Welcome to episode 29 of Offshoot. My guest today is Jack Cohen, a Managing Director of ArrowMark Partners, a Denver-based investment platform, and the founder of Dark Knight Ventures, Jack’s business consultancy, or “mentor capitalist” firm focused on helping smart, creative, salespeople be more successful. For Jack, it is a platform to teach and give away the things he’s learned on his journey as an intermediary, producer, principal, investor and consultant.
Jack’s main gig, if you will, was in my line of work. He took a single office mortgage banking business, Cohen Financial, from $200MM of annual loan production to 25 offices with $6B of annual production, and a loan servicing portfolio of over $30MM before a successful exit. Since then, he’s gotten on to a myriad of board and advisory positions while filling executive roles at some top-flight finance shops.
I heard Jack speak about 6 months ago and immediately knew I wanted to get to know him and perhaps get him on the podcast. I started by reading his book, was able to sit with him on a ski trip, and then again when he was in San Diego.
Jack’s the real deal. He’s hungry, he’s curious, he’s smart, he’s hard working, and he’s figured things out the old-fashioned way. He’s done the work and made the mistakes.
This is one of those podcasts that could have been twice as long. However, even in this short hour and a half, Jack drops a ton of knowledge and wisdom which is applicable across a wide swath of the industry.
Listen in as we cover topics that include:
“Stupid human tricks,” which Jack, in his self-deprecating fashion, labels his tools of the trade. They are lessons learned along the journey covering a myriad of scenarios.
The split between Jack and his father in growing the business with his father believing the business was to comprise “deal people and no one else that you need” while Jack operated from a leadership vantage point that meant accomplishing corporate goals through other’s work.
How the real estate business, and in particular the capital advisory business, is a to-do business, not a business to be outsmarted.
How not all strategy talk is in fact strategic rather it is people talking up their own playbook.
That standing for something, a why, is paramount to getting broad engagement from a team and how that provides common ground for people to rally from.
The idea that putting up one more success than failure, and getting up to try one more time, might be one great definition of success.
How you can be efficient with things but you need to be effective with people.
Why risk equals volatility of outcome and how smart investing chases excess return on a risk adjusted basis by identifying, assessing, mitigating, and pricing that risk.
Why many real estate assets have capital stacks with debt they can’t afford and will need to be repriced.
How a prudent operator or investor should seek deals, intermediaries, and collateral that they like before they engage in a transaction. If they don’t have all three, keep looking.
Why 2026 and 2027 might produce some of the best vintage of real estate deals in the last decade or so.
How self-awareness is the first step in the entrepreneurial journey which allows clarity and conviction to know how and why you are managing people and making decisions
Why bad experience comes from bad judgment and how that can lead to good outcomes.
Why fantasy is an important part of building a business.
Jack is a really great guy and he shares a boatload of wisdom in this, much of which can be revisited in his book, The Freedom Frameworks. For those that are curious, it’s a really solid book which I hope you take the time to read. Enjoy the podcast.
Transcript
[00:51] Kevin Choquette: Welcome everyone to episode 29 of Offshoot. My guest today is Jack Cohen,
[00:56] Managing Director of Aramark Partners, a Denver based investment platform and the founder of Dark Knight Ventures,
[01:02] Jack’s business consultancy or mentor capitalist, focused on helping smart, creative real estate people be more successful.
[01:12] For Jack, it’s a platform to teach and give away things he’s learned on his journey as an intermediary, producer, principal investor and consultant.
[01:21] Jack’s main gig, if you will,
[01:23] was in my line of work. He took a single mortgage banking office, Cohen Financial,
[01:28] from $200 million of annual loan production to 25 offices with $6 billion of annual production and created loan servicing portfolio of over $30 billion before a successful exit.
[01:41] Since then he’s gotten onto a myriad of board and advisory positions while filling executive roles at some top five finance shops.
[01:49] I heard Jack speak about six months ago and immediately knew I wanted to get to know him and perhaps get him on the podcast. I started by reading his book, was able to sit with him on a ski trip and then again when he was in San Diego.
[02:00] Jack’s the real deal. He’s hungry, he’s curious, he’s smart, he’s hardworking and he’s figured things out the old fashioned way. He’s done the work and made the mistakes.
[02:10] This is one of those podcasts that could have been twice as long.
[02:13] However, even in this short hour and a half, Jack Jack drops a ton of knowledge and wisdom which is applicable across a wide swath of the industry,
[02:20] listening as we cover topics that include stupid human tricks which Jack in his self deprecating fashion labels his tools of the trade. They’re lessons learned along the journey, covering a myriad of scenarios.
[02:32] The split between Jack and his father in growing the family business, his father believing that the business was to be comprised of deal people and no one else that you need one.
[02:42] While Jack operated from a leadership vantage point that meant accomplishing corporate goals through others work.
[02:48] How the real estate business and in particular the capital advisory business is a to do business, not a business to be outsmarted how not all strategy talk is in fact strategic.
[02:59] Rather it’s people talking up their own playbook. Why standing for something a why is paramount to getting broad engagement from a team and how that provides common ground for people to rally from.
[03:10] The idea that putting up one more success than failure means and getting up one more time to try might be a great definition of success.
[03:19] How you can be efficient with things,
[03:21] but that you need to be effective with people.
[03:24] Why risk equals volatility of outcome and how smart investing chases excess return on a risk adjusted basis by identifying,
[03:34] assessing, mitigating and pricing that risk.
[03:38] Why many real estate assets have capital stacks with debt they can’t afford and will need to be repriced.
[03:43] How prudent operator or investors should seek deals, intermediaries and collateral that they like before engaging in a transaction. If they don’t have all three, keep looking by 2026 and 2027 might produce some of the best vintage of real estate deals in the last decade or so.
[04:00] How Self awareness is the first step in the entrepreneurial journey. It allows clarity and conviction to know how and why you’re managing people and making decisions,
[04:09] why bad experience comes from bad judgment, and how that can lead to good outcomes.
[04:13] And finally, why fantasy is an important part of building a business.
[04:17] Jack’s a really great guy and he shares a boatload of wisdom in this,
[04:21] much of which can be revisited in his book the Freedom Frameworks for those who are Curious. It’s a really solid book which I hope you take the time to read.
[04:29] Enjoy the podcast,
[04:38] Jack welcome to the podcast,
[04:40] Kevin.
[04:41] Jack Cohen: Thanks for having me.
[04:42] Kevin Choquette: Yeah, I appreciate you taking the time. I know you’re a busy man and I also know you’re out on vacation right now, so I know it’s a bit of a sacrifice.
[04:49] Thank you very much.
[04:50] Jack Cohen: No, all good. Happy to chit chat.
[04:54] Kevin Choquette: Look, you’ve got a very interesting and long history in the commercial real estate background,
[05:00] which I know we’ll get into and go through, but your latest venture is Dark Knight Ventures.
[05:07] Maybe you could start with just giving us a little bit of background on Dark Knight, what you’re up to with that platform, and we’ll go from there.
[05:15] Jack Cohen: Well, Kevin, I appreciate you asking.
[05:18] So in my day job is working for Aramark Partners and there we manage a dozen or so separately managed accounts where we’re originating loans for others.
[05:35] As I think you’re aware,
[05:38] the Earamark folks a couple of years ago were very supportive about me taking some time off to write my book and so I spend a Portion of my time at Aramark and the rest of my time with Dark Knight Ventures.
[05:53] Dark Knight Ventures actually started about 10 years ago. It’s just me and a private holding company of investments that I have.
[06:03] But as I decided that kind of my.
[06:08] My purpose was to learn and learn so that I could teach. And my gift was to give those teachings away.
[06:16] I had this idea that maybe I could have a consulting business where I’m committed to the journey of others.
[06:26] And with the things that I’ve learned and the tools that I’ve accumulated,
[06:32] maybe I can help others optimize their journey.
[06:36] And I think, Kevin, you’re aware of my superhero complex.
[06:40] My favorite superhero is Batman.
[06:43] And why is Batman my favorite superhero? Because he doesn’t have any superpowers. Rather, he’s blessed with intellectual and economic resources that he uses to create tools to affix to his utility belt in order to give him human leverage to help others get home safely.
[07:03] And I thought, what a metaphor for a business consulting practice. I thought,
[07:09] could I accumulate tools and frameworks to give me human leverage to help others?
[07:16] And that’s really what Dark Knight is. There’s a collection of businesses that I’ve invested in. I call it kind of a mentor capitalist business, where I invest in certain people’s businesses,
[07:26] not always.
[07:27] And I help them,
[07:29] I hope, build their businesses.
[07:32] And as doing so,
[07:34] I have also,
[07:36] I sit on boards,
[07:38] I have retainer consulting agreements, and I have project consulting agreements,
[07:44] all with an eye towards. There’s something in my past, there’s an experience that I’ve had that merits sharing with an entrepreneur to help them optimize their journey.
[07:56] Does that make sense?
[07:57] Kevin Choquette: That makes perfect sense, actually.
[07:59] So if, you know, if you look out into the world and I know we’ll get into the background and your experiences,
[08:08] I would imagine that things can come to you in many size, shapes and forms.
[08:15] Who or how is it that you’d like to engage with the marketplace? What’s kind of an ideal client profile, if you will?
[08:22] Jack Cohen: I, you know,
[08:25] by salespeople, you know, I’m fascinated by people.
[08:30] I don’t know that.
[08:31] Maybe it’s intellectual arrogance,
[08:34] but,
[08:35] you know, creative people, smart people, people trying to do some good,
[08:41] are the people that I somehow am attracted to as part of the real estate business. We get to. To interact with a lot of interesting characters, and sometimes those characters are interested in my opinion about how I saw something or how I see something today.
[09:00] And it’s,
[09:02] I guess, a little ad hoc.
[09:05] I have,
[09:06] since publishing the book last June,
[09:09] I have Hired a social media firm that is helping me get social media out on LinkedIn in order to,
[09:19] you know, kind of pitch the book, but also pitch me and,
[09:24] and what I’m doing.
