Daniel "Danny" Diaz Leyva - Partner, Day Pitney LLP

In this episode, we are joined by a true Miami OG, Danny Leyva, partner and head of Day Pitney's Florida Real Estate practice group. Over a glass of Jose Cuervo Reserva de la Familia, Danny shares his unique, boots-on-the-ground perspective on the incredible evolution of the South Florida market.

From navigating complex transactional structures and land-use regulations to tracking the massive influx of commercial real estate investments driven by Latin American family offices, Danny has a front-row seat to the region's growth. We dive deep into where international capital is flowing from, which submarkets are absorbing it, and what the future holds for the Miami landscape. Whether you are a developer or investor, Danny’s insights offer an invaluable look into the legal and financial mechanisms shaping our built world.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Danny’s journey and his role leading Day Pitney’s real estate group in Florida.
• The mechanics of local land-use, zoning, and navigating complex transactions in a mature market.
• The rise of Latin American family offices and their shifting strategies toward Miami commercial real estate.
• A macro view of current capital flows and where the next wave of investment is headed.

Want to dive deeper into Miami’s commercial real estate scene?

• 📧 Get in touch: Built World Advisors
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Connect with the Hosts:

• Felipe Azenha 
• Ben Hoffman 

Our Partners & Sponsors

🏢 Studio Space: A special thank you to Büro coworking space for hosting us! 

Proudly sponsored by:

• Top of Mind PR
• Vizzda
• Vinya

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:14

Have you been on a podcast before? I have. Your wife's or someone else's? I used to do a lot of TV. Yeah? Yeah. Like, what are we talking like? Porn or daytime TV? What kind of TV? You're not supposed to say that live, man. My wife would get angry with me. Were you driving the bank bus? Is that what you're doing? That's exactly right.

SPEAKER_00 0:38

All right, cool. Um I used to do a lot of uh Spanish language uh TV and radio. Oh yeah? Been involved in politics for a long time, so that's uh okay.

SPEAKER_04 0:50

But you were like an actor or anything like that. Okay. Just been in commentary. Yeah. That's right. Cool. We're good, right, Ben? Yeah, we're rolling. All right. I need to open up uh we got Danny here with us. Dave Pitney. We did our research on you. Um I spoke to Steven Wardick this morning. Oh, he's a good buddy. He's a good buddy. He'll be at the house tonight. Yeah, is he? Yeah. Oh, okay. Um, yeah, I've known Steve for a long time. And so I'm like, Steve, Danny's on. Give me the dirt. That's funny. So he gave me the he he he gave me the download on Danny. Good. Steve's been on. Yeah, that's right. Steve Steve is the professor.

SPEAKER_00 1:33

The professor, I like that. He is the professor. Yeah, he's what is the glasses? Uh he's just very professorial. He is right. And he teaches a class in the master's program at UM.

SPEAKER_04 1:43

Oh, that's right. He is teaching a class there.

SPEAKER_00 1:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:45

Yeah. He's uh he's he's a wonderful guy. I've known Steve a long time as well. Yeah, he's a great guy. Um, and uh, I know you're uh you're one of the reasons he's over at Day Pitney. That's right. Yeah, he uh we interviewed with him, he was at his own firm. Yep, and then like a month later, he's at Day Pitney. I remember that. That's right, that's right. A month later, really. Yeah, wow. I think it was that. So he's probably negotiating final terms with you. Yeah. Uh well, cool. Welcome. And uh let's start with a cheers, right, Ben? Yeah, absolutely. Cheers, Danny, welcome. Thank you. We're excited to have you on the pod. Thrilled to be here.

SPEAKER_02 2:21

We're drinking some Reserva de la Familia.

SPEAKER_04 2:24

Very good stuff. And this is uh um we're bringing our new sponsor on, too, Ben, Vinya. Let's give them a shout out already. Yeah, why not? And they're gonna give us the good shit. And this is this is on the menu as well. So uh all our all our guests are gonna be able to elevate their their drinking game with Vinya. Where's Vinya? Uh Kibiscane. It's really cool. Have you been there? You've vetted them? I went I went there last week. I'm like, let me check this out. They actually exist, it's not just a Google listing. No, it's it's a pretty cool restaurant, too. Um, incredible wine selection. Uh and uh happy hours bumping in kibiscane last week. Oh, really? I went to go watch my son's soccer game and I stopped in there before. He had a game in Kibiscane, yeah. Oh, that's awesome. It was uh it was it was an interesting crowd. Golf cart central. Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_02 3:11

Did you get a DUI driving a golf cart? Probably.

SPEAKER_04 3:14

That's that's lame. So cool, Danny. Um you're an attorney. We're the second attorney we've had in a week. That's a lot. I know. A lot, a lot of a lot of legalese we're gonna talk, I guess. All right. Um, but uh you're you're like a Miami OG, born and raised here, right? I am born and raised. Uh where were you born?

SPEAKER_00 3:32

What hospital? I was born in Mercy Hospital. Oh, nice. With a view. Yes, sir. September 11th, 1979. Wow.

SPEAKER_04 3:40

I'm not a sir. You're talking to Ben, right? Um and uh I'm sorry, what year were you born? 1979. 1979. It's a little younger than I am, a little older than you, right? Yep, right in the middle. Um and uh where'd you grow up? Uh Coral Gables. Yeah, yeah. Uh your parents are Cuban.

SPEAKER_00 4:00

My parents are both Cuban. And they came from Cuba. My parents left Cuba um 8 and 6, 1960. My mother in March, my father in des in December.

SPEAKER_04 4:09

They were part of the Peter Pond?

SPEAKER_00 4:11

No, um, they were not. My my grandfather on my mom's side uh was a lawyer and uh never practiced. He was a newspaper man, he was a journalist and editor of several newspapers in Cuba and you know just wrote regularly and was always against every dictatorship. So he spent quite a bit of time in trouble.

SPEAKER_04 4:30

He was not a like man in Cuba, right?

SPEAKER_00 4:32

No, not not with the dictators. But um, but you know, he he had to leave uh for a threat on his life, and and he came to Miami and um got involved uh in the brigade 2506. Uh his son also enlisted at 17 and they uh participated in the Bay of Pigs. Dang. In April 17th, 1961. So that is the group of uh young men, uh about 1,600 of them, uh, that were trained by the CIA here in the United States and in Guatemala uh to participate in what became a failed invasion in Cuba to try to uh topple the government of Fidel Castro at the time.

SPEAKER_04 5:10

And what year was that?

SPEAKER_00 5:11

Uh April 17th, 1961.

SPEAKER_04 5:13

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 5:13

Yeah. And so you who who was in this brigade? My grandfather and my uncle. Dang. Yeah. My uncle was 17, uh landed on the beach, uh, fought until he ran out of bullets, and him and his men were captured. They didn't get the air support that they were promised. And uh they spent two years in uh a gulag in Havana, uh, tried, and uh then they were exchanged for money and pharmaceuticals uh with the Castro Dictatorship.

SPEAKER_02 5:39

Wow. Is that when uh JFK wouldn't let the air the uh air support come in? That's right. And the and you want to go down some tin foil stuff. They claim the CIA killed him because of that.

SPEAKER_04 5:49

But so let me let's get the little let me get the history out. So the CIA trained this troop, um, 1600 people, and then they go, they uh go into the Bay of Pigs, they're promised air support by who? The CIA.

SPEAKER_00 6:07

So that that's the big question, right? Um, you know, the the commitment was from the United States government. This happened before Kennedy came into power, it was during the Eisenhower administration, and they had um you know hatched this plan to basically have Cubans go into the island, similar to what Fidel Castro did, right? He kind of went into the mountains, you know, start this you know revolution, right? And um, and the people would rise up and support them and then topple the dictatorship. That was that was what they planned on doing.

SPEAKER_04 6:37

And this was in Castro had taken power what year?

SPEAKER_00 6:40

Um January 1959. Nine. So this is 61? This is 61.

SPEAKER_04 6:45

Okay. So it's uh it's it's the plan to go retake Cuba from from Castro.

SPEAKER_00 6:50

It happened right away. And so so you know, the idea was for that to occur. Uh a part of it was to destroy all of Castro's um, you know, uh uh planes, right? And a lot of them were, but they weren't all destroyed. So um, you know, the the concern Kennedy didn't want fingerprints of the United States uh on the invasion, they wanted it to look like it was organic.

SPEAKER_03 7:15

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 7:15

And um, you know, he pulled back support. Uh it was fairly obvious, I think, to everyone that, you know, America had supported these people. I mean, how else would they have done it? They lost all their resources and you know, they were a bunch of you know exiles living in the United States, pretty much, right? So the thought that, you know, the United States didn't have a hand in it is kind of ridiculous, in my opinion. But, you know, again, that's that's history, that's what transpired. Um, but you know, look, it it was a tragic moment. Uh, a lot of people lost their lives, um, you know, lost their livelihood. And um, you know, it it they came here eventually and and built this beautiful city that we live in. And I'm proud to be, you know, the grandson and and nephew of of a brigade veteran. That's pretty wild. What a story.

SPEAKER_04 7:59

Holy shit.

SPEAKER_02 8:01

So so is that what influenced you to become a lawyer at all?

SPEAKER_00 8:04

Or you yeah, I mean, I I um look, my family uh is big on education, right? Um, so one thing that they can't take take away from you, and that's something that we learned um, you know, with Exile. Um, you know, my family uh came here, uh had lost everything in terms of resources.

SPEAKER_04 8:24

So it was your parents that came here and brought your your your parents. My grandparents, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:29

So my my my mother's parents came here. Uh obviously I shared that story with you, and and um they actually lived in New Jersey for a couple years, uh, because that's a really good place for jobs at the time. Yeah. And um they you know, yeah, Elizabeth, Patterson, Union City, yeah. So there's a lot of Cuban feminine up there. So so they were up there for a couple years. Uh grandma couldn't tolerate the cold. She got real sick, and they moved back to Miami two years later. Um, this was after the the invasion. And um then my father, on the other hand, moved to uh to Spain. So my dad uh leaves Christmas Eve 1960 uh with his whole family um to Spain, to Arturias, um, which is where my father's maternal grandfather is from. Um and he grew up there for a few years uh until he came to Miami uh mid-1960s. Got it. And they've been here ever since. What a journey.

SPEAKER_04 9:27

And then what did uh and what did your mom and dad do here in Miami?

