Leadership Lessons on Conquering Adversity and Cultivating Company Culture with Eric Termansen of Western Retail Advisors

Reinvention. It’s what keeps businesses going and allows entrepreneurs to come up with creative solutions to increase profits and abandon strategies that don’t bring value. At the same time, business leaders must realize they can’t reinvent the wheel alone. It takes a team with a strong company culture to continuously find new ways to innovate. 

Host Dave Hartley sits down with Eric Termansen, Founding Partner of Western Retail Advisors, on this episode of But Who’s Counting? to discuss his journey from the corporate world of PetSmart to running his own commercial real estate brokerage. Eric shares inventive ways to shape company culture and encourage employees to take ownership of it. The conversation ranged from Eric’s beginnings at PetSmart to the struggles he endured while starting his own business to his outlook on commercial real estate. Topics discussed also include:  

• Building company culture and making it more than just one big event, but rather dozens of little things leaders can do every day 
• Handling the stress of being an entrepreneur while facing complications in your personal life 
• The impact team sports had on his life and how it prepared him for challenges on and off the field  
• How his involvement in the Vistage executive coaching group helped him evolve as a leader 
• Eric’s retail outlook and insights around grocery stores, quick-service restaurants and online retailers 

“If you ever have an opportunity to own your location, that’s a fantastic way to deploy your capital…owning your own location or locations is always a good strategy for building long term wealth.” – Eric Termansen 

Resources to Count On 

Want more insight into Dave and Jimmy’s conversation? Check out these resources to learn more: 

• Learn more about Western Retail Advisors via their website 
• Read more about how Eric overcame adversity to be selected as one of Globest’s Best Bosses in commercial real estate for 2023 
• Follow Western Retail Advisors on LinkedIn for more insights 

Make sure to never miss an episode by subscribing on Spotify, Pandora or Apple Podcasts and let us know what you think by rating and reviewing. Keep up with more Anders insights by visiting our website and following us on social media:
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Transcript

Narrator: 0:00

You're focused on making important decisions to take your company to the next level. But who's counting? We are Counting on trends and insight to move your business forward operationally and strategically, focus on helping executives achieve their highest potential. But who's counting is a podcast shedding light on and breaking down critical issues and opportunities for businesses Brought to you by Anders, cpas and Advisors.

Dave: 0:30

Welcome to another episode of the but who's Counting podcast. I'm your host, dave Hartley. So we've got an interesting conversation teed up today with an entrepreneur, business owner and retail industry expert. So we're visiting today with Eric Tremanson. Eric, welcome to the show. Thank you, dave. Welcome to be here. So you provide a little bit of information before the show and you've had a pretty fascinating journey. You're the founding partner of Western Retail Advisors and you oversee all aspects of Western's business, with a specialized focus on tenant representation During this time, which I guess, you founded the company in 2001,.

Eric: 1:09

I think yes. January 2001 was when I jumped off the deep end into the world of entrepreneurship.

Dave: 1:16

Okay, and so since that time, western has grown to represent over 125 tenants and over 15 million square feet of consumer focused real estate. What's not in that intro about you that you think is important that people know right up front?

Eric: 1:32

I think the fact that we started this business because, as I got to learn more about retail, I realized that I wasn't set to be a big company employee and I got so many great lessons from working for larger companies along the way. When I left PetSmart to start Western Retail Advisors, we really wanted to build out a company that helped retailers grow, but did it in a way where we thought we tried to think like the retailers themselves think and take advantage of what I learned and what several of my colleagues learned when they worked in-house for retailers and helped them put together their strategies to grow. So our early years in the business, all we did was represent tenants.

Dave: 2:15

So most people have an interesting first job story. So what was your first job coming out and kind of, how did that prepare you for what came next?

Eric: 2:23

So my first job coming out of college was working as a property manager for a company that developed shopping centers in the greater Toronto area called North American Development Group.

Eric: 2:34

I was very spoiled with that opportunity.

