The Life In Between, with Roy Dekel – Episode 434 of The Action Catalyst Podcast

Roy Dekel, CEO and Co-Founder of SetSchedule, recounts how his time as an officer in the Israeli secret services translated to the business world and what this former warrior considers to be his kryptonite, explains his mission to put solopreneurs on a level playing field with the big boys, and tackles topics like joy vs amusement, decision fatigue, the existential wisdom of Shakespeare, and why the biggest successes often only come after the biggest failures.

About Roy:

Roy Dekel is CEO and Co-Founder of SetSchedule. Preceding SetSchedule, Roy sold billions in financial products and prior to trends, institutionalized the buy and hold residential lifestyle model managing a lofty residential portfolio. Before moving to California, Dekel grew up in Israel, a child of Romanian refugees. He served as a first lieutenant in the Israeli Defense Forces of the Navy Seals. Inspired by his childhood, Roy helps charities that focus on the quality of life and education of children. Roy’s long-standing dedication as a donor, activist, and member of so many charitable organizations has earned Dekel the deserved reputation as a trusted and selfless community leader.

Dekel also serves as CEO of tech companies Rentastic and Taskable.

Learn more at RoyDekel.com and RoyDekel.org.

The Action Catalyst is presented by the Southwestern Family of Companies. With each episode, the podcast features some of the nation’s top thought leaders and experts, sharing meaningful tips and advice. Learn more at TheActionCatalyst.com, subscribe below or wherever you listen to podcasts, and be sure to leave a rating and review!

LISTEN:

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR RSS FEED: https://feeds.captivate.fm/the-action-catalyst/

SUBSCRIBE ELSEWHERE: https://the-action-catalyst.captivate.fm/listen

__________________________________________________________________________

(Transcribed using A.I. / May include errors):

Dan Moore
This is Dan Moore. And we are very, very excited today to have Roy Dekel with us. Roy is the co founder and CEO of SetSchedule, which he’ll share some more information about with us. But he has an incredible background, having an impact to defend the free world, and now having an impact to defend people’s right for free choice in real estate, and many other great things that he’s done in the charitable and nonprofit sphere as well. So Roy, welcome to the action catalyst.

Roy Dekel
Dan, thank you for having me. So excited to be here.

Dan Moore
Roy, you’ve had an amazing background, I know that you served in the equivalent of the navy seals in the Israeli Defense Force, which is absolutely incredible. But I wonder if you could share some of what you consider the most important pivots or twists and turns in your career starting as a young man that ended up being where you are today and making such a difference in the world?

Roy Dekel
Well, thank you for the question, then, obviously, I love it, because who doesn’t like to talk about their history, right? If you want to carve it out more to the corporate evolution, post military service, obviously, I can do that. But if you think about the experiences as an entrepreneur, obviously, I had the privilege to come in I was born and raised in Israel. So I was essentially the mandate was to serve in the military. But I volunteered to serve in special operations and become an officer. But ultimately, I had the privilege to carry that experience into the civilian personal life and corporate life. And when I did that, I think I got a little bit of kind of like, it’s almost like a cheat sheet that was an accelerated mode to maybe avoid mistakes. But ultimately, in the 15 years experience that I had in the corporate world and the charitable world and you know, civilian, I went through a lot of pivots that revolve around basically Junior mistakes, as I call them, Junior mistakes that a lot of people make along the way, and especially entrepreneurs, so many of the periods that could talk about.

Dan Moore
One specific question; many of our listeners are returned veterans, what was sort of your thought process as you were leaving the IDF? And how did you get into the business world?

Roy Dekel
When I left the IDF, let’s put it this way I was I was still a kid, right. And I knew that I served in a great unit, I knew that I was an officer, I knew that I enjoy leading and managing. And I knew that probably somewhere in the DNA, I want to be an entrepreneur, I didn’t know where and what’s gonna be my manifesto or business model, what’s going to be my industry. But ultimately, I knew that at the end of the day, I would want to build something that can benefit society, right? I mean, the end user in mind. So I went through the evolution from the military and implemented a lot of the training that I’ve been through a went through in my earlier career.

