Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
Hi, I'm John Coe and welcome to Icons of DC Area Real Estate, a one on one interview show featuring the backgrounds, career trajectories and insights of the top luminaries in the Washington D.C. area Real estate market. The purpose of the show was to explore their journeys, how they got started, the pivotal moments that shaped their careers and the lessons they've learned along the way. We also dive into their current work, industry trends and some fascinating behind the scenes stories that bring unique perspective to our industry. Commercial Real Estate welcome to icons of D.C. area real estate.
Today my guest is Matt Nicholson, Executive Vice President for the Mid Atlantic Region at Lincoln Property Company Before Matt became a recognized powerhouse in institutional real estate, he was the oldest of four boys growing up in Annapolis, Maryland.
Learning resilience firsthand. Losing both of his parents at a young age, he watched his Depression era grandparents and hardworking stepfather model a relentless heads down work ethic.
He carried that grit to Dartmouth College where he played Division I lacrosse as a defenseman.
Overcoming severe knee injuries and regime changes, Matt learned that true success isn't just about individual accolades, it's about staying in the fight for your teammates.
Today he applies that same defensive X's and O's strategy to mitigating risk in complex real estate deals.
Guided by a core philosophy. Let your light be contagious through fearless effort and honesty.
Over his 18 year career, Matt has executed an astounding $20 billion in capital markets activity.
Now, having made the notoriously difficult leap from a top advisory role at JLL to a principal investment seat at Lincoln Property Company, he brings a deeply human team first approach to institutional capital.
This is why commercial real estate professionals need to listen.
First, he brings the blueprint for the leap. Matt shares the mind shift, the mindset shifts and daily hustle required to transition successfully from brokering deals to taking a principal ownership stake.
2. A defensive strategy for Distressed Markets Discover how defensive technician navigates DC's 18% office vacancy by pivoting towards structural demand assets such as Northern Virginia data centers, integrated health care and infill logistics. 3. Team building and Ethical leadership. Learn why prioritizing unwavering honesty and treating your partners like teammates is the ultimate competitive edge when structuring the capital stack.
Join us for a conversation that proves the best commercial real estate strategies are built on a foundation of fearless effort and authenticity Partnership.
Without further ado, please enjoy this conversation with Matt Nicholson. So Matt Nicholson, welcome to Icons of ECA Real Estate. Thank you for joining me today.
[00:03:44] Speaker B: Thanks John. Thanks for having me.
[00:03:45] Speaker A: Appreciate it, appreciate it so let's start right where you are now. What is your current role at Lincoln Property Company today and what does your day to day look like? Overseeing acquisitions in the Mid Atlantic?
[00:03:57] Speaker B: Sure. So as EVP of investments in development, currently the majority of my time is focused on growing our net new investment and development activity in the region. Mid Atlantic region, just for context is Pittsburgh, Philly, all the way south through the Commonwealth of Virginia. All product types, really all type of situational investing. So a very broad coverage model and broad mandate that we're excited about, particularly as we see renewed capital flows to this region. In particular, I'm also spending and that's Probably 2/3, 3/4 of my time. I'm also spending time where I can with many of our talented folks in the management leasing spaces, trying to help continue to grow our third party management and leasing book where we're fortunate to have number one market share on the management side, about 65 million feet of predominantly third party managed product and about a 30 million square foot leasing book here in the region as well. So very, very fun to work with multiple teams across the region, all product types, again on the commercial side to help grow and leverage relationships from my time in the investment, sales and capital markets.
[00:05:10] Speaker A: How big is the team in the Mid Atlantic?
[00:05:12] Speaker B: So with the. It's a great question.
I still don't know if I have the full numbers at my command, but the full team when you think about our people at that scale in the buildings and with our clients is just over 700 and we are by head count the largest of Lincoln's 35 offices across the country.
[00:05:31] Speaker A: Yeah, Y. That covers those markets you mentioned.
[00:05:34] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:05:35] Speaker A: Got it. Folks in each city.
[00:05:37] Speaker B: Folks in each city. Again, more of a state regional coverage model for the service lines.
But you know, just plus or minus 350 engineers, part of that 700. Right. So really out boots up approach and in the buildings and doing the best we can every day for our clients.
[00:05:54] Speaker A: Well, I'm gonna get into the history of Lincoln Property Company and how it's grown in this region and I interviewed one of the guys who started in this region too, so Bill Jaynes.
So you moved to Lincoln in early 2025 last year in a principal acquisition role.
Talk about that change from your advisory role at JLL and before that hff.
And why was it a good time to transition and what was the biggest mindset shift you had to make sure.
[00:06:26] Speaker B: So the change was a few things. One, an opportunity to come in and try and make an impact with a great team in A multitude of areas, investments to be sure. Development which had not been my forte, but something that I was spending when it worked more time on in my capital markets days.
But really that geographic diversification, the product type diversification for me just as a next step in my career and not giving up on office but really giving the other asset classes and their moment in the sun and kind of evolving myself. My career, my expertise, my skill set was a real big thing for me.
Lincoln culture, which I think we'll get to and my familiarity with the team here not quite dating back to Bill found in the office, but for many call 20 plus years working with them side by side in a multitude of ways was a big selling point for me and have been here 14 months. Very excited with what we've done so far and the things we have lined up down the pike here, particularly with some of the net new discretionary capital we have access to in the logistics space, medical office space, some things that have some good things cooking for us right now on the buy side.
[00:07:45] Speaker A: That's cool.
Let's dive into Lincoln Property Company and its history both nationally and in this region. What specifically intrigues you about their corporate culture and their approach to the market?
[00:07:59] Speaker B: So great, great question. I think maybe I'll just comment on culture in a broad sense for a second as I referenced have known Lincoln essentially my entire career. When I got to HFF in 2007, I think the first two or three deals that I've worked on sales wise had Lincoln involved in some form or fashion management, leasing both.
And that core group is really still here running all these businesses still today and really were huge allies and partners of mine all throughout my career up until leaving and joining them beginning of last year.
I think that partnership that I experienced is the partnership that the culture that Lincoln was founded off of really is.
Mac Pogue left Trammell crow in the 60s to found Lincoln in 1965. So we've been around for a little over 60 years and it was all started and founded off of his partnership with Trammell to go develop residential across the country and was his first person out there doing residential development in multiple markets and growing that business for Trammell way back in the, in the 60s. And so that's pervasive throughout all of our 35 offices. It's I think a core tenet, if you will, of the people we hire and the partners we go look to have on the third party side the way that LPs view us both, you know, on a direct and indirect basis as well, just as great partners and stewards of relationships and capital and, you know, walking the talk and doing what we say we're going to do. And I think that's allowed us to, thanks to our Stone Point capital transaction in 2023, that's allowed us to really hit the gas pedal and grow in a multitude of areas, investment management, some other niche sectors that we're pushing into that aren't just office and industrial multifamily, and really start to grow the enterprise on a different level, different scale, while others may be struggling with that, that we've typically competed with over the years.
[00:10:02] Speaker A: When I arrived in Washington in the 1980s, Lincoln was divided into two specific business models and they actually had two leadership groups.
One was the residential side, which is really the origin of the firm. As you had mentioned, a fellow by the name of Jeff Fransen ran the union at that point. And then the other side was, as I mentioned, Bill James was there running it, I think about that time, late 80s, before he went over to Bass Brothers.
And so at that point, Lincoln was focused on mostly garden apartments. They weren't doing the vertical high rise buildings at that time.
And then in the residential side, and then we looked to actually we represented Aetna on a joint venture in Tyson's Corner for a thousand unit residential complex that Lincoln built, Jeff Ranson built, which I think was the first significant apartment project in Tyson's Corner. Bill. In the late 1980s.
It was a very interesting joint venture. And then with Bill, I didn't really do business with him, but I observed their most. Their focus started, as I remember, in Arlington with deals near Pentagon City. And I think they were one of the first developers in that marketplace, as I recall.
[00:11:21] Speaker B: That's right, Rosalind as well, with VIB and some other pension funds.
[00:11:26] Speaker A: That's what I remember then. And I don't know if it goes back much further than the 80s in Washington or not.
[00:11:31] Speaker B: No, not really is my knowledge of that. And when Bill James transitioned, Bill Hickey, if you know that name, came in from Dallas, ran this region for many, many, many years.
Then Paul Price, and then for the last 12, 13 years, Brandon Ernst here, who sits down the hall from where we are right now and was a big driving force in me coming over and joining the team. So yeah, it's been a very cool growth and evolution for us here over that time period. And we're almost, we're basically just at 40 years of existence here in D.C. and 60 total as a platform nationally, which we're really proud of as I mentioned, you know, just to touch on the residential business that was sold off in 2023 as well, and that's now called Willowbridge. And that was another transformative capital event for prior partners and ownership of the firm that also has now helped and allowed us here on the commercial side, what has remained Lincoln not rebranded as Willowbridge to really kind of set our sights on growth and doing so actually again in the multifamily space. So. So we'll just comment that we're really excited to have about 18,000 units of pipeline under control that we've been able to through legacy investments and some net new land banking and things that we did 23, 24 to kind of come out of the ground with that when it all works again. We'll talk about that, I'm sure, as we go here. But very, very much a key kind of element to our growth and strategy as a firm moving forward.
[00:13:04] Speaker A: Go over that Willowbrook transcription a little bit because what you just said about your ability now to do multifamily kind of flies in the face of what I think.
[00:13:13] Speaker B: Yeah, that's right.
[00:13:14] Speaker A: That there might be a competition or a competitive hold off there.
