[00:00:09] Speaker A: Hi, I'm John Co and welcome to Icons of DC Area Real Estate, a one on one interview show highlighting the backgrounds and career trajectory of leading luminaries in the Washington, DC 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 John at Co Enterprises coenterprases.com separately, my private company, Co enterprises, now will 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 review my
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Thank you for listening. Thank you for joining me for another episode of Icons of DC Area Real Estate. My guest for today's show is Liz Wanger.
Liz started her own company called the Wanger Group and she shares her career journey from journalism to public relations and founding her own company.
She discusses the importance of effective communications, storytelling and understanding the audience in the real estate industry. Liz also emphasizes the need for clarity, honesty and aligning organizational values for successful leadership in decision making.
Her advice for professionals, including the significance of genuine interest and being prepared for opportunities, is also important.
She again, at the end, talks about work, life, harmony and learning from mistakes and giving back to the community, which she has done in many cases. I had not met Liz before and was very engaged by her knowledge and breadth of communication skills, how to interact, and she's also written a book called the prism of value, which we talk about as well, and I'd highly recommend it for people learning to interface both in the sales and or marketing environment as well as in presentations and storytelling. So without further ado, please enjoy this wide ranging conversation with Liz Wanger. So, Liz, welcome to icons of DC area Real Estate. Thank you for joining me today.
[00:04:06] Speaker B: It's a pleasure to be with you, John.
[00:04:09] Speaker A: Thank you. So you started your consultancy, the Winger Group, a communications consulting company, in 2000, I understand. Please describe your role there at a high level and how it has evolved over the years since you founding the company. What makes a seasoned communications professional, as you suggested, your website.
[00:04:35] Speaker B: So I started Wanger Group after having done a number of different things in the communications area. I was a reporter at the Washington Post, and I realized pretty early on that I liked a lot of aspects of reporting, but I didn't like its intrusiveness and so decided to help other people tell their stories and then worked for a couple of organizations doing that. And so when I started Wanger group in 2000, I started it to be the firm that I always wanted to hire when I was on the client side.
And that was to be a true communications partner, deliver really high quality work, but also help organizations use communications to be stronger organizations. And so I started simply as me at a computer and a card table.
And we have grown. I have still maintained the model that I have. I started out as a virtual company when people weren't doing that, and the idea was to create just in time consulting so that there were only seasoned people who knew what they were doing working on clients jobs. Oftentimes in communications firms, you would have the principals sell you the work and then you would never see the principals again.
And they were brilliant. So then you'd have the 22 year old. Not that there's anything wrong with 22 year olds. We love 22 year olds, but they don't necessarily have all the experience sometimes required. And so my role has always been kind of chief strategist and assembling the right teams to address client needs. And we started out as a very traditional pr firm, primarily focused on media relations. And we have grown to be focused more on designing communications programs and working with organizations as much on their internal communication structure as they do on their external. Because if you don't have the foundation inside, you're not necessarily able to deliver on communication. So that's a long winded answer to your question.
[00:07:05] Speaker A: So what I'd like to try to do is go back to the origin of you and then how you got to the point where you felt like you were ready to start your own gig. So we're going to go way back to start and then go through your educational process and your corporate experience and your newspaper experience leading up to.
There's a better way to do this. So if you would do that, appreciate that.
[00:07:40] Speaker B: So I always tell people that I am your classic liberal arts person who had to try a lot of different things before they found their true calling or their true work experience.
I have always been interested in communication. And I can remember as a child when Nixon went to China, when he met with the Russians on the russian side, there was an interpreter named Viktor Sukharov.
And this man could. When he translated in Britain, he had a british accent. When he translated in the US, he sounded like he was from the midwest. It was extraordinary to me. And I said, I want to do that. I want to be an interpreter.
[00:08:41] Speaker A: How old were you at the time?
[00:08:43] Speaker B: I was probably nine or ten at that age?
Yes. And I said, I've always been fascinated by language, always been fascinated by communities. But just watching that man said, I want to do that. Okay.
[00:09:04] Speaker A: Did your parents inspire you at all in any of that?
[00:09:08] Speaker B: I wouldn't say they encouraged it, let's put it that way. My parents were such that they loved books. They loved learning.
So if we wanted to buy a book, that was always any book you want. You want to buy a book, we can buy a book. You want to buy a toy, that's a different thing.
I had toys, to be sure, but books were. Yes, that's important. We would go to the library, the bookmobile, if you remember what that was. It was like a portable library that would come to different shopping centers. We would do that every Thursday night, and we would check out books.
[00:09:51] Speaker A: Were they teachers or were they.
[00:09:53] Speaker B: No, my parents. My father was a physician.
[00:09:56] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:09:57] Speaker B: And my mother actually had worked in television in the 50s. She had worked for ABC in New York.
Then she married my father, and they moved to Philadelphia, and she couldn't find a comparable job. So she ended up basically raising us. And she raised us to be good writers because she was a good writer and to be good communicators, because that was important to her.
[00:10:25] Speaker A: That's her thing.
[00:10:26] Speaker B: That was her thing. And just a quick story about her after she died.
She made notes about all the different things in the house that she wanted people to have. And my sister got this family china, and my mother had written a whole description of this china, and it went like this. Let me tell you about all the hands who've touched this. And she went back to the first people who had the china and who they know, I think it was her grandparents, and basically told a family history through this china set. So my mother was a good storyteller. I learned that at her knee. And she also, if I know how to write, it's because of my mother.
She would say, I don't want to see your papers in junior high or high school. You write them. And then they would come back and I'd get an a. And my mother would look at it and say, well, I wouldn't have given this an a.
Sometimes it sounded harsh, and she'd say, this is not well written. Let me show you what are well written. And then she would sit with me and show me how to have made that better. And then she would say, go back and rewrite it.
I don't care that you got the a. That doesn't matter.
You could write better. So I learned that from her and was always, again, fascinated by, how do you get people who don't understand each other to understand each other? That's what I thought an interpreter did. So fast forward, I go to college, and I say, well, I want to be an interpreter at the UN. I got to learn three languages that are part of the five UN security council languages. So I picked Russian and Spanish, and I had taken Spanish in high school. I had actually taken Russian in high school, and I decided to become a russian major.
And my last year of college, I did some interpretation for russian speaking immigrants at hospitals.
And I realized I wanted to edit. The doctors would say stuff. I'd say, gosh, if they say that, that's terrible. So I wanted to edit, and I said, well, that's not going to make a good interpreter. If you want to edit it, it goes in one way, it comes out the other way, and it's not about you.
And that's when I said, well, that's definitely not going to be for me. And so I took a different direction.
[00:13:05] Speaker A: Interesting.
[00:13:06] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:13:08] Speaker A: So when did you decide to do what you decided to do? I think it was journalism, right out of college.
[00:13:16] Speaker B: Right. It was. Not.
Having worked in a hospital and being a very curious person.
[00:13:25] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:13:29] Speaker B: I would watch the doctors and I would say, oh, why are you doing that treatment? Oh, why do you think that person has that? Oh, that's really interesting. Even though my father was a physician, I had no interest in it. I hadn't really thought about it. And I said, wow, this is really interesting.
I don't know why I never thought of this.
I'm going to go to medical school.
But I realized, well, I never took organic chemistry, I never took mathematics. I never took these things. Maybe you should work in a hospital and see if you really want to do this. So I got a job at mass general Hospital, and I ended up doing in the social work department, doing discharge planning.
And that taught me so much about communication. It taught me how to spot when people were not telling you the truth because they wanted to get certain medical benefits.
It taught me how to work in a big organization.
It taught me how to listen for empathy and compassion. At that time, they allowed me to be silent observer in group therapy, to observe many things that probably today they would not let you do with a bachelor's in Russian, but they did. And after two years of that, I realized, and having seen a lot of death and hard things, I said, yeah, not going to do that, but I'm going to go to Europe and I'm going to go travel for a while, which I did. Three months turned into a year. And when I came back, I said, okay, it's time to get serious. I'm going to go work for the United States information Agency. They had a program where you could go to Moscow, and they had an exhibit of american life, and they needed people to be guides. And so I got into the program. I moved to Washington, and the Russians shoot down a jetliner and there's no cultural exchange programs. Kaputsky, right. So what do you do? Well, I could type, and I get a temp job at the Washington Post, and that's how I got into journalism.
[00:15:44] Speaker A: So were you fluent in Russian?
[00:15:47] Speaker B: At one time? I was. I just don't use it. It's been a really long time. But my last year of college, I taught Russian at the college, taught language with a professor. We team taught. And I spent some time in the former Soviet Union many, many years ago. I took a semester there so at one time I could speak quite well. I understand it. It's hard for me to come back, but I just don't have the time.
[00:16:17] Speaker A: Was it just interest in the language, or were you thinking professionally you thought you'd be a translator?
