Episode 364: 04-14-16
On this week’s show, we discuss the current conditions in the U.S. commercial real estate market with Mark Cosenza of Inland Real Acquisitions, Uhealth special guest Denise C. Vidot shares insight on current medical marijuana research, and Jim gives us an update on his wife’s transplant.
Commercial Real Estate Investment Trends
Mark Cosenza – Senior Vice President – Inland Real Estate Acquisitions, Inc. (“IREA”) – is responsible for purchasing properties and is involved in securing financing for IREA.
Cosenza began his career as a vice president of property management and acquisitions negotiator. Since joining the acquisition team in 2006, Cosenza has acquired more than 200 properties totaling more than $3 billion and more than 21 million square feet. Most notably, he completed a $424 million acquisition of 16 shopping centers from a joint venture between TIAA-CREF and Developers Diversified Realty in 2010 and the acquisition of 19 shopping centers from Australian Macquarie CountryWide Trust in 2009.
Prior to joining Inland, Cosenza was a market maker at the Chicago Board of Options Exchange. Cosenza was honored in Real Estate Forum magazine’s “40 under 40” in October 2012 and is chairman emeritus of the Downers Grove Economic Development Corporation. He is also a member of the International Council of Shopping Centers and a member of the Chicago Association of REALTORS® (CAR).
Cosenza is a graduate of the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University and a licensed broker in Illinois.
We discuss the current conditions in the US commercial real estate investment marketplace.
Medical Marijuana Research
Our special UHealth guest, Denise C. Vidot, Ph.D., is Executive Director at The Student Myeloma Advocacy Coalition. Dr. Vidot is a researcher with the University of Miami Department of Public Health Sciences. Her research on the health outcomes of marijuana use spans three years.
We discuss the current research on medical marijuana.
Vivian Fried Transplant Update
Jim takes a moment to update the audience on his wife’s quest to get a kidney transplant.
It is national organ donation month – help by giving the gift of life!
To register to donate or just to get more information, call the Miami Transplant Institute hotline at 305-355-5433.
Episode 364: 04-14-16
Transcription:
Jim Fried: We got a great show for you today. We’ve got Mark Cosenza. He’s the Senior Vice President in Inland Real Estate up in Chicago. He buys more property around the US than anybody else. We’re going to talk to Mark about what he sees in the US real property market place trends. It’s going to be great. Then we’ve got, let’s see, we’ve got Denise Vidot from UHealth. We’re going to talk about her research in the medical marijuana and then our last segment I’m going to give everybody an update on my wife’s search for a kidney donor and a kidney transplant. It’s national, kidney donation, it’s national organ donation month so we’re going to do a little focus on that at the end of the show. Whole show is going to be upbeat, positive energy filled with information that you can use today to improve your life. So take it away AC. We’ll be right back with Mark Cosenza talking about commercial real estate insights you’re going to want to hear.
[commercial break]
Jim Fried: Hi, this is Jim and we are back and we’re back with one of the coolest guests we had in a long time. We’ve got Mark Cosenza on. And Mark is the Senior Vice President of Inland Real Estate Acquisitions. He’s joining us today to talk with us about the commercial real estate acquisitions market. Thanks for joining us today, Mark. Can you tell me a little bit about your business and what Inland Real Estate Acquisitions is buying and your relationship with Inland Real Estate groups or companies, all that good stuff?
Mark Cosenza: Yes. First, Jim, thanks a lot for having me on the show. It’s a pleasure and looking forward to having this chat with you. I’m the Inland group of companies, IREA -Inland Real Estate Acquisitions is who I’m with and we are part of the overall parent group. We are the purchasing entity for the Inland group of companies and all the entities that it sponsors.
Jim Fried: And how long have you been there? You’ve been there 10 years now, haven’t you?
Mark Cosenza: Yes, I’ve been there, I’m going on 11 and our side, the acquisition side, we have purchased 673 programs, our private capital group we purchased for, we also have purchased all of the properties for the seven REITs that we have, some of which have gone onto the New York Stock Exchange and some of them have come actually full cycle and been taken private recently our Inland Real Estate Corporation. It was taken private by DRA. And these are all the programs that we have sponsored and the ones that the Acquisition team that I’m with has purchased for.