[09:25] I also have been on podcasts and been on media tours to promote the book and what I’m seeing going on in, in the business. So there, I confess, I really haven’t gotten any business from somebody who doesn’t already know me or know of me.
[09:44] So what I haven’t really figured out is how to productize myself.
[09:49] You know, every entrepreneur kind of has to figure out what their product and service is.
[09:53] Right now it’s just me. I got 43 plus years of varied,
[09:59] broad and deep experience.
[10:02] And to the extent that it overlaps with a perspective somebody’s looking for,
[10:07] I’m hopeful that we can intersect and see if there’s an opportunity to do something together.
[10:15] Kevin Choquette: It sounds like you’ll know it when you see it kind of a thing. As far as the opportunity.
[10:18] Jack Cohen: Yeah, very much so.
[10:20] Very much so.
[10:22] I try and be opportunistic. It’s interesting,
[10:26] you know, you and I talked about this.
[10:28] Since publishing the book, I have thrown myself into almost anything to see what comes of it. And I really think all entrepreneurs,
[10:38] but myself included, have to develop a no filter. No, I’m not going to do it for these reasons.
[10:44] And I haven’t really gotten there yet. And so it’s really being out there and in the game.
[10:52] And if somebody intersects with me in the game, then they say, hey, want to play? And that’s really how it works.
[11:01] Kevin Choquette: You know, there’s a lot of ways we could take this path. But since you just mentioned the 43 years,
[11:08] I have a reasonably good sense of your background, mostly just based on some of the filling in of the gaps I did from a research perspective before hopping on with you.
[11:18] But maybe you can just start with like,
[11:20] how did you get into this industry and into this position? I know it goes way back and you’ve had some long tenure at certain spots and shorter tenure in things subsequent to that, but maybe give a bit of background on how you get here.
[11:37] Jack Cohen: Well, I joke. I’ve made three great mistakes in my life and the first one was going to work for my dad.
[11:44] So what’s the old saying?
[11:47] A member of the lucky sperm club or the sob son of boss?
[11:53] Kevin Choquette: I thought it was boss’s son.
[11:55] Jack Cohen: Yes, yes.
[11:58] I just.
[12:00] I went to work for my dad. My dad had a local mortgage banking business.
[12:04] My dad loved the mortgage banking business. He was a pure deal junkie.
[12:10] The older sports fans will remember Mike Ditka and Bobby Knight. I used to joke that my dad grew up in the Mike Ditka, Bobby Knight School Management.
[12:20] When I want your opinion, I’ll beat it out of you.
[12:23] And so I went to work for my dad and I really,
[12:29] in those days,
[12:31] it was just like you got walked to the end of the pier and you were, you know, pushed in the water.
[12:36] And that’s how we learned the business.
[12:39] Obviously I was my dad’s business, which was Cohen Financial.
[12:44] And I was there for more than 35 years. And over time, right, you go from working on selling one product,
[12:55] right?
[12:56] I want to do loans for Equitable of Iowa.
[13:00] I want to do industrial buildings for Equitable of Iowa. And over time you start to do multiple products,
[13:07] you start doing them for multiple capital sources. And before long, what you really have is the capacity to see a blank piece of paper and structure what is necessary between borrower and lender to make a deal.
[13:22] And I had aspirations of global domination and so wanted to grow the business. So we started opening offices. Our first one was in Madison, Wisconsin at a high water mark.
[13:35] We had 25 offices that really didn’t last.
[13:40] As part of the great financial crisis, we had to kind of shrink ourselves down.
[13:45] But I think our business is very much a to do business and it’s an at bat business.
[13:51] Again, back to my father. My father’s thesis is there’s two types of people,
[13:56] deal people and no one else you need.
[13:59] He also believed that you’ll never make a name for yourself as a manager.
[14:04] And I just really ignored it, right. Firstborn.
[14:09] I have two brothers and a sister, so I’m the oldest of four. And I was always the rebellious child.
[14:15] And from my standpoint I always,
[14:18] you know, if my dad said black, I said white and,
[14:22] and I just thought he was wrong. I saw a business that was dependent on him and I brought in two of my colleagues to join the business.
[14:32] It was a wonderful little business and Joel Simmons and Steve Roth and my dad and I were kind of the producers. But I watched us go from dependence on my dad to dependence on Joel and Steve.
[14:45] And what I concluded was leadership for me meant accomplishing corporate goals through others.
[14:53] And I became a leader and a manager and an administrator on top of being a producer and wanted to grow the business.
[15:02] There’s really only two ways to grow a business.
[15:05] You either add geographies or add products. And so we did both.
[15:10] And in the early 90s, with my brother Bruce and I involved,
[15:17] we built a principal side of the business.
[15:19] We had an agency side of the business and we had kind of a services or advisory side of the business that left us,
[15:28] you know, that included servicing.
[15:30] And so from my standpoint, it’s just really being in the batter’s box, you know, trying to get hit by pitches. And that’s really how I grew in the business.
[15:42] The other thing that I did, which again was antithetical to my dad’s beliefs, is I got involved in industry associations.
[15:51] When people ask me if there’s one key to success in this industry, I think it is participating in regional, local or national organizations. And it could be a charity,
[16:05] it could be a school,
[16:08] it could be an industry association.
[16:10] And it was really through getting involved in associations locally, regionally and nationally that I found myself meeting other people in the business and I got to see how they did things and capital providers and other mortgage bankers and other parts of the country.
[16:28] And so as we started growing our business to roll up smaller independent firms or to hire more people and open new offices, it was really a byproduct of enhancing exposure over time.
[16:44] I’d say between 1998 and 2013, that was 15 years.
[16:50] I participated with others in recapitalizing our business six times.
[16:56] And I kept control of the business until the very last time,
[17:02] at which time it was a transaction that was done with Guggenheim Partners.
[17:05] And I stayed a couple years after that and eventually my wife and I joke, we did our junior year abroad.
[17:14] My generation didn’t really do the study abroad,
[17:17] but our four children did. And so in 2015, my wife and I moved to London and I did some small business enterprise consulting for global consulting firm that was started in Australia and eventually moved headquarters to London.
[17:33] So we lived in London for about 15 months and I traveled and did consulting and it was really a lot of fun. When I came back in the to the States at the end of 2016,
[17:46] a guy in the industry gave me a piece of advice. He said, don’t worry about what you’re going to do,
[17:51] worry about who you want to talk to.
[17:54] So I made a list of a hundred people that I wanted to chit chat with. Some I knew and some I didn’t know.
[18:01] And my idea was I wasn’t going to take a job or a deal or a business until making it through my list.
[18:09] And it was great advice. I learned a lot, I got a lot of insight. But what ended up where people asked me to kind of help them solve a problem or, or do a strategy or in the case of 3650 REIT.
[18:24] I was asked to join them and help them stand that mortgage REIT up. And I did. And I stayed for a period of time,
[18:31] created the servicing platform, helped create the servicing platform and a Chicago office.
[18:38] And eventually I left that and ended up reconnecting with a guy named Rob Brown, who is my boss at aromark today. But when he left JCR Capital to move on to Euromark to build a new debt platform, he asked for some help giving him feedback on his strategy.
[19:00] And out of that, another gentleman on the platform, a guy named John Eisinger, had a small balance commercial lender down in Austin, Texas and wanted to know some help with the strategy.
[19:13] And I, I went in, I did some research, I wrote their capital market strategy for them.
[19:18] And then he asked would I take on the challenge of running the business. And so I stepped in,
[19:26] we grew the business, I found my replacement,
[19:30] I hung around the hoop to help everyone. And then I moved back to Aramark to focus on the, the parent company’s real estate business.
[19:39] So it’s, you know, I’ve been an intermediary, I’ve been a producer, I’ve been an owner, operator, I’ve been a hired gun, I’ve been a consultant,
[19:48] I’ve been an investor.
[19:50] But more than anything else, I’m just curious and I love the business and the people that are in the business and it’s been very good to me.
[20:00] Kevin Choquette: That’s awesome.
[20:01] You put like 15 things we can go back to, so let’s do it on Cohen, you said it’s a to do and an at bat business. What do you mean by that?
[20:11] Or what did your dad mean by that? If it was his term.
[20:17] Jack Cohen: What was? Give me the question again.
[20:19] Kevin Choquette: You said it’s a to do and an at bat business, which I think was.
[20:23] Jack Cohen: Oh, okay, yeah.
[20:24] Well,
[20:25] you know, it’s funny, I do a lot of work with young professionals today and I think the generation coming out of school and in their 20s is far more aware than my generation was.
[20:37] Far better educated.
[20:39] And in the end these people I think are trying to outthink the business.
[20:45] And I actually think the business is a not a to think but a to do activity. I think you just gotta get in and this is a business. Sure. It’s important to know certain things.
[20:58] Can you write well, can you count,
[21:00] can you analyze, can you communicate? Do you know anything about real estate? You know, these, they’re skills that you want to bring to the table and you want to be intellectually capable to handle it.
[21:13] But ours Is a business that’s based on experience.
[21:18] You know, how many deals have you done of a certain type with a certain type of lender or borrower?
[21:26] And it’s kind of like never enough. You know,
[21:30] like I started with the product I liked the most was industrial and would do a lot of industrial business.
[21:37] But you know, eventually it’s not that you get bored, but you’re curious about an office building or a hotel or a land deal or a shopping center or a mall or a resort.
[21:48] And they all have their own little nuance and you just have to do it in order to learn it.
[21:56] And my dad’s term,
[21:58] and you’ll like this metaphor,
[22:01] I joke. A lot of times deal shops look like NBA shoot arounds, you know, where you see all the all stars,
[22:11] you know, before the game, wearing their track suits, if you will. They’ve got their long pants over their uniform, they got their sweater over their uniform, they got their beads headset on and they’re just shooting, of course, scoring and they’re listening to their own headset and somebody else is rebounding.
