#7 – Ward Richmond

Mark Taylor:

In this episode of Supply Chain Saga, we switch gears a bit and focus on the hero’s journey. Joining me today is Ward Richmond, vice chairman of Collier’s International, host of the podcast Truckin’ On and author of the supplychainrealestate.com blog. He’s a devoted father, accomplished musician, and someone who squeezes as much out of life as possible. I’m happy to call him one of my friends and am excited to share his story with you.
And we’re live.

Welcome.

Ward Richmond:

Welcome.

Mark Taylor:

Well-Ward Richmond:

Thanks for having me, Mark.

Mark Taylor:

Absolutely, Ward, I really appreciate you being here. And I have to say, this is the first one I have recorded outside in such a lovely setting. This backyard oasis you have here.

Ward Richmond:

Yeah. It’s Sunday in June.

Mark Taylor:

It is Sunday.

Ward Richmond:

Texas, [foreign language 00:00:55] heat.

Mark Taylor:

Yep.

Ward Richmond:

We were supposed to do this tomorrow, and I said, “Hey, let’s do it on Sunday instead.”

Mark Taylor:

Yeah. And it was perfect timing. I was just getting back in, so outstanding. Well, I’ll tell you, why don’t we get started by, why don’t you introduce yourself. And just tell me a little bit about what you do and how you got there, just kind of the origin story, if you will.

Ward Richmond:

Okay. So my name is Ward Richmond. I am from Dallas, Texas. I’m so used to being the interviewer, not the interviewee now ’cause I’ve been doing so many podcasts lately.

Mark Taylor:

Yeah.

Ward Richmond:

I grew up here, and I’m a commercial real estate broker is my trade. I grew up in the same neighborhood, Lakewood, in East Dallas. Went to public school, Lakewood Elementary, J.L. Long Middle School, Woodrow Wilson High School, played football. I was in theater arts. I played in a band.

Mark Taylor:

What’d you play?

Ward Richmond:

I played the bass.

Mark Taylor:

All right.

Ward Richmond:

It was the easiest. It had four strings. So I saw my friends playing in a garage band, and I loved it. I thought it was such great energy. They were having so much fun. The girls were there, of course.

Mark Taylor:

Yeah, yeah.

Ward Richmond:

And I said, “I want to do that.” And one of my friends on the football team was the guitar player in the band. And I said, “John, let’s start a band together.” He goes, “What do you play?” “I don’t know.” He goes, “You got to play something to be in a band.” I go, “Well, what should I play?” He goes, “The bass has four strings.” Started there. So that’s what I did.

Mark Taylor:

And do you still play bass?

Ward Richmond:

I can play bass. I don’t play as well as I used to. So that took me on a journey of playing in bands. I got my bass from my parents for my birthday the summer before my senior year of high school, so. I did take piano lessons growing up. So I used the music theory, I learned through piano lessons, and transferred that towards the bass, so I could figure out how to make sense of it. And what I really wanted to do was play the upright bass. The rockabilly bass.

Mark Taylor:

Yeah.

Ward Richmond:

Because living in Dallas, there was a big scene here. Reverend Horton Heat is a band. Have you ever heard of Reverend?

Mark Taylor:

I’ve not.

Ward Richmond:

Reverend Horton Heat, Lone Star Trio, was a band. They went on to become 1100 Springs honky-tonk band. And anyway, I was all into the scene in Dallas, and I got a big upright bass. First I played an electric bass, then I bought an upright bass at a pawn shop when I was a freshman in college and bought a VHS tape that was an instructional video on how to play it. And it teaches you how to play the slap rockabilly bass. It’s where you grab the string, and then you pull it back, and it slaps back against the fretboard, and it creates that [inaudible 00:04:11], like Johnny Cash songs. Do you know what I’m talking about?

Mark Taylor:

I do.

Ward Richmond:

All right.

Mark Taylor:

Yeah.

Ward Richmond:

So I became a bass player and went to Brown. I played football there.

Mark Taylor:

Yeah?

Ward Richmond:

Got recruited to play football, and it was great. I injured my shoulder freshman year. And what else?

Mark Taylor:

So I assume after you injured your shoulder, did you continue playing?

Ward Richmond:

No, I quit football. It was a tough decision at the time, and I joined a fraternity. My mom told me that I should give it one more semester because I really wanted to go to University of Texas, get out of Providence, go back home.

Mark Taylor:

Right.

Ward Richmond:

Football was my identity despite playing in the band and everything. Football was my identity until I stopped playing. But anyway, I stayed there. I did not want to join a fraternity. I thought it was selling out or whatever. And anyway, went to a rush event and had a great meeting with a guy there and made friends for life and changed my mind and decided to be in the fraternity. And I was a rush chairman and did all that and went all the way through college.

Mark Taylor:

And did you graduate from Brown? So you didn’t transfer down to University of Texas?

Ward Richmond:

Nope. I stayed at Brown, graduated in four years. I came home every summer and played music, so still played with my friend, John. We played in our band every summer. And I interned at commercial real estate companies every summer. So I interned at the Staubach Company and Cushman and Wakefield and Dalmac, which was a construction company.

Mark Taylor:

Wow. So those old companies, the older, well, not the old companies, but the ones that were your first kind of summer jobs, recognized all those names, actually. And…Ward Richmond:

Even Alack?

Mark Taylor:

Yeah, Yeah, I remember. Yeah. And so, what were you doing and was it focused? At that point was it focused on industrial real estate or was it just commercial in general?

Ward Richmond:

Well, I was interning.

Mark Taylor:

Right.

Ward Richmond:

So mainly office.

Mark Taylor:

Got it.

Ward Richmond:

And Staubach, I was working for office brokers, same at Cushman and Wakefield. I did work with Jack Fraker there, but I was doing things like managing contact databases and things like that. So I wasn’t really even getting into real estate. I was just doing a lot of organizational-type work.

Mark Taylor:

Of course. I mean, from the internship perspective, but were the people you were interning for in those… I mean, what verticals of real estate were you supporting? I guess is what I should have asked?

Ward Richmond:

So at Staubach, everything really, but office and industrial.

Mark Taylor:

Yep.

Ward Richmond:

Yeah.Mark Taylor:

Was it like a love at first sight type of deal?

Ward Richmond:

No, I wouldn’t say so. It was a family business. It was my dad’s business, so it was easy-to-get job because I guess nepotism. And my dad knew somebody and said, “Hey, you need to get a job and make some money while you’re home for the summer.” And he connected me with one of his friends. He once worked at Dalmac. That was my first one.
Second one was Staubach. He was on Leadership Dallas that this group with Alicia Holt Ragusa, now, who was the president of the Staubach company and said, “Hey, my son’s in college. Could you get him an internship?” “Yes.” So I took it. So I was kind of just taking what was given to me.
What I really wanted to do was be a rock star, so. I mean, I was playing five shows a week, probably, five or six shows a week at that time during the summer breaks and manufacturing records, negotiating distribution deals, started my own record label. And I was very focused on that. I mean, we were playing five times a week, get home at two, three o’clock in the morning. But I’d wake up, go to the internship from 8:00 to 5:00 every day, five times a week. And I made 400 bucks a week doing that. And then I probably made probably close to 1,000 bucks a week playing music. So I was making a lot of money for a guy in college.

Mark Taylor:

Of course.

Ward Richmond:

It was ridiculous during those summer breaks, and it was all cash, the band money, it’s just.

Mark Taylor:

Right.

