January 9, 2025 • 19 mins
Discover how John Wijtenburg transformed his career from navigating the tumultuous waters at Fannie Mae during the financial crisis to thriving in the world of hotel acquisitions and investment management. With a unique approach as a fractional chief investment officer, John shares his insights on the importance of flexibility and choosing the best partners for each project. Inspired by Dan Martell's philosophy from "Buy Back Your Time," he discusses how focusing on what you love and delegating the rest can lead to greater satisfaction and success in the ever-evolving landscape of entrepreneurship.
Join us as we explore the power of consistency in daily actions over chasing numerical goals, particularly in capital raising and pipeline building. Learn about the transformative role of AI in real estate, enhancing tenant experiences and streamlining operations. We also delve into the art of being fully present in both your professional and personal life, with valuable insights from John Wijtenburg on maintaining meaningful connections. Whether you're striving for balance or seeking to optimize your performance, this episode offers a roadmap to achieving both personal growth and business excellence.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Heather Ewing, the CRE Rundown.
I am your host, Heather Ewing,and today I have an exquisite
guest for you.
He is none other than JohnWittenberg of LXK Group, John
welcome.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Thank you for having me, Heather, Definitely.
So we've connected morerecently through LinkedIn, so
it's really nice for one for meto get to know you more fully,
but also my audience, so tellthem a little bit more about you
(00:39):
.
Economist at Fannie Mae.
Back in the great financialcrisis, we were building the
models that determined whoqualified for a mortgage
modification and what thatmodification looked like.
And eventually, in 2011, I movedback to Florida.
I contacted every single brokeror every single developer in
the area you know what do wehave?
(01:01):
How can I work for you?
All these things?
And they said, well, you knownothing's doing it bottom of the
market and you know nothing'shappening, and so maybe you
should try a brokerage.
And so from there, I jumpedinto brokerage eventually, which
recruited into hotelacquisitions for large hotels
across the country, eventuallydid acquisitions, asset
(01:25):
management, capital markets,business strategy and then the
whole world collapsed again in2020 and moved on from that and
eventually went into building aportfolio of eight extended stay
economy scale hotels over thepast four years.
And then you know that kind ofsoftened a bit, exited that
(01:49):
portfolio in May of this yearand started doing fractional
chief investment officer work,and so I help real estate
entrepreneurs that are not quitebig enough to have a full-time
chief investment officer, and Icome in part-time and help them
with financial modeling,underwriting, due diligence,
(02:10):
coordination, raising capital,capital strategies all those
different things.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Which is terrific, because I think, more now than
ever and I expect this trend tocontinue people are really
beginning to understand thevalue of coaches, mentors,
consultants, and so what you'reoffering is unique and I see
that, like I said, gainingmomentum.
Is there a particular aspect ofit that you enjoy most?
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Yeah, you know I had a lot of challenges through my
career and just building theseportfolios and marrying the
difference between running aninvestment management business
and an operations business.
One of the things that I sayabout myself and the way that I
invest is that I'm proudlydisintegrated, because I think
(02:59):
that there's great value inbeing able to select the right
partners for the job for eachinvestment.
And when you have a verticallyintegrated platform that has
operations, construction andinvestment management all in one
platform, sometimes it limitsyour ability to choose the best
(03:22):
partner for the deal.
And so one of the areas that Ireally love is is that business
formation, that thatinstitutional design and
building your strategy aroundwhere you're where you get the
most joy and then also whereyou're most effective, and so if
you're really great atinvestment management, let's
double down there and go findpartners to do the other things,
(03:44):
similarly with construction orproperty operations.
So that's where I find the mostjoy in helping people.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Right, and I couldn't agree with you more.
You know, vertically integratedis nice if you didn't have all
those different contacts, thereferrals, and it's really like
you're saying of hand selectingthe best of the best, no matter
where they're at in the countryfor whichever project you're
working on.
So I agree with you fully.
It's 200% or don't bother,right, right, right.
(04:17):
So how would you say thatmindset also plays into this
right, when you're pulling inall of these greats from each of
the niches, the differentarenas, how does mindset play
into that and how does it helpor hinder?
Speaker 2 (04:32):
So mindset is critical.