SPEAKER_00 9:32

So my my mother um worked as an interior designer um for several years. Um she worked for some prominent firms in the gables um until my sister was born and then she stopped working. My father uh worked for my grandfather. My grandfather, when he came from Cuba, uh was a businessman. He had a uh public relations agency in Cuba, uh and that was his business and primarily serviced um Ministry of Tourism, uh, music and entertainment industry, um, spirits industry. And so he would design uh points of sale, um, you know, manage all of their uh public relations. Uh and then he started a printing company in Cuba. And it was uh an adjacent business, it wasn't his lead business, uh, but that became his lead business in the United States. So uh in Cuba he started uh manufacturing record jackets for the music and entertainment industry. And that at the time, obviously we've digitized everything now, but they were produced by with negatives, right? And so when he came to the United States uh during you know the first wave of nationalizations and and exile, a lot of his clients moved to different countries, you know, Mexico, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, they went to New York, they went all over the place. And so he came back here with those negatives and was able to manufacture uh those record jackets for them here in the United States. Uh, and that was the start of our printing business in the United States. It was specialty packaging. So uh my father got involved in the business and took over the business in the 1970s. And did you guys have it at a warehouse somewhere? We did in Hyalea. Where in Hyalea?

SPEAKER_04 11:09

In Hyalea.

SPEAKER_00 11:10

Yeah, West 23rd Street. Okay, yeah, right off of uh Palm Avenue.

SPEAKER_04 11:14

That's our that's our territory right there.

SPEAKER_02 11:15

Do you know what the parcel number is?

SPEAKER_04 11:17

You should I should know it.

SPEAKER_00 11:19

He sold it some time ago. But yeah, he's he uh so I spent a lot of time in Hyalea uh as a kid. I used to love going to my my grandfather and my father's uh business, and uh we'd go out to lunch a lot. I spent a lot of time with him when I went to the University of Miami, so I I worked for him while I was there. Uh and then I had a lot of local friends whose family businesses were in Hyalea and Medley, and um, you know, spent a lot of time up there eating at different restaurants and stuff as a kid. That's cool. That's my upbringing. What was it like growing up in Miami? Uh it was amazing. Uh we had a really special upbringing. And you grew up in Coral Gables? I grew up in Coral Gables. I live in the same neighborhood I've lived. Yeah. You know, I've been there for over 40 years. So it's um it's great. You know, we uh, you know, have a a great life. Um, you know, it's faith, family, and friends. I mean, that's basically my upbringing. Yeah. Um, you know, we've we've been friends with a lot of the same people uh for a long time, attended a lot of the schools, uh, played a lot of sports. Uh, you know, I grew up playing baseball at South Miami Corey League, uh, played soccer at the YMCA. Um, you know, and then I ended up playing sports in in middle school and high school.

SPEAKER_04 12:24

What sport were you actually good at?

SPEAKER_00 12:25

Um I actually competed pretty well, man. Yeah? Yeah. What were you good at? Uh so I played soccer and baseball. Yeah. Um high school? From when I was five till I was 15. Yeah. And for some stupid reason, I think it was because I thought it was how I could pick up girls. Um, I decided to transition to football and basketball in high school.

SPEAKER_04 12:44

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 12:44

And um, and that's what I did. So I played football and basketball at Palmer Trinity School for uh high school.

SPEAKER_04 12:50

What position in football?

SPEAKER_00 12:51

Uh I played both ways. Uh I was a split end wide receiver and a strong side defensive back, front defense.

SPEAKER_02 12:57

That's awesome. Yeah. And what were you good at in school?

SPEAKER_00 13:00

Any subjects stand out? Um look, I uh lifelong learner. I I love school. I loved educating myself. I still read like crazy, but you know, history, uh, literature, um, you know, were my favorite classes, and I actually did really well in math, so I ended up studying finance in college.

SPEAKER_02 13:17

Oh, is that right? Yeah. Covering all the bases. Yeah. That's awesome. Did you have any idea of what you wanted to do when you when to when you grew up?

SPEAKER_00 13:24

You know, I it's funny. I that's it's a big point in my life that I I wanted to work with my family. Um, you know, I obviously so your dad's main business was the printing business. Was the printing business, yeah. And um, you know, he had a it was a very successful business. Do you have siblings? You said I have a sister.

SPEAKER_04 13:41

And she's older.

SPEAKER_00 13:42

She's nine years younger than me.

SPEAKER_04 13:43

Oh, nine years younger.

SPEAKER_00 13:44

Yeah. So I I clearly traumatized my parents. I'm sure. You know, so so I was a handful as a kid. But um, she's great. She's uh she's local as well. She's a doctor in town, so she's you know, she's thriving. Really proud of her. She just had her first child in December.

SPEAKER_04 13:59

What kind of doctor?

SPEAKER_00 14:00

She uh is a uh radiologist. Okay, yeah, with a specialization in pediatrics.

SPEAKER_04 14:06

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 14:06

Yeah, but she's she's great. Um, we're super tight. Um, so yeah, I um I wanted to work with my family. Um, you know, I I enjoyed the business. Uh I love music. Um, you know, I love art. And you know, it was a way to kind of blend the two, which is one of the things that my dad, I think, enjoyed about the business um and had a phenomenal relationship with his clients. And so, you know, I I thought that was the direction that I wanted to go. And um, you know, while I was in school, I, you know, I fought like my mother wanted to be. It's funny because Cuban moms never want to send their kids away to school, right? They want to keep them here close. And my mother was trying to push me out the door. She wanted me to go away to school, and I wanted to stay because I just wanted to work for dad. That's the opposite normally. Completely the opposite. Yeah. And so um, you know, it was funny. I I I ended up working with my father while you know I was early college.

SPEAKER_04 15:00

And but you also worked with him throughout high school too.

SPEAKER_00 15:03

Yeah, I would spend summers working for him for sure. And so, you know, I was doing deliveries and stuff like that. Yeah, right. Um, packaging boxes and you know, the hard work, lots of paper cuts. That's good. Yeah, it was great. And um, and then, you know, just college. I uh and I was having a lot of fun in college, and you know you went you went to UM. I went to UM. Yeah, yeah. I was having a great time. Did you live at home? I did. I lived right down the street. Okay. So it was just amazing. Yeah, we'd everybody come to the house, you know, when we get out of class Thursdays, obviously go to the Grove and then end up in South Beach. Um, and everybody'd meet at my house before we'd go out because it was right by school.

SPEAKER_04 15:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:38

So it was awesome.

SPEAKER_04 15:39

That's pretty sweet.

SPEAKER_00 15:40

Yeah, it was a great, great gig. Um you a frat boy? Uh I was not. Well, I I did start uh as an alpha sig. I rushed and everything, but it's kind of part of the story that my father got injured. Uh he was a big racquetball player and and he got socked. Racketball. Racketball. And he'd play at UM, right? And he got socked in the side of his his uh his temple, and he was bedridden for like six weeks. Holy shit. And so, you know, I at the same time that I had just finished rush, so it was a bad time for me. Yeah. But I ended up going to work for him at that time and you know, just being his eyes at the office while I was going to school, which was great because obviously it solidified our relationship. I was trying to earn my stripes with my old man. And then um, you know, what did ensue is that I realized I was trying to bring a lot of the stuff that I was learning in school to the office and running into some challenges with my dad. He's like, hey, you know, been there, done that, tried that. Yeah, you know, oh young man, you know, that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_02 16:34

Doesn't work the same in textbooks that it doesn't really it does, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:36

But you know, I I appreciate it, right? And much more today. But at the time, I was like, why is he why is he giving me such a hard time?

SPEAKER_04 16:42

And I imagine this business is evolving, right?

SPEAKER_00 16:44

Because it's going from, you know, record so we we went from record jackets to eight tracks to cassette inserts to CD covers, and then at that moment, which is again all of this stuff, which is really relevant to AI creating like the the the plastic, not the plastic, just the inserts in the CD cards, printed pack and their specialty packaging as well, because a lot of people would do really you know nice stuff for points of sale to like you know make it nice to buy. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:11

Do you remember those days, Ben? Dude, I used to pull out the insert and look at the lyrics all the time.

SPEAKER_04 17:15

Yeah. Ben is Ben's a little younger, he's kind of like more of uh the the the Napster kind of guy, you know?

SPEAKER_02 17:21

I had both, yeah. CDs for sure, tons of CDs. Yeah, but I didn't I didn't really mess with the tapes or the eight-tracks, yeah. I had some tapes, but we were CDs.

SPEAKER_04 17:29

Oh, I was still fucking around with cassettes.

SPEAKER_02 17:30

I still have CDs. Yeah, I remember the visor with all the CDs in them in the car. Yeah, for sure. I don't know what's more dangerous. Smartphones are like dropping a CD while you're driving.

SPEAKER_04 17:40

So so so then you guys, but you guys pretty much stuck with printing for the music industry.

SPEAKER_00 17:45

So we were we were doing that, right? And at that moment, you know, obviously starting to have a little bit of friction, you know, from that perspective, um, you know, with with my father, who I adore and literally worship him, you know. Um, he's you know, responsible for anything, just gave us a leg up in life and and provided us with a platform for up for upward mobility for for me and my sister. So um, you know, I didn't want to do that, right? And then at the same time, I start coming home and Napster starts happening, right? And I'll never forget the conversation I had with my dad, which really informed a lot of my, you know, filter approaching business and technology and disruption going forward, right? Which is really relevant today with AI. Um, you know, I I tell my dad, hey dad, this is going on. And he's like, Yeah, the record labels, you know, they've been dealing with piracy for the last 60 years. They won't allow this to happen. And I go, Dad, what do you mean they won't allow it to happen? Forget that they're allowing it. It it's done. This is 2000, right?

SPEAKER_04 18:39

2001, 2000, 2001, 2000. No, I think it's a little later.

SPEAKER_00 18:42

2002 is 2000, 2001, right around that time. Because I had just started law school at that time. Yeah, right. So so it was one of those things that he just he did, he didn't he didn't get that the technology was going to completely displace us, right? Because he he'd never seen that in his whole career.

SPEAKER_04 18:58

He had there was always paper, always 2001, like me and my cousin, we were living here in the beach, and we're like, this party's gonna end soon. Like we we would literally have Napster running like for weeks straight, just downloading music, yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_00 19:15

But it you know, but it digitized everything, right? At that point, it just happened like that.

SPEAKER_03 19:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:20

So, you know, I he I I told him, Look, this so he he managed kind of the decay, right, of the business over time. Uh, started transitioning a little bit, pharmaceutical packaging and stuff like that. Um, but you know, he he started investing in real estate and he was invested in a couple things.

SPEAKER_04 19:34

Yeah, I mean his warehouse is probably one of the biggest assets, right?

SPEAKER_00 19:37

Well, that and then he invested in other warehouses. He he owned warehouses in Airport West uh with a couple partners. So he he diversified.

SPEAKER_04 19:43

You know, a good broker for industrial in case you need one, right? Right, right?

SPEAKER_00 19:46

We might, we might. So so that that kind of you know transitioned a lot. At that point, I was like, all right, I'm out, I'm gonna go do my own thing. And uh, you know, at that point, I ended up going to law school, right? Um, you know, there was a big pivot as well. Was doing really well in school, kind of graduated, you know, with good grades from my finance degree and dot-com bubble burst. Investment banking was tough to get a job at the time, so I decided to go to law school and stay here locally as well, um, which is kind of part of my story. I'm I'm really not just born and raised here, I stayed here. Like I never went away.

