Real Estate Auctions in America ft. Simon Polito | Coffeez for Closers with Joe Shalaby

0:00This episode is not about flipping homes or selling listings. It's about flipping the entire real estate game on its head. Simon Polito is not your average real estate guy. Born in Sydney, raised by an Italian grandfather and Lebanese mother, this immigrant-built entrepreneur is on a mission to reinvent how homes are sold in America. In Australia, real estate is auctioned. Fast. Transparent. Competitive. Simon brought that model here, fought the stigma, and now he's pioneering a new movement in U.S. real estate. One that sells homes faster, with less friction, and often above market value. From the beaches of Turkey to the hills of Villa Park, Simons built an international platform.

0:43Blending old school grit, high stakes theatres, and a relentless mission to earn trust, one bid at a time. This one's about real estate, resilience, and raising a family with faith. It's about knowing your worth and never being afraid to start the bid. Welcome to Coffees. Quick break. If you're a loan officer closing deals every month and still capped at 150 basis points, you're leaving serious money on the table. At eMortgage Capital, top producers are taking home up to 400 basis points with better tech, faster closings, and full control. No junk fees, no red tape, just real comp. Hit up joining mortgagecapital.com and stop building someone else's empire.

1:32Thanks for having me. All right, bro. Thanks for coming. It'll be a good show today. Give people kind of like an overarching view of what is it that you do on the auctioning platform. Yeah. So I come from Sydney, Australia, originally, where I was born. And real estate over there, 90 % in Sydney is done by auction. So when I first got into real estate, that was part of one of the modules you could study. So I did all the modules I could do at that time, which was property management, commercial, industrial, auctioneering. And I obviously studied really hard. I got all those diplomas. And that was just the way we did real estate.

2:08But when I came over to the United States nine years ago, I discovered that you guys only do things one way, which is traditional. Nobody does it. The word auction was only mainly used for distressed properties, foreclosures, something in a negative status. And I was like, well, this is the only country that I've come across that actually sees it that way everywhere else around the world. Think about like Sotheby's art auctions and Christie's art auctions or classic cars. It's all seen for a positive. Yeah. So why is it seen as a negative in the United States? So I started my own company. I thought, you know, I'm going to try and change the game a little bit, shake it up with some new technology, and just see who gravitates towards it.

2:44And so far, it's been a rough ride. Don't get me wrong. It's a lot of education. But now that we're in our year six of our business, of RECA, we're now starting to get some weight. People know that we're a fixture in the community. We're not a startup anymore. And it's just another way to sell real estate, putting another tool in your tool belt for other real estate agents. Do you use traditional methods or it's all auction? No, I do both because sometimes auction isn't the right scenario for that seller. That's the only reason why I wouldn't do an auction if the seller is not on board. So if the seller's had a bad experience maybe with the foreclosure in their past, maybe they've just been hurt, this is going to be something that might bring up that PTSD, if you will.

3:26So let's go traditional. Let's try it that way, but just know that I've got that backup plan ready to kick in when you're ready. Your office is here, is it headquartered in Irvine? Newport. Newport Beach. So we're on the corner of MacArthur and Birch. You have a team in Turkey as well? Yeah, so I've got, I call them affiliates or referral partners that I work with. I went over there a couple of years ago and I loved it so much that I ended up buying some projects over there with some other friends of mine. In Turkey? In Turkey, in the southern part of Turkey, not in Istanbul, like down the bottom southern part of Alanya.

3:57it's a couple hours east of antalia which a little bit more people know of um great place like phenomenal location like cleopatra's castle is there like which is just for me i'm a geek for that stuff like that's phenomenal well i'm egyptian so i appreciate that yeah i didn't know that her you know kingdom expanded that far out you can go through then they got the they still got the tunnels underneath where she would hide the men and take them out and like it's all it's all been preserved you know she was a bit of a play play girl she had a flourish of men apparently that would come in that she'd sneak him through with boats and in the middle of the night and they had these little tunnels and then from the tunnel you could go into the castle wow yeah so i have a team out there um and then i originally being licensed in australia kept my name out there kept my company running and have a few people out there who work for me over there as well i've never met somebody who's got an international platform like that i always think i'm saying how can i be different you know everyone especially in california every second person's a real estate agent yeah so like how do i make myself stand out from the crowd no you definitely are totally different than any anybody in the real estate space that i've been a bit of a crazy man like that i've met you know in socal and i think that's the international flair you know well yeah i think i have that immigration mentality immigrant mentality right yeah my grandfather on my dad's side my dad was born in italy uh they migrated from italy in the in the late 50s my mother was born in Lebanon.

