This real estate guru has it figured out! In this episode, Chris shares how having a healthy and collaborative company culture starts with the first hire. Whether you realize it or not, you are establishing what you’ll accept, not expect. Chris talks about his experience building his company, building his leadership skills, and identifying his strengths and weaknesses during the process. Ultimately, he says, the best companies remain successful because of their culture. Whether you’re starting your own business or looking to join a team, this episode is for you!
Chris is a serial entrepreneur with more than 16 years of real estate development and investment experience. He founded Fort Capital in 2005, and to date, the company has invested over $559M in Class B industrial, commercial, multifamily, student housing, and residential / land development projects throughout the state of Texas.
Chris’s ability to conceptualize, raise capital, and execute are only a small part of what Chris brings to the table as Fort Capital’s Executive Chairman. With a belief that investing time in people is the best investment that can be made, Chris has built a strong network that has helped catapult Fort to where it is today. The drive to always remain curious and desire to connect and learn from others led Chris to start his podcast, The FORT Podcast, in 2019. With 100+ episodes published to date, Chris shares raw business conversations with business leaders and entrepreneurs through this platform.
Chris graduated with a BBA in Finance & Marketing from Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, TX. Innovative, ethics-driven, people-focused, community-minded, and passionate about ideas that matter, Chris’s professional philosophy remains the same as his personal one: “Tell the truth and be nice to people.” Chris is a member of the Fort Worth YPO Chapter. He lives in Fort Worth, TX with his wife, Mikal, and their daughters, Palmer and Connor.
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TRANSCRIPT OF THIS WEEK’S EPISODE
Evan Holladay: Welcome to Monumental, everybody. I’m your host, Evan Holladay. Today we have on the show with us, Mr. Chris Powers. Chris, how are you doing, man?
Chris Powers: I’m doing great, Evan. Thank you for having me today.
Evan Holladay: Yes, really excited to have Chris on the show. Chris is doing some phenomenal things, making massive change in the world and really being a disruptor in the real estate space. Excited to dive into a little bit of his story. Before we do, though I want to give all of our Monumental listeners first off a big shout out, because you are in your own way, making a monumental massive change in the world.
That is what we’re all about here with Monumental, figuring out how we can each have a positive impact in the world, and also how we can live that life of freedom and making massive change in the world. With that, if you’re listening right now, if you could go subscribe, rate and review today’s podcast on Apple podcasts or wherever you’re listening, that really helps us grow our audience.
Really helps us grow the mission of what we’re doing here with Monumental, and helps share the story of people like Chris Powers, who are just crushing it and doing amazing things. With that, thank you guys. Let’s dive into Chris’ background. He is a serial entrepreneur with more than 16 years of real estate development and investment experience.
He founded Fort Capital in 2005, and to date the company has invested over $559 million in class B industrial, commercial, multifamily, student housing and residential and land development projects throughout the State of Texas. That’s basically like its own little country. Texas is so freaking big. I love that, Chris.
A little bit more, he is able to conceptualize, raise capital and execute only a small part of what Chris brings to the table at Fort Capital’s executive chairman. He is also the host and started his own podcast, The FORT Podcast with over 100 episodes to date. He shares raw business conversations with business leaders and entrepreneurs through this platform.
So much more to Chris, but Chris, with that, let’s just dive right in. A little bit of your background, and how you got to where you are today.
Chris Powers: Yeah. Evan, thank you and I appreciate the kind intro. I was born in El Paso, Texas. Lived there my whole life, two great parents and a sister. I moved to Fort Worth in 2004 to attend TCU. Really growing up, I had always had an entrepreneurial bug. I did two things throughout high school, which were selling golf clubs on eBay, which at the time was a novel idea, it’s not like it is today, and mowing lawns.
When I got to TCU, really carried that forward and met a guy early on that was buying rental houses. Was zero money down and this was again, 2004, pre financial crisis of 2008. He taught me, a 17-year old fresh at TCU how to buy houses. I really got into real estate by accident in the sense that it was a way to make money at the time.
Just buying my first house seemed like the biggest achievement ever. I started a real estate company, which is the Fort Capital that we know today. It was buying rental houses at TCU. I had acquired 12 units by the end of my college career. Had started a leasing business called lease by tcu.com.
Funny note, back then, even in ’04, ’05, ’06, people weren’t really searching for houses online yet. They were still driving by a yard sign and leasing. We tried to aggregate online, and started a management business. Then in ’08 when I graduated, to be honest with you, I really still didn’t think up until months before graduation that I was going to continue on.
