The Mostly Real Estate Podcast, with Declan Spring

#55 - David Gunderman Interviews Me - An Unexpected Career in Real Estate

• Declan Spring

Share episode

Ideas for the show or to want just to support us? Send us a text!

My journey from Dublin, Ireland to becoming a successful East Bay real estate agent unfolds in this colorful conversation with David Gunderman, part of David's series of live audience conversations titled 'Humble Beginnings'. With hesitant and uncharacteristic candor I explain how my path was anything but straightforward.

Born in 1972 in suburban Dublin, I found myself in San Francisco at age 20 thanks to a quirk of immigration policy—the Morrison visa lottery. My early years in America paint a picture of 1990s San Francisco, where artists and waiters could afford three-bedroom apartments overlooking Washington Square Park for just $900 monthly. After stints as a photographer, darkroom technician, and world traveler, I found my family (and myself!) needing greater stability when our first child was born in 2004.

We discuss my career launch during the beginning stages of the financial crisis in 2007-2008. What followed is a demonstration in building a business from absolute zero, using the Buffini Coaching method to create authentic connections rather than mere networking.

Then there was my parallel journey of personal transformation alongside my professional growth and I try to describe what triggered my sobriety in 2007, a moment when "something just rewired". 

Whether you're a seasoned real estate professional, someone considering a career change, or simply appreciate stories of transformation, this episode offers both practical wisdom and emotional resonance. Listen to discover how sometimes the most challenging beginnings lead to the most meaningful success.

David Gunderman is a licensed CA REALTOR® DRE#01313613

Declan Spring is a licensed CA REALTOR® DRE#01398898 

Declan Spring:

This is Declan Spring, and welcome to the Mostly Real Estate Podcast. Okay, so well, before we get going on this week's podcast, which is a slightly different format than you'll be familiar with, I first want to mention something related to the conversation I had with Megan Miko a few weeks ago. Megan Meeko and I, of course, were discussing aspects of local ordinance in Berkeley and we also talked about the Ember Initiative in Berkeley and the City Council vote on the Ember Initiative, and that vote has been postponed. It's been postponed to June 17th in favor of some workshops first. So if you're listening from Berkeley, if you have family or friends in Berkeley, you might want to let them know about the. I think the final remaining workshop as of taping this podcast intro is Tuesday, may 27, from 6 pm to 7.30 pm at the Northbury Community Church, that's at 941, the Alameda, and you will need to register. As far as I know, you can probably show up, but you might want to register for that workshop ahead of the City Council vote on June 17. Okay, okay, the city council vote on June 17. Okay, okay, we have a very different format for the podcast this week.

Declan Spring:

In October last year, I released episode 45 of my podcast, which was a conversation with the incredible David Gunderman, co-founder of the Gunderman team and, I'm proud to say, a colleague of mine here at the Keller Williams office in Berkeley. Now I was floored when David recently asked me to be a guest on his series of live audience conversations that he calls Humble Beginnings. To my knowledge, david hasn't released any of his series of conversations in the public domain. I know he records them, so I was extremely grateful when David agreed to allow me to record our conversation last week and release it here on my podcast. So again, this was in front of a live audience. It's very, very different from how I do things, but actually, after the nerves died down and we got into the conversation, it was really enjoyable. It's amazing what a kind, generous and intelligent host like David can draw out of you, and very cool to know that the space at the office here lends itself so well to a live audience. Anyway, with some hesitation, here's David Gunderman's conversation with me for his series Humble Beginnings.

David Gunderman:

Hi everybody, Thank you so much for coming today to Humble Beginnings. As you know, this is when we try to sort of explore the secret sauce of an agent, because there's so many different ways to approach this business and succeed at it and there's such a mystery around what makes an agent successful and what doesn't. And really what this is born out of is, especially since Keller Williams has such a great training program and so many great ways to launch careers, especially for new agents or agents who are struggling or sort of waiting for that next tipping point. We do this because we want everyone to feel encouraged by the fact that there's so many different ways to succeed and so much of success in our minds is born out of sort of identifying and demonstrating and living in your authenticity and figuring out where you sit in a marketplace and who is likely to be attracted to you and things you know happen from that authenticity and from that expertise and from whatever anyone's personal passion and charisma might be.

David Gunderman:

So today we're going to talk to Declan Spring and I'm super excited about it. I've known Declan for years and years. I was so excited when you joined this tapestry of brands that is the KW Luxury Office and the gorgeous contributions that you and your team make to it. So, hi Declan, Hi David, let's start with where we always start, where, and if you were willing to tell us when, were you born?

Declan Spring:

Well, first of all, I'm surprisingly nervous, so bear with me, and I don't generate answers as quickly as AI, but I'll do my best. But there might be pauses. I was born allegedly I don't remember it, but I was born in Dublin, ireland, in 1972. Brilliant, yeah. Yeah, I'm an Irish, irish born and raised. Did you spend your childhood there? Yeah, I was there until I did what we call our leaving cert, which is, you know, your graduate, your high school diploma, and went to Trinity College for a while. I trained as I went to school for photography. After that, at third level, and right around the time I would have had to make a decision about leaving Ireland to do a degree course in England, I got the opportunity to come to the States. I had an opportunity to capitalize on a green card, as we call them. Yeah, and I chose to. I chose to come to San Francisco and I just never really left. I think I was 20 years old at that point.

David Gunderman:

Okay, I'm going to stick a pin in that, because you managed to get a green card as an artist is what I think I'm hearing.

Declan Spring:

No, no, no, I managed to get a green card because there was I didn't know it at the time Nowadays with the politics around all of this stuff but there's a global lottery of. There's a global distribution every year of just a lottery of green cards that go out In various countries. People can apply. There was a period of about I don't know six years. There were a couple of different senators on the East Coast. I give a long-winded answer. By the way, there were a couple of senators on the East Coast, I want to say Senator Bruce Morrison, and a guy before that. I can't remember his name. Anyway, there was an unfair and ridiculous percentage of the global lottery for three years running was given to Irish citizens to help with the situation on the East Coast with a lot of undocumented Irish immigrants, and so Ireland was given an unfair share.

David Gunderman:

I mean it was ridiculous.

Declan Spring:

So this is sometime in the early 90s. This was in the early 90s. Yeah, we called them Morrison visas, named after this senator, and everybody in Ireland pretty much got a Morrison visa. It was crazy, fascinating. All you had to do was cross into the US and you got your green card.

