What CRE Gets Wrong About Technology and Innovation

Drew Hall: Welcome back to the Peak Property Performance Podcast. Co-hosts here, Bill Douglas with me. I am Drew Hall. Bill, how you doing today?

Bill Douglas: Hello everybody.

Drew Hall: Yeah. All right. So Today's a good one. Now, before we introduce our guest, let me just first remind our listeners to like, subscribe, share the podcast. Also be sure to hit that bell so that you get notified as we drop these new episodes. And as a reminder, we say this every week, but our goal here, our mission truly is to spread the word on this Peak Property Performance movement and honestly to change an industry. There are so many opportunities that we talk in and through on this podcast with lots of interesting parties, including today coming up. And we're truly doing this to make a change in the industry.

Drew Hall: There's, there's lots of change to be made. So we're excited about the possibilities. If you think you'd provide value as a guest here, we welcome CRE thought leaders from all stages of ownership and operation. Please just reach out to us via the website peakpropertyperformance.com is probably the absolute best way to do it. Now, today's theme is what CRE gets wrong about innovation, an operator's view from both sides of the table. So Bill, who do we have with us today?

Bill Douglas: Well, today we're joined by Ryan Elazari. Ryan, say hello and tell us where you're hailing from this morning.

Ryan Elazari: Yes. Hello to the listeners. I'm hailing from Long Island, New York.

Bill Douglas: And it's not morning for you. We're crossing the noontime. So it's 1 o'clock for you.

Ryan Elazari: Exactly.

Bill Douglas: I've been excited to have you on the show. So we're finally getting to this. I was on yours. We go back, I don't know, a year and a half. You were an early reader in the book. So I'm glad to have you on here. Ryan's introduction. He's a longtime commercial real estate operator, innovation leader, educator, and host of the very popular CRE Unplugged podcast.

Bill Douglas: Like I just said, he was an early reader of our Peak Property Performance book, gave us some guidance and some info there. And he's a professor of a graduate-level real estate entrepreneurship course at Baruch College. Ryan has spent years on both sides of the innovation conversation, implementing technology inside real estate organizations, and now interviewing the people trying to change the industry, as are we. So that's why we have a lot in common. Today, we're turning the microphone around to find out what he thinks CRE got right, got wrong, and still needs to figure out. So Ryan, again, welcome to Peak Property Performance.

Ryan Elazari: Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Drew Hall: Absolutely. All right, Ryan, you have gone from operating real estate and leading innovation to interviewing people across virtually every corner of CRE. So after all of these conversations, is there something that you have changed your mind about?

Ryan Elazari: Not much really has changed my mind. I think people need to go back to the basics, and I think the basics is there needs to be more understanding on what the operators or what the real estate owners really want. And what do they really want? They want to be able to make sure to lower their expenses and increase their NOI. And if there aren't solutions out there that are doing that, or the people who are selling the products are not exactly explaining how that's going to come about with their technology or with their platform, I still think there's tough roads ahead.

Drew Hall: Yeah, well, I mean, have those many conversations made you generally more optimistic or more skeptical or somewhere in between about innovation in CRE?

Ryan Elazari: Yes, for sure. I think there's a lot of companies that understand it, they get it, they've been very successful implementing technology, they've got big institutional firms that are adopting their technology, and that I think would be like their blueprint in order for other companies that are starting out or they want to get more market share, I think that's what they would need to go.

Drew Hall: Yeah. Well, okay. So you talked a little bit about what owners are wanting, right? So what about the technology companies themselves? Are they understanding or misunderstanding that, or how are they doing in terms of pitching what they're doing, those technology companies?

Ryan Elazari: I think right now, if I was running a tech company, let's say I had a boiler management system or a building management system, I think what I would do for them is, hey, I'll go to the owner, hey, let me go inspect your building. Let me go and go to every crevice of your property. Let me look at it, let me review it, let me inspect it. And then I can then show you how my system could help bring ROI and what the payback period is. So I had a, when I was working at my previous firm, there was a company, there was a boiler management system, and they did exactly that. They went in, you know, with no fee, they went, they looked at like every single floor of the property down from the boiler room up to the roof. And then they gave me like a real analysis of the benefits of what their solution is. And I think that to me is what needs to happen.

