June 2, 2026 • 30 mins
Elon Elezra moved to Alabama for college and never left. A gig fixing iPhones in his dorm room turned into running storefronts for the largest reselling platform in the world, doing roofing repair, and buying real estate. He spent years treating every venture as a classroom, seeing a lesson in every hardship. But ambition has a price. When Elon tackled one of his first major commercial renovations, the project became a crash course in everything that can go wrong — and how much it costs to find out.
In this episode, Ben and Kathleen talk with Elon about what he has learned and how he has defined his own American dream. After successfully selling his garage door company, Elon continues to dream for more. These are The Unshakeables.
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
When Elon ELezra moved from Israel to the US for college,
he knew one thing. He was going to make it
in America, no matter what it took, and he had
the whole thing planned out.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
There's no way that I'm not going to grind and
work really hard. There's not going to be a scenario
that my kid needs a kidney, that he needs to
go after school programs and go on trips. I'm going
to buy it somehow.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
And he did what started as a side gig fixing
smartphones in his dorm room as a college student blossomed
into a real estate development career with multi million dollar properties.
Elon had officially made it, but his assent wasn't without struggle,
no matter how many times he could have quit, he refused.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
It is a true nightmare if you talk about nightmares
in this step of work. But it is what it
is well with the punches unshakable.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
And today, that's the story we're telling. Not the story of a business or an invention or an abstract idea, but of one man with a clear vision of how he's taking on the world.Welcome to The Unshakeables, from Chase for Business and Ruby Studio from iHeartMedia. I'm Ben Walter, CEO of Chase for Business. There's nothing small about the impact small businesses have on our country. Every day I hear from owners who are not only fueling our economy, but also shaping the character of our communities. Yet too often you tell us about the hurdles you face, regulatory red tape, access capital, and the constant challenge of finding resources to grow. These aren't just headlines, they're your stories, and they matter deeply to us.We don't use the Unshakeables typically to talk about us. This podcast is about you. But it's important that we also bring to you important resources that may help. And in this case, I'd like to talk about JPMorgan Chase's recent American Dream Initiative, which is designed to help put the American dream back within reach for small business owners everywhere. Through expanded capital and coaching, advocating for smart policies that matter to small businesses and continuing to innovate around services that help small businesses run and grow. We plan to support 10 million small businesses over the next several years. To learn more about the American Dream Initiative, go to jpmorganchase.com/communities/america.Hey, Kathleen, welcome back. You heard already, but we're talking to Elon Elezra.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Elon is a hustler, and I mean that in the
best possible way. He is moving a million miles an hour.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Yeah, and for those of you who were not in
the room with me, he's quite young, so it's pretty
impressive how quickly he's been able to do this.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
I was texting one of our producers asking that very question.
Speaker 4 (02:58):
Wait, how old is he? When you were conversation.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Put it this way, I have infinity percent more gray
hairs on my head than he does. The guy's just
making it happen.
Speaker 4 (03:06):
Making it happen. What did he say stopping it?
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Nothing?
Speaker 1 (03:10):
On today's episode, a man on a mission in Huntsville, Alabama. So how exactly does an Israeli end up in Alabama, you might ask. To start, Elon's Israeli, yes, but he's also an American.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
My mom is from America. Her family moved to Israel
when she was four. And then I do have an
uncle and an aunt that lived in Alabama.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
So that's why Elon is in Alabama. But it's not
why he's in Alabama.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Everybody hear about the American dream, the land of opportunity, and I just wanted to get out of Israel because I was hoping for something better here. Also, college opportunity here. In Israel, it's also a different path. You finish high school, you go military, and then you start your life, then you start to figure out college. And selfishly, the way I view it is I get to start my life about three years earlier because I didn't have to serve.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
He wasted no time starting his life in America. Elon
ran his first business out of his dorm room, fixing smartphones.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Advertising on Craigslist and Facebook groups, I was actually making maybe like $50 an hour as a college student fixing iPhones.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
He got a degree in accounting as.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
My backup plan, my safety in it.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
And after phones, he started a digital storefront facilitated by
one of the largest reselling platforms in the world.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
You buy X amount of products, you ship it to
Amazon warehouse, they store it and then they ship it.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Who pays for the inventory?
Speaker 2 (04:41):
You do one hundred percent. You got to pay for
the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
So it's your capital title bullets. It's in their warehouse,
that's correct.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
But you don't have to start big. You can start
with products that are fairly cheap and you climb your
way up.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
So what kind of products were you selling?
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Fidget spinners that were very popular, some dog collars. The
most successful thing that I had was a pillow that
you put on the arms of your office chair.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Fascinating. Yeah, he sold pillows for three years and he
worked formally as an accountant, but only for six months.
He saved up as much money as he could. Even then,
the goal wasn't to have money for the sake of
having it. Elon wanted to work for himself, so.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
He wasn't just leaving to do nothing. He was living
for something, hopefully greater.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
With a financial safety net, Alan was ready to jump
on an opportunity when presented itself in the form of
a roofing company started by his uncle. Alan joined him
and they opened the business together.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
It was good for what it was, but the roofing company, I guess the roofing industry, you don't have employees. The labor pool for it is subcontractors, and it's just how can you make a business big that everybody's a subcontractor? You tell them, "Hey, I have a job for you." They're going to tell you their price. But then you schedule everything. Then the next day, somebody else offered them, "Oh, I need it tomorrow." They'll move you, but now you have to push things with your customer. How can I grow a company that the people that execute the work are not your employees? There's really nothing proprietary to it, so how can I grow? How can I be different?
Speaker 1 (06:08):
After a few months, he sold off his half of
the company to his uncle.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
For very little. I didn't really care. I just wanted out.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
One thing you should know about Elon is that he's always thinking two, even three steps ahead. By the time he left the roofing company, he'd purchased a home, but not to live in. While at the roofing company, he went to a networking event where he met someone in the hotel business.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
She said, "Yeah, our hotel is about 98% booked throughout the whole year in this specific city." And I was very familiar with this city. So I went and I bought a house and then I started doing Airbnb and that was well.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Now by going well Elon means he stumbled into the
market for midterm rentals.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Somebody on Airbnb reached out to me and said, "I want this house for six months and they'll pay the normal price." I was like, whoa. Airbnb normally deal with two, three days and then you get a lot of parties and a lot of turnover and a lot of headache. And then somebody just came and rented my whole place for six months with the same rate, not even negotiated. I was like, dude, that's crazy. So then I went down that rabbit hole.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
When Elon decides to go down the rabbit hole, trust me,
he goes in deep. He didn't stop with two or
three houses. He bought thirty six.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
So he's been a very good business for me.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
If you define a very good business as one that's profitable,
then it could be fair to consider the roofing company
not a good business. For a loan, it was sort
of a failure, right.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
No, it's still running.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
It's still running.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
No, he was not a failure. I didn't make a
whole lot of money. He just hit a plateau. I
guess that might be a good explanition.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
In Elon's mind, there are no failures. Even the ventures that didn't pan out to him, they were learning opportunities or steps to the next thing. It's a mindset Kathleen and I were both fascinated by and we'll discuss later. So if you're keeping entrepreneurial score at home so far we've had smartphone repairs, online shopping, we've had roofing and we've had midterm rentals. Is this all in Alabama?
