 studio. That's it. Check it, check it, check it. It's a unique hustle. It's your boy ECEO and I'm here with the lovely official Mr. Mako. What's going on? None of my dad walk on. Save man. So hey man, you know, we came down to Atlanta man. We've been definitely enjoying ourselves, right? Yes, sir. So I'm something of I like to do things on a whim, you know what I'm saying? So when I seen this opportunity is when I was really like, this the one right here, we got to get this one. You get all these other people and they all entertainers and they all on stages and everything. But it's the entrepreneurs, you know, we, you know, I'm needed to that too. So when I, when I'd had this opportunity, I said, we have to take care of this man. So I got Dr. James and Mr. Reggie here, man. And Dr. James, what did you say name of it? Well, let me get it right here. Ideal B is center, right? That's right. So, so just we want, we want to know a little bit about them, right? Hey man, so tell us a little bit about how you, how you got started. How we got started with this. Yes, I know you got many. I'll be quick. So we've been here for four years. Four years. And when we bought the building, the plan was to rent out 12 doctors' offices. This was a medical building. Okay. And what happened was that over about a three month period, we started getting phone calls asking, well, do you have a room that I could rent to do hair? Do you have a room that I could rent to do nails? And initially it was no, no, no, we don't do any of that. We don't have any of that. And then one day, one week, we probably got about five phone calls. And then it was like, knock, knock, you know, the people that spoken, this is really what they want. And so we shifted our development plan from renovating medical offices to offering individual suites. And so we started out with massage suites and then it morphed. We developed studio suites for cosmetologists. That's really the majority of the suites that we offer right now are studio suites, private studio suites for cosmetologists. Wow. And then the hair tech, excuse me, nail techs. Estheticians. Thank you. Thank you. We have braiders. We have lash techs. I mean, you can go down the list. Right, right, right. So right now we have, we have about 25. And so we're going to build these out. Well, we'll have 35. Wow. Private suites. Wow. So that's the capacity of this building is 35. It's actually, we could probably go up to 50. Okay. You know, but what are you going to do with all the rooms? I'm sorry. What are you going to do with all, no, because you said you're only going to go up to 35. If you can go up to 50 something, why not just do all the rooms and rent them all out? That's a great point. And so, and we may, we may, but we have a couple that we're going to keep as larger suites for some other things that we plan to do here. We may open a real estate brokerage here. And so we have auto brokers, auto dealers here, we have six auto dealers here. So there's a lot of demand for that right now. It's a beautiful building. Well, thank you. Man, you know, you guys are something else because actually, that's one of the things that I've been trying to move up to, because we've had businesses now for 16, 17 years. And my, my thing is I wanted to own a property to go get into commercial real estate. My mentor passed away while he was training me. Right. And I just wanted to outright only build it. But I'm so, I mean, you know, they gave me the pointers on what percentage to look for that had to be, you know, it had to have this many people in it when you get it so that you didn't lose your money. I mean, I've heard that from you remember when I did a venture where I went to several different business men, all of my own commercial real estate. And I had, I'm blessed enough to be able to walk into their offices. And I sit down and talk to them like Napoleon Hill did on thinking grow rich. And I was able to speak with them. And we, we, we sat and we talked and they gave me their story, their spiel on how they got started. And I was trying to wrap it up in a bow in my own way for my own self in the end. So I, I still pray to God or let me be able to, you know, deal with that, with that avenue. We can help you with that. I'm gonna definitely be calling you. I got your number now. So you're in trouble. I'm going to be calling. Like I said, I'm trying to do it. She knows that's my dream. I wanted to get into it. I wanted to outright own a, own a building or several buildings. That's what God would have. Cause I've been in business so many years and just never did do anything but rent, just to be quite honest. And we were blessed to have our first landlord. He was a blessing the way how he is. It was very old school in the beginning. We didn't even sign a lease. It was a handshake and we lived by that. And it was just so awesome to see that type of trust. You know what I mean? You don't have that nowadays. I didn't really understand him. He made, he taught me a lot. Like I, one day I got beside myself. I was like, you know what, give me a receipt for, I just paid him for six months for it. And he took out an envelope that I had gave him and gave him the money in or gave him this check in, ripped it, wrote on down the ground and just gave him the paper back. He said, that's your seat. Well, we have expansion plans. So there's definitely room for you to jump in and have a little slice. Like I said, that's something I wanted, you know, that's something I wanted to venture into. And like I said, he died. I was there with him the day before he died. She was like, his wife, like, you got to come over and see Mac. He's going to pass away. And it was like about say