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Hey, hello and welcome to this new episode of Commercial Real Estate Talk with Steve and Arne, where we have what we hope to be compelling, interesting, and very informative conversations with leaders in the commercial real estate industry. And I am very excited about today's show because of our guest, Ethan Penner, CEO of Mosaic real estate investors, an icon in the real estate industry who is given credit with creating the CMBS market in the 1990s. But before we start the show and bring in Ethan, uh, we've got some business to take care of. So let me introduce my host, Arnie Garfinkel. Hey, Arnie, how you doing? Hey, how you doing Steve? I'm doing pretty well. Good. Starting the holidays off getting Ready. Holidays, new year coming up. Yep. Yep. But, And good, a little, little downtime for us, which, uh, I know we need and digest what's going on in the world. We got a great show planned today. Yeah, we do. So, uh, lemme tell you a little bit about Allstar Group and myself, Arne Garfinkel. I've, uh, opened the Allstar Group in 1995 as a commercial real estate lending firm. Uh, but lately we are the Allstar Group events. We do a number of commercial real estate events throughout the state of California, uh, putting lenders and investors and realtors together to find out how to get financing on their commercial real estate loans. We have events in la, orange County and San Francisco. Uh, that's what we do. Absolutely. But tell us about Rent tv, Steve. Well, rent TV is, uh, many of our audience will know. We're now in our 25th year, we're a news and media company covering the western half of the us. Our website, rent tv.com, has daily news about deals and developments. Uh, we do an email blast off of that, which is also a great place for firms and vendors and brokers to advertise with our blast. We also put on a series of conferences, uh, five year Orange County, March Inland Empire, may la, June, Arizona, now in October, and San Diego in November. And, uh, we have a great video platform, the review, where you all are watching this video, which is a searchable real estate, uh, platform, uh, for video programming. Uh, so that's what we are doing, super busy and very much looking for a little bit of downtime over the holidays. Um, so with that wrapped up, Arnie, let's bring in our guests. What do you say? Well, First we have to talk about our sponsors. Oh, Right, right. The sponsors, yes, Of course. Can't forget about them, but I know you're e eager to get Ethan in, but we'll do that shortly. Great. Um, yeah, we've got some amazing sponsors that make this show happen. And our first one, uh, first sponsor of the show has been a great client of mvs for a while, and now we welcome them as a sponsor of Commercial Real Estate Talk, and that is Chase Partners. Many of you in our audience will know Chase Partners, uh, and their head. David Parker is one of Southern California's leading investors and developers of industrial properties throughout SoCal for over 30 years. While now, uh, they're sponsoring our show to get the word out about an updated strategy for Chase, focusing on underperforming industrial and retail properties and other distressed properties with non-performing debt. If you are an owner, lender, or broker that needs a fast decision and a fast close on your property, please contact Chase Partners atDavid@chasepartners.com. Again, david@chasepartners.com. Who's next? Arnie? Well, our next sponsor is Fidelity Mortgage Lenders. Uh, fidelity Mortgage Lenders is a private lending company specializing in commercial real estate, founded in 1971 by Chuck Hershaw is known for its unique terms, fast funding, no prepayment penalties, and long-term fixed rates. Call Uncle Chuck or John McClain at 807 5 2 9 5 3 3. That's 807 5 2 9 5 3 3 Next. Excellent. Well, the last sponsor, and certainly not the least of, of the show, is commercial real estate inspectors in Southern California. Their skilled inspectors provide critically needed inspection information in easily understood terms, as well as inexpensive and simple solutions. Whenever possible, let commercial real estate inspectors help you protect your deal. Called Tiffany Simington. Tiffany Simington, and book your inspection today. 8 1 8 9 5 7 4 6 5 4. Again, Tiffany, 8 1 8 9 5 7 4 6 5 4. All right, Arnie, it's Time to bring in our guest. Yes, Ethan Panner. Okay. Okay. Alright, well, let's welcome to the show Ethan Penner, CEO of Mosaic real estate investors. Good morning, Ethan. How are you? Morning. It's great to be here. Great, great having you. Thank you so much for the time. You know, I know you're pressed and have done a lot of these over the years, so we really appreciate getting our crack and asking you some of the questions we have on our mind. So let's get started. And, you know, I've, I've seen a lot of the podcasts and, you know, heard about the creation of the CMBS market, but going even further back, how did you initially get into the real estate business? What interested you, what, what attracted you and how did that start out? I, uh, I really, nothing attracted me. I, I, uh, I think, you know, I, I'm gonna probably come off as somewhat of a religious spiritual zealot by the time we're done with this conversation, but as I've gotten older, I've become much more, um, aware of, I guess one would, could use a lot of different ways of saying it. I like to call it like the divine hand in one's life. I mean, I think that like most young men and women who are in college and don't have family businesses to go into or the kind of family business history in the family, you have no idea what you're gonna do. Like, how could anyone know? Right. I just laugh, you know, when people plan the future, it's always, to me a little bit comical because how do you know anything really? And I certainly did. I, I majored in finance in college, but I had changed majors four times. I, I, I didn't start out that way. I obviously, I thought first I'd be a lawyer, so I majored in political science that I thought everyone who wanted to be a lawyer did that. And then I got straight B minuses and I figured, well, I'm never gonna get into Harvard or Yale or any of the good law school. So by the end of freshman year, I realized that's not gonna be me. And then I liked writing, and so I became a journalist major, and I became sports editor of the school paper at NYU, which I really loved till I found out what journalists get paid. And then I go like, gee, I can't, I grew up poor. I can't support a family on that. I don't know how anybody does. Then I became an accounting major because I was desperate. I, I was an now a junior and desperate and wondering how am I gonna get a job? And everyone told me, accountants can always get a job. So I figured, okay, I'll be an accounting major. And of course, that was drudgery. Nobody I think really likes accounting, even accountants. And then I took a finance class as part of the accounting major, and it just kind of came so naturally to me, so naturally to me. And I thought, okay, well, you know, I'm meant to do something in the world of finance. I have an intuitive understanding that I can't even explain. And I became a finance major. But, you know, back in, I was in college, I graduated in 82, and there was no mortgage finance or real estate finance really being taught. I did take one as a senior. I took one real estate finance class, and it happened to be the class I intuitively again, knew best and understood best and did best in. So I guess I had a natural proclivity to it. And I think that's, that's the gift of, uh, trying a lot of things and then trusting that we're all here with some gifts and follow our gifts. I think that that kind of speaks to the purposefulness of how I see the world. Yeah. I think, uh, so if you see your life and the world as being purposeful, then you could follow these clues that just kinda line up for you and life kind of flows. And so that's kind of how it happened for me. I, I was naturally good in, and I wasn't naturally good at anything else, by the way, in school, maybe journalism, I was a good writer, Uhhuh, but, but other than that, still are still a good writer. I was naturally good at and had a natural understanding of finance. And I can't explain it because there was no, no finance or business in my family, and I never was exposed to it before. But I, it just came very logically, naturally to me and real estate in particular. And, um, and when I got out of school, I really would've taken any job actually. You know, like I, it was, you know, I, I love when people talk today about interest rates, because of course, interest rates are good indication of the vibrancy of the economy when rates are low. You learn this as you get older and you just see relationships. But when rates are low, economies tend to be booming because