[00:16:22] Speaker B: Is that what you. Yeah, that's what I thought I was going to do. And then I realized that that wasn't really what I wanted to do. Interpretation is simultaneous and translation is written, and I was more interested in the interpretation side. I thought that was just so fascinating. But what I've come to realize, looking back on all of this, is that I've always have always been interested in bridging gaps of understanding and helping people understand each other. It just took me a while to find the right way for me. To take those skills to do that.
[00:17:01] Speaker A: Talk about the difference between interpretation and translation.
[00:17:07] Speaker B: Well, in my mind, interpretation is live.
Okay? People are speaking, so you're listening to what they're saying, and then you're taking those words and as accurately as possible, putting them into another format that somebody else can understand.
And it's live, so you listen. Right. Translation, I think of more as translating documents, translating literature, that's a whole specialty in of itself, because you have to be a good writer.
You have to understand imagery. You have to understand well, in that language, you can.
That's a certain way that they express that in that language. But what would be the equivalent in English? It may not be exactly literal, but you're trying to express the same idea. So they're very much related, the two aspects of it. And I feel like in many ways, in what I do now, I'm helping people in one world understand the other world.
We're helping people who, even within organizations, have different styles of accessing the world and information, understand each other. And so those experiences, even though at the time, they felt very disjointed and very.
My father kept saying, when are you going to figure out what you're going to do? Because every week it was, I'm gonna be this, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna try this. And I'm really grateful that I did all of that. And I, you know, I try. I I thought I was going to do a filmmaking at one point, so I worked with the filmmaker for a little bit more on a voluntary basis.
But in the end, I realized that that's what's driven me in my life's work, is to help people understand each other and understand the value that they bring to each other, even when they don't always have the right words or the right ways to get that across that we're that bridge.
[00:19:35] Speaker A: Yeah.
When I saw that you were a major in Russian, to me, is such a foreign language in so many ways, and then translating to what you do now, it just seemed to me there was some bridge that you were trying to gap, cross over from Russian to English. And the idiosyncrasies, the idioms and the different aspects of the languages are completely different. The origin of the languages are different.
There's a lot of interpretation there.
[00:20:11] Speaker B: Yeah.
Different cultures, different approaches, but that is actually not dissimilar to what you find in business.
[00:20:21] Speaker A: Right.
[00:20:22] Speaker B: Different companies have their own cultures and their own ways of doing things, and their own different fields have their own language, their own jargon, their own ways of expressing.
[00:20:33] Speaker A: Even within the real estate industry, there's so many different varieties on the theme as we'll get into, for sure.
[00:20:46] Speaker B: I sort of fell into journalism.
I had no intention of being a journalist.
I got a temp job there in advertising, and they offered me a job in advertising like this. And this one gentleman said, well, I bet you like the newsroom better. And he introduced me to the people who hired copy aides. I started the very bottom. I mean, I sorted mail in the newsroom, and for me it was just kind of extra money. And then I had taken a full time job with a foundation, and I had gotten a call from the post. They said, well, we need somebody to come in at night and take dictation from reporters filing stories in the field. I said, okay, I'll do that. So I worked a couple of jobs. I would work during the day. Get over there. And one night somebody didn't show up to cover a party, and they sent me.
That's how it started, literally.
[00:21:53] Speaker A: You were in the social page, I.
[00:21:55] Speaker B: Was in the style section. And this was pre Internet, so they needed people to get the reporters filing stories, type what they were saying. And I remember it was the editor said, well, the reporter didn't show up. And I was just sitting there and that was body. They said, here's what you do. You go to this party, look at the food, look at the wine, get that down. And then you get quotes from these five people, like, okay, I can do this. Get in a cab, do this. And I get there and I'm like, wow, I'm Woodward and Bernstein. I'm going to go get the story. And I interviewed people. It was a DC statehood party. And on the way back in the cab, I started writing this story and I turned it in. And the editor said, you've never done this before. I said, I'm sorry. And she said, actually, for somebody who's never done this before, this is not bad.
I kind of got that bug. And so I would do administrative work, and then I started freelancing stories, feature stories, stories about artists.
And so it was like a Cinderella thing. By day, I would sort mail. I quit my foundation job eventually, so by day I would sort mail. And then at night I'd go cover parties at the White House or parties here, parties, know, Pamela Harriman's or whatever, sometimes with a senior reporter because I wasn't. And then eventually I got a job in the home section at the post. And then my editors there, who were incredibly supportive, said, you should be an intern.
So I was one of the oldest interns because by this point, I was probably late twenty s, and I went out to metro covered northern Virginia, ops, courts, the whole bit. And after a few months, about maybe a year of that, I said, you know, I was going to have to go to a smaller paper and then come back.
And I realized I didn't really want it badly enough to do that. And that's when I made the switch into pr. I said, well, now I know how to tell stories. How can I help other people tell stories?
[00:24:14] Speaker A: What was it about journalism you liked and not and didn't like?
[00:24:19] Speaker B: I loved reporting.
I actually liked feature writing. I was a really good feature writer.
I liked getting hearing people's stories and then figuring out how to tell that story honestly that reflected them or what the situation was, what I didn't like about it, especially as a metro reporter, I was sent out. There was some guy that was finally going to get, I think, executed for some murder that he'd done. And I was asked to go to the neighborhood where this crime had occurred and knock on doors and ask neighbors how they felt about that, or kid was killed in a drunk driving accident, call the family, ask them how they feel.
And I think part of that was also the social work background.
Why would I do this? Why would I ask them how they feel? They feel terrible.
And some people said, some reporters said to me, well, some people see it as an opportunity to memorialize this wonderful person.
I said, okay, that's true. But on the other hand, one of the things that I learned later on doing some other communications with some nonprofits, is that there's a power dynamic here. And even people don't often realize when they tell their story that their neighbor is going to see it.
They're not really thinking about that. So I felt like I wasn't going to like who I was going to need to be for me to do.
So I decided that, okay, I have learned from the best. I had five years with the Washington Post. I was there at an incredibly exciting time. I met amazing people, had great mentors, and I learned a lot. I didn't need to go to graduate school in journalism. I got it there and said, well, I'm going to go help people tell their stories. And my first job out of journalism was the american student of architects.
[00:26:34] Speaker A: What drove you in that direction?
[00:26:37] Speaker B: Well, I loved architecture, and I learned about architecture through a survey course in college on Art history.
And the fact that the way that buildings and our cities communicated who we were and who we are who we're becoming, I thought was fascinating and something I had never really been exposed to. So when I was in the home section, I interviewed a lot of architects, and I worked with a lot of people, mostly, obviously residential architects. But, for example, I remember because this is stuck in my head, I interviewed Charles Guggenheim. Charles Guggenheim, the filmmaker? Yeah. He had just done something on, I forget which architect. And I remember him saying, you know, the problem with making a film on architecture is that buildings don't move. I can still remember that quote so many years later.
And so when I realized that I wanted to leave journalism, I reached out to people at the AIA, and they had a job in their practice division, not the PR division, to write a newsletter for the practice about architectural practice for architects. And this was a newsletter. It was two page newsletter, and it was taking them months to get one issue out. And so I get in there, I had this journalism background. I said, well, let me go interview everybody. So in a week, I had written the whole thing and laid out all the pages because I'd learned how to do that, too.
And I said, now what? They said, you're done already?
Yeah. I mean, you said it was a tight deadline. They said, yeah, it was a month. I said, no, I'm used to, like, hours.
And then eventually I moved into the PR department and then eventually ran the PR department there.
[00:28:41] Speaker A: Interesting. So you like buildings? You'd like to write about buildings.
[00:28:47] Speaker B: I like buildings. And what's interesting about buildings is what they do and what they mean to humans.
And so I always tell this story, too. One of my first assignments when I moved to the PR department was they needed somebody to write the jury comments for the AIA Honor awards.
So they sent me to New York.
It was at Som David Child's office. And in the room was just a very august group of architects. I think it was Michael Graves, I think Frank Erie, not in that particular one, but it was Michael Graves. Brendan Gill, who was the architecture critic in New York Times, David Childs, trying to remember. It was a couple other very, very well known architects that were in the room, and for two days, they looked at all the submissions and said, architecture is going to hell in a handbasket. Awful. Everything's terrible. And then they picked ten, which is kind of what they did.
And so I said, well, gentlemen, now I need you to complete this sentence. We picked this building because.
And they said, well, why would we do that? I said, well, we're trying to educate the public about architecture.
Oh, okay. And so I got these very highfalutin things and came back and had to write these jury comments about colliding geometries and this kind of thing. But I loved it. And I got to meet just these amazing architects who were, whom I learned a lot from. And I learned a lot about business because the association, I thought I was going to go there, and all I was going to do is talk about great architecture and how you make great architecture. Well, in fact, what we were talking about was insurance, liability, fighting with the engineers, legal practices, documents, the business side of architecture, which is incredibly important.
