Good day. I'm Marc Bernstein and welcome to Founders Forum. I am here with my Ang Onorato, . I'll tell you about her in a second. The reason I say good day is I don't know when you're listening to this We are recording our first couple of shows.
Marc Bernstein:We will be live soon on the radio, wednesdays at 4 pm on WWDB AM talk 860 in Philadelphia. We are broadcasting from their beautiful offices in Ballack, inwood and that will become relevant to our conversation today. And I just want to tell you a little Ang Onorato about . She and I met over the last year and we found out we had a lot of common interests and some similarities and some overlaps and some diverse skills that we bring to the table in terms of the businesses that we do, and this, our initial interest, morphed into doing the show together. So I'm very happy to have Ang with me today, happy to have you here, and Ang is a business growth strategy and personal coach for action-oriented business owners, which very much intersects with a lot of my interests, and she is also a reinvention expert, which is something that very much resonates for me and something that we'll be referencing during the show at different times.
Marc Bernstein:We are here today with our probably our first guest in terms of when these actually will hit Radio Land and Etherland, and his name is Kevin Michaels, and Kevin is a real estate developer. He's founder of Genesis Properties and CEO of Genesis Properties And after this show we're actually going to look at his development of, i guess, more or less a town center. He'll tell you about it in Bala Cynwd. We'll write down the road. So very happy to have you here today, kevin. How are you?
Kevin Michaels:I'm terrific. Thanks, Marc, for having me.
Marc Bernstein:My pleasure And we usually start with a thought of the day And I was thinking about this And because we're talking about the successes of entrepreneurs, sort of how they got where they are and that's the intention of the show talk about entrepreneurs, how they got where they are, where they are today and where they're going in the future. So success is a theme that will run throughout. We have another guest for our next show who has actually started a nonprofit and has successes in measurable ways beyond financial. So success means a lot of different things to different people. But I have a few quotes and I'm going to bring these up and I'd like to ask both of you which one resonates for you and what it means to you and how it might have impacted your life or your business. Success is the good fortune that comes from aspiration, desperation, perspiration and inspiration. Even ESAR Success is more a function of consistent common sense than it is of genius and wag wang. Success, the child of audacity, benjamin Disraeli And which one do you like and why?
Ang Onorato:Yeah, well, first, Marc, i wanted to thank you for inviting me to co-host this show with you. I think it's very exciting. We're gonna have some really fantastic guests And on the topic of success, i mean, i think they all really resonate with me. But I wanted just to kind of rewind for a quick second because I'm really captivated by our intro song And to me it ties a lot into. It sounds like a music, i know, that is near and dear to your heart, called Should I Your Song, and I think it talks a lot about things might be in terms of how businesses get created and the people that drive them. And from my perspective, i think success is something that I think for a lot of our founders, i'm assuming, is really about doing the work, because there's a part that resonates inside of you And then the success is sort of a future looking perspective. So for me, i think it's about the journey, and I'm excited to talk today to our guests and see what brought you here today and what success looks like for you.
Marc Bernstein:Thanks so much, Kevin. how about you Did any of those?
Kevin Michaels:Can you repeat the first one again?
Marc Bernstein:Sure Success is the good fortune that comes from aspiration, desperation, perspiration and inspiration.
Kevin Michaels:So a couple of them resonate with me, but I'll simplify the first one and say inspiration and perspiration. As the CEO, the founder and the visionary of the company, my staff and team look for me for the inspiration, and I think it's one of the gifts that I've been given, that I've learned over the years. Which I think is key to anybody's success is figuring out what you're good at and doing it and pursuing it, and I'm great at creating vision and getting people to follow me in that direction. And then the hard work has to happen, and that's the perspiration part. We'll talk a little bit about one of my favorite books a little bit later. It's difficult being an entrepreneur, waking up each morning and duking it out and slaying dragons and so forth, but it's also inspiring to do that And I feel privileged to be in the position that I'm in Kevin.
Marc Bernstein:How did you get here And I don't mean you drove down City Line Avenue How did I know you didn't start out as a real estate developer? Tell us a little bit about your story.
