← CZ and Friends
CZ and Friends
Inside Real Estate Law: Nicole Komin & Danielle Shainbrown hosted by Laurel Palluzi
00:45:11
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- [00:00]
A
If you're not comfortable making mistakes, you're not challenging yourself enough.
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B
A business is only as good as a partnership.
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C
Welcome back to CZ and Friends, where we talk with founders and operators shaping how modern companies work. If you are a regular listener, you may have already caught on that I am not Cecilia. Today. I'm Laurel Paloozi, general counsel at gcai, and I'm sitting in for her. Really happy to be here. Today's guests are Nicole Komen and Danielle Shane Brown. They co founded two companies together out of Buffalo, New York, a law firm, Shane Brown Komen, pllc, and a consulting and advisory practice, Bellwether Advisors. Both launched in 2022, both running at the same time. What I love about these two is that they took completely different roads to get here. Nicole came up through public interest and elder law. Danielle spent almost a decade inside a real estate development company and eventually ran it as president before stepping away to build of her own. Very different journeys, same destination. This is also the first time on CZ and Friends that we are really digging into real estate law. And honestly, it is long overdue. Let's get into it.
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B
Thank you so much, Laurel. We're just, we're so excited to be here. And thanks for the invite.
- [01:16]
C
Yeah. Nicole, Danielle, welcome to the show. I want to start with each of your paths because I think the contrast is part of what makes this conversation so interesting. Nicole, yours is the less expected one. You came up through public interest work, elder law, pro bono coordination. It's not the typical on ramp to founding a real estate and business law firm. What were you actually doing in those years and what did that work teach you that you still use today?
- [01:42]
B
Sure, that's a great question. My path from my early 20s to now has been kind of all over the place, and I'll back up even a little bit more. So. I knew I always wanted to go to law school, but after undergrad, I just wasn't mentally ready. So I ended up going through a higher education administration graduate program, which took me to the School of Nursing at the University at Buffalo, where I was an academic advisor. Then I went to law school. When I graduated law school, I briefly worked at a law firm that unfortunately split up into two separate firms, which is how I ended up in public interest. But I started doing divorce and personal injury, two areas that are just. They're not the areas that I knew I was going to end up in in the long term, so had an opportunity to try to join a elder law. It was called the center for Elder Law and justice here in Buffalo, New York. It was a C3 focused on elder law. There I touched everything from grandparents rights to starting a pro bono program to then having an office in our local general hospital called Buffalo General where I had an office on the 11th floor. I used to go into the ICU and I would draft wills for people that were in the icu, which was my mom's a doctor. She absolutely loved that part of my life. I knew I was never going to go into medicine, but it really just was a complete eye opening experience. Ultimately though, I knew that wasn't going to be the final end path for me. And then a friend of mine who I went to law school with was at McGuire Development and she was leaving it's a local developer here in Buffalo. She was kind of an in house council owner's rep, which we'll get into what that means later on. I really had no idea what the position was, but it seemed really interesting. Went in for an interview. That's where I met Danielle and started working at McGuire Development, which McGuire Development is a commercial real estate company in Buffalo, New York. My path has gone every which way. I did not expect to land where I did. But deep down both my parents are entrepreneurs. Deep down I always knew I wanted to own something. What that was and who that was going to be with, I had no idea. I remember being in law school and people saying, well, what do you want to do? And I'm like, I want to own something. I don't. Well, what do you want to own? I don't know. And then I met Danielle and all of a sudden things started clicking.
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A
Not right away.
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B
It's not like we knew we were going to do this right away, but we worked really well together. And I think with a partnership, a business is only as good as a partnership.
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C
No, that's great. So it seems like this pivot into McGuire happened pretty organically. But you tell me if I'm wrong there, Nicole.
- [04:30]
B
It did. Yeah, it just. It's so funny. I remember the day when the posting. So how it works in, in Buffalo, there's a local bar association called the Erie County Bar association. And every Friday at 3 o' clock they send out a mass email to any attorney that's part of the bar association. Danielle's Danielle knows exactly what I'm talking about. And any attorney that might be listening
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A
in Buffalo today, we're about an hour away.
