Utah's #1 Industrial and Logistics Team

Welcome back to the Mountain West Podcast! In this episode, Chad sits down with two very important people in the industry and leaders of Newmark Mountain West, Nick Wood, Chief Executive Officer and Kyle Roberts, CCIM, SIOR, CSCMP, Vice Chairman - Industrial & Logistics / Capital Markets. They reminisce on the early years of their careers, what it takes to be successful, and much more. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I recognized that it was okay to tell other people what I was thinking, especially if I thought it would help them. One of the things that gets you know brokers fired and um or not hired for the next assignment um is when you're you know you're sitting on a a conference call with the developer and their capital partner and whomever else, and there's nothing to say.

SPEAKER_03 0:29

Welcome everybody to the Mountain West Podcast. Today we have a guest that we have been trying to track down for a couple of months. We've had him on the schedule a couple times, but he's been too busy. We finally tracked him down and it's late in the day. He just told me as we were walking in that he has worked from 7 a.m. to 5 a.m., which is like 22 hours in a row. So we are excited to have him. It is Kyle Roberts. And I'm gonna say something crazy that he's not gonna like, but I'm gonna say it anyway. Kyle Roberts, the most successful industrial broker that this market has ever seen. He's gonna hate it. And he can tell us why he hates it in a second. And we also have Nick Wood, who is the CEO of Newmark Mountain West. And Nick's got a really interesting connection here in that he and Kyle worked together side by side for 20 something years. And so I thought it would be interesting to have Nick on the podcast because of that connection and because we really have that commonality between Kyle on either side of Kyle. We've seen different things in different parts of his career. And so if you could just give us an intro on uh, you know, how in the world you got here sitting in this room with us.

SPEAKER_02 1:44

Yeah, I mean, it's a long story, but uh mine and Kyle's history goes way back. So been with Kyle for all of but two years of probably my 23, 24 years in the business. And uh have to say Kyle's probably one of the best mentors I've ever had. And I've worked with him as some, you know, just a young punk in the research department, all the way up to you know, leading up and selling our brokerage together. And then after that, going into the corporate environment and you know, running an industrial platform in conjunction with Kyle and uh the industrial leadership team. So, I mean, it's really covered all spans of the last two decades. And um, anyway, really excited to have him on today and just cover his journey into commercial real estate and the giant that he is.

SPEAKER_03 2:37

Welcome to both of you.

SPEAKER_02 2:38

Thank you. Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 2:39

Uh, let's just jump into it. I have literally 50 questions here that I came up with in like 10 minutes. Kyle is someone I've known for 30 years, and it's someone who I really, really respect. He's a friend of mine, he's a partner of mine. I can say a lot of superlatives, but he's a great guy. He's an intelligent guy. I've learned a ton from Kyle. I'll explain why in the podcast, but I'm really excited about this one. So welcome.

SPEAKER_00 3:08

Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_03 3:09

And let's just jump in. If you can give us kind of a quick personal history on what in the world you're doing in commercial real estate and how you got here.

SPEAKER_00 3:18

Um so from a pretty early age, uh, every job I ever had was sales. And um, there was one brief moment in time in my life where I got to run around, blow things up, but had the honor to serve as an infantry marine, uh, Charlie 1-1 and 1st Marine Division out at Camp Hunslin, California. And uh I had a uh pretty catastrophic injury that um ended my service and and turned me um a direction where I had absolutely no idea where I was gonna go. I had uh I had some pretty um lofty plans and goals for that service, and ultimately um I kind of just gravit gravitated back to the thing that you know, and it and I I wish I could tell you that there was some amazing you know calculus that went into uh wanting to be in commercial real estate, but um I've always had a little bit of an aversion to authority and that uh um so I was one of those people that really uh needed to go have his ass kicked a little bit and um learn a lot uh about you know humility and humanity in a very uh close quarters context. Um so uh when I came back, I uh I actually had moved to Utah when my folks were um uh had moved from California kind of uh right after the brain drain and in the the post um SNL recession that had happened. Uh and my father was a school teacher, my mother was uh a consultant for uh that ran around and taught people about ICDI encoding and whatnot. And uh I honestly really didn't like it very much. Uh I you know, I moved here um in as a mid-teen, and it was a little bit like footloose, honestly, for me. Um, you know, uh San Diego area kid moves to Sandy, Utah with what Sandy was in you know 1988-89. Yeah, literally was like footloose. It was. Um and you know, uh our our market has become a lot more diverse and whatnot, um, and in some respects a lot more tolerant and accepting of lots of different things, uh, which has been fantastic for for the state and applaud everybody for that. Um but I I when I shipped off to boot camp, I enlisted um when I was 17, had my 18th birthday in school of infantry, and uh was injured not long after that um on a predeployment workup. And when I came home, um I was I really had no idea what I was gonna do. Um my sister was attending the University of Utah at that time, and um she um convinced me to go to a um a fraternity rush function. So I went up there, met a bunch of cool guys, um we're all we were kind of more the uh animal house like fraternity. There wasn't a lot of wasn't a lot of wealth, it wasn't super stuffy, it was just you know a bunch of people that were uh looking for diversion and brotherhood, and um and I uh enrolled as a finance major with what was at the time available was a real estate emphasis, they call it an emphasis.

SPEAKER_03 6:58

This is before Mred.

SPEAKER_00 6:59

Long before.

