As working moms and business owners, twin commercial real estate developers and investors Jessica Miller Essl and Susan Gruppi Miller don't only bring their kids to the office. They follow in their parents' footsteps, making their children a third generation to visit real estate events, construction areas and prospective deal sites.
For Essl and Miller, that philosophy of introducing their children to their work life is one they picked up on at a young age from their parents, who invested in commercial real estate in Longview, Texas. The twins often joined their parents and older brothers to look at real estate, a pastime they are now passing to their own kids.
Essl said professionals starting out in the real estate industry can try to adopt that kids-and-work philosophy. And, if successful, "you don't have to choose," she said between parenting and being successful in real estate: "My career is my life, but my life's also my career."
The approach is getting put to the test this month when many in the industry are busy. From an Urban Land Institute meeting in early May in Nashville, Tennessee, to the ICSC conference last week in Las Vegas, Essl and Miller booked meetings and worked deals atop their duties as co-founders of M2G Ventures, a Fort Worth, Texas-based real estate investment firm. M2G Ventures makes aging industrial properties more desirable through art and design, completing more than $2 billion in deals since the twins founded it in 2014.
The sisters took their kids-and-work approach on the road, juggling work schedules in "Maycember," as many refer to the over-scheduled time of year when parents juggle end-of-school activities, graduations, sporting events, teacher appreciation gifts, summer camp paperwork and more, Essl said. Each sister has two kids with activities where parental attendance is a necessity.
"We have a lot of support" from their husbands, parents and each other as sort of a family tradition, on a daily basis, Essl said. "We kind of parent together. If someone's going to dinner, we are all going to dinner. We also go look at real estate" and the kids "come to the office all the time."
Even so, she acknowledges that not all families have this approach ingrained in their child-raising DNA — and that cooperative family members can only stretch so far. At the ULI meeting, the duo strove to apply their parenting philosophy to a challenge, knocking off a "bucket list" city for the kids, while juggling business meetings as a combination work trip and vacation, Essl said.
The two moms traveled to the ULI conference with their four children, ranging from a 3-year-old to a 10-year-old, and said they were lucky enough to be able to hire someone to stay with the kids in an Airbnb during the day while they attended conference events, with everyone getting together in the evenings.
Essl acknowledges that support from an employer is essential and is something she had in her past jobs. She worked at both Open Realty and Trademark, two companies with founders that fully expected working parents to step out of a meeting to take a child-related phone call. She and her sister extend that philosophy to M2G Ventures by offering flexibility to their 30 employees to go live a life outside the office.
If real estate professionals doesn't have the support they need to manage a family life alongside their professional career, Essl said it might be time to consider going out on their own or finding a firm that's a better fit. She knows that can be difficult, but she said it can be done.
"There are several people in our office who have kids graduating from college right now and they're doing the same thing I'm doing — juggling," Essl said, who has committed to being at her daughter's end-of-school programs.
"I could have taken a business development meeting with someone that's in town" that day "but I said no," she added. "That's a choice. Does that mean I'm not going to get the business from that person? No, it just means I'm prioritizing my time and how it fits best with what you want out of your life."