Episode 118: Stu Dyer – From a Buyer to a Broker

When it comes to working in sales, there are two things to always keep your focus on your customer and your brand. When you start your career with the habit of putting your customer’s needs first and making sure you know your brand inside and out, you’ll have a strong foundation for success as you navigate more tenured positions and take on more responsibilities.

In this episode of Tech Sales is for Hustlers, Stu Dyer, now the First Vice President of Data Center Advisory at CBRE, describes his growth as he’s navigated through different positions in his career. From working in the hospitality industry and sales to serving as a broker and now working as a VP in commercial real estate, Stu has accrued extensive wisdom and knowledge that he shares in this episode!

Guest-At-A-Glance

💡 Name: Stuart Dyer

💡 What he does: Stu is the first vice president of Data Center Advisory at CBRE

💡 Company: CBRE

💡 Noteworthy: Stuart joined CBRE from IBM, where he served as the global data center and strategy lead and was responsible for all IBM data center transactions globally. Prior to IBM, Stuart led business development at CyrusOne and launched the firm’s federal program. He also has prior sales experience at area tech firms Apptix — a cloud/SaaS hosting company — and memoryBlue — a lead generation, sales, and marketing firm. Stuart is a University of Arizona graduate and a board member of AFCOM, an association dedicated to advancing data center and IT infrastructure professionals. 

💡 Where to find Stu: LinkedIn l Website

Key Insights

⚡Salespeople must understand customer needs. A sales representative is a person who interacts directly with customers at all stages of the sales process, and this requires many skills — from confidence and persuasiveness to active listening and relationship-building. However, Stu notes that the most important thing is for salespeople to put the customer’s needs first. “I think that salespeople need to put a focus on understanding their customers, truly understanding their customers, understanding not so much the widgets and the whizbang parts of their products but to understand how their products can help their customers versus just understanding all the fancy things their product could do.”

⚡ Hospitality is an excellent precursor to sales. Before entering sales, Stu worked as a waiter and pointed out that everyone should spend some time in a restaurant. He says that in the hospitality industry, you acquire valuable skills that can help you in your future job. “It’s just the life skills that you get; there’s good, there’s bad, and there’s some ugly, but it makes you so much more well-rounded and also appreciative of all that goes into it; I think it’s an excellent precursor. If somebody’s been a bartender or a waiter, you gotta have decent soft skills and be able to think quickly on your feet a lot of the time.”

⚡ How to get new customers as a real estate company? CBRE is a worldwide commercial real estate services and investment company that can help you use real estate to transform your business and find greater success. It has clients — including more than 90% of Fortune 100 companies — in 100+ countries. Stu explains how they reach new clients, highlighting that brand awareness is very important. “The information’s out there; it’s how do you use it, how do you leverage it, and who do you use it with? Getting an organization to trust you in making their most important real estate decisions is really hard; finding tenant rep clients is really, really hard, and typically those are life-locked if you do a good job; they stay in business. Those should be lifelong relationships.”

Episode Highlights

Initiator of the CyrusOne Federal Program

“I got a phone call in 2013 saying, ‘Hey, will you come work for CyrusOne? We’re this little data center company opening up in Northern Virginia.’ And I said, ‘Look, I don’t know anything about data centers, but I know a lot about channel sales.’ And I didn’t have a first-class seat, but I had a business-class seat on the global rocket ship in the industry. That was right when you saw cranes in Ashburn like never before, building these buildings. We were the fastest growing company, so I got this amazing experience for the six years that I was there — watching a company go from small to big overnight

I started their federal practice and program, so I cut my teeth in the federal space. I was listening to the podcast. I was showing up to these events, pledging allegiance at all these government events, and learning the terminology. You know what’s really cool? 10 years later, now the government’s really starting to outsource, and now they’re really starting to spend money, and very few people in my industry know how to do it. I was doing workshops, and I was doing Delta classes, and I was doing subscription reading. I was just invested in myself.”

From a Seller and Buyer to a Broker

“When I was a seller, my job was to build relationships; it wasn’t to do a lot of the actual work. When I was a buyer, my job was to do the actual work and not build a lot of relationships.

[…] I keep going back to buying and selling, and now I’m in the middle. So I know what’s important to the buyer, and I know what’s important to the seller, and I’m in the middle trying to get a deal done. The other thing is that I’ve always prided myself on building really strong, meaningful, and transparent relationships. And now, it’s a very, very large data center community, but there are a couple of hundred people at the core of it, and I knew all of them, or most of them, when I was in different places in my career. So, I can have a way different conversation with a CTO or a head of sales now because I’ve been over there; I know what makes them tick.

From a buyer’s perspective, when I’m representing someone who’s buying data center capacity, I’m sensitive to all the internal stakeholders that they need to deal with, all the things that they need to do.”

First Vice President – Data Advisory Center at CBRE

“CBRE is the biggest data center real estate company on earth. The data center team itself is covered in almost every major market around the world. Data center brokerage in and of itself is a bit of a novelty. So, 99% of class office space today is represented by a broker; 99% of office sales are represented by a home sales or a real estate agent.

There are four lines of business my team does. I represent tenants for the most part; that’s my role. We are involved in about a third of all of those data center land sales that happen out in Loudon or Prince William County.”

Data Centers vs. Office Brokers

“The biggest competitor in my industry is a self-performer. The second biggest one is there are a lot of bad brokers out there; there are a lot of brokers that do office space in industrial space, and then they get a data center deal, and they say, ‘Let’s go.’ And they screw it up seven different ways from Sunday. So, there are very few people that have focused the entirety of their career and their skillset on this sector.

I go down the hallway on the third floor in Tyson’s, and people are talking about office stuff; it sounds like Mandarin Chinese to me. I start talking about a data center deal or the data center components, and these office brokers who have been doing it for 30 years look through me. They’re like, ‘We have no idea what you just said.’ It’s two different solar systems.”

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Stu Dyer: I think that salespeople really need to put a focus on understanding their customers, you know, truly understanding their customers, understanding not so much the widgets and the whiz-bang parts of their products, right? But to understand how their products can help their customers versus just understanding all the fancy things their product could do.

[00:00:19] Marc Gonyea: Stu Dyer in the house.

[00:00:43] Stu Dyer: What’s up, guys? 

[00:00:44] Marc Gonyea: Thank you very much for coming back. 

[00:00:47] Stu Dyer: Thanks for having me. 

[00:00:48] Marc Gonyea: And, and for the listeners, Stu has never met a stranger, we’re walking around the office and he runs into someone who he knows and who he, in fact, referred to us recently. So, thank you for that. 

[00:00:59] Stu Dyer: Yeah, it’s a, a small world. 

[00:01:00] Chris Corcoran: Yes, it is, for sure.

[00:01:02] Marc Gonyea: And, and you even did prep, which is great. 

[00:01:04] Stu Dyer: I wrote down my favorite stories.

[00:01:05] Marc Gonyea: So, we, we’re gonna talk about those stories, but, I mean, we’re, just to give the audience the perspective, we’re going back on the time machine here. Stu started working here in February of 2010.

[00:01:14] Chris Corcoran: Wow. 

[00:01:15] Marc Gonyea: Right? Worked here in February through, through February 2011. So, about a year is a change, and let’s just, let’s tell the story real quick, we’re gonna talk a little bit about you, but I just remember the story when you found him. You wanna tell that story, I, this may be a, actually podcast is about you. 