SPEAKER_03 7:00

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:01

Um and uh I needed to work, so um I did what I had known and went back and I was in retail sales, so I I sold suits of all things um at a couple different places and I would have paid money to see that. I was actually really good. I bet you were good, but it's where the fashion translates um and um realized pretty quickly that that that was not what my aspiration was. Not that that's you know, just for me wasn't what I wanted to do forever. And I always had a pretty strong drive to be financially successful, didn't grow up with much, and um, you know, kind of classic American story everybody wants to do better for the next generation than and than what it was and and leave it better than you found it. And um, so I was dating a girl who actually made the decision uh in the summer of my freshman year to go get a real estate license because my thought was if you're gonna sell something and you want to be commission only, sell the biggest thing. It was that simple.

SPEAKER_03 8:10

Right.

SPEAKER_00 8:10

So I went to Stringham Real Estate School. This is where we met. Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_03 8:14

You probably we actually didn't really meet. I just was introduced to you. And let me tell the story of how what happened. So I go to Stringham Real Estate, I'm 18 years old. I I had just graduated from high school, and back then you had to go to a physical place, which was Stringham Real Estate, and you'd go and there was a classroom of a hundred people that were all trying to get their real estate license. I mean, they're throwing out terms. I've never heard of any of these terms. I'm 18 years old. I'm an idiot. I don't know what they're saying. The instructor is up there. Every time the instructor says, Does anyone know what a 1031 is? I'm like, I have no idea what that is. A guy in the class raises his hand. Yeah, sir, that's a uh situation where, and then the next question would come up, does anyone have an like every question was answered by this guy who was my age?

SPEAKER_02 9:08

And what was your guys' age for reference?

SPEAKER_03 9:10

I was 18 in 1995.

SPEAKER_02 9:12

And I was 19. 18 and 19.

SPEAKER_03 9:13

He's answering every question. There's 30 year olds, there's 40 year olds, there's 50 year olds in the room. No one knows how this kid, like savant genius, is answering all these questions. I hate this guy.

unknown 9:24

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 9:26

So, anyway, there's another part of the story, but he ends up getting his license. I end up going on a Mormon mission, and I come back and I start working in a place called CRG, which at the time was the most dominant brokerage in the market. I walk in, the very first person I see is Kyle. And I was like, oh my gosh, this guy. Sorry.

SPEAKER_00 9:52

Well, no, it's fine. So um I was dating a girl right after I'd got my license. Um, and I was I didn't know that I want to do residential, commercial, or otherwise. Um, I'm tend not to gravitate towards emotional decisions for uh for business or money, and I was, you know, learning about finance. So um I um the girl I was dating, her best friend was working for um Bowler at CRG. Yeah. Um and so she's like, hey, come, you know, people are always looking for you know motivated people that that uh want to give it a shot. So I came and interviewed um with Steve Martin, who suggested that I work with Robert Cooper.

SPEAKER_03 10:45

Now that would have been an amazing combo.

SPEAKER_00 10:47

It was a um it was a crash course and talking really fast.

SPEAKER_03 10:51

Yeah. I actually worked for and that was my first job at CRG. Oh, was it for Cooper? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:56

Yeah, so oh wow. Um so um that didn't last more than about six or seven months, and Taylor DeBry had come on and you know had an MBA and um, you know, fantastic guy, and and knew um there was a lot of relationship connection in the community, so I could understand strategically why um I probably was not uh going to be on the growth trajectory that I wanted to be on. So um actually the very first real estate deal I ever did was a 2,000 square foot uh Navy recruiting center in Centerville.

SPEAKER_03 11:34

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 11:35

And Robert was gracious enough to give me that fee as a parting gift. It was a one-year deal.

SPEAKER_03 11:40

He was a good guy. He was a good guy.

SPEAKER_00 11:42

He was a good guy. And uh and and I mean fantastic broker. Um yeah. So I I learned a lot. And um the the thing that struck me was how hard people worked, that it was intense, that it was um action-packed. Um there were so many things that you could focus on and learn. Um so anyway, after I departed, um I went and sat with Bill Martin and um he we were talking and um he took a liking to me for whatever reason, and it's probably because I like to smoke cigars. And uh he I asked him who makes the most money here, and he pointed right over his shoulder and said, That guy right there.

SPEAKER_04 12:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:27

And uh, I had been bugging Zach Anderson, who was um was Mike's partner at the time, and had uh was you know extraordinarily successful early on. Um one of the most fun people I had ever been around, and just just a fantastic human. Uh and he took a liking to me, and I said to him, Hey, look, I'll do all the stuff you don't want to do, so you can do more of the things that you want to do. And um, you know, actually we went to Chili's and I was underage, and uh that's where the best deals are closed. I had a uh uh I had a draft beer and one for Zach that I bought, but my friend Dale Walker was the manager there, and I really didn't have the money to be buying beers at lunch, so he kind of covered it and it was must have made a good impression. So he sat me down, had an interview with Mike, and um I started at uh $6.25 an hour with a mileage reimbursement. Um, and at certain thresholds, one percent of Mike's net after expenses and brokerage, all that stuff.

SPEAKER_03 13:41

Yeah, and just for perspective, at the time, we're talking about Mike Falk and Zach Anderson, who were the best industrial brokers in the market, and probably some of the highest producing brokers, period. Maybe the highest producing broker.

SPEAKER_00 13:55

Mike had just come off the first uh seven or excuse me, first million dollar year that had ever been uh achieved by a broker. And he was, you know, he was that was back when um the commercial real estate community was a part of the Solid Border Realtors. Um so they had the Realtor of the Year award and Zach had one rookie of the year, Mike had had uh one broker of the year, and uh I liked the intensity. I liked uh I liked that it was it was there was no wondering where you stood. And um Mike was you know very clear with what he expected and um and he gave me a lot of rope. I think he recognized pretty pretty early on that um I picked up the technical aspects of things and so really spent a lot of time. Um, you know, Mike go out, put something on a contract, and and I'd clean them and fry them. And um and that worked really well. And um we ended up hiring a couple of interns and uh about this would have been so my second year in the business. Uh I could tell that um Mike and I used to leave and we would walk around the block and go down to uh what was the burger joint right on the corner of Fourth South.