Speaker 2 (08:07):
All in Alabama. As an entrepreneur, you learn that there's always something better, and I have found my something better. But you can't just jump to it. You can't just jump to a $10 million development without building up your cash. The bank won't just give it to you.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Oh no, we won't.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Yes, right, So you have to build your story. And
we're not growing the houses because I don't want to
put my time there.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
Once the midterm rentals were up and running, Elon found
himself with extra time on his hands. Then a cousin
approached him with a garage door company idea. Alan had
already been in roofing and he didn't like that so much,
but he felt differently about doors.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
I saw how this is ran with a real operation. Everybody that works in a company works for you. You treat them right, they'll treat you right. And then on top of it, what I like about garage doors is that it's a lot quicker. The transaction from you show up to somebody house, you can fix his door the same day. If you don't fix it, you got to replace it, you can replace it the next day. And it takes one person. It doesn't take so much material orders. It was just more profitable business. I'll give you a side note. Until today, I do not know how to fix a garage door. So I was always the driver from the back. The computer, the pushing on Google and the pushing on advertising and the softwares and all the backend stuff was mostly me.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
What was your brand positioning? How did you grow?
Speaker 2 (09:27):
I think I've played all the cards right. That's, I think, how we grew. From the beginning, you got to think about what do big companies have. You want to play with the big players, you got to act like them. So all the big companies have very beautiful branded vehicles. They all have nice offices and they all have showrooms. You got to grow to it obviously, but the idea is what do they have that copy? So we did a very good branding from the beginning and we got really good software to manage and we got marketing company that we vetted out. And then the biggest thing that I would argue is playing the Google game. Everybody looking for home service eventually goes on Google and search for garage door company near me, roofing repair Alabama.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Elon loves this game so much that when he opened an ice cream shop last fall, he named it Near Me. When people search ice cream near me, his store comes up first. Pretty clever. As for the garage door business, Elon sold it last year. When he sold, he had 43 employees and $11 million in annual revenue. During that time, you also took on commercial property, right?
Speaker 2 (10:32):
Right during that time.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Yes, he and a business partner bought their first commercial
property in twenty twenty two. They loved the process and
the profit, so they bought another.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
It used to be an old skating ring back in maybe the '70s and then it was a bingo like they call it because gambling is illegal in Alabama. In some places they're able to get away with temporarily at least to do what they call charity bingo, which is slot machines. And after that got busted, it was a church before I bought it.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
He and his business partner planned to turn the building
into seven commercial office units. He rehired the team from
their first flip, including a great general contractor. He was reliable,
and more importantly, he had the right price.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
He gave me a bid. It was $260,000. I need $60,000 upfront to buy materials and I start right away. Okay, no problem. Here's the money.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
But then the guy he disappeared.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
It was just five, six months of him barely doing stuff. Like he was answering me, "Oh yeah, yeah, I'm sending my framers there today." But then nothing was getting done. So it was about four to six months until I said, "Okay, take my losses, move on." But in that time it was a lot of back and forth, which was not fun. A lot of time wasted, $60,000 gone, and it weighs on you. When you have to deal with bad things, it's not just like you take the phone call and then it's over. It lingers after the phone call.That's a tough thing about being an entrepreneur. A bad thing could turn into a bad day, a bad mood, bad attitude, but some things last longer, some things don't last as long and sometimes you've got to have the attitude that it will get better. And if you got a good deal and you know that the numbers at the end are going to be very high, so you might make less by least you're not losing your pants.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
Kathleen, what did you think of Elon? I mean, I'm
like a little dizzy. I'm not gonna lie.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
Yeah, your head must have felt like it was on a swivel. I have been chomping at the bit to talk to you about this. I was absolutely gobsmacked. This is not our typical episode. This is an episode that is not about a business. This is an episode that is about a person, a person who believed in the American dream, who came over to this country, who believed possibilities are limitless.
(13:00):
I mean, it's crazy just to rattle it off. We had armrests, roofs, ice cream, rentals, flex spaces.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Garage doors, garage doors,Can’t forget about garage doors. When I think about Elon and all the different businesses that he's built, I think he's had a good mix of relying on himself and partnering with others. And we've talked about that on the show before, but he's had partners for almost everything he's done. He partnered with his uncle on the roofer. He had a partner for the garage door business. He had a partner in the real estate business. So he has found ways to partner with other people who can compliment him. And we've talked about many times partially the value of having a partner so that you're not so alone in it, but also so that someone can bring things that you can't.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
Yeah, just thinking about the city that you're based in
as a partner too, and so thinking about what is
the strategic advantage that you have with where you're based.
Speaker 4 (13:53):
And I just thought that was fascinating.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
One could say," Well, Alabama, there's so much less opportunity there with where he's living and he's actually made this a real arbitrage where he's thinking about this being a location where maybe there isn't as much entertainment or there isn't a fun ice cream-like option. He's flipped it on its head to think about the location as a partner too and a real advantage. Do you think that that is really something that folks could do more of, think more about?.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Yes, and that exists in a couple ways. I mean, look, this guy came from the Middle East and he's planted himself in Alabama and made a success of it. So I would say a couple things. Number one, very often there is an entrepreneurial ecosystem in local markets. We talked about that with Gretna Machine Shop in Houston. She's got a group of manufacturers that all talk to each other that are working together for the ecosystem on behalf of each other. They're not sharing customer lists, but they're sharing training programs for employees, other things. So that's one way in which your location helps.The second is lots of cities around the country have all kinds of incentives for small business, for development, for other things, because they're trying to spur the local economy and grow the tax base. So there'll be all kinds of tax abatements and incentive programs and other things that can be taken advantage of at the local level. And then finally, local knowledge is a competitive advantage. Knowing the contours and the assets and the deficits of an individual place, that's a competitive advantage in and of itself.
