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Success Story with Scott D. Clary
Gil Dezer - Developer & Visionary | From $500 Million Debt to Luxury Real Estate Empire
01:00:27
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- [00:00]
Peter Cunho
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- [01:24]
Gil Dezer
I grew up in really humble means three bedrooms and one bathroom in the house in Queens. And then when I got into the real estate world, I said, this is what's Some of this is overkill, some of it's absolutely needed, and some of it is just right.
- [01:35]
Peter Cunho
Most developers build towers. Gildazzar builds icons. He turned luxury real estate into an art form, fusing innovation with brand storytelling through groundbreaking projects like the Porsche Design Tower and the Bentley Residences. But what sets Gil apart isn't just the skyline he's changed, it's the mindset he brings.
- [01:51]
Gil Dezer
When you're the owner of the company, you have to do everything yourself. You can rely on some people. I have great people working from you. You can't just expect everybody to do it. You got to do it yourself. I didn't do anything that's never been done before. I just put components together in a way that's never been done before. Everything's available today. Everything can be done today. I truly believe that there's always a solution.
- [02:08]
Peter Cunho
A bold thinker from a family of visionaries, Gil's mission is to create spaces that redefine how we live, move, and experience luxury to him, a building isn't just glass and concrete. It's culture.
- [02:19]
Gil Dezer
When I did Porsche, nobody wanted to talk to me. I have this crazy idea of putting a car elevator. I finally found a guy who was able to build it for me once we built it then, now I have all these other big elevator companies saying we might have missed out on something that's really big. Everything is calculated risk, and you have to feel comfortable. And I really, truly feel comfortable when I say that anything can be built today. It's just a matter of money.
- [02:48]
Peter Cunho
Gil, first of all, thank you for coming out. I appreciate you. And this is one of my favorite quotes, because I think, I think it really captures your personality. So the quote is, if I can't live here, I can't sell it. And that's one of my favorite because I think that you have a very high bar for what you do in life, for what you build. But I'll just ask, in your words, what does that quote mean to you?
- [03:12]
Gil Dezer
Well, it means, you know, I, I grew up in. In really humble means. When I was. Until I was seven years old, we. I grew up in a. In a. It was three bedrooms and one bathroom in the house in Queens. Then we moved out to 10 to fly, New Jersey. That's where I grew up and went to school and everything. And, and that's where I, you know, I opened my eyes to my friends, had these huge houses and all kinds of stuff, and I, I started seeing how, you know, living can be, you know, and, and, and, and then when I got into the real estate world, of course, walking around and seeing all these amazing things, I said, this is. What's. Some of it is overkill. Some of it's absolutely needed, and some of it is just right, you know, and, and so when we look at these apartments, I say, you know, if you're going to sell something, you got to believe in it. You know, it's. I also, don't get me wrong, I also build smaller apartments, you know, one bedrooms, two bedrooms, and again, I would have lived in there maybe when I was 20, you know, 25, you know, but, but at this age now, where I have the ability to buy something better and such was, I say to myself, if I'm looking for this customer, you know, it also, it really all stems from. I see a lot of developers, what I call making fun of the customer. And what I mean by that is they show them a kitchen and a bathroom, and then, and then they don't. And they show them some floor plans and they make the customer believe that it's something else. And then the final product is real garbage. And yeah, you got the kitchen and the bathroom you saw. But we're the only developers who build a full scale apartment on, in our, in our sales office to show the actual sizes you're getting, the actual rooms you're getting because we're not here to make fun of the guy where if you're buying something at this level of 7, 8, $10 million, we just sold the penthouse for 20 over $33 million. So if you're, if we're selling that level, you got to really treat that customer with respect and the intelligence that he most likely has, showing them everything they're going to get. So if I couldn't, if I wouldn't buy something, I can't sell it and I can't, I wouldn't buy in a development where they're showing me a kitchen and a bathroom and a bunch of pictures and some butler showing me, you know, serving me something that, that's there today, not there.
- [05:11]
Peter Cunho
I've been, I've been to those.
- [05:12]
Gil Dezer
Yeah. And that's what it is. And the joke is, and I'm not going to call on any one of my, my competitors, but you have some of these hotel branded condos where you walk in at night and the restaurant's closed, you know, and it's like, what kind of hotel brand is this, you know, versus my places that we don't have the hotel brands. But what we do is I learned, hire the best managers who work in these hotels and let them run the condo, you know, and for them it's a, it's a no brainer.
- [05:33]
Peter Cunho
Well, it seems like, it seems like common sense. It seems like if you look at luxury, like look at the biggest, best luxury brands in the world and like they have to take their customers seriously or they'll never survive. So I don't know why real estate would be any different. If you look at Hermes, if you look at any beautiful luxury like lvmh, they have to take the customer seriously.
- [05:54]
Gil Dezer
And there's reasons for it. You know, there's, there's, there's buyers who just want to buy and they, and salesmen who sell them the dream and sell the sizzle, not the steak, so to speak, as they do, which it works. I mean everything sells. But I believe that, you know, when our customers come in, they see exactly what they're getting and it's a great way of managing expectations. So when they walk in, they're not, you know, a Lot of these, the same buildings that see the kitchen and bathroom. By the time the building's ready, you have half those building, half those units being sold for resale because the people aren't necessarily happy there.
- [06:22]
Peter Cunho
Is that something that, that idea, was that something that you've brought? Because I know that your dad was big in New York and he was building in New York and I kind of know a little bit about your origin story. Was that something you brought down to South Florida from New York or is that something that's uniquely yours?
- [06:35]
Gil Dezer
Well, I, I, I'd have to say it's uniquely. My father never built in New York. He is a landlord. He bought, he bought buildings, would renovate them, put new elevators, new windows and rent them out. Some of them he would co co op, he would sell floor by floor by floor by floor. That's how he got his start in the 70s. But it's, it's a, it's a personality trait. I, you know, I believe that when you sell something to a customer at, at that, at this price level, I'm not talking about the Guy's buying a $500,000, that's regular run of the mill kind of, okay, fine, that's, and we do those jobs, you know, I'm usually a partner, but not involved on those kind of jobs. But you make money in those things too. But if you're selling somebody their actual home where they, where they're going to wake up every morning and take a shower and you know, and that customer, you actually meet the guy and you make a deal in the handshake. He effectively owns a piece of you, you know, and you, and you have to deliver for that guy. It's very important, very, very important. And you got to take it seriously. And a lot of people, there's just, you know, their production mills and they're not realizing that they're building people's homes where they, where they live. And you know, I take it, I take it very seriously. That's, this is a guy who's going to wake up and brush his teeth every morning and if the, and if the water's not hot, he's going to think about me, you know, and I don't want to be there, so I don't want to be in thoughts in.
- [07:47]
Peter Cunho
The morning, is there. You know, if you think about what you've built and sort of your definition of luxury, you're already like giving over some really good ideas and insights about like customer first and just, you have to, you are building a part of their Life, basically you're building a part of their life. When you think about what luxury truly is, what are some of the ideas around luxury that you have that could be good ideas for any entrepreneur? Something that is just how you focus on customer, how you focus on experience. These are things that are in all of your buildings. But what is like, if you think about, okay, my customer avatar is so and so this person, how do you think through what to give that person?