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B
Yeah. So at 3:00 clock on a Friday, the local bar association would send out a mass email with any new Job openings and, you know, at that time, still a younger attorney, always trying to look at what opportunities are there. I, I remember I was about to get into my car to drive, and I looked at my phone. I'm like, that's an interesting position. So immediately I started googling who works at McGuire, and I realized one of my classmates that I went to law school with, I remember I got in my car, called her, and I immediately, I don't know, she sold the position. She sold McGuire. She sold the position. She told me about Danielle and she's like, you know, you're going to be doing some really interesting things that are really going to have an impact on the city of Buffalo. Working for a developer and Buffalo coming into a renaissance over the last 15 years. On the real estate end, she sold me. She said, nicole, you are going to be part of conversations that are really impacting the community and the region as a whole. And that just sold me. I'm like, oh, I've always wanted to be part of something like that. Not saying that what I did before didn't do that because I was doing some really incredible work. But I, I, I really wanted to be part of that. So, yeah, it happened organically. Thank God I checked my email.
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C
No, that's, that's fun. I love it. Danielle, your path looks more traditional on paper, but it's actually just as interesting, seven years at a firm than nearly a decade inside a real estate development company, eventually running it as president. What did those nine years at McGuire teach you about the real estate business that could not have learned from the outside?
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A
So when I, when I was practicing for the firm, I was kind of dispatched on this mission. And it's a really interesting story, so I'll tell it to you. In western New York, which is where Buffalo is, we have Niagara Falls. And Niagara Falls has a very large Air Force base, the Niagara Falls Air Force Base. Back then, because this was 2011, things were very different. And they used to do something called a Boss Lift, which was run by a nonprofit associated with the Air Force called the Employer Support for the Guard and Reserve, PSGR and Quarterly. They would recruit business owners and labor and employment attorneys to learn more about how the benefits of hiring reservists and guardsmen, which is a really important topic. A lot of employers are very anxious about doing that. At the time, my immediate supervising partner was too busy to go on the Boss lift, so I got to go. And it's, it was an 18 hour trip on a C130 aircraft. So we sat on cargo netting. And we flew from Buffalo to Biloxi, Mississippi, which is home to another air force base. All of this has nothing to do with anything except that when I was assigned the task to go on this flight, one of the other businesses was McGuire Development Co. And the president at the time, Jim Dettinger, was going to be on this boss lift. So my boss said we should really be doing their corporate work, so why don't you pitch it while you're away? So I did and I, all I said was, you know, we'd really love an opportunity to work with you. I think we can, you know, we, you know, at the time the pitch was we do things differently and you know, we're really agile and, and he's, you know, he was, it was literally a five minute conversation. And his answer was, okay, I'll think about it. And then about a month later, he reached out and said, do you have time for lunch? And he, instead of hiring us as a firm, he said, we really want a general counsel and we really think that you're the right person for general counsel. For going to law school, I worked for another family owned real estate development firm. I was very young though, and I really did not do very much substantively, but I knew the business. So I did a 180 left the law firm life. I had a little boy and so I really didn't want to be billing, you know, in a law firm anymore. But surprise, I still had to Bill at McGuire. We did and when I joined, you know, the job was sold to me as general counsel. But what I ended up doing for 11 years was running a division. I had a revenue generating business line that I was responsible for and it's called ownership representation. And I knew nothing about construction. But an owner's rep is really an ideal role for a lawyer because it's. You stand in the shoes of your client. And think of most clients are nonprofits, schools, charter schools, who don't know how to build things for themselves. And so obviously this, you know, large for the region family owned real estate development company knows how to build things. They build things all the time and they know the ins and the outs and where the tricks are. And so we would fee for service, hire ourselves out to be that expert standing right next to the nonprofit that was doing a project. So it took me a year to learn really the ropes of the business and I think I added the legal flair to it. So a lot of really good record keeping, a lot of reviewing of contracts, making sure people were doing what their contracts actually said. In construction and real estate, almost no one knows what their contracts say, even though they've signed them. So, you know, it became almost, you know, a very high level owner's rep. We're not architects, we're not construction experts, but we're experts in how things are supposed to be. And so that was my day job, was running the owner's rep division. And we did some really amazing projects here in Buffalo, in Boston, and in New York City. And then I had always had kind of an associate general counsel. And the, the second one was leaving me when and I met Nicole, and I was lucky. I had three amazing assistant general counsels that I worked with, all super smart. But I would say Nicole and I clicked immediately. We are very similar in a lot of ways. We are very different in a lot of ways. And we push each other with accountability because we feel the same way about accountability. So there's a, you know, high, a high level of doing the right thing, doing it thoroughly, and making sure, you know, we're really going where we need to go for the client and not just skipping steps and, and meeting our clients where they needed us to be. So I was there, you know, as general counsel. I became general vice, executive vice president and general counsel about a halfway through. And then the president departed and I was elevated to president. Right.
