Speaker 1: Welcome the Money in Wealth with John Hobriyant, a production
Speaker 1: of the Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartRadio. Hey, Hey,
Speaker 1: this is John Hobbrant and this is Money and Wealth Podcast.
Speaker 1: This is the first podcast episode host US Presidential Election
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four. I'm with my brother Don Peoples, who
Speaker 1: is a legend in real estate and in business. You're
Speaker 1: going to get to know him and his story and
Speaker 1: what he has to tell you. But this we had
Speaker 1: to reschedule this for a number of reasons tied to
Speaker 1: our mutual schedule. But in many ways this is now
Speaker 1: perfect timing and it ties into this moment. So let
Speaker 1: me see I can set this up properly. When doctor
Speaker 1: King was assassinated in nineteen sixty eight, before that happened,
Speaker 1: he said, I'm here the soul of America from the
Speaker 1: triple evils of war, racism, and poverty. He didn't say
Speaker 1: I'm here to say black people. Even though his work
Speaker 1: helped a lot of black people. He was there for everybody,
Speaker 1: and that last movement of the Poor People's Campaign had
Speaker 1: pivoted also to include poor whites, which were then and
Speaker 1: now the largest population of poverty in America. And he
Speaker 1: was assassinated on the eve of the launch of that movement,
Speaker 1: but he had pivoted to economics. Ambassador Andrew Young, my
Speaker 1: mentor my role model in many ways, the guy who
Speaker 1: sort of helped raise me in my adult life, our
Speaker 1: global spokesman in Operation Hope, who was on the balcony,
Speaker 1: who helped to turn Atlanta, by the way to the
Speaker 1: only international city in the South and the tenth biggest
Speaker 1: economy in the US almost five hundred billion dollars in GDP.
Speaker 1: He was there when Doctor King was assassinated and he
Speaker 1: was the only remember his team to take that mandate
Speaker 1: from Doctor King and pivoted into political realm to structure
Speaker 1: power versus their protests for it, and then to turn
Speaker 1: that into an economy, which was the city of Atlanta,
Speaker 1: as I just mentioned, almost a five hundred billion dollar economy.
Speaker 1: And don pivoting to you what Ambassie Young told me
Speaker 1: a couple Actually wasn't a couple of years ago. I'd
Speaker 1: say actually was about eight years ago, twenty sixteen. As
Speaker 1: we had gotten the Freedman's Bank renamed on the White
Speaker 1: House campus from the Treasury Annex building in honor former
Speaker 1: slaves who've been at charter the Bank to teach free
Speaker 1: slaves about money financial literacy, eighteen seventy five, Abraham Lincoln,
Speaker 1: Frederick Douglass. He said, John, you need to stay focus
Speaker 1: on your work. I never said this publicly now to today.
Speaker 1: You need to stay focus on your work because if
Speaker 1: ever we lose political power, if ever we lose the
Speaker 1: rights that we hold, dear, and he said, I can't
Speaker 1: imagine this happening, but if the only real power, potentially
Speaker 1: is economic power, if ever we lose political power, social power,
Speaker 1: even religious power, we'll only have economic power the lever
Speaker 1: of economics to pull back on. You have got to
Speaker 1: not diminish your work or get distracted from it, because
Speaker 1: we need an economic infrastructure for the underserved of this country.
Speaker 1: And it dawns on me that this is where we are.
Speaker 1: That the only true freedom is I believe and Chris
Speaker 1: Gorman a key back is the one who gave me
Speaker 1: this quote. Is potentially financial and economic freedom because once
Speaker 1: you have it, unless you screw it up, no one
Speaker 1: can take it from you. And it is and we
Speaker 1: live in an economic democracy. This country is I keep
Speaker 1: saying a center slightly right, center slightly right. It's an
Speaker 1: economic democracy. It's a inclusive I like to believe it's
Speaker 1: inclusive capitalism because you and I came from nothing and
Speaker 1: made ourselves to significant some things in America. I don't
Speaker 1: know another country in the world where our stories would
Speaker 1: have proliferated at the level that they have. We might
Speaker 1: have worked for somebody, but you and I work for ourselves.
Speaker 1: So I'm now turning to you because before we got
Speaker 1: on camera, we got we had a very powerful and
Speaker 1: important conversation, some of which I want you to recount here.
Speaker 1: But what do you say to doctor King's vision that
Speaker 1: he was pivoting toward the economic agenda? And what do
Speaker 1: you say to Ambassador Andrew Young's criminition that at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, one of the few things you
Speaker 1: can rely on that you have some control over, it's
Speaker 1: economic empowerment. And where are we with regard to that agenda?
Speaker 1: And then I want to get, of course, into your
Speaker 1: story and how you have built what you have built,
Speaker 1: by the way, with those of you don't know. Don
Speaker 1: Pebles runs people I call the People's Corporation, but it's
Speaker 1: several entities within his company that's a billion dollars plus
Speaker 1: in real estate development.
Speaker 2: Don Peeples well great, So you don't know. It's for
Speaker 2: those listening to this. I I did not mention that
Speaker 2: Don Peoples is a brother. He's black, He's not black
Speaker 2: for a living. He's a great developer who happens to
Speaker 2: be black. He's a great leader who happens to be black.
Speaker 2: But he's proud out of his heritage, and so am I.
Speaker 2: He's after America, okay, Don.
Speaker 3: People absolutely And in fact, I grew up during the
Speaker 3: civil rights movement. I was born in nineteen sixty in Washington,
Speaker 3: d c. Seat of our government, where many of the
Speaker 3: major protests and demonstrations and the fight in the halls
Speaker 3: of our government took place. I remember when doctor King
Speaker 3: was assassinated. I was watching television about the assassination. But
Speaker 3: and then the riots that followed were in my community.
Speaker 3: My mother had to drive me through a commercial quarriter
Speaker 3: near our home and have me duck down so that
Speaker 3: I wouldn't be hit as a little boy. And but
Speaker 3: and then, you know, I remember Robert Kennedy's assassination as well.
Speaker 3: I remember, uh how you know, and and and Malcolm
Speaker 3: X's focus. But I remember that, you know, there was
Speaker 3: a time of struggle in the country for us to
Speaker 3: have equal access to just basic civil rights, and how
Speaker 3: we had to fight for those and now our fight
Speaker 3: continues to be for economic opportunity. And doctor King understood it.
Speaker 3: I remember his quote. It was what good does it
Speaker 3: serve for the Negro to have a seat at the
Speaker 3: lunch counter when they can't afford to buy a hamburger?
Speaker 4: And so that was all.
Speaker 3: The relevance here about economic empowerment. And so he started
Speaker 3: to poor People's March and and and ultimately that's poor
Speaker 3: People's initial and so forth to reset the table economically
Speaker 3: in the country, because our democracy is a capitalism capitalistic
Speaker 3: democracy was that economic opportunity must lead the way. He
Speaker 3: set the pathway for Andrew Young and then uh Mayor
Speaker 3: Jackson before him, and uh and what happened, yes, and
Speaker 3: and and and and initially through Hartsville now Hartsville Jackson Airport.
Speaker 3: Where as mayor he had a vision for Atlanta to
Speaker 3: be a global city and having an international airport and
Speaker 3: got a lot of support throughout the state for that,
Speaker 3: but then people didn't realize what he had. Part of
Speaker 3: his plan was to make it an economic engine, and
Speaker 3: he had to fight to make it. To protect the
Speaker 3: opportunity for minority business contracting. He required thirty five percent
Speaker 3: to be for minority contract for black contractors, and ultimately
Speaker 3: he fought won that and that started the pathway of
Speaker 3: creating significant black wealth in Atlanta, and it made Atlanta
Speaker 3: the mecca for black economic empowerment. But others followed him
Speaker 3: and followed Ambassador Young Marion Barry in Washington, d C.
Speaker 3: Harold Washington in Chicago, bar in New Orleans, Tom Bradley
Speaker 3: in LA. So, as you so, that civil rights generation
Speaker 3: knocked down these barriers economically for businesses like mine or
Speaker 3: Bob Johnson at b E T, which would not have
Speaker 3: been possible if it wasn't for him getting the cable
Speaker 3: television franchise for Washington, DC. So the political power in
Speaker 3: the nineteen seventies and eighties was used to help generate
Speaker 3: economic powerman, And that's how.
Speaker 4: I got started.
Speaker 3: Without that and without that mindset, it would have never happened.
Speaker 3: So I grew up in d C. My mother and
Speaker 3: I My mother parents got divorced when I was five.
Speaker 4: My mother and I moved to Detroit five, okay, and then.
Speaker 3: Nineteen and so in nineteen sixty eight, when I was eight,
Speaker 3: my mother and I moved to Detroit for her to
Speaker 3: start a new life, and and she her sister was
Speaker 3: living in Detroit because her husband was doing his internship
Speaker 3: in residency and medicine. So my mother was a secretary
Speaker 3: at the Urban League and on Capitol Hill in d C.
Speaker 3: So she went to night school, got a real estate license,
Speaker 3: and she started working in real estate in Detroit and
Speaker 3: then within a couple of years had her own real
Speaker 3: estate brokerage business.
Speaker 4: And that was an environment of black entrepreneurship was Detroit.
Speaker 3: And I remember my best friend who's still one of
Speaker 3: my best friends in life.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: I met him when I think I was ten, and
Speaker 3: we were best buddies. His father, Barry Gordy. My friend
Speaker 3: Kerry Gordy. So Barry founded Motown and was running Motown,
Speaker 3: which was in Detroit at the time. And I remember
Speaker 3: the fact that there was a black man running, founded
Speaker 3: and ran Motown was very inspirational to me. And it
Speaker 3: showed me early on that there was no limitation. So anyway,
Speaker 3: I went back to Washington, d C. My mother thought
Speaker 3: I should get involved in politics, told me I needed
Speaker 3: to the city. In nineteen seventy four, when we had
Speaker 3: moved back with getting the right to elect its own
Speaker 3: government and for the first time because before it was
Speaker 3: all appointed by the President of the United States, including
Speaker 3: the mayor. So she wanted, yeah, so to think about
Speaker 3: DC didn't have any rights to vote. The citizens of
Speaker 3: seven hundred thousand residents could not vote for anybody. Wow,
Speaker 3: And so they in seventy four they got the right
Speaker 3: to elect their own government. And so there was a
Speaker 3: big deal there. And so my mother told me that
Speaker 3: I needed to go and volunteer and work for one
Speaker 3: of the candidates who was running for chairman of the
Speaker 3: city council, her former boss at the Washington DC Urban
Speaker 3: League God named Sterling Tucker, and then I could pick
Speaker 3: somebody else. And I was upset with her that she
Speaker 3: was taking up my summer for this, and so I
Speaker 3: did some research and I picked the most radical candidates,
Speaker 3: and it was Marion Barry, who was the city council
Speaker 3: and he was he was a part of the civil
Speaker 3: rights movement.
