Retail Revitalization Tips for Urban Districts with Michael Berne

Welcome to the B2B Growth Blueprint podcast, where we talk with entrepreneurs, founders, and leaders at B2B services, tech, and SaaS companies to learn the systems and processes they've used to create success for their business. We'll also learn from marketing and sales experts to provide insights to help you grow your business. I'm your host, Mark Osborne, and the podcast is brought to you by Modern Revenue Strategies and their 10X ROI B2B Growth Guarantee. Schedule a free diagnostic call to learn the fastest path to double your B2B revenues in just 90 days. Hello and welcome to another episode of the B2B Growth Blueprint Podcast. I'm your host, Mark Osborne. And today I'm very excited to welcome my guest, Michael J. Byrne. Now I'm going to read Michael's bio to make sure I get it right. Michael is the principal at MJB Consulting and one of North America's leading experts and futurists on urban and downtown Main Street districts, as well as the retail industry more generally. He has more than 20 years of experience conducting retail market analysis, devising tenenting strategies, spearheading implementation efforts, In the US as well as Canada and the UK. He's a regular presenter, keynote speaker at industry conferences, including the International Downtown Association, National Main Street Center, International Council of Shopping Centers, International Economic Development Council, and the Urban Land Institute, among many others. He's lectured at University of Pennsylvania, the Pratt Institute, City University of New York, as well as the University of California, Berkeley, and served as expert advisory panels For the Urban Land Institute, as well as the IEDC. Quoted often in high-profile publications such as Financial Times, The Street, Washington Post, and his widely followed retail contrarian blog has been referenced many times, and he's penned numerous articles for the Urban Land Institute's monthly magazine, Urban Land, and even authored a chapter in a recently published book, Suburban Remix: Creating the Next Generation of Urban Places. So Michael, that's quite a long list of accomplishments. Thanks so much for taking some time to join us today.

Thank you for having me, Mark.

So you have a really interesting, you know, sort of resume and background there around, you know, sort of retail and development and working with both governmental as well as, you know, sort of private companies. Tell us a little bit about your story and kind of how you got to, you know, what you do there at MJB Consulting and what you do do there.

Yeah, I mean, maybe I'll start at the end and then, and then go back to the beginning. So what I do for a pretty wide range of clients, private sector clients like developers or investors or just landlords, as well as public sector, nonprofit sector clients like municipalities, business improvement districts, which are a form of property owner association. Okay. Association. What I do for them is really help them understand what their retail mix, the assortment of businesses that they have in their center or in their district, what more that mix can be. What more is possible? What more is realistic? Can they attract A Trader Joe's. Can they attract more restaurants? Can they attract more boutiques? And so I help them understand what is possible, and then how that can be built into the project. As you know. Retail is, is very complex, and most of the projects I work on are ones that aren't just grocery-anchored strip malls. They're more intricate. They involve many uses. And so there's the whole question of how you plan that, how you design it, how you lay it out. What goes next to what, where the parking is, all of that. And so I work with the clients on that as well. So that's what I do. So how did I get there? Well, I can't say it was a linear path. I was not a shopper growing up. Of course, like any good '80s suburbanite, I spent a lot of time in the mall.

In the mall, in the food court, sure.

In the food court. I don't know if you remember the store Software Etc. It was like this was the early, this was the dawning of the computer age, you know, so, or the bookstore. But I was not a shopper. And I wasn't either someone who dreamed of being self-employed or being my own boss. I didn't have the lemonade stand on the street corner.

Okay.