companies and people can borrow easily and cheaply and expand, and they're, that there therein lies jock creation. But when rates are very high, the opposite happens. Right? Economic vibrancy is suppressed, and companies don't grow. There's no borrowing. And, uh, consumers don't really spend because money costs too much. They don't buy new houses and et cetera, et cetera. And so, of course, we now are living in a moment when rates have gone up rather significantly in the last two and a half to three years, uh, consequentially anyway, you know, you have the tenure and the ones, and now you have the tenure and the fours. So it's a, it's a big kind of percentage jump, but they're still in the fours. When I got outta college in 1982, the tenure yielded 1565. Okay. Yeah. And what I like to tell people is when the 10 year, when the government's borrowing at 15.5% for their money, you know, the economy's not growing, let's just put it that way. And jobs are hard to come by. So I was in the beggar shouldn't be choosing mode when I got outta college, and it wasn't like I looked for finance or real estate finance, I, I would've taken a job in a laundromat at that point, you know, like with the promise of being a management trainee in laundromats. And, uh, I did get a job in a savings and loan that was like a laundromat, you know, I mean, I think the sophistication of the laundromat been higher than the sophistication financially at the savings alone. And that's why the savings alone went under and many, many, many others did. I think that what I learned is that, and I've learned this, I've learned, you know, you pay attention in life, you know, we all learned so many lessons. One of the lessons I learned many in that first job was how wrong, uh, the stories told about kinda what happened are, you know, the retelling of stories and therefore kind of the historical history is not true. You know what I mean? To a large extent. So the story of the SNL crisis was told as the story of, um, uh, an industry riddled with corruption and bad actors and criminality. It was really a story of gross incompetence. You know, people were given licenses to take insured deposits and lend them slash invest them, uh, and they were given very broad investment licenses. Right. So at that time, commercial banks were quite restricted in what they could do with deposits. Yeah. But saving loans had no such limitations. And so they were able to invest in junk bonds and real estate equity and real estate commercial lending. I mean, the corporate lending, and I mean, they could do anything with deposit insured deposits and well, government, I remember the time of Long Beach savings, and that was, I remember Roland Ell and, and, and all that. And that was, uh, which, which kind of, you know, a lot of the things you just talked about reminds me of. I mean, I was an accounting major, and then I got to cost accounting. I said, no, you know what, that's not for me. And I got into the finance, and it's funny because I started out as a loan broker, and now I'm doing events because I found that that's my path. Yeah. So it's interesting how life takes you that way, As you know, I found my way to doing events too. Right, right. It's a little only than you, and I love that too. But it's interesting you mentioned cost accounting. It's a, uh, it's another kind of little side bar story, but in my desperation to get a job, I sent out, I don't know, a hundred other letters with resumes to any company for almost any job, right. Including cost accounting. And so I was interviewing for a cost accounting job, and the, um, you know, it seems very stereotypical, the Indian guy who ran cost accounting at this company is interviewing me. And after the interview, he says, well, you know, you are, uh, obviously a smart young guy, and it was very nice of him to say that, and you probably do very well working in this job, but I'm gonna do you a lifetime favor and not give you this job. Yeah. You, you are not the personality type who would find happiness and fulfillment in cost accounting. And I, I think back to that all the time. I, I'm, you know, I was 21 at the time now, it was 42 years ago, so I still remember that conversation like it was yesterday, and I have had to fire people in my career. Mm-hmm. That conversation informed me about benevolent rejection, you know what I mean? I think that for your own good, for your own, no, believe me, every person I've ever fired, I never do it with any maliciousness or hate or negativity, because it's not about that. It's about saying you're a human being and you deserve fulfillment, and you deserve happiness, and you're not winning here at this job, and you deserve to win because we all do. And it's not the right fit for you. It doesn't mean you're bad, or you're e even just, this is the wrong place for you. And, and I'm gonna liberate you from this, from this place that you're not winning to allow you to find a place where you can win. And I really do feel like people who give negative feedback, honestly, like that are, it's the greatest gift you can give another human being. Because every day that we spend suboptimally, it's precious and it's wasted, and it's digging a deeper hole that's hard to get out of. And so I I I, I was very, you know, in reflection that cost accounting conversation Yeah. A gift that that guy gave me a real, a lifetime gift that I'm still very, very, very aware of and grateful for. All right. Let's go back to what you're most known for in the CMBS market. And again, I know you've probably talked about this a million times over and over again on these podcasts, but some of our, you know, uh, people that see it aren't really that familiar with it. So tell us a little bit how that path got you there, and obviously that's where you made a name for yourself. Yeah. Well, I mean, mi I know Miracle, divine Intervention right place, right time, um, eyes being opened to an opportunity I wasn't even aware of. So it's all those things and, and then a phone call. So it's literally all those things. Yeah. I mean, I, I left Morgan Stanley where I had had dreams of one day being one of the guys running the firm and had every reason to believe that I was the youngest principal in the history of the firm, not related to JP Morgan. I had a wonderful career at Morgan Stanley. I loved it. And I really kind of thought, okay, this is, I, I mean, I could see myself being a Morgan Stanley guy for the rest of my life. Um, John Mack didn't see it quite the same way as I did. And, uh, we had a little bit of a, we had a little bit of a disagreement about a certain deal that ultimately caused me to realize that my future was best leaving shape by Morgan Stanley. Yeah. And I did. And I started, I left with my right hand guy and started a firm to my own firm. And it was at the time of the SNL Crisis, which gave birth to the whole idea of opportunistic real estate investing. Real estate investing had been kind of a dull core type investing business. Uh, unglamorous, not high yield, kind of a backwater part of finance. And the RTC dislocation and the distressed selling that was kind of the hallmark of that period, gave birth to entrepreneurial reactions. So the Sam Zes and the Tom Barracks and the Barry Sternly, and et cetera, et cetera, and Ethan Penners, all were energized by kind of the entrepreneurial kind of spirit in all of us was energized by this massive sell off. And we all go, like, you know, we're all attracted to it, like moths to light. And we all started our own companies right at about the same time. So in 1991 or so, that's when Starwood started, that's when I started my company. That's when, um, that was Magellan Colony started Magellan, that's when Colony started and et cetera. Loans started. Didn't even start. They started a couple years later, but all of the, uh, Blackstone started a couple of years later, but, but, but 91 was the moment when a lot of entrepreneurial energy was coalescing around real estate for the very first time ever because of this historic location. Yeah. And so I figured, okay, I'll start my thing and I'll do, I had the same idea everybody had, which is, let me buy assets on the cheap from distressed sellers, and lemme go find investors to back me to do that. So I found everyone found their investors, like Barry Stirling was introduced to two wealthy families in New York, and they were his first investors. And, um, colony had, um, the Bass Brothers, 'cause Tom Barrett had worked for the bass family and, uh, et cetera, et cetera. I found Cargill in Minneapolis. And so they backed me and my partner Steve, and we started bidding on auctions of distressed sale assets, pools of distressed sale assets. And we bid on the first one, and we came in second, and it was one of the earliest, I think the second RTC auction was mobile home park loans distressed. And it would've been a