Today we’d like to introduce you to Lacee Jacobs.
Hi Lacee, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I didn’t set out to build my own firm — I got here by spending over a decade in the industry first. I worked at global and local brokerage firms, then in-house with a developer, which gave me a front-row seat to how owners actually think about retail, from feasibility all the way through execution. What I realized over that decade is that retail is one of the most dynamic, fastest-changing corners of commercial real estate — and it’s also the one most developers struggle to keep up with or fully understand. It’s not enough to know the development process. You need someone with a finger on the pulse of culture, retail economics, and what retailers actually need, because the accuracy of those predictions is what the rest of the project depends on.
That gap is why I launched Rebel Retail Advisors in 2025 — to give developers who don’t have retail in-house that same level of expertise. My path into this industry is atypical for commercial real estate, and I’ve come to see that as an advantage rather than a detour. It lets me bring national and local relationships and a deep understanding of the development process to the table in a way that’s genuinely useful to the developers we work with.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Absolutely not — and I don’t think it should be, honestly. There are a lot of invisible barriers to entry in this business. Financial capital and social capital both go a long way, and when I was first starting out I didn’t have the built-in network some people start with. I had to be resilient and persistent just to stay in the game long enough to build the relationships and credibility that this industry runs on.
Then COVID hit, and for a while nobody knew where retail was even going to land. It was one of those moments where an entire asset class you’d built your career on felt like it was in question. Looking back, that stretch ended up being formative rather than derailing — it forced a level of resilience and adaptability that I don’t think I would have developed any other way, and honestly, without it, REBEL wouldn’t exist. The road wasn’t smooth, but it built the version of me who could actually run this firm.
As you know, we’re big fans of Rebel Retail Advisors. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
Rebel Retail Advisors is a boutique retail real estate leasing and advisory firm based in Houston, and we work with developers, landlords, and mixed-use projects across multiple southern markets. What we specialize in is the piece most developers don’t have in-house: retail. We handle everything from strategy and deal economics to landlord relationships and tenant prospecting, and we’re often brought in on projects from ground-up mixed-use developments to the repositioning of historic buildings.
What we’re known for is bridging two worlds that don’t always talk to each other — retail culture and retailer needs on one side, and the development process on the other. A developer can build a beautiful project and still get retail wrong if they don’t understand what makes a tenant say yes, or how retail economics actually pencil. That’s the gap we close.
What sets us apart is that we’re not a generalist brokerage bolting retail onto a broader practice — retail is the entire practice. That focus means deeper relationships with both national and local retailers, and a level of fluency in deal structure and market timing that comes from doing this one thing well.
What I’m most proud of, brand-wise, is that RRA operates as a true extension of our clients’ teams rather than an outside vendor. Developers come to us because they want a retail point of view they can trust from feasibility through lease-up — not just a broker who shows up once the space is built.
We’d love to hear about how you think about risk taking?
I’d describe myself as a calculated risk-taker. I want as much information as I can get my hands on before making a decision — I’m not someone who leaps without doing the work first. But at the end of the day, no risk, no reward. There’s a point where you have all the data you’re going to get, and you either act on it or you don’t.
Launching RRA was the biggest example of that. Leaving over a decade of stability at established firms to start something on my own, in a niche as specialized as retail, wasn’t a small bet. But I’d spent years watching the gap between what developers needed and what they had in-house, and I’d built the relationships and expertise to close it. Once I had that information, the risk wasn’t really in starting the firm — the bigger risk would have been not using what I’d learned. That’s how I think about risk generally: it’s not about avoiding it, it’s about making sure you’ve done enough homework and legwork that the odds are actually in your favor.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://rebelretailadvisors.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rebel_retail/