- [08:30]
Gil Dezer
We look at what is that guy? In our case specifically, we are dealing with how does that customer live? You know, how do they live? What are they doing every day? Are they going to work? You know, these people are investors, they own companies. They're not necessarily. What is the use of this apartment? Is it going to be a full time residence, is going to be a second home vacation, you know, and we, we tailor the product to exactly that. And what I mean by that is, you know, we have people who, who come to the building, they're there for two, three weeks at a time, they're working during the weekend, on the weekends, but at the same time they have the ability to hit a button and order room service to their apartment. You know, everything, everything is right there. Like a hotel without the transients. There's no transient, you know, meaning. And what makes our building special, different from all the other buildings in Miami. Every one of our balconies has their own swimming pools. So it's the kind of building where if you want to know your neighbor, you go downstairs and be social. But if you want to just, you know, leave everybody, leave me alone. You can be upstairs, leave me alone. Stay, stay, do your, do your own thing, stay in the apartment. You don't have to leave to eat. You can have brought upstairs.
- [09:35]
Peter Cunho
Exactly. Like hotel experience, right?
- [09:36]
Gil Dezer
Just like hotel. So you have the experience becomes what you want it to be. And that's what luxury is. And luxury is giving people all the options in the world. Not just option of A, B or C, you have options of a through 1 billion. You know.
- [09:49]
Peter Cunho
Yeah, I think that when I think about what you like, you're, you are an innovator. I mean, you've innovated with technology. We'll talk about that in a second with the Desert Vator. But I think that if you even go back to like the luxury branded buildings you've worked with, Trump, Porsche, Armani, Bentley, that's already thinking different. When you started doing that, that was not the norm. So what was the, what was the thought process in terms of? Because that's a very Interesting idea. Bringing in luxury from a completely different. I mean, Trump was in real estate, but the other ones were not in real estate. Bringing luxury in and then combining it for like this ultimate customer experience. What was the, what was the impetus? What was the thing that allowed you to see that opportunity and then sort of take hold of it? Going back, I guess a little bit now, but.
- [10:33]
Gil Dezer
Well, in, in each case, you know. Well, so the Trump thing happened.
- [10:37]
Peter Cunho
Yeah.
- [10:37]
Gil Dezer
And happened right after September 11th. They were looking for. And, and we needed. We needed. We were in Sunny Isles beach, which, in 2001, nobody even knew where it was. You know, it wasn't even on the map. It just had incorporated in 1997 as its own city owned police department, all that kind of stuff. So the city was relatively new.
- [10:56]
Peter Cunho
It's very new.
- [10:56]
Gil Dezer
Yeah, very new. And so 2001, we said, we need to. We had a big investment there. We started buying properties right before incorporated. So we were buying motels and little hotels up and down the beach. We owned 27 different properties at the, at the peak. And then the city incorporated, changed the zoning code, allowed for high rise development. We flipped some of the properties, went, bought more. That's the whole story in and of itself. But, but then we said, well, we need something marketing wise to put this place on the map to make everybody realize. Miami beach was great. Sunny south beach was great. Bal harbor is amazing. Golden beach was amazing. That's. That was a great part. Sunny Isles was, was right between Bell harbor to the south, golden beach to the north and Aventura to the west. So we were surrounded by three of Miami's super affluent neighborhoods. It was just a natural, you know, mix that they were going to come in. Natural infill, if you will.
- [11:46]
Peter Cunho
You saw that coming down from New York.
- [11:47]
Gil Dezer
Yeah, well, you saw it from the airplane. You literally saw it from the airplane. I mean, you know, you saw. Because Sunny House was unincorporated. There was. In order to get a police officer there, it was 40 minutes because there was no. No local. And so when that happens, these motels turn into little skeevy places. Prostitutes, drug dealers, all that kind of stuff was going on there. And we were able to buy Oceanfront relatively cheap because of it, and so. Relatively cheap compared to what, what it's going for today. Yeah, we were paying at the time $2 million an acre, which sells for today 100 million an acre. So 50x. Okay. Yes. It's insane. It really is insane. And we're still paying that 100 million an acre. Now in the last properties we're buying. So we're. We're riding up and paying our. Ourselves, you know, the extra money. But that's why it's worth that, because now the markets have gone up price per square foot. You know, when it was, when it was 2 million acre, we were selling at 300 a square foot. Now we're selling $3,000 a square foot. So, you know, the world has changed over there a little bit. But. But we needed Trump to really put Sunny Isles beach on the map, put our project on the map, get the right attention. And then we realized how strong this whole branding thing is. I had Trump on television every Wednesday night during the Apprentice. It was like he was my one hour advertising every. Every single night that I was every. And we had Apprentice shows at our sales office, and we were pushing that apprentice button. He was hot. And we were making tons of sales. This was early 2000s. I mean, there was between 2001 and 2007. There's nothing you can touch that went bad. Everything was up above. It was like crazy. It was crazy, crazy. So we did. We did. In that time, we did six Trump buildings, 2,000 Trump units over. Over $2 billion sold in Trump branded real estate. But more importantly is, I found that what. What the branding really does, it helped put us on the map as developers. It helped. It helped put the city, the area, bring attention. My. Remember, my competitors were saying, yeah, we're in the building next door to Trump. You know, when your competitors are saying next door to Trump, then. Then you know you won, right? As I said, we're next door to Porsche, so, I mean, then, you know you won when that's where the competitors are giving your building as the landmark. Yeah. So, so, and, and of course, in 2007, we got caught with our pants down like everybody else. We owed $475 million to the banks. I had. I had buildings closing as we speak. And, and so it was really 2009 when. When we actually called for closings and there was nobody there because the market was dead. And we reworked all of our situations with the bank in 2010, and by 2011, we paid them all off. We paid off $475 million in 2011, which every single unit closed and, and paid off our lenders like good boys. We didn't lose any buildings. And that for me, that was when my father heard it kind of stepped aside from the business. And for me, that put me on the map, at least in the eyes of lenders, because I was. I was me. And I think one Other developer were the only guys who paid off loans at the time. Everything else was deed in a box. Foreclosure, they took it. So it was a rough time.
- [14:48]
Peter Cunho
You know that when you think about what you were able to do versus the, the vast majority of people, when you think. Because I always like to pull out lessons like for somebody who's obviously not at your level yet but is still like upand, coming, if you were going to talk about just like resilience, perseverance, like things that you've like overcome in your life, what would be the lesson for somebody who is like an earlier entrepreneur who is going through this, like hopefully not owing $400 million.
- [15:12]
Gil Dezer
Yeah. 475. Almost half a billion. Yeah, I mean that's, that's a, that's, that is a sobering experience. You know, you're, you're, you wake up and you're, you're half a billion dollars in debt and you're like, holy shit, there's nobody there to close. You know, you had, I had, we had all these units sold. Yeah. Everybody with 20% deposit. We had the project sold for $1.1 billion. Okay. And with, and all 20% deposits, the values went down by half. So a guy with a 20%, let's say he had a million dollar unit with a $200,000 deposit. The unit is now worth 500,000. He's not closing. Why, why would he lose. If he closed, he'd lose a half a million dollars. Basically we renegotiated with some of them and, and in order for them to not lose their 200,000. But then lawyers popped up. Get your deposit back, dot com and all that fun stuff. So, you know, people didn't close. And so we, again, the product was good. Location, location, location. We were on the beach. We had the right size units. We had the Trump brand still on the building. We, and, and, and specifically in 2010, Brazil took off. Brazil, the dollar was, was weak against the real. Yeah. And we went in through the top of Brazil. We got some of the best brokers and best clients in Brazil who made a lot of noise that were buying Trump. Brazilians love Trump. They love, love, love Trump.