Dan Moore
Okay, so you identified that you had some strengths, you enjoyed leading people, you wanted to do something that would contribute positively to society. And that whole entrepreneurial thing was a powerful draw for you. That’s great. Now, specifically, I know you’re involved in selling a lot of financial services and real estate related products. And now you’re more of a powerful connector of buyers and sellers and people seeking information on the market. Can you share some of the maybe twists and turns that caused all that to come about?

Roy Dekel
Essentially, I’m a big believer that we need to address as a society, we want to address challenges and problems that actually affected communities to the core, basically, and the aspect of real estate was actually I don’t wanna call it an accident. But actually, the thought process started with the idea of creating communities of professionals that can connect with their prospects more efficiently using technology. Right. And I came from the financial services and a real estate services world investigating in real estate funds or what have you. And I realized that there’s a tremendous amount of gap between individuals abilities, okay. I mean, some people would refer to it as a core competencies as a businessman or salesman, and their ability to actually connect with prospects or to be competitive enough to have enough prospects to actually build a business and be profitable. You know, essentially, that’s how set schedule was born from the evolution of buying hundreds and 1000s of properties, diving into basically the core problem of assisting and helping real estate agent grow their business that’s was kind of like the initial evolution of set schedule. But the vision statement was much broader than that. And it’s it again, like I said, it revolves around enabling professionals, even if they’re solopreneurs, to be more relevant, competitive and successful in connecting with their prospects.

Dan Moore
I see. So a person that may have a one man band or a one woman band can actually connect at a really professional high level with people and create the right impression. So they don’t think well, this is just a one off instead, it’s a really professional connection point.

Roy Dekel
Yes. You know, that, as my grandma used to say, not all fingers are the same length, right? Not everything created equal kind of thing. And you know, that there’s sometimes unfair advantage to some groups, whether it’s budget, whether it’s geolocation and the real estate was obvious. be a catalyst for us, like I said. So ultimately, we realized that the solopreneurs rather than the small businesses, not even an SMB, but a small businesses, and especially real estate, which you’re talking about, you know, 2 million businesses, I mean, license holders and specific real estate, are constantly struggling with the idea of having a constant drive constant push constant ability to either perform budget and economical way to scale that business, right. So that that’s kind of like where set schedule was born from the idea of controlling the scheduled better, hence the set schedule and doing it in an economical way that enables you to call your business and be competitive.

Dan Moore
That makes total sense, because for people that are maybe not aware of the real estate market, this is not a salary based business. This is a business where income entirely depends upon production. And so if people can use their time better, they can have better production, and therefore build a business that is sustainable, so that they can grow too.

Roy Dekel
And it can apply to so many different industries. If you look at the charitable organization that constantly needs, new donors, right donations, and capital, it conceptually through to set schedule applications and everything that we have in a roadmap in the coming months and years, we’re going to enable this very efficient connection between even a foundation and then the donor, there may be a CEO of a company X, and they’re on the platform, that I mean, again, we we’ve fully we obsess over creating efficiencies and enabling the smaller business to be efficient and successful on a constant basis.

Dan Moore
Right. Now, you mentioned charitable work, I know that your great passion is children’s education. And I understand that a lot of that roots from your own childhood experiences can can you share a bit how you became so involved with that, and why that’s such an important conviction you have?

Roy Dekel
Absolutely, that’s an awesome question, then thank you. I mean, it’s hard to explain. But I’ll say, in a funny way, I’ve served in the military, I’ve seen a couple of different wars in Israel in the Middle East. And then I came here and basically dove into the entrepreneurial lifestyle without looking back. But every time I see a sick child, or every time I see a child that is at a disadvantage, whether it’s economically whether it’s you know, from from social environment, then you know, obviously an orphan child, it just breaks my heart, it’s kind of like in the family, we’ll call it my kryptonite. So I realized that young age, that’s something I care deeply about, and it’s just in my DNA, my childhood was was great, I was fortunate enough to have a great childhood in good area, but not, you know, didn’t come from money, but I just feel that kids have this obviously inherent disadvantage of, you know, their ability to actually, you know, solve their problems. And it was, it developed to be my my kryptonite, so I made it a mission to really be constantly involved in everything that revolves around children, children education, and, and medical needs.

