Data Integrity with Jeremy Woods

Ryan: today on the podcast? We have our good friend, Jeremy Woods. He is an EVP at CBRE real estate firm in Indianapolis. 

Ryan: So what is one thing you wish more people knew about using data to make better

Ryan: decisions? 

Jeremy: Yeah. I would say the, the one thing is. And this is probably something that most don’t think about, but it just always, it never fails to, uh, you know, kind of excite me is, and it sounds, it sounds maybe kind of silly, but I just get excited about, you know, taking the data, taking the information and, and then figuring out what it, what it’s telling me to do.

Jeremy: Right. So, so in our business, there’s just, there’s a lot of lease comp information. You know, this deal was done at five dollars a square foot. This deal was done at four dollars a square foot. This was this type of building. This was that type of building. I just love to take and compile all the information, which is kind of like a, a bit of a, uh, Well, that’s a challenge in and of itself.

Jeremy: Then coming up with the metrics to see what all of this, all these data points are saying. You know, what are the trends? What are the rents in the southwest side versus the northwest side? So it’s, I think people Maybe it’s the difficulty in compiling that information. So they never get to the joy of saying, Oh, wow, that that’s what it says.

Jeremy: But that’s what I wish people would know is that, yeah, there’s some, there’s some really cool stuff on the other end of gathering the data.

Ryan: Yeah, I absolutely love that. I think one of the things that was most interesting to me about your experience with data is that it contains such a large component of primary research. There are a lot of folks, um, within big and small companies and their, their business kind of generates that data for them.

Ryan: That could be, you know, financial or supply chain or something else. And so they’re really trying to dig in and look at the trends, but you actually get to be a part of the creation

Ryan: portion of that. Tell me a little bit about that. 

Jeremy: Yeah, it’s true. Um, And yeah, it’s a, it’s an interesting point you make because, and I hadn’t really thought about that, but yes, when you’re in a big company, and actually I do think about it because even CBRE, hopefully, you know, the, the top brass isn’t listening to this. I mean, I’m an independent contractor and a broker.

Jeremy: They kind of call us the gunslingers out there in the, in the field. But, um, you know, they rely on some big data sets, some big systems that they never really had any, any. Direct act of participating in. So what’s, what I love about what we do is we’re the ones out actually doing the, the transactions.

Jeremy: We’re the ones negotiating the lease rates, for example, which everyone wants to know after the fact, you know, what space leasing for in this market. So we’re the ones creating that. And then most. Of the folks in my position, just kind of, that’s what really lights their fire. That’s their passion. Of course, that’s what, when the rubber hits the road, that’s how you make your living.

Jeremy: I like to take it a step further and actually compile the information, create a platform to repository, you know, like a repository of information, which is what you helped me create in Power BI. So that I can, first off, so I can just. Set it in there, forget about it. No, I can call on the information later in the form of metrics.

Jeremy: What was 2023 like? What was 2022 like compared to 2024? So I like to do the deals, create the original research as you refer to it, and then actually compile it. And then. Use my relationships with my peers. The other Jeremy Woods is at my competitive firms that I can’t do all the deals. I wish I could or did.

Jeremy: Um, but you know, you have to rely on your peers, um, to say, Hey, I did deal with Acme Sprockets, you want to trade that comp for XYZ Corp that you did. And then boom, now we both have both deals that happened.

Ryan: That’s, that’s really interesting. So one of the, the other things that I think is really unique about some of the work that you’ve done is that it is also kind of, uh, reporting as marketing tool. Um, I think, again, there are a lot of folks that most of the reports they build are either to inform an existing customer of the status of something or to help them make a decision or something internal.

Ryan: Uh, your work has been really unique with data. I think you found a really cool new space to use. Can you tell me a little bit about how the stuff that you’ve built allows you to interact with prospects and new

Ryan: customers? 

Jeremy: So, so I guess I would go back to, and I’ll try not to use too much like jargon or lingo because the jargon and lingo is as unique to each market as like, languages to, you know, to countries oftentimes. So, um,

Jeremy: what I think what I did early on was I, I looked at the market and I said, look, you know, Indianapolis, if you counted, well, let’s start with the commercial real estate umbrella.

Jeremy: Right. So commercial real estate has, has different, uh, uh, disciplines within it. So it includes office space, which you’re hearing about a lot today. It includes retail. It includes, uh, multifamily like apartments. It includes self storage even, and then it includes industrial warehouses, which we heard a ton about during COVID.

Jeremy: Um, And so the first thing you need to do is determine you can’t in a market like Indianapolis, you can’t be a retail guy, an office guy, an industrial guy. Well, you could, but you wouldn’t be very good at it in my opinion. I wouldn’t recommend you use that person, but, um, so you really have to kind of specialize.

Jeremy: So you have to pick one. So I picked the food group of industrial. And then what I did was just take it a step further because you could be within the industrial umbrella. There’s all kinds of different subsets within the industrial. It’s, you know, you could be a manufacturing specialist. You could be a data center specialist, which is also in the news these days.

Jeremy: You could be an office warehouse guy, which are kind of the smaller units. I chose the biggest, why not, you know, just choose the biggest buildings that are the most impressive looking. And we call that type four modern bulk. Um, and I live it. I literally have a car and my license plate says type four. No one knows what it means.