You know, as an early sign of who I wanted to be in the world. I wasn't any of that. I went to college, majored in political thought, and then went to graduate school to get a graduate degree in a very pretentious-sounding subject, political thought and intellectual history, which is effectively the study of other people who study for a living. One of the more useless subjects to know. That's being snarky. I did gain a lot from it. But, and then I decided, you know what, instead of continuing in academia, why don't I try this whole workaday job thing? And I started working for an elected official doing policy analysis, uh, specifically on economic development, um, and learned about this whole field called urban planning, which I didn't know much about. It was a hobby to, to walk through cities, um, appreciate the architecture, understand the history, but I didn't know you could make a career out of it. So, uh, I went to work for a planning consultancy, uh, in New York City, and I found myself gravitating to the commercial revitalization part of it. How do you revive districts that had pretty much been left for dead? And you got to understand, this was in the mid to late '90s. Urban and downtown environments were only then starting to reemerge from what had been a multi-decade period of, you know, multi-decade stretch of decline. And so I was drawn to that, to that whole kind of evolutionary process as they reawoke from their slumber, so to speak. And then I started, you know, for the consultancy, I started at the planning consultancy, started gravitating to commercialization, specifically retail, because I found retail to be so fascinating from an analytical perspective. You can understand so much about places. If you know the patterns of where retailers locate, how they think, how they see the world. And so that was really interesting to me. I went to work briefly for a retail developer doing leasing and acquisitions, but I was getting calls from clients that I had worked with at that planning consultancy asking, could you come work with us, um, on this other project, right? And I said, you know what, why don't, why don't, why don't I give this, give this a go, right? It was 2002. I was still in my late 20s. I had no responsibilities to speak of, wasn't married yet, nothing like that. And I was cocky enough to believe, hey, I could do this and I could Keep the money rather than giving two-thirds of it back to my boss. And and so I did it. And the first few years were ones of investment, more going out than coming in. But by the fourth year, it really started to take off. And that and then in two thousand in in twenty ten, partly for lifestyle reasons, my wife and I semi-moved to Northern California from New York City. But I could not and did not want to lose my New York City presence. So now go back and forth between the two. Have been doing that for 14 years. It was a little harder during the pandemic, obviously, but back to doing that again now. And yeah, and that's, that's, that's, that was the circuitous route I took. But looking back in hindsight, There was, there was sometimes some intentionality to it, and at other times not. I think the larger through line, and we'll get into this, is that I just kind of almost naively followed what interested me, and kind of figured that what I like, I'll, I'll, I'll be able to learn and to and and then what I learn, I'll be able to be good at, and just let the rest take care of itself. Yeah, admittedly it was, it was a bit naive because a lot of people do that and it doesn't work out. But, um, I, I think that was a better guide than trying to figure out, okay, what industry is growing, what space seems like it hasn't been filled yet, um, Just follow what you like doing. What you know, and that was was was was helpful to me because it kind of clarified things, you know, and simplified them.

So that's such an interesting route and and such an interesting you know kind of niche that you work in. So I want to understand a little bit of just sort of the dynamics of of your business. So yeah, you help developers understand, and if we think about it, you know, really from kind of the business-to-business perspective of what you do and, you know, working with other businesses to help them maximize the potential to realize the potential of their properties and bringing in all those things. What does the sort of competitive landscape look like? Do they normally just kind of think, I don't need that extra layer of insight, I just need to sort of, you know, put in a store and You know, hang up a sign for lease, which I, you know, I see those as I drive down the road all the time, malls, or do they, you know, just kind of think that they can do it themselves? What does the sort of the competitive landscape look like that you're working with then?

Yeah, yeah, it's a good question, Mark. I, you know, I think there are clients that develop commodity projects, I'll call them, where you really don't need a consultant.

Okay.

If I am in Florida and I've got Publix as an anchor, or if I'm in Texas and I have H-E-B as an anchor, or if I'm, um, if I'm a shopping center developer and I have a grocery store, you know, the number one grocery store in the region as my anchor, And I, you know, and I'm just going to build kind of a strip mall to accompany that anchor. It's pretty straightforward. It's been done many times before. You know, the underwriting is straightforward. The leasing is straightforward. All of that, the layout, the design, straightforward. Don't need a consultant for that. Right? Okay. Um, I'm— those aren't my clients. Uh, you know, now then there are clients who feel like— then there are developers who, or landlords, who feel like, yeah, I'll just put a for lease sign up and the market will come to me. And if you have the right real estate in the right location, that, that is what happens, right? And And, and that's basically the way the entire industry is incentivized to, is to not go looking too far afield or invest too much time and resources in, in, in, if, if, if you've got tenants already coming to you, if you've got low-hanging fruit. And, you know, and I don't begrudge developers Or landlords for approaching it that way. That again, that's the incentive structure. However, there are a lot of places and a lot of projects where that won't suffice, where, yeah, some tenants might come to you, but they might not be the ones that you're looking for, or maybe tenants don't come to you at all because it's a very challenged sort of setting or market. Or where tenants would come, but they really need to be told a story about the project and, and need to understand, you know, what the project is going for. You know, complicated mixed-use projects or adaptive reuse projects, for instance, they don't necessarily sell themselves. And there's a lot of complexity and nuance in how you design them, how you lay them out, and how you market them and brand them, right? And so you can't just post a sign. And then there are the ones that think it says that the developers or landlords should think that they subscribe to the theory that, you know, you build it and they will come. Which is one of the great myths, at least with retail. That's, that's if they, if you build it and they come, there's usually reasons for it and ones that are quite clear, especially in hindsight. Um, it might be that you built it, they came, and you didn't initially understand why they came, but there was a why to it, right? Um, you know, so there's those kind of developers too who sometimes don't ask for guidance when they probably should.