[22:31] And you got five guys or 10 guys doing that kind of not paying attention to one another.
[22:36] My dad’s concept was he liked deals because it was like playing ball in the schoolyard when he was a little kid. You just showed up to the,
[22:46] the playground and, and, and people took sides. You decided based on the, you know, the season you were in, what sport you were going to play, and you just played.
[22:58] And it was about, you know, camaraderie and it was about competing and it was about,
[23:03] you know, getting better at what you do, enhancing your skills. But more importantly, it was about winning.
[23:10] And I think our business is a to do business and, and it attracts different deal junkies who just kind of want to play ball in a schoolyard. And there’s nothing wrong with it, as a matter of fact, it’s, it’s one of the fun characteristics of the business.
[23:25] Kevin Choquette: Yeah, but at the same time, you are clearly divergent. Right. You had made this comment that there he.
[23:32] I think you said, your father had said there’s deal people and no one else you need. And I think you then go into,
[23:38] you know, hey, I took a leadership role where that meant getting the corporate goals achieved through other people. Like there seems to be a split in the road there.
[23:48] Jack Cohen: Well, yeah, I ignored my dad.
[23:51] There’s a, there’s a lot. It’s funny about this business. You know, remember when I said this was a life lesson that hit me late or in my career,
[24:02] You Know, when I said, I came back in 2017 and I was talking to people, some really smart people who I thought were strategic,
[24:12] what I found out after talking to them is many of them were not.
[24:17] They were very good at justifying their existence and why they do what they do.
[24:26] They talk their own book.
[24:28] And so what I learned late in life is that my dad loved what he did,
[24:35] and he saw the world through his eyes.
[24:38] If it was good for him, you should do exactly what he does.
[24:42] It never occurred to him that somebody else would like chocolate ice cream if he liked vanilla ice cream.
[24:49] He just figured that you should do exactly what he did because he had so much fun doing what he did. And I just thought that was wrong.
[24:56] I also thought it was not scalable.
[24:59] It was a family business. My dad did well. He also believed in retained earnings.
[25:06] And I, as, as I said earlier,
[25:09] have three siblings. And I just knew that if my dad was going to grow retained earnings and then pass away and we sold that business,
[25:21] the company had to grow four times as much in order for my siblings to have the same lifestyle that my dad did.
[25:34] And when I thought about it of my own two birth children,
[25:38] I figured I had to grow the business eight times.
[25:40] Well, you cannot grow a business eight times. And in fact, we went from 200 million of origination and 200 million of servicing over 35 years to 35 billion of servicing and 6 billion of origination.
[25:55] You can’t do that as one person.
[25:58] And so you had to learn a new game plan. You started to have to strategize. You had to begin with the end in mind. You had to have an end game.
[26:09] You had to have a path you were committed to. You needed to hire people and organize people. And if everyone came to work assuming that everyone was alike, they were naive.
[26:20] Everyone was a byproduct of their own individual experiences and their own sets of values and thoughts and beliefs. And unless I found common ground for everyone to rally around,
[26:33] we would have torn the business apart.
[26:36] And that was why I went into leadership and management and administration and, you know, it served me well. And I tell this story not just to you, but to others.
[26:48] I encourage people to find their own path and their own justification, not somebody else’s.
[26:54] It’s like you going into my master bedroom closet because you like my clothes. And you starting to wear my clothes. They’re not going to fit.
[27:06] You have your own style. You have to have your own way of doing things. And if you don’t stand for something, you’re going to Fall for anything.
[27:15] And that is really an evolution that people who go from working for somebody to being the person others work for has to evolve through.
[27:29] Kevin Choquette: So go back to the deal shop that is the NBA shoot around,
[27:34] and it sounds like maybe you had three or four shooters,
[27:39] real producers, real deal guys.
[27:42] And then you start looking for common ground.
[27:45] And I have to imagine you’re building systems and team and headcount for the things that happen after a term sheet is executed and you’re trying to move from, okay, we’ve got the deal put together with, you know, I think you said Ohio national as a potential lender who.
[28:02] Doesn’t matter.
[28:04] Borrower and lender have agreed to terms. Now we’ve got to get through the diligence process and close this. And I suspect there has to be some support staff. So you start beating a different drum and trying to find that common ground to unify a team around a shared vision.
[28:19] And then you’ve got deal guys, the shooters. Like, is there any tension between them and their addiction and also excellence to just knocking down deals? And then like this broader narrative and the friction and administration of growing the platform.
[28:36] And if so, how did that play out?
[28:39] Jack Cohen: It’s a great question.
[28:41] Bidirectional respect.
[28:43] Early on,
[28:45] I had to convince the deal people that they couldn’t do what they wanted to do without respecting and supporting the support people,
[28:58] and vice versa.
[29:00] The support people couldn’t afford to work on the platform without the deal people.
[29:08] And if you really think about teams and team dynamics,
[29:13] good teams have all sorts of different types of personality.
[29:18] You know,
[29:19] I’m a National Football League fan, and it’s always fascinating to me how you even offensive linemen tend to have different personalities than defensive linemen, yet they’re both linemen.
[29:33] And I think if you are conscious of the different types of people you need in an organization,
[29:42] and you can create an organization where people believe in the team and where the team is going and support one another on the team,
[29:51] then you have a formula for scaling.
[29:55] And early on, you know, my dad’s generation,
[29:59] you know, the originators did everything. They originated, they processed, they closed.
[30:04] In my dad’s generation, they had secretaries that, you know, they dictated their offering memorandums to.
[30:12] We laugh at that today.
[30:15] But if you think about the process of dealing with ideal business,
[30:19] you kind of have originators,
[30:22] you have underwriters, you have processors.
[30:26] If you’re a principal organization, you have an investment committee that, you know, issues a term sheet or approves a loan,
[30:36] and then you have a closing department,
[30:38] and then you have a servicing business or a surveillance and asset management business. And what makes an asset manager really, really good is not the same thing that makes a deal originator really, really good.
[30:56] And everyone has to kind of find that common ground in order for the ball.
[31:02] We’re back to the sports analogy to move from I see an opportunity for a deal to it’s closed, and we’re managing this investment for profit.
[31:14] Kevin Choquette: Yeah. Okay, so we go from 200 million to 6 billion with Cohen, which is gigantic growth.
[31:20] Stick with NFL analogies.
[31:23] I don’t really love the Chiefs because I’m a Broncos fan and they keep whipping our butt, but there’s something on that team where you see a lot of individual players play with heart and conviction that lets you see that entire team has invested in whatever they’re up to.
[31:39] That the gospel according to Andy Reid. You see the same plays and same team configurations in other teams where there’s not that buy in, where there’s not that demonstration of like, hey, I’m in this team.
[31:55] I belong.
[31:56] This phrase is like, believe, belong and benefit. Right. People are fully enrolled in what the team is up to. How did you approach that part? Like, I get the bilateral or bidirectional support.
[32:08] Right. You guys support the deal team, deal team supports you. It’s a symbiotic relationship.
[32:13] But I still think there’s a difference between the administration of that and, like, the company sound bit. And then like the lived or felt experience.
[32:23] When you know you have a winning team, when you. When everybody on the team knows they have it. It’s like when you go to a rock concert and the place just goes off and everybody in the room is like, okay, we in the room.
[32:33] Like, this is the place to be.
[32:35] How did you.
[32:37] I imagine with that kind of growth, you probably had that spark. I don’t know. I wasn’t part of Comb Financial, obviously. But how do you think about that spark? Right.
[32:46] That thing that changes it from concept to something that’s really embodied by the humans that are actually doing the work.
[32:54] Jack Cohen: You know,
[32:55] I don’t think it’s any one thing.
[32:57] There’s an old story about The San Francisco 49ers in the bill Walsh era,
[33:05] where they’re at one of the Super Bowls and one of the media personalities sticks a microphone in front of Joe Montana’s face and says,
[33:15] what’s it like to playing for the genius?
[33:20] And Joe Montana looks at him and says, what?
[33:23] And they said, well,
[33:26] aren’t you playing for the genius?
[33:30] He says, what are you talking about?
[33:33] Isn’t Bill Walsh a genius? Oh, yeah, yeah. Bill Walsh is a genius. Yeah, great coach.
[33:39] But I don’t play for him.
[33:41] What do you mean?
[33:43] I play for Roger Craig,
[33:46] I play for Jerry Rice,
[33:48] I play for Guy McIntyre.
[33:51] And he kind of went through names on the team somewhere along the line. You have to kind of organize a business around a strategy,
[34:05] a purpose,
[34:07] a why.
[34:08] And if you can organize the business around the why,
[34:14] then you have to have a playbook that this is the way we do business and some companies are better than others.
[34:24] We had successes and failures by opening offices in different marketplaces,
[34:29] things I didn’t understand until afterwards.
[34:32] But the reality was you kind of had to have competitive people who believed in the purpose of the platform way beyond money.
[34:44] And then you really had to have them committed to one another.
[34:50] And, you know, it was funny. Our two biggest offices were in San Francisco. The first business I bought was from Paul Frater and Ken Fox.
[35:00] They had a company called ES Merriman in San Francisco.
[35:04] And when we bought them, they had Michael Joseph and Jonathan Soffer and. And so you had some big personalities in San Francisco, you had big personalities in Chicago,
[35:18] and you had a lot of competition between those two platforms,
[35:23] and you had competition inside those two offices that guys wanted to good naturedly beat one another.
[35:33] And I think part of it is instilling kind of a competitiveness,
[35:38] but a family spirit. I mean, you know, I grew up in a family of three boys and a girl, and we were all very competitive, but we were also family members.
[35:49] So there was a honor among thieves, if you will, and rules of engagement. And there was competition and conflict inside,
[36:00] but not outside the family. And I think businesses are very much the same.
[36:05] Those that really succeed get a repeatable act correctly.
[36:11] They create a predictable process that constituents can rely on for certain results.
[36:19] And it’s elements of these things,
[36:22] as well as the customer experience that you offer,
[36:28] that you hope transcends the individual personalities.
