WSO Podcast | E133: Hammers to Big 4 Senior Manager in Real Estate Consulting

About

In this episode, Roger shares his story of coming from a family in construction to working at a Big 4 in the real estate consulting division. We learn what motivated him to pursue accounting and finance in college, what he did when he realized he was behind his peers with no sophomore internship, and how he made the transition from audit successfully.

 

Or Listen to the Podcast Here:

Apple Podcasts
Spotify  
Stitcher 

 

Resources:

WSO Courses

WSO Resume Review

WSO Mentors

 

WSO Podcast (Episode 133) Transcript:

 

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:00:06] Hello and welcome. I'm Patrick Curtis. Your host and chief monkey, and this is the Wall Street Oasis podcast. Join me as I talk to some of the community's most successful and inspirational members to gain valuable insight into different career paths and life in general. Let's get to it. In this episode, Roger shares his story of coming from a family and construction to working at a big four in the real estate consulting division. We learn what motivated him to pursue accounting and finance in college. What he did when he realized he was behind his peers with no sophomore internship and how he made the transition from audit successfully enjoy. All right, Roger, thanks so much for joining the Wall Street Voices podcast. Yeah, thanks for having me, Patrick, to be awesome. If you could just give the listeners a short summary of your bio. Sure. Grew up in Southern California and kind of bounced around between Orange County and Los Angeles. Eventually, after high school found my way back up to Los Angeles and attended the University of Southern California with an emphasis really on accounting and real estate finance. Ultimately, graduated, tried to graduate on time, so left there

Roger: [00:01:22] With a four year degree in accounting and went to go start work at a Big Four accounting firm as an auditor. During the recruiting process, really had looked into and tried to get an opportunity with a lot of the transaction real estate groups that at that time were just forming and kind of starting their businesses and their operating models at that time. And this was kind of pre the 2008 09 crash. They were really looking for graduate students, so you needed some sort of real estate masters or real estate and finance master's degree. And I was coming out of undergrad and really didn't have that degree. So I was told to either take it, take another lap and go get an additional degree or go get some work experience and come back and try to apply. And so that's the route that I ultimately took. I went through and completed about three years as an auditor, making my way through various engagements and trying to focus primarily on financial services and real estate. And about two and a half years in, I had an opportunity to go take some real estate focused finance trainings that the firm was offering when.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:02:33] Go ahead. I said, cool, that's awesome. So you took advantage. Yeah, took advantage of some of the internal networking opportunities and trainings and made it known that I tried to apply about three years earlier for the same position. That was still something I was looking into and interested in joining and eventually had an opportunity

Roger: [00:02:52] To interview with some of the individuals that were in that group in my local office and a couple of months later had the opportunity to to get an offer and get a transfer over to the real estate consulting side or transaction consulting side from the audit side.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:03:09] Very cool. All right. Let's start all the way back. And then you've been there for a long stint, almost the longest I've seen coming right out of school. It's been over a decade. Let's give the listeners a minute. So you clearly love where you're at, which is awesome. So let's  go back to just undergrad, though. I want to get a little bit more of a background in terms of why accounting and why finance and UX gray.

Roger: [00:03:35] Did you grow up in

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:03:36] Like Irvine area? My wife's from there. Yeah, just south of their mission area.

Roger: [00:03:41] Yeah, yeah.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:03:41] Cool. And so you kind of ended up at USC, but

Roger: [00:03:46] Were you always drawn

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:03:47] To finance and accounting? You were your partner. Like, what did your parents do?

Yeah, not originally. I would say my father was in construction, was in law enforcement prior to that. My older brother ended up going to USC as

Roger: Did ultimately find himself in a construction company. I was looking to be more of an individual behind the numbers, maybe not as much wanting to be out in the field. Got that exposure earlier on and kind of my younger years growing up, and I think the point was my dad who really wanted to make sure that I didn't think working a field job was a great idea. So I got that opportunity before I was able to really go out and work on my own.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:04:33] And he was right. He make you work on some projects,

Roger: [00:04:35] Get your hands worked on some projects. I did pick up work, you know, growing up 10, 12, 15 years old and spent enough time swinging a hammer that knew I didn't want to do that for the next 50 years of my life. Very good, so when you got