two months before that he sat in the floor of my store and was just, we talked and talked and talked. So that's the, hey man, God has a way of dealing with people and getting them to where they need to be. And look, he brought me to y'all. So I'm happy. And let me share this also that that owning is a great idea, owning real estate, but it's not always the best idea. Yeah. So I've been in a real estate business for over 30 years. Okay. And the thing I can say is that, for example, what we offer here costs a lot less for people to occupy a space than it would be for them to go out and own one. Okay. So for now, some people think the rate may be a little high, but we allow people to move in. We take all the risks that's involved in construction and cost quite a bit. Real estate right now, the construction costs and the material costs is prohibitive. That's actually one of the barriers of entry into real estate is that it costs a lot of money. So our customers are small business owners that don't necessarily have the capital where they can go out and they can purchase a building. So I mean, we mentor people so we can absolutely put people on the right path that want to go out and buy building. But what I wanted to focus on for a moment was really the customer base that we have. So our customers, as I said, these individuals who may, maybe they were leasing someplace else and they decided to reduce their costs because they rent a building, you know, you're going to pay a rate per square foot. And you don't have that works, of course, you guys are entrepreneurs in the building. So you're going to pay a rate per square foot. And on the surface, it may sound like you're going to save a lot of money because you have a lot more space. But when you consider all the costs, for example, you're going to spend 20, 25% down. So for every hundred thousand dollars, you're going to spend 25,000. So depending on where you are in the market, you know, you could, you could, you know, you might find a building that's going to be a few hundred thousand dollars. So you just multiply 25 times every hundred thousand dollars. And that just tells you what your down payment is. And then not only are you paying a lot upfront to buy the building, but then you have all the construction costs. So we basically allow people to come into a space like what we're in right now for one week rent and one week deposit. I should think about that for a minute. A person can come in and occupy the space that we're in right now for one week rent and a one week security deposit. And they move into a space, everything's brand new, heating and air turnkey, turnkey, heating and air brand new, everything. Wow. So they can, they can, they can get in for less than a couple thousand dollars. And they don't have to do, because I know when you do lease, a lot of times it depends on the property, especially a property as nice as this, you have maintenance fees and all these other fees that management fees, triple net, all of these other things that, you know, because when we first rented, it wasn't any of that. It was just, this is what you're going to pay. And that is it. I like that. But we've had multiple locations. So we went through having stores that you had to pay the triple net. You had to pay the maintenance fee. You had to pay the broker fee and all of this, everything else. We've done it every way. I can't stand that. We take it all. We take it all. That's what's up, man. And it helps a lot of new business owners who are people who want to get in business as well. It, it, it guides a light to them to be able to get into business, right? Absolutely. And then our target market right now, although we have a few new people, we prefer the seasoned business owners who may just want to change locations. They have the clients, they have the customers, and they know what they're doing. And they're just looking for good space. And so this is what we call a class C kind of a neighborhood. This is not Buckhead. It's not Midtown. It's a transitional neighborhood. And a lot of the people that are business owners here, they live in the immediate area within a three to five mile radius. So when a couple of years ago, for example, they may have gone to Midtown, they may have gone to Buckhead to try to rent space. Then the customers have to drive across town to Midtown to Buckhead, which may appear to be a nicer neighborhood, but then they got to pay for parking. They have to inconvenience themselves by leaving their neighborhood to go, to go north. So we service primarily the south side. Okay, this particular location, as Mr. Reggie said, what we're scaling on is that we're actually building other buying other properties that basically duplicate this another neighborhood. And that's like I said, I definitely Atlanta is definitely a place where everybody's coming to a lot of different people. I know the guy that just lever, he just moved here. Yeah, if it's just McDonald, you know, it's the place is moving, the south is moving, even in Dallas, it's like people are people are looking for businesses to open up. So how was it? How was it for you during the pandemic, the pandemic, the COVID move? We shut down. Okay. And basically, the whole hospitality industry had to shut down nationally. And for whatever, and it really was politics, because they made the decision in Atlanta, like they did many cities across the country, early with the pandemic, that certain, certain professions were high risk professions. And they just, they basically, they stigmatized cosmetologists and said, okay, if you go to a salon, you go to a barbershop, you're at greater risk, which is ridiculous that you're a greater risk than going