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And now, onto the show.
From Data Reels, this is FPNA Today.
Welcome to FPNA Today. I'm your host, Glenn Hopper.
Our guest today is Seth Zimmerman.
Seth is maybe a little outside of the mold of many of our guests on this podcast.
He started his career in public accounting and quickly moved into finance and accounting
leadership roles in the real estate industry. In the interim, he became a really good financial
modeler and is someone who I personally went to when I had Excel questions over the years.
He is an experienced finance and accounting executive with a 25-year track record of building
high-performance finance organizations, implementing new technologies, and advising on strategic
transactions. Seth is currently the CFO at Invest With Roots, and is held leadership positions
at multiple real estate and property firms. He is a CPA whose expertise spends financial data analysis,
organization restructuring, and initial public offerings. Seth, welcome to the show.
You're really going to be here.
Yeah, so I'm going to go ahead and just get this out at the beginning of the show.
Seth and I have known each other since about 1944. I think we met in the war.
Actually, it was eighth grade, right?
It was actually it was ninth grade.
Yeah, ninth grade. Okay, yeah. Yeah. So, which was not much later than 1944, I don't think.
It feels that way now.
So I'm excited to have you on because I love, you know, you're someone I've talked to over the years
when I whenever I had a tough Excel question, you're one of the people that was in my
rolodex that I would call on. And so I know, you know, as a great modeler, you've got a lot
to add here. But also, I don't know that we've had a guest from the real estate industry before.
And I'm looking forward to diving into talking about real estate in more detail.
But I also, you were telling me a little bit about the company that you just joined
invest with roots. And it's a very novel concept. So I wonder if you wouldn't just take
them in and tell us about invest with roots and what you're doing there and what you guys do.
Yeah, so we are a startup wheat. It's been around for a couple of years. We have raised so far
total of about $32 million and growing every day. We're a RIG ARI. So we are an SEC
filer, but only twice a year. And the, I guess, sort of the concept of our business is, you know,
obviously we're a for-profit business, but the founders really wanted to try and find a way to
have an impact on the lives of the residents who live in our apartments and our single-family houses.
And so what we do is when somebody moves into one of our houses, we have a program called
Living It, like you own it. Basically, at the end of a recovery quarter, we ask the residents
to take a video, you know, a directed video. So we tell them exactly what to do of their house.
And we could look at it and see if there's anything that needs to be fixed or, you know,
cleaned up, anything like that. And then they also have to be current on their rent at the end of
the quarter. If they do those two things, then we will give them $50 per month in a rebate on
their rent. And they can, they have two options. One is eager to invest it into our REIT. And the
second is a high yield savings option. And people have been really happy. Residents have been really
happy investing in the REIT. They've had nice returns. And they can also, we treat security
deposits as a fee. And so those are allowed to be invested in our REIT also, which is, you know,
obviously the big chunk that they can put in at one time. So people love it. People, you know,
residents are sticky because they get this opportunity. So we think that our retention is a lot
better than, you know, your typical landlord. And it's good for everybody in the city. We're
only in Atlanta right now. The city of Atlanta loves it and is, you know, wants to work with us
on low-income housing grants and things. So it's been great. What a great concept. And so are all
the REIT investors? Is it exclusively the residents or are others also investing? Others are also.
We have accredited investors who have put in, you know, a couple of million dollars into the REIT.
And you only have to put in a million dollars to start, sorry, $100 to start.
A big difference there, right? Yes, you know, well, maybe for you.
But, yeah, you only put in $100 to start. The transaction fees are very low. And so, you know,
it's a great way for somebody to sort of get into real estate investing without having the risk
of just buying one house or, you know, one small term complex or something. So the vast majority
of the investments are from, you know, your regular investors or accredited investors. But
if think it's about, we have a total of about $700,000 of value that's been created for the residents.
So it's, you know, it's significant. I mean, we only have 150 units right now. So, you know,
considering, and probably, you know, 80% of those residents participate in the program. So it's,
you know, it's just, we've really, you know, we feel we've done right by them. And they,
they like living with us. Super cool concept. And it's, it's, so it's, this is, I know you've
been in real estate forever, but this is a different approach to that. So great story. So let's go back
in your career. Walk me through, because I know you started out as a CPA in public accounting.
