Roger Farah - TST Podcast #869

Event and I brought my old man along. He's cruising with me in the BMW M8 Competition, and so we sat down in his hotel room at Scribner's Catskill Lodge. They did not pay me to say that. To chat about business and answer some of your Patreon business advice questions. And so here it is, my dad Roger Farah, chilling with me on the Smoking Tire podcast. Today's episode is brought to you by Off the Record. We love Off the Record. You've heard us talk about Off the Record. In fact, I've got a case pending with Off the Record right now. It's my first one in a little while. I haven't... I've been a very good boy, but allegedly I've been a very bad boy. But Off the Record is going to help. That's what they do. Who's a lawyer and maybe can help you wherever you are in the country, even if you get that ticket far from home. Off the Record can help. It is so easy. All you have to do is go to offtherecord.com TST or download the Off the Record app and use code TST1. That's it. Those two things. You get 10% off all your legal services with Off the Record, and they have an unbelievable success rate. 97% chance of getting those points off of your record. They are so clutch. And it's not just the ticket, right? Your insurance can be impacted, potentially even your livelihood if you drive for a living and you can't have points on your record. Go to offtherecord.com TST, use code TST1 on the Off the Record app. 10% off all legal services with Off the Record. You know them and you love them, and we do too. Beautiful Catskills day. It's perfect. Chris, fall, Hunter Mountain in the background, leaves changing. Oh, you weren't kidding about the sun. Yeah, the cloud moves, it really hits you. That's okay, I'm used to it. I could use some sear on my eyes after my surgeries. I cannot... Oh, we needed like sunscreen. No, I just can't really get it full face. Oh, and the mower's back. Hopefully it'll be okay. Sorry, sorry for that.

Well, you mean you bring out... You just can't. I mean, you get a mix of people. You're great on a curve there. They were beautiful drives the last two days through some gorgeous rolling, leaf-changing rivers and streams. I mean, other than occasionally getting stuck by a construction truck or some slowpoke, it was gorgeous.

It's interesting. I didn't feel that because I don't have anything to compare it to. But the fact is, 80, 90% of the time we were... Find a balance of like, yes, it's a road and track trip, but we're not going to keep you in the car every minute of the day for 10 hours, because that gets exhausting. Yeah, I don't think that's fun. I think you got to have a balance. And today we're going to Saratoga, which is a lovely place.

Good. And now I want to know what the next one is. And how about my public speaking skills at the safety? You draw out the best in people. Other than your father, where you may not draw out the best. But it's all been fun, and I think a lot of these people want to know where the next one is, and where they can ship their car to.

Yeah, it's good. So other than a little sprinkle here and there, it's been beautiful. Yeah, it's been fine. So I've had a lot of requests to talk to you about business and things, and we've got quite a few topics to cover. You pre-screened, but was that scared the heck out of me? Well, I hope this one of course, our questions coming from the Patreon. Patreon.com/thesmokingtirepodcast. You can get an ad-free listening experience, you can ask questions for our guests, up to and including my dad. And we'll get right to it. Vincent says, put this question in like within 5 minutes of us posting the topic. And I hope this is about me, but maybe it's not. What is your advice for raising a child who is aware of their privilege to be a compassionate, ambitious individual? Wow.

Okay, well, general question, but your strategy has always been... I'm a very big believer in saving money and investing money as early, even if it's a small amount, but consistently when you can. Obviously you have to take care of your bills and your obligations, but where you can save money, I like when compounding works in your favor, which means growth over time each year, adding more to the pile because you're putting money in. And a mutual fund is the easiest and least expensive way to invest in growth. And if you reinvest the dividends so they buy you more shares in... Then they have an unbelievable... No comment. Then they have an unbelievable... If you have inside information, it does increase your odds. If you can legally insider trade, you are probably better off doing that. But I think it sets you up over the course of years and decades of investing for the kind of nest egg and future needs, whether it's college or mortgages or even retirement, that compounding really works.

