- [Narrator] This is a production of WEDU PBS.

Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota.

- Have you ever dreamed of having a second act in your career?

Having the freedom to pursue something new that you're passionate about after you've already established a successful first career?

Like being a successful real estate developer, who decides to make movies?

Well, you're about to meet a multi-talented Tampa Bay developer who's done just that.

And in his first few years has produced nine films with more to come.

Next on the "Suncoast Business Forum".

- [Narrator] Suncoast Business Forum brought to you by the financial services firm of Raymond James, offering personalized wealth management advice and banking and capital markets expertise.

All with the commitment to putting client's financial wellbeing first.

More information is available at raymondjames.com.

(melodic music) - Seeing opportunities that others overlooked and having the creativity and follow-through to capitalize on them are what makes a successful entrepreneur.

Convergent Capital Partners CEO, Santosh Govindaraju, proved that he had a keen eye for commercial real estate and market trends while he was still in his 20s.

Over the past two decades, he and his partners have successfully developed more than $1 billion of real estate.

Now he's expanding his horizons to include movies.

Santosh, welcome to the "Suncoast Business Forum".

- Thank you for having me, Geoff.

- Great to have you here.

Now, 20 years in commercial real estate, successful career, you turn your attention to movies.

I would guess you don't meet a lot of commercial real estate developers in Hollywood.

And I would think the skills are kind of different.

Are they?

- Well, Jeff, they really are not.

I've discussed this with numerous people and some people have gotten it.

They said, "Yeah, you're developing, on one hand, real property and the other hand, you're developing intellectual property."

And it happens all the time on set when I tell people about my journey and they said, "Yeah, this is just like real estate" after you have that discussion.

And for me, the parallels were clear when after some time I realized as a developer, I have a vision for property that maybe others may or may not have.

And with film, you know, we have a vision for a story that we wanna tell.

In real estate, I hire an architect to help me develop that vision.

In film, we hire writers.

In real estate, we hire contractors to help us execute.

In film, we hire directors to help us execute.

And my favorite is, you know, like we all love in properties is the feelings you get by the interior design team in a property.

What you feel, the emotion you feel when you visit a property is that interior design team.

And similarly, the emotion you feel in a film is just like, is driven by post-production.

The sound, the color, special effects.

And so when I understood that, for me you know, it's the same, but different, different canvases.

- One of your recently released films, "The Card Counter", was co-produced with the Academy award-winning filmmaker, Martin Scorsese and director Paul Schrader.

Tell us a little bit about the film and how a newcomer, relative newcomer, in the business was able to get involved with such celebrated talent in the film industry.

- With filmmaking and storytelling, it's all about the character, the journey and the depth.

And you know, this one is a, you know, it gets a little darker into the more tragic side of characters.

Deep inside, you still see the richness to goodness, but there's a tragedy there.

And so it gave me a great passion and appreciation of the intellectual side.

And of course, it's wrapped around the fun gambling scenario, you know, hence, "The Card Counter".

But I got into this film similar to how I got into a making my own real estate deals.

It was my third film, you know, third time with the same relationship, same team.

And the producer on this film, again, the word producer is pretty broad.

There's many different roles.

We're all called producers, but we all serve different functions in the film.

But with this producer, the one on the ground, the boots on the ground, this is my third film with him.

So when he secured this project from Paul Schrader.

- [Geoff] Who's the director.

- Who's the writer and director of this film and who had done previously "Taxi Driver" when Scorsese was the director, they had a long-term relationship.

So when my producer secured the rights, you know, I was the first person he called because we had done two other films before.

And so it's all about the relationships.

And what we're doing in the film, that we're doing in real estate is building great relationships with people who call you first when they have an idea.

- So filmmaking is now part of your life, a new part of your life, but you're still very actively involved in real estate development.

What is it that attracted you to real estate development and continues to attract you to real estate development?

- So for me real estate development, I've always been a student of interdisciplinary studies or multidisciplinary studies.

So in college, not only do I have a degree in engineering and finance, entrepreneurial management, but also in theater arts, you know.

And I, you know, I couldn't get my brain just to sit in one vertical and real estate allows me to challenge myself in all of those ways.

And the theater side of it helps me fake it when I don't know something.