I wasn’t really thinking too much ahead. When you graduate in the financial crisis and you have a bunch of properties that you bought, you’re forced to keep going and that’s what I did. Over the last, I guess it’s been 13 years since I graduated, we’ve done everything that you could really think to do.
As far as real estate, we’ve developed homes, townhomes, we’ve developed land. We’ve built office buildings, we’ve bought office buildings. Really the last five years, we have transitioned to more of a do all types of assets in one market that we know really well, to let’s become really good at one asset that we can do in several markets. That’s been Class B industrial. We’ve acquired now almost six million square feet across DFW Houston.
We have a deal now in San Antonio. We’re looking at El Paso, and really built an incredible team of 27 people. We’re not a fund, we raise on a deal-by-deal basis. In the intro, you mentioned executive chairman. After 16 years as being the CEO of the business, 90 days ago roughly, I transitioned more to a chairman role and my partner became CEO. While I still work here at Fort every day and I’m active in the business, it’s a much different role. I’m more of a steward of the company now than your day-to-day CEO operator type.
Evan Holladay: Interesting. How many years did you say? 15 years ago?
Chris Powers: Yeah. I guess 2005 to 2000… so 16 years.
Evan Holladay: Yeah. Wow. What made you want to switch from the CEO to the chairman role?
Chris Powers: That’s a great question. About two or three, I think what most founders might tell you, and as companies grow, you go from doing the things you started doing in the business, which were finding deals and executing deals and the day-to-day grind. That starts to wear off over time, and you become more of a manager of people, a builder of culture.
You start doing things in the business that have nothing to do with real estate to some degree. Obviously, developing business and things like that are important. I just hit a roadblock a couple years ago, where I just wasn’t being fulfilled every day. At the time, I didn’t know why. As I started to explore and talk to people and listen to podcasts and things like that, I realized that there was this other life being a chairman.
Not that I want to be Warren Buffett for the sake of having 100 billion, but I know much on the way that he’s structured his life. It’s always been fascinating to me that this man in Omaha that has a reputation for reading all day and playing bridge with Bill Gates had all the time to build this massive, almost trillion dollar company of businesses.
Really what he’s a master at besides investing, it’s just delegating. I started to really think about well, maybe I shouldn’t be the CEO. I can still be the owner and a great steward to the business. Once that clicked, my partner and I spent the last 18 months teeing up that transition, how it would work.
We hired an executive coach and met with a lot of people through YPO, and decided to do that.
That was again, I felt like I had taken the business as far as I could with my skill sets, and that for the business to kind of flourish going forward, I call it a boring business. I don’t mean that in a negative way, but an established company starts to get more boring.
You do the same things every day. You’re incrementally improving a little bit, but there’s not that big, exciting day by day from the early days. I felt like as a good steward to the company, the best thing I could do for the business was to transition. My partner thrives in the role that he’s in now. We have complementary skill sets, and so that’s what I did.
Evan Holladay: I love that. I love the long-term thinking, and mirroring those ahead of us that have been successful, like you mentioned, Warren Buffett. Figuring out, how can I set up a life where I’m living my life on purpose, with intention, the way I want to live my life?
Feeling fulfilled every day, and how can I at this point in time, at this stage in the life how can I remove myself from the business? Segueing into that, what does your day-to-day look like now compared to when you were in the business?
Chris Powers: Well, you mentioned I had started a podcast which I can get into in a little bit. Started that three years ago. Right now my day-to-day at Fort is supporting our CEO and my partner, Jason is really thinking in big, longer visions for where we can take the company.
Really just being a business development role, and still raise equity. I’m associated with that process. I know I have a skill set, being able to bring business into the company. I joke I want to be able to bring it in, and then hand it off. Not bring it in and then work all the way through it.
Evan Holladay: Yeah, get it closed.
Chris Powers: Yeah. We built an amazing team that can handle the business once it’s brought in. That’s my day-to-day at Fort. There’s days that I don’t have much going on, and then there’s days where I’m a little busier. The goal is over time to do less and less, not more and more.
Ironically, it’s not what we think but the less in the day-to-day I get involved, the business has continued to accelerate and flourish. I think there’s no coincidence to that. That’s just what happens. That’s where we are today.
Evan Holladay: That’s really interesting. As part of your vision, do you plan on always being involved in Fort? Then looking at other businesses to be involved or starting, or is it just focused on Fort? Tell us a little bit more about that.
Chris Powers: Great question. Yeah, I think the other thing I didn’t mention is just maintaining the culture. We’ve built an incredible team and culture, and I work with Jason behind the scenes to keep the integrity of our culture and our people intact. I think the longer term vision would be within a year or two, to very much have my role down to maybe one day a week at the most.
