THE Cambridge Connection - Episode 55

But you know what I have a really big problem with right now? What problem do you have? The cost of eggs. I love eggs. So you’re finding that less than egg-straordinary?

Egg-flation. Yeah, egg-flation. I mean, you just add flation to everything else, right? So here’s one of the headlines. S.

consumer borrowing rises more than forecast on credit card use. Wow. Transunion studies warning signals for serious credit card delinquencies. Yeah, let the bankruptcy attorneys line up. Yep.

And this is again, we are in interesting times, right? There’s so many things that are on the airwaves. We talk about scams all the time. When people get desperate, here’s the real deal. They put job reports out that the jobs are fine, but people aren’t making more money.

No, not at all. They’re spending more because everything costs more. You have to. Now you got the mortgage industry is a disaster because the interest rates are high now. So that slowed the market down completely because people were overbuying on homes and now inventory is low.

And when you think about buying a home, your property taxes are going to be higher. Your interest rate is going to be higher. Your payment is going to be higher. So what does that do? It makes people pull it back.

What do we have? We have a staggering market, right? That’s what we have. And again, the problem is, who knows what those solutions are? We hear the Fed’s going to raise rates again.

So here we are just getting up, going to work, trying to figure things out. It’s a roller coaster too. I mean, we’re not talking over periods of time. We’re talking within weeks. Right.

34 a gallon. 09 overnight. It’s crazy. But this is where people need to tighten the belt. If you don’t have a budget, you need to create one and you need to journalize expenses because this is one of the things we’ve talked about.

A month’s worth of all of the money you spent in an envelope and then jot that all down and look at what you’re spending in each category. Because in times like this, you got to make cuts, have to pull back the reins. This is why people didn’t need the sponsor of this show Cambridge Credit Counseling much during the pandemic because they were locked down, shut down, weren’t spending. And now, again, a year and a half later, now we’re going into the holidays, all the people have been doing since they were let go and spent. Especially, you’re right, the travel industry has increased even though with the price, the cost of traveling is obviously much more than it was two years ago, yet more people are doing it again.

Right. And you know, like we’ve talked about this, no doom and gloom, but you’ve got to live your life. We’re talking about awareness right now. That’s what we’re talking about. We’re not talking about doom and gloom.

Introducing the commercial real estate guest

We’re talking about awareness and good segue into awareness. Our guest today is a commercial realtor and we’re going to have a conversation through the pandemic. Some people made some changes where they decided they were going to take a different shift in their career or their life or what they were going to do, maybe become business people, entrepreneurs. Self-employed. Yeah, self-employed.

That’s right. Create your own life. And it sounds wonderful, but it’s not easy. Correct. And if you’re going to have a retail store, if you’re going to have a place of business where you do whatever it is that you’re going to shift to, you better know what processes you’re going to need to go through to be able to get approved.

So our special guest, Walter Kroll from Macmillan Group, he’s going to talk to us about how to get involved in commercial real estate. All right. Sounds like you need a plan. Yeah. We all need a plan for everything.

This is Gordon Oliver with The Cambridge Connection. We’ll be right back. This January, payments on student loans start up again. If your budget or other bills are making things tight, Cambridge is a nonprofit agency that helps people regain control of their debt. Plus add 1-800-CAMBRIDGE.

Walter Kroll background story

Welcome back, everyone, to The Cambridge Connection. I’m your host, Gordon Oliver, here with my co-pilot, Tina Marie, and it is my pleasure and honor to introduce my friend and special guest, Walter Kroll, who’s a partner with Macmillan Group. Welcome to The Cambridge Connection, Walter. Thank you very much. Glad to be here.

Glad to have you, Walter. Glad to be here. Yeah, this show is all about helping our listeners, family members, friends about financial wellness. Before we get into what you do exactly, can you give our listeners a little bit of your background? Sure.

Well, look, I grew up working for a living like everybody else. I worked- I’m sorry to hear that. No, yeah. I mean, grew up in Hadley working on a farm. That was my first job.

I was a dishwasher. I worked for Cumberland Farms for almost 15 years, stocking coolers, scrubbing floors, and then running a store and then having 15 stores report to me. So got into real estate later on. So I’ve been in real estate for the last 13 years. Wow.

13 years. Got in. I live in a Victorian house. My best friend and business partner, we got into house, I’ll call it house flipping. We had always talked about doing it.

We were both 100% employed and always talked about doing it. We did our first one. One turned into 10. He was already in real estate professionally. And so I had a chance to jump in myself 100%.