But, you know, for example, with the real estate, you know, having engineering, understanding plans, drawings, understanding physical constraints of property and limitations of boundaries, and so on, attracts the engineering side.

And then there's the financial side, you know, the finance.

So how do the numbers work?

What's the forecast look like?

What is the market studies?

I have to engage my economic analysis side.

And then my favorite is how do we make this property better than anything else?

And we bring a spirit of hospitality to our properties.

How do we make it feel so that when people arrive at our properties, there's something magical that's inviting them there and just luring them there, that's keeping them there.

And that's the whole interior design, the hospitality, the service, how you pay attention to even something like the garage.

'Cause that's the first impression and the last impression of a property when you leave .

Real estate really uses all of those different fields of study that I enjoy applying.

- Over the years, you've owned and redeveloped some very prominent properties in the Tampa area.

People will recognize a number of the Times publishing company building in downtown St. Petersburg, the Hyatt Regency in Clearwater beach.

You own The Pointe on Harbour Island.

Tell us about some of these endeavors and how you added value to these properties.

- Well, you know, each of these properties had a different problem to solve.

and that's what I love about that commercial real estate, is every property has a unique problem.

So for example, with The Pointe of Harbour Island, the problem there was it had a seller who had no motivation to improve the property.

I wondered this beautiful Bayfront property has one tenant.

Look at this location, I don't understand.

- [Geoff] It was a restaurant called Jackson's, right?

- That was the only tenant.

They occupied about, you know, 10,000 square feet out of this 100,000 plus square foot building on the waterfront.

And the rest of the billing was primarily empty.

And then learned was a seller was someone who said, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Don't put money in."

We had a lot of naysayers as well, who remembered this property from what it was in the '80s, with all the restaurants and the tram connecting it to this obscure empty building in the '90s and 2000s.

And they said, "Nothing will ever work there and nothing has ever worked."

And we said, "No, things are changing in the city."

So when we bought it, it just needed a vision and a lot of money.

And so when I bought it, I said, "I want this to feel like Los Angeles, like Miami and so on."

And we hired a leasing agent from Miami to help us bring, you know, different concepts here.

And so with the arrival of American Social, both American Social and Jackson's have thrived as restaurants and we've improved that boardwalk to make it feel very, you know, modern.

And what I love seeing is even on Saturday morning, seeing people doing yoga, yoga classes on our boardwalk deck on the waterfront, it's just a different vibe altogether.

It just needed a vision and a lot of capital with it.

- Let's talk about your formative years.

Let's talk about your family and your youth growing up.

- Yeah, you know my parents immigrated here from India and we come from a family that's very spiritual and education focused.

So in my younger days, it was very much about, you know, being spiritual practices, you know, being kind, being good and all these values that my parents and family instilled in us.

And then also about education.

You know, I could do whatever I wanted, as long as I got not only the homework my school gave me, but the abundance of homework my parents gave me.

And, you know, we grew up here in Tampa Bay.

I, you know, I've always loved being here in Tampa Bay and have very fond memories of my childhood.

But as a young child, I listened with great respect to my parents and the books they would have me read with spirituality are literally, you know, 2,000, 3,000, 4,000 years old.

And I said, "Who am I to question that?"

You know, let me at least respect them.

And respect was a big thing in our family.

And in my, you know, adult years, it's paid off and I've learned a lot of wisdom from those fundamental things they taught me as a young child.

And finally, the most important to me was cross-country and track, my coach there.

We had a great team here.

I'd get to high school and we've built this amazing team, but it was our coach, our coaches who taught us how to defeat our own minds, you know, to go beyond our limitations.

And it was through them that I realized that I am my own limitation.

You know, you can break the wall and run faster.

Just lose your mind, throw your mind at the door, out of your head and run.

And so, as soon as I realized that the only limitations I have are limitations I set for myself, I could run as fast as anyone.

And so, and then the same thing, I was later able to apply those things in academics and business that you look in the mirror and you realize your own mind is your only limitation.

- After you graduated from Gaither High School in Tampa, you went on to the University of Pennsylvania.

What did you study?

And did you have any idea what career you were gonna pursue?

- Yeah, you know, I got into Penn initially as an English major.

And I chose Penn because I knew it was flexible enough that I could do, they would allow me to do English and engineering to keep my Indian parents happy.