[00:13:17] Speaker B: Right. So when that transaction closed, it closed the day before our Stone Point transaction, as Lore tells it, and goes, as I've learned.
And what went away when it went full standalone, it was acquired by Cadillac, Fairview and Ontario Teachers and became no longer Lincoln Residential, but Willowbridge.
That lifted the unspoken kind of moratorium on the quote unquote, commercial folks at Lincoln to go out and do residential. And so with kind of no conflicts now in many of our markets, particularly the coastals, we've gone and again tied up quite a bit of dirt and are trying to monetize quite a bit of the legacy investments that Stone Point is very supportive of doing and kind of rebrand ourselves as multifaceted, multi product type and clearly very development oriented given our roots.
[00:14:07] Speaker A: Interesting to understand your journey to this executive role. Let's go back to the beginning.
Growing up in Annapolis, Maryland and attending the severance school. How did that environment shape you, your early ambitions?
[00:14:22] Speaker B: So this is fun for me. I.
And it's probably very cliche, but very much indebted to my grandparents, my parents, my stepfather, who I'll mention, and I've got three brothers. Those are really the catalysts for kind of pushing me and molding me into what I've become and gone on to do. And it starts with grandparents. They were all Depression era kids, Greatest generation as Brokaw kind of called it and just grew up in hard times, worked hard their entire life, you know all the way until retirement worked you
[00:15:00] Speaker A: know six years as well.
[00:15:02] Speaker B: They were not, they were spread out a bit southeast mainly Tennessee from my dad's side of the family and then New England Boston area for my mom's side of the family. So you know my grandfathers served in the military initially didn't go to college, served in the military, World War II Vietnam tours and things and then got out and started their working lives if you will and my grandparents worked for the town of Hingham in Massachusetts, public works and secretary, CFO type role for the town my grandmother was and just that work ethic you would hear about but you really saw it in their day to day interaction with my family and I think that carried on to my parents in many respects as well and so forth for the better part of my first 10 years I had both parents. Unfortunately my parents both passed away at relatively young ages growing up. Lost my dad when he turned 40. I was just turning 10 years old and just turned 10. Lost my mom at age 50, 14 years later and that kind of shapes you a bit.
Their struggles were and their fights were brave and fierce and always putting us first and you just don't forget that and many, many, many lessons that I could take an hour talking about here from that if you will but watching that fight and watching that push for us was something that my brothers and I still joke about today. We wouldn't be who we are without it.
My mom did remarry after my dad passed away, before she passed and my stepdad has been in my life for 30 plus years and he too is a bit of a workaholic and kind of set the standard for us and my brothers I think would also agree. And so we, we saw Sunday preparations before week long things that he would be doing whether it's travel, whether it's board meetings. He was able to stay at a company called Microsystems point of sale hospitality, hotel management that spent better part of 35 really his entire adult working life there and advancing and working head down and achieving great success with that they were bought by Oracle in 2016. He stayed on one of the last guys to leave of the Legacy Micros crew and just the, the work ethic being there and showing up for his people.
Ms. All in Annapolis they're Columbia, Maryland based back then. But he was a lot of sacrifice too. Would be on planes most of the week when he was doing things in Latin America, running that region covered Europe Emea and did a lot of travel and really left for my mom the sole job of raising four rambunctious boys. I'm the oldest of four. I've got three great younger brothers who are my best friends. And, you know, I think we all competed and worked hard. We competed more playfully than anything with each other. I'm the oldest, so I've got a bit of an age gap with the rest of them. But it was always, you know, who wants to get the fifth of the four serving? You get four servings, here's a fifth. Who's going to fight for it at the end?
I'm the biggest of the four, so I usually won that. But yeah, I would. I would say all of that kind of shaped a lot of the perspective that I have on how to work hard, put your head down, do what you say you're gonna do, and not take no and try and make it happen. And sports was a big part of that too. So did all your brothers play lacrosse like you did? We all played. Two of us were fortunate enough to go on and play in college.
And teams is a big thing for all of us. Just not only the family unit team, but the teams that we all played on because we played sports year round growing up, every season, at least one. And I think that was more babysitting now, in hindsight, looking at it, than we were any good at them. But was fortunate to be able to play lacrosse in college with a great group of guys. Played all four years, had some success, but, you know, started out on a very tough, tough road, tough team, rebuilding, new coach who recruited a bunch of us that he wanted to kind of mold into what he thought would be a winning program. And we're able to achieve that. My sophomore year there and, you know, that really instilled in me just the anything's possible if you put in the work.
[00:19:07] Speaker A: How was the Dartmouth experience?
[00:19:09] Speaker B: Fantastic. So I did have the fortune of growing up a bit and bleed a little bit of green. My dad and my uncle both went there. So from a very young age, I was heading to Hanover, New Hampshire, quite a bit for fun, meeting all these uncles that I had heard about that weren't related to me experiencing the upper valley and falling in love with the school. And really fortunate, my brothers, all of us are very fortunate that that was something that was able to work out for us. And we're still very much involved and dedicated to the college today as a result.
[00:19:40] Speaker A: Did you look at other schools?
[00:19:42] Speaker B: I did, I did. I toyed being a hometown kid with the Naval Academy for lacrosse for a period of time.
Look at Notre Dame. And in hindsight, given the successes of those programs in La Crosse might have been the better choice. But as I shared, you losing your dad at a young age kind of shapes what you think you should do and how you should live your life. And I was pretty determined as the oldest to go do that. And it worked. And lacrosse was a big reason why that worked for me. And so I kind of cracked the door. And then I had one brother come join me for a year and then the next brother was able to play lacrosse. Then our youngest brother was able to attend as well. So I had about 15 years where I was going back there in some capacity as student or older brother of a student. So I could talk about Dartmouth forever. I'll stop. But it was great.
[00:20:33] Speaker A: My cousin went there and I've interviewed several Dartmouth grads. So it's a great place.
[00:20:39] Speaker B: Yeah, fantastic.
[00:20:41] Speaker A: It's interesting. I toured five Ivy League schools with my son, went to Princeton and we didn't see. I did not get up there. And so I've never been to that campus. We went to everywhere with Brown, Dartmouth and Cornell. Only three that we didn't see. The other five we looked at and it was a fun experience to see those campuses.
[00:21:02] Speaker B: Very cool.
[00:21:04] Speaker A: So you earned your bachelor's degree in economics from Dartmouth in 2005. How did that quantitative foundation prepare you for analyzing complex real estate markets?
[00:21:16] Speaker B: That's a great question. Some of it is.
That was the only thing I could major in that felt like a finance degree. So I did. It wasn't particularly good at econ, so we joked I was the lowest GPA out of all four of us that went there and probably would have done that differently in hindsight because I've got two brothers that are on Wall street or have been on Wall Street. One's still there and they were history majors. So for the young people it may not matter what you major in. If you're really good at it and get outstanding grades and have good test scores, you can pretty much learn anything. If you're comfortable with that.
[00:21:48] Speaker A: Is the Tuck School only a graduate school there? Correct.
[00:21:50] Speaker B: Then it was. Today there are some cross listed classes that undergrads can take, Finance being one of them. Correct. And accounting and have some sort of business minor. And I think that was a push over the last 20 years plus years that I've been out to integrate that better. I try to go back to Tuck for business. School was prime GFC when every 2627 year old male, was looking probably for a job at that point.
I didn't get off the wait list and opted to go to Georgetown instead, which was a fantastic experience for me. But listen, the econ degree, I think macroeconomics and what I learned ripple through everything that we talk about today in terms of monetary policy, rates and really the influencing of the capital markets. And so that was a great foundation. Don't get me wrong. A lot of what I was able to learn and master in real estate was, was on the job. And I think we'll touch on that a bit in terms of where I think people's time and treasure is best served if you really want to master the real estate industry. And I think there's no substitute for just doing and that's what I was able to do. So MBA didn't help or did help, excuse me having that did that part time at Georgetown. Great experience as I said. But the Steer center that's there now we was not really a formal thing when I was there and has really grown in the call it 13 or so years I've been out to what it is today and I'm very fortunate to be able to leverage that as an alum and as a active participant.
[00:23:25] Speaker A: Was Matt Cypher there when you were there or not?
[00:23:27] Speaker B: Yeah. So Matt's first year was my last year in business school. So he had just started. But thankfully he's a dear friend and one of my favorite humans and has done wonders for that school and that program and I couldn't tell him how much I love him enough. And he was at Invesco prior to coming over to run the center. And we got to interact with Invesco quite a bit on some of the early real estate transactions I did at HFF with Steve Conley and others. And one of them being a Lincoln deal that they were buying from Lincoln called the executive building on 15th Street. So world is small and you know a lot of touch points when you start talking about where people were, what, what organizations they came up in. And Matt was a, was a friendly day one when he, when he got
[00:24:14] Speaker A: here through for the listeners. Matt Seifer runs the Steers program at Georgetown.
[00:24:19] Speaker B: Yeah.
Tara Kaufman, head of the center. So he's, he's great. Go Georgetown.
[00:24:25] Speaker A: So between Dartmouth and Georgetown, how many years was that between the two and what and what got you back to Georgetown?
[00:24:32] Speaker B: So it was eight years from undergrad graduation to grad school graduation, but three years of. Three calendar years of grad school. So about five in between.
And I think I didn't start out in real estate coming out of Dartmouth. I didn't graduate with a job. I came home, sucked my thumb a little bit, toyed with a few different things.