Jeremy: Even my friends who are in this business and specialize, but they’re like, what is type four? What’s that? Is that the type? I’m like, type four. It’s the space we lease. Oh, got it. So anyway, so, so I really think you need to immerse yourself into it. So, so when you take it down from commercial to

Jeremy: industrial to a specific product type within industrial, now you can really build a platform to, to, Show clients and prospects, and whether it’s a tenant looking for a space or an owner looking to find a tenant for their space or a developer looking to build the right building to fit the market.

Jeremy: I use this CIR, as I call it, the Competitive Intelligence Report. To market, that’s all I use to market myself. That’s it. I mean, and when you think about it, why would you want to hire me? You don’t want to hire me for a bunch of flashy collateral. You want to know what the information is. If I’m going to build a building, how much am I going to lease it for?

Jeremy: You know, what should I build? 

Ryan: I’ve been picking real estate agents based off of park

Ryan: benches. 

Jeremy: well, those real estate agents, yeah, are on your shopping cart. It’s like, well, at least he has enough money to advertise on a shopping cart. Maybe he’s successful. Let’s hire him, you know? And so, so yeah, there’s, there’s that, but the, the, um, And then it’s just these days that the lone wolf, you know, broker, kind of the solo practitioner.

Jeremy: Yes, they exist. But when you’re working at the higher levels of marketing buildings that are worth, you know, a hundred million dollars, you know, your clients really expect a team. And so we took it a step further and we call her our data wrangler, Gwen, who, you know, um, She doesn’t know, or she knows real estate now, but she’s just very good at basically wrangling all the data that all of our team throws at her.

Jeremy: And we created the platform of the CIR to kind of display it. And then we send out the CIR every month. Um, and I have for the past, boy, it’s been a couple of decades now, but it’s really evolved with the marketplace. When we started, there wasn’t Power BI, you know, it was a, it was a

Jeremy: Excel spreadsheet, um, and, uh, it wasn’t as early as Lotus Notes, but, uh, and then, uh, a PowerPoint.

Jeremy: You know, so we’ve really evolved it and you’ve helped us do that. So

Ryan: Yeah, that’s awesome, man. I think that there doesn’t seem to be anything that would make me more confident in working with someone than like you sit down and they’re like Here’s all the information right in front of you, right? We’re not gonna make estimates You can see all the come, you know comparative information.

Ryan: You can see everything. No granted, right? I

Ryan: work in data So in data, 

Jeremy: yeah. Yes. Yeah.

Ryan: I think it’s such a cool idea that You’re showing this person, hey, here’s tangible evidence that we know exactly what we’re talking about. You can immediately build trust and also probably build a lot of interest, right?

Ryan: They’re probably going to start wanting to ask you a ton of

Ryan: questions,

Jeremy: Oh, yeah Yeah, it’s cuz once you show them something as you probably know and you went through the process with me of building it It’s just like how you can dive deep, right? But but it’s interesting because when I I try to break things down to the simplest You know, elements, right. And, you know, that’s what scientists did until they got to the quantum level.

Jeremy: And then they got scared and said, ah, forget it. It that’s too small. You know, it’s like, yeah, it’s like, wait a second. There’s only a 30, 36 chance that electron is going to be in that spot at this time. Okay. Forget that. Let’s stick to the bigger stuff. So, so you can go too small, right?

Ryan: think there’s some of them hanging out underground

Ryan: in Geneva that are still trying to figure stuff out, but Yeah. I 

Jeremy: Or maybe they have, and

Jeremy: they’re all like manipulating us. Like we’re like puppets on a string, but anyway, that’s a 

Ryan: This, this, this

Ryan: podcast is gonna turn into Joe 

Jeremy: Oh yeah, I was going to say that’s a whole nother podcast, but so break it down to the smaller level. Like we talked about, you know, commercial, industrial type four within Indianapolis.

Jeremy: Right. But then,

Jeremy: um, I don’t, we got the laughing about that. I kind of forgot where I was going with this, but, um, yeah. Okay. So, so here, you know, when you think about real estate. There’s not a whole, I don’t want to give it away like it’s so easy, but it really kind of is easy, but it can get really, really difficult.

Jeremy: It depending on how far you want to go down the rabbit hole down to that quantum level. And we try to get to that quantum level and then stop. But when you think about it, so, so real estate, I could go into any market. It is my You know, claim to my personal fame. Not that I tell people this, but I tell it to myself.

Jeremy: I could go to Phoenix. I could go to New York. I could go to any market, apply my system, and I’ll become, I will become an expert in a much, much quicker timeframe than it typically would be purported. Like to be an expert, like a lot of guys in our business. Oh, you got to do this for five years before you can pay your mortgage.

Jeremy: I, you know, that may be true, but I think that the system that we run, you, you could get up to speed much, much quicker and probably exceed some people who have been in that market for decades, because if you have the platform and, and know how to populate it and where I’m going with this is basically real estate simple.

Jeremy: Once I define, I’m an industrial guy, I’m type 4, I have a bunch of criteria. That type 4 building has to be 28 foot clear or greater. It has to be 100, 000 square feet or larger. It has to have this size truck courts. So then all you have to do is figure out what buildings within that market fit that criteria.

Jeremy: Then you just plop those buildings into your database that you built. Um, and then you just track what happens to it. Okay, that building exists, who’s in it? What rent are they paying? When is their lease up? Right? Yeah, so, and it’s really just, it’s, it’s the box defining what boxes you’re gonna track. Who moves in and out of that box?

