Bob Richards, Executive Vice Chairman at Cushman Wakefield | How to Pivot In Your Career

Welcome to Success Story, the most useful podcast in the world. I'm your host Scotty Clary. The Success Story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network. HubSpot podcast network is the audio destination for business professionals who seek the best education and inspiration on how to start and grow a business. HubSpot podcast network hosts actors on-demand mentors to entrepreneurs, startups and scaleups through practical tips and inspirational stories. Listen, learn and grow with the HubSpot podcast network at HubSpot.com slash podcast network. Today, my guest is Bob Richards. Bob is the executive vice chairman at Cushman Wakefield and he is also a member of the Cushman Wakefield Global Advisory Board. He is in the upper echelons of commercial real estate. Bob leads the Cambridge Urban Team and also heads up the Life Science and Healthcare Practices Group. He serves on the Boston office steering committee. He has represented numerous corporate clients in transactions nationally and internationally. He has negotiated and closed some of the largest commercial real estate transactions in the world. He has successfully completed complex assignments in India, China, Singapore, Australia, the UK, Netherlands, Denmark, as well as in all major cities in the United States. He counsels tenants and clients such as Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, Bristol Myers Squib, Ray Fion, Forester Research, CRISPR Therapeutics, Acceleron, and the WIS Institute. Prior to joining Cushman Wakefield, Bob was a founding partner and president of Richards Berry Joyce and Partners, which was acquired by Transwestern in 2013. Prior to co-founding RBJ, he was principal at Tremel Crow Company and before entering commercial real estate, he spent a significant portion of his career as a sportscaster at CNN and WTBS in Atlanta. So, Bob has had an incredible career. He is crushing it in terms of corporate real estate, obviously real estate in general, where we're working. Are we going into office? That has somewhat changed over the past two years, so I'm going to obviously pick his brain on that, but we dive into his origin story. We speak about how he made a huge major career pivot from broadcasting into real estate, how he went from working for somebody to starting his own firm to successfully exiting his firm to working for somebody again at Cush Wakefield and obviously reaching the upper echelons of commercial real estate. So, we speak about some real estate topics and things that hopefully will provide some value to business leaders trying to understand the dynamics of the office environment in 2021 and beyond. And then we also just speak through some incredible stories and some insights that he has from his career across multiple industries, building his own company, just killing it at Cushman Wakefield. And now, of course, he is one of the names at Cushman Wakefield and manages billions of dollars in real estate transactions. So, let's jump right into it. This is Bob Richards, Executive Vice Chairman at Cush. Walk me through your origin story. You can kick it off right now. We can go right into it. You're sure? Great. Yeah. Well, I grew up outside of Boston in a little town, Norwood, Massachusetts. My father was a public school teacher and my mother was a homemaker, oldest brother, three younger sisters. I played a lot of sports growing up. Fortunately, had some success in hockey. And that helped me get into a good prep school and then helped me get into Dartmouth College, which made a really big difference in my life. So, I'm very, very blessed with those opportunities. After that, I always had had an interest in broadcasting. So, I started my senior year in NBC television station, opened up in White River Junction. So, I was hired as a sports reporter there, as opposed to doing the college radio station, Yig. And had some great exposure there. And then after that, I moved out to upstate New York to Binghamton, where I was hired as a sportscaster and also weatherman, which was a little bit of a not expected, but I expect respect was great training for me over time in terms of sales presentations. And from there, I moved on to CNN Sports in Atlanta, worked there for five years as an on-air sportscaster. Had a lot of fun, a great national exposure, worked really hard. They brought in a lot of young people and gave them great opportunity. We didn't make much money, but we had great opportunity. And at that point in time, had two kids and just thought that broadcasting career of living on two and three year contracts and having to go to any part of the country that was interested in you, was not a way to make a good family life. So, ended up looking around and networking and kind of doing the Jerry McGuire sports agent thing. Made the most sense and I interviewed with some of them, but one of my good friends growing up that I played a lot of sports with, wife worked at a real estate company in Boston. And her boss happened to be a Dartmouth grad and brought me in and gave me an opportunity to begin work. As a real estate broker and started in this industry at 30 years old. So, coming out of the block, Scott, I kind of felt like I was five years behind everyone else and had some pretty funny stories like