Ask the Expert: Chris Maier with Contractors Closers & Connections

Intro: [00:00:07] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Excel Radio’s Ask the Expert. Brought to you by Beckshot Photography and Video. It’s your story. Make it awesome. For more information, go to beckshot.com. Now here’s your host.

Randall Beck: [00:00:31] I’m here today with co host Robert Mason and our producer Stone Payton. Good morning guys. Beautiful spring day in Woodstock, is it not?

Chris Maier: [00:00:39] It is.

Stone Payton: [00:00:39] It is gorgeous.

Robert Mason: [00:00:41] Wonderful.

Randall Beck: [00:00:42] Special guest today, Chris Maier from CCC. He’ll explain what that is, what that’s all about. Good morning, Chris. Good morning.

Chris Maier: [00:00:49] Thank you, guys for having me. Pleasure to be here.

Randall Beck: [00:00:52] Let’s start with what’s CCC?

Chris Maier: [00:00:56] CCC. So it’s courage, conviction and confidence. No, guys, actually, what it is that fits, those are those are the morals that we stand behind. We have a lot of culture and energy, but what it actually is, is the contractors, closers and connections. Do you want me to go further into that? Yeah.

Randall Beck: [00:01:14] Well, you know what I tell everybody is that your group is preeminent commercial real estate connections and networking you’re doing. You’re just knocking it out of the park compared to all the other networking groups, your franchising all over the place, making all the money. So why don’t you elaborate on like, what you’re all about and what you’ve been doing, what you’ve got going on over there.

Chris Maier: [00:01:32] Yes. So, Randall, I started out in the commercial industry of demolition. A lot of people like to see things getting blown up, see all the environmentals getting done. You don’t see, you know, and that’s people like on on LinkedIn and social media. It’s important to build that brand. And so that’s where it all started, is just being dirty, you know, blowing things up, taking down hospitals, wrecking balls and that sort of stuff. And so in that capacity, you got to work with a lot of end users, developers, municipalities, things of that nature and master planners. So I took that opportunity to not only work with all the large general contractors under their schedule, but with the real estate, commercial real estate components of the business, and also attended every sort of seminar, conference and association. And we created the C.c.c. because there wasn’t any sort of melding between commercial construction and real estate and all those wonderful entities in between that have a say on the final decision making process. So that’s why we did what we did, created this professional forum about five years ago in 2019.

Randall Beck: [00:02:38] The thing I like about it at best, we talk about the whole built environment, right? The design build process from the project inception from permitting and design and site selection all the way through the finished product, whether it’s leasing up or whether it’s a resale or whatever. And so the thing I liked about C.c.c. was all those people are represented, right?

Chris Maier: [00:02:58] Yep, They are represented very consciously. You know, I think that’s a big part about what we do. There’s there’s a lot of wonderful brokerage associations. You know, they may have some that are specific to retail industrial office, but there’s really never been an organization that has put checks and balances in place. Operational on the back end to curate an audience that has the five verticals that we now know as our identity, which is development, investment management, brokerage and construction. So where we settle at a chapter when it becomes more evolved is like in Atlanta, it’s 85 to 15 principals. So the majority, 85% is actually commercial real estate. Like you said, 15% is the built environment. We can have architects, engineers, people like yourself that offer all sorts of services to assist in that overall decision making process and value add to projects and future developments and leasing and landlord and tenant rep and investment sales. And it’s just a it’s a wonderful environment that’s never really been been seen before, whether it’s you need equity, debt, you know, all that sort of stuff you can find at C.c.c..

Randall Beck: [00:04:12] Now you don’t have any exposure to residential. You’re strictly commercial.

Chris Maier: [00:04:17] There’s some there’s some agents and brokerages that might have a dip into into both worlds. But it’s meant to be commercial real estate. That’s our.

Randall Beck: [00:04:26] Brand. Now, tell me about all these franchises you’re opening up. You’ve got groups opening in Dallas and Nashville and we’re all.

