 To Leadership in Hawai'i on ThinkTech, I'm your host, Caroline Lee. On our show today, we're going to talk about how CBRE grew to become the largest commercial real estate company in Hawai'i and one person's unique leadership style. If you want to ask a question or participate in the discussion, you can tweet us at ThinkTech HI or call us at 415-871-2474. Our guest for today's show is Joe House of Cheney Brooks, my old friend. Welcome to the show, Joe. Hi, Carol. Thanks for having me. It's great to see you again. We've known each other almost 40 years. I know. Yeah. I know. It's been a long time. And then when I knew you, you were doing sales, right? Yes. I was a commercial real estate broker and I worked for several companies when we were friends. Right. And then we became the president of CBRE, which stands for Coldwell Banker. Now it's just an acronym. It doesn't have actually words, but it's Coldwell Banker, Richard Ellis, CB Richard Ellis. They took hold of it for a while and now it morphed into CBRE. It's kind of an interesting story. It began in 2001, 2001 in business in Hawai'i and around the world was a very bad year because the 9-11 and the dot-com bubble burst on the stock market. So it was a very difficult year for business. So our company wasn't doing very well. We owned it at the time, me and 10 or 11 partners, and we needed to make a change. So two of the partners started lobbying me that I should become the managing director of the firm. Had you had any interest at all in that side of the business? None whatsoever. I had never managed before in any level, in any capacity, never. So you were doing sales and brokerage? Yeah. No, I mean, yeah, one of the nice things about being a salesperson is you're kind of your own boss. But I wasn't managing people for sure, and nor had I ever. And you've never been trained in management skills? No. Oh, no. Academically or on the job? No. No. So I still know. Anyway, so these two of my partners approached me and said, listen, we'd like you to replace the current co-managing directors running the firm. And they wanted me to replace them both. And I was reluctant to say the least. I was saying, no, not me. I didn't actually have that much admiration for managers in my career. So I didn't think I could make a manager, be a good manager. But at the end of the day, my, you know, when your partners are telling you that they need you to do this, it's difficult to say no. And I had a bit of an epiphany. I went to Thanksgiving dinner at one of the broker's house, one of my partners' house. And we were, and I was sitting there and a vote for whether who's going to be the next manager or the firm was going to happen to follow in Monday after Thanksgiving. And I finally allowed myself to think about what if I became the manager? What would be the first thing I do? And if you don't want to be a manager, if you don't want to do a job, that's a bad thing to ask yourself because the idea popped in my head. We had a senior sales staff at CBRA and we hadn't hired a new rookie salesman or an entry-level position in over five years. And so all these senior brokers didn't feel that it was worth their time to do small real estate transactions. So in a year when we're having difficulty generating any revenue, we're turning away small business. To me, that seemed like a mistake and a bad idea. So I thought about it and I said, well, the first thing I would do is I would hire some entry-level people so that we can then do every deal. To cover an area that had been overlooked for years. Yes, exactly. And it's a different kind of a thing. So excuse me, if we hired people that was a whole train of thought led to my actually accepting the job, if we then hired new people, then we had to think about training those people. So who would do the training? I guess I could do the training, right? So in fact, our model, our number one model for the time I was manager at CBRRE was make every deal. Make every deal. So as a philosophy, we wouldn't turn any business away anymore. Which was very different than the preceding. Yeah, we were concentrating on the larger deals because we're a very large company. CBRRE, if you don't know, is a publicly traded company. Even though we were locally owned, we were part of this giant network. And so make every deal became our mantra. And so if we hired new people, then they had to be trained. And then who was going to train them? And then there was a whole lot of things that, you know, where they're going to sit, you know, and how are we going to take care of these people? And how are we going to make them productive? And it all felt to me, I was saying I'm the only one that would really volunteer to do that. I thought it was going to be productive. Take the other managers out of the way from being productive to do this. So I thought about it and I said, well... Because you were moving out of sales now onto the managers side. You were willing to do that. Well, the vote was coming. And up until then I had said no. And then I thought about it and I said, well, if that's the right thing to do, to hire junior people and to make every deal, would that happen if I don't accept a job? And the answer I came up with is no. So then I had to do it. I had no choice. So on Monday, the following after Thanksgiving, the Monday after Thanksgiving, I told