early on, I can remember going into my boss and they had me reading a bunch of leases and I was saying, you know, I have to find out who the CFO of a Delaware corporation is because these guys seem to be involved in every company I'm looking at. And that was like, oh my god, I like your instincts, but please go back to your desk. So, you know, so a lot of things along the way, but after a couple of years there, I was a top performer. I went to a boutique firm, Fallon Heinsen, O'Connor, where I get an opportunity to run the the Cambridge Massachusets Market, which has been very influential in the life science world and just technology in general. And I was there for about 13 years and then decided, I think there's a better way to do this business. So, several of my buddies and partners, we started our own boutique firm, Richard's Barry Joyce, and partners and we ran that for 13 years and sold it to Transwestern and then after three years made the transition to Krishman and Wakefield, where I've been for two and a half years right now. Amazing. And that's a lot of risk, a lot of pivots. So, walk me through your mindset when you, at 30 years old, did you have a spouse? You didn't have kids yet, I'm assuming did you have kids? Oh yeah, and was there a risk there? Yep, Mary, you know, two kids at the time when we left Atlanta, including a newborn, and since then, you know, we've had Jake, our youngest who's now, you know, 24 years old. But so, the mindset was, you know, once again, as you know, my background, I mean, my last year at CNN, I was doing my on-air work. I was doing play-by-play radio on Friday nights for high school football. I was doing the Braves post-game show on TBS and I was on Sunday nights being a camera man for pro wrestling. And so, to do whatever I needed to do, and I think my last year there, I made like $50,000. So, we didn't have much savings, and so my mindset's got was, frankly, like, I don't care how thick the brick wall is, but I got to go through the brick wall. So, if it's six inches thick, I'm going through it. If it's six feet thick, I'm going through it. Because, you know, I sort of felt at that time I had had, you know, spent a bunch of time in another career that wasn't going to have that much utility with the career I was going into. So, I didn't have any any time or effort to waste. And day one, and day one of real estate, you're not making any money. This wasn't a salary position, right? You're just real estate. Dialing, was it like, yeah, was it like, did you start off like every other real estate anything you do in rentals and everything like that and everything in the show? Yeah, so it was coming on a show. But, you know, I just, you know, wasn't shy about getting on the phone and getting in front of people. And I think, you know, that real estate background, and, you know, interviewing the, you know, whatever, you know, Muhammad Ali's and, and, you know, Dale Murphy's and Larry Bird's, you weren't, you know, I was not intimidated by talking to a CFO or a CEO and it just made you comfortable. So, I think that was, you know, something that, in retrospect, I hadn't wasted, you know, those eight years or whatever, it was actually, you know, sort of good, good training. And, you know, when you're a sportscaster and you go in live, you know, you live and die on that three minutes of night, right? So, there's no, no reduced, there's no editing. So, you know, that, that was my mindset going into it. But, you know, it was certainly intimidating in some ways to be going into an industry that I literally knew nothing about nothing. You just, you drink from the fire hose for sure. I mean, the first, you know, the first little bit. All right. So, you're growing your real estate career. You're, you're just consuming as much knowledge information as possible. Now, the, the real, the, the real, I guess, the real like hockey stick growth curve in your career would be when you started your own brokerage. Yeah. What, what differentiated you that made you, because now look at where you're at, like, this is the, you know, this is the epitome of real estate and commercial real estate. You're there now, but how'd you get there? Correct. Yes. So, you know, I mean, one, you know, when I talk to younger people, I think one important lesson is don't be afraid of moving on from success, right? Because think about it. I was 30 years old at the time. I'd only been in the business a year and a half, and I was fortunate to be, you know, the top salesperson in that real estate company with probably, I don't know, 40 brokers, you know, a year and a half in. And so, it was kind of like, why would you ever leave this company to go to this fledgling boutique Valentine's and O'Connor, but I just knew in my gut that I was going to have more opportunity and a wider runway than after being with that organization and having a great run. I think one of the things that really fuel my desire there was, was leadership and having a chance to lead an organization, you know, it wasn't as rewarding to just do another deal or a bigger deal, but it was a chance to kind of help young people and, you know, we ended up, you know, starting the company, you know, in July, whatever that was, three months before 9-11. So, talk about terrible timing. And, and, you know, we went from, at that point it was bigger