A Conversation on Life with ‘The Fish Guy’

Michael Quarles interviews Harry Paul

Serious about real estate? Then you’ve come to the right place. Get the knowledge you need. Get over the fear, and get started. This is the Michael Quarles Real Estate Show, with your host, Michael Quarles.

Hello everybody, Michael Quarles with the Michael Quarles Real Estate Show. Today I have Harry Paul on the show, and normally I would introduce you guys to my guest, brag about him, and tell you all the good things about him, and all that kind of good stuff, which, I enjoy doing, and it’s always truthful. But I’m going to let Harry tell you guys about him. Isn’t this man just fascinating? Here we go. Harry, tell us about yourself.

Well, what I’d like to say is that I’m somewhere in the senior citizen age range, which means that I have a PhD in experience, and I’ve been in the people business for the last 30 years, helping people be the best that they can be. Then, in turn, helping their companies be the best that they can be and in turn, being a good person, and being a good family person, because I think as an author and a speaker, if I spout one set of values to an audience, and there’s a different set of values at home or in my personal life, I’m hypocritical. So, I do my best efforts to always live in both personally and professionally with the same set of values, and it has served me well over the years because I sleep well at night, Michael.

That’s important. So, you don’t camouflage who you are during the day. You are who you are during the day, and at night, you’re the same person.

Absolutely, and in fact, with my first book, ‘Fish!’, which is all about enjoying what you do, coming to work with a great attitude, making people’s day being present, we use that same philosophy in raising both our children, my wife and I. So, yeah I live and breath this stuff every single day, and it’s one of my great pleasures in life is to go around the world sharing this message with people. I always say to people, “yes, the organizations hire me, and compensate me for it, but it’s the people I’m interested in”. I don’t see corporate people in the audience, I see individuals who I try to inspire to give and be their best every day, to wake up at work and say, “I get to go to work,” not “have to go to work”.

I’ve always felt bad for Monday, because it’s the day that most people leave us. And, I feel bad for the people on Monday, because I enjoy my day. People ask me all the time, “what do you do for a job?” Like, “well, I don’t have one. I go on vacation every time I go to my office, and sometimes I stay home and I’m on vacation.” I don’t look at work like I guess most people look at work. I hope for whoever’s reading, if you can experience what it feels like not to have a job, or think that you have a job, I think that would be a great thing.

I agree, and I know there’s a saying - I forget who said it, probably dozens of people take credit for it, or have taken credit for it - “if you love what you do, and have fun doing it, you’ll never work a day in your life.” I believe in that philosophy. We should wake up Monday morning and say, “wow, it’s going to be a great week.”

Look at the industry, the real estate industry. I always tell people “what is it you really do? Look at the product behind the product. You’re helping people create the American dream. Does it get any better than that?”

Not for me. I mean, no. One of the nice things as I turn more into that AARP lifestyle, for those that may not know what AARP, you’re lucky.

Yes, I’ve gotten the mailings.

How do you start getting that at 50? I started getting that, I thought, before I was there. But, they started pre-marketing to me, and I was almost worried for myself.

Yeah, I have gotten it since I was probably 45 and now at 65, I still get it. What did it, I forget who it was…Groucho Marx I think said, “I wouldn’t join a club who would have me as a member.”

Yeah, I really don’t want to be in that club, and I’m hoping we can just push the time frame out a little bit. I can’t wait for us to live longer.

You know what, Michael? Set your goals. When I turned 50, everyone went, “oh my God. You’re 50, your life’s over.” I said, “you know, I’m not worried about 50; but when I’m 60, I want to look like I’m 50.” And, I believe in that. I work out 5 days a week, and I try to … I don’t want to say ‘cheat aging’. I want to enjoy every step of the way and I got a lot of life ahead of me, and I want to be in good health, and good form, to enjoy it. I think we have an obligation to the future generations to do that and not be moored to the medical state. But, that’s too political.

No, no. That’s not, and that’s actually a very personal statement because we have more than that to worry about. I mean, there are people that we’ve asked to be part of our life forever, and we have to make forever as long as possible.