Eric: 2:37

One, because the economy was rotten when I graduated from college in 1989. But two, I got really a fantastic first hand view into learning how hard one has to work to be successful. I had a couple bosses there that really kind of explained to me what one needed to do if one wanted to be successful in the commercial real estate field and the amount of hours that you had to put in early in your career. And then, two, I also got to watch from afar the CEO of that company, a gentleman by the name of John Preston, and how he treated all of his employees and had a spectacular amount of longevity from everyone who was there. And people stayed with him for a long time. And it wasn't until I was a couple jobs beyond working for North American Development Group that I really realized how important and how different that was and was able to start to think about what he must have been doing to keep his team together for such a long time and to keep them motivated and excited about work every day.

Dave: 3:49

Yeah, there's something to be said from a team that can stick together for years and years and years, and both the leadership of that and just kind of the dynamic that that creates. So so did you go directly from there to PetSmart. Tell us about your PetSmart journey and kind of how you got there.

Eric: 4:04

My journey is very the road is very crooked on how I got there. When I left North American Development Group I moved back to. I moved from Toronto to Vancouver and spent 18 months helping my parents run their women's wear retail and manufacturing business in Vancouver. It was a very tough time economically. The business was really struggling and add some additional challenge to it, my parents were divorcing at the time so I worked with my mother all day and shared a house with my father at night.

Eric: 4:38

So the fact that I didn't end up with many months of psychiatry after this experience is quite shocking. But it was a great education into real, you know, hands-on retail. My mother's business was high in women's clothing and they both manufactured and designed the product in Vancouver. So I have lots of pieces and lots of opportunities on things that could go wrong and eventually I got to this situation where working for my family wasn't going to work out for me in the long term. I I 18 months had run its course and I didn't have anything planned. I just knew that I needed a change. So I spent the next nine months framing houses in Vancouver and reminded me why I went to college and that I really needed to get another job and I definitely did not have a long career in front of me as a as a framer.

Dave: 5:43

Yeah, and in your, your parents situation, what they went through and what you learned as part of that. I think that's one thing that a lot of people who aren't in this business Don't understand, which is how difficult running a small to mid-sized business actually is and how stressful it is, what a toll it takes on you stress levels, kind of all those types of things. So you know there's something to be learned from everything and it sounds like from that situation you definitely learned some things. You realized, I assume if you're framing houses, you are outdoors in Vancouver, which is probably not the best climate to be outdoors all the time, I know it's great in the summer, but there's only two months of that, so the other ten are a little wet and a little cold.

Eric: 6:28

So, yeah, it definitely was a motivating factor, working outdoors in the rain every day to try to find another job. I was able to Get a job with a Canadian retail chain called Future Shop and they were kind of Canada's version of Best Buy and we're growing very actively. In the early 90s I was fortunate enough to get a job in the real estate department helping them grow and Spent two years there getting a great education in large format real estate, how to position stores, how to negotiate. And After, after the two years there, I was fortunate enough to get hired by that smart as their first employee in Canada back in 1995. That's what started that relationship.

Dave: 7:14

So you used an interesting word choice describing that two-year work segment which is education. You got an education and I actually just did recording earlier for a young CPA success show and Part of what we talked about was how, early in your career, what's more important than anything is the learning and getting that education and actually you know, having the opportunity To see some things in real life and how things work, and it sounds like you took all those experiences and then, when you made the leap to PetSmart, sort of figured out how to take all those things and capitalize on it.

Eric: 7:48

Definitely and then learn lots more things at PetSmart along the way. I think if I was to, you know to still down. What has helped me along the way is I'm very competitive and always want to get better and always kind of continue to keep learning and never want to rest on Laurels or what's been accomplished in the past and Generally that's really helpful. Occasionally it's not because you don't slow down and Take a moment or two to say wow, you did a great job on that, and you know the mindset. It becomes a little self-fulfilling and as soon as you knock down one thing you're onto the next. So you know that's helped me in really good stead for a lot of my career. But as I Get to a more mature point in in my career, you know you also have to take a few moments along the way and enjoy those accomplishments as well and take a few seconds because you know it all goes really quickly.

