Get Up With Garret Ep. 22: Rick Ungersma from Murdochs

Ladies and gentlemen, there's no better way to get up in the morning than to get up with Garrett. Garrett is a third-generation success, credential real estate entrepreneur who's here to give you tips, tricks, and share stories of success. So without any further ado, ladies and gentlemen, Garrett Bedrin, Dougie Bricks.

Thank you for the warm introduction, babe. Absolutely. Wow, you know when I hear that entrance music, I feel like I'm the Undertaker coming. Yeah, look out if you're selling a shopping center. It's a beautiful rainy day in Bergen County, New Jersey, and we're feeling grateful and thankful for the opportunity to be with our friends and our guests. Right, absolutely. And today we do have a very special guest. We will be featuring one of our anchor tenants from one of our shopping centers, and we'll be meeting Rick from Murdoch's Ranch and Home Supply in about five minutes. Just want to talk about a couple things. Obviously, March Madness is coming up. It's exciting. I have no idea what's going on with the basketball, so I'm not doing any pools this year. I think our followers have probably lost enough money on football this year, so maybe we'll skip the March Madness. Get Up with Garrett recommendations. And football is going nuts. I mean, have you seen all the... Obviously, the big trade with Russell Wilson to the Broncos, and Baker Mayfield now kind of looks like he's perhaps on his way out as the Browns are looking to get to Deshaun Watson. And Aaron Rodgers goes to the bank and pretty much cha-ching like I've never seen before. So exciting time. I've got a cool thing I'm going to tonight. I don't know if you guys have heard of this, but there's a celebrity chef named David Burke out of New York City. He's done a lot of cool restaurants, super trendy, and he's got this kind of new American grill type restaurant in Morristown, New Jersey, and it's called 1776, I think, by DB by David Burke. So first of all, being able to go to a restaurant like that is super cool and thankful for the opportunities to be out of COVID a little bit and enjoy ourselves. But it's one of our YPO kind of special networking events, and we have a chance to meet Eric LeGrand, who is a former football player from Rutgers who was in a horrible accident, and he's going to talk about overcoming challenges and perseverance and being able to pick himself back up. And David Burke kind of added a really unique feature. I'm not sure if the website shows it, but basically they have these miniature kind of living room suites. There you go, living room suites that are sponsored by Topgolf. So I think there's like six or eight of them, and you can rent them out for private parties to watch the Super Bowl, just to kind of hang out on NFL Sundays, and it has a golf simulator. So golf, not one of my greatest talents, Dougie, but something I've been working on last year. I've got the clubs in the car, and hopefully I can warm up a little bit tonight and see if there's any rust there from the winter. So kind of a cool thing. I'm very into understanding what retailers are doing, what restaurants are doing, hospitality. I think how that blends into multi-family, the concept of having a restaurant where you can also have a place to hit some golf balls while you're waiting makes total sense. And again, this concept of being together again, being part of a community, to me is not only smart, but it's what the younger generation wants. They want something that brings them together. What do you think about that concept?

Absolutely. I mean, you know, we're always with our clients, we're always trying to figure out ways to collaborate with other businesses. And when we bring on someone, we're trying to not do competing industries. We want to bring people from various industries together. You know, so many times they'll be like the dentist marketer, same picture of a smile, different logo, and they're just going to dentists. We take the opposite approach. We want one of each industry, bring them together, do networking events. Stuff like this, like this is genius. Whether they even keep it like this or just change it every three or four months to a different theme, but that's what it's all about. I think it's pretty cool. If you think about it as like a suite, right? What else could it be? So that golf simulator could easily be bowling, it could be skee-ball, it could be virtual cornhole. It also could be a Zoom meeting or BlueJeans meeting where you've got six people up on the screen there, chatting with them. That could be where Eli Manning is sitting watching Monday Night Football with Peyton and he's doing his thing. So when we're thinking about design and development in concepts, whether it's hospitality concepts, whether it's multi-family concepts, or just kind of helping retailers, you want to have that flexibility of what else, what other applications can you create revenue from at different times of the day or week where maybe you haven't maximized your opportunity. So I think this is really cool, cutting edge. I'm excited to see it. I always want to be visiting and traveling, and that's something I really enjoy about my job, the opportunity to learn about some of these new things. And if I can share them with the audience or even reproduce them in our family properties or properties with our investors, I think people are pretty excited about it.