Still had this itch to maybe be a lawyer. I actually spent my first nine months in the working world post college as a paralegal. Whiten case.
[00:25:03] Speaker A: Did you buy a law school or.
[00:25:05] Speaker B: I did not. I did not. I did a few things happened that I won't, I won't get into there. Love all the people. There are a lot of Dartmouth people there that made it easy. Learned a lot about law and most of what I learned was stuff that I didn't like so opted not to do it. Had this itch. I was fortunate to do a program at the Tuck School while I was an undergrad for a summer called the bridge program and really felt like business school was where I needed to go. Wanted to go with. With really kind of rounding out an econ degree and not being a finance guy right out of school. So I instead kept on the job hunt. I left law after about nine months and found my way and maybe we'll get into this. But found my way into agency Fannie, Freddie Mac, Das lending at what was then called Deutsche Bank Berkshire Mortgage in Bethesda I'm sure. And worked for a few of the originators, some of which are still there today now as Newmark were Berkeley Point and then were bought by Newmark and were learned. Learned a lot about that business, learned a lot about multifamily modeling. Was there for a little over a year and decided that I needed to change it up a little bit and harkened on some advice that some family friends, Bob Milkovich specifically, I think you know, John had been in my ear forever about different things to do in real estate and capital markets. Investment sales was, was one of those things. And so I went back to the drawing board and sketch that he had given me as a young 20 something having lunch with him and was able to kind of piece it all together and apply to a role at hff, an analyst role and started there in the fall of 2007 right before the GFC.
[00:26:41] Speaker A: Who was your first boss there?
[00:26:43] Speaker B: First boss at HFF? First boss was Steve Conley, Andrew Weir, John Duffy, Elizabeth Johnston, Dan McIntyre.
The original crew.
[00:26:52] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:26:52] Speaker B: And you know we, we, we had a lot of fun in those days. Right. It was a little different maybe than, than it is today, but small boutique shop and just sales, debt and equity obviously placement focused as well and, and got to Them right. Right after they went public in 2007. And so big growth mode. A lot happened to the company. Still very small though, probably 400 people there and was a very cool experience. Feels a lot like Lincoln is right now for me. Honestly, just given comparable scales and people knowing each other's names and maybe it's just all companies that emanate from or are headquartered in Dallas, Texas are all like that.
[00:27:28] Speaker A: So while you were there, were they encouraging you to go to graduate school or was that a decision you made by yourself?
[00:27:33] Speaker B: You know, great question. They. They were. Once I disclosed it, they were very encouraging. Wrote Andrew, wrote one of my recs I think for. For maybe both schools honestly. And when I given the choice, really only I won which was to go start part time, looked at them and said I'll work my butt off here 9 to 5 or 7 to 7 or 24 hours and then load what I can on the curriculum front of Georgetown in my spare time and get it all done for you guys. And I was very lucky to have at that point. It had been about two years there. Just enough goodwill and belief that I wasn't full of it again was transformative for my career.
I don't think I knew if I wanted to stay in brokerage medium to longer term yet or not, but was a fun experience for me and we're very thankful for them for that support.
[00:28:22] Speaker A: What do you think that did for you, that McDonough School experience? Did that give you more familiarity with the capital markets? Did it give you a more dynamic financial modeling experience?
[00:28:33] Speaker B: Yeah, 100%. And again was very deficient in that. Unlike some of these great undergrad business schools around the country. Now, because I went to a liberal arts school and only majored in econ, there was no accounting and there was no corporate finance. I had friends that were living and working and experiencing all that on Wall street and getting to hear about it. The next best thing I could do here in real estate was to kind of learn through the textbook. And so there were no real estate classes there for me to take. That's what I was doing on my day to day. And it was learn as much as you can in finance everywhere else and try and understand the larger ecosystem and really the connectedness and globalization of capital markets through that experience. And I think it helped with just an appreciation for how money flows and what it is able to do. All the alternatives it can invest in, put itself out in. And real estate's just one small piece of that. It's not small, but it's only one silo, one facet, one asset class. Learned a lot about the others thanks to those years at Georgetown.
[00:29:37] Speaker A: That's great.
So playing Division 1 at lacrosse as a defenseman is incredibly demanding.
How did the discipline and resilience required on the field translate into the fearless effort you bring to your professional life?
[00:29:54] Speaker B: You know, I think it's really resiliency is what I come to.
There's a hard work and leadership component to it. I, you know, came there, recruited, didn't get to play much early on. Had to really work at it to, you know, and build confidence in myself, build confidence in the coaches and the teammates, obviously, to earn that time. And you learn a lot about yourself that way. But also had some adversity along the way, which I think was more transformative. Right, right. Kind of at the peak of, I gotta be honest, my playing career, which was sophomore year, I blew out my second knee and had done one in high school, did one in college. And so right when you think you're kind of master of the universe and everything's going your way and your team's having a bunch of success, something changes for you and you need to redefine who you are and how you spend your time and what you devote your effort and energy into outside of rehab and obviously wanting to make it back on the field and so was able to dive into school further, student life further. Had a great time, obviously, but really focus on core subject areas, things that interest me off the field and hopefully really let me better round out myself. Coming back from that wasn't easy. We had a coaching change right after. I kind of recovered from that as well. So my last two years were not the same as my first two. Had to work again to get back on the field and then just, yeah, really for program related decisions, new coaching regime. I didn't really get to play my senior year. And that was hard. That was hard to feel like you were a player of a certain level of caliber that could contribute and for reasons not fully ever articulated to you, but kind of understanding that there were younger people here that were going to help change the program for what that new regime wanted. They got the time that you did not and that and the minutes were finite. So that was tough. But was able to stick with it, stay through all four years and did it for the guys.
Some of my best friends, really, all of them are my best friends, and none of us quit over that period of time. And we all kind of shouldered the load, the goods and the bads, and did it for each other. And again, that's why I think sports are so great as just a microcosm of really how things should really work and function well in the working world, too. And real estate's no different. So I like to think a lot of that was brought over there in terms of.
And then I'll stop. But like, you know, defense and strategy and X's and O's. I really love that.
And it's come out now in me with my young guys. I've got four sons and coaching and being thoughtful and strategic and not only teaching, but. And I think you do a lot of that now in the working world and in a leadership role, but being a tactician and X's and O's and really trying to see things through multiple lenses before you make like an actual, hey, this is the way we got to do it. You really sit there and want to evaluate what's the best plan, what's the best strategy. And oddly enough, I feel like I learned some of that through playing defense.
[00:32:57] Speaker A: So I honestly have enjoyed watching the NCAA tournament that's on right now. It's been fascinating to watch.
[00:33:04] Speaker B: Lacrosse is very different 25, 30 years later from when I played back then, but it's very cool. The growth of sport's amazing.
Obviously very fortunate to be.
[00:33:13] Speaker A: It's like hockey on grass, really.
[00:33:15] Speaker B: That's what it's like. That's right. That's right.
[00:33:17] Speaker A: Pretty cool.
There's a powerful philosophy in business to let your light be contagious through fearless effort and honesty.
As a leader, how do you actively infuse this style of ethical leadership into your team's culture?
[00:33:34] Speaker B: So I think it starts with everyone knowing that you're not going to ask them to do something you either haven't done or wouldn't do yourself. And I tried in all my stops to show as many times as I feel is appropriate how things should get done and doing it the right way and then obviously having a lot of enthusiasm with it, good and bad, depending upon which former colleague you might ask. But I think doing it that way and then letting people be themselves and really own what you've taught them, grow it, evolve it, make it their own, is one of the things that I've really tried to do as I've gone further and further, hands off on the intricacies of every underwriting or deal memo or things like that here in the sales and investment space. And you want people to feel like they have ownership and they are an important cog in the wheel and not just Doing the work to do the work. And I think that's what I love about this business is that if you're really transactions focused and people first, that those opportunities are abundant. They're daily, whether it's reviewing the pro forma for the 10th or 12th time and doing it in a larger team format and getting it right, or you're in the throes of diligence trying to reconcile leases and camrecs to rent rolls if you do it the right way. People have an enthusiasm and a passion for this business and it's pretty fun to watch when you're able to cultivate and grow it. And again, I was fortunate to be a part of those teams as a young person and trying to do the same thing at my prior stop and now here at Lincoln.
[00:35:20] Speaker A: In an industry dealing with multimillion dollar institutional transactions, how do you ensure that unwavering honesty remains at the forefront of every deal, inspiring your partners and clients to act with that same integrity?
[00:35:34] Speaker B: Yeah, so I think this has been a pretty uniform approach of my predecessor partners and firm. And now here at Lincoln, where if you think like an owner always, whether you've got 0.5% of the investment or 100 and you treat your partner, put the partner, client, whatever you want to call it, first, and you're thinking that way always, honesty and transparency and doing right by each other is pretty bulletproof.
When you're not doing that is when you might want to fudge something, you might want to withhold something, you might want to keep something from folks for the sake of getting a deal done. That's never been part of really any environment I've been in, honestly, and I think it's sacred in terms of approach. And if you more often than not, I think do right by those, your team, your client, partner and the deal, then you're going to generally be successful.
Black swan events and market resets and corrections notwithstanding. But even those are learning opportunities. And where again, if you follow those same principles that I kind of outlined, if you're doing right by everybody now, maybe including your lender in those times, it's going to pay dividends forward for you as you go about your daily moving forward and want to get back on the field for net new investing, net new opportunities, the world is small in the real estate industry and if you don't treat it as such and treat people the right way, they're going to forget about you pretty quickly.
