Ep 028 - Achieving the Impossible with Josh Jacobs

Transcript

Transcripts are generated by machine learning, so typos may be present.

Chris Hanslik: In today’s episode, you will meet Josh Jacobs, the co-founder and CEO of the Blue Ox Group, and hear how he was inspired by the fable of Paul Bunyan, the larger-than-life lumberjack who could achieve the impossible to start his company in June of 2020 in the middle of the pandemic, and how that helped set the foundation for his company and its core values. Josh, I want to welcome you onto the show. Thanks for taking time to be here.

Josh Jacobs: Thank you for having me. I’m very excited about it. I’m very grateful for the opportunity.

Chris Hanslik: So, you kind of want to get started right in. And I know you now are the co-founder CEO of Blue Ox. Tell the audience, what is Blue Ox? What is it known for? Just introduce us to your company.

Josh Jacobs: Yeah, so I know it’s a very unique name. I’ll talk about Blue Ox in a second. The name came from a story of Paul Bunyan. And my wife and I spent a lot of time thinking up names. And we probably put down 100 and something names on this list of names. And I hired a branding agency. And we kind of pulled into this direction. But what I really loved about it was that we It’s a story about a guy who’s larger than life. He’s a lumberjack, right? He has this friend, Babe the Blue Ox, that he found in the snow. And it’s a fable. It’s just a fun story about doing great things. He did things that were larger than life, that were incredible, but together they did, you know, they worked together. And I really loved the idea of the teamwork that I think an ox represents hard work in any culture. And so for me, that was one of the things that to me is a big piece of my being and how I do business. And it allowed us to have core values essentially set out by this story to a certain extent. They work their tails off. They were friends. They were honest with each other. They trusted each other. And together, they could do amazing things. So I really love the story. And I love that it turned into core values, essentially. And I hire and fire by core values.

Chris Hanslik: As I think everyone should, assuming you develop true values that mean something to your organization.

Josh Jacobs: Right. And so it’s a unique name. I didn’t want my name on the door. It was one of those things that’s trying to be something not just me, not just Josh. And it allowed me to do that. And I think the other thing is kind of my quirky sense of humor is who doesn’t like a mascot? It’s fun to go create personality in a brand, which we haven’t done a great job yet, what we’re working toward. And I’m really excited about what we can do with the brand. Like I said, I have these incredible women that helped me create the brand. I’m forever in their debt.

Chris Hanslik: Well, so I love that story. What I love about it is a story and you can, just by someone asking you why the blue ox or why the logo, you get to launch into what you just did that tells a little bit about you as a person which is deep and thoughtful and shows how it naturally leads to talking about your core values for your organization. It’s funny because we do the same. We rebranded the firm in 2009. We have a column, and there’s five pieces to the column. Each represents one of our core values. And when they developed our business card, the company we used put a notch in the side of the business card that looks like the end of the column. And every time you answer one of our business cards, they ask about the notch because it’s so unique and it allows us to tell the story about our core values.

Josh Jacobs: I love that.

Chris Hanslik: Just naturally, right? Just like you just did. So that’s wonderful. I totally relate to that.

Josh Jacobs: Yeah. And for me, it’s, you know, you know, business is about more than just you yourself and just work, right? There’s other components of that. So the story is fun. And it, you know, for me, it’s all about work life balance as well. This came that the name Blue Ox originally when my wife and I put on the list was because we love to ski and there’s a run in Colorado called Blue Ox and where I grew up in Massachusetts, north of there, there was a run called. So, you know, just someone has been around me for a long, lots of parallels, a lot of parallels. Okay.

Chris Hanslik: So that’s how the name came up. Tell us what is Blue Ox? What does it do? What’s it known for in this community?

Josh Jacobs: So we’re known for our retail real estate expertise. We do four things really essentially. We do tenant representation, retail tenants, restaurants, things like that. Landlord representation for shopping centers. We don’t really do any other type of landlord representation investment sales. We, and that’s probably the biggest piece of our business right now is selling cash flowing real estate or vacant real estate that’s user oriented on the retail restaurant side. So it’s a niche business. Okay. And then we do quite a bit of land and land subdivision, development land, things that will go to an end user, you know, restaurants, shopping center, multifamily, industrial, things like that. Maybe we’re breaking up 50, 75, 100 acre tracks, maybe five acre tracks, things like that.

