Don Maroney is the Director of Business Development at C&W Services. He has over 25 years of experience in facilities management with a knack for sales and operational leadership. C&W Services launched in 2015 as a new brand dedicated to providing integrated facility services. C&W Services brings a new identity, outlook, and purpose to the facility services industry while providing strategic business decisions and creating a positive occupant experience. Don uses his expertise in graphic communication to create on-demand printing and high-end content, all while guaranteeing smooth and concise communication for clients and operators across the country.
Here’s a Glimpse of What You’ll Learn:
- Don Maroney and Greg Owens talk about how Covid-19 has affected their personal lives.
- What is C&W and what services do they offer?
- Don describes his roles at C&W Services.
- How can you foster an entrepreneurial spirit within your company?
- Don shares how Cushman & Wakefield provides leadership and direction in order to help companies navigate the paradigm shift caused by Covid-19.
- How to add value in times of crisis?
- Don talks about leaving a positive impact on others during the current pandemic
- Don explains why now is an excellent opportunity to deal with deferred maintenance projects.
In this Episode:
If you want to expand your business, you might want to take a look at the value that you’re able to add to your business relationships. More companies now opt to work with a single company that they can fully trust versus working with multiple companies to run different parts of their building. And C&W Services has capitalized on this market through strategic business development and expanded its reach with the help of Don Maroney, the company’s Director of Business Development.
According to Don, now is the perfect time to reach out to business associates and clients with accurate information and consistent communication. Why? Because now more than ever, people need to know who they can trust and who they can depend on to get the job done.
In this week’s episode of Watching Paint Dry, Greg Owens talks with Don Maroney, the Director of Business at C&W Services, about the importance of cultivating the entrepreneurial spirit in the workplace. They also discuss how Cushman & Wakefield has taken the reins of helping companies as they adjust to the changes caused by Covid-19, the benefits of staying optimistic despite the pandemic, and why companies should use this opportunity to finish deferred building projects. Stay tuned.
Resources Mentioned in this Episode:
- Greg Owens on LinkedIn
- McCarthy Painting
- McCarthy Painting Contact No.: 415-383-2640
- McCarthy Painting Email Address: info@mccarthypainting.com
- Don Maroney on LinkedIn
- C&W Services
- Cushman & Wakefield
- Xerox PARC
Sponsor for this Episode:
This episode is brought to you by McCarthy Painting, where we serve commercial and residential clients all around the San Francisco Bay area.
We’ve been in business since 1969 and served companies such as Google, Autodesk, Abercrombie & Fitch, FICO, First Bank, SPIN, and many more.
If you have commercial facilities in the San Francisco Bay Area and need dependable painters, visit us on the web at www.mccarthypainting.com or email info@mccarthypainting.com, and you can check out our line of services and schedule a free estimate by clicking here.
Episode Transcript
Intro 0:03
Welcome to the Watching Paint Dry Podcast where we feature today’s top facility managers, property managers and property owners talking about the challenges and opportunities of managing hundreds of thousands of square feet of real estate and how to beautify and improve their properties. Now, let’s get started with the show.
Greg Owens 0:32
Hello, Greg Owens here with the Watching Paint Dry Podcast. And we are continuing our series talking to facilities managers, business owners, property managers, and just sort of really deep diving in learning more about the unique challenges and challenges of this industry, and especially in these times, this episode Brought to you by my company, McCarthy Painting, where we serve painting residential and commercial properties throughout the whole San Francisco Bay Area. I started doing this business when I was 16 years old. I started working for my uncle, Fred McCarthy. And that was about 30 years ago and we have done all kinds of projects throughout the entire San Francisco Bay Area. We’ve worked for companies like Google and Facebook and SPIN. We’ve also done things for Autodesk, Abercrombie and Fitch in the retail market. H&M, also another one, great customers. Today, I’m excited to have Don Maroney, the Director of Business Development at C&W, a brand dedicated to providing integrated facility services. Welcome, Don.
Don Maroney 1:59
Thank you. Greg Glad to be here.
Greg Owens 2:01
Yeah. So first like you, your family, you know your thing. How’s things going? We’re still in this like COVID it’s crazy because at times if I forget and then I’m like, as I go outside and I’m like, Oh yeah, my mask I’m like, Oh yeah, we’re in a pandemic. How are things for you guys?
