Lloyd Lee, A Blessed Life and Real Estate Private Equity

 

92-155 Lloyd Lee

SPEAKERS

Lloyd Lee, Will Bachman

 

Will Bachman  00:02

Hello and welcome to The 92 Report, conversations with members of the Harvard and Radcliffe class of 1992 I’m your host. Will Bachman, and I’m delighted to be here today with Lloyd. Lee Lloyd, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me so Lloyd. Tell us about your journey since graduating from Harvard,

 

Lloyd Lee 00:21

sure, so I will say this, I still interview for Harvard here in London, which is where I’ve lived for the last 20 something years. And one thing that I will say before we talk about my own journey is that I always encourage incoming freshmen to really enjoy being at Harvard and looking at Harvard as an almost infinite platform from which, not only to Learn, but from which to just literally jump into anything that you want to do, either academically or for life, because that’s what infinite experiences in a contained environment give you the opportunity to do. And I am very grateful that at Harvard I was able to do that in my own way.

 

Will Bachman  02:19

I’d say infinite experiences in a contained environment. Sounds like a T shirt that you could get in Cambridge, Harvard Square. I will say this. I mean,

 

Lloyd Lee  02:35

Warren Buffett did say one of the best things that ever happened to bees. Because, frankly, I was born in the United States of America, right? I had a I live in a country of opportunity and freedom. And I will say, you know, it is, it was, and it still is a blessing to have been able to get a heart without doubt, it was an enormous opportunity. I think the key is, a lot of times you’re 17, you go to college, the first thing you want to do is get a beer, like your very, very first beer, right? We’ve all kind of done a little bit of that, but you missed the fact that actually it’s, it’s about a lot more than grabbing a beer for the first time. It’s about an near infinite opportunity to do stuff in a contained environment. And I, I did my fair share of that at Harvard, and it’s where this journey begins, which was I went to Harvard with the idea I was going to be a pre med guy, and I was and I did most of my coursework, but I also studied fine arts, specifically architecture, and I also met a professor, John Stilgoe, at Graduate School of Design, but who also lectured. And that whole experience opened me up to the idea that there was a lot more than you know, what they call STEM today, which is science, technology, engineering and math, and along comes a whole new world of opportunity as I exit Harvard, where I was not only studied fine arts, but had also done a lot of theater work, tech production, set design, stuff that had nothing to do with, you know, you know, calculus and biology and chemistry, which I was studying at The same time. And I basically went up to Cornell, graduated class of 95 and went out from the school of hotels up there, straight in to New York City. And I had two choices at the time for job, and I was either going to go to work at Disney, Walt Disney Imagineering, or something of that milk. We had a couple of options at the time. I can’t even remember what they were, or I needed the money. I needed to pay the rent, and I went to work for a consulting firm. And I chose the latter because I frankly, needed to pay the rent, and they paid that. Yeah, but what I found interesting is I went from New York City working at a boutique workout restructuring organization, because it was the early 90s and the world had fallen apart, and went to work for one of our biggest clients, Starwood Capital Group, a real estate private equity group. Founder Barry stern as HBS, and he’s a titan in our industry today. And effectively went to go work for Starwood Capital Group around 1998 something like that. And effectively was asked to open the Office for London in and around 2001 and so I found myself in this interesting position as a young buck who decided to pursue a common interest, if you look at it thematically, a guy who studied architecture found a love for the arts that still had math somehow in my bloodstream. I ended up in finance, but in real estate, and I was basically driving down the middle of the lane because it, it allowed me to pay the rent. It was a It combined two passions, which was, you know, real estate and kind of Math Finance. But what was funny is on that journey, I picked up the third passion, which is all the stuff that I’d never done in my life before, which was the fine arts, the passion of theater, the passion of entertainment. And what happened with the course of being at Strawberry Capital Group was I just kind of honed my skills as an investment guy for the course of a number of years, and then in 2010 the world had fallen apart again, and I saw an opportunity to be an entrepreneur, and in 2010 my current business partner and I set up Yoo Capital. And Yoo Capital was effectively a startup that the two and I, two of us had, which was to basically be real estate private equity guys. We’ve kind of do it our way, very investable, very responsible, very institutional, but a radical rethink in how we think investments can and should be done in real estate. And if you fast forward to today, what we are now known for as an organization is that we are one of the larger investors in central London in creating global icon, destination, type places which are also socially responsible. So we might be the largest investors today in London, in live theaters, stages, film and television studios, music, arenas, hotels, restaurants. We also have four, if not five, partnerships, schools, two of which we’ve gifted in schools, in film and television, School for the Arts, we’ve created incubator spaces for the Imperial College London and life sciences to basically support start businesses and innovation tech in the sciences on their campus. We’ve also created incubator spaces in film, television, for small to medium sized businesses in London that are really struggling to afford to be able to have the people work in central London because it is that expensive. And more recently, we have announced that when we do residences in central London for people to be able to live in these great places for building they can go to work and go to school, we are contributing 50% of all the housing to be government affordable housing, that is an enormous undertaking in central London to be able to hit that mark. So one in every two homes that we build be for social housing. And so the business we built, on the one hand, has put us in a position where we are now business partners with Cirque du Soleil and Marriott and Hyatt and entrance Entertainment Group and Trafalgar Entertainment Group and the organization out of Broadway, and some of the big names in hospitality, food, beverage, music, arena management and some of our buildings just announced two weeks ago, or two days ago that the naming rights deal was going to British Airways, like it’s kind of got a really fun. On front face of it all, and yet, at the same time, we are partners with local and central government here in the United Kingdom, because our investments are considered strategic to the national interest and socially responsible, because of the educational programs that we invest into because the affordable housing programs create and because the accessibility that we mandate operationally in our restaurants, so that we’re not just doing fancy restaurants, we’re doing all category classes, all ticket prices, all average check prices, which is the term you Give her. What’s the average check at a restaurant? What is the average cost for a person to be able to eat there? And we range from $8 or eight pounds here, up to, you know, 80 pounds. But the key is ensure that we create accessibility in our destinations. And so fast forward, over the last couple of decades, we now sit on approximately four and a half billion pounds of investments, and about 40 that’s that comprise almost 40 Acres of central London. Now what I think we’re proud of as a firm, and I’m particularly grateful for and proud of as one of the co founders of the firm, is that our people are extraordinarily talented as investment professionals, but because of who we are and what we stand for, we’re also incredibly committed to the ethos of what I just described at every level in the shop, And that for us has been incredibly important to us and something we’re proud of, which is that our people really believe in what we do. And for me, it’s been particularly gratifying because the journey I’ve taken to get here literally combines all the three strands that really tie all the way back to 1998 to 1992 it is just, it’s, it seems really simple in the rear view mirror. And I have to say, even though driving the whole way across the 30 some odd years is a slightly different journey, to be fair, I’d say every quarter I look in a notebook I have had since 1997 when I first mapped out my personal journey for the next 25 to 30 years.