By the way, I've been getting some texts and emails from some of our investors thanking us for obviously finishing up the Hunt Village property. We're thrilled about that, and everyone's excited about the returns we talked about last week. The other thing I just wanted to show real quick, giving back is such an important part of our family and of our business. And I always say, the more you give, the more you get. And of course, everyone knows I'm really, really tied to the Jewish Home here in Bergen County, New Jersey. I think it's so important to take care of our elders. Big shout out to my grandma B. She was in the hospital for a day or two, she's okay, she's home now. So I'm just always thinking about my family and about the impact that my grandparents had on where I am in my life, where Jessica is in her life. So the chance to go to an event, and you can show the picture, they opened up a brand new rehab center, and there's Jess and I. It's a real honor to hang a mezuzah on a patient room. So mezuzah kind of blesses the room, and it's a prayer. And to be able to hang them is considered an incredible honor. So this facility just blew us away. It's a $30 million facility for short-term rehab. So Doug, let's say your grandma, God forbid, falls, breaks her hip. You don't really want her in the hospital for two weeks, right? That's not the place for her. You want her to go somewhere where she can have physical therapy all the time, or you can have a pool where you can do it. I mean, we actually have treadmills in the pools where you can work with a therapist. It was incredible. And we have simulation, so like we have a car, we have a kitchen where you can practice what it's like to get back to your home when you're going to be back on your own. So this type of facility is just cutting edge. Nothing like it in Bergen County. So if you find yourself in that position, God forbid, where you have to deal with something for your parents or your grandparents, please think of me as a resource. Reach out to me, and I can put you in touch with our friends at the Jewish Home. You can follow them on social media. Just a great organization to be part of. So my full blessing, and just a real honor to be there. Nice, cool. So without further ado, I'd like to transition to our guest and bring him in. This is a really, really cool opportunity today because we have a family friend who is not only a YPO friend from networking, but also an actual real life tenant in one of our shopping centers, a long time tenant. I think he just crossed maybe the 10-year mark and decided to stay for the next five or ten. We're thrilled about that, of course. So ladies and gentlemen, I want to introduce you to our good friend, and if I butcher his last name, I'm in big trouble. It's Rick Ungersma from Murdoch's Ranch and Home Supply. Rick, are you with us this morning?

I am. Good morning. And you nailed the last name perfectly.

Awesome, awesome. I've been working on it. And Rick, I appreciate you getting up early. I know you're out in Las Vegas enjoying some time with your wife and your beautiful family. Typically you're from Montana, right? That's where you are typically?

Correct. Bozeman, Montana. Born and raised.

Bozeman, Montana, born and raised. So Rick, just tell us the quick story. First, let's just talk about Murdoch's. What is Murdoch's? I think it's an incredibly unique brand and retail store destination that probably people on the East Coast are a little less familiar with, being that it focuses on the West and kind of Midwest area. So just tell us, what's the elevator pitch? What is this Murdoch's all about?

Murdoch's is a culture company that just happens to be in retail. We have 34 stores in five states. We are expanding into Texas. We sell products for people that make their living outdoors or enjoy being outdoors, or both. So we sell everything from dog food to barbed wire, to clothing, lawn and garden, firearms, just anything anybody might want to live an outdoor lifestyle.

Don't you have live chicks too? I feel like I saw chicks one time. What's going on right now?

Chicks are active at Murdoch's. You see, guys, all the young guys that are watching now, let them know all the chicks are at Murdoch's.

That's right. This is great. There you go. Trick days are here. There it is. So everybody go ahead.

We'll sell about a quarter of a million chicks every year. And yeah, people put them in their backyard and gather eggs. It's a wholesome activity, absolutely great family.

And then some of the things Doug is showing now, you've got some like outside fencing areas or pools or different things. What are some of those applications?

Trampolines. Who would have thought a farm store could sell trampolines until COVID hit and families needed a reason for their kids to go outside because they were home every day? And so we started selling trampolines, and we've sold so many of them. Just one of those entrepreneurial things that one of our buyers brought to our attention and said, 'I want to start importing trampolines.' So that's what we did, and it worked.

So you're set up. You've got clothing, like a department store feel. So someone who was working on the ranch, working outside in construction, or other types of... it certainly doesn't just have to be ranch. You have all these different lines of the outside, whether it's boots or overalls, etc.