Dan Moore
Children are the future. I know, that’s just an old slogan, but it is absolutely true. And given them a chance to maybe have some equity in their start, is what you’re striving for.

Roy Dekel
You definitely can predict the future of where your country where our country is going to be 1020 years from now, I mean, if you just really spend the time and, and listening, reviewing and understanding what we’re doing to our next generation, I know this is not rocket science, pretty elementary, right. But that’s a crystal ball that you can predict if you pay attention to the kids of today’s generation.

Dan Moore
And there’s a lot of them. These are sort of the the grandchildren of my generation, which was the baby boomers. And so you have these waves of population growth, and this is a third wave after that one. So lots of kids, and many of them are not growing up in the best situations at all. Roi, our 100 listeners sometimes hit brick walls that just stopped. I’m sure you’ve had a few of those over the years, any lessons you could share about how to react first of all mentally and emotionally. And then practically, when we hit one of those unexpected brick walls?

Roy Dekel
Absolutely. That’s actually one of my one of my favorite Gen Con like mentorship questions. So thank you for this question, then the answer can be for producing a movie right that would go into like a flashback rewind story and going back to my BUDS training, right my equivalent of basic underwater divorce training, which is basically the sales training I got into the training knowing that I just wanted to pass a training I did I don’t want to quit that I want to I want to win it I want to be it I want to I want to be part of this unit and you have what’s called Hell Week in BUDS training, which is really Hell Week. Now when I served it was before way before Facebook and Twitter and YouTube so I didn’t get the privilege of actually watching this thing before it was in that unit. I actually realized that we have that there is such thing as called Hell Week, during hell week when I asked myself why the hell why are we not sleeping? Why we are constantly running around diving, swimming, kickboxing, practicing weaponry, and just it was I mean, it was a nightmare. I mean, it’s there’s no two ways about it, right? And that’s where I will Say 40% of the unit quits or the cadets quit. Okay. I mean, you started training with about 181 of these men end up with about 80 Entering Hell Week and probably the end of hell week, you end up with about 40 or 30 individuals, and I was one of them. And I thought to myself for years, how and why and then what was what was really the the, the, the out and the element that carried me through that, then the answer, by the way, is what I use and obsess over regularly to to stay, right. I mean, whether it’s charitable project, or whether it’s corporate project, and to me was pretty simple. I’ll never forget that during Hell Week, all I needed to do is to think about two things. Number one is I close my eyes. And I thought about the fact that I want it to be Friday, and it will be Friday at some point. Okay, so So what’s the worst that can happen? Right? It’s going to be Friday, I’ll be thrown all these challenges. I’ll sleep about the equivalent of six hour the entire week. So call it about half an hour or an hour per day, but I’ll be okay. I mean, nobody’s going to kill me, right? I mean, training. So that was the first thing. The second thing is I remember what my dad told me, and it’s gonna it’s kind of funny. But I remember when it was broken during boot camp training actually was given Hell Week. And I remember that I actually called crying to what parents, and my dad told me that that was actually like I said, before Hill, he said, Roy, no one on this planet is able to stop time. So if this is your mission, just let time work itself out and keep going with the mission. Right? So I remember that line, which is, again, pretty elementary. And I remember and I exercised the idea of I made the commitment to do something, nothing comes without challenges. I mean, if it was easy, everybody would have done that. And all you need to do is to close your eyes and say it will be Friday. But if I do it right, and I stick around, it will be Friday with my achievement of success. And that’s how I exercise my my decision making process and management style today.

Dan Moore
I think it’s awesome. You also got somebody else involved you called your dad. And I’m sure that that emotional push of somebody that you respect and looked up to was right in front of you all the time as you were working toward Friday.

