[00:03:04] Sean Sweeney: I, was in a couple movies. I was got lucky and was in some commercials and yeah, I had a lit, a very, very minor amount of success, but just about the amount where it was like, if you really want to make a career of this, you need to move to New York or Los Angeles. And I had a girlfriend at the time who had just started dating, who’s now my wife, who had actually just moved from Los Angeles to Chicago saying, I want to get out of Los Angeles.

[00:03:29] Sean Sweeney: I don’t want to be in the entertainment industry. And I liked her and was like, Hey, I’m, I don’t really want to go move and do the opposite. So looked at other ideas and long story short, on that front, she ended up getting into grad school back in California after a. And I had looked at going to law school, had had gotten kind of fortunate and talked my way into actually my old friend’s job at a law firm being a law clerk where I didn’t really do much.

[00:03:52] Sean Sweeney: But halfway through that year, I took the lsat, I applied to law school. It’s every communications liberal arts major is kind of backup plan, right. And I got into a school in California, so we were, Kim and I were going to move out there together and well, halfway through the year, the law firm I was working at was a small firm in Chicago.

[00:04:10] Sean Sweeney: It got acquired by Holland at Knight, which is a much larger kinda national law firm. And my job switched. I went from being a, a law clerk who basically did nothing but walked down the hall and drop off papers at the courthouse or go by, get people lunch, to actually working very closely with this bankruptcy attorney.

[00:04:27] Sean Sweeney: He ended up giving me a lot of work, which was great, and I, I learned a ton. But I would walk around that law firm and think, boy, I don’t envy any of these people. I don’t want to be, these guys are 60, 70, whatever. They have money, everything’s good. And they’re in here 90 hours a week. Like this looks, this seems horrible.

[00:04:43] Sean Sweeney: And I had a, a serendipitous launch with a couple of the other people doing my same job, who were significantly older than. And we were joking of, as you do when you go out to lunch with colleagues, when you’re low on the totem pole, you, you complain about your boss and you joke about the company and you, you kinda air your dirty laundry.

[00:04:59] Sean Sweeney: And they happened to mention how much money they were making. And back at this time, this was 2001 or 2002. 2002, they were making 50, 60,000 bucks as a paralegal. And I was making 26. And I remember. We’re doing the same job. Why are you, I can barely pay my rent. And, not that $60,000 was a be all, end all at that point, but to me that was a huge amount of money.

[00:05:20] Sean Sweeney: So we got back from lunch and I went into the, basically, not the guy I worked for, but the HR department, and I said, look, I want to raise. Not that I’m asking to get paid what they’re paying. I understand they have way more seniority, but I’m doing the same job. And they basically looked at me and said, you get paid based on how long you’ve worked here.

[00:05:37] Sean Sweeney: That for me, at that age, was such a light bulb moment of why would I want to work in an industry where I get paid only based on how often my butt’s in the seat and how many years I’ve worked here versus how good am I at the job? How much value am I. What am I bringing to the table? And that was kind of in line at the same time that the book Rich Dad, poor Dad, fell on my desk.

[00:05:59] Sean Sweeney: And it [00:06:00] was kind of those two events happening in about a week’s time where I, I realized quickly, this is not the road for me. I need to go figure something else out. Did you 

[00:06:08] Patrick Donley: grow up in a entrepreneurial family or a real estate family 

[00:06:12] Sean Sweeney: at all? Not, not at all. My, my, I don’t think either one of my parents has ever invested a single dollar that they’ve made.

[00:06:19] Sean Sweeney: My mom grew up in Israel and moved to America in her twenties basically when she was married to my dad. Odd jobs, assistant receptionist, some stuff like that. Stayed home with us at various periods as well. My dad is actually a lawyer by trade, but he is a, he works for the state of, he’s worked for the state of Wisconsin for 40 years.

[00:06:38] Sean Sweeney: So that was my vision of lawyers. I thought they all went to work at nine, came home at five, played baseball with their kids till eight 30, and then I went to bed and did all over again. I quickly realized that there’s a difference in income and a different, a difference in lifestyle depending on what kinda lawyer you’re, I had had, I mean, I respect my dad a ton.

[00:06:54] Sean Sweeney: I think he had a great career, but I, I had for whatever reason, bigger ambitions to want to do more and, and frankly to want to make money and, and do different things out in the.  

[00:07:05] Patrick Donley: So you read Rich Dad, poor Dad. I think you also had an uncle too, that you maybe spoke to that was doing some real estate investing.

[00:07:13] Sean Sweeney: I did. After, so I read the, I read the book and that and that combined with the experience with the, the law firm, I ended up deferring my, my law school acceptance for a year and then ultimately just saying no. But when Kim moved out to California, I went. And the first six months or a year of my time there was basically, and I, I joke, I’m just old enough that the internet was the baby at that point.

[00:07:35] Sean Sweeney: You couldn’t hop online and study for 10 hours. I, I was on the phone. I’d call one person and say, Hey, anybody else I could talk to? And they’d put me in touch with somebody else. And as it went, I, my uncle Brian was doing some development actually here in, in the Minneapolis area at that time. And I remember talking to him and listen to how he described the work and the job and like the things he did.

[00:07:56] Sean Sweeney: And I just remember getting off the phone and think. That’s the cool, like that sounds [00:08:00] amazing. I love art. I love design. I’ve been obsessed with building since I can ever remember. And I honestly, Patrick, I didn’t even realize that was a career option. It was one of those things where like the light bulb, the light went on of like, wow, there’s people out there that own these buildings and build these buildings and that’s their job.

[00:08:17] Sean Sweeney: I felt a little embarrassed being 24, 25 years old and not realizing that until that point. But it was a great eye-opener and I, I quickly set out, we were living in the San Francisco Bay area, then I was, I quickly set out and said, ok, I’m going to be a real estate developer. Let’s go. And it was also back when, to get a job, you had to write a cover letter and send a resume in the mail, right?

[00:08:37] Sean Sweeney: Via snail mail. You’d go online and I think Craigslist had finally come out. So there was a lease of monster.com, I think was the, was the job board, so there was at least a little bit of internet, and I just decided I, I was going to send cover letters and resumes to every real estate firm within two hours of San Francisco that I could find as the months went on.

[00:08:56] Sean Sweeney: Probably not surprisingly now, no one. Right. I got no, I got no calls. [00:09:00] Nobody wanted to interview me. No. With bartending and acting on my resume, surprised that no one was really into me. But, so it goes, I kind of realized maybe I need to go to grad school. I really didn’t want to, but I thought maybe if I go get an MBA or I do, I do something to show people that I’m interested in real estate.