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:04:48] To USC, was there something was there an internship or was there some sort of groups or anybody like a mentor that had kind of gone down that path? That said, you know, you should focus on this, but you just felt you were good at it. You know, it was one of those things, right? I think I took my first accounting classes and midway through, I had all these classmates asking for help or asking me how I understood things so quickly. So it was just maybe somewhat of a natural

Roger: [00:05:14] Gift that I picked up the content very quickly and was able to apply it. And so any of the scenario based modules or anything that we went through in class were kind of second nature to me. So at that point, probably sophomore year, I figured out, Well, maybe this is something I really ought to take seriously because my first year going into college, I was actually pre-med, believe it or not. And then I very quickly figured out that that probably wasn't where I was supposed to be. So I left when

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:05:46] I did much better in accounting than you did in biology, is what you're telling me. That's right. Yeah, it's a safe way to put it.

Roger: [00:05:52] So you OK, so you're

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:05:54] Kind of going through. Did you do anything in your freshman summer or sophomore summer?

Roger: [00:05:58] When did you get any internships? How did that kind of progress through your? No, I actually was. It was a late bloomer, so I was pretty active in sports and so sports was, you know, not, you know, at the college level or not for the school, but was pretty active in both working, I would say, and playing sports.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:06:17] So what did you like to play? So, so I actually actually raced motorcycles, so I did that for a while and then had an accident in my sophomore year, which I think led me to

Roger: [00:06:30] Resetting kind of priorities and objectives and where life was taking me. And I think that what did

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:06:35] You what did you break in the accident? I think so. Lower back. Oh yeah. So l three, three five.

Roger: [00:06:44] And you know, after that, you reset your priorities and you figure out that you're not Ironman, you're not invincible. And so I started really getting serious about school and taking it from there and running with it and was able to get my grades up and get in the business school and really, you know, I think, make a successful career at school in the short term, which ultimately led to some good recruiting efforts and some good responses from recruiters.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:07:11] When did you how did you just start just applying to the big four like junior year for internships? Tell me how that worked out, that whole recruiting, if you remember, like how many places you applied, the conversion rates, all that good stuff, if you remember. Yes, I remember.

Roger: [00:07:24] So yeah, I mean, at first, it probably wasn't until my junior year. Probably like literally showing back up on campus August, September of my junior year that I really figured out that I had to take it seriously. I think coming back to school and hearing about all these students or classmates mine that had sophomore internships, which, to be honest, I was rather oblivious about. I think at the time I was kind of surprised that they had already had some decent internship experience. So, you know, made it a point to get my name out there and try to meet as many people as I could.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:07:58] And so at this point, your resume is like a blank slate, like nothing like it's got a couple jobs up out there, but it's like swinging a hammer was one of them, right? So not great directly corresponding experience in the positions of the jobs I was seeking.

Roger: [00:08:17] It's kind of amazing. I mean, now I look at the number of resumes that come across my desk, and I just thank God that I, you know. Went down that path a decade or decade and a half ago, because some of the resumes I see come across my desk are fairly substantial and amazing and would have definitely outpaced me by a fair margin.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:08:38] Ok, so you're coming in your junior year, you kind of

Roger: [00:08:41] Realize, oh, like all these other

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:08:43] People had sophomore internships, so you start actually getting more aggressive with the networking and that whole spiel. What did you do? Was LinkedIn wasn't even around or it was just starting out then. So, you know, LinkedIn was was just coming out. So LinkedIn was definitely a thing.

Roger: [00:08:56] I don't think it was definitely not obviously as widely used as it was today. I mean, like,

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:09:01] Oh, this is 06, right? This is like six 07. Yeah, yeah, I guess. Yeah, maybe five or six seven somewhere in that range. So Facebook is just now starting up and, you know, a thing. And LinkedIn, it was like, how many of

 

Roger: [00:09:15] These things do you do you want to join? Myspace was the prior

generation of the whole social media platform that was popular in the day. And so I wasn't really, I would say, all that active on LinkedIn. I think I set up a profile, you know, as a student. But for the most part, I was on campus activity. So getting involved with, you know, for me, definitely the accounting groups, the finance groups, the investment banking groups, the real estate investment groups were

