CW 795 - Julie Benezet - RE Investors Need To Know How Amazon.com Picks Distribution Center Locations, The Journey of Not Knowing, How 21st Century Leaders Can Chart a Course Where There Is None

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Welcome to the Creating wealth show. This is your host, Jason Hartman with episode number 795. 795. Thank you so much for joining me today where we are right on the cusp of episode number 800. I can hardly believe it, but I can't wait until we get to episode 1762 or whatever number anyway, when we go over a thousand, that'll be really, really swank, don't you. So speaking of going over. Well, you know, I just had my afternoon coffee and I went to that place you've probably all heard of. We've probably all spent some money there, some of us too much money. And that is good old Starbucks, right? And I tell you, I gotta just point this out. If you are wanting to be healthy and be in shape, avoid Starbucks like the plague. And listen, I say this as a regular customer myself, but wow. Get a hold of the quote nutrition unquote information for Starbucks just before we dive into our show today. I thought I'd share some of this because I've been meaning to. You know, they talk about McDonald's being such the big offender and I've mentioned this before, but let me just share with you one specific example right now. That absolutely blows my mind. It's crazy. That little piece of very misleading reduced fat banana chocolate chip coffee cake. Yep, that's the one. It's not a very big piece. It only weighs 123 grams. And in that 123 grams you have, get this. You ready for this? 88. 0 grams of carbohydrates. 80 grams of carbohydrates. Now look, you're investing for your future. You're buying properties. You're following my ten Commandments, of success of successful investing. That is a tongue twister, isn't it? It's kind of like saying inflation induced debt destruction. Inflation induced debt destruction. Inflation induced debt destruction. Actually, that's not bad. See if you can say that 10 times faster. I did it three times right there. And you're doing all this good stuff. And to have a bright future and hopefully live a long time, have longevity and your investments are going to carry you right into the future because you're following my plan, the plan that actually works. But if you're eating this kind of stuff, you're shortening your life. 80 grams of carbohydrates in this tiny 123 gram banana cake thingy. Majig. Now check this out. How much sugar is in this thing? Wow. Shocking, shocking, shocking. 55,050 grams of sugar and fiber, which is good for you to a certain extent. Of course. Only four grams.