home run. And it just, again, it's interesting, the divine aspect of things. Had we won that deal, I would not have probably founded the CMBS market, and I wouldn't have been in that business. I would've been a lot like Lone Star, John Gray or Barry or those guys. I would've gone down that asset acquisition path. That deal would've led to other deals and bigger funds. And I would've had a firm like that. But that wasn't what was meant to be for me. We finished second in that auction, and right after we finished second, I got a phone call from a lawyer, a friend of mine, who said that he has a client who has, um, loans coming due on his shopping center portfolio, and he can't find a refinancing loan. Now, I didn't know about like the, I I hadn't even thought about the fact that this, um, period of time created a problem for refinancing because there was no lender capital, all the lenders had left. I didn't know that. I was like everybody else focused on the distressed sale of assets by, you know, forced sellers. And so that phone call alerted me to this other crisis that was related to this whole period of dislocation that I no one else was paying attention to, which was that if you had assets, you had loans coming due. There was not a lender in the country to give you a quote at any level, at any LTV at any spread. Right. I, I, so I met with these guys, the manors who had been syndicators and now had like a lot of syndicators in the eighties. They had bought out their LPs and now they own this portfolio themselves. Beautiful portfolio of, uh, again, I'll, I'll mention this 'cause it's for your audience. It'll be interesting. Kmart anchored shopping centers. Huh. Now Kmart of course went bankrupt in the, I guess the late nineties, but, but in this time in the early nineties, Kmart was a slightly better credit than Walmart. So, so people think I mentioned this because young people who haven't seen a lot, can't imagine big companies, successful companies disappearing, completely disappearing. Well, Kmart disappeared, right? And of course, we also know that Blackberry disappeared and Palm disappeared, and lots of dominant companies have disappeared in our life. And people look at Apple and they go, well, gee, that that'll never disappear. Or Amazon, I, you know, I, I like Jeff, all the banks on too big to fail. I mean, look at that. Yeah. Jeff, Jeff Bezos, one of the things I really admire him is he knows Amazon will not be forever. 'cause nothing's forever. And he just does, he just wants to make it for as long as it possibly can be. And you can't, you can't stay forever, probably. And anyhow, so getting back to my story, the, uh, man doors had a portfolio of loans of, of shopping centers with that were very low leverage, 60%, 55% leverage, and loans were coming due. And they couldn't get a single quote to refi, not a single quote. And I said, well, I think your loans are, you know, at a cross collateralized basis. 'cause he had, they had like 20 or so properties, uh, at a 50% loan to value cross collateralize at a 10 cap, by the way. Okay. 10 cap. Yeah. Yeah. On real historical, um, earnings. I think that's double A on its own. Right? I don't think you need to have any subordination. I think that's a double a rate to piece of paper. And now I had grown up again at Morgan Stanley and before that at Drexel being one of the pioneers of trading and structuring residential mortgage credit. So I understood structured credit, structured finance. I had gravitas because I ran that business at Morgan Stanley. So the bond buyer community knew me, and I knew them. The rating agency community knew me, and I knew them. And I understood how that game worked of turning structured loans into bonds and, and had the kind of wherewithal to think, okay, I think I could persuade my friends at the rating agencies that this loan should be rated aa. And if I could get aa, I think I could convince my bond buyer friends to put a bid on. Right. And I could bribe them with a lot of extra yield. Let's say they're buying AA corporates at X, how about if I give them a hundred over X or 150 over x to take something that's a little different real estate. Right. And I think, and I also know that because the borrower is so desperate for refinancing, I can impose very, very strict, uh, and prohibitive and bond buyer friendly terms, like prepayment protections and such that, that the borrower would never have agreed to a year ago or two years ago. But now they're desperate for money and they'll take anything. So I could make a great, a beautifully structured bond by making a beautifully structured loan refinancing that I know bond buyers would like. And I had the background understand what they would like, that I knew rating agencies would like. And I had the background to understand what they would like. So I was basically a cook in a kitchen creating new food for clientele that I had already served food to. Yeah. And that's really a proper analogy. And so I created that deal. Then I convinced Cargill, who again, had backed me into the bidding of distressed assets. I said, look, there's a, I suspect there's an opportunity here to turn, you know, it was like Rumpelstiltskin to turn loans into bonds and make a lot of money really fast here because we're gonna make the loans close them and then resell them as bonds and we'll get our money and our profit back. You know, in a short period we won't have to work very hard as we might have to if we buy a portfolio of distressed mobile home parks and figure out how to restructure them and deal with all that. Yeah. So they followed me in the rating agencies that I started with were Fitch and, uh, Duff and Phelps because Standard and Poors and Moody's were the kind of the blue chips. And I figured I'll start with the little bit less blue chips, who needed to be a little creative to compete with the Blue chips. Right. And I found really smart entrepreneurial guys there, a guy named Ron Wexler at Fitch. Mm-hmm. And a guy named Joe Franti at Duffin Phelps, both of whom were still around and were PLE pleasant to work with and really smart and open-minded. And, uh, I mean, I had to push them a little bit out of their comfort zone because real estate was a scary asset at that time. But, but they went along and I got AA ratings, then I got s and p, uh, to rate it as well. And, um, that was the first CMBS deal that went through the system. Now by the, I I then, here's the other thing that I think, I don't, I, I don't think investors or people that are historians understand about what I did, but I was a trader. Mm-hmm. So, so my, when you're a trader, a bond trader, first of all, bond trading is the only business in America or in the world where the oral commitment is legally binding. Right. And, uh, so I got used to a business where your word is your bond. Yeah. Handshake. A handshake business. Right. And phone calls became recorded. They weren't even recorded. They were just, there was a trust. And then sometime in the late eighties there, there was a need to record these phone calls. So you can go back to 'em and say, Hey, you did say you were gonna buy the a hundred million of this at that price, but, but it was still orally committed to and binding. Well, when I got to the real estate industry and I started seeing, so I took that deal that, that very first deal, the Mandos deal, and now I had a double A rated bond, and I thought to myself, who am I going to take this AA rated bond to? And I took it to teachers, you know, the big insurance company in New York, teachers Insurance. Mm-hmm. The reason I took it to teachers is because they had a large real estate lending business, and they also had a large bond portfolio business. And I figured you need both to be able to understand what I'm trying to sell here. And the bond guys would understand structure and understand that this is really good relative value. I'm offering them a hundred or more basis points above other double As. And it's a very well structured double A. And the real estate guys would be able to understand the real estate and the safety of the credit. So I went to, teachers had a relationship there, they really liked the deal, and then they went down their process of underwriting it and approving it. This is a deal they liked, and they never didn't like it. I would say six or seven months later, they still hadn't gotten to the point where they were ready to approve the deal. They were going through their committees, literally committee after committee after committee. Yeah. And in that process of trying to take that deal through a very large real estate lender's process, I got to understand something else that, uh, I think changed the way real estate lending, um, happened post me. And I think that what I realized was there's a very, um, bad mismatch between the entrepreneurial nature of the real estate operator and their