World-Class Real Estate Development with Dan Kodsi, CEO of Royal Palm Companies

Dan Kodsi is the CEO of Royal Palm Companies (RPC), a role he’s held since 1991. RPC is a leading Florida-based real estate and development firm that, under Dan’s leadership, has delivered over 6,000 units across mixed-use developments, multi-family, residences, and hospitality assets totaling over $3.5 billion in managed and completed projects to date. In 2011, Dan founded Participant Capital as the capital arm of RPC and a vehicle to empower individual investors to participate in ground-up construction projects.

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Transcript

A.Y. Strauss: Hello everyone, and welcome to The Dealmakers’ Edge. Today, I am super excited to welcome Dan Kodsi to the podcast. Dan has been the CEO of Royal Palm Companies, or “RPC”. Under Dan's leadership, RPC has developed over $3.5 billion in completed projects to date with over $2 billion in the pipeline of development. During the last three decades, Dan has delivered over 6,000 units consisting of over 14 million square feet of mixed-use and master plan communities, hotels, multi-family, and high-rise developments. Dan's known for identifying underserved markets alongside of his ability to execute large-scale, mixed-use developments and master plan communities. In 2011, Dan founded Participant Capital as the capital arm of RPC as a vehicle to empower individual investors to participate in ground-up construction projects. Throughout his career, Dan has been credited for changing skylines with his award-winning projects and has created several branded residences including: the Paramount brand that includes three distinct properties, including the recently completed and internationally-renowned Paramount Miami World Center which is the second largest master plan urban project in the U.S.; and RPC and its latest branded residence, Legacy Hotel and Residences, which is Miami World Center's newest mixed-use tower that will overlook the heart of downtown and offers both buyers and investors a unique blend of business models across hospitality, real estate, preventative healthcare, and wellness that work financially independently but also creates a special asset ecosystem that appeals to the new disease-conscious traveler. Dan, I know that was a long bio, but honestly with your background, it could go on for a long period of time. We had to end it eventually, but all kidding aside, it's terrific. You're here and I know our listeners are going to be pumped to hear your story and these exciting projects. So now you're going to do most of the talking.

Dan Kodsi: All right. Well, thanks for having me and I look forward to having this conversation, so let's do it. I'm assuming you have some questions.

A.Y. Strauss: I do. I do have a few. And, again, there's so many big projects you've done, and we can focus on so many. But I think to start off, this [podcast] is geared towards up-and-coming investors, developers, [and] people getting started in real estate [who are] may be in the early stages. Maybe you could talk about how you got started. I read about it, and we talked about it, and you got started from a very young age in commercial real estate and development specifically. But maybe you could share some of that background with people.

Dan Kodsi: So, I did. I actually—even as a kid—I worked construction when I was a young kid. I had my uncles and my father and everyone was doing small construction jobs. And I was an ambitious, young kid. For two or three bucks an hour, I did some labor in the the hot Florida sun. It wasn't a lot of fun, but I did it for a few years. When I was younger, I was supervising a job when I was 16. But of course, that incentivized me to go to college. And I got my degree at the University of Miami. I had a real estate finance degree, and also urban planning and architecture. My passion was really… I like to design and urban planning, but I always felt that [there was] no romance without finance. And, you know, I needed to understand the financial aspects and the capital side of real estate because, as you know, real estate's really capital intensive. So, after college, I started building projects with friends and family [and] building a track record. My goal was to always build a large entity corporation where we can build multiple projects. And as you can see in my career, I've developed quite a few very large-scale projects which was my ultimate goal as I started. But of course, at the beginning, you have to start with smaller projects and work your way [up]. You're not building the Paramount Miami World Center—a half a billion plus dollar project—on your first try. That's after a lot of years of grinding through a lot of smaller projects and then building your way up to it. That's a lot of how I got started.

