The Real Market With Chris Rising – Ep. 9 Darla Longo

00:49 CR: Today I have a discussion with Darla Longo, the Vice Chairman of CBRE, Darla is quite a legend in this business. She’s, over her 40 years developed an incredible track record in industrial real estate and we’ll talk about how today retail is changing industrial. How retail has really created a logistics business in industrial real estate. We also talk about what it’s like to be a woman in a male dominated business and how she’s dealt with some of the issues that have come up over her 40 year career. It’s a really interesting conversation and I’m very, very pleased to present to our audience, Darla’s view of what’s going on in the world today.

01:36 CR: Welcome to the Real Market. I’m pleased to have Darla Longo with me today, she is a superstar in the business. She’s been leading CBRE efforts in industrial real estate for many years and she is a vice chair at CBRE as well as managing director. Darla, thanks for being on the podcast today.

01:57 Darla Longo: Great. Thanks Chris, happy to participate and thank you for reaching out to me to be a participant.

02:06 CR: Terrific. Well, one of the things I think would be interesting to our audience is to hear a little bit about what your business is today, where you focus your time, how you’re focusing your time and what your role, not only just within the transactional side of CBRE but the leadership at the company as well.

02:23 DL: Great. Well, I have believe it or not, been with CBM I’m in my 39th year going January will be my 40th year so I’ve been in the business a long time. I’ve been through many, many cycles. I’d like to think of myself as starting when I was 10 years old and my focus in the business has predominantly been with industrial slash now logistics real estate. And that has grown over the years from starting out in a market area, from leasing, to land sales, to development and about 20 plus years ago, really evolved my practice into investment sales as well. And eight years ago formed a team nationally, which is called… We’re called National Partners and we cover the country, unique for a brokerage company in that we are 100% Tea sharing group that collaborating and helping our clients across the country. What’s been exciting for me in the last really four to five years and it’s really escalating currently is what’s going on with the E-commerce phenomenal, where retail has converged with logistics and that interception of the two is an amazing change and it’s really a whole new business line for those of us that have been in this asset class for years. I think that retail is in a whole new renaissance and likewise industrial logistics is in renaissance, so there’s a lot of changes going on. So it’s been absolutely amazing to watch everything that has happened within the past few years in relation to that… Go ahead.

04:47 CR: No, I just wanted to say that it really is amazing to see it and watching it too from a far, but I wanted to, before we get too much into where we are today, I’d love to hear a little bit. You attended UCLA and graduated from UCLA, did you go right into brokerage and right to CB?

05:05 DL: I did. I graduated from UCLA and was admitted into a program that the company had just started, which was a program to train young people right out of college and that’s where I started my career. So literally, it’s unusual, but I’ve never left.

05:29 CR: That’s amazing.

05:29 DL: Yeah and the reason I haven’t left is ’cause the platform that CB continues to have is a phenomenal place for me to work and it’s been a great workplace in general for women in the business and I’m very proud of what the company has done in that regard as well.

05:51 CR: Well, what drew you to real estate? It’s not… Especially going back when you started, was not an industry that was a natural draw for women, what drew you to real estate when you were graduating from college?

06:03 DL: Well interesting my dad encouraged me to go into real estate. He had invested in real estate, and my dad was in the steel business. And he felt that I’d be good at sales and he encouraged me to explore real estate. And if you can imagine, 40 years ago, I graduated from UCLA and I really did not want to go into residential, and not because I was opposed to what residential real estate did, but I really wanna work weekends and nights and graduating from UCLA really wanted to have an opportunity to work with business people every day. I migrated to industrial because I really was an econ major at UCLA. I loved economics, I loved everything about that. And the industrial sector, which included manufacturing and warehousing, just kinda lent its way to what I was super comfortable with. And that’s really candidly why I was drawn to real estate.

07:18 CR: Were there any more senior women who were brokers at CB at the time you started?

07:25 DL: No, actually not. There was one other gal that was at the company, and a couple of us were in the training program at the time, but really it’s been predominantly a male dominated business. But on the flip side, I think it’s an incredible and amazing opportunity for women because it really lends itself to a lot of the skill sets that we have. And I think it has allowed me to raise three children and have flexibility to be at home with my children, not at home, but to have flexibility to attend their events and be a participant, as well as it was, very intellectually simulating in terms of what the business offered me in terms of flexibility, plus opportunity.

