0:00:01 - Speaker 1 Dodson
As an entrepreneur, you typically have to be forward thinking. You have to be like how do we fix these problems? Where are we wanting to be? How do I get everybody excited about this vision? How do I get everybody moving? And instead, a lot of times that leads to deep dissatisfaction because you're never there fast enough. 

0:00:21 - Speaker 3 
Welcome to the Golding Group Strategic Growth Podcast featuring Expert Insights interviews with thought leaders and Business Plan Triage hosted by Kyle Golding, award-winning entrepreneur, ceo and chief strategic idealist for the Golding Group. Hello everyone and welcome to the Strategic Growth Podcast. I'm your host, kyle Golding. I'm joined today by Jonathan Dodson, ceo of Pivot. It was originally Pivot Project, but there's been some changes recently. So introduce yourself and tell everyone what Pivot is today. 

0:00:53 - Speaker 1
Yeah, so Pivot is a urban infill real estate development company that is focused primarily in the state of Oklahoma, and I'm one of the co-founders and current CEO, and we're really trying to make a difference within our community by what we do and how we do it, and Pivot's been in existence for about 10 years. Yes, I think we really formed a partnership in 2013 with the Tower Theater as our first project, and then formally became a legit company in 2014. 

0:01:26 - Speaker 2 Golding
So you mentioned the Tower Theater. People would recognize people in Oklahoma City would definitely know the Tower Theater and how it set empty for years and then you've came along and revitalized it and now it's a mecca of activity and lots of activity around it as well. Right, like just having that theater open. It really re-engages the whole block it has. Maybe even all of Uptown 23. 

0:01:47 - Speaker 1
Yeah, jonathan Russell really kicked it off with the Rise, which is just adjacent to us on Northwest 23rd and that's where you have Jim and you have several great restaurants good egg dining restaurants there. But the theater really was kind of the thing. It just pulls so many people in and out on a nightly basis that it has been a catalyst for that whole area and we're really lucky to have the team running that that we do. 

0:02:13 - Speaker 2
You even got the city to put a mid block crosswalk in soft light, which is pretty rare in this town. 

0:02:19 - Speaker 1
Yeah, it was a fight, but it's worth it. 

0:02:22 - Speaker 2
So other projects people would recognize would be the Market at East Point, which has won multiple awards national and international awards 11th and Hudson and the Sunshine Laundry, which is also the home of Stone Cloud Brewery. 

0:02:36 - Speaker 1
Yeah, and we've got. If you've been to Bar Arbalata, that's another one of our projects and a block. 

Yeah, yeah, great place to get burgers and drinks, and we have Beer City Music Hall and Flycatcher, which is at Second and Kline, a little bit off the beaten path, but it's still a really unique and cool development. And then we've got one of my favorite places to go to is Palo Santo, and so that's in the farmers market, and so Jeff Bezdek is next to them with Vox Audio. But yeah, so we've got stuff kind of scattered across the city. 

0:03:10 - Speaker 2
So there's some new things about to happen in the farmers market as well. 

0:03:14 - Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah. So we're kind of farmers market adjacent at. We've got a development that we're working on with a group out of Denver and Salt Lake to really bring kind of creative office back to the warehouse district. So we're kind of in between farmers market and Strawberry Field and so it'll be a large project. The office itself will be about 80,000 square feet, with development all around it. 

0:03:39 - Speaker 2
And you take a specific approach to real estate development. It's real estate development and your background in banking like it sounds pretty sterile. Yeah, you really focus on the human side, right, the connections and the relationship and what you're doing for the people, as opposed to just buildings and rentals. 

0:03:59 - Speaker 1
Yeah, so one of our values for pivot is joyous disruption, and so like that. 

0:04:08 - Speaker 2
It's a great term. 

0:04:08 - Speaker 1
What we mean by that is that there are systems that need to be changed, and sometimes you change systems. One methodology of changing systems is you use shame and guilt, and parents have tried that on their kids and it may be very effective in the short term, but it doesn't create any negative feedback. 

0:04:27 - Speaker 2
Negative feedback right. 