Kevin Michaels:A little bit of a security's route Graduated with an accounting degree, past the CPA exam, worked ever so briefly with Ernst Young, i realized I hated accounting and pivoted, answered a help wanted ad remember those for a quote unquote stockbroker at Smith, barney, shearson, lehman, hutton or whatever they were called at the time. This was back in 1993. And was hired and worked for two financial advisors for a period of about 12 months in Chicago, which is where I grew up. I took a road trip with a couple of my friends to the Badlands, portland, seattle and San Francisco. Landed in San Francisco and said why am I living in Chicago? I'm moving out here. So I did on a whim and dot dot dot. This is 1994 in Silicon Valley And this little craze began called the dot com boom.
Kevin Michaels:Netscape went public and the internet was born in front of my eyes. And my task was to deal with the C-suite executives who had all of their eggs in one basket and try to convince them to diversify outside of that, which was not a very easy task to do. One idea was they'd sell their Cisco stock and buy five other networking stocks. That's not diversification. So we talked to probably 1,000 entrepreneurs and worked ultimately with 50. The other 950 basically wouldn't take our medicine And our deal was if you're gonna work with us, you have to listen and pay it and follow our directions. Well, if you're not gonna listen to us, go hurt yourself with somebody else. So that was an exciting and really exciting and fun period. Anybody with an idea and a couple of nickels to rub together started a company And that was the hot bend and the, the birth of the internet, which is obviously so commonplace today, but at the time was not commercialized and that's where it all began. So I rode that wave until 2005. I loved the business for seven years, grew tired of it for about five, realized that the entrepreneurs were having a lot more fun than I was. I was simply moving the money from one side of the table to the next. They were the folks that were actually creating the wealth and the products and services related. So ultimately sold my business and moved to Philadelphia, which is where my wife is from. I met her out in San Francisco and hired a life coach. Hired a coach to say what do I want to do when I grow up and I guess I was 35 at the time making a career change, throwing caution to the wind and took six months off to figure out what I wanted to be, which was a really interesting time and challenging time and an inspiring time, but also that time where I've learned to understand what I'm great at, what I'm excellent at and what I don't want to do, which I think is equally important And ultimately settled on real estate.
Kevin Michaels:Wound up, i call it the confluence of art and finance. So I'm also a closet artist. I love to paint, i do a lot of master's studies, the Barnes Museum is my favorite museum in the world and we have the privilege of having it down the street. So I get to make pretty projects that make money. Ugly projects that make money, not interested. Pretty projects that don't make money bad business model. So I have a financial background, i have this artistic side. I put the two of them together and I build beautiful apartment communities that make strong returns for our investors.
Marc Bernstein:Great. So you sparked something we were talking earlier today about. So I was listening this morning to an audibly unalienable the almanac of Naval Ravi Khan. I don't know if you're familiar with him, jesus, i think. He's about a 48-year-old entrepreneur, investor who has done everything sort of outside the box and tremendously successful in a lot of areas and a huge influence, and he's a podcaster and all these kind of things. And a guy named Eric Jorgensen put together his thoughts as kind of his approved almanac And the nice thing about it is, he said, don't take any of this at face value. You can interpret it however you want and you're going to misconstrue it and you can change it around because it's like rapid-fire thoughts coming out. One of the ones that hit me is he talked about the importance of compound interest And obviously that means something to you and I about from a financial point of view and that's obviously one way of compounding interest, i think Einstein called it the eighth wonder of the world.
Kevin Michaels:Right exactly.
Marc Bernstein:I'm familiar with that as well.
Marc Bernstein:But he talked about compounding interest and the way I interpreted what he said as compounding your interests, not just your interests, and you mentioned one of them, your interest in art.
Marc Bernstein:So if you had and he said generally it takes time and you used a life coach and you tried to figure out what it was you were looking for, and I know I've gone through a lot of that, those same kind of things, over my life And, as an example, i found out the two things that kind of drive me to the things I do on a daily basis are curiosity It was always curious from a young age And the other thing was the sound of music in my ears that we've taught. And you mentioned that I'm surrounded by music, where Bruce Springsteen was just in town and we're both fans of his music and like music And it's always going through my head And I started to realize how much it influences everything I do, the rhythm of things, all kinds of things. So if you had to look at your most present compound interest items, what would you say they are?
Kevin Michaels:I love art, i love collecting, i love painting. I run marathons, i do triathlons, i'm a freak about health and wellness, i love architecture, i love music, i love reading. So my challenge is I just need more hours in the day to do it all. And I love the word curiosity. I would say it's top three, if not number one, quality that I look for when I'm hiring is somebody that's insatiably curious. It was always challenging the norm or questioning the norm. My sweet daughter is insatiably curious And I've learned more from her than I've learned from many adults.
