Office Space Matters With Vinny Di Meglio, Real Finds Podcast #12 Transcript
Gordon Lamphere: Hi, I’m Gordon Lamphere, and welcome to the Real Finds Podcast, the podcast series where we interview key entrepreneurs, scientists, and activists who are shaping the commercial real estate industry and, as a result, our world. On today’s podcast, we interview Vinny Di Meglio. Vinny is a Senior Vice President at Jones Lang LaSalle who specializes in office space in Princeton and the central New Jersey market. On the podcast, we talk tips and tricks for success in the real estate industry, the state of the office market, return to office, the hub-and-spoke model, and flex work. It’s well worth a listen. Hey Vinny, thanks for hopping on the podcast today.
Vinny Di Meglio: You got it, Gordon. Thanks for having me.
Gordon Lamphere: I wanted to start with the basics, and the basics we need to understand about you is: who’s Vinny?
Vinny Di Meglio: Vinny is a guy who doesn’t like seeing a Jordan jersey behind you, because in my office I have a Ewing jersey hanging up. I grew up painfully watching your Jordan torch my Knicks. But I’ll move past that for a moment. I’m Vinny Di Meglio, a Senior Vice President at Jones Lang LaSalle in our Princeton, New Jersey office. I’ve been in Princeton personally my whole life and professionally since 2009. I graduated from a liberal arts college in Pennsylvania called Ursinus College in May of 2009 and wondered, what do I do next? Thankfully, about a month after graduation, the opportunity to get into commercial real estate presented itself, and I said, what the heck is that? I didn’t even know what they did. But I rolled the dice, got hired, got my license, and that was August of 2009. This summer I’ll be coming up on 14 years in the business. I’ve been focused on the office sector the entire time. I split my business between tenant rep and agency deals, and I do a little bit of sales when the opportunity presents itself, with a pretty strict focus on the central New Jersey market that encompasses Princeton and some of the surrounding counties.
Life in the Commercial Real Estate Business
Gordon Lamphere: You mentioned getting into the business. What is life like in commercial real estate?
Vinny Di Meglio: Isn’t that a loaded question? I tell people this is not the kind of business to get into unless you’re really young and have the opportunity to test the waters, because you’re not going to make a lot of money for a long time. I was told getting into this business that it would take three years to build a business and start making money. But I was 22, living at home, single, on a $20,000 draw, making less than $1,700 a month. At 22, I was loaded, man. I was taking my friends out. Then I quickly realized that doesn’t get you very far.
You have to look at yourself as an entrepreneur, a sole proprietor. We work for these big organizations, and Jones Lang LaSalle is one of the biggest, with fantastic resources and people who support me in my endeavors. But at the end of the day, I’m working for myself. I have to wake up with that drive, that tenacity, that overall passion for the business, because if I decide to take the day off, no one’s going to check in on me. No one’s going to say, hey man, what are you working on? I have to push myself.
Gordon Lamphere: I grew up in and have worked my entire life at a small to mid-size boutique firm in Northern Illinois. We have a strong network within Northern Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Northwest Indiana, but it’s nothing like working at a Jones Lang LaSalle or Colliers. What’s it like working at a large global firm, and have you sensed a big difference between Colliers, JLL, and Newmark, where you also worked?
Vinny Di Meglio: Good question. I started with Newmark, and I look at my career in phases that align with the companies I’ve worked for. I didn’t know what I was doing at Newmark. I was brand new. By the time I left, three and a half years in, I was just starting to figure it out, so I didn’t know enough about who Newmark was and what they offered beyond being a big global company with a lot of great things.
When I got to Colliers, they had more of an entrepreneurial spirit. They were made up of a collection of smaller boutique firms from around the country, and that spirit was strong and alive throughout the organization. We were able to do things a little differently. I started writing blogs, got more into social media, and got into creative marketing for some of the listings I was working on. It felt like I could get my hands dirty, and I really grew my business over six and a half years there. But I started to realize that company didn’t have the same reach that some others do. I like to go out and hunt for my business. I don’t sit back and wait for the phone to ring or wait for an email saying, hey Vin, here’s some inbound business. That’s just icing on the cake when it happens. As I surveyed the market, I saw other organizations really cleaning up and holding market share, and I thought that for this next phase of my career, which hopefully is the longest, maybe I want to go join one of them.
