002 - Sean Zimmerman Created a Better Kind of Office Workspace - and It's Delicious

Sean Zimmerman created a better kind of real estate office. It's cleverly disguised as a coffee shop, restaurant and co-working space. His ideas on how a workspace reflects a company's values led him to create a productive, social, and collaborative workspace that serves not just his company, but makers and creators throughout the Valley of the Sun.

Hosts: Jack Heald & Matthew Thornton
Guest: Sean Zimmerman
Mentioned in the podcast:
Launch Real Estate
Schmooze Workspace & Coffee

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Transcript

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Jack Heald 0:00

Well, welcome back everybody to the culture brand podcast. I am your host, Jack Heald and I'm with my cohost, Matthew Thornton, the founder, president and chief executive officer... No, the lead singer of the internationally unknown band Vinyl Station. That p art's true. You are the front man for Vinyl Station.

Matthew 0:25

And you are my guru and wisdom nugget machine Jack H eald. What's up man?

Jack 0:34

God, that is terrible.

Matthew 0:37

Yeah. Oh , I'm terrible.

Jack 0:39

Well, okay . That's why we're friends. I am the light to his darkness.

Matthew 0:46

Gross.

Jack 0:51

We're here today with Sean Zimmerman who's the president of AZ Homes. I believe your company is called Launch. Is that right, Sean ?

Sean Zimmerman 1:01

That's correct. Yes, Launch Real Estate.

Matthew 1:03

Now , I asked Sean to be on the show because I heard him at Phoenix Startup Week a couple of months ago and I said, "Sean, I have got to have you on this show." And we're going to set that up here in just a minute. But before we dive into the reasons that I had you here , why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself? Who are you, where'd you come from? Just give us the background on who Sean Zimmerman is.

Sean Zimmerman 1:29

All right. First and foremost, I'm a father of now two children. I have a 28 day old at home.

Jack 1:37

Thus the circles under the eyes.

Sean Zimmerman 1:40

That is definitely the circles under the eyes. I much prefer voice only because you really see how I've aged like incoming presidents in 28 days. Two little girls, a husband to a wife. And I am. What year is this? 2019. So I am 16 years into my career , which has spanned from fortune 100 consulting and working for Apple . I was part of the team that launched the first Apple store to Cupertino , to Latin America , New Zealand and Bahamas. Real estate development and more specifically the sales and marketing of resort real estate development across the country. So that led me back into Arizona and I dabbled in both development as well as owning a restaurant. And three years ago, cofounded Launch Real Estate , which has grown to be the sixth largest real estate company by sales volume, but one of the smallest by agent count in the state of Arizona.

Jack 2:51

So if this was, if you were doing the metrics via retail or retail establishment, then your sales per square foot are significantly higher.

Sean Zimmerman 3:00

Yeah . That is a great way of putting it. Probably two to three times higher than others in town.

Jack 3:07

And another metric would be revenue per FTE. I used to consult to the retail industry so I know all that Gobbledygook. I had no idea you were with Apple. You completely failed to mention that.

Sean Zimmerman 3:23

I may have. I came out of school and worked for KPMG and spun into Bearing Point and then we provided third party consulting services for Apple and Walmart.com. And I may have been part of the team that said, "don't you guys know that no computer company has ever made it in a retail store?"

Jack 3:44

Y'know, I have a similar story. I was actually the 11th employee at Dell Computer. Michael Dell and I used to go out to lunch long before he was Michael Dell. And I laughed at him when he told me that his vision of himself was to be the president and CEO of a major microcomputer manufacturer. I laughed right in his face.

Sean Zimmerman 4:10

I'm glad I'm not alone.

Jack 4:11

Yeah, yeah. So , I see a Chicago Cubs photo there on your back wall.

Sean Zimmerman 4:22

You might also see a New York Times, you probably see an Olympic skier. These are just some of the small little pieces of canvas art that we have strong throughout our - I'm actually sitting in the conference room of our coffee shop that's branding our real estate company through some kind of fun - maybe not officially licensed fun - but still fun inside our office.

Jack 4:55

Let's dive into real quick. This is not specifically the culture oriented kind of stuff that I want to talk to you about, but I love the concept that you described about... I don't want to steal any of your thunder. Tell us about the real estate business and the coffee shop. Cause those are not obviously two things that go together.

Sean Zimmerman 5:21

They typically aren't. We were a startup real estate company that got into the coffee business that got into the real estate business. And now I'll explain that a little bit more. Three years ago when we got together with about 10 of us and with the leadership of one of our partners, John Vatistas, we wanted to create something that was different inside the real estate industry. In the real estate industry, you typically have a lot of lone rangers, right? You've got hundreds, even thousands, I think 60,000 individuals running around the state of Arizona with licenses. And the reality is they all truly work for themselves, right? They're running their own independent business. And from what I knew and what I still know to this day is they really feel alone , as lone rangers and they're really protective of their , whether it's leads or their quote unquote secrets. And it creates for kind of a lonely existence in a business. And we wanted to bridge that gap. So we wanted to create something that was collaborative by nature, which you would say collaboration and real estate or residential real estate are probably the antithesis of each other traditionally.