[00:09:16] Sean Sweeney: I, I actually started to get a real estate license. At least. I was like, look, I gotta do something to show people that I’m really interested. As I was kind of digging through how to apply to grad school and how to figure that all out, I realized, yeah, I got a phone call one day and this woman called me and said, Hey, I think you sent your resume to us by mistake because we’re looking for a receptionist.

[00:09:38] Sean Sweeney: And I said, you’re a real estate firm, right? And she said, yeah. And at that point, I, I hadn’t kept a list of the 300 people I’d emailed. I knew, remembered some, but it was like, I don’t know who this person is. And she said, look, we actually need a receptionist. We’re a small firm. Would you have any interest in coming to talk to us?

[00:09:54] Sean Sweeney: Because we had this, we like hit it off on the phone. It was one of those moments where we just had this great conversation. She’s like, you [00:10:00] know what, why don’t you just come in? Cause who knows? And I said, sure. Great. I went up there the next day. It was about, it turned out it was about an hour and 15 minutes from my apartment.

[00:10:09] Sean Sweeney: So I drove up, had the interview, and I met one of the principals of the firm and her, and he, the first thing he said to me was, why are you here? This is, you want to be my receptionist? Really? And my response was, look, I’m really interested in real estate. I don’t have any experience, but I, I’m smart. I’ll work super hard and I’ll do anything you want.

[00:10:29] Sean Sweeney: I’ll, I’ll be the receptionist. I’ll make coffee, I’ll sweep the floor. I’m mean, I’ll literally do whatever you want me to do if you just let me in the door. He kind of laughed and said, well, well let us, let us think about it and we’ll, we’ll call you. And I was like, ok. And I laughed figuring, all right, well gave it a shot.

[00:10:43] Sean Sweeney: Right? And about a week later they called me and said, are you still interested in being the receptionist? They said, why don’t you come back up? Went back up, met the rest of the team. Long story short, ended up getting, offered the job as the receptionist and the company was Thompson Dorfman Partners. And, and Will and Bruce, who ran the firm, [00:11:00] had worked at Tramel Crow, had worked at the Irvine Company, had run Trammel Crow’s West Coast operation for a long time.

[00:11:05] Sean Sweeney: And had them just recently broken off to, to start their own firm. So these were not small time developers. I mean, these were big guns and I had no idea what that meant when I first start. I didn’t know what that was, but I couldn’t have gotten luckier with the guys I, I got an offer from, and I commuted an hour and 10 minutes each way for 40,000 bucks a year to be the receptionist.

[00:11:25] Sean Sweeney: They thought 

[00:11:26] Patrick Donley: I was crazy. What I think is so cool is like you made it known to them, like, I’m here to learn as much as I can. I think you said you told a project manager maybe that you knew how to do Excel at one point, and I don’t think you knew how to do Excel or you maybe taught yourself at home that night and you were doing some it.

[00:11:41] Patrick Donley: You were doing a little bit of everything. I think it’s awesome, that, that kind of outside of the box thinking, initially you had considered more traditional education like an mba. Did you get their advice on whether you should pursue an mba? 

[00:11:54] Sean Sweeney: That’s a great question, Patrick. I did after a while, I started, when I started with them, as [00:12:00] I said, I, I just wanted to get in the door.

[00:12:02] Sean Sweeney: And then a couple months in the Excel story happened where the vice president came to me and said, Hey, you know how to do spreadsheets, right? He’s like, I’m busy, I need help. And I was like, in my head, I’m like, no, I don’t. But my gut was like, here’s a chance to start doing some real work. Say yes and figure it out.

[00:12:16] Sean Sweeney: So I did that and after about six months, I, I said to the, they had kind of said, We’re really impressed with the fact that you’ve been driving two and a half hours a day to be the receptionist and, and, and you’re obviously committed. We’d love to start giving you some more to do. And I said, that’s great.

[00:12:31] Sean Sweeney: But I said, guys, I don’t know how to do anything Still. I’ve gotten really good at making coffee and I know where Kinkos is and some of the other stuff, but I’m like, I don’t have any experience. And they said, you’ll just, you’ll figure it out. And what I said, what I, what I did is I went home and did some research and I found out like Berkeley had a, a part-time night MBA program and there was some other options like that in in the area.

[00:12:50] Sean Sweeney: Luck, obviously, luckily in the Bay Area there’s lot of good educational opportunities and I said to them, guys, I could apply to this Berkeley program. I don’t know if I’d get in, [00:13:00] but I could certainly try. Would that be a good idea? Their response was, seems like a heck of a lot of money to spend to get your old job back when you’re done.

[00:13:09] Sean Sweeney: I was a little taken aback, but, but their plant was like, look, you’re already in the door now, now you just gotta learn on the job. And I appreciated that, Patrick, because I, I paid for my college myself. I was fortunate. I had an academic scholarship at Madison, but I, I worked 20, 30 hours a week at a bar to pay my room, a board to provide food, do anything I wanted to.

[00:13:29] Sean Sweeney: So if I was going to go to grad school, that hundred $50,000 Berkeley program was coming out of my pocket, of which I had none. It was kind of a relief to think, and, and to be fair, especially to folks out there considering it, the fact that I didn’t do it 20 years later, I can look back and say, yeah, that was, that was the right choice.

[00:13:48] Sean Sweeney: There was a lot of self-doubt around that for several years after that, wondering, should I have done it? Because if I ever leave these guys, you know, is it going to, you know, all, all those types of questions always nagged at me. And after I became a [00:14:00] project manager with them, all the guys at the other companies had MBAs.

[00:14:03] Sean Sweeney: And so it was over a 20 year arc. It turned out to be just fine. But I will say that in the, in the first few years, there was definitely some insecurity and some doubt around the fact that I didn’t have the same education as a lot of the other people. Who were, were in the, in the field and I mean, even at the firm, I, both of the guys who ran the firm had MBAs, one from Harvard and one from ucla.

[00:14:23] Sean Sweeney: Yeah. So it’s hard 

[00:14:23] Patrick Donley: not to think like, ah, I should, if I want to do this, I need that too. I’m writing an article right now. We actually publish a newsletter and it’s coming out tomorrow about the, it’s about the traits that make for a successful real estate investor. And one of them that I have is like a long-term vision.

[00:14:38] Patrick Donley: Did you have a clear vision as you started working in San Francisco as the receptionist, or did that develop over time as opportunities arose? Talk to us about that, how your vision for what you’re doing now came 

[00:14:49] Sean Sweeney: about. If I’m being totally honest, I think I always deep down knew this is what I wanted to do.

[00:14:56] Sean Sweeney: Once I found out about it, once I really figured out this is it [00:15:00] because of the, again, the origin story sounds cool now because I ended up where I. But there was a lot of years where there was a lot of self-doubt around that, and a lot of, am I in the right place? Is, is this even for somebody like me? These guys are all financial wizards and this, that, or the other thing.

