new challenges along down the road

Bob, Matt and I spent our first working hour together in the Trust for Urban Land's corporate offices in a tower in downtown Atlanta. For what seemed like the thousandth time I told the story: For years now, as Atlanta's economy boomed and jobs were plentiful developers had bought river fronts, hill tops and other desirable locations and made plans to build huge numbers of houses there. An army of investors and community banks had sprung up to profit from and cater to these developers and home builders. Add historically low mortgage rates and no natural boundaries to confine it, the city of Atlanta and its suburbs sprawled like no other. Then the Sub-prime mortgage problems began to infest the larger banks, which led to a full blown credit crisis that all but stopped the economic growth of this, and most other regions - the interdependent banking and home building industry machine that had evolved here began to creak then seize up completely. By January 2009, finance and housing, especially in Georgia were in a state of economic depression. I believed that this confluence of historic events created an unprecedented opportunity to build a company organized to take back the river fronts and hill tops from the development industry and conserve them for posterity. And, it just so happened that the Georgia legislator had passed a law in late 2008 giving tax credits for those who purposefully conserved natural resources - especially water shed maintenance oriented projects as a persistent drought and uncontained growth had added a water crisis to the list of problems with which the region grappled. We imagined that such tax incentives would inspire investors, who were not in the finance or home building businesses to beat a path to our door. All we had to do was perfect a mechanism to identify the development land that had legitimate conservation opportunities and which were owned by investors or banks in the most distress and we should be able to have the wind at our backs to be that change agent. We were boldly proposing to use the circumstances we found ourselves in to build a business, out of whole cloth that would change our corner of the world. Bob Kookenbach was mesmerized. What's more, he was capable of helping us. His company had worked to conserve places like Golden Gate Park and the Okefenokee Swamp and while we didn't anticipate conservation opportunities quite as unique, he easily got the vision that we could turn Atlanta into a model of conservation and perhaps even smart growth. He was delighted by the prospects. I also saw something in the gleam in his eye that I hadn't anticipated. I saw an entrepreneurial spirit in this liberal, tree hugging, environmental bureaucrat. We could use this guy and his experience to give legitimate weight to our process and he could use us to promote their environmental agenda. In the following weeks, I met with Bob, often by myself a half dozen times to pick his brain and to build an interpersonal relationship. In no time, we had collaborated on how to reliably save Belmont Downs and the handful of others that we were now beginning to identify. The credibility of the Trust for Urban Land gave me confidence and I sensed that we were now beginning to get some meaningful traction.

To the office here we go

Having rationalized that an office might be the thing to put our efforts over the top, I packed a small box of essential office gear, i.e. a box of pens and 2 legal pads left over from the bank, my I-Pod docking station and the most effective Christmas present that I'd gotten this year, a new Rolodex. I know that sounds silly but over the last couple of years I had collected hundreds of business cards from people with whom I (we) had interfaced. These cards had been kept bound by rubber bands in no particular order and I'd gotten inspiration many times perusing these names/resources when we'd had a problem. Well, Jill recognized how I valued this "network" and sought to enable me to organize it by getting me an old fashioned Rolodex file as a Christmas present. As it turned out I need 2 of them to hold my professional universe of contacts in orbit and armed with both I bravely moved into the office. Two things occurred in the first hour that depressed me even further. Matt has a friend that seems to me to be nice but wholly unsuccessful professionally, personally etc but who "knew" computers, so he got him to come assess our technology needs. Needs that would have been effortlessly resolved in the office complex that I'd researched. Seeing this stumble bum coming in to work with us, if only on this project reminded me just how far we had to go. And, Matt - who had moved into the "nicer" of the two small offices and promptly began to argue with his estranged wife with over the telephone took an afternoon off to tend still more personal affairs. All alone in the dreary space I drifted into the office that he was beginning to assemble and I saw his pitifully small stack of business cards. Where I had the organized contact information of 500 regional professionals that I counted on, he couldn't have had more than 30, and of these he had cards from automobile mechanics, a plastic surgeon and several duplicates of ones that I had of human resources that I counted as friends of mine. In that moment I fully processed that getting this business out into the marketplace, a market run exclusively by human beings, I was going to have to be exclusively responsible for the penultimate aspect of our effort, that of marshaling the specific network necessary to build a business around. I resented that burden and for a pathetic moment, again wished for the institutionalized network that orbited me at the bank. But given the hugely valuable self reliance lessons that had been imposed on me over the previous 6 months, in that moment I accepted that responsibility (still knowing full well that I was going to have to share the credit for success, if there ever was any) and I returned to my desk and forced myself to began making calls.

I absolutely loath to admit this but not more than a day or two later, I began to sense that we were getting traction that we could possibly have gotten living and working in entirely separate spaces. While we had phone now, though no one knew the number we also had work spaces, windows from which to look at the busy street below for inspiration and wall to bounce stress balls off of and brainstorm our next moves. These are silly thing on which to rely but they offered creature comfort and I begin to be able to visualize a fully functional business. Still, Belmont Downs was our only realistic client and though I felt very good about the progress that we'd made strengthening our relationship with them we had no contract. Painfully aware that we were holding ourselves out as experts in a field in which we had only related knowledge I redoubled my efforts to systematically reach out to genuine authorities. An important one was Don Kookenbach from the nationally recognized, Trust for Urban Land. Don had been referred to me by the appraiser of Belmont Downs and he was impressive. he managed a staff of 20 people in a downtown office building and had a remarkable resume of environmental accomplishments. Over the years, the Atlanta office of this 50 year old, national land trust had raised hundreds of millions of dollars to conserve river fronts, historical places and ecologically sensitive tracts. He was going to be an important guy to us.