I read a book recently calledBuy Back your Time by Dan
Martell and I think it's kind ofcaught fire lately and
everybody's reading it now.
But the thing that really stuckout to me there is having the
ability to identify what it isthat you really love doing in
(04:53):
your work.
Because, as entrepreneurs, whatwe often do is we end up taking
all the hard stuff, the stuffthat's really hard and not
enjoyable for us, because wedon't want to put that burden on
somebody else, and what we needto do is shift our mindset to
say there are people who reallyenjoy doing this work.
Why don't we find those people?
(05:15):
And then they can do what theylove and we can do what we love
at the same time.
And so you know, if you, if youthink you know, bookkeeping is a
drag, but you do it because youfeel like you're the only one
who can do it, then you'resetting yourself up for failure,
because it's not in the areawhere you're going to have the
most impact.
(05:35):
And so being able to identifythose things that you love and
then offloading the things thatyou don't love is so important,
especially as you're a growingplatform.
I think once you get to acertain level, you start to see
that a little bit differentlyand a little bit better.
But certainly, as you're agrowing platform, you know three
(05:56):
, five, 10 assets.
You try to take too much ontoyourself and so having the
mindset to be able to, you know,say, okay, I'm going to make a
small investment here, but it'sgoing to have just a tremendous
return outside return is socritical.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Definitely, and I more recently came into Dan
Martell too, and more during hisbook.
So kudos to you on bringingthat up and it really does make
sense.
I think a lot of it, when youlook of in the 90s and much
earlier than that too, of it wasalways focused on your
weaknesses versus strengths, butI agree with you that it makes
(06:34):
so much more sense to focus onour zone of genius.
We're going to enjoy it moreand that's going to help you,
whether the the challengesthroughout your business Because
, as we know, especially in thisenvironment, entrepreneurship
is not for the faint of heartand you're going to have to dig
in at various levels throughoutyour journey and at different
(06:55):
times.
So really honing in on thoseskills is a benefit.
Would you say that it might bechallenging for people if they
haven't uncovered almost like apermission from themselves to
actually live a life that theylove.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
I think it is a challenge.
You know, the permission pieceis such an important piece
reframe because often we look atour lives and we look at the
sunk cost of all the experiencethat we've already put into what
we're doing.
(07:37):
For me, for example, I thoughtfor so long that in order to be
a great hotelier, I have to havethe operational experience, and
so I discounted all of theinvestment, asset management,
acquisitions, capital raisingexperience that I had and looked
at.
You know, I need to be anoperator to get the respect of
(08:01):
the people in my industry and Iwas looking for permission that
wasn't there.
And then when I would go andtalk to all these operators and
explain what I do, they wouldsay, oh my gosh, I need somebody
to help me raise money, I needsomebody to help me underwrite a
deal, I need somebody who canhelp me structure and find
(08:23):
lenders and vet lenders andpartners and all these different
things.
And I, at that point I realized, you know, everything that I've
done leading up to this pointis way more valuable than just
being an operator or or you know, not just being up being an
operator who doesn't have thatpassion right, because you can
(08:46):
always find an operator who hasthat passion.
You can't always find aninvestment professional who
understands the nuances and allthose different things.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
Which is a clear differentiator and I think to
your point also, when you gointo these different companies,
obviously they know who you areat that point and all of the
value that you bring.
But until that point, if youwere to give them a piece of
paper and a pen and say, craftyour ideal, they're probably
going to have difficulty becauseit's not a title that you
typically hear of and it's areally great culmination of all
(09:21):
these different areas thattypically people don't have, and
I think that's one of thereally neat aspects of what you
do.
What would you say is an areathat people struggle with the
most when you do come into theirbusinesses, their operations.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
I mean across the board I've yet to meet.
No, let me take a step back.
I know people who love raisingmoney, but I have yet to meet
people who are in operations whothink that it's an enjoyable or
easy task.
Everybody thinks that raisingmoney is just so difficult.
(09:58):
It's impossible to get in frontof investors, it's impossible
to convince them, pitch them,get the meeting, all these
things, and it is hard.
It's hard just like any othersales job, but at the same time,
if you don't commit to it, youdon't get results.
