[00:00:09] Speaker A: Hi, I'm John Koh and welcome to icons of D.C. area real estate, a one on one interview show highlighting the backgrounds and career trajectory of leading luminaries in the Washington, D.C. area Real estate market. The purpose of the show is to highlight their backgrounds and their experiences and some interesting stories about their current business as well as their past, and to cite some things that you might take away both from educational standpoint as well as lessons learned in the industry and some amusing and sometimes interesting background stories. So I'm hoping that you will enjoy the show. Before I introduce my guest, I'd like to share that both this podcast and the community I started in 2021 called the Iconic Journey in CRE, is now part of a new nonprofit organization with that same name. The new company will offer opportunities for sponsorship to grow the community, both in membership and in programs. It also allows you as listeners to show your appreciation for this podcast, which has delivered episodes twice monthly since August 2019 with a charitable contribution.
Transitioning the community and podcast into the nonprofit organization is underway. The Community, which is open to commercial real estate professionals between the ages of 25 and 40 years old, is currently up to 65 members and growing. If you would like to learn more about either joining the community or contributing to the podcast, please reach out directly to me at johnoenterprises C O E E N T E R p r a ses.com separately, my private company, Coenterprises, now we'll focus only on advisory work for early stage real estate firms and career counseling. If you have interest in learning more about its services, please please review my
[email protected] thank you for listening. Welcome to another episode of icons of D.C. area real estate. I'm thrilled to share that I had the pleasure of sitting down with Bruce Pascal, a top commercial leasing agent in D.C. with Cushman Wakefield and also the world's foremost Hot Wheels collector. Our conversation was a lot of fun as we sat in the Hot wheels museum. His 5,000 square foot space with very cool memorabilia, including over 7,000 pieces of both Hot Wheels cars and related full size models. Bruce and I actually sat in a custom Model T he will be taking to the Grand Nationals Top Fuel World Championship in Pomona, California actually next month.
Bruce's main profession, of course, is commercial real estate leasing, and he has 36 years of doing that in the city. Here are some of the key takeaways of our conversation.
He balances his dual passions between his real estate career and its Hot Wheels collection through managing his time pretty effectively. He basically has deals going with both cars and real estate deals simultaneously. So he's always negotiating. It seems like he shares his candid look at the D.C. real estate market, which he says is the most challenging he's seen in 36 years in the office leasing market, which is no surprise. He discusses the high demand for trophy buildings, of course, versus the struggle for the older properties.
He said he uses both digital and traditional marketing methods to stand out in a crowded market. He uses physical mailings and is particularly adept at doing in person personal things. He's adapted to change Internet advertising to the challenges of traditional canvassing.
He's adapted his strategies over the years. His personal background he grew up in a car loving family and pivoted from pre med to business during college. And he set up his own business more or less delivering affidavits to prosecute criminals and or served people. And he built his own business around that and he talks about that. That led into real estate. Then of course his Hot Wheels passion developed when he was a child, but in 1999 it kind of turned when he learned about the collection of it and he goes into that story.
So he has a daily routine. He talks about. He talks a little bit about bidding wars for office space. He gets into, as I said, creative marketing. So his story is a compelling blend of professional success and personal passion. We had a lot of fun. His insights into the market combined with enthusiasm. As you'll hear, whether you're a real estate professional or collector at heart, there's something special here. So please enjoy this wide ranging conversation with Bruce Pascal. So Bruce Pascal, welcome to icons of D.C. area real estate. Thank you for joining me today.
[00:05:25] Speaker B: Good morning. Welcome yourself.
[00:05:27] Speaker A: Thank you. So you're recognized as one of the DC's top commercial leasing agents and the owner of the world's most comprehensive Hot Wheels collection. What does a typical day look like balancing these two passions?
[00:05:41] Speaker B: So I always put work first because if you don't do your work, you don't have any money to do your passions. So work is always my priority. But the great thing about commercial real estate is you're not sitting there for hours working on one project. You're typically returning a phone call, preparing a letter of intent, reviewing a lease. And then when that's done, you always have time to then do something else that's part of your hobby. Which in my case usually means replying to 2 to 3 every morning. Emails that come in, talking about whether somebody's trying to sell me something, wants to get information about something they found are just seeking guidance in the hobby. So I think I have a really good mix between work and passion.
[00:06:29] Speaker A: That's great. That's great. As an innovator in real estate, what trends are you most focused on in today's market? Are you navigating current challenges in the D.C. office market?
[00:06:41] Speaker B: So the D.C. office market is from the landlord side, the most challenged market that I've seen in my 36 year career. On one hand, if you have a trophy building, you're getting phone calls, you're getting demand, and you're actually getting a bidding war. I had my first bidding war on a space, but it's one of the nicest spaces in downtown DC.
I have a building that's mid block, 1960s old air conditioning system, lots of columns like Rome. And do you remember that old commercial for the, what was that? The drive. The, the, the Maytag repair when nobody's calling, you know, and I feel like the Maytag repairman. And if I had to make my living on, you know, C buildings that are mid block, I'd be in really trouble right now. I'd have to be selling some Hot Wheels. So, you know, that's how I look at it. So it's a really strange market. So innovation is important. So for example, I just met with one of my clients that owns a C building and I said, you know, something just like a date where the spouse or the man or the woman kind of makes their impression on a first date in the first 10 seconds. I said, we can't change the location of our building, we can't change the ceiling height, we can't change the columns. But you know what we can do is why don't we get the largest TV that you can find in the world because the prices have come down.
Put a new material in one wall and then have one of those amazing graphics. Now these TVs, have you ever been to a Best Buy and you walk in and you see the fish on the wall moving? It looks like a real ocean. I said, let's do something. So when you walk in, people are going to be like, wow, this is a 2026 building.
Brand new, sophisticated electronics. And that'll be their first impression instead of what they have now, interestingly enough, is in 1970s painting on the wall for the 1970 building. You know, that ain't going to work anymore. So that's an exact case of what I would say is let's innovate, let's change the first impression. And it also, it goes into Marketing. I found, I remember years ago in the industry when we became on the Internet advertising flyers, which our brokerage shops love because they no longer had to do, you know, hundreds of mailings every day. I'm sure their postage price savings for all the brokerage shops was amazing. But I remember two years in, I started making flyers and my boss said, why are you mailing them? I said, you know why? Because everybody gets on the Internet every day, 17 to 25 flyers. I'm going to be the only one they get in the mail physically. And so I think sometimes innovation is just looking in the past what worked. It's a good point. And being different. And that's all about marketing, which you have to be a marketer if you're going to be a landlord broker.
[00:09:28] Speaker A: Do people still walk door to door and canvas?
[00:09:31] Speaker B: You know, so interestingly enough, the walking door to door has become more difficult, number one, because the guards now are much better.
[00:09:39] Speaker A: Right.
[00:09:40] Speaker B: Number two, the floors are electronically locked off. So you know, you can't, you know, you get onto somebody's floor, they may tackle you. So what made life easier now is there's all these services where I can actually sometimes get the personal cell phone for the decision maker. Now the question is, who's the decision maker? Which is always the challenge of any law firm, corporation, et cetera. But now I found the best technique is sometimes between 7 and 8 in the morning, are 6 to 7 o'clock at night. That way the staff doesn't answer the phone and you have a great shot getting to the decision maker. But I was never a cold caller just to say, hey John, interested in real estate? I always believe you should have a morsel of bait. The better bait when you fish, the better you are, of course. So my bait would be, did you know somebody just signed a lease to move into your building? You know Apple's going to be your new tenant? Or did you know that this law firm just went bankrupt, they're going to be leaving your building and I felt if you make the phone call information based, your success rate is much higher.
[00:10:44] Speaker A: Yeah, people want to learn.
[00:10:47] Speaker B: They always want to know what's going on in their house and they want to know what's going on in their neighborhood and they want to know what's going on in their building.
[00:10:52] Speaker A: Yeah.
So let's go back in time.
Tell us about your upbringing. What were the defining moments that shaped your drive and ambition? And why did you attend George Washington University? So let's start with the earlier story than that.
[00:11:08] Speaker B: So I'm a rarity. I am a true Washingtonian. My great grandparents opened up a tiny, what I called a grocery store. Is probably 600 square feet. But they had a grocery store in New Hampshire Avenue. Today it's a 711 right behind GW University. I was born at GW University. My father went to GW Law School. And I was thinking of becoming a doctor. And down the street was a doctor who had a connection to Gwen. So like a lot of kids, I was pre med that first semester. And then all of a sudden botany was pretty boring. And I decided, okay, I'm switching to business. And I ended up. My defining moments were, interestingly enough, is I had to put myself through school.
And my deal with my father was I'd pay for half the college, he would pay the other half.
[00:11:58] Speaker A: Where'd you go to high school?
[00:11:59] Speaker B: I went to Whitman. Bethesda. Sure.
[00:12:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:12:01] Speaker B: And I had saved up. I've been working since I was 6 years old. I delivered newspapers. I started a business going around door to door taking care of people's dogs and cats when they went out of town. I did anything to make a dollar. And when I wanted to get a 10 speed bike, my dad said, you got a three speed, that's good enough. And I said, no, I want a 10 speed. He says, well, you got to go pay for it yourself. Go get another job. And I bought it. Now the car bike got stolen, but that's another story. But to make a long story short, my sophomore year in college, I discovered I think I spent too much money in my freshman year. My savings was really low. What am I going to do? In 1980, Ronald Reagan passed a law that sheriffs and U.S. marshals no longer had to do summonses. If you're getting divorced or you didn't pay your rent, it used to be a U.S. marshal would go and put a note on your door. Private citizens could do it. And they were called special process servers. They would make the legal delivery and then they would have to do an affidavit and file with the court. And the interesting thing was you would get $25. So if I had to serve a summons on John Coe and I knocked on your door and I handed it to you, I made $25. And back in 1980, you know, if you did 10 of those a day, that's $250, you're making some money.
So I was delivering the summonses for two different law firms, my girlfriend's law firm. And my father was a lawyer. And I got the flu. You Ever had the flu? You feel like that? Oh yeah, I felt so bad. And so I leaned over to my roommate in the defining moment of my life and I said to my roommate, do you want to make $15? He goes, sure. So he went out and did 10 deliveries over the next few days. I paid him the 150. I sent a bill to the law firm for 250 and I said, wow, I can make money while I'm sleeping. Which is kind of like the definition of how you get wealthy one day. So I printed business cards. Pascal's Process service. I've been a salesman all my life. So I started knocking on law firm doors.
