Lifelong Curiosity with Adam Gordon

Welcome. This is the Insider's Edge to Real Estate Investing with James Nelson, the principal and head of Avis and Young's Tri State Investment Sales Group. In this program you'll learn game changing strategies to outperform the market. James will teach you how to source, execute and capitalize on the best real estate opportunities in New York and around the world. Now, here's your host.

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Welcome to episode number 217 of the Insider's Edge to Real Estate Investing. This is your host, James Nelson. I'm principal and head of Tri State Investment Sales for Avison Young and thrilled to have back with us my friend, my mentor, Adam Gordon from Wildflower. And someone asked me a week or two ago, James, you've done over 200 episodes. Now tell me, what are one or.

Two of the episodes that just really were meaningful that you love to do?

Of course I love them all. But the one with Adam that we did back in early 21, I mean, you have to remember coming right out of COVID it was episode number 63 and I would definitely recommend going back and listening to that one first. We called it Pivot because Adam is one of the most creative thinkers that I know in the real estate business. He's done so many different things ranging from self storage to luxury residential to logistics. And now in this episode, in true to form since then, he's now become one of the largest EV charging developers here in New York City. And also just now opening up Wildflower Studios, this incredible film studio that he opened up with Robert De Niro. And he said that really the key to being successful in this business and successful in life is to be a lifelong learner and have that curiosity. And Adam talks about him this episode about asking questions. He says he likes to do the leasing because he wants to hear what the tenants are saying. And when he's building developing, he likes to ask all the people involved in the transactions, you know, questions to learn the business. That was certainly the case for the studio business. So I know, as always, you're going to learn a lot from this. Now you can go to james nelson.com. that's where you can find the show notes for this, how to connect with Adam. There's a lot of helpful resources there too. You can also sign up for the newsletter. That's where we aggregate everything we're doing each month, not just the podcast but the articles that we have posted in Forbes. A lot of exciting new things to come out so you're going to keep an ear out for that over the next couple months. So we're going to have a brief word from our sponsor and we'll get right into that interview with Adam Gordon.

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Hi everyone. Thrilled to have back with us today my friend Adam Gordon, who is Managing Partner of Wildflower limited and going back and asking and listening to some of our podcasts recommendations. Friends asked me, James, what's a podcast that I should listen to on the show? And I've pointed out the interview that I did with Adam entitled Pivot, which goes back to 2021. I said this is long overdue. So Adam, you're not only a friend, you're also a mentor of mine. And so just thank you so much for coming and sharing your wisdom with us today.

Thanks for having me.

James, I want to start actually on that topic of mentorship. I know it's something that you're passionate about. I know you posted on this recently this whole idea of paying it forward. So maybe if you could just expand a little bit on, you know, what are ways to mentor. If you're a mentee looking for guidance, what advice would you have for people?

I think a couple things. The first is for somebody at my stage in my career, I think about what makes me happy on a daily basis and it's kind of like they talk about the lottery winner who's unhappy wins a million dollars and four months later is back to being unhappy again. What makes people happy on a daily basis are little things. Whether it's your favorite coffee house or meal or I make time to talk to friends on a daily basis. And mentorship is another sort of for me, paying it forward. Because I had a mentor for over 20 years, we used to chat three times a week and he always gave me the best possible advice and counsel. And in fact, when I graduated from Wharton, I mocked up a degree with his name on it because I felt like without Alan Rinseld, I wouldn't have gotten kind of where I am today. So having mentors is incredibly important. It's a skill to cultivate mentors. And I think one thing that I always say to young people is you've got to give back. Meaning the mentoring relationship is not merely a taking relationship, it's reciprocal. So when you go to speak to a mentor and you know things about your market, you've talked to a lot of people, share those things, share those tidbits, share a great podcast so that when the mentor walks away from it, he's learned something from it also and follow up and spend time and value their time and their advice. But a mentor can be somebody who doesn't have to have an alignment of interest with you, meaning they're not doing a deal with you, they're not your boss, they're not your parent. They're simply trying to be helpful to people out in the world. And I got a letter recently, recently, which I reposted on LinkedIn from somebody I had mentored who just closed his first deal and he was thanking me and it made my day. Wow.