Right.

So there's all those sorts of, you know, all those— that's kind of a little bit about the landscape is that there are types of projects which call for such expertise and ones that don't, and ones that do but the would-be client doesn't realize it. Does that kind of provide a sense?

And that puts it in a really sort of unique space that you've identified of it's not just, you know, everybody. And it's really interesting to, you know, so many entrepreneurs, founders of companies, they're very resistant to narrowing down who they work with because I don't want to exclude anyone because I want the opportunity to, you know, sort of build as big of a business as I can.

Yeah.

Whereas it seems like you've done a really good job of, uh, you know, not just sort of identifying a niche, but you and I were talking a little bit before, uh, the recording, um, about sort of the difference of kind of carving a niche and really sort of creating a space that's your own. And, and just hearing the way you described as You know, you start with what it's not and all the people that you sort of don't speak to. And we, we have the joke between us, you know, strategy is what you choose not to do, which people so often forget. So talk to us a little bit about how you sort of created a niche instead of just sort of, you know, finding one that existed. And you talked about sort of following your passion, your intellectual passion rather than, you know, looking for an industry that was growing. And what that's meant for, you know, sort of your business success.

Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, again, from the— I wouldn't want to say that there was always intentionality to it, at least at the start. I did know that retail was the land use or property type that I was most interested in. But then there were some other considerations. I, you know, In the United States, there is the assumption that if you are successful at something, you grow, you expand, you hire staff, you, you know, and—

Infinite expansion of capitalism. That's the, that's the, the what we're taught.

Yeah. Right. Um, and I think it's the contrarian in me that initially questioned that. Like, okay, I don't want to do it just because I'm— just because that's the thing you do. And from a qual— from both a quality of life perspective, but also from the perspective of what kind of work I wanted to do in a day-to-day sort of way, I made the choice to not just expand reflexively, right?

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, part of it was that I, you know, I didn't wanna be a project manager. I didn't wanna be delegating the work that I wanted to do to other people. I wanted to do the work. That might have meant I was leaving money on the table, but that was okay with me because, look, we only live this life once. We might as well spend that time doing what we love, right? So I resisted the urge to expand. And one offshoot of that is that there is a real opportunity cost to everything I do. Yeah. Right? So if I try to get put my finger in too many pies, I you know there's only so many hours in a day. Yeah. Right. And so I find retail complicated enough. Yeah. I did not want to start adding additional property types to make things even more more complicated. And I I mention this partly because a lot oftentimes my competitors are more general.

economists. Right.

They will, you know, a developer might come to them and say, what is the potential for retail? But also, what's potential for office on my property? What's potential for housing on my property? Hotels, all of that. And that's often my competition. But because they're doing, handling so many different property types, these sorts of general economists are looking at those property types at the 30,000-foot level, right? In very, you know, and, and, and whereas with retail, because that's the only property type I work on, I'm able to drill down. And so in fact, sometimes general economists are my clients. I'm a subconsultant to them on projects that require that 30,000-foot view on all the uses, but a real drill-down, drill-down on retail specifically. So, you know, so I, so I resisted the urge not only to expand, but also to expand my skill set. I wanted to focus on retail, what interested me most, but also there was a consideration that I'd rather do one thing really well and in really deep depth.

Yeah.

And a lot of different things Oh, do it okay with some debt, you know, and that was not the way most— that was not what most of my competitors choose. They're generally, you know, looking at all of the uses.

Interesting. Yeah. Do you think that— and I don't want to get too far afield.

Yeah.

But oftentimes we see that, you know, from a kind of corporate growth or even exit strategy standpoint, that specialization makes you a better target for acquisition or it's easier to sell or all those things. Is that— was that some of the thinking or did you just sort of kind of luck into that?

Not— it wasn't some of the thinking. I mean, maybe I was just too young to be thinking in terms of exit strategy. And also I know, and this is another reason I'm hesitant to take on full-time employees, I know that I am kind of my brand at this point, and I could impart a lot of that knowledge to an employee who then might take it and open their own shop or bring it to a competitor, right? And because I'm such a micromanager, it's not like I'm able to save time. By delegating either. You know, I'm gonna end up spending just as much time editing their work as if I just did it myself. That is not necessarily a great business skill.

Sure.