Ryan Elazari: Like you need, again, like I think it kind of goes back, like for me when I first started out, I was a property manager. So I learned the foundation of how a building property works. And then I kind of, you know, worked my way up to being an asset manager and then thinking of it more high level. And I think that kind of has to work for these technology companies. They got to think of it more about the foundation of what a building is. So they really need to understand that part before they could kind of go in and sell to them. Because if they think they could come in and say, hey, here's my demo. All right, what are your thoughts?

Drew Hall: Yes, exactly. Yeah, check out this shiny new widget. You're gonna love it. That's great. I mean, that's a perfect example. I mean, picking on one system that fits into the entire ecosystem, like we always talk about, it's part of a larger ecosystem and data and all that stuff. And we'll get into that. That's great.

Drew Hall: So I'm curious, I mean, maybe you touched on the answer to this, but I'm curious if there might be a little bit more here on this particular question. Is there anything that you know now that you wish you had known back when you were responsible for the innovation side?

Ryan Elazari: So now that I've kind of gotten some sneak peeks on what... let me go back. So I'm part of this Built World Innovation Council. It's hosted by Forum Ventures. And what the beauty about it is, is that I'm with other CIOs and champions of real estate innovation. And we all meet quarterly and we kind of talk about some of the stuff that we're seeing and hearing in the industry, and it's to help their portfolio companies. So I get to hear kind of like what their stories are and what they've dealt with when they've gotten pitched to by companies. And, you know, one story was is that they had like one company come in and just kind of share their TAM and how much funding they've gotten as like their pitch to why they need to use their solution.

Bill Douglas: Yeah, funding does not a company make. Yeah.

Ryan Elazari: But it's interesting because like, I think for me, I was always under the assumption that these companies did their real research of who they're going to be pitching to. Like whenever I thought that, okay, I have a meeting set up with so-and-so company, they were going to come in because they really know like the ins and outs of who we are. But I've realized by talking to these other CIOs, by talking to these other heads of innovation, that's not really the case. I think what's happening here, and I still see this today, these tech companies are... they believe more in their product than understanding what the actual company's need.

Drew Hall: Yes. Well said.

Bill Douglas: Ryan, it cracks me up when not just in commercial real estate, but any industry, a vendor comes in and said, let me show you my demo. We get sold to, right? We get sold to a lot. We didn't even spend a second to tell you what our problem is. I probably put my hand up and said, I'm interested in your solution, but you never asked me what my problem was. You wanted to come in and show me your demo. So I'm immediately, as a customer, I'm immediately turned off. We, we don't spend much time on demos because we're service organization. Even the pure technology companies, hold on, hold on.

Bill Douglas: I don't want to see it. I don't want to look inside of it. Besides, that's going to change in 3 months anyway, how it looks and feels and clicks, all that stuff. I want to know what it does. Like, and you said early on, what's the ROI? So you've seen this whole technology and adaptation thing from both sides. Now, what genuinely good technology still fails inside otherwise well-run real estate companies?

Ryan Elazari: Well, I'll tell you some of the tells that I've experienced is if You know, when we've implemented a new technology, something that always ended up happening with a few of them is the customer success person kept changing every month. And I was like, okay, if there's a lot of turnover in terms of customer success and our team has to keep talking to someone every month, that's a red flag right there.

Bill Douglas: So who actually owns adoption of technology inside commercial real estate companies on both sides, vendor and owner?

Ryan Elazari: Yeah, I think that's something that people are trying to solve. Like on my end, like I was head of innovation, so I was kind of leading the team in adoption. And I didn't think this was my role, but I ended up taking on this role was to help have the people who are using the technology understand it. So I was scheduling meetings and training sessions with our engineers, with our superintendents who are going to actually use the technology, or our leasing administrative team who are actually going to use the technology and make sure that they understand it. And there has to be handholding involved. You can't just think like, okay, I'm implementing this tech and it's going to magically work because I'll tell you, people are very against Change. And if you're not on top of them, making sure that they're using the tech or they have questions about the tech so that the other team or the counterparty can help answer for you, again, it's a waste of time because you're not going to utilize it effectively.

