DEI Advisors Podcast

Leslie Ng, CEO, Waramaug Hospitality, interviewed by Lan Elliott

February 13, 2023 David Kong
DEI Advisors Podcast
Leslie Ng, CEO, Waramaug Hospitality, interviewed by Lan Elliott
Show Notes Transcript

Having led numerous large hotel transactions and deal teams, Leslie shares his incredible career journey and his current venture, which started as a hobby that grew into a 35-hotel investment vehicle.  He describes how, early in his career, he determined the one skill that would make him sought after, and how he intentionally honed that skill, to position himself for the best opportunities.  As a highly-skilled negotiator, Leslie explains how he overcomes challenges in getting deals done, and the moment he decided to forever threw away all scripts and notes when giving speeches.

Lan Elliott:

Hello and welcome to D E I Advisors. My name is Lan Elliot on behalf of D e I advisors and Arizona nonprofit. And today I'm really happy to have Leslie in with Waro Hospitality with us. And Waro is a hospitality company that invests and owns hotels. And I actually met Leslie. A number of years ago we won't say how long ago. It was a while. And I have such respect for you, Leslie, for how you handle yourself. Particularly in difficult situations because some of the things we worked on were a little challenging. And one of the things I love about doing these interviews is that I always learn new things about people, even people I've known for a long time. And in this cut. I learned that you started your career as a civil engineer, which I had no idea about that, but Leslie, you've had such an amazing career. Can you share some of the inflection points in your career and perhaps some of the things or skills that you think were important to your success?

Leslie Ng:

Hey Lynn. Just want to say hello and, thanks for doing this today and excited to do this. Yeah, you're right. Most people in the industry don't know that I started as a civil engineer. When I was younger, I wanted to. just build stuff and be involved in the outdoors and build bridges and tunnels and highways. When I graduated, I ended up working for an architectural engineering firm in New Jersey, and lo and behold, during the early eighties all we did was sit in front of the computers and modeled nuclear reactors. So my job as a young engineer was to figure out. How to build nuclear reactors to sustain accident scenarios. It wasn't quite what I envisioned. And shortly after being there for about a year or two, I looked around and said, do I want to do this for the rest of my life? And so one of the biggest and fir first inflection points was making the decision to go back to business school. Went to business school. Fortunate enough to get in. When I graduated I majored in real estate finance didn't really know what I wanted to do. Decided to get a job at management consultant. Worked at too Ross now Deloitte too for a couple years. Did a lot of the m and a work. Was exposed a little bit to real estate. I ended up doing the feasibility analysis for what's now the Ritz Carlton in Phoenix. I didn't know it at the time. I had no idea what I was doing. So that was, the first reflection point. Going back to business school, about two years after working there, working like a dog 80 hours a week. I was actually recruited by a Japanese company. Called Toshima. And, during the mid late eighties, that's when all the Japanese companies were coming to American, buying up the real estate. And I eventually went with one of them, one of the high flyers in New York ended up buying a hotel. Although we did a number of other projects, end up buying a hotel for them at a bankruptcy court. Probably the worst deals I've ever done, one of the worst deals I've ever done. We bought 132. Groom hotels sitting on a leasehold in New York City for 76 million that was losing 2 million a year before debt service. So that was my foray into the hotel business. If you pick it up from there that was in 1987. From that point on, taking me all the way to the end of interstate, from the late eighties to 2018, when I retired from eight, that's a 30 plus year span. It's been essentially the same job. I've actually moved from four companies within that span, but it was all through mergers and acquisitions. So Tokushima became, Tcc. I went to work for Woody Weiser in Miami. I had bought his company and then Tokushima sold it back to TCC in the early nineties. I went to work for Woody in the mid nineties. When the first REIT came out in 19 93, 94, I went to Woody and said, maybe we should try this, Woody. So I did all the background work, did all the research. And convinced him to explore going public as a Reid. At the time, T C was the second largest hotel management company in the world, but it was a much smaller industry back then. We had about 50 hotels. Interstate had about 70 hotels, but we were number two. We were obviously too small to go public. We got together with Gencomm, who an aide's company, and Paul Nusbaum, a very small Patriot American at the time. And in 1995, the three of us came together and formed Patriot American Hospitality. We went public in 95 at 20 hotels very small market cap. It was the largest re i p o at the time at a 350 million enterprise value. And between 95. and call it ninety eight ninety nine. We had taken Patriot American from a 350 million company to a 7 billion company. Wow. We went from 20 hotels to about 450 hotels, including buying seven companies. One of the companies we bought was Interstate. We took Interstate Private, essentially Interstate had gone public on their own. And then back in 2005, I rejoined interstate as a separate company. It was a very small management company at the time. By the time I got there, we had about 200 hotels. Tom Hewitt was the c e and over a 14 year period We took that to 500 hotels right before it was sold to eBridge. So I've really had just one job. It's a long job with different names, but I've been doing the same thing Lan since the 1980s, but the inflection points were making the decision go back to business school and then leaving to sh Ross to get into the hotel business. I distinctly remember. talking to the headhunter that was tracking my career at the time. He said, Leslie, once you go to tcc, you're probably gonna be stuck in the hotel business for the rest of your life. Before that I was doing condos and other different types of projects, and I said to him, I said, I don't think it's such a bad business. I enjoy it. I took the plunge and, 30 years later I'm still in the business. And then the final inflection point and which I started a little later than most. Although I had passively invested in hotels before. I really got into it in a big way about 12 years ago while I was still at interstate. I was the Chief Investment Officer at Interstate. During the last financial crisis Paul Nussbaum and I started buying hotels initially as a hobby. We bought a holiday in Express in Colorado. We bought another hotel in Raleigh. We bought another hotel in Indie initially with friends and family. Five years later we owned 40 hotels. And at that point in 2018 he was imploring me to quit interstate to run our little hobby of that we founded. So I did that. I retired in 2018, went on Interstates board and had been running our little hobby for the past I dunno, four or five years. We still own about 35 hotels today. Still pretty active. A small entrepreneurial company, and we have a cadre of good investors that follow us.