Well, I could not agree more with you on the importance of mentorship, but also the fact that they're being a two way street. So sometimes mentees come into this thinking, okay, what can I get from this exchange? But as a mentee, and we have a lot of aspiring real estate investors who listen to this. And when you're looking for mentorship, I think bringing something to the table is an important piece. But, you know, the reason why, Adam, you've been such an incredible mentor to me is you're truly a deep thinker and someone who's always thinking ahead. You know, again, in our first episode, and for all you listening who have not heard that initial interview, I'd go back and listen to that first as a kind of a primer for this. Again, we entitled it Pivot. And you know, over my 25 year career, I've dealt with a lot of incredible real estate investors, developers. I have never met someone who has been involved in all, you know, the different types of businesses that you've been involved with, from self storage to ultra high end residential to logistics, now to Wildflower Studios, which, which I know we're going to get a chance to talk about today. But Adam, what is it that that drives you to always be trying out new things? And is that, and I know real estate's only one of your many interests, so what is it that drives you?

I'm an intensely curious person and so I get curious about things and then hop down a rabbit hole of learning. And that, that could be anything. It could be. I have an interest in cars. I haven't. I raised Japanese wagyu beef out in California. Knights Alley Wagyu. And it's real estate. And so an afternoon is going to find me the sofa with our two Pekingese, maybe reading monocle or watching a YouTube video or learning, listening, reading, trying to understand how things work. So for example, when we started researching e commerce, there's an enormous amount of information out there from the, the deep thinkers in that business like Hamid Mogadon at prologis. And so I read everything I could read. Then I got research reports. Then I looked at an industry association and attended conferences. So I did a lot of research. I talked to as many tenants as could talk to me. And just like we were talking about in mentorship, as I started talking to people and learning things, I would share what I learned with those people so that we began to have a reciprocal relationship. And I find this process for me keeps my career interesting. But it also has over time kept us at Wildflower thinking about what's next and what's coming and getting involved in businesses in, in a way which is helpful to, to New York and to, and to the firm.

So Adam, that makes a tremendous amount of sense. And again, the curiosity, the passion that, that really inspires you to, to make these moves and then doing the proper research. But what is amazing about your career is that not only are you entering into new asset classes, but then you're doing incredibly well with them. I mean, you are if I'm and the largest landlord here in New York, to Amazon with logistics. So not only were you able to enter this market, but then ultimately command a very strong market share. So without that track record, how are you able to get that confidence? And whether that's from investors, from potential tenants to demonstrate to them that you can actually execute on these ideas.

We are 17 jobs on time, on budget, in a row in Wildflower. One of the things that we've also developed is a system for bringing projects in on time and under budget. When we go to tenants, we go to them well informed and we go to them having thought through the questions that they need and the concerns that they have. And you know, as you get curious and I spend time with, with really successful people like you, you've, you develop good taste. And good taste includes good taste in locations and good taste in architects and building what tenants want. But I think that I tend to listen a lot. If you were to be with me and you sort of think about 100% being all the airspace, I'm definitely going to be taking up less than 50% of the space. So I'm on here chatting, but in general I'm going to be asking questions and I'm going to be learning because I want to always find out more. One of the reasons we've had such a good relationship with Amazon and we've done is we ask questions and then we try to be helpful and responsive and deliver on our commitments and then go above and beyond that. So that's not necessarily, even though I'm a New Yorker, a New York trait. People can be a little spiky in this city, but we don't have that attitude at all. We're very customer service focused and user friendly and we make it a point to be, to understand what, what people are thinking, what they're asking for, what they're looking for. And we, and we see it with a lot of our competitors. For example, in the e commerce business, they never ask tenants basic questions like what size space are you looking for? And so they build a lot of things that tenants don't want and then they're concerned and, and quizzical why their space is empty.

Well, and I'd love to maybe just some lessons learned with logistics. I mean, what were maybe some of your preconceptions going into it? And after doing the listening to the tenants, what was it that you learned?