 

Lloyd Lee  12:36

I wrote my first version on Broadway and 70th at the Mozart cafe in 1997 and I had three branches to my life over the next 25 years, and I took one of those branches, and the branch I just described to you, the branch I took, is the one I just described to you of three at that time, and it’s nice to be able to say that on the one hand, in the rear view mirror, it looks like a straight line, and the journey was always a bit different, but I have to say of the other hand, the journey was different because it’s day to Day, but it was actually a fairly straight line, and I think it’s because I was blessed to have a really great grounding in education and understanding who I am and what’s important to me, and and feeling like I was granted the skills, the education and the opportunity to hone those passions professionally over the last 30 some odd years.

 

Will Bachman  13:51

Wow, what an extraordinary story. Tell us a bit more about this notebook, and what were you What did you write down there in in 1997 at the corner of Broadway and 70th. What were the, what was the reactions that you laid out for yourself?

 

Lloyd Lee  14:09

I was, I was a young whatever that was, 26 year old, yeah. And I basically said, look, what am I doing? I’m at a consulting firm. And like, I’m either going to stay here and try to become a partner. That’s like, that’d be an amazing opportunity, no question about it. Or I’m going to basically work for a private equity group, and then I don’t expect to be like, the head of some massive private equity group, but I maybe I can run a region for a big private equity group, or I start my own firm. And so basically what ended up happening as I was very blessed by the opportunity to basically open the Office for strawberry caliber group back in 2000 something odd. So that was the decision tree was I’m leaving the consulting firm. I’m going to go work for our client, see how I do. Ended up being responsible for UK and. Year, and then, effectively, in 2010 set up in capital.