[00:37:14] Speaker A: Was there a person along the way that kind of hit that nail on
[00:37:19] Speaker B: the head for you several I've referenced some of them. Thankfully all of them were my partners up until coming here.
Yeah, I think Steve Conley or Jim Meisel and Andrew Weir, some of my younger partners over time. Sue Karas, who I know, you know, that was all their approach and being there for 18 years under that and working with that daily was, was, you know, made, made me feel those ways and, you know, making those core parts of, of who I am and how I approach the business, for sure.
[00:37:55] Speaker A: Mm.
So going back to your early career, what was the initial spark that drew you to specifically into commercial real estate rather than traditional finance?
[00:38:08] Speaker B: Yeah, so again, I go back to Bob Milkovich. It's kind of funny, you know, you're a young guy trying to figure it out. You go through corporate recruiting in college and aren't really sure what you want to do. Finance. I stunk at all the Wall street interviews. Didn't get those jobs. Did get consulting jobs. And so the next thing is who can you talk to? How many people with perspective can you talk to as a young person to kind of gain some insights and knowledge as to what you should be doing and maybe where your skill sets could be best matched? And so like I said, Bob was a great friend of the family.
His sister and brother in law are godparents and one of my brothers and great family friends. And Bob by extension. And so I remember having lunch with him as a 20something, early 20something. And he gave me a piece of paper with a bunch of quadrants written out as to, you know, you want to be a developer, you want to be a capital markets person, you want to be in leasing, do you want to be, you know, whatever else. And, and not only did he have names of companies, he had names of people. And he sat there and he went through and he.
[00:39:10] Speaker A: That's great.
[00:39:11] Speaker B: When he couldn't remember phone numbers, he hammered it on his, on his keypad like he was sitting there and wrote down the numbers and, and really laid out for me that probably given my background, I probably didn't have the patience for development and that maybe something more transaction based, transaction oriented like debt or equity placement, sales, leasing might be more up my speed and ally and aligned with the skill set and just him knowing me. So it was really that. And I wish I had listened to him maybe the first go around and instead of doing that quick stint at Deutsche Bank Berkshire Mortgage and maybe called on some folks a little bit more proactively, but thankfully ended up getting one of the jobs and companies on that list on my resume and Proved to be a pretty great move for me and great first 18 years of my career.
[00:40:03] Speaker A: Did growing up in the Baltimore, Washington metropolitan area give you a unique perspective on regional economics that stimulated the interest?
[00:40:11] Speaker B: You know, I think so. I think understanding what the linkage between Baltimore and Washington at a young age was very helpful. Mainly infrastructure driven. Right. And have only appreciated that more and more over time.
I spent way more time growing up being from Annapolis in the Baltimore area market and you know, high school competed against really Baltimore teams and up north, not, not really D.C. so much. But you know, being here for more than 20 years now having full appreciation for, you know, clearly the role that the federal government plays in the region nationally, you know, the economic kind of drivers of same and really what we're, what we're working through right now as it all resets, frankly, I think that's been a great know, backbone for me to kind of have as. As the office market comes back and DC centrically comes back into more favor with.
[00:41:09] Speaker A: With capital.
[00:41:10] Speaker B: But what I've been really excited about relative to our industrial capital raise and deployment has been being back up in the BW corridor and you know, knowing what I know about not much, right. But knowing and not starting from scratch and zero about the ports business and you know, Baltimore, you know, BWI corridor, the airport and a lot of the infrastructure that's there supporting the logistics business specifically. So it was fun, I gotta admit too like couple things we got to trade along Pratt street and do that in my 10 years ago, which was fun for me to be back in Baltimore doing some things like that. But I just feel very fortunate to be here in this region and have a relatively decent command of where things are and why they're there and how they kind of push this industry moving forward.
[00:42:04] Speaker A: You began your career focused on sales, debt placement and recapitalization. What intrigued you with these intermediary roles instead of the principal side of the business?
[00:42:13] Speaker B: Initially, yeah, initially I think it's back to reps and fast pace. We were early on, it changed over time for a variety of reasons. I'm sure we'll touch on, but start to finish, we were probably getting up and down on transactions in three to six months. I mean it could move pretty quick. There wasn't a sales now. Yeah like from underwriting, take it to the market and close it. There were things that happened pretty quickly and that feels like forever ago, but there weren't a lot of BOVs and paralysis by analysis and competitive BOVs and all these other things now that have kind of crept into the day to day in an intermediary role here in the region and nationally.
And so I think looking at those quick wins and quick learning experiences, being able to turn the page and move on to the next learning opportunity, to be able to stay stack those over time was something that maybe I couldn't put my finger on at the time. It just felt appealing. And also having the opportunity to work on behalf of so many different clients and do things, learn things different ways and make a little bit of everyone's kind of mantra or thesis or view on an asset class or a market submarket, play whatever it may be, make a little bit of everything your own and gather that data and information and really help widen your windshield and really shape the way that you view the market and how to play it. And so I joke. I've done a lot of fractional investing in friends deals. I've never bought a building outright myself, but felt like I learned a lot through an intermediary in the debt and equity space at my time at HFF and JLL and felt like a lot of that could then now be applied to coming here and stepping into an investments oriented type role and putting our capital to work alongside our great partners.
[00:44:19] Speaker A: So I did that most of my career as an intermediary. Of course, as you well know, it's fascinating to see the different perspectives on both sides of the table and why people make decisions the way they do.
And I don't think as a principle, there's no way you can have that much experience with enough transactions unless you're in the role as an intermediary. In my experience at least, you just can't see the velocity of activity and you can't see the different perspectives as well unless you're a deal junkie on the principal side. And there aren't many of those that do many business deals as buddies. It's an intermediary that I'm aware of totally.
[00:44:59] Speaker B: And the way someone once kind of couched it to me again, I was already kind of in the role, but they said, hey, what are you all worked up about?
You're in a great seat.
This market may spit out 100 deals a year you've competed for and looked at probably 60 to 70 of those deals yourself would you know, you didn't get to sell them all. Maybe you sold 25%, 30% of those things, but those are wins. I, you know, that person says I here on the buy side, I probably went deep on 20% of those transactions and did desktops and then maybe we offered on less than 10 of those and maybe we got to the promised land on one.
Not a great math guy, but some of those percentages started to resonate with me a little bit. And so having your fingerprints on more and kind of helping shape and dictate the market a bit more through that volume and flow was something that I really valued so far in my career, frankly. And I have my own views on how even here at Lincoln we're doing that with our services platform and the number of transactions we're participating in as a cog in the wheel to the overall sale and the way that we collect data and kind of look at things now as well. It's been a great kind of segue for me going from just straight brokerage to now more buy side focused in
[00:46:28] Speaker A: those advisory roles, navigating the complex needs of institutional investors.
How did acting as a strategic consultant shape your deep understanding of the capital stack?
[00:46:43] Speaker B: I think that really was through the volume that we saw every situation being different, being excited by the prospect of learning something new. To the extent I remember when we sold our first mez note in 2010, I knew what mezzanine debt was, but I didn't know that hey, coming out of the great financial crisis, that equity could be wiped. And now you're selling a debt instrument to effectively get someone title to the deal. So really, really fortunate to just be again in a chair and with a team that was wonderful and being able to be in front of so many things like that. And when you're doing things like that early in your career, it kind of builds upon itself. You then feel comfortable going out and calling on more banks and can you sell more debt? Do you want to go spend some time and understand structurally how the conduit market is whacked up and who controls what in these. In these pools and how do you play tranche warfare and CMBS 1.0, those are all things that I wouldn't have really been doing in just an operator type buy side seat that maybe I sit in now. It was all a byproduct of what we were being asked to move on the market's behalf at that moment in time.
[00:47:54] Speaker A: What was the most complicated or complex situation you ever got yourself into and out of?
[00:48:01] Speaker B: Oh God, there's a couple again.
I focus on a transaction that again, CMBS 1.0 is now Office to residential conversion that's sold for a song. But it's a transaction down in the Portals complex here in Southwest where originally took it out. It was an office investment.
Thought that we would be selling this for call it 150 million bucks based on bovs and the like pricing at the time. This is probably 201516 timeframe and learned very quickly that my math didn't work with bondholder math and you pull the deal things start to happen net new leasing tries to get done.
You kind of long story short spend five years of your life in a saga that basically was all manufactured off of a bond trade and where by the end the the overall sale price of the actual asset which ended up being sold empty for conversion to Henderson park and Low Enterprises. Mark Rivers and his team Lex Lefebvre wouldn't have seen that way through any other way mind you but learned a tremendous amount along the way. Didn't take.
[00:49:11] Speaker A: So this was a workout. This was a workout.
[00:49:13] Speaker B: Sort of, yeah, sort of. There's others to be sure. Was fortunate in 2021 to work with Steve Conley and others on the sale of Wall Street's office portfolio to Brookfield. And that was a five year labor of love where it started as a public to private opportunity. I think I can say that now because it's of everything that's transpired and taken place and the sell down that's occurred over time. But how we started is not how we finished and the execution that we thought was going to be there in the public markets going private was not. And so you learn how to advise and pivot and that resulted in a 12 building portfolio trade instead. And so I think above all it's just one of these things where you hang around great clients and great opportunities long enough and you learn a heck of a lot along the way and you might have to work yourselves out of them. But if you're doing it together then you're likely to be successful in some form or fashion.
[00:50:09] Speaker A: Having executed over 20 billion capital markets activity.
Did you ever consider an entrepreneurial role instead of institutional real estate either at first or later in your career?
