Seth [00:00:15]:
You’re listening to Entrepreneur’s Enigma, a podcast about the ups and downs of the entrepreneurial journey. Every week, your host, Seth Goldstein, interviews entrepreneurs from all walks of life about their entrepreneurial journeys. From store owners to fortune 500 CEOs, we all have stories to tell. So sit back and join us for the next 20 or so minutes while we explore the entrepreneurial world.

Dan Ritterman [00:00:49]:
Hey, everybody. Welcome to another edition of the Entrepreneur’s Enigma podcast. I am as always your host, Seth. Today, I have a good buddy of mine. I I’ve known Dan Ritterman. I don’t know. It’s way he’s one of those guys you just seem to know forever kind of thing.

Seth [00:01:04]:
Crossing paths for years.

Dan Ritterman [00:01:05]:
For years. Because we’re both in Philadelphia, both in the Philadelphia business scene, the startup scene, and all that stuff. And so Dan is a lawyer, and he’s also a licensed real estate salesperson in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. But the interesting thing about this, he works for tactics in Philly and they don’t represent the owners of the building. They represent the people coming in the tenants, that’s the word, the tenants, And you think, Oh boy, he must have caused so much trouble. But I think, and when we talked last, you said that, that the owners actually love you guys because you make sure you they you find good tenants for them.

Seth [00:01:43]:
Well, these days, especially, tenants come at a premium.

Dan Ritterman [00:01:46]:
They do.

Seth [00:01:46]:
I mean, everyone So You don’t need to be a real estate expert to know that the commercial real estate industry is in distress, let’s say.

Dan Ritterman [00:01:52]:
Just putting it lightly. Just putting it lightly for the.

Seth [00:01:55]:
Yeah. So I’m trying to be, you know, trying to put it lightly. And, but especially right now, landlords are desperate for tenants to get into their building. Yeah. So when we have someone in the market, we our phones are ringing.

Dan Ritterman [00:02:06]:
That’s awesome. And so you you work in Philly, but you live in Dresher, which is just in Montgomery County. You have a wife, 2 kids, and a dog. So living the American dream, you know, having a good time. You’re also very involved in the Philly startup scene. PSL, Philly startup leaders, not pumpkin spice latte. I know Isabelle Kent, the the founder or the executive chairwoman, the chief Pupa over at PSL hates it. It’s PSL, but she it that’s the acronym.

Dan Ritterman [00:02:34]:
So it’s not pine pumpkin spice latte, but we are competing with that hashtag on social media.

Seth [00:02:41]:
I’ve never thought about that.

Dan Ritterman [00:02:41]:
Yeah. We do hashtag PSL. All you get are pumpkin soy lattes in the fall. And then in the spring and in the summer, we’re fine. It’s usually us. So that’s kinda interesting.

Seth [00:02:51]:
I love that.

Dan Ritterman [00:02:51]:
So you honestly you’re a local boy because you went you went to Penn State. Won’t hold that against you. I’m a Delaware fan. So I’m a Delaware fan. I went to the University of Delaware. But, you know, we’re not in the they’re not in the same conference. It’s just you killed us last year,

Seth [00:03:05]:
which is

Dan Ritterman [00:03:05]:
It was a joke. It was a joke. Like, why would you put division 1 double a against, like, the best division 1 single a team? Like, it it’s gonna be a slaughter. We did get a touchdown. Year. We got a big touchdown now. We got a 50 yard, 50 yard, 60 yard touchdown run for our one score.

Seth [00:03:24]:
It’s kinda like golf. As long as you have one thing to hold on to, you know, the

Dan Ritterman [00:03:27]:
other thing. Exactly. And I think we’re moving up to division 1 single a this year too, which I think is gonna be devastating. Even Temple will hand us our butts to us. But, you know, you also went to Temple, piece of school of law. You’re in the bar. Are you still in the bar? Are you one of those that says, Chris, not to stay in the bar?

Seth [00:03:44]:
I think I just changed my license to an active. Up until this year, I was I was a licensed attorney. I kind of decided that I’m gonna burn the boats and leave it behind me.