A.Y. Strauss: Perfect. And it tends to be a trend I’ve noticed that oftentimes the more successful people are, the more modest they are. So, not to belabor your early beginnings, but I understand at 16 you were supervising construction of a beachfront hotel. By 22 you had a successful property management company. By 23, [you were] managing over 500 rental apartments with a staff of 22 people. I mean, you were enterprising really early, very young, and you were running real projects and with your hands and brains. It wasn't just theoretical spreadsheets. You were literally working on these projects, and [] literally [from] the ground up. So yes, it's really cool to say. 

Dan Kodsi: I was. And to your point on being humble, when you're young and inexperienced, and you screw up a lot, you get a lot of humbling experiences. And I think that's probably why people that are successful have had a lot of trials and tribulations and they realize that it's not easy. And when you take risks, you fail. Failing is part of growing and being part of a business, but it is what humbles you. And that's why, a lot of times I have people that work for me and, they've got all the confidence in the world, and they just probably failed as many times. And so it is interesting when you say that, but yes, I did from a very young age. I was very ambitious. I always liked to build companies. That's why I got into property management at first where I wanted to build a property management [company]. We were doing apartments at the time, and I wanted to manage them myself. And so having the ability to build an organization where we could do property management—and by the way, that management company is still in existence today. Even though we don't manage as many units as we did in the past, just because being busy with development [and] large scale projects, the property management side of the business is not something that I was really focusing on. Obviously, [it’s] in the past for a long while now.

A.Y. Strauss: And after you started that at 23, I know your background; at 24, you're running seven projects, single-family housing developments, competing with the major national home builders and really doing everything, soup to nuts. And then it seems like in your mid-twenties is when you really started to navigate towards going that institutional fund route, which is really precocious. You really don't see that institutions like to back people in their twenties. But it seems like in the late nineties you saw this new urbanism concept, and maybe you could talk about what excited you about that and some of the early developments. 

Dan Kodsi: Yeah, so it was interesting. In the State of Florida in the nineties, there was no demand for it. My passion was [for] urban [development], getting an urban planning degree and studying urban planning/urban development. It was my passion. I was looking at cities. I went to [the] University of Miami. There are pretty decent cities here in South Florida, [and] even through the State of Florida. And that was my passion. But in the nineties, there was no demand. We were still building our suburbs in Florida, so there was no demand. In other words, today, if you just look at the landscape today, why is urban development so successful in places like South Florida? And that's really because we ran out of land. You can't build Broward County, [or] Dade County. You can't build single-family homes. You can't build garden apartments unless you're going vertical. There's really no room for development, and so vertical development's really, really where it is. But I was one of the first. I was a pioneer in developing urban development as soon as I saw that trend happening. It was right around the late nineties where you saw [] “new urbanism” was kind of the talk of the development industry, and I wanted to get ahead of it. And even [though] I was young [in] the late nineties, I was just, you know, in my late twenties, just about to turn 30. There was a project in downtown West Palm Beach that was still manageable. It was probably only about a $60-70 million project. And I was able to put that together and it was in an area where they were redeveloping downtown West Palm Beach, and [there] was demand for mixed-use residential. And I built a 66-unit condo project with ground floor retail right next to a street called Clematis Street in West Palm Beach, which was being redeveloped with new restaurants and nightlife and so forth. That was really my first … getting into urban development. I saw the opportunity [as the] first one to build an urban development like that in West Palm Beach at the time. And yeah, I was young, but at that point I already had built hundreds—probably more than hundreds—but hundreds of single-family homes. But if you combine single-family homes [and] the apartments of over a thousand units I already had under my belt. So, I was able to … I had enough of a track record to raise the capital and get the project funded. 

A.Y. Strauss: Yeah, for sure. And then you spread [to] other cities. And what a great beginning. And I know one of the concepts you've mentioned for that up-and-coming developer is [] “don't drink your own Kool-Aid” a little bit because people fall in love with the design and the architecture and it's so exotic, it's so interesting. But the practicality of the proforma and driving the deal and making sure that you're going to make money and this is going to be successful; balancing that against the excitement. Maybe you can talk about how you sort of battled that or managed to push back some of that?