[36:36] Kevin Choquette: That’s very cool.
[36:41] So look, this is sort of.
[36:43] I’ve read the book. You and I have discussed the book.
[36:47] We’re getting into some of it here. There’s a lot in the book I don’t want you to try to. You know, that would be a fool’s errand to try to be like, yeah, well, the book has A, B, C all the way through to Z.
[36:59] How did the book sort of be become a natural extension of like this? What we’re talking about right here to me is the heart of the book. And what I loved about it is that it’s Very clearly written from somebody who’s done the work, who’s been in the trenches,
[37:15] who’s discovered truth by trial and error and has taken the time to codify.
[37:20] Like, these are my experiences and these are the things that worked for me.
[37:24] How did you get from,
[37:26] you know, hey, like, took my sabbatical, went to 363650 REIT,
[37:31] I think it was CMBS shop. And then somewhere recently,
[37:34] I don’t know the exact year that you published this, but put it out, like, what? How does that book become a natural extension of everything you’re talking about right now?
[37:45] Jack Cohen: Well, there’s a lot in the question and.
[37:48] Kevin Choquette: Yeah, sorry, that’s not a clean question.
[37:51] Jack Cohen: All good.
[37:53] You know,
[37:57] I think that the idea is to have at least one more success than you do failure and always get up to try one more time.
[38:08] And the book is a collection of frameworks of lessons I learned and tools that I either stole from somebody else, was taught by somebody else, or I frankly made up and and curated.
[38:24] These are all tools and frameworks that I use to give myself human leverage. I never was blessed as a, you know, five tool athlete. I was a grinder. I was a good B quality ball player.
[38:38] And I just was willing to outwork the next guy.
[38:42] And. And the generation I went to work for were horseshit managers.
[38:48] And they didn’t teach us ****.
[38:51] They basically abused the **** out of us. And we kind of figured it out on our own.
[38:58] And it’s kind of funny, I’ll go back to Joel Simmons.
[39:02] One time when we were in leadership together, I turned to Joel, I said, why are you such an *** to these people?
[39:11] And he says, chad,
[39:13] our generation got **** on. Look how well we turned out.
[39:18] I’m doing them a favor by ******** on them.
[39:21] And I thought, joel, this is the dumbest thing I ever heard in my life.
[39:26] I just was saying this was an abuse. I remember Brendan Donovan sending me out on a property inspection to a building that didn’t exist.
[39:38] I mean,
[39:39] I used to think of these things. And so I never wanted that to be for somebody else. So fast forward,
[39:46] you know, for maybe 40 years, I’ve been doing these,
[39:49] you know, open and closed, public and private roundtables.
[39:54] I’ve gotten up to 40 participants, and for two hours, I facilitate a discussion. And a number of years ago, I had this idea, how fun would it be to do this with young professionals.
[40:06] But because they were young professionals, I had to do it kind of off Broadway, right? It was in a closed ballroom for young professionals.
[40:13] And in doing These roundtables,
[40:16] I figured out that a third of the questions that these smart people had was about their careers.
[40:22] And I’m thinking to myself, oh, my God, these guys aren’t getting really good career advice.
[40:29] Could I inventory all my little stupid human tricks and try and organize it in a book that becomes a career self management toolbox?
[40:41] Now, the fact of the matter is it could also be how to run a business toolbox,
[40:46] because these are things that I used that I worked through and got right to give me human leverage. And unlike my dad saying, look at me, this is the way to do it,
[41:01] what I’ve said is that here’s a bunch of tools, here’s a bunch of things for you to think about.
[41:07] These are things I learned through trial and error and making mistakes. And if my mistakes can help you avoid some mistakes so that you can start making your own mistakes,
[41:21] I think that, you know, what a gift to everyone.
[41:25] And so my objective was to really distribute the book as a, you know, kind of a coaching, mentoring,
[41:33] virtual distribution to whoever receives the book. If they could just get one thing out of it,
[41:41] if they could get one thing that gives them human leverage, then I kind of did my job. And I’ll be really proud that I created that piece of literature.
[41:52] Kevin Choquette: Yeah, I think you will be successful in that. I think it’s.
[41:56] It’s a really nice.
[41:58] It’s a nice piece of work and I enjoyed it a lot.
[42:01] Let’s shift a little bit. So we are March,
[42:05] I think fourth, early March 2025.
[42:10] Trump’s in office. We’re not going down the political path, but just in the marketplace in general. And I’d heard you speak about six months ago.
[42:17] Um, what are you seeing in terms of trends, opportunities,
[42:21] challenges? Where do you think commercial real estate’s headed? Like, surprisingly,
[42:26] the 10 years down to like 4.18. It was what, six, six weeks ago? Somewhere around 4.8.
[42:33] There’s a lot of debt that’s maturing. There’s a lot of people who are on variable rate loans that are now really expensive and refinances are looking difficult. There’s a lot of things going on.
[42:44] What’s your crystal ball? What are you seeing in the marketplace? Where do you think there’s opportunity, challenge, et cetera.
[42:52] Jack Cohen: So I’m excited where the business is right now.
[42:58] When I go back,
[42:59] it’ll be 44 years in June.
[43:02] And when I think of the crisis that we as an industry have worked our way through,
[43:10] this one is like a non factor,
[43:13] if you think about it. The Economy is solid.
[43:16] The property markets,
[43:18] with the exception of office,
[43:20] are largely healthy.
[43:23] Product supply and demand is largely in balance. And where it’s not like housing,
[43:29] there’s a shortfall, there’s more demand than there is supply.
[43:34] You don’t have weak tenants, you don’t have weak institutions.
[43:39] Here you have a marketplace where two things have happened.
[43:44] One is interest rates spiked. Oh my.
[43:48] And people can’t afford the level of debt that’s on their property. So they have a basis issue in terms of what they own the property for. And they have a capital stack that is largely upside down.
[44:08] I’ve always said in this business you can’t legislate against greed or stupidity.
[44:14] And if there was a lesson to be learned, it was learned by the saves and loan industry in the early 90s or when long Term Capital Management failed in the late 90s.
[44:28] There’s a great book called When Genius Failed where they were talking really about the first hedge fund that went down.
[44:36] And the punchline was you need to have a duration match between your assets and your liability.
[44:46] When I got into the real estate business,
[44:50] there were wealthy families in every city that owned real estate.
[44:57] Generationally,
[44:59] they would put a mortgage on it, they would have amortization,
[45:03] the NOI would go up,
[45:05] the principal balance would go down,
[45:09] they’d refinance it two or three times over a couple of decades. They’d take capital out tax free and go do it again.
[45:19] But fast forward the invention of private equity and, and hedge funds,
[45:25] everyone started forgetting two things.
[45:30] One,
[45:31] duration.
[45:32] This is a long term asset class and everyone wanted to finance it short term.
[45:39] And the second thing everyone forgot is that value does not equal price.
[45:48] If I have a pen, a writing instrument to sell and I hold it up and hold an auction as a seller, whatever somebody will pay for it is value.
[46:03] But you as a buyer have to have a belief that there is an intrinsic value to the asset at the price you’re paying.
[46:15] You have to have a view about what you’re going to do with that asset to grow its noi, to enhance its asset value and take money off the table.
[46:26] But you can’t do it in 12 or 24 months. The idea that people were borrowing two year money with one or two one year extensions. Oh, and by the way,
[46:38] floating rate,
[46:40] it was great when rates were coming down,
[46:42] it was great when cap rates were coming down. But I think I was in the business 15 years before rates went below 10%.
[46:52] When I came in the business,
[46:54] long term rates for a 10 year mortgage were 17%.
[46:58] Prime short term rates was 21%.
[47:02] And I was stuck converting an apartment building to condos in Rockford, Illinois where unemployment was 22%.
[47:10] All deals make money.
[47:12] The only question is who owns it at the time.
[47:17] And so 15 years for rates to get below 10%. But now there’s almost two decades of real estate professionals who have only been in a marketplace where interest rates went down and cap rates went down.
[47:31] Kevin Choquette: That’s right.
[47:32] Jack Cohen: What do they know about creating value?
[47:35] Kevin Choquette: That’s right. All you have to do is get in the game and then wait 24 months and you made money.
[47:39] Jack Cohen: Right.
[47:42] I had a professor in college, one of the few real estate classes I actually got to take,
[47:47] who said, look, in good times real estate floats to weak hands.
[47:53] In bad times it finds its way back to strong hands.
[47:58] Variable rate finance is a fool’s game.
[48:05] Only we cans will hang on to that.
[48:09] And the fact of the matter is, is that the business got crazily good.
[48:14] We have a lot of people that came into the business that maybe should not have,
[48:21] and everyone got fed off this acquisition train. But in the world I grew up in,
[48:29] we had refinances and we had acquisitions.
[48:33] We kind of, it was a mosaic.
[48:35] And then eventually acquisitions became more dominant. Well, okay, acquisitions have gone by the wayside. They’re coming back.
[48:45] And so the brokers don’t have enough business. So there, there isn’t enough refinance business. But there should be because everyone put floating rates, short term floating rate loans on their books.
[48:59] They’re coming due.
[49:00] Except they put too much leverage on it by paying for properties based on what they could afford instead of what the value was.
[49:12] They built price up.
[49:15] So what’s happened over the last three years?
[49:18] There’s been this slow leak in, in value as basis across the country, across property types are starting to come down and level off.
[49:30] And So I think 25 will probably be a better year for debt than it will be for equity. I think in 26, equity will catch up. And I think 25, 26, 27 will be vintages of investments that will be the best of the next generation’s career.
[49:48] And in point of fact,
[49:50] I think the people coming out of school and getting into the business now are lucky that they didn’t get out of school and get into the business in 21, 22,
[50:01] even 23.
[50:05] Kevin Choquette: That’s a very interesting thought.
[50:07] I want to go back to the value versus pricing and just to make sure I’m understanding it. It’s sort of like value is in the buyer’s Eye and price is what’s reflected in the marketplace.