0:04:29 - Speaker 1
The next is paternalism, and I would say that's another method that is used. Usually. It's used by folks in power or in relationship power structure, where you think the person is not as smart as you, but you're going to help them become who they can be if they'll just listen and trust you. And so those are two typically the primary ways in which people try to disrupt systems, and what we've said is we would just like to be enthusiastic and joyous about what we're doing and the systems we're disrupting, and if you are excited about being a part of that, we want to either be on your team or you come join us, whoever is running. If it's not for you, that's cool. We're not. We know that if we're using guilt or shame of paternalism, those aren't, and anytime it's been used on us, it doesn't feel good right. 

So it's like why would? So we do think differently. We do need to make money on our projects, but money is not our highest pursuit. We say we have a virtue umbrella that sits above money, and so as we try to do developments that hopefully have an economic benefit to our investors and to the bank and the people involved, we're also not doing extractive development. We're also doing things that benefit the community that's involved. 

0:05:43 - Speaker 2
So go a little bit deeper in that, because I think maybe someone's listening to podcast right now. You know we talk a lot about very standard business and traditional business and you're talking about being disruptive and you're talking about making money but not having that be your focus. So go a little bit deeper in how kind of doing things the way you do it ends up resulting in profit. 

0:06:02 - Speaker 1
There's a lot of different ways to take it. I think one of the easy ways to talk about this, given the current situation we're in as we look at the West Coast, we look at Silicon Valley Bank that just imploded, and there was this whole theory within those groups that your goal was to make as much money as possible and then you could give it away. Like, if you didn't make a lot of money, you couldn't give it away, and so what ended up happening was people were doing all of these things that may or may not have been noble, to try to make as much money, and then they assumed that by giving some of it away, there's nobility in that. 

0:06:32 - Speaker 2
They'd make it up later. Yeah, yeah, make up that karma later. Yeah, yeah. 

0:06:36 - Speaker 1
And so what we would say would be that I don't think money is bifurcated that way. I don't think it's a dichotomy. I think money is a tool that can be used for good or for bad right, and so we want to say that if we have these values, then we're gonna use the tool of money and economic development to achieve those values. But if money ever becomes the chief value that we have, then you just have to look at things differently, and some companies are great at it and they're able to hold their value system, but for us it's like man. If the gravitational pull of wealth is comfort, comfort is fine, but what comfort does is it ends up blocking out access to suffering, and joy is a bedfellow to suffering, and so if you allow wealth to do its natural thing, you will miss out on joy, and as humans, we really want to experience that, which means we actually have to put ourselves in positions that make us uncomfortable as a company and be intentional about that, or we're gonna miss out on things. 

0:07:42 - Speaker 2
That's joyful disruption. Yeah, yeah, that makes perfect sense. I like that a lot. It's easy to say. I say all the time if your whole pursuit is money, then you're destined to fail. 

0:07:52 - Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah. 

0:07:53 - Speaker 2
And if your pursuit is excellence or doing amazing things, or disrupting or bringing something different or unique, then and you do everything right, treat people correctly, offer value, meet people halfway in them, it'll that. Money Will follow. Yeah, it'll happen. 

0:08:11 - Speaker 1
Yeah, you know Seneca, who's like this Roman philosopher. He said that nothing was more ridiculous than to try to assume that something that is rational could appease the irrational or the immaterial. So his idea was like, if you think money can actually fix really like the core things that we all are trying to learn and become whole in, it's kind of silly. It's like of course that's not gonna work. You can't shove enough money down in there to make yourself whole, and so how much is enough money? One more dollar, you know. We've always heard these things. So it's like, well, let's instead not get focused on that, let's just focus on who, what do we want our city to become and how can we be a part of that. And then let's go do that and let money follow along the way. 

0:08:54 - Speaker 2
You know another person here in Oklahoma City who follows those same ideas, who puts money second and people in mission first. I know you just spent some time with Mike Beckham. 

0:09:03 - Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. 

0:09:05 - Speaker 2
So tell us some of the conversations you guys had and some of the. Obviously you have a meeting in the minds that you have a common philosophy. So what were some of the conversations you had and some of the things that you took away from spending that time with Mike, who I recently interviewed for Local? 