5:19She migrated from Lebanon in the 60s. So I've always had that immigrant mentality of you've just got to go hard. And I was taught that way very traditionally from my dad's father, my Italian grandfather. He taught me to work from the age of five. I worked with him at the Sydney fruit markets from the age of five. So I've always worked. But it's always about being part of the community. That was the biggest thing I took from it. Always be there for the people. And in time, people will give you things back. We're fortunate to have that immigrant mentality. Yeah. Because Because we outwork everybody.

5:51You know, everyone says, oh, you're Australian. I'm just born in Australia, right? I am an Australian citizen, but if you go, I did my ancestry. I have no Australian in my blood. It's literally half Italian, half Lebanese. Do you speak in Arabic or Italian? I can get myself into trouble in Arabic. I just can't get myself out of trouble. And I can speak a dialect of Italian, which is my dad's from Calabria down south. Okay. So there's like over 60 different dialects of Italian in Italy. so I'm very cautious about how I speak because some people take it offensively but definitely living here in California with everyone speaking Spanish it's kind of confused me a little bit but it's also encouraged me to continue learning my language and my three kids I constantly speak into them in Italian trying to increase their opportunities in life by knowing more languages yeah it's imperative that kids learn other languages absolute gift my kids are learning all dead languages but they're learning them.

6:47It's Coptic and Latin. That's really cool. But Coptic is the ancient language of the pharaohs. They don't know why they're learning it, but that's what we use in church. There you go. And it's important. They're going to have a tool that's going to be something that sets them apart from everybody else out there. Exactly. And I always say I wish my kids could speak it fluently because when we're in a situation where I don't want anyone else to know what we're really saying, I could communicate with them. That would be great. That's what I use Arabic for. Yes, exactly. Let me ask you, How do you deal with the stigma associated with auctions?

7:19There is a large stigma and it's just education. You know, this is not going to be something that's for everybody. That's just what it is. I've learned to accept that. And I do the takeaway a lot with people. So I just say, look, this is not something that is used for negative purposes. In fact, I don't actually list anything that's in a negative status. I'm only using this product for traditional luxury and unique properties. so we're i'm trying to literally not work with anything that's got a bad stigma attached to it yeah no no one who's in default or foreclosure no we sometimes we'll help people who are in pre-foreclosure if they've got equity because what we're doing is saving the banks from doing it already we're going to go to auction we'll get them an extension of time by showing the banks or the institution they're lending off that we're doing an auction for them that normally helps the client out and it gets them their equity before the banks take it yeah but yeah the stigmas it's getting better i will say in nine years of living here i want to say probably like five percent of the market understood auctions now i want to say maybe 35 40 percent of the market understands auctions now i looked at some of your listings on your site and uh you know the you you put a disclaimer like this is just the traditional sale not behind starting at 1.995 correct like well it seemed like a normal house at listing at 1.995 will it actually go over in the auction absolutely So you'll sell over market because of the strategy?

8:39Absolutely. So on average, we start around 20 % below as a bidding to start from. And on average from our sales, we're achieving between 25 % and 30 % above. Wow. And it's basically because of the supply and demand, right? We're playing to a psychology of people, right? It's, you want this, I want you to write something down, but you haven't got a pen on you. I've got a pen. And I'm not trying to sell you the pen, but I kind of am. I'm going to say like, look, Joe, I need you to write this down. I don't have a pen. And three other people in the room need it as well. This pen's only worth a dollar, but you might pay$20 because you need it right now.

9:14Same thing applies with real estate. We've got one listing. It's on the market. We're going to start at$1, for example. Someone's going to pay where they see value. And then hopefully we get two males who are macho and they've got a big ego, and they just want to fight each other to see who's going to pay more. And that's where the sky's the limit. Absolutely. I mean, if people knew that they could get 20 % over at market just because of ego, which is a driving force for everybody. It's huge. It's huge. And it's been hard to get people to do that because obviously the scare. And they're worried about going 20 % under.