I think everybody says one day a week, maybe that’s one day a week of meetings or things of that nature. Again, I think it goes back to the- Harvard has done a lot of this. The Founder Dilemma. This business to me is like my first born child in a lot of ways. It’s my baby, and so what I tell people is I love it today more than I ever have.
Because I love it that much, I’ve realized I need to get out of the way. When you hire great people that want to make impact, that want to do great things in life, you got to get out of their way. People that want to make a huge difference don’t want a lot of roadblocks.
What you find in a lot of founders is because they get to that point where they don’t know what to do, they just start becoming a roadblock thinking that they’re providing value when maybe they’re not. Longer term, I think the entrepreneur in me thinks I have a few more good ideas in me.
At this moment, I want to spend the next one or two years really learning what it’s like to be a chairman and an owner. I think that’s a whole other learning experience, because my tendency if I see something is to say something, or to do something.
To be a great chairman, you have to pass off the role to the CEO and let the CEO be the CEO. That is going to be a learning experience. I’m 90 days in, I think I’m doing okay. I’ll be a good shepherd, and then we’ll see what happens. I have to close that loop, what I do know is that real estate has provided me a huge opportunity.
I know a lot of people in the industry, I know a lot about the industry in all different facets. Anything else I go do in life, I want to use the leverage that I built here in my next thing so that I have a competitive advantage starting out.
Evan Holladay: I love that. Well, I love your philosophy on basically how you’re still giving back to the company, but also figuring out what the next step is and how you can leverage what the skills, the relationships, the network that you’ve built up to take that into the next venture. Also, you mentioned quite a bit about culture building, how important that is.
Also, managing people and helping people grow, and also ultimately getting out of their way if they’re really great and talented people. I love that your company is dedicated to people maintaining a healthy and collaborative culture. How did that come about? Was that intentional from the beginning, or was that part of a process?
Chris Powers: It’s funny. When people ask me what my dream is, I don’t exactly think about it but I would like to be a holding company of some sort. I would like to be in different verticals. Really what I want is to be around smart people that are ambitious all day. That’s where I thrive. That’s why I have a podcast, I love being in that moment.
I don’t know, I picture myself walking down the halls, and maybe I’m in the real estate department one day and we have other verticals that we’ve gotten into, but your culture is everything. I didn’t know that originally. I knew I wanted to work with smart people, but I thought everybody will just arrive. They’ll just do what I think.
Evan Holladay: “It’s super easy.”
Chris Powers: Yeah, “It’s super easy, everybody will get it.” I think culture is if you’re in business school or coming out of college, you just think of it as this word in your textbook.
Evan Holladay: Yeah, a buzzword.
Chris Powers: It’s something you fight for every single day, and one person can change a culture dramatically. I always tell people, your culture is what you’re willing to accept in your business. It’s not the top of your business, it’s what you’re willing to accept at the bottom.
What you find in companies that don’t work out long time is that bottom keeps getting lower and lower. They keep accepting less and less. To maintain a great culture, that bottom bar needs to keep raising. You need to be relentlessly focused on not compromising what that is.
The truth is if you can get it right, and I’m not saying we’ve got it right. You’re always working on it. Great people want to be a part of a great culture, and so you can’t get great people to show up and last very long in an organization that doesn’t focus on that. If we were to relate it to sports, Alabama wins the national championship every year.
Not because they’re using the same players every year, but because they have an amazing culture and way of doing things that makes great people arrive. Not only arrive, but then flourish once they’re there. That’s how I think about it.
Evan Holladay: That’s awesome. Do you have any guide posts or mentors, or companies that you look up to in your process of building a really great quality team and a great quality culture?
Chris Powers: I don’t want to keep going back to Buffett, because I know he’s the easiest one to pick on. But some of the things about him are, they call it the Web of Deserved Trust. He buys businesses, leaves the CEOs intact and lets them do their thing. When I think about that going forward is I don’t want to be a person that is getting in the way of great people.
I want to be the person that one, can get them to arrive, but two, provide them opportunities to go the distance. Whatever I get into, I’m very aware of that going forward. I can’t say I was always aware of that, but it’s just fascinating to me the way that they have done things. You just see it around.
There’s no company that’s at the top of their game that doesn’t have amazing people excelling, and doing really well in an environment that people really want to work out long term. It just doesn’t exist. In today’s modern age where there’s a lot more transparency, you just can’t run things like a dictator anymore.