[00:15:17] Sean Sweeney: And so there, there was a lot of doubt around it for a long time. There was a, there was more than one occasion where I, I interviewed for some other job in some other field and I thought, I just don’t think this is for, I just don’t think I can do it. I, I don’t think I’m built like a lot of these guys.

[00:15:32] Sean Sweeney: You know what, what’s turned out again? 20. It’s, it’s great to have the benefit of 20 years of hindsight. What’s turned out to probably be my greatest strength is the unconventional way I came up and the way I think about things and in my design angle and, and some of the other stuff that I thought for frankly, 15 of the 20 years I’ve been doing this, that that made me less than, and it’s only been in the last 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 years where I’ve realized it’s actually my competitive advantage.

[00:15:59] Patrick Donley: There’s somebody, I think [00:16:00] Moses tweeted today that somebody else tweeted it, but the comment was, real estate gets really easy once you learn 

[00:16:05] Sean Sweeney: who you are. That’s a, that, oh, that’s an amazing statement. That is so true. I mean, I, I know that I tweeted at one point, cause I, I, again, I’m really fortunate now where I, where I’ve landed and how things have worked out.

[00:16:18] Sean Sweeney: But in the 20 years I’ve been doing this career, the first 15 were really hard. They were really. Both just from a dollars and cents and an experience and all of the reasons. There was a lot of self-doubt as well as I went through the process and it really, once I started my own firm and once I had some modest level of, oh wow, this might actually work, or this seems like this is going to work, has it really gotten fun?

[00:16:46] Patrick Donley: I like talking about the 2008 great financial crisis. There’s a lot of investors that have not lived through a downturn younger. 

[00:16:54] Sean Sweeney: Older guys that live through it, I like to talk about it. 

[00:16:57] Patrick Donley: What was it like for you? Real estate obviously did not [00:17:00] pan out well for a lot of people during that time. Really difficult time.

[00:17:04] Patrick Donley: I think at that time, maybe you moved from San Francisco back to Minnesota at that point. What was it like going through the downturn for you? How did you handle it? 

[00:17:13] Sean Sweeney: It was really, I mean, it was a tough time. I, the years I spent at Thompson Dorfman were, I mean, I think of Will and Bruce. I think of Bruce as my older brother, and I think of Will like a second father and we’re still in touch today.

[00:17:26] Sean Sweeney: We still get together. We still talk. So it, it was the decision to leave working there was much more than just switching a job or moving to a different city. We had essentially had a succession plan in place by that point that they had kind of said, look, you stick with us and this is yours one day. That was a lot to walk away from.

[00:17:44] Sean Sweeney: But in 2008 and two, 2008, they made me basically a, an associate partner and they said, look, we’re going to start paying you like a developer when, when we make money, you make. We’ll start bonusing you. We’ll start doing and, and I was, I remember going home and telling Kim, and we had just gotten engaged, so I’m [00:18:00] sure she was like, oh, thank God.

[00:18:01] Sean Sweeney: But I’m not, I’m not marrying the receptionist. That’s good. But within the next 12 months, the whole world. And I was really fortunate. They didn’t fire me. They, they said, look, we’re . They always joke, we don’t pay yet. We didn’t pay it enough to, to need to get rid of you. It didn’t really matter. But out in California, in, in a lot of big markets, right?

[00:18:19] Sean Sweeney: The entitlement process is, is many, many years. We had deals that we were working on in 2003 when I joined them, that in 2009 when I left, we were still working on that. Hadn’t broken ground. I was 30, I turned 30 in 2008, Kim and I got married in 2000. And, you start asking yourself those big questions at that point in time, right?

[00:18:38] Sean Sweeney: We’re married now, how, how are we going to have a family? Where are we going to live? How are all these things going to happen? And out there making not much money. Kim wasn’t making any money at this point, like it was, it was really daunting to think about how can we even make this work? If I’m not going to make any money with these guys for at least five more years, how are we going to do this?

[00:18:59] Sean Sweeney: [00:19:00] And we looked at moving an hour outside the city or moving, mo moving to Austin or Portland. I, I joke, I cost myself a lot of money by not moving to Austin in 2010 instead of Minneapolis. But so it goes, and we got to the point where we realized we’re going to run out of mo. Like we just can’t do this anymore.

[00:19:17] Sean Sweeney: We’re going to get, you know, we’re going to end up on the rock side of things. And we made the really, really difficult decision to move and we, we, we chose Minneapolis mostly with a two year plan. I mean, mostly because my wife’s mom lived here and we had a free place to come live. Honestly, I mean, I tell, I try to be really transparent to people on Twitter and in general.

[00:19:36] Sean Sweeney: When I was 31 years old, I was living in my mother-in-law’s basement. I didn’t have a dollar to my name. I was negative net worth living in my mother-in-law’s basement because I had just spent five, six years getting in hindsight world class experience. But I never was in the right seat at the right time to ever financially benefit from that experience.

[00:19:55] Sean Sweeney: And we moved here mostly because we could live at our mom’s house for free. [00:20:00] And then we figured we’ll give it two years, and if we don’t like it, we’ll move somewhere else. Right? But we gotta go somewhere. We gotta kind of lick our wounds and, and figure it out. I was really fortunate that I actually was able to get a real estate job in Minneapolis in 2009, at the end of 2009.

[00:20:15] Sean Sweeney: There’s a great company here called Art Space Projects that does tax credit development for artists around the country. Very few people have acting and real estate development experience on their resume. So I happened to be really fortunate and got super lucky that, that I was able to get a job so I was able to at least get a job and move here and get paid to still live.

[00:20:33] Sean Sweeney: And after a couple of years here, we just fell in love with the place. And I was really fortunate that when the market started to turn in late 2010, early 2011, I had, I had worked basically a second job networking, because my strategy was when the market turns, I can’t be the new guy who just showed up. People have to know me, so when opportunities happen, my phone, somebody will call me or I’ll at least be able to find out.

[00:20:55] Sean Sweeney: And I was really lucky that that’s how it played out. And then in 2011 I was [00:21:00] deciding between a couple of development jobs and then an opportunity popped up in an investment fund to help them buy multifamily around the country. And because it was a commission job and I was 32 at that point, still had no money.

[00:21:12] Sean Sweeney: I figured I gotta go do this and I gotta go crush it and I gotta hope for the best. And 

[00:21:17] Patrick Donley: so that was doing acquisitions for tertiary mul multi-family. 

[00:21:22] Sean Sweeney: Yes, a firm’s name is Timberland Partners. They’re a phenomenal firm based here in the, the Twin Cities. Started by a, a former broker in the nineties, just buying tertiary apartments and around the Midwest and the South.