This is junk. Stop eating that junk. It's terrible. No wonder, no wonder we have such an obesity epidemic in this country. Everybody's going to Starbucks. It's mind boggling. So, you know, when you go to Starbucks, get yourself a regular old coffee drink, you know, not one of those foofy drinks. I used to drink them all the time too and boy, they're just not good. I mean this is diabetes, obesity, you know, it's a very expensive problems that will shorten your life and we don't want that for any of our listeners. So live a long life, avoid this stuff. Just get the simple stuff on the menu and it'll save you a lot of money to get the simple stuff. So that's good. Just a good old coffee will do the job. Or maybe an Americano, but you know, that's about it. Okay, so let's talk today with our guest here. Coming up, Julie worked for Amazon and she was. Now this is of course Amazon.com we're talking about. You've heard of them too, right? We're talking about well known companies here today. She helped select or really was in charge of selecting the distribution center locations around the world. Now this is something that real estate investors look at, you know, when you go into an area. And I talk about this in my Creating wealth seminar. And by the way, we've got one of those coming up in good old Memphis, Tennessee, our most popular market. Even, even now. Even now Memphis is far and away our most popular market because it just works. This is our third property tour in Memphis along with a Creating wealth seminar that I'm doing there at the end of March. Is it the end of March? Yeah, I think so. Go to Jason Hartman.com and get the exact dates. And I talk about this in detail. I talk about property selection and what things influence it. What if there is a Starbucks near your property? Is that good or bad? I think you know the answer to that. It's good. But your tenants will probably not live a very long life because they're eating that crap at Starbucks. But all kidding aside. Well, it's really not kidding. It's actually true. That is a very powerful thing to have. Big employers obviously, right? Big diverse employers. So wouldn't it be nice to know if Amazon is setting up a distribution center there? Wouldn't it be nice to learn a little bit about that stuff? And that's what we're going to do today as we talk to Julie. She's fascinating woman. She's got a lot to say. You're really going to enjoy this interview with her. But before we get to that, I just finished and we've got him coming up back on the show, Harry Dent's book. And I tell you, I don't know, I can't wait to have Harry on the show again. He's been on what, four times now? So he'll be back for I guess his first fifth time real soon. And we'll have that. And I got a lot of questions for him because I think he made some crazy predictions and some of his predictions have been fabulously wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. But some have been pretty right on. And I think I know because I've been following him for a long time. Maybe since you were a little kid. I've been following him since the 90s. Yes, the 90s. Like maybe I want to say 1998. That was 19 years ago, if you can believe that. Boy, time does fly. So I've been following him for a long time and really interested in his work. But gosh, I gotta tell you, throughout the whole book he never makes any distinction. And I'm gonna give him a hard time about this, about the different types of real estate markets. I just can't believe that. But I'll tell you what he does say that I think is very true. He talks about the Chinese economic crash and that is really ominous and sad. And I believe he's right about that. That is coming and it is going to be ugly, ugly, ugly. And he talks about some other things that are pretty interesting. You know, one of the things I'm going to ask him right out of the shoot when he comes on the show is does he wish he waited to write this book or publish this book, because I'm not exactly sure the exact release date. Does he wish, doesn't he wish he waited till after the election? Because I, I, you know, I just gotta keep thinking. A lot of that stuff he talks about has really changed since the election of the Donald. I mean, the Donald is a game changer. Love him, hate him, doesn't matter. Game changer. Okay. And our Venture alliance members, of course, are probably reading Jawad Mia, who's been on the. And I'm gonna get him back on the show, his newsletter right now, because I sent it out to them and they are probably seeing what this Muslim economist, who's fantastic, by the way, came and spoke to our Venture alliance group when we were in Dubai, as I mentioned. And he just says, put your biases aside because Trump is going to be good for business. So whatever you think politically, you need to compartmentalize and separate that from what you do from an investment perspect. And I don't know why I need to keep saying that, because I think most of you get it. Okay? But just in case there's a few that don't, I want to impress that upon you again because it is very important. It is an amazing time to be alive. You know, I'll tell you one other reason it's an amazing time to be alive. I got. They just sent them to me, those Apple AirPod, AirPods, those little earbuds with no wires. Those are incredible. I mean, what, Apple just knocked it out of the park with that product. Talk about a technological innovation. I mean, just a phenomenal little thing. So if you have an iPhone or a Mac, you know, those integrate with them beautifully. Get those AirPods, they're, they're fantastic. They have only one flaw. They probably gonna give you a brain tumor or something because they're putting radiation into your head. But I don't know how we can escape that anywhere, anytime nowadays, because that's just the world we live in. So, whatever. But those are great. They're incredible. I have massively increased my intake of podcasts and audiobooks since getting those just last week because they are so convenient, make it so easy to consume content. So this podcast, the Creating wealth show, of course, you can listen to that on your Apple AirPods. Those are fantastic. I absolutely love those things. And of course, they're great with Voxer. A lot of you are on Voxer with me, getting your real estate questions answered. I'm J. Hart, 88 on Voxer. It's an Amazing time to be alive. It sure is. But it's also an inflationary time to be alive, I think. And Harry Dent addressed that a lot and he, I think he kind of nailed this pretty well, maybe not perfectly in the way that I would agree with it, but close where people ask the famous question are we going to have inflation or deflation? And the answer is both are right. Both of those are right. So we're going to talk about that on the show with him coming up. And I'm going to talk about that a lot more. But you know, I'm just looking at another article right here from fee.org and that's a great charity that I support. Check out their website, fee.org f e-org that's the foundation for economic education, fe.org I really want to recommend that. I believe we've had some of their writers on the show over the years. Well, certainly Steve Forbes, because now I'm looking at his name on their website and he's been on the show. We've had some others too, over the years, I'm pretty sure. And there is a big article here about your favorite products are about to cost so much more. And Trump with his protectionist trade policies, inflationary, like I've told you, very good for real estate. Anti Dodd Frank, we just did that show two days ago on, well, three days by the time you hear this three days ago on the loosening requirements at Fannie Mae, making it a little easier for you to get more leverage on your properties, that lights a fire under the market. Inflationary pressures light a fire under the market. It's a, it's a great time to be a real estate investor, let me tell you. Really good. And even add to that our new exclusive to us private lending program that many of you are inquiring about. And I'm glad to see that. And we've already got one loan underway. So this supply is very limited for this, by the way. So we talked about that a few episodes ago. That's where you can borrow money once you've you want to get your agency loans, your Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac loans first. But after that, this is now the officially the next best thing and you can do that right through us, exclusive to our network here on properties you buy through our network. So check that out. That's a great thing. Also, the Venture Alliance Mastermind meeting coming up right here in Las Vegas, and that is March 10th through the 12th. And we just booked the former governor of Nevada to come in and speak to our group and he's got a book out about his journey from being a casino man to being to the Governor's mansion. And that's just going to be a great talk. And we've really been trying to up level the speakers. You know, at the last event in Phoenix we had Charles Goyette who's been on the show a couple times. We had Ken McElroy who's been on the show a couple of times. He's the rich dad author that has I don't know the exact number but about 10,000 apartment units under his management in his investment group. And we, we've just been getting some great, great speakers at the Venture alliance events. And it's really neat to do these intimate Mastermind events. We're going to be at the beautiful Wynn Las Vegas, gorgeous hotels. We always.

