Building Spaces With Purpose: Commercial Real Estate With Heart

Everybody, you are in for a treat today. You get to meet my new friend, Ashley Stiles. As founder and CEO of Tribe Development, Ashley has fifteen plus years in commercial real estate. We all know that not enough women are in commercial real estate, so we love Ashley for this. Her project set the standard for function, design, and community impact. She has developed over 1,000,000,000, with a b, dollars of assets, including the Buxton Hotel, which is how we became introduced. That is in Fort Collins, Colorado. It is a boutique property reflecting her belief that great spaces are shaped by the people who use them. Here's Ashley. Hey, everybody, and welcome to the Power Up Your Life podcast powered by GoBundance Women. I'm Mandy McAllister.

And I'm Kelly Resendez.

And today, we have my my friend, my boutique hotelier buddy, Ashley Styles with us today. Ashley, how's it going, friend?

Well, first, thank you so much for having me, you guys. This is really incredible. I always love a chance where I get to talk to other women who are trying to do amazing things, and so thank you so much for having me. It's it's going. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah. I like you've done some really big task work. Yeah. Exactly. Right? You get Your exactly. I say a lot. You get two arms for a reason. Wanna pull yourself up and wanna pull other people up with you, and girl, you are doing that. So why don't we start for people who don't yet know you? Let's start at the beginning. Tell us about you, your journey, and how you got here.

Yeah. So I'll give you the Life notes version. So I, I'm an oil and gas brat. It's kinda like being a military kid, but no cool destination opportunity to go to the middle of nowhere. So I was originally, from Tulsa. I predominantly grew up between Tulsa and Denver, but I've lived all over the place, with oil and gas. And so I never really had that, like, home base, if you will, with, like, my family. And so I was always the new kid, always learning how to hustle, make friends, like, you know, all of that, which I think has served me really well in my adult life and doing real estate development. As you know, it's, like, all about connections. But Kelly what that meant was that my grandparents became, like, my home base. And so when I like, for summers and, you know, holidays, we would be there, and it was just this constant in my life that, you know, like looking back now, I just realized it was this sense of, like, belonging and feeling super safe and incredibly welcomed that just, like, yeah, they were my people. I was showing, you know, before you hopped on, but there they are. I keep them on my head. Oh. Okay. Yeah. So, but, yeah, so that that was kinda, you know, like, young Ashley origin story. I went to, college. I was a first generation single mom putting myself through school, working full time, going to school full time. So don't think that, you know, Life, I mean, if you wanna do it, you can do it. You can find a way. And, went to, Colorado State University for my undergrad, which is in landscape architecture, and I worked in that for about a decade, worked on, really high end luxury resort projects, as well as, like, the top half percent of the country I did their private estates and private islands. So learned really early in my career about brand and storytelling and, you know, like, how place really matters. And then during the, great financial recession, I jumped shipped and went to a developer. So clients, you know, were saying you should really be on our side of the table. And then that was so foreign to me. You know, all of the financial acronyms, like, oh, they do not teach you that in design school. Okay. You know? So I did go and get my master's, with a concentration in finance Mandy capital markets, at the University of Denver. And that was, like, seventeen years ago. So I've been doing development ever since. The love of hospitality, of course, never left for my design days. And so that's really where Tribe is focused now.

That is incredible. I love everything about it. I just I our I've you were my my brethren in so many different ways. I I do think, you know, coming from the world of commercial real estate investing, we represent a still significant minority of female real estate investors in commercial real estate. And I think that from the outside looking in, a lot of people would say we're real brave to play in the boys' club. Right? And you've developed a a damn billion dollars worth of assets. You know, I love this attitude of I'm a single mom Mandy it's not gonna stop me stuff. Girl, I felt the same thing when I was a single mom. Talk to that single mom right now who is trying to start her first business and doesn't know what next step to make. What do you say to her to really move things forward?

Yeah. I think as women, we strive for something that looks like perfection, and we wanna have it all figured out before we take the leap. And it just doesn't work that way. Right? And so boys are commended for being brave. Girls are commended for, like, doing it well. And so I think what we have to do is just, you know, like, put on, like, a brave hat and just say, I don't know, but I'm gonna figure it out. I think that that kinda comes from, you know, like, again, always being the new kid, always having to try and figure it out, even, like, little things. Right? Like, you go to a new supermarket Mandy you're like, where's everything? Okay. You know? And but eventually Your figure it out and it becomes routine and you know how to find those things and you know where to go. And that's exactly what business looks like. So, I mean, I was doing things today that I've never had to do. That's part of what I love about real estate, but it can be incredibly intimidating. So I think you just gotta make the leap. The thing is, is that, you know, what your your perfect business plan you created will be wrong two days after you start, and you just gotta be able to keep going and keep pivoting and knowing that Life, hey, I've got this far. I'm going to keep going. So