 

Will Bachman  15:07

Tell us about that journaling Have you continued to do on

 

15:12

the every December? Oh,

 

Will Bachman  15:15

tell us about your very timely tell us about what’s your kind of standard format,

 

Lloyd Lee  15:20

or what’s happened now is, obviously there’s professional elements, which is the first half of the page, second half is family and personal. And so what’s happened over that period of time is that that has grown and matured as well where, you know, I sit down and I think about our son, and I think about his future, I think about our family and what is important to us, and what we’re going to do as a family, and what we think people who haven’t been born yet are going to be doing. And so one of the things that my wife have have always done since we were dating, is we’ve thought about, what would we do if we actually could, and and what we said we would do if we could was we would effectively establish an ethos that would basically carry down to our children and their children’s children, which is, you’ve been given An opportunity. Go, keep building that opportunity, whatever you’ve received, you have to use it and turn it and make it bigger. That’s your That’s your job. But if you are blessed enough to be successful at that and you have an opportunity to set something aside that also keeps growing, where that that pot, that work ethic, that time contribution, that monetary contribution, has to go do something social value. And specifically, we created something that we call learn to fish a number of years ago, which effectively takes money that we contribute into it, along with our time to invest into educational outreach programs rooted in Christianity, rooted in Christian teaching as a moral fiber, founding for people to absorb and take and utilize as a guiding light in your own lives. And so in doing that, we have reached out to educational institutions to be able to do that. My wife is an alumna of Oxford, and she specifically studied at one of the colleges of Oxford University, which is a seminary. And so half of her classmates literally become clergy. She’s not one of them. She chose to focus on a more academic route, but still rooted in Christianity, not as a theoretical belief, but like, it’s like, that’s the belief system, that’s what you believe. And then what we’ve done is we’ve worked with Harvard, through the Department of religion, to do something not dissimilar, with Professor Cather Bricus, who is the chair of the department of the study of religion, we’ve effectively created learn to fish for the study of Christianity, And obviously we don’t have any say so over what gets taught or how University is obviously autonomous to that, but we created principles around which we were trying to support Professor Regis and her colleagues to be able to have financial wherewithal to support students who are going to study abroad or want to do special projects in the field or other things, and so we basically work with the university to do that, and now what we’re trying to do is figure out whether or not we can connect Oxford and Harvard together to a joint program that’s literally live as we speak. So when you think about our notebook, these are the kinds of things that didn’t exist in the page five years ago, 2020 you know, 2020 but we started to think about it, 2023 and then it was like, Okay, this what we’re doing in 23 then it was like 24 and now on 25 and I’ll be drafting 26 you know, over the holidays. And that’s how we kind of evolved the pages of our lives. And what’s really nice is that you can literally turn every page from 1997 to 2025 and see where did we get to? What did we do? What did we not do? What’s still not done yet. And so one of the things is that our son, who is six, is going to start participating in these weekly meetings that we have as a family. Is like, how are we doing? Right? What’s up? What’s up on the next one, and we go through it, and once a quarter, we compare to the annual. So we have a weekly, kind of, like, what’s going on in our lives, and then we have a quarterly what’s going on in like, our futures.

 

Will Bachman  19:54

That sounds like best practice that you read about, but really rarely. Hear about people who are implementing this kind of a program,

 

Lloyd Lee  20:04

I will say it, it’s something that I’ve always done, but I think probably in 2007 or eight, I started doing it a lot more rigorously, and by 2010 11, when we set up the firm, I have to admit, I looked at my then girlfriend, who’s now my wife, and I’m like, I’m telling you, I don’t know whether it worked or not, but like, I’m here, and I’m telling you, I wrote this thing down back in 2000 and you’re not and it’s closed, like the deal is closed, like we set up the partnership. We’re up. And it was quite remarkable. It’s like, you keep doing it and you keep watching it. And I guess it’s one of those things. It’s like, if you put your your weighted target on the mirror in the bathroom, I’m going to hit whatever number of pounds. It’s like, you know, you just keep watching it, and it just reminds you. And what happens is, you walk down the street and it’s back there in the back of your mind, as opposed to, oh, yeah, I I did say I was going to lose weight this year. Where did the year go? And now I put on five more pounds and and for some reason that consciousness has had a big impact on how we literally live and breathe every single day, because we know the end game, and we watch the near game, and they have to meet because that’s the point, otherwise, you’re just going around a bowl of spaghetti. And I’m not saying it’s straight line, but I am saying that actually, we’ve had a straighter line sometimes than we realized halfway through the journey, when you’re like, wow, I I thought I’d end up here. I kind of did. I thought I was going way off course, and I guess I didn’t even though it felt funny shit half the times. And that’s where, that’s kind of how I’ve lived my life for the last whatever, 30 some odd years.

