114: The Business of Great Ideas, Real Estate, Charity, and an Eco-Friendly Cause with Mayer Dahan

Robert Plank: Today's guest is Mayer Dahan. Mayer has a vision for a sustainable, environmentally friendly residential market and has continued to make a positive impact in Los Angeles. Dahan has a bunch of cool projects, a bunch of cool companies. This thing called prime five homes, dream builders project, and prime five homes was recognized as one of the top 15 fastest growing private businesses in Los Angeles, and a recipient of the best of 2015 in west Hollywood aware.

More recently, Mayer was acknowledged as a 40 under 40 residential builder to watch by professional builder magazine in 2016. Lots of cool subjects to talk about. Mayer, welcome to the show.

Mayer Dahan: Awesome. Thank you for having me on, Robert. It's an honor. I'm excited.

Robert Plank: Well, cool. It's an honor right back at you. What is it that you do and what makes you different and special?

Mayer Dahan: I think that's probably the hardest question to answer for me. What I do is very difficult to be categorized as one thing or another. Through my experience of growing up in this century with all the difficulties and the new economy and recessions and what not, I've come to the understanding that each person must have many hats and must cover many responsibilities, so in essence, what I see in my own private development firm, where we come up with the most innovative, beautiful, sustainable, Eco-friendly, luxury homes we can come up with and try to raise the bar as best as possible to try to merge people who are looking for the finer things in life with the concepts and ideas that are relatable to taking care of our environment, to giving our children a better, healthier world, to not ruining the gift we're given.

Subsequently, our company has a foundation that I founded four years ago, back in 2013, that ... our premise is a charity for charity. We use our profits from our houses to go out in the world, support charities, have children's events, feed the homeless events, back to school, galas for children's hospital, and we try to cover the gambit. We're trying to help the world economically, from a for profit side, and we're trying to help the world from a non-profit side, which may seem like it's a lot of things that are going on, but in my opinion, that's the most balanced and healthy approach that we can take to secure that we'll have success and purpose in our future.

Robert Plank: I like all of that. The thing that I've been ... the pattern I've been seeing with a lot of business owners I've been talking to lately is that, like you said, you can't just do one thing, especially in this day and age. A lot of us have maybe a scattered attention span. Some of us have multiple businesses, and it seems like the people who have been doing really well are the ones where the businesses they have either interrelate, or one relates to the other, right? This way, you don't have to switch gears so much. You don't see people who maybe own a dry cleaning business and a truck driving business. It's like in your case, where you have your real estate business, but then also the non-profit. Is that right, one connects to the other?

Mayer Dahan: Yeah, absolutely. There was this very consistent idea that I had many years ago where ... to explain it to you in simple terms, everybody has great ideas, but if you have a great idea, and you just pull it out of the sky, sometimes that standalone idea might not do so well. I think if you have a company, there are elevated statuses, there are other parts of the market, whether that be PR, marketing, social media. Whether that be the non-profit element of it. There's so many turns and bends that a company, if it wants to be successful, it must have other avenues and other things it does. If those things work together, that would be the best, but I think it doesn't mean it's easy.

I think you still have to change gears, and even though the companies interconnect, I think for young entrepreneurs and young leaders out there, we all struggle with first you have to come into certain meetings with a smile and a hug, and then you have to come in with a strong fist and a strong tongue, as they say. It requires a different hat for every different situation. It can be very taxing, but ironically, I think you said it. For people whose minds are all over the place, I think we thrive off of that chaos. You can find some of the most success in that versatile set up, where you can flow and move where you need to so your company, your team, and your customers can all grow together.

Robert Plank: That makes a lot of sense. Instead of trying to fight the entrepreneurial spirit, or to fight the temptation to be spread thing, instead of doing the opposite of what comes naturally to you, you embrace that a little bit, and say, "No matter what I try or what I do, I'm always going to have multiple irons in the fire. Let me roll with that."

Mayer Dahan: Precisely. I think for many years, I used to complain openly about how hard my job was, but then, given the opportunity not work that hard, I wasn't amused by my own life. I think a great entrepreneur loves to be pushed and loves to be under the fire. That's where we can produce the most. That's where we're the most activated or the most aware of our surroundings. It is emotionally very hard, though, so it's kind of cool to realize that you're expecting yourself to go through a little bit of pain and suffering, because that's the process to get to the best solution is to go through that process. Maybe it doesn't feel all roses and all great the whole time, but from that suffering comes some of the greatest innovations and changes the 21st century has seen.