Chris Maier: [00:04:32] Yes, sir. Yeah. So most immediate on the docket, we currently have ten chapters. So it started with Atlanta in 2019. Now we’re on our 10th, which is Memphis. So we’ve got Florida, we got Texas, we got South Carolina, North Carolina. And it’s all been organic. That’s what that’s what the beautiful thing has been. We’re just following where these primary markets and the United States is going with commercial real estate development and demand people moving in, single family, industrial, retail, mixed use and all those wonderful things that follow behind one another. So we’re in talks. We just had a national call with New York, with the New York City and people in Manhattan. We got folks we just flew in from Philadelphia. We had folks we flew in from Denver. We’re in talks with Charleston, Jacksonville. So we’ve got at least five more that we’re really hoping to have 15 by the end of the year, 2023 moving into 24. And they’re their licensed chapters. We find great people that are on the ground that can be our boots and they typically we like to have those two sides of the the field. We have construction professionals and real estate so they can pull in their resources, their networks, and we bring them all together and do what we’ve done in Atlanta. And we typically have to ship them out here first, because if we told them what we’re talking about today and they hadn’t seen it, they’re not going to know what to create. They won’t see the magic and feel the energy.

Robert Mason: [00:05:55] So what would be an example of a group of folks that you’d be looking for a franchise?

Chris Maier: [00:06:00] Yeah, you know, some of our organizations are started by a brokerage, which have been wonderful. Some have been started by a general contractor or an owner’s representative. Scott was actually our first licensed location in Tampa, and he found us, introduced himself to me in the middle of a pandemic. And he’s managing a 200 acre automotive enthusiast development. It’s mixed use. It’s got a track. It’s called the Motor Enclave down in Tampa. He’s an ex-Marine, very disciplined, great man. And and he said, I’ve been watching what you’ve been doing in Atlanta. It looks high energy. It looks genuine. There’s no sort of forum like this in Tampa, and I want to run it. So it starts on an individual’s heart and passion. And if I have that, I can work around them and we can bring attorneys, we can bring debt equity brokers, that sort of thing, to create what our environment is and and make it nice and finely balanced, that sort of thing. And I, you know, from the corporate perspective, we’re helping out with branding, marketing, keeping everything in alignment on on the websites and social media, things like that. And in person, when you got.

Robert Mason: [00:07:04] Into commercial real estate side of that, how did you what was the evolution like there? Describe that early on.

Chris Maier: [00:07:10] That was that was the hardest part, right? Because the hardest thing is building trust. I call phase one, establishing the company back in 2019. Who are we? Why are we doing what we’re doing? What is our value? Right? Where is our energy? People had to literally come to the events to see it and then they perpetuated it via social media. Phase two has been really what I see in the last 2 to 3 years. It’s been evolving. The decision makers. It’s not just folks in leasing or analysts crunching numbers or, you know, folks in the office sector. It’s got to be like, Hey man, we need the development directors, we need directors of construction, you know, acquisitions, professionals, principals of the firm, things like that. So if we don’t have the dealmakers in the room, it’s really hard for the brokers and everybody else to synergistically work out, Hey, where’s the capital coming from? Where’s the stack? You know? So that was the hardest part, is just just building trust. And now we’ve retained them. Now we have over 20,000 contacts we can reach out to actively in the Atlanta area and construction real estate architecture and bring them out to our events, which typically bring 300 people plus to a function.

Robert Mason: [00:08:19] When you’re evaluating folks, are you looking for a certain value add, what, 10 million? 20 million? What do you have a precip that you’re looking for?

Chris Maier: [00:08:30] You know, usually there’s a three step process to that. So step one is who is the individual? What firm are they with? Rather So they could be with a multifamily manager ownership group of apartment units. And it’s like, all right, check what is. And that’s point one. Point two. Well, what is their position in the company? Are they an acquisitions director? Are they an associate? Are they managing principal? What do they do? Right. So and then part three, my favorite, you know, because we could look into points like that, but it’s mainly based off the credibility of the firm and what they’ve done in the past and sort of name recognition in the community. Part three is their energy, right? Are they coming and are they bringing this energy of reciprocity and a Go-Giver servant leadership type of mindset like, how can how can we help each other? You know, we want to do more deals. That means you’ve got to give us some of the off market stuff. Mr. Broker You know, and that’s how we can all play synergistically. But if people aren’t coming to the table with that, it’s, you know, it’s not good. Right?

Robert Mason: [00:09:31] Okay.

Randall Beck: [00:09:32] All right. So Robert touched on a question. He said, why? And we all know why is the big question for buckshot. So tell me why you decided to do this kind of thing. You were in a demolition contractor, right? Yeah. And looking at opportunities. Why this?