SPEAKER_04 20:21

So you went to law school at St. Thomas, right?

SPEAKER_00 20:22

I went to St. Thomas University for Law School. So I stayed local, you know, the whole time. Um, and you know, that allowed me to just you know deepen my roots, you know, continue to build relationships here in the community, um, you know, foster friendships that they just never went away.

SPEAKER_04 20:37

So you graduated law school. So you went straight from from college to law school. I did.

SPEAKER_00 20:41

I graduated time off. No, man. And it's funny, people you know make fun of me. I didn't I didn't take a semester abroad on a cruise around the world. You know, um. I definitely should have.

SPEAKER_04 20:52

Semester at sea. Like it's like educational, right, Ben? I learned a lot. Give me a fucking break. It's a cruise. I think I like how you put it. It's a it was a cruise. Semester at sea. Dude, it was a dope cruise. Ben's my hero. You're my hero, Ben.

SPEAKER_01 21:07

Don't let him say that to you, man. Yeah, I love that.

SPEAKER_00 21:11

So it's great, man. I I uh I had a great time, you know, in law school as well. It's you know, challenging first year, but you know, I I made incredible friendships uh there as well.

SPEAKER_04 21:21

So what why why why'd you go to the school at St. Thomas instead of UM? Did you not make the cut of UM? Is that is that what happened?

SPEAKER_00 21:28

That's exactly what happened. Um so so I end up I graduated in three years uh from UM, which is why I tell you people make fun of me. They're like, dude, all of us he's a fucking overachiever, too. They're like, You graduate, why'd you graduate in three years? You should have graduated in five. I know push it out an extra year. Um now I had a friend of mine uh actually, so so Armando Kudina's daughter, Andrea, uh, was a very good friend of mine in college. And you know, we had kind of a group of study buddies in school, and she uh, you know, asked me to join. honors program with her at school and and you know I said look the only way I'm doing this is if I have somebody to help me you know push and so she did and you know kicked my tail academically and and you know I ended up doing very very well in school as a result of that relationship she's uh she was a good friend and and you know I credit her for for helping me through you know the honors program at UM but so so why did why St. Thomas instead of so so I graduated a year early um I didn't really decide until like six weeks before the end of the school year that I wanted to go to law school. Uh-huh so I ended up taking the the LSAT like you know within those six week period I'm applying for the fall right I knew that if I went and started working I'd never go back to school and so you know I applied for the fall for UM they didn't have rolling admission at the time they said look we'll take your application but there's no chance of you getting admitted this year you'll do it the following year. So I applied to two other schools I applied to St. Thomas and I applied to Stetson uh at St. Pete Stetson does have rolling admission they admitted me for January and St.

SPEAKER_04 23:05

Thomas admitted me for the for the fall with some money and I was like you know it's here I don't have to law degree is a law degree I mean listen you you're gonna get a good education regardless and then you know at least you fast track it right no year.

SPEAKER_00 23:19

But it's it's funny because a a lot of so I had several very dear friends of mine um who went to school with me at that time just by chance right so ended up becoming very close friends uh with Nick Estrella from the Estrella family from Australia Insurance uh who became my business partner uh and he's still my client to this day um I had uh Anthony Lopez Fear of the Beard your insurance attorney he studied with us as well uh and then one of my dearest friends uh who's from Knoxville Tennessee Flint Griffin who I mean like these guys are they've become lifelong friends that studied with me.

SPEAKER_02 23:51

Yeah cool yeah did you know going into law school you wanted to practice law or were you just doing it to kind of learn more?

SPEAKER_00 23:58

That I both okay right I I did I knew that I was going to practice for a period of time. Here I am you know 20 plus years later still practicing um but you know it it's um a big part of it is obviously the pursuit of justice right and and kind of appreciation for our family's history and our story about understanding the rule of law and the importance and significance of the rule of law uh but a big part of it was also business. I knew that if I had a finance degree and a law degree I mean that was a dangerous combination right you could do whatever you wanted pretty much so a law degree is such a good degree to have totally you know I think it's just it teaches you so much about just contracts how to think yeah how to think right they reprogram your brain so you can see all the yeah pitfalls in this contract before anyone else does yeah it makes lawyers kind of afraid of their shadow though it's you see you see risk in in anything and everything you do and sometimes it's paralyzed yeah go try to have fun with a personal injury attorney yeah and I have several friends who are and they're like don't do that don't do that dude don't be a wet blanket come on yeah exactly so fresh out of law school where where did you go to work right at so so that is uh Nick uh and I actually started a a law practice oh wow um really to serve as outside general counsel initially for who's Nick Estrella oh really from Australia Insurance yeah so so the idea was really to set up you know a practice to serve as outside general counsel for the family business uh and then obviously start servicing other people right and and we did that uh you know it was a great life experience for me uh you know I they have a massive operating business uh insurance your family's operating business or his operating business okay yeah it's I say how did your dad deal with those uh hourly billings you did my dad my dad would get beat the shit out of me over the yeah he'd be every hour would be disputed every single one yeah well listen it's not easy doing business with family for sure but um but yeah so so you know we kind of doing doing a lot of that right um a lot of real estate at the time it was before the you know the the financial crisis and so we were dealing with a lot of families that we have connections with here in Miami and that kind of started all the work that we were doing um and you know I kind of saw that there was a shift occurring in the market and you know I thought there was a great opportunity for me to go and start working at a big firm and kind of getting the big firm experience. So I did that in 2006 and uh and I worked for two guys who were you know mentors to me, which were Raul Valdis Fauli, former mayor at Coral Gables, who's an international lawyer, a lot of finance, banking, international business, MA. And then a guy named Luis Espino who is no longer with us um who was 10 years older than me. So he was more kind of my contemporary and I started working with him with a lot of his clients who were developing mainly shopping centers. So that's really where I cut my teeth on the development side retail at public anchored shopping centers CVS and Walgreens out you know outparcel developments. So I was doing a lot of you know the supervising kind of platting the ground leases the construction agreements the development agreements um so that's really where I cut my teeth and um you know then the world ended and so when the world ended what what in what year is this? This is 2000 like late 2008. Yeah right and so um at that point I think everybody had to pivot right um you know there was people that went into litigation I mean a lot of people got laid off a lot of people went into litigation you know bankruptcy you know a lot of these foreclosure mills um you know thankfully that that was not my story um you know I coincidentally one of my closest friends um in life who is my fat my my daughter's godfather uh is a guy named Jose Felix Diaz Pepe Diaz um he uh went to and he's the one that connected you and Steve Wernick he did yeah that's right that's right so he uh went to um with me he was a SIG app at um and he was eventually the president of student government at UM and um went to Columbia for law school and so when he decides to come back to Miami uh after law school I stayed and he wanted to get reengaged in the community and I had been very involved in the community at that point. And so I kind of started getting reinvolved in the community I started a young leaders group for uh the largest foster care agency in the state at the time I introduced him to that so we both got heavily involved in foster care then the Cuban American Bar Association.

SPEAKER_02 28:35

That's the Charlie Homes for Children. That's exactly right. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 28:38

And then um so it was you know incredible experience a you know obviously a lot of hardship right totally and um yeah don't want to be in dependency court ever. So it's um you know it's a just eye-opening experience right of the underbelly and challenges of in this community but we wanted to try to to help right and um Pepe decided to run for the Florida legislature right around that time. And he asked me to help him do it. And so he grew up in Westchester. He went to St. Brendan's for high school graduated in 98 same year I did from from Palmer. And you know I just grew up on this side of town he grew up on the other side of town he has a massive family like I don't know he's cousins with everybody in Westchester. I mean it's ridiculous.

SPEAKER_04 29:22

Why does that surprise me?

SPEAKER_00 29:24

It's unbelievable you cannot go anywhere in Westchester that this guy doesn't know somebody or is related to somebody it's just the most unbelievable thing. You go to like a Jreta on 87th and pour away and just stand at the window with this no they come kiss the ring. It's the funniest thing. That's awesome. So so anyway he's he uh he decides to run for the legislature asked me to help him with the campaign I chair his campaign for the legislature you know we raise a pile of money and what's a pile of money I mean we broke all kinds of records I mean in the first several months it was several hundred thousand dollars which for for a you know Florida House campaign was a was a a lot of money and so um you know he ends up winning in that process I meet a group out of Tallahassee which was the largest lobbying firm in the state at the time called the Southern Strategy Group and they asked me to open their Miami office. And so I did not want to entirely leave the practice of law that point. And so I joined the law firm that would allow me to open the lobbying firm which I did and become a partner at that law firm to continue feeding law business to the law firm. And so I ran parallel tracks for a while uh fast recognized I did not want to lobby uh just not my cup of tea. Why was it that you don't like about it you know the the business is constantly raising money and you know just not a not a great environment for me to be in. A little toxic a little toxic yeah especially at the time we're actually gonna get our first lobbyist on on the podcast Jose Gonzalez he's a great guy yeah he's a great guy so I told him he's so much more than a lobbyist well so I told him I was like I was like you're you you're gonna be our first lobbyist he's like oh he's a great guy yeah he really is he's a he's an incredible human being who connected us with him um who the fuck was it um it was uh Frankie Ruiz oh okay yeah we we had Frankie Ruiz on the podcast a good dude too yeah he's a good dude yeah non real estate but it was a cool cool conversation with him it was yeah yeah so listen it was it was a great experience man I I um the group was amazing yeah right the guys that I worked with were all former Jeb Bush guys um you know I I represented huge companies and um you know just kind of navigated the political environment for a while and and the law practice started thriving. So during that period of time you were talking to me about distress debt yep I had several clients that were buying single family homes right one-offs not portfolios one at a time buying the debt no no no just well either you know they were either REOs or it was direct from a distress sale or like a sheriff's sale or something exactly yeah so I had one client in particular who did it to scale and um you know that was it was an incredible experience for me because we I had to build kind of a compliance operation for him managing like 30 to 60 closings a month just for that one guy and he probably killed it he well so you you were saying that you were buying debt at like you know four six cents on the dollar right he was buying homes in homestead miramar different markets like he would aggregate them in certain areas but you know these are homes that were selling for three four hundred thousand dollars he was picking them up for eighty thousand dollars 12000 and you know to your point so I I started with him this was probably like in 11 up until like maybe 14 and you saw obviously incremental increase in value but the guy ended up having up over 600 homes damn and so I started he goes to the bank to try to find you you started getting into transactions with like the public's deals the shopping market deals before that.

SPEAKER_02 33:04

Yeah I mean when I was with Nick I was buying you know the office buildings multifamily buildings retail so you've always kind of been you you've always gravitated towards the transactions I've always been on the transactions I've always been a deal guy that's I I want to finish the story on the single family homes but I'm curious like sidebar as an attorney looking at these contracts and everything are you understanding the the financial background of these deals as well are you seeing the models and understanding the the returns they're looking for and they're everything okay absolutely I mean that's that's my my brain works that way right which is one of the if you're curious and you want to dig in a little more more than just what you know all these whereas is that's right you can understand it a little bit. Well and and it's a great seat to be in to to learn about real estate.