Incredibly important.
[00:31:12] Speaker A: Yeah, well, the relationship between the developer and the architect and the engineer and the.
[00:31:23] Speaker B: Mean everything. And it was interesting to just, I was so grateful for the experience there and the opportunity to meet Frank Gary and to meet, to really learn about, see architecture in a different way and to understand how architects work. One of the things I did when I first got there was especially being in the practice department, I would go out to architecture offices and say, I want to see what's on your desk. What books do you use? What tools do you use?
How do you do what you do? Right. Because I felt if we were going to communicate about the field, about the profession, then I needed to understand what they did and what was like for them. And I just met so many amazing people and was involved with some of the committees, and we would go around the country and look at different. They would have meetings in different parts of the country, and we would always do these great architectural tours.
[00:32:30] Speaker A: The language of architecture is a whole lot different than what you had, for sure, prior to that.
[00:32:37] Speaker B: But I had to learn another language.
[00:32:39] Speaker A: Right.
[00:32:39] Speaker B: There it is. And then figure out how to translate that to different audiences so that it would be relevant and clear.
[00:32:48] Speaker A: You were there for how long?
[00:32:50] Speaker B: Five years.
[00:32:51] Speaker A: Okay, and then what?
[00:32:54] Speaker B: Then I went to the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
[00:32:58] Speaker A: And why?
[00:33:00] Speaker B: Well, that's an interesting. I had been working with different people over there, and I met a very charismatic marketing director, and we connected over a bunch of things. And then a position opened and they offered it, and I went over and I talked to people, and historic preservation was evolving itself from what they always used to say, rich, dead white guys, preserving the houses of rich, dead white guys, to really looking at our history, how our history is represented. And so it was just a fascinating time to be there and to get a different vantage on urbanism and architecture from a different vantage point and to help an organization that was evolving to engage more people. So one of the things I was there. I started there in 93, 94 or 95. I put them on the web in 1994 because I said, this is going to be a thing.
And people kept. At that point, the web lived in the IT department, right? And I said, it's not an it thing, it's a communications thing.
The idea was, how do we engage younger people into historic preservation? How do we get more people engaged in that?
Because nobody really understood what this web thing was going to be, and they thought it was a passing fad. Everybody left me alone. So I got to create. I had to hire somebody to actually do the program. I didn't know how to do any of that.
And so we built the first site, and it was focused around how people come to preservation, either through home decor, that's why they have Williamsburg blue on their walls, in their living room, people like that aesthetic, or through travel. That's how people often get exposed to historic preservation. And so those were kind of two entry points. That wasn't the only thing that we had on the site, and it was really fun. And the other thing, we had just started a partnership with the History Channel, which was fledgling at that time. They were just beginning. And we had a program that long predated me, but called the eleven most endangered historic places.
And the History Channel did a documentary every year about what was on that list. And one of the things I was really proud of is that I had read somewhere, I don't know if you now I'm really dating myself, but there was a show er on NBC, and Noah Wiley, the young doctor, was like the heartthrob. And I happened to read in, of all places, people magazine that he was a history buff.
So I said, you know what? I bet nobody ever asked him to do anything serious.
So I reached out through his agent and said, we have this documentary, and I know you're a civil War buff. We actually have, I think we had a southern site. I'm trying to remember. I don't remember exactly from that particular year.
Would he agree to narrate it?
And he did.
And it was exciting to fly out to LA. And he was fantastic. He was so gracious.
Showed up with three outfits. He wasn't sure what kind of look we wanted.
Was such a pro.
I always tried to think about, how could we make this more accessible? How could we bring this to more people? And that was certainly one way we did that.
[00:37:13] Speaker A: So you were there for how long?
[00:37:15] Speaker B: Five years.
[00:37:17] Speaker A: Another five.
So you go from an association then to a nonprofit. You don't know what they are. I guess they just.
[00:37:27] Speaker B: They're a membership organization. I actually thought of them, in a way as an association, but they're not quite like most associations, but they are a nonprofit, and they had a membership, and it was a public membership of people who cared about preserving our history and preserving our buildings and also being relevant, making that relevant. And I think that was important.
[00:37:57] Speaker A: So were there differences between those two entities as far as the way they communicated? Obviously, you did the Internet. So that was obviously.
[00:38:06] Speaker B: So that was one thing.
Well, every organization has its own personality, right?
So really it's understanding the personality of the organization and the audiences that they're trying to communicate.
Yes. There were differences, I think, with the National Trust, we were more public facing.
[00:38:30] Speaker A: Right.
[00:38:31] Speaker B: We had a higher profile.
Know, we put something on our endangered list.
In southern Maryland, there's a saudderly plantation.
And that was interesting because the great grandson of the slave owner and the great granddaughter of a slave were both on the board trying to save this plantation.
So that was another really interesting thing because that got onto the Today show in the New York Times. And so, so the trust was really doing some very interesting things.
[00:39:14] Speaker A: Were you the communications director there?
[00:39:16] Speaker B: I was, yes, I was.
[00:39:18] Speaker A: So any interface with press, you were the person?
[00:39:22] Speaker B: Well, yeah, and I had a team, but I did some of that. But the team did a lot of it, too.
And it was really trying to figure out how we frame the narrative, how do we tell our story? How do we make it relevant to people who may not necessarily know about us or think about it in the way that we do? And so again, there's that translation interpretation model that a good communicator is and does.
[00:39:56] Speaker A: So then what?
[00:39:58] Speaker B: So then this is kind of interesting. Through some colleagues or whatever, I was introduced to Mario Moreno, who is considered by many to be the godfather of technology in this region. And he had just launched a nonprofit, the Marino Institute, and needed a comms director. And I met him, and he mentioned that he was looking for somebody. And I went on his website, and I was like, wow, this is so cool. I want to be part of this.
And so I ended up interviewing with him on the phone.
And then he did everything by Email. Right. He was half in Cleveland at that point, half here, and then interviewed with the team. And the next thing I knew, I was offered a job. And I said, this is really interesting what he's to. I want to be part of this. So I was his communications director for two years before I went out on my own. And that was amazing. I learned about a whole other world, the technology world, which I had sort of come to some understanding about a little bit by getting involved with the Internet and trying to put the trust on the Internet. And I was really fascinated by the interaction of technology with humans. And so I learned a tremendous amount from Mario and his team. Just know I was around a lot of entrepreneurs, and he had started something called Netpreneur, which was he had seen that there were lots of people who were starting these Internet related businesses or businesses that relied on the Internet, and there was no place for them in the business community. And he created this entrepreneur program where people could come together, people like Reggie Argua, who founded.
So he was just such a forward thinking person and understood the role that technology could play in making business better and making lives better. And we always joke that Mario was on social media before there was social media. He just knew how to connect people. And so that was an incredible experience. But I was around all these entrepreneurs, and I said, you know what?
Wow, I could do this. I can start business. Okay, I'm going to do it. And so I started Wanger group, and I haven't looked back. Wished I had done it ten years ago.
[00:43:06] Speaker A: Try to keep you.
[00:43:08] Speaker B: He did. Oh, he did.
In fact. So the story is that I went to Mario, and, you know, I had two little kids, and I was commuting from Rockville to Reston, and crossing that bridge every day was killing.
I remember I was, like, 2 hours late one time to pick my daughter up from daycare, and she was crying, and I was paying $5 a minute. And I said, I just can't do this. So I went to Mario, and I said, look, I got to do something else. I don't know what it is, but I'm going to talk to a lot of people, and, you know, everybody, and I don't want to surprise you, and I don't want you to hear that I'm out there talking to people. And he says, well, no, we can make it work. What do you want to do? No, I got to do this. So I went out and I talked to a lot of people, and I was talking to this one guy. I don't know what to do next. I'm not sure. I don't know what to do. And then under my breath, I said something like, sometimes I think about hanging out a shingle. And he said, well, why don't you?
I said, well, I don't know enough. And I never worked in an agency, and I had all these reasons, and he looked at me, this guy, and he said, when do you think you would know enough?
And it was like, oh, I could have had a v eight. Yes, that's what I'm going to do. So I went back to Mario, and I said, mario, I know what I'm going to do. He said, what is it? I'm going to hang out a shingle.
And he said, great. I will be your first client.
[00:44:39] Speaker A: Oh, that's great.
[00:44:41] Speaker B: And I'll keep you as busy or not as you want to be. And so with that, I really had the confidence to start the business. I mean, I was going to do it anyway, but that was tremendous.
[00:44:56] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:44:57] Speaker B: And I continued to consult with him. And then when he started venture philanthropy partners, I did off and on work with venture philanthropy partners for ten years.
So, you know, with content and just some strategy and various communications work. So that was really great. And Mario's been a real mentor of mean. I just learned so much from him, and he's very gracious.