Correct. So like I said, people that make a living outdoors or enjoy being outdoors. So we'll have everything from mud boots to hiking boots. We'll sell insulated coveralls for the rancher who's calving, to nice activewear for people that just want to go up in the mountains and hike. So kind of all points in between. And that's evolved over the years. It used to be really focused on ranch clothing, cowboy boots, jeans, things like that. But being out in the West, there's so many people now that want to live that lifestyle that don't necessarily ranch, but they love being outside. So everybody wears clothes, so we've figured out how to sell to them.

That's fantastic. Well, you know, that is something that you're born without, so you definitely need to pick up a few. So tell us about the founding of the company. What's the story? How did this all come together? Just give us a quick growth story. I think you said 1994? You've been in business?

Correct. Yep. So the company was founded by a guy named John Murdoch. And I'll just go real quickly here because the story's really strong, but we don't have time. He thought there was a better way to do these stores. Farm and ranch stores have been around a long time. John wanted to do something unique, and he wanted to make it a place where the whole family liked to shop, even the kids and the dog. And he wanted to appeal to females because typically a farm and ranch store at the time really didn't. It was a very male feeling vibe. But as we know, females spend most of the money, so why not make these stores really nice? Make it be something that a lady can walk into and say, 'Wow, this is a great experience,' and fall in love with the company. So we did that, and we did it through making stores very nice. I mean, this wasn't radical, isn't radical now, but at the time, farm stores didn't have baby changing stations in any of the bathrooms. We put them in both men's and ladies' bathrooms, things like that. Really nice bathrooms, beautiful clothing departments, excellent decor in the stores. So he set out to do that. He was going to have a small company, and I always tease John. I live five minutes from him in Vegas during the winter. He was going to have two or three stores, and I teased him that John, you didn't know yourself very well. He was never going to be able to just stop at two or three stores. So 34 stores, that's a small company. It did. So yeah, he did it. It worked. And we just keep trying to do right by our customers, listen to them, do right by our team members, listen to them, and keep growing this thing. And John retired a number of years ago. He sold out to my partner and I, and we're going to keep this thing rolling in our families for generations. That's our plan, to keep it a private, family-owned company.

Wow, that's awesome. Dougie, so we heard a couple interesting things there. The concept of generational, right? We've talked a lot about generational growth, generational wealth. This is easily a company that Rick could bring to private equity or look at potentially going public one day. I mean, he's got scale. He's being very humble. 34 stores, but our store is 50,000 feet. Rick, are your stores typically that large, or are they some 30 to 40 in the older generation?

Yeah, there's a couple that are small, but the average is about 46 to 50,000, with some that are a little bit larger than that.

Gotcha. You want, Doug, do you want to bring up our store real quick? I thought this was kind of interesting from the website. I think I... yeah, the Brookhill site. So the thing that you mentioned that really blew me away, and I want the audience to really capture this and understand this from what Rick just said: females, the wives, the girlfriends, the moms, these are way more than you think the decision-makers in a household. Okay, so Rick's point, he said, look, we went in, we remade the stores, we added baby changing in the men's and women's bathrooms, which is great too because I can change a dirty diaper better than most people can. I'm going to brag about that. I'm definitely trained at that. Not any longer, it's been a few years, but I was real confident in my skills there. And of course, upgrading the lighting, making the retail space feel inviting, right? That it's not that we expect you to be here. We're treating our customers as our guests, and we're inviting you to come as if you're coming into my home and having a glass of wine. And that's got to be your mentality and how you treat your customers. Customers have a lot of decisions, Rick. They could go to Duluth Trading, they can go to Walmart, they can go to Amazon. I mean, there's certain things that you sell that are available at other places. No different than when Allied was in its heyday selling art supplies, our family business. You could buy art supplies at Michael's, at Walmart, at Dollar Tree, at the supermarket. So you've got to find a way to be different. And how you differentiate yourself is how you speak to your customer. And of course, the first thing Rick said is we're a culture company. So Rick, can you elaborate a little bit more on what does it mean to be a culture company and be culture first? Because that sounds like that could be your special sauce, and I definitely want to unlock that.