SPEAKER_03 15:17

Yeah, it was uh the Greek place. The Greek place, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:20

I can't oh gosh. It was like one of the families that was related to the Crown Burgers. No, they had good fries. I remember that. And so we did that often, and I was kind of a sounding board for Mike, and um uh he uh used to say that I had a tuning fork for people because I was that was maybe not his strongest suit, and um, like any good broker, he was filling gaps, and um so I just became more and more involved in deals and a cool nugget there for anyone that's listening that's a rookie is you found some of the highest producing brokers in the market at the time.

SPEAKER_03 16:01

You approached them and you said, let me do stuff for you that you don't want to do. I will work on garbage, I will work on anything, I will solve problems for you that you don't want to solve.

SPEAKER_00 16:14

And it was funny because uh in the interview that because Zach then pestered Mike forever, and Mike was extraordinarily busy. And I mean, I thought he was uh tycoon because he had a cell phone in his car that, right? I mean, it was a big deal. With the antenna, yep, like the hardest. I was like this. I was so ballered. Yeah, this dude has uh and he Mike's an impressive guy. He's um was a tenacious broker, and um there was uh it was a great way to learn um the expectation of work ethic. And uh we uh Mike and Zach had left to go on the company trip. This was in the my second year in the business, and when they came back, um a very longtime client and uh former partner uh Paul Kaiser from Utah Paperbox um was a very close friend of Mike's and he'd done a bunch of work and I had worked on a couple of transactions where um you know, after getting the thing signed up, I was the primary interface to get the deal closed. And uh Paul took a liking to me. And um when uh Mike and Zach were gone in uh in the week that they were gone for the trip, I had put together two seller finance deals with one with Nielsen Frozen Custard on a 10,000 square foot building um in North Saul Lake Industrial Park and uh another uh building that that kind of dilapidated building that Paul owned um that was kind of a warehouse for all his toys. And when they came back, they were kind of surprised and it was like, all right, we'll see if they close. We better bring this kid into the fold, otherwise he's gonna Well, I I I think it was more like you know, I nobody taught me how to do a seller finance deal. I was asking Anna Irons at at I I had unbelievable people that were around that are many that are still involved in the business, many that are not, some that have passed away that were uh generous with with their time, and I was pretty persistent and probably a little precocious. And um Rod Newman at Metro National Title and Anna worked there, and when I would have questions about something, they'd give me the time to answer them. And and a kind of I I am a person that has it's it's a compulsion. Um I have to understand why. I need to understand why things work, how they work. Um and for me that has been a um a blessing and a curse.

SPEAKER_03 18:51

Um and um I know I'm rambling here, but so we we uh it it was there was like a big uh a big connection with super high producers that I've noticed, especially in this market, is you're the number one industrial broker in this market right now, probably ever. But you were mentored by a a guy and and a team who at the time was the number one industrial broker.

SPEAKER_00 19:19

Oh, absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 19:19

And if you look at the top ten most successful brokers in today's market, eight of them were mentored by the previous generation's top producing, you know. There's a really interesting connection there. And you still have to have all the hard work and everything, but the curve is so much shorter because, like you're saying, you're very inquisitive, you have all these questions, you can turn around and ask the guy right there.

SPEAKER_00 19:47

Well, you didn't do that with Mike when he was on the phone because he'd be grumpy about that. But yeah, but Mike was generous with his time. I mean, we stayed late and you know, order a pizza and and I'd ask him questions and ask him for feedback and you know what I could do to improve and uh help the team grow and all that fun stuff. And um, so I I started producing pretty quickly, and uh a lot of that also was being on a top-producing team, and there's a deal that probably wasn't worth Microsach's time. Um and so they gave it to me to do. Or um, you know, I start working on something because I'm returning uh phone calls that Microsac didn't want to return, and they made a connection with somebody and they started calling me, you know, those kinds of things. So there's there is absolutely no scenario um that I can think of where strong mentors and especially those that are um they do it year after year after year, and there's a systematic approach to the business, and you know, you you plan the work and then you work the plan um and then adapt when you have to adapt. Yeah, that's uh that was the ethos. So we we decided Mike was uh always uh had a lot of drive, also, and I think he'd always in his heart wanted to own and run a brokerage. Um so um he sat down with Zach and I in one of our quarterly planning meetings. We'd go for a quarter, completely tear our business apart or four uh once per quarter, and then we decided that was too fast. So we do it three times a year and called it a triannual.

SPEAKER_03 21:37

And uh we went to I went to a couple of those back in the day.

SPEAKER_00 21:40

We we would we would um literally leave, go somewhere uh at a hotel and tear our business plan completely apart, um, and then have an awful lot of fun afterwards, and uh and then slank back into the office the next day hating the world, but with a better idea of how we were gonna attack.

SPEAKER_02 22:00

It's and you continue that to this day, right?

SPEAKER_00 22:02

Yeah, we still do them. Um we we um we've kind of changed formatting and some other things that from from what they were before.

SPEAKER_03 22:11

You're sleeping now at some point.

