q&a: BRUCE LAUER

Bruce Lauer's commercial real estate career spans 46 years, beginning with the Allen Morris Co. in Miami. In 1976, the Ohio native and a trio of partners formed the Clark-Biondi Co., which was sold to commercial real estate brokerage Grubb & Ellis nine years later.

At 71, his role at Cushman & Wakefield straddles both being a rainmaker and mentor to younger brokers. Last month, he was inducted into the National Association of Office and Industrial Parks' Tampa chapter's Hall of Fame in recognition for his “significant professional and personal accomplishments.” Past recipients of the award include Dick Beard, Mel Sembler, Alfred Hoffman, Ron Weaver, Evelyn Andretta and Bill Eshenbaugh.

How did you come to be involved in the business, what appealed to you and why did you stay in it?

After graduation from college I went to work at Price Waterhouse, which at the time was a big accounting firm. It was a great place to go after school, and I learned a lot and stayed there right up until the time I was drafted and went to Vietnam. That really helped me grow up. When I returned to the U.S., I found I had developed a real distaste toward public accounting. I was assigned to work the account for Borden, and I would go to their accounts receivable department, and I determined I just didn't like the stigma of being there. And from there, I really just fell in love with real estate. I learned that property management was a way to generate revenue, and then I learned that leasing generated even more revenue for a property. At the time, I was writing checks to Morris agents, sometimes in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and I thought, 'There must be something to that.' So I transitioned from accounting into leasing.