That's our special sauce. It's not just something I throw out there. We are a culture company that just happens to be in retail. And what that means is that everybody understands that we operate this company through Golden Rule, Excellence, and Trust. That is our foundational value. We call it GET. And we behave in that manner. And it takes a lot of rules out of the company. But there's also a lot of responsibility on the part of everybody that is in the company. And I've always said that unless you're contributing positively to culture, you can't just sit there and bask in it. You have to be a contributor to it. So everything we do at Murdoch's, first off, is are we hiring the right people? Are we holding each other accountable to Golden Rule, Excellence, and Trust? And once you've built that foundation, and we really started trying to head in this direction back in 2004, so quite a few years ago, and it took a while for the culture to take hold. And once we did, once it got ingrained in our minds that this is a differentiator for us, this is our secret sauce, the buy-in was amazing. And yeah, we shed some really good talented people that just didn't contribute to culture, and it was painful. Over the years, we've gotten rid of some folks that frankly could get the job done, but they left a trail of bodies in their wake, so to speak. And while that's difficult, it has just been huge for us because now when we want to try to accomplish something major, like we're doing an ERP change this year, we're expanding into Texas, we're opening stores in Montana and Colorado as well, when everybody's on the same page and there's no ego, it's just a group of people that want to frankly kick butt and have fun, you can accomplish amazing things if you don't have to be dealing with garbage every day. The drama accomplished is just amazing, and you can have fun. So that's our secret sauce, and our customers feel it when they walk in.

Perfect, man. So you're kicking ass and taking names. Everything is amazing what you're saying, Rick. And I love acronyms, and I want to make sure the people at home don't miss that one. Can you explain what GET is one more time?

Yes. So it's called Golden Rule, Excellence, and Trust. And in life, there aren't a lot of original things that actually came from a book that was written by Lou Holtz, the coach of Notre Dame Fighting Irish. And that is how he coached his team. That is how a little Irish guy could get 300-pounders to do what he wanted, by treating him right, expecting excellence, and trusting them. And what a gift on St. Patrick's Day. But anyway, John Murdoch's a big football guy. He loves Lou Holtz because the story is incredible. And so we took that and we built our culture around that.

Yeah, I love it. And it goes perfect with us, Get Up with Garrett. So now we got something to aspire to. GET means no one knew until today. Absolutely, that was the answer. Let's talk about that team a little bit, because I know you're not doing this all by yourself. 34 stores, six states, now going into Texas. I know I got to work with Mary Kay. She was amazing. She's your CEO. Just talk a little bit about how important it is to have women at the helm as well with your culture.

Well, I don't know how to even approach that, but it's critically important because frankly, the way they look at things when it comes to a shopping environment is so superior, quite frankly, to how most guys would look at it. They know what a female wants to see and feel when they go in a store. They know that when you have gun counters in your locations, that's an intimidating thing for most females. So frankly, you better have some female salespeople on the gun counter, or you better have your guys that are working the counter not be arrogant and be approachable. So you have to have diversity in your leadership team, quite frankly, or it's just going to be a big fraternity, and that will only take you so far. I don't know if I answered that question very well. I mean, we didn't set out to have females on the ownership team or on the leadership team. It's just they're really good at what they do. Why wouldn't we want that?