Dan Ritterman [00:03:52]:
There you go. You because, I mean, now you’re in real estate, which is kinda I mean, you kinda it’s good that you have the background in law to pull from instead of me who Googles everything. It’s like, I think this is correct. At least you have an education behind it. You know how to write. You know how to read leases. That’s kind of important.

Seth [00:04:09]:
Yeah. A lot of what we do is working within the documents. Right? We when we’re operating, we view the lease as part of the business plan. Yeah. And it has to be. The lease has to support the business. And I I think that a lot of us are tactics or either attorneys or former attorneys and not practicing anymore, but I think that it does give us a little bit of an extra value to our clients so we can provide that sort of expertise.

Dan Ritterman [00:04:29]:
That’s wild. But before this, you also made a continent entrepreneur because you did mainline delivery. And not only did you do that for over 10 years, you negotiated a sale. It’s a publicly traded company, a publicly traded company, when in 2016. So you had a successful exit, you know, which is I’m sure your wife was thrilled about now that you have a full time job.

Seth [00:04:57]:
We’re gonna

Dan Ritterman [00:04:57]:
take a quick break, hear from our sponsors, and get right back to the show.

Seth [00:05:01]:
Hey. You know, I look. We we started this food delivery company. It was called Mainline Delivery, like you said, in 2008. And, you know, our idea was not novel necessarily. There were other companies that were doing it, and we found a market which was the main line right outside of Philadelphia where we grew up. I’m from Lohr and Mary. I went to Lohr and Mary in high School.

Dan Ritterman [00:05:16]:
Oh, well, I’m doing that. There were

Seth [00:05:17]:
a lot of high quality restaurants in the area. We knew that there were people there who were willing to pay for the service. Right? So food delivery is a luxury service. And there’s a lot

Dan Ritterman [00:05:25]:
of money in the area. I mean, if you know that, that’s a that’s a money area. It’s and that’s the old money where Storz has new money.

Seth [00:05:32]:
Right. So we sort of spent, you know, 5 or 6 years cornering that market, and this was in the pre DoorDash, pre Uber Eats.

Dan Ritterman [00:05:39]:
I know. So you it was, like, perfect timing. Yeah.

Seth [00:05:42]:
Where as those companies kind of raised 1,000,000,000 of dollars and grew around us, we were able to kinda maintain that area.

Dan Ritterman [00:05:47]:
Customer loyalty. Customer loyalty. Yeah. Absolutely. It’s how That’s

Seth [00:05:52]:
what ultimately end up happening. So Square was the company that ended up acquiring us at the end of the day.

Dan Ritterman [00:05:56]:
Square is sourcing.

Seth [00:05:58]:
Right. So Square owned Caviar at the time

Dan Ritterman [00:06:00]:
Oh, I don’t know that. Yeah.

Seth [00:06:02]:
Which I’m not so sure anyone ever understood why Square owned Caviar No. I understand what Square no.

Dan Ritterman [00:06:07]:
I understand is Jack, period.

Seth [00:06:10]:
Well, since the acquisition, they’ve sold Caviar to DoorDash. So the whole world is sort of now really Uber Eats and DoorDash. You know, Grubhub is kind of an irrelevant player now.

Dan Ritterman [00:06:18]:
Yeah. Oh, really? Do you wanna use Grubhub as much?

Seth [00:06:22]:
No. They they’ve sort of disappeared off the stage. I don’t they’re a publicly traded company anymore, although I’d have to look that up and confirm

Dan Ritterman [00:06:27]:
that. Don’t quote them on that. But still so so so so so so Yeah.

Seth [00:06:29]:
Do not quote me on that. You

Dan Ritterman [00:06:30]:
see, you sold to Dorsey, which is interesting. I mean, did you meet Jack?

Seth [00:06:35]:
I did meet Jack when we went out to square. I’m not entirely sure he was aware the acquisition happened.

Dan Ritterman [00:06:42]:
Honestly, he’s a character. They’re all characters. You know, take it take it or leave it, but it’s a he’s it’s an interesting thing. So you’ve done the entrepreneurial journey. Were Were you ever practiced did you ever do law, or are you one of those guys who got the bar and said, I don’t wanna

Seth [00:06:55]:
do that. At a law firm for a few years. So that was we we started the company in 2008. For the 1st 2 years, we we brought on a bunch of restaurants. We grew the business. It wasn’t entirely clear to us at the time, and, look, this was my own lack of vision because, obviously, DoorDash became a multibillion dollar company. Right?