Dan Kodsi: I still battle that. (laughs) It's something that's innate. I do still battle that where you have these incredible designs when you're sitting and designing, especially if you're doing a high-rise. It's going to stand in a skyline like Miami, for instance. There [are] times where you're sitting and your value-engineering a building, and your sensible side says, “All right, do we really need this? Can we lose it?” And then there’s the other side [saying], “well, this will stand on the Miami skyline past my time, for the next, I don't know, 100 years, 200 years.” I don't know. I don't know what's going to be in a hundred years. So, it is challenging to—even at this age—you still sometimes fall in love with a design or a look. But I've learned over the years to manage that where you could get a little of it. You know, I had a theory where—I learned this when I was building single-family home communities—is you create this really kickass, great entrance feature and you put a little extra money and it just makes the entire community look luxurious, but you're really only spending money in one remote area. And so [], there's tricks where you can make something look a lot more high-end and look like you spent a lot more by looking at certain components of a project and upgrading those components. And so, you get kind of that benefit without spending it all the way through the building. And you see a lot of developers make that mistake where they want everything to look great and what happens is they run over budget, and they can't make the numbers work. And I know there was a Forbes article that I wrote and that's, “Fall in love with the numbers, not with your project.” And so you do have to put the proforma first and then find ways to create designs that are favorable but fit within those budgets.

A.Y. Strauss: And I've heard development is just one series of failures after the next, and how much stomach you have for it. And things are always more expensive, and it takes more time than you think there’s going to be. But you’ve certainly completed a ton of projects. Has anything ever gone according to the timeline you set out from the beginning? 

Dan Kodsi: (Sighs) If any of my capital groups are listening to this, I'd say they all were perfectly on time and perfectly on budget. So, it all depends on who your audience is. (laughs)

A.Y. Strauss: Exactly right.

Dan Kodsi: I don't know if I represent that exactly. No, I'm kidding. Look, you know, the development business is tough because you're constantly … what happens is because of the time, from the time you're looking at a parcel of land … let's say you have to rezone it. You're going through that process, you're going through a design process, then you're going through either a pre-sales or permitting [process] and it just takes so long that you start bridging 2, 3, 4 different cycles. And so you're always in different markets. One single project could literally be in three or four different markets. So, you do have to shift sometimes. You’ve got to remain fluid, and you do have to sometimes shift your gameplan based on where that market is at that time. Or sometimes you have to hold back. Real estate is … people say location. I mean, you can go through all the different aspects of real estate, but timing is really, I mean, when you're looking at development of real estate, timing. That's really where you [want to be]. Anyone listening to this, you can have the best deal in the worst market or the worst deal in the best market. And I'd rather have the bad deal in a great market because you're just going to, financially, you’re going to do better because of the timing not because of what you built or what you did. And again, that is important. I'm not discounting building good projects and quality projects, but at the end of the day from a financial standpoint, timing the market is the most crucial part of the business.

A.Y. Strauss: Absolutely. The other thing is that even if it's a down market, if you're communicating with your investors and everyone's aware of the macroeconomics at play, you'd rather have a great partner probably in a down market perhaps, than a bad, horrible partner in a good market. Who knows? I guess that's philosophical. But having the integrity to communicate and do what's right vis-à-vis investors. That's really huge. 

Speaking of really huge, the developments you have going on now are epic. They're world record-setting—literally changing the skyline in Miami. I know because I was physically in one of your buildings. And we could jump to talking about the Legacy Hotel & Residences, which is really, really cutting edge; the largest lease in downtown Miami, I think, in history vis-à-vis the healthcare side of it and the joint venture you've done and…

Dan Kodsi: …Right.