[00:14:01] Speaker A: Interesting.
[00:14:02] Speaker B: Well, to make a long story short, by the time I was a Senior, I had 65 law firms. I was delivering, I was doing over $100,000 a year of business while I was in college. And I had 11 part time people. The guys who lived in Southeast D.C. did Southeast University of Maryland students did you know, Maryland. And so college students was your college students. And I ended up becoming the second biggest process serving firm in D.C. and continued it for a couple years afterwards. But that got me a lot of the skill set that became great later on being a real estate agent, the ability to knock on the door, tell somebody why I'm a better company than the competitor and get hired.
[00:14:40] Speaker A: How did the law firms hear about you?
[00:14:42] Speaker B: So it was all door to door. And then I found literally door to door, I'd be wearing jeans and I'd be going to law firm and saying, who makes the decision here for process serving. And usually somebody would come out, I'd hand them my card and believe it or not, process serving is very difficult because sometimes it's hard to catch people and nobody unlike a restaurant. It's like a restaurant that had a bunch of bad meals. Every client was willing to sort of try somebody else to see if they magically could be better. It worked and I grew the business and it taught me tremendous skills of bookkeeping, record keeping. Transferable skills are perfect for the real estate incredibly.
And during which we can get into. I basically got one side said, you know, I don't want to make my living. $25 a shot. Somebody hit me ahead with a hammer. Once I was chased in a car. Guy had a gun. You know, it was a dangerous business serving summonses. I said, you know, I'm 26, what am I going to do? So I called up a guy named David Gilson, who was the premier law firm broker at that time in D.C. we sat down and he said, tell me about yourself. And when I told him I had 65 law firm clients, he goes, do you know so and so at this firm? I was like, oh, yes, Ally. I know her really well. Do you know Bob at this firm? Yeah. He took me down the hallway, and all I know was the president said, okay, you're starting tomorrow. Okay. So, yes, the transferable skills were there and taught me a great life lesson.
[00:16:19] Speaker A: So what firm was that?
[00:16:21] Speaker B: That was the precursor to cbre, I think. One of the greatest firms of all time in dc. Barnes, Morris, Pardo and Foster.
[00:16:29] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:16:29] Speaker B: Yeah. Then we became Insignia, then we became CBRE, and I stayed there 25 years before going to Vornado, and then stayed there for three years, and then Cushman and Wall Street.
[00:16:40] Speaker A: Was Bob Cohen running the office then?
[00:16:41] Speaker B: Bob Cohen was running the office and was one of the greatest persons you could ever work for. Just an amazing guy.
[00:16:51] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, for the listeners. I did interview Bob, so you can listen to that podcast. It's a good one. He talks about the origins of Barnes Morris.
[00:16:59] Speaker B: Actually, I remember my wife and I were buying our first home. We were so nervous. Of course, we didn't have a ton of cash. So she goes, well, why don't you go out to lunch with Bob Cohen? He has that beautiful home, and ask him how he did it? How do you borrow? How do you get it done? So we went out to lunch, and I said, bob, I'm buying a house. How'd you do it? He goes, oh, I paid cash.
I found out he was one of the most successful land brokers, assemblage brokers in the city before he became, you know, the manager and the leader of our firm. So I came home to my wife. She goes, how'd it do? I said, it didn't help much, honey. It didn't help much.
[00:17:34] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, he made big commissions.
[00:17:36] Speaker B: He did. He did. He's very successful, man.
[00:17:38] Speaker A: I mean, Oliver Carr. I mean, he went on and on.
[00:17:41] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:17:42] Speaker A: People he assembled land for.
[00:17:43] Speaker B: So just recently retired, but I think that's a fake word for Bob Cohen. He'll never retire.
[00:17:49] Speaker A: Literally, the month after he retired is when I sat down with him, so.
[00:17:52] Speaker B: Oh, really? Okay. What a genuinely great man.
[00:17:55] Speaker A: Yeah, it was good.
So let's shift gears for a moment to your passion here. How did your passion for Hot Wheels begin?
[00:18:03] Speaker B: So I was born in 1961, and I remember distinctly my favorite toy when I was 7 or 8 years old, came out in 1968 was the hot Wheels.
[00:18:14] Speaker A: Why?
[00:18:15] Speaker B: Well, I came from a Family that always loved cars. My grandfather worked at the National Archives, and he was in charge of the history of transportation. And he was considered the foremost expert on the history of automobiles in the world. Yes. When he died in 1962, he left a collection of 10,000 items related to the history of automobiles to my parents. So in our house growing up, even before Hot Wheels came out, we were toy cars of all types. Advertisements, brochures for cars going back to the 1920s and 30s. So I love cars. And our family car, our fun car is my dad had a 1929 Buick.
[00:18:56] Speaker A: Oh, my goodness.
[00:18:56] Speaker B: So I grew up in this automobile world. So when Hot Wheels came out, it was. And of course, my parents encouraged it. You know, we had the Orange track, we had the cars. And, you know, but like a lot of boys, I put him in a cigar box, 10 or 11 years old, and forgot about him. Then in 1999, a real estate broker that worked for Vornado named Curtis Paul, he was one of my best friends at the time. He saw that box with me, and he goes, what's inside? I said, my old Hot Wheels. And I opened it up, and he goes, oh, these are nice. I'll give you $200 for them. I said, are you kidding me? These have value. He goes, oh, yeah, this Camaro is worth about 80. This car is worth about 60. This one's 20. This one's only 10 condition. And he really knew.
[00:19:39] Speaker A: So he was a collector.
[00:19:40] Speaker B: He was a collector. And I said to. So if he's one of my best friends collecting, maybe I'll get into it. And, John, I guess you'll figure out, I guess as you see around here, yes, museum, whatever I do, I only have one gear, 110%. So within a week, I was running ads in the Washington Post. Are you in your 50s and still have your Hot Wheels from childhood? And I started buying and buying Hot Wheels. And then six months later, I read an article that the rarest Hot Wheel in the world was going to be for sale. And it was around 2000. Remember the tech bust?
Boom and bust was the boom at that time, and our company had just given us retention bonuses to stay. And I said, you know what? I'm going to do it. So I bought the rarest Hot Wheel in the world. And once I got that car, I said, oh, boy. I now have a duty to really learn about the company.
And I remembered when I was first a broker, we would put you in a dark room with the yellow pages and say, cold call.
And I probably made Thousands of calls a month to strangers. So I got pretty good at that. And I said, you know what? If this rarest hot wheel in the world was actually discovered in a former employee's garage, maybe another former employee has something.
So I found out Mattel had an alumni division. I got invited to go to one of their events, and I started creating a database. I still have the database today. 4000 names of people who work for Mattel. And the problem was, if the name was John Smith, you're never going to find him on the Yellow Pages. But if the name was Otto Kuni, Otto Gabler, you know, a lot of foreigners, you'd find them. So I found over 400 former employees and interviewed them, took notes. I eventually wrote a book on the history of hot wheels in 2011.
[00:21:33] Speaker A: Oh, goodness.
[00:21:34] Speaker B: But every conversation, I'd end and say, did you keep anything from your olden days? I was a patent guy. I just had the patents. Would you sell them? Sure. I was art director. I have a lot of the original artwork. Would you sell it? Sure. So I ended up accumulating the equivalent of breaking into Mattel's headquarters in 1968 and stealing everything but the cars, the wood molds, the blueprints, artwork, internal notes. They called it the toy car. They didn't have Hot Wheels named until later, and that's what I did. I became a detective, but I used the same skills that I used in brokerage to build up one of the largest historical collections of Hot Wheels memorabilia. And this is my 25th year, and I haven't slowed down. If anything, I'm speeding up.
[00:22:24] Speaker A: So this is the Henry Ford Museum of Hot Wheels, basically.
[00:22:28] Speaker B: It really is, if you've ever been to Henry Ford's museum.
[00:22:30] Speaker A: I grew up in Detroit. I'm a native Detroiter. And when you talk cars.
[00:22:34] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:22:35] Speaker A: That's my blood.
[00:22:36] Speaker B: Yes, yes.
By the way, you did see my 1913 Model T hot rod, right? Yes. So there's a little Detroit down here for you, of course. Yeah, same thing, same logic.
[00:22:47] Speaker A: My father worked for the largest department store in Detroit, and then his father was with General Motors for 35 years.
[00:22:53] Speaker B: Wow. Amazing.
[00:22:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:55] Speaker B: So you have a little oil in your blood.
[00:22:57] Speaker A: Yeah.
You can't. You can't help but love cars if you grew up in Detroit.
[00:23:02] Speaker B: No, no. And you can't help not to love cars if you grew up in a family of antique cars and car shows. And that was part of my life. I've probably been to 500 car shows in my life. You know, just to give you an Idea.
[00:23:15] Speaker A: So that's.
[00:23:17] Speaker B: It's there. The passion's there.
[00:23:19] Speaker A: Your collection is legendary, including the rare pink rear peak rear loading beach bomb. What's the story behind acquiring that piece, and how did it shape your collector journey?
[00:23:30] Speaker B: So six months after collecting, I read a newspaper article that the rarest hot wheel in the world sold for $72,000. And I came home to my wife and I said, I am so mad. I would have bought it if I could have. And that was in the Washington Post. Then, interestingly enough, I think it was the Washington Star or some other newspaper I read three months later, had the same article with a little words on the bottom. The deal still has not concluded, but the seller has already bought a Dodge Viper.
So I said, whoa, this. That's interesting. So the guy's name was Chris Marshall, who owned the car. Try to look up the name Chris Marshall across the United States. You'll never find him. So what did I do? Same technique I always do. I called the writer of the article in the paper. I tracked him down, Kansas City Star. And the guy said, you know what? I. I don't think ethically I can give you his name and number, but what's your purpose? I said, well, I'd like to buy the car. He goes, well, I know he wants to sell it. Let me give him a call. And then an hour later, the phone rang. Kris Marshall.
[00:24:32] Speaker A: There you go.
[00:24:33] Speaker B: We took two or three months of negotiating, and we eventually, I bought the car from him, and he flew down in the airport. We exchanged the money for the car, and that was 25 years ago. So that's how I got it. Wow.
[00:24:46] Speaker A: Isn't that something?
So were there any early signs that sales and negotiation would become your career focus? Any childhood or early career moments that foreshadowed that talent?
