Scales Of Success Podcast

#28 - Losing the Race, Winning the Game with Ken Biberaj

• Marcus Arredondo

Share episode

What do you do when your biggest plans fall apart? In this inspiring episode, Marcus sits down with Ken Biberaj—real estate executive, civic leader, and host of Coffee with Ken—to talk about resilience, reinvention, and staying curious through setbacks. From politics to business and beyond, this episode is a reminder that showing up consistently opens unexpected doors.

Ken Biberaj, a former NYC Council candidate and past chairman of the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce. Ken blends public service values with private sector strategy—helping companies grow while staying people-focused. His work is grounded in consistency, curiosity, and a deep belief in showing up.

Connect with Ken Biberaj:
Website: https://coffeewithken.com/
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/coffeewithkenbiberaj
Email: ken@coffeewithken.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/biberaj/

Episode highlights:
(3:14) Reopening the iconic Russian Tea Room
(6:29) Frustrations with red tape
(8:54) Harvard & public service lessons
(12:29) Running for city council at 33
(15:27) Lessons from losing the race
(18:40) Leading the Manhattan Chamber
(21:32) Turning failure into future wins
(27:40) Launching Coffee With Ken
(31:48) Manufacturing revolution and business evolution
(41:58) Honoring his father's legacy
(45:39) Lessons for the next generation
(46:57) Outro

Connect with Marcus


Scales of Success

Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@ScalesofSuccess

—--

Leave a Review

If you enjoyed listening to the podcast, we’d love for you to leave a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts to help others discover the show.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/scales-of-success-podcast/id1773864140


Get in Touch

You can also Tweet @cus with any feedback, ideas or thoughts about the lessons you’ve learnt from the episodes and we can thank you personally for tuning in.


Note: The transcript was generated by AI and may contain errors.

Ken Biberaj: 0:00

No matter how crazy the world is. You got to carve out 10 to 20% of your time thinking about what's coming further down the horizon, so I absorb that like literally. Like I need to treat these conversations as, like everyone I'm interviewing and asking questions about, they're smarter than I am. They're thinking about the future. What are you thinking about that I should be thinking about? And that really became kind of like a core thesis of these conversations and has actually led to pretty incredible business opportunities for me.

Marcus Arredondo: 0:28

Today's guest is my friend, ken Beberei, a former New York City Council candidate and chairman of the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce, real estate thought leader and the energetic host behind Coffee with Ken, a conversation series that began in the early days of the pandemic and has grown into something far bigger than its original. Zoom calls. Ken's path weaves much of what pulses behind Coffee with Ken, including the public, private and nonprofit sectors, managing to stay upbeat, curious and grounded through it all. What I find most compelling is his calm sense of urgency.

Marcus Arredondo: 0:54

Whether it's daily campaign trips to the subway on the Upper West Side for a year straight, shaking hands in rain and snow, or building thoughtful, grounded and agenda-free dialogue through his platform, ken's core message has always been the same stay consistent, stay human and do the work even when no one's watching. That mindset, modeled after his father's 43 years at Voice of America, has shaped everything from his business success to his view of public trust. This conversation is about grit, humility and finding purpose at the intersection of politics, business and community. Let's start the show. Ken Beaver, thanks for being on. Man, I know we've been going back and forth for a while and finally scheduling it. It's a thrill to have you on.

Ken Biberaj: 1:32

I mean, I'm just so excited by what you're doing and it's been a blast doing Coffee with Ken and I'm so excited about what you're up to man.

Marcus Arredondo: 1:40

Well. So I'm glad that you mentioned Coffee with Ken, because we're going to get there. That's a huge component of why I wanted to have this conversation, for the benefit of our own audiences, but certainly for my own personal benefit. But I also want to spend some time on your background. I'm looking to the side because I've got some notes here, but you have an illustrious career. That is so just for the benefit of the audience. We know each other, ken and I, as colleagues at Savills. We've been brokers for many years and have known each other for several years.

Ken Biberaj: 2:09

Now we're podcast stars.

Marcus Arredondo: 2:14

Now we do share that podcasting and we've gotten to know each other a little bit better through that lens. But, preceding real estate, you have a larger background than I think a lot of real estate related professionals do and I want to talk a little bit about that. I want to talk about your real estate related pursuits, some of the new developments in what you're doing. I also want to spend a lot of time on Coffee with Ken, just for my own personal benefit, but real quick, for the benefit of the audience. You went to American University. You went to NYU Law School New York Law School, new York Law School yeah. And you got a Master's of Public Policy from Harvard yeah.

Ken Biberaj: 2:50

I love school, man, I love school.

Marcus Arredondo: 2:53

Well, those are no small feats. You were also Chairman of the Board for the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce, but you also ran for office, and that's where I want to kick things off. We'll talk about the Russian Tea Room as well. Maybe it's good to start off with the Russian Tea Room, because maybe that, I think, segues in.

Ken Biberaj: 3:10

Yeah, perfect. Well, look first again, thanks for having me on. Always great to like spend time with colleagues and then to actually like share this kind of love of thought leadership and podcasting with you is great. But yeah, I mean, I had kind of really been focused on politics and education. So I went like undergrad, straight to grad school, straight to campaigns, and I'll never forget it. My uncle called me after my, you know, worked on a presidential campaign and we lost and he was like you know, you're gonna get like a real job now and, like you know, make a presidential campaign.

Ken Biberaj: 3:40

It was the Kerry campaign in 04. So.

