Angie Lawless and Brandon Miller: Episode 847

Transcript

[00:00:33] FG: If you're a developer or business owner whose market has become saturated and overly competitive, you might be considering expanding, or relocating to a new market, but not just any market. You want a thriving city with a strong economic foundation and a pipeline of talented young creatives that boasts headquarters for some of the world's largest companies. In other words, you want a city like Nashville, Tennessee. In Climbing the Charts: The Ascent of Nashville, you'll learn why Nashville has become one of the hottest destinations in the country for real estate developers and other business owners. Offering big-city amenities without sacrificing quality of life, Nashville has seen explosive population growth in the past decade. Given the all-time highs in tourism and the record low unemployment numbers, there's no reason to think that growth will stagnate anytime soon. This is the Author Hour Podcast. I'm your host, Frank Garza. Today, I’m joined by Angie Lawless and Brandon Miller, authors of a brand-new book, Climbing the Charts. Angie and Brandon, welcome to the show.

[00:01:40] AL: Thanks. Thanks for having us, Frank.

[00:01:42] BM: We're excited. This is awesome.

[00:01:43] FG: To start, I'd love for each of you to share a bit about your personal and professional background. Angie, could you go first?

[00:01:50] AL: Yeah, sure. I moved to Nashville about 20 years ago for law school, and thought that I would, as soon as I graduated, would move and get out of Nashville, on to bigger and better places in my mind. Here I am 20 years later, and couldn't be happier. Fell in love with Nashville, when I was in law school. Fell in love with the real estate market, which is largely what I've been involved with during this past 20 years, and just could not be more stoked about where the city is going, and everything that I've seen during that time.

[00:02:29] BM: Yeah. I had a similar timeline. I moved here also 20 years ago. Although, when I moved here, it was after I had graduated from law school. I had a few years on Angie. And my path, it was kind of similar. I grew up in a smaller town in East Tennessee, Cleveland, Tennessee, which is near Chattanooga. I wanted to go really far away from the South and never come back. That was my goal. I went to college in New Hampshire, Dartmouth, and I went to law school at Harvard, in Boston, Cambridge. Then it was an afterthought, but I ended up spending some time back in the South after law school. Didn't really want to go to New York, which is where there's a lot of pressure to go. Just also discovered that Nashville was very, very different 20 years ago, and it was really starting to – there were some neat things starting to happen. Had a lot of fun and just ended up back in Tennessee, which is the last place I thought I would end up, after being away for basically, seven years in the north.

[00:03:29] FG: Yeah. A lot of people love the cities that they live in, but not everybody writes a book about it. Why did you all decide to write a book about Nashville?

[00:03:39] AL: I think, originally, we were seeing, being that we're in real estate, and we have a real estate title company, but we're also investors, and so, we were seeing so many people not only move to the city on an individual basis but also developers who are coming to the city and really putting a stake in the ground. I think, that wasn't the case when Brandon and I first moved to the city when we were first starting to get involved in real estate. During that time, it was mostly families who had lived in Nashville for years, who had property, who were just developing the property that they had, and there really weren't these outset players. Then, as we traveled down our real estate path, and we started noticing that there were actually becoming a lot of people outside the city of Nashville, who were starting to invest their time, money, energy in Nashville, and yet, even still, we felt like, there was just so much that Nashville had to offer, that these people saw because they were here, but we felt there was so much that the rest of the country, world, could see about Nashville that maybe wasn't super obvious at the time. I think, it just became a really fascinating project. Also, for me, probably less about the book and more about digging in and getting to learn more about the community that I was in, and that was a really fun part of the whole deal.

[00:05:16] BM: I'm just going to piggyback on what Angie said. I think, for me, too, just the professional role we're in, we're attorneys who work for the biggest law firm in Nashville for a few years; started our current firm. We really saw things shifting, sentiment changing about the city, which really inspired that thought of “What's happening here?” The big question is always “Why? Why are we seeing this energy coming into the city?” A lot of people seeing opportunities, especially people that were outside the city. Especially in the real estate development sector, there was a lot of interest that started happening from developers in large cities far, far from Nashville. That was really one of the, I guess, the intellectual curiosity piece of this for us, which was trying to really dig in and look at all the things that were happening that really accounted for the rise of Nashville. In the book, we talked a lot about the – part of the inspiration for it was the New York Times, its city article that came out, I guess, almost seven years ago now, that really shined a spotlight on the city. From that, the narrative that changed, especially in the popular media, it went from – when I graduated from law school, it was like, “Why in the world would you go to Tennessee?”, to “Wow, that was a brilliant decision to go to Nashville.”