0:09:19 - Speaker 1
My Adventure 4 on podcast. 

0:09:21 - Speaker 2
And I wish I could have recorded it the whole two hours I spent with him because he has definitely specific ideas about how things should be. 

0:09:28 - Speaker 1
Yeah, you know. So what's interesting about? So developers are weirdly not as influential in the shape of cities. From a positive standpoint, they can be destructive. So like we can go in and we can either negatively gentrify a neighborhood, we can tear down a building and never put anything back. Like we can do a lot of things negative. 

Just sit on a piece of paper Right, sit on a piece of paper, but all we do when we've done our job the best is we've created a cover to a book, and no one reads a book because of the cover. Right, you look at it, you're like I might take this up, but it's the story that actually captivates you. Right, and our tenants are our storytellers. So we are not in true fashion storytellers. We are trying to find storytellers to inhabit buildings that represent all of these values. So what's different about Mike is there's obviously lots of things that are different, but they're actually making a product that's a catalyst for how people think about it. You know it's affordable drink where it looks great, and they've got this mission. That's way bigger than just insulated drink where right Like it. Insulated drink where is a tool for him to accomplish the things that he wants to do. 

0:10:43 - Speaker 2
Because they started the company not knowing what the product would be. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah exactly. Which is crazy, right? Yeah, exactly. 

0:10:49 - Speaker 1
And so for him, you know, we went to him. Another one of our values is excellence, and so what we realized we had focused really hard on being kind, on being empathetic, on using joyous disruption, but we had gaps within our company. This is three or four years ago. That didn't allow us to be excellent and it was like okay, it's okay if you're cool and nice or whatever, but if you are not actually serving your people with excellence and you're actually not delivering the full scope of what we want to. And so every quarter we go and visit a company that represents a value that we have. 

Great idea, and so with Simple Modern, it was excellence. Because of the way that they've grown, the way they've done it, you walk in and you feel cared for. Everyone is checking in on you. It's just great right. The servant kind of or whatever you call it leadership that is not about an ego, but about other people has worked its way through that whole company. And so, really, with Mike, it was hearing him talk about, specifically, excellence, and then just hearing him talk about the things that he sees and the idea of not being perfect, right. Your goal isn't to be perfect, right, and so how does that impact the company? And so we had a great time. What they're doing is awesome. 

0:12:09 - Speaker 2
And if, for those of you who don't know, if those of you who don't know rock or don't understand Simple Modern, they'll probably do about $125 million in sales this year. Yeah, and they're bringing all of their manufacturing back to the United States, to Oklahoma City exactly, specifically, with not just the intent of replacing jobs, but making, creating new types of jobs. 

0:12:28 - Speaker 1
So another disruptive approach, right yeah. 

0:12:31 - Speaker 2
So an awesome person to get into. 

0:12:33 - Speaker 1
Yeah, absolutely. So glad that they decided to do that here. Right, they could have done that anywhere in the United States, and so glad they did it here. 

0:12:40 - Speaker 2
And so I talked with Mike talking about $125 million your companies but 10 years ago you left what people would call the nine to five job Right and was working out of a coffee shop trying to figure out what to do next. Yeah, and that was the LinkedIn post that caught everyone's attention, and caught mine for sure. So go back to when you were making that post and you were talking about where you started motivation, how you put together the first group of people to start in real estate and, I think, probably, I'm sure, a simpler version of what you're doing now. Just go back to how it all started and taking that leap of faith and making that change in yourself and then making your change professionally. 

0:13:17 - Speaker 1
Yeah. So I think one thing is to say is that I'm always really respectful of entrepreneurs in general, because I consider myself one now. But you know and I've shared this story before but my boss sexually harassed my assistant and I heard him say that, and so whenever I reported it up the ladder, they basically gave my assistant four weeks to find a new job and they didn't fire him, and so I left banking as a form of protest, but with no real plans on what I was going to do. 

0:13:52 - Speaker 2
Like an entrepreneur yeah. 