[00:50:21] Speaker B: I did. Coming out of business school I, you know I maybe would have been great honestly given my family situation. Having lost my mom young. I was the caretaker for her mom, my grandmother and I learned a lot about the seniors housing business in 2009, 1011 really or at least I thought I did as a consumer and started studying the space and wrote one of my business school essays that Georgetown actually about maybe starting my own seniors company. And that was really the only time I sat there and said I want to be maybe entrepreneurial when I'm done with this degree and maybe take other people's money and go out and execute on those types of trades. I didn't. I thought long and hard about it.
I felt like there were reasons for me, risk, reward, obviously. But given that point in my life, starting a family and doing some things, it wasn't the time.
The path and the Runway and the learning that I was able to do in the capital market space and sales space for really the 20 teens and early 2000s now I think were the right choice for me. But in addition, coming over to Lincoln, did I think about joining up with some friends? I've got a lot of friends now, early 40s, all spinning out of big shops and doing wonderful things in the space. And again, I felt like there were some things about this role, this opportunity where I didn't need to be full startup mode and still be very entrepreneurial because Lincoln wants to be and is highly entrepreneurial in its approach. And so having the backing of the machine and the access to capital is very hard to come by right now as you know, felt like the great migration from, from broker to, to buy side and, and don't, you know, completely close the door to wanting to go out and do some things on my own down the road. But I'm really excited to be here and see a great kind of road ahead, doing what we want to do.
[00:52:16] Speaker A: That's great.
How do you balance the entrepreneurial hustle required to close deals with a highly structured environment of institutional real estate?
[00:52:26] Speaker B: So the hustle, thankfully having been in the, in the brokerage space is, is kind of innate at this point. You got to be out calling and you know, out hustling anybody you can. There's some great examples of that, former clients, great friends of mine that I learned that from back to some of our earlier commentary a few minutes ago and so fortunate to see that I think if you're not doing, you know, 5, 6, 7, 8 meetings, touch points calls with all different players in the market a day, you're not doing enough and it might be money, excuse me, doing more. Right. Be really out trying to unearth things. And now I get to do it under a lens not only of investment or co investment, but from a services perspective as well. So that's going to be a key tenant of mine and backbone of who I am and what I do, I think until I hang it up. But I think with the.
You're going to have to remind me the second part of the question, John, but I think the, the real structured
[00:53:26] Speaker A: environment of institutional real estate.
[00:53:28] Speaker B: Yeah. And So I think institutional real estate is structured and it's not at the same time. Right. The way capital is raised and deployed is very structural. The way debt is originated and deployed is very structural. But manufacturing opportunities is not. Right.
You got to go out there and find it. And that's also why I love this business is it's like pricing's not transparent and you don't have fair market value every day. And so you're really trying to find the cracks and the chinks in the armor on a given deal or an opportunity and go unearth it and make it happen. And again, I go back to, you can't do that unless you're. You're out hustling.
[00:54:03] Speaker A: And so I interviewed Bill Norton of Northwestern Mutual podcast, and Bill was with Northwestern for over almost 50 years, 40 some years.
And I. It got to the point, you know, you think he's. That's about as institutional a place as you can possibly be. Northwestern. It's about as conservative of a real estate investor as just about any firm that I can think of.
And that he felt himself like he was an intermediary internally because he had to sell his committee on what he saw in the marketplace. So he felt as if he was an intermediary within his own firm.
And you wouldn't think that looking at that space. But, you know, you've met Bill. I'm sure you know the type of person he is. He's just as much, you know, a deal guy as anybody else.
[00:54:50] Speaker B: If you're a deal person, you're always selling something, so.
[00:54:53] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:54:53] Speaker B: Internally and externally. And I couldn't agree more. It really does feel that way. And clearly we're doing that with many of our transactions to capital partners, and I'm doing that internally to investment committee. And in some ways, it feels no different than when I was trying to convince people to buy some of my deals. That may not have been that great.
[00:55:13] Speaker A: I started my career prudential, and at that time, it was the pinnacle of real estate in the industry. It was the place.
And I looked around and there were people that were somewhat stodgy and waiting for deals to happen. And I just never felt that way.
You had to get out there and hustle. Even with the big piece of the rock on your guard, you had to do it.
[00:55:37] Speaker B: Absolutely. Absolutely.
[00:55:39] Speaker A: It's the attitude you have to take.
So how do you serve on the board for Georgetown Steers Global Real Estate Center?
You now serve there. How do you apply your contagious light philosophy when mentoring the next generation of real Estate professionals.
[00:55:58] Speaker B: So steercent has been so great for that.
And it started at HFF and carried on at jll. Now here at Lincoln we, we are very pro bringing young people undergrad and graduate on for formal intern or externships throughout the year. We think there's a lot that young people can learn from us and that we can learn from them. And so that's been a big approach.
I attend the career days I go. I had the fortune of lecturing a class or guest speaking in a class recently.
We do the mock interviews, we do some site visits and things with the different clubs and different student bodies, undergrad versus graduate. And it's just been a great way to A stay connected and B give back in a non monetary way to the program and really try and create some opportunities for the young people there that weren't around when I was and leave it a little bit better than you found it and thankfully have a large portfolio here now that they can access. They can learn by doing a big book of things that we can look at and underwrite and do in the abstract and also very technically that maybe other shops and opportunities can't afford young people. So I've been so pro bringing those folks to the real world as fast as you can and been really pleased with the, the output we've gotten from all of them.
[00:57:28] Speaker A: So you and I met ULI mentorship program.
[00:57:32] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:57:33] Speaker A: And you were a coordinator of the group that I led, that I mentored. I did that for 16 years to me at the time. And I still almost looking back at my time with ULI for about 30 some years, think that that's the best program that ULI does. Honestly. Yeah. Are you still involved in the mentorship program?
[00:57:55] Speaker B: Not in the mentorship program, unfortunately. Lost a little touch with it after Covid when I think they were kind of finding their way and footing with it again too. But I've tried to take a lot of those lessons learned from you and others in doing several years in that program and construct and give the same kind of effort and energy to the young people, whether it's Georgetown, whether it's Dartmouth undergrad.
I'm head of careers for the Friends of Dartmouth Lacrosse as an example. Just trying to give people as much information, confidence, just help as much as I can to help them find a career, hopefully in real estate. That has been so wonderful and rewarding to me and to many others. It's kind of the, it's the only way to do it. And I think there's same with DC Real Estate Group. Some other things I've been involved in. There's no shortage of those types of opportunities here in D.C. which I think makes D.C. relatively unique as a market. Others out of town say that, believe it or not, and I think we're all rooting for each other, wanting to help each other, maybe more so than some of the other markets. And that's odd to some people, but you really feel it, and you really feel it when even with uli. And Ray Richie's a legend, but he shows up to trivia night for ULI young leaders and is behind the bar 10 bar bartending, you know, for that event and, and just spending time with young people to, you know, to just give them some, some little glimpse of who he is and how he got there and what he's doing and what, what can help make them successful.
[00:59:22] Speaker A: So he's one of my favorite guests.
[00:59:24] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure.
Really excited to, to see what they do in their new, new venture. His son David and some others leaving jbg. And, you know, I think Ray will be a part of that as well. And, and he's just, he's one of the best.
[00:59:38] Speaker A: So two moments I'll mention about our mentorship group that you were extraordinary in your leadership. One was a case study that you did on an office transaction that was very complicated and you helped people walk it through. And in essence, you asked the other group members to do, to case study that situation and say, what would you do if you were in this situation? Which I, I thought was one of the better sessions I ever had in mentoring.
[01:00:06] Speaker B: Appreciate that.
[01:00:07] Speaker A: It was really a lot of fun.
And then the other one was when I brought Gary Rapoport into your office. Sure, there were. And of course people on the podcast know who Gary is. He's twice been interviewed by me, and he's one of the major retail leaders in the market.
But he always has good, sage advice for young people. And so that was. I think you enjoyed that.
Yeah, it was a special time. So I'll just say that if you're listening and you aren't aware of ULI's mentorship program, investigate it and get involved.
[01:00:41] Speaker B: Absolutely. And still a ULI member on the office Committee Council for dc, so still finding ways as a non young leader now to stay involved and to kind of help promote all the great things that that group has to offer.
[01:00:55] Speaker A: That's great.
You began at hff, as we talked about, which was acquired by JLL in 2019, where you became a senior managing director. What aspects of integrating with JLL's massive global platform were the most stimulating.
[01:01:13] Speaker B: Oh man.
You could find something new every day to go throw yourself into and learn from. What a wonderful six years to have had in that ecosystem with, with those people, many of which I still talk to daily. Great friends, partners and many instances still finding ways to work with them, which is awesome. You know, you go from like 4,000 people to 93,000 people globally and there's a bit of an adjustment and thankfully great leadership from Steve and Jim and sue and others along the way as that was unfolding to kind of learn how to integrate. But I think the global brand breadth and depth of its reach was the main thing for me. That happened at a time pre Covid where Global capital was still very, very involved in investing in Washington D.C. and finding new ways through new partners and avenues within JLL to access those relationships and be in front of those groups was very enlightening, transforming if you will. And then seeing what we were doing in those same geographies with those same clients and realizing there's a whole heck of a lot more Runway to do other things than just sales and debt placement with Large format investors, LPs, sovereign wealth, private high net family office, offshore. Right.