[00:45:27] Speaker A: He's obviously a very effective communicator himself.
[00:45:30] Speaker B: Obviously.
But I had to learn, coming out of being a computer person thinks differently than I do. So this is a story I always tell people. I had kind of gotten there. I was there about a month. He said, I need a communications plan. So I wrote a communications plan the way that I was used to writing a communications plan. Had a lot of words.
So I present this communications plan. I feel good about it. He says, I hate this.
And I said, you hate it? He said, no, I hate this.
Go. Right. Just, oh, I'm so dejected. And one of the people in his office said, mario is a chart guy.
So I went back and I just reconfigured it and put it into a form that was going to be more accessible to him. And he liked it.
[00:46:30] Speaker A: You showed him russian, and he was looking for.
[00:46:34] Speaker B: That was a, that was a really valuable lesson. And I've learned that many, many times. Know, I always told a story about something I did for Aia. I had done this report for one of the committees, and I gave it to the committee chair, and he said, I hate it again. And I said, well, you think you hate it, but tell me why you think you hate it. And he said, I don't like the COVID I said, there is no cover. It says draft. But what it taught me was this was a highly visual person.
Right? Again, giving a highly visual person a whole lot of words that weren't broken up and didn't have any kind of visual way to narrate through them was frustrating. So those were really valuable so the.
[00:47:23] Speaker A: Lesson you learned there was know your audience. Right?
[00:47:26] Speaker B: Know your audience. But it's more than it's know how they access the world.
[00:47:33] Speaker A: Okay?
[00:47:34] Speaker B: Right.
People sometimes say, well, I know this is what they think, but you have to understand how they access information, how they process, as much as other things that you need to know about your audience. You can talk about buyer personas and you can talk about all those things, but how do they best access information and the things that they are interested in?
[00:48:00] Speaker A: Okay, I'm going to pivot now. Please do some real estate things. Yes, I look at the commercial real estate industry as built on three pillars. First is communication, which is your specialty. Two is analytics and the financial part. And three is design and function.
Communication is the baseline among them. Of course, the concepts of presentation, negotiation, networking, marketing, sales and collaboration are all critical skills. In your book prism of value, you look at communicating through this prism, through this prism of value. Elaborate on that concept in context with the concepts I listed above and any others you believe are critical in our industry.
[00:48:52] Speaker B: So most people communicate. Thor, prism of me. Right. I have something I want to tell you.
I have information for you. I am wonderful and you should hire me and I'm worth it. Okay?
That's all about me.
It's not about you and me. Right? So tell me how all of those things that you just described, we know what's in it for me?
What will be different for me. So I always say, prism takes white light, refracts it, and out comes technicolor, right? The white light is all the things that we think people should know.
Sometimes it's the price, it's the location, right?
If we're trying to sell ourselves, it's all the awards we've won, all of the people we've worked with, right? That's all table stakes.
But you have to take that information and refract it through a prism of value which says, what about all those things that I want you to know?
How is that making your life better?
Fulfilling some sort of aspiration or yearning that you have? And conversely, how is that taking away some sort of frustration, pain, concern, worry, right? There are two sides of the messaging coin. One is appealing to our wants and aspirations and is positive. The other is about protecting us from ourselves and our fears. And you have to know which side of that coin to flip at any given time and refract all the other stuff that you want to tell through that prism. That's when you can be effective, when you understand what are the real emotional drivers behind what people say they want. Yes, I always quote this. There was a very well known professor of marketing at Harvard named Ted Levitt who used to say, when people buy a drill, they don't really want the drill. They want the hole, because they want to hang a picture, they want to hang their diplomas, they want to make a baby gate safe for their child. Right. And it's the same thing in business. I want a building. Maybe I need office space, but why do I want office space?
I want to bring a team together. I want to have a place I can show clients. I want to have a place we can work together, where we can clap. What is it actually about that place that we really want? We don't want desks and chairs, necessarily.
We don't want.
When we used to talk about the corner office, what is it about the corner office? It's about status. I've made it right. So it's understanding that and then communicating to hit on those emotional points for people.
[00:52:21] Speaker A: So what that tells me is you've got to be able to tell a good story. Is that correct?
[00:52:28] Speaker B: For sure. You have to be able to tell us. Yeah, but you have to tell a story, and it has to be authentic, and it has to be meaningful and somehow illustrative of some point you're trying to make.
I kind of get frustrated with this sometimes. So everybody's gotten on the storytelling bandwagon. Oh, we just have to tell stories.
Yes. I believe in stories. I've built my whole professional life on storytelling. I have to tell stories appropriately and at the right time.
Sometimes the story is appropriate, sometimes it's not.
And it's understanding how to use story as a vehicle to achieve understanding or connection.
[00:53:25] Speaker A: So when do you know when and when not to tell a story?
What's the trigger for that?
[00:53:32] Speaker B: So, for me, and I often don't think about it. I just do this. But sometimes when someone is, well, I always like to tell a story at the beginning of a conversation, because that can grab someone's attention if it's the right story and it's not too long.
Right.
Sometimes when people, when you're trying to express a concept and you can see that there's confusion. Well, let me tell you a story about that.
Let me tell you how that, or let me show you how that might work. So, for example, when we go in to make a pitch to a new client, and I'll remember this, it was a real estate client. And I get to the office, and I'm sitting waiting to go in, and out comes the previous firm, they have about 20 people, and they've got boards and they've got all this stuff. And I just am walking in, it's me. Right? And they said, well, do you want to set up your PowerPoint? I said, no, I just PowerPoint free zone. We're going to have a conversation.
And they said, well, tell us about your firm. And I said, well, I'm going to tell you about my firm first. I'm going to tell you what I know about you. Would you like to hear, I talked to about five other people to learn a little bit about you. Would you like to know what they said? Mmhmm. Talk to a developer, an architect about your firm? Oh, yes.
Then I tell them what they said. And I said, so what I take away from just those five interviews is that you have a gap in the way you communicate. Now, I'm going to tell you about my firm and how we're going to help you close that gap. And we won the business.
Right. And I said, I have a team.
This was pre zoom.
Zoom existed, but people weren't using it.
And I said, I'm happy to have you meet the team and see who's going to be working on the project.
And they said, oh, we'll get back to you in a few days. And they called me an hour later, and that was because I used the stories that other people had told about them, and it was about them, not about me.
What I was trying to do is say, let me show you. Let me tell you what I'm hearing out there. We need to know more, but this is how I'm going to connect with you. You have a gap. I'm going to help you bridge that gap.
[00:56:10] Speaker A: Interesting. Well, I was going to ask this question later, but I'm going to zoom ahead a little bit.
[00:56:16] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:56:17] Speaker A: So in our initial conversation, you said that several of your clients have been guests of mine on this podcast and called you before accepting my invitation to be interviewed, urged them to participate, and I really appreciate that support, and I thank you for that. Why did you think it was good for them to participate?
And was it to enhance their brand or to help them build confidence in an interview setting?
[00:56:48] Speaker B: Both.
Absolutely both. I said, first and foremost, it's exposure, and you're in great company in terms of who else has participated. There's social proof there. Right. So you're in with your peers. And number two, it's always good to practice telling your story to different kinds of audiences.
So it's a win win.
[00:57:20] Speaker A: That's great. Well, I appreciate that. And it's one of the reasons why I did it in the first place, is to tell the story of this market and this industry through as many eyes as I could and also different disciplines as I could as well. And so you're the first communications professional I've had on, and I'm trying to talk to as many people in different disciplines that I can in the industry. And it's interesting, when I started in this business, there were very few disciplines addressing real estate, for sure. Now it seems like just about everything that humans do touch this industry now, and why that is, I don't know, but it just seems like there's more and more input in this industry.
[00:58:14] Speaker B: Well, I think everything humans did always touched this industry. It's just the industry didn't know it and didn't understand it. No, I really believe that.
I believe that one of the challenges that the real estate development community, and I mean that in the broadest sense of the term, has had is that they have communicated about the objects and not enough about what the objects mean and the impact those objects have on human health and life, well being, satisfaction, productivity, performance, et cetera.
And that was something, again, having been a reporter and having listened to lots of people and understanding what makes a good feature or what's newsworthy.
Right.
Obviously, in business press, you sign a big lease that's newsworthy. But it's newsworthy for a couple of reasons. Does it mean that the company that signed the lease is doing something different in their business because they took more space, so they're growing? So what does that mean?
Right. Does it mean that they located in a part of the city where business typically didn't locate? So what does that tell you about the dynamics of our city and taste and growth? So that's the part that's always been. And finally, I think people have caught on that.
And actually it's made me think of something. When I was a metro reporter at the Post, there was a feature called where we live, and it was in the real estate section. Sure. And I remember the real, as metro reporters, we had to rotate once a month and do one of these. Right. And I remember talking to the real estate editor and he said, do you know anything about real estate? I said, no, I don't even about real estate. Well, I don't know if you're going to be able to do this story. I said, well, what is it that you want me to go to a neighborhood? You want me to find out about why people like living in the neighborhood and then get some factual information about the neighborhood. I think I can do that. Right.
