#91: Dwight Dunton: Leadership Lessons from Bonaventure’s CEO
A company that got its name from a ship in 1621 carrying the first Dunton ancestor.
A people company that just happens to be in real estate.
A CEO who sees the world through a different lens with an uncanny ability to navigate uncharted waters.
Buckle up, my friends. Dwight Dunton, Bonaventure’s CEO gives us 38 minutes and 46 seconds of his time. And you’re going to want to hear what he has to share.
“We really focus on the people rather than the sticks and bricks. And I think that’s what distinguishes us.”
The Bonaventure story
I found myself in a very fortunate situation at a young age, with no apartment experience, in the position to buy an apartment building. I was not smart enough or didn't have a mentor to say, don't try to do what you're about to do.
But at the age of 25, I bought a 370-unit apartment building and somehow managed to solve a thousand problems along the way.
Ultimately that was the birth of Bonaventure.
Why the name Bonaventure?
In picking the name, I didn't want to name it Dwight Dunton Real Estate. I hoped that it would be about more than me.
I also didn't want to name it something generic.
I happened to stumble upon our family genealogy in 2000 where the first Dunton ancestor came to the United States in 1621 on the ship Bonaventure. And that was it.
Bonaventure means good fortune.
On so many levels it was the perfect name. One, that's what we hope to bring to everyone that we touch in whatever capacity it is. But two, it was physically a ship that brought good fortune to my family. This is a vessel where we hope to bring good fortune to so many others. First and foremost our associates, and then the customers and families we serve.
WHAT SETS BONAVENTURE APART FROM OTHER MULTIFAMILY COMPANIES?
“It was my desire to build a business that was about people. Bonaventure is known to be a people company that happens to be in real estate. ”
Bonaventure’s Core Values: More Than Just Words
We had the values the moment the company started, I just didn’t know how to put them into words.
“We had the DNA and it was present within all of us. We just didn’t have the vocabulary to describe it. ”
We went through the process of formally writing down our core values, and I thought this was going to be some event where everyone would have an opinion about it and we'd have to make some compromises. It turned out we nailed it in about an hour, and it was because we already had those values.
They may not resonate with everyone's business because these values aren't right or wrong. Just as DNA isn't right or wrong, it just distinguishes one group from another group.
When you're born, your DNA is the exact same as the moment you die. What evolves over your lifetime isn't your DNA, but rather how it's expressed. How you look on the outside, how you think, how you move. And the same thing is true with any organization and especially, Bonaventure. Our DNA has been the same from the first day to today to the last day of Bonaventure, which I hope is 150 years from now. But the way it expresses itself, the way it appears outwardly in the way we talk about it and communicate, will evolve over time.
The DNA will remain unchanged.
ACCESS THE SPROUT MONTHLY MAGAZINE
Sign up for our free membership to access our digital magazine full of apartment ideas and resources for marketing, retention, events, and social media to make your job easier.
HOW HAS YOUR ROLE AS CEO EVOLVED OVER THE YEARS?
I realize the way I see the world is pretty abnormal. If you said there's a bell curve in the way people view the world, I thought I was in the middle. I thought I was just like everybody else. But in fact, I realized, that my perspective is fairly uncommon and I didn’t realize that for a long period of time. That created a lot of friction in terms of interpersonal communication. I was like, “Why don't you see this?”
I fulfilled this role at our company, called Visionary, and that's a fairly uncommon set of character traits, but I didn't appreciate it at the time. So it's been a journey of self-discovery.
“The way I see the world is pretty abnormal...I realized, that my perspective is fairly uncommon and I didn’t realize that for a long period of time.”
>>> TUNE IN: Dwight shares one more significant evolution as CEO.
HOW DO YOU BALANCE THE DEMANDS OF Your role as Ceo?
“It’s about building amazing teams and putting people in the areas that they’re naturally gifted at...then a lot of the problems evaporate, leaving more space for the things that I need to do to drive our company forward and to ensure that we survive in the turbulence of the market.”
Some days are more successful than others despite how hard we work. There's an occasional fire every day, but more importantly, when I look at it from a slightly longer perspective, my role is constantly evolving.
There are a lot of hard decisions on what's the best use of my time, what provides the impact, and what is urgent versus what is important. It's a continuously evolving process and every day you make slightly different decisions, but you make the best ones you can.
At Bonaventure, we call that process “sunshine and daylighting.” Everything we do, we reflect on it and go, “What did we learn?”
Sunshine is when we celebrate success, and daylighting is when we highlight the things we can learn to do better.
I do that on an hourly basis. I'm going to reflect on what I did, and what could I have done differently with my time.
YOU’VE DESCRIBED YOURSELF AS STUBBORN, ESPECIALLY ABOUT YOUR VALUES. Can you talk about that?
“There’s a difference between being stubborn and being obstinate. I have strong convictions that our values are immutable. And if a decision crosses those values, it’s very clear to me that’s not a decision for us. I also have strong convictions about what our business is.”
If somebody presents a rational argument and provides data, that's contrary to my direction, I will change in an instant. And I think that's the difference between stubbornness and obstinance.
An obstinate person will never change, no matter how overwhelming the data is because they would prefer just to be right for the sake of being right. The stubborn person is saying, I have strong convictions and I need to be convinced of that. Ultimately, you have to be able to go to sleep at night and feel comfortable that you made the right decisions for you. That is the balance a leader needs.