David Gunderman:

I think that might be happening for South Africans right now. No comment, I went sideways there, okay let me come back. So let me take you back, though you stormed, to getting to America around your late teens, early 20s. Tell me what it was like to grow up in Ireland.

Declan Spring:

Were you a happy kid, have siblings, uh, yeah, yeah, I have a sister, grew up in a very, I would say very suburban kind of three miles, not not on like, say, el Cerrito, uh-huh, just kind of that kind of vibe yeah suburban, a few miles to this, to the main city, um and uh, you know, on the, I like Tilden here because we had we were at the foothills of the Dublin Mountains so I could launch up into the hills, the foothills of the Dublin Mountains, and go for hikes, and I do that here and live in the East Bay and it's kind of very, very familiar to me from my childhood. It's one of the reasons I like the East Bay.

David Gunderman:

That's what you did as a kid. You'd venture into nature.

Declan Spring:

I would as I got older, when I started to get interested in photography, I would go and hike and take nature photos and that kind of thing. So once I could, you know we would We'd climb up into the hills, go camping and that kind of thing yeah.

David Gunderman:

Yeah, and so was it you, your mom, your dad, your sister. Yeah, and was the family unit tight, were you guys close?

Declan Spring:

Yeah, it was. You know, when you come from a remarkably functional, tight family that hasn't seen a whole lot of drama, you have no idea until you're older how much trouble other people have and what a privilege it was. Like you know, you wake up in your early 20s, late teens, early 20s to how lucky you are.

David Gunderman:

And I was just incredibly lucky you know yeah.

Declan Spring:

Very, very, very tight loving family that just was very supportive. I mean ridiculously good. Are your mom and dad still with us?

David Gunderman:

They're in the same house.

Declan Spring:

Danita and I went to see him. Just what like a month and a half ago, the same house. My mother just sent me a photo this morning. They had a tree cut in the yard, in the backyard, and you know they're there.

David Gunderman:

When you go back now is your bedroom still? Is it a museum to Declan?

Declan Spring:

No, my mother's not sentimental. Okay no, not at all. No, it's a storage facility. Okay no, not at all.

David Gunderman:

No it's a storage facility.

Declan Spring:

There it is.

David Gunderman:

Okay, was your family at all religious? I?

Declan Spring:

mean so. So I would call yes, I would say so. Yes my parents, probably my sister and I are more cultural Catholics. Right, you know, you do the things, but you don't believe in the big thing Right, you know.

Declan Spring:

Yeah. And then you know, at a certain point I personally wouldn't put money in the tip jar for the priest because I wasn't that into. I was, I was, I was. I was a believer in Sinead O'Connor. When she ripped up a picture of the Pope, I thought she was on the money. She was just a little ahead of herself.

David Gunderman:

Right, right, but she had the right idea. Oh my gosh, I remember that moment. Yes, oh we got some applause from somebody. I ask you I wouldn't normally ask about religion with folks, but my and forgive me if my time clock is off, but there was so much conflict in Ireland around religion and the various factions. Did that affect you in any way? No, what was your consciousness around that?

Declan Spring:

Yeah, so there's 32 total counties in Ireland, 26 are in the south. When Ireland sought and got its independence, one of the compromises that wreaked havoc for decades after was that they gave up six of the northern counties to England. Right, and it's those six counties in the north of Ireland that are part of England.

David Gunderman:

Yeah.

Declan Spring:

That's where all the trouble is Right, because you have a bunch of Catholics who wanted to be part of the 32 counties, have a full union of 32 counties, and then you had the Protestant people up there who wanted to remain, who were loyalists, wanted to remain part of England. So they're fighting for years and years and years. They now have their own parliament in the north and they're fighting for years and years and years. They now have their own parliament in the north and they're autonomous and they can make their own decisions. It's settled down a lot.

David Gunderman:

So it was more news outside. It wasn't really affecting your inner world.

Declan Spring:

It wasn't really affecting us when there was trouble in the north. I went to what we call an all-Irish school, so we spoke the Irish language in school. All our textbooks were in Irish. So because of that there was a lot of. There were a lot of what we call Republican families in my school Some I can think of in particular and you know you'd hear rumors that so-and-so's. If there was a big deal of trouble in the north of Ireland you'd hear that so-and-so family maybe got raided. You know, because there was gun running and all that kind of thing in the south, but we didn't have any like violence in the south of Ireland.

David Gunderman:

Okay, yeah, not too much, almost none.

Declan Spring:

Yeah, it was all in the north.

David Gunderman:

So I'm curious. So you're in the quote-unquote. El Cerrito of Dublin is how you've described it. Yeah, kind of yeah, and you're growing up in Dublin. You're young. I have never been to Dublin, I'm ashamed to say, as somebody who has Irish blood running through my body too, but my sense of Dublin is just it's a rich, historic, cultural place. Did you dip into that when you were young? What did Dublin mean to you as somebody whose psyche is growing up around this place?

Declan Spring:

Yes. So that's a great question and it's very interesting. Of course, you don't know when you're growing up, right? You don't know, it's only looking.

David Gunderman:

You just know what you know. Yeah, yeah.

Declan Spring:

I mean. So I was in a excuse me an all Irish speaking school, so we had a lot of Irish cultural stuff, like I had friends who played the music and we spoke the language. But the truth is I think even in the 80s, even though we had our independence in Ireland from 1921, the Irish, the community in Ireland, didn't get comfortable or get confident in itself until probably around the time that Sinead O'Connor was coming up as an artist. Before that, people just weren't confident in their Irishness. And you know, when I came to the States first and people were proud to be American, it was amazing to me because there wasn't the same confidence and pride in Ireland until you know, a little bit later, maybe the early 2000s, when we had a thing called the Celtic Tiger and the economy roared to life and then there was, you'd start to see Irish flags.

Declan Spring:

So what I'm trying to say, I guess, is there was a lot of great culture. But as an Irish-speaking kid, the country is a predominantly English-speaking country and the Irish kids would get harassed by the English-speaking school kids and we were looked down on for being so culturally Irish. So it was kind of an interesting time the 80s, a massive recession in the 80s. There's a lot of places in Ireland that are open now. You know landmark buildings that were just weren't open when I was growing up. They they just they weren't available for for the public. I go home now and I can visit places that we didn't even know existed when I was growing up. You know, they just weren't accessible right so it's.

Declan Spring:

It's great to see it in its current iteration as a country. Um, I love going back now because I can really appreciate everything that's happened in the 30 years that I've been away you know, yeah, it's great you should go.

David Gunderman:

When you say the tension between you and these english students and you talk about ireland being in recession and being generally poor, yeah, relative to its neighboring countries or other places? Did these dynamics, do you think, shape any of your values?