Jeremy: And that’s kinda it, but, but with those triggers, if you will, that, that creates a cascade of information. Right. That you’ve learned terms like absorption and occupancy and effective occupancy. Like we’ve taken it to a level of just taking those simple events and then showing everything we can possibly think of to create a metric.

Jeremy: To try to figure out what’s going on. Is the, are these buildings leased because they have a certain number of, this is dumb, but dock doors, uh, do, is there a ratio? Is there a magic or is it just, you know, I don’t know. Is the southwest side better than the northwest side? That sort of thing, right? Mm-Hmm.

Ryan: one of the things that you just touched on, I think is universally applicable. So you were talking about how, you know, if you moved markets, right? It’s not like overnight you’re going to be, you know, Mr. Wizard. But I think that, you know, You talked about the speed and that’s really one of the things that we see everywhere, not just with, with real estate anywhere is what using data in kind of a modern way means is not just.

Ryan: Filling up a gigantic database that’s so large that no one can do anything with it or running all of these advanced fancy machine learning models, which are cool and have awesome applications. We’re seeing a lot of those cool applications kind of in, you know, popular culture right now, but I have always found that doing simple well.

Ryan: Is the low hanging fruit for most people and when you’re able to look at a large complicated interdependent system Our human brains weren’t really designed to do an excellent job with that right like if I just like Plopped you on the street in downtown india with no computer. No, nothing. It was like Hey, tell me everything, right?

Ryan: It’d take you a long time to get that figured out. Whereas when we have that data and you’re able to aggregate it and slice and dice and really dig in and interrogate it, that puts you in a position where you’ve translated the real world, which is messy and kooky into like clean, structured information that your brain can digest quickly.

Ryan: And so that

Ryan: gives you that speed advantage. 

Jeremy: Yeah. And I, I agree with you up to the point of like, so here’s a couple of points I want to make when, and I love these podcasts and I love podcasts in general because I’ve done so many interviews with, you know, newspaper people, reporters, and I’ll spend sometimes literally like 45 minutes with them and we will talk about.

Jeremy: All kinds of things. I’ll read their article and it makes me look like I have no idea what I’m talking about. They literally put everything in there. They missed everything, every point, every point that I wanted to make. So, so I wanted to make that point real quick that I love this because everybody can just listen for themselves in a long format.

Jeremy: and take what they want from it. So, so that’s kind of a side point, but it’s related to you dropping me in the middle of Indianapolis. Like I could, if I had my phone, I could like Google things and say, okay, well, where’s the industrial product? And I’d probably go to a, a, a system that’s called CoStar, which is the biggest, that it’s almost like a monopoly.

Jeremy: It’s CoStar compiles, uh, you know, metrics and data. Um, but I always test these systems by, back when I was working for a developer, and these groups come in and I said, Okay, if you want me to buy your system, tell me every building that I own. Right now. You got your system. You got your laptop up. Tell me every building that I own.

Jeremy: And so they enter them. Okay This is such and such a company. Yeah, here you go. You own this much square footage It’s like no I don’t I own a lot more than that and I own way more buildings than you say I do So I can only assume and I’m gonna get back to that the articles that I talked about and the reporters I can only assume if the accuracy of Of the data that I know intimately, is that wrong?

Jeremy: That all of their data is equally inaccurate. Does that make sense? 

Ryan: Hmm. 

Jeremy: No. So if they’re off on my portfolio by 45%, I can only assume that that’s probably about their average because the portfolio that I, it’s right out there. They can, you know, they can gather that information. So I assume that there are only, you know, 45 percent they’re off by 45 percent across all of their stuff.

Jeremy: And even the stuff I don’t know about. And then where I’m going with the article and the reporter is I know my business cold. I would hope like when it, with respect to Indianapolis Modern Bulk, I spent an hour with them to give them to try to transfer that knowledge. They wrote an article that had nothing.

Jeremy: To do with anything that I said. So I can only assume that other things in the world that I don’t know anything about that were written by someone else is perhaps equally as wrong. And where I’m going with that, Ryan, is our model in our industry is I love analogies and the analogy is to transportation.

Jeremy: So our, how our industry handles research is first they outsource it. Okay. And it’s like we were talking before. It’s like it’s as preposterous as outsourcing exercise. Like Ryan, you do those curls for me and I’m going to watch my biceps get huge. It’s like that doesn’t work that way. You got to do your own.

Jeremy: Research, you got to do your own exercise if you want to get the, uh, the, uh, the benefits. And so the way our industry works is it’s, it’s like a bus. It’s like putting Lewis Hamilton, like the pro F1 driver knows how to drive like no other and saying, okay, Lewis, to get where you want to go, you got to get on this bus.

Jeremy: Okay. I get to drive. No, no, no. You don’t, you don’t get to drive. We got a bus driver driving this thing. You just sit with everybody else in the back there in the bus and the seats. And you just shout out to the driver where you want to go. Like that’s, that’s the analogy for real estate metrics. So you got these huge companies like the bus, and then they want you to get on their bus and then tell them what’s going on.

