283 Mike Kaeding

Jeffrey Feldberg: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast where you learn how to extract your business and personal Deep Wealth. 

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Mike Keading is the CEO of Norhart. Norhart designs, builds and rents apartments. They're transforming the way apartments are built and managed by incorporating technologies and efficiencies that have revolutionized other industries and lead to high quality cost effective projects.

Mike's parents started their family business, but just a few years after joining the business. Mike's father unexpectedly passed away. Suddenly Mike [00:02:00] had what felt like the weight of the world on his shoulders. 

He had to lead the business with no preconceived notions of the way things are done in the industry. He was struggling to the point where the city briefly shut Mike and his company down. Mike's world was shattered. Norhart just naively started to solve problems after that incident, and that's where the magic happened.

Norhart began changing the way construction's done, starting with an attractive culture, unique to the construction industry. They hired the best talent. Together Norhart solved chronic construction inefficiencies, apply techniques from manufacturing and integrated traditionally unaffiliated trades.

This resulted in higher quality and lower cost projects. Norhart's mission is to solve America's housing shortage by transforming the way apartments are built and managed. And in doing so, they'll improve the way we all live.

Welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast, and you heard it in the official introduction. We have a fellow business owner and entrepreneur with us. It's always such a pleasure and we're doing a deep dive on some [00:03:00] fascinating topics, but no spoiler alerts here. I'm really excited for what we're gonna be sharing with you, but I'll put a pause in it because we have Mike with us in the person.

So Mike, welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast. An absolute pleasure to have you with us. And Mike, there's always a story behind the story. What's your story? What got you to where you are today?

Mike Kaeding: Hey, well thanks for having me. At a high level, we design, build, and rent apartments, and we're really focused on driving down the cost of housing. But what got me started into that whole world it was actually a family business. My parents started it very small at the time. We'd build these small little buildings, and I remember us going on family outings where we'd travel a half an hour away to the local hardware store, pick up a bunch of supplies, thrown at my dad's car in the back of his trailer and head on back.

To our building. So the summers I would be building these buildings with my family. During the winters I'd be off at school and eventually I went off to college. 

And while at college I [00:04:00] got really into things like special effects, computer science mathematics and management. 

the one thing I knew is I didn't want anything to do with the family business. After graduating though, my dad really wanted me to join and I really wrestled. With that I really wrestled with my own ego. Cause deep down what I saw is that I didn't want people to think that I was given something in life, 

rather, I wanted to earn it and make my own way in life.

And what I really realized with time though, is what I really wanted to do was make a meaningful, positive impact 

on the world.

And so why not take the opportunity that my parents have and take this small business and grow to something much larger that can have that kind of impact? 

So once I got past my own ego, I joined with my dad for a couple of years, and then unexpectedly my dad passed away. 

hE was fairly young, I was [00:05:00] certainly young, and Overnight, I am here running this business, and if I look back, the reality is I didn't know what I was doing. 

Right. I was inexperienced. I didn't know everything I needed to know. And to the point that we were building a building at the time, the city came in and shut us down twice.

And the reason is they looked at me and said, dude, you're some pick squeak kid. How can you be building these apartment buildings we were working on at the time? 

The reality is I struggled and so they made me hire on quote-unquote official management, 

Which was a disaster cuz I'd only had like three days to find someone, otherwise my crew would be laid off.

That's not a good way to hire someone. And then I worked a lot behind the scenes trying to figure things out, get everything in place. And I remember that project after my dad passed away, we were down to just a few weeks left and there was a water leak 

somewhere in a multiple thousands of feet of pipe.

And this pipe is buried 15 feet in the ground. We had [00:06:00] to find a pinhole water leak somewhere, and I was out there in the trenches and my nice clothes is full of mud. And over the course of weeks, we eventually found the leak, and then just a few days before we're supposed to open, the city staff came out and said, Mike, there's no way.

There's no way you're opening. And we worked through the night, multiple nights and then uh, got to the last day, half a dozen inspectors, half a day inspection. And I remember the head building official coming out to me and pulling me aside in the basement after the inspection and saying, Mike, I know we were hard on you.

Looking at what you've done now, this is actually one of the nicest projects in the city.

Finally a point where I actually felt a little bit like, I can do this. I can get past where we needed to be. 

So that's how it all started.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And so you got off to a rough start and my condolences on the passing of your father and having been where you were with that, I know exactly what that's like. It's not easy, and I can imagine your whole world felt [00:07:00] like it was just crumbling right in front of you. How did you get through that?

You have the responsibility of the business. It was thrust onto you, choice, no choice. At that point. You're now doing this and you're out there and your father is no longer on the scene. So emotionally, you're dealing with a personal tragedy on the business side. The show must go on. What got you through that?