Speaker 4 (15:24):
And this is what makes America so special.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
There's no excuse, like if you are not in a
big city, you can still fulfill the American dream. He
is a living, breathing testament of that. I just thought
it was so powerful.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
Let's get back to Elon. After he fired his contractor,
he had to find a new one.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
I reached out to a few GCs, got multiple quotes.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Of course, by GC, Elon means general contractor.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
All of them were at about 400 to 450 range. In the meantime, it takes time. A GC doesn't just come and give you a quote right away. You have to do a lot of things. You have to reach out to multiple tradespeople and they have to come and look at it. And in that time, the place got broken into.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
You have to keep a skating rink frozen, of course, which requires a lot and I mean a lot of electrical wiring. If you were into stealing copper, finding this building's electrical room would be like finding a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
So one weekend, all that copper got completely busted out.
Everything got broken. The electrical room, everything just one big mess.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Which changed his new contractor bid again. They had to reimagine all the wiring now, which to Elon was an opportunity to tear it all out and start fresh.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
It would've potentially turned out be more expensive trying to use this electrical stuff versus just going blank, like brand new, everything electrical because it's old, it's very heavy duty and I don't need heavy duty for flex space.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Plus the insurance payout on the theft. Things were looking up. He found a new contractor who was more expensive than his first guy, but definitely more reliable.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
And now he had to go back to the city
and repermit this under his name, and that's when the
city decided to switch on.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
Elon's original permits allowed for seven units in the building. The city didn't like that.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
Now they said, no, no, no. We don't want seven units. We only let you have two units. The only way you have seven units is if every single one have an individual bathroom.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
The existing bathrooms were typical public bathrooms, multi stall, multi sink.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
But now they want individual bathroom in each one and that's expensive. You got to break concrete. You got to bring plumbing. You have to go to the water company.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
So paying for seven bathrooms was one option. The other
was to keep the existing bathrooms and only make two
rental units versus seven.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
That ideal when your entire square footage you cannot charge
as much as you charge for smaller square footage. So
now my property is going to be worthless.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Did you think about walking away?
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Yeah, that was an option, to walk away, but it is what it is. Roll with the punches, unshakeable. So that's the route we decided to go, turn it into two units and now architect have to get involved. That took another month or two, more money, five, six, $7,000 to an architect. And eventually the city approves it. Now another months of renovation. But happy ending, plus gets rented out. We were about $1,350,000 all in into this. It was over a year, but still have to pay your mortgage. Time is money, Correct. So forget the time money as well. The bank, you guys still want your money. Don't matter to you still want the monthly payments. So the interest was about $60,000 a year. That's just adding to the cost. It was a long journey. A lot of headache, but it stabilized, got two good tenants that made it good ending.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
So you're clearly a serial entrepreneur. You've started all these businesses.
How do you allocate your time?
Speaker 2 (18:52):
I've became more picky. I no longer want to buy more single family homes from MTR because it's not worth my time. I can only have so much time. So what should I focus on? And that's, like I said earlier, no more buying houses and focusing on commercial real estate development. And then I have my fun project, my ice cream store. And I thought it will be fun, but it's not. I regret it because it takes so much of my time. It's doing really well, but extremely well for an ice cream store is not that much money. It's in my neighborhood. That's why I opened it. I have kids, so I thought that would be fun. I wanted to open something there. And also maybe something that I'll truly enjoy, but I have yet to enjoy it. It's open for about five or six months. And I find myself sometime working there for 12 hours a day.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
You're going to have to turn it into a self
serve system. Yeah, I'm a machine.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
It's tricky, but you know, there's always bad parts and
eventually it will be a very solid system that all
I have to do is show up there and enjoy
it with my family. And ice cream now work.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
At least not working ice cream. Elon is still working and getting more involved in commercial spaces with families at the forefront of his decision making.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
I was like, what's the best real to say? It's
plazas with an anchor.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Anchor he means anchor tenant, which is a store that
people will come to, places like Target, Nordstrom, household names
that consistently have high traffic. These stores anchor the plaza
or strip, bringing people to the smaller surrounding businesses.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
So I said, maybe I can find an anchor. And then I found Slick City Action Park, which is indoor water slides with no water. So it's really fun. Slick City, I think, genius idea. So I give huge credit to the inventors of it.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
So is this a franchise model.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
It is a franchise. Yeah. So I got territories in Alabama. I have already one project. It's under construction. I'm developing a plaza. I'm calling it like a family entertainment plaza. I want everything to be related to family entertainment and that's going to have Slick City and other retail. And I'm working on a family entertainment district, which is a whole district with a green space and stage and a hotel. When there's Christmas, we'll have a huge Christmas tree when it's 4th of July, we have a bunch of fireworks. Slick City is an anchor that will bring families in and they'll have a bunch of restaurants and then nail salon and barbershop for parents. There may be some dentists on the second floor. I'm not sure yet.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Kathleen, we got to stop again here. I really didn't
expect him to say that he'd become a franchise owner.
Speaker 4 (21:17):
Let's talk about that.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
Yeah, Because everything else he had done, it was his. His own garage business, his own roofing business, his own real estate business. And this is his own, but he's clearly operating inside someone else's framework. So I thought it was fascinating that he decided to go to the franchise. I actually think it was really smart. Now, he'd made some money already. So he had the capital to do it and he had the real estate piece of it, but he was willing to sign up and go in and take a bet on someone else's idea.
Speaker 3 (21:41):
Guess who was one of the or the I should say,
keynote speaker for one of the biggest QSR restaurant.