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C
When Covid started, what was that like? I mean, it's just. That's a, it's a crazy shift, right, to go from drafting the deals and then now you're, you know, making the business decisions as the executive. How did that shift your instincts as a lawyer? And really as a business person, too.
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A
As a business, the lawyer skills were so important at that point. It was a constantly changing legal and regulatory environment between the state of New York and the federal government. With COVID what could we do? What couldn't we do? What did. You know, how do we. First and foremost was our employees. We have very dedicated employees at McGuire and protecting them and keeping everyone, you know, fed was number one. We realized that as owner, operators of medical office buildings qualified as that first tranche of people who could go back to the office. Covid started in March, and we were back in the office by June. And it was a state. You know, it kept us going. And then it was really, the business instinct was we have to be smart. We have to stay on top of these regulations that literally were changing by the hour. And, you know, could we apply for a payroll protection act? Could we apply for Eidl loans? What did we really need, you know, it was a judgment call. Don't go for money that we don't absolutely need. Making sure that our stakeholders, the family that own the business, understood that we have a great, we had a great ownership group and then what kind of business needed to be done in the real estate world during COVID and we found owners rep, found a whole new line of business and that was, well, we think we're going to maybe stay remote hybrid. How do we deal with, you know, 70,000 square feet of office space? We don't need it, we need 10. And how do we set up the office so that it's welcoming but safe? And how do we manage remote work? And so we were doing all of those things during COVID and keeping everything busy. And I was still responsible for being ready as soon as Covid ended to pick up the external business and try to get us ready to zoom forward as soon as kind of all of the restrictions went away.
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C
It's just crazy to think about. There's just so much that went into that for everyone who is operating a business during that time. So I want to, I want to stick with you for a second on this because I think the decision you made about transitioning into a business role is one that a lot of people in our audience are thinking about. So you were president of an established company. It's not a title most people walk away from. And here you are, you clearly aren't president of that company anymore. What actually made you do it and what did you underestimate about what it would take to start over?
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A
So it is a family owned business and to be the president of a family owned business when it's not your family is very challenging. But I had been doing, before I was hired by McGuire, I had been doing a lot of family business like breakups, divorces, et cetera. And so I knew the right questions to ask when they were interviewing me about what was the family succession plan, how, you know, there was a father and then several children ready to, you know, that were full adults ready to run the business. Why were they hiring me? They had lawyers in the family. And the answer was, you know, they liked the idea of the outside perspective. And there was a very clear cut plan for succession. But 10 years in, that plan was starting to erode because the patriarch had unfortunately passed away. And it really just became a challenge every day to make the right business decisions and maybe not have the family get behind them consistently. So. So I actually had tried, laid the groundwork to leave in before I became the president to do kind of what we're doing now. And I am a chicken shit. Excuse me for saying that. So I. I didn't do it. I formed an LLC and I just let it sit on a shelf for a couple of years. And then, ironically, Nicole ran into my husband in like July of 2020. I wasn't there. And she said, confidentially, I'm out. I think it's time for me to do something different. And I'd love it if Danielle would come with me, but I don't know if I could even talk to her about that. But it's only a matter of time. My husband, to his credit, came home and said, you're a chicken. This girl's got more confidence than you to go. And, you know, you work together already. You've spent several years, you zig and zag really well. And I think you guys should look into it together. And that's really what, you know, I would say the confidence for me was knowing that I had someone I could bounce things off of. I can make really great business decisions, except when they impact me.
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C
I feel you. I understand that quite a bit. So, Nicole, I mean, same question for you. It's a great segue. What was the moment you knew you were going to build something rather than keep working inside someone else's organization? It sounds like, based on Danielle's story, you had like a very clear point in mind of it was time to move on. And so I'd love to hear your version of things.
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B
Yeah, no, so I agree with Danielle. It was. It's a really great company and it was family owned and we were doing some really great work, especially during the time of COVID and not only advocating for the company itself, but then these third parties, we were doing really good stuff. But I mean, I had a timeline, like always, right. Every few years, Nicole jumped ship. So I'm like, well, clock's ticking. It's time to go. Because deep down I always knew that the end goal wasn't to work for somebody else, it was to work for myself. And like I said, who that was going to be with and what we're going to be doing, I had no idea.
