David Cohen, gentleman builder

0:03This is Business of Home. I'm your host, Dennis Scully. Every week I'll be speaking to leaders and innovators from all corners of the home industry. My guest this week is David Cohen, founder of the New York-based high-end residential contracting firm iGrace. David started the business in 1988 after cutting his teeth for other builders and quickly found himself in the midst of greatness, working for architects and designers like Mark Hampton, Oscar Shemamian, and Peter Marino. Over the years, iGrace has become an institution, one of the industry's best-known contracting firms at the top of the market.

0:45I spoke with David about how dealing with stringent summer building rules made his business better, how he got comfortable becoming friends with affluent clients, and why, from the very beginning, he looked to set himself apart as a gentleman builder.

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2:49Explore the new collections and connect with your Lalloy sales representative at lalloyrugs.com. That's L-O-L-O-I, rugs.com. And now, on with the show. It sounded to me from what you've described in the past that a professor role was much more likely in your future than the one you have now. Tell me about that. Take me back a little bit and help me understand how you've ended up here, David. it. Well, you know, it's funny. I, you know, I always did enjoy, you know, kind of the history and political science, you know, kind of world in the academic world. And I've always been kind of a bit bookish, you know, as it were.

3:38And I enjoyed just the kind of the general, you know, kind of polemics and stuff, but I'd always worked in the field of construction, early on. My father had all sorts of theories about idle time, which was probably a good rule in the 70s and the 80s, particularly with someone who, shall we say, was as curious as I was. So I had worked in the field. I thought it might, as was the case with my father and my sister, pull me, you know, pull me into the legal profession. But law was not my calling. I'm, I would say, you know, I'm, I have kind of more of a divergent mindset and I'm kind of a nonlinear, you know, thinker.

4:24And, uh, I do really enjoy a kind of the creative process and what I found, which was really seductive about construction and really ultimately kind of pulled me in. It was at the kind of the nexus of, you know, being kind of a pleaser and also someone who had to kind of undertake kind of creative problem solving. You know, these are the ways that things were done before and how do we resolve these issues and find ways to navigate them. And then creating the feedback loop if you're working for people and, oh my gosh, you're delivering things faster or better or finding a way to kind of marry craft, maybe classical tradition with modern technology or finding ways to do things faster or better.

5:22These were all very exciting and they really did draw around, really draw on some of the kind of my academic, you know, kind of antecedents. So there's so many stories of what happened to you along the way that I'm keen to get into. It seems like this fellow Tom Column was a very important figure early in your career. Tell me a little bit about how you came to work for him in the first place, and then sadly, the story of what what happens to him. So Tom really figures kind of largely in my life. And he had been brought to, I guess, New York, as I understood it, by Gayford Steinberg, of Saul and Gayford Steinberg.

6:13And he was a remarkably talented and had a really, really lovely way about him. And I was working on um a family um members apartment this is before i started the firm related to the stein steinbergs and um tom was um the decorator and they were also doing the architecture work and as it happened as the project progressed tom was more and more absent from the project and you I was trying to find a way to bridge realizing his design with the fact that there were lots of things that needed to be resolved that we really needed his input. And we found a way to navigate that, but it was not without its challenges.

7:03And towards the end of the project, the clients spoke to Tom and said, David has carried your water. And you really need to do something very special for David. Tom approaches me and says, David, if you go out on your own, I will ensure that all of my clients continue with you. And I was floored. I wasn't an entrepreneur. I really didn't have a vision for it. And certainly, I didn't have a business background. But upon reflection about what I had to lose and what I had to gain and the scale of the opportunity and some of the challenges of working for another firm, I decided to resign from William Crawford.

8:02And shortly thereafter, tragically, Tom passed and, you know, he was what none of us really understand stood at the time, you know, kind of a victim of the, you know, the AIDS scourge that took so many, you know, brilliant, you know, people, you know, away from us, particularly in the creative fields and stuff. And so, you know, there it was, Tom was gone, you know, aside from, you know, losing a friend and a force in the, you know, the industry, I obviously was quite concerned because I had kind of bet the farm as it were, you know, on this, but Tom, I mean, to his extraordinary credit had arranged everything, um, in the short time before he passed.

8:51So I, in fact, did get a wonderful new client at 4066th Street. And then I ended up working actually for the Steinbergs who had John D. Rockefeller Jr.'s apartment, which was a 25 ,000 square foot. The great 740 park. That's exactly it. And doing that. And then I acquired one other client at the Bearsford and was off to the races. And then with Tom gone, those clients needed to identify somebody who could, you know, to the extent it was possible, um, you know, fill those shoes. Um, and they found Mark Hampton who was an extraordinary person and extraordinarily talented and was more than capable of putting on his own dance shoes.

