My keynotes as a motivational speaker oftentimes address culture. How is a strong one built? How can can companies improve theirs? In my twenty-five years as a sports broadcaster, every team of every game I’ve called has its own unique set of strengths. But a solid culture is what really separates the good from the great, and has always been the common denominator of championship teams. This week I had the pleasure of interviewing a bona fide disruptor. In real estate, a team’s culture is just as pronounced as in sports.
He’s the serial entrepreneur and the political prodigy behind the best kept secret in real estate. His first foray into politics was at the age of 22, with a grassroots campaign aimed at returning his hometown to glory. He finished in a close second, but with eyes opened to the influence property ownership has on shaping local communities.
Five years later, he’s the quiet riot who’s shaking up an entire industry. Meet Luke Babich, CEO and Co-Founder of Clever Real Estate, the revolutionary approach to buying and selling. By creating a more affordable process, his startup from The Lou is opening more doors to home ownership than ever before, bridging divides from coast to coast and celebrating diversity as the asset it is.
SINGLE: Real Fair Real Estate
Buying a home is the biggest investment you will ever make. But because most people do it so infrequently, they don’t build expertise or know how to self-advocate. Luke founded Clever with a mission to make the process more fair, transparent and affordable. It provides educational products as well as a platform to connect buyers with top agents across the country. The result is advantages for homeowners that are far greater than traditional models.
DOUBLE: Human-Centric Culture in Real Estate
With the amount of technology and analytic tools available to assist in the home buying process, it can be easy to forget who is on the other side of the process. They are real people on their own life journey who may not fully understand the process. At Clever, remembering the human being on the other side is central to its culture, and they key to creating the synergies that set it apart. “That’s what makes the magic that starts to compound. It feels different,” said Luke.
TRIPLE: Give Purpose, Get Performance
Clever recently conducted a study and found that the Great Resignation isn’t being driven by a lack of compensation, but rather, a lack of purpose. At Clever, its culture has always focused on measuring outputs instead of inputs, and this unique twist on the traditional business model has given it an advantage in today’s environment. Luke encourages employees to nap, workout or whatever else they need to do during the 9-5 workday to be their best. As long as it doesn’t negatively impact performance, there will never be a conversation.
HOME RUN: Creating Identity
During the pandemic Clever grew 3-4 times in size, so the majority of employees have never actually met each other in person. But that hasn’t dampened the culture of gratitude that has been central to Clever since its inception. To conclude each week, the entire company joins on very crowded Zoom call. On it, they give a shoutout to a colleague who recently helped them swing bigger. It’s a tradition that has helped preserve a sense of cultural identity, despite employees being scattered across the continent.
Listen to the full interview here or tune in to Rounding the Bases every Monday and Thursday, available wherever you get your podcasts.
Learn more about Culture in Real Estate from Joel
Book Joel Goldberg for your next corporate event. He draws on over 25 years of experience as a sports broadcaster. In addition, he also brings unique perspectives and lessons learned from some of the world’s most successful sports organizations. Whatever your profession, Joel is the keynote speaker who can help your team achieve a championship state of mind.