No. That's incredible. Well, walk me through. So you make this pivot from development into your own place. Like, what are the steps? Because somebody out there might be interested

in acquisition or building or or whatnot. Like, what did what did it take to build this? And then tell us a little bit more about it too. Yeah. Sure. So I like to be super transparent about this part because I think this is, like, the one thing, like, where we always try to tell this, like, entrepreneurial, like, highlight story, you know, that that that sometimes doesn't really resemble what you Kelly going through it. So, I was at a conference I go to every year, and I had this is pre me starting my company, and so I was working for a really large national real estate development firm. And I was with my counterpart on the multifamily side. And we were just chatting about, like, our teams and trying to actually get them more access to to be able to participate in projects. And through the course of that conversation, I realized that he made 34% more than I did. And it was it was shocking. We were Up. We were doing you know, I was probably doing more on the revenue side. And so there was just you know, I realized, like, I'd already felt the tension of not being in the right place or doing the right thing, and then that really solidified it for me. So I actually went to my hotel room that night. This is the great part about being at conferences. You have zero distractions. And I wrote a business plan and and I said, okay, this is what it's gonna look like for me to leave. And it wasn't necessarily Life, this is what my first deal looks like. It was, how do I leave Mandy how do I do my own thing? And so I kind of wrote that business plan out. My husband is from the Midwest. He's a good Midwest man, incredibly steady, which is great because one only one of us can be crazy. And, you know, it's like he got a job, he's gonna work at that job, he might even die at that job. Okay. You know, like like very, very Midwest. And so he told me Mandy he's like, if we could have $250,000 in our savings account, I would feel comfortable with you leaving. Right? So that's what I did. I saved, I made that plan in November, I left in March. Some of that was because, like, we had some capital events on projects I was invested in at that firm that allowed me to have that cash relatively quickly and to leave, but that's what it looked like. I started the business by actually doing advisory work for folks, like while I was getting my feet under me, so we would have a revenue stream. It's actually become a really great part of our business. And that's what funds us all of our predevelopment. So predevelopment is the hardest thing in real estate to fund. And so that's how we do it. So we've never taken investment for predevelopment. And then, you know, the rest was was going through the motions of what I've always done in terms of real estate development.

Girl, friends. Amazing. I I love so much about I I too have a very steady Eddie Midwestern husband who, you know, like, the idea of enrolling your husband from the beginning, and I too am the crazy one in the relationship. So I I think it's so important when you are in a partnership to figure out what they need in order for you to go live the life of your dreams and not hold yourself back because they need to be steady, Eddie. You know? Talk to me about this project because you didn't I so my my path to becoming a boutique motelier was to find a very inexpensive 18 room motel that I could put a ton of cute lipstick on. Right? You round up $10,000,000 beefcake of a deal Mandy so talk to me about just swinging for the fences from the beginning.

Yeah. So what was great is that, you know, I had a really good track record with my previous firm, and I had a lot of investors when I left say, let us know when you have your first deal. We'll come and invest with you. And so and some of them did. Right? It was great. But I so I picked a project. So I guess I'll back up for a minute. This project was on the market. Nobody was biting because the price was, like, very unrealistic. And, I was flying back from a board retreat and I was like, why am I not taking a run at this thing? I knew that the listing had expired. And so I text the previous owner and just said, can we grab coffee? I wanna know what your plan is now. And so we literally met the next morning for like an hour and a half. And, and she said at the end of it, I think you Your the one to buy this from me. We never talked to numbers. And so a lot of it and I think that's the beauty of how women Up the deal, right? She had been approached by lots and lots of finance bros. I'm sure they all had Life Patagonia zip ups on. And, you know, they were probably all in some shade of blue. And so, you know, that's what she was encountering. And she wasn't meeting with somebody who said, I have vision of how this continues to be a legacy in our community. Here's what I think we do. Right? And then for the next year, I was just transparent with her and showed her every single number, walked her through it, got her to a reasonable purchase, and then, you know, completely repositioned the project. So that's that's how I got control of it. I did capitalize the project twice. So I had one investor, so talk about brutal. Awesome. Mandy nobody wanted to give any money for hotels. So, but I just I knew that we were doing the right thing. Like, I knew that this was, like, so underutilized. It had so much potential. And so I just kept going. So I had one investor who had invested with me for years at my previous company. He gave me all of the equity I needed to actually acquire it. So I acquired this very rundown hotel. I put in tiny bits of money because that's because I had tiny bits of money. Okay. You know? And but I was like, I'll do all of the pre dev. Oh, like, I won't come back to you for that. So, so he gave me that with the promise, right, like handshake deal, that I would recapitalize the project and essentially get him his money back. So, that's exactly what I did. So I got it. I acquired it. I continued to operate it as, like, a very rundown, like, c asset, and, and then put together the design plans, all of the permitting, and then went and raised all the money again.