Ward Richmond:

And we were drinking, it’s like free booze. And I didn’t go out ever. I really just always worked. Playing music was like going out for me. That was my social life. But I wanted to be on the stage. I did not want to be just in the bar hanging out. I wanted to be on the stage creating the party, but also being part of the party.

Mark Taylor:

Of course. Well, that sounds like it was a lot of fun. And around what years were those?

Ward Richmond:

That was, I mean, I graduated high school ’96 and college in 2000, so ’96 to 2000. So I’d never heard of the internet until I got to Brown and got an email address. It’s like, “What the fuck is an email address?” How funny is that? I mean, if we did not have email-

Mark Taylor:

Sure.

Ward Richmond:

…until then. And so it’s just really weird to think about, actually, my freshman year of college, that’s when I got email. It wasn’t midway through or anything. It was just like, “Okay, now you’re in college and now here’s the internet. Here’s Yahoo.” And it was the very beginning of all of that.

Mark Taylor:

And that was also at the time when the big run-up on all the new tech companies. The tech bubble bust happened, I guess, around ’99, I believe it was. And then you had 2000, and then of course 2001. At what point did you decide, “Okay,” did you not give up on your music career, but at what point did you pivot and say, “I have some understanding about the real estate thing.” How did that play out?

Ward Richmond:

So 2001, well, I graduated in 2000, leased office space for Fobare Commercial. I started on my 22nd birthday. I actually have Rick Curry, who hired me. He’s going to be on the podcast, on my podcast-

Mark Taylor:

On your podcast.

Ward Richmond:

… next week. And I started leasing office space, and I got a base salary. I moved back to Dallas, but all I cared about was playing in the band. And we continued to play multiple nights per week. My vacation time, I would go on tour, I would book tours for us. So we played CBGBs in New York City. We would go up the East Coast, back down to Texas. Any free time I had, every weekend time I had, I was playing shows.
And then, this is pre-SoundCloud and pre-digital press kits for bands. So we created these press kits, and we recorded two full-length albums in college, and then we recorded a EP, which is a four, five-song album during this time, like 2001, when I was right out of college leasing office space. I was doing this all covert, by the way, I did not tell my boss that I was doing this.
And I mailed the demo to every record label in the world and tried to get signed to a record deal. And then we got signed to a record deal in Australia, Laughing Outlaw Records, and they came to see us play at South by Southwest Music Festival in Austin.

Mark Taylor:

Oh.

Ward Richmond:

So that happened. And then I quit my job, and I went on the road for four years. So played 200 shows a year for four years, and traveled all over the place, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, all over the country. I waited tables. I worked at Freebirds Burritos.

Mark Taylor:

World-famous burritos.

Ward Richmond:

World-famous. They’re like, “Roll faster, roll faster, roll faster.” My dad called because he knew I was struggling. He was not supporting this idea of mine to go become a rock star. So I was totally cut off. And he’s like, “Son, you need to make some money because you don’t have electricity.” And I mean, I was living with no electricity for months at a time. And anyway, so got a job at a call center where my real estate license, which I kept alive, I could use it. And it was a cold-calling call center for residential realtors. So I would just call and say like, “Hi, are you considering buying or selling a house in the next 30 days?” And they say, “Yes,” or “No.” If they say, “Yes.” Great. “I work with Mark Taylor at Re/Max Realty, so I’m going to have Mark reach out to you and talk to you about that.” Boom.
I would make thousands of phone calls. So I’d work at Freebirds in the morning, then go to the cold-calling call center in the afternoon and then go play shows at night. And then I would go on tour for two months, I’d quit the jobs and hit the road and then come back home, find another job. And eventually I wound up at AllGood Cafe and waited tables there. And that became my life for four years.
Then in 2006, I decided my job as a rock star went from being the ideal lifestyle for me to the worst lifestyle for me. My best friend and I were barely speaking to each other. We just were going different directions. It’s a hard life. We were living in poverty, basically. Like I said, no electricity at times. We were touring in a van. It wasn’t a glamorous tour bus and staying at the Ritz-Carlton, it was grinding. It was flying. We flew to Australia. It was so awesome to tour Australia, but flying coach to Australia in a middle seat. And I’m 6′ 4″, back then. I was a big boy, too. I was probably like 255 pounds riding coach all the way to Australia. I mean, it was tough.
And when I turned 27, I was like, “Okay, I’ve done this, and now I want to do something else.” And I had my real estate license, and I had done enough in real estate to know people, and I had connections and everything. And by the way, those connections, I would get very embarrassed when they would see me rolling burritos at Freebirds Burritos, people that I was once showing office space to in a really fancy office building, wearing a suit and tie, and now I’m wearing a hairnet rolling burrito. They’re like, “Who is this guy? What happened to you?”
But anyway, I called those friends. My friend Todd Hubbard, who’s, went to high school with all my cousins in early Texas. He was at the Robert Lynn Company doing industrial. And I wanted to do industrial, ’cause I felt like industrial real estate was a little bit more blue collar, a little less white collar. And that appealed to me.
So the band I played in, we were a honky-tonk band, so we were playing honky-tonks, dive bars. We did play some big festival shows. We would play with people like Waylon Jennings and ZZ Top, pretty rough around the edges groups.

Mark Taylor:

Sure.

Ward Richmond:

And that was my scene. And I felt like if I could pick a vertical in real estate, industrial felt like this is the vertical for me. It’s a-

Mark Taylor:

It’s a good fit.

Ward Richmond:

… little more laid back. So yeah, then I got started doing it. I got hired by Jeff Mercer at Robert Lynn Company in 2006, March 20th, 2006.

Mark Taylor:

How long did it take before you had a decent stream of deals coming in? And then did you hit, I guess, that tipping point before 2008, or was it after 2008?

Ward Richmond:

Well, I guess the beauty of getting started in real estate in 2006, I mean, the economy was on fire, right?

Mark Taylor:

Right.

Ward Richmond:

But when you start in commercial real estate, you make zero money.

Mark Taylor:

Right.

Ward Richmond:

So my economy was not on fire really, but I was used to living on $15,000 a year. So that year I made, I think, $35,000, my first year in real estate. So that was pretty awesome.

Mark Taylor:

I mean, that felt…

Ward Richmond:

Felt awesome.

Mark Taylor:

Felt like you were running naked through the forest.

Ward Richmond:

I was rich.

Mark Taylor:

Yeah.

Ward Richmond:

I bought an Audi, A4 Audi, used. I still had my van, so I had the van and the Audi, and then I was still playing shows on the weekends. The shows were my base salary, so I’d still make… I wasn’t making 15gs a year playing in the band, but I was probably making 5 to 10.

Mark Taylor:

Still having fun.

Ward Richmond:

Still having fun, still playing music. I kept those two worlds very separate. I did not speak of my music career and stuff very much at all in my real estate life. I felt like the two needed to be separated. They were separate. And anyway, I got fired, year and a half in at Robert Lynn.

Mark Taylor:

Right about before the crash or after the crash?

Ward Richmond:

That was March 2007. Officially, Jeff and I parted ways. And then, let’s see, I joined Cushman and Wakefield working for Mike Wyatt, who was an office tenant rep broker in September of ’08. And then in June of ’09… Or no, I guess it was September of ’07, and then June of ’08, I left Cushman and Wakefield, and I cannot work for somebody. Working for these senior brokers was not in my DNA, I guess. And I’d already done it. I had those two and a half years at Forbare. I worked for Jeff for a year, then I worked for Mike for six months.
I just want to be the guy, and I don’t want to be working for somebody. And Transwestern hired me. So I went to Transwestern, and they gave me basically a desk and a phone said, “Go do your thing.” And I just worked the system that I learned at Robert Lynn, and I focused on a specific submarket in Dallas, 75207, 75247. And I cold-called all those tenants and landlords, and I did that and picked up business. So that’s whenever, June 2008, that’s when the crash was happening, right?

