Practically Fearless with Chris Girata: Episode 2, Peter Brodsky
In this episode, Chris engages in a candid conversation with the President of RedBird Development group, Peter Brodsky. Peter shares his personal struggle with lifelong anxiety and his personal interest in driving positive impacts on the South Dallas community through an opportunistic investment.
Q&A with Peter Brodsky
Chris: You have built an impressive list of accomplishments in your career, but those accomplishments have come in multiple moments in your life where you had some struggles. Your mother was diagnosed with MS. When you were only 11 years old, you had to go through the pain of losing your sister at a young age as you were building up your career. What we’d like to cover here is the idea that life can be hard, and yet, we persist. We persevere fearlessly. I’d love for you to give us a little bit about your early history and describe what drove you as you were beginning to build your career through that grief.
Peter Brodsky: Well, first of all, thank you for having me. Second of all, I really appreciate this opportunity because usually I have to pay someone about $250 an hour to sit and listen to me talk about my childhood. I feel like I’m getting a great deal here deal. It’s true that I had a lot of tragic things happen in my childhood. My sister actually died when I was 15. So, long before my career began. But I’ve always been a relatively happy person and very neurotic, anxious. My wife calls me the 6’’1 Woody Allen. I’m very neurotic and anxious, but I’m anxious about things that I worry will happen. When things actually happen, I’m very calm and able to function when the bad thing actually happens, maybe in spite of those neuroses. I really am able to function. I think I attribute that to biochemistry. I attribute that to being very fortunate to have had people in my life who’ve always loved me. I’ve always had, you know, at least one person, but usually multiple people, for whom I was their number one priority. I had a very solid base. Because I’ma New York Jew, I’ve been in therapy since I was 11. You know, that was the first time I ever went to a therapist, and I’ve been going on and off my entire life because I really believe in the power of talking about what’s on your mind, using that as a way to either make it less scary by saying it out loud or working through what’s causing the fear so that you no longer have the fear.
Chris: There’s a lot in what you just said to unpack, which is very rich. One thing is you talk about biochemistry, you talk about neuroses or anxiety. Everyone feels those things at some point, some more than others. But then you pivoted into therapy. I think that it’s how we deal with anxiety and those kinds of worries that we have every single day. It sounds like you, from a very young age, took responsibility for those feelings. You voiced those feelings and then you said they kind of took away a little bit of the fear.
Peter: That’s true to an extent but let me tell you a story. When I was 27 or 28, I was at an inflection point in my career where I was being given more and more responsibility at my firm. I worked for an investment firm and I sponsored my first deal. It was the first deal that had my name all over it. I wasn’t yet at a position in the firm where I could do that without a partner kind of co-signing on it. One day on the flight home from a business trip with that partner, he said to me, “I just want you to know that I think that deal is awful. I think we’re going to lose all our money and it has your name all over it.” Yeah, I don’t like that guy. I got off the plane. My wife was picking me up at the airport. I proceeded to have a panic attack that lasted for about 72 hours. I didn’t sleep. It was a weekend, so I couldn’t get any medication. I was like taking Benadryl. It was the only way I could get any sleep. And that was a moment when I went back into therapy. I wanted to understand why that comment caused me to Tailspin really badly. During the course of therapy, I decided to go on antidepressants, anti-anxiety medication. And I don’t believe in doing that without therapy. But I do believe in doing that in conjunction with talk therapy, at least for me. It takes about a month to kick in. And after about a month, I said to my wife, I just realized that that pit I’ve had in my stomach for the last 28 years is not a normal condition. I’ve been on them ever since. I have tried going off them at times and I always end up in a panic attack at some point. What I’ve realized about my biochemistry is when I have an event that would cause someone else, anxiety, it causes me extreme panic. And that’s not normal. And it actually is counterproductive because it actually prevents you from dealing with the problem because you’re panic-stricken. And so, it’s not that I don’t feel anxiety anymore. I do. But it’s leveled to where I can manage it in response, and that it’s leveled to where talk therapy, or problem-solving or going for a run or talking to my wife or whatever works.
Chris: Now in your life, that kind of mental health is something that you’ve had for at least the second half of your life. How often do you talk with people about that? I find in my experience that mental health is something most people ignore, and it takes an event, like a 72-hour panic attack, to finally send someone seeking some help. If people are a little short of a 72-hour panic attack, how would you encourage them to consider seeking help so that it’s destigmatized?
