Leadership & Innovation in Real Estate: Lessons from JLAM Co-Founder Doug Motley

Doug Motley, CFA is the co-founder and one of JLAM 's (JLAM) managing principals. The real estate investment and development firm helps investors build wealth through private investments, spanning commercial, multifamily, and residential real estate throughout the mid-Atlantic and Southeast regions. Doug is also the chair of the State of Delaware Council on Housing, and he's a private pilot making his lifelong dream a reality.

Read an excerpt from our interview below:?

Kimberly: I'd love to start with some company updates. Could you tell us a bit about your background and describe your journey to this point?

Doug: My journey has been interesting. I was in banking after college in a corporate strategy role, and the bank I was working for was acquired by a much larger multinational bank. I was fortunate to be part of the transition team of bringing these two big organizations together. On the first day, we were sitting in this giant conference room, and at five o'clock, half the room picked up their briefcases and walked out the door. The half that was still sitting there with my company were all looking at each other and wondering what was going on. That was the moment when I knew that the culture was going to change completely from the company, the only company I'd worked for in my professional career, and it was a wake-up call. That was the catalyst for me to end up meeting somebody who was in real estate.?

A young entrepreneur took a leap of faith in me at that time. I moved from a 30,000-person bank to a 20-person real estate development company. Fortunately, shortly after joining, I was quickly challenged by a promotion into the chief financial officer role, and again, it was a sink-or-swim type moment. I was able to quickly learn enough to swim and swim successfully. That was a little bit of the catalyst to starting my first company, which was a private equity real estate fund business, a couple of years after first getting into real estate. Then, through a sequence of events in 2011, we started JLAM. We just had our 13th anniversary, so it's been a fantastic ride since then.

Kimberly: What are some of the lessons you learned from founding and leading these successful companies, and what do you think works so well for you?

Doug: People are paramount; that's really the foundation of everything that's worked well for me. That was also something that was ingrained in me in sports teams growing up and my first career lessons. However, once you start your own company and you have to live and breathe it, it really resonates. Building the right team around you is very important, both in partners and team members, but also vendors, trade partners, etc., that you work with.

Alignment of interests is another really big one, as well as thinking through how you ensure everybody on your team is in the right position to succeed. If you can align these things, getting the right people, empowering them to do great work, and compensating them for doing that great work, then everybody wins together.

Kimberly: Concerning the ongoing housing shortage throughout the US, there's a pressing need for a lot of innovative solutions in real estate development. Can you share your insights on how emerging trends and strategies in real estate development can contribute to alleviating the shortage? What opportunities do you see for developers to make a meaningful impact while ensuring sustainable growth and community benefit?

Doug: The U.S. has been underproducing homes relative to the need for housing with new household formation and population growth over the past couple of decades. We are short somewhere between three and six million houses in the U.S. For us here in Delaware, we're short about 20,000 housing units today, and that number is going to grow to 30,000, I think, by 2030. That's a $6 billion problem for the state that is going to grow to nine and won’t be solved with public capital. It requires private capital and probably some forms of public-private partnerships involved as well, but to attract private capital, it has to be a profitable endeavor. So, it is a question of how to make workforce housing profitable.?

Another big piece is land use and how much density is permitted on a given piece of property. At some point, there has to be change to the land use codes that finds a balance between needing more density to create more housing units and being cognizant of the environmental and other impacts. If you're against density, then almost by definition, you're in favor of sprawl, which is bad for the environment. It’s actually better for the environment in a lot of cases to have higher density. That's because you're going to be closer to transportation and have less pollution from driving, but you're also taking up less land and impacting less of the environment to create the same number of homes. Turning land use and policy is like turning a cruise ship – it takes time. As it becomes more of an issue across the country, there's more encouragement, support, and pressure to try and turn that cruise ship.

Kimberly: Can you share some of the key leadership principles or values that have guided you throughout your entire journey?

Doug: I've had the fortune of starting and successfully running several different companies, and the one thing that is fundamental to all of that is to do the right thing. If you have that as your North Star, it's really easy to sleep at night. A lot of it goes back to your leadership approach and selecting the right people, putting them in the right seats, and empowering them to do the right work. That goes along with roles and responsibilities, having a clear line of sight to what somebody's responsibilities are, and giving them direct and consistent feedback.?

As a leader, your role is largely removing roadblocks and providing guidance and teaching. Arm the people to do their best work, get out of the way, and help remove hurdles that come up as you go through that process. If you do that right and you align the incentives right, you're setting yourself up for success.