SPEAKER_00 33:44

Look Ben and you you're a better advocate for your client you're a better advisor for your client when you understand the business side right and so that's one of the benefits that I've had you know one with a finance background and two coming from a business family and being on the business side with my clients right that's awesome. And so you know I I understand risk in a different way right the cost benefit analysis of those things because I look at it through a lens of business not just law. And so it it just it's changed the game like a relationship that I have with my clients is is very it's solid. You know and everybody I work with I've been working with for a long time. So you know this guy in particular I mean we worked together for several years until he ended up he exited right when did he exit so so it's it's a great story because the first deal we did uh he wanted to finance right because at a point he was he he bought him all cash right he had put in cash you know big guy from Mexico and then he had a bunch of investors who were who were co-investing with him and he ended up going to commercial banks and they couldn't wrap their head talk about business they couldn't wrap their head around financing 30 homes in a subdivision and you know we're trying to communicate to them this is like the pioneer of like invitation homes model. That's exactly right that's exactly what I lived through right so so it's like guys this is like a multifamily building I'm not sure what you know it's just not one structure and 30 units it's just 30 homes spread out over 30 30 lots like why is this so so complicated? Bankers so it was the first deal so the first deal we did refinancing the portfolio was with C One bank out of St. Pete the guy that started that bank was like a hedge fund private equity guy and understood it. Right right so they did that deal we closed that deal the next one that that we did was with Blackstone oh nice so we ended up doing so Blackstone before this is they started getting into the business. I was gonna say you guys gave them the idea hey this is interesting. So they start getting into the business and they see um you know the scale obviously right they're like holy shit there's a ton of people that are doing this how many deals is fine is is Blackstone financing at so that's they started B2R right which is a their finance arm because they started buying things and they're like there's a million people like this guy that are doing this all over the country we can lend them money and that's you know the first transaction we have with them and it enables us to underwrite the portfolio and then we'll just buy it from exactly and that's exactly what happened. Yeah so you know he ends up but he didn't sell it to Blackstone he sold it to Apollo but but uh he got a better deal with Apollo but anyway it was that was I saw the whole life cycle of the business you know I saw it from the beginning buying one single family home at a time amassing a significant portfolio refinancing it cashing it out returning all money to investors and having a massive liquidity event at the end so it was a it was a great experience for me living that whole life playing with the house money at that point after that remote that's exactly real that's sick yeah and imagine if he had held them yeah well I mean he he made a pile of money yeah he could have made two yeah yeah I know but hindsight's 2020 no one no one could have ever predicted what's going on now yeah for sure that's awesome so when did he exit what year was that so that was um I guess around 16 okay 16 that's a good time yeah 16 17 I mean it was a run up from 11 uh to about that time so I mean he yeah the value was how many homes did this guy buy six hundred six hundred yeah yeah and you just sold all six hundred to our all of them just once one fell swoop yeah yeah so so you know we we um that was kind of my world right and and doing a lot of I got into the home building side of the business as well and I ended up getting connected to a LGI homes which has been my longstanding client I've been working with them since 2015 and I got it introduced to them by a friend of mine who was selling them a piece of dirt down here that's actually another great story. Manuel Diaz down south was selling one of his properties and my friend was doing the deal he was the broker and they wanted to have somebody local represent them they're based out of Texas uh the woodlands in in Houston Texas and they had their Florida operation out of out of uh out of Tampa and they had not acquired anything in Southeast Florida and so I got introduced to the president of the operation in Florida they brought me on board and I started dealing with Manuel and his attorney and and man that was amazing. He's such a shrewd negotiator I mean he he was tough very very tough guy uh to negotiate with but you know we put the property under contract unfortunately it fell through you know he he just tore into our guys he's like ah you know you guys couldn't get the deal done I'm gonna go sell this to Lenar it was like you know unbelievable kind of back and forth went and got another property under contract didn't finish that one either guys just couldn't get comfortable with all the arsenic on the property down south like the remediation and all the environmental remediation that you needed to do um which I mean that's just like a naturally occurring event in Homestead and Florida City and and and all those surrounding areas in in South Dade. So the guys never got into Miami.

SPEAKER_04 38:57

And I'm sorry where is this arsenic from um from from farming.

SPEAKER_00 39:00

Oh gotcha yeah so like all of the like potato farms and all everything that is farming related all the fertilizers are just full of of all kinds of toxins right so so that's what it's it's kind of naturally occurring in all these areas so what what happens is you got to either scrape the the top of the you know the topsoil removing it and getting rid of it and there's a whole process for that and that's why uh agencies like Durham exist. Um and then you know you backfill it cover it sometimes you you know contain it and cover it and so you that's how you remediate right and so you know that's kind of a normal thing. But my guys couldn't get comfortable with the amount of work that needed to get done and the cost. It's it's really expensive to do that stuff. But anyway but long story short I got I got along fabulously with the guy and he's like look I like working with you can you do stuff in other parts of the state and I said I can do anything pretty much anywhere you need me to do stuff. And so he he brought me in to start doing work for him in different parts of the state he left the company was a Texas guy? Yeah the the guy that he brought in to be his number two took over the business. I became very good friends with him and um you know at the time this was before I started my own shop. So I I kind of left working with Raoul and Lewis to go to this firm to set up Southern Strategy group I spent about almost five years with Infante Zumpano and Southern Strategy Group kind of interchangeably. And then I left the lobbying firm and then I went to Foley and Lardner which is the biggest law firm that I ever worked for. That's you know they were 2000 lawyers Milwaukee based that's why I know a little bit about Minnesota. Nice um spent some time up there.

SPEAKER_02 40:36

But Wisconsin you know it's clearly inferior to Minnesota. There you go. There you go.

SPEAKER_04 40:41

You know you know uh it's all this it's all the same shit to me it's all the same shit.

SPEAKER_02 40:45

But then there's a there's a heat map of like most alcohol consumed per capita in the United States you know where the the peak is Milwaukee Wisconsin Wisconsin yeah those guys crush crush alcohol that's hilarious Natty Light yeah exactly yeah 30 rack for an evening I'm sure that's funny.

SPEAKER_00 41:01

So that was my exposure to the to the Midwestern culture. How was it? It was very nice people man very nice people we we got along well great office in Chicago great office in Milwaukee and so you know it was it was a cool experience but the big firm life wasn't for you business no I mean it it was great in the sense that I finally started I mean I was doing large transactions. How long did you last there? But uh about three and a half years yeah but I and that's where I decided to open up my own shop right but you were working from here I was in the Miami office yeah so so that's our entrepreneurial roots kind of so that's refill there? Yeah man just a little bit um actually like that's the thing about attorneys they drink we do party right that's true he's pre-game he's pre-game we do what's called tell us tell us about your party yeah man um so my wife and I uh started hosting a summer kickoff party because we uh take off for the summer um where do you guys go uh we we actually spend summers in Colorado typically oh sick where yeah in the Vale Valley nice um so one of my all-time best friends is a house in Morrison and then another house in crested butte sure and then I went to college it in the mountains so I know Colorado very well.

SPEAKER_04 42:11

The western slope you know is one of the most beautiful places in the country in the world you know so um but this year we're actually going to Spain for the summer yeah we're gonna change it up I I come hell or high water my children are going to speak Spanish and so I I'm I'm insisting my wife speaks Spanish she's cuban as well um did the kids learn Spanish when they were babies they were they were speaking it when they were younger but you know kind of when you start school it's it's off I'm in I'm in the early I have a th uh four year old and a seven year old and they both speak both now but I can you know my wife and I speak English she she moved here when she was nine so yeah we're both kind of gringo so do you do your kids understand Spanish um my daughter oddly enough the younger one understands it better and speaks it better my son has no interest whatsoever it's amazing so span will change that right I'm sorry six and eighth grade uh six and eighth grade that's right that's right um yeah it's it's I think it's really tougher um like my parents are both Brazilian and so I learned Portuguese at home right um and now my wife is you know she I I tell her she's faux faux Puerto Rican like I'm faux Brazilian right like because we we both are from parents from different countries but we both grew up here. Sure. We speak span we speak English at home and uh and so my son is he understands Portuguese he understands Spanish but he thinks he speaks both but he doesn't so it's tough you know at least he got the olive skin to feel part of the culture.

SPEAKER_02 43:55

Yeah yeah that's funny.

SPEAKER_04 43:56

And uh you know my wife is like the whitest Puerto Rican You'll ever see. She is. And she has a Russian name too. So exactly. And so uh, you know, my son's happy that he got my my skin color.

SPEAKER_02 44:08

Yeah, he should be. It's beautiful bronze. But you guys are thinking you have a big summer kickoff party tonight.

SPEAKER_00 44:13

Yeah, so so we, you know, uh a lot of people leave Miami, just it's brutally hot uh in the summer. So before everybody takes off, we figured we'd bring everybody together for one last celebratory. I love it. It's a great idea. And my wife and I love hosting and and love just spending time with people and you know, just doing what we're doing here.

SPEAKER_04 44:32

You guys have been doing this for how long now?

SPEAKER_00 44:33

Uh it's the fourth year we're doing it. Cool.

SPEAKER_04 44:35

I love that. Yeah, that's super cool. Yeah. Your wife's a podcaster too. That's right. Yeah, fellow podcaster.

SPEAKER_00 44:40

What's the podcast called? Uh so it's called the Heart to Heart Podcast. Okay. Uh her company's called Heartful Living. Um, I was sharing with you guys earlier. She had a spine surgery two years ago, and she was convalescing for six months. And um during that process, she was just recognizing how grateful she was for everybody having come together and supported her through the process and um started talking to different women that came out of the woodwork, telling their about the hardships that they'd endured and how they overcame them, and they're like silent heroes in their home, right? Like nobody really talks about these things. And so she started, you know, a podcast based on profiling women who had overcome hardships and were grateful in their life, and it's taken off.

SPEAKER_04 45:21

And how how's your wife doing with the surgery? Thanks for asking, man.

SPEAKER_00 45:25

She's doing great. Yeah, she's she's honestly, she's in the best shape of her life. Yeah, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_04 45:29

Doing somersaults and shit.

SPEAKER_00 45:30

I don't know about that, but but she's uh it's it's crazy. What she had was a birth defect, right? And so L5 S1, right? Yeah, um, L5 was sitting 75% of the way, slipped forward on S1, had completely obliterated the disc between the two uh vertebrae. And so it was bone-on-bone compression on her nerve, which was presenting as obviously like sciatica. Yeah, her leg was falling asleep. We'd taken a big trip with the kids to Italy, Croatia, and Greece, and we were walking at the Vatican, uh, oddly enough, and my wife just froze. She stops, and I was just like giving her a hard time because I'm like, come on, you're in Europe, you gotta walk. Everybody walks, right? And she stopped. She literally froze, and she goes, babe, I can't keep walking. I go, babe, you really need to start working out.