So Double click on it real quick, Kelly, if you don't mind. Yeah. Talk to me about the I love talking vision. I love talking heart. Like, as lady investors, one thing that we tend to besides the lack of blue or Patagonia zip Up, we tend to bring a lot more hearts to stuff. I love your heart on this deal and the story behind it Mandy your your commitment to storytelling Mandy the management of it. Can you give me kind of a a snippet of the heart and the story of this this deal?

Yeah. So as I said, so, you know, like, my grandparents was, Life, they were my safe place. They were, like, this really cool place. My grandma was also well, like, these days, we would call extra. Right? It was, like, the house was pink. The room I stayed in was, like, pink carpet. There was pink carpet in the bathroom. The toilet was pink. Like, the bedspreads was pink. You know, like, everything was pink. And, so, like, we started Salina. I was born in a pink hospital in Tulsa, so there's, like, a lot of meaning behind why this hotel ended up being pink. It's a it's an approachable pink. There's also great, great, like color theory around the color. But, so I knew that that was gonna be the story that I would tell. This is also the place that they would stay. My grandparents, you know, like they liked nice things, but they weren't Ritz Carlton. So and I wasn't gonna try to be something that this property wasn't. And so I gotta lean into that. I really learned that back in my design days, right? Like how important that was to understand who your customer is, how they're showing up, and then how do you get to, like, really amplify their experience. And so we start with that. So on all of our projects, we start with, who are we serving? And so then therefore, who are we? And then we get to make decisions related to that Women you're having to be Mandy you're having to, like, make really tough decisions. You get to do it through filters of, like, this is what's meaningful for our audience. And so then you know that those are the sacred pieces you don't wanna touch. And then, okay, here's things that we can kinda mess with and see if we can do them differently. So we really do that. My grandmother's maiden name was Buxton, so our hotel is called the Buxton Hotel. One is just Life fun because then we get to play into the x in it. So our tagline is where extra is welcome. And and that's just kind of that's what we do. So, yeah, that's that's a little bit of the storytelling, but I think, you know, you can we lead with that in our projects. And so if you ever get an investor deck from us, it will lead with our story, who we are, who we're serving, why we think we're gonna do it better, what's the white space in the market. Then we'll get to the financials. Right? I think financials for real estate development and for investing is kinda like when a GC tells you that they'll be on time and on bud or on yeah. On time and on budget. You're like, cool. That's like baseline. Right? I'm not gonna pitch you on a story and it doesn't make money. You know? So but I can show you money and then, you know, like, what do you do in those in those tough decision times if you don't know who you are?

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Wow. Ashley, I love this Your, and I got I got an opportunity to just check out the hotel online. And let me tell you just super impressive. Like, anybody going to Fort Collins definitely wants to stay at the Buxton. So, you know, one of the things that you talked about was how networking is so important. And I think that is one thing that as women that maybe we don't we miss some of the opportunity because we don't know how to network appropriately and consistently. Like, how important was it to you on being able to get this deal? And then what tips do you have for people to network more effectively so that you have this Rolodex of potential investors if you ever need cap you know, capital. Yeah.

