The Amber Moment
The podcast that tells stories of remarkable careers.
The Amber Moment
Andrew Kaempfer - Part 1
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Andrew is the Global Facilities Director at wealth management firm AlTi Tiedemann Global. He's also an actor (of course!). In this first part of our conversation, he talks about having to "show up to the dinner table"; trying to sabotage his own education; a life-changing moment on stage; wanting to make his parents proud "even when they're not watching"; and a tendency never to say no.
Hello and welcome to the Amber Moment. Podcast that tells stories of remarkable careers. My name's Paul Howarth. My guest today is Andrew Kempfer. Andrew is the Global Facilities Director for the wealth management firm Alti Tiedemann Global, which means he's personally responsible for all of the company's office moves and refurbs, from Lisbon to London, Miami to Milan, Seattle to Singapore. He's also an actor and has appeared in series like Blue Bloods, Law and Order, and The Equalizer. Andrew, thanks for being there. How are you today? I'm well, my friend. It's good to see you. Always a joy. Pleasure is mine. And we and we find you in Seattle today, is that correct?
SPEAKER_00Yes, um, running a project here. It's the world tour that that never ends, but it's uh it's one of my favorite parts about it.
SPEAKER_01It it does sound like you need your own tour bus.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_01With all with all that that entails.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. It's uh, you know, maybe I should have done stand-up comedy and I could have like done the tour and like got the moment of lay-flat bed and everything, you know.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, coochie months, you know. That's what I'm talking about, and a well-stocked fridge and all of that stuff. So look, what I'm trying to do here on the amber moment is is tell some great stories, and I think yours is a is a fascinating one. But look, every story starts somewhere. Every leading character has his or her origin story, if you like. So I'd love it if we could start uh by you telling us a little bit about your childhood, your background, your upbringing, education, and any early influences.
SPEAKER_00It's a wide breadth and one one go. Okay. Yeah, I have a distinct privilege of being born and raised in Las Vegas. Yeah. I am a seventh-generation Nevadan on my mom's side, which the only way you kind of get there is being from hardworking egalitarian land folk. My my ancestors, like uh from there, they helped prospect a lot of the like a northern Nevada. Um we're live we're living among the indigenous, yeah, or native, the Native Americans, as they're called, but the indigenous people and would, you know, we're we're living off the land. My my grandmother, my mom's mom, had a dirt floor and a tarped roof. This is, you know, they were they were not people of great means. Um where on my my dad's side, he he's more he comes originally from Sacramento, uh-huh, went to a college in Las Vegas, which at the time was university in Nevada Southern. That's where my parents met, actually working at a Burger King. He was putting himself through college, he was the manager, she was just a regular employee, and you couldn't you couldn't date the employees. So he quit Burger King and went over to McDonald's so that they could start dating. And then um the rest is is history. They've been married now over 50 years. And congratulations. Oh, yeah, they're it that screwed me up. It screwed me up, I'll tell you. It's kind of it's it's an interesting, it's it's a blessing and a curse. What screwed you up? My parents having a good relationship. God damn them. I know, seriously. It's no, but I mean, but it was it it's the stuff of films in a way. Of and and now in the way of stuff of films that's kind of turned into in their 70s, like growing up, I never heard them fight. Like right, they know they never screamed, they never argued in front of the kids. Of course they did behind closed doors. Yeah, but you know, we uh I grew up in a very religious household, and it was one of those like when dinner starts, you're at the table. Yeah, and we all had I sat right to the left of my dad, and it was and that especially growing up in Las Vegas, a lot of my friends were from divorced households, broken homes, you know, dad wasn't in the picture, all the and having to having that family obligation and being part of a really, really tight-knit family that you you had to show up for, yeah, saved me a million times over and kind of was the foundation where a lot of it was built off of. Because when you know, when it's you're you have a fake ID at 13 and you're growing up in Las Vegas, and people are like, Let's make some really bad choices. And yeah, you know, and Vegas will get you if you have the money and the means to do it, you can have anything you want with anything you want. Yeah, you know. So that that not only gave me kind of the bedrock of which my sisters and our lives kind of were built from, you know, that that flourishing garden, the obligation of showing up for family saved me a million times because it was like, Well, no, I I I have to decelerate here and get off the highway. Yeah, because you guys are going 100 miles an hour and I gotta make it home for dinner. And like, you know. So that that was a huge thing. Family and being part of a group. And so I am blessed in the fact of how close I am to my sisters and my parents. So three kids in total? Four in total. Um, I have three sisters, no boys, yeah. All of my cousins are girls. Unfortunately, my aunts were were all divorced, so I was raised by a fleet of women. Um so uh, you know, which which it wasn't as much fun when I was a kid, you know, sometimes they they would gang up on me a lot, but it was it's it's it I I have a lot of I think a lot of the point of views that I have now grown have and then have helped to be the bedrock of who I am and how you know have helped by that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Because I didn't, you know, my my grandfather started working in a coal mine when he was 13, like four pack a day smoker was not emotional, was not emotionally available. So even though he was there, you know, yeah, yeah. He he was sitting in his favorite chair and just you know, so it was uh I I grew up with with a lot of estrogen around. So but uh I I think it's it it led me to be a lot more empathetic and have some different points of view than than I would if I grew up in a more male-dominated environment.