Chris Hanslik: Okay, so pretty full service across every sector of real estate.

Josh Jacobs: Yeah, but we’re, we’re definitely a boutique farm and we’re not full service in the sense that we don’t do, you know, multifamily development or we don’t do industrial development. We do develop and work with developers and own real estate on the retail and land side. So we’re full service in that aspect. Okay.

Chris Hanslik: Yeah. Very good. So what inspired you to start BlueLocks?

Josh Jacobs: Well, part of it was out of necessity. I mean, I’ve started another company 12 years ago with partners and we had a great run, but it was time to separate and. can do my own thing and you know for me the downturn and covid we started this i started this june of 2020 so this was literally during you know right after quarantine and it was important to get it started and started right

Chris Hanslik: There weren’t many people starting new ventures in June of 2020.

Josh Jacobs: No, sir. No, sir. And I’m not sure that was the brightest move in the world. But at the end of the day, it was the best thing that ever happened to me, in all honesty. And I’m incredibly grateful because I have an amazing team of people that I’ve been able to put together. We have 10 people. just incredible talent and so that’s been fun but doing it during that time was a crazy time and but it was needed I needed to do it I needed to do it on my own this time I have no partners in it so it’s very important you know to for me to have started that and kind of grow it from there.

Chris Hanslik: So you know you’ve said twice now it was time or you needed to do it what was it that kind of bubbled up inside you and said, this is the time. I’ve got to guess there’s people listening and maybe having some of those same feelings or wondering if those feelings are what they are. What was it for you?

Josh Jacobs: Sure. I was in another business that I had amazing, talented partners, but we were looking at things through different lenses. And it was time for me to really go out and start my own. You know, someone once told me that you can’t have co-captains in leadership. The essence of it is that we’re all looking at things a little different way had different intents and different goals And for me that was what I needed in order That’s sort of what inspired me to basically do this and that moment was just the right moment in time, right? But I would this has been going on probably for six seven eight years.

Chris Hanslik: It wasn’t an overnight thing So it’s unique that you started a new business venture literally in the middle of a pandemic, and it didn’t relate to PPE equipment or anything related.

Josh Jacobs: I didn’t get any PPP money. Right.

Chris Hanslik: Or you didn’t start a company. Some people started companies to make hand sanitizers or masks, but this was real estate, commercial real estate. What we’re looking at it now, I guess now almost two years in the mirror, what were some of the biggest challenges to starting a company in June of 2020?

Josh Jacobs: I mean, there’s so many challenges. There was no business, number one. It was very hard. But the nice thing is that the business was slow. And finding the resources, for me, that was a component of it that made it difficult. But it’s kind of the biggest success, biggest challenge kind of thing, right? I was able to start a company in 30 days that no one would have been able to really pull off that quickly. And part of it was through relationships that I had, branding. IT, web development, all of the components that helped me get this thing started. But it’s very hard to do and it’s not for the faint of heart.

Chris Hanslik: Well, you bring up a good point. I think they were probably all a little slow in their work as well, so you had their attention. So yeah, something that is unique about that. Okay, so you started in the middle of the pandemic. How did you go about building this team?

Josh Jacobs: So, you know, that time when I left the company, a couple of other people were leaving also, and so they were going to come with me. And so it was necessary to a certain extent to start quickly because everybody was in limbo. And that’s not a fun place for anybody to be, including myself. I had a lot of sleepless nights, you know, thinking through this, getting it up and running. I mean, it’s hard and I don’t want to, you know, say that it’s not because I think anybody has gone through those emotions of starting a business and being an entrepreneur. It is not an easy task, but it was imperative. It was imperative for me to get it going, get it started right. People were relying on me to do that, and myself included, right?