Speaker 4: He was co.
Speaker 3: Founder of the Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee SNICK and
Speaker 3: was very active in the civil rights movement and then
Speaker 3: also the fight for economic inclusion. So fourteen years old,
Speaker 3: I volunteered for his campaign he won Sterling Tucker one.
Speaker 3: They were since it was a new government Barry, they
Speaker 3: drew straws for terms, whether it was two or four years.
Speaker 3: He got a short straw, so he ran two years later.
Speaker 3: I was more active in his campaign and got to
Speaker 3: know him a little bit better. I was one of
Speaker 3: the you know, advanced people for him. And then when
Speaker 3: I was on my way to college and I spent
Speaker 3: my last two years, my mother was big on politics,
Speaker 3: so she had me become a page, one of her
Speaker 3: you know, she used her relationships on Capitol Hill.
Speaker 4: I got appointed a.
Speaker 3: Page, spent my last two years of high school going
Speaker 3: to school at the top floor of the Library of
Speaker 3: Congress from six am to ten thirty, and then walking
Speaker 3: across the street and working in the US Capitol.
Speaker 4: So I was a page on the.
Speaker 3: Floor of the House of Representatives under Tip O'Neil, the
Speaker 3: speaker at the time, and then I worked in the
Speaker 3: offices of Charlie Rangel, Ron Dillams and John Conyers. I
Speaker 3: got a good sense of politics. So Barry and Sterling
Speaker 3: Tucker run for a mayor to unseat the first elected mayor.
Speaker 3: So three way race and Barry runs. I'd go off
Speaker 3: to college and the primary he wins, and and then
Speaker 3: I'm in college at Rutgers going into studying pre med.
Speaker 3: And then after that, after my first year, I quit,
Speaker 3: went back to DC and started working.
Speaker 1: You start you study pre man Why my uncle.
Speaker 3: I was very close to him. He was a role
Speaker 3: model and he was a doctor, and he was telling
Speaker 3: me not to go into medicine. But I wanted to
Speaker 3: go into medicine because I wanted to look my mother
Speaker 3: and I struggled financially.
Speaker 1: I wanted to have what.
Speaker 3: Would be a stable income stream. I really wasn't driven
Speaker 3: to try to be alter rich. I was driven to
Speaker 3: have a nice, stable lifestyle. Be it to take care
Speaker 3: of myself, take care of my family, and that be good,
Speaker 3: and then maybe an invest in real estate over time
Speaker 3: and make some money doing that. But after my first year,
Speaker 3: I decided that it wasn't for me, and I decided
Speaker 3: to go back to DC and start working in the
Speaker 3: real estate business. And I became a sales agent. But
Speaker 3: interest rates were twenty plus percent. It was nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 3: so I.
Speaker 1: Could sell whod on. People need to hear that they
Speaker 1: slow that down. First of all, in bach or young
Speaker 1: and you have something in common. Don you have a
Speaker 1: lot in common? But one thing. His father was a
Speaker 1: dentist and had a nice middle class lifestyle, wanted his
Speaker 1: sons to be dentists, and his brother became a dentist.
Speaker 1: But in Bassie Young, after studying it for a bit,
Speaker 1: it was like, no, that's your dream, that's not mine.
Speaker 1: I don't want to be a dentist. I respect your dad,
Speaker 1: thank you. I want to be a pastor and I
Speaker 1: want to preacher it. And then when he when he
Speaker 1: told us Dad he was going to follow doctor king Is,
Speaker 1: Dad like literally rolled his eyes and like, you, what
Speaker 1: have I done with What have I done with my
Speaker 1: with sacrifices my life. Of course, the rest is history
Speaker 1: of all that Ambassador Young did with his life, which
Speaker 1: is the legacy, really living a legacy of this family.
Speaker 1: You could have been a doctor because you saw somebody
Speaker 1: who was a role model, who you admired, your uncle,
Speaker 1: and that was enough for you. You model what you see.
Speaker 1: We had talked about, we talked earlier about the power
Speaker 1: of words and the power of we see and what
Speaker 1: we feel and what we hear in our lives and
Speaker 1: how that influences us positively and negatively. Your uncle influenced
Speaker 1: you so much you went to pre medt the school
Speaker 1: to maybe frame your whole life, and luckily you had
Speaker 1: a strong constitution. Your mother also, what's her name, god
Speaker 1: gressn Yvonne Willoughby Pool, Yvonne Willoughby Pool. Let's say her
Speaker 1: name and let it live in history, because without her
Speaker 1: you wouldn't be you. I say my mother's name on
Speaker 1: Nita Smith because she reminds me of your story, the
Speaker 1: same story. Divorced five years at age five, want to
Speaker 1: go do her own things. We want to go live
Speaker 1: with my auntie, not really my auntie, girl her girlfriend
Speaker 1: to save to build her to buy her his home.
Speaker 1: Now on your story, your mother interceded several times, including
Speaker 1: getting you a page position. Is that right? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: mean she's a bold, audacious, strong willed woman. It sounds like,
Speaker 1: is that right?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 1: She was.
Speaker 3: Or she was very big on exposing me to what
Speaker 3: the world had to offer, and so she really worked
Speaker 3: very hard to let me know what was out there.
Speaker 3: And so every chance she could get to introduce me
Speaker 3: to someone else. And she was working in DC. She
Speaker 3: met a real estate developer who was pretty successful and
Speaker 3: asked if he would meet with me for lunch one day,
Speaker 3: and he did, and I got a chance to meet
Speaker 3: was a very successful developer over lunch when I was
Speaker 3: maybe sixteen.
Speaker 1: Wow, how did your mother know? First of all, she's
Speaker 1: still with us.
Speaker 4: No, she passed away about twelve years ago.
Speaker 1: Okay, my mother passed away a year. They've both been promoted.
Speaker 1: Hopefully they're cooking gumbo together in heaven. But she certainly
Speaker 1: left a great legacy with you. So how did she
Speaker 1: know don to that relationship? Capital and exposure was so important.
Speaker 1: Was there something on in her life and the way
Speaker 1: she grew up and made his obvious.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's an interesting story actually, because she learned it
Speaker 3: from her father. My grandfather, and he was from North Carolina,
Speaker 3: moved he and his brothers moved up to d C.
Speaker 3: First New York and then d C for better opportunities.
Speaker 3: He got a job as a dorman at the Warboro
Speaker 3: Park Hotel and he worked.
Speaker 4: As a dorman for forty one years.
Speaker 3: But he d C was, you know, the government town,
Speaker 3: so he got to know many of the members of
Speaker 3: Congress and political people and so and then he would
Speaker 3: take My grandparents had five daughters. My mother was a
Speaker 3: middle one and my grandmother died with my mother was
Speaker 3: a teenager. My so my grandfather really took care of
Speaker 3: his daughters. Worked around o'clock, but he would bring them
Speaker 3: to the hotel on Sundays for you know, a you know,
Speaker 3: like a brunch, so they could dress up in a
Speaker 3: little dress addresses and then go and sit down and
Speaker 3: the segregated area of the hotel, but sit down and
Speaker 3: and see something different. But so he was all about
Speaker 3: exposing them. But also when you know, one of the
Speaker 3: my father, for example, when he needed a job, you know,
Speaker 3: he was my.
Speaker 4: Parents got married.
Speaker 3: He was an he was a car mechanic, and so
Speaker 3: to make more money he needed a job. My grandfather
Speaker 3: asked the congressman to do him a favor and help
Speaker 3: him get a job, which he did, got a job
Speaker 3: in the federal government. My my another one of his
Speaker 3: daughter's husbands was going to law school. Needed a job
Speaker 3: that could work you know at night and make money.
Speaker 3: Got him a government job as an elevator operator. And
Speaker 3: and so so he used his relationships to help his family. Yes,
Speaker 3: and that was as a dormant to be able to
Speaker 3: do that. So it was all about exposure. So my
Speaker 3: mother taught me because what she did is she generally
Speaker 3: you know, she was a relationship builder. So it was
Speaker 3: never kind of about something for her. It was how
Speaker 3: could she offer some value or help somebody else and
Speaker 3: then build up a relationship and one day if she
Speaker 3: needed help with me or something, she could yes. And
Speaker 3: so I learned the value of relationships myself, and that,
Speaker 3: you know, like I learned her. It was more valuable
Speaker 3: for me to build learn politics and build a relationship
Speaker 3: with Barry than it was to earn some money. So
Speaker 3: I was doing it on a volunteer basis. So but
Speaker 3: I benefit, I wouldn't be here today, but it wasn't
Speaker 3: for Barry.
Speaker 4: Be no chance. Really, yeah, I think, and.
Speaker 3: I think I'm a capable person, But I mean, so Barry.
Speaker 3: I go back to d C. Barry is mayor and
Speaker 3: everybody and so he's he's mayor and he is in
Speaker 3: his first term, and I'm working as a real estate agent.
Speaker 3: And then I ended up going to work for my
Speaker 3: mother as an appraiser because she had a conselling business,
Speaker 3: and uh, and then I worked as a subcontractor for
Speaker 3: another company. My aspirations were to have my own appraisal business.
Speaker 3: Barry's running for reelection. I'm twenty two years old and
Speaker 3: I understood politics, So I said, okay, I'm going to
Speaker 3: help him. I lived in War three, which was a
Speaker 3: had a big white population, and he had struggled over
Speaker 3: at War three. So I did a Meet the Mayor
Speaker 3: event with several of the community leaders and so we
Speaker 3: had this large gathering of residents and then I also
Speaker 3: did a fundraiser for him. He was running against Patricia
Speaker 3: Roberts Harris, who had served in President Carter's administration as
Speaker 3: Secretary put in hg W. So everybody thought Barry would
Speaker 3: lose and and I thought he would win. And so
Speaker 3: I did a fundraiser for him to get two days
Speaker 3: after the primary. I scheduled it for because he could
Speaker 3: You could you could deficit spend in DC. You could
Speaker 3: run up a campaign debt and so and so I
Speaker 3: have sent out an invitation to everybody who had given
Speaker 3: Harris more than one thousand dollars and then other supporters,
Speaker 3: and I got a little host.
Speaker 4: Committee together more you know, mature, more experienced.