Can you talk us through what you were thinking and what you did?

Mike Kaeding: It was incredibly hard. All of this turmoil going around and the intensity of running this business at the time,

I think for me, what I realized is that there was really no other choice and just put the next foot in front of the other. 

Right? I am okay. Like at this stage, like I just know I, I'm struggling. It's difficult. That's just the reality I'm in. I just had to be okay with that reality for now. 

I just need to focus on what's the next problem, what's the next thing?

And I need to stall, solve step after step. 

It does not help going and just hiding in some, in [00:08:00] my bad, pretending it doesn't exist. I've got problems and challenges to face. I just have to overcome them. And actually looking back, that's some of the one of the most valuable things that you can possibly go through cuz you grow so much through experiences like that.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And as you are going through that look, a lot of people could have said, Hey, I never asked for this. This happened. I don't really know this. I'm just gonna call it quits. People will understand. Not great. But you didn't do that. And whether it's on the personal front where we lose a loved one like you did with your father or other life situations come up for our listeners, I would love them to hear you didn't know what you were doing.

It must have felt scary at the time you had all this pressure on you. It would've been completely understandable to throw in the flag and say, okay, I quit. I'm done. You kept on going through that and you shared some of that, okay, I had a team there. I wanted to keep them going. I didn't wanna lose 'em, but what else was going on?

I sense there's a story behind the story there, Mike, of just, it speaks [00:09:00] to who you are as an entrepreneur, as a leader, as a person. What would you say to that?

Mike Kaeding: I think deep down the thing, especially through that moment, what I realized is that life is so short and really I don't want to waste the minutes of my life, and I think a lot about how I spend my time here on Earth. But what I really wanna accomplish is that I wanna make some kind of meaningful, positive impact 

on the world.

And so before all this is happening I started understanding for my own life that I could take this business and grow to something that could have that kind of impact. 

And so I, at this stage of my dad passing away, I have made a commitment in my own mind that this is the path I'm taking in life.

And once I make that commitment, like. I'm in it, right? I don't wanna fail. Like ultimately, even though there's minor failures along the way, 

I wanna show the world that I can actually get through this. And so there's a little bit of that [00:10:00] tenacity energy of I see where this can happen, I see what we can do with it, and I want to prove the naysayers wrong in the end.

And so I think that helped drive me as well.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And I know Mike at your company, no Heart culture is front and center. It's really important for you. Can you share with us what does that mean? I mean, people talk about culture all the time. They throw it around this big, fancy word, and oftentimes it's just that it's words. There's nothing behind that. So what's different?

What's going on in Earnhardt when it comes to culture and the difference that it's made?

Mike Kaeding: Oh my gosh I've seen this so much and I even seen it myself before my own transformation 

of just throwing around that word and of having a great culture, hiring great people. But the reality is there is a point in my life that I really learned this lesson deeply, 

and this is the most important lesson that I've ever learned, and that is to truly hire, The world's best people.

And when I say that, I actually mean that kind of [00:11:00] level. We fly people in from other states to come work with us during the week and fly them home. One of our staff members, for example, Steve Jobs, announces the iPhone in 2007, walks off stage at our staff member. Walks on that same stage to present after Steve Jobs.

It's that kind of level and caliber of person that we fight to have in our company, and a lot of people look at that and say, dude, Mike, you're crazy. That's expensive. 

I can never afford to hire someone like that. But the thing most business leaders, and I certainly didn't understand at the time, is that the best people outperform the average by two to five to 10 times as much, and I've seen it over and over again.

And so when you look at it instead of cost per person and look at. The cost per unit produced. Those people are actually the least expensive people. 

So those who think that it's expensive to hire the best, I say that it's expensive not to. And what's amazing is once we [00:12:00] made that transformation, We went from growing at like 10% a year to doubling in size every year because those kind of people, they unlock doors that you didn't know could be unlocked.

They make things happen that you didn't realize were even a possibility. And and then you start thinking about things like the world of culture as you originally asked about. I think the first thing there is to hire amazing people, cuz 

you bring it on an amazing team, culture starts happening, but there's also a lot that goes into building that culture in a meaningful way.

And to give you some. Sense of that. One is you have to define what that culture is. And this is not some plaque on a wall. 

This is something that you as the business owner, are living and breathing every day. It's something that you're truly passionate about to reflect in some sense who you are because you embody the torch, the energy that carries that culture for the rest of the organization.

To give you a flavor of that we have orientation every single week. there's dozens of people that get hired on and. [00:13:00] I lead every single orientation.

And I do that because again, I wanna build that relationship connection and share that culture with people. So that just scratches the surface, but it's really important to me, and that's how we change the game.