new office space

The aftershock's of Matt's revelation were felt for a while and manifested themselves in all kinds of unexpected ways. The first, and most important was that now he (we) needed a real office and nothing would do but we get one. Now, it is true that when we worked at the bank together, we used to throw a tennis ball against the wall and trouble shoot problems each other had. We both considered that our most productive time together. We had a partner in an other deal that owned some small office buildings and Matt had, from time to time needled him about making us a deal on some space. 4 or 5 months ago he'd even toured some places but they were either dumps or too nice for us to be able to afford. And since we were living on our savings' accounts, an office seemed like an complete extravagance to me. But Matt had been working from home and as he was moving out he had to have some place to hang his professional hat. When I realized that he was serious this time and that unless I did something in a hurry, we were going to end up in either a dump or someplace too expensive, I got busy. Rather than tend to our business affairs one morning I went on the Internet and found several locations of a service that provides a small office space, a receptionist, a conference room, all Internet accessibility, copier, coffee maker etc. for one very reasonable price. In fact the first place that I looked at was so pretty, cheery and professional that I instantly felt good about it. They required only a very small deposit, offered state of the art facilities and what I liked the best was, we'd be surrounded by professional looking people making a similar economical choice in offices. The hour I was there, someone had ordered a large pizza and was busy offering slices to the others sharing the space. Very friendly.

But I couldn't get Mark to even go look at it. He had made his mind up to move into Buckhead, Atlanta's most fashionable business neighborhood and our "friend" had indeed made us a bargain offer but it was on space they couldn't rent at any price. I felt like we were getting stuck, no - I felt like I was getting stuck. The space came with some used furniture, old carpet but they were willing to repaint in institutional gray. It had no phone system, no pre-wiring for Internet, no technology of any kind and we'd have to answer our own phone and bring our own Mr. Coffee. All I thought the space offered was the chance to get out of Starbucks and begin paying rent. I hated the idea and Jill already nervous about how we were plowing through our savings was flatly opposed to it. But what was I going to do? mark was just as adamant. It's days like these that i want to scream and scream. I was just beginning to feel as though we had a fighting chance to get this business launched and I'd get stressed about money and keeping everybody else from jumping off a bridge that I didn't know where to turn. But, I decided that maybe the professionalizing influence of an office would be what we needed so I went along with it.

Catching a break

With all of these personal issues swirling around I feel myself even more motivated to get a deal on the books so as to sense the relief that my business plan is actually going to result in income. As Belmont Downs is really the only piece of business that is any where close at hand, the next morning I call Bill B, the President of the bank to see where we are. Again, I'm anxious as I can possibly be dialing his number as I just know that he's going to growl that they're not going to proceed but, yet again he takes my call, is polite and agrees to take a meeting in 2 days. Wanting to pull all of the pieces together even closer, I suggest that we meet at the big accounting firms office, fingers crossed that it will work out with Rick B's schedule. In any event, it gets Bill off of his home court and the accountant's offices are big and beautiful with 180 professionals rushing around I thought that it would lend us some badly needed street credibility. Well, to my surprise and delight everybody agreed but the day of the meeting Bill's office called to say that he'd gone home sick and would have to call into the meeting. This was not as good a deal but what choice did I have. But at the appointed time, we all pulled up into a sleek, glass conference room, got Bill on the phone and proceeded to work toward a deal. We rehashed many of the increasingly familiar process details which I can now articulate easily but with the accountants on the phone I am encouraged that we're not missing anything. Then, what seems like a very important point arrives. Toward the end of the 45 minute call, Bill asks to speak directly to Rick (who he actually knows from a transaction years before) and asks him pointedly if hiring us to solve the huge problem that he has with the non-performing loan on Belmont Downs is what he should do. Rick tells him that "its the only thing he can do and that he is squarely behind these two guys." Encouraged, Bill tells me that he will deal with the developer, Tim and his reluctance to provide us with the information we need and we finish the meeting more confident than ever that we're about to close our first deal. But, significantly - its still not completely decided

What they really don't teach at Harvard Business School

There is a great old book called, "What they don't teach you at the Harvard Business School." Its all about negotiating and getting ahead in office politics, etc. Today, I got a huge dose of extracurricular stress that seemed to come out of no where. I share my virtual business world with one of my partners Matt. Since leaving the bank, he and I have met everyday, sometime spending the entire day at Starbucks or similar places thinking about what to do next. We worked closely enough over the years that I've come to know him extremely well, or at least I thought I did. We'd come to rely on each other and while one might expect us to be closer friends after spending such enormous time together we're nearly joined at the hip. Recently, as I've been so stressed I've become more and more critical about his work habits etc. For my own sanity, I need him to work as hard,as well and as effectively as I perceive that I am. In a two man company there simply isn't any place to hide. Recently, his effort has been getting increasingly erratic, he's given to spending hours mindlessly surfing the Internet and insisting that's somehow helping us by copying ads for exotic financing companies or brokerage firms with whom we have no access... and playing with his on-line stock portfolio - anything but effectively working on our business affairs. Now I know that we have complimenting skills and that his computer abilities and intuition about most business things is reliable but I was about to get really frustrated with his contributions. Then, over breakfast, trembling and almost about to cry he tells me an almost unbelievable story about his wife abusing him. Once he got started, he talked for 2 hours about her, who I've known socially for 10 years and have always thought was elegant and sweet - in a country girl, gone city -chic sort of way. Well, she has always been a spendthrift, something my Scotch upbringing considers a genetic character flaw. Apparently, I had no real insight into how terrible its been. While she rails at Matt for not being man enough to be truly successful, she's spending thousands of dollars a month on clothes, accessories etc. I'd heard that she'd gone and bought a Mercedes SUV and taken the money from their savings account - paying cash and putting the car in her name alone and I knew that she'd insisted that their home (second marriage for both of them and they lived in her "old" house, be put in her name when hey refinanced a couple years ago.) But today Matt told me that not only has she verbally abused him since the day they were married 5 years ago, now he is convinced that she's having an affair with the contractor that has completely remodeled her house. He has discovered huge envelopes full of cash hidden in her closet and that he had a GPS monitor put on her car by a private investigator and yesterday the car had gone to a contractors store for 2 minutes then gone to their mountain house for 5 hours, then back to that same store for 2 more minutes and then gone home. A trip that she completely denied. I was floored partly by the allegations but also because I had no idea that the home life of someone that I worked side by side with for almost 10 years was so completely awful. He had been so embarrassed by her incessant accusations of him being a looser that he's hid it all very well.