needs, which are, you know, you, you go do a deal, you tie it up, you need to have your financing line up like fast. You don't have months and months and months for an approval. And then that match of the need for speed and entrepreneurism was very mismatched by the bureaucracy of the lending community that had served them for so long. And I realized that created an opening very, very big for me, because if I could create an entrepreneurial lender that had trader mentality to it and trader speed of commitment to it, um, I could really dominate this business and I could change the landscape forever by providing unique value to the client, which was the real estate operator. Yeah. And so that experience with teachers, in the end, teachers couldn't close the loan. And I got to Nomura. So now Magellan gets folded into Nomura. I'm backed by Nomura, I have my own capital, and I call teachers and I said, listen, you guys have been dancing with this loan for seven months. You have like a week to close. I'm gonna be a mansion to let you close, but if you don't close in a week, I'm just gonna close it no more. I've got the money now myself and it's an amazing deal. And I ended up closing it no more. And they couldn't close. So it was pretty eye-opening to see the processes that existed, obviously that they've changed are obviously institutional lenders have reacted to the competition from Wall Street type lenders and have modified their, um, their responsiveness accordingly. Yeah. But what existed kind of in 1990s and prior in the institutional lending side was really a poor fit for the entrepreneurial need of the borrower. And I changed all that, and I'm very, so you asked me like, what did you really do? Uh, what do you, what are you known for, but what do you really do? Well, I'm known for kind of introducing the capital markets to real estate on the debt side, which I think forever changed the business because it, it made sure that capital was always available at some price, right? Before the industry was dependent upon regulated lenders. And when regulated, when regulators decide real estate lending is bad, the spigot got shut off across the board. Now the capital markets, you don't shut off, you just change pricing. So I created, uh, access to kind of permanent capital or always available capital. And that was a big, big, uh, ad I think. But the, but the other thing that's less known is I think I brought this trader mentality and service speed and responsiveness that forever changed the way lenders serve their clients. And I think that's been a big, big addition too. Great. Great story. Great, great answer, Ethan. Thank you for that. Alright. So you create this incredible, you know, new way of financing real estate. I think the time at no more ends around 98 or so, describe your career path from no more till starting Mosaic, you know, which includes, you know, that period of time, I think it's CBRE and the Great recession occurred, and then Mosaic, I think 2015. Am I correct? Yeah, I started it in 2015. So Yeah, that period of time, uh, what, what were you, what kind of deals were you doing? What kind of projects were you working on during that period? Well, between 98 and 15, um, I would say work wasn't my highest priority for, for a lot of those years. Right. So The, when I left Wall Street or I left no more, I was in a burnout mode. I really just needed a vacation or a sabba. Um, I mean, it's, it, it was a very hard, uh, hard period. You know, I had a, I had a, I had a very, from the time I started at Drexel in 1986, till the time I left Nomura in 1998, that was 12 years. Uh, but they were like 12 dog years. So it felt like about 80 years, you know, like whatever that math is because I, I don't think, I don't think I could have worked harder. I don't think anyone could have prioritized work more than I did. And, you know, the productivity was intense and I, I really was just burnt out. I'm very burnt out. And then, you know, I had, uh, people always say about work-life balance. I don't think that you can achieve balance if you're aiming really high in anything. Right? And so I was aiming really high. I didn't have good work-life balance. I didn't cultivate a good family life or marriage and, and that was fray and ultimately broke up. And, uh, so I kind of had a bit of a midlife crisis, you know, the leaving of Wall Street and then like, gee, I just need, I need some time to walk away from everything and just figure my life out right now. And I had the luxury of enough financial success that I didn't need a job right away. And I was still young. I was only 37 or 38 years old when this all. And, um, so I took the opportunity to remake my life. And I think that was a, I mean, a great gift. You know, one of the gifts of financial success is you can take a deep breath and think about life. You could think, right? I mean, if you're running and running and running as I was up until then, there's not a lot of time to be reflective and think about life and the meaning of life and the meaning of your life and purpose of your life. You, you're just running. And I think, I don't know, I think that this is a little bit, again, we're gonna go off the being path a bit, but I think that, you know, I've become quite philosophical. You know, I wrote the book, I wrote, uh, I'm coming out with another book that's about prayer, and it's a gift that I've been given that I don't take for granted Yeah. That I can breathe and that I can think and that I can reflect and, and I want to share that gift with other people who don't have that luxury. You know, when people meet someone who has, let's say, philosophy, like I have become a philosopher, I suppose I wrote a book on philosophy. Yeah. And, and I think people go like, who the hell does he think he is? That he's smart enough to tell me about life? I I don't really necessarily think I'm smarter than anybody. I'm just being give, given the gift of time and the ability to take a deep breath and be a better observer of things because I have time and because I can breathe. And unfortunately that's not what most people's lives are like, whether they're blue collar jobs or white collar jobs. I had a white collar job, but I didn't have time to breathe, you know, until 1998. I, I was just on the treadmill running as hard as I can. Just like, if I had a blue collar job, I was getting paid a little more, but, or a lot more. But still, I didn't have the ability to really understand my life or life, you know? And I think that that's what I'm hoping to do with my book, is to be able to share my gift, which is not my intelligence or even my ability to have insights. It's the luxury of being able to breathe and the luxury of being able to live a little bit of a slower life and of life. And a and that brings it with itself an awareness that I hope to be able to share. And I think back, if you know, you, I'm Jewish, and you know, we as Jewish people benefit from the teachings of many, many generations of rabbis. Yes. Interesting. About the history of rabbis in the Jewish, um, tradition. It's not that the rabbis were lords or superior, but the rabbis were literally the way the Jewish society was created, uh, and cultivated over generations. The, the rabbinical class was, um, freed, if you will, from having to work. Right. They were supported financially, typically by the community, because the community understood that it's good to have wisdom and it's good to cultivate. And the only way to cultivate wisdom is to free certain people from the kind of routine and the needs of a blue collar or a working life, white collar, blue collar, whatever. And so, rabbis historically were just paid by this, the community to be, to give advice, right. To study Torah and to study historical knowledge and to share that with the community in sermons at synagogue or private meetings, to counsel them when they had problems in their lives. And I, and I, I understand that so much better now. My dad was a Rabbi Uhhuh. And, um, and I understand how the intelligent design of a society and a community that cultivates that and appreciates that and knows that it's not because that guy or that gal has any superior wisdom. It's that the society needs a couple people to not be busy all the time. And to be able to be reflective and students and scholars, and then coach and share their gained scholarship with the community, that's their job. So I feel like, I feel like that's what I've been doing a little bit lately. Well, The way you categorize your thoughts and the way you're able to write, I gotta say, there's, there's a lot you, there's a lot more credit to give you than, you know, than what you're giving yourself now. Because the book was really, uh, inspirational on me. I really enjoyed it. So, you know, I know we'll get into that A little, little bit more, but Arnie, you go ahead. Yeah, no, I, i