Lan Elliott:

I love your choice to stay in the hospitality business. I think it's one of the best things about hospitality is people tend to find the industry and then stay for a really long time, so that it means that you have relationships that actually go for decades where you have known people and worked with them and then become friends with them. So I think it's a terrific industry during that time, and I. I, I know you say you, you never left to go anywhere else but actually choosing to stay. Is actually, as I mentioned, a choice as well. And you could have gone to different choices to different places along the way. I'm sure there were opportunities that were presented to you, but were there certain skills that you specifically decided to hone to increase your opportunities for advancement? Maybe something that you weren't comfortable with early in your career that has become easier for you to.

Leslie Ng:

A couple of things come to mind, Lynn. I grew up as an engineer, good at math and science. I remember having these arguments with my classmates, cuz I didn't know anything about finance at the time. And I said, science rules the world. They're the innovators. And they would go no. Finance rules the world. They're the ones that controlled the money. And we used to argue all the time, but as the years passed, I realized I was wrong. They were right. Finance without the financing, you can't do anything. So that's one thing that comes to mind. The other thing that comes to mind is, in combining my math and finance, as soon as I graduated business school, it was really the coming of age of laptops. People think when I went to business school, the spreadsheet was just coming out. So I knew that when I got out in the mid eighties and then I started at Deloitte and Touche, and we did all this m and a work for clients. If you knew how to do financial modeling, you were gonna be sought after to do assignments. So I made it a point among my group of 50 management consult. Become the best financial modeler in the group. And there was no Excel back then. Lotus was the king, and I became the Lotus King. And I knew that I became the Lotus King when people started asking me how to do things within the system. I rarely look at spreadsheets now, but it's silly to say, but. That's the one skill I made sure that I could do better than anyone else. And yeah I worked hard at it and then I think it's paid off. It's weird that they even think about that, but yeah, everyone does it now.

Lan Elliott:

It's true. And actually, what I find is the more senior you get, the less you are in, are actually in the spreadsheets and working them. I don't travel new in their spreadsheet,

Leslie Ng:

so I can't do any spreadsheets.

Lan Elliott:

it doesn't work very well on an iPad. I've tried that let's broaden the discussion a little bit to challenges, and over the course of your career, you've worked on a lot of deals, a lot of m and a, and that means you end up encountering a lot of challenges and having to overcome obstacles. How do you generally approach a challenge? How do you process it? What tools do you look for? What do you do first?