Jeremy: Like, tell me what Jeremy, that deal you did. Tell me about that. And then they take my information and then they compile it. Maybe it’s accurate. Maybe it’s not because again, it’s that third party. And then they disseminate it to everybody else for a price. So why would I do that? I want to build, so our model is I’m an F1 racer.

Jeremy: I’m going to build an F1 race car purpose built for the track in Dubai or the track in Austin or whatever. Right. So it’s purpose built for the market. I’m driving it. Cause I’m the only one who knows how to drive it and I’m not going to pay anyone else and ride in a big lumbering bus and hope I get to where I want to go.

Jeremy: You know, so that’s kind of,

Ryan: Well, I mean, I think, I think the proof is in the pudding for you there. Like, I mean, you’ve using the CIR has been really successful for you, right?

Jeremy: yeah, I believe so. I believe so. I mean, we, you know, if you look at agency listing market share or what have you of our team. You know, we have a, you know, we’re, we’re definitely a dominant, uh, player in that arena. And it is primarily geared towards, you know, if you owned a big warehouse building and you wanted a tenant, that’s really who it’s geared for.

Jeremy: Or if you were building one and you wanted to know what to build, where to build it, how much you’re going to get. That sort of thing that that’s really who it’s geared for, but it also helps occupiers immensely, right? Because it has all the information of who, what all those other like kind occupiers are paying in the market.

Ryan: So what do you, I mean, it sounds like you’re kind of rocking and rolling. Like, what do you see as your biggest challenge? Like what’s the next hurdle with data?

Jeremy: Yeah. I guess the biggest challenge is just. You know, when, when people see data as just a commodity, like it’s just as good to take that big bus with that group as it is to drive an F1 race car. I mean, I don’t, to me, there’s like no different. There’s no comparison, right? It’s like, I know what I want to do. And it’s just, but it’s hard to You know, to, to escape the fact that people look at you as maybe like you’re a commodity.

Jeremy: Like you, like you said, Ryan, I got my residential guy off the grocery cart at the grocery store. I don’t, I don’t know. I guess maybe he, like I said, maybe he’s got enough money at least to advertise on a grocery cart. Maybe he’s good at what he does. I don’t know. So I, I, it’s, that’s always been an issue.

Jeremy: And I think going forward, it could be an issue and probably with like, AI and all of that, you know, could people see, hey, we don’t need. You know, brokers anymore, right? Why? I don’t need that. I get all this information from AI, but you know, until, until an AI robots doing all that I’m doing, showing space, telling them the differences of the market and so on and so forth, and then populating the data, they still need us, the ones doing the deals, the guys in the trenches, you know, that to provide that level of transparency to the marketplace. Because, you know, when you’re in a million square foot

Jeremy: building, there’s a big difference between paying five bucks a square foot and 4. 62 that, you know, do the math, that’s a lot of money, uh, over a long period of time. So I want to work with the guys who can tell me, you need to pay 4.62, not the five bucks that someone’s asking, you know? 

Ryan: yeah, yeah. A hundred percent. I mean, I, uh, obviously have never bought, well, maybe not, obviously. I don’t know, but I don’t own any super large, you know, commercial real estate in Indianapolis or anywhere else. Um, so my only experience was buying the house that I’m in right now. And prior to, yeah, well. Prior to that, I had kind of been like, I had just had like some experiences where like we’re renting a place and someone opens the door and hands me some paperwork and I’m paying them a couple grand and I was like, Okay, not quite sure what that was for.

Ryan: I probably could use that money. And it wasn’t until I bought a house that I really understood like the meaningful value. I actually view what You do for work with what I do for work. So I’m a business intelligence and tech and data consultant and a large part of what I’m doing is showing people what to expect and advising them on what other people are doing, how the system works, all of that.

Ryan: So we ended up having this phenomenal real estate agent. You just kind of don’t know what you’re getting yourself into. Like, I’m sure you’ve done it so many times that it’s like you could, you know, go from discovery to closing, you know, with your eyes closed. But for, you know, just Joe Schmo, I’d never bought a house before.

Ryan: And so, I think what you’re really doing is you’re being a trusted advisor to that person where you can say, hey, this is how the system works, you know, ah, they’re gonna squeeze you for five grand here, don’t worry about it, you’ll get it back over here. And so When I think about that, I see how the reporting that you’ve built only furthers your ability to play that role of trusted advisor.

Ryan: Number one, because you get to build the trust, right? Like if I sat down with someone that had all that, I’d be like, Whoa, you got your ducks in a row. And then if I found out you did all the research yourself, I’d be like, Holy cow, you know? But then also that advising part. So. You get to kind of put this reporting that sits on top of your primary research in front of people and watch them go through that process.

Ryan: So, that’s a really cool picture into how people use data to make decisions. Like, what have you learned from getting to watch that process

Ryan: so many times? 

Jeremy: Yeah, I’ve learned, well, usually the comment is, is, wow, you know, this either just looks really good and it’s flashy and there’s just numbers on here and they could be totally wrong, but wow, it looks good. I’m going to work with you anyway. And let’s face it, no database is perfect and no data is perfect, but there’s definitely different levels.

Jeremy: But usually the comment is, is because you, you know, it is a relationship business, right? And everybody has And that’s another challenge that you can bring up, right? It’s like, everybody has a brother in law or sister in law that’s a realtor or whatever, but it’s like, I don’t know, are they good at what they do?