Make this a very, very upscale experience. And you can come as a guest. If you're not a member, just go to venturealliancemastermind.com talk to one of our investment counselors about any questions you might have and you can reach them of course through Jason hartman.com if you don't already have one and you're not already in communication with one of our investment counselors. And and then you can sign up for the Venture Alliance Mastermind, either the annual membership or the one time guest@jason hartman.com in the events section. And then you get to come to all of our regular events for free. So the Memphis Property Tour and Creating wealth seminar is included with your Venture alliance membership if you decide to join. But that's going to be a fantastic event. I can't wait to have all of our Venture alliance financial friends. Yes, that is our tagline for the Venture alliance, your financial friends. I can't wait to host them all in my new hometown of the not so humble Las Vegas. But it'll be a lot of fun. There's a lot of great stuff to do here and we've just got a fantastic weekend planned. So. Whoops. So check that out. And without further ado, let's get to our guest and let's learn a little bit about the inside of Amazon.com and learning a little about leadership as well.

It's my pleasure to welcome Julie Benezet to the show. She is founder and Managing principal of Business Growth Consulting, former director of Global real estate@Amazon.com that's going to be interesting to talk to her about that. And she's author of the new book the Journey of not how 21st century leaders can Chart a course where there Is none. And you know, Julie, I was talking to you off the air about one of my favorite quotes. You know, go where there is no path and leave a trail. Something along those lines. But anyway, how are you? Welcome.

I'm excellent, thank you.

And where are you located? Do you happen to be in Seattle?

I am in Seattle, Washington today, but I'm usually in seat 3A of Horizon Airlines.

You live on a plane, I understand.

I do.

Oh, good stuff. Well, tell us a little bit about your background. I mean, at Amazon, it's quite fascinating to watch that company's incredible growth. You know, these distribution centers that you open everywhere. How long were you with Amazon and when did you leave?

I came to Amazon in 1998 as their first real estate executive. And at the time we had 400,000 square feet of under provisioned real estate. So my job was to build the worldwide platform. And that's what we did for the next four years. And interestingly enough, it was not really a real estate job. Yes, we had to build 7 million square feet of real estate in that time, but we really had to lead the business case effort to make it so, because that function wasn't at the company, it was very new.

So what do you mean when you say you had to build the business case to acquire those distribution centers? What do you mean by that?

Well, as anybody who's been in real estate knows, real estate is the longest lead, least flexible, third most expensive item on the balance sheet, if not the second. And in order to know how to write size, time and locate it, you have to know what business requirements you're fulfilling. So at Amazon, it was all new, all the time. It had only been around for a couple years when I got there. And there's no such thing as a business plan, certainly not an operating history. It was a new company, new industry, new organization, new set of customers, and nothing to guide us. So in order for us to put the real estate together, which is at a different rhythm from the programming that goes with building out the site, we had to go and talk to the executives in the company to get them to make decisions they had no plans in making because for them was way out there. Why do I have to know how big my head count's going to be in two years when right now I'm trying to figure out what we're doing. But still we had to figure out how big to make the space. What products are you going to ship through this warehouse? Well, I don't know. Well, we need to make some kind of assumption. About this. So in order to justify a very expensive item, we did spend $320 million in a couple years. So we were not cheap. We had to be able to stand behind it. And so one of the beautiful things of working at a company that is run by a libertarian is there are a lot. If you smart and you take bold moves, you get a lot of ordinance of freedom. So we had the freedom to little real estate to lead the business planning efforts in order to get these sites up.