So I’m 100% self-employed. I’ve been doing this for 12 years on my own commercial property on a couple of residential duplexes and had the chance to join MacMillan as a partner. And I’ve been a professional commercial real estate agent for the last five years now. We had Gus on a couple of weeks ago from Domino’s. Same story.

He came over here, became a citizen, started working hard in the Domino’s. franchise and then worked his way up. And you know something? This is just a great story and message simply because we have this student loan mess going on. The cost of college is ridiculous.

And just to tell your story about how you did it was hard work. Started on a farm, worked your way up, learned, worked harder. And here you are today, a partner of a commercial real estate agency. I learned so much about. about interacting with people.

God, Cumberland Farms taught me so much about running a business, how you’re gonna lose money, how vendors are, just everything from vendors to cash management to hiring, firing, inventory control. I learned so much in so many different levels. And it was all from getting up before in the morning or working the shift no one wanted to work or staying after and, you know, swearing under my breath, but doing the work. All on the job, on the job training. And then when, you know, and it kind of comes first local because when you go the extra mile, if you’re working for someone who’s any good, they see that.

Absolutely. And then when they have a chance to reward you with either money or promotion, you know, they do because people are special and you really need people around you that are gonna hustle and that you can rely on now more than ever. Absolutely. So, you know, the lesson that I have, and, you know, I try and preach this to my kids is don’t worry about the money. The money’s gonna take care of itself.

Do the work. Because if you can show up and do the work, you’re gonna be recognized. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but you’re gonna stand out head and shoulders above other people because a lot of people just aren’t interested. What an asset you can become to a company by starting on the ground level and learning the business and having them see your work ethic, all the great things you brought to the table, learn as you go, train as you go, and then you become this amazing asset now that can manage 14 stores. I mean, that’s just an incredible story.

Yeah, well, for me, I needed that, right? So for me to be able to tell somebody something, I have to have kind of done it. Absolutely. And failed miserably. That’s very fair to say, though.

That’s very, you know, and as an employee, they have to recognize and actually appreciate somebody like you just as you did your superiors. Just think about the hierarchy of that company, right? From the corporate all the way down with all the stores they have to manage. Just think about how many actually good people that they need to work. And what better than somebody that started and learned the business, you know, from the, again, the ground up.

How Macmillan Group helps business owners

It’s just an incredible story. So because of the show, we do a lot of discussion for consumers and dealing with debt problems. Obviously, there are plenty of people that are entrepreneurs that want to start their own business, and eventually, if it’s not, you know, an online-type marketing service, they’re probably going to, at some point, have to look into buying some property or leasing some property. So at Macmillan, let’s talk about what your job is and how you help people that are looking for office space or commercial space. Sure, so like everything else, sometimes, I mean, people come to us from all walks of life.

We have people that come to us that do this by themselves. They’re entrepreneurs. They’re very comfortable finding their own location, buying their own building, leasing their own space, because they’re already in the business, so to speak, or they might be an investor and they own multiple properties, so they’re very experienced. I also get people that show up and they say, you know, look, I came out of COVID. I’ve been working for somebody else.

I don’t have the rest of my life. I’ve decided that I want to go and chase my dream now. I want to run my own restaurant. I want to have a delivery truck. So I don’t know all the ins and outs, but here’s my dream and here’s what I want to do, and I have experience in the industry, and so my business partner and I are out looking.

So obviously, the seasoned person, I’m going to have a high-level discussion about what their goals are. If it’s something that we’re selling, then I represent the seller. So for me, it’s how does this fit with him, answer any questions I have. If it’s somebody brand new and they’re looking for space and they haven’t been through this, part of me kind of becomes a business coach. I was going to say, there has to be a good amount of coaching for people that have just never gone through the process.

And yeah, so in a way to preserve my own time, I’ve come up with five questions in the beginning, and it usually tells me kind of where people are at. And depending on what the five questions are, that’s kind of where I start with them. Some people, the discussion is, hey, look it, you may not want to hear this, but you’re not really ready to look at space yet. You don’t have a business plan. You haven’t really sat down and thought about this.

You need to have goals about what your location is going to bring, what you can kind of afford once you have it. What are you going to invest? What is this location going to bring to you? You have a concept in your head, but you don’t have a written business plan. Here are some suggestions on things that you could maybe go and work to, whether it’s Valley Ventures or somebody like Nunzio Bruno, right?

Or a mentor, somebody that maybe you work for now or used to work for to sit down with and kind of draw it out. Like you need to kind of get in the weeds with stuff because once you begin, the other thing that people don’t understand is when you’re out looking for space, it’s a lot like a job interview. So if I represent the landlord and you come to me, Gordon, Gordon says, hey, you know, I’ve always wanted to run my own brewery. So me and my buddy are out looking for a place to do it. You know, we’re really passionate about this.