Dave: 8:53

Yeah, if you don't take it, take a minute to step back and reflect on what you've done and actually celebrate, then it just becomes a grind and it goes on and on and on. So so in Canada, you help PetSmart expand in Canada, and then I think you got the opportunity to come to Phoenix, where you are now.

Eric: 9:10

Correct. After about 18 months of working for PetSmart in Canada, they gave me the opportunity to relocate to Phoenix. They were kind of consolidating all the real estate team back into the Phoenix office and so I moved to Phoenix in the spring of 1997 and Didn't really know anything about it, didn't know a single person here but, as you can see, 26 years later, fallen in love with it and the city has treated me really well in response.

Dave: 9:43

But everything wasn't. It wasn't all roses and sunshine. Think, early on in your career you actually went through a downsizing that you had to rebound from. Tell us that story.

Eric: 9:55

Sure, one of the challenges with retailers that grow really quickly is often they have a lot of struggles, are all along the way, and in the fall kind of late summer, fall of 2000 my Boss at PetSmart came to me at the time and said we're being forced to fire one of our directors of real estate and the other gentleman has three kids in high school and it's not going to be him. So Unfortunate to you, but I'm going to help you. You know, look for a job and I'll buy you as much time as I can. And so the person was very helpful with me.

Eric: 10:35

I interviewed for several jobs and I kept coming to the inclusion that one I didn't want to leave Phoenix, and To that really wasn't the right person to be working long term in a big corporation and that I had much more entrepreneurial aspirations.

Eric: 10:52

And so a combination of Me looking at all the brokers that I was working with around the country and what they were doing, and a lot of conversations with some smart friends, and we came up with a plan where, upon my resignation from PetSmart as part of their downsizing, that they would be client number one for Western retail advisors. So I was really fortunate the day, you know to walk out the door of one opportunity and start another. But have a great client with me and you know the only, it was the only thing I did. So you know it's really fortunate to have one, to have one client. And then it was Pretty much convinced them that I would do every single thing I did as an employee. But we would shift the cost of it to me getting paid by the landlords in that situation Versus pet more paying me a salary to do that job well.

Dave: 11:57

Congratulations on your resilience and and being able to navigate your way through that, because I know that's not easy. But you know, after you saw your parents struggle with their own small business and you know, for you to make the decision to basically start your own business, I guess you discovered you were entrepreneurial, but that's quite a big risk. How did you make the decision? How did you decide that that was the path that you wanted to go down and the willingness to accept the unknown?

Eric: 12:23

So you know, the path was pretty complicated because at the same time I was in the United States on a work permit. I was not a citizenship the citizen at that time and did not yet have my green card, and so part of that, what made it especially complicated was if I was to leave to another employer other than Petsmart, I had to leave the country and then come back in and apply for another job. So fortunately, it only took another two months in order for me to get my green card after I left and, you know, maintain myself in the United States versus having to go back to Canada. And all of that was a whole additional stress of trying to figure that piece out. So you throw in trying to be an entrepreneur, trying to figure out your immigration status and wondering if this doesn't go right, if you get kicked out of the country.

Dave: 13:20

Fairly high risk scenario there. So, when you think about that stress and I have this conversation, I asked this question of entrepreneurs that are going through high stress, high growth environments you know how did you cope? What was your secret, you know? Was it exercise, was it? You know what? What were the things that helped you sort of deal with that level of the unknown?

Eric: 13:40

You know it's always been exercised for me. You know I grew up playing a lot of sports and continued to play basketball till about age 40. But really through my 30s it was a mix of running and basketball. The running was really, you know, the great head clearing opportunity for me and one of the great things about the climate in Phoenix was the ability to be out and go run three to five miles every morning to clear your head. And the basketball was great because it was always just a same group of guys and 50% of it was the exercise and 50% of it was the camaraderie and nonsense and giving each other, you know, the gears and the before and after the game and having a lot of fun about it. So you know that that kind of those kind of male relationships that you have can be really valuable in helping you manage those things and not just male but female. But in that case, you know, basketball was all was a bunch of guys that I played with.