Even they were looking at it as a pure business story, and this was a feature story about what makes a neighborhood tick and why you might want to live there and what was the history of this neighborhood and who were the people living in the neighborhood. So I think that the industry didn't really know how to talk about itself and talked about its features versus its benefits.
[01:01:13] Speaker A: So you've seen a big change then.
[01:01:16] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure.
[01:01:17] Speaker A: In communication in our industry, absolutely.
[01:01:20] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:01:22] Speaker A: So you started your firm because you didn't see any communication advisory firms that offered the services you believed your clients deserve. Why don't you elaborate on that a little bit, please?
[01:01:32] Speaker B: It wasn't that I was offering any different services. It was how I was going to deliver them.
[01:01:38] Speaker A: Okay.
[01:01:39] Speaker B: And that was important to me. What was important to me was, one, I had three criteria for how I would take on a new client. I still follow it. One, do they have a really interesting problem and that I could solve?
Two, are they jerks? Because I'm not working for jerks. And three, can they pay me? Right. But what I found was that I wanted to really get in deep with my clients to really understand who they were so that I could help them tell their story. And I didn't want to provide cookie cutter solutions that worked for three clients before or be so focused on, well, we can get you this media hit. Well, I'm not sure that that media hit is even the right place for you to be because I don't know that your audiences are actually even reading that.
So let's talk about what your company is about or your organization is about, and maybe you shouldn't even be doing media relations. Maybe you should be doing something else.
[01:02:46] Speaker A: Right?
[01:02:47] Speaker B: I remember one person said they wanted a big media relations program, and when they explained to me why they wanted it, I said, all you need to do is write a letter.
The media would be inappropriate for this, and it's not going to get you where you want to go.
For me, it was about finding people who I was aligned with. It was also doing what's right for the client, even if it meant that we had to say, you know what?
You shouldn't really be paying us anymore because you're not ready for this or we're not the right fit for you to be able to, but because it was really in the best interest of the client. Or actually what you need is really more on a marketing side than you need comps.
Right. And let me help you find somebody. There you go.
That was really what I wanted. And I wanted to be able to have the very best people who had experience, who had been around the block a little bit.
And as I always say, we've seen the movie. We know all the endings. We can help you write the right ending for you, for your story. And it was important just to be a partner and we really care about what we do.
I'm not doing this. We like to make a good living, but I'm not doing it because I have to build this big enterprise. I want to be able to do the work, do it in the way that we want to do it, and really help advance organizations. And I want to leave them better than how I found them.
[01:04:31] Speaker A: That's great.
[01:04:32] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:04:33] Speaker A: So since you've read the book, you had to do a lot of research on understanding a lot of the elements of communications.
So I'm now reading another book called the Art of Explanation by a fellow by name of Ross Atkins.
He's a british BBC producer and he describes the anatomy of a good explanation, including the following concepts. I'm just going to list them because I know you already have them and hopefully some thought to it. First is simplicity. Second is essential detail.
Third is complexity. Fourth is efficiency. Fifth is precision.
6th is context.
[01:05:21] Speaker B: Six.
[01:05:21] Speaker A: 7Th is no distractions. Eight is engaging. Nine is useful. And ten is clarity of purpose. Perhaps discuss these ideas in context of my listening audience with an example or two, maybe.
[01:05:38] Speaker B: So, first of all, ten is a lot. I know, right. And I would actually start with the last one.
[01:05:46] Speaker A: Okay.
[01:05:47] Speaker B: Clarity of purpose.
Because if you don't understand why you're communicating and why anybody else would want to hear what you're saying, the rest of it really doesn't matter.
[01:06:00] Speaker A: There you are.
[01:06:02] Speaker B: So I would start with that.
[01:06:04] Speaker A: Okay.
[01:06:05] Speaker B: And then once you understand your why, then you have to understand. And this wasn't on there, or maybe it was, but maybe in a different way, it's about your message.
So I would say clarity of purpose and then message and framing.
And that also assumes that you understand who you're talking to, because I always say this, you can have Shakespeare write your speech and you could have da Vinci illustrate the PowerPoint.
And if it's not resonating, it doesn't matter, right? Because people spend a lot of time and money on the mechanics of these things without getting that first part right. You have to have clarity of purpose. You have to have message that will resonate with the audience. Then simplicity is absolutely key.
When you confuse people, you lose them because our brains are trying to make simplicity out of complexity.
So complexity is fine if you can explain it in a simple way.
I would say that's tied to good messaging, is that you can explain it in a way that is memorable and easy to understand. So that means using the right language, using words. And remember, too, that certain words are triggering words. So they may seem innocuous to you, but you use a certain word and that's all that person can focus on. They haven't heard a thing you said because that brought something up for them, or that seems to project something about you that you didn't intend, but that's how they're hearing it.
So that's important.
What else did you had? Negotiate? I don't have it literally in front.
[01:08:17] Speaker A: Of me, I probably should have, but efficiency, precision, context.
[01:08:21] Speaker B: Yes. Context is another critically important, and that ties into what I just said about triggering word understanding, putting what you're talking about into some larger context. And that gets back to the why of why of what you're talking about and relating what you're doing to whatever it is that your audience needs to understand.
[01:08:48] Speaker A: And then engaging.
[01:08:50] Speaker B: Engaging, yes. And that is all about language. And if it's an in person presentation, it's about energy.
I always tell people, if you're on Zoom or you have to have way more energy than the people sitting listening to you.
And to be engaging is also to be memorable. So a story is one way to be engaging.
Open with a story.
Funny thing happened to me today. Right.
[01:09:24] Speaker A: And then useful is another one.
[01:09:26] Speaker B: Yeah, well, useful is also tied back, I think, to what I was saying about the purpose and messaging is that it's beneficial to your audience.
I live in Annapolis, and I was walking around the naval academy and there was a sign I saw that said, no drone zone. Now they were talking about the drones in the air. But I'm going to use that in presentation training. No droning.
You don't want to bore people.
[01:09:55] Speaker A: Right?
Very good people. I like that.
[01:09:59] Speaker B: Yeah. The boring people.
If you're making people angry, that's okay.
If you're making people happy, that's okay. If you're boring people, that's not okay, because they're not interested.
At least when you're making people angry, there's an emotional reaction. And sometimes you can work with that.
[01:10:25] Speaker A: There are certain politicians that don't bore you, but they can make you angry.
[01:10:30] Speaker B: Correct. And so you listen to them. You listen to them even if you don't want to.
[01:10:38] Speaker A: Right.
So the real estate industry has many disciplines the driving force is typically the principal who owns and operates the property. That person or entity interfaces with hundreds of people depending on the scale of the property. If the owner is a developer and the properties in pre development are under construction, there are even more interactions.
In the face of such a variety of communication situations, what advice do you give property owners to keep a consistently optimistic and present approach to communications among varying circumstances and stressful times?
[01:11:20] Speaker B: Yeah, well, and we're certainly in a stressful time now.
The optimism side of the question is interesting because you also have to be realistic.
[01:11:33] Speaker A: Right.
[01:11:34] Speaker B: So when you're in challenging times like this, painting rosy pictures that people know aren't really there isn't going to help you. No, but having a strategy for how are we going to get through this, how are we going to work through that? You're thinking about that is important. And having, again, it goes back to clarity of purpose and messaging, having a clear sense of the why of what we're doing. Why what we're doing, what we're doing. Being honest about it, being transparent about it. And when I say being honest, it doesn't mean you tell everybody everything.
It just means that you're not trying to tell people something that they clearly feel or see is not true. And one of the things I've seen with many real estate companies, especially when they report quarterly, here's the leasing and so on.
The numbers are the numbers.
So what sets people apart is what am I going to do about that? How am I going to work through that? Yeah, we've seen cycles like this may be a different cycle than we've ever seen before. So what does that mean for how are we going to deal with this? How are we going to manage it? And I think one of the things is that you have to have that consistent message, and it's really important to spend the time on your internal teams to help them understand how they need to be talking about things.
[01:13:27] Speaker A: Right.
[01:13:28] Speaker B: And it's not just handing people a set of talking points and say, memorize this, it's involving them in the solutions or the strategy that you have so that they feel some ownership, of course, of what's happening. But people don't do that.
A lot of people don't do that.
And just being honest about where things are, because eventually the truth comes out.
[01:14:12] Speaker A: Of course it does.
[01:14:13] Speaker B: So if you sit there and you say, everything's red, and I look and I say, no, it's green.
Well, no, I've painted all of my stuff red. Well, eventually the paint starts peeling off and people see that there was green there.
[01:14:31] Speaker A: I get it. Yeah.