had you started Mosaic, uh, and, and the mission when you started it was what, when you launched it, and where has, where is it now going from when it started to right now, nine years later? Well, well, I've always been, um, guided by a couple of governing thoughts when it comes to work. One of them is, uh, which I kind of like to use this, um, I like analogies don't bring sand to the beach. Mm-hmm. Okay? Mm-hmm. So, uh, I think that too many people in their careers are, are doing something that is akin to bringing sand to the beach. And the beach has plenty of sand and doesn't need any more sand. And so if you're showing up with buckets of sand and and expecting to get paid for that, well, you know, you're probably not gonna get paid or get paid very well because there's plenty of sound already there. So what I try to do is ask myself the question, what's valuable? Like, what could I bring to the world that is valuable? Because then if I bring that, I deserve to get rewarded for that. Right? And so I think that's the classic entrepreneur's way of thinking. And when I started, um, mosaic, I started off by saying to myself, 'cause it was a very, if you remember, 20 15, 20 14, as we were conceiving it in 2015, were highly, highly overcrowded, uh, times for the real estate, uh, investment management business that there was over capacity. And I knew that. And so when you try to bring, uh, something of value, and it is hard to do when there's just tons of overcapacity. So I asked myself the question, which I like to do, where is the world heading? Um, and then I should kind of have a thesis, investment thesis that, uh, comports with that. And I thought the big story of the prior, well, and I think this is, I'll share this with your audience. The big story, there's always a big story, right? If we look back at our lives since I got outta college, the big story has been the extreme, uh, reduction in interest rates. So I got out, the tenure was 1565, and by 2020 or 21, the tenure was one and a half. I mean, the world has never seen a 40 year run like that in. And so that, that story was the dominant theme. And it's why if you go to like that 40 year period, a guy like Warren Buffett became wildly rich. He didn't do anything. He didn't invent anything. He didn't produce anything. Yeah. What he did was get long duration and hold on for 40 years. And that was the perfect, perfect thing to do. Yeah. So, again, I don't say that disparately, but more, um, admiringly of what Warren Buffett did. He's, he, he understood that 1565 on the tenure was not a sustainable level, and probably rates were gonna go down significantly. And he figured if I can get long with leverage and staying power and just stay long duration, I'm gonna get very rich. It is exactly what he did. Yeah. And he created insurance company holding companies so that he had both leverage and staying power, which is a very rare combination that he uniquely concocted. And I give him all the credit in the world for that. Now, I ask myself, and I do this every day, what is the next 10, 20, 30, 40 year big kind of dominating theme that one would be rewarded for? Like if I was Warren Buffet today or in 2015, what, what, what theme could I kind of latch onto, right? As an investment thesis that I could have success over a long period of time without working too hard? You know, like Warren Buffet. And the answer I came up with in 2014 was, and I still believe this is true. So the same answer exists today, even more so is that we're gonna see inflation. Now, inflation is a misunderstood word, and I prefer a different word. I prefer a, a phrase currency debasement. Right? So inflation is a, a one word answer to a two word answer, which is currency debasement. Now, the reason I think that's gonna be the biggest theme is because the biggest problem we have is our national debt and servicing our debt, our debt, the fact that it's growing out of control every year. And no one seems to have an idea of how to staunch that. Although I think, uh, Vivek and Elon have some hope that they're gonna try to do that. But the point is, I think that, uh, some form of currency basement, and there's only really a couple of different ways to do it, but it gets to the same place. We'll create a scenario where 10 years from now, your, your $6 hamburger is gonna be $15. Yeah. And your, you know, your million dollar house is gonna be two and a quarter million dollars, and you're, uh, I don't know, your $5 latte is gonna be $11. Yeah. Okay. And, and it's just gonna happen, uh, either all at once or insidiously. I'm not sure that's the only question, but it will happen because it has to happen, because what I've learned in life is that big problems get solved and the world moves on. Yeah. And so, so I start by asking myself, what problem if it weren't solved, would destroy our society? And then I know, well, that has to get solved because our society can't be destroyed. And then I ask, how does it get solved? And I think that the debt crisis gets solved by currency debasement. Then I ask myself, how do I make money off of that? How could I develop an investment thesis that plays into that, that vision? So I believe multifamily ownership is the best way to do that. Yeah. Because multifamily ownership gets the benefit of, again, if rents are X, they're gonna be two x or two and a half x or whatever it is. And it won't be because rents got unaffordable. It's just because wages are gonna go up by two x or two and a half X and everything's gonna go up by two x and two and a half x, and then all of a sudden the debt is manageable. Right. If you think yourself, just think, I always tell people, let's say whatever money you make, let's say you had a debt you could manage. So let's say you're making a hundred grand a year and you have a hundred grand of debt that you owe, and it's a 10 year loan, personal loan. Well, you could, that's a manageable number. You could pay it off a hundred grand a year in income. Yeah. You could take a little bit every month and you could pay off a hundred grand over a 10 year period, no problem. But if you were making a hundred grand a year and you had $15 million of debt, it is never gonna pay that off. It's not gonna happen. Exactly. Never. However, if I added a zero to your pay and said, your a hundred grand is now a million or added a zero and a half and made it your million and a half, all of a sudden your 15 million to debt now can work. That's what's gotta happen to this country. Okay. So what's gotta happen is a zero or, or one and a half x needs to be added to the income level, wage level, price level of everything, and then the debt makes sense. Again. So multifamily is the best way to benefit as an investor from that belief because, and that trend, because one you've got rents gonna ultimately grow with that inflation or that currency basement, you've got leverage because multifamily is very leverageable because you have predictable cash flow. Right. You know, if you buy the right multifamily properties, your occupancy ranges from 87 to 95%. That consistency of cashflow tolerates debt, something like office buildings I've never believed should be leveraged because there's such wild swings in cashflow and office, even when office were considered good in the eighties and nineties, let alone now. Alright. But Ethan, I gotta, I gotta interrupt you there because, uh, one of the last news items, you know, when I'm doing my research about Mosaic was the, uh, yes. An investment or the formation with, we'll, We'll get, well, we'll get to that because there's a, there's a right way to handle everything. Right. And I don't think there was a very famous, um, I love this saying, very famous saying on Wall Street when I was a bond trader, there are no bad bonds, just bad prices. That's true. And I think that's true about all assets. There are no bad office buildings, just bad prices right now in downtown la The price might be negative. Meaning like to take an office building in downtown LA today, you might have to pay me money rather than, well, I Was gonna make, I, I heard your comments about downtown, The downtown markets are assets That you've got there, But there's still a right price. I don't know what the right price is, but there's no bad anything. They're just bad prices. And so, so that's the answer, the quick answer, we'll get to the office thing a little in, in a minute or two, but, but I, so in 2014, I have this belief, I still have this belief very, very deeply. It hasn't changed. In fact, it's gotten more so because the debt in the last 10 years has grown at an even faster pace. And so the thesis I saw in 2014 and 15 is even more true today. Right. Not less true today. And I do think it's gonna play out. So in, so when I started Mosaic, I thought, I'm gonna start a multifamily investment fund. That was what I wanted to, you Actually gonna