From Design Consulting To Regenerative Developer with Joel Fariss

Most real estate projects begin with a neat answer: a program, a typology, a unit count, a pitch deck that already “knows” what a site should become. In this conversation, we take the opposite approach and ask what happens when development begins with inquiry. Joel Fariss, founder of Sysoma Partners, joins me to explore how systems thinking, human experience design, and community relationships can shape projects that are financially viable, ecologically resilient, and socially meaningful.

Joel shares his path from craft and philosophy into architecture, civic innovation, and seven years at Gensler, where he worked in applied research and strategic futures. We talk about what transdisciplinary teams make possible, why “start with the question” is more than a slogan, and how one workplace project revealed the power of reframing. What began as a simple request for more focus space uncovered a deeper need for autonomy and agency. That shift changed the design language, the stakeholder process, and the final outcomes—a lesson with real implications for placemaking, entitlement strategy, and regenerative development.

We also get honest about the leap from advising developers to becoming one. Joel explains why the built environment is where climate, community, policy, and capital stacks all collide, and why moving faster sometimes means stepping out of slow institutions and into the arena. He walks through early Sysoma experiments in smart rural density, what he’s learning about missing middle and workforce housing, and the leadership practices he uses to build strong teams, from charters and emotional intelligence to a few comfort-zone-testing site rituals.

If you’re interested in regenerative real estate, community-centered development, or simply asking better questions before drawing anything, this conversation will stretch your thinking and sharpen your process. Subscribe, share, and leave a review—and then tell us: what question should every project team ask before they begin?

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The Regenerative Real Estate Podcast is an independent show exploring the people, projects, and capital reshaping how land gets used and communities get built. Two organizations grew directly out of this work, and they're worth knowing:

Hamlet Capital finances and advises on projects that integrate agriculture and conservation with mixed-use development. If you're building one or looking to invest, let's talk.

Latitude is a real estate brokerage representing sanctuary properties rooted in nature, beauty, and meaningful living.

Transcript

Holons And The Operator Mindset

SPEAKER_00 0:08

It's the word holon to be holonic, right? So a holon is something that is a whole in and of itself and a part of a greater whole. And so fundamentally, we need, I think, operators that believe in their holonic essence, right? That they are part of a bigger whole and that they're willing to lean into the inquiry necessary to identify and discover and name that bigger whole for themselves and within the systems that they're operating in, right? Um, I think that's where it starts, is that belief. And when you begin to live in that belief and you begin to embody it, the behaviors will come naturally, I think.

Show Purpose And Guest Setup

SPEAKER_01 0:58

Welcome to the Regenerative Real Estate Podcast, a show that explores how land, capital, and community come together to create places that are financially viable, ecologically resilient, and socially meaningful. Here, we talk with the people who are navigating the real-world challenges of regenerative development, from financing, policy, design, and long-term stewardship. I'm Neil Collins, and on this episode, I'm joined by Joel Ferris to talk about his journey creating the development company Sistoma Partners. There are some people who move through the world with an almost instinctual desire to create. They walk through a place and immediately see not only what it is, but they sense what it can become. In the real estate industry, the instinct gets shaped through the lens of highest and best use. Profit becomes the only metric, and every parcel becomes a transaction. But fortunately, there's another way of seeing. Some people look at land through a living systems lens. They see ecology, they see relationship, they see history and culture, watershed and community. They ask different questions, like how does this place heal? How does it nourish connection? And how does development become a contribution? For these people, development isn't just a career, it's a calling, it's an identity. Yet there's no real roadmap for becoming this kind of developer. There's no universal playbook that teaches us how to navigate the complexity, the risk, the financial realities, and the inner resilience required to bring regenerative projects into the world. That's why I was excited to sit down with my friend Joel Ferris. Joel is the founder of Sysoma Partners, a regenerative placemaking and development company working at the intersection of real estate, systems thinking, and community transformation. Before Sysoma, Joel worked at Ginsler doing community engagement and design strategy work, helping shape projects and visions from the consulting side of the table. But eventually, he felt the pull to step into the arena himself as a principal. In this conversation, Joel shares the transition openly and honestly. We talk about the frameworks he uses to approach projects, the mindset shifts required to become a developer, and the skills that are essential if you want to move from ideas and vision into actually creating real places in the world. This is a conversation about what it means to build in service to life. So without further ado, let's get into it with Joel Ferris.

Roots In Craft And Spiritual Inquiry

SPEAKER_01 3:55

Joel, welcome to the podcast. I've been looking forward to this for some time. And I've been trying to figure out like what is what's the conversation that needs to be had here because we can go in so many different directions. Um, but it is a pleasure, and I want to kick this off with just where you're calling in from right now. And um, and and if you had to describe what your role is, uh professional role, what what that is in a sentence or two.

SPEAKER_00 4:25

Yeah, thanks, Neil. I'm also a pleasure to be here, very much looking forward to the conversation. Um I am based in Edmonds, Washington, on uh the lands of the Coast Salish people. And um one sentence, professional description. No, that's a tough one. I'll set the tone with a little uh maybe a bit of some esoteric language. I would say professionally, I am a facilitator and and orchestrator of emergent possibility.