Absolutely. No, I mean, look, there's a famous book, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. And if you're young and thinking about maybe getting married, I highly recommend you read that book because men and women are just programmed differently, right? We're different species. And I think in real estate, and probably a little bit in the ranch industry, I would think long term, many, many decades ago, probably very heavily male dominated. You think about just the name cowboys and the old boys' club. And it's like, we've got to update to the modern times, right? Where having female leadership, diversity in our leadership, learning about where different people come from and how they approach, because the shopper is diverse. And the shopper, you want to be able to align to them. And I think your point of fraternity is interesting because that is the concept of just having fun. So sure, being with your old college fraternity buddies who all look like you, that sounds like fun for a weekend. That sounds like fun for a semester when you're in college. That's not what makes a lot of money today and returns to your shareholders, and in this case the families. And it's not what inspires the culture of your employees and keeps them fulfilled to come to work every day. So it's important that leaders are able to separate the concept of, yeah, there's fun and that's what I grew up in and came from, but now we're talking about responsibilities for hundreds of employees and their livelihoods and their families. So it's kind of like a lot of these industries need to grow up. I was incredibly embarrassed one of the first times I went to Las Vegas, which I know you're joining us live from Las Vegas, for one of the real estate shows. It was called the ICSC, their annual big conference. I'll just tell you a quick story. I was brand new in the industry. I actually was still living in California, but I just joined the family business, and this was my first kind of networking thing. And as I walked around the booths, I was just blown away. I couldn't believe there were just tons of these beautiful women out front of the booth. And I said to my dad or uncle, I said, 'I just can't believe this industry. Look at this. This is incredible.' And later I found out that those women were not working for these developers and these companies. They were just hired as models to sit there to bring me into the booth. So automatically I felt disgusted by that. Like, what kind of industry is this where we're using women as a fixture to bring you into the booth? Now I know sex sells, and that's a whole other podcast we can talk about. But it kind of inspired me to say, you know what, this is crazy. We've got to see women and minorities have an opportunity to step up in this industry of commercial real estate, which obviously is a part of your business. I mean, real estate is such a part of everyone's business. So when we sat down to work on our big project here, The Hedges in New Jersey, which is a luxury mixed-use project, 117 apartments by the train and a big retail building with Planet Fitness and then a self-storage facility, right away I made it critical that we hire women to run this thing because I knew that not only on the design side but on the marketing side, there'd be so many things that I was missing. So I appreciate your feedback with that. You touched a little bit about COVID. I don't want to look back into the down days. I'm very much a forward-thinking person and opportunistic. But is there anything that you learned through that experience that helped you pivot and adjust, that added new lines of revenue? I know you mentioned trampolines, but anything else you learned about your business that you've now taken as a good learning lesson, a good opportunity, and you see a return on that investment? Can you talk a little bit about that, Rick?

I can. So going back to culture, we thought we had a strong culture, but it had never been tested, truly tested, until COVID came along. Two years ago, almost to the day, it shut down. I think it was like March 18th. I'm not even kidding. It was just, 'Oh my gosh, here we go.' So here's the culture test, and we passed it with flying colors because again, there was no ego. People were ready to attack this thing and do what we needed to do to take care of our team members, take care of our customers, adapt based on what we were hearing from the health departments on a national and local level, but keep the business going. Fortunately, we were considered essential at the time, which I will tell you, some businesses were considered non-essential, really made me angry, but I won't go down that path. Anyway, the culture got tested, and we came through with flying colors because what happened is we completely changed the way we communicated internally. We went to Microsoft Teams. Before that, we were kind of dawdling, trying to figure out what we were going to do, Zoom or Teams. All of a sudden, we didn't have a choice, and we went with Microsoft Teams, and communication changed completely for the better. And now we have these weekly calls between operations and purchasing. They've totally changed how we communicate within the company and how we get important information out to everybody. We're so much better. We are such a stronger company post-COVID than we were before because our culture has been tested. We have shown ourselves that we are capable of far more than we ever thought before. We were going to dink around with doing buy online, pick up in store over an 18-month rollout. We got it rolled out in two weeks in all locations because we had to. So it was like, 'Okay, gang, we don't have a choice. We have to do this.' And lo and behold, we had strong people in our home office and our store locations, and we got amazing, massive things done in a very short period of time. So COVID transformed us into this organization. We thought we had a good culture, but it was proven that we do. And then we all found out once again that we're capable of far more than we ever thought if we work together. So it's been great.

Incredible. It's incredible what you can accomplish when you roll up your sleeves. There's a lot of different posts on social media about if you give yourself 30 days to clean your house, it'll take you 30 days. If you give yourself a weekend, it'll take a weekend. If you give yourself three hours, it'll take three hours. So you roll up your sleeves, you get in that boat all together, and you just make it happen. That's an incredible story about your team. I know your culture also is very into charity and giving back. You want to talk a little bit about some of the things you've been involved with, maybe the Charity Warriors or the Quiet Waters Foundation?