Clearly, we weren't going to get much done this day so when Matt tells me that he wants to drive up to his mountain house and change the locks on the doors I agree to ride along so we can try to get some work done in the car. However, during the 2 hour trip all he wants to do is purge. He talks nonstop about the most unbelievably flawed relationship I've ever experienced. She has been hateful to him in private while seeming to be a good, even doting wife in public. But the flaunting of the relationship with the contractor, right under Matt's nose was more than he could take. Apparently Matt had come home one afternoon to see the worker leaving the neighborhood and his wife, flustered but sitting in an odd chair, naked except for a robe and wet as if she'd just stepped out of the shower, which apparently they had. And another day where she cooked supper for the contractor and his son, in Matt's own kitchen without inviting Matt to join them... Well, we go by Home Depot, buy 3 new locks and go to the mtn house (in the absolute middle of no where) and proceed to change them. Once that's done, we sit down to rest for a few minutes and I hear someone at the backdoor. The hair on my neck stands straight up as it is dead quiet up there on this freezing cold, clear day - there should be no one trying to get in but through the window I see that its his wife! Matt lets her in and she mumbles something about needing to get a picture upstairs that needs re framing and I see that there is about to be an explosion so I excuse myself and go find a yard chair behind the garage. Its eerily quiet for 15 or 20 minutes, then they start hysterically screaming at each other. I feel like I'm an extra in a horror movie. I have no idea what to do, there's no cell service up there so I can't check my e-mails on my blackberry, I am stuck. The argument eventually spills out into the yard and Matt yells for me to come get in the car, even though when I do, she leans in the window and shrieks some more that she's done nothing wrong, Matt is the sick one etc.. We leave the gravel drive sideways, tires spinning and a ton of dust spun into the air as he aims the car for Atlanta. All the while I'm thinking, oh my God, now what am I (we) going to do?

A quick eloan cannot save everyone

The day after Christmas I experienced something that, again seemed like a providential nudge. I woke up with the feeling that it was time to act, as opposed to study and think about acting - what I'd been doing virtually since leaving the bank. Intuition told me to take Dallas and not Mark but early as I dared, I called Bill B. the President of First Community Bank that held the note on Belmont Downs and asked him for an appointment to discuss what we had been planning. Tim, the developer had told me terrible stories about this man. Tim, in his defense would think of him as terrible in that his professional life was in the balance as he was in default on a huge loan on which this banker could foreclose anytime he wanted, ruining him. But, we suspected that the bank hadn't foreclosed because the size of the note was so large, relative to their capital base that recognizing such a loss would cripple them. This was something of a Mexican standoff. Bill B was polite on the phone but insisted that I tell him what this was about so, I launched into a summary of 4 months of work like a shaky graduate student at an oral exam. I passed and Dallas and I went to his office that afternoon at 1. Bill B struck an imposing figure. He was 6 feet 8 inches tall and must have weighed 325 lbs, built like a pro tackle. This man was huge, with a deep voice and a disarming directness. He was also preppy, mean and clearly very smart. I would learn later that he had developed a reputation around Atlanta as THE man a Bank Board would bring in to straighten out a poorly run bank. He'd started a half dozen banks himself and was running 3 simultaneously now. But he admitted that Belmont Downs was in the ditch and that, for the life of him he couldn't figure out how to fix it. Our conversation was cordial and he seemed unconvinced but remained open to the possibility that our plan could work. He directed us to go talk with Tim, as he was still the land owner not the bank and make a proposal. We left feeling like we'd gotten a fair hearing, like we'd been well prepared and most important like we had the prospects of an engagement. IF this worked out, it would mean that somebody would actually pay us to help solve their problem and what better test case than this one - the banker that everyone feared/respected. When I got back in my car my hands were shaking. I admit to having been afraid of big Bill but I had been even more afraid of not being bold enough to march into that guy's office and declare that I was smart enough, shrewd enough, skilled enough and tough enough to have stet up my own business to do this for a living. But I had been and it seemed to be working. Once I calmed down, I was elated.

The follow up meeting with Tim didn't go particularly well. He believed that he now knew what we were going to try to do and he had digested the information from an earlier meeting and clearly had been in the marketplace trying to figure out our strategy and implement it himself. He'd even approached Cherokee County about the possibility of creating an easement on his property and selling that easement to them - something they were considering according to Tim. He directed any further inquiries to his lawyer and told us that unless we wanted to give him a purchase contract in roughly the amount of $10 million dollars he was through talking with us. I felt sorry for him as I drove away from that meeting. I knew that he was desperate and days away from financial ruin. Foresters call it "dead on the stump," a tree still standing but already dead. But upon reflection it occurred to me that it was now or never to act and that if we dithered any longer trying to perfect our process we might loose the first real opportunity that we had. Then I got mad. This twerp who had ruined everything that he had touched in the last 5 years was standing in the way of me feeding my family. OK, maybe I wasn't that melodramatic but I knew that only one of us was going to survive this and that I finally felt ready to press for the engagement. But I had to be smart and act quickly. Intuitively, I called Rick, the accountant that my lawyer, Tony T. had introduced me to. I told him that we had the opening to grab this "consulting engagement" to couch it in accountant's vernacular and pressed him to join us in making the case to the Bank, its Board and their investors - an opportunity I bet he wouldn't pass up as it meant exposure to so many wealthy and influential people. He agreed and we decided to arrange another meeting with Bill B. and this time we would ask for the business.