Chris Maier: [00:09:52] Well, I thought it served a higher purpose. You know, I think I also worked at a mid-sized general contracting company. I figured this was a way to help a multitude of people, and I just started going to a bunch of associations and hearing the same sort of objections. And man, we really wish an association or some type of forum existed that gave back to the community that still cared about, you know, others and all sorts of causes. Is that we can now help and benefit. But it just nothing existed, you know, And there’s people that love us and there’s people that hate us because it’s not everybody’s organization. It’s not meant really for the junior. It’s not meant for for children to come in here. And it’s not an internship opportunity. We want people sort of like you were saying, like at least two years experience in brokerage and things like that. We vet that process and we’re constantly evolving, cutting the fat, evolve, move forward to have, you know, the elite private events of the industry.

Randall Beck: [00:10:48] So you’re seeing all the real players. We want the players, actual players. Yeah. Let’s let’s convene the big brain club for a minute here. Mba, MBA type people. What? Talk to me about trends. What are you seeing in the commercial real estate market in Atlanta that’s hot or that must be noted, whether it’s a good or a bad thing?

Chris Maier: [00:11:07] Yeah. You know, I just got off the phone with some of our people on our board of directors today, and they’re having trouble in the debt markets right now. You know, a lot, especially smaller deals, because it’s just as hard to go out for the larger deals. You know, the $100 Million, $50 Million plus. And these guys are looking for stuff that’s under 10 million, under 5 million. You know, some of these subdivision developments and multifamily, you know, mid-rise. And it’s just tough with the way our economy is. So having relationships is now more important than ever, you know, and the trend of this whole chat, GPT and AI and all that stuff, our motto is making business personal again. So there’s a trend to get out of the office and to move away from culture. You know, that’s that’s not our culture. People always say, Well, this is important to note as well. S.s.c. is not membership based. So what does that allow us to do? It allows us to move past the traditional association that are local here in Georgia. And if I’m being generous, they stop at 1000 to 1500 members and they put people’s information on the back of some website, and they call that a value prospect, right? Why would you put people’s information on the back of some website that’s private and these are the players. Like you said, they don’t want their information broadcasted. So we’re different. We’re blasting past that 1500 mark again into the 10,000, 20,000 people. And I’ve got a team that just prospects information and new opportunities. So it’s always fresh and novel.

Speaker5: [00:12:37] Okay.

Randall Beck: [00:12:38] And, you know, building and development trends, what’s going on with spec office, what’s going on in retail?

Chris Maier: [00:12:45] So there’s a there’s a bunch going on still strong in industrial. I guess just to pick on one sector we’ve got, usually what we do is we’ve got a board full of boutique hospitality, mixed use, petroleum based industrial cold storage developers. And it’s it’s booming. There are certain markets in Denver and Arizona and really all the places that we have a s.s.c. that are doing tremendously well. And I’m seeing a lot now and I’m hearing a lot regarding reuse, right? Adaptive reuse. There’s a bunch in that trend right now creative office where you’re taking old gas stations and turning them into co-working. Yeah, kind of like this place we’re in, you know, a bunch of things like that. So it’s again, going back to the whole inception of debt markets, equity placements, things like that, where the interest rates are where they are. You have to be creative with the redevelopment plays, you know?

Robert Mason: [00:13:42] So COVID changed the game in the commercial real estate in a big way, in my opinion. I mean, we’ve been talking about this for a long time. Randy Um, I’m seeing shopping center space become. It’s dark. People aren’t going to the malls as much. People are ordering online. Amazon’s doing incredible. I’m seeing a lot of office parks with a lot of empty space. My wife’s company in particular, you know, that’s tied with Nasdaq. You know, they’ve they’ve given up a couple of floors and that seems to be the trend. And there’s a lot of there’s a lot of speculation on what’s going to happen with all of this commercial space that’s sitting empty.

Randall Beck: [00:14:19] Well, my brother works for Ethicon. It’s a J and J company. Right? Big, big subsidiary of of J and J. They literally their goal is to reduce their lease hold and their employees in the office by half.

Robert Mason: [00:14:31] Their brick and mortar.

Randall Beck: [00:14:32] Holdings. They’re cutting in half and they’re basically saying half. You’re going to work from home and we’re going to convert our office to shared space, you know, and you can come in and do the ad hoc meeting.

Chris Maier: [00:14:41] And they’re not building banks anymore. I just noticed that I talked to the guy. All the banks chase banks. Why would.

Robert Mason: [00:14:46] They. You do it all online now.