Jim Fried: How much real estate has Inland bought since it’s founded? First of all, when was it founded and how much has it bought since then?
Mark Cosenza: We were founded in 1968. And last year we crossed over the $40 billion mark and we are now approaching, actually we just crossed over $41 billion. We’re very prolific. So things change quickly on our numbers. One thing I want to hit on, a lot of people don’t realize that Inland was started with 1-2 flat in Chicago. And we were really founded on apartments. And we became Inland largest landlord in the Chicago land area in the ’70s and ’80s with 45,000 units. And then we transformed into retail in ’90s and we continued to grow, own and manage apartments even the whole way through that retail process. I don’t want people to lose light that we are and always were in apartments.
Jim Fried: No, and you talked about the start of Inland being with a flat. Why don’t you talk about the people behind the start of Inland because I think that’s a great part of the story and really argues well for the way you guys think about real estate?
Mark Cosenza: Yes, that’s a good point. It was started by four school teachers. One of them happened to be my father, Joe, which I think a lot of people in the industry know. He’s been around the circuit a long time since inception. It’s been about 48 years now I think, that is. And they all still work, they’re all here every day and they’re just enjoying what they do.
Jim Fried: I think I have one of the early school teachers come to me to Marlins game next week. I got Jonathan Stein coming. From what I understand he was a PE teacher.
Mark Cosenza: Yes, he was one of the early recruits from their teaching days.
Jim Fried: He’s an amazing guy. Is it every person I’ve met there of course other than you. Now, $40 billion, that’s a lot of real estate. Have you individually been involved with a lot of that and how do you find these deals?
Mark Cosenza: I’m not quite at 10% yet but I’ve purchased about $3.5 billion in various asset classes. I’ve purchased retail, I’ve purchased office, industrial, apartments of course, medical office buildings, a lot of single tenant net leases, then sale leasebacks and did my first student housing deal last year. Right now we’re mainly focused on grocery anchored retail and classy apartments but we still have entities that purchase in many different food groups.
Jim Fried: I touted this is overview of the US real estate investment market. You touch properties all around the country, you touch all the different food groups, I’d like to start with your thoughts on Miami and maybe we can then expand that to the rest of the country. Why don’t you give, well you gave a breakdown on the properties I guess but anything you can talk about currently, maybe something in Miami?
Mark Cosenza: Miami is one of those gateway cities which leads to some happy pricing. We’re always looking there. I have looked at multiple multi-family deals and retail deals recently, I do have a retail deal that I’m pretty hot on right now. I don’t have any kind of agreement on it so I don’t want to-
Jim Fried: Yes, don’t get specific.
Mark Cosenza: It’s grocery anchored and those are the types of deals that we’re chasing right now.
Jim Fried: Those aren’t easy to find. I was talking to somebody earlier today and at least in Florida, grocery anchored development is almost ground to a standstill, you got some free standing, you got some rehab, you got mostly Walmart anchored centers and those in Lester super centers are those that are real bigger, real small but that’s Miami. What are you seeing in the rest of the country? What are some of the hot market sectors around the country? It sounds like apartments are strong, grocery retail, what’s up?
Mark Cosenza: We’re on the grocery retail side. We realized for, I guess I’d say, we’ve always known that grocery anchored and necessity based retail has been recession-proof and that is why we have always made that a strategy in our REITs to own. And I said this before in another interview in December in New York, we know that the average person visits necessity based or grocery anchored retail about 50 times a year. So we know we’re getting foot traffic and we know it’s necessity. Going across the country, a lot of people like to focus on what they call the ”smile”, to buy coastals and then they fill in that southern part of the US through Texas and such. We’ve gone with that strategy but we also are not adverse to go into the Mid-West. You get a little bit more value and you still have the necessity. Everybody has to eat everywhere. So we realize that, I think the retailers that they realized that, and the entire market realized that. So it’s a great product for us to own and manage.