Jeffrey Feldberg: So it's incredible. It sounds like the kind of people that you're bringing on board, you're finding them, they're making a difference. From the outsider looking in, who says, well, Mike, how does that work? You're a construction company that's been around for a gazillion years. The technology really hasn't changed all that much, and you're really one in the same with all the other companies that are out there.

How has that culture made a difference from what you're doing? Is there any success story that you're able to share just to give our listeners a sense of, Hey, here's why I'm telling you, culture is what you should be focusing on, but here's what happens when you do that.

Mike Kaeding: This is a great question. Our industry in particular, the world of construction has been stuck in its ways, 

right? And this is an industry that typically doesn't have the top and the most bright people. There's great, fantastic people in this industry, but [00:14:00] it doesn't always, it doesn't attract your tech geniuses, right? 

Or your mathematic wizards or uh, marketing guru doesn't typically go on the world of construction.

And so there's a lot of people that are like, dude, This is the way it's always been done. This is how my granddad did it. This is how my dad did it, and by golly, this is how I'm gonna do it. And so the reality is when you look at it over the past 60 years, areas like manufacturing have improved labor productivity by 760%.

Air cultures improved by 1500%, but the world of construction. Well, it's been flat, it's been stuck at 10%, which is just a reflection of that culture, that environment. So we changed the culture, right? And we started changing everything and we started questioning everything. And this was sort of the benefit of me being inexperienced, right?

I didn't know the way things were supposed to be done. We could start doing it different ways and. We are now achieving about a 20 to 30% reduction in [00:15:00] construction costs. We believe we can actually hit a 50% reduction in costs, but imagine the impact that can have someday in the world. That means your rent or your mortgage payment could someday be half, and that's the kind of impact we can make.

And yeah, I can dive into more like the details of how people actually make that happen, but that's the result of hiring great people.

Jeffrey Feldberg: That's huge in terms of what you're saying, a 20% to 50% reduction in the cost of construction, and you're talking. About this at a time when we hear about supply chain shortages and prices skyrocketing and everything else. So if you can, maybe you can care to share a little bit of the secret sauce of, okay, how exactly is that working?

How are you achieving some of those reductions internally? What, what's that looking like?

Mike Kaeding: Yeah, so first, if you think about the world of construction, typically you have different companies doing different aspects of the 

work. You have a different company that's the owner of the building, a different company that's coordinating the construction, a different [00:16:00] company maybe finding and selecting sites, different companies that do the plumbing, different company electrical, different company, H V A C.

The world of manufacturing will look at us and say that we're crazy. If construction were to produce a car, you'd have a different company install on the windshield, a different company install on the door, and a different company install on the wheel, 

and then of course the wheel company, well, they'd call you up and say, Hey, I am so sorry, but we got delayed in another project.

I can't get out there for two weeks. Your line would be shut down. And then when they did get out there, they'd be irate cuz they could only work on one car at a time. They wanted an entire fleet of cars to work on. So we brought all the work under one roof. Then after doing that, we could start enabling some very simple manufacturing techniques.

For example, the assembly line. How in the world though, could you take a building and drive it down a line? Well, you can't, but what you can do, Is you can take the person and move them through the building. 

So [00:17:00] right now, each of our teams shift through the building by one unit every five hours. 

the framers might go in the first unit, five hours later they go to unit number two.

The plumbers follow them right after that and, and the unit number one. And so if you look at the end of our building, we have a brand new apartment unit being produced every five. And we think we can get that time down substantially, but that takes a project that might take 15 months and drives it down to nine months, just with that one technique.

But there is, there's literally 10,000 little things like that we do that make minor improvements. But overall, an aggregate make a massive improvement.

Jeffrey Feldberg: So Mike, are you vertically integrating? So instead of having all the separate tradespeople, they're now your tradespeople, are they working exclusively for you and they're going through everything one by one in clock like order and this timeline that you've set up and it's all going in unison, is that what you've effectively done?

Mike Kaeding: [00:18:00] Exactly. Yeah. I mean, even down to manufacturing. We've got a few manufacturing facilities now producing wall panels, precast concrete. We're expanding that out. We also have a whole supply chain team and sourcing materials and supplies all across the world. So we've eliminated the Typical supply chain and construction.

it's really incredible to see. I was just out at one of our sites today and they're now down to not only is it every five hours teams shift, but they can bring it down to the minute where certain teams down to where they should be on their workflow within that five hour cycle. And they can measure all that so they can figure out variation and prove the systems even further.

It's incredible. It's implying Lean and Six Sigma to the world of construction.

Jeffrey Feldberg: That's interesting because it is very, Contrarian when the world is actually doing the opposite. They're not vertically integrating. They're getting all kinds of freelancers in place. They're doing the exact opposite here. You come along and say, okay, forget that we're gonna take on the responsibility, the [00:19:00] costs and everything else of having everyone in house.