Chris Maier: [00:14:47] Exactly. Go in there like you came in for an appointment. Get out of here. Why are you here?

Randall Beck: [00:14:52] We don’t want to go home, buddy.

Robert Mason: [00:14:54] Send me a picture of your check.

Randall Beck: [00:14:55] That’s right. Email me your money. Well, the apps. That is right. It’s like a picture of the check. And. And it has a Well, I.

Chris Maier: [00:15:01] Had to go in for like a money transfer, you know, it had to be electronically done through the person there. So and they just look at you like you’re crazy nowadays.

Randall Beck: [00:15:09] So so all these buildings are going empty. You know, clearly the lease holders are going to there’s going to be a shuffle, right? They’re going to want to renegotiate their space. And now some of your B tenants can move. Oh, I can get a deal on a space. So I’m going to move up and the C’s are going to move up to the B’s. So you know what’s going to happen? We’re going to hollow out at the low end the lower tiers of office space and retail space. It’s going to create opportunity.

Robert Mason: [00:15:31] Randy, We’re going to see some things out there. There’s going to be some plays. And investors that I represent are asking me about, hey, what’s the deal with the commercial real estate aspects? And I’m saying wait for your pitch because it’s going to be available. Prices are coming down these landlords and see, these are smart folks who own commercial real estate, right? These are no dummies, whether it’s in, you know, stock portfolios or whatnot. And REITs like we talked about, they’re going to figure it out, right? They’re going to repurpose shopping centers to be entertainment spaces, whether it be concert venues or condos with retail on the bottom. They’re going to figure something out.

Randall Beck: [00:16:07] I was talking to I think it was Michael Bull a few weeks ago. And, you know, Michael and he was saying he was actually saying that retail was at least in his experience or in his exposure, is doing well because all these people that are have left their jobs right. They work from home crowd. Some of them are starting businesses and they’re taking small retail spaces and they’re filling up all these neighborhood centers with their new entrepreneurial ventures. And I imagine that will see a lot of that.

Robert Mason: [00:16:35] You know, when the.com collapse happened in 2000, those were a lot of middle managers that worked for a lot of big companies. Right. These were not dummies. Right. And when they got their pink slips, they didn’t just go home and jump on. You know, the the dole. They went out and they did things. They created businesses. We’re going to see a revival of that kind of mentality, I think.

Chris Maier: [00:16:53] And that is exciting. You’re right. It’s an opportunistic time where a bunch of stuff is going to be left on the table. Sellers aren’t going to get what they want right now. They can command what they can command, but who knows what things might be like in the next 6 to 8 months. You know, it’s people are holding on to a lot of cash right now.

Robert Mason: [00:17:08] Right. Which is a good thing.

Randall Beck: [00:17:10] You know, we did a segment recently with Robert on investment properties on particularly like Airbnb, short term rental type things. And Robert had some ideas on hot areas or hot trends. So now let’s take let’s take somebody out there that might be listening to us as a business type person who wants to invest and put some capital into commercial real estate. What do you think is hot for them? Where should they be looking.

Chris Maier: [00:17:30] In commercial real estate? So there are some great opportunities that one of our board members had put out there. It was a HUD deal with a locked in 4% interest rate for 30 years fixed in Arlington, Texas class. A 358 units that was just built in 2021. Deals like that with the good sponsor team that’s putting in 20% of their own money. It sort of checks all the boxes. It’s on a golf course. You know, again, it goes back to the relationships and these private offerings, whether you’re an accredited investor or not, getting in on some of these deals, if it’s one of your first time and you’re not going to get a GP share, perhaps if you have the capital, you could. But yeah, I think in multifamily is going to keep going strong with the way the interest rates are. You know, they’re going to keep fixing them up even if there’s a little bit of value add and they can raise this. This particular opportunity I looked in last week, 96% occupancy so they can raise the rents easily, you know, and get and they’re based on a on a five year sell refinance. So you know.

Robert Mason: [00:18:34] That’s funny that you just said that you’ve got that high occupancy so they can raise the rents. Yeah with my with with Harley’s hideaway this this cottage that I’ve got at big canoe because we’re so occupied, our occupancy is so high, we’re raising the daily rate that we can get. And it actually works. Yeah, I get pushback from my wife, but she said that.

Randall Beck: [00:18:55] Worked for me to. It worked. Raising my rent. Yeah. Got me. Yeah. So. All right. Very quickly, plug your short term rental. Harley’s hideaway.