Walk me through your early career and some of the milestones that got you into real estate and,
and brought you to where you are now. Sure. So like you said, I worked for,
Einstein Young, for six years in their corporate tax group, started out preparing tax returns,
ended that period working on research and development tax credits, which was fun, but it was
a little bit too much of a niche for me. And I wanted to get out and be able to kind of be,
you know, the big picture guy at the company rather than coming in and doing some really detailed
thing that doesn't involve looking at kind of the whole company. So when I left Einstein Young,
I went to work for a singular wireless, and their accounting group briefly kind of wanted,
you know, it was transitioned out of the tax side and transitioned into accounting. And then after
I was with singular for a couple of years, an opportunity came along with an affiliate,
Liam Brothers, private equity real estate that was based here in Atlanta, and we, they
leave it out source to the asset management for all their private equity real estate funds to
the group that I was working for. So I started there in 2004 and worked through 2012. So the
bankruptcy was right in the middle of the time I was there. That was interesting to go through to
say the least. We had just raised a big fund and, you know, we couldn't deploy the money anymore
and just kind of went to winding things down. But yeah, so then in 2012, I left there and went to
work for a pretty large apartment developer here in Atlanta and have worked for, you know,
a few apartment developers since then and just really enjoy it, love real estate. And it's been
20 years or something. So yeah. And I definitely want to talk about the Lehman Brothers. It was
actually on my list of questions earlier. But since you mentioned it, maybe let's go ahead and
and dive into Lehman Brothers because I think, I mean, you were one of the most directly impacted
and the fact that you guys after that, I mean, did you were able to sort of hang on until 2012
with the collapse there? Walk me through as it was all happening and when you knew you were in
trouble and what kind of walk us through that that time period because it's also fun that we
know, we love hearing about financial collapse on FBNA today. I wish I worked at NR also, but
the extra I don't. So back me up a little bit, the Lehman Brothers collapse. So yeah, remember,
just like everybody else knowing, you know, that there's all these, the government has started
creating all these programs to try and save some of the banks and, you know, it's hard to remember
back, but you know, banks were going under left and right. I will never forget that I was out
doing a lemonade stand with my kids and my neighborhood. One, I think it was a Saturday afternoon
and my boss calls, he's like, he's calling the whole group, like get into the office right now
and we didn't, still didn't really know what was going on. We knew once we got to the office,
that there was a possibility that something big was going to happen and we spent two days just
going through every document that was associated with any of our deals to see what the, you know,
bankruptcy provisions were. Unfortunately, we were less affected. The private equity side was
less affected because the investment is mostly third parties. Come, it wasn't Lehman's money. So,
Lehman was a general partner and they obviously weren't investing anymore money, but they were still
running things. And so anyway, on that night, I don't remember the exact date, but that night,
we'd just get a call from our New York office, a guy in New York who's like, well, it's done. We're
bankrupt. And everybody in the office was like, what? What's going on here? We come to work tomorrow.
It was terrifying. And fortunately, for my group, we did get to hang on for four or five more years.
And after that, Lehman spun out the management of the funds to a group that's still around today
and actually still managing those funds have a few assets left in them. And they're still managing
those, trying to sell them, close down the funds. And in fact, I went back to work there for a
couple of years right at the beginning of the pandemic to try and help sell off one of the, well,
the biggest asset they still had in the fund, which was a trophy office building in New York.
So, being directly impacted by Lehman brothers was that had to be a very tough time in your career.
But you've had some other, we're joking about in-run, but you've had some other situations in your
career that had to be, you know, when you came into the profession weren't exactly the kind of
things you were planning for. I know maybe in a couple of work, we can't say names here, but as
tell me, tell me a little bit about, and we've talked about them before, but tell me about some other
experiences you've had in financial leadership positions and tough times.