Warriors and Quiet Waters is a big one for us. It's an organization that's based in Montana that takes wounded soldiers and their families. They come to Montana for a fishing retreat. And what the organization has learned over time is that when a soldier has suffered from PTSD or traumatic brain injury, getting them on the river fly fishing, it's the first escape they've really been able to have mentally because when you're focused on fly fishing, all you can think about is putting that lure out in front of fish, and it helps them have a break from what they're feeling in their minds. Which I can't identify with, but anyway, that organization is a major one. We also are huge supporters of 4-H, which is a ranching and farming organization, Future Farmers of America. We do an organization called Eagle Mount, which is another therapeutic horse-centric charity in the Montana area. Special Olympics, we're huge supporters of that organization, which is one of my personal all-time favorites. It's just a fun, amazingly run organization. And if you're looking for something to support, they are dialed in. They get it. So we spend a lot of time each year with these organizations, and they make us a better company. We encourage our team members to serve on their boards or help them with their events. We give our team members days off each year to go support the charities of their choice. We also give each team member $250 per year that the company will match, so they can double it to $500 to give to charities of their choice. Yeah, it's a big part of how we operate. It's a big part of our culture of giving back.

That's incredible. I love that. I love the concept of a give-back day where you inspire your employees to get out of the office, and it's a paid day. You're not making them take a vacation day. It's an opportunity on the company's dime to get out, give back, whether it's do community service or donate to a charity that they love that you can maybe get involved with as well in matching. I just think the things that Rick is doing here, Dougie, and his team, this is where you need to be. It's no longer about doing one or two special things. It's about everything needs to be special to really be competitive in a job market to get the best talent. Rick, what do you think about this show? I want to switch gears quickly before we wrap up. My wife got me watching this show Yellowstone with Kevin Costner. Is this something that you guys out West are kind of joking about, laughing about, thinking us Yankees are watching the crazy show? Or is this legit? I mean, do you like it? Did you appreciate it? And I'm early on, so don't spoil anything, please.

Yeah, I won't spoil anything. I didn't understand the phenomenon, and then I think it's in season two or something. One night I'm sitting at home and my phone blows up. I'm getting texts and phone calls and emails, and they said they just mentioned Murdoch's on Yellowstone. I didn't know that. Somebody bought a coat allegedly at your Dillon, Montana store. And I'm like, and my wife and I had tried to get into Yellowstone, and we were locked into this whole thing. Well, that's not what Montana's really like. We don't go shooting each other with machine guns. We're not doing that. So you didn't actually appreciate the incredible characters, the storylines, and the fact that it's just okay to be entertained sometimes. So it is a great show. My wife and I are into it. We're caught up. We get it. All right, Yellowstone has since filmed in our Hamilton, Montana store. So we have a good relationship with the show, and they've been very good for Murdoch's, quite frankly.

Good. Yeah, they're bringing this outside lifestyle, the ranch lifestyle, which look, it's applicable here. Obviously, COVID woke everybody up to the concept of enjoying their space outside more. When you're looking for an apartment, what type of outdoor space are we thinking about? Designing outdoor fitness spaces, outdoor gathering for movies, certainly outdoor dog parks. So the outdoors is going to absolutely level up in terms of the dollar spent for development. I know you have a big outdoor shopping area. I think at our center, that was one of the things that you loved about our Westminster space, is a big outdoor storage area, I think I remember.

Well, actually, the city wouldn't allow us to have a big enough one, so we have one in Westminster. We just wish it was bigger. So like most locations will have an acre. That's... it wasn't on you guys, Garrett. It's what the city would allow. But we'll have an acre. We did the best we could. Outdoor display area, we call it, and it has fencing products in it, so gates and panels and wire and posts and everything to contain or keep animals out is what we have there. And yeah, that's the anchor department for what we do as far as how we take care of ranchers is represented in the outdoor display area.

Maybe for my 50th birthday, I'm only 42, I'd love to come out and do like City Slickers with my friends. I just think that would be the most amazing opportunity, right, Dougie? Wouldn't that be a lot of fun? I think the audience would get a kick out of that. My kids would probably really get a kick out of that. But I just want to summarize, I want to kind of wrap up here. Obviously, what we've learned from Rick: tremendous focus on culture, on being able to adapt to the times with COVID, changing, forcing to do things in two weeks that he thought would take 18 months down the line. Obviously, we talked about the big one, which was GET, which is the Golden Rule, treat others the way you want to be treated, excellence, and trust. Did I get that right? Golden Rule, Excellence, and Trust.

Nailed it.