these two partners who were lobbying me to take this job that I would indeed take it if I was elected by my partners. And I was. And you were... So from 2001 until the time you left, which was last year, how big did the company grow under your leadership? Yeah. It was... I took over the reins of the firm in 2002. And I was the leader until the end of 2011, 10-year period, okay? So in 2001, that very bad year, we had a difficult year. Again, we owned a company and at that level of production, the company would have to make changes. We'd have to lay off people. We'd have to downsize. We'd have to make sacrifices that we didn't want to make. And if we continued to work at that level, we might well have gone out of business. So I went on my first month of the job, I had to put together a business plan. We needed to get a line of credit to operate, you know. So if... There hadn't been one up to that point? There had been one that was with the parent company who sold the company to us. We had a line of credit with them for a period of time. But it would have expired and we needed a new one and we were in a difficult situation as well. So it was more important than ever that we have it. So I put together a business plan. And so my first board meeting with our partners was, okay, in the first... I have a five-year goal. My five-year goal is to be earning... And I don't want to use specific numbers because, you know, I don't work there anymore and it may embarrass the people that do. So I said it would be, we need to roughly in five years grow three and a half times bigger than we currently are in 2001. If we were successful, that would be more successful than any commercial real estate in Hawaii had ever been. My partners dissuaded me from that notion by arguing with me that, you know, if we go to a bank and we ask for a line of credit and we say, we're going to do that level of performance. When no one's ever done it before, they're going to think we're idiots. And they're going to think we're foolish. And we'll never get that line of credit. So we negotiated, we were mostly old partners and brokers mostly, and we negotiated. So they wanted it to be half that. And so we settled on three-fourths of that. And you made it. Well, yeah, we went and not only did we get the line of credit, it turns out in two years time, we were three and a half times more successful than we were in 2000. And one, and then in three years later, we doubled that. So we were roughly, we ended up being like 700% more revenue than we generated. We just, we did, what we did was great. I mean, everything happened. So in ten years, you increased revenue by 700%? Over 700. And how many employees did you grow by? Oh, we were, when we began the process, we had 40 employees. And we had a small management department, relatively small. And by the peak of our success, we were at 140 employees. And we were, well, our revenue was quite a bit more. It was, like I said, over 700%. So let's dig into how that happened. What are your, I mean, I know you as a warm person. Yeah, I gave everybody hugs. That was my first thing. No. Yeah. Well, the business plan was the first thing. Have you ever done one before? No. Okay. No, I just made that up as, and sort of, it's sort of, you know, if I had a book about this and we go, making it up as you go along, because I had no experience as a manager, as I said. But unbeknownst to me, I apparently was paying attention to all the managers I had leading up to my taking this position. And unbeknownst to you, your managers were looking at you, seeing the potential. Yeah, I don't know about that. Maybe, but they didn't share that with me if that's what they were doing. These were my partners you might be referring to. My partners, maybe. So let's talk about some of the different tools that you're used to. Yeah, so apparently in my work history, I was paying attention to all the managers I had. I had many managers. I used to work at Xerox, which was famous for good management. That's where we met. Yeah, I was still working at Xerox. Wow. That's for her, right? That was about 40 years ago. So I was working at Xerox, and I had lots of managers, and I was paying attention. I didn't realize it, but I must have been paying attention to what things I liked that they did, and what things I didn't like that they did, what I thought was stupid, what I thought was smart. And what did you like? And it was subconscious, because I wasn't focused on it. But when I took over at CBRE, I started to realize that, and I didn't do the things I didn't admire. So you're proud. I did do the things I did admire, and it worked. And tell us some of the things that you admired, because you were a workmanist. It was sort of, well, it's hard to say, specifically, I don't know. Well, some of these, we talked about some of these. Well, let me tell you some things we did, okay, and how that worked, all right? First thing we did was, after the Bird Business Plan, is we did what is known as a SWAT analysis. SWAT. SWOT. SWAT. Yeah, it stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. And so we got all the partners in a room for a day. I think we met off campus, too, so we were in some hotel or something. And we talked about all the strengths of the company. What are we great at? What are we good at? What can we do? Blah, blah, blah. And then