[00:24:58] Speaker B: So, great question. I've done practice interviews for over 3,000 people that wanted to get in the industry over my 36 years. Wow. So what I'm always looking for is because we can train anybody in finance, excel all the necessary tools to be a great broker, but the one thing you really can't train is that instinct, salesmanship. And what I look for is people who are, in some ways, like me as a child. I ask people in the interviews, did you ever win any sales contest? Did you ever do any sales? And if the answer is no, I'm. You know, I get nervous if somebody said, you know, for example, I sold lemonade. Distinctly remember that at 6, 7, 8 years old, I went door to door. I was part of a Youth group selling donuts. And I was competitive. I had to win. And I think I sold the most donuts every single year. So the essence is we're looking for the woman who sold the most Girl scout cookies. Those people tend to be great salespeople.
[00:26:01] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:26:01] Speaker B: The one who sold the least cookies, they, you know, they're back room, they're not going to be the front person. So I knew sales was a passion all the way through college. Knocking on doors and getting clients. You know, have no fear. You know, as I tell my wife, I probably asked out 100 girls who said no. Thank God she finally said yes. You know what I mean? But yeah, it's. There's no shame in getting rejected. And that's, I think, a barrier for a lot of people to get into. Yeah, of course. Yeah.
[00:26:30] Speaker A: But it's overcoming the fear of asking too, to some extent. For some people, at least once you.
[00:26:36] Speaker B: Do it a few times, it then becomes habit.
[00:26:39] Speaker A: Yep. So what drew you to real estate as a career and how did your sales skills develop over the time?
[00:26:46] Speaker B: So after college, I bought a smaller warehouse in ninth and Rhode Island Avenue to house my process serving company. Right. And we were on the second floor and I didn't know what to do with the first floor and it was like a warehouse. So I found some local artists, Zenith Gallery, Marjorie Goldberg and others. And I rented space to artists on the first floor. And about two years later, someone came to my door and said, hey, I want to buy your processor. Make contact company. And I was ready to sell it. So I sold the processor. Income, I had a little bit of money and started buying and selling houses in Logan Circle.
[00:27:25] Speaker A: Oh, really?
[00:27:26] Speaker B: Now in those days, I remember one house I bought, 1511 Vermont Ave. I paid 75,000. A year later, somebody knocked on the door and offered me 150. I said, sold. Today it's worth 2 million. So there's a good lesson in there. You know, bought a bunch of smaller properties because you could buy houses back. People don't realize in 19, you know, 86, 87. Yeah, you could buy houses for 60, 70, $90,000. It was unbelievable. And my house was a Victorian, three story, you know, miniature mansion, you know, for 75,000. So I was doing that and then we had a little downturn. I'm trying to remember the year. I think it was like 88, 89, 89, 89, 90. And it was the first time that I was renovating a house and I realized I'm going to sell it for 25,000 less than I paid for, you know, in it. And to lose money at 25, I realized, geez, I've done my process serving, I've done my real estate. I have a passion for finance. I was president of the school's finance, you know, investment club. A passion for sales and a passion for real estate. What am I going to do? Then somebody told me about the industry, commercial real estate. And they suggested I'd meet David Gilson.
[00:28:35] Speaker A: Right.
[00:28:36] Speaker B: And I called David Gilson up just to have an informational meeting. What does a commercial real estate do? And actually, to tell you the truth, I went in totally misguided. I thought you just show somebody a building, you walk away and you get paid. I didn't realize there's a lot of work in between. But that's when David hit off and found out I had 65 law firm clients. One thing led to another, went down the hallway. So Bob Cohen. And within 48 hours I was hired to try to learn the business. So that's how I got into it. And my sales skills were easily applied and developed because in those days we really didn't have the Internet and computers like we do today. Matter of fact, there was no costar. We had a book called Black Sky. Do you remember that?
[00:29:21] Speaker A: Of course.
[00:29:21] Speaker B: It was like a telephone book and it would tell you what spaces available updated. Was it like twice a year? They would update firms would send you a sheets of paper alphabetically. I put them in my drawer. So I used to do surveys. I felt sorry for anybody that had a name of a firm that started with a P or S because I had done my survey with Blake and Car and Douglas early on. So that's how I got into it. But my sales skills totally developed because I was required to make hundreds of calls a week. And that's exactly what I did.
[00:29:57] Speaker A: So you met people that way? The old fashioned way.
[00:30:00] Speaker B: The old fashioned way.
[00:30:01] Speaker A: So in the early days, what was the first deal or experience that confirmed that you made the right choice in real estate?
[00:30:08] Speaker B: There's one deal that I'll never forget.
Two weeks into the business, a broker, John Philippos, came down the hallway and said, listen, I'm going to do you a favor if you ever done a listing side. And by the way, I didn't know the difference those days between a landlord broker and a tenant broker. All shops did everything. There was no specialties right then. Right. So he hands me a Burger King that had caught on fire behind the FBI building on E Street. Oh, my 900 block of East.
[00:30:35] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:30:36] Speaker B: And literally, when you Walked in there, the place was a mess. Your shoes would slide on like the burnt oil, you know, it was a mess. He had that listing for a year and a half and no luck.
So nobody had told me how to market a building at that time. And I didn't know how landlord brokerage worked, which traditionally you put a flyer and you send the flyer to the actual brokers. Brokers have clients, they bring the tenant by. So I found out the company would pay for postage. So I went to the yellow Pages. I went to, in those days, we call them secretaries. Went to my secretary and by the way, it was like one sixth of a secretary, you know, I said, can you do me a favor? Can you make a label for every single restaurant in Washington D.C? i remember it may have been 200, 250 or whatever. And I created a flyer and I sent the flyers directly to the tenants.
Within three weeks I had three tours. And then all of a sudden I had two groups, a Burger King and remember the old store called Lunchbox. And the two of them were looking at it and then Lunchbox said, I'll take it. I was like, oh my God. And I did a 10 year lease, you know, for 5,000ft in my first month in the business.
Now there is a little bit of a preamble, a post amble to that.
The landlord decided, well, I'm proud I put a demolition clause in. I'm probably going to only pay you for five years because, you know, I'll be demolishing the building. I went to Bob Cohen, he goes, well, sorry, this is what happens. But you know, maybe you'll do a lot of business with them in the future. That's zero in the future. So my fee got from 100 grand to 50 grand. And then my partner goes, hey, the deal I brought you in, I take half. All of a sudden, 100 became 50, 50 became 25. And I was a bunch of months into my draw. I had to pay back the company first. That's how draws were, of course. So I got a check for like $6,000, whatever, but it paid off my credit cards. But that one deal showed me. I said, wow, this is the easiest business in the world. So early on I underestimated the complexity, but I had a, an amazing success in the first month. And that's what got me to be convinced to become a landlord broker. And that's what the majority. I've done about 3,000 leases in my career, probably about 2,600 of them have been landlord side and about 400 of them tenant. Although from an income standpoint, the 400 tenant probably gave me half my income in my lifetime.
[00:33:09] Speaker A: Interesting.
[00:33:10] Speaker B: Yeah. Because they tend to be longer lasting, larger deals and you get a higher fee doing a tenant deal than you do on a landlord side.
[00:33:17] Speaker A: Interesting, Interesting. So basically, if you're in the brokerage business, you have to choose if you have more patience and then the long term kind of thinking, you might be a tenant broker. Whereas, you know, if you're into the high volume process, you're in the landlord broker. Is that so?
[00:33:37] Speaker B: So the answer is it's interesting that, you know, actually I'll give the best advice I can.
[00:33:41] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:33:41] Speaker B: If you want to become a broker, you actually should learn on the landlord side because you, you only learn in this industry and trust me, everybody makes mistakes and you learn you by doing deals. Of course, every time a doctor does surgery, he learned something better. I'd rather have a doctor did 4,000 surgeries than the first one. Right. So on the landlord side, it's a volume business. Yep. So you're doing a lot of letter of intents, you're learning the language, the clauses, you're doing a lot more leases, you're meeting a lot more brokers, and it's a faster way to learn the business. And I would say the landlord side also, you're in the meetings with the landlords, you get to understand how they think, how they look at deals, what's important, concessions. So when you do a tenant side of the job, I always felt more prepared and I brought an advantage. I heard once an expression, wouldn't you like to have a former IRS agent be your person doing the taxes for you? And that's what I would say when I go into some of the pitches, is I understand how landlords think, I understand how they work, I understand and hopefully I can craft what I would call a win win situation for you and the landlord and that deal will be better for you. And that's been my mantra.
[00:34:54] Speaker A: That's great.
So DC's office market has faced seismic shifts over the past last decade, starting with sequestration, the pandemic, and now the new administration's policies. How would you describe the current state of the Office Market in D.C. and surrounding area?
[00:35:14] Speaker B: Well, as I said earlier, it's bifurcated that if you have a brand new building, a trophy building in a great location, you can sleep at night, you know you're going to keep the building and you have a coveted item. If you have a B or C building, you're seeing vacancy rates Depending on what shop and how they calculate it, anywhere from 23 to 27%, by the way. Let's put that in perspective. Perspective. When I started my career, we were 5 and 6% vacancy. I mean, I couldn't even fathom. I remember the first time ever northern Virginia hit 14% and we thought it was a crisis. And I felt sorry for every broker working in Virginia. And now, you know, we'll take 14%. You know, did the market have the.
[00:35:58] Speaker A: Same tiering when you first started A, B, C?
[00:36:01] Speaker B: No, we've never had such a divergent market.
I remember one of my best years was 2011, 2012, and actually the economy wasn't doing great. There's a lot of cutbacks at that time. And I had a lot of B buildings and I was doing deals left and right because businesses were looking to reduce their rent from 40 to 35, from 45 to 25. And all my B buildings filled up and I ended up being one of the top agents that year. And all the brokers that were traditionally doing the more expensive buildings, nobody wanted to, nobody could afford it. So that's one point to say how divergent the market is. The true trophy vacancy is probably single digits right now because there are some buildings that can't even do deals because of their financing. So if you actually take your tenant out to True Opportunities, it's a extremely tight market. If you're just looking for 4,000ft in a B or C building or even an, you know, an A minus, you're gonna have 50 or 60 buildings to look at.
[00:37:06] Speaker A: I mean, if you look at the last five years in the Washington D.C. area, the buildings that have delivered in those last five years are all well above 95% leased pretty much, right?
[00:37:17] Speaker B: 100%. Yeah, 100%. If there's something left, it's encumbered. Tough to get a few exceptions, but yes, 100% correct on that.
[00:37:25] Speaker A: And it's just people want new space if they're in that in that realm.
