West Philadelphia, Born and Raised

Growing up in a rough-and-tumble neighborhood on the west side of Philadelphia, Michael Gordon dreamed of one day becoming a police officer. Perhaps he was drawn to the sense of calm and order they seemed to bring to otherwise unruly streets controlled by a notorious gang. Or maybe he was taken by the friendliness of a pair of officers on his neighborhood’s beat that often worked together and always went out of their way to chat with Michael. But more than anything, he believes the calling to law enforcement was driven by a simple desire: to help people.

Ultimately, life had other plans for Michael. But though he never donned a badge, the all-consuming desire to help people never left him. It is that desire that drove Michael to found Elavaire, an exclusive value-building networking and business development group of Washington, DC-area owners and executives that he now serves as CEO.

“Whenever I find myself in any situation, my brain is just automatically wired to help the person I’m with or the people that I’m with,” Michael says. “The fact that I’m now here doing what I’m doing, serving my members or my network, has fulfilled my inner need and desire to just help. I get to do it in a more business and personal setting rather than in law enforcement, but it’s really obvious to me inward looking out that I do what I do because it gives me the opportunity to help other people all day long, and that gives me such an inner feeling of joy and happiness and personal fulfillment.

Michael brought more than 15 years of industry experience to his founding of Elavaire, but in doing so he set out to break cleanly from the familiar ways of business and create something new. Other niches such as peer advisory networks and business development groups filled certain areas of the market, but Michael sought to have his members' needs – not his own – drive the new venture.

“Elavaire is a value-creation networking group,” Michael says. “When I decided I was going to do this, I wanted the focus to be on the creation of value, however my members wanted to define it, not me defining it. After being exposed to all different types of platforms, I developed some pretty strong opinions about the business of networking. I was exposed to lots of things that I thought misaligned the goals of the members and the organization itself, so when I found myself in a position of being able to create something, I set out to build the type of experience and the type of group that people have always wished existed but never found.”

Back in his childhood days in West Philadelphia, Michael likely couldn’t have imagined himself founding much of anything, let alone a service lauded by executives and CEOs of industry leaders in the Nation’s capital.

His parents came from influential Philadelphia families: his dad’s side were owners of a high-end clothier that counted as patrons the likes of Frank Sinatra and Lee Iacocca, and his mom’s family developed multi-family real estate in the city and suburbs. When Michael was a toddler, his parents divorced. Familial rifts and bad business dealings left his father working retail, and his mother barely scraping by in a tiny West Philly apartment.

“I grew up in the hood, watching my mom’s side of the family all living really successful, affluent lives. And here we were,” Michael recalls. “It’s just so odd this life we were living while at the same time, on my mom’s side of the family, everyone belonged to a country club and they all drove German sportscars. They were living this seemingly other life. For me, I was like, ‘How? How do they do that?’”

Fearing for Michael’s safety at Beeber Middle School and Overbrook High School, his mother arranged for him to use a cousin’s address to attend Bala Cynwyd Middle School and later Lower Merion High School, where it was tough to avoid noticing the discrepancy in lifestyle between him and his classmates. Over time, Michael grew resentful of the divide between the haves and have-nots in his life.

On one occasion, after a deal his mother was working on that would’ve provided a healthy enough commission to move the family to a better area fell through, Michael stormed into her bedroom-turned-office and scribbled a brief message on the whiteboard: “Life is expensive.” His mother quickly crossed out his words, replacing them with, “Stuff is expensive. Life is free.”

“That was an incredibly sobering moment for me as a high school sophomore to be given that wisdom,” Michael says. “My mom knew to instill in me that it’s not the material stuff that’s important.”

It was one of many valuable lessons Michael learned from his mother. Her final words to him, delivered as Michael was serving as caregiver in her final days, were, “You need to find the love inside of you.” Scrambling to write them down, Michael could only find a business card in his wallet. That wallet and business card, now stowed away safely in Michael’s home, are his most prized possession.

“Growing up with a mom who was wealthy and became fantastically poor, she helped me understand that just because we didn’t have stuff and were really broke, I had to stop looking for love and validation and value in the material things that came in life,” Michael says. “She was a really wise person.”

