There was a part of me that didn't want to stay in the real estate business precisely
because I was then now being compared to my father-in-law.
And I wanted to go out on my own.
So, creating a technology and an information business would have allowed me to completely
distinguish myself.
And when that crashed and burned, I realized in a sense, that I had to go back to figure
out what were my strengths.
We found ourselves about four or five years in having 99% of our net worth tied up in
that one project.
For me, I was 29 or 30, that wasn't such a big deal.
But when you're 63, you start thinking about it.
And so, David really pushed to sell the project.
What was interesting is when we finally sold it, there was an interview and the interviewer
asked us how long it took to sell.
And I said, oh, about six months, David says, what are you talking about?
It was four years and six months.
It was for sale the day we bought it.
So, we had very different perspectives.
He was really somebody who was a buyer and seller, and he had achieved great success
doing that.
But you know, when you're 30, and you've had this extraordinary success, it's virtually
impossible to have any sense of what made you successful, what your strengths are, what
your weaknesses are.
And I went off and decided I didn't want to stay in the real estate business, I wanted
to conquer some new field, and created a business in the real estate information.
This is before the internet.
Today, all the services that we created in this online platform are available and things
like Zillow and other online platforms, but there was no internet then.
And the idea was that you could look up a property and see its history.
And you could track trading prices and actually trade financial instruments based on the database
that we were trying to create.
And I did that for about five years, created the fastest growing real estate information
company in the country until the day I had to close it.
Because the war in Iraq.
The war occurred.
And in that year, half the real estate brokers delisted themselves, many brokers are part-time
brokers.
Our clients were the real estate brokers that needed information to do their work.
So, although we were gaining market share, it was in a community where it was haft by
size.
And in retrospect, I'd say the biggest theme that I've learned over and over again is real
estate is a deal business.
I love negotiating deals, I love preparing for deals, I could probably work around the
clock on deals.
But when I'm finished, I need to regenerate, I need to step back.
That's a completely different rhythm than great managers who day in and day out, have
a steady hand.
So, if I were backing myself, I would back myself much more as a deal negotiator than
as a manager, because those are not skills that I've excelled at.
And other people don't recognize the difference between those two.
And that's where some of the trouble comes.
But how did you deal with that failure?
How did you close that failure?
How did you deal with that mentally and emotionally?
And how do you then channel what you've learned into the next project?
So, almost surely, part of my motivation was some attraction to being a renaissance person,
by which I mean a master in many different disciplines.
That's an unrealistic goal for most people.
The problem was my father had been chief interpreter at the Nuremberg Trials, Herman Goring's,
the number two Nazi, his personal interpreter, my father was on the American prosecution.
And then to go from there to being one of the world's greatest engineers- colored TV,
sending the first satellite up.
He was Executive Vice President of NBC, a dean of a business school.
And I probably, too, started to define myself by not wanting to just be successful, but
to be multi-dimensional.
So, when I sold this real estate project, it felt pretty good to be 30 and have developed
the largest commercial renovation successfully.
The deal- at least by many people- was estimated to be the most successful deal in metropolitan
history.
And there was a part of me that didn't want to stay in the real estate business precisely
because I was then now being compared to my father-in-law.
And I wanted to go out on my own.
So, creating a technology and an information business would have allowed me to completely
distinguish myself.
And when that crashed and burned, I realized that in a sense that I had to go back to figure
out what were my strengths.
And it turned out for whatever reason, a certain type of real estate business was where I've
been successful and where my instincts had been developed.
And sometimes, I felt like I was crawling back to my strength.
That it wasn't where I wanted to be, but it was where I was best able to recreate some
level of success.
And so, I started a new real estate firm, it happened by then.
We were in the early '90s.
And there was a savings and loan crisis in America that had continued to extend from
the crash in '87.
When my partner and I had bought Harborside in 1982, it was at the absolute low period
of that cycle.
And when we sold in 1986, it was at the absolute high period, we were very lucky.
If you look back at the statistics, we hit the low on the buy and the high on the sell,
now the market had crashed again.
And in 1991, in the savings and loan, the real estate market was at a new low.
And it was a fantastic time to start buying portfolios of distressed assets.
So, although it wasn't a development business, it was a variation of what I was doing.
And something that I had a- I guess a natural inclination to, and that started my second
success, but I could never have achieved that even greater success if I hadn't failed in
between and eating a little humble pie.