50: The Best of Real Estate Investing Live From New York

Welcome. This is Real Estate Investing Live from New York with James Nelson, the principal and head of Avis and Young's Tri State Investment Sales Group. In this program, you'll learn about the world of commercial real estate and find.

Out why it is one of the.

Largest investment opportunities in New York and around the world. Now, here is your host, James Nelson.

Welcome to show number 50 of real estate Investing Live from New York. This is your host, James Nelson. Unbelievable. I cannot believe it's we're coming up on a year I have had so much fun doing this. I have to thank each and every one of you for your support throughout spreading the word. It has been amazing. You know, this really started as a passion project for me. I listened out there for other real estate shows and there's a lot of, you know, how to get rich quick or how to flip homes. But I really wanted to do a show that taught the listeners how to actually invest and operate commercial real estate, how to actually do it. And I know we've really accomplished that, not only with some incredible legends in the business that we've heard about, not just their empires or portfolios today, but how do they start out? What was that first deal like? And I know a lot of you out there can certainly identify, as can I, about, you know, some of those early investments. And I think what we've come away with and definitely during this challenging time trying to recover through this pandemic is finding out how did these investors come back from hard times. Many of them have lived through many cycles and how have they been able to succeed in any market? And we've heard from legends like Bruce Ratner, Scott Rechler, Rick Clark, Frances Greenberger, Marianne Gilmartin, the list goes on and on. And so I thought for our 50th anniversary show to have segments, and we're gonna take you through some of the clips from these interviews where you're going to hear the advice that they're giving to not only the new investors, but to many of you out there who are maybe veterans in the industry and looking to step up your game. So I could not be more excited for the future. And so I think you're going to really love this show. And with that, we're going to have a quick word from our sponsor and we'll be right back. Thank you again.

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To launch our first ever show. I'm thrilled to have Bruce Ratner join us. Bruce is a true legend in the industry and visionary. He's had a hand in some of the largest New York City developments including the Barclays arena in his Pacific Park 4 million square foot planned development. Since he co founded Forest City Ratner in 1985, his company has built around 50 ground up projects in the city including New York's tallest modular tower, the New York times building, the 16 acre metro tech office complex, and a Frank Gehry apartment tower just to name a few. He was even an owner of the Brooklyn Nets until as of late. Above all, he's someone who gives back, most notably as chairman of the Museum of Jewish Heritage and and is also on the board of Sloan Kettery and Weill Cornell. Bruce, thanks so much for joining us today.

Thank you for having me. Very nice of you.

Thinking back to when you first got in the business and many of our listeners are aspiring investors and thinking about how do they get into this, where do they start? I mean to think about doing a project of many million square feet. And yes there was those earlier syndications, but what advice would you give to someone who wants to become investor?