JLL presented an opportunity, and once I got here, I realized they’re doing a lot of things differently than Newmark and Colliers, and I can only imagine the CBREs and Cushmans of the world. We just celebrated four years here in January. It’s been a weird four years, as you can imagine, based on where the world has been. But it’s a great organization with a lot of technology and services I’d never seen before, which really sets us apart. You don’t know until you get there. It’s hard to know what a company offers until you’re inside it. I’m glad I made the move.
Advice for Young Brokers
Gordon Lamphere: You’ve obviously been successful; otherwise, you wouldn’t have been recruited by multiple top firms. What strategies would you give a younger broker? There’s a lot of mysticism around what actually creates a successful career, and I think there are really just a couple of key things that factor into almost every successful broker’s path.
Vinny Di Meglio: You have to have a passion for what you do. It’s probably impossible to be successful at anything unless you enjoy it. I don’t wake up thinking, oh my God, I can’t wait to go be a real estate broker today. But I enjoy what I do. It affords a lot of flexibility. There’s earnings potential you can’t get in a lot of places. And there’s that entrepreneurial spirit of having my own business. If I want to make more money, I need to be on the phones today, meeting with people today, working more hours today. I drive myself. I was an athlete growing up, and there was something about getting in the weight room and training, understanding that if I want to be better, I need to spend more time perfecting the craft. You have to have that same passion.
You also have to have patience. If you’re a weightlifter and you want to bench 300 pounds, you’re not benching 300 on day one. You start at 100, then 110, then 120. There’s incremental growth. Young people getting into the business, if they haven’t been around it or talked to enough people, anticipate success almost immediately. There are so many nuances to this business, and this is what you can’t tell a young person who’s not in it yet, because they don’t know they need to hear it: understand the life cycle of a deal and how you get paid. People come in saying, in the next 12 months I’m going to be making money. That’s fantastic. But the life cycle of a deal can take 12 months from finding a prospect who agrees to work with you to signing the lease. Sales take even longer, but that’s a different topic. Then you have to go get paid. Typically you get half on signing, not always, and the other half on commencement, and who knows when that’s going to be.
Gordon Lamphere: That’s definitely a shock. My wife is in corporate law, so for her it’s the typical paycheck rolling in twice a month. She’ll say, Gordon, you did a 15,000-foot deal, where’s the cash? And I’ll say, honey, it’s going to be about nine months. She says, what? It’s a shock to people in a more predictable cash-cycle industry. We have to be driven by more than the immediate paycheck and focus on providing long-term value in our careers. The money does come into your bank account. It just sometimes takes a few months.
Vinny Di Meglio: It can take a really long time. If your fee is due in nine months, you send the invoice at month eight, it’s not there at month nine because they have 30 days to pay, then you’re chasing them for another 30 days, then it gets stuck in the system. It can take forever. For young people listening, in the business or thinking about it, for me it’s all about building your pipeline. And, by the way, making mistakes.
A lot of people are focused on wanting to do big deals, and that’s great. We should all have aspirations to do the biggest and best business we can. But personally, and I know not everybody agrees, I’m a firm believer in hitting singles and doubles. If you can build a team, you should delegate and have someone else run those smaller transactions. But if you’re young, do as many deals as you can. Get your repetitions in, going back to training. Learn from your mistakes, build your pipeline, and get those smaller checks coming in to get the cash flow started. It’s still going to take a few years even if you follow those rules. But around year three, you’ll look at your accounts receivable and everything coming in over the next year, all the deals and clients you’re working with, and that’s critical, because it’s such a psychological drain to wonder where the next client is going to come from.