Leslie Ng:

I, one of the things I always do is in any real estate transaction, there's always gonna be the other side. There's another party to the transaction. So one of the things I always do is, I try to get to know the people and I actually try to put myself in their shoes to see how they're looking at this thing. Whether they're a seller, whether they're a buyer, whether we're trying to merge our companies. And I really try to place myself in their shoes to see what their objectives and their motivations are. And then I've always found that gives me a better angle or posture. to either negotiate or find a compromise and to deal with the situation. We're never gonna get everything we want nor is the other side. But if the desire is there to do a deal or complete a transaction you'll find a middle ground. It's, I actually don't like walking away from a deal where I think I got everything. Because I, I don't I feel like I, I always want to do the right thing and make sure it's a fair deal. It's not to say that I don't try to make sure it's good for whatever my representatives or my investors are, but I always try to be fair.

Lan Elliott:

I think that's true. Having worked with you and I also really like that you always seem to be really calm and even keeled, even when things are getting a little emotional and crazy in the middle of a deal. You always approach things with a real calmness, which I appreciate.

Leslie Ng:

It's true. I, or is that only on the surface? I, it's funny in thinking back I can only think of a couple of instances where I was I was agitated during negotiation and I never take anything personally, but I one, one thing that sticks in my head, I was working on a pretty big transaction in Puerto Rico once and. I had a, an attorney who happened to be a woman. She was terrific. And one of the guys on the other side made some snide remark about her being a female attorney. And I just lost it. And I don't normally do that land. It's not typical of me. But I just It wasn't right. And so I don't normally do that.

Lan Elliott:

I appreciate you standing up for that woman in that in the room at that moment in time. It wasn't always like that back in the day.

Leslie Ng:

Oh no. There weren't that many female attorneys back then.

That's

Lan Elliott:

true. That's true. Let's talk about taking risks because you don't get to where you are today without taking some calculated risks, and we've both been consultants in the past, and then you become on the principal side, you actually have to make decisions and it, you're always taking a risk when you're committing to a deal or recommending it to your investment committee. How do you. How do you approach that and can you share maybe a time when you took us a risk and it succeeded?

Leslie Ng:

The I'm generally a pretty conservative person at heart. I came from nothing. We were lower middle class at best. My brother was the first one to graduate college in my family. I guess I was the. So I'm not really a big risk taker but you're right in our side of the business, you do have to take risks. One example that comes to mind, we recently bought a Radison hotel in Lansing, Michigan. It's right near the Capitol. A nice hotel. We're gonna rebrand it a double tree. We had lined up a capital partner as we typically do at the 11th hour, a week before we were going to go. Our capital partner pulled out for a number of reasons, and, we don't fault them for doing it. So we still like to deal very much. And I called Paul, I, he called me. We looked at each other and say, look, are we gonna go hard? And we thought about it and. we said yes, and we didn't have a capital partner lined up, which meant we would have a million dollar, for us, a million dollars is, decent money or I can't remember, a million and a half maybe. And we said at the end of the day, we'd like this property so much that we will buy it ourselves if we had to. and then figure it out later. And for us, we're still two individuals, so it's a big risk for us. But we were willing to do it, but it paid off. And soon thereafter we did lock in a good capital partner someone who we've done other deals with. we've done that before. We've, seems, we seem to be doing it more and more if we really like it because it's very competitive out there, Lynn. It's so if we didn't do it, someone else was gonna buy it. And we really like that hotel. It's

Lan Elliott:

really great that you and Paul though have those years and that trust in each other that you were able to, if you both felt comfortable with it, you knew that was something that you would do.

Leslie Ng:

Yeah, it's funny. Be pr I alone probably wouldn't have done it. Paul alone probably wouldn't have done it. But together, I guess the two of us got the gumption and say, what the heck? I'm looking at him and he's looking at me and he said, let's go.

Lan Elliott:

That's great. That's great. And that leads me right into talking about developing a network and about the hospitality industry, which as we've mentioned, business relationships can then turn into friendships. Which is, I feel like I've worked on a few different things with you and over the years we've become friends. Friends. How have you built your network and how do you do it in a way that feels authentic to you?

Leslie Ng:

It's funny. Most people who know me Lan know that I hate networking. I do not like going to the cocktail hours at the conferences. I rarely show up. I do not like going to social mingles for cocktails. Virtually every business contact that I've. Is because I've done business with them, or I've worked with them over the years, and I think it's a pretty vast network. I launched a teaching platform about two months ago called Blue Cougar learning, and it's my way of giving back to the young generation where I'm teaching classes on hotel acquisitions. And to use a baseball analogy, the theme of my classes is becoming a five tool player in hotel acquisitions. So I use an analogy in baseball where it's very rare to find a five tool player in baseball. So I have a five tool player in hotel acquisitions, investments, and one of the tools is what I call the Rolodex and. you can do anything in this business if you're smart and you know what you're doing except for one, and that's the network and your Rolodex. That's the one thing, one tool in your chest that can only come through time and experience. And it's people that's worked with you and it's building trust with you. And, I feel the same way with them. My, my entire network is based on having actually done business with all these people. I'm terrible at the cocktail parties.