There's endless opportunities in this business to go access capital and do great things and then to get to sit into tenant rep meetings and corporate advisory meetings, agency leasing meetings, whatever was on the docket in a given day, week or month, and learn how we're serving different facets of the whole ecosystem of real estate. I think was pretty fascinating.
[01:02:55] Speaker A: So you learned the user business as opposed to just the capital markets business?
[01:02:59] Speaker B: Yeah, by no means an expert, but was able to be part of user dispositions, user acquisitions, learn a little bit more, maybe put some of that corporate finance degree or background to work how they think about real estate, consume it, you know, like talked a lot about lease liability versus making things assets and just again different views and perspectives on how people view space decisions. I think was very interesting and that extended into maybe some larger format logistics things, some, some housing even. So was very again in terms of broadening the windshield as I alluded to earlier through transaction activity. Those may not have all been transactions, but those may have been moments for me to participate with other colleagues and constituents within that, that ecosystem that I wouldn't have had in a capital markets only firm. And I definitely think we're, we're very, you know, foundational building blocks along the way for my career as well. So awesome, awesome place, awesome people and
[01:04:05] Speaker A: great time There one of the things I'll mention about a firm like jll, I was at cbre.
I was at CB actually before it was cbre. But just understanding the user dimension, which the values of real estate are completely different when you look at it from a user size. What they need, why they need it, an investor has a completely different. And so to understand both sides of the business, to me I think is a critical part of really being, you know, have a full index in the
[01:04:40] Speaker B: industry, honestly 100% for the, you know, office and industrial asset classes. I thousand percent agree.
[01:04:46] Speaker A: And even in retail.
[01:04:49] Speaker B: Correct, Even in retail. Right. I totally agree. And just again, very, very fortunate to have had that level of exposure and experience and getting a few of these transactions done in my tenure there.
[01:05:01] Speaker A: During your time in brokerage, you executed complex transactions like the $196 million Bethesda School sale and the 167 million disposition of 500 L' Enfant Plaza. What were the most thrilling parts of putting those deals together?
[01:05:19] Speaker B: There's many. I know we were talking about some of my favorite transactions earlier, but. But maybe I'll just touch on l' Enfant, since you mentioned it, that was a transaction where the client, which was Tucana Capital Advisors and Normandy Real Estate Partners had bought out of a CMBS Trust 950 font. And so watching that from its inception and advising where I could up until that point in time, seeing them work with the servicer, which I think was C3 capital, come up with kind of the number and then formulate the business plan and be able to execute on that business plan, which was basically extend GSA tenancy, et cetera, and then take it to the market, was really cool to watch and see because it touched on so many intricate parts of the business that I don't think people always get exposed to, whether it was service or workout capital structuring because it was not just a traditional 60% leverage and 40% equity type transaction in a 95, 5 or 9010 format, I don't recall. But seeing that take place and then seeing the business plan happen in a nanosecond from closing to when we eventually took it out to market to sell was pretty cool. I think the hair on that was it was part of the larger l' Enfant Plaza complex. There were lawsuits and reas and all sorts of stuff going on, torpedoes below the water line that only come out when you can price a deal pretty easily, when it's all math and then you get into the complexities of real estate. Mixed use condo structures, shared operating expenses, the like air rights, things like that, where that proved to be a big lift, heavier lift than I think we all thought, but a great result. Took a bit to get done and I think was a poster child transaction for many of the folks that were part of that deal on the buy side and the sell side. So drive by. I actually drove by on my way here to the interview, John, so I look at it fondly every time.
[01:07:23] Speaker A: Well, the question is what's the future of l' Enfant Plaza?
[01:07:26] Speaker B: You know, that's I, yeah, Bob Murphy and Zach Wade will tell you. So go talk to them with what they're doing with Blackstone and I hope there's good things cooking there and clearly a much larger plan, hopefully a unified and coordinated plan for Southwest thanks to a lot of this federal building disposition stuff that I know is top of mind for many and in the public
[01:07:47] Speaker A: eye right now is Lincoln playing in that market.
[01:07:50] Speaker B: We've looked at some of the dispositions, have not really found a capital source which I think predominantly needs to be private, high net family office type that wants to take on that lift. But was very fortunate that my old team was able to transact on the GSA regional office building with Dallian Development. Hossein Fata, great Georgetown alum and board member of the Steer Center. Very cool to see that go on with, with his multifamily development team. Liberty Loan will get done. There's, there's more coming and we're, we're
[01:08:22] Speaker A: going to pick a project down there too.
[01:08:24] Speaker B: That's right.
[01:08:25] Speaker A: Residential project.
[01:08:26] Speaker B: That's right. That's right. So I think there's a lot of, a lot of promise, a lot of opportunity down there if things are bought right with the right views on maybe public assistance in terms of financing, maybe some more flexibility around zoning. Some other incentives I think would be great to do a lot of that stuff in bulk format, particularly like Department of Agriculture's headquarters at two and a half million feet. I think needs a, needs a big lift and big capital infusion and help to maybe achieve the type of reimagination Southwest needs and wants and hopefully gets.
[01:09:00] Speaker A: You are clearly a competitive and team oriented guy.
What advice would you give young people considering starting their careers in brokerage versus acquisitions?
[01:09:11] Speaker B: You know, I talked a lot about myself and I think did it, did it a good enough way? I don't know that it really matters where you start on either side as long as you're getting the reps that we've talked about and that you're being put in a position to learn things very quickly, formulate your opinion and then turn the page and move on to the next thing and stack those learned experiences one after another and almost to the point where it doesn't matter if you actually close the deal or not. My personal opinion, people may argue with that. I think you are a sponge at that age and everything is new and every situation you could possibly put yourself in is beneficial. And I had to remind a lot of our young people during COVID really through 2023, honestly, when things weren't transacting, that we were doing a heck a lot of work for banks, for still owners and clients and equity, you name it. And we weren't really sure where the payday was going to come. And everyone connotated their personal worth and growth off of successfully closed transactions and that wasn't happening. That can be frustrating. And so you got to keep a framework and a lens in mind that you can have as a young person, pretty demonstrative growth in even tough times if you're doing the kind of work that is a building block for future success, career, resume building, et cetera. So being with that right shop that has that infrastructure, the learning, not just the reps, I think is important as well as being in your own team based and oriented environment where young people have an opportunity to lean on each other and have some sort of shared learning as well. Where just by being around other people who are bright, talented, curious and trying to figure it all out together, you learn a lot through osmosis.
And I can't say the same thing for young people who might be brilliant that just sit in a three or four person shop and they'll maybe get the same reps and same guidance and same touches that these folks do. So I'm very pro that environment. And if you can find that on the buy side with a large format capital allocator and Analyst team of 10, 15 people, awesome. I love the way that we did it at HFF JLL with the teams that we built and really centered around young people doing all the hard work and the underwriting and learning together. And listen, AI may change some of that, John.
It may take some of that workflow away, but I think you can still find those environments and those opportunities for young people and that's where they're going to have their best success.
[01:11:45] Speaker A: It's interesting you mentioned AI.
You ask yourself, what's the humanity in real estate? Where is humanity going to be separate from the AI activities?
What's important For a human being to be involved in something as opposed to saying, oh well, let's just have chat bgpt figure all that out for us.
So how do you, how do you discern that?
[01:12:10] Speaker B: So yeah, I, you know, there, there are efficiencies and processes and procedures that we're constantly solving and searching for. And I think, and that's in our management business, our leasing business, our investments business, all of it. Right. And I think AI is going to be a game changer tool already is for many of those business lines in the terms of ways that we process larger format data, that we aggregate thoughts, we spot trends, we really try and consume and put things together quicker and faster and maybe better than we did before. That's all great. I think the humanity in real estate is we're living in a built environment that touches people in a multitude of ways. And so when you're a, and I've heard people are doing this, when you're a property manager at a, or you know, a front desk concierge in an office building, you are customer service. And people sometimes make their decisions on where they want to office and how they want to be there based on that person, how they made them feel. The customer experience that can't be replicated with a hologram machine can't do that. You can't do that. And so I think there's that, I think there's obviously within the built environment we're shaping neighborhoods and changing projects and neighborhood dynamics, socioeconomic otherwise through the projects that we build and the investments that we make. And AI can play a part in that. But it can't be again, outward facing and boots on the ground and explaining the merits, if you will, of why this 300 unit deal here is going to be transformative to the neighborhood with this level of retail and this level of, you know, parking infrastructure or you know, school proffer or whatever it may be like that can't be explained through a computer and a model and chat or Claude or whoever else. So I'm confident that we'll find the best ways to use it and hopefully not water down the offering, if you will, of this business and the industry and you know, verdict still out on how much it may impact office using employment, but I know it will. But we're very confident that it's not going to do anything more right now than really enhance the offering that we provide our clients and that others can too.
[01:14:29] Speaker A: Talk about the current DC office market, we have a little bit, but with total vacancy hovering around 18 to 18.5% late 25 and Castle return to office rates averaging around 51%.
How do you see the market evolving in the coming years?
[01:14:45] Speaker B: So it feels a lot better thanks to the Trump administration's push to bring people back downtown and have butts and seats was a dark place for a bit in parts of downtown, particularly in the east End when no one was at work and it didn't feel great and trying to sell stuff in that environment didn't feel great either. And I think people quite frankly were getting great deals than if they were active in the market and and there were a few that got done. But having people back downtown, the vibrancy is great. I hope it helps retail the place making all of that reset post Covid and some of that stuff hasn't been really back up and running at least and any sort of vibrancy in some of these neighborhoods since 2019. That's a crazy thing to think about now, six years later, seven years later.