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:09:46] You were you talking to like any professionals during this whole thing or you're just getting info from like other students trying to be

Roger: [00:09:52] Like, Hey, you need to apply

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:09:53] Here? Or was like the on campus recruiting the route. You went and just went straight in. Yeah, it was kind of all of it. So trying to digest as much as I could, I had that sense of urgency because I knew

Roger: [00:10:04] I was in a way in some respects behind some of my peers and being ultra competitive. I didn't want to be behind or didn't want to be in that position for long. I didn't like that feeling. So I tried to go attend as many events and soak up and learn as much as I could as quickly as possible. Definitely went out and got the school business cards that I kind of look back and kind of chuckle at. But I still get the kind of time the business cards that say what your degree is going to be in and your name and that you're actually a student at the school.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:10:37] Do you chuckle? How do you recommend kids do that if they get their own business cards? Maybe I know. I know on Wall Street races, there's probably been a couple of threads making fun of kids. They do that. Do you do you recommend it or do you think it's a good thing or a negative thing? Yeah, you don't. You don't, you know, because I would say it's a good thing, and here's why you can laugh at it.

Roger: [00:10:56] And maybe it's, you know, depending on what day you may chuckle more or less at the fact that someone you know could view it as being very serious.

but as a recruiter now, I do like receiving them because sometimes I'll get a card and I'll make a note on the back of the card, you know, oh, this was the guy that you know, grew up racing carts, or this was the, you know, the girl that rode horses from the age of three and, you know, is a phenomenal like just so I can kind of remember who that individual is. So not having something like that and not being maybe at an organized event, it does make it hard to remember someone's not getting your resume, not giving you a card, not leaving something behind.

 

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:11:34] But would you wouldn't you suggest like they get the card from the professional and then they follow up over email? Isn't that a more traditional way or is like or does the card allow you to get that card back? Almost. It depends who's chasing who at that point. So if they're, you know, I definitely appreciate when individuals will ask for my contact information or card

Roger: [00:11:57] And follow up with an email. And sometimes, you know, I think one of the things I'd suggest is if you have an interesting conversation with someone, make mention of it or make a joke, make light of it, you know, so that you kind of jog their memory about what that conversation was, was, was about or what you covered during that time. A lot of times, you know, as a professional, from a recruiting standpoint, you may need 100 different students in an evening. So you want to be able to stand out as one of those students that that is memorable, you know, hopefully in a good way. On the opposite side of the spectrum, if you do something to kind of shoot yourself in the foot and you're remembered for that. Just remembered that kind of that does kind of stick with you, I think, for a while, because we'll go back the next week as a firm or as a group and talk about the different candidates. And it never fails that someone made some awesome first impression that gets them kind of excluded from the resume drop or their resume doesn't go very far in the process. So you have

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:13:00] Examples of like what some kids have done that has just gotten them basically blackballed. Well, no, of course I do. Yes. So, you know, I've got a number of those. So I would say simple things, though.

Roger: [00:13:13] Mind your manners. You know, if you are not comfortable, you know, regarding business etiquette or etiquette during meals, there are so many resources out there. I mean. Be honest. You can learn anything from YouTube or pretty much anything in a Google search, you can learn so you really have no excuse.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:13:30] Are you telling me people ordering spaghetti and shoving it down their face and like eating with their mouth open? Is that what you're talking about early? I see the lobster and spraying everywhere. Yeah, yeah.

Roger: [00:13:41] No, I mean, maybe when learning proper etiquette, when passing a dish or asking for a dish and not touching other people's food with your hands, that's one that I do remember that I think me and one of the partners I was with, we kind of looked at each other and be like, Is this seriously happening right now? Like, it was kind of kind of comical, but and they don't say the other thing is approach. All your tongue

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:14:05] Was touching your food on your plate. No, it wasn't me. It was two different students and one the one student was touching the other foods, the other students food. And it was just awkward and kind of a strange situation. But they act like it was completely normal. Yeah, it's probably not. And I'll never forget that partner made it very clear that that was unacceptable to me afterwards and that that was basically a deal killer right then and there that we cannot have that we could not possibly have someone use that judgment in front of a client and somehow