Have conviction, have opinions, but don’t be obstinate in it just to be right.
How do you recover when you face a setback or feel defeated?
There's a moment where you just need to take some space and be in that emotion and just say this happened and feel that feeling of defeat or whatever, versus shoving it down and putting on false positivity.
But, after that moment passes, I really look back and go, this was not a failure. It's only a failure if I don't learn anything from it. Then I begin that task of saying, “What can I learn from this experience that will make us better, make us stronger, and help me make better decisions?”
The other thing I look at is, was this a bad process or an unfortunate outcome?
Process and outcome are different, and most people don't see the difference. They look at a good outcome and go, “we crushed it.” In fact, they may have gotten extraordinarily lucky and they took ridiculous risks, or alternatively, they had the wrong outcome and feel defeated when in fact it was just bad luck. It was the flip of the coin that went the wrong direction.
Those are the kind of things that I reflect on to get myself out of that hole when things don't go as I want them to or as planned. What can I learn from that? How can I grow as an individual?
“Process and outcome are different, and most people don’t see the difference. They look at a good outcome and go, we crushed it. In fact, they may have gotten extraordinarily lucky and they took ridiculous risks, or alternatively, they had the wrong outcome and feel defeated when in fact it was just bad luck. ”
Join the career challenge
Get 30 tasks that will set you up for success in the new year. Submit for a chance to win a $200 Amazon Gift Card!
Can you share any key decisions you’ve made over the years that were pivotal for massive growth for bonaventure?
On the growth side and also on the downside protection, there were some things that in retrospect seemed natural to me but were the difference between us sitting here today versus me working for somebody else because our company failed.
>>> TUNE IN TO THE FULL EPISODE TO HEAR DWIGHT’S RESPONSE.
What are your criteria for your core leadership team?
Everyone at Bonaventure needs to share our values.
That is the prerequisite and we focus on that more than technical aptitude first.
Very few people in an organization leave because they can't do the job. Most people leave because they're not a culture or value fit or they rub people the wrong way. So we look for that first and then we turn to technical aptitude.
We ask, “Does this person really see it, get it, want it, and have the capacity for the role?”
Second, they have to be amazing leaders at organizing teams of people to break down long-term goals into shorter-term milestones. They need to boil that down into the tactics to build a business, manage teams, motivate people and bring all the pieces together.
They basically have to be entrepreneurs running businesses at Bonaventure.
Bonaventure’s Tagline: We create assets. What does it mean?
We sit in the middle of the intersection of two massive demographic shifts. One is the lack of housing affordability. The other is the largest group of retirees who need to invest money so that they can fund their retirement.
On the one hand, we help provide housing towards that mixing middle between 60 and 120% of AMI. And on the other hand, we help connect the people that are savers to invest in those buildings that will produce a return and produce quality housing.
For us, the big differentiator is there are a lot of people who will manage your money, they'll just take your money and give it to somebody else to put in an apartment building. But we literally create those buildings from the ground up. That was important for us to communicate to the marketplace of people who are in need of getting a return on their capital.
To distinguish ourselves from people who are allocators, running around chasing deals, we find a piece of land, clear it, put the pipes under the ground, pour the concrete, put up the two-by-fours, and we eventually create this asset from nothing. That was important for us to communicate to the market as one of our unique factors.
When people think of Bonaventure, what do you want to come to mind?
I want them to think about the people that were behind that beautiful building they're looking at.
If anyone has the opportunity to go on a behind-the-scenes tour of a Bonaventure community, not the one you get from our wonderful onsite staff, but somebody from our development team or our acquisitions team, and they talk to you about why they made those selections that look like that beautiful club room that you're in or why they made those selections for the unit, it's fascinating. It's all about the people, the collaboration, and the teamwork that goes into bringing one of these communities to life. The people and teams that were behind what you're now standing in front of or inside, is the thing I want people to think about.
“It’s all about the people, the collaboration, and the teamwork that goes into bringing one of these communities to life.”
What has you fired up for 2023?
For 2023, what has me excited is uncertainty because I think Bonaventure is best at being nimble. When things are very steady, a lot of people can execute because it's pretty much a drive down the super highway at 90 miles an hour. But when it becomes foggy, the road becomes curvy or, it goes from a super highway to a gravel road, that's where Bonaventure is best. And so I think that's where we're going to distinguish ourselves from our peers in these uncertain times.
“When things are very steady, a lot of people can execute...But when it becomes foggy...that’s where Bonaventure is best.”
Dwight Dunton is Bonaventure’s Founder, CEO, and CIO. Bonaventure was formed in 1999 under Dwight’s leadership and has evolved into an integrated investment asset management company focused on multifamily developments, acquisitions, operations, and finance. Today, Dwight operates as the company’s visionary leader and strategic problem solver. He is a master predictor and ingenious intellectual who guides Bonaventure’s goals and ambitious growth trajectory. Dwight works across all lines of the business to ensure the team operates as one, using Bonaventure’s core values as its guiding principles. Dwight received a Bachelor of Science in Finance from the McIntire School of Commerce at the University of Virginia. He resides in Northern Virginia with his wife Camille and is a father of four daughters.
Connect with Dwight on LinkedIn.