Ken Biberaj: 3:42

I went straight from American 02, finished Kennedy School 04, right to the campaign and then it was kind of like, do you just jump on another campaign? Yeah, and I got a little nervous about that. I had a lot of friends who had kind of just done the political thing, consulting thing and so on, and I was very, very fortunate that I had an uncle in commercial real estate who said, hey, come to New York and learn business. And at the time he had just bought the Russian Tea Room on 57th Street, an iconic restaurant in New York City, but it had been closed at the time. So I went to New York and we worked on plans to like, what should we do with it? Do we reopen it? Do we build on the site, et cetera. But it was that experience and that- Did he own the building?

Ken Biberaj: 4:17

and the business. Yeah, so he bought the real estate when the restaurant was closed. So we set out to kind of reopen this iconic institution. And I'll never forget I was kind of in law school at night working in real estate but then also setting up plans to reopen this restaurant and I had to go take a class at the Culinary Institute on how to open a restaurant. But I can never tell anybody like who I was or what I was about to do, because it would be kind of ridiculous. And you know we put together an amazing team and reopened it and it's still in operation, in existence, survived COVID, and you know it's over 90 years old right there on 57th Street.

Marcus Arredondo: 4:50

That's a staple of New York. I remember being 12 years old going to visit and that was one of the first stops that my parents mandated.

Ken Biberaj: 4:56

Yeah, it's a truly special place and it was an opportunity to kind of see what it's like to run a restaurant, which is a very challenging, difficult thing, and then also kind of manage real estate, see that in action and also the types of high profile people that would come through the tea room. So it was a real privilege to kind of have that opportunity to kind of, you know, have a front row seat of reopening something so iconic.

Marcus Arredondo: 5:18

Any takeaways from the restaurant business that you still hold with you.

Ken Biberaj: 5:22

Yeah, it's, it really is hospitality, right. Like the restaurant business is about service and I think the more you kind of don't look down on you know what it's like to run a restaurant, work in a restaurant and service industry. When you take a step back and you realize that at the kind of macro level you are there to kind of make people's lives in that moment a little bit better, help them forget about their day, have a good time, right Like they're giving you time, not only money for the food that they're, you know, purchasing at your restaurant, but they're giving you their time. They want an experience. So it's you have a captive audience. I think when you appreciate the magnitude of, like the privilege of people dining with you, it puts it into perspective that you're in the service industry. You want to live up to their expectations and make sure they come back right, and it's something that translated into any line of work in any business and is just a real kind of macro thread on relationship building really Well, that's the front of the business.

Marcus Arredondo: 6:15

How about the back of the business? Do you have any from permits and plans to actually financing it, to operating it, to staffing it? Any takeaways from that that you still keep with you?

Ken Biberaj: 6:25

You alluded to the kind of running for office thing and I ran for office and I kind of used the tea room as a bit of an example in a lot of cases of just like how difficult it was to interact with government Right, I mean, like we would have an issue at the tea room and be like, ok, well, we need a permit from the fire department, no-transcript, and this always resonated with me the fact that, like, businesses and Americans would have to hire an expediter to interact with your own government is a shortcoming and fault of the system that needs to be addressed. And that was one of the reasons that I kind of ran for office was, you know, we were the Russian tea room, we were large, we were iconic, we could, you know, afford it and we could do it. If you're running a small business or you have a lot of locations, like, it's a true challenge. And you know we're New York, was a community of immigrants who tend to just create their own restaurants, right, like, and those hurdles are kind of arduous.

Marcus Arredondo: 7:20

So yeah, yeah, I can only imagine what. So what year was that reopening?

Ken Biberaj: 7:26

Yes, we reopened it in 2006. And then I ended up running for city council in 2013.

Marcus Arredondo: 7:32

So what took place between 2006 to 2013?

Ken Biberaj: 7:36

So I went to law school at night. So I graduated in 2008. I was never going to actually go practice law. It was one of these things where it's an invaluable degree to have and at the kind of encouragement of my uncle, he kind of gave me the flexibility to take it out and take a law school at night basically.

Ken Biberaj: 7:52

So I actually took the max classes permissible during the year and over the summer and work during the day, and we did real estate and the restaurant right. So we had a portfolio of properties that my uncle owned and occupied in Manhattan and the Bronx. So so we had a portfolio of properties that my uncle owned and occupied in Manhattan and the Bronx. So I got to see a breadth of real estate that most people don't get to see. So not only were we leasing and selling and purchasing buildings in Manhattan, we were doing that with vacant land and lots in the Bronx and then also running an iconic restaurant in midtown Manhattan. So my kind of breadth of what I spent my days on was pretty extensive Graduated law school in 08, got married in 09, had our first child in 2013 as I was running for office, so our firstborn Hudson got a front row seat to meeting people in the Upper West Side.

Marcus Arredondo: 8:38

I want to talk about you running for office, but I don't want to skip over your master's in public policy.

Ken Biberaj: 8:43

Yeah.

Marcus Arredondo: 8:43

Was that still in the hopes? Did you go into master's in public policy? Yeah, was that still in the hopes? Did you go into master's of public policy preceding law school?

Ken Biberaj: 8:50

Correct, so I went right from college. I graduated American. The average age of someone in the master's program at the Kennedy School was probably 28. So I was 22.

Ken Biberaj: 9:00

So I went in and I thought I was a hotshot and then quickly learned most of my classmates had liberated small countries or served in the military and I had done like student government and worked on the Hill. So it was a quick kind of opportunity to kind of absorb the magnitude of the people from such a cross section of the country and internationally and a large mid-career population of folks who were like a decade or two in their own careers yeah, so it was this opportunity where, like, you learn a ton in the classroom, but having the opportunity to go to a place like that is really about the people you interact with.