I do think that it's great to have everybody back. I think the office market still has a ways to go.
It's very bifurcated as you might imagine. And law firms are back, they're growing, they're signing new lease deals, record setting rents. That feels good. The next tier of office down feels pretty good in terms of now making space decisions, maybe having some net new growth, some new entrants to the market, some AI firms downtown again, maybe more lobbying than anything, but all good.
But it's the balance John of the market that would the 60s, 70s, 80s, vintage product, large, you know, large box, large floor plate, you know, wrong side of town, not in a transit oriented or many served location, you know, what do we do with it? And that is where the majority of the vacancy sits today. And if you don't want to really dig in and get into the math and the breakdown of where all the vacancy sits, then you can sit here and never play DC office again if you really don't want to. And I think people now are getting wise to that. I think there's more capital or institutional capital I should say that is open minded to Washington. I think that there's a bit of a misprice and an incremental yield opportunity if they're active now. And so our calling both inbound and outbound has upticked quite a bit on net new opportunities that come out but the real perceived opportunities have been how cheap can you buy some of these boxes and density blocks, portions of neighborhoods, corner buildings, mid block buildings, where can you reimagine redevelop, make your money and is that the most profitable way to play real estate in D.C. and it's murky at best. And I think there could be some repricing for that large format vacancy still coming because it's really hard right now to even put together a capital stack and really efficiently to do some of these adaptive reuse and conversions, if you will.
[01:17:32] Speaker A: So I interviewed Owen Billman of Blake last year.
[01:17:35] Speaker B: Love Owen.
[01:17:36] Speaker A: And we talked about a block that they're occupying. Sure.
Which is probably one of the premier CBD mark blocks in the city. It's a triangular block bounded by 18th Street, Connecticut Avenue, M Street, then kind of comes to a point there where their office is across Farragut Square. So he envisions a mixed use development and eventually assuming that you can get it accomplished, the height act being eliminated and going up maybe 40 or 50 stories on a site like that in the city. Now could that happen?
Is that a possibility? Is that if you're going to do that in any location in the city, City, would that make sense in that location?
[01:18:21] Speaker B: I don't know.
[01:18:22] Speaker A: It's interesting question.
It's a vision he has.
[01:18:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:18:26] Speaker A: He said unfortunately some of the other owners in this block are not along the same line as I have. So that is a lead into a question. Are you aware of any blocks in the city, full blocks now that are being assembled for a major mixed use redevelopment or new development project?
[01:18:46] Speaker B: Yeah. In the CB and East end. No full blocks? No. I think there's some great corner and maybe mid block buildings where you're grabbing a quarter of a block and trying to access redevelopment that way. I think a lot of that, honestly though is born out of the fact that large check size, large dollar amount, large format investing is out here right now. You'd much rather do a 200, you know, 250,000 square foot office building where you feel like you got a great shot at a 60 plus percent pre lease with a law firm user that's out in the 2029-2032 range maybe and see that project through and get a win rather than again, you know, a city center DC type opportunity, a wharf type opportunity. That seems really far away right now. I hope it's not. But that's the way that I think a lot of people feel unless there's more active participation, public funding available, TIFF and otherwise, tax advantages, I mean, you name it, we need it to really address a lot of this availability and obsolescence in the market as quickly as we can.
[01:19:57] Speaker A: I was at an event at International Square last year and just sitting in that food court there, I was amazed at how busy it was at that there. Yeah, I think it was about a year ago. Yeah. So there is some vibrancy still in downtown Washington.
[01:20:12] Speaker B: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.
[01:20:14] Speaker A: And an older building like that one.
[01:20:16] Speaker B: Yeah. And again, ground floor.
That user experience of done right is transformative. It creates the foot traffic and the vibrancy that a lot of these buildings may need and, you know, allows them to overcome maybe some of their structural, physical shortcomings from a leasing perspective. Lack of efficiency, you know, lack of amenities, whatever it may be. But that's a, that's a great project. And Adi and Tishman did a great job executing on that one specifically. And there's numerous examples of that now as we've tried to breathe life back into downtown pre and post Covid our
[01:20:48] Speaker A: shifts in the federal workforce and government lease adjustments impacting your long term investment strategies. The dmv.
[01:20:55] Speaker B: Great question. I was talking about this with somebody earlier. We're still trying to get a good handle on the jobs, real jobs data. Post Doge, there was a belief that we lost about 75, 80,000 jobs as a result of Doge. There were some recent revisions to those statistics, maybe that came out in the last couple weeks where it might be 119, 120,000 jobs were lost in the region as a result of that. I had my own personal experience where a friend of mine lost her job at a large box consulting firm, had been there for a long time, all federal health related. So HHS and NIH and FDA and some of those organizations got hit pretty hard both by the cuts to the federal workforce, but also to the private sector that you got to remember employ quite a bit here in the region. Who might be the folks that can go out and pay that $5 to $6 a foot rent downtown and be a viable renter moving forward for any of these conversions and things. Right. So you have that much retrenchment and job loss. It obviously impacts the local economy in the region.
I think that the same time everyone's been really focused on the net new growth and the positives which are happening. And people continue to talk about the law firm growth that feels real not only in the M and A activity that's going on in the space, but in decisions by some of these firms, particularly the AmLaw 100 firms to relocate to new development opportunities in the next four or five years as a kind of a indictment on that growth that they foresee. And the workforce that they plan to hire and how they view their business over time. And I think that's going to be a bright star, continue to be a bright star for the region.
[01:22:51] Speaker A: What's the rationale behind a law firm growing? I mean, what, what new business are lawyers getting right now that they haven't had before?
[01:23:01] Speaker B: I think it's. Honestly, I think it's. It's a consolidating industry generally, is my view. There are others smarter than me that probably have better answers, but it's all net new practice areas that they're taking on.
[01:23:11] Speaker A: It's the lawyer capital of the world.
[01:23:13] Speaker B: Yeah, correct. And so everyone wants and needs to be here on behalf of their clients.
You have three branches of the government here that you need to be interfacing with, and you can't do that virtually. We've learned that AI can't do that either. They can't go lobby, they can't go do real work on the Hill or at the White House or any of the other major branches of the government.
And so downtown, the White House micro market feels like it's very healthy, it's thriving. It may defy some of those stats that you cited earlier in a lot of that is law firm. A lot of that is some of it again, not large format, but it's net new entrants on the tech and the AI side. Frankly, when you've got groups like Nvidia taking space and Anduril and others, you feel like, hey, it may not be 300,000ft or this, that or the other that you might see in San Francisco or you might see a financial institution taking New York.
It still adding up?
[01:24:11] Speaker A: Well, there's more complexity in the marketplace than I've ever seen. So you've got like blockchain, you've got, I mean, cyber security and explosive growth in that. I mean, it's just there are new industries that are being created by AI and affiliates to that and progress. So I think in every case, lawyers have to get involved because they're all. There's always something structurally involved that the law firms get involved in. It's amazing what people specialize in, for sure.
[01:24:41] Speaker B: And there's always something to object to. There's always something to litigate. There's 100%. So particularly with this administration.
[01:24:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
What are the unique opportunities right now? And why are you seeing structural demand in alternative areas like data centers, healthcare or infill logistics?
[01:25:01] Speaker B: So, yes, we're investing in all those asset classes in various shapes and sizes across the country.
Thankfully, here you Know that we're in the data center capital of the world. We have not been able to really play or figure out, I say that lovingly, the hyperscale space, but have been trying to play data in the more fractional power colocation type arena where you may be getting 20, 30 megs of power and delivering more of a turnkey solution to smaller format users of that power. That's principally a Northern Virginia exercise, but given some of the coverage that we have that I alluded to earlier, there's parts of Pennsylvania where we're evaluating some of those opportunities. Maryland's making some pushes in certain areas and counties, but we've really been focused on va, focused on Pennsylvania in particular. And what we look at, a lot of it may feel like cover land for that execution, where you've got existing single story, two story flex properties, product that may not need to be there. Medium and long term, we'll see.
I think the hard part in those deals just to go there is that there's so much supply removal coming in Northern Virginia for data center development. So the displacement factor is really creating this unique opportunity on rents and mark to market opportunities right now, particularly in the shallow bay space.
And that is where we're spending a bunch of our time. One of the segments of the market that you alluded to in your question is, and all of those folks need to be somewhere, they all need to serve an end user, you know, resident population, whatever you want to call it, base. And they're not making any more of it right now. They're taking it away. So I think we like a lot of that. It's kind of funny to me when you see some of these per square foot metrics on those trades be multiples of where some of these office buildings a mile away might be trading for and you're trying to figure out why and does it all make sense? Is there an arbitrage one way or the other? I don't know. Right. But I think people are trying to figure that out.
You throw in, despite all the job loss as a result of Doge that I referenced, a relatively healthy home builder market that's still looking to secure sites and push product.
And it's a really interesting ecosystem to play in right now, particularly in Northern Virginia, where I think they're being smart about medium to long term growth and the types of companies they want to have and the retail offerings and the housing offerings, offerings that need to be there to make those viable. You know, particularly the corporate relocations to the Commonwealth. I think it all Gets back to infrastructure, to housing and to just the overall, you know, live work play offering that these counties and neighborhoods and submarkets have. And so we're really, really fortunate to have a bunch of different lenses to look at these opportunities in. The distress in the office space in the suburbs has kind of touched on and overlapped with many of those types of plays and have been trying to educate ourselves and more importantly capital on why they should be spending time here and make sense of those same opportunities. So hopefully, knock on wood, there's one or two that we've got in the cooker that could be emblematic of some of those themes that you touched on.