SPEAKER_01 4:58

I love it. I love it. And that is exactly the best kickoff that we can possibly have. Uh I d I see a lot of people that are trying to stand in the shoes of regenerative development. And we uh let me just put that in that category, so I'm not externalizing these sentiments. We're like searching for language and for methodology, and we're exposed to like living systems theory and all kinds of stuff. And in my proximity and exposure to to you has been like, oh wow, Joel is like really understanding how to articulate this in ways that just make sense. But as I look at your background and and just kind of who you are as a person, there's like design and experience and philosophy and so many different elements that come together where I was really curious how you like to just articulate what you do in the world. But I want to I want to jump into backstory so that we can set the foundation of where we want to go with a good conversation. You have some pretty wildly what looks like diverse uh experiences within your background. Why don't we we pick it up uh so that we can figure out what that golden thread is through your professional becoming?

SPEAKER_00 6:19

I would say, you know, a few things that might be helpful just contextually is I grew up in a uh a spiritual Christian family. Uh, and so religion and the community of religion was very early embedded uh in my in my life. Um my dad uh also was a master carpenter and owned a cabinet shop. And so I grew up around woodworking and craft and and um high-end, you know, custom home building. And so those things in me, I think, are kind of two big seeds that that have grown in different ways. I ended up ultimately leaving the church and leaving Christianity in my early 20s. But that spiritual disposition always stuck with me. And in fact, I studied theology and philosophy of religion in undergrad. And um, I think learned the the lexicon of philosophy, I think empowered me to begin asking questions about myself, about others, about the world in a way that um I found to be really liberating and uh animating. And so in my early 20s, as I was finding my way, uh I finished grad school, I was doing uh economic development work in East Africa, putting some of my construction background to use there, but also using some of the philosophical tools that I had acquired to kind of deconstruct what's actually happening here and what are the systems that are facilitating what it is that we're doing and why are things the way that they are, and and what are the systems by which those things came to be, right? And so I think in my early 20s, I started to kind of lean into uh the world of you know, um systems ultimately and and and experience and how this, how these things

Design Thinking And Healthcare Experience

SPEAKER_00 8:14

work together. And that led me to the world of design. I found that um design thinking specifically in the early 2000s you know was kind of having a moment. And I found that design thinking was a really great meld of kind of the philosophical world that I had come from. Um, it allowed for some of the kind of non-rational, hyper-subjective elements of experience to be integrated into the way that we think about systems and design for systems. Uh and so that's where I entered the world of architecture and uh worked for a firm called MBBJ. They're a large uh architecture based out of Seattle here. Uh and one of my first uh remits within that organization was to begin thinking about experience within the healthcare environment. And so I worked in a lot of hospitals designing the patient experience, right? Everything from wayfinding all the way down to, you know, what does it look like to be a loved one in an emergency uh circumstance or scenario? Um and so again, that offered me the opportunity to really lean into understanding some of the more subjective, maybe emotional qualities of human experience, specifically within the built environment itself. And that also allowed me the opportunity to learn architecture and to learn form and to learn mass and to learn planning and program and write all of these things as well.

Civic Innovation And The Gensler Shift

SPEAKER_00 9:40

Um I did a tour in the public sector as an advisor to the mayor of Seattle, specifically working on uh civic innovation and bringing innovation practices like design thinking and strategic foresight to the world of just civic uh uh policy. And then I went back to the world of uh architecture and design and uh most recently spent seven years at Ginsler leading uh applied research and strategic futures there, working with developers and owners around the world shaping millions of square feet of real estate through the lens of human experience and systems design. Um so that's kind of what led me to where I am today.

SPEAKER_01 10:20

Let's double click on Ginsler because I'm I'm really interested. Not a lot of people have the aperture of a Gensler in the world. I mean, what what kind of projects or what originally drew you to that type of an organization? Uh and what kind of projects were you working on, or what uh where did you specialize within the firm?

SPEAKER_00 10:43

Yeah. Um, well, I'll say that, you know, early in my career in this, this I think uh in parallel to the diversity is kind of the, you know, or the practice, my what looked like diverse practice is is a paradigm that for me fundamentally is anchored in inquiry and the question of why. And that always led me to, you know, especially through the lens of philosophy and studying, studying philosophy, the lens that this idea that all domains of practice are actually connected in one way or another, and that we've created these really arbitrary divides between practice. And so you have these domains of thought, like maybe it's philosophy, maybe it's architecture, maybe it's real estate development, maybe it's construction, maybe it's life science and biotech, maybe it's AI and quantum, right? Um, but that these are all what we might consider like deep domains of thought and practice, but they all are fundamentally interrelated at some level. And so I started to call myself transdisciplinary in the way that I did the work that I did. Um, and that I could draw from various domains and various practices in my professional work. And so all of this is preface to answering your question about Ginsler, is that there was a specific opportunity there to operate in a transdisciplinary manner to bring together what seemingly are disparate domains of knowledge and practice together in the world of shaping human experience or in the pursuit of shaping human experience and planetary prosperity. And so I worked on a team, we had MBAs, we had anthropologists, we had design researchers, we had psychologists, we had industrial psychologists, uh, you know, I had a philosophy background, we had people who came from product design, graphic design, architectural design. So working on this very diverse team of people, we could tackle really complex systemic problems. And we could do everything from working with the government of Singapore to think about cross-cultural executive innovation education and how you could advance generative creative mindsets within that culture all the way to working with some of the largest airport authorities in North America to think about the future of aviation and what that might look like from the passenger experience to the business model itself to the infrastructure required to support it all at a global scale, to thinking about the future of cities and thinking about what it means to live in an urban environment, right? To the future of work, the future of technology. And so we could we could show up and we could create this body of knowledge that would then inform the practice of architecture and thinking about placemaking and the systems that all kind of weave together to create this very acute experience that an individual or a community might have. And so that was the allure of going to a place like Ginsler. Um so yeah, we did a lot a lot of various projects from the built environment to things that never touched anything physical.