Robert Mason: [00:19:02] Harley’s hideaway, Big canoe, Great cottage on Lakes County on the golf course. All right.

Randall Beck: [00:19:06] We’re Daisy’s downtown one mile from Mercedes Benz in downtown Atlanta in the Pittsburgh neighborhood. You up and coming. You should see all the building going on there, Chris. Yours?

Chris Maier: [00:19:15] Yes. Stargazer hideaway in Clayton, Georgia, right off 441, next to the visitor center of Clayton Hookah, right next to Moonrise Distillery, right up the mountain. All right.

Randall Beck: [00:19:25] You said mountain. I was going to ask if that’s mountain. I don’t know. Clayton, Georgia. Yep.

Chris Maier: [00:19:28] Yeah, it’s about an hour, 15 minutes north of Atlanta. And it’s got a wonderful little town with shops and. Yeah, wonderful mountain town. Gorgeous. Yep. It’s a.

Randall Beck: [00:19:37] Secret. I’ve seen your website. The photos of your place is real nice.

Chris Maier: [00:19:40] Yeah. A lot of people ask about the LJ’s and the Blue Ridge and stuff. We’re sort of the path less traveled, you know? And there’s a stipulation on how much forestry authority that there is. So it determines how much residential can be built or not built. So it’s really nice. There’s not too much residential being built. There’s a cap on it.

Robert Mason: [00:19:56] How long have you owned that property?

Chris Maier: [00:19:58] Two years. Built it during COVID.

Robert Mason: [00:20:00] Okay. Yeah. New construction. Yes. All right.

Randall Beck: [00:20:03] All right. Robert, your former commercial broker. So let’s put your commercial broker hat on for a minute. How would you have benefited from having a s.s.c. in your life?

Robert Mason: [00:20:13] Holy smokes. Well, I’ve been doing it for so long. You know, I had less gray hair back then and a lot less experience. I think the coordination value, you know, to be able to focus energies where they were going to be most advantageous. A lot of times in the commercial real estate world, we’re just frantically knocking on doors, trying to to get new product, trying to get new centers to represent, whether it be commercial, retail, industrial, whatever. We’re looking for land. That would be a real big benefit for somebody like me to be able to look for land for development, right? Because like development now is huge. We’re looking for land and it’s we’re like California. We’re moving out. I mean, the epicenter is just getting further and further out. So that I mean, just to be able to focus on finding what we need for the parties that we’re representing.

Chris Maier: [00:21:02] Yeah. And not to sound pompous or anything, but, you know, it’s having us at the the back front because we’re not just, you know, there are people who run their organizations. Again, they reach that 1500 member and it’s just account maintenance mode. It’s some 16 year old that doesn’t know what they’re talking about. But us and our entire leadership, we’re all in the trenches, you know, So when I’ll give you a story the other day, one of our board of directors members, he’s in more or less the ground up hotel hospitality business between here in Greenville. And I said, How can we help you through the SEC? What is your most immediate need? And I thought he was going to say, Hey, find us sites for hospitality. But he said, no, we’d actually like more of an investment sales opportunity. And like a retail strip center, that’s cash flowing. I got some 1031 money we need to insert into that. And we knew exactly who the best investment sales guy is in Atlanta In less than a week later, we had a deal, right? So that’s the value is like saying you have to be very specific with your needs. Like, hey, we have a wonderful cold storage site and we’d like to build something spec. Do you have a developer and the best architect and industrial real estate that can build it and title it and do this, that and the other and design it? Sure we can.

Robert Mason: [00:22:14] So putting all of these people and and parcels into place, yes, it’s able to focus attention where it needs to go, correct?

Chris Maier: [00:22:22] Yes. And you know, I have a pretty exciting breakfast that’s coming up at one of the coolest mixed use developments with Bridge Investment Group and Lincoln Property Company in September. And our thought behind that is to bring in all the sort of elected official people, all the all the kids community improvement districts and economic development, so you can find out what’s going on in South Fulton. Ten. Gwinnett Forsyth And you hop basically from table to table. The landlord reps are gaining, the tenant reps are gaining knowledge. And that person saying, well, here’s what public and private partnerships we have going on. Here’s an industrial park in which we have this much availability for health care users, and we’d like to see like a 40,000 square foot sort of building there, like it could be so collaborative, but nobody’s curating that experience to bring value to the community. Not very often.