Mark Taylor:

Yeah, I think the Toxic Asset Relief Program, the TARP, was, I think around that was the seven. I think that was the first $700 billion, I believe, was around September, so.

Ward Richmond:

Of ’08.

Mark Taylor:

Yes.

Ward Richmond:

Yeah. And each year I made more money, so it did not impact me because I was kind of starting from zero, and I was slowly climbing up. And I wasn’t making shitloads of money or anything. But I meant I went from $15,000 playing music to 35,000. And then probably, I made like 70k in ’08.
I mean, I was just on fire, dude. I just couldn’t even fathom, after living for so long at $15,000. I didn’t think about money in the way that I do now. I don’t know why, but. I was happy and felt like I was crushing it. Then in ’09, I went to a show, Slobber Bone Show. Do you know Slobber Bone?

Mark Taylor:

I do not know Slobber Bone.

Ward Richmond:

Everybody should go. They no longer are a band. But on Spotify, look up Slobber Bone. Everything You Thought Was Right Was Wrong Today, it’s one of the best albums, my opinion. They’re not for everybody, I guess. But man, that album changed my life.
So we toured with them in Europe and stuff. So they had a reunion show, and I went to the show. The bartender there is a guy that I knew from my band days, and I was like, “Dude, what are you still doing bartending? I thought you were just doing this while you’re at SMU to pay your way through college.” And it’s like, “I’m just doing this to meet girls. But during the week, I worked for a courier company.” “Oh, a courier company. That’s cool.”
My company, Transwestern, we courier envelopes for properties, because this is… I don’t know if they still do this, but you would courier checks and courier things. “So how about I get you a meeting with the courier people at Transwestern, and then you can get me a meeting with the real estate person at your courier company, because I assume you use warehouse space.” “Yeah, we do use warehouse space.” “Cool.” Thought, nothing of it.
He called me Monday morning, “Hey, man, can you get me that meeting?” It’s like, “Yeah, I found out who’s in charge of real estate. It’s my dad. He’s the CFO.” “Really?” “Yeah. And he’s in charge of real estate, and they’re in the process of actually changing real estate service providers. So he needs a new real estate broker.” “No kidding. And what’s the name of the company again?” And it was Dynamex.
And Dynamex at the time was the largest same-day delivery company in North America. And I googled them. They were publicly-traded, DDMX on the NASDAQ, I still remember. And I got to go meet with the CFO, his, John’s dad, Ray, and just me and Ray met. And he hired me, and I put together a presentation. I leveraged some of the elder statesmen, my peers at Transwestern, to help me put together a presentation. But Ray insisted on only meeting with me. He did not want to meet with the team, just like, “I just want to meet with you.” He’s like, “If you can’t tell me what you do, why would I want to meet with you anyway?” He just awesome guy. And forced me into the situation. Walk in there, it’s like, “This is a really nice conference room.” He goes, “It’s not a conference room, it’s a boardroom.”

Mark Taylor:

Oh.

Ward Richmond:

And it was a boardroom. And next thing you know, I’m hired, and they had 100 facilities in North America, and I was responsible for helping them manage their portfolio of real estate. So all of a sudden I went from being very locally based and focused on two zip codes to working with this company that had 100 facilities in the United States and Canada.
I bought a book called Canada for Dummies. I knew nothing about Canada other than I played rugby. After I couldn’t play football anymore, I started playing rugby. And we played McGill every year, so we’d go up to Montreal. That’s all I knew, but I didn’t know anything. I didn’t know that they were called provinces and not states. Now I know this. And I just didn’t know anything about Canada, but I learned all about Canada and because they had a huge presence there in Canada, and then things just started rolling, and then my income probably tripled because of this, and then they became my only client.
So my whole life revolved around this company, Dynamex, and I did all their lease administration. So I tracked every one of their 100 properties. I knew when all their lease renewals were. I read all their leases, I abstracted them all. I negotiated every renewal, helped them with expansions. And in doing this, the way I managed to do this, I would partner with a local broker in each city that I was working on a transaction in. And Tranwestern, we had 25 offices, so pretty strong regional company. But Dynamex was a giant North American-wide company, and they were in every city you can name, and US and Canada. I said, the first deal I got was in Kansas City. And this guy, Mark Sonnenberg, who’s a good buddy of mine, he used to be at Collier’s, he was at Collier’s, and he was running an account for Bunzl, which is a paper company, you know?

Mark Taylor:

Uh-huh.

Ward Richmond:

Ever heard of Bunzl?

Mark Taylor:

I have not.

Ward Richmond:

I think they’re a paper company or a box company or something. I don’t know. But anyway, he was doing a similar type business. And then I just called Mark whenever I had a new Dynamex assignment, I said, “Mark, who do I use in Vegas?” “Dan Doherty with Colliers.” “Hey, who do I use in Toronto?” “Colin Ellis and Graham Meter with Colliers.” Oh, that’s cool. And all of a sudden I’m using Colliers people everywhere to work these deals. So this continued on. And so that was 2009. So 2009 was like, that was the year I made more money than I ever had imagined I’d ever make. I got into the six-figure realm and like, “Oh, my God, this is absolutely unbelievable.”
And then 2011 rolled around. In 2011, Dynamex was acquired by a company called TransForce based out of Montreal. And now I’m a Canada expert, and I knew who they were. It’s like, “Oh, TransForce.” Nobody in the United States knew who TransForce was because Dynamex was their first US acquisition, so. I was kind of freaking out because Ray, my guy who hired me, my bartender friend’s dad, who I’d been working closely with, we had done great work together. I mean, I worked my ass off on this account. I knew every single address in my head. I knew every lease expiration in my head. I knew every square footage in my head, who their landlords were. I knew everything. But Ray is like, “I’m done. I’m retired. The company sold. Peace out.” He opened a restaurant. It’s right over here at the Lake House. He still owns it. I brokered that deal too, helped him find it, and John runs it.
And anyway, then I joined Colliers, and I was still doing some deals. So TransForce would call me to help me, ’cause I kind of knew the portfolio, but then it took two more years of me trying to get them to hire me as their real estate broker. And that’s about how long it took. And thankfully that occurred, and they’re still my client today. Now I’ve probably done, I would say it could be, I don’t want to say 1,000 because it sounds pretty crazy, but I think maybe over 1,000 deals representing TransForce/Dynamex.

Mark Taylor:

Wow.

Ward Richmond:

And now they’re called TFI International. So they’ve grown into this behemoth of a company, and that’s its own story in and of itself. And it started with one $15 million acquisition, and now I think they’re like a $10 billion company.Mark Taylor:

Wow.

Ward Richmond:

So I went to Colliers because they’re a global company. They have 500 offices. And when this acquisition occurred, I wanted to have a global company supporting me so that I could do global business and have a global brand. And that’s what happened, so. That’s took me to Colliers, and that’s how my business got built. And then I guess that was in 2012. So now I’ve been there for 11 years.

Mark Taylor:

Wow.

Ward Richmond:

So am I rambling or telling you too much here?

Mark Taylor:

This is great.

Ward Richmond:

Or is this-

Mark Taylor:

No, no, no.

Ward Richmond:

This is a good story?