Ken Biberaj: 9:32

This is all about your classmates and so on. So I did that from 02 to 04. So it was a pretty wild, uh experience less political than I thought them right. Like I came from american university, I was like, oh, harvard kenn Kennedy School was going to be the most political place on the planet. It was not. It was really filled with folks who wanted to go work at USAID, work in government, work at the UN, right, and I mean incredible folks who had a commitment to public service, something that's a big challenge today, as you look around what's happening in DC and beyond no-transcript the government how you can be involved and how did that contribute to your desire to run for office?

Ken Biberaj: 10:37

And we'll get to it a little bit later. But I really credit my time at the Kennedy School as kind of being the launchpad for what became our Coffee with Ken series. Right, because what I learned at the Kennedy School was really like any large problem society faces requires kind of tri-sector partnership. And that means you have to have buy-in from the public sector, nonprofits, education and the private sector. And it's only at that moment where all three are rowing in the same direction can you actually effectuate large-scale change and impact.

Ken Biberaj: 11:06

And that part of the Venn diagram is where I always wanted to kind of play and thought I could add the most value, because I had an appreciation of the public sector. I went on to kind of have opportunities in business but always kind of spend time with nonprofits and advocacy groups. So I kind of realized that you know, the people who are making the advocacy call to action are going to need support from the private sector and eventually that next domino fall would hopefully be the public sector with the power and resources to really make impact on people's lives. So all of that were the ingredients that I have always kind of aspired to dabble in, if you will.

Marcus Arredondo: 11:41

Well, a lot of that seems to be not only perspective, understanding, different perspectives, but the ability to build consensus, which I would imagine, has served you well in a number of different capacities.

Ken Biberaj: 11:51

Yeah, I mean, look, would I have been better off going to the Harvard Business School, maybe, but I feel like the diplomacy, public speaking, communications, public leadership, organizing skills that I got at the Kennedy School, which was more public service oriented, have really been invaluable in the private sector, for me in particular.

Marcus Arredondo: 12:09

Yeah, I would imagine Diplomatic would be among the first adjectives I'd use to describe you.

Ken Biberaj: 12:15

I appreciate that Most people say caffeinated or you know.

Marcus Arredondo: 12:19

Well, that's who we're going to get there. So tell me about your decision to run At this point. When you ran, you were how old?

Ken Biberaj: 12:25

So I was 33 in New York City and the New York City Council has 51 members from all five boroughs and it was this moment in time where they had extended term limits. Bloomberg, if you recall, had actually gone on to serve as third term as mayor of New York City, so everyone was basically term limited out. So it was the first time the seat on the Upper West Side, as with other seats, was going to be open and I'll never forget it was an eight-way Democratic primary and I was the only one under 50 from business and if I had run on the East Side, only one other person was running and I might have had a better chance and it was somebody a peer of mine. Very fascinating dynamic.

Ken Biberaj: 13:09

And it was one of these things where I thought Mike Bloomberg had actually done some incredible things in New York City and that there was this momentum and trajectory on kind of innovation and tech. The Cornell Technion campus was kind of on the cusp, hudson Yards was being built. So I was very emphatic about like he wasn't perfect, there are things to improve, we need to build on this but it was a kind of you know Bloomberg message in a de Blasio year and I was the kind of Democrat talking business which wasn't the case for most Democrats around New York City. So I got clobbered, but I had an amazing time doing it. I mean it was.

Marcus Arredondo: 13:35

Well, if you don't mind, I want to. I want to indulge a little bit on that, on that process. So, from start to completion, what was that timeline?

Ken Biberaj: 13:43

So, from start to completion. What was that timeline? It was like a year and a half, right. So I got in the race in like mid-2012, actually, and the primary was in the fall of 2013. So it was about a solid year and a half and it was one of those things where I knew I was coming from a name ID disadvantage, sure and it was a pretty progressive, forward forward leaning neighborhood.

Ken Biberaj: 14:05

So I felt like I had to just outwork folks and I literally just spent every single morning at the subways and it was one of these things where markets I think it made me a better broker in real estate, frankly, because in New York City, when you're staying on the subway, most people aren't saying you know, hello and have your day and tell me about your platform. They're telling you to get the heck out of the way and why are you bothering me and slowing me down as I'm rushing to work. So it kind of forces you to smile and take it on the chin and it's always in those moments after you're there for like months on end when somebody like actually stops and they're like all right, you've been here long enough, tell me your story, and then you kind of get that little win and it fuels you, you for the next couple of months to stay out there.

Marcus Arredondo: 14:43

This is sort of the basis of what I'm really trying to dive in on this podcast on, which is that those are thousands and thousands upon thousands of conversations that you're having For a year and a half. I would imagine the first week you were bludgeoned and punched up, and it was. You know that's a tough thing to continue to want to come back. That's not just. You know there's got to be a drive there. There's got to be a purpose behind what you're doing. Otherwise you bail out. What was that drive and what have you taken away from that? How has that been able to? I would imagine that has to have served you in a lot of different ways.

Ken Biberaj: 15:23

Yeah, I tend to do well when there's like a timeframe, right. So I kind of looked at myself and I said, okay, this is going to stink. Like being out there every single day is going to be rough, it's going to rain, it's going to snow, it's going to be cold, it's going to be hot, it's not going to be fun. But this primary is in this many days and I kind of just reverse engineer and I had that experience with the bar exam like the bar exam is gonna suck, but it's on this day. I have to do this much work and this many, you know, this many uh reviews and tests and you know whatever, and then it'll be over.