[00:37:30] Speaker B: So think of all the dynamics that have changed the column placement. Instead of 20 by 20, it's 35 by 40, which means you can put your conference room anywhere you want and be happy. The ceiling heights have been increased from 8486 to 9ft. The air conditioning system that used to be on the side of your door taking up space, humming all day now is in your ceiling. Now they have doas. It's better controlling windows. The windows are floor to ceiling. And you know who versus a punch window. So, you know, in many ways it's, it's such a better product today, and I think people truly appreciate it. And that's not even including corporations that want to go to a LEED certified building or, or have other unique requirements.
[00:38:18] Speaker A: How has tenant behavior changed post pandemic? And what strategies are landlords employing to stay competitive?
[00:38:26] Speaker B: So the best word I could say is scrambled eggs after Covid, every client used to know and tell you what they want.
It became scrambled eggs after Covid and it's finally getting closer to becoming a hard boiled egg. If I could use that analogy. The first few years, first couple years after Covid, I don't think anybody really knew how many employees really are going to come back. They're all nervous. The ones that they had policies where the lawyers could move to other states and work from and things were working. And now everybody wants everybody to come back to the office. And what do you do? Do you call that lawyer that moved to Utah and say, you have to come back here or do we make an exception? And then how many exceptions do we make? So I do believe, if you believe what you read about Donald Trump, who's going to require five days a week, if you see JP Morgan and some of these other firms, I think the pendulum is, will be swinging back. And that is the number one thing that I'm looking for. How sad.
And I love D.C. as fourth generation to see all these retailers that closed.
[00:39:33] Speaker A: It's really sad.
[00:39:34] Speaker B: Yeah, we lost another couple. In my building at 2101 L Street, we had Stoney's Bar and restaurant.
[00:39:40] Speaker A: Yes, I remember.
[00:39:41] Speaker B: Closed, reopened, closed again.
[00:39:42] Speaker A: I was a tenant there too.
[00:39:43] Speaker B: Yeah, we had a coffee shop. The coffee shop just closed this week. We had a bagel shop. Bagel shop's been closed and never released. So we have an entire L Street of vacancy. And look at 1050 Connecticut, one of the greatest. Located corner of Connecticut. Now they have these graphics and all the vacant space. So you walk by and you see a scene of graphics. You know, you got a Starbucks and you got a few openings. New downs.
[00:40:07] Speaker A: Did you see the 2101 L sold recently?
[00:40:10] Speaker B: Yes. We knew that was going to happen. We knew that was going to happen.
[00:40:13] Speaker A: And that was quite a discount purchase price, the discounts.
[00:40:18] Speaker B: You know, this is what I say every day. I can look and see what my stocks are worth by the minute.
I don't think landlords want to know what their building's worth. No. And it's very difficult to buy a building for $100 million and then to accept today that it May only be worth 35 or 50. And there is a tremendous amount of buildings in D.C. that have debt that are. Now, if they bought buildings in the last 15 years, they're underwater. Then there's a dance between lenders and owners. And the lenders don't want the buildings. The owners want to keep it. And I think that's a dynamic that will still have another few years to really get out of our system.
[00:40:59] Speaker A: Do you get involved in the capital markets at all within your business or not?
[00:41:02] Speaker B: So the way I get involved was when clients interested in purchasing a building, right. Years ago, at one time, I had 38 different listings, and each of those 38 listings had different owners. And there's a new building for sale. I would sometimes get 20, 20 phone calls of saying, hey, this building at 6 and I is coming for sale. What do you think? You know, can I lease it? Interestingly enough, one of the reasons why I never bought office buildings in my lifetime is I'd always look at the negatives first. You know, I don't. I don't like that particular side of the street. I don't like the architecture. I don't like the ceiling heights. And other brokers would say, oh, my God, you know, the lobby is beautiful. The parking garage is abundant. And we used to jokingly say, if you want a conservative rent, call Bruce Pascal. If you want a high rent, call Trip Howe.
And the reality was the rent was probably in the middle of the projected in the future. So that's how we looked at it.
[00:42:00] Speaker A: That's fascinating.
So with federal budget cuts and remote work reshaping the office landscape, what opportunities or challenges do you see for brokers and landlords in the coming years?
[00:42:13] Speaker B: So the first challenge we're all facing right now is the financial health of our. Of the landlord clients. And it's actually changed everything. So, you know, we used to do deals and go out and have dinners to celebrate. Now, you know, we just. It's not celebrating. It's just like we're just climbing out of a hole that we're in right now.
I think the challenges are how what best used is for buildings and for owners to make those decisions. In some cases it is conversion to residential. In some cases it's just giving the building back to the bank. And in some cases it's, you know, adding amenities to the building and doing some renovations. So the problem is, though, you know, you got a developer that's got a building that has a $350 debt, and the building is only worth $300 a foot.
And how do you tell them to go out and spend another hundred dollars a foot to, to renovate the base building, then put another 150 into tenant TI's, wait two years of free rent. You know, the math just doesn't scratch out. It doesn't. So we're really in for some interesting times to see, you know, how this all works out. The one advantage is, and this is tremendous, is there are developers, as you mentioned, who are buying buildings for $90 a foot. There were once 300. And I don't know, one statement I always learned as a kid, buy low, sell high. You know, maybe that opportunity is there, that there could be like the RTC days, the greatest creation of wealth is people that have a long term vision that come in when the market is at a low.
[00:43:50] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:43:50] Speaker B: So I think right now we could be at that nexus of all these opportunities. And if you have a landlord that has a lower basis, they can afford to do deals to undercut the market and do quite well.
[00:44:04] Speaker A: So it's a good time to buy if you're in that realm.
[00:44:07] Speaker B: But you have to be patient. This is not a buy to flip market.
[00:44:14] Speaker A: You have to have patient. Money is what you need, right?
[00:44:16] Speaker B: Which interestingly enough, if you look at all the class of buyers, that's family money, right? Long term family, they, they can buy a building. They can, you know, they're buying it for generational wealth.
You know, I represented one family client in the DC area and then I remember when the market was weak, you know, the reality is, you know what, the market's ugly. Instead of getting 70, we'll do 60 instead of this. But guess what? Ten years later, hopefully the market will be better again and that next generation will do better. If you have that mentality, you can adjust for the market and do deals.
[00:44:53] Speaker A: I had a panel last week and we had, it's the last podcast. Bob Murphy said, you know, I bought Gallery Place recently and he got quite a discount on that.
[00:45:03] Speaker B: Incredible.
[00:45:03] Speaker A: And you know, he said, you know, how can I lose? You know, it's, I paid 80 bucks a foot for a parking garage. You know, gets an 8 return. Just the parking garage on the deal. Yeah, how can I lose with this location? You know, and then of course, when he had it under contract, the Wizards and the Capitals were going to move to Virginia. And it turns out that that turned around during the time he was in due diligence and it changed.
[00:45:28] Speaker B: So I personally think that deal is probably the best buy of any transaction that I've heard in D.C.
with everything happening from the Wizards monumental signing, 120,000 square foot lease in his building and the renovations that they're going to do at the arena, it's going to help the surrounding retail. So I just think that was a home run deal. Home run, no question.
[00:45:57] Speaker A: The other angle that was presented is Lacy Rice, who's SCP, talked about the shame back in the 90s and stuff, returning office buildings back to lenders. That's. That's gone.
[00:46:11] Speaker B: It's totally gone. Matter of fact, a lot of people don't realize there's one reason why some owners want to go into fall. And let me explain why. If you have CMBS loan, you can't pick up the phone and say, for example, I have a client that has, I think a portfolio of eight buildings that recently went into fall. They got multiple offers, offers to buy three of these nine buildings at a great number, but they couldn't sell any individual one because the CMBS loan was for all nine properties. They couldn't get a phone call returned from anybody, a cmbs, because there's no such thing as a owner of a CMBS loan. There's thousands of them or hundreds of them. So the only. And they, and they never defaulted ever on the loan, but they defaulted the day the balance was due and they finally got the phone call the next day. And now they can present their plan. Let's sell these three buildings an incredible number. Let's, you know, keep the loan going with these six. You're better protected today. I'm protected and we're all great. So there are situations especially, you know, you're to get a CMBS loan, you may be getting a slightly better rate, but you're getting yourself much tougher conditions.
[00:47:23] Speaker A: Tackling that situation, ironically, the special servicer who is making that phone call may say, no, no, no, I'm going to negotiate that. Even though it looks like a great deal, because their incentives are to hold to string it out and generate fees out of it. So they have a disincentive to make a deal right away.
[00:47:44] Speaker B: You are correct on that. You are correct. But you know what? I think at the end of the day, most of them have done deals because they're going to have such a backlog and they really are overwhelmed. Let me tell you, the CMBS people don't want to be in the management business. No, you know what I mean? Because they do recognize at the end of the day they have fiduciary duty to do it. You're right. But it is the only way to get a phone call returned. You know what I mean?
[00:48:08] Speaker A: So it's crazy. What impact do you foresee from the current administration's policies on federal leasing and office vacancy rates? Well, not the current administration. Let's say the one that's about to happen next week.
[00:48:22] Speaker B: Well, I think it's just what the doctor ordered.
President Trump will probably require five days a week. There will be a fight because a lot of people don't realize a lot of government workers are unionized, and the unions will say, hey, you can't take away our privilege from working at home, et cetera. But there'll be a fight. But I think at the end of the day, I'll pick Trump over the unions for winning in the end. And I think you'll then see if the government starts coming back five days a week, the way our City of Government affairs offices and corporations, other firms then will say we need to come back four or five days a week. And then we'll finally see it's a ripple effect, the retail demand for restaurants. And I feel so sorry for a restaurant today that really only has people showing up three days a week and they're paying rent seven days a week.
[00:49:13] Speaker A: If I'm starting a restaurant now, I'm looking for retail space in the right locations.
[00:49:18] Speaker B: Now's a better time, you know what I mean, after January 21st. But, yeah, so I think the overall positive effect of a five day a week is the, you know, it's the COVID shot, you know, the vaccine that we need.
There is a fear that President Trump will then turn around and say, we're going to close the Department of Education or whatever. But I think some of these, I don't even know where they're located, they're in such obscure areas of Southwest D.C. and spread around that, you know, the only restaurants there are coffee shops anyway. But, yeah, it's going to be some damage to those neighborhoods. But the overall effect, which as a leasing agent, 62% of the market is the CBD in East End. And that is not necessarily where all the large government agencies are. No, it's more Southwest and other.
[00:50:09] Speaker A: Yeah, well, that.