And time goes marching on...

There was something that I felt some urgency to get done before year's end that I hadn't gotten to and really had to apply myself if it was going to happen. I remembered that my old client, Rick S. was in the habit of spending the Christmas holidays at his home in California and I didn't want him to be gone for 2 entire weeks without having touched base with him again, so I made a pilgrimage out to see him at his office. This time, I went especially well prepared. I photocopied a dozen different articles, made complete records of the meetings that I had and even put together a notebook of my thoughts concerning conservation easements. I wanted this to be something of a technical conversation, coalescing all that I'd learned. In retrospect, I might have been using the occasion of meeting with someone I respected to demonstrate my consolidation of all that I'd learned in the past 4 months. In my own mind I passed the test because, even in from of this extremely accomplished real estate magnate, professionally trained accountant I had become a self taught authority on the subject of the tax benefits of conservation and this was saying something as we had generally found few articulate spokespersons for the field. Oh there were lots of lawyers, accountants and ecologists that knew about easements and their effectiveness but we hadn't met anyone who had actually built a business around the concept. Rick acquiescence that we were on just such a track and that the admission that he might be willing to invest in it were two goals that I had for the meeting. I thought that we had both by meeting's end as he agreed to change a appointment that he had made for the day before Christmas eve to join us at a meeting with the only investment banking firm that we could find in Atlanta that made a secondary market in conservation easement tax credits. We adjourned for the weekend confident that he was about to make us an offer to set up an office in his complex, be able to use his company's medical benefit program and maybe even collect a salary - evn if that meant giving up a big percentage of the profits from our own efforts. (OK, I'll admit that we hadn't made a dime yet, but by now we all felt sure that we'd get hired as soon as the new year began - by somebody) I can't entirely explain it but I still felt the need to have an institutional presence around me, despite all of the bad experiences that I had had with banks. I wasn't convinced that I could create a business out of whole cloth that would pay all of the bills just like a parent company would. I was about to get a very abrupt wake up call.

Monday morning of Christmas week - a pretty quiet week traditionally Mark and I met at a now very familiar, Einsteins Bagel shop to go over our presentation material for the investment bankers and my e-mail chimed. I looked at my Blackberry to see that Rick S. had sent me a message that fairly succinctly said that he'd thought about it over the weekend and that he was now unconvinced that our business proposition had sufficient promise for him to devote any more time to it. He wasn't coming to the meeting that morning and he thanked me for offering him the insights that I had but, as of now he was utterly, out. We went on to the meeting, which was inconclusive but encouraging and then went home to begin the Christmas holiday. While I was completely stunned by Rick's position, I was even more surprised by my own response. I was actually relieved. I had almost too much energy invested in seeking his approval for what I was doing and somehow it made me mad that he was being so obtuse. In no time I made my mind up that he was the one that was wrong and that we, I could do this without him or his money. I grew up a little bit that day, having weathered an emotional storm that I hadn't seen coming. I am still amazed at how I relaxed and enjoyed the rest of the week off, after such turbulence.

keeping up with my sanity

By mid-December Mark had begun to wonder out loud about the efficacy of the equestrian piece of the puzzle and his logic gave me still more heartburn. I give credit to Dallas for reaching out to me at just the right time and he inspired me with talk of well heeled investors from the Rolodex that he's built from decades of transporting horses for some of that sports most glamorous participants. He also spoke to my heart with his reverence for the land, his perceptive insights about the people around us and his resourcefulness that he attributes to life on a completely self sustaining ranch. Yet, Mark and I had been together a long time and I had come to trust his business acumen. Its true enough that Mark struggled with an apparent addiction to the pain killers he took to help him through the misery of a marginally functional back, despite remarkable success in our early real estate dealings he'd been responsible for little productivity lately and I knew that he was having marital problems, he was seldom wrong about business things. The model that we were now using was Belmont Downs and at the end of the day it was true, that neither the developer nor the bank absolutely needed to have a horse farm on the property in order for our plan to organize a conservation effort to produce tax credits sufficient to reward investors to come into the transaction and pay off the existing loan. It was also true that four and a half months into trying to tease a business out of the souring economy we both saw Dallas as a formidable net worker and one was a consistent source of encouragement but not much in the way of ideas that got us any closer to making money. It was also true that in this era of virtual businesses, Dallas had other sources of income that seemed to sustain him. Mark and I didn't and we were singularly pouring ourselves into this. Yet, I needed both of these good guys in my midst to keep me psychologically composed and that neither of them Fully shared this predisposition about the other, worried me. But in true Scarlet O'Hara fashion I chose to worry about that tomorrow.