Speaker 4 (21:47):
Chains in the world.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
I'm guessing you.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
I mean, it was not my bingo card, but I
got to tell you, I was so struck by the
work ethic.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
Oh it's hard.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
It is so hard.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
A toilet breaks at two in the morning, they're there. Someone coming in to flip hamburgers doesn't show, you're there. And I couldn't believe what it took, but I think we're now seeing when you look at franchise owners, the lion's share of them are first generation. That is who tends to open up a franchise. I think that one of the important questions to ask is, am I someone that likes to color within the lines paint by number style, which is really what a franchise is more all about or someone who just likes a white sheet of paper and I'm just going to figure things out on my own.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Some things are hard to figure out on your own and scale on your own. How do I design a slide park? That sounds pretty hard. They've already done that. But I also think not all franchisors are created the same. They're very, very different. They have different rules, they have different standards, they have different capital minimums, they have different experience minimums. They require different things of you.We bank a lot of franchisees and many of them are very successful. They've chosen what they want to franchise intentionally in a way that compliments other skills that they have. In the restaurant space, very few of them will even let you do it if you don't have restaurant experience and often restaurant experience at scale. Sounds like Slick City's very different. You need to pick one that's looking for your kind of experience and where you know you have something to bring to it.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
That's true. And also feeling like you're really prepared for whatever that is. When I was speaking to these franchise owners, for example, they were saying that the corporate mandates that just keep coming down with the changes in branding and then they have to revamp the whole store and it takes a lot of liquidity to be able to do that. So again, making sure that it aligns with what you can really do. It isn't magical thinking.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
Even with all of his success, Elon is still learning
and growing. He mentioned a hotel at this plaza that's
an entirely new venture for him.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
Hotel is over my head for now. I know nothing
about it.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Right.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
I don't actually have the money to also do a hotel. So I'm working with a hotel developer. This whole project together with a hotel is probably going to be $40, $50 million. I can handle that retail spot. It's about half of it, he's going to be hotel half of it is going to be the family entertainment district. I'm a big fan of saying there's always something bigger and better and it's just been true for me. And when I started Slick City, that wasn't the plan. When I reached out to do a family entertainment district, it just evolved from ideas that just hit my head. I was like, it's actually a good idea.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
I want to ask you something that we asked to
all of our guests on the show, which is if
you had one piece of advice for a current or
aspiring business owner or entrepreneur. What would it be.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
My advice will be the only thing that matters is customers. If you don't have customers, you have nothing. There's a lot of people with ideas. You got to focus on how you get your customers and do absolutely nothing to stop. And the perfect example for this is my garage door company. I've put enormous amount of effort into getting customers, which is playing the Google game, as I mentioned earlier. And we would have not sold it for 10 figures without playing this game, without listening to the economy or the industry of where people find you, and then you do absolutely nothing to stop to get there. In my ice cream store, it's open for five, six months. I have over 700 reviews. I made it the cultures. There's nobody leaving that store without asking them for a review. Anyway, that's my advice.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Okay, Elon, thank you very much for being here, and
thank you for coming on the Unshakeables.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
Okay, Kathleen, I got to say, Elon is like no
other guest we've ever had before, and I know he
mentioned it earlier, but I have to say it again.
This guy is really unstoppable. I got tired of just
listening to him.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
Almost seven businesses in seven years. I have so much
reverence for this person, it's unbelievable. What were you thinking
on the other side of this mic.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
Well, you heard me ask the question about how he spends his time. Because even though it was over a few years, normally when we have a guest on the show or frankly when I see a client, occasionally we see one somewhat like Elon. We don't typically. We typically see someone who tells the story of their early days being all in deep on one thing really hard, suffering through it, all the trials, all the highs, all the lows and maybe eventually then they've turned it into a success and they're onto something else or they start a second thing. I have not seen anyone be as serial an entrepreneur as he's been in the time that he has done it in as many different industries with at least modest success in all of them and really outrageous success in others and just the head down, drive, take no prisoners, get it done, make it happen, really impressive.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
Right. The prevailing school of thought would be double down on what you're doing. Once you've finally gotten the lay of the land, because it's so hard to learn and he's taking courses and he's trying to get up to speed on completely new industries, there's a school of thought that would just say, focus on that and then scale that even further and build it out. But he's by his own mantra, it's bigger or better. Just keep going bigger, better, keep it rolling.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
Yeah, it was super impressive. The other thing he seemed to do well is he seemed to take something away from each thing he did and bring what he learned to the next thing in a sort of compounding way. So if I think about what he's doing with Slick City, he learned about, okay, I want something where the employees work for me. I want something that has a recurring revenue stream. I've learned in real estate that you need an anchor tenant. I'm going to create that myself. I know how to leverage a project. This guy has a young family in Alabama. Why do you think he feels like there aren't places for young families to go in Alabama? Because he's got one and he's looking for places to go. So I'm going to build it myself because I can do that.
Speaker 4 (27:31):
That nothing's lost.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
And I was so struck listening, he's got stealing happening with those copper pipes and yet keeps this opportunity mindset going. And I wanted to talk to you about that because I'm obsessed with mindset as you know. And there's something here to me that speaks to, again, the American dream. It's 250 years. Our forebears, the stock that we come from had this sort of mentality, which was like, I'm going to do whatever it takes and go to whatever lengths to provide for myself, to provide for my family.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
There is only one way, and it's through. It's that
just relentless drive of there is only one answer, and
that is this is going to work.
Speaker 4 (28:18):
Burn the boats, baby.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
Exactly, and it doesn't matter what I have to do
within reason to get it. He didn't bring any laws,
but he was willing to sort of push the limits
on everything to get it done. He was pretty clear
about like he go up to the line, but not
cross it. And I think there are others who cross it,
and I think that was an interesting thing to sort
of frame up.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
Yeah, willing to do whatever it takes to get those
reviews and asking everyone for.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
Them exactly, Like he's not doing anything wrong, He's playing
the system the way it is.
Speaker 3 (28:44):
Do you think we've all become a little too precious,
Like everything's just a little too manicured, a little too save,
Like we could push the boundaries a little.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
More, you know. Look, I work in a bank. We
have to be yeah, yeah, and we want to be yeah. So I think different into streets are different. But here's what I would say. What you can't ever give up is your integrity because you only get to lose that once, and so you have to operate within the bounds of integrity. But I think a lot of these frameworks that are set up are not as prescriptive as you could interpret them. And the people who are winning sometimes are the people who they're not crossing those lines, but they are kind of living on the edges of them.
Speaker 4 (29:23):
Yeah, And I should have said that differently.
Speaker 3 (29:25):
I think probably what I was more intending to speak
to is like a humility of just being willing to
get gritty and dirty and roll up your sleeves and
like do what you need to do.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
I think that's right, And it's like the system rewards reviews,
so I'm going to do what it takes to get reviews.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
As I was listening, I was like, am I cut
from this cloth? I'm like, I'm a little wimpy, you know,
Like it made me feel like there's more that I
could do to just push the envelope and like go
for it.
Speaker 4 (29:52):
I just I loved it. I really did.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
Kathleen, as always, thank you for the insights, thank you
for the energy. It's great to have you back.
Speaker 4 (30:00):
What a thrill this one was. This one was so
so glad to be here with you.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Unshakeables.
If you liked this episode, please rate and review it.
Speaker 3 (30:14):
At the early stages of a small business, every job
is critical to the survival of the business.
Speaker 4 (30:20):
A job can feel like the razor's edge.