You had to be a doctor or an engineer.

And so, but English was my passion, but I had no idea.

But one thing I did have was humility.

And I had the humility to listen to the people who were seniors when I was a freshman.

And they gave me insights, you know, about the value of the Wharton School and finance and business and they said, "If you don't take advantage of it while you're here, you'll regret it."

I thought about it.

I said, "Okay, that makes sense."

So I was fortunate enough to be able to transfer into the Wharton School, still do engineering.

And instead of English, I did theater and I had no idea at the time, but pretty soon in those years it was the '90s and I really loved business, finance.

We were going through this time of economic expansion in the '90s, really driven by technology, you know, by the government releasing the internet to the public.

You know, unleashed a whole wave of innovation.

And so I was able to use my creative side, my business side and my engineering side, you know, in business and finance.

- So after college, you went to Wall Street.

You joined Lehman Brothers in 1997.

And that was a time when Wall Street was booming and the economy were booming.

Tell us about your experience and the lessons learned there.

- I worked with a great team at Lehman Brothers.

They were one of the top in the world in fixed income.

And I developed some really great lessons from my mentors there.

And so learning certain principles like reversion to the mean, you know, things always revert back to the mean.

At the same time, applying a lot of fundamental discipline.

And so I had gained some of that earlier in an internship that I had at Raymond James, where I learned fundamental analysis and forecasting and staying greedy for the numbers.

But this team at Lehman also helped me focus on really being greedy for the data, looking at the numbers and making sure our forecast and our predictions or whatever we thought was based on hard data.

It was just a fantastic time to observe how the big players work and how much money really moves around this world on any given day.

- Then in 1998, you left Wall Street and you headed back home to Tampa.

What led you to leave Wall Street when the markets were hot and going strong?

And that's when you began to get involved with real estate.

- Yeah, you know, the impetus for me to leave was I had this entrepreneurial craving.

So in undergrad, I had studied finance entrepreneurism, you know, and at that time, you know, it was a time of great entrepreneurial spirit.

And so I had this craving to leave and do my own thing as well.

And I also thought to myself, you know, the only I could think of that was important to me at the time was my family.

So I said, let me go back to Florida and be closer to my family and I'll figure it out.

And when I came back to Florida, what I saw was as I analyzed different opportunities, I saw real estate everywhere.

And it was so cheap.

And when I asked, I mean like, how does this make sense?

Why is this so cheap?

You can get plenty of money, you can borrow.

And people said, "I guess people have been burned from the recession around 1990 and everyone's afraid of real estate."

And of course, the media attention was on the dotcoms.

And so no one was looking at real estate, it was ignored.

And so I was able to come in and pick up all this great real estate.

At the time, we didn't have all the Wall Street brains looking at real estate like we have today.

And so it was like the wild, wild west and we could cut deals, get great opportunities.

I could take advantage of, you know, mispricing in the marketplace because people didn't know any better.

So I brought that Wall Street mentality early on to real estate in the late '90s ahead of the competition coming in.

And when you wanna be an entrepreneur, when you wanna start a business, you say, do you ever say, I wanna be in a business that has the smartest people competing with unit?

You know, no.

You wanna find places where the smart people are ignoring, find the niche that smart people are ignoring and take advantage of that before they come.

And there's always this stories, "Oh, it's the death of office.

It's the death of this, the death of that."

Like we hear today with office buildings, I've heard the same tune over and over again.

And so it was the two sectors that were, you know, really cheaper, multifamily and office.

And so, but I knew one of the things I'd learned in my studies was, in entrepreneurism, was that don't try to do it yourself, build a great team.

And so I built a team with skillsets that I didn't have.

So my partner Paul's skillsets are all in the physical real estate.

Now, if I ever wanna learn about a property, I send him out and he'll tell me physically about all the issues with the roof, HPC, whatever the system is.

My specialty is in the creative vision.

I can take a set of bones and I can see the beautiful thing it can become.

You know, I never look at something and see what it is today.

I always see what it can become.

And then I can take all of that and reduce it to financial analysis.

- In 2008, the Great Recession hit with a force unseen since the Great Depression.

Real estate collapsed, the banking system virtually collapsed, but in 2009 you started a whole new company, Converging Capital Partners, which is a private equity firm to invest in real estate.