[00:06:45] AL: What was actually, I think, a really funny story in writing the book was, at least for us, it shocked us was, we went to meet with Butch Spyridon, who's the CEO of the convention center, I guess, technically the National Convention & Visitors Corporation in Nashville. He was talking to us about how that article was not a feather in the hat moment. Because to him, it was like, people were looking at that article, almost like, it was the Holy Grail. For him, and I think he is just such a strong asset for Nashville. I think when he sees that, he was thinking, “That's in our rearview mirror.” That happened, and that was great leading up to it. The moment that hit, it was history, and that doesn't define us, and we're going to keep climbing. That really propelled our excitement as well, because when you've got people in your city who are that excited, and you have that vision, it's incredible.

[00:07:47] BM: Yeah. One of the things that was really neat in this, this book project was for us, was we did a lot of interviews. We got to sit down with a lot of incredibly thoughtful movers and shakers in the city. You know, thinking back to some of those early – For me, part of the thing was exploring, how much of an impact did that New York Times article really have? We talked to people that were really far more in the center of shaping what was happening in the city. A lot of them, people like Butch, viewed it more of like, this isn't something that the media should get a lot of credit for. All they were doing is being the antenna that had dialed in to what was happening, as opposed to being a kingmaker if you will.

[00:08:37] FG: Yeah. What did you, other than that New York Times article, what were some of the other key moments that you learned about, that contributed to Nashville's rise over the years?

[00:08:48] AL: Well, I think that's just it in that, when we were exploring it, it was like, the city wasn't – the key people in the city, like Butch’s office and plenty of other people. They had been working day in and day out to, like when they would compare cities, they wouldn't say, “Let me find a city. Let me look at Charlotte, which might be similar in some ways to Nashville and see how they are doing, let's say, a New Year's Eve celebration, right?” They're looking at where are the greatest places in the country doing these celebrations? Because that's who we want to look like. They're going to, maybe if you're doing New Year's, maybe they were looking at a city like New York. How do they do New Year's? I think that was what was really key as is piggybacking what Brandon said in the sense of we did think that these media articles had pushed it forward. Really, as we dug into it, it was so fascinating to look at the actual things. I mean, getting the soccer team to Nashville. It's this mixture of private individuals who thought, “Hey, we really want a soccer team. We think that would be good for the city.” Not necessarily people that were just the most prominent blueblood folks in the city, but they would go to the people in power, politically speaking, and say, just convince them with their passion and their energy and their hard work. The next thing you know, what seemed like a very long shot, we've got a team. I think, it just brought out to us, it's the spirit of the Nashville people that make Nashville what it is, and then have led to all of the things that are happening. I will tell you another defining moment for me, and I may get it not exactly right, but was when we sat down with Matt Wiltshire. At the time that we talked to him, he was working as the Director of the Mayor's Office, of Economic and Community Development. He was talking about when the part of Nashville, what we really have to focus on is keeping this open culture of, you can get the first meeting with almost anybody in Nashville. You may not get the second one, but you can get the first one. He was talking about how when companies come from other countries, particularly, that part of his role was to educate them. We talked about that a little bit in the book, but about how to educate these companies that are coming to know, that is part of our culture. Then coming here, we need you to maintain that. Maybe another city you go to, it's okay to say, “Oh, I don't have time to meet with you.” We're a city of having coffee with people. We're a city of sitting down and chances and opportunity. It's really important to us that, come. We want you here. We want you to also want the next person to be here if they want it.