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C
Right.
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B
I knew what my education was and I knew I had this entrepreneurial spirit. I mean, I would read, read all the, like, self help to personal development books. I'm like, we have to do something. Yeah. I think around 21, 22 is when 21 is when I got the itch. I'm like, all right. You know, Danielle and I work really well, together she's the president of the company. But I feel like we could really create something unique for ourselves. So, yeah, Danielle's husband's my dentist and I was literally getting my teeth cleaned, probably, probably drooling on myself when I was like, hey, what do you think about this? And her husband being a business owner, I figured he might have a different perspective as well. And just knowing Danielle as well as he did. Get your teeth cleaned, because you never know, that started the ball rolling, which was, which has turned into something that I never would have expected. So now I can answer the question, what do you want to be when you grow up and who are you going to do that with? And now, now we have these two companies which look very different from when we first started them back on January 1, 2022. Fast forward to 2026 and things look different, but in the best way. And, but I could, I can confidently say I'm doing it with Danielle. And what I said in the beginning, I was. And I think we learned this pretty quickly. Once you start a business, starting a business, I mean we could, we could have a whole podcast just about starting a business.
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C
That's what I love that, I love that. It would be a great one.
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B
Oh my gosh.
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A
It's my favorite. I will give you, I'll give you a funny anecdote. So at McGuire, we were, we used an operating model called EOS, entrepreneurial operating system. And it's a wonderful way to structure management of any business. But part of it was required that we have one on one between supervisor and subordinate once a month. And so Nicole obviously was my subordinate. We were already kind of hatching this plan and so we had this top secret notebook that we would pull out during her private one on ones and just plan our. It was called the escape hatch. It was, you know, everything we needed to acquire, like what insurances, what kind of software do we need? What kind of. Are we going to be in an office? Are we going to work from home? Are we working from the same home? Are we working from separate homes? Is it just us? How do we get business? Like, what are we going to do that first day to be busy and so I still have no idea. You still had it? Yeah, it's in my cabinet. And it gave again.
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B
It gave.
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A
It was confidence building. We know what we're talking about. We're thinking this through over many months and then. And that's really the time we used to plan this. I mean, certainly outside of work as well, but that was a great hour Once, you know, maybe it was even bi weekly that we were sitting down kind of going through that.
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C
Well, I mean that's a lovely story. And I say that as somebody who has, you know, started my own businesses and then, and then gone back to an in house life. So I mean it's a, it's a great question for both of you. What is the thing nobody tells you about going from employee to founder that you really wish somebody had said out loud? And I'm going to ask you guys to keep it to like the one thing, right? Even though I know from personal experience there's like a hundred million things that you wish somebody had told you. But like what is the one thing you wish somebody had told you?
- [21:05]
B
I'll start. No one tells you that when you start your own business that you become an IT expert. But you need to figure out how. I mean, when you work at different companies, right, Whether that was at the development company we worked for or whether it's a law firm or even a nonprofit, there's someone that you could pick up the phone and call and say, hey, my computer's not working. What do I do? When you start a business, you don't have that, you don't have that capability. I mean you could, but you have to figure it out. So I know I joke, but really it and it's just something that when you're starting a business, you don't think about that. You're going to be spending a lot of time trying to just figure out what the technology portion of your business looks like. You know, now you can add AI in the mix, right? Which is going to be another level. But even, you know, making sure your computers are working, if you have employees making sure their computers are working and they're all set up emails, websites, websites, talking to emails. I mean, it was something that at the time we were doing ourselves because we didn't. This is a complete startup, right. So you need to learn how to touch every part of your business, including it. That's right.
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A
I think mine would be, thankfully, we're not in the life or death business and so there really is no mistake that can't be fixed. We'd certainly made our share of mistakes and missteps and there's, you know, being humble and ready to correct those and address those has been, we support each other. You know, if I make a mistake, and I make lots of mistakes, you know, she's right behind me, either fixing it or helping me come up with a way to fix it.
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B
And it's Vice versa.
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A
We both think, yeah, no, but it just having, you know, we're not going to kill anybody, including ourselves. You know, if I still live with, we're what, five years in and I still live with, well, what if all the business dries up tomorrow and we don't have any work to do? We'll be okay. We'll figure something out in 22. I didn't feel that way. So it's all going to be.