Don Maroney 2:20
Well, that’s great. I guess there’s always a silver lining, right. So we’ve all been challenged in many different ways with this unfortunate situation. But my daughter had my first grandbaby right in the middle of it on June 20. So I guess I say I’m pretty happy.
Greg Owens 2:34
You’re a grandpa now
Don Maroney 2:36
Yeah, unbelievable. I can’t put that on my title yet cuz I don’t quite feel that.
Greg Owens 2:42
Well, that’s that’s great news. Yeah, like you said, it’s, it’s really important for us all to like focus on the silver linings of these kinds of things, right. In this case right now, like the web, like the, you know, I keep reading things about the environment is improving in just a short period of time, and so that’s Like a really that’s a really great thing like wow, you just turned the whole thing off and and the air will get clean. That’s pretty good. No, that’s right. Yeah. So tell us, tell us about C&W Okay. Yeah.
Don Maroney 3:14
So C&W Services is part of Cushman & Wakefield. Cushman & Wakefield is a top three real estate services organization in the world.
Greg Owens 3:23
Yeah.
Don Maroney 3:24
And obviously, they’re well known for the commercial real estate activity on the brokerage side transactional business, that sort of thing. But
Greg Owens 3:34
they have salespeople and they have they do leasing right off. That’s a big part of what they do.
Don Maroney 3:40
Yes, correct. They do leasing sales, all kind all the portions of a commercial real estate portfolio you can imagine. And that’s 100 year plus company Cushman & Wakefield. And so a number of years ago, they started getting into facility services so what we would call integrated facilities management these days. And so they threw a host of both organic growth and acquisition, they started putting together an organization called cm w services. So that really stands for Cushman & Wakefield Services. So when they had a building owner or an owner occupied facility or a retreat, or any kind of trust that they would do the real estate portion of the business they said, oh, by the way, we also have this other group here that can maintain everything for you. So it through all the complicated pieces of that when he stripped it right down to it, it’s see C&W Services is steps in when you have to heat cool, maintain, or, you know, or change any kind of facility. So that’s kind of where we fit in and there’s Cushman & Wakefield is 54,000 people strong globally. See, C&W Services mainly focuses in North America and we have 14,000 plus employees in North America. So that kind of gives you a picture of the scope.
Greg Owens 5:02
Yeah. Yeah, that’s, that’s quite a, that’s quite a few people on the payroll. There. It is. And, and so you know, you mentioned it there. And it’s always interesting because a lot of people don’t even think about their building really, unless things are going wrong. Right. And you kind of mentioned heating and air, and that’s like the two big ones, right? Like, if they walk into a building and it’s cold, they’re there, they’re upset. And then if they walk into a building, and it’s too hot, they’re upset, right or anything else. So normally, like everyday life, people walk into the building, and they don’t think about the building very much. Because it’s a it’s a safe environment. And it’s everything seems to be just working, but they don’t what they don’t realize is there’s a tremendous amount behind the scenes happening. That’s right.
Don Maroney 5:51
That’s right. Well, you know, part of it is it and you and you’ve talked about earlier about think Conrad Hilton or one of those types. You know, there’s a definite definite differentiation between experiences when you walk into a well oiled machine in a building and walking into another one, even though might be a great company, just your experience of walking into a facility that may not meet your initial expectations. And that is what really we focus on how do we deliver great, best in class services to make sure that experience both for internal and external stakeholders really hits the mark so that they go Wow, that was a that was pretty neat place to go. Actually, whether you work there or you visit there or whatever.
Greg Owens 6:37
Yeah, yeah. And now and so let’s and what’s your role within this within C&W services?
Don Maroney 6:44
So I have kind of two roles. One role is I run the Business Development Director of Business Development for the West Coast, and that includes driving new business and also expansion builds within our existing clients. Then also because of my background, I also overlay the rest of the country in what we consider mailroom services or office services. I have a pretty extensive background in that environment. And so I kind of act as a content matter experts in helping the rest of our operators around the country deliver high end office services, which includes print mail operations, could be concierge services, reception, security, those types of things. So within our value prop of just the normal traditional building maintenance and landscaping, critical environments, that sort of thing. There’s also this office services piece so I kind of played two roles and tried to help drive the business for the company.