Jeremy: But, you know, sometimes I don’t know if I’d mix family and real estate myself, but you know, I guess where I’m going with this is the comment about the CIR is why isn’t anyone else doing something like this? And, and I’ve said this to you many times, cause it’s really, really hard. It’s, it’s, you know, I’ve, I said it was simple.

Jeremy: But it’s, it’s really hard once you get past that simplicity, like it’s, it’s hard to define a building, you know, how do you figure out what the clear height is? It’s, how do you figure out how big it was? You know, it, and it takes time. And when you’ve been doing it for a long time, oftentimes you are the one that That precipitated that building being built.

Jeremy: So you know exactly how big it is because you’ve got all the plans for it. You know exactly what the rents are and it’s just, you said, you know, it’s that you had a good realtor working with you on your home. And it’s interesting because that’s been in the news lately, right? A lot of your listeners might say, Oh, great.

Jeremy: I heard the national association of realtors got sued and now they, now we’re going to save a bunch of money on selling our house. It’s like, okay. So Ryan, you, you own a house, right? And you’re going to go sell it and you would have had to pay a 6 percent fee. I’m just making this up. Right. And that 6 percent fee, half of it goes to your listing agent.

Jeremy: Half of it would go to the agent of the buyer that’s coming to buy your house. Right. All right. That’s kind of how it works. And you know, my house is worth whatever it’s worth, you know, uh, uh, 100, 000. Well, it’s 500, 000. And 6 percent of that is going to go to the agents that helped me out. But how do you know your house is worth five?

Jeremy: Maybe it’s worth. 600, 000. You know, the market’s changed. So I think people are so concerned about looking once they learn the market and, Oh, my house is worth 600, 000. Thanks, Ryan. Then they start to talk about your fee. It’s like, wait a second. You, you were going to sell your house for 500 a minute ago. I told you it’s worth six.

Jeremy: My fee is only whatever, 20 grand. I’m making these numbers up. You just made, I just made you 80, 000. So, so that’s the part that gets really with humans. It’s like they, once they learn some information that’s theirs, they, but they forget that they just learned that from you. And then now they just want to talk about that.

Jeremy: What’s next, like the fees and the, you know what I mean? So that’s definitely a 

Ryan: Well, yeah, I think it’s, it’s interesting, you know, there’s definitely human psychology behind that, which I’m dubiously. Qualified to talk about, but I do think that it’s it definitely is interesting also being in the professional services industry Around kind of like how you price things and how you talk about things changes a lot Of the way that people think about paying for services, you know what I mean?

Ryan: For example, if if you know, somebody wants me to come in and build something like do labor You They’re willing to pay for that. Pretty comfortably. They’re just like, I get X, X is worth Y, I’m paying

Ryan: Z. Sounds like a good 

Jeremy: Yeah, they can see that value. They can see what you’re doing. Hours equals dollars. Got it. Yeah.

Ryan: On the other hand, there are a lot of engagements that we do where we’re focused on, uh, data strategy. Um, which a lot of people think is very different from business strategy, but it’s really not. Um, I don’t think that data or tech or anything is like this separate business division. Um, they’re just tools that we should use.

Ryan: to make our business help achieve its objectives. And so, you know, we’ll come in and we’ll talk to people about what their business strategy is and how data can help them achieve that. And kind of the same thing, right? Like we’ll have a couple of conversations and they’re like, all right, thanks. know, so it’s, um, it really is.

Ryan: There’s this kind of interesting psychology around, um, you know, how do we sell information that is really interesting, right? It’s an interesting side conversation to kind of data. Cause that’s, that’s really what we’re talking about, right? It’s like, when we take this information and we make it readily accessible to people, you know, how do we strike the right balance of making sure that that’s like a sustainable thing that keeps generating value

Ryan: for people? 

Ryan: Um, need to like, like with the CIR, like how,

Jeremy: you know, we, it started off as Like literally like a placemat where we, cause we would always have lunch with clients and we made it, Hey, let’s just laminate our report. And it’s literally a placemat that they can eat as we sit and talk and have lunch.

Jeremy: There’s my laminated CIR placemat. This was back when, you know, laminating machines were like the high tech thing. Um, But, you know, so it went from that 11 by 17 two page thing to a one page overview in Power BI was the evolution. But as you know, I’ve got designs, like, I just give them the overview of the market.

Jeremy: The deep dive stuff comes in pages 2, 3, 4, maybe 5, 6, 7 down the road. And so, but you have to have that level of commitment, you know, assigned client. To get that deeper dive. Otherwise you’re just given away, you know, all of your, your knowledge, which is really in my business, that’s really all you have. I mean, you sure they want to work with someone that they like, but you know, once you get that out of the way, you know, that, that information is really, really valuable.

Jeremy: It took a lot of time and effort to gather it. And the accuracy of it is going to lead to clients making significant amounts of money, huge returns. Um, and so, and if, and if they, if they use bad information, it can lead to equally disastrous results. And so, so that’s like, I don’t, like when we start talking about fees and stuff, like I don’t get like commissions, of course, that, that at some point that has to come up, but that that’s, I get so excited just trying to share my knowledge and, and my experience with my clients.

Jeremy: Cause I, Oh, wow, they’re listening to actually what I have to say. I know I’ve had a lot of success. That’s what really gets me pumped up and excited. And, and, And then when you start talking about, I’m like, ah, and then you start talking about fees and it’s like, you ruin the whole moment, you know, it’s like, wait a second.