Jim Fried: What do you think about the apartment sector and why do you think that it’s in such great demand in the market right now?
Mark Cosenza: Apartments are a great market right now. And it’s really hot. Again, we’re looking across the country, focusing on the top 100 markets. We probably get priced out of the first 10, we realize that but there’s always some deals that are hanging around the fringes or the rim in those areas that we look at. The reason why it’s hot is you got the baby boomers who are downsizing their homes but they still want the high end luxury finishes. So then they’re moving to apartments and maybe they have a second home or a second spot and instead of buying a condo they’re just renting and they’ve got dual places that they commute into in different times of the year because they still want to be close to family on the home front. Maybe they’re buying that smaller home or condo in Florida, Phoenix or the like and then they’re renting back in their home state where their family is. So they can spend the quality time during the holidays then. Then you’ve got of course the Millennials that everyone is talking about which is the next largest generation. And they want more flexibility but on the other side, they have huge student debt, they want flexibility to move if jobs take them there, they want to test cities out that they think they might like and so they want that flexibility of moving around. And they don’t want the additional worries of home ownership, mowing a yard and the like. So that was really driving it all and of course, when we’re looking for apartments, we’re thinking about walkability, work with play, the school districts, the amenities of course we’ve talked about, affordability is always the key but the key driver that we look at is job growth in that market that will sustain renters and that Millennial group for a long time.
Jim Fried: We’ve got to take a break. I hope you’ll stick with us because there’s a lot more stuff I want to get to, I want to make sure we get some good information out there that can help people in their decision making even today. So we’ll talk about what markets you’re looking at, what are your criteria, how people can present you with transactions, a whole lot more great information from Mark Cosenza, Senior Vice President at Inland Real Estate Acquisitions. We’ll talk about how you can make money with Inland right after this. Mark, thanks for sticking with us around the break. We’ll be back after this. AC, take it away.
[commercial break]
Jim Fried: We’re back. We’re back with great information about commercial real estate around the US. We’re here with Mark Cosenza. He’s the Senior Vice President of Inland Real Estate Acquisitions. He’s one of the biggest buyers of real estate across the country. In this segment we’re going to talk about what he’s looking to buy and how you can make money by doing business with Inland. Welcome back to the show Mark.
Mark Cosenza: Thanks a lot Jim.
Jim Fried: We talked a little bit about what you’re looking to buy and where you’re looking to buy in the last segment. We talked about apartments, we talked about grocery anchored retail but we didn’t talk about markets within the US. What are the hot markets you’re looking at? We know you like apartments, we know you like retail, where is the place to buy this stuff?
Mark Cosenza: We really want to hone in on the major markets and secondary markets. We’re getting away from tertiary side. Like I said before a little earlier, it’s necessity based grocery anchored and on the apartment side it’s class A, B maybe I’m in that high B range too where I got a little bit of value at. And really we’re nationwide in that scope. We’re both, the retail side and the apartment side because we have multiple entities here as I alluded to in the first part of the segment, we’re buying from multiple groups here that have different strategies. So we’re running the gamut within these whether it’s ultra high demographics or I’m willing to go into a secondary market or on the apartment side, it’s class A luxury type product or that value add product. So we’re looking in a lot of different areas.
Jim Fried: It sounds to me like you’re a broker’s dream that they have to have you on speed dial as soon as they get an idea that something might be for sale, not even waiting for a listing. Now, how long does it take for you to close a deal? And it seems like the pace with buying $40 billion worth of real estate, $4 billion for you, that you got to really close a lot of deals fast. So how long does it take and has your pace changed over the years?
Mark Cosenza: You got to be quick. And we’ve prided ourselves on that for 48 years. I don’t think anyone negotiates a contract faster than we do and does due diligence like we do. We’re extremely fast and we pride ourselves on that. And going back to one of the questions you had earlier on how do we obtain most of these deals, in the early 2000s we built a lot of direct relationships with developers. And because we closed and we closed fast, we build on those relationships and I’d say about a little over 73% of our deals are off market but 52% of those are so or from seller.. direct from the developers themselves and the rest are the brokers will give us for a show. So I’d say contract, we get a contract negotiated one to two weeks. We do a typical 30-day due diligence, once in a while will dip below that and we close right afterwards, five, ten days. So that’s a really quick time frame to get a deal done.