Chris Hanslik: You emphasize a good point. If it were easy, anybody could do it. It’s not. It’s not. There’s a lot of uncertainty, a lot of risk, right? There is a lot of risk. With that in mind, you mentioned core values, what are the values of the firm and how have you gone about instilling those in the team and making sure those values are real and alive?

Josh Jacobs: Yeah, great question. I’ll gladly read them to you, but They instill basic traits right and i part of it is really hiring based on traits that you believe in anyway a lot of this comes from my gut and just what i believe just court to the core it’s not i don’t wanna be someone different i wanna live i wanna walk in the office and love what i do and love the people i work with it’s very simple. So if I believe those certain things, and they believe certain things, we should be okay. And so part of it is be resilient to the challenge we face. If you fall down, get up, right? Don’t just wallow in something that you can’t control. You know, have an outlook and a see forever attitude that you can have a positive outlook on life. Look at challenges, face the challenges and succeed, right? If you fall down, get up. Don’t be afraid to ask questions, that kind of thing. then strive for excellence. At the end of the day, we want to be not the biggest, we want to be the best at what we do. Just like you guys, right? You’re not the biggest, but you’re unbelievable at what you do. And you can honestly and confidently say that. I want to have that ability, right? I want to have that. I want people to say, hey, Blue Ox Group, they’re really good at what they do. If that’s all we get, to me, that’s a win.

Chris Hanslik: Great at what they do, reliable. I think you probably heard me say here about our firm, we’re not trying to be the biggest, we just want to be the best in everything we do. So you said you hire from those and I don’t know if you’ve had to fire yet in two years. Well, that’s good. But you clearly gauge behaviors and performance as it relates to those values from what I’m hearing.

Josh Jacobs: Absolutely. Yes. And I think they drive the culture. So really culture, it’s either you have it or you don’t have it to a certain extent. Everybody has a way they go about business. Everybody’s different in their own right. And that’s okay. It’s good to be different. Why would you have employees if they didn’t have different skill sets than you also, right? So part of it is empowering them to do the job that they can do and not micromanaging for me and letting them kind of just go. Yeah, I think it’s, you know, it’s a key component to our success is having the right people. And I have not had to fire, luckily.

Chris Hanslik: That’s great.

Josh Jacobs: I hope never to.

Chris Hanslik: Congrats.

Josh Jacobs: Thank you. I have in previous, you know, lives, obviously. But, you know, I think outlining it more clearly. I think that’s the benefit of starting a new company is that you can learn from the things that you failed to do before and do them better, whether they’re right or wrong. I don’t know. I’m still growing. Potentially, we change those. Right. Well, it’s a journey, right? It’s a journey. And I think it’s constantly evolving. And as our team grows and gets more seasoned together, we’re going to have that ability to grow that and maybe change these. We talk about it openly. I thought my core values has to be all of our core values at the end of the day. I did start it, so I had the ability to jump in front of it. But we created these together. That’s great.

Chris Hanslik: Yeah, you’re right. There has to be an adoption and full buy-in of the values for them to be institutionalized.

Josh Jacobs: But if someone’s not doing, you know, if they’re, you know, not trying to be the best they can be, just, you know, one of the challenges, we’re in a brokerage firm, right? So there’s people that do things for money that may not be the right thing. Well, that doesn’t go to our core value. That’s an easy one, right? Of course. To say, hey, that doesn’t work for me and you can’t be here anymore. Right. But I hope never to have that. We talk about it a lot, so that shouldn’t happen, but that’s an easy one to, you know, to pin it.

Chris Hanslik: So you mentioned a minute ago that you kind of had started this company maybe trying to learn from prior failures, for sure. I always like to ask my guests, what is a one or two failure setback that you’ve encountered in your professional career? It could be in starting Blue Ox, maybe it was before then, but if you pick one or two examples for us, what was it, what did you learn from it, and how did it make you better in the leader and entrepreneur you are today?