Jeremy: I was about, we, we’re on track to give you a 28 percent return on your investment. And then now we’re talking about this, you know, because that’s what people can, they get that. Wait a second. I gotta, I gotta pay out this much money, you know? Um, so yeah, we’re going off on a tangent there, but, but I totally get it.

Jeremy: How do you quantify your value? You know, and to the extent that you can do a better job than the next person about quantifying that and demonstrating that, I think, you know, is going to lead to great success. And, and the CIR is just one of the things that we use as an overview, kind of get in the door.

Jeremy: Hey, you want more? Well, let’s take it to the next level of commitment, right? Um, for the deep dive stuff.

Ryan: yeah. So as you, you’re talking a lot more about, you know, those interactions where kind of the rubber meets the road of folks kind of looking at your reporting and then making decisions around, you know, should I build? Should I not build? Where should I build? Should I buy? All of that stuff. Over time, you’ve become an expert, not just in your market, but in the data and in how to aggregate it.

Ryan: So you’ve kind of distilled, you know, your niche into this, you know, one to two pages of information. How do you watch people digest that? Like, how are they handling that? I mean, presumably some of these people are pretty smart. You know, they’re large scale investors and developers. How are you seeing smart people interact with this stuff

Ryan: and make decisions? 

Jeremy: Yeah, that, well, I guess it’s important to understand where real estate, we talked about how I picked my specialty and the umbrella of commercial real estate, but within the industrial sector, when you look at a company that has a distribution center, they look at. They’re looking at what’s their overall logistic spend.

Jeremy: And it doesn’t matter what company it is, right? Like pharmaceutical companies, everybody has to, and we all know this now because of COVID, everybody has to deal with supply chain issues. We all know that about those now, like they always were there. We just,

Jeremy: Particularly in the United States, we just did such a good job of going, you know, you can walk into CVS and pick up your favorite, whatever, bottle of Aleve tablet.

Jeremy: You don’t care where it came from. You never thought about it. You just, I know it’s on that shelf. I’m going to go pick it up and I’m going to pay for it. But only when it’s not on that shelf do you say, what the heck is going on? And.

Ryan: have been pretty good

Ryan: for us here for a

Jeremy: Right. So you get, now we know why, what happens? Well, you know, when the shipping container doesn’t show up at Long Beach and it doesn’t get on the train to go to Chicago and it doesn’t go dray down from Chicago to Indy to the distribution center, it doesn’t go from the distribution center to the store shelf.

Jeremy: That’s why it’s not on the shelf. Like if one thing happens within that chain, it just disrupts everything. So, so I, you know, I say that because real estate itself is. Is only about 5 percent of that whole logistics picture. So as much as I love real estate, I kind of was bummed out when I heard that. I’m like, Oh, you know, man, I’m only 5 percent of the pie, but you know, transportation is by far the largest 50, 55, even more percent for a lot of companies, so transporting it from A to B when, when teleportation is invented.

Jeremy: But, um, there you go. I’m, I’m. Forget it. Um, I have to retire. 

Ryan: to retire. 

Jeremy: So, so once the transportation model is solved and they say, Ooh, based on our transportation, Indy is the best spot. Cause that’s where we’ll minimize the outbound transportation and the inbound transportation. Then they worry about their labor.

Jeremy: Like who’s going to work in my distribution center? That’s probably 20 percent of it. Then they, then they’re worried about their inventory or their taxes on the inventory based on, you know, the municipality based on where I send it, that sort of thing. So then it works all the way down to literally the bot is real estate.

Jeremy: Now it’s still very expensive, right? Like I said, that million square foot facility at five bucks a square foot, you know, that’s, that’s a lot of money annually and you’re signing a long term lease. So, so it matters. But I say all this because there’s so much got them to that point to where they’re looking at my CIR data.

Jeremy: And then they’re like, maybe they’re relieved because they’re like, whoa, at least this is transparent. This is clear. Jeremy’s shown me exactly what these spaces should lease for, what the owner will give me as an occupier to improve my space and build it out, how long a term I should sign. So it’s kind of, I would hope it’s kind of a relief and a refreshing thing because they’ve just gone down this road to, you know, the final stop is where do I put this distribution center? At least Jeremy has this covered. So I think they may be, I would hope would be relieved. Uh, at least knowing that they are not, they have the peace of mind knowing that they’re getting a market deal or better on their real estate. Just like you with your house, right? There’s so much that you’re thinking about.

Jeremy: You know, the movers, the, Oh, we’re moving away from family. And, you know, I got this new job and yeah, you’re, but of course, at some point you’re concerned with how much you’re paying for your house. And if your agent is just awesome and they just, they get it and they empathize. Hey, I just moved myself. I forgot how, what a pain it was, but I’m going to tell you, Ryan, at least, you know, that you’re getting a good deal on this house.

Jeremy: That to me is worth, I mean, it’s just, it’s hard to quantify that.

Ryan: Yeah, it really is. You know, you, especially in, um, you know, there are a lot of fields, uh, mine being one of them where there’s this concept of, uh, information asymmetry. So I know what I’m talking about a lot. You. maybe surface level, if anything. And you have the money and have to make the decisions, right?

