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.

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

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