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And I and I think my well, I know that my my guy friends who I grew up with are like brothers to me. Yeah. Um and we share a a bond and a closeness that I never would have otherwise. So cool.
SPEAKER_01Uh tell us tell us a bit about your education then. How did that pan out?
SPEAKER_00Well, I I tried to sabotage it at every turn.
SPEAKER_01Oh, very good.
SPEAKER_00Well, no, I was bored. My older sister was bored. The actually in in Las Vegas, there wasn't really a at the time, there wasn't an attendance policy or like uh how many absences or tardies you could get. And my older sister, it she was frustrating, brilliant, brilliant woman. But she she would just not show up and then would show up the day of the class, ace the test, and walk away. And they were like, How does this work? Like, what do you do? We can't have so they actually changed the attendance policy because of my sister, which then screwed me over. But then I so but then the way I went about it, I was like, Okay, well, I'll just get 42 tardies. Yeah, or I would do things like try and I would purposely not read the material and challenge myself to show up to English class and see if I could, you know, uh, can I not read Beowulf and show up and write a two-page essay within the one hour class? But because you know, we were we were I was we were all bored. And how didn't how did that work for you? But you know, and it worked out well. I mean, I graduated, but actually, so the the the big C change in my life because you know high school was was horrible for me. Okay. There was uh I I tried out for football, and you know, I am I am the size I'm of of German heritage and descent, so I'm the size of a commercial refrigerator. My my dad always quotes a John Candyline from films like I swallowed a lot of aggression along with a lot of pizza.
SPEAKER_01Um that refrigerator though, you you know, you're not William Perry's size.
SPEAKER_00No, I know, yeah. Though there was a poster of uh of the fridge on on the the wall at home growing up. My mom was a huge fan. But yeah, so I ended up internalizing and not, you know, like because you know, it it's I didn't want to going back to like the family dynamic, like it didn't want to disrupt that by being like, hey, I'm be I'm being physically abused and bullied at school. So I just kind of I internalized it and I didn't want to upset anything or upset anyone, and that was you know my cross to bear. So then what it did is then for a very short period of time, then I started acting out, and we would go to like at your English classes, you would take a period off and you have to go to theater, and you're sitting here going, like, oh, this is horrible, like like suffering my way through it. But then as fate would have it, you I I almost didn't graduate, and then they're like, You never took a humanities class, so which is either drawing, which I couldn't draw, acting, which I'm not gonna do, or tech theater. So it's like fine, I'll do tech theater. Yeah, which then I had 43 tardies to because a buddy of mine we would not show up because we'd go get frappuccinos and smoke clove cigarettes and uh just yeah, you know, like like high school kids do. Yeah. Um so she the the head of the the theater program said, Well, I'll I'll I'll pass you in this class if you participate in a play.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00And it was the man who came to dinner, they needed a large gentleman. It was like two, I forget exactly what it was, but basically all the all I had to do was walk on stage and pick up a coffin that had someone in it. So they needed two larger guys who were like strong enough to do it. So I was like, okay, fine. I mean, I need to graduate here. Right. So the God, I'm starting off here on a horrible note. So we decided because I was actually I was actually very nervous. So the one of my buddies at the time, we were like, you know what we should do is we we should just take a bunch of shots and like you know, loosen up, which ended up turning into like double-digit shots of whiskey in the parking lot in his cheap. Uh so that's when we had the brilliant idea of okay, when I'm when I bend over and pick up this coffin, you I'm gonna rip my pants. So we took a pair of scissors and like cut on the the seam in the back. I bent over and put my thumbs in my pockets and like pulled and pants ripped from my belt line to the back of my knee. Um but I remember the laugh. Yes, because the audience just died laughing. Yeah, and it it's a seminal moment in my life because that was intoxicated. Yes. And that was where I it was like, wow, that I I I can I can go on stage and do things and get that kind of reaction. Yeah. And it was for someone who had been going through the trauma that I was going through and keeping it completely to myself, um, that that was a huge turning point in my life where you know tomfoolery and and just acting an ass um ended up somehow stumbling me into one of the great passions of my life.