SPEAKER_00 22:14

And uh so uh uh at that Mike looked right at Zach and I and he said, um I want to start a company. And okay, you know, um I wasn't gonna not follow Mike at that part uh point in time, uh, or Zach for that matter. And um the the extraordinarily fierce loyalty the clients had because of I think the service that was being provided um made it easy to make that transition. Um and we within a week had put together um Zach found space at the Eagle Gate Tower on on the lucky 13th floor.

SPEAKER_03 22:57

Um I didn't think they had office floors that were 13 back in the day, but I remember when you guys I remember I came in one day, this is at CRG, and you guys had left and it was a real bummer because at that point I had gotten to know you and we had become friends, and I had a ton of respect for you and was excited about working with you, and and and so I was bummed out about that, but the opportunity was so huge, you guys started what became NAI Utah.

SPEAKER_00 23:25

Was it initially NAI Utah or sorry, uh yeah, it was NAI Utah, then it became NAI West. That's right.

SPEAKER_03 23:31

And that became the largest brokerage, most dominant brokerage in the region. And um what's really interesting is it all comes full circle because I was at CRG for 10 years, maybe like five or six years after you left, and then we started talking about doing our own brokerage. And you and Mike reached out to me and said, Hey, we should talk. And and we ended up talking to a bunch of different brokerages and thought, should we do our own thing? Should we partner with somebody? And Mike was awesome and a and a great salesman, but I was just a little hesitant. And I've told you this before, I'm sure, but you were the one who really closed that deal. You grabbed me, we went into a conference room, we talked through it, and I really had a very, very high level of trust and respect in you. And so leaving that meeting, I was like, let's do this. And so you guys actually invested in Mountain West, the startup company, owned the majority of it, and that's how we started.

SPEAKER_00 24:36

Yeah, and it was uh I remember all those meetings with you and Ben, and I mean I think some of that that kind of camaraderie in same generation, and we were probably roughly the same points in in time and in our career because you had a pretty meteoric rise also. And it it really, I think the only thing that causes brokers to leave something, um you know, the world changed and there it became a lot more fan financially accretive for a top-producing broker to leave and go somewhere else. But I mean, somebody paying a broker to go to another firm was unheard of. And the um the structure that we put together, if you remember, was um rather than cash, you guys got ownership in in Mount West. Yep. Because it had kind of started to become a thing then. Right. Um and uh and and it was always very impressive to me that that people would take that opportunity, and it's uh also I think a very common theme with successful brokers is that they invest in themselves and they believe in their self in them in themselves. So and I think the only reason that people leave is either they are tempered for growth. Um there are sometimes conflicts in uh in offices where people don't get along and uh blow-ups that happen over things that are probably silly, and um somebody makes the decision to go somewhere else. Um but what allowed us to grow so quickly at um NEI Utah was um we had a ethos which was the best place to do brokerage business. So we were less focused on company uh profitability than we were broker profitability. And um as people start started to get paid to do things, um we were really successful recruiting people that had a higher split. So it's I'm gonna pay you to come, but believe in yourself. And um and those people that uh that kind of seize that opportunity also I mean it tells you something about who they are and and what they're gonna be.

SPEAKER_03 26:59

Yeah. And the funny thing is as a result of everything you just said, really m the DNA, the backbone of Mountain West, and now Newmark Mountain West is that because that's where it was born and that's how it was built from the ground up.

SPEAKER_00 27:15

Yeah, and it I think um, and I give all of the the partners credit because you know Steve Condi was the fourth horseman. Um it was the four of us that started the company, and then um Eli Mills joined a week later. Um, so he was effectively there at the beginning.

SPEAKER_02 27:33

Yeah, one of the favorite core memories I have is it's the newspaper article when you guys launched and started NAI, right? So it's the five people you just mentioned. Um, you, Zach, uh Mike, Condi, and Eli Mills. Yep. But like just looking back at that. You're you're a baby in that photo.

SPEAKER_03 27:52

So we gotta find that somewhere. You do?

SPEAKER_02 27:55

Yeah, I have an axe bar.

SPEAKER_00 27:57

I haven't seen that in like 25 years. It was uh October of 1998, and uh So you would have been what age then?

SPEAKER_02 28:05

22.

SPEAKER_00 28:05

So 22 years old, and then for took a couple mortgages on my on a house that I bought and maxed out credit cards to buy my portion of the company.

SPEAKER_02 28:16

So the two pivotal moments so you have 98, NAI gets launched. Obviously, Chad and you and your team do everything at CRG over that time. Then you talked about the formation of Mountain West, which was 2009. 2009, yeah. And so at that point, you guys both would have been what age?

SPEAKER_03 28:33

I was uh 34 or something like that, 33, 34. Uh so Kyle would have been 33. Right, right about that same thing. That's that's crazy.

SPEAKER_02 28:44

Yeah, just right in the prime.

SPEAKER_03 28:46

He was a lot younger than I was when he took that leap.

SPEAKER_00 28:49

I don't know about that, but it it um I I think that if there is one consistent kind of theme in what I see as a successful environment, fertile soil for brokers to succeed, is a recognition of just how important support services are, but an environment where those folks are also treated like partners, so they want to be there and they're recognized for the things that they do and uh rewarded. We had you know, owners of our company, you know, Monique Clausen, when she came over, she was she she owned one percent of the of the firm. And that's what she wanted instead of assigning bonus. She was a receptionist. Yeah, she was the receptionist at CRG. And I think Bill might have been most angry about her leaving.

SPEAKER_03 29:38

Yes, I remember being on the other side of that.