That landlord is going to interview you because he wants to make sure that you guys A, have a successful business, you have a business plan, you have experience. And then in month two or three, they’re not going to be chasing you for rent. So they’re not just looking at you. They’re going to look at all kinds of different people that are interested in that space. And what do you bring to that space?

How are you going to fit in with other people in the area? If you’re in a complex, do you bring synergy? What challenges are you going to bring? And again, it’s all those other stuff, right? The fear, the question marks.

So the more things that you kind of have together, A, the better you’re going to be in your business, right? B, when you go to a bank or an SBA or whoever, you’re going to have your, you know, your beep together, right? You’re going to have everything outlined because that’s what people are going to look for. And when you have to, that’s kind of the other half of this, is when you go to look for resources or money or whatever, or expertise, they want somebody that not just has a vision, but that’s actually put a plan together and says, wow, I get it. Yeah, so you’re pretty much selling yourself, not just your business.

Yeah, because it’s the whole thing. They’re going to look at the whole thing. Everybody likes a story, but when it comes down to dollars and cents, you got to be able to pay the rent. You got to be able to make sense. Right, there’s got to be some confidence there and it’s got to make sense.

Right. It’s got to make sense. So we’re up against a hard break. We’re going to take a quick one. And then when we get back, Walter, I think what we can do is, let’s go through the five questions.

Sure. And then let’s, from your experience, pros, cons, and do’s and do nots. Let’s see if we can come up with some things like, this is a national podcast, so there are going to be people in other states looking for resources on how they can build their business or get into this whole process. So let’s take a quick break. We’ll be right back.

This is Gordon Oliver with The Cambridge Connection. Are you having trouble paying down credit card debt? Cambridge has been helping people safely pay down their debts for more than 25 years without settlements or bankruptcy. Call us at 1-800-CAMBRIDGE. Welcome back, everyone, to The Cambridge Connection.

I’m your host, Gordon Oliver, here with my co-pilot, Tina Marie, and our special guest, Walter Kroll, principal at Macmillan Group. So again, you, from what we, our conversation you had mentioned, in COVID, people, there’s a lot of indications that people have just used that experience and this pandemic to take a look at what they want to do with the rest of their life, right? There’s a lot of changes in the business world about employee retention. So with someone that has a dream, let’s talk about dream to reality. So you said that there are some questions that you ask to really see where this prospect is at.

Five questions and business plans

And again, you’d know if it was a seasoned person that’s already been in business. You probably have recurring contacts because you’re an amazing friend and a tremendously professional businessman. You like that? Yeah, baby. Give me that 20.

Yeah, so for this person that wants to do this dream life change, wants to start their own business, for you, they’re now going to go look for space. Where do they start? What do you ask? Most of my questions start. Start off with, you know, how long have you been looking for space?

Are you in the industry now? Do you have a location now or is this your first one? You know, what’s your budget and what’s your investment budget? Those usually tell me right away where somebody’s at. Again, if it’s somebody that already owns property or has a location, they’re not shy.

They’re going to say, I’m this and I have five locations and I’m new in the market and I’m looking for this, this, and this. Or they’ll just ignore me and say, so look it, I’ve already seen the building and I know what the zoning is. And so, you know, he’ll start asking questions about the property itself, which tells me that I don’t need to worry about this person’s background. But budget is always the big one because one of the things that I’ve found is that talk is cheap and money talks. And so if you haven’t thought about a budget, you’re really not ready to be out looking for stuff.

If you haven’t set money aside, you’re really not ready to be looking for stuff. And the people that have, have gotten serious. They either got serious at some point in the past and they started saving money or they’ve gotten a loan or they have something from their family where they spoke to somebody and said, look, here’s what I want to do. Here’s my plan. And someone’s kind of pledged money or they’ve saved their money.

They’ve worked for someone else and said, you know what, I don’t want to do this forever. I think I can do this better and someday I’ll have my chance. So I’ve set some money aside and yeah, I don’t have my head around what I think the build out is going to cost, but this is what I have set aside. So you said business plan earlier too. So that would be business plan budget.

Yeah. So, so business plan really takes your dream and outlines the whole thing. So you’d have a market study. What’s my product? What’s the area you’re going to be?

How am I going to market? Who’s my target customer? What’s my budget? How much can I spend in rent every month? How many employees do I see having?

So they can articulate it. They should, they should have something in writing. If it’s a restaurant, they should have a menu. They should understand who else is in the marketplace, how they’re going to compete, what’s going to make them special. Right.

