Anne Hollander is the CEO of Lobby CRE, a Thirty Capital company. She's making an impression in CRE and Tech as one of the few CEOs with a background in both real estate operations and rapidly scaling technology companies. [00:00 - 05:16] How Technology is Improving Real Estate Performance Technology is essential in helping to improve performance and speed up the process of getting projects completed. Lobby CRE uses four levers of performance - ...
Anne Hollander is the CEO of Lobby CRE, a Thirty Capital company. She's making an impression in CRE and Tech as one of the few CEOs with a background in both real estate operations and rapidly scaling technology companies.
[00:00 - 05:16] How Technology is Improving Real Estate Performance
- Technology is essential in helping to improve performance and speed up the process of getting projects completed.
- Lobby CRE uses four levers of performance - operational data, debt management, equity analysis, and legal structure - to help boost returns for investors.
[05:16 - 10:40] 30 Capital Launches Lobby CRE, A Platform That Helps Real Estate Investors Perform Better
- Lobby CRE is a proprietary platform that helps real estate investors manage their workflows more effectively.
- The platform has been introduced into the market and has partnered with a number of industry organizations.
- The platform is helpful for real estate investors who want to take a more holistic approach to their investments.
[10:40 - 16:03] Lobby CRE Helps Real Estate Professionals Migrate Data Easily
- Lobby CRE can help optimize individual asset returns and larger portfolio returns by bringing all data together
- Data management is a huge issue in the real estate space and lobby CRE can help solve this by handling all data transfers and user permissions
- Lobby CRE can be implemented within 30 days
[16:04 - 20:07] Closing Segment
- Reach out to Anne Hollander!
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Tweetable Quotes:
"Being able to understand what those ownership contributions look like, what those distributions look like, what timing can look like on this, and balancing that across these levers."
- Anne Hollander
Connect with Anne Hollander by visiting emailing her at ahollander@thirtycapital.com or
Visit https://www.lobbycre.com/
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Want to read the full show notes of the episode? Check it out below:
[00:00:00] Anne Hollander: being able to understand what those ownership contributions look like, what those distributions look like, what timing can look like on this, and balancing that across these.
Levers is really critical here. And then finally, probably the least sexy, but most important of all is our entity management, right? Being able to manage those legal structures, understanding what your tax obligations look like, understanding what your insurance obligations look like, and of course, what that corporate structure above these investments is.
[00:00:37] Sam Wilson: Anne Hollander is the CEO of Lobby cre, a 30 capital company. She's making an impression in CRE and Tech as one of the few CEOs with a background in both real estate operations and rapidly scaling technology companies. And welcome to
[00:00:50] Anne Hollander: the show. Thank you for having me, Sam. So thrilled
[00:00:52] Sam Wilson: to be here.
Absolutely. The pleasure is mine. And there are three questions I ask every guest who comes on the show in 90 seconds or less. Can you tell me where did you start? Where are you now and how did you
[00:01:01] Anne Hollander: get there? Yeah, absolutely. So I started here my career in real estate here in Dallas in leasing and marketing operations at a, a small portfolio, about 30 properties or so in the Dallas area.
Got my feet wet in the value ad space but technology was always my calling. And so I find myself now right at that intersection working right between technology and real estate to help improve, perform. ,
[00:01:24] Sam Wilson: What does that even mean? When you say unique,
[00:01:27] Anne Hollander: Let's talk about improving performance, right?
Yeah. It's, it's that thing that everybody wants, everybody says, and nobody really quite knows how to get to, right? So when we think about improving performance depending on who you are and what your role is inside of real estate, that can mean a number of different things. Right. The way that we think about this here at 30 Capital is improving the returns that you have so that you can get to that promote.
We're very focused in the general partner and very focused in returning those returning that money and returning as much performance as we can back to the investor as well. We do this with technology. We know that there have been a number of other industries who have started down the path and already seen so many of the benefits that technology can provide.
But by putting technology into place, we find ourselves getting to a place where not only we can be much more efficient in what we do, but much more effective as well.