Speaker 3 (30:23):
Next episode, we'll hear about a machine shop in that
very moment on a critical job.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
It couldn't happened, honestly, at a worse time. There was
just no opportunity for any failure and we had an
issue with the machine. I'm Ben Walter and this is
The Unshakeables from Chase for Business and Ruby Studio from iHeartMedia.
We'll see you back here soon
When Elon ELezra moved from Israel to the US for college,
he knew one thing. He was going to make it
in America, no matter what it took, and he had
the whole thing planned out.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
There's no way that I'm not going to grind and
work really hard. There's not going to be a scenario
that my kid needs a kidney, that he needs to
go after school programs and go on trips. I'm going
to buy it somehow.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
And he did what started as a side gig fixing
smartphones in his dorm room as a college student blossomed
into a real estate development career with multi million dollar properties.
Elon had officially made it, but his assent wasn't without struggle,
no matter how many times he could have quit, he refused.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
It is a true nightmare if you talk about nightmares
in this step of work. But it is what it
is well with the punches unshakable.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
And today, that's the story we're telling. Not the story of a business or an invention or an abstract idea, but of one man with a clear vision of how he's taking on the world.Welcome to The Unshakeables, from Chase for Business and Ruby Studio from iHeartMedia. I'm Ben Walter, CEO of Chase for Business. There's nothing small about the impact small businesses have on our country. Every day I hear from owners who are not only fueling our economy, but also shaping the character of our communities. Yet too often you tell us about the hurdles you face, regulatory red tape, access capital, and the constant challenge of finding resources to grow. These aren't just headlines, they're your stories, and they matter deeply to us.We don't use the Unshakeables typically to talk about us. This podcast is about you. But it's important that we also bring to you important resources that may help. And in this case, I'd like to talk about JPMorgan Chase's recent American Dream Initiative, which is designed to help put the American dream back within reach for small business owners everywhere. Through expanded capital and coaching, advocating for smart policies that matter to small businesses and continuing to innovate around services that help small businesses run and grow. We plan to support 10 million small businesses over the next several years. To learn more about the American Dream Initiative, go to jpmorganchase.com/communities/america.Hey, Kathleen, welcome back. You heard already, but we're talking to Elon Elezra.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Elon is a hustler, and I mean that in the
best possible way. He is moving a million miles an hour.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Yeah, and for those of you who were not in
the room with me, he's quite young, so it's pretty
impressive how quickly he's been able to do this.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
I was texting one of our producers asking that very question.
Speaker 4 (02:58):
Wait, how old is he? When you were conversation.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Put it this way, I have infinity percent more gray
hairs on my head than he does. The guy's just
making it happen.
Speaker 4 (03:06):
Making it happen. What did he say stopping it?
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Nothing?
Speaker 1 (03:10):
On today's episode, a man on a mission in Huntsville, Alabama. So how exactly does an Israeli end up in Alabama, you might ask. To start, Elon's Israeli, yes, but he's also an American.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
My mom is from America. Her family moved to Israel
when she was four. And then I do have an
uncle and an aunt that lived in Alabama.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
So that's why Elon is in Alabama. But it's not
why he's in Alabama.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Everybody hear about the American dream, the land of opportunity, and I just wanted to get out of Israel because I was hoping for something better here. Also, college opportunity here. In Israel, it's also a different path. You finish high school, you go military, and then you start your life, then you start to figure out college. And selfishly, the way I view it is I get to start my life about three years earlier because I didn't have to serve.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
He wasted no time starting his life in America. Elon
ran his first business out of his dorm room, fixing smartphones.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Advertising on Craigslist and Facebook groups, I was actually making maybe like $50 an hour as a college student fixing iPhones.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
He got a degree in accounting as.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
My backup plan, my safety in it.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
And after phones, he started a digital storefront facilitated by
one of the largest reselling platforms in the world.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
You buy X amount of products, you ship it to
Amazon warehouse, they store it and then they ship it.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Who pays for the inventory?
Speaker 2 (04:41):
You do one hundred percent. You got to pay for
the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
So it's your capital title bullets. It's in their warehouse,
that's correct.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
But you don't have to start big. You can start
with products that are fairly cheap and you climb your
way up.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
So what kind of products were you selling?
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Fidget spinners that were very popular, some dog collars. The
most successful thing that I had was a pillow that
you put on the arms of your office chair.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Fascinating. Yeah, he sold pillows for three years and he
worked formally as an accountant, but only for six months.
He saved up as much money as he could. Even then,
the goal wasn't to have money for the sake of
having it. Elon wanted to work for himself, so.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
He wasn't just leaving to do nothing. He was living
for something, hopefully greater.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
With a financial safety net, Alan was ready to jump
on an opportunity when presented itself in the form of
a roofing company started by his uncle. Alan joined him
and they opened the business together.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
It was good for what it was, but the roofing company, I guess the roofing industry, you don't have employees. The labor pool for it is subcontractors, and it's just how can you make a business big that everybody's a subcontractor? You tell them, "Hey, I have a job for you." They're going to tell you their price. But then you schedule everything. Then the next day, somebody else offered them, "Oh, I need it tomorrow." They'll move you, but now you have to push things with your customer. How can I grow a company that the people that execute the work are not your employees? There's really nothing proprietary to it, so how can I grow? How can I be different?
Speaker 1 (06:08):
After a few months, he sold off his half of
the company to his uncle.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
For very little. I didn't really care. I just wanted out.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
One thing you should know about Elon is that he's always thinking two, even three steps ahead. By the time he left the roofing company, he'd purchased a home, but not to live in. While at the roofing company, he went to a networking event where he met someone in the hotel business.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
She said, "Yeah, our hotel is about 98% booked throughout the whole year in this specific city." And I was very familiar with this city. So I went and I bought a house and then I started doing Airbnb and that was well.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Now by going well Elon means he stumbled into the
market for midterm rentals.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Somebody on Airbnb reached out to me and said, "I want this house for six months and they'll pay the normal price." I was like, whoa. Airbnb normally deal with two, three days and then you get a lot of parties and a lot of turnover and a lot of headache. And then somebody just came and rented my whole place for six months with the same rate, not even negotiated. I was like, dude, that's crazy. So then I went down that rabbit hole.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
When Elon decides to go down the rabbit hole, trust me,
he goes in deep. He didn't stop with two or
three houses. He bought thirty six.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
So he's been a very good business for me.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
If you define a very good business as one that's profitable,
then it could be fair to consider the roofing company
not a good business. For a loan, it was sort
of a failure, right.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
No, it's still running.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
It's still running.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
No, he was not a failure. I didn't make a
whole lot of money. He just hit a plateau. I
guess that might be a good explanition.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
In Elon's mind, there are no failures. Even the ventures that didn't pan out to him, they were learning opportunities or steps to the next thing. It's a mindset Kathleen and I were both fascinated by and we'll discuss later. So if you're keeping entrepreneurial score at home so far we've had smartphone repairs, online shopping, we've had roofing and we've had midterm rentals. Is this all in Alabama?