Ryan: You know, the typical example of this is like, you know, like the car mechanic or, you know, something like that. I mean, like, don’t get me wrong. I, I, you know, enjoy taking stuff apart and tinkering with it, you know, uh, as much as the next guy. But, um, When it comes to a transmission rebuild, I’m really at the mercy of this person telling me that I need to do this or don’t need to do this.

Ryan: And so there’s like a lot of, uh, fear, right? Like, am I going to get taken advantage of? Is this going to be the right deal? And I really think the real estate market is one of those, right? Like you talked about, you are really, you’re not just a broker of locations. You’re a broker of information. And, um, So helping to clear up that information asymmetry is just going to like turn the trust into a lock.

Ryan: At least, like you said, like at least in, in your, Jeremy’s small portion of the world, there’s at least like clarity and trust.

Jeremy: Yes. Yep. Yeah, that’s exactly right. And, uh, yeah. And that’s always the challenge. And it’s funny because whenever someone’s calling me to sell their services, I just geek out. I think to myself, if this person only knew this about me and my industry, um, they, they would crush it. They, they would be able to focus in like when such and such becomes a, uh, a such, receives a certain title at this company.

Jeremy: That actually triggers all kinds of things for that person. Like they no longer are an employee. Now they’re a independent contractor. Like if, if people knew that they would be able to say, Ooh, I’m going to specifically work for the, you know, I know that that’s the triggering event. These are the things that they’re going to be thinking about.

Jeremy: I’m just going to call them and just talk about those things because that’s all that they’re thinking about, right? I don’t know if that makes sense. So, so yeah, so we 

Jeremy: have to, right. 

Jeremy: We have to figure out where are, where like your asymmetry is, you know, a lot about what you do, but how do you, how does that, where does that overlap with meeting Jeremy where he is right now, right? 

Ryan: Yeah,

Ryan: Well, you know, honestly, in, in my business, we try to do something actually very similar to what you do. And you see, I think a lot of experts that are You know, whether it’s in my space or any space, my experience is that the successful ones try to give as much of that information transparently as makes financial sense.

Ryan: So for example, right, you’ll see me or lots of other people going out and doing a lot of kind of content creation. Marketing so going out and talking about hey, what’s the latest and greatest? Hey, what’s you know old reliable that still works? What’s the balance between the two? How should you think about X Y or Z?

Ryan: Like hey, you’re new to this you’re making decision Here’s kind of a you know five easy steps to get from where you’re at to making a decision that will be good for you Like what are the important things? What’s the 20 percent that gets the 80 percent of the way all that 

Jeremy: mm hmm. 

Ryan: Um, you know, so I think you’ve, you’ve kind of just tapped into building that trust across the asymmetry.

Ryan: You’ve just done it in like a really cool and

Ryan: data empowered way. 

Jeremy: Yeah, it’s kind of the book. I don’t I can’t remember who wrote it the speed of trust, you know So like if if

Jeremy: the the trust factor like there’s a huge gap if you just call me cold I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you do I don’t know what you’re selling all I know is I want to get you off the phone or out of my face Yeah, but Hey, Jeremy, you know, I’m so and so.

Jeremy: I’m actually, I’m your such and such’s brother in law’s friend. Oh, okay. So you have a little bit of trust there, so you bought yourself a little bit. You’ve eaten into that gap of trust. And then You, you, you show them like a CIR and you’re like, then that’s like, whoa, then maybe that closes that gap of trust maybe all the way or partially the way.

Jeremy: And just, that’s what we use the information for is to close, you know, they don’t know you. They’ve never used your service before. So you, you have to close that gap of trust immediately. Whereas if I was, if I called my dad and I said, dad, you’re looking for a distribution center. Can I represent you? I, I, that would stink if he said, no, I mean, come on dad, you’re my dad.

Jeremy: Right. So how, so how do Hey, well, what’s your rate, 

Ryan: Jeremy? You’re like, come on, man. 

Jeremy: I think so and so at such and such a company does a better job, but so, so, so, You know, how do you, that’s what I think about all the time. How do I, maybe not my dad, maybe, you know, dad might be a bad example. Someone you really trust. How do I build platforms and systems and approaches that close that gap in trust from someone I just met, I can immediately close that gap with, with data, information, et cetera, that, that’s kind of the.

Jeremy: The trick, right? And it doesn’t matter if you’re in real estate or pharmaceutical sales or everybody’s selling something, you know, um, 

Ryan: right. That’s right. That’s full circle, man. I love it. Jeremy, I, I think one of the things that’s most important when we’re talking to anybody is, you know, sure. We’re talking about, you know, work and data and how they connect with one another, but learning about people and kind of how they got there is really interesting.

Ryan: I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit about, you know, Some of your formation and how you ended up, you know,

Ryan: in real estate in 

Jeremy: I might be an oddity because I know exactly how I got into this business and I, I trace it, I trace it back to the Renaissance Center in downtown Detroit, which I don’t know if any listeners are from the Detroit area, you know, gone through some, some tougher times, but I’m a Motor City kid. So I was born and raised in the suburbs of Detroit.

Jeremy: And, um, mom worked for Ford, dad worked for GM. You didn’t ask where your parents work. You just look in the driveway and see what car they’re driving, you know? So that was kind of my, my upbringing. So I, I had a friend who, uh, had an uncle who had a business that their business was, they would remodel office interiors.