 

Will Bachman  21:54

Tell us about this Weekly Review process, what? What does that look like if we were, if we were a fly on the wall watching it. What happens?

 

Lloyd Lee  22:04

It probably goes through, like, kind of what’s on the agenda, like, are we renovating the house or not? We got to call the architects next week. That’s just basic stuff. Got to pay taxes this year, that kind of stuff. But then there’s also, like, we said we would do this by June 30. I remember reading a book, I can’t even tell you what it was called. And the guy basically was talking about exactly what you and I have been talking about, which is a set date set targets would be specific. And so we just will say, Okay, we’re going to do this part of our business, of our lives, or whatever it is, by June 30. And we even just make a joke out of it. We’re like, by 215 in the afternoon, right? Just to kind of have some fun with it. And so we’ll actually watch them like, you do know it’s six weeks to go. It’s basically the middle of May. And we’re like, Ah, you’re right. We got to get on that. And the nice thing is, if you’ve been looking at it since February the first, when you first wrote it down, you realize how close you’re coming to June 30 before it’s on you. And so that’s what we will do. We’ll look at life projects like, are we going to basically launch the next section of learn to fish or not? We said we’d do it this year. You got to put a target on, let’s say June 30. And if we miss it, we miss it, but we can’t pass December 31 and so the big targets are there. We said we get an outline to both Oxford into Harvard and show them we’re actually seeing Catherine Ricas and Courtney Lamberth on December for lunch, because we just sat in Oxford two weeks ago. We said we put a program together, we get their sign off, and then we would take it over a lunch table in December when we’re in Boston visiting family. And that’s exactly what we do every week when we go through that, which is, like, are we ready? Because we’re actually leaving, you know, in December, to go to Boston for the week, for Christmas. And that’s, that’s what that weekly does it just make sure you don’t forget, and it’s keeps you organized, and it’s really nice, I have to say, when you check it off, like, done, what’s on? What’s next on the list?

 

Will Bachman  24:00

Yeah, tell us a bit more about founding your firm, you and your partner with Yoo Capital, and that’s Y, O O capital. Tell us a bit about what was your distinctive approach and how you decided to do things differently, and tell us about a little bit about the early days, sure,

 