Gordon Lamphere: I couldn’t agree more. Our whole firm has made a hundred years of business off hitting singles. If you have a good support team around you, getting those twos, fours, and eights on a regular basis is a godsend. Young brokers doing a 3,000-foot office deal think, man, this is just a 3,000-foot deal. But that small office, flex, or industrial deal is where that tenant is now. Ten years from now, they might be at 10, 20, or 30. Within our own portfolio, we’ve had tenants who were in 4,000 feet five years ago and are now looking for 15 or 20. It’s about developing that book of business on good relationships and good professional service. If you’re checking the right boxes, long term you’re going to be successful.
Vinny Di Meglio: There are so many anecdotes guys like us can share from being around a long time. One I like to share is an attorney with just under 3,000 feet. I was cold calling and eventually got her on the phone, and she said, I’ve got two and a half years left on my lease, why don’t you come in and we’ll chat. I looked at her lease and said, you’re overpaying by a lot. She said, but I’ve got two and a half years left. I asked, would you extend it and make it a 10-year lease if I could get your rent down 20% or 30%? Absolutely. Within 30 days that deal was done. I think the fee was $30,000. I was happy, she was happy. Then she referred me to somebody who needed 12,000 feet, and they signed a 10-year deal with me representing them. Subsequently, she expanded, and then renewed, and I did both deals. That little 3,000-square-foot deal everybody wants to poo-poo has led to significant revenue for my business. I can’t not look at it as important.
To go back to the sports analogy, I’m a Derek Jeter fan. That guy hit more singles and doubles than most, and he also had some of the biggest home runs of anybody’s career. He ended up one of the top hitters to ever do it, and nobody remembers him as just hitting big home runs all the time.
The Central New Jersey Office Market
Gordon Lamphere: The Captain is a great example. One of the biggest reasons I wanted to have you on is that certain regions of the country share great similarities in certain asset classes. Chicago is very similar to Atlanta in industrial, for example. For office in particular, the New Jersey market matches a lot of what Chicago’s collar counties have traditionally been: a large metro area with a large pharmaceutical hub. What’s the state of the New Jersey market right now? I think there’s a lot of advice here for people in both markets.
Vinny Di Meglio: I love that question. I sit in what I call central New Jersey. There’s a battle between people who live here over whether central even exists, whether it’s just north or south. But it does. So I’ll talk about the market I know, and I think I’ll hit on the same trends.
We have a 25 to 26 million square foot office market, one of the largest suburban office markets in the country. It’s not the biggest, but it’s one of the biggest, and it’s driven largely by the pharmaceutical companies you mentioned. We’re equidistant to New York City and Philadelphia, with a great transit system to get you to and from both. We have great hospital systems: Penn, Capital Health, Robert Wood Johnson, a bunch of big hospitals. And probably the biggest and most important is Princeton University. Princeton is the single most important driver of economic activity in this part of the state. Plenty of people want to be here because Princeton University is here, and they also happen to be the largest landowner in the market. Whether they’re buying buildings for their own expansion or involved in developments that need a broker’s help, without them, we’re not what we are.
There are a ton of factors that make Princeton unique but also similar to other regions you’re describing. I tell people, look at the 2008 and 2009 downturn and at what’s happened over the last couple of years. There are never dramatic peaks and valleys here, because we have a great foundation and support system, so when things go awry, there’s something to pull it all back in. I’m very fortunate to sit in Princeton. I grew up here, I live right outside it in Robbinsville, and I’m proud to serve this market.
Flight to Quality
Vinny Di Meglio: As for what tenants are doing, it’s such a mixed bag. There’s almost no consistency. You can’t say everybody I’m working with is in flight-to-quality mode, or everybody’s downsizing. Nobody fully knows what they want to do. Having said that, I have a listing that was owned for a long time by a group that broke up and really mismanaged the building. It’s a 150,000-square-foot Class A office building, and they sold it at a nice discount. A client of mine bought it and put $4 million into renovating it. In my opinion, it’s now the nicest building in that segment of the market. In the last two years, we’ve signed 12 new leases. Who’s signing 12 new leases in two years? And we have a substantial lease that, fingers crossed, gets done soon to make it a lucky 13. It’s because the new owner spent the money and created an atmosphere that makes people excited to come in. Gorgeous cafeteria, fitness center, shared conference room, game room, bike share program. You name it, we have it. Anybody who comes to the building recognizes the value of that atmosphere for their employees.
