The Deal Read Free

eyes. She had a terrific body, something that surprised me once I learned she had a two-year-old child. A stickler for detail, Perry was the team member who
never left a stone unturned. She loved to get a deal done. She would extrapolate leases until late into the night. She checked and double-checked the work of the attorneys. She liked to play devil’s advocate in discussions and force everyone to see all sides of a deal. She was delicate and smart, deliberate and cunning, with just the right dose of “bitch.” In short she was great for the team. When it came to deal making, she was always prepared. Tommy loved her for this. As for me, I probably would have tried to sleep with her so it was a good thing she was married. From day one I admired Perry, and we, too, became the best of friends. Perhaps it was because we were so different, not just in our lifestyles but in our approach for getting results. Maybe I helped Perry feel young again. At the time she was only twenty-six so I know that seems silly, but she had been married for three years and had a child. A boy named Max. As she put it, she had jumped into adulthood “overnight.”
    I was a perfect complement for the group. As I learned a little while after joining them, Tommy had already started to fade into the background of the team’s day-to-day happenings, something, frankly, he had earned. He was successful on a level beyond most forty-three-year-old men. He could afford to play puppet master and have strong, well-armed foot soldiers who worked to further both his name as well as his bank account. He had personally trained Perry and Jake while raising a family and positioning himself politically within the industry and firm. He was owed a time to handpick his clients and close the deals. He taught Perry and Jake everything they knew. They were two of the best in the business. Their work situation seemed enviable but they would both tell you, just as I am, the timing of my arrival couldn’t have been better.
    Their own success was beginning to suffocate them. More deals were streaming in than there was time for. They needed new blood. Once they accepted that I was more than competent, and as hungry as they were, we were one happy family. This just made us stronger. We enjoyed the long hours we spent together whether at Il Mulino for dinner with clients, or the Rainbow Room for lunch to discuss strategy, it didn’t matter. We had an expense account larger than most Americans’ salaries. The money was mind-blowing.
    My first monster deal came six months into my second year. It was a client I found, a prominent financial institution. Jake and Perry both helped me put the deal together. Two hundred thousand square feet in a mid-town property. The rent averaged $55.00 per square foot over a fifteen-year lease. As far as how a commission works, it’s simple. You take the average yearly rate for the term of the lease, which is usually somewhere between three and fifteen years, and multiply this by a percentage for each year of the lease. For a long-term lease this percentage usually begins around 5
percent for the first couple of years and works its way down—you get the idea. Once the aggregate number has been devised by adding up the fees taken for each year, 40 percent goes to PCBL and our team splits the rest. Anyway, for the aforementioned deal,
taking into account that according to the lease the yearly rent accumulated by 3 percent annually, the average yearly rent was around thirteen million dollars. To be precise, PCBL’s commission was $5,651,479.00 with our team getting a $3,390,088.38 share. Tommy got the largest cut of any deal we made. For this one he and I split 60 percent of our team’s share, since it was my client. Jake and Perry each got 20 percent. One deal and I walked away with a little over 1.1 million dollars. Now granted, not every deal made is of this size, but just like that I was wealthy. Not wealthy because my family was wealthy, but