[00:01:32] Chris Corcoran: Stu will tell it better than me.

[00:01:33] Stu Dyer: He will tell better.

[00:01:35] Marc Gonyea: So, I will, it’s, wow, we’re getting old, it’s been, it’s been almost 14 years here. 

[00:01:39] Chris Corcoran: Yeah, it’s crazy.

[00:01:41] Stu Dyer: So, after college, I moved to DC in 2008 and decided I wanted to work for the federal government, and that was right when the bottom of the economy fell out. 

[00:01:49] Marc Gonyea: Oh, no, you had, go after college. 

[00:01:51] Chris Corcoran: That’s where he’s going. 

[00:01:52] Marc Gonyea: Okay, sorry. He’s skipped, I feel like he skipped what he did after college, remember this from our interview? 

[00:01:56] Chris Corcoran: No, he’s telling the whole story, Marc.

[00:01:57] Marc Gonyea: All right, go ahead. 

[00:01:58] Chris Corcoran: Keep going, keep going.

[00:01:59] Stu Dyer: Yeah, yeah. So, so, I moved here in 2008, never even applied to the government. 

[00:02:04] Marc Gonyea: No, that’s not the part I wanna talk about. What about MTV Spring Breaks in Mexico? 

[00:02:08] Stu Dyer: That was 2004, Marc. 

[00:02:10] Marc Gonyea: Okay, all right.

[00:02:12] Stu Dyer: I spent every, every single college summer doing academic internships in either Cancun or Dewey Beach, and I learned some of life’s finer skills.

[00:02:22] Marc Gonyea: And, and just, and, and this is all part of progress, guess this is good. Where are you from?

[00:02:26] Stu Dyer: I’m from New Haven, Connecticut.

[00:02:28] Chris Corcoran: Gun wavin’ 

[00:02:29] Stu Dyer: Gun wavin’ New Haven, and I’m proud graduate of what is known as the Harvard of the Southwest University of Arizona, 51% graduation, right?

[00:02:40] Marc Gonyea: What did you think you’re gonna be, do? You’re growing up in Connecticut, as a kid, what did you think you were gonna be?

[00:02:47] Stu Dyer: A politician, a lawyer, something.

[00:02:49] Marc Gonyea: Is that what you thought, politician or lawyer? 

[00:02:51] Stu Dyer: Yeah, yeah.

[00:02:51] Marc Gonyea: Was sales, like, technology sales? 

[00:02:54] Stu Dyer: It wasn’t something I thought of or considered, and, uh, you know, to be honest with you, too, and I think that’s kind of really interesting about the program y’all built and the uniqueness of it, is I was good at, I, I accrued a lot of people skills,

[00:03:09] I didn’t go to college for the academic skills, I went to college and learned how to become an adult and learned, had developed really close interpersonal relationships, and that became the skill set I thrived in. How that applied to entry-level jobs that were non-sale specific? Not so much.

[00:03:26] Marc Gonyea: Doesn’t apply.

[00:03:27] Stu Dyer: Not so much. So, my skill set, at that age, lined up, I had a lot of drive, I had a lot of skills, but those skills really uniquely apply to, to talking to people and, and, and doing what memoryBlue does with coaching, with the coaching you guys provided. 

[00:03:44] Marc Gonyea: We’ll get to that, but, I mean, and I think you’re talking yourself down a little bit, I mean, you’re good talking to people, but you’re driven, now you hit on it, you’re a driven guy, and you know how to get stuff done. I don’t think you’re one who, like, shies away from big goals, was that, are, were you always like that?

[00:04:00] Stu Dyer: I think so, you know, I think so, and I think that that’s what I really kind of like about sales is the sky’s the limit, right? You set the bar and somebody else doesn’t set it for you, and you know, the harder you work, and the more you put into it, the more you can get out of it, and I think that that’s exciting. 

[00:04:17] Marc Gonyea: All right. So, you get outta Arizona, you moved to DC, tell us about that. That’s where you were, I just wanted to get a little more back story.

[00:04:24] Stu Dyer: Yeah. So, I, I ended up, uh, ended up waiting tables in the hospitality business, and, uh, you know, I was doing that for a year or two, and I, I met my, what is today? My wife, we were dating for a year or so, and, uh, it was Valentine’s Day, and I had to go to work, and she wasn’t so thrilled about that, and I went to work, and I didn’t make a whole lot of money, and I was kind of down and out about that.

[00:04:50] She was down and out about not being able to spend Valentine’s Day with me. And then next day, I will never forget this, I’m walking through the Safeway in my, 

[00:05:00] Marc Gonyea: In the grocery store, yep?

[00:05:01] Stu Dyer: In the grocery store, and my phone rings and I had seen the number come by once or twice, and I had it, picked it up.

[00:05:07] Marc Gonyea: Chris was creeping up on you.

[00:05:08] Stu Dyer: I still, to this day, don’t even know how he found me, and I picked the phone up, and Corc says, “Do you wanna make a $100,000, $200,000 in high-tech sales? And I’m sitting there like, 

[00:05:22] Marc Gonyea: Oh my, you used to read the copy.

[00:05:24] Chris Corcoran: Some of this. 

[00:05:25] Stu Dyer: I’m like, “Damn right I do.” You know

[00:05:29] Marc Gonyea: They put down the chicken.

[00:05:30] Stu Dyer: Yeah, they put down these ice pots in this chicken in my deli meat, and, you know, I got a 

[00:05:36] Marc Gonyea: Talk, talk to me, goose. 

[00:05:37] Stu Dyer: Man, and I prepped for that interview, and I prepped for that role play and, and I was living in DC, and I remember talking to with my now wife and saying, “I think this is the break I need to get out of the hospitality industry and really start a career.”

[00:05:50] And here I am, you know, 13, 14 years later, but it turns out, I think my resume was on monster.com from months ago, and, and yeah, that phone call changed my life. 

[00:06:03] Chris Corcoran: So, we, we were talking earlier today about this, about when you see somebody, and you’re gonna hump that person down. I remember seeing this guy on, I think it was Monster, and his name was University of Arizona and he was serving tables, I think it was at Tony and Joe’s?

[00:06:15] Marc Gonyea: BLT.

[00:06:16] Stu Dyer: BLT, Tony and Joe’s.

[00:06:18] Chris Corcoran: I mean, it was some, it was some high-end restaurant, I was like, “Oh, I’m going after this guy.” Gun wavin’ New Haven. 

[00:06:24] Stu Dyer: Yeah, the rest is, uh

[00:06:27] Marc Gonyea: You know what Chris and I always say, the biggest wins of memoryBlue or I ask, I ask people this question, what do you think, I ask my kids this mostly, my kids are the ones that are humor me,

[00:06:35] “Hey, what do you think the most important thing is we’ve ever done in memoryBlue, like, Mr. Corcoran and I? And they’ll say, “Oh, customer,” right? Or “A deal,” or “Not losing,” ’cause we always talk about not losing, not losing work, getting the people, convincing the people to come work here, and to stay. But really getting people to come in the door, and fine,

[00:06:55] you were looking for a job, you had a bad Valentine’s Day. You’re a very talented individual, you could have gone to work at so many other places. But getting you to come in here, it was a 100, 200K, whatever it was, changes, changes things. 