Greg Owens 7:47
Oh nice. So that so this is like a, an add on service and sort of concierge service that you that you can provide to building owners when they when they have You guys, you can also say, hey, by the way, your your building is big enough, you have enough people here that we can we can add on these other layers here. And and how did you get into doing that? It sounds interesting.
Don Maroney 8:13
So over the years, you know, from a traditional talk about the Cushman & Wakefield C&W Services piece, and I’ll share a little bit of my personal background. But, you know, overall, clients want more these days, and they started wanting more years ago, and it’s, it’s, it’s kind of I remember going to grad school back in the day, I’m a bay area guy. So I went to St. Mary’s. And I remember going back through and the term back then was called vendor rationalization. You can call it consolidation. You call a lot of different things, but they wanted fewer players to do more for them. And so when you talk about somebody that can really act as a turnkey operator, to do all the things inside of your facility, that not only drives efficiencies, but cost savings and continuity of service, versus having maybe multiple vendors in there. And so that strategy has been implemented for a number of years now. And I think as we hit the COVID era has even escalated that breach dramatically. Because if you can limit the amount of people that are actually maintaining your facility and have one master services agreement, where everyone’s under control under the same kind of operating procedures, I think that we see a lot of activity in that area. So that’s kind of how the services piece came about and push wake, and it’s evolving. My background, I kind of grew up I grew up in the Bay Area. So I’m an Alameda guy. And back in, I won’t say how old I am. But I remember back in the day, there was two industries in Silicon Valley. There was real estate and there was high tech, and all those orchards got converted to Silicon Valley. And during that process, I kind of fell backwards in the Graphic Communications business. And so started a business out of college did quite well with it for a number of years. So through my career, I’ve been involved all the way up to having major roles within Xerox, and so and some others, but I kind of fell into Graphic Communications. But inside of that business, there’s what they call facilities management as well. And that in that world, when he talks about on demand printing and those kind of things that falls into the office services piece of what we do, yeah, it’s kind of a natural transition to take my skills over to C&W services, and help build out a practice we already have had, and bring my skills to that table to the table to help them so well, flow snapshot.
Greg Owens 10:35
Yeah. Did you work at the Xerox campus down there?
Don Maroney 10:40
So zero Xerox is headquartered in Rochester, New York. But people don’t realize that Xerox PARC was really the genesis of a lot of things. They invented the first PC .
Greg Owens 10:54
No, yeah.
Don Maroney 10:55
They have been the GUI interface that was the really the basis behind graphic communications. So and then, with all their wisdom, believe it or not, they had leadership said, You know what, no one ever wants to have a computer on their desk. Just get rid of that. We want mainframes, right? Yes. Take of all time. Yeah. So our friends Wozniak and Jobs went over there and kind of pillaged Xerox PARC pulled the mouse out, pulled the GUI interface created Apple, and the rest is history.
Greg Owens 11:23
Right.
Don Maroney 11:25
Major player. So that’s, you know, it’s kind of interesting how that and I’ve been in route involved in that whole business for quite a while and saw the whole evolution. And they still, they still have a museum over there in Palo Alto that has the original, you know, the original devices. It’s pretty amazing.
Greg Owens 11:39
Yeah, yeah, I mean, I’m right. I’ve I’ve, I’ve read some of those stories and had friends that were working there back in the day, and it was kind of telling me those stories and that kind of thing. And, and I don’t remember what is the park turned into and who took it over is
Don Maroney 11:55
I think they sublease some of it. They still have a pretty good presence there. Yeah. They’ve been they’ve been in a big fight lately, as you may have heard with, they were in a big battle with hp. Carl Icahn was trying to reverse kind of do a forced merger that kind of fell apart, pre COVID but then definitely put the nail in it. So, Xerox is still, you know, probably one of the top 50 brands in the world. You know, Cushman & Wakefield kind of like Cushman & Wakefield, I mean, they’re a staple in the business community. And I was fortunate enough to come and bring all that background into Cushman & Wakefield as part of C&W services. So, it’s been the best of both worlds for me.