Lloyd Lee  24:22

so, so the early days were always founded on the idea that, in the world I live in, to keep it as straightforward as possible, there are many ways to make money. Some people buy real estate. They get lucky, by the way, in London, that happens a lot. Why? Because usually in London, real estate values go up. They will go down, but generally, 10 years later, they’re up again, just because it’s London, and there’s just such a crushing demand to be in such a small city, geographically small city. It’s very, very dense, and that’s not a bad thing. Like. Like, I know, I know taxi drivers I’ve met who’ve made money, and they’re just, like, basically driving. They don’t need the money, because they bought up to bed in South Ken for like, 300,000 and they sold it for like 9 million, like, like 35 years later, because that’s the price of appreciation. Is not one and a half percent a year. It’s like eight or 10% a year. And suddenly you do that for 20 years and you’re like, I’m a millionaire doing kind of nothing, and that’s okay. Then there’s guys who basically go and do an investment, but they borrow a lot of money, and if it works, you’ve made money. If it doesn’t, I didn’t put much in, and I borrowed the rest of the bank, and the bank can take it. And some people make money doing that too, and we promised ourselves we never would. And in this most simplistic way, the third way to do it is you pretend you never borrowed any money from the bank. You literally have to go make a return, as if you bought the whole thing in cash, paid for the whole thing in cash, built it in cash, renovated cash everything. And if you don’t have a really, really hefty margin for what you’ve done, not because that house in South Kensington went up in value, but because the real estate actually was transformed and was worth more than we just don’t do it, and we chose to choose that latter route, which Is everything you see we touch and feel is transformed when we’re done so. By example, we bought, you know, an old hospital site that had been cleared and scraped 10 years prior. It was basically dirt and had been auctioned for almost a decade, and it never came forward. If you go there today, there are 500 families who live there, around a square with a public library, a community center, swimming pool, shops, coffees. It’s called the Greenwich square, and it was basically bought during the depths of the recession back in 2010 1112, and it was untouchable. And we were like, Okay, we’ll go touch it. We’ll go together with some partners, we’ll go do that. And actually, we made a commitment even then, going to do 50% social housing. And 50% of all the homes there are social housing, we’re very proud of that, and we basically transformed that whole area because we basically decided we’re actually going to build the homes, build a square, build a swimming pool and the public library, and build a new community on something that was derelict for a decade. And so that’s the kind of transformation not everyone wants to do. It’s a lot of hard work and a lot of risk, and as you move forward through the course of our history, we’ve always gone for the impaired buildings, the ones no one will touch, the ones that are have had some kind of toxicity with their neighbors, who hate the prior owners because they were trying to do something no one wanted to see, and the government tried to stop them, and they were like, well, I have my right to develop it. I’m going to do it anyway, whatever it was, we went after the really tough ones. And so over the course of probably the last five to 10 years, our business has grown and advanced, and the kinds of projects we’re taking on now are where you’ve got a very similar set of problems, but the scale is bigger. So we bought a beautiful series of exhibition halls built in the 19th century, known as Olympia. It’s in West London. And when we bought it, it was Brexit, which is we were kind of a funny country that decided we were no longer going to be part of the European Union. No one even understood what that understood what that meant. And a lot of people were scared. And we were like, we’re long London. We’re going to look go long the UK, because we really believe in this country and what it’s offered for like, 1000 years. And so we bought this series of old exhibition halls that were literally closed six months out of the year, and literally for six months, you like, literally could throw a stone in any direction, and there was nobody there. And now fast forward to march, and next year, we will probably be feeding 50 to 75,000 people a day because we’ve added the largest theater built the country since 1976 and it’s a partnership between a British company known as Trafalgar Entertainment Group and the Schubert organization out of New York City, who, of course, are the major players the Broadway. And it’s a theater. It’s a proper 15 story tall theater. It’s spectacular. We’ve built a music arena with Anschutz, the guys out of Denver, Colorado, the Anschutz organization, who own la live in Los Angeles, the only 02 arena here in London, which is like one of the most successful music and entertainment arenas in the world. They have. They can close up to 23,000 people in there. It’s spectacular. There are partners in music of. Of entertainment at Olympia. We’ve got a Marriott Hotel, we’ve got a Hyatt Hotel, we’ve got a school, we’ve built a state program with the BRIT School for the Arts. We’ve got 4000 seats of restaurants. We’ve transformed the whole thing with our investors, who’ve been very, very strong and stalwart during difficult times, and we’re now opening our doors formally in, I guess, a little over 100 some odd days. And it’s really exciting. And so fast forward to the last three to five years. We’ve then gone out to buy, you know, beautiful 1930s buildings in the middle of the West End theater district that have fallen on hard times, and it’s now going to be the new home for Cirque du Soleil. And we’ve basically partnered with Marriott again to put a hotel on top to overlook part of London that’s really beautiful, called Seven Dials. It’s right in the heart of Soho. We bought old industrial states, 15 minutes from like central central London, and it’s like falling apart, half empty. And it’s going to be a new film and television quarter in the middle of Central London. We call it the Camden film order, and we’re super excited about it. And and told between all of these kinds of investments, we’ve done another one in life sciences on an old, 107 year old market in Westland called the Shepherd’s Bush market. All told, all of these investments probably now cover about 4 million square feet and almost 40 Acres of central London land, and we’re super excited about it, and that’s been really the genesis and the evolution of our business over the last 15 years, and obviously my own professional career over the last 37 years.

 

Will Bachman  31:55

It sounds like you were involved in theater at Harvard, and now you’re building and renovating theaters. Tell us a bit about what do you know now and understand now about the theater industry, the business of running theater that you didn’t know 10 or 15 years ago.

