present with each other before there. But life is crazy. And I won't get into it, but I've been dealing with some crazy stuff personally lately. And it is so grounding to have that. And positive, right? We end on this positive note because there's always so much stuff and bumps along the way. So I love it. Highly recommend it.

Bill: What's something you've learned to appreciate more with time?

Micah Green: I think time itself, Bill, special moments in time. I recently became a grandfather. So my wife and I, our granddaughter was born 20 months ago and now she's got a little brother and he was born a month ago. So we went from no grandkids to two grandkids. And my wife and I are crazy about them. And so we're a couple of Italian nanas and papas over here and you can imagine what that's like. And those are the things that are so special, those moments. And that's what I've really come to appreciate.

Drew: Yeah. I think Joe just said, I was going to say is the importance of time and how we allocate time and family at the end of the day. It's like, I've always been a family person, but it's so clear to me. And I tell it to the team too. I'm like, there's something going on with their family. I'm like, you go, just like go. Because to me, at least it's number one. Family first. Yeah. I love it. And that's definitely solidly right in there with that great business culture that we were talking about. That's great.

Bill: All right. Last one of the five here, when you're not working, what do you love to do that recharges you?

Drew: Mike, I'm going to let you go first this time. What does not working mean? What can you love? I'm just kidding.

Micah Green: I exercise and it's like a simple one, like I love to bike. I have this right now, so I don't know. Oh, geez. This is an old story. So I think just exercising, I mentioned meditation is a big thing for me and that's very helpful to kind of center me. Those are a couple quick examples. I think the thing that probably recharges me the most, I mean, I exercise, go for walks and stuff like that, but really what recharges me is if my wife and I are like in the kitchen and we're cooking something. As I mentioned, we're Italian, so we love to cook. My wife makes wonderful pizzas and we like to make pasta dishes. We're getting into the winter, so we're gonna start getting into osso buco season. Especially on a Sunday, we've got the Patriots on and we're cooking a wonderful dinner and we get the fire going and you can't beat that. That reach, if I have anything on my mind, it all goes away and everything gets clear and then I just enjoy that time and it's just wonderful.

Drew: For those non-Bostonian listeners, you can just substitute your favorite team when he said Patriots. All right, gentlemen, real quickly, how can our listeners contact you? I will put your contact in the show notes, but just tell us two, the best way to reach you.

Micah Green: Best way to reach me is through LinkedIn. Okay. Joseph Talienti Sr., SR, so at the end.

Micah Green: Yeah, I would say LinkedIn's great. Micah Estes-Green, that's my name on LinkedIn and I have a robot like Daft Punk helmet picture of me and then through our website too, talos.com.

Bill: Awesome, yeah. Well, Micah, Joe, thank you so much for joining us today on Peak Property Performance here. It's truly been a pleasure. Great conversation.

Drew: So to our listeners, we say thank you as well. As always, thanks for joining us for this. Be sure to follow, like, and subscribe and we'll see you on the next episode of Peak Property Performance.

Micah Green: Thank you, guys. Thanks so much. Thanks.