The Other Side Of Success With Martin Sawa
Success does not come easy. And the other side of success is not as glamorous as people often think. In this episode, Martin Sawa joins Chad Burmeister to discuss his book, The Other Side of Success: Money and Meaning in The Golden State. Before becoming an author, Martin was a commercial real estate broker, operator, and developer. A tragic moment changed the trajectory of his life forever. He shares his personal success story and reveals the hardships he went through in his journey. Be enlightened by Martin’s story and see how he’s strived to live a better life through it.
---
Listen to the podcast here:
The Other Side Of Success With Martin Sawa
I'm with someone from San Francisco, a place I have near and dear to my heart because I still hold the 415 area code on my cell phone and it's been many years since I've lived there. We're talking with Martin Sawa. He is the author of The Other Side of Success: Money and Meaning in The Golden State. I'm sure we're going to get into that. Martin, welcome to the show. Thanks for being here.
Chad, thanks for having me on. It's a real pleasure.
You launched the book in September of 2020. That seems to me to be at the tail end or maybe smack dab in the middle of the pandemic. Did that have anything to do with you writing the book? What was the purpose why you wrote the book?
The book actually took me about three years to write and that was preceded by a few years of writing other kinds of things and taking classes. I did a few screenplays and essays. I got out of the business. My career was in commercial real estate as a broker operator and developer, doing large transactions in San Francisco and LA, high-rise office buildings, shopping malls, technology parks, that sort of thing. I got out of the business and became a writer, and the result is my personal and professional memoir, The Other Side Of Success: Money And Meaning in The Golden State.
You must have had a few meetings on Woodside Road at that famous diner over there that all the VC players like to meet at.
I've worked in Silicon Valley. I also worked in Downtown San Francisco, West LA so yes, I met some characters.
What's the common thread because I've met a handful of these Silicon Valley CEOs? A lot of times, they're so far out there, at least in the way I communicate and yet, if you put a group of ten of them in a room, they'd be perfectly happy communicating with each other. What's the common theme that you've sensed with all those Silicon Valley people?
They have their huge estates up in the hills above Los Gatos and Palo Alto. The likelihood that they would meet another tech entrepreneur in a foreign country is probably greater than meeting the next-door neighbor. It's all in that world. In commercial real estate, you need physical space to conduct your business, although that's starting to change a bit. For them, though, the investment in real estate, which for most businesses is the largest investment after payroll, given the scaling and the amount of money they generate, it's almost an afterthought and they can easily afford to do whatever they want in that arena than I bet any conventional investment.
The big Benioff Tower became quite an enormous tower there in San Francisco. Let's get, let's have our audience get to know you. I like to rewind the tape and say, when you were younger, as a child, did you grow up in that area? Tell us about some of your passions? What got you up in the morning when you were a youngster?
The Other Side of Success: Money and Meaning in The Golden State
My parents were immigrants from Ukraine after World War II. I was conceived in a DP camp but birthed here on US soil. We were relocated to a small town in Wisconsin and isolated. I didn't speak English well until I started grade school. I looked forward to going to school because it brought me in contact with other kids and I was a pretty good student. That's where I focused my energies as a youngster.
I was born in Wisconsin. I definitely can appreciate that Milwaukee. Madison area, actually, not too far from Milwaukee.
I got my undergraduate at UW.
That's where my dad went to school for his medical stuff also. You're the first that I've heard that actually liked going to school and yet, if you think about it, it should be something we like to do because it's fun. You learn things, you meet kids and figure things out.
There happened to have been a Jesuit high school boarding school located right on the perimeter of the town, which was quite well known. There were students who came from other states and even other countries. I was fortunate enough to go there as a town student. My folks didn't have any money, so I worked my way to pay that tuition. I wanted more in high school. I got the classical liberal education, for the people who can relate to what that was. I learned far more than I did in college. I was very fortunate. I moved to the big city. I lived in Chicago and eventually moved West to California and became a city planner. One day, my wife was pregnant. I was dead broke and I hated my job. I quit and got a real estate license. That was the beginning of my adventure.
What do you think is the connection between what you liked to do when you studied as a child and then went to school, and why real estate? What led you to that?