9:49Has that ever happened where they get the 20 % under? So every seller falls over or falls off their chair when I suggest that bidding to start from number. But I just reassure them. Think of the website eBay. Everything on eBay starts at a dollar. Do you know anyone that's ever bought anything on eBay for a dollar? Yeah. No one does. It's like maybe one story of that one guy got one thing once, but no one buys it for a dollar. It just gets their attention. That's what we're trying to do with real estate. We're trying to get people's attention on the property. We do all the due diligence ahead of time, which helps lenders, which helps escrow and title because we already do a home inspection, a termite report, get the seller's disclosures, a natural hazard disclosure report, a preliminary title report, any permits.

10:28If it's part of an HOA, we get the HOA, CCNRs. So we have all that upfront preloaded. So when a buyer comes through the home, they see all this information. They can make an assessment whether they want to make a move or not. And they can either make an offer before auction to stop it from happening or they can get registered to get ready to bid. It seems like pretty foolproof. It is. It's safe for both parties. I'm not trying to be favorite or biased towards one. Obviously, we're working for the seller to get the highest price. But we're here to help the buyers have a stress-free experience as well.

10:59and we're allowing them to tell us where they see value and that's huge at the end of the day they're paying 20 over market though that's like who determines what the market is yeah well the buyers in this so the question i get a lot of the time is well how much above market do you achieve and i say i don't i don't get above market i set a new market level because the it's fair fair market value is achieved through for open public crying i know as auction now i got a cool question here it's uh what's one outdated rule in traditional real estate that the auction model absolutely shatters do you only want one give me several so i think with the contingencies um so when i moved to this country i'd been doing real estate for already 15 years in australia okay and i had never done a contingency on any sale in 15 years and i came here and there's this you guys have this contingency that to sell your own home which i just am mind blown that it's like It's like putting a home on layaway.

11:58Well, then how do they buy it if they don't have the money? Well, that's where you've got to sell. And if you've got a good lender, get some bridging finance. It makes them sell and buy really quickly. It makes them connected to the property. In Australia, what happens is you'll go buy a house, right? You'll go to an auction. You'll bid on it, Joe. You'll win the auction. The next day, you're listing that property on the market for an auction yourself. Now, in Australia, it's a 42-day close on average. you've got six weeks to get that property sold. And then you might have a week or two weeks of bridging finance, which is not going to be nice.

12:31It's going to be hard, but it's much easier than having a risk that you don't know if you're going to sell the home and it's going to sit on the market forever. And then you create a domino effect of everyone falling over. So we've, we've eradicated that by no one. There are no contingency sales with auctions. They're just like, Nope. It's as is no contingencies, no renegotiating a sales price, no credits, no repairs. that's crazy you're buying it as is but we're showing you the property so we'll have three weeks of showings so you can come into the home you can do your investigations you can read the reports and disclosures that are available you know everything about you know all the material facts so we're not buying sight unseen so to speak there's no risk wow because you're buying you know everything we're giving you it all up front so that was probably the biggest the biggest old-fashioned thing that i noticed when i moved here was like you guys do that really and then i I didn't know that was even possible to avoid contingencies.

13:24Yeah. So if I may be wrong to the date, I believe it's 1996. Since 1996 in the state of California, to be able to sell a property as is with no repairs, you have to furnish the potential buyer with a home inspection report. Showing them the rights and the wrongs. Right. As well as a termite report too. As long as you provide that document, you're disclosing everything to the potential buyer. So there's no risk. You're not hiding. There's no secrets. and that allows you to remove that contingency of inspection. Now, when we talk with lenders, that sometimes can be a bit of a hurdle for us because a lot of lenders don't want to do the extra work to get their client from pre-approval to underwritten.

14:05If you can get your client underwritten against 123 Main Street, that client knows exactly what they can bid on 123 Main Street. Right. So correct me if I'm wrong, it's about a 48 to 72-hour process depending on how quickly they get you their information. But once they have that, they're rock solid. You can say to Mr. Jones, Mr. Jones, you're bidding on 123 Main Street. You're approved and I can get you financing up to$1 million. Do not go any dollar over that. If you do, you've got to work out how to get that money because I can't get it for you. That's awesome. It avoids so much future headache.

