When office broker Rick Lackey launched a local Atlanta network for brokers to meet and share intelligence during the Great Recession, he figured it might help him and others find the next deal needed to survive the global financial crisis. The network did just that and now seeks to enter new U.S. markets to connect brokers at smaller shops with companies seeking space.
Lackey, who has represented major corporations including American Express in major office deals, said business dried up in 2008 as the recession took hold of the U.S. economy.
"I had to figure out a way to make a living," said Lackey, who's been a broker for more than 35 years, in an interview. "I had always said openly to people that my greatest assets are my relationships. All of a sudden it was sort of like it's time to put my money where my mouth was."
Making that even more challenging, he said, was that a lot of the corporations with which he had long-standing relationships had begun to migrate to large brokerages such as CBRE, Cushman & Wakefield and JLL, attracted by their size and global reach.
"It was like I was watering the flowers and somebody reached into the bushes and turned the water spigot off," Lackey said. "I mean, it was just like that."
So Lackey launched Real Professionals Network in 2009. The group, which originally had one chapter in his hometown of Atlanta, met to share business intelligence and discuss how members got deals done during the downturn. The network provided a way for brokers at small shops to better compete with powerhouses such as CBRE and JLL. And when the group became successful enough for Lackey to charge for memberships, he set up a chapter in Dallas.
Today, Real Professionals Network, or RPN, has members in 25 markets in the Northeast, Southeast, Midwest and Texas. Last year, the group, now headquartered in Alpharetta, Georgia, hosted more than 225 in-person and virtual meetings attended by more than 2,000 people, Lackey said, including members from several branches of the Federal Reserve System and global brokerages such as JLL and CBRE. CoStar Group, the publisher of CoStar News, has hosted some RPN meetings.
By Lackey's calculation, discussions at RPN gatherings have helped brokers source and/or close billions of dollars in transactions over the past dozen years. And just as RPN served as somewhat of a support group for brokers in smaller brokerages during the Great Recession, it has provided connectivity in the disruption caused by the pandemic, Lackey said.
"They needed it, and it helped us and we worked really hard at it," Lackey said of helping RPN members remain connected to each other. "We actually added members. But I'm not going to kid you, we didn't add a lot of them. We had a net gain, though."
Lackey, 60, grew up in a commercial real estate family and now has one of his own. His late father, Dick Lackey, was an apartment developer. Rick Lackey's daughter, Nicole Goldsmith, who shadowed her father at work while she was in college, is an office landlord rep at CBRE in Atlanta.
Looking forward, Lackey plans to expand Real Professionals Network to Milwaukee and other new cities. He's also going to keep doing commercial real estate deals until his last days, he said.
"I don't plan on ever retiring, and I don't mind saying this on the record," Lackey said. "I hope when I die I'm in the middle of a really, really big deal and everybody goes, 'Oh, damn, what are we going to do? He died. He knows where all of the bodies are buried.'"