Okay, so a few years ago, I went to work for a startup. Well, I won't go into exactly where I was
or what it was, but it was a real estate business that had significant financing to buy
multi-family properties. And also, we did a Series A round into our management company for $10
million. It was from a large real estate like investor. And unfortunately, the CEO, the day after
the Series A round transferred a million dollars into his personal bank account. And obviously,
as the CFO, the company that was, I almost had a stroke. And you know, it was really uncomfortable
and eventually had to force him to out himself to the investor. And the company does not exist
anymore. So it was, you know, really sad. I mean, that we had a large staff and things were
looking like they were going to be successful. And then you got to have somebody that just can't
help themselves. So yeah, what a tough spot as the CFO. I mean, I wonder it takes, maybe I'm
underestimating what most people would do, but you're in this role, you know, you are the steward
of that company's finances and you know, we're there to maximize return for investors. And when
you see something like that happen, even if it's just mismanagement, I mean, I wonder,
I mean, it sounds like there was no part of you that was just like, well, we'll figure out how to
call this a bonus or whatever. I mean, you immediately, it was as simple as reading the LLC
agreement. Truly, like that was the first thing I did was go dig up the LLC agreement. And it was
very clear that, you know, if any money goes out of the company for any type of investment or
whatever somebody would take money out for that, the investor was to know about it. And the
person who took the money didn't seem to have any intent to let them know about it. So that kind of
put me in a really tough spot. Yeah, I could imagine. I want my reputation to furnish myself
something that he did. So, you know, I wasn't going to go along to get along. Yeah, and I think about,
I mean, you know, that's a private company, but I think that, you know, all the surveys actually,
and all the post-end run stuff. And I mean, it's like, you know, you are the CFO, you're the
the gatekeeper on the finances there. So there's just really nothing else you could have done in that
situation or without getting dragged into it yourself, I guess. Right. It was, I had to testify,
I'm give her enough deposition to last a lifetime through that. I bet. I bet. Was there another
story about another situation you went through? Yeah, I'm probably very unusual in that I've encountered
this a couple of times in my career. So there was one when I was working for the Linger brothers
affiliate where we were building a condo in a city that's not to be named. And the, we had a local,
you know, developer partner. We were just the LP catch and the local developer partner, just like
the guy, the other company just, I'm sconded with a bunch of cash. The funny thing is he actually
booked it correctly. I mean, he was booking a credit to cash and a due from affiliate. So eventually
just that just built up to be millions of dollars, you know, and you start looking at it. You know,
where did that money go? So fortunately, that was a very large amount of money. That was much,
that was, I think, 12 million dollars. So that was a lot larger than the, the other one. And he did
end up going to prison for a year and came back out and got back into the real estate game. And
I mean, yeah, as far as I know, he's still at it. So crazy times. I think about why people go into
finance and accounting and just thinking of a job where it's just, it should just be so black and
white. And like I said, I've known Seth for years and he said, tell me if you remember this. I do,
because it was one of the nerdiest things I've ever heard. You said, I think made you happier
than when your T accounts balanced. I love, I love my T accounts, man.
So I think about what you're drawn to and how you want to spend your time and you're being
embroiled in all this drama and fraud and everything else. It's been graying this kind of
where you're first. I feel like you'd much rather just be staring at your spreadsheet.
Very much so. Like writing a big long formula and making that, you know, that'll make my day or
something. Yeah. I don't want to be a police officer or psychologist or anything like that.
But some time you get stuck. And I know you were, you were a Spanish major in undergrad. So
I'm wondering what led you to accounting to begin with and everything that you've been through
in your accounting career. The first reason you came to it and maybe, and I'm going to use this
word and I think literally or accurately at least your passion for the profession, how is it
evolved over 25 years? And the only reason I say passion works there is because you're still
excited about the T accounts. So I do love what I do. What led me to go into it is actually kind
of random. When I was in undergrad, I had two remates and they were both accounting majors.
And I was an aimless youth. But my remates had gotten great jobs with their accounting degrees
and they were doing well. And after, so after I graduated, I kind of thought, okay, well, I need
to do something besides Spanish. Speaking Spanish doesn't make you a lot of money.