We’re trying to get people to work in the office. You can’t force them back just because you say they have to. You have to create an environment that makes them want to come in. So yes, we’re seeing flight to quality, and I’m concerned for the Class B owners who don’t want to reinvest. That said, there will always be plenty of people who simply don’t want to pay the rent and want the cheap deals.
Gordon Lamphere: Of course. I sit in Lake County, the largest of the collar counties around Chicago, and there are essentially four buildings I’d really consider Class A. Those four are well leased and continue to be, and if anything, the divide between their leasing patterns and the rest of the market is growing.
Vinny Di Meglio: Big tenants, in company size or space, or a lot of smaller ones?
Gordon Lamphere: Overwhelmingly tenant agnostic. Some are full-floor tenants, some are fives and tens, some are small executive suites at 500 square feet. What they all have in common is quality. I’m sure there’s some market where that’s not the case, but I’d bet it’s not too different in New Jersey.
Vinny Di Meglio: I love getting into the nitty-gritty. If you’re a mechanic, you have to understand the components of how something works or you can’t fix it or build it. We can’t have surface-level conversations with our clients and really help them. We talk about adding value, so I’m looking at buildings and asking, why are those buildings successful? It’s hard to look at one tenant and explain why another tenant figured out their space needs, because everyone has different reasons for what they want. But looking at landlords, and you can hear the uptick in my voice because this is how I talk to my landlord clients, these are the things we need to look at: who’s being successful, what are they doing, and why?
The building I’m sitting in is a three-story, 80,000-square-foot Class A office building built around 2013, so a 10-year-old building that’s essentially brand new. The owner had incredible foresight. He had an 80,000-square-foot tenant who wanted to lease the whole building. Who says no to that? He said no. He was concerned that if he put all his eggs in one basket and that tenant ever downsized, what would he do? That tenant, where they went, ultimately did downsize and put their space on the market for sublease, all pre-COVID. Instead, he leased this relatively small 80,000-square-foot Class A building to about a dozen different tenants. It’s 100% leased, and it has one of the highest rents in the market.
Gordon Lamphere: We could tell war stories all day, but I’ll add one. The building I currently sit in came back to us in the mid-2010s from a large Fortune 500 company, with a landlord I’ve worked with for ages. The building was 95% vacant, and the question was simple: do they even want to continue with it in a mid-2010s office market that was absolutely atrocious here? They had a choice. Put more money into the building and sell it or hold it, or pitch it entirely. They put $2.2 million into a building in a market where everyone thought they were crazy, and now we’re 75% leased with the remaining spaces getting close. There’s a deep struggle with the typical landlord, and I’m sure you deal with this regularly. It’s so hard to tell somebody they have to spend money to make money, but that’s the world we live in, particularly post-COVID. It’s all about placemaking. There has to be a reason to come into the office. I’m sure you’re seeing that in New Jersey as well.
Vinny Di Meglio: If you’re going to give somebody the advice to spend money, which is always hard, you have to put your money where your mouth is, especially if you’re the one representing them. There’s only so much we can do as agents, but I look at it like this: as long as I’m doing the things I promised and the things I believe I need to do to be successful for everybody, the world has a way of giving back. I’m making my cold calls, knocking on doors, talking to brokers, running my marketing and social media campaigns. Maybe there’s no direct benefit today, but the world notices and things happen. So when I tell a landlord I think they should invest money, I’m going to put in that effort and do everything I think I need to do, if not more.