14:35Absolutely. And then it's a seamless escrow, right? Because we've got all the contingencies removed. Escrow's already got all the documents. The disclosure's already filled out. Everything's done. So touch wood, in 24 years of real estate, I've never had a property fall out of escrow. and I'm yet to meet someone in this country that can compete with that claim. How many transactions or escrows do you guys close a month in your brokerage? In auctions, it's been slow the last two years because of the supply and demand issue. So on average, before COVID, we were doing 100 a year. Then it dropped down to like 10 during COVID, and then we went up to 20, then we're at 30.

15:10Last year, we did, I think, 25 only last year. This week, however, we've listed seven properties in the last week, the last seven days. So the demand is like shifting like crazy. This is our market right now. You know, you're seeing days on market increase for a lot of sellers. You're seeing agents that, and I'm not trying to put down agents, I'm just being honest. A lot of agents don't know how to sell real estate anymore. They haven't had to do the negotiating, the marketing for so many years. They've forgotten how to do it or they're newer agents and have never learned. And that's the problem I feel with a lot of these cloud-based brokerages.

15:43There's no mentorship programs around that actually give hands-on experiences. So a lot of agents are looking for solutions. How do we get this home sold? We put on the MLS We took some photos without iPhone which I'd never let anyone do and I'm like well you haven't marketed the home You've got to think outside the box. Yeah, well we put it on our stories. Yeah Well, we posted about it and I sent it out to like six of my friends That's not gonna sell the house now. We know we have a program and it dictates What the roles are for every agent that we work with what our roles are is the auction company and that way then at the end of the process or the campaign, if you will, I can look at that checklist and see who didn't do what they were supposed to do and where we went wrong or where we went right.

16:25So I'm pretty strict on it because I know that when we tick every box, we get success every time. If something drops off, there's a chance we could not get the result we're hoping for. So door knocking, cold calling, inviting people over, doing voicemail drops, doing social media drops, doing email blasts, everything and anything you can. You know, going to local hotels, if it's a prestigious property, going to local hotels like your Ritz Carlton or your Montage or your Waldorf Astoria and asking the concierge, do you have any high net worth clients that are looking to move into the area? I have a great property.

16:59You've got to think outside the box in this current market. And that's where our program is only 28 days. And actually our average days on market right now is 17. Wow. We're getting homes sold in 17 days. The only reason it wouldn't sell is if the seller doesn't accept the number we get them. But they're going to accept it because they're auctioning and you're getting them over market. Well, that's the thing. So a lot of sellers, unfortunately, I'm finding have been lied to by agents by telling them an unrealistic price for their home to try and gain their business. As we call it, buying the listing, right?

17:29Yeah. And that's where we've got to educate ourselves. So this process is a great education tool for sellers because it shows them what the true market feedback is. Not the comps. Comps are not going to buy your house. The people are. so every every open house we hold which only goes for one hour we have a one hour open house twice a week for three weeks so wednesday and saturday for example from 12 to 1 that's abnormal by the way it's usually like 12 to 4 i know but what are you doing for four hours sitting around like we are now doing nothing playing on your phone going through the pantry you know that's what agents do and they're wasting a day in sydney i would do seven open houses every saturday 45 minutes wow They're now in Sydney doing half an hour open houses.

18:11And this is on like 10, 20, 30 million dollar homes. But they're marketed so that people show up at the time. So we pre-schedule all the open houses. We advertise them online. We have them on our flyers. We have them on our website. They're everywhere. So people know the schedule of when they can come and look at the property. And that gives them comfort knowing that if you can't make Wednesday, Joe, come on Saturday. We're going to be there from 12 to 1. And then when you come through, guess what you see? Because it's a small window. So guess what? Everyone comes at the same time. when you see a competition what do you fear loss yeah so a scenario i play with sellers in fact i played this with a seller yesterday and they're on the market traditionally in a great home in villa park uh and it's just shy of four million dollars it's a beautiful home in fact i love the home but the problem is people are coming individually one at a time they're not seeing their competition and then they're in mind they're playing a story or a stigma that look joe you're the listing agent.

19:05There's no one here. You've been on the market for 60 days. Here's a lower off. I tell your seller to get realistic. What we find with auctions is we get the reverse. It's like, hey, Joe, there's a lot of people here. What do we have to do to stop this from happening? So again, mindset change. A lot of psychology in what we do. Making people aware of the value. I don't know anybody doing it this way. And it makes so much more sense for execution. Yeah. I mean, we're not cutting anyone out of the deal. Listing agents are still getting their fees. Buyers agents, depending on how they negotiate it since August last year, it's a negotiation thing right now.