Mark Taylor:

Yeah, it’s a great story. So from 2011 or 2012 time to now, during that 11 years, have you added some other large companies? How has the focus changed? And, or are they just your primary, you focus on them? I mean, I know you’ve got a bunch of irons in the fire. So at what point did you start branching out, too, and putting, I guess, more irons in the fire? How did that come about?

Ward Richmond:

So in 2013, my wife got pregnant, and I was in a partnership at Collier’s with two other guys, and we were splitting our commissions three ways. And I mean, because I was doing that, I basically was not making enough money to support my soon-to-be, like a real legit family. ‘Cause my wife at the time, she was a dental hygienist, so she worked, and I worked and everything was cool. And so if I had some slow months or something, it was okay. But now we’ve got a kid coming into the picture.
So I got a business coach. The business coach said, “Look, this partnership is not working out. It’s not good for you. And if you were on your own, you’d be making more money, A, but B, you do need to hire people, and you need to scale. And you’re really good at doing these things, but you need somebody else to help you do these other things that they can do that.”
And he basically taught me the concept of if in business you need to be doing what you like to do and what you’re good at doing. Even if you can do everything, you don’t want to do everything. And also you don’t want to work by yourself. You want to work with a team. So I hired Cole Hooper in 2014, and of course, and then how did I grow the business?
Sorry, sparkling water.

Mark Taylor:

Yeah, it’s hard to drink it while you’re doing the show.

Ward Richmond:

I know I should have done still water instead, but. What happened was when Dynamex got bought by TFI, then the CEO of Dynamex, CFO Ray went to open up a restaurant, the CEO, he moved to Yellow Freight. And so then I knew him, James Welch, and I called James, and then James plugged me in with the real estate group there and started working with Yellow Freight.
And then I learned LTL, and that’s a whole nother world of industrial real estate that’s kind of hidden, especially back then. But those are long skinny cross dock truck terminals, so very unique asset class of industrial. And so I used that relationship. And then other people would leave Dynamex and go to other companies. And that’s how I grew my business basically organically.
And I did that. I hired Cole. And so I had a team. I was teaching Cole how to do the things. I still didn’t really let go of all the reins. I was doing most of everything by myself. And then, I guess it was 2016, I hired a business coach. The first business coach was gifted to me by Colliers. So I had three sessions with him, who told me like, “Hey, start a team, end your current team and hire somebody to help you scale.” It’s like, “Great.”
Then in 2016, I proactively hired a business coach, who one of my peers had been using, and this is a guy named Jim Hazzard that I used to work with at Transwestern. And Jim just had been killing it. And I called him and asked him to go to lunch. Like, “Hey.” I used to outproduce him at Transwestern, now he’s outproducing me. I said, “How did you make this happen?” He said, “I called Reagan Dixon,” the guy’s name. And Reagan coincidentally was in charge of Cushman and Wakefield when I was an intern there. So it’s so funny how life is.
So I knew Reagan. I called him, I said, “Hey, Jim told me to call you and that you can transform my business.” And then Reagan’s, our first call, he is like, “So who are you meeting with this week?” “I don’t know. I’m not meeting with anyone this week. I’m just doing my deals. I’m working my deals.” “No, you need to be meeting with people. You need to be setting appointments. You need to meet a list.”
And it’s so funny, I didn’t have any kind. It was just this organic kind of gut instinct growth of my business that I guess Tony Robbins would say I was operating through sheer willpower. And then Reagan actually gave me a good little process, which is, make a list of companies you want to call and call those companies and contact them. And I, like, “Great, what do I tell them?” He goes, “Well, You need to tell them a value proposition and a volume proposition.” It’s like, “What’s that?”
He goes, “Well, let me give you an example. My doctor just had to replace my shoulder, so I had to go find this shoulder doctor to do this complex surgery. So I interviewed a lot of different shoulder doctors. And the one that I chose, I chose him because he was able to say, ‘Look, I’ve done 1,000 of these surgeries, and I’ve never screwed one of them up. And here’s a list of testimonials of my clients, and they all tell you what a great job I did fixing their shoulders.’ So that’s the value. And then the volume is 1,000. It’s done 1,000 times. So do you have that?”
It’s like, “Well, yeah.” Because by that time I had probably done 300 deals just for TransForce and Dynamex and some deals for Yellow and some other deals as well. But I started making case studies, and I created a very clear value proposition and a volume proposition. And then I created a list of companies. It was a really simple list. It was the top 50 transportational logistics companies in the world, because all my clients at that point in time, they were on that list, like Yellow Freight, one of the largest LTL companies in the world. And then TransForce, also one of the largest transportation companies, both publicly-traded companies. I’m going to target these types of companies because I know how they work.
This is what I work, this is who I work with, I know their business. So made that list. And then I started calling the list over and over and over. And then somebody was like, “Hey, you need to go to IWLA.” “What’s that?” “International Warehousing and Logistics Association, where we just met again with second time-

Mark Taylor:

Second meeting.

Ward Richmond:

We re-met there.

Mark Taylor:

That’s right.

Ward Richmond:

The conference was in May, and this was in July. So I had missed the conference, but they had an Essentials of Warehousing class. So I went to the Essentials of Warehousing class, and it’s all these warehousing guys that go there. And there was one other real estate broker there, Cam Cusick, who was with Colliers from Indy, and I didn’t know him at the time, but we met there, and we’re still very close friends, and we do deals together all the time now.
But Cam was doing the same thing I was doing. So we went to this training on how to be a warehouseman, the Essentials of Warehousing at IWLA, and then you meet a bunch of warehousing people. So I met Mark Blubaugh, who’s amazing attorney, specializes in working with 3pls and transportation companies. So he is like a logistics attorney. And I think he presented to the Essentials of Warehousing course that I took. And I became friends with Mark, and then I started emailing Mark. I was like, “What’s your next conference you’re going to?” And realized, Mark and I have the same target market.

Mark Taylor:

Right.

Ward Richmond:

We have the same list that we’re calling, he’s just a lawyer, and I’m a real estate broker and-

Mark Taylor:

Service providers unite.

Ward Richmond:

That’s right. And said, “Which one are you going to next?” And that conference, I’m not even going to say that conference ’cause-

Mark Taylor:

No, no.Ward Richmond:

It’s-

Mark Taylor:

No, don’t.

Ward Richmond:

… a very secret conference that I discovered through Mark. Namaste, Mark. I love you, brother. And you too, Mark, but.

Mark Taylor:

I appreciate.

Ward Richmond:

I was referring to Mark Blubaugh-

Mark Taylor:

No, I figured. I figured.

Ward Richmond:

… my lawyer friend. So anyway, then I went to that conference, and it was basically all CEOs of everyone on my list. And then I met them. And of course, I don’t think I was conscious of this approach at the time or how I prospect at the time. I was more just shotgun approach and talking to everybody I could talk to. But I was talking to everyone I could talk to. But then, of course, what happened was I found people who I really connected with deeply on a personal basis. And I wasn’t really there as a pitch man.
I was just there. I was kind of lonely because I didn’t know anybody. It wasn’t a real estate conference where you know everybody, it was a supply chain conference with all CEOs, and I didn’t know any of them. And I know how they viewed me as a vendor. So I was like, “I’m just going to be opposite of sales guy in the sense that I’m not going to be selling them shit. I’m just going to go talk to them and introduce myself and get to know them.” And that’s what I did.
And through that conference, I made a lot of friends, and I still go to it to this day. I had strep throat this year, and I couldn’t go, unfortunately. But I’ve been going. That was in 2017 when I went. And 2017 is also the year that I went to Tony Robbins Business Mastery. And that changed my life. And so I was still working my list and everything, but then Reagan Dixon had taught me everything that Reagan Dixon teaches, which was make the list, set appointments. He goes, he said, “I want you to set so many appointments that you don’t have time in your schedule to do anything else, but go to meetings and track them all.” And that’s really what was happening. And it still happens to this day, as you know, right?

