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Show Summary
In this episode of the Real Estate Pros podcast, host Erika speaks with Daniel Green of BlackBriar Development about his journey in real estate and contracting. Daniel shares insights on scaling a business, the importance of choosing the right clients, and the value of networking. He discusses lessons learned from his experiences, including the significance of enjoying the process of construction and the current market opportunities in Los Angeles.
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High End Fellas Podcast (00:00)
Well, I I think that there is, and one of those big lessons is to make sure that you don’t take every opportunity because it’s tempting when you’re first starting to say, listen, I gotta take this opportunity. I need the money, we’re growing, we gotta take it. But you might be choosing an opportunity that’s gonna do you more damage than good. Maybe the client’s not quite right, the opportunity’s not quite right, whatever. So choose your opportunities wisely because I learned the hard way.Erika (02:00)
Hey everyone, welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m your host Erika and today I’m excited to be joined by Daniel Green of BlackBriar Development. He’s been shaking things up with his own developments in contracting. Daniel, I’m glad to have you here.High End Fellas Podcast (02:05)
youThank you so much for having me, Erika. I’m glad to be here.
Erika (02:21)
I think our listeners are really going to learn a lot with how to scale and grow their own business. you know, let’s dive on in. First, Daniel, can you share more about your story, your journey? What got you interested in real estate and ⁓ how did you land getting into development and contracting?High End Fellas Podcast (02:42)
Yeah, so like, listen, you know, my dad was my headmaster at school. He forced me to stay in school, though I would have left if I had the chance. But my friends all left school when they were 16, right? They all become tradesmen, all become electricians, plumbers. They were in the industry and I was like, ah, how can I approach this from a different perspective, right? So that’s why I decided to take a management approach and I studied construction project management and I did a master’s in that University of Brighton, England.And then from there, I worked for a company in the UK that transferred me to Beverly Hills. So I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to come to Beverly Hills. Although I was pretty young at the time. I was only 23 when I came to LA to Beverly Hills from England. And the funny thing was I went into my boss’s office every day and I said, look, send me to LA. I want to go to LA. And said, you’re too young. You don’t have enough experience. I’m like, well, what do you mean? He’s like, you can’t go yet. And I’d only been with the company a year.
And then when I went into his office and I said, listen now, if everybody in this office, I may be the youngest and I may have the least experience, but that also means I’m the cheapest to send, right? And so when I said that, it flipped the script and the mindset and he was like, all right, we’re gonna need some young guys out there. We’re gonna need some young energy. And they sent me, right? So they sent me to Beverly Hills. I worked out at Beverly Hills for six years, moving and shaking and working with some of the biggest developers in the world.
And from there I was able to then say, I can do this without the business. I can start my own business. And I took that leap of faith to start my own business. I had a couple of opportunities with new clients. I took them and I ran with it. And from there I started to manage projects as an owner’s rep, not a GC to start off with, where I was overseeing other projects, other GCs, overseeing the entire development budget. And then…
Once I’d done that for a few years, was like, listen, maybe I can be the GC here. And so I’ve got my GC license, I started building, and I started scaling up from smaller projects, starting with a thousand square feet, 2,000 square feet, 3,000 square feet. And before I knew it, we were building 40,000 square foot homes, right? So that took time, right? That took commitment, that took scaling the processes and continuously taking yourself out of the business and replacing yourself in the business.
to be able to grow and scale the business to where now we have 20 people working for us in the company on a management scale and we have another 40 people working for us in-house to build these developments. So we’ve got a team of 60 guys that sit underneath our company, Black Briar Development, and our in-house company, On Tap Trade. And so you just really need to stay with the grind because it is a daily grind and make small incremental steps towards your goal every day.
Erika (06:19)
Yeah, yeah, wow. You know, for for someone who’s new and starting off, there any particular lessons that you learned along the way that you wish you would have learned sooner but were instrumental for that growth?High End Fellas Podcast (06:34)
Well, I I think that there is, and one of those big lessons is to make sure that you don’t take every opportunity because it’s tempting when you’re first starting to say, listen, I gotta take this opportunity. I need the money, we’re growing, we gotta take it. But you might be choosing an opportunity that’s gonna do you more damage than good. Maybe the client’s not quite right, the opportunity’s not quite right, whatever. So choose your opportunities wisely because I learned the hard way.with some really bad clients in the first part of our business that really inhibited our ability to grow as opposed to empowering our ability to grow. ⁓ And so I think when you’re really starting out, it can be tempting to just take every opportunity, but you wanna take the opportunities that are really with the right clients and the right opportunity for you to make money and move on to the next one, right? Because a client might take up a bunch of your time and then.
know, things take way longer than you expected and all of your time is sucked by this one client that you could have been spending all of that time growing your business.