Full Transcript:
Joel Goldberg 0:00
Welcome in to Rounding the Bases, the podcast about culture and leadership with a baseball twist presented by Community America Credit Union. The music by AY Young. I was just on the road I’m getting back from a road trip as we’re recording this knee deep in baseball now which is awesome traveling for the first time since 2019. And one of the beat writers covering the Royals for the Kansas City Star started humming that tune, sitting next to me in the press box. I said I’m sorry, that’s my buddy Lynn where the assets are in limit that’s in your head but grateful to AY Young for the tune that keeps on going. Also grateful to my friends at Chief of Staff Kansas City, they are placing you name it whatever type of position all the way up to the executive level and down to temp jobs and everything in between whether it be Kansas City or all over the country. They truly value making things work for everyone or putting you in position to talk to somebody that does know. So I hope you’ll check them out ChiefofStaffkc.com. Chief of Staff: Making Connections That Matter. It is all about connections and my guest today will will tell us that but also that it’s all about culture. My guest is a serial entrepreneur at a young age, and the political prodigy behind the best kept secret in real estate. His first foray into politics was at the age of 22. With a grassroots campaign aimed at returning his hometown to glory, he finished in a close second, but with eyes open to the influence property ownership has on shaping local communities. Five years later, he’s the quiet riot who’s shaking up an entire industry. Meet Luke Babich, CEO and co-founder of Clever Real Estate, the revolutionary approach to buying and selling by creating a more affordable process. His startup from The Lou, that will be St. Louis I used to live there, is opening more doors to homeownership than ever before, bridging divides from coast to coast and celebrating diversity as the asset it is. I don’t know if I’ve done a real estate podcast, maybe some commercial people. But this is so much more than that. And I don’t even mean to say that in a demeaning way or whatever. But there’s so much here in terms of culture in terms of diversity in terms of people in terms of connections. And so with that said, I bring in to the podcast, the founder of Clever, Luke Babich. Look, that’s a lot there. But you got a lot going on. How are you my friend?
Luke Babich 2:41
I’m doing great, Joel, thanks so much for the intro. I know, you’ve set a tall order for me to fulfill here, but I’m looking forward to the conversation.
Joel Goldberg 2:49
Well, I know you can do that. And I, you know, there’s so much that I want to get into. I mean, we could talk about real estate and all that. But I just think that there’s so much depth here to what you are doing pertaining to people, pertaining to trust, relationships making this work, because it really does. It does matter in every single way. But before we get into all that, let’s explain to people what Clever is. So that they have an understanding this is, this is, to me, this is the modern, the modern day, the modern way of doing things in terms of being innovative in a profession, that I think has probably done things in many ways the same way for a lot of years and generations.
Luke Babich 3:32
So to start off with a quick intro to Clever, our vision is to give everyone a trusted expert to guide them through their real estate journey. And the mission is to make real estate more fair, more transparent and more affordable. Its the biggest transaction in most people’s lives. But they only go through a real estate sale or Purchase once every seven years on average. So typical folks don’t ever learn how to be their own expert how to be their own advocate through the process. So there’s two sides to the business. On the one hand, Clever focuses on educating people. And we run a set of digital media brands that publish educational content about the home selling and home buying process that reach 11 to 12 million readers every year, and give them the tools and the guidance to be their own advocates through the real estate process. Now on the other hand, we run an agent matching network network of real estate professionals all over the country. And when folks want to take their journey with Clever offline and actually connect with a local service provider in their area, anywhere in the country, we can have some of the top performing real estate agents from their local market competing for their business. But the catch is we’ve negotiated lower rates on their behalf than you could ever get going up to an agent off the street. So for a home seller, it’s just a 1% listing fee for a home buyer. It’s a full half a percent of cashback, $2,000 on a $400,000 home purchase. And so folks can get rates that are lower for me than even compared to the discount brands and real estate but you’re not getting a discount real estate agent, you’re getting some of the top vetted experts in your market and getting choice and selection among different brands like your Keller Williams, EXP, Coldwell Banker. So that’s the model. And to date, we’ve helped folks save almost $100 million on fees since 2018. And are just getting started, most of those savings were just within the last 12 months. So the company has been growing really well, on our path to reach one in 100 real estate transactions in the United States.
Joel Goldberg 5:38
Well, you and I talked just a few months ago, really, and now, we’re recording this, this episode will actually run in June, you and I are recording it at the end of April, beginning of May. And just in those few months, you’ve had huge growth. And so that certainly has to say a lot about what you guys are doing, your culture. Also the demand and the success that Clever is having. Tell me about that quick jump in terms of the people working for you.