Roy Dekel
Absolutely. I’m a big believer in learning to adapt, listening to advice, listening to constructive criticism that comes from a good place, and really sick for mentors. It’s okay to have mentors. It’s not a sign of weakness, it’s absolutely important.

Dan Moore
I spoke with another gentleman who spent about 27 years as a Navy SEAL in this country. And he also spoke about how many people rang the bell during buds and left the training. And he said the one thing they all seem to have in common that made it was it was not all about them. It’s about someone else that was important to them. And I think that’s a good lesson as well realize that people in our lives mean something. And it’s not just about us.

Roy Dekel
Absolutely 100% We actually have in the company would be called management development program. And we actually had this conversation about the difference between dopamine and actually the power of the congregation or the power of the network, it is much more powerful, where you see a child smiling, and being grateful that something you’ve done for them, as opposed to you going to Facebook and getting 10 likes, which drives your dopamine creation, right? So when you’re doing something for better goods, or for some external goal, it’s much stronger than then if you did it just for vanity purposes or for your internal selfish wants and needs.

Dan Moore
That makes sense. I sometimes think about the difference between joy, which is what you just described, an amusement and amusement are things that we do without fault without thought and they just random but true joy always involves other people and some connection of our abilities applied to the problems of the world. That’s when true joy occurs.

Roy Dekel
I like that.

Dan Moore
Well, let’s let’s share some other thoughts. What what do you do to keep from getting complacent? You’ve been highly successful in business, probably you could sit back, put your feet up on the desk and tell people how great you are. But you don’t you are continuing to grow. You’re developing and nurturing people, you’re coaching others. What do you do to keep from getting what we call satisfied itis?

Roy Dekel
That’s a great question. And again, it ties to everything that I’ve done everything that pretty much any under any successful entrepreneur and executive visit executive does. I would break it down to two parts. The first part was what we just talked about, right? So I’ve been analyzing the wine. I’m figuring out why am I doing it? What’s my what’s my passion? What’s my vision? Why am I doing this? Again, I mean, for me, for example, every time I come in the office, I don’t think about the fact that I’m coming to the office because I’m the CEO and this is an exciting environment and I get such a great vanity of validation of my title and my brand. I come in the office because I think oh, I actually have 200 team members and keep growing at a very fast pace in in I’m responsive for their families, and I’m responsible to their families are responsible for their livelihood and their career. And I want to make sure that 20 years from now, the most amount of people, when a company can can exit set schedule and say, Oh, this was the pinnacle of my career that made me who I am and enabled me to be independently wealthy, healthy and provide for my kids. So it’s a long way of saying, you know, it’s basically the the the combination of everything we talked about the joy and what drives me forward. And that’s more selfish, selfishly speaking, the competitive analysis, right? driving forward is I’m a big believer in always look at the ones that are bigger than you and are doing better than you, even if it’s me superficial, right, because I’m not trying to get to their personal life. But if I’m looking at a Jeff Bezos, or I’m looking at a Mark Zuckerberg, that is young to me, I’m looking at him and saying, Okay, I want to keep driving, because he’s driving, and I’m far behind him still, right. And that’s just the reality of things. So I use them as a compass to identify my constant pool and goals. You know, they’re saying, if, if you want to break a Guinness World Record, if you want to be the fastest runner in the Olympics, you need to have someone running right next to you. So so it to me, that’s the second component is creating this comp, competitive compass, that enables me to say I want to keep pushing forward.

Dan Moore
That’s great. So you have an internal focus, but you also have an external radar. Yep. I love it. Now, in terms of, again, personal self management, we might call Do you have a morning routine? Something that is a habit for you to start your day?