It doesn’t matter what it is, whether you’re insurance or restaurant or, or whatever. You should have all of this in writing on where you’re going to be and how you’re going to compete. Prior to actually even contacting you. Well, some people, but they don’t. And I’m okay with that because I asked my five questions.

And so we have a conversation and I, you know, if, if, if I can swing them in and spend the time great, if I can’t, then I kind of talk them through what I think they should do. Because some of this is the process of them, of figuring out what do things cost? Cause they don’t know what it costs. Cause who’s been out looking for commercial real estate if you never ran your own business before? That’s, that’s fair.

That’s why you hire somebody like me or you call somebody like me. Cause they do know. It reminds me of students borrowing like 150,000 to go to school when they’ve never really paid a bill before. It kind of reminds me, it’s the same. Yeah.

Like, well, okay, what do I do? Okay. What’s everybody else does? How’s it going to become whole? Right.

How’s it going to work? So I get the process of them wanting to go see places, but because then they can kind of see and help them visualize where it would be, how it would look, kind of what it would cost, what, what’s the process. So I can kind of talk them through that. So for most people, I don’t show them, but depending on who it is, sometimes I will spend the time and say, look at, I see some merit. Looks like you’ve got 70% here, you got some other stuff to work on, but come on, let’s, I’ll show you the space.

Representing landlords and tenants

Let’s talk through what you need to be ready with. And if you want to move forward, here are the things that you’re going to have to work on. So basically there are no guarantees. And if they pass all of the benchmarks to be able to get approved, have there been people that you’re seeing a business plan where you’re just like, as a realtor, you have to be confident that they’re going to be somewhat successful based on what they put together? Well, remember, I represent someone.

This isn’t my property. Right. So I do have commercial property. So I do have a process and that is my process, but I represent someone. So if I represent the landlord, I don’t really make the decision.

So what my job is, is to put everything together so that they have a complete picture of who the tenant is. They understand what, you know, what the kind of the basic wants of the landlord is when it comes to rent, things that they would pay for, things that they would allow. Do I think it would make sense based on my experience? Will they fit into the complex? I have them fill out a commercial application so the landlord can kind of get a feel for who they are, how long they’ve been in business, if they want to check references, they want to check credit, a written plan or at least a written summary of who they are so that when I present something to the landlord and say, hey, we have a tenant that’s interested in the space, here’s what I know, I’ve given them as complete a picture as I can, at least in the beginning, right, on paper and what I’ve talked to them about and how I feel about it.

Now, if they ask me, well, what’s your gut tell you, then I express that. But my job is to provide as much information to the landlord as possible for him to make order. Pretty much the black and white picture. Yeah. And then any questions that come back, well, what about this?

What about that? What about this? My job is to provide that picture for the landlord. If I represent the tenant, it’s this thing in reverse, but it’s still very, very important because again, it’s like a job interview. So you could hire me again, Gordon wants to run his own brew fest, right?

So it’s my job to go in the marketplace and best represent you as someone who’s going to be a great tenant. So with all of the experience of representing both the landlord and the tenant, for the people that may be looking to get into business that just have never done it before, what are some do’s and don’ts that you’ve experienced when it comes to helping people and coaching them? Make sure you have experience in whatever industry you’re in. It’s okay to have a dream about something, but get some experience. If you haven’t worked in it, if you want to run a restaurant and you never run a restaurant, go get some experience somewhere, work for somebody.

So if I just bought a beer kit and then came to you saying, Walter, I want you to find me a place where I can brew my own beer, you’d be like, okay, good. I’d say your backyard, it’s free and good luck. So I should become one of those- Well, Gordon’s taste buds are pretty articulate with beer, so- Yeah, no pumpkin. Pumpkin beer though. No, no pumpkin beer.

Not doing it. Oh gosh. So again, it comes down to, as a coach, you really in the transaction want everybody to be successful. Yeah. Right?

You want the new business owner or the business owner to be successful, whether they’re building out or opening a new location. I’m assuming, obviously, they already have a history of success, but going to a new location doesn’t always mean that that just is going to duplicate itself. I’m sure that’s part of the process of trying to find the right area, trying to find the right space. Yeah. That’s exactly right.

And again, my role as a real estate agent is to do the best I can for whoever I’m representing. Because my reputation is really everything in the marketplace. Absolutely. No question. We know what that is.

It’s phenomenal. But if you’re not so desirable tenants or you can’t answer a lot of questions about who the tenant might be to a landlord, you’re kind of not doing your job, right? And will you walk away from things just because you know it’s just not right, it’s not going to work, it’s going to probably stain your reputation? Does that happen? Most, yeah.