So they had been successful. So I decided, okay, well, check out accounting and I decided to go
back and it was almost like fortunately I loved it because I didn't really have a fallback plan.
So, but it was a great move and I'm really happy that I did it. And then, as far as the
career, it's just the thing that I've loved about it is, and I think probably through another
place, what I know is real estate is that every deal that we do is different. Everything that we do
from a finance standpoint, it just depends on the deal and the types of investors that you're
going to have in it. And I find that really interesting. I don't think that I would like
making widgets or doing finances for somebody who or a company manufacturing company.
I just love being able to touch the assets, being able to know that they're real things that are
being used by people for their shelter. And so that's kind of essential to people's lives.
So, yeah, so I've loved that and just continued to learn, coming to work here,
we're re and I've never worked on re-s before. So I've had a lot to learn, take a lot of classes,
and we'll continue to do that. And as we grow, just try to make myself into a redexpert,
which is always fun. That's great. That's great. And thinking about you, as you answered that,
you mentioned when you were at INY that you've gotten into this really specialized niche division
of doing the R&D tax credits, and then now, as you've taken on leadership roles and being a CFO,
that's a, it sounds like it's much more in your wheelhouse of like not wanting to just be so laser
focused and having this broad experience. But you do, the CPA and the accounting side coming up
is, you know, that's more of the traditional background for coming into a CFO position,
coming up a lot of times through CPA and audit and all that. So I'm thinking as you moved into
leadership with that tight accounting background, tell me about the transition to, because I know
you've always, you're a big modeler and you've had to, and then they serve the work that you do.
But how was that transition from accounting into sort of bringing in also the finance, the budgeting,
the FPNA, and that side of it? It was new. I mean, that's for sure. It definitely took a while to
kind of, you know, working for doing asset management for the Lehman funds, you learn what the LP,
you know, the large investor in the deal wants and what they're looking for. But you go to work for
a local guy that, you know, that the Lehman's of the world invest in, and it's a whole different set
of incentives. And, you know, they're in a lot of ways, you know, dependent on fees for their income,
and, you know, whereas at the fund level, you know, we had, we did, we did have fees, but the idea
was, you know, the investing was going to, you know, save, or not save us. But that's your, that's
your bread and butter. That's all you really care about is the returns on the investment. And
you become a lot more sensitive to fees, going to work for a developer. I mean, you said, they
have to keep the lights on and they got to keep the people, you know, out of the site. So it's
just a whole separate kind of group of challenges. Like, I, there's things that I had no idea even,
you know, I couldn't have told you what a superintendant was and a job trailer or anything like that.
And, you know, before I went to work with a local developer, and so it was, it was really fun,
sort of getting to go to job sites where the development was underway, and it was just very
motivating to be able to do that sort of thing. And, and know that you're part of, you know,
putting a deal together to, you know, eventually you'll see a new apartment community or, you know,
a high rise or something. It's, it's very rewarding.
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at datarails.com. Coming up in the development side, now being at a re and thinking about the kinds
of reporting that you've had to do. So how does the real estate industry, how does their financial
reporting differ from other sectors you've worked on? I guess, maybe encompassing that,
what kind of metrics are important, what are you tracking, and also part of that, who are the
primary beneficiaries? And maybe I should break this into three questions, but it's how it's
different what you're tracking and who you're reporting to in all of these projects.
How it's different, I would say, is that every investment is discrete, is different.
There's never a time when it's just cookie cutter, whereas that's kind of picking on
manufacturing earlier. But if you're cranking out something the same product 24 hours a day,
I think you're reporting can be sort of probably better standardized, whereas the reporting for
real estate just differs based on the product type. And there's a lot of common things that people
look for in terms of returns. The big three would be our multiple capital and profit. That's
at the end of the day what everybody cares about. And that's what the point of doing all the models
is to figure out. So I think in that way, it's the fact that every deal is different and you have
to look at them individually, rather than just a group of things that are being where the same
thing is being produced over and over again. So I think hopefully that answers the first part of
the question. Tell me I'm terrible with the stuff. So yeah, I threw 11 questions at you all wrapped
in the ones. So the next part is what are the key metrics, but I think you kind of hit on those two.
