Real(ty) Talk
Real(ty) Talk
Innovative Ventures: Dan Kassel on Real Estate and Car Washes
Prominent entrepreneur Dan Kassel takes us through his remarkable career journey, from his roots in tech to becoming a successful real estate developer and the creative mind behind his Car Wash company. You'll hear about his transition from detached single-family homes to high-density infill projects, focusing on unique community needs like multigenerational living spaces in urban contexts. This episode promises an engaging narrative filled with personal milestones and professional insights, with Dan sharing how mentorship has been a cornerstone of his growth.
Listeners will gain a fresh perspective on real estate development, as Dan shares the story behind his innovative projects. With a focus on the art of diversification and strategic risk management, Dan elaborates on the unexpected challenges he faced, including navigating complex regulations and developing creative solutions. Suzanne also joins the conversation, offering valuable updates on Innovate Realty's performance amid market fluctuations, underscoring the importance of adaptability and maintaining strong professional relationships.
Finally, the episode takes a lighthearted turn as Dan delves into the creation of Googie Car Wash, inspired by the retro-futuristic Googie architecture. He shares the unique process of bringing this concept to life, emphasizing the importance of creating memorable customer experiences. With mutual admiration and a dash of humor, we wrap up with reflections on the power of mentorship, innovation, and the unexpected paths that can lead to success in both real estate and beyond. Tune in for a dose of inspiration and subscribe for more compelling conversations.
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All right, welcome back to Realty Talk Podcast, your favorite podcast on the planet, not just real estate focused, but we're definitely number one in that sector. I've got my fearless companion to the right, the queen of the closing table. If you didn't know that, we give people nicknames it's the nickname. Okay, I like it.
Speaker 2:So we can come up with a good one for him. We're going to have a fun one.
Speaker 1:Yes, the queen of the closing table Suzanne Siena, to my right, the founder and CEO of Innovate Realty. I'm excited to get that update. A lot going on in that world.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I am Paul Hanson and I'm so excited to have one of my dearest friends join us on the podcast today, dan Cassell. Thanks, david. And there's a lot dearest friends join us on the podcast today. Dan Cassell, thanks to be here, and there's a lot to unpack, because you're not just a friend, you're like a mentor and you know so many different things. We'll maybe try to touch on some of those, but I'm going to do just a quick introduction of your background, primarily because he's too humble to tell us exactly what he's accomplished in his life when we ask him to do the intro.
Speaker 1:So the CEO and founder of Clearwater Community Development and then the CEO and founder of Googie Car Wash, which I'm really excited to talk about because I was involved early in some of your conversations of what was going to happen there and it's been such a cool project to watch go from nothing to washing thousands of cars a day now, which is amazing, yeah it's wild, it's so cool to see. So what did I miss in your intro Family?
Speaker 3:man. I've been married to my beautiful bride, Lisa. We just celebrated 33 years.
Speaker 2:Oh, congrats.
Speaker 3:Thank you, yeah, years, oh, congrats. Thank you, yeah, and I have two sons, kevin and Ryan, one of whom was a prior intern of yours, yeah, and you treated him great and gave him an awesome first experience in the working world years ago. Now he's actually joined the company. Yeah, and we're good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's awesome. Yeah, so the way we met, that's so the way we met. At the time I had a business. I was young, I was like 27 or 28. We had 300 employees and we would always hire 30 or 40 summer interns to help us from anything from engineering to sales and marketing. So we sent an ad out to USC, I think, the business school, and they put together 10 or 15 candidates and he was one of the three that we had to have yeah um, just fired up tons of energy, very optimistic, so fun to work with, and, um, you know, we live pretty close actually, right.
Speaker 1:And um, you know, kevin came to me one day, kind of, I think, like in the middle or towards the end of his internship. He's like hey, you know, because I let my interns see, like transparently, what's going on in the business, yeah, I think you could really benefit from, you know, mentorship. Or, um, you know, maybe ypo, this organization, yeah, which which I think took a lot of courage for him to say, because he basically in a nice way was saying, hey, you need help, yeah, which I'm sure I did at the time, but I had, uh, you know, I had lunch, had lunch or dinner with Dan and he's been a mentor to me ever since then. So it's just a special way to spend some time today with somebody that's impacted me.
Speaker 3:We were excited to meet you and I do really remember that first chance we got to meet and talk and Kevin was really fired up about you and he had been talking about you all summer. And so I really fired up about you and he had been talking about you all summer.
Speaker 3:And so I was excited to meet you as well and I was totally impressed and I just thought you would be a great contributor to the business organization, to YPO, and that started down a really great path and you got in hands down and everybody loves you and you've been a really integral member.