Speaker 3: People than me, and uh and and we did this
Speaker 3: event at the Capitol Hilton and d C on sixteenth
Speaker 3: and K and you know, we were kind of struggling
Speaker 3: a little bit to you know, but you know, and
Speaker 3: at one point they were the campaign was going to
Speaker 3: cancel it, but I got them to stick it out.
Speaker 3: So Barry wins. He beats her by four to one,
Speaker 3: crushes her.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 3: So two days later we have our event. It's so
Speaker 3: big that they were bringing in extra table because all
Speaker 3: the people who had given her Harris money were trying
Speaker 3: to redeem themselves with him. Made raised a huge amount
Speaker 3: of money and I got the chance to introduce him,
Speaker 3: and that showed him that I was no longer the
Speaker 3: little teenage guy that he had had, you know, working
Speaker 3: as his advanced person as a volunteer, but I was
Speaker 3: now somebody that could be helpful to him. Within a
Speaker 3: matter of months, one of the camp, one of the
Speaker 3: campaign team members called me. And what happened is many
Speaker 3: of the people in the campaign transitioned to work in
Speaker 3: the government. So one of them called me and offered
Speaker 3: me a position on as president of the Real Estate Commission.
Speaker 3: And ultimately I spoke to a person at the head
Speaker 3: of boards and commissions and she said that that wasn't
Speaker 3: the right position. I wasn't qualified for that position because
Speaker 3: you had to be a broker, and I was only
Speaker 3: a sales agent, but a proper assessment of pillboard would
Speaker 3: be good for me. But they had just filled all
Speaker 3: the slots and the appointees are on the Mayor's desk,
Speaker 3: and my mother had served on that board, so I
Speaker 3: knew that board. So I called the deputy mayor, who
Speaker 3: happened to have been the mayor's campaign manager from the
Speaker 3: time he ran for city council.
Speaker 4: And I was right.
Speaker 3: So I knew since I was fourteen years old. And
Speaker 3: I went and met with him and asked to meet
Speaker 3: with him, and I made my case and he said, okay,
Speaker 3: let me look into it. A couple of days later,
Speaker 3: the woman called me back and said, oh my god,
Speaker 3: I just want to I've got good news for you.
Speaker 3: I went into the Mayor's office and I told Mary,
Speaker 3: you were such an impressive young man that we had
Speaker 3: to appoint you. And he has nominated you for the
Speaker 3: Property Assessment Appeal Board. And I thanked her. I knew
Speaker 3: she didn't do it, but I thanked her for it
Speaker 3: and thanked her for her support and so forth, and
Speaker 3: so I served on the board the following year. The
Speaker 3: chairman's position was a chairman with a term had expired,
Speaker 3: and I asked Barry not to a reappoint him, and
Speaker 3: I asked Barry to pick somebody else, and I made
Speaker 3: a deal with one of the older members on the
Speaker 3: board to pick him, but he didn't want to. He
Speaker 3: said he didn't want to do it. So I told
Speaker 3: the mayor my first choice was this guy, but if
Speaker 3: he's not going to do it, I'd like to do it.
Speaker 1: How were you?
Speaker 3: I was twenty three. I love it, And and his
Speaker 3: deputy mayor gave me instructions on how to make it
Speaker 3: easier for the mayor to get some of the people
Speaker 3: that I had met during the fundraising and so forth
Speaker 3: who the mayor respected, to call the mayor and say
Speaker 3: they thought I'd do a good job, which I did.
Speaker 3: And so Barry told me that, well, you know that
Speaker 3: you're the guy was supporting. His name is Ted Wade.
Speaker 3: He said, you know that he is. That he's been
Speaker 3: trying to get to meet with me, and he's been
Speaker 3: asking and he's been telling people to call me because
Speaker 3: he wants to be chairman, right, I said, But he
Speaker 3: told me he didn't want it. He says, well, he
Speaker 3: can't be trusted, so he said, so let me think
Speaker 3: about it, don and and I'll get back to you.
Speaker 4: And I met with him in his big office and
Speaker 4: so forth.
Speaker 3: And because I've been on the hill, I was accustomed
Speaker 3: to the big office and so still I was a
Speaker 3: little nervous, but I wasn't as intimidated because I'd been
Speaker 3: exposed to it. But I was very you know, you know,
Speaker 3: humble and respectful. But because of the deputy mayor, he
Speaker 3: taught me. He said, look, you have to make You're
Speaker 3: twenty three years old. You have to make this. This
Speaker 3: is the most powerful board in the city.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: To make this easier for the mayor. Because him appointing
Speaker 3: a twenty three year old young black man, that's not
Speaker 3: easy to oversee all these real estate property owners.
Speaker 4: So you got to make it easier. And he showed
Speaker 4: me how.
Speaker 3: And because of that, Barry calls me up and says, hey,
Speaker 3: I'm going to you know, announce your appointment tomorrow. Wow,
Speaker 3: I'm going to get to come down the city Hall
Speaker 3: and and you know, and he asked his assistant what
Speaker 3: time was it, and so any sence, you'll give you
Speaker 3: all the details and I'll see them. And so it
Speaker 3: came in and he announced my appointment and then swarm in.
Speaker 1: A couple of things that jump out. By the way,
Speaker 1: I've got my own Mary Barry stories. Our backgrounds parallel
Speaker 1: so much. And Marion Barry helped Operation Hope when we
Speaker 1: went into Anacostia. He was a leader of one of
Speaker 1: the wards there and I put a Hope inside my
Speaker 1: first Hope center. We have fifteen hundred now. My first
Speaker 1: on the ground Hope center which was eat with E Trade.
Speaker 1: We built on good Hope Road. I believe it was
Speaker 1: called her It was a Hope Road.
Speaker 3: My first building that I built was on Martin Luther
Speaker 3: King Avenue just south of good Hope Road.
Speaker 1: Wow, coincidences. God's way remaining anonymous, But to stay focused
Speaker 1: on this incredible story of yours. Your mother taught you
Speaker 1: something else, and it's something that Ambassador Young has said
Speaker 1: that I'm going to repeat. Men and women fail for
Speaker 1: three reasons arrogance, pride, and greed. And of a quote
Speaker 1: that I use that I did not create, but I
Speaker 1: use in bast Young loves is quote from that I
Speaker 1: use all the time, which is to talk without being offensive,
Speaker 1: listen without being defensive, and always leave even your adversary
Speaker 1: with their dignity, humility stepping over mess night and it
Speaker 1: humility is really an underrated quality. And you said about
Speaker 1: five minutes ago, basically I'm paraphrasing, being smart wasn't enough.
Speaker 1: You said, I know I was smart, I knew I
Speaker 1: was sharp. But I'm not going to get this position
Speaker 1: just because I'm smart, just because I'm worthy. I need
Speaker 1: to have relationship capital. I need to understand. I need
Speaker 1: to read the tea leaves, I need to read the room.
Speaker 1: I need to make sure I've got the right people
Speaker 1: pitching for me, vouching for me. I need to make
Speaker 1: the job for the mayor easier to tell me, to
Speaker 1: empower me. Am I saying that right, You're saying exactly right.
Speaker 1: And uh, there's some lessons here for the audience on success.
Speaker 1: And we're not just storytelling here. We're giving you a
Speaker 1: narrative and an inside channel. And again, keep in mind
Speaker 1: that Don and I are two of the largest people
Speaker 1: who happen to be of after American descent in the
Speaker 1: country who are running big books of real estate and
Speaker 1: businesses with hundreds of employees. I don't know any employees
Speaker 1: you have done I've got four hundred. But you know
Speaker 1: we're you know, this didn't happen by accident. And a
Speaker 1: lot of his story so a lot of successes. It's
Speaker 1: just good habits. It's good habits and discipline and execution.
Speaker 1: But good habits is a big part of this. Don
Speaker 1: had good habits from an early age. And for anybody
Speaker 1: who's having a child or thinking about it, first of all,
Speaker 1: you should delay it as long as you can because
Speaker 1: you want to make sure you have a maturity to
Speaker 1: give to that child. But you can't be a baby
Speaker 1: mama or a baby daddy. You had to be a
Speaker 1: mother and a father. If Don had a baby mama,
Speaker 1: he'd been screwed. If you had a baby mama. In
Speaker 1: other words, I got you, but I had you. But
Speaker 1: I've got no whatever the streets chase you run you.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm sort of concerned about you, but I'm
Speaker 1: not responsible for you. No, no, No, he had a mother.
Speaker 1: I had a mother. He talked about his grandfather. You know,
Speaker 1: I know my grandfather R. B. Smith. I know my
Speaker 1: second great grandfather, George Young, fought in the Civil War
Speaker 1: protected Memphis. Know your story, Know your story, and if
Speaker 1: you're gonna have a child, be a mother and or
Speaker 1: a father be parents, because that's often who your children
Speaker 1: are most influenced by. And so if it wasn't for
Speaker 1: your mother being your advocate, and I think your grandfather
Speaker 1: you said, well opening those doors in d C. Before her,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't be who you are today.
Speaker 3: No, And look also my father, I mean my father
Speaker 3: and I had a good relationship overall, and I got
Speaker 3: my work ethic from him. Not only did he work
Speaker 3: his full time job at the government, he also kept
Speaker 3: a part time job as a carma catechut to set
Speaker 3: up his own little business in the garage.
Speaker 1: Of our house.
Speaker 3: And so he always was willing to work for what
Speaker 3: he wanted, and he worked to provide and he had
Speaker 3: this great work ethic. And one of the things I
Speaker 3: think about pride, and I look at it, I think
Speaker 3: in some regards like my father, and I think my
Speaker 3: grandfather did the same thing. My father was more so,
Speaker 3: but he grew up very hard in segregated rural Virginia,
Speaker 3: and so he didn't want to ask anybody for anything.
Speaker 3: His whole thing is, I'll do it myself, and if
Speaker 3: I can't provide it for me myself, then I'm not
Speaker 3: I don't need it, but I learned a lot from him,
Speaker 3: and also my mother's four sisters, they you know, all
Speaker 3: got married, three of their husbands and the one that
Speaker 3: was a doctor, the other one a lawyer, the other
Speaker 3: one a school teacher. I learned from each one of them,
Speaker 3: and they were models for me and role models for me.
Speaker 3: And I happened to have grown up in an environment,
Speaker 3: in a family where money was was not something that
Speaker 3: was elevated or it was you know, worshiped. It was
Speaker 3: more about, hey, you needed to take care of yourself
Speaker 3: and be supportive of your family. But that there, you know,
Speaker 3: your your existence and your you know, your contributions to
Speaker 3: our society are very different and and and they don't.