Jack 6:44

I think Matthew's been in real estate.

Matthew 6:48

Yeah, I'm an agent. Yeah . And it's really. I'm lonely, but that's because I'm a jerk. Not because... No, I'm just kidding. I only do very sort of part time stuff, just a couple of leases here and there. And if, you know, if a friend needs it, he needs help. But I'm an active agent.

Sean Zimmerman 7:09

But even at that level, you could probably agree that for the most part it's just kind of you, right? I mean, it's you, unless you have a legal question and then you have support, but that's about the support you're getting.

Matthew 7:20

Right. And I'm the only one. Like my broker is just my friend that I've known for ages and so it's kind of just us and he'll throw me some stuff that he doesn't really feel like doing or whatever. I'm not like out there hitting the pavement all the time and trying to drum up business and doing all that stuff. Cause I just , I'm a musician. That's how I make my living. So , yeah I really , I always enjoyed it and it's always been really like a sort of a fun thing. And it's hard to make it on your own because you're on your own. It's just you start knocking on doors or asking, asking around. You bring it up in every conversation. It's almost like the people that are like doing makeup or a pyramid scheme or something, they just have to talk about it all the time. It's in every Facebook post and it can kind of get lonely in the end . It can kind of annoy everybody cause you're always talking about it.

Sean Zimmerman 8:16

Well, in that case, you're your brand, right? I mean, as an individual agent, to your point, you've probably got a ton of other agents out there and you are your own brand. You're your own accountant, you're your own marketing manager. And you have to be talking to you about yourself constantly because there's five others that are probably good talking about themselves or a sign across the street. So I can certainly relate you say that I think most people in this office would, would have related to something very similar.

Matthew 8:45

Yeah, you feel it for sure. Yeah. You feel it for sure. But you've tried to focus more on creating a culture.

Sean Zimmerman 8:53

Yeah. We think for a business that's about people, right? I mean, the agent interacting with the client, you know, as I say, agents don't sell houses, right? As a real estate company. And we do not sell houses. We sell, we actually house agents, right? We give them an environment, we sell agents and agents sell themselves. And the by-product is that ultimately they close on transactions on the buy or sale of others' homes. I always say we are not in the business of selling houses. I'm in the business of , in specifically at Launch, we're in the business, the people business. And I think that's where from our culture we really wanted to say first and foremost we are about people and if that is the statement we make, you can't be about a person, AKA the individual. You have to be about the people of a group. And therefore we thought it was important to find like- minded people. Because while you cannot judge a book by its cover, you can certainly judge it by the shelf that it sits on or the section of the library that it's in.

Jack 10:01

I want to jump in here real quick because Sean said that in the session that I attended, that he gave and when, when he said that , oh, it's about people, I kind of rolled my eyes because it's so typical to hear CEOs and presidents talk about, "oh, we're in the people business" and it's just complete bullshit. It's a phrase. And then Sean started, then he went on from there and I went, oh my God, this guy is , this guy's legit. This is not bullshit. What he's saying, this is why I said, "Oh man, I gotta have this guy on this show." So I apologize for the interruption. But I just thought that was so cool that, that this is, you get it, that you really do get it. And I , and let's hear about it. Sorry.

Sean Zimmerman 10:54

No, no, it does . I appreciate it. I mean there's, and there, I mean it's hard for me cause there's so much to tell, right? And , and it's easy to jump around. I think it's easy to jump around as I tell it, because our culture truly is seen in all these places. We don't mimic a culture and say, well, this is what we are. And then in the background, that's not what it is at all. Or, you know, Oh , here's what we are to the public. Uh , but then behind the scenes we're like cracking the whip and like, hey, you know, work longer, work more hours and give us more money. Um, that's not the point, which is why I think we can jump around when we talk about the culture that we've created because it truly is all interconnected from our office space layout to the technology that we developed for our agents to the way we handle meetings. Um, and even in the way we interview agents, which is yeah , traditionally this business I would say unheard of, right? Uh , it's typically, hey, come be an agent with our office and pay your fees and we'll make money off you. And we're good. Right?