Luke Babich 6:06
So, coming into 2021, the company had just crossed 30, full time team members. Coming into 2022, we just crossed 60. And now we’re just crossing 90, and on our way to 120 by the time the podcast actually airs. So that has been both an incredible driver of the company’s growth and success, we’re looking for smart people who can actually drive the growth of the company and help them get Clever to its mission. It’s also been one of the biggest challenges when you have a company grow that quickly. Obviously, you face all of the the pressure to maintain the culture and the identity when so many people are new to the culture and to the team. So that’s been one of the biggest challenges we faced over the last 15 months is staying true to what made the company successful and enabled that growth while adding the team we need to get the business to the next level.
Joel Goldberg 7:03
So that’s a challenge for everybody. And especially in this day and age now to where you are running a company, you’re out of the St. Louis area. But in essence, you could have people working for you anywhere in the United States, or I suppose around the world if you wanted to. And that’s been, there’s two parts of this question, that’s been one of the most fascinating pieces of the pandemic, post-pandemic is the way like, the way we’re doing things is different in some form or another. And certainly for a company like yours, it’s different than than the traditional model. Yet culture still matters so much. So what what have been your secrets in bringing not just your new people, but everyone together from a distance?
Luke Babich 7:54
That’s such a good question. So to speak to that, from Clever’s point of view, we started with an in person, team, everyone based in St. Louis, and then had just started hiring remotely for roles in our software engineering team leading into the pandemic. Now the pandemic, as it happened for everyone made, Clever go fully remote. The difference between what we experienced compared to a typical company is that while we were remote, the team grew three to 4x in size in terms of its headcount. And so suddenly, two in three employees at the company have never met most of their colleagues in person because of the speed at which we grew. And that’s still true today. So about 1/3 of the company is based here in St. Louis and other two thirds are all over the country along with half a dozen based in Canada. So some of the most important institutions that have helped us keep a sense of identity all the way through are about how we communicate how we share gratitude, I want to just give you one specific example because I think showing instead of telling is so much more compelling. But one of the things that was core to the company from when we were a team of seven, myself, my co-founders and a few folks sitting in 1000 square foot office was finishing every week, taking a moment to say thank you to someone who helped helped you succeed during that week. And in a startup where everyone’s wearing so many different hats and your role doesn’t fit into a neat box, it’s so important that everyone feels the willingness to step in and solve a problem. And nobody is saying that’s not my job. And that tradition has actually scaled with us up to a company of almost 100 people we finish every single week with every single person in the company, taking a moment to shout out a colleague who helped them swing bigger during the last week. And so everyone down to the intern who’s just joined all the way up to me gets an equal amount of time and we go around on a really big zoom call and say thank you to someone who helps you succeed, and that that tradition is stuck all the way through, but I think it’s those through lines that really keep your sense of groundedness and a cultural identity. And that has translated really well from when we were in an office to now being 100 folks on a zoom call.
Joel Goldberg 10:17
And that’s got to feel so good to because you’re one, you’re giving people a voice. And you also learn about people that way you learn about what’s going on. And so there has to be a great carry over that’s infectious in the in the best of ways, I would think the the other parts of the question I wanted to ask you, Luke is that we have so much talk right now about the great resignation. And the one thing that, that I don’t know that we always talk about, we talked so much about everybody leaving, but we don’t necessarily acknowledge the fact that they’re still they’re working, they’re working, oftentimes in different ways. And so, you know, as your company grows, you are probably seeing a large talent pool of people that could come your way as part of that great resignation. Because, again, it’s not that people don’t want to work, they want to work on their terms. You’re a younger guy as well, that created something really special. What have you seen from the great resignation?