If people aren’t treated right, they’re going to leave. They have options. Maybe the easiest one is to go on Berkshire, but it’s more for the reasons of how Warren has thought about trusting great people and truly trusting them and letting them run. I think the thing that’s easy to say is I’m going to trust you, but it’s hard to say I’m going to trust you up until you do this one thing and then I’m in.
As soon as you break that trust of okay, he doesn’t fully trust me because I just made a mistake and now he’s involved, it takes a long time to regain that back. Again, that’s where I really want to learn that side of the business.
I’m really focused on it because again, even in the last 90 days, there’s been so many instances where I’ve wanted to say something or do something, and just shutting up and saying nothing is often the best policy.
Evan Holladay: That is really interesting. What advice would you have for our Monumental listeners trying to build a great team, and be able to take some of the principles you’re mentioning about building great quality culture and trying to make just a fun, unique place to work where people are excited to come in every day and make cool things happen?
Chris Powers: Well, you talked about the building early on. I think the first thing I would say is the first few employees in a business are so critical. They’re unbelievably critical. What you usually find in a small business that’s moving fast is they don’t really have great hiring techniques.
They’re just trying to get warm bodies in the office to do the work. The afterthought is the culture. To the extent you can, I think the cliché is be slow to hire and quick to fire, is you have to be super intentional early on about who’s coming in.
The truth of the matter is as the company grows, you have to be able to continue leveling up, because what works early on doesn’t work at 20 people, at 40 people. There’s different skill sets. One is just making it a focus. Two, be relentless. The people that you work with are with you eight hours a day, you often see them more than you see your families.
I don’t think people, especially first time founders or first time CEOs, maybe they don’t think about that as much. It’s more like hey, just come join the fight and we’ll figure out the culture thing later. What they don’t realize is the culture is created day one, you just don’t know it. It’s just really intentional.
We’ve had a lot of amazing hires, and the team is in incredible shape. Early on, there were times where we regretted who we hired. They weren’t bad people as people, they just didn’t fit what we were trying to do. We didn’t really know that until after and looking back, it’s probably something we could have known during the interview process had we been more intentional about it.
Evan Holladay: That’s funny you say that, because I definitely had that experience within our company where we kept somebody here longer than we should have. In hindsight, we should have noticed the signs in the hiring process, but we overlooked them because we’re excited about certain aspects of this person.
It’s interesting how, I like how you said, the culture really starts with the first hires. That is so important, and especially because culture ultimately is just people and what people do and don’t do as a part of becoming a part of the team.
Chris Powers: That’s business. You’re in the development business, but all business really is, is a bunch of people doing things and the output is your apartment community. The apartment community doesn’t arrive without all the people doing what they’re doing. I don’t mean to keep bringing up clichés, but what you usually find with people is that if they’re not working, I think the cliché is if there’s any doubt, there’s no doubt.
Early on, people that hang on to people too long because they think they’re doing them a service, it’s really a disservice to them and it’s a disservice to the business. Look, the worst days that I’ve ever had at Fort Capital are when we’ve had to let people go. It sucks. I hate it, but it is necessary to create a great organization.
Again, that goes back to what are you willing to accept? If you’re willing to accept mediocre work and a mediocre attitude, then more people like that will keep arriving because mediocre people do mediocre work are okay hiring mediocre people that do mediocre work.
Evan Holladay: That’s really interesting. Like you said earlier, it’s not what you expect. It’s what you accept at the bottom end of the totem pole, I guess you want to call it. I love the way you’re looking at things. As far as for our Monumental listeners, as they’re building their team around them, they’re growing their company, they’re growing their impact. What advice would you have for on the hiring process? You said a lot of earlier entrepreneurs or leaders don’t really have the tools, or know how to correctly hire. How would you recommend?
Chris Powers: There’s a few things, I’ll just go off the top of my head is to the extent you can, I would do reference checks. Everybody shows up well in an interview, and resumes always look polished. Nobody puts their mistakes on there. The second is, and it’s easy to say especially early on depending on what stage you are.
When you’re hiring someone, if you just ask yourself, would I work for this person? If the answer’s no, or if it’s hell no, I wouldn’t work for this person then ask yourself, “Well, why would I let this person work for me?” Depending on the level of person, especially if you’re hiring a partner, an executive or somebody high up to the extent you can, this was advice that I was given and it’s almost proved true every time.
Go to dinner with them and their spouse before you hire them, and take your spouse. Let your spouse observe the dinner, because your spouse knows a lot about you. Often when you’re hiring, you have blinders on. You’re only seeing what you want to see. In several cases I’ve done that, and my wife has come home and she’s told me like 10 things she observed.
