30 Years in Corporate Leadership—What It Really Takes to Build Wealth, Family and Legacy

Junaid Ahmed (0:00)

Thank you for tuning in to Hacks and Hobbies with your host, Junaid. We're visited by our amazing guests coming from all walks of life, who want to learn their story, their struggles and their journey on how they got to where they are today. So stick around.

Most people buy property based on emotion, timing and FOMO. But wealth and legacy are built with discipline and a plan that outlasts the market mood. By the end of this episode, you'll have a simple way to think about real estate as a long-term strategy, without losing the human side, family values and the life you're actually building. Today we got coming back Andrew. Andrew, welcome back to the show.

Andrew Paetow (0:50)

Junaid, thank you for having me. Looking forward to part two.

Junaid Ahmed (0:53)

Absolutely, man. So excited. We had a fun conversation in part one. So if folks haven't had a chance to listen to part one, please go check it out. So Andrew, after 30 plus years in high stakes executive roles, you chose a new chapter.

What did you have to unlearn about success?

Andrew Paetow (1:13)

I didn't have to unlearn about success.

Well, it's interesting.

It's a big transition coming out of the corporate world. You know, where, you know, things are much, they're just organized differently, right? And the expectations may be a little different. And also the confines within how you operate are different. And that was all what I knew. I knew over 30 plus years of really how to work in that environment successfully.

And equally, what was great about that experience, I developed incredible skills that these companies afforded me over the years and work with great leaders and great people, world class training, etc. And so I moved into this new world where you don't have the same structure, the confines, the expectations, but the disciplines and the skills and those things that I've learned along the way. Now, what I'm doing is I'm taking those and channeling them to now, my goal of being successful in the real estate and rental marketplace and Long Beach Island. And so far, it's been great. I can give you an example where, you know, for years, I've led things like strap planning and technical planning and things like that, for whether sales, marketing, operations, we were always putting plans together. Right. And I come into an environment where in the real estate market, that's usually not how real estate brokers operate like businesses to that degree. It's different. And what Freeman and company saw in me was the opportunity that aligned with their growth strategy and what they're trying to do as a company going forward, an opportunity to bring somebody in who could maybe bring some of those things, skills and experience to the table. So much so that I just wrote our strategic plan for the next five years for our rental business, where we were up and running without a plan per se. And for me, it took a couple of weeks to do it right and really put the time in. And for them, the value was significant because, A, just doing the work was helpful for them for bandwidth, but also bringing those skills forward to write that and present it, it just clearly showed a next level approach now for our business to be able to be organized and track, measure, et cetera. So that's just an example of like I unlearned some things, but I actually brought them with me and just changed the way I'm using them, respectively, in an environment that I don't know as much about, but I can bring those innate and learn skills to the table to then supplement already great realtors.

Junaid Ahmed (3:53)

Yeah, you're absolutely right, because when you're in corporate environments, you learn so many things from one perspective to another perspective in putting those contracts together, you have an expertise, you've developed those deep, what's that word, deep skill set around it and you're able to now bring that to a new environment and then having to put on multiple hats as well, I think that's another thing you kind of have to do, especially when you're transitioning from one specific system framework to another new system that you haven't worked with before.

Andrew Paetow (4:36)

Sure.

I certainly wore many hats, especially in the later part of my career at Regeneron, my last company where earlier years I was a sales leader or a sales rep or a marketer or a marketing manager, that kind of stuff. And then I got into operations and I was leading six teams, all different disciplines, all within operations. But some of my groups managed sales, operations and others were contracting and other things. And so I had always was juggling a lot of different things. Finance, I had my own budgets and all that kind of stuff. And then I come over here and what's different is I'm an N of 1 in the rental piece. Like I'm not N of 1, but I'm running it and building it while working with others, but ultimately I'll be responsible. And also obviously N of 1 where I have to sell my own homes as they come along. And at the same time, instead of juggling lots of big pieces, I'm juggling, I have many hats now because I'm on my own. I don't have the network behind me. It's just me now and I have to do all the different things. And honestly, I was just telling our owner the other day, Eddie Freeman, that I'm really enjoying getting back into that mode. It's been a lot of years because I always had teams and administrative people, like things to do that stuff. And now I've got the sleeves rolled up, but it's all on me to do all these things. I don't have someone say, hey, do this, do that. So that's the value of being done. Well, that's the value and challenge of being on a small team, going from 20,000 employees to 10