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C
It's a hard one to learn. I was in a group. There's a group of a bunch of like solo practitioners and fractionals out there. And somebody just said today, you know, the curse of small law firm life is, you know, right when you think like, oh, I don't have enough work, things are drying up and you put yourself out there, then suddenly you're drowning again. And that, that arc can like happen from like a Monday to a Wednesday or like in panic on Monday. So Monday night, by Wednesday, you're drowning.
- [23:38]
A
We. I fought Nicole on hiring another attorney for years. The two of us were drowning and we were working. We were working, you know, 15 hour days and. But I just kept saying, what if we commit to someone that we're going to pay them and we're their lifeline and then all the work goes away? She said, we'll deal with it, but she's like, you know, the answer is the work isn't going away. It may ebb and flow a bit, but we're at a point, you know, we now have kind of some, some ground beneath us. But even recently, it's, you know, it's just I don't want to be in that position where I harm somebody else.
- [24:15]
C
No, I mean, the people element of building a business is just. It's so important. I completely agree. I want to really dig into, you know, the practice that you guys are focused on real estate because it doesn't get enough airtime on this show. The deals are local, they're personal, they're complicated in that, like, don't show up in the documents. You know, what is working in real estate teach you about negotiation and risk that lawyers in other areas just do not pick up on. And, you know, I'd love your perspective there. I'll start with this.
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A
So there are a lot of elements of real estate law, especially in New York state and especially in western New York, where we live, that are never taught anywhere in law school. They're not part of the bar exams. They're learned by experience. And coming up in a bigger firm, like I did we had an army of paralegals and assistants who did a lot of kind of the technical work. What has been really beautiful for the two of us is it's us. And so we have to get through that technical work. And it has taught us to really understand and appreciate all of the details of a real estate project. So as. And I also think we are uniquely qualified as real estate attorneys because of our ownership, representation and development experience. A typical real estate lawyer may get a LOI to turn into a purchase and sale agreement. And you know, they know the terms that they typically like to edit, which are what's the due diligence period like and how much of a deposit and when does the deposit go hard? What are the requirements? Requirements for title and survey? We actually know what happens when those things blow up. And I'll give you a small example. Due diligence periods can be anywhere. In the last year, we've had contracts where they were 30 days and we had one where it was 360 days
- [26:15]
B
or we had one that was seven days.
- [26:17]
A
I mean, it really. Yeah. So what does that really mean? Well, it means you have to talk to your client. What is the property being used for now? What do you want to use the property for? Does the seller have environmental reports that they can share with you? Now, in New York State, as of 2025, do you have a wetland determination? New York State threw wetlands upside down. It used to be purely a federal. We're getting really nitty gritty. So I'm sorry, but it used to be purely a federal determination. The US Army Corps of Engineers, which is basically everywhere in the country, would make a determination. Now the State of New York says no, no, no, no, the DEC gets to make the determination. And by the way, they've never done it before or like this. They're not staffed to do it. And you have to come to them with an engineered wetland delineation study, which shows you If I'm buying 100 acres and 80 of it is wetlands, then the price needs to be reflective of the fact that only 20% is, is usable. So we, we have to get into all of that. We have to make sure if there's no wetland study, 30 days isn't going to cut it. You need like 80 or 90 to 120 years just to be, get on someone's schedule so they can go out and inspect your property. So then, you know, that's one element of it. Title. What does it really mean when there's something clouding the title in most states that's handled by a title company in New York. And here that's all lawyers. So we review title, we write title, we go through curatives and make sure that our clients are protected before closing from whatever other people might have claims to their property. What am I missing?
- [27:58]
B
No, it. See real. This is another. You could, we could just talk about real estate for hours. Because there's so many elements of real estate and I think working for a developer, Right, we worked for a developer. We generally saw the developer or landowner, landlord side of things. And that's who we represented and that's who we had to protect. The beauty of that is that right now, a lot of, I mean, our clients now can be either the tenant, the landlord, it can be really seller buy, it doesn't matter. But because of our experience, prior experience, we really have such a good, especially if we represent a tenant, we know what a landlord would put into a lease or you know, what the little tips and tricks are. And in addition to that, because we did this owner's rep and we still do it with our other company where we really step into the shoes of whether it's a for profit, nonprofit, anyone that's doing some type of real estate development, we guide them through the process. I like to say that we are, and this is breaking it down almost too simply, but we're almost like the wedding planner of a construction project. And I say that because we stand side by side and help help an owner figure out, okay, do you need an architect? Yes, you need an architect. What type of contractor?