Dan Ritterman [00:07:11]:
Yeah.

Seth [00:07:12]:
So, tens of 1,000,000,000 of dollars. So we didn’t really have that vision. We we envisioned it as a mom and pop version of that business that could operate along the main line, and I’m not so sure that we ever really intended it to be a full time job. 2 years in, I kinda went to law school part time, worked at the company at night. We grew the business together. My bit partner was there. When I graduated from law school, we had managed to grow the business to something that really had grown. You know, we we started sort of ball of Kenwood through, call it Bryn Mawr.

Dan Ritterman [00:07:40]:
Yeah.

Seth [00:07:41]:
By that point, we had expanded out to King of Prussia. Oh, wow. You you went beyond the

Dan Ritterman [00:07:45]:
main line. You went out to, like, the the depths of the main line.

Seth [00:07:48]:
Because for those who don’t know, the

Dan Ritterman [00:07:49]:
reason why it’s called the main line is that the main running Pennsylvania Railroad line was there, and that’s why it’s called main line. Not the more nefarious main line heroin thing. No.

Seth [00:07:59]:
No. No. No. Right. So the main line is the old train line that essentially runs right down what is now route 30, which kinda

Dan Ritterman [00:08:04]:
goes and build up the whole line. They don’t hold they hold against the northern suburbs all the time.

Seth [00:08:10]:
That’s correct. So we had kind of grown it to that point by the time that I graduated from law school. So I passed the bar and looked up and sort of said, well, you know, my partner had done it and run it for a few years. So I said, look. Let me take it over. This is 2014. I went back and ran the company and sort of took over operations. He went on and built some video games.

Seth [00:08:28]:
He’s got a company called Cleaversoft. You should check it out. Oh, put put in

Dan Ritterman [00:08:31]:
the show notes. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah.

Seth [00:08:33]:
Yeah. Built the game sold to Apple. Oh, that’s awesome. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very cool guy.

Seth [00:08:39]:
Best friend from high school. Still my best friend out there. So, yeah, I think and part of that had to do with us selling the company. Right? We we had been told since day 1, don’t start a company with your friends. It will be the end of your friendship.

Dan Ritterman [00:08:51]:
And you’re still friends. So to that point, you’re still friends, but you probably knew when the call quit.

Seth [00:08:57]:
Well, that was part of the conversation was we didn’t start this to become the heads of a huge delivery company.

Dan Ritterman [00:09:03]:
Yeah.

Seth [00:09:03]:
We’ve sort of grown this. And, by the way, this is my this is this is my approach to all businesses. Right? We started mainline delivery with $20,000 in cash, and I’m not saying that everyone has access to $20,000. That’s just

Dan Ritterman [00:09:13]:
not a lot of money when you think

Seth [00:09:15]:
about it. It’s also not an absurd amount of money, and we never put an additional dollar into it after that. Really? So we distract the company from that, and, you know, it’s it’s doable. And I think you do that by making one small correct decision at a time. That’s right.

Dan Ritterman [00:09:30]:
And a hustle. As much people don’t like

Seth [00:09:32]:
to take over the world that way, but you can grow a pretty meaningful business that way.

Dan Ritterman [00:09:36]:
Yeah. And you did to the point where Jack is like, well, me, he may not have realized he was buying you. But, you know

Seth [00:09:42]:
I’m joking. He may. I am.

Dan Ritterman [00:09:43]:
He may. But he’s like, let’s get let let’s go I want I like Dan. Let’s go buy his company. Yeah.

Seth [00:09:47]:
Yeah. Exactly.

Dan Ritterman [00:09:47]:
I mean, we’re not joking on him being a pothead or anything. ROE. No, I’m joking. But the idea I don’t

Seth [00:09:52]:
know what he mean. Exactly. No. We thought about more

Dan Ritterman [00:09:54]:
the fact that he’s the head of Square. And at that point, head of Square head of Twitter. He probably just signed on the dotted line saying, is it and asked these people, like, is this a good idea? And they’re like, yes. And they got it. Fine. Get it.