[00:12:00] BM: Yeah. Echoing some of that, and for me, one thing that really stood out that was something that I think was a very surprising takeaway from just the whole project was just how much individual people can make a difference. I think, Nashville is a 1.9 million population city now, but it is still has a very open culture. It's always had a very open culture. It's a place where someone can have a passion for a project or an idea. Even if they don't have great resources starting out, there's the opportunity to make big things happen through individual efforts. I think that's something you don't see in a lot of, even similarly-sized cities. I think, honestly, even in some much smaller cities. That was a very interesting thing. One of the other really big takeaways that I think I had never appreciated, even having lived here for a long time, was just how much the political culture of Nashville has made an impact, as far as where the city is now. I think, the city has had a really fortunate string of some really great, especially mayors who have been very forward-looking, who have made some incredibly great decisions. Phil Bredesen, in particular, we are just talking to all kinds of different business leaders, the impact that he had when he was mayor that started this trajectory, that subsequent mayors were able to continue. I think that was a really exciting point about this, to Angie’s point of open culture, is that there's almost no CEO, political leader in the city, that will not take somebody's phone call and meet for coffee. We were amazed at the response. We're not professional writers. This is not our occupation. We were amazed at the time that almost every single person we asked to talk to, gave us in this in this project. That was honestly, one of the most satisfying and fulfilling parts of our project.

[00:14:05] FG: What is something that you think would surprise people about Nashville? Or what is something that a lot of people get wrong about Nashville?

[00:14:15] AL: Yeah. I mean, I think the most common thing that people get wrong about Nashville from my perspective, is that it's honky-tonks. I think, that this was a part of the history. It's the Dolly Parton, the whatever, the Blake Shelton, the country, and that's what's here. That's what you get, and that's what you get with people here, too. Just that vision, and maybe even a – I think, this is changing, but maybe a less intelligent view of Nashville. I think, the thing about Nashville is, is that it's got some of the best music for sure. I mean, the best music we think, and lots of other people think in the world, and I think indie rock. All kinds of music is here. It's a strip of Broadway, about an hour from 5th to 1st, 5th to 2nd, with some honky-tonks on it. That's awesome and a lot of fun and locals like it. I think tourists like it alike. That said, when you go see shows at the Ryman, you're not just going to see the country acts. It's just a lot more. Some of the smartest people, the smartest companies, the most progressive. When you look at the health care industry and what it brings to our city and what it's doing globally, just in Nashville, I think people miss that and probably underestimate the intelligence of Nashville.

[00:15:59] BM: I would say, too, I think for me, too, that was – that we have a chapter in the book about the history of the music scene here and the music sector. I do think, one of the big, just popular culture misconceptions, even when you see different shows about Nashville. We talk a lot about the Nashville show that was on ABC. I think, the perception that Nashville is mostly about country music. I think, Nashville and Austin, I think, are the two greatest cities for live music. I'd say, 90% of the live music is not country music. There's very, very little – I feel like, there's the least amount of country music playing to any other music that's happening here. There's always this thing they call the curse of Nashville, which was the idea that you can't be a rock band and really make it to the highest levels. We have a whole chapter in the book that talks about the Kings of Leon, and how they really were credited with breaking that curse. Then Nashville has become one of the epicenters for, if you're a young and upcoming rock band, historically, you've looked at three cities to live in; New York, LA, or Nashville. I do think, Nashville has really taken the upper hand for lots of reasons, but a big one is just the affordability factor, compared to those peer cities that are the other entertainment trifectas in the US. I think that was a big one. The other thing is really, I think a lot of people think about Nashville's business community. It's really emerged, as you hear – you hear the phrase a lot, the Silicon Valley of healthcare. That has been a major identity. Even that identity has really shifted in the last couple years. We're really seeing an incredible rise in the tech sector here. I mean, one of the stats that I was pretty blown away by was, if you look at not absolute numbers, but growth of the tech force, workforce in the US, the only city that had a higher growth of the tech sector and the number of tech workers over the last 10 years other than Nashville was Austin. I think, even since the book, Oracle has announced, they're building their second headquarters here. I think the story is really also, the rise of the tech sector in Nashville. I do think, 10 years from now, we're going to be talking more about Nashville being the Silicon Valley of the South, maybe even as the headline over Nashville as the Silicon Valley of Healthcare. I do think, a lot of people outside the city don't appreciate how much really exciting things are happening within those spheres of the business and innovation world.

[00:18:40] FG: Just to give people a flavor of what it's like to live in Nashville, I'd love to hear what each of you would consider your perfect day in Nashville. Maybe you have gone out of town for a business trip for two or three weeks, and it's your first weekend back in town. You're like, “I want to have just this perfect Nashville day.” What would that look like for each of you?