SPEAKER_01 46:17

And she walked. Oh she was gonna kick my ass. I'm surprised God didn't smite you down. You're lucky I didn't get struck down.

SPEAKER_00 46:25

I didn't get struck down, but I was totally fucking with her. But she, you know, she was she she looks, she's like, I I can't. It's like this is it, right? And so anyway, long story short, we get home. She uh, one of her dear friends from from high school uh is an orthopedic surgeon, and she calls him up and she goes to see him. He she goes and runs all these tests. She had no idea she had this issue. And you know, we kept telling her. She had back issues before that? Never. I mean, it it started progressively getting worse. It was probably, I mean, almost like a two-year process of like it got really bad. You know, I and I think obviously pregnancy had a had something to do with it because these are it just didn't present.

SPEAKER_04 47:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:03

And so, man, she she just started taking pills and she was like not sleeping and like it was just an it was a nightmare. She was going through so much, and you know, obviously it was a challenging time for her. So she goes to see this doctor, and the doctor basically tells her, Look, you know, I think you need to call your husband after he did the tests. Because she told him walking in, I'm not having surgery. I mean, everybody that we talked to, that we, you know, yeah, just to get some insights into like back pain and surgery and stuff, no one told us to do surgery. So we were like freaking out. So the guy calls me, he's like, I think you need to call your husband. My wife's freaking out. She thinks that she's dying. And uh the guy's like, You need to have surgery. Look, this is what's going on. And you can't fix that. You can't train for that, you can't do yoga for that, you can't do anything.

SPEAKER_03 47:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:49

And so, you know, luckily, uh, we found an incredible surgeon uh at the University of Miami, uh, Dr. Eurocroft at the uh spine at the Spine Institute. And the guy did robotic surgery on her, two hour surgery, minimally invasive, so a lot less trauma on the surgery. She prehabbed a lot, she prepared for the surgery and she did everything the doctors told her to do. Dude, she is in phenomenal shape. That's amazing. It's unbelievable.

SPEAKER_04 48:15

Yeah, dude, I I've I uh I had some back issues and it it was it's the worst pain I've ever felt. Um, and I was told I needed surgery, and uh I I just I wasn't even offered physical therapy, and I I'm glad I went to physical therapy first because I've not I have not had surgery and I've just kind of learned to live with it and uh and work around it. And I can still pretty much do everything I want to do, but it's it's a terrible pain. Um, and so it seems it sounds like your wife's issue was a lot worse than than what I had. And uh I'm glad the surgery worked out because that's that's that's a place that you really don't want to have surgery.

SPEAKER_00 48:58

Yeah, it was scary. I mean, look, obviously, you know, we have two young kids, yeah, and when she did the surgery, I'm I'm not gonna lie to you, I was freaking out. Yeah, you know, because it it could have been I mean, everybody that I had talked to kind of in preparation for it, everyone was like, I've had two or three, they still can't get it right, like that kind of thing. Yeah, and I'm already thinking, you know, how much more am I gonna have to be in? I mean, we I carry a lot of water just working and like, you know, my wife, I can't, I could not do anything that I do without my wife's support, period. And so, you know, me thinking, I'm like, man, if if this life changes and I have to be a lot more involved on like day to day, this just isn't gonna work, like on the work side, yeah, right. And so I was freaking out a little bit, you know. I'm not gonna lie, it was a pretty sobering moment for me. Yeah, and uh man, when she gets, she gets because they they make you get up right away after the surgery. Oh wow. And so she's she gets up and man, she she like belts out like screaming, you know. And and I was like, Yep, this shit's about to get real, you know. Perfect. Yep. And uh and you know what? She powered through it. And uh and the therapists there at the hospital were amazing. Um, you know, they identified it's actually funny because it was more fear-oriented than anything else, because they give you like a walker, right? You're not supposed to use the walker. What happens is that you start like supporting yourself on it because you're afraid that it's gonna be painful. And so that stress was tightening up all of her muscles and all of her nerves and everything in her back. And so the second one of the therapists thought about it, he's like, I gotta get this walker out of her hands and took it off, transformational. And she just her correction was through the roof at that point. It was amazing. That's amazing, yeah. Man, you know, God uh God had a hand in that for sure, no question.

SPEAKER_02 50:49

And her her commitment to like rehabbing it. Well, I mean, that's huge, huge, huge.

SPEAKER_00 50:53

So yeah, I mean, look, for for six months, you know, she was uh doing nothing. I mean, that like physically she wasn't supposed to drive because even when you drive, you can get like it can provoke like fear, right? Because you have to stop abruptly and like you shake and like you can hurt yourself. So she did really nothing other than podcast and interview great women, you know, for six months.

SPEAKER_01 51:15

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 51:15

So it was a cool experience. That's great. Yeah. Well, going back to your path, we were right at the point where you left the big firm to start your own firm. Yes. For the second time.

SPEAKER_00 51:23

Yeah. So so this time it was and no family clients this time. No, this time around, it was pure. Well, it I kind of did the math at that point, right? That I had a good group of clients. I was still lobbying a little bit. Yeah. I I at the time I had kind of carved a little niche for myself on the lobbying side, specifically for tech clients, right? So I was doing work for home away. Uh on the home sharing side, I was representing Lyft on the rideshare side. I was representing AT ⁇ T. Um, they were putting these small cells, you know, to do like the 5G network that they developed. Um, so there's a bunch of tech clients that I was doing work for. They were like monthly retainer playing clients. So that gave me a little bit of impetus to do it, plus several transactional clients that were, you know, this development client, you know, several other developers that I was working on. But really, you know, LGI helped me to scale my practice, right? I I leave. Um, you know, this was 2017, and you know, the numbers were just, you know, silly. I mean, I kind of had my my stuff. If I stayed lean, I was basically making two times what I was making at the big firm just because I was managing my own clients and all the money was mine. So so that's really what provoked the move. And I'm on the floor.

SPEAKER_04 52:32

What kind of split are you guys usually doing with the with uh the law firm 50-50?

SPEAKER_00 52:37

No, no. I mean that does that's so if you're a partner at a law firm, you know, you're if you're at 50%, it's because you have a huge book of business, uh, and you have a lot of other people doing the work for you, right? Um there's it's they it's very every firm is different, right? But you know, a lot expect you to bill and carry on your back, and you're originating and working, and your compensation is directly, you know, derived from that. And sometimes it's 30%, right? So um they carry a lot of over. That's if you're a partner, they they carry a lot of over. No, you have to be a partner if not if you're you're just you know alignment, right? Um, you know, earning a salary and you got to fulfill 1800, 2200 hours a year, and you know, then you'll get a bonus if you hit your numbers. Um, but it's you know, you have to have a book of business, really, right? That that you to be in control of your own destiny at any of these firms, you have to have a book of business. And obviously the bigger the better. But at the end of the day, you know, and there's obviously a pivot there of why I ended up doing it again, right? Going back to a bigger firm. Uh, and obviously I'll share that with you as well. But you know, I I leave the big, big, big firm because the for me, the math was just dumb. Yeah, right. And so and I did that. And then coincidentally, the next year, my relationship with LGI, I mean, it went from 2015 to 2018. You know, there were five law firms in Florida doing work, you know, doing work for LGI across the state. They consolidated all of their work in my office. So that's really what enabled me to scale my practice and you know, apply a lot of the business principles and efficiencies and compliance, you know, both on the business side and on the legal side, that I said I created a compliance mechanism for them for their land acquisitions in Florida, right? So this is the 10th largest publicly traded home builder in the state. Uh, there's two lines of business. You either buy a large large tract of land for a subdivision, 100, 300, 900 homes, or you buy what they call scattered lots, which is one to multiple individual lots in any subdivision, right? And so the only way you get to scale on that, and it makes sense because they're not just building one home in a neighborhood, is that they have, you know, 15, 30 at any given time in any one of these subdivisions, right? So that's another way, because it's, as you guys know, and you in particular, I know you did a lot of land, land sales. We're running out of land, right? And it's very competitive. Everybody who's anybody in the home building business wants to be in Florida and they're all competing for the same land, right? And Lenar owns this market and VR owns this market. Those are the two top builders, and they're they're trying to consume everything that they can. So it's harder to get in to the big land sales, right? And things are getting more expensive. So it's another way to keep the machine going, right? Is getting into the scattered lot program. And so I helped them set up their compliance mechanism in Florida to do that, right? So, you know, at our peak, we were doing over a thousand transactions for them a year, right? So for scattered lots. For scattered lots. So, so it was a material client, right? And I set up what today we can do with AI, right? I was doing with talent, right? With people. And so I had, you know, a paralegal and an associate kind of managing that process based on a compliance mechanism that I set up, right? Of reviewing the contract and, you know, critical dates and inspection reviews and diligence and you know, closing documents and all that kind of stuff. So I streamlined it for them. And, you know, I would, I was billing hourly for it until I ended up doing a flat fee arrangement with them that obviously made sense for both of us. But that really provoked a massive scaling of my business. And then from that, I just applied a lot of that compliance to loan transactions to just pretty much every transaction I was doing. And it really, it really grew the business.

SPEAKER_02 56:28

And when you say compliance, what do you mean specifically?

SPEAKER_00 56:30

Like making sure, like that's our job, right? Our job as a lawyer is to make sure everything's airtight, right? You want to review every purchase and sale agreement, every lease agreement, every loan document, and make sure everything tracks properly, right? You're reconciling what a term sheet says in a document and it's right. And then obviously there's certain things that you want to, you know, certain protections that you want to see in contracts. Um, you know, I need to see these things, right, in order for me to bless it. And so that's how I set that up.

SPEAKER_02 56:58

Because when I hear compliance, I think of what his wife does, which is SEC compliance, right? This is different. This is more compliance with term sheets and making sure that it all flows through the way it's supposed to. That's right. The contracts are compliant with the LOIs, which is compliant with the client strategies.

SPEAKER_00 57:14

It's right. And then the closing, everything's reflected in the closing documents, you know, and and your liability ends, right? So that's that's our job, right, from a risk management perspective.

SPEAKER_02 57:23

And so how long were you, did you have your own firm and what so it was six years. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 57:27

Yeah. So so what happened was um, again, in the same vein, right, since I graduated from law school, having been born here, raised here, working with families, you know, I started obviously doing more and more with families. A lot of my clients are investors in projects, investors with sponsors, or the sponsors, or families that stand up, private credit, kind of hard money lending platforms, development platforms for their own portfolios, or, you know, co-investment opportunities with other families. And so, you know, I saw that growth in my business. And, you know, I was getting more and more requests to do that and kind of moving up the value food chain, right? Of not just, I need you to be my technical expert on documents and on loans. I need you to be my advisor. I need you to help me like be a filter. Like, you know, do you know Ben? You know, I I don't know Ben. Maybe I do know Ben. You know, yeah, I know Ben. You know, that kind of thing goes through that process, right? And so they depend on you more and more to diligence not only the deal, but the people you're doing the deal with, right? Um, another opportunity.

