The following is PG-13 version of a piece of an interview which was cleaned up a bit for this piece by Rob Studeville on Public Square. (thanks Rob).

Incremental Development does sound like you need a lot of capital and that there would be a lot of risk if you don't know what it is. If you didn't know what indoor plumbing is and how it works, that might also sound like a crazy risky idea. But Incremental Development is not that complicated nor that risky. The biggest barrier to entry is the initial step. What is the road map? What is the territory? It's a black box in a lot of people's minds.

Developers are held in very low-esteem.  I see that as more of a feature than a bug because if the bar is low, it's pretty easy to under-promise and over-deliver. On the spectrum of all possible developers that might arrive in your neighborhood from Mahatma Gandhi to Darth Vader,  people expect a developer to resemble Darth Vader.

A small developer just needs to be a noticeably less shitty version of Darth Vader."

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"Find a place that you love that needs you.

(You may love Brooklyn, but Brooklyn doesn't need your ass. Go somewhere that does.)"

-Ryan Terry

Ryan Terry's statement has two parts and you might stop at the evocative  opening; "Find a place you love..." The second half is just as critical "--that needs you". Places that need you will need a lot of work. That is why they need someone like you that is willing to do a lot of frustrating and unappreciated work (because you care about the place and the people in the place. Swell places with high barriers to entry don't need you.

If rents are low, you may need to limit yourself to picking up trash and doing careful serviceable rehabs like the cottage shown above.  Don't forget that the project is the neighborhood not just the building.  That little garage has been rented since Dan Camp renovated it 30 years ago as part of his effort to transform a part of town nobody cared about.  

Be disciplined in what you are willing to spend in total project costs.  If rents are low or high, you still need to limit your project costs to what can be supported with the likely rents.

Do not expect to be welcomed or appreciated. Keep your head down. Under-promise and over-deliver. If you are a developer it will be hard to build trust in a place where people doubt or casually mischaracterize your motivation and methods. Do the work anyway. Any recognition or support you see from your neighbors along the way is a bonus. Take the long view and outlast critics who don't have anything resembling a genius plan of their own. Be smart. Run the numbers on multiple projects before you launch. Start small. Find and support local champions and colleagues. Few resources are as important as Stubborn Hustle in a person hungry to learn their craft.

If you are passing through Bryan, Texas, look up Ryan Terry and have him show you his project on the edge of the downtown.  He is walking the talk.

I am currently reading  The Advantage by Patrick Lencioni.  Lencioni is the author of Death by Meeting, a favorite of mine. The Advantage is about organizational health, something worth considering for any small developer.

You may have zero employees, but your work will require that you cultivate a real organization to have a stable enterprise. The organization may be populated by freelancers, brokers, consultants, architects, engineers, property managers, building trades, and investors, but you will need to built that organization/network intentionally. Building a healthy culture without a lot of drag and friction from dysfunction, politics, low morale, and low productivity is as much of a project as building/rebuilding a neighborhood. I look forward to other folk's impressions of this book. The end of the year is a good time for reflection and big picture thinking.

I spent years in an outfit that started out with just enough structure and systems to design, entitle, engineer and build a cool project or two.  With time, the head of the company figured out that he needed to intentionally build a company with a good culture and good systems/habits that happens to produce cool projects.  The transition was rough, but the lessons of that enterprise, (now dramatically reduced by the Great Recession) have stayed with me as we explore potential business models for Small Developers.

Patrick Lencioni is onto something in focusing this book on organizational health.  This book merits a weekend of reading and big picture thinking.

Lenioni's consulting firm is called the Table Group