The Closing: Ari Rastegar

Ari Rastegar pulled up to the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library in Austin looking like a head of state. A two-man video crew filmed his arrival, in a blacked-out Escalade chauffeured by his chief of staff. Rastegar’s Lady Bird, his wife and creative director Kellie, walked behind him, impeccable in white, trailed by a social media manager with a makeup wand in tow. Rastegar, short, with ramrod posture and fresh-from-the-salon hair, sported a suit vest and pants by Martin Greenfield, tailor to six presidents from Donald Trump to Barack Obama to, fittingly, Lyndon Johnson. 

As a child, the developer and founder of Rastegar Property Company would visit the library almost weekly with his father, sitting behind the Resolute Desk in the replica Oval Office on the 10th floor. His ambitions aren’t political, at least not yet, but he has been taking steps to evolve beyond just brick and mortar. 

Rastegar started with multifamily projects across Austin, the country’s second-fastest growing city, but is now branching out into other asset classes. He’s developing 600,000 square feet of industrial space near the Tesla Gigafactory outside Austin, and luxury rentals in Dallas and Phoenix. His firm has $1 billion of projects in the pipeline and is raising funds from blue-chip investors to buy up land and go national. At his latest project, a 318-acre master-planned community in Kyle, Texas, Rastegar plans to build his own miniature society.

The closest thing Rastegar has to a hobby is longevity, a pursuit that dominates nearly all of his non-working hours. He has blood drawn every 60 to 90 days, which allows his doctor to synthesize an ideal blend of the more than 100 supplements he takes each morning. He has taken multiple stem-cell infusion treatments at a clinic in Tijuana, Mexico. French fries are his greatest vice, and he dreams of tahdig, the crispy rice crust that’s considered a delicacy in Persian cooking, but mostly maintains a no-carb, veggie diet. He reports 9 percent body fat. He may be 41, but biologically, he says, he’s six. 

When asked for a location for the interview that might mean something to him, Rastegar sent back a long list of options ranging from the modest north Austin apartments where he grew up to the steps of the Capitol Building. The ensuing discussion ranged for hours — in terms of topic as well as location — as we bounced between the University of Texas at Austin, his favorite childhood restaurant (which he convinced to open early for him to take photos) and Soho House on South Congress. The locations were portals to different eras of Rastegar’s life, while leaving plenty of room to wonder about what comes next.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Born: April 6, 1982
Lives: Austin, TX
Family: Married with three children (Isabella, 3, Kingston, 7, Victoria, 10)

Do you believe in God?

My whole life is governed around God. I don’t want to sound like a Mother Teresa, but I am a man of God. My work is my worship. I believe it’s my divine purpose and obligation to do it. It’s not to be narcissistic, or about me being someone, but beyond, for all of us: Our work should be our worship, in what we build and what we do. 

Is there a religious element to how you design your buildings?

“Religious” is a tough word, because there’s so much dogma. But there is “divinity.” There are no straight lines in nature. The curved line is of God, the straight line is of man. And so if I’m going to build something, or tear down a tree, and I’m going to destroy this part of God’s work, can I put something there that enhances?

If you could live forever, would you?

I’m going to. 

You’re confident?

Yeah. The greatest investment in the world is me: I’m all I got. 

I’m doing the health and wellness thing to give me longevity. I look at my peers in their 50s, 60s, 70s, and they’re slowing down because they’re tired. I look better, feel better, and think better than I ever have in my entire life. 

Ok, how long are you going to stay in real estate then?

I’ll be in real estate forever, because real estate is everything. Everything that exists, exists on real estate. App company — where’s your office? Where’s the server? Where are the hospitals, where are the sick people? It’s all on real estate. So the reason I started is because — no pun intended — it’s the foundation of life.

“I don’t give a fuck. I’m running my race. No one’s speeding me up. No one’s slowing me down.”

What’s your greatest fear?

Not being the person that I think I am. I think I’m here to do life-changing things, and I’m scared that one day I’ll wake up and just be a regular guy.

What happens if that comes true?

I’ve come to terms with the idea that it might not be that bad. But I feel like I was born to do the proverbial great things. I guess people would look at my career and think I’ve done okay, but not me. I think that my life this far has been a disaster. I think I could have done 100 times better. I know I could have changed. 