[00:07:06] Stu Dyer: It does, and look, I’m coming back here 13 years later, you know? So, when Caroline called me, she and I, you know, I don’t mean this in a negative way, she goes, “You were just an SDR, right?” 

[00:07:22] Marc Gonyea: Caroline’s a badass, by the way, 

[00:07:23] Stu Dyer: I said,

[00:07:24] Marc Gonyea: she was extraordinaire.

[00:07:25] Stu Dyer: I said, “Caroline, when I was there, there were 10 people, we were, we were all SDRs, there was nothing else, everybody was a freaking SDR, like, like what do you mean?” Right? 

[00:07:36] Marc Gonyea: 10 people.

[00:07:37] Stu Dyer: You know. And I come back 13 years later, and I dunno how many people you got now? 

[00:07:40] Marc Gonyea: Six hundred.

[00:07:42] Stu Dyer: I mean, like, look how far we’ve all come, and I was just an SDR, right? 

[00:07:48] Marc Gonyea: I was just a DM/SDR. 

[00:07:51] Stu Dyer: Barely have all these fancy roles and titles. 

[00:07:54] Marc Gonyea: No, no. All right. So, let’s talk about that, ’cause what do you remember? ‘Cause I tell stories about you to this day. One, I don’t, you might not tell the story, but I will tell it. What do you remember about getting, did you know what you were doing? Did you have any idea about tech? 

[00:08:05] Stu Dyer: No, I didn’t, I remember, you know, list building at home, listening the podcasts, you know, coming in. I remember though, like, what was the coolest part of looking back on it was, like, the camaraderie, right? Like, going over and putting pickles in John Parrott’s office.

[00:08:26] I, I, I, I remember, you know, like, just us giving each other a, I was like, kind of, like, college again with everybody in the office, and like, you know, like, we would have such a good time, but we worked hard, we were working hard. 

[00:08:44] Marc Gonyea: Working hard, I remember this, like yesterday. Talk about your clients and what, what’s, you had to learn a skill you could have, right, a talented guy, what did you learn how to do? Just take us back, do you remember any of that? Learn how to 

[00:08:55] Stu Dyer: Sure, yeah, I mean, I first, first, first client was a tough client, it was fragility project management services.

[00:09:01] Marc Gonyea: Difficult.

[00:09:02] Stu Dyer: Difficult, but successful. And then, then we got next, right, and that sort of transformed it, turned into a big account, turned into a big relationship, and it got to the point where I had to buy my own bell, you know, because I, I got tired of getting up and hitting the bell, you know, like.

[00:09:19] Marc Gonyea: But was it always super easy? I thought, you told me a story, you were here in the early days and you remember you went to lunch and you called your now wife, you’re like, “I dunno if I wanna keep doing this.”

[00:09:29] Stu Dyer: Yeah, it’s hard, right? 

[00:09:30] Marc Gonyea: And she was like, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, you’re going back in there.”

[00:09:32] Stu Dyer: You’re going, I mean, it’s, it’s hard, it’s scary to pick the phone up. 

[00:09:36] Marc Gonyea: At first.

[00:09:37] Stu Dyer: And you know what I remember you guys telling me back in the day, too, is, the older you get, the heavier that phone gets, right? And that, that’s true, I mean, I’m in my late thirties now, and I gotta make a cold call, I gotta kind of pump myself up for that. When I was 25, I was making 120 of ’em a day, not, you know

[00:09:55] Marc Gonyea: Making more some days. 

[00:09:55] Stu Dyer: Some days making even more. I remember. So, yeah, you gotta get over that hump, but you look at that and the kids that, in the, the kids that I mentor and the kids that I coach 

[00:10:05] you know, and their career and their stepping stone is, is the way I position memoryBlue in the industry is, it’s like going to an Ivy League undergrad. You’re gonna go there, you’re gonna grind, but you’re gonna come out of there, and the IT industry is gonna see memoryBlue on your resume forever, and that means something,

[00:10:23] it truly means something. So, look at this as the lily pad to jump-start the rest of your career, right? And, and I think once I came to that realization, I remember one of my, one of my kind of fondest memories was I, it was the end of November in my year here, and I was behind ’cause you had given somebody some bullshit quota and mine was way higher.

[00:10:47] Marc Gonyea: It, it was me. And I remember you and I arguing about it. 

[00:10:50] Stu Dyer: Yeah, and

[00:10:50] Marc Gonyea: It was December

[00:10:51] Stu Dyer: And, uh

[00:10:52] Marc Gonyea: You guys were first as many arguments. 

[00:10:53] Stu Dyer: Yeah, no, and, and I, I, I was, like, six behind, or I needed six leads, and it was. So, I came in, I got the key from you, and I came in the day after Thanksgiving, and I called the UK, and I get my number, you know, and it was like

[00:11:10] Marc Gonyea: We called Canada, too, I think 

[00:11:12] Chris Corcoran: That’s fine in the way right there. 

[00:11:13] Marc Gonyea: I remember. 

[00:11:14] Chris Corcoran: That’s fine in a way.

[00:11:15] Marc Gonyea: We turned upstairs quota late, late in the month ’cause we had monthly quotas, and you were next hand, and was probably turning the screws to me, too, right? So, I was pushing it down, and I remember I was, it was end of the day, and I was at the gym, and remember you were, you were, you were roughly livid, and I was like, are we just going back at it? I remember where I was and you yelling at me, me yelling at you. But then we just, like, got pass, we were pass, the next day I was like, like, “All right, Gonyea, what, I’m gonna get it and make it happen, and like, you know, that’s just part of it.”

[00:11:46] Right? What, I wasn’t doing it to be a jerk, then not take your money, but I was doing it ’cause the client was calling me saying, “You, good-fellow, had to get pizzas delivered or something.” From some webinar or whatever, you know, but

[00:11:56] Stu Dyer: You, you know what’s, you know, what about that, too? A couple weeks ago, we lost the deal, it was under contract and, you know, 99% close rate, you know what I still say? Verbal.

[00:12:10] Chris Corcoran: I love it. 

[00:12:11] Stu Dyer: That’s Chris Corcoran’s famous line, “You’ve got a verbal,” you know, it’s not a real deal until it’s signed. So, I had a verbal and then, and then it doesn’t sign, and like, everybody’s like, “Are you all right?” And I’m like, “You don’t think I’ve been in the trenches for 20 years? You know, like 

[00:12:31] Marc Gonyea: It happens.

[00:12:32] Stu Dyer: I’m gonna be fine, you know, like, you’re gonna pick yourself up, and you’re gonna go, go at it the next day, you’re not gonna win ’em all, and that’s life, right, so.

[00:12:41] Marc Gonyea: So, let’s, I wanna take you

[00:12:43] Stu Dyer: We’re not, we’re not gonna hurry pass this. Very few, we’ve, we’ve hired thousands of SDRs, very few of those SDRs, if they were behind on their number would come in on the day after Thanksgiving to call Canada and the UK, very few, but Stu did what it takes. 

[00:13:03] Marc Gonyea: Why is that, you think, why did you make that choice and other people would be like, “Gonyea, quota, good fellow.” And not do it, and like, quit or something. 

[00:13:14] Stu Dyer: Yeah, well, look, I, I, back to my point on, like, yeah, I was at a unique place in my life where I didn’t necessarily take my professional life seriously until I walked in the door here.