[00:02:17] Sam Wilson: What, when you say that, when you say putting technology into place, like what are some high level things that come to mind that you say, Man, these are, these are some things we've done that have, have juiced that performance.
Cause again, I'm going back to what you said, which is we want to, we, we want to obviously juice the performance of projects so we can actually get to the general partner promote, like that's, that's good for the investor and that's good for you as a general partner. Yeah. But what are those things that you guys are doing, or what technologies come to mind that you feel like you use maybe that other people.
Would benefit
[00:02:47] Anne Hollander: from. Yeah, absolutely. So as we think about this, right, let's, let's go way back in time. First major jump in technology was being able to write things down, pen and paper, right? And I myself am a member of the Red Pen Club, and I will print things out, mark them up, absolutely, and decide what I, what it is I need to do.
However, when I do that, I'm not able to look at nearly enough data to necessarily understand the, the finer points or the more contextual points that are potentially affecting my performance, slowing me down and creating a lag. And so then along comes Microsoft. And I gotta tell you, nobody wakes up in the morning wanting to get into their Excel spreadsheets.
But this is what folks do today within real estate. They try to put all of this data together, manually manipulate it, and hopefully it will set out an answer that is acceptable and that you know what your path forward looks like. But you know, Excel doesn't really cut it. That's still creating that lag on performance.
We've got Excel documents flying around through the organization. It's not getting data fast enough. I mean, I know that I have big fingers and sometimes fat finger numbers, columns, whole sheets of things. And so what we have today now is a another step forward, right? So from pen and paper to Excel now from Excel into lobby cre, where we're really managing all four levers of performance across the real estate portfolio.
We're managing the operational data that's coming in, So understanding all of those leading indicators around leasing and marketing, around delinquency around all of the financials, the costs and income that may be \ generated in the property. We're looking at your debt and understanding what that looks like and understanding not only the covenants and obligations that you have as you're beginning to manage and optimize that debt, but then also what your options are to generate cash back out.
Lots of folks might be sitting on a particular gold mine. And as, as folks especially today are looking at options for refi sell, they're going, Oh, I didn't know that there was an additional $300,000 here, 500,000, $800,000 that we could pull out of this. We're looking at the equity, which I think a listeners of your podcast here certainly know something about already, but being able to understand what those ownership contributions look like, what those distributions look like, what timing can look like on this, and balancing that across these.
Levers is really critical here. And then finally, probably the least sexy, but most important of all is our entity management, right? Being able to manage those legal structures, understanding what your tax obligations look like, understanding what your insurance obligations look like, and of course, what that corporate structure above these investments is.
[00:05:10] Sam Wilson: That's a lot of moving pieces to compile into one software platform. It absolutely is. This is a proprietary platform that you guys have developed in house. It
[00:05:22] Anne Hollander: is, yes. And so we developed this after multiple generations inside of real estate. We're struggling with the same exact problem. Right, right.
And paper wasn't cutting it. Microsoft Excel not cutting it. And so finally we decided, you know what? We're gonna build our own solution. And so for the last three years, that's exactly what we've done. We've now introduced this into market, partnered up with a number of industry organizations, and have more than 600 clients now enjoying the benefits of lobby
[00:05:48] Sam Wilson: cre.
Wow, that's really cool. But you built it for your own portfolio. We
[00:05:52] Anne Hollander: absolutely did. Selfishly, we did.
[00:05:54] Sam Wilson: Right. Now that's, i, I, I love that approach cuz I feel like you will end up building a better product. In the end, then necessarily somebody that comes along and sees a problem in the industry and goes, Hey, I can help you solve that.
You're like, Hey, I'm gonna fix the problem myself. And then once we have it in in house and it's functional, we can then sell it to the rest of the market that needs it
[00:06:15] Anne Hollander: as well. Exactly right. We understand these workflows. We understand the, the give and take that comes into these workflows. We understand the role of.
Inside of these workflows as well, right? We, we see a lot of other technologists come into this space who, you know, want to let go of Aunt Mary who's been running payroll for forever and ever, and they don't understand the family dynamics that go into a real estate investment. And so we're really considering, okay, how can I make Aunt Mary more effective here?