Dave: 14:45

Sure, so was your growth as a business? Was it fairly consistent, or were there clips that happened or particular events that sort of were foundational to the growth of your business? Or when you fled? When you reflect back over the first couple of decades that you were in business, were there key moments or things that really elevated the business?

Eric: 15:04

You know there were several and around clients, but probably the most key were around on the plus side anyway, were around people that we were able to bring aboard and you know two of the first three people I hired are still with me today and having that kind of longevity, and you know the skill set that they bring to the team and what they know about the culture of what we've accomplished. So you know, if I think about the big, it was 2003 when David Jules and Chris Damats joined the team. They again, they're still with me and have done an amazing job. And then you know, on the positive side, you know the next really big milestone was a gentleman by the name of Neil Bord joining me in 2011 and Ryan Desmond joining us in 2015. And, more than anything, they helped grow the business but really kind of commit to the culture and have been great cheerleaders for what we do and how we do it. And there's many others along the way, but those are just a couple of the ones that stand out.

Eric: 16:09

And then you know, from a kind of more challenging side of things, you know we've had some big clients go bankrupt. You know we were the national real estate brokers for Circuit City and you know, obviously a very powerful electronics company that you know, in the end of 2007, piled for chapter 11 and pretty quickly went to chapter 7 liquidation. And another very important client of ours for years was Sports Authority, who we represent for more than a decade, you know, and then it up again filing for bankruptcy and liquidating. So there's obviously some big clients that you know don't survive and we've had other clients who didn't go out of business but we've lost the business and that's heard. But we've had big wins along the way. You know we were able to start representing Target in 2004. And they've been a client of ours ever since. In 2002. We began representing both the Ulta Cosmetics and a regional theater chain in the western US called Harkins Theaters, and all of those clients are still with us today. Keeping those relationships for a long time, really building off of them, has really helped and, you know, helped smooth over some of the rough patches.

Eric: 17:30

You know real estate is a cyclical business and in our early growth our best year ever, kind of early in our cycle, was 2008. And then, you know, kind of the second half of 2008 happened and you know Arizona was really, really challenged on the retail side. We got very overbuilt and lots of challenges. Here. The economy really fell off a cliff. So we went for our best year ever in 2008 to our worst year in 2009. And, you know, had a very slow grow back out of that drop. It also really forced me to rethink our business and our strategy and try to come up with more ways to make our business more stable and more resilient. So that was when we first started branching out and doing some work other than representing tenants. We started representing landlords as well and started slowly moving our way into that space and eventually, you know, building that side of our business up where you know now it's 40% of our revenue.

Dave: 18:39

So when I ask that question, it's very rare that I get a straight line comment. Almost every time, the answer is similar to what you gave, which is you go up, you go down, you have to deal with the ups, deal with the downs, and you just have to persevere and push through. So, but there were two things that you mentioned that I want to come back on and talk about. The first is culture and the second is retail. So let's start with culture. You know, I know, you've got a philosophy that you try to live by as it relates to culture. Describe what you try to do to help develop and foster culture at Western, and then and then we can shift and start talking about some of the mistakes that you see people make or things that you would recommend.

Eric: 19:21

I'll start a little bit with one of my mistakes, just because early on in my career I thought if people just watched how I did things, they might learn by osmosis, and I wasn't mature enough as a business owner to talk about it, and so for a while it went unsaid. We had really good people, mostly we did things the right way, but I wasn't ready to talk about culture, maybe because I had not worked in places where they actually talked about it. It was, per se, more of watching it and learning from it. So it took me a little while to put words around the things that I thought were important and be able to share them in a way with people that I could bring them along for the ride. Because I think one of the things that I didn't do early on was I would know what the destination was and wouldn't pick people up at the beginning of the journey and bring them with me to the destination. I would just jump to the destination. So back to culture.