Robert Plank: Oh yeah, I agree. Let's unpack that a little bit. I'm looking a little bit at your prime five homes, so if I heard you right, this is a company that you have where you build the homes and the thing about these homes, like you said, is they're really cool looking, they're luxury homes, they're modern homes, but they're also, I guess you said, they're Eco-friendly, and they're also pretty low price. Is that right?

Mayer Dahan: The low price part, unfortunately, we haven't been able to build low price houses, primarily because building in L.A. County, the land can somewhat be over a million dollars alone. The prices of homes can be very costly up here. While where the part is exciting is we're able to build luxury homes, even more beautiful than some of the uneco-friendly ones and make them sustainable without having it be a hassle, a nuisance, or even visible to the customer. We can utilize solar power without anybody seeing it. We can use water capture without it visible anywhere to anybody. It uses a passive system that won't even break down.

We use recyclable materials inside and outside the house that are beautiful and long lasting but have been recycled to create a lower carbon footprint. Then, we utilize everything inside of the house, from lighting to plumbing to make sure that this house has low waste in water and in power. All of these amenities are given to the customer at no additional cost or fee. Our dream is to create champions of this cause without necessarily having to have them be a champion in the first place. Once they move in, they see how ahead of the times their home is. They end up becoming enthralled in it. We don't ... when you see our houses, you don't think Eco-friendly, but that's the point. The point is to teach people you can save the environment and be cool at the same time. It doesn't have to negate the other.

Robert Plank: That's awesome. I've been to people's houses where they have the whole solar set up. I think it just looks ugly if you have some kind of add ons where the beauty or design is not factored into them. They have those ugly pipes, or the things coming down from the solar panel to these huge things tacked on the side. Even in my own neighborhood, there were a couple of homes where they advertised them based on how Eco-friendly they were. I went in and walked through an open house kind of thing, and they had these weird octagon shaped rooms. In some rooms, the ceilings were high, and some were low. I'm thinking, "Of course it's Eco-friendly, because the air moves around super weird." I see what you're saying, how a lot of these homes ... I kind of am curious, because I check them out. It's like, "Oh cool. Eco-friendly, maybe the electricity bill will be super low or it's good for the environment," so I have a better conscious there.

Then, the house just looks weird, but not in a good way, not in the cool modern art creative way. I like how you mentioned that. I like how that's an important factor for you where not only is it Eco-friendly, but it's also, like you said, a think that it's passive. You don't necessarily notice it.

Mayer Dahan: Absolutely. There's been a lot of history behind this movement. I think in people's hearts and minds, when they hear or see Eco-friendly, I think they think something completely inappropriate. They think a house made of straw or mud, solar panels everywhere, compost and all these other things. While those things are beautiful and they're healthy, we're trying to create a new concept in people's mind, where being good to the environment is cool and it's impressive, and it's your duty, not just a bonus. It doesn't have to ... the main thing people are worried about is they think an Eco-friendly sustainable future means less for them. It doesn't. It doesn't mean less of anything.

It just means more consideration not to be wasteful of the sunlight that's free that comes down, not to waste more water than you have to. Not to have huge landscaping that need to be watered daily. Very intellectual thought processes that at the end make these homes better so they'll last 100 years, and the environment can deal with it, but also create a new idea in people's minds where no longer is Eco-friendly this, not in a bad way, but I think it's been related to the hippy movement a lot. It's been related to this free love and this free way of thinking. It's not. It's an economical and a realist thing. If you're a human being, and you care about your world, you would do it out of an intellectual realist side.

You would understand that the air you breathe in, the water you drink, must be protected for your own well being. It should be the world's movement to make sure that as we grow, as we expand and build more cities, that we do it intellectually so we can have something to hand off in the future instead of just consuming everything and not trying to think about what's going to come next.

Robert Plank: I like that. It reminds me a lot of when the Priuses first came out. Those first couple of years, like early 2000s, if someone had a Prius, or you saw a Prius, you'd like, "Man, what a nerd." Now, if you have a hybrid, that's a cool car, or Tesla is, "Look, this is an all luxury car. This is a cool race car almost." What you're saying is that up until now, there's been the same stigma but with homes instead of cars. There's all this negative stuff associated, so it's your mission to re-brand the Eco-friendly into all these positives.