Bill Douglas: You just said you had to schedule all those things. Is it possible that, I mean, can an asset manager realistically own innovation on top of everything else she or he has to do? That's a lot. Or are you advocating it's a separate role?

Ryan Elazari: I think it's a separate role, 100%. I don't think,

Bill Douglas: Inside of the CRE organization?

Ryan Elazari: Yes. Yes. I think it's a separate role. And unfortunately, a lot of those roles got eliminated in the past few years.

Bill Douglas: So do you have a story about one that did work? Like we avoided, well, not we, I don't mean we collectively, this audience, but an owner avoided pilot hell and the vendor actually saw a successful implementation inside of a new customer. Can you give us an example or a story of when it did work?

Ryan Elazari: You're saying like from my prior role?

Bill Douglas: Yeah, like from, you were an asset manager, right? And you saw it work. What did your company do right? And what did the vendor do right that made it work?

Ryan Elazari: Yeah, well, I think it was a long drawn out process because I think from my end, you know, you're also, you know, as a, as a head of innovation or CIO, you're putting your reputation on the line by being the champion for that tech. So you really want to make sure that this is going to work effectively. And, you know, like for me, it was, it was a technology that, that helped with move-ins with any tenants that would move into our multifamily units, they were going to get a checklist of tasks that they needed to be done before they could actually move into the apartment. So I thought that that was such a great use case for us because we had a lot of issues with onboarding. And they, you know, the CEO and their customer success team were adamant about setting up as many meetings as we want with the people who are going to use the product to make sure that it was going to run smoothly. And they were doing like quarter, like weekly checks with us to make sure that everything was running properly. And if there were any alerts that were happening that we weren't answering to, they would quickly reach out to us. So I think communication is very key.

Bill Douglas: Oh, I love that. Can you share a story of the converse? Something, whether it's simple or complicated, but maybe even simple, that should have worked but didn't?

Ryan Elazari: Yeah, so this was early on when I kind of took on this role. We had a boiler management system. This is like way before technology was like really advanced. So like the technology had to be used by some Wi-Fi system that they had to connect. And it was kind of like run by a switch. And then we would only be able to see what was happening with the boilers like through our desktop computers. Like there was no mobile technology at the time. So it was very hard to kind of see on our end if we were out of the office or we weren't like constantly checking on the platform to see if the product was being used very well, if the boiler was running smoothly or there weren't any issues.

Ryan Elazari: And then what ended up happening is a lot of the superintendents who were running their boilers, they would bypass it because they would get so frustrated by the product that no one ended up using it. And then one of the property managers like pulled the plug, like, I don't care how much we've invested in this, I don't want to go forward with it. So I think you could be... you could have a great sales team that could convince you this is a great product, but I think you need to still take the extra effort to make sure that whenever we have questions or we're having issues, you could help us with that. And I don't think they did a good job on that front.

Bill Douglas: Think about all the time and money that was wasted in that.

Bill Douglas: Oh my gosh.

Ryan Elazari: Yeah, hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Drew Hall: This right into this right here, Ryan. Like, why are so many CRE organizations still letting that vendor marketplace effectively write their technology roadmap?

Ryan Elazari: I think you both have discussed this on your, in your book and in your podcast. I think a lot of them don't want to deal with it. I think, Bill, you know, you came on my podcast and you explained this so eloquently. You know, you have the trust of this, of the big property management firms out there thinking that they're doing you right by recommending certain technologies. So with that trust, they think that, whatever you're implementing is going to work effectively. But in reality, it may not be the best product because they didn't go through a proper bidding process. And then who knows if they're implementing it correctly or they're doing the right change management to make sure that everything is going to run to the level of their standard. And I think that's the main issue.

Drew Hall: Well, I mean, so yeah, what do you think are a couple of things that a CRE organization could do internally, even before going out for RFP through the vendor array? What could be done internally?