Matthew 11:50

It's not the hardest interview. What are your goals or anything ? It's just, "Oh, you've got 400 bucks on a transaction. Cool. Come on. "

Sean Zimmerman 11:59

"Are you licensed? You are? Great." And we have 98 % of what we need from you is already achieved the other two percent is signing a nd the dotted line and r enew your license over here. Yeah. And we'll hope we don't get sued. You know what, we have fees for that. So if we get sued, big deal. We're really the opposite, in that we founded this environment to be collaborative by nature. Um, which again was one of those things you say, what does that really mean? And we'll talk, I think more about what we've done to support that collaboration. Um, the second thing that was important to us was , um, professionalism. So we really wanted career minded people that were doing this. Now it doesn't matter if they were doing $3 million a year in sales because that's where they feel comfortable, or if they're doing $125 million a year in sales, not the number one agent in the state. They're all the same to us. And to us it was about saying that this is the career path they've made. How much money they decided to make is up to them. But this is their career. And they might have kids at home and they're balancing that out and that's their full time job. But this is still the only career that they're partaking in on a daily basis.

Matthew 13:09

I would a bad candidate for them.

Sean Zimmerman 13:11

You may be a great candidate because you may be clever nature and you may be person that we really love to work with. But traditionally then we'd say, well, we really want, because we're not about the number of people, we're about the quality of them and the experiences they provide for their clients. And the third part is , uh , and I don't know you well enough Matthew, but, but I think you would qualify for this one, which is an unwritten rule, which I will say , uh , is "no assholes." But I think you're fine. I think you're fine .

Matthew 13:45

I do that in my, in my business as well,

Sean Zimmerman 13:48

Because you got to enjoy the people you work . I mean , right at the end of the day is we spent half of our lives pretty much in a working environment and we get to choose our spouse or our life mate and all being other people in our life. And oftentimes we don't get to choose the people we work with. But if the company you work in finds people like you, then maybe you are actually choosing the people you work with. Um, and we take it a step further in that after we've interviewed, I hate to say that term, gotten to know somebody as a human being, then we actually sent out a private announcement to everybody in our company and it simply says this: We would love to invite said person's name to the Launch family. If you have ever had any ethical dealings with them that you feel are not at our current standards, please email or write me or call me. Um , and that's anybody can be toast . Now we're going to into it. Oh, I dated the guy I 10 years ago and I'm all right with me . It's a different story, but I did a deal with him. He stole a lead . She called me a name during a professional interaction. Uh, I mean there's a number of variables that come up and we will revoke the invitation from that agent.

Matthew 15:11

Wow.

Jack 15:12

Okay, great. Now this, this isn't even the kind of stuff that I want to dive down into, but Matthew, you get a sense that it's not that they're not just talking the talk here.

Matthew 15:24

Yeah. Usually the first thing is when , when you're , especially in real estate stuff, if somebody mentioned collaborating, you go, how much am I going to be splitting my commission. Usually that's like, "well wait, how much of my commission do you want?" Now the initial resistance to collaborating could probably hurts you in the long run. It might save one bit of your commission on a transaction or whatever, but in the long run it's probably, that's why it gets lonely and then people struggle way more when they're not part of your team.

Sean Zimmerman 15:56

And then they leave cause they were looking for a solution and I mean the list goes on and you have attrition. I mean there's so, so yeah, you're absolute right. Yeah . And that's just sort of the, let's call the onboarding process. I think as a company we've taken it, you know, three steps further in that you can't make a decision in one part of a culture, which is "okay, we're going to have this statement and this is who we are" unless every decision that we make after the moment that we decided that our brand pillars were collaboration and professionalism. Um, and that we had to really like the people we work with and , and we had to want to socialize with them. I mean that was an important thing to us that if we were out and about and that it was about getting to know them as family and getting to know their families that then that went a step further and that went into creating our own office. Jack, do you want me to jump into the office?

Jack 16:54

You know what? I think this just needs to be organic. You know, your story, I'm going to jump in and ask questions where it makes sense, but this is just such an interesting story.

Sean Zimmerman 17:06

So the first thing sort of solves the column of the people and how we hire. Um, but then you still have this physical plant where people exist on a daily basis or theoretically may exist. Now the traditional real estate office would go out and they would get the most expensive office on the busiest corner so they could put their brand out in front of the world and they would build a bunch of offices that they would give to the highest performing agents and a conference room and a front desk staff where nobody would ever come to. In fact, what they were doing was breeding a culture of individuality , closed doors, secrecy , and hierarchies where you only got rewarded the more that you did in the company, which oftentimes meant the more secretive they thought they had to be, which meant the less collaboration. I mean, it was just like this perpetual cycle of building onto what the real estate industry has become. And frankly , I view it as a reason that people feel real estate agents are at the same level of attorneys and car salesman.