Speaker 1:Oh thank you, yeah, and we, you know for everybody that doesn't know. So we my wife and him and lisa we go out all the time like well, I would I shouldn't say all the time, but before kids we would go out a couple times, you know a quarter just for dinner and drinks and they're so fun to hang out with yeah good uh fact, your wife is the person that taught me what a Pim's Cup was.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, she taught me what it was when I had it for the first time and the 100th time I think. I've only had Pim Cups with her.
Speaker 3:Yeah she's into that one.
Speaker 1:So we should just do a quick rundown of what's going's going on, you know, for everybody in the business.
Speaker 2:Now all the different businesses.
Speaker 1:Um, it'd be awesome to check in with you quick because, dan, you just met suzanne right? So she, you know, I did a quick introduction with her, but I mean, she was the founder and is actively the ceo of innovate realty. It's a an independent brokerage, so we represent buyers and sellers, um, and she oversees 175 agents now throughout Southern California, so ranging from San Diego all the way up to LA and out into the Inland Empire, overseeing a ton of transactions on a monthly basis. Good month, 100, 125 or something like that. Bad month might be 40 or 50. But what's going on at Innovate right?
Speaker 2:now. Yeah, it's interesting because rates have fluctuated a little bit. So we had a nice dip and everyone got really excited and there was a lot of chatter about rates dropping. But you know, they've leveled out, come back up a little bit and so I think, you know, I think we're still in the same situation that we've been in, with low inventory, but rates do feel doable, they feel affordable, so we are seeing some traction. I know even just on properties that you guys have, they're moving. So it's exciting and it feels a lot different than summer, which is so strange because you know it's usually that's the best time. But yeah, it just there is there. There's definitely more traction in the market.
Speaker 2:I think everyone is anticipating that rates are going to continue to go down and I am feeling and hearing all the election talk of like I'm going to wait. Do you think people are waiting till after the election? I mean, I think that at the end of the day, I always think and especially in our market in Southern California, when people need to move, they need to move. We've kind of been in this situation for a while where it's been more of a need than a want because inventory has been so low. So you know that really hasn't changed. It's the people that need to move are moving and the people that need to buy are buying. And you know, not too much of a change there I did get.
Speaker 1:I had a few conversations with agents last week and they are starting to hear that tone of we're going to sell but we want to do it early next year which is a little earlier to hear that in a year.
Speaker 2:I do feel it is also because of that election situation, Like it's just people, there's just that feeling of uncertainty in the air.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And yeah, we've definitely been hearing the. Oh well, we're going to we're doing it, but we're going to do it next year. And the thing with next year is that again, I mean, everyone's going to like, that's what everyone's thinking. So now you're going on with a bunch of competition Like this is actually a really great time. So I think the agents that can kind of get that message across. It only benefits their clients.
Speaker 1:Do you read, john?
Speaker 3:Burns' reports. I do. I do read John Burns and I participate in his monthly survey.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know it's interesting because I always thought that during an election year, you know, transaction volume would go down, and I guess it was a month or two ago when he sent that report out. He kind of pointed out that it doesn't. It's not really that factual, you know. Transactions kind of do what they're doing based on the economic cycle, not necessarily the election cycle.
Speaker 3:So it's kind of interesting, I agree, I agree. I agree. I think the home buying decision is really different than other, say, business decisions that have longer term ripple out effects and that if one regime gets in versus another it's going to have some sort of an impact. But I think it's unclear whether either side wins, what, if any, impact there would be on home values and the home buying market.
Speaker 1:Right. So, dan, you've got a lot going on, right, so walk us through Googie, car Wash and Clearwater Communities. What's going on in your world right now?
Speaker 3:Well, so Clearwater is a developer. I mean, we started originally as a home builder and we built detached single family home communities all over Southern California. I mean literally thousands of homes under my GC license and we also were vertically integrated. So we have a broker's license. So we employed the licensed sales agents to sell at our communities. You can kind of visualize where you have like a three or four-home model, complex, with a trap fence. People come in, there's a topo table and then they go through the models and our sales people are supposed to walk with them, get them all excited, and then they come back and they've got to buy one of those right now. So there's that business and we did that for a very long time and then further refined and started doing larger projects between, say, 100 to about 600 homes per community and having multiple projects going on simultaneously and it was great. But mostly it was subdivisions, detached single-family homes.
Speaker 3:We kind of shifted our plan to be more than just entitling and building homes, to also working and doing infill, meaning coming back into close-in cities like City of LA, other cities like Glendora and San Diego and places that are already high density and you'd buy a site. Sometimes it would be unimproved land, but other times there would be a building there. We'd scrape it and go through. And there's legislative acts. We'd have to get a general plan amendment. That's a really big ask. A less intense one would be like a zone change, Right.