So it's very interesting. Just before coming here I met with a young man who a friend of mine son and he wants to go into the development business. He had run restaurants before and a smart young man. I think it's critical to realize what you don't know and to be very humble about it. I mean, not that I'm humble, but people probably would or wouldn't call me that, but I always had a sense of what I didn't know and I would talk to as many people as possible. So I must have talked to half a dozen lawyers who did syndications. I looked at probably 30 buildings before I Bought that first building, the Herald Tribune building. I interviewed many construction companies, talked to a lot of architects. I also did a lot of stuff myself. Even the arena we had when we decided, for a bunch of reasons, we couldn't do the original Geary arena because it included building four buildings around it at the same time, they were all attached. So we had to detach the buildings and build something that was just an arena alone. And we wound up switching architects. Not because Frank was too expensive. He's a friend and he doesn't. It wasn't expensive. We had to do it, really, the four buildings around. So to make that building, the building without the four buildings around, fit on the site. I took home. This is, you know, whatever, 12, 14 years ago, I had everybody in my office give me 10 arenas, give me their dimensions. And at home over the weekend, I figured out which one was the best one to be the model for fitting in. So I always kept my hands involved in every aspect of it. And I like to say I'm not. I think I'm pretty good at delegating, but when there's a problem, I dig in and I. So the thing is, you need to get. I don't want to say your hands dirty because it's a. Not. That's the wrong expression. But you need to make sure to collect rents yourself sometime and see what it's like to collect a rent. You need to do leases and work with the lawyers and actually negotiate the leases. You need to work with the architects and be able to sort of hand sketch a layout yourself. You need to understand the dimensions of an office building, what the space from the elevator to the window are. In residential, you have to know what layouts sell. You have to find out what other construction, what other developments going on. So we were. Once, we decided we wanted to do this particular type of residential building. We wanted to do condominiums at one point. And I had people in my office go around, pull every single site in the city which had a construction fence around it or had any kind of permit. And we figured out that we better not build condominiums or we were going to wind up in competition with a lot of other companies. Of course, what happened was the 089, thank God we didn't build them. But we always did a lot of research. Research was critical to us. Job market stuff. I would look every single month at job growth in the city. So job growth was minimal. 10,000 jobs a year, 20,000. Sometimes it was negative. And I would project that against vacancies. So we Would do a lot of the work ourselves. And you need to really understand the details of what's going on. The details are really important. I know in your business, it's the same thing. You can't skip steps. And so I always immersed myself intensely in the numbers. I was always very aware of all the employment numbers of the residents. Of whether or not people were moving in the city, moving out of the city, who was moving in the city, who was moving out of the city. We knew every single company that was thinking about moving out. So the knowing. Really spending the hard time and understanding construction. I didn't come out of a construction background, but I really tried to understand it and the cost, how much it cost to build and coming up with. I was good at computer stuff. So our company's one of the first ones to be really computerized and so on. So it's. The details of understanding it are really important. And now I have to say I probably don't get as involved in the details, But I still like the details. If there's a problem, I'm in the details.

No. Well, it's fantastic advice to our listeners. And you're a real inspiration. I just want to.

I want to say one other thing. So I tried to run a company that believed that people who worked there had to be. I used to say, you can't go home with the anxiety that you have in your stomach. I don't want you to go home with all that kind of anxiety. If the anxiety is caused by the people you work with, you can't go home that way. You need to be in an environment that's very comfortable. You don't feel threatened. I understand. If there's a business problem that's outside of us, sure, we're going to have anxiety. I don't want you to go home worrying about what's going on with respect to your fellow employees. So that's why I had. I had rules. I had A rule was family and friends first and health number one, you need to take off. I never, in the very beginning, for years, until I got CFO who demanded it. I would not keep track of whether some were. Took 10 days off or 20 days off. People did kind of. We didn't. We were informal. Our company. But I always say our company. By the time I, you know, sold. And for four cities sold, 50% of the management were women. The head of the company, Maren Gilmartin, was a woman. One of the few, probably almost the only large development company that A woman that headed it. And it Wasn't because we had any kind of affirmative action. We ran a meritocracy. And so. And we were always 100% union. I happen to have, that's my views. The union is what made the middle class in New York City and in Long island and New Jersey. It is. It's the unions that created the pay scale. Now people can say a lot of negative things about unions. They're not necessarily all. They're not. There's as many abuses in businesses as there are in unions. It's no different really. It's people. And so I was, you know, again. And also I didn't insist on it, but everybody wound up having nonprofit affiliations that they spent their other time with. So. And I probably a third of my time was always spent in the nonprofit world. And it made for a company that was people work to get. We worked together for most people 20, 25 years. And in the entire time, I think the most amount of people we had in the development part of the company was probably, and management was probably 200 people. And so. And we have annual reunions and we get 200 people, 180 people show up. And I don't think in my entire time, the total number of employees, if you add them all together, was more than 300. Very few people left. And people have gone on from our company and gotten excellent jobs. And the most important thing, I think is your employees and the people you work with are the most. You know, I once said when we had the arena, I said to the. I gave a little talk to the employees at the arena and I said, who's the most. When you open the doors, when we open the doors in the beginning of a day or evening, whatever it is, who's the most important person? And they all say, oh, the customer. I said, no, no, no, it's you. You're the most important person. And we had the employees at the arena trained by Disney. And you know, as I said, everything we did was union. And I believe in that. And I know people critical of it. And it was very hard to compete, by the way, in the development world toward the last, you know, X years because we were all union. You know, people were building residential buildings that were non union, very hard to compete and we probably made lower returns because of it. But I will say it created an environment where we got, in my view, the very best employees and people. It was a family. We had a company that was like one large family. And so. And that to me, and people from all walks of life, you know, ethnic backgrounds and so on. So that to me, I think there's nothing more important than, than having a company where people that work there are treated fairly and feel a part of it and you relate to personally. My door is always open, but it's true. I would walk around the office and I get calls still from people who used to work for me that need help in the healthcare area where I'm somewhat involved and getting connections and so on. And to me that's more important than the money. Frankly, the money was always, I can't say it wasn't important. It was important, but it never was. What never? I never aspired to be the richest person or it never mattered to me really that much. I was lucky and got fortunate, but that wasn't the important part of it.