SPEAKER_01 13:52

What an incredible experience, first of all. Um what is the what is the process to to bring in the interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary

Transdisciplinary Work And Big Projects

SPEAKER_01 14:04

nature? How did you take something away from that where you could say, you know, going forward, I'm gonna incorporate this type of process to create the outcomes that I want within either an organizational or built environment that you can pinpoint to from Ginsler's time?

Start With Better Questions

SPEAKER_00 14:24

Yeah, there's a there's a couple things that I think really galvanized during my time at Ginsler. One I would say is most endeavors start with an answer. What I mean by that is they there's a there's an idea, right? A solution, a perceived, a perceived answer to something. And the answer might be, oh, the answer is the agrohood, or the answer might be a large corporate campus, or the answer is a new retail model, or the answer is a different kind of interface. And one of the things that I began to really lean into and and to um practice and pro proliferate with all you know within Ginsler and specifically within the teams that I was leading was never to start with the answer, but to always start with the question. And to ensure that there is significant resource, scope, and time available to interrogating the assumptions that you're bringing that are informing your perceived answer and to actually spend time reframing possibly what the question is that you would need to go answer itself, right? And so in the world of you know design consulting specifically, you have clients often that come to you with the idea. They come to you with the answer and say, hey, we need you to go do this. And we're looking for depth and expertise and technical capacity to go implement, right? And we would always say, okay, that's great, that's awesome. Why do you think that's what you need? And then let's spend some time there sitting in that question and interrogating it. And nine times out of 10, what you find is that the real question that needs to be answered is never the one that you start with or assume is the one to start with. And when you have a transdisciplinary team or an integrated, diverse team as such, it really equips you to interrogate those assumptions in really multi-dimensional ways so that you're getting at the whole problem in a holistic way from the business viability to the design desirability to the market feasibility, right? All of those things can be really held comprehensively, understood, deconstructed, and then reconstructed in a generative way that gets you to something that is a far more powerful answer in the long run.

SPEAKER_01 16:50

Can you give a grounded example of what that looks like of an actual project that may have started with an idea by a client, and then you're able to rigorously question that?

Case Study From Focus Space To Agency

SPEAKER_00 17:02

Yeah. So we worked with a large client, one of the largest technology employers in the world, came to us and said that they needed help with their employee experience and specifically what that l looks like in the built environment, specifically, you know, workplace and thinking about that kind of thing. And they had a lot of assumptions about the challenges that they believed their employees were facing in the worked with the work environment. This is all pre-pandemic. And so, for example, one of the things that they felt like that they needed more of was focus space. We said, okay, that's great. You need to support people to focus, which means that you need to have some kind of, you know, sound protected, um, you know, do not disturb kind of right environment, right? When we got into that and we started to interrogate that assumption, what we discovered through the research that we conducted was there was actually no shortage of focus space. In fact, the focus space that they had was highly under underutilized. And what we learned is that people were actually seeking autonomy. They wanted more agency. And that the thing about focus space is that focus space was actually a means of claiming some agency and autonomy. That you weren't being bothered by anyone, you could just do what you needed to do. And so we started asking them the question well, what does what does it look like to empower people to have a sense of agency and a sense of autonomy? And what we ended up doing too is going to all the special uh there's these communities within the larger enterprise. Um they call them like affinity groups, maybe, is just to use some very basic corporate jargon. And so you've got, you know, the African-American affinity group, you've got the uh East Indian immigrant community group, you've got the LGBTQIA community group, you've got the um the mothers community group, right? These affinity groups. And we went and talked to them about what does agency look like for you specifically? And it kind of blew the door off of some of the assumptions that we've thought, you know, and ultimately what it came down to was um the spaces that they needed were actually far more about lifestyle and community spaces than they were about like work and focus spaces. It was more third spaces. And even beyond that, it was the things that I need, uh, the environments that I need, like convenience to groceries on my way home, right? Things like that. Um, how do I take care of some of the tertiary administrative workload that goes beyond my job description? If I could solve for that, that would be insanely helpful for me and would empower me to have more of my agency at work and to really lean into the job that I'm doing here. And so we developed this program that we called, we ended up calling it whole life design, as a design language for the workplace environment so that we could think about, hey, and the tagline was like basically the people are more than their job title. And so, yes, to focus spaces and meeting rooms and all of that. But there's all these other elements that are expressions of these individuals' identities and within the broader community and collective uh identity, that there's a bunch of unmet needs there that, if met, would empower that person to be more innovative, more connected, a higher sense of belonging and engagement, and ultimately more productive. And so we we ended up rolling that out and developing this new typology of office that was actually embedded in local neighborhoods and even up in the Cascade Mountains and other places. Uh, we had one in New York City and other places around the world that were more of these lifestyle drop-in offices where people could meet their needs and be able to have focus and be productive and do their jobs.