Declan Spring:

They shaped me. I'm not sure if values would be the word.

David Gunderman:

I use? What word should I use?

Declan Spring:

It shaped me. I'm deeply interested in Irish music, I love it, and that was a real gift, because I'm not sure if I'd gone to an English speaking school I would have been that immersed in the culture. So I was grateful for it and I was grateful to have learned the Irish language. It's lovely to, it's lovely to have two languages and be able to look at one and look at the other and just understand how language how language shapes concepts and shapes your thinking literally defines your thought process, and so you know, things like that were a real benefit. Um, I think.

Declan Spring:

Um, there's, there's also a part of ireland that's. Uh, you know, you may may have heard that Irish people drink, and there was definitely a lot of that when I was growing up, and that was probably not the greatest thing in the world, because I, like many of the kids my age, you know, we grew up in a culture that just was really just allowed for an awful lot of underage drinking and drinking and there wasn't much else to do. So there were ups and downs, but I don't know if it shaped I don't know how it shaped me, to be honest, and values wouldn't be a word that I would be familiar with, I think, my family, my parents shaped my values.

David Gunderman:

That would be a better place. How did they shape your values? Well, my dad. And what values did they shape?

Declan Spring:

They shaped. My father was. My father is and was. I would always be told by adults when I was growing up that my father was a very kind and gentle man and that he was very fair. And I got to just, he didn't teach. He didn't teach verbally, he't. You know, teach Verbally. He was more of a guy who just modeled. He's like just watch how I am in the world and I watched how he was in the world and I picked up the books that he would leave around and he was. He is truly a remarkably intelligent and wise person, but in a very quiet, unassuming way, and I think that's I'm pleased to have learned from him and my mother's. My mother, you know well, she's the master and commander of the house, you know.

Declan Spring:

And so she keeps everything running like clockwork.

David Gunderman:

It sounds like your father. Your father was a little mysterious to you um, he wasn't like other dads.

Declan Spring:

He, he, he didn't have, he wasn't gregarious outgoing, didn't have a few drinks and get loud, he didn't have silly jokes, he wasn't into manly stuff. He, you know, he'd be quite happy sitting in the corner reading history and some Carl Jung and that kind of thing. He was just very quiet.

David Gunderman:

So the books you were picking up were Carl Jung.

Declan Spring:

Well, there was one he had on a shelf that had a mirrored cover on it and that always fascinated me and it was a Carl Jung book about the hidden self. You know, and you look back at yourself and I would pick that up when I was like eight, nine years old. Every time it was on a bookshelf right outside my bedroom door and I think that just that alone looking at that title and seeing myself I really think that had an impact on my thought process from a young age. I thought it was just remarkable that I was being asked to look at myself you know, yeah, and so he.

Declan Spring:

You know I feel like he, he put things, he put little nuggets like that out, you know, in plain sight, hoping that you might find them. You know.

David Gunderman:

Yeah, yeah. So I. You hear so many Irish stories where alcoholism touches the family pretty deeply. Did that touch your life in significant ways? I don't remember. Oh yeah, Did you like a drink yourself?

Declan Spring:

Yes, yes, we drank, david. We drank like sailors on a ship that was sailing into no tomorrow. It was unbelievable.

David Gunderman:

Yeah, it was unbelievable. Yeah, I just had this conversation with a gentleman who a friend connected me to somebody who works as the cultural ambassador to America from Ireland. Yeah, I met him in New York because we're both adoptees and we sort of wanted to talk both gay men who are adopted and we wanted to sort of connect on that. But he is Irish as well and grew up in Ireland and he just talked about just the culture of just getting blitzed.

Declan Spring:

Yeah, yeah, binge drinking is terrible, I don't. I don't think it's as difficult or as prevalent a problem now as it was. There's an awful lot for kids to do now. You know my nephew who's going to turn um 18 in just a few days from now, and he's got, like their, their indoor bouldering facilities he's in he's uh, he's got places he can jam with his friends.

Declan Spring:

Um, you can commute around Dublin on light rail system. Now, I mean, there's just opportunities that are far more similar to what we know kids can do here. There's clubs, clubs there's community for kids. There's an awful lot more for them to do. And I and so the emphasis isn't just on just going out and getting blitzed every weekend, not in the same way you know so.

David Gunderman:

So I I imagine I don't know if this is true, if you agree with this, but there's a difference between recreational drinking and disease, and addiction and alcoholism. And it feels like you were able to sort of measure. Yours felt more recreational and you were able to turn it off yeah, I stopped drinking when I was 35.

Declan Spring:

Yeah, because it was, it was um, it wasn't good yeah, so it wasn't useful it was over I. I like to think of it this way everybody has a quota of alcohol they can get through in their lifetime I got through mine early. I like to finish early. You you know on those things, so do you not drink alcohol now. I don't drink alcohol anymore, all right, no, it's not Well good on you.

David Gunderman:

Yeah, fantastic. So when did you discover your art, your photography? Was that your first passion, as a teen or as a young?

Declan Spring:

adult. Yes, that was always my first passion. You just picked up a camera one day, or what made that happen?

David Gunderman:

I just liked black and white imagery and everyone's taking color photos and I like black and white imagery In the land of green. You liked the shadows, I liked the shadows.

Declan Spring:

I like documentary photography why I like the story that could be told in an image. I just thought it was fascinating. And I also liked my first photography teacher. He wanted me to take a series of pictures to see if I was good enough to be in his class. And when I brought in the negatives and we put all the negatives on an 8x10, you know you turn them into film strips in positive and he said turn it around. I don't want to look at them the right way up. He said they'll make sense to me upside down or they don't make sense at all. And I thought he was so with it, you know how cool.

Declan Spring:

What a genius you know. But uh, but he was on to something. You know the, the pictures that doesn't matter which way you hold them and a lot of good black and white photography. Everything is just perfect, even if you squint your eyes but, then if you look closer and there's a good story, that's even better yeah, you know, yeah, yeah. So I was into it very, very young yeah you know, I just wasn't an academic uh-huh, you know, just wasn't at all so what was, what would, if I don't know what year?

David Gunderman:

like you're 16, you're 17. What was? What was your dream for yourself at that point in your life? Um, if you could have projected out your dream for 10 years, that was always my problem.

Declan Spring:

I didn't have any idea what I wanted.