So now it's time for our Investor Spotlight here on real estate investing. Live from New York, thrilled today to have Marianne gilmartin who is CEO of L&L Mag, a New York based real estate development company she founded with David Levinson and Robert Lapidus. And prior to L&L Mag, Marianne served as president and CEO of four City Ratner companies. Marianne is also a civic leader in New York, serving as member on the Brooklyn Academy of Music, vice chair for New York Public Radio. Always great to see a radio fan with us today and on rebny. Throughout her career, Marianne has been recognized as a top professional in her field and was honored in 2017 with REBNY's prestigious Bernie Mendick Lifetime Leadership Award. She's made multiple appearances on Crain's New York Business list of top 50 most powerful women and also on the Commercial Observer's Power 100 list. So Marianne, really fabulous to have you on the show with us today.

It's a pleasure to be here.

Well, it's been amazing to watch and again, just in two short years, not only to start this new venture but then to have two projects underway. More to come. I mean, just so fantastic. We only have a minute or two left but would love for our listeners on the show, if you had advice out there for the aspiring investor, someone starting out, what would you say to them?

I'll give you the developer quest I think is a three legged stool. I think good developers know construction, marketing or financing. I think that if you nail one of those three and you're really good at the debt and equity or you're really good at the leasing and the marketing where you're strong on construction, you can develop a mastery of the other two. But you know, just to focus on what do I do first? How do I get into a business like this? Pick one of those three major areas and then become adept in that area. And then you can leverage that expertise and get yourself into the world of the other two components. It is the best job in the world, if you ask me, just because you're touching all of these amazing disciplines and you are core to the, to the overall effort. So I love what I do. It's all that I know. And I would say don't underestimate the power of the people involved in what we do and connections and relationships. And I don't mean in the networking sense. I mean you are, your word is your bond and that, you know, reputations take a lifetime to build and an instant to destroy. And it turns out that if you are a person of integrity and you're good at what you do and you keep your word and you're a decent humanoid, it matters in the business that we do. So real estate is a much more elevated game than it was when I started. And so I think it's a really important profession in our city because the built environment is what makes New York City an amazing place. So we have a duty and we ought to think of ourselves as civic builders, not just builders for profit. And if you can do that, I think New York's an incredible canvas.

Well, that is incredible, incredible advice. And I'm also going to. I know our listeners are going to remember that story of tracking down the US Postal office in the Caribbean. And tenacity, I think, is what you said, and that was always my grandfather's advice to me, is that stick to itiveness. So this has been a really fantastic discussion. Thank you so much for joining us on the show.

Well, I'm honored that you had me here. And the podcast is important because it gives people an opportunity to learn a lot. And so I commend you for your efforts to pull the right people in the room to have the conversation. So thank you.

Wonderful.

And now it's time for our investor spotlight and honored to have with us today Don Peebles, who is recognized as one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the nation. Don is founder, chairman and CEO of the Peebles Corporation, one of the country's few privately held national real estate investment and development companies. Mr. Peebles engages in the practices of affirmative development with a multi billion dollar project portfolio. Projects in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, D.C. charlotte, Miami, San Fran, and LA. He's also the author of two top selling books, which I definitely recommend. You got to check these out. The Peebles Principles and the Peebles Path to Real Estate Wealth. He's also a regular guest on such shows as CNN and Fox. He's passionate about mentoring programs. And so he's really, we're thrilled to have him on the show today to talk to our audience. So, Don, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

We only have a couple minutes left and again, I got to urge everyone to read your books, but maybe talk about what advice would you give to someone listening right now who's trying to start off trying to get into the business? What would you tell them?