[00:19:03] AL: I’ll let Brandon take this one.

[00:19:08] BM: This might seem like a weak answer. I think for me, it's the fact that any day you want to do something, can be totally different from what you did the day before. There are so many venues. Nashville has become a really big foodie city. I think for me, one of my favorite things is just being able to go almost anywhere in a pretty big city. You're always going to, almost always going to run into multiple people that you know. There's still that – Nashville often is described as the biggest small-town city in America. I think, you still have that just people know each other. The business community is very close. It's a very social area. There's truly so many things to do that no matter what your interest is, you're going to find a group of people that's going to share that interest. I think for me, the thing that I love is that I never get bored. I get bored pretty easily. I think, just having a true any given day, if I get in the mood for some particular thing, whether it's food, or drink, or some entertainment, there is going to be five different things, opportunities to go pursue whatever that is.

[00:20:23] AL: Well, and I think now, Brandon and I both have kids. Our perfect day, we love separately, I think, that we both love the biscuit house on Gallatin Road in East Nashville. It's just this little, quaint place, where they serve the best biscuits and gravy, the old-fashioned style, that your grandma may have made for you. Then, we might enjoy going to a park with our kids and seeing what festival, or what's going on that weekend. At the same time, we both live downtown, and gosh, 2005 I think, Brandon. At that time, not very many people lived downtown. I cannot even imagine what it must be like down there now. Because when we lived down, it was so much fun to get up, and you could just on a Sunday, I remember going down to Robert’s, which is one of the honky-tonks, and they've got this special – is it the recession special, they call it, Brandon?

[00:21:29] BM: Recession special. Yeah.

[00:21:31] AL: Yeah. For $5, you could get a hamburger and a PBR. We would sit there on a Sunday with some of our friends and just look at the number of people that were down there. Now, I just think it's classed up a bit, if you will. Down there at the time, there were only two or three restaurants that you could go to. Hooters being the main one. Now, I just think anytime we just added this project called Fifth and Broadway down there, that is, I went several months back, my family and I did, and we were walking around, and it's this major food hall that it brings together locals and tourists. Because you might be going to a hockey game right across the way, a local might, and you might be going to have some drinks on Broadway, was right in the thick of it. You see all of the bachelorette parties with their cowboy hats or the locals sitting there in their jerseys. It's impressive because here's this classy 5th and Broadway project right next to. It is shops and all the things that you might want to do.

[00:22:50] BM: A lot of very high-end, very high-end retail shopping. It's built now too as the largest food hall in America. It is a very impressive project.

[00:23:01] AL: I think, that's one of the most fun things right now to do in Nashville is just go sit there, because people are happy. I mean, the locals are happy. Doesn't mean every day is happy. It doesn't mean that things don't happen. They're smiling and they're courteous. You'll see, even sometimes see the tourists and they're sitting there and the most common thing that we get is like, “Wow. People are really nice.” If I go down, I might be asking a group where they're going, or what's going on. It's just fun to watch. I'm sure, you've probably seen a lot about the party buses in Nashville, that's become a major thing. You either love them, or you hate them. I think they're hilarious because you don't know if you're going to see the classic pedal tavern or the hot tub truck that's riding down the road with a bunch of people in it. It's just a party, and it's fun.

[00:23:59] BM: One of the anecdotes that was interesting is that, so the Fifth and Broadway project, it's an enormous project that really changes downtown. It is bringing back high-end shopping. There's an Apple store. It's an incredibly impressive facility. I think it is redefining downtown. Before that, when we moved here, and even five years ago, what was there was the old convention center, which didn't even have windows on the side of the whole convention center facing Broadway. Because the developers at that time did not want people there to see what was happening on Broadway, because it was just such a seedy, not good scene. To have gone from a convention center that basically didn't have windows, to, I mean, I do think the Fifth and Broadway is a world-class project, that is anybody that I know that has been there has just been completely blown away. To see that change from one thing to the other. That happens over literally a three or four-year period from the time the convention center was basically blown up, which was also a really cool event. The demo, to the construction and completion of the new Fifth and Broadway. That project, there's many, many projects we could talk about, but that really, I think, for me in a lot of ways encapsulizes the ascent of Nashville, which is what this book is really about.