Speaker 3: It's not about money. And so I think that that
Speaker 3: probably helped me quite a bit in terms of being
Speaker 3: able to be grounded and so on. And one of
Speaker 3: the interesting lessons I learned, one of the best lessons
Speaker 3: I learned from Barry is in and that election for
Speaker 3: his first campaign for mayor. And I didn't I didn't
Speaker 3: witness this, but I told his story probably one hundred times.
Speaker 3: So the most prominent black business person in the city
Speaker 3: of Washington was supporting Stirling Tucker, and he was not
Speaker 3: just supporting him. He was really speaking very nasty and
Speaker 3: negative about Barry, saying, you know, he wasn't articulate because
Speaker 3: he was, you know, grew up in the segregated South,
Speaker 3: even though Barry had a degree in chemistry and was
Speaker 3: getting a masters in chemistry before he left to fight
Speaker 3: in a civil rights movement. But he dogged him, I
Speaker 3: mean totally. And but the bank's biggest customer was the
Speaker 3: city of Washington, d C. So when Barry won, this
Speaker 3: guy was depressed. And so he, you know, got up
Speaker 3: the next day, went to work, got in a little late,
Speaker 3: and he walks in the reception area of his offices
Speaker 3: at the bank, and Marion Barry is sitting in the
Speaker 3: reception area really and he you know, stood up, shook
Speaker 3: his hand and said, now can I have your support?
Speaker 1: Wow, Marion Barry did that.
Speaker 4: Marion Barry did that.
Speaker 1: Unbelievable. That's that's saying something I've heard. That's that's wicked smart.
Speaker 3: And that was Bill Fitzgerald, the banker who owned Independence
Speaker 3: Federal Savings and Bank and Savings and Loan, which was
Speaker 3: the largest black owned bank in the country at the time.
Speaker 3: And throughout Barry's campaigns, and his you know, his scandal.
Speaker 3: It was Bill Fitzgerald who was rock solid for Barry,
Speaker 3: unyielding supportive of him from you know that point on,
Speaker 3: and and it was that what Barry did is he
Speaker 3: gave this man who was certain that he was going
Speaker 3: to lose his custom the biggest client, and the mayor
Speaker 3: of the city was going to put him on his
Speaker 3: shit list and that would have been it, and he
Speaker 3: wouldn't be able to do business. And instead Barry helped him.
Speaker 3: And I learned that from Barry. And ultimately we used
Speaker 3: to play poker as a group, and Barry included me
Speaker 3: in their poker games. And so I became very friendly
Speaker 3: with a bunch of different black business people because we
Speaker 3: played poker, you know, once a week and so and
Speaker 3: I did that probably from twenty five to you know
Speaker 3: thirty something until I moved down to Miami. So but
Speaker 3: I learned that lesson, you cannot be a sore winner.
Speaker 3: It's bad to be a sore loser, but it's worse
Speaker 3: to be a sore winner.
Speaker 1: That's right, step over mess, not in it. And realized
Speaker 1: that you may be careful to toe you step on.
Speaker 1: It may be connected to the rear end you got
Speaker 1: to kiss later. We're all in this thing together, We're
Speaker 1: all interconnected. And that is one of the messages that
Speaker 1: Don and I were both trying to articulate before we
Speaker 1: got on camera about how we all of us, everybody
Speaker 1: needs to be gracious, uh and find a higher frequency
Speaker 1: in the coming weeks and months, because there are four
Speaker 1: countries that want to take us out China, Russia, Iran,
Speaker 1: and North Korea. We're not each other's enemy. That's if
Speaker 1: you want to have an enemy. I mean, honestly, anybody
Speaker 1: is my enemy. If you want to say an enemy,
Speaker 1: that's your enemy. They hope that we hate each other,
Speaker 1: they hope that we that we kick it, they pick
Speaker 1: each other continue to and so I'm really hoping that
Speaker 1: we can find a higher frequency. And now we've had
Speaker 1: we've had a uh, you know, potentially the election of
Speaker 1: the of a lifetime here. And but as I said
Speaker 1: to Charlottage and some others this morning on we were
Speaker 1: trading text messages, where else in the world, Well, first
Speaker 1: of all, said, where else in the world could you
Speaker 1: and I our stories have come of age up from
Speaker 1: literally slavery, where we control our own destiny. But where
Speaker 1: else in the world could you have a superpower, yet
Speaker 1: alone to sol superpower have an election of tens and
Speaker 1: tens of millions of people. It's transparent, it's passionate, it's vibrant,
Speaker 1: it's violent free, it's drama free, it's scandal free. It
Speaker 1: appears it seems, it's unrigged, it's unboughketd It is what
Speaker 1: it is. You can like it the outcome and not
Speaker 1: like the outcome, but it is what it is. And
Speaker 1: tomorrow today you get up and you go to work,
Speaker 1: or you go to you have a conversation about it
Speaker 1: and you figure out how you go. But you know,
Speaker 1: you you express yourself. In Russia, you just disappear. China,
Speaker 1: you just disappear. Right, So people, you know, people need
Speaker 1: to understand that even in the Bible says you cannot
Speaker 1: grow except through legitimate suffering. You cannot grow except through
Speaker 1: legitimate suffering. Where would Andrew Young be if he hadn't
Speaker 1: been fired from the U N A little known story,
Speaker 1: but he was. You know, this vault is successful. You
Speaker 1: know he was one of the most powerful black men
Speaker 1: in America. Uh and uh and he was a you
Speaker 1: he was the first black unimbassador in the history of
Speaker 1: the country, and they fired him for talking to the Palestinians. Yes,
Speaker 1: they fired him for talking to the Palestinians, something that
Speaker 1: of course is just nothing but common sense. Now you
Speaker 1: need to talk to everybody. And he had his hid
Speaker 1: for a couple of days. Don his head was low
Speaker 1: and he was wondering what the future hell. But he
Speaker 1: he realized that God's is on the throne and guy
Speaker 1: was not in any way through with him. But rainbows
Speaker 1: follow storms, and he gets called to become mayor of Atlanta,
Speaker 1: and uh, he wonders whether they should do that, And
Speaker 1: this older lady says to him, you know, boy, we
Speaker 1: wasted our time on you. We had you with doctor King.
Speaker 1: We we supported you, we let you, we we we
Speaker 1: were rooted for you and did this, you did that,
Speaker 1: but then we need you. You just shrugged your shoulders.
Speaker 1: We just wasted our time on you. And that turned
Speaker 1: him around, that caused him to run for mayor. And
Speaker 1: uh yeah, and and don last story even get back
Speaker 1: to you, because I want to, ma, sure we spend
Speaker 1: the last ten fifteen minutes on how you came from
Speaker 1: where you are that to this billion dollar portfolio and
Speaker 1: where it comes next, and how people can get the
Speaker 1: art of how you did your uh your transactions and
Speaker 1: grew your business. So in uh in in this is
Speaker 1: a in this unique narrative of Ambassador Andrew Young. He
Speaker 1: he becomes mayor and and grows this incredible portfolio of inclusion.
Speaker 1: Gives his phone number to all the business people, say
Speaker 1: anybody tries to bribe you, whatever, you call me if
Speaker 1: you have any problems at all. Everybody had his home
Speaker 1: phone number. And uh that he attracted seventy trillion, seventy
Speaker 1: billion dollars of foreign investment to Atlanta on his on
Speaker 1: his personal rapport UH and people and his and folks
Speaker 1: and give him folks his phone number. Now, he couldn't
Speaker 1: have done what he did without Maynard. Right, Maynard created
Speaker 1: black wealth. But and Bashil Young really created the first
Speaker 1: international UH city in the South. And but it was
Speaker 1: a lot of his his he will say himself, it
Speaker 1: wasn't it wasn't just a success as it was a
Speaker 1: lot of his failures. He got a call from Quincy
Speaker 1: Jones's dear friend, the black godfather, Clarence. He got who
Speaker 1: I knew Clarence. So Clarence called him one day and
Speaker 1: again I can't say it completely here. But so is
Speaker 1: this a crazy negro? You didn't say negro? Is this
Speaker 1: a crazy negro running for mayor? Black man running from
Speaker 1: mayor at running for congress? Actually in uh in the
Speaker 1: Atlanta for yes, are you not your mind? Are you
Speaker 1: out of your dang on mind? He said, I if
Speaker 1: you're crazy enough a run, I'm crazy enough to support you,
Speaker 1: and did a concert for him in the stadium here,
Speaker 1: filled it up and gave him the campaign money. He
Speaker 1: was the first congressman from Georgia since reconstruction. And of
Speaker 1: course you ambassador congressman mayor, and we know the rest
Speaker 1: of the story. But it was not the successes. Is
Speaker 1: how he managed the failures. It was gracious when he
Speaker 1: won and when he lost. But also understanding his story
Speaker 1: was not over. The narrative was this was a It
Speaker 1: was a one hundred yard dash, not a marathon. It
Speaker 1: was a marathon, not one hundred yard dash. And it
Speaker 1: was a long game. So you've been playing the long
Speaker 1: game in your life. And you have said on this call,
Speaker 1: there's not about permanent friends, but permanent interests. I get
Speaker 1: that right, yes, and and and so you went from
Speaker 1: that humble beginning and setting it up the setup, and
Speaker 1: the payoff was that you created now a business that
Speaker 1: is one of the biggest run who runs by a
Speaker 1: person of color in real estate, I'd argue in the world,
Speaker 1: certainly in the US, tell us about that business, how
Speaker 1: you built it, where you are now, and where do
Speaker 1: you want to go and what and is is there
Speaker 1: a lesson here for folks other than the narrative of
Speaker 1: your life of how to do a deal that you
Speaker 1: want them to know? Sure?
Speaker 3: I mean, I think the first thing is that you've
Speaker 3: got to prepare yourself to be able to do deals
Speaker 3: and to prepare yourself to be in business. And so
Speaker 3: that means how you live your life, how you conduct yourself.
Speaker 3: In terms of building relationships, you want people to root
Speaker 3: for you. Most of the time people won't root for
Speaker 3: successful people, but you want them to root for you
Speaker 3: and and you, you know, want people to think you
Speaker 3: know decently of you and you and you want to
Speaker 3: be able to build relationships like I learned from my
Speaker 3: grandfather and my mother. And so it's building relationships, not
Speaker 3: making enemies. So the arrogance and having humility instead is
Speaker 3: very helpful. But building some relationships now and and and
Speaker 3: learning from other people and reading and understanding the business
Speaker 3: to being somewhat of a student of it. That puts
Speaker 3: you in a position to be able to be in
Speaker 3: the mix and be able to be successful when the
Speaker 3: opportunity comes, and then to put yourself in the mix
Speaker 3: of where you'll see opportunities. I knew that by being
Speaker 3: in the mix in DC politically, that was my pathway
Speaker 3: to being more engaged in the business. Then when I
Speaker 3: was appraising houses for HUT insured mortgages, that wasn't going
Speaker 3: to do anything for me earn a living and me
Speaker 3: to be and learn more about real estate but also
Speaker 3: be being in touch with you know, where people are,
Speaker 3: how they're living, and.
