Real Estate Development: Why Developers Are Like Quarterbacks!

It's sort of like being a quarterback. You just bring people smarter than you, the civil engineer, the architect, lender. I mean, you're sort of the quarterback, right? You surround yourself with people who are experts at whatever you're developing, get to know people on that side, but also the people that this is going to actually impact, too.

I frequently describe real estate development as kind of like running a business. Yes, hiring a bunch of people with certain skills is not enough. You need to develop their leadership qualities. You need to be interested in what they want to do. There's a lot of emotional component to running a business and being a leader in a business and real estate development is just like that. Yes, you can hire a ton of professionals to do their work, but unless you're there and you're managing this various different components and adding this human element, you're shooting yourself in the foot.