Seth [00:10:04]:
You know what? I I went out there. I was I worked for Square for 2 years at

Dan Ritterman [00:10:07]:
Oh, really? Are you they kept you on board? That’s pretty cool.

Seth [00:10:09]:
So they kept me on board. My partner, Rich, who had already started this, you know, Cleaversoft kinda decided I’m gonna go do that full time. And I said, I’ll stay on and kinda manage this area for the next, you know, foreseeable future. They needed somebody to manage the transition because at the end of the day, it’s a relationship business. Yeah. And we were the ones who had the relationships with these restaurant owners, most of most of which our largest restaurants by and large were independent operators.

Dan Ritterman [00:10:31]:
Let’s talk about the main line. The main line’s very homespun, small, large You don’t have large

Seth [00:10:39]:
large restaurant operators. We you have 2, 3 units, maybe 4, but nobody who no huge chains. So those were not our major clients.

Dan Ritterman [00:10:45]:
That’s that’s one thing about the main line is what’s amazing about it is that they’ve kept things at bay, and they’ve all well, they’ve also all shoved everything in the King of Prussia.

Seth [00:10:54]:
That’s right. That’s right. That’s true. That’s true. Which to the benefit of King of Prussia Yeah.

Dan Ritterman [00:10:58]:
Yeah. Prussia is what’s now the 2nd biggest mall in America.

Seth [00:11:01]:
With with 0 public transportation access.

Dan Ritterman [00:11:03]:
Access. Oh my god. Don’t get me started on that. Seth has been talking about that and the boulevard loop forever. That’s inside baseball. If anyone looks up, look up the Roosevelt Boulevard, subway system. There’s actually a subway system under the boulevard. There is one.

Dan Ritterman [00:11:17]:
There’s tracks.

Seth [00:11:19]:
Oh, they should reactivate it?

Dan Ritterman [00:11:20]:
Reactivate and clean it up, but they actually build it up to this up to, like, I think, Grant. We was where you look like in this podcast, but still they built up to Grant, and there’s still entrances throughout the boulevard. But but they but they they don’t have they have to keep moving the high speed north town high speed line a tumor stops and that’ll never happen. That’ll never happen. God forbid. Right. You know, that kind of thing.

Seth [00:11:42]:
God forbid. Although the King of Prussia train line is dead too.

Dan Ritterman [00:11:44]:
So it’s crazy. It is. So anyhow, so you left, left about Philadelphia, more about you. So then you say you, worked at square for a while for 2 years, and then you got out and then what brought you into real estate commercial real estate? And so, I mean, when you think about it, when you’re a real estate broker, you are an entrepreneur. You have to be kind of in that mentality because it’s your business.

Seth [00:12:05]:
Yeah. So I worked the Ally Contract at Square for 2 years. Square had this theory of the tour of duty theory of work they call it, which which I sort of love. And I call it, like, Netflix lite. Like, if you’re familiar with the Netflix sort of model, which is like, when you’re done, we’re getting rid of you. Right? When when your purpose here has been finished, we’re gonna get rid of you. Right? And they and if you can look that up as podcasts about Netflix, where even the highest level people, as the business shifts, if you’re no longer relevant, you’re out. Yeah.

Seth [00:12:31]:
Right? It’s very cutthroat. And Square is not like that. But they do have this model where you’ve come here to fulfill a purpose, and when you fulfill that purpose, you should move on, or we’ll gently tell you maybe it’s time to move on. Right? And if we have another position here that fulfills a new purpose for you, that’s great. But if that’s somewhere else, that’s great too.

Dan Ritterman [00:12:49]:
No hard feelings kind of thing. Like, you know, grow up, believe in that kind of thing.

Seth [00:12:53]:
So I went to my boss and I sort of said, look. I think I’ve I’ve been working with restaurants for 10 years now. I think I’m sort of run my course with this.

Dan Ritterman [00:13:00]:
Like, I’m done. I’m done. Right.

Seth [00:13:02]:
I I just sort of and I’m happy to talk about that, but that’s maybe a conversation one other day. But I just sort of was finished doing that and was ready to move on. So I gave them a lot of notice and said to give me a couple months to figure out what I’m gonna do. They said, that’s great. Keep doing your job. Just figure out what you wanna do. I love it. Talking to a lot of different people.