Greg Owens 12:34
Yeah. And then you you mentioned you are an entrepreneur and how, and now you’re working for a major corporation and everything, you know, and those are two different skill sets. How have you sort of adopted sort of that sort of entrepreneurial spirit and bringing that in? It sounds like you’ve done it and bring it in into a, you know, a legacy company in a lot of ways.
Don Maroney 12:54
No, no, exactly. Right, Greg. A lot of companies can’t do it. And it’s really a lead. It’s Leadership issue. And it goes back to I probably have hired hundreds of people in my career. And it goes back to a philosophy a very simple one that someone taught me a long time ago. Whenever you hire somebody, you should be hiring your replacement. Now think about that for a second, because not everyone thinks that way. And the people that don’t think that way, stifle innovation, and stifle growth, people that say, you know what, I want to bring in the best and the brightest, they may be smarter than me, they do something better than me and you grow and that creates an entrepreneurial environment with inside of a company. And certainly, even though it’s a big legacy organization, there’s a lot of creativity that goes on at Cush-Wake that I that really attracted me here. And I think it’s fair to assert a very simple principle of bringing the best and the brightest and turning them loose, we have to color between the lines, but then there’s also an open lines of communication to bring creative ideas, whether it’s through m&a activity you may bring bring into the company through other resources partners. strategic alliances, just just organic knowledge in the individual knowledge within industries, all those things.
Greg Owens 14:08
Yeah, it’s I mean, it’s so exactly right. And that’s why I hired Katrina there, right. She’s definitely smarter than me and better at me in a lot of different areas.
Katrina Hayes 14:20
Well, you You’re a great teacher, Greg.
Greg Owens 14:25
Yeah. And
did you did you do any sort of facilities management or work for in that industry before joining Cushman & Wakefield or was it just straight from from your own company into that?
Don Maroney 14:38
Yeah, so I spent probably 10 or 15 years in and around what what certain industries called facilities management is different than what Cushman & Wakefield would call facilities management and that facilities management may represent like I said, print and mail centers, it can include other parts of a business right and So Xerox, Konica Minolta, Canon, Ricoh, kind of crowd of, of OEMs, that build technology, they want to sell a whole lot of technology, software hardware, but then also they all the people to run it all. And but it also translates is that is one piece of the overall integrated facilities management strategy and solution set that a Cush-Wake would be involved in. So yes, I have been in around lots of different pieces, I bring a different set of eyeballs to the table in my current role, because I looked at the business differently. And it’s opened up a huge amount of opportunity for us to expand in other parts of the business into adjacent spaces that they may not have thought about before. If you’re doing building engineering, for example, and they have a huge print center downstairs. Why not roll that contract in? If you’re doing janitorial at a top five tech firm, why can’t you handle their concierge services? Or day porters or janitorial, you know, those kind of kind of adjacent selling, what we would call expansion kind of opportunities, right? And if you if you kind of grew up in the janitorial business, or even the painting business, maybe you don’t have the vision to say, I want to go into some of these other pieces of the business, you know, and not that’s not a knock on anybody, just sometimes you got to step back, say, hey, what other pieces of business can we expand within that existing account? Right? I think that’s that’s always an easier sale, expansion into an existing account than that new, as you probably know,
Greg Owens 16:32
as I said, a lot of times, like yeah, it’s a lot of times it’s, it’s like you said, you can add on things that are related to what you already are good at. Right? And you guys are good at managing things. So then like, what else can you put in? management for right? Um, one other question personally, and then we’ll, we’ll talk some more business stuff, but what is the thing behind you there? It looks like a family crest. That’s my crest. I’m
Don Maroney 16:57
Irish. So that’s my last statement. Ronnie, most people, they see me. They think I’m Italian because Maroni with an eyes Italian and Maroney with anyways Iris, so that’s my family crest. And but my best friend, his name is Perri with an ‘i’. He’s a big Italian guy played nose tackle with Fresno State. He always says no, no, you’re Irish was Italian.
Little inside joke there. Yep. So yeah, that’s that’s my family. Chris. Thank you for asking.
Greg Owens 17:28
Yeah, you know, it’s I’m I, my, my grandmother was born in Ireland. And so was my grandfather. And
Don Maroney 17:35
I can tell by that name. Yeah. It’s not as though the the Scottish version of it right.