I mean, it's, like, beyond important. Without it, the deal would not have happened. Right? Without having that network that I could go to, I would have never been able to acquire it, And then I would have never been able to actually capitalize it for the final time to do all the improvements. I think one of the things and and I love, like, you know, all of all of my women friend investors. I was telling Mandy earlier, I tried to cap like, I tried to get all of my investors to be women in this deal Mandy I and I couldn't do it. And so that was, like, devastating. So, you know, I was like, oh, man. So I had to, like, pin it and, like, keep going. So now there's a lot of there's a lot of men. Okay. But a lot of really great Women. And then we just keep talking to, to women about investing. I think sometimes it can be a little intimidating. It's, it's meant to seem hard. But I think, you know, if you're going out there and you, you know, that at some point you're gonna have to raise Mandy, I always say like, don't look for a friend when you need one. Like Your better have that friend already. And so I think that's the way that you think about like networking. Like don't just network when you need it, network when you don't need it, because that's when like, the real relationships evolve. That's when you get to, like, put it in your back pocket, like, oh, okay. So and so is very interested in these things. I'll stay in touch with them. But I think it needs to be authentic. It needs to be really genuine. I love connecting people. And so people come to me if they're trying to get to someone, you know, like the joke up here is that it's like, you know, one degree of separation if you call Ashley. Okay. Mandy so I can get people to anyone and I love doing it. But I have a very extensive network in this space having done this for seventeen years. And I will tell you that I probably pitched this deal more than 300 times to get 30 investors. And so you have to know that Life the no's are significant Mandy it's not no because your deal is bad. It's no because of a set of circumstances or requirements that the group you're pitching has Mandy you don't even know it. Right. Mandy, or, you know, their vibe is not your vibe. So I think that's the part where people get super discouraged. Like yeah. I got seventeen years Mandy it took me we actually calculated all of them so that we would have the statistics of what our close ratio was and how many times we pitched. We pitched, six lenders. Obviously, we only ended up with one, and only one said yes to us. It wasn't like we had multiple term sheets. Okay? No. One. So but we love them. They're great. Okay. And they were the right one for us. But, yeah, it's hard. And I think that's where people get discouraged. Mhmm.

I I think too Women you start dealing with bigger check sizes, you know, I one thing that matters a lot to me, that matters a lot to our mutual friend, Beth Azor, that you kinda spoke to just a second ago with how do we make more lady investors, you know? And a lot of women who work in commercial real estate Life you were don't also invest in commercial real estate, even though they have all this insider trader information to to get into the deal. So big kudos to you for for taking the jump and and investing and then running your own deals. But I want you to speak to that woman who is paralyzed by fear to get into her first $50,000 investment. She's she's maybe a business owner. She's maybe, an executive, but the idea of writing a $50,000 check or a $100,000 check to get into something that is an alternative investment, like a hotel or multifamily or whatever, she's paralyzed by the fear. What do you say to her to maybe get her over the hump to be interested in putting that check through?

So I think there's two things. So, you know, we we've pitched so many different, like, female investment groups and stuff. So I think that there's Power in numbers. So if you have other friends, you know, have been that Life invested, talk to them about it, ask them questions of like how they feel that those opportunities. But the one thing I say in this industry is if you cannot do the math about when you'll get your money back and what that rate of return is going to be for that investment on your iPhone calculator, don't do the deal. If it is like, this is the tranche Mandy then there's another one here Mandy then this is the metric. Anyone can make a deal work with, like, crazy math, but the best deals are gonna be the ones that are incredibly straightforward. And you're like, alright. I I understand that. I think that's where the fear comes from is, like, lack of of feeling super secure and understanding the data. And so I give it, like, super straightforward. But if if Your can't do that Mandy if you feel like somebody is talking to you and they're making a comp this is not complicated stuff. We have two levers, cost and revenue. Like, that's it. That's it. And so if you can't do that math, do not do the deal. And if you can, do it.

I love it. I love it. Well, what are the things from this conversation? Not only do I love just, you know, hearing your business journey and and how you put it together and the importance of all these things, but the embodiment of confidence really, really oozes from you. So speak to the woman about how you maybe you were born that way. Maybe there are things that you do that that continue to do that. But I think a lot of it is we've gotta be able to show up if people are gonna trust us. We have to be able to to really embody that. Like, what how do you do that? Like, do you have any strategies? Is there anything that you've done?

Mhmm. Yes. Okay. Yeah. So I would say this is just a little bit of, like, how I've always been. Like, I've always been a little bit of, like, a whack like, yeah. I I don't lack self confidence. Okay. Your whatever reason, I don't I don't. But I will tell you that there were definite times where I was doing this project in particular, where I questioned whether or not I was gonna be able to get it done. And it really made me question, am I doing the right thing? Am I supposed to be doing my own deals? Like, oh my God, am I not gonna be able to get this done? And and so doubt is within all of us. Right? And I think the one thing that I will say is like the the characteristic in myself that I think probably makes me seem really confident is that I'm incredibly persistent. And no is like no to this set of circumstances, but maybe not a no to these. And so I just keep trying to be like, okay, so if it's not that, then what, how would we get you to be a yes? How do we get it to move forward? And that's great for cities, right? Your municipalities and getting approvals, investors, lenders, everybody, right? It's like, okay, how do I continue to, to move through this process to get you to a place where you can say yes to me? And and so I think that's probably the biggest trait that makes me seem incredibly confident is that I'm just very, very persistent. I don't I hear no, but I don't I don't acknowledge no.

