That a mentor/mentee relationship
could work both ways was “my biggest surprise,” Parker says. When his late father
gave 90-minute to two-hour talks before
YPG audiences, “it was more a case of him
being in the mentor role.” The younger
Parker has emphasized the creative side of
office in recent projects, and when he gave
a PowerPoint presentation to a YPG class,
“they asked such good questions and they
were really opinionated. At the end of the
class, I was totally blown away by how
insightful they were. If I had a good idea,
I’d hear about it, but at the same time,
some of my ideas didn’t resonate with them
and they would let you know that.”
GETTING A LEG UP
When Patrick Barry graduated from
Coldwell Banker Commercial’s Emerging
Broker Training program in 2014, it was at
the top of a class of 50-plus. To hear him tell
it, much of the credit for his success in the
program could be claimed by the mentor/
mentee relationship that CBC requires as a
prerequisite for participation in EBT—in
this case, with his father, second-generation
broker Art Barry III, partner in Coldwell
Banker Commercial Eberhardt & Barry in
Macon, GA. “I had not one but two legs up
on most of the people in the class,” says
Patrick Barry.
At first, says Patrick Barry, “I really wasn’t
doing anything other than watching Dad
do what he does, in and out of the office,”
although he had begun listing properties
by the time he began EBT. ‘Whatever he
was doing, I was there.” That included
shadow training not only in the mechanics
of brokerage but also in such subtleties as
the art of talking to clients. “Dad is a master
of small talk.” When Art Barry wasn’t
actively engaged in an activity, “It was Q&A
time,” Patrick Barry says. “I could ask my
questions, and basically feel my way through
a dark room in my first six months in the
business.”
The elder Barry, whose father co-
founded Eberhardt & Barry with Guy
Eberhardt in 1970, recalls that when he
started in the business in 1984, he focused
on “trying to emulate what seemed to be
the more productive parts of what they did,
relating to recognizing real estate opportu-
nities.” He had previously spent four years
working for Northwestern Mutual Life,
where he learned advanced sales tech-
niques. “I had that under my belt when I
returned to Macon, and I was shocked at
how little training there was” at commercial
brokerages at the time. “When Patrick
came along, he was a natural-born sales-
man, but he had a much different training
than I did. I was trained basically by the seat
of the pants. It worked, but it was coupled
with some Fortune 100 techniques” that he
had obtained at Northwestern Mutual.
He gives plaudits to the sequence of edu-
cation that Patrick underwent: shadow
training, followed by specialized learning
through EBT. “Teaching techniques is
something that is long in process,” says Art
Barry. “It’s easy in theory, but it takes time.”
I could ask
my questions,
and basically
feel my way
through a dark
room in my
first six
months in the business.”
PATRICK BRADY
Coldwell Banker Commercial