Speaker 2 (08:07):
All in Alabama. As an entrepreneur, you learn that there's always something better, and I have found my something better. But you can't just jump to it. You can't just jump to a $10 million development without building up your cash. The bank won't just give it to you.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Oh no, we won't.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Yes, right, So you have to build your story. And
we're not growing the houses because I don't want to
put my time there.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
Once the midterm rentals were up and running, Elon found
himself with extra time on his hands. Then a cousin
approached him with a garage door company idea. Alan had
already been in roofing and he didn't like that so much,
but he felt differently about doors.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
I saw how this is ran with a real operation. Everybody that works in a company works for you. You treat them right, they'll treat you right. And then on top of it, what I like about garage doors is that it's a lot quicker. The transaction from you show up to somebody house, you can fix his door the same day. If you don't fix it, you got to replace it, you can replace it the next day. And it takes one person. It doesn't take so much material orders. It was just more profitable business. I'll give you a side note. Until today, I do not know how to fix a garage door. So I was always the driver from the back. The computer, the pushing on Google and the pushing on advertising and the softwares and all the backend stuff was mostly me.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
What was your brand positioning? How did you grow?
Speaker 2 (09:27):
I think I've played all the cards right. That's, I think, how we grew. From the beginning, you got to think about what do big companies have. You want to play with the big players, you got to act like them. So all the big companies have very beautiful branded vehicles. They all have nice offices and they all have showrooms. You got to grow to it obviously, but the idea is what do they have that copy? So we did a very good branding from the beginning and we got really good software to manage and we got marketing company that we vetted out. And then the biggest thing that I would argue is playing the Google game. Everybody looking for home service eventually goes on Google and search for garage door company near me, roofing repair Alabama.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Elon loves this game so much that when he opened an ice cream shop last fall, he named it Near Me. When people search ice cream near me, his store comes up first. Pretty clever. As for the garage door business, Elon sold it last year. When he sold, he had 43 employees and $11 million in annual revenue. During that time, you also took on commercial property, right?
Speaker 2 (10:32):
Right during that time.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Yes, he and a business partner bought their first commercial
property in twenty twenty two. They loved the process and
the profit, so they bought another.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
It used to be an old skating ring back in maybe the '70s and then it was a bingo like they call it because gambling is illegal in Alabama. In some places they're able to get away with temporarily at least to do what they call charity bingo, which is slot machines. And after that got busted, it was a church before I bought it.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
He and his business partner planned to turn the building
into seven commercial office units. He rehired the team from
their first flip, including a great general contractor. He was reliable,
and more importantly, he had the right price.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
He gave me a bid. It was $260,000. I need $60,000 upfront to buy materials and I start right away. Okay, no problem. Here's the money.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
But then the guy he disappeared.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
It was just five, six months of him barely doing stuff. Like he was answering me, "Oh yeah, yeah, I'm sending my framers there today." But then nothing was getting done. So it was about four to six months until I said, "Okay, take my losses, move on." But in that time it was a lot of back and forth, which was not fun. A lot of time wasted, $60,000 gone, and it weighs on you. When you have to deal with bad things, it's not just like you take the phone call and then it's over. It lingers after the phone call.That's a tough thing about being an entrepreneur. A bad thing could turn into a bad day, a bad mood, bad attitude, but some things last longer, some things don't last as long and sometimes you've got to have the attitude that it will get better. And if you got a good deal and you know that the numbers at the end are going to be very high, so you might make less by least you're not losing your pants.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
Kathleen, what did you think of Elon? I mean, I'm
like a little dizzy. I'm not gonna lie.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
Yeah, your head must have felt like it was on a swivel. I have been chomping at the bit to talk to you about this. I was absolutely gobsmacked. This is not our typical episode. This is an episode that is not about a business. This is an episode that is about a person, a person who believed in the American dream, who came over to this country, who believed possibilities are limitless.
(13:00):
I mean, it's crazy just to rattle it off. We had armrests, roofs, ice cream, rentals, flex spaces.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Garage doors, garage doors,Can’t forget about garage doors. When I think about Elon and all the different businesses that he's built, I think he's had a good mix of relying on himself and partnering with others. And we've talked about that on the show before, but he's had partners for almost everything he's done. He partnered with his uncle on the roofer. He had a partner for the garage door business. He had a partner in the real estate business. So he has found ways to partner with other people who can compliment him. And we've talked about many times partially the value of having a partner so that you're not so alone in it, but also so that someone can bring things that you can't.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
Yeah, just thinking about the city that you're based in
as a partner too, and so thinking about what is
the strategic advantage that you have with where you're based.
Speaker 4 (13:53):
And I just thought that was fascinating.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
One could say," Well, Alabama, there's so much less opportunity there with where he's living and he's actually made this a real arbitrage where he's thinking about this being a location where maybe there isn't as much entertainment or there isn't a fun ice cream-like option. He's flipped it on its head to think about the location as a partner too and a real advantage. Do you think that that is really something that folks could do more of, think more about?.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Yes, and that exists in a couple ways. I mean, look, this guy came from the Middle East and he's planted himself in Alabama and made a success of it. So I would say a couple things. Number one, very often there is an entrepreneurial ecosystem in local markets. We talked about that with Gretna Machine Shop in Houston. She's got a group of manufacturers that all talk to each other that are working together for the ecosystem on behalf of each other. They're not sharing customer lists, but they're sharing training programs for employees, other things. So that's one way in which your location helps.The second is lots of cities around the country have all kinds of incentives for small business, for development, for other things, because they're trying to spur the local economy and grow the tax base. So there'll be all kinds of tax abatements and incentive programs and other things that can be taken advantage of at the local level. And then finally, local knowledge is a competitive advantage. Knowing the contours and the assets and the deficits of an individual place, that's a competitive advantage in and of itself.