Declan Spring:

I, you know I I like taking my photographs and I loved hanging out with musicians, so I take pictures of musicians and I so I was the guy with the camera when the musicians were playing. Yeah, and we had some great musicians who live next door to me, who who just went on to become fairly important people in the music industry in Ireland. But I had the benefit of living next door to them and I didn't know what I wanted to do next. But I knew what I wanted to do in that moment and the emphasis in Ireland was all on academics, so understanding that you could take your passion and move it into a career I didn't know my sister wanted to be. I was always very envious, and still am, of young people who kind of know what they want to be at an early age she wanted to be an attorney.

David Gunderman:

Yeah.

Declan Spring:

And from a very young age, and you know she's an attorney, you know, and you know God, how lucky you are. You know, but but I've had a more adventurous life.

David Gunderman:

Yeah, did you have wanderlust? Is that what got you to the? Would you define that as a characteristic that you had? That you wanted to travel? No, I didn't really.

Declan Spring:

I think I wanted to get out of Ireland because I felt a little hemmed in. Yeah, I didn't specifically want to travel, so much as not be in Ireland. I kind of just I was a little bit upset with myself because I didn't know what I wanted to do and I think, in a way, I wanted to shield my parents from the reality that I was a bit of a bit of a lost cause perhaps. And so I thought, well, if I take that out of there, if I take that out of their purview, they won't have to deal with it. I'll just go away and deal with that on my own. You know which is the way I chose to do it? I don't know.

David Gunderman:

So you banished yourself.

Declan Spring:

I banished myself.

Declan Spring:

Yeah, kind of did yeah, and really it was motivated by trying to relieve your parents In a way it was yeah, yeah, like they wouldn't have any idea about you know, drinking or any of that stuff, because we kind of kept they knew, of course, but I didn't really talk to them about you know, my life, right, you know, and so yeah, yeah, kind of in a way, yeah, I just kind of wanted to like I didn't want to disturb them with my inability to go on the straight and narrow path of some nice career.

David Gunderman:

You, know so.

Declan Spring:

I had the opportunity to come here and I did that.

David Gunderman:

So you find this Morrison Morrison visa. Morrison visa you arrive in San Francisco.

Declan Spring:

So I'm going to tell you, because I know my mother's going to listen to this yeah, I was working in Germany, because everybody in Ireland went to Germany on summer jobs because there wasn't any work in Ireland, and so you would wind up alongside your high school teacher on a production line at the BMW factory, for example, in Munich, because he was there as well, you know, because he wanted work in the summer. So people would bring tents and just camp and work in Germany. I worked as a baggage handler in the main train station in Munich for a summer and when I got home from there my mother said oh, there's a letter there for you. I mailed one of those coupons from the evening newspaper to the embassy and you got one of them Morrison visas and I was like, okay, I'd never thought about going to the States. I was like, well, fair enough. So she inadvertently set me up. For what?

David Gunderman:

would be the rest of my life.

Declan Spring:

Yeah, I think she's kind of kicking herself now. So that's how I wound up here. And the thing is, when I was working at the main train station in Munich, they had a tiny English language section and the books were the electric Kool-Aid acid test on the road and something else along those lines. So when I got a Morrison visa, I wanted to go and drink in Vesuvios.

David Gunderman:

Right.

Declan Spring:

That's what I wanted to do. That's all. I had my lights for set, sitting at a table in Vesuvios, looking out at Kerouac Alley and going in and browsing the books in City Lights Bookstore. That's all I wanted to do. That was my plan.

David Gunderman:

This is the best plan ever. And hi Mom, Hi Mom, yeah, exactly so you arrive in San Francisco. What do you do in the first seven days?

Declan Spring:

You go and stay in a hostel in the Tenderloin and get a job bussing tables at Fisherman's Wharf. Okay, so you just got up on your feet and figured it out. You found a, got a roof over your head and got a job.

Declan Spring:

Yeah, I had a friend here ahead of me, he had already set himself up in a hostel yeah, in in um, just south of market, on minna and uh and so he was there. He'd managed to snag us a room with two beds, so we had like a private room in a hostel, luxury.

David Gunderman:

Yeah.

Declan Spring:

And, oh my gosh, he managed to get. There was a girl who worked at the front desk of the hostel and everybody wanted to go on a date with her all the people in the hostel. She wouldn't go out with anybody. She agreed to go out with him. We had no idea what we were doing here, I wasn't even 20. I couldn't drink. But my friend who's still here he lives in the South Bay she said she'd go on a date with him and he was beside himself and he was talking town to the whole hostel. He had no idea. Her understanding was that he and I were gay, gay lovers and it didn't dawn on him when the date was to be at the sausage factory right so that was my first month, or so it was very much a platonic date.

Declan Spring:

Yeah, he came home he came home, rip roaring, drunk, swinging from the lampposts, opened the door into me.

David Gunderman:

He says I love you.

Declan Spring:

And he opened the windows and screamed up through the fire escapes. I love Declan.

David Gunderman:

He woke everyone in the hostel. That's great Good times. How did the tenderloin in the early 90s, how does it resemble the tenderloin of today?

Declan Spring:

um, I don't know, don't go there much anymore, but were you?

David Gunderman:

was it? Were you? How was the environment? Were you into it? Whether you shocked by it? Like what was your emotional reaction? I was scared, shitless okay, so it was rough yeah, I was scared shitless.

Declan Spring:

I would hope every evening, if I worked late as as a busser, that I could get enough for taxi fare, because I was terrified, yeah, of taking the bus. Yeah, you know, because I we didn't have any diversity in ireland then we have some now, yeah, but you didn't have any which is something I loved when I got here yeah, I loved the diversity I felt so anonymous, but you didn't know how to work the work, this environment.

David Gunderman:

I mean you should have seen me at 19. I looked like a four-year-old.

Declan Spring:

You know what I mean, but I was terrified and so excited. What a rich time.

David Gunderman:

It was great. How long were you there In the hostel? Yeah, in the Tenderloin.

Declan Spring:

Oh well, we moved up in the world. David, A friend of ours in Bernal Heights, put us in touch with a woman who had a Victorian on I can't remember the street and the lower floor basement unit had no bathroom. Literally there was a floor missing from the bathroom so you could see the dirt. And she said you guys can live there for nothing if you rebuild the bathroom. So we said fine, no problem. And we threw a party and the homeless guy who lived under came up through the bathroom floor and we said come on in, you can join us at the kitchen table. The guitars were playing, it was great and he started smoking crack and we said you better go back down to your unit. You better go back down to your unit.

David Gunderman:

But he lived comfortably below us there it's so wonderful to be in your 20s and poor in a big city.