- [29:13]
C
Do you need a.
- [29:14]
B
Do you need a gc? Do you need a C. What are the difference between the two? Do the two contracts talk to each other? Do I need a permit? What about zone? Like, there's all these different areas that we learned while working for this developer that really help us in our roles as real estate attorneys. And I really think based on all of our experience, we, we've kind of have this niche that, that not many attorneys have because we've really worked in all sides of a real estate deal.
- [29:40]
C
Now what I would love to dig into for, for our audience, because we glossed over it at the beginning, is, and you brought it up, Nicole, in your commentary now is you didn't just start one firm, you started the law firm and you started the consulting practice. And they're running in parallel. Can you like, very briefly, one of you walk me through the logic there?
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A
Sure.
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B
When we actually, when we decided to leave our former company, we, we started actually the consulting company, we thought which is called Bellwether Advisors. We thought our real estate consulting company would be the bread and butter and majority of our work, who we are, what we're doing. We created a law firm as not a side thought, but just thought, you know what, sometimes somebody might need us to do a contract, look at something, might ask for our legal advice. So we thought, you know what? We are attorneys. Let's continue to be. We like to be attorneys. Let's have our law firm, which is going to be kind of a side project, so to speak. We learned very quickly over the last few years, though, that, I mean, both companies are very busy, but really, I would say we're attorneys almost 70% of the time.
- [30:51]
A
The anecdote is that Nicole spent a year negotiating a lease for a charter school with a very difficult landlord when we were at McGuire. And as general counsel, you can't advise anyone but the company that you're counsel for, at least in New York state, under our ethics rules. So at the end of the day, the lease was ready to be signed, but the charter school's board said, well, it has to be approved by council. So they sent it to a great law firm, but that law firm tore it apart again. And after a year of negotiations, the landlord called Nicole, screaming. And that was. That stuck in our mind. We were able. She was able to fix it. She did a wonderful job kind of smoothing things over and making it work, and that that relationship worked out really well. But as we were getting this going, we said, what if that happens again? We can represent them. But the beauty of it is we don't have to be the lawyer, and we're really happy when somebody else is the lawyer. When we're doing consulting work, we're also happy to be the lawyer, if that's what's needed. We always give our clients the option they have to engage us separately under both LLCs. So it's very clear when. And we bill separately. It's very clear when we're doing one thing versus the other. Again, lots of billing, but it keeps us clear in what we're doing, and it really. There's no question to our clients what work we're doing.
- [32:13]
C
Yeah, no, I've definitely been there. And it can be fun when you're working on something for the same client, but you're having to switch your billing out of two sides of your brain because you're like, wait, no, legal. Nope, that's not legal. And doing it at both businesses. I get that. You know, the part that I want to get into now is that you're in Buffalo. And I will admit I've only been to Buffalo once, and it wasn't a great experience because it was to take the New York bar. And so I haven't been back. But I want to understand, you know, it's. It's not New York City. It's not like a tech hub, but obviously it's got this big real estate presence and everything. What's the market like? And what is being, like, deeply embedded in that community give you that you would not have if you guys were somewhere else, like New York City or, you know, a bigger market?
- [33:05]
A
So there's a push to make Buffalo a tech hub, and I would say it hasn't achieved yet what it's intended to. But we are the home to one of the two flagship universities in New York, the University of Buffalo, which is a wonderful school. And through that, there is a tremendous amount of innovation and entrepreneurship going on. The state has funded an annual pitch competition called 43 North. 43 North. I always get it confused with 42 north, which is the brewery.
- [33:37]
B
But.
- [33:37]
A
So 43 north is a pretty big. I mean, the grand prize is a million. It's a pretty big prize for up and coming entrepreneurs. The deal, though, is that they have to live here and grow the business for at least a year. So we do have, you know, an element of the business world here that is. That is like that. That is entrepreneurial. But we very much are not New York City. We're not even Albany. You know, we are. We don't call ourselves upstate. We call ourselves Western. And we're much more like in Ohio or Western Pennsylvania.
- [34:12]
B
Midwestern.