organizations, but we just thought there was a better way to have a smaller boutique company. And one of the really interesting things we did was we went, as opposed to straight commission, we went on a salary bonus program. So, as opposed to everybody eating what they killed, whatever everybody earned, we brought in in twice a year, sat down, subjectively bonus the non-partners, and split amongst the partners equally, what was remaining. So, the teamwork and the knowledge sharing and the support that we developed there really differentiated ourselves. And then, you know, after the horrible 9-11 and the economy in a tailspin, you know, when people were, you know, thinking about trying to get rid and market their excess property, they said, you know, we can go with the normal folks or we've got this young aggressive energized group. And they were like, listen, we can take some chances because we've got to get rid of this space. You know, if, if the world had been smooth, I think we would have had a really much harder time, you know, getting going, but the fact that the economy was in a bad, a bad place. And, you know, ordinarily, you could kind of, you know, have your head down and say, oh, geez, you know, no one can make it work in this environment. It was the total opposite for us. That's amazing. You were 100% like you, it was funny. It's funny because it was a core economy. For most people looking outside in, it's the worst possible condition you could possibly ever expect. Right. But that's opportunity. Not in a malicious way. It's opportunity in like, you have to, you have, you're going to work hard, you're going to hustle, you're going to differentiate, you're going to take advantage of the fact that no one else can get this done. And you're going to have a team and a culture that supports this, this kind of mindset. How did you find people that were, they were right for this? It was really hard. And it was really happenstance. I mean, frankly, like, you know, you know, so it's Richard's Barry Joyce. I mean, John Barry, I had done some work with in Mike Joyce. We were playing in a pickup hockey league. And I remember just saying, you know, who's that number 11? And so that's my Joyce. And you could just see the way that he competed on the ice. And then, you know, we filled in other like-minded people within other geographies to cover. But we just had that mindset. And, you know, once again, by doing the compensation the way we did, it just fostered this sort of brotherhood of commitment. And it paid great dividends. I just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode latter. Now, latter allows you to get access to life insurance, but I want to just give some context. I was excited when latter reached out. I'm a big advocate of life insurance. Of course, a lot of us over the past two years have lost loved ones. But for me, it actually came back to before COVID. Fortunately, I actually haven't lost anybody, but I have lost people far before their time, previous to COVID. And it just so happens that when a younger family or a younger person loses their life, God forbid, way before they should, they haven't thought of life insurance yet. Younger families in general don't look into life insurance to the same extent as perhaps somebody with adult children or even grandchildren look into life insurance. 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That's ladder life. L-A-D-D-E-R-L-I-F-E.com slash success S-U-C-C-E-S-S story S-T-O-R-Y. So go there, get a quote in under 30 seconds, you'll get up to $3 million in coverage and then you can start to investigate and hopefully get life insurance so that you and your family will be taken care of. All right, let's get back to the show. And I was going to say one of you mentioned brotherhood and this culture and you did it by changing the way that people are competent. Compensation drives behavior and traditionally in like hard sell industries where it's like peer commission, you know, eat what you kill. Like that's a very competitive, not brotherhood and brotherly, you know, culture-driven organization. Right. Nobody's supporting each other. Correct. That's probably a different age or two. Yeah, and sisterhood. I mean, I'm amazed. You know, here it is. So, you know, we sold in like 2017, I want to say, but I'm sort of surprised that there haven't been other companies like that that have popped up, you know. But when you get into these sales organizations and it's this kind of, you know, pyramid scheme of the senior broker taking, you know, big pieces of every deal and spreading it around, you know, as they see fit. I'm sort of amazed that, you know, I think it's really hard when you're at the top of the pyramid to say, you know, there's, you know, there's another way to do this. Right. So, I think that's what's kept people because once again, every person when we started Richard's Barry Joyce was very successful in a, you know, mostly commissioned environment. You know, Falunheim's in O'Connor where I'd been had a similar system, but it was sort of modifying over time. But I think, you know, sales organizations, especially smaller ones can look at that. I mean, you can't replicate that as you get to be a, you know, 100 person group, you know, thousand person group. It's too hard to divvy up the pie. But for smaller boutiques, I think, you