- August 18, 2026
- Posted by: Ken Dichi
- Category: Uncategorized
Jimmy Ricard was employee number one at AB&B. He arrived in late 2020 tasked with transforming a portfolio of properties managed by five separate vendors using five different systems into a unified, high-functioning operation. Jimmy built AB&B’s infrastructure, along with the framework for how people work together, make decisions, and execute their roles without constant direction from above. That framework determines whether your property gets invested in or neglected, whether your lease terms get honored or nickel-and-dimed, whether decisions move fast or stall in bureaucracy.
As AB&B’s Chief Operating Officer, Jimmy’s role spans acquisition strategy, financial operations, development infrastructure, and what he calls the “orchestration” of everyone’s individual expertise toward a unified vision. His job description reveals his thinking: “My role as COO is to understand what our company is trying to accomplish, make sure from whatever we identify we need to accomplish, there are the pieces, components, and platforms in place to execute on that vision.”
That orchestration is what tenants experience, even if they never see the person orchestrating it.
The Relationship That Made This Possible
Before AB&B existed, Jimmy knew Dr. Hesham Baky for close to fifteen years: they played early morning basketball together and pursued various speculative projects that built deep trust between them. They trusted each other at a family level with each other’s children, and that relationship shaped everything that followed when they eventually started AB&B together.
What makes this partnership unusual is how it holds two contradictory operational modes at the same time. There’s the stable side: “Let’s do this. Let’s make sure our risk is insulated.” And then the experimental side: “Let’s throw something against the wall and see what happens.” The two are isolated from each other, operating like separate discretionary budgets.
This matters operationally because the world doesn’t stay still. COVID happened, and AI is happening now, which means the ten-year lease a tenant signs with the hope that location serves everything their business needs will inevitably face industry disruption during that span. Ownership that only understands stability can’t survive innovation, yet ownership that only understands disruption can’t ensure tenants get predictable service. AB&B needs both operating simultaneously.
“You need to have people that understand and can work together on ownership, plus staff that understands we need to create the most stable, predictable, repeatable environment for our clients. And we also need to have that little bit of insane side to jump off and go try some things that the industry hasn’t said, we’ve tested this. It’s safe for you to use,” Jimmy explains. That relationship with Dr. Baky gives Jimmy the freedom to innovate. “If one out of ten of those walls has a secret door on the other side, a hundred percent of the rest of the people are turning around. We’re not.”
Building Infrastructure Right From the Start
When Jimmy arrived in late 2020, the company’s properties were managed by five separate vendors using five different systems. The first move wasn’t to immediately choose a platform and migrate. It was to understand what infrastructure decisions actually enable the way you want to operate.
He spent the first six months learning the existing processes across all five systems. Understanding the mechanics before choosing tools is the opposite of how most operators approach infrastructure decisions. He then studied how successful commercial real estate companies had handled migrations, connected with certified consultants who could guide both the technical process and the hiring strategy, and built infrastructure from inception around collaborative, distributed decision-making instead of centralizing everything.
The result: AB&B built their commercial real estate platform with modern infrastructure and integration as foundational assumptions from the start. Most commercial real estate companies never get that starting position.
Shared Language Enables Individual Expertise
What Jimmy created during AB&B’s early years as he added people to the team was a shared language for how decisions would get made and work would flow. When AB&B hired Q.E.N. Strategic Consulting to formalize their brand strategy in 2023, the operating structure was formally named the Beehive Philosophy. The label mattered because it gave everyone vocabulary to discuss how they actually worked.
The framework is straightforward: people know where they need to be, what their role requires, and how their work connects to everyone else’s. The shared language means people can execute their expertise without constant approval seeking from above. “There’s a difference between people understanding and working in an environment versus having the vocabulary to understand it, being able to communicate with each other, and truly take advantage of the platform they’re working in,” Jimmy explains.