I'd read somewhere that during periods of great stress, exercise was unusually important. I suppose that beyond the ordinary good that exercise did, that of increasing heart rates, enabling weight maintenance and assuring that appetites remained normal, exercise helped in some inexplicable way to keep one sane. Since adolescence, I have skied, played tennis, ran 10Ks and 2 marathons but now I ritually walked 3 miles a day, usually at some absurd hour in the morning. Stress effects everyone differently, for me it robs me of the ability to sleep. So, I was often up at 4:30 or 5am, I might as well use that time wisely and get some exercise. What was accompanying me these days on my predawn regimen was one of my most prized possessions, my I-Pod. Like most teenagers, I collected record albums as a kid and kept up the practice until I was well into adulthood. The most cherished of these recordings, the ones not easily found or rarely heard on the nostalgia stations I had put on CDs and later transferred to my I-Pod. I like to think of it as the complete soundtrack of my life. I not only held in my memory the recollections of trying times long past and obviously endured, I had dozens of albums that bolstered me during those same difficult periods which served as an especially effective reminder of historical events and reminded me that, or how I coped with each phase. As I had begun to deconstruct this as yet another phase in my life, having my music with me was especially comforting, though during the mornings of especially difficult days I might ultimately reject even this most familiar distraction and just take my thoughts with me and I bundle up and trudge on, hopefully toward revelation. This particular year it was the expansive collection of Christmas music that kept my spirits buoyed. While I have the standards that everyone would expect, my collection includes contemplative arrangements of hymns and carols, orchestral works, both contemporary and ancient, elegantly simple works of piano, cello and organ and choral masterworks, some secular but mostly sacred. Again with my wife's full compliance we'd worked to shed the materialistic expectations from our Christmas experience this year leaving us with just family, food, OK - a good bit more wine than usual and this very special music. With all of this and good health in hand, Christmas wasn't simply saved this year, it was priceless and thankfully experienced.

Good friends are for keeps

In business as in life, or maybe they're all the same - human resources and relationships spell the difference between success and failure, sometimes both. I have no business relationship that's been more involved than my partnership with Mark. Its a long story but an interesting one. He and I met when we were both assigned to the same Wachovia team. I'd been at the company a long time but had picked up responsibility for a new team. He was an experienced banker brought on to add some age to our staff. I liked him right away. One afternoon we went to get a drink after work and he told me his story. He'd left home at 16, a product of a completely dysfunctional home life and worked successfully at odd jobs, never being actually homeless but coming pretty close. When he was in his 30's he managed an impressively large fur business for a department store chain that came with all kinds of stories about models, trunk shows and legions of women. Only occasionally would he tell me what life on the road with such an entourage involved. Along the line he'd gotten married and had a daughter but one day his wife disappeared and he raised his Marci by himself. Despite the rootlessness of his his past, relative to mine, there were times when his character was very evident and his resiliency and resourcefulness would serve him. Also about this time, two things happened that would affect him , and ultimately me profoundly. He was run over by a fork lift while in a warehouse crushing his back resulting in a lifetime of pain and pain management issues and he met his future second wife, Karen - a fur model. By the time we met, Marci was in high school and this longtime, single dad was about to marry his longtime girlfriend. Karen. against this backdrop our business relationship began.

Mark was a natural entrepreneur, that is to say he looked at risk differently than I ever had. When he came along, I was adjusting psychologically to the devastation of being divorced myself and the complacency of long term employment. This was the "right place right time" scenario to begin a business relationship. Mark had a friend/client that was building small, retail distribution warehouses for a former employer but was struggling to make a complete success of it. Mark bargained an opportunity to arrange to build all of the facilities his friend couldn't manage and invited me into the flow. All I had to my name was $11,000 of Duke Power stock that my successful granddaddy had left me a somewhat larger balance in my bank's retirement plan. But the opportunity to get in on the ground floor (only a neophyte businessman would use that cliche!) all I had to do was sell my stock - which somehow I knew my grandaddy would approve and borrow from my retirement account, then jump in. Well, I did and we pulled off a 3 year run that seems almost romantically successful in retrospect. While keeping up appearances at the bank, Mark and I managed to figure out how to acquire land, retrofit or build a dozen new buildings in towns all over the east coast. Once a building was finished, we'd lease it back to the parent company (on a prearranged basis) then sell the fully lease properties to investors that we'd find. I probably made $4 or 500,000 doing this, paying half of that back to the government in taxes but I learned, mostly from Mark how to think for myself and run a small company. After that played out, we went on to do a half dozen other "deals" and made a little more money and got a tad more experience but nothing with much consistent traction. We also both held on to our day jobs but neither had much enthusiasm after the thrill ride that had become our first real estate success. Eventually, Mark wandered away from the bank to devote himself fully to "Tundra Properties" our operating entity while I kept trying to stick to my now, all too familiar professional script but we stayed partners and met or talked every day. We had gone almost a year without any real estate success when the bank cut back and let me go and Dallas came along with his very thin estimation of what an equestrian oriented, real estate development endeavor could be. Mark was skeptical, mostly about my relationship with Dallas but as I needed to get focused on something positive and potentially productive and as he hadn't had any success on his own, he came along - reluctantly at first, but later fully invested.
Good Friends are for Keeps
Hey now don't let your empty
room ever get you down
You can fill the silence with a smile
And don't let the crowds on the street
Make you feel like you are
just a stranger in town
If you feel happy,
Or if you wanna weep,
Or you wanna warm word before you sleep

Remember,
Good friends are forever
Good friends are forever
Good friends are for keeps
-the Carpenters

