Don’t Mess With Texas? Transwestern’s Lindsay Ornstein and Patrick Robinson Take Manhattan, One Broker at a Time

Ms. Ornstein: We should do a round-robin. But to me, it personifies our office. It’s a way people can have fun, interact together. We do potluck lunches, not just for our company, but with our building staff. We do that once a month or once a quarter.
We do a lot of things as a team in a fun way to build the camaraderie and the culture that we are trying to foster.

Do you have any building representation assignments?
Ms. Ornstein: In New Jersey, yes.

Are you expecting to announce anything in New York City?
Mr. Robinson: We would very much like to (laughs). Listen, the bad news is … nothing meaningful is easy to get accomplished. It takes a lot of hard work, and there is a certain progression of time. The good news is, we’ve done all the heavy lifting, and now we are in a position [where] we’re starting to talk to clients and prospects and do meaningful discussions, and we’re actually doing some very formal presentations at this point in time for major leasing and management assignments, and we fully expect to win our fair share of those.

But we’re just at the point where that kind of progression of business cycle is giving us the opportunity to pitch. We’re hoping that our business plan is kind of at the point now where we can bear some fruit.

Ms. Ornstein: We should, in theory, be announcing a win this year, in 2012.

Do you have benchmarks in terms of dollars earned, how many square feet you manage or lease out? Or is it more organic?
Mr. Robinson: There [are] no benchmarks or numbers. The goals are simple. We would like to be a highly profitable firm, with a high revenue per broker, and we’d want to have a reputation of people and quality of work that we can compete for any assignment in the market. Other than that, it’s definitely not a numbers game. It’s a quality game.

Mr. Ornstein: That’s the beauty of being a privately held firm. You can be patient and grow it the right way and not force growth … We also have no debt.

Mr. Robinson: We have been profitable all through the downturn and we’re managed very conservatively, and financially we are in very strong shape.

Ms. Ornstein: Last year was the strongest year in the company’s history.

Mr. Robinson: I think there are two areas of growth: One is the Northeast—they’re investing heavily here—and we’re building out an investment platform as well, based out of Texas. It’s a national investment platform, so we’re looking for acquisition properties to acquire on behalf of our client base. Those are the two growth areas, so to speak, but again, no quotas. Do it the right way and it will work out.

drosen@observer.com