Perfect. But I also want to reiterate about relationships, which I always talk about. And Rick didn't dive into this too much, but we met Rick through our YPO network. Rick was looking for space in the market, and obviously had a broker and all that stuff. But the relationship that Rick knew our family and that we were in this organization together quickly went right to the finish line. It just cut out all the... and we were able to knock out, you wonder how could a family in New Jersey who knows nothing about ranching in Montana be able to get a 50,000 square foot anchor tenant signed up in Denver, right, Westminster, Colorado. And I want everyone to know that that comes from the deep, deep relationships of being in a networking organization. It doesn't have to be YPO for everyone. There's a whole bunch of them. GoAbundance, meetups, your Chamber of Commerce has small networking things. Dougie's always putting on fun networking things. So you can start what is appropriate for your business and where you are in your career. But I will tell you, it's the God's honest truth. People want to do business with people that they're similar to, that they like, that they're friendly with, that they connect with. And if you're in an organization and you know that there's a commonality there, it cuts out so much drama. You get right to the finish line quickly. And here's a real life example. Rick, you've been with us 10 years. We are so thankful and grateful for your company, for all the work your team put in. Can't wait to see the next 10 years together. You know, my kids will be knocking on the door for the rent soon.

That'd be awesome. Garrett, what you just talked about with organizations that you work with, business, YPO, whatever, it's trust. And when you are operating within the organization of YPO or any other business organization, trust takes a lot of questions out of it. It's like, okay, I'm going to get into business with Garrett Bedrin. I can trust him because YPO members do not screw each other. So it's like, we're out in Colorado, you're in New Jersey. We want your building. You have the building. It's a space that needs some work because basically the tenant went bankrupt and it was full of fixtures that did nobody any good. And we went to work together, and we opened an amazing store together, and it crossed the finish line. I mean, we got that lease done in record time.

Yeah, and I remember very well. Trust each other. I remember very well when I was in the car with my dad, and I outlined the framework of what the deal should be. And I said, 'Dad, this is what it's going to be. We're going to be thankful for this after the first two years kind of burn off because I believed in the outside culture.' And of course, the combination, we've got some skiing. I think the guards opened up the... I think it's called Epic now. Epic Mountain Sports. So it's like biking, it's skiing. We've got some hobby stuff there. It was kind of this outdoor Colorado lifestyle, which I thought was super cool. And that was good. I was young. I mean, that was 10, over 10 years ago. So I think it was 12 years ago actually because now you're going into the options period, right? So for me to learn, I got to really be a witness to see my dad in action, kind of a front row seat to my greatest mentor, and watch the deal go down and play a role in it too. It just blew me away. And I love hearing your side of it. We lost a lot of money before that. I mean, we spent $2 million on a Steve & Barry's deal building that. That's Steve & Barry's, yep. And they fleeced a lot of other families, not just ours. And before that, it was called Media Play, which certainly would be out of business now if they didn't go out earlier because everything they sold was CDs and books, everything that's now digital. So that was such an interesting deal to be a part of. And of course, we wish you and your family great health and success in not only that location but your 33 other locations, and can't wait to visit some more as you expand. And if our visitors, our audience, our friends want to get in touch with you, Rick, obviously we have Murdoch's.com. But are you okay if somebody, maybe an up-and-coming entrepreneur, wanted to email you, pick your brain, try to get a little bit more of that GET secret sauce? Would you mind taking an email from one of them?

I would be glad to.

Awesome. Yeah, I appreciate that. We're going to share your address right down there. Dougie, are you ready to finalize with the quick lightning round, and then we're going to... yeah, we didn't forget about the lightning round, right?

Absolutely. Rick, we have just a couple questions. It's very quick. Keep it light, keep it fun. Whatever comes in your head first. We ask all our guests.

All right. Here we go. Can you recommend a business book for an up-and-coming entrepreneur?

Well, Winning Every Day. That's by Lou Holtz.

Lou Holtz. Okay, gotcha. Yeah, inspiration. Now is it a business book? Anyway, lightning, that's good enough. Read that one. It's great on culture. Perfect. I don't know if we're going to open up a Murdoch's in outer space, but I definitely want to do a IPO trip to outer space. So who are we going with? Is it Richard Branson, Elon Musk, or Jeff Bezos? Who do you trust more?

I'd go with Elon.

Okay. I don't know if you guys have these vanity plates on your cars out there. In our area, we see people put their names on the license plate. If I force you to put something on your license plate, and I think Murdoch's is too long, what would you put?

Oh, my gosh. That's a tough one. Okay, let's go with... yeah.