I didn't have a boyhood dream, passion or anything for it. It came out of necessity. I want it to make real money. I was tired of being broke and I didn't think I could do that with a job, particularly with the cost of living in the Bay Area, even back then what it was. I wanted to work for myself. I didn't like working for people. In real estate, at that time, you could get a license basically by fogging a mirror. There were no barriers to entry and that represented the biggest assets and commissions I could think of. I said, "Why not?"
I went skiing a few years ago with the owner of Irvine Company, Donald Bren, who was about 6’5” or something. He was one of the wealthiest people in commercial real estate. I met him on a ski trip one time and he had his family there with him. It was a neat experience. What I learned about in conversating with him is that I always thought to be mega loaded, you had to trade off your family for your ability to make money. He actually proved to me that wasn't the truth. He prioritized things, if that's the same person we're talking about.
The thing you have to be careful of is the very wealthy, their press is managed pretty good. Most people don't relate to the lifestyle of these people well and it's only when they get divorced and you read the filings that you get some glimmer on the price it paid. That's been my experience.
Your parents immigrated and then I always find that there's something in life that we all face that at the time feels like a gut punch. Is there any of those that you're comfortable sharing that, now looking back, you say, "That was the crappiest time in my life," but there was a silver lining to it? What was one of those for you?
This will be a spoiler award for the book. The most painful memory, challenging time and impactful event in my life was when my second wife passed away suddenly and unexpectedly. She wasn't just a wife and a lover. She was my spiritual mentor and moral compass. There's nothing that can prepare you for that. That totally altered the trajectory of my life.
I'm sure there's someone reading that either hasn't gone through it yet and they will someday, they’re going through it now or they went through it. Are there any words of wisdom you can share of here's the process that I had to go through to be okay?
There's the near-term process, which is dealing with grief and that can put you right on the edge and looking into the abyss. There's the long return process of what does this means and how do you change your life for the better as a result? In the shorter process, I visited with a grief counselor listened to friends and things but I ultimately wound up doing a self-directed recovery. That's been mostly the story of my life. I prefer to do things on my own. I took time off from my career.
At that time, I had a partner and we were doing a large-scale project in San Francisco and he was good enough to cover for me, as you know. I don’t think you have a partner. I basically studied death and had some other experiences, which are detailed in the book that I called the metaphysical area. Eventually, we made it to the point where I was ready to move on. The long return process is still ongoing. It's a journey for the rest of your life, finding meaning and what you believe to be true.
I remember being in a car accident, a head-on collision and I never thought that I was in a head-on collision. I thought I was turning at an intersection. The guy happened to be going 65 miles an hour and I was going 20. If you do the math, that's 80 miles an hour of head-on and hit the windshield. My friend flew out of the car. He was okay but it was one of those life-changing moments. Now I have one of the bolts from the car that has a dent in it. It reminds me of how the physical is so passing. That metal bolt can be bent and I couldn't hammer it and bend it. It's that strong of steel. It makes me remember that, in the second half of life, it's now on me to do more than just thinking about myself.
My experience has been that of people I've met, those who have worked dealt with doubt or great loss, they're a little different after.
What is your passion now? Obviously, you came out with the book and you said you're not focused on the commercial property side. What are you working on these days?
With the remaining years, I have this physical life and we don't know exactly how long that is, I'm trying to impact the world positively, helping my extended family, charitable activities, mentorship and things like that. I'm speaking with you and your readers, doing podcasts and other media formats, telling people the lessons I learned and hopefully it can be inspirational and they can apply it to their problems in the present day but trying to keep a positive but real message.
Thinking about that, if you could wave the proverbial magic wand and change everything, maybe not for you but for people that you're impacting, what would be that a-ha moment thing that would change the universe? What would happen?
Other Side Of Success: If you want to change the trajectory of your life, you can’t keep doing the same things you’re doing and expect change.
I can wish upon them what happened to me, the sudden and unexpected passing of my wife, she just dropped dead. The cliché is if life doesn't get your attention, that will. I don't want to wish that on anybody but if you want to change the trajectory of your life, you can't keep doing the same things you're doing and expecting change. There's some external or internal shock to the system. In some of the work I do with young and old people, the first question I ask them is, "What do you believe to be true in the largest sense from the top down?" I see so much in the world now that people are manipulated and duped by images and what people say and they have no ability. They can't find the time to try to understand what's happening and discern it and apply it to their lives. That's usually where I start and see where people were in.