I would tell them to get themselves in the mix. Now's a good time. Don't be discouraged by the pandemic, the volatility in the stock market and the news that's constantly going. I mean, this is really the first time in this country where we've had a global pandemic, where we have been in a 24 hour news cycle. What cable television did when it entered the scene in the 1970s, it created this demand for content. And so you went from a handful of channels to almost a thousand channels. And so a lot of them are news channels. And so there's a demand to be on the air for 24 hours and there's not enough breaking news to be on the air for 24 hours. So it's creative and they get on issues like our pandemic and they constantly, constantly recycle and so ignore them. I mean, the reality is that we as a society are going to survive this. And by the way, if we didn't survive it, the money will be worthless anyway. So don't be discouraged by that. But to look where there are opportunities, look in your own communities where there are opportunities. And when you have that instinct that there's an opportunity, quickly vet it. And if that vetting demonstrates that there's an opportunity, act upon it. Don't sit on the sidelines and say, oh wow, this is a good opportunity. Talk about it to your friends and family and don't do anything about it. Seize the moment, because this moment won't come back for quite a while and the people who buy will be rewarded. I mean, you know, I bought Tesla and I'm not even in the stock market that much, but I bought Tesla within dollars of its worst moment. In March, I made and I sold. I shouldn't have, but I sold when it was just under $800 and now it's about almost a thousand, but I sold and made over 100% of my money. But in theory, no one's buying many cars. So you have to react and be contrary and stick to where you think things will level off at and so act on the opportunities and get familiar with an industry and aggressively pursue it. I mean, there is in these times of uncertainty, that's when great wealth is created. And you normally in real estate, for example, you create real estate on the buy side, you buy it well and then when the market stabilizes, the scary passes, you get rewarded for taking that risk and the reward is exponential.

So now it's time for our investor spotlight.

And with us today, thrilled to have Francis Greenberger I've had the pleasure of.

Knowing for almost two decades. Francis is the founder and CEO of Time Equities Incorporated, a multi billion dollar.

Real estate investment and development company, as well as chairman of the Sanford J.

Greenberger Associates, a literary agency representing some of the most successful writers of our time.

He's also the founder of two important not for profit organizations, the oh my.

International Arts center and the Greenberger center.

For Social and Criminal Justice. He has served on the board of over 15 nonprofit organizations for the arts, education and criminal justice reform and most recently the author of Risk Self Portrait.

Of an Entrepreneur, who I've read now for the second time and so really thrilled, Frances to have you with us.

Thank you so much.

My pleasure to be here. James, Wonderful.

So looking throughout your whole career and really defining what has made you successful.

What would you say those key attributes are?

Well, we've touched on them really to some degree. You know, I always, I often give lectures to groups of college students and talk about entrepreneurship. And what I say is that in my experience, being an entrepreneur requires three things. First, it requires a tolerance for risk. So if you're uncomfortable with risk, you're uncomfortable with borrowing money, don't become an entrepreneur. Got a good job. You can make a major contribution and you can go home at night, depending on your level of responsibility and not be worried. But if you feel that you can tolerate risk and it's not going to make you crazy, people often say to me, how do I sleep at night? I sleep fine. I sleep fine. Particularly when I know I've done my very, very best in whatever the circumstances might be on whatever I'm working on or whatever project, I've done my very best to solve whatever problems. So as long as I've acted responsibly, I can tolerate a lot of risk. The next thing that I always tell people is what we talked about before, that you have to be creative, you can't think generically. You can't do what everybody else is doing because there'll be people in the market that are much bigger than you, more established. Those are the ones that sort of can compete on price. They have access to cheap capital because of their size. And the average entrepreneur cannot be a capital accumulator and control assets on, on that basis. If you're Blackstone, you can do that or some of these. Not that they're not ambitious about their returns, but the average entrepreneur is not in that position. And the last thing I always tell people is that you have to be lucky, luck counts and so tolerate risk, be creative in your thinking and be a little or a lot lucky. And those are the ingredients you need to be a successful entrepreneur. And that's part of what I think has made me successful. I've also always had, I've always valued integrity as a very important value. My mentor in the real estate business was a man named Charles Bennison. And Charlie, as a lot of people knew him, had an outstanding reputation for his integrity. And it's part of what appealed to me about him personally as well as his business ethic. And I tried to adopt that. And I try to apply a sense of fair dealing with all of the people that impact all the stakeholders in my business, whether they're investors or banks or number one, really the people I work with because they're investing their lives in what we're doing. And I try to be fair with everybody, not take advantage. Doesn't mean I don't like a good deal, but I try to be fair when I have to make judgments. And when you're in business, you often have to make judgments.