I have to ask you about that statement you just made. I thought Jeff Bezos was a liberal, not a libertarian. Is he a libertarian?

Well, I learned that after I left and I don't think he's a card carrying libertarian, but he has very wide views of freedom and he doesn't like rules. So when I learned that.

And we know he doesn't like Trump, that's for sure.

Well, that's a whole different conversation. He's definitely enjoying running the Washington Post right now during this era.

Yeah, yeah. People say he hired like 22 reporters to just go and find every piece of dirt on Trump. But you know, that's what the media, that's what the media should do. I mean, you know, it should be a watchdog. Okay, but you know, if you're picking on one versus the other, that that's not right either. But you know, it should be an objective. But that's another discussion, as you said. So, yeah, I'm surprised to hear Jeff is a libertarian. I like him better.

I'm very much a libertarian. So where were your first couple of distribution centers? You know, you had this one piece of real estate in Seattle area. Where were the other ones?

The next one was in Fernley, Nevada. And after that we went into the. I went to Germany. And each place was done under the cloak of darkness because we had to keep everything we did secret. That's something about the company that has never changed. So we were moving around the country in 1999 and overseas and acquired 8 500,000 square foot distribution centers that we had to convert into fully smart fulfillment centers.

Wow, that's amazing. And were you buying these properties or leasing them? I assume buying them by the way you talk.

Oh, no, we were leasing them.

Oh, you're leasing. Okay.

The guts of these buildings were so full of smart conveying equipment. You had something like. They all had to be custom designed because until Amazon, there was no place where you were shipping 3 million SKUs of products to individual consumers. So no distribution centers were set up to do that. So our job was to work with the logistics people who designed this first of its kind system that had 10 miles of conveyor belts, 17 barcode swipes and just enormous cable connectivity in order to make the whole thing work. So these were very expensive warehouses because of the innards, not the outwards.

Just out of curiosity, your statement about secrecy, the cloak doing this under the cloak of darkness, what was the concern back then? Was it the concern that, you know, Walmart's gonna catch on and compete or. I know that Amazon and Walmart have had some litigation over stealing each other's employees and you know, I don't know what happened to all that, but you know, I've read about it over the years and because, because Walmart, you know, frankly, before Amazon, Walmart was one of these incredible distribution companies, right? Amazon, of course, just blew the doors off that whole concept. But you know, Walmart was about the closest thing you could find back in the day, I guess, you know, they had to know what products go to what store and you know, that's complicated. Was that the concern? Was it just that there'd be a competitor? I mean, like a Walmart?

Well, I think there were lots of competitors. Barnes and Noble was also competitors at the time because they were creating an online store. But Walmart, to your point, is first in class in distribution, still is very highly regarded in that. Ironically, my first box was the chief logistics officer of Walmart and he was brought in for a reason. Walmart knew how to distribute. And also the CIO who was the person who hired me, was also out of Walmart. So there was a lot of concern of we had to get there first. The whole mantra of the company was get big fast. And the idea was not only did it want to be a big company, it also wanted customers worldwide to adopt the habit of just using Amazon. I know Amazon, I trust I will give it my credit card, I will buy all my stuff from there. And in order to do that, it's not something that other places can't figure out. So you have to get there first and you have to get there really intelligently. So that was the big push.

Very interesting. Well, how would you pick an area? I mean, every real estate investor listening pays attention to things like, hey, there's a new Amazon distribution center opening in this town, maybe we should go and invest there. Now folks, look at, be careful with that kind of thinking because there's much more to it than that. But certainly employment and stable employment of these good blue collar, I mean, we love that these good blue collar jobs which as a little aside, since we joked about Trump earlier, we think Trump will be very good for real estate investors in that sense because, you know, he's appealed to that populist marketplace, you know, those voters, and says he's going to bring their jobs back and their wages are going to go up if he can, you know, if he keeps that promise, that's going to be really good for us. But we like, you know, this type of very stable employment. You don't just move a distribution center overnight. That's not an easy task. So, you know, how do you pick a place where you're going to.