Jack 18:10

Yeah. And what I want to highlight there is the dichotomy between saying - I don't mean your company, Sean . I mean just in general - this dichotomy that we've all seen a million times before anybody's been in corporate America knows what I'm talking about. We're a collaborative environment. Those are the words. But then you look at the actual environment, the physical space, and there is nothing about the physical space that actually says collaboration. It says hierarchy. It says there are secrets. The secrets trickle down from the top. And if you're on the bottom, if you're on the front lines, the people actually doing the grunt work, then you're really nothing more than a cog in the machine. And you're nailing the problem as expressed in the physical environment. And I love the way you've solved it.

Sean Zimmerman 19:01

Good . And we're going to , I'm going to talk about it and I think he's around video. I might even take you and show everybody a little bit of the physical environment. As the president of the company, I don't have an office. I don't have an office that has four walls around it that I go for privacy. When I want privacy and I want productivity, I go to the same place any agent in our office would go to use. When we started solving for the office problem, we had to solve two things. To us was important to create an office that supports our culture, which means it should be collaborative in nature. It should be social , and fun. And it should have some sort of productivity space because agents are productive when they're typically either out in the field with clients or when they're really heads down getting their work done. Then they're productive again, when they're with other agents, talking to them, asking ideas, getting feedback, seeing what's working. And we found that like most entrepreneurs, so many of these agents are entrepreneurs were either working from home or they were working from a coffee shop, a wine bar, a restaurant. They're meeting their clients. And we started to dive a little deeper and said, well, if productivity is one of the three types of office space we use, where does that rank in what our culture is? So productivity's number one, group thinking is number two and social space is number three. So what's the most important thing that we say? Well, productivity, they can work from anywhere including their own home and be productive and they're really more productive outside the office. Okay. So productivity probably ranks the lowest in where we feel our office needs were . Social because we're collaborative by nature and that is the DNA of our culture. That's what we established in the beginning, means that we probably want an office space that has a higher level of bringing together some social elements. And then this sort of group work or collaboration space would be another office type use. Now, traditionally in an office group space, the conference room, right, it's a space people can go, they can be creative together and they can problem solve, have a whiteboard, use a TV screen. A social spaces, a cafe. I mean like a lunch, the back lunch break of an office and now it's a foosball table. The hideous break room. Yeah, the break room . And then it became the foosball table on the ping pong table. Well that's great if your culture is getting breaks and playing those games, it's something that's important to them, to the generation or the value graphics of the employees that you have. But other than that, it's just a break room that nobody uses, that the companies are trying to promote you to use . So , uh, we took it a step further and said, well, we'll create the productivity space. We knew that was important. We will have that. But how do we gain more social space and more collaboration space or group space without paying half our rent, which could be five, 10, $15,000, which is one of our biggest red line expenses. And we started to look at what relationships are symbiotic to us . And the first thought we had was, well , we'll just create a, WeWork space , right? We'll create a co-working environment space where anybody can come work. And maybe graphic designers come in and maybe , these others come in and they work with us and agents will drop in when they want to interview. Just kind of be a free for all. And then we sort of thought, well, if that was the solution that we might not have enough productivity space for our agents. Are we really then controlling the environment that we want? And is it really breaking the norm? Are we jumping on the bandwagon from everybody else? So the next thought , which I'll walk you into here came two years of really my partner John going back and forth and redrawing things and creating things was the only way to amp up a workspace , is to provide a space that people would actually want to come to. Now, I think Starbucks has proven pretty well that people want to go to coffee shops and they want to work there. So we created what I think is the first ever high-end coffee shop and workspace environments.

Jack 23:39

And now we've got the environment, we've got the layout. Let's dig into the philosophy. What we're seeing with Launch and with Schmooze is the outworking in 3d of the beliefs and the philosophies that you have internalized. So that's where I want to really dive then. You talked an awful lot about culture during startup week.

Matthew 24:15

Do you have like a, something that you realized about humans that triggered this?

Sean Zimmerman 24:20

I mean, I think the realization is that all we want is acknowledgement of our existence. And that when you support acknowledgement of existence on a daily basis, that you get a higher quality of being surrounding you. And when you create a higher quality being around you, you get more of good everything. I mean, everything that comes from that is a positive results . And when you ignore that and you ignore the human being, the human element , uh , I think that's when things shatter and fall apart. Uh, so, you know, I don't, I don't know if it was, you know, maybe it was, maybe it was , uh, for me it was a decade ago. I sort of had this realization that when you look somebody in the eye, no matter what , they're the person behind the counter at the ticket stand who's had a bad day and you acknowledged them for saying , thanks for being here. I really appreciate that you're doing this or it's the trash truck driver who, you know, is acknowledged for being a human being and not a guy behind the wheel at you. For me, I feel, and I see it , um, and I guess that was it. I'm going to guess, and I do remember it, it was a decade ago at a counter, a ticketing line at, you know, American Airlines and Sacramento and it was like, I looked her in the eye and sort of acknowledge her. I said, I see the guy had been really ruptured advanced. I said, listen, I , I'm sorry you got to get treated like that. Uh, I really wish people had a little better understanding for what you have to deal with on a daily basis. You don't make the travel schedules. And all of a sudden she bumped me to first class because she was just so happy that I acknowledged it, that she was real and having a day. Um, so, you know, for me, maybe that was the day or maybe it's the fact that that's what my family taught me and those are the values that I feel and, and I'm lucky to find guys like my partner John and the other co-planners in this company that share that same common element that, that we're just, we are all the same from a DNA standpoint. We are 99.9 and more the exact same beings underneath it all. We have the same fears, we have the same needs and we have the same ones. And um, we just have to acknowledge that