Ryan Elazari: I think you could... I think now with the power of AI, you could do a ton of research beforehand and kind of, you know, kind of guide you into at least finding out 2 or 3 platforms that you think would help solve a lot of the issues that you're having within your company, right? I think that would be number one. I think number 2, a lot of them definitely have relationships with other owner-operators. And if you could just have conversations with them, say, hey, you know, this is what we're dealing with right now. What are you using at your company? Kind of get their... kind of like find out their experiences. I think I think that would really help. And that kind of goes with FOMO, right? I think a lot of companies have FOMO where they're like, they find out Blackstone or some other institutions using a certain product and they're like, oh, if that's the case, I need to use it too because you don't want to miss out.

Bill Douglas: But Blackstone might own them. That's misleading. Like, because Blackstone stood on the stage, right? And said, you know, we believe in this product. Well, they own 60 or 40 or 20% of it. So like we dedicated a couple pages in the book to you're the customer, own your own roadmap, but ask these hard questions of every vendor, every single vendor. I don't care whether it's services, technology, product, whatever. Ask these questions.

Ryan Elazari: But I'll tell you the one issue though is a lot of them don't have the time to do that.

Ryan Elazari: Sure.

Bill Douglas: To answer or to ask?

Ryan Elazari: To just even have the meetings to ask unless they're really adamant about it. I think they would, but I think that's part of the problem, right? Like they're too busy and then they probably don't want to hire a CIO to kind of help them with that or they'll leave it to their asset manager.

Bill Douglas: Why do you need a CIO? Do you need a CIO to ask? You know, do you benefit from this recommendation? Are you on commission? Does your company own part of this one? And whose service is that when it fails? Like 3 simple questions out of 11, but that's the core 3.

Ryan Elazari: Right. No, I get that. So you're saying once the meeting is happening, they should ask those questions. Yeah.

Ryan Elazari: I agree about that. Yeah.

Bill Douglas: Yeah. Like I just be transparent, like the vendor, if asked, will tell you, but if you don't ask, you're never going to know.

Drew Hall: Yeah. I think that's just it. I mean, I feel like there's a certain amount of discipline even involved in that. Like you could formulate the questions and ask the questions, but at the same time, as they fire off those questions, are they kind of internally wrestling with this reality of like, oh no, I don't have time to analyze the answers that might come back to me? You know, so I think it takes a certain amount of like agreement that there is massive benefit in asking these questions and then analyzing the answers because there's an overall strategy here. It's not just a one and done, obviously, right? We've talked about some examples already.

Ryan Elazari: Yeah, well, that the one and done becomes the issue because if that legacy owner implemented a certain ATT&CK, didn't work, they're never going to think about using another one for a long time.

Drew Hall: Right. Yeah.

Drew Hall: Yeah.

Drew Hall: Okay.

Bill Douglas: They remember what didn't work.

Drew Hall: Yeah.

Bill Douglas: And they forget about what did work.

Drew Hall: Absolutely.

Ryan Elazari: Right, exactly. That's true, too. They forget about the good times, only the bad times.

Ryan Elazari: Yeah. Yeah.

Drew Hall: Some human nature in there.

Ryan Elazari: Yeah. But I think with the overall climate right now of commercial real estate, I do feel like we're in this recession that no one really wants to talk about. You have interest rates going up, you know, that's why I think the tech has to be good. It has to, it has to really be effective and you're going to be able to... you have to talk the talk. And I think a lot of times, and I've discussed this before, is you go to these conferences, you've got technology companies who don't understand real estate. You have real estate companies who don't understand the tech. Maybe AI can help bridge that gap, hopefully. But you're still seeing that to this day.

Drew Hall: Oh, man. Perfect. It's like you read my question, Ryan. Okay. So do you think conferences are actually helping develop strategy or does it make it worse? Like, is there a trend, a general generality to be applied here?