There's different ones actually for for reads. And that's one of the things that I'm working on.
Here is to as I said, we're very small, but we need to be able to kind of benchmark ourselves against
the public reads and just know kind of what direction those kind of the overall market is going in.
And Delbus report, I think as we grow and get more sophisticated investors, they'll definitely
be asking for the more robust type of reporting. So that's we're switching accounting systems.
And that's real focus is the reporting piece of it. Gotcha. And right now, are you dealing with
like a lot of Excel data? Where's your data living these days? It lives in QuickBooks, unfortunately.
So for real estate is there's always tons of entities involved. So to buy one apartment community,
there might be five or six different LLCs involved. And QuickBooks is horrible at that. So that's why
we're switching to a new accounting system and we'll be able to do the type of reporting that we
need. We don't start to do like earnings per share and the accounting system now and all that
sort of stuff. So we'll have the capability to do kind of the traditional metrics for the public
company. And I think I'm thinking of so much of outside of property management, so much of what
you do in real estate, it's the real metrics are when there's a transaction. And so ongoing,
like tracking monthly quarterly metrics, I mean, are there things you're tracking monthly?
There are. I mean, you know, you're tracking performance, you've underwritten the deal. So, you know,
not necessarily always on a monthly underwriting basis, sometimes annual, but you do want to make sure
that you're met your metrics. I think typically your NOI should be 65% of your gross revenue. And
that. So you just always want to kind of be checking those things and making sure that also,
you know, you've got a budget obviously. So making sure that nothing is really going wrong. But
at the end of the day, those are relatively, you know, small parts of the lifecycle of the deal.
And so it's really, you know, the acquisition, any capital event, like a refinancing,
and ultimately, you know, a sale of the property or what takes the most time or the most
brain power to get them right. In real estate, I mean, how much is the industry on the whole
leaning into like data-driven decision making? Is it, I'm thinking about, you know, where you're
selecting the location and, you know, how much of that is data backed versus I'm a developer
up and doing this for X number of decades. And I know this is a good, I mean, how, like,
or determining pricing and all that. Are you using data a lot?
We do, probably not as much as other industries, because you do have a lot of developers who've
been around forever and they know where they want to be. They want to be, you know, suburban,
garden-style apartments in the path of growth and that sort of thing. But there are some great
services that have been around for a while, but just becoming much more sophisticated with
with AI that you can, you know, we use to define sites to compare, look at sales comps,
kind of discover demographics, you know, just all that sort of stuff. And it's just becoming,
you know, more sophisticated all the time. So some people use it, some firms, you know,
the owner wants to use their own intuition and, you know, many times they're great at that. And
other times, you know, you can't win them all. So, but there's a lot of people who are really good
at that out there. So, and, you know, when you trust yourself that much, it's, you know, why should I
bring in this million-dollar technology? So, kind of, you know, it's both.
And I guess the other thing, you know, and you mentioned earlier how many different investors there
are when you're just because of the cost of building out these properties. And the limited exposure,
I've had with working with real estate developers, it seemed like IR investor relations is a big
part of what you do because there's, you know, you've got to do your quarterly reporting to the
investors on this. Is that, have you done a lot of IR work? Is that a big part of the NSFO
in a real estate company? More with my last step with the Lehman team. I was very involved in
like quarterly valuations and putting together the investor report for the end of each quarter.
And so, there were always tons of questions about that stuff, you know, making sure your websites
updated. This is that the stats that you're showing there are correct, you know, your overall
returns, your track record, all that sort of stuff. But then there's, you know, there's the real deep
investor relations that is, I find it very interesting, and, you know, understanding what
different investors' motivations are for the investment, and, you know, that they can be
different and kind of take that into consideration when you're talking to, you know, pension funds,
you have individual, and they just all have their own, you know, unique sets of challenges,
things they want, reports that you got to create for them. That sort of thing.