SPEAKER_00 29:41

Um so I I think that you know, ha having the ability to adapt to markets, recognizing that generally when things are softer or there is some type of um crisis that's occurring that creates macro macroeconomic disruption, um, that's the time to invest. That that's when when everybody is, you know, it's old Warren Buffett. That's when people are fearful, and right.

SPEAKER_03 30:10

When everyone's when everyone's running out the door, you want to be running in.

SPEAKER_00 30:13

Right. And um, and and that's what we did. And um that's kind of what I do now, um, from a perspective of kind of targeting growth.

SPEAKER_03 30:25

And um, so let's talk about now because I we've talked about history and how we got to where we are. We've obviously missed a lot, but that was the condensed version. Now, yeah, you're the most successful industrial broker the world's ever seen in this market, but and you're bristling when I say that.

SPEAKER_00 30:44

That's debatable.

SPEAKER_03 30:45

But the really cool thing that I think that I want to explore with you is you have you came from a team, Mike Falk and Zach, and you had a great team, and then those guys retired. Um, and now you've built this incredible team. I mean, it is the biggest team in this market, it is the most successful team in this market, it's probably the most successful team that's ever been assembled in this market. I pulled some quick stats before you guys did 200 transactions last year. 200 transactions. That's an enormous amount. And how many people are on the team now?

SPEAKER_00 31:25

Um 17. We've just we've just grown it and and made some some investment based on um what uh what I believe is the trajectory of the market uh and where we need to focus and having the the right skill sets to do it.

SPEAKER_03 31:42

Yeah. And it here's where I think it gets really interesting. You would never say it's your team, and you have distributed the revenue across that with so many great partners and so many great contributors who are all making incredible money, huge producers in their own right. And I I just love to figure out how that works. Building a team in real estate, in commercial real estate, is one of the most complicated and difficult things to do. And in my experience, the lifespan of a team is around five to eight years. You guys have been doing this for 25 years? I mean, you and Luke have been partners in Burbank for 25 years, and then you've built 15 more people on top of that. How?

SPEAKER_00 32:32

So um I I kind of coined a a phrase when we did created the most uh recent iteration of our team, which um was myself, Luke, um Eli Priest and Jeff Heaton. And the phrase was me or we not me. Um and that's the the we not me kind of mentality. And you know, when you have you know defined splits, for example, um you know the same person's always gonna be the top producer, and I don't ever want my name on that wall alone. Yeah, so it's um none of us is is really successful in an environment like that if you feel like you're bigger than the sum of its parts, and that's part of also what blows up teams.

SPEAKER_03 33:23

Um the number one thing that that destroys teams in my experience is that guy who perceives himself as the founder of the team or the guy that started the team. There's a moment in time when someone else on the team outproduces that guy. Can that guy's ego take that moment? And most people can't, and that's what breaks most teams. Which is what you're describing right now.

SPEAKER_00 33:49

Yeah, what um the first time that happened, we had a year where um with our new iteration of the team, and Luke just absolutely knocked it out of the park and linked up with some family office folks that um really were not active in uh in commercial real estate but wanted to be, and just literally knocked out of the park. And of course, based on defined splits and all of those things, that year I was number one, but I went to Nick before and it said you're changing the order because I wasn't a true story. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:25

Um and you have to just like isolate that for a second. What you just said is something that most people would never do. You were the you were because of the team structure and everything, you would have theoretically been the the number one broker of the year, and you said put Luke on it because he actually had an incredible year and and produced a huge amount. I mean, so I think really the the overriding mess message there is if you want to build a team, you better be a selfless person.

SPEAKER_00 34:55

You have to you have to recognize and reward talent. You have to give people the ability to grow. Um, they have to feel safe. Um we have virtually no conflict. Um, you know, we add added uh Ben Richardson as the first partner we've added since uh 2016 and um has been a uh phenomenal addition um and has kind of the same ethos. And I mean I would grow the team as large as it could possibly be if we had the right chemistry to do that. And the way I think about that now is there are you know some amazing uh raw or or starting to polish talent that's here at Mountain West that um they don't have to be a part of our team to be a part of our team. And there I think there's a there's uh top producing teams also tend to have this, you know, this information is mine, these processes are mine, all of those things.

SPEAKER_03 35:58

It's almost like a company within a company. It is, yeah. That's how they want it to be. They want it to be closed.

SPEAKER_00 36:04

And and that really did never make sense to me. Um you know, tools are just that. And uh really the you know, the impact of a tool is a person swinging the hammer. It the rest of it is you know, that it's there to do calculus, but if you don't understand and can't interpret the inputs and outputs, then it's not worth anything. Um so that did never really scare me. And um to this day, I mean when somebody joins New Mark Corporate, I'll call them up and and uh ask them what they need, and um happy to share whatever information we have. And um there's a culture with the top producers there that um I think really reflects that too. So um uh sharing is not does not have to be a um a reductive process if um if you recognize that whether it's an investment of time or information or whatever with um whoever that next person is, um one, you you it's an enormous reward to see people be very successful. And I think that's for some people. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 37:25

Well For some people it's not, but what you just said, you're saying it like it's normal. That's not normal.

SPEAKER_00 37:30

That's what I know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 37:31

So I get that. I get I'm the same way. I love when people succeed, but um a lot of people don't.

SPEAKER_00 37:37

Yeah, and I I think I also uh had a I mean, every pretty much everything I ever did in my life was team. I mean, I four sport athlete, I you know, joined the Marine Corps, left, you know, you're with a team of salespeople, and then joined a team right out of the out of the gate. And um, you know, there are I think there's a enormous opportunity and also somewhat a responsibility to pay it forward. And you know, you don't I I have uh another saying that you know it's better to be judged by your foot your footprints than your posters. Um because pe people that I love all these like anecdotes are great. Um because if you do something that's impactful and it leaves a footprint, people will generally remember something about what that is. Yeah, but it's it's impermanent. It we're we got we have the time we have on this rock and we're gonna move on. And um, I try to approach things, I'm not perfect at it from the perspective of leave it better than you found it.