That shared language also determines how technology gets deployed. AI tools arriving without this collaborative foundation can fragment an organization. With it in place, technology amplifies. “AI is a tool, and without the platform that we created that’s collaborative, I think that tool would just create drift,” Jimmy says. The organization makes real progress through marginal improvements: three steps forward, sometimes two steps back. “The progress is real. We just get better day over day.”
Systems in Action: The Cindy Example
As of June 2026, when meetings conclude at AB&B, an AI agent reads the full transcript, identifies which issues belong to which departments, creates action items, and assigns them to the appropriate person. This happens automatically. Years ago, Jimmy would have spent four hours after each meeting manually sorting and delegating. The alternative was hiring administrative assistants to manage the backlog. Today it runs like clockwork.
The most tangible example involves Cindy Cohen, AB&B’s Construction Project Manager. When a tenant improvement project moves forward, five contractors submit bids in five different spreadsheet formats with different pricing structures and line-item categories. Leveling those bids (comparing them, identifying who’s above market, who’s missing categories, who’s truly competitive) took hours of manual work.
Jimmy built an agent to do it in five minutes. The agent normalizes messy spreadsheets to a consistent template, runs price comparisons, and drafts emails to each contractor with specific feedback: you’re 12 percent above market on sitework, you missed electrical, your general conditions are competitive.
“Cindy’s not spending her time in spreadsheets. She’s applying her actual skill set: understanding what’s happening at the ground level, catching scope gaps, knowing what tenants really need. I’m removing work that isn’t in her lane and stresses her. That multiplies her bandwidth.”
The moment this tool proved its worth came during a crisis. Cindy’s family member had a medical emergency and she needed to be at the hospital. She also had a bid review due. Jimmy showed her how to run the agent from her phone, and when the outputs came back matching the contractors’ data to the penny (data she and co-founder Dr. Jonathan Boes had previously spent until 2 a.m. manually reconciling), she said: “I never have to do this the old way again.”
Understanding Every Process: The Path to Independence
Ask Jimmy what he’s most proud of about how AB&B operates now versus three years ago, and his answer reveals his entire operational philosophy: “Much more independent. My goal is for nobody to have to rely on me.”
Most leaders want to be needed. Jimmy actively works toward becoming unnecessary. Here’s why: “If someone needs me and my time is allocated, then my time becomes the bottleneck in other people’s growth. And if it’s the bottleneck in other people growing, it’s the bottleneck in our company growing and everything growing. I don’t like being that.”
He achieves this by understanding every process intimately. He understands the full accounts payable timeline: three days for Yardi to process an invoice, one day to code it, two days for workflow approvals, one day for accounting to commit and issue payment, five to fifteen days for physical delivery or electronic processing. If payment needs to happen same-day, a manual wire transfer overrides the standard process.
“I need to understand that process very well in order to support this person and make sure I’m putting a reasonable workload on them, and that we’re communicating to our stakeholders how long it’s going to take for them to get a payment from the time they send us an invoice.”
Three years ago, Jimmy was manually managing 100 operational tasks. Today, that’s down to 20. The goal is zero. “A lot of those processes are running independently without me. And the goal is to get down to zero at some point.”
How Invisible Operations Become Visible to Tenants
“The tenant is never aware of anything we do unless it’s an improvement to the center.” Most of what tenants experience comes from what doesn’t happen to them as opposed to dramatic gestures. Things don’t go wrong because preventive work was already done.
When it does show up, it’s usually through property transformation. Take MacGregor Village. Previous ownership nickel-and-dimed tenants and neglected the property. Under AB&B’s strategic direction, a restored fountain became visible proof that the landlord was invested. New furniture. Active cleanup after weekend events. Accountability for irresponsible guests from neighboring businesses. These details accumulate.
“Tenants might not notice today, but they might, in a year, look back and be like, wow, things really feel different here than they did before. The truth is, everyone’s busy with their own life.” So you can’t know what every tenant will notice. But the compounding effect works regardless.
That’s what intentional operations look like from the inside. That’s what tenants experience on the outside.
Insights from the Experts: AB&B’s Chief Operating Officer on Creating Systems That Scale