Declan Spring:

Yeah, that's right. I was on food stamps and I was just beside myself. I couldn't reconcile the fact that I could get jolt cola with food stamps. I thought that's not nutritious. What are these things for? I don't think you can do that anymore.

David Gunderman:

I think we're in a world of rich stories in this moment and I'm tempted to mine for them. But also, what's the next moment for you? When does something turn in a different direction, and what direction does it turn towards?

Declan Spring:

You know, honestly, there wasn't a whole lot of progress for a long time. Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of good stories though, yeah, a lot of good stories. You know the living accommodations got better.

David Gunderman:

Yeah, we wound up in North Beach, you and your lover Exactly.

Declan Spring:

We wound up in North Beach. I went home for a period of time, finished up a certification in photography, came back I started working in a darkroom in North Beach. Had a great time. You know was you know waiting tables in the evenings working in the darkroom during the day, got some work with Lonely Planet, which was nice Did their San Francisco guide. Photographed a lot of musicians. And just had a great time doing both of those things, just putting it together that's right, just had a check.

David Gunderman:

Had a good time in your art.

Declan Spring:

San Francisco in the 90s, though, was really an opportunity, and listen to this define it. Yeah. Yeah, we had a three-bedroom. I think it was maybe a one-bedroom, one-bathroom condo. We looked out onto North Beach. I wasn't with my gay lover at that time. I moved in with a waiter friend, and so we had three bedrooms, probably 900 square foot ground floor apartment looking out onto Washington Square Park. I made probably $400 a week as a waiter, and we paid $900 a month for that condo, and we didn't even need to have a third roommate for the third bedroom, because we made the rent in less than a week.

David Gunderman:

Yeah.

Declan Spring:

And you look back on that now like you're like can you imagine looking out to Moose's? It was Moose's restaurant, yeah. And you just like we really had such beautiful opportunities to live life and be artists and waiters in San Francisco in the nineties, before dot com.

David Gunderman:

Yeah, it was amazing. It was amazing for me. I was having the same life in New York and it still felt like financially stressful on some level, like it felt like a stretch, but in hindsight it was easy street.

Declan Spring:

Yeah, comparatively, yes, I mean, it's just, it is get by, you could get by. Yeah, you know, no problem, really no problem at all. Yeah, you pick a restaurants to work in yeah and you could be an artist and and in fact I remember, like, do you know, there was a reasonable size recession here in the early 90s, yeah, and you know there were parts like of San Francisco downtown and what do they call it?

Declan Spring:

Noe Valley or whatever. I don't even know the little names of all the pockets that exist over there now, but like there were, the musicians would get into like closed storefront places and do gigs in the 90s it was a really vibrant, you know, scene of musicians and stuff. It's probably there now. I don't know, but I just don't know.

David Gunderman:

But it was great. So for someone living in San Francisco, you defined a financial or economic or some turning point. That was the dot-com boom of around 2000,. Is that correct? And the whole sort of environment changed, yeah, the environment changed.

Declan Spring:

It was a period of time where rents just went through the roof and you were lucky to have a place rent-controlled, because you couldn't get one. There would be lines around the blocks for rentals and just things really changed. And that was when tech came to, you know came. That's when big tech really came.

David Gunderman:

Yeah.

Declan Spring:

Yeah, it was unbelievable.

David Gunderman:

Yeah.

Declan Spring:

And it just became unaffordable.

David Gunderman:

And so the party was kind of over, I think the party was over.

Declan Spring:

yeah, did you feel it Well? So I went off to India for a year with my partner at the time.

David Gunderman:

Yeah.

Declan Spring:

We, just we gave it all up. We were like, screw this and off we went, backpacks, gave up our apartment, didn't know if we'd come back, and just wandered around Southeast Asia and India and places like that for almost a year and eventually wound our way back to Berkeley. We didn't want to go back to San Francisco. Okay, why Berkeley? Why Berkeley? Because it wasn't San Francisco, but it was still a Bay Area.

David Gunderman:

We were kind of sick of San Francisco. Okay, yeah, do you want to mention anything about India, any takeaways or epiphanies or things that changed you as a human being?

Declan Spring:

No, not really Okay. I had a great time.

David Gunderman:

Saw some great places.

Declan Spring:

All right Went up 18,000 feet in the Himalayas, mostly in flip-flops. You know, it was good stuff.

David Gunderman:

Yeah, so you come back to Berkeley.

Declan Spring:

How do you land on your feet here? Didn't really Landed on our feet and got married soon after and had our first child, and that's really when life became more serious for the first time.

David Gunderman:

Yeah, yeah.

Declan Spring:

Kids do that, don't they? Yeah, kids do that. So you know, things change fairly quickly in the first three or four years. What year is this? 2004, my first was born, I think. We came back from India, 2001. We were away for September 11th. Was the we your future?

David Gunderman:

wife.

Declan Spring:

Yes, in India. Yeah, so I had a partner, you know, through most of the late 90s and we got married. She still lives in East Bay here and we're raising our kids and so came back to, yeah, you know, needed to get a job, like a proper job, and I wasn't making it as a photographer because I didn't have any business acumen. I didn't, I was good at my job. You know it's funny, it's a little bit like real estate Be very good at your job and not good at the business. That's when I first started to understand. Oh, you know you can be great at your craft, but if? Yeah, that's when I first started to understand. Oh, you know you could be great at your craft, but if you mistake your craft for your business.

David Gunderman:

You're in trouble, right, and I wasn't good at the business of being a photographer. Well, and digital photography is coming fast digital photography was coming in.

Declan Spring:

I didn't really have an issue with that. I've never had a problem with change. It would know it was the business itself. Yeah, just not being good promoter of my own business and I just, you know there's nobody in my family that was entrepreneurial. You know everyone had a job. I come from, you know I come from workers, yeah, yeah, so didn't have any real experience or training in that from family. So what job did you get? I got a job with CoStar.

David Gunderman:

Okay, oh, okay yeah.

Declan Spring:

Oh, real estate. Yes, yes, I got a job with CoStar Just from an ad like how did you end up at costar I?

David Gunderman:

really don't know. I don't know he had an india hangover, yeah something like that.

Declan Spring:

No, I got a job with them.

Declan Spring:

They were building their database of commercial property yeah and my job was to go out in this sprinter van like remy's, yeah, um, and I, and I had this camera that would telescope out about 30 feet and I'd get up every morning and I'd have to go and COSAR literally built their database. I'd go measure buildings, talk about the buildings, fill in all the data and then that building would show up in their data and I would have the photographs and all that stuff. I did that day in day out.