[00:13:26] And I think, I think there’s a lot of people that are hopefully listening to this, that are in, that could relate, you know, I didn’t go to college to write essays, I went to college to watch basketball games and go to tailgates, I did, right, I wanted to go to Mexico, right, like that, that’s why I was there. 

[00:13:42] And, you know, then you reach a point in your life where you’re, like, 24, and you’re like, oh, man, like, I got friends that are making money now, you know, they’re off when I’m slinging steaks and, you know, you look at IT, and this was another thing that you taught, and you preached, is you, I remember this,

[00:13:58] you would say, you know, “Lawyers and doctors, you know, those are the people that are making 200, $250,000 a year. What other profession can you do that in without higher-ed? IT sales.” Right? So, I’m like, okay. So, to answer that question, like, I looked at it as my opportunity to start to move in that direction, which is exactly what happened.

[00:14:23] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, man. When you, well, there’s so many places to go, well, still, you did a good job of having a lot of fun, you played a lot of jokes. So, I think the listeners would love to hear the story that, that, the joke you played on Parrott.

[00:14:43] Stu Dyer: This is, like, one of the best things that’s ever happened to me, so 

[00:14:48] Marc Gonyea: I love the fact that you’re on, you’re on first, so you need to tell your side, Parrott’s too cool to be on the podcast, but anyway

[00:14:54] Stu Dyer: I told him I was doing this, and I told him I was gonna say this, he came to, he came over, like, two weeks ago, and I, I let him know.

[00:15:01] So, so, for everyone out there, we had a, um, market, Chris had a, an internal IM system that makes Nintendo look, look like an oculus machine, I mean, this thing

[00:15:14] Marc Gonyea: On the phone, right?

[00:15:15] Stu Dyer: This thing was, it was like the original IM tool, and it, 

[00:15:22] Marc Gonyea: I forgot about that. 

[00:15:22] Stu Dyer: and it only worked on, it only worked on your desktops, okay, and we used to have this, this, if you hit your quota, if you were at 150% of your quota, you’d get, like, a half day on a Friday, and if you’re at, like, 200%

[00:15:43] Marc Gonyea: We still have that. 

[00:15:43] Stu Dyer: You didn’t, yeah, you didn’t, you didn’t have to work or whatever. So, Parrott the Pickle comes in, and it’s the morning huddle, and he is like, you know, he was always, like, hemming around the edges on things, and he was like, “Ah, I got all these leads, can I, can I go home early, can I go home early?” And, and you looked at him, and you’re like, “Parrott, no way, like, just go to your desk, no way.” So, like, two hours into the blitz. 

[00:16:14] Marc is in another office helping somebody. So, we sneak over to Gonyea’s computer, and we pull up his IM, and we IM Parrott, and we go, “Hey, Parrott, I didn’t wanna give you permission ’cause I didn’t wanna show favoritism in front of everybody, be really quiet and get outta here.”

[00:16:42] So, so, then I hustled back over to my cube, and I hear, I hear Parrott packing up his stuff, and he, and then I, he literally is, like, skipping out of the office, you know, with his backpack. 

[00:16:57] Marc Gonyea: He’s like, 6’4. 

[00:16:58] Stu Dyer: He’s like, big goofy guy, like big bird, pat, like bouncing outta the office, and Corcoran’s in one of the other offices, and he looks up, he goes, “Where fuck is Parrott going?” I get up, and I go, “Chris, I think he’s leaving.” So, Corcoran comes, goes outta the parking lot, he’s like, “Parrott, get back in there!” Parrot was so mad, it was like somebody shot his puppy, like he sat there during

[00:17:33] Marc Gonyea: Shaking his head.

[00:17:39] Stu Dyer: Just shaking his head, I mean

[00:17:42] Chris Corcoran: What did, what did you tell him that you did that? Or, or is this how he’s gonna find out? 

[00:17:48] Stu Dyer: I don’t know, shortly thereafter, but he was not happy, it was, like, May, like, 72 degrees out, it was like 11:00 AM, I mean, the day couldn’t have been any nicer. I’ll never forget your face, you love, you go, “Where is he going?” I’m like, “Corcoran, I think he’s leaving, you better get him.” So, that was, uh, that was fun.

[00:18:13] Marc Gonyea: Dude, yes, it was a good culture, I think, you know, people were grinding again after it, we hadn’t really full out the model, we were like, we just gotta get strong people in here. 

[00:18:24] Stu Dyer: And you started growing, you put somebody in the janitor closet and, you know

[00:18:28] Chris Corcoran: Hilarious. 

[00:18:30] Marc Gonyea: Somebody else had that, did you work with? Who was your crew back then? 

[00:18:38] Dubs. 

[00:18:40] Stu Dyer: Ryan Battle. 

[00:18:41] Marc Gonyea: Battle. 

[00:18:43] Stu Dyer: Matt Herr. 

[00:18:44] Marc Gonyea: Mr. Herr. 

[00:18:45] Stu Dyer: Erica Higginson.

[00:18:47] Chris Corcoran: Vel Hammer. 

[00:18:47] Marc Gonyea: Vel Hammer. 

[00:18:48] Stu Dyer: Lyle, Lyle, the Crocodile

[00:18:50] Chris Corcoran: Crocs. 

[00:18:51] Marc Gonyea: Lyle McMullen, he’s over in Europe waiting around. 

[00:18:54] Stu Dyer: Dion Mitchell. 

[00:18:55] Marc Gonyea: Dion Mitchell. I saw him at the airport with his, with his lady. 

[00:18:59] Stu Dyer: Parrott Pickle. 

[00:19:00] Marc Gonyea: Pickle. 

[00:19:01] Stu Dyer: Stephen Thompson.

[00:19:02] Marc Gonyea: Mr. Thompson. 

[00:19:04] Stu Dyer: And there were a few others, but that was the core. 

[00:19:06] Marc Gonyea: It wasn’t that big, it was small, yeah, there may people coming and going when you were like, you know, you were coming in, you were leaving. 

[00:19:12] Stu Dyer: Do, do you remember when one of our new hires, who I won’t, I won’t call out here, who was coming in from Woodbridge, he showed up on Casual Friday ’cause the first time he was meeting his client?

[00:19:24] Marc Gonyea: No. What happened?

[00:19:24] Stu Dyer: With jeans and a t-shirt and sandals. 

[00:19:29] Chris Corcoran: Ooh, you’re kidding me?

[00:19:30] Stu Dyer: And you sent him home, it’s, it’s two hours each way. 

[00:19:35] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, go and change, yeah, yeah. 

[00:19:37] Stu Dyer: Yeah, yeah. 

[00:19:39] Chris Corcoran: Dude, you can’t do that. 

[00:19:40] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 

[00:19:41] Stu Dyer: I mean, it was just like, we had fun, we just, we had a lot of fun, so.

[00:19:45] Marc Gonyea: All right. So, let’s talk about your career, but go ahead, yeah, let’s talk, you’re, you got anything on there? You wanna hit on it? 

[00:19:50] Chris Corcoran: I wanna talk about his, I mean, what we, we, the listens need to hear about what he’s been able to do since leaving here, this amazing to watch.

[00:19:57] Stu Dyer: Yeah, I mean, we’re, I’ve come a really long way, right, and, and, uh, one thing has led to another, and I think, uh, a lot of life and a lot of your career, I think the most important thing that I, I also try and impress on, you know, kids that come through here, you know, it’s like, it’s really, really important that next job after memoryBlue, right? 