9:47And, and I mean, and, you know, he was a remarkable person. So, you know, so there I was, you know, at this, you know, early age working with, with Mark, with these apartments, you know, this high visibility thing and kind of, um, awestruck, I mean, by, you know, the serendipity of it all, you know, and that things had strangely, you know, worked out this way. And I always challenge myself a little bit because two years in, I was 29 and the trajectory seemed skyward. Everything was going well. And I had kind of started to make a foray into some of the things that previously I couldn't really pursue, one of which was joining an equestrian club.

10:44Um, and, uh, I still remember driving to the equestrian club in the funny little car that I had always wanted in high school and being in the best shape of my life and the triumphs, the great, the great, that's right. Yeah, that's right. The TR six, that's right. British racing green. It was with the growl. It was a, it was a, it was a, and going from, you know, the approach to a jump to being on the ground and paralyzed from the waist down. And so began the next chapter where there was a whole reassessment of who I was, what mattered, and the odyssey of imagining a path to recovery. And truly, there was no assurance there was a path to recovery.

11:42Absolutely. And I want to just pause and sort of make it clear exactly. So here you are, this young man, as you say. So you're somewhat of a mentor, passes away from the AIDS crisis, as you point out. Suddenly you've got your own firm. Suddenly you're working with Mark Hampton, and we'll come back to that, the legendary Mark Hampton, and a 15-year relationship you end up having with him. suddenly everything's going your way. You're feeling like I've got a real business here, again, despite your feeling that you weren't entrepreneurial to begin with, but we'll talk more about that. You're just a couple of years into having your own firm.

12:25You buy this sports car of your dreams and join the equestrian club. And then as you say, you're in the middle of a jump on your horse and suddenly you're flat out and you've broken your back and you are paralyzed from the waist down at 29. And at a time where we didn't have the knowledge and the treatments that we have since learned. And so suddenly life has taken a very dramatic turn for you. I think you described it to me when we spoke about it as sort of a second childhood is about to begin because your father has to take care of you in such an intense way. But help me fill in some of that.

13:15I'm sorry to bring back the painful memories of all of this, but it's an extraordinary story of how you over overcome all of this well thank you i um i think that first you know i always reflect on the dichotomy between the moment when i felt like i was on top of the world driving to the equestrian club to the moment that i hit the ground you know with kind of a resounding fud, you know, and, you know, there was that moment where I was just completely stricken, which was instantaneous. And I almost felt like there was like, you know, a hubris, you know, that needed to be just kind of ripped, you know, ripped from me.

14:02So, you know, at the time, there were a whole variety of different protocols, which hadn't been very successful without kind of wading into the choppy medical waters, which I'm not really equipped to do. But long story short, we found somebody who was a maverick at the time. They brought me into the city and I had just the faintest little flicker in one of my toes, but no bodily functions, nothing below the waist. And it was an immediate surgical intervention. They had pumped me full of steroids. They did this, you know, they did this whole thing. And the suggestion was, I might recover, but they just never knew what, you know, the deficits would be and the whole bit.

14:52And the types of things that course through your head about your life and, you know, seeing people standing over you crying, saying, you know, it's all, you know, it's all over for him. And I decided at that moment, I was going to be completely unaccepting of anything other than leaning into the fight to try and recover. And along the way, I learned so much about myself, but I also learned about the people who were present and the people who weren't. And also, I always use the term, I was kind of drowning in a sea of humanity. There was such extraordinary decency. And as I eventually became ambulatory again and got my bodily functions, I said I have to start from a place of gratitude.

15:52And I have to kind of remind, you know, mind myself that, you know, that there has to be a humility that kind of governs your life. And one of the things that was extraordinarily difficult was I was so fortunate that I got this result, but I was with so many other people who didn't. and I don't want to call it survivor's guilt, but it, you know, it was just like, oh my gosh, you know, this is something that I have been, you know, given and, and don't take it lightly. And, and I feel, you know, candidly that maybe because I was so fortunate, um, in terms of the way the business and everything came, even the, you know, with the tragic loss of, of Tom, you the extraordinary gift that he gave me but that doesn't happen to very many people and and maybe i didn't appreciate how extraordinarily fortunate i was so so suddenly this all happens and you and you begin to reframe your your your whole life right and yeah and and it it sounds as if it gave you a sense of purpose of the gratitude as you as you talked about it sounds as if it made you think long and hard about how you wanted to live your life going going forward yeah um the other thing that was kind of amazing is there was some question as to whether you know I would ever recover but my my budding firm, you know, I had a couple of employees all stayed, you know, with, with us, the clients that we were working on stayed with us.