Peter: Well, I think there are two differences between mental health and physical health. The first is what I suffered from, which is that I didn’t know that what I was feeling was abnormal. I didn’t realize that everybody wasn’t walking around with a pit in their stomach vs. if you have a massive gash on your forehead, it’s pretty obvious that no one else is walking around like that as a normal condition. If you’re diabetic, it’s pretty obvious that most people aren’t walking around going into insulin shock. There is difficulty in diagnosing the issue unless it’s extreme. The other difference is that there is a stigma, and it is, in certain parts, certain communities, considered a weakness. In many communities, the stigma and the lack of cultural acceptance is a real problem. I think it’s the combination of those two things that prevent people from seeking help. I guess the third one is insurance, as very often it doesn’t cover it. But it’s as real as anything else. Anytime anybody says to me, “I think I can manage my problem without medication, I say, if you were a diabetic, would you try to manage your problem without medication?” Maybe you can, I’m sure you can live the way you’re living. But why? Why are you doing it? What is the benefit to you, of doing that? “Well, I don’t want to not feel my emotions.” I feel my emotions, I get happy, I get sad, I get nervous, I get excited. I even panic. But it’s under the bell curve, it’s manageable.
Chris: That kind of experience you named that in some communities, in some circles, that can be seen as weakness. Needing help, in a sense, can be seen as a weakness. You passed through that experience. You understood you needed help and you got the help you needed. I imagine that, given your success in business in many other ways, you were able to take that experience and develop a lot more empathy for people who may be under-resourced. They may not have the kind of access to health care that you named earlier. They might even see that as embarrassing or a weakness. How have you used that strength? When you turn a weakness into a strength, how have you used that strength now, in the second half of your life to make some pretty courageous decisions?
Peter: Well, you know, on the specific issue of mental health, the ‘Oh, I’m not embarrassed about it,’ that really is a result. I mean, I joked about being a Jew from New York, but I’m sort of not kidding. In that culture, everyone’s in therapy. I mean, my mother had group on Tuesday night, my father had group on Thursday night, and all my friends did, too. There’s no stigma to it. So, I’m not embarrassed about it. Sometimes, I think just talking about it can help people. I think the broader question is how to react to people that don’t have the same opportunities that I’ve had. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten more aware, but at a certain point, I became very, very aware that the life I’ve lived, and that I’m living is not only not typical, but extraordinarily lucky. I was never told in my childhood. And I didn’t grow up, like super rich, but I grew up definitely upper middle class. My father’s a New York attorney, I got a great education, and I never wanted for anything. There’s an expression ‘born on third base,’ but you think you hit a triple. Yeah, there are a lot of people who go through life, born on third base, and think they hit a triple. I find it very irritating because it’s just so obvious that if any of us had been born in the Soviet Union and specifically if I’d been born in the Soviet Union in 1970, I would not be where I am today. And it literally has nothing to do with me where I was born, but that set me on a trajectory.
Chris: That awareness is really important because as you noted, a lot of people don’t have the self-awareness that they perhaps did not earn a lot of their opportunities. You have significant capacity and you’ve made choices along the way, especially in the last 15 years, to try to use your capacity, use your abilities to make sure that access to opportunities is spread to a lot more people. I know that you learned about South Dallas and some of the needs there about 15 years ago when you went through Leadership Dallas. Can you tell me about what pivot happened in your mind and why you began to consider putting a huge amount of effort and energy and resources personally at risk to try and meet the needs of some of the most underserved communities right here in our city?
Peter: I mean, there’s a million different ways to answer that question. As you and I were talking about before we started, ultimately, I believe that everybody does everything for selfish reasons. The reason why I do what I do is because I find it very personally fulfilling. Why do I find it personally fulfilling? That’s probably a deeper question. But essentially, what happened was, I was at a point in my life where I had been in a career that was very money focused. I was very fortunate to have had that opportunity, I was very fortunate to have done well there. And I realized something, which is that a lot of the people I was working with, and this is not a knock on them at all, had almost an insatiable appetite for more. And I don’t think it’s because they’re greedy. They’re very philanthropic. But I think that sense of competition, it stops being about the money, it starts being about the competition, and the competition really drove them. That’s great. It stopped driving me. I started to get bored. And when you start to get bored at your job, you stop being very good at your job. And I noticed that I was not as good at my job. My mind was elsewhere and my heart was elsewhere.