Marc Bernstein:Well, i know you're curious because of one of the other things you do, because you're chair of a Tiger 21 group. That's right. Do you want to mention that for a second?
Kevin Michaels:Sure Tiger 21 is a peer-to-peer learning network for ultra high net worth entrepreneurs. These are folks that had material exits, life changing exits, and have taken a pause to say what do I want to do next? So they're out of the grind if they want to. They're in the grind if they want to, but they're working because they want to stay perhaps relevant or create products and solutions, not necessarily because they have to. We get together on a monthly basis and it's a safe, confidential learning environment for these folks to be able to do life together and to assemble essentially what becomes personal board of directors for them.
Marc Bernstein:It's a fascinating kind of group. Kevin, we've talked about what got you here today. After our short break, we're going to talk about the future and how you're looking at that and where that might find you.
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Marc Bernstein:Hi, we're back with Founders Forum. We're here today with Kevin Michaels and we've been talking about what got you to where you are today And you mentioned the idea of life coaching, and we're going to transition to talking about your future, And Ange loves to talk about reinvention And I think that's relevant to all of us. We've all had some conversation around that And I think, Ange, you have a question for Kevin around that.
Ang Onorato:Yeah, i'm very curious on that topic as well, just about innate curiosity. But I don't think a lot of people realize how important that when you are an entrepreneur that having that coaching on the outside helping bring different visions to light or helping even entrepreneurs process through what they do with their business but what does happen as a next step? So I'm curious about how you came to at 35, what prompted you to hire a life coach and how did that impact what you've done now in creating Tiger 21 and giving that back to other entrepreneurs.
Kevin Michaels:Sure, i've had coaches multiple coaches along the way, and I have somebody else right now that I'm using. That's helped me on a partner level, partner level relations. I guess I've done enough therapy as well, all of which I find very helpful to learn about.
Kevin Michaels:Haven't we all Haven't we all Learning who I am? strange question. But who am I? what am I great at? what do I love to do? what do I stand for? what are my principles? what are my values? the old adage is climbing the ladder on a building and you get to the top of it and realize you're on the wrong building. I don't wanna do that And at 35, it was a great opportunity to hit the pause button and say that was a fun run.
Kevin Michaels:I stumbled into that through happenstance, through answering a help wanted ad. Fortunately, i enjoyed it and I also learned what one thing that I was great at was convincing people to trust me. I was great at building those types of relationships and that served me well in various other capacities. But hiring that coach was just a helpful sounding board. To have her draw me out and say what are you good at? what do you wanna do? Looking at literally the world is my oyster. What is gonna be my next phase?
Kevin Michaels:And fortunately, given 12 years in Silicon Valley and being around entrepreneurs, really became an itch that I wanted to scratch and start my own thing. I worked at Citigroup and Merrill Lynch, which are two behemoth companies. I got to build a practice within that, but clearly my name wasn't Citigroup or Mr Merrill, so making that shift into real estate, which I've always had a passion for, was a big deal. I left this out. I wound up working for a developer for five years and learning on his dime and his time before I started Cross Properties, which is now morphed into Genesis Properties, and there we invested $500 million into apartments, including, as Marc pointed out, what we did in.
Marc Bernstein:Balakinwin. So, kevin, you met back to Tiger 21 for a second, so you're, i guess, facilitator, moderator more so than coach, but I imagine there is some coaching involved in that as well. What, how would you describe your? you know the? move you're still getting coached, as, as you know, many, most coaches are, but are you, if not all? but how do you see your role as a coach in life, both in your company and in Tiger 21?
Kevin Michaels:In Tiger 21,. We have 15 members and interesting anecdote Recently a member presented his life, his life story, who he was the entrepreneur, that he was, how he created his business and he had a very, very significant exit, and the three or four questions that he ended his presentation with that he shared with the group, that he wanted feedback from the group, all surrounded around marriage.
Kevin Michaels:You know when I, when I didn't have money, my wife was concerned about having money. Now that we have money, she's concerned about losing the money, and it had nothing to do with how many commas and zeros. it was much more of this offside of of figuring life out with wealth, either with it or without it. So, regardless of the size of somebody's balance sheet, i think we still have the same I guess it's Maslow's hierarchies to satisfy. So I sit in a pretty privileged position to draw those people out to really get to the fundamental questions that they have burning in their, in their heart. That transcends should I buy this stock Or how do I save another nickel on taxes? And it's really a soft skill, it's really emotional intelligence And again, i think it's a skill set that I've, i've developed and learned that I have an atelier and I desire to continue to sharpen those skills.