And now it's time for our investor spotlight today. Thrilled to have with us Susan Hewitt. Susan has over 30 years experience as a developer, manager and investor in New York City's residential market. In 1993 she founded the Cheshire Group, a real estate development, investment and advisory company specializing in New York metro area multifamily properties. Susan has been involved in and rent regulated apartments, market rate cooperatives, condos for sale and has been involved in some recent conversions here as well as her latest endeavor is entitling the new Islanders arena in Belmont. So thank you for doing that and bringing the Islanders back to the island. I'm sure got a lot of happy sports fans listening in as well.

It's been incredibly fun.

So over your career, what we, what would you say has been your key to success? Ooh boy, it's your chance to just double handed pat on the back just, you know.

I return my phone calls.

You know what, that's actually, you know, it starts with that. Right. You'd be surprised how many people do not.

Jennifer, my business partner and I joke that the two things that all it takes for us to think you're wonderful is do what you say you're going to do and return your phone calls that turns out to put you miles ahead of everybody else.

Right.

It sounds like also doing your research and really getting into the project. And yes, you call it coordinating, but it sounds like you're not just kind of up above and let everyone else deal with the details. You're getting in the weeds.

Work with good people and give credit to good people because it is fundamentally a people business and we're in a small market. I mean, New York is a very big market, but basically the real estate universe. Not quite everybody knows everybody, but if you don't treat people fairly, everybody will hear about it.

Yeah.

I mean, it's reputation is the only thing you have in the business. And I think it's great advice. And for those of our listeners looking to start out, what would be your advice to them today?

My advice would be find something that.

You.

Know about, have an angle about, are able to understand whether it's because of your age or where you live, or if you have an uncle who runs a business in a part of town and sort of sees what's going on, tap into that. Particularly right now in the market, there's plenty of money. There's more money than ideas right now. There's plenty of bank financing available. So what's scarce are sort of deep understanding of what's happening in a certain area. So if you're able to see, like we were talking before, what Uber would do to West Chelsea or Red Hook.

Right.

Nobody would have lived in Red Hook because you needed a car.

Right.

So if you can find an area that you feel like you really.

For.

Some reason is likely to benefit from demographic change or economic change, I mean, the sort of big boom and bust obvious one would be Amazon and Long Island City. Right. Wow. People were suddenly crazed. But things like that. And by the way, Long Island City is probably still poised.

Right. Something's gonna happen on the waterfront. It's right there.

Yeah.

And then invest. So sort of pick a general area, whether it's a geographic area or a thing that you understand. Like, you know, I know how restaurants work and therefore I'm gonna specialize in looking at things that will work especially well for restaurants or what have you. Then you can kind of concentrate and if you're able to buy one or two projects on a basis that sort of don't blow it out of the water but just sort of make fundamental sense, you can kind of develop a working network of relationships and knowledge so that over time you'll be able to buy your next project more economically or you'll have learned some inexpensive and hopefully not too painful lessons. Then over 10 years, whatever the demographic change is that you tapped into will wash over it.

Now it's time for our Investor spotlight and wonderful today to have my good friend Jordan Vogel here with us. Jordan is principal and co founder, founder of Benchmark Real Estate Group. In addition to co founding and being the managing member, he oversees all the acquisitions for the firm and has purchased over a billion dollars of residential real estate in New York City since he established the company in 2009. Prior to Benchmark, he was with SG2 Properties. So, Jordan, welcome so much to the show. Thank you for joining us.

Thanks for having me.

What advice would you give to the aspiring investor?

Buy.

Okay? Buy anytime.

Or I mean right now, buy.

Do it. There's many, many people that waste many, many years talking themselves out of doing a deal.

Okay.