0:13:55 - Speaker 1
I was. I had, you know, six months before I told my wife that I would plan on leaving. I was planning on leaving banking at some point and doing real estate. And she was like sure, you know, and very fair, like I don't know if I would have ever done it had I not had something terrible happen to someone else, that I just happened to be a bystander and what was a part of right. And so Once I got into real estate in the banking world it's very siloed. 

I'm essentially around wealthy folks who are a certain demographic and they're wonderful people, but it was very much the same right. 

And so I started off seeing it at a coffee shop and a lot of these people that I would have said I didn't have any friendships with all of a sudden started becoming the people that I looked forward to every day to go hang out with, and I started seeing their heart and I started seeing concepts differently and I saw like you just start seeing the world differently, right, and so we always talk about like white culture or culture and power is anemic, and it's anemic in the sense that it doesn't have the full breadth of humanity in it, and it's easy to say that. 

What happens to me, though, and I've seen in others, is we forget that and we think we've got it all figured out, and so it's not, until we get exposed to people who think differently, like than us, and who see the world differently, that you go oh, like that. Actually, that makes a lot of sense, like I've never put this together with this, and so for me, it became really the first time in my life in work where I started to get expanded, my world started to get bigger and my heart could grow. It's like the Grinch, you know in Christmas. 

0:15:28 - Speaker 2
It's like you know you're three sizes. 

0:15:29 - Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, yeah you know it's like holy cow, like I lie. This old saint has this quote. He says even if your mother's a whore, you lover. And Oklahoma City has all these flaws and we could talk about all the problems that were wrong with Oklahoma City, but when you get to spend time with people in it and you see their heart for it, it's like man, how do you not love this place Absolutely? 

0:15:48 - Speaker 2
So you making this great change in your life with the blessing of your wife. 

0:15:55 - Speaker 1
Yeah, we didn't have any other options. 

0:15:58 - Speaker 2
So yeah, and it's something you wanted to do, but you didn't know exactly how. 

0:16:01 - Speaker 1
Right. 

0:16:02 - Speaker 2
A little bit of self-discovery, so who were the first people you reached out to? That ultimately led to what became pivot and pivot project. 

0:16:10 - Speaker 1
Yeah. So really the first, my next door neighbor at the time was Blair Humphries, and I just needed a place to like do something. And so Blair was like Wheeler, he was just getting ready to start and he's like come do something. So I was a totally overpaid assistant to him for a little while. But that gave me like three or four months, five months, to like start thinking through what can I actually do. And so I knew how to find money and I knew how to like get debt, because that's what my job was. So I started consulting with just any developer. I called all of the people that had always called me for money as a banker and I said I'll help you go find the money, pay me a little fee at the end. 

And David Wanzer, who I had become friends with for my 34th birthday, he disappeared and he came back and I was kind of pissed because I didn't know why he'd left. He came back and he said hey, I got the Tower Theater contract and I want you and Ben to be equal partners with me and let's go tackle it together. And so we always say, like the moment that Pivot was founded, it was founded in generosity, because David could have said like, okay, I'm going to take 75% of this, you and Ben split 25, and I would have said, great, yeah, you give me anything. Right. And so we were. Thankfully, we were super naive, we had no idea what we were doing, and that allowed us to be way more confident than we should have been, and we were able to put together the deal that is there today and really found Ben and David, two people that had a common vision for just what we were trying to build as a city and using the tools that we had to go build that. 

0:17:54 - Speaker 2
So the ultimately, relationships is what it comes down to. Yeah, absolutely yeah, I completely agree. I think that's the point, because there's so much value in power in relationships. And then patience, yeah, you know, taking your time, finding the right deal, the right partner is not just jumping into the first thing. 

0:18:10 - Speaker 1
that makes you money, absolutely, absolutely. 

0:18:12 - Speaker 2
And being open to collaboration. You know player offered you a job and you're like well, I don't know what it will do, but ultimately it will do. 