Speaker 3:And then we're going to subdivide the land and create a tentative track map and you get the number of lots.
Speaker 3:And so that was a big part of the activity and we started doing these high density for sale, you know, three story very close to one, another small lot detached. And then we also started doing apartments and we created, like one of the larger ones we did it was in the city of Southgate and the type of property is called a Texas wrap, why? I did research it and the first one was done in Texas. And what you do is you build a parking structure in the middle and so in our case it was five stories. I think it held about 375 cars, and then you build residential units on three or more, maybe four sides, but typically three sides of that parking structure to hide that concrete mass behind. You know type four wood frame construction and it would look nicer. We see them all over Irvine and other places. And so we started doing apartments.
Speaker 3:We've done duplexes in South LA, which is very cool, along the whole eastern side of the 110 freeway, east of USC and up from, say, like Martin Luther King, all the way down to Slauson which is close to the interchange of the 101 freeway and we are doing a product type with like five-bedroom, three-bath, 1,800 square feet, because our demographic there is largely Latino who live multigenerationally and so I understood well why do they do that? And it's really beautiful when you think about it and they're living with an aunt, a grandparent, a cousin and things and I go, wow, let's just lean into it. If we make a five-bedroom 1,800-square-foot unit or two of those as a duplex, wouldn't that be really good? Because what's the alternative? Old bungalows from the 1950s, post-world War II, two or three bedroom, one bath, two bath really not very functional and plus they're 70-year-old homes and so we've done those and that's been really a very niche kind of a product market that has done well, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I have a question, though, because I think I want to learn a lot about everything you're doing, but I also want to learn how you got here. I think, and I think you know, for us it's really interesting because we even have I was telling him before we even have a couple agents that are like we really want to get into this. So how did you get to this point where you are now? How did it start?
Speaker 3:Well, I think it was a little bit of a serendipity kind of a situation. After I had graduated college, my first job was in tech. It was a software company and it was called Articulate Publications and they officed in Larchmont Village in LA and the product was medical and dental practice management software and I was the director of marketing. Everybody was very young in the company, I think I was 22. And the president was 27. And he was the old guy in the outfit and I was doing OEM deals and representing the company at Comdex, which is the big computer show.
Speaker 3:And was there one know, was there one particular day and these real estate guys came through? I didn't know that at the moment and they really liked the software and we have a lot of competitors. But you know, over the course of the pitch and follow-up meetings they picked our software and they were doing this consulting job with the California Medical Association. But again, they were real estate people and they kind of got this business being, I'd say, opportunistic, and then I think they realized that they really didn't have anybody who knew the software, which I did, and we kind of had hit it off on a very friendly basis and they offered me a job to leave Um and and it was time to go. I'd been at the first job for about 18 months and I think I had gotten accomplished what I needed to get done and there wasn't necessarily a clear path to go further, and so I took that job.
Speaker 3:And then disaster strikes, like six months later the deal, their deal with the California Medical Association just falls apart. So they told me they said, hey, well, dan, you know we like you but we really can't afford to keep you, but we really hate to just cut you loose. But we're part owners of a consulting firm in San Francisco that's owned by a real estate developer and I already talked to the owner and he said he would love to hire you. So I took the job. I didn't even know what real estate development was at that point, but it just sounded cool and I'm from the Bay Area, so it was an opportunity to get back because, I'm very close with my parents and one of my sisters lives there and so I said, ok, it'll be the next chapter, and I joined this real estate development company.
Speaker 3:I knew literally nothing and I was really blessed because there was this one fellow there Mike Taylor is his name who took me under his wing and he was the EVP and then the owner of the company. I think he kind of got a kick out of me because I was kind of bold and really not afraid to talk to people and do stuff and I just shadowed those guys and I shifted from being really interested in tech computers and software and you know the future with that and much more interested in real estate, and just kind of backburnered the tech as, okay, I'm going to become a regular at least in my mind sophisticated user of.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:But I'm really going to be in real estate and then I just went on all these job sites.
Speaker 2:Soaked it in.
Speaker 3:Yep, and I did all that and I was there for three years and then I executed on my plan to go back to grad school which I did yeah. And I completed that at USC.
Speaker 1:It's really the only problem we have in our relationship, because I went to Utah and once a year we play football against each other. I know I know we're really bad this year, though.
Speaker 3:I know we're blessed, but we're not doing that great.
Speaker 2:So no drama this year between you guys Got it.