Speaker 1: So on.
Speaker 3: But it was the Property Assessment Appeals Board that put
Speaker 3: me in the mix. It paid, you know, twenty five
Speaker 3: dollars an hour when I met when we had board meetings.
Speaker 3: I would have done it and paid them for it
Speaker 3: because it was all about me learning and being able
Speaker 3: to be a you know, a player in the business world.
Speaker 3: So I was trying to build my own appraisal business
Speaker 3: because I was a subcontractor for another appraisal company and
Speaker 3: I need and the top clients were HUT. One of
Speaker 3: the top clients for residential and so I tried. My
Speaker 3: mother had had.
Speaker 1: An urban development. For those who don't know, the US
Speaker 1: Department of Housing Urban Development, and.
Speaker 3: They ensure mortgages for moderate and low moderate income home purchases,
Speaker 3: and then they also ensure multi family loans as well.
Speaker 4: So my mother had done't work for them.
Speaker 3: So I used to go in and drop off her
Speaker 3: appraisal reports and so forth. I became friendly with the
Speaker 3: staff there, so I tried to get on the on
Speaker 3: the approved list there and I couldn't do it. By
Speaker 3: that time, one of my high school classmates was working
Speaker 3: for Ron Dellaps, so I asked him to ask him
Speaker 3: to write a letter of recommendation for me and have
Speaker 3: the Congressman sign it. And the Congressman and so signed it,
Speaker 3: and then I say, and then also, can you make
Speaker 3: a call for the congressman to speak to the area
Speaker 3: director for the HUT director for Washington, d C. And
Speaker 3: put in a good word for me. He did, and
Speaker 3: I got a meeting with her, spoke to her, and
Speaker 3: then I stayed in touch, and then you know, a
Speaker 3: few months go by, I stay in touch, and then
Speaker 3: I asked my friend to get the congressman a touch
Speaker 3: base again, just see how things are going. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: that he known me since I was sixteen years old,
Speaker 3: et cetera, and I'm going to do a good job.
Speaker 3: He's confidence. So ultimately I got my first client, started
Speaker 3: my appraisal business. And one of the things that we
Speaker 3: said was that if he's qualified to be chairman of
Speaker 3: the Property Assessment of Pillboard in DC that reviews all
Speaker 3: one hundred and sixty five thousand properties in Washington, d C.
Speaker 3: He should be qualified to appraise some property for HUT
Speaker 3: And that was so it gave me a little bit
Speaker 3: of a building block, and then I use the relationship
Speaker 3: and then from there I was there.
Speaker 4: Yes, so we built.
Speaker 3: I was building my appraisal business, but I wanted to
Speaker 3: get into development. So I took a shot and a
Speaker 3: couple of different deals that were parcels owned by the
Speaker 3: government where I thought I had an edge and I couldn't.
Speaker 3: You know, not that one of them became successful. But
Speaker 3: I'd assembled investors and all of that.
Speaker 1: You took a shot. You're in DC. Now you know
Speaker 1: all the players. You take a shot, you're on your
Speaker 1: chairman of an important committee. You've You've gotten this relationship
Speaker 1: through a Congressman. You've gotten this deal through hud You've
Speaker 1: gotten this and now you take a shot at properties
Speaker 1: that you understand control by people who you know. And
Speaker 1: they didn't happen. The first two deals did not happen.
Speaker 1: Please listen to me, everybody, listen to what Donna is saying.
Speaker 1: This whole fantasy that you're going to be a microwave
Speaker 1: success story overnight, or that you put a business card
Speaker 1: and put CEO in your name and lease a car
Speaker 1: and go to some fancy meetings and buy some suits
Speaker 1: and take an Instagram shot of you being a successful person.
Speaker 1: That's not the way it works. Only in the dictionary
Speaker 1: does the word success come before the word work, because
Speaker 1: it's alphabetical. Again, he did everything right and it still didn't.
Speaker 1: He said earlier, being smart is not enough, being competent
Speaker 1: is not enough. And he didn't give up. He takes
Speaker 1: no provide im. It's just like me. So those two
Speaker 1: deals didn't happen.
Speaker 3: Continue right, and those two deals didn't happen. And Barry
Speaker 3: could have made either one of those happen, but he didn't.
Speaker 3: And for and I understood why, different reasons and different politics.
Speaker 3: So I happen to be in my office, my appraisal office,
Speaker 3: and I'd sublet some space to a real estate broker.
Speaker 3: And he comes into my office and he says, hey,
Speaker 3: I got a piece of property he should look at bye,
Speaker 3: And I said, okay, where is He says, in Anacostia.
Speaker 3: I said, well, why would I want to own anything
Speaker 3: in Anacostia. I mean it's a depressed community. I want
Speaker 3: to build an office building in downtow Dow, DC says look,
Speaker 3: he shows me this letter, and there's a letter on
Speaker 3: the Mayor of Washington, DC's letterhead, and the letter starts off,
Speaker 3: this letter constitutes a commitment on behalf of the District
Speaker 3: of Columbia government to lease office space in your proposed building.
Speaker 3: So letter, that letter was written to a white developer
Speaker 3: who was trying who was working on buying this piece
Speaker 3: of property in Anacostia from my subtenant's client. And I said, so,
Speaker 3: what's the issue here? Why are you showing it to me?
Speaker 3: It looks like the deal is all done. He said, well,
Speaker 3: my client wants nine hundred thousand dollars for this property
Speaker 3: and the developer won't pay more than seven hundred. And
Speaker 3: I said, wait a minute. So they're arguing over two
Speaker 3: hundred thousand dollars. It was like six fifty. I think
Speaker 3: it was six to fifty, but they were arguing over
Speaker 3: two hundred hundred fifty thousand dollars.
Speaker 4: You're kidding me.
Speaker 3: And so I look at the letter and I and
Speaker 3: I said, can I have a copy of it? And
Speaker 3: we make a copy of it, and I said, okay,
Speaker 3: let me get back to you tomorrow. So I called
Speaker 3: the investors that I had assembled for the other deal
Speaker 3: and I.
Speaker 4: Called them up. Didn't happen, which failed, and didn't happen,
Speaker 4: never got it.
Speaker 3: But I knew them, and I said, how would you
Speaker 3: like to own fifty percent of an office building that
Speaker 3: we will build is pre lease to the District of
Speaker 3: Columbia for twenty years.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, Oh my god.
Speaker 3: And they said, what's the deal? And I said, well,
Speaker 3: you guys put up all the money and I bring
Speaker 3: the deal. I bring the land, and I bring the deal,
Speaker 3: and uh and and so and you had own that
Speaker 3: I owned fifty percent.
Speaker 1: Wow, okay.
Speaker 3: And so I set up a meeting with the owner
Speaker 3: of the property and we had a meeting at the
Speaker 3: offices of my investors, and we laid out a deal.
Speaker 3: I said, you know who I am, because by that
Speaker 3: time I was somewhat prominent. So you know that if
Speaker 3: the mayor is going to do this for this group,
Speaker 3: chances are he'll do a deal with me, especially with
Speaker 3: my partners who are putting up all the money and
Speaker 3: have the experience. But we can't buy your property until
Speaker 3: we have a deal with the city. But the price
Speaker 3: is not an issue. We're going to pay you exactly
Speaker 3: what you asked for. You want a nine hundred thousand dollars,
Speaker 3: We're going to pay you nine hundred thousand dollars. We're
Speaker 3: going to give you one hundred thousand dollars deposit, and
Speaker 3: if we don't close, it's yours. And calculated what it
Speaker 3: costs to carry the property after ninety days, we'll pay
Speaker 3: to carry the property. You got to give us six
Speaker 3: months to make our deal, made a deal, signed a contract, partners,
Speaker 3: put up the money, and then I wrote.
Speaker 4: A letter to the mayor, and I wrote them a letter.
Speaker 3: In fact, no, I wrote the city council member for
Speaker 3: that district and the City of Washington's Director of of
Speaker 3: Government Services General Services, wrote them a letter saying that
Speaker 3: we own the property.
Speaker 4: We understood that they were and to lease it.
Speaker 3: And the rent that you all are proposing is twenty
Speaker 3: two dollars and fifty CENTSUS square foot, triple net.
Speaker 4: We're going to do a building.
Speaker 1: Explain triple net. Don explain triple net. Plice.
Speaker 3: So triple net means that twenty fifty cents rent to
Speaker 3: the owner. Net means that the tenant has to pay
Speaker 3: the property taxes, has to pay all operating expenses of
Speaker 3: the building, insurance, utilities, et cetera. So they have to
Speaker 3: pay all the expenses, so that the developer or the
Speaker 3: owner of the building gets twenty two dollars and fifty
Speaker 3: cents per square foot and a net of all expenses,
Speaker 3: so the tenant pays all operating expenses.
Speaker 1: For those listeners who don't didn't follow that and run
Speaker 1: the tape back, listen to it slowly. That's a brilliant
Speaker 1: deal because basically that meant that that don knew exactly
Speaker 1: and his investors knew exactly what they would receive in
Speaker 1: a return net of all expenses that could kill you,
Speaker 1: property taxes, things that are that go up and down, utilities,
Speaker 1: all that stuff. It was it was tripling. So he
Speaker 1: had he had a twenty year lease with a credit tenant.
Speaker 1: Credit means somebody you know is credit worthy. The word
Speaker 1: credit comes on the latter of word credit credibility. You
Speaker 1: knew that person was credit worthy. It's a government in
Speaker 1: DC doesn't get a better tenant than that twenty year lease,
Speaker 1: so you can get predictable income, which then gives the
Speaker 1: problem the property a value for twenty years. Uh. And
Speaker 1: he knew exactly what net cash flow would come to
Speaker 1: him and his investors because his triple net and as
Speaker 1: the government goes bankrupt, which was not likely and has
Speaker 1: it h he had a great deal. This wasn't a
Speaker 1: good deal. This is a great deal. He negotiated a
Speaker 1: up great He negotiated success up front. He was financially literate.
Speaker 1: Wasn't just a good developer, wasn't just smart, wasn't just lucky.