Ken Biberaj: 15:52

So I kind of reverse engineered to kind of manage the magnitude of it, because it could just seem daunting and then it'll never end, right. So I did that and it is just like this recognition that I always thought if you just worked harder than other people, that's's the differentiator, right. Like there's incredibly smart people out there, right. But if you're willing to kind of stay out there in the rain and the snow and work a little bit harder, you may not win at the end, but like you're not going to lose, right, like you know life is winning and losing and you know, sometimes you win when you lose and you know you just put it out there and you do your best, and if it doesn't work, it doesn't work.

Marcus Arredondo: 16:21

But what did that experience tell you about humanity or educate you about?

Ken Biberaj: 16:26

It showed for me number one, like people will respect the work and the time you put in it. So people who would ignore me for months on end, eventually, toward the end, like whether they voted for me or not, I had earned their respect. They were just appreciative. I once had a woman tell me that she would not vote for me for city council but she would vote for me for Congress. And I said how come? And she said, well, like you're very sophisticated, thoughtful, she would be making all these compliments and city council. She was like look, if my power goes out of my building, I want to call my city council member. I don't think you want me to call you at night. And I kind of paused. I was kind of like man, maybe she's right, I don't want the call if something happens in me. I don't know Right. But it was one of these things where it was like a back end, a compliment if you will.

Ken Biberaj: 17:06

But you kind of slowly can like earn people's trust and respect and I think people do appreciate hard work. I mean, you know this is America, this is a country where we can kind of have a merit based success. You can kind of, you know, work hard, succeed and get recognized, and it's one of these things in the campaign where I met thousands of people and I still to this day have those relationships and it's invaluable. I mean so like memories, experience. I've always believed in public service. I knew if I had not ever ran, like it would be hanging over me when I always wonder, like man, I should have run, I should have. And I felt like this was a moment. Like Bloomberg was leaving, I was going to be kind of new wave of like business leaders who were looking to add to the conversation.

Marcus Arredondo: 17:47

You feel like you scratched that itch, or you think there's still any lingering there.

Ken Biberaj: 17:51

I think I think so Right Like it is. I have three kids now so it's a little harder to imagine putting in the time and effort. And you know politics and campaigning is is very difficult. Governing is also hard and being accountable to voters. But right now I think, between supporting candidates, I care about using Coffee with Ken as a platform and talk about issues I care about. That's kind of keeping me motivated. And you know I got young kids and you know, maybe later in life there'll be an opportunity. I feel like I did my career in reverse Marcus, right Like I ran for office super young. I like chaired a chamber of commerce super young. Right Like supposed to do that when you're 70. So now I feel like I got to focus on work and make some impact.

Marcus Arredondo: 18:29

Well, that's what I want to transition to, so the chairing the chamber of commerce. How did that come about and what was that experience like?

Ken Biberaj: 18:36

It's one of these anecdotes I tell young people all the time right Like you can pursue a goal and it may not work out. But sometimes it's about like what's the outcome from that effort? And for me, I ran for office and I was proud to be a kind of advocate for small businesses, restaurants and entrepreneurship and at that moment in time not many people were talking like that. So I had built this amazing relationship with the leadership team at the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce and there was this deep connectivity because we had just reopened the Russian Tea Room, an iconic Manhattan restaurant. So they kind of came to me while I was licking my wounds after losing my election and I think they appropriately recognized hey, you probably want to find a way to stay visible. You were just neck deep in this conversation. It is kind of hard for you to just like walk away from it.

Ken Biberaj: 19:21

We're looking to kind of freshen up our brand and shake things up and we're not getting a lot of new members in tech, real estate and hospitality.

Ken Biberaj: 19:28

So it was really this kind of moment of like mutual benefit where I can have a platform and come in, leverage the brand of the Russian tea room and our work on the campaign and relationships with the de Blasio administration on behalf of the chamber and it was kind of low risk for them because we were just going to bring new energy and contacts and it really became this like unbelievable platform for me that I could never have imagined.

Ken Biberaj: 19:51

And Marcus, arguably, was like I think I got more accomplished on behalf of the community and issues I cared about than maybe I would have being in the council, because we go in there and we created chairman conversation events and we actually were able to get folks from the Obama administration to come to New York and do interviews and it was just like me interviewing people on stage. So we had Valerie Jarrett when she was at the White House, eric Holder talking about criminal justice reform, jay Johnson from Homeland Security. We did events on paid family leave, on climate change, on issues I cared about that weren't traditional issues a chamber of commerce usually talked about.

Ken Biberaj: 20:26

So I was able to kind of push the chamber out of its own comfort zone under the kind of theory of my job is to put you in front of policymakers. You know Kirsten Gillibrand is working on a bill on paid family leave. She should come speak and talk about it. And if you have issues or topics you want to share, I have created this room for you to have that dialogue and for me it was about putting business leaders or political people in the same room when it wasn't a fundraiser and I was asking for anything, but just to like talk about big issues.

Marcus Arredondo: 20:52

Well, I'm starting to see the genesis of Coffee with Ken here. It's a slow degree. But you know what's interesting is? I was going to ask, like, what's your relationship to their success?

Ken Biberaj: 21:27

no-transcript. I would be good in the city council. I thought I had a different voice, so I felt like I should pull myself out there and run as hard as possible. If you genuinely are in that position and there's something you care a lot about, even if you lose, did your best, you put yourself out there, and I think just experiences like that are worthwhile, right like we could talk about other things later in life.

Ken Biberaj: 21:51

Like I did this, like race last year, and it was one of these things like you get older, like when you actually physically push yourself on these things and you know, for me at that moment, running for office like that's like a hard thing to do, to like spend a year, put work on hold and like stand outside and try to convince people to support you, so putting yourself out there, and like diving in. If it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out, but you tried. So as long as you're kind of like mission aligned, focused, I think that positive things will come from it, and I also am a firm believer like things happen for a reason and me losing, that is totally fine and it's. It was such a blessing to have had that privilege to run and then it led to so many other things, sure.