[00:50:09] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:50:09] Speaker A: So Southwest, this, what this does is gives the opportunity to what I've been promulgating on my last five or six episodes, is to take the real estate between 6th and 12th and independence and the Wharf, basically, with the freeway, because, you know, you wouldn't build around freeway per se, but that whole swath, which I don't know how many acres that is, and just, you Know, level it and start over. And the federal government could subsidize that along with the city, turn that land into D.C. taxable land.
It's a win, win, win.
[00:50:48] Speaker B: You know what's funny about that is my father grew up in that southwest, you know, poor area.
[00:50:54] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:50:55] Speaker B: And that was one of the first major urban redevelopments in Southwest. Have you ever driven in that area? Yeah, you only see one or two old, old churches that were preserved and everything else was leveled to create what you described as this McNaira, I think.
[00:51:10] Speaker A: Was the first development.
[00:51:11] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, you may be correct on that. But the bottom line is that is an area that if you could get everything together and have the residential comeback. And again, what a great location. Easy access to Virginia, to Maryland, all the amenities now. Exactly, exactly.
[00:51:27] Speaker A: The ballpark, the, you know, the riverfront, the wharf, everything.
[00:51:32] Speaker B: And the good news is some of the buildings are actually owned by the federal government, which allows them to sell it as surplus property, which is a much quicker process than a private developer who may only have half the building lease to the government.
[00:51:44] Speaker A: So my belief is the landscape of downtown Washington will change dramatically.
[00:51:48] Speaker B: It will. But nothing happens overnight. Even if Trump says, I'm going to move the Department of Education, you know, it's like the FBI. How many years have they still been there? You know, it may take. We may not see the effects till three or four years from now, but you'll definitely see some positive impact.
[00:52:07] Speaker A: So how has passion for collecting Hot Wheels impacted your life and real estate sales?
[00:52:14] Speaker B: So that's a great question.
I think if you look at any successful broker in this town, they probably have a passion or other things they're involved with in their life. The broker that shows up at 6 in the morning, that works till 10 o'clock in the office, and, you know, doesn't have passions or other interests or sports or anything. They're probably not as producing as much as the ones who are just out there and have other people. So the Hot Wheels were world. It's interesting.
It's a microcosm of a lot of people my age, early 60s. Everything from the greatest expert on genetics in the country is a Hot Wheel collector, a rock and roll guy with the band Widespread Panic, who I get to get backstage passes to his concerts, to policemen. It's a cross index. So for me, it's a social aspect of collecting is amazing. There's not a day that goes by where I'm communicating with three to five people around the world about my passion. And I would say it's Interesting. Now that I'm in my 36th year, hope this doesn't get me in trouble for the podcast. You know, I'm getting closer and closer to that eighth and ninth inning of your career. And the Hot Wheels passion is extremely comforting to know that if I ever do a lot less real estate deals, you know, just a few a year, I have something that keeps me busy, a place to go. And there are days, believe it or not, that I don't go to the office. I actually come to my Hot Wheels museum. And you're sitting on my desk right now. And this is where I do all my business work. So I'm already co mingling, you know, the two. The passion and the work right now.
[00:54:00] Speaker A: So what about the business of Hot Wheels? I mean, is it. I mean, obviously it was hot. It started in 1968. And has its sales continued to go up, or has it been kind of plateaued a little bit over time?
[00:54:14] Speaker B: It was the number one toy in 1968 for boys.
[00:54:17] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:54:17] Speaker B: It's number one toy in 2024 for boys.
[00:54:20] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh.
[00:54:21] Speaker B: Okay. Barbie dolls for the girls. Number one toy still numbered. Still a husband and wife. The wife invented the Barbie doll, the husband did the Hot wheel, the number one in the world. Record sales last year, 56 year of Hot Wheels. It's absolutely amazing.
[00:54:36] Speaker A: So from that time, it's been.
[00:54:39] Speaker B: Well, there has been some ups and downs. You know, it almost died in 1973 during the recession, you know, but they've kept it going and they've kept, you know, keep. One of the secrets of their success is because they have such a mass volume that they've been able to sell a Hot wheel back in 1968 for 69 cents, and today it's only $1.19.
[00:55:03] Speaker A: Really?
[00:55:03] Speaker B: Yeah. So it's. The Wall Street Journal did an article on it, how it's defied logic that it's, you know, the price. So if you have a kid, you want to make them happy. In 1968, 69 cents. It's actually less expensive today. $19 in the store. The kid will be happy. Happy. I actually keep a bag of Hot Wheels in my car, and if Amy and I or my wife and I are at a restaurant, we see some young kids, I run to the car, pass out of Hot Wheels. You have no idea. Oh, yeah, I've given out a thousand Hot Wheels a year. You have no idea. Just a little Hot Wheel of a kid and how excited they are and how it sparks their interest in automobiles. So many people come here and say, my kids knows every car. He could say, Tesla, this car, that car. And he goes, how does he know him? Because the, because of the Hot Wheels. And when the real car drives by, it's exciting. And if you have no idea how many adults have Hot Wheels or toy cars just laying around their office many times matching their own car. If you have a white Tesla, I'll get you a white Tesla Hot Wheel.
[00:55:59] Speaker A: You know, what about little other model, little car like planes or other things?
[00:56:06] Speaker B: So Mattel Hot Wheels has done planes, it has done boats, just generally not as successful.
And in the collecting world, even today, Hot Wheels, you know, they'll do something crazy like they made a hot wheel with a toilet seat or they made a hot wheel like a snake or a bird or a dog. You know, the adult collectors don't collect those. Those are for the kids. But adult collectors are amazing. There's over 100,000 serious hot wheel collectors in the world. And most of them actually collect, you know, the real models that, that Hot Wheels makes.
[00:56:40] Speaker A: So there's not much cross pollination with other moving vehicles, either bolts or planes.
[00:56:47] Speaker B: Well, there are some collectors that say, I don't collect Hot Wheels, I collect one of their competitors. I think their car may be more detailed or whatever reason, but Hot Wheels is by far, it's a mile ahead of any one of its competitors.
[00:57:01] Speaker A: Do you think your collector mindset gives you a unique, unique edge in identifying real estate opportunities or in negotiations?
[00:57:08] Speaker B: So the answer is yes, because it changes the way you think. Number one, the way I found most of my items is cold calling. And that same technique was actually developed from the real estate. So there's a connection right there.
[00:57:22] Speaker A: Interesting.
[00:57:23] Speaker B: Number two, I discovered that it's not too hard to figure this out. There's, there's 700 commercial real estate agents in D.C.
so what did I do?
I did a chance.
I changed my LinkedIn and it says commercial real estate agent and Hot Wheels collector.
How many people that sets you apart? It sets me apart. And then I will tell you, there's so many times people say, you know, I was intrigued by, you know, your phone call and I googled you and, and like, wow, I still have my Hot Wheels, you know, and I've actually had people, I didn't get their real estate business, but they brought me their Hot Wheels to sell. But yeah, I think it's a. If you're anybody who's anybody, unless you lived in a cave, you know what Hot Wheels are. And it's kind of unique and interesting. So It's a conversation starter.
[00:58:15] Speaker A: Well, you know, it's interesting.
I did the same for my profile and I put podcaster right up front.
[00:58:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:58:24] Speaker A: And I am, to my knowledge, the only commercial real estate podcaster in Washington.
[00:58:29] Speaker B: So I think you're correct. And so once again, you must think like I do, and it separates you. And again, LinkedIn, it was kind of a risk to do that, to take such a professional thing to say and hot wheel collector. But you know what? It's part of my life.
[00:58:44] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, podcasting is my life.
[00:58:48] Speaker B: Yeah. So we both have more fulfilling lives is what I say.
[00:58:52] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:58:52] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:58:53] Speaker A: So I don't have to do deals anymore, and I haven't been. But I have a community and I do other things. But the podcast, of course, has led. Led that. So, anyway, you've had an extraordinary career arc from transforming Crystal City at Tornado Realty Trust to representing over 20% of DC's office market at Cushman Wakefield. What have been the most pivotal transactions in your career?
[00:59:18] Speaker B: So Crystal City was an interesting thing in 2013. 2012 was my best year of career. I finally made my dream, and it was a dream to win the number one ranking. And I finally did it. And then the phone call rang next week from Mitchell Shear Rank the portfolio for Vornado in Crystal City. And he says, I want you to come and lease Crystal City. And I said, mitchell, two things. I think I've only been to Crystal City once in my life. You know what I mean? So you may have the wrong guy. And number two, I just had a great year, and I don't think you can compensate me. He says, if I tell you I can make you happy in the compensation, would you want to talk to me? And I said, yeah, sure. So I went out to Crystal City, I talked to him, and at that time especially, admittedly, it was a city built for government agencies. Everything was the same color brick. The architect was not necessarily award winning.
[01:00:19] Speaker A: Was at a nice Charles E. Smith company.
[01:00:21] Speaker B: Yeah. Charles E. Smith Underground retail. And it was tough because you couldn't win by the most beautiful building, but it actually had several things going for it that were just unbelievably dynamic. You know, the closeness to the Reagan airport, the metro accessibility, the fact that you don't have to go to downtown dc and your views were the most beautiful skyline of dc. So I ended up getting hired and I. Mitchell said, you know, you got 30 days to come up. How are you going to. We're 78% occupied, 79%, you know, we need to get to 90. What's your plan? So my first plan was I walked around the city in all these buildings and I said, what could we do? And I realized we didn't have a multimillion dollar budget. And then I came up with an aha moment. I said, you do realize that you can take the Oval Office if you want and recreate it in a townhouse in somebody's house.
You could do it in Crystal City. So I said, okay, I can't afford to change the hundred million or the billion dollar project to knock buildings down and rebuild it, but I can make the interior of this space as nice as any place I want.
And I came up with this idea and I said, and I presented to Mitchell, I said, Mitchell, why don't we take a floor of this building that hasn't had a deal done in over two years? Why don't we take an empty floor, why don't we get one architect to do the hallway of the future? And then why don't we like a pizza ply, split the rest of the floor up into six suites and let's hire six architectural firms, give everybody the same amount, $65 a foot, and say we want to see Gensler's RTKLS, OTJ's vision of the future of office space.
And to Mitchell's credit, every single thing I asked for, he said yes. And to Mitchell's credit, he came up with the name Design Lab. We actually had labs. I still have the lab coat.
I will tell you the competitiveness of the architectural firms. We would see them sneaking into other firms during the build out period. One saw that one was installing art, so everybody installed art. One had a bicycle on the wall. RTKL porcelain had just come out as a material for floors. RTKL had the most gorgeous porcelain floor you've ever seen.