I don't accept respectfully. I do not accept. I also feel like it calls back to your the figure it out gene that you were talking about earlier. I I think that that leans into that a lot. I kinda wanna double click on this, Life, the fear and the doubt creep in stuff. Right? Like, a lot of entrepreneurs as they start their journey, the middle of their journeys, whatever is about as they're about to take off, that fear, that doubt, that, oh my god, what the crap did I do thing comes in. And that's for everybody. Right? No matter how shiny Mandy, and pink things look, it's, it's hard. So I operationalize this for me. When you are in that, oh my God, what did I do Women? How do you pull yourself out of it? What, what are some things you do?

So so I'll go to a safe place where I know I excel. And then I'll be like, okay. Let me focus on something I know how to do, and then get that thing done, and then you feel really good about it. And then you're okay. My my weakness is, I will always always put the operational things off to the side. Okay. I I'm not a fan of HR Mandy, and doing all of those things Mandy like compliance reporting. Like that's not my favorite. So, so then, and I didn't know how to do that. Right? Like, when I first got in, I had a I had a team of 14 people at my previous office, and now we're three people. So we're doing these three people are doing everything. And so then I just kind of, you know, like, I do it's like when you give someone feedback and they call it Life feedback sandwich, I do it as Life like a task sandwich. I do something I'm great at. I do something I'm not good at. I end on a high note. Okay? Your know? And so that motivates me too because you're you're starting in a place of positivity Mandy you're ending in that place because entrepreneurship is incredibly hard. I saw a meme the other day and it says, you're not an entrepreneur if you didn't think about giving Up, selling everything, and being a greeter at Walmart. You know? And that's that's a thousand percent true. There are days where you're like, my life choices are awful. I have made all of the wrong ones. What am I doing? And and then the next day, I actually had a day like that yesterday, and then I'll tell you that I was stopped in our parking lot by a guest. And he gave me the best review of my team, so much so that I, like, wrote a letter to everybody last night that kind of encapsulated the story he told me about how welcomed he felt and how amazing it was and how I should be really proud of them. And so Your just kind of like, yes, I am. Like, this is exactly what we're doing. It's taken us so long to get to a place where somebody will stop me in the parking lot and tell me that Your, and I really needed it yesterday. So Oh, yeah. Yeah. You just kinda have to wait, you know, like Your gotta you gotta trudge through the stuff that you're not good at, and that's really hard. But then once you've done it once, you can do it again. So

Totally. You would have said so many things, Ashley, that have just knocked my socks off, which I it's not surprising, but I I loved the figure it out, Jane. I I Life, you know, when you're up against something, the looking back and knowing that you have figured things out before so you can go figure this out too. And I also really love that you got an avatar. You have a north star so that you then can use it as a filter Mandy then all of the decisions far more easily line up. Kelly, what were some of your favorite things we talked about?

Yeah. I mean, my favorite things are just, man, that importance of networking and networking strategically with the people. I love not taking a no as a no, you know, rejection set so many people back. And I love just how you how you approach the fear and doubt and really just, you know, leverage the the positivity that you get from other people. So absolutely incredible. Wish we had more time.

I know. This is fun. Yes. Well, you have really served Up. And I I just I think your energy and all of the the hacks on how you sandwich the hard stuff in between. You know, we wanna serve you. What is an introduction or a resource that would change the ball game for you and what you're working on?

Well, so my goal is to do seven to 10 Buxtons. Right? So I'm on the hunt for the next one. That's the goal we're gonna try and do, like, one a year. And so if anyone knows of of a project I should look at, that would be huge.

That's amazing. I got a couple of options for you. Or the capital of the mess. Yes. Are you open to international or just, in The US?

Yeah. We're open.

Mhmm. Okay. I got amazing amazing GoBundance employment that's that's doing, international hotel stuff. Very boutique too. So Love it. Love it.

Yes. Awesome. What are the best way for people to get a hold of you, Ashley?

So best way so, I mean, you can find me really easily on social media, and then you can always just ping us at the buxtonhotel.com. There's a little, like, get get in contact with us that goes directly to my team, and they'll get it right over to me.

Beautiful. Ashley, thank you so much for joining us today. Anyone that you know that are that's listening to this that maybe your friend needs to know, send it to your friend, make sure you like and subscribe, and we will see you next week on Power Up Your Life. Thank you, Ashley. Bye. Thanks for joining us today on the Power Up Your Life podcast. If you got value from today's episode, make sure that you like Mandy subscribe and send this episode to someone who needs to hear some wins like this. If you need to power up your business, head over to Power Up Your Life Now where you can see all of the resources that our team has to power up your business. We'll see you on the next episode.