Declan Spring:

I had this black van with tinted windows. I was very careful not to park near schools. You know, yeah, it's like that and uh, and I did that for a little while and then I was also doing circle pics. Yeah, um, circle pics was one of the first you know, photographer you know they did 360 tours.

David Gunderman:

Do you remember that sure?

Declan Spring:

yeah, so I was doing that for a period of time and got to know the realtors in Marin County, where I was working.

David Gunderman:

This is so interesting. I mean, you went from a photographer to real estate and this is the bridge that was the bridge we're still photography, adjacent but moving towards real estate. Yeah, that's right.

Declan Spring:

And so I got to know realtors in Marin County you know, like the photographers we use for open homes and things like that. You get to know them and I got my license around that time. Around what time? 2004, the year my daughter was born. I got my license. That was nice.

David Gunderman:

The agents liked that I could let myself in and out of houses without them having to be there because you know, we like that, we do like that, we agents yes, you know if they could get in without a combo box.

Declan Spring:

it was great, and so I was doing that. So I had my license and I also hung my home my license with Bradley Real Estate in West Marin. I was in the Fairfax office. I was living out there, no-transcript. We came back to Berkeley again after that, but anyway, that's what I was doing. So we had to abandon that. We came back to Berkeley again after that, but anyway, that's what I was doing, and so I kind of got my license but didn't launch into a real estate career per se.

Declan Spring:

Yeah, until a little bit later, until I came to the East Bay in 2008. Yeah, 10,.

David Gunderman:

no, 8, 9, 10, yeah, 8, I think yeah, Okay, so foreclosure crisis is about to hit. Yes, I don't know where your marriage is in all this. And you're about to really dive into real estate. How does all that? How does that all triangulate?

Declan Spring:

So it was hell. It was absolute hell. We had very little money. Our second was on the way in 2007. It was, you know, headed for 2008 birth and we were losing our property in West Marin. We didn't have the finances. We had to come back live in the East Bay with my then mother-in-law, the pressure was on.

David Gunderman:

The pressure was on.

Declan Spring:

I hadn't figured out that drinking was bad for me yet, still under the mistaken notion that it was some way helping. And so it was really bad. David, it was really bad. Yeah, my ex-mother-in-law is that what you call a person like that? Sure, she was a realtor with Security Pacific, yeah, and so she encouraged me to, you know, really start working with a brokerage in 2007, which I did in Point Richmond. But you know so, do you want me to get ahead a little? Because this is funny, I didn't really know anybody in the East Bay. Honestly, you know, I just didn't. And my broker there, a guy named Jerry Fagley, who's still a friend, jerry said, well, why don't you? He said, look, I'll pay for three months of coaching with your home country friend, Brian Buffini. And I looked up Brian Buffini. I thought, yeah, I could believe this guy. He went to a school very near where I went to school in Dublin. I listened to a few of his snippets and I went to see him in Monterey. I thought, yeah, this guy is great. Okay, I'll do coaching for three months.

Declan Spring:

I called the coach and the coach said, okay, let's sit down and write a list of all the people you know. This is called your sphere of influence. And I said I don't know anybody. And he said everybody says that. Now just write down the names of the people you know. And I said no, no, you're not listening, I don't know anybody. And he said you really don't know anybody, do you? And I said no, I don't. He said why don't you just go and get to know some people and give us a call in three months? And I said okay, how? And he said why don't you join some parent groups or non-profits? And I said okay, and it was a local parent group and so I joined them. So I got on the board of a couple of things. There's a music thing in Point, richmond every summer, so I got to know a few people and they started to get note cards from me weekly. You know, as soon as I had your address, I was just looking for the next mailbox so I could put something in the mail.

Declan Spring:

You know, and so it began, and I'm really grateful, though, that I was introduced to that Buffini method, because this is, you know, this is before, like, the iPhone came out in 2007,. Right, yeah, and it was a great idea, but there were no apps.

David Gunderman:

Yeah.

Declan Spring:

And so I didn't get an iPhone until 2009. I don't think Facebook moved onto a platform like didn't have an app on the iPhone till 2012. So 2007, 8, 9, there was none of that. There was still just the old things you know.

Declan Spring:

And so I was grateful to meet Buffini and became very, very enamored of his personality and style and I believed him. I didn't believe a lot of people. Irish people don't believe a lot of people. They look like they do, but then the door closes. They typically say feckin' Egypt. An Irish person will know what that means. But I believed Brian Buffini, I believed him, I believed his story and so I got on board and I drank the Kool-Aid, as they say, or whatever.

Declan Spring:

And it was great, and I still have my Buffini CRM. It's what made me. I mean, it's what made me?

David Gunderman:

How did your Buffini CRM make you?

Declan Spring:

Because, as I said once I started adding names to that database of people. I never looked back or never looked at another system. I mean I did, I did, I flirted with a few other things, but never meaningfully.

David Gunderman:

So real estate is social. I think we can all agree on that. For most people, real estate is social in the Bay Area up until that point that you met this gentleman and didn't know anybody. It doesn't sound like that sort of social that was really authentic to you. You weren't doing it naturally. So what tipped you into? Was it inauthentic for you? Did you have to muscle yourself Like how did you go from no database, having lived here for so long, to like a list of people to send postcards to?

Declan Spring:

I mean, it was very slow, David.

David Gunderman:

Yeah.

Declan Spring:

I mean I would say that to people to send postcards to. I mean it was very slow, david. Yeah, I mean I would say that by about when I started with Buffini. So if people don't understand how Buffini operates, we talk about databases, right, and you know you have to like. Well, what do you mean by database? For some people they'll say, well, I have 4,000 people, I have probably 396 people in my database, or families or houses. It's very small. In fact there's almost like a pride when you work in the Buffini system to have a smaller database than to have a bigger one. They're meaningful contacts they're meaningful content.

Declan Spring:

They're meaningful context. These are people who, when the phone rings for them, they see your name. They'll answer the phone. You're a friend, you're not a salesperson, right? So it's very, very meaningful.

David Gunderman:

So your database was built of people not having necessary real estate conversations, but getting to know people exactly yeah, exactly, exactly, just getting to know people and your connections were children and co-parents, and right that were going on in your life. So right that made the connections even more meaningful yeah, it was people.

Declan Spring:

it was people you know, to whom you could demonstrate closely your value proposition in the world as a neighbor, as a a community member, as a parent, just as a person in their world trying to make their world a better place, not just through real estate and good selling, but just through being part of the fabric of what makes community physical community outside your front door you know important and special.