Jack 26:38

that answered in Matthew.

Sean Zimmerman 26:40

Yeah. So that was a,

Matthew 26:44

I love finding those, those little moments that like that little interaction, the fact that that guy was a jerk that was ahead of you might have influenced the opening of this coffee shop real estate company because those tiny little realizations that eventually turn into something way down the road are gonna . Those are my saying. My favorite things to discover about people as the like the, this, the small stories I've heard about studying history and some of the best ways to study history is to read biographies. So in order to understand the big picture, you have to kind of go down to a microscopic level or like a really small thing and , and then you understand the culture and what they were going through and how they had to use the bathroom back in the 18 hundreds or whatever it is. There are these little things and if you understand how the little things influence the bigger fish . So that was it . Yeah , it did answer my question very well.

Jack 27:40

So Shawn , I have identified five basic types of emotional triggers that all affect human beings emotionally and cause us to feel loyal. Um, and that's what resonated with me as I heard your speech. Um, one of the, one of the emotional triggers is our origin story, where we came from because when someone identifies with our own origin story, that automatically creates this sense of connection. Um, so I'd like you to, to, to dive just a little deeper if you can into , uh, that how you got to where you are not in terms of the business itself, that the beliefs that took you along the road from consulting with the first apple store in Cupertino to schmooze .

Sean Zimmerman 28:38

Well , it's a belief system. I'd have to say it started well before I ever consulted, right? Because I think that as a, as a human, I think that, you know, statistically, I don't know it , by the age of 13 90% of our neurons inside our brain have already made those connections. And we essentially are the human beings that we're going to be in the future. So if I really want to go back to the origin , uh , without sounding, you know , cheesy or lay might have to say , um, I was probably lucky to be brought up in a family status that I was brought up in. And I think most people would say that, are you lucky if your parents get divorced? So when your eight , are you lucky if you move in with your grandparents because your father has to take a job? That's that the area of support you , um, are, are you lucky if you know, you , you maybe don't see your mother for two years? Uh , are you lucky if your grandmother becomes your Sole Guardian by the age of nine? Um , now I'll say absolutely. Because the things that I learned from that was that number one, families first , uh, number two, you're never alone. And that doing and having a grandmother that was raised from seven years ago, you know, I think we were taught something that a lot people aren't taught today. Uh , but I'll be honest with you, the one thing I take away from her, and they call her Saint Anita , she started the , the charities in our town. She ran the food bank . She had 23 grandkids. She had seven kids. Uh , you couldn't tip this lady. Um, you couldn't upset her. She couldn't use a curse word is that ever since I was a little kid, she said, the only thing that matter in life was the golden rule. And you do onto others as you wished it on to you.

Jack 30:20

And, and it was, you're raising this, this fairly difficult from the standpoint of the nuclear family that's together, blah, blah, blah. That wasn't what you had. And so that golden rule was actually worked out, lived out merely it wasn't nearly spoken. Okay.

Sean Zimmerman 30:41

And it was a [inaudible] . And my father was a , so my father was a , uh, developer , uh, lost at all in the RTC days. He knew that he had is to try to support family of four. He was 36 with an 18 year old daughter , so that he had jumped , you know , yet my sister very young. Um, and he had four kids between the ages of eight and 18, or eight, eight, 16 , um, at home. And he became a firefighter because he knew that as a kid, all he wanted to do is help people. Now, it meant he made a third, maybe a quarter, maybe a 10th, of what he made when he was a home builder and developer. But it took the risk out of it. Uh , he could provide, even though it took time to provide personally better, and it , uh, showed that, you know, you set your ego aside to do what's right for others. So, yeah, I mean, all of those things I think influenced me too . Uh, get to where I am today. And that led me to wanting to work for a corporate environment because I didn't want what my parents had. I didn't want the ups and downs of an entrepreneur or of a real estate developer because, ironic. Right. Wow . I thought it was fit . To me. It was failed . I mean, honestly, it'll prolong time. I thought it was failure. My Dad failed to grow a company big enough. Might all because you're arrogant, you're 18 or you're 19 or 20, and I think I know everything in the world. Um, and I thought, you know what, to do this, I have to go work for corporate America. I'm going to climb up the ladder, I'm going to do something incredible. Uh , but I'm going to be sick and I'm going to be secure. Uh, and I'm going to have the title and people are going to recommend I'm looking for recognition out everywhere else instead of inside or across from me. Um, and at 120 hours a week , uh, which is what I was working . I mean , I , I logged 118 hours once, which if you do the math, that means like you sleep three or four hours a night, you for full 24 hour shifts. I remember sleeping under my desk one day. Um, and it was, and I thought that was my life. I was convinced that's the way things are supposed to be. Because the alternative to that was the fear of the ups and downs. And when ups and downs happen, you lose your family. Right. That was what I felt inside.

