The Real Estate Espresso Podcast

We often get questions from clients and even listeners to the podcast about the merits of a legal case. To be clear, we are not lawyers and the purpose of today’s show is not to provide legal advice in any way.  The purpose of today’s show is to illustrate the uncertainty of the legal process. I’m going to report on a case of a commercial lease in the province of Ontario. Commercial leases really are fully described by the contract and are usually not subject to being torn apart by a tenant board in the way that a residential lease might be. The interpretation is going to rely largely on the wording of the lease and much less on outside legislation that might trump the lease.  ------------- Host: Victor Menasce email: podcast@victorjm.com

Our book this month is a brand new book that was just released two weeks ago called “How to Make a few Billion Dollars “ by Brad Jacobs. Brad is a serial entrepreneur at the highest level having built multiple multi-billion dollar companies in succession. When I heard his story it became obvious that he had something to teach me. Throughout the book he takes the reader through his thought process. He talks about how he had to rewire his brain to reject the social conditioning. ------------ Host: Victor Menasce email: podcast@victorjm.com

Today’s question comes from Ramon who writes: Dropping a quick note to thank you again for all that you do to make the RE Espresso amazing. I can’t imagine how much work it must be for you to consistently create such high-quality content. I hope you know how much value I and many others get from it. Specifically, your recent mini-series on business planning has been phenomenal, amazing insight into how to keep an organization aligned in working towards the right goals. Wondering if you would have any interest in doing a similar mini-series (or even single episode) on how you built Y Street Capital in the early days. How did you balance the financial commitment of expanding the team, building-out office space, etc, given the difficulty for a RE developer to accurately forecast the timing to generate revenue/liquidity events - especially in the early days before you had a solid base of cash flow from existing stabilized projects and consulting clients - vs the need for high quality help to sheppard projects and evaluate new opportunities? I think many people struggle with this chicken and egg problem and would be interested to hear how you approached it. -------------- Host: Victor Menasce email: podcast@victorjm.com

On today’s show we are talking about commercial real estate and office in particular.  The main stream media remain fixated on reporting the averages. They are focused on the bigger macro picture. For example last week the Wall Street Journal published a story all about the commercial debt that is scheduled to mature over the next few years.  More than $2.2 trillion in debt is maturing before 2028, and much of that will have to be refinanced at higher rates. But it’s actually missing the larger underlying problem. When you layer the two problems together, its hard to see a path to success for most office buildings.  Last week I was in NYC and met with some senior folks from JLL. NYC has now over 100M square feet of vacant office space.  There are only 7 cities in the US having more than 100M square feet of office. NYC has more than 100M SF of vacant office space. ------------ Host: Victor Menasce email: podcast@victorjm.com

On today’s show we are taking another look at the world of energy and some of the disruptions that could result in major economic and geopolitical disruption far beyond the turbulence our world is currently facing.  Today’s show is about unintended consequences. ------------- Host: Victor Menasce email: podcast@victorjm.com

Peter Roisman is based in Puerto Rico where he is the principal at revmlc.com. The company specializes in rating leasing performance for multi-family properties and then training property managers to improve their performance when it comes to leasing. Most property managers don't treat leasing as a core excellence. The scores across most multi-family properties confirm this. To connect and to learn more, visit revmlc.com. ------------ Host: Victor Menasce email: podcast@victorjm.com

Eric Rice is based in Dallas Texas where he is in a business development role at King Operating. On today's show we are taking a look at various facets of oil and gas exploration. This is perhaps the highest risk end of the spectrum when it comes to oil and gas investing and I'm saying this from personal experience. To connect with Eric and to learn more, visit kingoperating.com --------------- Host: Victor Menasce email: podcast@victorjm.com

Today’s show is the final segment in our mini-series on business planning. Earlier this week we talked about the company mission, the ten year and three year plan, the one year plan and the quarterly plan. We then talked about how we then translate the quarterly plan into weekly execution of our goals and objectives.  If this sounds like a lot of work, it really is.  Underpinning all of this is attracting the right people into the right roles in the organization. When a company is small, and even in situations in large companies, we often see people performing tasks that are not leveraging their inherent strengths. In some cases, people are playing way out of position and performing tasks that they really are not well suited to.  It’s always possible for people to grow within a role. But at best you will turn a weakness into a competency.  To make sure we match people’s strengths and engaging their energy and motivation, we really need to look at what people are doing in their roles and adjust the resource allocation of work. This exercise identifies the gaps in the organization and plans our next hires.  We use a four quadrant classification called elevate and delegate. ----------- Host: Victor Menasce email: podcast@victorjm.com

On today’s show we are covering the fourth segment in our mini-series on business planning. On Monday’s show we talked about the company mission. We then spoke about the ten year and the three year plan. On yesterday’s show we spoke about the one year plan. Today we’re talking about the plan for the coming quarter.  This is where the rubber meets the road between the plan and the execution. Underpinning our process is the business planning process from several business books. The Book Traction by Gino Wickman. We use the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS), which is a set of practical tools and concepts outlined in Wickman's book to help businesses achieve their vision and goals.  The second book is the Four Disciplines of Execution, written by Steven Covey’s son Sean Covey.

Today and all this week we are talking about business planning. Within our company we have a regular heartbeat for business planning. We meet annually, quarterly and weekly to work on the business plan. The annual meeting is two full days. The quarterly meeting is a single day and our weekly meeting is held on a Friday afternoon and usually last 90 minutes. That’s separate and apart from our daily staff meeting where we review projects and action items.  In the annual plan we construct the revenue plan for the year. This is made up of the same three elements that form the 3 year and the 10 year plan.  ------------- Host: Victor Menasce email: podcast@victorjm.com