Possibilities of the conservation easement

Even as I slogged toward the Christmas holidays the business bug kept buzzing around. By now, Dallas, Mark and I had a clear idea about the possibilities at Belmont Downs. We were going to propose to Tim and the First Commitment Bank - the bank that held the $10 million dollar, non-performing note but on which they could not foreclose due to the bank's own solvency problems, that they reserve 10% of the property for exclusive home site but put everything else, all 400 residual acres in a conservation easement, give the easement to a land trust and harvest the tax credits and deductions for use by bank investors who had a vested interest in seeing that the bank stay in business. The problem now became, what land trust? There were lots of them chartered in Georgia but was there a perfect one? The answer came, as so many of the big ones had so far: from a remarkable source. Mark and I were eating breakfast together one rainy morning and I was looking at the survey and the appraisal that Jim Rice had given me. Having had some prior experience with appraisers, I decided to call the guy who had done the work on Belmont Downs and go pick his brain. His name was Dennis and he turned out to be an odd but remarkably articulate fountain of information on easements. he volunteered almost immediately that the Trust for Public Land and their local Director, Ken was who we needed. I liked Dennis right off as he had a big sign beside the door to his very cluttered office that read, "Nobody gets to see the Wizard, Not Nobody, not No How." he was the wizard alright. And man, was he right about Ken. The Trust for Public Land is a huge, old land trust that has as its mission "Land for People." And Ken was a disciple of the religion of conservation but he had a can-do attitude that seemed to suggest that he could think in technicolor. He listened carefully to our plans, made a few thoughtful suggestions and gave us every indication that we could count on this land trust to help execute Belmont Downs and perhaps many more. In his office in downtown Atlanta, I saw for the first time that our process could work, it could work in lots of different settings and circumstances and we could make money helping people with broken land deals either using the equestrian facilities idea or not. The outline of an evolving business was emerging right in front of us.

It seems the right time to say that i am a firm believer in a variation of the Protestant work ethic. My theory goes: work hard at something constructive and something good comes from the effort. it might not be the good you intended, but it'll be good never the less. My idea of starting a business to save broken real estate projects, and community banks in the process was picking up momentum and I was beginning to believe it, despite the fact that we had no proof that it would even work outside a couple of exotic examples

Runnin' on Empty

The first of December brings a confluence of emotions, feelings and worst of all, apprehensions. We'd had a pleasant Thanksgiving having actually succeeded in not thinking too awfully much about my economic fortunes. But, as December came on, frigid and bleak my mood began to mirror the weather. I had been off the payroll for 4 months now. The Christmas season was in full boil and I was flirting with the blues in ways I hadn't in years. When you spend most of your professional life working, even conscientiously in a bank its easy - no, I'll go so far as to say normal to lose track of what it means to be truly, economically productive. In a big, mature organization transactional business happens largely because customers know to call when they need a financial problem solved. A responsible bank employee simply takes the call and fashions a response from the ample resources that employee has at his or her disposal and that's called "sales". By using just a little initiative that employee might even qualify for sales rewards - a trip or a campaign prize and if you're really well employed, incentive compensation. Well, during my banking career, I had come to fully understand how that process worked and was, not only paid enough to keep my comfortable life style in tact, I'd gotten completely used to making bonuses on top of the ordinary compensation that did everything from enable consistent philanthropy, to treating my family, including young adult children to extraordinary trips and of course living well. (By upper middle class standards, anyway) But there is a dark psychological aspect to becoming accustomed to receiving such compensation without ever truly processing what it means to earn it. Its called entitlement. I had come to believe that I was entitled to be so compensated and that the things I chose to buy, creature comforts, admiration from others for doing so "well," a tangible sense of accomplishment and above all a feeling of security all get rolled together. I had become a person disconnected with self reliance because my well respected employer assumed that position. Now, all of that was gone. Only now was I beginning to understand how a slave could get comfortable with his circumstances and not want to change them, even if he could. The hardest reality though was my professional identity, my professional self concept was dissipating before my very eyes and, on the darkest of days I was terrified that I didn't even begin to know how to get it back. I realized that the irrevocable loss of such self respect meant certain failure. On some days this reality motivated me but by early December I was nearly depressed, longing for the salad days of working at the Bank, planning the office Christmas party, looking forward to shopping for others, the Christmas feeling. The only person who seemed to understand as well or better than me was my wife, Jill. its a long story but her adolescence was rudely interrupted when her Dad, a well respected football coach lost his job and simply couldn't find another one. Her nuclear family nearly disintegrated as a result and each carries the scars from that trauma, even to this day. The prospects of a merry Christmas seemed just as remote to her as it did to me. Oddly though there was real comfort in knowing that my wife understood. And, comprehending that she too was suffering psychologically was completely motivational. I simply could not let the blues over take me as I had too many looking to me to solve this problem. Of all the things that I couldn't afford, feeling sorry for my self, the ages old indulgence of the entitlement generation could not be the option I chose. I had to find some way to force-ably reject that.

Running on empty
Everyone I know, everywhere I go
People need some reason to believe
I dont know about anyone but me
If it takes all night, thatll be all right
If I can get you to smile before I leave

Looking out at the road rushing under my wheels
I dont know how to tell you all just how crazy this life feels
I look around for the friends that I used to turn to to pull me through
Looking into their eyes I see them running too

Running on - running on empty
Running on - running blind
Running on - running into the sun
But Im running behind

Just a ways down the road...

Tim turned out to be a small man, about my age more or less who had been trained as a Bell South sales manager but had stumbled into real estate development later in life. He's put together some small projects and then got a chance to buy these 400 acres from an acquaintance. He told us that a farmer friend of his family had just clear cut his property of the Georgia pine trees that had grown there for a generation and was now ready to sell the land. He bought it for a steal and got the bank to go along with an ambitious development plan to assemble 502 lots. he talked wistfully about the go-go days 2003 - 2005 when developed lots anywhere in greater Atlanta we red hot. Builders from all over the region had crews in town building for the insatiable appetite of the never ending population of people flocking to the prosperity Atlanta offered. Armed with prescient insight, he talk about how easy it was to borrow $10 million dollars from a consortium of community banks, built strictly for the purpose of capitalizing on this boom. And finally, he talked about the unbelievably cheap mortgage money available from the legions of mortgage lenders spread out across the country to feed this monster. He and two partners had thrown themselves into the furiously flowing credit river and now were drowning in debt. Then, in an instant he gathered himself, defended his actions and spoke just as passionately about the promise within those hills. He clearly loved his land and seemed to be the last man standing to believe that it could really become a shining city on the hill. He defiantly argued that they had not borrowed too much money - he in fact tried to retract the exact amount that they owed. He said that it was worth every bit of the $15 million dollar asking price and insisted that we jump into his four wheel drive Toyota truck for an off road tour. the tour itself was interesting as he told us every detail of the development process. he drove us through what seemed like miles of pine trees now just a head taller than the truck. To the previous owners great credit, he'd replanted the pine forest that was, sure as the world re-generating almost perfectly. indeed, one day this tract would be a magnificent example of a managed forest.he lamented all of the evidence of human disregard for the land - the four wheelers neglect of erosion control measures, the hunters disregard of posted "no trespassing" signs and the eyesore of the weekend party-ers littering of the tracts most scenic views.