- [16:27]
Peter Cunho
They still love Trump.
- [16:28]
Gil Dezer
Yeah, they know they love Trump. And so that was it. We, we wound up hitting Brazil hard and selling, selling units. We're selling almost 30 units a month at a lower price.
- [16:37]
Peter Cunho
You don't give yourself enough credit because I know for a fact that you were still making calls, renegotiating.
- [16:41]
Gil Dezer
Oh yeah. On the phone with everybody.
- [16:43]
Peter Cunho
That's the lesson. That's that the lesson. I mean, just like grinding it out.
- [16:46]
Gil Dezer
The answer is when you're the owner of the company, you have to do everything yourself. You know, if you rely on, you can rely on some people. Have great people working for me, but you got it, you know, you can't just expect everybody to do it. You got to do it yourself.
- [16:56]
Peter Cunho
If you're like you said, if you're the founder, if you're the owner, you got to figure out, but also like, I think that what you're really good at is you're, you're like, you never put yourself above anyone. You, like, you go in the trenches. You, you're human to human. You get that shit done.
- [17:10]
Gil Dezer
It's my company, you know, if it fails, it's on me. It's not on them. They. They get another job tomorrow.
- [17:15]
Peter Cunho
You know, I don't know if everyone, I don't know if everyone at the level that you're at thinks that way.
- [17:20]
Gil Dezer
You have to, it's. It's yours. Who's going to care for it like you do? It's your baby. So you treat your child, you know, so. And you got to make sure gets done. And I've known to be. Get frustrated and loud sometimes, you know, I can. When, when things don't go my way or things. Or people don't do things the way I want them to. And sometimes, a lot of times I, I have to show somebody how to do it the first three, four, five times, and then they'll pick up and do it on their own. Which is really what, what happened in Trump Towers. We were contacting unit owners who had deposits. So it's not like I was cold calling, hey, you want to buy a unit? This guy already had hundreds of thousands of dollars in my pocket. I'm trying to help him out, get a unit closed. So it was just a matter of teaching, teaching the system, teaching the math, teaching the levels of where we are and what we can do and how we get it done. And, and then I gave it to my people who really got stuff done.
- [18:05]
Peter Cunho
Would you say out of your whole career that was probably one of the more stressful parts?
- [18:10]
Gil Dezer
It was, it was weird. It was scary. You know, you wake up in the morning and the whole world's falling apart and day after day after day, not just like it was, it was bad. It was real bad. We sent out our closing notices on, on a Wednesday and, and that Friday, Lehman Brothers collapsed, you know, two days after. I was like, holy shit, who's Going to close now, you know, I mean, and it was just. You didn't know what to expect. Because I've never lived through anything like that before, you know, never, never experienced anything like that, never saw it. But you know, one thing I learned that was never take away from me is that it's, it's real estate. You can touch it, you can grab it. So the value of it is based on what people are thinking, which is to me, I didn't really like. How do you, you know, why, why is it based on consumer sentiment, right? If they're thinking good value goes up, thinking bad value goes up. But why? It's the same fucking real estate. It's the same building that, looking at the same ocean. So if that's really what makes prices move up and down, is consumer sentiment based on what they're seeing in the news? What, based on interest rates? Based. Then just sit and wait, you know, wait till they're feeling good again and sell it, you know, if you can, obviously, if you have the wherewithal. But sit and wait because it's, it's foolish. The reason why things go at the same time, I am that guy. When consumer sentiment is down, I buy everything I can, you know, because if this guy sees, oh the, the sky is falling, fine, I'll catch this guy.
- [19:33]
Peter Cunho
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- [21:44]
Gil Dezer
It's, it's, it's an, it's investment obviously, because it's a real estate investment and over time it will go up. I don't sell it to people as an investment. I don't think I, it's not an investment that I would invest in per se to see a return. You know, I'm selling a guy an 8 unit, 8 million dollar unit. It's probably going to be a 10 to 12 million dollar unit when it's over. No question about it. Because that's, if you look at what my neighbors are charging, where the markets are at. So I'm giving the guy an incentive to buy now, but he's leaving me at 50% deposit. So on that $8 million unit, he's leaving me 4 million bucks. If it goes up to $10 million and he made 2 million bucks, is that an investment? I mean, I'm sure he could do better in the stock market, you know, so yes, he'll, he'll, he'll, he'll be up, he'll have equity when he closes. He'll have the warm and fuzzies that he's got. Equity, got a good deal, but you know, is he retiring off of this unit now? Is it, is it a good investment? I wouldn't, I'd say go put your money in the S and P and you'll do better in the same four years. You know, that's you know, that's where I would call it an investment. But at the same time, at the same time the investment comes that if you don't buy now, you're not going to get anything at this price. Because if you think it's getting cheaper, just wait. Nothing's getting cheaper. Real estate's going up in cost, not value. That's where there's going to be an influx of cost versus value. If we have to start, you know, buying all this stuff from China with, with, with tariffs and all that kind of stuff, the costs are going to go through the roof and it's going to exceed what the market value is going to be. And that's when you're going to see a slowdown in construction. And that's why I tell anybody whatever you're buying, you know, a developer came to me two years ago, I'm not going to mention very well known developer, smart people, apparently smarter than me. I'm going to tell you the truth because they showed me a project and I'm like, this thing barely pencils out, you know, they're scraping.
- [23:30]
Peter Cunho
The financials are not the finance.
- [23:32]
Gil Dezer
It wasn't a great project. It wasn't like, again, I wouldn't invest in it. I can understand other people investing in it. They'll make some money. But I, it's not, I do home runs. I like to do home runs only. And you can't find home runs all day. But you know, we, we look for them. So I, I said to myself, you know, why is this guy even doing this? You know, what, is he wasting his time to make a 6% return at the end of the day? Now here we are two and a half years later, the building's coming out of the ground, tariffs are coming. I'm looking at myself, that, that guy, that was a bad deal then.
- [24:02]
Peter Cunho
So he's.
- [24:03]
Gil Dezer
No, no, no, no, no, no. It was a bad deal then, but he'll never be able to build it for that price again. So as bad as a deal it was, was he was the smartest guy on the planet because the, the replacement cost on that thing that he did two years ago versus today can't do it. So if it's a, it was a, his bad deal will wind up being a great deal. And I just, you know, I didn't want to trade four quarters for a dollar and sit there and.
- [24:24]
Peter Cunho
But yeah, if you don't have a crystal ball either, but, but you don't.
- [24:30]
Gil Dezer
And you do, because it's the same theme over and over and over. Again, this stuff is not getting any cheaper.
- [24:36]
Peter Cunho
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- [26:06]
Gil Dezer
Of $45 for three month plan equivalent to 15 per month. Required new customer offer for first three months only. Speed slow after 35 gigabytes of networks busy. Taxes and fees extra.
- [26:12]
Peter Cunho
C mintmobile.com you know 2008, 2009 was a shit show, but you navigated successfully. What was the idea about bringing in? Because Trump was a sort of like a well known real estate brand. Porsche, Armani, Bentley. These are not well known real estate brands, right? These are. These are car brands, right? Or these are luxury brands. Car brands. But when you decided to do this strategy to bring in these names, what was the thought process? It was. You had the idea of brand with Trump, right. But what was the next thing that made you want to do this?