Jack 33:01

Listen to that Matthew. Wow , Sean , Sean right here that this is, this is one of these incredibly powerful points in a story is I was actually going to ask a question that I hoped would lead to this, but, but the things that you fear, you know, the thing that is a deep fear , um, we are, we are conditioned to hide that from the world what we are afraid of. And yet all of us have, there's probably six fears in the entire world that are real. And, and anybody you talk to, the chances are very good that whatever you're afraid of, they have the exact same fear. Whatever your real fear is. And one of the things that I've, that I've discovered in my research is that when we share a real fear that creates this incredible connection between us and the person that, that we're listening to, because suddenly we come down off of our pedestal where we are, you know, we s we speak back and forth with the Gods and uh , we occasionally pass what we've heard down to the, to the listening masses know we're down there with everybody. We're human, we face the same struggle. So I just likable .

Matthew 34:20

My favorite people are , um , the ones that are that open. I love that. We just met on the, on this video thing and you're getting really open about really personal stuff though . That's some of my favorite stuff because once you get to a point where you can do that, hopefully I've been able to do that too is, is you're not really, you don't really care what people think when you don't care what people think. It makes it really easy for them to like you because you're so open and it's , that's a really nice way to be. So I love that you're just, this is how it is who I am and this is what, this is what caused this or that or that's, it's really nice to , and sort of rare for people to, to run into somebody that's not just open and like this is ,

Jack 35:06

that's why it works. Yeah. I didn't mean to derail you there, Sean .

Sean Zimmerman 35:10

No, no, it's okay man . I think what you said it , you just said , um, we all have the same fears and the same six by some will drive us more than others. Um, and I think for me, understanding that everybody is the same as me and I'm the same as ever . Everybody checks in their brain all the time. Everyone else judged themselves. Everybody else is thinking, what are they thinking about? We right now it's acknowledging that like, Okay Shit, so it's fine. So I'm just like, else no better, no worse. Then I could start solving for problems because I realized my problems are everyone else's problems. Um,

Jack 35:45

well that's good. That's really good.

Sean Zimmerman 35:48

And that's when I could feel like, well, if we're alone in this industry, if I felt alone as an entrepreneur, even though I was never really the sales like there the real estate sales, cause I was, I was, you know, running projects or, but I always felt alone. I said, well then, and I remember one day somebody said, well, you're not an entrepreneur. I said, well , not entrepreneur . Why not? Is it because , uh , I'm alone too . As I closed my company down and I just, me flying around the world doing consulting, is that, does that not make me an entrepreneur? And then I realized, oh my gosh, it's the same way real estate . It feels , it's almost like this. All this talk about being entrepreneurs become, you have to have a star. Uh , you got to have people where you gotta be in technology. Um, and that's when we really felt from a lot , you know, again, I go back to why , why it launches here. We're just there to provide all those entrepreneurs that are all feeling the same fear , that are all feeling the same way about either how people are treating them or what they're saying or how they feel alone or how they have no support. We're just there to catch them in a bucket and say, where are your support? And , and each and you guys are all the same and you're each other's support.

Jack 36:49

I want to , I want to jump in here and kind of put a frame around this. Um, Joseph Campbell back in the early, the middle part of, of the 20th century, identified these, these foundational myths of, of humanity. And the one that I think he's most famous for is the hero's journey. And the hero's journey is essentially , um, he starts in a place of weakness. He goes through life and con and faces all sorts of common struggles. He gets knocked to the ground and eventually he finally figures out how to solve the big problem. And it's a problem that, that those of us who , who watch also experience . And so he is a hero because a, he's liked us. B , he's faced the same struggles that we've faced. But the difference is that he has overcome them. And, and as a hero, he's, he's essentially an archetype for us. Somebody who can look at, so what I'm seeing here is that launch, if I may, if I may be epic here, launch is the outworking in space and time of somebody who dealt with the same kinds of problems that virtually every other real estate agent deals with, struggled with the same, the same failures and fears and flaws, tried a bunch of things that everybody else has tried that probably didn't work and found a way to overcome that not only worked for him, but can work for everybody else who shares that particular path. That particular, that's, that's what I'm seeing here.