Not that they’re all bad, but it just gives you a whole other perspective. Maybe those are a few, but I think the most critical part is starting out saying here’s what we’re going to accept, or here’s what we’re willing to accept. These are the type of people we want. Even though we need somebody yesterday, we might be willing to wait an extra month, because once they’re on board, they’re on board.
Somebody told me once, I was having trouble with somebody in our business. They said, “Well, why don’t you let him go?” I was still in that, “Well, we don’t really want to.” He goes, “You realize you’re just paying that person to show up every day and piss you off.” I’m like, “Okay, that’s a good way of putting it.” How long are you going to do that?
By the way, to that person, it’s really not fair to them that they’re getting to hang around. So dinner, what you’re willing to accept, references are huge. It all starts with the mindset of we are going to hire great people, and we’re not going to bend on that.
Evan Holladay: Yeah. Do you follow any outline or operating system like traction, or others for your business?
Chris Powers: Yeah. The EOS people will hate me when I say this. We were fully on traction early on. Call it five years ago. Then as we grew, there were things about traction we loved, and we still do today relentlessly. The only difference of what we did was instead of the rock system and the three-year rocks, one year, three year, we moved more to OKR goal setting method.
We still do L10s. We still do elevate delegate. We still have a lot of the components of EOS, but we have chosen the OKR goal setting method as our preferred method. It’s a hybrid between the two.
Evan Holladay: What is OKR, for our listeners?
Chris Powers: OKRs are Objectives and Key Results. They were invented at Google, and it’s a different way to set goals that has a top-down bottom-up approach in helping set. What you see in a lot of companies is the leaders set the goals, but they set them without getting any buy-in from the rest of the team.
So what you’ll have is these goals that everybody feels good about at the top, but at the bottom people are like, “You all aren’t the ones doing the actual work. You’re setting goals that while they sound good on paper, you don’t realize all the mechanics of how that goal would actually be achieved.”
OKRs, without getting too much into it, offer an opportunity to not only set the objective, but then really work with the team to say is this feasible? How is it feasible? You get buy-in from both sides.
Evan Holladay: That’s interesting. Basically taking certain components of traction, and mixing that with the OKR method.
Chris Powers: Correct. Key results are similar to Rocks in that you might have some big objective, but you got to eat that elephant one bite at a time. Key results can be as long as a month. They can be as long as six months. There’s no time period, it’s just we can’t get to the next level until we bite this bite first.
It has a lot of similarities to Rocks and everything. John Doerr wrote a great book on them. I think a lot of tech businesses use OKRs, and it’s something that we have just found is a much better way for our team and it fits our culture better.
Evan Holladay: That’s really interesting. I definitely hear a theme throughout what you’re saying, and the value you’re providing to Monumental listeners is really you have to invest in your team and your culture, and your people in order for them to be fulfilled and have the impact that they want to have through the business and throughout their life. Ultimately, in order to be able to succeed and to have your business and venture succeed.
Chris Powers: It’s a lot like parenting. If some of your listeners are parents, the biggest impact on a kid’s life I think it’s unequivocally, we can all say this, is who are their parents? How were they raised? What values are they given? We’re dealing with adults in business, but it’s very much a lot of the same concepts.
You got to invest in these people, and you got to put the time in and they need to know it’s genuine. Again, it’s not like you invest in somebody for a day and you’re good. It’s an ongoing process forever. That’s how you hear these stories that we read of the janitor that became the CEO. Well, the theme in that story is that person was invested in at every level.
Not only were they invested in, but there were also obviously people that took the initiative to run with that investment. It’s a lot of work. To be candid with you just so I’m not sounding like I’m somebody that I’m not, that constant investment in people and managing of people day-to-day and accountability was really what fatigued me.
I knew I could lead people, but the day-to-day grind of working with people wasn’t my strength. Originally I was like, “Man, I’m just a bad person.” I put a lot of shame on myself for that, and in that two-year process of exploring what I realized is there are people on this planet that love to manage people and love to work with them day-to-day. I just said, “Great, then I’m going to have somebody do that, so that I can do what I’m better at.”
Evan Holladay: I want to highlight just because I find this fascinating. From the outside eye, it’s like wow, this is really impressive. You said started at 17 the Fort. You’re now 34. Is that correct?
Chris Powers: Yeah.
Evan Holladay: 34 becoming executive chairman of your company. How big is your team right now? You said 27?
Chris Powers: 27.
Evan Holladay: 27 people, and really what sounds to be firing on all cylinders over $559 million in assets. On top of the people, what else do you think has helped you be able to reach that level of success and achievement in a very young age?