know, you want a commonality of purpose and a commitment and a spirit, you know, how you divvy up the pie can, as you say, drive some behaviors. Yeah, no, that's, it's very impressive. Now, so you built this up, you sold it, you decided to jump right back in, walk me through that mindset. Why did, why did you want to make the move to push me in a wake field? What was the play there? Well, I mean, I had never worked, you know, so really every organization I had been in, we had to kind of figure out every resource that we had ourselves. And I had never had an opportunity to work with an organization that had deep resources and, you know, a real international focus. So, you know, I talked to, you know, seven or eight firms when I decided to leave, you know, including staying with my former partners and another big organization, you know, CBRE, that's a great organization. And I was fortunate to get, you know, a bunch of offers, but to me, at this point in time, you know, my, my, my focus was, I wanted to have fun. I wanted to really enjoy the people I was working with. And I wanted to have, you know, an opportunity to sort of help mentor other people. And put myself in a position that we could win any piece of business, right? I mean, that's the compete at the highest level. So, it wasn't about, you know, who gave you the biggest signing bonus? I mean, frankly, I left a lot of money on the table coming to Cushman, but, you know, at some point in time, really, it's not, you know, the compensation is not your only reward in a career, you know, after you've had the level of success. So, you're, you're, you've joined the Cushman. And for people that don't know, for people that don't know what you're doing at Cushman, but also what Cushman Wakefield does. Maybe just give a brief rundown of what their purpose and their vision is. Sure. Yeah. I mean, Cushman Wakefield, it's a large organization, international organization, 50,000 people across the world, 140 offices, you know, great client, you know, great, great clients represent tenants, represent landlords, you know, sell properties, manage properties. It's a, it's a very, you know, very substantive company, you know, competes with the CBREs and the Jones Lang LaSalle's of the world. Yeah. Good, good. Okay. So, what are you, so what are you working on? What are you working on at Cushman Wakefield now? Because you also work in a very interesting, an interesting niche or niche for my American friends. So what do you do at Cushman Wakefield? Sure. Well, you know, so I, I need our Cambridge group and also lead our life science practice in Boston. So I think as you're aware, right, the life science industry, you know, thanks in part to MIT and Harvard has had, you know, explosive growth in the greater Cambridge market. So, you know, we are very, you know, humble to work with groups such as, you know, Pfizer, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, Bristol Myers, Squib, CRISPR, you know, some of the gene editing companies. So we're helping those organizations strategize on how to build their, their real estate portfolios, not only locally, but across the country and across the world. So it's a great opportunity, you know, the, when you think about the mission of a Dana Farber or what Pfizer and, and, and BMS are doing for people in the world, you know, our opportunity for our team to just help a little bit on that mission, you know, is something that's really rewarding to our team. Now, I am curious, what are some of the things that you've seen? Because we're all living, we're all living virtual now. So that impacts real estate. Yes. That's impacted real estate in a big way. Walk me through some of the things that you've seen over the past year and a half. When it comes to commercial real estate, what companies are doing? How, how is it impacting? I'm curious to see. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think on the life sign inside, it has not been as dramatic an impact because, you know, you can't work in a lab remotely, right? So the lab people had to be at work, but certainly on the office side, you know, there, there has been significant impacts and, and a lot of space on the market. And I don't think anybody is quite figured it out yet, but, you know, as you think about interesting issues that are going to come into play, I think a lot of people have gotten very comfortable working remotely. So I think as you think about attracting tenant talent and, and retaining talent, especially younger folks, I think if there's a hybrid opportunity where they can work from home two or three days a week and, and be in the office, you know, two or three days a week, that's probably going to give some organizations, you know, an advantage. And really the real estate business that we're in, we're really in the talent business. So it's really not about bricks and mortar, you know, the CEOs and, and sea level folks are really focused on how can I use my real estate to attract the best and brightest people for my company. And, you know, some of this back to work and workplace strategy and, and, and, and hybrid scheduling, I think is really going to play out, Scott, across all industries over the next few years. And, there's not a one size fits all. It's, it's going to be different company to company industry, to industry, age group workforce, you know, I think it's going to be really impactful and very interesting to watch. I just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode, HubSpot. HubSpot's CRM is the easiest tool you can ever find to align your team. There are two features that you need in a CRM that optimize every activity your team does. It's the ability to communicate, meaning chat, email, et cetera, messaging, as well as a unified system of record. Your company is going to use a CRM to manage conversations with prospects and customers throughout all stages of the buyer journey. And as your company grows, these conversations get a little bit more difficult. Information make it lost. Communication may be disjointed and HubSpot solves all that. 