A.Y. Strauss: …taking wellness and everything else to an entirely different concept. They wouldn't even define it as “wellness”. You almost, I think you created a new category entirely. And maybe you could talk about … well maybe it makes sense to start with Paramount first and then we can segue into Legacy Hotel. [That’s] probably the natural order of things. Would you agree? 

Dan Kodsi: So, yeah. So Paramount was something I came up with pre-2008 recession. That's how long I've been working on it. And what I did is, at the time I had some really great sites; one was on the beach, one was crossing the American Airlines Arena in downtown Miami, one was [what] is today Paramount Bay in Edgewater, right on the bay. That was something that I started back then. I had three great sites. I was looking at a few other sites, and we felt that there should be some type of synergy between these buildings. And that's really how the Paramount brand started. And I built Paramount Bay at the time, which is an Edgewater—which, again, if people don’t know where Edgewater is, it’s a neighborhood just north of downtown Miami, right on the Bay. And at the time, this was a luxury building with private elevators [and] flow-through units. And at the time people were just building apartments in those locations because that was a transitional area. People wouldn't believe it if they saw today. In the early 2000s, that Biscayne Corridor in that area was really run down. It was a lot of drugs, prostitution. I mean, it was a bad area. It was a bad neighborhood, and it was in transition. And today, it's all upscale condos and apartment projects and so forth. It became actually a very upscale neighborhood now because it all got redeveloped. But at the time, that was pioneering, [to build] luxury. And then I built Paramount Fort Lauderdale and then of course rolled it into Paramount Miami World Center. And that was—Paramount Miami World Center—that was the big one. It's right in the center of downtown Miami. It's got a big lighting feature that lights up at night. We light it for holidays and New Year's Eve. We have fireworks shows and so forth. And Paramount Villas is a 1.8 million square foot project, [a] big mixed-use development right in the center of downtown Miami. And after that, everyone looked at me and says, “Okay, well, you built this building, [with the] most amenities in the world, 46 different amenities. Where do you go from here? What are you going to do next? How do you top this?" And that's when Legacy [Hotel] was born. And, Legacy was really looking at where the trends are. And when you look at the future of real estate in general—and it's all the trends. It's hospitality trends, luxury trends, ownership trends. How do people want to own real estate in the future? When you started seeing the Airbnbs and then VRBOs and so forth, people want to own real estate as an investment, and they want flexibility in being able to lease their investment and be able to gain revenue and capitalize on their investments. When you looked at the hospitality industry, lifestyle hospitality was growing four times more than any other type of hospitality. So, we said, "All right, well, it should have a lifestyle component to it." And that's why we brought in at the time, SBE, who had the SLS hotel and all the lifestyle brands. SLS, they were running The Delano, the Shore Club in Miami, The Mondrian in LA, and so forth. So, they're a great lifestyle brand and they had a soft brand, and so we brought them in to do the entire lifestyle component. Recently, in the past couple years they were actually bought out by Accor. However, they still have a great lifestyle team. So lifestyle and then of course luxury [hospitality]. Luxury hospitality was on the rise as well. And for many reasons, one of them just … there’s a big transition of wealth happening in the world right now. There's never been this much wealth being transferred ever in the history of the world. And so there's just demand for luxury product. And then the last part was [that] you couldn't avoid the trends in wellness. You see these … Canyon Ranch was the first one that started it, and then you see Sixth Senses and a lot of wellness resorts where people go to the resorts, but I've been to a couple of these and you go there, [and] you’re kind of forced to eat healthy the entire time. And so it's a different kind of vacation. I didn't believe people coming to Miami want to eat healthy all the time; however, they want to have the access to it. And so, we said, “look, let's bring wellness and so forth as part of the ecosystem of Legacy.” But it's not all of it. It's … you want to party all night and drink and wake up the next day and eat a burger and fries to absorb all that alcohol in your stomach. You can still order a burger and fries at the Legacy. However, this wellness concept, we joined forces with Blue Zone. And Blue Zones—just to give you the background on them—in National Geographic in the early 2000’s, they went around the world, and they studied populations that lived, longer, healthier, happier lives. And you think, “okay, well they live longer because they had the same diet.” As a matter of fact, every location had a completely different diet. So, it wasn't just diet, it was everything from how these people moved around, their motion. It was the relationships they had with family. It was the relationship with the community, their community involvement. So there was a lot of components of why these people were living longer. And then they created the “Blue Zone Lifestyle,” and we're building the first “Blue Zone Center”. This is going to be a place where you can actually interact with the Blue Zone Lifestyle [and] talk about preventative healthcare. And because they're owned by a major hospital group out of California called Adventist, we also figured we could add some medical components because medical tourism is significantly on the rise. And again, all this tourism, whether it's medical or wellness, also creates premiums in your ADRs, your average daily rates for hotels. So we felt putting all this under one building—lifestyle, luxury, flexible ownership, wellness and medical under one building—kind of gives you the best of all worlds. And that's really what … how Legacy was born. 

