Nov 21, 2020
Welcome to another episode of Action & Ambition with your host, Andrew Medal. Today’s guest is Stephane De Baets.
Stephane De Baets is a Belgian investment, real estate, and hospitality entrepreneur. He is founder and president of the international asset management firm Elevated Returns, which controls the Aspen St. Regis Resort in Aspen, Colorado and other commercial properties in the United States, Europe, and Southeast Asia.,NA
You’re going to love this episode. Let’s get to it!
Where is Stephane right now? (1:00)
- Stephane used the pandemic to take stock f his private life.
- In his family, they decided that COVID-19 has taught them that quality of life is something to cherish and promote.
- They took the painful, but right decision to leave New York and move to Colorado.
- They bought an old estate from John Denver, Stephane always had assets in Aspen Colorado because they bought a property there 10 years ago.
- Re super excited to live in the historical estate, it has original stained glass from John Denver and his fireplace.
How does Stephane cope with periods where tourism is low and so revenue is low too? (6:14)
- Your timeline during such events is elastic. You don’t know how long the crisis might last or if it’s going to get worse.
- Always try and prepare for these moments. Make sure that you have capital, tour revolves alone, or that you have a really good relationship with your banker.
- Make sure that you have some kind of cash flow.
- This is to make sure that you can sustain a lack of economic activity for a prolonged time.
- The moment you receive a call from your banker that says you are being put in default, it’s a really horrible feeling.
- The second thing you need is a great team because you are going to ask those people to sacrifice.
- You need to be able to ask for a lot of compromise from your team and then reward them on the back end when the properties recover.
- You also need to listen to the market. There’s a fight you can win with perseverance and practice.
- Be clever over how you run your property, however, if the government says there will be no traveling to mountains, you can be the smartest man on earth and not have a solution if all of your properties are in the mountains.
- You will just have to accept your fate and huddle through the crisis as much as you can.
What vision does Stephane have for his real estate company and how is he playing the field? (15:21)
- They are trying to not chase the pie in the sky as Stephane put it.
- Everyone says that there will be cheaper stocks flushed out tomorrow.
- But Stephane says that if you’re an owner and you can hold on to even a default position and kick the can down the road, you’re going to do it.
- There’s a lot of factors, but Stephane doesn’t think just anyone is going to accelerate bankruptcy.
- During the pandemic, no one knows what the next administration is going to do.
- Someone could come out tomorrow and say amnesty or normal interest payment or you don’t need to pay rent until the pandemic is over.
- Stephane’s approach is trying to figure out how you can create a win-win situation.
- What does the owner need today? And what do they want from the owner?
- Stephane promotes and puts a lot of the business’ profits into consumer funded beta.
- Stephane believes in a healthy consumer/business relationship you should be able to tell your consumer if you help me out today because I need it I can give you a better deal on the product later on.
- He believes with technology you can create instruments that are perpetual, transferable and have a nice price for discovery.
Elevated Returns
Elevated Returns is a digital asset management firm specializing in; capital partner replacements, equity monetization, and recapitalizations for class A properties located throughout the U.S, South East Asia, and Europe. We are one of the first companies to successfully structure, implement, and execute the tokenization of a trophy asset, the St. Regis Resort Aspen, Colorado.
Resources
Connect with Stephane: LinkedIn
Elevated Returns: Website
Connect with Andrew: LinkedIn