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So, you know, I think it really depends on where you are and where you live and what kind of job opportunities because, you know, unfortunately, this parts of the country where, you know, the work opportunities are not there and they're going to be harder and harder to come by. But, you know, one interesting sort of trend that we talked about is, you know, you think of somebody working for, you know, a pie-in, conglomerate type of company and you need to pay them what a working wage in a New York or a Boston or Chicago brings. If some percentage of those jobs do not have to be in office and you can handle those remotely and you can have people in more sort of rural parts of the country and you can afford to pay somebody, you know, whatever, 50 percent less to live in another locale, I think that's going to have an impact on organizations because, you know, you don't have to pay top dollar if people aren't coming into the office anymore and can handle things remotely. So, that's going to be a very interesting trend, I think, to follow. Yeah, because now, if you think about that, now people who are working in New York in a pay ban for New York and they're making New York salaries and they move to nowhere, you know, somewhere else and they appear that was working in another city in another pay ban. Well, now there's no reason why they shouldn't be paid the exact same. Yep, that's a huge, that's an HR issue now. Now you've got to figure out the ethics of what to pay people and what, that's a big deal. Totally, totally, totally. I mean, you know, you think here and was just on with some folks yesterday and it's like, you know, people not wanting to live in Boston and enjoying the lifestyle in Maine, right? Well, you can live a lot more comfortably in Maine economically than you can in greater Boston. So, you know, are there going to be jobs that move that way or is this going to kind of advance that a little bit because once again, it's all about talent. You need the smart people and if they want to, if they don't want to live where you want them to live or to commute in and you still want access to that intelligence, you know, you're going to have to work with them in order to, once again, attract the best and the brightest and it's so competitive, you know, yeah, because now you can work for anywhere. You can, you can, you can leave a job like that and work anywhere in the world. No problem. Totally, right? Totally. You see, you see companies, now I know, so this is, this is life science. So I get it. Life science is probably not changing that much because you need to be in a lab for the foreseeable future doing things physically. But have you seen across question and way of field? Have you seen companies migrating from more of a co-working environment? Have you seen, or just people are just trying to do like a hybrid model? Have you seen any of that? Yeah, yeah, I mean, I would say everybody for the most part is at least going to a hybrid and a model and, you know, that's getting into discussions with, so, you know, if you used to have an office or a cubicle that was assigned to you and you're only going to come in three days a week, do you still get your assigned desk or cubicle or do you no longer qualify for that? You know, if you're a four day a week person, you get an office. If you're a three day a week person, you don't or two days or so on and so forth. So it's happening real time across organizations right now. And as I said, it's not a one one size fits all. It's it's different for every organization. And it's a major opportunity for customer and wake field to help organizations try to figure this out. Yeah, I'm now I'm here. Have you you're the guy who champions and sells commercial real estate? Have you been more productive at home or were you more productive in an office? I mean, I never would have predicted how efficient I have been remotely. And, you know, even time to time, you know, folks will say, are you coming in tomorrow and it's like literally I I cannot afford to come in tomorrow because I can't afford to be on the hour and a half commute or even, you know, to have a lot of unexpected interactions, which are fun because, you know, working remotely is certainly not fun. But it's this extremely efficient. And even even on the on the process itself, I mean, you think about when you were working with a company and showing them new sites or alternatives. Of course, you used to do that, you know, you got in a car and you took four people and you looked at building a, building B, building C. Now through this, the