[00:21:35] Sean Sweeney: And they, Bob had a great vision that he saw the market turning and he said, I think there’s going to be a great run for multifamily. We need to get aggressive and go start buying as much as we. I was hired to open new markets for them. Basically, they had a platform from Min, Minnesota down to Texas, but there was a bunch of other tertiary markets around in Florida and Nashville and St.

[00:21:56] Sean Sweeney: Louis and I. My job was to basically get on a plane and go make [00:22:00] friends in those cities and help ’em by projects and was class kind of class B cons. Think about garden style class B, multi-family in the suburbs of tertiary markets, basically. Secondary in tertiary markets. Yep. Some of the markets now are not considered tertiary or secondary like Nashville or some of the Florida markets we bought in, but at the time, nobody was looking in there.

[00:22:20] Sean Sweeney: It was a life changing, I mean, I’d almost say my third life changing job in a row to work with those guys because not only was finally my timing financially good, I had the beauty of being in a commission role where if we bought 200 million of real estate in a year, I was going to get paid according. And it was a really, I learned so much from those guys.

[00:22:42] Sean Sweeney: I learned a ton about it really rounded out my experience too, because in, in California, a lot of it was dev. One, once I got out of the front desk, it was project management, right? I, I wasn’t putting deals together, I wasn’t working on financing. It was, okay, here’s the project. Now you go execute this and make sure we get to [00:23:00] the end.

[00:23:00] Sean Sweeney: And here it was, here’s a, here’s a laptop and here’s a phone. Go buy apartment. It was a totally different thing and unbelievable. It gave me such great experience on how to put deals together and, and you know how to be a deal maker. There’s no way that I would’ve been able to jump off, start my own development firm and get any traction if I didn’t have that experience with those guys at Timberland.

[00:23:23] Sean Sweeney: It really paved the way for me. 

[00:23:25] Patrick Donley: So I wanted to circle back. You touched on while you were at the tax credit company, you were networking like crazy. It sounded like, almost like you said, a second job. So for people that are, maybe introverts don’t like networking, what would you say to them? Like the importance of it.

[00:23:40] Patrick Donley: How important has it been to like the success in your career? Like you said, you didn’t want to be the new guy showing up once things turned around. Talk to us how important that networking process was and maybe some tips on how to. 

[00:23:53] Sean Sweeney: I think it’s extremely important. I do think as I’ve gotten older, I do think there’s a, especially for [00:24:00] people who are introverted or shy or, it’s, it’s not enjoyable.

[00:24:04] Sean Sweeney: I do think there’s a kind of a path to, to saying, I don’t need the biggest network, go, I always tell people, now go make five best friends. You don’t need 50. A lot of people who enjoy networking. You try to make all 50 of your best friends, certainly, but if it’s not your normal way, I’m really fortunate that for me, networking is kind of like, it’s almost ingrained.

[00:24:23] Sean Sweeney: I make friends easily. I, I enjoy it. It gives me energy to meet new people and do those things. So for me it was a, a really great thing, but I understand if it’s not how you’re wired, that it could be intimidating and d. I think the beauty too now is you have the internet, right? I mean, even in 2010, Facebook was just getting started and my people were on MySpace and there was, you friend stirred, but it, it was nowhere near the mass adoption that there is today.

[00:24:49] Sean Sweeney: I think Twitter, I think some of these other platforms, I mean, it’s a, it’s a great way if you, you don’t feel like getting in front of people to really learn how those, those websites work and those social media platforms work [00:25:00] and use ’em to your advantage. LinkedIn, all that type of stuff. I mean, people always ask me now that my, my Twitter account has grown pretty significantly in two years.

[00:25:08] Sean Sweeney: Boy, you’re so lucky. How does it work? And da da da. And I’ve always said, you know what? Once my account started growing, I studied how Twitter worked. I understand every post I make, there’s a reason I’m making it right. There’s a, I mean, I, I, of course keep, I try to keep my humanity and I’m, I’m always interacting with people, but there’s an actual strategy to building your presence on Twitter, and it’s the same on, know, it’s not the same strategy, but on LinkedIn there’s one on all these other platform.

[00:25:34] Sean Sweeney: I’d encourage people if it’s not, if coffee, lunch and dinner isn’t your thing, get active on these platforms and, and you can certainly meet a bunch of people. But when I, to circle back when I, when I moved, yeah. I, in my job for Art Space was actually helping them kind of stabilize eight or 10 properties around the country.

[00:25:52] Sean Sweeney: So I was on an airplane all the time too. I wasn’t here that often. So every day I was here, it was breakfast or lunch or dinner with somebody I was [00:26:00] usually treating. Didn’t have any money. Still so , it was a tough thing, but I just kept at it. And I think one of the keys to networking is not going in with an ask, right?

[00:26:09] Sean Sweeney: You’re not there to get something from someone. You’re there to, you’re there to make a connection and to meet someone and to learn about them. and maybe they can help you, but hopefully maybe you can help them too. I think the, one of the other keys is it’s to be patient with it. I think some of the worst networking is when somebody sits down with you for the first time and it’s a sales pitch.

[00:26:27] Sean Sweeney: 10 seconds in, that’s not how you make connections with other people. Right. And people I’ve learned, people want to help friends. People want to help people that they like people. I, I love doing that now. I mean, young people when they, people that I can be of assistance to, it makes me feel great to be able to do that for people.

[00:26:43] Sean Sweeney: And when I first moved, it was just nonstop on that. I do remember coming home one day though, after about a year of it and saying to Kim, I’m done with this. I can’t network. I am burnt out. I can’t do it anymore. And I remember she looked at me and I mean, most of what I’ve [00:27:00] accomplished, I probably have her to think, is just keep going a little longer.

[00:27:03] Sean Sweeney: Just keep going a little bit more. And it was one of those things where like two months after she said that the world started to turn in, my phone started ringing and all that year and a half of networking I had put in start was starting to pay off. I said to somebody the other day, too, which I found, which I hadn’t, hadn’t occurred to me was, I’m surprised how much of that year and a half of networking didn’t pay off immediate.

[00:27:24] Sean Sweeney: But paid off 10 years later when I started my own company, when, I have people sending me opportunities now, who I met during that period who I maybe haven’t talked to more than five times since then. It’s really interesting how that that stuff works long term too. 

[00:27:38] Patrick Donley: Yeah, the patience part of it is really important and, and like you said, not going in with the taker mentality.

[00:27:44] Patrick Donley: I think, you were just trying to make a connection with people. That’s really the key. Like maybe you can help them give to them. The taker mentality is just kind of a turnoff, I think, obviously for most people. But if you get someone really young and genuine, it is, it’s awesome to be able to help someone like that who’s really hungry.