And so I think a lot of thesponsors that I talk to look at
(10:20):
it more as a burden, and thatperspective limits their ability
to go out and raise the capitalthat they need.
The other side of it is thatthey don't know how to identify
an ideal investor profile.
They have a certain type ofdeal that they like and they go
(10:42):
out and they take all the advicefrom the gurus out there who
are telling them go after healthcare workers, go after tech
engineers, all these variouspeople, entrepreneurs who are
nearing an exit, all thesedifferent kind of simple avatars
(11:04):
to put on, avatars to put on,and.
And they don't think like, okay, well, maybe I should just go
out and make a bunch of friends.
You know and then get referredaround, or you know, often,
often they think that, okay, theonly way to syndicate a deal is
through fifty thousand dollar,hundred thousand dollar checks
and they don't think like, ohwell, if I just add in a zero to
that, then I can go fromprivate capital to the middle
(11:25):
market.
You know, and it's just amatter of targeting RAAs and
private, you know, familyoffices and that type of crowd
instead of healthcare workersand the engineers.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
And to your point, if their mindset isn't where it
needs to be and if they don'thave a clear vision, good luck,
right Talk about a recipe for alot of challenging times and
heartbreak with that.
What's a trick of the trade foryou in helping to get people
motivated and to get some ofthose particular items that are
(12:01):
needed to get those lined up,and what's a rough time frame
for something like that?
Speaker 2 (12:06):
So in terms of raising capital and building a
pipeline, I mean first of allit's all about consistency.
I mean you have to have a clearmission to go out there every
single day.
And so when I look at goalsetting, I put less emphasis on
the number, so I'm not going tolook at, you know, raise 10
million, raise 20 million by acertain time.
(12:28):
That's really important thatyou kind of keep an eye on it.
But the more important goalsthere are.
What are the things that I cando daily to reach that goal?
And so it's how many phonecalls did you make, how many
emails did you send, how manyprospects did you identify?
How many meetings did you havelined up for the week, for the
month?
And so that looking at thosekey performance drivers are
(12:54):
what's going to set you up forgetting the particular key
performance indicators.
And so this is like basic stufffrom four disciplines of
execution or whatever framework,okrs, all those different
execution frameworks, from there, from that consistency piece.
Having the vision is soimportant because it allows you
(13:17):
to really dial in who you'retalking to, and when you
identify the right people totalk to, magic really happens,
because you're speaking adifferent language.
With a more advanced investmentprofessional, you're not
teaching them about theinvestments.
You're teaching about yourstrategy and why your strategy
(13:38):
is better or different orwhatever it is.
With a more entry levelinvestor, there's a whole
education about why you shouldbe investing in real estate.
You skip all of that when youget to a different level, and so
you just need to be prepared ina different way.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
Which makes complete sense.
How would you say AI willaffect this arena, between what
you do and also real estate?
Speaker 2 (14:07):
So, you see, ai show up a lot, especially the gen AI
content that's out there andthere's just, I think, what
we're seeing across allplatforms is that all content is
way more verbose, because AItends to be verbose and it
almost feels like a signal thatyou put more thought into it,
(14:29):
but then, when you read throughit, it's very vapid, it's a
superficial kind of concept, andso you're starting to see that.
I think, where you'll start tosee more concentrated, concise
messaging emerge, because peopleare tired of reading a lot of
that AI content you know, right,right.
(14:52):
I think where AI is reallyhelpful, though, is in creating
these custom GPTs that haveinstruction sets that let you do
faster underwriting, fasterevaluations.
Does it fit my portfoliostrategy?
Does it fit the allocation thatI have for this Kind of a quick
review that usually would fallonto an entry-level analyst or
(15:20):
an entry-level acquisitions ororiginations analysts, and so I
think that's something thatwe'll start to see.
And then, in the builtenvironment and operations, I
think AI is going to be huge inthe next 10 years in terms of
connecting the tenant experiencewith the maintenance
requirements and so being ableto plan your preventive
(15:42):
maintenance better, being ableto connect reviews to the
various things that are going onin your environment, whether
it's humidity levels or smells,or contaminants or temperature,
all these different things.
That's where I think it's goingto be really exciting to see
all the sensors kind of cometogether.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Definitely and to your point.