E Commerce logistics. Last mile logistics, when you start to think about it at a high level, is people in Silicon Valley retraining your brains. So 20 years ago, if you wanted to buy something, you would fill out a form, you'd send out a check, or maybe you'd give them a credit card over the phone, or you'd send a credit card number in the mail and then your package arrived when it arrived. And by that I mean whenever it got there, a week, two weeks, a month, and that was the standard of care. Amazon and others, but particularly Amazon, spent literally billions of dollars retraining everyone's brain to say we want the widest selection, the lowest prices and the fastest delivery. This is all brand new. And they created almost a terror of not getting things quickly. And on time. So now you order something from Amazon and when you order it, it gives you the day it's going to arrive so that you know that this package is going to arrive Wednesday or Thursday because of this. The old warehouse model of goods coming in from wherever, sitting in a warehouse and then dribbling out didn't work. The modern e commerce warehouse could have 60 trucks going in an hour, in one side, filled up in the middle, out the other side and high throughput. Then the design of the warehouses matter. Amazon has a warehouse typology called SSD sub same day delivery, meaning if you need your toothbrush in two hours, that's highly automated to the point of robotics. And so they need super flat floors, they need 150,000ft sheet on one floor in New York City, which is very rare, and a series of other criteria that need to be observed. So understanding that and understanding that this is a whole new building typology was the first major revelation for us. So we, we built the first one on spec. Amazon came and then we kept going.

So Adam, talk a little bit about timing because you also have this kind of uncanny ability to spot these trends and then to, and I don't know, I wouldn't say maybe exit at the right time, but you know, you went from logistics and then maybe EV charging is kind of adjacent. Was that just. Did you see the opportunity in a space that no one was really exploring? I mean, how do you think about when is the right time to enter into a new asset class or a business plan?

Well, I, I didn't come here to give dating advice, but let me give some dating advice, which is don't forget to date your wife or your girlfriend or your boyfriend. Meaning that it's not enough to romance them when you're meeting them, you got to romance them all the way through the relationship. And that's the same thing with tenants and markets. So we're continually talking to tenants, we're continually researching, we're examining the markets, we're seeing what's going on in other places. And, and we're understanding not only where the party is, but when the party is going to be over. When we see declining demand, as we saw with Amazon, we stop building Amazon warehouses. And so understanding that it's not only an interest rate or an economic cycle, but it's also a life cycle of a tenant or a business is incredibly important. And so we tend to exit a little bit early rather than a little bit late in terms of EV charging. I, you know, I wanted to be a marine biologist or a field ecologist. I didn't originally want to go into business, and that wasn't an option of my household. My father said, if you want to be a marine biologist, go buy a fish tank. So I kind of triangulated in on that. So I sat on the director's cabinet at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla for many years. And out of the 27 people sitting on the director's cabin, I was the only one in real estate. And we used to get these horrific maintenance bills for this 70 acre oceanfront campus in La Jolla where Scripps at. And so one day I said, hey, has anybody really thought about a longer time scale and thought about what this campus needs for decades? So out of that original discussion came 100 year campus master plan. Because as you think about 100 years, you start to think differently about sea level rise, climate change, and also electrification, among other things. I had that mindset. And so, you know, importing your curiosity other places can be revealing. And the first meeting I had with Amazon, one of the questions that I asked them was, how do we keep you happy for 40 years instead of 10 years? And they said EV charging. And so when they said that and we started talking about their fleet EV needs, which hadn't arrived but were coming, we got into the EV charging business. And now to provide a service for the city of New York. And because it's urgent for us to have public EV charging because people in New York City don't have garages, we started. So we're developing the largest one in the city at JFK Airport. We've got one at LaGuardia where rebels are tenant. We're on our third at Hunts Point, which is where all our food comes in. And we see that, you know, as another piece of urban infrastructure and related to our urban logistic business.

Adam, how do you plan 20, 30, 40 years into the future when technology is changing so quickly? I mean, is EV charging even going to look the same way? Are the cars going to have new requirements even in five or 10 years? So how are you planning to make sure that this infrastructure is going to have that long of a lifetime?

Sure. Well, look, I, I'm, I saying this with a lot of humility. I'm not Nostradamus, so I can't, I can't predict the future, but I can say with reasonable certainty that electric vehicles are here and they are going to be the predominant form of vehicular transportation in, in the future. Exactly how many years out we don't know, but it's. It is happening. The. They're simpler, they have fewer parts, they're more efficient. So in order for electric vehicles to function, they need to be charged. I don't know what the last. What I call the last six feet looks like. Meaning, are they plugged in, are battery swapped? Do you hover? I don't think that really matters. What does matter is, is power needs to be brought to those sites. That's a very complex undertaking, particularly as our grid becomes more overtaxed with use and with AI.