[00:27:59] Sean Sweeney: Just add one [00:28:00] point that I think is super important about networking and that is follow up. People don’t, people do so much networking and then they never follow up. Right? You meet, I mean, I’ve probably met a hundred people once and I say to each, and that’s when I’m on the side of being the person wanting to be networked with.

[00:28:15] Sean Sweeney: And I say follow up with me, because guess what I hear about every real estate job in this market before it goes on. Any job board or any, I know who’s looking for people. I know what deals are out there. You know those of us on the inside, we know all of that stuff before everybody else hears about it. And I’ve only, I, I tell this story.

[00:28:32] Sean Sweeney: I’ve had one guy consistently follow up with me over the years and over, like the seven year period I’ve known him, I gave him equi. I helped, I loaned him money to, I loaned him equity to buy his first duplex. I got him his first job in real estate development and I introduced him to the person who ended up being his future business partner when he started his own development truck.

[00:28:52] Sean Sweeney: The one kid who followed up with me consist. You 

[00:28:55] Patrick Donley: mean when you say follow up, you mean more than just a thank you note? You mean like following up touch and [00:29:00] base, seeing what’s check’s going on? Check in. Yeah, check in 

[00:29:01] Sean Sweeney: with me two or 2, 3, 4 times a year. Every quarter just call me or email, Hey, how’s it going?

[00:29:06] Sean Sweeney: What are you hearing? What’s going on? Just keep me fresh, keep you fresh in mind. And I, I’m using me as the example. It’s obviously applicable to anyone you’re trying to get to know her in any industry, but find a reason to reach out to me once or twice or three times a year back to Twitter, 

[00:29:21] Patrick Donley: which I know you love.

[00:29:22] Patrick Donley: I. You tweeted, I saw that at 38 that you hit a breaking point in your life and you decided to burn the ships. And that’s just what, six years ago? You’re about to turn 

[00:29:33] Sean Sweeney: 45. I I’ll be 45. I’ll be 45 in less than a month. Yeah. So a lot has 

[00:29:38] Patrick Donley: changed in your life since 38. Talk to us about what was going on with you both personally and professionally, that you decided to just say, I’m going for this.

[00:29:46] Patrick Donley: I’m going to start my own company. I am burning the ships and go on. I touched 

[00:29:50] Sean Sweeney: on it earlier that my unconventional entry into the industry and then kind of my feeling like I’m different, not, not [00:30:00] seeing myself 20 years from now and most of the people in the industry as I was going along, I realize now we had a lot more in common than maybe I had thought, but a lot of self-doubt around.

[00:30:10] Sean Sweeney: As I was going and I was in, like a lot of human beings, had some traumatic experiences in my childhood and, and never dealt with them. And as I got older, they, as they tend to do, they surfaced in ways that I wasn’t really enjoying and started seeing therapists when I lived in California and then continued in my time in Minneapolis.

[00:30:30] Sean Sweeney: And I, I actually still do to this day. But what happened is this, eventually that self-doubt went away. I mean, there, there is a day I will never forget. It was about a year and a half before I started my company that it clicked it like one of those moments in therapy where it just all clicks. I realized, holy crap.

[00:30:47] Sean Sweeney: For the first time in my life, I’d feel good about myself. And I feel capable and confident, and wow, this is an amazing feeling. To feel good about yourself and to feel confident in yourself. I took that with me [00:31:00] and I finally could apply that to my career. I started realizing I should be getting equity in these projects.

[00:31:05] Sean Sweeney: I’m buying for the, it just, once that light goes on and you realize you’re worth in your value, it’s just changes everyth. And so my life got really different because I was really different. And I went along and I realized, okay, if I’m not going to get equity in this company and I’m bringing in a hundred million worth of new projects every year, I’ve gotta do something different or I gotta make a change.

[00:31:25] Sean Sweeney: I realized that, that there I wanted to, that I wanted to stay in real estate and that I wanted to, I, I thought I wanted to get back into development because I really missed the creativity and, and all the pieces of develop. The buying, the multi-family stuff was great, but it, it wasn’t something I, I could tell I didn’t have a natural, it didn’t get me out of bed in the morning.

[00:31:43] Sean Sweeney: It was a job. It paid really well. And as I said, for the first time in my life, I was getting paid well. So I, I was doing it, but there wasn’t a spark. My wife and I actually did a renovation project on our house and it lit the spark of like, oh yeah, there’s that process again. And [00:32:00] then I went out.

[00:32:00] Sean Sweeney: I have a friend who we bought a site together and we started working on a development. We ended. Selling it quickly because it, we both had other jobs and it, it was, it got, it was one of those like, oh, we probably shouldn’t do this. But I remember during that process feeling like, oh my God, I feel alive again.

[00:32:17] Sean Sweeney: I had more fun doing that side project than I had in, I couldn’t tell you when. And, and that’s no dis, that’s no down on what I was doing. But it was like, it just felt different. And I realized deep down, I am a developer and I gotta go do that. And so I was trying to figure out how to make that happen.

[00:32:34] Sean Sweeney: And I had a really, really bad couple of months. My mom, who had been sick for a long time, passed away. One of my best friends from college passed away as well. And then on a good note, we had our second kid shortly before those two deaths happened. And then, As silly as it sounds, my lifelong favorite sports team, the Chicago Cubs won the World Series and this, all four of those events, all of which are pretty big [00:33:00] deals, happened in about a three and a half month period.

[00:33:02] Sean Sweeney: And obviously my, I think my mom’s death probably being the, the hardest one of those to deal with, obviously. She was in her mid seventies when she passed away, and I was 38 at that time, and I realized I’m halfway there already. That’s halfway. And I just had one of those moments of, I gotta do this now, or I’m never going to do it.

[00:33:24] Sean Sweeney: I didn’t. To my credit, I didn’t quit my job the next day. We just, we had a brand new rehab house. I had a, so I had a big mortgage. I had a wife who wasn’t working. I had a second, we had two kids and I realized, okay, if I was 24, I could probably quit my job tomorrow, I’ll go do this, but. We gotta be a little more mindful about this and basically put together a kinda a plan of like, I’m going to go interview around town and see what’s available.

[00:33:47] Sean Sweeney: And just to see, and there wasn’t something that enticed me enough, so I decided to do it. I knew I planned to, I would enough have decent amount of money in the bank, given some timing of some deals that I would, little bit of runway to live on when I went. [00:34:00] So I, I waited till that time. I remember telling my wife, here’s what I’m thinking about doing.

[00:34:05] Sean Sweeney: And she said, yeah, that seems like a great five or 10 year plan. And I said, no, I’m thinking about it like imminently. And she was like, oh boy. But to her credit, she has a lot of faith in me and really trust me. And I I, that goes a long way for making this all work too. And we had a plan together that was, we gotta check in every three months, right?