I think you know who wants todo, some of those brass tacks,
things that are very important,but it also allows us to use our
higher faculties for having thecommunications, building the
relationships, identifying fears, you know, identifying upside,
upside, all of those reallyimportant things that we, as
humans, excel at so if you takea step back.
(16:27):
If you were to look back intoyour career, let's say five to
ten years, john, what is a pieceof advice you would have given
yourself, knowing what you knownow?
Speaker 2 (16:41):
I think the biggest thing I would do is, you know, I
would give the advice of justmake that call.
You know, just make the call,send the email, post the content
.
Whatever it is that you need todo, just do it.
Because the one thing that Irealized is nobody cares until
(17:02):
they do Right.
So nobody's watching you.
You have yourself under thismicroscope because it's all you,
but people care a lot aboutthemselves and they don't really
care about people who are notreally making a lot of smoke or
fire.
So just get the reps in and justdo it, because until you do,
you don't know what people wantor what they think is important.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
And I think that's a prevalent message lately of like
, really, you know people, don'tbe so hard on yourselves.
No one else is really watchingand, to your point, unless
you're Elon Musk, right.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
Or someone of that stature.
People really don't care.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
But here's our final hard-hitting question for you
what does living fully mean?
Speaker 2 (17:47):
to you.
Oh, wow, I love this question.
So living fully is a huge partof my life and one of my values
personally.
So living fully to me meansbeing 100% in everything that
you're doing.
So if I'm at work, I'm 100% atwork.
My wife knows that.
(18:08):
My kids know that this is whereI am, this is what I'm doing.
But on the other side, if I'mat the baseball game on the
sidelines, I'm 100% there.
I'm not sending emails, I'm notsurfing the internet or
scrolling through social mediaI'm 100% there cheering on my
kids.
And same with if I'm at faithor community situation I'm all
(18:32):
in.
So I think that's so critical,especially in this world where
we're connected 24-7 is tounderstand who we are and who's
looking at us and expectingcertain things from us, and just
being fully there for them.
Because, if not, just staywhere you're, where your mind is
.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
Exactly, and I would say that is perfectly said.
So, john, thank you so much forjoining me today and please
share with our audience wherethey can find you for joining me
today and please share with ouraudience where they can find
you.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
Thank you, yeah, so the best place to find me is on
LinkedIn.
My name is spelled a littlefunny it's W-I-J-T-E-N-B-U-R-G.
Or you can visit my website,lxkgroupcom.
I have a newsletter therecalled the Hard Corner, so
lxkgroupcom slash newsletter tosign up.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
Perfect.
Thanks again, john, thank you.
Welcome to Heather Ewing, the CRE Rundown.
I am your host, Heather Ewing,and today I have an exquisite
guest for you.
He is none other than JohnWittenberg of LXK Group, John
welcome.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Thank you for having me, Heather, Definitely.
So we've connected morerecently through LinkedIn, so
it's really nice for one for meto get to know you more fully,
but also my audience, so tellthem a little bit more about you
(00:39):
.
Economist at Fannie Mae.
Back in the great financialcrisis, we were building the
models that determined whoqualified for a mortgage
modification and what thatmodification looked like.
And eventually, in 2011, I movedback to Florida.
I contacted every single brokeror every single developer in
the area you know what do wehave?
(01:01):
How can I work for you?
All these things?
And they said, well, you knownothing's doing it bottom of the
market and you know nothing'shappening, and so maybe you
should try a brokerage.
And so from there, I jumpedinto brokerage eventually, which
recruited into hotelacquisitions for large hotels
across the country, eventuallydid acquisitions, asset
(01:25):
management, capital markets,business strategy and then the
whole world collapsed again in2020 and moved on from that and
eventually went into building aportfolio of eight extended stay
economy scale hotels over thepast four years.
And then you know that kind ofsoftened a bit, exited that
(01:49):
portfolio in May of this yearand started doing fractional
chief investment officer work,and so I help real estate
entrepreneurs that are not quitebig enough to have a full-time
chief investment officer, and Icome in part-time and help them
with financial modeling,underwriting, due diligence,
(02:10):
coordination, raising capital,capital strategies all those
different things.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Which is terrific, because I think, more now than
ever and I expect this trend tocontinue people are really
beginning to understand thevalue of coaches, mentors,
consultants, and so what you'reoffering is unique and I see
that, like I said, gainingmomentum.