How can I give you a lot more power? Just simply by using technology rather than having to do this manually every single, every
[00:06:52] Sam Wilson: single day. Right, Right. And you hit, I mean, you hit on e even, even problems, you know that I think about it in our, in our own business. You hit on it, you know, it's the, it's the Excel sheet.
It's the entity management. It's, when's this filing due? When's that come up? Who's taking like, and, and you can build systems around it. But again, like you said, it, it's still similar to pen and paper in its own right. And that it requires us to go back in and look at it and go, Oh, right, no, that's due on April 15th or whatever it is.
I'm thinking of taxes here more. More, I guess, by the date that came to mind. But you know, I think that that's, that's that you're hitting, obviously, you know that what you've built is solving an industry problem. Is there, is there a stage at which a real estate investment company should begin considering a platform like yours or,
[00:07:37] Anne Hollander: I'd say the earlier, earlier the.
Why get yourself into a place where you're developing manual workflows inside of your organization. Start early. Build these processes from the beginning. Understand what these workflows are and, and get your team trained up as early as you can. Now, if you're pretty deep into your investments already, you've got 10, 20, 30, 50, a hundred.
Assets already. That's okay too. Our team will work with you to help update what those workflows are inside of your organization to be sure that everybody is getting value out of lobby
[00:08:06] Sam Wilson: cre. Yeah, absolutely. What, so where do you, where do you guys go as a business? I mean, if you're building, and I know you used the term technologist, that's not a term I'm familiar with cuz I can barely send an email.
So you won't be calling me for tech support, that's for sure. But, but tell me this, I where do you guys go as a company? I mean, if you guys started as real estate investors and that's, that's what you've known for so long, you built a platform that then services your own business. Do you guys then kind of veer off and go into the software as a, I guess you call it software as a service side of things, or do you stay in real estate?
Where are you guys going? We're
[00:08:45] Anne Hollander: actually doing both. We believe so strongly in the things that we built of improving our own real estate portfolio, that we have the two things side by side within the business here at 30 Capital. We're never going to abandon real estate. We, we love real estate. We know real estate.
That is our, our home for sure. We are a real estate first organization. I come in as, as more of that tech person that has a little bit of real estate background to help build out launch and then scale what these. Technology solutions can do for us as an organization. Again, focused on our own real estate portfolio, but then really also focused on the mid-market space as well.
We know that there are other technology companies out there doing something kind of similar but really serving that top end of the market. Those top hundred real estate investors that exist out there. There's nobody that's been serving this mid-market space, and that's the spot that, you know, that's our sweet spot.
That's what we know. That's what we love. Can
[00:09:36] Sam Wilson: you define mid-market for me? Sure.
[00:09:38] Anne Hollander: So under 5 billion in
[00:09:40] Sam Wilson: aum. Okay. Okay, great. No, that, that, that's extremely helpful. Let's go back to what you called the four levers of performance, and then tell me maybe in a little greater detail how exactly this software platform is helping end users.
I guess pull those levers of
[00:10:00] Anne Hollander: performance. Absolutely. So what we see today and this is certainly was, was true in our own real estate portfolio, is that we were taking a very siloed approach. So we were just looking at ops, just looking at marketing and leasing, just looking at occupancy and vacancy, just looking at delinquency, just looking at the expenses down at the individual asset level.
And that's great. That's what a lot of organizations are doing today. But when we begin to put other data, Next to this, so debt, for example, understanding what my debt obligation is, understanding my am schedule, understanding the covenants of this loan and what my options are to help generate cash back out of that.
Suddenly some of the decisions that I made over in the ops side didn't look quite as optimized. As they could have been. Same thing goes with equity, same thing goes with entity is they begin to put these things together and not having to do so manually or not having to pull data out of so many disparate systems that that it, it, none of it talks to one another.
What I'm able to see is actually optimizing not only individual asset, but larger across the portfolio as well. So if I'm invested in multiple. I may decide, okay, with this particular asset, I'm gonna do X, Y, and Z. This one, I'm gonna do X, Y, and Z. Across the portfolio that I have, I am going to get a stronger return because I'm able to optimize each one in in light of the whole.