SPEAKER_03 38:44

Um and I by the way, this is totally unrelated, but this is a Kyleism that I that he said to me one time, and I say this to people all the time. He and I were sitting in a conference room once, and we had just had a meeting with a bunch of people who were kind of a-holes, you know. I know this one. And I've repeated this innumerable times to people because it's such a great I have no idea what you're doing. I don't think you and I have ever talked about this. And all the people got out of the got up or they left, and it was just Kyle and me left in the conference room, and he looked over at me and he said, Do you know do you know what you call yourself when you look around in a conference or in a conference in a conference room, and it's just you think to yourself, everybody at this table is an a-hole. And I was like, Yeah, yeah, no, that's exactly what just happened. He's like, Yeah. He's like, Do you ever think to yourself, like, I'm the only guy in this room that's not an a-hole? I was like, Yeah, exactly. He's like, No, dude, you're an a-hole too. We're in the same room, we're all a- I just thought that was so funny.

SPEAKER_00 39:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 39:52

Um But here's another thing that I really think is interesting about Kyle and I respect, and this is what makes you so great. Most brokers, almost all brokers, are what I call ditch diggers, which means you give us an assignment, you give us a shovel, and you say, start digging in that direction. And we do. And some are really good at digging in that direction. Some people will dig and they'll be three miles ahead of every other broker. But Kyle has this really unique ability to be digging and to stop and to stand up in the ditch and look around and go, should we be digging in this direction? Maybe we're digging in the wrong direction. Maybe this shovel I have isn't that efficient. You know, maybe, maybe my shoes could be like he just has an ability to take in his surroundings and really decide and recalibrate. And I think that's what makes you so successful as a broker, but also so successful as a team leader and with your clients as well.

SPEAKER_00 40:54

Well, thank you. Um I it just it comes from being inquisitive and having to know how and why things work. So when um when there are a system of variables that kind of repeat consistently, and then um something changes, um, I want to isolate that variable that changed it and then uh and look at it um and try to find other anomalous things that are occurring that are are I mean it's pattern recognition, right? What what is different, and then you can um you can kind of knit those things together in a way that you can draw a conclusion about something. Um, and that's you know, I've been uh kind of blessed and cursed with the um uh ability to take large volumes of information um and and predict what it means and and where is it gonna go and why is it gonna go go that way. And uh I also have this, it's a um probably most people close to me would say that it's a character defect, but I have this and and I know you guys know this because we were we've been in lots of management meetings and rooms and and things. I have a I have the inability, if I have absolute conviction that something needs to be said, not to say it. I I I can't, I'm not able to. It's like a again, a compulsion. Um, and it's very rarely at the right time.

SPEAKER_03 42:28

Um then it's I've I've seen I've heard many of those.

SPEAKER_00 42:32

Yeah, and um, but I think that's that's a part of it too. You have to have conviction in um in what you believe, and you if you spend the time and you you know you develop over a long period of time, and I'm I'm one that believes the day you stop learning is the day you start dying. So there are I am learning constantly. And what I'm what I'm trying to do always is um observe my surroundings, be situationally aware, and um in a business context or a data context or a deal context, and um and one understand what needs to get from point A to point B and what tools and people and things you need to do to put in place to do that, which is kind of a fundamental management thing, but um more than that is have absolute conviction that if I look, if I have a thesis or something and I look around and it's not confirmation bias, but you you have directional data points that all point the same way. Uh I think a lot of people are afraid to say change is coming. Here is what the market is going to be twelve or twenty-four months from now. And um, and that's um one thing that I that I add to our team is I'm always trying to push us to where the puck's gonna be.

SPEAKER_02 44:05

I've got a great, great story that taps into that. I don't know if you probably recall it, but it was back in 2021. So we're at Newmarks Top Producers Retreat in uh at the Breakers Hotel in uh hottest industrial market ever. Yeah, hottest industrial market ever. Yep. Anyway, we're at a breakout industrial specific breakout. So you have the top producers across the entire Newmark platform. But at this time, like you have the after effects of COVID, you have all the things happening with these container ships, you have all-time high in consumer demand. And anyway, Kyle had a thesis just like he was talking about, he's trying to understand like why all these things are happening. And he sits in that room and he predicts what's going to happen for the next six, nine, and twelve months. And I mean he's relating it to containers on the container ships, which are called TEUs, what that converts to an inventory, what the demand's going to do after that, once the demand settles down. And literally every one of these top producing brokers in that room, their jaws were on the table.

SPEAKER_00 45:07

Well the mark I told I said that the market is going to change and within the next 18 months we're going to be we're going to be in a cycle and it it started in in 2023 and it was pretty predictable. You could look at you look at um the relationship between household debt and consumerism, inflation that was there, the fuel that was being thrown on the fire that was going to exacerbate that with um with you know all the thank you for voting checks and um and what people did with that money. And you you you could look at things like wage adjusted or inflation adjusted wage deflation. So as inflation was rising wages weren't rising at the same pace. So there's a gap and interest rates were zero and there were just a lot of things that were you said it's pretty predictable but it was pretty predictable but it really wasn't.