SPEAKER_01 21:10

So that's incredible. That's a great example. Where it leads me is really the genius of that process, which is in question design and in one, the the ability to recognize you needed to ask questions that unlock insight and potential that's uh locked away in some form or fashion.

Stakeholder Alignment Through Shared Assumptions

SPEAKER_01 21:38

How much do you think about question design and and really getting at a process of stakeholder engagement? Do you spend a lot of time in that?

SPEAKER_00 21:49

Yes, in some ways I do spend a lot of time in that. I think I think there's a really critical step in stakeholder engagement, which is the the schema building step, right? Where you can align together on the assumptions that you're bringing to the table. And that's another benefit of establishing a process for inquiry before you take action, is it allows for that to happen, right? That you can collectively build your scaffolding together. And so you all are standing on the same structure, so to speak. So yeah, I think there's a lot of time there that I spend cultivating that shared understanding. And a lot of that has to do with are we all asking the same question right now? And as such, are we pursuing a common answer? Um and doing that, that early work is is um extremely valuable. And it is a place that I I do spend quite a bit of time in.

SPEAKER_01 22:46

So we're we're gonna come

Why Leave Gensler To Develop

SPEAKER_01 22:49

back to this in a really interesting way later, but I want to make this bridge now from Ginsler into Sasoma Partners. Because what what I think that you've done from the outside looking in, you've gone from a really interesting multi like global firm into the developer shoes. And the the scale of project that you're working on is probably substantially smaller than the the projects that that you get called in on from the government of Singapore to the largest tech employer or one of the largest tech employers. What was the calling there? Why, why step out of Ginsler into a new role?

SPEAKER_00 23:33

A few things kind of came together for me and were convergent in the last few years. One is just, you know, the more that I worked on these super hyper intelligent, diverse teams, the more exposed I was to these various perspectives about how we should be approaching the built environment. And one of those perspectives continued to be the perspective of thinking about the linear material economy. And that there was this phrase we kept throwing around that the most sustainable thing to do would be to not build new buildings. Right. And that's a bit of an existential crisis, especially for an architecture firm to wrestle with. And what does that look like? How do you do that? And obviously, this leads to conversations around regenerative design and all of that world that I'm sure this audience is very familiar with. And so that that started to really, I think, swell in me is this existential question of like, how do we actually build well in a way that's not just good for people, but good for the planet? Like, how do we ensure that we have future generations that are prosperous on this planet, not just humans, but all of life, right? And how how are we good ancestors for the seventh generation? And so sitting with this question for years just began to really guide a lot of the work that I was doing as an advisor and consultant within the world of Ginslore, but also began to press on me of we're not doing enough fast enough. And one of the things, you know, there's a downside to working at the within the, you know, a global scale, which is that often institutions working at that scale move very, very, very slowly. And so when you're working with in large organizations, um, advising large institutions and developers, many of which are managing fairly large funds and endowments and the hundreds of billions sometimes, there's a risk aversion and a speed to adoption uh that really inhibits, I think, doing the kind of work that we need to do, despite the the potential opportunities and upsides. The other thing that I was thinking about is just that the built environment and having spent 10 years of my career in the built environment, it really is the confluence of so many of the metasystemic challenges that we're facing as civilization, right? It's community uh and you know, so much of what's been said about the loneliness epidemic these last five years or so, I think really comes down to a lot of the way that we've designed our cities, as well as the relationship between cities and rural areas. I think that the suburban sprawl and the way that we design uh a lack of designing for community within more suburban environments is also contributes to some of that. Obviously, ecological impact, biodiversity loss, bioregional waterways and watersheds, the way that we think about food systems, food deserts, the way that we think about our economics, the way that we think about investment and capital, where investment happens, where capital's coming from just geographically and how it's extracted and where returns are realized. So I think a lot of these things all actually exist at the confluence of the built environment. And so again, I'm I've been pushing for a in my you know career at Ginsler and other places, a more interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary conversation around how are we designing for these things? And I found that often in institutions, productivity is predicated on specialization and having deep niches. And so people don't talk to each other. And so you can go talk about the human experience over here, but you're never going to go talk to the economist who's thinking about the capital stack that's making that experience possible from a financial perspective. Or you don't get to go talk to the technologist who's thinking about the ambient, intelligent infrastructure, data collection infrastructure within that environment, right? Or thinking about the community, and you're not able to go do the community engagement and actually implement a truly participatory design process that gives credence to the voice of the community in which this new environment is being built, right? So those things are very hard to facilitate at scale within these large institutions. And so I think the confluence of all these things kind of came together for me in the sense that, you know, I've been working with developers for a decade now as clients primarily. I'd like to go do that. Right. I've been advising these folks for years. I just want to go do it. I don't want to have to keep asking for permission. And I want to be able to think holistically and metasystemically about the way that we're approaching the built environment and the way that we're building these, ultimately these platforms uh for human experience. And so that that all kind of came together for me in my my thesis, which Sysoma has been founded on, which is that fundamentally the way that we build determines the way that we live. And the way that we live will determine whether we endure as a society. And so that's kind of in a nutshell our thesis. And uh we exist to go essentially manifest that and embody that.