[00:34:23] Sean Sweeney: Because she said, what, what I want to avoid is you go a year or two and you get no traction, then we have no savings left. And then it’s like, oh crap, I need a job tomorrow. And then you get into something you don’t want to do. So she said, let’s just check, let’s make sure that we’re three months in.

[00:34:36] Sean Sweeney: Let’s check in six months. Like, let’s just make sure. And then if, if nothing’s hap, if, if a year in you have no traction, you probably shouldn’t be doing it on your own anyway. Right? And then you’ll still have a little bit of time to go figure out a new job or get your own job back or something like that.

[00:34:50] Sean Sweeney: That was our plan. And luckily at the three month check-in, I could say, honey, I already have three deals going. So we were good to. Your company is called 

[00:34:58] Patrick Donley: Hall Sweeney. So [00:35:00] had you partnered with Jeff Hall right off the bat or were you doing some deals on your own? 

[00:35:04] Sean Sweeney: It was a little bit of both. Jeff and I partnered on the first deal I put together and we actually partnered on the second deal I put together.

[00:35:13] Sean Sweeney: But after we got into it, and by Intuit I mean like a month or two into it, we, I started looking at the numbers and how everything would work and I thought, God, these are going to be great. But I also realized there’s no cash out or payout for two or three years on either of. And Jeff’s a great, I went to Jeff and said, look, I’m so glad we’re doing these two deals.

[00:35:31] Sean Sweeney: I’ve gotta figure out a little more income sometime, somehow in the short term. And to his credit, and probably why he is my partner today. He said, look, he’s like, you’re a good salesman. You know a bunch of people. You’ve got a great network. Why don’t you go see if somebody will hire you as a consultant, or you can partner with a couple other people and learn and do some deals.

[00:35:48] Sean Sweeney: And just see, because when I, when I left my job, it wasn’t to partner with Jeff specifically, it was to, to start a company. So I, I was really fortunate that, that Jeff was cool with that and I, I went and managed a, [00:36:00] another great guy, Michael Pink, got into some deals with partnered with another guy on another project.

[00:36:04] Sean Sweeney: So all of a sudden I started the company in late 2017 and, and in 2019 broke ground on five projects. 

[00:36:11] Patrick Donley: So were you getting the sites under contract and bringing them to other developers? Is that how you were initially 

[00:36:16] Sean Sweeney: getting involved? No, actually not. I, so I, the sites that I found, I brought you Jeff. The site that ended up being this COLA project that we did, I found the site that was Twain and Bryant I found, and I brought both those to Jeff.

[00:36:30] Sean Sweeney: Another site that we acquired that we’re, we’re still holding onto, but. I had other developers through my net, I went back on the networking circuit right, and started touching base with everybody and saying, Hey, I’m, I’m doing a couple projects, but I’ve got a little more bandwidth. So if you ever need another set of hands or you need a developer for hire or a fee guy, let me know because and, and everybody gets it.

[00:36:50] Sean Sweeney: They knew I was just starting and I said, look, I’ve got as much time as I can make, I don’t have any money right now, so, you don’t need to gimme equity. I’ll work for fee. Like, whatever, whatever we can do. Everything [00:37:00] turned out to be a good mix of everything, but I was really, really fortunate that I was able to find my way into some other deals.

[00:37:06] Sean Sweeney: I got some great experience, met some great people, learned how to work with some different architects and some different builders, and after that first round of of projects finished in 2020, thankfully all leased up well, despite Covid and some, some of the other challenges that were out. What really dawned on me, and I, I can’t speak for Jeff, but hopefully on Jeff too, was what great partners we would be.

[00:37:27] Sean Sweeney: I really enjoyed working with him. I think we see the world very similarly. We, we share values. We want our business to, we want our day-to-day to be similar, just we, we really were aligned on the big stuff. And then on the other stuff, we have really complimentary skills. I mean, we obviously overlap in a ton of places, but Jeff is a very confident, humble, intelligent, mindful, and he’s, he doesn’t get rattled.

[00:37:53] Sean Sweeney: And I’m a little more excitable. I’m a little more like go, go, go salesman out there making stuff happen. And, and I get more, I [00:38:00] probably get more worked up about stuff than he does. And it’s just been a really nice balance of the two of us together. I tell people are, are kind of one plus one is. How did you 

[00:38:09] Patrick Donley: decide to do infill development?

[00:38:11] Patrick Donley: And for the listeners that don’t know, explain what infill development is, but and how you decided on that niche, because you’d been doing, sounded like multi-family stuff more. That was mostly what you knew. Why did you decide on 

[00:38:22] Sean Sweeney: infill development? Well, at that point in time, there are a couple reasons. One was I saw, I just saw opportunity in the market there.

[00:38:30] Sean Sweeney: I saw that a lot of people were building 200 unit projects and other people were buying duplexes. But there was all of these sites around Minneapolis and other cities like that that could fit 50 units or 70 units, and nobody was doing it. So A, I just saw opportunity and B, through the therapy and, and just kind of as I became more and more comfortable with myself, I was able to look back over my career and my life and just be able to connect a lot more dots.

[00:38:59] Sean Sweeney: And I [00:39:00] realized living in, I’ve always lived in a city, I’ve always been interested in architecture. It just intuitively made sense to. I can’t go out into a, a far out city, buy some corn fields and envision how that’s going to work. It just doesn’t make logical sense to me. I know that it works and there’s plenty of people who have a tremendous career doing that kind of stuff, but I can walk around a city and redevelop sites in my head as I’m walking around the city.

[00:39:27] Sean Sweeney: It just, it’s just intuitive to me. I realized the opportunity plus the kind of the intuition, plus I just thought it was going to be more fun and I think you. I realized that design was going to be an important component of how I did the business, and I thought that the city is, in urban cities, is the best place for those types of projects.

[00:39:46] Patrick Donley: I want to discuss how you go about acquiring a site and what factors go into your decision making process on whether or not you make an offer on a property. 

[00:39:54] Sean Sweeney: We look at ci, I mean, we’re, again, we’re primarily urban builders. We are working on a couple of suburban [00:40:00] projects right now, but I would call them suburban, if you will.

[00:40:03] Sean Sweeney: They’re, they’re actually urban sites in suburbs. One’s on, on a main street, and another one’s a, a big master plan that we’re basically creating an entirely new community. So when we’re looking at sites, we’re, we’re looking at the city and we’re looking at the neighborhood, and we’re looking at what’s missing basically.