Mark Taylor:

Uh-huh.

Ward Richmond:

I mean, just trying to schedule this podcast. And I was thinking to myself when Reagan told me that, “That’s impossible.” Then I went to Tony Robbins, and I found Tony Robbins because Reagan told me to read a book called Book Yourself Solid, which was the first self-help book I’d ever read in my life. And that was in 2016. And that’s by a Michael Port, I believe, Book Yourself Solid. It’s about cold calling and really about being very passionate about what it is that you do for a living. And then Amazon, of course, the data mining came into play. And Amazon presented me with Tools of Titans, like, “Hey, Ward, read Tools of Titans,” said Amazon. So I clicked on it. I bought Tools of Titans by Tim Ferris. That book absolutely changed my life. Tony Robbins is profiled in that book.
In that summer before I read Tools of Titans, the summer of 2016, my brother-in-law at the time, who I can still consider, he’s just my brother James ’cause Gina and I, my ex-wife are still, we’re family, and her family’s still my family. So James went to Tony Robbins conference, he was doing residential real estate. He walked on fire. It’s like, “You are a fucking idiot, bro. I cannot believe you went to go see Tony Robbins. What are you doing? I read his profile in Tools of Titans.” So I was like, “Oh, my God, I love Tony Robbins. I want to be Tony Robbins. Tony Robbins is my spirit animal.” And then I watched, I’m Not Your Guru on Netflix, just to reinforce it. And I watched that, and he gets in his cold plunge at his home in West Palm Beach. It’s like, “Oh, my God, this guy’s so ripped and jacked.”

Mark Taylor:

And his little mini tramp.

Ward Richmond:

Yeah, his mini tramp. He just making such an impact on people. Wow. So I signed up, I wrote a check for $10,000 to go to Business Mastery. That was an insane amount of money for me at that time. I could not believe I was doing it. I mean, shit, $10,000 will always be a lot of money to me. But then it was painful amount of money where it was a true investment in myself. And I’m putting it all on Tony Robbins here.
And I went into it, and they tell you, you can leave after the first day and get all your money back if you feel like you’re not going to get any value out of it. And after the first day, I definitely felt like I was going to get value out of it. The other thing he tells you is like, “You will triple your revenue if you do everything I teach you to do at this conference.” So I made it my mission to go to that conference and leave and triple my revenue. And then tripling my revenue is a lot more than $10,000, that’s for sure. And I did just that.
And this is all happening simultaneously. And I wound up going to six Tony Robbins conferences, reading all these self-help books. And then I keep hitting my list of 50 people. I find out where are these people hanging out? The CEOs of the people on my list. And I go to those places, and then they’re becoming my friends. So I’m friends with them. And then also my clients are going to these too. So I know some of the people there, and then everybody’s moving companies, and they’re moving around to companies. But I start hanging out. It’s basically this caravan of a country club of supply chain executives. And the more you go to it, just the more relationships you build and the more comfortable it gets. I would pay lots of money to go to it. I’d pay money to go speak at it or to moderate a panel.
And then I would just keep doing my thing and just keep go, force myself. Go talk to people, go shake people’s hands, go say, “What’s up?” Go introduce myself and see if there’s a vibe. And I was talking to somebody the other day, he was saying, “I kind of want my social circle to be more my prospects.” And I was like, “I get that, but I didn’t make my social…” I mean, that’s a country club basically. I think people join a country club to go there to create business relationships. That’s one piece of the puzzle for I think a lot of people that join a country club. And anyway, this kind of became that for me. But I don’t play golf. And I always thought you had to play golf to be a successful commercial real estate broker. And I actually attempted to play golf, but I quit 12 years ago.
And it’s funny, now, all my clients, they’re not golfers. And if they are, now I have a team of six people and that includes two scratch golfers, like legit scratch golfers on my team. So I’ve got the golfers on my team, but my guys are the guys that don’t play golf because we’re not golfers.

Mark Taylor:

Right.

Ward Richmond:

And it’s funny, it’s like I’m not a suit and tie-wearing guy, but some people are, and they want another suit and tie-wearing guy to be doing business with. But for me, it wasn’t like, “Let’s go build a social circle of your prospects necessarily.” But it’s just like, “I’m going to go be around my prospects.” And then what wound up happening as a social circle formed because of like-minded mindsets and interests in life and things like that. And then we started doing deals together. And then of course whenever those opportunities came up, then I did everything in my power to go kick ass for them and create massive value and keep it rolling.
And I poured myself into self-help from the moment I read Tools of Titan. So I’ve probably read 500 books that are all in the self-development genre. I did Tony Robbins. I hired David Meerman Scott to help me build my website, my blog. And he taught me about LinkedIn and algorithms and how social media marketing works. So I really started pouring myself into LinkedIn in 2017.
And I went to a one-day seminar with GaryVee that cost 10gs, but I got to go be with GaryVee in a room for one day and meet with the head of every division of his company, VaynerMedia. And they all talked about all the different facets of social media that was going on. This was 2019, I think, or ’18. And funny enough. And then GaryVee said, “Hey, you know what you need to do, Ward, is you need to start a podcast.” And you can hear this conversation on GaryVee’s podcast because GaryVee being GaryVee, he recorded this whole day session anyway, and he put it on his podcast. So I was on GaryVee’s podcast. Then that was 2018.
Then 2019, I read The 10X Rule by Grant Cardone. And that book, I audiobooked it. Grant Cardone, the best audiobook reader there is. He’s just so hilarious. And his just demeanor, and the way he read it really connected with me. And I knew that if you wanted Tony Robbins to be your coach, you had to pay Tony Robbins a million dollars for a year. And then you had to give him like 25% of your business if you want Tony Robbins to be your coach. And that was in 2017. I’m sure it’s much more now.
So when I read The 10X Rule, I reached out, I just emailed Blake, [email protected]. It’s like, “How can I get Grant Cardone to be my coach? Or how much does it cost?” They’re like, “It costs $120,000.” It’s like, “Oh shit. Now another painful check to write.” It made me want to throw up. It’s like, “Fuck it.” Wrote the check. And then I got 12 one-on-one sessions with GC, and I’d fly to Miami for almost all of them and sit down with Grant for an hour. And this was the year of 2019. I mean, I would be so nervous. I don’t-

Mark Taylor:

Not a fanboy.