Seth [00:13:17]:
Right? And I’ve made a lot of different connections over the years. And the company that I work at now is owned by this guy, Glenn Blumenfeld. His son was the first driver that I ever hired at mainline delivery out of, like, 300 that we had over the year.

Dan Ritterman [00:13:28]:
I’m pausing that. This is just to show businesses and jobs come from relationships. Not from a not from a not from applying to these stupid things that you get ghosted. You it’s who you know, and, you know, it’s just the way it is.

Seth [00:13:42]:
And reaching out to people. And I I was introduced to him through somebody else actually, then we put this together, right, that I had known his son. It was, you know, I said, Blumenfeld. That that name sounds familiar. But anyway, it’s a tactics is a firm of former attorneys for the most part, not everybody for the most part, doing real estate brokerage work. Yeah. And the idea behind it as I started talking to him is, you know, when you hire an attorney, the expectation is that they work exclusively for you. Yeah.

Seth [00:14:08]:
Right? They have your best interest in mind. They’re not representing the the the party on the other side of the table, and they’re looking out exclusively for your interest. And in the real estate world, a lot of times, that is not the case. Right? And you you see you hear about it in the residential world all the time where the buyer buy or the seller’s agent has the buyer also, and it’s not entirely clear if there’s an arm’s length transaction going on that’s fully negotiated. Right?

Dan Ritterman [00:14:31]:
Importantly. Yeah.

Seth [00:14:32]:
And and the same idea sort of flows over to the commercial real estate world. In fact, in an even more meaningful way because these are huge transactions often.

Dan Ritterman [00:14:39]:
Yeah.

Seth [00:14:40]:
And in markets that you have building listings that have been consolidated into a few very large brokerage shops

Dan Ritterman [00:14:47]:
Yeah.

Seth [00:14:47]:
If you hire one of those shops to represent you as a tenant in your space search, there’s a very good chance that you’re going to run into a potential building that you like that that company also represents.

Dan Ritterman [00:14:58]:
And then lawyers can’t do that because it’s conflict. Brokers can do it because there is it it doesn’t matter.

Seth [00:15:04]:
That creates to us what is this sort of very, obvious conflict of interest. I don’t

Dan Ritterman [00:15:08]:
know how

Seth [00:15:08]:
else to say it. And if I were a tenant in the market with a meaningful requirement, I would wanna make sure that my broker was giving me unbiased advice about where I should.

Dan Ritterman [00:15:16]:
I love it. It’s it’s such a great, refreshing mentality to have. It’s great.

Seth [00:15:22]:
And that’s the that’s really the model. It’s we are very qualified to do this work. We have this unbiased way of doing this. Right? For a very small shop, we’ve done some extremely large deals in Philadelphia. We’ve won deal of the year 5 times, I think, with the PBJ award. You know, it’s just we’ve been able to this model has proven out to be successful. And I’ll be honest, not everybody buys it. Yeah.

Seth [00:15:44]:
Right? We don’t we don’t do all the work in the city. People still hire other full service repages to do this work, and that’s okay. Our our our message doesn’t resonate with everyone, but it does resonate with a lot of large companies.

Dan Ritterman [00:15:56]:
I bet. And I mean, I’m sure even the smaller companies, they’re like, we need a smaller office that but we need help because we’re not gonna

Seth [00:16:04]:
That’s really been what I’ve sort of been trying to spearhead as coming into tactics. Right? I have this entrepreneurship background, background, and I’ve sort of wanted to ingratiate myself in the start up scene in Philadelphia as best I can because I think that the real long term opportunity here I mean, I plan on doing this 10, 20, 30 years down the line, and we have the ability to take a 2 or 3, 4 person company, put them into a coworking space. There’s 20 coworking spaces in Philadelphia. I can talk to you for 10 minutes and tell you the 3 that we should go look at. Right? There’s not as many as there used to be. We worked down from 5 to 2.

Dan Ritterman [00:16:34]:
Yeah. Perfect. That was the best in my opinion.

Seth [00:16:37]:
Oh, I I agree. I mean, I I agree. We probably don’t even need the amount of coworking space we currently have in Philadelphia, but, you know, again, maybe that’s a conversation. You said

Dan Ritterman [00:16:43]:
you had

Seth [00:16:44]:
to be

Dan Ritterman [00:16:44]:
a coworking weekly. Exactly.

