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Robert Rivani never graduated from middle school. He never got a high school diploma. Yet he’s built a real estate portfolio that has generated over a billion dollars in acquisitions and dispositions — without a single outside investor or partner. Rivani, who works out of Miami with roots in Los Angeles, has become known for spotting undervalued properties and reimagining them, most recently with Class X, a new category of workplace that treats hospitality and wellness as core to the business model. I spoke with him about how he learned to trust his instincts, what a career selling sneakers taught him about competitive advantage, and why he believes the traditional office is broken.
Dan Bova: You’ve said you were never particularly academic, but you’ve built a career around spotting opportunities others miss. When did you first realize that was your superpower?
Robert Rivani: I never had a high school degree, never even graduated and walked across my middle school graduation stage. It wasn’t until I started becoming successful in my shoe business that I started learning that I had a business knack. And even as I was getting successful in real estate, I still thought I was a fraud and a phony for the first couple of years, because I thought there’s no reason why I should be in this position in a real-world business environment. It’s after you put enough repetition and experience under your belt in your shoes that you start getting confident in your craft. You’re like, I’m capable of another level, and another level.
What did selling sneakers teach you about what you do now?
That first business taught me that you have to do whatever it takes to get the job done, and you have to find a more creative way to do what others do to still be successful. What do I mean by that? Many people who are innovative and creative don’t always come up with a new idea — they just find out how to do an old idea in a better way. There were people selling shoes before my time. By me licking the bottom of a pair of shoes [to show how pristine they were] or sleeping overnight at every new shoe release, this gave me my competitive advantage.
When you walk into a potential real estate acquisition, what are the signals that tell you it is right for you or not?
The potential signals to me are that the property’s foundation is in a good location, but it’s been severely undervalued because the vision of the project from when it was first created is completely gone and lost. If I can’t think of new creative ways to bring a vision together — like putting a gym and a speakeasy in this office building, or creating a bank drive-through into a brand new valet — if I can’t come up with those creative moments, then I know the project will not be a success.
You call Class X a new category of workplace. What inspired it?
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