All right. We're going to go with Ranch Man. All right. Another show I love, Ted Lasso, always wants to know: what was your first concert and your best concert?

Best concert was Rush in Vegas, their final tour. I'd always wanted to see Neil Peart play drums because I'm a drummer, and I was blown away. First concert was 38 Special and Cheap Trick.

Oh my god. I've heard of Cheap Trick. I don't think I've heard of 38 Special. I sat in Neil Peart's drum set once. There you go. Yeah, I worked at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Last question, Rick. What's a goal that I could remind you of a year from now?

Stay true to what Murdoch's is all about. That is my goal. I love it. We have some rapid growth ahead of us, and we need to stay true to who we are.

That's right. You don't want to lose that as you expand. Perfect. All right, Dougie. Nice. Rick did it. He survived the lightning round. Nice job.

That's okay. You know, I think I may take that question out. That's a tough one because if you're not... I like plates. On my Instagram, I follow plates. I take photos. I grew up, Rick, I don't know. My dad had a plate that said 'Earned It.' What do you want from me? So I think I may take that one out. That's a tough one. I mean, how about like if you read that like an Instagram handle, a new Instagram handle? You gotta make a new Instagram handle. That's kind of like a license. Yeah, it's kind of the same thing.

Yeah, cool. Rick, I want to thank you so much for spending your morning with us.

Yes, go ahead. I need one minute. And I know you've got young dude. One of the questions you thought might come up is what is something you really screwed up. It was like the reverse resume. We talked about that. A big mistake that I made early on in my career when I was in my 20s, low 30s, I did not understand the importance of knowing the different personality types that I was working with. And I did not think it was important to get to know how they should be communicated with or even know how I should be communicated with. I blew it off, and I was wrong. So if you're struggling with your team and you're not having good communication, figure out a program to learn how to communicate with the different personality types that are in your company, and it will grease the skids completely. It will do away with a lot of drama. And I used to communicate completely wrong with people who didn't appreciate certain styles of communication. And that was something that I fortunately recovered from, but that is critically important.

I like that. I like that there's multiple resources too to help you with that. Yes, we use this. Yep, it's a profile. I've done a DISC profile. There's also Bank On It that helps you understand yourself and what's best for you for communication and how to communicate with others because they put you in like these columns, but it helps you discover the communication styles with different people. So interesting. Yeah, I love that because this happens even inside my own home. My kids, my wife, we may all be saying the same thing, but three people are hearing it totally differently. And so if you don't take the time to try to get to know and understand how your team member or family member, whoever it may be, listens and hears, you're just going Charlie Brown, blah blah blah. So very, very important. That's great advice. And I do often do the reverse resume. I didn't want to take up too much of your time, to respect your time, so that's why I didn't throw in that because we covered so much good stuff with GET and all the wonderful culture. So any last things from you, Doug?

Wonderful show, Rick. Everything you said, 100% spot on. It's amazing. Like I said, we are going to bring you some of the most incredible resources from all over the country, from family, friends, relationships, networking, real estate. This is not a powder puff podcast. This is about really diving in and getting to understand what's the secret sauce with some of the most successful, credentialed people out there. So I'm so grateful for the network and for our friends. So Rick, we'll see on our next visit out west. I hope we'll meet up maybe in Westminster. And wish you all the best. Say hi to Mary Kay for me as well.

Okay, I will do that. Right now. Thanks, you guys. I enjoyed it.

You got it. Safe travels. Thank you, Rick. All right. And stuff. Good stuff. Yeah, I mean, just one last thing. As we get more into the cell phones and virtual world, Rick definitely touched on it. As we get more into this thing, the trust, the relationships, and the experience are going to be more and more important. You can have a nice online store, you can have a nice website, you can have it, but the experience that they have in your space and what they feel when they go to your space is what's going to make the difference. So like he said, he trusted my dad because the organization we're in, that the deal would be what we do, which is what had happened. His customers trust him when they walk into the store to buy a certain pet food or a certain quality of a garment or a fence. They know it's going to last. So trust is at the heart of it. And trust is at the heart of any relationship. You have no relationship if you don't have trust. It doesn't exist. Anyway, Dougie, let's play us out. Maybe we'll be back in a few weeks with some great guests. And remember, guys, the more you give, the more you get.