SPEAKER_01Wow. It's it's incredible coincidence and happenstance, how these things work. And almost by accident, you you discover something that you go on to to love and actually form a career from as well. Incredible stuff. So what age are you what age are you at that point?
SPEAKER_00Oh, that's high school, so probably um 17. 17. Oh yeah, I got I got into it much later. And actually, that's it's it's a good thing in the sense of you know, when you because at that point then I got very, very serious about acting. And yeah, and you I once once you move into looking at how do I portray other people, like it it kind of shifts your life view and and the prism, you know, the the scope at which you you're viewing life and viewing other people, and you start asking yourself questions like what had to happen to that individual for them to organize themselves in that fashion.
SPEAKER_02Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_00And I'm glad that I had you know 16, 17 years of experiences that were not filtered through any sort of artistic lens, yeah, that were just, you know, uh and like you see this with a lot of uh kid actors where it's you like Macaulay Calkin, for example, you know, you're you you do not have it's Truman Show, you do not have a normal life. Yep. And I think that helped me. You know, you I I had a rich pool to pull from of life experience and and yeah, a lot of things that that were not that were not, you know, filtered through any prism of like, you know, oh that because it becomes masochistic in the beginning of that journey because in some weird way you're like, God, I'm heartbroken, but this is gonna be great for my acting career because I can cry on cue.
SPEAKER_01You know, um amazing. So and uh so talk to us about how you went from that sort of light bulb moment, if you like, and then what how did you sort of proceed? Give us a little potted history of your of your career or or your dual careers.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, the so the way that I ended up in Seattle and the way that you know running 19 offices globally and having this it was my side job. Yeah, I I went to grad school in New Jersey at Rutgers, um, and I got a great scholarship, and it was the same, it was the Meisner technique, so it was the same discipline that I was learning in college. Okay, so it was kind of a natural extension and made sense, and that moved to me right outside of New York City, and then so I moved into New York, and the goal the entire time was to be an actor. Like that's why I moved there. Yeah, and so this is where kind of like these dual lives started of because I started as a temp 22 years ago, and this was just my support job. Yeah, and it just you know, I I was working in a um a warehouse labeling medications through a temp agency, and it was like this is graphic, but it's the truth, it's like sitting here, it's like when blood appears in stool, take two of these, like pre-snicker, you know, and you're like, Yeah, oh great, cool. I I have a bachelor's and master's in fine art, and I'm sitting here labeling medication in a warehouse. And then they called me and they asked if I had a tie, and I laughed, and they said, You're the third person we've called. Don't laugh. They said, Leave where you are, go get the tie and show up at this place. Yeah. Which I did, and then so that's where like this the in it was only for three or four hours a day, but I was breaking lunches, and it was just the way that I paid the bills so I could make acting work. Yeah. So, and and which was great because I I had a chance to play to do Broadway and was in the thick of it in New York and doing plays and putting on stuff with friends in the East Village, and you know, the the KGB bar when it was um was this old Russian-themed bar in the East Village where there was a bar on the down on the on the uh first floor, and there was a small little theater stage on top. And at the same time, my best friends who stayed back in Vegas, uh, we'd created a company called Cockroach Theater. So they were doing theater, and it was just this, you know, beautiful artistic period of yeah. And at the time I had no idea that, you know, 22 years later I would still be doing the work job and just moved up and have this completely different life, yeah, while at the same time still uh you know going after my my dreams and passion. And you know, it's there was things that were sacrificed, but that's what you do for things that really matter.