Speaker 4 (15:24):
And this is what makes America so special.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
There's no excuse, like if you are not in a
big city, you can still fulfill the American dream. He
is a living, breathing testament of that. I just thought
it was so powerful.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
Let's get back to Elon. After he fired his contractor,
he had to find a new one.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
I reached out to a few GCs, got multiple quotes.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Of course, by GC, Elon means general contractor.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
All of them were at about 400 to 450 range. In the meantime, it takes time. A GC doesn't just come and give you a quote right away. You have to do a lot of things. You have to reach out to multiple tradespeople and they have to come and look at it. And in that time, the place got broken into.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
You have to keep a skating rink frozen, of course, which requires a lot and I mean a lot of electrical wiring. If you were into stealing copper, finding this building's electrical room would be like finding a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
So one weekend, all that copper got completely busted out.
Everything got broken. The electrical room, everything just one big mess.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Which changed his new contractor bid again. They had to reimagine all the wiring now, which to Elon was an opportunity to tear it all out and start fresh.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
It would've potentially turned out be more expensive trying to use this electrical stuff versus just going blank, like brand new, everything electrical because it's old, it's very heavy duty and I don't need heavy duty for flex space.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Plus the insurance payout on the theft. Things were looking up. He found a new contractor who was more expensive than his first guy, but definitely more reliable.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
And now he had to go back to the city
and repermit this under his name, and that's when the
city decided to switch on.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
Elon's original permits allowed for seven units in the building. The city didn't like that.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
Now they said, no, no, no. We don't want seven units. We only let you have two units. The only way you have seven units is if every single one have an individual bathroom.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
The existing bathrooms were typical public bathrooms, multi stall, multi sink.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
But now they want individual bathroom in each one and that's expensive. You got to break concrete. You got to bring plumbing. You have to go to the water company.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
So paying for seven bathrooms was one option. The other
was to keep the existing bathrooms and only make two
rental units versus seven.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
That ideal when your entire square footage you cannot charge
as much as you charge for smaller square footage. So
now my property is going to be worthless.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Did you think about walking away?
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Yeah, that was an option, to walk away, but it is what it is. Roll with the punches, unshakeable. So that's the route we decided to go, turn it into two units and now architect have to get involved. That took another month or two, more money, five, six, $7,000 to an architect. And eventually the city approves it. Now another months of renovation. But happy ending, plus gets rented out. We were about $1,350,000 all in into this. It was over a year, but still have to pay your mortgage. Time is money, Correct. So forget the time money as well. The bank, you guys still want your money. Don't matter to you still want the monthly payments. So the interest was about $60,000 a year. That's just adding to the cost. It was a long journey. A lot of headache, but it stabilized, got two good tenants that made it good ending.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
So you're clearly a serial entrepreneur. You've started all these businesses.
How do you allocate your time?
Speaker 2 (18:52):
I've became more picky. I no longer want to buy more single family homes from MTR because it's not worth my time. I can only have so much time. So what should I focus on? And that's, like I said earlier, no more buying houses and focusing on commercial real estate development. And then I have my fun project, my ice cream store. And I thought it will be fun, but it's not. I regret it because it takes so much of my time. It's doing really well, but extremely well for an ice cream store is not that much money. It's in my neighborhood. That's why I opened it. I have kids, so I thought that would be fun. I wanted to open something there. And also maybe something that I'll truly enjoy, but I have yet to enjoy it. It's open for about five or six months. And I find myself sometime working there for 12 hours a day.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
You're going to have to turn it into a self
serve system. Yeah, I'm a machine.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
It's tricky, but you know, there's always bad parts and
eventually it will be a very solid system that all
I have to do is show up there and enjoy
it with my family. And ice cream now work.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
At least not working ice cream. Elon is still working and getting more involved in commercial spaces with families at the forefront of his decision making.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
I was like, what's the best real to say? It's
plazas with an anchor.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Anchor he means anchor tenant, which is a store that
people will come to, places like Target, Nordstrom, household names
that consistently have high traffic. These stores anchor the plaza
or strip, bringing people to the smaller surrounding businesses.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
So I said, maybe I can find an anchor. And then I found Slick City Action Park, which is indoor water slides with no water. So it's really fun. Slick City, I think, genius idea. So I give huge credit to the inventors of it.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
So is this a franchise model.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
It is a franchise. Yeah. So I got territories in Alabama. I have already one project. It's under construction. I'm developing a plaza. I'm calling it like a family entertainment plaza. I want everything to be related to family entertainment and that's going to have Slick City and other retail. And I'm working on a family entertainment district, which is a whole district with a green space and stage and a hotel. When there's Christmas, we'll have a huge Christmas tree when it's 4th of July, we have a bunch of fireworks. Slick City is an anchor that will bring families in and they'll have a bunch of restaurants and then nail salon and barbershop for parents. There may be some dentists on the second floor. I'm not sure yet.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Kathleen, we got to stop again here. I really didn't
expect him to say that he'd become a franchise owner.
Speaker 4 (21:17):
Let's talk about that.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
Yeah, Because everything else he had done, it was his. His own garage business, his own roofing business, his own real estate business. And this is his own, but he's clearly operating inside someone else's framework. So I thought it was fascinating that he decided to go to the franchise. I actually think it was really smart. Now, he'd made some money already. So he had the capital to do it and he had the real estate piece of it, but he was willing to sign up and go in and take a bet on someone else's idea.
Speaker 3 (21:41):
Guess who was one of the or the I should say,
keynote speaker for one of the biggest QSR restaurant.