Jim Fried: Yes. But the thing that you really mentioned was where you get your deal flow from and that really benefits the people that are your partners in your funds, in your REITs. Because, if you’re getting these deals off market brought to market, getting the friends and family opportunity, it’s something that the individual investor just can’t get. Now what’s the type of real estate sector that’s not really attractive to you guys right now?
Mark Cosenza: I got to say, the one that really stands out is power centers and anything really in a tertiary market. The power centers, I think they’re going through a transition period. They don’t have that true necessity based segment to them and the retailers, they’re working on their omnichannel experience and they’re still working through their store format and exactly how they want to look. In the power centers, you got tenants like the OfficeMax and Staples Mergers still waiting to happen. So there’s things on these larger boxes that are trying to be figured out. So power center have really lost their luster over the last few years.
Jim Fried: So it sounds to me like you’ve got a concern about what’s going on with online retailing and its impact on the shopping center.
Mark Cosenza: I don’t want to say a concern. And talked about this in December at the New York ICFT show. The omnichannel experience with online retailing is something that we need to embrace, the retailers need to embrace and I actually think helps them overall and us as landlords overall. I think in many of the instances, they’re still going to want a brick and mortar there present, look at Amazon, they started out as an E-retailer and they’re opening book stores now. So going forward, the expansion and the congruity of growing the E-Commerce side of their business I think it’s going to drive their bottom line overall and I think we’ll help to keep these brick and mortar stores actually open. They might just look a little different.
Jim Fried: We’ve only got a couple of minutes left. We’ve talked about apartments, we’ve talked about shopping centers, I know that you guys have had experience in retail, office. What are some of the other product types that you think might have some good traction going forward? Remember, we only have about a minute and a half or so left.
Mark Cosenza: Yes, sure. Besides grocery anchored and apartments, medical office I think is going to be a real strong category over the next few years. Just thinking about baby boomers and retiring and their paying attention to their health and just the sheer size of that generation is going to drive that for the long hall and we just got into self-storage partly because of the millennials and their mobility but also if people are moving from larger homes into apartments on the boomers’ side, there’re still collectibles that they want to have and need a place to put them. So self-storage is on that list, medical office buildings and we’re still keeping an eye on that student housing type products as well.
Jim Fried: I want to thank you so much for coming down and talking to us on the radio today. I’ve got to get you down here to look at some real estate and go to a couple of ball games with me. Can I get you on the air so we can get you down in Miami do a little socializing?
Mark Cosenza: Absolutely. Would love to be down there, maybe even hit a little bonefishing I hear that so I’d love to catch a game with you and do that. And I really appreciate inviting me to your show.
Jim Fried: It’s my pleasure. Listen, we’re running out of time. We’ve got a lot of Jets fans that listen and for you guys in Chicago I’ll say a lot of Detroit Lion fans listening. So go slow when you give.. but how do people get in touch with you?
Mark Cosenza: They can just call me direct or email me. I answer my phone personally every minute that I can. I’m at 630 218 4946 direct or they can email me.
Jim Fried: Give the number again because like I said, we’ve got a lot of those Jets fans and Detroit Lion fans that are listening. They need it to go a little slower.
Mark Cosenza: I love it. So it’s 630 218 4946 and my email is mcosenza@inlandgroup.com.
Jim Fried: You’re my man. You can come on any time if you can play ball with me like that. Mark Cosenza, he’s the Senior Vice President at Inland Real Estate Acquisitions. He’s the buy side for one of the biggest owners of real estate. If you’re in commercial real estate, you need to know Mark and if you listened to our segment today, you know more about how to make money with him. We’ll be right back with more great information you can use today. We’ll be back after this. Mark, thanks so much for joining us.
Mark Cosenza: Thank you Jim.
Jim Fried: All right. We’re out of here. AC, it’s yours.