But everybody needs to hear multiple sides of being successful in real estate, not only as a broker but as an owner, and what kind of assets you need to own to be successful. When you were talking, I thought about my longest-tenured client, about a dozen years now. I started with him on a single-story, 77,000-square-foot office building. It’s not fair to call it Class C, but it’s not fair to call it Class B either. Great location, but a 40-year-old building that had been leased by the State of New Jersey for 30 years. The state pulled out of everything, and all of a sudden there was 50,000 square feet of empty space that mostly hadn’t been touched other than the roof and some mechanicals. I took the assignment as a young broker because I just wanted to learn and take anything anybody would give me. He’s not only one of my best clients, I consider him a friend. We’ve leased that building to 100%. It doesn’t have a single amenity. But he’s a good guy, actually a great guy, and a great owner who cares about his tenants. He’s put money in, every space has been retrofitted when it’s leased, he pays his commissions, he replaces the HVAC units on every deal. He does everything he needs to do. He didn’t have to spend millions replacing the skin of the building and changing every component top to bottom. If you provide a great service that people recognize, you’re going to be successful.
Hub and Spoke
Gordon Lamphere: There’s absolute truth to that. Flight to quality goes beyond amenities. It can be a property management group on its game, proactive representation that meets clients’ needs on time, generally high-quality landlordship. I want to ask about something we’ve been seeing in Chicago. The hub-and-spoke model has been spinning out of the Loop into greater Chicagoland. Is that something you’ve seen in New Jersey as part of flex work and return to office?
Vinny Di Meglio: Hub and spoke is something we thought we’d see a lot of, given our proximity to New York City and Philadelphia. The assumption was that people would be nervous to get on a crammed train, fearing getting sick, and that would drive them away from the office, so you’d need spoke offices scattered throughout the state to meet demand where people lived. It made perfect sense. We haven’t seen it to the extent we expected. We did show space to an insurance company last week, though, doing exactly that. They have no presence in Princeton, but they have a couple of employees here, and now they need an office for them. They’re doing it all over the place. I thought, finally, someone is doing this.
Outside of hub and spoke, there’s been good expansion. JLL represents Moderna, and as they expanded in Boston, they asked how to find more talent, because they couldn’t keep growing there. They came down to Princeton, and I was lucky enough to represent them on their expansion here. They opened a brand-new 15,000-square-foot facility. They were also working in DC at the time, and I assume they closed that transaction. When you have a good market with a great talent pool, it’s good for hub and spoke and for regular expansion. And if not for the pharmaceutical sector, I don’t know where our vacancy and absorption numbers would be. Pharma has been such a critical component of this market. I put a lot of emphasis on Princeton University, but pharma deserves to be recognized as well.
Return to Office
Gordon Lamphere: Every metro area has its titans. For us, it’s food, pharma, and logistics. Without those three, I’d be living in a cardboard box somewhere. Going to something more unique to New Jersey: like Illinois, it was one of the states hit hardest by the lockdowns. How have you seen the return-to-work movement, and do you see a long-term future for people continuing to return, or have we reached a stasis?
Vinny Di Meglio: It’s such a polarizing topic, and I have very strong opinions on it.
Gordon Lamphere: You can share those opinions. That’s fine.
Vinny Di Meglio: I had a great conversation with a client the other day and said, I wish there were a room of people listening to the back and forth we just had, because there was so much value from two people in the business, one an owner and one me, putting our thoughts out there. Sometimes you’re scared to share those thoughts because you don’t want to upset anybody. I worked from home during the lockdowns like a lot of people, the first three months when we were closed. JLL returned to the office in June of 2020, so we started getting back in. My wife was pregnant with our third child and nobody was vaccinated yet, so I probably spent more time at home, especially toward the end of the pregnancy and for a couple of months after the baby was born. Then we moved our office last year and leased our own space, because we had the agency on the building we were in. Unfortunately, here in West Windsor Township, which is also a Princeton address, it’s been a painfully long process to get permits. Long story short, we were without an office for five months, so I had to work from home again.
I say all this because I know what it’s like to work from home as an almost 36-year-old with three kids, a wife, and a dog. For me, personally, it’s impossible. There is zero value in my being home during the workday. So much so that my wife said, go away, you make my life harder when you’re here, because you’re trying to keep us quiet when you’re on a call, or you need focus time, and I’d rather you just be at the office. That was eye-opening. I thought I was doing a favor by being home and lending a hand, but it wasn’t helpful.