And there is a benefit of real estate that I've made it sound today as if everything challenging. But you have a very good inflation hedge. You have a asset that is cash flowing. And so long as you don't over lever the deal, you will own it forever. And that's been tested and true over time.

And so I meet with so many.

Young people who say, I can't find anything. Everything's too expensive and very hard. The hardest thing is drawing the line what constitutes too expensive or what doesn't. But I'll tell you the secret. Overpay.

You have to.

If you do not overpay, the winner of the deal is always the person willing to pay the most. You have to be very careful not to over lever it. But you don't also want to waste.

Your early career, your early days, talking.

Yourself out of a deal. Because there's not a. I've never bought.

A deal where I didn't wake up.

The morning of the closing thinking, am I closing on a deal that's too expensive? Even today, there's literally never been 49 straight deals. I believed even on that Soho deal at 281 a foot, I overpaid for that one, too. Time will tell. If you over lever, you may have some trouble. But if you overpay a little bit, it means your cash on Cash returns may be slightly lower. You just have to jump in somewhere.

Now it's time for our investor spotlight. I'm here with Ian Ross who founded Samara Road in 2014. I had the chance to hear him speak to REBNY's Sales Brokers Committee a few weeks back and was blown away. I've known Ian for some time, but he has an incredible story which I know you all will enjoy hearing. Before founding Sumar Road, Ian was Managing Director at Triangle Capital Group where he focused on purchasing hard real estate non performing loans and securitized mortgage products. Before that he was an analyst for Jefferies and companies in their investment banking division. He has an MBA from Wharton and before that had graduated with honors from Emory and a really impressive charitable background as well, giving back at Manhattan's Community Board 5 where he sits on the quality of life and Transportation committees. He's also the founder and chairman of the Asperger's Awareness Council, a 501c3 founded in 2009 to raise awareness for high functioning forms of autism. So Ian, welcome. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Thanks for having me. One of my favorite things to do is sit in a broker's office in a market that I haven't been in before.

Before.

The right brokers are extraordinarily passionate about the market they invest in or not. Excuse me, they work in. I love when they pull the map up on the screen and we just sit there for probably an hour and a half, two hours and we break it down. Where are people living? Where are people working? Where do they go out? Where are the cool trendy coffee shops and bars? Where's the creative office today? What's going on downtown? What's going on in the suburbs? Where do your worker bees live? Where do your decision makers live? What are the nicest suburbs? What are the up and coming neighborhoods that are regentrifying? Where is that downtown multifamily occurring? Is it occurring? What's the retail story here right now? Where is the industrial component? Where is the airport? Where's the convention center? Where are the sports teams? What do people do here on the weekend? How does this market function and work? How do people work within this market? So I've done that probably in 30 some odd markets around the country myself. Honestly, it's one of my favorite things to do, to sit there and learn a market and talk a market. As a follow on to that, my team is probably reading 50 local real estate rags a day broken down by the markets they're covering. But they're expected to. If you're covering Memphis, you're reading the two or three Memphis business journals and you're following the Memphis grizzlies. You got to know your market, you got to know what's going on. And it's not like New York City where 50 leases are signed a day or there's a bunch of transactions every day, but you got to know what's happening and you got to know what's going on in that market.

And now it's time for our investor spotlight.

And today I am thrilled to have.

With us Aisha Selden who's got an incredible story. She's a huge influencer out there. So urge you to definitely check her out on her social media channels. And we'll get into the interview and she'll tell you how to follow her. But I love this bio or that the words that she has on her homepage@aishaselton.com which is born in the projects. Introverted comedian, Instagram and Twitter legend, certified financial planner, millionaire landlord, has it, flaunts it.

So welcome, Aisha.

Thank you. Thank you, James, for having me.

You have an incredible story. This has been a really, really incredible, inspiring story again for our listeners. We only have a couple minutes left. So what advice would you give to someone and maybe to the college student.

Who'S out there right now?

And, and when you were telling your story about buying something for the first time with 108% financing, and I forgot to ask you at the time, so I'll ask you now in closing, but do those deals even exist today? So if someone doesn't have the money to put down right now, how would you advise them to jump in and get in the game?