08:32 CR: Yeah. I definitely can see that, but it had to have been a little intimidating when you were starting. And I know when I started as well, that was few years behind you, but it was such a male dominated business, and there was a lot of the fraternity and boys club. How did you deal with that when you first started in your career?

08:54 DL: Well, it’s kind of an interesting story in that I was raised with three other sisters, so four girls, went to an all girls high school in La Cañada, Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy Sacred Heart Academy and then went to UCLA and for some reason I just never felt a bias against women. I was raised, I could do anything I wanted to do. So the good news was, when I encountered the obstacles, I seemed to have had the confidence and the tools to overcome situations. I quickly realized that it’s probably better I bring the male to a meeting and I worked very hard. I felt that starting out when I did, I had to work harder and smarter than some of my colleagues, and work longer hours, and be very careful in terms of not making a lot of mistakes. So I was a good listener and was very coachable. So I think in combination of my ability to be coached and by a lot of my male counterparts, and I was a quick learner in that regard, and I just adopted and it’s paid off for me over the years, not to say that there weren’t a lot of bumps in the road, I have to admit there were a lot of those. So it was not rosy. But I just was confident that I really wanted to persevere and I wasn’t going to let any obstacles get in the way to where I felt I could add value and be a great professional to service my clients.

10:44 CR: Well, is there any obstacle that kind of… A lot of times on this podcast, we talk to people about certain failures they’ve had that drove them, or certain experiences that drove them. Is there anything that you’d wanna share about an experience or two that made you say, nothing’s gonna stop me?

11:02 DL: Yeah. Oh, I had so many obstacles along my career path that, if you talked to our management team and others, I literally had to reinvent myself multiple times throughout my career. I started out as a leasing broker working the San Gabriel Valley and the Inland Empire, and I then I evolved into doing land sales and development. And I quickly realized that some of my competitors and at that early stage was Cushman and Wakefield was pretty competitive and I recognized that the world was bigger than just my one little territory. And I had to kind of reinvent myself to get outside of just being a local broker. So I formed a team regionally and then formed a team nationally, and a lot of the obstacles were related to, I would say, barriers that my colleagues in my office put up, and it caused me to pause and say, “There’s a bigger picture here,” and step back and look at a macro perspective and changed up my business. So I would say that I was always looking to where the puck was going and as a result, when an obstacle presented itself.

12:47 DL: So when colleges and brokers and people were… It was barriers for me, I just stepped back and went bigger picture. And that allowed me to pivot and become a, how should I say, informative of more, what do you think about my economic background, macro economic trends. And then applied it back to my daily business. So it was really an evolution. And when I wanted to go to investment sales, that was a huge obstacle. It was a club. It was a tight knit club that they were not gonna let me in. So I basically sold all of Cabot at the time to Reeve, and I was doing some of those investment actions that caused the community to say, “I guess I we better let her in the club.” But it was not saying, not whining and complaining, just action speaks louder than words, I think would be what I did.

14:04 CR: Well, I know that when I started in the business, as opposed to a lawyer, but being a broker that I was really amazed what a relationship based business early on it was and still is today. But even back to the ’80s and the ’90s, brokers got their business because they had a relationship with a principal. I remember when I was working for John Cushman, it was pretty easy to ultimately find out where the company was gonna locate from the office side. It was gonna be near the male CEOS, town club, country club or home. And the only way you got to be a broker for that deal was you had a strong personal friendship and relationship. How did you, when you were talking about the Cabot Forbes deal, in a deal like that, how did you position yourself to really have control over the deal? Was it a relationship with the principal? Was it CB saying that Darla’s the best person for the job, and we’re gonna make sure she’s running the deal. How did that happen?