Okay. Uber driver says wants to know about your new Cayenne hybrid. Everyone wanted to know about your Cayenne. So my bad. This was a big... You know, laugh. You trash my black... And you know, brown black over chocolate is heinous. Was my unique car? Was so ugly. But the turbo Cayenne, I love driving. Yeah. Um, when it was time to get something else, I really like the Cayenne. And you kept that for... I mean, what was it? That car was like a 2017. Yeah, you kept it for like 6 and a half years, which is a while. And the hybrid, which I didn't have a lot of experience with, I've now had for several months. It's fantastic because I realized that 80% of the time I'm driving 35 miles at a clip, and I plug... Had a custom paint job in Greenwich, and he said, I like your green better than my green. What is it? I said it's a Matt Farah special, and it's Goodwood Green is what it's called. It's Goodwood Green. But it's gorgeous. Do you actually know how rare that is? Folks, got to take a quick break from the action for just a second for NASCAR, who is a sponsor of today's episode. The competition on and off the track is heating up in the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs. And with only one more race before the field is slashed in half one last time for the Championship 4, the playoffs head to Homestead Miami Speedway in sunny South Florida. Nestled between the vibrancy of South Beach and the calm of the Keys, this track offers a one-of-a-kind racing... Championship 4. There's only a few more races in NASCAR's 75th Anniversary season. So don't miss out. Get together with some good friends and tune in to the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs race at Homestead Miami Speedway, Sunday, October 22nd, 2:30 p.m. Eastern on NBC. And we are brought to you today by Prize Picks. What is Prize Picks? Well, it's the largest independently owned daily fantasy sports platform in North America. It's the easiest and most exciting way to play daily fantasy sports because it's just you against the numbers. Instead of battling thousands of other players, including pros and sharks, you just pick more than or less than on two... Really simple to play. You can make my picks and submit my entry in less than 60 seconds. And with the Prize Picks reboot policy, your entries stay in play even if one of your players gets injured. For NFL games and CFB top 25 matchups, if you have a player who exits the game in the first half and does not return in the second, that player is rebooted. Prize Picks is the only daily fantasy sports platform with injury insurance. Prize Picks is awesome. It's easy. They've got weekly promotions that can lead to big payouts, like Taco Tuesday. Each Tuesday, Prize Picks discounts selected player projections up... $100. Prize Picks is daily fantasy sports made easy. And now back to the action on the Smoking Tire podcast. I don't... So, Town Porsche Englewood, New Jersey, our favorite Porsche dealer, where my car came from and where you buy yours. That was the only paint to sample Cayenne they were allocated for the entire model year. Oh, they allocate the number of... You can paint to sample. The program is so popular that they only allow a certain number of cars to actually be... Because they can't do the volume, and particularly in... Even though a lot of the paint to sample colors were those orders were in many cases cancelled and they couldn't get it. Yours was able to go through because it was a non-metallic color. That's incredible because I was promised 3 months delivery and it took 11. Well, I mean, and it was... That's what I get for... Hey, get the paint to sample. They let you do it. You know, you always buy these sucky colors. Get a good color. And it's a good thing you didn't have to turn in a lease and you didn't mind driving your old car for a little while longer. But yes, that to have a paint to sample Cayenne hybrid for model year 2023 is very, very rare.

And it's like 700 horsepower. It's way over the top, but it's fun. Okay, I saw it for the car for the first time the other day, and even though it was kind of dirty because it's been raining, it was beautiful. And recommend the small wheels enough versus the big 22s you had on the turbo. You get a better ride with the small wheels, more tire. I love it. Yeah, and now we understand how hybrids work. Yes, we do. Zach says, not my Zach, Zach fan. I work as a superintendent for a large general contractor, and the push has been to multifamily housing as we have a continued national housing... I think we have a surplus. Well, right now we have a surplus because the whole way workforces have been retrained to do virtual work, whether it's Zoom or whatever you're using. Office buildings are really in trouble now because they're half empty. People are working 2 or 3 days maybe in the office, and there's a surplus. That is a glut on the market. And a lot of people are not even able to pay their mortgage on a commercial building, and they're throwing the keys back to the bank. And the banks have to repossess the property. Why do you think they haven't? There isn't a cottage industry that is converting offices to apartments, or is there and I'm just not seeing it?

Yeah, I just... I mean, there's a guy up the street from my shop that finished a brand new beautiful office building in September... The flexibility. One day if somebody wanted to turn it into offices, they could. But we have two sets of plans. Don't think that's going to happen anytime soon. Probably throw the other set of plans away. Yeah, it was... It was if this parking business is actually a failure and I don't know what I'm talking about. We've got a backup and we could have converted... Into 12 office suites. Oh boy. Here's the mower. All righty then. We have come inside because the mower simply will not stop. It's okay. So we're flexible. We're in a hotel room at Scribner's Lodge here, which is actually kind of cute. The next 20 years, I think that's 20 years is a long time, but at least for the foreseeable future, I don't see anybody building. There's just so much excess availability and high quality buildings. Yeah, yeah. But it's... I mean, as we drive through these Catskills towns, the hollowing out of local retail is sad. It is very sad. We saw so many local retailers who went out of business. Maybe it was the pandemic, maybe it was shopping online, maybe it was a Walmart or some other big box retailer. But building after building totally empty and nobody finding a reuse for them. Yeah. What happens to those properties?

