Bio
In addition to his writing and speaking, Len Forkas is the founder and President of Milestone Communications, a Reston, Virginia-based owner and developer of wireless towers in the Mid-Atlantic. Milestone has invested over $50 million in the development of wireless infrastructure in six states, creating thousands of jobs in construction, engineering and manufacturing in the USA.
In 2014 Len published his book What Spins the Wheel: Life and Leadership Lessons from the Race for Hope. Profits from the sale of the book are donated to support Hopecam’s work connecting children with cancer with their friends at school. Over 10,000 copies of the books are in print.
Len has appeared on CNN Anderson Cooper, Fox and Friends, Wharton Sirius XMRadio and Baltimore/Washington DC affiliates of ABC, FOX and NBC.
Len also serves as Chairman of the Board of Hopecam, the charity he founded in 2003 to use technology to overcome the social isolation of children in treatment for cancer.
Hopecam has connected over 1,800 children with cancer to 35,000 classmates in 47 states. It has formed partnerships with over 50 hospitals. Ninety percent of Hopecam children attend title one schools and 1/2 are treated at St Jude’s hospital.
Show Notes
Current
- Day job- Founder of Milestone Communications- Partners with government entities to build towers on public land to lease to wireless carriers (4:00)
- Company has facilities from Delaware to Florida
- Founded Hopecam due to his son’s leukemia having a video link to his classroom (5:30)
- Financed 3,000 children’s connections
- Chair of Fairfax County Public School Foundation (7:30)
- Serve 60,000 children a day during the pandemic
- 2,000 homeless children
Origins
- Grew up in suburban Cleveland, OH (9:30)
- Dad was self employed salesman- always his hero (9:45)
- Mom worked in assisted living community and raised him and his three siblings (10:00)
- Loved sports and was active as a child growing up
- Went to Ball State University in Muncie, IN studying landscape architecture (10:45)
- Joined EDAW, a landscape architecture firm located in Alexandria, VA in 1982 (11:15)
- Met John Forstman, a developer who influenced him to get into the real estate business (12:10)
- Attended American University to get an MBA with Real Estate major (12:40)
- Joined Oxford Development– story about his interview with Bernie Lubcher (worked with Tom Bozzuto, John Slidell, etc.) (13:15)
- Joined Winchester Homes and learned the land development business (14:50)
- Worked for Rick DiBella there
- Joined South Charles Realty during crisis time (16:00)
- Began working on the Milestone Community in Germantown, MD
- Joined ULI in 1991 (16:50)
- Transition from employee at South Charles into a consulting agreement (17:45)
- First deal to build his company was during this time (1996) with Peter Melmed (18:20)
- Late 1990s he met Tam Murray who introduced him to the cell tower business how the numbers work and the relationships (20:15)
- Started his communications business and approached Montgomery and Fairfax Counties to build cell towers on school and park sites (21:15)
- Model to have government property land deals to eventually build towers on ground leased land (22:00)
- Attempted to lease land on shopping center sites but it wasn’t feasible at the time (24:10)
- Now partnering with utilities in Florida and South Carolina (25:20)
- Signed a partnership with WashREIT for first private sector tenancy (26:00)
- Challenges (27:00)
- Science is doubted by people about potential risks from cell towers
- Fighting negative views of the sector is difficult
- Negativity actually helps “narrow the field” of competition (28:10)
- Overcoming these challenges makes his business unique (28:30)
- Opportunities (29:30)
- New generations of mobile communications create the dynamics of change in the industry providing growth
- Competitive advantage is that the relationship with the land owner is a partnership with a base rent and upside sharing (31:20)
- Deal structure (32:30)
- Debt raised to supplement equity to pay for land and construction and installation of towers
- Transition to 5G technology (35:00)
- In this technology it changes every 6 months (36:00)
- Four carriers now- Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile and Dish (36:30)
- Three elements (37:00)
- High Band (37:20)
- Low Band (37:30)
- Mid Band- Most used (37:50)
- 10 times faster and much less power (1/10th) usage (39:00)
- Compatibility with hundreds of devices currently and in the future (39:30)
- Designed for 100x of devices today (40:00)
- Low latency and low power usage
- Applications have not yet been created (40:50)
- “Building the Audubon for wireless technology” (42:00)
- 4G is not done yet (42:30)
- Always changing
- More competition now so service becomes more important (43:30)
- 300+ towers (44:15)
- 4,000 sites for potential towers (44:30)
- His son Matt is now at Milestone (45:00)
- Finds real estate community to be very inspiring (45:20)
- Hopecam (47:00)
- First fundraiser was a 50 mile race he ran (did it seven times thereafter) (47:30)
- When his son was sick he exercised more and more (48:20)
- He was able to do phenomenal physical feats to raise money (49:00)
- Signed up for RAAM by qualifying and set a goal to raise $150,000. (49:45)
- Crew and wrote his book “What Spins the Wheel” about this event and his son’s illness (51:15)
- Book is platform for leadership (52:00)
- Earned over $1MM in speaking fees- spoke to over 100 companies (52:30)
- Decided to do RAAM again in 2017 and raised over $1MM in succeeding (53:00)
- Helping over 500 children annually nationally (53:30)
- Organization has four full time people now (54:20)
- Wants to run a marathon in every state and dedicates the race for a child that has cancer (55:05)
- Climbed Mt. Vinson in Antarctica (55:45)
- Writing a book about his experience in climbing an ice mountain (56:45)
- Mountain climbing is his new challenge (57:00)
- “The mind is way more powerful than the body as long as one prepares” (58:45)
- Purposely uncomfortable but not life threatening in athletic accomplishment (59:45)
- Tell 100 people that he was doing RAAM and verbalize goals to others and resolve to do it (1:00:15)
- “Did you feel like quitting?” (1:01:00)
- Extremely motivated and does not pause to go (1:02:00)
- “Never doubt oneself–Don’t think too much” (1:02:30)
- Cannot explain why he was here today due to an incident in Colorado when he fell asleep on his bike during RAAM (1:04:00)
- Set a big goal and train (1:04:45)
- Practice faith through actions (1:05:30)
- “Have the opportunity to help people every day” (1:06:30)
- People (1:08:30)
- Parents were huge influence
- Omar Farouk- Professor at Ball State
- Key is the balance in life (1:09:50)
- Husband and Father is the first priority
- Hold children accountable in their lives (1:10:45)
- Rob Lowe- Stories I Only Told My Friends (1:11:15)
- “Work is what you create and accomplish” (1:13:30)
- Where are the opportunities today during COVID? (1:14:15)
- Trust your people (1:15:00)
- Future of real estate is future of collaboration (1:15:45)
- Collaborating in person is so much more fluid and personal (1:16:15)
- Equivalent to “Industrial Revolution” to work (1:16:40)
- Have to adapt or die (1:17:00)
- Advice to 25 yr. old- “Keep getting skills” (1:18:00)
- “Don’t be afraid to fail” (1:18:45)
- Ask questions after a failure that is pragmatic with no finger pointing (1:19:15)
- Learn as much as possible
- Give without expecting anything in return (1:21:00)
- Billboard- “Be fearless” (1:22:00)
Postscript
- Tom Amos introduces the concept of accountability (1:24:00)
- Pioneer of “remote learning” (1:28:00)
- Gap of remote learning is large