15:07 DL: Well, basically that was total relationship. I would say that the company had really, other then I worked for the company, and the company was always supportive of everything I did. It was relationship driven. Back in that time Cabot was candidly, one of the primary investors in my market territory, and actually almost one of the only investors in my market territory at the time. And I had a great relationship. Likewise, I had a very close relationship with all of the senior executives at Reeve. And just by knowing those two relationships, was able to put the two parties together, which ultimately ended up in the transaction. So you’re comment about relationship is really at the root of our business, which is why, when all of these auction.com and real estates a commodity, is really why we add value, because we know we have good relationships and we know who to call and we can be creative in how to put transactions together, which we just can’t do through the Internet. So our business really is just that; it’s all relationships.

16:40 CR: Was there a point that you hit in your career, understanding that you reinvent yourself, which I think is the number one indication of how someone successful as they continue to evolve. But was there a point where you said, “Okay, I got this, I’m gonna be making a career out of this and be a leader in the industry.” That you can identify or is every morning a battle and you gotta prove yourself again?

17:05 DL: Yeah. I would say that the struggle, candidly Chris that I had was being a working mom. And back, imagine 40 years ago, that was a hard place to be. And I struggled probably for a good 10 years within myself, about not being at home with my kids. If you talk to my children today, which I’m very proud that they are all college graduates and off our payroll, and the success has come with today, recognizing where my kids are in life and my husband and I are very proud of that, but it was a 10 year struggle and it took me that long to say, “Gosh, I really like what I do and maybe I need to accept that and embrace it. For a solid 10 years, I struggled, I definitely struggled. Because… It was kind of the push pull between work and not. There was a period of time I was home for a little bit. I had some surgery and my kids voted me back to work. They said, “Mom, you’re much better working. You are just way too intense here at home.” So there were certain moments that I realize that I’m good at what I do, and I wanted to make a difference. Now my focus is much on training and coaching as well as I am in my business ’cause that’s kind of the phase that I’m in right now.

18:47 CR: Yeah. One of the things could I find interesting is the experiences are so different today, for not just young women but young men, in the sense that they can really work on the road. There’s the cloud, and there’s all of these things that we didn’t have or if you wanted to work, you went to your office where there were your papers and everything. But I don’t think that, in and of itself, makes it any easier for young women who wanna be professionals and raise families. What do you see the challenges today as you are mentoring people for keeping bright, accomplished women in the business while they’re raising children?

19:28 DL: I think it’s… First of all, it’s helping women understand that they can do both, and it’s about quality time with your children and not so much quantity. The great thing about my husband was he was… Before his time, he was super helpful with the children when I wasn’t there and I do think the good news is, today, men are as actively involved with children as the women are. So I think that’s a good segue today that men are very helpful, very attentive, have time to take off from work to be with the kids. Which is a different era than it was when I started in the business. And I think that, for women that I’m coaching today, it’s more accepting the fact that it’s that quality time, not quantity. And spending that… Budgeting your time and not feeling guilty.

20:38 DL: It’s hard for women not to feel guilty about not being with their kids, and that’s a little bit different than men. And I think the challenges are still there because when you’re on your phone at home, you’re not actually there anyway. So you have to figure out, “When I’m at work, I’m at work. And when I’m home, I’m home.” Because if you don’t allow yourself to have that segmentation, you don’t feel that you’re successful at anything. You feel like you’re a bad mom and you’re not good at work. So I think it’s very important, today, to really, as women are in the workforce, to try to truly segment when “I’m gonna work and when I’m gonna be present with my children.” And that was the same as we had it, but we had to go to the office. We had picked up our little pink slips, it was a different era. But today, you could work 24/7, so you have to almost shut things off.

21:53 CR: Do you see better support systems from your company and other companies to facilitate keeping women in business once they decide to have children?

22:05 DL: Absolutely. Oh, yes. I think, particularly, CB has made major strides in the support of women having a career. And I have a predominantly woman team. Rebecca Perlmutter, who’s my partner in San Francisco, has two kids. She took time off to have her children and come back. Gina Christian, who works for me, just had a baby, took three, four months off and came back. The company is very supportive and we are very supportive. It’s that flexibility that allows women today to have children and have a career.

23:01 CR: A lot of other industries, especially here in Southern California, have been rocked with the ‘Me Too’ movement. To me, it’s just people feeling comfortable that they can come forward. Do you think that the real estate industry is experiencing anything on that or anything similar? Or do you think it will?