[commercial break]
Jim Fried: You know by now when he says he feels nice like sugar and spice it’s time for us to talk to our UHealth guest and especially because I feel nice like sugar and spice. We’re going to talk today about medical marijuana, I guess marijuana in general, and its impact on the human body. We got Denise C – and I’m going to butcher it as usual – Vidot. Dr. Vidot, she’s a PhD, she’s the Executive Director at The Student Myeloma Advocacy – I’m really doing a number here, Dr. Vidot. She’s a researcher with the University of Miami Department of Public Health Sciences. Her research on the health outcomes of marijuana use spans three years. We’re going to discuss the current research on medical marijuana. Welcome to the show. How did I do on your name?
Denise C. Vidot: Pretty good. It’s Dr. Vidot.
Jim Fried: Okay. I’m going to have to have them call me with all of this. AC, you got a preview, you can tell me. But we’re not here to listen to any kibitz. We’re here to listen to the doctor talk about the impact of marijuana on the body. Doctor, it’s yours.
Denise C. Vidot: First of all, thank you so much for having me. I love talking about my research so-
Jim Fried: It’s my pleasure. Love to hear it.
Denise C. Vidot: And secondly, this is a great topic right now especially with the legal ratifications going on in Florida and federally. I’m glad that we’re having this conversation. But the research that we do has to do with looking at the population of the US and we’ve been studying emerging adulthood, adults and middle aged adults to see what impacts the marijuana use have on metabolic syndrome.
Jim Fried: What is that?
Denise C. Vidot: I was just going to say most people wonder what’s metabolic syndrome. Really it’s a cluster risk factors that when they are working simultaneously, it increases your chances for diabetes, cardiovascular disease and all those scary terms that we all try to run away from. Like high blood pressure, glucose, things like that.
Jim Fried: It’s good that we have you on because there’s a lot of noise about marijuana. Let’s get some of the facts. Serve them up. Let’s hear it. What are the marijuana uses out there? What do they got coming at them?
Denise C. Vidot: First of all, I have to press it with my studies are not causation. So I’m looking at a snapshot so I can just tell you about association the relationship that we’re seeing so far and what we see so far is that in middle aged adults and in emerging adulthood, so that’s anywhere between 20 and 30 years old and then above 60, we’re seeing that current use of marijuana is associated with lower waist circumference, lower BMI, and lower blood sugar level which when you hear those things, independently it sounds like a good thing. But they are with higher blood pressure.
Jim Fried: Wait a minute now. So people are using pot and they’re getting a higher blood pressure? How does that work?
Denise C. Vidot: That’s where we need more studies to find out what’s going on inside the body. I really can’t say at this moment but I know I’m definitely doing research to find out one day.
Jim Fried: What are other things? I guess before we go on maybe some of our listeners want to be part of your study. How do they get involved with that?
Denise C. Vidot: Definitely. I love that.
Jim Fried: I’m serious. AC is cracking up. I mean, AC, we got people here that have been into marijuana, maybe they want to get involved here, I don’t know. Doctor?
Denise C. Vidot: They can always email me and that’s at dvidot@miami.edu and I can definitely point them in the direction that the research is going on.
Jim Fried: Actually you gave your email wrong. It’s dvidot@medmiami.edu. You didn’t get the ”med” part in there.
Denise C. Vidot: Thank you.
Jim Fried: It’s okay. That’s what I’m here for. You’re the star, I’m just helping.
Denise C. Vidot: Thank you very much. That’s the main thing. And the recent study is that really hot up the press. I’m actually right now in Denver about to present at a conference tomorrow. This research is late breaking. Tomorrow I’ll be talking about how we did a study on racial and ethnic groups. And we thought that Hispanic marijuana users actually have a lower prevalence of this metabolic syndrome if they happen to be using marijuana at the same time. I guess that is an association, we don’t know what caused it definitely but that’s very interesting especially among Hispanics, who have one of the highest incidences of cardiovascular disease.
Jim Fried: Yes, you should maybe check out the links to some of the genes or something, I don’t know.
Denise C. Vidot: Yes, maybe.