Ryan Elazari: Yeah, Drew, I'm glad you asked that. I think you need to come into it with a strategy. And I think you need to... and you guys both discussed it before... you need to come up with a list of questions or pain points that you're having, and then be able to go scour or meet with people, see what solutions they have, and then see if that fits the pain points that you've listed before you come in. And also be able to set up meetings ahead of time so that you're not walking into a conference thinking that magically you're going to meet the right people, because I think that's That's, that's a strategy that can go sideways.

Drew Hall: Yeah.

Bill Douglas: And I would be an advocate for take what you hear on stage with some caution because a big company is doing it doesn't mean that everybody's doing it. It means they have a big budget and they can afford to be there. Maybe they are setting a trend, but typically they're not on the, on the leading edge. They're on the fast follower edge and they're buying their way in. I mean, we, we need big tech, but a lot of innovation is not done by the bigs. So depending on your tolerance for change and adaptation, consider that and who you're buying it from. That's one piece of advice.

Bill Douglas: I'm trying to be neutral because I like all size vendors, but I've been to some shows where the vendor says something on stage and the audience thinks it's what everybody is doing and it's not. It's just what they bought last, right? That's their latest acquisition and they're pushing it. So put it in context, find out where'd they come from? Do they own them? That customer that's sitting on stage with them, is that customer a spinout of their own company? Because that happens a lot too.

Ryan Elazari: Yeah. Well, I'll tell you one time I was at a conference and you had a venture fund that that's headed by a big firm. And the person went on stage and was like, we're going to be in an AI bubble. And my jaw really dropped because I couldn't believe that they said that because they have so many AI companies in their portfolio. So like my joke is to people who is like, if you like go to a Domino's and they're like, okay, I want to get like a thin crust pizza. And they're like, no, we don't have pizza anymore. We just have calzones. Like it's just like, you know, it's like they're basically saying that the whole pizza market is going to go down the drain and that they're going to go through a different product.

Ryan Elazari: I just, sometimes these, you're surprised by what people like say out loud.

Bill Douglas: Well, I am in full agreement with what you said a minute ago, and that technology has to be a huge tool for the commercial real estate operators right now and owners, because for, I don't know how many years we've been able to push cost increases to the market, but this year the market's not tolerating them. Like if you can get 1 or 2%, what we're hearing on the show, 1 or 2% is a win, but expenses are up more than 5%. So you have to use utilities, occupancy insurance, et cetera, initiatives to drive expenses down just to break what their goal was last year for this year. Like we've seen such increases, 4% inflation's low, but that's where they're publishing it. Everybody I know personally and professionally is feeling much more than that. So I'm a big believer in what you just said. I know you're passionate about the next generation and you invest a lot of time in that and teaching, and I'm honored to be a guest professor in your class. you know, you teach people that are going to inherit this industry, right? What do they see differently than those of us or those of us who we sell to, right? Have been doing it for 20 or 30 years.

Bill Douglas: Like this is the way we do it. So what is this younger generation? It's a master's level class. So it's not 20-year-olds, right? They're all ages. You can tell me how old they are, but I've seen them. They're more mature than just high school graduates. Right. What do they see differently?

Ryan Elazari: Well, I'll tell you one thing, and I'm very happy that Baruch College, uh, has this course because I think it's important because anytime I have the class, I would say 90% of the students aren't that knowledgeable about PropTech or any type of technology. I did a lecture on, you know, the power of AI and how it's going to impact the real estate market, and a lot of them didn't even know that Claude existed or OpenAI existed. Like, you'll be surprised, the younger generation isn't as tech-savvy as most would think. And this isn't just a one-off, like, this isn't just this year, this is like previous years. So I'm glad that I could kind of give them like a snapshot of what's happening in the market, who the players are, what tools are out there to kind of help a lot of their, a lot of, you know, their pain points that they're having at their company, because I think it's great. And another thing that I always like to teach them, because I think with the Gen Zers right now, a lot of them don't understand the power of building a professional network. And especially with them, being students, the power that they have to go through LinkedIn or go to events and tell executives and say, hey, I'm a student. I would really love to learn more about how you got to where you are.