It’s true. There’s a lot of things yet to do, a lot of things yet to see; I have a 28-year-old daughter and a 26-year-old son. Yeah, I’d like to see them get married, I’d like to have grand kids at some point. Maybe at my age I’ll never see great-grand kids, but that’s okay. Grand kids would be enough.

That could be a goal, now. That could be a goal.

That’s what I want to do: travel the world, see all the places I haven’t seen yet. There’s a lot of things to do. Maybe, gosh forbid, volunteer somewhere.

Have you picked out a nickname as grandfather? Like what you want your grand kids to call you?

Yes: ‘sir’.

Oh, ‘sir’, okay. Well, there you go.

I haven’t gone that far yet. I remember when I was growing up, what I called my grandfather, and what my kids called my father, and it was a Yiddish word called ‘zeyde’. It’s a neat word, but for me, it’s a little too old. I want to be that grandfather that the kids have fun with and enjoy, and can go out, and throw a baseball around with, or … I won’t go snowboarding, but maybe go out and race cars or something like that.

I have a friend of mine that is so looking forward to his grand kids being at the age, I think, of being able to participate, because he’s a super-human. So, I think he has plans of making them into super-humans as well by doing all this awesome stuff. I mean, he’s just one of those incredible, incredible people, from both a personality perspective and a physical perspective. In fact, maybe he can adopt me. Glen, if you’re reading, I’ll sign the adoption papers and you can just adopt me as a grandchild.

I agree with that, but to a certain extent, because you want the kids to live their dreams, not yours. My son played baseball all the way through high school, and we thought he’d play in college and did get offers, and he decided he wanted a life in college instead of just constantly practicing and playing baseball. I said, “well, it’s your dream. You’re breaking my heart, and we spent a small fortune on this baseball journey. But, it’s your life, and I have to support it.” It was easy to get over. It took a little while, but once we did, it was fine.

Interestingly, I always asked my son after I pick him up from a game or practice, this was every day, over 10 years he practiced or played baseball, I would say, “did you have fun, Dave?” and he would go, “yeah.” So I would say, “good, we’ll come back tomorrow.”

You know, the whole concept for me as you talked about practice and baseball, or practice in life, or practice at doing anything great, is that I’m so amazed that we have really supreme athletes. We’ll take Steve Curry, who’s a really good basketball player currently. I imagine that man has played basketball from the time he could put that basketball between his legs and dribble it. Every day he goes and practices, and every day he had a coach from junior high to high school, to college, and now professionally. I’m amazed that society doesn’t see that same need for themselves, that every day they need a coach. Even when you’re the best at what you do, you still need a coach. If I could harp on about one concept in life, I’d harp on that one, because I can look at my personal life and say, “when I had one, I excelled. When I didn’t have one, I didn’t achieve.”

It’s absolutely true. When you look at an athlete at the top of their game, which I think is important, we get caught up in their skills, but there’s more beyond skill in that quest that they have for excellence. Because, there’s a lot of people out there that could have certain skills, but they’re average, and you have to have passion for what you do.

If you look at Curry, he has passion, confidence, the guy practices, tries and does, and gives his best. He also has that flexibility to learn, to take in feedback from the coaches, from the trainers. He also is a great communicator, because he has to be. He can’t excel without a good team around him. There’s too many athletes we see out there that never get to that level because they’re not pulling their spot on the team, and also, he takes responsibility for who he is, how he lives his lifestyle, and how he comes and approaches the game every day. That’s when you start moving towards excellence, and being excellent.

I don’t know if he could ever be that excellent, but I am moving towards it, because I’ve always felt if you’re not moving towards excellence, you’re moving towards average. I don’t think there’s any in-between. I put that in one of my books, called ‘Who Kidnapped Excellence?’ The answer is ‘Average’ has kidnapped excellence, and we always deny it. We always say we’re being our best, and then pretty soon, we start excepting average as our excellence and bad things happen.

But, I think there’s something more than just a confidence that allows these people to excel. I once spent a couple of weeks with Don Shula, former coach of the Miami Dolphins, and he was doing a book tour with my former boss, Kim Blanchard. I asked him “how do you find the right players? How do you put a perfect season together? How do you be the best coach? How do you keep that level of talent?” He said, “I always look for heart first, then I can teach them how to play my brand of football.”