David Gunderman:

Yeah, so what was your first deal?

Declan Spring:

My first deal was on Orion Court. It was a new development of single family homes in El Sobrante and it was in 2007. And it was set to close around just after Thanksgiving 2007. And it was a referral to her credit to my ex-mother-in-law. She referred me, this buyer, and we were in the middle of the transaction and it was somewhere, I think, at the weekend after Thanksgiving and the lender called me and he said are you sure you want to stay in the business? I said yeah, what's going on? He said we're not going to do another loan for six months. I said what do you mean? He said it's over. It's over. I didn't know what the preceding market had been from 2002-ish, all the way up to 2007. Everybody talks about the recession as having started in 2008., but for me it started that morning and it was just after Thanksgiving 2007,. Is my recollection? That's when the lenders all folded up shop and said we're not lending Right, Right and so.

Declan Spring:

But we got that one closed and then we launched into what became normal for me, which was half the houses were short sales and foreclosures were more.

David Gunderman:

Were you representing more buyers at that time? Only buyers, yeah, yeah.

Declan Spring:

Yeah, I had no connections.

David Gunderman:

You didn't get into the short sale game. Yeah, I had no idea what I was doing for.

Declan Spring:

God's sake, half the time.

David Gunderman:

Yeah.

Declan Spring:

So the normal length of a transaction for me in my formative years as a realtor was, on average, six months. Yeah, do you remember that?

David Gunderman:

I do In retrospect. It was one of the most gratifying periods of time because I was also heavy on the buy side and lives were changed. It was amazing to get a social worker into contract and get a school teacher into contract and I still have a healthy database of people who.

David Gunderman:

It just makes me want to cry. Like they still say, like that moment changed my life, I could set up my whole financial life. Can you every generation, like they say, should have one of those a reset to get into the market? And that's what you know Gary mentioned at the last family reunion was like, if this whole thing unwinds, for a moment, think of it as a possibility to get all those people, to get that next generation into housing. You're right, and and that's the upside of it, so like we, we can always sort of get into. The sky is falling, but it might be, you know, a generational opportunity.

Declan Spring:

Yeah, and you've said that to me before and I'm fully aligned with your thinking on that.

David Gunderman:

Yeah.

Declan Spring:

You know, an opportunity for people who couldn't normally enter the market.

David Gunderman:

Yeah.

Declan Spring:

Is a great and very healthy thing. Yeah, for goodness sakes.

David Gunderman:

I don't want to be overly Pollyanna, though, too Like you would take listing appointments and sit with two like lawyers who were losing their house, yeah, and just have to be a total undertaker. You're just like. I know you had no plans for this to be your life, but you're losing your house in rockridge, right, you can't get employment right now, wow. So I mean there were also just horrible. It was a horrible, roiling, complicated time, but it was. There were wins in there, a lot of them. It was bad.

Declan Spring:

I remember it might have been just after Labor Day, because now I remember being at a Thanksgiving party in 2007, and an agent who had been working for a couple of decades was sitting with her head in her hands and she looked up at me and she, she said I just had 14 transactions fall out of contract. Wow, yeah it was pretty wild, yeah, yeah it, it, the.

David Gunderman:

What you just said about the the lender saying it's over, we're closing up shop, reminds me. You just reminded me of the pandemic, like it was just like this, like a tidal wave came in and you just were like, whoa, okay, here we go. Time to go into a totally different mindset, totally different mindset.

Declan Spring:

Yeah.

David Gunderman:

Yeah, wild, what year, if you could define this, was there a tipping point between you aggressively trying to get people into that database to where the database just started to like, nourish you back with with passively?

Declan Spring:

so I, so I started red oak realty in 2010 yeah, virtually unknown yeah I credit art white with bringing me in.

Declan Spring:

Yeah, um, I loved art white. Yeah, amazing, amazing human being. I'm very grateful, probably the best mentor I've ever had. Yeah, he said to me once Declan, we live a contingent life and no truer words have ever been spoken for the business that we do, and that's why I like doing the podcast, because I know how hard it is and you know I always listen to these podcasts and you know God bless them. They're great, but like how to turn your investment strategy into a $10 million business in Florida, that's not a podcast that resonates with me. I was like you know what would resonate with me Talking to Anna Belomo or talking to David Gunderman or doing what you're doing here?

Declan Spring:

I wanted a podcast that was actually useful to our local community of realtors, because real estate's local. You can't take the guy in Idaho who parlayed this into that and find anything actionable for your life here as a realtor. You can't. Just doesn't work. And real estate's local. It was part of the problem in the media too. They fail to and nar they, nar fails routinely to impress upon consumers and the public in general how local real estate is. You know it's ridiculous, they just can't get it right, so I wanted to. I wanted to podcast. I digress again, so I so I started red oak realty in 2010. A few people asked Remember we had cubicles ever come into the office? The whole bit, there was floor time, yeah, and somebody asked me what do you do, what do you do for your lead gen? And I said buffini. And a few people. One guy laughed and said, oh, buffini. And six years later I was so grateful Art came and said you're in the top 20 this year or the top 10 or whatever they had.

Declan Spring:

And 2016,. Six years. So that's the tipping point, yeah. And a few agents who had asked me years prior came and said what are you doing? What's your lead jam? I said Buffini, still Buffini. Yeah, six years. As Brian Buffini says, it's a crockpot, it's not a microwave. Yeah, right, so it's slowly surely, brick by brick by brick, the roots are going down, down, down, and then it takes off, and that's a most for me.

David Gunderman:

I have a similar trajectory and it's just that warm lead business which takes time because it's a crock pot like you said, but it sets you up for a really nourishing career because the people you meet are warm.

David Gunderman:

They already value you. I just the, the, the, the, the. The hardest business is the stuff, the people that don't know you and don't know what your value is, and you have to just prove yourself or build the trust. Or the trust ruptures so easily or you're just a commodity to them, like that. Stuff's hard. Yeah, if any questions are popping up in your mind, hold them, because I want to, because again, I want to make sure we're talking about how Declan specifically got on a horse. That moved forward. But my sense is just because of who you are and your core charisma and your values and how you show up in the world, it just sort of slowly ramped up over time. Is that accurate?

Declan Spring:

You know coaching was very helpful. Yeah, getting the good stuff, just getting the good stuff. I never read coaching books in my life. I credit coaching with my you know aha moment for stopping drinking, with my you know aha moment for stopping drinking. Um, I think you know, if anybody else had said read, think and grow rich, I would have laughed at them and said no yeah but if brian buffini said it, I was like, okay, what page should I start?

