The ability to identify opportunities is a quality all successful people share. Turning your own qualities into an opportunity, however, is something Bobby Genovese could claim a patent on.
A natural people connector with an engaging personality, easy charm and formidable marketing nous, he parlayed all of these into a business, introducing players in the financial industry to one another. He would have understood the value of mutually beneficial, peer to peer networking before the word was even coined. As his clients prospered, so did he and somewhere along the line, the BG Capital Group was born. BG Capital is an evolved version of the “turn your qualities into an opportunity” concept – it is a “turn your interests into working assets” proposition and works spectacularly well because of Genovese’s unique skill of relating to people in general and utilising the relationships he creates to cross-fertilise the BG brand.
The BG brand itself comprises several divisions: a private equity capital group identifying new investment opportunities, a capital management multi-national business and asset consolidator, and a privately held real estate investment and development trust that actively acquires properties in the US, Canada and the Carribeans.
One of the ways his business has evolved is through his personal interests and it’s a measure of the man’s acumen and shrewdness that virtually everything he’s fallen in love with has become a working asset.
Over time he fell in love with beautiful locations and bought homes there, played polo around the world, went yachting in the Bahamas, flew planes and of course, kept making friends everywhere.
The homes, 14 of them, became the BG Luxury Retreats Luxury Portfolio; BG Parks is an ecotourism and land conservation project; BG Polo is two polo clubs in Florida and a polo ranch in Argentina; BG Yachts is not just a reflection of his love of boats (he bought Paul Allen’s former yacht, Charade), but an expanding business that charters yachts in Miami.
“It’s a new industry I fell into”, says Genovese casually, but there is nothing casual about it – not only does he pretty much own the FL charter market, he has plans to expand and grow it on the Med, so stay tuned.
When it comes to philanthropy, Genovese has followed a similar business-like approach and rather than donate to a spade of charities (too many causes to choose from), he bought a company whose model of giving he liked, Solutions with Impact.
The company raises funds through events and the Genovese-inspired car and boat rallies are hugely enjoyable as well as successful in contributing to paediatric cancer research (they have raised $17m to date).
“Giving back is a privilege”, he says, echoing major philanthropists around the globe, but you can bet that Bobby Genovese and everyone involved also have enormous fun doing it.
Investing in relationships that pay dividends and turning personal assets and interests into businesses, not to mention impact philanthropy, is what most of us endeavour to do either or both purposefully and on a subliminal level. Genovese has turned it into an art form.