17:47And we also, many of us, which is another kind of, um, sidebar, but I think is an important one, you know, particularly in the, you know, the larger tent of the business of, you know, of, of home, there were forces at work, um, you know, at that moment, um, a lot of the buildings were switching from kind of a relaxed set of rules to summer schedule rules. You know, people had been, you know, kind of in the eighties, you know, building, you know, on a really extravagant scale. And there was this, um, tension between the people who lived in the, and this was not the era of the condo. this was the era of the co-op you know these these buildings and people were like no we need to we need to and so this invited a question about how you get these projects done in short periods of time what are the the the creative approaches that one can you know can uh um use and and i think that you know as as perhaps as immodest as it may sound i really think that i was you know on the cutting edge of really changing the way things were approached because there was no playbook you know for that and i ended up um really finding myself which was an extraordinary opportunity and um an extraordinary moment in time um working very closely with um um oscar shamamian who went on to become a Ferguson shaman.

19:29And Oscar and I spent many a summer together figuring out how to get these things done. And he created the architectural engine. And I was busy trying to reimagine, how do you take what was formerly block and plaster and conduit and black iron and laugh and figure out ways to do traditional residences where you can get them done in, you know, in a summer. So it was, it was so much about deconstructing and re-imagining and, um, also figuring out how you create kind of a, an offsite kind of machine to drive success when, you know, the landing on the beach occurs.

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21:34And you talked about the summer schedules, and we should say for listeners who might not be familiar with, and maybe this is the case in many major cities that got rolled out over time, but hilariously in big Park Avenue, Fifth Avenue buildings, they decided that they didn't want all this construction going on the rest of the year. So the assumption was many of the tenants might actually be away for the summer and a big I Grace construction crew could come in and make a lot of noise and be disruptive. But what realistically could you accomplish in a summer? Here we are today, we're told projects are taking five years, things will last forever.

22:12What were you able to do in that period of time? Or what was the expectation of what you would accomplish? So I think the defining project for Oscar and I kind of out of the gate. And this is, I mean, it's almost 40 years ago now. I mean, it's crazy. It was almost an 8 ,000 square foot apartment, which was a full gut, you know, end to end. And it was, you know, how do you do a full-on interiors program and, you know, reconstitute, you know, it. And again, you needed to figure out a way to do these things differently because you couldn't scaffold, you couldn't bring the humidity levels up that much, and you couldn't just afford the time in sequencing.

23:03so it became we're going to have to figure out a way and at the time the building architects and the building management companies weren't really sure how they were going to navigate this either so you know part of it was we're going to use these types of metal studs which are heavier gauge we're going to do you know these sound attenuating bats we're going to do double layers of shit we're going to skim coat everything so it looks like it's you know it's plastic but we're going to, all of the plaster is going to be precast and self-bridging so that we can do things where what otherwise would have taken two months, three months, we can put up in two, three days.

23:48But it's all shop-drawn and manufactured off-site, brought in, and then and all kind of homogenized with a skim coat. And it afforded all sorts of other possibilities. So part of this was, A, getting the buy-in from building management, getting approval on these new technologies or assemblies, and then, to a certain extent, the psychology of it all, so that when people walked in, you'd kind of whitewashed everything, the floors, had paper down, and then people walked in and said, no, this is now in the decorative phase, and then you could continue. So concurrent with all of this stuff that's going on, architecturally, you're processing so many samples, so many shop drawings, you're in effect prototyping different things.

24:42So you needed to have a partner like an Oscar at the time who was all in, deeply invested and that you kind of had a shorthand. And during the early years, you know, we did so much of it. We almost promised ourselves later on that we would never do that anymore. Because it was, I mean, it was brutal. You know, it was just brutal. But, you know, we were literally getting these projects done in two substantial completion in three, four months. I mean, it was crazy. Unbelievable. You know, on site. But again, just to be clear, it would have been four, five, six months on the front and getting everything organized.

25:32And then it was about execution. And then the decorative phase and all those things, you know, whether it's the painting or the finishing or, you know, things. And there was all sorts of blurriness around what you can get away with, with that and how you navigated it. Were the residents below, were they home? Were the ones, you know, were they accommodating? Were they not accommodating? You know, every building had its own, you know, personality as it were management companies and stuff. And yeah, but to suggest that we became, you know, intimate with Candela buildings would be quite the understatement.