I also realized very early on that not being around my peers, specific to what we do in this industry and similar roles, I learn more by listening to what’s going on in the office and the conversations being had than I could possibly learn at home. We did the Zoom thing, and people got Zoom fatigue quickly. They stopped participating and got distracted by things at home. After the first three months at home, we had a meeting in the office, and in 90 minutes or two hours I walked away with more new information than in three months on Zoom. That’s not me being funny or exaggerating. That’s the reality. For me to be the best version of myself, for my family and my clients, I have to be in the office. I don’t know how I get better and grow by working from home.
Having said that, there’s a large cohort of people who completely disagree, and that’s where the issue is: how do you get back people who have been working from home for three years and have gotten used to the flexibility, the opportunity to garden during the day or get a workout in, things they couldn’t do when they were at the office all the time? I also agree flexibility is important to everybody. I’ve had flexibility since the day I started in this business. If I want to pick up my dry cleaning at one o’clock, I can. Is anybody going to check on you, Gordon, if you run home to feed the dog?
Gordon Lamphere: No one is going to check on me, basically ever. And that’s where we get to the unique point about how the work-from-home movement has been twisted in a weird way. There are folks like my wife, almost seven years into law at a pretty large corporate firm. When the pandemic started, she was already almost five years in. She’d been to court, done trials, and didn’t need the support network of a senior attorney around. But she’s gone into the office and seen younger attorneys who’ve been in the business a year or two and never had that in-office interaction, and honestly they’re terrible at what it takes to be a corporate attorney, because they never had that network or the experience of working with people.
I see it with young brokers. A couple of offices around here didn’t have anybody in the office for over a year and are still in a very flexed situation. You see brokers who are 20, 21, 22, 23, and their canvassing is sloppy. They come to our buildings and you think, come on, guys. It’s one thing to canvass our buildings well; it’s another to make all the rookie mistakes. I don’t know if I could have started in this industry working from home. That’s what blows my mind about the movement. If you’re 40 or 50 and have been in the business 10 or 15 years, work from home is fine in a lot of ways. But I don’t know how you train staff or develop as a young professional without that network around you, because there are years of institutional knowledge in an office that rubs off on people, and that’s surely lacking.
Vinny Di Meglio: I’m glad you said it, because I met with an attorney last week, a prospective client, and I told her it’s going to be an issue with the knowledge gap. Young folks aren’t getting mentorship and aren’t learning because people aren’t in the office collectively. I know somebody who’s been in their industry four decades, in their sixties, with an hour-and-a-half commute each way. Before COVID, they were going in maybe two days a week. Early in their career, they commuted into the city by train, up at 4 a.m., for 13 years. They really put their time in. At first I said, you’ve earned it, work from home. But then I thought about all the phenomenal wisdom they could impart on young people, and not just young people. Guys our age in our thirties and forties need that too. We need to be learning constantly. I’m not about to tell that person to go into the office, but that’s where I think it’s a little self-serving to say, I’m just going to work from home.
Because of COVID, I have a fully functioning office at home that I enjoy. I get a little done in the morning before I leave and a little at night. But I believe in separation. I don’t bring my computer into bed or onto the couch. I need that time mentally, and I think that’s something young people in this country are struggling with significantly. We’re wondering what’s going on with anxiety and depression, and look, you’re not meant to work 24/7. At home, there’s no separation of church and state. You wake up and you’re on, and it doesn’t stop. You need that separation. And I also don’t believe people are working the whole time. I’ve heard the stories from friends about how my employer thinks I’m working but I’m really not, I’ve got software that makes it look like I’m working.
The Final Four
Gordon Lamphere: It’s been a great conversation, and I’d love to have you back. Let’s get to our Final Four, starting with one of my favorites: where do you see the future of the office market going?