[00:11:17] Sam Wilson: Got it. that's really, really compelling. You know, tell me, I, I guess are there, are there, Well, here, let's hit pause real quick. What are some things, I feel like I'm looking for a question and I can't find it. Tell me, is there something else I should hit or highlight that I've, that I haven't yet asked you about?
Let's, let's talk about
[00:11:33] Anne Hollander: data management. Okay. Bring all
[00:11:35] Sam Wilson: the data together. Great. We'll jump right back in here and I, and I'll, I'll ask a, a lead in question for that. And what can you tell me about data management as it pertains to lobby
[00:11:45] Anne Hollander: cre? So I know you're not a tech person, and nor do I expect anybody in real estate to be tech people, right?
You brought up this point earlier, I wanna come back around to this. Real estate people need to be real estate people. You need to go operate, manage real estate and not really worry about the tech. Right where, where lobby CRE can step in. But let's talk about data management for a minute, because I think this is one of those areas that is greatly misunderstood, especially in the real estate space, data management.
So you're probably not even thinking about how much data that you're sending back and forth in an Excel file today, right? Probably not. No. Probably not. Just like, okay, it's just data on a sheet, right? What if that data fell into someone else's hands that it wasn't intended? Wouldn't. What if, there it had sensitive information, You know, investor information addresses, contribution amounts, right?
The, the risk begins to come up that if, hey, if that's in the wrong hands, whether it's even somebody inside of the org that you find yourself in, or if it's somebody outside of your organization, that could be bad for you, right? So what we do here within lobby series is handle all of that. You don't have to think about it.
It's all in one platform. All of your users are managed. Anybody can come in and you can set up what those parameters are, what they can access, when they can access it, and how they access that. So data management is huge in this particular space. We think about how much data that a real estate asset or a real estate portfolio can generate.
It's staggering. Staggering, right? If it's Facebook and, and Twitter and the rest of it, just shame for the amount of data that a real estate asset can generate. And so if without some data management actually in place through a, a provider or through a partner that you know, and you trust to do this for you you open yourself up for a lot of risk that I don't think a lot of people are actually.
[00:13:26] Sam Wilson: Yeah, I guess I easy example there, and again, maybe I'm talking a little bit outside of my depth, but let's, let's talk about a multi-family property, right? Let's say you got 250 units on a multi, I mean, if you're trading data back and forth on all of your tenants, on everything they've paid on this and that, does this allow you to interface with your property management company back to lobby c e so that it all stays kind of housed in one secure?
You nailed it.
[00:13:52] Anne Hollander: Okay. You're a technologist, you just didn't know it. , Right. You're solving the same problems, Right. That we are trying to solve as well. Right. Let's use that multifamily example. If I pull that that rent roll outta the property management system, it's gonna come with all that personally identifiable information, right?
All those things that we never wanna get breach alerts about, correct. Correct. We don't wanna do that. And so a provider then to help you manage all of this, help take that risk off of your plate and not have to worry about it, is huge in my mind.
[00:14:20] Sam Wilson: How? How do you work? What I have found with some technology solutions is in the end, they end up creating, and obviously yours doesn't do this, but just tell me how you guys worked around this.
They end up creating more work than if you just went out and just did it manually. I've seen this on some things where it's like, oh my gosh, like by the time we get this set. We might as well have just gotten on the phone and just had phone calls and written it on paper and sent, sent it in the mail.
So, yeah. How, how have you guys effectively solved that? I guess when I think about interfacing with the property management company back to us as owners, bringing on our investors and making sure all of this gets dumped into one place that is easy to access, but yet difficult to access. Tell me. Yeah.
[00:15:02] Anne Hollander: Oh, so we handle it is the short version of that.
So in, in our implementation when we're, when we're doing a lobby CRA implementation today most of our implementations are less than 30 days. Wow. If you've ever been through a property management system migration or, or putting one in, in the first place, you're like, Oh my God, I'm never going through this again.
Right? So much pain, so much agony, never doing it Instead we recognize that real estate is built on, on people and, and the people that are in those particular spots. And so we force those relationships. Directly with those people to help make this as an easy and seamless transfer as we possibly can.