23:19 DL: Oh, yeah. Well, a lot of the things that have been presented have gone on in the industry for years and I think it is finally refreshing to know that women have a voice and they can come forward. And I think that’s refreshing and I think our industry is not immune to that in any way, shape or form. I have always coached women to really think about our behavior in situations and if you can prevent this situation, be cognizant of that. And I think that is something our company has done very proactively for years and years and years. And as a result, I think we’ve had as a company, I should say, less incidences than others. But it’s not tolerated. Being able for women to have a voice and have people listen and react today is very refreshing. I just hope it doesn’t go too far the other way, that it basically causes more pushback for hiring women. So it’s kind of a balance. But I’m very, very pleased that this has finally come out and is front and center. And I wouldn’t be surprised if there were situations that come out in our business in the near future. It would not surprise me at all.

25:11 CR: Well, I think one of the strong counterbalances going on for the industry is that it’s a relationship business. And what I’ve seen on the office side is that where it used to be just the CEO, making a choice whether someone was going to office, it’s now a committee. And the committee is usually heavily diverse and has lots of women on it. Because at the end of the day, on the office side, it’s about at the office space becomes how you attract talent. And so you really can’t show up with three middle-aged white men and think that you’re gonna be able to connect in a relationship with a client. Is that same thing moving into industrial? Are you seeing that your clients are more and more reflective of the world we live in today, so there’s more diversity? Or is it still a very white male dominated on your side?

26:07 DL: I would say it is more white male dominated today. And I would make two comments. On the institutional side, it is definitely there are more women, and that has changed dramatically. So I do think that on the institutional side, the groups that actually own industrial real estate, there’s the shift. And that goes for office and industrial. In the actual logistic business, it has not been a business that I think most women are drawn to, yet. But I think that is changing and will change going forward. But I think it’s just the nature of the beast. It’s easier for women to go into retail, multi-family, or office than it is industrial. But I would say, the women that have gone into our asset class, although it is not abundant are some of the most successful professionals in the US, which you said something about that in terms of the success rate for women, if they wanted to go into our business.

27:40 CR: Well, I think one of the keys, I know this as a fact to your success is, you work very hard, but you know your stuff, and you are a complete professional, and you’ve built an amazing team. So, let’s talk a little bit about the market you’re in, what you see happening, and maybe describe for us what national partners at CBRE is, and who’s on the team, and the markets that you cover, and what you see happening in those markets.

28:05 DL: Okay. Good. Loaded question with lots of things. Well, first of all, let me start out with national partners. We call ourselves the five families. Basically, I have partners in Philadelphia that covered the East Coast, and New Jersey, and that market. Michael Hynes and Bryan Pomara are my two partners in that market. Chris Riley and Frank Fallon cover Atlanta and Miami, kind of the southeast region. I have Michael Caprile who covers the Midwest in Chicago, and Randy Baird and Jack Fraker are in the Dallas market and cover that whole segment of the market. And then my team, we cover the Western US. But what is amazing about that is that everybody has different talents and strengths, and we collaborate, and talk daily, and we’re probably more set up like a law firm, and it was really a ground up, the way we came together, we put ourselves together versus CB management, and management has been very supportive of our team, and they understand the power of all of us connecting. Because industrial real estate, which and Googling now, it’s not called the industrial real estate, it’s called logistics, and we’re changing our verbiage accordingly. Because if you go overseas and you talk to global capital, they’re saying, “I don’t want industrial real estate, I want logistics.” And that’s because in their mind industrial real estate is heavy manufacturing.

30:06 DL: And what’s changing business, which is exciting today, is that with the intersection of e-commerce with logistics we have a whole new asset class that has been transformed. We’re seeing things in the business that we’ve never seen before. And it’s so exciting to see what the future will be in terms of the impact of e-commerce in our overall world. And we haven’t overbuilt, we haven’t oversupplied, but it’s very sophisticated ’cause there’s robotics in the buildings. We’re planning the future for the driverless trucks, and what the impact drives trucks are. And what’s the future impact of robotics in the building versus not hiring people? However, the companies need skilled labors. Looking at that from each community segmenting on educating the communities that robotics are not bad. It’s a higher skilled labor. Changing the educational system to train individuals to be able to repair, maintain, operate the robotics and what that future will bring to us.