Is there a particular aspect ofit that you enjoy most?
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Yeah, you know I had a lot of challenges through my
career and just building theseportfolios and marrying the
difference between running aninvestment management business
and an operations business.
One of the things that I sayabout myself and the way that I
invest is that I'm proudlydisintegrated, because I think
(02:59):
that there's great value inbeing able to select the right
partners for the job for eachinvestment.
And when you have a verticallyintegrated platform that has
operations, construction andinvestment management all in one
platform, sometimes it limitsyour ability to choose the best
(03:22):
partner for the deal.
And so one of the areas that Ireally love is is that business
formation, that thatinstitutional design and
building your strategy aroundwhere you're where you get the
most joy and then also whereyou're most effective, and so if
you're really great atinvestment management, let's
double down there and go findpartners to do the other things,
(03:44):
similarly with construction orproperty operations.
So that's where I find the mostjoy in helping people.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Right, and I couldn't agree with you more.
You know, vertically integratedis nice if you didn't have all
those different contacts, thereferrals, and it's really like
you're saying of hand selectingthe best of the best, no matter
where they're at in the countryfor whichever project you're
working on.
So I agree with you fully.
It's 200% or don't bother,right, right, right.
(04:17):
So how would you say thatmindset also plays into this
right, when you're pulling inall of these greats from each of
the niches, the differentarenas, how does mindset play
into that and how does it helpor hinder?
Speaker 2 (04:32):
So mindset is critical.
I read a book recently calledBuy Back your Time by Dan
Martell and I think it's kind ofcaught fire lately and
everybody's reading it now.
But the thing that really stuckout to me there is having the
ability to identify what it isthat you really love doing in
(04:53):
your work.
Because, as entrepreneurs, whatwe often do is we end up taking
all the hard stuff, the stuffthat's really hard and not
enjoyable for us, because wedon't want to put that burden on
somebody else, and what we needto do is shift our mindset to
say there are people who reallyenjoy doing this work.
Why don't we find those people?
(05:15):
And then they can do what theylove and we can do what we love
at the same time.
And so you know, if you, if youthink you know, bookkeeping is a
drag, but you do it because youfeel like you're the only one
who can do it, then you'resetting yourself up for failure,
because it's not in the areawhere you're going to have the
most impact.
(05:35):
And so being able to identifythose things that you love and
then offloading the things thatyou don't love is so important,
especially as you're a growingplatform.
I think once you get to acertain level, you start to see
that a little bit differentlyand a little bit better.
But certainly, as you're agrowing platform, you know three
(05:56):
, five, 10 assets.
You try to take too much ontoyourself and so having the
mindset to be able to, you know,say, okay, I'm going to make a
small investment here, but it'sgoing to have just a tremendous
return outside return is socritical.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Definitely, and I more recently came into Dan
Martell too, and more during hisbook.
So kudos to you on bringingthat up and it really does make
sense.
I think a lot of it, when youlook of in the 90s and much
earlier than that too, of it wasalways focused on your
weaknesses versus strengths, butI agree with you that it makes
(06:34):
so much more sense to focus onour zone of genius.
We're going to enjoy it moreand that's going to help you,
whether the the challengesthroughout your business Because
, as we know, especially in thisenvironment, entrepreneurship
is not for the faint of heartand you're going to have to dig
in at various levels throughoutyour journey and at different
(06:55):
times.
So really honing in on thoseskills is a benefit.
Would you say that it might bechallenging for people if they
haven't uncovered almost like apermission from themselves to
actually live a life that theylove.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
I think it is a challenge.
You know, the permission pieceis such an important piece
reframe because often we look atour lives and we look at the
sunk cost of all the experiencethat we've already put into what
we're doing.
(07:37):
For me, for example, I thoughtfor so long that in order to be
a great hotelier, I have to havethe operational experience, and
so I discounted all of theinvestment, asset management,
acquisitions, capital raisingexperience that I had and looked
at.
You know, I need to be anoperator to get the respect of
(08:01):
the people in my industry and Iwas looking for permission that
wasn't there.