Luke Babich 11:17
Joel, that’s a really good question to too. You clearly have been doing this for a minute. We’ve experienced the resignation from two sides. So one is in the real estate markets, and people making life join your changes that we are, we’re part of their journey when people are relocating and moving across the country. And one thing that clever has experienced and it’s helped drive our growth is people who are moving from bigger cities with a high cost of living, and realizing they can reinvest all that money, they were spending on rent into equity in a home, that’s going to be their retirement, their college savings fund. And also that gives them a much better lifestyle and working environment. And those are also a lot of our employees, people who liked the idea of being able to work remotely, who like the idea of making a transition into a company that gives them more flexibility. And one of the most defining things about our culture is the extent to which clever managers buy outputs instead of inputs. I don’t know when my employees work, I don’t know when anyone on the team is signing on or signing off, unless they’re in a role that really defines that. But I just learned that an engineer has been with us for three years, was taking an hour long nap and an hour for the gym and the middle of the nine to five working hours for the last three years. They’ve never impacted his performance, it was never a conversation, we’re seeing a lot of folks want that kind of flexibility. One last thing I’ll throw out there is we just did a study as a company on the great resignation and learned that actually, a majority of people who are leaving their jobs with an offer in hand are taking a pay cut, not a pay raise. And employers have been rushing, thinking that this is all about money and spending money on their employees to try and retain them. Now what we’ve seen is people who are missing a sense of purpose and connection and identity. And one of the greatest advantages I think we’ve had and it’s helped us hire and grow even in a really competitive hiring market is folks can feel can can look in the mirror every morning, and understand how their work at Clever makes people’s lives better in a way that doesn’t require a lot of mental gymnastics. Every company has got a story. But ours, the line is really short and really straight from how what you are showing up to do at work is helping some family out there in the world, live a better life.
Joel Goldberg 13:45
And really, when you put your head on the pillow at the end of the night, and you hear those stories as an employee, and you say, wait a minute, I had a part of that. That’s where you start to start to get that buy in. I mean, that’s there, there are a lot of mental gymnastics and finding purpose because it’s not an easy exercise, I think but once you find it and it’s often driven in storytelling to me, once you find it, it’s extremely powerful. I got my end, it’s I love baseball. I love talking about that. When you start hearing about troops watching overseas getting up in the middle of the night, somebody sitting in a hospital bed you say please, anybody watching right now, this is a 13 Nothing game and it’s terrible. It’s you know, no, somebody’s always affected by what you do. And when you understand that, you become, I think more productive, better. And yes, you could take that hour nap or do all those things. And still, if you believe what you do I that’s a that’s a really interesting story too. And, and so, just so pertinent to where we are in the world. I think, right now if you have the right people and the trust is so I want to I want to go there with trust because and you and I talked about this when we first met also I should give a nice shout out to the great Barry Sandweiss who has introduced me to a lot of great people for this podcast. And I know this. And you know, if Barry makes the introduction, it’s going to be something good. And you and I really clicked over a deep discussion, a short one, not long enough, there’ll be more over culture, but we were talking about buy in, and not just buying from your people, but buying from these agents around the country, that that will end up taking less to do it. And, and we, it almost goes back to what you were just saying, Luke, about people leaving jobs and not necessarily being about the money. So that is important that these employers come and say, Well, let me give you more money. Wait a minute, that’s not what I was looking for? Are you really understanding what they want. And so in the case of these agents, if they’re just looking for the highest fee, it probably isn’t the right fit. So tell me about that working relationship with these agents that have to be able to buy into a process that is a little bit counterintuitive. Initially, in terms of the way we’ve been wired, since I think probably since day one money, money.