And I suppose that puts a lot of pressure on you in the sense that you now have to feed the machine.

 works terrific as long as you have projects. But once the project stop, that's an issue for you?

Mike Kaeding: Exactly right. So we had to solve that problem too, which is that we are our own customer.

So we build the buildings and then we own the buildings. So what we do then is we rent them out to residents, but because we own the buildings, we can set up a very consistent pipeline of new projects being produced.

And that smooths out our construction timeline in a way that most construction companies just don't have access to.

Jeffrey Feldberg: It's interesting. Now, would that tie in? I know offline, Mike, you're sharing with me some new developments. Your podcast is Real to Unicorn, which we'll talk about in a moment, but also you've created an investment platform. Is this where the investment platform's coming in and what's going on with that?

Mike Kaeding: Yeah, so we're launching a brand new investment platform called [00:20:00] Nord Invest, and it's aimed more the retail investor, but you can log into an online account, deposit money into different accounts, and earn a fixed. Interest rate for a time period that you lock it in for, 

you can have it floating, but most people will lock it in between, six to 24 months and then you can pull your money back out after that time period.

Behind the scenes, what's happening is that we're actually investing into our own projects, 

and so there's investment company that's been set up and then those funds go to, into those other projects basically. And there's steps that we take to make sure that money, people's money is protected.

For example, that investment fund, we deposit our own assets that are at risk first, before investors get touched. And yeah, we're really close to launching that and probably by the time this is out, it'll actually be launched.

Jeffrey Feldberg: It's interesting. It's almost as though you're doing a construction crowdsourcing for people to come along and it creates a win-win. It [00:21:00] lowers your cost of capital. And I've always shared with people, they ask Jeffrey, how do I get involved in real estate? And for the average person who wants to get involved in real estate, it's not so easy.

Because you need volume. Sure, you can get a house or a condo, and of course you have to figure out the upkeep and the maintenance of that. But if we're really open about it, one house, one condo, that's not gonna cover the rent, nevermind the rent of the investment or for that person. 

Mike Kaeding: Yeah, and what's crazy too is that even if you were to uh, invest as a passive investor in real estate, you can't get access to the vast majority of 

deals because you have to be an accredited investor where you have 200,000 more in income or a million dollars of assets excluding your home.

And so we went the harder route. It's taken us a year. We have to go through s e c approval, hundreds of thousands of dollars, hundreds of pages of legal docs in order to get approval to allow any investor to invest in our opportunity. And you mentioned something interesting there, which is, it's like we're trying to vertically negate even further.

[00:22:00] The question we asked ourselves is, could we become our own bank? And so we're not a bank, we're not F D I C insured. But that was the flavors. Can we replace the bank in some way, or at least partially, and allow investors to actually get the interest rate you would've gotten from a bank and get the bank's profits.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And you know what's interesting from an investor's point of view, they're cutting out all the middle people. They're getting right to the source through you. And I would suspect saving time and money along the way.

Mike Kaeding: Absolutely, because all those intermediate sources, they all take a large cut and so now you're going right direct to us, right to the actual core investment.

Jeffrey Feldberg: So Mike, as you look at your company, you're doing some incredibly unique things, and perhaps this ties into your podcast, zero to Unicorn. Are you looking to take the company with what you're doing at No Heart and your investment platform and putting up your efficiencies 20 to 50% and lowering all these, I mean, just doing all these wonderful things.

Are you looking to become a [00:23:00] unicorn? In your own right as a company, as you increase that value, both to the public, but also for yourselves.

Mike Kaeding: Yeah, so we're about a 200 million company today. We've been doubling in size more or less every year, not every year. 

And so yeah, we're getting close to that. If we extrapolate that out, we're getting close to that billion dollar evaluation. I think especially for business owners, the thing that we realized is that there is a currency, there's dollars that you should have as a business, but you also need to have attention.

And there is a significant value to a no, like and trust with a wider audience, with the wider public. One good example of this is Gordon Ramsay, 

Famous Chef Hell's Kitchen. If you go to Las Vegas, He's got a number of restaurants on the strip, and if you see any of his restaurants, like Burger for example, there's like a 30 minute wait.

Anytime I go to that restaurant or Hell's Kitchen, you have to like book out months in advance to get in that restaurant. What's crazy in these [00:24:00] amazing hotels, right across the lobby, there's another very similar restaurant. Equally as good food similar pricing, same location, and it's not nearly as busy as Gordon Ramsey's restaurants.

What's the difference there? The thing is he is built that no, like, and trust with a wider audience. 