And then when I would go andtalk to all these operators and
explain what I do, they wouldsay, oh my gosh, I need somebody
to help me raise money, I needsomebody to help me underwrite a
deal, I need somebody who canhelp me structure and find
(08:23):
lenders and vet lenders andpartners and all these different
things.
And I, at that point I realized, you know, everything that I've
done leading up to this pointis way more valuable than just
being an operator or or you know, not just being up being an
operator who doesn't have thatpassion right, because you can
(08:46):
always find an operator who hasthat passion.
You can't always find aninvestment professional who
understands the nuances and allthose different things.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
Which is a clear differentiator and I think to
your point also, when you gointo these different companies,
obviously they know who you areat that point and all of the
value that you bring.
But until that point, if youwere to give them a piece of
paper and a pen and say, craftyour ideal, they're probably
going to have difficulty becauseit's not a title that you
typically hear of and it's areally great culmination of all
(09:21):
these different areas thattypically people don't have, and
I think that's one of thereally neat aspects of what you
do.
What would you say is an areathat people struggle with the
most when you do come into theirbusinesses, their operations.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
I mean across the board I've yet to meet.
No, let me take a step back.
I know people who love raisingmoney, but I have yet to meet
people who are in operations whothink that it's an enjoyable or
easy task.
Everybody thinks that raisingmoney is just so difficult.
(09:58):
It's impossible to get in frontof investors, it's impossible
to convince them, pitch them,get the meeting, all these
things, and it is hard.
It's hard just like any othersales job, but at the same time,
if you don't commit to it, youdon't get results.
And so I think a lot of thesponsors that I talk to look at
(10:20):
it more as a burden, and thatperspective limits their ability
to go out and raise the capitalthat they need.
The other side of it is thatthey don't know how to identify
an ideal investor profile.
They have a certain type ofdeal that they like and they go
(10:42):
out and they take all the advicefrom the gurus out there who
are telling them go after healthcare workers, go after tech
engineers, all these variouspeople, entrepreneurs who are
nearing an exit, all thesedifferent kind of simple avatars
(11:04):
to put on, avatars to put on,and.
And they don't think like, okay, well, maybe I should just go
out and make a bunch of friends.
You know and then get referredaround, or you know, often,
often they think that, okay, theonly way to syndicate a deal is
through fifty thousand dollar,hundred thousand dollar checks
and they don't think like, ohwell, if I just add in a zero to
that, then I can go fromprivate capital to the middle
(11:25):
market.
You know, and it's just amatter of targeting RAAs and
private, you know, familyoffices and that type of crowd
instead of healthcare workersand the engineers.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
And to your point, if their mindset isn't where it
needs to be and if they don'thave a clear vision, good luck,
right Talk about a recipe for alot of challenging times and
heartbreak with that.
What's a trick of the trade foryou in helping to get people
motivated and to get some ofthose particular items that are
(12:01):
needed to get those lined up,and what's a rough time frame
for something like that?
Speaker 2 (12:06):
So in terms of raising capital and building a
pipeline, I mean first of allit's all about consistency.
I mean you have to have a clearmission to go out there every
single day.
And so when I look at goalsetting, I put less emphasis on
the number, so I'm not going tolook at, you know, raise 10
million, raise 20 million by acertain time.
(12:28):
That's really important thatyou kind of keep an eye on it.
But the more important goalsthere are.
What are the things that I cando daily to reach that goal?
And so it's how many phonecalls did you make, how many
emails did you send, how manyprospects did you identify?
How many meetings did you havelined up for the week, for the
month?
And so that looking at thosekey performance drivers are
(12:54):
what's going to set you up forgetting the particular key
performance indicators.
And so this is like basic stufffrom four disciplines of
execution or whatever framework,okrs, all those different
execution frameworks, from there, from that consistency piece.
Having the vision is soimportant because it allows you
(13:17):
to really dial in who you'retalking to, and when you
identify the right people totalk to, magic really happens,
because you're speaking adifferent language.
With a more advanced investmentprofessional, you're not
teaching them about theinvestments.
You're teaching about yourstrategy and why your strategy
(13:38):
is better or different orwhatever it is.
With a more entry levelinvestor, there's a whole
education about why you shouldbe investing in real estate.