Seth [00:16:46]:
So we can help put somebody into a co working space, help them move out into their first office when they need space for 10, 12 people. Then as they raise money, as they grow, we can be the ones who are there to say, okay. Let’s put you in your first real corporate headquarters.

Dan Ritterman [00:16:58]:
That’s true.

Seth [00:16:59]:
And that’s sort of my what I’m trying to spearhead at tactics is and and our involvement with PSL, which we talked about a little bit.

Dan Ritterman [00:17:05]:
Not pumpkin spice not pumpkin spice latte.

Seth [00:17:07]:
No. No. I drink my coffee black. Yeah. You know, I, but I I, you know, I I just that’s what we’re trying to do. We’re hosting events in our office. We’re trying to get in with these smaller companies saying, hey. Look.

Seth [00:17:17]:
We’re known for these larger deals, but all of these same things that we’re talking about to those companies are relevant to you too.

Dan Ritterman [00:17:22]:
I love it. I love it. And it’s, like, soup to nuts. You you kinda grow up with them, and you help them along the road. It’s kinda cool. Got you. I like that. So And I’m sort of Yeah.

Seth [00:17:31]:
I wanna I wanna mention one thing. Maybe we haven’t talked about it a little bit. I think you’ll find interesting. I’m all I’m kind of always thinking about starting businesses and doing things, and my wife and I started a business, like, 3 years ago that I think you’ll find I think maybe the listeners of your podcast will find interesting. My wife is a teacher, was a teacher. She retired yesterday.

Dan Ritterman [00:17:49]:
I probably would’ve survived.

Seth [00:17:52]:
But part of the theory of the restaurant delivery service was lot of these people who are running restaurants, they’re really good at making food. They might not be that great at making money making food. Mhmm. Right? And I think that applies to a lot of creative people. Yeah. Right? They’re really good at this thing. They’re not necessarily really good at making money doing

Dan Ritterman [00:18:07]:
this. Exactly. Yeah. And

Seth [00:18:09]:
I think that flows through to teachers on some level where they really love teaching. They love helping people. They don’t love the idea of finding people to help or talking about how much money they wanna charge. Yeah. Right? And I kind of said to my wife, if you can be that person who can make those connections, you have a deep bench of teachers that you’ve met over 15 years of your career. We can make a business out of that. And we’ve done that over the past 4 years. And the success of it is part of the reason that she’s retiring because we’re gonna make that a full

Dan Ritterman [00:18:37]:
time job.

Seth [00:18:38]:
And I think, like, this is a company that has under $200 a month of fixed cost.

Dan Ritterman [00:18:45]:
Oh, isn’t that great when making this system on the cheap and it works, and it’s all upside? Time?

Seth [00:18:48]:
Because the the business is, like we talked about, relationship driven, and it’s my wife’s ability, which, again, like, not everyone has this ability to find clients, mostly on Facebook Yeah. Who are looking for tutoring for their kids and saying, I can find the right match for you because I know all of these teachers.

Dan Ritterman [00:19:06]:
That’s such

Seth [00:19:06]:
a brilliant

Dan Ritterman [00:19:07]:
idea. And

Seth [00:19:08]:
it’s The

Dan Ritterman [00:19:08]:
teachers have the summer off, and they’re like, now what?

Seth [00:19:11]:
It’s a company that, like, anybody could start and seem to be with mainline delivery, by the way. And I I I another point for people who are listening to this, like, ideas are cheap. Yeah. Right? There are a lot of ways to get involved. It’s it’s the execution, and, really, it’s getting started. That’s the hardest part.

Dan Ritterman [00:19:28]:
The easiest in the case is your EIN number because that’s gets you the paid IRS.

Seth [00:19:33]:
I can’t tell you how many people over the years about mainline delivery said to me I had that idea 5 years ago, and my response is like, okay. It’s clear. Why ain’t you why are you doing that? How to respond to that.

Dan Ritterman [00:19:43]:
Why are you doing it? Yeah.