Speaker 4 (21:47):
Chains in the world.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
I'm guessing you.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
I mean, it was not my bingo card, but I
got to tell you, I was so struck by the
work ethic.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
Oh it's hard.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
It is so hard.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
A toilet breaks at two in the morning, they're there. Someone coming in to flip hamburgers doesn't show, you're there. And I couldn't believe what it took, but I think we're now seeing when you look at franchise owners, the lion's share of them are first generation. That is who tends to open up a franchise. I think that one of the important questions to ask is, am I someone that likes to color within the lines paint by number style, which is really what a franchise is more all about or someone who just likes a white sheet of paper and I'm just going to figure things out on my own.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Some things are hard to figure out on your own and scale on your own. How do I design a slide park? That sounds pretty hard. They've already done that. But I also think not all franchisors are created the same. They're very, very different. They have different rules, they have different standards, they have different capital minimums, they have different experience minimums. They require different things of you.We bank a lot of franchisees and many of them are very successful. They've chosen what they want to franchise intentionally in a way that compliments other skills that they have. In the restaurant space, very few of them will even let you do it if you don't have restaurant experience and often restaurant experience at scale. Sounds like Slick City's very different. You need to pick one that's looking for your kind of experience and where you know you have something to bring to it.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
That's true. And also feeling like you're really prepared for whatever that is. When I was speaking to these franchise owners, for example, they were saying that the corporate mandates that just keep coming down with the changes in branding and then they have to revamp the whole store and it takes a lot of liquidity to be able to do that. So again, making sure that it aligns with what you can really do. It isn't magical thinking.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
Even with all of his success, Elon is still learning
and growing. He mentioned a hotel at this plaza that's
an entirely new venture for him.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
Hotel is over my head for now. I know nothing
about it.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Right.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
I don't actually have the money to also do a hotel. So I'm working with a hotel developer. This whole project together with a hotel is probably going to be $40, $50 million. I can handle that retail spot. It's about half of it, he's going to be hotel half of it is going to be the family entertainment district. I'm a big fan of saying there's always something bigger and better and it's just been true for me. And when I started Slick City, that wasn't the plan. When I reached out to do a family entertainment district, it just evolved from ideas that just hit my head. I was like, it's actually a good idea.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
I want to ask you something that we asked to
all of our guests on the show, which is if
you had one piece of advice for a current or
aspiring business owner or entrepreneur. What would it be.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
My advice will be the only thing that matters is customers. If you don't have customers, you have nothing. There's a lot of people with ideas. You got to focus on how you get your customers and do absolutely nothing to stop. And the perfect example for this is my garage door company. I've put enormous amount of effort into getting customers, which is playing the Google game, as I mentioned earlier. And we would have not sold it for 10 figures without playing this game, without listening to the economy or the industry of where people find you, and then you do absolutely nothing to stop to get there. In my ice cream store, it's open for five, six months. I have over 700 reviews. I made it the cultures. There's nobody leaving that store without asking them for a review. Anyway, that's my advice.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Okay, Elon, thank you very much for being here, and
thank you for coming on the Unshakeables.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
Okay, Kathleen, I got to say, Elon is like no
other guest we've ever had before, and I know he
mentioned it earlier, but I have to say it again.
This guy is really unstoppable. I got tired of just
listening to him.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
Almost seven businesses in seven years. I have so much
reverence for this person, it's unbelievable. What were you thinking
on the other side of this mic.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
Well, you heard me ask the question about how he spends his time. Because even though it was over a few years, normally when we have a guest on the show or frankly when I see a client, occasionally we see one somewhat like Elon. We don't typically. We typically see someone who tells the story of their early days being all in deep on one thing really hard, suffering through it, all the trials, all the highs, all the lows and maybe eventually then they've turned it into a success and they're onto something else or they start a second thing. I have not seen anyone be as serial an entrepreneur as he's been in the time that he has done it in as many different industries with at least modest success in all of them and really outrageous success in others and just the head down, drive, take no prisoners, get it done, make it happen, really impressive.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
Right. The prevailing school of thought would be double down on what you're doing. Once you've finally gotten the lay of the land, because it's so hard to learn and he's taking courses and he's trying to get up to speed on completely new industries, there's a school of thought that would just say, focus on that and then scale that even further and build it out. But he's by his own mantra, it's bigger or better. Just keep going bigger, better, keep it rolling.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
Yeah, it was super impressive. The other thing he seemed to do well is he seemed to take something away from each thing he did and bring what he learned to the next thing in a sort of compounding way. So if I think about what he's doing with Slick City, he learned about, okay, I want something where the employees work for me. I want something that has a recurring revenue stream. I've learned in real estate that you need an anchor tenant. I'm going to create that myself. I know how to leverage a project. This guy has a young family in Alabama. Why do you think he feels like there aren't places for young families to go in Alabama? Because he's got one and he's looking for places to go. So I'm going to build it myself because I can do that.
Speaker 4 (27:31):
That nothing's lost.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
And I was so struck listening, he's got stealing happening with those copper pipes and yet keeps this opportunity mindset going. And I wanted to talk to you about that because I'm obsessed with mindset as you know. And there's something here to me that speaks to, again, the American dream. It's 250 years. Our forebears, the stock that we come from had this sort of mentality, which was like, I'm going to do whatever it takes and go to whatever lengths to provide for myself, to provide for my family.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
There is only one way, and it's through. It's that
just relentless drive of there is only one answer, and
that is this is going to work.
Speaker 4 (28:18):
Burn the boats, baby.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
Exactly, and it doesn't matter what I have to do
within reason to get it. He didn't bring any laws,
but he was willing to sort of push the limits
on everything to get it done. He was pretty clear
about like he go up to the line, but not
cross it. And I think there are others who cross it,
and I think that was an interesting thing to sort
of frame up.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
Yeah, willing to do whatever it takes to get those
reviews and asking everyone for.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
Them exactly, Like he's not doing anything wrong, He's playing
the system the way it is.
Speaker 3 (28:44):
Do you think we've all become a little too precious,
Like everything's just a little too manicured, a little too save,
Like we could push the boundaries a little.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
More, you know. Look, I work in a bank. We
have to be yeah, yeah, and we want to be yeah. So I think different into streets are different. But here's what I would say. What you can't ever give up is your integrity because you only get to lose that once, and so you have to operate within the bounds of integrity. But I think a lot of these frameworks that are set up are not as prescriptive as you could interpret them. And the people who are winning sometimes are the people who they're not crossing those lines, but they are kind of living on the edges of them.
Speaker 4 (29:23):
Yeah, And I should have said that differently.
Speaker 3 (29:25):
I think probably what I was more intending to speak
to is like a humility of just being willing to
get gritty and dirty and roll up your sleeves and
like do what you need to do.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
I think that's right, And it's like the system rewards reviews,
so I'm going to do what it takes to get reviews.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
As I was listening, I was like, am I cut
from this cloth? I'm like, I'm a little wimpy, you know,
Like it made me feel like there's more that I
could do to just push the envelope and like go
for it.
Speaker 4 (29:52):
I just I loved it. I really did.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
Kathleen, as always, thank you for the insights, thank you
for the energy. It's great to have you back.
Speaker 4 (30:00):
What a thrill this one was. This one was so
so glad to be here with you.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Unshakeables.
If you liked this episode, please rate and review it.
Speaker 3 (30:14):
At the early stages of a small business, every job
is critical to the survival of the business.
Speaker 4 (30:20):
A job can feel like the razor's edge.
Speaker 3 (30:23):
Next episode, we'll hear about a machine shop in that
very moment on a critical job.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
It couldn't happened, honestly, at a worse time. There was
just no opportunity for any failure and we had an
issue with the machine. I'm Ben Walter and this is
The Unshakeables from Chase for Business and Ruby Studio from iHeartMedia.
We'll see you back here soon
Hosts And Creators
Ben Walter
Kathleen Griffith
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