into a restaurant or going into Costco. Okay, or going into home. Because you're more face to face when you're doing cosmetology is you're, you're closer to the person. And that's part of that's what they're looking at. That was part of the logic. But you're going to come in contact with people, no matter what. So, so, so we had to live with that. We shut down for four, four months, I think it was. But for your people that rented their spots during that four months, did you, did they still have to pay that rent for the four months? Although there were clothes. How did you deal with that? We waved it. You waved it awesome. We waved the rent during that time. So just leave your gear here. We're just, we're giving it to them. Why can't I have you for landlord? We did not get that. We got, they didn't not only just, they didn't just, didn't waive it, but they actually made, because my friend, they're like similar mentor died in one of our, and he sold the property. He sold the property for right before the $1.4 million. He sold it. And, and, um, yeah, they doubled the rent on us. On us. Like right after, like, yeah. It messed me up. And they doubled the rent. They doubled it. They said he wouldn't get it. On almost everybody in that whole location. So, so think about it. And that's as the lease was going on there. That's sad, but not, but I would just say, and the reason they had to do that, because they still had these mortgages effect. Yeah. And they just, you know, they had to pass it on to you guys. I stayed and I mean, I'm dealing with it. I was hoping that they would sell it because I felt like, okay, if they sell it, maybe we'll get somebody in who's better. These people, quite naturally, they don't care. And what we did when they came back, what we did for the first 30 days, we allowed people to pay half of what they were paying. So if you're listening for those who have fantastic landlord treasure it, because you won't learn to appreciate it. And that's the lesson of life. You don't appreciate something until you end up with something else. Yeah. Well, I appreciate it. I appreciate it, Mac, all those years. I knew I had something special. I knew that. Yeah. Yeah, we knew. We knew it. And so I knew that with, if that building was to sell, I didn't even know if I would say that because I used to help maintain. We wish we could have bought it at the time, but we couldn't afford it. We couldn't have went to the bank. But the opportunity didn't just open up. Right. So the other thing that I share with you is that we don't have long term lease agreements. So as a commercial broker, that's one of the things that I wanted to kind of introduce. How long do you have it for? We don't even call them a lease agreement. It's technically it's a service agreement. So the service agreement allows, it allows, they have the exclusive use of, for example, this area. Then they may have the non-exclusive use of other parts of the property. So some of the spaces that we have, for example, they may have a shared, may have shared bathrooms. Some have shared waiting rooms, reception rooms, et cetera. Right. And so they have the exclusive use of the individual suite and then the non-exclusive use of the common area. So you don't have a term on the paperwork? It's a, it's a, it's a 12 month term. Okay. So a year or so to say. Well, it's 80 years. It's an agreement. Thank you. And, and we also allowed, we did allow them a chance to give us, to terminate agreement with the four week notice. Oh, awesome. At any time. A four week notice, they could terminate the agreement. You know, you'll never lose anybody with the way how you do things. I bet he has lost people. I don't think, you know, we lost people early. It's based on business. Yeah. And part of what was happening was that we had the number of inexperience business owners. That's it. That's it. Yeah. But if you get seasoned, easy to come in. Right. If you get seasoned ones or people who have been through certain things, they will stick to you and won't want to leave. They'll make it work because they know what they have. Yeah. But when you were choosing this building, what do you look at when you're choosing a building? Did you just, oh, that's a good deal. I'm going to buy it and make it work. Or did you, because, you know, some people will tell us, like, when we open different stores, it's like, well, did you look at a demographic? Did you look at how much everybody made? Did you look at all these statistics? Did you, they look at, they ask all these questions, but some people just do it on the fly. Some people actually do look at all of these things before they make a decision. So what's your reasoning behind? So that's an excellent question because that's the traditional, conventional way of looking at commercial real estate. You look at all the data that's going to support the decision to buy a business in the building, the demographic, the household income, etc., etc. So this was a little bit more of a gut kind of a feeling because I've been doing this for a while and I've looked at the numbers and the numbers were great. It was a tremendous opportunity. And the interesting thing is that at the time, five years ago, for example, the economy was a little bit more depressed than it is now. Okay. And so there was a lot of, I get a lot of, a lot of entrepreneurs who I know I've done business with who said, no, just stay away, stay away. Don't even, don't, don't do it. Don't do it. Don't do it. But it was a more of a gut reaction. We bought a lot in Southwest over the last, you know, a couple decades and it was a great deal. And it's really, and so the pendulum has really swung the last, I'll say, 24 months in spite