[00:20:19] How do you get to the outside? How do you get into the right high-growth organization? How do you get into the right vertical? There’s a lot of things that I, that worked out for me by happenstance, right, and, you know, I, I got, I went to APP, you know, I became a channel guy, one of my main channel partners, you know, bought and sold this company called CyrusOne.

[00:20:41] I got a phone call from in 2013, saying, “Hey, will you come work for CyrusOne, we’re this little data center company opening up in Northern Virginia.” And I said, “Look, I don’t know anything about data centers, but I know a lot about channel sales.” At least, I thought I did at the time. And I didn’t have a first-class seat, guys, but I had a business-class seat

[00:20:59] on the global rocket ship in the industry. That was right when the cloud, that’s right when you saw cranes in Ashburn like never before, built in these buildings, we were the fastest growing company. So, I got this amazing experience for the six years that I was there and watching a company go from small to big kind of overnight. I started their federal practice and program, so I cut my teeth in the federal space. 

[00:21:23] Chris Corcoran: Yeah, well, we need to hear about that, like, did, how did you just

[00:21:26] Marc Gonyea: Oh, two things,

[00:21:26] Chris Corcoran: teach yourself the federal

[00:21:28] Marc Gonyea: two, two things real quick. You said something on the first job after the next job, after memoryBlue, like, just gimme, like, the 25 version, 25 award version of why that’s so important.

[00:21:39] Stu Dyer: I think it’s really important that in the past that I’ve talked about Google, well, they were offering me seven grand more, right, I understand that, but whether it’s cybersecurity, or infrastructure, or SaaS, or cloud, or, you know, where do you wanna go in your career? Like, I try to talk to people about, one, what interests them,

[00:21:58] but two, you know, what is the viability of the company? Do you want to take more risk on more upside, do you want to take the sure thing with the bigger company? You really gotta tailor kind of what you’re looking to do and what your goals are to where you end up.

[00:22:10] And it’s just not the person that’s willing to pay you the most money because many times that’s not the, that’s not the best long-term answer. So, if you could see down the field that think strategically versus, you know, the highest bidder, initially, when you get out of here, or be patient and write for the, wait for the right bidder, I think that’s just so, so important. 

[00:22:29] Marc Gonyea: And then, you went to, you know, you hadn’t done fed yet, right? So, talk about the fed, bricking fed because you change, we’ll talk about change, getting into the data industry, or, you know, but it also cracked on the fed, why, why you did that and how, how you did it?

[00:22:45] Stu Dyer: Well, I was a, I was a channel rep, right, commercial channel rep, it’s fine, but, you know, we were a company based out of Texas, commercial company, and I got a phone call 

[00:22:53] one day from, like, Lockheed Martin, and all the sales SDRs and others will appreciate this, I went into Salesforce to look up Lockheed Martin, and there was no record in Salesforce, and I said, “Holy shit, this is a Fortune 100 company.”

[00:23:07] And then I looked up General Dynamics, and then I looked up Northrop Grumman, and none of those were in our sales force, and I said, “Oh, boy, here comes a land grab.” So, our COO was in town, happened to be in town that week, and I, I, you know, I went up to him, and I said, “Why don’t we have a federal program?”

[00:23:24] And his name was Tesh Durvasula, and Tesh, like, he looked at me, and he said, “I don’t know, Dyer, why don’t you go figure that out?” You know, he was really empowering, and to this day, I’m really grateful to have that kind of a leader, say, you know, “You’re this young channel guy, go figure it out.” And I did, right?

[00:23:41] I mean, I was listening to the podcast, I was showing up to these events, you know, saying the, uh, pledging the allegiance and all this, all these government events and, you know, learning the terminology, and, and I, you know what’s really cool is

[00:23:54] it’s like, 10 years later, like, now the government’s really starting to outsource, and now they’re really starting to spend money, and very, very few people in my industry know how to do it. So, I carpent.

[00:24:05] Marc Gonyea: And didn’t you, didn’t you, you invested in some programs and some know-how and didn’t you do some workshops? 

[00:24:11] Stu Dyer: Yeah, I mean, I was doing workshops, and I was doing Delta classes, and I was, you know, doing subscription reading, and I was just invested in myself,

[00:24:21] I think it’s sharpening the saw, I think that was the term, and it’s just really important because the information’s available to everybody, but you have to go and get it, and then what do you do with it? 

[00:24:33] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, why don’t more people go and get it? 

[00:24:36] Stu Dyer: I think a lot of people in our, a lot of salespeople, you know, this is, I’m gonna answer that question in a really cool way.

[00:24:43] So, after I was done with CyrusOne, I got a job, this is a funny story. I had a non-compete that I had to be mindful of. So, I got a job as a program manager at IBM, and I got, I said, okay, that’s, doesn’t violate my non-compete. So, I got up to Armac on the first week for training, and I said, “What exactly is my role?”

[00:25:03] And they said, “Well, you, you pretty much run global data center real estate.” I said, “Me? Okay, let’s go, let’s figure this out, right?” And, uh, it was a really big role. What it did was it put me in a role where I was the buyer instead of the seller. So, I got to talk to a dozen different sales reps that were 

[00:25:25] Marc Gonyea: Selling to you.

[00:25:26] Stu Dyer: selling to me, and out of the dozen, 10 of ’em stunk, right? They didn’t pay attention to detail, they didn’t understand our company strategy, they didn’t understand how we got approvals, they didn’t understand what we could or couldn’t buy based on our clip levels. And there were a couple sales reps that truly invested into understanding their customers, and we’re IBM, and we’re not AWS 

[00:25:49] Marc Gonyea: Five campuses, 300-plus megawatts. 

[00:25:51] Stu Dyer: Yeah, 300 megawatts, that’s a, I mean, that’s a, those, these are big deals, especially a couple years ago. So, I say that because I think a lot of sales reps are right place, right time, you know, doing processing orders. Some of them are really good at relationships, but they’re not necessarily good at the details.

[00:26:07] Some of ’em are good at the details, but they can’t build relationships, it, it, there’s not very many people that could put all those parts and pieces together and be really effective at a true enterprise level. 

[00:26:18] Marc Gonyea: Why is that? 

[00:26:19] Stu Dyer: I wouldn’t say it’s work ethic ’cause I don’t wanna be disparaging, I think that one of the things that I’ve learned in my role now, when I was a seller, my job was to build relationships,

[00:26:30] it wasn’t to do a lot of the actual work. When I was a buyer, my job was to do the actual work and not build a lot of the relationships. I think that salespeople really need to put a focus on understanding their customers, you know, truly understanding their customers, understanding not so much the widgets and the whiz-bang parts of their products, right?

[00:26:51] But to understand how their products can help their customers versus just understanding all the fancy things their product could do. 

[00:26:58] Marc Gonyea: It sounds like that time at IBM was transformational. 

[00:27:55] Stu Dyer: It was a chess move in a way that, it, beyond my wildest expectations.

[00:28:01] Marc Gonyea: You didn’t even notice when you’re doing it, right? Because the tables returned?

[00:28:05] Stu Dyer: Bingo.

[00:28:06] Marc Gonyea: And is that what inspired you going, tell me what you do now? ‘Cause we haven’t even talked about that, but then let’s go back to what, you know. 