Speaker 3:This last Friday night was pretty good against Rutgers over the last two weekends. Yeah, that was not good, Anyway. So I did that and then I just started my first company called Granite Homes out of school and went from there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and again, he's super humble, but the way he approaches stuff and what I really appreciate Dan is that he will literally leave no detail. He'll turn over every stone before he starts a project. And what I really appreciate, dan is that he will literally leave no detail. You know unturned Like he'll turn over every stone before he starts a project. To understand the nuance and you know complexity and stuff. But I mean, harvard wrote a piece about you and I think you were the number one. You tell it better than I would.
Speaker 3:Oh, harvard, oh well, I spoke there, but there is a book that they did with the ULI, the Urban Land Institute, and they took one of our projects and they did a case study on it. They've actually done it a couple of different times and it was really fun because they would send their grad students or postdocs out and they would really, you know, dig in on that stuff and yeah, it was. It was a really good experience. You know, when somebody asks you a lot of detail, why did you do this and how did you do that, and you kind of think about it and a lot of times I think what makes real estate, it's kind of exciting and it's fun but it's also kind of a sketchy business.
Speaker 3:It's like if you're trying to be a mathematician and you're trying to solve an algebra equation with three variables.
Speaker 1:You can't, it's not possible.
Speaker 3:basically you're taking a bunch of risk, calculated risk, yeah right, hey, if we wanted to partner today, which I would partner with you at any time um and we said hey, let's go do a development and we're gonna tell homes me, okay, it's gonna take us three years to get it entitled right.
Speaker 3:And and another, we'll develop it for 18 months to two and a half years. Develop and build and sell. Okay, so that's five years, All right. Well, what are interest rates going to be in 2029? Yeah, Where's our economy trending? That's a huge thing. Is it trending up or is it trending down? Because my understanding, my feeling, is that housing demand comes from two sources One, jobs creation and two, family formation Families formed hey, we've got to get a house right.
Speaker 3:So those two things have to be happening in general to propel housing to the levels that we want to see when we're out there, because we need to sell at least one a week, if not more, and if you don't, it's really difficult because now the interest carry and time you know, there's that expression time kills all deals right. So if you're out there too long, it's stressed. So that's kind of the challenging part of it is not knowing you know what the economy is going to be like when you're out there to monetize.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's really interesting, because I think that's a little. I mean, we do that to some degree and you do that to some degree, but it's that's such a longer term to think about.
Speaker 3:you know where it's so much more of a risk Totally the longer it's out there, the less you know accurate our projections are Like we can all feel pretty good like like, hey, this month's going to be what it is we, we got right deals in escrow yeah we got activity going on. We've got you know this and that things probably okay, the but the farther we go, out, especially beyond a year.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know that year two and year three it it's just becomes a I wouldn't say a wag, but you know it's the heavy speculation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean, that's one of the reasons we're so bullish in our business Buy, buy House is that you know the two data points you bring up. We think you know millennials are starting to form families, right. Boomers are starting to exit the workforce. A lot of boomers were fiscally very conservative, so they didn't spend a ton of money. And you know, some of the data that we go and look at is you know, did they pull second lines of? You know they get a line to go and do a home improvement project? Right? The general masses, you know, answer is no.
Speaker 1:So these jobs that are close, you know, these houses that are close to the jobs in these major cities are great houses, bones are good, they've been taken care of, but they don't have open floors. You know floor plans. They don't have white oak floors. And the younger generations, the people that are actually forming families, are a little lazy and they don't want to go and buy the ugliest house on the nicest block and then do all the work. They just want to walk into something that's ready for them, right For sure. And so that's really our approach. And then we obviously look at all the time. I mean, every deal gets killed by time in our business, so our duration is much shorter. We're like six to 12 months is what we're touching, and if it goes past 12 months, something went wrong.
Speaker 3:I think part of what you're talking about is vision, and a lot of people, I think, don't necessarily have a vision for what their property could be like if XYZ were done to it, and I can't tell you how often that people would say well, I want to buy that plan, but I want it just like the model.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And we kind of took that to heart that it's just people like what they see and they want it exactly that way. Well, where we kind of took that to heart, that it's just you know people like what they see and they just, they want it exactly that way. Where'd you get that furniture? Yeah, where'd you get those knickknacks?
Speaker 2:Okay, well, you know Ikea and cost plus.
Speaker 3:but yeah, but it's the putting it together.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, we hear that all the time with the staging.