So we've started to understand this point more deeply. And so from a strategic standpoint, we've actually been creating. Podcasts as well as other shows and social media kind of stuff to really tap into the attention of the wider public. And so the uh, zero to unicorn show that that's the business strategy behind it. And what the actual show is looking at what the journey is like of a small company growing to a billion dollar enterprise and seeing what that is truly like the good, the bad, and the ugly. And to create that in a way that is entertaining and engaging.

To wider audiences. And so that, recently launched as well as we were thinking a little bit [00:25:00] about the nor heart's cinematic universe. What are all the kinds of content we can create that can be engaging? The reality is a majority of that's gonna fail, but we're experimenting a lot of different ways to find what does work, to build 

that audience, to build the no liking trust.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Mike, now that you've painted in vivid bright color and detail and sight and sound of what nor Howard is doing and what it's all about I, I'm sure our listeners are saying, okay, let's go back to culture and talk to us. Mike, how do you find these unique people? From a cultural perspective that you're bringing into the company, they maybe had no interest in the industry in the first place.

You're not only having them come and join you, but how do you find them in the first place? What's that looking like? What are you doing? Where do you start?

Mike Kaeding: We were faced with that, exact problem. It's the same problem everyone else is faced with, especially in our industry. Really hard to hire anyone in the world of construction, let alone the best of the best, and good luck Try. To get like top level people to [00:26:00] come work for a construction company. So there are a few pieces to it.

I think first is you as a leader, you need to be passionate and engaged with what you're doing, and you have to have a mission greater than just the little aspect of you're doing right. For us, it's about solving housing affordability, but at a more tactical level. We were at about a hundred people as a company faced with this issue.

And what we did is we ended up hiring 15 recruiters. 

15% of our staff, were recruiters basically. And that changed the game for us because what we learned is that the best people are not looking for jobs, 

right? You post on Indeed you're just not gonna get them. This is the reality.

What you need to do instead is you need to. Proactively identify who the different people at different companies are, who the best people in those companies are, and then work to build relationships with them over time so that when you have a job opening available that you can then tap on them and bring them into the company.

That's sort of the. [00:27:00] The best strategy, one step below that is to use sources like resume databases to proactively reach out to candidates that are not looking for jobs or using LinkedIn to look out for people that are not looking for jobs when you do have a job opening. And so we said, if we're gonna do this well, we need a large team in order to be able to handle the volume that we wanted to find the truly best people.

Jeffrey Feldberg: It's interesting. So for our listeners who are saying, okay, Mike, I hear you on that. I'm not gonna hire 15 recruiters and put them on full-time and everything that goes along with that. But it sounds like they could use a recruiter. They don't have to bring that recruiter in-house. They can work with someone to begin to at deep off, we call it the virtual bench, where you're building relationships with people that you don't necessarily need today, but they know you, you know them.

Maybe you share a company newsletter, or you're staying in touch from time to time, or a call and email, whatever it is. And then as an opportunity arises, You reach out to them and perhaps lightning strikes and they come on board, is that more or less the [00:28:00] similar kind of strategy that you're following?

Mike Kaeding: Yeah. And if you think deeply, going back to like culture being a word on the wall. If you're just saying, my culture's important to me, but then not taking action behind that, 

it's is gonna fade, right? So we knew culture was important. The most important part to culture is hiring great people. And if you wanna hire great people, that means you need the resources on your team to be able to find those people.

And if you're just posting in, resumes, that indeed, I'm telling you right now, your culture is gonna fail.

Jeffrey Feldberg: It's interesting. So Mike, as you look at your journey, hindsight's always 2020 and you share not quite every year, but close to it. You're nearly doubling in terms of what you're doing revenue wise, and hopefully profits are following along with that as well. What would be. The one thing, or is there the one thing that's really been making a difference that's allowed you to have that astronomical consistent growth year over year?

Mike Kaeding: Yeah, the number one thing is hiring the best people, but since we've talked about that, I'll give you a second.

I think the [00:29:00] second is to be fearless in. Whenever you try new things, you're experimenting with something new, you're jumping into a new business line. Maybe you're just starting a business.

Oftentimes there's a lot of fear of the uncertainty that grips us, and there's almost a part of us as we grow older that thinks of if I wanna do something new, like our whole world of, content creation, video creation, right now. When you start something new, you think, well, I need to be good at it, right?

Because if I'm gonna post a video and it's embarrassing, like, dude that's out there forever I wanna be embarrassed by that video. But the reality is, We are terrible at everything that we start. I promise you that that's how it is, right? As we're kids growing up, we can't walk, we can't talk, we can't add, like why do we think it's any different as adults that somehow we're gonna be perfect jumping into something and if we can't be perfect, we won't try.

an interesting study I was reading not too long ago about, Two different groups. The first group they were told to make the perfect clay pot, and the second group said, make as many clay [00:30:00] pots as possible. Well, the group focused on making one perfect clay pot made a decent pot, but the group making a ton of 'em, the first pot was terrible, but the last pot was way better.