of COVID. You're right before COVID, six months a year before COVID, the pendulum was really swinging when we were getting a lot of demand because at one point again, everyone would come by and say, no, for that price, we can go someplace else, we can go north, we can go there, we can go there. And then as they've seen what we've done with the building, you know, it's been a lot of. So when you first came here, the building did not look like this. You did all of the renovations and fixed it up. Yeah, we've, we've spent quite a bit. Okay. That's, and it takes money to make it. It really does. Exactly. And this is what I was saying about, you know, buying is not always the right of the best opportunity. Okay. Because you may not get your money back when you think you're going to get it back. I mean, we just, we just spent, you know, significant amount on a new roof. Yeah, that's not cheap. I already know that. You know, and so for most people, they just couldn't, they couldn't make it work, you know. So for that reason, you'll see a number of buildings in the neighborhood where they just have put any money into it. Yeah, I've seen that. I love that. Your building stand out from everything else because of how you've maintained it and made it look. Well, thank you. And I really have to give the credit to the tenants that are here because the building is just a building. You know, building is not a business. I tell people it's a building, it's a construction. You know, the business is based on attracting the right kind of people who kind of recognize what you're doing and say, listen, I want to be a part of that. So this is, this is a community. That's what the business opportunity is about. We're building a community. We're not just landlords here to collect rent. Your family, you end up being family. That's right. Have you ever went to the city to find out what are their plans for the city in whether building it up, fixing it up, doing different things? Absolutely. Are there any plans that they're planning to do? The city is now, and the government's doing more now than they have in a long time. And, you know, the flip side, the COVID is that COVID has helped a lot of businesses. You know, COVID is something else. It had a lot of different ways that affected a lot of different things. That's right. That's right. You know, it affected a lot of businesses shut down. A lot of business shut down. A lot of commercial real estate was tough. It hit them tough. So it's like when you, when we sit here and talk about it, it's like, okay, when I first seen it, you know, I've seen millions and millions of dollar buildings, floors being shut down on different buildings, high rise buildings because people were not even going to build and they was actually doing things from their home. So this had to affect all of the commercial real estate in areas, I mean, in here. Absolutely. You know what I mean? It had to. Right. And you know, the saving grace for us was that this was, this was built as commercial office. Okay. But we've kind of flipped it where it's not just office, which is a lot of administrative, there was medical. Anyway, the point is that because we chose cosmetology, that's, you're not going to go to somebody's house they have your hair done. I mean, not, you may do that once or twice, but most people are just not going to do that on the regular. Right. And so I think that's a good, I think that's a good look. Yeah. So, so that, that, that was one of the reasons we chose the industry also, because we had the demand. And then what, and what we've learned is that it's a good customer base. Some who are in their homes who have to be or want to be in a suite. And so it's, it's really, it's been a blessing. It's really, right now we're, you know, we're not where we want to be, but we're not where we used to be. Who is? That's business. So we've been, we're really looking good right now. We think in a few months, six months from now, this is really going to be a great destination. That's really what we're working on. Greatness is a destination. And we're going to duplicate this in a few of the markets. If someone like to reach out to you to get more information about these suites, how can they do that? You can look in the camera and say, wow, they would go to www.ideal.idealsalonsuit.com. Idealsalonsuit.com. And what's your name again, doctor? Dr. James. Okay. Mr. Richie. Okay. I appreciate you guys for coming on the show, man. This year definitely was definitely something that I was looking forward to because I know that I know running a business, building a business is not easy. Building commercial real estate, being a broker is not easy. I know you guys are, hey man, you're having sin for a lot of people, man. And with the way that this whole conversation went, I know that these people over here that you are catering to are being serviced correctly. You know what I mean? And I just asked that you keep on pushing forward, man. Absolutely. We need more men like you, man. Thank you so much, man. Appreciate it. Man, hey, thank you. We love you. Well, we love you too. And we welcome you back. You know, we would love to have you come back, you know. Yeah. Yeah. We already, we, we, hey, we, Ryan, as you spoke to us earlier about coming back and speaking to each of the tenants that are here. Yes. Yes. So we're definitely. That way your audience really gets to understand what we're doing and how this is helping people. I can tell you this, when we do come back, you'll always be invited on the show. How about that? We look forward to it. Hey, man. Absolutely. Thank you so much. Yes, sir. God bless you. It's been another great segment of Boss Talk 101. Oh, yeah.