Mayer Dahan: Exactly. I mean, I think you gave the perfect example with the Tesla, because it's the re-branding of a concept to make it cool, to make it the future. The same movement ... I'm just one small builder, and even though I feel like, in many circles, I'm the leader of this movement, because I'm the one who cares the most and is willing to put the most up and talk about it the most, if the world doesn't get behind this, it's just going to hurt us, you know what I mean?

Robert Plank: Oh yeah.

Mayer Dahan: We can already see the effects of what we do to our planet. I never was an environmentalist. It was only when I started to build homes did I see the real power that I had in my hands. The first example I love to give is when we demolish homes, we just demolish them and we throw them into a bin or bins. Then, we ship them to a dump. If we were more intelligent, we would take the homes apart piece by piece and recycle everything, which is what we've been doing for an excess of six years. It takes more time, it costs a little bit of more money, but it's the way to give us an opportunity to grow and expand and do it in a healthy way instead of in a way that might scare us and might not leave any natural resources for us to enjoy anymore.

Yeah, this is ... I think there's so many people out there who want to do it for the right reasons, and they just need their voice heard. We're excited to make a company that's out there doing houses in a big neighborhood that are Eco-friendly, making it our standard. We just started building in Venice too, and bringing our concepts there. In Venice, California, there's a huge Eco-friendly movement, and you can see the benefits it has to the environment, and to the people. We're just excited to see this grow nationwide and see everybody engulf and envelope their lives in a more sustainable way and a more conscious way.

Robert Plank: How did you come up with this technology or the design of these homes or some of these processes you have? Is this all you? Did you learn this and architect this yourself, or did you hire a team? How did that happen?

Mayer Dahan: You know, the way I always look at it is I'm no genius. I'm not reinventing the wheel. We live in a world where, in my opinion, there are amazing ideas everywhere. Then, there are people doing things everywhere. The connecting between those amazing ideas and what we actually do is what's lacking. People have known how to recycle a home since the 1900s. We've had solar power available for an excess of 50 years. The technology's been out there. My part was to figure out a way and create an idea of why it must be a standard, even though you don't always make money on being Eco-friendly. I created a brand around that being the standard, so it's not about making money. It's not about being more profitable, which is taboo in our society, but it's not.

While making a profit is important, and we have to pay our bills, and people need money, we should be able to accomplish those goals while being intellectual about what we built. While being thoughtful and loving about how we build it, so I feel like I wasn't really, or I shall not take credit for coming with almost anything, I just like to take credit for seeing all the genius ideas that were out there and having the confidence to implement them when other people were just hesitating because they were possibly scared of change. I'm a bit more reckless. I never felt like I knew what I was doing anyway, so I always had to take chances. I was just happy to be able to be behind a company that believed in my ideals and I was very lucky that as we progress this brand, our houses were breaking records. They were selling for more than all the other homes. We were selling faster than any other developer in the nation.

Most of our homes never even reached the market in the first place. We were doing something very powerful. We basically feel like we have a huge head start, because we've been putting these homes together for about 10 years or so. As of right now, there is little, if any, competition in the market, meaning that there are very few developers developing high end, Eco-friendly homes, if any.

Robert Plank: There's a lot of cool stuff in there. One thing that you mentioned as far as building on the things that have already been invented, there's some kind of quote. I can't remember it exactly. I think it might be a Ben Franklin thing that's like, "Creativity is where you connect things that are seemingly unconnected." Like you said, we've known how to recycle a home. We've known about solar power. It gets a little bit better every few years, but you just combined these things together. The second thing that I really liked about your business model and the things you're doing is you're really niched down.

Who knows how many home building companies out there, and what do they do? They say, "Here's a neighborhood, get some lands, put things together, build some homes on some land." Well, who cares? You can go to any neighborhood and just go and move into a place where all your neighbors have the exact same set up as you. Sounds boring, so what you've done is you've combined, not just the Eco-friendly and the good design of it, but also made it into a nice neighborhood and made it where it combines everything. How can you be against a good looking home? How can you be against helping the environment?