31:32 DL: What’s so exciting to me, as you can tell, I get very pumped up about the game changers. E-commerce was a game changer. I used to, years ago I would go to our CBA Conner metrics guys ’cause I was tracking my packages. And I said, “It’s gonna go infill, and what’s gonna happen is it’s gonna change, and it’s not gonna be just these big warehouses outside. It’s gonna be infill”, and of course, that has come to pass. And the other game changer that’s gonna happen, which I can’t wait to see how it unfolds, is what goes on in the food industry. And for years freezer, cooler buildings hard to maintain and really hard to operate. Expensive to operate, I should say, but what’s going to happen, it’s not if, it’s when… Whether it’s Amazon, or Walmart, or Kroger, or somebody’s gonna figure out how to deliver to our homes the tomatoes, and the apples, and everything that you want.

32:40 DL: And millennials are already doing that but that’s the industry that’s gonna be the game changer in our business because that will take us from 15% in e-commerce to 30, or 40%. And Amazon’s, obviously, figuring that out with their acquisition of Whole Foods, but they’re not going to stay in the Whole Foods locations ’cause that’s expensive. They’re going to end up by going to warehouses… They’re just trying to figure out the algorithms and the patterns of what people have. It’s just an exciting time and it’s the changes are gonna be phenomenal to just watch and see what happens. It’s very interesting.

33:33 CR: Well, I agree with you. I saw recently that Prologis, probably the biggest name in logistic real estate in the United States and globally, has been building multi-floors, not necessarily multi-tenant but multi-floor industrial buildings. Similar to what we see in maybe Tokyo or some places in China. That would tell me that addressing some of the needs that you’re talking about is proximity to population is becoming more important. Do you have any view on that?

34:05 DL: Absolutely. It’s already happening very much so overseas in Europe and in Japan. And actually, I sold them a site in San Francisco, which is they’re planning to build the multi-story facility there to service San Francisco. They’re doing it in Seattle as well and that’s actually built and underway. And it’s because how can I access this population base quickly and in proximity to where I can have a facility that can serve this population? That is also a big game changer. It’s pretty expensive to build those buildings and location, location, location being a pro is very important, but you’re absolutely right. That is a game changer and I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s gonna be some built downtown LA. As in your business you guys, have taken advantage of buying everything in the downtown LA market and that’s pushing those users out, but eventually, there might be those facilities in downtown LA. Not yet today but eventually.

35:35 CR: Well, I would think with the use of robotics and driverless cars the amount of acreage you need to build these goes down if you’re not having to also build parking for employees. And if you can route the trucks so there’s not a build up into the street. All the things that can get owners of industrial real estate in trouble with their cities, it all of a sudden makes the urban area is the new frontier for the new building of industrial. That’s one of our bets. But I wanna move the conversation just a little bit to there have been some major portfolio transactions over the last three or four years in industrial real estate, with some of the biggest of the big Blackstone and Prologis and others putting together portfolios and selling at very low cap rates, both domestically and internationally. Can you talk about the trend of how big these portfolios are getting, and then what you see happening with that?

36:47 DL: Yeah. The Blackstones of the world, Prologis whether it be any of the industrial REITs have changed their focus from, for example, like Liberty and Duke basically sold off all their office and they have an industrial focus. Bigger is better, and it’s hard to aggregate industrial real estate of any size and magnitude. And the onset of the amount of foreign capital that is coming into our asset class is overwhelming. We’ve continued to have the Canadians. The Japanese are very active right now. The Chinese were very active; they’re less active today. European investors are very active. The list goes on and on from Australia to all parts of Europe, to all parts of Asia and the demand for foreign global capital to be able to acquire our asset class, has been hard because it just needs to be aggregated so that they have enough square footage and dollar size to make it make sense for them to enter.