The best part of the first group. And the lesson I've learned through that is you just have to jump in, be comfortable with being terrible, being comfortable with the city, shutting you down cause you're not very good that you're just some pire kid. Be really comfortable in that awkward, I'm struggling because it's in the doing.

It's in that, it's in the weeds, it's in the pain of all that, that you emerge as someone. Much better and actually phenomenal at that niche that you're trying to master. So be brave, step out, try new things.

Jeffrey Feldberg: As terrific advice. Done is always better than perfect. Just get out there, be a creator. Let the marketplace guide you along the way. And Mike, to your point, if you look at some of the titans of business, man, I don't wanna name names. I'd like to keep this timeless because who's a titan of business today, it can change tomorrow.[00:31:00]

But if you look at their first offering, And you look all the way forward to today, however long they've been doing this for. First offering was terrible, but it was good enough at the time, and they learned and they got better. The next one got better, the next one got better and they didn't stop. And I always say Dreamers always dream, but doers always do.

And it the doers that are crossing the finish line and getting things done. And speaking of doing, Mike, I'm curious, as your company's growing, And you're taking on more projects, you're looking to change really some wonderful things of bringing housing, making it affordable, such a, an issue, a big picture right now, elder for so many people.

From a leadership perspective, what does that mean for you in terms of do you have a team around you? Are you running the company? Are you not running the company? What does a typical day look like in terms of what you're doing or what your team is doing?

Mike Kaeding: So I would say the work that I do is probably split into two major camps. One is. Whatever we're working on is like a big new initiative within the company, and right now it's the world of content creation.[00:32:00] There's a chunk of my time that goes into that, and the second camp is the operation of the core business.

It's really driving down the cost of construction is the big focus there. what I have learned through all of this is what you pay attention to. Like just paying attention to it has a ripple effect within the rest of the group or the rest of the company. And so being very thoughtful about making sure to engage, to go do tours, to see the different components of different aspects that really want to improve upon.

So right now for us, we're trying to solve to drive down construction costs. Two major categories I'm working on. One is materials 

and better sourcing. So every, a couple times a week actually I'm talking, interacting with that team. Seeing their progress, kind of guiding them and coaching them and making sure they can hit to achieve that.

And then the other world is productivity. And specifically in productivity. Right now we're working on something we call a hundred percent batch completion. So we talk about the five hour [00:33:00] cycle that happens. 

Well, what happens if someone misses that five hour deadline? 

Well, the next group can't do their work.

It's this whole ripple effect that happens within the rest of the organization. And so we want to get that to a hundred percent batch complete a hundred percent of the time. I don't care if it's raining, I don't care if there's snow. I don't care. Like crazy stuff is happening that we have built in like.

Resilient systems that can handle the volatility that happens within each one of those workloads. And so we're spending a tremendous amount of time in that right now as well, improving those systems.

Jeffrey Feldberg: That's interesting. And so for our listeners, they're hearing some incredible stories and some achievements that you're doing, and congratulations with that. And you have a lot to be proud of, Mike, because really you stepped in not knowing what to do, where to start, but you figure things out. And so coming out of every episode, one of our goals is that a listener can take one action.

So when they finish listening to us talk before they help on the next phone call or take that meeting [00:34:00] or email, What would be one thing that they could do today that can make a meaningful difference? It moves the dial in their business. Any thoughts on that?

Mike Kaeding: Yeah. Simple way to put it is commit to hiring the best. But maybe the more nuanced thing to take away is, I've seen this so many times, you have someone on your team right now. I can almost promise you this. I don't know you, the listeners out there, but I can guess if I were to sit down with you, there's somebody on your team that you're like, this person's good, 

everything's fine. It's fine. Right? But they're not amazing.

AnD if you take the energy to make the decision to say, okay, I really need someone amazing in this role, and you fight, you spend the time, the energy, the effort to find that amazing person, it will change your life in that little niche that I have seen what incredible teams look like and there is such a huge [00:35:00] difference.

When you get the culture fit right, they're connecting, they're jiving. They feel like an extension of your arm. They're just amazing in every way. And if you build a whole team like that, it changes everything. And so my encouragement is be brave, step up and make the hard choices to let good people go.

So you can find the great ones.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Some terrific advice, easier said than done. And let me ask you just as a follow up as we are now with the pandemic, thankfully well behind us, the job market's gone through all kinds of interesting changes from the Great resignation, the great Return, and all these other kinds of things going on there when it comes to attracting world class talent. Any suggestions or strategies of what's working for you that you can pass along?

