Entrepreneurial City

The Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce's recently announced "Big 5" ideas for the future of the city dovetail very nicely with the entrepreneurial emphasis of the Lewis White Real Estate Center's new degree programs (and the rest of The Bloch School). 

Blueprint to a Billion

This is a week of "WOW" not only in the classroom but outside the classroom as well.

Yesterday afternoon we visited the Metcalf South Mall in Overland Park, KS, which will serve as our subject property for the remaining 13 months of study in this program. We spent an hour and a half walking through and around the subject. Jim Harpool, Eric Mann, and their property engineer of 22 years representing the Morgan family provided us all the critical hard data for us to use in our analysis process. We are grateful for the support of people like the Morgan family and Jim Harpool to help us in this project. It will certainly tax the creative genius of our students.

Following our property tour, we attended the announcement event at the Bloch School about our new higher rankings nationally as an Entrepreneurial and Innovative school as well as the largest donation in the history of UMKC. Henry Bloch's $32,000,000 donation will double the size of the Bloch School Building and create the only building in any business school in the country designed exclusively for entrepreneurial and innovative instruction.

We finished up the day by attending the SIOR Development Day, which continues to draw the "Who's Who" of the commercial real estate community in Kansas City-- a huge turn out and a great opportunity for networking.

This morning Michael is walking us through "Blueprint to a Billion Dollars," explaining detailed, step-by-step processes to insure success as a real estate entrepreneur. His insight, refined through his own personal investments in a wide range of ventures, is very helpful in enabling us to see how we can apply this to our own new creative opportunities in real estate.

It's exam time this afternoon, covering the information learned from Dr. Bolman and Dr. Song. Following the exam Professor Jim Scott will be here to introduce our next topic of "Urban Planning," and I will introduce the "Real Estate Finance" class. Both will be taught over the next two months in a blended "on-line" and "in-person" instruction format.

Exee. Master's of Entrepreneurial Real Estate

The third day of our first "Immersion Week" is continuing to move at a fast pace. This morning the class evaluated a partnership structure through a 24 page case study complete with financial analysis. Techniqued for capital raising for your next venture, metrics to determine success of the proposed venture, pay-back rules of thumb, how to protect yourself, and some very interesting risk management perspectives and calculations. We learned not just how to calculate the metrics but the logic of how to use these metrics to explain the degree of risk for your own decision making and how to communicate it to the investors.

This afternoon we are embarking on a Harvard Real Estate Case Study focusing on the principles we have been learning.

It is fascinating having the instructors who not only teach well (lots of group interaction and discovery learning methodology) but who have also completed several years of research about their subject matter.

Insight of wisdom and experience. Very cool!

Second Day of EMERE

Dr. Bolman explored various leadership styles as well as providing tools for the students to identify their own personal leadership styles. I took the test as well and found it very revealing and constructive. Several videos were shown demonstrating different leadership styles and the attributes and applications of each one. It was a very insightful view from his recent research and book called, "Reframing the Organization"

After lunch Dr. Song presented detailed information about setting up a successful company by breaking it down step by step with processes that he found to be foolproof after 15 years of personal research he has done studying many kinds of companies. He instructed the groups to build a business plan for their real estate company including salaries, start up capital, responsibilities, and how big each of their firms will get using these principles.

The depth and detail of the information is truly powerful. The recognition of the nexus of human dynamics and economic realities are so very significant.

First day of Executive Master's in Entrepreneurial Real Estate

The welcome dinner last night at Benton's Restaurant was phenomenal with comments from Chancellor Morton and Dean Tan. Several of the faculty attended with all the students who enjoyed cocktails, food and stellar views of the Kansas City skyline at sunset.
How truly exciting it is to be involved in an inaugural initiative like this Executive Master's program to establish a higher level of excellence in real estate decision makers.
Today, after a brief orientation by Director Walt Clements, Dr. Michael Song led a discussion about what makes for a successful business venture and applied it to real estate.
The class developed a fool-proof model for success based on years of experience of thousands of business start ups. Dr. Song is the leading international researcher and lecturer on this subject.
Dr. Lee Bolman is scheduled after lunch to continue to build our valuable body of knowledge. His latest work is now published in over 10 countries. Wow, what an amazing experience.