>> The education is the key piece, you know, giving yourself the intellectual foundation.
And you know, for planners, I came out of the Temple University Planning School, the community
and regional planning program out of the School of Environmental Design.
Wonderful program.
And what I always -- what I tell people is if you're, particularly planners,
is focus on economics and finance as much as you focus on planning.
It is absolutely vital.
And I make the analogy, you know, if you're a planner and you don't understand much
about real estate markets or land markets, it's kind of the equivalent of maybe working
at the Security and Exchange Commission
and not understanding how the stock market works because, really,
what an urban planner does is control the externalities that are created by this market
and shapes it in a particular way.
So you're shaping the build environment, and it's really important to understand that.
So that's one.
The other thing I always say is be willing to do anything and be willing to hustle.
And I mean that term in the most positive way.
Get out there.
I mean, Alex and I went out three times a week, four hours a day and picked up trash
in arguably one of the worst neighborhoods that you can imagine.
I mean, we were picking up needles.
You know, anything that you could imagine that would be on the ground
in a bad urban neighborhood, we were doing that.
And we were getting to talk to people on the porches, getting to talk to people
on the sidewalks, and it built a level of trust.
Had we not done that, had we said, you know, we're a bunch of college-educated guys,
and we're just coming in here to invest, and they should be grateful that we're doing that;
we don't need to get out and pick up trash on the streets, it would not have gone as well
and it wouldn't have, perhaps, gone at all.
So be willing to do anything in a humble and genuine way,
and it can lead you to some really wonderful places.