Lan Elliott:

I think that cocktail parties can be really intimidating, especially, I'm an introvert, so for me it's 10 times more intimidating. But you were right. You have friends in the industry that you've gotten to know because you've had a chance to work with them or interact with them. It makes it a lot, and it makes it a lot easier.

Leslie Ng:

it. I mean it absolutely is. I mean it, just coming back from Alice two weeks ago, I've seen friends that I hadn't seen in two, three years, cuz I hadn't been to LA in two years. But almost everyone I see and know and shake hands or hug it's because I worked with, it's a pretty big crowd.

Lan Elliott:

You've got an amazing network, Leslie and I love what you're doing to give back to the next generation as. We had talked a little bit about mentors and champions earlier, but you often hear how important they are to your career, and you've mentioned that you've had two great mentors. Can you share how they have mentored or championed you? Yeah. And how you came about finding

Leslie Ng:

them. I, you're right. I do have two mentors and the funny thing is Lon they have both pass. But they don't even know that they were, when they were alive, they didn't even know that they were my mentors. They weren't my mentors because they took me under their wing or taught me stuff. They were mentors of mine because I worked with them and I just observed how they treated people and how they worked. And I just admired it. And when I, and I thought to myself, I said, if I ever get to do things that they're. I'm gonna act the same way. So the first one is Woody Wiser. He was the founder of T C C C, which again was the second largest hotel company. He's a legend in the industry. He was the largest Sheridan franchisee developer. He built the Grand Bay Hotel in Miami, which is no longer there. He built the Ritz Carlton. In Kibes gain, which is still there, but he was just such a nice man. He knew everybody. He called people by their first name. No matter how busy he was, he would invite you into the office, ask you how your family was. He was just a true gentleman. He treated people right and it was just unbelievable. He didn't even know. He I, and like I said, he didn't even know that he was my mentor, but I, I. I, I almost watched everything he did and I try to model myself in how I treat other people. The other one's not even really in the hotel business. When I was at Toshima, the Japanese company in the late eighties, early nineties we did partner with a very prominent developer in New York named the Zor family. Bill Zeckendorf, who was a very prominent one, probably the biggest developer in New York. During the eighties and nineties and my company did a joint venture with him. We built the condominium project in Manhattan. And again, he was very similar to Woody. He was the guy that told me that he returned every phone call. Back then there was no cell phones or voicemails and assistance would keep a log of people we call'em. And one day I saw his login, they said, bill, you're gonna call these people back. He. Yeah, I am. And he says, number one, if they're willing to make the phone call, I owe them the the duty of returning a phone call. They made some time. And he goes, you never know what they're gonna call you about, no matter who they were, number which broker. And I learned that from him too. So again, he doesn't know that he was a mentor to me, but I. I watched how he did business. He did the right thing, he made the right decisions, and if he told you something, he gave you a word. He always looked by it regardless of what the document said. Those two guys were very important in my life and they didn't even know about it.

Lan Elliott:

Very admirable people. It sounds like they inspired you in your career and how you were gonna behave and act in your business career. Yeah. So the next thing is around overcoming self-doubt. And this is something, I have to admit, when I was younger I thought this only happened cuz you were younger. And then it goes away over time. But I've discovered that we continue to be our biggest, our own biggest critics. And it's not something that goes away. And it makes you, it can make you doubt yourselves and your skills. What are some of the strategies that you use to stay positive? overcome that internal narrative.

Leslie Ng:

