Real estate development coaching
Do Bigger Deals Better.
You are ready for bigger, more complex deals. Making that leap without getting burned is the hard part. Over thirty years I built my own development and construction company and delivered the market's most complex projects. Now I work alongside you to make the same leap faster, without the guesswork and the expensive mistakes.
Alon Barzilay · Professor of Real Estate, Tulane University
If this sounds familiar
You've closed a few deals. The next ones are bigger, and you're doing them alone.
None of that is a mindset problem. It is the actual work of getting bigger, and you should not be doing it alone.
Why most coaching fails developers
Most coaches have never seen a pro forma.
They have never underwritten a deal, sat through a zoning hearing, or signed a construction loan. So the advice sounds good on the call and changes nothing on Monday. Real estate is not a mindset problem. It is a craft with real machinery underneath it. I am not a coach who has never built anything.
Why the leap is hard
A bigger deal has more ways to go wrong. And they get expensive.
Over-leverage. An entitlement that stalls. A raise that falls apart. Overruns that eat the margin. On a small deal you recover. On a bigger one, a single wrong turn can cost you years. Making the leap is not about nerve. It is about knowing where the traps are, and having someone beside you who has already been past them.
Every bigger deal runs this gauntlet. I have been through all of it, and I help you get past the places it goes wrong.
Where this takes you
From winging the next level to building it on purpose.
Why me
Thirty years doing the work. Not talking about it.
01
I have done it
Thirty-plus years in development. I worked at some of the largest developers in the country, then built my own successful development and construction company, and developed, built, and sold the most complex projects in the market. Including the mistakes I learned from.
02
I teach it
I am a professor of real estate at Tulane University. I have already taken thirty years of experience and made it teachable, at a university level. Doing the work is one thing. Being able to hand it to someone else is the whole point of a coach.
03
I work it with you
When the deal gets hard, most coaches hand you a reading list. I work the hard parts through with you: the entitlements, the capital stack, the investor pitch, the numbers. Not as a partner in the deal, but as the guide who helps you around the traps that cost the rest of us years.
I don't coach from the sidelines. I work the hard parts with you.
The entitlements, the capital stack, the investor pitch, the numbers that have to pencil. Not as a partner in your deal, but as the experienced set of eyes who helps you get them right and steer around the traps.
The method
The Developer's Path
Thirty years, distilled into a path we run together. Not a pep talk. A deliberate way to take on more, and get it right.
01
Map the ground
A structured deep dive into your portfolio, your live deals, your goals, and the exact gaps between where you are and where you want to be.
02
Weekly work
A standing hour, one to one, to work the deal in front of you and decide the next move, with someone who has seen it a hundred times.
03
In the work
Hands-on on the hard parts: entitlements, the capital stack, the investor pitch, the numbers. We do the work together, on your real projects.
04
Bigger, with fewer mistakes
You take on larger, more complex, more profitable projects, and avoid the costly detours that would have taken you years to learn.
Who I work with
Developers at a ceiling, ready to break through.
This is for you if
You have closed a few deals and you are bumping the ceiling of what you can do alone. You want bigger, more complex, higher-return projects, the raises, the entitlements, and the risk that come with them. You are, more or less, where I was twenty years ago.
This is not for you if
You are a passive investor, a first-timer with no deal yet, or you are shopping for a mindset guru. I work with developers who have real projects and real ambition, and who want a guide who has already built what they are trying to build.
About Alon
I built the business I am going to help you build.
Over thirty years I have developed, entitled, financed, and built complex real estate, from adaptive reuse and historic projects to ground-up mixed use. I worked at some of the largest developers in the country, then founded my own successful development and construction company that took on and sold the most complex projects in the market. Today I teach the next generation of developers as a professor of real estate at Tulane. I know what these decisions cost, because I have made them, and paid for the wrong ones.
Let's talk
Thirty years of lessons, without paying thirty years of tuition.
Book a strategy call. We will look at a real deal or decision you are facing right now, and you will leave with a clear next move, whether or not we ever work together.
I take on a small number of developers at a time, and only when I am confident I can move your business. If we are not a fit, I will tell you on the call.