Eric: 20:26

I think it's best to find by doing little things every day, and so we really struggled finding a mission statement that jumped out and really encompassed everything that we do every day that everyone could get to, but we were really clear on what our values were and how those could be acted on by everyone, and so we came up with and lived by respect and integrity, teamwork and pursuit of excellence, by talking about those and what it means and bringing up publicly in our office when people do things right and sharing with the team great examples of those along the way that helps build and solidify. And we do little things around here to try to keep people connected. We have a lunch every month for and celebrate every birthday in the office to make sure that everyone feels it, and do lots of things on the education front, because I think culture is really multifaceted, and so we will bring in speakers twice a month to address the office on topics sometimes as boring as bankers talking about what they're lending on, or real estate transactional attorney talking about what they're doing, or local charity talking about how they are looking to make things better in our community. This week we went as a team to a local food bank and spent the morning packing emergency boxes for them, and so it's little things along the way, and I think if you as a leader, part of it is setting the tone, but it's also having everyone else do it. Also because culture and everything is hard if only one person is trying to do it.

Eric: 22:37

And I think culture is bad when everyone is talking about it and trying to live up to it. And it's not me calling out someone for doing something really right. It's another team member who's seen someone do something great and is willing to bring it up and talk about it. And it doesn't mean we don't have situations where we don't do as good as we think we should on certain areas and we'll always talk about those, but often those aren't in front of the whole team. That doesn't necessarily help the culture.

Dave: 23:12

Yeah, yeah, definitely, and I think, from a culture mistake I guess I would say is that some people do forget that it is an ongoing, continuous small moments thing. It's not a once a year meeting or a one time event. It's truly something that's built together over time. So what I wanted to transition into next is, obviously, you've spent your career and you understand retail real estate extremely well. So, when you think about, most of our listeners are small to mid-sized business owners, entrepreneurs I guess how would you distill some of your knowledge that you think would be relevant for that audience, things that they need to be aware of and or thinking about as it relates to the state of retail real estate in 2023.?

Eric: 23:58

That's a lot to cover, dave, but I'll try to give you a hand. Well, I think for any of the people who are listening who own their own business and they have to be in retail if you ever have an opportunity to own your location, that's a fantastic way to deploy your capital and I think retail the market will continue to be strong, and owning your own location or locations is always a great strategy for building long-term wealth and always just depends on your level of capitalization. I think, from what's happening in the market, that has been really interesting is that COVID did a lot of things good and bad for all businesses but what it did for a lot of things is really kind of took a number of things that were going to happen over a long period of time and kind of put them in this 18-month blender and then spat them out the other side and so you really fast forward a lot of things that were happening. You know. A great example is what happened in the entertainment world, in the theater industry. You've seen a lot of challenges that came out because you had an industry that was having a big fight with all the studios about streaming and when they were going to release movies and how quickly those would be released, and would they release movies on streaming platforms when they were opening in the theater? And so you had this big battle that had played out between the studios and theaters for 10 years prior.

Eric: 25:29

All of a sudden, everything got thrown out during COVID and all the studios started putting everything streaming the same day they opened in the theaters if theaters were even open and what the studios learned really quickly was they degraded the value of their intellectual property or their films really quickly by taking them immediately to streaming.

Eric: 25:56

And most cases box office earnings were less than half of what they I shouldn't say box up. That's not very much. All of the revenues earned from that intellectual property were essentially half of what they expected it to be, because there is a real value to theatrical release. And so here you are. If I don't know that we're ever post COVID, but here we are a year post COVID, roughly, and the studios have all come to the conclusion that streaming has been a fantastic way to light hundred dollar bills on fire and and that they have degraded the value of a lot of their intellectual property by just putting on the streaming platform, not releasing it theatrically first. So that is something that the studios have become very clear on, and they're going to have very much longer windows than were had before COVID before they go streaming.

Dave: 26:55

When I think about also, I guess, your general take on on retail in general, because you know you've got what's happening with shopping malls, you've got sort of different things that are happening. What's your take, just in a general pulse, of what's happening from that perspective?