It's more apparent than ever but I have to believe that truth has been manipulated for centuries. It just feels like to some of us in the last few years, the truth has been manipulated but it's been going on since man was a man.
The Nazi propaganda films, verbals and you think, "How could people be so stupid?" years from now, people look back and ask the same question.
You can see it and it's hard to discern because if you look at the ball from one angle versus another, it can have two very different viewpoints. I understand how it's happening but at the same time, it's not fun to experience and see.
Probably the biggest aspect of my life that's been most helpful in this area is to what I call put skin in the game. In my business life, as you know, that means risking and having high stakes. There's a consequence for non-performance. There's a downside. It means risking time, money and reputation in your business and putting it on the line. For example, not having skin in the game, you see it where you have a chief executive for a large corporation who works to improve his lot in a short-term perspective. If something bad happens, he has a golden parachute and no downside risk and no skin in the game. He'll make the kind of decisions that come from that situation. In personal life, you have all net trolls and people anonymously trying to hurt other people and have no downside risk. The best thing is to put skin in the game. If it's a situation you don't understand, put yourself at risk and see what happens, and then you're going to start to get it.
That gives me the chills because I was trolled and it was painful and it was canceled culture stuff. However, it caused me to put a lot of skin in the game. We created Living A Better Story as a direct result. We're helping fund a school that's in Kenya that has 210 teenage girls that are amazing. We're meeting with the Founder of FoodForOrphans.org. He's been doing this for years and has fed 9 million meals. Now we're going to double down on that. It's interesting how in those times, you can either let them burn you up from both ends or you lit a candle and say, "Let's go."
Don't get mad. Get even.
I started to get political and I was on Fox and Friends. I was on Newsmax even on election day. I look back and it feels like throwing a pebble at a wall. The machine's way too big to solve that problem. I'm not a politician and I do not like politics. I'm doubling down on my belief. I talk to God when I go to bed at night and when I wake up in the morning. I now bookend my prayer in the morning and at night. By bookending that and actually listening for the responses, that Holy Spirit gets in there and drives you in a direction that you never had the understanding of. It's awesome. When you said it, it hits me so hard. That's it's awesome. If you could go back to when you were twenty and say, "Martin, make sure you pay attention," like Back to the Future when he goes, "If that kid burns the rug," what's the one thing you would tell your twenty-year-old self that would change everything for you?
When I was twenty, this was in 1970 and I was living in Chicago and going to college. I had moved from this little town on the day of my high school graduation. I love my parents but I had to get away because there was no opportunity. I had some experience on my belt, even at twenty. I had nearly missed going to Vietnam. They had the draft lottery and I had already taken my physical and they stopped two short my number that year. I hitchhiked and taken drive-away cars across the country. I had my seminal sales experience a year earlier selling Fuller Brush products door-to-door.
I've heard a lot about of Fuller Brush people. That's neat.
One of the most famous ex Fuller Brush salesmen was Billy Graham. He was number one in South Carolina.
My old CEO named Sean McLaren, was number one in the Midwest. He wanted to play baseball professionally. He ended up doing writing code and his company was purchased for $30 million, $40 million at one point and he learned it all in his Fuller Brush sales.
I have to say with no hyperbole, what I learned about selling, I learned that summer. I had a great mentor and selling big buildings is a difference of degree, but it was the same principle. That was my twenty-year-old self. I was always trying new things and if I had to hark back and talk to me, I would say, "Keep doing what you're doing. Don't fear the unknown. No risk, no reward and put skin in the game."
The app we're launching is called 77Pray.com. We get so busy these days that if we're not reminded to do something, then you never form the habit. The ultimate goal of it is to crowdsource the ability to put a prayer out. It's one thing for you to pray for yourself. It's another thing to know you have an army of people praying for whatever it is you need. I had a challenge. First, I had the January situation, then on February 17th, my son gets burned in an oil fire where he was cooking. It blew up in his face and hands. All you can do is pray. You're like, "I have nothing else I could do."
He gets to the point of surgery and we're praying. It went to the United Airlines Pilot Association, the flight attendants, thousands of people. The result was he came out of it okay on the other side. He wasn't going to. His nose and hands were not looking good but crowdsourcing that many thousands of people, it was like, "Whoa." Now the app is coming out. The last question is about faith. You've talked a little bit about it. What role does faith play in your journey as you go through life?