Roger: [00:14:41] Make our make their way in front of our clients eventually.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:14:44] Yeah, fair. Ok, anything else? Do you remember? I think the stories are always on people cutting

Roger: [00:14:50] Other people off, like I'm cutting you

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:14:51] Off a lot here. No, you know, so I think I think it's honestly just being empathetic to your surroundings. So, you know, this day and age, there's a bunch of different, you know? There's a bunch of different ways that you can offend people, whether that's politically race,

Roger: [00:15:08] Gender, you know, sexual orientation, you name it, just being empathetic that that not everyone around you is going to think or believe the same way you do. And if you hear something that perhaps is inconsistent with your beliefs or your foundation, being able to accept that at least hear someone out and not show direct disdain or sarcasm towards somebody, it really does no one any good one. You make the individual that's trying to voice their opinion. You make them feel uncomfortable. And then a lot of times you create an uncomfortable situation for everyone there. That's listening. And so someone that can't play well with others to say it kind of lightly is not

someone that I think is generally really successful in recruiting for a lot of the larger firms that have a reputation in the standard to uphold.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:15:57] For sure. For sure. Really interesting. Ok, so you're basically coming in through junior year, you're going to all these events. But what is it? What does it result in? Like what actually comes out of that stuff? Is it did you actually land an internship for junior summer? Yeah. So I landed an internship, you know, and along the way, I would say, you know, kind of being competitive and having friends that were competitive as well

Roger: [00:16:19] Or you guys were you guys

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:16:20] Talking a lot of shit to each other? Be honest, like, Oh, you're not going to get anything or be like that kind of competitive, like openly fun, competitive or. No, no. It was just it. Honestly, it was kind of racking up offers how many offers you rack up, how many interviews did you rack up? How well did you do in the interviews? How soon did you hear back? And I would say I probably wasn't one to be bragging. I mean, I wasn't, you know, I wasn't one that was racking up dozens and dozens of interviews. But the interviews that I did get the half a dozen or so, maybe,

Roger: [00:16:52] You know, maybe closer to a dozen interviews, ultimately that honestly resulted in this, you know, level one or a phase one, phase two interview and office visits or invites you out to dinner or what have you. A lot of those interviews, I just took them very seriously. So I had friends that had so many interviews that they kind of like, I can't prepare for all of them, so I'm just going to kind of wing it. And honestly, I think when you do that, it's probably best to not do that. If you're not, seriously, consider working for a particular firm or company. So oftentimes you may be taking away a spot from someone who is seriously considering working for the firm, and they didn't even get the opportunity because let's say it's someone that is set for Big Four and they're definitely going before, but they rack up 10 interviews with regional and national firms. Well, they know that they never accept a position and they are going to get an offer from a couple of the big four firms, and that's the direction they're headed. They just stole an interview spot from a few of their classmates that might not have the grades or the pedigree to go before, but really wanted that opportunity with a regional or national firm and then didn't even get the shot. And so where are they now? So I would say, be mindful and put your efforts into that.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:18:09] I mean, part of what I often preach is just to take every interview you can get just because the reps are so critical. So like from the other side of the coin,

Roger: [00:18:18] Oftentimes I'm like, you take every

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:18:20] Single interview you could ever get on and you, but you treat it seriously and

Roger: [00:18:25] You try to

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:18:26] Learn about them because sometimes you're surprised. Sometimes you think you know a company and you think there's no I mean, yeah, if there's no way I agree with you, but if there's if there's a chance, I think. Turning that interview down and doing like a mock interview like this with somebody very different man than the real thing. I agree with you too. So if you have the ability, the availability, the ability and the time to take them all seriously,

Roger: [00:18:51] Without a doubt, especially kind of earlier on in your career. But if you've already talked to a lot of the firms, I mean, I figured out pretty quick that there were there was a firm or two in the big four where I really wasn't all that interested. So one of them, I did actually withdraw my application after an event. I just looked, this probably isn't the right place for me. Don't burn

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:19:11] Bridges. Do you think you would have done that in 2009 if it wasn't 2006?Great.When yields, when yields are offered are very hard to come by and stuff like that, I mean, I think maybe it was part of the time like you knew you were going to get an offer, maybe or you had that confidence. Maybe it's just personality.