Marcus Arredondo: 22:31

I would imagine that your callousness, or thick skin, has to develop quite a bit when you're in those positions and the criticisms that you face in opposition is not especially on the Upper West Side. I would imagine that that is not insignificant.

Ken Biberaj: 22:50

Yeah, it is a real. You know the Upper West Side is the highest voter turnout district in Manhattan in New York City, probably.

Ken Biberaj: 22:57

So running and losing there is almost, like you know, harder than like winning in some neighborhoods right so it is like it is a battle every single day, like you can be out there and if you have an off date, somebody's going to show up and, by coincidence, that's the day they're going to have like deep questions about the city budget or your plan for the parks department or how you're going to address crime issues, or you know. You have to be on all the time and you have to have a positive attitude all the time and you have to be willing to take it with a smile all the time. And I remember being at an event once and I think this was like like crack, but it was like a hot summer day and we were in one of these forums. It was like 150 people and 100 degrees, and somebody yelled at me about like oh well, you're from real estate, how can we support you? You know and like.

Ken Biberaj: 23:40

And then I paused and I kind of like had this realization, I and I kind of noted that, like, every problem in my opinion is a real estate problem and it was a mentality thing.

Ken Biberaj: 23:49

And I got to say, like your subways are overcrowded. I said you let Donald Trump build all these buildings on the West Side Highway and there's no more schools, there's no more grocery stores, right, like you had elected officials who cut deals, who weren't in a position to get the best deal for the community, and bike lanes. You know, affordable housing, like all these things are actually constraints on like available space. And I genuinely kind of pushed back on this woman and I kind of said, like everything in your neighborhood that you care about, from small businesses and on, is a real estate problem and it kind of like elicited like some boos, some hisses, but it was like sometimes you just got to kind of give it straight to and not be shy about like being forthright about what you believe and why you think maybe things haven't worked out for that community, because I genuinely felt like they hadn't actually fought hard enough for some. You know big deals that got done and impacted the community.

Marcus Arredondo: 24:39

I had a former congressman on not too long ago and we talked about the value of vanity and ego in this process, because you really do need to have a backbone, you have to have a faith in what you're standing for, even if it may be wrong. But beyond that, you have to have an optimism that you can actually achieve these outcomes. Because in the face of bureaucracy and I heard the phrase recently that you know, people are reasonable, individuals are reasonable but people are not right you know masses become something else and you can't have individual conversations, one at a time, with thousands of people. And I guess I'm wondering in today's environment, do you have any perspective as it relates to getting back to you know just more nuanced conversation that you have on Coffee with Ken that are really looking at all the spokes to the hub to understand more than just the headline of an X post as a means of information.

Ken Biberaj: 25:42

Yeah, I think it's all coincided with this kind of instant news 120 characters, like everything's so fast and I move fast too. But you know, it's kind of nice to just like pause and have a cup of coffee and like have a conversation with folks, and I think we're just moving at such a velocity and unfortunately, the pandemic like so many benefits of like Zoom and virtual stuff, but there's so many drawbacks where it's just like you're just moving so quick and you're not getting that true human connection by having real life interactions and then you're almost like more accessible. So the expectations are different. So I think nothing beats the ability to kind of like stop, think, reflect, meet with people.

Ken Biberaj: 26:23

The vanity thing on the political stuff is is always an interesting topic where part of it, I think, is like you're just kind of for me, for example, like you just get rejected so much when you're campaigning. Then once somebody gives you like positive energy, you really want to please them. You want to kind of convince them that you're you know and you think like you're going to convince every individual person, but like scales of success, like you can't scale the one-on-one conversation, so you have to find a way to create a brand and a message that goes beyond, just like the individual conversations.

Ken Biberaj: 26:50

And it's a very like it's politics, but that resonates with business and product development and going to market and storytelling and all kinds of things. So well.

Marcus Arredondo: 26:58

on that note, I'll use this as a launchpad for you to start sharing a little bit about Coffee with Ken, appropriate as you're having your drink here is. You had an interview with John Meacham, who I'm a huge fan of. I became a fan of him backwards through Bill Maher, of all people, and I started to read. I'm in the middle of his I think it's his Thomas Jefferson, I think he wrote that, but he talks about the portrait test, which I found to be really interesting. I'm wondering what's your take on that and maybe if you can use that as a launchpad to tell us how you got into coffee with Ken and what it is for those who are not familiar with it.

Ken Biberaj: 27:35

Yeah, so just high level. We started this like thought leadership series literally five years ago, like two weeks ago, Right, Like it was March 25th, I think, of 2020. So, like the pandemic had hit, we do office leasing markets right. A lot of people weren't going to the office because there was a global pandemic and I was coming off the heels of, like you know, the Chamber of Commerce and chairman conversations, but I had just moved in 2017 to Northern Virginia, so I was still trying to get my footing and meet people and then the pandemic kind of clipped me, probably more than other people.

Ken Biberaj: 28:07

So I was in this moment of like, well, how do you stay visible and relevant? And I'm also, like you know, a person who loves interacting with other people and personal connectivity. So I said, well, you know what? I have a weird network, you know. I have weird people who follow me. I have weird access to folks because of the chamber and all these other things and running for office. So I'm just going to like have conversations with people and I'm going to treat it like a webinar and if anybody wants to watch, they can watch.