buy the properties as opposed to buy The properties. Yeah. I don't wanna lend, I mean, the last thing you want to do in, in that thesis is be a lender because you're getting paid back 10 years. Right. With, with 50 cent dollars, I don't want to get paid in 50 cent dollars. You know, my, my after inflation return is ne is gonna be wildly negative no matter what interest rate I charge. Right, right, right. So I didn't want to do that. Uh, and I went to an investor, I'm kind of saying, I'm gonna tell you this story. And I would say I'm, I'm, I'm a little shamed by it, but I have no problem. We love those. You really do. I have no, well, I, I think that one of the things people do, and especially successful people, is they whitewashed their history and, and it's so f*****g insincere. You know what I mean? Like, you read a book about someone's biography and they never made a mistake and they never did a wrong deal, and they never had a bad idea. And you just realize this person's full of s**t. You know, it's just like, who wants even read a book? Like how did They learn? Right. You learn, well, But you, you, your model, your success was based on failure. And that's the way everybody should, well, I think, I think everyone is, but I think very few people are willing to actually admit it or talk about it, which makes their lives not valuable to study. And no one benefits from that. Correct. So I, I will tell you, how did I get Mosaic from that moment of like, gee, Ethan has this really well thought out thesis and wants to go raise an apartment fund that would be the right thing to do. And by the way, would've been an incredible home run. Mm-hmm. And ends up running a kind of debt oriented fund. How does that happen? Mm-hmm. And the answer is, I went to my first investor, and I won't mention names or anything like that, but I went to my first investor who was a wealth management firm, and I pitched the multifamily fund. And he said to me, well, you know, I like that and I would invest in that. But he said to me, he didn't know me, and he said, do you know anything about real estate debt? And this is 2014. And I said, uh, yeah, I think I know something about real estate debt. Or 15, I know something about real estate debt. I kind of have had a pretty good career in it. And he said, well, if you had a real estate debt fund, I would give you five times that amount of money that I would give you for multifamily, and I'd give it to you like right away. Wow. And I thought, Hmm, I'm, I'm trying to start a business here and um, maybe I'll just start a debt fund. So I said, okay, well I'm, I'll tell you what, I'll start a debt fund. Yeah. Right. And, uh, opportunity. And I took his money, you know, and that would've been a good moment for me to sign of say no. That would've been a good moment in reflection for me to say, I don't really think that's the best thing you could do with your investors' money, and here's why. Yeah. But instead, I took the path of least resistance, which is very unusual for me. I went against my norm. My norm is if someone, you know, they used to say on Wall Street, and I love Wall Street. 'cause my time, my era, my era had a lot of great sayings and colorful people and they say, if someone wants a green suit, you sell 'em a f*****g green suit. You know what I mean? And, uh, you don't tell 'em they look ugly in the green suit, you just sell 'em the green suit. I never believed in that. I always believed that that's not value. You know, again, it goes back to the, I wanna bring value. So bringing value to an investor who's kind of misguided means telling them they're misguided and being willing to risk losing the ticket. You know what I mean? And say, okay, listen, I know you want to green suit, but you really look ugly in a green suit. I've got a beautiful navy blue suit. You should be wearing that. You would look amazing in it. And if the guy says, well, gee, I'm gonna go find someone else to sell me the green suit. Thanks a lot. So be it. You have integrity, you did your best. Right, right. That was, that's been 99% of my career. That one moment was one of the few moments that I didn't do it, where one of the few moments where I lost my resolve and I went the path of least resistance, and I went for the green suit. The guy wanted a green suit. I said, okay, I'm gonna make a great green suit. I don't think in my, in my heart, I'm thinking, I don't think you should buy the green suit. I don't think it's the right choice, but I'm gonna do the best I can to make a good green suit for this guy. And so I took his money and I started a debt fund. Now, there was an over capacity of debt funds in real estate in 2015. So I couldn't just kind of say, I'm gonna go out and buy, um, I'm gonna go make distressed or transitional loans. A lot of pe everyone was doing the debt funds were all doing what I call transitional loans, which was funding some real estate operator who had gotten a little bit of money and the operator was going out and buying what he thought were sub performing assets and let's say trying to re-tenant them or create tenancy when there wasn't tenancy. And the, so the lenders were lending him typically 65, 70, 75, even 80% of his money. And then that got so crowded that the yields got driven down, and the lenders who were in that business were forced to leverage their loans on lines. They would go to like JP Morgan or Wells Fargo and create leverage on leverage and mismatch that leverage. Right. So let's say they were making a five year loan and then they were borrowing kind of month to month on repo or something. And I knew that's gonna end terribly. So I said, I'm not gonna do that. Like, that's, to me, it, it's an irresponsible, stupid move. So I thought, well, what am I gonna do with this new fund that I've begun that is not as differentiated in a highly crowded market? Well, I realized two things. One, there's no one doing construction lending. And there was reason for that because the word construction and construction in general had been stigmatized in real estate forever. Uh, and so no one, no one, no investor wanted to invest in construction lending. And if a, if an investment manager said, we're gonna take your money and make construction, is they would've gotten no money from investors. So that created a void. And I love voids. And so I figured I'm gonna focus on construction lending, which played into another thesis I had, which was that the biggest risk in real estate in 2015. And I still think, uh, we're seeing it now and it's much more acknowledged, but people didn't know it back then was obsolescence risk. And so I felt if I can make a 75% loan to cost construction loan, then my basis in the best newest beautifulest building in the market is gonna be much safer than if I make a 75 or 80% loan to value loan on a 25, 30-year-old building. So I, I, so I was very comfortable making construction loans because of that. And the other thing I did remember, I love multifamily ownership, was make preferred equity investments through the debt fund in multifamily portfolios where we were junior to Fannie Mae. And so we had equity like returns on multifamily. So I worked that multifamily equity thesis into a debt fund that way. So that's what Mosaic became really a barbell of those two strategies, construction lending, and mostly, I mean, we did a few deals that were off those two, but most of what we did were one of those two strategies. Excellent. And we were, and we were doing very well. I mean, it was a, it was a very well thought out thesis we were doing extremely well. We had found niches that made sense. And where there was a, there were some voids. And so we were seeing wonderful deal flow. There was not a lot of competition. So we were able to earn a, a very fair and high return for the risk we were taking. C happened and covid, uh, like for many, many, many businesses, covid was, uh, just a, a death sentence for us. I mean, it, it, there was no way to survive covid intact. And that's that. And I knew it. I mean, I'm a capital markets guy. I know that when there's existential problems in the society, and of course Covid was one of them. Big, big problem. Like a global pandemic, you know, who had ever thought of a global pandemic before and that closes down economies. I knew that this was not gonna end well for my fund and for my assets and for, and that there would be at the very wor very least a liquidity crisis. And I didn't want to have to put my investors and myself through that. So I sought an exit and I closed what was an open-ended fund and I sought an exit and we were able to successfully find an exit by merging our fund into a publicly traded reit. And my limited partners who had no liquidity in their LP investments in my fund were now given immediate liquidity in a public market stock with no lockup in March of 2022, which was before rates