Roger: [00:19:31] I don't know, yeah, I think that's right, I think it depends on everyone's individual situation. Yeah, I mean, if you're worried about not landing an offer ultimately, right, you don't want to look back and hindsight's always 20 20, but you want to look back at your situation, be like, Well, I re-. I told three firms that I wasn't interested in the six. I was interested in all the, you know, declined to offer. You know, if you're in that situation, you probably don't feel great about your prior decisions.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:19:57] Yeah, I say oftentimes, at least from my perspective, when I was in college, there's a lot of overconfidence, especially if you don't well in school,

Roger: [00:20:06] You're at a good

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:20:07] School. Your GPA, but you're thinking, Oh, I got all these injuries. And I had like 12 first round interviews.

Roger: [00:20:12] I only landed one offer.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:20:14] So I mean, it was it was in a bad time. It was 02 right after

Roger: [00:20:18] Everything went down. So it explains some of it, but

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:20:22] It's a real final round. So I would just encourage people not to be too. Too picky early and to keep your net pretty broad and just explore, at

Roger: [00:20:33] Least in the informational interview,

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:20:35] Especially in the information interview portion of it, because that's something you don't want to be overly confident in. The economy turns south or something like COVID happens and

Roger: [00:20:46] Then

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:20:46] You're stuck on the outside looking in with no job, you know, moving back in with the parents. So anyway, so you're very true. So, so OK. So let's go back to the story. So your. You kind of had it sounds like half a dozen first rounds and then you

Roger: [00:21:04] Kind of progressed on several

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:21:06] Second rounds, you're doing

Roger: [00:21:06] Well.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:21:08] Tell me how that worked. Did you know you were going to do audit or is that what you did in the summer? Yeah, so that's what I that's what I did during the summer. I don't know. That's it. Are you smiling? Why are you laughing? It seems like I think that's what I maybe figured out. That audit wasn't what I was going to do for 30 years. So I think it hit me. They are probably during my internship

Roger: [00:21:30] That I can do audit. I think it's a great start. I think you learn a ton of skills, you learn a ton about business in general. You know, you pay your dues, but you get a lot out of it. And I think you mature a lot. You develop some technical skills,

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:21:44] But you knew in your internship that that that wasn't something you were going to do for 30 years.

Roger: [00:21:48] Yet you still did three years in that group. Go ahead.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:21:56] Because it was at a good firm. It was something you felt like it was the right place to be. Or were there other reasons? Yeah, it was it's a combination of things again. I know financial crisis right during the middle of it. Yeah, that's right. So yeah, and so, you know, having been

Roger: [00:22:14] Kind of inside of a rather large banks office kind of the day that a lot of the collapse occurred and kind of the weeks and months that followed was pretty eye opening. You see 50 people on a floor at a time getting laid off and not showing back up on after leaving on Friday and the next Monday, they're staying at home and seeing that kind of happen week in and week out. I think that got real pretty quick. So it was one of those things where I think a lot of us went into survival mode because I think all the big four firms had layoffs at my level and at the junior levels. There just wasn't a need for as many

Roger: [00:22:51] Staff, accountants or staff, auditors or even going up through some of the junior, you know, supervisory levels, you know, senior or audit assistants or in charge and some of the other positions that are held.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:23:05] I would assume audit probably weathered the storm better than better than most groups, though. Is that accurate? Because there's still auditing, I mean, I'm sure there was cuts, there were cuts, but. People still need to get their audit done right.

Roger: [00:23:20] I would say yes, but we're going with skeleton crews, so I remember some of the audits that I was on previously where we had maybe just a team of five and we went down to two.One of them, ultimately, we went down to just myself. And so I'm working on myself, which used to be a team of four or five. And you know, you have to fill a pretty big set of shoes when you're a first or second year and all of a sudden you're experience seniors and even your managers get let go. I mean, you still had the responsibility to help make sure that audit got through to

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:23:54] Completion. Were you stressed out about that? Did you feel like you might lose your job at some point? You know, I think I think I probably you know that Ben was a little stressed out about it, but I've always been fairly confident in my ability to go, find, go find a job somewhere. Maybe it's not even doing the same thing, but, you know, pick myself up off the ground and go find it dollar and kind of moving forward. He could always swing the hammer. Right? So, OK, so you're