Sean Zimmerman 38:38

Yeah. And I would never , uh , ourselves to a hero. But yeah, ultimately what we did is we took that knowledge and we solved a problem that wasn't true to one man or one woman. It was true to truly all of them. It's those who recognize, you know, what they're missing or what they truly want, you know, and that that's who are there. So I'll tell you it was , I mean, whether that was it or whether it was knowing that and knowing that early pitch was, but you've got to shake it up. We're , we're industry changers because you can't just go out and say, hey, we're here for you to support you. It's like, no, we're going to change the industry. We're going to saying nobody's ever done before. Um, and we go back to saying how we work collaboratively, that 10 co-founders in this company would have been the biggest adversaries, right? They were different companies. They would have competed for the same business and a lot of circumstances, people might've thought they were untouchable , right? Because they do so much volume. And here you find 10 people. Again, it goes back to they're just 10 people that even at their success levels, share the same common fears and visions and goals. They've individually overcome them and they realize that together inside a company environment, they can help others overcome them and support them in a way that would lead not to their success. To other success. People only say one and one is two . I say one, one one's 11, right? Um, that's the power of working together. It's exponential.

Jack 40:10

Sean , one of the, one of the elements of, of cult your brand is, is persona. It's one of the triggers to emotional connection and persona is built from two different dimensions. The dimension that we admire in the dimension that we've identified to . So , um, the first part of the identification dimension is the what is most obvious about a person or an organization. And what, when I look at launch, here's , you know , what I see as l launch real estate brokerage, very obvious. Now what makes, what makes the , um, admirable part of a persona work is the utterly unexpected component . When you look at, at this person or this organization and you see what's most obvious about them, the thing that is most surprising, put those two things together and you create this powerful polarity that's very attractive. And so that's one of the first things I thought of when you told this story about schmooze the coffee shop. The obvious thing is this is a , this is a real estate brokerage with a real estate office. And the most utterly, totally unexpected side of that is, but they operate out of their own coffee shop. Those are , you know , those are two things that shouldn't go together there. And, and there's this polarity that draws us into it , um, and a tremendously powerful and I think, frankly, psychologically irresistible way. Um, so maybe you are aware of that. Maybe you weren't, but I'm telling you that's , that's what you've done. You've created this psychological , um, this, this overwhelmingly compelling psychological environment by putting these two things together that shouldn't go together.

Sean Zimmerman 42:11

It's funny when you , I guess we never thought of that . They shouldn't because I think we, we in our Bryan just think, well of course. I mean, you're right from the outside, you'd think they shouldn't go together. And instead that like , of course they should go together because our brand is , and this is how we work together and this is what we do. And, but you're right from the outside world, you'd think, how is that? Where would that make any sense? Well, it might be in 20 years where that's the new normal. Like all real estate offices have their offices and then they have a coffee shop that's like, of course, that's like you might say in 30 years, wait, you have a real estate office that doesn't have a coffee shop? That's so weird. And I've talked about it being, it's a coffee shop. Great, but what if we want to step further and we build airbnb's above it because then we could service our clients when they're out of town or they're coming in to look at homes or their houses are being fumigated. And we can literally take our client experience one step further and show them that we're not, again, that we're, we're really putting our clients' best interests forward and to our agents. We're saying we want to give you the tools to control your destiny. We want to show you guys that we can elevate an experience for yourself and for your clients. So yeah, I mean, you know, who knows what it really looks like.

Jack 43:22

So I want to , I want to go back and reiterate something that you talked about at the beginning of the conversation. This, this little experiment that you're running. You've got the track record that says it really works.

