Full transcript: Dubai Real, Episode 3
0:00 Last week on Dubai Real. I stepped inside an ultra-luxury mansion on Billionaires Row and got a glimpse of how the ultra-rich really live.
0:12 Your home says everything about you. With Dubai, you need to stand out.
0:18 Now, time is running out. Decisions have to be made. Without exaggerating, I think Dubai is the centre of the universe right now. The pressure is building and there’s a lot of money on the line. This is Dubai Real.
0:42 For the past 15 years at London Real, I’ve sat down with some of the most extraordinary people on the planet. Billionaire investors, special forces operators, world champions, cultural icons. I wanted to understand what creates greatness. So, I studied them. How they think, how they operate.
1:05 Every day suffering, being broken, duct taping my feet up, stress fractures, shin splints. This is my new norm. So then your mind starts to get tougher and tougher. But if you get through it, on the other side of that thing, man, is a whole other world that very few people know exist in your mind.
1:25 And there was one trait I saw again and again. Resilience. They never quit.
1:34 People always ask me, “What should I concentrate on doing? What’s your advice for me going to BUD/S?” I’m like, “Don’t quit. Train hard, don’t quit.”
1:44 But that’s not the whole story, because the best of them don’t just survive adversity. When things get dark, when most people break, they perform even better.
1:58 What if the worst thing that happened to you becomes the best thing that happened to you?
2:03 They are antifragile. When put under stress, they get stronger. And I didn’t just learn that. I lived it. Against all odds, from my kitchen in East London to building a global media business. Taking risks, leaning into uncertainty.
2:25 Discomfort and fear is an arrow. It’s here. This is where the gold is.
2:32 Getting stronger under pressure. At some point, it stopped being a strategy. It became who I am. I ran the Ironman and turned the demons from my past into the fuel of my future.
2:47 It’s not what happens to somebody, it’s what they do as a result of it.
2:57 I stepped into the ring thinking I would be destroyed, only to learn how to face my fear. Ryan, the OG.
3:10 Because crisis leads to opportunity, and I started seeing it everywhere. In people, in systems, even in cities. Some break, some survive. A few get stronger. Dubai is one of those few. Financial crises, pandemics, geopolitical shocks. They didn’t break this city. They made it stronger.
3:40 Because that’s where the real money is made. In what gets stronger under pressure. And today, I’m here at Atlantis The Royal. Bold, unapologetic, built to endure.
3:57 And I’m here for a reason. To decide if this next opportunity is worth backing. To meet the people behind it. To look beyond what shines on the surface. Because I need to know if this is real. If it’s been tested. If this opportunity, like this city, is truly antifragile.
4:34 This is what I like about Dubai. Everything feels effortless. The detail, the safety, the service. It all feels natural. Almost invisible. But underneath, there’s precision. Everything is engineered. Everything is intentional.
5:01 How are you? I’m good. How are you, man? Pleasure. Welcome. Dude, this is a serious place here. I know we came to do business, but we need to take in this view, right?
5:12 We’re in the penthouse of Royal Atlantis, designed by Elie Gamburg. I heard the ruler paid attention to every single detail, because this is the marquee showpiece for Dubai. This is his baby. Everything is here.
5:28 Didn’t they have Beyoncé perform at this place when they opened it up, and they paid her like 25 million bucks or something crazy? She splashed out of a fountain. The opening ceremony was from Beyoncé, exactly. Damn. This is ultra-luxury. This is. This is the best of the best, at the top of the top. I’m going to show you around. Okay, man.
5:46 I want you to look at all the details that have been put into this property. Fully customised, all the furniture. I think you have about a million dollars’ worth of art pieces, statues, art on the wall. On that side here, you have a full open ocean view. So, you’ve got these double water views, which is kind of unheard of in any other place, right? It’s really a Dubai thing. You get one or the other.
6:13 So, when you tell your friends, “I live at the Royal Atlantis,” it means a lot. Luxury comes from the location. It’s not just about the finishing details or the art or the furniture. It is where you are in the city that makes it luxurious.
6:35 Now, let’s go to the master bedroom. What makes the ultra-luxury master bedroom? What does it have to have?
6:44 You need to have a large wardrobe. You need to have a large bathroom space. And you need to have a small sitting area. And of course, you need to have this beautiful feature wall behind the bed with a custom bed. This is the art and finesse of building a luxury property, actually. So, it has to feel ultra-luxury and nice, but also feel like it’s home. Because nobody wants to live in a resort, right? It doesn’t make sense.
7:15 So, look, this place is gorgeous. And the place you showed me on Billionaires Row, that’s got to be one of the most stunning super villas I’ve ever seen. But I think it’s time that we slow things down a little bit, because great properties don’t necessarily make great returns. What I’ve found through 15, 20 years of investing is that it’s the structure that actually makes sure you get those incredible results for your investors.
7:44 No, you’re right. Look, that’s the reason why, when we started Highgate, the first thing that we did was sit down with the top private equities and also the lawyers that are working within DIFC to create the perfect balance of structure, to ensure that we give direct ownership to the investors to protect them. And the de-risking mechanism, besides the financial structure, is ensuring that we target projects that are in that 50, 60, 70% range.