Robert Mason: [00:23:13] It was unheard of to be able to put those pieces. It’s like a big puzzle. Yes. How do you put the puzzle together? Yeah. Here’s the puzzle maker right here.

Randall Beck: [00:23:20] That’s right. For any entrepreneur, obscurity is the problem, right? And in commercial, you know, the pieces can be so fragmented that people are obscure, right? You don’t know who to talk to. They don’t know how to reach, you know. And so so this is a good lead in now because at a S.c.c event, you can walk right up and talk to these guys. So let’s talk about the character, the character of your events here. Yeah. When you do something, what’s happening right? Like the last one you did at the beautiful showroom had the the model. Now you’re doing a Kentucky Derby later this week. Yes. Let’s talk about your events.

Chris Maier: [00:23:53] You know, again, I think it all comes down to an energy and a culture, one of reciprocity, because it goes back to me seven, ten years ago when I didn’t have a network, but I still believed in the American dream and the entrepreneur and the fact that, you know, a few people can make a difference. And what I mean by that is even when I didn’t have a network and somebody said, Well, Chris, I’m really looking to meet, you know, industrial users or multifamily developers, and I’m like, Look, I’ll be honest with you, I don’t have the network, but I know that the civil engineer, that’s really all he does is these Home Depots and that’s all they do, their civil engineering and site plans and whatnot for perhaps that would be an advantageous introduction. Now the coin is flipped. Now that I have the contacts, it’s sort of irresponsible for me not to help people, you know, And that’s what we want other people to realize, like you said, is putting the puzzle together. It’s one of which people are like you said, we don’t want the ambiguity to be there. What do you do? How can we help each other? Like we want to try to bridge that gap?

Robert Mason: [00:24:53] You know, it seems to me that this this idea would be useful in all environments. It is. I’ll give you for an example. A doctor goes to med school, gets out when he’s 35 years old. He knows all about medical and biology and all this stuff. He doesn’t know anything about creating a business. He doesn’t know how to staff. He doesn’t know how to set up sources. I mean, your business could be for any different industry, in my opinion. Yeah.

Chris Maier: [00:25:20] We have to your point, I mean, I go to a bunch of these international conferences and just ask the people from North Rhine-Westphalia or Africa or wherever they’re coming from and they’re wanting to do business in the United States. It’s like guys view the C.c.c. as a soup to nuts, you know, enterprise that can help you staff with your manufacturing, with your health care, with your IT, with your electric vehicle charging stations, because we have just enough and the right trusted vetted vendors that can help you know, whether it’s Boone Boone’s Rich Kentucky or, you know, California. You know we can help people all all across the the nation if they want to invest in real estate or ground up, if they want to partner up on some hotel venture. Really the it’s endless. It is now.

Randall Beck: [00:26:06] One of the drawbacks in the networking world. I mean, there’s other groups out there and I’ve I’ve been to a few of them and, you know, you get you see the same crowd of people showing up and some of them are just there for the social event and the party and they take a bunch of selfies and they go home and that’s their marketing. The free drinks. Yes. This is not what you’re doing. Right? Right. You have you have a not only do you have high class events in in the themed themed venues that relate to commercial real estate. Yes. And that’s good. I mean, it’s a great way to meet people. But you have a series, you have a layers different types of events. Right. So kind of run through what your offerings are for us. Yeah.

Chris Maier: [00:26:41] So there’s a variety of different value add propositions we try to do nowadays we have the authority. I just reached out to North American Property Properties today about the Peachtree Corners forum that they’re redeveloping because there’s going to be a bunch of opportunity there for the commercial real estate and construction professionals to come out and lend value. And really, I view this game as one of a magnifying glass. If you’re not under that spotlight, under that magnifying glass and your property is not envisioned and you’re not top of mind, people aren’t going to know about it. So that’s why we host events such as our one in June coming up with Ackerman and Company, one of Atlanta’s oldest, if not the oldest brokerage firm.

Robert Mason: [00:27:23] That’s who I started with in 1991.

Chris Maier: [00:27:25] Good people, I think they’re the oldest. Charlie. She’s still around. I’m not sure. I don’t know. Charlie There he was, the owner.

Robert Mason: [00:27:31] Charlie Ackerman.

Chris Maier: [00:27:32] Yeah. No, I don’t know him personally, though. We we’re hosting an event with them, though, to show off 90,000 square foot of creative office that they have with the Leon White site downtown. So you know we’re. Doing events together with purpose so that they can drive the attention to that development.