- [26:41]
Gil Dezer
It was, it was an evolution of thought process. We heard that port, so we started out with Porsche design. Okay. You have to understand how I got to these car brands. It was difficult at the time. They didn't Want anything to do with real estate. But Porsche Design was the, was the part of the Porsche company that did the sunglasses and the lighters and they had the retail stores. So I went to the Porsche design company and they were the ones looking to do licensing knowing that they had the name Porsche and the logo in their name that they can maximize on their Porsche design. At the time, I believe the whole Porsche Design part of the company was doing something like $80 million a year in revenues.
- [27:19]
Peter Cunho
Oh, it's small.
- [27:20]
Gil Dezer
Very small.
- [27:21]
Peter Cunho
Yeah.
- [27:21]
Gil Dezer
Right. It's the tale of the whole Porsche. Porsche company doing 9 billion.
- [27:25]
Peter Cunho
Yeah.
- [27:26]
Gil Dezer
Okay. So easy to get to, easy to make a deal with. And we made a deal with them. It was the Porsche design tower. What had happened half afterwards was Volkswagen did a leverage buyout on Porsche. They took over the company and they forced the sale of Porsche Design, which was owned half by Porsche, the car company, half by the Porsche family. So they forced the Porsche family to sell out. And then I got tucked into the Volkswagen Group and that's how I got my way, access to Bentley and all these other brands that we have that we've been talking about and too. And, and so that's, that's how that happens.
- [28:02]
Peter Cunho
They were, they were okay. So like the small subsidiary going to real estate.
- [28:06]
Gil Dezer
They. It was not easy. It was not easy. I had to convince him. I said, look, Donald Trump, the only thing he has is his name. And he gave it to me. Right. He doesn't, he didn't have, he was, he didn't have a product. He wasn't manufacturing cars or anything like that. These guys, you manufacture cars, you need a lifestyle component. Yeah, well, you know, we sat down with them. They were, we really guided them through the process because a lot of the things that we taught them, you're dealing with executives who are not at the same level as our customer pool, if you will, you know. And so I represented the customer pool and say this is what the customer wants, this is what they need. This is what they. And they. Oh yeah, that's great. Great, great. And so, you know, they didn't say no on me on anything. So a few things, they, we had to stop production of our brochures because the brake calipers were not red. Things like that.
- [28:50]
Peter Cunho
They were, they were obsessed with the details.
- [28:52]
Gil Dezer
Oh, for sure. They still. Till today. I mean, they check the building and everything else to make sure that, you know. Yeah, of course. No, that building is a hundred percent Porsche. I mean it smells, breathes, looks, everything Porsche. And the same way Bentley's going to be the same, you know. And so the concept of the car elevator started. My father owns a building in New York City which is a car dealership on 270 11th Avenue. It's called Manhattan Motor Cars, and it's a Porsche Rolls Royce Bentley dealership over there. And it's a five story building. And you drive in, you press one of five buttons on the elevator, goes up, opens the door, you drive right out. We said, okay, how cool is this gonna be? Maybe instead of pressing a button, you will have an rfid.
- [29:32]
Peter Cunho
Yeah.
- [29:32]
Gil Dezer
We go to the fire department with a design. Hey, you drive in.
- [29:36]
Peter Cunho
Yeah.
- [29:36]
Gil Dezer
Picks you up. Yeah. It got, they said, this is great, great, great. No way. And you know, because they said, we don't want you starting a car in the middle of the building. And so that was a whole other process of how to. Of how to what? What does Porsche have to do with real estate? We said, let's make the building for the car lover, for the guy who wants his car in his living room. And that was what our idea was. What really happened was something I didn't think would ever of, but based on the fact that we have all these South American customers, they love the fact that it was the security and the privacy and safety of them going up and down from an apartment without seeing anybody. Without seeing, you know, without anybody knowing who they are.
- [30:17]
Peter Cunho
Instead of jumping on board and being like, and I know you probably have the patents and the IP lockdown type, but instead of being like, okay, how do we replicate this? This is a really cool feature. This serves the same clientele as usual. It's like the. Immediately, it's like the blockbuster to Netflix, right?
- [30:33]
Gil Dezer
Yeah.
- [30:33]
Peter Cunho
They're just. People are so slow.
- [30:35]
Gil Dezer
They're afraid of evolve, they're afraid of new things.
- [30:37]
Peter Cunho
Yeah.
- [30:38]
Gil Dezer
And when they don't understand something, they're quick to say no. And if it was a little education and especially to developers, I would have expected by now the developers would have figured this out, what I'm doing. Yeah. Figured out that this is, you know, the, the whole reason we're sticking an 85 million dollar elevator in a building. Right. You understand why?
- [30:57]
Peter Cunho
Yeah, of course. Well, because it's a privacy, it's a convenience. It's the, it's.
- [31:01]
Gil Dezer
See, people don't get it. No, that's the abstract effect of it. But there's a financial reason. There's a financial reason I went and patented this. Yeah.
- [31:10]
Peter Cunho
What's the financial reason?
- [31:12]
Gil Dezer
The far. You understand real estate, you buy a specific plot of Land. It has a floor area ratio. Far in Europe, they call it gfa, Gross floor area. Whatever the far on that site allows you to build, in the case of the Bentley Tower, 600000 square feet of net sellable square feet. Okay. That is the actual inside the apartments, not including the balconies, not including the stairs, not including the elevators, not including the parking. So by now, placing the parking adjacent to the unit.
- [31:43]
Peter Cunho
Yeah, I get it now.
- [31:44]
Gil Dezer
I sell it as part of the unit, and I'm picking up an additional 50 on the building. So my, my FAR was 600, 000 square feet. I'm selling now 900, 000 square feet.
- [31:55]
Peter Cunho
What does that turn into in revenue?
- [31:56]
Gil Dezer
Ah, I'm picking up. I'm selling my square. 50% more revenue than the neighbor on the same size plot on the same size land. And yes, it's costing me an elevator, but 300, 000 square feet.
- [32:09]
Peter Cunho
Yeah, but what.
- [32:10]
Gil Dezer
Do the math. At 1500 bucks a foot, that's an additional $450 million in revenue.
- [32:14]
Peter Cunho
You spent 85 million for.
- [32:16]
Gil Dezer
Okay, so yeah, that's why. That's where the. I mean, if. If you were to ever call me a genius, that's where the genius comes in. Because we figured out how to milk every single penny out of this building by adding value by creating this elevator system. But every other developer gives away parking, and I'm selling it at the same price per square foot as a unit. So it's an aha moment. Any. And. And I am surprised that every other developer in the world is not calling me to do the same thing. I don't get it. I don't understand where the. But again, it's. Because it's something new. They're not used to it. Some others are trying. Some others are trying to, you know it. To do buildings where you drive in, drive out, which. Yeah, fire departments are going to shut them down on it. I'm the only system where you don't have to start the car. That's my patent. You come in with your passenger in the car. There's a little satellite system, slides out, lifts the car, these little like chopsticks. The same way, kind of like a tow truck gets the front. We do a four wheels. So the car is in park, passengers in the car, engine off, pulls you into the elevator. The deservator pulls you up to your floor, spits you out into your own personal garage two steps away from your front door. And because it's two steps away from your front door, you have to buy that garage. And if you don't want to buy the garage, this building is not for you. You can go next door.
- [33:27]
Peter Cunho
Have you had pushback?