SPEAKER_01 28:57

I can't help but chuckle. I remember when I was working outside of real estate, it was very impact-driven, uh, philanthropy, climate change adaptation work, and and I remember the inkling of desire was I want to go into the built environment and to figure out how that whole system works. And I got a lot of pushback. There's a lot of ostracism, it felt like from my peer group of why would you go into that space? That's that's the transactional side, that is like the belly of the beast. And over the years, and I I think you've just articulated what's taken me a decade plus to be able to put into words of like if if you actually are are focused on the intersectionality of all these different issues and complexities, um this is the industry that it meets each other.

SPEAKER_00 29:54

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 29:55

This is it. And like why would we work anywhere else? And and granted, those other industries and sectors, like they contribute. Um sometimes the the built environment is the conduit for techn new technologies and and things like that. But I agree with you. I mean, this is the playground in which I think if you want to enact change, right, this is the arena in which we need to do it in. And there's so many different entry points, and it it really calls these types of operators like yourself that have passions and skill sets in such different arenas. And what I get really excited about is whenever you have people with their particular constellation and they distill that into, and now I want to go do this type of project. That's what I watch really closely. Is it might not be even dripping in what we would consider the most regenerative design or image or whatever the the the thing is. And and so with that, where I wanted to lead into is where

First Deals And Smart Rural Density

SPEAKER_01 31:08

do you go once you decide to become the developer? And you're you're s probably been swimming in these waters of like, what's my first project? Or what is the thing that I want to add my 10 or contribute 10,000 hours to figuring out? How has that process been for you?

SPEAKER_00 31:30

Yeah, that's a great question. And before I answer that, I do really want to affirm that I 100% believe, with all of my being, that real estate development is the sandbox. It is the playground. And this is where metasystemic transformation change can most be profoundly implemented. And we do need all of these various people from all these various backgrounds to be, you know, coming together in this, this, on this playground in the sandbox. So I love that. I think that's that's really important. So, where do we start? Uh for me, uh, I started with a very simple four-unit townhome complex as an experiment in thinking about smart density in rural areas. And how do we begin um experimenting with the form factor of density uh and community specifically within rural areas? That project is through entitlements. We've closed on our construction loan. It's underway. We're we're breaking ground. Um, and it's a very exciting project and absolutely beautiful in the Skagit Valley of Washington state, right on the farmland, views are beautiful. You get mountain views, farmland views, but you're also on the edge of the historical Laconner, town of Laconner. From a placemaking and lifestyle design perspective, it's just a really fantastic property. And of course, we were able to think through materiality and think through the life cycle of that structure, and um, what does it look like for this structure to be a hundred years here in a hundred years? And um, how do we design it in a way that's complementary to the local bioregion and complementary to um even the cycles of the sun and light and daylight specifically? So it was designed specifically uh also to bring light into the middle units through large these atrium volumes that kind of puncture through both floors. And uh it's a it's gonna be a beautiful project. It's not by any means kind of pushing the envelope when it comes to, you know, we're not gonna have any living building challenge accreditation. It's not a passive design house. For me, it was an early experiment and beginning to explore some emerging forms. And I think it's gonna be a great project. But you alluded to the learning, and the learning has been immense. One of the things, you know, for me that has been a first principle and a guiding kind of maxim in my career is that um how questions are always who questions. And so I've been really intentional about curating people around me who are domain experts in their field, whether that's passive health design or it's you know, emerging timber frame kind of thinking, mass timber construction, or it's thinking about uh, you know, community engagement or coming from the finance side and the economics, right? I've really been intentional about spending a lot of time with these folks and absorbing and learning as much as I can possibly, and then inviting them to participate, right? Because I I'm under zero pretense that I'm going to be the person who knows all the things. My job, again, going back to my first statement, I'm a conductor and a facilitator. And so I know that my zone of genius is to bring the right puzzle pieces together and to put them together in such a way that there's a profound innovation flywheel that emerges out of that group of people that we can then begin to really push forward and advance new emerging typologies of place, place making, built environments, and ultimately, you know, real estate development. And our next project will be an experiment and thinking about urban infill. Um, how do we do urban infill uh in a way that is good for that local community, not just socially and communally, but economically. So that's that's on the roadmap. And then beyond that, um, you know, we're actively kind of seeking more property, more opportunity via our collaborators and partners. Um I think that you know I'm very interested in thinking about uh missing middle housing and workforce housing. So we're doing some inquiry right now around where is the emergent workforce and uh gonna be specifically when we think about supply chain, when we think about bioregionalism, when we think about uh where manufacturing is going, where we think about tax and policy, uh we're kind of putting together some of that intelligence right now to kind of begin shaping some of the markets that we're going to focus on. Uh right now it's primarily gonna be West Coast uh US. But um yeah, I think that I hope I answered the question.

SPEAKER_01 36:23

Yeah, no, we're we're now just exploring different areas and and where I'm my curiosity is bringing me is you're kind of bouncing around into some different areas, like on the edge of the urban growth.

Finding A Lane Through Experimentation

SPEAKER_01 36:39

Like that's a very particular zone that's quite different from urban infill and and all the kind of the amenities and the things that that goes on in the urban sphere. You've shared a hospitality project for me. Do you feel like you want to be a very multidisciplinary type of developer? Or do you feel like you're still trying to carve out your lane? I've seen incredible bespoke developers have a wide variety of projects, but I've also equally seen incredible entrepreneurs and developers say, you know what, like I've tried some of these things, and this is what's really sticking. And we're just gonna triple down and be known for this.