To be a micromanager. But I think part of this is understanding who you are, being okay with it, and saying, okay, if that is who I am, I'm not going to, you know, tilt at windmills and try to change it, what does it imply for the way I run my business? And so, yeah, I mean, I think that, but I was never thinking in terms of an exit strategy per se because, and also I am my brand and, you know, it's not something which is really all that relevant For that reason, you know.

It's so interesting because you've arrived at the same place that a lot of other businesses arrive at, but, but through a different path. And so, yeah, one of the things that we see oftentimes is, you know, again, businesses start by, well, I, I wanna serve everybody because I don't wanna limit my market. But then they sort of struggle with that for a few years. But then they, then they take the time to look and they see, Well, you know, most of my billing and most of my happy customers, most of my repeat customers have this same problem. They might be in the same industry or they might just be facing a similar, you know, sort of challenge that they're trying to overcome. And they like working with us because we do it this certain way, which happens to be different than the way other people do it for whatever reason, either because we chose to do it that way or because that's just kind of who we are. And so then once they start to focus on serving that particular, you know, niche, whether it's defined by an industry or defined by a problem set, and emphasizing their, you know, particular strength at solving for that, that's when they really experience the growth that they were looking for all along by having a wider set. And so, so often we, we really try to emphasize with folks, you know, defining your ideal customer profile and defining those personas is, and getting precise is a much faster path to growth than saying, well, I can do anything for anybody.

Right. It's so funny to see that. And I think, Mark, that gets at what you and I were talking about on a previous call, which is this difference between commodity and niche, right? I'm going to be all things to all people. Well, especially in my little corner of this sector, there's a lot of firms that try to be all things to all people.

That's right.

And I think the danger with that approach is it's not easy to show then how you're all that different. You might be very different. You might frankly do what everyone else does, but do it a lot better. But that's not easy to convey until someone actually hires you. So it's a chicken and the egg sort of, sort of problem you have. And it becomes, as you submit for jobs, a matter of how do I get myself out of this commodity positioning that, that, that I'm in? And ultimately, is my only option to just offer a lower bid?

Right.

And that's just a race to the bottom. I do something very specific for specific types of clients. And again, I did not expand. And so that has come with a lot of advantages as a business. One, I'm in a niche. and I don't have many direct competitors. I have some and some very good ones.

Right.

But I don't have as many as if I was a general economist, and I certainly don't have as many as if I was an architect or, you know, I don't have as many competitors. 2, because I don't really need to meet this massive payroll, I have, you know, like I don't need anyone near as much work to keep me busy and successful. I have more leverage from a pricing standpoint. And frankly, you know, if there's a would-be client that seems like they're going to be not easy, I could just say no.

That's right.

Or, and this is the best part, if there's a client that's really just become very difficult, I could fire them, right? If I had to meet a payroll, you know, and frankly, if I was a commodity, I wouldn't have as much room to do that. And my personality, for better or for worse, I need to have that room. I don't, again, for better or for worse, suffer fools gladly. And there's a reason why I went out on my own and didn't want to have a boss. And so the freedom to kind of say no is something I cherish and might not have been possible if I had to feed a lot of mouths, you know.

So, well, but that freedom doesn't come without, you know, sort of high quality work and knowing your niche well and being able to tell that story well. Yeah. You call out something that's That's so important, but often gets overlooked, which is, you know, being the best. That's kind of hard to prove. And oftentimes, like, being better, being the best, like, that's on a scale that usually clients, especially in, you know, sort of enterprise professional services, they don't know until after they've hired someone whether they got the best or the better even. And so it's really hard to prove from a sales perspective. However, if you're the only, that's got a real difference to it because that, you know, allows it to be a lot easier comparison instead of it's just a scale or shades of gray of being better versus, you know, which one of them is the darkest of those shades versus, well, they're the only blue one. Right.

Yeah.

And then it becomes a lot easier to say, and if I want blue, that's the choice for me.

That's who I gotta go to.

That's right. And so often, like, uh, the businesses that take the time to understand their onlyness, uh, and then come through with that and everything that they talk about and, and are willing to say, we're not for everyone, we're for people that are looking for blue.

Yeah.

That understand, you know, and you talked about the market dynamics of your space that, you know, it's a specific dynamic that requires the type of solutions that you offer. You only do it for a specific type of customer. And so if you find yourself in that situation, we should be in a conversation that gives you so much more credibility going into that first conversation than just, oh, if you own property, we should talk.

Yeah, I mean, I think from a sales perspective, there's, um, there's a certain level of credibility you get just by saying, oh, actually, I don't do that. I know someone who does.

That's right.