Robert Mason: [00:27:51] Yeah, that’s perfect. You know, it goes back to we don’t know what we don’t know, right? And so if these people don’t know that there’s resources out there like you, then, you know, they’re kind of lost in the wind and you hit on it with the micro, you know, you put the scope on it and it’s going to magnify it and then people are going to know.

Chris Maier: [00:28:08] Yeah, I mean, I know a gentleman right now who’s and we’re doing a lot of curation, not only at the event, you know, we’re sort of leading people’s hand into it. Just it kills me when I see somebody right behind Randall and it’s like, that’s the ultimate person he needs to be speaking to right now to further his business, because I know they probably just asked there was an instance the other day we just formed a national partnership with a commercial valuation appraisals company, and they’re doing these they’re out of our Phenix branch and they’re offering appraisals and valuations for half the cost typically of what most of our vendors are that don’t even know me by a first name basis. And they’re doing it quicker. Sometimes it can take weeks for these appraisals and whatnot, and they’re doing it in a matter of days, if not one day. So we form that and we’re just we’re adding these national partnerships to help people not only in Atlanta but across the country.

Robert Mason: [00:29:00] Well, I think you need a cattle prod to hit Randy here up with when somebody behind him you need to speak with, give him a little electrocution. That’s right. I mean, from what you’re describing to me, Chris, I mean, there’s so many entities that that I know of firsthand that I could call today and say, you need to talk to this guy.

Chris Maier: [00:29:18] Chris Yeah, we’re pretty diverse. We certainly didn’t want to come off as like the jack of all trades. That’s why we really are special. Like if we’re getting 50 lenders that want to come to seek different banks on the institutional side, we’ll cut them off and say, No, we’re good. Like, we’ve got enough like 30, 40 architects, that’s too much, you know? So that’s where we’re really watching who is coming into this event because if it’s not curated properly, it’s not s.s.c., it’s just something else. But it’s not us.

Robert Mason: [00:29:50] You get 50 realtors in the same room. That’s just kind of like an overkill in your.

Chris Maier: [00:29:54] Yeah, yeah. We want the money. We want the people taking risk. We want the people to find the deals. And then we want some people to also help if they need a fees. I met with an architect the other day and again, I’m asking him that question real, like down to the point type of stuff. That’s my personality. And I’m like, All right, give me something here. What can I work with? And like, well, we just did a feasibility study where a developer of a hotel could come in on this particular site. I’m like, Now we’re talking. All right. So but a lot of these architects and engineer types don’t know how to play ball like that. They don’t speak the real estate language, but we’re teaching them.

Robert Mason: [00:30:26] Yeah, diversity of thought.

Randall Beck: [00:30:28] Yes, they need the real estate aspect. Yes. That’s just not where they function.

Chris Maier: [00:30:32] Yeah. They’re just they keep, they keep hitting up these end users and whatnot and going after the RFPs and it’s like, what if it was just negotiated? Yeah, right. Like, let’s talk that.

Robert Mason: [00:30:42] Well, you get a room full of 50 attorneys. Golly, that’s going to be a boring event.

Randall Beck: [00:30:45] The other day. You guys will find this. You guys will find this funny. I was in an antique store the other day, and there’s a book laying on this counter for sale. And it was the original. Feasibility study from an architect from Marietta Square. Yeah. Wow. That’d be back when? Back when you had to put photos on the page and glue them down, you know? Yeah. I mean, they’re.

Chris Maier: [00:31:10] Using the old.

Robert Mason: [00:31:10] You’re doing hand traffic counts.

Chris Maier: [00:31:12] Yes. Click, click. Yeah.

Randall Beck: [00:31:14] It was really interesting to see, you know, speaking of that kind of thing, how how different the reality was than the original concept. Right. You know, that’s cool. And of course, I see stone, you know, pretty often you see why I’m always showing up with blood and bandages right after hanging out with these guys? Yeah.

Robert Mason: [00:31:32] The minute you said.

Randall Beck: [00:31:33] Cattle prods, you know, the.

Robert Mason: [00:31:34] Minute he said antique, I was like, Wait, you are an antique.

Randall Beck: [00:31:37] Yeah.

Robert Mason: [00:31:37] Speak for yourself. Is it a book about yourself?

Chris Maier: [00:31:40] Speak for yourself. He signed it. I might be older.