Right, right. There has to be a sense of wooliness and not gift, because I think when we think we’re special, then we’ve already failed.

Well, we see the police blotters, and the aftermath of entitlement. Especially in the athletic world. It is in the business world as well. What sets those winners apart from everyone else?

So, with that said, tell me about a winning attitude because I know you talk about that a lot. So, what is a winning attitude?

I think the winning attitude starts when you get up in the morning. I mean how many people in your audience look in the mirror and say, “today I’m going to be magnificent.” Because, if you’re not, what you are is you’re being ordinary. Your mind doesn’t know. If you tell it, if you wake up in the morning, look in the mirror and say, “I’m going to be magnificent,” hey, guess what? You will be. You’re already thinking that way. It’s the same thing that I said earlier, ‘get to go to work’ versus ‘have to go to work’. When you get to go to work, that’s different, that’s a choice. You take that cleansing breath before you cross the threshold at work, and you say, “I get to be here. I like what I do.”

Then, a part of a winning attitude, and I touched on it briefly before, is product behind the product. What do you really do? It’s very easy to say, “I sell real estate”, “I sell insurance”, “I sell finance”, “I work in a bank”. What’s the product behind that product? Take it down to the lowest common denominator… dishwasher. I washed dishes, and it’s a terrible job. You could say it, look at it that way. What about: you provide a safe, clean, germ-free environment in which to consume food? That sounds pretty darn important at that point. You have to look at what you do, and understand that product behind the product.

An American dream: two and a half years ago, my wife and I decided to downsize, sell the house where we raised the kids in the suburbs, move into the city in a really old, 1910 neighborhood, and buy a house with great bones and fix it up. That was -and is - our retirement dream. We wanted a realtor who shared that dream with us, that understood our needs, what we were looking for, what kind of lifestyle we were choosing, to show us the right property, the things that would work with us, what we were really after, that product behind the product. We were looking for something my wife and I could do together, and thrive with. That is more important than selling somebody a house. I hope I articulated that well. That is much more important.

I think so, and I have a question. I’m thinking about the dishwasher for a second. I think we can all value what we do, but at the same time, I think we can not value what we do and still value what we do. So, what do you do for the person who says, “I’m a dishwasher, I’m great at it, I love it, but I want to be the waiter, or the waitress”? How do you stay where you’re at, enjoy what you’re doing, want to go to what you do, but want to get out of what you do at the same time?

Well, I think it goes back to those 5 points I was talking about earlier. You need to have passion for what you’re doing, competency and flexibility. But, look at those 3 things. Let’s look at competency, flexibility, and communication. How do you communicate to management that you want to move? You want to grow. You want to do something else. What are you learning? What skills are you developing to be a server? And, the flexibility to say, “hey. I can do this, and learn at the same time.”

I’ll give you a good example. My son graduated UNLV. He has a degree in Gaming Management. That’s basically casino management. That’s what his degree is in. While he was school, UNLV in Las Vegas, he got a job dealing Blackjack, because it’s a great job, pays well, flexible hours, it works well with the school schedule, and it’s in the industry he wants to be in. While he was there, he was always fascinated by what was going on at the craps table, which is a very complex game to learn to play, let alone to deal.

On his breaks, he stood in the crap pit at where he worked, watched what was going on, to the point where he said to the big boss, the table manager, “I want to try”, and they gave him a shot. Before long, he was dealing craps. He took the initiative to go from - not dishwasher to waiter - but from blackjack dealer to craps dealer by taking those initiatives.

Right back to the 5 pillars of excellence. Every one of them was there, and I think that’s what we have to do. Look at where we want to go, have that vision, which is great, and clarity of vision. Then, the mission is, what are you going to do to get there? That’s where people fall down. “I want to be this, but I want it given to me. I don’t want to work for it”.

But wait, there’s more!?

This post has been adapted from The Michael Quarles Real Estate show. Listen to this past episode for more on the inspiring story of HARRY PAUL!

About
Michael is an accomplished real estate broker, contractor and expert specializing in residential real estate. He bought his first property before age 20 and has contracted thousands of deals since then. As an active and current investor, Michael understands what it takes to be successful in today’s market.

Follow Michael on Twitter at @michaellquarles. We welcome your comments.