Ward Richmond:

I don’t normally get in… I’m not a fanboy. I’ve been around celebs and stuff like that. But no, Grant just calls you on your shit. And he sees right through you, and it’s like, “Oh.” He just made me nervous. ‘Cause I felt like I was going to be in trouble whenever I went in there. And not very many people have that effect on me, especially not at that stage of my life, 2019, because now I’d tripled my revenue, and I had built a team. I’d hired Zach, we had just hired James. I had another business coach. I’d done all of this stuff. I’d really built a great business, I mean, substantially larger than it ever had been. And felt so confident where I’m going to these supply chain conferences now, and people know who I am, and I’m being asked to be on the panel. I’m not having to pay to be on the panel and all of these things.
But then when I’d walked in that room with Grant, I was like, “Oh, fuck, he is just going to rip me a new one.” But he taught me so many things and helped me developed all these processes. And just to tell you a few, we had a weekly sales meeting. He said, “No, you need to have a sales meeting every day.” “Really? That sounds ridiculous.” But I did. I decided, “Okay, I’ll do one four times a week.” And that’s what we still do today. So every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, 4:00 to 4:30, our team has a meeting.
And he’s like, “How many people are on your list?” And at this point also, I had stopped calling the way that I had been calling back in 2016 just because, I mean, really that list of 50, I would say half of them had become my clients. And so I already had a lot of clients and a lot of business. He’s like, “The 10X Rule.” He’s like, “You got to 10X it.” He goes, “You need to know every single person that is on your list, and you need to know how many people are on your list. How many people are on your list?” “I don’t know.”
I went back and looked, I had like 5,000 people on my list. He goes, “No, you need 100,000 people on your list, but just shoot for 15,000 people.” So then I just started building this list, 15,000 people. And he talked about outflow. He was just like, “Outflow, outflow, you got to do this.” And he talked about processes and team connectivity and measuring results and how to go do it. And so I invested in the sales training program, all of these things. And I set up processes. We developed core values for our team, core operating principles. I also hired a presentation coach to help me build a presentation. Mike Lipsey’s his name.
But did all of these things. And then Covid happened. And when Covid happened, that’s when my 120Gs that I paid for Grant Cardone, 10X’d, and I had all of the systems in place where we had this well-oiled machine that was absolutely Covid-proof. And we were operating because I was traveling all the time. I mean, my meeting list, the first time I met with Reagan in 2016, I had zero meetings on the schedule that week. I mean, I think I had like 600 CEOs I met with per year at that point. So it was just fucking insane. I was on the road all the time. So I had to build a business that could operate while I’m on the road, and I’m remote, and I’m going to all these meetings.
And then, anyway, that happened. And Covid just when it happened, I was like, “Oh, man, Grant was just such a blessing to have in my life the year before Covid happened because he had me prepared.” And I also got to be on his podcast, which was really cool. And that was super random. And I just flew to Miami for one of our meetings. And he said, “Now come in. I’m going to put you on the podcast.” And so he put me in the chair with the bright lights, camera. It’s on YouTube. If you look up Ward Richmond, Grant Cardone. And I got to interview Grant Cardone.

Mark Taylor:

Wow.

Ward Richmond:

And that was one of the coolest experiences of my life. But anyway, so man, that happened. And then we just continued to build the team and to evolve. And that’s how it happened. And then, I mean, I have a business coach still, and the focus is always two things. Well, three things. It’s the team, and how are we going to grow the team? How are we going to train the team? How are we going to make sure everyone is happy and retain the talent? And then scale, and scaling is basically you want to find other people that can replace what you do. Then you can do the next level up and keep doing that and keep leveling up. And so I want that for everyone on the team. And so then we structured the team in a way where we’re all partners. We’re all partners on everything. And we can all really, if everybody’s doing the same amount of work, then we can all be equal partners. So it’s set up in that manner. So if you want to go do it, then everybody can be equals.

Mark Taylor:

Sure.

Ward Richmond:

So the team. And then marketing. So marketing is just something that’s we’re constantly trying to evolve how we’re doing it. I started the podcast this year. I still do LinkedIn. We do our broker blast. I do my market updates. I do all of this. We still go to conferences. I don’t really go to conferences too much anymore. I have one or two that I might go to each year, but now I’ve got a team. So I send them to the conferences, and they go do that.
And then you have execution. And execution is becoming probably my greatest passion, is how can we execute better? Because we have so many amazing clients right now and so many amazing opportunities and deals to work on. But I want to keep innovating, and I don’t want to just go through the motions, and I don’t want to say we’ve figured it out. One of our core operating principles is constant and never-ending improvement. And it’s always something as simple as a lease renewal, which I’ve negotiated 1,000 lease renewals, Just last year one of our clients ask a question when we are working on a renewal. And it’s like, on a call. It’s like, “Well, what is this? What’s the deal with this landlord? How long have they owned the building? What are their plans for it?”
And I did not know that off the top of my head. And so that just like is a light bulb went off. And I said, “Team, we need to build a lease renewal checklist. So whenever we have a lease renewal, here’s what we have to do. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.” And we created this very comprehensive checklist so that then if we get asked any possible question that anyone could ever ask you about the lease renewal, we’re going to know the answer. And that’s part of the process that gets going just as soon as our client says, “Hey, we have a lease renewal to work on.”
Instead of how, maybe, I don’t like to think I ever did it this way, but I probably did when I was very early stage in my career. But it’s like, “Oh, it’s renewal. Let’s just go. We’ll get some comps, and we’ll go look at the market and see what’s there.” No, we’ve got a whole new way of looking at it. But it’s innovating in the execution side. So it’s team marketing, execution and then constant never-ending improvement of all three of those things. And that’s just what we do.
And thankfully our team is built on our core values, which we developed collectively, which is discipline, 10X mentality, loyalty, humility, and gratitude. And those five things are all I care about when it comes to hiring somebody. And as long as they possess those five characteristics, nothing else matters. And at high levels, then they can figure everything else out if you possess those five.

Mark Taylor:

I like that you’ve got gratitude in there. I mean, because I think, personally, contemplation of gratitude, making sure you’re actually you’re grateful for the things you have leads to being happier. I mean, finding happiness, I think much more consistently. So fast-

Ward Richmond:

I’ll tell you that came from Tony Robbins.

Mark Taylor:

Yeah.

Ward Richmond:

And when I was doing those, Tony, and this still happens to me today, you’ll have these moments where you’re working on these deals, and we do the work, and we find the space, and we negotiate the lease, and then it gets on the table. And then there’s got to be board approvals, and there’s got to be this and that. It’s out of our hands. We can’t do-

Mark Taylor:

Sure.

Ward Richmond:

… anything else. And a lot of times, not a lot of times, but sometimes we might work our asses off. And on 15 deals, in all 15 of those deals, they land on tails instead of heads, and they don’t get signed. And then it’s just like a sucker punch, and it’s like boom, boom, boom. And it can be really demoralizing when you work on a commission-only basis. And we don’t get paid for the work we do until the deal gets done. And that’s a unique thing in the world of business because most consultants get paid regardless if the deal gets done or not. Most lawyers get paid regardless. I mean, the lawyers that negotiate a purchase contract, if the purchase contract doesn’t ever get signed, the lawyers still gets paid. Real estate brokers don’t get paid.
So to overcome that, working with Tony Robbins, he’s like, “Dude, you know what you need to do when you’re feeling that way? You need to wake up. You need to say, ‘Thank God that I live in Dallas, Texas. Thank God that there’s air to breathe. My family’s safe, and they’re healthy. They’re here with me. I can go jump in the swimming pool in my backyard. And even if I go back to making $15,000 per year, like I once did, I’m still making more money than the majority of the people in the history of the entire world. So have gratitude.'”
And then when you’re feeling that way, go put yourself in that situation and just always find gratitude. Because when you’re operating in a state of gratitude, then I think that’s when, I mean, that’s just the secret of life really is just to be thankful. No matter what the situation may be, find the gratitude. And GaryVee has this crazy thing where if he’s feeling really down, and everybody feels down, man, if you’re GaryVee or Tony Robbins or Grant Cardone, they have these days. GaryVee’s like, I just fucking crazy. I do not do this because I just like am, too… I don’t even want to talk about it, ’cause I’m so superstitious about it. But GaryVee imagines someone goes and murders his whole family, and then how that would make him feel. And then he is like, “Thank God that didn’t happen.”

Mark Taylor:

Sure.

