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Magnolia’s developer blends work, play
By Dan McCue
Staff Writer
It is, in all likelihood, one of the more unique settings for a business meeting in all of Charleston.
The furnishings in the CC&T Real Estate Services meeting room are standard enough: a large table, several chairs, easels displaying various plans and brokered outcomes.
But eventually, one comes to the lion clutching a nyala, an antelope of southeastern Africa, in its jaw, both of them trophies from Robert L. Clement III’s frequent big game hunting expeditions in Africa.
“One of the things my daddy instilled in me was a love of the outdoors, and I just love hunting in Africa,” Clement said.
It turned out, however, that the game is only part of the allure. The six-hour time difference also plays a role.
“Being six hours ahead, I can play with the time in such a way that I still get a full day’s work done,” he said, glorying momentarily in the beauty of traveling with a satellite phone and a laptop computer, as well as outdoor gear.
“I can hunt in the morning and still be set up to work by the time people get to the office here,” he said. “Then, when I get done, I can hunt again in the early evening.”
This drive and commitment to his work is just as evident here. However, Clement used to run from the press instead of courting it with talk of business and pleasure. He wanted his work to do the talking and expected that to be enough, given that he devoted every moment he could to his projects.
But since founding the firm in 1993 with partners Thomas “Tommy” E. Thornhill and Steven C. Crawford, who retired in 1997 and was later succeeded by David Smythe, much has changed.
Today, the firm has eight full-time employees and 19 brokers with annual revenues and commissions of $3.6 million. Property sales and leases for 2005 exceeded $60 million.
“In the early years of the company, my attitude drew, I guess, on the essence of old Charleston,” Clement said. “I honestly thought it would be rude to brag to the newspapers about what we were doing. That’s just the way Southerners think.
“In time, however, I realized that by not talking I wasn’t giving credit to my people or my mentors to whom credit was due,” he said, adding, “I take a tremendous amount of pride in watching young people succeed.”
A driven man
By his own admission, Clement is a driven man and demanding boss, expecting his employees to be on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week. At the same time, he says, he insists they find a way to balance those things he considers the three pillars of his own life: family, faith and profession.
He also values teamwork, feeling rewarded when an older and more experienced associate takes a younger worker under his wing or when groups of employees go to lunch together.
“Many of our employees even hang out after …” Clement begins before trailing off.
He turned to John Tecklenburg, a CC&T associate.
“What’s that thing called that people do when they aren’t at work?”
“Recreating?” Tecklenburg offered.
“That’s it, recreating,” Clement said. “We’re really very close knit here.”
A father’s impact
Clement credits his own business success to his father, whom he continues to call his best friend, and to a series of mentors who shaped his young life.
“Growing up in Charleston, I got a certain education,” he said. “I acquired a love of history and a love of the environment. I grew up hunting and fishing on Kiawah Island. It was my world.”
But Clement’s father also instilled in his son an unquenchable interest in business and real estate.
“He was an attorney and loves real estate, so we talked about those things a lot,” Clement recalled. “When I was
11 years old, he took me to a meeting at which he tried to arrange for the state to purchase two barrier islands.”
Although the deal did not go through, Clement said the meeting, during which he stood in a corner and watched the proceedings, was his introduction to real estate.
Lessons from mentors
Throughout his youth, the number of his mentors continued to grow. He watched a grandfather rebuild a business after the Great Depression. His grandmother taught him to read The Wall Street Journal at about the same time he began earning his first salary as a paperboy.
Prior to enrolling at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va., Clement traveled to Augusta College in Georgia to take his first in-depth course in commercial real estate.
“I didn’t know what I was doing, but it was cool,” he said. “Throughout my years at Washington and Lee, I kept thinking, ‘There’s a piece of real estate. How can I sell it?’”
Clement readily admits he wasn’t a stellar scholar. “My father will tell you that,” he said. “But I never questioned that one day I would be successful. How I was going to get there, however, was a big question mark.”
After a stint in Houston, where he relocated to test his real estate prowess in a community where he had no connections, Clement returned to Charleston to build his company by acquiring environmentally distressed land.
“I wish I could say I got into working with Superfund sites and the like because I was so smart, but the truth is, starting out, it was all I could afford,” he said.
Clement switched gears.
“I think if you dig around here, you’ll find I’m big on perfection, big on results and constantly after something new to be engaged in,” he said. “But if there’s a key to how we’ve done all we’ve done, it’s really that of getting the right people and then getting them into the right positions here.”
Just the beginning
Clearly, the adventure has only begun for Clements. He’ll soon be packing the satellite phone and laptop again, this time to take to the mountains of British Columbia to hunt bear with a Cree Indian guide who doesn’t speak English.
He is also looking forward to at least two more long-planned hunting expeditions: a trip to the arctic to hunt polar bear with his daughter and another trip to Africa to hunt elephant with his son.
And then, of course, there’s the business of real estate.
“We haven’t finished,” Clement said. “There’s a lifetime of work still to finish.”
Dan McCue is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dmccue@charlestonbusiness.com.
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