And you don’t really have to go too far, because there aren’t too many people that I work for that own property and don’t have good judgment and don’t have money, because those people don’t end up having money for very long or property. Sure. But generally, again, I will collect the information and present it. And usually it’ll be like, yeah, I’m passing on this. Now are there any other additional resources that you can provide, either the consumer or the tenant?

Or do you just kind of say, go on your merry way? No. I try and direct them. There’s lots of great places to go. So here in Springfield, there’s a place called Valley Ventures.

It’s a nonprofit. And they do mentoring and stuff, right? For entrepreneurs. Right. For entrepreneurs that have a dream.

Stick has the incubator center where you can get some help. There’s professional coaches you can go to. That’s where you should really cut your teeth and get input from people. If you’re out of college, there’s MBAs. I mean, I got my MBA from AIC in marketing.

There were lots of think tanks there where you had to write your own business plan. People would critique you and add to it. You know, the SBA is a great place from the government, especially, because at some point you’re going to need financing. So sit with an SBA rep. You can go to a bank and sit with somebody that specializes in small business.

We both know a mutual friend, Lisa Jablonski, a key bank that really talks about small business people. Find somebody that likes to support small business, because you’re going to want to have an understanding of how financing is going to go. And won’t the SBA have resources that like help people build business plans and things like that? They have some resources to point to? Yeah.

Contact info and Macmillan Group spotlight

They will. They’re more on the financing piece, but they will help on the business side of it. All right. So my friend, great conversation. Obviously we’re out of time, but before I let you go, please tell people where they can find you.

com, that’s our website. Our offices are in Tower Square. We serve Western Mass, the Berkshires, Greater Springfield, Hadley, Northern Connecticut, all the way down to Windsor, 413-246-1766 is my cell phone. If you have a question about commercial real estate, give me a call. Ladies and gentlemen, Walter Kroll, this is The Cambridge Connection.

We’ll be right back. Are you in the market to lease a space for your business? At Macmillan Group of Springfield, their brokers have over 70 plus years of leasing commercial real estate, whether it’s for your own business or you’ve got space to lease. And that’s not their only specialty. At Macmillan Group, they help their clients buy or sell commercial properties, parcels of land.

They also offer a broker opinion of value by providing a detailed market value report. So if you’re in the market to lease, buy or sell a commercial property, reach out to the Macmillan Group of Springfield and ask for Walter Kroll because no one knows commercial real estate like Walter. All right, Tina Marie, it’s another show. Here we are again, 28 minutes flies by. Welcome back, everyone, to The Cambridge Connection.

Recap and closing thoughts

What a really great show we had today. Yeah, very interesting. And I think a lot of people would get, I would hope a lot of people got a lot out of that conversation. Have a plan is pretty much. Here’s where, again, very simple, right?

Now that you’ve heard from an expert what needs to be done, if you have interest in putting a business together and you want to go out on your own, we’re not going to endorse anybody here, but if you just go on the internet and search business plan, all kinds of resources from templates to sample plans come up. And the SBA, believe it or not, when you Google it, is like the fifth one down. So Walter had mentioned the SBA because there are grants that are potentially out there for people to start businesses, but you have to have a plan. And if you asked me, dreams are wonderful, but it seems like to put this kind of a plan together when you’re actually going to go out on your own, it’s probably going to take a good six months of getting everything in a row to make sure you know, because once you go on your own, the bill’s getting paid for the businesses first and then you get paid second. And that’s what owners deal with.

And like anything, it’s an investment and a risk and you have to be prepared, not just willing to take the risk or to take the investment, but be prepared as well. I think an example, like if you were going to go into landscaping in the spring and you work for a landscaper and you know how to use all the equipment, right? I’m not suggesting that people go away from the person they’re working for, but that’s typically what happens. You become an expert with all the tools. And then are you now a business person expert, where you’re paying the bills while you’re learning all the tools, right?

So there’s other skills that have to be learned there, right? Yes. Not just knowing how to mow a lawn. Yes. All right, Tina.

I’ve got our quote for the week. Success is not final. Failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts. Winston S.

Churchill. Perfect. Yeah, baby. Perfect for our topic today. And it’s time to close the show.

A huge thank you to Walter Kroll, our guest, Leah and Lisa, our producers. As you can see, we have great experts on the show and always on the horizon. m. com and click on podcasts or you can search where you listen to your favorite podcast shows. org or feel free to call 1-800-CAMBRIDGE.