SPEAKER_02 46:06

But not but not in the way that you broke it down. And that's what so many people like I mean I had people following up with me six twelve months later like and at the time I was very involved in the industrial platform with Kyle. So I would get this direct feedback and to your point chat on the ditch digging and like hey are we going in the right direction? That's one of probably like nine examples I could give you about Kyle and what's been so fun to watch over Kyle's span of just his evolution is being one of the top like being the top industrial broker is that he's it's not just a Utah or regional thing. Like Kyle's a nationally respected voice. I have a sheet full of stats here we don't even have time to get to whether it's white papers like I mean it's I mean it's one thing to hit once but to hit again and again that's when you become that respected voice nationally and it's been very very cool to watch.

SPEAKER_03 46:56

Largest transaction of the year award 11 times in a row it's pretty amazing.

SPEAKER_00 47:03

Yeah we um and those those would have been um relative to to this market um but again I mean if if you know something is right and um and the sun is shining and you know everybody's um in enjoying the moment um fire storm cloud I'm gonna and look at it and and then try to figure out what's pushing it and what direction is it moving. And then once I'm convinced that rain's gonna fall I tell people because I'm convinced and um some people call that rain man. Yeah I've I've gotten that little bit um so I I think that that may be the thing that has helped me be one of the most successful brokers in the market I'm not afraid of of saying what I think and why.

SPEAKER_03 48:10

How do you what why do you keep doing what you're doing? You have had a long career you've made plenty of money you could get in your car today and never go back to work again and sit on a beach for the rest of your life and live great what do you do you get to a point in in this business where it kind of becomes like an autonomic reflex right it's it's parasympathetic muscular response.

SPEAKER_00 48:45

Something happens and your body reacts to it but that's kind of how you kind of like you're in the matrix right um are you excited when you wake up in the morning and you think it's Thursday and I gotta go to work? Not always. I mean I I I think like anybody else um you know there are ups and downs and I'm a I'm a human being like everybody what I think is draws me to it so much is that there it's always a puzzle and um the person that can put it together the quickest and identify what the picture is um is going to have an impact. And um there are you know I don't have a problem sitting down with an economist and having a conversation about supply chain logistics and disagreeing with them. And I actually kind of like that constructive debate because you learn from it. It's a I just love to learn I really love to learn and then at a point in time in my career I recognized that it was okay to tell other people what I was thinking, especially if I thought it would help them.

SPEAKER_05 49:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:55

And uh and recognize that one of the things that gets you know brokers fired and uh or not hired for the next assignment or um where you lack or lose credibility is when you're you know you're sitting on a uh conference call with the developer and their capital partner and whomever else and there's nothing to say um about what's happening in the market that just something's not moving. I'm trying to find out why and I probably have before that call and I'm articulating that the circumstance that we're in exists because of this reason. And so depending on what outcome you want we have a menu of of choices that we can make and we could talk with talk through what those outcomes are. But you know the market's a market and we we are participants in it. We're not market makers, we're market participants and I think brokers at the are at their best when um when they're not transaction intermediaries but it's a much more kind of consultative approach to the business. And um there are things that other people do far better than I do. And I just happen to embrace the thing that I'm good at and um and I really enjoy doing. I I really like looking at a macro to micro and and you know trying to pick the direction the wind is going to blow. And then when you I mean it's not perfect but when you have um more success and failure doing it and then people are asking you questions um it's okay to to write things and and have conviction as well as your as long as you're prepared to support those things and then pretty quickly you find yourself in a circumstance where they're not even your clients but people want to know what you think. Where's the market headed why um and and the answers to those questions for me are not typically net absorption and gap analysis and although those those things matter. It's what's going to happen next.

SPEAKER_03 52:13

Where's it going and why I think that's why you've been so successful and your clients are so sticky with you is because your level of intelligence and um like we talked about the ability to stand up in the ditch and say what are we doing? Where are we going? Why are we doing this?

SPEAKER_00 52:30

Well if you have to raise yeah if you have to raise your voice and tell everybody to stop digging yeah sometimes that's the right thing to do.

SPEAKER_03 52:36

But a lot of a lot of brokers the majority brokers either are afraid to do that or they just don't even like think that's part of their job.

SPEAKER_00 52:43

And in my experience the best brokers have the ability to say to their client hey I actually disagree and these are the reasons why I would be I would be willing to bet that most of the consistently top producing brokers in the world do that, share that trait. For sure. And it's scary sometimes and it's it's not fun to tell somebody something they don't want to hear but it's even less fun if you know and you don't say something and uh and the earthquake hits um now not only were you and I hate to use the word a little cowardly about it but you're also partially responsible for not getting the people out of it. And um that I don't like.

SPEAKER_03 53:27

And in the and in those moments your clients realize the value that you bring right over a typical broker who just either one didn't say anything or didn't even know to say anything which is even worse. Yeah. Well as we as we wrap up I because all of us here have a connection to Mike Falk whether mentored or or whatever my question to you is where do you see yourself in five years which is something Mike often would ask people um you're at the absolute I like this I would call it you're at the apex of your career you've been at that place for for a long time. But uh like where do you go from here? You're at the very top of your game.