Greg Owens 17:42
Yeah. Well, my last name is Owens, too. So So McCarthy is the company and that’s my and so that’s Irish on my mom’s side. And then on my dad’s side, there’s the Owens. So it’s like, yeah, we’re surrounded.
Don Maroney 17:54
That’s right. You got off the rock,
Greg Owens 17:56
right? They got off the rock and what year was it Katrina.
Katrina Hayes 18:00
1911
Greg Owens 18:01
1911 she boarded the boat at 17 years old and moved and moved to America right? for life.
Don Maroney 18:09
Great move.
Greg Owens 18:10
It’s so funny as I took her back there when she was when she was 85. She went back to say goodbye to all the relatives because she’s like, I’m not gonna live much longer. I got to say goodbye. I took her back with a with my cousin, my uncle and my aunt. We all went back when she was 95. And then she goes on and lives to 105
Don Maroney 18:31
Wow, that’s amazing.
Greg Owens 18:32
Yes, so standing is so funny. There’s one moment in the in the in it we’re driving in a van and we pull into this tiny little town like what time that you’ve been to Ireland? Oh, yeah, so we pull in this little town. It’s like a wall. You know, it’s got like all the walls and we pull up to a pub and and my Nana says she’s like Gregory go inside and make inquiries for so and so and I’m like, really like I’m going to walk through In this bar and just like, make an announcement, she’s like, Yes, go. So I go in, right and I walk into this bar. And of course, like, you know, I walk in and everybody stops and looks at me on the outside, right? And I think it’s fenley. I’m like, I’m looking for Miss John Fenley, John Fenley, right? And they’re all like, Oh, yes, he’s up the street. You just go up the street, just two blocks and turn left and there’s a retirement home he’s in now.
Don Maroney 19:28
They know, they know. Right?
Greg Owens 19:29
They know. They knew right away. I was blown away, right. So now, in this time of this pandemic in COVID-19, how has this affected C&W services Cushman & Wakefield. I mean, it’s what have you guys been doing around in this times?
Don Maroney 19:49
Well, I gotta I gotta be honest, I’m very proud of the fact that our CEO Brett White has been kind of a thought leader out in front of the business community this year. The CEO C&W Services Paul Bedborough. Also their frequent guests on CNBC on Fox Business, because we developed a whole set of protocols. And it really emanated from. We have a huge presence in China like a lot of international companies, but they started building out return to work protocols in China early on, and then started bringing those through Europe to the States, North America. And we have a very detailed, robust portfolio of things that we’ve brought to our clients and actually the market. You know, Brett was very, very kind, I think, from a from a corporate standpoint, a corporate governance standpoint, to share as much information as we had with the business community to get everyone back. We’re all in this together. And I think Cushman & Wakefield has taken a leadership role there. Obviously, this is a very fast moving, unknown situation we’re in so I think it took collectively all the business committee kind of pulled together and put Aside profit motors for the time being to help. And if you go back and I can send you a few documents that really kind of illustrated early on in March, April, May June, we kind of led the charge of getting people in back into safe facilities with the six foot workspace, all the protocols to get back into the building from a from a security standpoint and make sure everyone stay safe. And then also work with our clients on a kind of rolling implementation plan, as people start to come back in, and everybody is rethinking their business plans these days, because there’s going to be a percentage of folks that have the ability or technology or skill sets to be able to work remotely still. Yeah, I don’t think there’s any, any definitive number on what that population is, because but I think it’s going to be, you know, from 20 to 25 30%. Probably, and that’s what we see that some people will just continue to work from home
Greg Owens 21:55
and that’s 20 to 30%. working from home or back in the business,
Don Maroney 21:59
No working from home.
Greg Owens 22:00
Okay, working from home,
Don Maroney 22:01
I think I think most companies still need to have a major presence back into a facility. And they want to make sure their their internal stakeholders feel comfortable with that. Right? So it has to be safe, clean, secure all those things. So Cush-Wake has kind of taken a leadership role they’re very happy about and we work with clients every single day on helping them navigate the waters of it’s a paradigm shift, traditional contracts that are in place that have maybe five year contracts and say, oh, by the way, change how do we break these contracts or move them or give them some flexibility, some scalability, give them some time to maneuver with inside of that. I think Cushman & Wakefield has done an outstanding job of work with the existing clients to help them through this process.