You skip all of that when youget to a different level, and so
you just need to be prepared ina different way.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
Which makes complete sense.
How would you say AI willaffect this arena, between what
you do and also real estate?
Speaker 2 (14:07):
So, you see, ai show up a lot, especially the gen AI
content that's out there andthere's just, I think, what
we're seeing across allplatforms is that all content is
way more verbose, because AItends to be verbose and it
almost feels like a signal thatyou put more thought into it,
(14:29):
but then, when you read throughit, it's very vapid, it's a
superficial kind of concept, andso you're starting to see that.
I think, where you'll start tosee more concentrated, concise
messaging emerge, because peopleare tired of reading a lot of
that AI content you know, right,right.
(14:52):
I think where AI is reallyhelpful, though, is in creating
these custom GPTs that haveinstruction sets that let you do
faster underwriting, fasterevaluations.
Does it fit my portfoliostrategy?
Does it fit the allocation thatI have for this Kind of a quick
review that usually would fallonto an entry-level analyst or
(15:20):
an entry-level acquisitions ororiginations analysts, and so I
think that's something thatwe'll start to see.
And then, in the builtenvironment and operations, I
think AI is going to be huge inthe next 10 years in terms of
connecting the tenant experiencewith the maintenance
requirements and so being ableto plan your preventive
(15:42):
maintenance better, being ableto connect reviews to the
various things that are going onin your environment, whether
it's humidity levels or smells,or contaminants or temperature,
all these different things.
That's where I think it's goingto be really exciting to see
all the sensors kind of cometogether.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Definitely and to your point.
I think you know who wants todo, some of those brass tacks,
things that are very important,but it also allows us to use our
higher faculties for having thecommunications, building the
relationships, identifying fears, you know, identifying upside,
upside, all of those reallyimportant things that we, as
humans, excel at so if you takea step back.
(16:27):
If you were to look back intoyour career, let's say five to
ten years, john, what is a pieceof advice you would have given
yourself, knowing what you knownow?
Speaker 2 (16:41):
I think the biggest thing I would do is, you know, I
would give the advice of justmake that call.
You know, just make the call,send the email, post the content
.
Whatever it is that you need todo, just do it.
Because the one thing that Irealized is nobody cares until
(17:02):
they do Right.
So nobody's watching you.
You have yourself under thismicroscope because it's all you,
but people care a lot aboutthemselves and they don't really
care about people who are notreally making a lot of smoke or
fire.
So just get the reps in and justdo it, because until you do,
you don't know what people wantor what they think is important.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
And I think that's a prevalent message lately of like
, really, you know people, don'tbe so hard on yourselves.
No one else is really watchingand, to your point, unless
you're Elon Musk, right.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
Or someone of that stature.
People really don't care.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
But here's our final hard-hitting question for you
what does living fully mean?
Speaker 2 (17:47):
to you.
Oh, wow, I love this question.
So living fully is a huge partof my life and one of my values
personally.
So living fully to me meansbeing 100% in everything that
you're doing.
So if I'm at work, I'm 100% atwork.
My wife knows that.
(18:08):
My kids know that this is whereI am, this is what I'm doing.
But on the other side, if I'mat the baseball game on the
sidelines, I'm 100% there.
I'm not sending emails, I'm notsurfing the internet or
scrolling through social mediaI'm 100% there cheering on my
kids.
And same with if I'm at faithor community situation I'm all
(18:32):
in.
So I think that's so critical,especially in this world where
we're connected 24-7 is tounderstand who we are and who's
looking at us and expectingcertain things from us, and just
being fully there for them.
Because, if not, just staywhere you're, where your mind is
.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
Exactly, and I would say that is perfectly said.
So, john, thank you so much forjoining me today and please
share with our audience wherethey can find you for joining me
today and please share with ouraudience where they can find
you.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
Thank you, yeah, so the best place to find me is on
LinkedIn.
My name is spelled a littlefunny it's W-I-J-T-E-N-B-U-R-G.
Or you can visit my website,lxkgroupcom.
I have a newsletter therecalled the Hard Corner, so
lxkgroupcom slash newsletter tosign up.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
Perfect.
Thanks again, john, thank you.
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