You know what, when I was younger, I was lucky to get thrust in the very important positions when I was young. I just happened to be at the right place at the right time. So one example is I started working for the Japanese company in 1987. I was in my twenties. I spoke English. I knew finance many of my colleagues couldn't speak English, so I was actually thrust front and center with all the developers and all the investors and all the brokers. And when we did projects, I was the one that put together the board presentations. I was the one that presented the projects. It was very intimidating presenting to the board at a very young age. In my twenties I used to be very nervous about it. I I didn't feel I was good with public speaking. But over time I just got more comfortable with it. I remember as I was growing up in, in the industry with some of these more prominent companies, We used to read scripts, we used to do general manager conference. We had to do presentations. And along the way like everyone else, I would prepare notes and read scripts and stuff. And we did our calls where 2000 people were on the phone call. Finally, someone said to me once, they said most of you guys sound like you're reading your stuff. I said, you're better off just speaking. with no notes in front of you and just, like you're talking to someone that's sitting right next to her and I said, Ray, you're right. So the next one, I threw away all my notes. And from that point on, I've never used them again. I've never written scripts even where I'm doing a presentation in front of 2000 people at a GM conference. I'll have some things that I want to talk. but I just, speak from my mind or from my heart and it, it works for me. I know it doesn't work for everyone, but it works for me. It's come, it's gone a long way in doing it. Even when I teach my class, a day and a half. I have a deck of slides that I present, but I have nothing prepared, absolutely nothing prepared, and we just, we just go with it and, let it go where it takes.

Lan Elliott:

You probably know those slides backwards and forwards and upside down at this point in time. just the amazing wealth of knowledge you have about doing deals. Let's talk a little bit about leadership style, cuz we talked about your style a little bit. what are qualities that you look for in, in your leaders and what advice would you offer for leaders who are looking to build a great team?

Leslie Ng:

The I ran a fairly large group when I was in interstate. I, we had about 20 people in business development. And as you alluded to, they came from all different backgrounds. The vast majority of people that I worked with weren't hotel jocks like you are land. They didn't go to Cornell Hotel School or Michigan State or Penn State. They come from all walks of life. I look for people that have the energy and the desire to to learn or excel. I do have a very, I think I have a fairly good bullshit meter. I can tell if someone's bullshitting me. It's okay if you don't know something, but. Don't bullshit me and we'll teach you. And so I'm very cognizant of that. I I like working with people that are straight shooters and that's very important to me. The one thing I will say is I spent the vast majority of my time. Once you become part of my team and I have the trust in you, I will back you a hundred percent of the way. I'll make decisions. If it goes against what the company may want to do, as in the deal world you gotta make decisions quickly and you've gotta, bend the rules every here and there. And, I would oftentimes fight internally because I approve the deal. And I would say, don't worry. Make the deal. I'll deal with our board. And we'll go to battle, but sometimes you have to make those decisions. I like to believe that, once you're in my team and I believe in you, I will back you 100% of the way

Lan Elliott:

that really gives the people who work on your team the ability to have confidence, to move forward, to be decisive. And it, it makes all the difference when you know your boss is going to have your back in the end.

Leslie Ng:

Len, you worked in development and stuff. You, you know how that goes. The worst thing that could happen is you know, you're working with a client and you look indecisive and you gotta check with 19 million people back in the home office. Yeah. On whether you can do something or not. And I said, make the deal. I'll deal with the internal politics.

Lan Elliott:

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. you just mentioned that you have had large teams and diverse teams as well. People from various different backgrounds that can be challenging to manage and diversity can be so much more. I today we talk about diversity in terms of race and gender, but it can be lots of different things. It could be people who are. The first college students in their families, they're first generation college students. It could be people who have a really di diverse way of thinking, a different way of thinking about things than the rest of the group. Or maybe they come from a different background or culture. How do you ensure that you have diverse people on your team that feel heard?

Leslie Ng:

It's a wonderful question, Lynn. our teams at interstate and they, they changed all the time. We would added the 20 people that, there'd probably be turnover of five people and anyone who leaves our group and goes onto better things. I've always wished them well. I've never held a grudge. I never understood it when people got pissed off when people left. But I, I've always encouraged people to, further their careers. The one thing I always do, and we have our, we always had our weekly development meeting. everyone would get their turn to speak from the youngest analyst, the most inexperienced analyst to the, to, to any of the EVPs. And I had four executive vice presidents in my group. And everyone would have equal say, I'll never forget the time one of the brightest stars in my group and she's doing extremely well now. She actually started that as my assistant cuz she has just gotten into college and I saw something in her and she's now a a very successful manager at ERNs and Young. She, I was grooming her. I was hoping that she would eventually take over my spot. But I remember there was one day where I was tired of doing something and I was complaining and bitching into her, and she would look at me and she said, Leslie, just do your job. And I was shocked because some people, not you Lynn, but were intimidated by my position. Forget about me. But she wasn't like that. She, she had the gumption to just tell me outright. And I love that about her. I like people telling me when I'm doing something wrong or not doing something right. And I don't care what the rank is. I don't care what the gender is, I don't care anything. Just, I want to hear it all. So that was wonderful. And then, and my, everyone who knows me knows that I have an open door policy. Anyone come up? I lived for 14 years at the Hilton Boston in. And probably my closest friend there for 14 years. I was, one of the longest days was Harry Henry, the doorman. I developed a relationship with the doorman and we would hang out at night and there, stuff like that, so That's wonderful.