And are you, I mean, I imagine in the startup world, and this is as someone who spent the bulk of
my career in the startup world, thinking about all these, you know, whether it's an IR report or
the management reporting and tracking all the metrics, how, I mean, you got to be in like,
roll up your sleeve mode. Are you really deepened? Are you still doing a lot of modeling and a lot of
work in Excel and just down there in the weeds? Yeah, especially at this company, it started out as
single family residential. And so we have a couple of guys that are great at that and they're great
at finding houses. But to scale as a re is difficult when you're out buying one house or five houses,
you know, and that sort of thing. So we're starting to get into the multi-family space and I'm doing
quite a bit of the modeling for that, just because no one here has the experience. But I'm trying
real hard to transfer that knowledge to somebody else. So it's fun, but like it takes away from my,
from other stuff that I need to do that's you know, well, not the model is not important,
but other stuff that a CFO would typically do. Yeah, and that's always the problem, the balance of
it's hard to make the battle plan from inside the fox hole, right? Like you're, you know, you're
really saying everything up close up front and then to be able to then the switching cost of
just pulling out of that and focusing on making a strategic decision is tough. But you got, I mean,
that's that's part of the thing with startup. You set it up, you build your team and and you've had,
I think we talked about this just for a minute before the show, you've built teams before in your
leadership roles and it's in now in the startup, especially as you guys are looking to scale up.
Do you have some kind of golden rules or your approach to putting the right people in the right seats
and just knowing that you're, you know, in startup world, you're, you're building the airplane while
you're flying. So do you, as you're thinking about the team that you're going to build there and,
and leaning on some of what you've done historically, what can you tell me about that?
So one of the things that I really like about the startup world is that good people are highly
attracted to it. And so you can really, it's, it's, if you can find people, because it's hard for
anybody to find people these days, because you're able to offer, you know, stock incentives and sort of,
hopefully set people up for an exit, it's easier to find good people. And so what I would,
what I usually look for is just somebody who could teach me, you know, to do their job. And,
you know, I don't want to be always the one telling people, you know, okay, we need this, we need
that. You know, I want somebody to come to me. And so looking for proactive people and, you know,
people who are smart and have the background. And, you know, I feel like once you find somebody
kind of with those traits, then, you know, if they're self-motivated, I just let them go to town
and kind of keep you updated on what they're doing. And I can kind of give them guidance and
make sure that, you know, they don't go off on some wild tangent. But, yeah, but that's hard to
create, because I mean, I'm, I'm, I love to learn and, you know, I always learn the new kids coming
out of school or I love calling them kids. I think I referred to someone who was like 42 the other
day as a kid. I don't, I'm just, I'm instantly my granddad. I have no idea what's going on. But
we're getting old, man.
Actually, that brings up something else you and I were talking about mentioning the kids coming
straight out of school and into a startup. Right now, there is, I'm sure you've seen the news.
I mean, there's a real shortage of people coming into accounting right now. And so I'm big tech
guys. So I'm just, I'm convinced that AI is going to fix all this and all the seats that we're
not filling with actual accountants. We're going to put a robo accountants in there. But I, I mean,
as someone who didn't start out your education, but then switched at the master's level to go into
accounting and just in some of the people you're talking to and hiring now, why do you think,
what do you think's causing the, the lineup of the well of people coming into accounting?
I suspect it's a combination of the fact that nobody likes accounting. And
yeah, there's just so many more opportunities these days than there were when we were coming up
to be in the finance world and that are, you know, higher starting pay out of school,
significantly higher. So that's attractive to people. And I think it's really unfortunate that
accounting has sort of become very difficult to find people. But I think, you know, it's saying
earlier, like the, it's going to have to turn. I mean, we have to have accountants. So at some point,
the industry is going to have to catch up in terms of compensation and incentives for people to
start going back in. So it'll happen. It's just everybody is going to have to be miserable for a
couple of years. Yeah. As miserable as an auditor who's fresh out of school and working. Yeah.
Absolutely. Okay. Well, this has all been great stuff. And it's been fascinating to hear about
the real estate industry. And since we've known each other while I have some answers to this question,
but I am going to move to the, our personal segment of the show where we learn a little bit about
you. And I won't go back and tell high school stories about you. But what's something that most
people don't know about you that they couldn't find on your LinkedIn profile or whatever?