- [34:13]
A
Yeah. You don't, you know, from a legal perspective, it's a very tiny living room. If you want to get real aggressive with me on a deal, you're going to see me next week. Don't do it. And if I'm going to be aggressive, I will tell you exactly why I'm being aggressive, and we will shake hands at the end. But you can't. Like, I used to fly to New York to litigate foreclosures back in the day, and I would walk into, like, Brooklyn Supreme Court, and everyone was just kind of screwing everybody else because you knew you'd never see them again. And that's. I love that, the smallness of our community. And then from a real estate perspective, as Nicole alluded to, we have been going through a bit of a renaissance over the past 10 years. The governor Cuomo started what he called the Buffalo Billion, and the initiative was to invest $1 billion into this city to help it recover as a Rust Belt city. And so there have been a lot of kickstart projects that have done really neat things for us. But there's also, you know, we had Covid in the middle, and the, the office market is declining. The apartment market is kind of in flux right now. And so it's an interesting time to be in real estate here.
- [35:33]
B
But the residential real estate, I think in 2025, Zillow named Buffalo one of the hottest real estate residential real estate markets. So it really is interesting. Part of it is Buffalo, and they're calling it a climate refuge, are nestled in between two Great Lakes. And we have a really interesting climate because of that. So Buffalo's always been cold, so we, but we were noticing that we're, we're just protected a little bit more than other areas of the country. So if anything, you are starting to see, I mean, I, I love to look at the Buffalo Reddit Forum, and there's a lot of, A lot of interest recently in Buffalo of individuals all over the country, from the east coast to the west coast, from Florida, that are looking to move to this area because it's really becoming, you know, price, price points are cost of living, and you do have the access to water. We have Toronto that's an hour and a half north of us. So Buffalo is really becoming, in the real estate world, an interesting place to practice because, like I said, on the residential side, you have a lot of people coming to Buffalo commercially. I mean, we're still like the whole country. And the impacts of COVID are still impacting specifically, like the downtown Buffalo area. A lot of those companies that moved away from downtown to the suburbs, they're starting to trickle back in. But the suburbs, unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on where you live, are bumping. Right. You have businesses opening up and restaurants, and even areas that weren't walkable are starting to become walkable in the suburbs. So from our perspective, we, we see all of this from both the, the commercial real estate consulting perspective, but also the legal perspective. And it's just, you know, it's interesting to see where this ends up in the next few years.
- [37:22]
C
Yeah, no, and, you know, I, what I love about what about that. And then, Danielle, what you said is I live in Chicago, so I deeply respect the whole Midwestern values. And one of the, the common phrases you'll hear in Chicago is that we are a big city, but a small town, and people just know each other. And I have friends who are vast different practice areas than I am. And you know, they know all the judges and they know all each other and you think it's kind of crazy in a city this big, but that's just how it is. So I deeply respect that. You know, and, and with sort of the, the change that's happening all around post Covid and into this now, we've got this whole wave of AI which is obviously means a lot here at gca. I'm curious about, you know, how you guys are using that in your practice. You know, have been, both been using AI tools in your work. But tell me honestly, how did you get there and was it something you sought out or did it find you the way that AI seems to be finding everyone these days?
- [38:24]
B
So do you want the long story or the short story? I'll give you, I'll give you a medium one. So it's interesting. We, Danielle and I, it's always from the legal end, it's been the two of us as the two attorneys with a high volume of work. And I think Danielle mentioned, I mean we were putting in, you know, 15 hour days on a daily weekly basis. And we, we finally got to the point where we said, you know what? We need a paralegal. We need, we need something, somebody or something to really help us with the tasks that at this point we just, we don't have the time to do. Right. More the administrative form, letters, templates, stuff like that. Hiring is not easy. And I, and I know this is not only in Buffalo and New York, but it's really across the country trying finding the right person for the job. That's a job in and of itself and it's also a skill. And, and this is. So we went down the path of all right, we're finally, I think we're ready for a paralegal. We ended up hiring a paralegal and ultimately it just didn't work out. It was about two weeks and we, we both recognized, you know what, it's just this is not the, the right person for this job. So fast forward, we're back to work in the 15 hour days, grinding away thinking, oh my gosh, what are we going to do? You know, kind of shoving our feelings under a rug. And I was talk friend of mine who's a GC for a tech company and she, she, she was, she said something about gcai and I go, what's that? And she's like, oh, it's, it's this AI platform that I use. And I'm like, her legal work she's like, yeah, you haven't heard of it? I go, no, tell me more. And she starts telling me a little bit about it. She actually sent me, I don't know, she sent me some type of. She's, I guess she screen shared or something with me about what it looks like. And I go, huh, this is interesting. So I tell Danielle about it and we, we decide to start Googling gcai and, and we got set up with a test.