Josh Jacobs: Well, I think that’s a really tough question for me. I don’t feel like I’ve had any major failures in life, luckily, thank goodness. A deep one, I would say this may be a little off what you’re saying, but a deep one is maybe for me not thinking big enough about what I was doing originally. I can get back into that one. The easy one to say is on a partnership level, what I did right and did wrong. You’re not setting specific expectations for partners. was a big problem at the end of the day. Not surprising, we see that a lot. Yeah, I’m sure you do. Well, and having those advanced roles and responsibilities would have helped clear a lot of things up that probably would have solved a lot of things. And so to me, that’s probably the biggest failure I have. And I hate to say that because I had great partners, really good people that are super successful in their own right. Those things happen if you’re not set up in advance. We all grew. The truth is we’re all young. We were growing.

Chris Hanslik: People evolve and change. I think where you were 10, 12 years out when you started to where you were a decade later, people evolve and change. It doesn’t make them bad people. It just wasn’t time to be courteous anymore. Absolutely right. As I recall, you were able to exit on fairly amicable terms. Absolutely. You had to learn from that.

Josh Jacobs: And I think that’s, if anything, I could say about that these failures. I know that’s why you ask these questions. People can learn from these failures. So, so well, you know, again, it goes to that. What I said earlier, no captain, no co-captains and leadership. You know, someone, you know, you know, really taught me that early on and. Got to me and I, you know, something I should have done a better job of. So that’s a big failure. Going back to the not thinking big enough thing. I think one of my personal, you know, things that I think about a lot and seeing, you know, people that are super successful. I think I’ve done great. And, you know, I mean, I started from nothing, Chris. where I am today, to where I started. I mean, thank goodness it’s worked out. But I really was always very conservative in the way I approached everything, not to fail, not to go set back. I didn’t have far to set back early on, so I should have taken more risks. I can relate to that. I should have probably taken a little bit more risk than what I did, but I learned I’m a singles and doubles guy. I really truly believe that I’m never out to get a home run. And I have a friend, I have an old friend of mine that’s literally, he’s either going to be a billionaire or bust. I don’t have that mentality, right? It’s singles and doubles. It’s okay to just do a little bit and hopefully you get somewhere further along. And that’s suited me well over my career.

Chris Hanslik: That’s great. So you mentioned not having the co-captain leadership structure. Sounds like that came from maybe a mentor early in your career. If so, can you tell us more about that mentor relationship and what value you got out of that?

Josh Jacobs: It did come from a mentor relationship. I’ve had many mentors over the years. I have one now that I think is I would recommend it to anybody to have a mentor. I don’t care who it is. I’ll tell you, the mentor I have now comes from the most unlikely source. He’s not like a Harvard educated guy. He comes from the school of hard knocks. He’s an amazing guy that we have things that we both enjoy in common. And so I was able to ask him to go to lunch, breakfast one day actually. And he gave me a couple of nuggets today. I’ve implemented my daily practice that have been, that’s one of them that he talked to me early on, but the one most recently that he talked to me about that I’m using and I have to do, I’m a people pleaser by nature. That’s what got me into the brokerage business. Originally, I like to help people. I like to see things come to fruition. I like to fix. And he, but the problem with that is that because I’m a people pleaser, I may not be totally honest with people. And he’s not honest is not the right word, but let’s say coy a little bit and not in a bad way, but let’s just say I may not be direct and brutally honest with someone. And so when he said, you know, he knows me pretty well. He said he was able to say that to me. He goes, well, you know, you go by, you don’t like make anybody feel bad. So you maybe not hit the nail on the head. And so going back to my leadership style too is be direct and brutally honest and it suited me so now tactful is important of course component. Okay, so we can talk a little bit about leadership if you want but like that’s one of those components that help has really helped me because I’ve been able to have very difficult conversations with people that I really admire and like within my own company clients whomever. and in a constructive way. And for me, that’s how I took it. It may not be how everybody takes it, but for me, that’s how I took it. And it’s a personality flaw that I have to a certain extent. Not that it’s bad, but it’s one of those that by seeing that, what he said, it allowed me to go change my daily activity and how I interact.