vast majority of some very large transactions have all been done remotely, where you just do, you know, back to back Microsoft Teams or Zoom presentations. And it's all a, you know, sort of virtual presentation on the property. Here's the property. It's the site and it's funny one organization, a life science group who has people from all over the country. So, you know, we've had to do them in this virtual way, but they all happened to be in town. And so we did an actual tour a few weeks ago. And their response was, oh, God, this is like so much worse. It's such a waste of time. You know, we got to do these virtual, this getting in the car and fighting traffic is is no way to do things. So it's very interesting to see how, how that'll evolve. But you've closed commercial transactions virtually in the last year and a half. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Many, many. I mean, yeah, had a very, our team had a very strong year last year and, you know, expect the same this year. So once again, a lot of that is, you know, being in greater Boston and being a life science broker advisor, you know, it's sort of like a good place to be, right? It's much harder for, you know, just strict office brokers, you know, that it's a heck of a lot harder. I appreciate that. It's very, very just so interesting how the, how the world's changing and you're kind of just living it every single day because you're working in, you know, you're working in the, in the office space and the commercial real estate. And that's one major area that's been impacted. I actually have family that work for more gardening in the commercial retail. And they're, well, they're getting slaughtered. They're not having the same positive conversation that you are. They're putting on anchors on malls. And that was the job before. Now everything's revamped. So it's been tough. Yeah, that tough go. Yes, for sure. Okay, so what I wanted to, so that was really, that was, that was great. Now, you took, you took the, you know, you had the foresight to write down a couple of points that I thought were interesting that I wanted to, to just unpack because they're really good career, they're obviously we're pivoting now from commercial real estate and COVID, but they're really good just career points. And I thought they were interesting to talk through because they're, they're provocative a little bit. Some of them. So one of the, one of the ones I thought was interesting is you only need to make three to four big career decisions. You mentioned moving on from near term success, but why is that important for people that are earlier on in their career to understand what that means for them? I just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode Quantum metric. 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Yeah, I mean, I just don't think there's that many, there are that many maybe even opportunities but you don't have to make that many big decisions in your career but one thing that I think really holds a lot of people back is being in a role that has kind of success at that moment in near term success and not being able to kind of peek over the mountaintop to say, well, maybe on the other side there's even more opportunity, not like there's no way I can ever leave this job or this role because I'm so comfortable doing what I'm doing and that happened to me a few times, right? I mean, I transitioned from broadcasting to real estate. I'm doing really well at this well established old line firm. Why would you go to a fledgling startup and then why would you leave that to start your own firm and then why would you leave that to go to cushion or wakefield? So I just don't see that many decisions that I've had to make but I think a lot of times people get very comfortable and they're not willing to take that risk for more success because, you know, not everybody is driven that way, I guess either, right? So, you know, some people can settle for less. What about this one? Make a bet on yourself and take the chance to be a different maker? Yeah, totally. Well, I mean, I just think, you know, as we said, we have an opportunity to work with some great organizations which gives us kind of great reward but, you know, I think people, you know, I think in our role, they're looking for advisors that can kind of help steer them into what, you know, an educated person, experienced person thinks is going to happen, right? Because there's constant decisions should we sign a three-year lease? Should we sign a five-year lease? Is the market going to get worse? Is the market going to get better? And, you know, especially in the real estate brokerage world, I always like to say, you know, to clients when they're asking about their advisors. I'm like, when your real estate broker tells you not to do a deal, that's when you have an advisor and not a broker, right? I don't think we should go transact right now because I think it's going to be better in three years. You're not going to find a lot of salespeople that are going to say, I'm going to turn down today's commission because, you know, hopefully I'll be working with this company in three years and we will transact. So, you know, that's what I mean by making a bet on yourself and it's once again, people that kind of get stuck in roles that, after a while, they just don't find rewarding. They're