A good business marriage - property management executive Millie Arnold

New Mexico Business Journal, March, 1991 by Arlene C. Odenwald

A good business marriage

Drive, ambition, aggressiveness. These are not words that people who know Millie Arnold use to describe her.

Yet, she is the senior vice president and third owner of the largest property management company in New Mexico, CBS Property Services, Inc.

Arnold, president of Millie Arnold & Company, a company that leased and managed about 1.5 million square feet of property, merged last year with CBS Property Management Services, a company with headquarters in Phoenix and offices in San Diego, Dallas, El Paso and San Antonio.

Their marriage created CBS Property Services of New Mexico, Inc., a management company that with the merger now manages and leases shopping centers, office buildings and apartments totaling 3 million square feet.

Millie Arnold & Company had 17 employees when it merged with CBS Property Management Services, an Albuquerque office with 33 employees.

What did CBS see in Millie Arnold & Company?

They saw a woman who was very knowledgeable and a company that was highly visible in the New Mexico market. At the time, Arnold's company represented local and institutional owners. CBS, on the other hand, primarily represented institutional owners, such as Pacific Mutual Insurance, Travelers Insurance, and Aetna. CBS added another dimension to Millie Arnold & Company.

"CBS is high technical, completely computerized, and highly automated in their marketing," Arnold says.

"It's been a good marriage," she says. "Together we picked up one of the most prestigious properties (First Plaza) in New Mexico."

This coup was accomplished in October during the aftermath of the merge, a time of transition for any company; not necessarily a time when one would expect to pick up a big account.

Arnold's rise is a story of hard work, responsible leadership and a professional reputation that brought her more business with each succeeding year.

One of six children, born in Roswell, New Mexico, her father was a farmer, her mother, a housewife. After graduating from Ruidoso High School, she returned to Roswell and went to work for Featherstone Development, an oil and gas company with a large pecan growing operation.

The fact that she started out as a receptionist and came out a comptroller, five years later, says much about the character of this woman, who eventually decided to leave the company in 1976 to pursue an accounting degree in Albuquerque at the University of New Mexico.

In 1976 she went to work as a comptroller for Deason Accounting Firm; in 1978, she went to work as comptroller and property manager for Petty-Youngblood, a real estate company.

Sooner or later, a person begins to have certain ideas about how things should be done or how to see things get done.

Arnold had ideas.

Ideas like what it takes to be a good leader, ideas about how to harness the wasted energy one sometimes sees in organizations, and ideas about how to recognize employees who work hard.

In 1982, she began her own property management business.

In the business of managing properties, one does not need financing; one needs clients.

So she went out and got an account. A good one, too: Copper Square Office Building. Entrepreneurs Phil Herkenhoff, Skip Skarsgard, and George Rutherford were in the process of renovating the old Cole Hotel, also known at one time as the El Fidel. "These three owners gave me my very first account," Arnold said.

Nine years later and many accounts bigger, Arnold is still managing Copper Square and a number of other buildings owned by the same partnership.

"The real important thing in any business is service," she says. "What will make a real estate business survive? What will make some tenants stay in some buildings rather than going to other buildings? Service and quick response. Make them feel important, because they are important. Because people will spend their dollars where their dollars are appreciated. If people's complaints are not answered and they feel they are not appreciated, then somebody else will come along and woo them away to another building. This is no theory of Einstein's. This is just how you take care of people."

Straightforward is the word that people who know her repeated more than any other in describing Millie Arnold. "Factually straightforward," said Skarsgard.

Fair was another word people used.

"Hardworking, smart, and industrious," said Rutherford.

"She runs a tight ship," said Herkenhoff. "And she has good people working for her."

Tom Jenkins, who is with CBS Property Services, says: "As far as working with her (Arnold) is concerned, you have to be ready to put on your track shoes and run."