SPEAKER_01So you took because I like asking people to think back to the start of their career, and I often ask them, were you aware of having like a plan or a mission or what were you trying to achieve at the outset? It sounds like you were quite single-minded about becoming an actor. But then as as as you sort of fell into this other career, were you aware then of of having a sort of a long-term plan or or not really?
SPEAKER_00No, no, the the goal, the single focus was to be an actor. Um, however, you know, I I was I grew up my mother, was a homemaker. We were very, very lucky to have her where my dad being the named partner at the time, it was he was one of the named partners in the law firm, and then eventually was the named partner in his firm and did well enough that we could have a constant presence and and be with my mom. You know, so it was you know, I I I had a lot of advantages there. So once I had decided, so he he was trying to get me to come over and do law, so then it would be you know, kempfer and kempher. So in the back of my mind, I was like, okay, well, I'm gonna do this and then but then I once I found acting and what it was like this this is what I meant to do, this is what I'm best at. Yeah, and there's something in the you know, in in the early abuse and bullying and all of that, it was I was so uncomfortable being myself, yeah, and being who I was that there was this beautiful release, and I just enjoyed being someone else because for that time, whether it was five minutes, two hours, whatever the plant, like yeah, I I was not me. And there was this symbiotic, beautiful relationship when you're doing theater of like the and if you're doing it correctly and you're really landing it, they're not worried about their problems, they're not worried about their bills, they're engrossed in the show. I'm I'm not sitting here feeling bad for myself or like churning up old stuff. Yeah, it it is this like cycle of energy that kind of you can get on that it that leads you somewhere. So that that was chasing that was more important than anything else.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00So, but also coming from a family where like, okay, no, you work, you're you're you no matter what hard work means everything, your name means something, you have to do it. I I still you know, and that I I've been saved by life situations and the structure of life many times over, similarly to having to show up to dinner. Having that job saved my butt because then you're in New York and you're in your 20s and you got a little cash in your pocket, and New York, similarly to Vegas, like you know, it was uh I have a lot of great memories of stuff that happened at 3 a.m., but nothing really Christian is happening at 3 a.m.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, you know.
SPEAKER_01Do you know what do you know what my line is for New York? My little strap line, everything all at once. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Love New York. Yeah. It's I I am I am blessed in that I I had, you know, my my early years in Vegas and New York. Hey, I mean, it's probably means I need to go out to the forest and spend some time touching some grass, but you know, I I've only really done like two 24-hour cities. But yeah, so it was it was that drive, but in the same way, the job, like having to put on dress clothes and show up to an office Monday through Friday, yeah. Um, similarly saved me like the dinner thing of like, okay, it's it's 2 45 a.m. I have to be at my desk at 8 30. I gotta go, guys.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00It's like, what do you mean? The delivery's kind, it's like, I gotta go. Like so, in that way, like having the struct having structure and and respon, you know, being responsible um and doing the things that would, you know, I I have a line of like one of my life goals is to try to make my parents proud even when they're not watching and will have no idea I'm doing what I'm doing. You know, the concept of making my parents proud is is so deeply ingrained in me, like I could cry just thinking about it. Um so that that's something of like you're like, okay, this this is not something that would make them proud. Like, I gotta go.
SPEAKER_01So, how did you as it apply that that approach of making your parents proud as your career uh what became Alti, as as that started to grow and flourish? How did you go about that?