Luke Babich 16:01
Absolutely. And there’s there’s an interesting moment when we’re talking to an agent and trying to convince them to join the platform. And this is something we’ve now been doing every single day, non-stop for five years, and something that my co-founders, and I did too. And you get some people who kick your teeth in and tell you their that you’re destroying their industry. But you also get people who stop and listen. And what agents have dealt with over the last 10, 20 years, is they’re spending more and more money to try and reach customers. And they’re spending a lot of that money. I’ll give you just one example that will folks will be familiar with it’s Zillow. Consumers are the product on Zillow, you’re looking at those beautiful houses. But Zillow is trying to get you to click on a button, submit a form and sell you off to a realtor. And that realtor is paying every time Zillow connects somebody to them. Now, what these agents are used to, is getting these introductions from Zillow where half the consumers don’t even realize they’ve signed up for something, it’s a little bit manipulative. And they’re used to spending 1000s and 1000s of dollars on advertising every month, to spend most of their time talking to consumers who are not interested in working with them. They then take a second and think about Clever. Now the commission they’re going to take is a half to a third of the going rates in the market, just a 1% listing fee. But a top agent on our platform is going to close one in two or two in three of the opportunities that we put in front of them because we’re vetting these customers, we’re making sure they’re serious, and we’re picking agents who are a good fit. So the close rate, the percentage of customers who actually turn into business for agents on our platform is 30 times the going industry norm from a competitor like Zillow. And so at the end of the day, the thing that makes them buy in is when they’re looking at the bigger picture, and they’re realizing I’m not losing out and I’m getting my time back, I may be netting the same amount dollar per dollar of profit at the end of the transaction as I would have with these alternatives. And the person who’s winning is that instead of Zillow, pocketing all that money I would have been spending on advertising, it’s going into the pockets of an American family. And these are not people are going to put it into private jet. These are folks who are putting it straight into a college savings fund into a more comfortable retirement. And I think the moment that our agents really start buying in is when they see that bigger picture of how we help them save time build their business, and the person who’s winning is finally the consumer instead of some big, faceless corporation.
Joel Goldberg 18:42
So in the end, everybody wins. But the challenge, this is true in pretty much every industry, I’m not making real estate that industry out to be the only archaic one. Most industries are archaic, because this is what has always worked, you know, and then when right when I’ve talked a while back about, you know, had had a physician on this show early on and COVID and direct primary care and going against the grain of she wanted to get out of that because she was sick of having to see X amount of patients per day, based on insurance and wanted it to be more personal. And it almost comes full circle back to this taking care of people, which is the way this all started. And then you opened up, you open up a Pandora’s box in every profession. You know, you get what comes with it. And so I think that’s a lot of what’s going on. So I before we get to my baseball themed questions, I just wanted to ask you a little bit about your journey because I mentioned that the political stuff. We’ll we’ll cover maybe more of that in in our final four questions up on YouTube. But how did you land on this? I mean, as a serial entrepreneur, serial entrepreneurs are always looking for the next thing. That’s the way that you’re wired. Did you think this would be that next thing?
Luke Babich 19:57
So as you mentioned in the intro, my journey into all of this is, I ran for city council as a 22 year old. I ran a campaign where I was the naive idealist in the race. And everyone was telling me, You got to dumb down your messaging, you need short bullet points, people don’t have the attention span for politics. And I very stubbornly walked around with full, two page case studies, and detailed data analysis about the local ambulance service, and ultimately lost the election to the incumbent faction, but also saw that I didn’t lose it. Because I was speaking to folks like adults, they really liked that. In fact, I got close, despite being this 22 year old who hadn’t held down a real job before. Because of the way I was speaking to people. And they liked that I was trying to educate them and shine a light on what was happening in the city. And coming off of that, like you mentioned, I got really interested in real estate, the main objection I’d had through my campaign was how are you gonna make decisions about my property taxes when you don’t even pay anybody? So I think I had a bit of a chip on my shoulder to come back and say, Well, look, now I’m paying all the property taxes. The other piece was digital media. And I realized that private sector was so far ahead of politics and public sector in educating your audience to build a consumer base and to build a brand, instead of just talking down to folks. So