It's always played a big role. I was raised a Roman Catholic and was an altar boy and I attended a Jesuit high school. I had a pretty good dose. When I went away to college and after that, I drifted away. I lost the practice. There wasn't any one moment. There was the growing secularism, which started in the '60s and has reached epic proportions. If you're doing well financially and you haven't suffered a great loss, you're too busy to think about those things. After my wife passed, I started to study other religions. She had been working with me. I had been a Biblical scholar. She didn't believe in the ritual. She grew up a Baptist in the rural South but she read the Bible every night, did her Acts of Jesus. She had started bringing me back and then I studied Buddhism and Judaism. When I was almost 60, I attended a personal retreat at a Jesuit retreat center here in the Bay Area. After that, I came back and had been practicing ever since.
I love what you said, which is not practicing the ritual. To me, it feels like where we're moving to as a society and as a world as a relationship over ritual because you can have a direct connection to the Creator. That's the part that's like, "Really?" If you would've told me that as a kid, I'd be like, "Yeah. You pray. It goes out into the ether and it may so happen that something comes back, but it's all a random chance." I firmly don't believe that anymore. Relationship over ritual. A lot of times, that's where a lot of people have a challenge with organized religion and I get it. When people get involved, we always screw things up. It's how it works.
Other Side Of Success: Whether it's owning a business, having a personal relationship, or raising a family, it's always trials and tribulations. You have to keep getting up and not get discouraged.
The other thing is and this was again how I observed my wife. She didn’t proselytize. It was practice what you preach, by example. We'd have friends coming over all the time, hear what she had to say and console them. It's, again, skin in the game.
We're about $40,000 of skin in the game at this point. It's very real but the apps are going to be a $1 a month donation to be part of the app and it's viral in nature because every day you execute the three tasks. One of them is to share this via a text to someone who needs the app or share it on Facebook or on LinkedIn. By day 3 or 4 of being a part of the app, you share it on LinkedIn, some people have 25,000 people who will see that. We think this thing is going to grow wildly and then we can have some impact on people in their lives.
When you use it, do you have the psychological feeling of all these people around you?
We're still in beta mode. There are only 2 or 3 of us that are on the app. The closest that I can share is when I did post to LinkedIn, you gave me a good thought. I interviewed another person on the show who's building another app and it shows on the map where everyone is. That would be a nice feature enhancement that would show the pins on the map that showed all around the globe, "Here are the people who prayed for you yesterday." There's power in knowing that you're being prayed for. My son went to where he could squint his eyes seven days after the burn because it gets worse before it gets better. When he came out the other side after they unwrapped the gauze and you reach out and touch his nose, it's like the prayers were answered. No doubt about it.
Did he keep his sight?
Yes. He closed his eyes. He didn't breathe in. If he would have breathed in, that could have been bad. His right hand is fully normal, his left hand still has a little bit of scarring but with modern-day technology, I suspect that goes away over time. It's his left hand. It's not his writing hand, which is good, but he is a computer guy. He does certainly have the need for both of those hands. Martin, any final thoughts you want to leave with the audience about what's the most important thing? You've been through a lot of experiences in life. If you could say, "This is the most important thing in life," what is that?
There's a Japanese proverb that says, "Fall down seven times, get up eight," whether it's owning your own business or having a personal relationship or raising a family, it's always trials and tribulations and the ability not to get discouraged and to keep getting up. It's probably the best piece of advice I can pass on.
If at first, you don't succeed, try and try again. That's another way to say it. That's amazing. Martin, Sawa amazing conversation. The Other Side of Success: Money and Meaning in the Golden State. I tell you what, I do a lot of these show and I order a lot of books and yours is going to be on the docket for reading. I appreciate you joining the show. Thanks for sharing your story with us. May you continue to find your happiness and peace in the ongoing days in your journey.
Thanks, John. Best of luck to you.
Thanks for joining the show. We'll catch you on the next one. Cheers.
Important Links:
About Martin Sawa
Martin Sawa’s career spanned over 30 years as a commercial real estate broker, operator and developer. He negotiated numerous high-profile transactions in San Francisco and Los Angeles, culminating in a $400 million development project.
Martin left the business to write in 2013. After completing several screenplays and essays, he committed to writing a memoir, The Other Side of Success: Money and Meaning in the Golden State, a raw and truthful accounting of his personal life. He continues to write and help others execute both business and life strategies