Sean Zimmerman 43:39

Oh, her. I , it's amazing. I mean, and I go back to that beginning, we were a real estate company that got in the copy shop and a copy shot they got in the real estate business. And I'll explain that and then I'll tell you why it works so well. Um, we were able to open the coffee shop and provide those things that were important to our real estate brand, which for collaboration and social environment for our agents to come together. And be together and have social interactions together and with their clients and control the experience at a high level. But that also meant that became rent. We didn't have to pay, so we took rent off our, our P and L as a real estate company. We pushed it to our coffee P and l that sees 300 people a day, 300 [inaudible] . I walk you through out there. It's a , I know to a Friday afternoon. Most people are off and doing their own thing and we're, we're full and it's like all week long. Now. We're going a step further now and we're creating a , which you probably saw, we added the bar. We're actually adding a bar. We're getting wine and beer and liquor so we can offer a little bit later service to now people can say, let's go to schmooze and have a glass of wine and hang out. Of course that adds to our, our bottom line. But our coffee shop is a cashflow positive revenue producing assets that then decided to go separate or and say, well we're, we're providing workspace for free. But what if we rented a conference room for someone by the hour or by the half day? So that's how we got back in the real estate business. So we said, well, we have this space that our agents use . That's what we built it. It's not being used all the time by our agents. So when it's not being used by our agents, why aren't we leasing that space out to these entrepreneurs who are coming and using our workspace again for 25 bucks an hour if they need a soundproof room. We have soundproof phone boots that are essentially, we have out there, we make on our rentals alone enough to cover what would be $1 million mortgage for , uh , for our commercial space on a monthly basis . That's incredible. Which means the coffee shop pays for its overhead as it foundation, which means that they really only have coffee and labor expense. So it's a , I mean, it's, it really is amazing. I mean, I , I really, I sit here and say I have to attribute it to my partner, John , um, who really sees the future. Um, and he sees the potential in people to take his vision of the future and run with it. And , and I'm just a guy that was lucky enough that John saw that in three years ago when we were co-founders and , and , um, wanted to step away and do small things and hand over the reigns to meet or to run this, this company. But I would never take all the credit. And there's some guys that just get it and , uh , others that are lucky enough to follow that vision and believe in that vision.

Jack 46:33

Well, I , I'm sitting here thinking about , um , how I instruct my clients in terms of creating, creating a persona that has the emotionally compelling elements, the most obvious, the most surprising. The fears are flaws and the, the values, the one that absolutely will not cross that line kind of value. And what I've heard here today is all four of those. We see the obvious, we've highlighted the, the most surprising , um, you've talked about this deep fear, which is a very common fear that a lot of us have. And then you know, that, that the value of the deepest value in terms of what you said, a no assholes, the no asshole rule, I don't know if you said it that way. That was how I heard it. And it , you know, it's, it's unmatched . It's unsurprising and that you've got the kind of real world, see it in three d success that you have because you've created the type of environment that, that is irresistibly magnetically attractive to your target audience. So I commend you. I just think that's extraordinary. I would, I would, I could keep this conversation going for quite a while , but we've been going for an hour now. Um, Matthew, you got any more questions or comments?

Sean Zimmerman 48:01

Uh, no, I'm glad he's going to booze at the place cause I'll be fine .

Jack 48:07

So thanks for doing that. I thought that was a compelling idea. Um, well , Sean , any last words you'd like to share with us? I just, I've really enjoyed this

Sean Zimmerman 48:20

and I think the only thing that I would ever live with anybody else are looking at their own brand or the work culture, which I think is, and I think you and I spoke with, it's like, it's such an overused term is that it's not a culture until it is actually your DNA. Until it influences every decision you make on a daily basis. And, and nothing you do, no dollar, you spend doesn't take into account what that fundamental culture is . Um, and that's the decisions that literally on a daily basis when we're working on something in the office, when an agent gives me a suggestion, when I get approached by a technology company to create an app for our agents, I say if, if what we're doing doesn't support this, the collaboration, the professionalism, this family spirit that we've created about the person. And I don't even want to look at it today. Um,

Jack 49:13

wow. Shawn , I'm so glad you agreed to be on the show today. Um , if folks want to get ahold of you, find out more about schmooze or about launch. What's the best way for them to do that?

Sean Zimmerman 49:25

Uh, I mean they can certainly email me any time . Um, it's Sean s t a n@azhomes.com . Uh , they can visit of course ac homes.com or come to schmooze. I mean, the best way to see it for yourself is come to schmooze. It's an old town Scottsdale. Honestly, we don't promote it. We don't have their ties. It is probably a hard to find online. Um, which is amazing that people have just found us , uh , by creating the right environment . So come up here and see if yourself, and I promise you, you'll be greeted by a friendly smile at the door. Uh, you'll feel it's a genuine experience and you know, you should walk away really feeling like you actually mattered. Even as a , as a coffee drinker. It doesn't matter if you're part of the company or not. You should always feel like you were welcomed and you belong.

Jack 50:08

Absolutely. I want to remind our listeners and our viewers that , uh , all of Sean's contact information will also be available on the podcast website. Um, well, Matthew, I think we've had another good one. I love it. All right.

Sean Zimmerman 50:26

I was gonna say, thanks you guys. I'm , I'm flattered. You know, to me it's just a story. Rogers , it's just what I do. It's what I believe in. So , uh, I don't look for, I don't go out, we don't search you . We don't search for the Opry to tell the story. So I certainly appreciate that you saw something in us that you took the time to listen. Um, so, so thank you and thank you for putting this all together.

Jack 50:47

You Bet. Absolutely. Well, for Matthew Thornton, I'm Jack Heald. This is The Cult Your Brand Podcast, and we will talk to you next time.