Ward Richmond:

And then that gets him back to his gratitude place. For me, I don’t do that. For me, I just look at the grass in my yard and the trees and the sky and thank God. And I love Texas. I love being an American. We have freedom. We live at a great time. I love technology. I love all of these wonderful things that we get to have. I love music. So just go find that gratitude and be thankful.
Practice smiling, if you find yourself pouting a lot, smile. At Tony Robbins conferences, they have you do a thing where you just force yourself to laugh. Try it. And then once you start doing, it’s like you really actually start laughing.

Mark Taylor:

Start laughing.

Ward Richmond:

And it’s like, “Oh, my God.” To force yourself to fucking laugh sometimes. Find the gratitude though, but.

Mark Taylor:

That’s a great transition or a segue, I would say, to one of the things I’m very interested in your perspective on, because you write a bunch of market updates, and you see a lot of data about the state of Texas and what’s happening in the Texas triangle, I think over 70% of the population lives here. Last year we created something like 660,000 jobs. Population growth is just going to continue to be… At least everybody’s predicting it’s going to continue to be a thing. So what are you seeing in the market? Where are you bullish on Texas? Are you bearish at all? What’s your take on it? Because this is your home and this is…

Ward Richmond:

Well, we run a global business to a certain extent, so I look at things very macro, but when it comes to Texas, I think, I mean, Texas, we’re in one of the best spots you can be in. Logistically, it’s right in the center of the country. There’s great interstate highways that crisscrossed through. We have great airports for freight and for passengers. I love the ability to go fly anywhere I want to in North America in three hours direct, American Airlines. I just got concierge key this year.

Mark Taylor:

Congrats.

Ward Richmond:

Respect American. And it’s a weird time, though, right now, and I think there’s a lot of margin pressure on everybody. We’re on the brink of a recession, are we in a recession? Who knows what’s going on? There’s a lot of pressure everywhere. I think everyone’s feeling it, but I do think Texas is a good place to be. I think, cost of living is very low comparatively. I think, when it comes to the arts and culture and things like that, we can go head-to-head with anyone in the rest of the United States for sure. And it’s a great place to live. It’s easy to get around. I mean, man, you can just go buy a house here, and the same house will cost you 10X in LA, maybe, I don’t know. I’m not a residential realtor, but. It’s just low cost of living, good people.
It’s beautiful. We got great weather other than the occasional black swan events, they’re not really black swan events here, but like 10 times a year, crazy shit happens, like an ice storm or a tornado or a thunderstorm or a hurricane or something like that. But I also think a lot of people are consolidating their distribution operations, and they’re coming here. I think a lot of manufacturers are going to come here. I think that Mexico is on fire. We’re probably doing 25% of our business in Mexico right now. And that’s just going to continue. And being the neighbor of Mexico is going to be a benefit to us as the nearshoring and reshoring and manufacturing comes, not only to the US, but a ton of it’s going to go to Mexico because of the labor there. And the cross border trade, it’s very important. So I’m a big fan of Texas.

Mark Taylor:

So what trends do you see in the industrial real estate in specifically the warehousing and logistics side of what real estate trends are you witnessing?

Ward Richmond:

Well, the trend is that we just had 2020 Covid, the pandemic triggered a surge in eCommerce from I believe 18% of all retail sales to 22%. And so because of that, that requires a lot of warehouse space. So there’s been more warehouse space built and absorbed in the history of the world in the last few years.
Right now, we’re, really it was Q4 of last year. I think it probably peaked, speculative construction of industrial real estate. Certainly in Dallas it peaked. I think we were at 80 million square feet at Q4.

Mark Taylor:

Wow.

Ward Richmond:

And now at 60 at the end of Q1 because 20 million was delivered. But there’s no debt out there to go build new speculative buildings. So there’s going to be a big slowdown in construction after there’s been this huge, absolutely insane amount of buildings getting built all over the country, especially in DFW. And that’s coming to a screeching halt.
So you’re going to see construction, product under construction, it’s going to go down. Tenants are not leasing space at the same rate that they were in 2021, in 2022. I think inventory is stabilizing. I think there was no inventory when Covid happened, and this huge spike happened to eCommerce, and then nobody had any inventory, and then everybody bought too much inventory. Now I think it’s getting balanced out. I think, I’ve heard from experts, that it should be very balanced out by Q1 of 2024, and I just think people are being a little more conservative right now than they were the last couple years. So I think absorption numbers are going to tick down, but I still think it’s very healthy and compared to pre-Covid, it’s still absolutely crushing it.
Compared to ’21 and ’22, will that ever happen again? Who knows? But I don’t know. Amazon put a big eCommerce footprint in place to support eCommerce, but a lot of other companies haven’t done that. So a lot of other companies are still catching up. The 22% is sitting there. The eCommerce growth was a very slow, steady line going up, trickling up, and then Covid happened, and it spiked up, and now it’s stopped. But all that’s happening I think is, it’s just catching back up to that.
And then I think in a couple years it’s going to start trickling back up again. But there’s still a lot of people trying to catch up and figure out how to set up their supply chain infrastructure in a way to manage this world that we live in today and eCommerce and projected growth of eCommerce, which is certainly going to be coming.

Mark Taylor:

What would you say the general size, the typical size, of the buildings coming online are, square footage-wise?

Ward Richmond:

I mean, I think most of them are 200,000 square foot plus. There’s not as many small buildings being built, but I don’t know that stat offhand.

Mark Taylor:

Sure.

Ward Richmond:

But I’d say 200 plus.

Mark Taylor:

And do you think of the 60 million that’s under construction right now, since the debt is dried up? And on one hand, I think because construction’s slowing down, construction costs are probably going down. But do you think the majority of those buildings are funded, and will continue to be able to build? Meaning, maybe if they borrowed their debt in tranches to build, and then, so it’s like you get to one, and you just assume that you’re going to be able to borrow for the next tranche, but that’s no longer available. You think all of those, that $60 million, the majority of that $60 million will come under, or will actually-

Ward Richmond:

60 million square feet.

Mark Taylor:

Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. Thank you.

Ward Richmond:

Yeah, it’ll get built.

Mark Taylor:

Eventually. Do you think it will get built on the original scheduled timeline?

Ward Richmond:

Yeah, I think the people that build it, they have the money, and they have loans that they could flex up. So they want to get it built and leased as fast as possible. And they’re already building it. They’re not going to stop building it. They’re not going to slow play it because the financial markets are too in flux right now to do that. So anything that’s under construction, I would think everybody’s scrambling to build it as fast as they can possibly build it.

Mark Taylor:

And then like you said, the ARMs and stuff like that kicking in. So as time goes by, those interest rates kick up, as you said. It almost makes me think that what’s going to happen is we’re going to see rates stay at a certain point, maybe dip even a little bit, and then once that inventory is absorbed, they’re going to start to probably climb in a big way.

Ward Richmond:

And rates have continued to go up. So we’ll see what Q2 has to say about rates, but because of this, it’s just making things more expensive.

Mark Taylor:

Right.

Ward Richmond:

Rates going up, it’s going to make it more expensive. And there is no doubt all of this space eventually gets leased up, which it will because the absorption numbers are not… Well, they’re not record-setting anymore, they’re still very healthy and construction is done. I mean, it’s happening now, but it’s going to get absorbed. And then when that happens, then rates are going to go way up.

Mark Taylor:

Right.

Ward Richmond:

So I don’t think I see rates going down. And I said years ago on a panel, industrial rates will be more expensive than office rates at some point in time.

Mark Taylor:

Right. And-

Ward Richmond:

And in some cases they already are.