Randall Beck: [00:31:42] I’m only 37. This. This comes from dealing with you. Okay, So, Chris, before we run out of time, a couple of things to promote for S.s.c.. What’s your vision? Where does seek going next?

Chris Maier: [00:31:56] So we want the business professional and commercial real estate and construction to be able to go to various cities throughout the US. We want to be in every 50 states, you know, and there are some successful associations that are well known in construction, real estate, and they’re in about 80. So I’m on the right track and with our with our brand growing the way that it is and the systems and operations that we have in place that are just essentially a better mousetrap. You know, we want to grow quickly. We make the turning the ignition and starting a chapter and licensing with us. Very simple. And we’re getting better and better and better at opening them and people seeing the credibility and purpose behind what we’re doing. So that would be the idea is to be in first all the primary markets. We want to get all the way coast to coast to California. We’re already as far as Dallas and Phenix. Again, we got to hit New York, we got to get Philadelphia and Denver so that it’s a pretty good chance if you’re going out to a conference or something or you’re just, you know, out of town for a week and you want to stop by a local or get instantaneously connected to that chapter’s leadership of brokers and developers and whatnot, just reach out to us and we’ll connect you to Cincinnati or Philly or whatever.

Robert Mason: [00:33:08] And again, it’s going to get back to knowing what you do. And people don’t know what they don’t know. So you’ve got to get out there and brand yourself and market.

Chris Maier: [00:33:16] And I’ll be honest with you, the tough thing about the name of our company, the acronym Contractors, Closers and Connections like it connotates more construction. So people are a little bit confused and it’s unfortunate, but it is easy to remember triple C, You know, we didn’t want to be the International Federation of Commercial Construction and sound extremely professional and just. We wanted it to connotate the fact that we’re a little bit more laid back, you know, in our events, like you mentioned, they’re genuine, they’re high energy. We typically don’t go to a stuffy hotel conference room with drop ceilings and carpets. That’s not us, you know. So we’re bringing people out to interesting, genuine sort of environments they’ve never been to before. And that’s what we wanted to Connotate. So we’re putting out a bunch of branding on video and digital to get to those new chapters because Atlanta’s already established, you know, we want to bring that same flag to other people and just shorten that time from A to B of understanding who we are and what the value is.

Robert Mason: [00:34:13] I know a really, really good video guy.

Chris Maier: [00:34:15] Yeah.

Randall Beck: [00:34:17] Now you’re going almost where I want to ask next because let’s face it, there are groups that that you know in the construction and the commercial real estate industry Boma people like that. Yes. That foster education. Yes. Relationships, you know. Best practices, thought leadership in the industry. So how is C-c-c different from, say, a UL?

Chris Maier: [00:34:43] So yeah, we want to leave a bunch of that to the organizations who do that best. You know, we want to leave the continued education, the award ceremonies, you know, people coming up on stage getting a plastic trophy for the most energy efficient building. That’s great. Like we’re boiled down dealmakers, right? We’re here. Black, white. Very simple. We want the best of the best people. And, you know, we want everybody to win. It’s not just about one person’s participation trophy. You know, it’s about let’s let’s win.

Randall Beck: [00:35:13] That’s an awesome way to differentiate yourself. And in terms of the people involved with you, who do you need? Who are you looking for? What’s what’s the big need or the big?

Chris Maier: [00:35:21] The short answer is just really people ask me this all the time, but it’s just if somebody is really in the trenches, they’re wheeling and dealing and touching commercial real estate, right? You could be a zoning attorney. You could be a civil engineer, you could be the developer themselves, the development team, the owner’s rep, the city, all those sorts of wonderful individuals that play into that unique ecosphere that we mentioned. People of that nature is who we want. Brokerages. Yeah.

Randall Beck: [00:35:48] All right. And some of those people are out there and they’ve heard about you or maybe they’ve been to one of your events and they’re not quite sure what to do next. You had one thing you could say to them, What would that thing be?

Chris Maier: [00:35:57] Come on out. Hey, we’ll get you a complimentary ticket to feel the energy and test it out for yourselves and spend some time with you on the phone to get a better idea for what you all do and how we can best serve you at c-c-c. And you can check us out at our website, which is contractors, closers, connections.com.

Robert Mason: [00:36:17] It flows very well off his tongue.

Randall Beck: [00:36:20] Chris Meyer, everybody from C-c-c.

Chris Maier: [00:36:22] Thank you.

Randall Beck: [00:36:23] Thanks for coming out today.