So leadership comes in many forms. Among them are top down, autocratic, laissez fair, relaxed, collaborative, and present.
And absent. Perhaps there are times when each of these approaches work best. How do you counsel your clients about when to use each approach? And how would you suggest implementing them contextually and keeping the spree decor in the right frame of mind?
[01:15:02] Speaker B: Well, I don't know that ever being absent is a good strategy. Okay, you may pull back, but being absent, I would maybe just take that one off the table.
Of course you want to be collaborative and present.
I think that's the healthiest. Where you ask for feedback. Again, you're making your team, you're empowering them by engaging with them in that way. Now, there are times where as a leader, you just have to make a decision. It may be you've done the conversation and everybody thinks you should do certain thing, but you know in your heart or you know that's not feasible. And sometimes you just have to make the tough call and be autocratic. But when you do that, again, communicating why you're doing that, and people may say, you say, I hear you, but this is how we're going to do it, and this is why we're going to do it this way and acknowledge that maybe they don't like it, but I've reached this decision and this is what we're going to do.
Yeah, you need to be all of those things.
So we talked about collaborative and present.
[01:16:35] Speaker A: We talked about lazy fair also.
[01:16:37] Speaker B: Lazy fair. Well, sometimes lazy fair sort of has sometimes a negative connotation. But if you hire good people and they know what they're doing and they're adults, let them do their thing.
[01:16:53] Speaker A: Almost like a law firm, for instance, one attorney is not going to tell another one at a partner level what to do. So they come together with the common spirit for the bottom line firm, but they otherwise let that person do their thing.
[01:17:14] Speaker B: But if you have an agreement on a shared vision, mission and values, that's not a message.
A lot of people will tell me, I have a message. Okay, what is. It's my mission statement. No, that is not your message. Your mission statement tells you why you exist, what you're here to do. Your vision tells you what the world might look like if you do that.
Values tell you how you do it, and your messages help people understand why they should engage with all of that.
What's in it for them.
But I think if you have in any organization a shared understanding of your vision and your mission.
And everybody buys into that.
Then there are going to be disagreements, there are going to be different opinions.
But because you all care about the larger vision and mission, that's what's important. I've had many meetings where there were multiple partners on a deal, and one group wanted to announce one thing, and one group wanted to do it this way, and one group, I need to have a quote.
The press release you always get, everybody's got to have a quote. No, we're not putting seven quotes in there. Right. And so I always step back and I say, and what do we think is in the best interest of the project?
What do we think is going to be? Which of these entities do we think, if you were talking to media will immediate, be most responsive to?
But I always take it back to, what do we think is in the best interest of the project? The deal, whatever. And I've watched people that kind of say, oh, instead of saying, no, we're not putting your quote in there, which is what I might have done when I was really young and write out of journals. I'm like, we're not doing seven quotes. That's stupid. Right?
What do we think is in the best interest of the project?
And then how do we make sure that you all get the recognition that you so much deserved, but can we do it in a different way?
[01:19:39] Speaker A: Interesting.
[01:19:40] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:19:43] Speaker A: Okay.
The pandemic threw a monkey wrench in our way of life.
Families, workplaces, and life in general were disrupted. We became a work from home. Zoom communicators. Rebounding from this disruption has proved difficult for many people. How can the real estate industry adapt to this new hybrid environment in communicating with their employees, clients, and partners?
[01:20:12] Speaker B: So having been a virtual firm before, it was a thing.
One of the things that I have learned is that you have to be much more intentional, much more precise, because you're doing asynchronous communication.
So then you can't just walk down the hall and explain what you meant. And a lot of people just don't want to talk on the phone anymore. They won't talk on the phone.
So if you're not seeing them in person and you're doing this over text or email, what do you do? So it's very important to use your subject lines really well and communicate in the subject line. What is it that you want? I'm sharing this for information.
I'm sharing this because I need you to respond.
There's urgency.
It's what I call the whitman's sampler of communication. If you ever know the chocolate. Right. And you open the chocolate box, and on the back the box, there's a roadmap of what's in the box.
[01:21:21] Speaker A: Right.
[01:21:22] Speaker B: Okay, I want the caramel. Oh, it's over here on the right. I can go right to the caramel. I don't need to go eat the cream. I don't have to guess.
In the same way, when you're communicating, whether it's over slack or whatever, you have to be much more precise about what you want and when you want it or need it.
[01:21:42] Speaker A: Interesting.
[01:21:45] Speaker B: And you have to think about what's going to grab their attention because we're all overwhelmed with so much email.
And then when you write the email, you don't want large blocks of text. You got bullet points. Get to the point. Tell them why you are reaching out in this form of communication when you need it. If there's background information, put it at the end and then tell them what's in the. And tell them what's in the background information and why they should read it. You've got to do the Whitman sampler. You got to guide people through. So it takes more time and it's harder.
I think in some ways it's a lot harder because you have to spend a lot more time doing it to be effective.
You also have to establish norms in your organization.
What is the threshold for when you return a communication? Is it 24 hours? Is it 48 hours?
Set the appropriate expectations for when you should hear from people.
What is the best channel?
When I start working with a client, I say, what is the best way for me to talk to you? Is it text? Is it email?
Is it teams?
Is it zoom?
Is it the phone?
Or some combination of. And so I ask people, okay, if I really need to get to you because there's some really urgent matter.
What's the best way? What are you going to pay attention to?
And everybody needs to do that with their boss and their boss's boss, right? And so what happens is sometimes, well, I'm on teams and I want everything that way. Or I'm on text.
Maybe I don't like text, but I've learned to use text because that's what other people use and I want to get my point across and I want them to hear me. So I better learn to use their preferred mode of communication. And especially for younger people to understand this. There's a power dynamic.
If your boss wants an email but you want a text, you better give them an email because you're the lower person on the totem pole and you need to engage them.
Yes, they need to communicate to you, but you need things from them in order to do what you do.
And therefore you have to go into their world. And this goes back to the whole notion of being an interpreter and so on, is understanding the world that somebody's in and working from that. And it's exhausting.
It's hard work, but it's the difference between people who are really successful and those who often aren't.
[01:25:04] Speaker A: Well, if you were designing a company culture for communication, what would be the ideal, in your opinion, for that?
[01:25:13] Speaker B: Well, it would be an open culture. And by that, where there were certain thresholds that, yes, we don't ignore people.
Okay. If we don't want to talk to them or we can't answer their question, we should at least tell them that we can't answer that right now. I'm not going to be able to get back to you for a week. That's just common courtesy.
Right? I think people get frustrated. You send something out and it's crickets, they're ghosted. Yeah, you're ghosted. And so then you're, well, did they not like it? And it might be that their kid was sick, but you've already made. The other person on the other end has made all these assumptions. I'm going to lose my job.
I've heard this from people. My boss didn't get back to me. So taking the time and understanding that, no, you don't want to get into a ping pong match with email. Got it.
But if someone sends you something, how long does it take to say, I got it? We'll look it over. Then they know you got it.
Right.
In fact, I use Gmail, and it has those responses in there. You just have to click on one of them.
[01:26:34] Speaker A: It even reminds you three days later after you sent something to follow up.
[01:26:39] Speaker B: Too, which is, yeah. So I think a lot of it is a culture that's based on respect for the people, whether you're at the top of the heap or the very bottom. It's that everybody has a role to play in the organization and that everybody deserves the courtesy of being responded to at some point, but set some thresholds for what those expectations are.
Right.
If I expect, when I send an email to hear from you in 3 hours, then that's got to be clear that that's my expectation. So if you can't meet that expectation, you better tell me why.
[01:27:26] Speaker A: What you just said actually should be written in the rules the first day you come on. I'm just going to say this, any job, what these protocols are so important, it seems to me, because otherwise there's misunderstanding, there's fear, and you're creating a negative culture if you don't have a very clear understanding on how you communicate within a company. Is that.
[01:27:54] Speaker B: That's absolutely true. And what those cultural norms are in our company, this is how we behave towards. Because it's not about the email, it's about how we behave towards each other. It's about how we build or value relationships, right. With the people around. And everybody likes to talk about collaboration, and we're going to build collaboration space. Collaboration space only works if you are willing to do it. When I worked in the hospital, there was this joke. How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb? I don't know, but the light bulb has to want to change. And it's the same thing. How many people does it take to? You've got to be committed to communicating, and it's a soft skill, so it's not necessarily considered as important in the hierarchy of things. People will talk about it, but let's get the legal people on, let's get the accounting people.
And then comms was kind of, well, that's a nice, fluffy thing to have. But comms people know how to have conversations. That's really what public relations, digital, it's all about having conversation, I mean, facilitating them.
[01:29:16] Speaker A: It's just amazing to me, there is no more important thing than to be able to understand what other people are saying.
It's the most important thing, right.