SPEAKER_00Well, so I'll I'll I'll tell you one quick story, and I'll so I had a job. My my family is a huge baseball family. Well, except my mom, not so much, but she was originally. Um, I mean, but we you know, my sisters played softball, I played baseball. It's just it's it's a religion in my home. So there's a triple A baseball team. I had a job. My dad got me a job when I was 13, being a bat boy, and I ended up working there every summer from like 13 till I was 24, 25, because I'd come home during college and worked there during the summer. And I remember when I was 13, and he's a a very Christian man, doesn't drink, doesn't curse. Yeah, uh, if you'd curse, he would say he would remind him, Andrew, that's the language of the ignorant.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00Um but so and I and I I'm saying that because then when he dropped me off, and I remember and he he told me, you know, about your name meaning something and the the quality of work you do is it puts further respect on your name. And I remember this speech because at the end of it he said, I've done a lot of work to put some respect on our name. So don't fuck it up. Oh, right. So when you know, for for someone who never does, and you're like, Oh my, I'm gonna go, like it it was it it was a it landed on me because for a gentleman who never ever swears, you know, that's that's the that's the power, that's the power of cursing.
SPEAKER_01When somebody who who never swears or swears very infrequently uses it, it means more.
SPEAKER_00100%. Yeah, it's it it then becomes like a it's not it's not like me. Um it's this I just salt and pepper it all over the place. It's just yeah, I actually have to work not to curse. Yeah. Um, where for him, like it's actually it actually serves the purpose that it's meant to, of you're like, oh wow, okay, he means this. With serious it, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So with that, it's you know, and I and also a fear of, you know, I was again blessed with the upbringing. That I had, you know, of I also didn't want to call them and go like, I'm not making I need help. Yeah. You know, like those phone calls were horrible to make. And sometimes they did happen, but like that made me feel like I wasn't making them proud. So like I hated every time I had to do it. Yeah. But I was also lucky in the fact that, you know, it's because there's a lot of people where it's like, you know, who who am I gonna go home to? Who am I gonna call? There's no one there, there's me. You know, and I was I was lucky that I could, but at the same time, like it that fed into it of like I I wanted to be successful on my own. And and there's also some deep-rooted psychology there of I could have very easily just transitioned into being an attorney. I had it all set up for me. Wouldn't have been much, I would have had to done the work of becoming an attorney and becoming my own person. And of course, there then would have been different psychology there of like, how do I beat my dad, who was this very accomplished attorney in his own realm? So, you know, I think there's some something there of like, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna move across the country and go into a field where he couldn't possibly help me. No one can help me. There's no one around, and I gotta make it on my own.
SPEAKER_01So, with that great advice ringing in your ears and trying to make it on your own, well how how talk us through your sort of rise through what was Tiedeman Investment Group and became Alti Tiedeman Global.
SPEAKER_00Well, yeah, I started out as a temp for the first several years, and that was a real interesting learning experience. And then then at the time, so I had been there for about a year and a half, and I had the opportunity to move to London actually for eight months. Yep. And I went and I went to them and I was like, look, you know, you're you're paying this temp agency $25 an hour for me, and I'm making like 12 of it. And I have this opportunity, and so I'm I just gotta go. Yeah. And I said, Well, and this is how how great the this company is. And they said, Well, you know, we we really like you and we really want you to come back and like you need to do this clearly. So they gave me $2,000 in cash and we're like, go have some fun, and when you come back, look us up. Um, and then I ended up staying there almost nine months, and then when I came back, I was like, Hey, I'm back. And they're like, Oh, okay, cool. And then I got hired full-time. Yep. And then there was I was had moved into kind of just I was being an assistant, I was kind of a a utility guy at that point.
SPEAKER_02Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_00But we had three, we had two and a half floors of a uh of an office in Madison in uh midtown 535 Madison. Yep. So I would be doing everything from breaking receptionist lunches to cleaning out storage units to, you know, like we we had a corporate apartment at the time, so I was doing like utility guy tool belt stuff.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But then the office manager went on maternity leave and they asked if I would step in and take care of that just while she was gone. And three months turned into six months, and then she ended up not coming back. And they were like, Well, he the place didn't burn down. Uh so do you want to keep doing this? And I was like, Yeah, sure. And and that that's an odd sequence of how my career at Tieteman kind of because I I needed the job and I was still focused on acting, and like I never said no. Um, I also have an inability to draw boundaries, which is uh very beneficial for an employee, um an employer, not so much the employee. So, and then when the downturn in 08 happened, um, and it coincided with the retirement of the Joni who was running the AP department, they're like, Do you think you could run AP? And I'm like, Yeah, of course. AP being what? Sorry? Accounts payable.