[00:25:28] AL: Then also, Brandon goes back to what you were talking about when you said that we've had so many great leaders that have seen Nashville and really believed in it. If you see a good company, you tend to see people in it that just really believe in what they're doing. I credit these folks with so much of Nashville. With the new convention center that we have, at the time it was 2008. The market was obviously not great anywhere during that time. We were losing out. We had an older convention center. At the same time, nobody wanted to make big investments. Instead, our leaders, folks like Karl Dean at the time said, “Now, we're going to double down and we're going to build this thing.” What happened was when the country started coming out of the monetary turmoil of the time when they started coming out of that, we had this beautiful, new convention center, and conventions booked for years. That brought a lot of people to Nashville, different people. I would love to just sit in the convention center for a week, and then, the random conventions that come in. I just think that belief, though, in Nashville is that's what's here.

[00:26:50] BM: That was a very inspiring just narrative, we heard over and over. Just this faith in the future. Part of the book, we interview Karl Dean, who was the mayor that oversaw that period. To think like, most cities during the credit crisis, were literally just trying to batten down, not spending money. I think, Dean really flipped the script on that and said, this is the greatest time ever to build a 600-million-dollar top 10, world-class convention center, because labor is going to be cheaper, and we can bring the whole project in at budget. Very few projects of that scale come in at budget, and that project came in under budget. It was a big, bold, took a lot of, I think, political courage. It has been an absolute grand slam for the city in almost every way imaginable, including economically.

[00:27:43] AL: It gave people jobs, right? At a time when it was a tough period.

[00:27:49] FG: Well, thank you both for all those. I’m looking forward to checking it out next time I'm in Nashville. Well, writing a book is such a feat. Congratulations on getting it done. Is there anything else about you, or the book that you want to make sure our listeners know before we wrap up?

[00:28:06] AL: I would say, first of all, thank you. Thanks for having us. Thanks for taking the time to listen. I would encourage folks, if they haven't been to Nashville, to come with an open mind, and make the decision for themselves. I think for us, in real estate, we see so many people investing and just making fortunes in Nashville because they believe in it, and particularly out-of-town people who see it and really believe in it. For people out there looking to invest in real estate, and looking for good plays, man, Nashville just seems like a great way to set your retirement up.

[00:28:48] BM: Yeah. I couldn't echo. Just a couple of final points. One of the big things we look at in the real estate sector is the Urban Land Institute every year does a projection for what's the best cities in the US for real estate development. This year, the report came out a couple months ago, after our book was completed, but it was the first year that this really deep dive study that they do, in conjunction with PWC, Nashville was ranked number one as the best city for real estate development and investment in the United States. I think, that really, for me, in many ways, was a vindication of this book, and the themes of the book of this trajectory being really realized and appreciated at a very high level, that a lot of very, very smart people, bankers, developers, venture capitalists are really looking at. On a less serious note, that I think we'd encourage anybody listening to this, or thinking about coming to Nashville to check out our book, we have a – one of the last parts of the book has an insider's guide of the coolest things to do and see, and we think that a lot of people that are considering a trip here would really, really enjoy it.

[00:29:53] FG: Angie and Brandon, this has been such a pleasure. The book is called Climbing the Charts. Besides checking out the book, where can people find you?

[00:30:02] AL: You can always feel free to email us and we're just angie@wagonwheeltitle.com and brandon@wagonwheeltitle.com. We're happy to shoot one out to you, and aside from Amazon.

[00:30:17] BM: Yeah. One last thing, too, we’ll give a shout out to our third business partner, Steve Morris, who also, this was a very collaborative book. He's not on this interview here today, but obviously, we all spent a lot of time, and really, this was very much a team collaborative effort.

[00:30:32] FG: Thank you, Angie and Brandon.

[00:30:33] AL: Thank you, Frank.

[00:30:34] BM: Thank you.

[00:30:37] FG: Thanks for joining us for this episode of Author Hour. You can find Climbing the Charts on Amazon. A transcript of this episode, as well as all of our previous episodes is available at authorhour.co. For more Author Hour, subscribe to this podcast on your favorite subscription service. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you next time, same place, different author.