They had a new LED light that came out that, that's movable. And another firm had the first use of these newest LED lights. Okay, here's the summary. We kept count of how many people walked into that floor. 2,300 people, brokers, tenants, occupants of Crystal City. It got written up. Within nine months, the building was 100% leased. And we had people for the next couple years coming around and saying, I'll take the RTKL space in this building. And at the end of three years, we were 89% leased. And then JBG bought the book.
[01:03:24] Speaker A: So you got to tell me where that idea came from, Bruce.
[01:03:27] Speaker B: It was the spur of the moment because I'll tell You what it came from.
Whenever you hire an architect, they would come in and say, this is who we want the bathroom to look like. And then the owner would come in and say, hey, dude, you know, that's a little, you know, I don't want red. I don't want green. You know, can we do it like my. You know, what my house is like, or whatever. And I always saw there was a natural conflict between, you know, what a decorator's idea would be and what the client pushed back. And I said, we're not going to push back. You have two goals. I want you to design this space for the future, and we're going to give awards to who leased the space first. What the brokers want to do. Do you know, Two brokerage firms called me up and said, can we have our monthly meeting in those spaces? And so it was remarkably successful. Now, the next idea, though, this one bothers me. You know, this is an old expression. It's the deals that you don't make you think about for the rest of your life.
[01:04:22] Speaker A: Yep.
[01:04:23] Speaker B: So after Design Lab, which was really successful, I came up with another idea. I said, how am I going to outdo Design Lab? And I said, I'm going to look at other cities around the world and just see. So if you go to St. Louis, you see the Arch and Washington, D.C. you have a monument. I went all around the world, and then I saw something. I think it was Paris that I liked. I said, okay, this is what we're going to do. Crystal City, we're going to have the largest Ferris wheel at the beginning. Everybody in D.C. will see it lit up every night. This will be the iconic transformation. Mitchell didn't know I was working on this. I found a used Ferris wheel in Italy. It's like $3 million. And I went in and I told Mitchell, I said, mitchell, this is it. We're going to put a Ferris wheel here on this land. At the beginning, I said, I believe we're not going to be too high, so it won't be a problem with the airport. It will be lit up, and it will transform Crystal City. I said, even the idea of Sworsky crystals on it, you know, I said, this is it. And for whatever reason, two months later, it was never accepted. Okay. Three months after it was sort of officially turned down, I open up the newspaper. National Harvard Peterson, national harbor decides to do a Ferris wheel.
[01:05:43] Speaker A: No, Peterson did.
[01:05:44] Speaker B: And a year later, I'm at the awards ceremony, and Mitchell Shearer was sitting next to me. And the deal of the year the Ferris wheel at National Harbor. So that, that was. And I'll never forget that for the rest of my life. I just truly wish we had done it because isn't that iconic? Is it on the news every night when you turn it on for weather and everything?
[01:06:06] Speaker A: I think of London, the Eye of London is what I think of. Which, excuse me, that's.
[01:06:11] Speaker B: Was my inspiration. That was it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I, I just, I never got it done, but I, I'll put it on record today if my good friend Mitchell Shears listening to this, that we would have gotten to 95%, you know what I mean, instead of 89.9, you know, if we had done the Ferris wheel.
[01:06:31] Speaker A: Well, Mitchell's no longer with JVG Spin.
[01:06:33] Speaker B: That's true, that's true.
[01:06:34] Speaker A: You are marketing now for the current operator, which is now known as National Landing, JBG Smith. So they're probably happy about your discussion here.
[01:06:44] Speaker B: Well, yeah, it's, I think they've done a remarkable job. I, I, in many ways I rooted for them to get the arena, but also as a lover of dc, I'm kind of glad they didn't get it. But if it was going to go anywhere, I would have loved to see it to go there.
[01:06:59] Speaker A: So, so what do you think how TBG Smith is done since you've left Tornado and how, you know, how they develop.
[01:07:06] Speaker B: So I don't do any Amazon.
[01:07:08] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:07:08] Speaker B: I don't do any work with them now. But winning Amazon is the equivalent of somebody winning the lottery.
[01:07:13] Speaker A: Right.
[01:07:13] Speaker B: And I believe you've only seen the beginning. I think they finally filled up one building completely. I think in five years, when you drive by Crystal City with the developments and the way the future is going, I just think it's going to be a great skyline there.
Everything we talked about that we had in the past will be much better with the residential developments, the apartment buildings, the hotels. I just think that's just going to be a fantastic piece of land.
[01:07:40] Speaker A: Well, another person I'll bring up, and you actually mentioned him before we started our discussion today and he, we talked about it, he spent a lot of time in my interview with him is Henry Fonville, who basically took the retail.
[01:07:53] Speaker B: Yep.
[01:07:54] Speaker A: And brought it to the street in Crystal City and that he had to work with Bob, Bob Smith to get that mindset.
[01:08:02] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:08:03] Speaker A: To, to do that. And I think part of what you did and what Henry did, I think is what kind of stimulated the opportunity that now exists there.
[01:08:14] Speaker B: It's a fabulous investment for JBG you know, they're, you know, it's sort of. Vornado is New York. And if you're going to have properties in Virginia to be next to the airport. It's the only walkable airport in the United States.
[01:08:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:08:28] Speaker B: So you can literally walk from your office to an airport. Think about that.
[01:08:32] Speaker A: And they're building a bridge across, you know, Route 1 there.
[01:08:35] Speaker B: Yeah, but you could do it illegally. You actually have to run across the street. I did it on several occasions. There's like, you know, there's a little beginning of it. You just walk. There's a path. There's actually a path by where the little coffee shop is. You go down there and that. Everybody did it all the time.
[01:08:51] Speaker A: Well, Arlington county is facilitating.
[01:08:53] Speaker B: Yes.
[01:08:53] Speaker A: Pedestrian walkway now across.
[01:08:55] Speaker B: We talked about it when I was working, you know, for Vornado at that time.
[01:08:58] Speaker A: Exactly.
So how do you stay adaptable and relevant in an industry that's constantly evolving?
[01:09:05] Speaker B: That's a great question. I think innovation is, you know, thinking of something to do different all the time. I'll give myself credit for one thing that actually changed the market back in the early 90s. We never had a grab and go. You know what a grab and go is? There were no grab and goes. And I had a developer who had A building at 321 New Mexico Ave. No metro. Ringling Brothers and Barlow and Bailey Circus was the tenant that left. And he asked me to lease this building. Larry Brandt. And it was tough because I would call people up and say, can you come by 321 New Mexico? They're like, where is that location? Because it's not A. Not CBD.
[01:09:42] Speaker A: Right down the street from American University.
[01:09:44] Speaker B: 100%. But AU is. It's sort of still like, who wants their office space there? You know, thinking back in those days.
[01:09:50] Speaker A: Right.
[01:09:51] Speaker B: Especially when Metro was much more important.
So I told the owner, I said, let's let me grab eight brokers and bring them to lunch. He goes, great. So I bought a bunch of brokers. And by the way, there was no grab and goes. So what did the brokers do? One guy ordered a surf and turf. One guy, I think six of them had alcohol in the middle of the day, and the bill is like $480 or something. And I went back to the landlord. He said, well, what they think? I said, well, all eight had never been in this building before. All eight will now consider it. He goes, okay, you know, if you want to do it again. I said, you know what? And by the way, it was two and a Half hours I don't have. That's a lot of time.
[01:10:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:10:31] Speaker B: So I said to him, I said, Mr. Grant, I have an idea. Why don't we offer everybody $20 to help pay for the cabs? Remember the old zone system? We'll give everybody $20 and to let them get in and get out. Because not everybody has two hours. Why don't we give everybody like a bag lunch from. I forgot there was like a grocery store, you know, that was back there.
[01:10:50] Speaker A: Wagshol's Deli.
[01:10:51] Speaker B: Wagsholes are one of those ones next to it. He goes, that's a good idea. So I basically invented the grab and go where brokers get paid. Now they get $100 and they got a great sometimes catered meals.
So even today, my innovations are different. I had a. There's one of these luncheons now. Go on. I wish I could have patented, but there's two or three of these luncheons every week in D.C. and so when I do them now, I innovate. Atman's Deli is the best corn beef sandwich out of Baltimore. There's one in Potomac. So one of my grab and goes, I had admins come in and carve the corned beef. Roast beef sandwiches cost us $10,000. But everybody got an authentic Jewish deli experience on an empty floor of an office building. And the difference is Parkway and Silver.
[01:11:39] Speaker A: Spring might argue there, try the corned.
[01:11:43] Speaker B: Beef at Odd mints. But what happened was we could tell the brokers stayed around for an hour. They stayed there, they got there, we filled up the tables. Normal grab and go. They come in, look at space, and they're out within 16 seconds. Seconds. So we got them there for a long time and able to, you know, get success. And then we usually generate tours right after we have these luncheons.
So innovation is critical. And right now, what's more important than innovation is personal relationships. Because on the landlord side, if I have a friend who's representing in the brokerage industry, a tenant that's 5,000ft and I have a 5,000 foot square foot foot. And he said, look, I already picked my favorite five. My expression is, I want to be the number six.
So I will many times call personal relationships and say, hey, Andy or Bob, do me a favor, just bring them by this building, you know, to get. You're already looking at five buildings.
[01:12:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:12:38] Speaker B: And getting that six. If you don't have a date, you're never getting married.
[01:12:42] Speaker A: Of course.
[01:12:43] Speaker B: So to me, I'll do whatever it takes to try to get an opportunity, a client. So they're building a scene. Nothing's worse when you hear about a tenant that toured last week and you know you missed it. So that, that's, to me, it's, it's innovation is also just pushing relationships and making sure when you're a landlord broker, you better get along with everybody.
[01:13:05] Speaker A: There you go.
So since the beginning of your career, technology has significantly transformed brokerage. What were your some of the earliest technological shifts you experienced and how did they change the business in your mind?
[01:13:20] Speaker B: Okay, I'm going to make a confession. In the entire podcast industry right now, out of the 760 brokers in DC, I'm the bottom 5% in technology.
I remember when we finally had this new computer system. I loved it when the newest innovation was the flip chart. Do you remember those? Sure. You'd flip the chart. You flip the chart and then finally they became computerized. And I said, I'm going to do everything I can and I'm going to learn how to do this. So I go into this law firm by myself. I put on the screen, I push the button and we go through seven slides. And then the client says, do me a favor, go back to slide six. That was the end of my career.