Right? Because it implies confidence. Whereas if you're saying, oh yeah, I could do that, I could do it. I mean, is that client necessarily going to trust you as much or think that you're just desperate for work?

Right?

And so So I think, yeah, I think, and I also would add to that, Mark, not only really getting really precise about who you do serve and who you don't, but finding the platforms that will help you to elevate yourself against competitors that you do have. I won't deny that when I first started doing this, yeah, I was a nobody in my field. I mean, and I had to do a lot of hustling, a lot of versions of cold calling. I mean, I didn't cold call, but like I'd go to conferences and I'd have to be the one initiating the conversations. And it's very awkward. And it's, you know, and it's like, it's like dating when you're single, you have to be used to rejection. Um, but I think there were a few things that I discovered. At first, there was a bunch of different conferences I could go to, right? You know, and I said, and you can't go to all of them. Right. And I decided, you know what, I'm gonna pick one organization and go every year so that maybe not now, but within a few years I'll start to be seen as a fixture. I'm gonna go to every one and then I'm gonna always try to speak at every one in some way or another, whether it's like, you know, I wasn't gonna get keynotes at that stage, but on a panel. But something which elevated me Which positioned me as an expert, and which made the price worth it because you have to pay money to go to these conferences. Right?

Right.

I always so I always made sure to market to to you know to speak at every conference, and then and then I realized also that you know first when I would go to conferences, I'd be like wait a second no work came out of that conference.

Right.

And I had to content myself with the reality that it's not going to happen immediately. This is the long play, and eventually. It will hit a certain inflection point where it will start coming. And it did. That was about the 4-year mark, right? It just started coming. And then the last thing I'll say is that as I've been doing this now for a while, I try to stay at that elevated perch by always taking the time to do writing and speaking. Which again, which doesn't bring in much money at all. It doesn't, but from a marketing perspective, it keeps you as that, you know, in that elevated position. So, so yeah.

This has been a super interesting conversation, Michael. I've really enjoyed it. I know our audience has gotten a lot out of it, but we got to be mindful of your time.

But to wrap this up, tell us a little bit about what's something that's on the horizon for you that you're excited I mean, I think that as, you know, I've now been doing consulting work for about, you know, on my own for about 22 years. I still can't believe I say that. And I still really like it. But I do want to get my ideas out to a larger audience. You know, like when you do work for a Client, you know, okay, the developer gets your expertise, the project ultimately gets built, and that's exciting. But I, you know, I want those ideas to have an even broader platform. So I've definitely been— and all— so as I've had to market my consulting work less, as I've had to hustle less, as I get more referrals and repeat clients, um, I've shifted some of my time allocation to more public speaking, annual meetings, more writing in industry publications.

Right.

And again, that of course helps with the marketing of the consulting business, but that's not the main reason I'm doing it. I think I just reached a point where I kind of just want to get my ideas out to a larger audience. And so I'm really excited about that. You know, I mean, I it it's you know whether you know game published. You know, I wrote an article in Market Watch, which is part of Dow Jones, and you know, and I spoke last week at an annual meeting in Tampa. That that sort of stuff again doesn't bring in much money, right? But you know, since I don't have to worry about that as much anymore, that's kind of. The way I, I feel like taking— the direction I would feel like taking things in.

So that is— yeah. Well, so for those in our audience that maybe want to talk with you about a speaking engagement or, uh, an opportunity to, to write something, how can they get in touch with you?

Well, so I, I kind of have 2 websites. The, the, the website that is just for the consulting is just www.consultmjb.com. Right, that's just for consulting. Um, but for the speaking and the writing, um, uh, there's another website, www.michaeljberne.com. Berne, you know, so it's M-I-C-H-A-E-L-J-B-E-R-N-E. I noticed a lot of people now spell Michael E-A-L. Uh, that seems to be increasingly common, but I'm still the old M-I-C-H-A-E-L, and then J, and then B-E-R-N-E. And that— and my, you know, my email, uh, will be on those sites. You could reach out to me that way, mikeberne@consultmjb.com.

Fantastic. We'll have those in the show notes as well.

That's terrific. Yeah.

Well, Michael, thank you so much for joining us. I've really enjoyed our conversation and learning more about your work.

Thanks for having me, Mark. This has been fun.

Talk to you soon. Thank you for joining this episode of the B2B Growth Blueprint podcast. We hope you've gained insights to grow your business. If you enjoyed this discussion, please rate, comment, like on your favorite platform, and share to others who will find it useful. Do you know a CEO, founder, or leader at an early-stage B2B services, tech, or SaaS company who would like to be a guest and share their story, send us a note. Let's schedule a conversation.