19:44We charge the buyer. We charge the buyer a 2 % buyer premium to buy the house. Now, do buyers like that at first? No. No one likes paying extra fees. Hell, I don't like paying a copay when I go to the doctor, but it's part of life. Yeah. It's advantageous that a settlement works for you. Absolutely. But let's just say you're looking at the home, Joe. I'll be like, look, Joe, you really like this home. Are you prepared to lose this home for 2 %? No. You do know in the area we're seeing 5 % to 7 % growth every year. So paying 2 % more is still going to make you money. So it's knowing your product and not just knowing yourself or your product.

20:17It's knowing the market as well, right? So if you can understand how the market works and what's going on in your marketplace, you can share that knowledge with the buyer to give them confidence. Now let me ask you, like auctions are high stakes. People are freaking out. There's a lot of emotions. A lot of emotions. That's why I like doing residential. Running in the room. How do you control the environment with all the emotions? It's always different. Can I tell you, it's always different. I never really know 100 % what to expect. Sometimes you'll have an old ethnic guy in the corner who doesn't want to sit there with his arms crossed, doesn't want to talk to anybody.

20:52You'll have a young family that are really excited. You'll have an investor. You have all different types of personalities. I like to think of myself and not to put myself down as a bit of a comedian when you're up there I've got to keep the crowd entertained all right so in the auction world it's called pitter patter what you got to perfect your pitter patter so it's a bit of rhythm so ladies and gentlemen looking for opening bids at one million dollars can I say from there one million dollars two million dollars two million dollars and I'll call out three times give everyone a fair chance first second third finish quite done so you change your voice but I'm always looking at you I haven't forgotten about the offer on my right sir you're still over there but I'm looking at you right now waving you in.

21:27Do you want to miss out right now? Do you want to go home to a happy wife? So if I see two husbands in the crowd or two boyfriends in the crowd and their partners are squeezing their hand, oh God help that man. I'm going to hone in on him like nothing else. I'm going to get every last dollar out of him because I want him to one, go home to a happy partner and I want him to not have to go looking at homes for the next four weeks. And my job for the seller is to get every last dollar. So I use a lot of tactical lines like, you know you know sir if you give me another five thousand dollar increase that's one cup of coffee per month for the next 30 years are you telling me you can't give up one cup of coffee hell if you make the next bid i'll buy you an espresso if you win the bid so a three hundred dollar nespresso machine to me gets a seller maybe an extra 10 15 grand so it's about keeping the crowd on the toes keep entertained and managing them by not just myself i've got my team so i've got uh the clerks if you want to call them, or floor runners.

22:25And they're the reps in my team. They'll be going around and whispering in the ears of the buyers, don't miss out right now, this is your chance. Reminding them of the value of the opportunity. If we're at a view property or a landlocked location that is very hard to come by, I'll make people aware. I'll call the auction live on site. Ladies and gentlemen, look at this view. It might be the last time you see it for another 30 years. Are you sure you're prepared to walk away for another 30 years? Don't lose this chance, ladies and gentlemen. This is the gem that you've been waiting for. A lot of psychology because it's live sales.