So then, I spent several years trying to find what it was that would be of interest to me. And that’s why I did the Leadership Dallas class because I was actively looking for something that was going to be satisfying. I have a lot of the competition thing in me too. I always had a fantasy that I’d be a math teacher. And I wasn’t at the point where I was ready to go be a math teacher, I still wanted the business challenge. I still enjoyed the competitive aspects of that. But I was looking for something that had more to it. And one of the things that the Leadership Dallas class opened my eyes to was the racial history of Dallas. And through that, I became a lot more knowledgeable about the racial history of America. I mean, I knew the basics, but I really didn’t understand the nuances and I’m still learning. But I find the American experience of African Americans so profoundly unjust and continuously unjust. It’s deeply, deeply unfair, and has impacts way beyond what I think any of us can imagine. So, the opportunity to address some of those inequities in what’s now my hometown, was very attractive to me. I find it intellectually stimulating, just understanding how the system was designed, and what the reverberations of it are. It feels good to see your work and have a positive result. I’ve made really deep friendships with people that I would not otherwise have met, really some of my very, very best friends. And I saw a money-making opportunity as well. So, it kind of checked every box for me in terms of what I wanted to be spending my time doing.
Chris: You spoke about being philanthropic. I want to differentiate philanthropy, from taking risks and being fearless. I would say that what you’ve been doing over these last few years might have a positive impact. So, you could consider it kind of philanthropic in that regard. I think it’s bigger than that. You name something that I think seems counterintuitive. In my experience, for most people, the more they have, the more they’re invested in keeping what they have. When people don’t have a lot, they tend to be a bit more generous, relatively speaking. You seem to be bucking that conventional wisdom in a way that could inspire others, who might be fearful, to put themselves at risk because they want to make sure they protect everything that they have built, or earned or have. What would you say to people who actually have this huge capacity and are feeling like there’s an opportunity, but they’re not entirely sure whether the risk is worth the potential reward? I feel like that may be where you would have been at that point.
Peter: I mean, I don’t want you to give me too much credit. I also want to protect what I have. I’m not looking to come out with less. I am aware of the fact that if I did come out with less, I would still be incredibly lucky, have a great life and be just fine. But I didn’t go into this thinking, ‘Oh, I’m just going to throw this money away because it’s for a good cause.’ I profoundly, I’ve used the word profoundly and deeply too much, but I really 100% believe in this investment opportunity. The investment opportunity is based on a core belief, which is that everybody deserves nice things. And that communities that are perfectly capable of paying for the nice things still aren’t given them because of the assumptions made about them, unspoken and maybe even unthought. There is the belief that they don’t deserve those nice things. I believe that they do deserve them. And I know that they can afford them. So, I thought this is actually not that higher-risk investment. Now, if I knew then what I know now, it’s plenty risky, just because real estate is risky, and the economy goes up and down and convincing other people that they should put their businesses at Redbird is hard. But to me, it was the perfect opportunity to make an investment that I really believed in that aligned completely with my values.
Chris: You’ve sort of crossed some lines in this project in the sense that you’ve stretched yourself, you’ve exposed yourself. You mentioned you’ve learned so much about racial history, not only in Dallas, but in America. You’ve also been challenging yourself to do things that might not be the easiest path to walk. Is there one example of something that you have learned or perhaps a story of a particular person that could exemplify the exposure that you have gone through and how that has impacted you in a positive way?
Peter: A couple of things come to mind. I think this isn’t about a person, but an experience that I’ve had that I’ve really had to learn how to navigate. It’s the risk of people thinking that I think I’m the white savior. One thing I’ve been very made very aware of in this community that I’m working in at Redbird, and I could generalize to say most African American communities, they don’t want to be saved. They don’t need to be saved. And I understand that there are civic aspects to it. And there are some things we’ve done that are more civically oriented. But the bottom line is, this is a market that has been underserved. And so, I’ve gone off on a tangent, but it’s very dangerous if the community thinks that you think you’re the white savior. I don’t, and I’ve made very sure that people understand that I don’t think that. In terms of an individual, there’s something that happened to me just recently, that actually made me feel really good. We were at the Tom Thumb press conference at City Hall, there was a guy from the community who happened to be at City Hall for another reason. He sat in on the press conference after the city council meeting. And he had been not very kind to me on Facebook over the years. And he came up to me and he said, “I just want you to know that I still don’t like you, but I really respect and appreciate the work that you’ve put in to make this grocery store happen.” He emphasized again, that he didn’t like me, which is fine. It did feel good to have kind of convinced someone that, even though I may not be their cup of tea, my intentions are good.
Chris: I think that that’s a good way to kind of wrap this up because you’ve shown a lot of dignity, respect and honor for the community in southern Dallas. I love that you said you’re not saving anybody. This is a good opportunity and it’s going to be a win-win for everybody. I appreciate you being with us today. Peter, thanks for being here. And thank you all for listening. And remember, you have the power to be fearless.