Chris Powers: I’ll then take you back to people again, not just inside the business. You’re an average of the five people you surround yourself with. That could not be more true. Anybody that hears that that thinks that’s a cliché, it’s absolutely wrong. If you take yourself and you go start hanging out with five drug addicts every day, no matter how smart your IQ or anything, if those are the truly the five people that you interact with, you’re probably going to become a drug addict.
To the flip side, if you go hang out and put people in your life that you aspire to be like, you will elevate yourself kind of through osmosis just being in the room. A lot of it’s been that. The second is and I don’t know if I was born with this or whatever. I’ve just never had any fear in asking questions to people, being vulnerable. I think the know-it-all that walks into the room, there’s no help to give that person because they already know it all.
The people that are the top of their craft, Elon Musk still probably wakes up every day feeling poor from the sense of I have a lot of knowledge I still have left to gain. I think I’ve had a knack for asking questions, and really putting mentors in my life. It was always an easy equation to me. It was like that person has already done what I want to do. Now I need to find out all the roadblocks that I hit and all the mistakes they made so that I just don’t do them, or at least I’m aware of them.
I think a lot of people, either they’re scared to ask, they don’t want to look stupid. Maybe they don’t know to ask. But unless you’re going and doing something like going to Mars, most of the things that people are working on is something that somebody has already done. I think that really great leaders want to give it back.
I think more people would be surprised at how much people are willing to share if they’re willing to ask. I’ve always done that. I don’t know, it’s just again how I’m wired. I’m just a visionary person. Nobody needs to motivate me. I wake up every day motivated. That is I think something I was given as a gift. I’ve just kept chopping wood day in and day out.
It’s just been a very consistent grind for a long time. What happens on the other side is you buy a lot of real estate or whatever you do. At any one day throughout the last 16 years, I always felt like, God, I still have so much to do. I even sit here today and in my mind I’ve just gotten started. I’ll probably feel that way 20 years from now, and I can’t quite put on why I feel that way. I think that’s the part I don’t know.
Evan Holladay: I love that you shared all of that and I’m glad you brought up specifically you think people are afraid to ask that because they’re feeling stupid or not knowing what to say. That people put up all these roadblocks in their mind, they know what you said about you are the average of the five people, but yet a lot of people still hang out with the same people.
Or maybe marginally increase the level of people that they surround themselves with, even though they want to get to that exponential level. I’m really glad you brought that up, because I think a lot of our listeners can gain a lot of value from that of just saying hey, how can I be a constant learner?
How can I always be putting myself in the right rooms and right conversations with the right people? How can I find people who are three, five, 10, 20 years ahead of where I want to be and have already accomplished X, Y, and Z and already done all the deals that I want to do? Have bought all the real estate and had all the impact, and help the community, given back to the cities or whatever it is that you want to create.
Like you said Chris, there’s likely one or multiple people that have had some sort of similar path in their life. It’s not an impossible task to reach out to them, and make a connection and build a relationship. Maybe it’s only one conversation, or maybe it’s a long-term relationship. Maybe it’s even a partnership. There’s just so many things that can come from that, just reaching out and connecting.
Chris Powers: Well, the one thing I would just add to that, and the cool thing about where we live in in 2021 is if we were in 1950, those five people literally had to be five people that you could see. One of those five people could just be somebody that you watch on YouTube every day that motivates you, that’s doing something you’ve already done.
I think they do need to be people that you know that will invest in you. But for people that might be looking at the slate going, “Man, I need five totally new people in my life” or whatever that might be, you can get that through this podcast. You can get that through a great YouTube video. There’s a lot of people that you can put in your life that can push you that don’t necessarily have to be people you know right off the bat.
Evan Holladay: Yeah, I love that. As far as what you are most excited about, about the future, future view, future of what you’re working on, future of your potential. Where do you get most excited?
Chris Powers: The world was built on optimists, not pessimists. I’m very excited about the future. Again, maybe that’s how I’m wired. Just in general, I have a positive outlook that most people on earth, we tend to see in the media and things like that, that the 1% on either side that are just total lunatics. The majority of people get up every day and try and do their best.
I tell people all the time, you could have been the richest person in America 100 years ago, and you didn’t have air conditioning or a refrigerator. The world is getting better, it’s improving. One, I’m just optimistic about the future. Where I see I think my biggest impact is going back to I know what my core competencies are.
I’ve worked with enough people now. I’ve gotten my base under me. I think there’s a lot more to be improved on in the real estate technology side. I’m really excited about what I’m doing in my podcast, but I think it goes back to I’m most excited to keep working with really great people.