[00:28:13] Stu Dyer: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I, yeah. So, now I’m a, I’m a data center broker, I was a seller, and then I was a buyer, and now I’m a broker. So, just, like, someone goes out and buys Class-A office space, or someone goes out, for the listeners out there, someone who says, “Hey, I want to go buy a home in Arlington or, or Vienna or what ha, I need help.” 

[00:28:35] Well, if somebody used to go out and buy third-party data center, call location space, I’m their real estate agent, I’m their data center broker. It’s a dynamic market, Northern Virginia, little people know if you take the other six markets in North America, the six biggest markets for data center capacity, and you roll ’em all up into one, you don’t have what’s in Ashburn right now. 

[00:28:56] Marc Gonyea: Wow. I was flying in last night, I was looking down at it.

[00:28:59] Chris Corcoran: I know, last night.

[00:28:59] Marc Gonyea: I was like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, crane.

[00:29:01] Stu Dyer: And you wanna hear, you wanna hear the wildest stat around that whole thing

[00:29:05] Marc Gonyea: Go.

[00:29:05] Stu Dyer: is vacancy is 0.09%.

[00:29:09] Marc Gonyea: But the unemployment rate, the lowest that has been 53 years as of this morning. 

[00:29:13] Stu Dyer: So, find in space, fine in capacity. For the first time ever, we have customers that are buying data center capacity 18 to 36 months in advance.

[00:29:25] Chris Corcoran: Geez. This was a problem a decade ago, two decades ago. 

[00:29:29] Marc Gonyea: Where is it gonna be built? 

[00:29:32] Stu Dyer: Well, Loudoun and Manassas will continue to be the epicenter of the internet, that’s not gonna slow down, that’s not gonna stop. Just based on the digital transformation and how things are going, other markets that are springing up rapidly,

[00:29:46] Hillsborough, Phoenix, Dallas, Chicago, Atlanta, those are the major markets that seem to be growing, you’re seeing a lot of stuff happen now in middle of nowhere, Ohio, all the cloud guys are going there. Now, around here, you’re gonna see stuff start to push north and start to push south, you may have heard of Quantum,

[00:30:03] it’s that, the old, uh, steel mill up in Frederick, that’s a data center site now. And then down south, you know, whether it’s going in the Faulkner County, Culpeper, Stafford, Richmond. So, you’ll start to see a little bit of sprawl, but the core will remain Loudoun, Manassas for the foreseeable future.

[00:30:22] Marc Gonyea: How has, you know, what you’ve done in the past kind of sets you up for what you’re doing now, like, from a skills standpoint?

[00:30:30] Stu Dyer: It’s, honestly, like, I keep going back to buying and selling, and now I’m in the middle. So, I kind of know what’s important to the buyer and I know what’s important to the seller.

[00:30:39] And I’m in the middle trying to get a deal done, right, and, and I think the other thing, too, is, is, I’ve always prided myself on building really strong, meaningful, transparent relationships, and now that, I mean, it’s a very, very large data center community, but, you know, there’s a couple hundred people at the core of it, right?

[00:30:59] And I knew all of them when I was in, or most of them when I was in different places in my career, so I can have it 

[00:31:07] Marc Gonyea: Starting when, starting at Cyrus?

[00:31:08] Stu Dyer: Starting at Cyrus, so I can have a way different conversation with a, a CTO, or a head of sales. Now, because I’ve been in, I’ve been over there, I know what makes them tick, from a buyer’s perspective, when I’m representing someone who’s buying data center capacity, I’m sensitive to all the internal stakeholders that they need to deal with, all the things that they need to do,

[00:31:30] and you know what’s really fascinating is in this data center world, you have real estate and IT, and some companies treat it as real estate, some companies treat it as IT, but it’s bringing those two things together with finance and making some of the biggest decisions that those organizations are gonna make, I mean, they’re enormously impactful and expensive real estate decisions that a lot of stakeholders weigh in on, and getting consensus inside of these companies to get something done is complicated.

[00:32:01] Marc Gonyea: Very interesting. I wanna make sure we hit on some of your points here ’cause you’re a man, your time is your most precious asset, so we only got you for so long. 

[00:32:08] Stu Dyer: Well, I, I will say here, I, I, it’s kind of interesting, I’m at, I’ve been at 1, 2, 4 jobs since leaving you guys 13 years ago, and I’ve, I’ve came back three times to hire memoryBlue people.

[00:32:21] Marc Gonyea: Yes, that’s awesome. 

[00:32:23] Stu Dyer: So, three for, three for four is a pretty good stat. 

[00:32:25] Marc Gonyea: That’s pretty good, yeah. Some of your guys are still at CyrusOne?

[00:32:28] Stu Dyer: Toby. 

[00:32:28] Marc Gonyea: Right? 

[00:32:29] Stu Dyer: Well, I never actually, like, To, and 

[00:32:31] Chris Corcoran: Oh, Toby.

[00:32:34] Stu Dyer: Jonathan Stevens. 

[00:32:35] Jonathan Stevens. And yeah, it’s been pretty good, and it’s been a pretty good experience, and then shout out to Vessels, remember Michael Vessels?

[00:32:44] Marc Gonyea: Mr. Vessels? 

[00:32:45] Stu Dyer: Yeah, yeah, yeah, he’s he’s doing well, I think in, in, in a career, in, uh

[00:32:50] Marc Gonyea: You were with Frank? 

[00:32:51] Stu Dyer: No, I, I hired, he was my, one of my guys when I was at Apptix way back in the day. 

[00:32:57] Chris Corcoran: Oh, yeah. 

[00:32:58] But yeah, I mean, and, and look, I, I would also say, too, I had the pleasure, I think, you know, we all kind of stay in touch, like, I’d like to do a better job of coming into the first Fridays. So, what

[00:33:09] Marc Gonyea: Dude, it’s hard, man, you’re busy, you’re a father. 

[00:33:10] Stu Dyer: You know, I officiated, I officiated the wedding for David Collins. 

[00:33:16] Marc Gonyea: Of course you did.

[00:33:16] Stu Dyer: And Erica Higginson.

[00:33:17] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, Mr. Collins, the Velda Hammer part too.

[00:33:20] Stu Dyer: Yeah, yeah. 

[00:33:21] Marc Gonyea: Gets in here early. 

[00:33:23] Stu Dyer: Yeah, Mr. Collins.

[00:33:24] Marc Gonyea: And, and you’ve made friends, like, yeah, your relationship, too, that’s part of it, I mean, you’re very savvy, yeah, you like to overbid yourself as, like, a relationship guy, but you’re really smart dude. 

[00:33:34] Chris Corcoran: Stu, I think part of this is, I remember when you very first started as an SDR, I was like, all right, that, that guy is not gonna let the congregate, conversation go anywhere he doesn’t want it to go. You got that, I think from working with your dad and waiting certain tables, I mean, you have got control of conversations without, without the other person knowing that you’ve got the control. 

[00:33:56] Stu Dyer: You’ve always said that, yeah.

[00:33:58] Marc Gonyea: Tell us about what have you been working with his dad? I dunno about that, or I do, I forgot. 

[00:34:01] Chris Corcoran: Serving tables where, at the Pearl, or? 

[00:34:02] Stu Dyer: The Pearl, Cultured Pearl, baby.

[00:34:04] Marc Gonyea: Oh, yeah.