Ken Biberaj: 28:32

And then we did like three and it was like hundreds of people would just tune in and like fill in the chat and all this stuff. So it was one of those things where we started it early and we just like haven't stopped and what started as a truly just virtual, you know, exercise and effort has now evolved into a lot of in-person events. So you referenced the John Meacham thing. That was like an event I could never have conceived of. Right, we had partnered with CAA speakers that represents John Meacham, and we were in a position where we wanted to kind of raise not that he needed his profile raised, but really introduce him to a broader audience of folks. So with CAA's partnership, we convinced the White House Historical Society to host us and we interviewed him in the Decatur House, which is this iconic, you know, hundreds year old carriage house on the White House grounds, and it was like this perfect venue for like 150 people to come together and hear john talk about, like the books he's written about george hw bush, to inner meetings and writing speeches for joe biden.

Ken Biberaj: 29:32

It was at this moment in time where he was actually like spending time working with president biden, so it was like he was at the white house and then he was having coffee with ken in front of people and he talks about just a host of different you know ideas, but references this portrait test of just like presidents. Looking at that portrait, like what are people going to think of me when I'm, you know, long gone? And that like kind of elevated reflectiveness that he has come to appreciate when he's kind of writing his, his books and he's studying history whether it's Thomas Jefferson or anybody else, just like deep stuff, and he's just like such a magical storyteller that for me I read like five of his books. I was so nervous, watched videos and podcasts with him, but you know it was a really neat setting but a lot different than just being virtual right. I mean you're reacting to an audience, you have people there, you're sweating, but it's you did great man I am interested in.

Marcus Arredondo: 30:28

So I love this trajectory of sort of evolving right. I mean what it has become, because the majority of your discussions are live now, if not all of them. Your opportunities have opened up considerably, and I do, if you're willing to talk a little bit about you know how that's influenced your business pursuits and activities. But I'm wondering if you could just spend a second just for my own personal benefit. What comment would you have about how what your thought was originally what kept coffee with Ken was? Was it just scratching your itch?

Marcus Arredondo: 31:02

I think you know from the outside some people might've looked at it and said what the heck does this have to do with real estate? Right, like, what is he doing? This is just a passion project of his. But there is a lot of overlap between the three different sectors that you refer to, between the public, private and nonprofit communities that I think that juncture is really critical for everyone who is interested in their own well-being, certainly those within the business community. So I guess, long question. But how has that inception taken shape since it came up, since you came up with it, and what it's become now?

Ken Biberaj: 31:44

Yeah, I think at the beginning for me it was used as a way to stay visible, where I was never selling anything. I've actually never really done one on real estate. I actually intentionally avoid the topic, but I'll never run out of stuff to talk about because you can literally talk about anything. So I do talks on whatever I want and it goes back to kind of the city council run, like if you genuinely believe in trying something and you just throw yourself into it, do that and you don't know what will come from it. So for me I actually wasn't and we've talked a little bit about this like I was never tracking how many views, how many clicks, like any of that. I was always more interested in hey, Marcus, you want to do a Zoom and like catch up, and I'm going to open source and people could watch. And then people kept saying yes, and I think it was like timing and momentum and that nobody was doing virtual events yet. So we kind of built this momentum and that summer I interviewed somebody named Beth Comstock who is a former vice chair of GE and she has a great book called Imagine it Forward and you know her philosophy doing change management and stuff that GE was like, no matter how crazy the world is, you got to carve out 10 to 20% of your time thinking about what's coming further down the horizon.

Ken Biberaj: 32:53

So I absorbed that like literally like I need to treat these conversations as, like everyone I'm interviewing and asking questions about, they're smarter than I am. They're thinking about the future. What are you thinking about that I should be thinking about, and that really became kind of like a core thesis of these conversations and has actually led to pretty incredible business opportunities for me. Because I kind of went without an agenda. I was genuinely curious.

Ken Biberaj: 33:16

It fed this kind of you know, a need for me to kind of like feel like I was in politics because I was talking to people in the office or business about what was happening in the world. So you feel like you're part of the conversation. And then I got to somebody named Jigar Shah, and Jigar Shah was the former head of the loan program office at the Department of Energy and I think I was telling you this in a previous conversation. I had been doing a lot of industrial real estate during the pandemic and got really kind of focused on manufacturing and I was like, wow, it really feels like there's more people building in the United States even though we haven't done that in the last 30 years, but now there's some reshoring because of COVID and supply chain resiliency.

Ken Biberaj: 33:53

But also the people who used to build apps are now building products. Like something seems to be happening. And when I interviewed Jigar, he noted that the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, the infrastructure bill, chips, was going to fuel investment in more manufacturing. And I had kind of had this policy dilemma, marcus, that I was dealing with, where the vacancy rate for industrial real estate nationally was like 2% to 4% in the early part of the pandemic and I was kind of like this is really hard. We have a public policy challenge where we don't even have enough industrial space to meet demand. So I asked him like well, where are people supposed to build this? He's like you should help them find out where to build it. And I said I around the country and started stress testing this idea.

Ken Biberaj: 34:45

And for the last 18, 24 months I have literally been crisscrossing the country working on advanced manufacturing projects, helping companies figure out where in the country they should build, helping them compete states against each other for projects and then helping them structure the real estate deal Should they lease, should they own.

Ken Biberaj: 35:06

So for me, marcus, this moment in time is like the intellectual kind of beast is being fed by these companies that are transforming the world through clean tech, defense, national security. I get to deal with state economic development leaders. It's like my dream. I thought I was going to be a state economic development leader, right. So I'm dealing with this crowd of people who is striving to win these projects to make their communities better. And then we get to do real estate, which is our day job, and they're projects of significance where it kind of like gets you out of bed in the morning, where you're like I can go, maybe help out that community in, you know, in North Carolina or Illinois or in Arizona. And now the inverse is happening, marcus. We're now we're spending time and I'm speaking at these economic development conferences and like get into those communities even more so that we're ready for the next project and what story to tell. So all of this has been a bit of a flywheel.