Have you ever seen the rain?

I never had the clearest of ideas how Rick S. ought to be involved in this initiative but being associated with someone of his reputation and intellectual horsepower seemed like a good idea. For his part, Rick S. seemed happy to meet every 10 days or so and be brought up to speed while he mulled his options. He was, after all a real estate developer and this was a real estate oriented endeavor. My long time partner, Mark - who had by now gotten on board this train was consistently wary of Rick S. as he wasn't sure enough of his motives to suit him. I suppose down deep, I was still resisting the notion of going out on our own without the financial backing of some institution or at least and institutionally sized individual. I had enough cash to keep body and soul together for 6 months, I estimated and I had not, as of yet committed myself financially to this wholeheartedly. The cold hard truth was, it was approaching Thanksgiving, we'd been at it virtually full time for 60 days now and I still couldn't see how I or any of the rest of us was going to get paid.

Dallas , Mark and I were meeting at least once a week at a Starbucks on Lake Lanier, as that was roughly central for each of us. When I met Dallas, he was considering buying a 100 stall barn in Acworth, Georgia due north of Atlanta. Part of my first impressions were formed in the enormity of a barn that size. having little frame of reference in the equestrian world, I'll just say that one could easily park a 747 Jumbo jet in it! Well, as that purchase had fallen through and Chuck's admonishment to look for a failed subdivision instead of a farm, we began to ponder our land options toward the lake and closer to Atlanta's equestrian heart, an area call Birmingham Highway, in Alpharetta. In another of what seemed like Providential intrusions, one day I was wandering back from our Starbucks, looking for a scenic route back to town and I stumbled onto Birmingham Highway. As I had time on my hands, I drove north until I came to The Canton Highway (Ga. 20) and randomly turned toward home. In just a minute or two I came over a hill and there stood "Belmont Downs." Truth is stranger than fiction.

4 years ago, I was with a bank client who was trying to market a development called Belmont Downs. I remember it because my hometown was Belmont, NC. Here it was right in front of me and it was beautiful. There was about 2000 feet of frontage on Canton Highway that was lined with 4 rail, black creosote fencing, just like the modern farms in Kentucky are fenced. behind the fence was 30 acres of bluegrass and then a sweep of pine trees that ran over the hill and out of sight. The gate of the now derelict subdivision was locked but a faded sign had the developers name and phone number. Believing that I might just have found, or been pushed toward the exact site we needed, I called the number and got the developer, Tim Rice on the phone and made an appointment for Dallas, mark and me to see the property.

Someone told me long ago, there's a calm before the storm,
I know, Its been comin' for sometime
When its over, so they say, it'll rain a sunny day
I know, shinin' down like a water

And I wanna know, have you ever seen the rain - John Fogerty of CCR

real estate team ASSEMBLE!

As if I needed any more motivation to succeed the incentive stock options that I had earned during my career that were worth $500,000 at the start of the year had fallen to a value of less than $50,000 during the first month that I was thinking about what to do with the rest of my life. I had earned an old fashioned pension too but had no idea if that had any value any more. Facing the loss of most of my retirement assets I resolved that I had everything to gain from succeeding. So, on I marched...

My next call was to a tax lawyer with whom I had worked often, Tony. Tony and I are contemporaries, both from North Carolina and our business relationship had always been super. We have even had a few personal/social outings that were fun as well so I felt like he'd give me the straight scoop on what it was that I was trying. After exchanging voice mails for a week, we finally connected and he was encouraging but deferred to an accountant with whom he worked often who had directly relevant experience. Rick B. is the managing partner of a 180 person accounting firm in Atlanta and he called me back promptly. As it turned out, he had a client several years ago who was developing a 200 acre tract on lake Oconee, about 90 miles from Atlanta. The subdivision was a complete bust so, at Rick B.'s direction he put a conservation easement on all but a hand full of acres, went from 200 building lots to 20 and went through the elaborate process of having the state certify the conservation effort so that he could get the tax benefits designed to encourage land conservation. Additionally, he master planned an inexpensive equestrian facility for the easement property to attract land buyers who enjoyed such amenities. As luck would have it, he sold all of his lots (at a much greater price than he was asking originally) and when combined with the tax benefits that ultimately did come - the venture was a roaring success. Now, three years later the whole transaction is being audited by the IRS but they all feel as though their defense is air tight and they will not only prevail but they'll pave the way for folks like us to similarly succeed. Realizing that having a super qualified resource like Rick B. in my corner, I made plans to cultivate his friendship and get him squarely on our team.