what are our weaknesses? You know, what things aren't we good at that we should be good at? What are our opportunities? What potential is out there? And you know, how can we grow? Where can we, where can we do well, you know? And then threats, who our competitors are, what their strengths are, and things like that. The market might be dealing. It's a very, very important process to go through as a manager. I highly recommend it. I joined Cheney Brooks earlier this year, and it was the first thing I, I had the senior management and we did a SWAT analysis because they knew everything about the company, but I did not. But it brought me up to speed pretty quickly. And in the process of doing it, you get ideas. I mean, Is it something that you do on a regular basis to review how things might have changed through every few years? Well, I'd rather, it depends. I mean, I have a new organization now that I'm working with, and so I don't know if they'd tolerate me doing it every year, but if I could, I would. Okay? I think it's that helpful. Uh-huh. All right? And also, it's important to set big goals, okay? There was a book I read that, that just talked about, uh, big, hairy, aggressive goals. The egg. She's kind of laughing because I didn't write aggressive down on that piece of paper I gave her. So big, hairy, aggressive goals, and you have to be able to dream a little bit. Like that 10, um, I'm sorry, I'm trying not to speak specifically about numbers. About that three and a half times growth of revenue in five years that I described earlier, uh, that was a big goal because nobody believed it was possible. Right. But because we set a big goal. So do you have everybody buy into that goal? Yeah. How do you do that? Well, it, it's a process, uh, you, you know, I slide it up by saying it. And then, and then I said, okay, if that's our goal, how do we get to our goal? And then I divide, and then I come up with, with strategies to achieve the goal. Let me give you an example. Our biggest competitor, uh, at the time, and I think still is Coyers, Coyers. Then, then it might have been Monero, Monero and Freelender, right? Collie's Monero Freelender. They were our biggest competitor. They had years earlier, well, uh, cause I, I know this because I used to work there. They had years earlier opened an office on Maui, uh, and, uh, it had interesting result from that. I'll explain in a minute. Okay, great. On that note, we're going to come back and listen to the rest of this story. This is Karamon Lee, uh, on Tink-Tek, Hawaii with my guest, Joe Hasen. We'll be right back. Aloha. My name is Steven Phillip Katz. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist, and I'm the host of Shrink Rap Hawaii, where I talk to other shrinks. Did you ever want to get your head shrunk? Well, this is the best place to come to pick one. I've been doing this. We must have 60 shows with a whole bunch of shrinks that you can look at. I'm here on Tuesdays at three o'clock every other Tuesday. I hope you are too. Aloha. Aloha. My name is Raya Salter, and I'm the host of Power Up Hawaii, which you can see live at from one to 130 every Tuesday at thinktecawaii.com and then later on YouTube. I am an energy attorney, clean energy advocate and community outreach specialist. And on Power Up Hawaii, we come together to talk about how can Hawaii walk towards a clean, renewable, and just energy future. To do that, we talk to stakeholders all over the spectrum, from clean energy technology folks to community groups to politicians to regulators to the utility. So please join us Tuesdays at one o'clock for Power Up Hawaii. Welcome back. This is Karaman Lee with my guest, Joe Hasen, talking about leadership in Hawaii and his many years of heading CBRE, making it the largest commercial real estate company in Hawaii. And we were just talking about a great story about you and Coyers Monroe Freeland. Yes. So as an example, as a strategy, a growth strategy for the company, I knew that having worked at Coyers earlier in my career that they had decided they initially opened an office on Maui. And the man who was running that office on Maui left the firm and started his own company on Maui. And I remember Andy Freelander saying, I remember Andy Freelander saying that I will never open up an office on the neighbor islands again. So my strategy was, well, if our biggest competitor is not going to be in the neighbor islands, we're going to be there because we wanted to be a full-service company. We wanted to give the opportunity of all our clients to do business on the neighbor islands using us. So that was a typical strategy. Right. So you paid attention on some random remark. Yeah. So that's an opportunity. I called that strategy to hit them where they ain't strategy. I did really. I had an excellent name for it. So you moved to the neighbor islands. You opened offices in the neighbor islands? Yeah. I didn't move anywhere. We opened offices in Hilo, Kona, Kahului, Lahaina, and Kapa'a on Kauai. So yeah, we were everywhere. Now those offices, they were not big players. They were marginal players, but they did afford us the opportunity to offer services. We have clients, for example, Alexander and Baldwin, who are on most of the neighbor islands, if not all. And we could service their needs everywhere. So it was a good strategy. Yeah, really. Another