Mark Taylor:

That’s right. That’s right.

Ward Richmond:

Depending on how shitty the office building is.

Mark Taylor:

So what do you think happens to these large scale product assets, like the malls and things like that? The places where they’ve shuttered them? The strip mall where you used to have a Bed Bath and Beyond or something like that. Now it’s available square footage, and you could potentially do something with a last mile distribution that could come into it, but I don’t know what kind of retrofitting would have to be done.

Ward Richmond:

You could, but I think it’s called NIMBY, not in my backyard.

Mark Taylor:

Yeah.

Ward Richmond:

You heard of that?

Mark Taylor:

I have.

Ward Richmond:

Yeah. NIMBY, that’s a thing, so. Residents don’t want last mile distribution centers and next to them. Yeah, transportation companies in an ideal world would like to be located where the elementary schools are located because that’s where the houses are. But obviously the people that have children at those schools don’t want them there.
And I think it’s going to be, I would figure it’s going to be more multifamily and retail office is going to get converted to multifamily. That is obsolete office space that people don’t want to go to. And I think retail’s actually seems to be doing all right. And I think a lot of eComm companies are opening up retail places. I like to go shopping-

Mark Taylor:

Sure.

Ward Richmond:

… for some things. I don’t shop for groceries. I don’t go to the grocery store. I think that’s a great eComm thing. But when I buy clothes, I mean, I like to go to Nordstrom still and go try them on. And I guess it depends on where the mall is located too. I think, big town, there’s a big town mall out in Mesquite, and they’ve tore that down and built a FedEx Ground out there. So that will happen in some places.

Mark Taylor:

What are some of the hottest markets you’re seeing that maybe not… I mean, everybody knows Dallas and a couple other ones, but where are some of the other maybe not so on the radar spots that you’re noticing?

Ward Richmond:

Well, there’s big shift on the ports from the West Coast to the East Coast going on. So a lot of cargo is just going always from China to LA. And now Apple, I think, opened up a plant in India, there’s going to be a lot going to Mexico. There’s going to be I think a shift. I get confused because the world is round, but moving from China, but further west, I guess.
But then that will impact the East Coast ports. So the East Coast port activity is going to go up. Gulf Coast port in Houston’s going to go up. So we’ve been seeing the highest growth markets, I think at the end of Q1 were Spartanville, South Carolina, Richmond, Virginia, places like that. Savannah is absolutely on fire. It’s going to continue to go Charleston-

Mark Taylor:

Miami, maybe?

Ward Richmond:

Oh yeah, Miami is, we’re working on a lot of stuff in Miami right now. Houston, and then on the West Coast, people want to get out of California. You have a warehouse in California, right?

Mark Taylor:

We do, yes.

Ward Richmond:

Yeah. But I mean, a lot of people are looking at Phoenix or Vegas, BNSF is building a terminal in Phoenix. Did you know that?

Mark Taylor:

I did not. No.

Ward Richmond:

So if you’re a rail user, and you don’t want to be in LA, you can go to Phoenix. And we’ve been doing a lot of business in Phoenix, Salt Lake City, Boise, Idaho, Reno, Nevada, all those types of places in the Midwest. Like Indy, it’s booming, Columbus, Kansas City, of course, Kansas City has a lot of great rail infrastructure. Chicago’s just been absolutely on fire and killing it. My homeboy, Tom Rodino, up there, he’s my guy to call up. They’re in Chicago. Pat Turner, Matthew Stober. I love our Chicago office. But Chicago’s just a very dynamic, high-growth industrial market. They’ve been at over a billion square feet for a while. DFW actually just surpassed the 1 billion square foot threshold at the end of Q1 of this year. So now we have a billion square feet of industrial product in DFW.
But I mean, I feel like, I guess I talk about it all the time, so it seems obvious to me. But all those cities I just named plus Canada, I think the population growth in Canada is on fire. They have very favorable immigration policies. A lot of people are moving to Canada, so when there’s more people, there’s greater need for product and then for warehouse, and the vacancy rates there are extremely low. To go lease space in Toronto can be $20 a foot triple net.

Mark Taylor:

Wow.

Ward Richmond:

It used to be 5 when I bought my Canada for Dummies book back in 2009. It was like four or $5, and now it’s 20. Back then, in Dallas, it was $3 a foot. And I mean, some Dallas deals are getting done in the 7s and 8s, 9s. I mean, even million square foot deals getting you get that done in the sevens man.

Mark Taylor:

Well, even 7, 8s and 9s sound like you’re running naked compared to the-

Ward Richmond:

California.Mark Taylor:

… what we pay in Southern California.

Ward Richmond:

Same with New Jersey, New Jersey’s out of space. So they’re shifting to the Lehigh Valley to Allentown. And so I think different pockets of Pennsylvania are going to continue to have that. Labor’s huge for all these eCommerce operations. You need labor, so you got to go where the people are. Transportation’s the number one cost component, but labor’s making a lot of the decisions. If you need heavy labor, if you need manufacturing, getting power right now is very difficult. So electricity and natural gas is driving everything for these facilities, and there’s a long, long lead time on it. It takes longer to get a transformer than it takes to build a freaking building.

Mark Taylor:

It’ll be interesting to see how that plays into the electrification of California to make these terminals available to support electric semis and things like that.

Ward Richmond:

And I think smart developers are laying down EV conduit to be prepped for that because users are going to want to have EV charging stations for their trucks. I did hear a stat that if you switch the whole diesel long haul fleet over to EV, it wouldn’t make sense. So I don’t see that happening. I know I can find the stat somewhere, and I’ve quoted it before, but I’m going to basically tell you, a diesel truck long haul can go for a few days carrying cargo. An EV can go for 24 hours, and then it’s got to recharge overnight. So if you move the whole diesel fleet to EV, then that would consume as much power as the entire city of Phoenix consumes in 24 hours to recharge that fleet. And that’s not good for the environment either.

Mark Taylor:

No.

Ward Richmond:

So it’s just like someone asked me on Friday night, “What do you think about AI?” And it’s like, “Same thing I think about EV, I think it’s good, I think it’s good when it’s needed, but it can’t, it’s not going to replace everything, or it shouldn’t.”

Mark Taylor:

Right.

Ward Richmond:

There’s going to have to be a happy little hybrid.

Mark Taylor:

Well, I mean, if it makes sense, whatever makes sense. I mean, I think nothing’s black and white in this world. It’s got to be shades of gray, and it’s got to be a multipronged attack.

Ward Richmond:

That’s right.

Mark Taylor:

Yeah. Look, I mean, I’ve immensely enjoyed this, and I really, really appreciate you taking the time, especially I was glad to see you say, “Hey, come on over Sunday, let’s do this.”

Ward Richmond:

Yeah, man.

Mark Taylor:

It’s a lot more relaxed than us being all amped up and the work week and trying to-

Ward Richmond:

It’s Monday, the phone’s just like [inaudible 01:25:37].

Mark Taylor:

Yep.

Ward Richmond:

And I know how you roll, and I knew you’d be down for it, so like, “Dude, just come over and let’s hang by the pool and do a podcast,” so.

Mark Taylor:

That’s great, man.

Well-Ward Richmond:

Thanks for coming over.

Mark Taylor:

Absolutely. And I look forward to potentially doing another one down the road.

Ward Richmond:

Let’s do it, too. I got to get you on mine.

Mark Taylor:

I’d love it.

Ward Richmond:

Yeah.

Mark Taylor:

All right. Hey, thank you for being here. Thank you everybody for listening.

Ward Richmond:

Peace.