[01:29:27] Speaker B: Because everybody wants to be heard and everybody wants to be understood, and everyone wants to be valued, and it's simple things.
It's simple things. And taking the time to understand other people.
I had a client recently, and we were going back and forth about something, and then she talked about something that happened with her family.
And so I commented on, yes, that can be really difficult because that was something that was getting in the way of her being able to respond to me.
Right. But I knew where she was coming from. Okay, take your time.
[01:30:09] Speaker A: Sure.
[01:30:11] Speaker B: I think that's really important.
[01:30:13] Speaker A: What advice would you give early stage young professionals in the real estate industry regarding building his or her network? What specific advice would you suggest for approaching experts to learn, which makes these experts feel honored to share? You know what I'm saying there?
[01:30:30] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, I get asked this all the time because I get asked by people. My daughter is thinking of going into comms, or my daughter's thinking about going into real estate, and because of that person, I make the time, and I go talk to that person, and the only thing I say to them is, I just want to know what happens to you.
Many times, I never get a thank you note.
I never hear back from them.
And there's a sense of entitlement, like, of course you were going to do this because I'm me.
So you have to recognize that when you talk to people and everybody says, well, I need a mentor. I want to be a mentor. Well, you got to be a good mentee.
And I believe that you're never too old to be a mentee and never too young to be a mentor. But you need to look at the relationship as also, what can you bring to that relationship? Not just take.
I think that's really important about networking and just to show genuine interest, ask people questions.
There's a saying, if you're talking, you're not selling.
What I mean by that is that when you meet people, the tendency is to say, hi, I'm so and so, and I do this, that, and the other thing, and I'm, you know, and I'm this and that, and I'm looking for a job, and I'm, you know, I've. I've seen people do this at, at networking events, and instead, it might be better to just ask people questions.
Tell me, you know, find something that is in common, and just be open and curious about people.
Just be curious about people and what they do and what makes them tick and what you might learn from them.
[01:32:26] Speaker A: Well, you've just said what I tell my community almost to the letter of a community of young people that I'm counseling all the time, and just say, listen, and you will learn. Ask good questions. Be curious. Find out what turns people on, and then you can learn whether it resonates with you or not and whether it sense for you to continue working with them or talking to them or doing whatever you need to do.
[01:32:56] Speaker B: And one way to ask questions is not to ask yes or no questions.
[01:33:02] Speaker A: No.
[01:33:03] Speaker B: And to ask questions in such a way. Well, how is it that you. What prompted you to.
What do you think about?
How might you deal with a situation like this?
Tell me about your company.
What do you like about being there?
All open ended questions.
And also learn to read cues. So if you're at a networking event and you're trying to learn about somebody and they are talking to the person that they've been trying to connect with.
[01:33:48] Speaker A: Right.
[01:33:49] Speaker B: Shut your mouth. Leave them alone. Right.
There's a little bit of EQ that has to go on here. Is to understand time and place.
[01:34:03] Speaker A: Very good. Especially at networking events. It's important to know when to strike and when not.
[01:34:11] Speaker B: Exactly.
And being able to pick up on that, that's something you learn over time. Sure.
[01:34:20] Speaker A: You've been in many communication scenarios. What are the most uncomfortable situations relating to our business that you commonly see? And what strategies do you recommend for people to handle them? We may have already dealt with a few of them, but maybe you can reemphasize.
[01:34:34] Speaker B: So the biggest ones are when there's bad stuff happens. Right. Crane collapse deals, falls through and is hurt. Public people in your company behave badly.
Somebody's embezzled money. I've seen it.
Okay, so those are more extreme things. Perhaps, but you have to lay people off.
[01:35:02] Speaker A: Deceit, maybe. Sorry, deceit.
[01:35:06] Speaker B: Deceit. Yes. People have. Or you thought you were going to get a certain deal and someone else snatches it away from you. Yeah.
You tell somebody something that you thought was in confidence, and then it's all over the place.
So in those situations, well, you learn a lesson.
The other thing, and it's something that I have been doing a lot of thinking about, is being prepared not only for when bad things happen, but being prepared for an opportunity to walk into your example. A story I like to tell is that I was at some friend of mine's office, and George Clooney happened to be there.
And as I was know, and he was signing autographs and all the other, he's like, do you want to do something? No, I don't need to do that. Well, I get in the elevator and I hear, hold the elevator, and it's George Clooney, and it's me and George Clooney in this elevator.
And I was totally tongue tied. I didn't have anything to know. I said something like, wow, that was really nice of you to sign all those autographs. Your arm must get tired. And he said, yes. Imagine doing this at a stadium. And then the doors opened and he left, and I left, and so on. But I tell that story as to say, what if the person you've been dying to meet somehow walks into your office? Or are you prepared for having that conversation?
So always thinking about how would I respond if that opportunity come across, and how would I respond when I'm in a pressure situation? You're making a presentation and the client hates it, and they're mean about it, right? They're really mean. They're mean. Who knows why they're mean?
Maybe they had a fight with their spouse that morning. Maybe their boss yelled at them, but they don't like what you said. So what happens is people get very defensive, and they want to argue, and they just escalate, and nobody hears each other. So it's also thinking, how can I learn to deescalate? How can I learn to calm myself? How can I make this? It's not about me. They're angry, but it's really not about me. Don't take it personally. So how would I prepare myself?
Or when the boss questions that number is wrong and you're in front of the whole team and you feel really embarrassed. Okay, how do I deal with that? Preparing yourself for those kinds of situations and thinking about how you would deal with that. And you should never go into a presentation without having thought about, what's the worst question I could get that would make me want to crawl under the table?
[01:38:10] Speaker A: Plan B.
[01:38:11] Speaker B: And then how will I answer it?
[01:38:13] Speaker A: Right.
So, in your book, and I'll never forget this part, you talk about a story vault.
[01:38:20] Speaker B: Yes.
[01:38:20] Speaker A: Which is interesting, because it seems to me if you have a good story vault, you can, in your mind, fairly quickly come up with a story or a way to deflect a situation that's uncomfortable. Am I right?
[01:38:36] Speaker B: Absolutely true. Think about things that you know in your own life or what other people have told you. Now, you have to be careful about storytelling because it needs to be your story. And you have to remember that other people who might be in that story may not want you to tell that story.
So then you have to disguise the other people so that people don't know who those other people are. But the point being that you tell a story to illustrate or to buy you time can buy you time, too.
I've been doing it.
[01:39:14] Speaker A: It deflects an emotion sometimes, right?
[01:39:19] Speaker B: It can.
It's done, right? Yes, absolutely. Great point.
[01:39:26] Speaker A: So let's shift now to your company a little bit. Talk about how you built it and what is your mission, and what are you doing for your clients. You've already talked a little bit about that, but maybe go into more depth.
[01:39:39] Speaker B: So this is where we might say in journalism, we buried the lead because it's coming at the end. But Wanger group, we design communications programs for clients. We work with executive leadership and their teams, and we do three things. We help people clarify their purpose, simplify their message, amplify their presence so that they win more business, motivate their teams, expand their influence, and if you're a nonprofit, raise more money, and either way, win more business, you're generating more revenue. So it's really using communication to build organizations and to make more confident people who can go out in the world and be brand ambassadors for the company or the enterprise.
[01:40:37] Speaker A: Can you cite a few client examples?
[01:40:41] Speaker B: Sure. I'm not going to name them necessarily, but we have worked with, I can name one of them. I think so. I worked for many, many years with CBRE.
I worked with them in three markets and worked with them on building their communications program. So when I started, it was insignia, started at Insignia, and then they merged with CBRE, acquired them, and really worked with folks on how to talk about what they were doing. So when we would do announcements of deals, we would also talk about it from the client perspective and what that meant to the client and really help them build their communications program. Here in DC, I've worked with all kinds of organizations really helping them. Here's another example. We just worked with a large firm, large design firm, and we were brought in to help them with messaging.
And we interviewed people inside their organization. We interviewed people outside the organization.
And through the messaging process, they came to the conclusion that they needed to redo their business plan because by talking about what they said they were going to be and what they wanted to be or what they wanted to emphasize, they realized that the budgeting and business planning that they had done, actually there was a disconnect. And if they were going to be that, then they needed to think differently about the structure of their organization. Wow.
And that's what's so powerful about that. I always say that if you can say it, you can be it, and if you can be it, you can do it. And many times people do strategic planning and business planning and they focus on the numbers and then they say, well, okay, now we're going to be this or we're going to do this, we're going to launch this new thing, and then we might get call to help them. How do we talk about it? And we ask them a whole bunch of questions that didn't come up or because of the process, we'll find out. Oh, we're still angry about three mergers ago where we never really gelled, or you all want us to do this, but we don't have infrastructure. So the conversation around how we're going to talk about our brand often uncovers other truths that might not have come out because it's a lot safer to talk about it from. We have a communications challenge rather than we have a product challenge. We have a team challenge. We have an infrastructure challenge.