not really, you know, passionate about it. They're not having that much fun at it, but they're afraid to make a bet on themselves and do something else and take a chance. The clients you work with are a reflection of you. Yeah, I think it's, you know, actually one of our receptionists had pointed that out to me years ago, just on kind of fielding the incoming calls and this was really pre-voicemail even, right? So, you know, you'd come back and you'd get a stack of pink slips and so, you know, our receptionists would be interacting with everybody's clients and she just, you know, noticed that, you know, I mean, she just said, you know, my clients were the nicest people to deal with and I think, you know, over time, the, you know, super analytical clients deal with the super analytical advisor and the most social networked, you know, entertaining at night folks work with the most socially, you know, involved people and, you know, the hard asses work with the hard asses. So, I really think over time, you know, you can't fake it and people hire people that they trust, that they like being around and that they believe in and I don't think you can fake that, you know, if you are, if you are, you know, dealing with somebody who's very technically proficient and over time they find out you're not technically proficient, I don't think that's a match that works long term. So, that's what I mean by that. And even, even, even to take that a step further and said differently, if we extrapolate that concept to anybody, if you are, if you are very self-aware and you find yourself constantly surrounded by really shitty people, that's a really good introspection point where you should be like, this is, this is a mirror of potentially who I am. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it goes beyond sales and beyond real estate. This is, I found that an interesting point because I don't think we think about that. Even, you know, I mean, and you can't fake it. It's like, listen, if you are a huge, you know, if your client's a huge opera fan and you live for the NFL, you know, over time it's going to be hard to continue to find the commonality of talking about things not just about business, right? And you can't, you can't really fake it and you shouldn't fake it, right? I mean, you shouldn't fake it. That's a life lesson, that's not even a, that's not a sales, that's a life lesson. Yeah. That's true to you. Yeah. One other one that I thought was interesting, finishes strong as you start. Obviously, everybody thinks that that'll make sense. But what have you seen? And we can talk about an commercial, commercial real estate context, sales context, which is just, you know, as a, as a good business individual or professional, walking through that concept. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's a lesson I learned from a mentor of mine's wife, you know, who was the headmaster of a private school where two of my kids went and she was always like finished strong. It's sometimes easy to, you know, start things, get almost to the finish line and fade. You know, you got to get through the finish line and be just as engaged at that point in time as when you were first even, you know, pitching a project. So it's just so important. And I mean, it happens in real estate all the time, especially in commercial real estate where, you know, you get to like an MOU or it's called a letter of intent in real estate where you nail the business terms and then you start negotiating the actual lease document. And there's a lot of people that just get it to the business, to the L.O.I. and then just kind of keep their fingers crossed that everything's going to work out and the two attorneys are going to work through the lease. That's not how we were, you know, we, you know, provide extensive lease comments to the in-house counsel or outside counsel for our clients and are on every lease negotiation call. You can fade early or you can stay on. And I think our clients really appreciate it. And, you know, once again, the the Christmas resources we have people in our organization that are attorneys and operating expense experts and measurement of properties experts and project management experts that dig into every detail of that lease. And that's how you separate yourself from the pack of dropping off before you even started talking about, you know, issues that'll cost hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars over the the course of a, you know, 15-year major lease. Amazing. And then last one that I thought was interesting was always have clarity of purpose. What's that? Well, that's really, I think it's really more like appreciating what our clients are doing and it's really, you know, it's really helping them with their success. And, you know, how lucky are we to help somebody, you know, to work with a Pfizer, right, who's bringing, you know, the vaccine to the world to work with, you know, not an unknown name. Right, right. I mean, and to work with a Dana Farber that's helping to cure cancer and protecting their real estate interests like every dollar that's spent on rent is your dollar. I think, you know, just reminding our team the clarity of that purpose and what they're up to and how lucky we are and how we can, you know, in some small way help them support their amazing missions that, you