So, Adam, I'm thinking about parallels in the execution of what you do. So, you know, you mentioned 18 projects on time, on budget. These are incredibly complex projects. So what is it about the way you plan, the way you execute, that you can have a track record like that?

So the goal at Wildflower is not to be the biggest. We certainly aren't. I'm not interested. We're big enough. What I try to do is have an integrated team, and by integrated team, acquisitions, development, strategy, asset management, everything's got to work in concert. And we want to be small enough that the walls are porous in between. And then people understand how everything affects everything, El so that they can make better and more informed decisions. So when we work through these processes, like when we're looking at an acquisition, I'm spending as much time with the development team as I am with the acquisition team, and then trying to understand what's going on with the particular site, the politics, the tenants, all the other features. And I'm bringing everything, all that information and data and insight into the equation.

That makes a tremendous amount of sense, because I know it's some of the bigger institutional shops, and certainly once you get to a certain size, it's not uncommon to have kind of the various divisions siloed. But again, to have that benefit and hear what the people are saying on the ground as opposed to going out and helping capitalize these projects. So that makes a lot of sense.

You have a lot of younger viewers. And I'm going to tell you, it's a big advantage being young and having energy, no offense, that are in their 40s and 50s want to manage, they don't want to work. I get paid to execute. And so I'm executing all day long. I'm in front of tenants, I'm in development meetings. I know what investors pay me for. And I also know that now I have skills and abilities which are beneficial to the team, and they're not beneficial to me as a manager. Right I am still and love being a deal guy.

Well, let's talk a little bit about the longevity and that work ethic that stayed with you because you've got a lot going on. You never seem stressed out. You have a lot of really cool hobbies. You mentioned raising wagyu beef. I know you collect vintage cars and like to go out and drive them. I mean, how are you able to accomplish all these things, you know, while still having a balanced life and, yeah, manage all that.

I'm very strategic in the way I spend my time. I don't, I don't like meetings. I don't sit for hours. I don't sit on a bunch of boards. I don't, you know, I'm not doom scrolling on the Internet all day. I'm kind of getting it done. And I'm not the longest worker at all. But I tend to be focused and I tend to focus on what's important. And there usually aren't that many things that are important in a transaction. I think a lot of people get caught up in the hundred things instead of thinking about the essentials. So I do that. But I also, I know myself and I like, as I say, to spend time with friends every day, whether it's a phone call or a coffee. I work out all the time because it's fun and enjoy it. It certainly is healthy. I, I value my relationships with, with friends and family and I'm incredibly close with my sons and my wife. You know, one of my sons, Wes, has just joined Wildflower recently. And it's fun. So I wouldn't, I wouldn't like to be doing anything other than what I'm doing.

That's wonderful to hear. So now I'd like to talk about Wildflower Studios. And we're, you know, over 200 episodes in. We, we've interviewed a lot of interesting developers. I don't think we've ever had a show that's talked about the studio business. So maybe just first for our audience, talk a little bit about the business because there's clearly a real estate component to it, but also certainly an operating business. So, you know, I don't know how, how broad you want to take this as far as, you know, how does the US Compete, if you want to say that, Canada and the, and maybe New York versus California. What does it look like? And I know within that there's also not just movies and documentaries, all different aspects of studios too. So where would you like to start to explain this space?

