Always Ask Questions: My Blockbuster Moment

Early on in my career, I was leasing a property and I got a call from a guy on a very crackly phone. For those of you born in the last 30 years (I’m aging myself,) cell phones were not always around, and early in my career, they just started coming out. A guy called me and it was a very crackly phone which should have been hint number one. So I was talking to the guy and he said, “Hi, I’m calling about the end cap space you have available at Ritchey Plaza.” Ritchey Plaza was not one of my best projects. It was about 25,000 square feet. It was an L-shape (hate that!) and there was one great space, an end cap on the main road and that space was 6,000 square feet. And this guy was calling me about that space.

I said, “Well, what do you want to do with the space, sir?” And he said, “I want to put in a video store.” And I laughed out loud; arrogance. I said, “Video store? What could you possibly want to do with the video store in 6,000 square feet?” I said, “I’ve got 16 other shopping centers that I lease. They all have video stores in them and they’re all about 1,500 square feet.” He said, “I’m going to start a prototype and I’m going to expand the concept and do franchising.” I said, “Oh, I’m sure you are sir, but we have plumbing and electrical for a restaurant. My boss wants us to do a restaurant to bring traffic into the center.”

So he said, “Okay. Can you take down my cell phone number?” Again, hint number two, “And call me, cause I really like the space and I think it would be great for one of our first prototypes that we roll out.”

I take down his name. I don’t ask him how to spell it. I take his number (back then we didn’t have CRMs,) and write it on the prospect sheet and then put it in a tickler file; literally a manual file with a month per slot of the files. 12 months later, I pulled out these prospect sheets and there is the prospect sheet for this guy by the name of Wayne Huizenga, who ended up owning the Miami Dolphins and the Florida Marlins and founded Blockbuster Video. But, I was too arrogant and had too much chutzpah, which is a nice way of saying “arrogant,” to ask some questions, to find out more.

The more questions you can ask the prospect, the more questions you can ask your friends in your market, the better you will be at leasing. I just needed to ask that guy one question, which would have been, “Sir, what do you do now?” And he would have said, “Oh, I run Waste Management,” and I’m sure I would have probably done one of the first Blockbuster Video stores but I was too arrogant. I was in the business for three or four years, was leasing 17 shopping centers, and I thought I was cool beans and didn’t think I needed to ask a lot of questions.

How wrong I was.

Remember arrogance is a lot different than confidence. Confidence comes from knowledge and knowledge comes from asking questions. Better qualifying up front will deliver much better results in the end.