Investing In the Right Businesses with Fiona Arnold

Fiona Arnold is President of MAINSPRING Developers, a Colorado company engaged in commercial and residential real estate development and retail business operations, and has served in that capacity since 2014.

During 2015 and 2016, she served on Governor Hickenlooper’s cabinet as Executive Director of the Office of Economic Development and International Trade for the State of Colorado. From 2006 through 2013, Arnold served as executive vice president and general counsel for Vail Resorts. Prior to that, Arnold served as associate general counsel at Western Gas Resources Inc. (now Anadarko Petroleum), and prior to that, she served as vice president of legal and business affairs at Crown Media Holdings in Greenwood Village, CO. Arnold began her career as an attorney in Australia before joining the international law firm of Jones Day in Dallas, Texas in 1998 and then moving to Colorado in 2001.

Arnold holds a Bachelor of Commerce (Accounting) from the University of Tasmania; a Bachelor of Laws (Hons) from the University of Adelaide; and a Master of Laws, International & Comparative, from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.

She currently serves as a board member of the non-profit charter high school, the CUBE Corp, the non-profit c, an organization introducing the youth apprenticeship system in Colorado and is a Governor appointed board member of Pinnacol Assurance.

She has been a Governor appointed Commissioner of the Business Experiential Learning Commission, the Colorado Workforce Development Council and the Colorado Opportunity Scholarship Initiative.

[00:01 - 09:13] Fiona Arnold Shares her Career Journey

• How she started out as an attorney in Australia and move to Colorado
• How she ran the economic development for the State of Colorado for a couple of years
• She shares what inspired her to do real estate development
• She also shares about her developments in Denver, Rhino, and the backyard in Blake

[09:14 - 12:04] Her Golden Rules

• Rule 1: No Assholes:

1. Why they’re building a community
2. Why her employees comes first, over disrespectful customers

• Rule 2: For real estate developers is don't shit in your backyard:

[12:05 - 23:22] Her Investment in the Workforce

• Blue Sparrow is a retail operation that focuses on delivering life lessons through their apprenticeship program and their luxury but out-of-the-way office concept
• They are also focusing on workforce housing with their rent to own apartments
• The recession has slowed down one of their projects, the off-grid hospitality project, for a bit, but they are still focused on Denver's housing needs 
• The rent to own program is a way for for-profit industries to get involved in solving some of the issues in Denver, Colorado, and the US

[23:23 - 31:07] How She’s Helping the Tenants

• She shares about working hard, learning your lessons, putting in the yards, and earning your stripes
• Why we should get for-profit involved in creative ways
• She shares how she finds it obscene that real estate is viewed as this thing where we should promise these massive returns

[31:08 - 33:41] Why She Made the Huge Leap

• Why she wanted to try doing things upside down in starting her own company
• Why we shouldn’t invest in businesses that we don’t believe in
• Why she wants to be a disruptor

[33:42 - 39:36] Closing Segment

Key Quotes:

“So it'd be very difficult for an existing real estate company to flip. You have to be a startup….. If you're gonna do something that's so opposite to that and so disruptive, you're gonna be disrupting your core business.” - Fiona Arnold

“I believe economic development is best and it's stickiest when it's real and it's organic….. You gotta give them something, especially public companies” - Fiona Arnold

Connect with Fiona:

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fiona-arnold-5ba75a4, https://www.linkedin.com/company/mainspringco?trk=public_profile_topcard-current-company

Website:

Visit us on our Website: https://www.naiop-colorado.org/