- [33:28]
Gil Dezer
Oh, yeah. Oh, you charge me for the garage? Yeah. Well, it's part of your unit, you know, I mean, they don't charge me next door. Okay. That's where they don't have. That's where you need to live. Go have some valet sweat and sweat in your car and bang the car up all day long. If it's not important to you, you know, if it's not important to you, if you really think about it and do the math again. I have. I'm selling four spaces. It comes to square footage wise, about 2 million bucks. Not cheap yet. It's $500,000 parking space, which, if you go to any city, anywhere in the world, and you wanted to buy a parking space, that's the price. All right? In Hong Kong, they're going for 2 million. New York, they're going for a million. So to spend half a million dollars to have the car right there in.
- [34:04]
Peter Cunho
Front of you, how do you do something that's never been done before? So I know people that build technology, software that's never been done before. Building something physical, that's never. That requires engineering, architecture. It's like, it's not easy. There's a lot of. It's expensive. It's time consuming.
- [34:19]
Gil Dezer
Well, I, I, here's what, here's what I, I gotta be honest and say I didn't do anything that's never been done before. I just put components together in a way that's never been done before. Meaning what we took was automated parking that's been around since the 70s, but never. It was always done to save space, to put cars next to each other, save the driveways, you know, and make it a more efficient parking garage, because garages are expensive. So I just took that same thing and adapted it in a way where. Where I'm not looking to save space. I'm looking to bring a passenger in the car. So we had to put a lot of passenger safeties. And the answer is, yeah, I'm not an engineer, but we hired the right engineers and said, hey, how can we get closer to this? And how can we get closer to this? And guys would pop in out of nowhere, and I didn't understand what they were doing, but later on became some of the most valuable guys in the whole project. You know, I'm the only elevator in the world with a sprinkler system in it. Should the Car catch on fire. You know, there's a sprinkler system in a moving elevator with traveling. And so, you know, at first we said, oh, we're gonna have a traveling water cable.
- [35:18]
Peter Cunho
Yeah.
- [35:19]
Gil Dezer
And I said, that's gonna be a fucking problem. You can't do that. So. So we went ahead to a high mist system with these huge scuba tanks that sit on the cab and they missed out a fight. Yeah, I mean, but you just got to sit and think and figure it out. Everything's available today. Everything can be done today, you know, and if it can't be done, it's easy to make it today. 3D printers and whatnot, anything can be made.
- [35:37]
Peter Cunho
Yeah, it's true. So it's very true. Like, listen, I don't know, you just never take no for an answer when it comes to innovation, when it comes to building. I know.
- [35:46]
Gil Dezer
Like, because I truly believe that there's always a solution, you know, and there really is.
- [35:50]
Peter Cunho
There really is.
- [35:51]
Gil Dezer
There's always a solution. You just got to think, you know, and sometimes I'm not in the position to think because I don't know the solution, but I gotta. I sit there and I force my people to think and I ask them questions a three year old child would ask and get the juices going to, you know, but why can't we do it this way and why can't we do it that way? Even though I know that their answers are gonna be, but what about this and what about that and what about this and what about that? And just force experts. Who. They're experts. They've been doing this their whole life. You know, force them to think, you know, force them to think the other way.
- [36:19]
Peter Cunho
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- [38:17]
Gil Dezer
Really, really is the oldest. Yeah, yeah. I mean, so one of the main innovations we did at Bentley, I don't know if. Have you been to the sales office? Okay, so you saw the, you saw the balcony? Yes.
- [38:26]
Peter Cunho
Yeah.
- [38:27]
Gil Dezer
It started out at the Trump International Hotel. One of the engineers from Porsche came over, stayed at the hotel and it was a windy day outside. And he said, I went on the balcony of your hotel room and I cannot light my cigar. And I don't want to go inside and light the cigar and walk out because I'll stink up the room and I can't. He says, can you above your balcony railings, can you enclose it with some sort of accordion or sliding windows? I said, that'd be cool. But you can't do that because then it becomes interior square footage. So we thought, and we came up with, on the balcony at Porsche, we did the balcony with the balcony rail, but then towards the edge of the balcony, we did four full floor to ceiling panels of glass on the balcony. And what happened was now you have an area at Porsche of like an 8 by 10 area 0 window on the balcony because the wind gets trapped in that little spot there. And so he says this thing works really well. Let's blow it up at Bentley. And so we, Bentley has an additional skin, an additional skin of window on the building which nobody else does. But what that does is it gives you a three sided balcony. So now we have 1500 square foot balconies with zero wind on the balcony. Even when the wind is blasting at you. It's, it's, it's gonna, it's a game changer. Miami for whatever reason doesn't do a lot of indoor, outdoor. And now we, we have really because of the wind, the weather, the rains tomorrow, every five seconds you gotta pull your cushions in, pull your cushions out. We solve that, we solve for that problem. You don't have to touch your cushions. You don't get any wind on the balcony. And so we put a swimming pool on the balcony. We sunk it in. We have a barbecue you can have and we invite our customers, we have dinner outside there and we show them on the windiest days. Look, nothing's flying off the table. This is an exterior extension of your living room. And so I think that's, that's been a game changer. Nobody else has done it yet. They're all going to start copying me soon. I know it as they do. Which is fine, you know, but, but because that's not a patentable thing, right? I mean we, but, but we did figure out that if you add a third wall to your balcony when you.
- [40:30]
Peter Cunho
Do innovate, how do you protect your ip? How do you make sure that people aren't just copy. Now it's, it's wild to me that people aren't copying you yet. Well, at some point they will.
- [40:40]
Gil Dezer
Well, so here, so here. I didn't, you asked me the question, I didn't answer before how I'm different differentiating. So at when I did the Porsche, you know, nobody wanted to talk to me. I was, I was, I had this, I was crazy idea of putting a car elevator and even the elevator people thought I was nuts. I finally found a guy in Chicago who was able to build it for me. He was a specialty lift company and does all kinds of specialty lifts. Once we built it and, and as, as we did a proof of case or whatever they call it. You know, proof of concept as they call it then. Now I have all these other big elevator companies saying, oh, we might have missed out on something that's really big. I went ahead, I patented the concept. I have a worldwide patent on the Desert taking passengers in a car in the elevator adjacent to a dwelling unit. And there's, it's deeper than that. But yeah, I have a patent. Why? Because there's, there's a revenue on this thing. It adds value. I can add hundreds of millions of dollars to a developer's bottom line, you know, so that's why I believe that this, this anybody who wants it. So, so now the shift we made from Porsche over to Bentley, I'm having Otis Elevators building the elevator for Bentley. Otis is the largest elevator company in the world. And now that also gives me the ability to go sell this elevator concept everywhere. So I can go to Dubai and say, hey, you want to, you want an elevator? My guys at Otis will build it for you.
- [42:01]
Peter Cunho
They're building like crazy too.
- [42:02]
Gil Dezer
Yeah, but in China you want an elevator, My guys at Otis will. So now with Otis in the picture and partnering with us, and hopefully that's going to come out to be a great job. So that gives me a worldwide reach on this patent that, that's costing me like $300,000 a year to keep the patent alive.
- [42:17]
Peter Cunho
But you don't see them copying other parts of what you built.
- [42:20]
Gil Dezer
Not yet. Not yet. I mean there's, there's a one building that's doing something similar. There's another one in Brazil. A lot of them so far, driving in, driving out, that I've seen. But you know, we'll, we're going to call the local fire departments and ask them how that's legal.
- [42:33]
Peter Cunho
You have a 25 year pipeline of projects, correct?
- [42:36]
Gil Dezer
Probably more.
- [42:37]
Peter Cunho
Probably more. How do you, when you think about what you're building into the future, how do you manage that? When markets are going to change, administrations are going to change, everything's going to change at some point.