Vinny Di Meglio: Oof. Office isn’t going anywhere. As we just outlined, there’s a ton of value the office provides. It’s just going to set a new bar. After the 2008 and 2009 recession, we had very high vacancy, people were laid off, and companies shrank their space. But that became a new starting point. People grow, they hire, they need more space. So companies will reset, take what they think they need, and grow from there. I think it’s going to be a struggle for the next 12 to 24 months as we keep figuring out return to office versus work from home, and as leases roll, people will have to decide what they want to do. The hardest thing will be figuring out how much space they actually need. In the early stages of COVID, we said, you can work Monday through Wednesday, the other person works Thursday and Friday, and you’ll share desks. Now people are saying, we actually see the importance of being together and we all want to be in at the same time, so you can’t share desks. It’s going to be a reimagining of what the office is and why we come together: more collaborative areas, maybe fewer private offices, more open space. That might mean a smaller footprint, but not drastically. That’s my way of saying we’re going to be fine. It’s just going to take some learning over the next couple of years.
Gordon Lamphere: I wholeheartedly agree. Within the office park we manage right here, right out the window is Zebra’s Midwest headquarters. They’ve taken that model: three days a week, two days everyone has to be there, one flex day, and you can’t take both Monday and Friday off. There’s a lot of flexibility going forward, and I think you’re right. Next question, and this will be particularly meaningful from you because your career has grown like a rocket ship early on: if you could give a one-minute speech to a young Vinny on how to have a successful career, what would it be?
Vinny Di Meglio: I always thought I put in the hours when I was younger, and I realize now I didn’t. I’ve always worked hard. My father is an immigrant, and I grew up in a pizzeria pouring sodas at four years old and wiping down tables. I’ve always understood the value of hard work. Shaking a hand and looking somebody in the eye, coming to work with your face washed, prepared, suit on, with confidence. Those are the simple foundations of being successful, and I’ve always done them. But getting into the office at 8:30 and staying until 6, Monday through Friday, and going to bed at 11, that doesn’t cut it. As a married man with kids, I find myself getting up way earlier than I ever imagined. If I want to get everything done in a day, I’m up at 5:25, and I try to be asleep by 10:30. I wish that from 22 to 25, that very specific segment of my career, I was out the door by 6:30 and walking back in at 6:30 or 7. I’d have gotten a lot more done and built my business faster. I have no complaints. It worked. I’m still here, I’m thriving, and I had the best year of my career last year. But I wish I’d put in more hours when I had the opportunity, because young Vinny didn’t know how finding my future wife, getting married, buying a house, and having kids would change my schedule. You don’t have the same time at this stage, so you want to double down early.
Anybody with kids will laugh at this. You don’t know what you don’t know. One of my best friends had his first son a few months before we did, and he said, whatever you do, don’t get the onesies that button, get the ones that zipper. In one ear, out the other. I didn’t know why that mattered until I was trying to button that stupid onesie while the baby’s kicking his legs. Now I know what he was trying to tell me. Too many people will listen to this and remember it in a few years. But if you really can hear it now: spend more time perfecting your craft early on. You’ll be glad you did.
Gordon Lamphere: We have our first on the way, so we’re picking out baby clothes right now, and the number one recommendation I got was to get the magnet buttons, and if you can’t get magnets, get the zipper, but never the buttons. Funny to hear that from you too.
Vinny Di Meglio: Congratulations. Magnets are good too.
Gordon Lamphere: We learn a lot from our friends, but some of the best places to get knowledge, because they’re often the only places available, are books. I’m a voracious reader. Is there a business or lifestyle book that really shaped your career, and what should our listeners be reading?
Vinny Di Meglio: The best advice I can give, and I will answer the question, is read. Just read. It’s amazing how much information is in books, and how much overlap there is between books that have nothing to do with each other but talk about the same company or story, so you start putting the pieces together and see the bigger picture. Around the time I turned 30, I decided I wanted to read a lot, and I’ve always been drawn to autobiographies of people who found success. The first book I picked up was a Walt Disney biography by Bob Thomas. Whatever your opinion of Disney the company, there’s a long and complicated history of how Walt Disney built it, the failures he had early on, and the mental fortitude to push forward. I’m not going to become who he was; almost nobody does. But if you can glean one or two pieces of somebody’s story and put them into your life and mindset, it can change your life. Steve Jobs, Ben Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, I’ve read all of those. Fascinating people with tremendous successes and failures, and learning from them has been a big help.