SPEAKER_00 54:12

Well I I have people often ask me the question um you know sometimes my wife and others when you're when you um kind of work at a at a frantic pace um how much is enough and and my answer to that is or how much do you want? My answer to that is um uh I have everything that I need but um there's more that I want to do so there's a I I think this is true of of um most people that have longevity in this business this is my 30th year in it um you there is that desire to um help groom the next generation and and it's it's not just brokers any organization where the ethos is if the next generation isn't better at this than I was then there's some level of personal responsibility in that failure. So um I I don't uh I'm sure I'm crotchety and and you know the old guy in the business sometimes. But um I it's I get I derive a lot of enjoyment out of mentoring and um seeing people have success and and um participating in that success in a way that nobody has to know. And then when you when you do that over and over again um the other thing that happens is you have an immense support system and that that's pretty invaluable. I mean I don't ever it never crosses my mind that um if I find myself in a really sticky situation that I don't have a hundred people I could call. Yeah and and I mean we're with the people that we work with oftentimes more than we are our family. Yeah and it is that way and and the squabbles are that way and the right the emotion that's attached to it is that way. So I I try to think um or I like to think that the next season of time for me is a continuation of that um and then that generally bears a lot of fruit and creates opportunity that maybe wasn't there or in order to execute on that opportunity whether it's um you know participating in a real estate transaction as a as a principal or putting the the deal together um with your clients that's a lot of fun um I get a great amount of enjoyment out of the capital market side of the business um mostly because it lends itself and this is I mean true of development I tend to think that development is a capital markets trans uh transaction it just has it has um less predictability um because you don't have a you know an existing stream of cash flow or or whatever yeah um those things are all fundamentally puzzles and the better you get at um at solving those puzzles um the easier this job gets and uh I the the one fear I have about AI um is that people lose that skill because they become reliant on something else to tell them and it's for me extremely difficult if I don't know what the source of the information is, I don't know um how credible that source is I know it's being pulled from lots of different places and I'm and and I think as large language learning models continue to advance and you have more compute space and all of those things, there's um it'll get better. But um I want that skill you know you you you know and pretty much everybody that knows me uh knows that I I shoot long range and I'm pretty proficient at it. And um we could do an entire podcast on guns literally we could do five podcasts absolutely on it's absolutely I'm gonna do a podcast first I have to go to the bathroom I'm gonna die I dream but it's really monster yeah go so um the what I love about it is there's a combination of art and science there's um there are things that are very um are easily predictable based on the same sympt uh symptom uh same system of variables however um there's art because you gotta dope the wind and you you have to you know have some experience at it and you have to do fundamentally biomechanics have to be correct to um have your round impact its intended target and um that's a good analog for what it is that we do. And I think that that there's a place for everybody in this business that wants to work hard. Yes. I think actually intelligence is a lesser indicator of success in our business than is work ethic. And if you surround yourself by by people maybe they don't have to be the ones deciding where you're gonna dig but if you know they'll pick up the shovel and they're gonna grind with you and until you're where you need to be that becomes a um an immense asset.

SPEAKER_03 59:57

I think everything you just said is 100% accurate I would add on top of that the most successful brokers are a combination of hard work and intelligence. Yeah you can you can definitely be a broker who's a hard worker and you make money. Happens all the time. It's awesome. It's one of the greatest things about our industry what you cannot be is a smart guy who doesn't work hard.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:18

Yep or and a dumb guy who doesn't work hard which is the deadliest of all the combos well I think there's um there are a lot of of opportunities in our business to try and do different things and um that that create that's a creative outlet for me um you know within certain boundaries but um and that kind of scratches that itch and there's just so much going on all the time that that creates that system of variables that you have to parse through and um and pick out and then apply those systems of information. I mean that's probably trait but it's totally true it is one of the things that that attracts me to continuing to do this.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:15

And there's a level of excitement of puzzle solving that appeals to you in particular in your personality type.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:22

Yeah and I I don't I mean if if you're doing something as a career that is a means to an end I think most people that do that um I mean it's obviously always a means to an end but I mean you have to sustain life but um if that is the primary driver of of someone in something um those people tend to be spiteful, regretful angry um tired um and you know don't want to uh they just don't want to dig as hard and as much and and they end up doing something else or hopefully they do something else. It's if you are if you love the work and you love the things that are um a part of all of the process of how the work gets done and then you get to do it around a a group of people that you like and care about and you get to do it in a um a place that that supports you in those endeavors. I'm you know now kind of on the other side of that veil because I've was a business owner um for m most of my career and I learned very you know valuable um things for the time period that um that I was um you know a corporate asset of new Newmark and uh I think just if you if you know that you're you're in uh a grind that you just that makes you feel those negative things yeah it's just time to do something different. And I think that's and having the courage to do it it's the it's it's the knowing the thing and having the courage to shout it in the wind is not much different than actually looking in the mirror and shouting at yourself. And I think that's uh I love the Kyleisms. You could write a book just put all the Kyleisms in it.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:29

So good just the way my mind works I just as we I I think we're out of time here, but I just want to say in summation that uh you know there's so many great little tidbits about Kyle and what makes him great and I think in particular rookies or anyone in the industry can learn so much from this podcast and so much from a lot of the things you said but just a couple of things I really grabbed out of there and I know you so well and and respect you so much. But you're an incredible team builder because you're selfless because you really want your teammates to do better than you and that is huge. And you are incredibly intelligent and you're willing to stand up in the ditch and say what are we doing? What direction are we going? And you're willing to have hard conversations with clients and say I don't agree with that. I think we should consider this and all of those things and so many many so many other things that we've talked about today is what makes you so great what makes you the number one industrial broker that this world that this market has ever seen and I'm just so excited and appreciative of you and and love you and and you know the feelings mutual I I the only thing that I would challenge there is is it really a team if you're not cheering when your teammate scores there you go see write it down add it to the list we're gonna share in the profits of this book. Kyle Roberts thank you for your time thank you guys get some sleep it's been 22 hours of nonstop work was let this guy sleep and wake up tomorrow and back to deals.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:09

Right back and hit it.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:10

Thanks brother appreciate it