A.Y. Strauss: It really does, and that's so thoughtful. I don't know. I've been to hotels like One South Beach. You're just looking for a chocolate bar [and] they just don't have it. It's very restrictive. The wellness concept can be taken too far. So, to have that flexible mindset where one person's going to have the juicer [or] the smoothie, and one person wants to have a slice of pizza, and to be thoughtful. And I think it sounds to me like a brand-new asset class in many ways. It's sort of like it has to happen, but that's just the way people are coming together, and you're taking it one step further really.

Dan Kodsi: Right. And it's true. You've made a good point. How many times are you sitting—let’s say four people are sitting at lunch or dinner—and one person's ordering a juice and a healthy salad and the other person's ordering a steak. And that's how we live today. And you know what? The person ordering the steak, the next day they may order the juice or the salad because they want a cleaner meal the following day. And so that's really how we live today. And for someone [who’s] on a keto diet, and they're eating the steak because that is their diet. You don't want to exclude anyone. You don't want to make it where it's just this restrictive diet. You want people to be able to choose. And I think in today's society, people just … the way we live today, people want the ability to choose the way they want to do it. They don't want to be forced into eating a certain food. They'll do it one time, but then they won't come back. 

A.Y. Strauss: Yeah. Or even medical office to combine with hotel. I'm not sure I've heard of that to be honest. I don't know if that exists elsewhere, but it just seems so natural that you just combine everything somebody might need whether they're traveling or living there, so it's just such a vital component and I think people are looking for what's next. So, it's very, very interesting. 

Dan Kodsi: And the idea was reinforced when you see people travel. They want to get minor surgery. They don't want to be home. And if you're getting back surgery or knee surgery, you don't want to be home because when you're home—say you have kids, your kids ask you, you feel like you have to get up or you feel like you have to do things at home. And so it'd be great if you—once you have surgery—you could just be away from home and you're not stuck in your home routine. You feel like you could really rest, recover, and not be part of that. And I think that's a big deal. Also, there's people, like, it's funny, another thing: I had a friend that came down and, and his wife wanted to do some cosmetic surgery and she didn't want anyone to know, so they came to Florida for ten days. So then when they got back, she [would] be healed and nobody would know. [They’d say,] "Oh, you look so great", but no one would really know what you did. And so, Miami's definitely a good place for that. 

A.Y. Strauss: Yeah, no one wants to walk around with bandages and if they could be anonymous. It's more than just the wellness and surgical center. I mean, it's absolutely massive. All the other components to it. I mean, anything you can think wellness-related does seem to be part of the amenity package. So, congrats. And you mentioned on the Paramount early on the signage. Jumping back a step, one of the cool things you did was [support] Ukraine and their defense and you put a 700-foot-tall display with Ukrainian flags and colors, and I think that was the largest sign at the time [] supporting that. 