- [42:48]
Gil Dezer
That's right. I mean you don't, when you got that kind of stuff, it's all right. So you have to. Specifically the 25 year pipeline we have is all different product types. So whatever. Meaning all the, I have 1800 units of, of, of workforce housing that we're planning on doing. We have a 2000 unit project of super luxury with a canal and everything on the Intracoastal mall. I have four more oceanfront sites which is probably another, you know, 250 units each of those of condos. So. But each one is, the world goes up and down for each one of us. One day the rentals are hot. One day real, real retail's hot. One day condos are hot. So over that time, you know, we'll just EB and flow with the market. I mean when you, when, when you build these things, it's not about the market. You're. You're in it, you know, you're in it for, for two administrations. You know, from the day you start to the day you stop, it's is six to seven years. So it's, it's, it's not just who's in office that day and buyer sentiment that day. So you're gonna have to live with these things forever.
- [43:45]
Peter Cunho
Do you see some new technologies in, in the real estate space or just in like not even real estate? I. It's like luxury and lifestyle. What's something new that you will eventually be excited about incorporating a lot of robotics.
- [44:01]
Gil Dezer
I think robotics are going to change to be a super game changer on, on everything we are.
- [44:06]
Peter Cunho
You're already looking at them.
- [44:07]
Gil Dezer
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I am already. I'm working on making a machine. They have it already, but they don't have it. Right. Package delivery. You see, you live in a house, so you don't have that problem.
- [44:16]
Peter Cunho
I see what the con up.
- [44:17]
Gil Dezer
Okay. But yeah, so Amazon today, yeah, is a force, you know, and it's a force of how everybody's getting their stuff, their units. And it's been a real headache for the buildings, the package rooms in the buildings and organizing it and what unit gets what and how do you communicate with the resident of his stuff is here, his stuff is not here. Is he in residence? Is he not in residence? I think a robot to deliver to the units and have them sign the received and all that fun stuff. That's the way it's going to be going. And I think that's what's absolutely needed. You've seen them in some hotels as a butler.
- [44:48]
Peter Cunho
Yeah, I seen those.
- [44:49]
Gil Dezer
But those things don't carry a proper payload. They carry a payload that's, you know, for, for a six pack of Coke. And you know, that's the problem with those. And also the technology on that is already, you know, dead.
- [45:00]
Peter Cunho
So. So like true luxury and true convenience it's getting.
- [45:04]
Gil Dezer
I believe my tagline is luxury is privacy. So and that's me personally. It's not for everybody but luxury. If I can go and accomplish everything I need without having to ask anybody for assistance, yeah, that's luxury. And what I mean by that is, you know, if I have to ask for my valet to get the car, and that's a problem, that's a pain, pain in the butt. Just because there's one more person I got to deal with. And one poor person, I got to, I got to make my hair look nice and smile and you know, I want to just be able to come and go as they do in a single family home. Right. So we do that in the place. I want to be able to just like ordering Uber Eats, you know, on your phone where you don't talk to a person. How much people love that they order Uber Eats and magic food shows up. You can have that downstairs and you can have that same thing and it comes up A, in 10 minutes, B, from the guy who you knew is cooking it. You know, the ingredients, I mean a little bit, you know, better level of, of that kind of experience. I mean and, and, and then having the ability of just, you know, shutting out the world or coming downstairs and, and meeting same people in your same socio economic situation, which is the other part. You want to be living with people like yourself, you know, because I've made the mistake of building a building once where there's one bedroom units, 800 square foot units mixed in with 4,000 square foot units and there's a two tier system and two second class system in that building. The guy with the one bedroom, he's downstairs saying we don't need six valets. And the guy with the, with the 4,000 says we need four more valets. I waited four minutes for my car. You know, so it's, you know, there's a lot that goes into this. You know, people don't realize.
- [46:35]
Peter Cunho
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I know. I.
- [46:37]
Gil Dezer
And people have to live together. You're creating a community.
- [46:40]
Peter Cunho
Yeah. And you can't escape each other.
- [46:42]
Gil Dezer
You can't escape each other. See, the community has to be all like minded residents, you know, and people of the same interest.
- [46:46]
Peter Cunho
We've left, we've left buildings way, way earlier on in my life when we were just renting just because the building wasn't the right, like we were doing well financially or we were doing well in our career. And it was a mix of like, you know, kids that were maybe two people sharing a condo versus families like at every level. It doesn't matter what level it could be a 4,000 square foot could be bigger than that. Whatever it is, you always want to be around people that are sort of living the same life as you. And, and I think that that's just a pleasant experience. You want to be in the right neighborhood.
- [47:17]
Gil Dezer
That's what makes the living experience.
- [47:19]
Peter Cunho
Exactly.
- [47:19]
Gil Dezer
You know, because who wants a bad neighborhood? You never do.
- [47:22]
Peter Cunho
That's why, that's, this is why that neighbor will.
- [47:24]
Gil Dezer
You don't want to go home when you have a bad neighbor.
- [47:25]
Peter Cunho
Also, just last, last comment on just real estate and there's some other things that I want to talk about, just like luxury and lifestyle that you've included. But also I want to talk about some of the people that, that buy your units and, and what, what luxury really, really means. But just on the topic of like future projects and south Florida in particular, you are all South Florida. Why do you believe in South Florida so much? I know that you've been here for forever, but say you never ever, you know, made a mark in South Florida. Do you still believe in this part.
- [48:01]
Gil Dezer
Of the U.S. well, I was definitely here at the right place at the right time.
- [48:04]
Peter Cunho
Yeah.
- [48:05]
Gil Dezer
You know, and multiple situations in this place goes up, goes down, goes up, goes down. But it, you know, every time it goes down comes back up. Yeah. And it comes back at double, you know, so I believe in the United States, but I also see what's going on everywhere in the United States and the popular and the population shifts. And so we are very fortunate and lucky to be here. That's why, you know, and like I said earlier, this is not stopping. More people are going to come. If you come here on vacation, it's very hard to leave, you know.
- [48:32]
Peter Cunho
Oh, I know I came here six years.
- [48:34]
Gil Dezer
Yeah. And, and if you have the ability to pay to uproot and leave if you're working from home, if you do, you know that people will do that. Why not? No state income tax.
- [48:43]
Peter Cunho
Yeah.
- [48:43]
Gil Dezer
I saw yesterday somewhere New York, New York state and Florida state have roughly the same amount of population. And New York State being a Democratic, democratically run, they're paying, they have double the budget, double the annual budget of Florida. I mean, why. Yeah, why? Because they're shoveling some snow. I mean, we have hurricanes. That's the offset, you know, So I don't get it. You know, it's people, this is a well run state. DeSantis is awesome. Yeah. He's really an awesome guy. And so, you know, it's people appreciate that.
- [49:15]
Peter Cunho
You know, I know that people aren't investing in real estate in California or New York or a lot of the other like very Democrat states, but is there anything else that you would, you know, I know that you are entrenched in Florida, but are there other places that even somebody who's like early on starting, maybe they want to buy a, you know, their first property for investment? Where else would you look?
- [49:39]
Gil Dezer
I mean, if, if you listen to the numbers on Immigration and population growth. We, we've expanded by 5% the size of this country in the last couple years based on Biden letting. Those people now, they, they can't necessarily afford houses and they'll double and triple up, et cetera, et cetera. But over time that will trickle down into a tremendous amount of housing needs. And so any, any relative level of housing is going to be lucrative, assuming you could do it right in the right neighborhoods, etc. Again, we're in a microcosm of super high. I am building in Orlando, I'm building. We have, we have a thousand units of rentals. We have two buildings done, 350 units done each and we're in the third building about to start. So we're in all those kind of markets too. And we see it and, and it's Florida.