 

Lloyd Lee  32:19

So actually interesting. The guys are doing the AR t now in Harvard Square. Hayworth Tompkins are the architects. They’re actually one of our architects on two of our theaters here. So I actually saw some Harvard affiliates when they were in London saying, we’re doing this new theater in Harvard Square called we’re renovating the AR team like I used to stand up on in the flying tower there when I was 17 and 18, six and a half stories up above terra firma. And I think the answer to your question is, the things that I know are that the only way we think it is prudent for us to do these things is to have really world class partners, like Hayward Tompkins, like the Schubert organization, like ancients and Chicago entertainment because, and, of course, Cirque du Soleil. Because, if you don’t, you’re kidding yourself. Know what you know? Try to know that you don’t know, and go find someone who is the best group in the world to do it with if you’re fortunate enough to be able to do that, and so we now have probably over two dozen kind of the most admired partners, brands, companies in the world who work with us. So in electronics, we’re partners with Samsung on a very nascent basis. It’s a super early relationship. British Airways just signed up to be a founding partner of Olympia. They just announced it yesterday. And you know, that’s Travel Leisure, and what we end up doing with them over the next five or 10 years, I don’t know. I can’t tell you, but those are the kinds of things where by learning from your partners and contributing back to them. And what we know, which is real estate, it creates a powerful ground foundation for creating theaters, hotels, restaurants, offices, production studios, because your partners are the best at what they do, and we then learn from them what they need in a real world, as in a real estate world, and we build it for them and with them, and we partner. And that’s that’s been something I know now, and it’s a, I think, been for us, a very good discipline to hold on to, because it’s very dangerous to think you know more than you do. Maybe, if you come from Harvard, that happens more often than not. I had no idea, but I will say, if there’s one thing I learned at Harvard, it’s there’s a lot way more smarter people out there than you are. And remember that. That because, I mean, I went to Harvard, which was great, but, like, I very quickly, rapidly realized how many way more smart people there are better Harvard than I, and that was actually a great thing, because it was, again, the seedling of an approach we take in doing business, which is we try to be really humble, very focused and very good at what we do, and we make sure we recognize when we don’t know somebody, that we have to go out and find someone who’s really great at it and work with them.

 

Will Bachman  35:29

Yeah, most startups are not a pure hockey stick like linear, straight line of growth, but they have some challenges along the way, an all is lost moment at some point. Tell us about early days of Yoo Capital, has there been a like an all is lost moment where, where you guys were, where you were not sure if things were going to work out, and what happened? Tell us a story about that.

 