Jim Fried: Apple one, throw that in there. I don’t know what I’m talking about at all. What are some of the other things that you’ve found so far?
Denise C. Vidot: That’s the main thing. You know that current users happen to have a lower prevalence of metabolic syndrome. We just need to find out why and what kind of marijuana they’re using and this brings in two questions of medicinal marijuana, if there’s something different between that and recreational. There’s plenty to do.
Jim Fried: Are you finding any other collateral stuff or any anecdotal stuff that you can share with our folks? I just want to make sure we get all your stuff out there.
Denise C. Vidot: Right now just, I don’t want to say if you give any recommendations or anything but the research is coming.
Jim Fried: Okay. Listen, we got to have you back. You got to be a regular on the show. I want to thank you so much for coming on. I hope you have a great event. Colorado or next guest on the show is going to be a guy who moved from Miami to Colorado and he’s in the medical marijuana implementation party, he does the real estate, he does investing, it’s all really cool. In fact, he’ll even go to your event. Where are you speaking tomorrow?
Denise C. Vidot: I’m speaking at the Westin in Downtown Denver. It’s at the American Psychosomatic Society.
Jim Fried: It sounds like a really interesting crowd. I had to do that, I’m sorry. You’re an easy mark. We got to get you in the studio. You’re just an absolute giggler. We would have the best time. Doctor, if they want to get you, what’s your email and don’t forget the ”medmiami” part this time.
Denise C. Vidot: It’s dvidot@med.miami.edu.
Jim Fried: You’re just terrific. We really do need you in studio. You got a great sense of humor. So this was great information for our listeners and if one of our listeners wants to participate in your study, they can email you at dvidot? Did I get it right finally?
Denise C. Vidot: Yes.
Jim Fried: Close enough for a guy from North Miami Beach, right? At med.miami.edu. You’ve been an absolute sport. I can’t wait until you come back to Miami. And we got to have you back next year when you got another year of your study in the book. Would you do that for us?
Denise C. Vidot: Of course, I look forward to seeing you.
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AC: Yes, you’re listening to Jim Fried. But Jim, before we officially get back into the segment, I know I got a chance to meet your beautiful wife and I know things could be hard right now and I just want to know an update on what’s going on with the donor and how are things going?
Jim Fried: I love you AC. Thank you so much for asking. I really appreciate it. We’ve had a lot of issues trying to get a kidney transplant. You think that it’s going to be easy and it’s just not. We have a beautiful lady who’s a donor but that lady has been rejected now for transplant at two different hospitals for reasons that are going to stay private to us and to her. But she is a beautiful person, she’s sticking with us, we’re going into another hospital, we’re trying to get her approved at that other hospital. But she’s our second donor. Our first donor, that donor got donation fatigue, she was a match but it took her 18 months to try to get her family together and they finally didn’t approve the transplant and she backed out. We found the second donor. Second donor is having problems. I need a backup. Not a backup, I need help. I need you to help me. I need the people out there to reach down deep and understand that it’s National Organ Donation Month. 20 people die every day waiting for a kidney transplant and there’s a lot of misconceptions out there. For instance, you only need one kidney. A person only needs one kidney. Now my wife, both her kidneys don’t work. In fact, for the last eight months my wife hasn’t even been able to take a Number one. That’s right. My wife hasn’t peed for eight months. See, you go through summer in South Florida, drinking water and not peeing and you see what happens to you. My wife is drawn, she’s weakened at times, we have cut back our schedule to the point where all she does is go to dialysis, run a couple errands if she can and comes home, I tuck her in the bed, kiss her on the forehead, I tell her how much I love her and what a superstar she is. My wife is wonder woman. How she gets up and keeps doing this, I have no idea. She is my personal hero and I want you to help her if you possibly can. So what are a couple of other misconceptions? You don’t need to be a match. You don’t need to be a match with my wife. All you need to do is volunteer to be a donor and then if you are accepted to be a donor, they can put you into the Nation Donor Exchange Program and they can find another person that matches my wife and that person, that kidney comes to my wife and your kidney goes to somebody else and now we’ve made two