Chris Hanslik: We all have strengths and weaknesses and part of that is figuring out what those are and how do you enhance your strengths. And you have to decide, I think some weaknesses you may not be able to shore up, some you can a little bit. You just kind of figure that out for yourself and with the help of mentors and being willing to take constructive feedback, that’s how you kind of continue on the journey to improvement.

Josh Jacobs: I’m a serial learner. I love to learn. I’ve been doing it a long time. I’m in an entrepreneur’s organization, which has helped me. And I think you talk about starting a business. I’ve been in an entrepreneur’s organization for 10 years. I was the president of the organization for a year. And I have gotten so much out of that organization from a learning standpoint. that allowed me to get the company off the ground in 30 days was a true testament to the relationships and the learnings that I have from being there and taking the time to try to study those things.

Chris Hanslik: So you mentioned a little bit about your leadership style. Let’s go a little deeper on you and your philosophy and style of leadership. Tell us a little bit about that and kind of how you approach things and maybe where you learned that from and how it’s evolved.

Josh Jacobs: Sure. I mean, I like to joke around. So that’s part of it. I think it’s being authentic and being approachable is very important because I want to have, you know, can’t be best friends with everybody in the company, but we’re small. We’re only 10 people, right? We have to enjoy each other’s company. And so I’d much rather everybody come to me and with their challenges, You know have the ability to have conversation about things i’m not a micromanager so that’s a big deal i believe i truly believe. If someone has a job they’re gonna do it if they don’t do it right let’s have a conversation let’s ask questions and figure how to solve for it. And but it’s not about sitting there and overseeing them and making sure they do everything you know the way i would do it because they may have a different approach to the same. Probably get it done just as well and so i’ve learned from that but for me that’s a big deal and yeah i think you know. At the end of the day you know. there’s a lot of components of leadership that are very challenging. Some are very fun and some are very hard, right? We can’t be a pushover, but at the same time, you have to set those boundaries. And so I think we have a really good balance of that. But part of it is to have fun and enjoy what we do and enjoy walking into that office every day. So that’s a little bit of a component of our culture. Yeah.

Chris Hanslik: So you’ve mentioned your habitual learner. Where do you go For resources and learning I know you mentioned entrepreneur organization in the group there but any resources you know books you do re seminars you’ve attended.

Josh Jacobs: I’ve done the entrepreneurs masters program at the end to cut house at MIT three which has been an amazing learning experience but the everyday thing I mean there’s a couple books I love you know Jim Collins get to grace by the best greatest business book ever right. But just beyond that, the great by choice, he wrote the second book and he had a couple when I started this business. He said something in that book that really caught my attention. It was about decision making. And it was the low risk, low cost, low distraction. Have you heard that? Yeah. And it’s about when you take a rifle shot before you throw the cannonball out there, is it going to be cost effective? Can you do it without breaking the bank? Is it risk averse enough where you’re not blowing the whole company up or yourself up personally? But the one that really got me was that low distraction. Because think about the things that we do in our life that take us on tangents. that are very distracting and don’t really provide what we want out of it. I was like, I mean, that blew my mind. It was one of those things to me personally that was, okay, I need to be really careful about that particularly because that really sets the tone for what we do every day.

Chris Hanslik: It really speaks to time, right? Time is valuable and how you spend it can make or break things.

Josh Jacobs: Absolutely. So that’s one of them. I mean, I’ve, you know, I love Brene Brown and I’m not a reader as much as I listen to audible books and podcasts. And I really love learning that way or watching speakers speak. And that’s why, why I like the EO stuff so much. But the, you know, you know, the Brene Brown had that thing about trust that I really, I really love and You know, she talked about that thing, you know, where trust is built on reliability, accountability, integrity and generosity. Yep. And if you think about this, so one thing that got me in my past relationship as well, the Braving acronym. Yeah. Right. And thank you. Yes. And I read a little bit of it. You know, I know. And that one got my attention. So think about someone that’s habitually late to a meeting or to to something you know that breaks trust right and I was forever I you know I was like man that really bugs me but how do I understand and that’s one of those things that you know with that acronym allowed me to sort of put things in perspective and understand who you know I picked my friends and my relationships through some of that is you know I didn’t really understand how to put that together without That was fascinating to me also.