started going up. And when mortgage REITs, which what we essentially got stock in, were at all time highs. And so if my investors had sold the stock they were given in March of 2022, they all made out very well. Excellent. Unfortunately, Ethan Penner didn't sell his stock in March of 2022 and still holds that stock at 50% of what it was worth in March of 2022. But, you know, that's a decision each investor got to make. And again, another in a life filled with mistakes, you know, we think of successful people again, as having done mostly or all good things and smart things and right things. I would say that I've done my share of good right. Smart things, but I would say my batting average, you know, like in baseball, you're a hall of famer. If you only make out seven out of 10 times. That's right. I would say that's about the right ratio. I probably make out seven out of 10 times and I get hits three out of 10 times. Hey, great answers, Ethan. And you know, the time has flown by and I know we, we, we, you know, we promised you an hour, so we we're, we're ticking down there and, and there's still some, some areas we want to cover. We may have to do this another time 'cause we've got, you know, know still some unanswered issues, but you Wanted to go deep on certain things, so I'm Sorry. Well now we, we, we could do part two, you know, we'll just, we wanna shift it to, you know, how you see things going forward. You know, we just had, you know, obviously a month ago, you know, something occurred in, in our country election and, you know, how do you see things now going forward, you know, a few weeks now to digest it and Yeah. And, you know, well, I'll give, I'll give you my two answers. One is just a repeat and it's gonna be quick of the whole, the thesis I just described that kind of compelled me in 2015 to one of the multifamilies is still deeply in play today. And I love that strategy because I believe that we have to fix the debt and currency debasement in one form or another will be the solution as far as the election and the post-election analysis. You know, I think that the, um, the b******t is starting to go away. It just is, you know, and, uh, up is gonna be up again and down is gonna be down again. And we're not gonna have to pretend otherwise. And I think it's a huge breath of fresh air that everyone gets to breathe because we were heading towards a totalitarian society and all the signs were in play. You know what I mean? You were, you were, you were ostracized for speaking kind of against the herd or the what was acceptable speech you were being told what you can say and what you couldn't say. Um, you were being told that merit is not the basis for anything good. In fact, it's racist. The idea of merit. All the things that are just senseless and were, if followed, would've trashed our entire country. Okay. And we had four or eight or 12 years that, I dunno, by anyone's measure, depends on when you think it all started, but, um, it's all gone. You know, as a country, we, we stood up and repudiated all that. Now, of course, slightly less than half people did not repudiate that, which is a little bit problematic. Um, and some of them are very upset and some of them bought hook line and sinker that up is down and down is up. And it's gonna be very hard to, um, to undo the, the kind of Yeah. Why the wiring, the wiring problems that those people now have. Yeah. I don't know how that gets done, but I think we just move forward, you know, we just move forward. Yeah. And well, bringing it back, uh, bringing it back to, you know, our world, the real estate and finance world, because of the results. Do you see new opportunities in, in finance perhaps, or, you know, in some of the sectors, maybe the, you know, office to sector or the office to multi-family opportunities? Well, I think that, I think that it's gonna be a little bit early to answer that question, right? Yeah. But I would say the positives should ripple through every sector. Every sector. Now I think that, um, I think that, uh, the office is, so we go back to office, and I'll mention that briefly. I've said it before and I think I'm the only person I've heard say this. I think that one of the real, the real reason that office has been so plagued is not because of work from home as a result of Covid, it's because of the woke mentality in the office place has made the workplace an unfun place to go. So if you are given a choice, you can go to this place or not go to this place, and this place is fun and this place is stimulating, and this place is vibrant. You go, okay, like in 1985 or 86 or 1995, people were running to work, running to work. I mean, you couldn't keep me or my kind of, uh, partners or workers from the office. We loved the office because we, we just loved being there. It was fun to be there by 1999, 2000. And then after that, it just continued to go downhill. All the fun, all the joy, all the spontaneity, all the celebratory aspects of being human in a group were sucked out of the, the work experience in the office. So when Covid came and all of a sudden people were given a choice, which they didn't have a choice until then, hey, you could work from home or you can come to the office. Well, they made the logical choice. This ain't fun. I'm not going there if I have a choice. And so the office return will return to its full health if we can unwind some of this stupidity that has permeated our society and made it less fun to be in a group together. Right. And, um, I dunno if that's gonna happen. I don't know how it can happen. I suspect this election is a step in the right direction, but that's, that's a governing or gating issue for a lot of, uh, a lot of office. How about, how about the, you know, another hot topic today, which I'd love to get your thought on the, uh, the thought or the attempts to, you know, go from office to multifamily. Obviously a lot of physical challenges, but have you looked at that Mm. Closely at all? There's a lot of people who have much better domain expertise about that than me. Yeah. And every single one that I've talked to say it doesn't make economic sense. Yeah. It's, it's 90% of the time it doesn't make acknow. Yeah. And especially where those things are. It's gotta be the Right type of Property. Yeah. Let, let's find out about Ethan Penner. What is he like? Um, I mean, other than the philosophy and everything else, uh, obviously you're a sports fan 'cause we could see right behind you, uh, your favorite teams. What do you like to do? Do you go to games? Uh, uh, do you charities, hobbies? Let's find out a little bit about you. The, you the person. Well, I, I grew up loving sports, playing sports. Mm-hmm. Dreaming about sports, um, even dreaming about being a professional athlete. Uhhuh like most boys, you know, you lose that dream at some point, but like most boys who played Met are Yankees, Mets are Yankees. Mm. Mets Dodgers. No, no, Baby. No. Well, I, I, I was born in the Bronx on Grand Concourse. And so my first team was the Yankees just by proximity. And I was seven or six. Right. My dad used to take me to Yankee games, and, uh, the Yankees were absolutely awful, but I still enjoyed them. And I was a Yankees fan. I still had a kind of a connection to the pins stripes. I Think I told you my grandparents lived blocks from Yankee Stadium. Yeah. I, I was a Met fan. I grew up in Flush Soto. Man, I gotta tell you. But then what happened was the 69 Mets came about. Yep. Uh, I was eight. And you could not not love the 69 Mets. Yes. They were the epitome of American Dream, you know, like the underdog making. Yeah. My First memories is them winning the World Series. Well, yeah. I mean, I could still name the starting lineup. Well, I made, me too. I can, I can name their starting lineup too, which is weird. And I'm still been a Mets fan ever since. And so I have become friends with, uh, just by strange coincidence, probably seven or so years ago, Steve Cohen and I met on a golf course and we become fast friends. And so it's part kind of kinda weirdly cool to not, I'm Uhhuh, I I'm friends of the owner of a team I really love, and, and now they're great and they're promised even better now. And so, so I I I've rekindled my sports fanship, so Mets fa, my, my Mets Fanship was dormant for quite a while, like 20 plus years Uhhuh. But, but in the last few years it's been rekindled. I'm a, I'm a big mess fan. And the same thing with the Knicks. I was a Knicks fan when I was a very young kid. Right. Wolf, Razer, Nicks, I mean, I saw them win championships. I love that team. Then I kind of left the Knicks not, I mean, I just didn't elect the team ever since 1978 or 79. Bernard King was the last great nick, I think. Yeah. So, so the Knicks kind of all of a sudden under the Brunson, Nicks, uh, had been a pleasure because they play basketball the right way. So I'm, I'm, and I've kind of rekindled