Marcus Arredondo: 35:47

That's the flywheel that I want to actually talk a little bit about, because you know you wouldn't be. You're doing it sort of backwards right. I mean you're getting in front of a company.

Ken Biberaj: 35:55

I do everything backwards, man, which is the best way, sort of, to do it right.

Marcus Arredondo: 36:14

You're not necessarily having to pursue all of these companies, but by being a thought leader in a position where you're being sought out to speak and I make you an expert when you parlay it with preceding foundational pieces of information. But you might argue that you'd never have access to any of this if you hadn't lost your run for city council. I mean, it was you know. All of this sort of lent itself to a tripping forward that's provided a lot of opportunity for you.

Ken Biberaj: 36:39

Yeah, I mean that's a great way to put it right. It was this kind of opportunity with the chamber where I was never selling anything, right, Like I wasn't. Actually I wasn't at Savills when we did the Manhattan Chamber, we were doing the Russian tea room and my uncle's stuff. So like I was building these genuine relationships with like big companies, CEOs, executives, and just trying to be helpful to them, putting them in the room with folks and and just trying to be helpful to them, putting them in't need to be in a set market, Marcus, right, Like we're pitching people in California, overseas, et cetera, and developing teams around each engagement. So I think for me, just recognizing that Savills is a platform, like it doesn't matter what's happening in just one market we can service all kinds of needs from companies around the world who are thinking about expanding the United States and beyond.

Marcus Arredondo: 37:42

So yeah, yeah, that's super fascinating. So I know we're starting to come up on time. I couldn't, I would be remiss if I didn't spend a couple of minutes Well, actually before I get to that because I want to talk about your dad and I want to talk about you as a dad and sort of the relationship between those two things. But, real quick, I want to spend a couple of minutes talking about Coffee Weekend, because I said, you know, sort of tripping forward and that's an unfair assessment. Because, as someone who's witnessed the background of what's entailed and actually putting this on, in some ways I sort of think back to the early days of the pandemic, when you started having these webinars.

Marcus Arredondo: 38:18

I find that it's probably a little bit less threatening now than asking somebody to come on a podcast, right, because a podcast somehow has become this little bit of a term. But I'm curious how you? It's effort to try and get guests, it's effort to combine the scheduling of their schedule and your schedule to get to get it, to get it to production and get it out and get it marketed. I I'm just curious. First of all, how are you, how has the process of getting guests changed from the beginning until now?

Ken Biberaj: 38:52

Uh. So we're trying to get a little bit more organized and professional. So now we we release videos like every two weeks as opposed to like once a month, every whatever. We had a good cadence cadence, but it was never like a set thing. So now it's like trying to get more organized. Youtube channel, podcast channel, um more in person. As we film them. They're not live anymore and we just drop them every couple of weeks, so that has helped kind of stay more organized.

Ken Biberaj: 39:15

Um, I have a whole running list of topics I care about and guests I want to interview. But it is a wild situation where we have like PR companies pitching us to interview people on a regular basis and it's been like this thing I never could have imagined, mark, is that like I was like strong arming people to like join my webinar leadership series, because I didn't even know if it was a podcast back then, I don't even know what it was. And now all of a sudden we have like PR people and we've been speaking at conferences, right, like. So I got to go to the social innovation summit in Chicago last summer and I interviewed the governor of Illinois on the main stage with a thousand people, right. So we're getting more inbound and, again, because we're not, like, solely focused on conversations on real estate, it opens up the breadth of what you could talk about. So it's a ton of work.

Ken Biberaj: 40:01

It is, to the point of the city council, hard to maintain that stamina because, as I mentioned earlier, it's good when you have a date and you can kind of work toward it. There's no date with coffee, we're just still doing it. So I'm trying to continue to rationalize how to keep it going. But so far so good. And the problem is it's just like when you meet a voter on the West side and they actually give you the time of day, it fuels you to do the next one. Every time we do one of these conversations, someone tunes in, someone reaches out who I haven't talked to in a long time, someone comes to an in-person event, a business lead comes in, a new topic idea comes in. It's just one of these things where it's now become so routine for me that I can't not do it, and now we have like lists of people who want to come in person and watch.

Marcus Arredondo: 40:41

That makes it a lot easier yeah.

Ken Biberaj: 40:43

And it's yeah, the in-person thing is a fascinating thing, though, because it's intimidating trying to get people to show up in real life, right, that's what I was just about to ask.

Ken Biberaj: 40:51

Like Zoom is, but like but now I've been like blown away because we get a cross section. The feedback I've gotten from folks is they really enjoy coming because they meet people from so many different industries and it's like a rare moment where it's like a curated audience of people who actually care about making a difference. But they could be from nonprofits, public sector, private sector, campaigns, whatever.

Marcus Arredondo: 41:16

So, yeah, it seems like a more organic way to network. How has your preparation changed?

Ken Biberaj: 41:20

that'll be my last question in for in person versus yeah, uh, you have to really have the questions organized and ready to go because, like I, I always have like a piece of paper or something in front of me and when you're sitting there and hundreds of people are watching, you want to kind of be a little more organic, you know. So I still have like a note sheet, but you try not to, you know, rely on it. So you really got to like prep and be organized and just figure it out, yeah.