Chris Hanslik: Her work is really great. You’re not the first to mention her. As is good to great. Those are two things that I rely on personally as well a lot and being a leader and just a person. But I think you write that braving acronym and how she talks about being vulnerable. is really good stuff applying it into business, not just personal.

Josh Jacobs: Absolutely. Business, for me, it has to be both work and play. It’s both because I want to work so I can play. I don’t want to get so old that I’m not playing ever. That’s going back to leadership in the office. I promote work-life balance. I think everybody needs to take their breaks and do the things that they’re passionate about. Rodeo is a big thing in our office this year. A lot of people took off for rodeo and it’s hard as a business for everybody to take off, but you know what? That’s their passion. They loved it. And I’m so glad to be able to support that. And it’s also a charitable organization.

Chris Hanslik: It’s really part of our city, right? Well, I think what you were what you’re alluding to earlier, I believe how heartily when we’re at work, we’re in relationships. So we. tend to have learned about relationships outside the office, family, friends, whatever. And then we get to the office and we just think it’s work. But we’re really in relationships with our coworkers, with the organization as well. And those same relationship principles apply in the corporate and business context. I feel like the more we think about that and talk about it that way, the more cohesive a culture can be within a company.

Josh Jacobs: I agree completely. Our business, our entire, so I look at it two ways. We’re in a brokerage business. We’re in a service-based industry. How do I get people over to my office versus the big national companies that have bigger platforms, better resources, and all those things? A lot of it’s culture. The other side of it is building relationships. My business is completely built on relationships that I’ve had either for a long time or built over many years. It’s all referral based almost entirely. And without that and having the right demeanor and mentality for that, we would have failed long ago, right? So I completely believe in that relationship from a client perspective, but the other side of it from a brokerage firm perspective, my client is my brokers and my employees. So it’s important for me to make sure we take care of those guys so they can be successful. I wanna see them be successful. I want them to make a lot of money. If money’s not for them, I want them to be happy. I want them to enjoy their time, right? So what else can you do? I don’t think there’s any other part of it that I could affect essentially in their daily life. I agree.

Chris Hanslik: You know, we’ve been coming out of this pandemic now and there’s been a lot written recently and on what they used to call the great resignation or was called the great resignation seems to be the pendulum starting to swing a little bit back. And you mentioned work like balance. Obviously, during the pandemic, you have had zero turnover. But what are some of the things you’re doing to promote work-life balance? How has some of the work from home things impacted your business at all, positively or negatively? Sure.

Josh Jacobs: Great question. I think we’re in a position today, more than ever, that working from home is something that will stay with us probably for a very long time. I’m not sure 100%. The people that I know that are 100% work from home will desperately want to be back in the office. A lot of them desperately want to be back in the office, but some are bigger companies that can’t really do that yet. To me, I think it’s an important component. I think I will always have the ability for someone to work from home parts of the week. The problem is the little things that happen on a daily basis that you need something or want to have an interaction It’s missing from a work from home scenario, and it’s caught us a little bit already, right? We’ve had to modify some of the practices that we had, because out of sight, out of mind, everybody’s saying that, hey, you’re not there, you’re not doing the work. Well, shoot, this woman’s actually doing the work. and doing a great job at it, but because they don’t believe, they don’t see her, it’s not the reality. And that’s not true. But I think we’ve had to adjust and adapt to that, which I think we’ll continually do. But for that person, for example, it’s important to be able to work from home one, two, three days a week. And that’s okay, so long as the work’s getting done, in my opinion, but that’s not the way everybody sees it. So it’s very bad. I think the balance there is going to be interesting as we progress. I think so, too.

Chris Hanslik: It got thrust on us, and you had to have radical mindset shifts that’s tough to shift that quick, in some respects. Yes. And I think you’re seeing people try to find a more happy medium versus the extreme.

Josh Jacobs: But I think some people want to just be at the office 100% of the time. Some people want flex, just even having some flexibility solves some of the problem because they’re not told they have to be in the office and wear a tie every day. So the world is shifting to a certain extent in that regard.