While his mother worked to shift his focus away from the trappings of what money could buy, Michael still managed to discover the power of a hard-earned dollar early in life. He carried DJ equipment for a neighbor in the building on weekends through middle and high school, and he eventually saved enough to buy equipment of his own.

Michael continued to DJ after going off to college at West Virginia University, which he chose to attend because it was “the furthest thing from West Philly.” He also took to selling bootleg t-shirts for extra cash, using his connections with popular sorority girls on campus to help him boost sales.

While West Virginia provided the opportunity for Michael to “learn”, he was never a very good student, and academia was never Michael’s strong suit. After three semesters, Michael dropped out of WVU and went to work.

“I realized pretty quickly that school was just not for me,” he recalls. “It wasn’t like, ‘Oh, I’ve figured it out and I have the bug to go work.’ It was, ‘No, you’re failing.’ I was really embarrassed, so instead of seeking help, it was easier for me to quit.”

Michael landed a job working for his uncle selling steel after his brief stint at WVU, and he learned valuable lessons in leadership in his six-plus years with the company. Unfortunately, the lessons learned were more about the type of leader he did not want to be.

It was not uncommon for Michael to draw verbal abuse for small mistakes and hear members being dressed down in profanity-laced tirades in front of the office on multiple occasions. Michael knew then that was not the type of leader he aspired to be, and his leadership philosophy today is to serve those he leads rather than expect them to serve him.

“My style has always been to find out what they care about and to help them achieve their goals,” Michael says. “A boss once told me that it was my responsibility to get the people that reported to me to understand that I cared more about their success than my own. If I could get them to understand that, they would do anything for me. My leadership style is 100 percent about helping them be successful, because their success will be my success.”

Michael jumped at the chance to leave work with his uncle when presented with the opportunity to transition into commercial real estate brokerage, specifically, retail tenant representation. He started with grunt work but quickly earned enough trust to begin taking on his own accounts.

After several years in the real estate business, some good and some not so good, and living a lifestyle way beyond his means, Michael struggled to keep all the plates spinning.

Before he knew it, he was over six figures in debt and the financial walls were closing in on him fast. Needing any additional income he could get his hands on, he took a job stocking shelves overnight at a local Target store.

“I was in such bad shape,” he recalled. “I’d work from 9:00 PM to 6:00 AM, sleep until 8:00 AM, and then try to go be a commercial real estate broker. It was horrible.”

Eventually, Michael and his first wife separated, it was devastating for Michael as he was intentionally alienated from his daughters, who he has not seen or spoken to in over 12 years. To this day, Michael remains hopeful that his children will want to know him again, and if that day comes, he is ready to know them and let them know he never gave up hope.

Looking back on this period of his life, Michael doesn’t know if he would’ve survived had he not met his current wife and step-daughter, Jennifer and Alexa, a few years later.

Michael and Jennifer, both from working-class families in the mid-Atlantic region, met on Match.com and clicked immediately.

“In our first email exchange, I actually wrote to her, ‘If you are what your profile says, what size ring do you wear, and where do you want to honeymoon?’” he says. “That was literally my first message to her, and we have it saved. She is my best friend in the world, and I wish I had 1,000 more years on Earth to be with her. She is a triple-threat: funny, smart and drop-dead gorgeous. I have outkicked my coverage big-time.”

Michael ultimately transitioned to the corporate side of commercial real estate, moving in-house at Quizno’s as a local real estate representative. He entered the job facing a backlog of more than 130 new franchisees with nowhere to open their restaurant, and his first-year quota was set at 50 placements. He signed 113 leases.

His massive production earned him quick promotions: first to oversee franchise sales, construction, and real estate acquisition for the mid-Atlantic region, then just real estate for most of the country.

“Here I am, this college dropout from West Philly, and I am heading up development on the East Coast for Quizno’s,” Michael says. “I killed it for them, and they put me in charge of real estate for most of the United States.”