coming off of that, my, my co-founder at Clever and I started investing in real estate. And I started working a sales job at a digital marketing agency to learn how they were going about providing a service that was built around education as a form of marketing, content marketing. And those two things, my co founder and I built out a real estate portfolio. Luckily, in the Midwest, where real estate is less expensive, it’s possible to do this, we, with a very small amount of startup capital, plus some investments from folks I met during the campaign, we were able to build out a one and a half million dollar real estate portfolio year of cash flowing rental properties within the span of just two years. And then Clever came about really, really out of the relationship that my co-founder and I had more than as the destined vision. And he and I took a big bet on each other. And we sort of, the business started with this belief that we were going to try different things. We were going to whatever worked, be all in on succeeding and winning together. And it was out of that, that bet on one another. We tried all kinds of different schemes and strategies as we were building out the real estate portfolio. And he was the one who had the idea for Clever and got it going initially. And that was the thing that started to get traction, it started to work, it was solving a real problem. And a few years later, it’s not only solving a real problem, it’s making a real difference. And that was the thing that made me not just opportunistically want to stick with it, but want to see it through to want to take it to a point where we will have raised the standard of fairness, transparency and affordability in the whole industry. And the fact that we have the opportunity, the path ahead to do that is I think too good to pass up too good to look for the next thing, when we have a straight shot to leave a dent in the biggest industry and the biggest financial transaction in most people’s lives.
Joel Goldberg 23:33
Right. And this is not some of the problems that you’re talking about in terms of access in terms of you know, we, we hear so much about about redlining, that is not one specific city that is across the country. And so this is something that, you know, when you talk about diversity when you talk about access, when you talk about giving people that that fair shot. This is you name me a city in the country where that isn’t an issue, right?
Luke Babich 23:59
Absolutely. And that that hit especially close to home growing up here in St. Louis. I went to a public school here in University City in St. Louis, where my school was 93% Black and low income but because I grew up south of a single street, south of Del Mar, I was from the white and upper income half of the city. And that divide was so stark, I’d have my high school friends crossing the this street coming to spend time with me growing up and just walking down the street, we’d have a cop come by and ask them what they’re doing and tell them to leave. And it was that pervasive structure that’s all around you that I think will just take decades and decades to to uproot. But I think the core of uprooting it is giving folks that transparency, teaching them how the process works. So they know the right questions to ask they understand the service and the they know what to expect and how to be their own advocate.
Joel Goldberg 25:15
I love it. So powerful. So it’s, it’s relevant everywhere that and then that’s what I was getting at night, you know, without I don’t think you and I really had even discussed the topic, but I knew that that this was important to you. It should be. It should be important to everyone. In my opinion, that’s true with housing. That’s true of business. That’s true of everything. I would have talked about that on this podcast. And we’ll continue to do so. All right, I want to I want to get to my baseball themed questions. So still young in your career, but a lot of early success and failures to like all of us how much of the biggest home run that you have hit professionally so far.
Luke Babich 25:57
I think the biggest home run was Clevers bet on digital media as a way to grow and swinging, taking a really big outsized swing, it took a lot of courage, because we had to invest a lot in research and understanding the real estate process in order to build these platforms that teach folks how the process works. But that’s exactly what propelled Clever through 10x growth in a matter of just three years. I think that investment in education as a way to reach our customers, which brought us to be a platform that’s selling close to 1000 homes a month that that investment, I think was the biggest, professional homerun so far,
Joel Goldberg 26:45
And many more to come. How about a swing and a miss? And what did you learn from it.
Luke Babich 26:50
The swing of the mess was, was my campaign. I put everything on the line to try and achieve something big. And I thought I could make a big difference if I won and got that local office. I learned from it, that sometimes it’s okay to play a longer game. And I’m still really interested in getting to a place where I can influence policy where I can shape some of these political issues like we talked about, like with diversity. But I think building out Clever is in many ways a better way to do it. And I’m learning a lot of the skills personally that I’ll need to do those later on. I think sometimes the most direct path is not the right one to reach the goal.