Chris Hanslik: So we talked about a lot of things, cover a lot of subjects. I’d just kind of like to ask you, If there are two or three things you would tell someone out there that’s thinking of starting their own business. If you’re going to do this, here are two or three things that you’ve got to do or think about before or as you launch. What would be your wisdom or insight on that?

Josh Jacobs: From an entrepreneurial standpoint? Absolutely, yes. Well i mean first off starting a business is is a daunting task for a lot of people including myself and i think if i were to look at just rear view mirror and reflection on what i’ve done not having done it earlier in my career is probably a regret that i have. I think you’ve got to just do it and find a way to do it. But be smart. Do your research and make sure you have some resources behind you to do it properly. But I think the key there is don’t be afraid to ask for help. There’s a lot of resources around town, whether local or national, that can help you start a business. But there’s components to starting a business that are important. There’s a financial component, whether you understand books and records, you understand how to hire and fire. I mean, being an entrepreneur has its set of challenges. But I think at the end of the day, believing in yourself to do it earlier than later is a big deal. I think that’s a regret that I’m not doing that sooner, when I was really younger. I’d be in a much different position today, I think, even with the business that we have. I probably wouldn’t have learned as much from the failures that I had. It’s true.

Chris Hanslik: It’s like you’ve had an amazing journey. So first let me say those are great points that should be heeded by anyone out there, but you wouldn’t be where you are but for where you’ve been. That’s right. So I think it’s good to be able to reflect and then learn from that. Great stuff. Josh, I want to turn to a little bit lighter side. Perfect. You mentioned earlier you grew up in Massachusetts.

Josh Jacobs: Yeah, I grew up outside of Boston.

Chris Hanslik: So, you have several hobbies. Tell us, what are some of your favorite hobbies?

Josh Jacobs: Okay, I’m a cereal hobbyist, Chris. I have a lot of hobbies. I’ve done some crazy things and enjoy a lot of them, some I won’t do again. I love downhill skiing. I love to ski. I’ve always loved to ski. I love to race cars, which is a crazy passion. You’re going fast.

Chris Hanslik: There’s two.

Josh Jacobs: Yeah, two going. So I guess part of it’s going fast. The real truth is, I’m not sure I love going super fast, but I love turning. So going fast, I guess, helps the turning part. All right. So those are a couple of my favorite hobbies.

Chris Hanslik: Well, so I know you was in high school. You moved to Texas. So you’ve been here long enough to kind of be a Texan. Oh, yeah. So question I ask everybody is what’s your favorite Tex-Max or barbecue?

Josh Jacobs: Man, I love both. And I love to find the best of both concepts, because we do quite a bit of restaurant and real estate. But if you had to put me on the spot, I’m going to go with barbecue. All right.

Chris Hanslik: Very good. So if you could take a sabbatical for a month, where would you go? What would you do?

Josh Jacobs: So if you ask my wife, she’d be like, oh, he can’t sit still. So I’m not sure there’s a great answer to that question, although I would probably take a couple days at the beach. And then go find a place to learn something new. So, you know, I don’t know what that would be today, but whether it’s kite surfing or, you know, I think part of it is to travel. I really love to travel and just go explore and see new cultures. You know, someone did this and I love the idea of it, but it’s. So it goes back to traveling, but it’s going to people’s houses when you travel. Go find, you know, go to a country where you can go to meet a native person in those countries and enjoy, you know, those non-touristy side of travel. So that’d be something I’d probably spend quite a bit of time. Kind of a cultural immersion. I love that.

Chris Hanslik: Well, great. Well, listen, Josh, this has been great hearing your story. I appreciate you taking the time to come talk to us and really couldn’t thank you enough. Thank you. Really appreciate it. And there we have it, another great episode. Don’t forget to check out the show notes at boyarmiller.com forward slash podcast. And you can find out more about all the ways our firm can help you at boyarmiller.com. That’s it for this episode. Have a great week and we’ll talk to you next time.