Mike Kaeding: Yeah. Well, I think you need someone doing the recruiter role, 

right? You need someone out there trying to proactively bring people on in. But [00:36:00] secondly, you've gotta be able to sell them, right? When you're looking at best people it's not them looking for a job, you're selling yourself. 

And so I think it takes a little bit of internal reflection.

It makes sure that you are passionate and driven and have all the energy, enthusiasm for what you're doing. 

Because if you have that, then when you engage with that candidate, You can share that enthusiasm, you can share the picture of what you're doing, why it's exciting, and why they're the perfect person to come work with you on that journey.

I've been able to hire a lot of people that I should never have been able to get on my team simply because I, I shared that energy and passion with them, and they got excited by that regardless of our company and our industry.

Jeffrey Feldberg: It's interesting. At Deep Wealth, we have the nine-step roadmap and step two, Mike, that's X-Factors, that insanely increase the value of your business and culture is one of them. Within the culture, [00:37:00] embedded within the culture, the foundation of it, it's the vision, it's the

Mike Kaeding: Yeah. 

Jeffrey Feldberg: it's your passion that is really the rocket fuel that gets all of that going.

And so what I'm hearing you say is world class talent, they hear the vision, they hear it from me, I've bought into it. I've drunk my own Kool-Aid. They start drinking the Kool-Aid. And if we're open about it, who doesn't wanna be on a winning team? We all wanna be on a winning team. And it's interesting, I remember it's a survey that Glassdoor, the site that has employees rate the companies, and they did a study and they asked employees what were the factors that had them either move to a new job or stay in their job, and it shouldn't come as a surprise based on what we've been talking about.

Salary. So dollars and cents was near the bottom of the list. Top of the list, it was culture. What's the quality of the management team, the leadership, what's the vision like? What are they doing? And it just all [00:38:00] really feeds into what we've been speaking about. So some terrific takeaways for our listeners.

Mike Kaeding: Absolutely. I was in a um, team meeting last week. We were talking, there's some, a variety of issues we're faced with. We have lots of problems. We're always solving, and then one of the members was like, Mike I'm struggling because it's hard dealing with all these issues that we keep having to resolve and fix.

I appreciated that. And then he said, Do you know why I'm here? It's because you pointed to everyone and they're else in the room. It's because of all my coworkers. 

I've never been on a construction team with a caliber of people sitting around me, 

and as long as these guys are on my team, I'm never leaving this company.

Right. That's what you want. And if you have a great team, it becomes self-fulfilling like that.

Jeffrey Feldberg: What's great, it's beyond you. This is bigger than you. Yes, you're important and you're right there, but it's attracting world-class talent who attracts world-class talent, and it's no longer just about you. It's really about the [00:39:00] team and what they're doing. And for the benefit of our listeners and as we begin to wrap things up here, Mike.

Because as you talk about, well, you know, we're nearly doubling year over year and our efficiencies are skyrocketing for their benefit though. And you alluded to a little bit earlier, it's not a bed of roses every day. Can you talk to us perhaps about some of the challenges or what that looks like day in, day out?

Mike Kaeding: Oh yeah. Very much so. Yeah. So it's exciting to see the fun metrics, but the reality is we have 10,000 problems, right? We face that every day and I often tell my team that the number of new problems we face is a function of how fast we try to take on new things, grow, experiment, learn. And one of my jobs as a leader is to try to balance the number of new problems coming in with our capacity as a team to solve those problems.

And the reality is last year we jumped into the. Too many things too fast. We jumped into precast steel wall panel production. We switched from wood to steel.[00:40:00]

 We are now doing three stories of underground parking. It's seven story buildings, a hundred million projects. It was a big jump, and the team then, because of all these changes so fast, I threw too many problems on too fast.

And 

so the stress and the strain that the company is feeling is having to work past all of those issues. And that's, yeah, it's, the day-to-day is hard. 

It's fun when you look back and see what you're achieving. But the reality is, for me at least, and I think a lot of people in our company, they don't want to be at an easy company.

We want to be the company that's changing the world. And so we've kind of signed up for the challenges that we face as a result.

Jeffrey Feldberg: I do some terrific things, and you have a terrific moonshot of increasing efficiencies in a rather stagnant industry, bringing prices down to make it more affordable for home ownership. I mean, it's all the right things. And so as we think about that, I now have the privilege, the pleasure of asking you the same question that I have every guest who's on the show, and let me set this up.

It's a fun question for [00:41:00] you.

Mike Kaeding: Yeah. 

Jeffrey Feldberg: When you think of the movie Back to the Future, you have that magical DeLorean car that can take you to any point in time. So Mike, the fun part is tomorrow morning you look outside your window and curbside. There it is. A DeLorean car door is open, waiting for you to hop on in.