Jeremy: So I found myself at two in the morning in downtown Detroit, which is Not always a great idea, but we were, uh, doing a job. They, my job was they give me a sledgehammer and I knock out all of the old balls that are within a suite within an office building. And it was a great job for a young teenager that just wanted to take out some aggression.

Jeremy: And, um, I just asked one time, one of the carpenters, I was like, how did we. Like he’s like, what do you mean? I would get here. You know, he came down the Jeffries highway. It’s like, no, how did we end up in this space doing this office remodel for this company? It was Merrill Lynch. He’s like, Oh, let me tell you, there’s guys that they’re called brokers and they come through representing companies.

Jeremy: They show them the space, they negotiate leases, and then they get paid. A commission based on the value of that lease and they get it paid all up front. They don’t even have to, you know, fulfill their whole lease term. I said, well, that sounds way better than knocking down walls with a sledgehammer. So I figured out.

Jeremy: You know, where could I become a broker? And I looked at, I love Big Ten football. So my criteria was they had to have real estate and Big Ten football. So it was either Ohio State or Wisconsin. So I went from Michigan, which is not a place that likes Ohio State, and I defected. I went from Michigan to Ohio State, never went to Wisconsin to visit and studied real estate.

Jeremy: And one of my instructors when I was a junior said, you should go check out this company Pazuti in Columbus, Ohio. So I did. And that was it. And then I went from Pazuti to what is now Prologis. And then I went from Prologis to become a broker, uh, at, uh, various firms and now I’m with CBRE. So that was my, my, I was always real estate.

Jeremy: I was always commercial real estate. I know that’s an oddity, but that’s, that’s just my, that was my story.

Ryan: that’s it. No, that’s a super cool story. I love it. The, uh, the sledgehammer story is a good one. So I also, when you were at Ohio state, um, you got a bachelor’s in real estate and urban analysis. Yeah. As a, as a data junkie and someone who spent way too many hours playing SimCity as a child, um, urban analysis sounds pretty

Ryan: cool. yeah, So, yeah, 

Jeremy: Yep. Yep. 

Ryan: Yeah. I mean, being the, uh, the grand computer master in the sky does help with, uh, with building a city. So what are, um, what are some of the things that you like to do

Ryan: outside of work for fun?

Jeremy: Yeah. So the the latest thing that I’ve done is, um, I bought a garage condominium, which is just about five minutes from my house and it’s, uh, it’s, 

Ryan: Real estate guy buys real 

Jeremy: Yeah, you know,

Jeremy: it’s, well, I didn’t fall too far. So my wife always said I was happiest in the garage, like tinkering, she calls it, and literally mopping my floor.

Jeremy: I don’t mind telling people I just love to mop my garage floor. Um, and so I decided, Hey, let’s go buy a bigger garage. So I bought this garage condominium and just completely decked it out. Um, and it’s a community of folks is about 120 units. And, you know, Some pack Ferraris into them. Some work their business out of them.

Jeremy: Mine’s just, I think they did a write up. It’s like Superman had his whatever place of solace. This is, you know, kind of one of our favorites. And I was like, I don’t know about the Superman part, but I definitely find Sanctuary there. Um, and so, yeah, I just love. I love taking things again from, from the very beginning and just, uh, you know, building upon it, upon a theme.

Jeremy: And so I created a theme that kind of matched my personality and it’s kind of like a Chicago loft meets a fifties kind of diner type of thing. And, uh, so yeah. You can watch F1 races there, Super Bowl parties, uh, you know, it’s got a, uh, a court where you can, my daughter can play basketball, uh, stuff like that.

Jeremy: So, it’s 

Ryan: That is so 

Jeremy: It’s a retreat, and once my wife figured out that I couldn’t live there, she settled down quite a bit. Like it’s not zoned. It’s not zoned. So don’t worry, I’m not moving out. It’s just a place to go and hang out with like-minded people. So

Ryan: I love it. Jeremy,

Ryan: where can people connect with you? 

Jeremy: yeah, they can call me, uh, at, uh, at the office. Um, they can reach out via email. I don’t know if you have a, you know. System where you can shoot them my email or if I need to,

Ryan: Yeah, we can, we can put

Ryan: some links and everything in the show

Jeremy: yeah, it’s, it’s pretty simple. Jeremy. woodsatcvre. com and uh, 

Ryan: Couldn’t miss 

Jeremy: yeah, love, love to talk about obviously real estate, love to talk about our platform and what we’ve done.

Jeremy: Um, and you know how it’s might be applicable really to any, any type of, uh, a business. Um, so.

Ryan: Well, Jeremy,

Ryan: thank you so much for coming on the show. 

Jeremy: You got it. It’s been fun. I appreciate you inviting me.

Ryan: Absolutely. Um, thanks to the audience. If you learned something today or laughed, please tell someone about the podcast. Thank you again, Jeremy. 

Ryan: This has been another exciting episode of making better decisions. See you next time. 

That’s a wrap for today’s episode of making better decisions for show notes and more visit, making better decisions dot live a special thank you to our sponsor canopy analytic canopy. Analytic is a boutique consultancy focused on business intelligence and data engineering. They help companies make better decisions using data for more information, visit canopy analytic.com. There’s a better way. Let’s find it together and make better decisions. Thank you so much for listening. We’ll catch you next week.