Reinventing Tradition

For a family business to survive, every generation has to reinvent what that business is. I’m sure there are some exceptions but, in my experience, I have found this largely to be true. Taking a business that is set in its ways and creating a new long-term strategy that can be executed over a 20-30 year period requires one to be an expert generalist.

This month marks 10 years since I officially joined Westlake Realty Group. I came into the family business with the goal of bringing institutional quality to our real estate operating business and our family office. We have re-defined our real estate investment theses, raised outside capital for the first time, shifted our investment allocation, and most importantly, brought on a team to help execute this vision.

Part of being an expert generalist is knowing what you don’t know and having the humility to hire people who are better than you at their respective fields. In the first decade, I was so blessed to have Jessica Smith help elevate our culture and operations and Lino Campanile to bring all aspects of our business up to institutional quality.

Whereas the first 10 years of our story have been all about elevating quality and laying the groundwork, we envision growth being a big part of our story in the next 5-10 years. To that end, I am pleased to announce that Stew Cedarleaf has joined our team as Director of Acquisitions. Stew brings a wealth of experience in industrial and multifamily to the team and Lino and I feel so lucky to have him join. Stew will be an integral part of our story as we build out our industrial outdoor storage platform, continue to grow our self-storage portfolio, and execute on the multifamily ground up development projects in our pipeline.

Lastly, I want to give a shout out to our LinkedIn community. When I posted about our job opening, we were inundated with folks sending their resume or recommending their friends. This is what led us to Stew. I hope that you will continue to be a part of our growth story and thank you for engaging with my articles and the Westlake story.