thing I thought was very important was to question everything. Question everything. Yeah. And it worked great for me because although I was with the firm for a long time, I was only in the broker piece, right? I wasn't in the management side or the administrative side. So I was able to just question, why do you do that like that? You know, what is? So you were naturally interested, curious. Yeah. No, it's not that. I always think I know a better way to do it. I see. I look at it, I go, I think that doesn't seem like a good way to do it. I had a, by the way, in the service, I worked in the clerical side. I was a finance clerk. And before that, I did a accounts receivable and payroll for a fairly mid-sized company. I was responsible for that. So I had a lot of administrative background, plus the sales background. So anyway, so I would question everything. And when you do that, people will tell you why they do it that way. And if you have a better way to do it, sometimes it saves them time and they appreciate it. But mostly, they think you're annoying when you ask them that question. When you ask questions all the time, why do you do that? How are you doing that? Well, that brings up a question of style. So what is your style? Do you like one-on-one? Do you email? Do you phone call? No. Are you team player? Yeah, if it's anyone in the office, the people I now work with, Cheney, as you know, I never send an email internally. I go see them. And unless they're not in the office, I will walk to their desk and speak to them every single time. I think it's good manners. I do. And when they see you and you're there, you're not some mystery person. We were never big enough, except the Naval Islands, obviously, but we travel fairly often to the Naval Islands. So I would, for example, so I think the personal touch is always better. How about technology, though, in general, as it has evolved since 2001, you know, cell phones? Oh, yeah, it sure has. So how have you kept up with that? And how has that helped CBRE? Well, CBRE, being a big international firm, they were there with the technology. You know, they pushed out technology to us, and we had to fit into their little cookie cutter of how it's done. We had very old versions of, let's say, Excel and Windows, but they worked. And they were uniformed throughout the platform, so they worked with each other very well. So that wasn't a problem. But technology, I mean, you know, obviously cell phones made communications better, and email certainly, the ability to communicate with clients was instantaneous and robust. And it allowed us to have a paper trail for everything we did. So there's a lot less misunderstandings. It was very good for our industry as a whole, not just CBRE specifically. Right, right. So has technology placed the need for more employees? No. No, I didn't know. I didn't, that didn't, we didn't have any of that. Our type of business seems a little resistant to that, I think. I also think, I also noticed that I also tried to make very small changes in our operation. I mean... Like what kind? That's a good question. I'm trying to think of a particular change, but just let me talk about it philosophically a little bit. So I like this analogy. If you're going, you know, back when they were having the moon landings, they talked to, yeah, I know, I'm a little off the subject, but with me, and you have a trajectory to the moon. I mean, you had to hit it exactly. If you were off by 1% on your trajectory going to the moon, when you left Earth, it wouldn't be, it wouldn't even be noticeable. But by the time you get to the moon, 186,000 miles away, I think that's the right number. You would have missed the moon. Yeah, tweet us if it's not right. And by the time you get to the moon, you'd be out by 10,000 miles. So a little change over time becomes a big change. And I believe that. So I would look everywhere I could to make little changes in how we do something. So I would get a CD, and we played it for Muzak in the office, you know, or a whole music. Because we had no music before. Yeah. We had speakers, but we had no music. I see. I don't know. Don't ask me why. And things like that, just little changes I would make. I'd change the coffee table book. And then I'd have a contest internally to say, oh, there's been a change in the office. The first person who can tell me what that change is, wins $25. And we'd have like, I get like 25 emails like that. Right. It was very interesting. And so it sort of kept everybody loose and interested, and it sent the message that we were growing. And initially in our business, because when I first started as manager, my main job was standing by the mailbox and waiting for checks to arrive. But once we got past that, it was like people could see things were getting better. Oh, and another thing I did was I'm an ex-Zerox salesman and tech rep, too. So one of the very first things I did was I changed out our copier. Two zeros. I upgraded them. I had the Zerox copy. We had Zerox copiers. We had two, one color, one black and white. And I upgraded them. I went and got better ones. I know, I know how Zerox works, if you get a bigger, more capable copier, and you're releasing it, it's roughly the same price. But you use it more. So you use more supplies, and they make more money, and you get a better product. And of