Ryan Elazari: Can we set up like a 15-minute coffee informational interview? Like, can I just like pick your brain? Because a lot of them are not doing that. And I've kind of instilled a whole lecture to kind of help them understand the power of that because your network is what's going to get you to the next level in your career. And I think that really goes back to these technology companies, I think a lot of them are having issues with long sales cycles. They're not allowed to get a lot of deals done. And I think part of it is they don't understand that they need to create... they need to create long-term relationships with the people who they're selling to so that they could trust them. And then they would want to eventually implement their product because that trust has been built. And then they could kind of be more comfortable into dealing with them. I think it goes with everything.

Bill Douglas: Well, kudos to you because when we went to that conference last fall, you had some students there. I would say, I don't know how many you had, but probably 7 of them approached me with that question you just laid out. So you are changing them because now I'm connected with them and I've had 4 or 5 video calls with them, right? They're in New York and I'm in Colorado. So yeah, kudos to you for making that difference in their lives because that'll sink in well beyond just professional. Like, or just commercial real estate, whether they start to switch industry or whether they do that for themselves. But I'm going back to the students. What legacy commercial real estate assumptions do they immediately question? Like you walk sites, do they walk out going, why do they do that?

Ryan Elazari: Well, I think a lot of them are still trying to grasp how to incorporate like AI into their, into their business. I think that's one thing. But like in terms of what you're talking about and like how buildings are being run or operated, they're kind of still like we had a big discussion on office, like office-to-resi conversions, and they think it's kind of like a very easy way to just do that type of conversion, and they don't understand the intricacies of it. They're just like, oh yeah, I mean, like, why, you know, the office market is dead, like, oh, it could be very easy for you now to just convert to resi, right? And I'm like, no, you need to have like a full team before you could even think about making that type of conversion, and it's very costly, and you're going to have to do a feasibility analysis just to to see if it can be done. So I think a lot of those things they need to kind of understand better in my mind.

Bill Douglas: Yeah. Office to resi is a whole... we could probably have a whole show on that. Maybe we should.

Drew Hall: I was going to say, I find myself saying, please tell me plumbing is in the top 3, please.

Bill Douglas: We've actually had people approach us and say, can we do this? And I was like, sure you can, but can you make money doing it? Yeah, you can, but at what cost?

Ryan Elazari: And then the same with data centers, right? They're like, oh, just put a data center in an office building. Like that could work. And I said, no, actual like companies that are specialized doing that right now. You can't just take a company that's been just investing in office buildings and tell them like, hey, go convert into a data center. It's not that.

Bill Douglas: So how has AI changed what you teach about real estate entrepreneurship?

Ryan Elazari: I think now you... when I first started, I was... it was like in 2020, right? So PropTech was kind of like at their point where literally if someone had it like once, like had like an idea, they would get like a million dollars. Like it was because it was like the Wild Wild West out there.

Bill Douglas: Oh wait, you mean a million dollars in funding?

Ryan Elazari: Yes, yes, a million dollars in funding.

Bill Douglas: There you go. There's a difference,

Ryan Elazari: right? I mean, it was literally the Wild Wild West. And now what I've been seeing is a lot of these tech companies that didn't see this rise of AI happening, and they've still had their product being backed by, you know, what, what's being backed like from day one, and they didn't convert to an AI company, I think those are dying out. And all the market share... they're losing a lot of their market share to their competitors who AI back. And I think that's the kind of shift that I've been seeing. And then you're seeing a lot more consolidation happening by these bigger companies who were successful in going to AI, kind of like with Kodak, right? They didn't see that digital was going to take over the camera market. I think a lot of these prop tech companies were a little bit late to the game in terms of adapting to AI.

Bill Douglas: Well, I like asking this of any instructor or professor. What are you learning from your students?