Roger: [00:24:26] You kind of weather that

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:24:28] Storm, it sounds like. And as you're coming out of it, you know, as things are stabilizing a little bit, although still pretty rickety, you kind of make that transition internally

Roger: [00:24:37] To the real estate side.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:24:39] Can you talk a little bit about just for the listeners that aren't familiar what like a real estate consulting position looks like and what are you actually doing? Who are your clients? What are you? What's the type of analysis day to day? Yeah, so it's honestly it's quite broad, so if you look at what we do is part of a big four firm, you know, frankly, if I'm honest, you know, and I know fairly well

Roger: [00:25:02] The other counterparts in other big four firms. None of us are very large in terms of the overall scale of the firm nationally or at least globally. If you if you look at the timing

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:25:15] Specifically, you mean specifically the real estate groups.

Roger: [00:25:17] Correct. Ok. If you look at the tens of thousands of people that each of the firm's employees across the accounting and the tax and the consulting sides, especially if you go so far as to look at the individuals that specialize in implementations and internal systems, the real estate side of the house is very, very niche and very, very small in terms of overall headcount.

Patrick (CEO of WSO):So, yeah,

Roger: [00:25:50] Call it, you know, somewhere around one hundred plus or minus 50. And I think most of the most of the big firms that where a lot of their total professional accounts or above fifty thousand, probably somewhere south of one hundred, but definitely many, many multiples of what the real estate group would ever hope to be.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:26:10] Got it. So, yeah, so day to day, like what types of engagements are typical for, like

Roger: [00:26:15] Who are your clients, I guess. So I'd say most of our clients, I mean the range from anything from family offices all the way up into the global, you know,100, you know, a lot of the Fortune 500 companies have massive real estate holdings. They may not be in the business of real estate, but they either used own or operate real estate as a as a key portion of their business. If you really look at any P&l statement of these large firms kind of across the globe, and it really is something that would, I would say, does blanket the globe. It's not specific to the U.S. or to Europe or Asia, but all of these companies that have large operations, they are going to be users of real estate in some shape or form, whether that's leasing massive amounts of real estate or they own it. And a lot of times since that's not their primary core business, they don't have a real robust or as robust as they might need. Real Estate Group, you know, something like just a corporate real estate group that can manage and do all the things that are involved in operating a portfolio of that size. So we come in and really help a lot of our clients through that. So whether it's diligence on the front end of a transaction and it can be a diligence activity specific for the acquisition or development of real estate, o r it can be in conjunction with the acquisition of a business, and there are now acquiring either own real estate that is currently owned by the target company. Or maybe perhaps they're going to be stepping into a large sum of leases. And so they need to figure out really what is the liability there? What are they stepping into and how do they digest that and then ultimately bring that onto the balance sheet when they look to consolidate at some point down the road? So I would say that that is a large majority of our business because as much as we may be valuation and consulting professionals, we tend to at least have a background or exposure to the accounting and financial reporting side of the house or in addition to that, if we don't know how to how to figure that out. We've obviously got, you know, very deep Rolodex of individuals and professionals that have done that before and can help us out and help our clients through that process

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:28:32] For sure. And can you talk to me a little bit about what the transition was like for you going from an auditing role to a more like traditional consulting role internally? Yes. So that transition was really pretty interesting, you know, especially at the time when I joined, I would say a bulk of our work was really helping clients figure out and navigate their way to impairment analysis to make sure that they didn't have portfolios or large assets on their books and records and sitting there on the balance sheet at maybe a value that