Every night we all watch more TV than we'll admit we watch it on Amazon, we watch it on Apple, we watch it on Netflix. Most of what we see, other than reality tv, unscripted or a nature program, almost everything is filmed in a studio. So that's a controlled environment where stages are created. Some is filmed on location as part of that, but most of it is filmed in a studio. So a studio is a specialized type of warehouse building where productions are filmed. We kept getting knocks on our door from productions who wanted to film in our locations. And as I was saying earlier, I tend to stay very close to demand. So I was on the front lines of those calls and I was listening and asking them and they were talking about a lot of demand for film studios. After a while, it seemed as though there was a critical mass. And so I went to see my friend Robert De Niro and talk to him about the film business. And it turned out that he had long had an interest in building a studio in New York City. He sent me and another close friend, his oldest son, Raphael, around the country to see what the studios were and what the competition and the landscape looked like. And what we saw was there was Hollywood, which was a place people coming through the gates of Universal and spending careers on lots. And then there was the rest of the business, driven by the talent wanting to live in New York, or tax benefits, which, when you hear about something filmed in Toronto, Atlanta, it's because the tax benefits are attractive. It's a rebate, effectively, that goes back to productions. What we didn't see was a lot of thought going into the physical plant. And so it's, it's, it set us thinking about creating a permanent home for content creation in New York City and thinking about what that could look like and how we could do it better. And we sort of put it under the headline of performance meets poetry. The performance means there are performance specifications for each part of the business, whether it's hair and makeup and the temperature of lighting that's there, or how big of a role people need when they're setting out their makeup case or in productions, how tall the grid is off the floor in order to hang equipment. There were a whole series of things. And so we found a site in Astoria. We bought half of the land the Steinway piano factory sits on. And we set about creating a brand new building typology, the vertical film studio stack stages 170ft in the air. And we wanted to hire an architect who was capable of building something of this kind of innovation, complexity in New York and somebody who was comfortable Here, that was Bjork Angles. And we set about and have opened recently, 765,000ft on, under one roof, this vertical film studio campus. So that's been an incredible exploration. I've worked with so many talented people, been at Bjorka's office and everybody else, and realize something that we all already knew but sometimes take for granted. In New York, there's just an incredible diversity of people here. I've met hundreds of people from a business that I never had even a toe in the water in the film content creation business. And they're some of the most interesting people imaginable. We also, as part of this, and as part of kind of my DNA, we created this as the most sustainable film studio in the world. So it's flood resilient. We lifted the entire soundstage campus up by a floor, creating four and a half acres of parking underneath. But also, if a Hurricane Sandy event came through and a flood would wash through the parking area and wash back out and the studios on top would be fine. What that also did from a sustainability standpoint is it took four and a half acres of trucks and cars and traffic away from the neighborhood where it would be an incredible disturbance. We also think about energy efficiency and we think about indoor air quality. A whole host of other features which are built into Wildflower Studios, some of which you wouldn't even recognize unless you had an interest in sustainability. But that we embed in all of the Wildflower projects.

When I remember hearing you talk about this initially in the planning, and this really goes to what you were speaking about earlier, about asking the right questions and listening. I think you said that you were even talking to some of the union crews that were moving gear and you wanted to understand every little aspect. So it sounds like the details are really important. When you pull something off like this.

We get totally forensic. So you gotta kind of picture it. Five guys walk into Bjork Engels office. And Bjork Engels is a well known Danish architect and he's cool looking. And the people work there are cool looking, they're all wearing black and they kind of look like they're from Nolita. And then who walks in but Anthony, Anthony Jr. Tony and Sal. One guy actually had the unlit cigar the most. They look like experts.

Like central casting.

Yeah, right. At central casting. These teamsters come in there and they sat down and the first thing they said is, no one ever asked us our opinion before. Yeah, here we are, guys who run trucks all the time. No one asks us our opinion about Logistics and they sat down. We ultimately had five meetings with them. And they were incredibly articulate and thoughtful and helpful in refining our logistics plan. So all the way through each aspect of the studio, we brought in the experts and ask them and talk to them in a lot of detail how to optimize both their workflow and also their happiness. Happiness in New York being good food first and foremost. So we have a restaurant, we've got coffee from Joe Coffee. Actually my cousin John now partners with Danny Meyer in that business. So we have Joe Coffee trucks inside the studio, little and big things. So that the idea is when you come to work, it's going to be a joyful experience because people are there making art.

So, Adam, there's a little bit of this. If you build it, they will come. But again, this wasn't like a small bet where you're saying, okay, I'm going to just open up a 50,000 square foot studio and let's trial it, see if it works. I mean, the idea of going big and the scale here, I mean, what, what gave you the confidence that there was in fact this demand? And if I'm not mistaken, I mean, still, if you look at the amount of square footage and studio space, it's still overwhelmingly, you know, on the West Coast. I mean, New York's still relatively small. How did you know that there was going to be demand for what you were building?