Roy Dekel
The answer is absolutely is the way I operate is pretty predictable. It’s the most predictable way that you can think of. And if you read articles, you will see that it talks about how Steve Jobs always wore a black turtleneck shirt, and it didn’t have this decision fatigue over what shirt to wear to work. And I kind of like do the same thing, not because I read that was years ago, it’s maybe the military pragmatic approach. When I wake up in the morning, I know that I will always shower, I know that I have my T shirts, my jeans and my Lacoste shoes, and know that I wake up between 630 to 645. And by seven, I have to be out, I know that when I get to the office, I have my first cup of coffee, and et cetera, et cetera. But the point is, and alongside that Elsa, know that everything that I need is position in the place that I always leave it like, for example, I don’t lose my phone, I don’t lose my phone, because my phone can only be in one spot in the house. And I’m going to love this the cart keys because they’re going to be in one spot in my bag in the house pretty predictable. So when you create this predictability, you don’t burn your brain sales over a decision fatigue, or over a decision that are not necessarily driving your core goal. Right. So you leave bandwidth in our CPU in our in our brain, you leave them with important decisions that you want to make throughout the course of the day.

Dan Moore
So you rely on the force of habit and the power of routine to keep emotional energy and reserve for the most important things. Absolutely. Yeah, there’s an old saying, Why is it when you lose something, you always find it in the final place you look. But if you can just remember car keys go here, phone goes here. Plus, I think you also have an emotional drive to get the day started. Because again, you got 200 people depending on you and you have many families that are depending upon you. It’s pretty hard to roll over and hit the snooze alarm when you realize people are expecting me to do my best.

Roy Dekel
And I make a point to keep the clock far from me. So I can not hit the snooze alarm. That’s another strategy. Don’t Don’t, don’t leave it within reach, because you’ve got to turn it off.

Dan Moore
Yes, sir. I guess my last set of questions for you wrote would be to help encourage people that really need encouragement. Some of our listeners are are kind of out of ACEs right now. How would you advise people to keep into motion and get things going again?

Roy Dekel
That’s a great question. Obviously, in light of the pandemic, and I’ll start with a perspective, it’s going to sound a little bit cheesy, but I think it’s important that we slow down. And we think about it. The start of life, and the end of life. And I heard it recently, the start of life and the end of life are the only definitive real things that you cannot change everything in between is a 6% it’s it’s a stage, right? It comes and goes it’s what’s the worst that can happen. Just Just think about it, right? I mean, this is not the start and end of life. This is in between this is the quality of life that you can build. And you can work around and what’s the worst that can happen? So if and I’m going to go extreme right hypothetical, not hypothetical theoretical that extreme. There’s no money you didn’t get an SBA loan, no funding for your business and you have to shut down your your restaurant, for example. I mean, this suffered tremendously, right that would give to shut down the restaurant. Well, then that’s that’s it, right? So the restaurant is shut down. Now, the next thing that you need to think about immediately is what is your next act? shim, and how you creating a new critical path to a solution. And the solution is out there. The solution is out there because you can start in your restaurant, you can partner with a new great friend that you’ve known for years. That’s what happened to me. That’s what happened to me, I went through one of the toughest experience in my life. And I ran into my friend, and we started set schedule together. So you may go now, after one business crashed, you go, you go to a new business, and that business would be even better. And I’ve seen this so many times. So many times entrepreneur were actually more successful after their biggest failures. So it’s at the end of the day money. And I know, money’s important. And I know that you can take this advice in multiple different ways and say, Oh, Roy doesn’t, you know, as this is doing, okay, right. That’s not true. I mean, we all have our challenges. And we all came from failures, if we have a success with probably had multiple failures before successful story. But ultimately, you can pivot, and you can change industries. And you can even go in for now or temporarily work for companies. I mean, the job, the employment world now, I mean, there’s, I think, for every applicant there 20 different positions open now so you can find a job, and everything is going to be okay.

Dan Moore
I love the combination of practical action and internal attitude that everything’s going to be okay. There will be a Friday. We can get there. But I can’t get there by sitting around hitting the snooze alarm. I’ve got to get into motion and keep things moving. That is sound advice, Roy.

Roy Dekel
That was a great instant edit of all of my lines. I liked that.

Dan Moore
Well, it’s terrific. Well, I want to thank you so much, but not just for you shared today. But the way you’re living your life because it’s an example to everybody around you. And we never know when that example affects somebody and then their example affects someone else, but it’s always important. So thank you so much for being with us today.

Roy Dekel
I appreciate it. Thank you Dan.