SPEAKER_01Accounts payable. Okay.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So, you know, paying the bills and running the finances for a you know, several billion dollar hedge fund, which is exactly what you should do or you know, give to someone who has a couple of fine art degrees. Exactly. Um so clearly this points out to uh an embarrassment of like trust, the the amount of trust they've had made. But there's the there is something of of acting in there of like, I can be anybody. You can be anyone you want. You know, it's I I have played lawyers, I've played doctors, I've played scientists, you played this. It's like you you you have to be comfortable on the fly. Yeah, you have to put yourself in uncomfortable situations, which is the only way you grow. Uh-huh. And it's, you know, the the metaphor is, you know, you're driving the car down the road while you're making repairs to it at the same time, yeah. Which is not something it's it's not something that a lot of people are comfortable with and living in that kind of reality. But having done so many plays, there is something akin to that of like, you open in two weeks, you open in five days. Like you the curtain will go up and you will present something. That is happening. People are judging you. Yep, it's happening.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00So you know, having that being where I came from, going, Yeah, okay. Because if they were they were giving me, you know, the ability to make mistakes while and going, okay, you can learn from these, and we're gonna give you the training you need. And it's like that that's a lot of people would succeed at a lot of things if employers gave them those opportunities, gave them that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Where it's like, here's here's the opportunity, here's the education you need, and we're gonna give you some leeway to make a f make a few mistakes and not crucify you for it. Like that was a huge gift as well.
SPEAKER_01So how on earth then do you go from you've arrived in this accounts payable role? How how how'd you go from there to being global uh director of facilities?
SPEAKER_00That was so my first build out was 17 years ago. We moved from February of this year. I've been with the company for 22 years. Fantastic. Um as a side note, yeah. So we we were moving literally right across the street from 535 to 520 Madison, which is 54th in Madison, like right in midtown. Yeah, right spot. So they yeah, so they had come to me and they said, you know, we're we're going to be moving, we have this build out, we we're gonna need you to run it. Yep. So it's and I've never done it before, but it's the similar thing of like, do you think you could run AP? And like, and at that point, I had taken over half of HR. I was the liaison between the building and us. I was running all of AP. I was also office managing. There was two different companies, so I was, you know, I was wearing a lot of different hats. Yeah, for sure. But but similar thing where it's like, do you think you could run a 24,000 square foot construction project with a multi-million dollar budget, move the company from a place they've been in for 30 years, and also go from being paper predominant to a you know more digital experience and kind of do that seamlessly, keep it on budget and make it all happen within a timeline. Logical people would say, no, you're crazy.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00While still doing all your other jobs. Yeah. Um, for me, it's like, yeah, of course, cool.
SPEAKER_01Let's do it. One of my recent guests was talking about she at some point in her career, she said, I learned how to say yes. It sounds like you're very good at saying yes. Yes. Which is a great way to be.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. Well, it's not my my wife is not thrilled with that characteristic all the time with me. But she's also amazing and very forgiving and enjoys the adventure of it. So but yeah, it was that's that's a wonderful way of saying it. Yeah. I I just said yes to everything.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And that was that was 17 years ago, you said your first app. Yeah, that was 17 years ago. And how many have you done now?