Speaker 1: He created his own lucky. He was smart, and he
Speaker 1: was financially literate, and he understood a budget and a
Speaker 1: balance sheet. And he took risks because he cut the
Speaker 1: deal before he wrote the letter to the council person
Speaker 1: or got back to the mayor, he'd already he was
Speaker 1: at risk if the deal gone sideways, the mayor changed
Speaker 1: their mind city council person decide they didn't like him.
Speaker 1: He's toast, okay, go ahead, don.
Speaker 3: So there and in fact there's there's some drama to it.
Speaker 3: So we make a deal, and so we send a
Speaker 3: letter to the city. The first argument I had with
Speaker 3: the investors there were three white guys and who are
Speaker 3: real estate investors, two Jewish guys and a Greek guy.
Speaker 3: And they said, why in the world are we offering
Speaker 3: eighteen dollars and seventy five cents a square foot. The
Speaker 3: other the mayor wrote a letter saying twenty two dollars
Speaker 3: and fifty cents. This is a minority deal. Those deals
Speaker 3: always cost more money to do business with minorities. You
Speaker 3: should be charging twenty five dollars a foot. I said, no,
Speaker 3: you don't understand the reality of the world here, and
Speaker 3: the reality of the world is I've got to be better.
Speaker 3: There's no way we're going to get this deal if
Speaker 3: I'm not better. One I'm black. Two I'm a friend
Speaker 3: an ally of the mayors. So we have to make
Speaker 3: this where they'd be fools not to take our deal.
Speaker 3: I said, But we're going to do something smart. We
Speaker 3: don't spend a money per dollars per square foot. We
Speaker 3: spent absolute dollars. So we're going to double the size
Speaker 3: of the building mhm. And we're going to have and
Speaker 3: we're going to pitch that as a bigger economic development
Speaker 3: impact on the community. And we're going to commit to
Speaker 3: thirty five percent or better minority contracting.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: And you're a minority promising minority contractor.
Speaker 4: Yes, And and we were going to build a bigger building.
Speaker 4: So the mayor, so, the so so all.
Speaker 3: So we send the letter to the council member and
Speaker 3: probably within within almost hours, I get a call from
Speaker 3: the mayor and the mayor said, Don, what are you doing? Further,
Speaker 3: the way it happens is, you know, is his assistant Jerry,
Speaker 3: and she says, hold don hold on for the mayor.
Speaker 3: So mayor A, Don, what are you doing over in Anacostia?
Speaker 3: I mean Native council member Nadine Winner just came up.
Speaker 3: I came we just left my office. She was yelling
Speaker 3: and all crazy in here, saying, you bought this property
Speaker 3: in Anacostia and now you took it from you know,
Speaker 3: some other people who were going to build a building
Speaker 3: over there, and I.
Speaker 4: Guess they were friends of hers. Or something.
Speaker 3: And I said, well, yeah, mister Mayor, I did buy
Speaker 3: a piece of property. I put it under contract because
Speaker 3: the city was interested in leasing office space there. And
Speaker 3: you want to have you want to help rebuild economic,
Speaker 3: you know, neglected communities. And I know that you have
Speaker 3: been an outspoken advocate of economic empowerment for black entrepreneurs.
Speaker 3: This is anacostia, a predominantly black community in a commercial courter,
Speaker 3: destroyed by the nineteen sixty eight riots, been neglected ever since.
Speaker 3: I'm a black developer, and I figured that it would
Speaker 3: be better if I built it in a community this
Speaker 3: reflective of my people. And I'm doing it, and I'm
Speaker 3: doing it on better economic terms. And I don't know
Speaker 3: why she's mad. She should be happy. She's a black
Speaker 3: council member and everybody's talking about how you all want
Speaker 3: to help more black entrepreneurship.
Speaker 4: Okay, here you go. And he says, yeah, man, she is.
Speaker 4: She is furious.
Speaker 3: And I said, well, and I shouldn't have said it,
Speaker 3: but I said it. I said, well, mister Mayor, if
Speaker 3: it's a real problem for you, I could walk from
Speaker 3: the deal. And he paused for a second, and he said,
Speaker 3: would you lose money? And one hundred thousand dollars. I said, yes,
Speaker 3: miss May, I'd lose a lot of money and loves
Speaker 3: a big opportunity and right, I said, but you know
Speaker 3: you were You know, my relationship with you is extremely
Speaker 3: important to me, and so in this thing, you know
Speaker 3: what you want to do as a priority. He says,
Speaker 3: all right, let me think about it. I'll get back
Speaker 3: to you, and uh. And then a couple of days
Speaker 3: later he calls me back up, and I'm all worried
Speaker 3: calling back up and said, you know, we're going to
Speaker 3: go forward with that deal. It's the right thing to do,
Speaker 3: and you're saving us money and you're doing a better building.
Speaker 3: And a counsel member whin is going to need to
Speaker 3: get over it.
Speaker 1: Now. I like you to go down and.
Speaker 3: Meet with her and try to get her to feel
Speaker 3: good about this. But you can go there knowing that
Speaker 3: we're going forward. And and so I did that, went
Speaker 3: in and and then met with her, got her on board.
Speaker 3: But a few like a couple of weeks later, I
Speaker 3: get a phone call from a reporter in the Washington Post.
Speaker 3: I get and I was out of the office, so
Speaker 3: I returned the phone call and I called the guy
Speaker 3: up and.
Speaker 4: And he says, this is Tom Sherwood.
Speaker 3: I'm an investigative reporter for the Washington Post because I
Speaker 3: thought it was a special interest story about a black
Speaker 3: developer helping the black community. And he says that we
Speaker 3: want to talk to you about this least deal that
Speaker 3: you're doing with the mayor and that's above market rent.
Speaker 4: And so.
Speaker 3: And so he I want to talk to you about
Speaker 3: it and so forth. And I said, well, all right,
Speaker 3: well let me get back to you. So I called
Speaker 3: the mayor's office, talked to his press secretary she and
Speaker 3: then his inner governmental affairs person, and they tell me one,
Speaker 3: I should do the interview, and then they talked me
Speaker 3: through how to do it. And that was my first
Speaker 3: real interaction with the media. And so I do this interview.
Speaker 1: How are you? At this point?
Speaker 4: I was twenty six unbelievable love, And so I go
Speaker 4: and meet with.
Speaker 3: This guy and in my office and I recorded the interview,
Speaker 3: and we do the interview, and I kept saying, well,
Speaker 3: here's a letter that the mayor sent to some other
Speaker 3: developer other than me, and it was for twenty two
Speaker 3: dollars and fifty cents the square foot I'm reased in
Speaker 3: eighteen seventy five square foot.
Speaker 4: My deal is better.
Speaker 3: So it's the market was what this person offered and
Speaker 3: what the city signed a commitment letter for. He just
Speaker 3: didn't control the property. And I figured out how to
Speaker 3: control the prop by the property, and you know, and.
Speaker 4: I'm doing it for less money.
Speaker 3: So that got me some and I called a couple
Speaker 3: of city council members and they were supportive of me
Speaker 3: as well. And uh and and so a couple of
Speaker 3: days later, from page to the Washington Post, right next
Speaker 3: to Ronald Reagan's, I ran contra a fair issue where
Speaker 3: they're trading, you know, arm or drugs for arms. It's
Speaker 3: my little building in Anacostia, And it was a front
Speaker 3: page story in the Washington Post, and they were trying
Speaker 3: to make controversy out of it, but it wasn't. I
Speaker 3: saw the mayor that I saw the mayor that day,
Speaker 3: tell me, don't worry about it. But then I go
Speaker 3: into this prominent restaurant where I started. I'd been going
Speaker 3: with this Washington local business and political power restaurant called
Speaker 3: Joe and Mose. And that was where, like Bill Fitzgerald,
Speaker 3: the banker I talked about earlier, it would go every
Speaker 3: day for line and all the power broke.
Speaker 4: Many of the power brokers would be there for lunch.
Speaker 4: So I go there. I became more of a regular.
Speaker 4: So I go in.
Speaker 3: Bill Fitzgeral standing at the bar. He gets up and
Speaker 3: he comes over to me and he hands me a
Speaker 3: glass of champagne, and he said, welcome to the club.
Speaker 3: And what he told me is that there will be
Speaker 3: no fans. Yeah, they will not there.
Speaker 1: You will not the.
Speaker 3: Washington Post in the establishment. You are now their target,
Speaker 3: and you will not have fans, and they will not
Speaker 3: be in your fan club. And but you're gonna have
Speaker 3: to keep going and not lett none of this bother you,
Speaker 3: and you just keep focusing, stay on your point, don't
Speaker 3: do anything wrong, and you're fine. But I was like
Speaker 3: worried that my deal was going to blow up. And
Speaker 3: then Barry said he'd stick it out, and then it
Speaker 3: was lingering. And then one of the council members who
Speaker 3: had ran against him and lost, he said, look and
Speaker 3: he designed the lease now and get it over. Just
Speaker 3: put it in this now, and that was it. Got
Speaker 3: my deal done and signed the lease in nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 3: I just turned in twenty seven and then built the
Speaker 3: building in two years. We brother in early and that
Speaker 3: building was my first building, and I was netting back
Speaker 3: then about my share was about four hundred grand a year,
Speaker 3: so I no longer had to work for a living.
Speaker 3: And then I could start focusing and it was just me,
Speaker 3: so I could just be helping my mother and I
Speaker 3: could just focus now on what's the next step. And
Speaker 3: then from that one building. Oh and I forgot to
Speaker 3: get it financed. The National Bank of Washington did the
Speaker 3: construction loan. And the way I met them is the
Speaker 3: chairman of the National Bank of Washington with Barry's campaign chairperson.
Speaker 4: So Barry introduced me to him.
Speaker 3: I did the lung construction loan and found an insurance
Speaker 3: company for me to take the construction loan out and
Speaker 3: repay the construction loan and give me a permanent loan
Speaker 3: for ten years.
Speaker 1: And so just for those to follow that he had
Speaker 1: he purchased it, he needed a banker, a lender to
Speaker 1: do a construction loan to get the building up. And
Speaker 1: then with the construction loans not the final financing. You
Speaker 1: need a permanent financing, a long term vehicle at firmly
Speaker 1: fixed rates, so you know what the monthly outflow is
Speaker 1: because because the construction loan offen is at adjustable rates
Speaker 1: and is not very economical deal, you don't want to
Speaker 1: keep it long term. But he got the construction loan,
Speaker 1: which is typically you know, two years or less on
Speaker 1: a building like that, and then he did a permanent loan,
Speaker 1: which is what the insurance company he mentioned that allowed
Speaker 1: him to finance it institutionally for the life of the building. Okay,
Speaker 1: go ahead, and so that freed me up.