Erika (07:41)
Absolutely. What you were talking about transitions great to ⁓ my next question, because I was going to say when it comes to those projects, you know, don’t want to have a scarcity mindset and take up whatever you can. But so then what is that approach to selecting a good fit? What you know, what things are you looking for or what red flags are there that you’re like, I’m not touching that.High End Fellas Podcast (08:05)
Yeah, I mean, I think you’ve got to look really deeply into the client’s personality to start off with, they a good personality fit? Can you get along with this person? know, especially if you’re gonna be doing a project with them that’s multiple years, there’s a thing called deal fatigue, right? You’ve got to sit in a meeting with someone week in, week out. If you’re not getting along with them, that process is just horrible, right? You want to be able to enjoy it. So you’ve got to look at their personality, you’ve got to look at their background.You’ve got to look at what they’ve done before, how have they treated people, have they been in lawsuits, what kind of issues have they had, and do the background research on that individual to make sure they’re gonna be a good fit for you, and they’re gonna be somebody that you can really make money with, that they’re getting a benefit, right? Because it’s ultimately a two-way street. You’re doing something for them that’s gonna make them money, and they’re doing something for you that’s gonna make you money. So there has to be an understanding of that, right?
Erika (08:59)
Yeah. When, you know, when, when it comes to all the experience that you have, Daniel, would you say there, you know, maybe there was a moment that really stood out for you, a project, maybe it went sideways. Maybe you had to completely pivot. Maybe, you know, you had to decide that you weren’t going to work with this person anymore. Can you share one of those moments on your journey and what you learned from it?High End Fellas Podcast (09:24)
Yeah, so very early on in my career, we had a client. ⁓ I can’t say any names, but he was a French man, us as far as I’ll go. But we were building a very big house for him. It was a complicated house. was architecturally a masterpiece, great architect. And we started on the process of building this house. What we found was, is he couldn’t make a decision.He couldn’t get out of his own way. He delayed everything that we tried to do. We put prices in front of him. We need to approve this. We’ve got to get this going. Delay, delay, delay, delay, delay. And then six months into the process of what should have been a two year build, we’ve made no real progress on the build because he blockaded every ability for us to move forward. Because he questioned everything. He didn’t trust. He clearly had some issues with trust.
in terms of the numbers and thinking that these numbers were good and signing up subcontractors. And at a certain point, we had to pull the plug, right? We had to decide this is not the right opportunity. This is sucking all of our time. We need to find an exit strategy for this project because we’re never gonna be able to get this client to commit and move forward. So that’s what we did. But it cost us a good amount of money and it cost us to walk away, right? And it cost us a lot of time and energy.
And I think hindsight 2020, if we’d spent more time analyzing the type of client that we were getting into bed with, we would have been much, much further ahead. And I think that was just a very early lesson in choosing your clients wisely.
Erika (11:36)
Yeah, when it comes to your process now for finding people that you want to work with, are there any networking groups that have been helpful or just general connections that have ⁓ been a game changer for you and your businesses?High End Fellas Podcast (11:51)
Yeah, mean, listen, I always say that only takes one person to connect you with an amazing array of different people that may be an opportunity for you, right? And those people, they don’t come along every day. So when you find that person that’s gonna give you those connections, you really gotta hold onto it and figure out how can I provide value to this person? How can I give them what they need? ⁓and help them so that they wanna continue to help me with the connections that they have, right? It’s like you’re only one degree of separation from anybody, right? People say that. So for me, it’s a lot of networking. It’s not necessarily one group or the other, although there are some that we’re involved with, like ICA would be one, which is Institute of Classical Architecture. There’s quite a lot of good groups and architects inside of that group that do a lot of very beautiful homes here in Los Angeles that we’re very connected with, that provide us with work.