On our videos before, and now they are over here at the podcast. And this show's episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. I like BetterHelp a lot because they make talk therapy easy. Finding a new therapist can be really hard if you don't already have one. And sometimes your brain can get in its own way. You could be going through a tough time in life, or you could have a proper clinical disorder like depression or anxiety. And therapy can help figure out what's holding you back so you can work for yourself instead of against yourself. And whether or not you've been in therapy before, I have been in therapy... Professionally and personally from another perspective. And I can tell things to my therapists that I don't necessarily want to say to either my wife or my family or my friends. And I know this person will give me a balanced and experienced perspective. But it's really hard to find a new therapist, especially in our sort of post-COVID world. I've tried to find therapists in person before, and it is a challenge. And you may live somewhere where frankly there aren't very many therapists, or there isn't a therapist that you can personally relate to. And so BetterHelp is a better way of doing it. It's entirely online. It's designed to be convenient, flexible, suited to your schedule. You just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with one of... Go to betterhelp.com/smokingtire today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp.com/smokingtire to get 10% off your first month with BetterHelp. What is the productivity versus happiness of home versus in-person work?

Okay. Jonathan says, how much overlap is there between your approach to managing people in a company versus raising kids? Lot of parenting questions here. Ooh. Well, they're so pleased with how you turned out, they think I have the secret sauce, which I don't. No. When I was a kid, you went to work. That was what you did. And Mom did a lot of things and... Your children otherwise, or you try to teach people at work good values. You try to teach them how to reason through problems. You try to teach them how to be patient and compassionate. Those are behaviors that equally apply in an office environment or in parenting. But you also have to accept every child is different. Every child has different needs or interests. And I think it worked. One size doesn't fit all. What you have to do to work with one person may not apply to the next person. So there are some core guidelines, family rules, some business rules. And then I think you have to deal with each... Came out with me at Monticello in a McLaren 570. That's exactly what I was going to. One Matt said, let me take a couple laps around and then you can do it. And just I'll show you the lines and then you can drive the car. Halfway through one lap, I said, Matt, you got to let me out. I can't do this. I was tapped out. Happy to watch you. I sat there all day watching you. I could not do it. It scared the heck out of me. But it wasn't my driving in particular. It was just it was a very fast, you know, a lot of turns. It was over my capacity to take on risk at that stage of my life. If I were probably younger, I could have done it. But halfway through the first lap, remember I said that? Let me out.

Okay. Have you ever driven or bought, owned your dream car? And if not, what is your dream car?

My name is a verb says, what was your managerial awakening? The moment where you realized that if you were going to be in charge of people, you had to be the best version of yourself so they could depend on you but also respect you.

Okay. Josh says, I find the topic of... Aware of. Is it common in the corporate world or is it rare?

Okay. Amateur 911 says, with the rise in social media... Instead of buying huge EV, huge heavy vehicles, do you share the same... This is sort of two separate questions. So one is fast fashion versus lasting fashion, and the other is, do you share my sentiment about wastefulness?

Okay. Meh, that's his username. Meh says, I'm going to paraphrase. Meh makes a good living, is successful, but is recently being inundated with requests from extended family, etc., to partner with me on this or invest in their new business or struggling business. How can I deal with these types of requests?

I once... You know, Kevin O'Leary is... Yeah, he's kind of a dick, but he makes a point sometimes. And I once heard him on a podcast, I think it was with Tom Segura, where he said that for every member of his family, he offers a one-time free money which... You this, this is your one get. And then if they ever ask again, he holds up the paper. You agreed, one, this is the one ask. I like your method better, but I think that's for him. What he said was it eliminates that awkwardness of I gave you the money and now I need to bug you for it back, or I gave you the money and you spent it in a way I don't approve of. It's very hard with family or even very good friends. I also have had a variety of friends who have come to me and said, will you invest in my business? And my answer has been no, whether it's a good idea or a bad idea. I'm not even evaluating. I know it's going to ruin the friendship. Yeah, so I stick with... John Maxwell. No, I don't either. But he wrote, quote, success is when I add value to myself, but significance is when I add value to others. Okay, does that resonate with you? And if so, have you seen this play out in your life?

Okay, we don't have enough time for all of these. And so there's some that have been asked in previous shows with you about leadership and stuff, so I'm going to skip over those. And if I don't get to yours, I'm sorry. Okay. DWB F11 says, if you were given... Not me, he... If this person given 15 minutes with a member of your company's board of directors as a rising internal business leader, what would you ask them in order to make a memorable and positive impression?

Individual and what exactly you're good at now and what you're not so good at. But we've touched on this. Leadership for me is the ability to inspire the best out of your team. What do you have to do to bring out the best, whether it's work harder, be more intellectually curious, be more detailed in your work? And I think individual leadership skills bring out the best in the team they're overseeing. And I think that kind of customized advice for your team is what will make you a better leader over time.

This journey, but it's okay. It's fine. And we're going to drive to Saratoga Springs, and then we're going to go back to Connecticut, and then I'm going to come back to Los Angeles, and I'll be back in the studio with Zach next week. Thank you to our patrons for your questions. They're great. As always, and for the ones I didn't get to, I really... Most of the ones I didn't get to, there was four or five. They actually overlapped previous shows, so there was stuff we covered already. So it was either close to that or whatever. And we're limited time because we got to get in the car and go drive. So thanks. We'll see you later. Thanks, Dad. Take care. Bye. Thank you.