I can’t sit here today and say I know what the next business is going to be, but I do know that I have, because of my 16 years at Fort Capital, a really good filter for making sure that whatever it is that I continue to do remains intact. I’m still learning every day, but I’m coming in with a better tool belt as I move into this next phase of my career.
Evan Holladay: Yeah, I love that and I agree with you. I think there’s real estate technology, and I think everything that’s coalescing at the same time is creating really exciting times for people that are willing to step up and take advantage of it.
Chris Powers: Yeah, for sure.
Evan Holladay: Two last questions, and then I want to jump into our Monumental questions. We didn’t really talk as much on the real estate side, but I did want to ask, with all the different assets that you’ve been involved in, why have you chosen to focus specifically on the warehouses, and specifically the class B warehouses?
Chris Powers: Yeah, great question. One, they’re already built. I like the idea of when I buy something, knowing what I bought and then the equation of how to make it successful becomes more simple. Really, we looked at the world in 2016 and just thought it’s easier to sit here today and acknowledging things wasn’t as easy five years ago.
Some simple statistics. For every billion dollars increase in online sales, there’s 1.25 million square foot need for industrial. If I believe that e-commerce is going to continue rising, which anybody that thinks that e-commerce has hit a peak, I think we’re still in the second inning. That’s going to impact us.
Two, a lot of the tenants that we have that have nothing to do with e-commerce are in a city that’s growing, DFW has 100,000 homes under construction. Where’s all that roofing material being supplied? Where are the roads, where are the suppliers and manufacturers and contractors and service providers? They inhabit our spaces.
On the flip side of all that, you can’t rebuild this stuff. There’s not industrial land in the middle of a major city. If there is a lot of land, it’s usually for higher and better use. I don’t have to worry about new supply. I’m competing against the supply set that I know about. In fact, in Texas, we think it’s depleting 1% to 2% a year.
What you often see in class B industrial is people will buy them and convert them into office or entertainment or some type of hybrid use, or they’re torn down all together. I know you’re in Nashville. I don’t know what it’s called, but one of the biggest mixed-use developments I think going on in Nashville was an old industrial park.
That’s the case in Dallas, uptown Dallas. One of the most prolific mixed-use communities was an industrial park in the ’80s. In Fort Worth, that’s West Seventh. You’re seeing it torn down for higher and better uses, but the tenant base isn’t shrinking. It’s actually growing. Sam Zell said why he likes mobile home parks is because it’s really hard to build any more of them, so we thought there’s a supply constraint.
Then lastly, and I won’t go through all the reasons. We like the idea that when we come in and paint buildings, stripe the lots, maybe patch the roof, that’s seen as this huge upgrade. We’re not having to build these class A really nice finish out, and the tenants are pretty humble.
There’s a minimal office, I like to joke there’s no Platinum toilet that the CEO is asking for in these spaces. CapEx is really predictable, and they’re easy to manage. That’s a high level overview of why it made sense to us, and we’ve just been playing out that strategy as we go.
Evan Holladay: That’s really interesting. You have me convinced. As far as one other question on that, do you look for more infill, completely surrounded industrial, or are you looking more in suburban locations, or is it really just wherever it is?
Chris Powers: Great question. We’re looking to be in the major cities, not on the peripherals and we love mature neighborhoods with tons of rooftops. That is our fastball. I think we bought maybe one or two deals that you could say are on the peripherals, but I would argue we think they’re in growth corridors. We look at five or 10 years from now, they’re going to be surrounded by rooftops.
Evan Holladay: That is really interesting. I agree with you, I think industrial warehouse space in general, I think it’s got a long way to go to really reach its capacity of demand. I agree with you, I think more and more, the last minute or the last mile trucking, that’s going to take up more distribution space.
Everybody is going to expect deliveries within a couple hours within a few years. Amazon and all the whole e-commerce world is completely changing demand for warehouse, on top of just more and more businesses needing warehouse space. That’s really, really interesting.
One last question, what is one last piece of advice you can leave with our Monumental listeners that are wanting to maybe mirror your level of success, and your level of growth and build out their company and one day be able to remove themselves to the chairman role?
Chris Powers: I won’t go back into the people. I think one regret that I have that I wish I had started earlier was focusing on one thing. For a lot of years, we were doing all types of things. If you’d asked me at the time, I would have said our competitive advantage is we know the Fort Worth market, so it doesn’t really matter what asset type we’re in.