Speaker 3:They're like where's the stage? We want to buy the staging.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, and it's that vision I think that's what also really contributes in if you're in that real estate development business is to have a vision what should be on that site? What's the highest and best use? There's something there now, or maybe it's vacant land, but in your business for sure there's an old house. It's got antiquated architecture, eight foot ceilings and small windows and you know a tiny master with almost no closet and a lot of things that aren't desirable to today's. You know tastes.
Speaker 3:And how do you transform that into something that's exciting and livable? And maybe the exterior is still a you know California bungalow or you know post-World War II housing from the 60s or whatever or 50s even.
Speaker 2:But if you can make that transition to white oak floors and limestone or whatever, the taste is going to be, yeah, well, speaking of transitions, because I really want to know about Googie Car Wash, because you OK, so developing got that. But how do we get here? How do we get to Googie Car Wash? Because you okay, so you know, developing got that. But how do we get here? How do we get to Googie Car Wash?
Speaker 3:Well, it started with just an idea of mine to just have a second source of income in addition to real estate development, Because over time you know there's big gaps between the inflows of cash, because you put a lot out over time and it's years, and then you're out of time and I actually just, I think, became a customer of what was the first express car wash in Orange County.
Speaker 3:It still exists today. It's on Harbor Boulevard, just north of Victoria, and when I went through there I just thought it was great because I got my car washed and it was inexpensive and it was quick, it was the time right. My parents kids, you know were busy running around and so I just became a customer of it and I just became just more and more intrigued by it and I couldn't let it go. And I, through my business group, and I couldn't let it go, and I, through my business group, reached out to industry and then found best-in-class operators. I didn't even know this was a business car washing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a big business actually.
Speaker 3:It is there's 280-plus million cars in the United States and more coming online all the time because our population is growing and most people want a clean car, yeah. And so you know it's a thing right. And so I traveled around, I went and met these people in Texas and in Georgia and in Utah and you know, we just became intrigued by it and so we just decided I said, okay, you know, if a site comes along that has a car wash or the opportunity to do a car wash, we're going to go for it. And my employees were just shaking their heads, going, oh, this is going to be a ride.
Speaker 3:And sure enough one came along in the city of Whittier and it was a larger site. It was a little bit over three acres and it had several warehouses, it had a restaurant and it had an actual car wash. And the catch was this car wash is actually a historic building and it was from 1961. And this whole architectural form is called Googie architecture and artwork. So if you think about that art form and back to the, say, 1950s and 60s and think about iconic brands like McDonald's, in-n-out Burger, norm's, denny's Diner, the theme building at LAX, the Circular Silver Convention Center building in Anaheim, all that's Googie architecture.
Speaker 1:It's kind of almost mid-century-ish, exactly, yeah, the Jetsons mid-century, excellent, yeah right.
Speaker 3:So we ended up realizing all this stuff and we saw the site and I said, okay, I had a vision. We're going to demo all this industrial and retail and we're going to build four-rent luxury apartments, I'd say medium density, so they're four-story, so it's tuck under parking, so parking on the ground level and then three living floors above, and that was at a density of a little over 30 homes to the acre. Normally we build a detached single family. We're at four to six homes per acre.
Speaker 3:So this is 30 to the acre. Normally we build a detached single family. We're at four to six homes per acre.
Speaker 3:So, this is 30 of the acre and we decided to do it for rent. And then the car wash portion needed to get re-entitled and you have to get a CUP, which stands for conditional use permit. It's a discretionary approval and they can say no, and that is the risk, and we went for it and we created it. And then the idea what are we going to call it? And there's a bunch of brands out there, but most of them they pick names that have to do with time or water, which is logical, right, because you're offering a high-speed product service, so saying it's fast is good, and then, of course, we're using water, so the water is a water drop as a logo is really typical, and I realized myself for me I would get confused at our competitors' names.
Speaker 3:I couldn't always like I would confuse that.
Speaker 2:They're so similar, similar yeah.
Speaker 3:And so I said, well, I want to come up with something different. And then it just sort of struck me well, why don't we just call it Googie Car Wash? And now it feels comfortable. But back then all my employees were going. What?
Speaker 1:No, don't do that.
Speaker 3:Nobody's going to know what it is that can't be the one that can't be right, and I frequently do listen to what other people say, but at the end of the day there's got to be like one decision maker. And I said, no, we're doing it. And we went for it. And then I had this kind of wild idea to go try to copyright it and the IP lawyer said, no, you're totally wasting money. They're going to say no the word's in the public domain. I said yeah, but it's so inexpensive to make the application.
Speaker 2:It doesn't take you very long.
Speaker 3:Look, it costs very little. What's the worst they can say? And I about fell off my chair when we got awarded the copyright patent from the US Trade and Patent Office. So that's good. I don't think it matters all that much it just gives you an opportunity to protect your IP if somebody infringes.