So you hop in and you're now gonna go back to any point in your life. Mike, as a young child, teenager. Whatever point in time it would be. What would you tell your younger self in terms of life lessons or life wisdom, or, Hey Mike, do this or don't do that. What would that sound like?

Mike Kaeding: Yeah. Probably go back to myself. Just grading, graduating college. And I would share the lessons I've learned related management. Specifically I would talk a lot about the hiring, the best people. Having that right kind of mindset, I'd probably guide away from certain things that I knew were dead ends, 

And like help myself not go down those paths.

I didn't have to waste the time. 

And probably more than all of that, I would give myself a degree of encouragement [00:42:00] because I think. As the younger self, you're still unproven, you still lack a degree of confidence 

just to share with myself, like, dude, you're gonna be fine. 

This is true for everyone, not just my younger self.

Like, you're gonna be fine if you put the energy and effort in it's going to pay off in the end, even if it's hard in the short run. And so be brave. Step up, try new things and keep moving forward.

Jeffrey Feldberg: It's great advice for all of us, and I thank you for sharing that. Mike, before we wrap things up, if someone wants to learn more about your investment platform, what you're doing as a company, maybe they even wanna join the team. They're hearing what you're talking about. Hey, I'm the perfect fit. I'm world class in this area.

I. How can they reach you online? Where's the best place?

Mike Kaeding: Yeah, you can visit our website, norhart.com. That's N O R H A R t.com. And there you can click. On shows to see our podcast or investments to see our investment opportunity, and there's a way to contact and reach out to us [00:43:00] as well and you can also find our social media accounts to that as well.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Terrific. And for our listeners, as always, will be your ally and friend. Come to our show notes. You'll click on it as point and click. It'll take you right there. It's all they're waiting for you. Well, Mike, it's official. It's a wrap, and I have really enjoyed your insights, your wisdom, and I only wish you all the very best.

That life has to offer you both in business and personal, and as we love to stay here at Deep Wealth, may you continue to thrive and prosper while you stay healthy and safe. Thank you so much.

Mike Kaeding: Thanks for having me. 

Sharon S.: The Deep Wealth Experience was definitely a game-changer for me. 

Lyn M.: This course is one of the best investments you will ever make because you will get an ROI of a hundred times that. Anybody who doesn't go through it will lose millions. 

Kam H.: If you don't have time for this program, you'll never have time for a successful liquidity 

Sharon S.: It was the best value of any business course I've ever taken. The money was very well spent.

Lyn M.: Compared to when we first began, today I feel better prepared, [00:44:00] but in some respects, may be less prepared, not because of the course, but because the course brought to light so many things that I thought we were on top of that we need to fix. 

Kam H.: I 100% believe there's never a great time for a business owner to allocate extra hours into his or her week or day. So it's an investment that will yield results today. I thought I will reap the benefit of this program in three to five years down the road. But as soon as I stepped forward into the program, my mind changed immediately. 

Sharon S.: There was so much value in the experience that the time I invested paid back so much for the energy that was expended. 

Lyn M.: The Deep Wealth Experience compared to other programs is the top. What we learned is very practical. Sometimes you learn stuff that it's great to learn, but you never use it. The stuff we learned from Deep Wealth Experience, I believe it's going to benefit us a boatload.

Kam H.: I've done an executive MBA. I've worked for billion-dollar [00:45:00] companies before. I've worked for smaller companies before I started my business. I've been running my business successfully now for getting close to a decade. We're on a growth trajectory. Reflecting back on the Deep Wealth, I knew less than 10% what I know now, maybe close to 1% even. 

Sharon S.: Hands down the best program in which I've ever participated. And we've done a lot of different things over the years. We've been in other mastermind groups, gone to many seminars, workshops, conferences, retreats, read books. This was so different. I haven't had an experience that's anything close to this in all the years that we've been at this.

It's five-star, A-plus.

Kam H.: I would highly recommend it to any super busy business owner out there.

Deep Wealth is an accurate name for it. This program leads to deeper wealth and happier wealth, not just deeper wealth. I don't think there's a dollar value that could be associated with such an experience and knowledge that could be applied today [00:46:00] and forever. 

Jeffrey Feldberg: Are you leaving millions on the table? 

Please visit www.deepwealth.com/success to learn more.

 If you're not on my email list, you'll want to be. Sign up at www.deepwealth.com/podcast. And if you enjoyed this episode, if it added value, if you walked away with some new insights and strategies, please leave a review on your favorite podcast channel. Reviews help us reach new listeners, grow the show. And continue to create content that you'll enjoy and as we wrap up this episode as always please stay healthy and safe.