0:18:18 - Speaker 1
It buys me time, right, it buys me time. And Blair realized I was a terrible assistant, so it was great, like it worked out for all of us. So he fired me. He didn't fire me as an assistant, but, yeah, it was great. I was able to actually go do what I had a unique skill set to go do and it mattered at that time, and so that was fun. 

0:18:38 - Speaker 2
So you have the tower project a very visible project, yeah, the one that everyone was familiar with. Like it's set empty. For a very long time, people were very anxious to see something happening and you didn't really know what you were going to do with it. Walk us through the process of starting with what could we do and really deciding what was the best thing for that building and for that property and for the area around it. 

0:19:00 - Speaker 1
Yeah, no, great question. We really wanted, actually, oklahoma City University to function, programming out of the theater. They already have a great arts program and from the film, from ballet, from music, it was like this is this could be when they and they were part of the route. 

0:19:22 - Speaker 2
The revitalization, absolutely right, yeah, yeah. 

0:19:25 - Speaker 1
And so we were like this is perfect, and so we got pretty far down that road and it didn't work out. 

And then we had a group sign a 20 year lease on it to put a million dollars into the building and do music, and they defaulted on their lease about four months in, so so so we had to basically me, ben and David at that point we'd guaranteed the debt, the only way the building would pay its debt back, as if something was in that space. So I was at elemental and with Stephen Tyler and he's like, hey, I think I can run a music venue for you. And so they put together business plan. We met and the five of us formed a music venue operating company. 

Overnight we we ended up borrowing about personally about a million dollars through every way possible to do what we thought the tenant was gonna do and really bootstrapped that thing into what it is now. I mean, it's, I think it's one of the it's maybe the best sounding venue in town. It came at an immense personal sacrifice for all five of us involved because we were just borrowing and borrowing and borrowing, but it worked out. And then we were able to sell a portion of the operating company to a hedge fund and in, based out of California, to really kind of take over some of the ownership responsibilities for us. We still own the real estate. 

0:20:51 - Speaker 2
We don't have to worry about the day-to-day anymore got you so long twisted journey that finally worked itself out into something that would be, yeah, a more traditional business deal yeah eventually, right again, you had to have that patience, relationships and yeah, risk, you know. 

0:21:05 - Speaker 1
Again, it's like one of those things being uncomfortable right and and working out of elemental is where I met so many people that ended up being a part of that project, so another leaked in post that caught my eye of yours was trying to explain and illustrate you had an illustration of how real estate developers provide value yeah, yeah, in the, in the whole process yeah, so about the five, ten minutes that we have left, can you kind of talk through how a real estate developer or working with the developer can create, create these value opportunities and it creates that synergistic value where it's good for everyone right. 

So what we would say is we, we create for pivot. We create value three different ways. We create it through the development process, which means finding a building or a piece of land, putting together the team managing that process, finding someone, the storytellers who are going to fill it, managing that, the build out, and then really managing the asset after it's done. So that's one piece. The next piece is really the property management side, so it's allowing our values as we manage the project, from development, to be communicated throughout the life cycle of the asset. The next would be teneting. 

So again, it's picking our storytellers. It's like who do we? Who we've we've? We're a little different in the sense that we've probably leased out 90% of our space. Personally, it's through relationships. So it's finding those storytellers and putting them in the, building them and allowing them to work. And then we try to find creative financing opportunities to allow certain things to happen, because we have a long view in mind. We don't need to. If you're go develop in the suburbs, the market there kind of forces you to build it, fill it and flip it, and it's not because they're doing anything wrong, it's because that's the way the market works there and in an urban core. It gives you the opportunity to think 20 years down the road, and so we think tower theater can be a better place in 20 years than it is today, right, and so that allows us to be very patient on our teneting and think about that so we get common themes patience, relationships, storytelling and creative solutions yeah, absolutely which anyone could apply to any business model, absolutely, if they'll take the time to focus on those things and not be so focused on on the short money right, which is hard right, yeah, yeah, it's hard 

yeah, it's easy to say, harder to do when you got to pay bills yeah, absolutely, and and there's I have a couple journal entries where I actually wrote what was in my bank account, just so I could go back and look at things have gotten dire before, right, and so you, you were reminded of that. 