people have a life. You’ve given the gift of life to two people, not just one. And isn’t that just a great thing? And before I forget, I want to give a special shout out to our friends in Austin, Texas. They call, they text, they give us all the support in the world. I love the people in Austin, Texas. We’ve got a great love affair going with them and they support us on this issue all the time. Hugs and kisses to all our people out in Austin that do give us, stand up with us because it’s very tough. I support my wife, she’s a star, she gets calls all day long from people giving her support. Very few people call me but I’m strong for her. I don’t mind and by the way, I get calls. And we’ve not gone out on the internet last week. We’re going out this week and we’re going to keep going strong until we find people that are going to stand up to give the gift of life and I’ll tell you, we’ve set the record down at the Miami Transplant Institute. Lots of people have registered to see if they’re suitable but it’s not easy. We’ve had people that have been denied because had internal injuries in an auto accident, that they had a little bit of a problem with some of their other bodily parts, that they’re pre-diabetic, they are diabetic, that they’re too old. All these things, and I want to thank every single person that called and offered to make a donation and I got to tell you, I’m looking for the donation number here. You see me fumbling on the internet if you watch it on the internet. But I’ll get it. I’ll get it here in a second because you’ve got to have the number to the Miami Transplant Institute where my wife is registered. She’s also registered at Chance. And we’re trying real hard and we’re going to get this done. So if you want to give a kidney and you want to get the phone number for them and you want to talk to them, I’m going to give it to you right now. The number that you call to get tested to see if you can be a kidney donor is 305 355 5433. And this time I won’t consult the Jets fans and say I got to go slow for them. I’m going to say it just normal speed again. Call 305 355 5433. That’s 305 355 5433. Call that number. Offer to be an organ donor, a kidney donor. Tell them you want to donate for Vivian Fried. And for goodness sakes, if you don’t qualify to donate for Vivian, donate for somebody else. It’s important to get out there, it’s important to be an organ donor. AC, how much time do I have left?
AC: You got two minutes.
Jim Fried: All right. I got two minutes left. Usually I go to the closing but I’m going to spend one more minute on this because it’s that important. If you want to be an organ donor, you call the Miami Transplant Institute hotline. The number is 305 – I got to do it, I don’t know how to do a zero – so 305 355 5433. And you call that number and you give them your name, you tell them you try to get on the list for Vivian Fried and if you don’t match with my wife, we’ll find somebody for you to donate the gift of life to. But imagine, the person that needs the kidney transplant is feeling bloated, they’re run down, they’re having all kinds of physical issues that we’re not going to talk about on the phone. When they come back from dialysis they’re nauseous, they usually need to have a ride because their blood pressure is so low, it goes on and on and on. Save somebody’s life. Give them the gift of life. I’ll give it one more time. Call 305 355 5433 and change the world today.
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Jim Fried: AC had a hot finger and he started the outgoing music a little too early because he saw how into it I was for my wife. But I got to thank the sponsors AC. I got to thank South Florida Business and Wealth Magazine, this CCIMs, KIND Snacks, UHealth, Warren Henry Automotive, the NFL Alumni Association, the Miami Dolphins, Social Media 305, the Miami Marlins, I have great sponsors, Ron Book and Lauren’s Kids, I love you. Ron made a special call to help Vivian today. Aztec Group, Bergstrom Center for Real Estate Studies, thank you listeners, please call the Miami Transplant Institute. We gave the number earlier, it’s National Organ Donation Month. Go to your Facebook page, like our show, tell your friends, share Vivian’s story on all your social media platforms, join our community, give us feedback and comments, tell us who you want to hear from. @JimFried, @FriedonBusiness, LinkedIn, Facebook, Youtube, the website www.friedonbusiness.com. If you missed today’s show it’ll be up on the website probably tomorrow. This is Jim Fried for Fried on Business. Look for us on 880, we’ll be on 880 AM next Thursday. Why? Because I love this. Absolutely love this. Remember, this is not a rehearsal, this is your life. The person that wants to do something finds a way, the other finds an excuse. Now go out there and make it happen. AC, it is yours now. Thank you. I want to thank everybody.