SPEAKER_02 58:36

Which is probably more important than the deal itself. Listen, how full of shit are these people?

SPEAKER_00 58:41

Look, it's funny because you know, I have a long time now friend and client. Uh is I don't know if you guys have have heard of him or should invite him onto the show. He's a great guy, he's funny, he'll drink a lot with you. Uh, is I like him. Who is this? This is uh Camilo Nino from Link Vest Capital. Yeah, we talked to him.

SPEAKER_04 58:59

Yeah, we talked to him at uh at the real deal event. He's my boy.

SPEAKER_02 59:02

So we had we had a very mini episode with him on from the real deal.

SPEAKER_00 59:06

He's he's awesome. So so he he tells people all the time, he's like, I'd rather do a bad deal with good people than a good deal with bad people. Because when you do a good deal with bad people, you never win, right? And I'd rather be in the trenches with somebody if I'm, you know, the shit hit the fan. I'd rather be dealing with somebody that I can trust that I know that's not gonna fuck me, right? And at the end of the day, I've seen it, unfortunately, right? You know, the paper is worthless if you got a bad dude on the other side that's just gonna try to screw you no matter what, because the interpretation of something that everybody in the room sat down painstakingly to document and memorialize and remember, hey, we made this this way because of this. Oh no, I don't remember that. Yeah, like you you can't fix values, right? You can't fix morality, right? If you're a bad dude and you're gonna try to fuck somebody, it doesn't matter what the paper says, right? They're gonna try to do it anyway. Totally. So so that's one of the things I quote him all the time. Like I do a lot of these panels and speaking things, and I always quote them and I always credit him for the comment.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:09

So we were right at the precipice of going from private practice to uh day pitney.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:14

Yeah, so so with that, right? Yeah, I'm I'm kind of seeing this evolution, right? And there's uh this powerful ecosystem that I'm plugged into.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:25

Well, going just going back to your firm, I mean, how many people are in your firm at this point?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:29

So we ended up having like staff staff that all kind of were my team, uh, were seven people, and then I had a couple of of council attorneys.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:38

Yeah, it sounds like you started also outgrowing your own firm, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:41

Yeah. I mean, it look, it gets to a point. I mean, I could have kept doing it myself, right? Which is I got to an inflection point where the question was clients are calling you. Hey, I need the structuring side. And I, you know, I I structure pretty well, but there's an element of tax that comes into stuff, right? There's offshore because I was dealing with some offshore families and domesticating their investments for them to invest in U.S. real estate. And I was outsourcing that or working with accountants or working with the international tax planning. So I was kind of a quarterback, if you will, right? Yeah. And so that was one element that I started seeing, like sort of trends that are informing my decision, right? The other was uh, you know, obviously the pandemic happened, which is another great story I'd love to share with you guys. But um, you know, I decamped and went to Colorado for for a long time. I love it. And so, you know, I saw all these people moving to Miami from the Northeast. And I'm not a Northeast guy, right? I'm a Miami guy with strong Latam ties, but I don't have the ties to the Northeast. And that is kind of the next phase of growth in this city, right? And so I needed to build a bridge there somehow, right? I could definitely execute on their behalf and advise them, but I just don't have the relationships to be in the mix, right? So I needed to get a seat at the table. So that was one. The other was a complex structuring side. Um, and then litigation and tax planning. So I kind of got to a point I do work for a lot of lenders, both bank and non-bank. And eventually, and I'm still waiting, um, there's gonna be a correction, right? We're all still waiting.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:21

I got excited in 2020. I was like, yes, it's finally tanking again. I know what to do. No, didn't happen.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:26

So so you know, everybody's waiting for this, you know, uh certain special situations and all this kind of shit, right? And and so I wanted to have the litigation arm because the first person that the bank or non-bank calls when the deal you know goes south is you to send a demand letter, right? I can send a demand letter, but I'm not going to court. Yeah, like that's not me, right? I'm not your guy. So and then the tax planning side, I know what I know and I don't know tax. So I wanted to either hire that, right? Or I had to, you know, integrate and buy that, right? And so I knew Miami's moment at the time was right now. Like I felt it, right? Since I'm local and and I just have my fingers on the pulse and just constantly talking to people. This isn't a five to ten year thing. In what year is now this is like 20 21, 22, right? And again, God's hand in my eye.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:19

You're just feeling this this momentum, my business was booming. Yeah, I mean, business was so and this is why you're just hanging out in Colorado.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:27

So, so it's well, so this is 2020. Um, obviously, I closing a couple deals for for clients at the time, like right before the shutdown. I mean, I'll sitting down at at the closing table with one of my clients, my my guy that bought all those homes, he was buying office buildings suburban to reposition.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:50

The guy that sold to Apollo. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:52

So I'm sitting there at a table, he's like, I mean, if I could have walked, I would have walked. He's I'm not gonna lose a two million dollar deposit. And he's like, We're gonna close and we'll see what happens. And you know, like it was he was too deep. I had other guys that did walk from deposits. LGI at the time, dude. I had like 15 transactions under contract, like big transactions, like with since January to March. They called me up one day, Danny, cancel all the contracts. Wow. So I I I mean, I lived this story before back during the financial crisis, right? Where I kind of informed that expertise. But I was like, you know, if the government's gonna shut us down and send us home, they're gonna have to pay us. There's just no way nobody can continue paying their mortgages, their car payments. If we can't work for a defined period of time, somebody's got to pay us for that. Right, right. So that was kind of what informed my my thinking at the time. Obviously, thinking back to TARP and like the bailouts and stuff. So these guys are gonna bail out America, right? And so I just I didn't, I wasn't really concerned, right? Like I wasn't afraid that the world was gonna end because I knew that the government was gonna step in and save us, they had to, because they caused it. Right, right. So it was basically, you know, folks canceling deals and stuff. Like I told you, we've been going to Colorado. I mean, at that point, I'd been going to Colorado every summer for several years, like probably dating back to 15. You have a place there in Vale? Yeah. And so um we sold the last place we had there a couple years ago, but we had we've had a place there for a long time. And so, you know, we we spend the summer there. I told my wife, this was like when things shut down. Look, if things open up and we're not able to go back to school, let's just drive cross country, close up over there, and we'll hang out until everybody goes back to school. Things go back to normal. And so when things started opening up again, that's what we did. That's amazing. We drove cross country, which that and of itself, like driving across America, the zombie apocalypse, though, yeah, was like dude, we drove. What year what's what month did you drive? I don't remember the exact date, but you know, we shut down like May 5th, March 15th around the time. Um, it had to have been like late. April. Okay. Right? Like we shut down for like a month, six weeks. Yep. Shut, shut down. That's when things started opening up again in Miami. So so we we hit the road, drive the turnpike, all the uh you know the service plazas were closed with the exception of the bathroom. So there's no one on the road. From Miami to Atlanta, it it's like a I don't know, 11-hour drive. Took me like eight hours to get to Miami. Just ripping. I get to Atlanta. Cannibal run. We stay, we stayed at the West End on Peachtree, right? 70-story tower. I don't know how many keys the hotel is. It's a massive hotel in the middle of downtown. There was no one there. That's amazing. There were five people staying in the hotel. We had our dog with us. I have a you know small Australian labradoodle. I walk to Century Park there. There's no one there. Like literally zombie apocalypse. We drive from there to St. Louis, spectacularly beautiful, driving through, you know, North Georgia, Tennessee, Chattanooga, Illinois. Like it was unbelievable. Um, we get to St. Louis and we go to the arch, you know, the park on on the river. No one there. We stayed in a room. Uh, so the the main hotel there was a Hilton that was shut down. The Hyatt was shut down. We stayed at another Hilton. There were three people in the hotel room. They just so happened, they were consolidating. Like, if you stayed in the hotel, they put like you next to the two other people that were staying in the hotel because they had like a skeleton crew of two people staying there. But we had a domestic dispute in the room next to us.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:34

Oh, nice, dude.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:35

Husband and wife beating the shit out of each other in the room next to us at like three o'clock in the morning. My daughter wakes up. I'm like, oh my God. I'm I I got concerned. I'm like, you guys need to get on the floor. I didn't know if they had a gun in there, start shooting. Those walls are paper thin. Yeah. So, you know, police showed up. It was a disaster. Um, but Missouri shit. It was terrible. Missouri. It's terrible. Then from there, we drove through Kentucky. Um and uh obviously, you know, uh Nebraska. We got into uh Colorado, it Kansas. I mean it was it was unbelievable. And then we get into the valley and and there was a handful of people, and it was amazing. We did seven national parks that year driving to all of them. Um there was very few people, it was before like it started spiking and people kind of caught up.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:25

It's like a dream scenario, honestly.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:26

It it was. And you know, we we in July we started seeing the numbers spike. Are you are you working at this point or not really?

SPEAKER_04 1:08:34

Like the business is slow.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:35

No, so so it's funny. Um, things went off the rails in business. When things started opening up again, we just exploded because it was that pent-up demand and free money, and people just went bananas. And so, you know, I did not mandate people to stay home, right? I told my team if they wanted to come into the office, they should, and they did because nobody wanted to stay home, right? And so everybody came into the office and things started just humming again. And so I was out west, and you know, I was I had daily calls with my team, I had daily calls with my clients, you know, cranking out, doing whatever I needed to do. Uh, and I just so happened to have, you know, have you know the second largest ski mountain in North America behind my home. And so, you know, it was hiking, biking, you know, whitewater rafting, you know, fly fishing with my. No, no, I got a I got a giant uh mountain bike. So it's it's I like the sky. So it's uh it I have a roadie here, but it's yeah, it's uh so it was amazing, man. I mean, my kids had an incredible experience. They uh so July rolls around, numbers start spiking again. Um, and at the time the kids were at Epiphany, and that's my it was my parish. Um, you know, my wife and I got married there. I've been my sister went to school there, 30-year parishioner. And, you know, unfortunately, I just heard crickets like from the parish. You know, they didn't tell us when they were going to reopen, how they were gonna manage through it, zero communication. And the worst thing that you can do in times of crisis is not say anything.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:07

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:08

Like when as a leader, your job is to tell people whether you know or you don't know. And, you know, the way that I see that, right, in that time is we're all in this together. I don't know. And I'm gonna tell you that I don't know. So I can't give you an answer. But being silent and not responding to you doesn't, you know, inspire a lot of confidence. Of course, right? So, anyway, long story short, I started looking at alternatives because my kids belonged in school. They were gonna be in first and third grade, you know, reading it was critical. And um we started calling friends of ours in the valley, and Vale Christian Academy said that we could go right away. And if we wanted to stand, you know, a month on, month off, we're we're good. We'll admit you. So the kids started school at Vail Christian Academy, and you know, school for us ended up starting like cohorts for like a week. You know, some people this week were in, the following week you were home, and to me that was total bullshit. So, and it was private because public schools were open. And so I just think that they managed through it, you know, not well. Uh, you know, I it it it saddens me, honestly, because that's my home, right? But it honestly opened the door to the best year of my life and for my family. Um, we ended up, my wife and I started having conversations of do you want do you want to just stay for the year in Colorado? And we did. We stayed for the academic year. That's amazing. And so I would come back to Miami for two purposes. One, I'd come for a week at a time. And obviously, I got to keep my Florida residency, so that's checking boxes. Didn't want to be a Colorado resident, start paying taxes in Colorado. Uh, and two, I have to, you know, show face for my clients and my team, right? I didn't want them to think that I was abandoning them. So I did that. And so um, man, it was awesome. I was super productive. I'd come here, meet meetings, you know, seven days, like cranking it out. Then I'd go home, you know, to Colorado and and then I'd work, but you know, saw four seasons for the first time in my life. It's the best, isn't it? Never experienced that. It's amazing. Um, what was your favorite?