Roger: [00:29:04] Was above any recoverable amount. And so learning that whole process, which was a first for me and going through my first wave of, you know, really back to back impairment exercises and an impairment analysis was interesting. But that's really where I cut my teeth is trying to look at other analyses that were put together by clients and parallel and trying to help them figure that out or by receiving analysis that were done by third party preparers, you know, or perhaps outside consultants, similar to my own group that were prepared for the purposes of supporting an audit and trying to poke holes to that and really make sure that ultimately the estimates that were used for accounting purposes were appropriate and kind of acceptable in the circumstances.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:29:51] And so when you do that, you cut your teeth on that, but then when you transitioned, was it? It's like you went from all this impairment analysis to obviously in the doing more proactive stuff or was a lot of the real stuff, real estate stuff also similar? Yeah. So this was all impairment. Maybe I should clarify better, but this was all impairment specific to real estate. Ok. Looking only at real estate assets, you know, if when you were on the audit side, what types of how was it different? So I guess on the audit side, you're really auditing the balance sheet, you're auditing the P&L statement of cash flows, you're auditing the whole company. When I moved on to the real estate side and we were preparing analysis either used by auditors and tested by auditors, or we were assisting our own internal audit firm by reviewing a lot of the work that was thrown their way. And they didn't have kind of the specialization in real estate or the background in real estate that digest, you know, a 10 year DCF and look at various cap rates and discount rates and the various market leasing assumptions that go into developing maybe an income approach analysis, which is, for the most part, a lot of the key drivers in value and valuation if you kind of set aside the cost and market approach.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:31:13] And can you tell me a little bit about? So thanks for that. Can you tell me a little bit about just how you thought about your career? Starting out? I mean, obviously it was like survival

Roger: [00:31:23] Initially,

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:31:24] Right? Which makes a lot of sense. And then as you kind of applied for this real estate consulting role internally, can you tell me about a little bit of like who you had to talk to internally? Was it one of those things where it's like technically goes through H.R., but you still need like the blessing of your manager or your senior manager or it's not going to go well? Or is it a truly internal request transfer?

Roger: [00:31:46] That's.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:31:49] That stays confidential. Yeah, it's I would still say it's not as easy as that could be a lot of times when you look at the various. You know, counting entities that may be under the same umbrella with, you know, real estate consulting or some sort of valuation and transaction consulting group. No one wants to lose good people, but I think when it gets right down to it, you would rather see a good auditor go over to the consulting side rather than walk out the door period and go work for another competitor, maybe, or go work in industry. So at the end of the day, I think they try to hold back auditors is as much as they can, but there

Roger: [00:32:33] Does become a breaking point where the auditor, just their hearts, not in it, They're just not there. They're eventually going to set themselves up for failure if they can't stomach ADR, work weeks and kind of working through the night on something that they really had to have disdain for and can't stand doing so. Ultimately, I think that

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:32:51] Was where those 80 hour weeks was that only in busy season or is it like year round basically for, you know? Yeah, I mean, I think that's definitely in a busy season only for the auditors. I mean,

Roger: [00:33:02] And that's three months, three months or so. Yeah, I would say it depends on your clients, but sometimes it starts kind of in October and goes to November. It might slow down a tick in December and then you pick back up kind of first

week of January, and you'll probably go pretty strong through early April, for the most part, is kind of in my experience or at least through maybe three thirty one on the consulting side, it's been a bit different. We tend to stay fairly busy year round, so very infrequently do we have 80 hour work weeks, but very infrequently, do we ever see forty five 50 hour work week? So we tend to work in excess of that, but probably have more stable hours throughout the year, for

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:33:44] Sure. And so can you talk specifically when you are trying to make that transition? You said you applied once and they said, well, now you need either work more or you need to go get a masters. Yeah. What was the thought process of just sticking around? Was it more just like, Hey, I don't know if I leave with the Great Recession or whatever that was happening

Roger: [00:34:01] Then was,

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:34:03] I'm trying to tie it back to today if there's people in a similar situation and thinking go back to school right now during COVID. Do you think it's better to stick around and get that experience, or do you feel like, hey, if you had just gone to school for a year, got your masters, it would have been a faster but like looking back at yourself, what would you suggest to kids in a similar boat? Yeah, I don't I don't think I regret the path that I took. You know, could I have gone back to school, missed out on a year of salary, paid a decent sum of money to collect? You know, an additional degree. Sure, I could have gone that route. I actually asked the same question to a bunch of the partners throughout the recruiting process. I said, look, this is ultimately what I want to do. What would you suggest? What would you do in my shoes? And frankly, it was pretty unanimous. At least the partners I talked to, they said, look, if you come at a school with a master's program and you've got zero years of work experience, you have zero years of work experience. If you come work for the firm

