What one local brokerage is doing to build Trammell Crow 2.0

By Ryan Salchert  – Staff Writer, Dallas Business Journal

Mar 4, 2020, 1:53pm EST

It’s not uncommon to hear sports analogies thrown around when describing the competition of winning deals in commercial real estate. It’s less common to hear a company build its principals and culture around a single sports figure.

This is exactly what Plano-based Paladin Partners has done however, with National Football League Hall of Fame member and former Dallas Cowboys head coach Tom Landry.

“If you go to our website, there’s a quote from Tom. I basically built the principals of our organization around things that he was known for. He was an innovator in football. My goal is to innovate in commercial real estate by doing things a little different,” said Conrad Madsen, co-founder and partner at Paladin Partners.

These different approaches include paying brokers 20 to 30 percent more on average in commissions than other real estate firms, being at the forefront of technology trends in the industry, eventually starting a $200 million to $400 million real estate fund and starting a give-back campaign.

Like his hometown hero Landry, who also grew up in Mission, Madsen has big aspirations for his team.

“What I want to do is create the next big regional power player. When I look back at the history of CRE in this city, a local player has almost always dominated at some point. … I want to build Trammell Crow 2.0 but with the Staubach culture because, to me, that was a great environment that Roger built. It was a team environment. Everyone knew the principals and values he stood for, and I think a lot of those came from playing under Tom Landry for all those years,” Madsen said. “If you don’t dream big, you’re never going to accomplish big things.”

How Paladin plans to build the next regional giant

Though Paladin Partners formed nearly six years ago, the company recently underwent a change among its top brass as co-founder Ben Appleby and Brett McMillan, a former senior vice president, left last year to form Dogwood Commercial. Now, Madsen and fellow co-founder and partner Greg Nelson are running the show. They have nearly four decades combined of commercial real estate experience.

Paladin is working to built the infrastructure to position itself as a potential powerhouse firm.

Starting on Jan. 1, the company began offering its brokers higher commissions to the tune of 20 to 30 percent more on average than its local competitors, according to Madsen. Mirroring the splits found in residential real estate, Madsen says this practice is not only expected to help attract and retain talent but also won’t cause the firm to sacrifice in other areas like technology, support or services.

Meanwhile, Paladin is also looking for ways to bring the industry into the 21st century.

“Sadly, the brokerage community is way behind when it comes to technology. It’s a very antiquated business. To this day, guys compile all their comp data using Excel spreadsheets. What we’re trying to do is take all that data and put it into a format that’s not static,” said Madsen.

The goal for Paladin is to make it as interactive as possible, where you can fly around the city, click on a building and it’ll tell you all the details about tenants, how much space they have, according to Madsen.

“CoStar tries to do this but they don’t have all the comp data,” he said.

The company is looking to partner with an out-of-state tech firm. While he didn’t disclose the name of the company, Madsen said it is a leader in another sector, but has not developed anything related to real estate just yet.

Though Paladin focuses on landlord representation, tenant representation and investment sales for industrial property, the company has recently moved into the office sector. Soon, it wants to cover everything else.

Madsen said Paladin is looking to be in every service line within the next year – from project leasing and tenant rep on the office side to retail, multifamily and hotel to all avenues of investment sales, debt and equity.

“My goal to raise $200 million to $400 million in a real estate fund in the next few years so that when the market turns, which it will eventually do because this is a cyclical business. We’ll be well-positioned to buy property. I want to have a development division going, as well,” Madsen said. “You’ve got to dream big.”

Once Paladin gets closer to launching its real estate fund and development division, it plans to hire people with experience in those areas.

The company’s growth plan will first focus on Dallas with hopes of opening a permanent North Dallas office, an Uptown office and another in Fort Worth. After that, the company is looking to scale outside of North Texas.

While Landry and Staubach are obvious inspirations for Madsen and his company’s business plan, another part of his company’s new philosophy was inspired by one of another Dallas legend, Ross Perot Jr.

“I was at a Hillwood broker event last summer. Ross Sr. had just passed away and Ross Jr. got up on stage and talked about his dad for about 45 minutes. He shared a lot of stories of how his dad impacted the community and other people in a positive manner. It was really eye opening,” said Madsen. “I’ve created a great life for my family but I hadn’t done enough to impact others, so that became my new mantra in life. How do you make an impact? How are touching other people’s lives?”

Out of this mantra came Paladin’s give back campaign. While still in its early stages, the company is identifying various charities that it wants to work with and that its team is passionate about. These include charities focused on veterans, animals, cancer, diabetes, faith and homelessness, as well as Madsen’s charity of his choice, Team Luke Hope For Minds.