Ep. 046 - Imants Holmquist, Co-founder of Holmquist & Gardiner

THE SEA-TOWN PODCAST: Interviewing Seattle's Business Leaders and Entrepreneurs

This week’s guest is Imants Holmquist, Co-founder of Holmquist & Gardiner law firm in Downtown Seattle. Imants Holmquist & Hamilton Gardiner started their own law firm in 2008, specializing in real estate transactions and business law, primarily helping clients buy, sell or lease real estate or if there is a dispute, representing them in litigation. Highlights From This Episode: Imants talks about the difference between what they do as real estate lawyers and what real estate brokers or agents do. He also talks about what they don't do as real estate lawyers (anything having to do with property valuation or if a purchase is a "good deal" or anything to do with listing or marketing a property). Often times they work with brokers to serve mutual clients or a transaction does not warrant the full service of a RE Broker (like for an off market purchase/sale), so they will use Holmquist & Gardiner's services to draft up the documents for a purchase and sale of a property. Commercial real estate transactions commonly use real estate attorneys to draft documents due to the complexity of the deals and large dollar figures involved.

• Real Estate attorney's may be used in leu of real estate brokers for drafting residential purchase and sale agreements but on commercial transactions, they often work hand in hand with the real estate brokers and investors/developers who have already submitted their letter of intent and negotiated the details.
• Having grown up locally in Kirkland, WA working for his dad for his construction company, Imants loved the feeling of being able to stand back from what he had built that day with a sense of accomplishment and he knew that he would get that same feeling with doing real estate law of having completed something that day by helping clients acquire a property or add value to a property or client... and that's not necessarily the case for much of the legal world, where lawyers can be entrenched in legal cases for months or years and not having much to show for all their work at the end of the day.
• Imants started his own law firm for several reasons. Before going to law school, Imants was fortunate to have the opportunity to work for a large law firm and was able to see what a big firm looks like. He also saw that it was going to be difficult to work in a big firm environment when he primarily identified with small and mid-sized clients. Now they have a wide range of clients from some of the larges developers in Seattle to individual buyers and sellers. It's hard to have a large range of clients like this at a large firm and so from the very beginning he was drawn to a small firm and so they created their own.
• Imant's says that the best thing about owning and running his own law firm is the entrepreneurial aspect of it and the autonomy and ability to immediately impact the quality of service everyday. Unlike many larger firms, they are not focused on the common metric of how many billable hours did they accrue per day but rather where they able to accomplish what the client wants, how effective they were represented and if the goal was accomplished.
• Everything begins and ends with integrity. You can learn skills but if you don't treat people right, none of the rest of it matters.
• The best advice Imants has received was advisors early on telling him to follow his passion, not necessarily what made the most sense on paper.

Episode Links & Resources:

• Guest's Website: www.lawhg.net
• Guest's recommended books/tools/resources: Amore Towles - A Gentleman in Moscow
• Guest's favorite podcast(s): Waking Up with Sam Harris. Reply All, Planet Money, How I Built This
• Guest's word of wisdom: If you have a concept for starting a business based on what your passion is, do that and do it right now!
• Learn more about Christian, Sea-Town Real Estate and more at: www.Sea-Town.com

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