Seth [00:19:45]:
I know it’s not a novel idea. Right? Like, very few businesses that are starting are truly novel ideas. Right? You’re iterating and improving on something that exists most likely. Yeah. And, you know, I’ve now started 2 businesses that just didn’t one in conjunction with my wife that didn’t require any extensive capital Right. And that I have not that we did not put an additional dime into once we started.

Dan Ritterman [00:20:06]:
Oh, bravo. That’s awesome. Yeah.

Seth [00:20:08]:
We just we take a little bit of money out as we can, leave a bunch of it in, and, again, because most of our money comes from Facebook or most of our most of our marketing comes from Facebook, we’re not spending a lot of money on. So it’s just these things are all doable.

Dan Ritterman [00:20:21]:
It’s doable. Exactly. So in your mind, because you’ve done the corporate, you’ve done the brokerage, which is sort of kind of entrepreneurial. You’ve done the entrepreneurial. Still in the entrepreneurial with your wife. What’s the best thing about being an entrepreneur even as a side hustle entrepreneur?

Seth [00:20:37]:
I just think that when you’re doing this kind of work, the the upside is infinite. Right? And, I play a ton of golf. I, I I think entrepreneurship is a lot like golf. Yeah. In golf, like, nobody’s playing defense, and the ball’s not moving. It’s just you doing what you’re doing.

Dan Ritterman [00:20:56]:
I love it.

Seth [00:20:56]:
Right? And business isn’t exactly the same way. There are some probably playing defense. You have competitors. But when you’re in control of the business by now. The ball’s not moving unless you move it. Right? So it’s you get to decide how you move forward in every way when you’re the entrepreneur. And there’s something intimidating about that. Yeah.

Seth [00:21:17]:
And there’s also something really freeing about that. Love it. Right? Mhmm. And I think that if you’re the right kind of person who can manage the stress of having to deal with how you spend all of your own time because people aren’t handling you work for the most part. Yeah. It’s it’s the best way.

Dan Ritterman [00:21:31]:
I love it. I I enjoy it. I love it. You know, the cash flow sometimes is not always the most fun thing in the world, but, you know, because that’s kinda that’s on the flip side. What keeps you up at night? I mean, being entrepreneur being entrepreneur with a full time job too.

Seth [00:21:44]:
You know? Well, what I’ve learned is that everybody is in sales. Oh, so true. Right? And I don’t care really what you do. If you can’t sell, you’re going to end up working for somebody else who can. Yeah. Right? Because and and the people who make the most money at law firms, it’s not the ones who are doing the work. It’s the ones who are bringing in the work. Yeah.

Seth [00:22:05]:
Right?

Dan Ritterman [00:22:05]:
It’s the part I company It’s the associates doing the work. Yeah.

Seth [00:22:09]:
And that and people even in major, like, Fortune 500 organizations, people get furious at the salespeople for how much money they make in commissions. But the response is, they’re the ones who are bringing the money into the company. Yeah. Right? Without them, that they’re the engine that makes everything go. So whether you’re a solopreneur or you’re a Fortune 500 company, the sales is the engine of the company. Amen. And, it’s in the restaurant world is the same way. Making great food and making money making great food is not the same skill, and in fact, they are arguably divergent skills.

Dan Ritterman [00:22:39]:
Oh, they are very divergent skills. I mean, you can have a mom and pops greasy spoon. It makes great food. It’s like a hidden, but it’s a hidden gem. Right. It has to be discovered versus, you know, you have like, you know, Vela or you have heirloom in Doylestown. Getting one back local here, folks, but, you know, where the where they are, they’re focusing on the elegant food.

Seth [00:23:01]:
And when we started mainline delivery, people would ask me over and over again, how are you gonna market this? How are you gonna market this? And my answer was, this is the best idea anyone’s ever had. What do you mean how am I gonna market this? Everyone’s gonna find out about it and love it, And that’s not true. People don’t just find out about good ideas. They have to be told about them repeatedly.

Dan Ritterman [00:23:15]:
Oh, right. I think was it 7 to or 7. There’s 7 or 9 touch points if for someone even looks at your stuff.

Seth [00:23:22]:
And if you would ask me 2 years in the mainline delivery, could this ever be your full time job? I would have said, no. Of course not. Maybe it’ll pay my mortgage one day, but I’m gonna have to go get a job for the rest of my life. But then if you had asked me 5 years in, I would have said, I think so. And if you’d asked me 6 years in, I would have said yes.