Speaker 2:But you still got to run a business.
Speaker 3:It doesn't mean you're going to be successful or anything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I mean we talked about it a little bit before. But as soon as you say the name, like you, just really like it lights you up.
Speaker 3:It's such a great Well that's right, and there's something cool about it because there's this authentic nature to it. So back then it was futuristic, but today it's this retro future. It's nostalgic, almost it's nostalgic, but even more because what I really like about the whole Googie theme is that it has this positive look into the future. Right, the future is good. Technology is good. Technology is going to help people.
Speaker 3:And I just like that, just personally, naturally. And I really like it these days when there's just so much negativity and stuff. It's like I just so not want to trade in those kind of conversations because they just you know.
Speaker 3:But so, googie, is this positive thing, and we wanted to make this great experience for our customers, and so I I studied companies who I thought were really good at making a great experience for their well, the word guests is a Disney expression for their guests, which I've adopted and that was one of the companies. Like there's theme parks and then there's Disney right.
Speaker 3:There's shopping and then there's Nordstrom. I'm talking to so many people. Why do they go to Nordstrom? They're selling not that much different stuff than some of the other places, but people go there because of the overall experience.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:Right. So I said, well, what can I learn from these three industries that I can borrow and take and utilize here? And so I did, and that's kind of where we came up with it to make it a really good experience, to make it fun. And the overall theme is this feeling like, if you come and get your car washed at Googie Car Wash.
Speaker 3:you're going to feel great, your car is going to be clean and you're going to have a really great experience. And you know, for all of us, we all have good things in our lives and we have challenges all of us. And you know life's hard and it's not fair. I hate when I have to tell my kids sorry kids. It's not fair. You're right, it's not fair, but you still have to deal with it and I literally put in our employee manual you have to smile at our customers.
Speaker 3:You have to smile at our guests. Plus, it gives your face something to do right. So smile you know and be grateful. We're grateful. They come. We have a lot of competitors.
Speaker 2:They choose to go anywhere they want, right.
Speaker 3:So we wanted to come here.
Speaker 2:I was just having that conversation with my dad this morning. We were talking about how like there are so many negative aspects of our daily life, but it's like you really have to find the positives in the small stuff, you know, really have to find the positives in the small stuff, you know, and that's why I that really resonates with me, because it's it's going to the grocery store and like those tedious daily tasks you have to be happy with with that too, you know. So this is such a great example of that where you're taking that concept and putting it into practice.
Speaker 3:For you know, for most people your car, the car, is your most valuable piece of personal property, which is sort of a funny tangent on a real estate conversation but that's personal property right. But it's many people's most valuable piece and some people actually name their cars, Like my wife's mother. My mother-in-law named her car Betsy.
Speaker 1:And it was on her license plate.
Speaker 3:And. I found that that was a common thing. And the other thing I realize from people is that you actually, if you think about when you get your car washed and after it's done and it's nice and clean and you walk away, do you ever turn around and look back at your car?
Speaker 2:Or when you're walking back up to you, look at it and it's nice and clean.
Speaker 3:It's such a great, you feel good. It's like everybody in this room is smiling right now. Yeah, and it's just, we all get it. Yeah, that was something that attracted me to this business, that, wow, I could be in this industry, where you know it's a service and the end result is saving people time and money, which is really beneficial, and also helping them keep their most valued personal property clean.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And they're happy and they're smiling.
Speaker 1:I, it reminds me so, and part of this is just, you know you can tell when you talk to him why he's so successful, right? Because he the passion, yeah, there's so much passion in what he does. But I don't know if you remember, but the Googie concept, right? So Dana and I were on a trip together and we happened to be sharing a room and he was like hey, you know, I want to pick your brain for a couple of minutes before we go to bed, and it was pretty late already.
Speaker 1:We're in Israel like on the border of Lebanon, and it was like maybe 1130 or midnight Fast forward to like 3 in the morning. We're talking, we're both talking about you know, googie, and, and you know, does it work, does it not work? And we're like, oh shoot, we probably got married.
Speaker 3:I mean right to be up in two hours. Yeah, yeah excited. You're excited about it, I was well and and paul is in, you know, previously had this consumer facing retail experience that I didn't really have and having, you know, employees at that level, which is really different than real estate development employees who are like architects, engineers, finance people and things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:So it was. It was you. You gave me like a lot of good ideas, but I think mostly, paul, you encouraged me to go for it. You know, and not everybody did Some people go oh, dan, you can't do this, you're you encouraged me to go for it and not everybody did Some people go oh Dan, you can't do this. You're a contractor, You're a developer, you don't know anything about consumer-facing, retail or the service business. And I go well, I didn't know anything about home building until I built my first home.