[01:28:09] Speaker A: With the trophy office vacancy rate falling to 9.4% due to massive flight to quality, how is Lincoln capitalizing on this trend in the mid Atlantic?
[01:28:21] Speaker B: We are evaluating sites with long term owners of said sites to potentially co develop.
We are evaluating always that also that next tier of office that currently exists that may have some distress and dislocation and basis reset that might be needed where we can come in either on behalf of a lender who doesn't want to just outright sale structure something, put our operating infrastructure in place with our management leasing teams on the ground and you know, participate in that correction and pendulum swing back to some office growth here in the district. Downtown in particular, we're looking at some sites in Northern Virginia that are clean that you might be able to get a pre lease for and go out and find really the gamut. John, I think that's the blessing and maybe also the curse of having a 65 million square foot management portfolio and a 30 million square foot leasing portfolios. There's endless types of things to look at with existing clients, partners, problems to help them solve and maybe find your way in where you're actually deploying some capital. So it's exciting time to becoming more and more active in office investment when we've been so active in the post Covid kind of revving of the office engine here across the market in many of our third party buildings.
[01:29:44] Speaker A: So about 10 years ago a lady by the name of Elaine Clancy, who you may know used to work at Lincoln Property company and she was the GSA interface.
What has happened to that business with Lincoln? Are you still in the GSA business?
[01:29:59] Speaker B: We are, yeah, we are.
[01:30:00] Speaker A: How is that?
[01:30:02] Speaker B: So we have two gentlemen here, Jay Lee and Will Rupe, who are leading that effort for for us here in the national capital region, but also nationally and they're spending a lot of their time with other markets that have GSA needs right now as this market continues to reshape and evolve.
Not to steal their thunder or their jokes, but they would say that maybe recently in the very near term here they've been spending more time on active GSA de tenant engagements for clients than actual procurements. But they see a slow trickle back, some net new requirements coming. But it's going to take time and not with hoops to jump through and some controversy. But it won't be, it doesn't feel like. And not speaking for them doesn't feel like it's going to be in the large format kind of areas that we need to again, reimagine a full city block type project or, you know, dramatically change perspective. Right. Economics or the value of some of these office buildings that they're currently in.
[01:31:02] Speaker A: The Trump administration has already agreed to move the FBI over to the Reagan Building. So what, what, what if you know of anything, what's going to happen to that block when they, when they move out?
[01:31:14] Speaker B: Yeah, don't, don't know. Would love to be part of an RFP process for anyone that's listening that's going to be involved in that. I did do a business school case study on that for the UT competition back in 2012.
We didn't win, but thought we had a pretty good plan and idea and basically involved the full implosion of the Hoover Building and dramatic kind of neighborhood transformative, mixed use, et cetera. I think that's probably the way that one needs to go.
[01:31:40] Speaker A: It's probably one of the best locations in Washington D.C. so the question is, how does that get capitalized? Who does it? The federal government will retain land ownership, I would think, on Pennsylvania Avenue there.
As you said, an interesting case study.
[01:31:56] Speaker B: 100%. 100%.
Maybe not in my lifetime, John. I don't know.
[01:32:04] Speaker A: You've achieved immense professional success. What about your family and other life priorities? How do you maintain that balance while executing at such a high level?
[01:32:13] Speaker B: Could always have more balance and always be better. But very active family with four young boys.
My wife Casey's wonderful, very supportive.
[01:32:22] Speaker A: How old are your children?
[01:32:23] Speaker B: 10, 8, 6 and 4. Wow. So we're in it.
It's awesome. It's what I grew up with, as you may have picked up on.
So my life kind of goes in a full circle. All boys? All boys. Probably wouldn't have it any other way at this point. It's been great. They're very active. They're playing a bunch of sports, as I mentioned. I try and prioritize educating your youth Basically, yeah. It's like Groundhog Day. Feel like Bill Murray Groundhog Day, you know, Always need and want and try to be more present when I'm home. It's hard to shut work off when you're doing a lot of different things all at once. And it's a busy, active industry here and business that we run here in the middle. And coaching, you said we try and do it through coaching. You know, spending time with my sons that way and showing them that there's a different side to dad than just someone who stares at his phone all the time. Although I yell a lot when I, When I coach because they're not always listening, they and their friends. But I mean that half seriously, but also half joking and, you know, but. But really try and put in, you know, the effort that way. Get. Get home when I can to either coach, to. To have dinner and to really be there on the weekends. Weekends, thankfully, are our time where, whether it's sports, traveling to sports, or traveling back from sports, we spend a lot of time together trying to make that quality time and replicate as much of my youth and my upbringing as I can in those same ways, which has been really, really fun and rewarding and enjoyable.
[01:33:52] Speaker A: How do you see your children interface with technology at this point, and how are you managing that, just out of curiosity?
[01:33:58] Speaker B: Yeah, great question.
No real screens or phones for the older two at all. TV different, right? I think my generation was all raised in front of a tv, so I'm okay with TV at this point as long as it's not certain content.
But yeah, no phones. We've got little gizmo watches that allow them to check in when they're running around the neighborhood untethered a bit. Can call them when we need to, they can call us, but nobody else. We do give them a little tablet time, but not really much. They're not playing video games. We're really just trying to push the avoidance of screen and the tethering as much as we can and, and we'll see if we're right. But it's hard. It's hard to. Especially when they're integrating it in good and bad ways in school. Obviously it's hard for them to always kind of turn it off when they come home and not need and want it. But we've been able to figure out a plan that makes it work for our family.
[01:34:50] Speaker A: I think it's a big challenge for everybody in your generation, I would think, having children today.
I'm going to be a grandfather first time this year, so congrats yeah. Thank you.
[01:35:01] Speaker B: Yeah. Don't buy them any screens or tablets or toys.
You may get excommunicated pretty quickly. I know from experience how that goes.
[01:35:14] Speaker A: You give back to your local community. And how does your philosophy of honest, fearless effort play a role in your philanthropic priorities?
Yeah.
[01:35:25] Speaker B: So to try and give back a few different ways again, with really active kids and stuff, the easiest has been coaching at the youth level, being an active participant in Bethesda Lacrosse association in particular, last several years as a rec commissioner, trying to get back to the sport, into the community that way. That's been great.
Again, get back through Georgetown, get back through some of these affiliated communities within, you know, the kind of D.C. metro Bethesda area.
We, as, as a. As a whole, as a company, really sit there and try and think about how we want to spend our time in Treasure and so try and be involved in as many philanthropic efforts as here as we can. So, you know, JDRF or what now is, I guess, breakthrough type 1 diabetes or boys and Girls Club Higher Achievement. I mean, we're trying to find people, not just myself, but find people here that want to be champions of some of these causes and really get ourselves out there and making a difference where we can. And that extends down to the younger people here in the office as well. Used to at JLL have some of my folks on my team be higher achievement mentors and go out into the field and spend a couple hours a week with young people. Huge proponent of that. And I wish I could get more of my time, but try and stay involved through the things that my kids do or children. Yeah. Through our church, which is honestly more my wife than me, but trying to touch the different things that touch our lives as much as we can. And you spend so much time here at the office, though, that you really, as an industry, I think this market, and again, as an industry, we do a great job of really championing these causes. And there's so many.
We believe in value in that and try and give our people the time to go out and do that and also make financial contributions where we can, where they're impactful.
[01:37:18] Speaker A: My final question.
[01:37:19] Speaker B: Sure.
[01:37:20] Speaker A: If you could place a billboard on the Capital Beltway so millions of people would see, what would it say?
[01:37:30] Speaker B: Oh, man, maybe come back. It's not that bad. It's more of a capital partner, capital flow kind of commentary, but. But it's not all about the headlines here. I think there's some great silver linings, some good, solid stories, some things emerging that give me some hope that Washington's on its way to a for office and for some other things here from a population growth perspective, I think still very, very much heading in the right direction. And we need to debunk some of these national narratives and the way that the media spins this administration and what it's doing and how this may not be an area of growth. And I hope that people remember.
[01:38:10] Speaker A: Can you distill it to a sentence?
[01:38:13] Speaker B: Come back now.
Come back now. Time is now. Let's go. There's a lot of people here that want to do a lot of work and help fix this thing where we can and be active participants in this continued recovery. And I wish I could tell you it was going to be the next two, three years versus ten. We don't know. But you got to do the work. And we think there's, like I said, a bunch of silver linings and things that if we're all willing to roll up our sleeves and commit to that, we can get back on track a bit here and do some good work and change the narrative in Washington.
[01:38:44] Speaker A: So, Matt, anything else you'd like to say before we conclude?
[01:38:48] Speaker B: No, just thank you so much. Thank you for your mentorship, your friendship over the years and for having me on this has been fantastic and been an avid listener of past podcasts and I'm very honored to have been a included in the series and always available to you, John, obviously, and to any young people out here listening that think that I could lend some insight, some expertise, please reach out. Happy to spend some time with you.
[01:39:13] Speaker A: Matt Nicholson, thank you very much. You've been great.
[01:39:16] Speaker B: Thank you.
[01:39:17] Speaker A: As I conclude this episode, I want to offer a final thought for you to carry forward.
Recently I've been dedicating more energy to guiding professionals as they navigate their career trajectories with a greater intentionality.
While this initiative will expand significantly later this year, the current intimate focus of this work has been incredibly rewarding. I truly appreciate you joining us today and I look forward to sharing more insights on the next episode.