Dan Kodsi: It was a great display. And you know what? It put Miami on the world map. Miami is on the world map. Some of us have been here a long time. We remember Miami when it was still just a little town, and that wasn't that long ago. Thirty years ago, Miami didn't have any of this. And so it's come a long way in 30 years. When we saw the video and they have pictures of New York or the Empire State Building and they have Paris with the Eiffel Tower. And then you have Miami with the Paramount all sitting side-by-side. It's a great thing for the City of Miami to have that world recognition when CNN is playing [the] Ukraine colors all around the world. So it was pretty cool. 

A.Y. Strauss: Very cool. And one of the things you touched on before was sort of the way technology is changing and you mentioned things like virtual reality or just the way the world is going, you seem to have a great sense of what's next, which is what all great developers need to have. So I know you've put some thought into that and you've been proactive in a variety of ways, but maybe you could talk about how you're thinking about technology today and how it's going to change and what you're excited about or maybe less excited about.

Dan Kodsi: On the technology side, I mean, we're implementing a lot of … and again, my wellness guy can probably talk more about this. I don't know all the lingo when it comes to the wellness … but we're doing a lot of technology within the rooms. Anywhere from when you have jet lag, there's certain buttons that you push and the I forgot it's “arcadian” lighting. I'm probably not pronouncing it right, but there's certain lighting that goes within the room and helps you adjust to the time zones and we're looking at also AI and I think everybody's looking at AI today and how they can implement that. So we are definitely looking at a lot of technologies. During COVID we were looking at a lot of touchless technologies, air purifiers and so forth. And we are doing a lot of that within the Legacy where we're going to have wellness rooms with air purifying water, your water's purified. Everything from lighting to the bedding; the bedding pretty much tells you what kind of night's sleep you got. The mat—just by laying on the mattress—you wake up the next morning and it gives you all types of stats on how you slept [such as] did you snore? Everything. It kind of records your night's sleep and there's really nothing you have to do. You literally just lay on this mattress and you wake up the next morning and it gives you that data. A lot of cool technologies are out there that we're going to be incorporating into our projects.

A.Y. Strauss: Very, very cool. Maybe you could talk a little bit about, I mean, this podcast's called  “The Dealmaker's Edge”. And people just say, "Oh, that's great. You built some massive project; bought the property, the financing." But as we talked about earlier, there's an enormous amount of challenges in major development. You've seen tons. I'm sure you'll continue to see many [things] but, what are you telling yourself or what would you talk to somebody…what would you tell somebody rather who's growing in their development chops, they're becoming more and more entrenched, and they've got a far road ahead, but, you've seen a lot and you're doing stuff on a really major scale. How about the mental health aspect? I mean, how do you talk to yourself on very challenging days when there's some massive delay that no one could prevent? There's the knee jerk reactions, which we all do, bang the desk and such. But obviously you're a long-term thinker and you're thinking through cycles in the future, so, how do you keep your head on straight when you do these major scale projects? And I'm sure it's not easy. 