Ryan Elazari: Well, I think what's really great about Baruch is I have students who all have all different roles in real estate. I don't have a lot of background in development. So whenever I have a student that's in development, I learn a lot from them because they kind of like tell me what's happening in their market, what they're seeing in terms of build-outs or large structures that they're working on. Or, you know, I'm not very familiar in affordable housing. We have a couple of people who are in affordable housing. They do a lot of homes and development, and they kind of tell me about the laws and how it's changing and what's going on inside those companies. So I get to kind of see people with other roles in different asset classes that I haven't been accustomed to and kind of seeing their viewpoint there. So I'm very lucky about that.

Drew Hall: Yeah, I love it.

Drew Hall: All right, Ryan. Well, everything so far has been about the industry on the professional side. Fantastic. So now at the end, we always shift to the personal side so our listeners can get to know you as a person. So we call this part the Extra Floor. In the spirit of commercial real estate, of course. So it's just three short questions, gut-level responses, no wrong answers, of course. Number one, what would you say is a great piece of career or life advice that you have received?

Ryan Elazari: I've had a lot of mentors over the course of my life, and I think something that they've always told me is to never give up. Always like believe in what in what you you do. Like don't take no for an answer. I think in real estate, no matter what role you have, it is you know you still are dealing in a salesy type. type like atmosphere. So you shouldn't get discouraged and keep pushing through if you believe in what you're doing every day. And I think that's really important.

Bill Douglas: What's one habit or practice that consistently makes you more effective?

Ryan Elazari: Well, my wife is very into meditation and she's on the more of the spiritual side. So I'm more of a realist. What I like to do is I'm more of like, if I could go and have like a good workout and go for a run or play tennis or play basketball, I think that kind of helps me more in getting into like the right mindset and and help me with my work. I think that's important for me.

Drew Hall: Yeah, get the blood flowing.

Ryan Elazari: Yeah, yeah. I'm not a meditation guy. I just can't get myself into that.

Drew Hall: Yeah, got you. Yeah. All right, last one. Would you consider yourself an early bird or a night owl? And has that changed over time?

Ryan Elazari: It's so funny you're bringing this up because this is something I end up getting into conversations about with my wife. I'm a night owl. I could stay up. When we had newborns, I have a 5 and a 2-year-old, I would always take the late shift in the feeding 'cause I would always, that would never affect me. But if she was like, you need to wake up at 5, 6 AM to like feed our kid, I would... I'm just not programmed that way. I've always been a night owl. I always was that kid in high school that would do their homework at the last minute. Like literally, I would finish by like midnight and then go to sleep and wake up and go to school.

Ryan Elazari: Um, and it's something that I've never been able to change. I... it's just, it's just within me.

Bill Douglas: Funny, you'd be surprised how many different answers we get on that. It's not just one or the other.

Drew Hall: It's wonderful.

Bill Douglas: Changes. Yeah, it's It's fun. It's fun. I love that question. So Ryan, how can our listeners contact you? We will have your contact information on the page for the show, but just tell us audibly how they can contact you.

Ryan Elazari: Yeah. So if people want to hear my podcast, I'm on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube, CRE Unplugged. They could also find me on my website, creunplugged.com, or they can email me at info@creunplugged.com. And then they could also reach out to me on LinkedIn, Ryan Elazari. I definitely share my insights there. And yeah, and I don't know when this is going to be published. English, but I'm having my first live podcast event on October 19th in Tribeca, New York. If you can make it, you could find the registration on my LinkedIn page.

Bill Douglas: Okay. We'll talk to the producers and see if we can't get it out before then.

Ryan Elazari: Okay. No pressure.

Bill Douglas: I will ask after this recording is done. Ryan, thank you so much. I know we've wanted to do this. I look forward to doing this again. We should probably visit each other a couple of times a year on our shows. And thank you to our listeners. Be sure, like Drew said, to like, follow, subscribe, Etc., etc. But more importantly, forward it to somebody, tell them they should listen to it and why, or even better, ask them to be on the show or suggest them to be on the show.

Bill Douglas: We always like people with operational stories. We don't want anybody to come on here and pitch. We just want somebody to share what they're doing, why they're doing it, and if and why it worked. So that's, that's the movement Drew talked about, and that's what we're trying to do. So everybody, thank you again. We'll look forward to seeing you on the next episode of Peak Property Performance.