38:24 DL: That has been a big driver of the multiple portfolio sales that have gone in the past and today, and going forward, if it’s 100 million and above, pretty much the sweet spot is if you’re a 100 million up to a billion, there’s a lot more buyers for that size range, and then once you get a billion and above, it becomes a more limited field. However, everyday I would say probably at least two or three times a month, we have a new global capital source flying into Southern California meeting with my partners across the country, and trying to understand and strategically make commitments to buy the asset class. What Blackstone is brilliant in the way they have aggregated and continue to aggregate a lot of the industrial real estate, and there are several others that have made those exact plays looking to the larger exit. And I don’t see that changing really.

40:00 DL: And I think that the belief is that our asset class is probably not gonna fill a downturn and not because the economy’s not gonna have any hiccups or downturn. There will be things, and there are things that are happening. The difference is that because we haven’t overbuilt and because we are in this convergence of retail meeting logistics, we are not feeling an impact of a slow down. And in fact, we are seeing exponential rental spikes that candidly, in my career, I’ve never seen. That is noticed globally and global capital is looking to say, “How can I enter this asset class?” And it’s no longer that they want to buy that trophy building because they want it brochure quality. They look very differently at the asset class, which is a big shift, and which is why the aggregation is important because there is cap rate compression and continues to be that cap rate compression because of the aggregation.

41:24 CR: If I had to guess, I would say that the IE is probably the number one industrial market in the country, but I could be wrong. What would you say are the top five for investment from both domestic and international capital?

41:40 DL: I’d say the top five are really kind of the smile, as we call it, a coastal regions. It’s New Jersey. It is Miami, Florida, It is Southern California, Northern California, Seattle and then you have groups that will consider… I mean, Dallas has become a very… From a population growth, and a business growth, has come on many people’s radar screens. Atlanta has done the same, so you’ll find groups now starting to look at Atlanta, and Chicago has always kind of been on the radar screens, but if you think of where global capital wants to seriously invest, it’s everything along the coasts in general. And that is the predominant focus, and it’s pretty simple to look at when you look at a map and you look at those heat maps for population centers. They’re in those coastal regions, so the driver is the population growth. But, when you look at logistics and things come into the porch, they cross the country on intermodal and those hubs are Chicago, Dallas, Kansas City’s kind of coming into play. But from a intermodal transportation perspective, that’s a way similar to how office looks at, where the executive lives, industrial lives, where’s the infrastructure? And to accommodate getting goods to the population centers. And that continues to be the request, which is why we’re seeing many instances of poorer cap rates.

43:46 CR: Well, on that note, the number one question I kind of get asked is where we are in the cycle. And I don’t mean innings or anything, but just more like are there things that concern you? Do you see people levering their portfolio in a way that won’t be able to sustain a default? Or, in talking about where the puck is gonna go, what’s your view here in April of 2018?

44:11 DL: I think that there are a lot of global… When we look at things out of our control, what’s going on in Syria and those types of things, we all kind of go, “Okay that could be a game changer.” Definitely the capital markets and the investors are super disciplined, not over leveraged, and have been very, very disciplined in the cycle so we don’t feel that we’re having excess leverage that could cause a collapse in the commercial real estate area, for sure. I think that when people talk about it, I think we’re in a second inning of a double header, and we’ve had a long cycle of recovery. But I do think that the things to be worried about are, what are the impacts of some of the technology changes that are gonna be going on in the business, because technology is changing so rapidly. How is that going to change everything?

45:36 DL: It’s impacting office space, it’s impacting retail, it’s impacting industrial. And so if you just take the industrial asset class, what worries me is, I know that these algorithms are figuring out, “What I’m gonna order, when I’m gonna order it, what I like, what I don’t like, ’cause it pops up on my iPhone.” I would say that pretty soon they’re gonna figure out… They’re gonna understand, they, the algorithms in technology is gonna be so advanced that it’s going to, when you think about what they actually… What goods they make and warehouse or whatever, it’s gonna be calculated pretty close to what it’s gonna be. There’s not gonna be excess. So, that could be a space game changer. And then, interest rates are gonna rise. I don’t think any of us doubt that interest rate is gonna rise, and if we can keep inflation down.