know, make what we do, you know, seem very, very insignificant. You know, it's very, especially the life sciences, you work with them very interesting. Yeah, very, very interesting customers for sure. Okay, so I want to, I want to do some rapid fire career questions that I finished these interviews off with. But before we pivot, last thoughts on commercial real estate, your career, and then where do people reach out to you? Where do people find you if they want to get in touch, social media or otherwise? Oh, sure. So, I mean, I mean, I think the commercial real estate industry is changing dramatically. I think, you know, in our, I don't know what we say, COVID world, it's not free or post. I think there's going to continue to be a lot of changes that every organization is going to go through and we've got a deep team to help. Best way to get a hold of me would probably just be through email, robert.richensatcushwake.com, CUSHWAKE. And, you know, my mobile number is 617-943-3928. But always interesting in understanding challenges that organizations have and being able to help them out or even helping, you know, younger folks with career decisions, which is, you know, tremendously rewarding at the stage of my career. So now, now I know you're a real, a real salesperson because nobody's ever given out their phone number on this show before. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, hey, bring it on. Let's do it. All right. Good. Very good. Okay. Call us, right? I mean, this will be one of the few times anyone will call. We, we have to call them, right? So that's true. That's very true. All right. The way to look at it. I love it. Okay. A couple of rapid fire. Biggest challenge, you've had in your career. Which point was that and how did you overcome it? I would say the biggest challenge was definitely transitioning from broadcasting into commercial real estate. And I don't know how I overcame it really just with persistence and passion and intensity. Good. Very good. A mentor, a person. I know there's probably been many, but you have to pick one. Who was that? What did they teach you? I would say probably that would be my sort of high school hockey coach and ended up being the, you know, headmaster where two of my three sons went to school. And he just, just taught, you know, how to do things right and not take shortcuts. You know, one thing I see a lot of people doing and I counsel against it is spending a lot of effort trying to figure out the easiest way to accomplish a task. And instead of figuring out the easiest angle and how I can shortcut this and that, just do the job and go through and get it done. And I think I learned a lot of that from, you know, Mr. Flood. Very good. That's smart. That's good advice. What would be a resource that you'd recommend people check out? A book or a podcast that you maybe would recommend that you've that's impacted you over your career anything in particular? I can't really think of anything specifically. I just think it's, you know, staying in tuned with kind of what's going on and having sort of broad interests. And I wouldn't get very segmented. I would be really open to, you know, we always said, you know, like when I was, we talked to the marketing folks at Rich's Barry Joyce and Partners, I would be like, listen, I don't want the best marketing materials in commercial real estate. I want the best marketing materials and industry. So what are the automotive folks doing? What's going on in insurance investments? I think it's very important to have kind of a broad perspective as your advice and clients because you just can't be, you know, too too segmented on one particular expertise. What would be one thing that you would tell your 20-year-old self? My 20-year-old self. Don't watch the 1987 World Series between the Red Sox and Metz. That would be, that would be my first or the Patriots Giants Super Bowl game. It's been a few. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, I can't really think of, you know, I mean, once again, I don't really consider myself a risk-taker. I mean, I remember talking to my dad about transitioning from, from broadcasting into real estate. And he's like, well, what are you going to do? And it's like, well, you know, I'm going to help companies find, you know, space they need to run their organizations. And he's like, well, what happens when they have all fine found the amount of space they need? I'm like, good question, dad. Hopefully that doesn't happen. No, it's just going to be a short career. But I would say, you know, I would just embolden myself to continue to kind of take chances and, you know, really wanting to be a difference maker and wanting to know that you are giving your clients the best advice there is out there, right? I mean, don't settle for anything less than being the best. And last question, what does success mean to you? Success means to me providing for my family, right? Giving them opportunities that, you know, we didn't have growing up. I think that's really what it means. I think it's success means helping others to become successful, you know, so some lessons learned like our talk today. How can you help pass it down to the next group of folks? Because, you know, helping somebody get it and change the opportunities they can provide their families is just, you know, amazingly rewarding.