Lloyd Lee  35:57

It’s interesting. I think that the answer is, there were and still are moments. There always are. You run a business, you’re in Singapore at your parents 50th anniversary, and the vote for brexit actually goes the other way. And they’re like, Yeah, we’re going to leave the EU who knows? And you’re like, what? And of course, all your investors call you within like, three minutes, and you’re like, I know, I know, I know. Let me, let me call you back. I got to figure this out. And we had people who’d contracted with us, and we’re calling them like, are you going to honor your contract? Like, I will, I will. And they did. Year and a half later, they were feeling good as gold. Or you wake up and you’re like, oh, by the way, no one’s leaving their house anymore for the next three years. It’s called covid. Or inflation that was zero is now 25% and if you’re buying steel, it’s 200% like, Oh, my word. So there’s always stuff going on in this world, and we definitely had our share of it, whether it’s our fair share, more or less, it doesn’t matter. We had our share. And I think all businesses do and whether all businesses do small or whether big, it’s constant. The difference, I suppose, is, when you’re small, you can’t take that many knocks before you’re not a business anymore. Maybe if you’re a slightly bigger business, or very big business, you have more standing to withstand shocks, but that’s only if you’ve built your business well enough, if you’re basically just borrowing more to be a bigger business. You’re no safer than you were before, and that’s where we’ve tried to be extraordinarily prudent, so that as we’ve had knocks and we have we’ve been able to get through them and keep going. And I would say that the knocks that we’ve had probably more that you’re going to have to go the hard way around the mountain because the tunnel just closed, and so you’re like, Okay, it’s not that there’s no way around the mountain. It’s at the tunnel closed, and now we’re gonna have to work five times harder to go the long route, all the way to get to the other side, but we’re going to get there. And our firm, by nature of hard headedness and never being afraid of work, I’ve taken two approaches to that. Number one is, if you have to go around the hard side of the mountain to do it, and that’s just and everyone in this firm is like, fine, we do it. We’ve been here before. We’re going to do it again. But secondly, because of that, particularly the older folks in the firm who’ve been here longer, also take the view that when you’re on a boat and the sun is shining and you’re basically going to a dock somewhere. You race like hell, always, always, always. And the younger guys in the shop are like, Why sun’s shining? Coast is clear. I’m on the route to the map I got. I don’t know why you’re like banging down the door every day, like, Have I gotten it done yesterday or not, and the answer is, because once the storm starts, you’re going to be pulling into harbor, and half your brethren who are sunbathing are going to basically be bailing out. So you choose, because our choice is to run like hell and race across the seas when the sun is shining, and so hopefully, when it does start raining, and I promise you, it always does, you’ll be pulling into Harbor, or you’ll be sleeping in the hotel, and that’s the approach we’ve always taken. So back in the day, when we talked about the old hospital site for a couple of the deals that happened, subsequently, you. We had a million square feet of investments that we’ve committed to to build residences in central London, because no one was building them in London, because it was the recession, no one knew people would ever get mortgages. And so there was this, like complete stoppage on the delivery of any housing in London. And so we went forward and committed to a million square feet of it all virtually the same time, like, within like 18 to 24 month window. And it was all brand new construction. And so what we did, which was really, at the time, quite radical, is we forward sold all of it. And people are like, you do know, normally you buy a piece of land, you go build a building, and then suddenly you put it for leasing or for sale, and you guys are trying to sell a building on a plot of land that doesn’t exist, and we’re like, yes, and we’re selling it at a discount, so you can get a bit of upside when you when we take over the keys, but now we can tell our investors everything’s sold, all of it. And so we we closed a couple of deals, and our lawyer said we checked this is the largest forward sale of residential in European history, like no one’s ever done at the scale level before, we sold like a 36 story tower that didn’t exist to 12 families who wanted to own apartments in London and just be rental rents. And we were like, fine, so we sold it to them, and their manager, their investment manager, on a contract, we own the land, and we’re like, you own it, and we will take all construction risk. The price is fixed. If we go over budget, that’s on us, and we deliver it on time through Brexit, and he was the guy who honored his contract, and he closed, and all the apartments were sold. And he actually not only lives in that building today, but his office is in the nine floors of offices below the apartments. It’s basically ground to nine or offices in a lobby, and the residents start at 11. There’s like a garden between all the way to 36 and it’s like we were really risk averse, and we did that because that was how we averted the storm that in Brexit literally flattened almost any other for sale product marketplace. People were like, I’m not buying anything right now. I have no idea what a Brexit means, and all homes just stopped selling for like nine months, and we were like, We don’t care. We’ve already sold every day.

 

Will Bachman  42:47

You when we opened, you shared the phrase of Infinite Opportunities in a contained environment. Let’s go back. Tell us a little bit more about any professors or courses you had at Harvard that continue to resonate with you. And I think you had mentioned John still go any other

 

Lloyd Lee  43:06

so, so I don’t think he’s a professor there, and I think he’s retired, yeah, but Stilgoe, had a course something to the effect of History of the American Built Environment,

 

Will Bachman  43:20

the s, 107 is it really? Yeah, yeah, and, and John just retired last May, but visual environmental studies, 107 I think it was the history of the built environment in North America.

 

Lloyd Lee  43:38

Yeah. So he and professor Harvey Cox, which was Jesus in the world life, he actually co signed a letter of recommendation for me. Are probably the two most influential professors on me. And

 

Will Bachman  43:58

how did they influence you?