I have totally changed my mind on that. I think that focusing on one asset type is just like everything compounds. You just get so much smarter about it. You know when a deal is a deal. You don’t spend time for months or weeks working on something that was never going to happen anyway. You can move a lot quicker, you get a lot smarter.
Then when you’re recruiting, you can recruit better because people know what they’re showing up to do. They don’t know if you’re building townhomes and this and that, and you’re a small company, you’re telling people, you’re going to work on it all. That seems like a great thing, but people want to focus.
Then when you’re raising capital, as we started doing bigger projects and started raising more professional type money, people kept saying to me, “Yeah, we like your deal, but we’re worried that who knows what you’re going to be focused on tomorrow? Why would we give you money when we could go give the townhome developer that only does townhomes money?” If there was one thing that I would say early on I wish that we had done earlier, and has been the biggest accelerator of our business is focus.
Evan Holladay: I love that. It’s the one thing.
Chris Powers: Hard to do.
Evan Holladay: Yeah. It really is, it’s just hard to put on the blinders, but I agree with you. Well, I love that. I love everything in today’s episode. Before we wrap up, let’s dive into Monumental questions. What does success mean to you?
Chris Powers: Great question. Success to me on the personal side is really getting to know my kids, and being a part of their life. A lot of people that are founders and owners and entrepreneurs can tend to forget that, so that’s important to me. My relationship with my wife is important to me.
On the business side, it’s not necessarily a specific thing, but it’s using the opportunities that I’ve had to bring other people up. I think I would leave this question with just something that people can think about that I think about a lot that some wise people told me. They just said imagine you’re at your 80th birthday, and you’re at a party.
Your family is there. Your co-workers that you’ve worked with over your career are there, and your kids are going to get up and give you a speech. Your wife is going to give you a speech, and one of your co-workers and maybe a friend. What are they going to tell you at your 80th birthday about how you impacted them?
The good news is if you’re sitting there thinking, “Man, I don’t know if I’m going to get a lot of good speeches.” Great, then change yourself. That has stuck with me for so long as what will people say at my 80th birthday if they give a speech? It’s really easy when you go through that process to go, I need to change this, or I need to do more of this. That’s a framework that I think about when I think about really long-term success.
Evan Holladay: Yeah, I love that. As far as daily habits or morning rituals that you have, what does that look like?
Chris Powers: I’ve never had one until COVID. That’s one of the one blessings that I got out of COVID. I go on a 90-minute walk every morning. I go at six o’clock. Sometimes I’ll go with friends. A lot of times I just go by myself. I’ve even used it to meet with people.
When you go on a 90-minute walk with people, it just changes the dynamics. For me, the ones I do by myself probably mean the most. It’s time to think, reflect, but I’m pretty religious about it now.
Evan Holladay: That’s cool. I love that. I’ve done walking meetings. One thing I’ve heard other people do is hiking meetings, which I’d like to try as well.
Chris Powers: Yeah, walking meetings. You hear about walking meetings. There’s just something different about walking than being at a stuffy conference table.
Evan Holladay: Yeah. Last question. What about your favorite book or book you’re currently reading?
Chris Powers: I don’t want to sound like a broken record. The book we gave this year, we give as our investor gifts and our annual gift investors, we always give our book of the year. Last year’s was the Tao of Charlie Munger, which is a book of just all the different concepts that he’s laid out over life. You can read it front to back, but it’s also one of those books you just flip to page 89 and read the 89th thing that he had talked about. It sits on my desk and I refer to it all the time.
Evan Holladay: That’s awesome. I’ll have to check that one out. Chris, phenomenal episode. I got a lot of out of this episode. I love this. I love your story. I love your energy, your passion for people. Building people up, building up great cultures and companies. Having massive impact through that. Finding your niche, staying in your lane, putting on the blinders, and so many other things that we got to dive in. Thank you for that, Chris. Where can our Monumental listeners follow you or reach out to you?
Chris Powers: One, thank you so much. This was a lot of fun. It’s fun to be on this side of the mic. The best way to find me is you can go to our website fortcapitallp.com. I’m really active on Twitter @fortworthchris, or you can check me out on my podcast, The FORT Podcasts of Chris Powers.
Evan Holladay: Yes, thank you so much, Chris. Guys, take Chris up on that. He is sharing massive value. I personally got a lot of insights for Holladay Ventures, and what we’re doing with our company so thank you for that, Chris.
Guys, remember, if you enjoyed today’s episode with myself and Chris, make sure to subscribe, rate and review wherever you’re listening today. Also, please, make sure to share this on social media. Let other people know or text it to a friend. Guys, with that, have a monumental day.