Speaker 3:Right you know, yeah, and so you know, I guess I'm maybe evidence that an old dog can learn new tricks.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly I think well, you're not an old dog. To me, age is just a mentality. 100% yeah. So I have a couple of blocking and tackling questions. Okay, what is the future of Googie Car Wash? I mean?
Speaker 3:we're going to grow, we're looking for more sites and my older son, kevin, recently joined us and he has been very good at bringing in some new tech to our business. We have tablets. There's a gamification component for our salespeople. They make commission, but they also get prizes and awards. It also records the conversation, which is really good.
Speaker 3:Then you can listen to how your pitch was and what the customer said and you can learn from it. And then it all stays internal and then it self-erases. So it's a really good tool. So, anyway, he came along and bumped our memberships from about 5,200 to 7,500 in five months. Wow, and so we're kind of on this path, so we're looking of on this path, so we're we're, we're looking for more sites now and um, it's just very, very competitive.
Speaker 1:So I have a couple other questions, um and I know we're probably running a bit short on time, but um, so three washes. Now walk me through how you lived with the risks that you were taking on the first one, because it wasn't the first product, because the first project you took on and you talked a little bit about it it wasn't just go and build a car wash.
Speaker 1:There was a ton of risk. I mean it was big dollars. You had all this other land to figure out. How did you consolidate all that risk down into going for it?
Speaker 3:Well, I think that one of the things we were going to do is do a lot split and I felt, you know, if the car thing didn't work out or we just had problems back there, we could flip that out and probably well, do more than break even, and so I didn't feel like that was a big risk. I didn't feel like that was a big risk. The residential side was more risky because it was already industrial and just between the land cost and the escalating construction costs I was kind of concerned what rents we'd have to charge in a third year.
Speaker 1:This was like 2017, too.
Speaker 3:So there was kind of yeah later than that, actually because we opened at the end of 19. Oh, that was like a bit of an unforeseen risk, because we opened in December of 2019.
Speaker 2:So if you go back, the pandemic just slammed us in the beginning of 2020.
Speaker 3:So right after we opened, oh, we got shot twice by the government, which was erroneous, but they did it anyway. So there were a lot of things, but I just try to do as much analysis as we can. It's a calculated risk and the return that return's got to be there to take that extra risk so that if it didn't work out as well and we can't lease for $3,000 a month or whatever, and it's going to be $2,400, okay, well, what are you going to do if you don't get that extra?
Speaker 3:$600 type of thing. So I think it's a risk.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So one of the questions we ask our guests are what's the most interesting or what's the best or worst real estate story or experience that you've had? Oh gosh.
Speaker 3:Well, I have a lot of stories.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:So there's this area called the Dairylands, which maybe you guys are familiar with, and it's in, it's near Ontario and it was originally a dairy yeah, Eastvale. It was a dairy preserve and this tax incentive was to get farmers to raise cows and then the preserve ended and there were still all these cows there and a lot of these farmers were older and they wanted to retire and their business really wasn't worth anything, but it was for a home builder. So we came in and bought a really big parcel of land. It was a big stake and that's where we developed 600, well, it's actually, I think, 596 homes, Wow. So we bought it and went through the entitlement process, which wasn't all that bad and everything, except for when we got to this one element where you know if you're building that many homes, you have to build a park or you want to build a park because to you know, have something for you, so we're going to do this park.
Speaker 3:Or you want to build a park because, to you know, have something for you, so we're going to do this park. But then the quasi-government organization that runs the parks that there is called Valleywide or it used to be at least and they said they wanted baseball fields. And I go, okay, great, I played baseball my sons play Baseball fields sound like a good idea and they go we want it lighted.
Speaker 3:I go, okay, well, that's at some cost. But you know what? I get it. Okay, we're going to have night games and yep, we're going to do it. So we go through and we design it all up and we just get a hard no from the FAA. Why? Because the Chino Airport is close by and so well, the lights on your southern baseball field are going to be distracting the pilots, and so you could cause plane crash. So no lights on you can on fields one and two, but not three.
Speaker 3:The northern and middle but not the southern one. So we go, okay, cool, Well, I guess we'll save a little bit of money. We'll just let Valley Light know, and they go no, we're not going to approve your project, we have to have lights on the field, oh no, and I go. Well, wait a minute, and then I tell the whole story.
Speaker 3:And then now we're this, just small business, we're like a ping pong ball in between these two government agencies, and so they're getting into a big fight over it, and meanwhile we're unapproved and I'm sitting there going OK, we've got to do something.
