MANAGING PARTNER
HRG CAPITAL, BLOOMFIELD HILLS
EMPLOYEES: 100
REVENUE: $50M
COLLEGE: NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY (BOSTON)
The years David Lazarus Jr. spent as a student at Macomb Dakota High School in Macomb Township spurred determination on multiple fronts.
First, his mother, Mary Jagello, was a secretary at the school, and it took everything she had as a single mother to support her son on her salary. He noticed her efforts, and the resulting desire to provide assistance to single parents is something that stuck with him.
He also wanted to learn about business finance, which spurred him to attend Boston’s Northeastern University. While there, he worked in the office of one of the area’s wealthiest families while studying what was going on around him.
“It was a little bit of learning everything,” Lazarus recalls. “The family business had apartments they owned, hotels, casinos, and land development. I came in and learned a little bit of everything.”
He also acquired knowledge on how to obtain financial backing from people with money who were looking for places to invest it. Following graduation, Lazarus established a brokerage company — Hampton Realty Group (HRG) — which focused on real estate investments.
In the early going he kept his ventures reasonably safe, so the people in his network would consider backing him a low risk.
“I could justify buying a 40-unit apartment complex and having a few guys take a risk on me,” Lazarus says.
HRG did well with its real estate investments, but over time Lazarus came to see real estate as merely a “cash preservation play,” promising safe bets but modest returns. He realized the much larger potential was in buying operating businesses.
“I could put $1 million into a real estate deal and know that in a couple years I’ll get $1.5 million,” Lazarus says, “but I could put $1 million in an operating business and get $30 million out of it.”
While Lazarus doesn’t limit his investments to any particular industry, he has had strong success in the past four years in the event services sector. It started with the acquisition of three companies in 2022 — Wahl Tents, Bos Structures, and Tecumseh Tents — which rented large, structured tents for corporate activities and sporting events. In 2025, he sold the three businesses to WillScot Storage Solutions.
“The focus right now is buying family founder businesses that are blue-collar and have been around a long time, but are maybe lacking the infrastructure and processes,” Lazarus says. “What I would do is try to institutionalize the business — institute some ERP and AI — and open the doors for personal relationships I may have to move the business beyond where it’s been stuck.”
The desire to learn about business finance paid off — which brings him back to the passion he felt about helping single parents.
To pay homage to his mother and other single parents, Lazarus established a 501(c)(3) nonprofit called the Single Parent Foundation. Located in Bloomfield Hills, it provides financial support, job opportunities, scholarships, and other forms of assistance to single parents who are doing their best to raise children under challenging circumstances.
In addition to contributing his own money, Lazarus has secured a donation from Amazon to get the nonprofit started, and he will be raising funds in the coming months.
“We really want to get the word out to the single parents in the Detroit metro area that we want to help them,” Lazarus says.
— Dan Calabrese