- [50:22]
Peter Cunho
I mean, yeah, it's all Florida.
- [50:24]
Gil Dezer
They're building more universal is building another park. It's just everything's getting bigger and bigger.
- [50:29]
Peter Cunho
Do you think it's better to be close to the real estate you invest in and just know the region versus just look for the most strategic state or opportunity?
- [50:37]
Gil Dezer
It's definitely a localized business. Absolutely. And when you, with your feet on the ground, you'll do a lot better than just like flying around. And I see this and oh, I see that also managing it, Managing the business, managing the relationships within the business. Yeah, when you're local, it's more important. I see a lot of these New York developers come from out of town and they get the lunch handed to them.
- [50:59]
Peter Cunho
Yeah.
- [50:59]
Gil Dezer
You know, the subcontractors will charge them a different amount just knowing that they're one hit wonders. They're only here because the market's hot today and they're not around, you know, versus me. I've been working with some of the same subcontractors for the last 20 years. You know, so it's, it's, you get different pricing in that respect. So there's a lot that goes into it being local for sure. And I even said that to myself, when people say, hey, let's do a project, I say, I'm not set up to go build in that place, but find me the right developer who's, you know, the Gil Desert of that town, and I'll put money behind them.
- [51:26]
Peter Cunho
You know, for your buyer, for your person that lives in your buildings. Do you think that profile of a luxury person is ever going to change or are their standards, their standards? You see them changing at all in the near future?
- [51:38]
Gil Dezer
What's changed is that you Know, there's always the luxury buyer who is extremely discerning and requires. But what's changed is you get that. That, you know, the lottery. Lottery winning money. Lottery winning, you know, basketball player or singer or something like that. And yeah, they. They come in and, you know, you have to kind of explain to them how to conform to everybody else. But other than that, you know, do.
- [51:59]
Peter Cunho
They have a lot of special requests?
- [52:03]
Gil Dezer
No, more like we have. We have. We have special requests of them, you know, to like, behave and not smoke pot in the elevators and that kind of stuff, you know. You know, but that's what it is. It's, you know, it's. When you, when you move into these buildings, you have to. You're surrounded by ladies and gentlemen. You have to behave like ladies and gentlemen. That's it.
- [52:20]
Peter Cunho
You know. Yeah, I'm. I'm sure you have opinions on new money versus. Versus old money.
- [52:25]
Gil Dezer
It's. Money's green. It's all the same. It's. And it has nothing. And, you know, and I've seen, you know, I sold the unit to a guy.
- [52:32]
Peter Cunho
Yeah.
- [52:33]
Gil Dezer
Who was an absolute class act, absolute gentleman, even an elegant, you know, the way he carried himself and everything else. And he bought a unit for me and I said to him, say he was retired. I said, what did you do in your past life? And he's. And this was like, this was. I'll tell you where. This was like early 2000s. And he said to me, I was a UPS driver and I invested all my UPS stock and UPS went public early 2000s, around then. And the guy became an overnight millionaire after being a UPS driver. And so this is a guy, regular Joe, but he didn't look like a regular Joe, didn't act like a regular Joe, had discerning tastes. And he bought a nice apartment from me, which. He bought a $300,000 apartment, which today is worth 1.2 million easy, maybe even more.
- [53:15]
Peter Cunho
Real estate, in my opinion, is one of the best investments. I truly believe is one of the best investments. I think that more people should be in real estate in some capacity, whatever it is. I mean, outside of the fact that it is a physical asset that you can touch, you can leverage as well, which is also great. But I find that people like, if you're just earning a paycheck, it's very easy to just take all that paycheck and just spend it, and then you make a little bit more and then. Lifestyle creep. And I mean, this is. This is more of a lesson for people that are very early on just starting out. But if you have like a little bit left over, like put that money into a real estate deal, find, find a way to invest it so it compounds, put it into, you know, if there's a sort of a blue chip stock, something like that.
- [53:57]
Gil Dezer
Yeah, yeah. Because it's getting harder and harder to put a little money in real estate.
- [54:00]
Peter Cunho
It is getting harder and harder. So like, I think the answer is like start sooner than later.
- [54:04]
Gil Dezer
It used to be deal sizes were 5 to 10 million and those same deal sizes are now 50 to 75 million.
- [54:09]
Peter Cunho
Yeah, I know, I know.
- [54:11]
Gil Dezer
And so it was easy to jump in, but now it's.
- [54:13]
Peter Cunho
Do you think that somebody who actually is made some money? So say they have, you know, say they had an exit. $50 million exit. Hundred million dollar exit. These are, these are decent sized companies. They built by this point and they want to, they want to get into real estate. And just because you're a good entrepreneur doesn't mean you're a good investor. That's one thing that I've learned many times. You got to learn the game too. It's another game you got to learn. Do you think that they should put their money into real estate? Do you think they should put their money into a fund? Do you think they should manage your prop? Like how do you think through when people come to you for real estate advice, which I'm sure annoyingly all your friends who are not in real estate probably ask you, they have money. How do you get started?
- [54:51]
Gil Dezer
It depends on the person. I mean, are you a passive investor? Are you an active investor? You really want to get involved? Do you care? You just want to put your money and wake up and look at a, look at a bank statement. You know, real estate has a bit of active investing in there.
- [55:06]
Peter Cunho
So if somebody's getting into real estate, I mean, your first building was $80 million building. That's a decent sized building. Is that a big building to jump into for somebody getting started?
- [55:14]
Gil Dezer
Oh, yeah, that was huge.
- [55:15]
Peter Cunho
Yeah.
- [55:16]
Gil Dezer
So I mean that was, we didn't, it was a story of how we got started in that we had partners initially. My father got into an argument with the partners and bought them out. And I was working for the partners, learning, you know, I'd never built anything. I was 24 years old, 25. And my father got into a fight with the partners. He said they were going too slow. He said, hey, just at the time we've been sitting here, the land went up by $10 million. And so they said if it went up by $10 million, pay us 5 million and buy us out. And he said, okay. And he paid him $5 million to buy. Buy them out. That was the first day I had a cigarette in front of my father. I was like, dad, what the fuck are you doing? You know, I mean, we don't know we're doing. Never built anything. He said, and he, My father always had a lot of confidence in me. He said, he said, yeah, you're smarter than all those three guys in the room. You'll figure it out. And, and it was a good, good confidence, good pat on the back. And we figured out, we figured out construction. They've been building since the days of the pyramids. So, you know, it's not that, that, that crazy or not. It's not brain surgery. You got to figure out how to do it. And that's why by my third building, I got bored of building regular buildings. We started putting car elevators and swimming pools on balconies and seeing how we can over complicate general situation.
- [56:23]
Peter Cunho
Yeah, I don't know. I feel like people are scared to take risk like that. I think a lot of people will be scared to take risks.
- [56:28]
Gil Dezer
You have, it's, it's everything's calculated risk and you have to feel comfortable. And, and I really, truly feel comfortable when I say that anything can be built today as far as molded. You can mold concrete in any shape. The steel, the computers behind it can tell you how to make something stand up. And so anything we do, it's just a matter of money, right? So first you gotta start with anything can be done. Then you got to figure out how to make it economically feasible, visible. So where you still make money on.