Speaker 1:You're already baked on the deal. Oh, we're baked. Yeah, we own it. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:And no, we're not going anywhere, it's just we're dead in the water, yeah, and so I was telling the story at home. Like, we always have family dinner as a by the way, so kids at the table, we have dinner together and they're curious about what I'm doing, and so I explain what you should do. I go what's that? Build a skate park. And I go. I get why you guys would say it because you guys love to go to skate parks.
Speaker 1:Can I take you to skate parks?
Speaker 3:I said but nah, you know what these guys are going to say it's too risky because you know they'll skateboard around, they're going to bang their head or the older boys will come there and they'll get high and it'll just be a mess.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Right and they're going to say no Anyway. So they told it to me and I just kind of said no, it's not a good idea.
Speaker 2:I mean it's a good idea, but it's not going to work.
Speaker 3:So we're at kind of the final meeting and the commissioner's there of the Valleywide and he's just firm not going to do it, and the meeting just basically ended and we played every card we had and I said, well, sorry, I don't know, do something else. And I said, you know, the thought occurred to me and I literally no, I shouldn't say literally I figuratively fell out of my chair when he thought the skate park was a great idea. Really.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's so cool, so we built a skate park. Wow yeah.
Speaker 3:So I got my kids involved. And then you know, because we were trying to like design a skate park and you know if you're not an active skater, you don't really know what the good turns and tricks are and things, and so we did a skate park and we skated by that really difficult condition.
Speaker 1:I love that. Did you do a ribbon cutting or did you like ride down the cake?
Speaker 3:No, my kids, my kids are out there. Yeah, yeah, so that was one where it just was kind of difficult.
Speaker 1:That's great. So I, we normally ask the question, what's your superpower? But I, I, I don't know what your answer would be, but I, I personally feel like your superpower is vision and creativity, because you know, I think a lot of people in that moment would just kind of fold and then go back to the drawing board and be like, oh shoot, they wouldn't have the tenacity to ask that question. But what's your answer?
Speaker 3:I think it's a willingness to like formulate an idea and just go after it. And I mean not to be like crazy, like a bulldog or something, but to pursue it vigorously. And you know I joke when I get told no. I've only been told no three times. I mean, if you really want to be a real estate developer, you got to get told at least 10 times no right, and so I think it's maybe the idea of follow through.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Like having the courage to have an idea and some people to maybe say no, that's not a good idea. But if you have the conviction, but really it's a lot of execution. Yeah, you just got to follow through.
Speaker 2:Yeah, awesome, I love it.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you so much for spending time with us today. Yeah, for I love it. Well, thank you so much for spending time with us today For all of our listeners. We want you to go to the Googie Car Wash. There's a few locations, so this goes out on Spotify and YouTube and a bunch of other social sites, so we're going to put all the information about how to find Dan and the Googie team.
Speaker 3:Go get a wash done, and anything else you want to share with our listeners, I would just say I would encourage you. Real estate is a really interesting business and it's challenging, and I'll tell you, one thing that I really liked about single family home business is that we are part of creating the American dream and I don't know if it's corny or not, but it's true.
Speaker 3:It's just. You know, home ownership it's not for everybody but for, you know, probably close to 60% of the people in the US, it's a great path, a great place to raise your children and a great investment. It's one of the few really good investments that most people can participate in and, as long as we have that mortgage interest deduction, that's a huge benefit to people. So one of the few really good investments that most people can participate in and, as long as we have that mortgage interest deduction, that's a huge benefit to people. So I think, you know, it's an honor to be in that business and I think it's a really positive thing because we're all making a positive contribution in that realm. It's not frivolous.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that Cool Anything on your side. No, no, that was great. Thanks for being here.
Speaker 3:Thank you, this is my first podcast. You nailed it. I don't know. I'm afraid to listen to it.
Speaker 1:I am too, because you'll probably take my job. No, it was awesome, all right. Well, that is it for this episode. Please check back. If you have not subscribed, please do so. Go get your car washed If you are in Southern.
Speaker 1:California. It is Googie Car Wash. Don't go anywhere else. They're the best on the planet. I can attest to that because I actually flew with Dan to look at how the soap exits the machine. I mean the bristles, the soap, like every little piece of tech that's inside of their car wash. He turned over 15 different times.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:So if you want a car wash, you need a car wash. It's the only place to go. Oh, thank you. I would drive out of my way 15 minutes, 20 minutes, to make sure that it's done there. Maybe an hour.
Speaker 3:Thank, you Depending on the day.