And all I could do is I figured out how to get 20, 27 of them showing up at one little time. Little teeny squares. And the only way I could do it is to stop everything, reboot, and start from scratch. Because I only knew how to go forward. Who would ever told me to go back?
So anybody that works with Bruce Pascal knows that I thank God a successful broker always has a team. And I've always had great teammates that were much more technologically advanced than I am. And to this day, I still regret I literally have to run to our tech department. My screen's dark. How do I make it lighter? So what I'm doing now is going to Google and try to figure out stuff myself.
[01:14:49] Speaker A: It's mind blowing to me that you can do this Hot Wheels museum and not be technologically savvy.
[01:14:56] Speaker B: No, I'm not at all think about Hot Wheels. There's no motor. They just roll down the track like gravity. Come on. You know, I'm the Hot Wheels broker. You know, I go by gravity. Yeah, it's been a challenge and. But at the same time, at the end of the day, like my story I told you earlier, of mailing the flyer, you know, the old technology still works. Meeting the people and talking to people. And sometimes even better, I still think so you know, yeah, funny.
[01:15:25] Speaker A: AI is poised to revolutionize industries across the board. How do you see AI shaping the future of commercial real estate brokerage, particularly in client relations, market analysis or deal structuring or have you even played with it?
[01:15:40] Speaker B: So my co worker told me about Chat GT. Is that what it's called?
[01:15:45] Speaker A: Chat GPT.
[01:15:46] Speaker B: So I ended up getting on ChatGPT, did an experiment and I wrote a love letter to my wife and you know how much you mean to me, whatever, and I gave it to her and oh boy, did that work.
So I have taken that same thing. What I've done now is I will many times write a letter and then I'll run it through Chap GT see if it's better. I find Chapti though is people can identify that's not really Bruce speaking. So what I tend to do then is I kind of take a few things out and then add some personalizations. But what a great tool. It's mind boggling. I know a lot of brokers are just, you know, sending out hundreds of letters using, you know, the new artificial intelligence. So I think it's an absolutely, an amazing tool.
[01:16:34] Speaker A: Well, here's a hint. Take some of your other writings and feed it to ChatGPT. It learns.
[01:16:42] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:16:43] Speaker A: So then you say, write this letter like Bruce Pascal. So then you'll read it and say I could have written this.
[01:16:51] Speaker B: Yeah, it is amazing. I found it as a great tool. I also do a lot of volunteer work with an international human rights group and many times I want to quickly learn about something that's going on in this country or that country and you just ask the question.
[01:17:05] Speaker A: Amazing.
[01:17:06] Speaker B: It's absolutely amazing.
[01:17:08] Speaker A: It is even better than Google search.
[01:17:10] Speaker B: Oh, I think so. I think so. No question. Because it's more, it's a direct answer and Google gives you maybe 25 links.
[01:17:17] Speaker A: It customizes your answer 100%.
[01:17:19] Speaker B: So I think it's one of the greatest tools of our lifetime. The question though is how. Yes, it will help your letter, but once you're in front of the client, you still know how to speak. And yes, it may get you in the door, but you still have to have a good team.
[01:17:34] Speaker A: Well, the questions that I generated today I've obviously curated over the last 123 interviews. However, I did use ChatGPT to refine them.
[01:17:47] Speaker B: Amazing.
Good for you.
[01:17:50] Speaker A: And you've said good question many times today, so I'll take that as a compliment.
[01:17:54] Speaker B: Okay. You and Mr. Chap.
[01:17:56] Speaker A: Okay.
So your unique talents include strategic problem solving, innovative marketing and Negotiation. Which of these has been the most instrumental to your success and why?
[01:18:13] Speaker B: So negotiation skills are really fascinating.
And as a landlord broker, I've seen a lot of amateurs out there, and I've also seen a lot of patterns. Certain brokers negotiate. There's one broker who technique is always to say, if you don't give me this, I'm not going to. You're not going to make the deal. You know, and it's like. And a lot of brokers then run to their client. This is our only shot. And then one day, this particular broker, she gave me that word. But I had a little spy that knew somebody in the firm and said, you know, you're the favorite. They're going to go to your building no matter what. I remember calling the broker up and saying, you know what? You told me I had to give you 150 and 12 months free to make the deal. I'm congratulating you. She goes, oh, we made the deal. I said, no, I'm congratulating you because your other building will give you that deal. We can't, though, but congratulations to you. And she goes, oh, no, no, you got the deal. You know what I mean? Okay. I was just trying, you know, so you find your blood. So negotiation skills I love. I am a believer of what's called win win. It's understanding. I believe the best negotiating person in the world 100% understands both sides, how landlord thinks. And that way you can craft a solution to make both people. I don't know if they're always going to be happy, but you can make a transaction. And my most unusual thing I ever did in my life was getting involved in negotiations to help a prisoner being released from Cuba. And Alan Gross, I don't know if, you know, years ago, was in jail. And I ended up going to Cuba four times, meeting many people in the Cuban government. And I used every single skill set that I learned as a real estate agent of how to start a meeting, how to, you know, make a friendship, and then, you know, trying to negotiate. And one of the earliest. I guess I can say this now, you know, eight years later, one of the earliest negotiation skills was when somebody from the. It wasn't technically an embassy at that time. The attache office from the Cuban government said, we'll get together, and said to me, but I'm sorry, I don't. We don't have any kosher food here. He thought I kept kosher. And I said, no problem. I'll tell you what, I will bring you a bottle of Kosher wine. When we come to our first meeting. We got together in our first meeting and I gave him a bottle of Manischewitz, which cost me $6, and he handed me a case of Cuban cigars. I said, okay, good trade. I'm going to learn how to negotiate easily with the Cubans.
So bottom line is I've used those negotiation skills to the most important things that I've ever done in my life. And I consider that was one episode that I was involved in where all the skills of brokerage were used at a diplomatic level.
So our skills that we learned to be a broker are interchangeable for other aspects of life.
[01:21:04] Speaker A: Did you. Were you successful?
[01:21:06] Speaker B: Yes. Yes. Alan Gross was released. I ended up bringing in one of my clients who was a lawyer to become his lawyer. We put together a team and I was called that Wednesday morning to go to a special location.
White House van took me to Andrews Air Force Van, Andrew Air Force Base. The airplane came in and Alan Gross got off the plane. And it's one of my most memorable days. There's a picture of it. I know you can't see it, but that's John Kerry, Alan Gross the lawyer, and myself watching Obama, minutes after he landed, opening up the. The relations with Cuba. That was part of the deal.
[01:21:44] Speaker A: Oh, my goodness. Yeah.
[01:21:45] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:21:47] Speaker A: Wow. And I understand the current administration might be reversing that relationship.
[01:21:52] Speaker B: Yes. Cuba Today is being taken off the terrorism list. It'll probably be put back on in a week. It's just. We won't go. We won't go down that road.
[01:22:00] Speaker A: No.
[01:22:01] Speaker B: That's another podcast.
[01:22:03] Speaker A: You've also been a leader in philanthropy and community impact. How has giving back shaped your professional identity?
[01:22:12] Speaker B: So let's just start off in my. I've hired 15 agents.
All 15 agents. I said, I will not hire you until you join a board. All 15 agents came to me and said, I'm so broke. You know what I mean? How am I going to join a board? I said, you know, just tell them you're broke, but just volunteer. I absolutely believe you have to be on a board to be a successful broker.
[01:22:35] Speaker A: Explain what you mean by a board.
[01:22:37] Speaker B: So, for example, I told Matt Garcelle, one of the young top agents of our firm. I said, matt, you need to find a charity, and if you can't find one, I'll find one and find out that they have a board. Almost every charity has a board, and you need to get on that board. You need to be to see how a non profit operates, because that will teach you things and so, sure enough, Matt found a small nonprofit and said, I'll help you out in your real estate needs. And they had a single office empty. And so Matt joined a small board. They had a single office available. And you're not gonna believe this. Three weeks later, I hired him. Somebody called on that single office, meets him and says, you know what? It turns out I don't need one office, I need six. And that did his first deal in six weeks because he joined the board. Now, you don't join a board because you're going to make money. No, but there is a relationship for most successful brokers. So, for example, I saw a big broker one day long walking around this big tenant. How does he know the decision maker from both groups? We're on the same board. It's an opportunity to meet other people. It's an opportunity to give back. And it's a teaching moment for you. And you're also giving back to the community. So I don't think there's anything more advisable for a young person getting into this industry or any industry than to try to join a board and learn how nonprofits operate, operate, and do good for the city.
[01:24:05] Speaker A: Okay, talk a little bit about your philanthropy.
[01:24:09] Speaker B: So my first weeks in the business, an artist that I rented space to in my process serving building, called me and said, there's a shelter for homeless women, but it's a daytime shelter. Nobody sleeps there at night. Called Rachel's Women's Center. And the building has rats and problems. We pay, you know, twelve hundred dollars a month. What can you do? Can you help us? So here I am. I don't know much about real estate. I said, I'll come meet you. And it was 11 nuns, and it was part of the Catholic Charities of D.C. and they rented this worst building you've ever seen at 11th and N Street. And I said to them, you know, you could buy a building in this neighborhood for a quarter of a million, get a mortgage, and your payment will be about the same, and then you could fundraise on that building. I must tell you, the way they made money was bake sales and grants and things like that. And most of them didn't even know. They're all nuns. They didn't even know. Someone didn't know what a mortgage was, Right? So I said, I'll tell you what, Put your faith in me, and I will go out. And we got Madison bank to commit to loan us the money. And we found a building, 1222 11th St. And two weeks before settlement banking crisis, Madison bank would taken over.
So I ended up calling a wealthier philanthropist, and I said, I need to borrow $250,000. We'll give you, in those days, 8% or something, and I'll even do a kicker. If the building goes up in value, you get to share. And he says, okay, we got a deal. So I got the money, and we bought the building, and we. Within three years, fundraising brick by brick. We paid off the mortgage, and I ended up joining the board. And I suggested to them, I said, you may do better not being part of Catholic Charities, but running it on your own and expanding the board. So I immediately brought in one of my law firm clients, who then brought in their personnel management company, you know, their human resource company. And within two years, from $200,000 a year revenue, we were. We went up to almost a million dollars a year.
[01:26:09] Speaker A: Wow.
[01:26:10] Speaker B: By changing the board. So for me, it was a transformational episode of being a real estate agent, getting involved, becoming president, changing the board. And that taught me a tremendous lesson.
