103. Robert Frost, Never Left Home

Show Notes:

Robert Frost married  his high school girlfriend 10 days after graduating. After moving back to New York, Robert worked at a consulting company called A.T. Kearney. He was interested in business and thought consulting would be a good way to go while working towards becoming a CEO. However, three weeks in, he realized consulting wasn't for him.

From Columbia University to Real Estate

Robert worked with Kearney's Global Business Policy Council, which provided political advice to senior leaders in business and advised governments on business practices. He worked on projects advising countries on transitioning to free market economies. He also worked with Kearney on cultivating C suite level clients. After a few years, Robert  went to business school at Columbia University. At Columbia, he was attracted to investment banking and private investing. After pursuing more technical training, he worked at Bear Stearns in the real estate gaming and lodging group from ‘97 to 2000, but while he liked the work and people, he didn’t like the lifestyle.  and later found a partner and started buying real estate. They bought and sold real estate in New York during the up market, but in 2006, they realized there was nothing to buy. They sold most of their property, found another partner, and started building affordable housing units in the Bronx, rezoned industrial real estate and built housing units. 

President of the Lucius N. Littauer Foundation and Buying a Football Team

Robert became the president of the Lucius Littauer foundation in 2011, which he helped streamline. Robert talks about how his business ventures are built on a foundation of unlocking processes. More recently, he has been involved in other projects, such as buying a third-division soccer team in Lisbon, Portugal, which had a beautiful old stadium but needed money to pay bills and become professional. They raised money from investors and bought the team from the club. They professionalized the organization, hiring a head of football, administration, scouting department, and investing in the beautiful stadium. They also invested in a hospitality suite to become a destination for Lisbon visitors. Robert talks about the experience of running a football team and the real estate component of the business play. 

Harvard and the Jewish Community

Robert shares a little about his background, his father, and his experience with the Jewish community. His father attended Harvard, joined the navy,  and later became the founding president of Harvard Hill. He talks about the culture at Harvard at that time, how it influenced his father, and how, both his father’s and Robert’s  role with the Littauer Foundation. Robert talks about the foundation's involvement with the Jewish community and how his father's legacy continues to influence the foundation's future, as it continues to support the Jewish community and provide funding for various programs and projects. The conversation turns to antisemitism, Robert and his father’s experience at Harvard, and how the university's anti-Semitism efforts have evolved over time, with some factors being institutional and others being intentional.

Rezoning in New York City

Robert discusses the process of rezoning in New York City, which involves both formal and informal steps. In the formal process, a draft environmental impact statement is filed, which goes through a series of reviews and approvals by various constituencies, including community boards, borough presidents, city councils, and mayors. The informal process involves scoping of the study on the environmental impact and analyzing the community's needs, and attending numerous community board meetings.  He talks about the  areas they focused on and why, the transactions made, and putting together teams. 

Building Affordable Housing

The conversation turns to the importance of affordable housing, and Robert shares how they developed affordable housing. They have almost no tenants who make more than 60% of the average median income, and their rents are programmatically sized to accommodate 20-30% of people coming out of the homeless system. Robert notes that this industry has existed for a while, but it is now difficult to build true affordable housing due to inflation, land costs, and construction costs. Currently, the Affordable Housing Program is a leveraging of the federal Low Income Housing Tax Credit Program, which grants tax credits to not-for-profit entities to build affordable housing. However, this approach has led to increased costs for developers. New York City has provided supplemental financing through second and third mortgages and low interest rate grants, but these grants have not kept up with inflation in construction and land costs. He also talks about financing and regulatory issues.

The Decision to Leave Consulting

Robert explains why he did not like consulting and how his perspective on sales and selling has changed since his time at Kearney. His early experience with consulting led him to realize that he wanted to be in charge of his own business. He  initially thought he wanted to run a big organization but realized that he didn't like the level of responsibility over people's lives. He prefers running a small organization and having services provided by third parties, as he doesn't enjoy the human responsibility of running a big organization. 

Influential Harvard Professors and Courses

Robert recounts his experience at Harvard Student Agencies (HSA) before becoming president. He explains how his role involved budgeting and rolling up a corporate overhead budget for 10 different businesses. The board was not supportive, but from this experience,  Robert learned about dysfunctional dynamics. He emphasizes the importance of learning from mistakes and not allowing one person to dictate the dynamics. Despite the challenges, HSA had a successful financial year and renegotiated contracts with real-world implications. Robert's time at Harvard Student Agencies was central to his education and he uses lessons learned from his experiences to improve his career.

Timestamps:

02:27 Career progression from consulting to investment banking to real estate development

07:52: Buying a soccer team in Portugal and its business implications

12:51: Running a small sports team with limited resources

16:19: Jewish immigration and Harvard involvement

21:56: Harvard experiences, anti-Semitism, and cultural acceptance

28:34: Rezoning in New York City and its impact on the community

34:49: Land assembly and rezoning in New York City

36:51: Affordable housing challenges in New York City, including funding and regulation issues

43:29: Sales and consulting experiences, personal growth, and academic experiences at Harvard

48:48: Leadership lessons learned from managing a struggling business

Links:

The Lucius N. Littauer Foundation: http://littauerfoundation.org/

Company website: https://signatureurban.com/

Featured Non-profit:

The featured non-profit of this episode is The Nature Conservancy, recommended by  Tom Hughes who reports: 

“Hi, I'm Tom Hughes, class of 1992 the featured nonprofit of this episode of The 92 report is the Nature Conservancy. The Conservancy is tackling accelerated climate change and biodiversity loss by preserving ecosystems, driving policy and bringing together communities to reach pragmatic solutions. I love the work of this organization. I've been a regular donor for almost 20 years, and I've personally trained and coached many of their senior leaders, and have the utmost confidence in their integrity, their sincerity and their ability to achieve these goals of matter to all of us, you can learn more about their work at nature.org and now here's will Bachman with this week's episode.”

To learn more about their work visit: https://www.nature.org/en-us/