- [40:18]
A
What do you call it? Thank you.
- [40:20]
B
A sales rep. Yeah, sales rep. And it has changed our life.
- [40:23]
C
We love to hear that. We love to hear that.
- [40:26]
A
I was gonna say it is. We used to say it saved us the FTE of the paralegal, but it saved us the FTE and, and maybe two FTEs. The best analogy I'll make is that unfortunately the paralegal that we hired did not know what it meant to redline a document. So in word, we're trying to like explain redlining. And he was pretty well educated and had worked as a paralegal before and so it was very frustrating. And then as we were signing up with gcai, the word module was coming out and we were lucky enough to kind of get in early and be able to download that module to our Word. And we literally replaced a human who didn't know how to redline with AI that would suggest redlines right in our document. And it was, I mean, life changing.
- [41:17]
C
We love to hear that.
- [41:19]
A
Yeah.
- [41:20]
C
Okay, well, I know we're coming to the end of our time, so we, we like to do our, our lightning round of questions. So like 10 second responses for each of these. First thing that comes to mind. So, okay, Nicole, we'll. You and Danielle, you can give your response after. So a myth about startups or building your own practice that you would love
- [41:41]
B
to kill, that you have to have everything planned out. And I know you don't have to have everything planned out. No. Do you want to be building the plane while flying it? No. You want to have an outline and understanding and motivation, but there's a lot that you're not going to be able to plan out. And there's really no, there's no good time for starting a business. But if, if you have an idea and you're motivated and you are passionate about it, go for it. Go for it. At least try it out.
- [42:11]
C
Great. Danielle, what's your, what's your 10 second take?
- [42:15]
A
You don't have to have a savings account full of rainy day money. It works. And have faith in yourself that It'll work.
- [42:22]
C
All right, next question. A founder or a book that shaped how you think?
- [42:27]
B
Two why eaters, why leaders eat last and never split the difference.
- [42:32]
A
I wish I had them committed to memory. There are many. But I mentioned the EOS operating system and I'm not promoting it, plugging it. But Dino Wickman has written a series of really great books about just being practical. There's no rocket science going on here. And, you know, just keep it simple.
- [42:53]
C
Wonderful. And then last one, one thing that you would tell your younger self.
- [42:57]
B
Oh, that's a good one.
- [43:01]
C
That's.
- [43:02]
B
That's a great question. To keep going. And, and I, I think I, I kind of alluded to it in the beginning. I knew what I wanted. I just didn't know how I was going to get there. But all of the right turns, wrong turns, left turns back. It all leads to where you're going to be. So just trust yourself.
- [43:21]
A
I would say that you will make a difference to other people that you have no idea you'll never meet. Especially in a place like Western New York. You will leave an imprint. That is something that I am proud of already. But the world is our oyster when it comes to making a difference in this community.
- [43:44]
C
That's wonderful. And then the last question to wrap this up, because I've really enjoyed talking with you ladies and I want both of you to respond and give your reflections. If somebody listened to this episode and walked away with just one thing, it could either be a real estate takeaway about what it means to build a practice or business on their own terms. What would it be?
- [44:07]
B
It's a great question. One thing would be, I think it go almost what I told what I told my younger self. Right, is trust yourself. You don't have to have a fully fledged out plan, but you want to. You want to have some type of passion for what you're doing and that's really going to guide you where you land.
- [44:25]
A
And mine would be if you're not comfortable making mistakes, you're not challenging yourself enough.
- [44:31]
C
That's a great one.
- [44:33]
A
I love that.
- [44:34]
C
Well, thank you both for joining today. It was great speaking with you both. And that was my conversation with Nicole Coleman and Danielle Shane Brown, co founders of Bellwether Advisors, and Shane Brown Komen PLLC out of Buffalo, New York. If today's conversation got you thinking about how AI can help you run a leaner, smarter legal practice, that is exactly what we are building at gcai. You can learn more at gc. AI, follow CZ and friends wherever you Listen, thanks for being here, and we will see you next time.