SPEAKER_02 1:12:12

The fall is my favorite. Me too. Always. I mean, period. You can't beat fall. There's uh crispy air and orange leaves, like so bonfires.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:19

The kids, the kids' first field trip was in late September um to the to the Vale Pass. Oh, yeah. And we did a hike, and at just driving I-70 uh east towards the Vale Pass, the the mountains were on fire. They call them leaf peepers. Dude, it was spectacular. All the peepers are out there, and so you know it was it was amazing. And then obviously during the winter and spring, I mean I got a million vertical feet that year. Wow, a million. And that's that I stopped skiing every day because I came as became a snob, right? Like, because you're like, ah, the day's not perfect. Like when you go out there on vacation, like, dude, you're skiing every day. Yeah, nonsense. But when you live there, you're like, if it's not perfect conditions, you're not gonna totally. So it was it was an incredible experience, man.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:01

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:02

So then you you came back to reality. What made you go to the back to a big firm?

SPEAKER_00 1:13:07

It sounds like you had things pretty well greased. I did, man. Um, so in 22, when I started kind of going through that exercise of evaluating like what the future was gonna look like, and I was telling you that you know, Miami's moment was now. I needed to have the resources and and the support and the team now, right? And so I I didn't look for it. Uh coincidentally, I got a call. Uh, the guy who runs Dave Pitney for Florida uh was a guy I met through the Cuban American Bar Association. He was the president at it for a time. He was with a law firm called Richmond Greer, which is an institutional law firm here in Miami. Actually, Michael Fay's father, okay, uh, the judge, uh, was a named partner there, uh, founded the firm. And, you know, they they're an institution here. And so they were acquired by Dave Pitney in uh in 18 or 19, and they became their Miami Beach head and their litigation department. Dave Pitney had acquired a practice in 2015 in Palm Beach, and that was their trust and estates, right? And the firm is almost equally divided into three departments it's litigation, corporate, and private client. So there's 350 lawyers there. Uh, the private client department's the largest department in the firm, which is very focused on ultra-high net worth and family office folks. Um, and that's the people that I represent, right? So when Manny reaches out to me, he's like, listen, we don't have a real estate department, we don't have real estate capabilities. We need you. We don't want a person, we want a department, and you bring that to us. So obviously, checking the box in terms of the need, right? I fit that, I filled that gap. They had the litigation side, they had obviously all of the tax planning side and all of the structure, specifically on the family office side, because I was seeing all these families with generational transitions of wealth, right? Liquidity events, people selling their businesses. And I have, you know, kind of a uh, you know, visibility into that. This was the place, right? And so I there was no question that the thesis made sense. I just needed to make the economics work, right? And so I cut a deal with them that they would basically acquire my practice. Um, you know, you get guaranteed comp. That's what that means in the law firm world, because they don't quote unquote buy you out. Uh, and then you have an earnout mechanism where if you roll your business, obviously that I'm not just going to show up and disappear if they start paying me guaranteed money. I obviously have to earn my keep, right? And keep building. And that's what I did. And so we merged uh our practice January of 2023. Uh I've I now run the real estate practice in Florida. I'm the chair of the Florida real estate practice for the firm. Uh and then the following year, just because of all the Latin American families that I do work with, they made me chair of their Latin America practice. They do a lot of work for families as well from Latin America that are, you know, just generally global families. We don't have any offices anywhere outside of the U.S., but we are intentionally focused on representing just global enterprising families that are coming here with their wealth and investing in the U.S. And we help them structure that, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:16:06

I mean, Miami could arguably be your their office outside of the U.S. They do.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:11

I need a green card in Miami.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:14

What uh what countries are the families that you're working with from most of the uh we do have some Brazilian families.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:19

Yeah, sure. There's actually that it's been one of the biggest, I would say, recent arrivals of like scale. Yeah. It's from Brazil.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:28

Family offices from Brazil.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:30

Big families.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:31

Yeah. Yeah. So let's let's talk about family offices because I don't think we really ever talked about this. What is a family office? I know what it is, but I want you to kind of great question. You know, because it's it's it's a pretty interesting structure.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:44

So a family office, um, because a lot of people have different definitions of what a family office is, and I'll tell you exactly what a family office is. So uh you are a family of wealth and you are managing your own money. And we're talking hundreds of millions of dollars generally. So between 50 and again, that's it, it depends, right? So there are people who have material wealth in the hundreds of millions of dollars, right? Where they have a staff that does that, right? They'll hire a CEO, a COO, a CIO, right? Um, that they're managing their liquidity. Okay. So stocks, bonds, whatever.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:24

And generally they have accounts in multiple banks or brokers.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:29

Or not, or not. Or not. That's so that's a a real so again, this is why I tell you every that there's iterations, right? You are a big family and you've got you're sitting on a hundred million dollars, 250 million cash. Okay, I'm not talking assets. You might have a purging relationship, right? You might have a relationship with Goldman, with JP Morgan, and that's where you park your liquidity. Yeah, okay. And you may or may not have a banker at JP Morgan, Goldman, you know, managing that money, right? When you're that big, a lot of the time you have a chief investment officer who is managing your money, and you're paying that guy a lot of money every year with bonuses to do that. That's his job. And you pull him from JP Morgan, from Goldman, and that's his job. He represents your family. So instead of him managing 100 million, 200 million for his multiple clients, right? He represents one family and he's doing that full time, right? So, in addition to that, you have money that obviously in your asset allocation model, right, of cash, right? You're not putting it all in the stock market. You want to own real estate. You want to own a small business, maybe because you generated, you generated your liquidity, your your wealth in business. You're investing that money in other businesses. So it's private equity sometimes or an operating business. Yeah, right. So, you know, I have a large client that still has a massive operating business, but he stood up a private equity firm. And I I don't want to say his private equity firm does better than his massive operating business, but it's pretty close. And so you have some people that are that way, they're enterprising in and of themselves. And so that starts defining the differences of structures because sometimes you want to be active, sometimes you don't. Sometimes you check out and you just want to be philanthropic or you want to sit on a beach and do nothing. I mean, that there's different iterations, but that's that's that world, and it is a world of I mean, it's it's the 0.01%. It's not the 1%. So it sounds like it's been working out well at Dave Pitney. Yeah. So far it's been going really, really well. Um, you know, obviously there's uh a big question mark, I think, in everyone's future today, uh, which is AI.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:47

Uh that's where that was that's a great segue. Look at that. I didn't have to do it. And uh that's where I wanted to go next.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:51

Yeah, awesome. Because uh, you know, I I've had conversation with Steve, and uh, you know, uh Steve's like a no bullshit guy. He's like, oh, it's impacting our business. For sure. Um and uh, you know, I think there's there's there's some attorneys that are pretending it's not impacting their business, or they they just don't and and and not all forms of law are gonna be impacted equally, like right, like litigation, um, lobbying is a whole other complex, you know, transaction possible, yes, land use, yes as well. Um, so how are you using it? Um, Ben, you have some questions for him, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:34

No, I would just love to hear like how you're using it or if you're using it.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:36

Yeah, yeah. I mean, look, I'm um I'm buried in this stuff. I uh I took it upon myself probably back October, November of last year, to really, really do a deep dive uh and educate myself. Um when did you start using AI? Really back then.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:52

In October. October. So it hasn't even been a year. You weren't dicking around with it like so.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:58

I I wasn't really intentionally using it until then.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:03

At that point, I started, you know, messing with it. Then I I started really doing with intentionality because I started seeing the writing on the wall, educating myself. I'm like, dude, this this is starting to get you know, legs, right? And and I said the only way to to really learn about it is to do it. Right. Like that's I feel you know, that's one takeaway from me in life, is and I tell my team, I drop them in the deep end of the pool to do so that they learn. That's the only way to do that. Because I can't I can't tell you how to do things, and then when something goes wrong or something is outside of the box, you're never gonna figure it out. You got to do it yourself.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:40

But I think you have to be very curious to start doing this, and not everyone's as curious as probably you or I or Ben are to start playing around with the shit.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:48

So I I that's a great segue into answering your question, right? Um, I think most lawyers are ostrich theory right now, bury their head in the sand, nothing's gonna change. This is you know, literally, I heard somebody tell me the other day, oh, this is like the dot-com. It's like the Napster conversation we had an hour ago with your dad. This is what I'm I'm wired differently because of my life experiences, right? And so look, you know, if you're saying that, you're done.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:17

Listen, I I I I I went to dinner with a friend of mine that I went to to high school with, and he's probably one of the smartest guys I know. You know, he went to Cornell, then went to Harvard, works for a big litigator in in New York. Big, big name. And I I go, Andrew, you know, are you using AI at all? He goes, No. And I'm like, like, what? I couldn't fucking believe it. And then he's like, Yeah, our firm is, you know, they're putting this AI model together. He starts showing it to me, and like it didn't even fucking work on his phone. I'm like, this thing doesn't even work, dude. Like it's it's shocking to me how few people are using it that are so extremely smart. Well, because they think they're too smart. I don't know if it's that bad. No, I don't know. Because Andrew's not not that kind of guy, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:10

Yeah, I mean, look, I'll I'll give you some insights without naming names or things, right? And it's not just a day pit and you thing. This is a general thing because what so what I've done since October, November, I'm using it every day myself. Do you have like a proprietary one? No, so so uh you know, I Chat GPT and Claude is mostly what we use on the personal side, yeah, right? Because obviously we need to have an enterprise service for the firm for confidentiality, for confidentiality and and protection, right?

SPEAKER_04 1:23:39

But can we talk about that for a second? Because I think that limits the firm and and limits the use and the creativity.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:47

But what's the workaround?