- [56:50]
Peter Cunho
The job if you don't have it, how did you get that? You didn't put up the 80 million cash. You had banks behind you and stuff like that?
- [56:57]
Gil Dezer
We had, yeah, we. Well, yeah, yeah, we had a construction loan of 60 million and we had.
- [57:02]
Peter Cunho
So that's a good size construction.
- [57:04]
Gil Dezer
Yeah, yeah. It was from a bank that's no longer in business.
- [57:06]
Peter Cunho
How did they, how do you get them to trust and bet on you?
- [57:08]
Gil Dezer
It was not easy. We had to, we had to, you know, we had to promise. We had to show. We had to do with this. We show sales, we show that we had the construction team. The contracts were all eyes dotted, T's crossed. Yeah, everything was all properly lined up. And we found Colonial bank to give us a loan because bank, the regular banks were not willing to talk to us. It's one of those things where you know, they tell you for this job, you need experience. Nobody's going to hire you without the experience. But then where do you start? Where do you need the experience? It was one of those situations, for sure. We didn't have experience. Nobody wanted to give us a loan. But then, once you get experience, now everybody's your best friend. Same with the car elevator. You know, nobody wanted to touch me when I was building the desert. But then once I built it, now I had Otis, Koenigse, everybody running after me. Coney. Right. Everybody running after me to do it.
- [57:48]
Peter Cunho
These are the others, you know, so, no, it's a. It's a good lesson because, like, I mean, like, I get it. Like, you know, you didn't start with zero cash on that first building, but a $60 million loan was all. Yeah, that's a lot.
- [57:59]
Gil Dezer
It was big.
- [58:00]
Peter Cunho
And you can make the argument that a lot of people could replicate, even in a slightly smaller scale, that first build, if they're smart.
- [58:09]
Gil Dezer
Today, for sure. Today. Today, to get a $60 million loan is easier. And I would think. And today, there's so much money out there. If you have the right. It's the business plan.
- [58:19]
Peter Cunho
Okay? So everyone I know in South Florida, the first time they hire a GC and a team, they get screwed. How did you not get screwed? Or did you. And you figured it out in spite.
- [58:30]
Gil Dezer
You know, it's. It's one of those. What do you really call? Screwed? Of course you're gonna get screwed. Yeah, I get screwed all. Every day because I'm the guy who's paying for everything, you know, so, you know, but some. Sometimes you get screwed, and you can't take it personally because it is what it is. You know, there's things the architect left off the plans. There's. I have a doll in my office that looks like one of my engineers where you can actually press and choke his. Choke his neck, and he sticks. So my guy's got it for me, so I don't want to mention the guy's name, but I choke his neck because I want to. You know, that's a guy you want to choke. But these things are what they are. And, you know, fortunately, we have. We price our things right, and we have a cushion inside of it to absorb any hiccups that come along. But, you know, you just can't take it personally. Just keep on moving forward.
- [59:13]
Peter Cunho
I love it.
- [59:13]
Gil Dezer
Yeah.
- [59:14]
Peter Cunho
Okay, a few more. What do you call them? What were the.
- [59:18]
Gil Dezer
Gillisms?
- [59:19]
Peter Cunho
Gillisms, yeah.
- [59:20]
Gil Dezer
That's what my. My team calls my My philosophical.
- [59:23]
Peter Cunho
Some of them are good. Yeah, some of them are very good. I. I wrote out a couple that I think. So just tell me what these mean to you and what these mean people that are listening. Success is not a number. Success is the feedback that I get on these buildings.
- [59:35]
Gil Dezer
Yeah.
- [59:36]
Peter Cunho
So you don't chase money.
- [59:37]
Gil Dezer
I have. I have enough money, fortunately, thank God, you know, knock on wood, you know, I have enough money. Yeah. The feet. Yeah. What better feeling than that? You know, Somebody tells you, oh, my God, I have a guy that. He says, you created my life. He says, you created. The reason I go downstairs and have breakfast there is because of you put that restaurant there and blah, blah, blah, and, you know, very, like, profound things. You don't think about that stuff, you know, so. And they appreciate. And they appreciate because I did set it all up for them. I got the chef, who's the guy there. We set up every.
- [60:10]
Peter Cunho
You know, got a Michelin star chef.
- [60:12]
Gil Dezer
Yeah. Well, that's now for the next hour. You know, that's a big one.
- [60:15]
Peter Cunho
Yeah. Every no gets you closer to a yes.
- [60:19]
Gil Dezer
Yeah, very true. Don't take no for an answer. Don't say no. You know, and I. And I. And I. To the point where the word no for me is a really like, like, like, like, I don't like it, you know, and, and so. And. And I also don't like when people tell me no. I have a. In Spanish, they call it become caprichoso. You know, like, they. They tell you no, and you're like, you want it even more. You want even more. So, so. And, and so that's where I never really took no for an answer. And, and, and I also taught my staff in part of our training that we do in my hotels and. And on all my properties, you're not allowed to use the word no. If you can't do something for somebody, you can say, we, We. We can't. We don't do it this way. We can't do it this way. But this is how we can do it. And never, never give the negative without offering the positive. Yeah. Find a solution. Because, you know, just to say, oh, I'm sorry, you can't do that. No, I. It was France that pissed me off. You ever been in France? Anything you asked for, I want to punch. Every French person tells me, I know. Pusa boo. You know, why is no, I can't get ketchup. No pissabou.
- [61:21]
Peter Cunho
Yeah, I'm sure you can get. I think you can figure it out.
- [61:23]
Gil Dezer
Yeah. I mean, I couldn't park the car after 4:00. No. P, like you know everything there with those French people there.
- [61:29]
Peter Cunho
But that's the difference. There's two very different types of people in this world, right? There's people that'll say no or they'll come to you with a problem or the people that'll just figure it out and who do you want to be around? Right, Exactly. You want to be around people. Just figure it out. Okay, last two questions. But before I go there, I just want you to leave the audience with like where should they go to connect with your work, what you're working on. Website, social. I don't know what you want to.
- [61:54]
Gil Dezer
Drop, but BentleyResidences.com is our latest project. Desert.com is our website, but I don't know how well maintained it is.
- [62:02]
Peter Cunho
That's fine, that's fine.
- [62:04]
Gil Dezer
305-932-1000 is our main office number. You can reach us there. Yeah, and, and we, we're doing. I'm projects going on right now for, for us, I'm doing the main focus is Bentley. I'm also partners, 50 partners in the project in Hillsborough. It's a Rosewood in Hillsborough, where it's beautiful. It's really going to be. Wow. I gotta say I'm not as involved as I'd like to be, but the designers there knocked it out of the park. It's gonna be an 11 story building where the first entire floor is all amenities. It's really going to play be a place you're going to want to live.
- [62:36]
Peter Cunho
Okay, last questions. First one would be what would be out of all the words of wisdom that your dad taught you growing up, what was the most important idea or thought or piece of wisdom that he left you with?
- [62:49]
Gil Dezer
My father told the story. I don't know if people know the story or not. This is Michael Desert philosophy, okay? And it's awesome. He said, he tells the story of the young bull and the old bull and they're all, they're both at the top of the mountain and the young bull says, the old bull, he says, hey dad, dad, look at all the cows down there. Let's go run really fast. Run down there and go one of the cows and the old bull says to the, the young boy says son, let's walk slowly. And all the cows. And so that's the answer. Don't run just to one of them. Take your time. Them all.