[50:20] And that buyer needs to have a distinction between market pricing and their idea of value.
[50:27] Jack Cohen: Yeah, largely. So I think the biggest difference is the guy with the cheapest capital wins when everything in the industry has cheap capital.
[50:38] Because treasuries went to zero and 10 year mortgages went to the twos.
[50:44] And everyone with capital trying to get into the game started chasing deals. You know, it’s funny,
[50:52] I’m old enough to have gotten in the business pre computers and when cap rates were in the, you know, before 1981 there were 10, 10% cap rates. You know why?
[51:09] All my dad’s generation had to do was move the decimal point that’s right place if you like the deal better then you paid less than a 10 cap and if you liked the deal worse, you paid more than a 10 cap.
[51:25] But at that time, developers were doing,
[51:28] you know, yield on cost.
[51:30] In the teens they were developing properties with a 13% yield on cost, not trended.
[51:37] So when I look at some knucklehead who’s doing a multifamily deal in a town I’d never heard of in Florida at a 5% yield on cost, I’m thinking to myself, I think I can put my money in a savings bank and get four and a half percent on my cash.
[51:54] Why on earth would I take the risk to develop a property at that level?
[52:00] And so what happened is people overpaid for the asset because they could afford to. It’s a little bit like my wife going shopping for a purse and coming back with two because one was on sale.
[52:17] Yeah, that’s what’s happened to the real estate business and people. It’s funny,
[52:23] what everyone’s upset about with no trades going on is not just I don’t have any business to finance,
[52:32] but no one knows what the value of the properties should be.
[52:37] Kevin Choquette: That’s right.
[52:37] Jack Cohen: How can that possibly be the case?
[52:40] In the 50s and the 60s and the 70s and in the 80s and in the 90s and the aughts,
[52:46] people had views about what the asset was worth.
[52:50] But for some reason the masters of the universe that populate our industry today can’t figure out what a property is worth.
[53:00] Well, because they’re afraid of somebody else saying, oh, you overpaid for the property.
[53:06] So I really think we’ve lost the muscle of how to identify, assess, mitigate and price risk.
[53:16] And that has to come back. That skill set has to come back.
[53:23] Kevin Choquette: Hang on, I’m taking notes here. We got a lot that you just put on the table. So what about real estate becoming an asset class? Right. We had stocks and bonds and then we sort of said, hey, and also real estate is a core part of the allocation and then the flow of funds to the sector as a whole.
[53:41] And I don’t know, what was that the last 12, 15 years?
[53:45] That seemed like it plays into this, right? Because price,
[53:48] when you take institutional flows and take even just a small piece of the trillions of dollars that have to be allocated and say, okay, let’s go to real estate and those, those you know, are continuing to increase the real estate allocations, isn’t that part of what’s playing into this distortion of price?
[54:06] Jack Cohen: Yes,
[54:08] yes. There’s no, there’s no, there’s no question about it.
[54:11] But, you know,
[54:12] that doesn’t make it right.
[54:14] But you’re right, there’s a **** ton of dry powder trying to get in to the industry yet again.
[54:22] And there has been for a long time now.
[54:26] And so we as intermediaries are doing our damnedest to help that capital get into the business.
[54:34] Kevin Choquette: That’s right.
[54:35] Jack Cohen: But like anything else, you kind of sort of have to have honor among thieves or discipline or rules of engagements or opinions about what is apropos or not.
[54:49] You know,
[54:50] what’s really fun about our industry is getting smart real estate people around a table and listening to them to debate what they like and don’t like.
[55:02] You know, not to get overly esoteric, but we could argue that there isn’t that much of a difference between a mezzanine or loan and preferred equity yet. I have seen people go to the mats,
[55:17] why they would prefer a mezz position or somebody else would go to the mats,
[55:23] why they preferred a preferred equity position.
[55:26] And they’re both right.
[55:28] Neither is wrong.
[55:30] They have a view of their risk tolerance.
[55:35] What is risk?
[55:36] Risk is volatility of outcome.
[55:40] How much volatility can you take in your portfolio?
[55:45] How good is the stomach lining in your stomach?
[55:50] And when you’re looking at an investment,
[55:54] whether it’s bitcoin,
[55:57] crypto,
[55:58] commodities,
[56:00] stocks, bonds, real estate, and then break it down by different property types,
[56:06] I like industrial.
[56:08] Other guys don’t like big box industrial because they’ll talk about binary risk.
[56:13] Okay, I agree with them. There is binary risk.
[56:16] So I just think we’d all be better off if we had our own opinions, if we would stop selling our own book and yet and instead act on our own convictions.
[56:32] Kevin Choquette: Yeah, it’s funny that the conversation around, you know, getting real estate people together, we every year kind of do A very boutique ski trip. And it was last year, I believe I was talking to a developer and I said, you know, I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that for the better part of the last 20 years,
[56:51] and I think with the exception of a few years right after the Great Recession, I have by in March felt like commercial real estate is overpriced.
[57:00] And he just laughed and he’s like, yeah, of course it’s always that way. And he had no reservations about the fact that like the market would always push him a little bit farther than where he might want to be,
[57:12] but yet he’s the one doing the trading and I’m the one sitting in the middle as an intermediary. So it was very interesting to see the difference. Right. Like he laughed at it and he’d clearly gotten peace with the idea that things maybe are a little overpriced.
[57:29] Where I’ve just always looked at it and go, God, it seems like a lot my sense of value has,
[57:33] has held me back from a lot of trades and there’s plenty of participants, as we know.
[57:38] Jack Cohen: Yeah, and you gotta give this guy though credit, right? As a developer, he was creating product.
[57:45] Kevin Choquette: Yeah.
[57:46] Jack Cohen: You know, so he was creating value if it’s overpriced. But somebody has a carry forward plan to enhance and create value and then a capital structure that supports it.
[58:03] There’s no problem with overpaying.
[58:06] You know, it’s like, think about it for a second. Like, you know, you mentioned I’m on vacation, I’m out of Four Seasons.
[58:12] You know, when I travel for business, I try and keep my,
[58:16] my budget in, in in hand. But when I’m traveling personally and with my family, I’m a hotel snob.
[58:24] Right. That doesn’t make me right. But I’m willing to overpay for what I get. And of course I can afford it.
[58:32] And if I wasn’t willing to overpay, we know some very wealthy people who we would think have deep pockets but in fact have short arms and they don’t spend their money.
[58:45] That doesn’t make me right and them wrong.
[58:48] But I love it when somebody has an opinion. You know, I joke, I’m often wrong but never in doubt.
[58:55] And it’s part of me being me is throwing myself out there. I’m wrong all the time,
[59:02] but I’m learning from it. I’m course correcting,
[59:06] I’m trying to move forward with what I’m learning. What I hate is when somebody makes the same mistake more than once.
[59:18] Kevin Choquette: So I think you had just said identify Assess, mitigate and price risk.
[59:23] Jack Cohen: Yeah.
[59:24] Kevin Choquette: Tell me about what you think it’s required.
[59:30] Jack Cohen: I don’t think smart investors chase yield.
[59:33] I think they chase excess return on a risk adjusted basis.
[59:40] Well, what does that really mean?
[59:42] What that means is that they have a view about risk.
[59:50] Can they identify it,
[59:53] can they assess it,
[59:55] can they mitigate it with structure?
[59:58] And can they price it?
[01:00:01] That is investing money with value,
[01:00:07] not price in mind,
[01:00:10] based on risk.
[01:00:11] Well, how do you do that?
[01:00:13] Well, if I’m representing you in a financing,
[01:00:19] I’m trying to inventory the collateral strengths and capitalize them and inventory the capital,
[01:00:31] I’m sorry, the collateral weaknesses and inventory them to mitigate them.
[01:00:39] That’s what we do for a living as financiers.
[01:00:43] But I think people have forgotten that they’re product salesmen. They go to work for somebody who has cheap money. They get paid on volume. They don’t get paid on whether or not the investment performs.
[01:00:57] And you know, that used to be the benefit of promotes in a transaction, but now it’s like promotes are like deferred comp for people.
[01:01:08] The industry itself should be a performance industry.
[01:01:14] Kevin Choquette: Yeah.
[01:01:15] Jack Cohen: That means there are winners and losers based on who performed and who didn’t.
[01:01:22] Yet there’s so much in our industry,
[01:01:24] our economy and our country that promotes mediocrity,
[01:01:29] that creates safety nets for people.
[01:01:33] What happened to capitalism?
[01:01:38] Kevin Choquette: Yeah.
[01:01:41] The intermediary’s job, I just want to make sure I’ve got this, is to assess the capital and the collateral and, and the weaknesses that are within each and just make sure that you’re doing what you can to mitigate them.
[01:01:54] Jack Cohen: And really the focus, I think, begins, yes, you’re right about collateral and capital,
[01:01:59] but I got sloppy in my articulation.
[01:02:02] I think where you start is the collateral, the brick and mortar,
[01:02:06] because that’s what secures our investment, whether it’s debt or equity.
[01:02:13] Kevin Choquette: That’s right.
[01:02:14] Jack Cohen: And so I think matching the capital and doing strengths and weakness analysis is part of it,
[01:02:21] but it starts with the collateral.
[01:02:24] And if you think about your sponsors,
[01:02:27] you know,
[01:02:28] I tell deal people,
[01:02:31] hopefully you like the deal,
[01:02:34] hopefully you like the sponsor, hopefully you like the intermediary.
[01:02:39] And if you do, there’s a deal to work on. That rarely is the case that you get all three,
[01:02:45] but if you don’t get any of the three,
[01:02:48] don’t work on the deal.
[01:02:50] So the art is I like the deal, but I don’t like the intermediary.
[01:02:55] I like the sponsor, but the deal kind of sucks. And the intermediary is an Idiot. Right. So now I’m trying to figure out where I can add value.
[01:03:04] But it starts with the collateral and with that,
[01:03:10] that’s where you’re identifying, assessing, mitigating and pricing risk.