course, you're very paper-driven. At that time. Yes, we are. Yeah. Yeah, we were. And so that there was, there was something that all the employees could see an improvement in everything they did. So it was really good. So, and let's see, let's talk about how your former managers, and how, how did that work out in terms of keeping your senior managers who were now reporting to you? Yeah, that was, that was kind of interesting, you know, it, there were, there were some of them who immediately were okay with that, and some were not. And it wasn't, it wasn't necessary, it wasn't, you know, any rebellion or anything like that. It just was, they were like, yeah, yeah, I'm okay with this, you know, like leave me alone, mostly that. And I'm questioning everything, right? So we had, we had many of the minds there. One of the things I think it's important to be, if you're going to be a manager with no training in particular, is to be yourself. I, I participated when I was at CBRE on what they called a Management 360, it was sort of a psychological evaluation as to what is, what goes into being a good manager. And to do that, they have to have a baseline of where you are. And so I was, I belong to the Executive Committee in the Western United States for CBRE. And we, everybody who was on the Executive Committee participated in this. And then they plotted it on a shard, and it was sort of like an octagon or hexagon, I forget. And on one side, there's like a very strict manager. And the other side was like a cupcake person, right? And so, and then they, and then they gave you a battery test to determine where you fall in this in two areas. One was in your management style or at work and your, and your personal style at home. And so when we got the results, we all shared, everybody could see where everybody else was. On mine, and this is something I'm very proud of. I, I can't tell you how proud I am of this. It's, it's on my chart, it had my, the Joe at work and the Joe at home, we're right next to each other. Everybody else in the, in the group, they were on one side of the other, and they were several inches apart on the plot. So in other words, they're different people at work, but I'm not. I am the same person, like we're sitting here, or I'm sitting at home, or we're, we're out having cocktails or, or whatever. I'm always the same. And so you think that's a really important factor. I do, because people. People sense, if you're insincere, if this isn't really you, they can, they can smell that, you know, it's just this thought of mine. Because I mean, I've worked for people that weren't, you know, and I, and I saw it and I don't admire it. Now I didn't do anything differently. Apparently this is, this is how I worked, how it worked, so. So how about coaching and mentoring and training people to take over, you know, you left, yeah, it turns out. I really enjoyed teaching and you're a former teacher. And I enjoyed, I enjoyed the process of training. We had a lot of fun. It also allowed me as the manager to bond with the new people in, in, you know, on a different level. You know, I mean, your, the relationship between a teacher and a student is different than a boss and a, and a, an employee. Right. So it was a very good exercise. I thought, plus I got to impart hopefully the, how to do the business with them. Well, you know, Joe, this time has gone by so fast and we only have about 30 seconds left. So I'm going to let you look at camera four and give us some closing remarks about leadership. Yeah, well, first of all, I'd like to thank my wife, Karen. I couldn't have done this without Karen. Hi, sweetie. And I'd like to leave you with this. I think, I believe that it's very important that you ask yourself good questions. And if you have problems, problems will pop up in work and in life and it's a very important aspect of everything you do on how you handle and address those problems. And I believe that if you have a problem, if you ask yourself good questions about it, like how to solve the problem, if you ask yourself in the right way, your mind will come up with an answer. That's why people say, let me sleep on that. Because they, they think about a problem and then they sleep on it and hopefully they get an answer. So don't ask yourself stupid questions. Don't say, why am I so stupid? Because your brain will answer that for you too. Ask yourself like, well, gee, I got this problem with this client and I'm not sure what to do. And how do I make this okay with the client and still keep their business? That type of a question, your mind will answer it and you will solve some of the most difficult problems you'll face. So with that, thank you for having me, Karen. Well, thank you, Joe. I'm gonna say one last thing that you and I talked about is that street smarts. Oh yes, I thought we went at a time. Okay, street, yeah, I got a PhD at street smarts. I'm a New York City kid. I grew up in the main streets and that has always served me well too because you gotta be real. Real. And on that note, we're gonna thank Joe so much for this fun interview. That was a pleasure, let's do it again. Yeah, thanks, Karen. Okay, well, Aloha from Think Tech Hawaii. We'll see you next time. This is Carol Monley and thanks to our floor manager, Ray Thunelang and our control room engineer, production engineer, Rob McLean. Aloha.