22:55It's live. And when you make people feel comfortable, they do things they ordinarily would not do in a traditional sense. So when people are comfortable and confident, they will play the game. So what are like some big mistakes you can make on the auction floor? The biggest mistake I feel some agents, some auctioneers make, and again, it's just my opinion, is they're not flexible with their increments. that's something that i change the way i do things i don't have set increments i will suggest increments like so let's just say we're trying to get to a million dollars the bidding to start from would roughly be 799 or 800 000 when i start the auction i'm going to be suggesting a 50 000 bid if i don't get anybody to say that i'm going to drop down to 20 000 or 25 000 bid right and then i want to go with the market i don't want to if someone's only got another a thousand to add in i don't want to lose that bidder because that's the one that could push the next person right so i find a lot of auctioneers like no sorry we're only taking five thousand dollar bids right now and that's cutting out their other that's cutting out the opponents right from competing so i try to flex i try to flex and if a scenario be like you maybe let's just say you bid ten thousand dollars and someone over here bid only a thousand well well sir it looks like he's slowing up this is your time to pounce give me another ten thousand dollars knock him out in that time i've just raised 1 000 from him 10 000 from you i got an extra 11 000 for the seller that i wouldn't have got if i didn't take that 1 000 bid so that's the probably the biggest error i see and then although i'm going down this path myself to be able to be scalable across the nation a lot of agent a lot of auctioneers aren't live anymore since covid a lot of them are going completely digital which takes away that interaction that personal experience i know i can get more money for my sellers when i'm in person as that leads me to my next question you're like you're a businessman slash showman you know so theatrics are a big part absolutely a lot of theater a lot of theater and what we do look i'm half italian so i automatically speak with my hands and i'm a bit theatrical but uh it's about making people feel comfortable honestly uh people think when i say auctions they think you just speak really really quickly there are times i will speak quickly but there's other times i will slow it down so i'm still looking at you here looking for that bid to come on in don't wait right now this is it your chances right now because when people think auctions they're doing like a hundred items in one day they've got to get through them all so they're calling sold calling sold to me i'm doing one or two auctions in a day i've got time to take our time get everyone to have a chance to think about it seriously and partake in the auction so you're you're you're 50 50 then you're half businessman half showman then yeah But it's about making people aware of the value, right?

25:43Same for you. You have a lot of products in your line of work. Yeah. And for you to showcase that, you've got to show knowledge to your clients. You've got to show them the value. And I'm more showman as well. Yeah. Over here. Absolutely you are. Pitching people, just getting them to come over to the company. Absolutely. It's funny. Since I met you, I'm seeing everyone around who knows you now. It's like you're on my radar now. And it's funny because I'm like, I just met you, what, a couple months ago? Yeah. And all of a sudden now, everywhere I go, I see your face or I see you on my Instagram.

26:12I see people talking about you. I see you at the Elks. It's really cool. It's really cool how the world works and how we connect like that. Me, by design, I try to drive millions of impressions to the brand. And the brand is around because we have a couple thousand people that work for the company. It's huge. Yeah. So you can't run into anyone walking through Orange County that doesn't know of e-mortgage capital or work for e-mortgage capital, especially because you're in real estate. We know you've got one of the coolest garages downstairs. Yeah. Those aren't my cards. I know. I wish it was. But one day.

26:47That's not even like American money. You can't even be that rich. I know. It's crazy. But it's always nice to come here. I always let a little peek in that garage to see what's going on. Unless you're Jeff Bezos or something. There's a couple hundred million dollars in cars down there. Manny Cushman? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's not. He sold the building. The cars are even nicer now. Oh, okay. Yeah. All right. Yeah. I remember it was Manny's. Yeah, it was Manny's. Yeah. No, the guy that bought it's from China. And so, you know, I've never even met him. Okay. Interesting. He's just got a bunch of people that work for him and manages cars.

27:18Oh, nice. Perfect. Hey, if it makes some money, they're not buying anybody. Good luck. I don't think he's making money from that. I think he should set up a museum down there, though. That would be cool. Yeah. It's a good area for it. Yeah. But yeah, man, we have fun. It's all about just making people feel comfortable and reminding them it's not a stressful experience. We're here to be honest. We're here to clean up the name our industry has. And that's what we're really trying hard to do. There's a lot of people that, and I agree, there's a lot of bad agents in our industry, a lot of unethical practices happening.

27:48And just I'm trying to change the way that we're looked at by the public. And there's not a lot of like really high achievers. Like you're one of the few that really like just dominate. So I mean, I'm trying. I've still got a long way to go. You know, I'm no way to know when I never, I don't think I'll ever be happy with where I am. Yeah. I'm just scratching the surface of success. And as a business owner yourself, you understand. It's like there are days when people don't see us crying and struggling to see how we're going to make this work. And then the next day when they see us winning, they're like, oh yeah, you're killing it.

28:23Right. But there's highs and lows and tribulations when you come as a business owner and it's sacrifices you make. You know, you've got four kids. I've got three kids. I'm sure if we were here without kids, we'd be having a different conversation. We'd probably be taking a few more risks. But right now, we're a bit more reluctant to take those risks. Actually, I'll still take risks all day. Me too, but maybe not as many as I would have taken before. Because at the end of the day, we've got more mouths to feed. Yeah, I've got a lot of mouths to feed. We're hinging on our success to survive. and especially out here in Orange County where it's not cheap to survive out here.