For my job shadow experience, I had the privilege of meeting and shadowing Mr. Algenon Cash, Managing Director at Wharton Gladden, a boutique real estate investment bank in Greensboro, North Carolina. While Mr. Cash referred to himself as a “one trick pony” in conversation with me, stressing how focused he is on growing Wharton Gladden, he is much more than that.

He is extremely involved in the community, having been involved in a number of charities and also being involved in North Carolina politics. Additionally, Mr. Cash teaches a commercial real estate class at Winston-Salem State University. His well-rounded character showed during the meeting I sat in on, and it was evident that his community involvement has helped him grow an enormous network in the North Carolina area.

I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to sit in on a meeting where Mr. Cash and former Wake Forest basketball player, Skip Brown, were considering investing in a micro small-business fund in the triad area being created by Scott Bauer, a local banker. The meeting was essentially a negotiation on the details of the fund, such as its size and who potential investors may be, and whether Mr. Cash and Mr. Brown would be willing to invest.

It was really impressive to watch Mr. Cash and Mr. Brown interact with Mr. Bauer because of their ability to stress what they were looking for in the fund, while identifying with what Mr. Bauer was trying to do. It was clear that they were all not necessarily on the same page in terms of the size of the fund they were looking for; however Mr. Cash and Mr. Brown were poised in the negotiations. It was also clear through their conversations that they all had built tremendous networks over their careers and they would be relying on these strong networks to help the fund thrive.

Mr. Cash appeared to be persuasive in his attempts to convince Mr. Bauer of his point of view, referring to his ability to get the state of North Carolina to match the initial investors stake in the fund, and how based on origination fees, asset management fees, monitoring fees and closing fees this could be a very profitable investment. In the end, the men were not able to come to an agreement due to how early in the stages of creating the fund Mr. Bauer was, but Mr. Cash definitely appeared to be persuasive in his negotiating.

All in all, I feel like I learned a lot just from watching Mr. Cash interact during this meeting. He demonstrated incredible poise and persuasiveness throughout the meeting and I feel that these are skills that are critical for one to develop in order to be successful in the business world. I am very thankful and appreciative of the time I spent shadowing Mr. Cash and I hope one day I can emulate the negotiating ability and people skills he showed.

Wake Forest University student, Jimmy Tangires, 2014 graduate with a major in science and finance, authored this guest article about his experience shadowing Wharton Gladden Managing Director Algenon Cash.