[00:40:21] Sean Sweeney: Right? I look at a city as like a. It’s this big puzzle that’s been put together, but there’s always missing pieces in places. And you go to these na, you go to great neighborhoods and once you start to train yourself to do it, you see the oddball property all the time. You see the gas station in the residential neighborhood and you’re like, why is that there?

[00:40:40] Sean Sweeney: You see the one story crumbling retail center where there’s tons of really nice housing around and you start to see those types of things. And so those are the kind of opportunities that we’re looking for where there’s already an established neighborhood. For the most part, the neighborhood is the amenity, right?

[00:40:58] Sean Sweeney: It’s a great place to be. [00:41:00] There’s already shops. There’s already stores, there’s already other housing for the most part, but there’s a missing piece of that puzzle, and we like to find those sites that are the missing piece of that puzzle. 

[00:41:10] Patrick Donley: Once you get a site under contract, what kind of contingencies do you put in place?

[00:41:14] Patrick Donley: Because it takes the projects you’re doing. What take a year maybe for you to do the due diligence on it? 

[00:41:19] Sean Sweeney: Is that accurate? Yeah, it’s about, I mean, I, I tell people, I tell sellers when I sit down with them, if it, I mean it differs, everywhere. But obviously the majority of our projects have been in the city of Minneapolis.

[00:41:29] Sean Sweeney: And I say to the seller, barring anything super out of the ordinary here, the day you and I agree on a deal, I’m probably a year away from putting a shelf on the ground. What we’re normally doing is trying to be, we’re trying not to compete on sites where nine other people are trying to buy it too, and you just need to pay cash and close the next day.

[00:41:48] Sean Sweeney: I mean, we’re trying to find those sites that the only other really good use is to redevelop it. So we’re going, we’re, we’ll approach sellers or we’re really fortunate now. In the beginning it was me out there running [00:42:00] around, writing down addresses, calling people, trying to figure stuff out. Now that we, we’ve done, I’ve completed seven projects.

[00:42:06] Sean Sweeney: I have two more under construction. I’m fortunate now that people know what I’m looking for and I, I just get a lot of calls and a lot of opportunities sent to me, which is great. But we talk to these sellers and we say, look here, we’ll, we’re going to build a project here, so, but here are all the things that have to happen between when I, when I acquire this and, and when we go.

[00:42:25] Sean Sweeney: So a lot of times we’re trying to not close on the property until we’re ready to build. We will tell sellers that this is a year long. Or whatever, you know, whatever the timing is and we’ll, we’ll get pushback. Certainly sometimes, and, and I’m speaking in generalities. Obviously some deals, you have to close sooner and, and things change.

[00:42:43] Sean Sweeney: But in a perfect world, and we’ve been able to do this in our last several, we put the project under a purchase agreement. And then we go to work. We design a project, we do all the environmental studies, we get it all figured out, and then we get it approved by the city, get all the rest of the design done, and then we hopefully don’t close and actually own the [00:43:00] property until we are, we’re simultaneously closing on our construction loan and basically shovels in the ground the next day.

[00:43:07] Sean Sweeney: I 

[00:43:07] Patrick Donley: read also on Twitter that you thought that Paul Sweeney could be like a billion dollar company at some point, and basically you were like, well, I don’t know if that , if that’s something I want to do. You, you’ve hired a couple employees, I think it was just you and Jeff for until up until recently, right?

[00:43:22] Patrick Donley: You’ve brought on employees. What’s that been like? Bringing on new people and kind of scaling it to some degree. And what is the, the vision for the company, because you’re not exiting your properties generally. 

[00:43:34] Sean Sweeney: We’re trying not to, for the most part. If we, if we can just to start, I mean, I, I always say some of my tweets, you have to take ’em with a little bit of a grain of salt, but obviously what I, what I meant when I said that was I, I think we’ve got a really great company now and I think we could kind of do as much or as little as we want with it.

[00:43:50] Sean Sweeney: But I think that, we, part of what appealed to me about Jeff and, and vice versa is we’re also very devoted. I mean, and obviously everybody is, [00:44:00] but we’re, we’re very devoted to our families. Spending a lot of time with them is important. Quality of life is super important to us, and I, I think that we’re not looking to work 90 hours a week every week for the rest of our lives just to, just to build a company, to get more and more and more.

[00:44:14] Sean Sweeney: I think we, we like to do, we, we know if we do a project every year or a couple projects or a project every other year at the scale we’re working at now, the financial stuff will take care of itself. We’re really trying to just focus on, on doing good projects. But we did, earlier this year had prior to interest rates doubling construction costs going up 50%, the world turning on its head.

[00:44:34] Sean Sweeney: We had a huge pipeline. I mean, we had like four or five projects that we were very seriously working on. And we realized there was no way we were going to be able to do ’em, just the two of us. We needed help. We’ve hired a couple young women, one who graduated from law school, who we both had known, and another young woman who has a great design background from Vogue and Berg Goodman in New York.

[00:44:55] Sean Sweeney: And we have, so we have two basically project managers now that are each managing a project, [00:45:00] which has been phenomenal. It’s been a transition. I joke with them and I, I apologize to them almost daily. That it’s been a hard transition for me because I’m, I’ve spent 20 years doing the work just day after day after day, doing the work.

[00:45:15] Sean Sweeney: So it’s a new thing for me to, I still do a lot of the work, but to pull back and to let other people do things and to try to take on more of a manager management. Role it’s been a, it’s been a transition. I, I joke that I’m probably a better developer than I am a manager, , at least so far.

[00:45:32] Sean Sweeney: Hopefully, hopefully I can continue to improve as a manager, but I think it’s, it’s true. It’s funny, I. I now see the things I do and the way I behave and the actions I take, and it, it brings me back to my first bosses Will and Bruce, who their management style was like, all right, go figure it out. Or You want to have a review?

[00:45:50] Sean Sweeney: Well what you’re doing fine. We’ll let you know if there’s a problem. Cause they’re, same thing, they were just in the stuff all day long doing development. So it’s been really funny to kind of come full circle and I’ll realize I’m kinda, [00:46:00] I sometimes do that. 

[00:46:02] Patrick Donley: Talk to us a little bit about how important community development is, whether it’s developing, if you’re doing a project, what are you guys actively doing to build relationships to get the projects done?

[00:46:13] Sean Sweeney: To answer your question, it’s very, it’s extremely important to us because we, we see our roles as developers as having a lot of responsibility to the communities that we work in because we’re making change. We are, we are the instigators of some level of change in those communities. Our hope every time is that it’s a positive change and that it’s a, that’s an improvement and an enhancement to the community, but we’re not naive, and we understand that, especially when we first arrive or when we first announce something or when people first hear something, the knee-jerk reaction is to oppose it or to not want to do it, or to think it’s going to pro, to think it’s going to be a negative.