Roger: [00:35:01] And you do well and you've got a year of great work experience operating at a very high level. And now you've earned the salary for a year and hopefully got some sort of, you know, merit increase or increase in base compensation. If I look at those two individuals and compare them side by side and really try to decide on who's worth more money at the end of the day, as far as what is their value that they bring to the firm or to the entity, they would 100 times out of 100 say that it's the individual with a year of work experience. So that's kind of the route I went. That was the advice that I got from a number. I would say probably four or five individuals gave me essentially the same advice. And so I took that and kind of ran with it. Ultimately, no one saw, you know, seven eight nine happening. And so what was supposed to be a year or two and jump ship turned into three for me? They'll think I was probably, you know, in a lot of respects, pretty fortunate to have found the spot that I did when I did. Totally.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:36:05] Yeah, it was still a tough time back then. It wasn't like it wasn't like all roses in 2010, right? No, no. Yeah, that definitely was. It was. It was still tough for a lot of people. I mean, there were still individuals that had been let go a year or so prior, still looking for work. So. Right, well, you've had a long run there. Any other words of wisdom before we call it anything you'd like to share? You know, it's interesting to see kind of your path sticking around with one firm. I feel like nowadays

Roger: [00:36:33] It's much more common to see people coming

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:36:35] Out and then jumping every year to three years, from firm to firm to firm. What do you think has been the biggest benefit of sticking around in one place? Yeah, that's it, it's a great question, I would say the biggest benefit to sticking around is once you make a name for yourself, and hopefully that's. A name for yourself in a good way. You know, to constantly jump from firm to firm and recreate that from the ground, and even though as

Roger: [00:37:03] You continue to get experience in an industry or maybe even it's within a demographic area, if you build a name for yourself and you've got something good going, it becomes really hard for you to throw a lot of that away or lose some of that and start from maybe not square one, but start a good way back as far as building up that reputation at a new organization. And so what that's allowed me to do is I've built a reputation with the current firm that I'm with, and I've been able to just build on that and focus on building on that, not building it back up from the ground. I haven't had to go back to a foundation for many, many years. So I every time I go to a new role or new position within the firm, I start wherever I left off you 12th floor, 15th floor in the course of kind of building my skyscraper. And so that's one thing that's let me really focus on not trying to make a name for myself. My name's been made already by the past decade or more of service here at the firm. And so that's really helped me get opportunities that I probably wouldn't have had at other firm. Just because I begin to have a network that is now national and reach out to individuals that I probably would take a take a good while to figure out who's who across the nation within the platform that the big four firms operate on. Mm hmm. So, you know, although it may seem better to jump ship for five grand or 10 grand or 20 grand, I think there's definitely some merit to kind of staying where you're at and you may not be compensated what you think you're worth right now, but give it a year or two or five years. And I think a lot of times you'll find people will eventually recognize that you are bringing a lot of value to the organization and that you would leave a hole if you left the organization. And so therefore you may start to get compensated or rewarded. And keep in mind that that reward doesn't even have to be in the form of compensation. A lot of times its exposure, its opportunities, it's, you know, it could be in the form of, you know, travel and, you know, meeting people and getting exposure. That's well beyond anything you can really put dollars on. Cool.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:39:25] I love it. Anything else you'd share in terms of wisdom, of having been at one place for a long time or just for the young kids coming out of school now listening to this in terms of how they should start their career in this kind of uncertain times. Yeah, I think just be patient.

Roger: [00:39:41] Like, I know everyone wants to know, you know, come out of school and make seven figures. And unless you're making seven figures, it feels like you're not making progress. But I think the fact of the matter is you have to be patient and that you work hard enough and kind of stay at it and build a skill set and make yourself valued valuable to an organization. You'll get there, but it doesn't happen overnight. I mean, no one has been an overnight success. I mean, it may seem that way. You read about people or see them in the news, but you forget that they've been working in their basement for the last two decades to finally get to that spot. And then they finally pop. And it's something they've worked for. Sometimes an entire lifetime. So just realize that it doesn't happen overnight and stay patient, stay

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:40:27] Asleep on that. Stay patient. Thanks, man. Really appreciate your time, Roger. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Patrick, and thanks to you, my listeners at Wall Street Oasis. If you have any suggestions whatsoever, please don't hesitate to send them my way. Patrick at Wall Street Oasis.

Roger: [00:40:42] And till next time.