SPEAKER_00Oh gosh. We're in we're double digits now. Because in the interim, then you had you had San Francisco happen, Seattle. We did one in Seattle previously. This is the second in Seattle. We built up Miami. So I've I've done quite a few around the states. We moved Lisbon from a dual floor seven and eight down to a larger fourth floor. Yeah, you know, so I've I've now been able to do it in, you know, both in North America and internationally in a bunch of different places. So some of them, some of them are different, where some I'm finding the location and doing front-end negotiation of I find the location, I negotiate the the lease and the terms of the lease, then okay, we're gonna build out from scratch. So I put a team together, I design the spaces in collaboration with the design team and you know the architects, yeah, and and help kind of put together a design thesis for the firm of that each location should, you know, it's it because it's it's my thought that every location should look like and be intrinsic to the city that they're in. Yeah. No one no one gets excited going into a bank where every location looks exactly the same. Yeah. You know, like you you you go to McDonald's for the cheeseburger, not not the locale. Like, yeah, you know, so you know, in in now and others are much easier of like, okay, it's a pre-furnace sublease, so I'm just negotiating the lease, and then we're relocating them and doing some like rebranding and things like that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But but that too has been like building up to it. It wasn't that originally, um, but it was the going public in the merger in in um three years ago in 23, yeah, was when then I moved away from everything else and then moved strictly into facilities, lease negotiations, build-outs, things of that nature.
SPEAKER_01You you're a man who clearly loves variety, Andrew, in in your life and your and your work generally. What would you say are some of the more rewarding aspects of what you do?
SPEAKER_00The the well the people, the places, 100%. You know, the I am a such a huge fan of people. At this at the same time, I'm it's it's the double-edged sword, right? It's because I I it's such a blessing to be able to relocate places and say, like, like I'm in Seattle for two and a half months with my wife. Yeah, we were we were here in 2024 for about three months. And the first time we stayed in Cap Hill, which is it's similar to like a Brooklyn vibe in Seattle. Yes, you know, it's younger, it's hipper, it's loud, it you know, and there's so many different cultures and vibes, and you're like, okay, this is awesome. This trip, then we strategically are like, okay, let's go stay in a completely different neighborhood, see what it's and now we have we're staying in Magnolia, which is much more residential, it's closer to the water. So, and you also really so you can get a feel of what it's like to be there and say, like, and also you know, it's be like, Man, that Neapolitan pizza place is dope, that coffee spots amazing, like, but then the local then you build better relationships and uh with the local teams and get to meet so many cool people, and you know, and say so you learn a lot about you know how how much a region, you know, yeah plays into like how different people are, like the Pacific Northwest is so much different than the Northeast. You know, a lot of New Yorkers or cartoon characters who I grew up with watching movies in movies where it's just like you can't talk like that. And then then I move there and you meet someone who was born and raised in Queens, and they're like, Oh man, you do talk like that. This is wow, you're real.
SPEAKER_01As we're talking about all this stuff in the States in particular, I I'm reminded of a line. Do you know the Baz Lehrmann song Wear Sunscreen? Oh, yes. Yeah, so it's all that wise advice from an older guy. And uh one of the bits of advice is um live in New York once in your life, but leave before you get too hard. Live in California once in your life, but leave before you get too soft. That's always stuck with me that. You you my my father quoted that many, many times. Did he? I like your dad already.
SPEAKER_00He's he's good people, yeah. Um good people, he's good people. Yeah, but it was but part of that was also you know him sending me a mess, not so subliminal message. Yes, because they would also joke and be like, because I'm Andy to everyone who knew me before I went to grad school. In grad school, they were like, No, you're Andrew. People don't take Andy seriously, it rhymes with Candy. You're And you're not Andy, you're Andrew. Yeah. So they would always say to me, they're like, and then that's when I started taking myself very seriously, you know. But they would always say when I came back from New York, they're like, it takes you three days to get the New York off and come back to being Andy. Right, right. And then he would, you know, because that was right around the time where everyone in and my age group was, you know, that was the high school song, or like, you know, that they would play when you're graduating. And I also have two sisters, uh, one has since left, but my older sister is lives in NorCal. So we do we at the time had people on both coasts of like, you know, you've you've you've been in North Northern California, maybe you're a little too soft. Yeah, you're definitely too hard. You've been in New York, you're you know, you just cursed out the coffee guy for being too slow. Like so yeah.
SPEAKER_01Next time on the Amber moment, we'll hear Andrew talk about his tendency to focus on what's not working, doing whatever it takes, being a one person team, empathy and authenticity, throwing paint on canvas, and squeezing every last drop out of life. Until then, stay amber.