Those are thorny issues, but it feels safer to talk about well, it's marketing's fault.
We just don't have the right message. We don't have the right words. Well the know Louis Sullivan said the architect, form follows function and communication follows product or service.
And the delivery of that said product or service.
[01:44:25] Speaker A: I mean it seems to me that communication has to be part of every plan in every way almost.
[01:44:36] Speaker B: It absolutely should. But it's often, we often, and I think sometimes communications firms do this, communications people do this to our, we do it to ourselves, is that we're brought in as task to do certain tasks and not tapped into the strategy that we can provide and the lens that we bring, that's different.
[01:45:03] Speaker A: If you can be the strategy for firms, I would think that you could multiply your business ten times.
People would buy into that.
[01:45:12] Speaker B: Yeah, well that's kind of where we're going.
[01:45:16] Speaker A: And then the question is, do you want to grow that much?
You're constrained by what you're constraining yourself with.
[01:45:30] Speaker B: We're boutique firm and that's by design.
[01:45:34] Speaker A: Right.
[01:45:35] Speaker B: And I went through this whole period of like, why don't I build a big firm? I certainly could. And then I came back down to the fact that I don't want to, I want to be a boutique firm.
I select the clients very carefully and we do very high end consulting. And sometimes we have to get into the strategy through the back door because a lot of times people don't know that they need this.
Sometimes the product people don't know that they need, they think they need the tactical side.
I need a press release, I need social media, I need a video. So sometimes you have to get in through that very concrete want or need to get to the other things.
[01:46:21] Speaker A: Well, it seems to me that if you ask the right questions when you're being engaged or when they're at you, if you ask the right questions, say, wait a minute, I hadn't thought of that.
[01:46:35] Speaker B: Which is what often happens. Yes. And then even then, when we start working with people, once we get in there, we say, you know, I know we said we were going to do this, but now that we're here, we need to be doing this. And most of the time I can convince people that that's going to be more effective because they'll see it themselves.
[01:47:02] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, you can make it real easy to understand if they see, oh, I didn't know that, or I didn't see that.
[01:47:12] Speaker B: But you have to do it in a way that gives people a sense of ownership and agency.
[01:47:20] Speaker A: You want them to make it think it's their idea, not your.
[01:47:25] Speaker B: Because they know their enterprise better than I ever will.
[01:47:28] Speaker A: Of course.
[01:47:29] Speaker B: Right.
What I've learned is that when someone hires a consultant, it's because they want to change something.
They're in a state that they don't want to be in. They want to be somewhere else.
[01:47:50] Speaker A: Right.
[01:47:51] Speaker B: And so it's a question of how do we help them get to where they want to go or where they think they want to go and help them figure out if that's the right destination and then how to get there.
We're all in the change business. Right.
Everyone always wants to think about that from a nonprofit perspective or a social enterprise perspective. But we are in the change. I mean, if somebody's trying to leave space, they want to make a change.
They either need bigger, they need different.
They're buying something, but they're buying something different from what they have. Right.
And it's a journey.
[01:48:39] Speaker A: Yeah. It's a journey. It's a purchase.
[01:48:41] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:48:43] Speaker A: All right. Now I'm going to get you the final questions, just a few.
What are some of the biggest wins, losses, and surprising events of your career?
[01:48:53] Speaker B: Well, so you don't win every project or everything that you go after.
I used to get very upset about that in the beginning, and then I just said, well, you win some, you lose some. And I've also taken the attitude that if we didn't win something, I always tried to find out why. Right.
Was it something in the way that we presented ourselves so that we can learn from it, but sometimes it's just didn't win it and move on.
I think the biggest things is learning from mistakes we all make. Them not reading a situation a certain way or pushing too hard.
I know that this is the right, and this really more happened earlier in my business, whereas I know what they need to do. Oh, my God, if they do that, they're going to totally wreck themselves.
Well, I might know what they need to do, but they have to know what they need to do. They have to see it.
And then being able to say, you know what, I made a mistake there and own up to it. Sure. And I've had lots of clients really appreciate that. Oh, gosh, we didn't do that. Right or we didn't do that. Well, this is something I tell a lot of consultants. You know, what? If you messed up, eat it.
Don't charge the client to do it over again because it's your mistake. Right.
No surprises. And that's the other thing with fees and things. And this is something I found when I was on the client side, I would have people all of a sudden get a bill and nobody told me that we were out of scope.
Well, I had a pretty finite budget. So now you're telling me.
And then we'd have to come up with the money and it would mess up other parts of our budgeting. So I always believe in being very transparent with people. Okay, we can do anything you want if you want to do that. That means either that's more time, more money, more whatever, or what are we not going to do? So we can do that thing. But I always have those conversations with people because I don't want to be surprised, so they shouldn't be surprised.
[01:51:35] Speaker A: Has anything come out of left field that you didn't expect as far as a client relationship?
[01:51:41] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, when we've won some really big projects, we're the David and I got an RFP out of the blue for a very prestigious, large national foundation. And I said, oh, I'm not going to bid on that because we're not going to get that. Then I sat in on the bidder call and I listened to the 18 other firms. I'm like, these people don't know what they're talking about.
And a friend of mine said, dad, just do it. We'll go in together, we'll do it.
And so we responded to the RFP and I put a line in there about they kept saying they wanted to change something. And I said something like, well, this sort of reminds me of Lewis Powell and pornography, like, are you going to know it when you see it or are you going to define it? That was the question I asked and my partner said, don't put that in there. I put that in there. And we were shortlisted and we go in for the meeting and the first thing they said is, we love that line because that's exactly our problem. Right? And we ended up getting the work and it was a two and a half year project with this very large national group and we beat out 18 other firms.
[01:53:05] Speaker A: That's awesome.
[01:53:07] Speaker B: And we've had the privilege to work with some really amazing people, but sometimes when we win a big project like that or a client like that where we weren't sure we would, or we're competing against all these other people, and that's very gratifying like that.
[01:53:33] Speaker A: So what are your life priorities among family, work and giving?
[01:53:39] Speaker B: So, yeah, well, I moved to Annapolis and really like being on the water. And so I like to really spend time at this point. I really want to make sure. I don't really believe in work life balance as much as I believe in work life harmony. I heard somebody say that and I think that's really it. It's making sure you have time for people, relationships, making sure you have time to check in on people, especially when people are hurting.
I really doing a lot of travel.
There was a long period of time, especially when my kids were growing up, I didn't want to travel, and now I do. So I'm hoping to do more of that and just really find a.
I think I have a pretty good work harmony right now, but making sure that we keep that.
[01:54:41] Speaker A: What do you give back to the community?
[01:54:44] Speaker B: So I am on a number of boards. I chair a board for the school for Ethics and Global Leadership, which is a high school semester school program with. We have three campuses in Washington, South Africa and London. Just open the London campus, and we bring high school students from all over the country to these campuses, and they get part of their junior year taught through a lens of ethics. They learn English and math and science through the lens of ethics.
And the other board I had been on for a long time is Jubilee housing, and have been very involved with that organization for a very, very long time.
And I've been on other nonprofit boards and do some volunteer work. But those are the two things that are occupying my time at the moment.
[01:55:39] Speaker A: Are you involved at all in the curriculum on that school of ethics there?
[01:55:46] Speaker B: So I'm a good board member and I stay in my lane, which means that we have an exceptional head of school.
We provide advice and guidance. One of the things that we did that I was very proud of is we did a strategic plan. It was the first strategic plan, really serious strategic plan that the organization had done, and it's only 15 years old. And we brought in a consultant and did all the right, asked a lot of the right questions. But it's up to the head of school.
We set vision and direction, but it's up to the head of school to deliver on that. And we, as a board, need to support him and his team. But we do make suggestions about many things, about involving more.
The program here in Washington is very focused on political ethics and government, and we need to be looking at AI and technology and so on. The program in London is more focused on finance because of London being a finance center. And our program in South Africa is focused on a lot of cross cultural issues.
It's a great program.
[01:57:08] Speaker A: So what advice would you give your 25 year old self today?
[01:57:13] Speaker B: I would tell myself not to worry so much that things will work out, even when they don't look like they're going to, they will work out and you will figure it out.
I wish I had known that then, because it would have saved me a lot of angst.
[01:57:32] Speaker A: Well, since you're a communication expert, this last question that I ask all my guests, I hope you got a pretty good answer for if you could post a statement on a billboard on the Capitol Beltway for millions to see, what would it say?
[01:57:48] Speaker B: I was going to say something else, but I'm not going to.
I would probably go back to stop worrying so much.
Stop worrying so much because I hear, because people are worry about the things we can't control.
So stop worrying. Focus on what you can control.
[01:58:16] Speaker A: Well, Liz, thank you very much for this wide ranging conversation ish. Really good item.