Michael’s production was not enough to save him, however, when the company was acquired by a major bank who promptly laid off much of the corporate staff. Forced to pivot again, Michael connected with a businessman in the Northern Virginia area who hired him to launch a new branch of his business that would help small franchises that didn’t have the means to hire their own in-house real estate professional.

“I didn’t want to be the head of real estate that went from Quizno’s, to Starbucks, to Chipotle, etc. because basically you end up working yourself out of a job once saturation of the country happens,” Michael says. “Those jobs at the top of the pyramid get harder and harder to find.”

As a result of the work Michael was doing with small franchises, he left the real estate business completely in 2006, moved to Northern Virginia, and began his journey down the networking road. Michael found his passion in the endeavor, growing the new enterprise into a presence in six major US markets.

His aspirations were far beyond just six markets, but the metaphorical rug was pulled from under Michael when he discovered that his boss was content with the size to which they’d grown the business and had no plans to further expand.

In a random telephone call, Michael remembers his boss boasting how successful the six markets have been. His boss further bragged about the additional investment opportunities he found as a result of the networking groups they were building.

“Michael, it’s been a huge success, why would I want to grow it any more,” Michael remembers. It was in that phone call that I knew I needed to leave, not because his boss never shared the investment opportunities, rather, it was a recognition of how Michael and his boss’ goals were no longer aligned. I thought I was getting up every day to get us to the next city, figure it out, and try to find that next Michael. My boss basically said, “This thing has already given me so much money and so much success, I don’t need or want to grow it anymore.”

Faced with another fork in the road, Michael fielded dozens of meetings with owners and executives with whom he’d developed connections through his networking group. ALL of them wanted his talents in their own companies. But one of his valued connections was an exception.

He said, “Michael, I know you won’t work for me, but how about I just put you on a retainer, and you just keep doing for me what you’ve always been doing: connect me to good people and great opportunities?” In the weeks that followed, Michael was meeting with his network of CEO’s, except now, when he was offered a job, his response was a polite, ‘No thank you, but would you be interested in renting me?’ “I had a dozen friends put me on retainer, and all I did is what I’m still doing today: meeting new people and making connections wherever possible,” Michael shared.

Such began Elavaire, which Michael officially founded in 2021. The original group of owners and executives is now 38, and another group run by a teammate of Michael’s has grown organically to 25 members.

“Everyone of those 38 would probably tell you that they think they’re my only client because of the high level of service I provide,” Michael says. “Because it’s the right people, it’s a really magical environment.”

Each Elavaire member meets with Michael monthly, or as often as needed, and many gather twice a month for an open-ended conversation over breakfast that can run the gamut from mergers and acquisitions to human resources issues to macroeconomic trends. Additionally, Elavaire arranges for off-site memorable experiences that have included supercar car racing and VIP tours of the DEA training facility and Naval Academy.

But Michael stresses the key is the people, not the process. Each member is thoroughly vetted to ensure they can bring as much to the group as they get out of it and that they check the seven mandatory boxes that Michael requires of those desiring to participate: humility, abundance mindset, relationship-driven, like helping people, have a network, trustworthy, and committed.

“Someone can be a wonderful person but lack some of those seven,” Michael says. “That would not make them a good fit for what I’m doing. The people I was interested in joining a group like this are successful, sophisticated, experienced people who believe they have seen it all and have done it all. I set out to create they type of experience this type of person has always wished existed, but has yet to find”

Though Michael held previous roles he enjoyed, he now feels more fulfilled than ever. He knows Elavaire was not a necessary venture, but rather a product of his passion of connecting people. It’s a lesson that ties neatly into his simple advice to young people entering the working world, which was inspired by a book his mother gave him his senior year of high school: Do What You Love, and the Money Will Follow by Marsha Sinetar.

“That’s my advice,” Michael says. “Do what you love, and the money will come.”

Reflecting on his journey, Michael always comes back to one word. He ends each entry in his daily journal with the eight letters that sum up his feelings toward the ups and downs of life and all that’s come between: thankful.

“When I think about the life that I live today, the people I’m fortunate enough to be around, and the relationships I have, I’m confident it’s a result of me being me and never feeling a need to put on a show or be less than fully authentic.” He says, “I am thankful.”