Dan Kodsi: Well, you asked two questions. The first question was, “how do you stay in this business?” I always like to use an old story that we all learned when we were kids, right? The three little pigs. We all remember the three little pigs. The pig that build the straw house, and the wood house, and then the brick house. And you know what I learned? I learned it the hard way is if you're not living in a brick house, you're not going to make it in this business. Because the big bag wolf is going to come and it's going to blow your house down, and it's going to happen. And so, be able to ride these cycles. You've got to be well capitalized. You got to not be over leveraged. You have to be in a position where, if things go wrong, you're able to survive through some of these issues. And that's why, I use the analogy of being in the brick house is really the only way you can survive long-term in this business. And so my advice is don't over-leverage yourself. Don't put yourself in that position. And I'm not going to tell you that I didn't do it. There were a couple times I got my house blown down. (laughs) Hence, why I started working on my brick house a while ago as I got older. I started putting certain, let's just say, backstops and so forth in place in case things did go wrong. The second part is the stress aspect of it, I’m not going to lie to you and tell you I don’t get stressed out. After all these years, I still do get stressed out. It’s a very stressful business, it's one of ’he most imperfect businesses. Imagine you're taking material from all around the world and you're assembling it into this 50-story high-rise in the middle of the city. How could it not go wrong? Right? When you're doing that, and then you're also trying at the same time, market and capitalize it and deal with rules and regulations and permits and everything. There [are] so many things that can go wrong along the way. And so, it's all about expectations. I think people going into this business, a lot of people think, "Oh yeah, I'll just do it. I'll hire a contractor and put it together and get a great project.” Drinking their own Kool-Aid [thinking] everything’s going to be great. Everything’s going to work out. And what you have to do is you have to expect that really nothing’s going to work out. Everything’s not going to go right. And, you hope for the best, right? And plan for the worst. And so every time you move forward, you have to look at every component. What could go wrong? Due diligence in a project is crucial. You see a lot of people just make mistakes right off the bat. I mean, you make your money on the buy. It's that first buy is where you make your money. Sometimes you see people just jump too quickly into a project. They get excited about it. They think it's going to work. They don't do enough due diligence to determine “is there a market for the product? Is this going to work? Am I going to be able to get the zoning or the permitting or whatever else I'm going to need to build this project?” It's a lot of planning. It's a lot of due diligence. It's digging into those details [which] is crucial and that saves a lot. But then there [are] a lot of things that just will go wrong and you just have to expect them to go wrong and you can't overreact. Take a deep breath and there's the old saying where, “if you can't find a door, look for a window. And if you can't find a window, look for a crawlspace out of there.” But you have to persevere and perseverance is big. And you have to find ways to get around these problems.

A.Y. Strauss: Well said. Well-articulated. I'm sure people really appreciate hearing that. Anything additionally you wish I would've asked you, but I didn't? Obviously we can go down so many tangents and I want to respect your time, but anything else you think we should talk about?

Dan Kodsi: I don't know. There's a lot to talk about. In this business, if your listeners are people that want to get into the business, my advice is—and I've been on panels where people ask me, “what do I do? How do I get in?” And I always tell people, I say, “Look, best thing to do is, is find a deal.” And now that we're … I can't say we're in a recessionary period. We're kind of in this limbo period between having a great market and a market that there [is] a lot of uncertainty, but let's assume that things in real estate are not going to go as well, let's say over the next 12 months or so. It's a good time for people that have not been in the business. I always tell people [to] look for a good project. Look for a  good deal, a good site. Something you can get terms on. Right now, let's say a landowner might be sitting on a site and they don't have a buyer for it, because developers are saying, "Look, we're not taking on any new projects". That's a good chance for you to come in, lock up a piece of land. It might be a great parcel when the market rebounds and now you're sitting on something. And then what you could do is you could take that site and you can find a developer. It happened to me where a person didn't have the experience, but they locked up a good project. They presented it to me and they said, “Look, you know, I'd like to stay in the deal. I'd like to work, build my track record, build my career. But I need someone to back me, someone with a track record. Obviously, I'm not going to be able to capitalize this project because I don't have the track record”. And so that's a way where you do it. And then after you do a couple of projects like that, suddenly you do have a track record. And now suddenly you have worked and delivered a couple of projects. Of course you have to execute. And at that point you can start raising capital. Lenders will start paying attention to you because they see that you have a track record at that point. Maybe you've built yourself somewhat of a balance sheet. You're bankable. So, those are probably the best [pieces of] advice I have. It all comes down to a project. Find a really, really good project. Find a way to tie it up and find a way to bring that project to reality. Be part of that project, and build yourself a track record and get the experience. 

A.Y. Strauss: Amazing, Dan. This conversation has been fantastic, and I can't wait to have people listen to it and give us critical feedback and say how much they've learned from listening. So I guess from here we'll wrap it up. And again, Dan, I just want to thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to be on the podcast. 

Dan Kodsi: Great. Well, thank you. And I enjoyed the conversation.