Once it's up and running, then we go into our next phase of being sure that everybody in your organization is now leveraging what the platform looks like. So we're very deep into the analytics within the platform to make sure that, Hey, are you using this dashboard? Hey, do you know how to use this report?
Hey, here are all 500 KPIs that we've got, which ones are gonna be most important to you? What are you interested in? and a full team there of real estate and data analysts who are there by your side to help with all of that. It's rather amazing. What we've seen is that we have organizations who are able to go from you know, from a, an old system or an old manual way of doing things and be able to create not only time in their day.
One of the metrics I love here as an organization we worked with that wanted to create for everybody in. Their property managers, their asset managers owner, everybody, an additional eight hours a. To focus just on real estate, not on tech, not on reporting, not on data, not, not on anything that was not directly real estate related.
Whether that means how do we grow the real estate? How do, what are our acquisition targets? Do, do we have assets ready for disposition? Are there other things strategically that we can do? And we were able to do that for them plus some. Wow.
[00:16:47] Sam Wilson: Wow. That's really cool. And I, and I, and I really, actually find your answer there valuable.
It's, it's, it's more of a done for you. Especially on the onboarding side of things. Mm-hmm. , because that is where a lot of us get lost in bringing on technology. It's like, Oh my gosh, this is, this is, I just don't understand. It's gonna take forever to get it implemented, and by the time we get it implemented, we've lost out on how much ever progress could have made on something else.
Exactly.
[00:17:09] Anne Hollander: Right. Why are we messing with actually in a market dynamic like this, right? Yeah. Where we've got so much activity now, kind of like, Okay, are we going this way or this way, or this way or that way? Or what's going on with this asset, with this deal, with that, that particular opportunity that's on my plate.
Right? Right. Trying to keep track of all of that and implement technology incredibly difficult, which is why we lift that whole thing off of. I
[00:17:31] Sam Wilson: love it. I love it. Very, very cool. And is there anything else that we should know to highlight here on this show before we sign off as it pertains to lobby cre, what you guys are doing, where you guys are going?
Anything I've missed?
[00:17:42] Anne Hollander: I think just one big thing. And that's just one, so you talk about, Hey, I'm. Not a technologist, and we think that's that's great. We have recently launched the Academy of CRE and Innovation here at 30 Capital, and I serve as an executive in residence there. This academy is a great source for anybody that wants to build or sharpen their skills, specifically within real estate focused in, in critical areas.
For example, our first two courses here are in debt and equity optimization, how to go and do that. And we're leveraging a number of mid-career functional experts who have been doing this for, for quite some time as well as some later career industry heavyweights that are providing a lot more context into market dynamics and how things shift.
It's been great for our students. We've got we've had just about a hundred folks now go through these certification courses. We've got another one in data and. So you said you wake up one morning, you're like, I wanna know more about data and how I can derive value from data. Excellent Academy of CRE and innovation is there for you by your side to teach you all of the cool new things that you can do with real estate data.
[00:18:49] Sam Wilson: That is awesome. Is there, tell, tell us while we're on this topic, how does someone find that resource?
[00:18:55] Anne Hollander: Yeah. You go to the academy of cre.com and it will be right there available for you. You can go and register and I'll even leave you with this, right? If there's a listener here who's interested in taking one of these courses, participating in our panel sessions or even becoming an expert in residence, please reach out.
I have a lot of free codes to get you a free certification.
[00:19:16] Sam Wilson: That's fantastic and thank you for taking the time to come on the show today. If our listeners do wanna reach out to you about that particular topic or any other topic, what is the best way to do
[00:19:25] Anne Hollander: that? Oh, email might be the best as much as I love to ignore it.
hollander@30capital.com. Or you can reach out via the lobby cre site at www.lobbycre.com.
[00:19:35] Sam Wilson: Fantastic. We'll make sure you put both of those there in the show notes. And thank you for coming on the show today. I certainly appreciate it. Absolutely.
[00:19:41] Anne Hollander: Thank you, Sam.