Well, if the distribution center. And I will caveat this by saying I'm not there anymore. I was there for four years, but I doubt it's changed that much. And obviously the thing you look at is transportation, arterials, how many trucks can get in and out of there. But there's also the question of where is the workforce that no matter what level you're looking at, you need to get those distribution centers, even with their robotics, employ a large workforce round the clock. So you have to have a very large group of people available to come in and work there. So that's one thing. The second thing is things that would be predictable and that would be obviously the regulatory. What are the taxes, like, what are the building permits, like, how long does it take? Will they give economic incentives? Then you're looking at the infrastructure. Can you get double large fiber running in? Because these are extremely smart facilities and they have to have redundancy to protect them because that's the whole store. So you look for that. But the last thing that's gotten incredibly important is the safety. You got to, particularly when you're going outside of the United States, is you got to look at things like political stability. You got to look at what is the risk factor to the employees.

What is to get people in and out of there. So that has become a factor in both the warehouses and the offices. But it didn't used to be as important as it is now.

That's an interesting point. I mean, certainly political stability is important. Important. Like companies in, in Venezuela have had their facilities nationalized. Yes, we've all read about that. And that's pretty ugly. Of course. Talk about a disincentive to do business there.

Yes.

But, you know, like, can you share any examples of, of the political stability concern? I mean, Amazon doesn't. How many countries is Amazon in now? Or maybe when you left, I don't know.

Now I certainly know we sold into Literally every country and territory in the world. And that I don't know the current number of distribution centers. I do know that Amazon is operating, if not all of them, most of them. We went full circle on that one. We first built our own because we said we're the only ones who know to operate these complicated things. And they're so integrated into our store that we can't segregate them into a third party vendor. Then for sake of speed, we started to do third party operators. And then we found out that it made sense for us to continue to operate our own. So that meant that it had to be a place that you could operate. That being said, they figured out how to do it most places in the world, but I couldn't tell you how many.

Yeah, very interesting. So it's refreshing to know that if I ever move to beyond Yang, or however you say it, North Korea, I can get Amazon deliveries there. Huh?

Well, yeah, you can there, but I have relatives in Australia and they don't have Amazon facilities there, which is kind of a dent into the Christmas because I have to figure out how to send a package the old fashioned way.

Right, right. That's such a hassle. But you did say you sold into every territory in the world. So that's why I made the North Korea joke. I mean, seriously.

Well, probably.

Wow, that's amazing. Okay, good. So, you know, your book is so aptly entitled for what you did at Amazon. I mean, you know, just to reiterate, the title of your book is the journey of not how 21st century leaders can chart a course where there is none. And you have made it quite clear and all the listeners understand that when you came to Amazon in 1998, there was no blueprint. You were inventing a whole new industry, basically. Tie that into some leadership tips. And why, I mean, are we just living in a world where things are changing so fast that you can't look at the past anymore, that nobody has any blueprint or roadmap or role model, you know, however you want to say it.

Well, I think Amazon was in the vanguard of the 21st century. That where the difference between the 20th century and the 21st century is that in the 20th century, business was more local. You knew who you worked with. Most of the people you worked with were around you.

You talked to each other, which is an amazing concept. It wasn't all based on the Internet and things were more predictable. It had the illusion of being more known and controllable. But the Internet completely turned it upside down. When the Internet became the main channel of communication, goods and ideas. Then it didn't matter where people were, it was where the best resources were, which you had the whole globe at your disposal. And what has happened is it's created a rush of information, a rush of possibilities, and a rush of extreme anxiety. And so what we're seeing in the 21st century is a lot of anxiousness about, oh, my God, what do I do? How do I choose? Anybody can compete with me. And that's all true. So what we learned at Amazon became a good lesson for life in the 21st century, was you got to do a few things to deal with all this scariness. The first thing is you need to figure out what stakeholders you're going after. And as a leader, your job is to make things better for whoever you're trying to make better, whether it's your.

And you said, what stakeholders, Right?

Yes. And that could be your customers, your employees, your community. It could be, can I build a better way technology to empower my customers to make better market choices?