The Estate Managers Coalition is another one in LA that we’re involved with that kind of manages a lot of big estates ⁓ for people and they often get asked about who would they recommend for builders and things like that. ⁓ And then we do a lot of outreach and connection with investors to engage new investors to look at deals with us. We’re sending them pro-formers and…
know, opportunities for them to look at all the time. And we also, we do spend some money on marketing. You know, we do run some ads about our business and what we do to let people know if they’re considering building a house, you know, that they could enjoy the process with us and that we’re a very open and honest contractor where they can enjoy the ride, right? It’s as much about the ride as it is about the end product. I always tell people this, if you wanna build a house, right, and you don’t love the process, don’t do it.
Just buy a house that’s finished because you have to enjoy the design process, the construction process. There’s gonna be issues, there’s gonna be problems. Construction is so ⁓ sporadic and very broken down into multiple different subcontractors that it’s hard to control the process sometimes. Like a manufacturing process is lot easier because it’s in a manufacturing warehouse, you can control everything.
But when you’ve got 25 different subcontractors doing different things, arriving at different times, someone’s car broke down, they’ve got a flat tire, something’s gonna happen that’s gonna at some point hinder your ability to build everything perfectly, smoothly, seamlessly. So you’ve gotta figure out ways to put contingency plans in that process, you know?
Erika (14:27)
Yeah, yeah, you know, you, when it comes to your developments, Daniel, you know, what kind of like opportunities are you seeing in the market that you want to take advantage of?High End Fellas Podcast (14:40)
Well, mean, as much as it’s an opportunity, think with what’s happened in the palisades, there’s a lot of opportunity to help people is the way I would put it, right? We wanna try to help as many of those homeowners rebuild their houses as we can. And so we are starting to work with a lot of those homeowners, although it is a slow process and not as fast as everybody would like. ⁓ We’re starting to see opportunities to rebuild some of these houses in the palisades and we’re looking for opportunities there.And I think we’re still continuing to look for opportunities in LA. I think that now with it becoming a bit more of a buyer’s market, there’s more opportunity to pick up development opportunities at a discount. ⁓ And as we’re now rising out of this interest rate rise that’s starting to come back down, we should start to see some major development opportunities coming into LA.
more investment into LA, we’ve got the World Cup coming, we’ve got the Olympics coming, all of these things, I think, will start to bring a lot more development opportunity back to Los Angeles. A lot of people were saying, ⁓ everyone’s leaving LA, everyone’s leaving LA, everyone’s moving to Miami, everyone’s moving out of state. And that has happened. But I’ll tell you what, a lot of those people came right on back, right? They, you know, they wanna be in, they wanna necessarily be in Florida, in the, know,
in the sweat of Florida, so to speak, right? It’s very humid. The California weather is always inviting back. So I think it’s had a lot of sort of political issues that everybody’s been complaining about, but I think some of that stuff’s gonna get fixed. And I think what you’re gonna see is a big influx of people coming.
Erika (00:00)
So Daniel, with the projects that you’re working on with construction and development, I know a lot of it, you got to be logistical, you got to run your numbers, you got to make decisions that make sense financially. But if we were to kind of strip that away aesthetically, what kind of stuff excites you in construction?High End Fellas Podcast (00:08)
And we’re-Bye.
Yeah, I I’m always excited about design, right? So we’re always trying to look for some opportunities to build something that no one’s ever built before. Like, I’m sitting at a house right now that’s a $20 million house that’s about to go on the market. Big plug to Hut and Drive, 2535 Hut and Drive about to hit the market. So if you know somebody that needs a $20 million house, hit me up, we can show it to you. But this house has an amazing feature, which we did, which was a
40 foot skylight down the hallway that’s completely open to the sky all the way down. That’s super cool and just creates all of this natural light that comes into the hallway, down to the bedrooms at the back of the house. That’s amazing. Whether we’re building bowling alleys, whether we’re building salons, whether we’re building wellness centers, like there’s so much cool shit that people are now putting into homes that’s amazing. And it’s always about unique, interesting materials.
Right, we’re using micro cements, different types of plasters, different types of metals. Like we just did this fireplace at this other house that was metalized plaster. So it’s actually plaster mixed with metal on this amazing fireplace that just looks absolutely fantastic. And you know, we didn’t even know that this product existed, right? There’s always new products and ideas coming out. And so we’re always trying to figure out how can we use these new products in different ways and how can we…
apply them to architecture in an amazing way that makes it feel luxury and high-end, but all the while being warm. I love warm architecture. I don’t like white boxy stuff that just, you know, doesn’t look, it just looks a bit vanilla, you know? I think the warmth in a house is super important.