[00:34:05] Stu Dyer: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, look, I think that I will say, too, anybody I recommend, and I’m hopeful, my son, I have one, I think everybody should spend some time working at a restaurant in high school or in college, in some capacity ’cause,

[00:34:19] you know, it’s just the life skills that you get, you know, there’s good, there’s bad, and there’s some ugly, but I mean, I think it just, it makes you so much more well-rounded and also appreciative of all that goes into it, I think it’s an excellent precursor, and I think maybe you figured that out through your

[00:34:41] hiring, but if somebody’s a, you know, been a bartender or a waiter, you know, you gotta have decent, you gotta have decent soft skills.

[00:34:48] Marc Gonyea: You de, you do. 

[00:34:49] Stu Dyer: Yeah, you really, really do. And be able to think quickly on your feet a lot of the times and, and, uh, so yeah, I mean, I think I’ve applied a lot of those skills as I’ve grown.

[00:35:00] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, for sure. So, the data center real estate space, how small or how big of that, big is that within CBRE? 

[00:35:10] Stu Dyer: Oh, it’s a, it is a, a niche within a niche, I would say 

[00:35:16] Marc Gonyea: Is this the only market where we have, where CBRE has people, or are they in Atlanta and Phoenix, and?

[00:35:20] Stu Dyer: So, CBRE is the biggest data center real estate company on earth. The data center team itself is covered on almost every major market around the world. Data center brokerage in and of itself is a bit of a novelty. So, 99% of class office space today is represented by a broker, right? CBRE, JLL, Cushman, whatever. 99% of office sales are represented by a real estate, I mean, uh, home sales or a real estate agent.

[00:35:50] Yep, I’d say it’s about a quarter, 25%, yeah, because it’s, the data center industry is still, Corc, if this was a baseball game, the digital transformation, if this, we’re in the bottom and the second top and the third inning. So, the idea of having independent third-party representation when going to complete a hundred-million-dollar lease is a bit of a novel concept now that we expect that number, I, I bet my career on that number going from more, like, 25% to 75%. 

[00:36:22] I mean, our team right now, we have set, I’m on a team of seven people that we are the largest dedicated data center only team in the business, that’s all we do. 

[00:36:33] Marc Gonyea: And do you represent landlords or tenants, or both? 

[00:36:37] Stu Dyer: Yeah. So, typically we, well, there’s four lines of business my team does. I represent tenants for the most part, that’s my role. We are involved in about a third of all of those data center land sales that happen out Loudoun, or Prince William County. We, you make, well, CyrusOne just bought a

[00:36:57] Marc Gonyea: I read about that in, in the Business Journal yesterday.

[00:37:00] Stu Dyer: So, we helped them with that, for example, we represented the

[00:37:03] Marc Gonyea: I heard that they paid an astronomical amount. 

[00:37:06] Stu Dyer: Yeah. So, when I first started, this is like, you know, an acre of land in Core Loudoun was $400,000 an acre 10 years ago, an acre of land that has power in Core Loudoun now is 3,5-plus million dollars an acre. 

[00:37:22] Marc Gonyea: Wow. Geez.

[00:37:24] Stu Dyer: The trades in Manassas used to be a hundred thousand dollars an acre, 10 years ago, for land in Manassas. There’s just been a few trades north of $2.5 million an acre for land. So, when you look at, like, the digital gateway, the community opposition for that very large parcel down in Manassas and the community, you know, next to the battlefield. 

[00:37:50] Marc Gonyea: I’m gonna read about this.

[00:37:51] Stu Dyer: I mean, that’s like trying to run power lines ‘cross route seven for all those data centers that don’t have power right now. The future’s gonna be interesting. 

[00:38:01] Marc Gonyea: Wow. So, you, you represent the tenants, and who are you negotiating with? 

[00:38:05] Stu Dyer: They’re the landlords, typically.

[00:38:07] Marc Gonyea: The, the landlords who own the

[00:38:09] Stu Dyer: Yeah, so we’ll run a process, right? So, there’s 20 operators, 20 data center landlords. So, we, we would call landlords in Northern Virginia, biggest data center market in the world, is what we’ve discussed. Certain ones are good at retail, certain ones are good at wholesale, certain ones are good at federal, certain ones are good at connectivity,

[00:38:30] you know, not all, the data center’s not a data center, to the layman data center’s a data center, but to the educated buyer. So, you know, we understand from the C-suite through the technical team, through the sales team, through the board, through their money, through their investment, we understand these organizations inside and out.

[00:38:51] So, when we’re helping a customer on their journey to navigate what’s the best solution in Northern Virginia or Phoenix or San Francisco, or, you know, we’ll run a process on behalf of our customer, we understand the comps, we understand vacancy rates, we understand who might try and who needs a deal pretty badly and might lean in, you know? 

[00:39:13] So, our job is not only to get the best financial outcomes for our customers, but it’s also the best technical outcomes, and we out, it’s just, you know, we, they, they outsource that process. Now, we don’t make decisions for our customers, we present them the information that they need to make educated and informed decisions.

[00:39:31] So, we represent tenants that need space in the market, we buy and sell land representing both buyers and sellers. The third thing that we do is we have a rapidly growing capital markets business. What I mean by that is, is, you know, the data center, useful life of a data center, 20 to 25 years, you’re seeing a lot of M&A,

[00:39:52] there’s been $35 billion of M&A in our industry in the past 15 months, which is a pretty big number. Three of the largest data center companies, three of the top five publicly traded companies have been bought and taken private 

[00:40:09] Marc Gonyea: By, by the P world? 

[00:40:11] Stu Dyer: KKR took Cyrus private, Blackstone took QTS private, and then Capitol Tower took CoreSite private.

[00:40:20] And what that has done is it’s created, there’s a lot of private equity, market’s still floating around, but my point around capital markets is a lot of these buildings were built 2010, 2012, 2015. So, not only do you have M&A, but you have a lot of buildings that are gonna start being marketed and start being sold or spun off and, and the pool of people that are qualified to sell an operating data center asset pretty limited. 

[00:40:47] Marc Gonyea: So, when you represent a tenant, a company, right, you know, a company, who’s, what role are, is it the CIO, the CFO? Like, who, who are you typically working directly with? 

[00:40:57] Stu Dyer: Yeah. So, that’s a good question, I mean, I took a role, my role at IBM was like, I felt like I was kind of a sales guy in a real estate role,

[00:41:05] and I, I took a fresh approach to how we procured space and power, and what I mean by that is, is I bridged that gap between real estate fundamentals, IT requirements, and the bean counters, the finance guys, right, got ’em all in a room, we made decisions collectively, but I ran point as my interface to the industry,

[00:41:25] as I interface with the industry. There’s organizations that deal with it differently, and that goes back to the bottom of the second, top of the third inning, every company kind of deals with this differently, some, sometimes it’s a CIO, sometimes it’s facilities.

[00:41:40] Marc Gonyea: Wow. 

[00:41:40] Stu Dyer: Right? And they’re like, you know, CIO was like, “I don’t care, just make sure it runs right.” Real estate, it’s real challenge, and this is a real challenge with, is real estate. So, there were 400 people in global real estate within IBM. 400, two people, two of the 400 knew how to do co-location transactions and knew how to do third-party data center deals, it was 35% of our real estate OpEx spent.

[00:42:10] Marc Gonyea: Wow. 