Speaker 3: And from that one building, it was a ten million
Speaker 3: dollar project cost I built. I built a business that
Speaker 3: where I had about ultimately about two and a half
Speaker 3: million square feet of space in DC, you know, and
Speaker 3: other sites I could build more. I expanded into Miami
Speaker 3: and then other parts of the country. And so today
Speaker 3: we do business in Boston, New York, d C, Atlanta, Charlotte, Roley, Durham, Miami, La,
Speaker 3: San Francisco, Vegas.
Speaker 1: And all that.
Speaker 3: From the one building, so we've completed several billion dollars
Speaker 3: of projects. A pipeline today is over six billion dollars
Speaker 3: of development projects around the country. I'm trying to get
Speaker 3: the rights to a site in New York City where
Speaker 3: from the state government where I can build the tallest
Speaker 3: building in the Western hemisphere. It'll be the first skyscraper
Speaker 3: built by African American developers. It's age percent black owned building,
Speaker 3: two point seven billion to build it, and sixteen hundred
Speaker 3: and sixty seven feet tall, which would make it the
Speaker 3: tallest building in the Western hemisphere. All that from that
Speaker 3: one opportunity and if one opportunity, and being prepared to
Speaker 3: take it, being not worrying about what I was going
Speaker 3: to get up from very early, but building a relationship
Speaker 3: of somebody that I respected, and being useful to him.
Speaker 3: Even that building was a source of pride he did
Speaker 3: and was there the groundbreaking and that building kick started
Speaker 3: the revitalization of Anacostia, and today Homeland Security has a
Speaker 3: three billion dollar headquarters there.
Speaker 1: The department that the building, Homeland Security is building.
Speaker 4: No, no, that's not the building.
Speaker 3: But all of that happened as a result of that
Speaker 3: first investment, a catalyst to create all of that economic development.
Speaker 3: And ironically the government after twenty years, the next mayor
Speaker 3: renewed the lease for ten years and then and then
Speaker 3: we renovated the building and the city he leased it
Speaker 3: for another sixteen years and my son oversaw the renovations.
Speaker 3: So after thirty years after me building it, my son
Speaker 3: who was working is working in the company. He oversaw
Speaker 3: the renovation of that building and the city another sixteen
Speaker 3: years and still on it today. We still make money
Speaker 3: off that building and have been making money off that
Speaker 3: building for thirty five plus years.
Speaker 1: This has been a masterclass everybody. If you did not
Speaker 1: know any about real estate development, he just walked you
Speaker 1: through how he built an empire, and he unpacked a
Speaker 1: critical deal which triggered every other deal in many ways.
Speaker 1: He talked to you about humble beginnings. He talked to
Speaker 1: you about his grandfather. His grandfather, a doorman, had relationship
Speaker 1: capital because everybody coming in out of that hotel he
Speaker 1: got to know. He talked about how his mother built
Speaker 1: relationship capital and his father helped him. His father was
Speaker 1: a hard worker. Don your story, my story is so
Speaker 1: are so similar in so many ways. We don't have
Speaker 1: time to go into it. But it is heartwarming to
Speaker 1: me to know because I didn't know all this backstory.
Speaker 1: How there's so much sympatico here. But he talked about
Speaker 1: and this is the most important thing I want people
Speaker 1: to listen to here, integrity. Integrity. He could have taken
Speaker 1: the short route a couple of times. He could have
Speaker 1: been about himself, But he told the mayor, the then mayor,
Speaker 1: Marion Barry, if you don't like this deal, now he's
Speaker 1: got the money at risk. Now. It is the second
Speaker 1: risky thing he'd done on this property. First of all,
Speaker 1: he went into the contract without having gone back. He
Speaker 1: could have gone to the mayor in advance and tried
Speaker 1: to reassure him that this was a good deal. He
Speaker 1: could have gone to the city council purpose person, but
Speaker 1: by the way they would have set him up. The
Speaker 1: importers then could have suggested that this was some kind
Speaker 1: of a cooked agreement, some kind of a not fraud
Speaker 1: but bribery or whatever. They could have made something of all.
Speaker 1: You gave them free dinners and lunches or whatever. He
Speaker 1: stayed clear of all that. He did his deal on
Speaker 1: the on the strength of the transaction went undercut. His
Speaker 1: competition could have taken more money, but it wasn't greedy. Undercut.
Speaker 1: It made it true, it was competitive, tightened it up,
Speaker 1: put at himself at a risk, because you cannot do
Speaker 1: anything in life without putting yourself on the front lines.
Speaker 1: He backed his own deal. Then he went to the
Speaker 1: mayor and then they had to wait and said, look,
Speaker 1: if it doesn't work out, if you don't like it,
Speaker 1: that's fine with me. I'll recover. But my relationship with
Speaker 1: you is that important. I did the same thing with
Speaker 1: Tony Rester Michael Arraghetty when I sold Promise Homes Company.
Speaker 1: I could have sold it at at a much higher price.
Speaker 1: I could have sold it a much lower price, but
Speaker 1: I simply said, whatever you guys want to do, you're
Speaker 1: my partners here. I want to honor my commitment to you.
Speaker 1: Get you in and out in five years. And ultimately
Speaker 1: they did exactly what you did with Marion. Barry said no,
Speaker 1: we're with you, but I was willing to take much
Speaker 1: less to keep my word. He did that. That was
Speaker 1: a big deal I did on Promise Homes Company. He
Speaker 1: did that on his first deal. And the way he
Speaker 1: did it allowed him to talk to that reporter with
Speaker 1: a straight face and with integrity. And it was nothing
Speaker 1: that reporter could do but report the news. I mean,
Speaker 1: there was no you couldn't make it up. It was
Speaker 1: nothing to make up. Now it's you could they All
Speaker 1: he did was give you great advertiser on the front
Speaker 1: page of the local paper. Ultimately and made you the
Speaker 1: guy made you part of the club. As the guy said, really,
Speaker 1: welcome to the club. You've been hit at, you've been
Speaker 1: knocked on your head. Now welcome to the club. So
Speaker 1: another message for everybody. I rather you respect me and
Speaker 1: learn to like me, then like me and never respect me.
Speaker 1: And what Don has built is a global reputation of respect.
Speaker 1: And people also like him. They know when you when
Speaker 1: he shakes your hand, you've got a deal. He'll keep
Speaker 1: his word. He is a man of integrity. So many
Speaker 1: lessons here you had really a masterclass and up from
Speaker 1: nothing real estate development and integrity and relationship management. Whoever
Speaker 1: you are, where you come from. With no financial capital
Speaker 1: at all, work ethic, hustle, your own developed relationship capital,
Speaker 1: and your own innovation and creativity, you can be immensely successful. Don.
Speaker 1: In the last couple of minutes, we have what comes
Speaker 1: next for you? You got your son and your business.
Speaker 1: Now I've met him is really impressive. I love your
Speaker 1: whole family. What's come next for you? And what last
Speaker 1: piece of wisdom do you want to leave with the audience?
Speaker 4: Well, I mean so and they both kind of both connected.
Speaker 3: So I think what was the one of the more
Speaker 3: important things about you know, my trajectory, aside from the
Speaker 3: building of relationships and a reciprocal relationship, I always wanted
Speaker 3: to create value.
Speaker 4: I didn't ask Barry to mentor me.
Speaker 3: I made myself valuable to him, valuable as a fundraiser,
Speaker 3: valuable did a great job on the property assessment of
Speaker 3: pill abortion. I told him, you will never get a
Speaker 3: call about this board. You will never see a bad
Speaker 3: article about this board. This borders run and you will
Speaker 3: look good, and it will respond to the average person
Speaker 3: because they couch out to the commercial property owners, but
Speaker 3: not to the people who voted for Barrier. I said
Speaker 3: this board. I will take this board and it will
Speaker 3: be an asset for you and not a liability. And
Speaker 3: so I tried to always perform. But you know it
Speaker 3: was my motivation to make money was really to be
Speaker 3: able to pay my bills, to earn a living. It
Speaker 3: wasn't hey, I needed to accumulate all these things. It
Speaker 3: was more about I wanted to be comfortable, but I
Speaker 3: also wanted to have a purpose, and a sense of
Speaker 3: purpose is to knock down these barriers. I mean doctor King,
Speaker 3: Andrew Young, Jesse Jackson John Lewis. They didn't fight and
Speaker 3: struggled so that I could make some more dollars and
Speaker 3: spend it on myself. You know, Doctor King didn't die
Speaker 3: and give his life so that people like me could
Speaker 3: just make some money and you know, keep it to ourselves.
Speaker 3: And so I feel a greatest sense of purpose. And
Speaker 3: so I use business as a tool of transformation. It's
Speaker 3: a it's a tool where I can provide access to opportunities,
Speaker 3: and ownership is the essence of power, and so I
Speaker 3: want to hire a contractor.
Speaker 1: I can do that.
Speaker 3: When I built the last building we did in New York,
Speaker 3: we just finished it a little while ago. I bought
Speaker 3: it from the City of New York and and part
Speaker 3: in a competitive process. And when we did the interview,
Speaker 3: they said, you committed to twenty percent minority and women
Speaker 3: owned business contracting. No one's the government can't even get
Speaker 3: to those numbers. How in the world do you think
Speaker 3: you're going to get to those numbers. You're not ever
Speaker 3: going to get to those numbers. And I said, well,
Speaker 3: we're going to really work hard to try, but I
Speaker 3: think we'll get to the twenty percent numbers. And it's
Speaker 3: our first building in New York and about a five
Speaker 3: hundred and eighty million dollar project.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: So I brought in a construction company, a construction manager.
Speaker 3: It's actually the oldest black owned construction company in the country, mckizac.
Speaker 3: I brought in Gerald mckizac and I said, look, I
Speaker 3: want you to oversee the contractor, and I want you
Speaker 3: to make sure that we do better than twenty percent
Speaker 3: minority in women owned business contract and so I'm hiring
Speaker 3: your company to do that. And so we need to
Speaker 3: set up a structure and a system that we can
Speaker 3: excel it. And she said, well, how much time are
Speaker 3: you going to be willing to commit? I said, well,
Speaker 3: what do you mean? She said, well, one way to
Speaker 3: do it. Part of this is going to be you
Speaker 3: need to approve every contract so you can push it back.
Speaker 3: And so ultimately we set up a system. I approved
Speaker 3: every subcontractor came with a decision memo random that I
Speaker 3: learned from Barry about here's a contract, here are the options,
Speaker 3: and it would tell me who it was, what they did.
Speaker 3: Were they a minority or women own firm and they weren't,
Speaker 3: why not? What were the three bids and so on?