[01:03:14] By inventorying collateral strengths and collateral weaknesses,
[01:03:20] you can make a good deal better or worse with capital.
[01:03:25] And so, and that’s where we are today, I think in the marketplace is there’s too much capital on some of these transactions where the stack is wrong, it needs to be altered, fixed,
[01:03:39] redone, whatever it may be. But hopefully it’s with a good sponsor and hopefully it’s on a good asset because there’s no purpose in doing it with a bad sponsor or a bad asset.
[01:03:50] Kevin Choquette: That’s right. And some of these guys are still going to get lucky. Right? I mean the fact that the 10 years at 42 is undoubtedly going to, at the margin, bail out some guys if they’re able to luck rate right now.
[01:04:02] But I like the distinctions you’re making.
[01:04:06] Jack Cohen: Here’s a quote. When you use the word luck when you were children or when you had children, you watched cartoons,
[01:04:15] Bugs Bunny once said,
[01:04:17] I believe in luck.
[01:04:19] How else do you explain the good fortune of those you despise?
[01:04:26] Oh, of course they got lucky.
[01:04:30] Kevin Choquette: Yeah.
[01:04:31] Let’s shift over to the personal side and kind of,
[01:04:35] you know, this has been sort of co. Mingled already. But mentors, like, I’m guessing your father having boss’s son title might have been an influential mentor. Who else was a mentor along the way?
[01:04:49] And what, what might you have learned from some of the notable mentors? And I know that’s probably a long list, but give it a crack.
[01:04:56] Jack Cohen: You know,
[01:04:57] it’s fun.
[01:04:59] In Chicago,
[01:05:01] there were,
[01:05:03] in my professional growing up, there were two restaurant chains, Levy Organization and the Melman Organization. And there was a story once about Rich Melman,
[01:05:15] about his.
[01:05:17] Sorry about that.
[01:05:19] About his father’s father owned a delicatessen and his father actually fired him from the delicatessen because he thought he would never make a restaurateur. And of course Melman, you know, built this unbelievable empire of restaurant chains in Chicago.
[01:05:40] And I remember a quote where Melman said, you know,
[01:05:43] hopefully we can learn all the right things to do from our parents and other times we can learn other things from our parents.
[01:05:54] My dad was a, a, a great father. He was an honorable man. He worked hard, he did well. He was a horseshit mentor for me.
[01:06:04] But,
[01:06:05] but, but there were his, his orbit was, was filled with good people who gave me great advice.
[01:06:14] You know, it. And, and it was funny. I’m I’m one of the reasons, you know, I always when, when young people start talking about, well, I’m going to take a job, but I’m willing to take a job if they let me work from home.
[01:06:25] I’m thinking to myself, that guy will never be an entrepreneur.
[01:06:29] Kevin Choquette: Totally.
[01:06:29] Jack Cohen: That guy will be, you know, stuck in his job and miserable the rest of his life.
[01:06:35] I was 24 years old and my dad says,
[01:06:38] are you busy?
[01:06:40] And I said, of course, dad, I’m busy. What do you think? I’m sitting around waiting to get my nails done and eating bon bons. What do you want?
[01:06:47] Come on, grab your coat. We’re going to go see Sam Zell.
[01:06:51] I said, why would that be the least bit important to me?
[01:06:56] And he said, grab your coat, let’s go.
[01:06:59] So my dad had known Sam Zell and banked Sam Zell when he was in college buying student housing.
[01:07:08] And you know, this is 1981 and we walked into Zell’s office and Zell and my dad are like good natured, screaming at one another. They’re both opinionated, they’re challenging everything.
[01:07:22] And I want to hide. I’m just hoping no one invites me into this conversation.
[01:07:28] And mid sentence, Sam Zell looked at me and said, young man,
[01:07:32] yes,
[01:07:33] Mr. Zell?
[01:07:35] Do you know what the difference is between eccentric and weird?
[01:07:41] And I’m thinking to myself,
[01:07:43] why is he asking me this?
[01:07:45] Of course I don’t. I said, no, sir, I do not.
[01:07:49] He said, the difference between eccentric and weird is talent.
[01:07:56] Kevin Choquette: That’s awesome.
[01:07:57] Jack Cohen: I never forgot that. And, and he then like turned to me and he said,
[01:08:03] unitize.
[01:08:05] I’m sorry, what?
[01:08:07] When you’re underwriting a property, don’t fall into the trap of using appraised value.
[01:08:15] I used to get phone calls and say, hi, I have a $4 million appraisal, I’d like to borrow $3 million. And I used to think to myself, appraisals don’t pay debt service.
[01:08:25] What are you talking.
[01:08:27] And Sam Zell’s point was a really brilliant one.
[01:08:30] If I converted the sale or purchase or loan to a per square foot,
[01:08:39] if I could convert debt service to a per square foot, I could pick up the phone and call three friends that I had that were leasing agents or sales brokers and ask them what a rent was or a sale price was per square foot, and I would know if the transaction had cushion,
[01:08:56] I didn’t have to do a fancy analysis. I could do it on the back of the envelope based on that.
[01:09:01] So that lesson stuck with me. My entire career.
[01:09:05] But, you know, there was a woman who ran real estate at John Hancock by the name of Debbie McEnany,
[01:09:13] one of the first special servicers. And BP Spiers company was called RCAP. A guy named Lee Cotton.
[01:09:21] The. These were great mentors to me. There was a life insurance head of real estate at Union Mutual by the name of Jack Hastings.
[01:09:32] There was a real estate industrial developer and broker by the name of Jack Garon at Nicholson, Porter and Liss.
[01:09:39] There was a syndicator by the name of Bill Wilco.
[01:09:43] These people taught me things.
[01:09:46] They looked me in the eye, they didn’t condescend. And I wanted to be like them, them and help others.
[01:09:53] In a way, they helped me. And I’m sure there were really many, many more like that,
[01:09:59] but those are the names that really jumped out at me.
[01:10:02] Kevin Choquette: Yeah, that’s awesome. I just want to make sure I got the thing on Sam Zelle. Did he say unit ties?
[01:10:09] Jack Cohen: Yeah, unit ties.
[01:10:10] Kevin Choquette: Unit.
[01:10:11] Jack Cohen: If it was 100,000 square foot building and it was a million dollars, it was $10 a square foot.
[01:10:17] Kevin Choquette: Oh, it’s Ize. Unitize. Yeah,
[01:10:20] yeah, I got it. Okay.
[01:10:22] At first I thought you said unitize, like a tie that’s one piece or something. And then I thought it was unit ties. I got it. Unit ties. Got it.
[01:10:30] So look,
[01:10:31] you clearly are very capable. You came into the industry by birthright, if you will, and were able to kind of come into that and all the things that are downstream.
[01:10:42] But somewhere along the way,
[01:10:45] I suspect you could have looked out on the horizon and said,
[01:10:48] you know, I’m going to be a playwright or I’m going to go do insurance,
[01:10:52] or I’m going to start a automobile manufacturing company. There’s a. There’s a myriad of things that one Jack Cohen, with your sort of acumen and experience,
[01:11:02] could be doing other than commercial real estate. Why commercial real estate? Why are you still here?
[01:11:09] Jack Cohen: I like all the crazy people.
[01:11:12] Kevin Choquette: I love it.
[01:11:13] Jack Cohen: You know,
[01:11:15] it’s like I did do transactions.
[01:11:19] I can remember very few of the transactions that I did, but I remember all the people.
[01:11:27] And that’s what I’ve really enjoyed about it.
[01:11:32] Of course I got exposed to it and, you know, I’m blessed for that, right? So I was like, lucky. But, you know, when I always tell people I taught a class last Friday at the University of Wisconsin, and I always come back to the story.
[01:11:50] My generation, when we were getting out of college, the A students were going to medical school,
[01:11:55] the B students were going to this new thing called investment banking. And the C students who couldn’t get a job anywhere else went into real estate and,
[01:12:05] and we didn’t have any skills and the industry never gave us any skills.
[01:12:10] And so it just is a crazy landscape. Even the people that I hated,
[01:12:17] I just loved having the opportunity to play on the schoolyard with them.
[01:12:22] And that’s what I’ve really enjoyed most about the industry. But maybe every industry is like that. I don’t really know.
[01:12:30] But you know,
[01:12:32] I have fomo. I wonder what it would be like to be a spy or to be an international.
[01:12:39] I always had this fantasy, except I don’t speak any languages,
[01:12:43] how cool it would be to be multilingual,
[01:12:48] multicultural and multi economic and be an international businessman.
[01:12:54] Come on, how cool would be like an economic James Bond.
[01:12:59] Yeah, but I, you know, I, I’m an ugly American,
[01:13:03] I say swear words, I’m insensitive,
[01:13:06] my daughter in law thinks I’ve got to work on my soft skills, right?
[01:13:10] So I, I go to France and I hate the Parisians,
[01:13:15] so,
[01:13:16] so it wouldn’t work for me. But.
[01:13:21] Kevin Choquette: Managing success, right? So go back to Jack Cohen who’s,
[01:13:25] I don’t know how young you might have been when you started working with your father, but let’s say early 20s and you know, you’re just kind of hoping that something comes along that might look like a lead or something that perhaps you could monetize that isn’t just a task.
[01:13:42] You’re trying to kind of get a foothold and, and start to ascend into having some business acumen and some success. And you know, the phone rings, I’m just making all this up, but I can imagine we’re pre email, right?
[01:13:54] Phone rings and it’s actually a client. You’re like whoa, okay, yeah, absolutely, we’re all over this. And now,
[01:14:00] you know, having done everything you’ve done, I think we’ve talked about this exercise of like the zero calorie email, you know, sort of ping pong activity that doesn’t necessarily produce a lot of results but as you become more successful there’s more and more of those things coming at you.
[01:14:17] And you know, you sort of talked about just taking a bit of a walkabout and saying yes to a lot of it. But how do you think about managing success?