 

Lloyd Lee  44:01

So there’s no question that I grew up in a family where our religious beliefs, Christian religious beliefs. And I would almost say they become more important to me as private citizen and my wife has also been a big part of that as well, because it kind of self reinforced, and as a result, it is genuinely a guiding light for how I live my life and how I lead the firm. And the guys in the firm know it, I don’t, I don’t postulate, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t impose, but they know that there was a moral fiber that’s behind every decision I make. Secondly, Professor Stilgoe. If, I don’t know if you took the course, but if Professor still go was great, because, as you will then, remember, he would come into class every day and just really radically work. How you saw the world, and just say, did you know this? Did you know this? This is what Nintendo was actually doing, and it was fascinating how he basically put a different lens on telecommunications, and how the rail network was built in the 19th century, and how insurance companies operate, or banks and Savings Loan institutions, or how they were, like the kind of agrarian farmer class and like all kinds of things. And what it really made you do is step away from the risk of making study almost too insular. It deep couples from the real world in the same way that when you think of biology and a cell form, you might start to look at it only as something in a textbook or under a magnifying glass or microscope, not realizing that like that cell literally is in me and in my son and in a plant over there that I eat, and you decouple the two. And what he was great at doing was reconnecting academic knowledge and how it literally touches and influences your own everyday life in a way that you never expected it to and that I found fascinating, and so he was one of the few people I would go sit with outside of class. I was not one of those students who constantly did like the tutorials and special meetings and stuff I just I wasn’t that guy. Maybe they didn’t want to see me. I had no idea, but he was gracious with his time, and I saw him quite a lot, and there were times when I think he even saw some of my papers and wrote personal notes to me about my paper and said, I wonder whether or not you will do this when it’s your 10th wedding anniversary, and I thought of him when I did, I wrote a paper about diamonds and how the whole thing is one gigantically successful marketing ploy, because diamonds are one of the most commonly available stones on the planet. And yet, De Beers created this massive Mystique in the very, very early 20th century, that they are a girl’s best friend, that they were as rare as can be. And the value of them is, you know, skyrocketing every year, and it’s an investment. And I wrote the whole paper, doing the research on how this whole thing had come together, where they had effectively tied up all the supply chains of diamonds in order to control the distribution so that they were rare. It’s because they held up all the diamond mines in the world and said, don’t distribute it on flood the market, because the pricing will collapse. And so I tore it apart in this paper because I was inspired by how he had dug underneath all of these other constructs we all walk around in, assuming that that’s just the way they are and they’re not. It’s someone made it that way for us to believe. And he said, given the fact that you’ve now cited how they went to Ogilvy and Mather and created marketing campaigns to create the mystique of a diamond being a girl’s best friend. And then they come back and they go, Well, that’s a one time buy, unless you get divorced. So we’re going to create the 10th Anniversary diamond band, right? And then we’re going to create the next thing. And if she doesn’t, if her friends all get it, you’re going to have to buy it for your and we went through it, and he actually wrote a minus. And he said, I wonder if you’re going to buy your wife a 10th Anniversary, something or another. And the crazy thing is, I did, but more important part is I remembered Professor still goes comment, literally, I thought of him when I bought it, and I’m like, That is a tie back to a professor to Harvard about, like, what you’ve learned and has stayed with you. And I have to say, if he’s if he’s listening to this, thank you for that, because you have been an enormous influence in my professional and personal life.

 

Will Bachman  49:29

I will send John a link to this episode, and I’m sure he’ll appreciate hearing that influence continues to resonate. Excellent. Lloyd, where can listeners find out more about your firm and about you and your Learn to Fish and other initiatives. Where would you point them online?

 

Lloyd Lee  49:49

So I would say learn to fish is relatively private, so we’ll keep it that way for now, but hopefully we will start to. See the fruits of labor over the next few years at Harvard and at Oxford and elsewhere. If you want to reach me, I’m at Yoo Capital, www.yoocapital.com  and if you want to see our investments in the projects that we’re doing, you can do through www.yoocapital.com but equally, now that the investments are starting to grow, you’ve got www.camdenfilmquarter.com  and www.olympia.co.uk  because it’s United Kingdom, and you can actually go to www.Olympia.co.uk starting next year, and buy tickets or make restaurant reservations or go see shows. I think we will probably be doing over 700 shows a year at Olympia, music, theater, jazz and obviously events and exhibitions, which is where life began for Olympia in 1886.  So those are some of the examples of our work and and how to kind of find out more amazing.

 

Will Bachman  51:00

Lloyd, thank you so much for joining today and sharing your journey.

 

Lloyd Lee  51:04

Absolutely. Thank you for having me. It’s always great, and  Please don’t be a stranger, particularly if you’re ever in London. Love to take you around. Fantastic. Thanks.