Everything has to be right sized, not too big, not too small, but with, with the appropriate scale. And we needed a campus that had critical mass where we could provide a level of amenities and service which would be far beyond what anybody could find any anywhere else. And then we did a tremendous amount of research and talked to a million experts. And look, I would not have entered that business without my partner. Just the same way I would not have entered the self storage business 20 odd years ago without Steve McKnight, who was working as a development lead at Storage USA and was a true expert in the market. So, you know, we're not, we're not going in unarmed and unresearched. This is a tremendous amount of study and hard work that goes into this. Just the same way, you know, when I go into a meeting and this is getting back to mentorship, you know, I tell people, so I'm, I'm meeting with a young mentee in two weeks. I said, listen, Google me, look at everything, listen to the podcast, write down questions and don't ask me anything that you can read about. And I said, and I'm telling you this only Because I do the same thing. If I'm going to go for a meeting with James Nelson, I'm going to prepare questions, I'm going to study up on what recent deals James has done, and I'm going to try to be as intelligent as possible and add value to James when I meet with him.

Well, hopefully this will now be another one of the podcasts that you can give as a, a precursor. Clearly incredible background here and I think to, to understand kind of how these projects came to be incredibly helpful. And so we really appreciate your sharing all this. So, Adam, from a real estate standpoint, and just so our listeners can understand kind of the business of the studio space. So is it, I mean, you're still essentially doing leases. These are short term arrangements. How does the business aspect of this work?

Sure. Think about a bed and breakfast. So we have 11 sound stages averaging 18,000ft. Think about it as 11 rooms in a bed and breakfast. So you rent the rooms, in this case the leases. If you watch a Netflix show, those could be from two months to 10 months. So there's a license agreement involved. And then when you go to the bed and breakfast and you want to order room service, that room service has associated fees as well. So people want grip and lighting, people want food and beverage. Every service has already been thought through and then is billed as part of this. But if you sort of look at real estate on a cash flow basis, it's pretty much all the same. On an unleveraged basis, it's return on total development cost and it's building consistent cash flow with or without credit, depending on the property type. So, you know, I don't, I don't want to mystify the business because it's, it's a business of leasing space like any other with an operating business layered on top. Just like self storage. You know, self storage is a large warehouse broken up into small warehouses and urban environments. Right. And then a management team which is leasing space.

I remember one of the things, I mean, as much as there is the, you know, the economics of these productions, you know what you said, what's most important about the location is that if you're shooting, if you have a production with really top talent, right. They have a choice on what they want to work with and they might not want to go to Atlanta or wherever else is offering the tax incentives. So I would imagine the appeal of New York and kind of the community around it is probably a big draw.

When, when my older son Wes was born, I decided I didn't Want to travel for work because I wanted to come home and be with him every night. And then his brother Grant was born. And not only was there a lot to do in New York, and so I built a career here, but also I believe parenting is about showing up. And I think you look at the studio business, it's not that different. You know, somebody is a husband or wife or a father or a daughter or son or a friend, and they want to come home at night and have their life. And so much of the talent is focused around New York. And New York is such a wonderful place to spend the evening when you're not working. So it's a whole nother world than, you know, being stuck in Atlanta for three to 10 months at a time.

Great point. So, Adam. I know. And we sat on. I had the chance to interview in front of a large audience a year or two back, and we had a discussion about the future of commercial real estate. And because you do, you know, you're always thinking in the future. One of my favorite quotes, the Wayne Gretzky skate, where the puck is going. So, Adam, where is the puck going right now? What's. What's next in store for you? What. What are you thinking about over the next couple of years? Well, or even further.

Sure. Look, I think there are a whole series of initiatives that we're exploring now. We're constantly thinking about how we can be helpful next and what that's going to look like. So we have our three and a half million square feet or so portfolio and then new acquisitions and then new initiatives. The headline is New York isn't going anywhere. Right. The. The business has become institutionalized. So people have to understand small deals are going to remain really difficult to do. Bigger deals are going to be easier. The idea of New York City could be expanded to be New York metro. So when people are thinking about housing creation, it's still going to be incredibly difficult in New York City. But you see a tremendous amount of activity going on in the metro areas. So maybe expanding the definition a little bit. But then there's a world of really interesting opportunities out there. You know, from build to rent to conversions to a whole. Just a whole host of opportunities. And I think that there's. It's never been. It's never been a better time for young people to get in the business because it's easier to raise capital than it's ever been for good projects. And capital and relationships had never been more accessible. So I'm. I'm encouraged.

Very true. So, Adam, I'VE been doing this now for 25 years and it would seem, you know, the real estate industry, you know, have we embraced technology, have we leveraged it? I noticed that a lot of things, you know, maybe it's construction seem to still be done in large part the way that they've been done in the past. I mean, I don't know if again if you would agree with that or how much more room is there really for improvement leveraging technology in our business?