SPEAKER_00 37:28

Yeah. In my 10-year roadmap, this first two years will be experimentation and learning. Not experimentation in the sense that we don't know what the outcomes are going to be, but experimentation in the sense of um, let's do some diverse projects and find what resonates with us, with our collaborators and the communities that we're working in, as well as how does that intersect with what the world needs right now. I think we need to, you know, we've got in terms of our stakeholders, right? We've we've got investors, we've got partners, uh, in terms on the on the implementation side, and then we have our thought partners as well. And uh and then there's the communities that we're working in. And so I think managing kind of the the incentive stack, so to speak, uh, and the expectations that kind of orbit that incentive stack uh is kind of we're trying to navigate that as well as to navigate how do we remain true to our convictions and kind of the animating principles of Sysoma. There's a lot of things at play right now that I think will will continue to become clear. And at some point, some clarity will will arrive, we'll cross that threshold, and that will inform kind of the next stage of our evolution. Um, and so I think this next year is going to be fairly iterative in that regard. And and I don't think I can say yet whether or not we're gonna specialize in any one kind of track or lane. Uh, but my my hunch is that the typology of place that we're building isn't going to be the common denominator. But the common denominator will rather be how do we actualize the latent essence and potential of a place to its greatest extent? What does this place want to be? And that will become the common denominator rather than the form factor or the typology of the building itself.

SPEAKER_01 39:26

I cannot help but laugh. I'm reminded of this conversation that I had about a month ago with the developer in the South. And we're at doing some due diligence and was asking him, like, what kind of projects do you get involved with? And he just said, you know, anything that I can make money with an asymmetric return. And, you know, like this is what the real estate industry is. It's like, why do we need to work in this space? It's because it's filled with operators that they're not indexing for, like, hey, how do we optimize and and help flourishing of habitats and humans? It is so often, sometimes in this, well, I can make money in this, and we end up with now these self-storage funds that are doing nothing but self-storage. Or um, we just go in these really weird ways that capital starts to concentrate because it's a very efficient system. So I I appreciate the the journey that you're going through, and and it's really telling that you can at least hold the question and and identify where you are, even if it is um like, hey, let's try on a couple of different different things and and see how that works. And I'm sure there's going to be commonality, a process that comes in there. And and one of the areas that I wanted to go, Joel, is because I I you're you're able to articulate this so much, especially whenever you're working in diverse landscapes and with diverse people, like if you're working on the urban edge and you're dealing with farmers and this whole there's a there's a whole conversation there that I don't even need to illustrate to people. Um they can fill in the blanks, but it's a very different stakeholder group than the folks in in an urban infill project, and you're doing a four over one and multifamily and maybe some affordable housing. What

Emotional Intelligence For Project Leadership

SPEAKER_01 41:21

what are the skill sets that successful developers can bring to the table or should be really cognizant of to engage with people and to create form and to create ideas and uh to be able to rally around, you know, the right questions. Is that something that people can learn, or is this just a a natural characteristic that you either have it or you don't?

SPEAKER_00 41:50

A little bit of all of the above. I I think that there are folks who have a natural disposition. And then there are folks who are gonna have to invest more effort in cultivating it, right? Yeah. I think the the language is uh I'm struggling a little bit with finding the right kind of framing for it because skill set uh often I think um cheapens it in some cases. Uh I think there's a a mindset, a belief system that animates everything else. Yeah, we need developers, we need operators who have certain behaviors that maybe are more inclusive or more holistic, et cetera. But fundamentally we have to start with, well, what are the beliefs that animate that? And I think that there's a belief in an embeddedness, right? That that we are all connected in one way or another, that you don't actually operate in an isolation, that the in the individuality to some degree is a myth. And so there's a word for this that's um I think is is really profound, and it's the word holon, to be holonic, right? So a holon is something that is a whole in and of itself and a part of a greater whole. And so fundamentally, we need, I think, operators that believe in their holonic essence, right? That they are part of a bigger whole and that they're willing to lean into the inquiry necessary to identify and discover and name that bigger whole for themselves and within the systems that they're operating in, right? Um, I think that's where it starts, is that belief. And when you begin to live in that belief, and you begin to embody it, the behaviors will come naturally, I think. Uh, and you'll be more open to the kinds of operational behaviors that we need that I think will lead to greater impact.

SPEAKER_01 43:44

That's fascinating. I where my mind goes is I'm working with a couple of different operators and the different roles on a team. And you're talking about all these different people coming together. I think that. One, this is a great team sport. You almost have to have to do it as as a team. Um oftentimes we'll get these design briefs of a client that's it's like 50 pages of what they they wanna they wanna create. Um and then you realize that just needs to go into the bin and we need to start over with a different question. But it also comes back to like if if we're working, if the process is actually to work in the community and to to work through stakeholders and to define the questions behind it. And you've got to talk with financiers and municipality leaders and uh NGO leaders, entrepreneurs. It's how do how do we maybe not shape shift, but get along and get people on board. And I had asked a really successful developer that lives in my community, you know, what's the secret? He's been at it for five decades. And he said, you know, I only work with people that I like, I like to work with.

SPEAKER_00 45:04

Right.