It's a bigger bet. But I think that could be a good thing for them if what they're wanting is more information to be a better participant in the process. Or can I build a team structure where the managers don't pick the members, the members pick them and make a different type of team culture. Or the stakeholders could be your leadership team. If you make a compensation system that says, okay, we're going to take into account how the team does as a whole in calculating your bonus, not just you individually. It's a switch. But the idea is your belief is it's going to make it better for you and the business. So that's the first part. But the second part is you have to be okay with the scariness of risk because any of these new ideas, by their very nature, are new and untested, and you don't know how they're going to come out. And that's scary to people. But the epiphany I had in Amazon, which I carried forward, and it came to me one night in the middle of a distribution center push, was as scary as all the impossibilities were. The tight time frames, the not knowing where we're going to put it, not knowing where to get the money, much less know if we were going to be able to get a workforce into there was, I realized despite all the stress, there was no part of me that thought we couldn't do it. And that's when I came up with the turn of phrase being A leader is being comfortable with the discomfort of not knowing. And that's business in the 21st century is we think that to be a leader we're supposed to be cool, calm, collective, confident. Well, talk to any leader who's really involved in something and wants to make something better. And for that matter, even if you're not a leader, anybody who is driven to do something and you ask them, are you calm? They said, no, scared, kidding. They don't like to admit that what they're confident about is how they're going to go about figuring it out. And leading is a life of. But they're not calm about, I don't know it. So that's the second part.

The third thing to do to navigate the scariness of the 21st century is to not sabotage yourself with defensive behaviors. And these are things I call hooks. And they're ordinary behaviors that we all get into. And what they're there for is to give us short term comfort. But what they do is they take us away from the scariness we need to experience on the way to bigger ideas and the testing of them. And then things like micromanagement, conflict avoidance, perfectionism, things that make you step out of the experimentation phase and are very universal. Everybody, when they hear about hooks, they say, oh, that's terrible. I have some of those. I'm embarrassed. I said, no. It's very common personalizing, taking some person's criticism of something you do as a comment on your self worth rather than the broader picture. So that's the third thing, is to learn about what those hooks are in yourself and other people and not get tripped up by them and find different strategies. And the final thing, and the most important thing is to know your purpose. Why are you doing something? In order to go and try new things and go through those scary places, you have to have a reason to endure that pain. So finding a purpose for it is really essential. And you need to do it for yourself personally and then one for your team. But for yourself, it can be anything from you want to try this new technology initiative because to honor a mentor who made a big difference in your life and in that person's memory. You want to roll this initiative out as a point of pride and respect. Or it can be, I want to prove my to my rival's older sister that I too can win and put make things happen or it can be so petty as I hated that competitor. The last thing I want to happen on earth is for that person to win. It doesn't have to be laudable it just has to work and help you with the scariness of navigating the unknown. So those are the four things that I suggest and just review the four again.

Just review the four again.

The first is to have to learn about your stakeholders so you know what things you can do for them to make their lives better. The second is be okay with the scariness of risk while you test out your ideas. The third is to not to sabotage yourself with defensive behaviors that will get in the way of you going after those bigger risks. And the fourth is to find a purpose that helps give you fuel and courage to get through the scariness of the unknown while you trying to these new ideas for your stakeholders.

Yeah, very interesting. You talk in your book about the defining leadership moment. What do you mean by that?

Well, in my case it was.

Are you talking about my own or generally?

Well, I'm not sure. So there's my honest answer. But you're referring, you're referring, you know, to, you're talking about the stranger on the phone and then you're talking about, you know, that building the distributions, the fulfillment center before Christmas, you know, really fast and getting a team there and all that.

You really read this, I'm really impressed. Thank you.

Not the whole thing, don't be too.

Impressed at the end of the call, but I'm impressed. That defining moment was in the middle of this acquisition of the German distribution center where we had of course like everything else, we had no directions, no business plan, no know anything and everything was new, chaotic and crazy. But we had an objective in that we had to deliver 99% of the packages to our customers it to on Christmas time by December 23rd. And we the underlying reason was to prove to Wall street we actually had a business model which is something that's very near and dear and sacred to a bunch of X gen MBA or so.