Joel Goldberg 27:38
I like that. That’s it’s interesting. And I guess the follow up that I had ready and I’ll I feel like I should go with this year now is what will you run in the future?
Luke Babich 27:50
Absolutely. I want to get back to that. I love what we’re doing with Clever. And both right? You know, I think we’ve got the opportunity to do something really exciting, really meaningful in the real estate industry and build one heck of a business. And I’m still only 28. So on the other side of that hope to be able to come back to my roots and make another run and help other people who share a little bit of that relentless, idealistic streak, make a run too.
Joel Goldberg 28:23
You know what’s refreshing, too, which I’m not going to, I’m not going to push you out of politics. But a politician supposed to say well, we’ll see. I mean, I, you know, never say never. You just came right out and said, Yeah, no, I’m gonna do that. Which is very refreshing. Because you know, you never get the honest. I shouldn’t say a fair answer.
Luke Babich 28:45
I appreciate it. No, I think I’ll run again one day, I just don’t have a timer on it.
Joel Goldberg 28:49
Yeah, that’s fair. Last question for my baseball themed ones is small ball. It’s a culture question to me the little things that add up to the big results, those behind the scenes elements, I think you’ve probably talked about some of them, that make you that make Clever successful, what is small ball to you?
Luke Babich 29:08
Look, remembering the human being on the other side. And in our content. It’s so easy to be looking at webpages, seeing what other people are writing and just focusing on your research and forgetting that there’s a human being you’re talking to who’s engaging with that page. When we’re connecting a homeowner to real estate agents. It’s so easy to be looking at the tools, the technology we built the data we have on the home seller, home buyer and on the agents and forget that these are real human beings out there who have their own life journey and they’ve got their concerns and there’s things they may not understand about the process. And something we drill into the team and culture every single day is remembering the human being on the other side. It’s the difference between one plus one equals two and one plus one equals three in our world if people are waking up every day, not just doing the work that drives the business but doing it remembering the human being on the other side. That’s what makes that magic that starts to compound and really build a business that people interact with and it feels different. So that is without a doubt small ball in Clevers world.
Joel Goldberg 30:18
Well, it’s, I say this over and over again. And my guests on this podcast are from every type of profession. And really anyone that could talk culture with an interesting story, which we all should be doing. It’s always about people. In the end, find me a profession, find me anything we do in life, that is not about people. That’s what you guys are doing. I want to let everybody know, before we get out of here that if you want to learn more about Luke’s business, really simple, you can go to their website, and then start that process. But it’s listwithclever.com. Listwithclever.com. Before we wrap it up, and then we’ll continue the discussion on YouTube. How to this point at the young age of 28? How gratifying has it been just to be able to build something with purpose?
Luke Babich 31:08
it’s been I don’t know what to say other than incredibly gratifying. It’s been a lot of work. It’s been tiring, there’s parts that are really challenging, but there’s not a single day that my feet don’t hit the floor in the morning and I feel grateful and excited to be able to do something I believe in. And I if if we can grow to a team of several 100 People who have that same feeling every day, number one, I’m completely confident the business will be just fine in the long run. And number two that will have been really worth doing.
Joel Goldberg 31:43
that right there is the definition of culture and purpose all in one answer. I think you guys are you have that, you’ll continue to explore it. And it’s a beautiful thing. It really is in every single profession. Luke Babich is the co-founder of Clever again, you could check them out the website is listwithclever.com. You could check out the rest of this conversation, some really interesting stuff in terms of Luke’s background and how he got to where he did. We’ll continue this on Rounding the Bases extra innings on YouTube. Just just search for Joel Goldberg Media are Rounding the Bases with Joel Goldberg, putting Luke’s name as well, if you want, we’ll have links to it. And you can check that out. But as far as the audio version of the podcast, Luke, really appreciate you taking time. Thanks so much.
Unknown Speaker 32:27
Joel, thanks so much for having me. There’s a lot of fun and look forward to our next chat.