But maintaining that vision and so you know, I one of the things and talking about the posts that I had made, it was really helpful for me to stop thinking about where I wanted our company to be and, instead of focusing on, look at what has been accomplished. And as an entrepreneur, you typically have to be forward thinking. You have to be like right, how do we fix these problems? Where we wanting to be? How do I get everybody excited about this vision? How do I, you know, get everybody moving right? And instead, a lot of times that leads to deep dissatisfaction because you're never there fast enough or quick enough. When you pause and you look back which is really hard for, I think, most entrepreneurs to do you can actually find, oh man, look at what's been done, like this is kinda cool, right, and so that allows you to be more grateful in those moments of tension, because you actually have a sense of grounding. 

0:24:50 - Speaker 2
So Well, let's look five and 10 years in the future Great For Pivot and what you think Oklahoma City could look like in the next five, 10, 15, 20 years. 

0:25:00 - Speaker 1
Yeah, so I think the most exciting thing for Oklahoma City that has been one of its Achilles heels, but I think it could be one of our greatest opportunities is one you know we tore down two or 300 really beautiful buildings in our urban core during the 60s and urban renewal and IMPACE plan, and we have a lot of areas that have not been revitalized yet because of redlining and historic issues. What that allows us to do, though, I think, is do it better than anyone else, and so, if you look at Austin Austin was once you know their theme was keep Austin weird right. 

Austin is now one of the widest communities in North America, I think just outside of Portland, and so what happened was it seems like half of Portland is in Austin. 

0:25:46 - Speaker 2
now, yeah, it does, yeah, yeah, yeah. So how's San Francisco? And half of Portland is in Austin. 

0:25:50 - Speaker 1
And so what happened was is people get this momentum going so fast that it's, and then the money comes, and then the money comes, and then the money comes and everyone else gets left behind, right, and so all of the Latinx community left Austin, right, like you have. All these people leave, and so Oklahoma City still has an opportunity to preserve districts and communities that have been there forever without any support from development community, from the business community, from the government community, right, like the lack of disinvestment in a lot of areas is profound. That gives us the opportunity, if we're willing to go in and put ourselves in positions that make us maybe feel uncomfortable, to be a part of a city. That when you go to Chinatown in New York City, you don't go to Chinatown because it feels really comfortable. You're going there because you're like this is crazy, right, and it's the best Chinese food you've ever had, and no one speaks English and there's like you don't know what animal is hanging. 

0:26:53 - Speaker 2
And you eat things you would not typically eat. Just do like you know. 

0:26:56 - Speaker 1
win in Rome, right, so win in Chinatown, yeah, and you feel alive right, cause you're like these people get a whole sense of community that we don't have and we can't appropriate it, but we can at least appreciate it and be thankful for it and be in it, and we have those same types of communities in Oklahoma City. 

We've just never given them. So to me, like what I am most excited about is we actually have the opportunity of a city to preserve the people that have made this place so great and so unique that we've all known about but none of the world has. So that's one thing. For Pivot, our goal is to grow, so we think we need to do some bigger projects with the same value system in place, so that we can continue to do the things we care about, but not do it at the risk of the company not surviving. So we've had a couple of projects that were so complicated and so difficult that we bordered on wash, you know, watching it go away, and it's like we need to have a little bit more stability than that. But we still have the same core vision of all the things we're trying to accomplish. 

0:28:02 - Speaker 2
So Plus, it will continue to allow you to joyfully disrupt and show that bigger and bigger things can be done with this approach. 

0:28:10 - Speaker 1
Yes, absolutely. 

0:28:11 - Speaker 2
So just continuation of the mission. Yeah, absolutely Awesome. I love the approach and I love the philosophy, and a lot of people say you know mission driven. They talk about who we are in the four walls, but it's another thing to actively do it, yeah, and live by it and even take losses by it as well, and put your money where your mouth is. So congratulations on that. Thanks. I appreciate you being on the podcast today. 

0:28:34 - Speaker 1
Thank you, thanks for inviting me.

0:28:41 - Speaker 3
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