[01:14:24] Success when you go from I got a drip or two early in my career to now you’ve got a bonafide fire hose of things that are coming at you and it’s a very different experience.
[01:14:34] I’ve always asked people like how do they Manage the shift.
[01:14:38] Jack Cohen: You know,
[01:14:39] I think one of the problems I have is, you know, maybe I need more therapy.
[01:14:43] I haven’t really.
[01:14:45] I accept,
[01:14:46] I do accept that there are people who think I am a caricature of success.
[01:14:56] I don’t know that I have a definition of success. I think Bill Walsh said, success is the peace of mind knowing you’ve done your best.
[01:15:05] And because I’m nutty and driven,
[01:15:10] I think I can do more. And so therefore I’m not successful. So, so I’ve been blessed with energy and curiosity and because of that I seek different things out.
[01:15:26] I’m a voracious learner.
[01:15:29] I want to get exposed to as much as I can get exposed to.
[01:15:33] And I literally before I understood my kids generation term fomo, I did recently come to the conclusion that a lot of people in a deal shop or in a principal shop actually fear making a mistake.
[01:15:50] I’ve never really feared making a mistake. I feared missing an opportunity.
[01:15:56] It, you know,
[01:15:57] we’ll go back to my dad. True story.
[01:16:00] Guy comes in and says, I got this really great idea. I want to open a fast food chain and I need some money for this business and I’m going to put up the first building in Skokie, Illinois.
[01:16:14] And my dad, who grew up in a kosher home didn’t under, you know, you weren’t supposed to mix milk products and meat products.
[01:16:24] So having a cheeseburger was like off the table. So my dad,
[01:16:28] who sees the world only through his eyes, says, that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Why would I give this guy Ray Kroc money to start fast food chain?
[01:16:40] You know, same, same conversation with us after my, my dad, you know, these are Chicago people and this guy walks in and girly magazines. And my dad, who’s approved saying girly magazines, why wouldn’t even do that, right?
[01:16:54] And so I,
[01:16:57] I took the other, like every deal is a good deal, right?
[01:17:01] And so,
[01:17:02] so how do you manage it? I haven’t managed it.
[01:17:07] I spent three hours on vacation doing emails because it bothered me that there were too many in my inbox.
[01:17:13] I decided my PowerPoint skills were ****. And so I got up at five in the morning before anyone got up to teach myself PowerPoint.
[01:17:22] I mean like I’m 67 years old, I’m not supposed to do that ****.
[01:17:27] But you know,
[01:17:29] I got no answer for you, Kevin, on that one.
[01:17:34] Kevin Choquette: Keep, keep going, right?
[01:17:36] What is it? It’s the Johnny Walker Walk on, right? They’re the Brits thing with the subway. Keep Calm and carry on. Yeah.
[01:17:46] What about tough times? Right. I know you went through the, the Great Recession.
[01:17:50] I don’t know the implications for current financial. But all of us who were around, and that’s a whole nother tangent. We can go on some of the younger generation who’ve actually never seen the downturn.
[01:18:00] But what has been your response to some of the tougher times in life? Whether it was TGR or something else? I suspect there’s been times you’ve been handed it.
[01:18:10] Jack Cohen: Yeah,
[01:18:12] it’s 2006 and this is like 20 years ago when money meant something.
[01:18:22] I had a $65 million revenue business.
[01:18:26] I was making seven, seven and a half million dollars, you know, at net profit.
[01:18:31] And I wanted $100 million business. Why? I had friends who had $100 million business. Why can’t I run $100 million business?
[01:18:40] And the next thing I know,
[01:18:42] it’s 2007 and we hit the early part of the financial crisis and my $65 million business doesn’t go to 100 million,
[01:18:52] it goes to five and a half million gross revenue.
[01:18:55] Kevin Choquette: Yeah. Unbelievable.
[01:18:56] Jack Cohen: And now I’m like putting money into the business. I’m going to the bank and borrowing money and signing. Personally, I’m feeling guilt ridden because all these families who work for me and get salary to put food on their table,
[01:19:16] this is my responsibility.
[01:19:19] Right. And I guess back to my early comment, for young people, this is a to do business, not a to think business.
[01:19:27] And it just really meant I had to get off my strategic high horse and focus on creating revenues and trying to figure out why the industry collapsed and where, what it was going to take to turn around.
[01:19:44] So, you know, that’s been one.
[01:19:48] I have been betrayed before in business.
[01:19:52] I have been subjected to fraud before in business.
[01:19:56] And you kind of beat yourself up over that because, like, how could I be so stupid?
[01:20:03] Yet, you know, fraud, you know, is, is on the,
[01:20:07] has been on the uprise in our business.
[01:20:11] Again,
[01:20:12] you kind of try and, you know, I joke, I don’t joke. I think it’s a good quote.
[01:20:16] I think bad experience comes from bad judgment.
[01:20:20] But the good news is if you can learn from the experience and get good judgment from that bad experience,
[01:20:28] then that good judgment will lead to better experiences.
[01:20:32] And I’ve always believed in tomorrow. My mother used to say if today was a bad day, when go to bed,
[01:20:40] get up early tomorrow, tomorrow’s always going to be a better day.
[01:20:44] And it sounds silly, but she was right.
[01:20:47] And it just, part of it is just kind of grinding it out now. You know, at some level, as you get older or have more success, you have to watch your portfolio and your risk positions differently.
[01:20:59] If you have a view about the where world is going.
[01:21:04] I think that,
[01:21:05] you know, I cover this in the book.
[01:21:07] It was late in my professional career when Stu Gaul taught me the difference between context and content.
[01:21:15] And it’s an interesting lesson because the mother of all contexts is why we’re doing something.
[01:21:24] So if you think about context giving meaning to content,
[01:21:29] I like to think about strategies. I like to think about transactions. I like like to think about opportunities.
[01:21:37] Answering three questions, why,
[01:21:39] what,
[01:21:40] how?
[01:21:41] And if you have a view about why something is happening or why you want to do something,
[01:21:48] it drives what you’re going to do and how you’re going to do it. Too many people live in the how,
[01:21:56] you know,
[01:21:57] people do their very best job to make it through the day.
[01:22:02] And some people have more resilience than others. What is the old saying? God gives those only what they can carry.
[01:22:09] And some of us are blessed with an ability to take on more burden or more responsibility.
[01:22:16] But if everyone’s overwhelmed with their day to day burdens and their current reality,
[01:22:23] there really isn’t a way to get to the other side of a downturn in the business or a trough in their business plan.
[01:22:35] You really have to be able to have a view about an intended future and why that’s the case and what it will be and how you’re going to get there in order to create pull energy to pull you through the bad times.
[01:22:49] I’ve made bad investments, I’ve lost a bunch of money, you know, and like sometimes I go, didn’t you learn from that?
[01:22:57] We’re in the same scenario again.
[01:23:01] So I just think it’s back to having enough at bats that you start to get a sense of pattern recognition.
[01:23:09] And you know, in the 80s there was a bumper sticker in Texas running around where please God, one more boom. I promise not to **** this one away.
[01:23:18] Kevin Choquette: Yeah, totally.
[01:23:18] Jack Cohen: I’ve been waiting 40 years for that opportunity.
[01:23:22] I’m hoping this is going to be it. Is that I’ve learned so much that now I’m going to apply it.
[01:23:28] Yeah, right. I’ll make the same **** ******* mistakes.
[01:23:31] Kevin Choquette: I made before the, the intended future. We’ve talked about a good bit.
[01:23:38] There’s a,
[01:23:39] there’s a.
[01:23:41] I don’t know how this has been portrayed to be many different ways, but the idea is there’s three, three people laying bricks, right? The one guy just says, what are you doing?
[01:23:49] I’M laying a brick. The next guy says,
[01:23:51] I’m building a wall, and the third guy says, I’m building a cathedral. Right. So, like, what. What are you up to? What’s your why?
[01:23:58] And that changes the context around what you’re doing and how you’re doing it. Right. If you’re building a cathedral, if you’re building Notre Dame, like, that feels way different to that person laying than the brick, than the guy who’s just laying a brick.
[01:24:10] Jack Cohen: Right, Correct.
[01:24:11] Correct. Yeah.
[01:24:13] And. And. And, you know, not only is it in insp.
[01:24:17] Inspirational,
[01:24:18] it’s pull energy for him,
[01:24:20] but it’s leadership. It’s pull energy for somebody else.
[01:24:24] Kevin Choquette: That’s right. It goes back to your Joe Montana comment. I think it was Joe Montana. Right. He wasn’t. He wasn’t playing for the genius. That was somebody else’s view. He’s playing for the team.
[01:24:33] He’s playing for. For the win.
[01:24:34] Jack Cohen: Right.
[01:24:36] Kevin Choquette: A little bit of a.
[01:24:38] Well, in this whole, you know, your. Your response on crazy people, by the way, is why I do this. And not that you’re crazy, but I also love the. The people in this industry.
[01:24:47] This is a little bit of a tangent, but I’m curious because I respect your viewpoints.
[01:24:52] The political process, do you think of it as something that is to be engaged with or perhaps avoided? I’m just curious. Not, I don’t want to get into politics, but, like, there’s a part of me that looks at it and goes, God,
[01:25:04] what a dumpster fire. And then there’s another part that says, well, it’s a dumpster fire. Only in so much as I let it be one.
[01:25:11] Just curious how you relate to the body politic.
[01:25:15] Jack Cohen: You know, I’m disappointed.
[01:25:18] I don’t understand how my generation let it get so far.
[01:25:25] You know,
[01:25:25] what do they talk about?
[01:25:27] Who was the broadcaster who wrote the book, you know, about the great generation.
[01:25:33] Kevin Choquette: You know, the great Dan, the greatest generation, and somebody **** Rathers.
[01:25:40] Jack Cohen: Yeah.
[01:25:41] And, you know, I guess that was my dad’s generation,
[01:25:44] and they created a world that my generation and my children’s generation benefited from. But somewhere along the line, my generation has screwed this up. I’m embarrassed about politics. I’m embarrassed.