Speaker 3: So I could send it back and so one of
Speaker 3: the building, one of the one of the contracts we
Speaker 3: looked at was the facade contract got came to me
Speaker 3: and it was a nominated is done the exterior walls.
Speaker 3: So it was a historic landmark building that was about
Speaker 3: five hundred thousand square feet and the original New York
Speaker 3: Life Insurance Company headquarters. And so we were restoring the
Speaker 3: limestone facade around this giant building. And so the contract
Speaker 3: to restore the exterior walls was forty million dollars. And
Speaker 3: so just that contract, just that contract, and so the
Speaker 3: lowest price wasn't wasn't with a black owned.
Speaker 1: Firm, okay.
Speaker 3: And but the contract that was submitted to me was
Speaker 3: for the next lowest bidder, a non minority firm. And
Speaker 3: the reason was because the minority firm couldn't, uh, you know,
Speaker 3: they were not able to.
Speaker 4: Bond the job, so right, they couldn't.
Speaker 3: They they had a bond they could bond half of
Speaker 3: their bonding capacity is about twenty five million dollars, and
Speaker 3: the bank would not give us any relief on that
Speaker 3: on the bond. So the general contractor wanted to pick
Speaker 3: the non minority firm. But the schedule also it has
Speaker 3: a schedule in the contracts, and everybody was around the
Speaker 3: same time period about two years, right, So I said,
Speaker 3: go back to I told my team, go back to
Speaker 3: the minority firm and this firm that you want to hire,
Speaker 3: and ask them if does that mean that half the
Speaker 3: building gets done in a year. And so they come
Speaker 3: back and they give us a schedule for half the building.
Speaker 3: If they only did half, it's about, you know, a
Speaker 3: fourteen months or so for each one of them, basically
Speaker 3: around and the price goes up a little bit. And
Speaker 3: so I said, okay, we're going to give we're split
Speaker 3: in the building up and we're going to give the
Speaker 3: minority contractor half and we're going to do the other
Speaker 3: one half. And while it's going to take us it's
Speaker 3: going to cost us a little more money, we're going
Speaker 3: to make up for it because we're going to finish
Speaker 3: this at least eight months earlier on the exterior, so
Speaker 3: we'll be able to get the windows in and other
Speaker 3: stuff faster. And so we did that and that's how
Speaker 3: we were able to finish. And so we finished the
Speaker 3: project and we had thirty eight and a half percent
Speaker 3: minority contracting. And I was told I couldn't get twenty.
Speaker 3: But that's why A big part of why I do
Speaker 3: what I do, because it gives me the chance to
Speaker 3: provide opportunities instead of standard that if my company can
Speaker 3: do it, then the government should have the expectations of
Speaker 3: all these other developers the same thing, and so changing
Speaker 3: the marketplace and the expectations. But so I think that
Speaker 3: if you're going to be successful, I think you want
Speaker 3: to operate with integrity. You want to operate with a
Speaker 3: long term view. My mother taught me to think long term.
Speaker 3: I mean that's a big thing for her. Think long term,
Speaker 3: not short term, long long term deferred gratification. And so
Speaker 3: you want to look that way, but you have to
Speaker 3: have a sense of purpose.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 4: I think you know.
Speaker 3: The purpose that I have is that I want to
Speaker 3: expand economic opportunity for Black Americans. And so I'm willing
Speaker 3: to continue to do this, have significant financial risk to
Speaker 3: myself to grow the business because I believe if I
Speaker 3: keep scaling the business up, it creates more and more opportunity,
Speaker 3: and then hopefully the more developers like me and you
Speaker 3: John that will do the same thing and we can
Speaker 3: ultimately get our community to a place where we no
Speaker 3: longer disproportionately carry the burdens of poverty. But we become
Speaker 3: an economic factor in this country, and then many of
Speaker 3: the issues that our community confronts will go away because
Speaker 3: we'll have the financial resources to help ourselves.
Speaker 1: There's a quote that I love to use. Don This
Speaker 1: has been by the way, this has been absolutely great.
Speaker 1: This is technically the longest podcasts I've ever done for
Speaker 1: this series, but at every moment, every minute of it
Speaker 1: was worthwhile. There's not a moment of it. I think
Speaker 1: people will not sit on the edge of their seats.
Speaker 1: I often tell people who don't understand capitalism and free enterprise,
Speaker 1: and they think money is everything. Even if you want
Speaker 1: to distribute money like a socialist, you have to first
Speaker 1: collect it like a capitalist. And that eighty eight percent
Speaker 1: of all jobs in America are private sector jobs. So
Speaker 1: the government gets their money from the private sector. And
Speaker 1: so if you want to have influence on your government,
Speaker 1: you want to influence on your school district, your border counselors,
Speaker 1: your city council. You want to influence on the infrastructure.
Speaker 1: You want to have influence on the trajectory of your
Speaker 1: community and your world. You want to become successful as
Speaker 1: successful as you can be. You want to be a taxpayer,
Speaker 1: you want to be on record, You want to have integrity,
Speaker 1: So people come to you not just for a check,
Speaker 1: but come for your counsel the company. Because you build
Speaker 1: bring credibility to any endeavor you assign your name to.
Speaker 1: So anybody listening to this, I want you to listen
Speaker 1: to this two or three times and take notes, because
Speaker 1: he really gave you a masterclass on how to build
Speaker 1: something from nothing. Don in the last word here and
Speaker 1: by the way, I just do it just so much. Here.
Speaker 1: One of the things that really my heart sung when
Speaker 1: you said it, you hit thirty eight percent of minority
Speaker 1: contractors versus twenty they told you couldn't do twenty. One
Speaker 1: of the reasons I stayed and wanted to build my
Speaker 1: real estate companies was the bigger I made it, the
Speaker 1: more minority contractors plumbing, heating, lighting, and roofing, landscaping, both
Speaker 1: employment and contracts multimi dollar contracts I could let to people.
Speaker 1: Which is sustainable wealth creation. It's not charity. It's not
Speaker 1: a one off check or one off government check or
Speaker 1: one off charity check. I can give you a charity
Speaker 1: check for one thousand dollars or ten thousand dollars one time, maybe,
Speaker 1: but I can give you contract for tens of millions
Speaker 1: of dollars if the business will sustain it and you qualify.
Speaker 1: That's what we got to get. We got to get
Speaker 1: enough infrastructure for companies like yours and Mind and Russell
Speaker 1: Russell Family and others so that we are collectively doing
Speaker 1: so much business that we can literally employ employ not
Speaker 1: just Black America, but underserved America on a sustainable basis.
Speaker 1: What's the total assets under management right now? Or how
Speaker 1: are you you know, I know private equity looks at
Speaker 1: this a little differently, but how do you equate your
Speaker 1: current success platform? Is it develop amount of development you've
Speaker 1: done or assets you own? Now, what's that benchmark that
Speaker 1: you have? You can leave the audience with the employees.
Speaker 3: Michigan Cities as a company, we're focused more on our
Speaker 3: pipeline because that really drives our revenue. That's six billions, yes,
Speaker 3: and our goal is my twenty twenty six that we
Speaker 3: have an ongoing pipeline of about ten billion dollars and
Speaker 3: we just continue to add as we as we deliver
Speaker 3: and add and so it as a as a it's
Speaker 3: a development business.
Speaker 4: On that pipeline. Our goal has been to do just
Speaker 4: under right around forty percent of that in profit.
Speaker 3: So if we you know, so that's about two point
Speaker 3: four billion dollars and so and that pipeline is about
Speaker 3: an eight year process, right, so you're adding and subtracting,
Speaker 3: and but from beginning to end, all the that within
Speaker 3: that pipeline now will be completed within eight years or less.
Speaker 3: And so that's kind of how we measure. And then
Speaker 3: we have been to grow our business that you know,
Speaker 3: we really we we have developed for sale product, we
Speaker 3: sold buildings, et cetera. And so now we're building a
Speaker 3: series of businesses now. So one of the businesses that
Speaker 3: we're doing is a where we are doing a series
Speaker 3: one four a offering, which is a private placement that
Speaker 3: ultimately will probably go public. But of our public private business,
Speaker 3: which is a big core, about seventy five percent of
Speaker 3: what we do, which I learned on that first deal,
Speaker 3: we're doing business with the government. So either we're buying
Speaker 3: building sites from the government or we're buying buildings from
Speaker 3: the government and then redeveloping. And that's about seventy five
Speaker 3: percent of our business part and that company is called
Speaker 3: Affirmation partners and Raymond James is launching that offering next week,
Speaker 3: and so that's one of the things that we're building.
Speaker 3: We're also looking to build a private equity fund business
Speaker 3: to deploy capital to black.
Speaker 4: Entrepreneurs and women entrepreneurs who.
Speaker 3: Have had very limited access to capital, so that we
Speaker 3: can create more opportunities there. But then and then we
Speaker 3: have a robust condo development business in Florida, and that
Speaker 3: was kind of the keys of our business. But it's
Speaker 3: about creating you know, economic performance and then you know,
Speaker 3: growing our business to keep scaling it up and so
Speaker 3: you know, so that's kind of how we measure but
Speaker 3: we measured by a number of buildings and a number.
Speaker 4: And dollar amounts.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's right, the best example of kind of
Speaker 3: measuring us in terms of size.
Speaker 1: So a developer will develop a project audience for their
Speaker 1: own account but also for others, uh, and they deliver
Speaker 1: those products through a pipeline of develop a development process,
Speaker 1: and when they deliver it, they are rewarded for that.
Speaker 1: And sometimes it's fee income and sometimes it's ownership, and
Speaker 1: sometimes it's a combination of both. What you've heard is
Speaker 1: literally a masterclass and Don and I he didn't know this.
Speaker 1: I didn't know this about him. He know this about me.
Speaker 1: But we both started with government service. We volunteered on
Speaker 1: a committee, and we had integrity about that process. We're
Speaker 1: about giving, not getting, and but we used it. We
Speaker 1: built relationship capital serving on those volunteer boards and as
Speaker 1: he said, we would have paid to be there. This
Speaker 1: is John O'Briant, it's my friend Don Peeples. This is
Speaker 1: Money and Wealth, and this is a special episode that
Speaker 1: I probably is my first, other than my conversation with
Speaker 1: Michael Milkin, probably is my first masterclass in a certain area.
Speaker 1: And this is real estate development. I hope you enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: Share it with everybody you know. Love and life. Let's
Speaker 1: go Money and Wealth with John O'Brien is a production
Speaker 1: of the Black Effect Podcast Network. For more podcasts from
Speaker 1: the Black Effect Podcast Network, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Protect Tempts, Peepers,