Dan Ritterman [00:23:36]:
Yeah. And then you’re like and I can now have a full time job working for Square for a little bit and learn. And that’s another thing is when you have acquired and you stay at the company for a while, I’m sure you learn so much at Square. You didn’t know when you’re on your own too. So it’s like

Seth [00:23:48]:
Right. And, you know, a lot of people are are out there trying to raise money, trying to raise money, trying to raise money, and we tried to raise some money in the last, call it, 12 to 18 months of mainline delivery. Had we succeeded, it would have wrecked our company in the end. Because once we got approached to sell, had I not owned half of it, the amount that they were offering us would not have been meaningful enough to sell the company. We would have been sort of locked in because I would have been diluted so much. So the fact that I was a 50% owner of the company at the time of the acquisition That was nice. Was maybe the only thing that even allowed it to happen in the first place.

Dan Ritterman [00:24:19]:
That’s wow. Right. That’s that’s that’s a very smart tip is that, you know, make sure you watch your the dilution of your company too.

Seth [00:24:27]:
And you could argue that we lucked into that because we tried and failed to raise it.

Dan Ritterman [00:24:30]:
Yeah. So Serendipity, buddy. Serendipity.

Seth [00:24:34]:
And by the time we tried, by the way, the the world had already been taken over. Right? Yeah.

Dan Ritterman [00:24:38]:
You are a small fish in a big pond.

Seth [00:24:40]:
Right? Yeah. For 1st mover disadvantage, we’ll call it.

Dan Ritterman [00:24:43]:
Yeah. So the if you live, you learn, and they and you pivot and all that good stuff. So here’s here’s a question of of the podcast. What is the most important thing to carry with you all the time?

Seth [00:24:54]:
I think that the only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time.

Dan Ritterman [00:24:57]:
Oh, like that. There’s quality of these good analogies today, buddy.

Seth [00:25:01]:
You know, I’ve You’ve

Dan Ritterman [00:25:02]:
been around the block.

Seth [00:25:04]:
I have. But I I think people have a tendency to overcomplicate things. And life is full of complicated questions and problems, but generally, the step forward is not complicated.

Dan Ritterman [00:25:17]:
Mhmm.

Seth [00:25:17]:
Right? And, a lot of small steps adds up to really big things.

Dan Ritterman [00:25:23]:
Yeah.

Seth [00:25:23]:
And try to take a step back and say, you know, what is the next thing that I can do to move towards the goal?

Dan Ritterman [00:25:28]:
Absolutely. I love that. I love that so much. So, Dan, where is your order hall online? Where are you hanging out the most? LinkedIn, let me guess?

Seth [00:25:36]:
Yeah. We’ve I post, like, call it semiweekly videos with a colleague of mine, Gary Lozoff. We bring we try to find, like, 3 or 4 somewhat fun, whether fun in a bad way or fun in a good way, real estate stories, about Philadelphia. Lots of building foreclosures, lots of new fun things.

Dan Ritterman [00:25:50]:
Yeah.

Seth [00:25:51]:
Conversions to residential, talking about industrial warehouse leasing, which is really hot. Everyone wants to talk about it. So, you know, national stories, I’m talking about locally. So find me on LinkedIn. That’s the best place to do it. I’m I’m posting pretty regularly.

Dan Ritterman [00:26:02]:
Awesome. Well, Dan, I’m glad we finally got you on. I don’t know how you slipped through the cracks, but I’m glad I got you on because I know you forever. And it’s always gonna be always fun to have friends on the show. So

Seth [00:26:12]:
and guess what? I really appreciate it. I love chatting.

Dan Ritterman [00:26:14]:
Yep. And we’ll have you we’ll see everyone next week.

Seth [00:26:18]:
That was a great show. If you’re enjoying Entrepreneur’s Enigma, please consider giving us a review in the podcast directory of your choice. Every review helps us reach new listeners. If you like Entrepreneur’s Enigma, consider the other shows on the marketing podcast network at marketing podcast dot net.

Dan Ritterman [00:26:53]:
Gold theme gi. I hope you have enjoyed this episode.