Marc Bernstein:You articulate that extremely well and it's meaningful work at getting. If you're really getting to the heart heart of people and to the heart of the matter as well, like what's purpose, the important things, meaning of life.
Ang Onorato:I think it's very meaningful, but I think you're also an advocate, because we've heard so many stories of you know people spending their life trying to get the money. Get the money and it doesn't create their happiness. All right, and so I think you're a great advocate for this, because it's an important aspect of business that I don't think gets talked about enough.
Kevin Michaels:Great book Plug. The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel really talks about the inner workings of the mind and how it relates to wealth whether you have it or you're not. It's a topic and it can warp the mind or do beautiful things, and it's a great book that walks through that dance.
Marc Bernstein:Well, you and I have this is a little plug for my book. You and I have talked a little bit about what I refer to as fiscal therapy and people's thoughts about money, the relationship with money. My book is called the Fiscal Therapy Solution 1.0 because it's not finished And that was one of the influential books with me, as well as while I was writing it and as I discuss it. But I believe that I'll just give you a quick example. But it's somebody that's in your business that I know, a long time client, who's got way more than enough money than he could ever possibly use And he's thinking about the rest of his life. But we just during the pandemic, we were having conversations about what's important to you regarding money and what do you think of when you think of your relationship with money.
Marc Bernstein:He says, you know. He says when I go into a restaurant I have a really difficult time ordering the sides on the menu, you know. And I said why is that? He said because I don't want to pay $11 for asparagus or whatever. We talked about it a lot. He's he's since now orders the sides, you understand, so you can afford to do it and there's no harm in really getting the sides. Kevin, i want to shift real quickly to your future And I like to ask questions. If this were 10 years from today so it's March of 2033, and you're looking back on the last 10 years what would have to happen in your life, business and your life for you to feel like that was a successful 10 year period?
Kevin Michaels:Raising a real estate fund. it will allow me to $650 million worth of new deal, namely in the apartment space, and my, my, my hope, 10 years from now is that I'm in top three, if not the top, developer in the city of Philadelphia. well, in the region of Philadelphia, that we have a legacy of beautiful communities that we've built. Our, our why is to cultivate environments where people can flourish, and that is meaningful to me and it's meaningful to our team. We strive to to achieve that on a daily basis to create beautiful communities for people to live in and to create family and to create meaning where they live. So the fund will allow me to have a fair amount of runway to be able to accomplish that goal. I want to take care of my team, i want to take care of my staff to have a beautiful environment where they can flourish, as well as our residents.
Marc Bernstein:If you had to name one obstacle in the way of that vision, the one thing you might have to overcome that could be in your way, what would that be?
Kevin Michaels:Well, i always say there's five obstacles in the world of real estate development You need to deliver it on time. On budget, you need to be able to hit your pro-former income and your pro-former expenses. So those are four things that I have within my control and influence. The one thing I don't have control over the capital markets, and we've seen that over the last 12 months. How interest rates have gone from 3% to 6% has had a pretty dramatic impact on the economy. They're still trying to slow inflation, but the one big impact is the wild card of where a capital market's going to be over the next decade, and your guess is as good as mine, gotcha.
Marc Bernstein:Last question what music are you listening to? Let's have a little fun for a minute right now.
Kevin Michaels:A big YouTube fan. I listen to anything from country to rap to opera to rock and roll, classic rock and roll, current rock and roll. My kids try to keep me current with the hip new beats. But an oldie. But a goodie that was just released is called Songs of Surrender by You Too, which is a remaster of 40 of their songs over their 40-year career, as I shared with you. I'm kind of choking on it. They've stripped out all the instruments and it's Bono and the Edge singing acapella with a folk guitar. It feels a little loungy for me but I'm hoping that with enough plays I'll come to love it as much as I have the rest of their music.
Marc Bernstein:Pretty cool. Well, with that, our closing theme, i've been told, sounds like it has a little bit of You Too influence. So thank you all for being here today. We hope that you'll see it. We'll see you again next week at Founders Forum and have a wonderful day.