I'm a little sorry about that. Can you hear me okay? I'm a little, I'm a little old school in the sense that even though I didn't have to finance my deal with cash, I had the cash. So when people, people ask me that a lot, like, you know, how do I, because you'll hear these gurus out there. Like I've heard I can buy a property with no credit and no money down. You know, so how can I do that? My response to that is don't, like, go save some capital and fix your credit first. Because I think that there are a ton of issues that we can come up against as real estate investors. And I think that having first the discipline to be able to accumulate enough money to acquire real estate will take you a long way in being an owner and being A landlord. And in being an investor, some really good advice that I'd have for somebody who's in, in college right now is there's a. I recently wrote a book that is specifically for new investors. I mean it is, it's the book that every like 15 to 22 year old should read. It's like the book I wish I had when I was, when I was a kid. It's called Mud to millions and it's the number two. It's on Amazon either through paperback or Kindle. I would go read that book. It's the stuff that is first about mindset. I say all the time that mindset is the genesis of wealth creation and it talks a lot about all the things that you need to think about to be a successful investor. It tells a little bit of my story and it's a super quick book. Self help books are extremely boring for me. They're usually too long. I'm like, what the hell is this guy talking about? So it's a super quick read. It's a fun read, It's a fast read. It's my story. Some of the things I've shared on our talk here are documented in the book. A little bit more at length. That's some great advice. There's a ton of jewels in there that I think would benefit folks.

Now it's time for our investor spotlight here on real estate investing. Live from New York, I'm your host James Nelson on the Voice America network today. Thrilled to have with us my good friend Dan Hurwitz, who's founder and CEO of Raider Hill Advisors. Dan, thanks so much for joining us here today.

Thank you, James. It's a pleasure to be here.

Sure.

What would you say above all are your keys to success?

I think overall the most important thing is to really embrace diversity of thought. I really do. I think diversity of thought and look at projects not to the way everyone else is looking at them, but the way you really think they ought to be looked at. Understanding that there are different perspectives on different aspects of real estate on a regular basis and the opportunity is there. You know, you may not see it. Somebody 20 years your junior might see it and you better listen if you want to do well. I think what happens very often is people get very set in their mind like no, I can't do this project in Scranton, but you can. And you can not only make money, but you can do good for the community and you can help build your brand. You can help do certain things. So I think diversity of thought is probably the most important thing listening and surrounding yourself with really smart people much smarter than yourself and then letting them go to work work and listening to what they have to say doesn't mean you'll always agree. And sometimes you'll bitterly disagree and you have to make decisions. That's why you're the CEO. But often the people you surround yourself with will make you better. And if you recognize that it'll take you a long way in real estate.

That'S fantastic and incredible advice. And we're all almost out of time. The last piece of advice that you would give one of our listeners on the show. And again, maybe they're not in real estate. Now I know you said go to the organizations and that's great, but putting together that first real estate deal, what's a piece of advice you could give them to make it happen?

Well, the most important thing I think is that people can't trade on headlines. Do your home homework, look at the real estate, evaluate it the best way you feel you can and ignore the background noise. Don't listen to just the headlines. Don't listen to what people, the talking heads might say here, the talking heads might say there. If they were so smart, they wouldn't be talking heads, right?

They'd be putting their money where their mouth is.

They'd be out investing in real estate and hopefully doing well for themselves. So I think don't trade on headlines and trust your instincts and surround yourself with smart people and you'll be just fine.

A Different Approach to Putting Our Clients First Avis and Young's Tri State Investment Sales Group sells multi family office, retail development and specialty sales throughout the New York metro area. As experienced thought leaders in their industry, our 35 member group is available to help you make informed investment decisions by advising you on your current holdings or identifying new opportunities in the marketplace. Our one unified team is built on an industry unique platform which promotes unparalleled collaboration and teamwork. We share core values of hard work, integrity and expertise. We put our clients first, providing tailor made strategies to achieve superior results. Please Visit us at aytristateinvestmentsales.com and follow us on Twitter LinkedIn and Instagram amesnelsonnyc to learn more. Thank you for tuning in this week to Real Estate Investing Live from New York. Please join your host James Nelson for another program next Tuesday at 7pm in New York, 4pm Pacific Time on the Voice America Business Channel. All shows are rebroadcast Wednesday mornings at 7am Eastern Time, 4pm Pacific Time as well as always on demand. We'll talk in again next week.