Mayer Dahan: Correct. I appreciate that. I completely agree. It always cracks me up when I think back, because everything that should have been done has always been out there and available. I think I realized very early on, before I was ever a business leader, that there were no visionaries left in my industry. There were lots of people, but very few people with passion or willing to put forth a dream or take a chance. There's a lot of regurgitation of other people's blueprints and a lot of copycatting, a lot of people just trying to do the simplest thing and get money and get out.

That's always baffled me. If you have the power and the responsibility to build homes, which are extremely important, why not, if you're going to do it anyways, why not just put the extra effort in and do it the right way? Why not leave a resounding message of your legacy of what you've accomplished? Why not try to aspire to make money and do good at the same time? It seems very obvious. It seems very easy. It's the part that cracks me up why I don't ... I've always invited people to copy my system, to copy my business method, but I think people still don't realize that the future of human evolution is one where humans understand that it's about sacrifice. It's about more than just your days on this Earth and the things you do on those days.

It's about whatever legacy and impact you leave and that your name will live way beyond you if you can learn how to give a bit of yourself to others. I feel like we're lacking that in the business world. If I can go out there, and I can talk like this, and I can make money at the same time and be successful, then the young ones, which we get interns from all over the world come to work for us and learn from us ... I think the young ones will learn from this sort of system and hopefully will have a lot of young philanthropic developers out there building beautiful homes, because it's the right thing to do.

Robert Plank: I think that's a pretty powerful message. As we're winding down to this call, I want to make sure we bring it back full circle around to the marketing. I really like how a lot of your message revolves around, not even the easy way, but the lazy way, or the non-thinkers way out is to just be looking to copy and repeat and be greedy and just think about the money. You've kind of linked what it is that you do, not just with your passion, but connected it to a really cool social cause. Were all those, like you said, the younger, or newer, up and coming business owners out there, out of all the things you see ... the mistakes they're making are all things they could be doing but not ... what do you see is the number one mistake all these up and comers are making?

Mayer Dahan: I think ... I'm very lucky through my company, I get to interview and meet hundreds and thousands of young interns and college graduates yearly. It seems as though the younger, more start up generation, is possibly lacking that self-criticism, and self-deprecation, or what not, that it takes to get to the finish line.

Robert Plank: You're saying they're overconfident, and they should be more looking into oneself.

Mayer Dahan: Exactly. As you navigate through the world, and as you start a company, there are so many things you have to do. Pretty much the only thing you can do that will assure you continued success is to continue looking in the mirror, look at your weaknesses, look at the weak links in who you are as a human being, and then address those, because regardless of your intelligence or your experience, this is a world where it's about human to human connection. It's about what you make people feel when you talk to them and when you talk about what you're doing. If we're going to become successful, we're going to have to become very emotionally connected human beings. I think for most entrepreneurs and most young leaders, it's very hard to be critical and put yourself down and try to grow and stay on top of yourself.

If you're ever going to become a big person in this world, it requires being your biggest critic first.

Robert Plank: That's one of those things where it's so dang simple, but so few people do it. Out of all of the steps, it sounds like you've taken in your journey, and of all the cool tidbits of advice you shared throughout this call, it seems like that's what I'm hearing over and over. There's all these simple things, and yet a lot of people just ... they're just not taking action on doing these simple steps or just combining these simple steps or doing the right thing.

Mayer Dahan: Yeah. Agreed.

Robert Plank: Cool, so before I let you go, I want to make sure that everyone knows about you and goes to your website and checks out these homes and just gets all the information that they need to know about Mayer Dahan. Where can they go on the internet to find out more about you?

Mayer Dahan: All right. There's actually a lot of different avenues we have. Our main company is called Dahan Properties, which is the marketing and brains behind everything we do. You can go to Dahanproperties.com and then, you can also visit prime, p-r-I-m-e, five, f-I-v-e spelled out, homes, h-o-m-e-s, .com, where you can check out our homes, our styles, architecture, all the interiors and exteriors. If you want to get involved with our non-profit, the dream builder's project, visit our website. Www.dbpla.com or the dreambuildersproject.com. We're also on Facebook and Instagram, so feel free to reach out to us. We love to communicate with anybody.

Robert Plank: Awesome. Lots of cool companies, lots of great ideas. Lots of cool causes. I really appreciate all of the wisdom you had to share with us. Thanks being on the show, Mayer.

Mayer Dahan: Thank you, buddy. Have a good day. Appreciate you having me on.

Robert Plank: You too.