46:39 DL: And I’d say, technology is gonna be the game changer and the impact on real estate is just gonna change it up. But I think that’s what we have to watch. I feel like we’re gonna have a steady growth for… We’re gonna be going along hopefully for the next five years. Beyond that, it’s kind of hard to say, but we have to watch what technology is doing to change our industry and the impact of all that on our economy. And then all the other political issues are above my head. Who knows? It’s like every day you think something’s gonna impact something and it doesn’t, and you think something isn’t gonna impact something and it does. So, I think that’s a piece that we don’t understand.

47:31 CR: Well, on that theme of technology, I often ask people in the podcast, how do you work on a day to day basis? Do you have a project management software that CBRE uses to work amongst the national partners or your own team here in Southern California? Are you email based? How do you deal with the constant barrage and how do you operate your business on a day to day basis, as it relates to technology?

48:00 DL: Yeah. CB has gone paperless, I think as you know, everything is web-based, we use Salesforce and we use a deal flow, and our company is leading trying to be leading edge and investing millions and millions of dollars in technology to take us to the next level. I think for people like myself, it’s hard not to have paper, but everything we do is email and web based, and we share all of our data nationally with our partners, so it’s come a long way. So that’s what we do. And then CB has huge investments and project management and other softwares that continued to develop going forward. We just hired our head of technology was a gentleman that was Ram Zipcars. And so bringing that bringing somebody that’s been in that business into our business with the different land. So I would say whenever I think it’s changing again.

49:27 CR: Yes, well, the one thing that we agree on is a technology allows you to not have to be in the office. So how would that relate to you being a volunteer sheriff? You have enough time to go and ride in sheriff cars.

49:42 DL: Well, that’s a long story, but yeah, you know what happens in life. I am a chair of Flintridge Sacred Heart now and do that. It’s just you sometimes give it it’s time to one of the busiest people you know and you’ll figure it how to get it done. And I just carve out the time when I can. I work NASCAR, I’ve worked a rodeo, I worked a breast walks. I have to train four times a year for eight hours a day, and I just basically figure out how to make it happen. And sometimes it gets a little crazy. But as you know in life, you have to try to see what others you can give back to. So you just find the time.

50:32 CR: That’s terrific. This has been a great conversation, but I really wanna ask you one last question, which is, as you’re advising and talking to people who are in their 20s, maybe just out of college and they’re asking you for career advice, what would be your advice to a young person, male or female, but probably more focused on female about the real estate business today, and whether it makes sense to try to make a career out of it.

51:03 DL: Well, I think that real estate is one of the industries that is a great opportunity for anyone coming out of college to go into the business. And I think it has a lot more pathways that people don’t think about what happens in our industry and somebody’s worried about sustainability and there’s an avenue to go in that path, whether it’s capital markets, whether it’s marketing research, there’s so many avenues that when people look at commercial real estate, so many paths that young professionals could take, and there’s so many different ways to go about it. So we have spent a lot of time on the intern programs, and I think have turned a lot of people’s heads about what opportunities are available. And I think it is an industry that gives you flexibility and offers true professionalism and an opportunity if you wanna give back, but also an industry that you can kind of apply in your every day life. If you wanna be an investor, you understand how goods flow, how offices work, how retail works. It’s really kind of the backbone of a lot of things that we do and not just technology.

52:52 CR: That’s terrific. Well, Darla, that has been a fantastic conversation. I really appreciate you being willing to do it and sharing your thoughts. I think our audience is gonna really benefit from everything we’ve talked about today. So thank you so much.

53:05 DL: Well, great, and thanks for the opportunity, and it was great catching up with you too.

53:09 CR: Thanks, Darla. Well, thank you Darla. That was a terrific conversation. I really appreciate it to our listeners. Please follow us at chrisrising.com and subscribe to the podcast via Apple Podcast or other podcast services. You can find us at The Real Market with Chris Rising and please hip. Subscribe. Thanks so much.

53:30 CR: Thank you, Darla. I really appreciate your honesty. Really appreciate the granularity when into the business, and I really appreciate your time at it and for our audience, Remember, please follow us at chrisrising.com on Twitter @chrisrising, and please subscribe to our Podcast. You can go to Apple iTunes, or you can go to any of the other podcast services and subscribe to The Real Market with Chris Rising.