I think there's, I think there's a tremendous amount of opportunity. It has been a lazy man's business and that should change. No one's figured out precast, prefab. No one's figured out modular 3D printing is kind of on the precipice. It's incredibly interesting what Icon is doing and the opportunities that are coming out of the tragedies in Los Angeles for less labor intensive construction. So I encourage people to embrace it and spend time researching it. I think people should think about 20 to 25% of their day in research, follow up and relationships every single day. And if they do that, then they'll find their actions are going to become much more efficient. For example, if you think about where AI is going to take us in under 12 months, there ought to be ways to automate most jobs so that they'll take the way ARGUS probably takes somebody half the time of Excel. There'll be a series of work saving steps that are going to allow people to spend more time and higher order business. But the question is, do you take advantage of it? And that's really more mindset.

And why do you think adoption is always so slow? I mean, clearly modular housing has been around for at least two decades, maybe longer, but it's been very slow to find its way into the mainstream. Why do you think that is?

I think you would know better than I. Many real estate people, and I'm generalizing, are not very curious and they say, I'm an office building guy, I'm a retail guy. And they kind of label themselves and in that label is a sense of giving up. They just sort of assume the business is going to be static because their skill base is static and it's not. It's an incredibly dynamic business. And I think getting into more of the tech mindset of constant growth and evolution is really essential because if not, you know, people are going to be left behind. And that's an opportunity for young people. But it's a cautionary tale too for people who just think they can go and float because it's, it's not easy and people who are just doing sort of sales and are not adding real value are going to be disintermediated.

So Adam, advice and again, you've had a lot of mentees over the years, so maybe for those. And we get a lot of students who listen to this show, so maybe it's someone who's in college, maybe they've gone to get their real estate masters, they want to get into investing, they want to get into the business. What's your advice on how best to start out?

My advice first and foremost is to have skills. So whether that's suffering through being an analyst for two or three years, getting great training, working for a firm like yours, working for sort of a cushwake, understanding how to do things well and then being very, very, very specialized. So if your thing is senior housing, do the research, figure out who the top people are in the field, bug them with very well researched emails and letters and LinkedIn reach outs, get in with the best companies, develop skills and then, you know, the natural pattern is really simple. And it's, it's part of the way we've grown is we'll take somebody who's working at the leading company in industry and we'll say, come on, come on over to the dark side, be a developer, let's partner together, we'll learn from you, you'll learn from us and then you can become an entrepreneur. So there's a natural kind of life cycle and just thinking about the pattern of how to build the career is not, it's not at all mysterious and.

Advice that you would give to someone who, let's say they're five, 10 years into their career and they've been working at a big shop and they have the technical knowledge but they have a big idea. Right. What would you say to that person? Because you know, there is security in, in being at a company and getting that, that paycheck as opposed to going off on your own. What would you say to that person?

I would say a couple things. I mean the first look, entrepreneurship's not for everyone. It can be a high wire act, it can be stomach churning. And so my life, my perspective is, is my own. But it's not for everyone. And I don't think most people want to raise Japanese wagon beef. And so I, I'm saying this in that this, I, I do what works for Adam. But what I would say to somebody working at a mid level job is number one, you have less job security than you think People will pay you only a dollar more than they have to so you don't leave. And they want to keep all of the ducats for themselves. And if you're going to leave, make sure that you are thoughtful and you are leaving with a deal and that deal is funded. So it's all about a deal, meaning that if you decide you want to go into build the rent and you spend your weekends, you find a great property, you get together and capitalize it, you know, you leave with something and you can jump off and do it in a way which minimizes risk. But I would say that it's really fun being an entrepreneur. I've enjoyed it greatly. I went out on my own when I was 28 or so after a couple years of being a banker, I got an MBA and then I was a miserable banker and wasn't really particularly good at it. So I can tell you that with some self awareness, I'm not very good at telling somebody something I don't believe in. And that was a key skill that I was never going to have as a banker. In order flourish. And my boss, I remember, would rather eat lunch at his desk than sit down with us. I thought I just couldn't do this anymore. So, you know, I've enjoyed the entrepreneur's.

Journey so in finding partners, because I think that that's part of your story as well. And how do you find good people to work with, you know, build new relationships? What do you look for?