It looks good from here: a wonderful family, a big business…

The business could have been way bigger. I could have treated people differently in certain ways. I could have done it in a more efficient way. I could have been kinder to myself, I could have been kinder to people, I could have learned to check my ego earlier than I did.

I don’t feel like I’ve made it yet. I’ve still got a long way to go. I’m comparing myself to the person that I would like to be — that person has more humanity than being driven by money.  I’m not a money worshiper. Do I want to have the things that come with it? Yes. I’m a pretty simple guy at the end of the day, even if it doesn’t look that way. 

Is it frustrating to be misunderstood like that?

It can be incredibly frustrating. Emerson used to say that to be great is to be misunderstood. That was his definition of greatness. And I’m a huge, huge Emerson fan.

Do you consider yourself to be an extrovert?

I’m actually a very private person. And I’m never more comfortable than when I’m alone with a book. I can be an extrovert as part of a role that I need to do, as part of this persona — I know that sounds wildly ironic coming from me.

What does alone time do for you?

It allows me to kind of find my own voice. I don’t focus on competition — people ask me who my competitors are in real estate, and I have no idea. I watch the market like a hawk. But I’m not watching, like who’s doing what and why they’re doing it. “So and so bought whatever —” I don’t give a fuck. I’m running my race. No one’s speeding me up. No one’s slowing me down. 

I’m a wildly, wildly patient person. If I was going in a hurry, we would be 100 times the size that we are right now. I’m going at a pace that looks like we’re going fast, because I’m 41 years old, yet I built a massive company — fine. But I want to move correctly.

I go to Fairfield, Iowa, the North American capital for meditation, all the time. Once a month, I go for two or three days at a time and go into deep meditation. Any time there’s a problem that I have that I can’t figure out, I go to Fairfield.

Where do you get your capital?

Most of our money is public pension funds. We started having institutional capital pretty early in the firm’s history, just two years in, and I got the investor by a cold call. We’ve built the whole company on cold calls.

How did you pull that off as an introvert? 

Need. It’s amazing what you’ll do when you’re desperate. People do things because of one of two things: either they’re inspired, or they’re desperate. We had our second child. And when we started the company, I had $250,000 in student loan debt. 

Do you want your kids to take over the business?

I want my kids to be able to take over the business. My hope is our youngest, the three-year-old, is going to want to do so — I don’t think my first two are going to want to, which is totally fine, as long as they follow their dreams, and we created a platform where they can do anything they want, and they know that we support them, we love them, and they can go do something great. And we have the money and the power to facilitate that.  

What do clothes mean to you?

I like to be in pajamas. I don’t like wearing fancy clothes, I don’t wear watches. Aside from wearing custom Martin Greenfield suits, custom shirts — like I have literally the best tailors in the fucking planet… George Cleverley, probably the most renowned shoemaker in the world, makes those custom crocodile shoes I was wearing. My grandpa used to say, “Try to put on a general’s uniform and lay on the couch.”

Meaning? 

That our clothes and the way we carry ourselves will affect how we present ourselves and how we actually act. People say you don’t judge a book by its cover — everybody judges the fucking book by its cover. Everybody. So when I put on a suit, that’s my switch to go into that role of that business person. It’s no different than a general’s uniform. 

Your grandfather comes up a lot when you tell your story.

He died in my arms, actually. I was in high school, and I remember crawling in bed with him in the final stages. 

My parents were divorced and I lived with my mom until I was 10, then I went to live with my dad. When I was there, my dad was working, so I stayed with my grandparents. And that’s really how I learned Farsi, how I learned to cook. 

We’d go on these walks together, and he [grandpa] told me epic stories. He told me about the Shah of Iran coming to our house in plain black clothing through the back door, and what my life was supposed to be, what he had planned out for his first son’s first son. And he would apologize for letting the world go to shit. 

We were driving through downtown Dallas one time, and my grandpa asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I said I wanted to be a doctor like him. And he got really upset, going on this treatise about America, the land of opportunity. 

He said, “See those buildings? When you grow up, buy all of them.” 

Something just stuck in my head. I was like, “alright, well, fuck, I guess I’m gonna buy all these buildings.”