I love to ride motorcycles. I've had a motorcycle. My first one was right after I got married.
Shockingly, my wife was okay with a minor motorcycle. My life insurance. So I pretty much had one
consistently for 25 years. And I do have one sitting in my garage right now that I haven't
written in a couple of years because I crashed it. And there was a horrible experience.
And it's a quick story on the wreck curve. Yeah, sure. So I was riding up in the North
Georgia Mountains one Saturday afternoon. And I was behind a motorcycle, which was then behind a car.
And the motorcycle in front of me decided to pass the car. We run a straightaway in the mountains.
And I thought, okay, well, he passed them. There must be plenty room for me to pass them. And I
sat sped up and then ran out of straightaway. It just derailed curved. And I was going way too fast
to make the turn and laid it down. And I'll never forget here in my head at the ground. I was just
like, oh my god, I think that at the summit on. And yeah, I mean, I had all the gear on.
Thankfully, or I just would have been road rash like crazy.
So how did you break anything? How did you walk away from that?
Barely. It was tough to walk. And so walking away was a challenge. But I was in pain for a
couple of weeks, really bad. And I'm still carrying like a small tear in my rotator cuff.
Too small for surgery and, you know, kind of one of those things you can live with.
So now you still have the motorcycle? Are they just they're just decorative items at this point?
Have done for a while. I got to get a new battery for it. And I'll get it out there at some point.
So in the story about motorcycle riders is there's two kinds. There's the people who've crashed and
the people who haven't crashed yet. So now you're on the other side of that. So I, yeah, I figure
out cut the odds. I don't I'm not going to crash again. So I connect with a crazy person out there.
The crazy accountant on a motorcycle. I don't know. That sounds like a premise for a movie, maybe.
I don't. Yeah. It's a fantasy movie for sure. Yeah. No crazy accounts on the list.
All right. And when we have to ask everyone, um, as well. And I'm all I say, I'm always interested.
I think I already know what you're going to say. But what is your favorite Excel function and why?
So it's not really a function. I don't know what you call it, but I learned power query last year.
And first of all, it was fascinating to learn. You know, everyone really thought about
cleaning up data and that sort of stuff before. And where I was working at the time, we had a
need for doing that. The GL information we could get out of our accounting system was just not
easy to work with unless you really manipulated it. And so I discovered the fact that you could go
in and manipulate it one time. And that would you never have to mess with it again. I mean,
just can keep saving a file on the same folder and it keeps doing the same thing for you cleaning it up.
Save me so much time and really helpful with reporting. You can do power, pivot tables off of multiple,
you know, different tables and sort of a database function. There's just so many positive things about
it that help with reporting and that sort of thing. So I love that. So very cool. And I guess my
first question is, why do you hate index match? And you're supposed to say index match or
Excel, it's a good function for those who like it. And power query is great. I think,
and honestly, I'm pretty excited. We're not there yet. It's kind of a dud right now, but seeing where
Microsoft goes with co-pilot built into Excel, I think we're going to start seeing a lot of that
kind of functionality that is just something that you're speaking to it in natural language and
saying what you want to do. And all these page long formulas that you're using are going to
go away. And it's just going to be a completely different way to interact with your data. So I'm,
I don't know, we're far from it now. I don't know if you've even messed with co-pilot yet,
but power query is awesome. I've tried to mess with it once or twice, but it wasn't at the point
where I could really get answers about what I was looking for. But I think it's going to be really
cool when they get kind of mature. And it's I guess this week is the big Microsoft build conference.
So they're probably while we're recording this, they're probably announcing the next
school Excel thing that we'll have to find out about later. So we'll set that really appreciate
you coming on the show. How can if listeners want to learn more about motorcycles in real estate,
how can they connect with you? I'm on LinkedIn, I'm set A Zimmerman, and you can go to investwithrubes.com
and find out all about us and you can invest for those levels $100. So we're always interested
in getting new people. And so if that's your thing, please come and invest with us.
All right, thanks for being on the show. Well, you'd appreciate you having me. It's been great.