What was your vision and where did you get the capital?

- Yeah, so, you know, the vision came from the smart idea of the fundamental analysis.

I looked around and I saw those prices.

This is the kind of sale that I love shopping at, you know.

But what I said to everybody was and this happened during the summer, I remember, of 2008, I went to New York first to raise money.

And as soon as at Florida, everyone looked at me as if I said some sort of really bad F word, right?

And I said, no, no, it's all in Florida.

And it was shocking.

And with my eyes what I learned was that everyone wants to be in Florida.

I said the south Americans were coming to Florida.

The Canadians love coming to Florida.

And even Americans love retiring in Florida.

Everyone has that dream of a Florida retirement.

I said, "If everyone wants to be here, these prices can't stay this cheap for that long."

That was actually the basics of my thesis, was just the fact that everywhere I looked people wanted to be in Florida.

These prices can't stay this low forever.

And you know, with our team we're fortunate enough to meet and work with some prominent investors who appreciate our vision, our relationships, and our ability to execute in the past.

And so they trusted our ability to execute.

And we were able to raise a $100 million dollars in 2008, in October 2008, committed to us to focus on acquiring all of these assets at cheap prices.

- Well, what were some of the kinds of bargains and specifically what kind of bargains did you find?

- You know, it's amazing what fear does.

And you know, in fundamental analysis, you know, when you study the Buffet Methodology, Graham and Dodd, you know, Buffett has this saying about being fearless when others are fearful and being fearful and others are fearless.

This was exactly that situation.

So for example, the one that puzzles me the most how we bought it, was the building that we transformed into the Aloft Hotel down here.

I remember this auction, it was the FDIC Auction.

- [Geoff] This is a building right in downtown Tampa.

- On the riverfront.

- Corner of Kennedy, on the riverfront, Kennedy and Ashley, right?

- Right.

- In the center of downtown - So this is 66,000 square feet of real estate on the water, empty building.

And I can't remember, I still can't remember to this day, how I came up with this, but I said, "No one's gonna bid more than 1.7 million."

That was like, I wrote this on a napkin to my partner.

I want it.

I don't wanna lose this thing.

We're gonna be at 2.2.

I don't wanna be closed.

I don't wanna be at 1.9 and lose it for a 1,950,000.

I just wanna be safe at 2.2.

And we were the highest bidder.

And later on, I found out the second highest bidder was at 1.7, but I didn't wanna take a chance.

But this is, you know, part of being a deal maker when you want something, you get and you see a good value.

But at 2.2 million, I was over the top paying only $33 a square foot for a building on the river in downtown Tampa at a major intersection.

Why were people so scared to bid up to that amount?

And I was told when I paid 2.2 million for it that I overpaid for it.

- [Geoff] You sold the building, how much per square foot, how much later?

- Well, we pumped in 17 million into it.

So all in for about 20 million.

And then we sold it for 30 million.

So over $500 a square foot.

But you know, when we buy these things, I always say to my partners, I said, "Worst case, I'll make it my house."

- In 2015 at age 40, you decided to take your career in a whole new direction, filmmaking.

What inspired you to become a filmmaker?

- Well, it was always a part of the idea I had for myself that I wanna be a storyteller and produce films.

And it was actually a train ride riding from Philadelphia to New York that I had this karmic opportunity to sit next to a film producer.

And this gentlemen, you know, it's a two-hour train ride.

I said, you know, I picked his brain.

He said, his story was, "Well, I was born into a Jewish family.

I had to become a lawyer or a doctor."

And he said, "I became a lawyer to keep my parents happy.

Over time, I decided, you know, I started helping my friends with their films.

I became a film producer through the legal process, helping them the legal work."

And I said, "Oh, so you become a filmmaker going the top down."

So right away, I sign up for a 10-week program in UCLA.

It's called Professional Program in Producing and committed to the process.

- So you took a course at UCLA in becoming a film producer which you are now and you've already produced nine films with more on the way.

What does it take to be a producer?

- So like any other endeavor, there's things.

There's first, I think what you know, you must master materials, the fundamental materials of whatever industry you're pursuing.

And then it's who you know, right?

And business to succeed, it's who you know, you know, helps you take what you know, and put it on the screen, put it on the property and so on.