SPEAKER_01 45:05

And I realize it's not, it's not you just want to work with the people that that are like you, but it's the people that like you, if you're gonna work on a project for a couple of years, it's not showing up and it snails on a chalkboard.

SPEAKER_00 45:18

Right.

SPEAKER_01 45:19

And that's where I I still have some sensitivity and I'm trying to figure out how to talk to different people in my world of like how you show up right now is actually making this project harder.

SPEAKER_00 45:30

Right.

SPEAKER_01 45:31

You might be sucking the oxygen out of a room, whenever we have four different firms coming together, and and whenever we leave there, it it may just be no one actually has a lot of enthusiasm about this project because of that personality. Or, or even sometimes like when you're working with planners or engineers, like there's such high vernacular and jargon. Yeah. And you have to put them in in front of a room where you're trying to vision as a community together of like what do you want this place to be? That all of a sudden it gets into like really to the community, like technical place making and urban planning and engineering language. And it's like, how can we teach developers and level up our game to have that kind of emotional intelligence so that we can go through this what what I would consider a deeply regenerative process to get to the product of the built environment that that we want. And it's it's really not just a framework of regenerative development, is it it really starts with the self-interalizing of who we are and how we show up, the questions that we're asking and the values that we're holding.

SPEAKER_00 46:48

Yeah. I mean, I think that's a really important thing to highlight. There is a certain level of EQ or emotional intelligence that I think ultimately translates just as an awareness, right, of how you show up in the room and how the way that you move through the world affects others. Right. There's there's um uh there's always going to be those people who ride the left lane going 60 miles an hour or, you know, cross the crosswalk without looking up and giving a wave, but right, that they're just kind of they live in their own world and they're not really thinking about more beyond them. And we've all had those moments, and I think those, that's fine. I remember early in my career, uh, one of my first jobs out of college, I would walk into the office every morning and just go straight to my desk. And about a month in, uh, the executive director of this organization I was working at, he called me over into his office and he says, Hey, Kathy thinks you hate her. And I was like, What? He's like, Yeah, you just walk in every morning, you never say hi. She's always here, but you never say good morning, you just walk straight to your desk. I was like, Oh, I didn't, I mean, I'm just so in my own head thinking about my day, thinking about what I need to do, what's next, right? I just don't, you know, that was never a thing for me. And so that kind of helped me. He he was able to illuminate for me through that mirroring. Hey, the way that you show up every morning in the office affects other people. Uh, and that was a that was a good learning moment for me, young in my career. And so I think those kinds of things, right? We need those, those people in our life who are willing to mirror us and show us, hey, this is how you're showing up. This is what's happening, this is how it's affecting other people. And that that is a skill that can be developed, right? It can be practiced and cultivated. But to your point, I do think we we definitely need operators who just have a certain level of sensitivity to themselves, their own inner life, their own beliefs, a certain level of awareness, right? Who was it who said that the greatest form of intelligence was to think about intelligence itself, right? Something like that. That's you know, I think there's a certain level of like metacognition, right? And and just can you think about your own thinking, right? And and the assumptions that you bring to the table and how you show up in the world. And then can we help others in that same practice of saying, you know, maybe to the side, not in front of everyone, but hey, when you said that, did you notice how you know Brian responded? Or did you whatever it is, right? Um and cultivating that kind of that kind of uh community of practice. I will say that two things have been really helpful for me in this.

Team Charters And Testing Discomfort

SPEAKER_00 49:29

One, always having a team charter from the outset for any project. The team charter outlines this is how we're going to interact with each other, and here are the the organizing principles that are gonna shape the way that we show up and the way that we implement this work. And that team charter always includes things like listen first, uh, you know, things like that. It also includes like, hey, if you need to exit, we're gonna exit well, right? You're gonna leave well from this project because it endings are always inevitable. Um, and so we we account, we plan for that with team charters. And then the other thing that I do is uh a prana project kickoff, I like to I like to push the discomfort a little bit for people and see how they respond. And so, for example, we might go to a site and walk, do a sidewalk with a project team and do a sun meditation, right? And and how come like is it really uncomfortable for people to do that kind of thing? Or to um hold a rock in your palm and listen and ask the rock, does it have anything to say to you about what this place should be? Like things like that, right? They're a bit weird, maybe borderline woo, but I find that those kinds of activities tell you a lot about the team that has shown up and where they're at and what they're willing to lean into and how they're gonna show up through the course of the project. So those are two things, you know, the project charter and the project kickoff that I think uh give me a lot of actionable intelligence about how to guide and lead a team effectively in that way.