[00:46:52] Sean Sweeney: There’s certainly some projects we’ve done where we haven’t been able to garner the ne as much support as we had hoped. We still do the project and then [00:47:00] afterward people come out of the woodwork and say, oh, this is actually great. We, we really like it. But we’ve learned a lot about community development and how we approach that.

[00:47:07] Sean Sweeney: And, and I would say, Patrick, the, probably the number one thing we do is just listen. We go into our community, we do a lot of communication with neighbors. We get in touch with neighbors, we meet with the city council, people from certain neighborhood. We’re not coming in anywhere trying to push our vision on people.

[00:47:25] Sean Sweeney: We’re trying to understand what’s needed in the community, what people want. There’s a huge housing shortage, so we know that we want to provide housing, but how can we do that in a way that that fits into the neighborhood? And we, we take a lot of time and care with that. We try to get the neighborhood involved.

[00:47:40] Sean Sweeney: On our last project, we realized it was being, some of the land was sacred to, to the Native American community. And we branded the project that way. We got, we, we met and got engaged with, we got to know the, a large portion of the Minneapolis Native American community from the Dakota tribe.

[00:47:58] Sean Sweeney: We have some of them as investors in the [00:48:00] building. We have a bunch of Dakota artists who did artwork for the building. We have language consultants from the University of Minnesota who are now good friends of ours. I think at the end of the day, it’s community engagement and it’s time and it’s effort.

[00:48:14] Sean Sweeney: And I don’t mean to say that other people don’t do that, but I think it’s a different mentality when you go in to do a project where you think, we’re going to own this for 50 years, so how do we think about who we’re building this for and where we’re building this, and who’s everybody around us versus we’re going to, I’m trying to build this thing and sell it the next year, and I’m in and out of this community in 24 months.

[00:48:37] Sean Sweeney: I care, but I don’t care that much or I don’t have to care that much. Right. And again, that’s just a different business model. One is not better than the other, but Jeff and I are aligned in the way that we think about how we do community development. 

[00:48:50] Patrick Donley: I think that’s awesome. I think it’s awesome too, how design, I’ve seen a lot of your projects on Twitter.

[00:48:55] Patrick Donley: They’re really beautiful buildings. I think a lot of developers be, for cost cutting reasons, they’ll throw the design aspect out the window or take shortcuts or whatever. I think it’s really awesome to how involved in the design process you are. Is that something like right off the bat that you do, or do you have outside architects that you’re working with that help with that?

[00:49:15] Sean Sweeney: We’ve worked with some really phenomenal architects. So most of the credit at the end of the day goes to the architects. They come up with the these great, ideas. One thing that Jeff and I do really well is we’re good at setting the vision for what we’re trying to achieve, though. I think, and our architects would echo this.

[00:49:31] Sean Sweeney: I think we push them further and ask for more. And I think we don’t stop until it’s right in our mind. I think from all the other developers I know and obviously there’s some that do just as good or better design than we do. But I think the main difference that I’ve seen is just the amount of time that as a firm we’re willing to spend on the design.

[00:49:51] Sean Sweeney: Like, we’re not willing to stop until it’s exactly how we want it. We’re fortunate we’ve got great architects. As I said earlier, I’m not sure how I learned how to do it other than I think maybe I’ve always known how, and it wasn’t until we look, looking back, connecting the dots that I’ve always been obsessed with what houses look like and what, what spaces look like.

[00:50:10] Sean Sweeney: And they bring me energy and it’s always been a thing. When we did our first project that was called Colo, when we met with the architects, Jeff and I partnered and I took a bunch of images in that. I said, look, these are the things I’ve been thinking about for the last 10 years. Here’s some of the projects around the country that I love.

[00:50:26] Sean Sweeney: And I’d love to not, I don’t want to copy any of these, but I’m just saying this like, this is what I’m trying, this is what I want us to achieve. We spent a bunch of time, and I remember our architect said, you’re either going to be my favorite client of all time, or We’re never going to work again, , we’re never going to work again together.

[00:50:42] Sean Sweeney: And I, I had this idea that I just thought we could execute some really, really great design. And I remember telling Jeff, please, please just trust me on this one. And to his credit, he said, okay. Yeah, go. And I said, look, if I gotta do it once the way I think we should, and if it doesn’t resonate with people, if nobody cares, if nobody can, doesn’t make nobody notices, then I, I can rest easy saying, okay, that wasn’t the, I, I had an idea.

[00:51:07] Sean Sweeney: It might have been selfish idea that I just wanted to do, and it doesn’t seem to matter, but we’re still trading on colo five years later. It was a phenomenal project. We get calls every other week. Somebody who drove by and said, oh my God, I drove by, and that was our first one and we made it really cool.

[00:51:24] Sean Sweeney: I think so it’s been great. 

[00:51:26] Patrick Donley: Sean, I have a ton of questions I could ask you, but we’re going to wrap things up. This has been great. I, I really appreciate your time, love having you on the show today. Maybe we can do another session maybe with Moses. It’d be awesome to do like something with him. Oh, it would be great.

[00:51:39] Patrick Donley: It’d be really cool to. For our listeners that want to learn more about you or maybe follow you on Twitter, what’s the best way for them to reach out to you or get in touch? 

[00:51:47] Sean Sweeney: It’s funny to say, now that I’ve been on Twitter for two years, that that’s the best way to find me. But it’s, yeah, it’s seandsweeney on Twitter. You can find me on there. We have a website, hallsweeney.com as [00:52:00] well. And you can track us down either one of those two ways and love to hear from people. 

[00:52:04] Patrick Donley: Seems like you love the educational process too, of helping people . 

[00:52:08] Sean Sweeney: Yeah, I’d love to. I mean, I, there’s a few days that I don’t wake up now that I kind of can’t believe how lucky I am, and I think a lot of that has to do with how many people have helped me along the way and have been kind and gracious and giving and taken a risk on me.

[00:52:25] Sean Sweeney: And I mean, I can talk about it for hours, so I want to, as much as possible, obviously pay that forward and try to be that person for other people . 

[00:52:34] Patrick Donley: Yeah, I mean it’s an amazing story, from starting as a receptionist to, I think you’re what, 700, over 700 units coming in to Minneapolis 

[00:52:42] Sean Sweeney: When the two projects that are under construction when they’re finished, since I started the company in 2017, personally I helped developed over 700 apartment units since then. 

[00:52:55] Patrick Donley: Sean, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate having you today. 

[00:52:58] Sean Sweeney: Thank you, Patrick. It was great. Great to talk to you and I appreciate being on the show. Thanks very much. 

[00:53:03] Patrick Donley: Okay folks, that’s all I had for today’s episode. I hope you enjoyed the show and I’ll see you back here real soon . 

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