I'm Byrne Murphy, chairman of the DigiPlex Group of companies, which is a data center, designer, builder, and operator in Scandinavia. Formerly I was also the co-founder and deputy CEO of McArthurGlen outlet centers which we introduced in France and rolled across Europe. And in addition as a co-founder and CEO of which is a private residence club we introduced in Florence, Italy. In a 15th century. As background to what I did in Europe, I went from business school where I attended the Darden School of Business, one of the foremost in the world. And went to the Washington DC area where I spent approximately eight years on urban mixed use development downtown, with a lot of historic preservation, a lot of retailing, and office combined with transferable development rights from one side of town to the other. So rather complex for the American Standard, and it turns out that complexity was a great deal of use to me when I went to Europe where it is extremely complex. After 8 years, we hit the great American savings and loan crisis, which really hit the real estate industry very hard. At the same time a recession hit, and frankly I had to figure out something else to do somewhere else And I packed up the bags, moved to Paris in less than thirty days from my idea to inception. And started a company to import the concept of outlet shopping to Europe. It was a great idea, at a terrible time in the wrong country. And it ended up being a very complex introduction, in the end very successful, but if you ever need to believe in never never ever giving up, this is one of those examples. But if you don't give up, all those barriers in your way, all those barriers to entry, is what your competitor will face behind you. They normally are worth fighting if only because they protect you down the road. For the last 25 years or so, after having left Darden, I have imported into Europe three different American concepts. Three different business models of which there are some similarities. But the concepts were outlet shopping, data centers, and private residents clubs. And in each case, those concepts did not exist in the modern form as they did in America. In each case, they were the first in their market or the first in Europe. And in each case, there are the typical hurdles to overcome in Europe, which include some very strong barriers to entry. But underlying all of it is the product life cycle, and what I was trying to do in each case was you come in the infancy and you hit that growth curve. And often times what happens is that concept is ahead of the capital markets because it's risky because it's new. And how do you manage that? So that calls for a lot of equity very often no debt. Or if debt's available it's so prohibitively priced that you just don't want to bother. And the other thing is you're also introducing it to in addition to the capital markets being farther down the curve, so too is the customer. And that's one of the challenges, and as soon as you prove in a concept with one installation or one project, one operation then boohoo, all of sudden competitors and potential competitors say that company took the risk and it works, now I'm going in. So the instant you have success, you have this wave of competition. And the question is, how do you manage going up that curve of growth while you manage the risk at the same time, all sorts of risks, almost every risk you can think of. And that in short is what I've been for the last 23, 24 years. So in all three concepts when I was introducing them, the key to keep your eye on is what's the goal? What is the end game? I think often people can confuse strategy with objectives or, much more commonly, strategy with tactics. And in my case, I wanted to successfully introduce a concept and roll it out across Europe, and that was the objective that at the five year mark, we would be of x volume, for example x number of high end labels, brands in our data centers or in our outlet centers across Europe. That's the objective. Now the strategy may be, for example in the retailing concept, you have to be regionally dominant. You have to have such an outlet center of such scope in size and attraction and magnetism. That it's insane for anyone to try to open up across the street. Regional dominism, that was a strategy. In the data centers, and then you take regional dominism, and you want as many dots across the map as you can get. In data centers, you want to be reasonably dominant, but you only want the same dot to get bigger and bigger and bigger because of the economies of scale inherent in that industry. So, you start with the end in mind. I always start five years out and I look back to the present. That's the objective. Now, the strategy is how do I get there. And a strategy shouldn't change every month. It really shouldn't change even I don't think every year. You should have a strategy to get you there and you're constantly monitoring it. Ronald Reagan used to say he only has three principles and it makes governing very easily, because every time there's an issue or a question to be determined, he goes back to those three principles. That's what a strategy should do. Tactics may change daily, weekly, quarterly. You need to revisit at least annually your objectives, are they still realistic? You need to revisit your strategy. Is it still getting you to your objective, and hopefully it is. It's no sense clinging to an unsuccessful strategy or an unrealistic objective. But if it remains realistic, stick to it and find the talent that is more talented than you are to help you get there. So in determining what should be your strategy to reach what have already been the derived as the objectives, for five years from now. And the one year subset of that, I always look at what are the key success factors for this industry. Now in my case, there was no industry in Europe with these three new concepts. So I studied the models in America, I've been in Europe for a long, long time. I know which countries have certain jurisprudence. Some are harder or more difficult than others. But once you get those key success factors, then you cling to them and say how can I put the building blocks of those factors together to derive the strategy. And if you don't think you're able to, then you might need to change your strategy. So in deriving a strategy for any one of the three concepts, it's important to realize that I had a fundamental underlying business model that was similar in each case. First off, I come from a real estate background so I know real estate and real estate finance and I'm very very comfortable with that. Each one of the concepts that I imported had a real estate element to it. That in turn enabled me to dictate my financing strategy. And in real estate and all the concepts that which I'm describing, they are very capital intensive. Deriving appropriate financing strategy is really, really key and I said, that the outset when you're going up that curve, the concept maybe more successful then, the capital markets are following you so, there's a gap so, your financing strategy is key. And in these case, I adoption what's called the Opco Propco model, you have an operating company that is on top of a property company. And I needed to own the property everywhere I went and I had a separate operating company on top. But that gave me the long term security and collateral that I could offer to the private markets, private banks, but eventually also to the public markets and I floated a number of bonds on the public exchanges. And it's the Opco Propco model that is the same model in all three of those concepts that most people wouldn't understand. What? What do you do for a living? It's so different. Well, underneath, it's not so different. Not that different. So when you're taking courses such as this one, or if you've gone through a formal MBA program or Executive MBA. In essence, what you're doing is you're learning how to stock your tool box with a bunch of different tools. And then when to use which tool and under what circumstances. And the tools can be about accounting, and then marketing and finance and on and on. Looking back 30 years, after I graduated from my business school. I can say without hesitation, there are two tools that are far and away the most useful. One are people skills and it's very hard to teach, that is a tool. But it's as I said earlier, when you're working in a team you have to believe in the team. You have to realize the team can achieve way more than you can. Believing in people and communicating, they are related. But especially in the business world, I found that people who can write a one page memo and say here is the problem, here are the relevant issues, here is my analysis, here is my recommendation, and here is the timeline of the action plan, that's one page. As a CEO, and as a chairman, I don't have time for more than one page. I have so much coming at me because I'm, all mine are growth companies and time is my most rare commodity. communicating crisply, clearly, and with proper grammar, and people think don't worry about the grammar. Grammar matters. Grammar matters a lot when you're, or diction and clear communications, when you're communicating by email more than you are in person. So investing in your people skills for the long term, and investing in your communication skills is really important.