[00:42:11] Stu Dyer: So, you do the math, and it’s, like, you have a lot of these legacy organizations that are starting to do a more and more outsourcing of their critical infrastructure, but they’re not necessarily sure how do, you know, ’cause it’s a new world, they’re closing their legacy data centers that are on-prem during COVID,

[00:42:30] it totally accelerated people saying, I don’t wanna take care of my own data center anymore, I want to make this somebody else’s problem. And either they’re moving to the cloud, or they’re moving to a third-party data center, or most of ’em are moving to both. We’re gonna put these 10 applications up in the cloud, and everything else is gonna go over here in this colo.

[00:42:48] Marc Gonyea: How do you get new customers for yourself?

[00:42:51] Stu Dyer: By doing podcasts. 

[00:42:53] Marc Gonyea: Not this one. 

[00:42:54] Stu Dyer: Yeah, um, no, I, you know, I think that brand awareness is important, right? I think it’s being, the information’s out there, it’s how do you use it, how do you leverage it, and who do you use it with? Getting an organization to trust you on making their most important real estate decisions is really hard.

[00:43:15] Finding tenant rep clients is really, really hard, and typically those are life law, if you do a good job and, you know, they stay in business, those should be lifelong relationships. So, you know, I, I’m at an interesting point in my career where I’ve done a, a couple deals, brought out a couple new clients, you know, but I’m really looking for that one big client, maybe two big clients that spend my career growing with and, you know, I’m getting closer. But that’s, that’s the deal, are, they’re enormously hard to land. 

[00:43:50] Marc Gonyea: And what, what is your reluctance to work with, with somebody who can help them with

[00:43:54] Stu Dyer: I think there’s, well, look

[00:43:55] Marc Gonyea: do yourself, or ’cause, is it because of the, the, in, industry and it’s just not 

[00:43:59] Stu Dyer: Yeah, the biggest competitor in my industry is a self-reformer, “I got this.” that’s the biggest at, you know, sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. The second biggest one is, there are a lot of bad brokers out there, there’s a lot of brokers that do office space and industrial space, and then they get a data center deal, and they say, “Let’s go.”

[00:44:21] And now, you know, they screw it up seven different ways from Sunday. So, I mean, there’s, there’s very few people that have focused their entirety of their career and their skill set on this

[00:44:31] Marc Gonyea: And your background, so specialized for you to make you uniquely capable of doing the job.

[00:44:37] Stu Dyer: So, I go down the hallway on the third floor in Tyson’s and I, you know, people are talking about office stuff, sounds like Mandarin Chinese to me. I start talking about a data center deal or the data center components, and these office brokers been doing it for 30 years, kind of look through ’em, they’re like, “We have no idea what you just said.” I, it’s two different solar systems.

[00:44:54] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, that’s great. 

[00:44:56] Chris Corcoran: So, Stuart, what about, what, what advice would you give a, a listener who wants to kind of do what you’re doing because you, it sounds like you’re something super specialized, super early, and can be wildly impactful and lucrative. How do they get in that? 

[00:45:09] Stu Dyer: It can get very difficult. 

[00:45:10] Chris Corcoran: Yeah, yeah, how do they get in, into that?

[00:45:12] Stu Dyer: Well, look, I was super happy to see, you know, the, the QTS alumni network that you guys have built, right? Wayne, and, and there’s a whole bunch of people, I mean, I’m getting too old now, so like, I don’t, you know, some of ’em are coming up, and I’m just, but, you know, I run the AFCOM internship program which is kind of a selfless promotion, but I, I hire a bunch of operations kids every summer out in Ashburn, not sales roles, operations roles, and we place them in the data center industry. What I would just say is, is like, look, for the people that are local here or in the major markets, the digital economy is growing exponentially,

[00:45:51] and all the stuff that is, they say the cloud, the cloud’s really a data center, right? It is. There’s no such thing as, as hard as I tried to explain it to my mother that the cloud actually wasn’t in the sky, you know, it is in a data center, right? And I just 

[00:46:05] encourage as, you know, when I talk to people like Will or Colin, or who, whoever, right? Like, getting involved in infrastructure, this industry is so hungry for talent, they’re so hungry for people that wanna get into it. And a lot of the people drive by these buildings, a lot of the kids and parents and what, drive by these buildings in Ashburn for the last 20 years and actually have no idea what’s inside of ’em. 

[00:46:34] And to, and I’m like, look, every time you touch Uber, every time you touch your TikTok, you’re sending a signal into that building, they think I’m crazy. So, what advice would I give ’em? I think that getting into tech sales is a good idea, I think the memoryBlue program is unique, and I, I still tell people about it ’cause I, I be,

[00:46:53] Marc Gonyea: Appreciate it.

[00:46:54] Stu Dyer: I believe in it, and I think that if people are interested in the future of the data center ecosystem, not necessarily data center real estate, but everything else that’s associated with it, it’s gonna be around for a long time. 

[00:47:08] Marc Gonyea: And what’s the name of that, the internship program that you run? 

[00:47:10] Stu Dyer: It’s called the AFCOM Internship Program. AFCOM is a, uh, a network, a national networking group, I sit on the board for the Potomac Chapter, which is effectively the Northern Virginia Chapter. We actually have an event on the 13th at Nova Community College in the afternoon, we pay for, in my mom’s name, we started a scholarship,

[00:47:33] and we pay for, um, every, so what’s really kind of neat is, is Nova Community College has set up a Data Center Operations Program through their curriculum. They’re one of the first community colleges that has curriculum focused on helping kids get into the data center industry. So, we made a decision and established a scholarship where no student who takes that class at Nova Community College pays for it, we pay for it. That’s cool.

[00:48:01] Chris Corcoran: That’s awesome. 

[00:48:01] Stu Dyer: Entirely.

[00:48:02] Marc Gonyea: Wow. 

[00:48:03] Stu Dyer: And then, this summer, I’ve pledged a commitment to hire 15 full-time interns, we pay them, and by the end of the summer, as long as they’re not boneheads and everyone shows up and wants a job, they’re all gonna have one by Labor Day. 

[00:48:16] Marc Gonyea: Wow. 

[00:48:16] Chris Corcoran: Wow. That’s fantastic. 

[00:48:18] Stu Dyer: It’s, it’s cool. 

[00:48:19] Chris Corcoran: Super cool, Stu, very good. 

[00:48:22] Marc Gonyea: That’s nice what he thinks. 

[00:48:23] Chris Corcoran: Yeah, well, Stu, we appreciate you coming back. 

[00:48:26] Stu Dyer: Yeah, it’s good to be back. 

[00:48:27] Chris Corcoran: Yeah, and then, man, it’s been a long time I laughed so hard I cried. 

[00:48:30] Marc Gonyea: Oh, it’s a circle.

[00:48:32] Stu Dyer: Sorry, I mean, like, it’s always gonna make me laugh, and it’s great seeing you guys, so thank you.

[00:48:37] Chris Corcoran: Yeah, thank you. 

[00:48:37] Marc Gonyea: I’m a fan of the two spaces from knowing he’s in there, so I kind of, it’s nice to follow, you can’t not live around here and hear about it. It’s just fascinating.

[00:48:45] Stu Dyer: Super cool. 

[00:48:47] Marc Gonyea: All right, Stu, we’ll do this again. 

[00:48:49] Stu Dyer: Thanks, guys. 

[00:48:49] Chris Corcoran: Thank you.

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