Wes joined Wildflower three weeks ago and he was a banker working 100 hours a week. And I told him that coming to Wildflower was. Is about sort of structure and thoughtfulness and intensity and definitely not about hours. I wanted him to go enjoy his life just, you know, as we all try to. And so we start at 9am every morning, five days a week at one coffee house bar P. Sallino there last week.

That was great.

There last week. And I and we sit down with five days a week, five people in the business who I want him to meet and learn from and who he can learn and share some of his thoughts and insights. So getting out there and meeting people in person, not over text, not over the Internet, not over zoom, but real humans and buying them coffee. Everybody's going to have coffee or tea in the morning is part of this learning process. And again, having that going, going into the workday and then thinking about this 25%, doing research, podcasting, listening, learning, climbing down those rabbit holes, that's my biggest single recommendation.

So Adam, as we wrap and this has been amazing on this theme of research and self improvement. What are the sources? Whether it's favorite books, whether it's podcasts, you know, when you're doing your specialized research, you know, what is it that you recommend people to get that baseline?

I don't recommend everything I do because you don't want to read the American Wagyu association publications or you don't want to read about necessarily food and wine. I'm doing, I'm doing a wine dinner at a restaurant in Napa Valley called Charlie's NV with the Kistler family's Occidental Pino and the Harlan family's mascot cab. So that's, that's fun, but a couple of real treasures, definitely. The Pivot podcast with Scott Galloway, the Acquire podcast, certainly everything James is doing, some Tim Ferriss, some Rich roll and then their lists of books that you'll see Tim Ferriss and the all in podcast. And, you know, start reading books, see what inspires you. You don't have to read them all. I, I watch a lot of YouTube videos, I think not to get too shrinky, but making sure you're healthy mentally is incredibly important. There's a lot out there, you know, a lot of resources to things because we're all, you know, we're all coping with our parents, we're all coping with our childhood. So I think that's important. And again, you know, making sure all the basics, because this is a marathon. It's not your career is not a sprint. It is a, it's a true marathon. And so, you know, the basics of fitness and health and eating right and sleeping adequately and, well, meditation. I use the Headspace app. All of those are really very fundamental to me being here at this age in this kind of mindset.

And Adam, just last question as we close, you know, for those. And again, I don't know how they cannot be inspired by this, but those who really, you know, hear something that resonates with them, they want to put this into action. They want to reach out to you. What is the best way to approach. Yeah, you're busy, you've got a lot of things going on. What is typically the format when someone reaches out to you, that's best for you? What's the. I mean, you must get a lot of these, you know, outreaches. So what, what is the best way to reach out to someone in, in your position?

Just do the same thing I did. You know, we, we developed a site in Mass, Beth, and we were working through a very prolonged negotiation with Tesla and I just couldn't get it across the finish line. So I went on LinkedIn and I sent a note to the five people I saw up there and out of that I got their head of supercharging and then we ended up getting the deal done and we sold the site to Tesla and they're building their first supercharger center in the city on that site in Masspath. I do it all the time. People reach out to me by email, they reach out to me by LinkedIn. As I was saying earlier, it's critical if you're going to send somebody an email that it be a thoughtful email. It's not, hey, I need help. I'm lost because that's probably not going to resonate with many people. So it's definitely not going to resonate with me. Do your homework and be very specific about what it is you want and what it is you're offering, just as I did when I reached out to Tesla and I still do it virtually every day.

Adam, this has been amazing. Thank you so much. I tremendously enjoyed this and I really appreciate our friendship. So thanks again for joining us us today.

I do too. James, thanks for having me.

Wonderful. And thank you everyone for joining as always. And I think the best thing that you can do again if something really resonated with you here again, how could it not would be to share this episode. I do this all the time. I send podcast forward links to friends. It's a, it's a great way to share the knowledge. So as always you can go to james nelson.com this site is not about me. I built this site for you. That's where you can find out the show notes, ways to connect with Adam and a lot of helpful information there. So until next week, thank you again for joining us.

Thank you for listening to the Insider's Edge to Real Estate Investing. We appreciate your subscribing and sharing with your friends. If you haven't already, please connect with James amesnelsonnyc on LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter. Please also visit james nelson.com where you can find the show notes and other episodes along with an exclusive video series and other helpful resources so you can gain the Insider's edge to real estate investing. Until next week.