my, my love for going to sporting events and my appreciation for why that's a great thing, you know? And, uh, so now I try to go as often as I can. I went, my daughter's a SMU College senior, and they've had a good run out of nowhere. Yeah, yeah. Played on, um, Saturday in Charlotte in the a CC championship game, which was an amazing game against Clemson. Yeah. And my wife and I and my daughter went to that game. Oh, wow. So, so I have to say that sporting events are beautiful experiences because all the social divisions go away. Yeah. Your skin color, your religion, your who you voted for your right slip goes away and you just hug and kiss and high five the people next to you when your team does well. And it's exactly, and you're Americans also. You have the national anthem, and we all just forget all our differences. And it's one of those magical moments in a stadium when everyone's together in, in a beautiful social way. I really love it. I really love it. Good. Well, now the, now you live in la you follow the Dodgers, the Lakers, the, uh, or you still back in New York? Interesting. I, I don't really feel like I live in la I kind of feel like I visit my home in LA a bunch, but I travel so much that I don't really feel like a Los Angelino. I've never really liked the Lakers. And look, I admire LeBron James. I think he's, there's so much to admire about that guy. He's, he's conducted himself amazingly as a human being. He didn't go to college and he's elegant and he's not one of those, you know, he's just a good guy. Right. He seems like a good family guy. Great family guy. Right. Yeah. He seems like, um, there's so much to admire about him athletically and how he conducts himself. I just don't like him as a No, no, no. And that's, you're right. I mean, I really like him as a person. I think there are certain, like him as a basketball player, there are Certain players in all kinds of sports that you'll look at and go, I know this guy's great, but I can't stand this Guy. He's not my guy. And so, since he came to the Lakers, I think he's actually ruined the Lakers. Yeah. And, and that cha that fake championship that they got in the bubble is just fake. Uh, I don't like Lakers. I don't like, uh, the Dodgers I have nothing for or against. I'm just, you know, nothing really. Um, I, I also find that going in and out their stadium with the traffic Stadium. I hate Dodge. Horrible. I'm a history. Uh, so no, I'm, I'm a Knick's met guy, and on football, I'm a I'm a Vikings guy and always have been a Vikings guy since I was interesting. Eight. Um, I don't know. So I love sports though. No, That's great. And you know what, In California, I mean, we, uh, you know, we could go out and play golf, we could surf, we could go to Yosemite. My, my, you know, zen spot. I love hiking. I'm a big outdoors, nature loving person. Yeah. Yeah. And my wife and I, I would give advice to your listeners, there's nothing better than nature. Nothing. Yes. And there's nothing, and it's free. Okay. That's the coolest thing, is like, it's free and it's the best thing in the world. Well, we went, we lived near hiking here, and it's very nice. But we went to the Alps to a city called Shaman, and I hope, and, and I really, it's, it's the Mob Blanc, which is, you know, the Alps and it's the biggest down range in, uh, in Europe. And Mont Blanc's, the biggest, tallest mountain in Europe. We spent seven days hiking our asses off, you know, for 5, 6, 7 hours a day. It was remarkable. It's hard physical labor. Um, but you go at your pace, whatever your pace is, is maybe the best vacation I've ever taken. So, uh, that'd be my big, I'm a, I'm a big national park, big hiker. Yeah. I'm gonna, I'm doing Mount Whitney next year for us to celebrate 60. My daughter did Mount Whitney. Yeah. That's, that's not, I mean, in the Right, in the, you know, when it's icy, you know, you have to have your crampons and it's hard work. No, I'm gonna do half done cables as a tuneup, so, you know, we'll, we'll get there. But that's my, Well, I wanna, I wanna mention, yeah. Your audience, two things. One is, I wrote a book called Greatness is a Choice. Yes. And we're gonna get to talk about, I know we hope to, but we went deep on a lot of things, and it's a book that I re I wrote with Great Care, love and Respect for the Reader, and I wrote it for myself and for my family. And ultimately it got published. I didn't expect it to be something that got published. I thought it was gonna be something I handed to my kids that got passed along generationally. But it's very short chapters. It's 69 conspicuous number, but 69 chapters. Yeah. And no chapter is longer than three pages, and each chapter is its own individual topic, meaning you could read, you don't have to read 'em in order. They don't relate necessarily one to another. And you could read a chapter and put the book down for a week or a month and pick it up wherever you want. No, you can't. I, I, I have to read it straight through. Ethan, you can't put it down. You gotta read it straight through. It's Good. I appreciate you saying that. But the, um, it, it is intended, um, to communicate a totality. It's kind of like, um, I, I would say, so of the 69 Ideas, each chapter is its own idea, its own thought. And I made it short chapters for a couple of reasons. One, I wanted the ideas to be ownable by the reader rather than be about Ethan's life and how those ideas played out. Stories about, I kinda made the book way longer, and each chapter could have been a book because I could have retold story after story that reinforced the idea through my own experiences. But I wanted the, the idea to be alive for the reader in their own life, because we all live incredible lives, and these ideas are universal. They impact every one of us in different ways. They play out and at different times in our life. And so I didn't want Ethan Penner story to get in the way of the idea's purity as a value proposition to the reader. And of course, the second reason is I think we're all pressed for time. And so I wrote a short book with short chapters with that in mind. It's a wonderful book for, uh, holiday gifts. You know, we're coming, coming on holiday Gift Giving Season. It's a, i I really believe that. Uh, it's a book, it's a book for young people too. It's a book for, I would say you can go down at easily 15 years old. And it's very valuable because it's got, it's got a lot to offer people of every age. Right. I also do this thing called Friday five or Friday Focus, and every other Friday I send out an email blast to about 10,000 people who have subscribed. It's free. So I don't, I don't believe in, anyhow, it's free. And, um, it's five again, short thoughts of that moment. Like I, I, I always have ideas. And so it's like five things that are on my mind, and it's two or three sentences typically for each of those ideas with a associated video. That's one to three minutes. If you wanna watch the video and expands upon the idea. And you could go to great ww you got great intersections.com, great intersection.com, and there's a way to sign up. Just put your email address there. Excellent. Okay. They are, they are great. And, and your book, I have to say, and tweet like, really changed my perception of my own life in several ways. And I could see already how it's affecting me in a positive way. So I thank you for Yeah. Taking the time and, and writing it. I told my son who's 28, he's gotta read it. So, uh, it, it, it is very much worth the time. And like you said, you fly through it because of the way you wrote it and the way you thought about it. So appreciate you very much for, for, for giving that gift to us. My Pleasure. Okay. So I, you we're, we're really out of time. I can make sure we have enough storage to, to get on do this, but I would like way to close it. We'd like to bring you back, uh, at some point and, and get into a little bit more that we didn't get into now. But I think this was fascinating, one of our, our bet and being in, in the lending field myself, fascinating to talk to you. And I, I really appreciate the opportunity that we had to be with you this morning. Oh yeah. Ethan, thank you very much. Hopefully we got to most of what you wanted to talk about as well. I, I, I didn't have an agenda. I just wanted enjoy the morning with you guys and it was very enjoyable. Perfect. Thank You. Nice little walk down memory lane and yeah, And, and you know, when we give, you know, the new administration a bit more time and can judge the results, you know, we'd love to get you back on and, and see how you're taking advantage of, uh, of the new opportunities out there. It'd be amazing. I'm always, always happy to do that. Always happy to talk to you both. You've been watching Commercial Real Estate Talk with Steven Arne, sponsored by commercial real estate inspectors, fidelity Mortgage Lenders, and Chase Partners.