Eric: 27:10

Well, I think the big thing you've seen in the economy is you've seen a continued bifurcation in retail. What I mean by that is, at the very high end, the luxury retailers are performing really well, and then the kind of more value conscious retailers are really performing well, and where there's been a challenge for the last 10 years, and they're continuing to be, is in this middle market. That includes a lot of the traditional department stores that people grew up with that are having a really hard time keeping customers and showing a value proposition to them. As far as categories of real estate go, I think your typical grocery anchor shopping center is as strong or stronger than it's ever been and will continue to be.

Eric: 27:57

The grocery retailers have really done a fantastic job of learning what the customer needs, which is the customer wants to be able to shop in store, the customer wants to be able to shop online and the customer wants to be able to buy online and pick up in store, and so for the grocers who can provide all of those options, they will continue to do a great job serving the customer.

Eric: 28:19

But you know, every online retailer has learned the hard way that the most expensive last mile of distribution is shipping it to someone and the cheapest way is for someone to drive to your store and put it in the trunk of their car.

Eric: 28:35

And you know you're going to continue to see with online retailers that have such huge amounts of returns that mathematically those business propositions aren't working and they've tried to build sales in a huge way by offering free shipping and free returns and that map doesn't work.

Eric: 28:55

And so for the people who have the opportunity where they can have their customers pick it up in store and or return it in store, those businesses will continue to grow. And I think everyone's noticed it across the country that there has been a huge move to quick service restaurants, adding drive-thrus, and you'll continue to see that, from a convenience point of view, people love the ability to order on mobile and pull up to a drive-thru and pick up their product. And you're seeing more and more drive-thrus where they've actually taken away the order kiosk, where they just expect people to order via their app and pick it up in at the drive-thru window. And I think you'll see more and more mixes of technology like that that will allow for retailers to frankly deploy less labor. As minimum wages have increased dramatically, retailers are going to look more and more to technology to limit their labor costs in each other units.

Dave: 30:02

So we're visiting today with Eric Termanzen, who's the founder of Western Retail Advisors in Phoenix, arizona. Eric, one thing when you talked about earlier how you dealt with stress and you talked about playing basketball and the community that you felt with the people that you played basketball with, and I think so on a professional aspect of that, I know you're active in Vistage and I think a lot of our listeners either are interested in Vistage or have been part of a similar group. What's your take on the value of things like Vistage? Explain briefly what it is for those who don't know and then your involvement and value that you see in that sense of community and how you support others as part of your Vistage group.

Eric: 30:45

So Vistage is an education organization that has multiple levels of educational offerings. What I participate in is a CEO group, and it's been a really terrific educational situation for me. It includes roughly 14 people who own or lead kind of small to mid-sized businesses and includes a we have a chair or moderator who is someone who's been. In our case it's a person who's been CEO of multiple companies and been a professor of marketing at a major university business school, so it's got a very diverse background, and so what we have a great opportunity to do is to have an outside speaker for three hours in the morning. Then we get together in the afternoon and we get a presentation by one of the members of the group on their business, and then we spend the rest of the afternoon working through each of our respective issues within our business and talking about them and having peers to review and challenge you on the things within your business that you're struggling with. And again, it's been a great opportunity for me to learn to meet other entrepreneurs in different businesses, and what you learn over time is we all have pretty much exactly the same problems. They just have different wording around them in different industries and they may have different sizes and scope, but every entrepreneur has all the same issues and so, looking at how someone tackles it in pest control versus how someone tackles it in heavy construction, or we had a gentleman or a group who ran a hedge fund that only invested in late stage legal cases. So there's all sorts of different businesses, that everyone has a different view of things and gets to see different things, but that we all kind of get back to a lot of the same place.

Eric: 32:47

And then when people have business challenges, you've got a support network.

Eric: 32:51

We've had a couple of people go through some kind of off-belt takeovers or challenges with dealing with family members as they need to transition out of the business.