But here's a byproduct. I sat every month with a leader of that law firm, and 10 years later, when their lease came up, I didn't have to interview. We were friends. We see each other every month. So there's like a benefit for Bruce, there's a benefit for the charity. But, you know, everybody wins in the end by making these relationships. So I start off with Rachel's Women's Center. I then ended up joining several other boards, including my most active, which is B'nai Brith, which is the oldest Jewish human rights group, started in 1843 in New York. I believe it's the oldest nonprofit, perhaps, in the United States. And last week, I was just elected vice chairman, which is the number two job of this organization.
[01:27:04] Speaker A: So that's a worldwide organization.
[01:27:06] Speaker B: It's worldwide. We have offices in Israel and Belgium. We're. We're admitted to the United Nations.
[01:27:13] Speaker A: Really.
[01:27:13] Speaker B: I'm going to go to these skills I told you about. I'm going to Paris in March to UNESCO meetings, where groups of five of us meet with different UN ambassadors talking about issues that are important to us today. So all these skill sets come back that I learned from the brokerage world, you know, because you're. You got to go into a meeting when you're 24 years old with, you know, a lawyer and a big law firm and big deals. And, you know, you have to know how to talk and learn. And everything that I am today is because of the skill sets that I had Innate, but refined from the brokerage world.
[01:27:47] Speaker A: Talk a little bit about why you are involved so heavily in Bunnet Breath. Is it a religious thing for you or is it. What is it?
[01:27:54] Speaker B: So when I was younger, in high school school, they had a group called the Neighborhood Youth, which is sort of like the Boy Scouts, but a little bit older. And to this day I have my. My best friends are from that group. When I went to college, I joined Hillel. I was so broke, I told you in college I actually cooked for them and I got free meals. That's how I. I ate through college. What is Hillel? Hillel is a division from bae Breath started, it's now by itself, which is kind of like the Catholic center for Catholics at school. It's a place to get together and meet other Jewish kids. They do charity work, they have social events, etc. And then after college, B'nai Brith became my client. And fateful one day, I'm in New York, who sits next to me but the president, B'nai Brith. And I said, what does B'nai Brith do today? And he goes, wow, I can't. You know, I'm surprised you don't know what we do. And he goes, I'll tell you what we do. Meet me next Tuesday at the corner of 15th and M at noon. So I showed up, what's it, 15th and Mass Avenue. See him gets out of a cab to Tunisian embassy. He says, here's the deal. This is your first diplomatic meeting. Don't say a word. Just watch. So I went in, we met the visiting prime minister of Tunisia. We met the ambassador. They talked about different items. At that time, there was a request to do something for an Israeli citizen. The request eventually happened and I walked out of that meeting and I was hooked. International diplomacy.
[01:29:20] Speaker A: Well, this is a Muslim country.
[01:29:21] Speaker B: Yes. Oh, yeah, yeah. But it's. And we were requesting a relative of a dignitary of Israel to visit his mother who still lived in Tunisia. And the trip was granted. But to make a long story short, I was hooked after that meeting. And I've been lucky enough to been to three meetings with popes now. Really? Yeah, there's. There's. See Pope Francis right there. That was in his office. Benedict I met in his office. And then I met one of them at the Rome synagogue. So we go around the world doing Netanyahu, you said, No, I have not met Netanyahu. Interestingly enough, so many of the Israeli trips I skipped because I've been to Israel so many times. But. But, yeah, it's been fascinating to meet. I even met one day, Mubarak, two weeks before he got overtaken. Mubarak, he was in the Four Seasons meeting, believe it or not, with a group of Jewish leaders. And it was a snowstorm, and I knew I wanted to meet him, so I ended up checking into a hotel in Georgetown so I could, with this one foot of snow, go to the meeting. There was only like eight of us there, and we had a one hour dialogue back and forth, and at the end, out of nowhere, Mubarak looks at me and he says, you stand next to me. You know why he had me stand next to him? Because I'm five'seven He wasn't that tall. He didn't want one of the tall guys standing next to him. There was a guy in the group that was like 6 foot 7. So I regret to this day I never called the embassy to get the picture because three weeks later, he was no longer there. And you can't call the embassy now saying, hey, you got that picture of me and Mubarak, you know, he was put in jail. So, you know. Yeah. Wow. Yep.
[01:30:53] Speaker A: Fascinating.
So over the years, what's been your biggest professional challenge and how did you overcome it?
[01:31:01] Speaker B: So my biggest professional challenge we talked about today was the lack of technology.
And how I've overcome it is by having great people help me out all the time. I won't even tell you how. You know, put it this way.
A lot of brokers run their own numbers, but at Cushman, we have a guy that's all he does is run numbers, and he's the highest level trained. So just because I may not have the skill set to. To do a very complicated, you know, compilation of seven different buildings and all their financial structures. I'll get a summary from him. I am very good at finance, so I can understand completely. I just don't know how to do the Excel spreadsheet because every time I push a button, everything goes wild and crazy.
[01:31:47] Speaker A: Okay, so you overcome it by having the right people.
[01:31:50] Speaker B: Yes. Teamwork.
[01:31:52] Speaker A: Got it. What's the most important lesson you've learned about balancing personal passions with professional responsibilities?
[01:32:00] Speaker B: I always put first the professional responsibilities. The fact that Barnes Morris hired me, Vernado hired me, Krishna Wakefield hired me. That is a commitment you make that you will be successful for them.
As you may or may not know, my salary is zero.
I only eat what I kill, as they say. And I recognize the firm hired me and gave me the opportunity to work for them. So my number One commitment outside of my family is to my job. And I always put that first.
But like I said in the beginning of this, the greatest thing about commercial real estate, it's God's gift to people with adhd. Okay, we work on a project, we need a break, we need to go to the next project, the next project. And because of that, the hobby and the passions and the work can magically flow together. I just always prioritize the work.
[01:33:00] Speaker A: That's great.
So if you could go back and give your 25 year old self one piece of advice, what would it be?
[01:33:07] Speaker B: The advice would be Warren Buffett advice is live within your means. Invest and make sure you join many charitable boards. There's so many brokers that I actually feel sorry for during COVID who ended up, let's say they're in their 30s, the prototypical broker. They had a few good years, joined the country club, put their kids in private school, and Covid hit.
I don't know, how quick can you quit a country club and how quick can you put your kids back into Montgomery county schools? You know, they, they were living beyond their means because they, you know, and, and this industry we've had, John, you've been in this, what, close to 45 years. We've had some real punches in our stomach.
[01:33:55] Speaker A: We sure have.
[01:33:56] Speaker B: If you were a Virginia broker during a tech bust, if you were during the RTC days, the banking crisis, Covid, it's, it's, you know, in some ways it's like the stock financial crisis, global financial crisis. You know, you, you always need to live lower than what you make. Be thankful, put away and save for the future. I, I know a broker right now that's, you know, in my age, and I'm like, you know, why aren't you thinking of retiring or slowing down? And I, I think he's got seven more years of paying his forced divorce settlement, you know, and, and, you know, it's a, you know, make sure you're, you're, you're financially set and keep busy, be happy.
[01:34:38] Speaker A: Well, I think, you know, you just, the point you just made is not just financially set, but your personal life is in control too.
[01:34:45] Speaker B: 100%. 100%?
[01:34:46] Speaker A: To some extent, yes.
[01:34:48] Speaker B: Yes.
[01:34:49] Speaker A: So what are your life priorities among family, work and giving back?
[01:34:53] Speaker B: I would say they're very balanced. I'm now a grandfather. Granddaughters. Thank you. They live in Atlanta and it's hard to describe in words being a grandfather. It's very exciting. And especially when they come here and visit me in the hot Wheels Museum. The kids love it. How old are you? One in three. And let me tell you, they just love it. You know, I'm saving every pink hot wheel for my two granddaughters except the really expensive one. I'll still keep that one.
But yeah, what I'm doing right now is I am in the ninth inning of a 36 year real estate career and I'm pushing my charitable work and outside volunteer work to a higher level by realizing I'm 63 years old. This was an opportunity to run for election to be with B'nai Brith and I decided now's the time and that's going to take some time and the hobby. So I'm kind of, I feel like I'm in a really great balance right now that I still can produce, I still can have a passion for Hot Wheels and I can give back. So. And I'm a grandfather and I have great kids. So it's.
[01:36:04] Speaker A: So you'll just hand your book of business to your colleagues, your team.
[01:36:08] Speaker B: So I basically, I have, eventually, I have all my listings I have partners on, and the listing side, I'll slow down much faster than the tenant side. I can envision myself seven years from now, somebody calling me up and saying, a friend, I need space. You know, I'm gonna, you know, hopefully still do the deal, but I will always bring a partner in because you don't know what's changed, what's happened. And you know, and I always said the best way to be a best broker is to be the best broker for that client to solve the solution. So if I ever felt I didn't know a trend or something, there's so many great brokers you can bring in.
[01:36:44] Speaker A: Well, my final question is, is if you could put a message on a billboard on the Capitol Beltway for millions to see what would it say and why?
[01:36:55] Speaker B: It would probably be close to what I would say is my thank you.
Thank you for being able to touch the number 3,000 is a lot. Thank you for me being part of so many organizations that I was involved with and touched because everyone was just an amazing experience. Everyone was kind of like dating somebody new. You know, when you're, when you get a new client or you find, you find somebody's face or you solve negotiations, it would be thank you. I'm moved by something that I saw years ago.
Edward S. Gordon was probably one of the greatest real estate brokers in the history of the world.
And a week after he died, or maybe even less than a week, there was a full page ad in the New York Times that said thank you. And it was Edward S. Gordon that he knew he was going to die and he had an ad in the newspaper. And I told my wife that, you know, I haven't done it yet, but I will probably do something like that. Just thank you for the opportunity because it made my life so fulfilling working in a city that I'm multi generation and helping so many people.
[01:38:11] Speaker A: That's great. That's awesome. Anything else you'd like to say, Bruce, before we turn off the mic here?
[01:38:18] Speaker B: Well, I was going to say thank you for all these great questions, but maybe I shouldn't thank you. I should thank Mr. Chap. I'm just kidding.
Thank you for the opportunity to reminisce today about something you've been doing 36 years. I've seen the list of people you've, you've done podcasts with and I humbly say I must have just barely made that list. But thank you very much. I'm honored to be part of your podcast and thank you for what you do for the Washington area.
[01:38:47] Speaker A: Well, thank you, Bruce, very much. And listeners, another one in the books. So thank you for listening. Have a.