So the defining moment for me in that whole thing was we were pushing everybody out of their comfort zone really hard and having them produce miracles. So they were over in Germany. We found a site, we had to build out a 300,000 square foot distribution center and get it up and going in five months. And with a group of people who never worked with each other and so on, and a market that had no other comps. So there's no way of evaluating this real estate, the orthodox ways, et cetera, et cetera. But people really pulled together and did their best work. Well, the defining moment for that, for me was the phone call that was planned where finance said, okay, time we Want you all on the phone because we want to talk about this deal and we needed our letter of intent approved so we could get into permitting and get this thing done. So like often happens in new companies, I say everything happens in scrums. And everybody who could fog a mirror seems to pile on the phone. And there are phones all over Seattle. And then there was a group in Germany listening in. And nobody's really sure even who was running this call, but I think I might have opened it. And two sentences in this voice comes on the phone of somebody I'd never heard before. And I thought I knew finance pretty well. And he starts the grand interrogation. He says, well, how do you know the market? You got market rates. And we explain what the difficulties were and how we went about getting them. He says, well, that's no good. How did you know that you got the best information? And he's just started going slicing and dicing. And I'm sitting there thinking, who is this person and why are we getting this cross exam here? And I had no way of discovering who he was. He did not introduce himself. Finally at one point I emailed somebody I knew who was on the call and I said, who's this guy? And he wrote back, said, I knew it's finance exec. I said, great. So at one point he asked us for.

One other parameter and we explained that the way that we could figure out if this was good deal was whether the economic return that the developer would get would be consistent with Amazon practice and real estate practice, which we thought was actually a known thing, which is pretty solid. And all of a sudden he just exploded on the phone. That won't do. Shame on you facilities. Shame on you for not doing your homework. And I remember being astonished and the whole everybody. The phone call went silent. Nobody knew what to do with this. And I in a mind, I don't get mad too often in business because if you, if there, if I got mad at everything that could make you angry, I.

You'd be mad all the time. So would I.

And you know, I'm from a big family and I'm, you know, you fight all the time. What? That's the difference. But once in a while. And I said in the book, twice in my life, one time with a used car salesman and the second time in this case, I just, he crossed my line. And I remember the room just went two dimensional, just went flat. I was so furious. And I thought, you know, you don't when people are working hard for you and doing their best to Deliver. You don't take them apart. You have to support them. And this ridiculous criticism is completely out of bounds. And so I leaned forward and I just gave a speech that said basically I was disconcerted with the tenor of the call that we've been asked to deliver the. This distribution center in three months. And we were not going to cut off any corners, but we couldn't do everything we'd like to do. And this was ordained by Jeff Bezos. And he didn't like it. He could go talk to him. And so the project manager that was sitting with me leaned in and said, you know, in any project, you don't get all. You get a scope, you get a price, you get a time, and you don't get all the. And I heard later that the 20 people that are sitting in the German conference room threw their hands up and mouth score. But this guy, whoever I knew, I learned who he was later shut up and suddenly got very nice and humble. And we move forward, and for me, the big defining moment was what you have in your life. Either your values, your dreams, and your life story, and they're the things that make you you. And when you're in a situation of conflict like that, you got to dig into those and let them be your guide. And there was no choice that I was going to lean in and tell him that he crossed my line and he was going to go no further. And I was pretty, you know, child member of a big family that I am. I was prepared to fight to the death. But he was quiet then. And a couple days later, we got our deal approved. Approved.

Yeah. Very interesting. Good stuff. Well, just to. To wrap it all up, you know, what do you want to just share in closing with any, you know, real estate investors about buying near Amazon distribution centers, knowing where they're coming next? I mean, this is top secret stuff still, isn't it?

Or.

Or leadership, you know, are you trying.

To get me killed or what?

You know.

You know, actually the principle is the same. Pay attention to your customer. I call them stakeholders because they're not always people who pull a wallet out and take money out of it, but they're the people that you're trying to do something for. And whether you're trying to build an organization or you're trying to build a piece of real estate, pay really close attention and learn about the people that you're trying to benefit. And that is going to give you the guiding lights. Real estate is not good at looking at business. They think that everybody loves real estate and that's enough. But the people that were successful and to be successful with Amazon and companies like it are those who do their homework and understand the businesses and understand where they don't know and try to find out.

Very interesting Julie. Give out your website and tell people where they can find you.

Www.bootjourneyofnotknowing.com journeyofnotknowing.com and of course the book.

Is available on guess what, Amazon.

And all the other usual places I assume.

Good stuff. Julie. Thank you so much for joining us. This has been very fascinating discussion.

Thank you so much.

This is a part of the world that very few people get to see or hear about, so the part of the business world. So thank you so much for sharing it with us. We appreciate it.

My pleasure.

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