Lan Elliott:

I love that story. one of our favorite questions at D E I advisors is what advice would you give to your younger self? And I think why we like this, it really is an opportunity to reflect on maybe what you would've told your younger self if you were able to do that. Oh

Leslie Ng:

man, Celest, if I could do it all over again, you'd

Lan Elliott:

get into hospitality right away, right?

Leslie Ng:

You know what's funny? So when I was an engineer, there was a PhD very well respected. He was one of the scientists at the engineering company. He could have designed a nuclear power plant by himself. And I was a lowly second year engineer. And when I was going back to business school, he pulled me aside as. don't go to business school. Why are you gonna business school? I said, what do you mean? I said, I'm trying to get my mba. And he goes, you know what they're gonna do at business school, right? When I was going to this hotshot business school, he goes, they're gonna teach you how to work for someone for the rest of your life. And I said, huh? And he goes, that's what they're gonna teach you in business school. And sure enough, they teach. When you go to business school you get out and you go to management consulting or investment banking, and you. They teach you how to work for someone. So in a sense, he was right. And it probably took me 30 years to figure that out cuz I didn't really start buying hotels in earnest for my own accountant until about 12 years ago. So if I had to teach myself a younger self I had the skillset pretty early on, Lynn. I didn't have the financial wherewithal and maybe not the connections. I had the fairly good skillset to do maybe 20 years ago, what I did 10 years ago. So if I had to go back I probably would've been a little more of a risk taker and entrepreneurial and gone out on my own a little earlier. Instead of converting my hobby into the warmock hospitality that we have today. But, I did well in these companies that I worked for, but I guess at the end of the day, the entrepreneurial stuff is, makes me happier. So that's the one advice I would give.

Lan Elliott:

I love that you're not the only person who's been on here, who has said their advice to the, to their younger self would've been to buy hotels earlier for their own account

Leslie Ng:

oh, yes. I'm sure 80% of the people you've talked to wish they could have done, and that's what I'm teaching in my class.

Lan Elliott:

That's excellent. That's excellent. So Leslie, we're coming to the end of our time together and keeping in mind that the mission of d e I advisors is around empowering personal success. Do you have one final piece of advice that you are offer our viewers, women and underrepresented groups who are looking to advance in their career?

Leslie Ng:

By the way, LA Lynn, when I found out that you were doing this and I went on the website and we I thought this was terrific. It's been a long time coming. Nobody has ever done it the way you guys have done it. I have been fortunate enough to work at many companies where women not necessarily ethnic minorities, but women had very prominent roles when we had Wyndham at interstate. Probably one third or 40% of our C-suite colleagues were women, which, is very unusual. It's very atypical. So from that perspective, I've been very lucky. And some of these women have been the smartest people and great friends for life. And so I'm encouraged at what I've seen in the past 20 years because when I started in this there were probably only two Asians that had significant roles in our industry, and there were very few women. Thanks to people like Youlan, I think things are changing. I hope they continue to change and my advice to people is, continue to work hard and it, if this business is a passion of yours, stay with it and you can. And take my class and then you'll succeed even more. But I'm encouraged by what I've seen and you are a big part of it.

Lan Elliott:

Thank you. Thank you. And this is really the vision of David Kong, our founder of d e I advisors. So we're really, Thrilled to be a part of it and has just been a wonderful journey to be able to talk with friends in the industry like yourself and learn new things about you that I didn't know before. And I just discovered while we were talking that we were probably living and working in Miami at the same time in the early nineties, but I didn't know you then. I had to move to DC to get to know you. I

Leslie Ng:

was living in the Grand Bay. That was pretty nice.

Lan Elliott:

I was just in Coconut Grove two minutes away, so all the happy hours we missed out on in those days. Leslie

Leslie Ng:

in Cocoa Walk.

Lan Elliott:

Thank you so much, Leslie, for joining us today and for our viewers, if you would like to check out other interviews, please go to our website, which is d e i advisors.org, and you'll find a number of interviews that we've already recorded there and we're also recently launched. Podcast platform so you can also listen to interviews at your favorite podcast platform. Thank you so much, Leslie. All right. Thanks

Leslie Ng:

Lynn. Be well. Bye.