David Gunderman:

on what? What lesson told you it was time to stop drinking?

Declan Spring:

um, that was an interesting minute. Um, I, uh, I was reading some of these good books and just getting some really good information from them about reshaping your internal, your mind, you know, rearranging the furniture inside there, so to speak. And I started to rearrange the furniture a little and I kind of popped out furniture a little and kind of I kind of popped out from myself for a second and it was almost like, you know, you can look in this room and you could rearrange the furniture and you could be doing that for a long time and just still not happy with it. And then somebody just sort of taps you on the shoulders that there's a door there. Why don't you go and take a look at it from outside? And you go outside and and you're like, holy shit, there's so much more space out here than I thought.

Declan Spring:

And that was like that happened and that was an incredible moment in my life and it took a while for me to grasp it. It took about three or four months, it was probably in August. And then Thanksgiving that year, which was 2008,. Eight, no, 2007. Again, I said, you know I'm not going to drink on Thanksgiving. And everyone said, and I didn't drink on Thanksgiving and people said, well, you should probably go to AA. And I said I don't think I'll ever drink again, though, and something just rewired and I was able to start thinking properly like a mature person, and it was great it was. It was born out of a real desperate need for help.

David Gunderman:

Talk about epiphany.

Declan Spring:

Yeah, and and, and it's a similar story for a lot of people who hit you know, addictive people with addiction who hit a rock bottom. Yeah, you know you're going to either wind up in hospital or jail or in the ground. I mean, there's only three options, unless you're fortunate enough to wind up on your knees and you get heard, and then you can have that moment. It's very nice, amazing.

David Gunderman:

Yeah, so where are your kids now?

Declan Spring:

They won't let me use the phone tracker thing, so I can't tell you.

David Gunderman:

How was your role as a father? How did you enjoy that?

Declan Spring:

I loved it. I loved being a father to my kids. So it was great, yeah, great. So it's great, yeah, great. Very lucky, very lucky to have kids that have not been any trouble whatsoever to me or their mother in any you know, in any in any big way, no, or to themselves. Of course, we've had problems. I did divorce. I'm so grateful to be with my wonderful partner, fiancé Danica now, and, of course, there's no history of divorce really in my family. So, navigating that, there was nowhere to turn. What year was that? It was a long, dragged-out kind of a thing, so I don't give it a year, but so that was a struggle for them, yeah, of course, and there's plenty of need for therapy around certain things, but in general, I've loved being a dad, yeah, and I love being a dad and I'm very grateful for the kids that I have. They're very funny. They're funny people. They're funny people. They make me laugh. When did you and Danita meet? Danita and I met when I was her realtor there's a few stories like that.

Declan Spring:

Thank you, brian. There's at least one other in the room. The recession changed our lives. The opportunities it gave changed our lives. The opportunities it gave changed our lives brought you life, yeah, so, um, so yeah, I met, I met denisa. Yeah, but romantically, um, we, we didn't realize. Could thank you, brian buffini, for teaching me how to stay in touch with my sphere? Yes, there it is. I would check up on her, like I did, and many clients. And thank you to Barbara Hendrickson. Does anyone remember Barbara?

Declan Spring:

Hendrickson Sure Lovely Barbara Hendrickson used to do draws for Chez Panisse when she did Brokertour.

David Gunderman:

Yes.

Declan Spring:

And she called me or emailed or whatever and said you won the Chez Panisse. And I looked at my database and I thought who loves getting dressed up and would like to go to Chez Panisse for lunch? I was like Denise de Chapeau and so I asked her would you want to go to lunch at Chez Panisse? And she said I'd love to. And sure enough, I'm waiting outside Chez Panisse and she walks towards me with her Chanel blouse and I was like I picked the right person. But we had a lovely, lovely lunch and several days later, another, another realtor, hannah Kearns. Hannah Kearns. I asked her. This could really kill the client relationship, I said but should I say something? She said go for it, yeah. And I texted Denitza you're on my mind and she takes it back. Oh, I was so relieved and we've more or less been together ever since you're on my mind.

David Gunderman:

Yeah, that's lovely yeah.

Declan Spring:

So thank you again. If anybody's interested in reaching out to the Buffini Coaching Company hopefully they'll send me a check at some point, because they certainly haven't up until now. With all the work I've tried to do on their behalf to let people know, if you want to build a relationship driven database where you actually are present in your clients' lives and not just somebody on social media or whatever, buffini Coaching is fantastic for that, in my opinion, and it can lead to other stuff.

David Gunderman:

I'm going to ask you a few questions and then we'll open it up, but before I do, I just want to ask you this one last question, which is you said you banished yourself from your parents. Yeah, how do they feel about you now?

Declan Spring:

You know, I think they're pleased that I'm doing well. We do great. We never had any problems. You have to understand like I was shielding them from my, you know, misspent youth. Do you feel?

David Gunderman:

like you need to shield them now. How do you feel about yourself? Relative, don't have a misspent midlife.

Declan Spring:

Yeah, so there's nothing to shield them from. I can now celebrate what I've become with them and that's nice yeah um, when did that happen for you? Around the time I was getting divorced, that's's when you.

David Gunderman:

That's when I really Something actualized that you felt more proud of.

Declan Spring:

No, it's when I realized that you can't. It's unfair to mistreat people who clearly love you and would do anything for you. It's unfair to them not to share your problems Like you're not really doing anything useful's unfair to them not to share your problems like you're not really doing anything useful. If you could change one thing about your business, what would it be? Um, I wouldn't change anything, but I would try and become a bigger team more quickly if I knew how, because and and so somebody like david gunderman to me is hugely inspirational because he's done this.

Declan Spring:

I want to have a few people on my team so they can pass down some of the benefits of you know, the experience and client base I've built and hopefully enrich their lives and give them an opportunity to find their way into being successful, whatever. That is because there's work for people and asan is on the team and I'm I'm so grateful to have somebody like asan, yeah, who's hopefully benefiting from, you know, a couple of decades of work that I've done, yeah, and I'm happy to share that with him. He's phenomenal, awesome, yeah. Thank you, david, that was fun. This episode of the podcast was edited by me, with original music by Chuck Lindo and graphics by Lisa Mazur. The podcast is brought to you by the Home Factor. Realtors. Thehomefactorcom Catch up on the latest news from the East Bay Market in their weekly sub stack published every Saturday. Go to thehomefactorcom to subscribe. If you'd like to reach out to me with suggestions for the show, that kind of thing, and please do just text me 415-446-8591. Catch you on the next podcast, everybody.