26:13And a renewed appreciation for that remarkable architecture and all that went into it. Yeah. And I do remember talking to so many builders and architects who talked about just having to pay all these, I guess there were fines that were issued, right? If you were over the period of time or you were doing this kind of work when you said you were doing that kind of work and right. Yeah. You know, we would model what are the implications of doing this, you know, in two summers or three summers, you know, between the carry between all of, you know, these things, as opposed to instead of having a team of one project manager, you know, having three project managers and three superintendents and having people in reserve these large things.

27:01So there's an inherent inefficiency because you need to have all of that and you needed to be able to absorb change and kind of flank any issue that arose. But whatever that expense was, the combination of the cost of caring and beneficial occupancy. I mean, the idea of caring these places and you have to live someplace else too. Right. I mean, it was a really interesting moment in time. And then it becomes a good calling card. And frankly, I would say, as I think about the firm, I think the discipline and the whole kind of construct is largely a function of those years. It really changed us and the way we approach things.

27:57Because I didn't share this with you, Dennis. You know, once upon a time, you know, delusions of youth, you know, I still had this kind of creative streak early on. And I envisioned myself, you know, kind of an early adopter of the laptop and, you know, the cell phone that I was going to be able to do the summer schedule project, finish it, and then, you know, basically take, you know, several months to, you know, just kind of recover from that. But the consequence of having to build the machine that was capable of getting the work done meant you needed to feed the machine year round. So it became something that really changed my life plan too and forced me to confront how do I carry this overhead?

28:54So, you know, we became a much more diversified, you know, diversified firm, you know, in terms of our, you know, our offerings and the reluctant business person. Well, this is what I'm so keen to hear because, yes, of course, you discover you have to take on all sorts of other kinds of projects in order to make possible what you were doing with the crazy summer schedule, the intensity of all of that work. Right. Right. But also you discover, oh, my gosh, my my entire life is being sucked up into into running this business in a way that you hadn't imagined. And I and I'm wondering what it is you discovered about yourself.

29:39And what what was your incredible gift that you could lean into? And where did you have to go and find help to make possible, I'm assuming, the running of the of the business? What were the challenges for you there that you needed others to help you with? And what did you discover you had this incredible power for? Well, there were a lot of really kind of interesting reckonings. You know, first of all, it became interesting and not noticeable initially, but it became much more apparent. Many of my friends were much older than I was because they were running businesses. And I was dealing with a lot of people in our space.

30:25So not only did I have friends that I could speak to about the issues and the things that I was confronting, I started to really understand that a lot of the crafts-based people and even people in the design community really didn't have kind of a deep understanding. of business. And my clients, many of them were often, you know, very supportive, you know, and reminding me that I maybe needed to think about my business a little bit differently. So, you know, hence, you know, very early on, I joined, you know, YPO and YPO was very helpful, you know, first, because it disabused me of any lingering illusions about, you know, what a marvelous businessman, you know, I really, really was, you know, and it was just like, you know, you are like a babe in the woods here.

31:27And I would sit, you know, I mean, transfixed listening to people talk about, you know, the things that they were doing and frankly benefit a lot from, you know, listening to their experiences. Obviously I tried in the early years to do a certain amount of learning and stuff, but it was not without its challenges. And then it became very often about understanding what are the deficits that I have and how do I hire the right people who both kind of understand culturally who we are, but at the same time, bring an expertise and a creative way of looking at things that is different. But many of my clients in the early years were much more friendly than I was comfortable with.

32:22And it took me so many years to get comfortable with where I was in my life, because there There were, I mean, there were obviously significant disparities in wealth and position, particularly, you know, in the early years. But also, you know, I was very deferential. You know, I was always Mr. and Mrs. I was always, you know, very, very careful. And I felt, you know, good fences make good neighbors and the whole bit. And people, you know, really tried to kind of get me. And it took many, many years. And I'm thankful that some of the most important people in my life, they've been clients now and friends for 30, 40 years.

33:10They put up with my standoffishness. And we still work together all these years later. But they also provided kind of insights into a whole variety of different business topics, life topics. You know, one particular friend, he had four kids as I did, you know, did, and he had traveled a lot for businesses. I had because, you know, we had an office in California, which we started, you know, 25, 30 years ago. Anyhow, you know, I was traveling a lot. And he would foreshadow for me all the different things that were going to happen with the development of the children, the challenges, all the stuff.

33:57And it was kind of uncanny. But he was like that in so many other aspects of my life too. I mean, and you can't quantify when you have a confidant, a mentor, a trusted friend, the value of those relationships. How did you – so it's so hard for me to imagine you in the early days, it sounds like, being standoffish or not being comfortable. I mean, because I think of you as somebody who immediately makes someone comfortable and gets into conversation and finds commonality. And you seem to have a very high EQ. And so I wonder, how did you come to develop that? How did you overcome some of the issues that you faced in the early days?