Erika
Absolutely. Are there any designs or features that you’ve been using lately that just seem to be reliable in terms of ROI or your clients being really happy with it?High End Fellas Podcast
Yeah, I mean, think one of the things that I think is really cool, that is a really great option as an alternative to plaster, because a lot of people would love to have plaster walls in their house, So it’s not always possible that people can afford to do that. So there’s this finish called a lime wash that we’ve used in this house. ⁓ And I can show it to you.
because it’s on the walls and it looks like plaster but it’s not plaster. It’s a paint application and you have to, you can figure out how to do it, right? There’s a YouTube video that will show you how to do it and it’s something that somebody could do themselves at home to make their walls look like they’re plaster but they’re actually not and it’s done, you know, it still looks like you have that texturization of the wall but it’s not as expensive as plaster. So in this house, it’s a $20 million house, we didn’t have the budget to do plaster anywhere, everywhere.
We did it in the master bedroom, we did it in the master bathroom, we did it in some of the bathrooms as well. Actually, we did it in some of the showers. But in the rest of the house, the main areas, the house was a big house, we used the line wash. And that was a really kind of, I wouldn’t say cheap, because it’s still, oops, am I losing? ⁓ there we go. I wouldn’t say cheap, but it was a really effective wayErika
I still see ya.High End Fellas Podcast
of saving some money. So if you look at this wall, I don’t know if you can see it in the light, but you can see how it still has that sort of texture to it, right? So it looks like it could be plaster, ⁓ but it’s not, it’s a lime wash. And I think that might be something that people were interested in, but okay, I could do that in my house and it wouldn’t cost me anywhere near as much. But it still look chic and it still look high-end.Erika
That’s a really cool feature. Well, before we wrap up, Daniel, why don’t you talk about your podcast here, the High-End Fellas podcast.High End Fellas Podcast
High-end fellas, yes. So it doesn’t always have to be fellas. We have women on as well, but it’s called high-end fellas. So it’s essentially about high-end, right? What does high-end architecture mean to you, to designers, to architects? Maybe we’ll bring on a sculpture, right? A guy that makes sculptures out of ironworks and what does his process look like? Or maybe we’ll talk about high-end watches and how, break down how a high-end watch is made. Or maybe we’ll talk about…a jet and the interiors of a jet and how that was crafted and what goes into the background associated with building something like that. Or maybe we’re just talking with a realtor about what are they seeing in the market? What has changed in the market? So all different people connected mainly with real estate, but some other topics are high end. And we’re bringing on all kinds of different guests to discuss that and educate people about what’s new out there, what’s exciting, what new products are coming out.
could be in the world of tech, what new tech products are coming out, how are people controlling their houses, what kind of sophisticated security systems are out there, what kind of AV audio visual systems are out there that are integrating into people’s homes. Everything that people were doing now in high-end homes and real estate or high-end is what we talk about. So it’s exciting.
Erika
Yeah, yeah, that’s a really cool, how can people find your podcast?High End Fellas Podcast
So you can find the podcast High End Fellas on YouTube, it’s also on Spotify as well, and I think it’s on Apple as well. So if you just look up High End Fellas, you should be able to find it. We’ve had multiple podcasts out so far already, I think we’ve done, maybe we’ve done 20 or so. So I suppose we’re new, but we’re definitely growing interest, we’re starting to scale, so that’s exciting. And then again, you can follow me on Instagram, BlackBriarDevelopment, just look up BlackBriarDevelopment on Instagram.You can find us on Facebook and other channels as well. We’re on LinkedIn, but BlackBriar Development, you should be able to find us. And as I said, we’re always posting new content about what we’re doing. We have a lot of shorts of our podcasts on that feed as well to give you a taster of what we’re talking about. And then we’re always talking about what we’re building and showing what we’re building and showing high-end things that we’ve built.
Erika
Yeah, yeah, that’s great. I’m going to have to go take a look later because just what you’ve been sharing has been really awesome today, Daniel. Thanks for being on the show.High End Fellas Podcast
Very welcome.Thank you so much, Erika. I really had such a great time talking with you and looking forward to seeing you again soon.
Erika
Yeah, same here. And for our listeners, if you enjoyed this episode, make sure that you’re subscribed to the Real Estate Pros podcast. We’ve got more conversations coming up with pros like Daniel who are out there building fantastic real estate businesses. We’ll see you on the next episode.