In my experience, there is no better way to demonstrate our serious capacity than to introduce Rick B. to the richest guy I knew. That guy was Rick S. I met Richard S. several years ago and had been moderately successful in getting him to move his investment management relationship to me. Rick S. was 63, had grown up in California where he was a practicing accountant - a "good fact" in the grand scheme. He had worked for one of the state's largest audit houses then left to start his own firm. he built that into a regional player in California finance in the 1970's. During this time his wife had bought a dress shop that was struggling financially. he assumed control of it and when they sold "it" 6 or 7 years later they had 240 retail stores on the west coast. In the late '70's Rick S. sold all of his interests and started developing real estate. Well capitalized, he survived the recession of the early 80's and had the foresight to buy lots of property in the then depressed part of north Dallas, Texas. In the mid '80's when the oil patch was beginning to boom he sold his properties without developing a single one! He took his second fortune and bought then depressed real estate in north Atlanta where he built over a thousand homes and 10 million square feet of industrial space.When he and I met he was worth $100 million and looking for the next thing. He liked my idea but needed confirmation. I was willing to bet that Rick B. would be a credible source of such confirmation and would be interested in meeting such a successful prospective client. My hunch was right and they hit it off beautifully. I now had a confederacy with Dallas, Chuck, Tony, and two different Rick's. I was a long way from imagining how to make money at this but it certainly felt as though I was on to something.

A Step In A New Direction

In continuing with my new opportunity...

Dallas grew up on an 18,000 acres ranch in West Texas. His family was in the horse transportation business though he seemed to be some kind of self styled entrepreneur. He was well bred and spoke of much business experience but drove an old Ford Explorer, lived up stairs in a barn and had none of the trappings of success. It was really hard to tell if he was real but he was so earnest and nice that I trusted him effortlessly. He wanted to build an Olympic quality barn, stable and breeding facility for $1 million dollar horses but claimed that he needed help pulling it all off. He spoke of legions of possible investors that flocked around the posh equestrian facilities that his family managed in Palm Beach and in Del Mar, California. It all sounded interesting even though he offered no concrete plan to actually get it all done. I supposed that was why he needed me. For my part, I have lots of second hand experience managing relationships involving successful people and their ventures. I could do research as well as anyone and arguably the most important thing; I believed in myself. I was hoping that there might be just enough meat on this bone to build an enterprise around. I was willing to give it a shot, not even fully knowing what I was getting into.

A professional associate suggested to me the I talk with Chuck, a well known land broker to discuss properties that might be for sale, as a first start. With only a little trouble I found the guy and pressed him firmly enough to get an appointment. Providence seemed at work as this turned out to be one of the most important associations of this effort. Chuck and I met at Starbucks in Atlanta early one morning and talked about what it was that we were going to try to do. That being buy an existing horse farm and manage it to a much higher level. My new friend, Chuck was unconvinced that we could make the math of such a venture work but he liked my description of Dallas so he agreed to take a meeting. The 3 of us met a week later and spent several hours talking about horse farms, land availability and other options. Chuck, a disciple of Eastern medicine - so much so that he and some partners of his just leased a farm in China offered us advice that not only sounded plausible, it sounded like the basis of a business. He suggested that we not buy a farm but a "broken subdivision." Find land," he said, "that is zoned and platted for many homes that can't be developed due to the ever worsening economy and crashing home building market. He then said, "put a conservation easement on the property, secure, then sell the tax credits that Georgia allows for such conservation and we might have enough money to capitalize our efforts." I believe, and this seems especially important to note, that I understood immediately the full sweep of the possibilities and went to work enthusiastically exploring the concept with as many of my professional associations (numerous from my banking life) as I could get appointments with.

Banks aren't the only ones in trouble...

It was a hot Thursday afternoon in mid August, 2008 when I was scheduled to meet with the President of our division. I cant remember his name now but he'd come down from New York to personally meet with each of the business development people in the Atlanta office because the market and our sales performance had been bad all year. It seems important to point out that I was in my 18Th year as a business developer for the Wealth Management area of a Bank and I had become a Senior Vice President and a Team leader precisely because I knew what I was doing. But that afternoon, I was to be in the hot seat - like everyone else.

I should have known something was up when I reported to the conference room and the HMFIC wasn't there but in his place was my social climbing, weasel supervisor and the Chief Operating Officer, a thin, insecure woman who had consistently impressed me regarding how little she actually knew about operations. Grim faced, they stopped me from making my well rehearsed sales report and told me right away that they had bad news. Bad new for me, anyway. The sub-prime mortgage crisis had slashed 30% from their stock price and the Chairman, making a statement to Wall Street had decided to let 10% of the company go. I was being laid off, sacrificed to the God of expense ratio management. I had loyally worked every day for 18 years being the best I could be. I had attended every training option, I had cross sold every stupid new product and I had allowed myself to think that I was entitled to the relative prosperity I had come to enjoy. I thought that I had tenure. I was wrong. In the time it took to make coffee, I was escorted back to my desk, given 2 minutes to collect the personal things that I could carry and shown the door. It happened too fast for it to even sink in.

I resolved to take a month off before beginning the job search just to give myself time to grieve and secretly, take all of the time I wanted to feel sorry for myself. The indignity that I felt was crushing. I admit that I had been feeling really unenthusiastic about my job for a while, though I might have rather left on my terms not theirs. But, the fools that were blaming the office's poor performance on me had also given me a month's pay so I was going to take that month at their expense and relax. As it turns out, two huge things happened in the following days to change my plans entirely. One global and one personal.

At roughly the same time, the banking industry in the US was melting down. The sub prime problems caused an avalanche of bank failures as the stock prices of nearly all of the banks in the country collapsed. Clearly, there wasn't going to be a bank job available for me to try for. My professional life line was being severed. Facing the terror of starting over at 50 years old was something I wasn't sure that I even had in me. Second, on day 2 of my forced sabbatical my phone rang and it was a former client that I'd befriended. I'll tell you more about him in a minute but he went to some effort to find my home phone number so as to be able to tell me that he liked and admired me and wondered if I'd be open to helping him launch a business that he was planning. I liked him too and began to wonder if starting a business, even in the worst economy in 50 years was absolutely the best way to keep from becoming completely depressed. I agreed to consider it.