[01:26:01] I remember when,
[01:26:03] you know,
[01:26:04] it was simpler, Right. The Republican Party was about,
[01:26:08] you know, big business and good business and smaller government.
[01:26:13] It wasn’t about some of the other things that’s become about today.
[01:26:18] And, you know, I think our politics have gotten way too polarized,
[01:26:23] it seems maybe it’s a problem due to the primary system because the Only way you get noticed is to be extreme to the right or to the left.
[01:26:31] I do not know what the solution is.
[01:26:34] I’m mortified that we are where we are.
[01:26:38] And I don’t know what happened to grace and humility and good old fashioned competition. I don’t know why people need to be so offensive to one another to make a point.
[01:26:54] I’m ashamed. And you know, it, it, it’s funny because I guess the answer is get involved, right? But I got no stomach for that.
[01:27:05] But you know, maybe at a local level there are things we can do to help.
[01:27:10] And I’m tried to do it in the local community of, of Aspen, Colorado, but that in itself is like a crazy version of Disneyland.
[01:27:20] So, you know, then there’s Pitkin county, where Aspen, you know, resides. But even Pitkin county, like points a finger at Aspen and can only do so much, right?
[01:27:32] But I’m intrigued by trying to help others optimize their journey.
[01:27:38] And I just wish there that politics was a better business that attracted better ball players and it wasn’t about power, but it was about collective accomplishment.
[01:27:49] Kevin Choquette: Yeah,
[01:27:50] I’ll give you that for sure.
[01:27:53] Related and also similarly tangential social media. What do you think its impact is on the personal and collective well being?
[01:28:02] Again, these are just curiosities.
[01:28:04] Jack Cohen: You know, I’m an old guy,
[01:28:06] right? You know,
[01:28:08] my concept of social media that I only participate on is LinkedIn.
[01:28:14] But you know, I have children and Instagram and TikTok and Facebook and all that other stuff.
[01:28:21] I think people spend way too much time on their app.
[01:28:26] You know,
[01:28:28] it was interesting.
[01:28:30] We were at a ULI conference.
[01:28:32] We were in a product console and a bunch of us,
[01:28:37] some NYU students were invited and they were sitting at the various tables. And we had a magnificent NYO student sitting at our table and a bunch of us old people.
[01:28:47] And I was talking to a guy who runs a public reit and he was saying that, you know, his HR department is getting mad at him because he’s not relatable to the young generation.
[01:29:01] And he turns to me and he says, like, why is that? I said, mike, I think you’re wonderful. I have no idea why you’re not.
[01:29:09] So I turned to this kid and I said, why is it that your generation is so different than ours? And this guy stood up and looked at me and said to our table, it was five or six of us, it was brilliant.
[01:29:22] I’ll never forget it. He says, Mr. Cohn,
[01:29:24] I don’t think you understand.
[01:29:26] My generation has had everything that we want in Life accessible on our phone.
[01:29:37] We are a generation of instant gratification.
[01:29:42] My problem with instant gratification is it doesn’t happen fast enough.
[01:29:46] But this guy is saying, we don’t stay long at jobs because we want instant gratification. We don’t have a sense of grit because we want instant gratification. Well, what is social media?
[01:30:00] Not only is it instant gratification,
[01:30:03] but it’s, it’s a bunch of siloing. It was, it was really funny. I was having this conversation with my youngest.
[01:30:09] He’s 30 now,
[01:30:11] in a committed relationship. But you know, he was on the apps and he was, he even playing the game, was saying, you know, this is kind of weird.
[01:30:19] The app, the dating apps will silo for me.
[01:30:24] What I’m looking for,
[01:30:26] I’m not getting diversity. I’m getting somebody just like me.
[01:30:31] And I hadn’t thought about it that way.
[01:30:34] But you know, look, somebody once said with things you can be efficient,
[01:30:41] but with people you have to be effective.
[01:30:46] Kevin Choquette: That’s a really good one.
[01:30:47] Jack Cohen: Technology and social media are efficiency tools. They’re not effective tools. They’re tools that are effective, but they’re not, they’re not promoting human effectiveness.
[01:31:03] Kevin Choquette: That’s right.
[01:31:04] Yeah.
[01:31:07] I’m taking notes. I apologize for the gap there. I really love what you said. With things you can be effective, but with people, you. Or, sorry, you can be efficient, but with, with people you must be effective.
[01:31:18] Right. How, how nice. Like I’ve heard this phrase,
[01:31:22] you know, business would be great, but for my clients and my employees. Yeah,
[01:31:27] like you, you have to be effective. You actually have to meet people where they are. And it’s not a spreadsheet, unfortunately, but also, that’s the joy of it.
[01:31:36] You’ve offered a ton of kernels of wisdom and advice, but I’ll, I’ll give you another shot here. Just for the entrepreneurs out there,
[01:31:44] you know, any words of wisdom or, or advice that you might give somebody, let’s say, on the earlier part of their career, and they’re just trying to figure out how to get through this thing, this grand adventure, the kind of adventure you’ve been on.
[01:32:00] Jack Cohen: I think self awareness is the first step in the 12 step plan.
[01:32:05] I love entrepreneurs because the value I hold most dear in life is freedom. And I think there is no better definition of an entrepreneur than a business person who’s free to do what they want to make money.
[01:32:25] But it was kind of funny for me.
[01:32:29] My dad, who I did love and I did respect,
[01:32:34] behaved and I think carried himself as like he was Warren Buffett.
[01:32:40] But in hindsight, he had a lifestyle business.
[01:32:44] He didn’t want to be told what to do.
[01:32:46] And he was very successful. He made a bunch of money, but he played by his set of rules.
[01:32:53] And a lot of times entrepreneurs simply go into business for themselves because they don’t want to work for somebody else.
[01:32:59] I’m okay with that.
[01:33:01] But then don’t tell me you haven’t figured out how to scale your business.
[01:33:08] And so I think if you’re self aware about what kind of business you have, why you have it,
[01:33:15] then the how you want to manage it comes more clearly and more freely.
[01:33:22] The other piece of advice I would give an entrepreneur, I again learned this late in life.
[01:33:28] If people are stuck in their current reality, just kind of fighting their way through the day and they’re pushing the boulder uphill,
[01:33:37] entrepreneurs are doing the same thing.
[01:33:40] They’re starting with an idea, a product, they’re making a sale, they’re trying to make payroll, they’re hiring people.
[01:33:47] That’s what I call push energy.
[01:33:51] There is a lot of friction in building a business from pushing it forward.
[01:34:01] My view, I learned a long time ago,
[01:34:04] was if you could have a view of your intended future and envision what the elements look like,
[01:34:14] then you can plan how to get from here to there.
[01:34:19] And you won’t continue to be stuck in your own ways because to your point about me having a view about going from a deal person to a leader or manager and administrator, that was a byproduct of my why was.
[01:34:36] I had a view that I had to grow the net worth of confinancial at least eight times.
[01:34:43] And I did.
[01:34:44] I had help,
[01:34:46] but I had to change in order to commit to, to that end game.
[01:34:54] And I just find too many entrepreneurs who like just playing the game in the schoolyard and if they would just accept that, then they won’t have these illusions of grandeur about why isn’t my business as big as HFF or JLL or Secured Eastil?
[01:35:12] Well, maybe it’s because you’re not thinking big enough.
[01:35:18] Kevin Choquette: Do you think that the change that may be asked of the entrepreneur comes more easily or readily or is just more accessible when they hold that vision versus just succumb to what has been called the tyranny of the present?
[01:35:36] Jack Cohen: Well, I do think that the tyranny of the present is everyone’s life. Right?
[01:35:42] Kevin Choquette: Right. Totally.
[01:35:43] Jack Cohen: It’s the inertial force that keeps us in our current reality.
[01:35:48] It’s, it’s, it’s why, you know, it’s funny I’m blessed. In the last year I got three of my children had children.
[01:35:57] And so it’s just so fun to watch one year olds, right, and their wonderment about life.
[01:36:06] Everything’s new to them,
[01:36:07] whereas we get in our own ruts and it’s hard for us to, to find something new.
[01:36:15] So I think fantasy is an important part of building a business and getting out of your current reality and that tyranny of the present.
[01:36:27] But you know, it’s also what makes entrepreneurs great is their ability to stay in the present and not be focused on yesterday or tomorrow.
[01:36:38] So it gets back to building a team around you and having a set of rules of engagement and a view of what the business stands for and doesn’t stand for.
[01:36:55] And now misery loves company. There’s an opportunity to take a hill together.
[01:37:03] Kevin Choquette: Yeah.
[01:37:06] Jack, I want to just say thank you for taking the time,
[01:37:10] sharing all of this with me of the listeners.
[01:37:13] Drop us a review, follow us on whatever platform you’ve listening. You’re listening to us on if you got this far.
[01:37:20] The Freedom Frameworks is Jack’s book. I know you can get it on Amazon because that’s where I got it.
[01:37:25] Jack, closing statements are all yours. And again, thank you very much for taking the time. I really appreciate it,
[01:37:32] Kevin.
[01:37:32] Jack Cohen: It was my pleasure. I really, really enjoyed it and I hope that people enjoyed some of the stories.
[01:37:40] It’s a fun business. Everyone should be on their own path, picking up and collecting their own stories. And it’s those stories that create texture to our existence.
[01:37:53] I had a view about being a parent. I was manufacturing two things,
[01:37:58] adults and memories.
[01:38:00] And as I grew up professionally as an adult in the real estate business,
[01:38:05] the thing I take with me on my journey are all the memories I have from my past,
[01:38:11] the memories I’m making in my present that I will guide me in my future.
[01:38:19] Kevin Choquette: Yeah, I love it. I love it. It’s a grand adventure you’ve been on. Thank you for sharing it.
[01:38:25] Jack Cohen: Thank you for asking and having me. I really appreciate it.
[01:38:28] Kevin Choquette: Come on. Thanks, Jack.