SPEAKER_00 1:23:49

Well, so so so look, I'll I'll a couple things, right? And look, let's dip our toe in the water, right? It we've had a we've had a challenge just doing that, right? Totally. I haven't, but I would just say generally in the legal profession, right? And so you know, I start really, really intentionally using it, seeing how it's iterating, right? I write a lot, okay, and and I started and I consider myself a pretty good writer. It has taken my writing to the next level. I'm sure. I mean, it the the power is uh extraordinary, okay? It has uh taken on my essence, okay, the way that I speak, the way that I write, the way that I communicate, the way that you're using chat for this? Yeah, yeah, right? Chat's great, right here. And so so it's it is to me, right? And so even like in just a short period of time, the exponential benefit has been extraordinary, right? Dude, this is a couple months. This isn't a couple years, right? Right. And so that's one. The other, I'm burying myself in, you know, white papers. Then I go start talking to my contemporaries and my like cohorts and like you know, my buddies who are chairman of the real estate department at Stearns, co-chair of the global real estate department at Greenberg Trarig, is a dear friend of mine and mentor. Like I start talking to all these people, right, that are similarly situated or even bigger. Like, what are you doing? What are you seeing? Are you adopting? Are you not? Like just educating myself on what other people are doing. And obviously, like now, having these same conversations with clients, right? Or business people that I bless to be connected to, even if I'm not doing work with them. And I ask all of them the same question. Tell me about AI, what are you doing? Right. I serve on the board of trustees at Palmer Trinity. We have an AI strategy in academia, right? Like we have a dear friend of mine who serves on the board with me, who's a super successful tech entrepreneur and he's guiding our AI strategy. And at the end of the day, what he coins, it's amazing. So and his name's look him up because he's a freaking rock star. Walter Gonzalez, Goja is the name of his company, is one of the largest resellers globally for Amazon. AI isn't just a tool, it's a mindset, right? It's a growth mindset. If you are not tuned into that, I can't fix you.

SPEAKER_05 1:26:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:06

Right? If you don't have a growth mindset and you adopt and adjust to the reality of the market and what's happening around you, I can't fix you. I can't help you.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:17

I mean, it's a great point because I have happens to me like when I'm trying to fall asleep, I'm like, oh, I should use it for this. You're almost like zooming out from a macro perspective. I should be asking it to optimize this whole range of things that I'm doing. And then you can zoom in and be like, I need to upload this, this, this, and this with context. So I can zoom back out and be like, make this whole thing better.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:35

That's exactly right. So that's so that's you know, on the legal side, how are we using it? And obviously, I've leaned in and I've told my entire team, like they're using it every day. They have to, right? That's awesome. And so what you need to do is, you know, you're taking your contract and your term sheet and everything that I was doing with LGI, which again, this is a big part of why I have the visibility and the use of it, is I'm doing the same thing that I was doing in my mind to say, how do I make this work? How do I make this efficient and effective? I'm just dumping it into the system. Right? We still do the same work for LGI. Now we're obviously AI enabled, right? So you put a term sheet in a PSA, make sure that these terms and conditions are consistent. Obviously, you're going back and you're reviewing it to make sure it's right. But but instead of taking 10 hours, you're taking a lot less time. But let me ask you a question, though.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:24

Like with a firm like Dave Pitney, like are they required? Are your are your colleagues required to use certain like Claude or ChatGPT, or can they just use some like Chinese-made AI? No, you know, like how does that work?

SPEAKER_00 1:27:40

So it's enterprise, right? Um, you we have we have co-council and chat GPT presently. That's the only two tools that we have. Co-council is a product, yes. Okay, I've never had a co-pilot, excuse me. Oh, co-co pilot and and chat. I don't use it, obviously. Um, so so those are it's not great. Um, those are the two tools. That we currently have enterprise um you know services for. We are uh piloting Harvey, we're generally for for league, and that's a general legal tech uh AI tool. Um there is uh uh Hebia that we're uh piloting now for corporate, uh for MA specifically. Uh there's a couple for uh for litigation that I'm not familiar with, but we're we're piloting a bunch of different things to see which one works. That's one of the things it's it's fragmented. It's not, you know, you're not using chat and cloud for everything, right? Um real estate, we we demoed one last week. It's called Orbital. It's exceptional. It's doing, I mean, everything that we do, and that's why you can't like chat. Yeah, chat doesn't have this dashboard, right? So so orbital, what do you do is you have your your contract, you can put it in there, you know, they'll review it, identify critical dates, calendar your critical dates, you dump your title commitment in there, your survey in there. It actually it reviews the you know items on your B1 and your B2, identifies all of the instruments in your B2, pulls them up, executive stuff.

SPEAKER_04 1:29:20

So what's B1 and B2?

SPEAKER_00 1:29:21

So schedule B1 are requirements that you have to clear in order for title insurance policy to be issued, right? And B2 are exceptions to that policy. So these are instruments that are recorded on title that will impact the property, but will not have title insurance coverage because these instruments are reflected on that schedule, right? Got it. They're accepted from coverage. But those are easements, plots, declarations of covenants, conditions, and restrictions, leases, whatever. This system, you dump it in there, it pulls those documents from the public records, reviews them, and gives you an executive summary. Someone like me that knows what I need to review on time. I mean, you're supposed to review all of those things, but obviously I can I'll know real quick if I it's an easement that I need to review or not. Obviously, you reconcile that with your survey, right? If it impacts the property or not, it reconciles them for you. These are things that took hours and hours and hours and expertise and experience of lawyers and paralegals to do. You're dumping it into a software.

SPEAKER_04 1:30:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:27

Not a software, a tool, and it's doing it for you, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:30:30

I think one of the biggest things is everyone's so scared of AI. Like the public, the the media narrative is so negative, like it's taking all these jobs away. But it seems in practice the opposite's happening.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:40

So what do you see? So it look, I uh what I see, and again, this goes to to the comments and and evolution of what I'm experiencing in my in my practice, and you know, taking this, you know, what I built in my practice to Dave Pitney and kind of continuing to go up the value food chain, right? What what is not going to be disrupted is experience. Obviously, you can't replace experience, of course, right? Your judgment and your relationships and your ability to connect with people. The personal element is irreplaceable, right? You everyone is using AI, and I am getting calls. I mean, I had a 76-year-old, very successful business guy that I represent call me on a deal, and he's like, So I ran it through Grok. And I know that you're going to review it yourself and you'll identify.

SPEAKER_04 1:31:28

Does anyone use grok? People use grok? The 76-year-olds use grok.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:32

Grok's kind of sick. I haven't used it. I don't know. I use it in my Tesla because I have to, but other than that. But it's it's funny because he he lit again, he led with that. He's like, I ran this through Grok. These are the issues that I sp that grok spotted. I'm sure you're going to identify them. You know, uh, let me know. You have a 76-year-old guy who has all the money in the world, who can afford whatever lawyer he wants, and he's using AI to cut through the prices.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:57

Like that's where this is going, right? So look, I think that there's a commoditization of things that's going to occur, right? We're democratizing technical expertise on document drafting, on review of drafting, issue spotting, and things of that nature, right? Where, yeah, you're not going to take 30 hours to get through documents anymore. You'll probably take a third. Yes, you're going to be needed. You're still going to be necessary. Do you need thousands of lawyers? No. You'll need a fraction of them and smart ones that know how to use it, right? And so that's going to happen.

SPEAKER_04 1:32:34

I think that's the key, though, is smart ones that are that know how to use it. Yeah. Right. Because you have to you have to be curious and know how to and and be able to prompt it to get the answers that you're you're looking for.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:46

100%. But at the end of the day, to me, and this again, another I I just see kind of things moving in this direction. So I was in New York City the last two days. I get out of my plane in LaGuardia, I walk to the rideshare area, and when I'm walking out of Terminal B, there's two huge billboards, okay, in the wall, exiting Terminal B, not on the street, exiting Terminal B for Harvey, which is the largest now legal tech tool in the world. Um, why the hell is Harvey promoting itself at LaGuardia Airport, walking out of the thing? Is it for me, the lawyer? I already know about that shit, right? LinkedIn, my cohorts, people telling them selling it to the city.

SPEAKER_04 1:33:32

I've never heard of Harvey, have you? No, first time.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:34

You haven't, right? Why? Because it's sold to lawyers, right? Lawyers start to adopt and adjust based on what their clients tell them to do. Okay. And so that's why you're starting to see some resistance from lawyers to use AI, right? So, you know, everybody tells, no, you know, the legal AI, it's not, you know, moving so fast. First of all, uh, Harvey has a value, just start looking these things up. It's Harvey and Lagora are the two largest uh AI tools for legal tech. They're the Uber and Lyft of legal AI uh tools. Harvey in less than a year went from like a $5 billion to a $20 billion valuation. Okay. Um they are definitely doing crazy stuff, good stuff, disrupting our practice. But at the end of the day, if we're not adopting to it, right, the bigger opportunity isn't the law firms. The bigger opportunity are the small and medium-sized businesses that need lawyers to do their stuff and probably aren't because it's too expensive.

SPEAKER_03 1:34:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:38

Right. So we constantly as an industry have been talking about quote unquote access to justice, right? And access to service, right? Legal services. Dude, it's because it's expensive. A lot of people don't call their lawyer. If you have a legal tech tool that you can plug into and review stuff, you're going to use it. Right. And so I think the next phase for a lot of these companies isn't selling to me. It's selling to you. How do you use it? Because you're already using chat and Claude and Grok. Now, if you can in your business, which real estate is a very legally oriented driven business, you need to have a lawyer or you need to have some kind of legal support, right? Or Harvey, an attorney or Harvey. There you go. So that's that's where that's where I see things interesting. And so at the end of the day, what's not going to be displaced is this experience, right? Is that dude, you want to pick my brain? I'm here, right? But there's going to be some kind of an evolution. So it might not be a billable hour, it might be a subscription service, monthly, you know, something like that. That's what we will probably evolve to.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:40

Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:40

Really interesting. Yeah. Well, we're at the mark.

SPEAKER_04 1:35:43

I know. He's got a party to go to.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:44

He's got a party to get to.

SPEAKER_04 1:35:46

We were invited to the party, but I don't think we can make it.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:48

We're three minutes past. Yeah. Wifey's are going to get upset.

SPEAKER_04 1:35:51

Yeah, wife's going to get upset. So we're going to let you go. This is awesome. Thank you for having me. I really enjoyed it. Great spending time with you guys. Um and uh thanks for the insight on the on the AI stuff. We love talking about this. We just feel like the last I mean, I feel like the last six months has been transformative the way I use AI. Um, you know, before I was just kind of dicking around with it, asking questions, doing like marketing stuff, but now it's like real work's getting done. Oh, yeah. Like we're putting some really cool shit together uh with data. And uh, you know, I think it's just gonna keep getting more impressive.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:26

For sure.

SPEAKER_04 1:36:27

Um, and uh in the last six months has really kind of changed the game for us.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:32

Totally. Well, Danny, thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. Enjoy your party. Thanks, man. Great spending time with you guys. All right. All right, Danny. Be well.