SPEAKER_01 51:04

I love that. This is this is a new thing for me. I have not heard of a team charter. I like that language instead of you know, what's our values and how does that go? I just feel like that can get pretty blanched out quite quickly. Um and the discomfort piece, that's great. I see that around our dinner table a lot. Like, well, there's three of us, right? My wife and my son and I, and we'll we'll just do hold hands and do a round of gratitude. But whenever we have guests at the table, it's the ones that are just so freaked out by that process that they just can't bear it. Uh, is always really interesting. But I've I've seen the discomfort get pushed in a couple different ways outside of some of those mindfulness practices that you're talking about. Of like, we'll intentionally use some language that I think might be scratchy. I did this on a pattern language document with the team about a month or two ago. Uh and I I was like, this is this is gonna be triggering for somebody that um and I and I kind of oriented it that way just to see what was gonna come up. And something really juicy came up. There was tension, but she was able to identify it and we were able to move through it, hopefully, um looking in the rear view mirror. But I think that's great to be able to intentionally stress taste some of the the team dynamics. And um yeah, this is this is the intangible side um for everybody listening, just like how do you create world-class great teams? What what needs to go into regenerative development? You know, so often, I think we can we can say it starts with self. Um, but what is what does that really mean and and how do we design these processes to move through to create uh really world-class and interdisciplinary places? Because I I can tell you we're we're in capital formation mode right now, and the the need to be able to shape shift and work as a team, work with different personalities within a room, as well as like really live wire personalities that we're having to essentially present or pitch to, um, it it requires high emotional intelligence and a strong bond across your fellow team members. And and I'm curious to see as you start to put up projects, like what how does that start to show up in in the actual built environment and um and where you're going? So let me do this. Let's let's forecast, or not forecast, let's let's vision cast 10 years in the

A 10 Year Vision Of Repair

SPEAKER_01 53:47

future. I want to ask, what what do you want to be celebrating and what will that be? 2036. Holy smokes, that's that's crazy to to even say that date, but what do you want to be celebrating in the year 2036 as you as you look at the the path of Sysoma partners?

SPEAKER_00 54:07

Yeah, that's a great question. I would say primarily, I mean, number one, I I think I I would want to be celebrating the relationships, you know, for your comment about working with people that you like. I think I think relationships are fundamental. And that's really at the end of the day, uh what it comes down to for me. I think from there I would say, you know, I I would scale, I think about the scale of the impact. I would say thinking that, you know, if we've um I'm trying I'm trying to pin something like specific and and pragmatic. Um but I I'm having a hard time because I think you know the the it's it's relationships, it's being a good ancestor, it's you know, healthy soil, it's celebrating the the meals that were shared together and the beautiful time, you know, over shared food. Uh it's the uh beauty that we've created, you know. I think so much uh this is another thing we didn't really get into, but so much of our built environment is so ugly, especially on the residential side. If I never saw another hardy board sighting again, I would be happy. You know, I think I think there's things like, you know, have we left the world more beautiful? Have we in some way mended separation from self, from others, from nature and from mystery? Have we cultivated and built communities and environments that have able been able to operate as platforms for that reconnection, for that mending of separation. And that's where relationships come in, and that's where shared meals come in, and that's where you know these other aspects come in. But I think I think if I yeah, it took me a while to get there, but I think if I had to really kind of nail it down, I would say in 10 years I want to celebrate the work that we've done to mend the wound of separation from self, others, and nature and mystery ultimately by creating an environment that allow people to re-encounter and to remember selfhood and uh cosmically, I think that this moment is 13.8 billion years in the making and we should live like it. Right? Like that's kind of my ethos lately. And um and so for this moment in time, at this stage of our evolution as a planet, I think that uh the the call now is as conscious beings to be medicine. And um I hope that in 10 years we can look back and say through all of our relationships, through all of our projects, through the platforms that we created, we were medicine. Um that's I think what I want to celebrate.

SPEAKER_01 57:00

I love it. Beautiful, beautiful, Joel. Well, this has been everything that I was hoping. I I hope people are able to find your work. Um, this is Joel with Sasoma uh partners. What I think would be really cool, and uh who knows if this show is gonna be going for the next 10 years, but it'd be so fun to revisit your your projects in a couple years and then a couple years after that just to see what that evolution looks like. And and projects take a long time to come together. And so I think it's it's not something that we could just say, hey, in two months, let's see what this building's gonna look like. Um but that would be amazing, you know, for the listeners out there. This is this is field building, like this is the type of regenerative development that we're we're flowing capital into. It's the type of operators that I think need to proliferate in the world to have you know great teams come together supported by supportive capital that that wants to to flow into projects that are holding deeper questions than just anything that we can make money with asymmetric returns on. Uh, you know, if we're gonna end up with a bunch of like roll-ups of um doggy daycares and self-storage and chick-filets. Like that, that's what's happening in the private equity world. And I don't think that people are are quite understanding that. And now's an amazing time to have sophisticated operators and developers that understand capital stacks and human design and experiential uh and experience and and be able to navigate the political landscape to create something might be four townhomes on the edge of the uh urban growth boundary at first. Um and and it's the the growth over time that I want to watch

Where To Find Joel And Closing

SPEAKER_01 58:51

out for with you, Joel. So it is a pleasure to have you on the podcast, and we're gonna do it again. Do you want to send people to where they can find out more about you or get in touch?

SPEAKER_00 59:01

Yeah, so somopartners.com, S Y S O M A. Um, and uh I'm on LinkedIn, I'm on Instagram, just you can find me via my name, and uh we'd love to hear from folks. Um, absolutely feel free to reach out.

SPEAKER_01 59:18

Amazing.

SPEAKER_00 59:18

All right, until next time, Joel. Thanks, Neil, Right, yes, yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:01

This episode was edited by Asher Griffith at Cicada Radio. If you're a landowner, investor, or developer exploring regenerative projects, or if you're sitting on land and wondering what's possible, you can learn more or reach out to the links in the show notes. And if this conversation was useful, consider subscribing or sharing it with someone working at the intersection of real estate, investment, and impact. Until next time, this is Neil Collins signing on the project.