Eric: 33:01

You know, being able to have a peer group around to talk about it is always really interesting and has been tremendously valuable to me. And the other thing we've done with Vistage was we put together Vistage also offers some more customized training, which we've done within our office for about 12 of our most senior employees to give them an opportunity to get some outside influences, some really good business speakers, and then to have a forum where they can talk about challenges within their personal businesses and within the company and not have me around to really deflect any, where they can come up with what the challenges are and what the solutions are without me as part of that, and I think that's been a really valuable tool for us as well. But I would say for any entrepreneur, having some mentoring, peer group, kind of consistent continuing education really helpful. And I joke about it because the day before Vistage I always feel like I don't have time to do it and I always come out of it the next day. I hope that I did.

Dave: 34:08

So, eric, one final question and then we're going to shift to the make it count segment as we wrap up the show. I know that you were active in sports when you were young and now I think you're having a lot of fun with your daughter playing basketball. So, from your perspective, the importance of sports and, I guess, what did you learn from sports that you were able to take to business and I assume you're very encouraged by all the things that your daughter's learning in her journey playing sports as well.

Eric: 34:36

Yeah, thank you.

Eric: 34:37

That is an important question to me because I think the opportunity to participate in team sports is really valuable for everyone, and one of the things I learned early on was that for any team, you're only as good as your weakest link, and I had a great opportunity in my youth where I was that weakest link on the team and several of the seniors on my high school basketball team really invested in me to build my confidence so that I was no longer the weakest link, and it really had a huge impact on me because it wasn't just the coaches investing in me, it was my teammates.

Eric: 35:26

And that's when I think it gets really powerful. And so I've had a great opportunity to watch my daughter play basketball and I think the team that she has been part of has been what's really exciting, because when you watch an entire team where everyone is for the team, it's really fun and it's a great lesson. And I think it gives you many opportunities when you get into a work career, because as you go to work for a big company, you don't choose your teammates. You don't choose. You're very, really good to choose anything other than how you're going to react to everything around you, and I think team sports is really helpful for understanding that and understanding how you can use your behaviors in a positive way to influence the others around you.

Dave: 36:09

Yeah, that's great, and I played sports when I was younger and in high school, and I do think some of the things that you learn is part of that. You really can't learn in other ways. Just great lessons come out of that. So, eric, as we wrap up the show, one of the things that we always try to do is the make it count segment, which is we try to distill it down. What's one key, actionable piece of advice that you would like the listeners to take away from this conversation?

Eric: 36:37

Well, I'm not very good at keeping it short, dave, as you can tell, but I would really lean toward.

Eric: 36:45

I think one of the biggest learnings that I had was it took me a long time to think about how to phrase everything that I do in the right way so that the person I'm communicating with really understands the message that I want to get across to them.

Eric: 37:02

It seems weird to say, but it took me a long time to really understand how people accept your communications versus how you give them, and I'm still learning every day on that front. But I think there's a real nuance to trying to understand how people are accepting your communications, from your body language to your eye contact, to the tone you have in an email or any other written, even a text, because it is so easy in today's world to have people misconstrue your intent and taking the time to really think about how the other person is going to receive that communication has been probably the single biggest change that I've tried to make over the last 10 years. It's really impacted not just my work life but my personal life of making sure that I'm really aware of how things are communicating and how things are heard versus how things are said.

Dave: 38:06

Yeah and Eric, that makes complete sense to me because I do think one of the things in today's society is we get busy just doing a bunch of stuff but at the end of what we did, what was the message that we expected to send and was that message actually received? And a lot of times it does take some years of experience before you realize that that's a pretty big gap between what you intended to send versus what people actually received. And I think, to your point, getting intentional about that and actually focusing on that sounds like it's reaped great rewards for you and certainly a good, solid piece of advice. So, eric, we appreciate you spending time with us today and sharing your insights and your lessons learned over your decades of experience. So we appreciate you making the time.

Eric: 38:51

Thank you.

Dave: 38:52

Thank you for joining the but who's Counting podcast. Make sure to never miss an episode by subscribing on Spotify or Apple Podcasts and let us know what you think by rating and reviewing. Connect with me, Dave Hartley, on LinkedIn and keep up with more Andrew CPAs and advisors insights by following us on social media through the handles in the show notes. We'll see you next time.