Marcus Arredondo: 41:41

So I want to spend a minute. You made a post recently about your dad and I want you to take a minute actually just to share with the audience what his role was and what that post was about. And then I've got a couple of questions.

Ken Biberaj: 41:53

Sure, so I grew up in Northern Virginia because my dad's been a lifelong civil servant for 43 years a lifelong civil servant for 43 years and he has been a voice of America which has been in the news lately because the current administration decided they were going to shut down voice of America. And it's one of these like shocking realizations for me as someone who grew up every day watching my father go to work, be in public service, and for us we're ethnically Albanian and for a long time he ran the Albanian service. So I grew up with people coming to me telling me that they had listened to my dad's voice on the radio in the 80s and 90s while Albania was still communist. So I'd be on the Upper West Side campaigning and like a building super restaurant owner who was Albanian saw me and they would come just to say thanks to me and the family for what my father had done me and they would come just to say thanks to me and the family for what my father had done. So I grew up with this like deep appreciation of the positive impact government can make, not only for people here but around the world. And it's been this terrible thing to watch how it's been dismantled and kind of you know, pushed off to the side.

Ken Biberaj: 42:55

But for me, my father always inspired me to public service. Right, is why I went to American University, why I wanted to go to the Kennedy School, why I wanted to run for office. It was this kind of like path of public service that I really ingrained in myself from him and his leadership. And Voice of America is a journalistic entity right, it is the US government's broadcasting arm on news to countries that don't get fair news, right, whether it's Russia or Albania or China, et cetera. So in a small way we always joke that, like you know, I got my. I guess I'm like journalistic now. Mark is right, I interview people. So we're kind of like this extension of like I never really appreciated until recently, but, like you know, he did it on such a scale. But what we're doing is having conversations and trying to share these stories on topics that are important for the day.

Marcus Arredondo: 43:45

Well, I might be wrong, but Voice of America, the teams are relatively small.

Ken Biberaj: 43:47

Right, I mean, it's a news organization that is producing content, but it doesn't have the staffing that a large media organization no it's incredible how ahead of the curve they were even in the late 90s when he was doing, you know, going from radio to TV to social media, to digital. Right Like they have country specific services that are broadcasting in and they do it with a tight budget and a tight ship. Right Like I can't imagine you know any real monetary impact in a material way to the United States government by shutting it down, versus the negative impact it plays on a geopolitical, global scale of taking away the American voice to folks that were actually relying on having some type of democratic news to their country.

Marcus Arredondo: 44:31

What do you think his work ethic and those principles have taught you?

Ken Biberaj: 44:37

I grew up watching, like, when he was broadcasting in Talladega. I'll never forget the story and it probably is a little bit of what I internalized in running for office they would broadcast every day, marcus, and they wouldn't even know if anybody was listening. Right, and it was one of these things where, like, he would get up and do it serious every single day and they would do the news and then it turned out that, like, everyone was listening to it and everyone was watching it. But it was one of those things where you go through the mechanics of, like, I know what my job is and I'm going to do it, and I actually don't even know if people are listening. It's kind of like this, right, like you don't know how many people watch or listen to your podcast right, but like you, what do you?

Ken Biberaj: 45:26

think is among the more uh important principles you try to uh convey to your own children yeah you know takeaways yeah, I think the same lessons I learned from my dad, um, really, just like consistency, right, like showing up. You know people will rely on what you tell them, right? Um, so it's like those types of habits you want to get good at, right, like on a daily basis, like do your work, show up, do right by people, be reliable and just be consistent, and I mean it's. It's a message for like my, it's a message for like my kids, it's a message for like young professionals in our business, right, because life's a marathon and it takes endurance and the only way you're actually going to do it without burning out is to make incremental steps every day.

Ken Biberaj: 46:10

But, that means every day you got to actually get off your butt and do stuff.

Marcus Arredondo: 46:13

So Well, I tend to ask this question, which I think you may have already answered which is how you measure success.

Ken Biberaj: 46:24

So for me, I always had like different answers to that and I think, more recently, as we're getting older, like for me success is like freedom of schedule, right Like the ability to like make it to you know my kid's baseball game. Take my son to wherever he wants to go. We're going to see Dude Perfect in Pittsburgh this summer. It's like of course we're going to go do that. So I think it's being able to have that flexibility. I have a big family. My parents are still in the same house in Virginia we grew up in 20 miles away. My brother's in the neighborhood with his four kids, right Like nothing beats having the flexibility of your schedule to be with your family and pursue what you want.

Marcus Arredondo: 46:52

So, yeah, Any closing thoughts? No, I'm just, I'm so proud of you.

Ken Biberaj: 46:56

I'm so excited you're doing this. I'm so grateful. I'm not used to being on this side right, so I'm very uncomfortable, but you know it's.

Marcus Arredondo: 47:03

Well, you did great, like you always do, man. I appreciate your support and thank you so much for being on.

Ken Biberaj: 47:07

Well, I appreciate it, good to see you and looking forward to continue the conversation, man.

Marcus Arredondo: 47:12

Likewise, thanks for listening. For a detailed list of episodes and show notes, visit scalesofsuccesspodcastcom. If you found this conversation engaging, consider signing up for our newsletter, where we go even deeper, on a weekly basis, sharing exclusive insights and actionable strategies that can help you in your own journey. We'd also appreciate if you subscribed, rated or shared today's episode. It helps us to attract more illuminating guests, adding to the list of enlightening conversations we've had with New York Times bestsellers, producers, founders, ceos, congressmen and other independent thinkers who are challenging the status quo. You can also follow us for updates, extra content and more insights from our guests. We hope to have you back again next week for another episode of Scales of Success. Scales of Success is an Edge West Capital production.