And so I started networking, you know, a lot.

And having that coursework at UCLA helped me understand the lingo, the dynamics.

There's even the subtle things like the chain of command.

When I'm on a set as a producer, I have to understand that I can't go talk to a cast member and give them my thoughts, my 2 cents.

No.

It has to go through to the director, which has to first go through with the producer on set.

And so there's a whole respectful chain of command and how to operate on set the etiquette.

And so having mastered all those little details of how to be a producer became on about who you know.

And so I networked, I went to the major film markets and I wanna understand how our films sold.

How do people decide?

The distributors, how much they pay for a film.

What goes on in their head and their thoughts when they're buying something?

Just like in real estate, I wanna talk to real estate agents to understand what's the mindset of a buyer.

Before I build something, I wanna know what it can sell for.

And so talking to a realtor.

So for example, the Aloft Hotel we talked about earlier, before we invested in it, I talked to people who sell hotels as a business to see, how do I value this?

What do people look for?

You know and making sure I build to that market.

And so I went to the Cannes Film market, the Berlin Film market, Toronto and LA, that those were the four major markets where all the business activity happens.

And it is show business, not show art.

And after understanding the business side of it, I've been working backwards and learning different aspects of how to become a much better producer overall from the creative over to the business side.

And so now today, after having worked on "The Card Counter", I'm working on, how do I make these films have the quality of Oscar, almost like an Oscar nominated film.

You know, that quality, which is what Paul Schrader endeavors to do, you know?

And so I do work on the creative side, but having the business side helps me, you know, with that at the same time.

And in fact, the other side of it is when I'm reading a script, I'm already looking at costs.

"Oh, you know this scene, oh my God, that's gonna be really expensive, you know You know, as you're reading through a script or building a script, just like when you're building some property, it's own designs, "Hey, I want an elevator this side of the building", we should think about, oh, the cost of the shaft, the cost of equipment, all these different things.

So same thing with scripts.

At the end of the day, you must stay true to the characters and the journey of the character is what really matters.

- I will call you.

- I will answer.

- Did you just wave?

- I did not.

- Yes, you did.

- So it is a collaborative business.

And if the director and others can't work with the budgets that worked for us, then you have to pass.

And I prefer to work with the directors and the creative teams who know how to be gritty.

And I think entrepreneurism and independent films are a gritty business.

It's like being a startup every time.

Being gritty is so important.

Knowing how to stretch that dollar, to get the most value out of it.

And so I look to work with talented creative types that had that same sense of grit.

We had figured out what makes great content.

And, you know, if you maintain the integrity of the content, budgeted prudently, and making sure you have a long-term plan and you have an assessment of what it's worth in different territories around the world, the more platforms that come out, give us a wider market to sell to.

- You're active in the community.

You're also very active in nonprofit organizations within our community.

Tell us about the kind of things that you're doing in the nonprofit world.

- I work with Stageworks Theatre.

I work with Arts Conservatory for Teens in St. Petersburg, Children Across Borders.

I remember my childhood and the things that were given to me as a child.

I feel very privileged, even though we didn't have enough money.

I feel privileged to have had the family that I had and the values instilled in me.

And so I wanna keep giving back, giving others an opportunity to have, you know, improve themselves through the self-confidence that the arts teach us.

And so the arts are very important part of my life and arts organizations that work to empower children and youth through the arts really capture my heart.

- As an experienced entrepreneur, what advice would you give to a young person who's contemplating an entrepreneurial career?

- You know, first thing is entrepreneurism is not about the money.

It has to be first about a commitment to a journey.

It's a commitment to yourself.

And so I would say, have humility and commit to the journey.

Number two, I would say is invest in education and the time you need to understand the material.

And finally, don't do it alone.

Teamwork is everything.

Be very picky about the team that you build and the people you surround yourself with and the attitudes that they bring to the table.

And make sure and don't try to look for people who are exactly like you.

- Well, Santosh I'd like to thank you so much for being our guest today.

- Thank you.

I have fun telling the story and wishing you the best of luck.

- Thank you.

If you'd like to see this program again or any of the profiles in our "Suncoast Business Forum" archive, you can find them on the web wedu.org/sbf.

Thanks for joining us for the "Suncoast Business Forum".

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