8:13 Look, in all these perfect scenarios, we can think about making 50, 60, 70, 80% returns. And you never know what’s going to happen till you can really stress test an investment. That means you’ve got to have the structure. You’ve got to understand what happens when the market goes down, when schedules get delayed, when materials go up. And that’s what I need to know before we commit capital.
8:35 We’ve been doing this for 5 years now, and deployed over 25 million dollars in capital for our investors.
8:40 That’s great. And the reason they trust us is because we go deep into the detail, deep into the bottom line. Look, I love flash, of course I do. And I love a beautiful property, but if it can’t make it to the bottom line, then obviously we can’t touch it. I want to see what you guys have done. I want to see that the structure is bulletproof. And if you can show us that it is, I think we can keep talking.
9:07 Time was running out. I had to make a decision before the opportunity slipped away. But something didn’t sit right. I couldn’t move forward with only the developer’s vision. I needed another perspective.
9:25 That night, I got on a call with all my investors. They were ready to move now. But this couldn’t be rushed. We had to step back and think carefully about how to allocate capital. What we needed was another perspective.
9:41 So, I asked Chris to set up a meeting the next day with an investor representative. Someone with real skin in the game on the other side of the deal. He agreed to introduce me to one of his key players, Toghrul Mahmudov, a seasoned real estate player with a powerful global network, operating across multiple markets, connecting investors with real opportunities.
10:04 But he wasn’t just another operator. He had built his reputation by consistently delivering at a high level. And in this business, you’re only as good as your last deal.
10:16 So, first of all, thanks for the time. Really appreciate it. My pleasure. You know, it’s interesting. When you invest in a lot of projects like we have over the years, you find out over time that the founder or the manager, the person involved, is really important. Because I think sometimes you don’t even invest in projects, you invest in people.
10:41 And so, I wanted to ask you, what’s it like when you try to explain this to your investors, the people that you know, to put money into these projects? How long have you known about this niche? And how does it compare to a luxury off-plan property? Because that’s something that we all hear about, but as Chris said, it’s maybe a little less predictable. So, I’m kind of curious about your thoughts on this market as a whole.
11:06 The luxury market, I would say, post-COVID, for the past 4 years, it’s really booming. And the reason for that is the wealth. The millionaires and multi-millionaires and billionaires are moving to Dubai. But we had an issue in Dubai. We didn’t have quality finishing.
11:23 The idea of transformation, like luxury houses, it’s not something new. But at this level, what Chris does, I haven’t seen this anywhere, to be honest with you, because he pays attention to details. He literally transforms them and makes them a trophy asset. And this is what these people need. So, I’ve seen that, and I saw the value in it, and I said, I mean, count me in.
11:53 Can you tell me something about the investors that trust you with their money, that trust your advice? What’s their appetite for risk? That kind of thing. I’m curious.
12:03 They want to enter the market and they want to make the most profit in the least amount of time. You can’t make it in off-plan.
12:12 But what really caught my attention was the structure behind the deal. It was set up as an SPV, a special purpose vehicle. In simple terms, a separate company created for a single investment. Everything sits inside of it. The asset, the risk. If something goes wrong, it stays contained. It doesn’t spill over to the other investors.
12:35 At the same time, everyone owns a share of that structure, which means they directly own the deal. Cleaner, safer, more transparent, simple to set up, made to scale. The perfect structure for this type of deal. Intentionally designed, built to perform.
12:55 How long do you think we have? How many years until this kind of gets arbitraged out, to where more people see what’s going on? What do you think that window is? Is it 1 year, 2 years, 3 years, 5 years?
13:06 I can’t predict the future, but I always look at data, right? So, if you look at the data now, the ultra-luxury segment, like mansions, like huge villas, is probably 3% of the supply of the whole market. So, looking at that number, I think that says a lot of things. It might take quite a lot of time. So, we’re still early.
13:31 Let’s talk worst-case scenario. Okay. People in the West and in America, they think this is a dangerous place. They say, “Okay, the market can’t go up forever.” I don’t know. How do you feel about the risks, and how do you quantify those to your clients?
13:47 The only risk here is it might take a little bit longer to sell the house if the market shifts. And that can happen. The real estate market, especially the ultra-luxury segment, doesn’t drop like… I mean, it’s affected last when the crisis hits. It’s not like the stock market, it’s not the crypto market. And again, the target audience is a completely different segment of people, right? It’s ultra-wealthy people. We both know that when the crisis happens, rich people get richer, right? Yeah, and they keep spending, too. Exactly. Especially on things that they need. Like a home.
14:26 I went through the entire deal point by point with him. And I had to admit, the structure was designed not just to withstand volatility, but to benefit from it. It was antifragile. And this is exactly what we do at London Real Ventures. We go deeper. We ask harder questions. We test every assumption before we allocate capital. Because access alone is not enough. You have to understand exactly what you’re investing in.
14:56 So, was everything ready to sign? Well, that’s what we’re about to find out.
15:03 Next week on Dubai Real. Time is running out. We have capital ready to deploy. When we do business, we like to keep everything discreet. Now we have to decide if this is the right deal.
15:20 What we’ve seen here is some incredible, incredible growth in the luxury and ultra-luxury area of Dubai real estate. Do we move forward or walk away? Because once we commit, there is no turning back. So, I had a long call with my investors last night, and there were a lot of questions, and there were a lot of concerns.
