Brandon Donnelly

Daily insights for city builders, delivered every morning at 6 AM ET. I’m Brandon Donnelly — a Toronto-based real estate developer and founder of Globizen. I’ve been writing here since 2013.

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Category: Personal

  • Anything above zero compounds

    I haven’t been riding much this summer (I can’t wait until Vivienne can join us on our bikes!), but I did go for a bike fit over the weekend — something I’ve been meaning to do since I basically got my “new” bike.

    In case any of you are curious/in the market, I went to Racer Sportif at Bloor & Runnymede. Ask for Dennis and tell him you want to see the photo of him on his first-ever bicycle. The west side of Toronto has such a great road biking culture.

    So, it turns out my setup was off. My seat was too low, my seat was too far back, my handlebars were too high, and my stem was about 2 cm too long. These micro-adjustments were all it took for my ride to feel significantly better on the way home.

    Of course, these micro adjustments become even more important on long rides because small things do compound over time. I like thinking of things in this way, and it reminds me of one of Sahil Bloom’s core philosophies: “Anything above zero compounds.”

    The smallest positive changes and actions can have an outsized effect when you play the long game.

    The same is true for city building. It’s easy to focus on big plans and tall towers, but let’s not forget the micro adjustments that are being made every day. A new bike lane here, and a new coffee shop there, all have an impact and add up to something more.

  • I ❤️ Biarritz

    Neat B and I tried surfing for the very first time today in Biarritz. Our instructor was a 57-year old Frenchman who has been surfing for 50 years (he allegedly started when he was 7) and who spent some 20 years living in Costa Rica doing the same. Sounds super stressful, if you ask me. We both did well for our first time, and managed to catch waves and get up on our massive spongy boards. (This is what they give you when you have no idea what you’re doing.) Naturally, we’ll be doing the same thing tomorrow morning. Biarritz is an awesome place. It feels to me like the summer version of all the things I love about Utah in the winter — breathtaking landscapes, chill vibes, and cool people doing fun things on boards and such.

  • Streets of Marrakech

    Camera: Fujifilm X-T3 (23mm lens)

  • Out of office

    I just turned on my out of office. Neat B and I leave this evening for our honeymoon. Our first stop is Mallorca. Neither of us have been before and it has been on our list.

    One of our goals for this trip is to be active. So among lots of other things, the plan is to get on some bikes at some point. We hear that Mallorca is a pretty good island for that.

    As always, I’ll be continuing to write. I love writing when I’m on vacation and experiencing new things. The laser distance meter is also in my bag, so expect some of this and this.

  • My last day at Slate

    As some of you may have gleaned from this recent RENX article, I have moved on from my development position at Slate Asset Management to focus exclusively on Globizen. After 8 very productive and exciting years at the company, it was time.

    I joined Slate in 2016 to help start the development group. Here is the post that I wrote back then. And it all came about because of a coffee meeting at Starbucks at the corner of Yonge & King.

    At the time, Lucas Manuel was looking to hire someone, and so our mutual friend, Kieran Boyd, connected us with the expectation that I would make some industry introductions. But at the end of our meeting, Lucas was quick to say, “actually, I think you should come join Slate.”

    And obviously, that’s what I did.

    Fast forward to today, and Slate has grown into a global investment and asset management company with $13 billion of assets under management across Canada, the US, and Europe. And within this platform is a supremely talented development group with an awesome portfolio of sites and projects.

    Thankfully though, this is not a goodbye. Myself and the Globizen team will still be working very closely with Slate on a handful of development projects, including One Delisle and Corktown. And the intent is that we will continue to work on new projects together in the future.

    I learned a lot during my time at Slate, and I have so much respect for Blair and Brady Welch and the rest of the partners. They have built an incredible global company and assembled some of the most creative, entrepreneurial, and smartest people I have ever worked with.

    Thank you for everything over the last 8 years.

    So what’s the plan for Globizen? This will be the topic of a follow-up post.

  • ❤️

  • Forty-one

    Today is my forty-first birthday.

    I had aspirations of making it a slower day, but that didn’t really happen. I did, however, start my morning “on the Bench” for one of our development projects and that was pretty spectacular, especially with the weather we had. Today has to have been the nicest day of the year.

    I very much enjoy my birthdays, but the cadence of them seems to only speed up. It feels like just last month that I turned forty. And so in many ways, birthdays are a reminder to me that it’s important to be decisive and not waste time. Life keeps moving forward whether we like it or not — usually quickly. So it’s best to optimize accordingly.

    At the same time, this is probably one of my biggest faults. I’m bad at slowing down and living in the moment. I get restless. Neat B tells me that I am at my most relaxed when we are traveling in Paris and just sitting idly in a cafe somewhere. That sounds right. But I’d like to do more of this at home.

    So that’s my birthday wish (goal) for this year.

  • Ideal end state

    A friend of mine sent me this X post today.

    It covers two important life questions: (1) How do you define success? (2) Are your actions aligned with that definition? And included in the post is the author’s “ideal end state”, which is a list that includes things like “control 80% of my schedule”, “be top 0.1% fit for my age group”, and “thriving marriage with regular 1-on-1 time.”

    Some of his list has checkmarks, and some of it — things like “small, beautifully designed home with an epic view” — is still a work in progress.

    After I got the message, I immediately responded with: “This is great. I’m going to do this for myself.” I then sent it to my family.

    Now, in some ways, I’m already doing this. I like lists and I have a lot of them. Some of them are “disciplines” that tell me to do things like write every day (that’s what this blog is), lift weights, and continuously practice my French. And some of them deal with aspirational goals like, build a creative retreat in the mountains because you love snowboarding.

    But I think there’s a lot of room for me to be even more intentional, and aspirational, about what success means to me. And so that’s what I plan to do. Maybe some of you will want to do the same after reading this post.

  • The Boxing Day move

    We moved into our new apartment today, so I don’t have a lot to say other than that moving is a good way to remind yourself that you have too much stuff. I was in my last place accumulating for over a decade.

    I try my best to live minimally and there is certainly something liberating about this mindset. But there is also a part of me that is a collector at heart. (A great number of our boxes are filled with things like books.)

    It also turns out that Boxing Day, or some other time over the holidays, can be an excellent time to move. Streets are calm. Buildings are quiet. The email firehose is off. And nobody else wants to move at this time.

    Most importantly, though, it affords you some time to get your life back together. And that’s exactly what I’ll be doing for the rest of this week.

  • Merry Christmas

    For those of you who celebrate, I wish you a Merry Christmas.

    This year has been a hectic year for many; certainly for those of us in real estate. I’ve heard a lot of people tell me that they’ve “never worked so hard only to feel like they have accomplished so little.”

    Looking back at what I wrote on the first day of this year, I was wrong about many of my 2023 predictions. I thought the interest rate hikes would be over by the first quarter of the year and that the spring would bring greater optimism for new development projects.

    This was partially true — we did see some buoyancy around spring — but then further increases over the summer really quashed the pre-construction condominium market and overall developer sentiment for basically the rest of the year.

    I also thought that we would see distress within the industry in the first half of the year. That didn’t quite play out, as far as I can tell, and I now think that 2024 will be the year for this.

    All of this said, I do feel that 2023 was a highly productive year. I’m proud of what I accomplished both personally and professionally. And this holiday season, I’m looking forward to slowing things down, spending time with family and friends, and catching up on some life management.

    Hopefully you are all able to do something similar. Merry Christmas, everyone.