Right now I’m reading a simple one that comes up all the time, and I almost couldn’t believe I hadn’t read it yet: How to Win Friends and Influence People.
Gordon Lamphere: You haven’t read that?
Vinny Di Meglio: I thought I had. I just figured I’d read it. Then I was looking through my library thinking, why don’t I have this book? The stories he tells are fantastic, and there’s a lot of great information I’m already thinking I need to be doing day to day. As you grow and get busier, it’s harder to find time to pick up a book. I love the way a book feels in my hand as I turn the page. When I close it, I look at it and think, wow, look at everything I just got through. I feel smarter and better as a person for having read it. Some people can’t stand it, and that’s fine. But I’d encourage anybody to pick up any book at all, start there, and work your way up.
Gordon Lamphere: For the folks who don’t love to read, at least get an audiobook, because long-form content is not only better for your brain in terms of sustaining attention, it changes the way your brain interacts with the world. Multiple great selections there, and we’ll put them on the list. The last question is my favorite and the whole reason I created the podcast. In real estate we live in our own bubbles, of our firm, our region, our asset class. As a successful broker, you know a lot of amazing commercial real estate professionals. Who would you recommend to hop on the podcast next?
Vinny Di Meglio: There are a ton of great people. It’s funny, I was on another podcast, a real estate broker based in Kentucky.
Gordon Lamphere: I know those guys. I’m actually going to be on that podcast.
Vinny Di Meglio: They’re great guys. As I listen to their episodes, I know so many of their guests, probably the people more involved in social media that we see every day. Two I’d point to: Jeremy Neuer, now a Jones Lang LaSalle broker, a great guy who’s been really successful and somebody you should talk to. And Michael Beckerman, who’s on a path to change the world through environmental sustainability in real estate. That’s a really interesting topic, and he’s an outgoing guy with a lot of passion for what he does. The list goes on, but if I give you two names, I’ll give you those two.
Gordon Lamphere: Two good names. The second most important question before we wrap: what’s the best way to get in contact with you, whether a client who wants to be in the Princeton market or a young broker looking for a tip?
Vinny Di Meglio: On social media you can find me on LinkedIn, where I do most of my connecting. I’m also on Twitter, but LinkedIn is best. Or keep it really simple: my email is [email protected].
Gordon Lamphere: Awesome. Vinny, thanks for hopping on the podcast.
Vinny Di Meglio: Gordon, I can’t thank you enough, man. Thank you for the opportunity. This has been a real pleasure, and I hope to do it again soon.
Gordon Lamphere: The pleasure is all mine. Thanks again to Vinny. We appreciate his insights. If you enjoyed the podcast, please give us a like, a five-star rating, or a review. Your comments, interactions, and subscriptions truly matter and help us continue to provide quality guests. You can follow us on YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. I’m Gordon Lamphere with the Real Finds Podcast. Thank you for listening.
Van Vlissingen and Co. has been the Midwest’s oldest commercial real estate brokerage, development, and management firm since 1879, and today is independently ranked the #1 commercial real estate agency in Chicagoland, home to the #1 independently ranked agent, Gordon Lamphere, and the region’s #1 ranked commercial property management team. If you own, manage, or invest in energy-adjacent, mixed-use, or transit-oriented property across Lake County, the North Shore, the Northwest and O’Hare corridors, DuPage and the I-88 corridor, Will County, or southern Wisconsin’s Pleasant Prairie, Kenosha, and Racine markets, contact Van Vlissingen and Co. at 📞 847-634-2300 or 🌐 vvco.com. For a market-wide view of where these dynamics sit today, see our State of the Chicagoland Commercial Real Estate Market for Q3 2026.